#and working in not-for-profit/human services

[stephdrawsjohnlock]

Fandom Trumps Hate 2025!

Looking for a scene drawn for your story? A piece to help inspire you to write a fic? A new icon? How about covers for your story with full print-ready Graphic Design service? Maybe a pinup, or some trading cards (up to 10)?? Maybe a gift for someone, or just your vision of a character(s) (up to 3 character sheets) for your AU?

Well, that’s just some of the stuff I’m willing to offer for this year’s @fandomtrumpshate​​ Charity Event! FTH is a WONDERFUL community project that supports amazing non-profits through donations for fanworks via this wonderful annual event!

I am offering ONE fanart Piece for BBC Sherlock or Good Omens!

Because of my day job's circumstances this year where I will be guaranteed to be indisposed for about 3 months and unable to work on my personal projects, I feel I am only able to offer up one piece this year instead of my usual 2 to 4. This will be my sixth year, and the piece will be for either the BBC Sherlock or Good Omens fandoms, starting at 10$ for the non-profit of your choice!

Here are some past FTH pieces I’ve done, if you’re interested in seeing the scope of the work you would be getting from me:

2020:

GO - :FTH 2020 – Lagniappe for Big_Edies_Sun_Hat:

GO - :FTH 2020 BONUS – Réveillon for Big_Edies_Sun_Hat:

2021

SH - :This Year: (FTH #1 for @discordantwords​​)

SH - :Burlesque Johnlock: (FTH #2 for @ohlooktheresabee​)

2022

SH – :A Quiet Moment: (FTH #1 for @totallysilvergirl)

SH – :Against the Wall: (FTH #2 for @anarfea)

2023

SH – :Let Me Come to You: (FTH #1 for  ShakespearelovedLadyMacbeth)

SH – :Couch Cuddle: (FTH #2 for @discordantwords)

SH – :More Every Minute: (FTH #3 for @totallysilvergirl)

2024

GO – :Come On, Dear: (FTH #1 for Box Human)

GO – :You're Alright?: (FTH #2 for mltrefry)

====

And of course, you can browse all my art (primarily fanart) to see my range:

@stephdrawsjohnlock​​

stephdrawsfanart on Instagram

@stephratte​​ (Primary Multifandom Art ​Blog)

stephratte on deviantART

I will draw any ship from either of the above fandoms, though I do prefer Johnlock or the Husbands. All my work is done digitally at a minimum 2000x2000 print-ready piece in Procreate. Traditional media (markers, India ink, and pencils) is also available if you prefer, done on illustration or marker paper at the paper’s size, with the option of acquiring the original if you choose. I will also do it at a requested size if you have a preferred format for something specific (like a book cover or a comic panel). Feel free to DM me if you have any questions before bidding on me, or to see if I am able to draw what you would like!! I want you to be satisfied that I can achieve what you want!

The browsing begins on February 21, and the bidding opens on February 25! I hope I once again get a chance to do a fantastic piece for one of y’all!! I love doing this so much, so keep an eye out for the official info post link once FTH officially opens!

Thank you to everyone who is interested!

**NOTE!! If you've bid on me before and want to try again, I've changed my User Name this year to this blog's name, StephDrawsJohnlock (I-J), for easier finding once the listings are posted!

[enbeees]

I am so tired of the discussions about ai art especially as an artist

Bc BOTH sides are always too extreme

Like

Pro-AI is obvious, people tend to completely disrespect and devalue artists, a lot of them are just NFT shills in different packaging, they seem convinced that AI is equal to human thinking and therefore should be treated the same as a human thought process, and they tend to lean on technicalities and legality instead of harm caused without recognizing that laws do change with the introduction of new technology

Whereas Anti-AI people tend to outright fear-monger and either lie or purposely remain ignorant about the way AI works so they end up taking important, valid concerns and framing them in a way that's outright untrue and doesn't help their case

[whatifyoulivelikethat]

ribbon, m | jjk

pairing(s): jungkook x reader

summary: Jeon Jungkook asks you what you would do to him if he was naked, blindfolded, and tied to a chair. He really is asking for it, isn't he?

warnings: rated M (18+) – JK is insolent bc he's secretly nervous smh; reader is unafraid to challenge him; smut (fem reader, he's obv naked, blindfolded, and tied to a chair, hand appreciation (?) spit kink, photography during sex, use of safe word, m-receiving oral, edging, f-masturbation); non-idol!AU; switches between reader's POV and JK's POV

--

“I’ve been wondering – do you ask me these questions because you’re bored, voyeuristic, or propositioning me?”

“W… What?”

“Hm? I’m allowed to ask that, aren’t I? Or can only you ask the questions?”

-

Truth to be told, you already had a good guess. It was just more fun to put someone on the spot. Strange that, even with the certain, ahem, reputation you had, people still took the time to misconstrue. It was tiring. Not entertaining in the slightest. Well, being entitled and self-serving was human nature. You didn’t mind it, as long as one owned up to their shamelessness.

Which never happened.

One could hope.

Regardless, you were willing to entertain when you felt like it. However, you refused to be a performance monkey. Even that practice was becoming obsolete as people realized the inhumanity of it all. If only the same could be applied to openly sexually active femme fatales. Sigh. For this reason, you avoided dating, both because it was exhausting and because we all die alone. Mhm. And, due to your rigid stance against romance, you of course kept finding yourself in long-term relationships. The universe never ceased with its paradoxes. With age came a rare lull. You figured that surely now was the time to be alone. Thus, the universe put Jeon Jungkook in your path, who did everything except for leaving you alone.

Ah.

The universe and its great paradoxes.

You were well aware of his fascination with your freak. He was green to it, too. It was the off-hand questions trying to catch you off guard paired the attempts at producing shock factor to a seasoned veteran that were the dead giveaway. Not that things weren’t moving forward as they normally did. A drag racer was slower than how you and him were progressing. Eh, you always believed time was a finite resource. So, you let him lead you along while skirting the edges of what if. Mostly to test his persistence. Alright, it was pretty fun for you as well. But the next evolution couldn’t quite continue without discussion.

Even nymphomaniacs could have morals.

Sometimes.

You watched his thoughts play out on his face. He was stuck in the mental battle of societal expectations, self-respect, and the truth. You wondered which would win.

“I… Just bored. That’s all,” he mumbled.

Hm. Societal expectations won. To be expected. Someday he would work up to the truth on the first try. He was one of those men with a pretty face, an arm sleeve of tattoos, and few reservations. But one of them was still sex, because sex was an undefined creature that he was still attempting to domesticate to that fantastical mold that media tended to favor. False idols attracted fanatics and fanatics generated payola. The most profitable subscription service was the lies that bound society.

It was what it was.

You weren’t surprised or disappointed by it. Didn’t hold it against him either. You leaned against the sofa cushions, facing him. With a smile. His jumpiness was quite cute. The tip of his tongue danced over his lower lip in involuntary nervousness. He had a tiny mole underneath his mouth, right at the center, that you were mildly obsessed with and hadn’t told him yet. Large black-brown eyes that shattered the tough image he was trying to aspire to but you weren’t going to tell him that. His style was big, baggy, and dark. Today was no exception. Black t-shirt, black track pants, gray beanie. Didn’t even dress up for the occasion of trying to bang you in his basement.

Well, trying to get you to bang him in his basement, actually.

You preferred it this way. It was authentic. You proceeded to question him. Just because you knew why he said what he said didn’t mean you had to accept it. You were trying to get to know him, after all.

“Is that so? Just bored, so you wanna get tied up?”

-

Actually, his reason was that he was horny. Which was probably obvious, but wasn’t something Jeon Jungkook felt like confirming. He learned for the start that she was not the subtle type. She did not seem to mind making the first move, so much so that Jungkook hadn’t realized she had until she had him backed in a corner that one time. It was a refreshing change. However, he had made the mistake of putting up an I-don’t-give-a-fuck attitude in attempt to match her confidence when he very much did give a fuck. He gave a lot of fucks. To be more precise, he was trying to get fucked. And now trying to make her think it was her idea.

It was going…

Well.

Ish.

He knew from their first meeting that she was endgame. He didn’t do anything about it, because that would have gotten him labeled as a creep. Jeon Jungkook had flaws, but he was not a creep. He wasn’t her target at the time either, so. That was that. Over the years as he learned more about her, he was even more convinced that she was it for him. She was clever, resourceful, and unafraid to be the villain in someone’s story if it meant doing what was right. Sometimes you have to be a little bad to do a lot of good, she once said. It stuck with him. He used to think that his one true love would have to be his career. Film school was not cheap either. Money was required for existing, sadly. A person would, therefore, always come second. But, right now, seeing the way that her sleek black turtleneck and those tapered slacks draped over her body as she sat beside him on his black leather sofa, knowing that she was gently chastising him with her teasing smile, and, hell, even knowing that she in no way fell for his bait – there was no one else. There would never be anyone else. He just knew.

Whether it worked out or not, uh, remained to be seen.

Outlook was currently bleak.

“Why are you into that stuff, anyway?”

She leaned her head against the back of her hand with her elbow on the back of the sofa. “I’m not so much into it as it is my very nature.” The tip of her tongue grazed the edge of her teeth. He wanted her to bite him. He could also listen to her talk all day. But he would prefer the biting first. “Personal lore aside, everyone has things they are passionate about. Such as you and your mini movie theater down here.”

She was referring to the room they were in now, with the projector and sofas. The basement allowed him to enjoy the surround sound without disturbing his neighbors. There were a couple folding chairs leaning against the far wall for extra seating when he felt like hosting a karaoke night. He was actually very interested in her personal lore but maybe it was too much childhood trauma dump for this sexually charged moment. She knew time and place like that.

“People will talk behind your back if you like sex that much,” he pointed out.

Not for the first time, it seemed. “They talk behind your back even if you don’t like sex that much,” she chuckled, the oscillating blue-and-purple mood lighting making her eyes gleam. “For instance, I know for a fact that people speculate about your sexual prowess all the time. I’ve heard stuff.”

Jungkook doubted that. People possibly couldn’t be that unhinged. “Like what?”

She mused. “Like how you have a huge dick and are super dominant in bed.”

His eyebrows shot up. “Uh… huh…”

She smiled at him.

The same way a lioness would smile at a desert hare.

It wasn’t that he didn’t want to be thought of in such a… nice… way. It would be an ego boost if she hadn’t made it sound so objectifying. There was something off about it. Like looking into a mirror and seeing a blemish he didn’t remember having. He watched her eyes rather than looking into them. They had a distinct, sharp shape that reminded him of his favorite female characters in video games. She leaned a little closer. She always wore very nice perfume. Her natural scent was better, though. Tasting skin on tongue and breathing in at the same time, feeling her breath scatter at his touch, now that was perfection.

She ticked her head. “You didn’t answer my question.”

He realized he was slouching and straightened. He was most certainly not leaning forward in eagerness. Or anything like that. Nope. “You didn’t answer mine either.”

“I answer your hypotheticals every day. Humor me.”

Yeah, and didn’t offer to test any of them. He did his best to not feel bitter about it. He felt bitter about it anyway. “I said I was just bored.” Her waist-to-ass ratio was accentuated by her sitting position. Unreal.

She either didn’t notice his wandering eyes or didn’t mind it. “They say the first thought you have is the thought you have been conditioned to have.” Her hand was resting on her thigh. Didn’t move. She had said earlier the glittering reflective dark blue color she was wearing was from a Star Wars nail polish collection. It made the points of her almond manicure glisten in the low lights. “True feelings take a little more time to process.”

His eyes traveled up.

He wondered if she had ever thought about chilling the fuck out.

“What if you were the one being tied up?” he asked shadowed eyes.

She frowned slightly. “Now that sounds boring. For me, personally.” She stuck out the tip of her tongue before adding, “Hate that.”

He leaned onto his knees. “Oh, but you’re ready to do it to someone else?”

Her eyes slid downward to track his movement. “In my defense, you asked,” she said softly. Dangerously. “There’s no need to stress for compatibility. It’s either there or not.”

A pause.

In all honesty, Jungkook had first started asking the vulgar questions to see if he could throw her off guard. Then it became fascinating how unbothered she was by it. At some point, he couldn’t really help it anymore because he had become suddenly aware that she was aware of her effect on him. She had begun to notice how acutely he was listening to her answers. How he always had an involuntary reaction to her standing close to him. One time, he had felt the tips of her fingernails grazing over his lower back and visibly shivered. She had paused. Given him this look. He had held it but didn’t say anything. They were amongst other people. Must have been an accident. The next time, she did it intentionally. He held himself together better this time, but still returned the same knowing stare.

It became a silent game they played, just the two if them.

He asked the question of if she ever considered being on the receiving end of the power dynamic. She always rejected. He knew by now. He was only asking to stall for time. It was a dumb question, because nothing was a front with her. He liked that. He liked that she didn’t try to control anyone around her but rather had complete control of who she was. Didn’t try to convince anyone to change their opinion of her even though Jungkook hated it when he heard other people call her a slut. They used to be his friends but he stopped talking to them. He didn’t want to deal with that shit. He could get new friends.

He tilted his head at her.

She mimicked him, intrigued.

“So, you’re all talk and no walk?”

-

Damn, Jeon Jungkook was really trying to push your buttons today. You had to admire the audacity. Or maybe he was just horny. Nah, let him have the gumption. You hard let him get pretty close already, to test the waters of your compatibility, and you were feeling pretty confident about it. In conclusion, very successful. But nothing as intense as what he was suggesting. Pushing for, really. The best course of action was to talk about logistics and follow up some other time. That wasn’t really the way you or he rolled, though.

“What’s your safe word?” you asked plainly.

Jungkook looked confused. “Safe word?” he echoed.

You nodded. “Mhm. You know what that is, don’t you?”

His dark eyes shifted. “Uh. Yeah. Of course.” He frowned. You waited. “Stop?”

You almost laughed out loud. Almost. “Try something more obscure,” you coaxed. “Sometimes we say stop out of habit but not because we mean it.”

Jungkook was giving you this look. Fiercely protective with an even split of jealousy. “Oh, so you do this often, huh?” A little accusatory.

You blinked slowly.

Gave the time to let his own words sink into his ears. Then you said, “I’m fine walking out of here and pretending you never existed. I’m really good at playing the ignoring game.”

He got the hint. Winced and looked away. There was a bit too much pride to apologize for his rude remark. You could tell he sort of wanted to, yet the seconds marched on. The silence extended. Well. As long as he got the hint that you weren’t tolerating that shit.

“S… Sorry,” Jungkook mumbled under his breath.

You stilled a bit, wondering if you heard correctly. “Apology accepted.” You decided not to hold it against him since he proved you wrong. “The safe word is not just for you. It’s for me, too, so I can alert you that you’re asking for something I’m not willing to do. So, technically, it’s for us.”

Us.

That seemed to reignite his interest. “There’s stuff you’re not willing to do?” Of course that was what he was curious about.

You half-smiled. “Mhm. Such as heavy physical abuse. Blood play. Also, I’m not into cages. Those types of things aren’t for me.”

His eyes widened. “O… Oh.”

You ticked your head teasingly. “Disappointed?”

His eyes darted away. His deep voice became small. “Kinda scared… What even is…” He quickly cleared his throat. “I mean, okay. Yeah. I understand.”

You didn’t fill the silence. You let him think about it. Giving him an easy out if he wanted it. To be honest, this wasn’t your plan for tonight. Maybe some making out, but you didn’t walk in the door thinking about blindfolding Jeon Jungkook, tying him up, and having your way with him. Bit of an excessive lead-in. Hm. Suited him, though. You would have worn something less boring if this was your plan for seduction. Turtleneck and slacks weren’t exactly screaming I-am-going-to-fuck-your-brains-out.

“Yanggaeng.”

You broke out of your thought bubble. “Sweet bean jelly?”

Jungkook shrugged. “I was thinking about food.”

You liked that. “Mmm. You have rope? Fabric. Preferably all-natural.”

He shook his head. “Uh… I have some leftover ribbon from wrapping Christmas presents?”

You considered it.

“Eh, that’ll work.”

-

The tight turtleneck and tailored slacks looked even better when she stood up. Her sensual figure was made imposing by the cut of the fabrics. Either she was very good or very lucky at selecting clothing. He could clearly see the enticing body lines while at the same time seeing nothing at all. Even her shadow looked good. He felt a bit like a potato next to her. Best not to think about it too much. He changed the mood lighting to red. For ambiance. She let him know what she needed. He told her to stay and wait. A spool of dark cranberry velvet ribbon, a pair of scissors, and one folding chair later, she tucked her hands in her pockets and tilted her head at him.

“Blindfold?”

Jungkook went off in search of a silk sleeping mask. Close enough, right?

“Ah, smart.” She nodded. “Okay, strip.”

He stared at her. “Uh.”

She looked back at him, unbothered.

The silence extended.

“You weren’t serious about that?” she finally asked.

Calmly, as if she was asking for clarification of his lunch order. Awkward. He bit back his tongue. He looked from the line up of collected objects on his basement coffee table and then back at her. Instead of looking expectant, she looked curious. They hadn’t seen each other fully naked yet. Just mostly. And touched. But that was different.

“What about you?”

She glanced down. Then back up. “In due time.” There she went with that lioness smile again. “It’ll be a temporary embarrassment.”

“I’m not embarrassed,” he shot back instantly and then regretted it. But she didn’t taunt him. Just continued standing there. He touched the seat of the folding chair. “It’s kinda cold.”

She looked around. “You have linens down here? A hand towel in the bathroom?”

“There’s some on the bar cart back there.”

This was happening. Really happening. It was sinking in now. All the more reason to not think about it. He yanked his t-shirt off as she searched the bar cart for the spoken towels. He plucked his beanie off too, and realized how flat and unappealing his hair must look. He had not planned this, obviously. Quickly, he made his way to the bathroom by the stairs. Yup. His reflection was not it. It took some water and aggressive pushing back to fix his hair. Wet dog was a better look than compressed.

She seemed a little perplexed when he re-entered the room. There was a plush white towel on the seat of the chair now. She was holding another one in her hands. She immediately looked over to him as he approached. Made zero comment about his shiftlessness.

Rude.

“You’re wet.”

He snatched the spare towel from her hand. “Turn around.”

She blinked slowly. “Why?”

He thwacked the edge of the towel against her hip. She looked down, acknowledging the action, but didn’t react much. Raised her head with a slight tilt. He tried not to blush. Believed he had succeeded with the combined force of sheer willpower and a hearty dose of delusion. He glared.

“I’m going to see everything and you won’t get to see my reaction,” she reminded him.

He clutched the pearly white towel quite intensely. “So what?”

She smiled. In that way. “You can use your safe word if you want.”

He clenched his jaw.

“Turn. Around.”

She searched his face for a second. Then, she did as he asked, facing the other way so her back was to him. Damn. Nice ass. Not the first time he thought that. He must be crazy. She had given him the option to drop it all and go back to just the usual hot-and-heavy-almost-there. He stared at the back of her head. Her hair was twisted upwards, trapped in a claw clip. The covered nape of her neck made his blood run hot. He pressed his lips together before slapping the towel over his shoulder and reaching into his pocket, pulling his phone out and setting it on the coffee table. Then he took off his pants and boxer briefs.

He picked up the sleeping mask.

Sat down, draping the towel over his crotch before turning off the lights for himself behind black silk.

“Okay.”

Now would be a good time to get out of his head.

Sadly, that was not how life worked. And so Jungkook was forced to endure the revelation that he was not Daredevil, sigh. His hearing did not suddenly become more sensitive due to the absence of sight. Fuck. Hadn’t been bitten by a radioactive spider recently either. Damn. He heard nothing but the hum of the wine fridge. He tried to listen for any movement – rustling clothes, a change in breathing, even a single dust bunny shivering, but there was nothing but a looming sense of what-the-fuck-am-I-doing.

A fingertip touched his cheek.

He almost flung himself off the chair. He would have lost his chastity towel in the process though, so instead he clutched it and jerked his head, realizing partway that it was probably a bad idea. He might startle her with his sudden movement. He froze.

Her voice floated down, dreamlike and airy.

“Was I not supposed to turn around?”

“I… I wasn’t expecting…” Which was a dumb thing to say. Duh, she was supposed to turn around.

“Jumpy like a bunny.,” she purred.

His breath caught in his throat.

Her fingertip had only left for a second but it was back again, tracing his cheekbone. Then he felt the other three follow in a cascading caress. His skin tingled. Her fingers danced down, cradling his jaw. His body felt strange. It felt like his blood was burning in his veins. She gently guided his head back to face forward, cupping his chin in the base of her soft palm. He could smell her hand lotion. Herbal and warm with a hint of yuzu. The pad of her thumb touched his lower lip.

Then her lips were by his ear.

He felt her breath stroke his earrings.

“Can you see anything?” she softly asked.

He almost choked.  Somehow, he held it together. At least, he thought he did. “Fuck no.”

She tipped his head back. He realized he had instinctively closed his eyes under the sleeping mask anyway. He didn’t try to check if he could see but he heard her say, “I’d like for it to be nice and snug. That fine with you?”

He gave her the classic, “Whatever.”

That made her stifle a chuckle at least. Her hand let go of his chin. He let out the breath that he didn’t know he had been holding. He felt her adjust the plastic slider against the elastic so it was a little tighter and added alight pressure. Then he felt her wrist lift his chin and then her warm hand slid down his neck, fanning over his chest. He gasped and then immediately shut his mouth. Her other hand touched his forehead and tipped his head back once more.

Her lips brushed against the edge of his.

“Ready to get tied up?”

No, Jungkook was not ready. His heart was beating in his throat and cutting off all his air. His blood was on fire. What was scaring him was not what was happening but his reaction to it. The epitome of desire was too physical. It was freaking him out. Her name escaped his lips. He did not like the way it sounded to his ears. Hopefully she didn’t catch any of the nuance.

“Mhm? What’s wrong?” Her breath mixed with his breath.

He sucked in air. “You know what you’re doing, right?”

She kissed him.

He didn’t expect that at all. If it wasn’t for the damn chair, he would have tumbled to the ground. It was only a press of lips to lips, lasting for perhaps one very long second. Her lips were very soft. Plush. Fun to kiss, he had always thought to himself. And then she pulled away with a satisfied sigh.

“I know what I’m doing. Do you remember the safe word?”

He heard her pick up the scissors.

-

“I’m not going to need the safe word.”

You rolled your eyes. He couldn’t see it, thankfully. You could only control yourself for so long. You stood behind him, holding the velvet ribbon and scissors. “What’s the safe word?” you repeated, more sternly this time.

“Yanggaeng.” Jungkook scoffed like a bratty kid that wasn’t getting his way. If he didn’t look so good naked and if you didn’t have the patience, you would have called this off by now. “You’re not gonna get all crazy on me, are you?”

Was it your imagination, or did he sound a little bit scared?

This probably wasn’t the time to bring up snuff films. “Good thing you have the safe word,” you remarked, crouching down and unraveling the ribbon. The cranberry-colored ribbon had weight and a sleek pile. It was the high-quality velvet. The price was still on the paper spool. Damn. His family must have gotten some nice gifts. You snipped off a decent length and called out to him. “Bring your hands back here.”

He hesitated for a second. You waited. His shoulders shifted and he crossed his wrists behind the folding chair. The muscles of his arms stood out, one bare and the other accented by dark, colorful, swirling tattoos from hand to shoulder.

You did smile.

What? His obedience was cute.

But you took a moment to readjust so his hands were side by side instead of crossed. You also turned his wrists inward so the pressure points wouldn’t be stressed. He would probably twist and move around eventually but you preferred to start off like this. You made sure there was some distance between his hands before you made a loop and began wrapping around both wrists.

“How do I know that you would even listen if I said the safe word?”

“I’m not going to gag you,” you replied a matter-of-factly. After a few wraps, you turned the ends perpendicular to the loops and crossed them before beginning to weave them parallel to his extended arms. “You can yap however much you want.”

“Yeah, but are you gonna listen?”

You paused before making the knot. “You don’t think I will?”

“I dunno. What if you go beastmode or something?”

Ah. You brushed aside your initial hurt feelings once you realized he wasn’t personally attacking your character. “If I could go beastmode, I would find a way to make money off it, not use it on you when you’re tied up like a Christmas present.” You tied a square knot. Fuck it. And added a bow to finish it off. You saw him test his restraints.

“… You do know what you’re doing, huh?”

“I keep telling you that and you keep not believing me.” You unraveled another long length and snipped it off.

Jungkook heard it and flinched. “What are you doing now?”

You were about to cut another one to match but you stopped. “I’m going to tie your ankles to the legs of the chair.”

“O… Oh.”

“Unless you don’t want me to.”

“I… It’s whatever.”

You felt a muscle in your cheek twitch. “Do you want to stop?”

He shrugged as much as he could. “Up to you. You’re in charge, right?”

You had not known Jungkook on a personal level for very long but you had enough intimate moments to know when he was being a cocky lil shit. It was mostly a bluff of false confidence to hide his nervousness. But it was annoying. He was basically low-key making fun of you. Well, not you specifically but BDSM in general. Probably unintentionally and out of ignorance, which was why you hadn’t brought down the axe yet. You licked your teeth, thinking.

He called your name.

In the same way he did before, when you had been holding his chin and asking if he was ready to be tied up. Low. Breathless. Fleeting, as if he didn’t want you to really hear it. You softened slightly at that. You cut the last length and let him hear you put the scissors and ribbon back onto the coffee table. Your misgivings would probably resolve themselves. You trusted him that much, at least. Whether or not that was a mistake would soon be known. Still, you had to teach him a lesson. You couldn’t let him think you were going to tolerate these comments forever. Then you got an idea. An awful idea.

You got a wonderful, awful idea.

You smiled the entire time as you bound his ankles to the legs of the chair.

-

“You scared?”

“Not really.”

This was fine. Everything was fine. Jungkook was not scared. One, because he totally wouldn’t be intimidated by a girl. Ever. Yup. Not him. And, two, because she had assured him that she was not going to go crazy on him and she totally wouldn’t lie. Right. So. He would be fine. His limbs were getting a bit cold now but his chest felt hot, as if someone was pointing a heater on his ribs. Cooked, if you will. He breathed in deeply yet quietly, trying to relieve the undefinable tension. She was behind him because he heard the click of her claw clip. Must be readjusting her hair. Haha. He was worrying over nothing. It wasn’t like she had whips and chains in her purse.

He heard her breathe in.

He was about to quip, are you nervous, but then he felt her hands close in around his forearms.

Her fingernails skimmed over his skin and dragged down.

He stiffened at the rising tingling sensation. It bloomed from his arms up to his shoulders, crawling down his pecs and into the pit of his stomach. His breath caught in his throat. Did time stop or was it due to the fact that he couldn’t see? Her warm touch closed in the cold backs of his hands. The binding around his wrists was secure but allowed her to turn his palms outward. Her lips touched the pads of his fingers.

She kissed his hands.

Never in a million years did he think she was going to kiss his hands. He was bound to a chair, blindfolded, naked, and the one isolated sensation he could feel was her lips traveling over the lines of his palms. His fingertips. Her breath trailing after. He could hear the delicate sound drifting up from below. He felt her fingers cup his, caressing his knuckles, and shivers slid up and down his body, diffusing the heat from his chest to his limbs. It was weirdly intimate. More intimate than sticking his dick in someone, which seemed fucking impossible, but it was. He didn’t know how to react. His entire body was frozen.

His breathing went shallow.

Her tongue slid out and curled around his right index finger.

Warm. Wet. Agile. His legs were spread open, locked in place by the binds. The towel was still draped over his crotch. He felt it shift when his dick twitched as her tongue licked his hands. There was almost no sound. Saliva dripped down his fingers. He suddenly felt her warm mouth closing in around two of them. She must be low on the ground to do that since his elbows weren’t raised at all. Jungkook bit back what was surely to be an embarrassing sound.

His fingers were halfway in her mouth when she said, “You can make noise, you know.”

Somehow, she was able to enunciate while sucking. His cock twitched again. “W-What are you talking about?” He only stuttered because he had not realized what little breath he had. “You haven’t… Haven’t done anything yet.” His racing heartbeat was choking him again.

She exhaled, low and slow.

His fingers slid out of her mouth with a wet plop. Then into the warmth went the fingers of his left hand, her tongue snaking in between, back and forth. Her pointed fingernails dug into the backs of his hands, almost pulling him. The persistent tingling danced all over his skin. He sucked in a breath. His hands were let go and then it was only her hot mouth traveling all over his fingers and palms. She hummed and the vibration coursed through his entire body. It was foreign and sensual and mind-numbing. She didn’t say anything but she didn’t have to. He kept thinking about how good it would feel to wrap his wet, slippery hands around his growing erection and yet he couldn’t, trapped in her circling tongue.

He shuddered.

His right thumb was pressed against something hard and cold.

It lasted for maybe a millisecond. His brows knitted together in confusion. Then he felt her tongue slide up his right forearm, dripping saliva. Soaking the velvet. He couldn’t feel her hands anymore. The trail of kisses traveled up his arm and to his shoulder. He leaned into it, wanting more.

“Hm. I think I found a nice place to sit,” she whispered.

He would have replied with a snappy comeback but then she started kissing his right ear, melting away his thoughts. Lightly biting. Sucking. Toying with his earrings, and he heard the zipper of her pants unravel. This was familiar territory. He let himself bask in the attention, letting out a satisfied sigh. Then he heard it.

The sound of a camera shutter.

For a moment, he thought he imagined it. He was so focused on the sensations on his right ear that he wasn’t paying attention to the left. He turned his head slightly, puzzled. Her warmth shifted. Circling. He was about to ask if she had heard it too, but then he felt her knee slide between his legs, stopping just so. He became highly aware that she was right in front of him. He moved his head to face the direction of her breath, tilting upwards. He couldn’t see but it was obvious. Her fingers laced into his now mostly dry hair and she yanked. The pain was momentary.

Click.

“Woah!”

 His hands clasped instinctively. He was quickly cognizant of his compromising position. His throat exposed, the towel barely clinging to his erection, dangerously low, and it occurred to him that she was holding his head with her left hand. He heard the sound of the camera shutter again. There was no mistaking it now. Panic shot through his ribs.

“What the fuck are you doing?”

Her voice was eerily calm.

“Guess.”

Click.

Her hand turned and the base of her palm pressed against the top of the blindfold.

“Are you taking pictures of me?” he gasped, feeling his face flush hot.

She didn’t answer. She did not answer. He pulled against the velvet ribbon but his ankles and wrists were going nowhere. Her knee on the seat of the chair prevented him from moving it. He would have to throw his weight to one side to break out of her grasp but then she might be injured at the same time. His mind reeled. Click.

“Stop squirming,” she finally said.

“Stop –?” He did not know why he was hiss-whispering and yet he didn’t want to yell in her face. “I didn’t agree to this!”

“What’s wrong with it?” Click. “You take selfies all the time.”

His cheeks were on fire. “That’s… This isn’t the same at all!” He writhed, arching his back. “You can’t… Don’t… Please!”

All of a sudden he felt her chest press against his. Or, more accurately, her breasts. Still clothed, apparently, because he felt the smoothness of the turtleneck fabric and her bra underneath. He stopped raising the volume of his voice. Her face was close to his. He was breathing very rapidly and very shallow.

“What was that?” she murmured.

His head felt hot. His pulse roared in his ears.

“D… Don’t…”

“Just the last part,” she prompted, sweet like poison.

Confusion ate through the tension. “Uh…” He racked his brain. “Please?”

“Hm.”

Click.

Jungkook opened his mouth to protest, but then his lover whispered, “That wasn’t the safe word.”

The safe word.

He felt the edge of the cell phone touch his collarbone.

“Y-Yanggaeng,” he gasped.

She immediately pulled back and lifted the sleeping mask.

He blinked hard even through the red mood lighting wasn’t bright at all. Hurriedly shook his head. Panting. The tension eased down his limbs, melting away. He looked up. She was right there. Her left hand was on his shoulder now, bracing herself. In her right was his cell phone. The back, showing his phone case with a print of black marble with white veining. She turned it around wordlessly.

Jungkook saw his face.

Barely. The front camera was on. The front camera was on. He frowned, confused. Huh? He glanced down at the preview of recently taken photos and it was merely a black circle. He looked up, not quite understanding. She was looking down at him with an undefinable expression.

“Eh?”

She tapped the gallery and showed him the photos. All black screens. She swiped through them until she got to the most recent photo he took – an image of falling snow in the city. It was clear that she did not actually take a photo of him. Not a single one. He tilted his head. She switched back to the camera app and turned the phone around again, bracing it against her chest before he heard the camera shutter sound again. She had used her right thumb to press the button. All of the photos were when the lens was pressed to her covered chest.

“I’m not going to need the safe word,” she echoed hauntingly.

His eyes widened.

She raised an eyebrow.

Oh. “O…Oh.” He felt his cheeks warm again.

“Using the safe word is not just for extreme pain,” she said quietly. Her expression reflected mild disappointment. “I’m not fucking around, Jungkook. The safe word is not a joke.”

“Y… Yeah.” He looked down and then immediately couldn’t focus upon seeing her naked legs. “Yeah. I get it. Sorry.” He realized he should not have made light of something that was now proven to be very important. He looked back up, hesitantly. She seemed to relax due to his reaction. Even half-smiled. Forgiven, for now. “When did you swipe my phone?”

“When I put the scissors down.”

He smirked. “Sneaky.”

She chuckled. “Surprised you didn’t notice me unlocking it with your thumb print.”

He frowned slightly. “I felt it but I wasn’t sure what that was.” He narrowed his eyes. “I was a little distracted.”

Her shadowed eyes sparkled. “I think you liked it more than you let on.” She straddled his thighs, leaning her arms around his shoulders. The towel on his crotch was barely holding on. She didn’t look down though. Just stared into his eyes. “But I had to teach you a lesson.”

“Nuh uh.” He made a face. “You scared the shit outta me.”

Her amusement was subtle like a cat. “That would have been a nasty situation.”

“You know what I mean.”

He could stare into her eyes forever.

He probably should have been madder but she was right to begin with. Plus, it was hard to care when he could feel the weight of her naked thighs on his thighs. It was hard to think when he could almost feel their bodies pressed together with little air between them.

“You can put more weight on me.”

She didn’t take the bait. “I’m good.” Her tongue slid out and traced the edge of her lips.

His eyes followed. He sucked in a breath. Glanced back up.

She regarded him curiously.

“Kiss me.”

She didn’t move. Picturesque in the shadows. Imprinted into his memory.

“Please kiss me,” he breathed, low with want.

She tilted her head and kissed him.

Pulled her body closer and he moaned into her mouth. The towel bunched up against his hard length. He felt the warm dip between her legs. So close and yet so far. She kissed him deeply, the tip of her tongue against his lip, and he craned his head forward, driven by desire. Her tongue slid inside. He sucked on it, tight. His heartbeat against his ribs. Heat rising. Intensifying.

She broke the kiss, tearing his breath apart.

He half-opened his eyes. Her lips were glossy. Gleaming in the dark.

“Hey.”

Her eyes shifted under her lashes. Pupils slightly dilated. “Hm?”

“Take a selfie.”

Bewilderment. “Right now?” She frowned a bit. “My phone is over there.”

His voice was shaking a little. “With mine.”

She pulled back her right hand. The screen was dark. She still looked perplexed but made to get off his lap.

He immediately protested. “No.”

She turned the phone around. His lock screen was his Doberman who was blissfully asleep upstairs. “I need your fingerprint.”

“Use the PIN.”

She swiped the screen with raised eyebrows. Before she could ask, he gave her the answer.

“It’s your birth date.”

Her eyes flickered to him.

“What?” He shrugged as best he could. “I have to remember it somehow.”

She looked like she wanted to say something. Didn’t. Instead, she typed it in. The last open application was already loaded. It was still on the front camera. She raised off his thighs, holding onto his right shoulder with her left hand.

“Uh. Wait. The towel.”

She paused. Looked down. Back up. “What about it?”

He pouted. “Move it.”

Something flitted across her gaze. But she didn’t ask. She angled her hips and lifted the white towel from his lap gently. Upwards, so the edges had clearance before she tossed it aside. He glanced down, just in case. He wasn’t exactly hard. Not completely limp either. He was very aroused. He could feel pre-cum leaking onto the towel under him. His eyes went back to her face. For a split second, they shared a gaze. He couldn’t quite work out her expression. She had touched him before. Sucked him when he was fully hard. But never really seen him completely naked and not hard.

Every guy was self-conscious about that stuff.

She lowered back down and slid up higher. Higher, so the top of her crotch was against his abdomen. He inhaled sharply. She reached around and cupped his head, pressing it to her chest. He almost squeaked. Her thighs pressed against his hips. He wished she was completely naked.

What? Guys thought about that stuff too!

“Only my face, right?”

“Don’t get any of me,” he mumbled to her tits. “I don’t need any pics of myself.”

“You take a lot of pics of yourself. I’ve seen your Instagram,” she chuckled and then he heard the camera shutter.

“I deleted that,” he grumbled as she let go of his head and turned the screen. He could barely make her out but the highlighted details were exquisite. The red light and deep black shadows cast her pretty face with a vampiric glow. She had said she wasn’t into blood play but Jungkook was pretty sure he would let her suck his blood.

“Satisfied?”

His mouth was open. He closed it. “Uh. Yeah.”

She smiled. “You wanna continue?”

It did not occur to him that he could stop all this right now. “What? Duh.” He wiggled in place. “I haven’t even cum yet!”

Her smile grew. “Oh?”

“Hey! You gotta hold up your side of the deal,” he complained, stressed that she wasn’t going to let him bust a nut like this. “Come on.”

She was really serving Cheshire cat now. It might have been the lighting.

“Then it’s lights out for you.”

And she pulled the sleeping mask down, leaving him in the dark.

-

There was no plan. There never was when it came to Jeon Jungkook. You just knew you would end up in some shit whenever you stepped into his place. Like tying him naked to a chair and making out with him while he was blindfolded. You loved the feeling of dragging your nails over his skin. He slipped into the darkness much more freely this time, accepting anything you did. You hadn’t removed your turtleneck or undergarments yet. It added to the ambiance. He could feel the shape of your body but not your skin and it was driving him insane. His breath caught. His body went tense.

You dragged your nails down his chest and followed it with your tongue, slithering down his legs.

His gasps were slowly turning into whines.

You pressed your hand against his hard abdomen.

You lowered your head and drenched his cock with your spit. He wasn’t hard and yet he moaned to the ceiling as you swallowed him, guiding him down your throat with your tongue. You didn’t need to use your hands. You toyed with his thigh, spreading your fingers out over muscle and tapping your manicure against his skin. Moved your head back and forth. He grew harder and harder in your mouth. You kept it soft and excessively wet, sucking out the air at the back of your throat.

His moan rocked through the chair.

You worked him to full hardness rather quickly before pulling off.

“Fuck, what…?”

“Surely you didn’t think it was going to happen right away,” you said with your tongue against his balls. You held his wet dick up and out of the way, drawing one of his balls into your mouth and swirling your tongue. His whole body went stiff. You stroked the underside of his shaft at the same time.

“C-Careful.”

You held it delicately with your teeth and said, “Sensitive?”

He made a sharp sucking sound with his cheek. “A-Ah…”

You eased, pulsing, testing the limit. Licking at the same time. Jungkook made an odd moan-yelp.

“I dunno why, the biting kinda feels good…”

You changed sides, working him with your tongue first. Took him in your mouth, sucking back and forth. Tugging a little at the same time. His erection became hot. You slid your hand up and down, keeping him hard as you chewed lightly on one of his balls.

“Feels tingly…” he murmured, more to himself than you.

You let go and slid your tongue below his balls. Pinched the skin in between your teeth and placed a little more pressure there. His breathless gasp quickly turned into a moan as you sucked while jacking him off at the same time, using your own saliva as lube.

“A-ah, fuck, I’m gonna…”

You released your teeth and licked up his balls, up the length, releasing his cock milliseconds before you crammed it down your throat. His thighs snapped against the seat of the chair. He swore, or maybe that was a prayer, but you were busy planting your hands onto his thighs and sucking him off. You took him deep so he could feel your throat close in, over and over again, keeping a steady pace while building his orgasm. It was easier using gravity to your advantage. You had to spread your knees and hold your torso up so you didn’t hit your chest into anything, but that was easy to adjust to. You slid your tongue along the underside with each descent, hearing his moan drop into a hiss.

“Gonna cum, fuck–”

You pressed your lips into the base of his cock.

You felt his hips flinch and cum shoot into the back of your mouth. It flooded into your tongue, blanketing over the throbbing head of his cock, and Jungkook groaned, his collarbones standing out from the strain. Shoulders and chest tense. His thighs were rock hard in your hands. You felt him twitch. You didn’t move. The wave of orgasm shot up and rolled down, down. Slowly, he relaxed.

You swallowed, savoring it.

He shuddered.

Soft, grazing, lazy. Barely any pressure. You rocked your head up and down, licking up any excess liquid. Your turtleneck was becoming a little too warm. But then that meant your mouth would have to let go of Jungkook’s cock. And he was still hard.

So, that wasn’t happening.

You moved your hands from his thighs.

“Holy…” He panted, struggling to breathe. “Fuck, that feels good… Aaah…”

You drew your knees together. If he was paying attention then he would have heard you, but he was too busy basking the high of the afterglow. Or your mouth was too distracting. Both were possible. You drew closer. Took him a little deeper. Closed your eyes. Time slipped away. You forgot your own heartbeat, becoming one with the rhythm you commanded. Curling tongue. Excessively wet. A tight pocket in the darkness. Licking the lower base as your throat pulsed around the swollen head, and you heard his moan vibrate to the walls, the sound spreading and then falling, drenching you in his wanton want.

He came again.

You didn’t stop.

In fact, you reached between your legs to join him.

“Are you…? O-Oh, fuck. I can hear it…”

You spread your knees and slid two fingers into your pussy, letting it make a loud, wet sucking sound as you pulled out. It was more fun than pleasurable, really. The real pleasure was letting him listen to you fingering yourself while you continued sucking him off. You placed a hand on the seat of the chair to brace yourself, increasing the speed and saliva. It was noisy and obscene, the repeated sticky separation sounds, and you kept going, getting closer, your back tingling, blood burning, closer, tucking your fingers in between your upper folds instead, rubbing your clit, feeling electricity crawl up your abdomen, closer.

You pinched your clit and moaned around his cock.

Jungkook threw his head back and groaned, his hips rising into your face.

You focused only on the head. He orgasmed with a hiss and an intelligible moan, and you tucked him all the way in the back of your throat. Thankfully you didn’t choke. The volume wasn’t as much as the first one. You locked your limbs and felt your own orgasm seep into your bones, setting your nerves on fire in heated blood. Your grip on the chair tightened, unwilling to collapse under the pressure. Wave after rolling wave, scalding you with ebbing ecstasy, and you endured it while licking him clean, feeling reborn. Proud of the session.

Pretty good if you could say so yourself.

You finally removed your mouth, wiping your chin with the back of your hand. You stood up, somewhat shakily, and righted yourself before plucking off the blindfold. You tossed it to the ground. Jungkook’s eyes were still closed. His black hair was damp with sweat. His chest, too, shone with a thin sheen of perspiration.

He panted, “Kiss me.”

“Do you want me to untie–”

“Fuckin’ kiss me now.”

-

She slid onto his aching, trembling thigh. Her lips felt like heaven in the hellfire, gentle against his racing pulse, pressing against his greedy mouth over and over. He could taste a hint of himself in her saliva. He felt the slick lips of her pussy on his upper thigh and he hissed between breathless breaths, “Rub on me, ugh, fuck, yes,” and she curled her fingers into his sweaty hair, pulling him to her. Tugging. Ah. Sweet, delicious pain.

He forgot he was tied up, really. It was just part of him now.

“Take it off,” he grumbled, realizing she was still wearing her turtleneck. It was a nice fabric but he wanted her naked. “How the fuck… How are you not hot in that?”

“I was busy sucking your dick,” she laughed, and he opened his eyes to see her peeling it off her body, crossing her arms. Pulling up and back to reveal her torso. He had seen it a few times already and every time he marveled. She tugged it off her head. It messed up her claw clip, but she looked better that way. More beautiful in chaos. She tossed the clothing aside and unclicked the front clasp of her bra.

Jungkook was convinced bras were made by the devil, but he couldn’t deny the magic of a front-clasp bra opening the gateway to heaven.

“Like what you see?”

He stared at her. She looked amused.

“Put them in my face right now.”

There was a certain rapport when it came to power dynamics. He didn’t know anything about that. Maybe he would get better at it. She laughed and lifted herself, dropping the bra to the ground, half-standing with one knee on the chair, and scooped up her perfect breasts to present those delicious-looking nipples to his face. He didn’t even care that he couldn’t use his hands. Ugh, they were just so perfectly soft and supple. She tasted so good. Was it creepy to think her skin tasted good? He didn’t care. She rubbed her breasts against his cheeks as he sucked, licked, buried his face into them like an excited puppy.

“I think we are losing the plot here,” she joked.

“Don’t talk to me,” Jungkook sighed, self-asphyxiating with her tits.

“I should be taking them away from you if I was really being dominant.”

He unstuck himself and planted his chin in her cleavage, staring up at her.

She looked down, a ghost of a smile on her lips.

He could have offered a witty comeback or even put on his best puppy eyes to convince her otherwise, but instead he stared into her eyes in stunned silence. His limbs were burning, now not from arousal but longing. Maybe also soreness. But mostly longing to hold her. The puddle between his legs was also alarming. His sweat was becoming cold as the seconds marched on.

“Don’t go.”

She tilted her head. “Did you think I was going to walk off and leave you tied to the chair?”

“What?” He frowned. “You’d never do that, right?”

She blinked at him.

“Right?”

“Maybe when you have more practice,” she chuckled. “What did you mean by, don’t go?”

The red mood lighting made her ethereal. “Don’t go home. Stay here with me.”

A pause. “In your house?”

“Yeah?” The way she said it made him question it too. “Uh, yeah?”

She sucked in a breath while pressing her tits against his face. “Huh, I dunno… That’s usually how women get murdered.”

“Hey!” He wiggled in place, or at least as much as he could. “I let you tie me up. You should trust me by now!”

She made a thinking expression. He would be much angrier if her soft breasts weren’t caressing his cheeks. “Mmm, okay. As long as I get to tie you up before we sleep.”

His eyes went wide. “What?!”

“I’ll even put a bow on your head. You would look really cute.”

“You can’t–”

She laughed. “I’m joking. I wouldn’t do that. It’s dangerous.” She slid down his body and pecked him on the lips. “Let’s get you outta these ties.” She was about to say something else but then stopped. Confusion fluttered over her features. Her eyes cast downwards. He felt his cheeks flush warmly.

“Uh.”

“Why are you hard?”

“No reason.”

Those shadowed eyes drifted back up. She gave him a slow, knowing nod. “Noted.” She got up to undo the velvet ribbon ties.

“Don’t get any ideas,” he called out.

“I don’t,” she said from behind him, loosening the knot before rubbing his forearms. “You give them to me.”

Oh shit.

He did.

And would continue to.

--

masterpost

[imsobadatnicknames2]

Leaving aside the whole debate about the ethics of AI art and copyright, I think one of my biggest gripes with the AI art industry is that generative AI art has this natural tendency towards producing weird and surreal imagery that I actually think DOES have a lot of artistic merit and potential if explored and leaned into as one of the unique strengths of the medium.

Like, when AI image generators were at the stage imbetween the vaguely recognizable imagery produced by neuralblender and the type of generators we're seeing today, they were producing really fascinating imagery that I'd argue had value as a contribution to the art landscape that was entirely unique to AI, since the weird surreal quality of the images was the result of Machine Learning programs interpreting words and images in a fundamentally different way than humans do.

Like i'd argue shit like this indisputably has a place as its own artistic style/medium, it's surreal and weird in ways which are completely distinct from what a human artist could produce because its unique strengths come from details that are inscrutable, ambiguous, and hard to parse to the human mind, which a human artist would have an extremely hard time mentally visializing, let alone translatong into an art piece.

But since the main selling point of AI art for both the people making these generators and the teach aficinados who are a little too into them is that AI art can serve as a cheaper/faster replacement and/or alternative for the work of human artists, progress is measured not in terms of how well they can use and explore the distincly non-human quality of AI art, but instead in terms of how well they can supress it to make it more closely mimic the work of human artists. So all advancement in the tech is geared towards progressively getting rid of the things I find artistically interesting about the medium instead of towards leaning into them as strengths that give it a unique, artistically worthwile style.

Like, I don't think AI art is inherently "soulless" or devoid of artistic merit, but I do think the focus on trying to make it increasingly indistinguishable from art produced by humans strips away the things that gave it artistic merit to me. This thing can produce imagery that is weird and wild and hard for us to even conceive but the profit motive's tendency towards rewarding homogenization has neutered that to turn it into a factory of increasingly bland, generic, serviceable imagery.

[dragongirlsnout]

Go Badge-Free: Tumblr is a multimillion dollar company that doesn't need your loyalty!

Some users ("many" by Tumblr's own unsourced metrics) might want to support Tumblr with something similar to regular donations. Great news! You don't need to, it's a multimillion dollar company, and its parent company, Automattic, was valued at around 7.5 billion dollars in 2021 as stated by none other than Tumblr's Elon-Musk-wannabe CEO himself! Tumblr isn't going to go broke any time soon, and any money you waste on it will just convince staff that the garbage fire they're currently tossing the site into is profitable!

Enter the power of not giving a fuck about useless badges and shitty merch of stolen memes. Everyone with a brain knows auto-renewable subscriptions aren't the way to a "user-led business model", and again, you don't need to show your support for a massive multimedia platform despite whatever their embarrassing ad campaigns that just want money may tell you!

How it works—or doesn't:

Tumblr doesn't care about the users, whether you're giving them money for nothing or not! So take the initiative yourself. Send them negative feedback about the pointless UI updates. Give Tumblr a 1-star rating on the app store or play store. Disable your badges. Block intrusive ads (and potentially dangerous flashing ones). Style the dashboard to look less like a 1 : 1 clone of Twitter. Install additions to fix basic site functionality.

Seriously, who is buying subscriptions besides staff:

The subscription badges do nothing. Nada. Zero. That is, unless staff decides to lock basic functionality behind a subscription in the future, so make so to make it flop before then.

Pricing:

A year's subscription for a useless cosmetic badge costs you $30 USD. Cheaper than Twitter Blue, sure, but it sure does a whole lot less! Meanwhile, fixing your own user experience and complaining to staff is permanently on sale for the low, low price of free. Spend your money on a nice treat instead!

More details:

I don't know how else to put it. This subscription service sucks ass.

That's all for now. No idea who exactly would buy a badge subscription of all things in the first place that staff probably designed in 5 minutes. Maybe someday Tumblr's will figure out how to interpret actual human behavior and user desires, but that day has yet to come. Stay weird, and Tumblr is not your quirky friendly hellsite company <3

[gayvampyr]

CNN:

Hundreds of families gathered in the West Darfur capital of El Geneina on June 15, plotting their escape from what had become a hellscape of blown-out buildings scrawled with racist graffiti and streets strewn with corpses. The state governor had just been executed and mutilated by Arab militia groups, leaving civilians with no choice but to flee.

What followed was a gruesome massacre, eyewitnesses said, believed to be one of the most violent incidents in the genocide-scarred Sudanese region’s history. The powerful paramilitary Rapid Support Forces and its allied militias hunted down non-Arab people in various parts of the city and surrounding desert region, leaving hundreds dead as they ran for their lives…

…residents set off en masse from southern El Geneina, many trying to reach the nearby Sudanese military headquarters where they thought they might find safety. But they said they were quickly thwarted by RSF attacks. Some were summarily executed in the streets, survivors said. Others died in a mass drowning incident, shot at as they attempted to cross a river. Many of those who managed to make it out were ambushed near the border with Chad, forced to sit in the sand before being told to run to safety as they were sprayed with bullets.

“More than 1,000 people were killed on June 15. I was collecting bodies on that day. I collected a huge number,” one local humanitarian worker, who asked not to be named for security reasons, told CNN. He said the dead were buried in five different mass graves in and around the city.

Conflict erupted between the RSF and the Sudanese army in April. Since then, more than one million people have fled to neighboring countries, according to estimates from the International Organization for Migration.

Now, a telecommunications blackout and the flight of international aid groups have all but cut off Darfur from the outside world. But news of the June 15 massacre began trickling out of the region from refugees who escaped to Chad. The evidence uncovered by CNN suggests that, behind a curtain of secrecy, the RSF and its allies are waging an indiscriminate campaign of widespread killings and sexual violence unlike anything the region has seen in decades.

The RSF’s official spokesperson told CNN that it “categorically” denied the allegations.

“To say you were Masalit was a death sentence,” said Jamal Khamiss, a human rights lawyer, referring to his non-Arab tribe, one of the biggest in Darfur. Khamiss was among those who said that they fled from El Geneina to Chad, surviving a series of RSF and allied militia positions by concealing his ethnicity.

The United Nations raised the alarm in June over ethnic targeting and killing of people from the Masalit community in El Geneina, after reports of summary executions and “persistent hate speech,” including calls to kill or expel them.

The vast majority of those who managed to make it out of El Geneina alive sought refuge in the Chadian border town of Adre, about 22 miles (35 kilometers) away from the city.

On June 15, the town received the highest number of migrants in a single day, along with the highest number of casualties — 261 — since the Sudan conflict broke out, according to Doctors Without Borders, widely known by its French name, Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF), which runs the only hospital in Adre. The number of wounded people that arrived at the hospital was even higher the next day: 387.

“The last time we recorded the death toll in Geneina it was 884,” one local humanitarian worker from El Geneina, who works for a Western non-profit organization, told CNN. “That was June 9. After June 9, it was a different story. The dead became uncountable.”

Action Against Hunger is accepting donations to provide health, sanitation and nutrition services to Sudanese refugees in Chad.

[calder]

Released in 2010, Obsidian Entertainment's Fallout: New Vegas actively concerns itself with the realities of gay existence, and is widely recognized as a noteworthy work of queer science fiction. New Vegas extensively examines social attitudes towards homosexuality among the game's major factions, and primarily conveys this lore through gay and bisexual characters describing their own experiences. It also allowed the player to mechanically set the Courier's sexual orientation. By taking both available perks, the player character can be bisexual. By choosing neither, the player can opt out of seeing flirtatious dialogue options.

Uniquely, Fallout: New Vegas explores homosexuality in the context of wasteland societies, and touches upon related issues. The core theme of New Vegas is that the desire to recreate the past is driven by irrational nostalgia, and any endeavor to manifest past glory is dangerous and doomed. The social issue of homophobia is used as a demonstrative example. The resurrection of corporate and military power structures presents new avenues for Old World problems such as institutional homophobia to reemerge. One of the many issues that divide the New California Republic and Caesar's Legion is the latter's open persecution of gay people. The NCR is described as tolerant and even accepting of same-sex relationships, though acceptance tends to fall off the further one moves away from the developed, urbanized core of New California. In recent years, the Republic's rapid economic transformation has led to an unforeseen erosion of the humanitarian ideals which it was founded to serve. In practice, to recreate America was to take on its shortcomings and its sins. As subsistence scavenging has dried up, the people of the NCR increasingly turn to wage labor, entrepreneurial venture, or military enlistment to keep their families fed. Meanwhile, their government enacts morally corrosive imperialism (narrative verbiage), their dominion expanding indefinitely as their infrastructure crumbles from within. This has led to a profit-based imperial monoculture which must conquer, consume, and coerce to perpetuate. As personal politics and service labor grow in importance, people find themselves more inclined to present as "normal" in the interest of financial stability and political expedience. A loading screen visualizes this culture of artificial social normalcy: the portrait of President Aradesh on the NCR 5$ bill neglects to depict his unibrow, earring, and facial scarification, overall portraying the once-chieftain so cleanly-cut as to be unrecognizable at first glance. He also appears to be wearing a collared shirt or suit as opposed to the robe he wore in Fallout.

In the Legion, Caesar has mandated that every legionnaire take a wife and produce children, citing high infant mortality rates and the constant need for soldiers, and going as far as instituting child quotas. He treats human beings as a resource to be exploited for war. Ostensibly in this aim homosexuality has been declared a capital offense punishable by death. Historically, routine demonstrations of violence towards women and gay people are a deliberate feature of fascist societies, the only logical cultural conclusion of a government devoted entirely to war and control. In Forlorn Hope letter 9, an NCR soldier wrote wrote the following to his boyfriend:

Dearest Andrew, Writing this seems pretty morbid, but tomorrow we march into the no man's land between our camp and Nelson, which is crawling with Legion. The Major insisted I write this damn "if you get this, I'm dead" letter so here it is. What a crock. I have the luck of the devil and your love on my side, so I'll be home soon. Keep the porch light on for me. We'll party in New Vegas when I get back. I love you. —Devin

Devin believed he would prevail over the Legion because his love would keep him safe. He was found dying or dead on the battlefield, the letter was found on his body. In a post-release patch, the injured soldiers were removed from the battlefield for performance reasons, and never re-implemented. Driven largely in reaction to the Legion's hyper-masculine posturing and misogyny, rumors persist across the Mojave that gay male relationships are not only common within the Legion, but condoned. These rumors are repeated commonly in NCR society. A closeted NCR Major mentions that the Legion is "a little more... forgiving" about close male "friendships," speaking in a hushed tone to avoid suspicion. At the same outpost, the player can encounter Cass, a bisexual civilian woman. She may flirt with a male Courier, who may imply they are gay, prompting her to imply gay men are more common in the Legion. Even as gay men fight and die in the name of love under his command, NCR General Oliver may remark to Courier Six at the Second Battle of Hoover Dam: "If you think after all that's happened, I'm going to grab my ankles and take it like the Legion..."

This writing pertains to institutionalized homophobia which manifests in practice though power structures and social interactions without being written into law. Simply put, in his derogatory remark, the general expresses to his army that military surrender is gay, much like their gay enemy. From the brevity and bluntness of this remark, it's clear that this sentiment is already well understood among his ranks. Logically, to project strength in the eyes of such a leader, one might also project homophobia by scrutinizing and harassing one's peers and subordinates. In this atmosphere, the expression of homophobia is not only normalized, but materially incentivized. For the ambitious, it becomes a tool, and a way of casting shame upon rivals. For the closeted, homophobia becomes a survival tactic, hoping to throw scrutiny off oneself. This is why Major Knight is immediately frightened when a male Courier flirts with him. He is so profoundly alienated that he romanticizes life as a gay man under the Legion. The Legion punish homosexuality with death, and yet Knight characterizes them as more "forgiving" than the NCR. Through these apparently disparate events, the audience can trace how a distorted perception of gay people emerges among insecure men in a military environment, and subsequently becomes ingrained in the corresponding civilian culture. At the 188 Trading Post, a lesbian from the Brotherhood of Steel named Veronica also wryly remarks that she believes legionaries have gay sex about as often as straight sex. She also notes that this only applies to men, as women have no rights whatsoever in Legion society. In this aside, she conveys a pre-existing frustration with lesbophobic social norms. Veronica also mentions that the people of her bunker would rather she remain on the surface. The Mojave Brotherhood of Steel has no official policy prohibiting homosexuality, but an implicit attitude among its dominant members that their limited numbers require everyone to have children to avoid extinction. Numerically, this may seem logical on the surface, given their reluctance to recruit outsiders. However, given their tiny population, this is an ineffective countermeasure, as they do not have nearly enough members to maintain genetic diversity for more than a few generations. This approach is not universally supported by all family units within the Brotherhood, but every individual is ultimately at the mercy of the elder. Veronica was in a lesbian relationship, but they were quietly separated by Elder Elijah, due to the dominant culture of enforcing heterosexual pairing among their population.

Caesar's law has not ended homosexuality within his domain. Despite the obvious risks, some legionaries have continued to pursue relationships behind closed doors, especially given their access to slaves. So long as members complete their societal obligations and fulfill the child quotas, they are able to pursue romance with other men in secret. Homosexual relationships in the faction are noted as being relatively equal compared to the average Legion husband and wife, in a "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" sort of open secret policy. Gay legionaries must always make sure to keep their activities hidden. A centurion was once almost caught fraternizing with the teenage boy he had chosen to tend his tent. Despite previous "romantic" intentions, he quickly resolved to dispose of the slave to dispel suspicion. Had they been caught together, the centurion would have been charged with homosexuality and sentenced to death. This story is only known because the enslaved young man, Jimmy, managed to escape execution. Further illustrating the cruelty intrinsic to Legion governance, it's stated that homosexuality was the crime, and not the rape of a young slave; in fact, it seems Jimmy was forced to contribute to the child quota despite being a gay teenager, and the experience left him traumatized. He has resolved to never have sex with another woman, as the very notion triggers memories which fill him with disgust, and (in his own words) makes him feel like a slave all over again. The Strip is indifferent to gay people, viewing them as another opportunity to make caps. Both the Gomorrah and the Atomic Wrangler are interested in maximizing profits, and their prostitution services cater to clients regardless of their orientation. The openly gay Jimmy works at nearby Casa Madrid, but there is some tension among his peers due to his co-worker Maude's blatant homophobia. She supposes he's "okay, for one of those," and if propositioned by a female Courier, Maude will direct them to Sweetie for such "perverted" services. Pretty Sarah must regularly intervene to keep the peace among her staff.

The Followers of the Apocalypse, well-read punks who seek to embody healing through anarchistic values, are not concerned with gender. Most are openly and casually sexually active. Upon meeting Courier Six, Arcade Gannon offhandedly makes his gayness known, unprompted. The audience must face the fact that Arcade's apprehension of the Legion is far from abstract; under Legion law, he would be put to death. One possible ending gives further insight into Caesar's hypocrisy: should the player sell Arcade into slavery and leave Caesar alive, he will keep Arcade as a personal physician and philosophical advisor. They intellectually spar at length, and Caesar grows singularly fond of him. Accordingly, Arcade imitates the historic suicide of Cato the Younger by disemboweling himself. The Legion's remaining medics attempted to save his life, but none were Arcade's equal. Caesar understood his doctor's final gesture of contempt, and mourned him for months.

New Vegas ventures further into themes of healing from the trauma of sexual violence, from the perspective of a lesbian character. Corporal Betsy, an NCR sharpshooter, is a rape survivor, and suffers with PTSD from the incident. Her unprocessed trauma has manifested as a maladaptive tendency to aggressively and explicitly proposition the women she encounters, in an effort to reassert a sense of control. This defensive hypersexual impulse has negatively impacted her ability to connect with other women. A male superior officer notes that her behavior is inappropriate for anyone of her stature, but abstains from disciplining her out of sincere concern for her mental health. The Courier can help her begin to recognize these problems, and convince her to seek treatment from Doctor Usanagi at the New Vegas medical clinic, which proves helpful to her as she processes and heals from her trauma.

In Old World Blues, the Think Tank are five floating brains in jars who express themselves by waving robotic arms bearing screens depicting facial features. Before the War, they were federal scientists who committed crimes against humanity in the name of weapons development. Each is stuck in some sort of neuro-bionic feedback loop which prevents them from moving forward with their projects, mentally binding them to their central laboratory. Walking through their homes at Higgs Village, it's clear each was deeply neurotic before they were transformed into floating brains. Now without bodies, they attempt to maintain the illusion that they are exempt from sexuality as purely mental beings, but each displays obvious interest in the human form. They have codified this shaming with the term "formography." Most of the men are obsessively defensive over their complete disinterest in penises, which they talk about constantly. However, the shameless Dr. Dala shows overwhelming interest in observing and recording any and all human functions. Already androgynous in her pre-War life, Dala has taken to self-identifying as a "gender neutral entity" (though she is not known to use they/them pronouns). Regardless of the Courier's gender, they may coquettishly scratch themselves, clear their throat, and stretch in front of Dala until her biomed gel decoagulates. Dr. 8 also responds positively to graphic masturbation advice from Couriers of either gender. The X-8 research facility is ostensibly a massive immersive shrine to Doctor Borous's hatred of Richie "Ball-Lover" Marcus, a long-dead child who bullied Borous centuries ago. He also clings to his resentment of one Betsy Bright, who refused to attend a dance with him, supposedly so she could "go smoke with RICHIE MARCUS." Clearly arrested in development, Borous has literally built a temple to the fantasy of torturing his adolescent romantic rival and feeding him to dogs. His frozen, static characterization of the jock Richie Marcus as a "pinko-commie" who "likes balls" reflects the shallowness, pettiness, and overall misanthropy underlying his patriotic identity. It remains apparent throughout Old World Blues that the Think Tank are all chronically sexually repressed, which is inseparable from the values of the violent and judgmental pre-War culture which created them. With time and isolation, this ingrained repression has manifested as various intense and deranged psychosexual behaviors, including rage-fueled homophobia, voyeurism, and the obsessive performance of puritanical pretense.

____

“Although I’ve been out for a very long time, I made a conscious effort to be out with relation to this project, as I wanted to be visible as a lesbian in the game industry. New Vegas itself is, I think, one of (if not the) best games out there in how we treat homosexuality – and all of that is very intentional.”

“If my work on FNV, if my being out has helped even one gay person, then I have succeeded.” — Tess “Obsidian’s Gay Cowgirl” Treadwell

____

written (with help from other editors) for fallout.fandom.com/wiki/LGBT_representation_in_the_Fallout_series criticism welcome

[themadcapmathematician]

The thing about public transportation is that it often operates at a loss or at least pretty thin profit margins no matter how much the ticket prices get raised. In a lot of places, service is bad, operator pays get cut while they're overworked, wait times are ridiculous, no one can get places in a timely manner most places, if you can get places at all, and a profit still isn't being turned

But the money and human suffering and indignity that public transport saves can't be quantified by profits from ticket sales. "Can people get places in your city easily to work, to school, for leisure, for socializing? How much money do you save when your workers get to their jobs on time? When people can access healthcare and government buildings easily? How much pain and suffering and human life do you save when people know they'll never be stranded in your city or town no matter the time, day, or how much pocket change they have?" these aren't questions answered by "it makes profit" and the necessity of infrastructure can't be measured by profit, you have to think long term, you have to look at benefits in more abstract ways, and all Business Models are deeply bad at that kind of planning. It isn't a mystery why a machine that exists to make profit right now isn't a machine that's good at making a robust system that focuses on long term benefits, fiscal or ethical. the fact that people are still struggling futilely to turn something with benefits that abstract and that vital into a dispenser of narrow, short-term return is fucking infuriating

Public transportation should be free and well-funded because a place where no one can get anywhere is a place no one can exist in public, and that's bad for the economy but it's also bad for human fucking dignity

[naamahdarling]

I'm probably going to piss some people off with this, but.

The use of AI and machine learning for harmful purposes is absolutely unacceptable.

But that isn't an innate part of what it does.

Apps or sites using AI to generate playlists or reading lists or a list of recipes based on a prompt you enter: absolutely fantastic, super helpful, so many new things to enjoy, takes jobs from no-one.

Apps or sites that use a biased algorithm (which is AI) which is not controllable by users or able to be turned off by them, to push some content and suppress others to maximize engagement and create compulsive behavior in users: unethical, bad, capitalism issue, human issue.

People employing genAI to create images for personal, non-profit use and amusement who would not have paid someone for the same service: neutral, (potential copyright and ethics issue if used for profit, which would be a human issue).

People incorporating genAI as part of their artistic process, where the medium of genAI is itself is a deliberate part of the artist's technique: valid, interesting.

Companies employing genAI to do the work of a graphic designer, and websites using genAI to replace the cost of stock photos: bad, shitty, no, capitalist and ethical human issue.

People attacking small artists who use it with death threats and unbelievable vitriol: bad, don't do that.

AI used for spell check and grammar assistance: really great.

AI employed by eBay sellers to cut down on the time it takes to make listings: good, very helpful, but might be a bad idea as it does make mistakes and that can cost them money, which would be a technical issue.

AI used to generate fake product photos: deceptive, lazy, bad, human ethical issue.

AI used to identify plagiarism: neutral; could be really helpful but the parameters are defined by unrealistic standards and not interrogated by those who employ it. Human ethical issue.

AI used to analyze data and draw up complex models allowing detection of things like cancer cells: good; humans doing this work take much longer, this gives results much faster and allows faster intervention, saving lives.

AI used to audit medical or criminal records and gatekeep coverage or profile people: straight-up evil. Societal issue, human ethical issue.

AI used to organize and classify your photos so you don't have to spend all that time doing it: helpful, good.

AI used to profile people or surveil people: bad and wrong. Societal issue, human issue, ethical issue.

I'm not going to cover the astonishingly bad misinformation that has been thrown out there about genAI, or break down thought distortions, or go into the dark side of copyright law, or dive into exactly how it uses the data it is fed to produce a result, or explain how it does have many valid uses in the arts if you have any imagination and curiosity, and I'm not holding anyone's hand and trying to walk them out of all the ableism and regurgitated capitalist arguments and the glorification of labor and suffering.

I just want to point out: you use machine learning (AI) all the time, you benefit from it all the time. You could probably identify many more examples that you use every day. Knee-jerk panicked hate reflects ignorance, not sound principles.

You don't have beef with AI, you have beef with human beings, how they train it, and how they use it. You have beef with capitalism and thoughtlessness. And so do I. I will ruthlessly mock or decry misuse or bad use of it. But there is literally nothing inherently bad in the technology.

I am aware of and hate its misuse just as much as you do. Possibly more, considering that I am aware of some pretty heinous ways it's being used that a lot of people are not. (APPRISS, which is with zero competition for the title the most evil use of machine learning I have ever seen, and which is probably being used on you right now.)

You need to stop and actually think about why people do bad things with it instead of falling for the red herring and going after the technology (as well as the weakest human target you can find) every time you see those two letters together.

You cannot protect yourself and other people against its misuse if you cannot separate that misuse against its neutral or helpful uses, or if you cannot even identify what AI and machine learning are.

[seat-safety-switch]

Snowblowers are the kind of tool that is born out of frustration. When you're out on the sidewalk, shovelling for the third time today, it can seem obvious that the best thing to do is to apply internal combustion power. And I agree: the best thing to do is to apply internal combustion power, in the direction of the airport, where you then use another internal combustion engine to leave this accursed province and go somewhere that's warm all the time and has cars that don't rust.

Barring that, though, snowblowers also seem like a good idea. You start the appliance, push it down the street, and all the snow becomes your neighbour's problem at incredible speeds. There's just one problem: snowblowers are a complex mechanical system that requires maintenance. In fact, their primitive small-enginey ways require more maintenance than a car, which is already well beyond the capability envelope of most so-called adults in the current era. Nobody knows how to rebuild a carburetor anymore, not when they can just spend another $600 to get another snowblower.

This means that in the spring, tons of snowblowers with dicky carbs, broken augers, or seized engines turn up on the curb or for a few pennies. These infernal machines let the owners down when they needed them most, and now the humans are getting their revenge. To me, it is shocking that someone would throw away a perfectly-good appliance just because it doesn't work at all in any way.

I like to scoop them up, give them a little freshening job, and flip them for a profit on the first week of a snowfall, when everyone is already sick of shovelling and wants to just buy something that makes the problem easier. Really, it's a public service. I don't want the sidewalks to be covered in snow because it makes it way harder for me to drive on them.

[kokobot]

Koko’s Commitment to User Privacy

Hi, it’s the team at Koko.

We’ve noticed some misunderstandings circulating about what we do at Koko and with Kokobot on Tumblr.

We’d like to assure you:

Koko is confidential.

Koko does not collect identifiable information, like your IP address or device ID, unless you choose to share it.

Koko will never sell your content or data.

Koko is a non-profit organization dedicated to accessible mental health resources.

First things first – your privacy is incredibly important to us. We never, ever sell your data — and we never have. And we don’t collect information that could personally identify you unless you choose to share it, including things like your IP address, device ID, or Tumblr account info. Our integration with Tumblr was designed with privacy in mind, and we’re committed to keeping it that way.

Second, Koko is a non-profit organization, registered in the U.S. under 501(c)(3) status. We’re funded through donations, which allow us to continue offering our services for free. And just to be clear, we’re not affiliated with Airbnb or any other company. The Koko team is a small, diverse group from all over the world. Many of us have lived experience with mental health struggles. Our goal is simple: to make mental health resources accessible to everyone who needs them.

Most people use Koko to gain perspective on things they’re going through, like talking with a friend. If our system detects someone in crisis, it steps in to guide them to resources like crisis lines for immediate help. Our systems are not always perfect, and we’re working on them every day. That’s why we also have human moderators who help ensure everyone feels safe and supported. 

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[unsolicited-opinions]

I used to run a doctor's office. If your doctor's office hasn't explained this to you, let me do it for them.

You probably don't know how much time your doctor and their staff spend fighting with insurance companies for routine, ordinary things. The stories you see online might leave you thinking that these fights are, if not rare, maybe occasional. A sometimes sort of challenge.

Nope.

It's every day. It's all day. Your doctor's office has employees who fight with insurance companies as a full time job.

This isn't an accident or a side effect of other market forces at work - this is the deliberate, calculated plan the insurance companies have chosen to implement. They know very well it is hurting patients and providers, and they're okay with that because their priority is to maximize ROI for investors and other stakeholders. They're in the business of business, and they don't give a single fuck about human beings or health care.

They've lowered reimbursements in primary care so effectively that primary care has only survived in many parts of the US by becoming a loss leader for larger health systems. You know how the local retail store gets you in the building by selling something at slightly below cost because they know you're likely to buy more once you're inside? It's like that, a loss leader.

The health system where you get your primary care often loses money when you see your PCP, but since your PCP refers you to speciality care inside their own organization, the system makes up the money when your doctor sends you to see their own systems' surgeons, endocrinologists, dermatologists, etc.

Smaller primary care practices literally can't survive. That's why there are almost no independent family doctors any longer. That's why it is so hard to see the same provider with consistency, someone with whom you can develop trust over time, who knows you and knows your challenges. United Healthcare and it's private healthcare insurance competitors have nearly finished killing off that kind of primary care.

Larger primary care practices (30-40 providers) might still be able to make ends meet independently through economies of scale and/or what they earn by doing their own lab/testing/imaging services in-house, but that won't work much longer if current trends continue. We're headed in the direction of just a handful of vertically integrated businesses running healthcare, and they are in the business of business, not health care.

The insurance companies deliberately create administrative barriers which make it expensive for your doctor's office to advocate for you because it moves administrative costs away from the insurance company and onto your doctor's office. This results in fewer paid claims when your doctor's office can't afford to hire another full time position whose only job is to argue with insurance companies and jump through their deliberately obstructive hoops. They want your PCP to be struggling to stay open. They want your PCP unable to afford the cost of overcoming the administrative burdens they have deliberately created for the purpose of denying you the health care your doctor thinks you need.

There are other words for this, but the most appropriate one is "evil."

I don't want to glorify murder or lionize Luigi Mangione, but Brian Thompson was a ghoul, his senior team are ghouls, and the for-profit health insurance industry is a disaster for Americans, even those Americans who don't yet see the problem affecting themselves. They will.

We need universal, single-payer health coverage, just like every other wealthy nation.

We're not going to get it any time soon, and things are about to get worse for healthcare in the US.

Set aside the damage RFK Jr is likely to do to an already patchwork public health system by attacking regulations and spreading misinformation. Let's look at other ways Trump and the GOP plan to worsen health care.

1. They're going to go after Medicare and Medicaid benefits. They'll seek to lower them and raise the bar which must be cleared to receive them.

2. They're going to seek to raise the age for social security benefits (above 70!), and reduce benefits paid, so the most financially vulnerable seniors will have greater out-of-pocket costs. Those seniors are going to struggle harder with out-of-pocket costs.

3. They're going to attempt to cripple the Affordable Care Act (AKA 'Obamacare'), despite the fact that the ACA has been a HUGE money maker for the private insurance companies.

4. This administration will be run by hyper capitalist billionaires. It will seek to deregulate wherever possible and promote supply-side economics (tax breaks for the rich and large corporations) at every opportunity. United Healthcare and its competitors, which already weild an obscene, horrific amount of control over US Healthcare, are about to get substantially more power.

It's bad, folks. It's a very bad time to be sick and it's going to get worse.

Alan Grayson was right in 2009. The Republican health care plan has been and remains:

* Don't get sick

* If you do get sick, die quickly.

[literaryvein-reblogs]

Writing Notes: Culture

There are many definitions of culture and it is used in different ways by different people.

Culture - may be defined as patterns of learned and shared behavior that are cumulative and transmitted across generations.

Patterns

There are systematic and predictable ways of behavior or thinking across members of a culture.

Emerge from adapting, sharing, and storing cultural information.

Can be both similar and different across cultures.

Example: In both Canada and India it is considered polite to bring a small gift to a host’s home. In Canada, it is more common to bring a bottle of wine and for the gift to be opened right away. In India, by contrast, it is more common to bring sweets, and often the gift is set aside to be opened later.

Sharing

Culture is the product of people sharing with one another.

Humans cooperate and share knowledge and skills with other members of their networks.

The ways they share, and the content of what they share, helps make up culture.

Example: Older adults remember a time when long-distance friendships were maintained through letters that arrived in the mail every few months. Contemporary youth culture accomplishes the same goal through the use of instant text messages on smartphones.

Learned

Behaviors, values, norms are acquired through a process known as enculturation that begins with parents and caregivers, because they are the primary influence on young children.

Caregivers teach kids, both directly and by example, about how to behave and how the world works.

They encourage children to be polite, reminding them, for instance, to say “Thank you.” They teach kids how to dress in a way that is appropriate for the culture.

Culture teaches us what behaviors and emotions are appropriate or expected in different situations.

Example: In some societies, it is considered appropriate to conceal anger. Instead of expressing their feelings outright, people purse their lips, furrow their brows, and say little. In other cultures, however, it is appropriate to express anger. In these places, people are more likely to bare their teeth, furrow their brows, point or gesture, and yell (Matsumoto, Yoo, & Chung, 2010).

Learned: Rituals

Members of a culture also engage in rituals which are used to teach people what is important.

Example 1: Young people who are interested in becoming Buddhist monks often have to endure rituals that help them shed feelings of specialness or superiority—feelings that run counter to Buddhist doctrine. To do this, they might be required to wash their teacher’s feet, scrub toilets, or perform other menial tasks.

Example 2: Similarly, many Jewish adolescents go through the process of bar and bat mitzvah. This is a ceremonial reading from scripture that requires the study of Hebrew and, when completed, signals that the youth is ready for full participation in public worship.

These examples help to illustrate the concept of enculturation.

Cumulative

Cultural knowledge is information that is “stored” and then the learning grows across generations.

We understand more about the world today than we did 200 years ago, but that doesn’t mean the culture from long ago has been erased.

Example: Members of the Haida culture, a First Nations people in British Columbia, Canada are able to profit from both ancient and modern experiences. They might employ traditional fishing practices and wisdom stories while also using modern technologies and services.

Transmission

Passing of new knowledge and traditions of culture from one generation to the next, as well as across other cultures is cultural transmission.

In everyday life, the most common way cultural norms are transmitted is within each individuals’ home life.

Each family has its own, distinct culture under the big picture of each given society and/or nation.

With every family, there are traditions that are kept alive.

The way each family acts and communicates with others and an overall view of life are passed down.

Parents teach their kids every day how to behave and act by their actions alone.

Outside of the family, culture can be transmitted at various social institutions like places of worship, schools, even shopping centers are places where enculturation happens and is transmitted.

Understanding culture as a learned pattern of thoughts and behaviors is interesting for several reasons:

It highlights the ways groups can come into conflict with one another. Members of different cultures simply learn different ways of behaving. Teenagers today interact with technologies, like a smartphone, using a different set of rules than people who are in their 40s, 50s, or 60s. Older adults might find texting in the middle of a face-to-face conversation rude while younger people often do not. These differences can sometimes become politicized and a source of tension between groups. One example of this is Muslim women who wear a hijab, or headscarf. Non-Muslims do not follow this practice, so occasional misunderstandings arise about the appropriateness of the tradition.

Understanding that culture is learned is important because it means that people can adopt an appreciation of patterns of behavior that are different than their own.

Understanding that culture is learned can be helpful in developing self-awareness. For instance, people from the United States might not even be aware of the fact that their attitudes about public nudity are influenced by their cultural learning. While women often go topless on beaches in Europe and women living a traditional tribal existence in places like the South Pacific also go topless, it is illegal for women in some of the United States to do so. These cultural norms for modesty that are reflected in government laws and policies also enter the discourse on social issues such as the appropriateness of breastfeeding in public. Understanding that your preferences are, in many cases, the products of cultural learning might empower you to revise them if doing so will lead to a better life for you or others.

Humans use culture to adapt and transform the world they live in and you should think of the word culture as a conceptual tool rather than as a uniform, static definition.

Culture changes through interactions with individuals, media, and technology, just to name a few.

Culture generally changes for one of 2 reasons:

Selective transmission or

to meet changing needs.

This means that when a village or culture is met with new challenges, for example, a loss of a food source, they must change the way they live.

It could also include forced relocation from ancestral domains due to external or internal forces.

Example: In the United States, tens of thousands Native Americans were forced to migrate from their ancestral lands to reservations established by the United States government so it could acquire lands rich with natural resources. The forced migration resulted in death, disease and many cultural changes for the Native Americans as they adjusted to new ecology and way of life.

Source ⚜ More: On Psychology ⚜ Writing Notes & References

[licorice-and-rum]

SOC and Neoliberlism

So, as promised, here it is my analysis of Six of Crows and how neoliberalism is amazingly portrayed in Ketterdam, and how the city is an example of what happens in a community that is not provided for.

Before we begin, I wanted to say that English is not my first language, and, considering I read SOC in Brazilian Portuguese, I might translate some names literally or differently from the English version but I think it's manageable to read and understand my point. If not, I'll edit the text.

The first thing we have to understand is how neoliberalism works and the theory behind it, and then we'll talk about how it's portrayed in Ketterdam.

So neoliberalism is a theory born more or less at the end of the 20th century (70s-80s), and it finds its roots in laissez-faire capitalism, meaning that it's a political current that tries to suppress and/or eliminate the State's influence from the market. The neoliberalist view understands that the market can supply by itself the population's needs without help or limitations imposed by the State.

The thing here is that most people listen to this and think neoliberalism is about electronics, cars, and other stuff. The truth is, that neoliberalism aims to suppress the presence of State-run facilities in ALL corners of society, such as health care, housing, water access, electricity, etcetera.

So, we can use the American and Brazillian health systems to understand it better, for example:

In the US, the ones providing health care for the population are great corporations - they decide the price of care, they work together with pharmaceutical companies to define medicine prices, and the laws that bind them are pretty much only offer and demand. There is almost none State intervention to provide the population with accessible health care.

However, this brings problems, of course: not everyone (actually, most people) has real access to health care simply because they can't afford it, or they can't afford it without taking a big financial hit, which threatens their other basic needs, such as food, housing, water, electricity, etcetera. Not everyone can provide for their medical needs, such as diabetic and disabled people.

That leads to:

(a) an increase in poverty;

(b) a decrease in educational levels - if you don't have the means to pay for higher educational levels because of health care debt, or if you're sick and need to go to class and tough through it but you're not really learning anything, and so on, which leads to a major workforce in base level production and a minor class who has access to this education;

(c) an increase in overworking people - meaning that we have a lot of people taking on several jobs to be able to pay for things like health care, which increases the competitiveness between people, making individualism levels go up and breaking up human beings' natural sense of community.

I could also talk here about how this breeds isolation and increases the potential for mental health problems but I think you got what I was saying.

On the other hand, we have the Brazilian health care system (SUS), which is a universal gratuitous medical care service through the whole country. Its purpose is not profit, it's providing health care for the community, so therefore, any SUS unit is bound by State law and run by the State. By law, every SUS unit must provide for anyone who enters its premises in need of medical care. Everyone, Brazillian and foreigners, poor or rich, must be treated if they need to. It's the law.

Of course, that doesn't mean it's all rainbows and flowers, there are definitely many problems in SUS. However, what I'm trying to showcase here is that, when the needs of a population are met, the population itself is more resilient, their life quality goes up and so does their participation in their community.

On the other hand, in neoliberalism, when the State is absent from these areas of community service, the market is, in theory, the one providing for the community. In practice, however, what we observe from neoliberal policies in cities with a great poor population in Latam for example, is that when the State doesn't provide for the community, the market is unable to step up for them because of their obscene prices.

The poor population that doesn't have their needs met by the State or the market sees a great boom in criminal activities within their spaces. That's mainly why criminal organizations are so present in slums and favelas throughout Latin America: criminal organizations are a way for the community to provide for themselves and, as a means to become more powerful, they provide for the community in exchange for their services (not to say they do that for the good of their hearts, of course not).

It's why it's so common, for example, that criminal organizations such as PCC in Brazil pay for kids from favelas to undergo Law school, for example.

And that's is where I wanted to go to start the conversation in SOC: one of the main traits of Ketterdam is the Barrel and, in the Barrel, we have the presence of many criminal organizations, such as the Dregs, the Dime Lions, the Menagerie staff (not the girls, ofc), etcetera.

This, as observed by Kaz himself, is one of the only ways to survive on the Barrel - you filiate yourself to a gang because you need to be able to provide for yourself and, more times than others, for your family as well.

Kaz's story is actually a perfect example of how Ketterdam is the representation of America in the early 20th century in full policies of laissez-faire (neoliberalism): as we can see in Titanic and many other historical fictions, the said American Dream had people believing the US to be this economical paradise where they could all enter the market and become millionaires.

The result of it is the Great Depression, of course, but I'm getting ahead of myself here.

When Kaz and Jodi leave Lij for Ketterdam, Jodi believes he'll become a merchant - which is a pretty common belief of those who arrive at Ketterdam, as Pekka Rollins and Kaz himself state in Crooked Kingdom.

The reality of it, though, is much harsher, because the truth is that when you have a market that controls everything, as we see in Ketterdam with the Merchant's Guild (I think that's how it's translated?) and the Stadwatch as a police force, you see perfectly how neoliberal policies really work in real life:

You have a higher class who controls the market and the riches (question: who do you think got the money Shu Han sent to Ketterdam at the beginning of the first book: the people of the city/country or the merchants in the "government"?), and a lower class that, without support from the State or the market to have their needs met will turn to their own means to do so.

So you have the trafficking that brought Inej to the island, the unlimited gambling that Jesper was trapped in, the cons Jodi and Kaz fell for - it's all product of liberal policies.

And so, you have Ketterdam and its neoliberal policies (:

(I really love to make this kind of analysis, please, if you have something you want me to talk about, don't hesitate to ask)

[moretheta]

ok i know i'm the 101st person to compare the phantom troupe and the heil-ly family, but with each new chapter we get more and more to work with & i'm chewing on it 24/7 like drywall. let's talk fatalism:

so first of all shoutout to the number one champion of this theory, my main man nobunaga:

literally idk if the guy is in a nostalgic mood or what, but he will not stop yapping about the similarities and for that i commend him & his service

for the record, phinks & feitan don't seem tooooo convinced. phinks specifically points out that hey, actually, we aren't amateurs like these guys and we don't have some crazy genocide murderscheme going on. this much is obvious in the way the PT reacts to luini's insane murderfanboying with "huh????????" *stab*

the phantom troupe do not want to destroy the world, nor were they designed to- they were designed for a very specific purpose and that was to create an environment (a web, hah) that could lure in the big criminals they wanted revenge against, while being dangerous enough to keep the petty criminals out.

these are two very different vision boards!!!

....that nevertheless share some strikingly similar imagery

and we find even more parallels in their respective leaders: aside from the obvious biblical resemblances, morena and chrollo share a similar outlook on life-- more specifically, a similar outlook on death.

more seem uncaring about their respective prospects of survival. self-preservation is such an inherently human trait- hell, a trait inherent to the living- that the lack of any such instinct whatsover is pretty damn terrifying. it leads to a certain kind of alienation from humanity that we know at least chrollo has felt (when he says shit like "humans are so interesting" like damn get your head outta your ass you are one of them). it makes them striking and scary and unpredictable. fucking brocco li points this out:

he's talking about the troupe here, but he could just as easily be talking about the heil-ly. because once again, the mafia is the establishment and the heil-ly and phantom troupe are decidedly not. the regular kakin mafia looks out for their own self-interests, which can lead to unchecked greed but is also what causes them to not go around murdering civilians just because they feel like it.

think of the loss in profits!!

now, nobunaga seems to think of the heil-ly as a sort of prototype- unrefined spider. when they're first investigating the heil-ly hideout, he says "maybe a switch was flipped when one of their own was killed," [see figure 1 above] which is a reasonable assumption to make considering his own experience. but when we check back in with the heil-ly...

their reaction to losing luini is "bummer," before immediately talking about what abilities they should develop to replace him. and in the second panel, when hinrigh kills padaille, the guys who are supposed to be his comrades just.. run away. later morena mentions that those same members are now leveling up to get revenge on hinrigh, but it seems like that stems more from hurt pride and morbid curiosity to see what they can accomplish with their shiny new powers.

these mfs are singing a "let's go hunt the mafia" jingle

big contrast to the way the xi-yu react to the death of lynch^

now both the troupe and the heil-ly are known to have fairly blasé reactions towards death and violence and general in the past. and that extends to their comrades' fights:

shalnark and co play cards while uvogin get leeches injected into his veins, or phinks & co stand by and watch feitan almost get his ass handed to him by zazan in meteor city- before he starts taking things seriously, that is. but i think that comes from a genuine respect in their comrades' strength. like everyone knew uvo could handle the shadow beasts just like they knew feitan could handle zazan. the heil-ly also seem to enjoy each others company and have a great rapport while chopping up dead bodies... but i think they don't expect much from their comrades in the way the troupe does. i mean, it's like phink's says: the troupe doesn't take on amateurs. everyone in the heil-ly is an amateur (except morena) so i don't think their laissez-faire attitude comes from confidence in their own abilities- i think they actually just do not care.

this whole exchange felt sooooo spiders-coded. which makes sense: i mean plenty of them are fans of the spiders! i think yokotani (the lawyer) was deadass trying to get an autograph lol

one thing to note is that when nobunaga attacks terebellum, he assumes the reason the gang hadn't shown signs of confrontation thus far was because they were convinced they were safe- that nobunaga and hinrigh couldn't get to them. i think that's only half the truth: when hinrigh throws a knife at this guy (the heil-ly's "organ" whatever that could mean) he just thinks "huh i wonder how long this would take to heal," before being saved by an issue of shonen jump. then he gets chastised for being reckless and going against morena's orders to keep his head down, but it's all very unserious. then everyone just kind of wanders off to do their own thing.

can i also just say i was getting from real uvogin vibes from terebellum over here

again, i can't really make any blanket statements with information we have available. but my current outlook is that the biggest difference between the spiders and the heil-ly right now is that the heil-ly is what chrollo had initially envisioned for the troupe: remember the "i am the head but i don't matter and you shouldn't make choices with my life in mind" speech? i think this is what that would look like. we know that (up until yorknew), chrollo truly believed that everyone saw the spiders as he did. that he would have no value as a hostage. that they would all be able to accept his death and move on:

and this turned out to be a fatal flaw.

the levels of cognitive dissonance going on during this whole exchange...

he was soooo in hhis head about being above humanity in his own little conceptual space where life and death don't matter that he forgot to look around and realize not everyone was there with him.

there were some, like phinks, who were in line with chrollo's philiosophy. kudos to them ig. but there were enough people who wanted to keep their friend alive- and are still working their asses off to do so today!- that his plan failed. pakunoda chief among them god rest her soul. this moment was one of the first dominos that sent into into the downward spiral he's on today. because after all he invested in the spider, all he gave up for it, it's web is slowly but surely falling apart. he is losing one lifelong member after another in events he is either powerless to stop or has a direct hand in. the ethos that kept him in this purgatory where he could temporarily transcend pain and guilt and humanity is unravelling, and the people he loves (not all of them, at least) don't share in it, and if that's the case then they've been suffering all this time. and if that's the case then what the hell has he been doing, and what the hell is the point.

so now he's stuck on a ship with a group of people that are like his own but worse (and younger and stupider g'bless) lead by someone who's like him but at peace. (and also probably worse lol). having a breakdown because people might love him. also he's trying to steal a national treasure because this is a nic cage movie apparently hey how many words is this post again

TLDR; chrollo is loosing the idgaf war

[rockpapertheodore]

I cannot tell you how frustrated I am with the anti-math movement because despite what anyone thinks in high-school, you use math constantly every day in ways the very, like, sexless? way school teaches math will never prepare you for.

If you want to run a business? Inventory costs, storage and logistics, labour and wages, bills.

You have any customer service job? You are making change. You are making SO much change. All the time. Sometimes the computer works and you're safe, but sometimes your entire point of sale is beholden to the whims of a third party system with a web server of your entire inventory on the other side of the state and it's gone down. Again. So u gotta do all the math on paper because you're still open because it's an inconvenience, not a reason to stop business.

Baking.

Building something? Gotta do some dang ol' physics and engineering if u wanna do it efficiently and with minimal expenses.

Sports people are doing so much subconscious math all the time, without ever knowing it, and being aware of all the ways geometry (if ur playing a stick-and-ball game like baseball or cricket or pool) or physics (literally every sport)

I'm not gonna lie, I'm not sure where I was going with this beyond "im so annoyed with the incompetent presentation of math in US public schools." Please understand I'm not trying to shame anyone, and I am not judging anyone for struggling with math. Math is an arcane wizard language invented to quantify and understand the functions of the world around us. The human brain is a pleasure-seeking monkey with astronomical pattern-recognition abilities, and some beautiful autist in the past went "hey actually what if I could measure everything?" And math started.

I'm not even particularly good at any discipline beyond general mathematics because I've been making change for customers since I was 6.

Also its really fun making ur bosses sweat when you piece together the profit margins on accident because you 'tism for a second and guesstimate the cost of buying in the product and margin of profit based upon sale price and volume of sales.

Anyway learn and understand just enough to survive, and then just enough more to make your employers sweat when you can explain to your coworkers approximately how much the store is making.

Shoutout to my discalculic homies, I don't know how to make math that doesn't suck yet, but I'll do my damndest to help u out when they create a sequel to numbers that makes sense.