#and then there’s the fact that you can just be spied on

[renthony]

Goddammit I have things to say about Arcane again. I've said it before and I'll say it again: I have never been this obsessed with a show that pissed me off so much. Fucking hell.

Longish critical post under the cut.

Husband and I are re-watching Arcane from the beginning, specifically so we can do some critical analysis and frame-by-framing. This watch, I'm really fixated on the way Vi is reintroduced after being in prison, because it does not make any goddamn sense.

If Stillwater is primarily full of Zaunites working for Silco, and Vi is constantly fighting with them, but she's also constantly being tortured by the enforcers...who the fuck is watching her back? How is she alive? Yes, she has a solitary cell, but we see her let out into the common areas. If she has that many enemies in Stillwater, how has she survived this long? The answer seems to be "plot armor," and that's...not a good answer.

If she has literally zero allies in prison, and she is hated by both the inmates and the guards, she'd be dead. Even if we're supposed to assume Marcus gave the order to the other enforcers to keep her alive, we know for a fact that the enforcers are still abusing her, so they clearly don't actually give a shit, nor do they stop the other inmates from fighting with her.

Like, I don't care how much of a badass she is, she has to sleep sometimes. She has to eat sometimes. She has to take a piss sometimes. She is clearly in fighting-fit shape, she is clearly healthy enough to immediately start parkouring all over Zaun after release, so who's letting her have access to workout equipment? You don't get or stay that jacked just by punching a wall. How's she getting enough calories? You don't get the good food if everyone in the prison hates you. For all that she makes a joke to Caitlyn about prison food tasting awful, she is clearly not malnourished.

And who the fuck did her tattoos????? They're extensive and fairly high-quality. If someone else did them, who was she on good enough terms with? If she did it herself, who liked her enough to smuggle, sell, or share supplies with her?

It really wouldn't bug me as much if it weren't for the fact that the narrative seems to want me to see her as a forgotten loner who has nobody in her corner until Caitlyn. Fundamentally, that cannot be true, or Vi would have been murdered and dumped in the water long before Cait showed up.

Also, if Silco has that many people in Stillwater, how does he not have his fingers in the prison smuggling operation that clearly exists? I don't buy it. If he owns Marcus' ass that hard, and he's already involved in smuggling, he'd have spies and smugglers in Stillwater, too. I do not believe that Silco has the power and the confidence to casually threaten Marcus by showing up in the man's personal home, but not enough power and confidence to get spies into a prison that's already full of his own allies/underlings.

There are definitely possible answers to some of these questions, and I certainly have my own headcanons, but it really doesn't feel like the writers' room spent a lot of time thinking about the actual social issues and politics that they invoked for aesthetic.

Usually this is where I'd say, "I wonder what the S&P notes looked like, and I wonder how many episodes they got screwed out of, because so much of this could have been fixed with a little more runtime." Sadly, based on the shit that keeps coming out of Christian Linke's mouth, I don't think we can blame the corporate office for this one. If Christian Linke is telling the truth and the show got all the episodes they wanted, my ever-present "TV writers keep getting screwed, so I have to analyze the finished product with the knowledge that the creators likely got fucked over" goodwill completely vanishes.

The problem really seems to be that the show was written by centrists with a fundamentally flawed understanding of class struggle, drug use, the drug trade, and the prison-industrial complex. It's not surprising, but it does disappoint me.

And while I'm thinking about it, why is Shimmer somehow both drinkable and injectable in seemingly the same form???? Drugs can absolutely come in different forms, but we see people drink the exact same type of shimmer that other people inject. You don't drink injectable drugs. Fuck's sake, this is Skooma levels of "the writers just threw every scary-sounding drug in a blender to make Scary Super Drugs without knowing anything about how real-world drugs work."

Also, if the Firelights' big thing is that they hate Silco Because Of Drugs, I really wanna know how the hell Ekko found that many straight-edge anarchists willing to build a secret compound together. Are they against all drugs, or just shimmer? Where's their line?

[race-week]

Someone should take the camera doorbell away from my parents (particularly my mother)

My parents are away on holiday atm, and I just left the house and got in my car, I hadn’t even left the driveway and she calls me to ask me where I’m going and what I’m doing.

Woman I am 24! (Also I was going out to get her a birthday present but I couldn’t quite say that)

[ricky-mortis]

“You’re a caveman. And I’ve invented fire.”

Close-ups under the cut :)

[urghblergh]

I finally watched "Our Man Bashir" and did like the outfits and the shooting at each other, so I drew this. ✨

Also inspired by this brilliant fanfiction and the very interesting headcanon concerning Cardassians and dancing mentioned in there. 👁️🔥

Reference

[blackberry-sage-tea]

"The Dalish gifted an Eluvian to the Grey Wardens so we can get in Weisshaupt" is just so emblematic of my problems with the game, because you can tell--it feels to me--that the thought process was "We need to have an Eluvian in Weisshaupt, Eluvians are an Elven(TM) thing, the Dalish are the Elven(TM) faction, so let's just say they were the ones who gave one to the Grey Wardens".

The Dalish have been established over all three games as a people who have spent the last thousands of years desperately scrounging for whatever scraps of their culture they can find, a struggle that has cost them dearly as typified by Merrill's plight trying to restore a single Eluvian which had previously Blighted two of her clan mates (an Eluvian that she can't open or use, and doesn't actually know what it's for by the end of her quest line). Multiple Dalish in Inquisition are killed trying to regain their history ("The Knight's Tomb") or trying to prove themselves by regaining even a talisman related to their culture ("Someone to Lose"). They are an insular and guarded people because outsider interactions frequently invoke a heavy toll in Dalish lives, up to and including entire clans. And yet, we are supposed to believe in a single throwaway piece of dialogue that in the 10 years between Inquisition and Veilguard, the Dalish have (offscreen) gained enough access to Eluvians as a piece of technology that they can afford to just "gift" one to the Grey Wardens without explanation.

There are constant revelations of this kind where pre-established parts of the lore are just thrown out the window. Things that had great emotional weight or impact in previous installments of the series are used for cheap thrills or plot-hole fills without explanation, justification, or even gravitas from the game. You have a moment in one of Emmrich's quests where you stumble through a portal directly into the Fade that Hezenkoss opened in Blackthorne manor, and you're tasked with closing it again. All of this is done entirely without the Anchor or even an implied blood sacrificial ritual, and it is never commented as anything particularly groundbreaking (when going into the Fade physically through tearing a hole in it was a Big Fucking Deal in Inquisition). You encounter a Compassion spirit in a side quest investigating the deaths of citizens in Tevinter who were murdered by a demon of Despair, and it is strong enough to not only retain itself through sensing the (unanswered!) suffering that these people experienced, but it also resolves to protect others to keep them from the same fate (when Cole was so traumatized by a single person's death that he completely reshaped his entire being around them). So on and so forth. Don't even get me started on Bellara's comment that the ancient elves "made most of their buildings in the Fade".

I'm not asking for someone to hold my hand and spoonfeed me information. I frankly don't care if an obscure codex entry, a reddit AMA question, bluesky tweet, or headcanon exists somewhere to patch in or bandaid over all of the jarring details like this, because it doesn't change the fact that the game itself should be doing this. The game itself should be taking the time to explain this in a way that is not missable, the game itself should be taking these things seriously, it should recognize when it is doing contradictory things and rush to justify itself accordingly, because these are things the emotional beats of previous stories hinged on. Like, when the game has Taash say a line like "The Qun isn't a prison, you can leave if you want", it's the responsibility of the writers to show that this is Taash being misinformed, not because I'm too stupid to headcanon that this is the case, but because this line is a symptom of how the entire game's writing seems to have forgotten about the Ben-Hassrath as a thing that exists in this setting.

Previous Dragon Age games are no stranger to "We quietly removed Solas' network of agents and spies offscreen"-style writing, but it usually didn't feel like a constant deluge periodically uprooting my emotional investment and immersion. There's only so much I can take in good faith before I realize that this game was just not written with any care towards ensuring that the worldbuilding made sense and felt right to the player, leading to awkward backpedaling in reddit threads like "no the Crows haven't changed as an organization, these are just the unique Good Crows and we forgot to mention it".

I just can't look past this shit anymore.

[waffled0g]

Everyone gets “The 90s” look wrong and I hate it

Couple years ago I saw these two board games at the store back to back. Well, not saw them per se, but ya know. Spied them out of the corner of my eye. And for a moment without reading the text, I couldn’t tell you which was which decade at first. Funny. Either they were in a rush to get these out the door or they wanted their throwback trivia game boxes to look uniform. I didn’t think too much of it.

Only, from then on I started seeing it MORE. Every time someone markets a 90s or 80s throwback...

Goddammit they’re identical! What??! How did we let this happen? As a 90s survivor and a designer, this drives me up a wall.

Look, I know I’m late to the party to complain about “the 90s look” when we’re just starting to get sick of the Y2K nostalgia train. But c’mon, the 90s were not The 80s: Part Two™ 

Trust me when I say that we weren’t all wearing neon trapezoids up until the year 2000. The 90s look being peddled is so specific to the tail end of the 80s and an early early part of the 90s - a part of the 90s when it wouldn’t stop being the 80s. This is Memphis design being conflated with the wrong decade.

Keep reading for a long ass graphic design history lesson and pictures of old soda and fast food.

Specifically, the look is Memphis Milano, self-named by the Italian design house Memphis Group. Starting in the early to mid 80s, they made all sorts of furniture, fabrics and sculptures that were like a Piet Mondrian grid painting under heavy radiation. Their whole deal was defying the standards of existing industrial design up to that point on purpose. Chairs had weird arches, bookcases would be in strange alien colors, unusual materials like plastic or elastic were used in place of metal or wood, that sorta thing.

Memphis quickly became the signature look for the decade. You can tell something’s influenced by Memphis design from it’s telltale trademarks:

Clashing, neon colors.

Use of diametric shapes.

Contrasting patterns like zebra print stripes, confetti squiggles and checkerboards.

It wasn’t long before Memphis Milano-inspired design was everywhere in 80s pop culture:

It was a special time, yes.

I was a kindergartener at the tail end of the 80s, so I knew Memphis mostly through the lens of kids media. Toys, clothes, games, tv shows used it like candy colored catnip. Cable channel Nickelodeon more or less adopted the Memphis aesthetic as their signature in-house style and practically built a monument to it at a Florida theme park:

I think this is why folks mistake what decade Memphis is representative of - 90s staples like Nick, Saved By The Bell, Fresh Prince - they all stayed around much longer than the design trend’s expiration date. 

Couple that notion with the fact that companies are slow followers to design trends. Something gets popular and they want to get on the bandwagon? Gotta wait for the ink to dry, gotta wait for the production molds to be made. It would take a few years for them to completely work Memphis outta their system.

Now, this is not to say Memphis is bad! Personally I’m a fan of the aesthetic, if my neon-drenched artwork wasn’t a tip-off already. But it is a trend, and trends never last forever.

So what took the Memphis Milano look down for good? This part’s up for debate, but I personally think it had something to do with this dude:

It’s that grunge music from Seattle that’s so popular with the kids these days dontchaknow.

Once Smells Like Teen Spirit hit in 1991, the Nirvana tone drove the rest of the decade. Clean geometry became weathered, grainy and organic. Bright neon pastels became more bold. Bubblegum pop music sounded fake and manufactured. Attitude and apathy was authentic. Whatever.

Things got grungy. Things got grimy. Olestra was invented.

I think the best way to visualize this transition is how Cherry Coke entered the decade and how it left it:

1992 Memphis on the left, 1998 grunge junkie on the right. Fitting that the 90s would end with a design that looked like Darth Maul’s lungs.

Okay, so what should 90s retro design look like?

Continue on to PART TWO! Spoilers: No VHS filters or vaporwave needed, but maybe bring an antacid.

[anghraine]

It's interesting (if often frustrating) to see the renewed Orc Discourse after the last few episodes of ROP. I've seen arguments that orcs have to be personifications of evil rather than people as such or else the ethics of our heroes' approach to them becomes much more fraught. Tolkien's work, as written, seems an odd choice to me for not wrangling with difficult questions, and of course, more diehard fans are going to immediately bring up Shagrat and Gorbag.

If you haven't read LOTR recently, Shagrat and Gorbag are two orcs who briefly have a conversation about how they're being screwed over by Sauron but have no other real options, about their opinions of mistakes that have been made, that they think Sauron himself has made one, but it's not safe to discuss because Sauron has spies in their own ranks. They reminisce about better times when they had more freedom and fantasize about a future when they can go elsewhere and set up a small-scale banditry operation rather than being involved in this huge-scale war. Eventually, however, they end up turning on each other.

Basically any time that someone brings up the "humanity" of this conversation, someone else will point out that they're still bad people. They're not at all guilty about what they're part of. They just resent the dangers to themselves, the pressure from above, failures of competence, the surveillance they're under, and their lack of realistic alternative options. The dream of another life mentioned in the conversation is still one of preying on innocent people, just on a much smaller and more immediate scale, etc.

I think this misses the reason it keeps getting brought up, though. The point is not that Shagrat and Gorbag are good people. The point is that they are people.

There's something very normal and recognizable about their resentment of their superiors, their fears of reprisal and betrayal that ultimately are realized, their dislike of this kind of industrial war machine that erases their individual work and contributions, the tinge of wistfulness in their hope of escape into a different kind of life. Their dialect is deliberately "common"—and there's a lot more to say about that and the fact that it's another commoner, Sam, who outwits them—but one of the main effects is to make them sound familiar and ordinary. And it's interesting that one of the points they specifically raise is that they're not going to get better treatment from "the good guys" so they can't defect, either.

This is self-interested, yes, but it's not the self-interest of some mystical being or spirit or whatnot, but of people.

Tolkien's later remarks tend to back this up. He said that female orcs do exist, but are rarely seen in the story because the characters only interact with the all-male warrior class of orcs. Whatever female orcs "do," it isn't going to war. Maybe they do a lot of the agricultural work that is apparently happening in distant parts of Mordor, maybe they are chiefly responsible for young orcs, maybe both and/or something else, we don't know. But we know they're out there and we know that they reproduce sexually and we know that they're not part of the orcish warrior class.

Regardless of all the problems with this, the idea that orcs have a gender-restricted warrior class at all and we're just not seeing any of their other classes because of where the story is set doesn't sound like automatons of evil. It sounds like an actual culture of people that we only see along the fringes.

And this whole matter of "but if they're people, we have to think about ethics, so they can't be people" is a weird circular argument that cannot account for what's in LOTR or for much of what Tolkien said afterwards. Yes, he struggled with The Problem of Orcs and how to reconcile it with his world building and his ethical system, but "maybe they're not people" is ultimately not a workable solution as far as LOTR goes and can't even account for much of the later evolution of his ideas, including explicit statements in his letters.

And in the end, the real response that comes to mind to that circular argument is "maybe you should think about ethics more."

[mellowyellow236]

How would the TWST boys act when they’re jealous?

This is Diasomnia's section- Link to Heartslabyul. All characters are meant to be interpreted as romantic. The reader is gender-neutral. There may be mild spoilers as to who overblots and other facts. Some of them might have Yandere tendencies, though nothing graphic or descriptive and always very mild, they’ll be marked with a ‘Y’ if they do. Mainly because sometimes the boys are calm and talk through their feelings… And sometimes they go down possessive insecurity-included spirals. If anyone has anything to add or any questions, please leave a reblog or comment! Requests are open if anyone wants. 

Malleus Draconia - 

Malleus gets jealous very, very easily. He loves you, obviously, but he’s a dragon. You’re a part of his horde. And just like his gold and jewels and artifacts, he’s not willing to let you be stolen away from him, in any way. 

He desires you. You’re his crown jewel, a shining star, the only light in the darkness. His entire life, his one true friend and lover. And he knows- He hates it so much- But he knows that you’ll leave him one day. He will outlive you. You will leave him. So do whatever it is you need to punish him for acting out, but he’ll be the one in a casket before he gives up your meager time to anyone else. 

He’s in love, and you couldn’t possibly deny him, could you? Please don’t. He knows that you have your friends, that he can’t be your only. But don’t deny him the right to love you in whatever way will make them leave- If they are intimidated by your love, let it happen. Let it happen. Let them leave you, Malleus never will.

Lilia Vanrouge - 

Hey, Beastie… Who are ya with there? A friend? Oh, how cute! You think that he’s going to get jealous, don’t you? Well, guess what? Lilia isn’t in the slightest! Why, you’re so silly, Beastie! 

What? That wasn’t an attempt at making Lilia jealous? You’re telling him that man right there honestly likes you. You? Why, no, you’re not the undesirable one. You’re beautiful in every way. But that’s Lilia’s job- To make you feel special, to make you feel good, to make you feel loved- And that man thinks he can replace him in it. He thinks he could do better than Lilia could. 

How dare he. Lilia will whisk you off your feet and away at the drop of a hat. He’s an old Fae who never believed he could feel something as simple as jealousy for a human but now look at him. Look at him craving you, look at him loving you, look at him holding you close, so close, until you leave him the same way his other lovers did. But please. Look at him. 

Silver “Vanrouge” - (I am sorry Silver fans, the boy did not want to be written in Headcanon form)

Silver was stretching in the back of the gym as he spied you walking in. It wasn’t odd for you to be there, of course, you would often come in and say hello to him. He expected you to do the same that day, so he paid no mind as you talked to another student first. You shared your last class of the day with him, no? So it wasn’t weird. 

But then another student comes up and joins your conversation. You’re popular- You deserve to be popular- So Silver still isn’t shocked. You are allowed to have more friends than him and a large amount of friends and fun activities is a sign of healthy living. 

It isn’t until you’ve spent half the period and Silver still hasn’t gotten onto his broom as he waits for you to come over that he takes matters into his own hands. He easily walks up to you, putting a hand on your shoulder, and as you push into him he easily melts back into you, all of his jealousy pouring away as your attention has returned to its rightful place. 

Sebek Zigvolt - 

Sebek doesn’t recognize that he’s jealous, no matter how obvious it is. He’s only caring for you because he has to. You are merely a silly little human, much weaker than a half-fae like him. And then you go off with a different human! You two together could never compare to him, so why is it that you’re not by his side? 

Human! How dare you go off without Sebek there, you could be hurt! While he might not care for you at all, you are liked by the great Wakasama, and thus you must be protected for the sake of his lord’s honor. If Sebek’s weakness made Malleus cry, what could ever become of him? How can you not see that? 

Oh, you were with Malleus…? But… Sebek still needs to protect his lord, even if you are not there! He can defend himself from any magical threats, but he… might… be hurt by you and your weak human feelings! How would you be able to hurt Wakasama…? Shut up, human! Your mind simply cannot comprehend the horrors that he must plan for as his lord’s future guard!

[chloeapplepi]

as a victim it makes me really frustrated when people see yuri briar as incestuous. i'm not a fan of him and he makes me uncomfortable at times so i don't have all the information about him off the top of my head, but i just want to give a bit analysis in defense of him.

he is not in love with, nor attracted to, yor. he has not just childhood trauma but shared trauma with her. she is also his only family member, which is a fact that he is overly aware of and affects his mental state and actions deeply. he has unhealthy attachment and codependency towards her as she is the only family and also the only close connection he has, as well as because she took on a motherly role for him as the oldest sibling. he feels like he needs to work hard to protect her out of his own love and to feel worthy of having received her love.

i feel like people forget because of how he is towards loid that yuri genuinely wanted yor to have a boyfriend. he even offered to introduce her to someone. but even when you objectively want something, that doesn't mean you'll have only positive feelings when it comes to fruition. he wants for yor to be in a happy relationship but at the same time, he does not know loid. his very most important person is living with someone who is a total stranger to him, and didn't tell him about it for a whole year.

that alone would naturally make anyone somewhat suspicious. then you have to consider that seeing them married also hammers into yuri the fact that he cannot always be there with yor. he has to live with the fact that someone he cares about so dearly, his only person, is going to be alone a lot of the time with a man he doesn't know.

this would be difficult for anyone with childhood trauma and trust issues. and yuri isn't just anyone. he is SSS. he is trained to stay suspicious and untrusting, it is a requirement for his job. he spends hours and hours a week dealing with spies and is intimately aware of how well they can blend in and how they can have a completely unknowing family.

that's all, folks. and i don't want to hear any arguments, thanks. if u disagree just keep it to yourself or u will be blocked 🫶

[800db-cloud]

spare some spy hcs? 👀

OKAY. ok. so i have been putting off answering this ask because i’m admittedly very shy and very afraid of sharing my headcanons. and also because i have A LOT OF THEM.. but here we are!

here are my headcanon spies :) René works for RED and Jacques works for BLU!

where to start, where to start… i have a LOT of headcanons for them, i’ll be talking for FOREVER here. i’ll just start with story because why not! xP

René’s parents were also agents/spies, so he was always destined to be one as well. And he lives up to his parents’ legacies! He’s most notorious for destroying gangs and mobs and the like from the outside in. He was brought to America years ago to take out a dangerous mob boss, but unfortunately found himself infatuated (and involved) with the boss’ daughter. Luckily for him, the boss’ daughter wanted the guy dead, too.

René’s story is honestly a lot more fleshed out than Jacques’, but here goes anyway:

Jacques’ father was a very rich and powerful man in politics. Jacques himself was the result of an affair, and to keep it hush-hush, his father decided to raise him. Raise is a strong word, though— but he did help his father gain intelligence and blackmail on opposing political parties. Jacques proved to be a promising spy since childhood.

If anyone has any suggestions/ideas for Jacques’ story, let me know haha x) he didn’t have the greatest upbringing per se…

last thing on this section i wanna talk about is the Scouts. René is related to both of the Scouts; he’s RED Scout (Jeremy)’s biological father, and he’s BLU Scout (James)’ adoptive/step-father. Jacques has no relation to either scout, but acts as a guardian figure to BLU Scout.

anyway, this is the part where i continue talking about other miscellaneous headcanons! and these come with doodles :)

You couldn’t catch René DEAD without his mask, or his suit! He’d neeever take them off around other people (‘other people’ is mainly just Scout. For obvious reasons.) Meanwhile, Jacques is pretty lenient in letting his teammates see his face! Everyone on BLU’s seen his face at least once.

A big part of why René refuses to strip down is also due to the fact he has a LOT of tattoos. No doodle for this one because I’ve yet to decide on what tattoos to put on him (ideas are very welcome!!), but yeah! Most of the tattoos were ‘forced’ onto him/he had to get for jobs and ‘fitting in’ with bad crowds, but a good few of them were of his own accord, too.

Jacques doesn’t have tattoos, but he has a myriad of another thing: scars! Lots and lots of scars on this guy. Faded and old, sure, but they’re there. Most prominent ones are the one around his neck (from when the RED Medic beheaded him) and the ones on his forearms (those are from the LAST time he was imprisoned— looong story…)

René doesn’t cook very often for his team, but when he does, everyone’s always BLOWN AWAY by this guy’s cooking! René’s really bad at taking compliments, though— (“Cooking food that’s remotely edible isn’t a compliment, it’s basic survival.”) —but rest assured he’ll be thinking about it for the next month. Jacques, however… Do NOT let this guy into the kitchen. Ever. The BLU base has a special fire extinguisher “In Case Spy Decides To Turn On The Stove”

oooh, this one is an hc and a HALF to me. René much prefers working alone. It’s just in his nature, being isolated and whatnot. He likes to deal with things by himself– maybe he doesn’t want to burden others? On the contrary, Jacques NEVER works alone. It’s a trait he’s had even before being hired to BLU. You never know when things could go wrong, so it’s best to have someone else to fall back to… or someone else you can blame!

these hcs both have something to do with how René and Jacques show their trust in other people :) it’s a bit convoluted but it gets there:

René is, amusingly, very bad at remembering names. Almost laughably bad. There have been many-a-story of his days before RED where he’d get a target’s name wrong, even after he’d repeated it in his head dozens of times over. Names are difficult for him, so if he remembers yours, it means you mean a lot to him! He prefers using his teammates’ names rather than their titles. René is unaware of how charming this specifc trait is to his coworkers (they saw how much work and effort it took for him to memorize their names, they’re just happy with how far he’s come!)

Jacques has a… to put simply, very complicated relationship with food. But the one thing he’ll never turn down is sweets. His favorites especially being chocolate bonbons. Jacques has a hard time eating in front of others, let alone sharing his food! But if he genuinely likes and trusts you enough, he’d have half the mind to share with you. Admittedly, he hasn’t brought himself to share with most of the members of his team yet, except for a select few. Mostly BLU Medic and BLU Sniper.

—

and of course, eventually, EVENTUALLY, these two also become friends! it took a little bit but believe me, they both respect each other’s skill in their job :)

AHHg i could go sooo much longer about them— from things like their physical traits (how much teeth they have? it’s a pressing question) or different periods of their life (why did rené have to leave his family? why was jacques imprisoned for the last time?) BUT this post is so… so, so long. My fingers hurt from typing

If you’ve managed to read through this Beast, THANK YOU RAAHH!!! thanks so much for asking this, too. i hope to spare more hcs someday. hehe ^_^

[cherrysweets-world]

Invidia II

masterlist - part one

Pairing: Geta x unrequited!Reader, Caracalla x Reader

Summary: Geta takes satisfaction where he can. Basically, he spies on Reader and Caracalla having sex.

Warnings: 18+, minors dni, porn without plot, yearning, unrequited desire, non-consensual voyeurism, unedited, masturbating, piv sex

Word Count: 1.2k

Geta waited a respectable fifteen minutes before getting out of bed and yanking on a robe.

His hands shook as he tied it around his waist but still, he did not stop. If he paused too long then he might actually think about what he was about to do and he did not want to risk talking himself out of his own reckless idea.

Caracalla had shared women with him before. Concubines and the occasional noblewoman if they desired a challenge. However, you were his wife. And it did not require an intelligent person to see that Caracalla would never share you.

It did not change the fact that Geta needed to know more about you. The visions he conjured in his mind were not nearly enough and tonight had proven to him that the concubines could no longer provided him adequate satisfaction.

The part of him that was Caracalla's brother told him no, that it was a terrible idea. The other part though, the Emperor, told him that he could do as he wished, for who would stop him?

The floor was cool beneath his feet as he dipped from his room. The Praetorians turned to him, surprised to see him after he had retired.

"I need to see my brother," he said, as if he owed them an explanation. Needed to see you. His lips tightened and he said no more.

Caracalla's chambers had been moved after he had married you. More privacy. Shamefully, Geta did not even try to talk himself out of his plan in the five minutes it took him to reach his brother's rooms. Instead he was exhilarated, his steps quickening the closer he got. Despite his earlier romp with the concubine his cock was already twitching beneath his robe. Flushed, eager and aching.

When the Praetorians outside of Caracalla's door saw him they raised their fists to knock. Geta hushed them, gesturing for them to lower their hands.

"His wife may be sleeping," Geta lied, "now step aside."

They did as he demanded. Geta opened the door and it was mercifully silent. He slipped inside and gradually pulled it shut.

Caracalla's rooms were mostly dark. The section he was in now was the receiving room. Geta paused for one moment, debating. If Caracalla caught him it would not be pleasant. And what would you think of him? Would you be disgusted to find your brother-in-law lusting after you?

Geta was debating on turning around when he heard it. A single, lyrical sigh. It was as if you were telling him to stay, to indulge.

All thoughts of leaving fled. Your siren song lured him deeper into Caracalla's rooms. Shallow breaths were all he could manage, the dark masking his approach. The sounds grew louder as he approached a privacy screen sectioning off the sleeping quarters from the rest of the room.

"Caracalla," you sighed, "please."

Geta's mouth was dry. He used his tongue to whet his lips as he pressed himself against the privacy screen, moving along it until he reached a gap between two sections. It was barely enough to see but oh, he saw.

You were on your back, thighs locked around Caracalla's head as he feasted on your cunt. Geta felt sick with want and fisted a greedy hand around his cock, squeezing as he imagined you might. His eyes could not find a single thing to settle on; they flashed eagerly over your naked body, drinking you in as much as he dared.

You had one hand tangled in his brother's hair, the other roaming your own breasts, tugging, pinching just as Geta would. From this angle he could imagine that it was him between your legs, not Caracalla. His tongue traced patterns on his lips, mirroring what it wanted to do to you between your thighs.

Writhing on the sheets, you chanted Caracalla's name as if he were a god. You were more than a dutiful wife.

There was a moment when you were rendered speechless, back arching off the sheets, and Geta began to stroke his cock at an almost harsh pace. If you were going to cum then he wanted to be right alongside you. It was the closet he could get to you.

Caracalla drew back though, pulling a long whine from your lips as you reached out to him, hips tilting.

"Almost, wife," Caracalla teased, leaning in to share your own taste with you. "I want to be close with you when you enter paradise."

"Paradise," you echoed.

Jealousy seethed and his cock throbbed. Geta watched as the pair of you locked together as you likely had countless other times. The familiarity was obvious and Geta wanted to rip his brother off you, wanted to enter you himself before either of you could protest. He was better at ruling Rome than his brother - could he not also be better at fucking his wife?

His thoughts were becoming reckless again so he leaned in, desperate to distract himself with your small sounds and movements. Caracalla entered you and you smiled. Radiant, lustful, his. Geta had seen his brother with women before but he was different with you. No doubt he had changed himself to give just what you desired.

The slick sound you produced made Geta dizzy as he panted through the gap in the screen. Caracalla muttered filthy things to you and you appeared to love it, answering him in kind with words that Geta had never thought he would hear spill from your lips.

He closed his eyes and pretended you were saying those things to him but then snapped them back open, unwilling to miss anything. His heart was clambering into his throat as his climax shot towards him like an arrow to the chest.

There was a delicate sheen of sweat on you and Caracalla as his hips rolled into you, coaxing mewling, desperate sounds from you as though he had done it a thousand times before.

"Please, husband," you breathed, "I want to give you an heir."

That did it for both Geta and Caracalla. Geta had to bite down on his lip to silence his climax, pearly white dripping through his fist and onto his robe and the floor. The room span and it was an effort to stay upright. His knees were weak and threatened to let him pitch forward, revealing himself.

Caracalla was much more vocal, his voice climbing in pitch as he set a near brutal pace. Your own climax seemed to center on Caracalla's and it made Geta sick to see you both tense and then collapse together. Caracalla nestled his face in your neck and you turned your head, whispering sweet nothings to him.

Caracalla's hands still roamed your body greedily. Your neck, your breasts, your thighs. He pushed into you one last time before pulling out. Geta leaned in as though he might be able to see what Caracalla currently gazed at.

He swiped a finger through the wetness of your cunt and held it up to the light, grinning. "Pretty, wife."

Geta could not bear to watch anything more. He wanted to see that part of you, glistening and satiated. He wanted to be the one who had caused that blissful look on your face, the way you melted into the bed.

He stepped back into the dark before he was caught. He did not want to push his luck. If he was caught now then he could not come back tomorrow night, and perhaps the night after that. The Emperor of Rome would take whatever scraps he could get.

Authors Note - a few people had been asking about this fic and I felt like this is what it needed to round it out. Let me know what you think pleaseeeee

Taglist - @prestinalove @justasmallbean @1950schick

[milla-frenchy]

After

2k8 | Joel Miller x fem reader | ao3 Summary: you want Joel and finally get the opportunity to have him Warnings: 18+ mdni. Virginity loss, age gap (reader is 23, Joel is in his late 40s), dirty talk, praise kink, oral (f/m), piv a/n: @aurorawritestoescape thank you for beta reading, and for holding my hand with this one 💕🫶 Pic for mood only

Masterlist

***************

You had been watching the exchanges between Joel and Fedra soldiers for several weeks and finally he got scammed by one of them. When you offered him a new deal, you had a hard time hiding your satisfaction.

“You fucked up, Joel. Trusted the wrong guy,” you said with a smirk, “But I can help you.” 

You had known him for several years. He sometimes did business with your father and never seemed interested in you. You were just “the daughter of”. He looked at you before letting out a surprised “You?”

“Yeah, me. Those supplies you need, I can get them for you. Come to my place tonight. I’ll show you a part of them and tell you how to get them all.”

He sighed, nodded, and left for his shift.

You heard his heavy footsteps on the stairs and opened the door before he knocked. He must have worked in the sewers that day because he had showered and changed. His hair was slicked back and still slightly wet.

“Ok, show me the supplies.”

You took out half of them, having watched his previous exchanges. You spied on him regularly, but you never thought you'd have the chance to get some kind of leverage over him.  You had your own apartment in the QZ, where you lived alone after moving out of your father’s place. 

No man interested you, except Joel. In recent years, you started looking at him differently. His gaze, his broad back, his hands obsessed you. At night, in your bed, you thought of him when your fingers rolled over your clit or when you rubbed yourself lying against your pillow. You imagined his body against yours. His kisses on your neck, his hands on your breasts. You imagined what you would have felt if he’d buried his length inside you. You wondered what his cock looked like and a few times, when you met him, you dared to lower your gaze to his crotch.

You had boyfriends before, but never did more than quick handjobs and blowjobs. None of them wanted to go further and you suspected them of being afraid of your father. You thought Joel would know how to deal with you. And now you had leverage.

“What’s your price?”

“I wanna have sex with you”, you replied confidently, making him laugh.

“You’re just a kid. Ain’t gonna fuck you.”

“I’m not a kid, I’m 23.”

“That’s what I said. A kid.”

“Come on, Joel. You can have all these supplies, just after having sex with me. Could be worse, don’t you think?”

“What about your dad?”

You rolled your eyes.

“I’m not asking you to fuck my dad, right?”

He smirked.

“You really want my dick that bad, that you’d give me all the supplies for it?”

“Yeah, in fact I do.”

He sighed. “Ok, your choice. Make me hard, if you want it that bad.”

You smirked and kneeled before unzipping his jeans. When his cock slipped free from his boxers, your lips formed an O. He was semi-hard, and already his size was impressive.

“Fuck”, you breathed out.

“Your boyfriends don’t have these kinda cocks? Come on, suck it.”

His hair there was slightly graying. He smelled of soap. You took his cock in your hand and collected the precum with your thumb.

“Spit on it.”

You did as he said, and you started jerking him off. He was getting harder. You licked his tip, lingering your tongue on his slit, filling your throat with his taste. You rounded your lips and took him in your mouth, applying yourself, breathing through your nose. You inwardly thanked the cocks you had practiced on before. Your head was bobbing and rising, and he was now fully hard. His cock was filling your entire mouth, precum flowing, and his taste was intoxicating you.

“Yeah, just like that. Keep goin’. You’re doing great.”

It was the first time a man spoke to you this way, and you were soaked. Gaze fixed on him, you took his cock out of your mouth and licked his entire length. From the base of his shaft to the slit. Then you licked one of his balls and took it in your mouth.

“Fuck…yeah, keep goin’. Didn’t know your father raised such a slut.”

You moved to the other ball, still jerking him, your thumb caressing his balls.

“Yeah…shit. Take my cock in your mouth again now. Keep suckin’ baby, just like that.”

His praise encouraged you. His hand was on your head, not applying any pressure. But when you took him back in your mouth, he held your head between his palms.

“Gonna fuck your throat now.”

He pushed all the way in, slowly, but giving you time to get used to his girth, to breathe calmly.

“Stay like that, don’t move. Yeah…good girl.”

He pulled back until only his tip remained in your mouth, and thrusted in again, faster, hitting the back of your throat. Again, he held you against him, your nose buried in his hair. Then he fucked your throat. You heard him grunt, and you were afraid he would shoot his cum down your throat. Like the other guys before. But Joel wasn’t like them. He was fucking your throat for a while, letting you catch your breath from time to time by pulling out. He was smirking watching the string of saliva connect your mouth to his cock. Finally he released you.

“Lie down on the bed and take off your clothes. Show me that cunt.”

You took off your clothes: t-shirt, jeans and panties, lay down and spread your legs, showing him your dripping pussy. He stroked himself a few times, eyes on you.

“You really want that? Ain’t got any boys of your age to fuck you?”

“Don’t want them.”

He looked at you again and shrugged before taking off his clothes.

“Need to stretch you first. Don’t wanna tear that slit.”

Shivers ran through your body when he placed his mouth on your folds and his tongue ran over them. “Fuck,” you moaned. Other men had gone down on you before, but he was different. Joel was eating you like a starving man, lapping at your pussy, drinking all the wetness that flowed from it. And he was hot. He was looking at you with a piercing stare while his tongue was buried in you. His broad shoulders were forcing your thighs open, and his hands were keeping them against the sheets.

“Yeah, you really want it…,” he growled between your thighs. And he was right. You wanted him, you wanted all of him, and you were moaning nonstop. He placed his lips around your clit, swirled his tongue over it and pushed his middle finger into your core, making you whimper. He added his index finger and you winced.

“You’re fuckin’ tight…when was your last fuck?”

“Shit, who cares? Keep goin’.”

He shrugged again, and thrusted both of his thick fingers into you. You focused on your clit, moaning. He was fucking your cunt with his digits easily now. You felt your wetness flowing down to your ass.

“Gonna cum for me? Come on, baby, you can do it. Give it to me, then I’ll fuck you.”

He sucked your clit again and your body shuddered, squirming under his tongue and fingers.

“Good girl. Good fuckin’ girl, clenching on my fingers like that. Want to get fucked that bad, uh? I’m gonna give it to you now.”

He carefully removed his fingers, and lapped between your folds one last time. When he stood up, you looked at his cock, hard as steel now, and you felt your cheeks heat up.

“Sure you can take it?”

“Yeah…yeah, I can take it, Joel.”

He nodded and laid between your thighs, cock in his hand, and he pressed it against your entrance before pushing lightly. You gasped and he pulled out.

“What is it?”

Your eyebrows were furrowed, and a tear ran down your cheek.

“Fuck, don’t tell me…don’t tell me you’re a virgin?”

He looked at you with wide eyes. You nodded shyly.

“Damn, what’s wrong with you? I ain’t gonna fuck you.”

“Please, Joel! I want it. Please.”

“I…fuck…sweetheart, I ain’t for first time. That cock ain’t for first times. I'm sorry."

“Please. Just…I don’t know, go slow?”

“Shit…It’s one thing to fuck you. Being your first time, is something else. The fuck is wrong with you? Can't you have your first time with a good boy in a decent place…But not with me, not as my payment.”

“Stop protecting me, or whatever you’re doing. Just fuck me. How many times do I have to tell you I want it?”

He looked at you, hesitant. You expected him to shrug but he didn’t. He laid between your thighs again. His tip nestled at your entrance. He pushed in again, slowly, his eyes locked with yours. He must have felt you tense, even if it was involuntarily, even if you wanted it, and he caressed your cheek. He pressed his lips to yours with a sweetness you didn’t expect coming from him.

Joel’s ruthless attitude was well known in the QZ. And here, right now, he was offering you an unexpected kindness. His lips were warm and soft. You felt your heart race when his tongue sought yours, passing the barrier of your lips. His cock twitched inside your walls. Before kissing you, he had paused pushing in, only his tip nestling inside you. He pulled away from your face and took your hands in his. He placed them on either side of your head, against the mattress, and said, “hold my hands, baby. Hold ‘em tight.” His body was warm against yours. Somehow, you felt reassured by his weight pressing you down. 

So you squeezed his hands, and he looked at you, pointing his chin towards you, as if to say “ready?” You nodded, and he thrusted in again, muttering  “fuck” through his clenched teeth.

He pushed halfway inside your pussy and you closed your eyes. “Look at me,” he murmured. You bit your lip as you opened your eyes, struggling not to tell him to stop, not to let the fear overwhelm you. He pulled back, his eyes in yours, keeping just the tip at your entrance, before thrusting in again. This time he didn’t stop. You squeezed his hands tighter and held your breath, until he bottomed out. He rested his forehead against yours, pausing deep inside you, and said, “Breath, sweetheart. You’re gonna be ok.”

He pulled back before thrusting in again, his movements were smooth and gentle. Your pain was gone, and the way he buried himself inside you, caressing your folds, made you squeeze his shaft. Your gaze remained fixed on his, devouring him. His brown eyes, his furrowed eyebrows, the brown curls of his now dry hair.

He stopped again and you pleaded “no, no, no, please, don’t stop. It’s…it’s good, it doesn't hurt anymore.”

“I know, baby, but…fuck. I need a minute. You’re too tight. Lemme…hold my breath, ok? Or I ain’t gonna last.”

You nodded, but you had a hard time stopping your hips from rolling towards him. You didn’t want it to end, didn’t want to stop feeling him in you. So you focused on him again. His nose, his mustache, his lips, and his patchy beard. You let go of his hands and placed yours on his biceps. You wanted to feel his muscles under your fingers, the warmth of his skin under yours.

“Shit…ok. How do you feel, baby?”

“I’m ok, Joel. Told you I could take it”, you said proudly with a cute smile - at least you hoped.

He smiled and kissed you again, as he started to fuck you, a little deeper this time, slightly faster.

You roamed your fingers over his arms, his shoulders, his back. His lips left yours, and his nose ran across your cheek before brushing your neck. His soft mustache made you shiver, and when he kissed the delicate skin there, everything you had imagined about him came back to you. He was perfect, just like in your fantasies.

He was fucking you slowly again, and you spread your thighs to feel him deeper in you. He was rubbing his pelvis against your clit, and you felt another orgasm building. Different from all the others you had so far. A deeper one, coming from the depths of your body, and you were moaning at every thrust.

“You like it, sweetheart?”

“Yes Joel, it’s so good…I don't want it to stop, please, don’t stop..”

He kissed your neck again, and said “I won’t. I know you’re good. You feel it coming?”

“I…fuck, yeah! How do you know?”

He gave a confident little nod, just as your orgasm overwhelmed you and made you clench on his cock. You whimpered and he held you tighter against him, his arms under your shoulders. 

He whispered in your ear, “you’re such a good girl, coming on my cock. Damn, you’re squeezing me so tight baby.”

You could barely hear him, and your body was still trembling.

“Joel…,” you whined.

“I know, baby, I know…You’re ok. You’re ok.”

He kept thrusting into you the whole time, slowly, deeply, and you felt like his cock was made for you. You knew it was a dangerous thing to think, but couldn’t help it. 

You heard him whisper in your ear again, “wanna try something, sweetheart?”

“I’m not sure if I can-”

He stopped moving, and placed his hands on your cheeks.

“Do you trust me?”

You nodded. Of course you trusted him. Right here, right now, he seemed to be the most trustworthy person in your world.

“I’m gonna lay on my back, and you’re gonna ride me. I’ll help you if you need me.”

You nodded again, and when he withdrew you whimpered, crying his loss as silently as you could. He lay down on his back, and when you saw the stained sheets you froze. “It’s ok. Nothing that can't come off after washing. And if it doesn't go away I'll give you other ones.”

You realized that he was constantly reassuring you since he found out that you were a virgin, and had never been rough. Your heart sank again.

You straddled him and whispered “how do I do it?” You felt inexperienced and clumsy, but once again he didn’t judge you.

“Take my cock in your hand, use me how you want it. You’re in control.”

You positioned his tip at your entrance and he nodded encouragingly. You lowered yourself onto his shaft, feeling your pussy welcome him. You didn't dare take all of him at first, and you rolled your hips slightly, your chest against his.

“Yeah, just like that baby”, he said, caressing your back.

When you felt like you could take more, you welcomed him deeper, whimpering in his neck, rubbing your cheek against his beard, as if to forget the heat in your core. You slid down his shaft, your hands roaming his cheeks, his neck, his torso. You wanted to feel everything. To fill all your five senses with just him.

You sat up, ready to take him fully. He placed his large hands on your breasts and hard nipples. You welcomed his warmth and covered his hands with yours. You were feeling his cock differently. Deeply. You looked at him, he seemed wrecked and you didn’t expect it. 

“I’m not gonna last much longer. Rub your clit now, baby. Come on my cock one last time”, he said.

You nodded, and placed your finger on your clit. You felt fully exposed and vulnerable in front of him, but there were no red flags in him. You wondered if that would change the next time you’d see him, if he would avoid you. You pushed the idea out of your mind, focusing on your sensations. You kept riding him, eager to show him you were learning how to do it right. How much you loved it. And you truly did. Your finger was swirling over your clit, and you couldn’t believe that another orgasm was building in you. 

“Joel…I’m gonna cum again, it’s…fuck, it’s so good.”

“Yeah, you like that, baby? Can feel it…you're gonna clench on my cock again? Gonna soak it, till you’ll drip on my balls?” His words made you whimper and you came a third time on his cock. Your head fell back, and he waited as long as he could before he lifted you up lightly and pulled out. He jerked off quickly, then spurted his cum against your thighs and your pussy, growling. 

You laid against him, both of you trying to catch your breath, and he held you in his arms. You knew that you wanted to feel him again. To feel his lips, his hands on you. His cock in your mouth and in your cunt. You played tough when he arrived at your place, and now you felt different, your heart wanted to be filled too.

Again, the word “after” flashed in your mind, and pain twisted your heart.

****************

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[mostlysignssomeportents]

Your car spies on you and rats you out to insurance companies

I'm on tour with my new, nationally bestselling novel The Bezzle! Catch me TOMORROW (Mar 13) in SAN FRANCISCO with ROBIN SLOAN, then Toronto, NYC, Anaheim, and more!

Another characteristically brilliant Kashmir Hill story for The New York Times reveals another characteristically terrible fact about modern life: your car secretly records fine-grained telemetry about your driving and sells it to data-brokers, who sell it to insurers, who use it as a pretext to gouge you on premiums:

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/11/technology/carmakers-driver-tracking-insurance.html

Almost every car manufacturer does this: Hyundai, Nissan, Ford, Chrysler, etc etc:

https://www.repairerdrivennews.com/2020/09/09/ford-state-farm-ford-metromile-honda-verisk-among-insurer-oem-telematics-connections/

This is true whether you own or lease the car, and it's separate from the "black box" your insurer might have offered to you in exchange for a discount on your premiums. In other words, even if you say no to the insurer's carrot – a surveillance-based discount – they've got a stick in reserve: buying your nonconsensually harvested data on the open market.

I've always hated that saying, "If you're not paying for the product, you're the product," the reason being that it posits decent treatment as a customer reward program, like the little ramekin warm nuts first class passengers get before takeoff. Companies don't treat you well when you pay them. Companies treat you well when they fear the consequences of treating you badly.

Take Apple. The company offers Ios users a one-tap opt-out from commercial surveillance, and more than 96% of users opted out. Presumably, the other 4% were either confused or on Facebook's payroll. Apple – and its army of cultists – insist that this proves that our world's woes can be traced to cheapskate "consumers" who expected to get something for nothing by using advertising-supported products.

But here's the kicker: right after Apple blocked all its rivals from spying on its customers, it began secretly spying on those customers! Apple has a rival surveillance ad network, and even if you opt out of commercial surveillance on your Iphone, Apple still secretly spies on you and uses the data to target you for ads:

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

Even if you're paying for the product, you're still the product – provided the company can get away with treating you as the product. Apple can absolutely get away with treating you as the product, because it lacks the historical constraints that prevented Apple – and other companies – from treating you as the product.

As I described in my McLuhan lecture on enshittification, tech firms can be constrained by four forces:

I. Competition

II. Regulation

III. Self-help

IV. Labor

https://pluralistic.net/2024/01/30/go-nuts-meine-kerle/#ich-bin-ein-bratapfel

When companies have real competitors – when a sector is composed of dozens or hundreds of roughly evenly matched firms – they have to worry that a maltreated customer might move to a rival. 40 years of antitrust neglect means that corporations were able to buy their way to dominance with predatory mergers and pricing, producing today's inbred, Habsburg capitalism. Apple and Google are a mobile duopoly, Google is a search monopoly, etc. It's not just tech! Every sector looks like this:

https://www.openmarketsinstitute.org/learn/monopoly-by-the-numbers

Eliminating competition doesn't just deprive customers of alternatives, it also empowers corporations. Liberated from "wasteful competition," companies in concentrated industries can extract massive profits. Think of how both Apple and Google have "competitively" arrived at the same 30% app tax on app sales and transactions, a rate that's more than 1,000% higher than the transaction fees extracted by the (bloated, price-gouging) credit-card sector:

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

But cartels' power goes beyond the size of their warchest. The real source of a cartel's power is the ease with which a small number of companies can arrive at – and stick to – a common lobbying position. That's where "regulatory capture" comes in: the mobile duopoly has an easier time of capturing its regulators because two companies have an easy time agreeing on how to spend their app-tax billions:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/06/05/regulatory-capture/

Apple – and Google, and Facebook, and your car company – can violate your privacy because they aren't constrained regulation, just as Uber can violate its drivers' labor rights and Amazon can violate your consumer rights. The tech cartels have captured their regulators and convinced them that the law doesn't apply if it's being broken via an app:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/18/cursed-are-the-sausagemakers/#how-the-parties-get-to-yes

In other words, Apple can spy on you because it's allowed to spy on you. America's last consumer privacy law was passed in 1988, and it bans video-store clerks from leaking your VHS rental history. Congress has taken no action on consumer privacy since the Reagan years:

https://www.eff.org/tags/video-privacy-protection-act

But tech has some special enshittification-resistant characteristics. The most important of these is interoperability: the fact that computers are universal digital machines that can run any program. HP can design a printer that rejects third-party ink and charge $10,000/gallon for its own colored water, but someone else can write a program that lets you jailbreak your printer so that it accepts any ink cartridge:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/11/ink-stained-wretches-battle-soul-digital-freedom-taking-place-inside-your-printer

Tech companies that contemplated enshittifying their products always had to watch over their shoulders for a rival that might offer a disenshittification tool and use that as a wedge between the company and its customers. If you make your website's ads 20% more obnoxious in anticipation of a 2% increase in gross margins, you have to consider the possibility that 40% of your users will google "how do I block ads?" Because the revenue from a user who blocks ads doesn't stay at 100% of the current levels – it drops to zero, forever (no user ever googles "how do I stop blocking ads?").

The majority of web users are running an ad-blocker:

https://doc.searls.com/2023/11/11/how-is-the-worlds-biggest-boycott-doing/

Web operators made them an offer ("free website in exchange for unlimited surveillance and unfettered intrusions") and they made a counteroffer ("how about 'nah'?"):

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/07/adblocking-how-about-nah

Here's the thing: reverse-engineering an app – or any other IP-encumbered technology – is a legal minefield. Just decompiling an app exposes you to felony prosecution: a five year sentence and a $500k fine for violating Section 1201 of the DMCA. But it's not just the DMCA – modern products are surrounded with high-tech tripwires that allow companies to invoke IP law to prevent competitors from augmenting, recongifuring or adapting their products. When a business says it has "IP," it means that it has arranged its legal affairs to allow it to invoke the power of the state to control its customers, critics and competitors:

https://locusmag.com/2020/09/cory-doctorow-ip/

An "app" is just a web-page skinned in enough IP to make it a crime to add an ad-blocker to it. This is what Jay Freeman calls "felony contempt of business model" and it's everywhere. When companies don't have to worry about users deploying self-help measures to disenshittify their products, they are freed from the constraint that prevents them indulging the impulse to shift value from their customers to themselves.

Apple owes its existence to interoperability – its ability to clone Microsoft Office's file formats for Pages, Numbers and Keynote, which saved the company in the early 2000s – and ever since, it has devoted its existence to making sure no one ever does to Apple what Apple did to Microsoft:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/06/adversarial-interoperability-reviving-elegant-weapon-more-civilized-age-slay

Regulatory capture cuts both ways: it's not just about powerful corporations being free to flout the law, it's also about their ability to enlist the law to punish competitors that might constrain their plans for exploiting their workers, customers, suppliers or other stakeholders.

The final historical constraint on tech companies was their own workers. Tech has very low union-density, but that's in part because individual tech workers enjoyed so much bargaining power due to their scarcity. This is why their bosses pampered them with whimsical campuses filled with gourmet cafeterias, fancy gyms and free massages: it allowed tech companies to convince tech workers to work like government mules by flattering them that they were partners on a mission to bring the world to its digital future:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/10/the-proletarianization-of-tech-workers/

For tech bosses, this gambit worked well, but failed badly. On the one hand, they were able to get otherwise powerful workers to consent to being "extremely hardcore" by invoking Fobazi Ettarh's spirit of "vocational awe":

https://www.inthelibrarywiththeleadpipe.org/2018/vocational-awe/

On the other hand, when you motivate your workers by appealing to their sense of mission, the downside is that they feel a sense of mission. That means that when you demand that a tech worker enshittifies something they missed their mother's funeral to deliver, they will experience a profound sense of moral injury and refuse, and that worker's bargaining power means that they can make it stick.

Or at least, it did. In this era of mass tech layoffs, when Google can fire 12,000 workers after a $80b stock buyback that would have paid their wages for the next 27 years, tech workers are learning that the answer to "I won't do this and you can't make me" is "don't let the door hit you in the ass on the way out" (AKA "sharpen your blades boys"):

https://techcrunch.com/2022/09/29/elon-musk-texts-discovery-twitter/

With competition, regulation, self-help and labor cleared away, tech firms – and firms that have wrapped their products around the pluripotently malleable core of digital tech, including automotive makers – are no longer constrained from enshittifying their products.

And that's why your car manufacturer has chosen to spy on you and sell your private information to data-brokers and anyone else who wants it. Not because you didn't pay for the product, so you're the product. It's because they can get away with it.

Cars are enshittified. The dozens of chips that auto makers have shoveled into their car design are only incidentally related to delivering a better product. The primary use for those chips is autoenshittification – access to legal strictures ("IP") that allows them to block modifications and repairs that would interfere with the unfettered abuse of their own customers:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/24/rent-to-pwn/#kitt-is-a-demon

The fact that it's a felony to reverse-engineer and modify a car's software opens the floodgates to all kinds of shitty scams. Remember when Bay Staters were voting on a ballot measure to impose right-to-repair obligations on automakers in Massachusetts? The only reason they needed to have the law intervene to make right-to-repair viable is that Big Car has figured out that if it encrypts its diagnostic messages, it can felonize third-party diagnosis of a car, because decrypting the messages violates the DMCA:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/11/drm-cars-will-drive-consumers-crazy

Big Car figured out that VIN locking – DRM for engine components and subassemblies – can felonize the production and the installation of third-party spare parts:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/05/08/about-those-kill-switched-ukrainian-tractors/

The fact that you can't legally modify your car means that automakers can go back to their pre-2008 ways, when they transformed themselves into unregulated banks that incidentally manufactured the cars they sold subprime loans for. Subprime auto loans – over $1t worth! – absolutely relies on the fact that borrowers' cars can be remotely controlled by lenders. Miss a payment and your car's stereo turns itself on and blares threatening messages at top volume, which you can't turn off. Break the lease agreement that says you won't drive your car over the county line and it will immobilize itself. Try to change any of this software and you'll commit a felony under Section 1201 of the DMCA:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/04/02/innovation-unlocks-markets/#digital-arm-breakers

Tesla, naturally, has the most advanced anti-features. Long before BMW tried to rent you your seat-heater and Mercedes tried to sell you a monthly subscription to your accelerator pedal, Teslas were demon-haunted nightmare cars. Miss a Tesla payment and the car will immobilize itself and lock you out until the repo man arrives, then it will blare its horn and back itself out of its parking spot. If you "buy" the right to fully charge your car's battery or use the features it came with, you don't own them – they're repossessed when your car changes hands, meaning you get less money on the used market because your car's next owner has to buy these features all over again:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/28/edison-not-tesla/#demon-haunted-world

And all this DRM allows your car maker to install spyware that you're not allowed to remove. They really tipped their hand on this when the R2R ballot measure was steaming towards an 80% victory, with wall-to-wall scare ads that revealed that your car collects so much information about you that allowing third parties to access it could lead to your murder (no, really!):

https://pluralistic.net/2020/09/03/rip-david-graeber/#rolling-surveillance-platforms

That's why your car spies on you. Because it can. Because the company that made it lacks constraint, be it market-based, legal, technological or its own workforce's ethics.

One common critique of my enshittification hypothesis is that this is "kind of sensible and normal" because "there’s something off in the consumer mindset that we’ve come to believe that the internet should provide us with amazing products, which bring us joy and happiness and we spend hours of the day on, and should ask nothing back in return":

https://freakonomics.com/podcast/how-to-have-great-conversations/

What this criticism misses is that this isn't the companies bargaining to shift some value from us to them. Enshittification happens when a company can seize all that value, without having to bargain, exploiting law and technology and market power over buyers and sellers to unilaterally alter the way the products and services we rely on work.

A company that doesn't have to fear competitors, regulators, jailbreaking or workers' refusal to enshittify its products doesn't have to bargain, it can take. It's the first lesson they teach you in the Darth Vader MBA: "I am altering the deal. Pray I don't alter it any further":

https://pluralistic.net/2023/10/26/hit-with-a-brick/#graceful-failure

Your car spying on you isn't down to your belief that your carmaker "should provide you with amazing products, which brings your joy and happiness you spend hours of the day on, and should ask nothing back in return." It's not because you didn't pay for the product, so now you're the product. It's because they can get away with it.

The consequences of this spying go much further than mere insurance premium hikes, too. Car telemetry sits at the top of the funnel that the unbelievably sleazy data broker industry uses to collect and sell our data. These are the same companies that sell the fact that you visited an abortion clinic to marketers, bounty hunters, advertisers, or vengeful family members pretending to be one of those:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/05/07/safegraph-spies-and-lies/#theres-no-i-in-uterus

Decades of pro-monopoly policy led to widespread regulatory capture. Corporate cartels use the monopoly profits they extract from us to pay for regulatory inaction, allowing them to extract more profits.

But when it comes to privacy, that period of unchecked corporate power might be coming to an end. The lack of privacy regulation is at the root of so many problems that a pro-privacy movement has an unstoppable constituency working in its favor.

At EFF, we call this "privacy first." Whether you're worried about grifters targeting vulnerable people with conspiracy theories, or teens being targeted with media that harms their mental health, or Americans being spied on by foreign governments, or cops using commercial surveillance data to round up protesters, or your car selling your data to insurance companies, passing that long-overdue privacy legislation would turn off the taps for the data powering all these harms:

https://www.eff.org/wp/privacy-first-better-way-address-online-harms

Traditional economics fails because it thinks about markets without thinking about power. Monopolies lead to more than market power: they produce regulatory capture, power over workers, and state capture, which felonizes competition through IP law. The story that our problems stem from the fact that we just don't spend enough money, or buy the wrong products, only makes sense if you willfully ignore the power that corporations exert over our lives. It's nice to think that you can shop your way out of a monopoly, because that's a lot easier than voting your way out of a monopoly, but no matter how many times you vote with your wallet, the cartels that control the market will always win:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/03/05/the-map-is-not-the-territory/#apor-locksmith

Name your price for 18 of my DRM-free ebooks and support the Electronic Frontier Foundation with the Humble Cory Doctorow Bundle.

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/2024/03/12/market-failure/#car-wars

Image: Cryteria (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:HAL9000.svg

CC BY 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en

[ricky-mortis]

Curtwen Week Day 7: First Meeting/Last Words

[ozzgin]

So uh, hey it's your wife🫶 Bf just broke up with me 🥲 Currently in a corner dying and in need of monster comfort

-S.B.B

Content: gender neutral reader, monster romance, implied murder, cannibalism

Yandere!Monster who secretly inhabits your home - has he always been there, or did he follow you on your return? - and is content with simply watching you; Carefully observing your movements, stalking your mundane activities. Mind you, there is nothing malicious about his motives. He was merely interested in you, a human, unknowingly trespassing his territory.

He would've remained in sworn secrecy, had it not been for the quiet sobs coming from the bedroom. He's seen you cry before, naturally, but not in these mysterious circumstances. He slides discreetly across your floor and spies your fingers angrily tapping away on your phone, complaining about your partner breaking up with you. Aha. So that's what it was.

He doesn't know what's more ridiculous out of the whole following sequence: The fact that he casually stood up and allowed himself to be detected, that you glanced at him without the faintest hint of fear, or that he is presently holding you against his chest, stroking your hair and murmuring nonsense in a confused attempt to soothe you. Can he understand human speech? More or less. Can he actually reproduce it himself? Irrelevant.

After what feels like an eternity, he detaches himself from your small body, and gestures something. You stare at him as he pounces out the window. Were you just abandoned again? Truth be told, cuddling with the grotesque, monstrous creature had been rather enjoyable. Your worries don't last long, however. You're soon distracted by the rattle of the entrance door, so you hurry down the hall.

The monster has returned, holding a paper bag and stretching it out to you. Your nostrils immediately pick up the scent of decadent fast food. Without much thought or hesitation, you grab the offering from his clawed hands and scurry back to your chamber, followed by the unholy Beast. He gazes at your greedy consumption with a peculiar smirk.

"Where did you even get this food?" you finally ask, raising your eyebrows. You doubt he just walked into the closest fast food chain and placed an order at the counter.

He shrugs. Either way, your pesky, mortal ex will not be a cause of turmoil anymore. He'll make you forget such human ever existed.

[hitracks]

Can we see a c! Wilbur design maybe? (If you're chill w/ it) Or Technoblade and Philza?

I’m planning on doing a whole separate ref for Wil at some point so I will do both Blade and Philza for you… im really really normal about Techno like really serious I promise you. ( <- lying through his fucking teeth. ) LOTTTTS OF DESIGN PARTICULARS WITH HIM. I deviate a lot from his skin ( for one I get way too engrossed with drawing animals so humanoid it is. ) but I make his outfit more errr. Flashy…? Also southern inspo all over this bitch. as a southern man myself I am forced to give him ( modest ) matador esque pants and a bolo …. I think putting him in that is hilarious cause the closest things piglins have to bulls are fucking hoglins LMFAO. Imagine him in a Nether rodeo … terrifying … Away from design in general I love his character sooo much. I think its important to keep his funny nerd qualities when designing him. Like techno is a beast with technical skills and combat but if you ask him to sit in a room with more than about 3 people he starts sweating. Make him a little loser guys … hes got like one friend total and lives in the middle of nowhere in the snow as a Nether mob. Nothing normal about him. No bitches and no gains …

PHIL …. ghh … I have an unpopular take on him because i dont find him very fatherly. Hes more like an estranged uncle who dgaf about his kids. Shanks from one piece if you will. As much as I like his dynamics, for his character I feel like people are constantly glossing over the fact he isolates himself on purpose away from everything and everyone so he doesn’t have to deal with it … Him and Techno are so close because 1) They’re both crazy fucking good at everything and 2) Neither of them WANT to interact with others outside of themselves usually. Techno most often times only talks to people for his own personal gain or when he has no choice … Philza just get dragged into everything cause Wilbur is like a damn blight on the world. IDK! I wish people made him more aloof or terrifying because the concept of him is so genuinely freaky like hes got spies everywhere all the time and could or could not be immortal or some sort of biblical creature like THATS SCARY!!! I tried to mess around with him being green and the Minecraft equivalent of souls ( exp drop when you die ) being the same shade-ish …. Hes just some eldritch horror to me. Not explainable by mere words…