#anything that cant go on forever eventually stop

[mostlysignssomeportents]

How to shatter the class solidarity of the ruling class

I'm touring my new, nationally bestselling novel The Bezzle! Catch me WEDNESDAY (Apr 11) at UCLA, then Chicago (Apr 17), Torino (Apr 21) Marin County (Apr 27), Winnipeg (May 2), Calgary (May 3), Vancouver (May 4), and beyond!

Audre Lorde counsels us that "The Master's Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master's House," while MLK said "the law cannot make a man love me, but it can restrain him from lynching me." Somewhere between replacing the system and using the system lies a pragmatic – if easily derailed – course.

Lorde is telling us that a rotten system can't be redeemed by using its own chosen reform mechanisms. King's telling us that unless we live, we can't fight – so anything within the system that makes it easier for your comrades to fight on can hasten the end of the system.

Take the problems of journalism. One old model of journalism funding involved wealthy newspaper families profiting handsomely by selling local appliance store owners the right to reach the townspeople who wanted to read sports-scores. These families expressed their patrician love of their town by peeling off some of those profits to pay reporters to sit through municipal council meetings or even travel overseas and get shot at.

In retrospect, this wasn't ever going to be a stable arrangement. It relied on both the inconstant generosity of newspaper barons and the absence of a superior way to show washing-machine ads to people who might want to buy washing machines. Neither of these were good long-term bets. Not only were newspaper barons easily distracted from their sense of patrician duty (especially when their own power was called into question), but there were lots of better ways to connect buyers and sellers lurking in potentia.

All of this was grossly exacerbated by tech monopolies. Tech barons aren't smarter or more evil than newspaper barons, but they have better tools, and so now they take 51 cents out of every ad dollar and 30 cents out of ever subscriber dollar and they refuse to deliver the news to users who explicitly requested it, unless the news company pays them a bribe to "boost" their posts:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/04/saving-news-big-tech

The news is important, and people sign up to make, digest, and discuss the news for many non-economic reasons, which means that the news continues to struggle along, despite all the economic impediments and the vulture capitalists and tech monopolists who fight one another for which one will get to take the biggest bite out of the press. We've got outstanding nonprofit news outlets like Propublica, journalist-owned outlets like 404 Media, and crowdfunded reporters like Molly White (and winner-take-all outlets like the New York Times).

But as Hamilton Nolan points out, "that pot of money…is only large enough to produce a small fraction of the journalism that was being produced in past generations":

https://www.hamiltonnolan.com/p/what-will-replace-advertising-revenue

For Nolan, "public funding of journalism is the only way to fix this…If we accept that journalism is not just a business or a form of entertainment but a public good, then funding it with public money makes perfect sense":

https://www.hamiltonnolan.com/p/public-funding-of-journalism-is-the

Having grown up in Canada – under the CBC – and then lived for a quarter of my life in the UK – under the BBC – I am very enthusiastic about Nolan's solution. There are obvious problems with publicly funded journalism, like the politicization of news coverage:

https://www.theguardian.com/media/2023/jan/24/panel-approving-richard-sharp-as-bbc-chair-included-tory-party-donor

And the transformation of the funding into a cheap political football:

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/poilievre-defund-cbc-change-law-1.6810434

But the worst version of those problems is still better than the best version of the private-equity-funded model of news production.

But Nolan notes the emergence of a new form of hedge fund news, one that is awfully promising, and also terribly fraught: Hunterbrook Media, an investigative news outlet owned by short-sellers who pay journalists to research and publish damning reports on companies they hold a short position on:

https://hntrbrk.com/

For those of you who are blissfully distant from the machinations of the financial markets, "short selling" is a wager that a company's stock price will go down. A gambler who takes a short position on a company's stock can make a lot of money if the company stumbles or fails altogether (but if the company does well, the short can suffer literally unlimited losses).

Shorts have historically paid analysts to dig into companies and uncover the sins hidden on their balance-sheets, but as Matt Levine points out, journalists work for a fraction of the price of analysts and are at least as good at uncovering dirt as MBAs are:

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2024-04-02/a-hedge-fund-that-s-also-a-newspaper

What's more, shorts who discover dirt on a company still need to convince journalists to publicize their findings and trigger the sell-off that makes their short position pay off. Shorts who own a muckraking journalistic operation can skip this step: they are the journalists.

There's a way in which this is sheer genius. Well-funded shorts who don't care about the news per se can still be motivated into funding freely available, high-quality investigative journalism about corporate malfeasance (notoriously, one of the least attractive forms of journalism for advertisers). They can pay journalists top dollar – even bid against each other for the most talented journalists – and supply them with all the tools they need to ply their trade. A short won't ever try the kind of bullshit the owners of Vice pulled, paying themselves millions while their journalists lose access to Lexisnexis or the PACER database:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/02/24/anti-posse/#when-you-absolutely-positively-dont-give-a-solitary-single-fuck

The shorts whose journalists are best equipped stand to make the most money. What's not to like?

Well, the issue here is whether the ruling class's sense of solidarity is stronger than its greed. The wealthy have historically oscillated between real solidarity (think of the ultrawealthy lobbying to support bipartisan votes for tax cuts and bailouts) and "war of all against all" (as when wealthy colonizers dragged their countries into WWI after the supply of countries to steal ran out).

After all, the reason companies engage in the scams that shorts reveal is that they are profitable. "Behind every great fortune is a great crime," and that's just great. You don't win the game when you get into heaven, you win it when you get into the Forbes Rich List.

Take monopolies: investors like the upside of backing an upstart company that gobbles up some staid industry's margins – Amazon vs publishing, say, or Uber vs taxis. But while there's a lot of upside in that move, there's also a lot of risk: most companies that set out to "disrupt" an industry sink, taking their investors' capital down with them.

Contrast that with monopolies: backing a company that merges with its rivals and buys every small company that might someday grow large is a sure thing. Shriven of "wasteful competition," a company can lower quality, raise prices, capture its regulators, screw its workers and suppliers and laugh all the way to Davos. A big enough company can ignore the complaints of those workers, customers and regulators. They're not just too big to fail. They're not just too big to jail. They're too big to care:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/04/teach-me-how-to-shruggie/#kagi

Would-be monopolists are stuck in a high-stakes Prisoner's Dilemma. If they cooperate, they can screw over everyone else and get unimaginably rich. But if one party defects, they can raid the monopolist's margins, short its stock, and snitch to its regulators.

It's true that there's a clear incentive for hedge-fund managers to fund investigative journalism into other hedge-fund managers' portfolio companies. But it would be even more profitable for both of those hedgies to join forces and collude to screw the rest of us over. So long as they mistrust each other, we might see some benefit from that adversarial relationship. But the point of the 0.1% is that there aren't very many of them. The Aspen Institute can rent a hall that will hold an appreciable fraction of that crowd. They buy their private jets and bespoke suits and powdered rhino horn from the same exclusive sellers. Their kids go to the same elite schools. They know each other, and they have every opportunity to get drunk together at a charity ball or a society wedding and cook up a plan to join forces.

This is the problem at the core of "mechanism design" grounded in "rational self-interest." If you try to create a system where people do the right thing because they're selfish assholes, you normalize being a selfish asshole. Eventually, the selfish assholes form a cozy little League of Selfish Assholes and turn on the rest of us.

Appeals to morality don't work on unethical people, but appeals to immorality crowds out ethics. Take the ancient split between "free software" (software that is designed to maximize the freedom of the people who use it) and "open source software" (identical to free software, but promoted as a better way to make robust code through transparency and peer review).

Over the years, open source – an appeal to your own selfish need for better code – triumphed over free software, and its appeal to the ethics of a world of "software freedom." But it turns out that while the difference between "open" and "free" was once mere semantics, it's fully possible to decouple the two. Today, we have lots of "open source": you can see the code that Google, Microsoft, Apple and Facebook uses, and even contribute your labor to it for free. But you can't actually decide how the software you write works, because it all takes a loop through Google, Microsoft, Apple or Facebook's servers, and only those trillion-dollar tech monopolists have the software freedom to determine how those servers work:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/05/04/which-side-are-you-on/#tivoization-and-beyond

That's ruling class solidarity. The Big Tech firms have hidden a myriad of sins beneath their bafflegab and balance-sheets. These (as yet) undiscovered scams constitute a "bezzle," which JK Galbraith defined as "the magic interval when a confidence trickster knows he has the money he has appropriated but the victim does not yet understand that he has lost it."

The purpose of Hunterbrook is to discover and destroy bezzles, hastening the moment of realization that the wealth we all feel in a world of seemingly orderly technology is really an illusion. Hunterbrook certainly has its pick of bezzles to choose from, because we are living in a Golden Age of the Bezzle.

Which is why I titled my new novel The Bezzle. It's a tale of high-tech finance scams, starring my two-fisted forensic accountant Marty Hench, and in this volume, Hench is called upon to unwind a predatory prison-tech scam that victimizes the most vulnerable people in America – our army of prisoners – and their families:

https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250865878/thebezzle

The scheme I fictionalize in The Bezzle is very real. Prison-tech monopolists like Securus and Viapath bribe prison officials to abolish calls, in-person visits, mail and parcels, then they supply prisoners with "free" tablets where they pay hugely inflated rates to receive mail, speak to their families, and access ebooks, distance education and other electronic media:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/02/captive-customers/#guillotine-watch

But a group of activists have cornered these high-tech predators, run them to ground and driven them to the brink of extinction, and they've done it using "the master's tools" – with appeals to regulators and the finance sector itself.

Writing for The Appeal, Dana Floberg and Morgan Duckett describe the campaign they waged with Worth Rises to bankrupt the prison-tech sector:

https://theappeal.org/securus-bankruptcy-prison-telecom-industry/

Here's the headline figure: Securus is $1.8 billion in debt, and it has eight months to find a financier or it will go bust. What's more, all the creditors it might reasonably approach have rejected its overtures, and its bonds have been downrated to junk status. It's a dead duck.

Even better is how this happened. Securus's debt problems started with its acquisition, a leveraged buyout by Platinum Equity, who borrowed heavily against the firm and then looted it with bogus "management fees" that meant that the debt continued to grow, despite Securus's $700m in annual revenue from America's prisoners. Platinum was just the last in a long line of PE companies that loaded up Securus with debt and merged it with its competitors, who were also mortgaged to make profits for other private equity funds.

For years, Securus and Platinum were able to service their debt and roll it over when it came due. But after Worth Rises got NYC to pass a law making jail calls free, creditors started to back away from Securus. It's one thing for Securus to charge $18 for a local call from a prison when it's splitting the money with the city jail system. But when that $18 needs to be paid by the city, they're going to demand much lower prices. To make things worse for Securus, prison reformers got similar laws passed in San Francisco and in Connecticut.

Securus tried to outrun its problems by gobbling up one of its major rivals, Icsolutions, but Worth Rises and its coalition convinced regulators at the FCC to block the merger. Securus abandoned the deal:

https://worthrises.org/blogpost/securusmerger

Then, Worth Rises targeted Platinum Equity, going after the pension funds and other investors whose capital Platinum used to keep Securus going. The massive negative press campaign led to eight-figure disinvestments:

https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2019-09-05/la-fi-tom-gores-securus-prison-phone-mass-incarceration

Now, Securus's debt became "distressed," trading at $0.47 on the dollar. A brief, covid-fueled reprieve gave Securus a temporary lifeline, as prisoners' families were barred from in-person visits and had to pay Securus's rates to talk to their incarcerated loved ones. But after lockdown, Securus's troubles picked up right where they left off.

They targeted Platinum's founder, Tom Gores, who papered over his bloody fortune by styling himself as a philanthropist and sports-team owner. After a campaign by Worth Rises and Color of Change, Gores was kicked off the Los Angeles County Museum of Art board. When Gores tried to flip Securus to a SPAC – the same scam Trump pulled with Truth Social – the negative publicity about Securus's unsound morals and financials killed the deal:

https://twitter.com/WorthRises/status/1578034977828384769

Meanwhile, more states and cities are making prisoners' communications free, further worsening Securus's finances:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/02/14/minnesota-nice/#shitty-technology-adoption-curve

Congress passed the Martha Wright-Reed Just and Reasonable Communications Act, giving the FCC the power to regulate the price of federal prisoners' communications. Securus's debt prices tumbled further:

https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/117/s1541

Securus's debts were coming due: it owes $1.3b in 2024, and hundreds of millions more in 2025. Platinum has promised a $400m cash infusion, but that didn't sway S&P Global, a bond-rating agency that re-rated Securus's bonds as "CCC" (compare with "AAA"). Moody's concurred. Now, Securus is stuck selling junk-bonds:

https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/117/s1541

The company's creditors have given Securus an eight-month runway to find a new lender before they force it into bankruptcy. The company's debt is trading at $0.08 on the dollar.

Securus's major competitor is Viapath (prison tech is a duopoly). Viapath is also debt-burdened and desperate, thanks to a parallel campaign by Worth Rises, and has tried all of Securus's tricks, and failed:

https://pestakeholder.org/news/american-securities-fails-to-sell-prison-telecom-company-viapath/

Viapath's debts are due next year, and if Securus tanks, no one in their right mind will give Viapath a dime. They're the walking dead.

Worth Rise's brilliant guerrilla warfare against prison-tech and its private equity backers are a master class in using the master's tools to dismantle the master's house. The finance sector isn't a friend of justice or working people, but sometimes it can be used tactically against financialization itself. To paraphrase MLK, "finance can't make a corporation love you, but it can stop a corporation from destroying you."

Yes, the ruling class finds solidarity at the most unexpected moments, and yes, it's easy for appeals to greed to institutionalize greediness. But whether it's funding unbezzling journalism through short selling, or freeing prisons by brandishing their cooked balance-sheets in the faces of bond-rating agencies, there's a lot of good we can do on the way to dismantling the system.

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/2024/04/08/money-talks/#bullshit-walks

Image: KMJ (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Boerse_01_KMJ.jpg

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

[inmirova]

"it's easier to leave an abusive situation than it is to stop an abuser" :^( but it's not easy :^(

[h0rr0rsaxo]

Real (a little rant of mine below, i start complaining on it so just.. ignore it lmfao)

I know life is full of goodbyes and hellos and sometimes you go away from people you love and sometimes they go away from you and that’s the way things are but I just hate it. I hate saying goodbye I hate letting go. I hate missing people.

[retroaria]

⋆｡° ✮ boyfriend sakura ⋆｡° ✮

༉‧₊˚. dating the oh so bashful Haruka Sakura! ༉‧₊˚.

WIND BREAKER M.LIST | enjoy 🖤 - aria

⋆｡° ✮ ⋆｡° ✮ ⋆｡° ✮ ⋆｡° ✮ ⋆｡° ✮ ⋆｡° ✮ ⋆｡° ✮ ⋆｡° ✮

pre-boyfriend!sakura who sees you chatting with Umemiya one day and couldn’t stop thinking about you. He steals Nirei’s notebook and locks himself in a bathroom stall to skim through and find everything he can about you. He can’t help it! The way your cheeks perked up when you smiled, your hair effortlessly framing your soft features. The only logical explanation is that he had been bewitched by your or something. Maybe Nirei had written down the cure for this spell you seemed to have casted on him.

pre-boyfriend!sakura who gets flustered at the mere sound of your name. The rest of the guys catch on pretty quick to his little crush because of how intensely he seems to focus any time you’re mentioned. “Oh, and they’re single, by the way. Do what you want with that…” Suō would whisper teasingly into his ear. “Oh, really… wait w-what!? No I’m not- I- I just…” Sakura could barely contain himself, he gets so red there’s steam coming off of him.

pre-boyfriend!sakura who can’t stop thinking about what Suō said. He considers asking Umemiya about you, considering the two of you seem to be close, but he decides this is something he should do on his own. He finds little ways to get your attention on him, sparking small conversation which usually results in him acting as if he’s annoyed by you. He gets the other guys to hang around the shop/cafe you work at in town just so he can see you more often without seeming weird and going by himself.

pre-boyfriend!sakura who finds you being harassed by a rival gang one day and steps in without hesitation. He sends those guys home with tears in their eyes and turns to you with a level of concern no one has ever seen him have before. Asking if you’re okay or if you were hurt. It eventually turns into him making you out to be a nuisance again, asking how you got yourself in this situation and scolding you to be more careful next time. He takes this opportunity to give you his number, which is honestly the boldest thing he’s ever done. It’s just in case you’re in danger of course!! Although he walks home that night hoping that you’ll message him as soon as possible, checking his phone every so often with the hopes of your name popping up.

pre-boyfriend!sakura who becomes rather fond of your random messages to him throughout the day, his face heating up at the thought of you potentially liking him back, whether it was just platonic or not. If you ask him to hangout his mind goes blank, he has no idea what to do and accidentally leaves you on read for half the day. Eventually Suō and Nirei get a hold of his phone and see the messages, teasing him about it before discreetly replying back to you with a cheeky “I’d love to ;)”, which you notice is very uncharacteristic of Sakura. When he does meet up with you that day he rambles forever about how that wasn’t him and how the guys were messing with him. “Oh, so you didn’t actually want to hang out today?” You say, your expression falling sad. “Wait no t-that’s not what I meant, I did I just-“ this guy cant handle anything.

pre-boyfriend!sakura who spends his days in anticipation of the next hangout you two will have. He relishes in the peace your presence brings him and the way your voice lulls every worry out of his mind and body. He decides that confessing his feelings may ruin the bliss of your current relationship, and so he holds back and tries to enjoy what he can of you. Gushing at light touches, eyes lighting up at the sight of your smile or the sound of your laugh, losing himself in the stories you tell about anything and everything. He accepts the fact that he wants to just smoosh his face into yours and pull your body into his, but he’s ok with how things are as long as he can have these moments with you.

pre-boyfriend!sakura who gets whiplash at the sound of your confession. Through all the time that he’s spent entranced by you, in sheer awe under your spell, he failed to notice the subtle signs of your feelings for him along the way. All he could do was stare at you with a stupid dumbfounded look on his face. He’s lucky that he wears his heart on his sleeve and that his feelings were obvious to you from the beginning, because if you hadn’t pulled him in and placed your lips against his, he would’ve stayed there on the street with that dumb look on his face for days, paralyzed.

⋆｡° ✮ ⋆｡° ✮ ⋆｡° ✮ ⋆｡° ✮ ⋆｡° ✮ ⋆｡° ✮ ⋆｡° ✮ ⋆｡° ✮

boyfriend!sakura who is immediately extremely possessive and protective over you. Refuses to even tell the rest of Bofurin about you because he truly just wants to keep you all to himself. Of course, you told Umemiya and he told literally the entire town. He takes detours from his patrol routes to check up on you specifically, tries to make it quick although he can’t help but pull you away for a moment to steal a quick kiss before returning back to his patrol. It becomes known by other gangs that your his partner and while some of them get the gist that they shouldn’t mess with you, others may take it as a chance to mess with Sakura. He would protect you with his literal life and so would the rest of Bofurin so you have nothing to worry about, except for cleaning up the injuries your poor boyfriend got while protecting you, but he wears his battle scars with pride.

boyfriend!sakura who is always buying you little treats! Sweets, snacks, little toys and figures, anything he thinks you’d like he gets for you. Always gives it to you so nonchalantly, trying to hide his blush as he watches your adorable face beam at the gift with excitement.

boyfriend!sakura who takes a few months to get comfortable enough to share his life and backstory with you. He’s afraid that you may see him differently, or think that he’s a bad person for who he was in the past and the things the continue to drive him as a fighter. You assure him that you love him for who he is no matter what and it takes him aback. He isn’t used to this level of love and care, and it takes a bit for him to get used to it. Eventually, he becomes totally comfortable with you. He lets you dote on him as much as you want and he relishes in the love he gets to give and receive with you. You truly opened up new perspectives that he had never considered before.

boyfriend!sakura who does his best to make time for you. Not just for you but for him as well. You’re the only thing that calms him down and keeps him sane. He needs a dose of you at least once a day to help him ease out of his constant antsy state. Although it doesn’t help when you start getting all lovey dovey and he make him all flustered, but deep down, he loves it.

boyfriend!sakura who doesn’t really understand the concept of a date. It’s just hanging out right? Wrong. It’s intimate, something he’d never experienced before. Now that he gets to have that with you he loves taking you out. Dinner, movies, walks around the park, even just staying in and cuddling with you for hours, it’s never just hanging out with you. Every moment with you is a date for him because every moment with you is an experience of closeness and intimacy that he can’t get anywhere else but with you.

boyfriend!sakura who needs time to ease into physical touch, but once he does, he can’t get enough of it. Loves the feeling of your hand in his, his arm around your waist, your hands cupping his face, his lips locked with yours. He loves it all so much. When you guys cuddle he absolutely engulfs you, tangling his legs with yours, wrapping his arms tight around you, he’s clinging to you for dear life. He loves when you kiss his jaw or the corner of his mouth, he also likes planting soft kisses to the corners of your mouth. Loves when you run your fingers through his hair or down his back or trace soft circles on his arms, your soft touch feels like the cure to everything that ails him.

boyfriend!sakura who is the first to say “I love you”. He says it to you while the two of your are cuddling, laying face to face, bodies tangled up on his bed as the light from outside begins to dim. You’re both tired and eager to fall asleep in each others arms. He can’t help but notice how incredible this feels, it’s calm and peaceful, but he can still feel the faint flutter of butterflies in his stomach whenever he’s around you. You tug at his heart like you own it, you’ve taken it already, but he would’ve happily given it to you. He can’t help the words as they come out of his mouth in a soft content sigh. He knows he’s scared to say it, but he can’t hold them back, and he doesn’t try to stop it. When you say it back he instinctively pulls you into a tender kiss, then pushes his head into the crook of your neck. He’s blushing like crazy, but he’s so happy right now he doesn’t care about how flustered he is.

⋆｡° ✮ ⋆｡° ✮ ⋆｡° ✮ ⋆｡° ✮ ⋆｡° ✮ ⋆｡° ✮ ⋆｡° ✮ ⋆｡° ✮

Sakura Haruka, you are going to be the death of me. I really wanted to capture how tender and sweet I think it would be to fall in love with him. He’s such a crybaby, but I think at his core he just needs to be loved ❤️ I hope you guys enjoyed!!

⋆｡° ✮ ⋆｡° ✮ ⋆｡° ✮ ⋆｡° ✮ ⋆｡° ✮ ⋆｡° ✮ ⋆｡° ✮ ⋆｡° ✮

[miaoua3]

hey!! popping in to say stay the morning was just 🧎‍♀️perfect. cld i request for some boyfriend ceo cheol hcs? <3 cant get enough of that trope omg.

LOVE UR WORK SM BAE

heya! thank you so much for the nice words! and sure i can, it would be my pleasure🫶

CEO! Seungcheol Boyfriend Headcanons:

• (sfw headcanons)

met you at some fancy dinner that you were accompanying your friend to, literally saw you across the room and couldn’t look away, literally stopped listening to whoever it was that he was talking to, said a brief “excuse me” before he immediately approached you to ask you for your name, the rest is history❤️

boyfriend or a sugar daddy? well- both actually. he literally gets mad if you even dare to think about paying for something with your own money, his black card has its first and foremost place in your wallet so you better be using it

although he indulges in buying you expensive and extravagant presents, cheol is actually all about small actions of affection. randomly ordering you food while you are at work, sending you flowers, tying your shoes when they come undone, holding your hand while you walk down the stairs in heels to make sure you don’t fall-he does it all and does it without even having to think twice about it, that’s how much he loves and adores you

has his kitchen filled to the brim with all the sweets and treats that you absolutely love, you definitely will put on a bit of a healthy relationship weight when you start dating him

never lets you drive to his place, always either picks you up himself or has his driver pick you up, not because he thinks you can’t but because he’d rather not risk it and just because he thinks it isn’t necessary, his princess shouldn’t be doing anything except look pretty and give him tons of kisses❤️

definitely books and pays for all the activities you have always wanted to try like your dream concerts, sky diving (if you are into dying like that lol💀) etc- just anything to make his girl happy

didn’t even ask you to move in officially, he just hung an extra key to your keychains, started insisting that you stay the night (every night actually) and eventually…your place was empty and his place was filled with your things and that made him so so happy❤️

behind the cold and moody persona he puts up as a cover is the clingiest, babiest boyfie seungcheolie ever :(( will text you all the time, asking when you will be back so you can cuddle him, “its been so long since you cuddled him last :(“ (its been 3 hours….)

is absolutely miserable when he has to go away for some business trips, literally counts the days until he comes back home to you❤️

• (nsfw! headcanons)

definitely provider both in and outside the bedroom, he will always put your pleasure first, refuses for his bedroom life to be just something quick and simple, will always spend hours just making love to you until he knows that you are 100% satisfied

LOVES spending his money on lingerie and expensive jewellery for you to wear in bed, he thinks there’s nothing hotter than you clad in red lacy lingerie and with rubies hanging from your ears and neck, he finds it so hot that HE was the one to buy all of that and finds it even hotter that HE is the only one who has the privilege to take it all off (read: rip it all off)

possessive as fuck, is always asking you “who is my good girl?, on nights where he is jealous and feeling pissed might even let the words “who do you belong to?” slip out, but like not in a misogynistic and egotistical way, but more so in a “i can’t live without you in my life so i need you to remind me that you will want to be with me forever :(“ way

doesn’t want to risk it with shower sex because you almost slipped and fell one time and gave him a mini heart attack, bathtub sex however? lets just say he always has to clean up the water that has splashed outside the bathtub while you rode him to the point he saw heaven

not really into bondage but loves to restrict your movement with his hands alone, gets him off knowing he’s strong enough to manhandle you in ways he desires

loves your ass more than anything else in the world, his favourite position is 100% doggy or fucking you in front of a mirror with your back turned towards him so he can see both your face and your ass

big on leaving hickeys all over your body, he just wants to mark what is his so everyone can know to back. the fuck. off. of his girl (loves it when you do it to him too, he just wants the whole world to know that you two are each other’s person, even if it’s because of the hickeys littered all over his collarbones

low-key into voyeurism, likes the danger of being discovered (and getting into a scandal apparently smh bro doesn’t care about his public image he’s just thinking with his dick)

i said it once and i will say it again- my man has a praise kink and that’s the end of it, he just loves reassuring you and praising you how good you are doing and how good of a girl you are being for him, would never call you the b-word, you are his princess, his baby, not…that word :(( (well unless you insist to-)

thats all i got for now😭 hope that you like it! love you mwah💋

[gothicflowers]

Listen, Alex has been consuming my brain for weeks. It’s a whole issue (it’s not an issue, I love it really). So can I get something that’s maybe a little darker with him? Doesn’t have to be too dark, just maybe showing that side that isn’t the golden retriever we all love. Maybe a little more of that something that makes him such a good CIA operative.

Something protective/possessive perhaps? Can be NSFW or not, totally up to you.

Also, I hope you’re doing well! I know what it’s like to just need a distraction and get out of your head for a bit 💙

(MDNI +18)

Sorry this took me forever but I’ve been fighting waves of ADHD paralysis that even my meds cant fight. And I’m doing a little better, not fully healthy but I’m getting there❤️

ALEX KELLER IS A GOLDEN RETRIEVER.

At least that’s what he lets you see.

Because he doesn’t want you to know how dark and dirty he can be. Your family is fully convinced that he is the perfect man, which he truly is. Always getting you flowers and planning dates or small getaways. You clearly won the lottery with Alex. You see Alex as a night in shining armor, a kiss from the stars.

But Alex sees you as the dusk sky, beautiful colors that light up the sky before the light disappears. Soft delicate hands to hold, no blood or dirt under your nails. Your voice is the crackling of a fireplace in deep December snow that warms his soul. You’re the flower that blooms from the spring frost after he tills the ground with his bare hands.

Alex has fought for too long and shed too much blood in the name of justice and peace for anything to take away the one pure thing the universe owes him. You.

But sometimes dispute all his training and good intentions you see small glimmers of what Alex could be if he didn’t keep himself in check. Sometimes it’s in the way you end up bent over the counter with his fingers laced tightly in your hair as he rants on about this little bitchy attitude you’ve had since you woke up. He knows you love it and it feeds a dark pit of control that burns for you. Every thrust making you gasp. All Alex can grunt out of his gritting teeth is MINE. MINE. MINE. And is he gonna let you come? No. Not unless your pretty little eyes are welling with lust and love filled tears begging to cum. He’ll eventually let go of your hair and hold you by the jaw and let you confess that you just needed some dick, and he’s the only one that can satisfy your craving. Such a sweet thing, such perfection, so delicate.

Alex doesn’t mind letting other guys how possessive he can get. He didn’t like that guy that keep trying to dance with you at the bar. It’s surely a coincidence that guy slipped and hit his head on the sink. Other times it’s simply staring them down with a look that even Simon wouldn’t mess with.

When your ex tried to weasel their way back into your heart they abruptly stopped. They sent flowers, chocolates, jewelry, everything they could think of to win you back. You figured they finally got the message that you didn’t want them. But in reality your ex came home to a large envelope packed full of evidence of everything they’ve ever done, things you never knew about. Paired with a simple note “leave what is mine alone or else”.

Alex never wants you to know about what he truly does. Would you ever hold his hand again knowing how blood stained they are? Would those soft lips still say I love you? Despite his pure intentions he knows not all of his orders he’s been given were good. So he just tells you he works in surveillance. It eases your mind thinking he’s hiding on a roof somewhere, not down in a gunfight.

When he comes home after an extended time away you’re distraught with worry that he lost his leg. You will die never knowing the truth about what went down that day.

It’s not always that he wants to keep you in the dark, but sometimes it’s just truly classified information that you can’t know. And shouldn’t, it would give you nightmares. This man could rewrite history books if he shared what he knows.

Alex keeps hidden security cameras around the house. You don’t even realize they’re installed. He’s got extensive knowledge of technology and he used it to his advantage. He’s very good about keeping you a secret from his job but sometimes on those late nights he just needs to see you sleeping peacefully at home. And yes there is a tracker on your phone. Can’t lose track of his sweet little angel.

Everyone highly underestimates him. Too soft hearted, too eager, too naïve. The way his eyes darken and chest heaves as he stands covered in someone else’s blood shocks a room of experienced soldiers. A version of a man they rarely see, a version of a man you don’t know. Yet that version of him is who checks the house when he hear something at night. The version who corrects people who speak to you rudely. The version that growls in your ear from behind as your bodies tangle. The version who got rid of all of your problems. The Alex that will pull the earth apart and unleash hell to create a heaven on earth for you alone.

Alex is a wolf in sheep’s clothing.

[riordanness]

— say don’t go - [tmr!newt]

wordcount: 0.9K

warnings: uh- you have the flare

requested: no

We’d been running for… how long? It felt like forever. Days and days of scorching heat, oppressive sunlight, harsh winds. My throat feels dry all the time, my eyes ache, and my legs are rubber.

At least I have Newt. No one could ask for a better friend. He’s always there for me, right beside me no matter what. He gives me the water even though I know he must be just as thirsty as I am.

He makes sure he’s the one carrying the pack we’re supposed to be sharing; he’s always taking my turns.

How can I tell him I know I’m not immune? That the cranks scratched me back in that old warehouse a few days ago? The weight of knowing my days are dissolving in front of my eyes is so heavy I can barely breathe. What should I do? What does anyone do, knowing you’re about to die?

I know I have to tell him soon. I can’t keep putting it off — it’s killing me in more ways than one.

Minho calls for a stop hours after nightfall. I have lost complete track of time; too lazy to keep track with my wristwatch. My head is fuzzy enough as it is.

Newt glances at me, and gives me a weak smile. I try to return it, but I can’t. I collapse to the ground, my knees giving way after one too many hours of walking.

Newt is at my side in an instant. “Are you alright?”

I try to nod my head. “Just… tired. Sorry.”

“It’s okay.” He holds out our shared water bottle. There’s barely a gulp left in the bottom.

I shake my head. “You take it. I had it last.”

“No.” Newt is serious. “You need it more than I do. Besides…” He hesitates, but doesn’t continue. I’m too scared to ask what he means.

I eventually give it and take the water, the few semi-cold drops helping immensely. I feel my body shutting down, my eyes trying to close.

Newt shifts over to sit beside me. “Go to sleep, love.”

I don’t even try to stay awake. I lean against him and am instantly in darkness.

The next thing I know, I’m startled awake. I don’t know why, as it’s still pretty dark, the air is still cool, and none of the boys have stirred. I wonder briefly if a sound in the night woke me, but I see and hear nothing.

It’s probably just the growing anxiety and disease taking over my brain. I inch away from Newt, desperate not to wake him. He’s been doing so much for me, for everyone. I owe him my life ten times over, and I don’t want to disturb maybe the last peaceful sleep he may get.

I get to my feet, and my eyes stray to Newt’s sleeping face. I have a ridiculous urge to touch his cheek. He looks so soft and pretty and perfect, just laying there.

I force myself to turn around. I walk a minute, until I stumble across a little boulder and sit down, my chin in my hands. This illness inside of me is eating me up. I can feel myself fading away, everything that makes me me slowly dissolve into nothing.

I don’t know how long I sit there, despairing.

Eventually, someone approaches. I can tell by the slightly uneven footsteps who it is even before they speak.

“Hey, Newt.” I have no emotion in my voice, struggling to keep it even.

“Y/n,” he replies, gently sitting beside me. “What’s up, love?”

I shrug. “Nothin’.”

Even though it’s too dark to tell properly, I know he’s got his you-are-such-a-bad-liar face on. “Y/n.”

I sigh. “Okay. Fine. I—“ But the words die in my throat. I can’t seem to find the right way to tell the boy I love more than anything that I’m about to, well, die.

“You have the bloody Flare.” The anger in Newt’s voice takes me by surprise more than the fact that he knows.

“What—“

He slams his hand into the rock we’re sitting on, cutting me off. “It’s not fair!” He hisses. “We have to fix this, we have to—I cant, lose you—“

His voice cracks, and I hear him inhale sharply, like he’s trying not to cry.

That makes me break down. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you,” I sob. “I just—I didn’t want… I don’t know. I just don’t want this.”

“Nobody shuckin’ wants the Flare, Y/n.” Newt’s voice is gruff, but almost teasing, a little reminder of what we used to be together. Joking, teasing best friends.

That makes me break down completely, and I cry heartbrokenly into my hands. I feel Newt wrap his arms around me, pulling me into his chest. I cry into him, clinging to his shirt like it’s my life.

“Newt,” I manage. “I’m going to die.”

“No you’re not.” His tone is firm. “I’m not gonna lose you. I—I love you, ya dumb shank.”

“What…?” My tears come to a hiccuping stop, and I lift my head to look at him. “You…”

He lets out an embarrassed chuckle. “Yeah. Sorry. Bad timing?”

I shake my head, a smile on my face despite it all. “I love you too, idiot.”

“Oh,” Newt laughs. “Oh, okay. Good.”

I lean towards him, pressing a kiss to his mouth. “Just hold me, please? Help me forget for a while.”

And Newt does exactly that.

[sturniccz]

Pretty boy

Chris Sturniolo smut. If you dont like it, leave.

slightly inspired by a request i received, but not fully because im not comfortable writing the full request, this is what yall get😭😭💕

Warnings: nothing crazy tbh, mommy kink, sumbissive chris, slight age gap, oral, fem receiving, swearing, lmk if i missed anything!

not proofread, feel free to send requests!

___________________🎀__________________

Being best friends with your older brothers, coworker does have its perks, but at times like these, when all Chris wants to feel is love, He swears he would do anything. He has never really been into relationships, or any kind of love feeling other than the love he has for his family, but as for y/n, Justin‘s coworker at his new location for his job, he has discovered a new feeling that he has never felt before, which somehow scares him.

Every time he’s with Justin, y/n is there also. After a significant amount of time of knowing each other, they have grown to be very close with each other, regardless of their age gap. With Chris being freshly 20 years, old, and Laila, being 25, it almost feels illegal to have such feelings for her. But he didn’t care, all he wanted was to make her feel good. Thats what she deserves.

Another night crept upon Chris and he cant help but feel the absence of her not being in the house like usual. After some thought, he decided to send her a message politely asking her to come over. Regardless of her being so hesitant, he insisted, and eventually she caved.

After about 15 minutes there was three soft knocks at the front door, and Chris quickly jumped up, walking to the front of the house to greet her. He was excited, and it was obvious from the slight tent in his sweatpants.

“Hey Chris, how are you doing? Why did you want me to come over so late?” she breathes. “Its only 10,” he replies, “and plus im your favorite co-workers little brother, right?” he asks, only half serious, trying to keep a conversation going. “Well, I suppose I dont know any boys better than you.” She chuckles.

This caused Chris to freeze. He began to get lost in his thoughts, staring at her as she makes her way into the kitchen, grabbing herself a drink and getting comfortable on the couch. Chris makes his way over to sit next to her, noticing that she’s significantly keeping her distance from him.

“Do you wanna watch a movie?” she quietly suggests, almost as a way to erase some of the deafening silence between the two. “U-uh sure, you can pick.” He stutters. She chuckles at his remark. “You sure you’re alright pretty boy?” she laughs, an inside joke, of course she didn’t mean it whenever she calls him pretty boy, but she is completely unaware of the affect it has on the boy. Physically.

“Yeah it’s nothing just put on whatever you want” he says, trying his best to just end this painfully flirty conversation in fear of her noticing his boner.

Not even ten minutes pass by and Chris can’t seem to keep his eyes off of her. She’s so gorgeous its almost unreal, as if shes a genuine angel that got lost on the way to heaven. Her hair is so perfect the way it rests across her shoulders, and the way her necklace looks laying against her collarbones. He could look at her forever, but he couldn’t, he might just die from getting so horny.

“Alright why are you staring at me? Do i have something on my face?” She snaps, not meaning to startle him, but still coming across as angry. He loved it.

“No, sorry.” He breathes as he reverts his attention back to the film on the screen. Less than ten seconds later he’s staring again. “Alright Chris stop doing that.” She says, using the same tone as before and somehow getting even deeper under his skin. “O-okay, i’m sorry,” he says looking into his lap, “i just think you’re pretty.” he finishes. “You think im pretty? Chris you’ve hardly ever spoken to be before why are you telling me this?” she questions, slightly confused and slightly turned on. “I just wanna make you feel special, wanna show you love, wanna be good for you. Am i good for you?” he blurts out, hardly thinking.

She is completely stunned by his words, but chooses to play along, with the boy now laying his head and shoulders in her lap. “Of course. You’re good for me Chrissy, always.” she says looking down at him, playing with his hair. “Do you wanna show me how good you can be? Show me how much you love me, baby?” she says as he slowly sits up, looking at her in the eyes. “Y-Yeah? You mean it?” he asks, a bit hesitant about what he had said. She nods.

“Be a good boy for mommy and touch me, yeah?” She is completely in control. Chris is practically at her mercy at the moment, and he is fucking loving it. Chris lets out a small whine as he begins trailing his hand down her torso, stopping just above her waistband. He looks at her for a nod pf approval one last time before finally making his way down her body.

After quickly removing her leggings, he leaves a long trail of wet, open mouthed kisses from the crook of her neck all the way down to her panties. He licks a stripe from the bottom to the top of her pussy over the pink, lace fabric, stopping right at her heat. Her hand slowly makes its way to his hair, slightly pushing down. “Go ahead baby, show mommy how much you love her.” She’s good at this. Really fucking good. So good that Chris begins riding the fabric of the couch he was previously sat on, trying to get any amount of friction he could.

He loved eating pussy. So much so that he didn’t even consider any foreplay, he went straight in, tongue fucking the older girl, looking straight into her eyes. “Oh fuck, Chris! God your mouth is amazing-“ she cuts herself off with a moan as he slips a finger into her. “God- Fuck, Chris!” she moans biting her lip. “Good boy, baby, such a good boy for me. Keep going baby you’re doing so good-“ she says looking down at him as he lets out a guttural moan at the names.

Chris is a slut for praise. Her fingers curled in his scalp as he adds another finger, in hopes of getting more praise from her, now curling upwards. “Fuck, yes right there! Oh god-“ she says arching her back. Chris removes his mouth, replacing it with his thumb temporarily. “You’re so pretty mommy, I can never get enough of you.” he says leaving kisses to the inside of her thighs before returning to her heat. “Fuck Chris- Im gonna cum! Gonna cum on your fingers, yeah, baby? You gonna be a good boy and l-let me cum on your hand?” she says stuttering and arching her back. He nods in agreement, remaining eye contact before her eyes squeezed shut and she threw her head back. Letting out the sluttiest moans and whimpers, she finally finishes on Chris’ fingers, watching as he pulls them out and placing them into his mouth, sucking off the juices.

“God thats hot.” she admits. “You calling me a good boy is hot for fucks sake.” he breathes. “You want me to take care of you?” She asks, looking at the obvious bulge in Chris’ sweats. “No, I just wanna sleep. M’tired” Chris says before snuggling into her space between her neck and her chest. “Okay Chrissy, you get some sleep. You did good for me, love.” She says as she watches his breathing steady and him slowly drift off into a deep, very much needed sleep.

Lmk if you want to be removed from my tag list, ive just composed a few people like my mutuals etc

Tags: @daddyslilchickenfingers @apclyptc @byerreddue @chrisenthusiast @christophersfilm @ciarasturn1 @christinarowie332 @lovingmattysposts @mangosrar @oversturn @plasticferal @recklesssturniolo @softsturn @sturnsbaby @sturniolosluvv @sturniscz

[ssparksflyy]

my tears ricochet but its jason grace and his 'lover' that he cant be bothered to give attention to

"even on my worst day, did i deserve, babe all the hell you gave me? 'cause i loved you, i swear i loved you 'til my dying day" but its his lover knowing she wasnt perfect, but also knew she didnt deserve the way he treated her.

"i didn't have it in myself to go with grace and you're the hero flying around, saving face" but its his lover watching him be everybody else's hero and prioritizing people he hardly knew.

"and if i'm dead to you, why are you at the wake? cursing my name, wishing i stayed" but its his lover watching him at her funeral from elysium and seeing how pathetic he's acting, saying he misses her, as if he didnt once tell her in an argument she was the last thing on his mind at the time.

"you know i didn't want to have to haunt you but what a ghostly scene, you wear the same jewels that i gave you as you bury me" but it's the way he can't think of anything else but her, no matter how hard he tries, after she's gone. but it's the way that he had the audacity to wear the necklace he gave her when they started dating to the funeral.

"'cause when i'd fight, you used to tell me i was brave" but its their 'honeymoon phase' where he used to treat her as if she was the only person he'd ever care for.

"and i can go anywhere i want, anywhere i want, just not home" but it's the way he infiltrated her home that once adored her and made it all about him. the way camp half blood was once the only real home she ever knew, but now it wasn't. the way that jason once served as a home to her, only for a very short amount of time, but she was incapable of reaching that home as well.

"and you can aim for my heart, go for blood, but you would still miss me in your bones" but it's the way that he now realizes and regrets how much and badly he hurt her. the way she'll forever haunt him. the way he refuses to ever forgive himself and knows that apart of him died in shame that day.

"and i still talk to you (when i'm screaming at the sky)" but it's the way that when she was alive, his lover would beg all the gods for a way out. the way she wouldn't allow herself to leave but begged for the strength to continue fighting for his love that simply was no longer there.

"and when you can't sleep at night (you hear my stolen lullabies)" but its the way that jason can't stop replaying the one video he has of her singing by the campfire and the way he can't fall asleep without listening to it.

"you had to kill me, but it killed you just the same" but it's the way that jason could've saved her from dying, but chose to help another camper in need, thinking you'd just get hurt and would heal eventually. the way that decision is the reason why he can't get out of bed in the morning, the way that decision is what causes him to lose himself.

"you turned into your worst fears" but its the way that jason realizes that he's no better than his father, the man he hates most, for being so careless and heartless when it came to somebody who loved and adored him in a way nobody else could.

"look at how my tears ricochet" but it's jason grace and his lover who both lost themselves for each other, but at different times. one of those times, being far too late.

his lover died in battle against an invasion of monsters in the woods of camp half blood. jason saw her just minutes before she passed, knowing he couldve helped her, but instead decided to help the camper who was only a year younger than her and who's name he didnt know. he figured she'd be fine and accepted the fact she'd get hurt, but knew she would heal later. years later, he's still killing himself from within for being unable to answer the question, if he knew it all then, would he do it again?

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Lina Khan’s future is the future of the Democratic Party — and America

On OCTOBER 23 at 7PM, I'll be in DECATUR, presenting my novel THE BEZZLE at EAGLE EYE BOOKS.

On the one hand, the anti-monopoly movement has a future no matter who wins the 2024 election – that's true even if Kamala Harris wins but heeds the calls from billionaire donors to fire Lina Khan and her fellow trustbusters.

In part, that's because US antitrust laws have broad "private rights of action" that allow individuals and companies to sue one another for monopolistic conduct, even if top government officials are turning a blind eye. It's true that from the Reagan era to the Biden era, these private suits were few and far between, and the cases that were brought often died in a federal courtroom. But the past four years has seen a resurgence of antitrust rage that runs from left to right, and from individuals to the C-suites of big companies, driving a wave of private cases that are prevailing in the courts, upending the pro-monopoly precedents that billionaires procured by offering free "continuing education" antitrust training to 40% of the Federal judiciary:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/08/13/post-bork-era/#manne-down

It's amazing to see the DoJ racking up huge wins against Google's monopolistic conduct, sure, but first blood went to Epic, who won a historic victory over Google in federal court six months before the DoJ's win, which led to the court ordering Google to open up its app store:

https://www.theverge.com/policy/2024/10/7/24243316/epic-google-permanent-injunction-ruling-third-party-stores

Google's 30% App Tax is a giant drag on all kinds of sectors, as is its veto over which software Android users get to see, so Epic's win is going to dramatically alter the situation for all kinds of activities, from beleaguered indie game devs:

https://antiidlereborn.com/news/

To the entire news sector:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/06/save-news-we-must-open-app-stores

Private antitrust cases have attracted some very surprising plaintiffs, like Michael Jordan, whose long policy of apoliticism crumbled once he bought a NASCAR team and lived through the monopoly abuses of sports leagues as an owner, not a player:

https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/michael-jordan-anti-monopolist

A much weirder and more unlikely antitrust plaintiff than Michael Jordan is Google, the perennial antitrust defendant. Google has brought a complaint against Microsoft in the EU, based on Microsoft's extremely ugly monopolistic cloud business:

https://www.reuters.com/technology/google-files-complaint-eu-over-microsoft-cloud-practices-2024-09-25/

Google's choice of venue here highlights another reason to think that the antitrust surge will continue irrespective of US politics: antitrust is global. Antitrust fervor has seized governments from the UK to the EU to South Korea to Japan. All of those countries have extremely similar antitrust laws, because they all had their statute books overhauled by US technocrats as part of the Marshall Plan, so they have the same statutory tools as the American trustbusters who dismantled Standard Oil and AT&T, and who are making ready to shatter Google into several competing businesses:

https://www.theverge.com/2024/10/8/24265832/google-search-antitrust-remedies-framework-android-chrome-play

Antitrust fever has spread to Canada, Australia, and even China, where the Cyberspace Directive bans Chinese tech giants from breaking interoperability to freeze out Chinese startups. Anything that can't go on forever eventually stops, and the cost of 40 years of pro-monopoly can't be ignored. Monopolies make the whole world more brittle, even as the cost of that brittleness mounts. It's hard to pretend monopolies are fine when a single hurricane can wipe out the entire country's supply of IV fluid – again:

https://prospect.org/health/2024-10-11-cant-believe-im-writing-about-iv-fluid-again/

What's more, the conduct of global monopolists is the same in every country where they have taken hold, which means that trustbusters in the EU can use the UK Digital Markets Unit's report on the mobile app market as a roadmap for their enforcement actions against Apple:

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

And then the South Korean and Japanese trustbusters can translate the court documents from the EU's enforcement action and use them to score victories over Apple in their own courts:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/10/an-injury-to-one/#is-an-injury-to-all

So on the one hand, the trustbusting wave will continue erode the foundations of global monopolies, no matter what happens after this election. But on the other hand, if Harris wins and then fires Biden's top trustbusters to appease her billionaire donors, things are going to get ugly.

A new, excellent long-form Bloomberg article by Josh Eidelson and Max Chafkin gives a sense of the battle raging just below the surface of the Democratic Power, built around a superb interview with Khan herself:

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2024-10-09/lina-khan-on-a-second-ftc-term-ai-price-gouging-data-privacy

The article begins with a litany of tech billionaires who've gone an all-out, public assault on Khan's leadership – billionaires who stand to personally lose hundreds of millions of dollars from her agency's principled, vital antitrust work, but who cloak their objection to Khan in rhetoric about defending the American economy. In public, some of these billionaires are icily polite, but many of them degenerate into frothing, toddler-grade name-calling, like IAB's Barry Diller, who called her a "dope" and Musk lickspittle Jason Calacanis, who called her an all-caps COMMUNIST and a LUNATIC.

The overall vibe from these wreckers? "How dare the FTC do things?!"

And you know, they have a point. For decades, the FTC was – in the quoted words of Tim Wu – "a very hardworking agency that did nothing." This was the period when the FTC targeted low-level scammers while turning a blind eye to the monsters that were devouring the US economy. In part, that was because the FTC had been starved of budget, trapping them in a cycle of racking up easy, largely pointless "wins" against penny-ante grifters to justify their existence, but never to the extent that Congress would apportion them the funds to tackle the really serious cases (if this sounds familiar, it's also the what happened during the long period when the IRS chased middle class taxpayers over minor filing errors, while ignoring the billionaires and giant corporations that engaged in 7- and 8-figure tax scams).

But the FTC wasn't merely underfunded: it was timid. The FTC has extremely broad enforcement and rulemaking powers, which most sat dormant during the neoliberal era:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/10/the-courage-to-govern/#whos-in-charge

The Biden administration didn't merely increase the FTC's funding: in choosing Khan to helm the organization, they brought onboard a skilled technician, who was both well-versed in the extensive but unused powers of the agency and determined to use them:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/10/18/administrative-competence/#i-know-stuff

But Khan's didn't just rely on technical chops and resources to begin the de-olicharchification of the US economy: she built a three-legged stool, whose third leg is narrative. Khan's signature is her in-person and remote "listening tours," where workers who've been harmed by corporate power get to tell their stories. Bloomberg recounts the story of Deborah Brantley, who was sexually harassed and threatened by her bosses at Kavasutra North Palm Beach. Brantley's bosses touched her inappropriately and "joked" about drugging her and raping her so she "won’t be such a bitch and then maybe people would like you more."

When Brantley finally quit and took a job bartending at a different business, Kavasutra sued her over her noncompete clause, alleging an "irreparable injury" sustained by having one of their former employees working at another business, seeking damages and fees.

The vast majority of the 30 million American workers who labor under noncompetes are like Brantley, low-waged service workers, especially at fast-food restaurants (so Wendy's franchisees can stop minimum wage cashiers from earning $0.25/hour more flipping burgers at a nearby McDonald's). The donor-class indenturers who defend noncompetes claim that noncompetes are necessary to protect "innovative" businesses from losing their "IP." But of course, the one state where no workers are subject to noncompetes is California, which bans them outright – the state that is also home to Silicon Valley, an IP-heave industry that the same billionaires laud for its innovations.

After that listening tour, Khan's FTC banned noncompetes nationwide:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/25/capri-v-tapestry/#aiming-at-dollars-not-men

Only to have a federal judge in Texas throw out their ban, a move that will see $300b/year transfered from workers to shareholders, and block the formation of 8,500 new US businesses every year:

https://www.npr.org/2024/08/21/g-s1-18376/federal-judge-tosses-ftc-noncompetes-ban

Notwithstanding court victories like Epic v Google and DoJ v Google, America's oligarchs have the courts on their side, thanks to decades of court-packing planned by the Federalist Society and executed by Senate Republicans and Reagan, Bush I, Bush II, and Trump. Khan understands this; she told Bloomberg that she's a "close student" of the tactics Reagan used to transform American society, admiring his effectiveness while hating his results. Like other transformative presidents, good and bad, Reagan had to fight the judiciary and entrenched institutions (as did FDR and Lincoln). Erasing Reagan's legacy is a long-term project, a battle of inches that will involve mustering broad political support for the cause of a freer, more equal America.

Neither Biden nor Khan are responsible for the groundswell of US – and global – movement to euthanize our rentier overlords. This is a moment whose time has come; a fact demonstrated by the tens of thousands of working Americans who filled the FTC's noncompete docket with outraged comments. People understand that corporate looters – not "the economy" or "the forces of history" – are the reason that the businesses where they worked and shopped were destroyed by private equity goons who amassed intergenerational, dynastic fortunes by strip-mining the real economy and leaving behind rubble.

Like the billionaires publicly demanding that Harris fire Khan, private equity bosses can't stop making tone-deaf, guillotine-conjuring pronouncements about their own virtue and the righteousness of their businesses. They don't just want to destroy the world - they want to be praised for it:/p>

"Private equity’s been a great thing for America" -Stephen Pagliuca, co-chairman of Bain Capital;

"We are taught to judge the success of a society by how it deals with the least able, most vulnerable members of that society. Shouldn’t we judge a society by how they treat the most successful? Do we vilify, tax, expropriate and condemn those who have succeeded, or do we celebrate economic success as the engine that propels our society toward greater collective well-being?" -Marc Rowan, CEO of Apollo

"Achieve life-changing money and power," -Sachin Khajuria, former partner at Apollo

Meanwhile, the "buy, strip and flip" model continues to chew its way through America. When PE buys up all the treatment centers for kids with behavioral problems, they hack away at staffing and oversight, turning them into nightmares where kids are routinely abused, raped and murdered:

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/they-told-me-it-was-going-be-good-place-allega-tions-n987176

When PE buys up nursing homes, the same thing happens, with elderly residents left to sit in their own excrement and then die:

https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2023/12/24/nursing-homes-private-equity-fraud-00132001

Writing in The Guardian, Alex Blasdel lays out the case for private equity as a kind of virus that infects economies, parasitically draining them of not just the capacity to provide goods and services, but also of the ability to govern themselves, as politicians and regulators are captured by the unfathomable sums that PE flushes into the political process:

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2024/oct/10/slash-and-burn-is-private-equity-out-of-control

Now, the average worker who's just lost their job may not understand "divi recaps" or "2-and-20" or "carried interest tax loopholes," but they do understand that something is deeply rotten in the world today.

What happens to that understanding is a matter of politics. The Republicans – firmly affiliated with, and beloved of, the wreckers – have chosen an easy path to capitalizing on the rising rage. All they need to do is convince the public that the system is irredeemably corrupt and that the government can't possibly fix anything (hence Reagan's asinine "joke": "the nine most terrifying words in the English language are: 'I'm from the Government, and I'm here to help'").

This is a very canny strategy. If you are the party of "governments are intrinsically corrupt and incompetent," then governing corruptly and incompetently proves your point. The GOP strategy is to create a nation of enraged nihilists who don't even imagine that the government could do something to hold their bosses to account – not for labor abuses, not for pollution, not for wage theft or bribery.

The fact that successive neoliberal governments – including Democratic administrations – acted time and again to bear out this hypothesis makes it easy for this kind of nihilism to take hold.

Far-right conspiracies about pharma bosses colluding with corrupt FDA officials to poison us with vaccines for profit owe their success to the lived experience of millions of Americans who lost loved ones to a conspiracy between pharma bosses and corrupt officials to poison us with opioids.

Unhinged beliefs that "they" caused the hurricanes tearing through Florida and Georgia and that Kamala Harris is capping compensation to people who lost their homes are only credible because of murderous Republican fumble during Katrina; and the larcenous collusion of Democrats to help banks steal Americans' homes during the foreclosure crisis, when Obama took Tim Geithner's advice to "foam the runway" with the mortgages of everyday Americans who'd been cheated by their banks:

https://www.salon.com/2014/05/14/this_man_made_millions_suffer_tim_geithners_sorry_legacy_on_housing/

If Harris gives in to billionaire donors and fires Khan and her fellow trustbusters, paving the way for more looting and scamming, the result will be more nihilism, which is to say, more electoral victories for the GOP. The "government can't do anything" party already exists. There are no votes to be gained by billing yourself as the "we also think governments can't do anything" party.

In other words, a world where Khan doesn't run the FTC is a world where antitrust continues to gain ground, but without taking Democrats with it. It's a world where nihilism wins.

There's factions of the Democratic Party who understand this. AOC warned party leaders that, "Anyone goes near Lina Khan and there will be an out and out brawl":

https://twitter.com/AOC/status/1844034727935988155

And Bernie Sanders called her "the best FTC Chair in modern history":

https://twitter.com/SenSanders/status/1843733298960576652

In other words: Lina Khan as a posse.

Tor Books as just published two new, free LITTLE BROTHER stories: VIGILANT, about creepy surveillance in distance education; and SPILL, about oil pipelines and indigenous landback.

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/2024/10/11/democracys-antitrust-paradox/#there-will-be-an-out-and-out-brawl

[minimujina]

ɪ ᴅᴏɴ'ᴛ ɴᴇᴇᴅ ʏᴏᴜʀ ʜᴇʟᴘ

scara drabble turned emotional, not clickbait🔥had to put a readmore cause it got long, i didnt fkn plan this

thinking violently about taking care of scara’s wounds even though he’s not human and they’re literally going to fix themselves (let’s just. go with that. since idk how his body actually works LMFAOO). and he doesn’t even have the heart to tell you the first time you see him lightly injured—he tries to, really, but he can hardly get a word in with how firmly you insist on patching him up. he can’t find it in himself to interject with the real reason he’d be fine without your help, because good god you’re just so stubborn—and normally he wouldn’t give a lick about something as trivial as the feelings of a sentimental human, but there’s a part of him that finds it.. sweet, the way you care so much. even though it’s actually for no reason. even though this “purpose” you’ve found—following him around to take care of him when he gets hurt—is actually pointless in a way. even though he could spare both you and him extra work by telling you.

he just cant find it in himself to be the one to deflate you. he could deflate anyone, anyone at all—but not you. never you. somehow, you’re special. there is something about you that makes insults catch in his throat and ugly comments die before they even become a wisp of a thought.

your earnest gaze as you rush for him when his porcelain skin has been blemished—that, in particular, feels strangely familiar to him, but he does not know why. and your unabashed naivety irks him in a way, but it’s also one of the sole reasons he could not possibly ruin the moments between you two where you are touching him so gently and so lovingly, the only sounds being being the rustling of bandages and the chirping of insects, his leg bouncing violently and stomach playing jumprope at the feeling of your soft fingers ghosting over his artificial skin and his artificial wounds. your palms are sweaty as you work and your breathing is a bit loud, but he could not possibly care about anything less. things that would piss him off if done by anyone else—existing, for example, or any of the former mentioned “imperfections”—could pass very easily if the person was you.

and then there’s the selfish part of him, the part that can’t tell you because he would then be forced to forfeit those special moments of intimacy he had not experienced the likes of since his first breath of life. he wants you so selfishly; he sees no reason to squish your good, false faith while losing you in the process. that’s just a lose-lose scenario. what would he gain in return—a real relationship? pah. with relationships come suffering, and the fact that it is all entirely out of his control makes his empty chest convulse a bit.

he figured it’s alright to live a little white, harmless lie. it meant he could be close to you, it meant he could keep you around without being blatantly obvious about his affection (read: he could beat around the bush for as long as possible). he could avoid his feelings while still reaping the benefit of your presence.

but oh, trust me, it will certainly bite him in the ass eventually. he can’t run forever. you’ll get tired; you’ll think he’s sick of you. that he hates you. that he doesn’t want you around—he doesn’t need you.

and it’s true, actually, that he doesn’t need you.

however, there is a point to be made about relationships out of need versus relationships out of choice.

wouldn’t it be such a beautiful thing for him to finally stop pretending he only has you around because of necessity? if he makes it known that no, this is a choice that i am making—i am choosing to love you—his chest will be left wide open in all its empty glory, where there is no heart, but instead a vulnerable child. he’d be left with nothing but the hope that you will respond with grace, and that terrifies him.

and no, he is certainly not sick of you, nor does he hate you. he wants nothing more than you, than your presence. he wants everything to do with you. he wants you more than anything he’s ever wanted in his miserable, pathetic life, if it could even be called a life.

but does he need you? no.

and you know what’s so fascinating? he has not needed you all this time, and yet he’s kept you around. isn’t that interesting?

he chose you from the beginning with the guise of necessity. he pretended that it was because he needed it, needed you, needed your help—because somehow the idea that it was a choice made entirely of his own volition, for literally no reason other than he liked you, is absolutely mortifying. the last time he made such a choice, it destroyed him.

how is he supposed to justify keeping you around if he doesn’t even have a reason for it other than the butterflies in his artificial stomach? how can he justify it with his mere feelings?

his feelings make him weak. his feelings are the reason he was cast away in the first place.

it’s so much easier to pretend he’s detached. but detachment means he will only ever feel your artificial touch on his artificial skin, and nothing more. your well-intentioned hands on his fake skin, on his fake wounds. the porcelain cracks are spreading quickly, and he will do nothing about it.

the saddest part about all of it is the fact that he thinks he has to justify his feelings to anyone at all. he does not know what it means to do anything without immediately thinking about how to explain it should someone question him.

what he needs is not you. what he needs is to stop treating you like you’re a ghost from his past who will echo the aches and pains of all the people who hurt him. he can choose you in his mind, but if he holds you at an arm’s distance and does nothing about that choice, it will then mean nothing.

what he needs is to stop wishing he could have you without exposing himself in the process.

if he is to have you, he will be vulnerable with you. there is no choice in that matter. but what he does not understand is that such vulnerability is not dangerous if it’s you he’s with.

so that’s the one thing that you can do to help him—you must not only tell him, but show him, that you are not going to leave him at the drop of a hat if he is anything more than apathetic. that’s it. your only job will be to show him you are safe. that’s all you can do.

and then you must wait for him to believe you.

it’s not your job to fix him. and he can’t sit around and wait for someone to be his savior, the yin to his yang, the angel who will purify his sin. you cannot be any of that. nobody can.

but what you can be is his safe place, his heart, his joy, his lover. you can be—you are—the only one who is able to receive his angst and transform it into understanding. you can choose to love him, not because you need him, but because you want him, amidst all of his angst and suffering.

so that’s his job—realizing it’s possible that you could ever choose him, not of need, but of want, despite everything about him that is less than desirable. despite how difficult it will be. he already knows he’s chosen you, that’s not the hard part—he doesn’t have difficulty believing the lovability of others. the hard part is believing the lovability of himself.

and even when he finally accepts that you want him, even after he tells you the reason he does not need you to fix his injuries, you are still there to lovingly wrap a cloth around his fake, weeping skin.

he does not need you, and yet you remain, because you’ve made your choice—it doesn’t matter whether he needs you or not. he will have you because you chose to give yourself to him.

you will take care of his body not because you need to, but because you want to. you will love him simply because you can.

it’ll take him some time to understand that, but he’ll get there, i promise. please do be patient.

[the-s1lly-corner]

can you make headcanons for all the tadc cast with a reckless reader?

also, have a good day :)

-daz

TADC cast x reckless! reader!

last post for this batch! ill get right back to answering stuff soon! my cinnamon roll dough is almost done with its first rise and ill have to shape them soon! also gotta make the frosting..! short post since the base of one of my thumbs is getting a lil sore idk if its because ive been typing so much these past few days or if i just slept on my hand wrong; maybe both

CAINE:

youre in luck reader! you cant really get hurt in the digital world...! well, not... traditionally.. you can definitely still feel pain, thats for sure, but i dont think your digital body has any bones to break or skin to scrape..! so hey at least you can kind of be as reckless as you want without consequence...! except, there are consequences. caine is not at all happy at your recklessness.. i mean sure yeah some of his IHAs can be more... intense, i mean zooble almost got turned into a gloink, but..! i think he tones down his adventures just so you wont throw yourself into the danger

POMNI:

tries to stop you but her words fall short as you run in yelling into whatever the threat is without a second thought. "i- wait- er..." and youre gone, leaving pomni to hurry and try to catch up with you. she probably has to drag you to safety, assuming this isnt a case where you got all glitched up by an abstracted circus member.. shes gonna have to work herself up to get you to chill out; perhaps ending in a whole emotional thing where she just. explodes? perhaps

RAGATHA:

just because you cant get hurt doesnt mean shes not going to fuss over you. if there were a need for it i think she would keep a pack of Band-Aids on her. however, because you guys cant get hurt in that way, she tries to keep you in bed when you inevitably get knocked a little too hard and need to rest it off. dont even think about trying to get up out of bed, shes going to give you this stern look that only a few percentage of people can muster.

you know the look

the stern one

scolds you too if you get caught up in something real dangerous

only really softens up if you threw yourself in danger for the sake of another person, because i think ragatha would do the same

JAX:

"bet you cant make that jump"

"bet i <> can!"

que you absolutely eating shit after you fail to make that jump, comically flipping over yourself and face planting. you probably have cartoon birds circling around your head. jax laughs at you before eventually coming over to help you up. he will not let you live this kind of stuff, down

KINGER:

he gets so so scared when youre not in his sight, i think if he knew you were willingly throwing yourself into harms way? this man would have a heart attack! like really, or he would if he still had his organs and stuff...if he could he would keep you in his pillow fort with him forever... but he cant, so he has to settle with following you around with meek attempts to try to stop you

ZOOBLE:

zooble would do similar stuff as jax, but when you actually. go to do the dangerous thing they just pull you back. "dude. i wasnt being serious"

bro has to keep you on one of those kid leashes because your first instinct someone says "bet" or "no balls" or anything in that vein, you need to prove yourself

GANGLE:

her comedy mask probably falls off from the sheer shock from how easily you just. launch yourself into things. on one hand she worries for you, but on the other hand she cant help but feel a little jealous; i mean shes just ribbon and a mask, shes not really... tough... strong.. durable... she wants to be able to run around and do the things you do but theres that fear of being immediately broken down or overpowered, you know? didnt mean to get silly there; anyways i think she would try to keep in you bed to sleep off the soreness, like ragatha

[wonymao]

──★ ˙ ̟. supernova love 𖹭 !!

a supernova glowin' the dark, forever i wished upon a star. then you came over, occupied my heart, occupied my heart <3

a/n; this is my first time writing a fic! HEAVILY inspired by dream contact: our wish and also supernova love by ive&david guetta because i've been obsessing over that song since it came out (ive never misses)

no cw! fluff cheesy n cringy sakuya, not proofread!! sakuya fic about astronomy kinda??

saku x fem!reader

wc: around 2.3k

a supernova glowin' the dark

forever i wished upon a star ::

astronomy. something about astronomy has always been calling your name. you've always been interested in it, i mean who isnt curious about outerspace? you'd have to be insane not to wonder whats out there, right? or maybe youre just too much of a nerd like your friends say..

everynight you would stargaze on the top of your roof, using it as a stress reliever while listening to your favourite songs and drawing sketches of different planets, stars, galaxies, anything that comes to your mind that day.

2:47am

coming down from your roof, stepping into your room from the window. forgetting to close the window behind you. laying on your bed, lights off, window open with the wind blowing your curtains. with the window open, its hard to fall asleep. the cold air seeping into your room, but being too lazy to get up and close it. slowly closing your eyes adjusting to the cold room, a neon green colour invades your room. instantly opening your eyes and seeing the prettiest green ever suddenly wakes you up.

running to your window, you spot a bright neon green star in the sky. looking through your telescope immediatly, getting a closer look. your heart beats faster, never in your life have you ever seen a pretty star like this one. running back to your bedside table to grab your phone to snap a picture of it, yet once you come back to your window sill, its gone..? the star just.. disappeared

how can you go to sleep after that? while the star is still fresh in your mind, you start to sketch what the star looked like. walking back to your bed sketch book and coloured pencils in your hand, getting comfortable in your sheets. eventually passing out with an unfinished drawing of that star you saw that night.

its been a week since that event happened and you cant stop thinking of it. ever since that day youve been wishing everynight looking up at the stars. 'please show me that star once more' you want to know if what you saw was real, if you were just so tired you started imagining things.

because that morning you woke up, you immediatly ran to turn on your computer searching for neon green star spottings, yet nothing showed up. only fake stock images.

you sit on the bench that you always sit on daily while waiting for the train that takes you back home after your cram school. you were let out early. 15 minutes till the train comes, its cold too. to pass time you pull out your sketchbook. flipping through the sketches of all the green stars youve drawn, you begin to skecth it again. you want to sketch a drawing similar to what you saw.

as your minding your own buisness, you feel a pair of eyes on you over your shoulder. turning around you see this guy, munching on bread staring at your drawing with wide eyes. he looks about your age, but why does he look like he jjst saw a ghost??

"that green star.. you saw that too??" he says with an unexpected deep voice "no way. did you see this as well?!" you stand up excitedly looking at him right in the eyes

"yeah, ive been searching online for any clues on what i saw.. i thought i was the only one" the boy replies sloghtly smiling

you reach out your hand to him "im y/n! im so happy to meet someone who saw it too!"

"im fujinaga sakuya" the boy takes your hand, and sits down on the bench as you follow.

"i tried to take a picture of the star but jist as soon as i picked up my phone it was gone" sakuya says with a hint of sadness in his voice.

"me too! thats why im drawing it because i domt ever want to forget that moment. ever since i saw that ive been wishing too see ot again"

"i hope that wish comes true for the both of us," sakuya says looking at your sketchbook. silence falls with the both of you sitting beside eachother on the bench on the cold. you start flipping through thr pages silently showing him all the skecthes you drew throughout the week. looking at his face for a reacyion he just lets out a little laugh.

the train comes and you both get on. its so warm on the train that you start to feel itchy from how cold it was outside. sakuya sits down and invites you to sit beside him.

the two of you talk about the star you saw that night, but eventually the conversation turns into getting to know eachother. his name is fujinaga sakuya, hes 16. he loves soccer, basketball, and also is interested in astronomy. time moves by so quick you dont even realize you miss you stop. ringing the bell to be let off at the next stop, you get up but he grabs your hand. looking down at the boy whos still seated, you see he's holding out his phone.

"y/n.. uhh.. can i have your phone number?" he shyly asks. you smile to him grabbing his phone and putting your number into it. giving his phine back you wave bye at him while stepping off the train. hes waving back and smiling.

when he mentioned he was interested in astronomy, your heart started beating faster. youve never met someone who liked the same stuff as you, not only that. but hes also really attractive and kind.

you step into your home, taking of you coat and boots, your mom welcoming you back and offering you dinner. after eating you get ready for bed and fall asleep.

----

tge next day you had just got gotten home from school, getting ready for bed you get a notification from your phone. thibking its one of your friends asking help for the homework you sigh, turning on your phone only to see a text from.. fujinaga?!

----

sakuya got to his shared dorm around 8:30pm, taking off his backpack and slipping off his shoes running into the living room like the happiest child ever. "guys you will never guess what happened to me today" sakuya says while 5 boys turn their attention from the tv to him

"i talked to this girl-" sakuya is cut off from his roomates cheering for him. really? he didnt even get to finish his sentence but theyre cheering for him like he just accomplished the hardest thing ever

"our saku-chan finally getting a girlfriend?" riku jokes nudging the youngers arm

sakuya blushes at the thought of the girl being his. "yeab so what? i talked to a girl and you guys didnt. i know youre all jealous."

the room goes dead silent. the first to break the silence is sion laughing follwed by the others. sakuya jist ignores their teasing and goes to his room to get ready for bed.

the next dayduring rheir shared dinner sakuya asks for advixe on how to strike a conversation with the girl. "just ask her to go to that bakery you always go to or sometbinf" yushi suggests

"hyung youre so smart!" sakuya says pulling out his phone and starts texting away. naturally the 5 boys gathering around him watching the conversation between him and the girl

"YOOO SHE SENT A HAND HEART SAKU SHE LIKES YOU" Riku says slapping sakus shoulder "orrr she could just be nice, but i doubt that" ryo adds on

"our little sakuya has a date tomorrow" daeyoung says hugging the younger boy. sakuya smiling to himself as his face flushes thinking of getting to see her again.

sakuya hurriedly goes to his room to try and get some good sleep so he can be refreshed and full of energy for tomorrow.

---

then you came over, occupied my heart,

occupied my heart <3 ::

its been 2 months since youve met sakuya and youve been hanging out with him very often. youd be lying to yourself if you said you didnt like him. everytime he looks at you with those eyes you feel you heart beat faster, cheeks flushing red. whenver he asked why you were red you would jist say its from the cold. but you didnt know that he knew it was because of him, i mean it was already spring. shouldnt you be saying its too hot? sakuya was just waiting for the perfect time to tell you what he truly felt about you.

even thiugh he knew you liked him because youre not so good at hiding your feelings, deep down, he thought maybe you were just being nice like what ryo said when he first asked for advice.

you both saw that green star on febuary 7th. he wantes to confess to you april 7th. that day also happened to be your birthday.

"soo whens your birthday?" sakuya asks while tilting his head at you. you stop eating your food to reply "its april 7th" sakuyas mouth is wide open "REALLY??" sakuya says shocked "yeah why?" you slightly laugh at his cuteness

"oh.. nothing, its just next week" he awkwardly laughs realizing his actions were too weird "are you doing anything that day?" he asks. "yeah im going bowling with my friends!" you reply smiling like an idiot

sakuya reaches his hands across the table and holds yours. "what about after that?" you feel your face heat up

"i wanna see you on your birthday" sakuya boldly says

"w-we'll most likely be done after 7ish.." you say trying not to move, you want to hide away from this situation. as much as you like it, its embarassing

"okay cant wait to celebrate your birthday at 7:30pm jist the two of us" sakuya says while letting go of your hands to finish his bread.

the rest of the dinner with him goes well, you trying to forget what hapoened to calm your heart down.

-----

april 7th.

you wake up in a good mood, i mean its your birthday and you have fun plans for today. you get ready, trying extra hard to look good today. not only for the amount of pictures youre gonna take today, but also for.. sakuya.

as the time gets closer to 7:30 your heart beats faster. god you really cant think of sakuya without blushing and almost looking like a fool in love.

he told you that he wanted to celebrate your birthdah togetger in your house, and you agreed. its currently 7:15. waiting for him, you touch up your makeup and hair, also cleaning uo your room a little.

*ding dong* you hear the doorbell from the front door. you told your mom not to asnwer the door if someone knocked because you told her your friend was coming over. your mom makes raises an eyebrow at you because you normally never say that to her, so she assumes ots a boy. which she was righr when she hears you greet a deep voice boy. respecting your privacy she just stays in the living room.

"hi y/n" sakuya says stepping into your house holding a bag of sweefs from wishs bakery and a present

"hi saku! omg you didnt have tk get me a present" you shyly say

"its your birthday of course i had to" he says taking off his shoes

"thank you.. come on lets go to my room?" sakuya nods at your request. his heart beating knowing hes about to confess his feelings.

----

"so this is my room!" sakuya looks around, he knew he liked the right girl but seeing your room made his feelings grow even more. he can tell your serious about astronomy.

you both settle into your room, ypu sit on you bed patting the spot beside you which he quickly takes. you both share the sweets he bought, laughing, making jokes and talking like yoh always do.

"wanna see your present?" sakuya gets uo and walks towards yohr desk to pick his present up.

you nod as he gives you the box. you start to open it feeling his eyes on you. a smile instanly lighting up your face as you pull out this pretty milky way snow globe, also a cute teddy bear hokding a heart. you hug sakuya thanking him for the gift.

"open the heart insidd the teddy bear" he says pulljng awat from the hug. listening to what he said, you open the heart. the heart read out

'I think I fell for you, so it’s only fair that you pick me up.'

"saku.. what?" you say looking up at him, face red.

"y/n, ever since that first day i saw you drawing a picture of that green star, i couldnt get you off my mind. i thought about- no i still think about you everyday, how you make me laugh, youre so pretty, smart, kind and.. i ended up falling in love with you. i love you y/n. can i be your boyfriend..?" sakuya says struggling to maintain eye contact, face heating up. you break into tears hugging him.

"yes of course, i wanna be your girlfriend sakuya. i love you too" sakuya hides his face in the crook of your neck and smiles to himself.

"youre the best person that has ever walked into my life" he whispers still hugging you. you break the hug to look at his face. you cant believe it. he's yours? the boy youve liked and known for 2 months confessed to you on your birthday.

sakuya cups your face in his hands

"can i kiss you?" you swear you couldve died in that moment. you silently nod not wanting to speak jist incase if you stuttered too much, or jist having your voice crack

he slowly inches his face closer. your lips meeting, his hand still on your face but his other dropping to lay on your lower back. you wrao you arms around his neck. the kiss only lasfed a couple of seconds but after he pulled away from the kiss you hide your face in his chest. you love him so much.

"this is the best birthday ever, thank you saku."

its crazy to think that you found your boyfriend all because of a green star.

[shiny-jr]

pardon my late message i've been letting letting the current damnation chapters sink in the past couple of days after finally taking the quiz (im am still waiting with baited breath but like in a chill way for the rest) but HOLY. MOLY.

i did indeed notice that the MC's have different morality stances, and they match their crimes (granted im still trying to figure out which one did what. cuz rn i got stuck on iago coming fraud or tax evasion, even though theyre super down with murder, but like raven is WAY more down to murder somebody. im just nit paying enough attention to figure it out, really. im having too much fun vibin)

2 THE WAY THE CHARACTERS MAY NOT START OUT ENTIRELY YANDERE FOR THE MC AND INSTEAD DEVELOP THE OBSESSION FOR THEM LATER ON 🤌🤌🤌🤌🤌🤌🤌🤌🤌🤌🤌🤌🤌🤌🤌😭😭😭😭😭 BRILLIANTBRILLIANTBRILLIANT. ok so i got heartslabyul on my first attempt so it wasnt as like "obvious" even though trey and cater are both instantly "shocked" i was like "that could just be bc our character is weird it doesnt necessarily mean they yandere switch has been flipped pshaw! 🤭" BUT THEN eventually i got to pomfiore and epel confirmed it when he was like "ive been imagining things i never did before!" and i was like "oh snap! WAIT is *THIS* part of the punishment? like not JUST being sent to another world that is based on a story, but specifically a YANDERE DEATH TRAP? 🤯🤯🤯🤯🤯🤯🤯🤯"

cuz like, sure, the MC is doing what they can to survive but depending on which one theyre fine to just vibe and let the story take its course if theyve got a good chance to survive not doing anything special. but then the story always gets WEIRD, RIGHT?! stuff always goes wrong! was that part of the vision? or am i going conspiracy crazy?

anyway AMAZING WORK. also you really fed the vil simps on that one story. i thought i was over him and content to be like rook and admire from afar but that SCENE with his hands wrapped around the retainer 🥵 i darn near short-circuited. HOW DARE YOU! (please continue 😉)

its hard to choose a favorite story in this series and i dont want to speak too soon before theyre all out. but i do have favorite bits in each of them.

and i just love the endings to them all. i love the bittersweet nature of all the endings. like none, of them are really romantic in a comforting way (duh its a yandere story) but they do vary in romance level. like by far i think riddle's azul's and vil's are the most romantic while leona and jamil are quite cold and calculating or in jamil's case mostly possessive and manipulative on the surface. it's VERY interesting.

and also bc im silly and you brought up the yandere-ness of the other characters, i start to wonder what happens next in these stories (im not asking for sequels. oh heavens no! never! unless you wanted to, but im mostly just brainstorming character relationships and potential conflicts). like in the savannaclaw story, ruggie and jack are also glued to the MC but not in a really romantic way? ruggie has that "i want to be your #2/by your side forever" which could go either way, but to me initially reads as "jack was pushing his way into MY spot and i want to guarantee he cant have it" rather than a "one day i'll deserve to be by your side romantically and for now i want to ensure i'll always have that opportunity by being next to you and a priority of yours" and then comes leona's proposal at the end, and i was thinking "uhhh but mc is by your side as consort, then ruggie gets pushed out of his spot in favor of the husband taking over. even though ruggie could still be an advisor and confidant, its still like 'move over dude theres another taking priority over you" and then that gets me wondering "what would happen if MC turned down leona? what kinda havoc would he wreak if any? does that put the village in jeopardy if he gets pissed off? what if they accept and they're STILL screwed bc he stops paying attention to the village after he gets the throne? and then the chieftain is taken into the palace and away from the village and has no way back and theyre left to basically flounder without them?"

also i really like how you end your stories with pseudo-cliffhangers? i mean they are but also the plot is mostly resolved and whatever major things that needed to happen happened. and its just the character resolutions and epilogues you dont see. its entertaining. like i said, i like to imagine what happens next and you really leave some stuff open for that.

anyway! thank you so much for sharing your stories!

Oh, for the crimes, just look at one of the questions which I believe asks what you (the quiz taker/MC) committed. Those are currently five of the seven crimes I've listed before, and each MC has committed at least ONE of them. But, they could've always committed more too.

On that other topic, of characters going yandere, one thing I hate is when reading a story and for some reason the characters are already obsessed with the MC but for absolutely no apparent reason. And me personally, I enjoy a bit of build up, which is why I try to implement some in my writing. Which can be a bit hard to do within forty pages when all these other things are happening, but I manage for the most part.

[fruitsoxs]

Hi socks!! I absolutely love your writing and your jealousy drabble was soooo good <3 I'm definitely a nai simp so I was wondering if I could get nai x reader jealousy drabble with the happy aftermath too? Thank you for your work!!

rahh this took me forever but i just cant get knives right??

pairings; knives x (GN) reader warnings; suggestive, possessive knives, mild nsfw but nothing like graphic notes; like i said i just can't get knives right. i hope this is okay !! also possessive knives is 💯💯💯

This is not what he wanted to happen when he accepted your offer to traverse into society for a single day. 

Knives doesn’t like humans, and that’s no secret. However, he’s very interested in you. A little too interested, yet he doesn’t seem to mind. You just happen to be the right bit of everything to catch his eye. Which is why it’s so infuriating watching you smile at the man in the store who is standing a little too close to you. 

He’s explaining something to you, something you clearly already know. You’re smart, Nai knows this. He’s seen what you can do, and yet here you are; letting some common man explain to you how a simple little gadget works. LIt’s infuriating to witness. It makes his blood boil, and the need to walk up and let his presence be known. He will, eventually. Nai doesn’t let what is his slip so easily from his fingers. For now he wants to sit back and observe. That is what he came here to do. (You had asked him to come to the market and watch people for  a bit)

He’s mostly watching you. He’s looking at your expression, trying to read what is going on inside your mind. You seem fine, playing an awfully fake looking smile. Nai knows you though. He knows you better than most, and he can tell that this smile is nothing more than a facade. You are uncomfortable with this attention. He knows you are. Is it the type of attention? Or the man giving it to you? Would you cringe so subtly if Knives himself were to try and flirt like this?

He tries his best to keep observing the situation. Despite the rage that builds up in his chest as the man puts his hand on your back. Or how his fingers clench as he sees him slide his hand down- He’s moving before he even realizes it. He wraps his fingers around the man’s wrist and snatches it away from you. The man lets out a small yelp at how tight Knives holds his slimy arm between his fingers. “Excuse me.” Is all Nai says before throwing the man away.

You whip around and look up at Knives with wide eyes, glancing between the man who had just tried to make a move on you, and the platinum blonde who now stands with his arms crossed. You sigh in what seems like relief before a tiny smile stretches across your lips. “Thank you.” You whisper, so quietly that only Nai can hear. He doesn’t say anything. His Neutral expression remains, but he gives a little nod.

He wasn’t doing it for you.

Although he’s happy to see you relax. 

He puts a hand on the small of your back and starts to lead you away from the scene. People have stopped to look at the scene, confused and nosy. The man stands back up and glares at Nai. “What do you think you’re doing?” The man asks. Nai simply clicks his tongue and rolls his eyes. He doesn’t want to start a fight with a pig today. He had promised you to stay non violent. So he simply turns his nose up and continues to lead you away.

Thankfully the man gets the image and huffs off in the opposite direction.

You glance up at him as the two of you walk away. “What’s wrong?” You ask, making Nai sigh. How can you read him so easily? Nobody else understands him quite like you. He had been trying to keep you from seeing how upset the situation truly made him, and yet you see right through him. Once he’s far enough away from the crowd he stops the two of you. 

In the small of an alley, he his hand down your back just as the man did. Your face turns a bit mad, but you make no moves to stop him. Interesting. You tense up when he stops his hand right before it can reach your ass. With that stranger, you had looked so tense and uncomfortable. With Nai you look…nervous. Not uncomfortable, but unsure. 

“I don’t like watching other men touch you like that.” He finally speaks, pulling you close. You are flush against him as he looks down at you. His cold eyes stare into yours. You don’t look away. He likes that about you. You’ve always been so willing to look at him in his cold blue eyes. You face your sins with ease. 

“I don’t like that others can look at you.” He continues on, trailing a finger down your cheek. His other hand stays against your back, holding you against him with strength you cannot over power even if you wanted to. The finger drifts down your cheek, then to your neck, and rests on your collarbone for a second. His eyes follow its movement, then glance back up at your face. Your cheeks are rosy, and you’re starting to breathe a little heavier. 

“I don’t want them thinking they can have what is not theirs” He leans forward. He has never been so open about his feelings before. He’s nicer to you than most, so you have always known you were different. Still, he has never outright said he likes you. Nor has he made any moves like this. It must be so disorienting for you. 

“And who do I belong to?” You ask, your voice is a little shaky.

He smiles at your boldness, and answers you by slamming his lips against yours. It’s a heated kiss. Demanding on Nai’s end as he nips and licks at your lips. You open up so easily for him, and he shoves his tongue into your mouth to taste every inch of you. You moan, and he hardens the kiss before pulling away. “Me.” he grumbles, leaning forward to kiss you again. This time when he pulls away, he bites your bottom lip. 

He then trails a few kisses down your jaw, and onto your neck. He reaches up and cups the back of your head and he kisses and sucks at the skin. Once he reaches the crook of your neck, he bites down. You yelp at the harsh feeling, the whimpers as he licks the spot better. He keeps traveling down, moving your sleeve out of the way to press his lips against your shoulder.

He bites down again.

He travels to the other shoulder and bites down, then back up your neck where he leaves you with one more small bite mark just below your ear. He pulls away to admire the bruises forming along your neck and shoulders. It’s a beautiful sight. He smiles and cups your cheek. “You are mine.” And now everyone who sees you will know that you are his. They will see the marks, and they won’t dare make a move on what is his. He leans forward to kiss your forehead softly. 

“Yours.” You agree, your breaths still heavy. He can sense you are a little worked up now, something that he will happily help you with later. For now, he wants to admire the beautiful marks that sit upon your skin like jewelry. 

He was not expecting this when you had begged him to go to the market with you, but he would not have it any other way. Now that he knows that his feelings for this human are returned, he will be having a lot of fun with you in the future. He can’t wait to show you just how fun being his is. 

[splatattackz]

and, springing off of my last post, heres a greater post talking about ramon and his relation with lying and secret-keeping - because, in my opinion, its a topic that needs to be known to better understand his character as secrets are a big part of his family.

ill place the talk under the cut so this post doesnt take too much space :)

"just [to] let u know, i trust u even in the dark"

ramon trusts fit. a ton. and theres nothing that could ever change that. he trusts what is kept secret is best kept this way. its why he wasnt as persistent to know about the contract, even if he knew there was lies and secrets at play that he hated. he trusted him. and that trust only grew when fit trusted him enough back to tell him a little bit of the family secret (the contract).

but, despite this trust, ramon also loves fit all too much. its why he gets so defensive when fit tells lies to him. ramon is a very observant boy. he knows a lot of things he shouldnt because of this. as fit once said, "the kids too damn smart for his own good". no lie leaves his detection because he can always tell the way people shift and change when theyre fibbing. but he doesnt push or prod on the matter usually. unless its fit. because he loves him too much. he needs to know whats going on with him. if he doesnt know, how can he help and protect him? its a reason he hates it when fit mutes, too. he always feels like fits keeping a secret from him when it happens.

i remember one time they were working on ground zero (i think it was the last time they worked on ground zero) and fit was fretting over his contract and ramon made a joke about how he acted like he would die if he didnt fullfill the contract. and fit laughed and said "no, ramon, i wont die." and then muted and said smth like "itll be much worse than death". and ramon noticed fit muted and got very upset. he basically threw a tantrum over it and wouldnt talk to fit until he told him what he was keeping secret. ramon said he was upset because the topic at hand (fit dying) and the fact he muted didn't spell anything good.

"if u tell me i [either] [lose] everything or u, i would choose [to keep] u"

something ramon said to show how much he cared for fit and how that care is why he was so upset. eventually fit did tell him and even told him more about what it meant if he didnt fullfill the contract - that if he failed, he would be trapped in the wastelands forever with no escape. and that this contract was his only chance at a semi-normal life.

but otherwise, ramons relation to lies and secret-keeping isnt negative. he has told lies and has kept secrets himself. hes no stranger to it. and he even keeps fit in check about the contract when he wants to tell other people things. i remember when fit found tazercraft in the prison he wanted to tell phil but ramon stopped him and told him some things are best kept secret. and, while this was mainly a very hrp response bc the admin wanted to let the duo solve the puzzles, he made a good point of if he trusts phil enough with this maybe he should tell him about the contract too. to which fit said "no, hes not ready to know about it yet". and, again, when ramon first built the satellite for the second attempt at contact, fit wanted to tell phil where he would be in case anything happened. and, again, ramon stopped him and reminded him if he wanted to do that then he'd have to tell phil everything. and the convo ended there.

(its no coincidence that fit told phil about the secret bedroom with ramon not around :] the baby boy cant keep him in check with that stuff now..)

ill stop the post here before we are here for hours but. i needed to talk about one of ramons most interesting aspects ajaja i hope you enjoyed the little ramble