#was a failure on every single level

[whorejolras]

am i the only one who thinks celebrating pride month in the middle of an ongoing genocide is a bit................... 😒

[andypantsx3]

momo yaoyorozu u are so special to me i think about u every day my angel princess

[fiendishartist2]

kinda crazy how you can work as hard as possible all day long and then feel worried and guilty that you didnt get enough done. i worked for 11 hours straight w like 2 breaks

[crickwater]

I don't have any strong feelings abt matt mercer dming for d20. I am enjoying seeing the intense reactions of everyone else tho

[sweet-as-kiwis]

why is midterm season Like This

[fans4wga]

26 July update from WGA's Chris Keyser

From the WGA: With SAG-AFTRA now on strike and new levels of solidarity across all Hollywood unions, we are witnessing the spectacular failure of the AMPTP’s negotiating strategy. In this video, WGA Negotiating Committee Co-Chair Chris Keyser lays out what this moment means and how we move forward. To learn more about the WGA strike, visit https://www.wgastrike.org.

FULL TRANSCRIPT:

Fellow members of the WGA East and West. It's been a while since our last video and quite a bit has happened in the meantime. So on behalf of the negotiating committee and leadership, I wanted to give you an update on where we are and what the near future at least is likely to bring.

We've been walking side by side on picket lines in New York and Los Angeles for a little over 12 weeks now. Only now we're joined by thousands upon thousands of members of SAG-AFTRA who, like us, have finally had enough.

This is the endpoint and the fruit of the AMPTP’s game plan. For 11 weeks, they negotiated with everyone but us. They claimed it was just practicality, that they could only do one thing at a time, which is not normally a point of pride. But events have made clear what we knew from the start: that not only was it a strategy, it was their only strategy. Negotiate a deal with a single guild and impose that deal on every other guild and union in Hollywood, whether it addresses the needs of those unions or not, all with the implicit threat: if you want more, strike for it.

Wow. It’s their 2007-8 playbook applied to 2023 as if nothing has changed, as if the accumulation of economic insults and injuries inflicted on us over the past decade would be borne in perpetual silence, as if the giant of labor had not awakened. But it has. And you only need to look as far as the front gates of every studio in LA and New York to see the evidence.

Two unions on strike willing to exercise their power, despite the pain, to ensure their members get the contract they deserve. For us, that means addressing the relentless mistreatment of screenwriters, which has only been exacerbated by the move to streaming; the continued denial of full MBA protection to comedy variety and other appendix A writers when they work in streaming; and the self-destructive unsustainable dismantling of the process by which episodic television is made and episodic television writers are paid.

It means addressing the existential threat of AI and the insufficiency of streaming residual formulas, including the need for transparency and a success-based component. All of these will need to be addressed for there to be a deal because in this strike it is our power and not their pattern that matters, not their strategy. Their strategy has failed them. Now they're in the midst of a streaming war with each other, an admittedly difficult transition. And as they face the future, their interests and business models could not be more different from Disney to Sony to Netflix to Amazon.

We root for their success, all of them. They root for each other's failure. We are the creative ammunition through which they will succeed. They are each other's apex predators. And yet, in a singular shared dedication to denying labor, they have shackled themselves together in what increasingly seems like a mutual suicide pact, as the 2023-24 broadcast season and the 2024-25 movie schedule and its streaming shows disappear, melt away week by week.

So what does this mean? What does it mean going forward? How do you play chess against an opponent who insists on screaming checkmate at every move regardless of how the board looks and the game is going?

You stay firm, you stay resolved, because our cause is no less existential than when we started and our leverage is increasing every day. Alone we withheld our labor with the support of our union siblings and the Teamsters and IATSE and the Crafts, we were able to delay the vast majority of production. Now with SAG-AFTRA on strike, those few studio projects that remained have also shut down. And it's not just the obvious delays. If this strike drags on, it's the actors with conflicting obligations and the directors and the double-booked studio facilities and release date chaos that the companies must now also contend with. Some of their most valuable product could well be delayed for years.

Add to that, no promotion of movies or television shows and famous faces on the picket lines and social media speaking directly to their customers. For the tech companies and the mega corporations, that should be their nightmare scenario: WGA and SAG-AFTRA side by side. Our bargaining agenda may not be identical, but our cause is the same. Our army of labor, defending labor has increased 17-fold in the past two weeks alone.

Even so, even with all this wind at our backs this negotiation won't happen overnight. It's not because the negotiations themselves are so complex. Once the companies fully engage, it could go very quickly, but because their strategy of many decades has just fallen apart and they didn't see it coming, and it's going to take them a minute to regroup, 'cause the companies have things to work out internally, and saying no to labor in unison is a lot easier than saying yes. So either together or separately, as their divergent interests might suggest, they will come back to us, despite their understandable concern about how they've navigated this transition to streaming, which is on their heads and not ours; and their worries about costs and their worries about Wall Street; despite this being a season of doom and gloom, none of them are walking away from the riches of this business, and certainly not over the equitable minimum compensation to writers.

They didn't get the deal they wanted; that's fine, it happens all the time. They're not taking their ball and going home over it. And since we know they come from union families themselves, and since they've denied that “even-in-Hollywood-you-have-got-to-be-kidding-me” ugliness of threatening to starve us out and leave us homeless (which we assume they understand also means making our children homeless,) they will come back to us. Although I will say they took a long time to deny that statement, longer than I would have had it been ascribed to me.

But what does it matter? You can starve a labor force slowly or quickly. The effect is the same. It's not like day rates for comedy variety writers and endless free drafts for screenwriters in exchange for a single paid one in four-week mini-rooms isn't cruelty. It's just cruelty written in contract language instead of a press quote.

So what can we expect from the companies as all of this plays itself out? They will try to convince Wall Street that taking a strike, prolonging it unnecessarily, losing their content stream in the process—that all of that is just smart business and no reason for investor concern. We will be talking to Wall Street too, and reminding them that for all these companies, all of 'em including Netflix, the bill, the price for making nothing, will eventually come due. And Wall Street is listening already. Here's Michael Pachter, managing director of equity research at Wedbush on Yahoo Finance the other day: “I think the studios are completely wrong on this one. Content is their lifeblood. They're feeling really foolish about this."

Wall Street isn't the only one listening. We've been talking to union pension funds too about the risks the companies are taking. We talked to CalPERS, the largest public pension plan in the country, talked about the loss of programming and the cost to the industry, and we heard strong support from its board for our struggle and the promise that the companies will be hearing from them, from CalPERS, and demanding answers on behalf of its 2 million members.

To us, of course, they will continue to plead temporary poverty, but we know the drill. These companies support billions into the streaming wars and taken short-term losses these past three years, because they know that to the winner will go the spoils. We're patient, will they share that with us when the time comes? What are the chances?

Since 2017, the last time the studios negotiated with us outside of COVID, the big six companies alone have made $150 billion in profits off our work, while they slashed our pay and degraded our working conditions. Maybe if they had shared a tiny piece of that then, made $1 billion or so less, this year wouldn't seem so costly. As it is, there is no iron law that these companies are entitled to record profits every year, and it isn't some great travesty if their shareholders or their CEOs get a slightly smaller slice of the massive profits we helped create if some balance is restored.

Look, no one denies that corporations exist to make a profit and no one wants our employers to be profitable more than we do, but the singular pursuit of corporate profits to the exclusion of their social and human cost is a real problem in this country—it’s a real problem. A corporation's bottom line is not the same as the world’s, and there is nothing in our studio's bottom lines today that accounts for the quality of our lives or for our dignity, for the comfort of our retirement or the security of our families. Their numbers have no conscience, but the people who report them as victories ought to.

In their refusal to recognize that, these companies have also extracted an awful price, which is laid at their feet and for which they are responsible. Losses to the economies of New York and Los Angeles and everywhere that film and television are made, terrible losses that mount every day, thousands of people out of work; not just us, all the crews, the crafts, the janitors, the drivers, the businesses that thrive when Hollywood thrives, the restaurants, the stores—for what? For nothing. So they could avoid coming to the table to negotiate the deal they will one day give us. Measured today that is the painfully mixed legacy of our employers, weighed against every beautiful piece of work we have made with them.

And if history is a guide, they have only temporary stewardship over a kind of national trust, which is Hollywood. Our story, our sometimes conscience, our public conversation, our diversion of the worst and best of times, our greatest export, the repository of our imagination. They have some obligation to more than just their shareholders to behave accordingly.

Unfortunately, it seems big tech, mega corporations, and some of the people who run them, as the saying goes know the price of everything and the value of nothing. So they have built a business model that no longer works for human beings who cannot be paid minimum for 10 to 20 weeks a year and make a career out of that, be paid for one draft of a screenplay that demands a year of labor, be paid a few episodic fees for a show about which to take years to decide be paid a daily rate.

And now we have a first glimpse of what they offered our actor colleagues. We are not 170,000 Willy Lomans to be used and then discarded. We know what the companies believe they have the power to do. We know what they think machines can do and do without any of us. Oh yeah, we've seen the writing on the wall and it's plagiarized.

The thing is this: the difference between what you CAN do and what you SHOULD do is the greatest single difference in the world. Knowing that is the only real protection we have against a dystopian future. And if the companies sometimes forget that, writers will do it for them.

I can't know exactly how long it will take this revolutionary moment, and you've heard again and again what is happening today has not happened in 63 years, but I know that's not always how it feels, revolutionary and defining, even though we celebrate that on picket lines together, which is the right thing to do. That's not always how it feels when you go home at night. I know how tough this is: to strike, to hold the line. I know it gets tougher every day even with SAG-AFTRA marching beside us, how hard it is to face the uncertainty of when it will end, when we'll get back to work, how we'll pay the bills. I know it's hardest for those who've just gotten started, for those for whom the world opens doors more reluctantly, battled their whole life just to get here; but hard too for those struggling to maintain their long careers, who find work tougher and tougher to come by, or those with families with children or parents to take care of.

These companies understand the cruelty of what they're doing. It's their plan to starve us just a little, to exact as much pain as they can so that we wish more for the pain to end than for the better life we dreamed up. That we're more afraid of the uncertainty of the present than the certain devastation of the future. It's societally acceptable economic torture inflicted by management on labor every day, then blamed on labor for daring to fight back, for refusing to be complicit in its own mistreatment.

Here's how I know that's not going to work. Not with us, not with the writers, because we haven't come all this way, fought to have these careers in the first place, all the adversity, and marched together for all these months, only to let it slip away on our watch—because there is no point in rushing back to jobs that may not be there in a year or two anyway. Because the business, as the companies have twisted it, is now untenable, unsurvivable for so many of us, because even success is not enough to keep going, because this guild is younger than it's ever been and more diverse. And this young diverse membership knows from hard personal experience the system is broken and that it will not be fixed unless they fix it. And those of us who came before them will not let them down, because we and the writer's guild are the beneficiaries of all those who came before us who gave up everything for us.

Like the writers of 1960, the year I was born, who struck for 22 weeks and who gave away all the TV residuals for all the movies they had ever written so that we could have a health insurance and pension plan and residuals from that date forward. $15 billion flowed to writers and their benefit plans because of that sacrifice. Because writers are brave, because now it's our turn.

So what's our job? Even as we welcome SAG-AFTRA to our side, we are still responsible for our own deal, and so we must remain focused and diligent. We must continue to march, picket signs in hand. But we should also remember this and with pride, that before there was SAG-AFTRA, before even the Teamsters and IATSE and the laborers and the electrical workers and the musicians and the plasterers came to our side, there was the writers. Alone then, we looked at the blank page and began to imagine the future. With no net but each other we typed the words, what if?

And then we took a step into the darkness and found that it was light. And then we were joined by the crews and the drivers and the actors. The actors got a bit more fanfare when they showed up, but that's okay, we wrote the script. The WGA, still small, not alone anymore after all these decades. Hollywood labor has finally linked arms and found its voice, and that voice says enough. There is no road to longterm prosperity that burns a path through your own workforce. We are not your enemies. We are not merely a cost to be borne. We are your partners and your greatest asset. And we are, as you acknowledge yourselves, irreplaceable, but by accident or design and it doesn't really matter anymore, the business you are running no longer works for those who work for you.

What is the point in continuing to deny that? Why deny it when everyone else in the business to a person tells you it's true? Do you think it's a coincidence that two unions are on strike against you for the first time since Eisenhower was president? You can't exactly accuse us of being quick on the trigger. The effect has a cause, it has a cause. And there is no profit in insisting on the answers to the past for the questions of the future.

But if you want instead to invest in something that will reap you fortunes, I have a tip. And if you are visionaries, envision a solution, not a stalemate. Because this isn't a war we're in, it's a negotiation, it's just a negotiation. There is no face-saving here for either side, because there is no winner or loser. It's just a deal. And when you come to remember that again we will be here as we have been here all along.

And at this point with 170,000 writers and actors aligned against your intransigence, that is as generous as I can be, as close to an olive branch as I can offer. But if you insist instead on the same threatening rhetoric, on saying you would rather starve us than pay us, I would remind you of this: You are fighting for a dollar, we are fighting for survival. We are fighting for our home: writing is where we live, and we will defend that home with a bravery and stamina and ferocity that you will come to understand someday, which is why you cannot break us. You cannot outlast us, you cannot.

And not just because we have the will, because we have power. Nothing in this business happens until we start to write. And we will not start to write until we are paid.

Union now. Union forever.

[stxrvel]

absence (1)

series summary. the holy grail of the seven men who ruled the country's entertainment used to be your friends at school. now, ten years later and between successes and failures, what reason would they have to want to come back into your life? pairing. eventually ot7 x f!reader... or not? content. first of all, english is not my first language so sorry for any mistakes! curse words, fangirling a lot and some self-deprecation. no proofread. this is just silly writing, we're on the safe zone for now. a/n. hi guys! i was gonna wait a little bit but i'm really excited about this one so you're gonna have earlier! thank u all for the support and i really hope you enjoy this 🫶🏻

series masterlist | bts masterlist | next

You met them all at school. Each with their own ambitions, their different dreams, but so similar in the nature of their core. It was almost funny how everyone with their dissimilar personalities fit so strangely well into one school group. There were times when you could still remember how you used to tell them that all together they could rule the world.

Maybe that's why you didn't see them years ago.

Jeon Jungkook was an idol. There wasn't an hour in the day or a screen in the city where you weren't watching him. He was so popular around the world that you suspected that not even one person didn't know him. His voice was on every radio station, on every cell phone of the people you passed on the street and on the buses, his face on the TV sets with the last interview he had done, as if it were a national achievement. You even saw him in restaurants, chefs naming dishes after him, production companies releasing collaborations with his company. There wasn't an object in that city that didn't have Jungkook's face on its forehead. It was impossible to escape him.

He was closely followed by Kim Taehyung and Park Jimin, two of the most promising models of the last decade, a national pride hand in hand with Jungkook. You didn't see them as often as Jungkook, but they still swept the international public and there was hardly anyone who didn't talk about them. Invited to catwalks in Paris, choosing their contracts and collaborations, wearing the most expensive clothes that you wouldn't even think of buying, wearing beautiful matching jewelry, expensive enough that a single outfit from each of them could buy you five houses in the small town they all came from. Taehyung and Jimin were known as the Siamese twins of modeling. Wherever one went, the other always had to be. Their exclusivity was incomparable.

In levels of recognition, Min Yoongi followed them in line. A great rapper who was well received by the general populace. Yoongi had managed to captivate a large audience thanks to his incredible command of the production of his music and his ease and gift for writing his own lyrics. His growth was gradual, but when he touched the sky he never went down again. His popularity was not low even though his presentation to the public was not that high compared to the other three. Still, Yoongi had enough charisma and talent to stand out, especially when his fans were obsessed with highlighting the duality he had when he was on stage and when he did those seventy question interviews with Vogue or whatever… that had made him one of the best rappers of his generation and probably of the last century.

Kim Namjoon was the owner of the company that made Jungkook's debut and welcomed Yoongi with total creative freedom. If he were not solely focused on music, he would surely also be Taehyung and Jimin's agent. Namjoon had inherited a company from his parents, but the success he had turned it into over the past few years, into one of the most profitable businesses in the country, was entirely to his credit and effort. His popularity was also high, because everyone said he was too handsome to be a mere businessman; not knowing, of course, that everything involved in maintaining such a business required much more than a pretty face. Of Namjoon the public didn't know too much, not probably like the other guys and you, if he was still half the person he was before.

Hand in hand with Namjoon were Jung Hoseok and Kim Seokjin. Hoseok was and still is to this day a national pride as he passionately played tennis since school and turned professional, reaching to participate in major international tournaments representing his country and winning one of them. However, two years after that great feat, an accident involving one of his hands prevented him from continuing to play. No one knows exactly what happened during the more than a year and a half that he almost completely disappeared from the public eye, but when he returned with his huge smile he announced that he would dedicate himself to dance, opening his own academy throughout the center of the city. Although he was not a recurrent teacher, his academy was one of the best in the country, and of course, it was financed by Namjoon's company. At one time Hoseok became Namjoon's associate.

Seokjin, on the other hand, was the one who kept the lowest profile. He was a great doctor, cardiovascular if you were not mistaken. In addition to being an amazing surgeon, his research projects were the ones everyone looked forward to the most at the end of each year. You didn't know much about the subject, but he was almost like the guru of medicine in his field specifically. The only reason he was so much in the public eye being a doctor was because he was regularly seen in the company of Namjoon, Hoseok and Yoongi. The four of them made up the holy grail of dilfs.

They had all had incredibly successful careers and you were glad that they had been able to accomplish everything they once talked about on the rooftop of Namjoon's house, with sneaky steps so their parents wouldn't scold them when they sneaked out in the wee hours of the morning.

You didn't know exactly what it was - or you didn't want to acknowledge it - that succumbed inside you every time you saw or heard about any of them on the news or on social media. Because yeah, no matter how low media exposure any of them had, always the faces of all seven appeared on your TikTok every week.

It was amazing how they had all moved on and you… well, you-

“Weren't you supossed to leave?”

You lifted your head from your phone, trying to hide it with trembling hands as you let Taehyung's face next to Jungkook's plunge into the darkness of your apron pocket.

“Huh?”

You tried to look distracted, returning your gaze between your boss and the notes next to the cash register. She had a soft gaze, between amused and sisterly. Her brown eyes shifted from your eyes and hot cheeks to the notes you held upside down in your hands, pretending to work as if she herself hadn't seen you completely frozen and gawking at the pair of the country's great casanovas.

“I thought you were leaving earlier today,” your boss shifted, settling her trench coat and long brown strap bag over her shoulder. At that moment she was leaving to walk around to each of the locations she had in town, just to do follow-ups. “Don't tell me you forgot.”

You followed her index finger until it landed on the red circle you had drawn on the calendar placed in your little cubicle a couple of weeks ago, with hearts surrounding it and exclamation points. Yes you remembered, of course you remembered, but at the point where you were at the time no one was going to miss you if you didn't attend.

“I didn't forget…” your voice trailed off as you looked down, your fingers finding the tips of the pages more entertaining than your boss's worried expression.

“y/n, you asked me to leave earlier this day from four months ago,” her high-pitched voice echoed in your head, reminding you how excited you had been a while ago for this day to come. “You can't just give up like that. Come on. You still have time.”

You began to shake your head, releasing your grip on the woman who was looking at you with the same worried eyes of a mother. Your boss had been one of the most encouraging people you'd ever had in your life, besides the handful of friends you had stored in your phone's contacts.

“It was a bust last time. I don't plan on going through that again.”

“But hadn't you told me afterwards that you weren't going to let that stop you? You said… what was it? I can't drown in this glass of water.”

You grudgingly resisted the urge to roll your eyes. Really you of four months ago was a deluded fool.

“I had no idea about life at the time.”

Your boss clicked her tongue, dropping her hands on your shoulders, giving little squeezes whose familiarity stole your breath.

“I'll leave Patrick waiting for you in case you change your mind.”

You shook your head, evading the memories. The man outside the store shook his head in greeting as the two of you turned to look at him, as if he knew you were talking about him.

“Don't miss this opportunity because you're afraid. It may change your life.”

You watched her leave, the clacking of her low heels drawing the attention of everyone in the store, earning every possible stare as she did every time she entered any room. Her chauffeur, Patrick, greeted her with a similar nod of his head as before and stood leaning against the black car parked right where he could get a perfect view of your nervous face.

You, unlike the great and successful lives of your high school friends whose company you still used to miss like a fool, had not had such a great and successful life.

You were a writer. Well, an attempted writer and, worse, part-time. The other part-time was this job behind the cash register at the largest pastry chain in the country. Or sometimes as a waitress, it depended on the day. There was good pay, mind you, at least it allowed you to make up for the losses you took every time you tried to sell a book and then had to market it on your own, only to have five purchases once every seven months and three of them were from your parents and brother. The other two were from your friends.

Four months ago you had been invited to a sort of convention for readers, how they had found you and why? You had no idea, but the idea of being considered in that way drove you crazy at the time. You were so excited that you had more copies of your failed books printed and prepared your booth several days in advance to present them to the horde of people who, you were sure at the time, would come to meet you.

Only one person came by to ask you about the bathroom.

You never recovered from that.

Even with all that failure, that same day you were invited to another convention and, for a while, you were excited to attend. Everyone goes through those kinds of bumps at some point in their life, right? You have to work hard to earn that kind of fame, you kept telling yourself. But as time went on and your networks didn't grow and your videos didn't get more than ten views, or fifty views at most in a week, you began to lose that spark of excitement you held for your dream. Your parents had never turned your back on what you wanted to do, but it was too demotivating and discouraging to have spent so many years at it, so many headaches and tears invested for you to just keep losing and losing money.

That was why you were sure you wouldn't go to that convention if you had to go through that mockery again. You hadn't even bothered to go and fix your booth so surely they already knew you weren't going.

“Have you seen them yet??????”

The female voice coming from the wine cellar made you jump up on your chair.

“Jesus, Yuna, you almost killed me here.”

“I don't care! We could die right now for all we care!”

“Wow, speak for yourself.”

“Haven't you seen theeeem?”

Yuna held up her phone, the screen at full brightness blinding you for a moment. The blurry dots you saw from the proximity of the device told you nothing, as your friend jumped excitedly beside you.

“God, hold still.”

Grabbing her wrist, you leveled the phone to see her TikTok and a picture of three men.

Namjoon, Yoongi and Jungkook coming out of a building. From Namjoon's building.

“They look amazing, don't they? They just came out! That means their car will pass in front of us any minute!”

Yes, Namjoon's building was just a few blocks away from your boss's place. In fact, your boss knew him and many times they would prepare large orders for parties at his company. You had never seen him set foot in this place or any other in the country, but every time he went to celebrate something he had to dial your boss's personal number and you would work until your backs burned because everything had to be perfect for the big businessman.

“Are you going out to greet them or what?” you frowned, letting go of her wrist and returning your gaze to the notebook next to the cash register.

Yuna let out an excited exclamation.

“Ohhhh~, should I? Should I?”

You grabbed her by the collar of her uniform as she tried to pass behind you.

“We're still on business hours.”

“I'm sure Sol wouldn't mind,” her almost heart pupil eyes stared down the street, her hands moving in front of her like she was a zombie. She almost seemed possessed by her fanaticism. Though of course you didn't blame her, if you didn't know any of the seven knights of the underworld you would surely be as excited as she was.

“Don't put words in her mouth. You'd better tell me if the lady's batch of cakes is out yet-”

Commotion erupted throughout the room. You almost saw in slow motion how all the people in the premises got up and running in the direction of the glass doors when you heard the screams coming from far away.

“They're comiiiiiiiiiiiing!!!”

Sometimes you wondered how they dealt with this level of fanaticism.

The ground almost shook with the amount of people running after a black car, where the three men who were causing such a furor so early that day were most likely to be, and the commotion was not tiny inside the venue where the screams erupted.

Having to deal with that on a daily basis would easily turn someone into a hater. Not that you were one... strictly...

“God, for a moment we breathed the same air,” Yuna plopped down on the table, her body doubled over with her eyes lost. You resisted the urge to smack her forehead.

“Their car windows were up.”

“So you saw them, right?????”

“Argh.”

You had to drag her back to work as the excitement in the store dissipated. You attended to another batch of consumers while Yuna fixed the display case and, in a moment of lapse you could almost tell, her back suddenly straightened and she turned to look at you with her eyes a little too wide. You passed the change to the man in front of you, who barely sent you a confused glance before continuing to claim his order at the other corner of the store.

“What's wrong with you?”

“You shouldn't be here.”

“Don't say that with that face. You look creepy,” you pulled out the bill to tuck it under the cash register as Yuna approached, leaving the frightened face behind.

“Wasn't that convention today?”

You sighed. “Yes.”

“Then why aren't you there?”

“Do I look like I want to be there?”

“Y/n! It's a great opportunity. You should-”

“A great opportunity for what, to be a laughingstock again?”

Yuna pursed her lips, looking almost pained that you would remember in that way the experience that was supposed to change your life. She had been one of the ones who had accompanied you to set up the booth and she was sure she had never seen you smile so much during all the time the two of you had known each other. Yuna was aware of how over time you seemed to have lost interest in this new convention, but she didn't think you would finally decide not to go.

On the sly, she had prepared your booth with the help of your mother and Sol, your boss.

“You were never a laughingstock! Don't say that,” Yuna patted your forearm harder than necessary. “Besides, I recently logged some purchases on the site! How do you-?”

“I know it was you and mom,” you raised your voice to interrupt her, stepping archly away from her body.

“What the… Of course not, ha, ha!”

“You're the only fools who would write down celebrity names to register purchases. Besides, the addresses don't even exist.”

“Fuck, I told her that wouldn't work.”

Under your heavy gaze, Yuna had the decency to look embarrassed.

“Okay, I'm sorry! We wanted to motivate you to go to the convention.”

“Can't you just let me do my own thing? If I don't want to go, I won't go.”

“Even if you leave Patrick waiting there?”

You followed his gaze, watching the man pull an umbrella out of the trunk of the car as the slightest breeze brushed against his body and the water droplets were smaller than a dew that the two of you had to squint to see them on the glass of the entrance.

“Whatever it is, I'm not going.”

“y/n…” Yuna pleaded, coming closer with her puppy dog eyes.

“No.”

“y/n, please…”

“No and stop doing that. You look weird.”

“I don't,” Yuna pulled away to frown at you. “I once heard you agreed with Seoyeon about my puppy face being cute.”

“I never agreed with that!”

“Seojun told me so!”

“Your first mistake is believing Seojun.”

“Do you blame me if the reason is your demonstration of love for me?”

“That was your second mistake.”

“Y/n!”

_____________________

That day you arrived home a little later than usual. Since Patrick had been waiting for you all day in the sun and mini rain and refused to let you take a cab on direct instructions from Sol, you asked him to take a ride downtown so you could buy the teokkboki your mom loved and incidentally bought some for him, even though he didn't want to accept it at first.

“y/n, dear, how did it go?”

Your parents were in the living room when you arrived playing Go. Your father left the table when he saw you carrying the bag of food and came over to take it from you.

“What does our little writer bring here, a contract by any chance?”

You watched out of the corner of your eye as your mother tried to get your father's attention by wildly waving her fan, while the man rummaged through the bag to find something warm and delicious smelling.

“Oh, it's teokkboki.”

Your mother stopped waving her arm to stare at the bag with sparkling eyes.

“The ones from the center? From Mrs. Wang?”

You nodded in her direction, taking a seat in their midst on the floor. Your parents started a pitched battle to see who would break the bag first to try the first batch of teokkboki and you could only watch them with a smile on your face. The day may have been difficult, but being home at the end of the day always made you feel so much better.

Amidst laughter and anecdotes, trying to avoid the elephant in the room because you knew your mother's furtive glances weren't for nothing, the three of you ate teokkboki until you were bursting at the seams. You organized the kitchen with your father while your mother grumbled from the living room whatever he said about her. You watched the three of you favorite soap opera on the fixed schedule and finally got ready for bed.

With your body more relaxed and lighter, you let yourself sink into the softness of the sheets, completely ignoring the messages Yuna had sent earlier and the stupid questions your brother asked at the most inopportune moments.

How do I unclog a bath?

Do I add salt to the rice???

Where do I get the kimchi mom makes?????

His independence was probably one of the worst things that could happen. You being the older sister thought you would leave home first. Even according to your twelve year old diary, you should have been married by then or at least planning your amazing, mega giant wedding, complete with helicopters and puppy dogs carrying drinks through the reception. You didn't know what kind of crazy dreams you had when you were younger, but up to that point you hadn't been able to fulfill any of your inner child's desires except to study for a career you were passionate about.

Still, what good had that done in the end? Maybe you should've listened to your grandparents to study medicine. Maybe your parents should've been a little more conservative instead of libertarian, which your grandparents always complained about when they had the chance. If you were a disgrace to anyone in the family, it was to them.

Ah, what a long day.

You didn't know at what point you fell asleep, but the incessant sound of your phone vibrating next to your pillow woke you up. With a grunt, you moved your hands to put the device in front of one of your half-open eyes to find Yuna on caller ID. Your eyes moved upward.

It was one in the morning!

“What the fuck are you doing calling at this hour? It better be an emergency because-”

“WHAT THE FUCK WERE YOU DOING THAT YOU DON'T CHECK YOUR MESSAGES?”

“WHAT KIND OF QUESTION IS THAT? IT'S ONE IN THE MORNING! WHY WOULD I BE DOING ANYTHING ELSE BUT SLEEPING?”

“I'VE BEEN TEXTING YOU FOR A WHILE NOW, Y/N!”

“YUNA HOW CAN I NOT FUCKING SLEEP-?”

“Well, whatever!”

You let out an exasperated snort, giving her time to say what she had to say.

“You're going to fall on your ass.”

“I'm lying down.”

“Your books have sold a thousand copies in the last hour!”

Silence. Absorbing silence…

“Yuna, if you really woke me up to play a fucking prank on me I'm going all the way to your house to pull out every single one of your hairs with a fucking tweezer.”

“First of all, gross. Second of all, I'm not kidding! Get on your fucking Instagram! What's worse is that's not the most shocking news. Well… depends on how you look at it.”

“Yuna, I don't think I'm following you.”

“Fucking Kim Taehyung was at the reader convention and he took a picture of your books and UPLOADED IT TO HIS INSTAGRAM STORIES!!!!! AN HOUR AGO! The damn shopping notifications woke me up and I think I took too much time trying to process what was going on because they already tripled!”

“What the fuck are you talking about, did you start smoking weed?”

“Ugh, why are you so insufferable? Just look at fucking Instagram!”

You didn't want to believe Yuna, but a part of you was vibrating in anticipation. You'd already seen her text messages, her exclamations and voice notes, you'd barely processed the images she'd sent you. You logged on to Instagram. The first thing you noticed was the exorbitant amount of notifications and direct messages.

You had to search for Taehyung's account because you weren't following him.

There was the colorful arc around his profile picture. The story.

You clicked on his picture on the screen.

Your books were all over his story, with his hand holding one of them.

It jumped out at you that there was a stand of your books that you had no idea where it had come from.

A description loomed between the image.

One of the best fantasy books I've read in recent years. And by one of the best writers I've ever met in my life.

Your user was next to the description. You had no idea how fucking Kim Taehyung had gotten your user when it wasn't even something related to your name. You hadn't even uploaded pictures of yourself once in all the time that account had been open.

“Did you see it?? Can you see I wasn't lying?”

With Yuna's malevolent laughter in the background, you felt your mind escape into an unknown mental space.

“You're going to be rich!!! And I'm going to meet Kim Taehyung!”

Your mind was racing a thousand miles an hour trying to make sense of what your eyes couldn't credit. His story was replaying on your screen. So many things you could say and just…

“What the fuck?”

--

tag: @rinkud @futuristicenemychaos @pastelpeachess @parapiop7

[canmom]

"don't post links to pirate sites" as a security through obscurity strategy seems... weak. if a pirate site is so obscure that almost nobody can find it, it's also essentially pointless.

but yes, if a pirate site is common knowledge, the feds will be working on destroying it. so the idea is i assume to achieve an intermediate level of obscurity, where you have to have a certain amount of talent for asking the right people or searching the right things to find it. but... whatever capacity for research you are asking people to have on that front, the feds are equally capable of it, and they have a whole lot more time on their hands for tracking down pirate sites! security through obscurity is a losing game for piracy. the perfect sweet spot where people can find your pirate resource but the feds cannot is something of a mirage.

if not that, than what?

the current piracy system involves a few different tiers of accessibility, and various components that are more or less decentralised.

torrents are the most resilient tech because to stamp out a torrent (with DHT enabled) you have to suppress every seed. so, you have big public torrent trackers like TPB; these are well known and rely on hopping domains and redundancy for security. the ratio of seeds to leeches tends to be low, but the number of users is large enough that there will be at least a few seeds out there for most stuff. torrent clients have gotten a lot better at seeding strategies that take into account your seed ratio and what's currently available in the swarm, so if you just leave everything on seed and open your torrent client fairly often (use a VPN though lol), you don't really need to think about it.

then you have private trackers; these operate on an invite basis. the problem with this is that when the pool of users is so small, the odds of a given seed being online are also small. to prevent torrents dying, they gamify it: you get points for seeding and if you don't have enough points you can't download anything until you seed more. to help people get back in the game there will be 'freeleech' events. being active on a private tracker takes a bit of work.

and of course you have to get in in the first place, which tends to require a proven track record of seeding on other private trackers, and some kind of interview with the operators. getting involved in private trackers is a much bigger ask, you have to figure out where to get your foot in the door, and work your way up to the more insular trackers. it's like a mini subculture. it's valuable, but not scalable.

at the top level of inaccessibility is the warez scene. this is a whole subject that i'm not even gonna get into, go read wikipedia. historically this is where the files actually come from, before getting distributed on public trackers, usenet etc. but good luck getting in there lmao, they are understandably quite paranoid.

of course, for stuff to get on pirate sites you need somebody to go the effort of ripping and encoding it. this is where a major point of failure exists. when RarBG went down recently, the biggest loss was not the existing archive of torrent links, which can be backed up - it was that they were very active at converting scene releases into torrents with a decent balance of file size and quality, which then filter out into the various public trackers. that is much harder to replace! but what killed RarBG wasn't even suppression by authorities - according to their statement, it was a bunch of the admins getting covid or dying or fighting in the Russia-Ukraine war, which made the whole operation impossible to continue. so despite the thousands of people who download RarBG torrents, this single point of failure was overstressed and broke.

as far as the ethics of spreading links to pirate sites go... if it's something like a mega drive, yeah, the chances of a takedown are pretty high if it gets noticed! no question. but those things are by nature short-lived; if you want to use that for archival you're building on sand. there's also databases like emuparadise, but there was no saving that through obscurity, it just took Nintendo a minute to bring the case.

in this kind of centralised case, the clock is ticking from day 1. what we want is to maximise the number of people who are able to save copies while it's up, and then some of those people can put it up again somewhere else and keep the authorities playing whack-a-mole. (for a small collection of files, a sensible measure would be to make a torrent and a mega drive side by side, so that people can download the mega drive and then add the torrent to their client to seed if it gets nuked.)

as for torrent sites, the thing is that torrents rely for effectiveness on a swarm that is either very large or very responsible about seeding. if it's a public tracker, it has to be well known or it's pointless. instead of security through obscurity, the form of security for these sites is try to make the resource itself hard to take down - operating the tracker/archive in countries that don't have copyright treaties, maintaining mirrors, and of course distributing as many seeds as possible so the torrent can stay alive even if the site goes down.

the major problem with a dead torrent site is discoverability. if it's harder to find the torrent, fewer people will download it, the existing seeds will gradually go offline, and of course you can't download a torrent that you don't know exists. and while you could imagine a system of broadcasting metadata about a torrent (title, encoding etc.) in a DHT-like way but that would be so vulnerable to fakes and spam. maybe some kind of cryptographically signed 'this torrent is good' declaration is possible? I know certain torrent clients tout discovery features, but honestly I don't know how well they work. I'm sure there are projects that are way ahead of the game than me on this question.

but yeah anyway trying to browbeat people into not sharing links to pirate media is 1. futile, by the time you see it the cat is out of the bag 2. not a sustainable strategy for security. if you wanna lecture people, 'use a VPN and seed your torrents' is evergreen ;p

[tshifty]

it really is egregious the way Taylor is staying silent about Palestine, especially at this point. and oh before yall start with the "she's a SINGER it DOESN'T MATTER" performative bullshit sit your ass down and read first.

Taylor Swift is objectively the biggest singer in the world right now. biggest celebrity in the world right now. and that platform carries power. the Biden administration literally has a team to seek her endorsement—that's not a cutesy pop culture meme moment that's genuine recognition of influence.

we are well beyond the point where silence due to ignorance or fear is acceptable. we are watching genocide live on our phones. we are watching children be burned alive in a UN refugee camp.

and every single person in a position of power has a responsibility to advocate for life, for humanity. there is a whole organized group of artists for ceasefire. and Taylor's silence is deafening. it isn't too late to speak up, to come to terms with what we are not only witnessing, but funding.

Taylor Swift, the biggest and arguably one of the most influential celebrities in the world at this current time, using her platform how she said she would btw to bring awareness to the genocide in Palestine, to direct some of her incredible wealth towards humanity, to use her platform of influence to shift the political narrative... she CAN do all of that. and if you think she can't you either aren't paying attention, or are too afraid to confront your own biases.

it is such low hanging fruit for her to post on social media. to say anything at all. her platform carries a level of responsibility I really hope she understands but this failure to uphold it is heavy.

[joshfutturman]

"good boy" 18+

oneshot (request) - inexperienced virgin failure josh futturman asks the reader over for some 'video games' (4.4k words) pairing - josh futturman (future man) + reader (no gendered pronouns, reader is afab) tags: utter filth lol, porn with tiny plot, dom/sub, dom!reader, sub!josh, LOTS of good boy mentions, oral both receiving, penetration, kissing, no use of y/n, missionary, slight dumbification ig, lots of wet mentions lmao, orgasm control, probs more i cant remember rn

.・。.・゜✭・. .・。.・゜✭・. .・。.・゜✭・.

the janitor from work was cute in a nerdy, adorable yet super naive way. in passing he'd attempt to flirt with you at your reception desk, attempt being the keyword here. but you'd flirt back, stronger and harder - which most of the time simply flew over his dense little head.

"i'd love to see it sometime," you say enthusiastically, referring to his video game collection he'd rambled about for 10 minutes straight. again.

his face lights up and a smile tugs on the corner of his lips, "yeah? really? you should totally come over - i've been dying to play this new one i picked up on co-op. - i mean," he falters, "if you want to. . ."

oh my god. was he asking you over? finally? josh futturman asked you over to play video games in his bedroom. alone. score.

.・。.・゜✭・. .・。.・゜✭・. .・。.・゜✭・.

notes: this was requested by @fatinhadesiners06 hehe, i hope you like it! tried to make josh as much of a virgin failure as i could but turns out that he's pretty good at eating pussy ig ( ˘͈ ᵕ ˘͈♡) officially the first smut ive written and finished

.・。.・゜✭・. .・。.・゜✭・. .・。.・゜✭・.

the janitor from work was cute in a nerdy, adorable yet super naive way. in passing he'd attempt to flirt with you at your reception desk, attempt being the keyword here. but you'd flirt back, stronger and harder - which most of the time simply flew over his dense little head.

"i'd love to see it sometime," you say enthusiastically, referring to his video game collection he'd rambled about for 10 minutes straight. again.

his face lights up and a smile tugs on the corner of his lips, "yeah? really? you should totally come over - i've been dying to play this new one i picked up on co-op. - i mean," he falters, "if you want to. . ."

oh my god. was he asking you over? finally? josh futturman asked you over to play video games in his bedroom. alone. score.

. . .

however, that's exactly what you do. you play video games together. on his cramped single bed.

it's not like you don't enjoy it, it's actually pretty sweet. he allows you to choose your character first, he guides you through the levels he knows off by heart, and he even offers you his favourite controller.

but you can't help but note the uncomfortable silence that lingers every so often. you notice him glancing at you in between games. you wonder what he's thinking about, is he thinking about how his hand would feel inside your underwear? how his fingers would get slick and glide over your folds and slip beneath the surface and - ...

well, you certainly know what you're thinking of.

high scores flash on the screen at the end of the level, yours and his. yours is a few hundred points higher to josh' surprise. this earns a loud laugh from you and a laugh from him, tossing his controller down in defeat.

"beat you at your own game." you tut and turn to him with a smirk.

josh grins and looks down at his lap with a shrug, "what can i say? you're pretty good at this."

scooting a little closer, you tilt your head, trying to catch his gaze again. "do you think so? or. . . do you just like it when i come out on top?" a hum sings from your lips.

his eyes widen and he looks at you with an arched eyebrow, finally catching on to at least one of your dirty jokes, or at least partially. it was about time. "it was only a two-hundred point difference." he says, glancing at your lips with an unsure smirk, "i'll dominate next time, for sure."

"who are you kidding, futturman." you whisper, leaning in towards his lips. "i was always going to be the one to dominate you."

you're both inches apart. you can hear how his breath hitches in his throat slightly with each inhale. shaking, his hand raises in an attempt to cup your cheek. but you reach up to grab it, lacing your fingers in his as your lips connect.

immediately, futturman melts into you. you swear you hear a whimper escape his lips as your tongue glides along his bottom lip, seeking entrance. he allows you in, squeezing your hand. he's sloppy, but you don't mind, you like it, actually. it's hot that he's so lost in it that he can't even control his tongue.

his other hand grips the bedsheets, knuckles turning white. he's trying to ignore how his cock is already twitching in his boxers, wondering if you're already wet. josh sighs your name into your lips and you take this as a sign.

your hand finds his crotch as your kiss intensifies and you begin to palm his hardened dick through his jeans, grinning. his mind goes blank and all he can focus on is the fact that your hand is on him, it's actually on him. this isn't just in his head. you're touching him and - fuck, it feels so good.

"you like that baby?" you ask him, his kissing growing sloppier and slower as his breath picks up. you're hardly touching him and he's already squirming under you. hot.

josh hums in response and you find his hand, bringing it to your skirt, slowly sliding it under to meet your growing heat. his fingers feel wetness through the material of your underwear and he swallows hard. gingerly, his fingers dance across your panties.

a giggle slips from your lips as you pull back slightly, ". . . is this your first time?" you ask with a smile.

he's taken aback by this question, suddenly embarrassed as his cheeks begin to flush. "i . . ."

"it's okay, i'll take care of you," you reassure him, giving him a gentle kiss on the lips, "don't worry."

it's time for you to take the lead and you remove your hand from his crotch, this earns a soft whine from him that causes you to bite your lip. placing a hand on his chest, you push him back slowly until he's flat on his back. carefully, you straddle him, sitting just below his waist.

your fingers find the button on his jeans and unbutton it at an excruciatingly slow pace. josh looks up at you with pleading eyes, panting softly as his tummy rises and falls with each breath. "are you. . ."

"i want to taste you." you admit, licking your lips as you unzip him, pulling his jeans down to reveal his boxers.

"f. . . fuck. . ." he whimpers, leaning up on his elbows to watch you.

the outline of his cock is clearly visible through his blue boxers, he's so hard already, it's adorable. josh' heart pounds as he eyes you, his dick springs free and he gasps at the cold air around it. he holds himself back from begging you to touch it in some way. you'd be lying if you said you weren't a little surprised by the girth, it makes your mouth water.

your warm hand wraps around him and his eyes glaze over, head tilting back. he swears he could cum right there just from your touch and if he looks at you again, he just might.

"look at me, baby." you whisper, beginning to pump him slowly. "i wanna see your face while i touch you."

josh pulls his head up, brows furrowing as he tries to slow his breathing. the strokes are slow and deliberate, he moans under his breath. watching him slowly come undone underneath you, you can't help but feel the pulsing of your wet cunt intensify.

lowering your head, his eyes begin to widen and before he can figure out something hot to say, your lips are on his cock. tongue swirling on the tip, he swears he's seeing stars. his trembling hand desperately reaches up to find the back of your head, lacing his fingers through your locks.

"holy fuck, that. . . that feels so good." he mumbles with a gasp as you begin to take his length into your mouth. a high-pitched whimper escapes him as he bucks slightly. you keep your eyes on him the full time, taking in as much of him as you can until he hits the back of your throat.

picking up pace now, you start bobbing on him, lapping your tongue all the while. josh is curling his toes, gripping your hair and whispering your name into his bedroom like he's trying his best to tell a secret. he wonders how he got so lucky, the way he'd fantasised about this constantly and for it to actually be happening? it was his lucky day.

he'd imagined you both at the lab, in the back room, he's bent you over and you're dripping wet. he slides in with ease and you call his name a little too loudly. or, behind reception, he would crawl beneath your desk and you'd spread your legs and he'd dive in like a man starved. or sometimes, you were in this very bed, your juices coating his sheets.

you swirl your tongue on the tip once more, causing him to let out a loud, pleading moan before pulling away with an obscene pop. this allows him to catch his breath slightly, but man - he was so close. it takes everything within him not to beg you to put those pretty lips of your back around his aching cock.

glancing over your shoulder, your eyes find his gaming chair and you grin. you wonder how many times he's jerked off in that overused thing, thinking of you. pumping his cock, wishing it was coated with your wetness instead of some cheap lube. calling your name into the palm of his hand as ropes of hot cum land on his soft tummy.

it drives you crazy just thinking about it.

and you need him, more of him.

you shuffle off the bed and walk towards the chair before sitting in it, facing him on the bed. legs spreading, you relax them over his armrests, exposing your underwear beneath your skirt. josh watches on, mouth agape, blinking.

"c'mon baby, don't you wanna taste me too?" you ask and his eyes sparkle. you've never seen him move so fast - he scrambles from the bed, boxers and jeans around his ankles. kneeling like he's about to pray for you, (and maybe he should, with the sinful images plaguing both of your thoughts), he looks up at you with that same puppy dog look.

"please," you whisper, exhaling, "i need you, josh."

he bites his lip at those words and has to actively try and suppress a moan. hearing you plead like that. . . fuck, you were so hot.

slowly easing closer, josh hooks two fingers into your underwear and pushes it to the side. your cheeks flush as your wetness is exposed to him, but you can see by the look on his face that he's elated. 

"your pussy is so fucking pretty. . ." he exhales, gradually getting closer before his tongue begins desperately lapping at your dripping cunt. a squeal escapes you as you arch your back, finally getting the relief you need. his licking is messy, it's wet, he's drooling and mixing his saliva with your juices but it's so filthy it's hot.

your gaze finds his and watch as his nose glides up your folds. his name falls from your lips repeatedly as you reach for his head, getting a firm grip on those messy curls. you guide him higher with your grasp and his tongue finds your clit finally. it's so sensitive, you'd been edging for days leading up to this.

"s. . . slow." you purr, "i'm. . . i'm gonna- fuck, i'm gonna cum if you keep going so fast."

he abides, slowing his tongue on that spot you enjoy so much. his hand presses into your thigh, pushing your leg out further to get in closer. wetness drips down his chin as he laps long licks, stopping briefly and hesitantly only to begin sucking your clit gently. he looks up at you for your approval.

a gasp and your head is thrown back, fingers in his hair tightening. there's pleasure building in your core, little sparks working inside your belly as josh obediently eats you out.

"good boy," you manage to say through breathy moans, "good boy. . . you're doing so good for- for your first time. . ."

and it was true - though he was sloppy, clumsy and got a little lost in the moment, that only served to turn you on more. his inexperienced moves were endearing, they were hot, and it felt kinda good that you were the one to finally experience this with him.

small moans sing from his mouth at the pet name 'good boy' - and you make a mental note to call him that more often. this urges him on. he moves his hand to your pussy, massaging with two fingers around your tight hole, fluttering at the sudden contact. it takes him a few circles to find it properly before sliding one inside.

the chair almost tips back as you feel him slide in, his tongue back to flicking over that sensitive spot while his digit pumps into you. your hand grips the back of the fake leather chair, digging your nails in. it's not long before he inserts a second one, and though his rhythm is off with his poor coordination, it's such a relief to be filled, even if only a little.

hand combing through his hair, you look down at him, encouraging him with every moan. wet sounds fill the small bedroom now, between his tongue on your clit and his fingers exploring your slick hole. his dick is aching to be touched, desperate for any sort of friction as it spasms occasionally under the chair - but he'd stay here forever, eating you like this, if it meant he could hear those sounds sing from your lips.

"you sound so fucking hot. . ." he mumbles, the low vibrations of his voice against your pussy, sucking harder to increase your pitch and it works. you're almost there and you'll cum all over his sweet little face soon if you're not careful. who knew that josh futturman could be so good at eating pussy?

"-n. . . need you to fuck me," you blurt out, completely breathless. josh pulls back a little to look up at you fully with wide eyes, excitement piquing. the dim light from the television dances across him and you notice the lower half of his face is completely coated in your juices.

you continue, "you need to fuck me too, i bet. you're aching, aren't you? i bet you've been thinking about this for years." - and he had, fuck, he had. he'd lost count of the number of times he'd imagined you both here, a writhing, moaning, wet mess against each other.

"please, please let me fuck you." josh begged, fitting that he was on his knees. he looked good down there, you thought, pleading with his hands grasped together and that pathetic, lovable, pussy drunk expression of his as your wetness drips from his chin.

staying there for a few moments to admire him in this position, and to hear him beg just a little longer - you finally stand and step over him deliberately to watch him underneath you for just a little longer. wriggling out of your soaked panties, you throw them towards him and collapse back onto the single bed whilst removing your skirt. surprisingly, he catches your underwear and relishes how wet they feel in his palm.

you spread your legs once more for him and he watches in awe like you're the most beautiful thing he's ever seen. wiping his chin a little, he scampers to you like a lost puppy, crawling up onto the bed and kicking his jeans and boxers off in the process.

he slots between your thighs and you see how his jaw goes slack when his dick brushes against your dripping cunt. you grab his chin, still a little wet, and pull him in for a deep kiss. when his tongue enters your mouth, you can taste yourself and it makes you smile. letting go of his chin, your hands roam to his hoodie, yanking it off and tossing it to the side. the only barrier between you both now was your damn shirts.

pushing him back, you begin to slowly pull your shirt up revealing your bra. josh bites his lower lip, swallowing hard as his eyes roam across your chest. his hands inch closer and you slap them away. "your shirt first." you tease.

he holds back a whine and removes his shirt, throwing it far across the room in frustration. "now, can i?" he hums, glancing at your chest and then back to you.

you wait a few moments, then a few more. and then nod.

your shirt isn't even fully off when his hands are desperately roaming your chest, squeezing both breasts as you gasp. his eyes glaze over as he continues to squeeze and you feel his dick twitch once more against your pussy. you begin to grind against him, his saliva and your wetness mixing against his cock.

holding back some moans, josh slips his hands behind your back to unhook your bra. it takes him a little longer than he'd have liked, and you arch your back a little to help him - but he finally removes it to reveal your chest.

between your perfect fucking body below him and the way you were slowly working his desperate cock along your pussy lips - he was in heaven. immediately he's sucking on a nipple, flicking his tongue over it with soft, breathy moans. you moan in return and cup the back of his head, petting him softly - "good boy," you whisper, "good, good boy. . ."

fuck, he loved it when you called him that. it lit a fire in his belly like he'd chase you to the ends of the earth just to hear you call him a good boy one more time.

he moves to your other nipple now, giving them both equal attention and you squirm a little, gripping his hair. the cold air drifts across your erect, soaked nipple he'd left behind but the coldness is quickly replaced by his fingers, rubbing.

"your tits are fuckin' perfect-" he mumbles with his nipple still in your mouth, pulling himself away finally as he begins to move in rhythm with you.

"josh." you say, commanding his attention with a sultry tone.

he snaps out of his dizzy state and looks at you.

"fuck me," you demand, reaching down to push his cock harder against your drenched cunt, "i need you inside of me. can you do that? can you be my good boy and fuck me?"

jesus fucking christ. josh wasn't sure he'd ever been this hard in his life.

josh nods with a whimper, it's so cute. he's so desperate. just as he begins to move into position, you reach up to grab his chin.

"use your words." you instruct him.

those hazel eyes widen, taking a breath to compose himself before nodding, "i'll fuck you. i'll be your good boy and fuck you." his voice wavers. he wants to be so good for you. he wants to be your good boy so badly, "please? please." josh pleads whinily.

"good boy." you grin and let go of his chin, trailing your hands down his chest and his soft tummy, taking great pleasure in grazing your fingers past his fuzzy snail trail.

lining himself up with your entrance, he makes a few sweeps with his cock, lubing it up and enjoying the feeling of your hole sucking his length in. his eyes glance to you for permission one final time and this makes your stomach flip, he's too fucking cute.

you signal, giving him permission with a nod and he slowly pushes inside of you.

he's slow, purposefully, so that one thrust doesn't cause him to immediately explode inside of you - cause the way you'd worked him up, it wouldn't be long before his cum was stuffed deep in there. your walls wrap around him so perfectly, his words get caught in his throat and all he can do is whine. but it feels so fucking good to finally have him inside of you. his thick fingers pumping into you were fine, sure, but his cock is what you craved all along.

your stomach tenses as he fills you completely, eyes locked on his to see him fully experience this for the first time.

"does that feel good, baby?" you ask him, trailing your hand across his lower stomach.

"s. . .so fuckin' tight- ah-" still, he can hardly speak, bottomed out inside of you with his cock pulsing, "so wet, so so fucking wet."

"just for you." you coo, beginning to roll your hips slightly to help him along. this earns a loud gasp from him, positioning his hands on your hips to get a proper grip on you. slowly, you both find a rhythm and he's thrusting inside of you at a slow pace.

each thrust has you moaning as you roll your hips to meet him, his strong grip on your hips only intensifying the feeling as he gets lost in the sensation. already, you can tell he's close - having almost finished him off earlier definitely adding to his desperation.

"faster," you tell him, gripping his stupid blue patterned sheets and holding one of his wrists in your other hand.

a whimper - no two - no three, falls from his lips as he picks up pace. josh is slamming into you now, his hands glide up the side of your body to meet your tits again and he leans over, unable to keep himself upright through the thrusts. his lips find yours once more, half to muffle his moans and half to ground himself a little.

over and over, his cock pumps into you speedily, creating loud, wet, slapping noises. you wrap your legs around him to pull him in deeper, closer and arch your back.

"-g...gonna. . . i'm. . ." his words are muffled by your lips and you pull back slightly, your breath mingling together as his eyes struggle to stay open through the pleasure.

"you gonna cum?" you ask with a grin, pulling his chin up for him to look at you.

"ah - yeah. . ." he swallows, and you squeeze around his dick causing him to whine loudly.

the thought of him exploding inside you had you close too. that girthy length was slamming you, over and over, slick from what he had done to you. josh was totally lost in the pleasure, sweat coating his brow as his hips worked hard to chase your climax and his own.

"can i?" josh suddenly asks, gasping for breath.

you deliberately don't answer, but moan louder and squeeze your cunt around him - you feel his rhythm waver in response.

"fuck - baby, please," he cries, locking eyes with you as his brow furrows, "please, i need to cum, please let me cum."

the words falling from his lips were so fucking hot, he was begging you for release. all he wanted to do was unload inside of you and he was pleading and wet and adorable. how could you possibly say no to that face?

"have you been a good boy?" you ask.

"yes!" he almost screams, "yes! i've been such a good boy, please, please. i need it, i need to cum in your tight, fuckin' perfect - ah, ah. . . - pussy, please." the words trip over themselves and he's really sweating now. the way he's pistoning into you, you can feel the desperation in every thrust of his hard cock.

"then cum, my good boy." you finally say, pushing him into you with your legs around his back for a hard deep thrust - and he keeps this up.

his whines heighten in pitch, going higher and higher as he gets a little rough. with each thrust, you're thrown back a little on the bed and it earns large explosive moans from you each time. his hands are back on your hips and he digs his fingers in, leaving harsh red marks.

you don't care though, watching him lose control is the hottest fucking thing you've ever seen. a desperate, whining, whimpering, cumming mess.

josh tries to announce it, let you know he's really about to cum, but all that comes out are breathy moans as his rhythm falters and his eyes start to roll back. you can feel it too, the way his cock is twitching and pulsing harder inside you. it brings your own climax closer, the inevitability of your pussy walls being painted white with all of his cum. . .

and though you try to hold off, you cum. lights flash behind your eyes as you reach out for him, pulling him by the back of the neck down to you. pressing your forehead to his, your hole flutters around him, squeezing and clamping down as your orgasm milks him - causing him to cum. ropes of hot, white cum fill you over and over, his mouth stuck half open.

you continue to grind through the orgasm, albeit with a faltering rhythm due to your climax, as he's mostly still beside the way his dick is jerking as it empties inside of you. his cum begins to leak out of you slowly with each grind you make against him and it causes you to gasp at the sensation. your moans fill his mouth, looking into his eyes as he struggles to make eye contact through the blinding pleasure. praises sing from your lips for him, coaxing him through it as you feel his movements slow to a halt.

he pulls out reluctantly and slumps against you with heaving breaths, his head falling on your chest with his cheek flush against your skin. his body is hot, and sticky. you begin to pet his head gently, your other hand tracing your fingers across his arm around you.

"that. . ." he pipes up, "- was amazing," josh tilts his head to look up at you with a dumb smile on his face.

"yeah?" you answer, smirking, "it was pretty fucking amazing, wasn't it?"

and you admire him like this, the way he's looking up at you with that familiar smile, practically with hearts in his eyes as your fingers pet through his hair. his eyes are sleepy, half-lidded - and the rest is deserved too, after what a good, hard-working boy he's been.

"you were so good for me." you lean down to kiss his forehead, peppering soft kisses all across it.

he giggles and snuggles against you closer, "stop - you'll get me goin' again." if his cheeks weren't already flushed from exertion, they'd be red once more.

"right, i'll save the praise for next time - since i know you love it so much." a grin tugs on your lips.

and he likes the sound of that.

his head suddenly springs up, his smile growing wider with his mouth half open, joy filling his face. ". . .next time?"

[brighteuphony]

On the way back from Tea Country with Chakra-poisoned Kakashi tryna "casually" fish for some info before Sakura comes in with the one-hit KO on accident.

So she's got some complicated feelings for Kakashi as well, though they're a lot milder than what she feels about Sasuke.

There's a moment in my AU where Sakura goes through a deep reflection ritual, in which she has to face Inner Sakura -who is representative of all the ugly truths her day-to-day self hasn't been able to face- and come to terms with who she is.

During that time, she's got to face the music.

The music:

Sasuke is the last prodigal son of a clan that was brutally butchered. He's a genius with one of the most powerful dojutsu out there (that he has no idea how to use) and is coming in hot with more baggage than an airport terminal.

Naruto is not normal. She doesn't know what he is (as in-canon, she finds out after the time-skip and the Sakura from above is right on the cusp of Shippuden), but there's nothing normal about a kid who can pull wild orange chakra and who can fight Gaara's tailed beast and come out on top. He's got the personal attention of the Hokage, but the entire village has banded against him for some reason. He's special.

Kakashi is a war veteran turned Jounin and an infamous ANBU captain (I headcanon that some ANBU names are leaked specifically to generate a healthy level of fear/caution among other villages- which is why we know of Itachi/Kakashi/Shisui very publically) and is ALSO the last prodigal son of an old noble clan.

(No way a bookworm like Sakura didn't consume every publically available scroll on Konoha clans).

It doesn't take the big brains to figure out that he got team 7 specifically to help deal with Sasuke's trauma/teach him about the Sharingan, and put a leash on Naruto (and in the future, when she finds out that Madara was able to control the Kyuubi with the Sharingan as well as the knowledge that Kakashi was Minato's student it becomes even clearer why he got the Sasuke/Naruto combo.)

And Sakura? Sakura is a civilian. No clan, no dojutsu, nothing to her name except great chakra control. She's the literal meat in the meat-grinder of the military machine of Konoha, the acceptable sacrifice in a group of otherwise invaluable shinobi. She's just a...girl. (And it doesn't help that she was obsessed with Sasuke instead of training, furthering the gulf between her and Kakashi.)

Kakashi was absolutely not built to handle her- in fact, Kakashi has NO idea how to relate who hasn't gone through a mountain's worth of trauma or someone who hasn't been ingrained in the shinobi-as-a-tool lifestyle, and even then, he's not fully equipped to handle people who have (lmao Sasuke). Not to mention the man is a prodigy- he has no idea how to teach people who have to work hard to get somewhere in life. How do you teach someone if you've never had to 'work hard' to get there yourself?

So, Sakura understands that Kakashi was put in one of the most ridiculous situations of his career- a situation he had NO idea how to handle. She can forgive him for that. BUT, she can't forgive him for not trying his best.

Sakura spent a lot of time coming to terms with the fact that she rushed into the Chidori/Rasengan combo without a single idea of what she would do, but...Kakashi was a big reason for that.

She was HIS responsibility, and he fumbled that bag. Whatever his reasoning, whether it was to 'protect' her, or whether he thought she was worthless, whatever: he should have TRIED.

Kakashi was an adult with resources aplenty. He recognized that she had stellar chakra control but never bothered to teach her genjutsu or direct her to teachers who could pick up the slack.

And after the accident, he abandoned her again. Being forgotten in lieu of Sasuke and Naruto hurt...but she could heal. Being abandoned as some kind of martyr to Kakashi's failures as a teacher? It's gonna take a while for Kakashi to make that up to her...if he can muster the courage to face her.

Sakura finally understands why he preferred the memorial stone to the living. He already failed the dead, and it's easier to wallow in self-flagellation than it is to try and step up for the living.

Sakura stopped being a coward some time ago, and when Kakashi finally does the same, she'll forgive him.

Thank you so much for sticking with this wall of text! And thank you so much anon for the question! Once again, I really appreciate all the kind words people have been throwing my way. <3 <3 <3

[batboyblog]

Doing a mail-in vote and for the more local stuff, it does feel a little disheartening to see "No candidate" under the democrat or even independent option, leaving only one unopposed republican option. Is there a way to work towards change for stuff like this, or is it just something we have to sit there and take?

when it comes to politics there's always something you can do.

Any ways, yes this problem has been disheartening Democrats in red areas for many years, but you'll be happy to hear people are working to fix it. For the first time ever the DNC has been able to fund support to every single state party, all of them from Alaska to Wyoming. Much of this will be focused on long term party building goals to break Republican super majorities in Red states to allow Dems to get a voice in states like Idaho, or Missouri where they've been locked out and Republicans have had their own way totally for years.

One part of the problem is just what you're talking about, failure to field any Democratic candidates some times even for close or winnable seats, sometimes for seats where a majority of voters voted Biden but there were no Democrats running for State Rep/Senate.

Florida's Dems have really gotten out in front of this, for the first time in 30 years, there's a Democrat running in EVERY Florida state House seat and other state parties are catching up

everyone should check out the DLCC who's job it is to fight for state level Dems

As for what you can do? well past signing up to volunteer for the DLCC if there isn't any local candidate near you, I'd say check out Run For Something, its an organization that focuses on supporting young first time candidates running for state and local office, they've made a big push on school boards to counter Moms for Liberty. They also like to support candidates who are running where Democrats don't normally run, I've made a lot of calls for them over the years and remember one women who was the first Democrat elected to her city council in 120 years. You might not get to talk to anyone running in your area, but maybe you can help fix the problem for someone else by supporting someone running for local office in a Red area

and finally look up your local Democrats and join. Every local Democratic Party has a "candidate recruitment" Committee or officer who try to talk community leaders into putting themselves out there and running for office. Running for even local office is hard and scary and largely an unknown for most people. If you can help build up a local party that'll have their back, more people will take the risks, and will do better for having a ready to go network of support rather than just winging it on their own. You can be the person in the room insisting that the party find someone to run for every office, if not you who? if not now when? etc.

[amphiaria]

*walks back in* and one more thing

ultimately we need to meet media on its level, and the reason that chobits is a crazy-making narrative is that it takes such huge, insane swings and utterly whiffs every single one of them. if it were an absolute failure on every level nobody would like it. it is extraordinarily good at a few specific things. anybody will tell you that the aesthetic is absolutely off the chain. very few manga groups rival clamp in appealing character design. every single thing they have ever done oozes with style, and their costume design is more considered than many larger and much more successful properties. they are also very good, bless their hearts, at making narratives where god's most perfect angel (literally in the case of wish) makes doe eyes at the most Some Guy-ass man in existence. they're fucking great at this. this is their bread and butter. this is what they want to be doing, and everything else is gravy to them.

why they decided to tell this particular narrative with chobits' particular set dressing is frankly beyond me, but I am not the ultimate authority on what stories are allowed to be told in which settings. chobits makes me insane because I want it to be more ambitious than it is - because I think I see places where IT wants to be more ambitious than it is - but I can't condemn the story because it wasn't exactly what I wanted it to be. chobits raises and subsequently fumbles a thoughtful narrative about the violence of being a women in a society where sexuality is forcibly imposed upon you without your knowledge and against your will and is unable to keep the plate spinning alongside the other plate that wants to draw cute girls in underwear (I am only going to write five paragraphs about the fucking vagina button if you ask me to). we cannot help but rend our garments and stan.

anyway I theorize that rebecca sugar read chobits and looked at hideki/chii and went "I could make it gay and worse" and gave us pearlrose send tweet.

[eroguron0nsense]

Garp, Fascism, and Parental Failure

Garp is truly one of the most interesting One Piece characters for me because of the extent to which his dogged, relentless devotion to a fascist system–and the supposed "order" it promises to uphold in the face of anarchy or rebellion–perseveres no matter how many times it fails him and his son and his grandsons. He's fully aware of the deep-seated corruption and atrocity, and feels some kind of moral obligation to bend its rules to protect the innocent (as we can see with his attempts to protect Rouge and Ace), but when faced with widespread femicide and infanticide, genocide, slavery and endless examples of egregious cruelty, he is unable to comprehend the notion that the system is indefensible, or that the only moral choice he can possibly make when faced with that level of atrocity is to leave and resist it. His son recognizing the inherent, inexcusable failures of the World Government and its armed enforcers–literally quitting the force to start a revolution– changes nothing. The order to slaughter pregnant people and infants at Baterilla can't convince him otherwise. The countless instances of bribery, the tolerance of atrocity from state-sanctioned privateers, everything about the history of the Valley of the Gods are all things he's aware of, and takes issue with, but never comes to the conclusion that he cannot affect positive change within a system designed for oppression. The public execution of his grandson–a prime example of the marine's fundamentally irrational, arrogant, vindictive cruelty clearly bound to blow up in all of their faces even before their Pyrrhic victory at the summit war–makes him waver, but even when confronted with this obvious, indefensible injustice against a child he raised and rescued by people seeking to murder him on live TV and desecrate his corpse as a show of power, he cannot bring himself to act against it in any meaningful way no matter how much it hurts him to leave his grandson to die. If he can't veto it, he'll stay Vice Admiral and suffer through Ace being sacrificed on the altar of fascist state control, and functionally leave Luffy for dead in the process while he's at it. He fails every single person he wanted to love–Ace, Luffy, and almost certainly Dragon–and allows himself to be reluctantly complicit in countless crimes against humanity again and again and again because he's so deeply steeped in this notion of preservation of order through state control that he convinces himself that even this disgusting, atrocious, fundamentally flawed and untenable excuse for a government is better than abolition, better than revolution, or just the act of expecting accountability or literally anything better from the systems that issue false promises to protect you. Dadan beating the living shit out of him and calling him a failure as a grandfather, as a self proclaimed defender of the people, is one of the most important scenes in the Postwar Arc because a lesser series might frame Garp as a tragic, helpless figure suffering more than anyone else due to conflict of love and duty, but One Piece refuses to whitewash his actions/inaction or allow the grief and suffering caused by systems he's complicit in to take precedence over its real victims: the D brothers.

There's so much I could say about statism and anarchism and the ways people have internalized the supposed necessity of state violence to the extent they can't oppose that violence even when it ruins them or their loved ones, but that horrible indoctrination and its devastating consequences for both him and his family are what makes Garp so fascinating to watch and so thematically/politically important to One Piece as a whole.

[cyb3rtarot]

Pick a Pile: Facing “Failure”

Disclaimer: readings are not replacements for professional advice. You create your fate, not the reading. Take what confirms and not what confuses. In this reading, I’ll look at your current perception or relationship to perceived failure & things to keep in mind. It’s great if we can find beauty in the inevitability of lessons instead of fear!

Help a Palestinian family: 1 2 3 4 5

pile 1 ✃ pile 2 pile 3 ✃ pile 4

Pile 1

[Mannaz, King of Wands rx, 8 of wands rx, 2 of swords, Follow Your Own Good Advice rx, Changed in the Night]

Hello pile one! This pile struggles with understanding how fate & time interacts with effort. There’s a complicated relationship with destiny or divine timing. On one hand, when things don’t work, you may try to reflect and understand if that has a deeper meaning. You may wonder, for example, about whether failure & rejection is divine protection, if the timing wasn’t right—if it’s not meant for you. But then the energy switches to pointing the finger at yourself and wondering if what you haven’t accomplished is a personal failure. There’s flip-flopping between where to place the blame. Even if you’re not thinking of intentionally blaming anyone or anything, there may be self-blaming tendencies or a fixation on trying to find a reason for pain. You may comb through your actions looking for an answer and are sometimes only able to see everything that went wrong. This can begin even before the outcome is achieved; you may stagnate yourself through perfectionism or through not applying yourself because every approach seems not good enough. There’s a struggle in merging what you think you could improve with the knowledge that some things are out of your control.

Of course, we wish we could understand why exactly things went wrong because we’d feel better armed. But one of the things failure shows is no matter how much we arm ourselves, there can be a wrench in our plans. Instead we must move with self-trust even when we don't know what's going to happen. This is one of the struggles of being human! Even highly intuitive people are in constant reflection to understand what’s going on. Going around in a mental loop can function as self punishment sometimes, as if we’re forcing ourselves to sit in the corner and find an answer to things beyond our understanding. You should always reflect and strive for self improvement, but this best comes from self love rather than a fixation on failure or criticism. You already have this King of Wands energy which leads you to success despite stumbles. You don't need to perfectly understand everything or perform perfectly. 

Fate, success, failure, outcomes, these are complex webs. Trying to boil fate—and related concepts like divine timing, fated chance, predestiny, free will, etc—down to a few simple factors can lead to extremes or bias, where we convince ourselves we’re totally in control or on the opposite end we convince ourselves life is out of our hands. Neither side of this polarity acknowledges the power of free will. Fate is something formed by ALL people who have lived, are living, and will live, by forces unseen, but also our own hands. It’s complex because one single person is an infinite pool of complexity within themselves, much more so a whole world. Add time and it can be confusing to understand why xyz happened the way it did. Don’t go to extremes ignoring the concept of timing nor dooming yourself to feeling controlled. The human experience is somewhere in the middle. When things don’t work out, take an honest look at what you had control over and how you feel about the way you handled it. Not to judge or criticize, just make objective notes. If we focus on these parts of reality, we can detach from unhealthy mental traps about what could’ve been or might be. 

On some level, you already know this. From your oracle cards and this King of Wands (rx), I feel you’ve already done a lot of self reflection on things you want to improve or that haven’t gone the way you wanted, but there’s hesitancy to relax and move forward. It’s like you keep re-evaluating or planning because it can’t be as simple as trusting yourself—what if it goes wrong again? Yes, it’s true, things may go wrong. But what if everything went better than expected? This is the unknowable which will eat away at our mental health if we let it. But, even if we knew what would happen, it still could not replace our effort, confidence, self love & trust. We would still need those things to make the most of our future and enjoy it. Trust that you know yourself. You’re not who you once were, because those lessons you learned prepared future-you for new things. Be honest with yourself, not because I think you aren’t, but because when you can say with evidence you’re realistically evaluating the situation, you can navigate the unknown to the best of your ability. Your relationship with failure is also your relationship with fear of the unknown. But I see someone who should trust that their honest effort does mean something, is worth something, and then your energy and talents can come out more easily. Don’t be your own bully before anything had a chance to get off the ground!

Also, don’t be afraid to ask for help! Some of you isolate or were forced into being self-sufficient. Other people add more unknown factors, but sometimes that’s what helps the most! Working with others or asking for help is often where positive surprises comes in, safety nets that catch us when we’re low, and we also learn more about ourselves through others. If you can grow deeper bonds with your peers or community, these may be a positive influence.

Failure won’t always come with epiphanies to undo it, especially when we already tried our best. Sometimes we can only understand & manage limited things. We must balance and rest in this knowledge ♥️

Extra Details: more college students in this pile or preparing for college (I see a lot of academia and big university buildings), fear of embarrassment or shyness when presenting what you made, worrying about what you’ll make of yourself, past bullying, writing & traditional drawing, letters, journal keeping, thick frame glasses, kpop, being unsure when to reach out or withdraw, drawing on a tablet/with a stylus, studying arts or liberal arts, blueberries, lots of huge creative energy

Thank you for reading! 

✃

Pile 2

[Xebo, 7 of pentacles, the Magician, page of cups, Justice]

Your relationship to failure is linked to a fear of disappointment. This pile is grounded in the idea of give and take, putting effort into goals to receive a desired outcome, needing to do the work. And I feel when faced with failure this pile may have a relatively quicker process of getting back up, because you know that’s what it takes to move forward. There’s balanced, methodical, and steady energy, a work ethic or skill of endurance. 

However, the symbolism & faces of figures on these cards seem melancholic. I see physical effort to keep it all together, but you may feel hesitant to put hope or emotional attachment into anything. There’s a sense that you let yourself have wishes but only view them as wishes. Even as you work towards them, you may not let yourself get expectations up, because you know even with putting the work in something could go wrong. Or, you might see things you want as a “forbidden fruit,” imaginary, unrealistic, naïve, etc. There’s a deep-seated fear or thorn in your emotions when connecting to desire—because doing so sets up potential for disappointment which feels too crushing. You might feel it’s illogical to set yourself up in that way, yet at the same time, this restriction of yourself can become fear based and less logical. 

There’s a need to heal this because it’s casting a dampening energy over what you do. Confronting your relationship with failure is confronting avoidance of the pain of disappointment. Avoiding pain is normal but can restrict desire and ambition that wants to be expressed. Don’t deny desire, emotionally separate yourself from it, nor be too judgmental. The possibility of failure makes you detach from deep emotion and put your guard up. Maybe you feel a very measured approach will yield the best results, and often it can, but more so when coming from a place of healthy curiosity than suppression. This may stop a lot of you from pursuing connections with others. It’s great if you’re rational, grounded, decisive, but to your inner self this may come off as a strict-parent dynamic where you restrict wants through very decisive planning—rather than directly addressing them. And sometimes what you need is to be a friend to yourself, to indulge a bit, let yourself relax and see the fun in dreaming. You already understand putting work in, so using this realistic perspective, what would your life look like if you had some of the larger desires you feel are fantastical dreams? What would a merger between your current life and that desired life look like, or what would the transitional scenes look like getting there if you were reading a story? And, what are reasonable disappointments you may encounter on a journey there? The point of the last question is not to get caught up in disappointment, but rather that facing it as a possibility may make you feel more prepared. Disappointment is not more powerful than you when you accept it as part of life’s cycles. 

As I flip through the deck I see strings of cards indicating you already know this but maybe some of you are having trouble integrating intuition with conscious knowing. I feel if you haven’t already come to these conclusions you may be at the edge of an epiphany regarding emotions and desires. Maybe because there’s something new you’re interested in with the page of wands at the bottom of the deck? The work ethic and planning skills you have can carry you far, and through reflection on disappointment as a part of the human experience, remaining fears cannot keep you down. Best of luck in whatever you pursue!

Extra Details: meditation on emotions, desires, & fears could be helpful. Revisiting past disappointments to create new perspectives (there may still be pain or disappointment to process, don’t rush it!), scared/anxious, uncertainty about seeking connection, balancing long term material goals with relationships, connecting with your emotions & wants will bring clarity to your intuition, putting defenses down about feelings, letting go of old ideas, spending time with/ thinking of a grandmother, homemade coffee, new interests/ on a search for something new, measured responses to others, lack of excitement/ feeling rigid (or coming out of this), a need for more union or sync within oneself & dualistic concepts (body/mind, emotions/thoughts, desires/detachment), changing views on connection with others and within yourself, resigning yourself to unhappiness unnecessarily, unhappiness in the home or with traditional lifestyle, prominent Virgo placements in natal/SR chart or in profection yr, or receiving help from a Virgo (take as it already resonates), internalized beliefs from family about success or passions—a lot of you may replicate your family’s criticism in your thoughts towards yourself. Interests you’ve put off because it’s “not productive” like music, some of you may enjoy going out at night to places with live music or clubbing/lounges, The Moon in tarot/deep subconscious emotional pulls, something dripping or the word dripping may be significant?

Thank you for reading!

✃

Pile 3

[Perthro, Ace of cups, King of pentacles, the Hierophant, the Hanged Man rx]

Hello pile 3! Your message is about perspective. On one hand, I see you guys have a lot of hope deep down or a tendency to romanticize. When you see things aren’t working out, it may be hard to accept because you look at potential and what's working rather than what isn’t. Especially in relationships, there are a lot of people here who find it difficult to accept aspects like incompatibility. However, when you finally come to terms with what’s happening, I see a lot of you can turn around to the next thing very quickly. This pile is aware that “failure,” or endings, are just new beginnings. It’s very hard to totally dull your “sparkle,” because there’s always some renewed sense of optimism or ability to see potential. When you realize the stage has been set for something new, you get a lot of excitement. There’s an inner & outer sense of security that allows you to make peace with the fact that living means lessons, and as long as you take these lessons in stride, you can keep going and receive new things.

However, your other message is about that momentum. The Hierophant with the Hanged Man rx and your rune suggests that slowing down mentally and having a lot of reflective or learning/teaching time may be a benefit, especially because this pile’s message seems specific to right now. You may hear a lot about waiting and working on yourself, and you may feel like, “but I have worked on myself, what’s next??” Sometimes a period of stagnation after something doesn’t work just drags & drags and makes you keep seeing or feeling the things you’re trying to move on from. However, it's this exact period that's a benefit—those moments are beneficial for the new opportunities you seek. Your cards encourage you to analyze those things—particularly in the recent past—that didn’t work, and to do a lot of reflection on what you wish to carry into the future. You may wish to rush forward, but good things come to those who are patient (not necessarily to those who wait, but those who take a steady approach). There may be things from your past that you've quickly dropped from your mind and there’s more learning to be done. For example, there may be relationships or events you look over with rose-tinted glasses, and it’s important to analyze what actions & energies led to the endings you experienced, both what you did and didn't do, and what others did and didn’t do. You may also learn something from analyzing what didn’t work in the lives of those close to you. For example, you could look at similar things friends & family did that seemed to go wrong if you wish to try a different approach. Your ability to pick yourself up and keep going is admirable, but appreciation and taking advantage of still moments is also needed. There may be some kind of lesson wrapping up right now or that’s attempting to be conveyed to you, and there may be more things to learn yet from recent “failures” that you have not analyzed from all angles because you’re ready to go. Especially those things which are emotionally painful, make sure you’ve not only made peace with these but understand how approaches may need to be different going forward if you’re to have different outcomes. Life is unpredictable, and it’s for that reason that still moments are a blessing, because when things get moving we may no longer have the time, experience, and learning to tweak our approach mid-trajectory. Quieter times allow us to set our destination and plan our trip before hopping on the plane, metaphorically. Whether in material efforts or seeking new connections, and I see a lot of you may be bringing children into the world so that's especially important. Looking into the future is not bad at all, but make sure you’re connecting the past and present into your future vision and looking at things from all different sides. There’s no need to rush forward; life constantly moves us in that direction.

It seems there are developments & surprises upcoming for you. Think of the present as us donning our armor and weapon—self-exploration and growth. The more time we put into these, the less we'll be caught unawares. We’ll be prepared to make the most of things we actually do want when we get them, instead of repeating the past from a different standpoint. There’s a particular emphasis on gaining knowledge, whether of yourself or otherwise, while new phases are in the making. Each new moment is born out of this present one, so be mindful of the energies allowed forward. As we get in control of ourselves and our perspective, we less so need to “wait” for good things to come to us, and instead can take confident steps, as you’ll know what you want and what direction those things are in.

Extra Details: pregnancy (use protection if doing risky things) ((messages about proper planning & gaining knowledge are doubly emphasized for anyone giving birth soon or trying for children)), being mindful of energy allowed towards oneself (those with rose-tinted glasses may have had a tendency to allow disrespect in relationships), breaking cycles, others sharing your developments (example, if you break a toxic cycle or start something new you may notice loved ones doing the same), realistic hope, pushing the past out of your mind due to emotional wounds or resentment (healing/shadow work needed if so), “let go or be dragged,” current Saturn transit may be significant or Saturn significant in solar return/profection year, as well as Pluto leaving Capricorn, Wheel of Fortune, never-ending flow of time, heavy natal or solar return Libra placements, midnight, interim period before change, a need to study/learn pertaining to the things you want in your future, midnight gospel, meeting up with others in public spaces like cafes

Thank you for reading!

✃

Pile 4

[Laziness, Compromise, the Outsider, Iceolation, Sowilo]

Hi pile 4! Your message is about redefining what “failure” means to you. Your cards suggest you’ve gotten comfortable with some misery or discontent, possibly because you don’t feel a life that would make you happy is accessible. Maybe you feel you’re not a person who can achieve a different life, so you resigned yourself to how you currently feel. Or, some of you have built an “acceptable” life, and you’re not confronting discontent because you might have to tear this down—or you might “fail” trying to achieve change. 

Wanting to start over, being different from others, past difficulties, none of this makes you a failure or is anything to feel shame/embarrassment about. I won’t say not living your truth makes you a failure either; everyone struggles and searches for that throughout their lifetimes. It’s not that there’s necessarily anything wrong with how you do things or how you might do things differently without the pressure of expectations. But, you may be compromising on something that’s fundamental to your wellbeing, and this doesn't have to be the answer. Your relationship to failure is significant in whatever is making you feel like you have to accept misery or “less than." There’s a sense of alienation from others through your life and from your own happiness. Maybe you feel your wellbeing is too difficult? The significant thing is on the “outsider” card, a child looks longingly through a gate they think is locked, but actually the gate is open. This card is comparable to the 5 of pentacles in that help in unhappy times is often far closer than you think. But don’t water yourself down for others or their expectations, that’s like extinguishing your flame before it has a chance to do anything.

Now’s a time where you can approach different aspects of your life in ways you might’ve thought of before but couldn’t. Maybe there’s a desire you couldn’t obtain before and now there’s a more promising opportunity. Especially in regards to your material situation, such as jobs, life goals, physical things or finances. But not only; this is a time of general personal development and spiritual growth. Things in your life that you have kept in darkness, such as feelings of disconnection, misery, resentment—these have an opportunity to be purged. It’s a time where you’re encouraged to see how the effort you put in can pay off, like sowing seeds. Don’t be discouraged by the fact that you may have once tried and failed. Life has ebbs and flows, sometimes what was once out of reach comes into grasp at another time. 

Some of you are concerned with what your life will look like to others if you change. Particularly those who are living a socially acceptable life or have something that works practically, or people encourage you into (such as a traditional job), but want to explore something unconventional or harder. This is also a fear to address, keeping yourself caged through others’ ideas. Everyone has their own path to walk and you won’t necessarily find yours by looking at your life through another’s lens, or through the person you wish you were instead of who you actually are. You may have reached goals, but that doesn’t mean you have to stay where you are if you feel misaligned. The feeling's not there to throw you off but to tell you something. It’s your choice how to address it, but don’t repress it. Life can be more than staying afloat. Not even necessarily in a material way, but mentally and emotionally you can find things that give life more meaning. If you address the ways in which you minimize yourself, or kill your hopes before you’ve tried, then your relationship to failure may take a healthy turn and you can feel assured in making changes.

Extra Details: feeling like you’re regressing, spiritual growth or incoming period of inner development, the Hermit/turning inwards to find yourself, contemplating what you want or who you are, setting new goals/ working towards dreams— especially material ones, finding confidence, reflecting on haughtiness vs confidence. Contemplating the universe, feminine energy (reflecting on what this means to you spiritually), eat nutritious foods to combat deficiencies especially iron deficiency, caring for yourself according to your bodily/mental cycles

Channeled image, I see a bush or hedge being pruned. The message is you do this to yourself—how you minimize yourself. We all grow and have to tweak our expectations, selves, goals, etc. But if you try to take care of one plant in the way another needs, you may take away what makes it most beautiful or unique, it may come out looking off. Similarly, it’s true you may have had to adjust your life in unexpected ways, and this may happen again. But, if you do this based on anything except your true self, then the end result—your life, will be more likely to feel “not right.” When you make a mistake growing a plant or pruning, the plant can make a comeback if taken care of. But if you try to care for it as if it were a totally different thing, that’s what actually creates errors.

Thank you for reading!

✃

[piratecaptainscaptainpirates]

I talk a lot about loving Ed on here, he's very lovable, but I think Stede deserves more of that attention, too.

Stede's been dealt such a tough hand, constantly feeling like he's a failure and a disappointment on every level, and he's never once let the world turn him cruel. It would have been so understandable if he was bitter or unkind or callous, and he never, never is. He gets up every single day and decides to be better to the world than the world has been to him, and I love him for it.

He's so used to people dismissing his interests, and when he gets Ed, who cares so much about the things Stede likes, he's over the moon. He and Ed have very different lived experiences, but not once does Stede question the validity of Ed's feelings or try to force him to explain himself. He's spent a life so bereft of friendship that he's not even certain what love feels like, but the second he realizes? Not only does he fully commit himself to getting the love of his life back, he never questions Ed's love for him, either.

Stede Bonnet is one of the best characters of all time. He's kind, he's a bitch, he's supportive, if you hurt his family he'll laugh as you burn, he always greets people with kindness and empathy and compassion. He sees rules and he questions them. He's excited by fancy clothes. He sees people past what the world tells him he should think about them. He says "anywhoo!" I love him so much.