#us general insurance company

[hijinxinprogress]

Civilian Gothamites realizing they can get vengeance through Sword!Robin

Gothamites figuring out if they happen to mention a rogue treating animals poorly within hearing range of sword!Robin that rogue will be in custody with at least four fractures and a concussion and Damian being completely aware that like 63% of these people are lying but it’s the only way he can get experience with the nonlethal takedowns he’s experimenting with bc everyone keeps complaining about how he treats his opponents and allies 

Like he’s guiding a civilian to safety and they mention that “this would be the worst thing to happen to me today if riddler didn’t stab my fucking cat” and this civilian does not own a cat but they did own a car that was just paid off but riddler fucking crushed it with a stupid ass hot air balloon that’s shaped like a fucking question mark and Damian is aware of this bc he was the one that verified the insurance claim (but he’s been looking for a reason to punch Nygma in the throat since his last Arkham escape when he called Damian a moron)

And he also knows that if he plays along with it and says ‘as if I’d let that gaudy and tactless imbecile get away with committing such atrocities’ when prompted that he’ll get away with barely a slap on the wrist like he gets three half hearted but long lectures he’s not going to listen to and an online sensitivity training seminar he goads Tim into completing (Damian and Tim 100% try to trick each other into doing work they don’t want to do and full heartedly believe the other has no idea what they’re doing)

Bruce’s tendency for finding small crashouts at risk of becoming future rogues in Gotham and deciding they need love & supervision but what actually happens bc he’s so fucking awkward is they get almost the same amount of supervision just with like an hour of intense helicopter parenting a week but honestly besides that they just have more money and resources to do fuck shit

Tim 🤝🏾 Damian: using the manipulation tactics they learned from their mothers then later improved on with help from an assassin cult and bat/cape interrogation questioning techniques on the homies

[alessandriana]

I discovered today that several people in my office were not aware of this, so: health insurance in the US does not work like home or car insurance- they cannot and do not raise your individual premiums if you use it. So go to the fucking doctor, oh my god.

[sureuncertainty]

if i have to see one more post about disney from people who don't work here or at least live in the area i'm gonna lose it

[aroguexenolith]

If your employer fires you without cause you can file for unemployment benefits! Which probably most people know, but what people DON’T know is that former employees claiming unemployment benefits can make the employer have to pay higher taxes. Not like, a ton, but still—you get to hit back just a little bit.

[needlepokes]

do you guys know if i can directly ask insurance companies beforehand if they cover CGMs? like is that a thing i can do?

i've been on my parents insurance for years and it barely covers anything so i never bothered checking. I have no idea how to look for an insurance company that will cover all my diabetes supplies and i have no idea if asking directly is an option

[pyjamac]

people on the internet are on an "making everything about ai" any% speedrun and it's truly an incredible sight to behold

yes. they did talk abt ai tbf but my understanding is it’s not don’t use ai it’s abt the way in which ai should be credited (as a tool not as a writer in and of itself). but it’s really secondary it is not what the strike is about at all.

[larkiethings]

I was writing this in the tags but I want to include sources. I’m gonna tell you why drugs don’t go generic right away, and I want you to know that I don’t agree with the reasoning here, but this is how the system works.

New drugs are priced so much to recoup some of the losses of research. Drug research is insanely expensive. Whether you’re talking about buffers and reagents in the lab, machines designed to give scientists highly specific information, or required animal research, it’s EXPENSIVE. I tried to pull up an example for a standard microscope but companies that make lab equipment don’t have prices on their website, you have to fill out a form to request a quote.

So, lab equipment is expensive. You also have to go through rounds of animal testing. One lab mouse can cost hundreds of dollars, depending on how it has been genetically designed to give the best research results. And spoiler alert, you need repeat results, meaning multiple mice, and then larger lab animals because humans aren’t mice and we need to be sure drugs are safe before testing them on humans. Raising and caring for lab animals also takes lots of highly trained staff, which adds to the expense. This is partially why a lot of scientists in animal research are pushing for alternative research methods, because it is more humane and more cost effective to reduce our reliance on animal models.

So it’s expensive to do research, and then you get into patent law. Drugs get 20 years of patents, although that’s from when the patent was filed - which is often BEFORE the drug hits the market. You can patent a drug and then still have several more years of development. So in practice, drugs are often on the market for less than their patent time. From the drug company’s perspective, they need to recoup their losses in that amount of time, and the high price of the name brand drug is funding the ongoing research of the next drug.

Generic drugs don’t have to go through animal or clinical trials, so companies making generic drugs ONLY have to consider the manufacturing cost when pricing their drugs. This is why they’re so much cheaper, because all they have to prove is that their drug is the same as the patented one.

Lenacapavir is STILL IN CLINICAL TRIALS, according to the source linked above. It hasn’t been approved for prevention. I believe it will probably be approved, but the point is that it’s a very new drug and still within its patent range. I’m not entirely sure when the patent was filed, but the fact is that it will have a generic eventually. Just not right now. But the reasoning for drugs being so expensive is that they’re factoring in the cost of research, not just the cost of production. I don’t like it! It’s a bad system! But that’s why it is the way it is

Source

[thoughtportal]

Opinion Here’s how to get free Paxlovid as many times as you need it

When the public health emergency around covid-19 ended, vaccines and treatments became commercial products, meaning companies could charge for them as they do other pharmaceuticals. Paxlovid, the highly effective antiviral pill that can prevent covid from becoming severe, now has a list price of nearly $1,400 for a five-day treatment course.

Thanks to an innovative agreement between the Biden administration and the drug’s manufacturer, Pfizer, Americans can still access the medication free or at very low cost through a program called Paxcess. The problem is that too few people — including pharmacists — are aware of it.

I learned of Paxcess only after readers wrote that pharmacies were charging them hundreds of dollars — or even the full list price — to fill their Paxlovid prescription. This shouldn’t be happening. A representative from Pfizer, which runs the program, explained to me that patients on Medicare and Medicaid or who are uninsured should get free Paxlovid. They need to sign up by going to paxlovid.iassist.com or by calling 877-219-7225. “We wanted to make enrollment as easy and as quick as possible,” the representative said.

Indeed, the process is straightforward. I clicked through the web form myself, and there are only three sets of information required. Patients first enter their name, date of birth and address. They then input their prescriber’s name and address and select their insurance type.

All this should take less than five minutes and can be done at home or at the pharmacy. A physician or pharmacist can fill it out on behalf of the patient, too. Importantly, this form does not ask for medical history, proof of a positive coronavirus test, income verification, citizenship status or other potentially sensitive and time-consuming information.

But there is one key requirement people need to be aware of: Patients must have a prescription for Paxlovid to start the enrollment process. It is not possible to pre-enroll. (Though, in a sense, people on Medicare or Medicaid are already pre-enrolled.)

Once the questionnaire is complete, the website generates a voucher within seconds. People can print it or email it themselves, and then they can exchange it for a free course of Paxlovid at most pharmacies.

Pfizer’s representative tells me that more than 57,000 pharmacies are contracted to participate in this program, including major chain drugstores such as CVS and Walgreens and large retail chains such as Walmart, Kroger and Costco. For those unable to go in person, a mail-order option is available, too.

The program works a little differently for patients with commercial insurance. Some insurance plans already cover Paxlovid without a co-pay. Anyone who is told there will be a charge should sign up for Paxcess, which would further bring down their co-pay and might even cover the entire cost.

Several readers have attested that Paxcess’s process was fast and seamless. I was also glad to learn that there is basically no limit to the number of times someone could use it. A person who contracts the coronavirus three times in a year could access Paxlovid free or at low cost each time.

Unfortunately, readers informed me of one major glitch: Though the Paxcess voucher is honored when presented, some pharmacies are not offering the program proactively. As a result, many patients are still being charged high co-pays even if they could have gotten the medication at no cost.

This is incredibly frustrating. However, after interviewing multiple people involved in the process, including representatives of major pharmacy chains and Biden administration officials, I believe everyone is sincere in trying to make things right. As we saw in the early days of the coronavirus vaccine rollout, it’s hard to get a new program off the ground. Policies that look good on paper run into multiple barriers during implementation.

Those involved are actively identifying and addressing these problems. For instance, a Walgreens representative explained to me that in addition to educating pharmacists and pharmacy techs about the program, the company learned it also had to make system changes to account for a different workflow. Normally, when pharmacists process a prescription, they inform patients of the co-pay and dispense the medication. But with Paxlovid, the system needs to stop them if there is a co-pay, so they can prompt patients to sign up for Paxcess.

Here is where patients and consumers must take a proactive role. That might not feel fair; after all, if someone is ill, people expect that the system will work to help them. But that’s not our reality. While pharmacies work to fix their system glitches, patients need to be their own best advocates. That means signing up for Paxcess as soon as they receive a Paxlovid prescription and helping spread the word so that others can get the antiviral at little or no cost, too.

{source}

[thistlecrimes]

Things I've learned from getting covid for the first time in 2023

I wear an N95 in public spaces and I've managed to dodge it for a long time, but I finally got covid for the first time (to my knowledge) in mid-late November 2023. It was a weird experience especially because I feel like it used to be something everyone was talking about and sharing info on, so getting it for the first time now (when people generally seem averse to talking about covid) I found I needed to seek out a lot of info because I wasn't sure what to do. I put so much effort into prevention, I knew less about what to do when you have it. I'm experiencing a rebound right now so I'm currently isolating. So, I'm making a post in the hopes that if you get covid (it's pretty goddamn hard to avoid right now) this info will be helpful for you. It's a couple things I already knew and several things I learned. One part of it is based on my experience in Minnesota but some other states may have similar programs.

--------

The World Health Organization states you should isolate for 10 days from first having symptoms plus 3 days after the end of symptoms.

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At the time of my writing this post, in Minnesota, we have a test to treat program where you can call, report the result of your rapid test (no photo necessary) and be prescribed paxlovid over the phone to pick up from your pharmacy or have delivered to you. It is free and you do not need to have insurance. I found it by googling "Minnesota Test to Treat Covid"

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Paxlovid decreases the risk of hospitalization and death, but it's also been shown to decrease the risk of Long Covid. Long Covid can occur even from mild or asymptomatic infections.

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Covid rebound commonly occurs 2-8 days after apparent recovery. While many people associate Paxlovid with covid rebound, researchers say there is no strong evidence that Paxlovid causes covid rebound, and rebounds occur in infections that were not treated with Paxlovid as well. I knew rebounds could happen but did not know it could take 8 days. I had mine on day 7 and was completely surprised by it.

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If you start experiencing new symptoms or test positive again, the CDC states that you should start your isolation period again at day zero. Covid rebound is still contagious. Personally I'd suggest wearing a high quality respirator around folks for an additional 8-9 days after you start to test negative in case of a rebound.

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Positive results on a rapid test can be very faint, but even a very faint line is positive result. Make sure to look at your rapid test result under strong lighting. Also, false negatives are not uncommon. If you have symptoms but test negative taking multiple tests and trying different brands if you have them are not bad ideas. My ihealth tests picked up my covid, my binax now tests did not.

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EDIT: I'd highly suggest spending time with friends online if you can, I previously had a link to the NAMI warmline directory in this post but I've since been informed that NAMI is very much funded by pharmaceutical companies and lobbies for policies that take autonomy away from disabled folks, so I've taken that off of here! Sorry, I had no idea, the People's CDC listed them as a resource so I just assumed they were legit! Feel free to reply/reblog this with other warmlines/support resources if you know of them! And please reblog this version!

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I know that there is so much we can't control as individuals right now, and that's frightening. All we can do is try our best to reduce harm and to care for each other. I hope this info will be able to help folks.

[pippin-pippout]

For those following the SAG and WGA strikes there’s new shit a-brewing, this time targeting background actors (aka extras).

Some may know that one of the issues SAG is fighting is that studios want to take virtual scans of background actors and use them in perpetuity (meaning forever) without any additional compensation to those background actors. So you would just see a bunch of AI generated humans in future movies based off of a background actor that worked one day.

This is already shitty because working as an extra for 3 days on a union set (if you receive a union voucher each day) is one of the main ways to qualify for SAG eligibility. This means that a lot of actors working background do not yet have union protection and likely do not have an agent or manager to protect them. Disney has already allegedly told background actors to do this on the set of Wanda Vision: https://www.avclub.com/wandavision-background-actors-say-disney-scanned-them-1850709900

Here’s where it's worse.

There is one main company that supplies background actors for major union and non union productions. Central Casting. They love to brag about their very long influence in the industry - in old movies dating back to the 40s you can hear jokes about hiring extras from Central Casting.

Central Casting has been including an electronic document for all actors in their database to sign as part of onboarding. Signing it gives Central Casting the right to use your images, your videos, and YOUR LIKENESS in perpetuity, forever. They would OWN your likeness. Instead of it being a studio supplying the AI background actors, it would be Central Casting instead.

Receiving any work from Central Casting in the future is conditional upon signing it. No signature = no extra work = no extra income for union actors trying to make health insurance minimums, no union extra work for pre-SAG members.

SAG already reached out to Central Casting to tell them to stop. Central Casting refused.

Edit to say: this is not new. It’s part of actors onboarding and is called the Photo, Image, and Video Release. It’s phrased to sound like you are just giving them permission to use your image and video for CC’s website and promotional purposes. But the actual language is much broader. It's only recently being brought up as a point for discussion because some casting directors (who are generally supportive of the strike) started pointing it out.

Central Casting is owned by Entertainment Partners which is also a giant software conglomerate and owns a lot of the software used to organize background casting and pay actors. https://www.ep.com/company/about-us/

[creepyscritches]

I read your post about open enrollment for the ACA and was hoping you might expand on why you believe it would take years to dismantle. I've been terrified that with a Republican house/senate, Trump could just snap his fingers and make it go away within months of taking office. I'd love some reassurance that that's not possible.

Hiya, sure I can share some thoughts on the matter! First, it's very important to understand the ACA is a huuuuuuuuuuuuge system with subject matter experts in dozens of places throughout the process. I'm one of those SMEs, but I am at the end of the process where the revenue is generated, so my insight is limited on the public facing pieces.

What this means is that I am professionally embedded in the ACA in a position that exists purely to show what conditions people are treated for and then generate that data into what's called a "risk score". There's about 6 pages I could write on it, but the takeaway is that the ACA is

1) intricately interwoven with the federal government

2) increasingly profitable, sustainable, and growing (it is STILL a for-profit system if you can believe it)

3) wholeheartedly invested in by the largest insurance companies in the country LARGELY due to the fact that they finally learned the rules of how to make the ACA a thriving center of business

4) since the big issuers are arm+leg invested in the ACA, there is a lot of resistance politically and on an industry level to leave it behind (think of the lobbyists, politicians, corporations that will fight tooth and nail to protect their profit + investment)

The process to calculate a risk score takes roughly 2 years. There is an audit for the concurrent year and then a vigorous retro audit for the prev year - - this is a rolling cycle every year. Medicare has a similar process. These are RVP + RADV audits if you would like the jargon.

Eliminating the ACA abruptly is as internally laughable as us finishing the RADV audit ahead of schedule. If Trump were to blow the ACA into smithereens on day 1, he would be drowning in issuer complaints and an economic health sector that is essentially bleeding out. You cut off the RVP early? We have half of next RADV stuck in the gears now. You cut off the RADV early? No issuer will get their "risk adjusted" payments for services rendered in the prev benefit year (to an extent, again very complex multi-process system).

The ACA is GREAT for the public and should be defended on that basis alone. However, the inner capitalistic nature of the ACA is a powerful armor that has conservatives + liberals defending it on a basis of capital + market growth. It's not sexy, but it makes too much money consistently for the system to be easily dismantled.

Or at least that's what I can tell you from the money center of the ACA. they don't bring us up in political conversation because we are confusing to seasoned professionals, boring to industry outsiders, and consistently we are anathema to the anti-ACA talking points.

I am already preparing for next year's RVP for this window of open enrollment. That RVP process will feed into the RADV in 2026. In 2025, we begin the RADV for 2024. If nothing else, the slow fucking gears of CMS will keep the ACA alive until we finish our work at the end of the process. I highly doubt that will be the only reason the ACA is safeguarded, but it is a powerful type of support to pair with people protecting the ACA for other reasons.

I work every day to show, defend, and educate on how many diagnoses are managed thru my company's ACA plans. My specialty is cancer and I see a lot of it. The revenue drive comes from the Medical Loss Ratio (MLR) rule stating only 20% MAX of profit may go to the issuer + the 80% at a minimum must go back to the customer or be invested in expanding benefits. The more people on the plan using it, the higher that 20% becomes for the issuer and the more impactful that 80% becomes for the next year of benefit growth. It is remarkably profitable once issuers stop seeking out "healthy populations". The ACA is a functional method for issuers to tap into a stable customer base (sick/chronic ill customers) that turns a profit, grows, and builds strong consumer bases in each state.

The industry can never walk away from this overnight - - this is the preferred investment for many big players. Changing the direction of those businesses will be a monumental effort that takes years (at least 2 with the audits). In the meantime, you still have benefits, you still have care, and you still have reason to sign up. Let us deal with the bureaucracy bullshit, go get your care and know you have benefits thru 2025 and we will be working to keep it that way for 2026 and forward. This is a wing of the federal government, it is not a jenga tower like Trump wishes.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Epic Systems, a lethal health record monopolist

Epic Systems makes the dominant electronic health record (EHR) system in America; if you're a doctor, chances are you are required to use it, and for every hour a doctor spends with a patient, they have to spend two hours doing clinically useless bureaucratic data-entry on an Epic EHR.

How could a product so manifestly unfit for purpose be the absolute market leader? Simple: as Robert Kuttner describes in an excellent feature in The American Prospect, Epic may be a clinical disaster, but it's a profit-generating miracle:

https://prospect.org/health/2024-10-01-epic-dystopia/

At the core of Epic's value proposition is "upcoding," a form of billing fraud that is beloved of hospital administrators, including the "nonprofit" hospitals that generate vast fortunes that are somehow not characterized as profits. Here's a particularly egregious form of upcoding: back in 2020, the Poudre Valley Hospital in Ft Collins, CO locked all its doors except the ER entrance. Every patient entering the hospital, including those receiving absolutely routine care, was therefore processed as an "emergency."

In April 2020, Caitlin Wells Salerno – a pregnant biologist – drove to Poudre Valley with normal labor pains. She walked herself up to obstetrics, declining the offer of a wheelchair, stopping only to snap a cheeky selfie. Nevertheless, the hospital recorded her normal, uncomplicated birth as a Level 5 emergency – comparable to a major heart-attack – and whacked her with a $2755 bill for emergency care:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/10/27/crossing-a-line/#zero-fucks-given

Upcoding has its origins in the Reagan revolution, when the market-worshipping cultists he'd put in charge of health care created the "Prospective Payment System," which paid a lump sum for care. The idea was to incentivize hospitals to provide efficient care, since they could keep the difference between whatever they spent getting you better and the set PPS amount that Medicare would reimburse them. Hospitals responded by inventing upcoding: a patient with controlled, long-term coronary disease who showed up with a broken leg would get coded for the coronary condition and the cast, and the hospital would pocket both lump sums:

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

The reason hospital administrators love Epic, and pay gigantic sums for systemwide software licenses, is directly connected to the two hours that doctors spent filling in Epic forms for every hour they spend treating patients. Epic collects all that extra information in order to identify potential sources of plausible upcodes, which allows hospitals to bill patients, insurers, and Medicare through the nose for routine care. Epic can automatically recode "diabetes with no complications" from a Hierarchical Condition Category code 19 (worth $894.40) as "diabetes with kidney failure," code 18 and 136, which gooses the reimbursement to $1273.60.

Epic snitches on doctors to their bosses, giving them a dashboard to track doctors' compliance with upcoding suggestions. One of Kuttner's doctor sources says her supervisor contacts her with questions like, "That appointment was a 2. Don’t you think it might be a 3?"

Robert Kuttner is the perfect journalist to unravel the Epic scam. As a journalist who wrote for The New England Journal of Medicine, he's got an insider's knowledge of the health industry, and plenty of sources among health professionals. As he tells it, Epic is a cultlike, insular company that employs 12.500 people in its hometown of Verona, WI.

The EHR industry's origins start with a GW Bush-era law called the HITECH Act, which was later folded into Obama's Recovery Act in 2009. Obama provided $27b to hospitals that installed EHR systems. These systems had to more than track patient outcomes – they also provided the data for pay-for-performance incentives. EHRs were already trying to do something very complicated – track health outcomes – but now they were also meant to underpin a cockamamie "incentives" program that was supposed to provide a carrot to the health industry so it would stop killing people and ripping off Medicare. EHRs devolved into obscenely complex spaghetti systems that doctors and nurses loathed on sight.

But there was one group that loved EHRs: hospital administrators and the private companies offering Medicare Advantage plans (which also benefited from upcoding patients in order to soak Uncle Sucker):

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8649706/

The spread of EHRs neatly tracks with a spike in upcharging: "from 2014 through 2019, the number of hospital stays billed at the highest severity level increased almost 20 percent…the number of stays billed at each of the other severity levels decreased":

https://oig.hhs.gov/oei/reports/OEI-02-18-00380.pdf

The purpose of a system is what it does. Epic's industry-dominating EHR is great at price-gouging, but it sucks as a clinical tool – it takes 18 keystrokes just to enter a prescription:

https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/2729481

Doctors need to see patients, but their bosses demand that they satisfy Epic's endless red tape. Doctors now routinely stay late after work and show up hours early, just to do paperwork. It's not enough. According to another one of Kuttner's sources, doctors routinely copy-and-paste earlier entries into the current one, a practice that generates rampant errors. Some just make up random numbers to fulfill Epic's nonsensical requirements: the same source told Kuttner that when prompted to enter a pain score for his TB patients, he just enters "zero."

Don't worry, Epic has a solution: AI. They've rolled out an "ambient listening" tool that attempts to transcribe everything the doctor and patient say during an exam and then bash it into a visit report. Not only is this prone to the customary mistakes that make AI unsuited to high-stakes, error-sensitive applications, it also represents a profound misunderstanding of the purpose of clinical notes.

The very exercise of organizing your thoughts and reflections about an event – such as a medical exam – into a coherent report makes you apply rigor and perspective to events that otherwise arrive as a series of fleeting impressions and reactions. That's why blogging is such an effective practice:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/05/09/the-memex-method/

The answer to doctors not having time to reflect and organize good notes is to give them more time – not more AI. As another doctor told Kuttner: "Ambient listening is a solution to a self-created problem of requiring too much data entry by clinicians."

EHRs are one of those especially hellish public-private partnerships. Health care doctrine from Reagan to Obama insisted that the system just needed to be exposed to market forces and incentives. EHRs are designed to allow hospitals to win as many of these incentives as possible. Epic's clinical care modules do this by bombarding doctors with low-quality diagnostic suggestions with "little to do with a patient’s actual condition and risks," leading to "alert fatigue," so doctors miss the important alerts in the storm of nonsense elbow-jostling:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5058605/

Clinicians who actually want to improve the quality of care in their facilities end up recording data manually and keying it into spreadsheets, because they can't get Epic to give them the data they need. Meanwhile, an army of high-priced consultants stand ready to give clinicians advise on getting Epic to do what they need, but can't seem to deliver.

Ironically, one of the benefits that Epic touts is its interoperability: hospitals that buy Epic systems can interconnect those with other Epic systems, and there's a large ecosystem of aftermarket add-ons that work with Epic. But Epic is a product, not a protocol, so its much-touted interop exists entirely on its terms, and at its sufferance. If Epic chooses, a doctor using its products can send files to a doctor using a rival product. But Epic can also veto that activity – and its veto extends to deciding whether a hospital can export their patient records to a competing service and get off Epic altogether.

One major selling point for Epic is its capacity to export "anonymized" data for medical research. Very large patient data-sets like Epic's are reasonably believed to contain many potential medical insights, so medical researchers are very excited at the prospect of interrogating that data.

But Epic's approach – anonymizing files containing the most sensitive information imaginable, about millions of people, and then releasing them to third parties – is a nightmare. "De-identified" data-sets are notoriously vulnerable to "re-identification" and the threat of re-identification only increases every time there's another release or breach, which can used to reveal the identities of people in anonymized records. For example, if you have a database of all the prescribing at a given hospital – a numeric identifier representing the patient, and the time and date when they saw a doctor and got a scrip. At any time in the future, a big location-data breach – say, from Uber or a transit system – can show you which people went back and forth to the hospital at the times that line up with those doctor's appointments, unmasking the person who got abortion meds, cancer meds, psychiatric meds or other sensitive prescriptions.

The fact that anonymized data can – will! – be re-identified doesn't mean we have to give up on the prospect of gleaning insight from medical records. In the UK, the eminent doctor Ben Goldacre and colleagues built an incredible effective, privacy-preserving "trusted research environment" (TRE) to operate on millions of NHS records across a decentralized system of hospitals and trusts without ever moving the data off their own servers:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/03/08/the-fire-of-orodruin/#are-we-the-baddies

The TRE is an open source, transparent server that accepts complex research questions in the form of database queries. These queries are posted to a public server for peer-review and revision, and when they're ready, the TRE sends them to each of the databases where the records are held. Those databases transmit responses to the TRE, which then publishes them. This has been unimaginably successful: the prototype of the TRE launched during the lockdown generated sixty papers in Nature in a matter of months.

Monopolies are inefficient, and Epic's outmoded and dangerous approach to research, along with the roadblocks it puts in the way of clinical excellence, epitomizes the problems with monopoly. America's health care industry is a dumpster fire from top to bottom – from Medicare Advantage to hospital cartels – and allowing Epic to dominate the EHR market has somehow, incredibly, made that system even worse.

Naturally, Kuttner finishes out his article with some antitrust analysis, sketching out how the Sherman Act could be brought to bear on Epic. Something has to be done. Epic's software is one of the many reasons that MDs are leaving the medical profession in droves.

Epic epitomizes the long-standing class war between doctors who want to take care of their patients and hospital executives who want to make a buck off of those patients.

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

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

https://pluralistic.net/2024/10/02/upcoded-to-death/#thanks-obama

Image: Flying Logos (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Over_$1,000,000_dollars_in_USD_$100_bill_stacks.png

CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/deed.en

[dabisbratz]

𝒮𝒲𝐸𝐸𝒯 𝒯𝒪𝒪𝒯𝐻 — shouta aizawa x male reader

w.c: 12.4k

warning: dbf!shouta, age gap, (sho in his early 40s, reader is 23), bottom!reader, daddy kink, breeding kink, dirty talk, feminization, mentions of gettin ‘knocked up’ regardless of anatomy, sneaking around, creampie, unprotected sex ( wear condoms ! ), praise/degradation, brat!reader, jealousy, mutual teasing, reader has an oral fixation, improper use of lollipops, mentions of exhibitionism, blowjobs, cumming untouched/hands free orgasm, ‘ taboo ’

sonny says..: not proof read, msorry !! did lotsa jumpin around while writin this. . . n five months later !! she’s all done !! ໒꒰ྀི⸝⸝T ˘ T⸝⸝꒱ྀི১ ♡ m’a lil rusty, forgive me !!

You’re back home for the summer.

Well— not entirely. You’re back at your family’s summer house for the season. Gifted from your grandparents, it teeters at the beginning of a beach, crystal sands and clear, blue waters that stretch out into the horizon. You’ve been looking forward to it since you’d graduated, even if it did come with a set of overbearing parents and a sinful amount of sunscreen.

The air is hot and thick, sticking uncomfortably to your skin through the windshield as you watch an everlasting stretch of greenery and trees pass you by. The road has stretched on for miles, every upcoming exit and street sign blending into one as each hour passes by. You’ve got the company of staticky radio stations and news outlets, spewing something nonsensical about sports, politics, car insurance. . . But it’s the trip you enjoy more than the destination. Traffic and all, you prefer it over the muggy air and parental scolding. Though, the beach is nice. . .

“You’re sure you’re taking the right route?” It’s your mother speaking, her voice crackling through the speakers of your car. You’re sure she’d smack you upside the head for the aggressive roll of your eyes in her. . . general direction, but she’s not exactly within eye-contact distance. Not for another five minutes, anyway.

“I’ve been doing this for years,” You have— it’s true. Though you’re only twenty-two, you’d driven this distance since you’d left for college. There’s a sound akin to the sucking of teeth through the radio, and you have half the mind to turn around and restart your road-trip all over again.

“Why’s there so much attitude in your voice?” Her cheerful, smiley voice suddenly sounds much more shrill, to your chagrin. You thrum your fingers along the leather of the steering wheel, biting back a long, drawn out groan.

“There isn’t any,” Gravel crackles under the weight of your rubber-tire car, snapping and popping into the air as it makes a smooth halt into the driveway. Shifting gears to park, the radio switches off with the twist of your keys. And, perhaps with more force than necessary, you’re slamming the door to your car and face to face with your mother. Her phone is still in hand, eyebrows pinched at the thought of her very own son hanging up on her. “. . . attitude, Ma.”

She hugs you with a squeal, ushering you up the stairs to your childhood ‘home.’ It’s almost exactly like you’d left it— save for a few recent porch decorations and repainted walls. You hope the years have been kind to it, with the irregular weather and constant pipe problems. Floorboards creak under your weight, welcoming you home after a few long years of studies. There’s an everlasting stream of bubbly speech behind you, your mom speaking, but there’s already so much to take in.

The air is fresh and salty, hints of beachy winds flowing upstream through the doorway. It smells like home, and looks like it too, as you situate your small duffel bag by the stairs that lead to the bedrooms. Your room. You hadn’t packed much— there was still a dresser overflowing with old clothes in your bedroom, after all. And now that you think about it, you should probably change into something more fitting for the weather.

“I know you just got here,” The sound of ice swirling against glass catches your attention, and you turn to face your mother. “But could you bring these out to your father?” She’s holding a tray of decorative glasses— or at least, you’d always thought they were— full of oblong ice and freshly squeezed lemonade. The glasses are stocky enough to adorn lollipops— one each, which are probably sickeningly sour. Topped with tiny, colorful umbrellas and intricate swirling straws. It’s almost like she’s trying to impress someone, with the way she’s put so much effort into the drink’s presentation.

Your lips curl to form a playful ‘no’, a boyish smile pulling at your cheeks when she huffs— as if she already knows what you’re about to do. So you shake your head instead, stealing the tray with one hand, “Let me change first.”

In hindsight, wearing clothes about. . four years too small wasn’t a great idea. The shorts that once fit you perfectly— before your growth spurt— are now much too short, like they’ve been tossed around in the laundry one too many times. You feel almost naked, moving the pink hem down with the shake of your legs.

Your mother insists they look just fine, a dramatic downturn to her lips as she rambles on and on about how fast her boy has grown up. Still, as you walk through the sliding glass doors parallel to the open patio, the sunlight bathing your legs does nothing but make you feel stuck under a rapidly growing spotlight.

It all clicks as you walk outside— the detailed drinks, the smell of barbecue and fresh coal. There is someone she’s trying to impress, someone other than your father. Maybe both of them. On a good day.

Wiping the bead of sweat from your brow, your eyes squint at the man in front of you. Around your dad’s age— maybe slightly younger, he stands at a whopping six foot something. There’s age in his face, and worry between his brows as if he’d spent most of his youth grimacing. His hair is long and black like charcoal, save for a few streaks of gray and a salt and pepper ensemble of stubble littering his chin and jaw. Two scars— forming a cross of sorts, one beneath his right eye, horizontal and thin. But the other is much longer, starting below his brow and ending at his cheekbone. It draws your eyes to a milky gray iris— heavily contrasting against the natural black-brown of his left one. It’s pretty, cloudy and almost pearlescent.

His silhouette— tall and thick, with broad shoulders that travel on and on as he crosses thick biceps over his thick chest. He’s standing in the way of the sun, and yet, it peeks through his long hair in small, short leaks. And, surprisingly, his waist is small in his black tank top. If you feel hot he must be scorching, draped in black— down to the beaded bracelet adorning his wrist. His hands— they’re big, maybe enough to cover the entirety of your face, curled into loose fists at his biceps.

And— right, you’re here to help, not gawk. But you can’t help it, shifting your weight from one leg to another as his intimidating gaze slowly sweeps you over. He’s like sex on legs, and if you can squint enough to get the sun out your eyes, you swear you can see the imprint of his cock through his black shorts.

“Uh,” You blink dumbly after introducing yourself, and suddenly the tray you’re holding is weightless. “Ma made these. I’m supposed to help. . . or something. . .”

“Or something.” The man echoes, but it’s quiet and you barely catch it. His voice is deep, way deeper than your own, rumbling in your ears and smooth like butter. Almost husky, with a dark edge to it as flames roar in his face. But it makes your father laugh, hearty and jubilant as he bounces over to where you stand. He gives you a small pat on the back as a greeting, ushering out a small, “son.”

The heat emitting off the grill is enough to make a grown man cry, but neither of you wince when you walk by it. Cold glasses of lemonade are handed out, fingers imprinted on cold condensation painting the surfaces of each glass as they’re passed around— one for you, one for your dad, another for him. You watch rivulets of water drip from his fingertips, down his wrist, past the collection of veins adorning his forearm.

“Mr. Aizawa,” There’s a beat of silence, but it’s quickly filled once you’ve been introduced. “World’s cruelest teacher.”

“Shouta Aizawa.” Is all he says, a correction of sorts, voice grumbly as his fingertips brush against your knuckles. Your eyes flicker down to where he’d touched you, his skin warm and inviting despite the roughness of his palms. You see now, that he’s accompanying your father, occasionally taking over when he walks back into the house every. . . five minutes or so.

“An old friend of mine, we go way back.” Your parents have an odd habit of rambling, it seems, because you and the handsome stranger make exasperated eye contact as your dad begins to reminisce on old memories. “You met him a few times— remember? He’ll be staying with us, so be respectful, you hear me?” His gaze seems to dip for a moment, down your lips and straight to the extra exposed skin of your thighs, then settle back to the ocean before you can comment.

But those five minutes must start now, because after a firm squeeze to your shoulder your father heads inside, leaving you alone with his. . . friend. He’s awfully quiet, busying himself as the patio door slides shut— occasionally sighing as he wipes away the sweat on his forehead with the back of his hand. It’s obvious you’re staring, maybe a bit too hard, but he’s the best scene around, really. Even with the beach right behind him.

And maybe it’s wrong to think this way— but he’s hot. Old enough to be your dad and then some, sure, but it doesn’t make him any less attractive. He almost makes you nervous, the slow blink of his eyes as he pays you no mind.

“So you’re staying with us, huh?” You eye the juicy meat he’s been flipping for the last five minutes, golden brown and sizzling in the heat. It’s rather thick, soon to be lazily flattened by the tongs he's holding and— you can’t help but wonder. . . Is he good with his hands?

“Don’t make a habit of asking strange old men questions like that.” It’s not entirely clear if he’s serious or not, but he’s certainly assertive. Like a firm, guiding hand placed at the nape of your neck. Your eyebrows pinch in confusion, but before you can ask what he means, it clicks. You’d said it out loud, let it float into the air like an everyday, casual question. But Aizawa doesn’t seem exactly bothered, more passive (if anything), as he takes a swig of the fruity, sour concoction.

“You’re not strange.” Is what you conclude, slamming the tray down hard enough to rattle its contents, and the man notes your lack of regard. Even with a slight spill you don’t bother to clean, you’re already turning to walk off the patio and dig your toes into the hot sand before it can be mentioned— but not without plucking a lemon coated lollipop free from its icy enclosure of glass. There’s an arrangement of seashells hidden beneath the coarse mounds of the glimmering seaside. Different sizes and colors, different textures and shapes. Where some would scrape the soles of your feet, others would glide across them. But as a kid you’d liked the search for tiny crabs much more than the search for shells. Though you’re much older now, you’re not afraid to say you miss it.

“But I’m old?” Aizawa says, not too far behind you from where he stands. There’s a light glint of dry humor in his voice that sends butterflies down your throat and straight into your stomach.

“Yeah. Old enough.” Your small laughter is sweet, dancing in the air in a way that has Shouta nearly pressing his palm flat into the skillet— just to check if his heart is still beating. What do you mean by that, anyway?

There’s a divot where the tightness of your shorts dip into your skin, pressing against the plush skin of your ass whenever you bend over. Even as you’re upright, Shouta can’t stand to look for too long— you’re a real, proper, honest and genuine distraction. Yet here he is, watching you move around on your hands and knees, ass taut and round— shorts tight enough to show off the cute bulge of your balls from behind. And now that he’s really looking, it’s obvious you’re not wearing anything underneath.

He shakes his head, grunting to himself as he peels processed cheese free from its plastic packaging. You just met, that’s not right, you’re simply just minding your own.

“Ugh!” You share a groan, and for completely different reasons. Aizawa can’t help but watch you scramble in the sand, presumably after whatever sea-creature that had the pleasure to pinch you right on the finger. But you seem happy once it’s retrieved, stuck in the seclusion of its tiny shell as you hold it in your palm. From what he can see, you’re not much of a brat at all. Maybe your parents are just too hard on you. He’s always known them to be dramatics.

Still, he has half the mind to drag you over by your ankle, or maybe to press your handsome face into the sand while he fucks you from behind. Ever since you’d brought out that damned lemonade— tugging on the hem of the fabric as if you’d suddenly grown conscious of just how short they were— he’d been hard. And now he has to listen to you grunt and groan over the smallest of injuries. . . His best friend’s son, his presumed pride and joy.

He’s fucked.

From where he stands, slightly elevated, he can see the bulge of the sweet protruding from your cheeks, stuck afore your teeth. Cute, as it swishes from side to side, stuck in your mouth as your occupied fingers caress the diaphanous shell in the palm of your hand. Your lips move, puckered, around the sucker, curled and glossy with molten sugar— it’s hard to make out exactly what words your mouth forms, yet Shouta doesn’t think he’d be able to listen anyway.

Turns out the creature was a hermit crab.

Shouta learns this at dinner, the day’s hard work shared on plastic platters and glass

bottles in the middle of the beach. There’s a roaring flame between the four of you, it casts golden embers along your skin every so often, crackling into the air. Cicadas chirp with the night’s welcome, loud and joyful in retaliation to the silent, serene fireflies and settling ocean.

You’re all sipping on beers, some more than others, but it’s enough to loosen everyone up. Even Shouta, whose eyes look lidded with sleep the more he drinks. He’s not incoherent, he never is. If anything he’s observant. For one, you have an awful habit of holding onto this evening’s lollipop, it seems, as you have it situated between your fingers like a cigarette. Sometimes your grip around it tightens, like when your mother wraps her hand around his bicep, squeezing the flesh in small, sporadic rounds. And though neither of you want to say it, let alone think it— you’re jealous. That’s the second thing.

Even with Shouta’s knee brushing against your own, you can’t help it. He’s so warm, muscly legs pressed against your own in a manner that’s almost electrifying. You want it all to yourself, to suffocate in his heat and capable hands.

You zone out of the conversation, blinking at the fire with reserved eyes until a thick screwer pokes at the flesh of your shoulder, leaving behind a tiny dimple. Jet black hair invades your vision for a moment, smelling of faint seasalt and warm cologne, until you turn, “What?”

“You want chocolate on your marshmallow, right?” Your mother asks for him, squeezing a transparent bag of thick, soft marshmallows. It’s tossed to you in a flash, to which you catch, but not before stealing a glance at the man beside you. His jaw sets, poking out from the mass of stubble. Like she’d stolen a precious moment away.

“Right,” You mumble, stabbing the skewer through the excessive amount of sugar. The stick hovers above the fire, the sweet melting to a crisp, flaky brown. Sticky and gooey, it slowly begins to lose its form. Through all the conversation you can’t help but glance at the older man to your left, taking in the glow of yellow and orange caressing his tan skin. His silhouette is bold and broad, legs spread wide as he sits on a thick log. What was once brown turns a deep, dark charcoal. “Oh, shit! Fuck. I meant shoot, sorry.”

You’re not supposed to swear in front of your parents— Aizawa’s paternal intuition picks that up. But shoving the marshmallow into your mouth, even as it has yet to cool down, he doesn’t quite get. Either way, your expression. . . it’s sickeningly cute. It’s cute to watch you fumble. With lips pursed into a tight line, cheeks bitten and eyebrows pinched with apology despite how obviously uncomfortable you are with the piping, burnt sugar spreading along your tongue.

His heart could almost burst.

“You’re fine, kid.” Shouta’s voice is a gentle whisper, airy like the waves brushing against the shore. With his eyes caught on the sticky white lingering on your cheek, he's desperately aware you’re not a kid. The way you move and speak, the way you carry yourself. The way you suck on lollipops like they’re something else. He’s never been one for dirty jokes or subtle innuendos but. . . yeah, this is doing something to him. His fingers twitch with want, the desire to wipe it away and rub his thumb along your lips. He should really get it together.

And maybe the fact that he’s more worried about your parents being in the way than the fact that they’re your parents proves that.

But they’re pretty preoccupied, lost in conversation neither of you are exactly interested in. Whirling his own marshmallow, chocolate melts down its fluffy outside. It’s steaming, hot and fluffy after twirling around the fire. Looking at it now, it looks comically small in his large hands, much bigger than your own. His lips part, cool air leaving the ‘o’ shaped mold of his mouth as he blows on it with a low, “Here.”

There they go again, mouth open as your pink tongue covers your row of bottom teeth, Shouta doesn’t let go of the skewer despite the light squeezes you press along his knuckles. Instead he holds on tighter, lifting and reaching until the desert melts in your mouth and sticks to your lips. Messy on purpose, your heart plummets into your tummy when dark eyes watch marshmallow fluff pull away from between your teeth. Hungry, starving.

“I can do it myself.” You mumble, wondering if the heat prickling your skin is from the brush of his fingers against your own or the wilting fire.

“Can you?” His expression is tired and flat, but his voice tilts with blooming amusement. It’s odd, the way you’re so quick to shut him down. You almost respond more openly when you hear sneaky comments or listen to gossip— ‘that boy just doesn’t know what to stop,’ ‘why’s he such a smartass?’ — spoken about you directly by you.

“Yeah,” There’s a shine in your eye that isn’t just a product of the glowing fire. Mischievous, almost. “I don’t break that easily.”

Shouta could definitely take your dad in a fight. It’s the first thing that pops into mind as the two of you stand in the dark, dimly lit kitchen. Your parents had gone off to bed almost an hour ago, and with the clock approaching half past midnight, it leaves you two alone. So, yes, he’s considering who would win in a brawl because he can’t stop staring at his best friend’s son and his pretty, kissable lips.

They’re sheen with spit, your pink tongue licking them over as you scrub away yesterday’s dirt from the kitchen counter. It’s a noncommittal motion, your arms wiping suds and heavy contents of water along the granite surface. Yet you seem absolutely dead-set on getting that one stain. The stain that has your ass brushing against his side, bare skin rippling the harder, lazier, you scrub. Not that there’s even a stain to clean.

Yep. He’s fucked.

You suppose he should be focusing on the dishes— not that there’s much of those either— but his attention strays.

It carries him through the motion of leaning over, his body practically draping your own as you bend at the waist. Black hair again, wisps of it, lightly pressed against your back as he leans down, lips by the shell of your ear and an arm trapping you in. His cock is pressed right against the swell of your ass, and he may have to consider slipping it between his waistband.

“I think you got it.”

“Oh, really?” Your hips are moving again, side to side as you scrub shapes into nothing. “Double check for me?”

A low groan sounds behind you, big hands at your thighs that squeeze enough to have the plush skin bruised and tender in the morning. His hand travels, snaking up your thighs to meet the silky skin of your ass. Spread nicely with the way you’re bent over, warmth radiating off each globe as his thick pointer finger loops around the thin layer of pink cotton pressing against your balls.

It’d be so easy, perfect access to slip his thick cock into the warm, tight walls of your hole and pound you against the counter. You could sit on his dick for the whole day, drooling and dumb the more the head kisses your prostate again and again and again. Your Daddy could fuck you on your dad’s favorite sofa, make it squeal and whine under the weight of him filling your fucked-out and used cunt over and over.

Dark pupils blow wide as he pulls the fabric away, watching your hole flutter around nothing. He coos, sweet and deep. Just give him a minute, he’ll give you everything you need. Everything and more, until you’re a braindead fucktoy with glassy eyes and sticky, dripping holes. Until—

You’ve slipped past his arm, twisting as your growling stomach makes itself known. You inhale a quivering breath through your nose, eyes wide and expecting and waiting. His best friend’s son, wriggling and writhing under his palms, handsome face twisting as pearly teeth bite at your stout bottom lip.

He’s almost frustrated with himself, voice flat and distant when you puff out your cheeks. Forget a distraction— you’re a real, honest brat. “You’re still hungry.”

“I’m a growing man, Sho.” It’s almost consequential how your voice cracks, breathy and teetering the edge of a whine as he releases his grip on your body. Light from the fridge illuminates your silhouette in a yellow, halo-adjacent glow, and once again Shouta is staring a little too hard at his best friend’s son as he bends forward at the waist.

Aizawa weighs the juxtaposition between the middle of that sentence for a moment before his breath catches in your throat. Sho. You’d called him by a nickname, ten times sweeter than the candied fruit (grapes, are they?) you’re now sinking your teeth into. You’ve grown alright, and the proof stands hard, throbbing, and pressing against your shorts once you’ve returned to face him. It’s obvious your ploy with the fruit was just something to keep your mind off cumming in your cute, soft shorts— but he’d honestly have preferred to see that.

“I can see that.”

Rough palms press into your jaw— firm, but not aggressive, until fingers close and clasp at your cheeks. A dissolving layer of baby fat at your cheeks spills between his stern fingers, and you blink as the older man turns your face from left to right, then reverse. Seems he’s got a nasty habit of looking you over, breaking you down— bare bones. You still have enough room to chew, teeth grinding on the crystallized sugar with a hard and resounding crunch.

There’s always something in your mouth.

Dark eyes flicker to the lump appearing and disappearing in your throat as you swallow, sweet sugar dotting your lips, “You’re hard.”

“Yeah,” It earns a dark chuckle, though there’s not much light humor in it, “So are you.” His lips curl as he releases his grip, slow and lingering.

“Usually,” your gaze drops to his lips. “When two men,” Then up to his deep, dark eyes as you press against him, chest to chest. His cock twitches against the heat of your body, you can imagine it now— thick and pretty, curved upward with a sticky head and throbbing, heavy veins. “Make eachother. . . hard, they—”

A door slams upstairs, the air going still as your breath catches in your throat. As if that single disturbance has stolen all the oxygen in the world, your body goes rigid and stiff, and the sound of tired steps make their way descending down wooden stairs. The candied grapes are swapped for thick fingers, with light peppers of hair at the knuckles, and you can’t help but suck the seasalt right off.

“Behave.” He takes a single step back, dripping with indubitable authority that makes you feel light and airy. Ready to bend at his will with lazy eyelids and hazy eyes. It’s not a question, not a suggestion— it’s a demand.

“You’re still up,” Your father, shameless as he walks by the two of you with barely any coverings, makes a sleepy gesture in your general direction as he opens the fridge. “Both of you, huh?” He sounds faintly out of breath, and his skin sheen. The mental implications make you cringe, taking a step toward the characteristically nonchalant man who’d just stepped away from you.

Shouta’s eyes narrow.

“Don’t tell me I’m being replaced!” He’s always been a loud man, your father, but it seems tonight his one-too-many beers have finally caught up to him. It’s just a joke, the both of you know it, but you can’t help the prickle of heat poking at your throat. You’re pulled in by the back of your head, your father’s hand pressed against your hair as he holds you in a firm side-hug, “Rather Mr. Aizawa be your old man?”

“That doesn’t sound too bad,” Your smile is wide and tantalizing, heavy and dripping with something that has yet to be named. “Are you a good Daddy, Mr. Aizawa?”

Then, his eye twitches, “When I want to be.”

Your laugh is instantaneous and loud, an awkward thing that stretches into deep silence. There’s a lot of things you’d like Mr. Aizawa to be— rough, gentle, sweet, and mean. But your dad? It’s laughable, and couldn’t be farther from the truth. And sure, maybe the title you'd like to use on him sounds similar, but they’re most definitely not the same. If only he knew.

“I’m sure you’re the best,” He watches you smile, opposite ends of your mouth pulling at your cheeks in a motion that doesn’t quite meet your eyes— but it’s convincing enough. “Better than your other friends, right Dad?”

Shouta is avoiding you.

You know it, you can tell! He’s always gone nowadays— a couple weeks into your vacation and you can only count a mere handful of the times you remember seeing him. You’ve barely talked, barely stole a few glances here and there— he may as well have disappeared. He’s out somewhere, somewhere that involves your father, and the ocean, and his generously sized deck-boat. You don’t want to say it, but you know you’re the reason why. You’ve gone a bit overboard, perhaps, with the flirting. Ever since that night— even before then, it’d become a natural habit of yours to call the man Daddy.

And, now, he’s grown even closer to your parents because of it. Whenever you come down for breakfast they’ve already finished, leaving your plate in the microwave— as if you’d want cold, limp eggs and soggy, get charred bacon. You want to scream, really. There’s your mother, who leaves lingering touches and bats her eyelashes like some sort of schoolgirl. You feel almost evil for the rage that sears your blood— even more so when your first thought is she’s pushing fifty.

Then there’s your father. Who is and always will be, not if you can help it, closer to Shouta than you ever will be. They drink together a lot, the guest more in moderation, but it still hurts to see them laugh about old times— over, and over, and over again. Even when you’re the topic of conversation, despite your presence being completely ignored, it hurts. You’re right here.

So you mope, lounging around in your swim trunks. Your skin sticks to every surface, humid and thick as your mother complains to you about getting some sun, stepping out the house, then something about how you need to fix the look on your face. She says the warm rays on your skin will do you some good, the salty water of the sea against your body will toughen up your bones and loosen your muscles. But there’s really only one thing on your mind.

It trickles into about an hour and a half when Mr. Aizawa finally comes back. Your father too, you suppose, with flushed cheeks that only sake can replicate. It’s once you’ve been pulled outside and forced to stand in wet, thick sand that washes away from your feet with every sweep of the shore— that they return. Once the sun has begun to set, yet still bright enough to have your brows furrowed and eyes narrowed, they return.

“There’s my boy!” No one’s boy, actually. Your father shouts with an intoxicated wave, and the grimace on Shouta’s face is hidden behind his whipping hair as he slows the boat to a stop.

Or at least, you think so. It’s hard to see with the sun in your eyes, yellow and orange flakes of the gold star percolating your vision.

It dances along the surface of the ocean, pretty and shimmering the closer you step, the further you go, until you’re submerged in water from your knees—down. There’s a shout, something akin to a ‘catch!’, and you have barely any time to react to the ball that’s flying to you with an oddly precise amount of speed and velocity. You gasp, whipping your head back to catch the ball between two sea-soaked hands.

“What the hell?!” Your hands sting, pretty eyes blinking back at the two silhouettes in your vicinity. Mainly at Aizawa, who hasn’t even acknowledged you, let alone looked away from the resplendent horizon. And what’s so good about that? Of all things to look at— you’re right here! You don’t leave with the setting sun, nor do you only ever arrive with the rising one. You’re a constant, and you know you don’t hurt to look at.

So you throw the ball back, all your force behind it with a smug look on your face until it smacks Shouta in the leg— right in the center of his calf with a horrifying thump of a sound.

“Fuck,” You shout in horror, despite it all. Despite the desire to maul him the last few weeks, rushing forward into the water with the cutest tremor to your brows. “Fuck, okay, shit, my bad!”

And it seems you can’t move fast enough to wade through the rippling waves, where schools of tiny, nipping fish and textured shells had twirled and danced about through the currents of pellucid water. But Shouta seems just fine, almost as if he’d forgotten how to react to the feeling of getting punted with a ball at full force. He picks it up, waves it in his large palm, and throws it back. You can hear it tear through the air, just as it smacks you in the shoulder with so much force you don’t register it at first.

Numbness spreads along your arm, eyes blinking up at the older man who laughs. It’s quiet yet hearty, and not at all a pretty sound. It’s more contagious if anything, a wheeze of sorts, but your lips still curl into a petty frown regardless. You can make out a huff of “Your face!” broken up with laughter, biting back on his tongue.

“I’m not laughing.” You grumble, rubbing at your shoulder with faux diligence.

There’s an eerie smile on his face, enough to send shivers down your spine as water drapes your face and drips down your body— boat engine revving with ferocity as the men float off into the boarding dock— Aizawa’s presence arrives just as fast as it leaves.

You’re left to your devices, gawking as you process the last few minutes— his smile, your brattiness and stupidity, the way you’d only just noticed his prosthetic leg— at the mention you can feel miscellaneous fish brush against your own, scales shining through the transparent waters. You can’t help but smile too, wiping it away with the back of your water-draped forearm. Fuck.

It’s only been a month and you’re smitten. He’d left you in favor of your father again, and all you can do is giggle about it.

There’s not much you know about the man— now that you think about it. There’s been a brief drunken mention of him having kids of his own, a little girl, you think. Maybe a son? Despite his affliction for quiet, Aizawa looks as though there’s more he wants to say. To share, to tell. Your father must know it all, seeing as they grew up together, and part of you can’t help but feel a bit jealous.

Hmph.

“What’re you sulking for?” His voice has broken you out of a daydream, turning your body to look him in the eyes. The man of the hour— Shouta. You almost hate how quick you are to melt under his gaze, squaring your shoulders with the stability of poorly glued popsicle sticks.“That ball bounce off your head, too?”

“I’m not sulking.” You watch him walk around the perimeter of the shore, slow and calculating, with his hands balled up in the fabric of his black t-shirt. He pulls it overhead, tummy contracting and biceps rippling— it still manages to catch you by surprise, how much muscle he’s hiding under his baggy clothes. Your brain sets off a symphony of ooh’s and ahh’s, unable to tear your gaze from the light rise and fall of his chest.

Your eyes trail back up, past the bend of his collarbones, up the display of stubble on his throat— he’s staring right at you.

“Uh — I wasn’t. . anyway. . What’re you looking at?”

His lips twitch, briefly pressed together before relaxing as he steps into the cold water. He’s slow, hair rippling just as smooth as the ocean, the further he moves forward. And, despite that, he slowly curls a finger to and fro, as if he’s talking to a small kitten. “C’mere.”

You’re frowning when you trudge forward, hesitance in your step. “Mr. Aizawa,” you grumble, still something of a cute little sound, using the prefix your father introduced him with. Something about it makes Shouta’s frame stiffen— the title, or maybe the pettiness behind it. It’s not like you call him that when you’re in a particularly good mood. “You didn’t seem to want me around earlier.”

“Quiet,” He tuts, clicking his tongue as if he knows the game you’re playing. But despite the curt, clean-cut execution of his tone, his thumb finds your cheek with the same gentleness as a spring breeze. “Your parents were always around earlier.”

Oh.

You play off your surprise well enough, swatting his hand away with a deep grunt. Sure, it feels good. His hands on your skin— such rough palms that cover your body — but you’re not desperate. Not entirely, not even when he fixes the twist of your face with a quick look to your furrowed brows. You settle for a sigh, grumbling, “They don’t have shit to do with me.”

“You’re, what, twenty-five—“

“Twenty three.” You interject, almost proud you can correct him. Rivulets of water trail down your arms, and his gaze seems to follow its motion.

“Twenty three,” He echoes with something of a breathless sigh tilting his voice. For a moment you think it’s the interruption— he’ll work on it later. Maybe he’s been struck by just how much younger you really are. “They have everything to do with you. You’re still their kid, I doubt they’d be enthusiastic about leaving you alone with an older man. A stranger, at that.”

“But they did,” You look around, as if to prove your point. Shouta’s never been one for dramatics, let alone those fueled by snappy attitudes and rolling eyes, but it looks cute on you. Maybe even cuter if it were accompanied by tears. “They left us alone. . . Half naked. . . At a beach. . . Alone..”

“I get it. We’re alone,” Shouta’s voice has always been so deep, rumbly and tired and smooth in your ears but even more so when he’s irritated. “Drop the attitude.” It’s different in a way. Leaves no room for argument, though you still feel the overwhelming need to stomp your foot and keep on pressing. You can’t help the shudder, nor the goosebumps crawling up your thighs. It’s just so fun to push his buttons, to watch his passive face twist for a split second as he processes your words.

It’s not exactly hard when he allows it. Shouta lets you push until your heart’s content, only reprimanding you with a glance or cleared throat— and it’s almost eerie. You can’t help but feel

like you should be anticipating something, even as you stand flush against his thick body in lukewarm ocean water and he looks at you with contentment.

Then it occurs to you. . . He’s letting it build up.

“And you’re not a stranger, Mr. Aizawa.” Obviously you’re softening the blows, so he watches you step forward, arms crossed over his thick, plush chest. You’re just so cute, brushing past his overwhelming seriousness with a smile— albeit sly. He can’t stay mad forever. It’s not fair, how cute you are, with lips stretched out and teeth on display, with the apples of your cheeks rising, and the cutest little twinkle in your eye. He wants to kiss you. . . He wants to kiss you so bad it’s starting to hurt.

Especially when you lean forward, sunlight bouncing off the ocean surface and across your body— painting you in pretty, golden slivers of glow. Across your face, your chest, your stomach, your thighs. It’s been a while since he’s felt his skin against your own. Since he’s run his large, calloused hands along your body.

“What happened to ‘Daddy’?” He asks, absentmindedly.

“What?” You break his trance, looking down at yourself with a hint of something Shouta can’t quite place. Uncertainty, perhaps? Vulnerability, maybe. It’s odd, you usually prance around so confidently. You wear the tiniest— tightest— clothes known to man, have the smartest mouth, egg him on day in and day out.

That’s not it. You look smug. You’re playing him for a damn fool.

“Nothing.” Aizawa sucks in a sharp breath through his teeth, squeezing his eyes shut. It’s wrong— it’s cliché, maybe even taboo. He wants to wipe that look off your face. He wants to kiss his best friend’s son stupid. The man he’d just shared parenting advice to, the man he’d spent years upon years of highschool, college, divorces, with. It’d been so innocent when he’d visit— maybe he should’ve never stopped. Maybe he shouldn’t have come back to see you in full bloom, so handsome and lithe and sweet.

“ ‘Nothing,’ ” You echo, snarky as you mimic the flat, detached tone of Shouta’s voice. If you weren’t sulking before you definitely are now, readying yourself to push past him like some spoiled brat who was just denied their favorite candy after being caught trying to steal it nonetheless. So He holds onto your bicep, squeezing the flesh as it flexes with your feeble attempt at struggling.

“Are you done yet? Or do you need a minute to calm down?” He shifts his weight, voice calm and level as he holds you still despite the straining. Not a single hair on him is out of place, his tranquility almost alarming.

“Let go, old man!” He has to ignore the rush of adrenaline the back and forth gives him— the way he has an incessant urge to squeeze your jaw just a bit tighter.

“Hey,” You watch his lips curl to coo, a tone somewhat akin to a parent shushing a fussy child. Your face is turned to face him directly, “How many times do I have to talk to you?” Then impossibly close as his warm breath pans over the expanse of your face, “What’d I say about the attitude?”

“I don’t care what you say about it.” Your face is squished against his palm as you go to squirm your way out of his hold, but with the way his head angles down toward your face— you can barely get the words to sound convincing. There’s a giggle in your voice, like you think his frustration is amusing.“You like it, don’t you? Forget strange, you’re dirty!”

He’s the only thing keeping you upright, eyes narrowed and lidded, “Stop fuckin’ playing with me, little boy.”

“Dad never lets me drive the boat,” Though the man can sense your whining from miles away, it still manages to catch him off guard. Shouta quirks a brow in questioning, hand hovering a polite foot away from your calf as you stand to walk along the wading boat floor. “Destroyed his last one when I was a kid,” (He doesn’t have to know you were actually nineteen when you did.) You speak in a tone that makes him think just maybe you consider it more your father’s fault than your own. “This one’s nicer anyway.”

“That’s wasteful.” Aizawa bites the inside of his cheek, brows furrowed into a familiar line. Had one of his kids done that it’d be a completely different story. Surely one they wouldn’t be proud of telling either. Through the corner of his eye he watches you dig into the cooler, scrabbling past the beer bottles and iced hennessy, to pull out an ice cream.

“To you,” You spare him a glance before finally plopping down in the passenger’s seat with much more force than necessary— especially when sitting on a boat. “I did him a favor.”

The cooler did a poor job— your ice cream is already melted and soft once it’s unwrapped. Thick, velvety cream that you lap up with your tongue dribbles down your knuckles. He should find it gross, but your pretty eyes flickering upward to meet his own as you take one long, slow lick up each bend of your fingers has done the complete opposite. Fuck. It’s hot— your sticky fingers and messy lips, your pinched brows and tiny, pleased whines.

If only it were his cock.

Shouta’s thick. Much thicker than your ice cream, he’s sure you’d feel a good stretch to your lips if you wrapped them around the head of his cock. You’d probably whine about how hard you have to try, how heavy it is on your tongue— how much it’s stuffing you full when it hasn’t even slid down your throat yet. You’d cry too, maybe, with drool slicking your chin and coating his dick in a pretty, shiny layer of thick saliva.

“Want some?” You lean uncomfortably forward, though your legs are over the arms of your seat and draped across Shouta’s lap. Already close, Shouta can smell the oreo on your tongue and vanilla cream by the corner of your lips. “You’re staring pretty hard.”

“Sit up,” The deflection is an answer in itself, yet the dark-haired man can’t find a reason to look away. “Before you hurt yourself.”

Instead, you take his wrist, thick and decorated with a long vein, to fiddle with his fingers. They’re long— healthy, strong, clipped haphazardly— big. He watches you split his fingers apart, lacing your free hand with his own— and though he remains with all five fingers up, he’d be lying if he said he didn’t feel the urge to close them around your much smaller ones. Shouta clears his throat while you hum, lapping at your ice cream before pressing your lips against his knuckles, “Want you to hurt me instead.”

“Hush,” There’s a sharp intake of breath, dark lashes fluttering as multicolored eyes glance past your shoulder. It’s evident he wants to say more— in the way he shifts his weight to lean outward. “You hardly know me.”

Your foot nudges his upper thigh, pressing into the firm skin as the boat moves further toward the horizon. It feels more secluded that way.. Private, even. As if there’s only the two of you left on the dreamy island. Your face looks a bit exasperated, like you’ve never had to work so hard in your life, and he has to admit it— it’s cute.

“I know you grew up with my dad,” He ignores the venom behind your tongue as you mention your father, letting out a low hum of confirmation. “I know you have two kids— adopted, right?”

“Hitoshi and Eri.” He interjects, voice soft and fond. You’d never noticed it before, but now you’re acutely aware of the gentle presence of breeze and rippling waters. Shouta’s relaxed face is much sweeter, still creased with age but not quite as deep. The cute, pinched dips between his brows are gone, but you know how to bring it back.

“Lucky. Wish you were my Daddy instead,” Aizawa isn’t sure which word he’s more hung up on, nor how it's so easy for you to completely twist his words— but as much as it rushes to his cock, gets him twitching in his pants and throbbing all the way down his heavy shaft— he doesn’t like it. You talk entirely too much. With lips much too sweet and sheen with cream. With a tongue that flicks and presses against your teeth when you smile. With a pretty voice he could listen to, all day. Something that’d sound better through choking and gagging—ragged and crackly and used. Your lashes flutter, soft and gentle against your cheek. “How old is Hitoshi? My age? If he takes after you, then. . .You’re just—“

“Listen to me,” Perhaps it’s not very characteristic of him, but he just can’t stop. Shouta moves without thinking, pressing his fingers into your cheeks until your lips are puckered. “For as long as I’m here,” he offers a squeeze. “For as long as your father is here,” then another, “Turn. It. Off.”

Your face melts into something floaty and distant, the smirk melting right off your face into something much more preferable. His thumb is so close, so close to your pretty lips. You blink once— twice, even— before regressing back into a grin, lips pressing against his long fingers. Fucking brat.

“I’ll just have to hit up Hitoshi sometime, then.”

The persistent comment nearly knocks him over, straight off the boat and plummeting into the cerulean depths of the sea. Instead, Shouta finds it better to step on the gas. . . To ignore the prickling heat in his blood, to ignore the easy taptaptap-ing of your fingers against the screen of your phone. It’s so easy for you to say anything around him— like a deliberate disregard for his reaction. His fingers thrum against the tiller, then wrap around its leather exterior to squeeze, and he doesn’t miss (not even for a second) the glance you give him through the corner of your eye.

The silence is almost painful. The motor speaks for you, loud and rushed and heavy. Aizawa’s jaw sets, clenched at each chiseled edge. His eyebrows furrow deep, angry, and his lips remain tightly shut. You can’t help but stare, watching his hair whip in the wind, dreamy and mellifluous. Not a moment of eye contact is shared, and you feel yourself slinking back into the white leather of your chair for the first time this evening.

Come the wooden dock just adjacent to the shoreline, Shouta’s throwing away wrappers (they’re all yours) and unbuckling his seatbelt. Your arms cross, a pout heavy in your lips as your eyes flutter closed. . Almost as if you being unable to see him makes him unable to see you.

“C’mon, baby.” You both miss the nickname, and despite the tension, it feels so natural dripping from his tongue.

Still, you whine. Mind occupied by your nearly offset tantrum prior to getting back at the dock. “I’m staying outside.”

“You’ll get heatstroke.” Shouta sighs, stepping back to lift you into his arms not even a moment later. You consider it ironic, for a moment, he always wears black despite the scorching heat. Bent at the waist as he leans over the open inside of the boat to unbuckle your seatbelt, his face remains stoic as your arms flail and fly to push him away. Your pretty face morphs into a nasty scowl, grumbles and mumbles toppling from your lips— you’re embarrassed.

He sets you down on the creaking wood, hands placed steady at your waist and shoulder to keep you upright— in your feeble attempt at escapism, your last result was simply going limp.

You just won’t budge, standing planted at the end of the dock despite the tugs to your biceps, forearm— hands, wrists. Your last attempt at pushing him away ends up in stumbles, nearly tripping over your own feet as you stomp down the polished dock, eyes hardening with the contact of deep, dark pools in Aizawa’s irises.

You were holding hands.

It’s been days. You haven’t left your room in days. At first, Shouta doesn’t worry. He doesn’t think twice about it, doesn’t question why you don’t come downstairs. When he asks your parents about it it’s always the same thing— ‘That’s just how he is when he doesn’t get his way,’ or ‘He’ll come around.’ The more he asks, the mode suspicion, More questions, mostly wondering why he’s so enamored by their son— even if he had been closer to you when you were younger. But that was long ago, and you hardly remember.

And that isn’t even it.

He starts to worry, to feel bad, on day six. Not a single sound that even points to your presence. No creaking floorboards, no music playing from your old, antique and overpriced record player, no sounds of muffled laughter. It makes him feel out of his skin, like a bystander watching the inhabitants of this very beach house go about their day like nothing is wrong. But this wrong, so very wrong—

He wants you. His boy, his brat, his best friend’s son. It’s wrong and it’s taboo, but so help him, he yearns.

His feet had carried himself upstairs before his mind could, following after you a good half-hour later. You heard him on his way in, the shuffle of his slipper-clad feet from the outside of your door. Still, you’d made no effort to move, no effort to free yourself from the cocoon of your childhood blankets, no effort to open the door despite his gentle knocking.

“You ready to talk yet?” He was willing to brush it all aside. The pushing, the persistent flirting, the slight disregard for his feelings, the mentions of his son. Really, he was jealous. Maybe it’s unsavory for him to admit, maybe he shouldn’t think of his son as competition. And he knows, of course, there’s nothing there— he’s only ever competing with himself. He just can’t help it.

Maybe he’s a bit spoiled too.

“I don’t like being ignored.” Your voice was small, but he could still hear it through the door. He heard it all, every implication. His sweet boy, his spoiled brat. You froze, just briefly, before he let himself in. The door creaked slowly with its open and close, a gentle click of the lock as the air grew thick.

Your old bed is small and creaky. Almost as much as the underused floorboards, your old bedroom screams with just as much personality as it does neglect. There’s tiny figurines, posters, awards, memorabilia— but it’s all too clean. Even if it has collected dust, not a thing is out of place. Pristine. There’s a few scattered photos— awkward haircuts, familial pets, the works. . Unapologetically you, maybe when you were just a tad bit more naive— but you nonetheless. It even smells like you, just with a hint of sea salt and warm, summer-y vanilla. Shouta wants to bury his nose in it.

“None of my fancy college boyfriends liked it here, Maybe ‘Toshi would.” You shift your weight as Shouta sits at the edge of your bed, the springy mattress creaking ever so slightly. There’s something left unsaid between the small string of words— and it’s sour. Twists on Shouta’s tongue, like he’s bitten into old bread, and it’s not just the mention of past boyfriends. Sure, that’s not exactly what he’d call this. . . relationship, but it’s not like it’d feel wrong. And he’d certainly feel bitter if his son were in his shoes. “Guess my sheets weren’t silky enough. Can tell you what was, th—”

“I like it.” It’s simple. The admission— simple and sweet, like it’s obvious. Shouta watches your lips part for a moment, just to close again, like a fish out of water. You look so small when you’re caught off guard, glancing to the side and shifting your weight onto your palms as you sit in the comfy middle of your bed. He knows what you’re doing— redirecting the conversation by flirting (it does get his heart beating, he’ll admit it)— and it makes you seem softer, almost.

He watches you sniffle for a moment, a quiet sound as you shift your knees with exuberating coyness. Your eyebrows furrow, cheeks puffed into a pout because, “That's it? You just ‘ like ’ it?”

He’ll give it to you, you never give up. He’d been warned, he was skeptical, and he’s been proven wrong. And, in the brunette’s head, you’d tallied over three strikes. Perhaps he was being too lenient. And now, Shouta, the weak man that he is, simply wants to indulge.

“What else would I say?”

“That it’s nice,” You cock your head to the side. “That you’ve never seen a room so nice. Which m’sure is true, anyway. . Are you low income, Sho? I can’t imagine what it’s like being a single father of two— or one, since Hitoshi moved out forever ago.”

The older man takes a breath through his nose, and out through his mouth. Pretty irises flicker down to meet the rise and fall of his chest, the way his fingers pinch the bridge of his nose. Then, like the tidal wave of emotion has washed away back into shore, his voice is level as he speaks, “You spoke to him.”

“You ignored me,” You say it as if it’s obvious, simple, that if you can’t have Shouta you’ll have to settle for the next best thing. And though it’s not entirely true, you only really stalked his social media to learn more about his father, you don’t think your heart can stomach seeing pride swell in Aizawa’s chest. “Wanted your attention, Daddy.”

There’s a sharp intake of breath through his teeth, cold air rattling the bones as he watches you stare up at him. Your eyes look softer, boyish, wider at this angle. His pink tongue darts over his equally pink lips, “You don’t know what you do to me.”

“Show me.”

“Shh, sh, sh,” Shouta’s cock slips down your throat with a low grunt, the slippery walls clench around the fat head of his cock. Just as he imagined it, cutting off pretty whines and gasps, head bobbing back and forth— like you can’t tell whether it’s too much or too little. There’s a slight burn— the stretch of his thick, sticky cock nestled against your throat— but it feels good, heavy and throbbing in a way that makes your brain shut off so quickly you drool. It sticks to his shaft and slides down his balls, painting your chin in a syrupy-sweet layer of saliva, but you’re too far gone to wipe it away. Such a good boy.

He must’ve said it aloud, because there you are nodding, lazily bobbing your head as he grinds in and out of your mouth. There’s a loud, sticky sound coming from your throat, squelching and soaked, obscene in a way that makes you whimper around your heavy mouthful of cock. He’s quick to correct himself— you only ever seem to behave when you’re stuffed with his dick, and he can’t have you thinking your behavior is acceptable. With a grunt, deep and velvety, Aizawa pushes deeper into your mouth until you gag— tight throat convulsing and quivering around his shaft.

You slurp loudly, choking and gasping as you struggle to pull back. His balls hit your chin, heavy and sticky and so fucking good as tears stream down your face. You’re starting to get into it now, making a mess of yourself as you stick out your tongue to lick along the prominent vein on the underside of his cock, eyes focused on the rings of saliva holding you together. Shouta pulls out to let you breathe, his cock quickly liding upupup your throat and past your lips until all you can do is whine and lean forward, lips wet with spit as you chase after what you’ve been wanting for the past month.

“Stop fuckin’ moving. Let Daddy use your throat, wanna hear you cry on it,” The bulge of his fat cock shows in your throat, in and out, in and out, in and out.

You want to whine, to beat your fists against his thighs, and kick your feet— it’s all so much. He has you by the hair, big hand pulling and tugging, lifting you on and off his cock like a warm, tight fleshlight. You fail to bite back a growl, though it emits more as a cute, pathetic sound, glassy eyes focused on his cock being shoved down your hot, wet throat. It’s so easy to press your lips against the darkness of his pubes, to smear pre along your pouty lips and cheeks. His cock jumps in your mouth, thick and long and curved, leaking at the tip.

It’s hard to adjust to the stretch, sputtering and gagging with such cute, greedy sounds. You’re getting ahead of yourself, eager, tongue lapping at the achy underside of his dick, pressed against his balls. And, with a gasp, Shouta pulls out, huffs and unintelligible groans filling the air. The blushing head of his cock taps against your cheek. Once, twice, again and again. “C’mere.”

And yet, despite all that bark, your eyes barely make contact with the ones above you. Instead they trace the pulse of his shaft, how heavy his cock hangs between his legs, how it makes his long fingers almost smaller in comparison. The way pre dribbles from the tip, sticky and warm and oh, so inviting. It’s as if he can read your mind, knows how badly you miss the weight of his thick cock stretching your throat, “You can do better than that," and you almost can't believe it.

Better? Your eyes flicker to the saliva dripping from your chin, suddenly aware of the slick pre smeared across your pretty cheeks and the heavy pants leaving your lips. What gets better than this? You let him use your throat like a new fleshlight, cried on his cock and muffled the sounds in his pubes. Ignored the aching of your own cock just to focus on his own, absentmindedly bucking your hips into nothing, even if it made you look like a pathetic puppy. Fine— you can show him better. You can break him first.

You blink rapidly, tears clumped in your pretty eyelashes, lips parting to, indubitably, sass the older man. “What, need help gettin’ it up? Fuck you, can do it m—”

Prideful boy. Shouta will have to fix that.

“— I wasn’t asking.” You really fucked up now, eyes wide as you’re lifted up by your throat and manhandled into Shouta’s strong arms. He smells good, and just as strong, as your face is pressed into his chest and your tiny, tiny shorts are pushed past your thighs. The air is cold, it spreads goosebumps along your skin, and you’re sure Shouta can feel them along his palm as he grabs handfuls of your ass. He ignores your off guard ‘Hey! I wasn’t done!’, ignores the squirm of your waist, ignores your poor, weeping cock.

Being the smooth, calculated man that he is, you’d expect Aizawa to put a rhythm and pace to his spankings. But no, there’s nothing for you to latch onto but the bundles of his hair as he hands out sporadic, random, and hard smacks along each globe of your ass. There is no back and forth, no favoring one over the other— it’s just where he wants, when he wants. If he wants to watch your thighs convulse and jiggle beneath his heavy palm he will, and if he wants to smack your hands away from his wrists as you tug and tug— he will.

Shouta groans when you let out a particularly pathetic cry, biting your lip and whimpering into his warm skin. You can feel his big hands part your cheeks, squeezing the skin until it spills over each finger and your ass has turned tender and sensitive. He coos, feeling you squirm and wriggle against his hold, “S’it too much? Daddy’s poor baby.”

It shouldn’t sound so sweet coming from his lips, even when it’s condescending and rough, even when he’s cracking his palm down again and again despite your kicks and squeals.

But it does.

“Da—ddy. . !” your voice quivers, hips rocking to an uncoordinated tune. So little contact and yet it feels like so much, his hot palms against your warm skin. . . The tears rolling down your darling face. . . The way your cock throbs against your tummy, your mouth aches with emptiness, your hole twitches beneath the weight of his fingers. The thought makes you want to whine all over again, body squirming and trembling as he holds and kneads the flesh of your ass.

“Quiet. I should shove my fingers down your throat to shut you up,” Shouta murmurs, so unnecessarily mean, kissing the dampness of your forehead before his hand cracks down against your plush ass three, four, five more times. You try to keep up your resolve, pretty legs trembling and knuckles clenching— but it’s just so hard. Being a brat is easy— it’s fun— you’ll give up a few tears, cry and pout, get your way. Easy. So you won’t break and give him what he wants. He’ll have to work for it, get a taste of his own mean, mean medicine.

Delayed gratification.

Wet llips open to speak, something smug and almost smart, but it’s reduced to a wet moan. You feel it—fingers spreading apart the globes of your ass, and more cracking down between them, on your empty, pretty little hole. For a moment your brain slips out of your body, thoughts static and turned to mush, fuzzy and convulsing where you lay. You process the sound of hushing, the feeling of wetness, the sound of slick spit against your skin. . . Thick, merciless fingers rubbing and tapping and sliding against you.

“Oh, god,” You sob, eyes fluttering shut and eyebrows pinching the second more pressure builds and— oh, a finger slips inside. “Fingers— that’s, oh god..” Inching in slowly, rubbing against your velvety walls and so fucking slick you’re beginning to see stars. Whatever you had your mind set on earlier flies straight out the window, your brain short circuits as your sopping hole flutters around his fingers, sucking them in.

“Fuck, baby, look at you clench on Daddy’s fingers. Want Daddy to finger-fuck this cute little cunt silly?” If you could see his face you’re sure he’d be smiling— an eerie thing, eyes trained on his fingers getting sucked back into you. Such a needy boy. “C’mon, say it. Tell Daddy you want his big fingers in your sweet, greedy little pussy.”

You can’t help it, hole throbbing rhythmically along his long fingers, squelching and gushing with stickiness. The swell of your ass ripples as you wiggle your hips, rising and falling to grindgrindgrind. “Fuck me already, c’mon, old man.”

“That what your little ‘boyfriends’ do?” Your lip quivers— he hadn't even flinched at the sass— and instead used your own words against you. “Oh, baby. They didn’t give that little boycunt the attention he needed, hm? That why you throw so many tantrums?”

Your hand finds his wrist, fingers wrapping around thick and strong limp just enough to get his hand moving, trying to guide him deeper, faster, harder. He should reward bratty behavior, but the words spill from his mouth almost immediately, “That’s it, just needed something to fill you up, nice and full.”

It’s ironic— he says it just before pulling out his soaked fingers. And, at your nightstand, opens the drawer to retrieve lube. You watch him pause, eyes scanning the contents of the drawer until his lips quirk downward. Lollipop wrappers. An ungodly amount— you really went on a hunger strike because he ignored you? For six whole days?

“What am I gonna do with you.” He sighs, but grabs a sucker regardless, tearing open its pretty, pastel blue packaging to reveal its red, shiny hard candy. He pops the treat into his mouth, holds it on the right side with his teeth, and squirts a generous amount of lube over the globes of your ass. His hands slip and slide as he guides it around, watches it dribble down your thighs and relishes in the way your hole opens up for him, soaked and sticky.

Your eyebrows pinch, hips wiggling as he pulls the lollipop free from his mouth and directs it against your own, “Suck,” He murmurs, but it’s forced past your lips before you can process the demand. Here come more tears, burning your nose as you hiccup out a tiny, overwhelmed, “Daddy?”

“It’s okay, I’m here,” He coos, circling the pad of his thumb along the rim of your hole. Even as your feet instinctively kick, there’s no reaction from him, just a pleased hum. “Keep sucking, atta boy.”

His thumb feels like a lot, makes you squeal and shiver as he presses it inside, and something hot and wet accompanies it. That's good, the heat of his tongue licking and sucking at your throbbing rim, bubbly spit dribbling down his chin and caught in his stubble. One hand is focused on fucking your boyhole raw, till your brain goes numb and you’re incoherent. His palm presses into the small of your ass, tongue working hard until your eyes are rolling to the back of your head, and your mouth flies open in a silent scream. He takes the opportunity to snatch the lollipop back, keeps his tongue pressed against your walls until—

He trails the glossy sphere of the candy down to your sloppy little hole, nudging and prodding until he slowly works the lollipop inside. “You can take it,” He growls, eyes trained on your fucked-out face. He can feel it, the tightening of your balls, the way your hole aches and pulses with the treat inside you. “That’s it, sweet thing. Wanna make this pussy cum, give it t’me. Let Daddy have it..”

He murmurs, and suddenly, instead of the treat that he’s popping back into his mouth, there’s the head of his perfectly thick, so big, cock pressing against your slick, thoroughly fucked-out hole and—

Oh.

“Sweet.”

You sob into nothing, back arching and spongy walls clinging down on Shouta’s cock as it’s worked inch by inch into you and— you can’t fucking believe it. You fought for so long, put on a bratty attitude and stomped your feet. Why would you ever push Shouta and his cock away for so long? Your breaths are short. Tiny little gasps as his large hands grip your ankles, spreading your legs open to get a better view of the thick dick pumping you full. Your pretty little hole, sheen with spit and lube, exposed and on display for him and his cock. And, yeah, this is everything you’ve ever wanted and more. . . You want him to break you.

“You’re— fuck, you’re so gross, Daddy,” Shouta grits his teeth, “Ohh, havin’ your best friend’s son on your fat cock, fuckin’ my pussy so full. . !” You’re straight up babbling, cross-eyed as each thrust knocks coherent thoughts out your brain. A real, proper slut, desperately humping upupup to fuck yourself on his dick. With this position�� knees to your ears and holes on display, you barely have the control to move— but it’s cute to watch you try anyway.

“Shut up and take it,” He rasps, voice deep and scratchy in a harsh whisper as his hips snap back and forth. “Don’t want mommy and daddy to hear their son calling someone else daddy, do you?”

“Daddy— Daddy, my pussy—“ You’re babbling, it’s all you can do since Shouta is all force with his thrusts; takes what he needs, feeds you his cock good and so, so deep. Over and over, you let out broken whines, desperate for it, looking down as best you can to watch your own cock bob and jump against your tummy, thighs sticky with spit and lube. You can hear the sound of your slutty, pathetic moans, the wet plaplaplap of skin, lube trailing and frothing between your bodies as Shouta fucks into you. You can’t stop twitching— your legs, your hole, your cock.

“This is Daddy’s pussy,” He corrects, angling his hips just right, the heat of his cock pressing against every special spot you’ve got. Every bundle of nerves, every silky, spongy wall you’ve got wrapped around him. “Just like that,” You’re gagging for it, pouty lips parting with open-mouthed pants as he continues to watch your hole tighten around his thick, veiny cock. He has to swallow down his own drool, reaching deeper into you, your body jerking back as he pounds, and pounds, and pounds. You may not be a good boy, but you’re a damn good slut.

“Uh-huh, uh-huh. . .” Your breath is caught in your throat, and if you could, you’d scream, your body tensing as your cock throbs and bounces, cum spraying across your bare chest — stickiness shooting out your spent cock until you’re twitching, handsfree and body set ablaze. Shouta shows no signs of stopping, instead keeping his cock inside you as he flips you around, eyes narrowed. He fucks you through it, watching more cum squirt from your cock, leaky hole milking him for all he’s got.

“Dumb sluts love cock, baby. S’that what you are?” His voice is a low purr, pressing your face into the mattress, watching your ass fall back onto his cock until he feels himself aching hard, hard enough to start cumming inside you.

“Yeah, mhmm,” You drool into your pillow, absentmindedly fucking yourself back onto him. You’re desperate to chase after it, the searing spiral of pressure growing in your stomach, tight hole bearing down on his cock. “Daddy’s slut, s’me!” For a minute you think you’ve passed out, everything going dark as you ride out his hard thrusts, offering tiny movements of your own, up and down to satiate the erratic spasming of your hole, to feel his balls slap against your thighs.

“Good sluts take Daddy’s cum,” Your eyes, so glassy and empty, is what gets him, groaning loud as he pumps a load inside you. “Take it, boy. Let Daddy knock you up.” It’s messy, and downright pornographic watching his cum leak out of you, just for him to fuck it back in with the head of his dick. Shouta’s cum starts to kiss your insides and spurt straight onto that small bundle of nerves— fuck, it’s so deep. His thrusts are erratic and sloppy, thick rope after thick rope frothing around his shaft as he fucks it deeper inside. You never want it to stop, not the groaning or moaning, not the filthy sounds, not the cum filling up your hole till you can’t move.

He ignores your needy, overstimulated whines when he pulls out completely, his spent cock hanging heavy between his thighs. Even when you’re limp and boneless, body trembling violently, you want more.

“Da— Da—ddy,” You sob, eyes squeezed shut as strong arms pull you up and into even stronger thighs. Sitting on his lap now, Shouta coos hums, basks in the sight of his pretty boy’s afterglow.

“Daddy’s here. I’m here, I got you.” He whispers into your shoulder, and that’s all you need to hear. The thought of his best friend melts away— you’re more than that. You’re not just his best friend’s son. . .

You’re Shouta’s boy.

Summer is coming to an end.

There’s a seasonal chill in the air and it’s getting dark in the early afternoon. The beach has switched its course, currents changing direction and fish disappearing from the shoreline. The weather is turning, branches are starting to grow bare and bloom in color, the wind picks up, and the clouds have yet to dissipate into the sky. . Shouta helps you pack, grumbles when you press chaste kisses against his skin the whole time— shuts down the stomps of your feet while you whine, “I don’t wanna leave.”

“Spring break,” Is all Shouta says, his mismatched eyes downcast in a way that highlights his long, pretty eyelashes. Then, voice barely audible, he whispers, “I don’t want you to, either.”

Your body visibly straightens, giddiness painting your boyish face as you smile wide and big. The older man almost regrets saying it, huffing with you lean impossible close to hug him tight. “Will you call me?”

“Whenever you want,” He says, as if it’s the most simple thing in the world. You watch as he throws your large bag of lollipops into your carry-on backpack, but not before plucking a treat free from the others. “You know I will.”

And that’s all you need to hear.

[shiny-jr]

- Warning: None really. Gender-neutral reader. 

- Characters: Malleus Draconia, Lilia Vanrouge, Silver, Sebek Zigvolt.

- Summary: You work a minimum wage job when a fae takes an interest after you jokingly asked him "will you adopt me?"

- Note: I planned for this to be a platonic yandere thing, but really it's only silly thoughts so I don't really plan to continue this unless y'all want. I don't even have a name for it.

Thinking about an AU where...

You were born a regular magicless person in Twisted Wonderland. Which was a travesty, but not too uncommon, as there were plenty of beings in this world that were incapable of magic. It was considered a privilege to be born with such capabilities. A privilege.

Which was likely why the world seemed catered specifically for magic users. Magic users were the cream of the crop, the best of the best. In the social hierarchy, magic users reined on top. That's just how things were. It wasn't discriminatory. It was merely the nature of society. If a company was looking to hire, of course they would inquire if potential employees could use magic. And of course, they were more likely to choose magic users to fill the positions. That explained why you could only find work as a minimum wage telemarketer, but it was better than nothing.

Random numbers generated and numerous attempts, scripted greetings you've said so much you could recite them in your sleep. As soon as you get an answer of "mmmyello?" a casual and exaggerated hello, you go off on the scripted greeting to advertise the product.

Shockingly, the person on the other end doesn't immediately hang up. They merely hum at your words, occasional shifting heard on the other end.

By the tone and voice, you've deduced that it's a rather relaxed guy. A conversation ensues, and although he doesn't sound all that interested in making a purchase, he doesn't get annoyed by your call. In fact, he continues to chat, seemingly amused by you and willing to share details such that he had a son and two others he fondly cared for.

The man, whom referred to himself as Lilia, mentioned he lived in Briar Valley. How odd, as it was common knowledge that the valley didn't have the best connection with technology due to their preference towards magic. He spoke of his well-mannered son and the other two boys he helped raise, one was a loud son of a dentist and the other was a quiet son of longtime family friends. By this time you were imagining an older gentleman with three young boys no older than ten.

He seemed to care so fondly for them that in the middle of the pleasant conversation, you couldn't help but jokingly ask, "Will you adopt me?"

The line was silent and you were mortified as you remembered this was supposed to be business talk, and your calls were likely being recorded. After what must've been shock, he began to laugh on the other end, and you immediately ended the call in your panic.

Why did you say that? You shouldn't have said that– Damn it, right when you were just gonna test the waters to see if he wanted the insurance package! Well, there went your big catch of the day. The rest of the evening was failed attempts, either deadlines or potential customers just hung up as soon as you spoke. Things were looking bleak.

Eventually, not even a week later, you received a letter. A letter, not an email, that was written much like how you expected the contents of a letter from the medieval ages to sound. Starting with: Salutations, Telemarketer–– and after several paragraphs, ending with ––That is why I am now interested in your deal! I will need your assistance, because I have not a single clue about how insurance works.

There was no number, and you couldn't recall the one you had reached him through, so there was no choice but to resort to the old fashioned way. Through letters. Although it would be a hassle and an interaction that would likely last for weeks just for one deal, a customer was a customer, and this would be your first one in so long. However, when you agreed to speak to him, you didn't actually expect him to show up at your doorstep. The voice you recognized, but he was not what you had in mind. He looked to be your age, short with magenta highlights in his black hair and wide red eyes accompanied by a fang-toothed smile. And pointed ears, the sign of fae. Of course he was a fae, that made total sense as to why he spoke as if he were older. He probably was older, much older than you previously thought.

Lilia wore a constant smile, listening but also not listening when you tried your best to explain what insurance was to a fae that had never once needed it.

"Do you get it now...?" You asked finally, after a lengthy explanation to which he barely asked any questions. All he did was nod up and down.

There was a brief pause. "Yesss..." That sounded uncertain, but he didn't appear to care too much as he noticed your bag with only the minimum in it like keys and a thin wallet. Along with the time. "Shouldn't you be on your lunch break now?"

"Yes, but... I don't eat lunch. I'm not hungry." A lie. You were hungry, but it wasn't easy to get lunch on a minimum wage salary alone. You'd eat something for dinner.

Lilia seemed to sense this, somehow detecting your lie. "Hm... Well, I like you. And I'm not about to let a child starve on my watch."

"A child...?" You stared at him incredulously. This fae was practically the same size as you, maybe even shorter. "I'm over––"

"Uh-huh, just nod and come along." He instructed, holding up a finger to gently shush you as he waved you along to follow beside him. "If your age only has two numbers in it, then in my eyes, you're like a toddler."

Lunch was surprisingly nice, as Lilia was quite eccentric but excellent at holding a conversation. He seemed wise and witty, making a great combination. However, you couldn't help but wonder what a fae from Briar Valley was doing here, as it was known that most faes preferred not to leave the valley.

"It's getting late, I do have to be going..." Lilia sighed, before turning to you and his smile softened. "Would you like to see my boys I told you about? It won't take long."

Did he live close by? That was the only plausible explanation you could think of, since Briar Valley was a whole continent away. It only made sense that he lived nearby if he were here now. Maybe he was one of the few fae that chose to leave the valley.

This was quickly disproven when he held your hand and told you to stay still, when it felt like you were hurled through space. A gust of wind slapping your face, your eyes momentarily seeing a kaleidoscope of colors, you felt sick when suddenly your surroundings were darker.

Dark brick walls like black, candles lighting the space, gray stone floors... definitely not the outside of the cafe you were just standing in front of moments ago. Teleporation magic...? He was a fae, and all faes had magic. You only had milliseconds to recover and swallow the rising bile in your throat, as Lilia pulled you into an open space like a courtyard where light filtered in. However, in this space there were training dummies and swords instead of flowers and butterflies.

"Come, come, meet my boys. The ones I've told you about!"

You immediately paled. When you heard boys, you were expecting young children no bigger than half your height. Instead you were met with three towering men with forbidding expressions.

Two of which were dressed in dark metallic armor and lowering sharpened weapons. The one on the left was a bit taller, with green hair and sharp eyes that pierced you like a blade. The one on the right was the shorter of the two, but that didn't make him any less intimidating with his gray hair and aurora eyes on an expression as cold as ice.

And the last, the last was recognizable anywhere. Black robes and majestic black horns like a crown with slitted green eyes that seemed to glow and peer into your very soul. That was the prince of the valley, a fae with unrivaled and frightening levels of magic.

"This is Sebek, Silver, and Malleus. They've so looked forward to meeting you ever since I told them about you after our pleasant telephone chat yesterday!"

[batboyblog]

Things Biden and the Democrats did, this week #20

May 24-31 2024

The EPA awards $900 million to school districts across the country to replace diesel fueled school buses with cleaner alternatives. The money will go to 530 school districts across nearly every state, DC, tribal community, and US territory. The funds will help replace 3,400 buses with cleaner alternatives, 92% of the new buses will be 100% green electric. This adds to the $3 billion the Biden administration has already spent to replace 8,500 school buses across 1,000 school districts in the last 2 years.

For the first time the federal government released guidelines for Voluntary Carbon Markets. Voluntary Carbon Markets are a system by which companies off set their carbon emissions by funding project to fight climate change like investing in wind or solar power. Critics have changed that companies are using them just for PR and their funding often goes to projects that would happen any ways thus not offsetting emissions. The new guidelines seek to insure integrity in the Carbon Markets and make sure they make a meaningful impact. It also pushes companies to address emissions first and use offsets only as a last resort.

The IRS announced it'll take its direct file program nationwide in 2025. In 2024 140,000 tax payers in 12 states used the direct file pilot program and the IRS now plans to bring it to all Americans next tax season. Right now the program is only for simple W-2 returns with no side income but the IRS has plans to expand it to more complex filings in the future. This is one of the many projects at the IRS being funded through President Biden's Inflation Reduction Act.

The White House announced steps to boost nuclear energy in America. Nuclear power in the single largest green energy source in the country accounting for 19% of America's total energy. Boosting Nuclear energy is a key part of the Biden administration's strategy to reach a carbon free electricity sector by 2035. The administration has invested in bring the Palisades nuclear plant in Michigan back on-line, and extending the life of Diablo Canyon in California. In addition the Military will be deploying new small modular nuclear reactors and microreactors to power its installations. The Administration is setting up a task force to help combat the delays and cost overruns that have often derailed new nuclear projects and the Administration is supporting two Gen III+ SMR demonstration projects to highlight the safety and efficiency of the next generation of nuclear power.

The Department of Agriculture announced $824 million in new funding to protect livestock health and combat H5N1. The funding will go toward early detection, vaccine research, and supporting farmers impacted. The USDA is also launching a nation wide Dairy Herd Status Pilot Program, hopefully this program will give us a live look at the health of America's dairy herd and help with early detection. The Biden Administration has reacted quickly and proactively to the early cases of H5N1 to make sure it doesn't spread to the human population and become another pandemic situation.

The White House announced a partnership with 21 states to help supercharge America's aging energy grid. Years of little to no investment in America's Infrastructure has left our energy grid lagging behind the 21st century tech. This partnership aims to squeeze all the energy we can out of our current system while we rush to update and modernize. Last month the administration announced a plan to lay 100,000 miles of new transmission lines over the next five years. The 21 states all with Democratic governors are Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Kentucky, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Washington, and Wisconsin.

The Department of Transportation announced $343 million to update 8 of America's oldest and busiest transportation stations for disability accessibility. These include the MBTA's the Green Line's light-rail B and C branches in Boston,  Cleveland's Blue Line, New Orleans'  St. Charles Streetcar route, and projects in San Francisco and New York City and other locations

The Department of interior announced two projects for water in Western states. $179 million for drought resilience projects in California and Utah and $242 million for expanding water access in California, Colorado and Washington. The projects should help support drinking water for 6.4 million people every year.

HUD announced $150 million for affordable housing for tribal communities. This adds to the over $1 billion dollars for tribal housing announced earlier in the month. Neil Whitegull of the Ho-Chunk Nation said at the announcement "I know a lot of times as Native Americans we've been here and we've seen people that have said, ‘Oh yeah, we'd like to help Indians.’ And they take a picture and they go away. We never see it, But there's been a commitment here, with the increase in funding, grants, and this administration that is bringing their folks out. And there's a real commitment, I think, to Native American tribes that we've never seen before."

Secretary of State Antony Blinken pledged $135 million to help Moldavia. Since the outbreak of Russia's war against neighboring Ukraine the US has given $774 million in aid to tiny Moldavia. Moldavia has long been dependent on Russian energy but thanks to US investment in the countries energy security Moldavia is breaking away from Russia and moving forward with EU membership.

The US and Guatemala launched the "Youth With Purpose” initiative. The initiative will be run through the Central America Service Corps, launched in 2022 by Vice President Harris the CASC is part of the Biden Administration's efforts to improve life in Central America. The Youth With Purpose program will train 25,000 young Guatemalans and connect with with service projects throughout the country.

Bonus: Today, May 31st 2024, is the last day of the Affordable Connectivity Program. The program helped 23 million Americans connect to the internet while saving them $30 to $75 dollars every month. Despite repeated calls from President Biden Republicans in Congress have refused to act to renew the program. The White House has worked with private companies to get them to agree to extend the savings to the end of 2024. The Biden Administration has invested $90 Billion high-speed internet investments. Such as $42.45 billion for Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment, $1 billion for the The Middle Mile program laying 12,000 miles of regional fiber networks, and distributed nearly 30,000 connected devices to students and communities, including more than 3,600 through the Tribal Broadband Connectivity Program

[fratboykate]

I'm totally in support of the writers in theory but I'm trying to understand more of what you're fighting for because I've seen some people on twitter claim writers make more money a week than most of us make in a month so I'm trying to understand what the issue is. Also if that info is accurate. This is a genuine question. Not trying to have a "gotcha moment". I really want to hear from a writer.

people have always had wild misconceptions about how much a writer earns because of their lack of understanding of how the industry actually works. there's so many posts about how "you guys make 5k a week. what more do you want?!" yeah...let's do some math on that.

5k a week for 14 weeks (and that's a long room. a lot of rooms these days are 8-10 weeks. those are the dreaded mini-rooms we're trying to kill) is $70,000. for roughly three months of work. you'd think we're cooking with gas...BUT HOLD UP. that's gross! let's see everything that has to come out of that check:

10% to our agent

10% to our manager

5% to our entertainment attorney

5% to our business manager (not everyone has one but a lot of us do. i do, so that's literally 30% immediately off the top of every check)

most of these breakdowns ive seen downplay taxes severely. someone made one that says writers pay 5% in taxes and i would like to ask them "in what universe?". that doesn't even cover state taxes. the way taxes work in the industry is really complicated, but the short of it is most of us have companies for tax reasons so we aren't taxed like people on w2s/1099. if we did we'd be even more fucked. basically every production hires a writer's company instead of the writer as an individual. so they engage our companies for our services and then at the end of the year we (the company) pay taxes as corporations or llcs (depending on what the writer chose to go with). my company is registered as a "corporation" so let's go with those rates. california's corporate rate is 9% and the federal corporate tax rate is 21%. there's other expenses with running a business like fees and other shit so my business managers/accountants/bookkeepers have recommended i save between 35-40% of everything i make for when tax season comes.

you see where the math is at already??? 25-30% in commissions and then 35-40% in taxes. on the lower end you're at THE VERY LEAST looking at 60% of that check gone. 70% worst case scenario. suddenly those $70,000 people claim we make are actually down to $28,000 as the take home pay. and that's if you're only losing 60%. it goes down to $21,000 if it's 70%.

lets pretend you worked a long 14 week room (that's the longest room ive ever worked btw) and let's also be generous and say you only have 60% in expenses so the take home is $28,000. average rent in los angeles is around $2,800-$3,000. if you're paying $2,800 in rent that means you need AT LEAST $4,000 a month to have a semi decent life since you need to also cover groceries, gas, medical expenses, toiletries, phone, internet, utilities, rental and car insurances, car payments, student loan payments, etc etc etc. and again, this is los angeles. everything is more expensive so you're living BARE BONES on 4k. and these are numbers as a single person. im not even taking having children into account. so those $28,000 you take home might cover your life for 6-7 months. 3 of which you're in the room working. the reality is that once that room ends, you might not work in a room again for 6-9-12 months (i have friends whose last jobs were over 18 months ago) and you now only have about 3 months left of savings to hold you over. we have to make that money stretch while we do all the endless free development we do for studios and until we get our next paying job. so...3 months left of enough money to cover your expenses -> possible 9 months of not having a job. this is how writers end up on food stamps or applying to work at target.

this is why we're fighting for better rates and better residuals. residuals were a thing writers used to rely on to get them through the unemployment periods. residual checks have gone down from 20k to $0.03 cents. im not joking.

they've decimated our regular pay and then destroyed residuals. we have nothing left. so don't believe it when they tell you writers are being greedy. writers are simply fighting to be able to make a middle class living. we're not asking them to become poor for our sake. we're asking for raises that amount to 2% of their profit. TWO PERCENT. this is a fight for writing even being a career in five years instead of something you do on the side while you work retail to pay your bills. if you think shows are bad now imagine when your writer has to do it as a hobby because they need a real job to pay their bills and support a family. (which none of us can currently afford to have btw)

support writers. stop being bootlickers for billion dollar corporations. stop caring about fictional people more than you care about the real people that write them. if we don't win this fight it truly is game over. the industry as you know it is gone.