#another wednesday product

[corvidsofthedeep]

from the deep #24077: Wednesday branded gushers ravens

[gunsatthaphan]

"do you agree? - yes."

[re-discover-communication]

Happy to be able to say that Suspirium's last chapter is proceeding. Can't instead say when it's going to be out, I'm still quite far from the end, but not too much. Can't wait to be finally free finish it and know what you think of it

[adrianlikesdinos]

heres to another 3 hours (at minimum) of school work! (ive been sick since last week Wednesday. ive been working on catching up since 8:30am. its is currently 6pm. ive taken another small dose of adhd meds so either this work is getting done or im ending up on the news)

[beloved-child-of-the-house]

I’ve been meaning to do WIP Wednesday for aaaages and I always forget. It’s not actually Wednesday yet, but oh well! I have been working on this fic for over a year, and I think I am in the home stretch. Here is a snippet from early on. 

Draco had got barely halfway across the Entrance Hall when it happened. He felt the Trip Jinx round his ankles before he saw his assailants, and he went sprawling hard onto the stone floor, the wind knocked out of him, his wand spinning away to clatter out of sight and well out of reach. He lay on his front, coughing and gasping with ugly laughter ringing in his ears.

"Nasty tumble, there Malfoy," jeered someone behind him. "You want to mind where you're going, or you could hurt yourself."

Draco pushed up onto his hands and knees, still trying to get his breath. There was no way he could reach his wand before they jinxed him again; he hadn't even seen where it landed. He never was any good at muggle duelling. He got one leg under him, bracing himself to be knocked flat again, and heard a shout from above him.

"Protego!"

The jinx bounced off the Shield, and Draco got to his feet under its protection. Harry Potter was striding down the marble staircase toward them looking like a thunderstorm. Halfway along he stooped and picked up Draco's wand. He hardly glanced at Draco as he passed him and marched up to the little knot of seventh years picking themselves up from where they'd been hit by the rebounding jinx.

"Think it's funny to knock people down, do you, McClaggen?" snarled Potter, glaring up at the biggest of the lot.

"Oh don't get your wand in a knot, Potter. It's only Malfoy," said McClaggen in the sort of tone you might use to say 'It's only a slug.' "No love lost there, eh?"

"It doesn't matter who it is! We're not doing things like that anymore," Potter said furiously.  "We just got done with a fucking war, and you want to keep fighting? You lot want to keep it going just for fun? Well, I don't, and I better not see you do that again! Now clear off!"

"You can't tell m--"

"Too fucking right I can! Now get back to your common room!" And, perhaps because Potter was Head Boy, perhaps because he looked like he could spit nails,�� or perhaps simply because he was Harry Potter, they did clear off. Potter watched them go, then turned to Draco. He still looked quite angry, but he was clearly trying to gather himself, "You okay?

[elytrafemme]

everyone please clap and cheer for me i did all my homework for tomorrow AND for wednesday's class. my shoulder neck and thumb hurt very bad but i was so so productives :]

[mostlysignssomeportents]

The one weird monopoly trick that gave us Walmart and Amazon and killed Main Street

I'm coming to BURNING MAN! On TUESDAY (Aug 27) at 1PM, I'm giving a talk called "DISENSHITTIFY OR DIE!" at PALENQUE NORTE (7&E). On WEDNESDAY (Aug 28) at NOON, I'm doing a "Talking Caterpillar" Q&A at LIMINAL LABS (830&C).

Walmart didn't just happen. The rise of Walmart – and Amazon, its online successor – was the result of a specific policy choice, the decision by the Reagan administration not to enforce a key antitrust law. Walmart may have been founded by Sam Walton, but its success (and the demise of the American Main Street) are down to Reaganomics.

The law that Reagan neutered? The Robinson-Patman Act, a very boring-sounding law that makes it illegal for powerful companies (like Walmart) to demand preferential pricing from their suppliers (farmers, packaged goods makers, meat producers, etc). The idea here is straightforward. A company like Walmart is a powerful buyer (a "monopsonist" – compare with "monopolist," a powerful seller). That means that they can demand deep discounts from suppliers. Smaller stores – the mom and pop store on your Main Street – don't have the clout to demand those discounts. Worse, because those buyers are weak, the sellers – packaged goods companies, agribusiness cartels, Big Meat – can actually charge them more to make up for the losses they're taking in selling below cost to Walmart.

Reagan ordered his antitrust cops to stop enforcing Robinson-Patman, which was a huge giveaway to big business. Of course, that's not how Reagan framed it: He called Robinson-Patman a declaration of "war on low prices," because it prevented big companies from using their buying power to squeeze huge discounts. Reagan's court sorcerers/economists asserted that if Walmart could get goods at lower prices, they would sell goods at lower prices.

Which was true…up to a point. Because preferential discounting (offering better discounts to bigger customers) creates a structural advantage over smaller businesses, it meant that big box stores would eventually eliminate virtually all of their smaller competitors. That's exactly what happened: downtowns withered, suburban big boxes grew. Spending that would have formerly stayed in the community was whisked away to corporate headquarters. These corporate HQs were inevitably located in "onshore-offshore" tax haven states, meaning they were barely taxed at the state level. That left plenty of money in these big companies' coffers to spend on funny accountants who'd help them avoid federal taxes, too. That's another structural advantage the big box stores had over the mom-and-pops: not only did they get their inventory at below-cost discounts, they didn't have to pay tax on the profits, either.

MBA programs actually teach this as a strategy to pursue: they usually refer to Amazon's "flywheel" where lower prices bring in more customers which allows them to demand even lower prices:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BaSwWYemLek

You might have heard about rural and inner-city "food deserts," where all the independent grocery stores have shuttered, leaving behind nothing but dollar stores? These are the direct product of the decision not to enforce Robinson-Patman. Dollar stores target working class neighborhoods with functional, beloved local grocers. They open multiple dollar stores nearby (nearly all the dollar stores you see are owned by one of two conglomerates, no matter what the sign over the door says). They price goods below cost and pay for high levels of staffing, draining business off the community grocery store until it collapses. Then, all the dollar stores except one close and the remaining store fires most of its staff (working at a dollar store is incredibly dangerous, thanks to low staffing levels that make them easy targets for armed robbers). Then, they jack up prices, selling goods in "cheater" sizes that are smaller than the normal retail packaging, and which are only made available to large dollar store conglomerates:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/03/27/walmarts-jackals/#cheater-sizes

Writing in The American Prospect, Max M Miller and Bryce Tuttle1 – a current and a former staffer for FTC Commissioner Alvaro Bedoya – write about the long shadow cast by Reagan's decision to put Robinson-Patman in mothballs:

https://prospect.org/economy/2024-08-13-stopping-excessive-market-power-monopoly/

They tell the story of Robinson-Patman's origins in 1936, when A&P was using preferential discounts to destroy the independent grocery sector and endanger the American food system. A&P didn't just demand preferential discounts from its suppliers; it also charged them a fortune to be displayed on its shelves, an early version of Amazon's $38b/year payola system:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/11/28/enshittification/#relentless-payola

They point out that Robinson-Patman didn't really need to be enacted; America already had an antitrust law that banned this conduct: section 2 of the the Clayton Act, which was passed in 1914. But for decades, the US courts refused to interpret the Clayton Act according to its plain meaning, with judges tying themselves in knots to insist that the law couldn't possibly mean what it said. Robinson-Patman was one of a series of antitrust laws that Congress passed in a bid to explain in words so small even federal judges could understand them that the purpose of American antitrust law was to keep corporations weak:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/14/aiming-at-dollars/#not-men

Both the Clayton Act and Robinson-Patman reject the argument that it's OK to let monopolies form and come to dominate critical sectors of the American economy based on the theoretical possibility that this will lead to lower prices. They reject this idea first as a legal matter. We don't let giant corporations victimize small businesses and their suppliers just because that might help someone else.

Beyond this, there's the realpolitik of monopoly. Yes, companies could pass lower costs on to customers, but will they? Look at Amazon: the company takes $0.45-$0.51 out of every dollar that its sellers earn, and requires them to offer their lowest price on Amazon. No one has a 45-51% margin, so every seller jacks up their prices on Amazon, but you don't notice it, because Amazon forces them to jack up prices everywhere else:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/03/01/managerial-discretion/#junk-fees

The Robinson-Patman Act did important work, and its absence led to many of the horribles we're living through today. This week on his Peoples & Things podcast, Lee Vinsel talked with Benjamin Waterhouse about his new book, One Day I’ll Work for Myself: The Dream and Delusion That Conquered America:

https://athenaeum.vt.domains/peoplesandthings/2024/08/12/78-benjamin-c-waterhouse-on-one-day-ill-work-for-myself-the-dream-and-delusion-that-conquered-america/

Towards the end of the discussion, Vinsel and Waterhouse turn to Robinson-Patman, its author, Wright Patman, and the politics of small business in America. They point out – correctly – that Wright Patman was something of a creep, a "Dixiecrat" (southern Democrat) who was either an ideological segregationist or someone who didn't mind supporting segregation irrespective of his beliefs.

That's a valid critique of Wright Patman, but it's got little bearing on the substance and history of the law that bears his name, the Robinson-Patman Act. Vinsel and Waterhouse get into that as well, and while they made some good points that I wholeheartedly agreed with, I fiercely disagree with the conclusion they drew from these points.

Vinsel and Waterhouse point out (again, correctly) that small businesses have a long history of supporting reactionary causes and attacking workers' rights – associations of small businesses, small women-owned business, and small minority-owned businesses were all in on opposition to minimum wages and other key labor causes.

But while this is all true, that doesn't make Robinson-Patman a reactionary law, or bad for workers. The point of protecting small businesses from the predatory practices of large firms is to maintain an American economy where business can't trump workers or government. Large companies are literally ungovernable: they have gigantic war-chests they can spend lobbying governments and corrupting the political process, and concentrated sectors find it comparatively easy to come together to decide on a single lobbying position and then make it reality.

As Vinsel and Waterhouse discuss, US big business has traditionally hated small business. They recount a notorious and telling anaecdote about the editor of the Chamber of Commerce magazine asking his boss if he could include coverage of small businesses, given the many small business owners who belonged to the Chamber, only to be told, "Over my dead body." Why did – why does – big business hate small business so much? Because small businesses wreck the game. If they are included in hearings, notices of inquiry, or just given a vote on what the Chamber of Commerce will lobby for with their membership dollars, they will ask for things that break with the big business lobbying consensus.

That's why we should like small business. Not because small business owners are incapable of being petty tyrants, but because whatever else, they will be petty. They won't be able to hire million-dollar-a-month union-busting law-firms, they won't be able to bribe Congress to pass favorable laws, they can't capture their regulators with juicy offers of sweet jobs after their government service ends.

Vinsel and Waterhouse point out that many large firms emerged during the era in which Robinson-Patman was in force, but that misunderstands the purpose of Robinson-Patman: it wasn't designed to prevent any large businesses from emerging. There are some capital-intensive sectors (say, chip fabrication) where the minimum size for doing anything is pretty damned big.

As Miller and Tuttle write:

The goal of RPA was not to create a permanent Jeffersonian agrarian republic of exclusively small businesses. It was to preserve a diverse economy of big and small businesses. Congress recognized that the needs of communities and people—whether in their role as consumers, business owners, or workers—are varied and diverse. A handful of large chains would never be able to meet all those needs in every community, especially if they are granted pricing power.

The fight against monopoly is only secondarily a fight between small businesses and giant ones. It's foundationally a fight about whether corporations should have so much power that they are too big to fail, too big to jail, and too big to care.

Community voting for SXSW is live! If you wanna hear RIDA QADRI and me talk about how GIG WORKERS can DISENSHITTIFY their jobs with INTEROPERABILITY, VOTE FOR THIS ONE!

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

https://pluralistic.net/2024/08/14/the-price-is-wright/#enforcement-priorities

[wilwheaton]

“After meaningful conversations, it is clear that the gap between the AMPTP and SAG-AFTRA is too great, and conversations are no longer moving us in a productive direction,” the AMPTP wrote in a press release on Wednesday night. Meanwhile, SAG is calling out Hollywood CEOs—including Netflix’s Ted Sarandos, Disney’s Bob Iger, NBCUniversal’s Donna Langley, and Warner Bros. Discovery’s David Zaslav, who are all present during the talks—for low-balling and using “bullying tactics.” “It is with profound disappointment that we report the industry CEOs have walked away from the bargaining table after refusing to counter the latest offer,” SAG’s TV/Theatrical Negotiating Committee announced on X on Thursday. “We have negotiated with them in good faith, despite the fact that last week, they presented an offer that was, shockingly, worth less than they proposed before the strike began.”

SAG-AFTRA Strike Looks Bleaker Than Ever as Talks Break Down

Oh, look, the same reprehensible billionaires are using the same failed tactics with SAG-AFTRA that they tried with WGA.

Fuck you, David Zaslav, Bob Iger, and your fellow scumbags. You’re nothing without the creative workers who are the heart of the entertainment industry. All we are asking for is reasonable protections so we can earn a living and qualify for health insurance. You want another helipad on your yacht.

As long as it takes. One day longer, one day stronger.

[modernmutiny]

The thing is, idk if this is a neurodivergent thing or a lupus thing or a Me Thing but I'm not impaired until i am. Like. I can take 4 edibles and drink a couple shots and be perfectly fine and capable but then i take one more sip and fucking BAM I'm off my ass can't tell which way is up giggling like a child down for the count. It's never ever been gradual it's always been one switch flip between sober and Intoxicated and i gotta say it's no where near as fun as it may sound

[bengesko]

AI Sellout

Used an email mask to read the whole article, pasting it below the cut.

Quick important points:

The tweet content is a list of things that are currently included, but were not SUPPOSED TO BE, and engineers are working to scrub it.

Automattic is supposedly going to add an opt out option.

Automattic did not respond to a question from 404 Media about whether it could guarantee that people who opt out will have their data deleted retroactively.

Tumblr and Wordpress are preparing to sell user data to Midjourney and OpenAI, according to a source with internal knowledge about the deals and internal documentation referring to the deals. 

The exact types of data from each platform going to each company are not spelled out in documentation we’ve reviewed, but internal communications reviewed by 404 Media make clear that deals between Automattic, the platforms’ parent company, and OpenAI and Midjourney are imminent.

The internal documentation details a messy and controversial process within Tumblr itself. One internal post made by Cyle Gage, a product manager at Tumblr, states that a query made to prepare data for OpenAI and Midjourney compiled a huge number of user posts that it wasn’t supposed to. It is not clear from Gage’s post whether this data has already been sent to OpenAI and Midjourney, or whether Gage was detailing a process for scrubbing the data before it was to be sent. 

Gage wrote:

“the way the data was queried for the initial data dump to Midjourney/OpenAI means we compiled a list of all tumblr’s public post content between 2014 and 2023, but also unfortunately it included, and should not have included:

private posts on public blogs

posts on deleted or suspended blogs

unanswered asks (normally these are not public until they’re answered)

private answers (these only show up to the receiver and are not public)

posts that are marked ‘explicit’ / NSFW / ‘mature’ by our more modern standards (this may not be a big deal, I don’t know)

content from premium partner blogs (special brand blogs like Apple’s former music blog, for example, who spent money with us on an ad campaign) that may have creative that doesn’t belong to us, and we don’t have the rights to share with this-parties; this one is kinda unknown to me, what deals are in place historically and what they should prevent us from doing.”

Gage’s post makes clear that engineers are working on compiling a list of post IDs that should not have been included, and that password-protected posts, DMs, and media flagged as CSAM and other community guidelines violations were not included.

Automattic plans to launch a new setting on Wednesday that will allow users to opt-out of data sharing with third parties, including AI companies, according to the source, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, and internal documents. A new FAQ section we reviewed is titled “What happens when you opt out?” states that “If you opt out from the start, we will block crawlers from accessing your content by adding your site on a disallowed list. If you change your mind later, we also plan to update any partners about people who newly opt-out and ask that their content be removed from past sources and future training.” 

404 Media has asked Automattic how it accidentally compiled data that it shouldn’t share, and whether any of that content was shared with OpenAI, but did not immediately hear back from the company. 404 Media asked Automattic about an imminent deal with Midjourney last week but did not hear back then, either.

Another internal document shows that, on February 23, an employee asked in a staff-only thread, “Do we have assurances that if a user opts out of their data being shared with third parties that our existing data partners will be notified of such a change and remove their data?”

Andrew Spittle, Automattic’s head of AI replied: “We will notify existing partners on a regular basis about anyone who's opted out since the last time we provided a list. I want this to be an ongoing process where we regularly advocate for past content to be excluded based on current preferences. We will ask that content be deleted and removed from any future training runs. I believe partners will honor this based on our conversations with them to this point. I don't think they gain much overall by retaining it.” Automattic did not respond to a question from 404 Media about whether it could guarantee that people who opt out will have their data deleted retroactively.

News about a deal between Tumblr and Midjourney has been rumored and speculated about on Tumblr for the last week. Someone claiming to be a former Tumblr employee announced in a Tumblr blog post that the platform was working on a deal with Midjourney, and the rumor made it onto Blind, an app for verified employees of companies to anonymously discuss their jobs. 404 Media has seen the Blind posts, in which what seems like an Automattic employee says, “I'm not sure why some of you are getting worked up or worried about this. It's totally legal, and sharing it publicly is perfectly fine since it's right there in the terms & conditions. So, go ahead and spread the word as much as you can with your friends and tech journalists, it's totally fine.”

Separately, 404 Media viewed a public, now-deleted post by Gage, the product manager, where he said that he was deleting all of his images off of Tumblr, and would be putting them on his personal website. A still-live post says, “i've deleted my photography from tumblr and will be moving it slowly but surely over to cylegage.com, which i'm building into a photography portfolio that i can control end-to-end.” At one point last week, his personal website had a specific note stating that he did not consent to AI scraping of his images. Gage’s original post has been deleted, and his website is now a blank page that just reads “Cyle.” Gage did not respond to a request for comment from 404 Media. 

Several online platforms have made similar deals with AI companies recently, including Reddit, which entered into an AI content licensing deal with Google and said in its SEC filing last week that it’s “in the early stages of monetizing [its] user base” by training AI on users’ posts. Last year, Shutterstock signed a six year deal with OpenAI to provide training data.

OpenAI and Midjourney did not respond to requests for comment. 

[blueiscoool]

Archaeologists Find a Beautiful 3,000-Year-Old Octagonal Sword in Germany

A rare Bronze Age sword unearthed from a burial site in Germany is in such good condition that it still glimmers.

According to a statement the Bavarian State Office for Monument Protection released on Wednesday, the weapon was discovered in the town of Nördlingen in Bavaria, and may date to the 14th century B.C.

"Last week, archaeologists made a very special find during excavations in Nördlingen: a bronze sword that is over 3,000 years old and is so extraordinarily well preserved that it almost still shines. It is a representative of the bronze full-hilt swords, whose octagonal hilt is made entirely of bronze (octagonal sword type)," a translation of the statement reads.

Its octagonal shape make it a rare find, as only the most skilled blacksmiths were capable of making these types of swords—known as Achtkantschwert in German—that required precise casting and decoration.

"The production of octagonal swords is complex because the handle is cast over the blade (so-called overlay casting). The decoration is made with an inlay and using hallmarks. While there are two real rivets, another pair of rivets are only implied," the statement said.

These rare and specialized swords were only made in two locations in Germany at the time, one in the north, one in the south, although the exact location of this sword's origin could not be confirmed.

This find is especially unusual considering that most burial mounds in the area of Germany where the sword was discovered have been opened and looted in the past.

"Sword finds from this period are rare and come either from burial mounds that were deliberately opened in the 19th century or as single, presumed sacrificial finds," the statement said.

It is unclear if this octagonal sword was ever used in combat, or if it was a ceremonial blade.

However, archaeologists noted that while the blade had no signs of wear in battle, its center of gravity made it suitable for use as a real weapon, and it was capable of being used to slash opponents.

The grave in which the sword was found contained the remains of a man, a woman and a child.

"It is not yet clear whether the persons were related or what the relationship between them was," the statement explained.

Despite these questions, the sword marks an exciting find for the archaeologists and for Germany.

"The sword and the burial still have to be examined further so that our archaeologists can classify this find more precisely. But it can already be said that its condition is exceptional. A find like this is very rare," Mathias Pfeil, head of the Bavarian State Office for the Preservation of Monuments, said in the statement.

[awearywritersworld]

the day of my execution

sukuna x reader summary: gojo, yuuji, and sukuna discuss what happened at the store. sukuna begins to consider your mortality like never before and takes care of you when you're sick. w/c: 2.7k tags/warnings: fluff. mentions of attempted kidnapping. banter. reader has the flu. aged up!yuuji. not canon compliant. fem!reader. no use of y/n. a/n: sorry for disappearing for so long, but here is the long awaited next chapter. i've put a second a/n at the end, so i hope you'll read it. please excuse me talking out of my ass trying to rationalize my application of jujutsu, but if gege does it, so can i. i hope it kind of makes sense though. series masterlist // masterlist

truthfully, yuuji expects his wednesday morning to be as uneventful as any other, but when he stands in front of the bathroom sink to brush his teeth, his eyes are not the only ones staring back at him.

"what d'ya want?" he groans. "it's too early for this."

"we need to talk."

sukuna doesn't give his vessel a chance to respond before he begins recounting the events of the previous night, a story which has yuuji's face cycling between surprise, worry, and dismay. "the man claimed someone sent him?"

"that's what i said," sukuna responds impatiently.

"why would anyone be after her? i don't understand."

"would it kill you to use your brain for once?" sukuna questions, having had the entirety of the night to ponder the situation. "think, idiot. who would be interested in using her in some ploy? against you. against... us."

yuuji's eyes widen. "the higher ups?

"no one else would be so brazen."

it strikes sukuna as ironic that just days after he relayed the cruelness he endured at the hands of jujutsu society's higher ups a millenia ago, you too almost became one of their victims. it's a reality that he despises.

"i should call gojo—"

"that is out of the question."

"do you want to keep her safe or not?"

sukuna scoffs. "this is how we keep her safe. if the higher ups are after her, we can't trust other sorcerers."

yuuji almost seems offended on gojo's behalf. after all, he's known him for the better part of a decade. "i'd trust gojo with my life."

"well this isn't your life we're talking about. this is much more important."

yuuji chuckles. "i know. that's exactly why we need help."

before sukuna can protest, yuuji's dialing his old sensei and asking to meet somewhere they can speak privately.

that's how they end up at a small bakery on the outskirts of tokyo, sukuna relaying the story for the second time that morning.

once he finishes, gojo leans back in his chair and folds his hands behind his head. "well, i don't think you're wrong about the higher ups being involved."

"so what are we supposed to do?" yuuji asks. "they might use her to get to me, but you don't think the higher ups would actually put her life in danger, do you?"

though yuuji's question is directed toward gojo, it isn't him that answers.

"you're as naive as ever," sukuna scoffs. "they'll stop at nothing to achieve their own ends."

gojo grimaces, a silent agreement with the assertion. "i can do some poking around, see who ordered it to be done."

"and what exactly is that going to do? there's no reasoning with them."

"a fact i am well aware of," the white haired man narrows his eyes at the king of curses. "but there is leverage in power, something i happen to have more of than anybody—"

"almost anybody—"

"so as the strongest, i'll take care of this as soon as i can."

"hey, um, so as productive as all the dick measuring is," yuuji interrupts. "it doesn't keep her safe in the meantime."

"i have an idea in that regard," sukuna says. "it's an ancient practice, and while it doesn't offer any protective measures, it will allow me to find her if they make another attempt like last night."

gojo leans forward, clearly interested to hear more.

"i can imbue a talisman with a part of myself and if she wears it, it will act as a beacon for her location."

"with part of yourself? as in, your cursed energy?" yuuji speculates. "wouldn't that do more harm than good? attract cursed spirits and whatever?"

"no, i'm not a fool. it's not cursed energy."

sukuna is hesitant to clarify further. he'd done something similar when creating his fingers, but it was different then. it was a selfish endeavor to preserve his life long after it was his time to die. it was a dark sort of jujutsu, one meant only to bring destruction.

but intention is important in sorcery. it can change the very essence of the practice.

for the first time in his life, sukuna is acting selflessly, concerned only with your protection. it's a pure sort of jujutsu this time around, one that allows him to impart a piece of himself that isn't tainted by cursed energy.

and because of that, that part of him would be unprotected. it'd leave him uniquely vulnerable. it's a steep and dangerous measure. that's why the practice had been forgotten long before the modern age.

"then what could it possibly be?" it's quiet for a moment as yuuji's question hangs in the air.

"it's your soul, isn't it?" the disbelief lacing gojo's voice is quite plain, but he's heard whispers of such techniques. "you'd give her a piece of your soul."

sukuna's never been one for unfinished business, so it's no surprise when he finds himself on the couch, intent on finishing the stranger. besides, it had become clear he'd been focusing on the wrong aspects of the book when he first began reading it.

he's three chapters from the end when he hears a loud shatter from the kitchen, followed by a sharp gasp. the broken glass hasn't even finished sliding across the floor before he's at your side.

"what happened?" the alarm in his voice doesn't go unnoticed by you.

"nothing, nothing," you assure him. "i just dropped my cup."

crouching down, you reach for one of the bigger pieces before your hand is swiftly smacked away. "don't."

"it's fine. it's only a little glass."

when you reach for it again, he grabs your wrist. "you troublesome little thing. do you ever listen?"

"i don't make a habit of it."

"i know. the question was rhetorical."

sukuna's already noticed the shards of glass surrounding your bare feet, so he wastes no time in picking you up and placing you on the countertop.

"don't move." he says it in such a way that, for once, you don't even think about disobeying him.

he all but stomps out of the room, returning moments later with a broom and dust pan. there's a small smile playing on your lips as you watch him gather the larger pieces before sweeping up the rest.

and you know, it's really not fair. sukuna could even call it a cosmic injustice, the way he has to worry about broken glass and fragile fingertips.

but he likes you and he likes the pads of your fingers, particularly the way they feel against his skin and run through his hair, so he swallows his pride.

it's been consuming him lately— the fact that you are just as easily broken as the glass that littered the kitchen tile. he never considered just how many ways there are for a human to die until you were nearly taken from him.

so once he's done, he rests the broom and dustpan against the wall and stands in front of you, his hips situated between your knees.

reaching into his pocket, he pulls out a necklace and your mouth falls open in shock. a delicate chain is threaded around his fingers, while its ruby pendant dangles in the air. "i want you to have this."

"what.. what is it?"

he snorts. "you don't know what a necklace is?"

you let out a breath of a laugh. "of course i do. i'm just surprised."

you hold up your palm and he places the necklace there gently. inspecting the gem, you notice it bears a striking resemblance to the color of his eyes.

strangely, it's almost as if it's heavier than it should be— like it's weighed down by some importance beyond your comprehension.

"it's beautiful," you tell him honestly. "are you sure?"

"sure of what?"

"that i should have it."

he pauses before responding, taking in the way you're so gingerly holding it. he's scared you've realized what he's actually giving you. that you're repulsed by it.

he's hesitant when he asks, "why would you think otherwise?"

"i didn't do anything to deserve something like this."

sukuna breathes a sigh of relief. "you are ever the fool."

his hands find your hips, pulling you off the counter and onto your feet. he plucks the necklace from your hand, then shifts to stand behind you.

moving your hair to the side, his fingers brush lightly against your skin. "the necklace is undeserving of adorning your neck. not the other way around."

and he knows it's the truth. a piece of him, attached to a creature so lovely she should be out of his reach... well, that's just unseemly, isn't it?

"but promise me something anyway."

"anything," you say without delay.

he situates the chain around your neck, the pendant lying in the space where your collarbones meet, and fastens the clasp. when you turn to face him, you're met with an alarmingly grave expression.

"promise you won't ever take it off."

you fiddle with the ruby somewhat nervously, feeling as if you're missing some important piece of the puzzle.

you nod in response to his request, but it isn't enough for him.

"say it."

"i promise."

he can see that you're biting back questions, so he explains, "if you're wearing that, i'll always know where to find you."

it finally dawns on you, for the first time, how much the incident at the store truly affected him. it's not the way he ended those men that clued you in, nor is it the way he pleaded with you to forgive him.

it happens in this moment. it's the gentleness of his voice, despite his underlying desperation. it's the way he's watching you carefully, as if you're likely to disappear. it's the fact he wouldn't let you clean up a mess of your own making, because he can't stand the thought of seeing you bleed.

"i... i don't know what to say."

"well, that's a first."

"shut up," you punch his shoulder. "you're ruining the moment."

"right, my bad," he chuckles and glances down at the gemstone. "do you like it?"

you let out a breath. "of course. i love it."

he smiles at your words— soft and genuine— truly a rare sight. "good."

you notice that he's looking at you. really looking at you. his eyes shift away from yours and over to each of your temples. then down to your nose. your mouth. even your chin.

he takes in every detail and he feels like he's in your debt simply for gazing at your countenance.

you almost regret it when your hands curl around the collar of his shirt and pull his lips to yours. you should have savored his smile, spent time committing it to memory.

although, that's soon forgotten as you feel the curve of his mouth deepen while his lips move against yours.

it isn't until day three of your ceaseless coughing and sneezing that sukuna adds them to his list— broken glass, fragile fingertips, coughs, and sniffles.

his concern is clear from the way he dotes on you. he brings you cold cloths, makes you tea, massages your neck, runs you baths.

now he's on his way to a twenty four hour pharmacy to pick up more medicine to reduce your fever, and while it's only a block away, he's still doing it alone.

but not even for a moment does he consider running off to burn the world's largest city to the ground. the streets are crawling with people, but he finds himself avoiding them more than anything.

he has to get back to you after all.

the only thought on his mind other than you is the ending of the stranger. the main character, while awaiting his beheading from his prison cell, conveys his final words to readers:

for the first time, in that night alive with signs and stars, i opened myself to the gentle indifference of the world. finding it so much like myself— so like a brother, really— i felt that i had been happy and that i was happy again. for everything to be consummated, for me to feel less alone, i had only to wish that there be a large crowd of spectators on the day of my execution and that they greet me with cries of hate.

in sukuna's first life, perhaps this line would have resonated with him. it was a life where he had resolved himself to the idea that nothing really mattered, because the alternative was too painful. it didn't matter that jujutsu society betrayed him. it didn't matter that he stole people's lives out from under them. it didn't matter that he was alone.

and while he would have never surrendered himself to execution, if that had been his fate, he would have preferred to go out surrounded by living reminders of all he had accomplished. surrounded by all the people he had ruined.

however, when he imagines such an occurrence happening in his present life, there is only one face throughout the entire crowd and it belongs to you.

the very thought makes him sick with grief.

looking up, he realizes that there are no stars in tokyo anymore, that there is no feeling of indifference when it comes to you, and that there is no happiness to be had when you are not by his side.

he knows he'll never shed another drop of innocent blood if it means you'll always have that look of adoration in your eyes when your gaze falls on him.

so his trip to the pharmacy is short and hurried.

opening your apartment door, he's careful to be quiet in case you're sleeping, but he finds you peering at him from the couch.

your hair is disheveled. there's a sheen of sweat across your forehead. your eyes are beyond tired. your shirt is wrinkled.

you're still the most pleasing thing he's ever laid eyes on.

"you're back," you rasp.

"i'm back," he affirms, slipping off his shoes.

you sit up and quickly regret it, your hand coming to rest against your stomach. "god, i feel like i'm gonna puke."

"charming."

you use all your strength to throw a pillow at him, which he easily catches before tossing something small in your direction— a ginger chew to help with the nausea.

you unwrap it and pop it in your mouth. "thanks."

he hums in response, settling down in the spot beside you. once he pulls the medicine from the bag, it's followed by two bottles. "got you these, too."

recognizing them as your favorite drink, your exhausted and delirious brain makes your eyes well up with grateful tears. "you're so sweet."

"yeah, whatever. don't get used to it."

"but you are. you're sweet and kind, except i'm the only one who knows it," you pause before continuing, your head falling onto his shoulder. "why is that?"

he contemplates denying that he possesses any such quality, but decides against it. "you're the only one who's ever cared to know."

he can feel the heat of your temple through his shirt, so he opens the box of fever reducers and pops out two tablets before handing them to you. "take these. you're burning up."

you do as he says without protest. standing up and stretching your arms above your head, sukuna's eyes wander to where your shirt rides up and reveals your stomach.

"c'mon, let's go to bed," you yawn.

he follows after you wordlessly, carelessly pulling off his shirt and climbing into bed beside you. curling up against his side, your head comes to rest on his chest and it's quiet for a few passing moments.

"you can't see the stars from tokyo anymore."

"what?" you ask sleepily.

"the stars. there's too much light to see them from here."

"oh, yeah. we can take a trip to the mountains soon. you can see them pretty well from there."

"i'll hold you to that."

and so with the promise of a beautiful night sky, with the company of someone who means the world to him, and with the feeling of your body pressed against his— sukuna feels that he had been happy and that he was happy again.

a/n 2: hey! so i'm sorry again for stopping updates without really saying anything. i think i just needed to step away from tumblr and writing for a while because i was getting a bit overwhelmed. i was also a little unsure about the direction of this chapter. i was struggling to incorporate the necklace part without it seeming cheesy or weird. that being said, thanks as always to everyone for your support of this series. it's really heartwarming and much appreciated. if you have any feedback, i'd love to hear! i'm not sure when the next update will be, but i'll do my best to keep you guys posted. all my love - m<3

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[rememberwren]

A Dichotomy of Thought || 3

Part One | Part Two | Part Three | Part Four | Part Five | Part Six | Further Parts

Johnny has a good day.

Tw: ableism; implied sexual assault

#

That night you dream about fucking the two neighbors in 5C.

It’s good sex, too. You can tell by the sweat slicking your skin and the ache in your thighs. You are naked on the big one’s lap, his huge hands on your hips while he bounces you on his cock. Behind you, the shorter one loops his one arm around your waist and grinds his cock against your bare arse. 

“Did Jesus send ye?” his voice rasps against the sensitive side of your neck. You tilt your head to give him more room to suck and kiss and bite. Then, as his hand slips down to tease where you need a soft touch the most: “Are you gonna finish me off?” 

The one beneath you cums, a flood of warmth deep within your aching cunt. His groans have you teetering on the edge of your cut of the pleasure. You lean down to kiss him, but before your mouths can meet, hands grip your hips and lift you free—his cock slides out with a wet rush of fluids, leaving you feeling cracked open and empty.  

Your boyfriend passes you on to his friends who are waiting for their turn with you, and then it is no longer a dream, but a memory. 

#

Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays are for physical therapy. Tuesdays and Thursdays are for cognitive rehabilitation. Both of these are paid for by the British government and accomplished in the ‘comfort’ of Johnny’s own home. Like that’s supposed to help; he’s going to have to sweat (literally) and bleed (probably figuratively), but as long as it’s on his own carpet, that’s quite all right. Johnny isn’t sure which he hates more, the physical or cognitive rehab. Both hurt, just in different places; one hurts the stump of his arm, the muscles of his shoulders and neck, his fake knee. The other hurts his pride, leaves him tired and second guessing his broken mind. 

The other scares him. It’s one thing to lose his arm—one terrible, traumatizing thing. But the idea that he’s going (or gone) simple is too much to take.

The cognitive rehabilitation therapist’s name is Anna. She wears horn-rimmed glasses and sloppy buns that Johnny fantasizes about gripping in his fist and throttling her with during their less productive sessions. 

By sessions, he means they play games together. Simon sits on the sofa in the living room pretending not to watch. He thinks he’s so fucking clever, turning his pages even, but Johnny knows. Simon’s gaze is a tangible thing, as physical as a touch, like a finger running up the back of his neck. There’s no hiding from it. You don’t get a name like Ghost without raising the hairs on some people’s arms with just your eyes. 

“It’s your turn, Johnny.” 

“I fuckin’ know it. Sorry—sorry.” 

Anna puts up a hand to stall his sorries. She is younger than he is; shouldn’t she be older? Wouldn’t that make this less painful? “Take your time.” 

It’s a simple matching game. There are less than a dozen tiles left on the board, and Johnny has seen most of them two or three times by now. He keeps forgetting their placements, even though he is burdened with the memory of having chosen them. 

His shaking fingers reach for a tile…a red car. Sweat breaks out on his brow. He’s seen this fucking Red Car no less than six times. His fingers hover over the board, moving from one tile to the next. Here? Or here? If he sees the Rose again, he’ll lose his head; he knows it. He can feel his blood pressure rising like the mercury in a thermometer, up up and away, blackness eating at the edge of his vision.  

Finally, with absolutely no idea where the other red car is, he picks a tile at random. 

Red Car. 

Johnny shouts out in triumph, holding up the tile for Simon to see. Even Anna—eternally unimpressed Anna—gives him a smile, infected by his joy. 

“Good job—now do it again.” 

Groaning, he picks up another tile. 

Rose. 

#

“Come lay down with me,” he says to Ghost after taking two of the green, oval pills that are the only things which take the edge off his pain. They make him so fucking tired, though—perhaps that’s their secret; if they can’t take the pain away, they’ll at least help him sleep through it. 

“Alright,” says Simon, putting his book down. He doesn’t bother marking his place; they both know he wasn’t reading it.  

The two of them slip into the bedroom. It isn’t much: a bed against the southern wall, the doors leading out onto the balcony—blinds pulled shut to keep out any hopeful rays of sunshine, a desk piled high with medical bills that the government will front. 

Johnny is pretty good about getting his shirt off with just one arm. He reaches up and back, gripping the collar, and tugs it off over his head in a smooth, fluid motion. He’s thinner after his three-month stint first in the hospital and then in inpatient rehabilitation, but he still looks good. 

He hates the stump where his arm used to be, but today he doesn’t even care. It’s a good day, a purely tolerable day. He presses himself against Simon and kisses him, the first true-kiss he can remember giving him since the accident, though his memory is not what it used to be. Simon’s hands—large and warm and strong—settle on his waist pulling him closer. It’s desperate and messy, too much teeth and tongue, neither of them quite settling into the old easy dance they used to be capable of; likely because they aren’t the same people anymore. 

“Fuck, I want you,” Johnny pants against Simon’s feral mouth.

“You can’t,” Simon grits out, dragging Johnny’s hardened cock against his own. 

“Like hell I can’t!” Though…already his knee throbs, a deep ache punctuated by glass-like shards of sharpness when he bends it. He could take it—but it would hurt. But fuck, what doesn’t hurt these days? “I need you, Ghost.” 

Simon grips him by the hair which has grown out too long and badly needs trimmed. He tugs back til Johnny’s neck pops uncomfortably. “You’ll take what I give you,” Simon says, sounding on the verge of madness, at least as desperate as Johnny feels. 

“‘n what? I can’t beg for more?” 

“Oh, you can beg,” says Simon darkly. 

He pins Johnny against the sliding doors of the balcony, rustling the blinds around his body. Knees bent to bring them to just the right height, he fists both their cocks in one large hand, his face buried in Johnny’s neck, muffling groans against his skin.

“Yes,” Johnny gasps, his nails digging into Simon’s back. “Yes, jus’ like that—fuck! Don’t stop, don’t stop, don’t—“

Simon keeps jerking off his spent cock well after Johnny cums, even after he begins whining and pulling back, shoulders thudding against the glass doors behind him. Ghost makes Johnny fuck his fist through the sensitivity until he cums too, both their seed slickening his hand and turning the sound of his handjob filthy-wet. 

“Thank you,” Johnny sighs, blissed out. He doesn’t feel any pain, not in his stump or his knee or his head or anywhere. Maybe it’s the pills, but maybe it’s Ghost. Maybe it’s the relief of knowing they haven’t fucked up their relationship beyond all repair, that they’re still capable of loving one another like this. “I needed that. 

Simon feeds two fingers soaked in cum past Johnny’s full lips, relishing the way his hot mouth sucks the digits clean. He admits: “So did I.” 

He cleans them both up and they curl up on the bed together for Johnny’s afternoon nap—the doctors say all the sleep he needs is good for his brain. 

Simon doesn’t intend to fall asleep. But he does. 

And when he wakes, Johnny is not there beside him. 

#

You’re just thinking how cold it is out on the balcony, wondering if it is worth it to risk going back inside for a sweater, when the balcony doors from 5C open and out steps the man you almost hit with your car. He looks likely to be cold as well, wearing only a t-shirt and loose pants, his feet bare against the concrete. 

A cigarette is tucked in the corner of his mouth, unlit. He gapes at you, and it falls to the balcony floor. Glancing behind himself into the darkness of his apartment, he shuts the door with careful tenderness before bending down with a wince to pick up his cigarette. 

 The sleeve of his missing arm dangles innocuously. “I wasn’t expecting to see anyone out here.” 

“Sorry,” you say on instinct. It’s ingrained in you; a lifetime’s worth of apologies. “I can go in and give you some privacy.” 

“World’s big enough for two,” Johnny says coolly. There are chairs out here, but he doesn’t sit. Instead he leans against the doors with his good side and pretends to look out. It’s a lovely view of the parking lot. You do the same, except you can see the spot from here where you almost hit him with your car, and it makes your stomach turn. Speaking of: “Sorry about all that in the parking lot. My temper got the best o’ me.” 

“I’m the one who should be sorry,” you admit. “I was distracted. I can’t say it enough, I’m so—so sorry.” 

“Water under the bridge,” he says. He holds out the only hand he has left. “Johnny MacTavish.” 

You hold out your own left hand, shaking via air from the distance between your balconies. When you give him your name, he mutters it under his breath two, three, four times. 

“I’m going to forget that,” he warns you at length with a sad little laugh, fiddling with the unlit cigarette still in his hand. “It’s not you, it’s me.” 

“It’s alright,” you forgive. “It’s pretty forgettable.” 

Johnny frowns, putting the cigarette back in his mouth and working his hand into his pocket. His accent is so sweet to listen to, syrupy and dropping the consonants off of his words as he assures you: “Didn’t say that, did I, lass? Don’t get twisted.” 

Mollified and embarrassed in equal measure at his simple admonishment, you duck your head. 

“Got a broken brain,” he says in explanation, reaching up to tap the cigarette against the scars at his temple. “Forgot one of my own sisters’ names on the phone last week and she wept like a bairn. In my defense, I have several of them.” 

“I forget people’s names and I don’t have a head injury,” you say. 

Johnny snorts softly, the sound carried away by the wind.

He withdraws a lighter, one of the cheap disposable ones you can buy beside the registers at gas stations. His hand shakes as he tries to spin the sparkwheel once, twice, thrice, but no dice. Johnny takes a deep, slow breath, like a little boy trying not to lose his temper. He tries again, the familiar noise of steel rasping on steel, but no spark. 

You wait, patiently, eyes turned out toward the parking lot as he begins muttering curses beneath his breath. Anxiety itches beneath your skin. His building anger is a tangible thing in the air like heat thrown off by a lit flame or the smell of burnt rubber, tires squealing in the parking lot as you slam on the breaks. A man’s anger is familiar to you. It predicts pain. Your skin flashes hot and then cold, and you are just about to make a polite escape inside when: 

“Can you catch?” he asks, sending your gaze swerving to him from the parking lot.

“Can I—? Fuck!” you throw your hands up just in time, scrambling for the lighter even though he only tosses it underhanded like an easy pitch for a tee-baller. It slips from one of your sweaty hands to the other like a slapstick comedy routine, but it doesn’t clatter to the concrete nor does it fall off the balcony altogether. Holding it in your hand, you light it easily to make sure it works, missing the hungry, bitter expression that comes over his face when you do. “How? I can’t reach you from here.” 

“We can meet in the middle.” 

You can’t. Even with him outstretching from his side of the balcony and you from your own, there is a good half a meter of distance between you both. You can’t help but remember the other man’s words—I just want one fucking cigarette without worrying about him taking a swan dive off the balcony. 

“Be careful,” you admonish when Johnny slips a little, his ribs digging into the iron-wrought railing. He doesn’t have good balance, you realize. Does losing an arm fuck something like that up? The answer you don’t know: it fucks up everything. Taking a deep breath, you glance over the rail and take note of how high you are from the ground. High enough for a healthy splat should you fall…

“Forget it,” he says morosely, his brows low. He is the picture of dejection, a kicked dog. “Doctors say ‘m not supposed to smoke anymore anyway.” 

“Don’t they say that to everyone? Just—hang on.” Tucking the lighter into your pocket, you throw one leg over the railing. 

“What are yeh—you-uuu fucking nutter,” he laughs as you test the stability of the railing. It doesn’t shift or creak at all under your weight. Heart in your throat, you lift your other leg over, feet lodged in the narrow space between the railing and the concrete floor. Gripping the rail with a tight fist, you let your weight lean into the space between your balconies, reaching into your pocket to remove the lighter and flick it to life. 

Johnny looks like he could laugh or cry or both, stretching out his shaking arm so you can light the cigarette and then quickly bringing it to his mouth to suck it to life. 

“Yer crazy,” he says breathlessly, words tinted with smoke as he watches you scramble back over the railing and to safety. 

The sliding doors open. For a moment, you mistake the sound for being closer than it is—for being your boyfriend finally noticing how long you’ve been gone and coming to find you. He’s going to find you out here with Johnny and the same arguments will be born all over again—arguments about your disloyalty.

But it’s Johnny’s doors which slide open. The taller man comes out, the circles under his eyes standing out darkly  against his pale skin in the late afternoon light. At the sight of Johnny, an expression of raw, poignant relief comes over his face. 

Johnny drops the cigarette over the ledge of the balcony, face sheepish. 

“Was just meeting our bonnie neighbor,” says Johnny, slipping his arm around the other man’s waist. If there was any doubt left of what they were to each other, it disappears: seeing them together, you can see the magnetism that draws them together. They act like plants which turn toward the sunlight, except they are the sunlight. The bitterness inside you rises up in the back of your throat. “Grateful to be doing it without a car in between us. This is Simon.” 

“Nice to meet you,” says Simon. 

“You too,” you offer, like perfect strangers. 

You don’t find the lighter still in the pocket of your pants until later, when it is past midnight as you are collecting your clothes from the floor, aching between your legs and raw-eyed from crying. You flick the sparkwheel, watching the flame come alive. Glancing behind you, you make sure your boyfriend is fast asleep before creeping to your dresser drawers, opening the one with your socks, and shoving the lighter towards the back as far as you can. 

[gnabnahc317cb97]

Cucking Part 2

Bang Chan x Jeongin x female reader

Word count: 15.7k

A/N: I have worked SO hard on this! I have poured everything into this, in any free time I've had, every day for the last... like... week! It has been a while since I've felt this inspired and invested in a story. With THAT being said the product is 15,814 words of absolute filth and debauchery. She's a SLOOOW burn. I tried to build up the tension sooo much and then I snapped. Who even wrote this I dunno probably the same person that did those horny texts. I hope you all love it but please read warnings carefully!!!

Warnings: 18+ ONLY! MDNI, strong language/cussing, mentions drinking alcohol (no one is drunk), unprotected sex with multiple partners (NO NO NO do NOT do that!), roll play, voyeurism, pet names (princess, angel, baby girl, good girl ), reader calls Chan daddy, Jeongin calls reader noona, spicy pics, masturbating (m both), oral (m both & f), biting/marking, choking (very little), dom/sub dynamics (switch Chan/switch Jeongin/sub reader), light system used, multiple orgasms/overstimulation/subspace mentioned, edging, Innie cucks the FUCK out of Chan, a lot of degradation, name calling (m/Chan & f, pathetic, whore, slut etc.), cum eating (m & f), rough oral/deep throating/face fucking, gagging (fingers, panties and mentions actual gag), spit play, rough sex (like really super fucking rough)/bdsm, hair pulling, clit/pussy slapping, cuffs and spreader bar used, choker and leash, sex toys, ass play/fingers (m & f)/butt plug/anal sex (f, first time), ass eating (m), squirting, cum play (like lots it gets messy), cum eating, coming on face, cream pie, DP 2 & 1 hole (vagina), bomb ass aftercare (Chan and Innie are absolute sweeties!) If I missed any warnings please forgive me it was A LOT!

Part 3

The Wednesday before you and Jeongin’s dinner reservations Chan gave you his credit card and you went to the spa as planned. Per Chan’s orders you got what he called, the princess treatment, which included a full body wax, facial, mani/pedi, and, your personal favorite, a hot stone massage. There was even a lavender infused seaweed bath, they did everything! When you left the spa you felt like a million bucks and headed off to the mall to find a dress for your ‘date’.  

Chan had told you to get yourself something nice to wear to dinner with his card while you were out as well. You had argued with him about it at first, you didn’t like it when he spoiled you so much but he loved to do it, you deserved it. After you guys had gone back and forth about it for a minute it became clear that it was no longer Chan you were arguing with, it was daddy, and daddy put his foot down. Spa and dress, pay with his card, period.  

So, you were at the mall browsing around yet another department store you had wandered into. You still hadn’t seen anything that really jumped out at you. You had a little bit of an idea of what you wanted but you just weren’t seeing anything like that. You turned looking at another display and notice a cute little black dress on one of the mannequins.  

You typically gravitated towards black since you and Chan both liked it but you had planned on wearing something in a softer color for a change. The lingerie Jeongin had picked out was a pretty pink with ruffles and bows, it was so cute, you wanted to pick a cute dress too. Alas you hadn’t seen anything else that piqued your interest and even though it was black, it had lace details and dainty straps, so it WAS cute, even if it wasn’t what you had envisioned.  

As you stood there considering your options which were, settle for the black dress or go looking in yet ANOTHER shop, a lady who worked at the store came up and asked if she could assist you. You thanked her and asked if they had the dress the mannequin was wearing in a pastel color or maybe even a pink but she regrettably informed you that particular dress only came in black.  

You deflated a little when she said that and the lady, trying to be helpful, asked what style you were looking for exactly. After you told her what you were picturing, she pulled up their online catalog and showed you an adorable pink dress that was almost exactly what you’d had in mind, even the shade of pink was perfect, but the price tag alone was about $100 more than the black one. You weren’t sure what to do.  

On the one hand you LOVED the pink dress, it was truly perfect, but you DID like the black one too and the black one would be cheaper especially since it wouldn’t have to be special ordered and shipped in a rush. On the fence about which dress to choose you excused yourself from the lady a moment, grabbed your phone and pulled up the group chat you had with Chan and Jeongin from the other day... 

Saturday morning you and Chan woke up and started your day like any other Saturday. Chan showered and got ready for work while you made him a little breakfast and ate your own, then you showered while he ate his. Chan washed the dishes then kissed you good bye and left for work. Since you had weekends off, you left to run a few errands and when you got back you tidied around the house and got a few necessities for that night situated in the bedroom.  

Really you were mostly just trying to burn off any nervous energy and keep yourself busy until it was time to start getting ready for you and Jeongin’s dinner reservations. The plan was for you to take a car service to Chill and meet Jeongin there at 7. Then after dinner the two of you would drive back to you and Chan’s place in Jeongin’s car and well, the rest would play out as the night progressed. 

Although you had showered that morning, you had done a lot of running around so you wanted to freshen up. You also hoped a nice hot shower would help relax your left-over nerves. It’s not like you were scared about what was going to happen, on the contrary, you were extremely excited but you also never really thought you’d ever be with anyone else other than Chan and, as turned on as you were by the idea of the whole situation, you couldn’t help but feel a bit shy at the thought of another man, Jeongin of all people, seeing a side of you only Chan had ever really been able to bring out. So, you took a long shower hoping to calm your nerves.  

You took the extra time to wash your hair with your milk and honey shampoo and conditioner and made sure to exfoliate with your brown sugar body scrub. When you finally got out of the shower you lathered your skin with your vanilla bean body butter. You dried your hair and decided to wear it curled, then tied it half up with a pretty pink ribbon. When you did your make up you didn’t go too crazy, it would be ruined by the end of the night anyway, so everything was neutral shades and soft pinks. Once you were ready you pulled out the dress Chan had picked up for you on Friday as promised. 

You thought it was even cuter than it was in the picture and it fit you PERFECTLY and made your tits look amazing. You dropped your robe and slid the dress on, then grabbed your fuzzy baby pink cardigan so you wouldn’t get cold, and buckled your cute, pink, platform mary janes. When you stepped back to take a look at the full ensemble you were very pleased with yourself. 

Tonight you were to be sweet innocent little y/n. Daddy’s perfect little princess that was to be corrupted and wrecked in every way possible by the maknae and then Chan. Just then your text alert went off informing you your ride had arrived. Right before you left, as a finishing touch, you dabbed a little of your favorite Kayali vanilla rock candy perfume on your wrists and neck and with that you were ready. You looked and smelled like the most tempting piece of candy, ready to be eaten, ready to play your roll. 

By the time you were dropped off at Chill Jeongin was already there and seated at your table. When you walked in he couldn’t believe his eyes. You were an absolute dream come true in that dress. He had to adjust his dick in his pants before standing so the whole restaurant didn’t see him rocking a hard on already. He gave you a hug and kiss on the cheek and when he leaned in your scent engulfed him. You smelled like the most delectable dessert and it didn’t help the growing situation in his pants at all. 

“You look AMAZING Noona!” Jeongin breathed out in awe as he took your sweater and pulled out your chair for you to sit. You giggled and blushed as you sat down. 

“Thank you Innie. You look very handsome too.” And he really did. It was just a simple black suit, he had decided to forego putting on a tie and the top button of his crisp white shirt was open, very minimalistic, but it was all tailored to him very well. Had his shoulders and chest always been so broad? Had he always had that slutty narrow waist? Had your blinders for Chan always been so effective that you had failed to notice just how beautiful the maknae was in his own right? Well tonight, at least for a time, Jeongin had your undivided attention. 

As nervous as you had been earlier in the evening you and Jeongin managed to have a completely comfortable dinner together. It was honestly no different than any other time the two of you had spent together which put you at ease. You both casually talked about your day, joked, and had a few drinks after you were done with the meal which did wonders to loosen you up even more. You weren’t drunk by any means, not at all. You were just primed with a little liquid courage, which was probably why you felt emboldened enough to slide off one of your mary janes and gently press your foot against Jeongin’s crotch under the table. 

“Noona!?” Jeongin whispered surprised, not so much that you had made the first move, more so that you had done so in public. It seemed you were definitely ready to get this game started. You tilted your head as if you were confused by his reaction. 

“Yes Innie?” You smiled sweetly, batting your eyelashes and feigning innocence as you slowly slid your toes back down his inseam and against his hardening cock. 

“Is something wrong?” You asked in a painfully cute voice, bordering on aegyo. Jeongin took a deep breath and collected himself. He reached under the table and wrapped his strong hand around your ankle firmly, stopping your movements. He looked at you with his sharp foxlike eyes and cocked his eyebrow. 

“No, not at all actually, but this dinner has most definitely come to an end. You should probably put your shoes back on, we’re leaving.” Jeongin’s voice was calm but demanding. He slid his chair out and let go of your ankle, letting your foot fall to the ground abruptly, then walked over to pull your chair out as you slipped your shoe back on. You stood and Jeongin grabbed your sweater wrapping it around you. His hands lingered on your shoulders as he leaned in closer to steal another whiff of your intoxicatingly sweet scent. 

“You smell good enough to eat princess.” He whispered into your ear, his warm breath fanning across your neck, giving you goose bumps. So, you were ready to play? You wanted to tease him? Well, he could tease too and he would show you, he could tease better. Jeongin’s hands trailed down your back until he was gently palming your ass over your dress. 

“Come along then angel, time to go.” He gave your ass a gentle nudge in the direction of the door to get you moving and followed behind you, one hand now ghosting the small of your back as he led you towards the exit. The air outside seemed to be a bit cooler on the walk to Jeongin’s car than when you had first arrived, it made your nipples hard. He quickly opened the passenger door and helped you in before walking around, climbing into the driver’s seat, and starting the car to get it warming up for you. He looked over and saw your erect nipples through your pretty pink dress. 

“Better buckle up beautiful.” Jeongin reached over and grabbed your seatbelt before you even had a chance to register his suggestion to put it on. You watched his strong hand grip the belt as he pulled and clicked it into place for you. Then he looked up at you, his face only inches away from yours. You let out a little gasp and bit your bottom lip as you began to feel, almost dizzy by his proximity, the woody smell of his cologne, the warmth emanating off him, and the way he looked at you as if he was ready to absolutely devour you.  

You held your breath and your eyes fluttered closed, you thought for a moment that Jeongin was going to kiss you right then and there but instead he chuckled and sat back, putting on his own seat belt before putting the car in gear and heading towards you and Chan’s apartment.   

Although dinner had been filled with lots of chatter and laughing the ride to the apartment was eerily quiet. The only sounds were of breathing and the soft music coming from the car radio as you both stole glances of each other from the corner of your eye. There was a sexual tension building between the two of you more and more. With every rotation of the tires taking you to your destination, the air in the vehicle grew thicker with desire. You looked out your window at the passing city trying to distract yourself from the almost overwhelming feeling growing inside you.  

You were pulled from your distraction when Jeongin’s hand suddenly grabbed a hold of your thigh, his placement very deliberate. As high up as he could without pushing up your skirt, his fingers tracing, coming to rest on your inner thigh. His grip was firm but gentle as he gave your supple flesh a soft squeeze. It was very clear now that he was signaling the dynamic of the night had indeed just shifted and it was time to play. 

Once you arrived at you and Chan’s place Jeongin jumped out and quickly helped you out of the car. You led the way into the building but Jeongin hurried ahead to open the door for you. Once in the lobby you made your way to the elevators, one of which was already on the ground floor so you didn’t have to wait thankfully. When you stepped onto the elevator and Jeongin realized it was only the two of you, all he wanted to do was push you up against the cool metal and touch you, taste you, finally, but he knew once he’d gotten his hands on you there would be no stopping himself. So as difficult as it was, he waited. He waited the 14 floors it took to get to the level you and Chan’s apartment was on and, to you especially, it had never seemed to take so long to get there as it did this night. 

Jeongin walked up behind you taking a deep breath in completely addicted to your scent already. You bit your lip and closed your eyes as you tried to ignore how close he was. The ding of the elevator signaling you were finally at your floor snapped you out of your horny daze. The doors opened and neighbors you recognized, a nice couple that always chatted with you and Chan, were waiting to get on. Jeongin placed his hand on the small of your back and you both quickly made your way off the elevator allowing them to enter.  

They seemed a little surprised to see you, especially looking so cozy with a strange man, but they smiled politely and said hello to you both as they passed. You hoped that they didn’t assume you were some shady bitch ‘cheating’ on Chan as you made your way up the hall towards your shared apartment with another man. Would they say something to Chan if they thought so? Would they treat you differently the next time they ran into you with him in the hall?  

As you got to your door you shook those thoughts from your head. You couldn’t and wouldn’t worry about any of that now and it didn’t actually matter what they thought anyway. YOU knew you weren’t cheating on Chan. You knew this is what HE wanted. So, what anyone else thought or assumed was irrelevant.  

You got the door unlocked and walked in, Jeongin still following closely behind you. You hit the switch by the door and dim lights softly lit the apartment. You slipped your shoes off by the door and shrugged off your cardigan tossing it on a chair as you made your way into the living room. You turned facing Jeongin who had also slid his shoes off before taking his own jacket off and laying it over the back of your couch. It seemed like the tension that had been building in the car and elevator had dissipated a bit after running into your neighbors. You decided another drink was in order. 

“I’m going to get a drink, would you like something?” Jeongin smiled and nodded. 

“Yes thank you, a drink would be nice, whatever you’re having.” You made your way to the kitchenette and grabbed a couple of glasses from the cabinet. You tossed a few ice cubes in each glass and then poured three fingers of Chan’s Macallan 1824 for the both of you. You made your way back out to the living room to find Jeongin examining your book shelves. You made your way over and handed him his drink. 

“Thank you.” He smiled and took a sip. 

“Oh wow, this is REALLY good scotch!” You laughed as he took another drink. 

“I hope so Chan spent like $2500 dollars on it.” Jeongin choked a little. 

“$2500 dollars!” You laughed again nodding as you walked towards the couch and sat down. Jeongin took another drink as he followed. He sat his glass down on the table and took a seat right next to you on the couch, draping his arm on the back behind you, leaving very little room between the two of you. You quietly sipped at your drink a little until Jeongin took it and sat it on the table next to his own, then turned back to you. 

“You look absolutely unreal tonight princess. An actual angel.” You weren’t sure if it was the whiskey or the pet names, all you knew was when the words passed his lips your body felt warm all over and suddenly the sexual tension that had built up before, flooded the room again all at once. It was finally time. 

“Thank you.” You replied softly, fully stepping into your roll for the night as you looked down, blushing and shying away from his compliment. Jeongin hooked his finger under your chin and tilted your head up, forcing you to look into his sharp eyes. He licked his lips and then leaned in, softly pressing them against yours. He pulled away a little. 

“You’re welcome.” He whispered against your lips before kissing you again, a little more behind it this time. You could taste the whiskey on him. His hands found their way to your body and his lips started softly trailing down your jaw and neck. You tilted your head back granting him access as you tried holding back the small gasps that occasionally escaped you when his teeth would gently graze across a sensitive spot on your neck. 

“Don’t hold back princess. I want to hear you.” His lips ghosted against your skin as he spoke. 

“Let me hear you baby.” His big hands cupped your breasts over your dress as he sank his teeth into your neck again. You arched into his touch and let out a breathy moan.  

“Innie...” His name left your lips like a little prayer. 

“W-we shouldn’t...” As soon as the words left your lips Jeongin’s stomach dropped. He stopped kissing you and removed his hands from your body. You sat up surprised at first. Then your brain caught up and you realized exactly what you had just said. 

“NO! No. I’m sorry! I mean OUT HERE, we shouldn’t out here. Tonight Innie, unless you hear the word red, everything is alright. Don’t worry, okay?” Jeongin let out a huge sigh of relief and nodded understanding. You got up and grabbed your glass taking a sip as you started walking backwards towards you and Chan’s bedroom, beckoning Jeongin to come with you.  

Jeongin grabbed his drink, shooting back what was left and followed. When you got to your room you turned on your bedside lamp, casting the room in just enough light to see a little more than silhouettes. You sat your whiskey down on the night stand before opening the drawer to grab something. When you turned whatever you had grabbed, Jeongin assumed the lingerie, you were now hiding it behind your back. 

“I’m gonna just go freshen up. Why don’t you make yourself at home.” You made your way to the ensuite bathroom and turned on the bright florescent lights. You gave Jeongin a little wink and blew him a kiss before shutting the door, leaving him standing in the dim bedroom lighting alone.  

When the door clicked closed Jeongin sat his empty glass down by yours. He untucked and unbuttoned his shirt, unbuckled his belt then unbuttoned and unzipped his pants as well but left all of his clothes on still. He sat down on your bed and took his socks off balling them up together and tucking them out of the way before resting back on his elbows, legs draped over the side of the bed, spread wide, prominent bulge apparent, waiting for you to return. 

In the bathroom you slid out of your dress and you were indeed putting on the pink lingerie Jeongin had bought you. You removed the ribbon from your hair and shook your curls loose then you took your perfume from earlier and put a couple dabs on the insides of your thighs. You walked to the full-length mirror and gave yourself a once over to make sure the collar and everything else was in place.  

Once you were satisfied that it was, you went to go back out to the bedroom. Just as you grabbed the doorknob you stopped, closed your eyes, and took a deep breath, willing away any last-minute nerves about how Jeongin would see you now. He wanted this, you reminded yourself, YOU wanted this, and Chan wanted this. There was nothing to be nervous about. 

You opened the bathroom door and stood in the entry way as the bright light flooded the room again. It took a second for Jeongin’s eyes to adjust but when they did the sight in front of him was something he never dreamed of seeing and it was absolutely breathtaking. He sat up a bit watching closely as you clicked off the bathroom light and started walking towards him toying with the leash attached to your collar.  

About half way you stopped and stood there in the dimly lit room, allowing him to drink in every inch of you in that lingerie. Jeongin’s sharp eyes narrowed as he extended his hand, beckoning you with two long fingers to continue towards him. You did so until you stood in front of him, right between his legs, where he could really get a good look at you. That sweet scent that emanated from you engulfed him again, made him dizzy with desire for you. 

“Oh angel. You look so fucking...” Jeongin chuckled and stood from your bed He grabbed the little pink leash from you and gently pulled you even closer to him. 

“You just have no idea what I’m about to fucking do to you.” He kissed you, his tongue dipping into your mouth to finally get an actual taste of you and the taste was like heroin. He needed more immediately. Jeongin dropped the leash and gripped your hips turning you so he could toss you back on the bed.  

When he climbed on top of you and claimed your lips again your hands trailed up his firm chest and over his wide shoulders, pushing his shirt off. He tossed it and started almost frantically kissing and biting down your neck and chest, your fingers threaded through his hair and gently tugged every time he sucked another mark on you for Chan to find later. 

Jeongin left a wake of fiery kisses down your body, he stopped to playfully tug at the garter belt around your waist with his teeth then continued his trail of kisses down further. When he finally got to your frilly pink panties Jeongin buried his face in your clothed pussy and breathed you in deeply. 

“God damn! You smell so fucking delicious baby.” You covered your face with your hands blushing.  

“Innie...” You said his name in a small, shy voice. Jeongin tsked you. 

“No no, none of that now. Uncover your pretty face. I’m about to eat your cute little pussy so fucking good and I want to see every little face you make while I do, understand me princess?” You moved your hands and bit at your lips as you nodded. 

“I’m sorry I can’t hear you?” He said as he teasingly traced his fingers up and down your clothed slit, wetting your panties with the arousal that had been dripping from you since the beginning of the night. 

“Y-yes Innie.” You said sweetly. Jeongin hummed in satisfaction at your answer. 

“Good girl.” When the words left his lips, you closed your eyes, trying to calm yourself as more of your arousal flooded from you. 

“You like that don’t you? Hmm? You’re gonna be a good girl for me right?” Jeongin pushed your cute panties to the side to finally get a look at what smelled so damn delicious, then he took two fingers and gently ran them through your folds teasing your clit and gathering your slick. You gasped and nodded, then remembered to speak. 

“Yes Innie, I wanna be a good girl for you. I will be!” He smiled at you and stuck his fingers in his mouth sucking and licking your flavor from them. 

“Mmmm so fucking sweet. Then be a good girl and lay back now, it’s time for my dessert.” You rested back on your elbows, looking down as Jeongin spread your pussy lips apart and licked you from bottom to top. When he got to your clit he latched on and gently sucked. It felt so good your legs tried to press together around Jeongin’s head but his strong hands gripped each one of your thighs and held your legs apart as he started to literally make out with your pussy. 

That was it then, he was completely gone. Eating you out was solely for his own pleasure at that point and the only goal was making you cum. Over and over and over again, making your legs shake, making you question your sanity, making you scream for him so loud Chan would hear it from the elevators. He threw your legs over his shoulders and fucking ravaged you. 

You couldn’t be surprised at how quickly the maknae pushed you towards your first orgasm the way he hungrily lapped at your cunt. He was messy but with purpose. Licking and slurping at your pussy as your climax washed over you. Jeongin started fucking your hole with his tongue, then latched back onto your clit sucking harshly wanting to make you cum again quickly. You tugged at his hair and moaned his name. 

“Innie fuck! Sensitive!” He shook his head, he was just getting started. He didn’t care how sensitive you were. He gripped your thighs tightly and continued his assault on your clit before finally letting go and fucking you with his tongue again. Your second and third orgasms were back-to-back and that was when your legs started to shake but Jeongin still wasn’t done. He was so pussy drunk he couldn’t stop. He hummed and sucked and licked and fucked your cunt with his tongue until you were coming and screaming his name again and then again and then again.  

You felt like you were floating above your body. You were completely drunk on ecstasy and you and Jeongin had both gotten so lost in the moment you had failed to hear the front door open and close when Chan arrived home from work. You had been far too busy screaming Jeongin’s name that you didn’t hear Chan walk down the hall and stop at the cracked bedroom door. You were so both so utterly gone as Jeongin hungrily ate your cunt you didn’t realize Chan had watched him bring you to your last two orgasms through the cracked door, gripping his rock-hard cock over his sweats. 

At around 8:45pm Chan’s text alert when off as he and the rest of 3racha worked in the studio. He grabbed his phone and saw that Jeongin had texted him saying the two of you were leaving Chill to head back to your place. Chan’s heart rate immediately picked up. He calmly put his phone down and worked a bit longer until he found a good stopping point on the backtrack he’d been working on for the last 2 hours.  

Chan yawned and stretched and told the guys he was calling it a night. Changbin and Jisung were a little surprised to hear Chan turning in so early, it wasn’t often their friend took extra time for himself to rest but they said their goodbyes and Chan eagerly headed out. 

The entire car ride home Chan felt like his whole body was vibrating with excitement. He had to check himself so he didn’t do something stupid like speed and get pulled over in the process. When Chan finally got home, he quickly made his way into the lobby and towards the elevators.  

As he walked up he noticed two of his neighbors waiting for the elevators as well. It was a couple that often stopped and talked to you and Chan in passing so Chan smiled and said hello to them as he usually did. They both froze a moment and looked at each other somewhat nervously but then they both smiled and said hi back.  

After standing there a minute Chan noticed the couple seemed to be having an unspoken conversation between the two of them as they all stood there waiting on the elevator. The girl nudged the guy with her elbow, kind of tilting her head towards Chan raising her eyebrows.  

The guy raised his eyebrows back at her dramatically as he gritted his teeth, slightly shaking his head no. Chan was just about to ask if everything was okay when the elevator dinged and the doors opened. Chan held the door open and waited, letting the couple get on first then he got on as well and hit the button for their floor.  

Once the doors to the elevators closed the silent conversation between the neighbor couple seemed to awkwardly continue. There were a few more elbows to the man’s ribs and a couple throat clearings directed towards him from his girlfriend but he just kept looking forward ignoring the daggers she was staring into the side of his head.  

Chan wasn’t sure what was going on exactly or why the girl suddenly looked so pissed off at her boyfriend but he decided it wasn’t his business and he was very happy once the elevator reached their floor and he was able to escape the weird pantomimed fight his neighbors had been having. 

When Chan got to the front door of your shared apartment he stopped and took a moment to try and collected himself. His heart was racing so fucking fast! This had been a big fantasy of his for a while and it was about play out in front of him in real life. Just standing there thinking about it he was getting hard, he was also pretty sure he could hear you a little through the door already too.

He didn’t want to wait another second. He took his keys from his pocket, unlocked the door, went in and stood there in the little foyer a moment. He was so fucking excited the blood rushed from his head to his cock instantly. His blood was pumping so hard and fast all he could hear at first was what sounded like white noise in his ears.  

Chan closed his eyes and took a deep breath. In through his nose, out through his mouth, trying to calm himself down a little. His hands were fucking shaking he was so excited. Once the blood rushing in his ears quit, he could definitely hear you. Panting, moaning, for another man, for Jeongin. Another deep breath. Chan turned and locked the door then kicked off his shoes.  

He walked through the kitchenette and saw his bottle of Mcallan on the counter. He quickly grabbed it and took a HEALTHY swig straight from the bottle. He enjoyed the satisfying burn as it went down then put the top back on, set the bottle down and headed further into the apartment.  

When Chan got to the end of the hall he could see the soft glow of the bedside lamp through the cracked bedroom door and the sounds you made were much MUCH clearer now. He could hear you breathlessly whining Jeongin’s name as you were very obviously having an orgasm. He wondered how many times Jeongin had made you cum already. 

Chan’s cock throbbed in his sweats at the thought. He made his way up the hall towards your shared bedroom and stopped again when he made it to the door. He peered through the crack and instantly had to grab on to his dick and squeeze hard. The sight before him was one he’d only dreamed of up until that point. 

You were on your back in that cute fucking pink lingerie set Jeongin had got you. Your legs were draped over the maknae’s wide shoulders, his head lost between your thighs. You gripped tightly at his hair as he absolutely ravaged your cunt, he looked like he was going fucking feral as he pushed you over the edge into another orgasm.  

You moaned out Jeongin’s name along with a string of expletives even louder than before as he did. Chan’s dick twitched hard in his hand, he was so fucking tempted to pull it out and start jacking off right then but he wanted to savor the moment, part of the fun for him was the edging. So he squeezed harder and kept watching as the maknae ate his girlfriend’s pussy in his bed. 

Chan continued to watch from the crack in the door as Jeongin brought you to yet another orgasm. When Jeongin came up for a breath Chan saw his face covered in your cum and he couldn’t stop the heavy breath that left his body.  

You and Jeongin heard a noise come from just outside the bedroom door and you both realized you were no longer alone in the apartment. Jeongin got up from between your legs, walked over to the door and opened it finding Chan standing there still squeezing his cock over his pants. 

“Oh hyung! I didn’t know you were here.” Jeongin said nonchalantly. Like he hadn’t just been caught wearing his Chan’s girlfriend's thighs for earmuffs as he ate her pussy like a baby’s first smash cake. Before Chan could say anything Jeongin hiked his thumb back towards you on the bed as you watched them, still laid out catching your breath from the marathon of orgasm’s the maknae had already given you. 

“I would ask if you mind me using your sweet little princess like a dirty fucking slut but it doesn’t really matter if you do.” Oh Chan was ROCK HARD now. Jeongin looked down and saw Chan gripping his cock so hard the veins in his hand were popping. He laughed. 

“That’s pretty fucking pathetic. Why don’t you stop touching yourself and come in! You are just in time to watch me fuck your girl’s face! Come on, come in!” Jeongin wiped your cum from his face and opened the door wider inviting Chan into his own room. Chan let go of his cock and walked in, as he did Jeongin extended his fingers covered in your slick. 

“Did you wanna taste?” Again, before Chan could even think of answering Jeongin stuck his fingers into his own mouth sucking your juices from them, humming in delight. 

“Too fucking bad. You don’t deserve to taste her. Maybe if you’re lucky she’ll let you use her when I’m done. If there’s anything left of her that is. Until then go sit over there.” Jeongin pointed to the chair Chan had put by your bed for JUST this reason. Chan walked over and sat down, his eyes never leaving your figure on the bed as he passed by you. Jeongin walked back over to you, grabbed your little pink leash again and pulled you upright. 

“Get on your knees angel, we’re gonna show your daddy how well you choke on my cock.” Jeongin dropped his pants and boxers as you got on your knees in front of him and you got your first look of the maknae’s cock. He was a little longer than Chan but Chan was thicker. You looked over at Chan and gave him a sly smile.  

His eyes looked wild and you could feel a fresh flood of arousal course through your body. Now Chan was here and the fun could REALLY start. Jeongin grabbed a fist full of your hair and yanked your head back harshly.

“Open up and stick out your tongue you pretty little slut.” You did as you were told and Jeongin spit in your mouth before slapping his cock against your tongue. 

“Go on suck it. Show your daddy how bad you wanna swallow my cock princess.” You looked over at Chan again as you took Jeongin’s dick into your mouth and started bobbing up and down, getting it good and coated in your spit.  

You hollowed your cheeks and started sucking him off as you watched Chan from the corner of your eye, then looked up at Jeongin for further guidance. He nodded smiling, pushing your hair away from your face and gathering it into a tight ponytail. 

“Be a good girl now, take it deeper, I know you can do it.” You did as you were told and took him deeper but he was longer than what you were used to so you struggled a little. Your eyes found Chan again. He was gripping his cock over his sweats again, biting at his plump bottom lip. Jeongin tsked you. 

“I thought you were gonna be a good girl for me princess? Didn’t you say you’d be my good girl tonight?” You looked up at Jeongin and hummed, nodding your head yes, cock sliding in your mouth. You started sucking harder, taking him deeper.  

“Then stop playing around and choke on my fucking cock slut.” Jeongin forced you onto his dick and the tip hit the back of your throat making you gag a little. He pulled out, and you let out a little choked sound, a string of your spit connected to your lips and Jeongin’s cock. 

“You gonna be my good girl and deep throat me now?” You nodded. 

“Yes Innie, I’ll be your good girl.” You choked out before you took Jeongin back into your mouth, looking over at Chan again. Your eyes narrowed with a wicked sparkle in them. Then you opened your mouth wide and started taking Jeongin’s cock whole, as deep as you could. You fucked your own throat with his dick, obscenely wet gawking sounds coming from the back of your throat, drool dripping from your chin. 

“FUCK! That’s it! Such a good little fucking slut. Good girl! Channie hyung can’t choke you with his cock like I can, can he princess?” You hummed and shook your head no side eyeing Chan again with tears forming in your eyes as you continued deep throating Jeongin’s cock. 

“I’ll teach you how to choke on a big dick.” Jeongin thread his fingers tightly through your hair and started thrusting harshly into your mouth as he held your head in place. The squishy gawking sounds increased in volume and came from you every time the head of Jeongin’s cock harshly hit the back of your throat.  

Spit now dripped from your chin onto your breasts, wetting your ruffly pink bra. You could feel your cunt getting creamier hearing Chan’s breathing come out more labored the harder Jeongin fucked your face. A particularly deep thrust made you gag hard and choke. Jeongin pulled you off his dick coughing and gasping for air. 

“Such a good girl aren’t you? You like the way I fuck your face don’t you angel?” He grabbed your leash in one hand, a fist full of hair in the other and pulled hard making you look up at him. 

“Y-yes Innie I like it when you f-fuck my face.” Jeongin shook his head. 

“Nuh uh. Don’t tell me princess. Tell him. Tell your daddy. Say you fucking love getting throat trained by my big cock.” He pointed over at Chan sitting in the chair still using every ounce of his will power to hold back. You turned to Chan putting on your best doe eyes. 

“Daddy, I fucking LOVE getting throat trained by Innie’s big cock.” Chan gritted his teeth and squeezed his dick again as his eyes rolled back a little. 

“Such a good girl for me. Listens so well.” Jeongin thrusted his cock back into your mouth deep, gagging you a couple more times before pulling you off again and tugging on your leash, making you stand. 

“Get on the bed slut, on your knees, facing Channie hyung. I want him to see the look on his baby girl’s face while his maknae fucks her stupid.” You got on the bed on your hands and knees facing Chan like Jeongin told you. He walked up behind you unsnapped and removed your garters then slid your panties down your ass. You lifted one leg then the other allowing Jeongin to remove them. When he saw how wet they were he couldn’t help but put them up to his face and take a deep breath. 

“Smells so fucking sweet angel.” Jeongin took another sniff of your panties then tossed them in Chan’s face. 

“There. You can jack off with those while you watch me raw dog your little princess if you want.” Chan couldn’t fucking take it anymore. He stood and dropped his sweats and briefs then sat back on the chair and spit on his throbbing cock.  

Chan wrapped your creamy panties around his shaft and started stroking it. Jeongin laughed, shaking his head, then got on the bed behind you, lining up with your juicy cunt. He teased your hole with his tip making you squirm and whine for him. 

“Man Channie hyung she’s pretty fucking desperate for my cock. Don’t you know how to satisfy her?” You arched your back pushing out your ass and wiggling it trying to entice Jeongin to just fuck you already. He spanked your ass hard instead making you let out a little squeak. 

“Patience princess, you have to wait, I’m making a point. My point is hyung, your girl wouldn’t be aching for my cock to be inside her this badly if you knew what to do with yours. So you sit there and jerk your useless dick while you watch how good I fuck your baby girl and know, KNOW, you could never fuck her like I’m about to.” Jeongin thrusted every inch of his cock into you hard and deep. 

“INNIE!” His eyes narrowed and he smiled at Chan after you screamed his name then he started fucking you hard. All you could do was grip the sheets and take it. Not that you were complaining. Every thrust Jeongin took was hitting your g spot harder and harder. If he kept at it he was gonna make you squirt for sure.  

You had fallen forward so Jeongin grabbed a hold of your hair and pulled you up that way Chan could see your face as he kept pounding into you. The sounds bouncing around the room were FUCKING sinful. Wet skin on skin, your tight cunt sucking Jeongin’s cock in, your moaning, Jeongin’s grunting, Chan’s panting as he fucked your panties. Jeongin leaned over you thrusting deeper as he whispered into your ear. 

“Tell your daddy who’s fucking you good angel huh? Who’s fucking you like the dirty fucking slut you are hmm?” You were breathless but managed to speak. 

“Y-you Innie, y-you fuck me so good, fuck me like a slut. Please please please.” He sat back up, spread your ass cheeks and spit on your hole before sticking his thumb in your ass as he continued to pound your pussy with his big dick. 

“Say I fuck you better than Channie hyung! Tell him how much better my cock feels!” You nodded. 

“You fuck me so much better than daddy does! Your cock is so much better than daddy’s Innie! YES YES FUCK FUCK!!” When Jeongin took his thumb out and pushed in two fingers, pumping them deep into your asshole, your orgasm hit you out of nowhere. You started squirting and you buried your face in the bed screaming as your legs shook. Jeongin’s cock slipped out when you started squirting but he just shoved it back in and fucked your cunt harder as your juices gushed from you.  

When you finally stopped coming Jeongin pulled out and ran his cock up and down your sopping wet, sensitive, pussy making you shudder from overstimulation. Chan was frantically tugging at his cock now as he fondled his balls, sweat had formed on his brow and his face grew redder the more worked up he got. 

“Get on your back princess. Want that pussy facing your daddy. Want him to watch me fuck your hole open until I fill you with my cum.” You got in position as Jeongin told you too, your legs spread wide so Chan could get a good look at your cunt. Jeongin hooked his arms behind your knees and pushed your legs to your chest putting you in a mating press then sank into you all at once.  

You didn’t think he could fuck you any deeper than he already was and you were wrong. In this position Jeongin was not only fucking you deeper than you ever had been but was also able to kiss you, so he did. His tongue teased yours as he took you hard. Chan knew the mating press was one of the easiest ways to make you squirt and waited in anticipation to get sprayed by you.  

“Take it take it take it!” Jeongin growled at you as he slammed into you harder and harder. 

 “Fucking take it, cum for me again you pretty fucking whore!” Another orgasm hit you like a head on collision and you started squirting again. Jeongin fucked your harder making an absolute mess and some of your cum hit Chan’s face. He wiped it up with his fingers and sucked on them as he beat off into your panties harder. 

“Tell your daddy you want my cum.” You moaned struggling to get the words out as Jeongin folded you in half and railed you fucking harder. 

“Go on tell your daddy what a cum hungry slut you are for me. Tell daddy his sweet baby girl wants MY cum in her cunt.” You tilted your head back and looked at Chan upside down. 

“I want his cum daddy, I want Innie’s cum inside me so bad.” Jeongin’s rhythm started to falter as his climax approached.  

“Fuck I’m gonna cum princess, I’m gonna fill you the fuck up!” Jeongin slammed into you one last time hard and started unloading inside your cunt, sending you reeling into another orgasm of your own. He fucked you through both of your climaxes, pumping his cum deep into you. When he was done he pulled out and moved so Chan had a good view of your gaping, dripping, hole.  

“Hold your legs back angel, show your daddy how pretty your pussy looks with MY cum oozing from it. Spread your legs for him so he can see.” You held your legs back as Jeongin pushed two of his fingers into you working more of his cum out before rubbing it all over your pussy and slapping your clit a few times more of your juices dripping from you. Then Jeongin took his fingers coated in cum and stuffed all four of them into your mouth. 

“Clean them.” You sucked all the cum from Jeongin’s fingers and hummed in satisfaction. Jeongin pulled his fingers from your mouth as his cum dripped from your cunt and then you heard Chan start to moan and whine like he does right before he comes. You were able to prop yourself up on your elbows enough to look over at Chan just in time to see him bust his huge load all over the pink panties he was jacking off with. After, you fell back onto the bed. Jeongin collapsed onto the bed next to you, both of you panting trying to catch your breath as Chan did the same in the chair.  

After a moment of everyone recovering in silence you heard Chan start to shift and move from the chair. When you opened your eyes to see what he was doing you found him standing by the bed over you and Jeongin looking down on you. He’d taken his shirt off and tossed it at some point, you really hadn’t noticed just when in the heat of things.  

You definitely noticed now that his chiseled body was standing over you completely naked, his cock already half hard again. It didn’t take a genius to notice the shift in the room as he stood there gripping your ruined panties tightly in his hand. The look on his face stern, brows furrowed. After a minute Jeongin opened his eyes and also realized Chan was standing there. He sat up waiting to see what his hyung would do or say next. A wicked smile spread across Chan’s face. 

“That was really quite cute. I will admit Innie, you fucked her very well. It’s not just anyone that can make her squirt without a vibrator, so don’t think I'm not impressed, but I’m about to teach you what ruining her ACTUALLY looks like. Get ready to learn maknae, because you’re about to help me completely fucking destroy daddy’s little whore.” Chan chuckled as he walked out of the bedroom for a moment and came back with three bottles of water. He handed one Jeongin and then one to you. You sat up and grabbed yours and when Chan didn’t let go you looked at him. His eyes brown eyes were softly looking you over. 

“What’s your color baby girl?” You were reminded again just why you loved this man so completely. He wasn’t going to touch you, he wasn’t going to do one single thing until he was sure you were good to continue. You smiled at him as he let go of the bottle. 

“Green daddy.” You opened the water and drank it all in about 2 minutes and threw your bottle in the bedside trash. Jeongin had also chugged his water as he sat there, red faced, sweating. Chan looked over at him. 

“Innie? Color?” Chan wanted to make sure EVERYONE was good to keep going. Jeongin looked a little surprised that Chan had asked him as well. He swallowed the last of his water and took a deep breath. 

“Oh! Uh... I’m green as fuck.” Chan laughed and shook his head at the maknae. 

“Good, green for me too.” Chan slammed his water, tossing the empty bottle aside and leaned over to quickly give you a soft kiss.  

“I love you.” He whispered looking at you seriously for a moment. You nodded, you had no doubt in your mind about that. Anything that was about to come from his mouth once the game started again was an act. He just wanted to make sure you knew that first and you did. 

“Let’s continue then, shall we?” Chan’s eyes stayed locked on you as he stood back up, the soft brown they were moments before were now almost clouded black with lust. 

“Lay the fuck down.” Just Chan’s tone, you knew not to hesitate and to do exactly as you were told. You laid back on the bed. 

“Innie, reach under the bed on that side, there should be a bar. Grab it.” Jeongin got up and reached under the bed pulling out the custom spreader bar Chan kept tucked away there. He handed it to Chan and he adjusted the length of the bar, extending it as far as it could go.  

You knew from experience just how far your legs had to stretch to accommodate the length of the bar when it was fully extended like that. It was a lot, Chan had it made that way on purpose for your punishments. 

“Wanna spread your legs for the maknae like a dirty fucking slut? Then spread them.” Chan cuffed your first ankle to the bar then pushed your legs far enough apart to cuff the other. It was WIDE but it wasn’t an uncomfortable stretch for you. Chan walked over to the black trunk he kept on his side of the bed and opened it, pulling out two pairs of padded cuffs.  

Jeongin watched as Chan went to one side of the bed, grabbed your wrist and yanked your arm above your head. He fixed the first set of cuffs, one on your wrist and the other end attached to a ring on the bed post. Chan walked around past Jeongin and pulled your other arm up doing the same with the second set of cuffs on that side. Now you were completely spread out on the bed for them, pussy dripping wet and exposed. 

Chan climbed on the bed and straddled you then gripped your pretty pink bra with both hands and tore it in half, pulling and ripping it off your body entirely the straps and shredded fabric digging into your skin as he tugged harshly at it. 

“Take this fucking shit off. Look at you dressed like some cute little fucking whore for Innie. I said take it the fuck off.” Chan growled at you as if you could do anything tied down the way you were now. He gripped the garter belt around your waist and yanked hard lifting you off the bed a little, ripping at it until it was shredded from your body leaving a couple little rope like burns on your skin from the fabric being torn from you. Chan left the collar and leash on you and threw the ripped-up lingerie on the floor before climbing off you. He shook his head as he ran his fingers through his curls and took a deep breath. 

“Not even an ‘I’m sorry for being a little slut daddy’? Looks like my good girl got dicked down by someone else and forgot how to act.” You shook your head no. 

“No daddy. I am! I’m so sorry.” Chan shook his head and sucked on his teeth. 

“No, you’re not. Not yet at least. That’s okay though, cause daddy is gonna remind you exactly whose little whore you are. Daddy’s gonna remind you who you belong to.” Jeongin still didn’t do or say a thing, just continued to stand there and watch Chan degrade you, eyes narrowed, as he gripped his hardening cock. 

 Chan walked back over to the trunk and started to grab more things. A flogger, a wand vibrator, nipple clamps, a glass dildo with a little pink heart shaped handle and a matching glass butt plug. As Chan lined up his tools you tried again to plea your case. 

“I really am sorry daddy, I’ll ne-” Chan quickly snatched up your panties he’d set aside, still covered in his cum, and shoved them into your mouth silencing you. 

“Shut the fuck up, I didn’t say you could talk. Dirty fucking sluts don’t get to speak. If I want to hear from you I’ll make you scream, otherwise...” Chan put his finger up to his plump lips and shooshed. It made you fucking throb.  

Chan picked up the flogger and started to drag it across your skin then lightly slapped you with it. Your thighs, your tits, your belly, just enough for you to feel it but not hurt you at all. Then he drug the tassels up your aching pussy and gave it a little slap. You moaned and tugged at the cuffs a little. Chan grabbed the wand and held it out for Jeongin to take. 

“Don’t stop making her cum until I say so.” Jeongin grabbed the vibrator from Chan. 

“I can definitely do that.” Jeongin clicked the wand on and pressed it against your pussy. You instantly tried closing your stretched legs but obviously couldn’t. Jeongin started to rub the wand up and down your slick cunt teasing your clit. You were so focused on the vibrations between your legs you were caught off guard by the flogger slapping against your tits again, a little harder than before but still pretty mild.  

You jumped a little and moaned and Jeongin pressed the vibrator directly against your clit and turned it all the way up. You tugged at your hand cuffs hard and squirmed as you started coming and Chan started flicking the straps of the flogger against your tits again and again, a little harder each time, red strap marks starting to show up the more he slapped you with it. 

When Chan stopped flogging your tits Jeongin turned the vibrator back down and started rubbing it up and down your wet pussy again collecting your fresh juices to help the wand slide back and forth over your throbbing clit.  

Now that Chan had your tits good and sensitive he grabbed the nipple clamps and attached them. Your breasts were numb from the flogging but you could still feel the slight sting from the pinching of the nipple clamps. Once they were in place Chan hooked the chain that connected them with his finger and gently tugged at your nipples. 

“Make her cum again Innie.” Jeongin nodded and pressed the wand against your clit cranking it up again rubbing it harshly back and forth, forcing another orgasm from you. You screamed out, the sound muffled by your cum covered panties. Jeongin was about to turn it down again but Chan grabbed his hand and pressed the vibrator against your clit harder. 

“Filthy fucking whore wants you to make her cum, make her fucking cum. Again!” Jeongin held the wand directly on your clit. You were holding onto your hand cuffs for dear life, the lower half of your body thrashing trying everything to press your thighs together or wiggle away, unsuccessfully of course. Chan pulled on your nipple clamps harder and you came again. Chan let go of the chain and picked up the flogger again. 

“Out of the way.” Jeongin moved the vibrator and the flogger’s straps connected with your cunt twice. The sting was absolutely delicious. Chan pointed at your pussy as fresh slick dripped from you. 

“Go on make her cum again.” The wand was pressed against your clit again and turned back up. The way Jeongin rubbed little circles against your clit with the vibrator was driving you fucking mad. You started coming again and this time you started squirting. 

“That’s it! We’re not stopping you make a fucking mess baby girl.” Chan pushed the vibrator out of his way and started harshly rubbing your clit with four of his fingers as your juices kept gushing from you. He slapped at your cunt a few times and then rubbed your clit hard and fast again before he pushed three fingers into your pussy, working every drop of cum out of you. Chan pulled his fingers out and gave your cunt another slap before standing back up off the bed. You laid there totally fucked out already. Chan pulled your panties from your mouth finally but replaced them with all of his fingers immediately. 

“Suck them clean.” You swirled your tongue around Chan’s digits sucking your cum from them like he told you to. When Chan deemed his fingers clean enough he pulled them out of your mouth and went to grab another toy from his arsenal. When he walked back over he was holding a bottle of lube and the glass butt plug. He held them up for you to see. 

“What’s your color princess?” You let out a breathless little laugh. These men were going to drive you into utter madness. 

“Green daddy.” Chan nodded, shoved your panties back into your mouth, and slipped right back into dom mode. 

“Time to stretch your asshole slut. Innie grab the bar and pull that little whore’s legs back.” Jeongin grabbed the spreader bar and pulled your stretched out legs back far enough that Chan had easy access to your ass. Chan put some lube on his fingers and started circling your asshole before pushing two fingers into you, getting you ready for the toy.  

He fucked your ass open with his fingers for a minute, then put lube on the butt plug and started teasing your hole with the cool glass. When Chan started pushing it in you couldn’t help how loud the muffled sounds were coming from you even with the panties in your mouth. 

“Better be a good girl and keep it the fuck down or I’m gonna have to get out the cock gag to use on you instead those panties.” Chan spit on your asshole just to make it a bit wetter as he kept pushing the butt plug into you. 

“See Innie? Daddy’s fucking slut can definitely take more than just a couple fingers in her ass.” Jeongin looked down licking his lips as Chan pushed the rest of the butt plug into you. You let out a choked moan but stopped yourself before you made any more noise. Chan massaged your ass cheeks with both hands giving you a second to adjust now that the toy was fulling inside you, then he gave you a hard slap on one ass cheek. 

“Alright you can unfold her now, grab that wand again.” Jeongin helped you bring your legs back down to the bed and grabbed the vibrator while Chan grabbed the glass dildo and climbed on the bed again. You laid there cuffed and spread out, Jeongin on one side with the vibrator, Chan on the other with the dildo, your ass filled by the butt plug. Chan wasted no time pushing the glass dildo into your mouth, making you suck it. Once it was coated in your saliva he took it from your mouth and immediately pushed it into your pussy, pumping it in and out of you hard. 

“You just gonna hold that wand Innie or are you gonna use it?” Jeongin laughed nodding 

“Right hyung!” He pressed the wand against your clit again then turned it on. There were suddenly so many sensations happening at once. The way the cuffs felt around your wrists after tugging at them while you came, your nipples had gone numb from the clamps pinching them, you could feel the slight welts from the flogger and clothes being torn from you, there was a dull ache that was starting to form in your legs from being spread so wide for so long, the toys filling your ass and cunt, the vibrations from the wand that seemed to spread through your entire body. It was so fucking much to take a once but you loved it. 

“Turn it up.” Chan demanded. Jeongin cranked the wand to high and just when you were about to cum again, and thought you couldn’t possibly take anymore, Chan grabbed the chain on your nipple clamps with his free hand and tugged as he fucked you harder with the dildo. Your whole body tensed when you came again, like you had been electrocuted. You could feel your asshole tighten around the butt plug as Chan kept fucking you through your orgasm with the dildo and you started to squirt for a second time.  

Chan fucking loved to make you squirt it was his absolute FAVORITE so when you started squirting again and he snapped. He pushed the vibrator away again then positioned himself between your legs and started licking and slurping at your gushing cunt. He ate your pussy like a man that had been pushed to the brink of starvation, he drank you like you were the fountain of life and he’d just crawled through the dessert to get to you. He pushed the dildo back into you and started sucking on your clit as he fucked you with it, working every drop of cum from you again. 

Chan was completely lost in you, Jeongin was just going to have to wait a minute. You came three more times before Chan decided he’d had satiated his hunger for your juicy cunt. At least for now. You laid there absolutely spent. Chan put down the glass dildo and took your panties back out of your mouth so you could take deep breaths easier. Your arms dangled in the cuffs as your body melted into the bed, your breasts heaving with your deep breaths. 

As you laid there recuperating Chan gently took the nipple clamps off then started undoing one of your hand cuffs. He nodded towards the cuffs on the other side, silently instructing the maknae to undo that side as well. Chan kissed your wrist once it was freed then he started unfastening one of the cuffs on the spreader bar, Jeongin immediately helped undo the other side of that as well.  

Once you were freed you moved your legs and arms trying to get all the blood flowing back into them. You sat up and rubbed at your wrists a little. Chan gently grabbed one of your hands inspecting your wrist closer and noticed red marks. 

“Color?” He asked, unable to hide the concern in his voice. You grabbed Chan’s wrist and gave it a reassuring squeeze, looking up at him. 

“I’m okay daddy, really. Green.” He took a deep breath and nodded but still left the room and came back with another bottle of water for you. You drank it down quickly and handed the empty bottle back to Chan to throw away.  

You had managed to collect yourself for the most part and now you sat there, a gorgeous man with a rock hard cock on either side of you, watching you, waiting for you, to have YOU. Chan beckoned you to him and you crawled across the bed on your hands and knees. He hooked a finger under your chin, tilted your head up making you look at him. 

“Be a good little slut now and gag on daddy’s cock like I like it. Do a good job and maybe I’ll let Innie fuck you again while you choke on me. Bet you’d look real cute getting spit roasted by me and the maknae, don’t you think Innie?” You looked back at Jeongin who’s foxlike eyes were fixed on your creamy pussy and the heart shaped end of the butt plug decorating your asshole as he stroked his cock. 

“Definitely! Cutest little slut I’ve ever fucked for sure.” You turned back towards Chan, grabbed his thick cock and spit on it. You started jacking him off, coating his shaft with your saliva before taking him deep enough to make you gag. You pulled off and took a deep breath before throating him again, deeper.  

The wet gagging sound that came from you as you started choking on him again and again made Chan throb hard. He gripped your hair tightly and thrusted deep into your throat until your nose hit the smooth, firm, muscle above his cock, then held you there. Chan pinched your nose closed and your throat constricted around his cock tighter as you tried to breath. Drool poured from your mouth and dripped from your chin down your tits as Chan gave you a few shallow thrusts before pulling you off gasping for air. 

“Color?” Chan pulled your hair tilting your head up towards him to look at your messy, mascara streaked face. 

“Green daddy.” You choked out. That wicked smile spread across Chan’s face again. He forced his cock to the back of your throat and held you there again. He didn’t pinch your nose this time, instead he started thrusting, fucking your face hard. The squishy gawking sounds coming from you was music to Chan’s ears. He thrusted hard gagging you and pulled you off again. He yanked your head back again harder, forcing you to look up at him. 

“Color?” He asked again. 

“Green daddy.” You gasped out again. 

“Open wide fucking slut.” Chan demanded and you opened your mouth. Chan spit in your mouth before shoving his cock back in and fucking your face again. 

“Since she’s being such a good little whore for her daddy go ahead take that pussy Innie. Give it to her hard, she can handle it can’t you baby girl?” You made a gagging noise trying to answer and Chan pulled you off his cock so you could. 

“Yes daddy! I can take it, make me fucking take it please!” You choked the words out desperately. Chan laughed and made you swallow his cock again. 

“You heard her Innie, make her fucking take it.” Jeongin knelt on the bed behind you, lined up with your wet cunt, gripped your hips tightly, and bottomed out in you so hard it made you gag on Chan’s cock. Jeongin started fucking your pussy at an absolutely brutal pace, spanking your ass until it turned pink as you bounced back and forth on both of their dicks. 

“Yes! Fuck! Take my big cock you pretty fucking whore!” Jeongin growled at you as Chan tugged your hair, pulling you off his cock again so he could watch your fucked out face as Jeongin continued drilling into you. 

“You want it harder princess?” Chan asked. You struggled to nod your head yes. 

“Yes daddy, daddy pleasepleaseplease, want it harder daddy need it harder!” You begged for it not caring how pathetic you sounded, how desperate you were. 

“Alright baby girl we’ll give it to you harder. Innie, pull out that butt plug. We’re gonna fill this little slut up.” Jeongin pulled his cock out and then grabbed the heart shaped end of the butt plug and gently pulled it out. You felt a little empty but you knew that was getting ready to change quickly. Chan got on the bed and sat with his back against the head board, his legs spread wide. 

“Well go on princess, if it looks like a throne, sit on it.” Chan smirked and winked at you and you cracked a smile. You couldn’t help it, the man had been destroying you half the night and he still managed to be a goofball. You crawled over to him and straddled his waist. Your pussy was dripping you were so wet just by the idea of what these two men were about to do to you. He grabbed your leash and pulled you forward kissing you. 

You lined Chan up with your pussy and sank down on him until your cunt was filled with his thick cock. You moaned into his mouth and braced yourself on his broad shoulders as started to ride him, feeling the stretch a little since he was a little thicker than Jeongin. Once you could comfortably bounce on his cock Chan gripped your hips and made you sit, taking him balls deep and held you there. 

“You ready baby girl?” He cocked his eyebrow at you. Jeongin was kneeling on the bed to the side jacking off, waiting for the signal to take his place behind you, between Chan’s legs. Your heart was racing now and your hands gripped Chan’s shoulders a little tighter. 

“Innie, hand me that glass off the nightstand, will you?” Jeongin reached over and grabbed the glass of whiskey you’d sat down there earlier that night then climbed behind you and handed you the glass. Chan’s big hands softly rubbed up and down your thighs soothing you as Jeongin pushed your hair aside, grabbing your shoulders and massaging them gently while you shot back what was left of the slightly watered down whiskey in your glass. You handed the empty glass back to Jeongin who stretched, putting it back on the night table and then went back to rubbing your shoulders. You took one last deep breath to prepare yourself. 

“I’m ready.” Chan nodded and grabbed the bottle of lube, handing it to Jeongin. He put a few big drops on his fingers then started teasing your asshole to get you lubed up. Jeongin pushed two fingers into your ass to make sure you were ready to take him then squirt a liberal amount of lube on his dick. He stroked his cock a few times spreading it all over making sure it was good and coated.  

“Lean into me baby girl.” You threaded your fingers behind Chan’s neck and leaned forward. Jeongin got right up behind you and teased your asshole a little before he slowly started pushing his cock into you. Your grip on the back of Chan’s neck tightened and you tensed a little when Jeongin’s tip slipped into your asshole. 

“Relax baby girl, just relax.” Chan cupped your face, kissing you softly, and your body relaxed as if it were controlled by Chan’s words alone. Jeongin didn’t move for a moment giving you time to adjust and relax completely then pushed his cock into your ass a little more. You let out a choked moan. Again, Jeongin waited for you to get used to the feeling of having two cocks inside you before pushing in further. 

“FUCK ME! GOD DAMN!” Chan grabbed your leash pulling you towards him as Jeongin gripped your hips holding you in place while he pushed the rest of his length into your ass. Now Chan AND Jeongin were balls deep in both of your holes. You had never had something so big in your ass.  

Chan had fucked you plenty of times while you wore a butt plug or while he fucked your ass with your glass dildo but he loved fucking and coming in your pussy so much this was the first time you had two very big, very real cocks inside you at the same time. You had never felt so full in your life. Chan pressed his thumb against your clit and gently rubbed circles against it. 

“Let me know when you think we can move princess.” You bit your lip and gripped Chan’s neck, your forehead pressed against his as you nodded. 

“Yes daddy, I just need a minute.” Chan gave your hip a gentle squeeze, gathered more spit on his fingers and played with your clit as Jeongin placed feather soft kisses across your shoulders and played with your tits, teasing your sensitive nipples. 

“Take your time.” Jeongin whispered against your skin. All the hands on your body gently caressed and massaged you as you got used to the feeling of two big cocks inside you. After a minute you had adjusted to their size and straightened up a little. 

“Okay daddy, you can move now.” Chan stopped playing with your clit, wrapped your leash around his hand and gripped your hip with the other. 

“Okay baby girl, hold on. You start Innie, go slow.” Jeongin nodded then slowly pulled out a little and pushed back into you. You moaned and threaded one of your hands into the curls at Chan’s nape and tugged as you gripped his shoulder with the other. Jeongin pulled out again, a little further, then thrusted into your ass a little harder and deeper making you move up and down Chan’s cock a bit. 

“FUCK! YES! LIKE THAT! Fuck me JUST like that!” Jeongin started a steady pace making sure not to go too hard just yet. Once you seemed to be taking Jeongin easily enough Chan adjusted a little. He let go of your leash and held your hips up so he could start thrusting into you from below.  

It didn’t take long for everyone to get a good rhythm going and the feeling of two cocks sliding in and out of your ass and pussy at the same time was driving you fucking mad with pleasure. Your wanting moans got louder and louder the closer you got to coming. 

“Does daddy’s cock hungry slut like getting her holes filled? Hmm?” You nodded frantically. 

“Yesyesyesyes fill me up! Harder! Want you both to fuck me harder daddy!” Chan and Jeongin both gave you what you wanted. All four hands held you as they fucked you harder, sending you reeling into subspace as you came hard again. When you started squirting Chan dropped his hips and stopped thrusting, then gripped your hips forcing you down onto his entire cock as Jeongin gripped you right above one of Chan’s hands, grabbed your leash and pulled on it as he fucking railed you in the ass hard, prolonging your orgasm.  

“OH MY FUCKING GOD YES!!!” You gripped Chan’s hair with both hands tugging and screamed so fucking loud when you came you hoped the neighbor couple from earlier didn’t hear you. Fuck it, actually, you hoped they did, you hoped they knew exactly what you were doing, taking two perfect cocks at the same time and fucking loving it, you didn’t care anymore.  

Your juices continued dripping down your legs as they trembled and Jeongin slowed his pace before stopping, buried deep in your ass still. Chan rubbed at your clit making you jump and twitch from overstimulation and you clenched hard around both of their cocks.  

You leaned forward resting your head against Chan’s again, gently carding your fingers through his sweaty curls as the room spun around you. Jeongin dropped the leash and softly ran his hands up your back, kissing your neck and shoulders. You didn’t move your head but managed to open your eyes and Chan was right there, looking at you. You closed your eyes again smiling and he cupped your face in his big hands.  

“Color?” Your heavy eyes fluttered back open and looked at Chan again still working on regaining the ability to speak after your last orgasm. Chan ran his thumb across your bottom lip and you took it into your mouth gently sucking on it. Your teeth grazed his skin as he slid his thumb back out of your mouth and down your bottom lip, pinching your chin, holding you in place. 

“Color baby girl.” You licked your lips so you could move them to speak. 

“Green daddy...” You said softly, kind of spacey, still a little overwhelmed from the feeling of both of their cocks filling you entirely. Chan cupped your face again and made you lift your head to look at him better. 

“You sure?” You let out a content sigh and nodded in his hands. 

“Yep! I’m sure daddy, green.” You smiled and your eyes scrunched and disappeared. Chan smiled, laughing a little then leaned in and kissed you, sliding his tongue into your mouth to taste you before pulling away.  

“You ready to see if you can take us both at the same time now princess?” Chan ran his fingertips down your arms and a little shiver ran down your spine as goosebumps rose all over your body. You were so excited by the idea of both of their cocks rubbing together inside one of your holes. 

“Yes daddy, I think so...” Chan cocked his eyebrow at you. 

“Think?” You shook your head. 

“I know. I’m ready daddy.” He gave you a peck on the nose. 

“What do you want to do? Ass or pussy? It’s up to you princess.” One of your thumbs went to your mouth and you chewed at your nail as you weighed your options. Chan had fucked your pussy with toys bigger than him before so that would definitely make it easier to take them both and you decided your ass had probably had enough for one night after being stretched by Jeongin’s big cock. 

“Pussy.” Chan shot Jeongin a look and nodded. Jeongin slowly pulled out of your ass and you could relax a little for a moment. Chan adjusted so he was laying back a little more, legs still spread wide to accommodate you and Jeongin between them. 

“Come here baby girl, lay on me.” You wrapped your arms around Chan’s neck and laid on him more, your breasts squishing against his firm chest as he wrapped his arms around your waist. The new position gave Jeongin a better angle to get to your cunt. He grabbed the lube and coated his cock again as well as squirting a liberal amount on you. He watched it drip down your pussy and the base of Chan’s dick that was still buried inside you.  

Jeongin scooted in a little closer to you and Chan and started by just rubbing his tip around your already stuffed hole, spreading the lube around more, getting you ready. Then he gripped the base of his cock hard and your hip harder as he started to push the tip of his dick into your tight pussy, and it was an EXTREMELY tight fit. When Jeongin finally managed to squeeze his tip into you, you all moaned out various expletives. 

“Fuck! So fucking tight princess!” Jeongin breathed out and Chan’s arms tightened around your midsection. 

“Tell me when it’s good baby girl.” Chan was watching every expression on your face to make sure you were doing okay. It was A LOT to take. Not in a painful way, although it did sting initially, but in a way that made your whole body feel like it was on fire from the adrenaline coursing through you.  

“Okay, good. I can take more Innie.” Jeongin still gripping his cock tightly pushed a little deeper. 

“SSssfuck! God damn! It’s SO much fucking cock!” Jeongin stopped again giving you more time.  

“Relax princess, just let go. Daddy’s got you.” Chan whispered into your ear. You let your body go more laxed and Chan held you. Jeongin slowly worked his dick deeper and deeper into your cunt waiting a little bit each time until he felt his balls pressed against you and Chan both. Jeongin gently massaged your ass cheeks spreading them so he could get a good look at your pussy stuffed full with two cocks. 

“Oh my fucking god it’s so fucking pretty. That’s it, it’s all in angel.” Jeongin wanted to reassure you that the hard part was over while Chan was doing his best to hold it together underneath you. He didn’t expect to love the feeling of Jeongin’s hard cock rubbing up against his inside you so much but between that and your velvety tight cunt Chan was glad you needed a minute because he did too.  

“Someone play with my fucking pussy, PLEASE! Distract me or I think I might lose my god damn mind.” Chan’s arms were still wrapped around you holding on to you so Jeongin reached around and started playing with your clit. It took a little longer to get used to both of their cocks in your pussy than it did when they were in different holes but they waited patiently until YOU were ready.  

Once you were ready you gave Chan a deep kiss parting his thick lips with your tongue and had a quick messy make out session. You broke the kiss after a minute then braced both your hands on Chan’s chest and propped yourself up a bit. You could feel both of them so full inside you as you moved and the feeling was an absolutely indescribable pleasure. You reached around and gripped the hair the back of Jeongin’s head tightly, pulling him into a kiss too. He licked and sucked on your tongue until you pulled away breathless. 

“Fucking ruin me.” You whispered against Jeongin’s lips then looked at Chan bracing yourself against his pecs again. 

“I want you both to absolutely fucking destroy me daddy.” Chan’s eyes rolled back and Jeongin’s cock throbbed inside you so hard Chan could feel it twitch against his own. They both couldn’t help but moan at the filthy request leaving your pretty mouth.  

Jeongin started moving first, only giving you shallow thrusts to begin with, making sure not to go too hard. You and Chan both moaned and cussed at the feeling of Jeongin moving in and out of your cunt, his tip rubbing up against Chan’s every time he was balls deep inside you. 

“Harder...” You whined and Jeongin picked up the pace, cramming his cock into of your tight hole faster. 

“Harder.” You asked again so Jeongin started bottoming out into you harder. 

“HARDER! Fuck me fucking harder god damn it!” Jeongin’s jaw dropped at your forceful demand and he went fucking crazy on you, fucking you fast and hard. Chan did his best to thrust up into you from below so the maknae wasn’t doing all the work.  

“Yesyesyesyesfuckmefuckmefuckme! Split me in fucking half!” You were a babbling drooling mess as their two big cocks slid in and out of your cunt. What the guys felt as they both fucked your hole together was unfuckingreal, their wet cocks slipping against each other as they found a rhythm and pounded into your pussy at the same time. 

“Daddy’s baby girl like being fucking used? Hmm? Is daddy’s baby girl a greedy little fucking cock slut?” You nodded and struggled to control the level of your voice. 

“YES DADDY! Yesyesyes fucking cock slut YESSSSuhhhhhh!” You groaned out as you were bounced up and down on their dicks harder. 

“Pretty little fucking whore loves getting wrecked by our cocks, don’t you angel?” Jeongin pushed your hair off your shoulder then sank his teeth into your skin and Chan latched onto one of your tits and started sucking and biting your nipple hard before moving to the other and doing the same.  

“Yes fucking use me, ruin me, destroy me, please FUCKING PLEASE!” Jeongin shoved his thumb in your mouth getting it covered in your spit then pulled it out and immediately stuck it in your asshole. When he did Chan spit on his own fingers and started rubbing your clit hard. You couldn’t take it anymore, you started screaming and coming.  

“FUCKFUCKFUCKINGFUCK! OHMYFUCKING GOD! YES! It was by far the most intense orgasm you’d had all night, probably in your whole fucking life. You started squirting again as your body convulsed covering Chan and Jeongin both in your cum.  

“Such a good fucking girl, go on soak us, don’t stop coming on our cocks! That’s daddy’s good girl!” When you finally stopped coming you slumped down on Chan, your juices still pouring from you, completely out of breath. Chan ran his fingers through your hair, pushing it out of your face as your whole body heaved with your deep breaths.  

Jeongin took his thumb out of your ass then slowly, gently pulled his cock out of your cunt. You hissed a little, feeling VERY sensitive from everything that had progressed through the whole evening but you had also never felt more satisfied in your entire fucking life. Chan sat up with you on his lap, cock still inside you. He wrapped his arms around you and Jeongin moved so Chan could lay you back on the bed gently. Once Chan had you laid back he pulled out and moved out of your way so you could stretch a bit. Once your back had made contact with the cool sheets your whole body relaxed. 

You laid sprawled out on the bed completely used up and probably the most fucked out you had ever been in your whole life. You felt the mattress give a little around you, then heard heavy, panting breaths coming from both of the guys.  

When you were somehow, by some miracle, able to finally force your eyes open you saw Chan and Jeongin were both kneeling over your lifeless body jacking off. You managed to reached up and started to fondle Jeongin’s balls with one hand and finger Chan’s asshole with the other as they both tugged furiously at their red leaking cocks. Jeongin scooted closer. 

“Fuck I’m gonna cum! Open up princess!” You opened your mouth and stuck out your tongue as Jeongin started to cum. The first few streaks landed on your face, more shot across your lips and tongue which you ate eagerly, a few more streaks landed across your face as Jeongin groaned and then fell back on the bed to catch his breath post nut.

You wiped the streaks of cum off your face with your fingers and sucked on them humming, savoring Jeongin’s flavor. Chan stroked his cock harder and moved, positioning himself so that he was straddling your face. You knew what Chan wanted without him saying a word.  

You gripped his firm ass cheeks with both hands, spreading them so you could start tonguing his asshole as he kept jacking off. Chan played with one of your tits with his free hand and beat off with the other while you fucked his asshole with your tongue, pushing him towards his climax fast. You heard the sweet sound of Chan’s deep throaty moans, the sound you know he made when he was about to cum. 

“Is my pretty little cum slut ready for more?” You hummed as you continued eating Chan’s ass and he started jacking off so hard it almost hurt, tugging at his balls. 

“FUCK! Here I cum! I’m gonna fucking cumghaaaah!” A guttural groan came from Chan as he shot his big load all over your tits and tummy. You felt the warm streaks of his cum land on your skin as you continued to kitten lick Chan’s asshole. He shook and twitched as the last of his cum streaked across your body. He adjusted a little and then stuffed his softening cock in your mouth. 

“Get it all baby girl, every drop.” You sucked any trace left from his cock as you started rubbing his cum all over your tits, smearing it on as if it were some designer skin care product.  

“That’s it, that’s daddy’s good little girl.” Once Chan couldn’t take the overstimulation from your sucking anymore he pulled his dick out of your mouth and slumped down on the bed, his back against the head board, head tilted up to the heavens as he tried like hell to catch his breath. You all laid there in silence, hot, sticky, sweaty, the only sounds between you all were heavy breaths. Jeongin was the first to somewhat recover, he took a deep breath and sat up looking over a Chan. 

“You want a water hyung?” Chan nodded still panting, face red, curls dripping sweat. 

“Fuck yes, please, thank you!” Jeongin got up off the bed. 

“Noona? Water?” You shook your head no. 

“I’m good Innie thanks.” Chan scoffed. 

“Uh no you’re NOT good. Yes Innie she would love a water please get her one as well.” You looked over at Chan shaking your head and rolling your eyes as you cracked a smile. Jeongin laughed and headed towards the kitchen to get everyone water. He came back and handed each of you one. Chan and Jeongin chugged theirs like before and you sat up and drank about a third of yours before putting the cap back on and tossing the rest aside for later. You flopped back on the bed, arms stretch out, hair spread out around your head like a halo. Chan crawled over and hovered above you then removed the collar and leash for you. 

“I know I usually draw your bath and wash you but I’m gonna have Innie do it this time while I clean up the toys and change the sheets for bed. You hummed in agreement. Chan looked over at the maknae. 

“Innie you don’t mind do you?” He shook his head. 

“Absolutely not. I’ll go run a hot bath then come back to help you walk to the bathroom noona.” You hummed again. While Jeongin drew your bath Chan laid beside you tenderly kissing all the red marks he left on your body. You could feel every ounce of his love for you in each kiss he left behind. Once the tub was ready Jeongin came back in and him and Chan helped you up off the bed and to the bathroom. 

Your whole body ached deliciously but it was difficult to walk still. Once you were settled in the tub Chan left to go clean up. Innie grabbed a rag and ran it gently over your face wiping off any of his cum that was left before running the rag over your shoulders and down your breasts, washing the cum from your body too.  

“Spread your legs a little for me noona.” You did as Jeongin asked and he, as gently as humanly possible, ran the rag over your pussy. You winced a little. 

“Does it hurt?” He asked concerned. You smiled and shook your head no. 

“No Innie just sensitive, I’m okay, I promise.” When Chan was done cleaning up he came back to the bathroom to help Jeongin get you out of the tub and back to bed. You crawled in collapsing in the middle and Chan laughed. 

“Tired baby girl?” You shook your head, face buried in the fresh linen ready for sleep to pull you in. 

“Mhmmmhm.” Your answer muffled by the pillow. 

“Innie if you want you’re welcome to sleep over with us. Bed is plenty big enough for everyone.” Jeongin nodded smiling. 

“Thanks hyung, I don’t think I could make it home right now if I tried.” Chan laughed again shaking his head in agreement. Both of the guys got cleaned up real quick and climbed into bed on each side of you. Jeongin curled up on his side and passed out almost immediately. Chan pulled you close and spooned you from behind, softly kissing your shoulder. You relaxed back into his arms, your favorite place, the place you felt the safest. 

“Thank you baby girl.” You hummed half asleep already. 

“F’what” You asked sleepily. Chan smiled and kissed your shoulder again as you slipped off into a deep sleep. He didn’t know how to answer that exactly. For playing out his fantasy with him? For fucking another man for him? For loving and trusting him so completely that you would do anything for him? For letting him love you? Chan pulled you into him tighter. 

“Everything.” He whispered before also drifting off to sleep.  

[you-call-it-a-dude]

Call It What You Want Pt. 5

Pt.1 Pt.2 Pt.3 Pt.4

Summary: it's thanksgiving break and you get to spend some time with Regina. She also meets your family, kinda. And she also comes out to her mom...kinda.

Pairings: Regina George x Fem/Gender Neutral Reader

Warnings: internalized homophobia, mentions of sex, emotions and feelings

Notes: hi! So I know it's been a minute and I really appreciate everyone's patience and continued support with this story. Life just got ridiculous and this chapter is also slightly long lol. I have a bunch of requests that I am going to get started on with the intention of getting those out in the coming weeks. I think something I really struggle with is that I love writing longer stories which can put me behind and I think I need to start learning how to cut things short lol. But thank you so much again and I hope you enjoy.

-----

"Ugh, I don't want to go." Regina said, stomping around your room.

It was the morning of thanksgiving and Regina may have fibbed to her parents slightly. She told them her final day of classes was Wednesday and since she had a night class she would come out first thing Thursday morning to celebrate thanksgiving.

The fib, or well big fat lie, was that classes ended on Tuesday and Regina spent Tuesday afternoon through Thursday morning with you at your mom's house.

Your mom went to California to celebrate thanksgiving with your brother, so you both took advantage of the opportunity to have alone time in a space other than one of your dorm rooms.

It was really nice, honestly. You cooked dinner for her Tuesday night. She tried to help, but you both discovered that cooking possibly isn't something she was good at when she almost chopped her fingers off slicing bread for garlic bread.

She did provide plenty of support and some distractions through. Whispering flirty things in your ear and wrapping her arms around you while you cooked and plated your meals.

She did promise you that she can make really good breakfast. She ended up making you probably some of the best scrambled eggs you've ever had on Wednesday morning.

You spend Wednesday afternoon walking around downtown Chicago. Regina insisted on paying for Lyfts for the rest of the day because she just straight up refused to take the train downtown and you refused to drive because trying to find parking down there was a fucking hassle.

You looked at the lit up Christmas tree, took her to the water tower mall to shop, and then she treated you to lunch at this really nice place that you probably couldn't afford on a good day, but you still tried to pay her back anyway. She obviously refused.

You came back to your house and you showered together in your huge walk-in shower.

Which, arguably felt like one of the most intimate moments you've shared so far.

You both laughed and bickered your way through the shower. Someone was always hogging the water for too long, or spraying water in someone's face, and you judged the ridiculous amount of conditioner Regina used in her hair and she gave a long spiel about why that was the necessity amount for her.

But it was perfect because none of it was serious. It was all playful and lighthearted and it made you sad that you didn't have any idea of when you would be able to share another moment like this with her again.

You dried off after the shower, both walking around the house in some sort of state of undress. Regina only in your t-shirt and a pair of underwear and you in a pair of boxers and a tank top.

You watched her do her hair and skincare routine, asking her questions about her expensive products that you had never seen before in your life.

She was patient with you, answering all your questions about her stuff. After she finished, she made you sit on the bathroom counter. She pushed your hair back with one of her microfiber headbands, choosing one that had a bow on it and scrunching her nose up at you and calling you cute after she slipped it on you. She rubbed some of her $500 moisturizer on your face, massaging it into your skin and giving you sweet compliments. She finished off your little face massage with a quick kiss to your lips.

She cleaned her hands off and asked you if you felt any difference between your stuff and hers. You nodded, trying not to let on how fancy you felt with this stuff on your face.

You spent Wednesday evening cuddled up on the couch watching 2000s rom-com movies that she deemed absolutely necessary for you to watch.

You wouldn't tell her how much you enjoyed the movies though. You put up too much of a fight to admit you enjoyed them all.

Wednesday night after the movies was spent in your bed. It consisted of sloppy kisses, your head between Regina's legs, and her nails scraping across your back.

It was hot and sexy in the moment, but in her post orgasm clarity, she realized how badly she scratched you up when she saw bruises forming around the scratches and one of them was bleeding.

She swore loudly when she saw them, clearly torn between being concerned and turned on. She made you sit at the edge of your bed while she cleaned them, pressing soft kisses to your back while she did.

You didn't care that she marked you. You wanted people to know you were hers and you'd be happy to let her do it again. You kinda hoped that she would.

The following morning, Regina stomped around the room, packing her bags with an annoyed pout on her face and complaining about how much she didn't want to go back to her parents' house for the holiday.

"Well, you are always welcome to spend it with me. I'll be at my dad and step mom's." You offered.

She paused, thinking it over seriously.

"Ugh, no. I can't. My dad will get so mad." She threw one of your shirts into her bag and you shook your head at her blatant thievery.

"You can come for dessert? Maybe you can even come back here with me after...?" You suggest and she smirked.

"So what you're saying is, you'll need me to bring you back here and that I can't stay with my family? Oooh, maybe I can use you as an excuse."

"Sure, make them hate me before they even meet me." You tease, scrunching your nose at her.

"I'm just saying! I can tell them we travelled together and we need to travel back together."

"You know you're an adult, right?" You point out. "If you don't want to stay, you don't have to."

"It's more complicated than that." She rolled her eyes, catching an attitude with you now.

"Don't get grumpy with me." You say firmly with your eyebrows furrowed and somehow she manages to roll her eyes even harder at you. "Look, if you have to stay then stay. I get it. I'm just letting you know you're invited to my dad's and you're welcome to spend the rest of your break here with me. Okay? No need to get mad at me about it."

"Okay, yeah. Fine."

"Okay, yeah. Fine." You mock playfully, making a face at her and putting your hands on her hips.

"I fucking hate when you do that mocking shit. Grow up." She said, putting all her hygiene products in her bag and shifting her hips out of your grip.

"Good grief. Are you gonna get all closed off and homophobic on me now because you have to spend time with your family?" You say boldly, crossing your arms. She whips her head around to look at you, narrowing her eyes. You swallow thickly and ignore the tingling sensation that look sent between your thighs and focus more on the fact at how mad she looked right now. "S-sorry. I'm sorry. I was just joking, but I am now recognizing I shouldn't have said that." You say quickly, but sincerely.

You really needed to learn that some of your little jokey jokes that may bode over well with your gay friends, might hit a sore spot for your very much closeted girlfriend.

"No, I-you're right. I'm kind of just having a really hard time." She admitted, her tone softening.

"With what, baby?" I ask, brushing some hair behind her ear.

"I don't know. I want to talk about you to my family, you know? I feel like my mom would really like you. I want to tell her so bad, but I'm scared she'll tell my dad."

"You think she would do that?" I ask, cocking my head to the side.

"I don't know. Maybe? She's also just so bad at keeping other people's secrets."

"You don't think she'd keep this one for you? Or that she'd be happy you told her?"

"I don-" she just shrugs, looking up to most likely stop herself from crying. "Part of me thinks she'd be really cool about it. But it's that little sliver of doubt that makes me too scared to say anything."

"Well, if you aren't feeling it, you aren't feeling it. You don't have to come out to anyone if it doesn't feel right. I'm not rushing you." You pat her hip reassuringly and give her a playful pinch. "The offer I made earlier still stands. Dont feel pressured to take me up on it, but it's there if you want it. All you have to do is tell me, okay?"

She just nodded and continued packing her bag. You know she's upset and probably not in the mood for any bullshit, so you kiss her shoulder and walk out of your bedroom to give her some space for a few minutes.

You get a drink from the fridge, fighting the urge to eat something because it's basically against the law to eat anything on thanksgiving before the meal.

She stepped out of your room a few minutes later, her bag over her arm and her sunglasses on. You pout slightly. You knew she was leaving because she had to get ready at her house, but it didn't make you any less sad to see her go.

"Let me know when you get there, please?" You ask, stepping towards her and planting a soft kiss on her lips. She nods and leans in, pulling you in for a deeper one.

"I love you." She mumbles against your lips before deepening the kiss again. You smile against her lips and kiss her once more before pulling away.

"I love you, too." You take her bag from her shoulder and throw it over your own. "Let me walk you to your car."

---

You haven't heard from Regina in a few hours now. She let you know what she made it home and sent you a few provocative photos of her getting ready, but otherwise you haven't heard from her since then.

It was almost 4pm and you've been at your dad's for maybe an hour now. Your step-mom's family were also present and they were okay people, but you didn't really know them.

You also didn't know they were coming. Your dad pulled you aside when you came into the house and said it was very last minute and he was upset by it. Not your business, but go off, dad.

You snatched your little sister up from your step-mom and followed your little brother up to their playroom. Too many people you didn't know were asking about what you were doing with your life, who you were dating, what you were studying. You've met these people like four times total.

You released Zoe and let her crawl around with Levi. You sat on the floor against the wall and let them both bring you toys and random shit they wanted you to see or hold. You play wrestled, let them climb on top of you, all around earning big sibling points you hoped.

You took a selfie of you with Levi climbing on your shoulders and Zoe sitting on your lap. It was blurry and all three of you were smiling and laughing in the photo.

Levi requested to see the picture of course, like any curious toddler would. Zoe didn't care, but she looked anyway because her big siblings were.

You sent the photo to Regina, expecting it to go unanswered like your previous messages the last few hours.

'I wish I was there with you'

She responded within about a minute. You frowned reading the message.

'Everything okay?' You respond, unsure if she'll even text back that quickly again. The little bubble with the three dots pops up immediately.

'Yes and no. It's fine.'

You were in the middle of typing up a response when she sends you another message.

'Can I still come over?'

You delete the message you were in the middle of writing to type up a new one.

'To my mom's for the rest of break? Or to my dad's for dessert?'

'Both. I don't want to be in this fucking house any longer than I need to be. I'm an adult, right???'

You smiled and rolled your eyes at her response.

'Yes, of course can. Dessert will probably be around 7. That work?'

She didn't text back, but she responded to your message with a heart so you knew it was most likely fine. You sent her your location so she knew where to go and continued to play with your siblings that had been all but demanding your attention while you responded to Regina.

"Alright, alright." You say, dodging a block that Levi was about two centimeters from smacking you in the face with. "Relax, you little monster." You tease, tickling his little belly and making him break out into a fit of giggles. Zoe looked up at you like she was being left out and you tickled her also, making her laugh.

There was a light knock on the door frame and you looked up to see your dad coming in with a small plate of appetizers, two sippy cups with water for the kids, and then a bottle of water for you.

"It sounded pretty rowdy up here, thought my babies could use some refreshments." He handed Levi his sippy cup and sat down on the floor across from you with his legs crossed.

You rolled your eyes slightly at him still calling you his baby, but you also still found it really cute and wouldn't dare make a comment about it.

Zoe was resting comfortably on your lap and he handed her the drink before giving you your water bottle and holding out the plate of snacks for you to pick off of, stealing a mini quiche for himself in the process of course.

You took a big sip of your water, not even realizing how thirsty you had gotten. You closed the bottle and set it to the side, taking the plate from him and eating the last mini quiche before it got stolen from under you.

"How's it going down there?" You ask him with your mouth a little full, covering it with one of your hands to be not gross.

"It goes, bud. They get on my nerves. What can I say?" He chuckled. "You talk to your mom today?"

"I called her but she didn't answer. Probably too busy with Ricky. You know how it goes." You shrug, sharing a small piece of mozzarella with Zoe that came from one of the mini caprese skewers, smiling at her when she said 'mmm!' "Is that yummy??" You ask her with a smile and she grins up at you while chewing.

"I love when you come by, kiddo. I know these terrors do, too." He said sincerely, ignoring the fact that Levi was wacking his back with a foam sword now and laughing like a maniac.

"Hey, dad, can I ask you something?"

"Of course!" He said, reaching his arm back and snatching that foam sword from Levi. It made the toddler giggle and run off, thinking he was about to get chased.

"Is it okay if my girlfriend comes over for dessert?" Your dad knew you liked girls, but you had never introduced him to any of your past partners before. He waved to Regina that day after the party when she brought you back to get your clothes and she waved back, but that was about it. You don't even think he saw her face.

He perked up and smiled at you.

"Girlfriend?? Of course! That's so exciting, Y/N!" He have your knee a nudge. "Tell me about her."

"Well, her name is Regina. We went to high school together. We didn't really talk much then, but we ended up being neighbors in our dorm and it just worked out." You say with a wide smile on your face. "But, um, she isn't out. To like anyone really, but especially her family. So I don't know how comfortable she would having people know, but I also wanted at least you to know that she was my girlfriend if I was going to invite her." You were nervous and rambling and you really hoped he understood what you were saying.

He nods his head and looks at you slightly concerned.

"I get what you're saying. Unless you indicate in any way that she's comfortable, we don't address it." He says sincerely. "Are you sure you're okay with dating someone like this?" He asks. You know he's coming from a good place, but you hate that people keep asking you this.

"I mean, she won't be in the closet forever." I shrug, picking a piece of lint off Zoe's outfit. "It'll be okay, dad. And if it's not, then at least I gave her a good first experience, right?" You give him a reassuring smile and he reaches over to brush hair from your face.

"I'm glad you turned out to be such a good kid. I know you dealt with a lot of shit as a kid, but you didn't let it ruin you. She can definitely come. I'm excited to meet her." He gave you a genuine smile.

The four of you turned your heads when you heard footsteps approaching. Your step mom, Ginny, came into the room looking exasperated and closed to door behind her softly.

"God, I hate the holidays sometimes." She said, plopping down on one of the rockers in the playroom. "They're driving me nuts. How have things been up here? It got quiet so I came to check on everyone- hi munchkin!" She reached for Zoe who all but launched herself off your lap to crawl to her mom.

You took advantage of your newfound hand freedom and grabbed that plate of appetizers you had set down. Though your freedom was short lived because within about ten seconds Levi threw himself onto your lap and almost sent your plate of appetizers flying.

You set your plate on the floor again and wrapped an arm around his tummy, offering him a pita bread with hummus that he happily accepted.

"Hey, Ginny?"

"Yes, hun?"

"Is it okay with you if I have someone join us for dessert? Dad said yes, but it's your house, too." She smiles at you and nods immediately.

"Of course, Y/N! We have plenty of dessert and I think you need someone your own age to enjoy the rest of the night with, too."

"Psh, I don't know what you mean. I am having so much fun with these two. Couldn't ask for a better holiday." You say truthfully, giving Levi's leg a playful pinch and making him laugh.

"So is this a friend or...?" Ginny asks with a small smirk and you can't help but smile wide. "Ah! I knew it! I knew it!" She said excitedly,

Ginny was about ten years younger than your dad. Smack dab right in the middle between your age and his. She's great and you really do love her. She's been around for many years now at this point and knows you just as much, if not more than your own mom.

"She's my girlfriend." You admit, blushing slightly. "But she isn't out yet, especially to her parents. I don't know how comfortable she's gonna-"

"Say less. I know exactly what you mean. We've got you. If that changes at any point, please tell us. Cause we would love to treat her like your girlfriend if we can. This will definitely stay between us though."

You smiled at her and the three of you sat in a comfortable silence for a few moments. You were watching the kids play and listening to the commotion that Ginny's family was stirring up downstairs.

At some point her mom shouted up the stairs obnoxiously for her that timers were going off and food needed to be pulled out and you all knew your peaceful moment was over.

Your dad and Ginny went downstairs to pull the food and turkey from the oven and you were asked politely if you could please do diaper checks on both of the kids before bringing them down.

Which, honestly, that seemed way better than walking into that mess downstairs.

---

Dinner was a little more chaotic than you were used to, but it wasn't totally unbearable. Ginny's parents, aunt and uncle cleared out so they could spend dessert with her cousin and his wife. They complained the whole night about how his wife was more of a baker than a chef.

So apparently that was the reason they sprung this last minute self invite to dinner on them.

Ginny's sister stuck around though, most likely to talk mad shit over a slice a pie and a glass of wine. Which, so valid.

Regina messaged you around 6:30pm that she was ten minutes away and you could feel yourself getting really nervous all of a sudden.

Cause of the whole never bringing anyone home before thing.

She texts you when she's here and asks you to come to her car. You look at the message confused, but excuse yourself from the house and run outside.

She's sitting in her black Volvo, which is surprising to you since she's back home in Evanston. You walk up to her car and open the drivers side door and see her sitting looking...nervous?

"Hey, baby." You say, wrapping an arm around her shoulder. She wraps an arm around your waist and gives you a quick hug. "Everything okay?" You ask, sounding concerned.

"I think I almost came out to my mom." She said, rubbing her hands against her thighs anxiously.

"Almost?" You ask, cocking your head to the side.

"I was in the middle of doing it and my dad came in and I just stopped talking."

You give her a sad smile and squeeze her shoulder.

"I'm so sorry. How do you feel about almost doing it?" You ask, dancing on your toes because you were starting to get cold. "What was the conversation?"

"I was asking her if I could leave and spend the rest of break with a friend. I didn't just want to be cruel and just leave." She was playing with her steering wheel cover. "I could tell she looked kind of upset, but she said it was fine and that she hoped I had fun. I felt bad. Like really bad. So I told her I was spending it with someone I was dating. She just looked so excited." She shook her head and buried her face in her hands and letting out a muffled, dramatic scream into her hands. She looked up again with a straight face. "Then she said tell her about him and I just didn't want to lie. I just felt in that moment I could trust her. All I was able to say was 'well it's not a guy' before my dad busted into the kitchen."

"And then what?"

"I left to come here." She shrugged.

"Babe, you definitely came out to her. You just didn't talk about it after." You say with an awkward chuckle.

"No," she shook her head. "I didn't come out. I didn't tell her enough. She's too goofy to have picked up what I meant." She said, seemingly trying to convince herself.

"Okay, you didn't come out." You affirm, but her phone lighting up over and over in the cup holder of her center console is having you believe that her mom might not be as goofy as she thinks. But you also know Regina can ignore messages like nobody's business when she wants to, so part of you also has a feeling Regina knows that her mom knows, too. "Are you gonna check those...?" You ask cautiously.

"No, I'm not and I think you should mind your fucking business." She said simply while she fixed her makeup.

"Don't start, please." You say softly and you see her tense briefly before relaxing.

"You're right. I'm sorry." She swallows and nods, looking up at you with a pout, her bottom lip quivering. "I'm really sorry." You furrow your eyebrows and cock your head to the side confused, waiting for her to continue. "I don't think I should go inside."

She said it barely above a whisper, but it still felt so fucking loud.

"Don't do this, Regina." You say, shaking your head. "Just come inside." You say calmly.

You can hear what your dad said earlier replaying in your head, about if you were sure you wanted to do this with someone who wasn't out yet and you hated that Regina was sitting here in front of you proving him right.

"I don't-" She just shrugged, looking at you with those sad fucking eyes.

"Look, I know you're scared and it freaks you out. I'm not trying to rush you." You cup her cheek, rubbing your thumb along her cheekbone. "But please just trust me and come inside. If you really hate it, I'll let you leave." You say softly. Your heart was pounding and you swear your hands were shaking.

Shit, you weren't even fucking cold anymore.

Regina was unpredictable and the possibility that she could flee at any moment was always at the back of your mind. Anytime something regarding her sexuality and coming out got involved, you always felt like you were teetering between her fully accepting herself or absolutely destroying you.

She gripped her steering wheel, staring straight ahead. You could tell by the way she was breathing that she was anxious and thinking about what to do.

You wonder if the only reason she hasn't just driven off yet was because you were standing in front of her open car door.

She chewed her top lip, trying to control her breathing through her nose and she nodded slightly. Her thumbs ran across her textured steering wheel cover and she nodded again, this time more confidently.

Like, you could actually tell she was nodding.

"Okay, okay, yeah." She licks her lips and swallows, continuing to nod.

You can tell she's still trying to convince herself, but she said it out loud and that works for now.

"They don't even have to know you're my girlfriend. You can just be my friend." You reassure her and you can visibly see her relax a bit.

She takes a deep breath and pulls her visor down and fixes herself in the mirror again. She slams it up when she's done and within seconds she's moving to get out of the car. The attitude and anxiety gone from her face as if it were never there and you frown at the thought of how good Regina has become playing this version of herself.

She grabbed her phone and her purse, closing and locking her car door and shoving her keys into her bag. She adjusted her outfit nervously and looked over to you.

"Do I look okay?"

"You look so beautiful." You smile, staring at her like she was the most beautiful person you had ever seen.

Well, she was.

She nods and follows you up the rest of the driveway, gripping the back of your shirt until you open the front door.

You walk inside and shut the door behind you both. You take her jacket off and hang it up. You hear some noise coming from the kitchen so you make your way over there first.

Your dad is pulling an assortment of pies from the fridge, Zoe crawling around his feet and him avoiding stepping on her expertly.

"Hey, dad?" You called to him softly when you entered the kitchen to get his attention. He looked up at the both of you and smiled.

"Hey, kiddos."

"This is my friend, Regina." You introduced and you could see the faintest glimmer of sadness on his face before he smiled wide and wiped some whipped cream off his hands on the apron he was wearing.

"So nice to meet you, Regina, Y/N's friend." He said, his hand extended out and stepping over Zoe. "I'm Greg, Y/N's dad."

Regina met him halfway and shook his hand firmly, smiling wide while she did it.

"It's so nice to meet you. Thank you so much for letting me join you so last minute."

"Oh nonsense!" He let go of her hand and waved her off playfully. "We are so happy to have you here." He turned to look to you now. "Y/N, you want to bring Zoe and Regina to the dining room and introduce her to everyone else? I'll handle the pies."

"Sure, dad." You squat on the floor with your arms out. "ZoZo, let's go." She smiles and crawls to you, her hands and knees smacking against the tile floor. You pick her up and toss her slightly, seeing Regina's eyes widen slightly when you catch her and prop her on your hip. "Say hi, Zoe!" You bounced her on your hip in Regina's direction.

"Hi Zoe!" Regina lit up, smiling at her in a way you had never seen before. Zoe looked up at her, taking her in and studying her. She decided after about ten seconds that Regina was a friendly and giggled, throwing herself back in your arms.

She reached a curious hand out to Regina, most likely wanting to get her grubby paws on her earrings but the blonde knew better than to give her access to those. Instead she gave her one of her hands, letting Zoe investigate her painted nails, her rings, and her bracelets.

You could hear your dad shuffling in the kitchen behind you so you knew you had to get out of the way. You pointed your head in the direction of the dining room and began walking. You were essentially pulling Regina along because Zoe was showing zero interest in letting her go.

You walk into the dining room where Ginny, her sister Lucy, and Levi were setting up plates and silverware for dessert.

You introduced Regina to everyone and when she tried to move to shake everyone's hand, Zoe began the makings of a temper tantrum and she stayed put out of panic.

Regina apologized and thanked Ginny for having her and you took this opportunity to hand Zoe to Regina while she was distracted with talking. Zoe went with her willingly, resting her head on Regina's shoulder and fiddling with her rings.

It made your heart want to explode honestly with how cute it was.

Everyone in the room laughed and Ginny made a comment about how it looked like Regina found a friend and she was happy to have her here.

Ginny told you both to take a seat and you pulled out a chair for Regina and Zoe, helping push it in for her.

You pulled out the seat to her right for yourself, but Levi took it upon himself to slide into the seat instead and investigate this new person that both of his siblings are giving attention to.

"Levi, you butt." You say, rolling your eyes and pushing his chair in and taking the seat to Levi's right. He fully ignored you and turned his attention to Regina.

"Hi, look at my dinosaurs." He told her, pulling out three little dinosaurs from his corduroy pants and setting them on the table between them.

"I love dinosaurs." She tells him. "Do you know which dinosaurs those are?" He nods excitedly and sits on his knees, naming them out excitedly and giving her a fun fact about each of them. "See, I didn't know that about any of them. You taught me something new today." She smiled at him and he was practically vibrating with excitement.

He was ready to hop of his chair and get his dinosaur book, but Ginny told him to park it or no dessert.

He started asking her other questions; her favorite animal, her favorite planet, her favorite reptile. She answered all of his silly questions like they were the most important thing in the world to her right now and you swear you could feel yourself somehow falling even more in love with her.

Your dad served the pies, giving everyone small slices of each one to sample (there were four). When he handed you a plate to pass to Regina, he gave you a look and you know it meant that he liked her.

"Y/N, let your friend eat her pie in peace and take the baby from her." He said, after he handed you her plate.

"I was already planning on it, dad." You took the plate and stood up, setting it in front of Regina and snatching Zoe up while she was distracted by the pie. Regina chuckled and Zoe threw herself back in your arms in protest of being taken away from her new friend.

Lucy said she would take her, so you handed her over to her, but her protest turned into a meltdown so she went with Ginny instead who bribed her with pie.

There was quiet conversation over dessert. Your dad and Ginny asked Regina a few questions about herself, but nothing too crazy. How she's liking college, if she's decided on her major yet, and if she did any school activities.

Your dad was very excited to find out she played soccer. They talked about that briefly before moving on to essentially talk shit about Ginny's family.

You and Regina listened in silence, stealing glances and smiles at each other while you both enjoyed your dessert.

Once Levi was done being distracted with his own dessert, he became more talkative and more demanding of both yours and Regina's attention.

Part of you was worried that Regina was going to get annoyed. If she did, she didn't show it. She was entertaining all of Levi's silly questions, laughing at his jokes, and asking questions back to him and listening intently to his answers.

Once dessert was wrapped up, the kids were hyped up on sugar and overtired so you took that as your cue to dip out.

You both said your goodbyes. Your family hugging Regina as if they didn't just meet her a little over an hour ago.

You followed your dad into the kitchen so he could give you leftovers, packing you enough for the two of you since you told him Regina was most likely going to be going back to your mom's with you.

When you came back to the front door with your bag of leftovers, Regina had her jacket on with Levi in her arms and they were making silly faces at each other.

"Ready?" You ask with a smile. Regina nods and sets Levi down and he clings to her leg immediately.

"Can I come?"

"Not this time, hun." Ginny steps in, picking him up to avoid making it awkward for anyone. He crosses his arms and pouts. "They'll just have to come back soon." She smiles and gives him an encouraging jostle.

"Definitely, Levi. We'll be back soon." You pinch his cheek. He perks up and you know he's gonna hold you to that.

You put your own coat on and say one final goodbye before exiting the house. As soon as the door is shut, Regina links your arms together and you both start walking down the driveway.

"They knew, didn't they?" She said with a slight laugh.

"Was their acting that bad?" You ask, turning to look at her to try and gauge her reaction. She was smiling, so at least you knew she wasn't mad.

"No, they were good. They were great." She said, pulling you closer to her. "I saw the look your dad gave you when he was giving you the pie. Your dad also might've overemphasized that I was your friend just a touch." She laughed lightly.

"He tried so hard." You laugh. "I think he was just excited, but also wanted to be respectful of you."

"Excited?" She asked, pulling her keys out of her purse.

"You're the first partner I've had that he's met, technically." You explained, pulling your own keys from your coat pocket.

"I'm really sorry. I feel like I ruined that experience for you." She stopped in front of her car, turning to look at you with soft eyes. She wrapped an arm around your waist.

"No," you say softly, shaking your head. "I wouldn't have had it any other way. It was perfect. You were perfect. Did you have an okay time?" You hold her arm, pulling her closer to you and she leans into you.

"More than okay." She nods, fighting off a smile. "I love you." She whispers, leaning in and kissing you softly.

"I love you, too." You say when she pulls away. "Thank you for coming tonight." You nudge your nose against hers and she smiles.

"I'm glad I did." She presses her forehead against yours before pulling away. "It's fucking cold." She unlocks her car and you open the door for her. You rest your arm on the roof of her car, poking your head into the car slightly.

"I have a nice warm bed and some leftovers with our names on it." You sing, holding up the bag of leftovers.

"Well, fuck, why are you just standing around then?" She laughs, rolling her eyes at you playfully.

"Don't get upset with me, but you know you're gonna have to talk to your mom, right?"

"No, I know." She says softly, nodding in agreement. "I'm gonna call her. I just want to enjoy the rest of tonight with you."

"Okay." You nod, pushing some hair behind her ear. "Follow me back, then?" You say, stepping away from her car. She turns on her car and rolls her window down as you close her door.

"I'll be right on your ass, babe."

[mostlysignssomeportents]

“Disenshittify or Die”

I'm coming to BURNING MAN! On TUESDAY (Aug 27) at 1PM, I'm giving a talk called "DISENSHITTIFY OR DIE!" at PALENQUE NORTE (7&E). On WEDNESDAY (Aug 28) at NOON, I'm doing a "Talking Caterpillar" Q&A at LIMINAL LABS (830&C).

Last weekend, I traveled to Las Vegas for Defcon 32, where I had the immense privilege of giving a solo talk on Track 1, entitled "Disenshittify or die! How hackers can seize the means of computation and build a new, good internet that is hardened against our asshole bosses' insatiable horniness for enshittification":

https://info.defcon.org/event/?id=54861

This was a followup to last year's talk, "An Audacious Plan to Halt the Internet's Enshittification," a talk that kicked off a lot of international interest in my analysis of platform decay ("enshittification"):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rimtaSgGz_4

The Defcon organizers have earned a restful week or two, and that means that the video of my talk hasn't yet been posted to Defcon's Youtube channel, so in the meantime, I thought I'd post a lightly edited version of my speech crib. If you're headed to Burning Man, you can hear me reprise this talk at Palenque Norte (7&E); I'm kicking off their lecture series on Tuesday, Aug 27 at 1PM.

==

What the fuck happened to the old, good internet?

I mean, sure, our bosses were a little surveillance-happy, and they were usually up for sharing their data with the NSA, and whenever there was a tossup between user security and growth, it was always YOLO time.

But Google Search used to work. Facebook used to show you posts from people you followed. Uber used to be cheaper than a taxi and pay the driver more than a cabbie made. Amazon used to sell products, not Shein-grade self-destructing dropshipped garbage from all-consonant brands. Apple used to defend your privacy, rather than spying on you with your no-modifications-allowed Iphone.

There was a time when you searching for an album on Spotify would get you that album – not a playlist of insipid AI-generated covers with the same name and art.

Microsoft used to sell you software – sure, it was buggy – but now they just let you access apps in the cloud, so they can watch how you use those apps and strip the features you use the most out of the basic tier and turn them into an upcharge.

What – and I cannot stress this enough – the fuck happened?!

I’m talking about enshittification.

Here’s what enshittification looks like from the outside: First, you see a company that’s being good to its end users. Google puts the best search results at the top; Facebook shows you a feed of posts from people and groups you followl; Uber charges small dollars for a cab; Amazon subsidizes goods and returns and shipping and puts the best match for your product search at the top of the page.

That’s stage one, being good to end users. But there’s another part of this stage, call it stage 1a). That’s figuring out how to lock in those users.

There’s so many ways to lock in users.

If you’re Facebook, the users do it for you. You joined Facebook because there were people there you wanted to hang out with, and other people joined Facebook to hang out with you.

That’s the old “network effects” in action, and with network effects come “the collective action problem." Because you love your friends, but goddamn are they a pain in the ass! You all agree that FB sucks, sure, but can you all agree on when it’s time to leave?

No way.

Can you agree on where to go next?

Hell no.

You’re there because that’s where the support group for your rare disease hangs out, and your bestie is there because that’s where they talk with the people in the country they moved away from, then there’s that friend who coordinates their kid’s little league car pools on FB, and the best dungeon master you know isn’t gonna leave FB because that’s where her customers are.

So you’re stuck, because even though FB use comes at a high cost – your privacy, your dignity and your sanity – that’s still less than the switching cost you’d have to bear if you left: namely, all those friends who have taken you hostage, and whom you are holding hostage

Now, sometimes companies lock you in with money, like Amazon getting you to prepay for a year’s shipping with Prime, or to buy your Audible books on a monthly subscription, which virtually guarantees that every shopping search will start on Amazon, after all, you’ve already paid for it.

Sometimes, they lock you in with DRM, like HP selling you a printer with four ink cartridges filled with fluid that retails for more than $10,000/gallon, and using DRM to stop you from refilling any of those ink carts or using a third-party cartridge. So when one cart runs dry, you have to refill it or throw away your investment in the remaining three cartridges and the printer itself.

Sometimes, it’s a grab bag:

You can’t run your Ios apps without Apple hardware;

you can’t run your Apple music, books and movies on anything except an Ios app;

your iPhone uses parts pairing – DRM handshakes between replacement parts and the main system – so you can’t use third-party parts to fix it; and

every OEM iPhone part has a microscopic Apple logo engraved on it, so Apple can demand that the US Customs and Border Service seize any shipment of refurb Iphone parts as trademark violations.

Think Different, amirite?

Getting you locked in completes phase one of the enshittification cycle and signals the start of phase two: making things worse for you to make things better for business customers.

For example, a platform might poison its search results, like Google selling more and more of its results pages to ads that are identified with lighter and lighter tinier and tinier type.

Or Amazon selling off search results and calling it an “ad” business. They make $38b/year on this scam. The first result for your search is, on average, 29% more expensive than the best match for your search. The first row is 25% more expensive than the best match. On average, the best match for your search is likely to be found seventeen places down on the results page.

Other platforms sell off your feed, like Facebook, which started off showing you the things you asked to see, but now the quantum of content from the people you follow has dwindled to a homeopathic residue, leaving a void that Facebook fills with things that people pay to show you: boosted posts from publishers you haven’t subscribed to, and, of course, ads.

Now at this point you might be thinking ‘sure, if you’re not paying for the product, you’re the product.'

Bullshit!

Bull.

Shit.

The people who buy those Google ads? They pay more every year for worse ad-targeting and more ad-fraud

Those publishers paying to nonconsensually cram their content into your Facebook feed? They have to do that because FB suppresses their ability to reach the people who actually subscribed to them

The Amazon sellers with the best match for your query have to outbid everyone else just to show up on the first page of results. It costs so much to sell on Amazon that between 45-51% of every dollar an independent seller brings in has to be kicked up to Don Bezos and the Amazon crime family. Those sellers don’t have the kind of margins that let them pay 51% They have to raise prices in order to avoid losing money on every sale.

"But wait!" I hear you say!

[Come on, say it!]

"But wait! Things on Amazon aren’t more expensive that things at Target, or Walmart, or at a mom and pop store, or direct from the manufacturer.

"How can sellers be raising prices on Amazon if the price at Amazon is the same as at is everywhere else?"

[Any guesses?!]

That’s right, they charge more everywhere. They have to. Amazon binds its sellers to a policy called “most favored nation status,” which says they can’t charge more on Amazon than they charge elsewhere, including direct from their own factory store.

So every seller that wants to sell on Amazon has to raise their prices everywhere else.

Now, these sellers are Amazon’s best customers. They’re paying for the product, and they’re still getting screwed.

Paying for the product doesn’t fill your vapid boss’s shriveled heart with so much joy that he decides to stop trying to think of ways to fuck you over.

Look at Apple. Remember when Apple offered every Ios user a one-click opt out for app-based surveillance? And 96% of users clicked that box?

(The other four percent were either drunk or Facebook employees or drunk Facebook employees.)

That cost Facebook at least ten billion dollars per year in lost surveillance revenue?

I mean, you love to see it.

But did you know that at the same time Apple started spying on Ios users in the same way that Facebook had been, for surveillance data to use to target users for its competing advertising product?

Your Iphone isn’t an ad-supported gimme. You paid a thousand fucking dollars for that distraction rectangle in your pocket, and you’re still the product. What’s more, Apple has rigged Ios so that you can’t mod the OS to block its spying.

If you’re not not paying for the product, you’re the product, and if you are paying for the product, you’re still the product.

Just ask the farmers who are expected to swap parts into their own busted half-million dollar, mission-critical tractors, but can’t actually use those parts until a technician charges them $200 to drive out to the farm and type a parts pairing unlock code into their console.

John Deere’s not giving away tractors. Give John Deere a half mil for a tractor and you will be the product.

Please, my brothers and sisters in Christ. Please! Stop saying ‘if you’re not paying for the product, you’re the product.’

OK, OK, so that’s phase two of enshittification.

Phase one: be good to users while locking them in.

Phase two: screw the users a little to you can good to business customers while locking them in.

Phase three: screw everybody and take all the value for yourself. Leave behind the absolute bare minimum of utility so that everyone stays locked into your pile of shit.

Enshittification: a tragedy in three acts.

That’s what enshittification looks like from the outside, but what’s going on inside the company? What is the pathological mechanism? What sci-fi entropy ray converts the excellent and useful service into a pile of shit?

That mechanism is called twiddling. Twiddling is when someone alters the back end of a service to change how its business operates, changing prices, costs, search ranking, recommendation criteria and other foundational aspects of the system.

Digital platforms are a twiddler’s utopia. A grocer would need an army of teenagers with pricing guns on rollerblades to reprice everything in the building when someone arrives who’s extra hungry.

Whereas the McDonald’s Investments portfolio company Plexure advertises that it can use surveillance data to predict when an app user has just gotten paid so the seller can tack an extra couple bucks onto the price of their breakfast sandwich.

And of course, as the prophet William Gibson warned us, ‘cyberspace is everting.' With digital shelf tags, grocers can change prices whenever they feel like, like the grocers in Norway, whose e-ink shelf tags change the prices 2,000 times per day.

Every Uber driver is offered a different wage for every job. If a driver has been picky lately, the job pays more. But if the driver has been desperate enough to grab every ride the app offers, the pay goes down, and down, and down.

The law professor Veena Dubal calls this ‘algorithmic wage discrimination.' It’s a prime example of twiddling.

Every youtuber knows what it’s like to be twiddled. You work for weeks or months, spend thousands of dollars to make a video, then the algorithm decides that no one – not your own subscribers, not searchers who type in the exact name of your video – will see it.

Why? Who knows? The algorithm’s rules are not public.

Because content moderation is the last redoubt of security through obscurit: they can’t tell you what the como algorithm is downranking because then you’d cheat.

Youtube is the kind of shitty boss who docks every paycheck for all the rules you’ve broken, but won’t tell you what those rules were, lest you figure out how to break those rules next time without your boss catching you.

Twiddling can also work in some users’ favor, of course. Sometimes platforms twiddle to make things better for end users or business customers.

For example, Emily Baker-White from Forbes revealed the existence of a back-end feature that Tiktok’s management can access they call the “heating tool.”

When a manager applies the heating toll to a performer’s account, that performer’s videos are thrust into the feeds of millions of users, without regard to whether the recommendation algorithm predicts they will enjoy that video.

Why would they do this? Well, here’s an analogy from my boyhood I used to go to this traveling fair that would come to Toronto at the end of every summer, the Canadian National Exhibition. If you’ve been to a fair like the Ex, you know that you can always spot some guy lugging around a comedically huge teddy bear.

Nominally, you win that teddy bear by throwing five balls in a peach-basket, but to a first approximation, no one has ever gotten five balls to stay in that peach-basket.

That guy “won” the teddy bear when a carny on the midway singled him out and said, "fella, I like your face. Tell you what I’m gonna do: You get just one ball in the basket and I’ll give you this keychain, and if you amass two keychains, I’ll let you trade them in for one of these galactic-scale teddy-bears."

That’s how the guy got his teddy bear, which he now has to drag up and down the midway for the rest of the day.

Why the hell did that carny give away the teddy bear? Because it turns the guy into a walking billboard for the midway games. If that dopey-looking Judas Goat can get five balls into a peach basket, then so can you.

Except you can’t.

Tiktok’s heating tool is a way to give away tactical giant teddy bears. When someone in the TikTok brain trust decides they need more sports bros on the platform, they pick one bro out at random and make him king for the day, heating the shit out of his account.

That guy gets a bazillion views and he starts running around on all the sports bro forums trumpeting his success: *I am the Louis Pasteur of sports bro influencers!"

The other sports bros pile in and start retooling to make content that conforms to the idiosyncratic Tiktok format. When they fail to get giant teddy bears of their own, they assume that it’s because they’re doing Tiktok wrong, because they don’t know about the heating tool.

But then comes the day when the TikTok Star Chamber decides they need to lure in more astrologers, so they take the heat off that one lucky sports bro, and start heating up some lucky astrologer.

Giant teddy bears are all over the place: those Uber drivers who were boasting to the NYT ten years ago about earning $50/hour? The Substackers who were rolling in dough? Joe Rogan and his hundred million dollar Spotify payout? Those people are all the proud owners of giant teddy bears, and they’re a steal.

Because every dollar they get from the platform turns into five dollars worth of free labor from suckers who think they just internetting wrong.

Giant teddy bears are just one way of twiddling. Platforms can play games with every part of their business logic, in highly automated ways, that allows them to quickly and efficiently siphon value from end users to business customers and back again, hiding the pea in a shell game conducted at machine speeds, until they’ve got everyone so turned around that they take all the value for themselves.

That’s the how: How the platforms do the trick where they are good to users, then lock users in, then maltreat users to be good to business customers, then lock in those business customers, then take all the value for themselves.

So now we know what is happening, and how it is happening, all that’s left is why it’s happening.

Now, on the one hand, the why is pretty obvious. The less value that end-users and business customers capture, the more value there is left to divide up among the shareholders and the executives.

That’s why, but it doesn’t tell you why now. Companies could have done this shit at any time in the past 20 years, but they didn’t. Or at least, the successful ones didn’t. The ones that turned themselves into piles of shit got treated like piles of shit. We avoided them and they died.

Remember Myspace? Yahoo Search? Livejournal? Sure, they’re still serving some kind of AI slop or programmatic ad junk if you hit those domains, but they’re gone.

And there’s the clue: It used to be that if you enshittified your product, bad things happened to your company. Now, there are no consequences for enshittification, so everyone’s doing it.

Let’s break that down: What stops a company from enshittifying?

There are four forces that discipline tech companies. The first one is, obviously, competition.

If your customers find it easy to leave, then you have to worry about them leaving

Many factors can contribute to how hard or easy it is to depart a platform, like the network effects that Facebook has going for it. But the most important factor is whether there is anywhere to go.

Back in 2012, Facebook bought Insta for a billion dollars. That may seem like chump-change in these days of eleven-digit Big Tech acquisitions, but that was a big sum in those innocent days, and it was an especially big sum to pay for Insta. The company only had 13 employees, and a mere 25 million registered users.

But what mattered to Zuckerberg wasn’t how many users Insta had, it was where those users came from.

[Does anyone know where those Insta users came from?]

That’s right, they left Facebook and joined Insta. They were sick of FB, even though they liked the people there, they hated creepy Zuck, they hated the platform, so they left and they didn’t come back.

So Zuck spent a cool billion to recapture them, A fact he put in writing in a midnight email to CFO David Ebersman, explaining that he was paying over the odds for Insta because his users hated him, and loved Insta. So even if they quit Facebook (the platform), they would still be captured Facebook (the company).

Now, on paper, Zuck’s Instagram acquisition is illegal, but normally, that would be hard to stop, because you’d have to prove that he bought Insta with the intention of curtailing competition.

But in this case, Zuck tripped over his own dick: he put it in writing.

But Obama’s DoJ and FTC just let that one slide, following the pro-monopoly policies of Reagan, Bush I, Clinton and Bush II, and setting an example that Trump would follow, greenlighting gigamergers like the catastrophic, incestuous Warner-Discovery marriage.

Indeed, for 40 years, starting with Carter, and accelerating through Reagan, the US has encouraged monopoly formation, as an official policy, on the grounds that monopolies are “efficient.”

If everyone is using Google Search, that’s something we should celebrate. It means they’ve got the very best search and wouldn’t it be perverse to spend public funds to punish them for making the best product?

But as we all know, Google didn’t maintain search dominance by being best. They did it by paying bribes. More than 20 billion per year to Apple alone to be the default Ios search, plus billions more to Samsung, Mozilla, and anyone else making a product or service with a search-box on it, ensuring that you never stumble on a search engine that’s better than theirs.

Which, in turn, ensured that no one smart invested big in rival search engines, even if they were visibly, obviously superior. Why bother making something better if Google’s buying up all the market oxygen before it can kindle your product to life?

Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Amazon – they’re not “making things” companies, they’re “buying things” companies, taking advantage of official tolerance for anticompetitive acquisitions, predatory pricing, market distorting exclusivity deals and other acts specifically prohibited by existing antitrust law.

Their goal is to become too big to fail, because that makes them too big to jail, and that means they can be too big to care.

Which is why Google Search is a pile of shit and everything on Amazon is dropshipped garbage that instantly disintegrates in a cloud of offgassed volatile organic compounds when you open the box.

Once companies no longer fear losing your business to a competitor, it’s much easier for them to treat you badly, because what’re you gonna do?

Remember Lily Tomlin as Ernestine the AT&T operator in those old SNL sketches? “We don’t care. We don’t have to. We’re the phone company.”

Competition is the first force that serves to discipline companies and the enshittificatory impulses of their leadership, and we just stopped enforcing competition law.

It takes a special kind of smooth-brained asshole – that is, an establishment economist – to insist that the collapse of every industry from eyeglasses to vitamin C into a cartel of five or fewer companies has nothing to do with policies that officially encouraged monopolization.

It’s like we used to put down rat poison and we didn’t have a rat problem. Then these dickheads convinced us that rats were good for us and we stopped putting down rat poison, and now rats are gnawing our faces off and they’re all running around saying, "Who’s to say where all these rats came from? Maybe it was that we stopped putting down poison, but maybe it’s just the Time of the Rats. The Great Forces of History bearing down on this moment to multiply rats beyond all measure!"

Antitrust didn’t slip down that staircase and fall spine-first on that stiletto: they stabbed it in the back and then they pushed it.

And when they killed antitrust, they also killed regulation, the second force that disciplines companies. Regulation is possible, but only when the regulator is more powerful than the regulated entities. When a company is bigger than the government, it gets damned hard to credibly threaten to punish that company, no matter what its sins.

That’s what protected IBM for all those years when it had its boot on the throat of the American tech sector. Do you know, the DOJ fought to break up IBM in the courts from 1970-1982, and that every year, for 12 consecutive years, IBM spent more on lawyers to fight the USG than the DOJ Antitrust Division spent on all the lawyers fighting every antitrust case in the entire USA?

IBM outspent Uncle Sam for 12 years. People called it “Antitrust’s Vietnam.” All that money paid off, because by 1982, the president was Ronald Reagan, a man whose official policy was that monopolies were “efficient." So he dropped the case, and Big Blue wriggled off the hook.

It’s hard to regulate a monopolist, and it’s hard to regulate a cartel. When a sector is composed of hundreds of competing companies, they compete. They genuinely fight with one another, trying to poach each others’ customers and workers. They are at each others’ throats.

It’s hard enough for a couple hundred executives to agree on anything. But when they’re legitimately competing with one another, really obsessing about how to eat each others’ lunches, they can’t agree on anything.

The instant one of them goes to their regulator with some bullshit story, about how it’s impossible to have a decent search engine without fine-grained commercial surveillance; or how it’s impossible to have a secure and easy to use mobile device without a total veto over which software can run on it; or how it’s impossible to administer an ISP’s network unless you can slow down connections to servers whose owners aren’t paying bribes for “premium carriage"; there’s some *other company saying, “That’s bullshit”

“We’ve managed it! Here’s our server logs, our quarterly financials and our customer testimonials to prove it.”

100 companies are a rabble, they're a mob. They can’t agree on a lobbying position. They’re too busy eating each others’ lunch to agree on how to cater a meeting to discuss it.

But let those hundred companies merge to monopoly, absorb one another in an incestuous orgy, turn into five giant companies, so inbred they’ve got a corporate Habsburg jaw, and they become a cartel.

It’s easy for a cartel to agree on what bullshit they’re all going to feed their regulator, and to mobilize some of the excess billions they’ve reaped through consolidation, which freed them from “wasteful competition," sp they can capture their regulators completely.

You know, Congress used to pass federal consumer privacy laws? Not anymore.

The last time Congress managed to pass a federal consumer privacy law was in 1988: The Video Privacy Protection Act. That’s a law that bans video-store clerks from telling newspapers what VHS cassettes you take home. In other words, it regulates three things that have effectively ceased to exist.

The threat of having your video rental history out there in the public eye was not the last or most urgent threat the American public faced, and yet, Congress is deadlocked on passing a privacy law.

Tech companies’ regulatory capture involves a risible and transparent gambit, that is so stupid, it’s an insult to all the good hardworking risible transparent ruses out there.

Namely, they claim that when they violate your consumer, privacy or labor rights, It’s not a crime, because they do it with an app.

Algorithmic wage discrimination isn’t illegal wage theft: we do it with an app.

Spying on you from asshole to appetite isn’t a privacy violation: we do it with an app.

And Amazon’s scam search tool that tricks you into paying 29% more than the best match for your query? Not a ripoff. We do it with an app.

Once we killed competition – stopped putting down rat poison – we got cartels – the rats ate our faces. And the cartels captured their regulators – the rats bought out the poison factory and shut it down.

So companies aren’t constrained by competition or regulation.

But you know what? This is tech, and tech is different.IIt’s different because it’s flexible. Because our computers are Turing-complete universal von Neumann machines. That means that any enshittificatory alteration to a program can be disenshittified with another program.

Every time HP jacks up the price of ink , they invite a competitor to market a refill kit or a compatible cartridge.

When Tesla installs code that says you have to pay an extra monthly fee to use your whole battery, they invite a modder to start selling a kit to jailbreak that battery and charge it all the way up.

Lemme take you through a little example of how that works: Imagine this is a product design meeting for our company’s website, and the guy leading the meeting says “Dudes, you know how our KPI is topline ad-revenue? Well, I’ve calculated that if we make the ads just 20% more invasive and obnoxious, we’ll boost ad rev by 2%”

This is a good pitch. Hit that KPI and everyone gets a fat bonus. We can all take our families on a luxury ski vacation in Switzerland.

But here’s the thing: someone’s gonna stick their arm up – someone who doesn’t give a shit about user well-being, and that person is gonna say, “I love how you think, Elon. But has it occurred to you that if we make the ads 20% more obnoxious, then 40% of our users will go to a search engine and type 'How do I block ads?'"

I mean, what a nightmare! Because once a user does that, the revenue from that user doesn’t rise to 102%. It doesn’t stay at 100% It falls to zero, forever.

[Any guesses why?]

Because no user ever went back to the search engine and typed, 'How do I start seeing ads again?'

Once the user jailbreaks their phone or discovers third party ink, or develops a relationship with an independent Tesla mechanic who’ll unlock all the DLC in their car, that user is gone, forever.

Interoperability – that latent property bequeathed to us courtesy of Herrs Turing and Von Neumann and their infinitely flexible, universal machines – that is a serious check on enshittification.

The fact that Congress hasn’t passed a privacy law since 1988 Is countered, at least in part, by the fact that the majority of web users are now running ad-blockers, which are also tracker-blockers.

But no one’s ever installed a tracker-blocker for an app. Because reverse engineering an app puts in you jeopardy of criminal and civil prosecution under Section 1201 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, with penalties of a 5-year prison sentence and a $500k fine for a first offense.

And violating its terms of service puts you in jeopardy under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act of 1986, which is the law that Ronald Reagan signed in a panic after watching Wargames (seriously!).

Helping other users violate the terms of service can get you hit with a lawsuit for tortious interference with contract. And then there’s trademark, copyright and patent.

All that nonsense we call “IP,” but which Jay Freeman of Cydia calls “Felony Contempt of Business Model."

So if we’re still at that product planning meeting and now it’s time to talk about our app, the guy leading the meeting says, “OK, so we’ll make the ads in the app 20% more obnoxious to pull a 2% increase in topline ad rev?”

And that person who objected to making the website 20% worse? Their hand goes back up. Only this time they say “Why don’t we make the ads 100% more invasive and get a 10% increase in ad rev?"

Because it doesn't matter if a user goes to a search engine and types, “How do I block ads in an app." The answer is: you can't. So YOLO, enshittify away.

“IP” is just a euphemism for “any law that lets me reach outside my company’s walls to exert coercive control over my critics, competitors and customers,” and “app” is just a euphemism for “A web page skinned with the right IP so that protecting your privacy while you use it is a felony.”

Interop used to keep companies from enshittifying. If a company made its client suck, someone would roll out an alternative client, if they ripped a feature out and wanted to sell it back to you as a monthly subscription, someone would make a compatible plugin that restored it for a one-time fee, or for free.

To help people flee Myspace, FB gave them bots that you’d load with your login credentials. It would scrape your waiting Myspace messages and put ‘em in your FB inbox, and login to Myspace and paste your replies into your Myspace outbox. So you didn’t have to choose between the people you loved on Myspace, and Facebook, which launched with a promise never to spy on you. Remember that?!

Thanks to the metastasis of IP, all that is off the table today. Apple owes its very existence to iWork Suite, whose Pages, Numbers and Keynote are file-compatible with Microsoft’s Word, Excel and Powerpoint. But make an IOS runtime that’ll play back the files you bought from Apple’s stores on other platforms, and they’ll nuke you til you glow.

FB wouldn’t have had a hope of breaking Myspace’s grip on social media without that scrape, but scrape FB today in support of an alternative client and their lawyers will bomb you til the rubble bounces.

Google scraped every website in the world to create its search index. Try and scrape Google and they’ll have your head on a pike.

When they did it, it was progress. When you do it to them, that’s piracy. Every pirate wants to be an admiral.

Because this handful of companies has so thoroughly captured their regulators, they can wield the power of the state against you when you try to break their grip on power, even as their own flagrant violations of our rights go unpunished. Because they do them with an app.

Tech lost its fear of competitin it neutralized the threat from regulators, and then put them in harness to attack new startups that might do unto them as they did unto the companies that came before them.

But even so, there was a force that kept our bosses in check That force was us. Tech workers.

Tech workers have historically been in short supply, which gave us power, and our bosses knew it.

To get us to work crazy hours, they came up with a trick. They appealed to our love of technology, and told us that we were heroes of a digital revolution, who would “organize the world’s information and make it useful,” who would “bring the world closer together.”

They brought in expert set-dressers to turn our workplaces into whimsical campuses with free laundry, gourmet cafeterias, massages, and kombucha, and a surgeon on hand to freeze our eggs so that we could work through our fertile years.

They convinced us that we were being pampered, rather than being worked like government mules.

This trick has a name. Fobazi Ettarh, the librarian-theorist, calls it “vocational awe, and Elon Musk calls it being “extremely hardcore.”

This worked very well. Boy did we put in some long-ass hours!

But for our bosses, this trick failed badly. Because if you miss your mother’s funeral and to hit a deadline, and then your boss orders you to enshittify that product, you are gonna experience a profound moral injury, which you are absolutely gonna make your boss share.

Because what are they gonna do? Fire you? They can’t hire someone else to do your job, and you can get a job that’s even better at the shop across the street.

So workers held the line when competition, regulation and interop failed.

But eventually, supply caught up with demand. Tech laid off 260,000 of us last year, and another 100,000 in the first half of this year.

You can’t tell your bosses to go fuck themselves, because they’ll fire your ass and give your job to someone who’ll be only too happy to enshittify that product you built.

That’s why this is all happening right now. Our bosses aren’t different. They didn’t catch a mind-virus that turned them into greedy assholes who don’t care about our users’ wellbeing or the quality of our products.

As far as our bosses have always been concerned, the point of the business was to charge the most, and deliver the least, while sharing as little as possible with suppliers, workers, users and customers. They’re not running charities.

Since day one, our bosses have shown up for work and yanked as hard as they can on the big ENSHITTIFICATION lever behind their desks, only that lever didn’t move much. It was all gummed up by competition, regulation, interop and workers.

As those sources of friction melted away, the enshittification lever started moving very freely.

Which sucks, I know. But think about this for a sec: our bosses, despite being wildly imperfect vessels capable of rationalizing endless greed and cheating, nevertheless oversaw a series of actually great products and services.

Not because they used to be better people, but because they used to be subjected to discipline.

So it follows that if we want to end the enshittocene, dismantle the enshitternet, and build a new, good internet that our bosses can’t wreck, we need to make sure that these constraints are durably installed on that internet, wound around its very roots and nerves. And we have to stand guard over it so that it can’t be dismantled again.

A new, good internet is one that has the positive aspects of the old, good internet: an ethic of technological self-determination, where users of technology (and hackers, tinkerers, startups and others serving as their proxies) can reconfigure and mod the technology they use, so that it does what they need it to do, and so that it can’t be used against them.

But the new, good internet will fix the defects of the old, good internet, the part that made it hard to use for anyone who wasn’t us. And hell yeah we can do that. Tech bosses swear that it’s impossible, that you can’t have a conversation friend without sharing it with Zuck; or search the web without letting Google scrape you down to the viscera; or have a phone that works reliably without giving Apple a veto over the software you install.

They claim that it’s a nonsense to even ponder this kind of thing. It’s like making water that’s not wet. But that’s bullshit. We can have nice things. We can build for the people we love, and give them a place that’s worth of their time and attention.

To do that, we have to install constraints.

The first constraint, remember, is competition. We’re living through a epochal shift in competition policy. After 40 years with antitrust enforcement in an induced coma, a wave of antitrust vigor has swept through governments all over the world. Regulators are stepping in to ban monopolistic practices, open up walled gardens, block anticompetitive mergers, and even unwind corrupt mergers that were undertaken on false pretenses.

Normally this is the place in the speech where I’d list out all the amazing things that have happened over the past four years. The enforcement actions that blocked companies from becoming too big to care, and that scared companies away from even trying.

Like Wiz, which just noped out of the largest acquisition offer in history, turning down Google’s $23b cashout, and deciding to, you know, just be a fucking business that makes money by producing a product that people want and selling it at a competitive price.

Normally, I’d be listing out FTC rulemakings that banned noncompetes nationwid. Or the new merger guidelines the FTC and DOJ cooked up, which – among other things – establish that the agencies should be considering whether a merger will negatively impact privacy.

I had a whole section of this stuff in my notes, a real victory lap, but I deleted it all this week.

[Can anyone guess why?]

That’s right! This week, Judge Amit Mehta, ruling for the DC Circuit of these United States of America, In the docket 20-3010 a case known as United States v. Google LLC, found that “Google is a monopolist, and it has acted as one to maintain its monopoly," and ordered Google and the DOJ to propose a schedule for a remedy, like breaking the company up.

So yeah, that was pretty fucking epic.

Now, this antitrust stuff is pretty esoteric, and I won’t gatekeep you or shame you if you wanna keep a little distance on this subject. Nearly everyone is an antitrust normie, and that's OK. But if you’re a normie, you’re probably only catching little bits and pieces of the narrative, and let me tell you, the monopolists know it and they are flooding the zone.

The Wall Street Journal has published over 100 editorials condemning FTC Chair Lina Khan, saying she’s an ineffectual do-nothing, wasting public funds chasing doomed, quixotic adventures against poor, innocent businesses accomplishing nothing

[Does anyone out there know who owns the Wall Street Journal?]

That’s right, it’s Rupert Murdoch. Do you really think Rupert Murdoch pays his editorial board to write one hundred editorials about someone who’s not getting anything done?

The reality is that in the USA, in the UK, in the EU, in Australia, in Canada, in Japan, in South Korea, even in China, we are seeing more antitrust action over the past four years than over the preceding forty years.

Remember, competition law is actually pretty robust. The problem isn’t the law, It’s the enforcement priorities. Reagan put antitrust in mothballs 40 years ago, but that elegant weapon from a more civilized age is now back in the hands of people who know how to use it, and they’re swinging for the fences.

Next up: regulation.

As the seemingly inescapable power of the tech giants is revealed for the sham it always was, governments and regulators are finally gonna kill the “one weird trick” of violating the law, and saying “It doesn’t count, we did it with an app.”

Like in the EU, they’re rolling out the Digital Markets Act this year. That’s a law requiring dominant platforms to stand up APIs so that third parties can offer interoperable services.

So a co-op, a nonprofit, a hobbyist, a startup, or a local government agency wil eventuallyl be able to offer, say, a social media server that can interconnect with one of the dominant social media silos, and users who switch to that new platform will be able to continue to exchange messages with the users they follow and groups they belong to, so the switching costs will fall to damned near zero.

That’s a very cool rule, but what’s even cooler is how it’s gonna be enforced. Previous EU tech rules were “regulations” as in the GDPR – the General Data Privacy Regulation. EU regs need to be “transposed” into laws in each of the 27 EU member states, so they become national laws that get enforced by national courts.

For Big Tech, that means all previous tech regulations are enforced in Ireland, because Ireland is a tax haven, and all the tech companies fly Irish flags of convenience.

Here’s the thing: every tax haven is also a crime haven. After all, if Google can pretend it’s Irish this week, it can pretend to be Cypriot, or Maltese, or Luxembougeious next week. So Ireland has to keep these footloose criminal enterprises happy, or they’ll up sticks and go somewhere else.

This is why the GDPR is such a goddamned joke in practice. Big tech wipes its ass with the GDPR, and the only way to punish them starts with Ireland’s privacy commissioner, who barely bothers to get out of bed. This is an agency that spends most of its time watching cartoons on TV in its pajamas and eating breakfast cereal. So all of the big GDPR cases go to Ireland and they die there.

This is hardly a secret. The European Commission knows it’s going on. So with the DMA, the Commission has changed things up: The DMA is an “Act,” not a “Regulation.” Meaning it gets enforced in the EU’s federal courts, bypassing the national courts in crime-havens like Ireland.

In other words, the “we violate privacy law, but we do it with an app” gambit that worked on Ireland’s toothless privacy watchdog is now a dead letter, because EU federal judges have no reason to swallow that obvious bullshit.

Here in the US, the dam is breaking on federal consumer privacy law – at last!

Remember, our last privacy law was passed in 1988 to protect the sanctity of VHS rental history. It's been a minute.

And the thing is, there's a lot of people who are angry about stuff that has some nexus with America's piss-poor privacy landscape. Worried that Facebook turned grampy into a Qanon? That Insta made your teen anorexic? That TikTok is brainwashing millennials into quoting Osama Bin Laden? Or that cops are rolling up the identities of everyone at a Black Lives Matter protest or the Jan 6 riots by getting location data from Google? Or that Red State Attorneys General are tracking teen girls to out-of-state abortion clinics? Or that Black people are being discriminated against by online lending or hiring platforms? Or that someone is making AI deepfake porn of you?

A federal privacy law with a private right of action – which means that individuals can sue companies that violate their privacy – would go a long way to rectifying all of these problems

There's a pretty big coalition for that kind of privacy law! Which is why we have seen a procession of imperfect (but steadily improving) privacy laws working their way through Congress.

If you sign up for EFF’s mailing list at eff.org we’ll send you an email when these come up, so you can call your Congressjerk or Senator and talk to them about it. Or better yet, make an appointment to drop by their offices when they’re in their districts, and explain to them that you’re not just a registered voter from their district, you’re the kind of elite tech person who goes to Defcon, and then explain the bill to them. That stuff makes a difference.

What about self-help? How are we doing on making interoperability legal again, so hackers can just fix shit without waiting for Congress or a federal agency to act?

All the action here these day is in the state Right to Repair fight. We’re getting state R2R bills, like the one that passed this year in Oregon that bans parts pairing, where DRM is used to keep a device from using a new part until it gets an authorized technician’s unlock code.

These bills are pushed by a fantastic group of organizations called the Repair Coalition, at Repair.org, and they’ll email you when one of these laws is going through your statehouse, so you can meet with your state reps and explain to the JV squad the same thing you told your federal reps.

Repair.org’s prime mover is Ifixit, who are genuine heroes of the repair revolution, and Ifixit’s founder, Kyle Wiens, is here at the con. When you see him, you can shake his hand and tell him thanks, and that’ll be even better if you tell him that you’ve signed up to get alerts at repair.org!

Now, on to the final way that we reverse enhittification and build that new, good internet: you, the tech labor force.

For years, your bosses tricked you into thinking you were founders in waiting, temporarily embarrassed entrepreneurs who were only momentarily drawing a salary.

You certainly weren’t workers. Your power came from your intrinsic virtue, not like those lazy slobs in unions who have to get their power through that kumbaya solidarity nonsense.

It was a trick. You were scammed. The power you had came from scarcity, and so when the scarcity ended, when the industry started ringing up six-figure annual layoffs, your power went away with it.

The only durable source of power for tech workers is as workers, in a union.

Think about Amazon. Warehouse workers have to piss in bottles and have the highest rate of on-the-job maimings of any competing business. Whereas Amazon coders get to show up for work with facial piercings, green mohawks, and black t-shirts that say things their bosses don’t understand. They can piss whenever they want!

That’s not because Jeff Bezos or Andy Jassy loves you guys. It’s because they’re scared you’ll quit and they don’t know how to replace you.

Time for the second obligatory William Gibson quote: “The future is here, it’s just not evenly distributed.” You know who’s living in the future?. Those Amazon blue-collar workers. They are the bleeding edge.

Drivers whose eyeballs are monitored by AI cameras that do digital phrenology on their faces to figure out whether to dock their pay, warehouse workers whose bodies are ruined in just months.

As tech bosses beef up that reserve army of unemployed, skilled tech workers, then those tech workers – you all – will arrive at the same future as them.

Look, I know that you’ve spent your careers explaining in words so small your boss could understand them that you refuse to enshittify the company’s products, and I thank you for your service.

But if you want to go on fighting for the user, you need power that’s more durable than scarcity. You need a union. Wanna learn how? Check out the Tech Workers Coalition and Tech Solidarity, and get organized.

Enshittification didn’t arise because our bosses changed. They were always that guy.

They were always yankin’ on that enshittification lever in the C-suite.

What changed was the environment, everything that kept that switch from moving.

And that’s good news, in a bankshot way, because it means we can make good services out of imperfect people. As a wildly imperfect person myself, I find this heartening.

The new good internet is in our grasp: an internet that has the technological self-determination of the old, good internet, and the greased-skids simplicity of Web 2.0 that let all our normie friends get in on the fun.

Tech bosses want you to think that good UX and enshittification can’t ever be separated. That’s such a self-serving proposition you can spot it from orbit. We know it, 'cause we built the old good internet, and we’ve been fighting a rear-guard action to preserve it for the past two decades.

It’s time to stop playing defense. It's time to go on the offensive. To restore competition, regulation, interop and tech worker power so that we can create the new, good internet we’ll need to fight fascism, the climate emergency, and genocide.

To build a digital nervous system for a 21st century in which our children can thrive and prosper.

Community voting for SXSW is live! If you wanna hear RIDA QADRI and me talk about how GIG WORKERS can DISENSHITTIFY their jobs with INTEROPERABILITY, VOTE FOR THIS ONE!

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

https://pluralistic.net/2024/08/17/hack-the-planet/#how-about-a-nice-game-of-chess

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