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inkskinned · 1 year

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one of the things that i think we should pay attention to, socially, about the disney v. desantis thing is that it is really highlighting the importance of remembering nuance.

in a purely neutral sense, if you engage in something problematic, that does not mean you are necessarily agreeing with what makes it problematic. and i am worried that we have become... so afraid of any form of nuance.

disney isn't my friend, they're a corporate monopoly that bastardized copyright laws for their own benefit, ruin the environment, and abuse their workers (... and many other things). this isn't a hypothetical for me - i grew up in florida. i also worked for the actual Walt Disney World; like, in the parks. i am keenly aware of the ways they hurt people, because they hurt me. i fully believe that part of the reason florida is so conservative is because it's been an "open secret" for years now that disney lobbies the government to keep minimum wage down, and i know they worked hard to keep the parks unmasked and open during the worst parts of Covid. they purposefully keep their employees in poverty. they are in part responsible for the way the floridian government works.

desantis is still, by a margin that is frankly daunting, way worse. the alternative here isn't just "republicans win", it's actual fascism.

in a case like this, where the alternative is to allow actual fascism into united states legislation - where, if desantis wins, there are huge and legal ramifications - it's tempting to minimize the harm disney is also doing, because... well, it's not fascism. but disney isn't the good guy, either, which means republicans are having a field day asking activists oh, so you think their treatment of their employees is okay?

we have been trained there is a right answer. you're right! you're in the good group, and you're winning at having an opinion.

except i have the Internet Prophecy that in 2-3 months, even left-wing people will be ripping apart activists for having "taken disney's side". aren't i an anti-capitalist? aren't i pro-union? aren't i one of the good ones? removed from context and nuance (that in this particular situation i am forced to side with disney, until an other option reveals itself), my act of being like "i hope they have goofy rip his throat out onstage, shaking his lifeless body like a dog toy" - how quickly does that seem like i actually do support disney?

and what about you! at home, reading this. are you experiencing the Thought Crime of... actually liking some of the things disney has made? your memories of days at the parks, or of good movies, or of your favorite show growing up. maybe you are also evil, if you ever enjoyed anything, ever, at all.

to some degree, the binary idealization/vilification of individual motive and meaning already exists in the desantis case. i have seen people saying not to go to the disney pride events because they're cash grabs (they are). i've seen people saying you have to go because they're a way to protest. there isn't a lot of internet understanding of nuance. instead it's just "good show of support" or "evil bootlicking."

this binary understanding is how you can become radicalized. when we fear nuance and disorder, we're allowing ourselves the safety of assuming that the world must exist in binary - good or bad, problematic or "not" problematic. and unfortunately, bigots want you to see the world in this binary ideal. they want you to get mad at me because "disney is taking a risk for our community but you won't sing their praises" and they want me to get mad at you for not respecting the legit personal trauma that disney forced me through.

in a grander scheme outside of disney: what happens is a horrific splintering within activist groups. we bicker with each other about minimal-harm minimal-impact ideologies, like which depiction of bisexuality is the most-true. we gratuitously analyze the personal lives of activists for any sign they might be "problematic". we get spooked because someone was in a dog collar at pride. we wring our hands about setting an empty shopping mall on fire. we tell each other what words we may identify ourselves by. we get fuckin steven universe disk horse when in reality it is a waste of our collective time.

the bigots want you to spend all your time focusing on how pristine and pretty you and your interests are. they want us at each other's throats instead of hand in hand. they want to say see? nothing is ever fucking good enough for these people.

and they want their followers to think in binary as well - a binary that's much easier to follow. see, in our spaces, we attack each other over "proper" behavior. but in bigoted groups? they attack outwards. they have someone they hate, and it is us. they hate you, specifically, and you are why they have problems - not the other people in their group. and that's a part of how they fucking keep winning.

some of the things that are beloved to you have a backbone in something terrible. the music industry is a wasteland. the publishing industry is a bastion of white supremacy. video games run off of unpaid labor and abuse.

the point of activism was always to bring to light that abuse and try to stop it from happening, not to condemn those who engage in the content that comes from those industries. "there is no ethical consumption under late capitalism" also applies to media. your childhood (and maybe current!) love of the little mermaid isn't something you should now flinch from, worried you'll be a "disney adult". wanting the music industry to change for the better does not require that you reject all popular music until that change occurs. you can acknowledge the harm something might cause - and celebrate the love that it has brought into your life.

we must detach an acknowledgment of nuance from a sense of shame and disgust. we must. punishing individual people for their harmless passions is not doing good work. encouraging more thoughtful, empathetic consumption does not mean people should feel ashamed of their basic human capacities and desires. it should never have even been about the individual when the corporation is so obviously the actual evil. this sense that we must live in shame and dread of our personal nuances - it just makes people bitter and hopeless. do you have any idea how scared i am to post this? to just acknowledge the idea of nuance? that i might like something nuanced, and engage in it joyfully? and, at the same time, that i'm brutally aware of the harm that they're doing?

"so what do i do?" ... well, often there isn't a right answer. i mean in this case, i hope mickey chops off ron's head and then does a little giggle. but truth be told, often our opinions on nuanced subjects will differ. you might be able to engage in things that i can't because the nuance doesn't sit right with me. i might think taylor swift is a great performer and a lot of fun, and you might be like "raquel, the jet fuel emissions". we are both correct; neither of us have any actual sway in this. and i think it's important to remember that - the actual scope of individual responsibility. like, i also love going to the parks. Thunder Mountain is so fun. you (just a person) are not responsible for the harm that Disney (the billion dollar corporation) caused me. i don't know. i think it's possible to both enjoy your memories and interrogate the current state of their employment policies.

there is no right way to interrogate or engage with nuance - i just hope you embrace it readily.

#does this make sense #to do be deleted probably yikes #(takes a swing at a wasp's nest)#like i think ppl have started to just be really quiet when they like something 'problematic'#and im like... u can be like -#girl tswift NEEDS to just TAKE A BUS . LIKE?????????????????????#while also being like.#''she's a lot of fun''#if ur personal policy is that u don't support her for that reason that's great #but it's like. eating meat???#like yeah some people won't bc the environment. but the fact i eat meat doesn't mean i hate the earth #like i can say that i think the meat industry is HORRIFIC and also downright cruel to its employees #but like. still enjoy a chicken nugget....#there are people who choose otherwise. it's okay . we are people. i make like no money. u probably don't either #us fighting about whether or not it's Right To Eat The Chicken Tender just distracts from like.#actually turning your ire on the corporation #i hope it's clear what i'm saying here is like. when we fight each other for Purity Reasons #we are just doing the work of corporations . for free. like they WANT us to be doing this lol #it's the fucking DREAM of the upperclass that now ALL forms of responsibility fall on the individual

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solarsturniolo · 5 months

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𝕮𝖗𝖊𝖊𝖕 // 𝕸.𝕾. // 𝕺𝖓𝖊

𝕾𝖚𝖒𝖒𝖆𝖗𝖞: in which Matt is failing his classes and at risk of having to repeat the semester, and his tutor is the reason behind it.

𝕯𝖎𝖘𝖈𝖑𝖆𝖎𝖒𝖊𝖗: This is a collaborative story that me and @bambi-slxt started on, but I am in charge of it now :) All characters in this story are of age. None of the characters are minors.

𝖂𝖆𝖗𝖓𝖎𝖓𝖌𝖘: cursing / smut / switch!matt / switch!fem reader / male masturbation / wet dreams / use of good boy / virgin!matt / p in v / oral (fem receiving) / oral (male receiving) / overstimulation / breeding kink / praise kink / mommy kink / scenes mentioning anxiety

𝖂𝖔𝖗𝖉 𝕮𝖔𝖚𝖓𝖙: 5,906

“W-Wait, what?” Matt’s eyes widened, his eyebrows raising. “What do you mean I might not be able to graduate?”

The school counselor sighed, lifting her glasses from the bridge of her nose and placing them onto her desk. She leaned back in her plush swivel chair, looking at the nervous boy sitting across from her. Her office was comforting, a place that Matt had found solace in quite often on his bad days. She never used the overhead light, always opting for the warm glow of her floor lamps and the flicker of light from the flame in a scented candle. Her bookshelves were littered with not only books, but numerous knick-knacks and do-hickeys. Most people would have seen it as clutter, but Matt found comfort in the items she had, which more or less reminded him of his grandmother’s house.

She turned her monitor for him to see, and she visibly saw the blood drain from his face. Her screen glowed with a much harsher light, the gradebook showing Matt’s transcript laid out in front of him. “You’re proficient in your American History class, but the rest of your classes for the semester are in the gutter. Socioeconomics, U.S. Government, European Literature, and Chemistry are all greatly negatively impacting your overall grade point average.” Matt’s head fell, his hands coming up to rub his face. How could I have let it get this bad? How could I be so negligent? How was it even possible? She clasped her hands together and leaned forward, resting her arms on her desk. She had grown to like Matt, he was polite and always greeted her with a smile, he was very open with his thoughts and feelings, and he really did work hard. She empathized with him, because she knew how it felt to be in this spot. “This is a reversible situation - we can fix this. You have options, Matt.”

Matt looked up from his lap, his hands falling onto his thighs. “W-We can?”

“Yes,” she replied with a smile. She swirled her chair around, unlocking one of the drawers in her filing cabinet and opening it to reveal a number of filing folders. She fingered through them before pulling out a sheet, turning her chair back towards her desk and placing it down in front of Matt. “We have a tutoring program available, and I think you would benefit greatly from it.”

“Tutoring?” Matt frowned, staring down at the paper. He never thought in his life that he would need tutoring. How embarrassing. I’m doing so bad in my classes that I need another student to teach me. What if I know them? What if they tell everybody? Matt looked back up at the counselor, hesitation clear on his face. “Are there any other options?”

She sighed, putting her glasses back on and turning the monitor to face her once again. Matt watched intently as she clicked her mouse a few times. Matt instinctively brought his hand to his face, subconsciously beginning to chew on his nails. I can’t choose tutoring. Chris and Nick will never let me hear the end of it. This is so embarrassing. Can’t I just retake a test or something? Why did I let it get this bad?

“Unfortunately, the only other option I have here is for you to retake these classes again…which would also mean repeating senior year.”

Matt hadn’t realized he had chewed his nail off. He dropped his hand back to his lap, discreetly spitting it out when she wasn’t looking at him. “I’ll take the tutoring,” Matt sighed. The thought of not graduating with Nick and Chris made him feel queasy. His stomach turned over just thinking about his brothers walking across that stage while he sat in the audience and watched. His brothers holding their diplomas up with cheesy smiles on their faces for their pictures that would surely be framed and hung on the walls of their parents’ house for the remainder of their lives; all while Matt would have to wait another year to meet the same fate. Another year of high school, this time without his brothers. Without Chris to make him laugh, to make the day move by just a little quicker. Without Nick, who always looked out for Matt, always offering to ask the teacher any questions that Matt had to take the heat off of him, to avoid any anxiety inducing feelings that Matt might have had. I can’t do it. I wouldn’t last a day without them. Any chance to avoid that outcome is one he would take, no questions asked.

x o x o x o

I should have asked some fucking questions. Matt’s heart pounded as he pretended to look at something on his phone, switching between his social media apps anxiously; not that any of them were bustling with activity, he just needed something to make himself look busy. She was here. I wasn’t prepared to see her. Holy fuck.

For the past four years, Monday through Friday, once the bell rang after the final class of the day, Matt had booked it for the locker room. Shuffling through a crowd of boys, shoving Chris (and getting shoved right back), listening to a variety of music through his headphones (mostly Kid Ink, Lil Skies, Mac Miller, and Post Malone), and throwing on his gear for lacrosse. Today, however, he sat awkwardly in the school library, leg bouncing, chewing at the skin around his pinky fingernail. His headphones tucked away in his pocket. No music to drown out his thoughts. Why didn’t I ask more questions? I can’t do this; I can’t be here with her. This can’t be happening. She…looks so pretty.

Across from him, a few tables over, she sat on the table itself, cross-legged and completely at ease. A light blue sweater hung off her shoulders, a pair of khaki cargos crinkled over her legs, worn-out white air forces, and a pair of hoop earrings rounded out the simple, gut-wrenching outfit.

Matt hated feeling this way. She drove him insane, and she had no idea who he was. That was a lie - they had a few classes together. Incidentally, those same classes glowed red in the gradebook. It didn’t take him very long to figure out why.

For the past four years, Matt had walked into school every morning hoping in equal measure that she had shown up and that she had suddenly become homeschooled. Every single class, he would stare at the door just hoping he’d catch a glimpse of her, whether she was walking into the classroom or just passing by in the hallway. He knew where to look for her in the hallways between classes, and he’d be lying if he said he didn’t feel his heart rate pick up when he’d see her in the flood of other students chaotically herding through the halls.

Now she was his tutor. She was the reason he was failing, and she was his tutor. His counselor had no way of knowing, but she had just doomed Matt to repeat senior year. He was not about to sit down with that girl and make a complete idiot out of himself.

Lifting his backpack and hooking the strap over his shoulder, he got up and turned for the door. At that moment she looked up from her book, her eyes locking with his, and he froze.

Her hair fell softly along the edges of her face, and she looked at him with mild curiosity. Matt’s breath hitched in his throat. Years of her never even noticing me, and now she’s looking at me and…smiling. Oh god.

Don’t you dare fuck this up, he heard Chris whisper in the back of his mind. “Fuck off,” he muttered and began to walk towards her.

“Is this where I’m supposed to be for uh…” He didn’t want to say it. Normally people would jump in and finish sentences anyway to avoid uncomfortable silences. She did not. She just continued to look at him with minimal interest, her smile growing a little in amusement. Oh god. This isn’t happening. Somebody please pinch me. Or shoot me.

Matt felt the heat rising to his face, his breath catching in his throat as she stared at him. “Tutoring. I’m here for tutoring.”

She slipped a bookmark between the pages of the book she was reading and pulled a knee up to her chest. Matt caught a glimpse of the cover of the novel, furrowing his eyebrows a bit. A hockey player? I played hockey. Should I say that? Does she like hockey players? Lacrosse is like hockey… in some ways. Should I-

“You’re Matt, right? One of the triplets?”

Matt blinked. “Yeah.”

She smiled again, placing her book down onto the table. Icebreaker? Matt made a mental note to look that up later. “I think we share a few classes, right?”

“We have Socioeconomics, European Literature, and Chemistry together, and when Chorus comes into the auditorium to practice, I run the soundboard for you. You took Workshop with me and Chris, and I could never focus on a single project me and him had together. We had Math and Introduction to Culinary together last year, all of our electives the year before that, and in ninth grade you were in my home room and study hall. You’ve always been in my lunch block, and you like to eat out in the courtyard under the willow tree far away from the picnic benches. You’re in the photography and Yearbook club because you love to take pictures, and you also run the school’s yearbook account on Instagram. You never get breakfast because it hurts your stomach to eat in the mornings but if you forgot to have dinner the night before, you’ll go through the line in the cafeteria and get an old-fashioned donut and a cup of mixed fruit. You prefer peppermint gum over spearmint, you always wear shimmer lip gloss instead of clear, you chew on your lip when you’re thinking really hard, you write sloppily when taking notes, but your papers are written in cursive. You’re terrifyingly beautiful, and I’ve wanted to talk to you for four years.”

That’s what Matt thought about saying. Instead of opting for that particular route of social suicide, however, he simply went with, “Yeah, I think we have one or two together, right?” and sat his bag down.

Don’t fuck this up. You cannot fuck this up.

x o x o x o

“Ms. Coleman said you were behind in some classes,” she said, pulling out her laptop from her bag. “Which ones?”

‘All of them’, He thought to himself. Matt sighed, running a hand through his messy hair. “What am I not behind in?” he mumbled.

She looked up at him through her lashes. Matt felt his stomach twist up in knots. He had imagined her looking at him like this more times than he could count. Usually late at night when he was in bed, his hand wrapped around his cock, his eyes screwed shut as he bit back soft whines and whimpers as his arousal leaked into his fist. He couldn’t help but feel his pants tightening around his crotch as filthy thought after filthy thought played in his head.

She smiled at him again, and Matt suddenly realized that she had been speaking. His stomach dropped. “S-Sorry, what?” he stammered. She laughed softly, a sound that made Matt’s heart leap up into his throat. “I asked if you could be a little more specific.”

Matt cleared his throat. “Um, Government, English, Socioeconomics, and Chem.” He looked down at his hands in his lap, the thoughts from earlier looming over him. I won’t graduate. Mom will be so disappointed. Dad won’t speak to me for a year. Chris and Nick will move on in life without me. She probably thinks I’m an idiot. Who the fuck fails almost every class in their last semester?

He could have sworn he felt his heart come to a full stop when he felt her hand on his shoulder, his head snapping up in an instant. “Hey,” she cooed as Matt met her gaze once more. “We’ll fix this. We have four months until graduation. You have time.”

Yeah, time to spend my afternoons drooling over you and retaining no information. Four months to sit here and gawk at you every fucking afternoon while my grades continue to plummet. Four months of me rushing home after these tutor sessions to beat off before Nick and Chris get home from their after school extra curriculars. Either way, I’m failing this semester.

“Why don’t we start with English, hm? I’m in that class with you, third period. We have a paper due on Friday.” She opened her laptop, pressing the power button repeatedly. Matt swallowed the lump in his throat – fuck. The paper… he was hoping to avoid it altogether. Sensing his hesitation, she raised her eyebrows. “Have you started it?”

Matt blinked. He licked his lips, suddenly noticing how dry they were. “...No.”

“Me neither,” she grinned, and Matt felt his shoulders relax. She had a beautiful smile, and it so rarely appeared on the Somerville High property, even less so in the classes they’d shared. It made him wonder what else he could do or say to make it stay for longer.

“It’s okay,” she continued, tapping away at her keyboard, urging the ancient relic to awaken and let her log on. “We can write it together.”

“Yeah, sure…together,” he said, taking out his own laptop, proud that he had enough focus to keep his hands steady. He wanted to make her smile again, but he hadn’t the faintest idea how. Matt also wanted to crawl into the floor and sleep for an eternity, but his wishes seemed to have no substance. His grades did, and more than anything, he knew he wouldn’t forgive himself if he made Chris and Nick leave him behind. Punctuating his thoughts with a deep sigh, Matt pulled up the assignment rubric. “Three pages, double spaced - that’s not bad - third page sources cited…” As he scanned the page, she, still waiting on her dinosaur of a computer to come to life, leaned closer to him to see for herself.

Her perfume. Waves of vanilla with floral notes. Undertones of musk. It was strong but intoxicating. Matt used every ounce of self-control to not turn towards her and inhale as much of it as he could. She had been using this perfume for the past three years, and Matt had become obsessed with it. He was like a stoner catching a whiff of weed, he could identify it from a mile away. He could sniff her out like a bloodhound if he really wanted to. Matt begged his brain to behave.

It didn’t.

The aching in his pants grew. Matt pulled his hoodie down to cover his lap, he could not let her see what she did to him. He felt his face heat up as embarrassment flooded his brain. Still, his cock remained half hard and his balls felt heavy with arousal. Despite knowing how wrong it was, he wanted nothing more than to rub one out. Matt used every iota of his self-control to focus on puling the assignment up on his computer. One hour. I just need to get through this one hour.

x o x o x o

“How long have you been tutoring?” Matt wanted to know more about her. It was a near-feverish affliction that kept his leg bouncing continuously, releasing nervous energy at speeds that could power the entire city of Boston.

She didn’t look up at him, pulling up the assignment on her computer. “I started last year…gave me a chance to get out of Johnson’s eighth period. Do you know why you’re falling behind in Philosophy?”

Matt didn’t hear her question at all. The stickers on her laptop were incredibly distracting - he caught a glimpse of Homer Simpson, the Monster logo, a few Pokémon, numerous band logos, Marilyn Monroe, a sick vaporwave statue head, and a plethora of raccoons. I like raccoons. Now is probably not the best time to tell her that. “Huh?”

She glanced over through her lashes, and Matt felt his air supply vaporize. “I asked why you’re failing.”

Because you walk into the room and I forget how to speak my own damn language. Because I want to talk to you so bad, but my throat closes up when you look at me. Because when you smile it makes my legs heavy…But more than anything, because I want you in ways that I have never wanted anyone before, and it is all that I can think about. No matter where I am at or who I am with, you manage to take over every thought in my head. Movie nights with my brothers where I can drown out the movie, daydreaming of what you might look like waking up next to me in one of my shirts. Dinner with my family, wondering if you like whatever it is that we’re eating that night. In the shower, wondering what your routine is like. Late nights in my room, the door locked and the lights off, clothes discarded onto the floor, my hand tugging at my cock. You are always there. You’re the reason why I’m failing, and you don’t even know it.

Matt settled on, “It’s hard to focus in there.” Not a lie. But not even close to the truth.

She nodded. “She talks in circles sometimes.” A pause made his eyes dart up to hers, terrified that he’d missed something again. But no, she was…studying him.

Her head tilted slightly, and her hazy eyes rested on his. He wondered what she was thinking about, and something primitive in his mind was screaming at him to hide. He felt vulnerable, weak under her gaze. His cock throbbed. Matt did his best to bite back the soft groan that fought to escape his throat.

“I think you might just need a body double.”

He blinked.

She continued. “The classes you’re failing, those are the only ones you don’t have with one of your brothers or your other friends, right?”

Matt nodded, wondering how she could possibly know that. He bookmarked that thought for later.

“Well, your brain probably knows that they expect you to do your work, and you don’t want to let them down, so the work gets done. Not in English or History, apparently. So, I’m your body double. And I expect you to do your work.” She grinned. “It’s corny as fuck but you’d be surprised how much you get done. Ready to start?”

Matt decided to process that particular heap of information later. “Yeah, sure.”

“I’m sending you my sources. You know how to cite them?”

His brain couldn’t register her words. It all made sense, but his brain felt too fuzzy to put the pieces together. “Sources, right. Y-Yeah, I uh…yes.”

“Good boy,” she purred. Matt nearly choked, his dick now fully hard. There’s no way she just said that. She gestured to his keyboard, and Matt began to shakily type the name of the website he needed into the search bar. Maybe I just imagined it…It’s been a weird day. Matt could feel her gaze burning into his skin like the heat of a thousand suns. His heart was lodged in his throat, he had begun manually breathing, not wanting his breaths to sound too heavy or too short.

Her hands kept brushing his arm, and Matt realized if he wasn’t careful, she would notice the way his face turned a bright red when she touched him, or worse… she’d see the bulge that could barely even be hidden by his hoodie. He turned away from her, pretending to look for something in his bag. “I um…thanks.”

“Go ahead and read those, throw all the relevant information into a messy doc, and then let me know when you’re done, okay?” Matt looked up and she leaned once more against the concrete column behind her, earbuds in, typing away in her own empty doc for the same assignment. He glanced at the stickers on her laptop, eyeing the one in the dead center with the name of a band he had never heard of. I wonder what she’s listening to. Would she like my music? Would I like hers?

Pulling out his own headphones, Matt shuffled his own playlist, and tried desperately to focus on the article in front of him.

x o x o x o

Forty two minutes later (he counted), Matt finally reached the end of the mind-numbing wall of text. No closer to understanding what the fuck he was doing, he reached out to tap the table near her knee. Her cargos sported faded stitching on their edges, proof of intentional wear as opposed to fashion wear.

When the flash of motion moved into her line of sight, she looked up from her own article, brows raised expectantly and eyes locked onto his. “How’s it going?”

“Well…It’s not perfect but…it’s better than nothing right?.”

“Mhmm.” She leaned forward, staring at his screen. “One and a half pages? Atta boy.”

Matt’s face flushed, his lips parting to speak but silence was all that followed.

“Did you do what I said earlier?”

“Yes ma’am.” Where the FUCK did THAT come from?

She wrinkled her face, her lips tugging up into a smile. “Down, boy.”

Matt almost puked. A lightning bolt struck his lungs, and they withered in his ribcage. “Sorry- sorry,” he stuttered. He ripped his gaze away from hers, blinking rapidly.

She laughed softly, the ghost of a smile passing over her lips. Matt’s head shot up faster than he’d ever admit. “Little weirdo,” she muttered, turning away from him to put her laptop in her bag.

“Oh, are we-”

“Mhm. Bell’s about to ring.”

He blinked again, opening his own backpack.

“Give me your snap.”

“Huh?”

“Your snapchat. So we can talk about your assignments and schedule tutoring for sometime other than boy’s athletics.”

How did she-

“Wouldn’t want you to miss lacrosse.” She tilted her head to punctuate her all-knowing tone, and put her phone in Matt’s hand.

As he typed megamett_44, Matt reevaluated the entirety of his life’s choices, and hoped she’d just…ignore it. Or not see it at all, that was preferable.

Neither of those things happened.

“Mega. Mett. Forty four?” she questioned, raising an eyebrow at him.

“...Yep.”

“You, um…” She gestured, sarcasm beginning to drip from her lips. “You wanna explain?”

“No I do not,” he replied, grinning nervously, avoiding her gaze.

“Hmm…cute,” She smirked. Matt felt his heart swell and his pants tighten even more at the comment she had made, just barely crossing the line of being a praiseful remark. He wanted to ask more about what she meant; Why did she say cute? Does she think I’m cute? Was she just saying the username is cute? But before he could think of something, the bell rang, and in one fluid motion, she swung her bag over her shoulder and slipped off the table. “Later,” she hummed before she disappeared into a river of students escaping school grounds for the weekend.

Matt exhaled and slumped into his chair, hanging his head as he dropped his bag back onto the floor. The visible bulge under the fabric of his shorts and his hoodie taunted him, his mind raced, thinking of all the things he could have done instead of gawking at her and stuttering one or two words at a time in response to whatever she said to him. Matt ran his fingers through his messy hair. His cheeks remained a rosy pink. He rubbed his lips with his fingers, an anxious habit he had picked up over the years in a desperate attempt to help with his nail biting problem, though very little progress had been made there.

“I’m done for,” he said, nodding decisively. “Yep. This is the end of Matthew Sturniolo.” Matt looked down at his phone, numerous texts from his brothers flooding the screen.

Nick: where are you

Chris: where r u ?

Nick: why weren’t you at lacrosse

Chris: coach is not happy with you lmao

Chris: helloooooooo

Chris: the van is still here so we know ur here

Chris: unless 😏

Nick: enough

Chris: man come on nick is grumpy and bitching about the weather

Nick: it’s fucking sweltering out and i’m sweating bullets. I’d appreciate getting into the air conditioned vehicle that we OWN

Matt sighed and shoved his phone into his pocket. He looked around, making sure that nobody was nearby as he stood up. Grabbing his bag, Matt hurried out of the library and pushed his way through the halls to the nearest restroom.

Ensuring that the bathroom was completely empty, he slipped into the closest bathroom stall and locked it behind him. Matt quickly dropped his bag to the floor, lifting the hem of his hoodie up and holding it between his teeth. He pulled the band of his shorts down, groaning softly as the friction sent bolts of pleasure through him. He slipped his hand under the fabric of his boxers, his eyes fluttering closed as his hand wrapped around his shaft. He hummed ever so softly as he gave his cock a few strokes.

He opened his eyes, suddenly realizing what he was doing. No, this isn’t like you. This isn’t right. You don’t do this here. He pulled his cock up into the waistband of his boxers, dissatisfied above all else, but knowing he had to hide his unpleasant erection somehow. This was a new low for him. What kind of a creep can’t even keep it in his pants until he gets home? Matt pulled his shorts back up, dropping the hem of his hoodie from where it had been between his teeth. He stepped out of the bathroom stall, taking a quick once-over in the mirror to make sure he looked put together and not a flustered horny mess, before he slipped out of the bathroom, following the mass of students rushing for the exit out into the student parking lot.

x o x o x o

Matt saw Chris and Nick leaning against the edge of his car. Matt clicked the unlock button on his key, the vehicle chirping in response. Nick opened the door to the backseat, huffing something under his breath as he got into the car. “Where the hell were you?” Chris asked, slinging his bag into the back next to Nick’s foot, closing the door behind him.

“Library,” Matt muttered, clunking into the driverseat. Chris paralleled Matt’s actions, dropping himself into the passenger seat. “Library?” Chris repeated, tasting the word with furrowed eyebrows as he turned to look at Nick, expecting he might know more about Matt’s situation.

He did not. Nick scrunched his face. “Since when do you go to the library?”

Matt groaned. “Can we just go home.”

The other two didn’t ask too many questions after that. What normally would have been a debrief session of their individual experiences from that day while feasting on whatever fast-food place the three of them had voted on, was instead a deafening silence and a painfully tense atmosphere. Matt was secretly very appreciative of this, his mind was too scattered for him to hold a conversation with his brothers, never mind care about what they were discussing.

x o x o x o

When he collapsed onto his bed, Matt checked his phone, brows furrowed in surprise. He’d gotten a notification from Snapchat (a rarity), and his heart shot up into his throat when he saw who it was from. He tapped on the notification to see that she had sent him a photo of herself - her hair fell in waves around her face, and Matt could see the glint of her earrings. She wasn’t even looking at the camera, making the edge of her eyeliner effortlessly severe. Matt’s chest went aflutter, and he stared at that picture for a very long set of minutes. “Here’s my snap”, she had typed, and once he tapped out of the photo, Matt added her back.

But they hadn’t spoken past that.

He laid on his bed trying to think of something to say to keep talking to her, but everything sounded desperate and corny. He had so many things he wanted to say, so many questions he wanted to ask. He wanted to talk to her for hours, about anything and everything. He wanted to know everything about her.

As the sky darkened, Matt scrolled aimlessly on TikTok, then Instagram, then back to TikTok, avoiding Snapchat to the best of his ability. His mind refused to let go of her, and it was starting to piss him off. What is she doing? Does she stay home on school nights? Does she go out? What are her hobbies? Does she play video games? Would she play them with me? Does she like to read outside of school too? When does she go to bed? Does she like to stay up late? Does she go to bed early? Why can't I think of something normal to say to her?

Matt dragged himself out of bed, crumpling slowly to the floor. He leaned his head against the edge of his mattress and sighed - what a fucking day.

A knock at the door had him lifting his head from where it rested against the mattress. “Hi, honey.” Mom. “You eating dinner with us tonight?”

He stood up, crossed the empty floor of his room quickly, and pulled his door open. “Hey Mom.” Matt leaned into her, and Mary Lou slipped her arms around her son.

“Hi baby. Somethin’ on your mind?”

I’m failing.

I’m failing four classes.

You and dad would be so disappointed.

I feel tired and sick all the time.

I just want to go to sleep.

Graduation is in four months.

Nick and Chris are gonna leave me.

I’ll have to repeat senior year.

It’ll all be my fault.

The girl making me fail is the girl trying to help me pass.

I can’t focus on anything.

I’m so fucking tired.

“Just missed ya.” Matt sighed. He hummed when he felt his mother's loving arms embrace him just a little tighter. “I’ll be downstairs in a minute.”

x o x o x o

A dark room. The brush of fingers over silk. A candle flickering shadows against the walls. The faint scent of vanilla. Pleasure flowing through his body. The buzzing hum of a vibrator. More waves of soft tingling flowing from the center of his body.

“Good boy…”

He sighed, lips parted, eyes closed. His hips began to shift upwards, slowly at first, pushing against the vibrator, aching for more. Instead, his leaking, rock-hard cock met a soft hand. He whimpered, digging his pelvis into the pillowy skin. “Awww…d’you wanna hump Mommy’s hand?”

“Yes…” he pleaded, his head lolling to the side, chest heaving. “P-Please, I-I... Please.”

Her fist began to slip around the head of his cock. “Please what?”

“Nnnghh…please let me hump your hand. I need it s-so bad, p-please, it hurts Mommy, I just wanna…jus wanna feel your hand around my…my…”

Another hand cupped his balls, silky-soft thumb rubbing spine-tingling circles over his pleasure-filled skin. “Hmm? What was that, pretty boy? Mommy didn’t quite catch that.”

“My cock, miss, I…p-please reward me…please, I-I’ve been so good…”

She smiled, amused by how easy it was to get him riled up. “Go ahead, baby. You’ve been such a good boy. You deserve a little treat, don’t you?”

Matt didn’t need to be told twice. His hips lifted, his jaw going slack as his shaft slipped through her fist with ease, her hand already sticky with his arousal. A whimper grew at the back of his throat, his hips beginning to buck up into her grasp. Erotic sounds filled the room; heavy panting, his wet cock slipping in and out of her grasp, the bed frame creaking ever so quietly, her quiet praises that she’d whisper to him. “Atta boy, you’ve got it,” she hummed, earning a sound from Matt that he hadn’t even known he was capable of making. A mix between a sob and a whimper, a sound that made her press her thighs together, her core aching for him. “That’s it, baby, hump Mommy’s hand. Doesn’t that feel good?”

His pace quickened, his chest rising and falling with heavy breaths as he began to rut against her hand. His desire was primal. It was animalistic. The way he craved her, unlike anything he had ever craved for in his life. His balls, heavy with his arousal, slapping against her wrist as her hand reached the base of his cock with every thrust he made. His tip, swollen and pink, leaking with his desire. She could feel the way his shaft throbbed, practically begging for more. Her hand gently squeezed his tip, a guttural moan falling from his rosy lips.

He began to whine now, desperate pleas pouring from his lips like thick sweet honey. “I’ve been so good, I’ll behave, I promise, I’ll be s-so good for you Mommy, please let me cum, please, I’m b-begging you, please Mommy… y-you’re so sweet and g-good to me, I jus’ wanna make you happy, please let me make you happy…f-fuck!” White-hot liquid spurted from his tip, coating her hand and his abdomen as she continued to stroke his sensitive shaft.. “Mmmph…Mommy…f-fuck…thank you, th-thank you, mmph Mommy…thank you, y-you’re so good to me…”

Breathlessly, he pushed himself up onto his elbows, looking up at the beautiful girl in front of him. His gaze flickered down to her hand, his cock throbbing as he saw how much of a mess he had made. Ropes of thick warm cum coated her hand, and Matt couldn’t help but think of what it’d look like leaking out of her. He watched with a dazed and aroused glisten in his eyes as she brought her hand up to his lips. Obediently he licked his mess off of her fingers, paying no mind to the taste. He didn’t care, he’d do anything she wanted, even if it meant having the lingering taste of his seed in his mouth. Once her hand was cleaned up, he pressed kisses up to her wrist, trailing up her arm, keeping his eyes low in reverence.

She lifted his head with a finger under his jaw. “You’re welcome, baby. You did so good for me, hmm?” she murmured, kissing his forehead. Matt closed his eyes, never wanting to leave this moment. “Were you a good boy for mommy?”

Matt shot up in his bed and his chest rose and fell with shallow breaths. He pulled his duvet cover off of him, and in the dark of his bedroom he could still see his mess leaking through the fabric of his boxers. His torso was slick with a sheen layer of sweat. Despite having already finished, his cock refused to soften.

“Oh fuck me,” he snarled, rubbing his tired face with his hands. This is going to be the hardest four months of my life.

Tags: @mattsturniololoverr @oversturn @mattslolita @simplysturn @flowerxbunnie @soursturniolo @megamett44-lover @sturnybabes @jjmaybankswifes-blog @plasticferal @cupidsword @liz-stxrn @sturniolosreads @bernardsleftbootycheek @egirlshit @matthemunch44 @nonamegirlxsturniolo @chrizz333 @sturniolopowers @mattsleftnipple03 @worldlxvlys @hearts4chriss @tillies33ssss @janiellasblog @creamoncreamoncream2 @breeloveschris @meg-sturniolo @lustfulslxt @braindead4l @xtravrgnoliveoil @ghostlythinggoingaround @rootbeerworshiper @querenciasturniolo @whicked-hazlatwhore @m4ttslvr @sturnioloblogs @mqttittude @bewtyschooldropout @taekwite @itzdarling

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cathkaesque · 2 years

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When it comes to understanding migration, this needs to be taken into account: if you are in a rural area in the global south, like Honduras, you have basically no access to social services, medicine, and education. In fact, the funding for those services is actually being cut, as the social security funds have been looted by corrupt politicans appointed by a military coup. Then you have to factor in that you likely have no access to the land, and no access to credit to buy seeds, and have to sell yourself for basically pennies to an agroindustrial giant. The peasants feed the local people; the agroindustries feed the Americans. In Guatamala, there is a neo-corporate fuedalism where you are allowed a patch of land if you are willing to work, unpaid, for coffee plantations which sell their produce to the German company Ritz. If you attempt to settle unoccupied land, a local businessman will claim it is his without any proof, and the police will take his side because the Agrarian Reform Institute, which issues land titles, is controlled by coupists whose main concern is squeezing as much wealth out of the country as possible. Thugs will murder a man and his wife in broad daylight, and the judge will respond by evicting you and your family from the land.

There is nowhere else for you to go but Tegucigalpa, where you can work trying to wash car windows or selling snacks to passing cars for a handful of lempira a day. Or perhaps you could work for a few dollars a day in one of the maquila factories making textiles for the American and European market, which are set up in special economic zones called Charter Cities where the constitution and labour laws do not apply, which can close down and spirit away whenever they like to another country when they are more willing to sell their people for even less. And then you have to factor in the hurricanes that sweep through the country, destroying everything, that the rains no longer come when they used to but when they do they come in flooding torrents. Much of the north of Honduras is currently underwater; most of the banana and coffee plantations have been destroyed.

And then you factor in when you tried to change this via electing a better government in 2006, he was overthrown in 2009; when you tried to get organised and resist the coup, your friends, your loved ones, your trade union leaders and peasant resisters all turned up mysteriously dead while the military and police worked with drug gangs disguised as agribusiness like the Dinant coproration to burn down villages that opposed them. For trying to change things in the way that you were supposed to, through non violently protesting, organising, and voting for something better, you were subjected to a decade of counterrevolutionary terror and violence that the “international community” not only ignored but gave its active approval to. All of the factors listed above have not only been ongoing for the last 10 years, they’ve been intensified, hothoused by the global counterrevolutionary terror that was the response to the 2011 wave of post-financial crisis uprisings and revolutions and accelerating climate apocalypse.

And at the same time, all of this is being done so more of the country can be turned into a massive cash cow for the benefit of foreign corporations and domestic oligarchs. The wealth of your country is siphoned off and flows around the American and European financial system, benefiting them and building a consumer disneyland that looks like paradise compared to your situation. That could, even if you are worked for nothing, give you a few dollars to send home that could build your abuela in the countryside a nice home for her to live out her days. What other option is left for you and your family other than joining the exodus of people heading north, to the countries where the wealth and profits and rewards of your homeland’s suffering are being kept. And after you cross mountains and rivers which freeze you to death and sweep you away, you are faced with a massive border wall of ahte and soldiers on horses which hit you with sticks. You are faced with an immigration detention centre that will chain you to your bed while you give birth and separate you from your baby who will be given away for adoption to a white couple. When you make a charge against the border fence in Melilla, fed up with being kept in shacks with nothing while the Northerners debate what to do about the problem people their greed has forced to move, the Moroccan police will beat 35 of you to death.

And then when you get there to that golden paradise, you end up doing work not dissimilar to the work you were doing back home, working for pennies (though pennies that are valuable enough back home to buy the family that remain the tiniest slice of comfort) for an agroindustrial giant that supplies supermarkets with cheap produce picked by cheaper people. While you work in the fields, a crop duster plane will spray you with paraquat; when support organisations try to raise this with OSHA they will ask for the plane’s number, and when this can’t be provided they will say nothing can be done. In fact, inspectors are ordered to stay away from the plantations on the Texas border. A member of the Border Agricultural Workers Project says she hasn’t seen a normal child born on the border in 20 years, such is the effect of agrichemicals. If you fuck up in the slightest, have any interaction with the state, you will be deported and sent back to square one. There are a 14 million migrants in the US in the same precarious state, effectively without any way of enforcing their rights. My aunt is a Mexican migrant in California. Her son was deported because he got a speeding ticket. It was 15 years before she saw him again, other than through the bars of the border fence, when she finally got her green card.

The situation in Honduras can be repeated for almost any other country. Syria, Venezuela, Iraq, South Sudan, Libya, all the headline countries are countries that have been subjected to a severe counterrevolutionary terror. The processes of dispossession and destruction of peasant economies and communities (primitive accumulation to use the Marxist jargon) have been hothoused over the last decade by war and violence. I just wish that relatively comfortable people in the imperialist countries realised that the “migrant crisis” is the result of policies that their governments forced on others. Violence that their elites made their fortunes off. What a monstrous, barbarous way of life we have.

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fuck-hamas-go-israel · 11 months

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Ethnic cleansing? Genocide? Apartheid?

Throwing around these buzzwords to describe the Israel-Hamas war because you’ve seen them on social media doesn’t make you right, and it doesn’t make you an activist.

It makes you ignorant, intellectually dishonest, and lazy for parroting biased talking points with no concept about what these terms actually mean.

What is apartheid?

Well, it was first used to describe the political system in South Africa and today’s Namibia whereby racism was institutionalised. This manner of governance meant that clear racial segregation would occur, in a manner that benefited the white race and would actively oppress those who had darker skin.

This meant that there were white-only spaces, white people would get prioritised when it came to education and jobs, and relationships/marriages between white peoples and coloured people were illegal.

Is Israel objectively an apartheid state? There are no laws that actively favour one group over the other. There is a sizeable population of Israeli Arabs that can thrive in the same way as the Israeli Jews can. There are laws against discrimination on the basis of gender, race/ethnicity, and sexual orientation.

Palestinians from Gaza are allowed to work in Israel through a work permit system. There are about 150,000 Palestinians working in Israel, most of which live in Israel and some come from Gaza/the West Bank. They aren’t denied rights institutionally.

Is it harder to get a job or education in Israel if you’re a Palestinian from Gaza? Sure, because of different governments. It’s like how it’s a lot easier for you to find a job in your own country (in terms of paperwork and bureaucracy) than overseas. But you’re not denied the right to apply.

Of course, if you have a history of violence, a criminal record, or your family has ties to terrorists, then it’ll be a lot harder to get an approved work permit. But that’s not apartheid. That’s common sense, and a regulation practiced by all countries that minimally desire to protect their own population from danger.

Ethnic cleansing and genocide

These two concepts can go hand-in-hand. Ethnic cleansing refers to the mass expulsion or killing of a group of people based on their ethnicity. Similarly, genocide is the purposeful killing of a group of people solely with the intention of annihilating them.

Famous examples? The Holocaust, of course, where the Nazi regime believed in the superiority of the Aryan race and decided to declare genocide on the Jews, Romanis, the LGBTQ+ community, people with disabilities, people with “Asian features”, and many many other groups. Anyone who they didn’t think was “pure”.

Their aim was to ensure that the Aryan race propagated without having “impure” blood affecting the bloodlines. They even started a eugenics programme called Lebensborn to ensure that more pure Aryan babies were born.

More recent examples? The Rwandan genocide where the Hutus attempted to wipe out the Tutsis on the basis of ethnicity. They mandated that Tutsis mention their ethnicity on state-issued ID cards in order for the Hutus in power to be able to identify them and then kill them.

Or the Yazidi genocide which happened so recently, in which ISIL killed, raped, and sent thousands of Yazidis into conversion camps on the basis of their ethnicity. They also took Yazidi women as sex slaves and raped and tortured them.

Or the Rohingya Muslims in the Rakhine State in Myanmar, and how there was a mass killing and expulsion of them from the country, forcing them to flee to Bangladesh to take refuge, crating the world’s largest refugee camp.

Or how ISIS killed thousands of people from Christian groups in Iraq, Syria, Egypt, and Libya because of their faith, leading the US, EU, and UK to label this as religious genocide and condemned their actions.

Has Israel been practicing ethnic cleansing and genocide on Palestinians all these years?

Well, the birth rate of the Palestinian population in Gaza, the West Bank, and in Israel has been steadily increasing all these years.

So, no. No ethnic cleansing, no genocide. They are free to have as many children as they desire.

The UN Genocide Convention

The United Nations has 5 actions that constitute genocide.

1. Killing members of a target group

Israel is targeting Hamas officials with the aim of wiping out the terrorist group and ensuring that such a deadly attack on Israeli soil doesn’t happen again. I suppose you could call it genocide against Hamas, but they’re killing Hamas because they’re terrorists, not because they’re Palestinian. Shouldn’t everyone believe in genocide against terrorists?

But look at Black Saturday. Look at Hamas’ rhetoric. They repeatedly call for the annihilation of Israel and genocide of Jews. When will the media start believing what they say, word for word, instead of trying to spin it into “hmm maybe they want to kill all the Jews because they’re freedom fighters!”

War has collateral damage. Of course the innocent civilians don’t deserve to suffer just because of the actions of their government, but there have been warnings given to the Palestinian civilians prior to Israel striking the areas. There are consequences of attacking a country first, and then having that country attack you back.

2. Causing people of the group serious bodily or mental harm

The UN refers to sexual violence as the prime example of non-fatal harm.

Sexual violence has occurred. Hamas have kidnapped and raped women and even paraded the bodies of half-naked women around. But I f Israel had done the same, it’ll be the first thing appearing on everyone’s BBC push notifications (without even being confirmed as true).

3. Imposing living conditions intended to destroy the group

Many people refer to the blockade that Israel imposed around the Gaza Strip as an example of this.

This blockade was imposed by both Israel and Egypt in 2005. Its aim was to prevent smuggling of weapons into Gaza, and isolate the reign of Hamas to the region. This was to ensure the safety of Israel and Egypt.

Did this blockade pose serious challenges to the Gazan civilians? Of course. But that’s a consequence of having a terrorist government. If you have a terrorist group running your country, don’t be surprised if neighbouring countries are extra careful about who or what they allow in or out of the borders.

Many authorities from other Arab nations have also expressed approval of Egypt’s border restrictions, and even encouraged Egypt to flood the terror tunnels that Hamas has dug under the city. As a side note, other Arab nations have not historically been very kind or welcoming to Palestinians. Syria has killed over 4000 Palestinians, and many Arab countries are now refusing any refuge for Palestinians. But no one cares about that because it doesn’t make Israel look bad. All they do now is use the images of dead Palestinians under the hands of Syria and reuse them to propagate fake news.

The blockade has been labelled as a human rights violation because of collective punishment. Many humanitarian organisations believe that the blockade has caused the Palestinian civilians disproportionate harm.

Contrary to popular belief, Israel isn’t disallowing humanitarian aid from coming through the borders. Fuel, food, hygiene products, clothes, and shoes have been coming through the borders regularly for years. The Gaza Strip also has electricity and internet access and water.

Do all these items reach the Palestinian civilians? Well, there has been evidence that Hamas has been intercepting a lot of the supplies sent by humanitarian groups. This is not surprising since the UNRWA tweeted that Hamas has stole fuel from hospitals in Gaza in order to launch more rockets at Israel (but quickly deleted it after realising that it goes against their agenda to paint Hamas in a bad light.) In addition, the returned hostages have mentioned that there are many aid supplies hidden in the terror tunnels by Hamas. Instead of giving them to the civilians, they are hoarding it for themselves.

There has also been video evidence that some people are reselling these aid items in stores at exorbitant prices in order to turn profits. This has been well-documented for the last 10 years.

Is blockading the region to mitigate terrorism a disproportionate response? Well, it’s like asking if heightened security and stricter border control at airports is a disproportionate response after 9/11. Is being cautious and worrying about the security of your country an irrational reaction to the constant threat of terrorism?

4. Preventing births

Gaza’s population growth rate per annum is about 1.99%, which is the 39th highest in the world! Their population is allowed to propagate freely.

Israel isn’t preventing births of Palestinian babies.

5. Forcibly transferring children out of the group

No, Israel hasn’t been taking Palestinian children and forcing them to convert/keeping young Palestinian girls as sex slaves. Like I said, if this was truly happening, all the news outlets would be so quick to publish the story before verifying it.

Can we trust the UN Genocide standards?

The UN is known for corruption and have been exploiting the Palestinian people by selling them the humanitarian supplies instead of distributing them for free, which they should because these supplies literally are donations.

The UN also has differing standards of what they would label as genocide. For example, they refuse to call what China is doing to the Uyghurs in Xinjiang as genocide, even though the situation does fit many of their own criteria.

Hence, to all of you out there overusing these terms without knowing what they mean, make up your own mind about things. No one can force you to believe anything and no one can force you to change your mind.

But at the very least, do your due diligence and educate yourself before spouting tired buzzwords. Repeating misinformation doesn’t help anyone and can be very harmful.

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charliemwrites · 7 months

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Government Asset Soap! This is half of the last part (the smut got too long and I wanted to post this dammit).

Original concept comes from @ceilidho’s military asset Soap. Further inspiration came from @391780’s Nikto version “The Summons”. Both are very good and you should definitely check out!!

Content: Post-trauma coping, Non-Con Touching and Kissing, Violence (mentioned), Unstable Soap

It’s probably a fire hazard, the candles. They’re sprinkled across your little cabin like fireflies, feeble but steady heartbeats of a home you’re failing to build. Too many of them, likely. Two, sometimes three, per room. Tiny tealights, smokeless soy, scented pine. It would be easier, safer, to just turn on the lamps you foolishly invested in.

You can’t bear anything brighter than golden halogen anymore, though. The glare drags you back to a tiny cell bisected by cruel metal, holding back an even crueler fate. No, you’d much rather wade through pools of shadow and firelight, fire code be damned.

It’s a small cabin, but you’ve already cluttered it up with furniture and rugs, a theme for each room. Yellow and blue for the kitchen. Purple and cream for the den. Green and brown for your bedroom. Nooks to hide in, spaces to squeeze into, big shapes to huddle behind. You’ll never be caught out in a cold, barren room ever again.

Your days are long regardless of the time of year. Get groceries in town every day, making a point to be friendly and seen so that someone might notice if you suddenly stop coming. Clean incessantly, so many surfaces to dust. Pick hobbies like daisies. Knitting and crocheting, different paint styles, felting. You’re contemplating carpentry, would like to build shelves for all the books stacked up in the den. Keep a dream journal by your bed that you neglect for weeks at a time.

You draw out the nights until you can count the hours until dawn on one hand. Stay up baking, making homemade ink, learning new ways to style your hair, anything, anything, anything—

It’s not the sleeping – or at least that’s not the worst of it. It’s the waking.

Laswell suggested a cat.

You told her to stop suggesting pussy to unstable people.

But it’s still not a bad idea. Another living thing to keep you accountable; the plants are pretty and time-consuming, but not good company.

You talk yourself out of it every time, knowing the worst-case scenario. It’s not catastrophizing if it actually happens, and you can feel an invisible time weighing on your shoulders like another gravity. Tick, tick, tick. Heavier, heavier, heavier. It’s hard to breathe beneath the wait.

The military doesn’t do apologies. It does platitudes at best. Well wishes and good intentions are painted in brushstrokes of blood. Victory flags are planted on bodies, living or otherwise. Laswell apologized. She swore that if there had been another way – any other way…

She didn’t promise to leave you alone. Didn’t assure you that you’d never see her or her goons again.

If you thought it would do any good, you’d tip one of the candles over and set it all aflame. Rebirth through fire. But you never did figure yourself for a phoenix. And besides, a phoenix is still itself, even when the ash falls away.

So, you spool out your time like picking at tapestry threads, one thin string at time.

Tonight, it’s bread. Cinnamon chocolate babka, to be specific. You were craving something sweet. Are debating the merits of some sort of cream cheese icing while you shower off the long, ever-busy day.

Have decided on an optimistic why not as you slip out to begin your overly complicated self-care routine. Moisturizers, hair oils, lotion. An unexpected benefit of overloading yourself, you suppose. Even when you first got out of the military, you didn’t take such good care of yourself. You have a jogging route now. You’re handling your trauma every possible way except therapy. (And sleeping.) Better than nothing, you figure.

The candles have gone out in your bedroom. You click your tongue in annoyance, trying to remember where you left the matches this time. Bedside table?

You pad across the soft carpet, using the edge of the bed as a guide in the pitch black. The only other problem with candles is that their humble light doesn’t reach very far. But you know this house and keep the floors tidy enough that you’re confident you won’t trip.

Make it to the nightstand without incident and pat around. Knock the side of your hand into the little carton and only just catch it before it hits the deck. Let out a little huff and start to fumble it open.

“Nice catch, bonnie.”

You gasp, but your voice doesn’t get any farther than the back of your tongue. The box slips from your numb fingers, matchsticks scattering across the floor. He tsks.

“Shame that. We’ll get ‘em later.”

You can’t move. Can barely breathe. You’re just frozen, heart thundering with a sudden storm of fear and confusion. Hands still aloft in front of you, spine rigid, knees locked.

You feel more than hear movement behind you, and then the warmth of his body seeping into your naked skin. Not quite touching. Not yet.

“Missed you, little bird,” he rasps in your ear.

You always thought that in a moment like this you would scream. Kick and elbow and fight, damn your certain loss. But when it comes down to it, survival drowns out all those stupid, haughty ideas about pride and dignity. So you don’t curse and shout like you always fancied you would.

You whisper, “Soap.”

He hums but it sounds like a growl in your panicked state. “Missed me too, aye? You’re already naked fer me.”

His hands are searing when they settle on your waist like they belong there. He pulls you back against him; in the dark he’s bigger, broader than you remember. At least, you think, he’s fully clothed for now.

“What are you… how are you here?” you ask.

He barks a laugh, mean and rough. “Was only a matter of time after that shite they pulled.”

You squeeze your eyes shut and see it recreated in the phosphenes behind your lids.

Soap buried balls deep inside of you, murmuring a constant stream of filth as he got harder and harder inside you. Filling you up as you twitched around him, oversensitive and teary, afraid of what would come next.

Then the lights flashed, flicked red. An alarm sounded, Laswell’s voice ordering Soap away from you. But he just snarled and hunched over you, hips snapping to bury himself right back inside while you cried out.

The locked door swung in, armed guards swarming in. Yanked Soap off you while you scrambled to cover yourself. Someone grabbing your arm none too gently to pull you from the room. Soap wild-eyed and snarling like something possessed, until he was overtaken by struggling guards and you were trembling naked in that damned hallway.

“Was mad at you, at first, cannae lie,” he says, almost conversational. Your eyes snap open, though you know it’ll do you no good. “But I’ve had time to think on it. Wasnae yer fault, was it? Saw them drag you out.”

An awful relief floods you. Fuck dignity, fuck honesty. This is Soap right behind you, completely unrestrained and unsupervised.

“Yeah,” you answer, voice small. “I didn’t know they would do that. What… um. What happened to you?”

He presses his face into your damp hair, pressing closer, snaking his arms to squeeze you against him.

“Sent me off on some shite mission,” he explains, “probably hoped I’d die out there. You smell so good, lass.”

You shiver as his breath ghosts over the sensitive skin of your neck. Hot, humid.

“And… and then what?” you insist, trying to stall.

You’re not sure what you’re stalling for. There will be no miraculous saves here – not that you really got any last time. It’s not like there’s any real plan to be made here, either. None that you’d be confident enough to risk his wrath on.

“Disappeared. Took care of business. Came to get my pretty little bird.”

A rough hand trails over the curve of your hip, brush the neat curls of your mound. You suck in a breath, hands twitching with the urge to stop him but not sure of putting up resistance when you’re still unsure of his mental state.

“And what about you, hm?” he rumbles. “Been a good girl while I’ve been away?”

His fingers dart down towards your entrance, not nearly prepared for anything. Least of all his thick digits.

“Y-yes!” you yelp, grabbing at his wrist. Relief makes you dizzy when you manage to stop him. “I-I’ve been good. Which means I’m not… I can’t just take you. I need… I need prep.”

He huffs, nips at the tender spot beneath your ear. The thrill that shoots through your stomach is terrifying.

“That’s what these are for, bonnie.”

And to your horror, he starts to push past your resistance like your staying hands aren’t there at all.

“John!”

He freezes. You shudder air into your burning lungs, feeling dizzy on panic.

You can get through this without pain, just think.

“I haven’t even got to see you,” you stutter, voice shaky. Can’t quite inject the disappointment you’re trying for, but hopefully it’ll work. “And I bet you’re all dirty from travel.”

He grumbles. “So what?”

You scramble to think of a satisfactory response. “S-so let’s get reacquainted in the shower, yeah? That way I can see your handsome face, at least.”

He chuckles, grazes his teeth “playfully” across your cheek. “Bossy thing.”

“You like it.”

And to your shock, he agrees with an amused huff. Hauls you up in his arms and walks you back to the still muggy bathroom. You’re set on your feet and spun around, chin jerked up to receive a savage kiss. All tongue and teeth, no finesse. He’s just licking into your mouth, hungry and animalistic, spit dribbling down your chin.

When he finally pulls away, you blink spots from your vision. Finally focus on his smug features and make a soft, horrified noise when you register the splatter of crimson across them.

“Och, that? My little bird had watchers.”

Of course you did. The horror ebbs a bit. Resentment has made you indiscriminately bitter.

“Oh,” you say, “th-thank you. Definitely glad we’re showering first, then.”

“Squeamish?”

You’d like to know when the world turned upside down and John fucking “Soap” MacTavish began teasing you about the blood on his face.

“A bit,” you admit.

“Poor dear,” he coos. “Hard to believe we were made for each other sometimes, aye? Complementary, we are.”

Is that what he thinks? Christ.

You turn to start the shower again, spine prickling with the weight of his eyes on your back. The water rushes down and then he’s crowding you against the cold wall beneath the (thankfully) warm spray.

“Y-you’re still dressed!” you protest between sharp nips to your collarbone.

“Fix it, then,” he snarls.

You claw his shirt up his back, get momentarily distracted by the impressive display of muscle hidden beneath. Draw your palms over his chest and feel him shudder.

“Fuckin’ heavenly, love,” he purrs. “Missed this.”

A vague memory comes back to you, him gripping you close because he felt you naked against him for the first time. Him admitting he hasn’t had affectionate touch in a while.

This… this you could work with.

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beyonsatan · 1 year

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Here are some REAL astrological tips that I'm not just pulling out my ass and actually learned from reading

1. Aquarius is not ruled by uranus, aquarius is ruled by saturn. When astrologers discovered uranus they borrowed some of the traits of saturn and applied them to uranus because they didnt know what to do with this planet. Having strong uranus influence won't make you feel like an outsider but having a strong saturn influence will. Uranus does not rule "outcasts" or "obstruction" it rules sudden changes which we only associate with aquarius because of their eccentricity and the modern rulership of this sign, aquarius isn't as open to "change" as we would like to think they are, they're a saturn(restrictions) ruled fixed sign, they're more open minded and progressive than capricorn but they're more traditional and less accepting than we think pisces to be.

2. NO planet is unwelcome in the 5th and 11th house. Any personal planets in these houses including mars and saturn, especially the chart ruler is a sign of good fortune, wealth, successful investments and just an easy life in general because these houses are the joy of Venus and Jupiter, harmful planets here become neutralized and instead work to our benefit even with difficult aspects. Ex: Someone with a 5th house saturn might work high paying government jobs or become some kind of authority(saturn) figure sometime within their life.

3. What you've been taught about the north and south node is wrong. The north node is not "underdeveloped traits" The north node represents "increase" while the south node represents decrease, not your comfort zone and this is according to hellenistic and ancient astrology. The north node represents the dragon head while the south node represents its tail. Wherever your north node(the head) is, is where there's an infatuation and/or otherwise increase of energy and experiences, the south node (the tail) is something you abandoned (and shouldnt have) so you could focus on your north node, it's not necessarily something you need to let go of because that's like saying the dragon cut his tail off so he could keep his head lol, the dragon doesn't need to cut his tail at all, his tail is what's helping send him into the right direction because how do you expect him to move without his tail? In this case the south node is something you can rely on to assist you when handling the topics of your north node, that's the whole point. If south node was something that we needed to dismiss or free ourselves from it, there wouldn't be a south node, the south node and north node exist with each other, they HAVE to co-exist

4. I don't really debate about which house system to use when reading your own chart or others but when reading transits, synastry and composite charts, I strongly recommend using WS to make things alot less confusing.

5. The moon is a significator of money in alot of the same ways venus and jupiter are that's why the moon gets exalted in taurus. Moon in Taurus, Pisces, Sagittarius or Libra in the 3rd (house joy), 5th or 11th house is an indicator of wealth.

6. When outer planets transit your cadent houses please don't have a breakdown, planets in cadent houses have the weakest influence within a person's chart.

7. The houses responsible for fame are realistically the 5th, 7th house, 10th and 11th house and everything starts with the 5th house. Explanation: 5th house is the talent you have, the 11th house is your audience, you bring the talents you build upon in the 5th house for the world to see over into the 11th house, the 7th house is your relationship to law and the public, partnerships etc, if you wanna get contracts like a partnership with the NBA or picked to star in a movie, all of this would take place in the 7th house, the 10th house is the brand and image you cultivate after your name gets around from the 7th house, this house talks about your peak, how well did you do? Did you make it big? Planets here, where it's ruler is/and aspects will color all of this. Honorable mention is the 1st house cause the 1st house like the 10th house is angular and says alot about whether eyes are on you, do you get attention, are you an extrovert, are you confident or is building up those kind of things difficult for you, all of this gets answered in the 1st house.

8. Do not let any amateur astrologers gaslight you into thinking that having 8th or 12th house placements make you spiritual, spirituality gets its meaning from the 9th house and the 11th house where jupiter finds joy, planets in the 8th and 12th house is NOT for the weak and I don't mean to sound arrogant, I have 12th house placements and I'm aware that the 12th house doesn't get its meaning from pisces or jupiter, sprutuality is meant to be a good thing, planets in these houses is not a good thing so it is not wise to draw proximity there

9. Both Venus/ Jupiter and it's aspects is an indicator of marriage, the sign they're in, house placement and aspects will tell you more about your spouse (venus if you're attracted to women and jupiter if you're attracted to men)

10. Debilitated or fallen planets are liberated or in accidental dignity when in the angular houses or the 5th and 11th. Yes this counts for retrograde planets as well even tho i don't count retrogrades as a debilitaty. Think of them as having "redemption arcs" like negan from the walking dead, started out evil or In bad condition but it got better real fast or the challenges with that placement are easy to overcome. Ex: aquarius sun in the 1st house, aquarius is obviously debilitated under the sun because the sun and saturn are enemies and aquarius gets overwhelmed by the attention and self expression that comes with the sun but with the sun in the 1st house that luminary becomes apart of you, it's literally influencing your physical body and how you behave, with the sun here you have no trouble expressing yourself and actually like attention, so it's like having a leo rising but alot more intense

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mostlysignssomeportents · 8 months

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Apple to EU: “Go fuck yourself”

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/2024/02/06/spoil-the-bunch/#dma

There's a strain of anti-anti-monopolist that insists that they're not pro-monopoly – they're just realists who understand that global gigacorporations are too big to fail, too big to jail, and that governments can't hope to rein them in. Trying to regulate a tech giant, they say, is like trying to regulate the weather.

This ploy is cousins with Jay Rosen's idea of "savvying," defined as: "dismissing valid questions with the insider's, 'and this surprises you?'"

https://twitter.com/jayrosen_nyu/status/344825874362810369?lang=en

In both cases, an apologist for corruption masquerades as a pragmatist who understands the ways of the world, unlike you, a pathetic dreamer who foolishly hopes for a better world. In both cases, the apologist provides cover for corruption, painting it as an inevitability, not a choice. "Don't hate the player. Hate the game."

The reason this foolish nonsense flies is that we are living in an age of rampant corruption and utter impunity. Companies really do get away with both literal and figurative murder. Governments really do ignore horrible crimes by the rich and powerful, and fumble what rare, few enforcement efforts they assay.

Take the GDPR, Europe's landmark privacy law. The GDPR establishes strict limitations of data-collection and processing, and provides for brutal penalties for companies that violate its rules. The immediate impact of the GDPR was a mass-extinction event for Europe's data-brokerages and surveillance advertising companies, all of which were in obvious violation of the GDPR's rules.

But there was a curious pattern to GDPR enforcement: while smaller, EU-based companies were swiftly shuttered by its provisions, the US-based giants that conduct the most brazen, wide-ranging, illegal surveillance escaped unscathed for years and years, continuing to spy on Europeans.

One (erroneous) way to look at this is as a "compliance moat" story. In that story, GDPR requires a bunch of expensive systems that only gigantic companies like Facebook and Google can afford. These compliance costs are a "capital moat" – a way to exclude smaller companies from functioning in the market. Thus, the GDPR acted as an anticompetitive wrecking ball, clearing the field for the largest companies, who get to operate without having to contend with smaller companies nipping at their heels:

https://www.techdirt.com/2019/06/27/another-report-shows-gdpr-benefited-google-facebook-hurt-everyone-else/

This is wrong.

Oh, compliance moats are definitely real – think of the calls for AI companies to license their training data. AI companies can easily do this – they'll just buy training data from giant media companies – the very same companies that hope to use models to replace creative workers with algorithms. Create a new copyright over training data won't eliminate AI – it'll just confine AI to the largest, best capitalized companies, who will gladly provide tools to corporations hoping to fire their workforces:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/02/09/ai-monkeys-paw/#bullied-schoolkids

But just because some regulations can be compliance moats, that doesn't mean that all regulations are compliance moats. And just because some regulations are vigorously applied to small companies while leaving larger firms unscathed, it doesn't follow that the regulation in question is a compliance moat.

A harder look at what happened with the GDPR reveals a completely different dynamic at work. The reason the GDPR vaporized small surveillance companies and left the big companies untouched had nothing to do with compliance costs. The Big Tech companies don't comply with the GDPR – they just get away with violating the GDPR.

How do they get away with it? They fly Irish flags of convenience. Decades ago, Ireland started dabbling with offering tax-havens to the wealthy and mobile – they invented the duty-free store:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duty-free_shop#1947%E2%80%931990:_duty_free_establishment

Capturing pennies from the wealthy by helping them avoid fortunes they owed in taxes elsewhere was terribly seductive. In the years that followed, Ireland began aggressively courting the wealthy on an industrial scale, offering corporations the chance to duck their obligations to their host countries by flying an Irish flag of convenience.

There are other countries who've tried this gambit – the "treasure islands" of the Caribbean, the English channel, and elsewhere – but Ireland is part of the EU. In the global competition to help the rich to get richer, Ireland had a killer advantage: access to the EU, the common market, and 500m affluent potential customers. The Caymans can hide your money for you, and there's a few super-luxe stores and art-galleries in George Town where you can spend it, but it's no Champs Elysees or Ku-Damm.

But when you're competing with other countries for the pennies of trillion-dollar tax-dodgers, any wins can be turned into a loss in an instant. After all, any corporation that is footloose enough to establish a Potemkin Headquarters in Dublin and fly the trídhathach can easily up sticks and open another Big Store HQ in some other haven that offers it a sweeter deal.

This has created a global race to the bottom among tax-havens to also serve as regulatory havens – and there's a made-in-the-EU version that sees Ireland, Malta, Cyprus and sometimes the Netherlands competing to see who can offer the most impunity for the worst crimes to the most awful corporations in the world.

And that's why Google and Facebook haven't been extinguished by the GDPR while their rivals were. It's not compliance moats – it's impunity. Once a corporation attains a certain scale, it has the excess capital to spend on phony relocations that let it hop from jurisdiction to jurisdiction, chasing the loosest slots on the strip. Ireland is a made town, where the cops are all on the take, and two thirds of the data commissioner's rulings are eventually overturned by the federal court:

https://www.iccl.ie/digital-data/iccl-2023-gdpr-report/

This is a problem among many federations, not just the EU. The US has its onshore-offshore tax- and regulation-havens (Delaware, South Dakota, Texas, etc), and so does Canada (Alberta), and some Swiss cantons are, frankly, batshit:

https://lenews.ch/2017/11/25/swiss-fact-some-swiss-women-had-to-wait-until-1991-to-vote/

None of this is to condemn federations outright. Federations are (potentially) good! But federalism has a vulnerability: the autonomy of the federated states means that they can be played against each other by national or transnational entities, like corporations. This doesn't mean that it's impossible to regulate powerful entities within a federation – but it means that federal regulation needs to account for the risk of jurisdiction-shopping.

Enter the Digital Markets Act, a new Big Tech specific law that, among other things, bans monopoly app stores and payment processing, through which companies like Apple and Google have levied a 30% tax on the entire app market, while arrogating to themselves the right to decide which software their customers may run on their own devices:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/06/07/curatorial-vig/#app-tax

Apple has responded to this regulation with a gesture of contempt so naked and broad that it beggars belief. As Proton describes, Apple's DMA plan is the very definition of malicious compliance:

https://proton.me/blog/apple-dma-compliance-plan-trap

Recall that the DMA is intended to curtail monopoly software distribution through app stores and mobile platforms' insistence on using their payment processors, whose fees are sky-high. The law is intended to extinguish developer agreements that ban software creators from informing customers that they can get a better deal by initiating payments elsewhere, or by getting a service through the web instead of via an app.

In response, Apple, has instituted a junk fee it calls the "Core Technology Fee": EUR0.50/install for every installation over 1m. As Proton writes, as apps grow more popular, using third-party payment systems will grow less attractive. Apple has offered discounts on its eye-watering payment processing fees to a mere 20% for the first payment and 13% for renewals. Compare this with the normal – and far, far too high – payment processing fees the rest of the industry charges, which run 2-5%. On top of all this, Apple has lied about these new discounted rates, hiding a 3% "processing" fee in its headline figures.

As Proton explains, paying 17% fees and EUR0.50 for each subscriber's renewal makes most software businesses into money-losers. The only way to keep them afloat is to use Apple's old, default payment system. That choice is made more attractive by Apple's inclusion of a "scare screen" that warns you that demons will rend your soul for all eternity if you try to use an alternative payment scheme.

Apple defends this scare screen by saying that it will protect users from the intrinsic unreliability of third-party processors, but as Proton points out, there are plenty of giant corporations who get to use their own payment processors with their iOS apps, because Apple decided they were too big to fuck with. Somehow, Apple can let its customers spend money Uber, McDonald's, Airbnb, Doordash and Amazon without terrorizing them about existential security risks – but not mom-and-pop software vendors or publishers who don't want to hand 30% of their income over to a three-trillion-dollar company.

Apple has also reserved the right to cancel any alternative app store and nuke it from Apple customers' devices without warning, reason or liability. Those app stores also have to post a one-million euro line of credit in order to be considered for iOS. Given these terms, it's obvious that no one is going to offer a third-party app store for iOS and if they did, no one would list their apps in it.

The fuckery goes on and on. If an app developer opts into third-party payments, they can't use Apple's payment processing too – so any users who are scared off by the scare screen have no way to pay the app's creators. And once an app creator opts into third party payments, they can never go back – the decision is permanent.

Apple also reserves the right to change all of these policies later, for the worse ("I am altering the deal. Pray I don't alter it further" -D. Vader). They have warned developers that they might change the API for reporting external sales and revoke developers' right to use alternative app stores at its discretion, with no penalties if that screws the developer.

Apple's contempt extends beyond app marketplaces. The DMA also obliges Apple to open its platform to third party browsers and browser engines. Every browser on iOS is actually just Safari wrapped in a cosmetic skin, because Apple bans third-party browser-engines:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/12/13/kitbashed/#app-store-tax

But, as Mozilla puts it, Apple's plan for this is "as painful as possible":

https://www.theverge.com/2024/1/26/24052067/mozilla-apple-ios-browser-rules-firefox

For one thing, Apple will only allow European customers to run alternative browser engines. That means that Firefox will have to "build and maintain two separate browser implementations — a burden Apple themselves will not have to bear."

(One wonders how Apple will treat Americans living in the EU, whose Apple accounts still have US billing addresses – these people will still be entitled to the browser choice that Apple is grudgingly extending to Europeans.)

All of this sends a strong signal that Apple is planning to run the same playbook with the DMA that Google and Facebook used on the GDPR: ignore the law, use lawyerly bullshit to chaff regulators, and hope that European federalism has sufficiently deep cracks that it can hide in them when the enforcers come to call.

But Apple is about to get a nasty shock. For one thing, the DMA allows wronged parties to start their search for justice in the European federal court system – bypassing the Irish regulators and courts. For another, there is a global movement to check corporate power, and because the tech companies do the same kinds of fuckery in every territory, regulators are able to collaborate across borders to take them down.

Take Apple's app store monopoly. The best reference on this is the report published by the UK Competition and Markets Authority's Digital Markets Unit:

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/63f61bc0d3bf7f62e8c34a02/Mobile_Ecosystems_Final_Report_amended_2.pdf

The devastating case that the DMU report was key to crafting the DMA – but it also inspired a US law aimed at forcing app markets open:

https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/senate-bill/2710

And a Japanese enforcement action:

https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/Technology/Japan-to-crack-down-on-Apple-and-Google-app-store-monopolies

And action in South Korea:

https://www.reuters.com/technology/skorea-considers-505-mln-fine-against-google-apple-over-app-market-practices-2023-10-06/

These enforcers gather for annual meetings – I spoke at one in London, convened by the Competition and Markets Authority – where they compare notes, form coalitions, and plan strategy:

https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/cma-data-technology-and-analytics-conference-2022-registration-308678625077

This is where the savvying breaks down. Yes, Apple is big enough to run circles around Japan, or South Korea, or the UK. But when those countries join forces with the EU, the USA and other countries that are fed up to the eyeballs with Apple's bullshit, the company is in serious danger.

It's true that Apple has convinced a bunch of its customers that buying a phone from a multi-trillion-dollar corporation makes you a member of an oppressed religious minority:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/01/12/youre-holding-it-wrong/#if-dishwashers-were-iphones

Some of those self-avowed members of the "Cult of Mac" are willing to take the company's pronouncements at face value and will dutifully repeat Apple's claims to be "protecting" its customers. But even that credulity has its breaking point – Apple can only poison the well so many times before people stop drinking from it. Remember when the company announced a miraculous reversal to its war on right to repair, later revealed to be a bald-faced lie?

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/22/vin-locking/#thought-differently

Or when Apple claimed to be protecting phone users' privacy, which was also a lie?

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

The savvy will see Apple lying (again) and say, "this surprises you?" No, it doesn't surprise me, but it pisses me off – and I'm not the only one, and Apple's insulting lies are getting less effective by the day.

Image: Alex Popovkin, Bahia, Brazil from Brazil (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Annelid_worm,_Atlantic_forest,_northern_littoral_of_Bahia,_Brazil_%2816107326533%29.jpg

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

Hubertl (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:2015-03-04_Elstar_%28apple%29_starting_putrefying_IMG_9761_bis_9772.jpg

CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/deed.en

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