#could not be copied because not enough free space is available

[needtricks-blog]

Problem Solving: “iPhone Cannot Be Synced Not Enough Space”

Problem-Solving: “iPhone Cannot Be Synced Not Enough Space”. The error message “iPhone cannot be synced because there is not enough free space” can be quite frustrating, especially when you know there’s enough space on your device. This blog post will guide you through some potential solutions to this problem. Continue reading Untitled

[wardensantoineandevka]

sorry to bother you but i wanted to ask how you're enjoying using Obsidian? I've been eyeing it for a while but would love to know your thoughts, highlights, lowlights, etc :) if you don't mind sharing, ofc!

No worries! The short version is that I've been enjoying Obsidian quite a lot, and I find that it serves all of my needs nicely without any fuss. Using it is rather frictionless, I think, and getting used to it was pretty easy though it did take some willingness to very much learn to navigate its menus and features and how it lays everything out. It's not at all difficult, but I do think you have to sit with it for a bit. It's currently my main writing program with the exception of screenplays, for which I use Highland 2.

For context on myself, my writing needs are rather straightforward. I use these sorts of apps and programs to write and organize my fanfic, original prose writing, professional correspondence, and journalistic article drafts. I previously used Notion, which I left because of the big NotionAI push. Before Notion, I used Bear, though I can't remember why I stopped using it; I haven't checked out Bear 2, so I don't know if it suits my needs.

When I was shopping around for a new program to use, the following points were important to me, in no particular order:

no native / built-in generative AI assistants

interface is simple and clean or had customization or community themes that would make it so

offline access

mobile app with document sync

ability to organize and group notes through a folder, tag, or similar system

not too many Things going on with it or I could very easily ignore stuff I didn't use without them cluttering up the UI or my space

Obsidian organizes files within "vaults", of which you can have multiple, each of which are connected to folders that are stored locally on my laptop (or my phone). I love this. I have local versions of all of my notes. I can literally find all my stuff as markdown files within a folder on my desktop and open them up in another program with EASE. If you are someone who doesn't have a lot of storage space, this might be an issue, but for me, this is a very bright highlight.

The biggest lowlight for me is that mobile sync is reliant on a subscription fee, but considering that the rest of the program is free and the fee is small, I found this ultimately a very small concern. I very critically need mobile sync because I spend a significant amount of time writing from my phone. The mobile sync is incredibly good; it keeps all documents synchronized very well, and I have yet to run into version conflicts that cause me to accidentally overwrite and lose significant progress. I don't even have to close files on my laptop first; they'll just update in real-time on my screen like Google Docs. Sometimes I'll name documents something that my phone's file path system cannot handle; Obsidian warns me that it cannot fetch and sync these files with illegal names, and I like that it keeps me informed about that.

It has both a folder system and a tag system, which allows you to organize your files. I only use the folder system because my needs are simple, but the tag system is also solid. It also has a robust search system. It also has a bookmarking system to further organize your stuff. I don't have enough files to use that, but it is available, and I think that's neat.

More precise customization can be difficult if you're not used to writing CSS. I am familiar with CSS, so I found this a small hurdle, but this will be a bigger issue for others. That said, this does mean that Obsidian is DEEPLY customizable, and there is a large gallery of community themes that offer a lot of styles that serve a wide variety of needs. There is also a deep bench of community plugins to help get Obsidian to do what you want — I have plugins that make the word count in the status bar show the count of highlighted text and allow me to copy text as HTML instead of formatted text or markdown. There is also an active Obsidian community and forum, so you will not be necessarily troubleshooting customization alone.

Other small things that occur to me to mention right now: It supports opening files in multiple windows, and it has a tab system, which is really neat. The ability to open multiple files at a time is very good. You can also open files side-by-side for easy comparison, which is useful for more technical work. I don't use Obsidian for coding or wiki work, but I can imagine this being really useful for that. It has a reading mode. Offers a version history with a "show changes" mode and restoration capability. File merge capability. You can open images into it and organize them like any other file.

All in all, I'm very happy with it, and it serves all of my personal needs very well. I generally give it a blanket recommendation, again noting that I think it does take sitting with to get used to some of its features and UI and customizing it to your needs and preferences, but I don't think that's super difficult with some patience and time.

[copperbadge]

I am going to read your Shivad series. My original plan was to download the PDFs and then drop some money in your kofi, but I see I can also just buy e-pub version. Does one of these benefit you more financially than the other?

I hope it's okay to post this publicly, I've gotten the question a few times but never in a space where I could make it public easily. Thank you for thinking of me and asking!

So, in terms of purchasing any of my books, buying an ebook direct from Lulu.com directs the most money to me -- I get more of a cut than from the paperbacks purchased at Lulu, and if you purchase anywhere other than Lulu I get a smaller revenue regardless. You can find links to all the Shivadh paperback and ebooks currently available here (the omnibus is linked at the top, the rest are linked under their summaries).

If you download the free PDF of any of my books and would like to send me money directly, anything above about $5 will be more than I would make from an individual sale (excepting the omnibus in hardback, which I get an unusually large cut from, but it's also kind of a lot to pay for a book, even a book that big).

But also like -- I earn a good wage and have a secure life, and I don't want to be a full-time working writer, so don't worry too much about me. The money from these books is currently funding the purchase of a really nice pair of boots, and some of my lodgings while in Europe this April. This isn't my rent and food money. Get whatever is in the easiest format for you to read, and if you get the PDF, it's okay that it's free. I encourage people to support writers and pay them fairly for their work, but offering my books for free allows people to pay other writers who earn their living at it.

What is much more valuable to me, and I think honestly to other writers as well, is word of mouth -- if you read the book and enjoyed it, make a post about it or lend it to a friend. Buy a copy to give as a gift, or ask your local library if you can donate a copy for their catalogue (always check first, as library policies around donation vary). Even if you have critical things to say, I've read negative reviews that have led me to buy books before because they sound like they're up my street, and as an author I have a thick enough skin that I can take it :D Feel free to reblog any sales posts I make, or to share the free PDFs around.

[sleepysadden]

My gripes with AI and its acceptance

People on the internet participating in spaces centred around creative work of any kind (both technical and more free-form) are often wary of infringing on creative rights of others. These people are an important factor in enforcing proper treatment of original authors by pointing out cropped references to the author, blurred watermarks, providing sources and meticulously analysing code they suspect to be stolen.

It's always satisfying to see a person trying to pass someone's work as their one be called out for it and made to stop through pure societal pressure directed towards something deemed unjust. Unfortunately these techniques are applicable only on singular individuals or small groups. Any bigger entity tends to lack a 'face' towards which any attempts can be directed. This is why its often much harder to enforce rights of smaller creatives whose work is being stolen by bigger entities. It requires an official process often going through channels of the entity in question (dubious effectiveness) or through the legal system (expensive, tasking, and long). And that is if the copyright infringement could be shown, which used to be somewhat easy. AI changed that.

Casey Rickey demonstrated on his YouTube channel how one could go about replicating a specific style using his own and Salvador Dali's work as an example. The results were in my opinion not exactly successful but close enough to be concerning. Currently available AI models are cheap for what they can produce and while their results are sub-par and often recognisable as AI (which is also changing rapidly) they are free or close to free which is much less than an artist would charge for a commission. This is likely enough to undermine real artists through: 1 - their works likely being already included in current models, 2 - ability to copy their exact style to a text or image prompt. Both of those currently seem to be legally untouchable as in both cases unlawful (and unethical) use of source material is near impossible to prove outside of catching the culprit in-act, as mentions of similar style could be dismissed as subjective and not exactly proving anything (which is fair, but doesn't help the victim).

Is AI generated content derivative?

We could assume AI generated content to be a more advanced way of taking inspiration in someone's work and trying to replicate things that we deem worth replicating in it, an admiration-through-imitation kind of approach. Though I would argue that intent here is important. Is the intent really to appreciate someone's work or is it to gain a close-enough copy of the work? In my case I consider it more as a form of advanced tracing, which doesn't gel well with being derivative.

Being more on the conceptual side - AI, in it's current, non-consensual form is theft. But what is it stealing? It's not exactly the works themselves, it's more (at the risk of being too abstract) about the work that was put in. AI is not a way to steal the effect of someone's work, but rather to steal days of training and personal input that made the work the way it is. It's offering to apply someone's expertise to an idea of a stranger at no cost to them and with potential loss of income by the original artist. It's a commission, but the artist is absent.

The above was written without aid of generative AI's. I might have more to say about this later, but it's enough for now.

Edit: I forgot about my actual point. My conclusion is that because AI generated content in its current form is inseparably involved in copyright infringement of people whose works cannot be extracted from the model nor can they be properly compensated for damages (as it is almost impossible to say for certain whether their rights are infringed upon or not) - all authors of generative AI's that cannot provide a complete list of sources for its training data along with proof of rights to using them cannot offer their AI as a service, cannot accept payment for using them, should not have created them and may not create any without providing such sources.

[doubleddenden]

Okay so I'm thinking about how the Pokémon Day Presents is 20 minutes. I'm usually pessimistic about these because last time it was mobile game garbage with like a minute of okay stuff.

But here's what's guaranteed:

Scarlet and Violet DLC teaser or equivalent. Everyone that's played knows why so there's no point going further

What's most likely coming:

RBY, MAYBE Green for US I doubt it; GSC, and at the least RSE for NSO. I'd say FRLG too but they may opt to ignore it since LGPE exists on Switch. Either way, it's most likely the case due to the Nintendo Direct that announced Gameboy and GBA games but only showed the Pokémon TCG game for then. The trailer for the Presentation also previewed the old school sprites, the RBY intro, the RBG balloons- we know they like nostalgia, it's coming. Couple the GBA games with the events and the fact that 3ds will be closing shop next month, they pretty much are guaranteed to make it available.

PMD- something is being announced. My bet is on an Explorers remake since they recently dropped the OG remake. We know something is up due to the copyright being on the website code showing Spike Chunsoft 1993 to 2023, and unless they're suddenly going to drop Donphan Rompa and have Pikachu have to figure out which of his classmates killed Butterfree, that pretty much just points to PMD.

That alone should comprise at least 15 minutes. We could probably toss in a minute or 2 to casually remind everyone to download all the Pokestuff they can on the 3ds before the end time comes (so basically Bank- which will be free- and the SM demo for Ash Greninja).

Other than this that leaves a little wiggle room. A minute or 5 is guaranteed to be nostalgia bait and probably a montage of photos from the hashtag campaign they did for Twitter recently.

The only thing left I could guess would maybe be the usual rock cast at Pokémon Sleep, but only because it had a recent stir a couple of months back for... I think trademark, I might be wrong, but it was definitely a small behind the scenes ripple.

As always, I'll be praying for some reminder that Colosseum and XD existed. Won't happen because there's just not enough time. But I'll still hope for a third party studio to bring it back some day- and it'd fit since the GBA games will come back.

But anyway, why don't I have fun with a prediction of what the SV dlc will probably look like:

1. Hexagon legendary revealed, basically a piece of it exists in all Terra Orbs and its basically been soft fusion this whole time. Full form probably has something to do with a world turtle, 2 forms: ancient and future, dragon /Psychic type

2. New uniforms. Not full customization, but probably some special uniform for exploring deeper into Area Zero or some extra variants on the uniforms- maybe even straight up copies of Arven, Nemona, Team Star, and Clavell's uniform variants.

3. Probably mostly going to be artwork, couple of new characters locked to versions, and probably the professor OPPOSITE to the one we worked with- aka Arven's parent that bailed shortly after his birth- showing up suddenly.

4. 2 parts most likely, maybe a third if they really want to milk this. Hexagon is one part. The "Imagined" Pokémon the other (the Johto Beasts and Unovan Swords hybrids). Potential third is up in the air. One location is probably deeeeeeper into AZ and sort of a Hollow World (kinda like Halo 4). The other most likely that chunk on the north east of Paldea. My next guess would be islands way off the coast since apparently Paldea's oceans just go on forever, according to a recent Boundary Break video on SV- Essentially plenty of space for it.

5. More Paradox Pokémon. If I were a betting man- and I do enjoy gacha- I'd wager either paradoxes for Kanto starters OR Sinnoh starters since they basically got left in the rain for new forms. Probably Kanto because they love jacking Charizard off and Ohmori can't go one game without giving his favorite special privileges. But if they ever wanted to drop Gorochu, it's now or never. Probably an ancient pokemon with either a future counterpart or Eevee or Meowth gets a future counterpart.

6. a forgotten Pokémon gets a new form and evolution akin to Slowbro. Betting on Oddish or Poliwag, or generally a Pokémon with a split evolution so they can milk it like Slowbro in Isle of Armor and Slowking in Crown Tundra.

7. Called something like "Azure Ocean" or "Topaz Tunnel" or "Quartz Quarry"- keeping up with fancy color names.

Of course I could be entirely wrong, none of any of the above happens, and it's just something very, very minor.

[unidentifiedwhistlingobject]

So I think I found the right article.

The thumbnail quote in the original tweet is the second paragraph:

And like, unless I'm missing something, the article ... isn't talking about grids getting damaged because of overload. I do think that what @crazy-pages said is correct, because I've heard parts of it often enough before, but the article is pretty much just talking about market economics. Do I have the wrong article?

MIT Tech Review has limited free articles, so I've copied and pasted the full text below the cut. It isn't a super long read.

A few lonely academics have been warning for years that solar power faces a fundamental challenge that could halt the industry’s breakneck growth. Simply put: the more solar you add to the grid, the less valuable it becomes.

The problem is that solar panels generate lots of electricity in the middle of sunny days, frequently more than what’s required, driving down prices—sometimes even into negative territory.

Unlike a natural gas plant, solar plant operators can’t easily throttle electricity up and down as needed, or space generation out through the day, night and dark winter. It’s available when it’s available, which is when the sun is shining. And that’s when all the other solar plants are cranking out electricity at maximum levels as well.

A new report finds that California, which produces one of the largest shares of solar power in the world, is already acutely experiencing this phenomenon, known as solar value deflation.

The state’s average solar wholesale prices have fallen 37% relative to the average electricity prices for other sources since 2014, according to the Breakthrough Institute analysis, which will be published on July 14. In other words, utilities are increasingly paying solar plants less than other sources overall, due to their fluctuating generation patterns.

Wholesale prices are basically the amount that utilities pay power plants for the electricity they deliver to households and businesses. They shift throughout the day and year, edging back up for solar operators during the mornings, afternoons and other times when there isn’t excess supply. But as more solar plants come online, the periods of excess supply that drive down those costs will become more frequent and more pronounced.

Lower prices may sound great for consumers. But it presents troubling implications for the world’s hopes of rapidly expanding solar capacity and meeting climate goals.It could become difficult to convince developers and investors to continue building ever more solar plants if they stand to make less money or even lose it. In fact, California construction has already been flat since 2018, the study notes. But the state will need the industry to significantly ramp up development if it hopes to pull off its ambitious clean energy targets.

This could soon become a broader problem as well.

“California is a little sneak peek of what is in store for the rest of the world as we dramatically scale up solar,” says Zeke Hausfather, director of climate and energy at the Breakthrough Institute, and author of the report.

That’s because while solar accounts for about 19% of the electricity California generates, other regions are rapidly installing photovoltaic panels as well. In Nevada and Hawaii, for instance, the share of solar generation stood at around 13% in 2019, the study found. The levels in Italy, Greece and Germany were at 8.6%, 7.9% and 7.8%, respectively.

The race

So far, heavy solar subsidies and the rapidly declining cost of solar power has offset the falling value of solar in California. So long as it gets ever cheaper to build and operate solar power plants, value deflation is less of a problem.

But it’s likely to get harder and harder to pull off that trick, as the state’s share of solar generation continues to climb. If the cost declines for building and installing solar panels tapers off, California’s solar deflation could pull ahead in the race against falling costs as soon as 2022 and climb upward from there, the report finds. At that point, wholesale pricing would be below the subsidized costs of solar in California, undermining the pure economic rationale for building more plants, Hausfather notes.The state’s SB 100 law, passed in 2018, requires all of California’s electricity to come from “renewable and zero-carbon resources” by 2045. By that point, some 60% of the state’s electricity could come from solar, based on a California Energy Commission model.

The Breakthrough study estimates that the value of solar–or the wholesale average price relative to other sources–will fall by 85% at that point, decimating the economics of solar farms, at least as California’s grid exists today.

How do we fix it?

There are a variety of ways to ease this effect, though no single one is likely a panacea.The solar sector can continue trying to find ways to push down solar costs, but some researchers have argued it may require shifting to new materials and technologies to get to the dirt-cheap levels required to outpace value deflation.

Grid operators and solar plant developers can add more energy storage—and increasingly they are.Researchers at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory highlighted similarly declining solar values in California in a broader study published in Joule last month. But they also noted that numerous modeling studies showed that the addition of low cost storage options, including so called hybrid plants coupled with lithium-ion batteries, eases value deflation and enables larger shares of renewables to operate economically on the grid.

There are likely limits to this, however, as study after study finds that storage and system costs rise sharply once renewables provide the vast majority of electricity on the grid.

States or nations could also boost subsidies for solar power; add more long-distance transmission lines to allow regions to swap clean electricity as needed; or incentivize customers to move energy use to times of day that better match with periods of high generation.

The good news is that each of these will help to ease the transition to clean electricity sources in other ways as well, but they’ll also all take considerable time and money to get underway.

The California solar market offers a reminder that the climate clock is ticking.

This story was updated to add details from the Joule study.

[darkjudgeranchfish]

Convert youtube to Audio Formats for free

Introduction

If you are looking for a way to convert your favorite videos from YouTube, we have something special for you. Onlymp3 is a tool that can help you to download only audio from any video on YouTube. This means that if someone uploads a video with music in it, then onlymp3 will extract that music and save it onto your device. This way, people who want to listen to the song without watching the whole video can do so easily with this app!

Why do we need a youtube to mp3 converter?

There are a lot of reasons why you might need to convert YouTube videos to MP3, AAC, WAV, and FLAC files. One of the most common reasons is that you want to download music from YouTube. You can’t just go into your local library and pull out some CDs or vinyl records—you have to get them from somewhere else if they aren’t already stored on your computer. And what better way than by converting YouTube videos into MP3 files?

There are other reasons as well: if someone loses their original copy of one of those oldies-but-goodies like Nirvana's In Utero album (or whatever), then they could always turn it into an audio format in case the CD goes missing! Or maybe someone has an older version of an album that was recorded live at their favorite concert venue; now all he needs is something that sounds similar enough so as not to ruin his memory banks when listening later as time goes by...

Onlymp3

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While there are some other similar programs out there, only MP3 stands out because of its ease of use and wide compatibility with different devices. It also comes with some useful features like the ability to listen to your converted song while it’s downloading (this feature is available only if you have an Internet connection) and automatically converting videos that match certain keywords or phrases (such as “YouTube”).

No need signup

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This tool is absolutely free, with no ads or anything like that! It's perfect if what you want is something quick and easy that won't take up too much space on your hard drive.

Auto-fetch videos from Youtube

You can get the videos from youtube

You can get the videos from google

You can get the videos from Dailymotion.

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To start using onlymp3.to, simply go to the website by clicking here or searching for it in your favorite browser.

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You can download as many videos as you want. The number     of downloads will not be limited and the size of each video is unlimited.

Some people may want to download only the audio from the video for their own needs.

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For example, if you are going on a long drive and don't have access to the internet, you can listen to music without videos or ads, or subtitles.

Conclusion

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[hollandorks]

middle of the night

battinson!bruce wayne x f!reader

chapter two

summary:  y/n’s life changes immensely, starting with the Batman falling out of the sky right in front of her and ending with a promising new job at Wayne Manor. As her life intertwines with that of both Batman and Bruce Wayne, she begins to figure out that there’s more to both than meets the eye.  No spoilers for the Batman movie.

a/n: thanks everyone for loving this fic so much after just one chapter! This chapter is just filler/ foundational stuff. The next two chapters after this will be a lot more interesting I promise. I thrive off reader feedback so please feel free to drop a comment, ask, or even yell in the tags if you reblog! I’m also creating a taglist I’ll update with every chapter so let me know if you want to be added to that. 

Series Masterlist 

word count: 3572

But he was gone. Armor and all. The front door was still locked and–there, at the window, a shadow.

Batman was gone.

Y/n spent the next week going over every single detail of that night. For two nights, she stared up at the signal against the clouds and hoped for a glimpse of him. She told no one of their encounter and went along with life as usual. But she couldn’t stop thinking about how Gotham’s protector had been in her apartment. How real he had been. The flesh and blood beneath the suit. She’d always known there was a man under there, but now she’d gotten a glimpse of him. The real man. The real Batman.

A week after her encounter with Batman, there was a new job posting. 

For Wayne Manor. 

It was just for a housekeeping position, but still sent a little thrill up her spine when she saw it. There were going to be scheduled interviews–by appointment only–for the next week at the Wayne Enterprises offices. No pay information was available, but she didn’t care. Anything was better than what she had. 

The official company wasn’t hiring, but apparently Bruce Wayne himself was. 

She immediately sent in her resume. Anything was better than working at the club. Well, almost anything. But she much preferred cleaning up after one spoiled rich man than a whole bunch of drunk and handsy ones. Plus the manor was huge. She could escape from one handsy rich man easily enough in a space that big. 

Anything, anything to help pay off her debts. And if the hours worked out, she could still work at the club sometimes too. Two jobs would be much better than one. She doubted, too, that the Penguin would let her go so easily. 

Plus she’d been in culinary school for a few months before her mother got sick. She hoped that made her application valuable enough for Bruce Wayne. She really doubted she would get the position. Applying and hoping was better than suffocating at the Iceberg Lounge most nights. 

Within a day, her appointment for an interview was confirmed, much to her surprise.

The day of her interview, she dressed carefully in her best business attire, packed up an extra copy of her resume, and headed towards Wayne Enterprises. 

The weather had finally dried enough for the subways to run again. She was glad, because it was starting to drizzle outside again, though the weathermen were confident it would only last into the afternoon. She had never missed the sun so much. 

Wayne Enterprises was a huge, towering building. She wondered briefly why Bruce Wayne didn’t hold the interviews at Wayne Manor. He didn’t have much to do with Wayne Enterprises these days from what she heard on the news. But then again, he probably didn’t want a bunch of strangers traipsing through his empty home trying to steal a glimpse of his private life. 

She gave her name to the receptionist on the ground floor to sign in. The receptionist guided her to a bank of elevators and to the third floor. 

The elevator doors slid open to reveal a hallway where at least another dozen people waited to be interviewed. As she took a seat in the only open space, a door at the end of the hallway opened and a girl quickly hurried out. She got into the elevator without a word and was gone. 

Name after name was called. Even with appointments for interviews, y/n was surprised at the number of people here. Mostly women. She thought Bruce Wayne would have been a lot more selective off the cuff. 

Some of the other women waiting whispered among themselves. Most craned their necks every time the doors opened and closed, hoping to catch a glimpse of the elusive billionaire. Y/n listened to their idle gossip without participating. She didn’t care about Bruce Wayne. Just the job. 

“Do you think he’s hiring based on looks?” one woman asked with a smirk as she tugged her low cut shirt even lower. Y/n hoped he wasn’t. Mostly because that was what guys like the Penguin did. 

“I wonder how much I could get for a photo of him from TMZ,” another woman said. There was a chorus of nervous laughs. But they’d had to surrender their cell phones at the security checkpoint inside the front door, to be collected at the reception desk after their interviews. 

When her name was finally called, y/n stood on shaky legs. 

She entered the office to find an older man. He had salt and pepper hair, the beginnings of a beard, and was dressed immaculately. His clothes held no wrinkles or lint. He even had cufflinks at his wrists that glimmered as they caught the light. 

“Have a seat,” he said in a pleasantly accented voice. “I’m Alfred Pennyworth, Mr. Wayne’s butler, assistant, and longtime guardian. I’ll be conducting your interview today.” 

Y/n wasn’t sure whether or not she was disappointed that Bruce Wayne wasn’t there. This guy seemed much more professional anyways, and she figured–if she got the job–she’d work with him more than Bruce Wayne. From what she understood of household staff from period dramas on TV, butlers were basically in charge of all staff. At least, she thought so. This butler was also apparently important enough to represent Bruce Wayne’s interests and conduct all interviews. 

He started by telling her the job requirements, most of which required discretion, several NDA contracts, and regular hours during the week. Then he asked her all kinds of typical job interview questions, went over her resume, and asked what her expectations were for pay and benefits. He didn’t even stumble over her listed position at the Iceberg Lounge despite it’s bad reputation. 

When she told him the pay she’d like to make–after having looked up several similar enough jobs online–Alfred Pennyworth smiled. 

And then he countered with a much more generous offer.

“I have to say, I really think I’ve found the person for the position,” he continued, as if her heart rate wasn’t high enough already. “I’ll have to clear it with Mr. Wayne first of course, but your application seems very promising.” He smiled kindly. 

“I–thank you–wow, thank you,” she stuttered. She stood and shook his hand eagerly. “You have no idea how much this means to me. Really.” 

“I do have to finish the rest of the day’s interviews, but I really do think we’ve found what we need in you. I’ll give you a call tomorrow most likely, as long as Mr. Wayne is amenable.” Alfred stood and gestured to the door. 

Y/n hesitated and then blurted, “Why me?” She immediately clamped her mouth shut. Heat settled in her cheeks. “I’m sorry–I don’t mean to sound ungrateful. I just…my resume doesn’t exactly scream prior experience.” 

Alfred seemed to soften a bit. “My dear, you seem plenty qualified. And, most importantly, you’re the only one who didn’t ask after Mr. Wayne upon seeing myself. Privacy and discretion are very important to him, and so far everyone else has failed to uphold those values from the start. Or failed the background check.” He chuckled. “I’ll call you tomorrow and let you know if the position is yours.” 

She thanked him again, profusely, and walked to the elevators with her head in the clouds. 

The job wasn’t hers yet, not for sure, but she couldn’t help the bubble of hope that grew in her chest. With the hours and the pay and the benefits…she would be doing so, so well. She could still work at the club one or two nights on the weekend, and her debts would be paid off in–she quickly tried to do the mental math. Two years, maybe. And that was if she found a nicer apartment to rent. If she continued living in her shitty apartment, she’d be paid up with the Penguin even sooner. 

The next morning she received a call from an unknown number. 

“Hello, y/n speaking,” she answered breathlessly. 

“Good morning,” Alfred Pennyworth’s warm voice answered. “I’m calling to formally offer you a position working at Wayne Manor.” 

Y/n clamped down a squeal of delight before it could escape. “Yes, I accept. Absolutely. I–you have no idea how much I need this job, thank you.” 

“You haven’t even heard the full offer yet, dear,” Alfred said with a light laugh. “Mr. Wayne would like to not only offer you the pay we discussed yesterday, but also health benefits and…well, I understand it’s rather unusual, but he also offered one of our many guest rooms for your use. You would still work the same hours, but live on the property.” 

Her jaw fell open with an audible pop. “I–That’s very generous of Mr. Wayne, but I couldn’t possibly afford–”

“Rent free, of course,” Alfred continued as if she hadn’t spoken. “And it would not be deducted from your pay either. In Mr. Wayne’s words, he has too much unused space to let it go to waste. Besides, the rest of the staff live on the property as well, myself included.” 

Something in the way he said it clicked in y/n’s brain. “You mean Mr. Wayne wants to keep an eye on everyone to better protect his privacy. Don’t you?” Hastily she added, “I don’t mean to be rude in saying that.” 

“No, not rude at all, but perceptive. Yes, I do believe that that is Mr. Wayne’s thinking in his offer. That, and he is actually quite generous, once you get to know him. No need to accept the offer right away. You have my direct number. Please let us know by next Monday your decision, in case we need to fill the position elsewhere.” 

Brain whirring a mile a minute, she said, “No. I mean, yes, I accept. When can I start?” 

Rent free and not deducted from her pay. Health benefits. Regular hours. Weekends off. Living in a fucking mansion. It was almost too good to be true. 

As long as Bruce Wayne didn’t turn out to be a creep, peeping Tom, or a rapist, it was exactly the life-changing thing she needed. 

“I can pick you up Monday, give you time to pack and get your affairs in order. Unless you need to work out a two week notice with a previous employer?” 

“No, I’m–Monday is perfect. Thank you so much.” She gave Alfred her address, then hung up.

Things were really, really starting to look up. 

That weekend, she requested a meeting with the Penguin to explain her new job situation and that she wasn’t quitting, just cutting back her hours to pay her debt off more quickly. 

If shit was going to hit the fan, it would be in this meeting. The Penguin wasn’t a nice guy. She knew that firsthand already. But surely, hopefully, he loved money enough to let her do this in exchange for paying him more quickly. She didn’t care if he raised her debts a little, either. Anything to get out from under his thumb more quickly. 

But all the Penguin did was lean back on his plush leather couch and look her over with a smirk. “Sucked Bruce Wayne’s dick for a job, did ya? I thought you were too good for that sort of thing. Oh well, good for you. Remember that I charge three percent interest on my debts, though. And if you forget…” He glanced over at the thug who’d slapped her the night of the incident with the spilled drink and the handsy man. 

Y/n clenched her teeth so tightly it hurt. It doesn’t matter what he thinks, she told herself, but she hated the idea that a rumor might spread about her working for Bruce Wayne just because the Penguin was a scumbag. 

“Yes, sir, I understand. Three percent interest. Thank you for your generosity.” Because that’s what he wanted, what he liked. The ass-kissing. The gratitude. And it rang true this time, when it hadn’t so many other times they had spoken. Shit hadn’t hit the fan. He was letting her go. And, hell, three percent interest really wasn’t too bad. She could do three percent. And living at Wayne Manor, she wouldn’t have to worry about rent or subway fees or a car payment or gas prices. 

Bruce Wayne definitely couldn’t be as much of a creep as the Penguin. 

–

Monday morning dawned early. She had barely slept all night. Her nerves were wound tight. The rain had started up again in the early hours before dawn and showed no signs of letting up. 

Y/n’s bags were packed. Her meager belongings waited patiently by the door for her move to Wayne Manor. It was a dream come true, in a lot of ways. She had resented her tiny, shitty apartment since she had been forced out of the one she had grown up in–just her and her mother, all those years. Now her mother was gone, and all that was left of their life together was packed in a small cardboard box. That box was really all that mattered. Y/n had only bothered to pack it, her clothes, and her quilt and pillow. Everything else was staying in the apartment. 

A soft knock sounded at the door. 

She opened it to reveal Alfred, who was startlingly dry for all of the rain roaring down from the sky outside. 

“Good morning,” she said. 

“Good morning. Shall I help you with your belongings?” 

She only had her backpack, two suitcases, the box of memories, and her pillow with her quilt shoved into the pillowcase. 

For some reason, as Alfred helped her carry everything down the stairs and loaded it into the car outside, she couldn’t help but feel embarrassed by her surroundings. At her obvious lack. Had it been too desperate of her to leap at a chance to live in Bruce Wayne’s giant mansion without thinking it through? She had never been one to take handouts so readily, but in the past few years that had changed drastically. She would take whatever she could get–which was only underscored by the fact that all she’d been able to do was make a deal with a criminal to try and save her mother’s life. 

Wayne Manor was just barely inside of city limits. It was close to everything while still just separate enough to scream wealthy. A huge brick wall stretched around the property. A wrought iron gate swung open to reveal a long driveway lined with trees. 

As Alfred drove up the drive, he explained the security system to her. Cameras all along the walls, alarms, security guards patrolling and watching the gate. Security never came near the house except in an emergency. He also explained, gently, that she likely wouldn’t see much of the master of the house. He tended towards the nocturnal and often went out for most of the night and slept during the day. The way Alfred said it was almost affectionate, like he was used to Bruce Wayne’s antics. 

The long driveway suddenly ended. A huge, Gothic manor was revealed. It sprawled across an equally massive lawn. Gargoyles sneered down at her from the edges of the roof and towers. She felt her mouth pop open in surprise. It was…well, enormous. 

They pulled around to the back of the house towards what y/n guessed was the servants entrance. 

“I’ve given security your information and identification. You’re free to come and go as you please, of course, but we ask that you simply alert the guards at the gate each time you leave and come back.” Alfred parked the car in a small spot near a door in the back. “Your rooms will be on the second floor. My rooms are right next to yours. Master Wayne’s are on the first floor. The kitchen, library, pool house, and stables are free for you to use whenever you would like. The basement, however, is completely off limits. There is a code to enter, but I figured I would warn you. It’s Master Wayne’s private study and he doesn’t like to be disturbed.” 

They entered through the backdoor into a storage room. It led into a kitchen that was, by itself, larger than the shitty apartment she’d just left behind. 

“We’ll pause here for some paperwork, if you don’t mind. Then I’ll take your things upstairs for you to get settled.” Waiting on the kitchen island was a stack of paperwork that included the typical employee and tax forms, health benefit contracts, and also a thick stack of contracts that included heavily binding NDAs. She tried to take a moment and look it all over like it didn’t overwhelm her. From what she gathered, she was allowed to say she worked at Wayne Manor, but not in what capacity. She wasn’t allowed to mention Bruce Wayne, his comings and goings, or anything else about the house to anyone other than Bruce Wayne himself and Alfred. Taking any kind of photographs of the house, grounds, or the occupants was entirely forbidden. If she broke the contract, she would be immediately fired and sued. 

Head swimming, she signed all the forms. Alfred made tea while she signed paper after paper. She preferred coffee but she would take whatever caffeine she could get to help her through the huge stack of forms. 

By the time she finished, the dregs in her cup had gone cold. 

“Now that’s done, let’s get you settled,” Alfred said as if it were simply any other regular day. Y/n supposed that, working for a billionaire, it probably was. 

As they made their way up a servant’s staircase, Alfred’s soft, accented voice kept up the narration from their drive. “I would also ask you not to disturb the late Mr. and Mrs. Wayne’s rooms on the third floor. They have been…kept the same since their passing.” 

“Of course,” she murmured. Obviously, her curiosity was piqued at the mention of forbidden rooms–including the basement–but she needed this job more than she needed to satisfy her curiosity. 

The house itself was more of a Gothic castle or Gothic church than it was a house. Intricate stone and woodwork was everywhere, from the arched ceilings and moulding to the carved banisters on the servants stair. The stairs kept winding upwards, but they took the first landing and came out at the very end of a long hallway. There was a stained glass window that overlooked the estate below them. 

“You’ll have the rest of the day to get settled and explore, if you’d like. You’ll officially start tomorrow morning. This first door here belongs to me. And…here you are.” 

Alfred stopped at the next door on the hallway. 

“I’ll leave you to get settled. Text me if there’s anything you need.” He set her stuff politely beside the closed door. “Oh–we all fend for ourselves with meals. The kitchen is fully stocked, so help yourself.” With that, Alfred disappeared back down the stairs to do…whatever it is he did as butler. 

Pushing open the door to her room, y/n swallowed her apprehension. 

She had to use the doorjamb to hold herself up when she saw what was before her. 

When Alfred has used the plural of room, he hadn’t made a mistake. There was a small living room, a huge bathroom, a bedroom, and a walk-in closet. It was the size of at least two, if not three, of her apartments. It had been recently cleaned, though the furniture was a bit outdated. There was a thick comforter and set of pillows on the bed that looked to be the most updated things in the room. It was a muted gray with blue and green accents. 

There was a small couch, a sitting chair, a desk, a fireplace….Her head spun. This alone was such luxury compared to what she had just come from. And she had the run of the house when she wasn’t working, save for a few off-limits areas. Kitchen, library, grounds, pool house…

Taking a deep breath, y/n began unpacking her things. Her clothes barely took up a quarter of the closet. 

She set her photographs on the dresser and bedside table. One of her as a baby with her mother–still glowing with youth and young love. Another of them when she was a teenager, at one of Gotham’s music festivals. Another taken when her mother was sick, the last photograph of them together. Around the photos went other various sentimental items. 

Already she could tell that the house was gloomy and barely lived in. There was a pervading smell of dust in the air. She flung open the heavy drapes in the bedroom and living room. With a satisfied nod, she resolved to open more curtains in the house. Maybe bring in some fresh flowers once in a while. Alfred had told her that the gardener and groundskeeper–a married couple–lived in a cottage farther into the property. Maybe she could ask one of them for permission to bring flowers inside sometimes so she didn’t have to buy them. 

It would take some getting used to. But she would work hard. She would save money. She would pay off her debts. And then Wayne Manor would just be something in the rearview for her on the way to something better. 

It wasn’t a Cinderella story, but it was a good stepping stone into the rest of her life.

Next Chapter

taglist:

@pop-rocks-and-skittles @calumspupils @n1ght5h4d3-24 @keepingitlokiii @11mb0 @illicitghosts​  @passionandpeaches

[ff7ogzine]

Making a zine?

Consider going ✨ digital first and free/not for profit! ✨

There are so many benefits to this approach:

Eliminates your risk of fraud, embezzlement, tax issues and legal liability (which might be on your mind after the latest scandal)

Reduces scope and logistical complexity while your zine is being produced 

Makes your zine more accessible to readers, contributors, and first-time mods 

Allows you to include whatever content you want without worrying about unfriendly storefront policies (often a concern for NSFW content)

Reduces your zine’s overall timeline to delivery

Allows you to have a nice big simul-launch party

Keeps your zine a community passion project rather than a professional commitment, preserving the spirit of fannish culture

You can still coordinate a print run later, if you want to!

Free + digital first is the strategy we took with Return to the Planet, and everyone on the team feels that it was an excellent decision. Our zine was a success! To give you an idea of our impact:

Our Twitter follower count is about 512, and our zine release has received 444 likes and 289 retweets (a 144% engagement rate), plus 697 impressions to our website, indicating that it has been pretty widely read among the audience we have

Although our zine was completely free, we raised $1300 USD and counting in at-will donations using Tiltify as a charity fundraiser platform – without a mod ever having to handle money or personal information

Even with the digital zine freely available, we still had enough interest to proceed with a print run, and sold 133 copies internationally (which we are now working to fulfill)

I cannot overstate how well this model worked for us! After the cut I’ll go into detail about the logistics and the benefits at each step. If you’re curious about this option, or just want to read about our process, read on!

We chose free + digital first for RTTP because of two constraints on the project:

As an anniversary zine, we had a fixed deadline we were targeting for delivery, which would have given us 7 months total from “hey let’s make a zine” to delivery. A print run was out of the question.

We had a team of first-time mods and wanted to minimize scope, stress and risk by taking money out of the equation

Here's how it turned out.

Timeline

Our mods are spreadsheet-loving workaholics, so YMMV, but the 7 month timeline from inception to delivery turned out to be just right. This broke down to:

1 month interest check and initial planning

1 month contributor applications opened and prep finalized

3 months for contributors to work on their pieces

2 months for zine production and promotion

We saved a significant amount of time that would have gone towards printing and shipping, which could have easily doubled the length of the project. We also had to make fewer decisions and do less research and setup up-front because we didn’t need to make decisions related to costing early on. 

Although we were working towards a fixed deadline we didn’t want to move, choosing a digital release generally affords you better control over your timeline by reducing your dependencies on external factors such as shipping delays and changing import laws.

Contributors and Content

Under normal circumstances, printing or selling your zine comes with contributor and content restrictions. 

The number of contributors a zine has will impact the size and weight of the physical book, which will affect its cost to print and ship. Digital zines simply don’t have this problem, and so our contributor limits were instead dictated by the amount of work our mod team felt willing to handle.

The same physical size constraints tend to cause zines to feature more art than writing because it takes less space per piece. Alternative, fewer writers being accepted with a much more restrictive word count. Because we weren’t worried about the size, we were able to accept many writers with a reasonable word-count, and invite essayists as well as fic authors for content variety.

Our zine was SFW, so we don’t have strong experience here, but going free/not-for-profit will also eliminate issues NSFW zines might encounter with trying to comply with storefront policies.

Charity Campaign

We decided later in the project that although the zine would be free, we should try to raise some money for charity while we were at it. We created digital merch that would be gated behind a minimum charity payment as an incentive. It was very painless to set this up without mods having to handle money directly. We used the charity fundraising platform Tiltify to accept payments on our behalf.

Anyone who contributed to the Tiltify campaign above a certain dollar amount received an email with a link to a Google Drive folder containing all the digital goodies. One could easily use this service to deliver a digital charity zine in the same way without having to manage a storefront. It's an excellent option for not-for-profit mods who want to avoid bookkeeping.

Release

Working toward a specific release date for the zine helped with the sense of community and morale on this project. We were very in control of our own delivery timelines and not beholden to external delays, so building the hype train was fun! Everyone involved got to see their work go out into the world at the same time and share in that sense of achievement.

Contributors also had a pretty minimal publishing embargo on their work, and were able to share their pieces approximately 2 months after the completion deadline, as opposed to having to wait for all shipping and fulfillment to complete.

Print Run

We had always entertained the idea of a limited print run, so we kept the project print-safe from the start, enabling us to do a print-run afte the fact. 

After the zine’s release and a much needed several-month break for our mods, we felt we had the confidence, experience and trust we needed, and we set out to pursue that print run. We were unsure at the outset whether or not anyone would be interested in buying a copy of an already freely accessible zine. Turns out, the interest was definitely there!

We had no trouble at all meeting minimum order thresholds and have been able to move into the production phase. We are still in the process of delivering on our print run, so more reflections to come later, but I think having already delivered on our zine made the process less stressful and created less guesswork for us when it came to working out costs. We knew what our product would be like and we had a pretty good idea about the interest of our audience. This allowed us to stay pretty close to at-cost pricing for the zine.

Minimal Stress and Headaches

Our mod team had two mantras. One of them we repeated to each other whenever things felt overwhelming: “Free digital zine.” Just by removing any money from the equation we lowered the stakes – and therefore the stress – substantially. We were blessedly free of internal problems and drama, but if they had arisen, the “free digital zine” principle also would have helped to protect us, and protect the success of the project.

It also limited the stress on mods to break creating the zine and coordinating the production run into two separate projects. We were able to focus on one thing at a time and make sure that the details were all ironed out to the point that nobody lost any sleep over the project.

In the end, reduced stress + greater accessibility are probably the #1 reasons to pursue free and digital first. If you've made it this far - thanks for reading, and feel free to reach out with any questions. We'd love to see more free digital zines make it out into the world!

[ah0rmone]

dazai osamu x fem! reader

warnings: nsfw, minors, dni! dubcon if you squint because the reader finds dazai annoying but attractive, non-consensual touching (at first), enemies/rivals to fuck buddies I guess?, fingering, vaginal penetration.

there are literally two self-defence techniques from here and here

"Why it has to be you?" you grumbled looking at the person who stood in front of you.

"Oh, who else would you like to see as your teacher? Kunikida-kun who's doing everything according to instructions, even fighting? Ranpo-kun who won't lift a finger unless it's a murder case? Or Tanizaki-kun who's always followed by Naomi-chan?"

The obnoxious man in front of you was called Osamu Dazai and, to be fair, you'd actually prefer any other agency member over him. Sure, he definitely had combat experience and, probably, wasn't that bad at teaching, given that Atsushi was still following him. But something about him was off and you didn't like it. Nor that you had any choice, Dazai was there for a reason and that reason was Fukuzawa's order.

"Whatever," you sighed. "Can we get to it already?"

Today was the day when you were supposed to learn some self-defence techniques. Your ability wasn't really of a combat type, so you never participated in fights but it didn't mean that you had a zero possibility of running into problems. It was your own request to be taught how to protect yourself.

However, you didn't feel quite confident at all. You genuinely hated conflicts and tended to avoid people, so all of this was a somewhat essential but still itchy experience. Your sporty shorts and a skintight top wasn't helping the situation either. Especially, since a person with who you were going to get quite close physically was a rather attractive young man. You and Dazai weren't that close, just colleagues who barely communicated. For you he was just as attractive as he was annoying - you wouldn't mind having a fling with him but nothing more. Maybe it was the way he carried himself: overly cheerful, loud and noisy. Or maybe it was the things he was hiding: his true mischievous, manipulative personality.

Taking a deep breath you reminded yourself that it was your idea, something that your survival depended on and that you just had to get over it.

"Usually you're not the one who fights, y/n-chan. So what are we doing here?" Dazai asked, a teasing smile on his lips.

His eyes were gleaming with a vicious sparkle. Your power imbalance was uncomfortable to you. You shrugged, the feeling that he was a big cat and you were his meal strongly sat in your guts.

"I'm here to learn how to defend myself. Like some easy techniques. I'm not very strong, keep it in mind," you reminded with a well-controlled flat voice but some notes of irritation would have been apparent even to the densest person.

Osamu didn't answer, instead, he let his fake smile turn into a smirk. For a moment the room fell into silence and you could swear that your heart was beating too loud. Both of you just stared at each other for some seconds until the smile returned on Dazai's lips and the man joyfully clapped.

"Okay, gotcha! First of all," he took a step closer. "The most important thing in fighting is a stable stance. Stand like this," he put the left leg forward and motioned you to follow him.

Hesitantly you mirrored his stance, the feeling of embarrassment washing over you. It wasn't even the physical activity that you hated but the way Dazai was gazing at you. Predatory eyes were gliding over your skin like he was analysing your tiniest movements. Like he was about to pounce.

Just as you anticipated, once you've finished copying him, Osamu clicked his tongue and stood up.

"No, y/n-chan, you're doing it wrong."

You were about to argue but Dazai was already behind you. Suddenly painfully aware of the warmth of his body you tried to move from him but he was quick to put a hand on your hip.

"Let me help you," his hot breath ran over the shell of your ear making you flinch a little.

While you were contemplating whether you should allow him to be that close, Dazai had already brushed his palm down your leg. Now he was standing next to you, your bodies touching.

"There," he encouraged, moving your leg a little further by the back of your knee. His other hand was still placed on your hip and such a position was taking away any personal space you had before.

"Thanks," you muttered, feeling the light smell of his cologne.

"Now you're standing rather steady, aren't you?" he beamed with his hand still on your leg.

"Ah, yeah," you muttered, grabbing him by the wrist and pushing it off yourself then taking a step back. "Guess, we can move to the actual stuff now."

"Y/n-chan!" Dazai exclaimed. "The stance is very important, I didn't show it for fun!"

You saw the man's lips curl into a pout but either than that he didn't display any sign of irritation by you pushing him away. Keeping that in mind you decided that even though he might not have any ill intentions you should stay on guard.

Something dropped behind the door and as you inverted your gaze to the sound you felt your hair being grabbed.

"What," you didn't even have the chance to end the question instantly being pushed to the wall.

Your colleague's right hand was holding firmly your hair, the other one gripping your waist. You tried to push back, but to no avail - his whole body was pushing you to the wall.

"Dazai," you growled.

"Too bad, y/n-chan," he cooed. "How can you protect yourself when you have such a short attention span? Look at you - one move and you're helpless."

The sting of resentment piercing through your heart encouraged you to grumble through the teeth:

"I told you I'm weak."

"And stupid apparently," he gibbed.

"Listen," you tried to free yourself but instead just shook your hips clumsily. "If you came here just to insult me, let's end it, I'll ask Fukuzawa-san to send someone else," voice full with venom, you wanted to be as far from Dazai as possible but instead felt with dread as your hips bucked into his. You jolted forward fighting for the tiniest bit of space.

If Dazai noticed, he didn't show it as there was no reaction whatsoever. However, your little touch wasn't the only thing he ignored:

"Let me instead show you how to deflect it," he proposed, paying no heed to your words.

He backed up and you got a chance to glance at him with unhidden irritation. He met your gaze with a cheesy smile like he wasn't a person degrading you a couple of seconds ago. However, giving it a little bit more thought you exhaled and nodded. After all, you should've picked up something from this lesson, not just the revelation that Dazai was a total dick and you wouldn't want him to be near you ever again.

You moved from the wall and this time he gripped your hair slowly.

"What you want to do now is to grab my hand by both of yours, then stand back to the stance I showed you earlier, turn underneath the arm, so that you twist it and when the person lets go, just bolt. Got it?"

You hummed in acknowledgement. Perhaps it wasn't that difficult. Perhaps, at the end of the day, the lesson would be fruitful.

"Try it then," he prompted and then tugged at your hair lightly.

Following his instructions, you grabbed his hand and as you were about to go underneath his arm, he spun you. His arm was firmly holding your throat.

"No, y/n-chan, I've told you your stance was wrong," he whined. "Let me show you again."

"What just happened?" you asked confusedly but he already was spreading your legs.

Osamu didn't answer, too busy putting you in the right stance. And you tried your best to concentrate on how your legs were placed instead of his fingers brushing over your ass a couple of times, once getting a little bit too close to your clothed vagina.

"Just like this," he said and his hand slid up from your knee to your waist getting under the top a little.

From your point of view, the skinship was completely irrelevant but you decided to keep your sharky comments to yourself. For now, you were going to follow his instructions and maybe you could avoid the conflict.

Maybe not.

This time around when you were trying to deflect his arm, once again he outpowered you. You cursed as he said with disappointment in his voice (you were pretty sure it was the fake one, he was enjoying it, that bastard):

"You're too slow, y/n-chan. Do you think attackers would just stand there and watch as you crawl your way out of their grip as a turtle in slow-mo?"

"Dazai, I'd appreciate it if you-"

"Again," he cut you harshly, puppeting you around like you were nothing but a doll.

His attitude towards you was so demoralizing you were fighting the urge to end it here and there. Losing all the motivation and looking exhausted, you tried to go through the motion again but Dazai wasn't having it.

"Hm, y/n-chan, kinda feels like you're not trying hard enough. Should I give you a motivation boost?" he exclaimed cheerfully but before you could say that he should go fuck himself he had already pushed you to the wall. Again.

You were expecting harsh words pouring from his mouth, but instead, it was the kisses as he roughly pulled your hair baring your neck for him. The hot tongue travelled from your shoulder to the globe of your ear, prompting you to jolt. Once again you attempted to push him away but could barely move. His left hand was pinning your wrist and his right one was painfully tagging at your hair, cranking your head to the side.

"Dazai," you wanted to let him know that you understood his intentions but he needed to stop when a not so gentle bite quickly shut you up.

He was licking and nipping leaving hickeys at your poor neck. You were squirming and whirling under his touch not giving up yet, so he thrust his hips into yours. There was no way you could keep any sounds in, so a whiny moan escaped your lips. You felt Dazai stopping, a satisfied smirk on his lips, then without saying a word, he continued torturing your sensitive neck. Two things were clear to you: a strong lust was taking over your body which meant that you were slowly losing yourself and that Dazai had just started playing with you, there were more to come.

Dazai. Dazai! Realising who was the man behind you, you tried to gain back control. Osamu was just being a bully, whywere you letting him see you in such a state? He certainly didn't deserve nor your moans, nor your hips grinding his.

You were thinking this but it took everything in you to not just give in to his touch. While you were having an internal battle, Dazai pulled away with a loud pop.

"Five."

"Five what?" you mewled weakly.

"There are five hickeys on your neck," Dazai murmured. "You look so good, all red and moaning. When you can't even do anything. You've been definitely enjoying it, sure you still want to continue learning self-defence techniques?"

You widened your eyes at his words.

"Excuse me?!" you exploded. "What the hell are you implying?!"

With all force, you shoved him in the side with an elbow. Dazai hissed and even though the attack was fairly weak he let go.

"I mean, no kink-shaming," he put hands in the air surrendering.

"What's your problem?!"

It was hard for you to overcome your desire of slapping him but no way in hell you were staying in one room with him for another second. You bolted but Dazai was quicker, catching your hand.

"Where're you going? For a moment there I thought you didn't agree and wanted to continue," he quipped. "Come on, that was just one technique."

"Dazai, let me go," you growled yanking your hand free. "I've had enough of you today, I'm leaving."

You had already turned to leave when he pulled you to the ground. You snorted in frustration, your legs fiercely kicking but the lack of strategy played against you and there you were - trapped under him. Osamu was sitting between your legs with his arms pinning yours to the ground.

You felt unbearably hot and weak, your cunt throbbing against his groin. His face was hanging right above yours, so close you could feel his breath. Unintentionally your eyes focused on his lips then you looked up. Only now you noticed how lustful his gaze was. He clearly was a winner today and he was about to enjoy his prize. As you licked your lips, your recognised your mistake - now your eagerness was more than obvious.

"I'm just parched," you faltered but it sounded pathetic even to you.

"I'm sure you are," Osamu whispered, sitting back. "One more technique and I'll let you go." His fingers gripped your thighs.

Since his weight was off you now, you felt kind of cold. Not knowing where to place your arms, you were about to put them next to your sides when Dazai commanded you to keep them still.

That position was too sexy for your liking - arms are placed next to your head, legs spread. All of it without his control felt like you were offering yourself to him. Like you were submitting. The man was clearly savouring it because his gaze was so intense, in the end, you even had to avert yours.

Dazai clearly didn't like it, tapping your left thigh:

"Look at me, y/n-chan, how else are you supposed to learn?"

You slowly turned back, embarrassed as your eyes darted all over him until they abruptly stopped at his crotch. There was a visible boner in his pants. When Osamu followed your gaze and loudly chuckled you felt your cheeks grow hot and desire growing stronger.

"Concentrate, y/n-chan," Dazai said amusingly but the only thing you could concentrate on was the wetness between your legs. You feared it might start to be visible through your shorts.

"Look, if someone got you into this position," Osamu continued like both of you didn't want the same thing and that thing was to fuck. "You have to keep your arms straight and put them on your shoulders, like this," he gently took your hands and placed them as he instructed. "Then you should put your leg on my hip," he tried to do it for you once again but your leg was wobbly. All the strength you had was wasted on keeping your arms straight.

Dazai sighed theatrically but he couldn't keep a vicious sparkle in his eyes.

"Y/n-chan," he whinged. "You're such a bad student. Weak. Stupid," his fingers were slowly stroking your thigh. "Having a short attention span. Don't you think that you should have concentrated on learning some stuff instead of thinking about my cock?" With this question his arm groped your ass, pulling you closer.

He gripped your hips and you let out a moan. Now you weren't trying to hold back. You were already a loser, might as well enjoy it. Being a tease he was, Dazai wasn't ready to give you everything right then and there but you were having none of it. You hooked your legs around his waist and pulled him closer by his collarbone. Osamu certainly wasn't ready for such a force so he confusingly complied.

"Call me stupid one more time and I'm leaving," you warned him, a confident smirk playing on your lips.

Dazai's face quickly changed from surprised to a perverse one. He dropped down on you, pinning you with his whole body and slammed his hips into yours. As you moaned he caressed your face, lovingly brushing your hair, and then whispered:

"I'm gonna break you, pretty doll."

With one swift motion, he put your wrists in one hand pinning it above your head, his tongue running over your lips then dragging you into a deep kiss. As you two were hungrily kissing each other you felt his fingers crawling under your waistband. You jolted, an instinct of placing your hand over his acting up but he was still holding you firmly. He ran one finger over your cunt but you were already shaking, silently begging for more.

"Dazai," you moaned desperately asking him to get down to business.

"You're so wet, y/n-chan," he licked your earlobe making you writhe. "I wish I teased you a little bit more," he started to kiss your jaw getting lower and lower. "I said that I'd break you but it seems you're already at your limit," he chortled, helping you to take your top and bra off.

"You look so beautiful," he murmured once you were almost fully naked in front of him.

Suddenly his gaze turned soft and you felt even more aroused than you before. Gladly the man wasn't planning on wasting any time as he started to lick, nip and bite one of your nipples, playing with his fingers with another. Moaning lewdly and rutting your hips you put your hand into his hair, curling soft strands in your fingers.

When he finished playing with your tits, he wanted to go further down, to place kisses on your lower stomach, but you decided to get back at him. Placing your straight hands on his shoulders, you put a leg on his thigh just as he instructed and squirmed out of his grip.

"You talk about me but look at yourself," you shoved a knee between his thighs, pushing it at his boner. "You were hard even before I started to feel something else besides irritation."

Now it was Osamu whose breath hitched. You were savouring your little win when he looked back at you with a dangerous grin. That was when you realised you fucked up. He quickly grabbed your leg and turned you over on the stomach. Laying down on you, he harshly seized your hair and hissed:

"A+ for learning the technique, but your attitude towards you teacher," he took off your shorts with pants nearly ripping them. "Needs some correction."

That was when the sound of a loud slap broke the silence of the room. You jolted, a gasp leaving your lips. You tried to crawl from him but his grip on your hair was strong.

"Come on, y/n-chan, it was just one slap. Don't you think you deserve it?" The hand that hit you was stroking your bruised ass cheek.

"It fucking hurt," you spit.

"Was it?" Dazai chuckled. "Say that you're sorry."

"For what?" you raged but another hit was your answer.

"Dazai, stop," you sobbed.

"Wrong," he retorted slapping your ass again. "Plus, if you don't like it why are you leaking so much?"

You embarrassingly bit a lip at his remark.

"A little bit of masochistic, are you?" Dazai noted. "Well, if you insist, I can keep on going."

You knew that both of you were barely holding it, so you decided to submit. Just this once.

"I'm sorry!" You squealed after another hit.

"Good girl," Osamu placed a soft kiss on your back still not letting go of your hair. "Now it's time for a treat."

And with that, he finally pushed the first finger into you. Since you were so wet there was a little pool under you, Dazai successfully pushed another finger shortly after. You quivered and jerked your hips begging him to move. This time around your colleague decided not to tease you.

As his fingers were pumping in and out of you, you were trying to push your head down to steady yourself but Dazai didn't let go. You were completely at his will.

"'m close," you mewled, your eyes rolling back.

Dazai hummed in acknowledgement and withdrew his hand. You groaned offendedly but heard the sound of a condom wrapper being ripped and then felt something else rubbing at your entrance.

Finally, Osamu positioned himself behind you and pushed inside, your pussy stretching obediently. The fullness made you gasp pervertedly. As he started moving your mind went completely blank. The only thing that existed for you at that moment was Dazai and his cock inside of you. He let go of your hair, one hand now was holding your hips and another one was giving attention to your clit.

You had no idea how he was still holding on but once your sensitive bud got stimulated you quickly come undone.

"Once more," Dazai panted while moving and playing with your clit simultaneously.

Even though you were tired, you had actually felt desire growing again. Osamu was just way too good for you to resist. You thought that the only thing he was chasing was his high, but he didn't cum until you orgasmed again denying himself every time he got too close. That's why when you cummed for the second time you did it toghether.

He rolled off you, but you couldn't move even a finger, for a moment you've gone completely numb. Your chest was going up and down with heavy breaths, your heart was racing. None of you spoke because you didn't know what to talk about. Especially, since you, personally, felt way too embarrassed to admit that you had just cummed two times because of an annoying Dazai Osamu.

"Looks like we ended in time!" Dazai chirped after some time and you looked at the clock realising that you spent here one hour. Just like it was promised.

"Wish I had actually learned something though," you remarked lazily, trying to pull on your shorts back. You just had to make it to the shower room and then wear your casual clothes. However, your pants were completely ruined.

"Well, if you think that you need another one, just let me know," you looked back at Dazai and his smirk told you that he wasn't meaning the self-defence lessons. You felt your cheeks grow hot again.

"Yeah, sure," you muttered, awkwardly leaving the training room.

From now on you intended on avoiding Dazai whenever it's possible.

Little did you know he had other plans.

[uomo-accattivante]

Excellent article about bringing a re-make of Ingmar Bergman’s Scenes from a Marriage to fruition, and the twenty-year friendship that Oscar Isaac and Jessica Chastain share:

There were days on the shoot for “Scenes From a Marriage,” a five-episode limited series that premieres Sept. 12 on HBO, when Oscar Isaac resented the crew.

The problem wasn’t the crew members themselves, he told me on a video call in March. But the work required of him and his co-star, Jessica Chastain, was so unsparingly intimate — “And difficult!” Chastain added from a neighboring Zoom window — that every time a camera operator or a makeup artist appeared, it felt like an intrusion.

On his other projects, Isaac had felt comfortably distant from the characters and their circumstances — interplanetary intrigue, rogue A.I. But “Scenes” surveys monogamy and parenthood, familiar territory. Sometimes Isaac would film a bedtime scene with his onscreen child (Lily Jane) and then go home and tuck his own child into the same model of bed as the one used onset, accessorized with the same bunny lamp, and not know exactly where art ended and life began.

“It was just a lot,” he said.

Chastain agreed, though she put it more strongly. “I mean, I cried every day for four months,” she said.

Isaac, 42, and Chastain, 44, have known each other since their days at the Juilliard School. And they have channeled two decades of friendship, admiration and a shared and obsessional devotion to craft into what Michael Ellenberg, one of the series’s executive producers, called “five hours of naked, raw performance.” (That nudity is metaphorical, mostly.)

“For me it definitely felt incredibly personal,” Chastain said on the call in the spring, about a month after filming had ended. “That’s why I don’t know if I have another one like this in me. Yeah, I can’t decide that. I can’t even talk about it without. …” She turned away from the screen. (It was one of several times during the call that I felt as if I were intruding, too.)

The original “Scenes From a Marriage,” created by Ingmar Bergman, debuted on Swedish television in 1973. Bergman’s first television series, its six episodes trace the dissolution of a middle-class marriage. Starring Liv Ullmann, Bergman’s ex, it drew on his own past relationships, though not always directly.

“When it comes to Bergman, the relationship between autobiography and fiction is extremely complicated,” said Jan Holmberg, the chief executive of the Ingmar Bergman Foundation.

A sensation in Sweden, it was seen by most of the adult population. And yes, sure, correlation does not imply causation, but after its debut, Swedish divorce were rumored to have doubled. Holmberg remembers watching a rerun as a 10-year-old.

“It was a rude awakening to adult life,” he said.

The writer and director Hagai Levi saw it as a teenager, on Israeli public television, during a stint on a kibbutz. “I was shocked,” he said. The series taught him that a television series could be radical, that it could be art. When he created “BeTipul,” the Israeli precursor to “In Treatment,” he used “Scenes” as proof of the concept “that two people can talk for an hour and it can work,” Levi said. (Strangely, “Scenes” also inspired the prime-time soap “Dallas.”)

So when Daniel Bergman, Ingmar Bergman’s youngest son, approached Levi about a remake, he was immediately interested.

But the project languished, in part because loving a show isn’t reason enough to adapt it. Divorce is common now — in Sweden, and elsewhere — and the relationship politics of the original series, in which the male character deserts his wife and young children for an academic post, haven’t aged particularly well.

Then about two years ago, Levi had a revelation. He would swap the gender roles. A woman who leaves her marriage and child in pursuit of freedom (with a very hot Israeli entrepreneur in place of a visiting professorship) might still provoke conversation and interest.

So the Marianne and Johan of the original became Mira and Jonathan, with a Boston suburb (re-created in a warehouse just north of New York City), stepping in for the Stockholm of the original. Jonathan remains an academic though Mira, a lawyer in the original, is now a businesswoman who out-earns him.

Casting began in early 2020. After Isaac met with Levi, he wrote to Chastain to tell her about the project. She wasn’t available. The producers cast Michelle Williams. But the pandemic reshuffled everyone’s schedules. When production was ready to resume, Williams was no longer free. Chastain was. “That was for me the most amazing miracle,” Levi said.

Isaac and Chastain met in the early 2000s at Juilliard. He was in his first year; she, in her third. He first saw her in a scene from a classical tragedy, slapping men in the face as Helen of Troy. He was friendly with her then-boyfriend, and they soon became friends themselves, bonding through the shared trauma of an acting curriculum designed to break its students down and then build them back up again. Isaac remembered her as “a real force of nature and solid, completely solid, with an incredible amount of integrity,” he said.

In the next window, Chastain blushed. “He was super talented,” she said. “But talented in a way that wasn’t expected, that’s challenging and pushing against constructs and ideas.” She introduced him to her manager, and they celebrated each other’s early successes and went to each other’s premieres. (A few of those photos are used in “Scenes From a Marriage” as set dressing.)

In 2013, Chastain was cast in J.C. Chandor’s “A Most Violent Year,”opposite Javier Bardem. When Bardem dropped out, Chastain campaigned for Isaac to have the role. Weeks before shooting, they began to meet, fleshing out the back story of their characters — a husband and wife trying to corner the heating oil market in 1981 New York — the details of the marriage, business, life.

It was their first time working together, and each felt a bond that went deeper than a parallel education and approach. “Something connects us that’s stronger than any ideas of character or story or any of that,” Isaac said. “There’s something else that’s more about like, a shared existence.”

Chandor noticed how they would support each other on set, and challenge each other, too, giving each other the freedom to take the characters’ relationship to dark and dangerous places. “They have this innate trust with each other,” Chandor said.

That trust eliminated the need for actorly tricks or shortcuts, in part because they know each other’s tricks too well. Their motto, Isaac said, was, “Let’s figure this [expletive] out together and see what’s the most honest thing we can do.”

Moni Yakim, Juilliard’s celebrated movement instructor, has followed their careers closely and he noted what he called the “magnetism and spiritual connection” that they suggested onscreen in the film.

“It’s a kind of chemistry,” Yakim said. “They can read each other’s mind and you as an audience, you can sense it.”

Telepathy takes work. When they knew that shooting “Scenes From a Marriage” could begin, Chastain bought a copy of “All About Us,” a guided journal for couples, and filled in her sections in character as Mira. Isaac brought it home and showed it to his wife, the filmmaker Elvira Lind.

“She was like, ‘You finally found your match,’” Isaac recalled. “’Someone that is as big of a nerd as you are.’”

The actors rehearsed, with Levi and on their own, talking their way through each long scene, helping each other through the anguished parts. When production had to halt for two weeks, they rehearsed then, too.

Watching these actors work reminded Amy Herzog, a writer and executive producer on the series, of race horses in full gallop. “These are two people who have so much training and skill,” she said. “Because it’s an athletic feat, what they were being asked to do.”

But training and skill and the “All About Us” book hadn’t really prepared them for the emotional impact of actually shooting “Scenes From a Marriage.” Both actors normally compartmentalize when they work, putting up psychic partitions between their roles and themselves. But this time, the partitions weren’t up to code.

“I knew I was in trouble the very first week,” Chastain said.

She couldn’t hide how the scripts affected her, especially from someone who knows her as well as Isaac does. “I just felt so exposed,” she said. “This to me, more than anything I’ve ever worked on, was definitely the most open I’ve ever been.”

“It felt so dangerous,” she said.

I visited the set in February (after multiple Covid-19 tests and health screenings) during a final day of filming. It was the quietest set I had ever seen: The atmosphere was subdued, reverent almost, a crew and a studio space stripped down to only what two actors would need to do the most passionate and demanding work of their careers.

Isaac didn’t know if he would watch the completed series. “It really is the first time ever, where I’ve done something where I’m totally fine never seeing this thing,” he said. “Because I’ve really lived through it. And in some ways I don’t want whatever they decide to put together to change my experience of it, which was just so intense.”

The cameras captured that intensity. Though Chastain isn’t Mira and Isaac isn’t Jonathan, each drew on personal experience — their parents’ marriages, past relationships — in ways they never had. Sometimes work on the show felt like acting, and sometimes the work wasn’t even conscious. There’s a scene in the harrowing fourth episode in which they both lie crumpled on the floor, an identical stress vein bulging in each forehead.

“It’s my go-to move, the throbbing forehead vein,” Isaac said on a follow-up video call last month. Chastain riffed on the joke: “That was our third year at Juilliard, the throb.”

By then, it had been five months since the shoot wrapped. Life had returned to something like normal. Jokes were possible again. Both of them seemed looser, more relaxed. (Isaac had already poured himself one tequila shot and was ready for another.) No one cried.

Chastain had watched the show with her husband. And Isaac, despite his initial reluctance, had watched it, too. It didn’t seem to have changed his experience.

“I’ve never done anything like it,” he said. “And I can’t imagine doing anything like it again.”

###

[amysteryspot]

I’ll always choose you - Spencer Reid x GN!Reader

Summary: After his partner broke up with him, Spencer finds a letter adressed to him on their favorite book that leaves him rather confused.

Pairing: Spencer Reid x Gender Neutral Reader

Fandom: Criminal Minds

Prompts: exes to lovers + written confessions from this list

Warnings: little bit of angst; self-doubt; exes to lovers; English is not my first language; let me know if I forgot anything.

Word count: 1098

A/N: First time writing for Spencer. Couldn’t help myself because pretty boy has been living in my head 24/7, rent free. Hope he’s not too OOC and that you all like it.

It gets him off guard. He spots the book on his shelf and immediately gets up. One of yours. You must have forgotten it.

For Spencer, it still felt strange to separate your books from his, your life from his. He was used to seeing his life tangled in yours—your books in between his, your clothes hanging beside his in the wardrobe, the mess you two made and for some reason he didn’t mind.

The breakup caught him by surprise, things had been going well between the two of you. Or so he thought. Apparently, it wasn’t enough for you.

Despite his better judgment, Spencer opened the book, fingers tracing the notes you’ve made in the margins, post-its, loose pieces of paper, any space available. He smiles at it, knowing that this little fact was his fault. When you two started seeing each other you hated writing in books. All your copies were neat and untouched aside from the signs of time.

Spencer remembers saying to you that there was no reason not to write in books, it would only give you the insight into what you were thinking the first time you’ve read it if you ever decided to do it again. You joked that he had an eidetic memory and would probably never need to read a book twice. Spencer reassured you he used to read his favorite books more than once, explaining to you that it would be nice to read what the previous owner of a book thought about it if you ever decided to give it up.

It took you a while, but suddenly Spencer noticed how every time you picked a book to read you always made sure to have a pen or pencil with you. Sometimes you would go a little bit far, taking post-its and random papers with you.

Looking at your calligraphy spread all over the book in his hands, SPencer was glad that you decided to take his advice. At least now he could memorize a part of your thoughts about your favorite book and carry it with him.

For a moment, he thought about not returning the book. You had so many copies of it that maybe you wouldn’t notice one of them was missing. Then he decided against it, closing the book and turning to pick up his cellphone to send you a text. It was then that he noticed the paper laying on the floor.

He bent down to pick it up, unfolding it to see what it was. Surprise washed over him when he saw his name on it.

It was a letter. A letter you wrote to him.

Spencer headed to his couch, sitting down and placing the book by his side before he started to read the letter.

It didn’t surprise him in the slightest how eloquent your words sounded, you had always been good with words. “It’s my job”, you used to say, but Spencer knew that it was more than that, it was talent. What took the air from his lungs was your last sentences.

Life made you believe that nobody ever chose you, that nobody would ever choose you, well I will choose you. I’ll always choose you. In any version of reality, in whatever universe we may meet in. I’ll always choose you.

He fell back against the couch. The latter was dated just days before your break-up. If you loved him so much, why would you break up with him? Spencer couldn’t make sense of that and he planned on learning why you thought leaving him was an option after writing such heartfelt words that poured your love for him in ink and paper.

You looked as if you had seen a ghost when your eyes met his from across the room. What took you out of your daze was your coworker nudging your arm and telling you something, probably that they would cover for you so you could talk to him.

“Hi,” you greeted him confused. “What are you doing here?”

Spencer didn’t answer your question, he just handed you the letter he had just found, making you gasp as you reached for it, your fingers brushing against each other which ended up making you take it back quickly as if his touch burned you.

Sighing, you asked, “where did you find it?”

“It fell out of your favorite book,” he answered, “one of the copies, I mean. You forgot it at my apartment.”

“Didn’t even realize it.”

“Thought so, you have so many,” he smirked.

“Don’t call me out like that,” you smiled.

Spencer knew what you were doing—trying to redirect—and he was having none of it.

“You meant it,” he asks. “What you wrote here,” Spencer asked again, raising the letter he was still holding for emphasis.

“Spence…” you start, fidgeting.

“Why break up with me when it’s clear that you still love me? That we love each other?” He looks at her, emotion pouring out of every word. He wanted to understand, he needed to understand.

“Because I’m not good enough,” you exclaim, sounding surprised to give it up so easily. “What can I give you, Spencer? I’m just an ordinary person, I can’t challenge you, in the blink of an eye you will get tired of me, so it’s better if we break up right now than wait to suffer later.”

“That’s what you think? That I’ll get tired of you because you don’t challenge me?” he asks, incredulous. You blink a couple of times, looking away from him and biting your lips, one of your tells, meaning that you were nervous. “Do you have any idea how much you challenge me every day? You made me confront my feelings, my traumas, you were the one that convinced me to seek professional help after you noticed how I bottle everything up. You made me open myself to you when I never did it with anyone else, not even my closest friends!”

“Spencer…”

“That’s why you broke up with me? Because you said that you would always choose me and to you leaving me was giving me a better option at being happy?”

“Yes,” she whispers.

“You,” he starts, taking a step closer, taking your hands in his and pulling you close enough that his forehead was resting in his, “You are my best option at being happy. If you will always choose me as you said here, then choose to stay with me. Choose to stay by my side because that’s all I ever wanted.”

“Why?”

“Because I will always choose you.”

[toiletwipes]

and i'd give up forever to touch you

chapter six. normalcy.

Summary: Will does a job moment, speaks to his family and ponders the meaning of life, before arriving alone in his thoughts. Then, you do your thing and read his mind.

ao3 link. ~2.2k. masterlist.

---

unlocking the door to his office, he kicks it closed behind him and presses the power button on his computer.

despite it being almost an hour since he saw the three of you, he can’t help but miss the way you all filled the space, rosie being a little bit entitled but oh so confident in every move she makes, jared, though hardly knowing him, acted as though he had golden retriever genes in his blood, and you. you made the space comfortable, warm, and accommodating. not to mention the way you almost never hesitated to call out rosie for being less than nice towards him.

she could have a bit of a bite, he knows this, and he never really expected rosie to just accept him in their hangouts even though you did so easily.

moving on from his thoughts about earlier today, he logs in and loses himself in the meaningless tasks he had.

from data sheets to writing up emails to drafting papers, and then when his workload was finished a few hours in, he begrudgingly started on his homework. the amount of essays he had was uncalled for, the worksheets assigned were as if they were scanned from a copy of a copy of a copy.

bullshit as it was, he still had to turn them in.

his phone turns on, startling him as it starts ringing out one of his dad’s favorite shows’ theme song. he groans, leaning back in his stiff chair, he reaches over without much aim and picks the phone up. debating whether or not he should just throw his phone out of the window, he answers, turning it on speaker and putting it back on the table, he mumbles out a half-assed greeting.

“well hello there to you too, son,” his father is too cheerful in his opinion, it being seven in the evening and he still has a mountain of work to do. “are you still at the office? thought they close the building after six.”

“it’s a different office job.” he explains, rather dulled, and reads over the same line for the fifth time since they started this phone call, and immediately decides he can not handle talking to phil and reading through the painful amount of philosophy at the same time.

“oh! well good for you, you always said you hated the place,” except for the money, he thinks as he twirls a pencil between his fingers. “hey, quick question,” and here it comes, he rolls his eyes.

“when are you available?” rubbing his eyes enough to see stars, he has to ask why he would need to know such a thing. “i’ll be honest with you, mate, it’s tommy. he misses you and wants to spend some time with you, but is doing that thing where he won’t admit it.” okay, that’s reasonable. it’s been almost eight months since he’s seen them, after staying in town during the summer because of his lease.

“as much as i miss him too, it’s not that easy.” he bites on his lip, chewing on it as he thinks about his little brother and their old antics he’d followed him blindly. it’s not that he didn’t want to, there’s so much to do.

“sure it is, you’re either free soon or free later, just tell me a date and i’ll even drive him up there myself.”

a very tempting deal. where he doesn’t have to drive the three hours to his hometown to visit and appease his baby brother, but then he has college, work, not to mention his new friends-

and your project.

“listen, i’m- i’m going to be busy, i’m working with a friend on some music, a small gig-”

he hears a gasp and immediately regrets everything, including answering this call and being born.

“you didn’t tell me you have friends now! and music? start from the beginning.”

“phil- please, i’ve got work-”

“and you’ve refused to answer my texts and phone calls for the past two weeks, so start talking.”

he leans down to bang his forehead onto the wood, but then groans as he lifts his head back up and into the phone. “listen, i’ve been trying to make sense of it too, but see, they just sort’ve- asked me to be part of,” he really doesn’t want to say it's more like a band of only two known names so far, but what else can he say? “they’ve asked me to be part of their band and i figured that since i’ve been stuck in this loop, i might as well do something to get out of it.”

“yes but how did you two meet? and when did this happen?”

phil with his pestering, bothersome father antics, has not changed one bit since he’s seen him.

“we’re in a class together, phil, and barely a week, now can i get back to my work?” will begs his father to leave him alone but then he hears a door slam in the background and he groans, if somebody knows he’s on the phone with will they will not let him go so soon.

“absolutely not, hey tommy, techno, come say hi to wilbur!” both of his brothers? really?

“will!” though, hearing his brother shout for him and then the automatic scramble no doubt for phil’s phone, “will, where have you been, big man? it’s been so boring without you and techno is starting to guess where i place the boobytraps at so that is mildly inconvenient.”

tommy’s rambles’ matches so similarly to yours, that he briefly wonders if that’s why it’s comforting.

“that was you?” he hears techno screech on the other side and then a large bout of yelling makes him hold the phone away from him as he tries to rub out the exhaustion out of his eyes.

“okay, will, you gotta help me out here, this brat has been nothing but a pain in my ass-”

“-don’t swear, bitch, phil just said no swearing-!” 

-techno, tommy! what did i just say about swearing?!”

the overlap in yelling made him want to throw himself out of the window more so than the phone.

bringing it to his face, he mutters out, “as much as i’ve missed our talks i suddenly have to talk to my landlady, so i will-”

“not so fast, will, i know you don’t have classes on the weekends and that you don’t work on sundays, so how about i drop tommy off at your place on a saturday night so that way you two can catch up? how does that sound, hm? good, alright, see you next week, love ya son, bye!”

then his father hangs up. the beat that follows, including silence, is almost deafening. placing his phone down on the desk, he admits it could've been worse. and as much as he would deny it in front of anybody, he could admit to himself at least, he missed their endless bickering and presence more than he remembered. (though he would definitely have to figure out something with tommy.)

now, all there is to do is finish some homework before he heads home.

~~~

laying on his bed with his guitar on his stomach, he didn’t think he’d be back in this spot. even before he posted his songs online, he remembered nights in his bed, strumming for ideas.

ideas for his music, for his life. what to make of himself when all he wanted to do is lose himself in the music in his earbuds, what was going to happen after he finishes his education and what job he was going to need to make ends meet. assuming he leaves home at all.

these thoughts often plagued his nights, leaving little sleep for him and the biggest eye bags to carry.

and it was most comforting when he was in a spot like this, consumed and lost to the strings and the way it would sway him to an almost-sleep. caught in a daze, caught in the music, the possibility of finding the perfect tune, the one song that would get him out of his head and out of this stupor.

he never found it of course, but the action never stopped comforting him.

strumming up and down, he hums and thinks about you and rosie. you’ve been nothing but a kind force, to him at the least, making him comfortable whenever he’s around to the best of your abilities, and how rosie’s somehow made it less awkward with him being a total stranger, save for what you’ve told her about him. which he knows nothing about.

you could’ve told her that he smells weird or that he chews the eraser off his pencils, or something just absolutely bizarre, but knowing you, you wouldn’t possibly do that (would you?) when you’ve asked him to do this- this cover with you.

him specifically.

and he keeps that close to his chest, holding to his ribs and lungs to where he can breathe it in and never forget. you’re possibly the first one who’s approached him with kind intentions, the first to keep being kind.

and though it’s been less than a week with less than daily interactions, he doesn’t mind how close he feels to you already. being close to you means being close to rosie.

she’s so much more than what he thought.

though, he doesn’t know if that’s a good or a bad thing just yet, he tells himself this is just how she is off the screen. and when he inevitably asks her out, she’ll smile and tell him yes, wondering how long it was going to take him.

thinking about the two of you brought up the memories of the panties and the cameras. the previously mentioned are sitting in the bottom drawer of his dresser, and the cameras are still installed.

having just as many chances as him actually meeting up with you, taking it down was just not an option at the moment.

speaking of the cameras, he slowly sits up as he sets the guitar aside. prying the computer and starting the program up, he wonders what it would mean for the three of you after the cover is finished and polished and never to be listened to other than the first time. wonders if you will keep being friends with him, and the thought of you dropping him after getting what you want leaves him tasting bitterness on his tongue, leaves him spiralling in his bedroom.

swallowing both the dryness in his mouth and the tears down his throat, he stares at the footage he finds. you sitting against the wall on your bed with papers spread out in front of you, some song playing in the background.

listening to the music and the papers shuffling, he calms down enough as you mutter about renting out the auditorium and if that's a thing, he lets himself believe in a you that won’t leave him in the deep pit of loneliness and obsession.

thinking about you and hearing you talk might put him at ease but he doesn’t know if he should, checking the time and seeing it has passed a significant amount since he crawled on top of his sheets.

doubt shackles him to silently watching you as you move papers and writing on them with pen or a pencil, he couldn’t tell. then you lean back and sigh, crossing your arms over your chest as you nudge your foot to pick something up, a little bit weird but who’s he to judge you, opening it and pressing several times on the screen.

and then you’re calling him.

your name on the screen.

his breath catches in his throat, had you read his mind? had you known he was feeling this way? surely not. surely it’s a matter of coincidences, accidents that led to this very moment.

you had no way of knowing that he needed you, needed your calming voice and the way you knew he was uncomfortable. picking it up, he ignores his fast-beating heart and incredibly dry mouth as he answers, holding it close to his ear as he waits for you to speak.

“oh! that was fast- oh well anyways, are you doing anything right now, will?” he blinks to himself as he looks around, his guitar next to his computer, the tv turned off after being cursed at.

“not particularly?”

“do you have, what normal people would call, an irregular sleeping schedule?” you want to do something, he can see the way you’re wiggling in your spot on your bed, as if you couldn’t be held down for long.

“yes? why are you asking me this?” he watches as you scoop the papers and lay them on your desk, shuffling some shoes onto your feet as you throw a hoodie and a beanie on your head, both of those belonging to him.

“would you want to join me for a late night drive around town?” you ask but it turns to rambling on how you couldn’t sit when there’s just so many things that need to happen and it just can’t happen right now, turning to look outside your window, pulling the long sleeves over your fingers again and sitting on the edge as you finally come to a stop, speaking wise.

and when it seems as if you made eye-contact with the camera, your eyes skip over it as you wait for his response.

breathing in deeply, he turns his eyes from the computer, shutting it off as he swings his legs off the bed. “why not?”

“good, see you in ten, send your address.” then you hung up and he’s stuck with his thoughts again.

...

taglist: @fxnxtical @ghostburlovebot @ollie-overscore @marinaloveswomen @roygbivvie @beehive-syst3m @boiled-onionrings @mayempress

[misscammiedawn]

Hypno Asks Answered 3/5

20. What’s one tip you have for other hypnotists/subjects? Learn your partner's modality and style as soon as possible and explore within your own spaces. Find your unique styles and be open to the idea that new things will pop up and intrigue. There's so many ideas floating around. Also when you read stories/see art that you like ALWAYS LINK THEM, trust me on this. Some of my best scenes happened because I sat down with a partner and enjoyed a piece of media together. Oh and if you're a data analyst nerd with a nerdy partner, feel free to catalogue things obsessively. It's FUN! 21. Do you have any tips for how to negotiate hypnosis play? None that wouldn't have been copied from better minds. I'm lucky to have partners who pioneered the consent models we all enjoy within the community. My biggest tips would be "be honest" it is better to not get anything than to force yourself to get what someone else wants at personal cost and "be aware of your partner's comfort and enthusiasm levels". 22. Do you like your hypnosis to involve power exchange, or not? Typically I do. I just find it more enticing. I normally hypnotize for hyponosis sake, but my dominant and submissive selves always find a way to make sure that those power dynamics are felt. What's better than giving or receiving honorifics? 23. For you, how does hypnosis fit into a relationship? Just in the bedroom, or as part of BDSM relationship? It's a backbone of the relationship in pretty every respect. That said my asexuality and switch nature make it hard to make any firm and concrete definitions of anything. It's all fluid. That said, one relationship pretty much has hypno in the corners, like a nice thing that barely comes up. One I am a domme when I am available to be so and just a loving girlfriend at other times. One I am owned, collared and you'd be surprised how little hypnosis and D/s elements are involved in that and another we schedule time and negotiate based on moods but pretty much always have some triggers, teasing and tempting involved. I just like being where my energy takes me and treating my relationships as they find their comfort.

24. Are you interested in a 24/7 hypnotic enslavement relationship? Again, technically I am in one such relationship. There just happens to be very little conditioning within it. I've not really noticed any differences between my pre-kink lifestyle and my post-kink lifestyle. I just call her Goddess [or "My Lady", pending moods] and wear my collar when I play with anyone outside of the house. 25. Have you ever experienced strong, sudden feelings for a hypnotist/subject? How did you deal with that? I can't really say I have. Thanks to my first hypnotist being an abusive piece of shit I typically am extraordinarily cautious about new people. I may spend my learning phase admiring from afar, but when I decide someone is "Okay" I have been through a lot of doubt and worry. Now, when my girlfriend says "I am Commanding enough to Dominate you" and my emotions are tugged by a hypnotic compulsion? Then… yes. I have felt strong, sudden feelings for a hypnotist. They're just temporary ones, built from well deserved and earned ones. 26. Are you interested in hypnotising/being hypnotised by people of a gender you are not attracted to? I'm ace, baby. I don't give a shit about attraction. As for romance. I've been desperately in love with men, women, enbies, transwomen and transmascs. There're other locations on the spectrum of gender, but I doubt I could find a gender I couldn't find love within. Though I'd prefer to not fall in love again for a while. If my damaged heart can manage that FOR FIVE MINUTES. 27. What’s your favourite work of hypnosis erotica? I usually say "The Kind of Girl I could Love" by Jukebox: https://mcstories.com/KindOfGirlICouldLove/KindOfGirlICouldLove.html because I had not come to terms with my kink or asexuality when I read it and just broke down in sobbing tears after reading it. I also happen to enjoy Theatre Slut by Sammynona because it is partially about me (albeit a lot more sexual than me) and was a collab between us as ex-movie theatre employees: https://mcstories.com/TheaterSlut/TheaterSlut.html

And if a story becomes part of my scene work then I can't help but adore it, so recency bias has me need to mention "Love Bites" by Jukebox: https://mcstories.com/LoveBites/LoveBites.html

28. What’s your favourite spiral? That pink one that goes around. I'm not too much of a spiral gal. But that one does the rounds, so I think of it. 29. What’s your favourite hypno-themed image/caption/piece of art? Skypenotized by Zko is an easy answer. I just love the comedy of errors and Mrs. Erickson is goals. I'm always attracted to powerful redhead hypnotists, especially ones in suits.

[hillbillyoracle]

Rural Accessibility Matters

We really do not talk enough about how the move to streaming and banning local copies absolutely screws over rural folks so much. 

It’s one of the reasons that for the things I make available for free, why I do not make them read only copies. I always try to make it so you can save it to your personal collection. It’s part of why I provide the vast majority of my writing for free because I know it’s expensive as hell to develop and maintain a library of local copies. It’s part of why I prefer to work in mediums that don’t require special knowledge to copy and save - written and visual. 

For years I did that as someone who had grown up rural but moved to a city out of consideration for the strong ties I still had in the country. 

But now I’m looking at having to move back. 

One of the first things my parents mentioned when we discussed moving in with them was that the internet is generally very poor. There are times when there are none and even when they have it, the ability to stream media is incredibly limited.

At first, I wasn’t that concerned. I thought well I’ll just go back to what I used to do - store local copies. But it turns out, that it’s not only incredibly hard by virtue of there being very few and very limited store fronts to purchase them but most work arounds are illegal. So people who are denied access to good internet by monopolies that use the “there’s not enough people living here to merit the upgrades” excuse are also denied of media generally. 

Are there some options? Yes. But they’re nearly all expensive or toeing the line legally. 

I think what’s more frustrating than anything is that when I try to talk to people about this issue they act as if it’s natural. It is not. 

Other countries with similar economies have better internet speeds across the board and with far better rural internet access. This is a manufactured issue that providers depend on convincing you is “natural”. 

Why this is a rural specific issue is that when I’ve gone without internet in cities, it was pretty easy to walk or take a short drive into a place with internet and the libraries were close + well stocked. I could easily get to a place with free wifi, download stuff to my phone, and delete it to make space for more. Many apps would auto clear things I’d already listened to or watched but it wasn’t an issue because daily I’d walk down to the dentist office or the creepy strip mall or whatever I was near and grab more. 

It’s not as easy when you’re rural. With gas prices rising it’s expensive just to drive to get internet somewhere. Local copies provide a more stable turnover and are able to be stored in long term formats like external hard drives or local servers that don’t need to be cleared out to make room for new stuff nearly as often. Yes it’s nice that when I actually can get to a library I can download ebooks and audiobooks - but when they disappear after 2 weeks and there are more barriers to me getting back to the library - that impacts my access to books. A local copy can be read again and again in the meantime. 

What’s been especially frustrating to see is primarily metropolitan based artists who make providing no download options (paid or free) for their work the norm based on the argument that artists deserve control over their work. While yes, that’s true that artists deserve control, to not even provide a method for those who need local copies to get one, you’re ensuring your work will only ever be consumed by people who are also in areas that were deemed important enough for good internet and pushing people toward criminalized methods of obtaining that media - which artists love to shit on. 

You can call it stealing all you want, but if you make ads or small streaming kickbacks your only revenue stream and don’t even provide a way for people who need local copies to pay you...to me at least there’s always going to be an undercurrent of saying “sucks to suck” to rural folks especially. 

This mentality is always especially egregious to me from people in cities who are making work informed by folk traditions that originated in rural areas still deprived of internet access. Indie bluegrass/folk musicians are a great example of this. I don’t want to slam this artist by name but I was looking to see if I could pick up a CD or digital download of an older album by a indie folk artist I like and just could not find it. I don’t think it’s available. Unsurprisingly, when I checked, they live in NYC and are from a city in their home state. 

Compare that to folk musicians still living in Appalachia or the South - Appalshop works with so many musicians to not only help the record, mix, and master their music but makes local copies available for purchase for every artist I’ve seen them work with.

This goes for writing too. So many folks currently making work in genres with DIY histories have no DIY ethos anymore. If you’re blogging and putting your thoughts directly into the hands of readers, you are, to some degree at least, participating in a culture influenced by zine and DIY punk movements generally. 

It’s worth thinking about how those people thought of media - as something they wanted to get into as many hands as possible for as cheaply - both to producer and consumer - as possible. 

Read about anticopyright and copyright alternatives. Get familiar with critiques of permission culture. Consider what hard copies and digital local copies you’ll make available. 

You have decisions to make. Will you plaster your works with “DO NOT SAVE, DO NOT STEAL” disclaimers or will you openly let people know they’re welcome to save a local copy of your work? Will you depend on ads or will you make your videos + music + podcast available to saving locally (and let people know how to pay you)? It’s not simple or straightforward and it requires a certain level of knowledge folks who’ve grown up in the streaming era may not have. I know I’m still in the process of figuring it all out and I grew up in the era of ripping any and all CDs you could get your hands on. 

But how you answer these questions will directly impact rural access to your materials so it’s worth taking the time to consider.

And if you’re someone living in a “developed” area and you need a personal reason to care about this shift - the internet is no where near the given it’s being treated as right now. Governments around the world have effectively shut down or majorly limited internet at the drop of a hat. Natural disasters are not only more common but are taking longer to bounce back from when they occur in areas they historically haven’t (Texas Ice Storm 2021). Cyberattacks are escalating in what they target. 

These are issues that impact all of us and really we all should be looking at what we can do to build out our local file collection no matter where we live. It’s just that rural access tends to be the canary in the coal mine on these issues and it’s high time more folks started paying attention. 

All of this is to say that while I know there’s not such thing as universally accessibility, folks need to at least consider the needs of rural folks a whole lot more. 

[googledocsdyke]

Do you have any thoughts/recommended texts for Cas analysis? I genuinely love the dean gender studies and I just wanna know what people might apply to Cas.

yes absolutely!! while dean studies is my first love i also deeply love cas analysis (casnalysis?) and wanna strive to do more of it. here’s some stuff off the top of my head:

1. gender, sexuality, heavenly embodiment

this is much more theological and less psychological than dean’s whole Deal because there’s so much fascinating stuff around how the angels in general experience express and conceptualise gender (@autisticandroids has a good post about angel gender & lily sunder has some regrets) but for cas in particular there’s this fascinating kind of collective fandom agreement (which i DO also agree with) that cas’ own gender kind of is gay man, that he actively chose gay manhood, but also that he’s kind of..... lacking the Insane Genderishness that dean exhibits at all times, even though he actively chose to engage in male gendering and became so comfortable housed Within Jimmy that he, as some post i saw the other day that i can’t find anymore said, “became his own body” when jimmy died. 

like on the one hand there’s an almost-canonical transness to the whole process but it also never feels fully written-into because 1) the supernatural writers for all their insanity are sometimes very boring and *most* of the time only feel interested in narratively expressing angels As Their Vessels anyways and just like leaving convenient spaces around these questions (boldest thing they ever did was hot girl cas which i WISH i had the range to unpack) 2) there’s a vague inevitabilist shrug to the whole thing since they obviously weren’t gonna recast misha collins (though they HAVE tried to get rid of him) and 3) something amorphous about cas’ entire..... personhood? makes him Empty Of Gender as a contrast to dean’s Full Of Gender (i believe it was @deanwinchestergender who said this) and like is it just the juxtaposition to dean/jensen’s whole insane Deal? or something else? 

like he actively chooses the terms of his own embodiment and yet narratively it feels like a shrug. and we’re all like “well obviously even though he’s a celestial being he was always a gay man” and like WHY. i love it idk idk much to think about! and yeah just in general the theological questions of possession and cas genuinely Becoming a man as he iterates himself consciously towards humanity it almost feels like. by doing the most boring things possible with his gender they made it interesting? idk if that makes sense.

2. discipline, free will, metanarratives

cas is like a tool (“i am not a hammer, as you say”) held in constant discipline and surveillance by the system that enmeshes him and it’s really, really fascinating to watch the way the angels hold each other to conformity. especially pre-god they kind of produce each other as foucauldian disciplinary subjects (which i posted about here) in perpetual visibility through angel radio, generating their own and each other’s conformity rather than being directly ruled through like a single centralised source of power. only the spectre of a god. and obviously cas’ whole thing is that he has ALWAYS disobeyed and the narrative affords him this psychological interiority never given to the foucauldian subject, an internal will and desire for freedom in a way that fits more with the liberal subject (super roughly and not with the same pro-capitalist implications but he has this internal drive for self-liberation. 

and that’s also where the metanarrative comes in ofc! i think it was @dykecas who said that cas is a real person written by people who hate him, and there’s this crack in the narrative (mirroring the crack in his chassis) where cas gets in, over and over, despite all the order imposed by the show’s authorfathergod. like we’ve all seen the analysis about how it was Never supposed to be this way they DID try to fire misha collins in 2012 and yet this gay man literally cannot be stopped! i think actually his appearance in scoobynatural is a neat little distillation of this — he drops into this animated world originally with a singular purpose (Save Sam And Dean) the same way he dropped into lazarus rising with a single 3-episode arc (Save Dean). huge hammer behaviour. his “utility” diminishes within the narrative (he finds that he can’t fly in the scooby doo universe) and so he is no longer a tool/means to an end that salvation moves Through. and in the process (and huge creds to @lesbianyuugi for this) he does something ENTIRELY unrelated to his original cas-as-tool aim, and learns, like, the meaning of laughter from shaggy and scooby. WHICH brings me onto the third point

3. love, queer kinship, family-making

HE’S GAY AND HE’S A DAD! i feel like a lot of tumblr throws around the term “found family” in a very flat and tropey way (which is fine it’s cute and fun no matter what!) but like . GOD there’s so much specific stuff going on here. like the way that cas (unintentionally) obliterates the midwestern white christian nuclear family (made incarnate in the novaks) which like could be uniformly portrayed as an act of deep malice and villainy but instead grows to serve as a surrogate (if imperfect/complex, but DEEPLY loving) father figure for the gay daughter who has now escaped that nuclear family/seen it destroyed depending on how you read it? like he remasters the entire concept of fatherhood and it’s a very interesting (if DEEPLY) unintentional subversion of the homewrecking non-nuclear gay trope. cas is so good because his character arc doesn’t say “look, gay people can be normal and have perfect settled families just like you” it says “gay people DON’T have normal settled families actually and they are full of love anyways! or Because of the abnormalcy itself!) 

to cite ziz lesbianyuugi again he DOES queer fatherhood in his parenting of jack particularly because it really is one of the ONLY parent-child relationships in the show that breaks the incessant cycle of abuse and control and cold indifference perpetuated by the authorfathergod (a cycle reified in 15x20 lol). like god’s treatment of cas and his siblings mirrors john’s treatment of sam and dean (particularly dean) mirrors victor’s treatment of krissy and her crew mirrors dean’s later treatment of jack. there is a CONSTANT reiteration of the story of authorfathergod (often a father tightly entwined in biological kinship) treating a child as a mechanism or a tool or a means to an end. and cas looks at ALL that he has suffered and all that he is ever known and chooses constantly to reject it with every piece of love he expresses for his child. and not to sound like the kind of academic people make fun of on twitter but there is an INHERENT queerness to that. gay love will pierce through [the veil of death/the thick silence of abuse/the mechanism of godly control/hegemonic american masculinity] and save the day

anyways here are some very haphazard recs on everything above for further reading:

angels in america (tony kushner)

histrionics of the pulpit: trans tonalities of religious enthusiasm

the public universal friend: religious enthusiasm in revolutionary america

discipline and punish (michel foucault)

friendship as a way of life (michel foucault)

the genesis of blame (recommended by @pietacastiel who has GREAT theology content in general

all about love (bell hooks)

the chapter “when hated characters talk back” in anti-fandom: dislike and hate in the digital age (is actually explicitly about cas)

also cannot recommend enough following the ppl i tagged above!! most of the unlinked stuff is available through http://libgen.li/ and bookshop is a good alternative to amazon if ur american and want physical copies