#buyer rejected

[bluepoodle7]

#Househuntedgame #MaisonTaloQuirksAndBuyerRejectionReactions #WhatINoticed

I was rewatching a let's play of Househuntedgame and I noticed that when Maison Talo gets buyer rejected he just messes with his outfit and his house pin then just ignores the player to say his speech again or says something convincing to check out his house and runs away.

The game.

HOUSE HUNTED by Scopophobia Studios (itch.io)

26:36-38:14 38:22-38:32

3:23-3:38

John Doe - HOUSE HUNTED - All 4 Endings (game is created by the John Doe dev) No Commentary Gameplay - YouTube

And when you say hotel I imagine all REALTORs act like a vampire hissing at a cross, a cat hissing at you, just look sad like you rejected them on a date or stood up this REALTORs when changing their mind when visiting their house.

Maybe have the REALTORs act like this dog scream barking at you like a demon for saying hotel.

Power of Christ compels you dog version - YouTube

I imagine a yousona holding a hotel room key cards like a cross to a REALTORs that is trying to get their buyers in to sell their houses.

Like you use the hotel key card to swap with a REALTORs business cards that they give you and it burns them similar to a vampire as a joke.

We need more art of that.

My question about the lure body with how heavy it is and how it walks.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

I was rewatching a let's play of House Hunted and found more interesting things.

I like that Maison Talo was "brave" hungry to sit at a table in front of the yousona and that his lure was describes a stiff as cardboard.

So are all REALTORs lure bodies cardboard like in appearance and how heavy are a REALTORs lure body?

I would love to see a REALTORs lure body walk cycle since the lure body doesn't walk but my guess is that the creature "walks" like Mewtwo in smash where the Pokémon float walks around.

This meme I randomly found is looking more true I only wish my art style was super good.

Now I want to see Maison Talo drawn as Mewtwo now.

🦊 FOX 📼 on X: "finally finished REALTOR/maison's anatomy chart! enjoy uwu lovely sketches by @/bileshroom ! #househunted #househuntedgame #maisontalo #johndoegame #theuncannyvalleyseries https://t.co/KxuVKW2PlE" / X

14:20

SSBM: Mewtwo Adventure Mode Hard (No Continues/Lives Lost) - YouTube

The meme.

#Househuntedgame #MyThoughts Maison Talo at the Uncanny Valley Cafe be like. I can see a artwork drawing of Maison Talo in this... – @bluepoodle7 on Tumblr

REALTORs pin question with other questions

---------------------------------------------------

I still wonder if a REALTORs Lapel genotype pins can be removed like if a Yousona was not only fighting back a REALTORs house body knock out enzymes but also fighting off the creature's lure body physically pushing them down.

I wonder what happens if you remove the pin and destroy it?

Does the lure body shrivel up and die?

I wonder if the new lure body can regrow the pin back but it's weirdly shaped.

Or the pin doesn't grown back and the creature just man make a new pin to "replace" it to feel normal.

I know that there is a artwork of Maison Talo without his blood red blazer and the beta artwork he didn't have the pin.

I wonder when a REALTORs removes their plant flesh like clothes does it hurt?

Also are REALTORs naked kind of similar to humanoid Pokémon where their "clothes" are a part of them.

If a REALTORs eats a salad isn't that cannibalism like a plant eating another plant since these creatures are plant creatures?

That's wild that it's canon that REALTORs lure bodies don't have internal organs besides the eyes and teeth.

Now I wonder if their is a REALTORs that "eats" food by the lure body like storing it for later for the lure body to "spit" into the house body to eat.

But my guess is that some of these houses just carry out the normal way like a human by buying groceries or fast food to eat beside the luring people to their house.

I wonder if a yousona picks up a lure body of a REALTORs would it be heavy or light?

I guess it depends on the body type of the lure body like Heim might be heavy and Maison might be a little light.

Now I want to know how heavy John Doe is since the character is a living hair ball monster in a fake clay human body.

When I first saw Maison Talo's lure body with the house body I thought that was like a humanization of the house but then I saw the lore and found out that these creatures don't get to choose what the lure looks like.

Also the Heim Balie's lure body doesn't match the house body.

Now I wonder if the lure body gets the cord cut and shrivels away.

Does the lure body's look change in appearance or just be a deformed copy of the first lure body with little changes to the lure body that doesn't look as good as the first?

I was rewatching and listening to the House Hunted 1 House Hunted 1/2 let's play on youtube for lore I might have missed out on and when Heim tried to eat the yousona by trying to knock out the yousona with the enzymes it didn't work since he already ate burger's before hand.

I wonder if you get pushed by a REALTORs and food falls out that satisfies the house's hunger before the enzymes kick in then I guess it stops.

Now I imagine a yousona getting grabbed or pushed by a human eating only REALTORs and a tasty food item stops the digestion process.

Also the lurebodies to the houses are heavy or as Maison Talo says cumbersome.

Well I got both of my answers.

I bet these creatures would drown in water if a flood happens in the Uncanny Valley since REALTORs seem heavy due to their tree bones.

This is just my guess.

I wonder if REALTORs lure bodies are warm to the touch similar to humans?

Like what is the body temperature of these plant creature mimics?

I rewatched the House Hunted game on Youtube again and noticed that in Maison Talo's hot/warm house body the lure body body is also hot or warm.

So I guess the lure body adapts to the temperature it is in.

The game.

HOUSE HUNTED by Scopophobia Studios (itch.io)

32:20

HOUSE HUNTED - no commentary longplay - YouTube

Maison Talo when he whispers in your yousona's ear before eating you be like.

Let me whisper in your ear - YouTube

I wonder what REALTORs do with the clothes and other non organic items a buyer leaves behind?

Like what do REALTORs do with the clothes a buyer was wearing and do they keep the money from a buyer?

Also do the REALTORs eat the bones or are those for Regular Guys to eat?

17:00 (Cumbersome lure from Maison Talo.)

John Doe - HOUSE HUNTED - All 4 Endings (game is created by the John Doe dev) No Commentary Gameplay - YouTube

31:15 -31:56

A Prequel To JOHN DOE - House Hunted 2 - ALL ENDINGS (a horror game from john doe developer) (youtube.com)

All images and videos not mine but links are there.

I wonder where the REALTORs heart is inside of the house body?

I know I didn't see a heart in the anatomy chart but the love feelings are stored in the predator brain and I know the lure body doesn't have organs like a heart.

Unless the house can just make a heart.

I got gif video of Mewtwo's float run in adventure mode.

https://gifmaker.me/video-to-gif/viewimage/20241015-08-tBFdyrsqphn47UWJ-Cn71r4-HNET

14:20

SSBM: Mewtwo Adventure Mode Hard (No Continues/Lives Lost) - YouTube

Maison Talo is 140 lbs.

How much does Dom Hus and Heim Baile weigh?

And John Doe base form is 112 lbs but I guess this character gets heavy or lighter depending on what form Doe takes and Doe's Regular Guy form is 25 lbs.

I wonder if a REALTORs lure body's tree wood skeleton has the tree rings to show how old a tree is thing?

I wonder if a REALTORs lure body power washes their house body does that could as a bath for them?

I imagine if a REALTORs was successful in buyer hunting but is working with someone while they do their buyer speech they just get interrupted by a yousona power washing the house.

Maybe have to yousona say sorry if it annoys the house from concentrating because of the noises of the power washer or the house pretend making drowning noises when sprayed with the water hose.

Pressure washing a house with a foam cannon - YouTube

What if a REALTORs sprout with a castle moat around the house body.

Would that just be the creature's stomach acid roleplaying like the water?

Like if random people or creatures decide to check out the house then fall in the moat then they just die and be consumed by the house.

I also wonder if REALTORs can sprout with a pool can the lure body pretend to have a pool party to attract buyers to see the house wearing a swim suit then just walk the buyers close to the pool to either push them in or just have a normal pool party with alcohol and snacks.

Or does the mimic house just disappear once the house dies?

I know if the lure body is gone then the house starves to death unless the REALTORs works with a outside party to help feed the lure bodyless house.

I wonder if the severed lure body gets eaten by the house once it stops moving?

Does the house get calories from it?

I imagine Maison Talo's ranking falling pretty hard after losing his lure body unless the lover or partner works as hard as Maison Talo does to feed the house body.

I wonder do REALTORs fall in love with just normal houses?

Like non mimic like houses with no lure bodies but just a house.

Now I imagine a REALTORs falling in love with a normal house just waiting for the lure body to appear.

Have the other REALTORs say should we tell them?

While these house creatures watch this lovesick house creature wait on the lure body that isn't a thing.

I wonder what happens when a yousona rejects the REALTORs business card by either pushing the hand away or slapping the hand away to make the business card fall on the ground then just have the yousona ignore them while walking past them or just avoiding the REALTORs?

Maybe give the business card back to the REALTORs.

Does the lure body still mess with that yousona or move on to the next buyer?

I wonder how strong is the REALTORs lure bodies are without the enzymes knock out gimmick on a yousona?

I know they like to push the character down on the ground and pin you to the floor wrestler style.

I also know John Doe's base form non changed is not very strong but once the character changes then they might be stronger like a muscular John Doe.

I want to know if the REALTORs genotype house pin's door can open up or is it just a static design for show?

Also I wonder if the house pin's door could open up I would imagine it has a photo of the parent's house and lure bodies that made that REALTORs.

I can see Fable in control of Zable's closed eyed vessel body when a REALTORs is on top of them just randomly messing with the genotype pin to open up the door and if that's impossible then it would be a funny fourth wall gag.

Have Fable say this in Zable voice then a neutral voice.

"My my what do we have here?"

"What a nice little household and I wonder how they are doing now?"

Then have Fable make Zable's closed eyed vessel body's head move up like it's looking up at the REALTORs but is sensing them to intimidate.

Maybe have the REALTORs or enemies think they are stuck in a room or place with them but are actually stuck with Fable and the mysterious invisible force that makes the enemy's reality randomly weirdly warped.

I want to know what happens to the business card Maison Talo gives your yousona character?

Like I wonder if it rots quickly once you accept his offer to see his house or if you reject his house offer then does the business card also rot.

[dynamicdouble]

Property Hunt 22 - Another Close One!

Here's 2/2 of the property hunt updates I've missed but that's not all, more content will be coming out soon! #BuildMyAccessibleHome #Disability #Accessibility #PropertyHunt #FirstTimeBuyer

A Quick Find Close to Home Shortly after seeing the property in the previous property hunt update, I found another property conveniently situated near my current home location. However, something was different this time around with the property I was seeing, something I had been searching for a while… The Viewing Before I proceed, I want to make you all aware that this property was viewed by…

[aurumalatus]

𝐭𝐮𝐫𝐧𝐟𝐢𝐫𝐞 [𝟏]

pairing. kinich x fem!reader

word count. 1.5k

genre/warnings. childhood friends to lovers, slow burn, fluff and angst, drabble collection, mentions of abuse/alcoholism

summary.

in which kinich learns the value of all things: lives, friendship, and, of course, you. or, in which kinich realizes that you are the only priceless thing in this world.

author's note. first meetings and a slight introduction to our characters! i imagine each drabble will have a pretty varying length, so this one is a bit on the shorter side! either way, i hope you enjoy :) interaction is highly appreciated!

↢ 𝐩𝐫𝐞𝐯𝐢𝐨𝐮𝐬 | 𝐦𝐚𝐬𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐥𝐢𝐬𝐭 | 𝐧𝐞𝐱𝐭 ↣

𝗧𝗛𝗘 𝗙𝗜𝗥𝗦𝗧 𝗣𝗥𝗢𝗠𝗜𝗦𝗘

Kinich meets you in the spring.

The air is warm and balmy that day, with a breeze that brushes by the skin with pleasant coolness. His mother likes to take him to the market with her on days like these, probably for his own good. She tells him he’s a bit unsociable for his age, not that he disagrees—he just doesn’t see any point in changing. He does just fine spending his days at home, exploring the land around his house.

This kind of weather brings everyone outside, which leaves the market bustling—sellers scream their prices and show off their wares, and buyers haggle until their wallets are empty. He walks around with his mother for a bit, one hand gripping her skirt, and she offers him bits of candy and other treats. He rejects them all; really, he doesn’t want for much.

Still, he’s a more independent child, so eventually his mother leaves him to explore the various market stands while she goes around buying the more “boring” items. She probably hopes that he’ll make a friend or two, but he never does—most of the children don’t play in this area. They prefer to play with the Yumkasauri near the outskirts of the tribe.

Either way, he does end up looking around for a bit. Yanta, an elderly woman that sells fruit, gives him some berries to try, and he leaves with his tongue sweetened. He peers at some of the climbing gear, too, with astronomical prices that he would never be able to afford—at least not while his father gambles every Mora away. As the time passes, the crowd starts to get a bit stifling, so Kinich wanders away in search of a quieter place.

He settles for one of the walkways outside of the market, letting his legs dangle over the edge so he can look down at the river. There’s Yumkasauri whelps playing below, bumping each other into the water and screeching with joy. 

Laughter echoes from somewhere nearby—the sound of children, children like him. He tucks his knees to his chest. He has no need for friends, not when there is still so much to learn about the land. He thinks of his mother and the fresh welts on her skin. When he’s older, when he’s more capable, when he knows more, he can help her. Maybe one day they’ll be able to leave this place, or maybe just that man.

A burst of wind slips by—it carries the scent of flora, fuzzy yellow ones that make his eyes water and the purpling blooms that his mother loves. The recognition makes his head turn, just in time to see you run past him, a clump of flowers falling from your grip. You don’t seem to notice, and they fall uselessly to the wooden walkway, inches away from Kinich’s pinky. 

He eyes the flowers curiously—the petals are so bright, yet dainty and thin. Then, he looks toward your rapidly disappearing figure.

And really, he doesn’t know why he cares. He should go find his mom and go home. His father will be there soon anyway, and that’s a whole different beast to contend with; he doesn’t have the time or energy to be concerned with you. 

So he doesn’t really understand himself when he grabs the flowers, pushes himself to his feet, and jogs until your back is within his reach. Another step, and then his fingers wrap around your wrist just as you yelp in surprise. 

The first thought he has when you turn to face him is that you’re quite pretty, and that you look to be his age—he shakes it away just as fast. Instead, he nods toward the bundle of flowers sitting in your arms.

“You dropped some,” he mumbles, opening his palm to you. It reveals a pile of crushed petals and snapped stems, and his face reddens in embarrassment. He hadn’t thought to be so careful in his rush to chase you. When he looks up, your lips are barely parted in surprise, and he awkwardly tugs at his collar.

“Ah, I’m sorry.”

He’s not good at this, he realizes instantly. Years of sticking to his own have left his social skills lacking, and he grasps blindly for something to say. Instead, you’re the first to break the silence—you laugh, a bell-like sound that he finds a bit cute.

“Wow, I must’ve been going pretty fast,” you say, head tilted. “Sorry about that! My momma used to say I run like the wind!”

Kinich tries not to get stuck on the ‘used to’ in your words, but fails—he wonders if you’re alone. It must be difficult, he’s sure, but there are some nights when the stench of alcohol grows too strong and the screams grow too loud where he wonders if it might be preferable. He’s thinking too long, and the silence grows awkward, so he forces himself to speak.

“What are the flowers for?”

It’s your turn to be embarrassed now, an awkward giggle escaping your lips as you shift your weight between your feet. 

“I was thinking about making flower crowns for the other kids in the tribe. They don’t really like playing with me lately, maybe ‘cause I’m alone, so I wanted to do something so we could all be friends again.”

Kinich doesn’t really get it—what would be the point of playing with someone who doesn’t like you? Something about the situation tells him it wouldn’t be the right thing to say, though, so he merely nods. You seem genuine, and while he may be socially inept at times, he’s not mean-spirited. Quietly, however, he notes that the stems of the flowers you have are too long—you’d have trouble making flower crowns with these. 

“Have you ever made crowns before?” he asks, doubtful. 

“Nope,” you answer honestly, “is it that obvious?”

Living at the foot of the mountain meant he had become much more familiar with the nature surrounding the tribe. His mother had been teaching him a few things lately, particularly related to farming and weaving. A flower crown would be simple work, certainly. 

He frowns. He shouldn’t do this, but you’re looking at him so expectantly.

“I could show you how—”

“Kinich!”

His mother appears just then, cheeks reddened and hair sticking wildly to her forehead. Various bags hang from her arms, evidence of her shopping, but she casts them aside in favor of grabbing at his wrist. 

“I’ve been looking everywhere for you! I thought you got lost, or even kidnapped! What were you thinking? You’re not usually like this!”

You vaguely think that the two look quite alike; he has her eyes, save for the purpling bruise that sits just underneath her left one. You’ve had similar ones from banging your knees on things, but none in a place so front-facing.

Kinich hangs his head, stepping away from you quickly. “I’m sorry, Mom.”

Shame radiates from his form in waves, so potent you can practically feel it yourself. You grab his other wrist out of instinct, and he raises his eyes to you in surprise.

“I’m sorry too, ma’am,” you say. The woman looks shocked, gaze flitting to where your hand joins with his. “I was clumsy and took up too much of his time. It’s my fault if he was late.”

Kinich’s heart flips, and he’s unsure why—maybe because he’s never had anyone defend him like this, maybe because he’s never had anyone defend him at all. His mother looks just as flabbergasted as he does, only returning to her senses when she notices the setting sun. She sighs, addressing her son again.

“Your father will be home soon,” she says, retrieving her bags, and Kinich visibly stiffens. “We should go.”

Gentle, he twists his wrist from your grip, quietly following his mother as she starts to leave. There’s a similar sadness to the hunch of their backs, as if they’re dreading returning home—you wonder if you’re imagining it. Kinich, you remember his mother calling him. You like the sound of it.

“Kinich!” 

He turns at the call of his name, so unfamiliar from your lips. You’re smiling brightly, holding up two of the flowers you’d picked.

“Next time, teach me how to make a flower crown, okay?”

/

His mother doesn’t speak as they make the walk home. He lets the wind fill the silence, whistling through the trees and carrying him with its lulling sound. It’s one of the few pleasures he finds nowadays when he retreats outside, skin purpling with fresh bruises.

They inch the front door open, tentative and wincing, half-expecting his father to burst out in a drunken rage—they’re only met with silence. Relieved, Kinich’s mother sets about putting away the groceries, and Kinich collapses into bed, letting his eyes fall shut as the sun dims outside. He tries to savor the last few minutes he has, distantly praying that his father might come home sober today. 

He thinks of the market, and then he thinks of the flowers. He thinks about the flowers, and then he thinks about them some more—a little longer than is natural for him.

Just as he slips into sleep, Kinich realizes that he never asked for your name.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Thinking the unthinkable

On SEPTEMBER 24th, I'll be speaking IN PERSON at the BOSTON PUBLIC LIBRARY!

Time and again, I find myself thinking about radium suppositories: specifically, I get to thinking about the day that the consensus shifted from "radium suppositories are great" to "stop putting radioisotopes up your ass."

The thing is, people really liked radium-based quack remedies. They drank radium-infused water, smeared radium cream on their faces and bodies, and yes, rammed radium suppositories up their assholes:

https://maximumfun.org/episodes/sawbones/radium-girls/

The fact that this made whatever ailed you sicker didn't deter the radium true believers: if you're getting sicker, then you must need more radium.

When I think about the debate over radium, I imagine that the people who understood that radium was really bad for you must have run up against critics who told them they were being unreasonable. "You can't tell people to stop using radium. Tell them to use suppositories with less radium. Tell them to use them less frequently. But you can't just tell people, 'stop putting radium up your asshole.' They won't take you seriously."

About 20 years ago, I started pitching various institutions that reviewed consumer tech policy on the idea that they should reject any product that had DRM. After all, DRM didn't just restrict how you used a gadget today, it provided a facility for nonconsensually, irreversibly field-updating that gadget to add new restrictions tomorrow. How could a reviewer in good conscience say, "Go ahead and buy this device if you need this feature," if they knew that at any time in the future, the gadget's maker could take that feature away and leave the buyer with no recourse?

Here's the warning I (half-seriously) suggested magazines run alongside such products:

WARNING: THIS DEVICE’S FEATURES ARE SUBJECT TO REVOCATION WITHOUT NOTICE, ACCORDING TO TERMS SET OUT IN SECRET NEGOTIATIONS. YOUR INVESTMENT IS CONTINGENT ON THE GOODWILL OF THE WORLD’S MOST PARANOID, TECHNOPHOBIC ENTERTAINMENT EXECS. THIS DEVICE AND DEVICES LIKE IT ARE TYPICALLY USED TO CHARGE YOU FOR THINGS YOU USED TO GET FOR FREE — BE SURE TO FACTOR IN THE PRICE OF BUYING ALL YOUR MEDIA OVER AND OVER AGAIN. AT NO TIME IN HISTORY HAS ANY ENTERTAINMENT COMPANY GOTTEN A SWEET DEAL LIKE THIS FROM THE ELECTRONICS PEOPLE, BUT THIS TIME THEY’RE GETTING A TOTAL WALK. HERE, PUT THIS IN YOUR MOUTH, IT’LL MUFFLE YOUR WHIMPERS.

https://pluralistic.net/2023/12/08/playstationed/#tyler-james-hill

No one took me up on my offer. Over and over again, magazine editors, managers of nonprofit review outlets, and indie gadget reviewers told me that it was unrealistic to publish a roundup of, say, this year's portable music players with the recommendation, "Just don't buy any of these. None of them are fit for purpose."

In other words: No one wanted to publish, "The correct amount of radium to stuff up your asshole is zero."

But the correct amount of rectal radium for you to administer is "none" and the correct car for you to buy today is none of the cars:

https://foundation.mozilla.org/en/privacynotincluded/articles/its-official-cars-are-the-worst-product-category-we-have-ever-reviewed-for-privacy/

This isn't the first time the correct automotive recommendation was "don't buy any of these cars." Back before seatbelts came standard in cars, the correct car was "don't buy a car." Sometimes, the correct answer is "none of the above." Even if that makes you sound unserious, the alternative is that you counsel people to put radium up their asses in a bid to seem "reasonable."

Today, DRM-infected products are routinely downgraded and bricked:

https://www.theverge.com/2024/9/5/24236237/ftc-software-tethering-letter-consumer-reports-ifixit

Even when companies face public uproar over these disastrous decisions and vow to reverse them, they can't, because these downgrades are one way:

https://www.stereocheck.com/news/music/unfortunately-you-cant-revert-to-the-old-sonos-app-anymore/

That's bad enough when it's your smart speakers, but what about when the company bricks your wheelchair:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2022/06/when-drm-comes-your-wheelchair

Or your $100,000 exoskeleton:

https://paulickreport.com/news/people/paralyzed-jockey-michael-straight-wants-to-keep-walking-but-manufacturer-wont-repair-exoskeleton

The reality is that we're living at the end of a catastrophic experiment in deregulation and its handmaidens, corruption and regulatory capture, and there are lots of "normal" things that we just need to stop doing. Not do less of them – just stop.

Like, the correct amount of collusion between realtors representing sellers and realtors representing buyers is zero:

https://www.latimes.com/business/real-estate/story/2024-03-19/realtor-rules-just-changed-dramatically-heres-what-buyers-and-sellers-can-expect

We got that one right, but there's plenty more that we're still engaged in this pathetic, denialist bargaining over. What's the correct degree to which White House officials should cycle back into working at the industries they oversaw? Zero. How many times should such a person come back to work at the White House? Again: zero:

https://prospect.org/power/2024-09-19-next-administration-can-stop-ethics-scandals/

When the Biden admin dropped its executive order on ethics just hours after the inauguration, they trumpeted that it "went further than any other towards slowing the revolving door and limiting conflicts of interest while in office":

https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/presidential-actions/2021/01/20/executive-order-ethics-commitments-by-executive-branch-personnel/

And it did. But it was also full of loopholes, because banning these conflicts of interest altogether was viewed as politically unserious, so the correct amount of radium up the administration's asshole was set at non-zero. The result? Well, it's about what you'd expect:

https://therevolvingdoorproject.org/what-the-hell-is-anita-dunn-even-allowed-to-work-on/

Congress hasn't updated consumer privacy law since 1988, when it took the bold step of…banning video-store clerks from telling the newspapers which VHS cassettes you took home. Since then, a coalition of commercial surveillance companies and the cops and spies who treat their data-lakes as massive, off-the-books anaerobic lagoons of warrantless surveillance data has prevented the passage of any new privacy protections for Americans.

The result? Stalkers, creeps, spies (both governmental and corporate), identity thieves, spearphishers and other villainous scum are running wild, endangering every American's financial, physical and political wellbeing. The correct amount of commercial data-brokerage for America is zero:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/12/06/privacy-first/#but-not-just-privacy

In other words, we should order every data-broker, every tech giant, every consumer electronics company and app vendor to delete all their surveillance data. All of it. The correct amount of radium in that asshole is – as with every other orifice zero:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/08/07/revealed-preferences/#extinguish-v-improve

From the perspective of the radium pitchmen, the most shocking thing about the past four years has been antitrust enforcers – like Lina Khan, Rohit Chopra, and Jonathan Kanter – who refused to bargain about how much radium we needed to stick up our butts. Fearless of being branded as "unserious" and "unreasonable," they seriously, reasonably said the right amount is none, actually.

None. Which is why they're so mad at Khan and co. Which is why they're so bent on getting Kamala Harris to fire Khan – despite the fact that this would burn precious political capital in the senate. Some people just love the feeling they get from a radium suppository – especially the suppository salesmen:

https://prospect.org/politics/2024-09-19-lina-khan-doesnt-need-to-be-confirmed-again/

The paperback edition of The Lost Cause, my nationally bestselling, hopeful solarpunk novel is out this month!

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/2024/09/19/just-stop-putting-that-up-your-ass/#harm-reduction/a>

Image: Museum of the Health Sciences https://www.uab.edu/amhs/

[pangur-and-grim]

new milestone, 41 rejections in! that’s 41 separate people who have opened my submission and been like “the fuck is this? no.”

if they were in a room, they’d look like this:

that’s 41 people who didn’t wanna read about an evil wizard boning down. 41 people who disliked the concussed elf subplot. 41 people who disapproved of the 70-word chapter titles. 41 people who were repulsed by the cowardly knight’s accidental erection. pah, I will find a buyer for this thing eventually, I swear it!

[fallenrocket]

My god, Cassian is just so young in season 1 of Andor. On this last rewatch, it kept jumping out at me everywhere. Especially at the start of the show, which makes sense--he goes through a pretty intense education over the course of the season and transforms before our eyes. But there's just so much in Cassian that comes from being young, traumatized, and desperate.

We see it in his moments of unabashed fear, like when he's stopped by the two corpos in the pilot, the first time he sees the TIE fighter fly past on Aldhani, or as the prison transport takes off for Narkina 5. Even when he tries to hide it, we can see it in his eyes, the parts of him that are still that scared kid from Kenari.

We see it in the chip he has on his shoulder, like the attitude he cops with Luthen in their first meeting: "I don't know you." He's not just guarded and distrustful, he kind of actively resents this guy trying to get too familiar with him. When he's scared, uncertain, or guilty, he tends to push others away, a product of having to fight most of his life and of losing many of the things and people he's cared about. I also think of him coldly telling Bix, "You won't have to worry about me anymore," at the end of their argument in "Announcement."

And yet, by the same token, he can also be surprisingly open and earnest in his affections. For me, this is most apparent in his scenes with Maarva in "Announcement." There, we see his naive optimism that the money he got from Aldhani can solve all their problems. He's so buoyant and hopeful and loving as he suggests running away, saying, "What do we need but the three of us?" Later in the episode, we see that same naivety when he insists, "We'll find a place they haven't ruined yet." But it crops up in other places too. On Aldhani, he chooses Clem's name as his pseudonym, even though he already realizes Luthen has a lot of intel on him and will probably recognize it--in that moment, his distrust of Luthen is outweighed by his desire to go into this dangerous mission carrying a small piece of his dad with him. Then there's that beautiful hug with Brasso in "Rix Road," especially those few extra beats past when you'd expect them to part. When he hugs Melshi in the previous episode, Cassian is rushed, on the brink of falling apart and not wanting Melshi to see. But with Brasso, Cassian needs that touch for a few extra seconds, and he's not afraid to hold on a little longer.

Most of Cassian's dumbest mistakes in the season are very youthful ones. He's an incredibly smart and observant guy, so he's not dumb very often, but when he is, it tends to come back to being young, traumatized, and desperate. We see this especially in the opening Ferrix arc: insisting on bringing an unsecured comm to his meeting with Luthen (oh my god, the way he bickers with B2EMO about them beforehand!) and trying to go back for the starpath unit when the shit hits the fan, even after Luthen repeatedly tells him to leave it. With the starpath unit, part of it is naivety--"What if it's just one guy left?"--and part of it is growing up poor and scrappy. This box represents more money than he's ever had at any one time, and he simply can't process the idea that his buyer would just leave it behind.

Finally, every now and then, Cassian has this subtle but impeccable "little shit" energy. We definitely see it when he messes with Timm in the pilot, deliberately goading him instead of trying to defuse the situation when he sees that Timm is jealous. It's a dumb, petty moment of cheap satisfaction that winds up with some intense blowback when Timm IDs him to Pre-Mor. And I love Cassian's refusal to give up on Kino on Narkina 5, always believing he can be brought into the fold no matter how many times Kino tells him to forget about it. It's a great reflection of how Cassian rejects the Empire's attempts to divide the inmates by pitting them against each other, but part of why he's able to keep at it is his annoying-kid tenacity. I love the scene where Kino brushes him off by saying how many shifts he has left and Cassian immediately responds with, "So...tell me what you know before you go."

It's simply wild to compare the Cassian we see in "Kassa" to the one in "Rix Road." He goes through so much in twelve episodes and really comes into his own, and it's fantastic to see some of the qualities he displays in Rogue One starting to peek through. He's already come so far in his character growth--I cannot wait to see how season 2 gets us from "Rix Road" to Rogue One!

Oh yeah, and Diego Luna is simply stunning. You can really feel how he traced Cassian's life backwards to this point, see how different the Cassian of "Kassa" is from the Cassian of Rogue One and yet still fully believe that this is the same character. All the little hints he drops, all the tiny moments where you can see Rogue One Cassian starting to gestate. It's such beautiful, brilliant work!

[radfem-rage]

hello miss, why are you against surrogacy? :)

Feel free to send people to this post whenever they ask the same question. ☺️✌🏻

• Surrogacy is a form of sexual slavery, human trafficking, and creates a baby with the full knowledge that the baby will suffer the deep trauma of being separated from its mother. Surrogacy is purposeful creation of traumatised children. Dog moms are allowed to be with their pups for at least 8 weeks, but human babies are separated immediately.

• Most women who do surrogacy are poor and doing it out of financial desperation. It often has terrible implications for their families too.

• Surrogacy pregnancies are high risk because of the extreme amount of medication that need to be taken so that the mom’s body doesn’t reject the fetus who doesn’t have her own DNA. There have even been cases of women becoming infertile after surrogacy.

• It reduces a woman to the state of a brood mare, even the word surrogate is used to eliminate the reminder that this is a woman, a human, not an incubator. Women who do this are often kept under tight control, and the baby buyers are often very demanding of complete control over her body. When Ukraine was invaded, the women were forced to do what their buyers wanted, either be evacuated or remain in one location, separated from family.

The moment they gave birth and were in the buyer’s country, they were sent right back to Ukraine after.

• There's also the fact that pregnancy carries very high risks including death, especially true in poorer countries where this is more likely to be common. Sometimes the baby is born the 'wrong' sex or with a medical condition and then the buyers rejects it. It's important to know that women make babies using their own flesh, blood and bones, not just a bit of DNA. Every pregnancy can be deadly. Only women who want a child and love them should get pregnant because of it, never because they want/need money.

• The bond the mother and child will have will be no different to that of her own related child. It will be extremely traumatizing to see her own child go, even worse when in the contract it’s stated the mom gets to keep having contact with the child but the buyers don’t keep their part of the deal.

• When one woman is for sale, men believe we are all potentially for sale.

Thanks for your question!

[anglingforlevels]

Open House (Yandere House x Reader)

When people say the housing market is a nightmare, is this what they had in mind? (The story goes out to me because I’m trying to get an apartment and it is Suffering. Please pretend this count as yandere.)

CW: not proofread, unconventional captivity, swearing, I accidentally had too much fun writing Abby and forgot the point of the story-

Minors DNI

When you proudly had reached the saving milestone to buy a small house in the countryside, you had opted to spend some of that money on a real estate agent, figuring it was a good investment, hiring a Ms. Abby Bardot – who, over the phone, had insisted heavily on being called Abby rather than Ms. Bardot – who had twenty years of experience in the field.

Quite quickly, you realized that perhaps she wasn’t the most conventional real estate agent.

Ms. Abby, you quickly noticed at your first meeting, was all hand-wringing and nervous sweating, though she seemed sweet enough, having clutched a tin of home-cooked cookies in all shades of black and almost-not-black, and had heartily insisted you’d take as many as you’d like (which was zero).

She had insisted on bringing you to an open house for what she had called a hidden gem of a house, that it would be a private tour. To you, once she mentioned it would be at 1 p.m., it was quite obvious that “private tour” meant, “no one else has or will be showing up”.

Ms. Abby had also enthusiastically shown pictures of the place, pictures she had ready-at-the-go on her phone, presumably she really needed a buyer for the house.

“Ms. Abby.” You had said, interrupted with a small interjection of, Oh please, just Abby. “Ms. Abby, that’s not quite a house and more so a small manor. I went over my budget with you when I hired you.” Ms. Abby had quickly recovered from the rejection and puffed out her chest proudly.

“Why that’s the best part, this is within your budget!”

You had sent her a dubious look at this. “Are the pictures… How do I put this delicately? Are the pictures recent and unedited?”

Ms. Abby deflated so quickly that it almost felt impressive, almost urging you to clap as if it was a circus performance. Of course, it felt mean had you clapped at her dejected look.

“It’s well-kept, I assure you. These pictures are all recent, I’ve updated them every year for almost my entire career!” She said proudly, and you almost felt pity at the fact she didn’t seem to realize her own slip-up but instead paraded it around like a badge of honor.

Though, all-in-all you were charmed, and somewhat endeared, by the honesty. But not very much by the house at all. “I think I’d like to look at other options, it’s awfully big for just one person.”

“Ah, wait!” Ms. Abby said urgently. “Please, before we continue with other options, let’s first try out the open house this Friday.”

“Is this protocol, Ms. Abby?” Ms. Abby’s lips wobbled at this and… “Are you crying?!”

“No, I’m a professional. Real Estate Agents don’t cry, I’m simply sweating, is all.” Ms. Abby sniffled, dubbing her eyes with a handkerchief, presumably you were meant to believe her eyes were suffering heat stroke on this fine autumn day.

“…Alright, I’ll go to the open house. Just give me the address.” You eventually relented, if only to avoid seeing the pitiful sight of a teary-eyed Ms. Abby.

That’s how you ended up before a grand house out in the middle of nowhere, the closest town was an hour-long drive away. Forest and fields were most of the surroundings, which was why the house was in such stark contrast, standing as a sole presence, the forests and fields shying away to make room for it, leaving a vast vacancy around it, stretching on for at least fifty meters.

It really was a pristine house, when comparing it to the pictures, it seemed to match right down to the placement of every rock and plant in sight. As if someone had consciously placed each leaf and pebble.

The plants and trees of the garden donned vibrant colors despite the season. You wondered how often Ms. Abby came by, or if she had hired a crew for maintenance, as you could not spot even the slightest hint of dirt or spiderwebs.

The only thing that looked aged was, unfortunately, the “For Sale” sign.

It felt a little unnatural, but you chalked it up to currently being a display house, and thus not lived-in either. You took notice of the way the trees beyond the reach of the garden were withered and wrinkled, and the grass yellowy, dry patches, barely hiding the dirt beneath.

“Some more forest could really do this place some good.” You mumbled. You hesitated for reasons you didn’t fully understand before stepping beyond dead plants clinging loosely to your feet and entering the garden.

You felt a prickling sensation behind your eyes the further you traveled, the door felt so far when the weight of something cloyingly attentive seemed to drag you down as if to prevent your advances.

“You’re here!” A delighted Ms. Abby yelled out before the sound of pitter-patter was interrupted by a loud thud against the door that rattled the frame. With her energy dampened, a sheepish Ms. Abby appeared behind the front door, simply saying; “It opens the other way.”

Right, something attentive could only have been the attention of the overzealous Ms. Abby.

“Come in, come in!” She invited, all but pulling you stumbling into a most decadently, lavishly decorated foyer. From distasteful stuffed animal heads to the ruby red furniture and mosaic glass tables, it felt quite uncomfortable, all sharp angles and very little homeliness to it, like an ornate display of wealth rather than a welcome into a household.

“Not very welcoming, huh?” You commented, which Ms. Abby elected not to respond to, though the small “eep” suggested she had heard the negative impression.

Looking the room over it was impossible for your eyes not to rest at the centerpiece of the foyer: A huge painting above the staircase. A solemn-looking guy stared out into the air, curly locks framing his face. Old paintings always looked miserable, yet you couldn’t help but feel there was a glint of genuine misery in his eyes. Noticing your attention had wandered, Ms. Abby followed your eyes.

“Oh, that was an owner of the house who had it commissioned back during the Renaissance, they wanted it right here, in the heart of the house.” She explained though you couldn’t say you agreed to a decadent foyer being the heart of a house, and if it was, that wasn’t boding well for Ms. Abby’s already poor sales chances.

“I���ve never understood why someone would want to pay money to look miserable in a painting, like you’re paying for it, at least make yourself smile or something.” Your jab was met with Ms. Abby’s impressive ability to carry on like you had said nothing negative at all.

“You know, the owner claimed it was a Jan van Eyck-original too.” Ms. Abby said as if letting you in on a secret, or town gossip. “Really, we’ve had it appraised.”

“And the appraiser confirmed it was a Jan van-whatever original?”

“…The owner really loved art; you’ll see plenty of paintings throughout the place.”

So that was a no. And speaking of no’s:

“Listen, Ms. Abby, I don’t exactly have the budget for a big house, as I already said. I especially don’t have the kind of budget that the kind of person who’d commission an artist to paint them for their foyer would have.”

Abby laughed nervously. “Well, you see, the value’s dropped as I mentioned. We haven’t been able to sell it for a long time, so the price just kept falling.”

“Right. But even so, it can’t have fallen that much.”

At this, Abby avoided eye contact, wringing her hands before, after a big breath, blurting it out. “The person in the painting was the last person to own the house.”

…

“Is this place built on top of an oilfield or something?”

Ms. Abby laughed a hearty if a bit shrill, laughter, before sighing and mumbling. “If only.” She clapped. “But! This is a charming house, why, let me show you the many rooms!”

“Ms. Abby, have you ever considered a field outside of sale?” You asked dryly but nonetheless followed along, eager to leave behind the painting, as you felt watched. The house consisted of many sprawling hallways, enough to almost make one dizzy, and you struggled to remember where everything was.

The house had many rooms, none of them particularly inviting, reading more like a historical display room lacking any warmth or heart (and perhaps even worse, any semblance of renovation despite old age), and all absolutely clustered with trinkets, knickknacks, and in the case of the walls, paintings – leaving very little free space.

It really did read like a historical display, as some rooms seemed older than others, suggesting partial renovation must have been done on some of the rooms. You’d like a word with whoever had been in charge of that lackluster, nonsensical effort.

Perhaps the lack of replaced furniture or renovation was why the house periodically seemed to creak and moan in odd ways, at times you almost confused it as Ms. Abby groaning or sighing, only to realize it was the sound of the house itself.

As for Ms. Abby, she remained undeterred regardless of how many snide remarks you made, which you had to commend her for, though the charm you initially had felt from it was quickly wearing off. Ms. Abby actually seemed increasingly happy, humming to herself. She didn’t think the sale was going well, did she?

“How much of the house is there left to see, Ms. Abby?” You asked, increasingly impatient and tired, having been dragged through an unreasonable number of rooms, which inexplicably, almost all were bedrooms (and yet, you had yet to see more than a single bathroom).

“Well, we’re still missing a couple rooms like the kitchen, oh! I know, how about the master bedroom since you’ll be spending every night there.” She said with a beaming smile.

“That’s awfully optimistic, Ms. Abby.” You noted, at this you received a good-hearted chuckle.

“Oh, this place is too lovely to pass up on, I think it likes you – it’s a match made in heaven. If you don’t like some of the features or decorations, it’s easy to change those, so it would be a waste not to live here.”

“I can’t imagine a house as empty as this holding much affection, and I’m not up for a big project.” All you wanted was a small but cozy house, a simple place. You felt exhausted just thinking about the amount of work you’d need to pour into a house like this to make it feel like home.

“Well, it’s perhaps not an easy house,” Ms. Abby admitted, her cheer at this point an unshakeable force, as a sense of confidence seemed to have sprouted in her. “But that’s why when that rare fit comes by one must take the leap and hold onto it.”

You’d feel insulted by the suggestion you were a good fit for this distasteful and unpleasant house, had Ms. Abby not already shown herself as incompetent but well-meaning. You simply sighed, giving up the conversation, figuring you’d find another real estate agent when you came home.

“Well, take me to the master bedroom then.”

Ms. Abby led you through the foyer again, the bedroom apparently at the other end of the house. Your eyes were drawn to the painting once more, its eyes felt more sunken in than before, shadows forming beneath, to which you tiredly sighed. “Me too, buddy. Me too.”

The master bedroom seemed to be at the stopping point to the sprawling hallways on the right. You were just aghast at the fact you had gone through another set of sprawling hallways, you wondered who had come up with the confusing layout of the place.

Ms. Abby tried to imitate a trumpet to build up suspense but trailed off after you shot her an impatient look. After a weak cough, she simply said “Tadaah” and opened the door.

You stopped up, your right foot hanging in the air, about to cross into the room. A sense of foreboding filled you; it was a bit different from the first time, however. The prickling sensation you felt and the cloying attention, it felt smothering, less like a shove away and more like… Being held in place.

Ms. Abby waited patiently inside the room, not commenting on your hesitation, though you had been snarky and displeased the entire tour, so perhaps this just seemed like more of that. You swallowed and ignored the pressure as you put your foot down and entered the room.

The air felt different here. You had hoped the odd sensation would disappear if you just carried on, like when you entered the house, to begin with, instead, it worsened. The air clung to you, terribly heavy and sticky. It took you a moment to actually focus enough to realize Ms. Abby had spoken, so when you finally snapped back to reality, Ms. Abby was standing in the hallway.

“-tively spellbound already. I’ll give you some time to look around and get acquainted together, one-on-one.” And then she closed the door in your face. The room was, oddly empty, compared to every other room. Nothing but a big, red bed, the empty walls that you could’ve sworn were further away when you entered, and that feeling of being watched, lodging into your skin like stitching.

Nothing except an almost empty room that didn’t feel empty enough.

That’s it. Ms. Abby had officially used up all her pity points, you were leaving. You opened the door, a tad more aggressively than what was perhaps called for, but Ms. Abby was nowhere to be seen in the hallway.

For how annoyed you were with her at this point, you found that you missed her company as you walked down the hallway, nothing distracting you from the odd sounds of the house that seemed to have increased. It felt as if the floor beneath your feet moved and rumbled slightly, the velvety carpets uneven and bumpy, as if walking on something breathing, something living.

You wished that Ms. Abby had given you the floor plans, as you struggled to remember how to return to the foyer through the hallways and occasional rooms you had to cross seemed to hold no real rhythm and didn’t feel as if it obeyed any rules about directions.

At one point you could have sworn you turned back, only to be in another room than where you had emerged from originally. Finally, after what felt like an eternity, you found the foyer again. Even in your rush to find the door, your eyes were drawn to the painting, though you continued to rush by it. In your haste, it almost looked as if the painting’s colors were smudged.

You attempted to open the door but found it didn’t budge. It was an odd choice to lock the door, but you were certain that was the reason, it had to be. A locked door was no issue from the inside, but even after hearing the click of the lock, the door didn’t budge when you attempted to open it.

You attempted to kick, pry, tear, and even throw your body weight at the door, but with no luck.

Settling in the foyer after your final attempt at prying the front door open, you huffed, out of breath. You laid on the stairs, trying to settle your heart and pulse, when your eyes landed on the painting again.

…You rubbed your eyes and sat up, thinking what you had seen was owed to your tiredness and the upside-down angle, but no. The painting really did look smudged. Like someone had blurred colors and borders together, the hair’s vibrant color having lost its radiance.

And the mouth, it was oddly smudged between the lips, that it almost gave the impression of a mouth being pried open.

…

No, that was silly, you were being silly. The painting was smudged out, which was already creepy enough on its own, or rather, the house was already creepy enough on its own – your mind was just working overtime and was making up new things to get scared over.

“Well brain, if you like overtime, I guess I’ll have to put you to use and think of an escape. But you don’t have a union, so it’s unpaid hours for you, I’m afraid.”

If the front door was a bust, then you’d find a window. You struggled to recall any windows on the ground floor, but surely there had to be some. Or… That’s right! The kitchen, it had a glass door. You never got around to seeing the kitchen, having mainly been shown the upstairs so far, but you recalled Ms. Abby mentioning it back when she had given her pitch for why you should show up.

You hadn’t been on the left side of the house, at least not on the ground floor, so you figured that was a good direction to begin, in your search for the kitchen. You opened the door, urgency in your steps, only to find you weren’t in an unfamiliar room.

Instead, you were back in the empty master bedroom, which somehow felt much more crammed than any of the other rooms. But… That didn’t make sense. The master bedroom was upstairs, you had fought through a confusing hallway to find the foyer, so this… this didn’t make sense at all.

The air felt oppressive in the room as if your heart would be forced to a halt from the sheer weight of it, like a physical presence. This time you were sure that the walls were closer than they had been before. A bed table had been added next to the bed, and the part of you still delusional enough to hope thought maybe it meant that Ms. Abby was still around. As if this was an elaborate prank.

You tried to swallow despite how dry your mouth felt, your heart hammering painfully against your chest. This was ridiculous. You slammed the door open again, the door shaking on its hinges. Beyond the door, it revealed a hallway, but even if the hallway was confusing, you had been through it twice by now, you could do this, you could find the kitchen or a ground-floor window.

Hurrying along the hallway, it felt as if the floor and walls shifted and moved. Were you dizzy, or was this actually happening? The restrictive air of the master bedroom followed you, as you dragged yourself through.

“Huh?” you furrowed your eyebrows when you opened one of the doors. You were sure this was the one you had gone through before, but the room behind was unfamiliar. Cold dread filled you as a horrible thought crossed your mind.

No, no, no. You ran to the next door but behind it was another unfamiliar room. Were the layout… Changing? Your hand trembled as you tried to open a third door, and you felt like crying when all it revealed was the master bedroom again.

A lamp now stood on top of the bed table. Were new things going to be added each time you returned to the room? You thought back to the cramped bedrooms Ms. Abby had so cheerfully shown off. You weren’t sure what to make of it but felt sick all the same.

“I don’t have time for this.” You had to snap yourself out of it. You could spiral and panic later, but for now, you needed to get out. So, turning on your heel, you returned to the hallway. You’d go through each door that didn’t lead to the master bedroom, hoping to somehow find your way downstairs.

You almost cheered audibly when you finally saw the staircase, rushing to it. Once again, as you passed it, your eyes were drawn to the painting.

The painting no longer looked the same as before, the person it had been long erased by smudged and changing lines. You couldn’t tell what it was changing into but felt your heart race with familiarity all the same.

The mouth was a gaping hole by now, outstretched awkwardly. You thought it might have been a smile, but it looked much more like a pained grimace to you.

You only took this as further encouragement to get out of there.

When you failed to find anything of use, you realized there was one room that you seemed to always find. So, as counterintuitive as it seemed, you walked upstairs again, and as confusing as the changing layout was, it didn’t take you long to find it.

You saw the familiar bed, the bed table, the lamp, and the newly added clock on the wall (which didn’t seem to be working) and closed your eyes for a moment. You took a deep breath. And then you decisively walked in to grab the lamp, shivering a bit as you brushed against a much-too-warm wall.

If you couldn’t find the kitchen or a window on the ground floor, then fuck it, you’d find one up here. Whatever broken bones or bruises you’d get from the fall, you’d accept. Finding a window upstairs proved much more doable, as one would line the walls every now and then.

You threw the lamp against the window and braced yourself for impact.

But nothing happened.

The lamp fell to the floor with a hollow thud. When you opened your eyes, you found not a single scratch on the window. So, you tried again. And again. You tried punching the window, earning nothing but a stinging fist.

Yet you continued. At some point, it became more of a tantrum, an expression of your desperation colored in violence, than an attempt to escape. Hitting the window, kicking the wall. “Why-“ you hated this house. You hated it. Hated, hated, hated it. You just wanted to leave. Your ears rang, whether it was from your headache, or the way the house’s groans and creaks had grown in severity, you didn’t know, didn’t care, couldn’t care.

Already unsteady on your feet, your final kick caused you to lose balance entirely.

Stumbling and falling onto the floor, without realizing it, you found yourself by the stairs, and face to face with the painting. Your blood ran cold as you stared into your own lifeless eyes staring down at you from above.

 

Quiet had fallen over the house like a blanket, only the slow rumble throughout the house bellied any activity. In the heart of the house rested a painting, donning a toothy smile and a certain glint in their eyes.

A satisfied Ms. Abby removed the “For Sale” sign out front and drove away with a hum.

[covid-safer-hotties]

Also preserved in our archive

by Hannah Buttle

Editor’s note: This article contains a brief mention of suicidal ideation.

Key points you should know:

There are currently no approved treatments for Long COVID and progress on clinical trials has been slow. Some medications can improve people’s quality of life, but they may not work for everyone.

With few choices, rejected disability claims, financial instability, and little support, some people with the disease have turned to online pharmacies, often based in India, to source potential medications.

Popular choices include medications used to treat conditions like HIV, hepatitis C, and acute COVID-19. Some of these drugs are being tested in upcoming clinical trials for Long COVID.

Buying medications online from unknown sellers can be risky; buyers might not receive the correct medication or even receive something harmful.

However, many people with Long COVID feel their quality of life has declined so severely that these risks are worth taking. With no approved treatments, lack of support, and stigma against the disease, many people with Long COVID are using overseas pharmacies to source medications. Some of these treatments are widely used for other conditions, such as HIV and hepatitis C, but are not approved for use in Long COVID.

“I was in such a desperate situation,” said Rafael, who lives in the U.K. and developed Long COVID in 2021. “I was bedbound, and I was within months of losing my job, which would then mean losing my home. So I didn’t have much to lose.”

Rafael bought several months’ worth of Maraviroc, an HIV drug, from a seller in India via WhatsApp. Soon after taking the Maraviroc, Rafael had a significant improvement in symptoms, although he was taking other medications at the same time.

“If I wasn’t so debilitated by Long COVID, I probably wouldn’t have taken the risk,” Rafael said.

The Sick Times spoke to several people with Long COVID who had used online pharmacies to import medications from abroad. Because importing medication can be illegal in certain circumstances, many sources interviewed for this article asked to be identified by their first name only or by a pseudonym.

Popular choices for people with Long COVID included the acute COVID-19 antiviral Paxlovid, the HIV drugs Maraviroc and Truvada, and the hepatitis C drug Sofosbuvir. Maraviroc and Truvada are currently being evaluated in an upcoming clinical trial at the Cohen Center for Recovery from Complex Chronic Illness, but results are not expected until at least early 2026.

Some people with Long COVID find some relief with off-label medications like low-dose naltrexone, but many told The Sick Times their doctors won’t prescribe these treatments. Even when doctors are willing to consider off-label treatments, health insurance often will not cover them.

Few treatments in sight The slow progress on clinical trials for Long COVID has been a source of frustration for both researchers and patients. The pharmaceutical industry has expressed little interest in finding treatments for the disease. Studies through the RECOVER initiative, launched by the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH), have primarily focused on observational approaches, such as asking people with Long COVID to track their symptoms, though the initiative is now planning new trials.

An analysis by The Sick Times found that fewer than a quarter of clinical trials for Long COVID are drug interventions, as of November 2024.

(interactive graph here)

Even when clinical trials take place, there is no guarantee of a “one-size-fits-all” treatment for Long COVID, said Ondine Sherwood, CEO of Long COVID SOS, a charity in the U.K. representing people with the disease. Currently, the available drugs may help only with specific symptoms or may work only for certain subsets of people with Long COVID.

Given the severity of symptoms and widespread government abandonment, it is unsurprising that some people with Long COVID have taken risks to seek relief from their symptoms since the beginning of the pandemic. Past unapproved treatments have included HELP apheresis, an expensive procedure that removes blood from a vein, filters the blood, and returns the filtered blood to the body. Many have also tried triple anticoagulant therapy, in which patients take aspirin, clopidogrel, and a blood thinner like Apixaban to break down small blood clots, called microclots. There is a high bleeding risk associated with triple anticoagulant therapy.

For many people with Long COVID, however, anything that offers a chance of improvement may seem worthwhile. Survey data suggest that the quality of life of someone with Long COVID can be worse than that of someone with stage four cancer. People with Long COVID may also be at a higher risk for suicidal ideation.

Financial insecurity can also drive people with Long COVID to consider experimental treatments, as many are out of work, behind on housing payments, and facing other financial challenges.

Some doctors may be willing to prescribe medications off-label for Long COVID and related conditions, like dysautonomia and mast cell activation syndrome (MCAS). Commonly prescribed drugs include beta-blockers, which lower heart rate, for dysautonomia, or H1 and H2 antihistamines for MCAS.

Dysautonomia drugs can lead to “massive improvement” for some, said Dr. Asad Khan, who worked as a respiratory doctor in the U.K. before developing Long COVID. For example, a beta blocker could bring down a patient’s heart rate while posing a limited risk, he said.

But some off-label treatments could carry higher risks, especially without a doctor’s oversight, said Khan: “You've got people taking anticoagulants and various other drugs that can affect the kidney, and the liver, and can have effects on the nervous system, and nobody's monitoring. The problems could be quite serious, and it could even be fatal.”

However, doing nothing for a patient can also put them in danger, said Khan. For instance, some research indicates that COVID-19 can lead to a higher risk of heart attacks and strokes for years after the infection.

People with Long COVID echoed these concerns. “I worry that, the longer we wait, the higher the destruction in our bodies,” said Lena, from Germany, who has had the disease since 2021.

After a difficult few months of symptoms, Lena decided to buy a generic form of Truvada, an HIV medication, through an online pharmacy. While she was scared, “pure despair” led her to try the medication, she said.

“I was having suicidal ideation,” she said. “If you have to weigh up how I was feeling versus taking an unknown pill, there’s no contest.” Many people with Long COVID who spoke to The Sick Times felt that buying medication online was their only choice.

How online pharmacies work Without a doctor to recommend the correct drug and dosage, many people with Long COVID receive advice from online social media groups. Users share tips on which drugs had worked for them, how to slowly increase the dosage of medications, and which side effects to expect.

Most of those interviewed by The Sick Times reported purchasing drugs without a prescription, either from national online pharmacies or from India via services like IndiaMart, an online marketplace. India is the world's largest exporter of generic pharmaceuticals.

“For me, what helped was a combination of ten days of Paxlovid and Sofosbuvir,” an antiviral drug for hepatitis C, said Tiff, from the U.S., who developed Long COVID in 2020. Tiff had read online about other people finding relief from the disease with these medications. She asked a friend to bring them back from India and had a significant decline in symptoms.

“I felt like I did pre-2020,” she said. “I had energy. I felt wonderful. No [Post-exertional malaise (PEM)] crash, no brain fog, no symptoms, nothing.” Tiff was later reinfected with SARS-C0V-2, and her Long COVID symptoms returned. She once again bought Sofosbuvir and Paxlovid from a seller in India and saw an improvement.

Lower prices offer another incentive to buy medications from abroad. Take Paxlovid, which can cost as much as $1,400 for a five-day course in the U.S., while a generic version from India costs just $103.

Sofia lives in Austria and has Long COVID. “In Austria, it would cost €40,000 for four months of Sofosbuvir,” she said, which “would be unaffordable.”

An anonymous Twitter/X user offered to help Sofia. She sent him €200, and he bought the medication in India and took it back to Europe. Since taking the Sofosbuvir, Sofia said she went from 40% to 60% of her previous level of functioning.

Risks and regulations Generic medications in the U.S., U.K., and Europe are commonly exported from India. But those exported through official channels are often subject to stricter regulatory standards than the medications available to locals. For those who have bought medications online from abroad, confirming the medications are safe can be difficult.

“We don’t have a functional regulatory system in India,” said Dinesh Thakur, a drug-safety advocate and former pharmaceutical executive. Online markets like IndiaMart have no safety guarantee.

“In the best-case scenario, the product may not contain enough of the active ingredient,” he said. “In the worst-case scenario, an injectable may contain endotoxins [harmful substances released by bacteria].”

If buyers from outside India have a bad experience, it would be difficult to hold a foreign company to account, Thakur added.

Nonetheless, many who spoke to The Sick Times felt that, despite the risks involved, they had to try something to relieve their symptoms.

“The symptoms grind you down so much, the risk calculus changes,” said Chris, from the UK, who has had Long COVID since 2020. “There is no help coming, nothing on the horizon.”

The World Health Organization has a checklist for gauging the safety of medicines purchased online. Tips include looking out for unusual activity on your credit card, checking security seals, and ensuring the batch number and expiry date on the package match throughout.

People with Long COVID may also be able to access off-label medications from more reliable sources. For instance, some online clinics may prescribe medications after a consultation. RTHM, a U.S.-based online clinic, offers a prescribing service for certain off-label medications for Long COVID, including low-dose naltrexone, beta-blockers for dysautonomia, and ketotifen for MCAS. In the U.K., those with a confirmed diagnosis of Long COVID or ME can buy low-dose naltrexone through Dicksons Chemist.

Another option for a small number of those with Long COVID is to join a clinical trial — though depending on the trial’s setup, some participants may receive a placebo instead of a drug.

Without the oversight of a pharmacist, taking a DIY approach to medications could also lead to dangerous medication interactions, even when the drugs are high quality. Paxlovid, for example, interacts with many drugs people take for Long COVID. These include ivabradine, some statins, and HIV medications. The University of Liverpool offers a COVID-19 drug interactions checker, which could help those using drugs like Paxlovid.

Regular blood tests could also help monitor for side effects. Truvada and Maraviroc can increase liver enzymes, and patients who take these medications for HIV prevention and HIV are advised to monitor liver enzymes regularly. Rafael, who bought Maraviroc, said he received monthly liver checks while taking the drug. These tests, which individuals can do privately without a GP referral, cost around £50 ($60) in the U.K.

Even if medications are safe, they are not guaranteed to work. People with Long COVID risk spending hundreds to thousands of dollars without success. New drugs could also lead to worse symptoms and significantly worsen a person’s health baseline.

Chris tried several medications, including Maraviroc and blood thinners, but has seen few improvements in symptoms. “You end up becoming your own guinea pig because nothing else is happening,” he said.

“It’s easy to depict people as reckless and not understanding the risks. But that’s not the case at all. Everyone understands the risks —they’re doing it because they’ve got no choice.”

[guildofpriapus]

Mares being prepared for Presentation

THE PRESENTATION OF THE MARES

Being selected by The Guild to make a presentation is considered a high honour, and husbands who elect to offer up their wives for consideration are gambling their money and their reputation on the favorable response of the Guild Elders. A sound attractive mare may provide an heir for Guild members, or may become a mere plaything. It is uncommon for a mare to return to private ownership.

Rejected mares are sold on with a percentage being returned to the owner.

The Guild statutes put it thus:

**WHEREAS, the Seller doth possess certain brood mares of sound lineage and good repute, and the Buyer is desirous of acquiring said mares for the purpose of breeding and husbandry;**

**NOW, THEREFORE, for and in consideration of the sum of [Amount], to be paid in lawful currency of the realm, the parties do covenant and agree as follows:**

**Examination of the Mares.** Prior to the exchange of coin, the Buyer shall be afforded the opportunity to conduct a thorough examination of the Mares, to ascertain their health, vigor, and breeding capacity. Such examination shall be conducted at a time mutually agreeable to both parties, and in the presence of a competent physician, should the Buyer so desire.

**Use of Mares.** The Buyer shall have the right to utilize the Mares for breeding purposes or any other lawful endeavor as deemed fit. The Seller doth make no representations as to the future breeding success of the Mares, and the Buyer hereby assumes all risks associated with their use.

Successful applicants can expect to see their property handed over in perpetuity and used however The Guild sees fit, and will recieve a handsome payment.

[candycandy00]

The Doll House - A Toji x Reader Fanfic Part 4 (Final)

You’re in love with Toji, even after finding out he trains sex dolls at the Doll House. Taking a chance, you sell yourself to the Doll House so he can be your trainer, and you bet him that you can make him fall for you by the end of the training.

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4

Read Geto’s Part Here!

Read Nanami’s Part Here!

Read Sukuna’s Part Here!

Read Gojo’s Part Here!

Read Choso’s Part Here!

AU! Each trainer will get their own story! This is Toji’s. If you’d like to be tagged in future parts, let me know! You must be an adult to be tagged! Any feedback whatsoever is adored! I’m keeping the same tag list as Geto’s part. If you’d like to be removed, please let me know!

Note: Consider these parts AU’s within an AU. So you might see Geto with a different doll from the reader in his part, but just consider this an alternate timeline lol.

Smut. 18+. Short Fem Reader. Cock drunk reader. Age difference (Reader is 20, Toji is 38). Size difference kink. Rough sex. Use of aphrodisiacs. Brief attempted rape. Lots of cum. Divider by @benkeibear!

The next day, Toji takes Megumi to school and makes arrangements for his uncle to pick the boy up afterwards. You’re a little sad to see Megumi go. While he started out a bit rude, he seemed to be warming up to you. Hopefully, you’ll get the chance to spend time with him again. 

You and Toji have breakfast together, then spend the rest of the morning enjoying each other’s bodies. At lunch, Toji orders takeout, and while the two of you are eating at the small table in his room, he says something that makes you totally lose your appetite. 

“So there’s a buyer who wants to meet you.”

The plastic fork in your hand drops to your foam plate. You knew this was coming, you’ve been mentally preparing yourself for it. Meeting with potential buyers is part of the process at the Doll House. It’s one of the things that makes the place so popular among buyers and people considering becoming dolls. Meeting with someone a few times before the purchase gives both parties a chance to feel each other out before making a ten year commitment. Dolls even have the right to reject buyers if they provide sufficient reasoning, though obviously they can’t just reject buyer after buyer. 

But these past few weeks with Toji have been like a dream, like a fairytale. You’ve been so happy spending every day by his side, and now reality is crashing into your fantasy. You definitely haven’t given up on the bet, and you have almost two more weeks, but you realize that you have to play by the rules. You have to meet with the buyer. 

“Okay,” you say, picking the fork back up, “I’ll meet him.”

Toji watches you, seeming surprised that you’re not arguing about this. “I’ll have the owner set things up,” he says after a pause, taking a bite of his sandwich. 

The meeting happens two days later, in the afternoon. You sit in the welcome room of the Doll House, Toji standing nearby, as you wait to meet your potential buyer. Even though you still feel confident that you can get Toji to fall for you, there’s something nerve wracking about this meeting. Knowing this man wants to literally buy ten years of your life, if the meeting goes “well”, just makes you feel awkward and mildly creeped out. 

When the owner walks in, there’s a man walking beside her. He’s younger than you expected, much younger than Toji. You guess his age to be no older than mid twenties. He’s not repulsive, in fact he’s sort of cute, dressed impeccably, and carrying himself in a dignified manner. But he’s not Toji, and seeing the two men in the same room together really drives that point home. 

He sits down on the plush sofa beside you, not too close, and crosses one leg over the other. He flashes you a gleaming smile that probably cost him a lot of money. 

The two of you make small talk. Mostly introductions and generic pleasantries. At one point he asks, “What did you do before this?”

“I worked at a convenience store,” you reply with a smile. 

His nose seems to wrinkle a bit at that. He returns your smile as he says, “I work for a major investment firm. I’m in high demand, so I stay busy. I don’t have time to date and pursue relationships.”

In your mind, all you can hear is that he doesn’t want to put in the effort required to find and keep a girlfriend, but you keep that to yourself. 

“So do you live around here?” he asks. 

“Oh, yeah, I have a small apartment in town. It’s really close to the store I worked at, so I could walk there and save on gas.”

There it is again, that wrinkle of his nose, as if your frugality is disgusting. To be honest, you’re hoping he doesn’t like you, so maybe you’re emphasizing the fact that you’re borderline poor. 

“You might have a hard time getting used to my place then,” he says with a smug grin. “It’s huge, three stories, eight bedrooms, four baths, a pool in the backyard…”

He goes on for a while longer, and you simply smile and nod, with the occasional, “Wow” thrown in. You wonder if he can tell just how much you don’t care about his big house. 

The man moves his hands a lot as he speaks, and you suddenly notice light glinting off the gold, fancy-looking watch on his wrist. It’s quite annoying, and distracting. When he notices you looking at it, he stops and holds his arm up. 

“You like it? I bet you’ve never seen a watch like this before. If I told you how much it cost, you might faint,” he says with a chuckle. 

You give a small laugh of your own. “Actually, the light reflecting off it is blinding me.” Then you hold up your own wrist, where the watch you bought last year at a discount store is sitting. “Mine can catch the light too, and it was only ten dollars!”

Behind the man, Toji has one hand on his mouth, stifling a laugh, the other hand clutching his side. When he meets your gaze, he rolls his eyes in an exaggerated way and shakes his head. You have to fight back a laugh of your own. 

The man looks at you sharply, and for the first time you get a genuinely bad feeling about him. He smiles at you again, but there’s something off about the expression. He looks like he finds you amusing, in a “here’s a toy I can play with and break” sort of way. 

Later, after he’s gone, you and Toji are walking down the hall. “Can you believe that guy?” you ask. “Are all buyers rich assholes?”

Toji laughs again. “Nah, most of them are alright. But this guy? He sure was rich, huh?”

“If there’s one thing I can say about him, it’s that he’s rich,” you reply. 

“Yep. That’s the main takeaway from that meeting,” Toji says, grinning. 

You think the meeting went well for you, but pretty poorly for the buyer. Which is why you’re quite surprised when, two days later, the buyer wants to have another meeting with you. He’s going to have dinner with you in one of the empty rooms, privately. 

“Do I have to be alone with him?” you ask Toji as you get ready for the dinner date. 

“Buyers request private meetings all the time. It’s normal,” Toji says, stepping closer to zip up the back of your dress for you. “But it’s just dinner. He’s not supposed to touch you.”

You turn around to look at Toji. “What if he does?”

He gives you a smile. “I’ll be right outside the door. Call for me and I’ll be in there before you can blink.”

“What if he locks the door?”

Toji grins. “Do you think a locked door would stop me?”

You sigh as you turn back to the dresser and look in the mirror. You haven’t dressed up since you got here. Toji seems fine with you wearing casual clothes, or nothing at all. But tonight you have to look “fancy”. You reach down and pick up the glass bottle of Toji’s cologne and spritz some on your neck. Then you whirl around to face Toji again. You stand on your tiptoes and give him a quick kiss. 

“Okay, I’m ready. But just so you know, I’m gonna be thinking about sucking your cock the whole time!”

Toji’s eyes widen, but then he laughs. “That’s one way to get through a boring dinner!”

You grin at him, sliding your hand down to palm his dick through his pants. “Be ready for me,” you say, “I’m gonna be famished when we get back to your room.”

His hand quickly moves under your dress, groping your pussy through your thin panties. “We have a few minutes, maybe I should fuck you right now, send you on your little date with my cum oozing out of your pussy.”

You gasp as you feel one of his fingers slip beneath the fabric and stroke your slit. “Please do! I wanna feel it dripping out while I sit across from him.”

Toji immediately turns you around to face the dresser, bends you over it, and hikes your dress up to your waist. He pulls your panties to the side and slides himself in, easily going all the way into your slick entrance. It’s a quick and rough fuck, with Toji thrusting fast and hard, making your legs wobble and your pussy ache. It doesn’t take long for him to pump you full of his cum. 

You stay there, leaning across the dresser, trying to catch your breath. You can feel Toji’s cum seeping out and into your panties. Behind you, he uses his hand to press the fabric against your pussy, getting it all messy and damp. “Don’t change them,” he says into your ear.  

“I won’t,” you tell him, finally straightening up and pulling your dress back down. “So while I’m in there, keep thinking about my pussy soaking in your cum.”

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

Toji watches her walk down the hall in front of him and then go inside the room where the potential buyer is waiting. The door is shut, and Toji stands leaning against it. 

Though he looks calm, inside he’s so riled up, it takes all of his strength to resist tearing down the door and fucking her on the table right in front of the buyer. The fact that she wanted to be filled with his cum while having dinner with another man is so insanely fucking hot, Toji is having trouble controlling himself. He wants her under him right now, or on her knees in front of him, choking on his cock. 

He takes a deep breath and crosses his arms over his chest, trying to calm himself down. No doll has ever made him feel this way before. He enjoyed fucking them, sure, but he’s never felt like he needed them. But this girl… he’s getting dangerously addicted to her. 

Time passes at an agonizingly slow pace as he waits for their dinner to be over. And when the door finally opens, his heart beats faster when she steps out. The dress is a fairly simple one. She probably bought it at a mall somewhere. But on her, it looks stunning. When she walks by him, he smells his own cologne, his own scent. It drives him wild. 

The buyer steps out after her. He doesn’t look very happy despite the smile on his face. She probably made him feel foolish again, or just wasn’t impressed by all his bragging. Either way, Toji feels relieved that the date didn’t seem to go well. He tries not to think about what that means. 

He doesn’t even look at Toji, as if the man training his potential sex doll to please him is beneath his notice. Toji doesn’t care. In a few minutes he’ll be balls deep in her tight little pussy while this asshole goes home alone. 

Back in Toji’s room, she’s giggling as she sits on his bed, taking off her high heeled shoes. “You should’ve seen his face when I told him I love to shop at thrift stores! I thought he was gonna vomit up his dinner!”

Toji smiles as he watches her, noting how easy and comfortable the conversation is between them, as opposed to the stiff and awkward way she and the buyer spoke to each other. “So did you learn anything new about him?” he asks. 

She snorts cutely. “I learned how many cars he has, where his summer home is, and that he only wears clothes from some Italian brand I can’t pronounce.”

“Oh, so you learned he’s rich. Again.”

She laughs and stands up, crossing over to him with bare feet. Having just seen her in heels, he’s struck again by how short she is. But she reaches up and wraps her small hands around his neck, pulling him down closer to her. “I learned that he’s utter trash compared to you,” she says, then kisses him deeply. 

The next day, the owner calls Toji into her office to speak privately. He’s always found her office to be slightly intimidating, with its blood red carpets and decor. The desk she sits behind is made of deep cherry wood, glossy with polish. Her chair is lined with velvet, and she holds a folded silk fan in one hand. 

“He wants to sample the goods,” she says. 

Toji blinks. “Seriously? They’re not hitting it off at all. I get the impression he doesn’t even like her.”

It’s common practice for a buyer to want to “sample the goods”, as the owner put it. What that entails differs from buyer to buyer. Some want to see the doll naked. Some want to watch a few training sessions. Some want to actually have sex with the doll. It’s no surprise that they ask for this, as this is a ten year contract and a lot of money is involved. And so long as the doll agrees to it, which they almost always do, it’s allowed. It’s something that usually happens after a few meetings, and only after the buyer has demonstrated a serious intent to buy the doll. 

“He doesn’t have to like her,” the owner says, “he only has to want to fuck her. You know this. Dolls aren’t wives or girlfriends.”

True, Toji thinks, but in his experience, both parties were much happier with the purchase when they got along. 

“So? What does he want exactly?”

The owner doesn’t bat an eye. “Full sexual intercourse.”

Toji feels a knot in his stomach. His doll won’t agree to that. She can’t stand that guy. And… the thought of that guy touching her made Toji feel sick. 

“Absolutely not,” he tells the owner. “She’s not gonna be willing to do that.”

The owner stares at him silently for a moment, then sighs. “Alright. Sex is off the table. How about I counter offer with some kissing and light touching?”

Toji doesn’t like that either. He opens his mouth to say so, but the owner cuts him off. 

“Fushiguro, you’re one of the best trainers we have. You consistently provide excellent results. But there’s something off here. I’ve asked around, and it turns out you can’t get this doll to have sex with any of the other trainers. That’s a staple of your training! Now you’re bristling at the idea of the buyer sampling the goods. What’s going on?”

Toji suddenly feels defensive. “Nothing is going on. She’s kind of attached to me, that’s all. It happens occasionally, you know that.”

The owner taps her long fingernails on her desk. “So do something about it. Pump her full of your drug and send her in to meet with the buyer again. Give her so much she won’t care who he is. Don’t screw up and ruin your track record.”

Toji scratches the back of his head, thinking it over. “Okay, I’ll try it. But just kissing and light touching, right?”

The owner nods. “I’ll tell him tonight. If he agrees, we’ll move forward tomorrow.”

Later, when Toji tells his doll about this, she’s understandably upset. 

“I have to kiss him? And let him touch me?!”

“Just a little. Nothing under the clothes,” Toji says. 

She’s sitting on his bed, wearing pajamas - a tank top and thin cotton shorts. “But… I only want you to touch me,” she says in a small voice. It makes him want to pull her into his arms, but he doesn’t. 

“Look, we have to show that you’re willing to give buyers a shot. If not, it makes me look bad as a trainer. I won’t force you to do anything, but I will ask. As a friend, can you do this for me? Just give him a few minutes. Let him kiss you and cop a feel, then tell him that’s all you can handle right now. He’ll leave and that’ll be the end of it.”

She looks at him with wet, glassy eyes, her lips slightly quivering. “Okay,” she says. “But only if you’ll stay in the room with us.”

He sits down beside her and puts an arm around her shoulder. “Of course I will.”

The next evening, the meeting is set up. Toji gives her a dose of the “aphrodisiac”. He expected her to reject it, but she takes it without complaint, saying, “I could drink a gallon of this stuff and I still wouldn’t want him.”

Like always, her skin becomes flushed and her breathing becomes rapid. She stares at Toji with lusty eyes even as the buyer walks into the room. He gives Toji a surprised, unhappy look. 

“Are you supposed to be in here?”

Toji nods. “Standard procedure. You won’t even know I’m here.”

The doll is sitting on Toji’s bed, looking small and helpless as the buyer sits down next to her. Her eyes sweep over to Toji as the buyer’s hand moves to her face and pulls her into a kiss. It’s obvious that she’s not feeling it, and Toji thinks the buyer must be able to see that. But the buyer doesn’t seem to care, holding her face still while he sticks his tongue in her mouth, ignoring her whimpers. 

The sight of it repulses Toji on a primal level. He’s watched countless buyers kiss and even fuck the dolls he’s trained, and it’s never bothered him. Maybe because it’s never bothered the dolls. Maybe because this doll is different. 

The buyer suddenly begins groping at her breasts, his hands rough and clumsy. She draws back a few inches, but doesn’t push him away. Her eyes are on Toji, as if she’s asking if this is enough, if she can stop this now. 

For his part, Toji wanted to stop this from the moment the buyer walked in. Every spot the buyer touches on her skin, Toji wants to gently wash for her when they take a shower together later. He wants to erase this entire evening. 

After a few more minutes, Toji gives her a nod, and she quickly pushes the buyer back. “Sorry,” she says, “but that’s all I can handle right now. I’m still in training and-“

The buyer cuts her off, kissing her again, then suddenly pushes her onto her back in the bed, climbing onto her and sliding his hands under her shirt. 

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

You thrash and kick, trying to push the buyer off you, screaming out, “No! Stop it!”

Then, all at once, he’s gone. One second he’s on top of you, pawing at you, and the next he’s simply not there anymore. You look over to find Toji literally holding the buyer by his collar, his feet dangling inches from the floor. 

“This isn’t what we agreed to,” Toji says, his voice low. “And she said no.”

Toji drops the buyer, who lands in a heap on the floor. The man scurries away from Toji and then scrambles to his feet, his face red, looking incredulous. 

“Who cares what she says?!” the buyer yells. “She’s just a doll! I’ll own her in a week and then I can put the little bitch in her place! The only thing this stupid cunt will ever be good for is sucking cock, and we both know-“

Toji’s fist smashes into the man’s face, so fast you barely see him move. Blood sprays across the room, and when Toji draws back, you can see that the man is now missing several teeth, his lips bloody and busted. You’re instantly reminded of your would-be attacker in the convenience store. 

The man wobbles, but somehow keeps his balance. He holds a hand up to his shattered face and lets out a garbled scream. Then he looks up at Toji. 

“How dare you!” he screams, the words sounding funny through his broken mouth. You think to yourself that he should just shut up and leave, but apparently a lifetime of getting whatever you want makes you overly bold. “I’ll have you fired for this, you son of a bitch! You’re just a trainer! You’re a nobody!”

That’s when you jump out of the bed, rush over, and kick the barely standing man right between his thighs. “Compared to Toji, you’re nothing!” you scream. “And I wouldn’t fuck you if you were the last man on earth!”

Toji comes over to stand beside you as the man howls and crumples over. “Nice kick, babe!”

You smile proudly at him. “Thanks!”

The man is looking up at both of you with angry, watery eyes. “I’ll sue! I’ll have this place shut down!”

Toji bends down and yanks the buyer up by his shirt. “Yeah, yeah, whatever you say, you sniveling little fuck.” Toji opens the door and drags the younger man bodily into the hall. You follow behind, and the man loudly screams insults, becoming hysterical now. 

The other doors in the hall open as the rest of the trainers step out to see what the commotion is about. Even Sukuna is in the hallway now, watching the unfolding scene with a grin on his face. 

The buyer notices them all and screams, “What are you looking at?! This place is nothing but a whore house anyway! All the women here are filthy sluts!”

Toji pauses in the middle of the hall. Six pairs of eyes suddenly darken and narrow. The man falls silent at the sight. Toji’s voice is dangerously low as he says, “Now you’ve pissed off the last six guys on earth that you ever wanna make angry. You don’t insult dolls in this house.”

The other trainers begin walking menacingly down the hall toward Toji and the man, and they follow as Toji drags him into the parking lot. You decide to stay inside, but you can hear the man screaming for a long while after that. 

When Toji comes back inside, you’re waiting in his room for him. He sits down beside you on the bed and says, “Are you okay?”

You nod, leaning your head onto his shoulder. “I’m fine. I wasn’t scared. I knew you wouldn’t let things go too far.”

Toji looks down at his bloody knuckles. “I wanted to kill him,” he admits, “but I guess giving him a beating he’ll never forget is good enough.”

“Are you gonna get in trouble for that?” you ask, suddenly worried. 

“Nah, he tried to force himself on you. I just stopped a crime. He’ll be removed from the client list so he can never come back here. Not that he ever would after tonight.”

“Thank you, Toji. You saved me again,” you say, snuggling closer to him. 

He glances down at you, then after being quiet for a few moments, he says, “You said before that you wanted me to tell you about any happy memories I have.”

You look up at him. “Yeah.”

“Well I don’t have a lot of those, to be honest,” he tells you. “But the ones I do have… they all involve Yumi. Megumi’s mom. Do you still wanna hear about it?”

You nod vigorously. 

Toji takes a breath, then goes on. “I don’t have a good relationship with my family. I ran away from home when I was a teenager, grew up mostly on the streets, got into gambling, drinking, all that stuff. So I wasn’t the nicest person when I met her. But she burst into my life like a sunbeam. She was chatty and funny and always smiling. And I guess that cheery attitude rubbed off on me a little. We got married, she got pregnant, had Megumi, and at the time I thought, ‘So this is what it’s like to have a happy family’.”

He stops for a moment, smiling at the memory. Then the smile fades. “Yumi got the diagnosis when Megumi was three months old. An aggressive cancer. No chance of survival. They gave her six months. You know, right up until the end, it didn’t feel real. Somewhere in the back of my mind I believed she’d get better. They’d suddenly invent a new drug or she’d go into remission or… or something. I kept thinking we’d get a miracle. But we didn’t. She died five months later. Didn’t even get the full six months.”

Toji’s eyes are clouded with sorrow as he takes another pause, then continues. “I tried to hold it together for Megumi’s sake. I really did. But I just couldn’t. Losing Yumi… it was like losing a vital organ. How was I supposed to live after that? So I went back to all my old habits. Staying drunk off my ass, gambling all my money away, getting into bar fights… anything to keep myself from thinking about Yumi. Then one night I got arrested, and I lost custody of Megumi.”

He notices the sad look on your face and smiles. “It was probably for the best. I wasn’t much of a father to him. And my relatives took him in so he could avoid the foster care system. That was probably my lowest point, but it was a wake up call. I stopped gambling, stopped fighting, got a job… I wouldn’t say I’ve completely turned my life around, because I’m still not raising my own son, but I’m in a much better place than I was.”

“I’m happy for you. That was a lot to overcome,” you tell him, taking one of his hands in yours. 

He looks down at you with a warm expression, one you’ve never seen on his face before. “All this is to say, I have a lot of baggage. I’m pushing forty, I have an unruly kid who hates me, and a dead wife I’m never gonna stop loving. If you still think ten years with me is a prize, I’ll keep you.”

Your eyes widen and your lips fall open. “Does this mean… I won the bet?”

Toji looks a little embarrassed as he looks away from your face. “Ah, well, the truth is, these past few weeks, I’ve been feeling things I haven’t felt since Yumi was alive. And it kinda scared me. So I tried to ignore it, but tonight the truth slapped me in the face. The thought of some other man, any other man, touching you… it’s unbearable. Right now, my biggest fear is losing you.”

Eyes brimming with tears, you crawl into his lap, wrapping your arms around him. “I’m so happy, Toji! I love you!”

He kisses the top of your head, rubbing your back. “I love you too.” 

The words sound like music to you. They’re everything you’ve ever wanted. You rise up to face him, looking into his eyes. “So, am I yours now?”

“Not yet. You have to complete the training, then your contract will transfer to me.”

You kiss him on the lips. “I can’t wait.”

His hands rubbing your back begin to slide your shirt up. “You really in such a hurry to belong to me?”

You hold your arms up for him to pull your shirt over your head. “I’ve belonged to you for over two years now,” you say. “You just didn’t realize it.”

He grins, turning you sideways in his lap so he can slide your skirt and panties down your legs and off your ankles. Then you turn back to face him again, your legs straddling him. You’re completely naked in his lap, your wet pussy rubbing against the soft fabric of his pants as you lightly grind into him. “Toji, please,” you say, arching your back.

“What do you want?” he asks, a bit teasingly. 

“I want you inside me,” you breathe out. “Always.”

His hand moves down to the waistband of his pants, where he pulls the front down. His cock springs free, already hard. He lifts you up slightly so that you can get in position, then you sink down onto it, letting it fill you completely. You moan as you feel the tip hit your cervix. Fuck, if it wasn’t there, he could probably literally fuck your womb. 

You grip his shoulders as you slowly begin to move up and down, enjoying the way your body stretches to accommodate him. It’s like you were made for each other. You were already so wet for him, there’s a vulgar squelching sound coming from your groin. 

After a few minutes of slow and shallow motions to prepare yourself, you slide all the way down again and wait. Within seconds, his strong hands are gripping your waist, and he stands up, holding you onto him. Your legs automatically wrap around him, and soon he’s holding you in midair, fucking up into you while his mouth devours yours. 

He’s going so hard and so deep that you have tears in your eyes, your face scrunching up in pain. But it feels so good, so satisfying, to have the man you love touching the deepest parts of you. Your hands are in his hair, on his neck, your mouth open and accepting his tongue and saliva, your body jerking with his powerful thrusts. 

“I love you,” you murmur after breaking the kiss. “I love you so much, Toji!”

One of his arms circles around your back, pulling you even closer, while his other hand moves to the back of your head, fingers gently threading through your hair. The contrast between the soft, affectionate gesture and his cock roughly pounding between your thighs sends you over the edge. Your upper body collapses against his chest, your arms weakly clinging to his neck as you tremble through an orgasm. His hands are still gently holding you as he thrusts into you, finally shooting his seed into your core.  

Afterwards, he carries you to the bathroom where he helps you shower, then the two of you climb into bed. Lying beside him in the dark, you look at his vague outline and say, “You won’t get tired of me after the contract ends, will you?”

He laughs. “Are you kidding? You’ll be the one kicking my old wrinkly ass to the curb in ten years!”

You sit up suddenly. “Never! I don’t care how old you are!”

He laughs again and pulls you into his arms. “I gotta tell you something,” he says in a strangely quiet voice. “A couple years ago I bought a little house a few miles outside of town. It’s nothing too fancy, but it’s paid for with the money I’ve made as a trainer. I kept thinking I’d retire and move out there with Megumi, finally be a dad, you know? But it just never happened. Now though… I’m thinking a lot about that again.”

You feel tears stinging your eyes again, and you wipe them with the back of your hand, smiling. “That sounds like a dream!”

He leans over to kiss you, his lips hitting your nose in the darkness, and the two of you laugh. You can’t wait for the training to be finished, so your future can begin. 

Tag List:

@suguguro @kaedear @onyxsphynx @poopoobuttsy @butterskyy @collectionofdolls @akaotv @witchbybirth @bloofinntoona @wasurenagusaa @tclbts @tojirin @lucyrocks86 @badbyeyoongi @97britt @aydene @lzaj19 @lyn-lotte @missthatgirl @peachedtv @ladytamayolover @nanam1nx 

[miraculouslbcnreactions]

(I wish I could ask this in a video with GamingMagic13’s editing style, but I don’t have the energy for that.)

People say that, after Antibug, Chloé’s redeeming qualities started to show through throughout Seasons 2 and 3 because Thomas Astruc didn’t contribute to those episodes of those seasons as if he wasn’t on the writing team for every episode for those two seasons, including the ones showing Chloé’s redeeming qualities.

It’s not “Thomas left so the other writers started to make a redemption for Chloé, but then he came back and threw it all away”, it’s leaning more towards “Thomas, along with other writers, wanted to waste our time with Chloé pity parties for two seasons and trick people into feeling bad for her, which worked on plenty of reactors, and then yank the rug out from under them just for the sake of pulling a rug out from viewers” whether it’s the truth or not.

Also, do you get the feeling that, if people weren’t harassing Thomas and his family over Chloé’s “abandoned redemption”, Chloé wouldn’t have been made into evil incarnate to spite people?

Considering that the hiatus between Seasons 3 and 4 started towards the end of 2019, had to continue throughout 2020 due to the COVID pandemic with only the New York special to keep us busy in September 2020, and then finally ended shortly after 2021 started, that would have been plenty of time to rework scripts, because we know he was also on the writing team for every episode of Seasons 4 and 5 alongside 2 and 3, to made Chloé more and more unlikeable while propping up the male adults to spite Chloé fans, like several episodes of Teen Titans GO! and even this show are guilty of.

Whether all of this is true or not, I think it all lines up too well for too many other outcomes.

The "Thomas Astruc was able to completely rewrite the plans for this character and no one stopped him" take has always been a little wild to me especially since Chloe never showed meaningful improvement in canon. In fact, now that we've seen her story play out in all it's disappointing and time-wasting glory, you can even argue that Despair Bear was straight up telling you what we were in for since it's the same plot, just on a smaller scale.

As far as I know, there is no evidence for this "Chloe was rewritten" conspiracy. At the very least, no one has sent any my way on the multiple occasions when I've asked for it. Astruc is a credited writer for pretty much every episode involved in the Queen Bee arc and, while head writers have a good deal of power, they often don't have supreme power over their shows. This is especially true when it comes to kids shows since those have a lot of restrictions on what they can do. While I cannot speak French, I've been told that this class involves one of the writers talking about the multiple darker version of Chat Blanc that were rejected, leading to Chat Blanc being a season three episode instead of a season two episode like they originally planned.

These shows are products that are being sold to buyers who do have the power to reject the product and the writers work for a company. In most cases, they can be stopped!

There's also the fact that this is Astruc's career that we're talking about. You're arguing that he purposely messed with his reputation and screwed up the writing in the show that he's most well-known for in order to get back at online randos instead of just blocking them and moving on with his life. That's an insanely hard sell for me. Unintentional bad writing is a much easier explanation especially since he has nothing to gain from people disliking the Chloé stuff. This wasn't situation where Astruc needed to tank the show to get out of writing it. If Astruc left the project, then Miraculous would go on without him. While he came up with the initial idea, Zag owns the property.

Unless someone has hard evidence that Chloé was changed to spite fans, I am never going to buy into this conspiracy theory. Her bad writing is too in line with the show's other issues. Remember, this is the show that gave us Derision, everything about Lila, and Gabriel getting an 'ascends into the light with a smile' ending while his son sat the fight out and remains in the dark. Is Chloé really meaningfully worse than any of that?

I'd say no and, if you agree, then why do you think that she's so special? I've previously called her a canary in the coal mine and that's going to be my read until someone gives me evidence of something else. She was your warning sign that the writing was never going to be very good. I don't think she foretold just how bad it would get - that's why I kept watching - but her story showed that these writers were only good at short-form content and sucked at long-form content. In fact, Chloé's story is arguably better than a lot of the long-form stuff that the show gave us in season four and five. At least Chloé's story logically flowed together even if it was massively disapointing!

I also don't consider Chloé's season four and five writing downgrade to be all that telling because, once again, it's not unique to her. The class gets a similar downgrade in quality, going from "we'll help Marinette with her confession plans when she asks, but this isn't a major thing to us" to "we live for Adrienette and will make our own plans for Marinette to confess and force them on her/try to force Adrienette to kiss." It makes the entire class feels more shallow than ever.

Gabriel also gets a downgrade with his writing going more over-the-top than ever. We have things like him locking Adrien in a cell and using Adrien's amoks for no obvious reason even though Gabriel is supposed to get an ending where he dies totally at peace and ascends into the light. Totally nonsense choices just like the choice to make Marinette's inability to speak to Adrien because she's anxious into a full-out trauma response.

These are just a few of the many, many, many writing downgrades.

If you truly believe the Chloé conspiracy, then I'd strongly encourage you to watch at least the first of the videos I'm about to link and see if you notice similarities. I have all of them set to the specific, relevant timestamps in case you don't want to watch a massive video to see what I'm talking about because they all talk about more than the conspiracies that arose in these fandoms when the writing got "bad" (especially the last one. The conspiracy gets a very brief mention. I really only included it because I wanted three examples and just went with ones big enough that someone else had done research on the topic because it's not an area of fandom that I've ever waded into).

I'm linking these videos because I wanted to give you more than me just saying "this kind of thing happens all the time when media gets bad." Watching just a few minutes of each of these should give you the context you need assuming the timestamps work:

As you can hopefully see, the Chloé stuff is nothing new. So many pieces of media do something disappointing and then fans create conspiracies for why it happened, refusing to accept what is most likely to be the unfortunate truth: the writers thought they told a good story or, at the very least, they did the best they could within the confines they were working with be those confines monetary, temporal, and/or the limits of their own skills. That doesn't make the bad writing okay, you're fully valid in being upset, but there's also no need to create a conspiracy theory around it. It's probably not that deep. This shit happens all the time, especially in larger fandoms.

This is why I often give the advice of, "don't trust your mental health to stories that you have no control over." Is not that fandom isn't fun, I've just seen this shit before and I always feel bad for those who get involved with it. I've luckily never gone down the conspiracy rabbit hole, but I have gotten really upset when other fans continued to like a show that was bad, actually, and got a good deal of catharsis when most of the fandom woke up after the final was terrible. That still wasn't a good experience for me, though. It was not a healthy mindset to be waiting with baited breath for total strangers to agree with me that this random show was bad. I'm much better of bashing it with those who agree that it's bad, moving on when I'm no longer having fun, and letting those who like it be wrong (that is both a joke and real advice. Don't waste your time trying to change people's minds on something as insignificant as Miraculous. Just let them be wrong.)

[beyondthesefourwalls]

To Make a House a Home

Summary: House hunting in California was proving to be a challenge. Leave it to Bradley to manage to pull off the biggest surprise you’ve ever gotten.

Pairing: Bradley Bradshaw x Reader (no use of y/n, can be read as unnamed OC) 

Word Count: 1.6K 

Warnings: smut, fluff, language 

Notes: This was written off the blurb request I got during my TGM Blurb Party by @cherrycola27​. She requested Bradley. Smut/Fluff. House. “You can’t trick me into confessing my secrets” and it ran away from me, so she gets a one shot instead. Hope you like it and that it worth the wait, girlfriend!

------

“I don’t think I can handle an open house today, baby. Can we just go back to the apartment instead?” 

The dejection in your voice was clear. You had been on the market for a house for months now that you had relocated to San Diego from Virginia. But the market was nearly impossible right now, and you were dealt rejection after rejection for every single offer you put in. You were renting an apartment on a month to month basis with the majority of your things packed away in a storage unit, and both of you were so eager to get out of the third floor walk up and into a place you could make a home. 

Bradley squeezed your hand before bringing it to his lips as he took an exit off the freeway. It was sunny but not too hot today, and the wind from the open windows made the strands of your hair flutter around your face. “Just one, okay? I have a good feeling about this."

“Just one?” you asked, hesitation and reluctance in your voice. But you would humor him, he knew, because he never asked for much. 

“Just one,” he confirmed. 

You sighed, and Bradley knew you really didn’t want to, but you agreed with him nonetheless. You weren’t happy now, but his own excitement started vibrating under his skin, because he knew you would be. He couldn’t wait to see the look on your face. 

It was only another few minutes before he pulled into a neighborhood. He saw how you sat up a little straighter in your seat and how your brows pulled together out of the corner of his eye; you started to recognize your surroundings, taking them in. You didn’t say anything right away, but Bradley could practically feel the wheels in your head turning. You waited until he pulled into the driveway of a very familiar house before turning to him.

“What are we doing here?” 

The here in question was a house that could only be described as your dream home. It had almost everything your Pinterest Home Goals board could ever imagine, and maybe even a little bit extra, and you had fallen in love with it the moment you saw it during your house hunting more than a month ago. Your eyes had lit up in a way that Bradley had never seen before, only to be stamped out when the offer you had put in before you had even left the driveway was rejected the very next day. It had been hard, but you had simply smiled at him and said you would find another dream home, and that as long as you were with him, it didn’t matter. He knew you were being truthful, but he also knew that every home you looked at afterward simply didn’t compare. When he got the phone call from the realtor last week that it was back on the market after the original buyers had fallen through, he knew he had to move fast. With a little more cash down and a pre-approved loan for the rest, he had managed to sign all the paperwork and get the keys with you being none the wiser. 

Bradley turned the Bronco off and got out. You were still giving him that same confused, skeptical look when he rounded the vehicle to open your door for you like he always did. He couldn’t help but lean forward and place a kiss on the top of your scrunched up nose. 

“Come on,” he said, helping you down and closing the door once you were safely on the ground. “We should go inside.” 

“Bradley, there’s no one else here. And isn’t this house already sold?” 

You sound dumbfounded, and more than a little confused. You climbed the few steps to the closed front door, and Bradley couldn’t keep it to himself any longer. A smile took over his entire face and he dug around in his front pocket until he held his hand out. A shiny, silver key laid in his palm. 

“I..I don’t…what’s happening?” 

Instead of answering, he took the key and inserted it into the lock. The door swung open easily and he gestured for you to go in. You did so slowly, not taking your eyes off of him until you crossed the threshold. You gasped when you looked around. The large open concept living room and kitchen were bare, not a single rug or piece of furniture to be found as of yet. But on one of the walls right there in front of you, your favorite photo of the two of you hung, snug in its frame that had been sitting in your storage unit up until he had retrieved it earlier this morning. You stared at it in shock for a long moment. Bradley closed the front door and wrapped his arms around you from behind, pressing a kiss to the top of your head. You turned to look at him, that same look of disbelief on your face, but your eyes were bright with love and awe.

“This is ours?” you asked quietly, like you were too scared of the answer. He nodded. “You bought this?” 

“We bought this,” he corrected, “but yes. We did.”  

You didn’t say anything, just stared at him for a long moment before squealing and launching yourself into his arms. The unexpected force of your body made him lose his footing and sent the both of you to the ground. He braced your fall with his body, but even then, he was laughing. 

“Bradley! This is our house!” 

“It is,” he agreed, looking up at you with the biggest smile on his face. You squealed again before leaning down to kiss him and he returned it eagerly. His hands settled on your butt, squeezing softly through the denim. 

“How did you pull this off without me knowing? You aren’t sneaky!” 

“I’m plenty sneaky when it means surprising the love of my life, thank you very much,” he remarked. You rolled your eyes but kissed him again nonetheless. 

“Our house,” you mumbled against his lips. He hummed in response, nodding. His cock twitched in his jeans. You always had a powerful effect on him, but combined with the way your body pressed against his, wiggling in excitement, and knowing that the happiness radiating off of you practically in waves was because of him, he was almost fully hard in a matter of moments. You could feel it, too. He knew by the way you ground down into him and tugged at his hair. You pulled away after a moment, rolling off of him and climbing to your feet.

He was about to push himself up as well but stopped when you tugged your shirt over your head. His jaw dropped as the material fluttered to the floor beside where he lay. You kicked off your shoes and worked on getting your jeans and panties off next. You returned to him as soon as you were left only in your bra, and you immediately set to work on undoing his belt and pulling his zipper down. 

“Don’t you want to look around?” he asked, even as he was finally getting with the program and raising his body just enough to quickly discard his own shirt. 

“No, I want to fuck you in our house. Right now. And I want you to tell me how you managed to do all of this.” 

He groaned in pleasure when you freed his cock from the confines of his boxers. “You can’t trick me into confessing my secrets. Oh, fuck, baby, god damn.” 

You had taken his length into your mouth with no preamble, sucking and licking him in the sloppy way that you knew he loved. The back of his head hit the hardwood floors as you hollow your cheeks. He cursed your name when you hummed around him. He threaded his fingers loosely through your hair. “Oh my god, you’re so good to me.” 

You didn’t work him with your mouth for too long, pulling off of him after only a minute or two, but he couldn’t bring himself to complain about it when you were climbing up his body and lining him up with your glistening wet pussy. You sank down slowly, and your matching groans echoed off the walls of the empty house. 

“You’ll tell me eventually,” you breathed, clenching around him as he bottomed out. You ran your hands over his chest, your nails scraping against his nipples as you went. His hips jerked up into you at the sensation and he knew you were right; despite what he said, your tricks always worked on him. 

He rolled the two of you so you were on your back below him. He thrusted in and out of you with long, hard strokes, you begging him for more the entire time in that desperate way you always did when his cock was buried inside of you. He wouldn’t be surprised if neither of you lasted long, but that was okay, because you had an entire house to christen.

“Welcome home, baby,” he grunted, slamming his hips into yours and reveling in the sounds you were making for him, echoing around him like music, “welcome home.” 

-----

Masterlist

Notes: In my head I was picturing the couple from the first TGM one shot I ever wrote, A Change to Everything. You don't have to read that to follow along with this, obviously, but check it out if you haven’t! 

Tag List (please let me know if you’d like to be removed or added!) :  @roosterforme - @mak-32 - @hoyaharper - @wildxwidow - @gretagerwigsmuse - @bradshawburner - @iamaslytherin0 - @lilyevanswhore - @too-fangirl-to-fuction - @fav-fanficssss - @benhardysdrumstick - @fandomxpreferences - @acatwriteshere - @1234-angelika - @double-j - @cocoskween - @sunflowersteves - @teacupsandtopgun - @littlezee80 - @sometimesanalice - @je-suis-prest-rachel - @khaylin27 - @infamous-reindeer - @hotch-meeeeeuppppp - @sarahjoestewy-blog - @sunnysidesidra - @notroosterbradshaw - @yanna-banana - @inthestars-underthesun -@avengersfan25 - @wkndwlff - @zbeez-outlet - @lt-spork - @indynerdgirl - @loveforaugust - @mssleepy876b

@kassieesworld - @luckylexie - @lovemesomevesey - @mizzzpink - @books-for-summer - @a-serene-place-to-be - @deviltsunoda - @tv-fanatic18 - @memoriesat30 - @melody-death - @imnotcreativeenoughforthisblog - @dabisblackprincess - @pansexualwitchwhoneedstherapy - @realdirectionx - @waywardhunter95 - @myownworstenemyyy - @sexualparkour - @sadpetalsstuff - @almostgenerallyalways -@alilstressyandlotdepressy - @14readwritedraw96 - @ccbb2222 - @taytaylala12 - @alittlechaotics-blog - @starkleila

@shelbycillian - @mavrellover91 - @vici111 - @merishfit - @plaper1 - @lunamooncole - @pariahsparadise - @bunny-nonnie - @blackwidownat2814 - @huang-the-geek - @jpgliv - @bluelicious - @loveyhoneydovey - @pisupsala - @nuvoleincielo - @olivezeppelin - @jynxmirage - @shanimallina87 - @ouralcohol - @lumpypoll - @discowitchyy - @bellaireland1981- @princessmiaelicia - @eighthwvnder - @floydflys - @smile-child-13 - @rashelruby10 - @csoutsider - @cowboybarbie - @haydensith - @itsizzythebell - @phantomxoxo - @myhealthymarvelobsession - @winterrebel04

[coulsonlives]

"Trump, as most of us know, is the credited author of “The Art of the Deal,” a book that was actually ghost written by a man named Tony Schwartz, who was given access to Trump and wrote based upon his observations. If you’ve read The Art of the Deal, or if you’ve followed Trump lately, you’ll know, even if you didn’t know the label, that he sees all dealmaking as what we call “distributive bargaining.”

Distributive bargaining always has a winner and a loser. It happens when there is a fixed quantity of something and two sides are fighting over how it gets distributed. Think of it as a pie and you’re fighting over who gets how many pieces. In Trump’s world, the bargaining was for a building, or for construction work, or subcontractors. He perceives a successful bargain as one in which there is a winner and a loser, so if he pays less than the seller wants, he wins. The more he saves the more he wins.

The other type of bargaining is called integrative bargaining. In integrative bargaining the two sides don’t have a complete conflict of interest, and it is possible to reach mutually beneficial agreements. Think of it, not a single pie to be divided by two hungry people, but as a baker and a caterer negotiating over how many pies will be baked at what prices, and the nature of their ongoing relationship after this one gig is over.

The problem with Trump is that he sees only distributive bargaining in an international world that requires integrative bargaining. He can raise tariffs, but so can other countries. He can’t demand they not respond. There is no defined end to the negotiation and there is no simple winner and loser. There are always more pies to be baked. Further, negotiations aren’t binary. China’s choices aren’t (a) buy soybeans from US farmers, or (b) don’t buy soybeans. They can also (c) buy soybeans from Russia, or Argentina, or Brazil, or Canada, etc. That completely strips the distributive bargainer of his power to win or lose, to control the negotiation.

One of the risks of distributive bargaining is bad will. In a one-time distributive bargain, e.g. negotiating with the cabinet maker in your casino about whether you’re going to pay his whole bill or demand a discount, you don’t have to worry about your ongoing credibility or the next deal. If you do that to the cabinet maker, you can bet he won’t agree to do the cabinets in your next casino, and you’re going to have to find another cabinet maker.

There isn’t another Canada.

So when you approach international negotiation, in a world as complex as ours, with integrated economies and multiple buyers and sellers, you simply must approach them through integrative bargaining. If you attempt distributive bargaining, success is impossible. And we see that already.

Trump has raised tariffs on China. China responded, in addition to raising tariffs on US goods, by dropping all its soybean orders from the US and buying them from Russia. The effect is not only to cause tremendous harm to US farmers, but also to increase Russian revenue, making Russia less susceptible to sanctions and boycotts, increasing its economic and political power in the world, and reducing ours. Trump saw steel and aluminum and thought it would be an easy win, BECAUSE HE SAW ONLY STEEL AND ALUMINUM - HE SEES EVERY NEGOTIATION AS DISTRIBUTIVE. China saw it as integrative, and integrated Russia and its soybean purchase orders into a far more complex negotiation ecosystem.

Trump has the same weakness politically. For every winner there must be a loser. And that’s just not how politics works, not over the long run.

For people who study negotiations, this is incredibly basic stuff, negotiations 101, definitions you learn before you even start talking about styles and tactics. And here’s another huge problem for us.

Trump is utterly convinced that his experience in a closely held real estate company has prepared him to run a nation, and therefore he rejects the advice of people who spent entire careers studying the nuances of international negotiations and diplomacy. But the leaders on the other side of the table have not eschewed expertise, they have embraced it. And that means they look at Trump and, given his very limited tool chest and his blindly distributive understanding of negotiation, they know exactly what he is going to do and exactly how to respond to it.

From a professional negotiation point of view, Trump isn’t even bringing checkers to a chess match. He’s bringing a quarter that he insists of flipping for heads or tails, while everybody else is studying the chess board to decide whether its better to open with Najdorf or Grünfeld."

— David Honig

[readychilledwine]

Blooms and Blossoms

Summary - The building was perfect, bones ready for a new owner and beginning. Now Elain just had to convince Rhysand to let her have it.

Warnings - None, unless you want to count female independency

A/N - Happy @elainarcheronweek day 6! I think Elain is all of us flower girls who secretly wish we could be running a floral shop *dreamy sigh*. I just know her shop would be gorgeous.

🌸Elain Week Masterlist🌸Master Masterlist🌸

Velaris was never a sleepy town. Elain had realized that very quickly into her newest adventure as she had begun to call being made fae. The streets were always full of light and life. Footsteps and music following every twist and turn on the streets.

She noticed flowers everywhere. Every shop window, planters paid for by Feyre and Rhysand, large gardens, but there were no floral shops. No places for males and females to treat themselves to the beauty only petals could bring. She had been hunting for days to change that, and as she dragged a very confused Rhysand with her, she had a solution.

Elain stopped in front of an empty shop. No sign to detail what had once been, dust gathering on the windows, “Here.” The shop was located in the Rainbow. Near Feyre, yet far enough away the sisters would not be close enough to annoy each other.

“Here what?”

She rolled her eyes at her brother in law before dragging him inside the building. “Look at how perfect the bones of this place are.” Walls that needed fresh paint, floors in need of a good clean and stain. Counters he'd want to replace as soon as he saw her vision. “I want the till here,” she motioned to the empty counter space where she envisioned something ornate and gold to hold coins. “Coolings here?”

Rhysand was slowly catching on, a soft smile playing on his lips. “More windows,” he turned her to the main wall facing the street, for your floral displays and season decor. You will be required to change it for Starfall and Solstice.”

Elain nodded excitedly, “Maybe a new door? With a bell? You know that is one of my favorite sounds.”

“I'm picturing light blush walls,” he began. “To bring out the color in the petals. Neutral countertops, perhaps a white marble?” He began to walk around the large building. “Darker Stained floors.”

“Darker. Definitely a deep rich color,” she agreed before moving with him. It was working. Her goal was slowly coming into fruition. “Blooms and Blossoms,” she said the cheesy name, biting her inner lip and waiting for him to reject it.

Rhysand only glanced back at her, “Very catchy. Nothing around here or in the shopping quarters has a similar name, My dear.” He watched her lip trembled, watching as the happiest of tears began to pool. “An interesting fact. Feyre and I own this building. The former owner could not find a buyer before her marriage to a Day Court noble came. Feyre bought it from her out of kindness.” He motioned for her to follow, knowing she probably had not seen the back.

Her hand found his as they walked through the dark, trusting her brother to get her to whatever he was showing her safely. He opened the door to the back of the shop.

A greenhouse. The shop already had a beautiful greenhouse, archway massive and ready in place. “The artist who owned this building specialized in making paints and art supplies from flowers, berries, and foliage. She grew it all to capitalize on profit.”

Elain walked around the huge greenhouse, now bare bones, but ready and aching to grow life again. “Rhys, please.”

He nodded before motioning for her to come back to him. “It is yours. Work will begin tomorrow.”

Board by board, day in and day out, Elain watched as her dreams were built. Seeds and bulbs planted, suppliers contacted. Each moment was reality growing near. Dusty aged wood was made new again, a deep mahogany stain freshly laid with a satin finish. Walls primed and changed to a soft blush pink. The old worn countertops were removed and replaced with a white and gray marble. A gold register with flowers and fauna carved into it is placed. Every change had Elain in Rhysand's office, the most alive he had ever seen her.

She was electric like this. Her joy became contagious as the Inner Circle learned of her shop, and as opening day approached rumors were spreading through Velaris.

Elain had started spending more and more time at the shop, preparing bouquets of roses, wild flowers mixes, daisies, whatever she could in pretty glass and clay vases. She hummed to herself as she worked on her current project, 24 long stem red roses mixed with fresh baby's breath and soft feather-like foliage. She had not noticed Rhysand enter from the back shop door. She had not noticed his smile as he watched her. She only noticed when he came to the register, placing gold in the till before kissing her cheek.

“I'd like that one,” he hugged her. “It exactly what I was wanting.”

“Take your money back, you aren’t-”

He shook his head, picking a clear glass vase with an iridescent glazing, “I am your first customer, little sister.”

Those words made her heart ache, from joy, from gratitude, from the love pouring from her very chest. “Rhysand-”

“I am so proud of you,” he stopped her sentence, knowing she was going to argue. “So very proud. You've come to life, Elain.” He pulled her to him, placing a soft kiss on her forehead. “Have you gotten to see the sign we had done?”

She shook her head, letting him pull her to the beautiful new stained glass door and wall of curtained off windows before pulling her outside.

“Blooms and Blossoms” was painted in a soft scroll on the largest window. It would be surrounded by her hanging pots and the flowers she had potted that could withstand the brightness of the window. Feyre had planned and centered it perfectly. Each season, it would shine, obvious to all who passed that this was the floral shop she hoped people would come to be regulars at.

“I saw all the beautiful exotics and staple plants you enchanted and are growing,” Rhysand wrapped an arm around Elain's shoulder. “Your suppliers are also doing wonderfully so far. The trade it's created has helped with a few other niche things we have here.” Rhysand's voice was soft as the two of them stared at the shop window.

“Thank you,” she finally gave him her gratitude after moments of just taking this in. “For funding this, for believing in me and my dreams.”

“That's what Velaris is for,” he whispered into her hair, “Dreamers.”

The next day was loud. It was crazy. Elain had not sat since the opening day party began. She had been blind to Rhysand and Feyre's influence before, but the fae of Velaris rushed to the shop she owned, purchasing single stems, mixed bundles, and house plants. Her smile stayed wide and ready all day, constantly holding in tears of joy as she did.

She was a business owner.

Her passion now a livelihood.

Cassian locked the door as the shopping day came to a close, and the last customer left. Elain slowly closed the curtains as her sisters and the Inner Circle stood in the flower shop. “That was insane,” Mor huffed as she fell to one of the client chairs Elain would use for custom orders. “How much did she make, Rhysie?”

The High Lord was deep into counting for Elain, shaking his head with a smirk, “More than enough to buy us all a round or two at Rita's.”

Elain squealed before bouncing slightly, “I have money to pay?!”

Everyone stared towards her before Feyre spoke, “You won't be paying, but yes?”

Elain screamed with joy, the fulfillment of having her own income almost too much for her. “I have my own money!”

They all glanced at each other as the middle sister began to skip and clean, singing softly to herself about being independent and having money.

“It seems this was about more than flowers,” Azriel muttered to Nesta.

The eldest sister just smiled at him, “It was about passion,” she said slowly. “And about gaining independence through doing something by her own choice.”

Azriel hummed, “Then it would seem she should be allowed to make whatever choices make her happy if this is the result.”

Nesta nodded in agreement as Elain skipped to Lucien, showing him the till, “It would seem she should.”

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[unluckycactus]

Preview:

“Manager Kim, if you open your own business, put up a big ad in the Incheon City Hall station! I will come running like a dog!”

“Don’t sell your soul too cheap.”

It was true that Manager Kim was rude and didn’t entertain socializing for too long, coming off as hard to approach, but most of the employees liked him regardless.

‘I want to speak to the manager!’

‘I’m the manager, you illiterate asshat; it’s written right here on this pin. Oh, my bad! I forgot that there are some entitled tourists who don’t bother to learn the language of the country they are traveling to.’

He didn’t believe in that ‘the customers are always right’ bullshit and would stand up for his coworkers, even for those he didn’t particularly like.

‘You look like shit. Go home, no one wants your germs all over the food.’

‘But–’

‘You’re on sick leave until you’re no longer a walking sack of diseases. Now get out.’

He was harsh but always fair.

‘Hey, why are you lingering here after hours? If you’re not going to buy anything, scram!’

He let them leave on time, and overtime was always paid without delay.

Almost no one had quit their job ever since Manager Kim was promoted. And, honestly, who could blame them? Where on earth would they find a superior so considerate?

“Manager Kim, I will sell my soul for a corn chip if you’re the buyer! No, forget buying! I will give it to you for free!”

“Gross.” A short but critical comment came back as feedback.

“... my sincerity was rejected.”

“Words are meaningless. If you want to show sincerity, make a bank transfer.”