#dynamic market

[foxnangelseo]

Exploring Investment Options in India: A Guide to Financial Growth and Security

Investment options in India encompass a diverse array of opportunities that enable individuals to grow their wealth and secure their financial future. Investing involves allocating resources in various avenues with the goal of generating returns over time. This practice is fundamental for individuals looking to build wealth, beat inflation, and achieve long-term financial goals.

The importance of investing in India stems from the country's robust and rapidly growing economy. With a burgeoning middle class and a dynamic market, numerous investment avenues present themselves to both seasoned investors and beginners. Understanding these options is crucial to making informed decisions aligned with individual financial objectives.

One of the most traditional yet reliable investment avenues is the stock market. India's stock exchanges, such as the National Stock Exchange (NSE) and Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE), provide opportunities for individuals to invest in a wide range of companies across sectors. Stocks offer the potential for capital appreciation and dividends, albeit with inherent risks that require a prudent approach and research-driven decisions.

Another popular investment avenue is mutual funds. These professionally managed funds pool money from various investors to invest in diversified portfolios of stocks, bonds, or other securities. They offer diversification, liquidity, and professional management, making them an accessible option for investors with varying risk appetites.

Fixed-income instruments like government-backed schemes, corporate bonds, and fixed deposits (FDs) from banks offer stable returns and security, albeit with comparatively lower returns than equities. These serve as a conservative option for investors seeking stability and capital preservation.

Real estate stands as a tangible and historically appreciating asset class in India. Investing in properties, be it residential or commercial, can potentially yield rental income and capital appreciation. However, this avenue demands significant capital, long-term commitment, and careful assessment of market trends.

In recent years, alternative investment options such as gold, commodities, and digital assets like cryptocurrencies have gained traction among investors seeking diversification and higher returns. These avenues come with their own set of risks and require a thorough understanding before venturing into them.

The significance of investing in India lies in the potential to generate wealth over time. By carefully diversifying across various investment avenues, individuals can mitigate risks and capitalize on growth opportunities. Moreover, investing encourages financial discipline, compounding, and a proactive approach towards achieving long-term financial objectives like retirement planning, wealth creation, and achieving financial independence.

In conclusion, exploring investment options in India is pivotal for individuals aiming to secure their financial future and achieve their life goals. Each investment avenue carries its own risk and return profile, and thus, a well-thought-out investment strategy that aligns with individual financial goals and risk tolerance is imperative. With prudent decision-making and a long-term perspective, investing in India offers the potential for wealth creation and financial security.

This post was originally published on: Foxnangel

[marketxcel]

Unravelling the Expanding Landscape of Market Research in India

The size of the market research industry is rapidly expanding, driven by factors like rising consumerism, data-driven insights, and technological advancements. As businesses recognize the intrinsic value of consumer insights, market research becomes a strategic imperative for decision-making and customer-centric strategies.

[dreadark]

round 1.png

[mostlysignssomeportents]

FTC vs surveillance pricing

Support me this summer on the Clarion Write-A-Thon and help raise money for the Clarion Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers' Workshop!

In the mystical cosmology of economics, "prices" are of transcendental significance, the means by which the living market knows and adapts itself, giving rise to "efficient" production and consumption.

At its most basic level, the metaphysics of pricing goes like this: if there is less of something for sale than people want to buy, the seller will raise the price until enough buyers drop out and demand equals supply. If the disappointed would-be buyers are sufficiently vocal about their plight, other sellers will enter the market (bankrolled by investors who sense an opportunity), causing supplies to increase and prices to fall until the system is in "equilibrium" – producing things as cheaply as possible in precisely the right quantities to meet demand. In the parlance of neoclassical economists, prices aren't "set": they are discovered.

In antitrust law, there are many sins, but they often boil down to "price setting." That is, if a company has enough "market power" that they can dictate prices to their customers, they are committing a crime and should be punished. This is such a bedrock of neoclassical economics that it's a tautology "market power" exists where companies can "set prices"; and to "set prices," you need "market power."

Prices are the blood cells of the market, shuttling nutrients (in the form of "information") around the sprawling colony organism composed of all the buyers, sellers, producers, consumers, intermediaries and other actors. Together, the components of this colony organism all act on the information contained in the "price signals" to pursue their own self-interest. Each self-interested action puts more information into the system, triggering more action. Together, price signals and the actions they evince eventually "discover" the price, an abstraction that is yanked out of the immaterial plane of pure ideas and into our grubby, physical world, causing mines to re-open, shipping containers and pipelines to spark to life, factories to retool, trucks to fan out across the nation, retailers to place ads and hoist SALE banners over their premises, and consumers to race to those displays and open their wallets.

When prices are "distorted," all of this comes to naught. During the notorious "socialist calculation debate" of 1920s Austria, right-wing archdukes of religious market fundamentalism, like Von Hayek and Von Mises, trounced their leftist opponents, arguing that the market was the only computational system capable of calculating how much of each thing should be made, where it should be sent, and how much it should be sold for.

Attempts to "plan" the economy – say, by subsidizing industries or limiting prices – may be well-intentioned, but they broke the market's computations and produced haywire swings of both over- and underproduction. Later, the USSR's planned economy did encounter these swings. These were sometimes very grave (famines that killed millions) and sometimes silly (periods when the only goods available in regional shops were forks, say, creating local bubbles in folk art made from forks).

Unplanned markets do this too. Most notoriously, capitalism has produced a vast oversupply of carbon-intensive goods and processes, and a huge undersupply of low-carbon alternatives, bringing the human civilization to the brink of collapse. Not only have capitalism's price signals failed to address this existential crisis to humans, it has also sown the seeds of its own ruin – the market computer's not going to be getting any "price signals" from people as they drown in floods or roast to death on sidewalks that deliver second-degree burns to anyone who touches them:

https://www.fastcompany.com/91151209/extreme-heat-southwest-phoenix-surface-burns-scorching-pavement-sidewalks-pets

For market true believers, these failures are just evidence that regulation is distorting markets, and that the answer is more unregulated markets to infuse the computer with more price signals. When it comes to carbon, the problem is that producers are "producing negative externalities" (that is, polluting and sticking us with the bill). If we can just get them to "internalize" those costs, they will become "economically rational" and switch to low-carbon alternatives.

That's the theory behind the creation and sale of carbon credits. Rather than ordering companies to stop risking civilizational collapse and mass extinction, we can incentivize them to do so by creating markets that reward clean tech and punish dirty practices. The buying and selling of carbon credits is supposed to create price signals reflecting the existential risk to the human race and the only habitable planet known to our species, which the market will then "bring into equilibrium."

Unfortunately, reality has a distinct and unfair leftist bias. Carbon credits are a market for lemons. The carbon credits you buy to "offset" your car or flight are apt to come from a forest that has already burned down, or that had already been put in a perpetual trust as a wildlife preserve and could never be logged:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/03/18/greshams-carbon-law/#papal-indulgences

Carbon credits produce the most perverse outcomes imaginable. For example, much of Tesla's profitability has been derived from the sale of carbon credits to the manufacturers of the dirtiest, most polluting SUVs on Earth; without those Tesla credits, those SUVs would have been too expensive to sell, and would not have existed:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/11/24/no-puedo-pagar-no-pagara/#Rat

What's more, carbon credits aren't part of an "all of the above" strategy that incorporates direct action to prevent our species downfall. These market solutions are incompatible with muscular direct action, and if we do credits, we can't do other stuff that would actually work:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/10/31/carbon-upsets/#big-tradeoff

Even though price signals have repeatedly proven themselves to be an insufficient mechanism for producing "efficient" or even "survivable," they remain the uppermost spiritual value in the capitalist pantheon. Even through the last 40 years of unrelenting assaults on antitrust and competition law, the one form of corporate power that has remained both formally and practically prohibited is "pricing power."

That's why the DoJ was able to block tech companies and major movie studios from secretly colluding to suppress their employees' wages, and why those employees were able to get huge sums out of their employers:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-Tech_Employee_Antitrust_Litigation

It's also why the Big Six (now Big Five) publishers and Apple got into so much trouble for colluding to set a floor on the price of ebooks:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Apple_(2012)

When it comes to monopoly, even the most Bork-pilled, Manne-poisoned federal judges and agencies have taken a hard line on price-fixing, because "distortions" of prices make the market computer crash.

But despite this horror of price distortions, America's monopolists have found so many ways to manipulate prices. Last month, The American Prospect devoted an entire issue to the many ways that monopolies and cartels have rigged the prices we pay, pushing them higher and higher, even as our wages stagnated and credit became more expensive:

https://prospect.org/pricing

For example, there's the plague of junk fees (AKA "drip pricing," or, if you're competing to be first up against the wall come the revolution, "ancillary revenue"), everything from baggage fees from airlines to resort fees at hotels to the fee your landlord charges if you pay your rent by check, or by card, or in cash:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/06/07/drip-drip-drip/#drip-off

There's the fake transparency gambit, so beloved of America's hospitals:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/06/13/a-punch-in-the-guts/#hayek-pilled

The "greedflation" that saw grocery prices skyrocketing, which billionaire grocery plutes blamed on covid stimulus checks, even as they boasted to their shareholders about their pricing power:

https://prospect.org/economy/2024-06-12-war-in-the-aisles/

There's the the tens of billions the banks rake in with usurious interest rates, far in excess of the hikes to the central banks' prime rates (which are, in turn, justified in light of the supposed excesses of covid relief checks):

https://prospect.org/economy/2024-06-11-what-we-owe/

There are the scams that companies like Amazon pull with their user interfaces, tricking you into signing up for subscriptions or upsells, which they grandiosely term "dark patterns," but which are really just open fraud:

https://prospect.org/economy/2024-06-10-one-click-economy/

There are "surge fees," which are supposed to tempt more producers (e.g. Uber drivers) into the market when demand is high, but which are really just an excuse to gouge you – like when Wendy's threatens to surge-price its hamburgers:

https://prospect.org/economy/2024-06-07-urge-to-surge/

And then there's surveillance pricing, the most insidious and profitable way to jack up prices. At its core, surveillance pricing uses nonconsensually harvested private information to inform an algorithm that reprices the things you buy – from lattes to rent – in real-time:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/06/05/your-price-named/#privacy-first-again

Companies like Plexure – partially owned by McDonald's – boasts that it can use surveillance data to figure out what your payday is and then hike the price of the breakfast sandwich or after-work soda you buy every day.

Like every bad pricing practice, surveillance pricing has its origins in the aviation industry, which invested early on and heavily in spying on fliers to figure out how much they could each afford for their plane tickets and jacking up prices accordingly. Architects of these systems then went on to found companies like Realpage, a data-brokerage that helps landlords illegally collude to rig rent prices.

Algorithmic middlemen like Realpage and ATPCO – which coordinates price-fixing among the airlines – are what Dan Davies calls "accountability sinks." A cartel sends all its data to a separate third party, which then compares those prices and tells everyone how much to jack them up in order to screw us all:

https://profilebooks.com/work/the-unaccountability-machine/

These price-fixing middlemen are everywhere, and they predate the boom in commercial surveillance. For example, Agri-Stats has been helping meatpackers rig the price of meat for 40 years:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/10/04/dont-let-your-meat-loaf/#meaty-beaty-big-and-bouncy

But when you add commercial surveillance to algorithmic pricing, you get a hybrid more terrifying than any cocaine-sharks (or, indeed, meth-gators):

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/tennessee-police-warn-locals-not-flush-drugs-fear-meth-gators-n1030291

Apologists for these meth-gators insist that surveillance pricing's true purpose is to let companies offer discounts. A streaming service can't afford to offer $0.99 subscriptions to the poor because then all the rich people would stop paying $19.99. But with surveillance pricing, every customer gets a different price, titrated to their capacity to pay, and everyone wins.

But that's not how it cashes out in the real world. In the real world, rich people who get ripped off have the wherewithal to shop around, complain effectively to a state AG, or punish companies by taking their business elsewhere. Meanwhile, poor people aren't just cash-poor, they're also time-poor and political influence-poor.

When the dollar store duopoly forces all the mom-and-pop grocers in your town out of business with predatory pricing, and creating food deserts that only they serve, no one cares, because state AGs and politicians don't care about people who shop at dollar stores. Then, the dollar stores can collude with manufacturers to get shrunken "cheater sized" products that sell for a dollar, but cost double or triple the grocery store price by weight or quantity:

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

Yes, fliers who seem to be flying on business (last-minute purchasers who don't have a Saturday stay) get charged more than people whose purchase makes them seem to be someone flying away for a vacation. But that's only because aviation prices haven't yet fully transitioned to surveillance pricing. If an airline can correctly calculate that you are taking a trip because you're a grad student who must attend a conference in order to secure a job, and if they know precisely how much room you have left on your credit card, they can charge you everything you can afford, to the cent.

Your ability to resist pricing power isn't merely a function of a company's market power – it's also a function of your political power. Poor people may have less to steal, but no one cares when they get robbed:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/07/19/martha-wright-reed/#capitalists-hate-capitalism

So surveillance pricing, supercharged by algorithms, represent a serious threat to "prices," which is the one thing that the econo-religious fundamentalists of the capitalist class value above all else. That makes surveillance pricing low-hanging fruit for regulatory enforcement: a bipartisan crime that has few champions on either side of the aisle.

Cannily, the FTC has just declared war on surveillance pricing, ordering eight key players in the industry (including capitalism's arch-villains, McKinsey and Jpmorgan Chase) to turn over data that can be used to prosecute them for price-fixing within 45 days:

https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2024/07/ftc-issues-orders-eight-companies-seeking-information-surveillance-pricing

As American Prospect editor-in-chief David Dayen notes in his article on the order, the FTC is doing what he and his journalistic partners couldn't: forcing these companies to cough up internal data:

https://prospect.org/economy/2024-07-24-ftc-opens-surveillance-pricing-inquiry/

This is important, and not just because of the wriggly critters the FTC will reveal as they use their powers to turn over this rock. Administrative agencies can't just do whatever they want. Long before the agencies were neutered by the Supreme Court, they had strict rules requiring them to gather evidence, solicit comment and counter-comment, and so on, before enacting any rules:

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

Doubtless, the Supreme Court's Loper decision (which overturned "Chevron deference" and cut off the agencies' power to take actions that they don't have detailed, specific authorization to take) will embolden the surveillance pricing industry to take the FTC to court on this. It's hard to say whether the courts will find in the FTC's favor. Section 6(b) of the FTC Act clearly lets the FTC compel these disclosures as part of an enforcement action, but they can't start an enforcement action until they have evidence, and through the whole history of the FTC, these kinds of orders have been a common prelude to enforcement.

One thing this has going for it is that it is bipartisan: all five FTC commissioners, including both Republicans (including the Republican who votes against everything) voted in favor of it. Price gouging is the kind of easy-to-grasp corporate crime that everyone hates, irrespective of political tendency.

In the Prospect piece on Ticketmaster's pricing scam, Dayen and Groundwork's Lindsay Owens called this the "Age of Recoupment":

https://pluralistic.net/2024/06/03/aoi-aoi-oh/#concentrated-gains-vast-diffused-losses

For 40 years, neoclassical economics' focus on "consumer welfare" meant that companies could cheat and squeeze their workers and suppliers as hard as they wanted, so long as prices didn't go up. But after 40 years, there's nothing more to squeeze out of workers or suppliers, so it's time for the cartels to recoup by turning on us, their customers.

They believe – perhaps correctly – that they have amassed so much market power through mergers and lobbying that they can cross the single bright line in neoliberal economics' theory of antitrust: price-gouging. No matter how sincere the economics profession's worship of prices might be, it still might not trump companies that are too big to fail and thus too big to jail.

The FTC just took an important step in defense of all of our economic wellbeing, and it's a step that even the most right-wing economist should applaud. They're calling the question: "Do you really think that price-distortion is a cardinal sin? If so, you must back our play." Support me this summer on the Clarion Write-A-Thon and help raise money for the Clarion Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers' Workshop!

https://clarionwriteathon.com/members/profile.php?writerid=293388

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

https://pluralistic.net/2024/07/24/gouging-the-all-seeing-eye/#i-spy

[kacievvbbbb]

Thinking about Mihawk joining the Red Hair Pirates because he makes for a terrible subordinate.

He's unwilling, unhelpful, stubborn, apathetic, refuses to listen to Shanks (will listen to Benn) and is so obviously there just because he's sleeping with their captain. There most be so much gossip amongst the lower crewmates about it. Thats the scandal of the red hair fleet. Mihawk joining the crew and then sleeping his way to the top. lol

Also mihawk would come in and be like don't think I'm going to swab the deck or anything. and then be up at 3 in the morning swabbing said deck because god forbid he live in such filth (never mind that the deck had literally just been swabbed)

And he of course has to remodel the entire red force t fit his delicate sensibilities because he refuses to live in a vessel that doesn't even have a single cross

[sovamurka]

let's be honest, for very ironic reasons, official writers were not really responsible for timebomb being so good, fortiche carried most of the timebomb writing

yes, even in s1 since this is really where writers (*VERY LOUD COUGH* amanda) picked up on very delicate and deliberate details that fortiche put in s1e7, details which could be potentially explored later (as a side plot, of course *sarcasm*, we don't want to overshadow other dynamics of the show, do we?)

but especially in s2 since it's basically confirmed by pascal charrue, fortiche's co-founder, that the episode fortiche studio were most emotionally and creatively involved with in matters of writing is episode 7

which is even further confirmed by linke in the artbook where he states that episode 7 is basically a literal love letter to french culture and that he hopes fortiche is really proud of it

like... wow, the "nobody loves timebomb more than french people do" joke is actually not a joke at all

[daisiesonafield-blog]

This is an answer to a question that nobody asked me, but I saw it asked on Gina's blog @twopoppies and for some reason felt like contributing my opinion, hope yall don't mind.

The question was:

Why is it that Louies are so much more tolerant of Larry Stylinson than Harries?

It is my impression that this is the case, or rather was the case (and I say was for a reason*), due to how their careers have progressed differently, with timing playing a huge role in it. For starters, it's important to emphasize how Harry's marketing and image have always been tied to the sex appeal persona created for him. He was marketed like that as a 16 year old, and it continued like that through all of 1D and his solo career. So the fans that comprise the harries ended up falling in that category for the most part. Additionally, in my opinion, the fact that Harry began his solo career much earlier, and got a high level of success right with his 1st solo album, led him to gain a much larger fanbase much quicker. Whereas Louis' solo career took several years to grow like that, so his fanbase stayed smaller for longer, and as a result it was more likely that he'd have more larrie fans than Harry's fanbase. It's strictly a numbers game.

Now looking at how Louis' been marketed, he was not really marketed as a sex symbol for fans to desire. He was always marketed as safe, a friend, someone you could trust, someone fun. This was done through 1D via his relationship with Eleanor. They always painted that relationship as a steady, long term relationship. From the start saying that she was a childhood sweetheart, and a girl he brought home to meet the family. So that painted him as unavailable as a love interest to the fanbase at large. He was also always funny, so Louis came across as a friend who you could trust and have fun with. Someone to rely on.

I would say that this largely carried on through the beginnings of Louis' career, in part because it was slowed down due to covid delaying it, but also due to its marketing also relying on the friend image. He was a lad, sweet and caring, but a friend. His fanbase grew, but I think there was still a level of balance between solo fans and louie-larries. The pandemic brought in a boom of new fans. People who were in lockdown with nothing to do who fell down the rabbit hole of Larry. So while Louis' fanbase grew, I would say it grew a lot in larries because of 2020. FITF is where things began to change and his fanbase really grew with the larger public. I think this can be attributed to his massive tour and social media presence. His styling and image was sexier during this tour, so he also grew a lot of fans who now viewed him as a sex symbol, someone to desire. That paired with his reported split from Eleanor made him available, which in turn helped grow his image of the "rockstar boyfriend" for people to desire. I think this was also largely encourage through more frequent online discussions of how hot Louis is. Something that wasn't really commonly a part of fandom discussion prior to 2020. Whereas for Harry, it has always been a part of discussion, because it's always been how he has been marketed.

*Overall I think this is rapidly changing, and we've already seen it in how Louis' fanbase has changed through FITF. I don't think the fandom at large will have this dynamic for long, as it grows and changes.

Anyways, this is my opinion. If others have a different opinion or would like to contribute, feel free to share.

[thewarriorssun]

Sometimes I wonder, if I dislike booktok spaces for the same reasons I dislike Zutarians, because the books seem to attract almost the same type of people

[strawberry-smog]

[starliteonearth]

The more and more I think about it, because it has been bugging me for a minute, I think the reason why Rhaesaria can happen and Rhaenicent can't -and probably never will- is that Rhaenicent is just too big of an ask. It's too much of a canon divergence and an incredibly massive one at that. They've already changed so much from the books to make their relationship what it is in the show but actually putting Rhaenyra and Alicent together in a romantic relationship would literally derail the plot. Like I literally can't think of a way they could put them together and still accurately portray the Dance. I really don't think it's feasible. Rhaesaria however, can happen because it literally affects nothing, in the grand scheme of things. Nothing about and around the two of them changes. With Rhaenicent, you'd have restructure so many things (again) to not only make it possible but believable to the greater audience. Especially given where the story is right now. The bad fanfiction slander that would further arise from making them cannon would practically snuff out the show. And that's why I believe their relationship can only, and always will be, just subtext.

[klanced]

I still have no idea how Veracxa actually played out in the show but I’m enamored by the idea that the team spends years fighting like the bitchiest most tenacious most androgynous lesbian ever. And then she becomes Lance’s sister-in-law.

[alwaysbewoke]

[captainbragd-personal]

Hey speaking of dungeon meshi, I think its really fucked up that the story brings up slavery Twice and just glosses over it. Esp when one of said mentions is pointing out that one of the characters OWNS another which makes all their interactions a whole lot less cute.

Anyway I hope Kuro skins Mickbell and makes a rug out of them.

[yanderejustforyou]

Day 10 - Winter Market || Murmuring Crowds, Rows of Stalls, and the Smell of Food

Pairing: Kuroo Tetsurou x Reader Genre: Dark Romance with Food Kink

Short and Sweet

The bustling winter market was alive with a vibrant energy that danced in the frosty air, enveloping all who wandered its paths. Sounds collided in a chaotic symphony—murmuring crowds filled with laughter and jovial chatter, the melodic clinking of coins exchanged for goods, and the mouthwatering sizzle of food being prepared at the myriad of stalls. Each bite-sized morsel showcased the culinary delights of the season, and the air was tinged with a concerto of enchanting aromas. The crispness of the winter atmosphere carried the tantalizing scents of roasted chestnuts crackling over open flames, spiced cider simmering to perfection, and freshly baked pastries, their golden-brown crusts glistening under soft lighting like a warm embrace amidst the cold.

You clutched your ceramic mug filled with steaming cider, the warmth radiating through your fingers, providing a small but welcome comfort against the chill that nipped at your cheeks. The market was a sensory overload, but despite the excitement all around you, there was an anchoring presence right behind you—Kuroo. His proximity brought an unusual mix of comfort and nervous energy that sent delightful shivers racing down your spine.

His hand rested lightly on the small of your back, an intimate gesture that guided you effortlessly through the throngs of people. Each step seemed intentional as he maneuvered you toward a stall decorated with an enticing array of candied fruits, their vibrant colors sparkling like jewels in the twilight. “You’ve got to try this one,” he said softly, his voice wrapping around you like a warm scarf. He plucked a sugar-coated strawberry from the display, its crimson flesh gleaming seductively in the golden lights, and raised it to your lips. His amber eyes glinted with mischief and something deeper, catching the soft glow of the fairy lights that adorned the stalls like a canopy of stars. “Come on, open up,” he coaxed gently.

An uncertain flutter of nerves thrummed through you, making you hesitate. The intensity of his gaze was potent, almost magnetic, compelling you to lean in closer. When the moment finally came, you leaned forward, and his fingers lingered a heartbeat longer than necessary, brushing your lips as he fed you the succulent strawberry. The sweetness exploded on your tongue, a luscious burst of flavor that momentarily took your breath away. Yet, it wasn’t just the delicious taste that made your knees weak; it was the way he watched you—his eyes devouring the sight of you enjoying something so simple, yet so intimate.

“Good, right?” he asked, his voice low and smooth, laced with an undercurrent of something tantalizingly dangerous. He leaned in even closer, the warm breath spilling against your ear despite the pervasive cold around you. “I want to see that look on your face again.” The request hung in the air, charged with unspoken promises and heated implications.

You peeled away from the candied fruit stall and moved towards the next one, a charming little booth that was buzzing with the scent of savory dumplings being steamed to perfection. Kuroo’s playful persistence was relentless. Each delectable bite he offered you came with a cleverly laced comment, his fingers brushing against your lips or your cheek, creating sparks that danced on your skin. His possessive streak was unmistakable, manifesting in the way he stood so close, his arm pressing against yours, a tacit reminder of his claim.

“You taste better when you’re happy,” he teased, his grin transforming into something sharp, almost predatory. “But I wonder how you’d look if I made you blush like this somewhere... less public.” The implications of his words ricocheted in your mind, igniting heat in your cheeks that had nothing to do with the cold air or the bustling crowds.

The murmuring crowds faded into a distant hum as Kuroo’s words settled deep within you, a tantalizing promise that made your heart race. His hand slid down your arm, fingers lacing through yours—a warm, secure hold amidst the chaos of the market. The mingling scents of food, laughter, and winter warmth no longer held sway over your senses; instead, it was Kuroo, and the way he seemed to consume you with every lingering glance. The world around you dimmed in significance, narrowing down to the electrifying connection between you two, turning a simple outing into something far more intoxicating.

[twopoppies]

Hi!! First time in ur inbox- sorry it's such word vomit. I've seen you be so sweet to people in your asks and I thought I'd join with my own thoughts that have been rattling around in my head since last night.

Why is it that the general population see larries as actually, genuinely, crazy and delusional fans? I know it serves it's purpose in maintaining the believability of a closet, but

when i got into the fandom and started going through all the receipts& explanations, I remember still being on the fence for a while, unsure and sort of paranoid about whether I was allowed to believe in it. I can remember telling a friend that asked if I thought it was real: "The craziest part is that you look through everything, read about PR and closeting in the industry, and you are left thinking: Well, holy shit. It's entirely possible that this is true. It wouldn't even be a special case- all of these things that fans theorise about Larry have 100% happened to other celebs."

I understand people not wanting to believe in 'conspiracies' but when it's straight relationships, it's ok? when it's the mainstream media narrative, it's ok? even though artists have told us repeatedly that the media has their own agenda? I'll never get that. How are we the crazy ones? They're the hypocrites.

Because I'm new to the fandom I've been watching old clips on youtube, and I got recommended a video essay on 1D and the whole comment section was full of people saying larries caused gaylor to happen (ew as if we would ever), and comparing what we believe to kpop stans thinking every one of their idols is secretly dating (which btw, yes kpop stans are intense and often fall for easily debunked conspiracies but. statistically speaking, some of those boys have GOT to be fruity.)

It just makes me wonder why people have to come at us like that. Saying all our proof can be debunked... a lot of it can lol but that's more of an issue of younger or naiver people getting obsessed with the idealised romance of H&L and seeing writing on the wall when it's just some accidental smudges. If they don't want to believe us, fine. But why are they so sure they know better than we do?

Hi, love. This would be a PhD thesis if I really broke it down. But I think a couple of the main reasons are that 1DHQ worked overtime on the gaslighting and the story that larries ruined HL's friendship. Then they added in "Louis" tweeting about how Larry is bullshit, and he's straight, and he's had to deny "Larry" a bunch of times over the years. So from the early days, it was considered being a "good fan" to shit on larries. Then, add in that Harry was marketed as a womanizer, Louis was marketed as the world's best boyfriend, and tabloids calling anyone "crazy" who thought they could be anything but aggressively straight. Larries just became the scapegoat.

Add in a sprinkle of homophobia ("stop assigning a sexuality to people" as if "straight" isn't a sexuality) and compulsory heterosexuality, and you've got a perfect storm. Plus, unless you've got a basic understanding of closeting and the way the music/film industries operate and only you've really followed things from early on and cataloged the insane amount of "coincidences," it's easy to explain everything away.

more here

[age-of-moonknight]

Werewolf by Night: Red Band (Vol. 1/2024), #2.

Writer: Jason Loo; Penciler: Sergio Dàvila; Inkers: Jay Leisten and Aure Jimenez; Colorist: Alex Sinclair; Letterer: Cory Petit