#zero cost offer

[transmechanicus]

Brb crying on this friday night

[mejomonster]

Debating if it's worth self publishing or just making like 20 personal copies for me and friends. I do not like that Amazon charges authors back if people return an ebook instead of just not giving the author the money until the return option deadline passes. I do not think I could afford -200 dollar charges hitting me randomly if people returned ebooks, since I predict like a profit margin of 0-50 dollars max (I mean 50 is hugely optimistic as i predict almost 0 profits and just ppl I tell who love my writing to check it out). Maybe there's a company that allows self publishing without the "charges you for ebook refunds" that's not Amazon. Hell maybe its not an issue maybe it's just do NOT spend money the same month u make it in case everyone returns their ebook, and if I just put book sales in a specific area then I can always have the money if someone returns an ebook...

I do not think publishing companies is a route I can do because with no writing degree experience and connections I have no idea what a pitch letter is or how to do one people don't throw out and I didn't learn until recently if a publisher asks you to pay it's a red flag and I don't know how to find open calls for submissions and it's just a lot of knowledge that I'm sure is basic af to anyone who's done it before or worked around it but to me it's as much of an unknown-no-idea-of-expectations as me trying to do like a Javascript example code of X program for a job interview having never studied Javascript before. And then even with people who do amazing and know exactly how to make the best job impression with good professional actions done in the preferred format with prior publishing on their resume, people still get rejected a ton. So if I can't even confirm the technical aspects of my submissions would be adequate, it's not worth it. If I'd submit I'd want to know rejection is due to novel quality or content, not due to a pitch or contact letter that's formatted wrong or lacking implicit content inclusion I didn't know was expected.

[muraenide]

Who would pet the eel?

[kizuike]

Mmgh

[the-trans-dragon]

Every time I buy toothpaste the tube is smaller and I hate it!!! Give me fucking the toothpaste!!!

[iigrowrich]

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[barbarastreisandof]

Blocking out her name and picture to protect her from harassment, but this is a Palestinian journalist reporting out of Gaza who I've personally had contact with through Twitter.

Money and aid is not getting through. Crowdfunding is not helpful. Ordering things is not helpful. Buying keffiyehs that say the money goes to Gaza is not helpful.

Gaza is a concentration camp - nothing is getting in or out that Israel does not approve of and right now Israel wants people dead or dying.

Most of social media, and tumblr is no exception, skews toward "taking action" being things that put you at zero risk and only ask for money or bits of time, or sometimes just doing nothing and calling it a boycott. "Call your rep!" "Buy this thing!" "Share this link!"

The reality is that you get out what you put in and if it was easy and low risk and comfortable for you to do it, then that is the level of impact it is having - low, comfortable to ignore, and flimsy.

Palestine, Gaza and increasingly the West Bank, NEEDS real help and the reality is we do not have the power as individuals to give it.

We DO have the power to band together and influence things collectively and the best way to do that is to loudly unequivocally express our anger and clarity of purpose.

So that does mean calling reps and being polite and firm and brief and giving your real address because otherwise they can't confirm you're a constituent and they'll ignore you. "Hello, my name is ______ and I am calling as a constituent to demand representative/senator _______ support aid to Gaza and to call for an end to support for all support to Israel."

It is important that your support for Gaza include opposition to Israel - there is no supporting Gaza while supporting Israel, it genuinely is one or the other.

Tear down pro-Israel posters. Tear down those fake kidnapped propaganda posters. Show up to rallies and marches where you can and if you can't, find out who's organizing them and get in touch to offer your support and help. Talk to family and friends. LEARN! Read up on these things and teach yourself history so you can better advocate and push back on propaganda.

Be willing to have people not like you. Losing friends over this is, and I don't mean to be cold here, nothing. It doesn't matter. Fuck em. If advocating against genocide costs you friendships and gets people calling you antisemitic, fuck em, good riddance. Privately process the loss of those relationships if they really matter to you, but publicly don't give it air because this is not a time to be focused on the feelings of people who cannot bring themselves to oppose ethnic cleansing.

The culture is shifting, support for Palestine is growing and it NEEDS to continue and we have the power to make sure it does.

[perlelune]

NDA | Coriolanus Snow

When you get hired as a nanny for President Snow and his wife's firstborn, you’re beyond thrilled and grateful. But quickly, the perfect facade melts, revealing the ugly truth of what actually goes on in the Snows' house.

Warnings: NON-CON, Capitol! Reader, Innocent Reader, Cheating, Coercion, Blackmail, Power Imbalance

This is a dark story. Heed warnings before reading under the cut.

Your worried eyes track the frenzied glide of the woman’s quill over the notepad. You squint, hoping to discern some of the words she’s scrawling that way, but they are indiscernible…just like the stone-cold expression of the bespectacled woman on the other side of the desk.

She catches you trying to peek. Your heart jumps.

As her sharp green gaze zeroes in on you, you clear your throat and shift in your seat.

She puts her quill down and twines her fingers.

“So what do you think sets you apart  from the other applicants?”

You chew on your lip. When you arrived to offer your candidature this morning, you naively believed you’d be early. Instead, you were forced to join the tail end of the massive waiting line stretching far outside the Snows’ estate. It didn’t hit you before that moment, how prized the position is. Each of the women and girls you saw radiated excellent breeding and impeccable manners. Many probably attended the University and could double as a tutor if the need presents itself.

This isn’t your case. Your parents left you and your brother Laertes with nothing when they suddenly passed away in a rebel bombing. You couldn’t blame them. This wasn't the plan. Who plans on dying and leaving their two children to fend for themselves?

Still, you now have a list of bills the length of your arm coupled with a massive mortgage to pay every month. And as Laertes’ sole caretaker, you must ensure you can afford to send him to University once he completes his education in the Academy.

Circumstances denied you that chance. Despite being of university’s age, you couldn’t afford the cost of tuition and had to drop out as soon as you got accepted. You want better for your little brother.

So as soon as you heard the news that President Snow and First Lady Livia Cardew were in search of a nanny for their son Martius, you jumped on the opportunity to apply. You rose before the sun, rummaged through your mother’s closet to find her best dress, and hailed a car to come here.

It’s a long shot, of course. You’re not as polished and impressive as some of the other women. You’re also noticeably younger. But the wages promised alone compelled you to take a chance despite the odds being unfavorable.

Fiddling with your hands, you meet the woman’s impassive stare head-on.

“What sets me apart?” You mull over your answer. You could paint a false, august portrait of yourself, your skills and your accomplishments. Or try to at least.

But what would be the point of pretending to be someone you’re not only to be found out later on? So you elect to tread the path of honesty.

“Nothing,” you say. “But I’m a hard worker. A very hard worker. In fact, I already have three jobs, one at a bakery, another as a clerk in an antique shop and I assist Fabricia Whatnot at her boutique sometimes.” Panic quivers inside you as the woman quickly jots something down on her notepad. You swiftly specify, “...But I’ll quit all of them if I get the position, of course.” You lick your lips as knots tie your stomach. “I can learn everything there is to learn on the spot. I love children, and…” You trail off, gaze traveling to your lap as you muse if you should reveal more. Your fists clench as you add, “I have a little brother who’s a few years older than Martius, and I’m really hoping I get this opportunity so I can give him the life he deserves.”

An unnerving quiet occupies the air. The wait is agony, your nails digging painfully into your palms. The jagged drumming of your heart bleeds inside your ears as she studies you.

Eventually, she leans back in the velvet chair, her face betraying no thought or emotion.

“You’re dismissed,” she says.

Your heart plummets to your feet. You shakily rise, dispirited as you drag your heels towards the door. You steal a glance above your shoulder. The woman’s attention has already drifted away from you as she shouts for the next applicant.

You sourly exit the office. You try to swallow your dejection as you note how many women are still waiting in line, each of them likely more qualified and experienced. It’s obvious you tanked the interview. Shoulders slumping, you take resigned steps through the elegant, palatial hallways of the Snow’s mansion. You get lost in admiring the crystal and gold chandeliers hanging from the high ceilings. There isn’t an inch of the house that doesn’t scream excessive, unattainable wealth.

You take your time soaking it in. Chances are you’ll never step foot in such a place in your lifetime ever again.

Distracted, you don’t notice the person in front of you before it’s too late. You bump straight into a hard, inflexible body. 

The sudden collision threatens your balance.

Fingers coil around your wrists as you stagger back, preventing your impending collapse onto the marbled floor.

As your attention drifts skywards, your jaw drops at who fills your vision.

“P-President Snow, my deepest apologies, s-sir,” you stammer, flames licking your cheeks.

As if you didn’t make yourself look dimwitted enough before, you now carelessly crashed into the leader of all of Panem. Just when you thought the day couldn’t possibly get worse.

You take him in. It truly is him. Shock fills you. 

 Tall and dazzling in a crisp white shirt and crimson vest that hints at his lean physique beneath the clothes, his signature blond waves slicked away from his face, he looks every bit the important figure that he is.

The flickering TV screen you own at home doesn’t do him justice.

A gentle smirk unfurls on his lips.

“It’s quite alright. I’m not made of sugar,” he jests.

“No…you’re not, your highness…majesty...I mean sir.”

Your blunder expands his smile. His cerulean gaze drags over your frame.

“Are you here for the nursemaid position?”

“I am, sir.” You unleash a deep exhale, his inquiry tossing salt on the fresh wound. The interviewer clearly wasn’t impressed by your less than stellar performance. Maybe you should have tried to mimic the way the girls with whom you attended the Academy behave more. They carry themselves with such confidence, wading through the world with the certainty of their destinies being secure, bereft of hardships unlike district dwellers.

You envy how carefree they get to be. Everyday you wake up worried you’ll come up short on a bill and you and Laertes will be forced to leave your family home. No matter how diligent you are at work, there never seems to be enough money to sustain the two of you. Even with three jobs, you’re barely eking out a decent living for you and your little brother. Many times, you’ve gone to bed hungry just so Laertes would not.

You don’t even realize tears have filled your eyes to the brim until a handkerchief is daintily pressed into your cheeks.

Flabbergasted, you blink up at President Snow. 

“Thank you,” you exhale, stunned by his kind gesture.

“What’s the matter?” he asks.

You search his eyes. Genuine interest lights up his pellucid blue orbs.

Without much thought, you confess, “I just don’t think I did very well with my interview.”

As he scrutinizes you in silence, cocking his head sideways, embarrassment rushes through you.

Words anxiously leave your lips in a tremulous string.

“God, I’m so sorry, spilling my problems to you as if you’re not an extremely busy man, sir.”

He shakes his head. “It’s quite alright. And do not count yourself defeated, sweetheart.” Your pulse stutters when he bends over you to whisper, “You may have left a stronger impression than you think.”

He nudges the pocket square between your hands. It’s still damp with your tears. You gape at it in awe. President Snow’s initials are elegantly etched in the left corner of the fabric.

“Here. Keep it. Though I’d much prefer it if you didn’t cry.” He pauses, studying you. “Girls as lovely as you never should.”

His words send your heart into a frenzy. For a while, you’re too stunned to move. You then shake yourself back to reality, noticing you’re now staring at the empty space where he used to stand. He’s gone. You look ahead. He’s already miles away from you, wrapped in conversation with who seems to be an assistant of his. 

Your thumbs press against the soft fabric of the pocket square. Cheeks ablaze, you hold it to your nose. It smells like roses, the same delicate scent that wafted from him a few minutes ago. Your back prickles. You pivot and are astonished to find the envious glares of some of the applicants still waiting in line zeroed in on you. Self-conscious, you rush to continue your exit, fleeing away from the hateful stares. 

As the outside gates come into sight, you can’t suppress an elated smile. It’s not everyday someone meets President Snow and receives such a gift from him. Shoving the handkerchief in your pocket, you vow to place it somewhere safe and always cherish it. 

When you return home, your brother’s already sitting in the living room, his tiny brows scrunched in concentration and his nose buried in his books. Your stomach sinks. Everything you did today was for him. You can’t help but feel you missed out on a huge opportunity, one that’d have changed the course of his life forever. You glance around at the apartment. The walls are crumbling. The wooden floors are creaking. The pipes in the kitchen have been leaking for weeks, a measly bucket you must empty every morning the only thing preventing a flood. And at night, the pitter-patter of rodents’ paws resonates from the ceiling.

Every inch of your family home is in dire need of repairs.

Unfortunately, every penny you earn goes into rent and food, meaning the house falls apart a bit more everyday. Perhaps one day, you and Laertes will awake beneath the rubble of what’s left of your childhood home. Nightmares of that sometimes keep you up at night.

“How was the Academy today?” you chime, rummaging through the kitchen cabinets. Worry twists your chest. There isn’t much left. You’ll need to make do with cabbage and whatever other veggies are left. Perhaps you could toss in some leftover dried meat and make a stew.

“My teacher signed me up for advanced trigonometry,” your brother announces.

You close the cabinet and beam at him.

“Oh, that sounds hard. I’m proud of you.” It doesn’t exactly surprise you. Laertes’ always been exceptionally smart. Even his teachers noticed how gifted he is from an early age. Unlike you, he breezed through middle school and now the Academy.

It’s why it’s crucial you make sure he can go to the University. A mind like his shouldn’t be wasted.

You brother shrugs, exuding nonchalance.

“It’s fine.”

You rush to him. You wrap your arm around him playfully and hug him in his chair, pulling his cheek like when he was little. You know he hates when you do that but you can’t help teasing him a bit. It’s your duty as a big sister after all.

“Don’t downplay it. My little brother’s a genius.”

He wriggles his way out of the hug, rolling his eyes. 

“Stop it.”

You head back to the kitchen and fire the stove.

“I’ll make you something,” you say, smiling at your brother.

His brows knit. “Make something for yourself first.”

You nibble your bottom lip. You truly hoped he wouldn’t notice, how much smaller than his your portions are. But he’s growing; he needs it. Much more than you. Besides, how can he focus at the Academy and be the brilliant boy he is supposed to be with a growling stomach? You won’t allow it.

“Laertes…”

He shakes his head, his expression firm.

“No. You always do this. This time, we split whatever is left.”

Heaving out a resigned exhale, you nod. You whirl to resume preparing dinner.

You gather a boiling pot from the overhead cabinet and place it on the stove. With the ease of practice, you begin chopping vegetables and tossing them into the pot. You add spices and water. The mouthwatering aroma quickly fills the kitchen. Pride swells in your chest. Your cooking skills have improved so much in the last year since your parents passed. You now manage to bring flavor to the blandest of meals. 

Once the stew’s ready, you pour a portion in each bowl, putting just a little more in your brother’s and praying he will not notice.

You place the steaming bowls on the table and take a seat opposite him.

“No books at the dining table,” you admonish, mimicking the exact tone your mother used with your brother. Admitting defeat, Laertes sighs and sets his homework aside. The tiny victory tugs your lips skyward.

He tells you about his day at the Academy while the two of you eat. You’re delighted to hear he’s making a lot of friends and he’s at the top of his class for most science subjects. He’s struggling a bit more with his poetry and ethics classes, but you encourage him by reminding him he can just ask the teacher for extra assignments to keep his grade up.

“I interviewed for a new job today,” you reveal, stirring the spoon in your bowl while waiting for your brother to eat more of his food.

“How did it go?”

“Well, it pays really well so I’m hopeful.”

The hope dancing in his eyes makes your chest ache. You don’t have the heart to tell him you made a fool of yourself today. You may not be gifted like your brother, but you want him to know he can rely on you at least.

Pursing his mouth, he looks down at his stew.

“That’s great. It’d be good if you didn’t have to work as much.”

Your smile falters. “Don’t worry. I have everything under control.”

“Okay.”

His dour tone stirs your concern. You wish you were better at hiding things from him, making his childhood as normal as possible. But your brother’s twelve now, and that’s old enough to sense when things are wrong.

He rises from his seat. You frown as you note there’s still food left in his bowl.

“Finish your plate before going to your room.”

Annoyance pinches his features but he still picks up his bowl and hastily guzzles down the remainder of his stew.

“Happy now?” he says, wiping his mouth.

“Yes. Very,” you cheerfully respond.

He gathers his books and strides towards his room. 

Your voice rises.

“Don’t stay up too late to study, okay? I love you.”

“I…love you too,” he mumbles.

You bask in the moment as you clean the table. Thankfully Laertes is still at an age where he says it back. One day he might not. So you must cherish every instant. Every conversation, every hug, every ‘I love you’. Because it could all vanish in a second. You learned that the hard way a year ago.

The day of the interview recedes to the back of your mind as you keep living your life. Work is harrowing, as usual, but you tend to your tasks as best as you can. Your arms ache as you knead the dough in the back of the bakery. You give yourself a second to wipe the sweat off your forehead. It’s been a hectic afternoon. There’s a massive pastry order for some Capitol heiress’ birthday due tomorrow. So you’ve been racing between the front desk and the kitchen in the back. A baker called in sick today, leaving you with twice the workload.

You know it won’t take much to crash into your bed and fall asleep tonight.

To make matters worse, the day hits its nadir when you get your pay that day. You peer inside the envelope for the umpteenth time. An anxious chuckle peals out of your lips. 

“I’m sorry I don’t want to complain, but…this doesn’t match the hours I put in.”

The owner scratches the back of his neck, a contrite expression etched on his face.

“I’m sorry too. With the new taxes imposed by the Capitol, I had to cut your salary.”

Slack-jawed by the news, no word leaves your mouth as you stare at him. He sighs.

“If it’s a problem, we can find someone else-”

“No, no,” you interrupt, blinking in panic. “Please, I need this job.”

He acquiesces and you’re forced to thank him despite feeling cheated. You actually scaled back your hours for your other part-times since this one paid more. What a waste. 

Dispirited, you return home. As you give the driver a bill for the fare, your insides wrench. Every bill counts. Perhaps you’ll need to walk back home from now on. The streets of the Capitol are notoriously dangerous but you can’t see any other way to save your dwindling wages. You already know you’ll need to request an extension for rent this month. How will you pay it, however?

You suppose you’ll have to figure it out. You always figure it out.

These are the somber thoughts swaying in your mind as you check the mailbox. 

Bills. Bills. And more bills. Your already sour mood plummets even more. But a slim, silver envelope sticking out from the pile corrals your focus. Curiosity surges inside you. It looks fancy and there’s a wax seal with the Capitol’s symbol keeping it shut. You rush to open it, heart fluttering in strange anticipation.

You unfold the neatly folded letter inside. As you read the words, you gasp, dropping the letter. Still trembling from shock and excitement, you bend to pick it up. 

You take a deep slow breath before reading it again. 

This time, a squeal escapes from your lips. 

You read it many more times to make sure your eyes aren’t just conjuring wild fantasies. 

After a while, you realize they aren’t. It’s true. 

Holding the letter to your chest, you toss yourself on your bed and kick your feet excitedly. 

You then place your palm on your forehead. In disbelief, you beam at the ceiling. 

Somehow…you’ve been hired to work for the Snows. You actually got the job. 

Perhaps there is light at the end of the tunnel.

You fidget before the iron gates, smoothing absent wrinkles on your skirt. It’s one of the best outfits you could find on short notice that wasn’t moth-eaten or visibly overworn. You pray it’s enough. You let your gaze wander. The Snows’ estate truly is majestic. The lush gardens. The beautiful architecture. You feel a little small as you admire the mansion.

Remembering yourself, you pivot to the man who drove you there. You fish inside your pocket for a bill and hand it to him. He stares at you blankly from the driver’s seat.

A weary sigh ripples behind you.

You turn, your eyes widening. It’s the woman who interviewed you that day. She wears the same stern expression.

“You don’t need to pay him,” she explains, dismissing the man with her hand. He nods and drives away. “He’s your assigned driver. He’ll pick you up each day and take you back home.”

“Oh.” You offer your hand. “Nice to meet you…again.”

She gives you a lengthy onceover, completely ignoring your gesture. Then she motions at you to follow her. You let your hand fall to your side. Heat blooms in your cheeks. Perhaps, you were too enthusiastic just then. Straightening your spine, you try your best to keep pace with her quick strides.

“I’m Pandora. I supervise most housekeeping duties for the president. I’ll show you around the estate. Then you’ll meet the young Master.”

She gives you a tour of the mansion. You’re even more amazed than last time though you try to suppress your awe and not stare excessively. She shows you the garden as well. The sea of snow-white roses makes your head spin. She specifies that the only part of the house that is off-limits is the west wing of the mansion, as these are the First Lady’s apartments and she must have rest and quiet.

She ends the visit by taking you to the nursery. A smile spontaneously finds its way onto your lips. A toddler plays with his toy train on the floor. With his blonde curls and bright blue eyes, he bears a striking resemblance to his father.

“That’s him? He’s so cute,” you whisper. Even the stern woman’s expression thaws a little as she looks at the child, softening ever-so-slightly. You send her a questioning glance. She gives you a nod of approval. 

You approach the boy and crouch in front of him.

“Hi. You’re Martius, right?”

He lifts his head and beams at you. You’re immediately endeared. Again, his smile reminds you of President Snow. You suppose one could probably take over the world with a smile like that. 

You turn to Pandora.

“Is his mother around? I should probably introduce myself.”

Her face pinches. “Mistress Livia has been unwell as of late. She is not to be disturbed today as she is quite tired.”

“Of course.” Your lips squeeze shut for a few seconds but curiosity gets the better of you. A question burns on your lips, one that nagged you ever since you got the job. It slips out before you can think it through. “Is this…Is this why the president and his wife require a nanny? The First Lady is sick?”

Pandora glowers at you. You flinch as she steps further inside the room, her searing tone like a whip.

“You are here to do your job, and nothing else. Mistress Livia’s health is no concern of yours. Do you hear me?”

You rise on shaky feet. You forgot yourself.

“I-I understand. I’m sorry I asked.”

“This reminds me. You have to sign this,” she says, handing you a pen and clipboard. A thin stack of papers are attached to the clipboard. The front page spells ‘Non-Disclosure Agreement’ in bold letters at the very top. You scowl as you flip through the pages.

“What’s that?”

“It’s a contract, one signed by every one of the President’s employees.”

“I don’t understand most of what’s written here…”

A frustrated exhale peals from her lips.

“I’ll make it simple for you then. For the duration of your employment here, nothing you see or hear must ever leave this house. You are here to care for the young master, that is all. Nothing else should concern you. Is that clear enough?”

You swallow thickly. It doesn’t sound hard at all. Discretion is essential in every job, isn’t it? But the way Pandora makes it sound, you’d assume there are bodies buried beneath the Snows’ estate. You’d laugh if her death stare weren’t so disquieting.

You peruse the contract, perplexed by most of the legal mumbo jumbo filling the pages. None of it rings any bell. You understand the gist of it however. You must preserve the president and his wife’s privacy. While you don’t know the specifics of the first lady’s condition, her public appearances have been few and far between in the last few years.

She used to be the envy of every woman in the Capitol. Beautiful, young and married to the dashing President Snow.

She was a fairytale princess come to life.

Then their son Martius was born. And when they held him up from the balcony of their mansion for all of Panem to gaze upon, they truly seemed like the perfect family.

Until one day, Livia Cardew simply…vanished.

She was noticeably absent from all the events of the season, some she even hosted herself. Tongues wagged of course, rumors and wild theories spreading like wildfire. 

But no one knew the truth of what had happened to her.

The matter seems delicate. You promise yourself not to bring it up again.

You click the pen and scribble your name at the bottom of the very last page.

“I’ve…never signed a contract like that before starting a job.”

Pandora lets out a wry chuckle.

“Well, you’ve never worked for President Snow.”

As promised, you quit your two other jobs to focus solely on Martius. You’re hesitant at first. Your departed parents taught you never to put all your eggs in one basket. And it’s exactly what you’d be doing by trusting the Snows. But when you receive your first paycheck, long before the end of the week, every qualm you had fades. It’s more money than you’ve ever had, more money than you expected. Rent isn’t an issue anymore. Neither is food.

Besides, gifts keep coming from the estate. Clothes mostly, for both you and Laertes, but also jewelry, perfume and other fancy things you don’t need. Overwhelmed by President Snow’s generosity, you try to send some of it back, but you don’t have the heart to return everything when you see your brother’s happy face when he opens his wardrobe one day.

You’ve caught the self-conscious glimpses he casts at his classmates sometimes, when not wearing the Academy uniform. Their clothes are always brand new and custom, perfectly tailored while his are stitched back together by your clumsy hands whenever they fray at the seams. You’re not a seamstress but you’ve always done your best. But you know your best doesn’t compare to the access and privilege those kids have.

Other than those blessings, your time with Martius has been a breeze. Only hazy memories of your brother as a toddler linger in your mind, but you don’t recall him ever being as sweet and calm as the little boy is.

It hardly feels like work, caring for the small child. You spend the day playing along with his games, reading stories to him and, as the day nears its end, the two of you feed the ducks in the massive pond behind the mansion. He even gives them names and gets upset when they fight with each other. 

“Lily doesn’t like James anymore,” he whispers to you one day, a sullen pout scrunching his tiny features. 

“And why is that?”

“I think she’s angry that he steals her food.”

You chuckle and ruffle his golden locks. The little boy always has a story for everything he sees. At all times, his world must make sense. So if he cannot find a reason to explain what fills his gaze, he’ll weave a tale that matches it. His stories are each more wild than the other and he sometimes utters words you’ve never heard a four year old use.

But you surmise it is expected from the son of the president. When he isn’t with you, the little boy is often with his private tutor. Even at his tender age, the importance of manners and eloquence is impressed upon him.

Martius tugs at your skirt when you make your way to the door. You look down. His blue eyes are pleading. 

“You’re leaving again?”

You heave out a long exhale. The little boy wasn’t so clingy before but with your bond growing, he’s been expressing more sadness from watching you go at the end of every day. 

You hunker down to his level.

“My little brother’s expecting me.”

His forehead puckers. “Stay…”

“I told you before, Martius. I have a brother. He’ll miss me if I’m not here.”

“Okay,” he mumbles, giving a begrudging nod. Tears already swim in his eyes though. Panic flows through you. You didn’t want to upset him. You pick him up and bounce with him in your arms to try to soothe him.

“Oh, no. Don’t cry, sweetie.” He buries his head in the crook of your neck, nearly squeezing you to death when he wraps his arms around your neck. His loud, tearful sobs swell in the room. “Hey, it’s okay. I’ll see you tomorrow like always, okay? So I need you to be brave for me.” His grip on you loosens as he sniffles. You put him down and the two of you pinky promise that you’ll return. Your heart twists at the sight of his tear-stained little face. 

You give his hair one last affectionate pat before rushing outside. If you stay, he might throw another tantrum. No matter what, you can never get mad at Martius. He’s just a child. In the absence of his mother, he’s bound to grow attached to any woman filling a role adjacent to hers. You loathe that you’re taking those moments from the first lady. Though it pleases you to have a steady job and spend time with the sweet boy, it feels wrong that she isn’t there. She should get to see her baby grow up. She should hear his inane ramblings and eccentric stories.

As time wears on, you’re dying to meet her and tell her about Martius. Is she truly so sick that she can’t even see him for a mere few minutes? You’re itching to break the rules and visit the west wing of the mansion. Sometimes you hear blood-curdling  screams and wailing coming from the dark halls but you never dared venture through them. You know that if you did, Pandora would crucify you.

Laertes’ well-being matters more than your curiosity.

Humming absently, you halt in your tracks in the middle of a hallway. Confusion has you blinking. A peculiar noise bounces faintly against the walls. Your gaze drifts sideways, where the noise seems to come from. You’re clocking out. Whatever’s going on in the house isn’t any of your business at this hour.

But what if someone needs help? What if it’s something bad? You’d feel awful if you learnt something happened the next day and you pretended to ignore it. So you gingerly approach the wall. Your fingers graze the tapestry covering it. 

Your eyes widen when the wall moves, a tiny crack forming in it.

Your eyes bulge. It’s an ajar door, you realize. A secret door one wouldn’t notice if they weren’t aware it was there. Light spills from the slight opening.

Confining your breath, you bend over the crack in the wall to get a glimpse of what’s behind it. 

The vision crowding your sight makes the blood in your veins freeze. 

President Snow rutting into a maid with his pants down to his ankles. His usually neat blonde locks are tousled, a few damp curls kissing his forehead. His massive cock glistens with the girl’s essence, disappearing into the girl’s spread lips over and over again. Her body is bent over the railing of the bed and her maid outfit is bunched around her hips, exposing her ass, the flesh trembling with each of the president’s harsh, pointed thrust.

Each time he snaps his hips he draws a broken moan from her. One of his hands is around the back of her throat while the other’s on the small of her back. He grunts low in his throat as she clenches around him, thrusting into her even faster than before. 

The obscene sound of their coupling rises, coalescing with the feral grunts spilling from the president’s mouth. In that moment, he’s not the poised gentleman you’re used to seeing, he is an animal in rut chasing his high.

A shocked exhale escapes your lips. Your hand flies to cover your mouth. President Snow’s head snaps up, his gaze landing straight on you.

Your heart slams against your ribcage.

You jump back from the door and push the secret door closed. You dart across the hallway, determined to find the exit as quickly as you can. You don’t glance back, your steps hasty and panicked. 

Pandora was right. It’s best not not to hear or see anything, to become a tomb in which secrets are buried.

You can only hope he didn’t recognize you through the tiny crack in the door. 

Though you’re shaken to your core, you continue your work as a nanny. You still need money. You may have set aside everything you made thus far, but it will only sustain you and your brother for a month or two. Besides, you’ve already handed in your resignation for your other jobs.  The positions have likely been filled. You can’t exactly show up out of the blue and ask for your former job back. 

No. So you convince yourself that it’s alright. You have a good thing going anyway. You’re making more than you hoped. The child is happy. You’re happy. All is well. Or it would be at least.

…If you could conjure the memory of President Snow railing into the maid far away from your mind. 

You want to forget it, bury the moment so deep in the abyss of your thoughts, it can never be unearthed.

But it isn’t so easy. Because every time your mind wanders even a little, you see him again. Skin glistening with sweat and blue eyes alight with lust. The image is tattooed into your brain. 

You wonder if the first lady knows. Perhaps it’s why she’s hiding away. The weight of her husband’s indiscretions may have grown too heavy to carry. It sours your heart. President Snow seemed so kind, good and noble. He was nice to you. You still have the breast pocket he gave you tucked away in a drawer. You loathe to think he’d do that to his wife. No woman deserves this.

You lift your head when your name is uttered. You get to your feet. Adrift in your thoughts, you didn’t realize Pandora was in the nursery. 

“Yes?”

“The president wants to see you in his office.”

Dread wrenches your gut. It’s exactly what you feared. Does he know? Did he see you? Your pulse picks up. What other reason would there be? He never summoned you before.

“Really, why?”

“He didn’t say, but I’m assuming it’s to congratulate you.”

Befuddlement wrinkles your forehead. “Congratulate me?”

Pandora heaves out a weary sigh. “Well, you’ve done much better than we thought,” she begrudgingly admits. “The young master smiles all the time.” She rolls her eyes. “Even if we must deal with his tantrums when you leave.”

A sliver of pride flutters through you with her admission. Pandora made her doubts about your capabilities plain and obvious from the beginning. It gladdens you that you may have changed her mind a little. 

“I’m sorry.” 

“It’s fine.” She turns to him, the ghost of a smile playing on her lips. “It’s a small price to pay for his happiness.”

Your smile vanishes as she adds, “Now let me escort you to the president’s office. He doesn’t like to be kept waiting.”

Swallowing the lump in your throat, you trail behind her. The entire trek to the president’s office, your stomach’s in knots. You keep wondering if it’s the day you’ll lose your job for being too nosy. You should have walked past the noise. You shouldn’t have peeked. 

You inhale a lungful of nerve as Pandora opens the door to his office and frees room for you to enter. Your clammy hands wrench in your lap. He’s sitting behind his desk. You stagger further inside the room as he motions for you to sit in the chair on the other side of the desk. He looks the same as the first time you stumbled into him, disarmingly handsome in an impeccable shirt and pants that flatter his long legs.

A sharp contrast to the version of him that has plagued your thoughts lately. 

His sky gaze follows you as you take a trembling seat.

“Are you settling in well?” he asks.

“Hm, yes,” you stammer, anxiously twining your fingers. “It’s pretty much the perfect job. I get to be around a cute child all day.”

“I hear my son is very fond of you.”

You bashfully dip your head. “He’s very easy to like. He’s such a good boy, sweet, kind, and curious. You and your wife are raising him well, sir.”

He hums in thought. “I can’t take much credit for that. I’ve tried my best to carve out time for Martius…but work’s kept me busy. As for Livia...” He lets out a humorless chuckle. “Well she isn’t quite herself these days.”

“I’m sorry to hear that.”

He places one hand under his chin, scrutinizing you. You try not to twitch beneath his stare, your insides tight with dread.

“Hm, it’s strange,” he states after a minute that goes by like an eternity.

Your head rises. “What’s strange?”

“A girl like you.” His lips drag upward. “Sweet, nurturing, beautiful. Shouldn’t you be married already?”

Your lips part in astonishment. This isn’t the line of questioning you expected. “I-I’m not.”

“No fiancé?”

“No, sir.”

“A lover then?”

Warmth rushes to your face.

“No…”

He laughs, mirth dancing in his cobalt orbs.

“You must pardon me for being so forward but I simply find it astonishing. No suitors? It’s hard to believe since you’re so lovely, sweetheart.” He tilts his head. You shift in discomfort, his attention making you feel see-through. “I mean, a husband would have made your life easier than it’s been thus far, wouldn’t he, dove?”

A long exhale flows from your lips. “I’ve had offers, after I graduated from the Academy. There was even this boy, he was so kind to me.” The memory draws a small smile from you. “He proposed. I’m sure he’d make a great husband, but…”

“But…”

Your mouth dries.

“I know it’s probably naive and unrealistic but I want to marry for love, that great, life-changing love, like in those romance novels my mom used to love, not money or status.”

His eyes twinkle. “Or financial stability?”

Shame gathers in your chest. You know it sounds silly when uttered aloud. 

“I know, I’m an idiot.”

“No, you’re not. It’s sweet that you still believe in love.” He appears lost in a faraway memory, his gaze hazing over with remembrance. “I used to believe in it too. I used to think, ‘Who needs wealth and success and power when love conquers all?’”

He chuckles but it’s bereft of amusement. 

“Really? What happened then?”

His gaze locks with yours. 

“I grew up.”

Confused, you frown. 

“But aren’t you and the first lady in love?”

Another laugh bursts from his chest.

“God, you’re sweet.” His tone lowers to a dulcet whisper. “It’s like none of the world’s ugliness has gotten to you yet.” He reveals matter-of-factly, “My wife and I hate each other.” His smile widens at your flabbergasted expression. “Always did. It’s best that way, more…efficient. Of course, there was a time, when we had…passion.” He licks his lips, something you can’t pinpoint flickering in his gaze. “But not anymore. She’s far too gone for that.”

He rises from his chair. You stiffen as he circles the desk, making slow steps towards you. 

“Which is why I must…satiate my needs wherever I can,” he mumbles, fingers lurking under your chin, forcing your eyes to fall upon him. “Do you understand my meaning, dove?”

“I…yes.”

Discomfort flares within you. Tension hangs in the air, so heavy it clogs your airways. 

He cocks his head, lips slanting crookedly.

“Do you really? With that innocent look in your eyes, it’s hard to tell.” His thumb sweeps over your shuddering bottom lip. “Men have needs. And am I not a man, sweetheart?”

“Y-Yes you are, sir.”

He bends over you to whisper in your ear. “You saw everything that day, didn’t you?” Your heart stops.

Flames lick your face as you bow your head. “I-I didn’t see anything.”

His warm breath ghosts over your earshell.

“Liar,” he mumbles.

Your pulse quickens.

He leans back and nudges your chin upward.

“Since my wife fell sick, I’ve been very lonely. And sometimes…” He looms over you, crowding your space as you peer up at him, fingers squeezing the arms of the chair. “I need something soft and warm to forget that feeling.”

President Snow slowly falls to his knees in front of you. His fingers find your thigh, starting to creep under your skirt. A devilish glint sparkles in his cobalt gaze. He finds your center, pressing the sheer fabric into your folds. You gasp. He chuckles at your reaction. He starts teasing you through your panties, tracing your slit and dragging over your tender bud. Your breath hitches as the air around you grows hotter. You grow slick beneath his finger, your thighs shaking as tingles bloom on your flesh.

“Sir…” you whimper, tears welling up in your eyes.

He pushes further inside you, adding another finger, and you unleash an audible breath. You try to close your thighs. He places his other hand on your knee to keep you open for him.

The air in your lungs grows thinner as he rubs your core through your soaked panties. The friction is a delicious torture. Pleasure pools in your belly causing your face to burn with shame. You’re getting embarrassingly wet with President Snow’s attention.

“I just want a little taste,” he murmurs, his deep timbre bleeding lust. “Just one time and it’ll never happen again,” he promises fervently as his lips graze your ankle. You find some relief when his fingers disappear from your drenched center. But your respite is ephemeral. He slips his hands under your ass and tugs at your panties.

Panic widens your eyes. Cheeks ablaze, you pull at the material between your legs with both hands. But he’s stronger than you and effortlessly drags the fabric along your legs. A wicked smile plays on his lips as tears glisten in your eyes. It’s soon down to your ankles. You squeal when the president yanks the panties off your foot, tossing them aside. Cool air sneaks beneath your skirt, swirling over your bare folds.

Hands over your knees to keep you spread, his wolfish gaze sweeps over your glossy folds. 

Your skin heats, embarrassment gathering in your chest. You’ve never been this vulnerable and exposed in front of anybody before.

“Please, President Snow, s-stop…” 

“But you’re dripping, sweetheart,” he states smugly, sinking a finger inside your weeping core, as if to make a point. Your breath hitches. He takes his finger out sluggishly. You clench when he grazes one of your sensitive spots. “Just as sweet as I expected,” he hums, obscenely licking your essence off his long digit.

Without a warning, he buries his head between your thighs. A sharp exhale leaps from your mouth. His cool tongue traces a wet trail over your folds. President Snow traces maddening patterns over your swollen bud causing your eyes to roll back.

You card your fingers through his silken platinum locks, hoping to push his head away. But the delightful sensations grow too overwhelming. You unravel beneath his sinful ministrations, your limbs twitching as the thread of your thoughts comes loose.

Your grip on his hair weakens. Your belly tightens, your chest rising and falling rapidly. 

You jolt as his tongue flickers over your tender heap of nerves. 

“P-President…” 

He purrs against your folds and the vibrations rock through your core. You squirm in the chair. Your thighs quake. Your vision dims, your mind blank as waves of pleasure swaddle you in their tide. Protests scatter on your tongue, replaced by wanton whimpers and moans.

Electricity ripples through your spine as you cry out.

Bliss engulfs you and your legs turn liquid. Shame swirls in your gut as your juices coat his tongue. He drinks your nectar, elation rumbling in his chest. 

When he lifts his head, you hardly recognize him. The feral glow in his gaze chills your blood.

There is no time to collect yourself, realize what just occurred, as the blonde gathers your limp frame from the chair and places you on his desk. Documents and papers are flung to the ground as he grabs your thighs and presses his throbbing hard-on against your cunt. 

He hastily unbuttons his pants, freeing his hard length. He fists his cock and guides it through your wet entrance. Your back arches, the sudden intrusion robbing you of air. He reaches the hilt of you in a few seconds, giving you no time to accommodate his thick girth. You collapse over the desk, weak whimpers leaving you as your walls are stretched to their limit. He drags out of you, his pupils flaring as they trace the motion of his length in and out of you. Coriolanus leans over you. He snaps his pelvis into your hips, each of his thrusts tearing tearful moans from your throat.

When you turn your head, hot tears flowing down your cheeks, he grabs your chin so you’re forced to meet his lustful stare. Bracing himself on the desk, he reaches between your bodies to pinch your swollen clit. He plucks at your soft bud until you shatter around him with a sob. His throat bobs, a look of sheer bliss flitting across his face when you clench around him.

“I’ve been dying to fuck you the minute I saw you,” he confesses, trailing soft pecks over your collarbone. A sinister chuckle peals from his lips. “The way you looked at me with those sweet, innocent eyes…it made me rock-hard.” He tilts your chin towards him, his thumb skimming over your parted lips.

Satisfaction glimmers in his eyes as they flick over your prone form.

“You should thank me. Those boys at the Academy wouldn’t know what to do with a girl like you…” His cock twitches inside you. Sticky warmth spills from him, painting your walls and dripping past your hole. Drops of his seed leak onto the desk. A throaty sigh pours from President Snow’s throat as your cunt flutters around him.

His teeth nip the skin of your neck.

“...But I do.”

After what occurs in his office, you hope to avoid President Snow. Those hopes are swiftly dashed however. President Snow lied to you. It doesn’t happen once. In fact, you begin to lose count of the actual number.

Every time the president finds a little spare time, he summons you.

Sometimes you end up bent over the desk in his office as he pours the frustrations of the day into your warm hole. Sometimes he prefers you sprawled on your back in one of the multitude of luxurious beds in the mansion while he devours you as if you were his very last meal. And at times, he grows even more impatient and simply shoves you against a wall before ravaging you.

More than once, a maid or footman has walked in on the two of you, and you’ve had to swallow your shame and embarrassment.

As you’ve come to learn, the entire staff is aware of Coriolanus Snow’s insatiable appetite and none of them seems to care.

You feel sick, desperate, trapped in something twisted and awful you never signed up for.

But how does one say no to President Coriolanus Snow? The entire Capitol yields to his every whim. And you are the same. Here to bow and smile and lie back whenever he demands it.

You long to focus on your job, to care for Martius and nothing else. Whenever the boy looks up at you with those innocent blue eyes, eerily similar to his father’s, your stomach wrenches. You pray he never comes to learn what kind of man his father is. You wish he’d stay just as kind and sweet as he is now.

Those are the thoughts drifting through your mind as you watch Martius play with his toy trains. Your eyes wander towards the window. Outside, orange and purple hues are bleeding into the sky, the afternoon nearing its end. Your stomach coils. It’s during times like these that President Snow often seeks you out. You’ve tried to run away from him but it’s all a game to Coriolanus, and he always delights in chasing you through the hallways.

Your brows crumple as you note that Martius has stopped playing. He drops his toy and rushes to your side. Confounded by his behavior, you’re on the cusp of asking him what’s wrong…but your gaze follows what caught his attention on the other side of the room.

You fall silent, your eyes rounding in shock.

“Martius. Come here, my love,” says the blonde woman in a white robe and nightgown, her arms wide open.

Time stands still for a few seconds. It takes you a while to realize who stands before the door. She looks so different, more ghost than woman, her glassy blue eyes hollow and sunken. But her likeness is unmistakable. Even with her graying, limp tresses and ashen complexion, you recognize Livia Cardew. The president’s wife.

You bolt to your feet. Arms still open, Livia takes slow steps towards Martius.

“I’m your mom, sweetie. Don’t you remember me?”

The little boy’s fists clutch your skirt as he hides his face against your leg.

“You’re not my mom.”

A stricken look twists Livia’s features as she shrinks. As if her own son just drove a knife through her heart. Your chest twinges. While her abrupt appearance is a shock, you can’t imagine how she must feel. You place a hand on Martius’ back and try to nudge him forward.

“Martius. It’s the First Lady, your mother. Go on, hug her,” you urge softly.

He shakes his head, tears filling his eyes as he hides behind you even more.

You’re stunned. Has it truly been that long?

“Martius-”

You don’t get to finish your sentence, Livia lunging at you, her eyes wild with fury.

“You! This is all your fault,” she hisses. She points at you and scoffs, “You’re his new whore, aren’t you?” Her mouth wobbles as she grips her head. “First you take my husband, now my son.”

Martius begins to sob. His loud cries overlap with his mother’s frantic yelling. You cover his eyes, tossing Livia an apologetic look.

“First Lady, I never meant-”

Before you can explain yourself, she grabs a nearby vase and smashes it. White roses scatter on the floor. Stomping all over the petals and broken glass, she collects one of the shards and races towards you. Terror numbs you. You freeze as Livia aims the shard at you, scarlet droplets dripping on her nightgown as she squeezes her fist around the glass.

Your eyes shut as you wait for the inevitable strike.

You shiver, waiting still.

But it doesn’t come.

“Livia, darling, that’s enough. It’s time for you to sleep and take your medicine.”

The familiar sound of Coriolanus’ voice causes your eyes to snap open. 

You watch him restrain a struggling Livia. She curses at him, fighting him with all her might. It’s a painful spectacle. 

“No, don’t touch me!” Other staff members rush into the room. It takes several people to hold Livia down, colorful expletives pouring from her mouth as she punches and kicks whoever comes close. “You’re killing me! You bastard! Give me my son back! Martius! Martius!”

The child trembles against your skirt, his tear-filled gaze stuck to the floor.

Eventually someone manages to stick a needle into Livia’s neck. She instantly goes limp, arm still reaching for her son in her last conscious second.

“Take her away,” Coriolanus instructs.

The first lady’s flaccid form is dragged out of the room. Still shaken by what you just witnessed, you don’t move a muscle. President Snow approaches you, worry swimming in his blue orbs. 

“Are you alright, dove?” He cups your cheeks, his brows crumpling as his gaze settles on your neck. “I’ll have Doctor Gaul look at you. She has an ointment for that.” He caresses your cheeks, smiling. You gape at him. How can he smile at a time like that? “It won’t even scar. I promise.”

You graze your neck. Your fingers come away bloody. Oh. Livia nicked you with the shard but you didn’t even feel it. Perhaps adrenaline numbed you to the pain.

“Dada,” Martius chimes, lifting his chubby arms.

Coriolanus’ face warms as he picks up his son. He tosses him in the air and catches him. Martius giggles through his tears.

“My sweet boy. That was very scary, wasn’t it?” he says, balancing his son on his hip. Martius nods and wipes his nose. Coriolanus flicks his cheek, beaming at him. “Don’t worry, son. The scary lady won’t bother you anymore in a few months.”

A wave of ice blows through your veins. You wonder why the president uttered those words with such certainty. Like a promise. Or a prophecy. Almost as if he knows exactly when the grim reaper will come knock on his wife’s door.

The next day, you hand over your resignation to Pandora. Her expression is skeptical as she gauges the manila folder you give her.

“This is for the president,” you announce.

She unleashes a deep exhale. “You should reconsider, sleep on it.”

You almost laugh. Sleep on it? You can hardly find rest, the picture of a disheveled Livia Cardew crying out for her son haunting your nights. Whatever befell upon the poor woman, you wouldn’t be surprised if her husband somehow had a hand in it. It broke your heart, seeing her like that, her own son unable to recognize her. You also despise the role Coriolanus forced you to play in erasing her memory.

All of it feels wrong. 

And most of all, you don’t want President Snow to use you to satisfy his lewd desires anymore. He took all your firsts, all the moments that should have been beautiful, and made them a nightmare you have to relive every time he touches you.

You respected him; you admired him. Now you can’t be in his presence without dread whispering through you. What will he make you do this time? How will he make you small and powerless again?

“I can’t…I can’t do this anymore. He can hire someone else to care for him.”

Pandora purses her lips and shakes her head.

“It’s really not that simple. The president has developed…a fondness for you.”

You bristle. “I have to go back home. Laertes is expecting me.”

“You won’t like what comes next, trust me.” Her gaze narrows. “No one leaves the president.”

Ignoring the shudder elicited by her daunting words, you pivot and make a beeline towards the exit. Pandora’s voice echoes down the hallways.

“Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

Depleted, you glumly make your way to the gates. You enter the car that takes you back home everyday. Your thoughts wander as the Snow’s house grows smaller through the car window. You were thrilled when you got this job. It felt like kismet after the year you and your brother had. A rainbow after the rain. A slice of hope.

How it all went to hell so quickly. You’re still reeling from it. You’ve no idea what you’ll do next. The only thing you know for certain is that you will not step foot into the Snows’ estate ever again.

The car suddenly halts. You bump your head into the passenger’s seat. Wincing, you grip the sides of your head. As you retrieve your senses, you look around. You stopped.

You toss a questioning look at the driver.

But before he can respond, the car door opens and you’re yanked outside. Two pairs of strong arms drag you away from the car.

You take in the blue uniforms of the men. Terror pulses through your blood.

Peacekeepers.

Noting the guns at their sides, you stop trying to resist. There’s no fighting against them, ever. They are the Capitol’s fist and carry the President’s will. You don’t stand a chance. In fact, you likely never did. You slump in their grip, despair thrumming inside you.

They escort you to a black car with tinted windows. Your pulse soars. You’ve only ever seen one individual step out of this car.

The peacekeepers toss you inside and slam the door shut.

Your fearful gaze rises to him.

He casually sits in front of you, his eyes narrowed.

“You disappoint me, dove.” He lets out a weary sigh. “After everything I’ve done for you…you try to leave me. I thought you were smarter than that.”

You twine your hands, sputtering, “I-I’m not the right person for this job, sir.”

He slides his fingers under your chin, tilting it upward.

“Oh but you’re perfect. My son loves you. You’re sweet, dutiful and most importantly…” He smirks. “You are mine. Mine to hold, spoil and fuck whenever I please for however long I please.”

The prospect fills you with dread. He wants you to be his toy again, submissive, available whenever he pleases.

“Sir…”

His jaw ticks, his hold on your jaw tightening.

“Wouldn’t it be wonderful if your brother could attend the University, free of charge? A bright young mind such as his, I believe he deserves it.” His blue eyes twinkle. “Instead of, let’s say…end up in a District, his name chosen as a tribute in the next Hunger Games.” Your heart sinks to your feet. “That’d be awful, wouldn’t it? So cruel…” he mumbles, stroking your trembling bottom lip.

“No, please,” you beseech, tears swelling in your eyes. Your brother’s all you have left in the world. Nothing can happen to him. 

Coriolanus fondles your cheek, the tender gesture a sharp contrast to the wicked words rolling off his tongue.

“It’s all up to you, then, dove. As long as you behave, I’ll give you the world. But if you act like a little brat again…” A threat lurks in his soft tone, a glint of madness swaying in his cobalt orbs. “I really don’t know what I might do.”

Chills dance over your spine.

“I promise to never do it again,” you blurt out.

He pulls out a square from his breast pocket. It’s identical to the one he used the first time.

But a lifetime seems to have passed since that moment, the world now so different from what you imagined, and the man before you…even more so.

“Good girl,” he lauds while swiping away your tears. 

He shoves the pocket square back in its place. Coriolanus then beams at you as he starts unbuttoning his shirt and undoing his pants.

“Now, I’ve had a long, exhausting day. So how about you get on your knees for me and make it better with that sweet mouth of yours, dove?”

[scorpioracers]

Steve mentioning in passing that he has a tattoo. And before Eddie can ask the important questions (where, when, why, what, can i see it??) the moment is gone. his brain was offline for too long at the thought of an inked up Steve Harrington he missed his chance.

But he can’t stop thinking about it. He’s always looking at Steve anyway (because how could he not) but now it’s ramped up 1000%. Any inch of skin on display and Eddie is zeroed in, looking for what he doesn’t know, but he needs to see it.

He’s being soooo obvious but he can’t help it.

He offers Erica ten bucks to push Steve in his pool to try and get Steve’s shirt off. “What am I eight? No. It will cost ten bucks for me to not tell him though..” She takes the money with a look he’s seen many times during DND night. Like she understands why he ended up a super-senior. She tells him she should have asked Mike.

Mike does it for free. But all that leads to is Robin hip-checking Mike in to the water, then Dustin and Lucas push Robin in and go in after her, and for some reason Argylle picks Eddie up and they end up in the pool too. He doesn’t get to see the tattoo and he reeks of chlorine for days.

-

Anyway in the ends Steve gets tired of waiting and one night when they’re both halfway to high he swings his legs over Eddie’s and takes his shirt off, grabs Eddie’s hand and places it on the little tattoo placed under his pec on his rib cage.

[ode2rin]

petty!rin is so baby girl i love writing him as much as i love clingy!rin | warnings: profanity and lil ooc | mentions of food

itoshi rin, likes to believe that he is one rational man. 

he truly is. he is a man grounded with rationality, the real definition of calm and quiet. he prides himself on his ability to be stoic and composed at all costs.

he is one to be blunt, approach what’s wrong head on with his words that bleeds. never to cower, never one to hesitate. 

truly indeed, itoshi rin is a rational man.

so, why the fuck is he in the kitchen, tightening all jars that he could see?

apparently, when rin is faced with the seemingly impossible mission of getting you to talk to him after a small (he thinks so) disagreement, all rationality goes out the window.

suddenly, he finds himself overcome with a desperate need to hear your voice, to mend whatever rift has come between you. and so, he does the only thing he can think of at this point: he heads to the kitchen.

there, he methodically tightens every jar he can find, each twist of the lid a small act of rebellion against his own calm demeanor. he puts your favorite snacks up high on the shelf, just out of reach, hoping that you'll come to him for help.

on a normal day, rin would never do this. this is nothing but a foolish, incredibly ridiculous, absurd plan. he would never do something like this, but he exhausted every rational option he had at his disposal. he already asked you if you wanted takeout (you just looked at him, you never say no to takeout), asked if you knew where his cleats were because he couldn't find them (of course he knows where they are), and his last resort was to play your favorite show in the living room in the hopes that you'd join him on the couch.

nothing worked. zero successful attempts. nada.

you are officially ignoring him for 5 hours and 36 minutes (not that he’s counting, the wall clock in the living room is just obnoxiously big for its purpose and it keeps reminding him of the time, yup, that must be it). 

and rin thinks if this goes on for much longer, you might suggest sleeping in the guest room out of stubborness. no, rin thought of the idea. 

there’s no way in hell would rin sleep away from you. that’s just vile torture in his book. a cold ass bed without you? sleep without you in his arms? (he might genuinely prefer to be locked in a room with shidou than have that). that is atrocious, he needs to prevent that from happening, or else he would really lose it.

seemingly content with his scheme, rin places himself on one of the bar stools at the kitchen countertop to wait, boring holes into the bedroom door you've isolated yourself in. if this doesn't work, pinning you down until you utter a word to him may be the next best (worst) option.

after what felt like an eternity (it was ten minutes, max) to rin, you finally emerged from your shared bedroom with a purpose, and that is to fill your grumbling stomach. making your way in the kitchen, you ignored how rin is intently watching every step you make. 

you open one of the cupboards to get your leftover bag of chips from yesterday, only to be met by an empty shelf. looking up, you see the said chips placed two shelves higher than usual. 

when did that even get there?

hastily, you reached out for a stool to reach it. rin can’t help but let out a silent huff at the sight of you standing on a stool. that stool must be fucking with him, because why is it conveniently there? 

rin shifts expectantly on his seat when he sees you looking for the jar of dip you always combine with your chips. and the heavens must be siding with him as he sees you annoyed and struggling to open the said dip.

“let me.”

you were about to deny his offer when you felt his chest already pressing on your back as he reached out for the culprit of your annoyance.

“thanks.” you timidly uttered, but rin didn’t move an inch from where he was pressing on you.

instead, rin tentatively wrapped an arm around your waist and pressed a kiss to your temple. you felt the side of his jaw on your temple, his other hand rubbing smooth circles on your shoulders, tapping on it three times.

you shut your eyes tightly at the feel of his touch, "rin," you started, but you didn't know how to continue. 

“i know. i was in the wrong,” he trailed off, tapping three times once again on your exposed collarbone as if the gesture was a language you two only understand, “i’m sorry, y/n,” he said, voice laced with remorse.

you looked over your shoulder to meet rin's gaze. his eyes were soft, and his expression held a hint of guilt that you rarely saw. he seemed to be waiting for your response, and you took a deep breath before answering.

“i only want what's best for you, rin. seeing you exhaust yourself like that hurts me,” you explained, turning to face him and resting your hands on his chest. “and i'm sorry for being immature and ignoring you. it wasn't the right way to handle things.”

immature? only if you knew.

he tightened his grip on you, burying his face in the crook of your neck. “i hate it when we fight," he mumbled, his voice muffled. “it hurts when you don’t look at me.”

taken aback by rin's confession, you struggled to find the right words to alleviate what you’ve done. instead, you tapped three times in his chest, right where his heart beats.

in which you earned a - “not more than i do,” reply from rin, suggesting he understood.

“as you should, rinnie.” you replied with a playful teasing smile.

ah, there it was - the smile rin loved so much. the smile that always promises him that it will be fine - you two will be fine.

if it meant earning that smile over and over again, rin wouldn’t mind throwing out every ounce of rationality from his body. 

he’ll never tell you about it though, you’d tease him to death. besides, if you knew, how could he use the same scheme again?

note. i love this trope in books so much that it's everything i think of lately (˘･_･˘)

[genericpuff]

I'm sorry, but this should come as a shock to absolutely no one.

Just a little bit of 'insider info' (and by 'insider' I mean I was a part of the beta testing crew a few years ago) Webtoons has been messing with AI tools for years. You can literally play test that very same AI tool that I beta-tested here:

Mind you, this is just an AI Painter, similar to the Clip Studio Colorize tool, but it goes to show where WT's priorities are headed. I should mention, btw, that this tool is incredibly useless for anyone not creating a Korean-style webtoon, like you can deadass tell it was trained exclusively on the imports because it can't handle any skin tone outside of white (trying to use darker colors just translates as "shadows" to the program, meaning it'll just cast some fugly ass shadows over a white-toned character no matter how hard you try) and you just know the AI wouldn't know what to do with itself if you gave it an art style that didn't exactly match with the provided samples lmao

And let's be real, can we really expect the company that regularly exploits, underpays, and overworks its creators to give a damn about the ethical concerns of AI? They're gonna take the path of least resistance to make the most money possible.

So the fact that we're now seeing AI comics popping up on Webtoons left and right - and now, an actual "Webtoon AI" branding label - should come as zero shock to anyone. Webtoons is about quantity over quality and so AI is the natural progression of that.

So yeah, if you were looking for any sign to check out other platforms outside of Webtoons, this is it. Here are some of my own recommendations:

ComicFury - Independently run, zero ads, zero subscription costs (though I def recommend supporting them on Patreon if you're able), full control over site appearance, optional hosting for only the cost of the domain name, and best of all, strictly anti-AI. Not allowed, not even with proper labelling or disclosure. Full offense to the tech bro hacks, eat shit.

GlobalComix - Very polished hosting site that offers loads of monetization tools for creators without any exclusive contracts or subscriptions needed. They do offer a subscription program, but that's purely for reading the comics on the site that are exclusively behind paywalls. Not strictly anti-AI but does require in their ToS that AI comics be properly labelled and disclosed, whether they're made partially or fully with AI, to ensure transparency for readers who want to avoid AI comics.

Neocities - If you want to create your own site the good ole' fashioned way (i.e. HTML / CSS) this is the place. Independently run, offers a subscription plan for people who want more storage and bandwidth but it only costs $5/month so it's very inexpensive, and even without that subscription cost you won't have to deal with ads or corporate management bullshit.

Be safe out there pals, don't be afraid to set out into the unknown if it means protecting your work and keeping your control as a creator. Know your rights, know your power.

[gallavichsreddie1128]

You’ve Never What? (Dean Winchester)

Description: Y/N has never rode anyone’s face before and Dean is shocked.

Warning: Face Riding, Age Gap

Word Count: 1,531k

I sat at the table eating alongside Dean and Sam. I made us mac and cheese because we’ve been having take out all week and I wanted something different. The boys and I were pretty close, almost like a family but I certainly didn’t view them as family. They were both so hot but one of them caught my eye more than the other. Dean. He was older than me, sure but only 14 years. He was strong and muscular and oh my god his voice? I could get off to the sound of him talking. He was so hot and he knew it which was why he talked to the why he did. Anytime he saw a pretty woman he had to voice it and say what dirty things he wanted to do to her.

It made Sam and I roll my eyes but we were rolling them for different reasons. Sam was annoyed and didn’t wanna hear his brother talk about that stuff and I was annoyed he wasn’t talking about me. But why would he? He probably has zero interest in me. “Y/N are you okay?” I snapped out of it and looked at Sam. “Yeah sorry.” I said and went back to eating. “Man, I would love to be on the beach right now with some hot chicks.” Dean said. Sam and I look at him. “A hot girl sitting on your face. It’s the dream isn’t it?” I shrugged at him. “I don’t know, I've never done it.” I said.

Sam looked at me with his eyebrows raised and Dean’s jaw dropped. “You never what?” He asked in shock. I shrugged. “Being with you guys the past 5 years I haven’t really had time.” I say. “Before then?” He asked. I shook my head. “Well sweetheart if you want to just ask.” He said. It was my turn to be shocked and I squeaked out a “what?” Sam got up with his bowl and walked to his room. I didn’t blame him. “If you ever want to experience it just ask.” My face was red. “Oh come on. I see how you look at me sweetheart. I’m not an idiot.” He says. I just stare at him too shocked and embarrassed to even process what is going on. “Dean, what if this ruins our friendship?” I asked after a few minutes. “I won’t let it.” He says. How could he be so sure? “You can’t know that it won’t.” I whisper. He gets up with his bowl. “The offer still stands.” He shrugs. 

I sat in my room on my bed thinking about what he said, what he offered. It would be a dream but at what cost? I didn’t use to do anything and it would be awkward after. I had a pretty good relationship with him, I didn’t want that to be over because of hormones. I really liked Dean too. I didn’t just want us to do sexual stuff, I wanted something real with him. But the more I thought about it the more I realized what if this was my only opportunity to be with him in any way? If he thinks it won’t affect our relationship then maybe it won’t.

A knock at the door snapped me out of my thoughts again. I got up from my bed and opened the door revealing the man I was just thinking about. “Hey Sam bought some pie if you want some.” He suggested. “Yeah sure.” I say and walk out of my room. I followed him into the kitchen where the pie was. It looked and smelled delicious. “You want me to get you a slice?” He asked, grabbing a knife to cut the pie with. “Yes please.” I say. I sat at the table and watched as he cut two slices of the pie for us. He brought them over and sat down next to me. “Thank you.” I say and start eating the pie.

We ate in silence for a while but I was thinking too much about the conversation earlier. Dean seemed to notice. “I’m sorry if I made you uncomfortable.” He said. I looked at him. He didn’t make me uncomfortable, just made my feelings worse. I shook my head. “No you didn’t but I think…I wanna take you up on your offer.” I say. “Are you sure?” He asked. I nodded. “Yes.” Before I could say or do anything he leaned over and kissed me. Catching me off guard. It took me a minute but I kissed back. Our lips moved together at the table and he pulled me closer. His arms wrapped around me pulling me into his lap. I straddled him as our lips didn’t stop. My hands run through his hair and his hands run up and down my back. Wherever Sam was I only hoped that he didn’t walk in on this. I pulled at his shirt wanting him to take it off. He pulled away from the kiss. “Not here. In my room.” He said against my lips.

I nodded and got off him. He took my hand and dragged me to his room. He closed the door and took off his shirt revealing his beautiful body to me. “Take off your clothes, sweetheart.” He told me. I took off my big shirt revealing my matching bra and panties to him. I looked at him as he walked up to me. “Wow. You’re so beautiful.” He says and cups my face. I stare at him and look at his lips as he leans down and kisses me. This was a different kiss than the one we had in the kitchen. This one was more passionate and slow and not so lustful. I wrapped my arms around his neck and leaned up to deepen the kiss. “Jump.” He mumbled into the kiss. He caught me and I wrapped my legs around him. He turned us around and fell onto the bed with me on top. I pulled away to catch my breath. His eyes stared into mine and his hands ran up and down my thighs. “Take off your panties.” He tells me and I do, throwing them somewhere in his room. I straddled him once more and he tugs me up his body.

My nerves grew as I got closer and closer to his face. He smirked up at me and my breath got heavier. “It’s okay sweetheart.” He tells me in a soft voice. I nodded and he helped me to where I was hovering over his face. I looked down at him and I saw my juices drip onto him. I gasped in embarrassment and went to apologize. “No need. Your juices are going to be all over my face.” He winks. I let out a breath I was holding in and he lowered me onto his face. I gasp as I feel his hot breath tickle my area and his nose settle on my clit. “Fuck.” I gasped. His tongue began swirling my hole making me let out a little moan.

I didn’t have anything to grasp onto so I laced my fingers through his hair. His tongue entered me a little, making me moan louder than I wanted to. His hands that were gripping my hips started moving me. My clit was dragging on his nose and his tongue was moving in and out of me. My moans grew as I let myself ride his face. Though his tongue couldn’t go super deep into me but it still felt good. His nose was perfect for riding and I took a mental note of that. With my clit constantly bumping into it my high was very close. I moan his name over and over like I was praying to the man below me.

He hummed against me making vibrations course through me. “Dean fuck i’m really really close.” I whimpered. He sped up his movements and within seconds I came all over his tongue and nose. My hips stuttered on his face as I rode my high. Once I became over sensitive I pushed myself off his face with shaky legs. He helped me stay up as he smirked at me. I gasped seeing his face covered in my orgasm. He licked his lips and hummed. “Are you okay?” He asked me. I nodded and chuckled. “Yeah definitely.” He helps me off him and I collapse next to him. “I’m glad you enjoyed that.” He winked.

I laughed and looked up at the ceiling. “That really was amazing.” I whispered. “You can have my tongue and nose anytime you want.” He tells me. I looked over at him and he was already looking at me. “I know that I talk about women a lot and I know you and Sam hate it but I really like you and I want something more than just this.” He motioned to what we just did. I was shocked that he returned my feelings. “I like you too Dean. And yeah I was hoping that this wouldn’t have been a one time thing either.” I say. He smiles and leans in and kisses me.

[yanderestarangel]

Hi can I request Yandere Bi Han mortal kombat x male reader who is a normal human has no powers just lives his life normally headcanons of how he would be as a Yandere but you can also put a little smut in it.🥰❤️😍

yandere!bi han x male reader ౨ৎ ⋆🎀｡˚ [ HUMAN AU ]

TW ┆dark themes, au, violence, manipulation, non con, dub con, ftm reader, rough sex, age gap, stalking, emotional dependence, threat, v!sex, breedkink, praise, smut, mind break, eat out, anal, blowjob.

ʚɞ a/n: I need to make a bot on this concept.

♡ ┆I really like to think that Bi Han would be a martial arts teacher who works at some martial arts academy, he has always been extremely serious and stoic but has a love for his family roots of grandmasters and skilled fighters ─ he wouldn't differ too much from his persona as Sub Zero, without powers. The Asian would live a normal life in China and have a calm routine going to the gym teaching classes from morning until afternoon and going to sleep at night too tired to think about anything else.

♡ ┆He would go out on the weekends to visit his brother Kuai Liang who lives with his wife Harumi on the other side of the city and has a renowned clothing store in the city center. He can't feel many things other than coldness and is very closed to everything and everyone, being the typical "bossy" person in the room.

♡ ┆Bi Han couldn't take a life like this anymore, he tried dating but couldn't feel the same intensity as his former partners - which always led to nights of quick sex just to satisfy his carnal desires. Riding a motorcycle around was also his passion, something to distract him from intrusive thoughts on lonely Sundays ── He would also have several tattoos adorning his muscles and biceps.

♡ ┆But everything changed when you arrived in his life unexpectedly. You were looking for self-defense classes to feel safer but from the moment you entered his gym the long-haired man's cold heart practically melted and missed a beat momentarily, as if everything slowed down in his lap for moments and he just I could see you in front of me.

♡ ┆He was... Friendly with you, he managed to smile and even make small jokes which was new even for him, as if you had unlocked something in him. You talked about self-defense classes and he smiled widely for some unknown reason he offered private classes in the afternoon at no extra cost making you stay under the free and spontaneous pressure of the fight teacher.

♡ ┆So it all started there. You became his obsession and his point of fixation... He wanted to make you love him and make you just his. It was a crazy thought since he barely knew you, but not for long. You were his man, you needed to be his.

♡ ┆The self-defense classes started with Bi Han going easy on you, a few easy jabs and among them were the "innocent" questions that came out of his mouth, your relationship status, where you lived, how old you were, what your foods were favorites and your hobbies ─ a little interrogation disguised as a genuine concern from your coach.

♡ ┆You also noticed how he liked to press your body against his, keeping you close to his muscles while showing you how many times he could easily break you in half if he wanted. "You really are a cute creature aren't you? How long are you really uh?" Bi Han would speak in a deep voice as he stood behind you and held your body lightly with a muay thai movement making you look at the reflection of the two of you in the mirror ─ his brown eyes boring into you, he could make you scream and beg for him but... Not at that moment he wanted you to come to him because he wanted to, so he soon let you go and smiled sideways. "You need to improve your defense, little boy, let's practice the blow again ok?" he said, turning his back to you and adjusting his clothes slightly while trying to ignore how hard his dick was in his pants and how his pulse was racing just from touching you.

♡ ┆You would find yourself getting closer and closer to the older Asian, he would invite you to dinner with him, or a walk even offering to take you home, after all according to him "pretty boys like you attract wolves." And he was certainly one of those wolves a silent and effective predator in his goals.

♡ ┆He can easily manipulate you and get into your mind with lies, saying that the neighborhood is very dangerous, that delicate boys like you should stay alert and let him take care of everything and take you home every day, a less invasive way of enter your life without causing much suspicion for you or third parties.

♡ ┆When you least realized it, Bi Han would already be at your house, talking to your family and pretending to be the ideal companion you needed ─ a man who cared about you and only wanted the best for you. So he soon starts to put pressure on you, saying that he could help you more intimately, that you couldn't be alone in an unknown country and even offering to marry you so you could stay permanently in China ── things escalated so quickly it made you dizzy; but you were a strong man at first and ignored all the advances he made towards you until then. What led the man to use unconventional methods to make you his.

♡ ┆He started stalking you knowing exactly where you went and placing staplers in your house, always on alert in case you tried to find another relationship besides him. He would start playing psychological games with you, knocking on your windows in the middle of the night and entering your house at night to see you shaking in fear at every loud noise and dropped things he did, quickly hiding in the shadows and watching you like a damn ghost. It didn't take long for you to be psychologically shaken, mainly because he combined all of this with anonymous messages sent to your numbers with threats like "I'll see you from here" "there's no point in covering the windows" "I'm inside your house." You were so mentally fragile that you went looking for the only safe haven you could have at that moment in unknown territory... Your martial arts teacher, Bi Han, the same man who caused all this from the shadows.

♡ ┆So soon you would find yourself accepting his support, even leaving self-defense classes because he himself said he could protect you. He has been living at your house for a while ── However, he would soon change his mind, saying that it would be better for you to go to his apartment because your 'stalker' could come back there while he was away, it was the perfect excuse for him to have you under his control. Soon you lived more in Bi Han's house than in your own staying at his mercy, it was worth it for him to spend a whole month playing the terror in your mind, after all, now he finally had you all to himself. You will be spoiled with the good and the best, foods, clothes and the affection of the older man ─ movie nights watching movies and tight hugs with Bi Han's hair tickling your face... You've never had someone who cared about you as much as he did, so it wasn't difficult to develop an emotionally dependent relationship with him.

♡ ┆You would also marry him a few months later, convinced by him because you needed to stay in the country and have a better life, but with the marriage certificate also came his possession slowly climbing the surface... He calls you "cute hubby" and made a point of leaving you at his house when he left, under lock and key and away from the madness of the world. Bi Han had a perfect life now you were dependent on him in every aspect, especially mentally since he even took you away from your own family to keep it for himself and now he really he felt alive, with a beautiful boy by his side, the true love of his life in a completely sick and twisted way, just like his mind.

♡ ┆If you tried to leave his domain he would have to make you his carnally, biting you and holding you tightly to the nearest wall of the room and looking deep into your eyes. "I gave you everything, baby boy, You won't dare leave here, right? The world out there is cruel and dirty and you were born to be taken care of by someone, to be submissive to someone, do you hear?" And it wouldn't take long for you to become a trembling mess, clinging to his muscles for support as he pounded his dick into your pussy, with force and even cruelty to mark his territory in you ── he would hold your thighs and your neck with another hand, making you look at him with each rough thrust of his cock ─ the wet and obscene noise filled your ears and made you moan even more his dick was so good that with every kiss his tip had on your uterus you could feel your brain shut down for a few seconds making the asian laugh and whisper in your ear "good boy, a good boy for your owner hm? You're going to take all my cock with that beautiful pussy, aren't you? You're going to take all my cum and be a little slut who only thinks about sit on my dick until you get everything you want... So fucking beautiful..." He would leave you dripping with cum and with a sore clit.

♡ ┆On the bed, on the floor, in the bathroom, in the living room, even on the kitchen counter, Bi Han would fuck you all over the apartment. No hole of yours will be left out, you would have a sore throat from sucking his dick and having him force you to deep throat him or with him between your legs for at least an hour even if you were shaking and in pain he wouldn't stop eating out your cunt, until he left your flesh red and overstimulated by him. He will also fuck your ass while sticking two fingers in your pussy and making you moan loudly as he thrusts his hips against yours, praise pouring into your ears while you just moaned his name. "fucking hell-!, so beautiful and so broken ─ you're such a good slut begging for me like that, you want more, slutty boy? Want me to fill you up again?" He would moan hoarsely between slutty smiles and rhythmic skin-to-skin slaps ── After that you wouldn't think about leaving or going back to your old life, you belonged to him now and you were happy being his husband. Too broken to think about getting away.

[centrally-unplanned]

To talk about monopoly & antitrust, I want to start off with your first day in Econ 101, when you learn "how prices work". The toy model that nearly everyone learns as one of the first things ever is that classic supply-and-demand graph of price and quantity; you know it, I don't need to show it. And in relation to how firms set price in a market, the explanation you get is something like:

"In a world with perfect information, zero transaction costs, rational agents, and no barriers to entry, new firms and/or increased output will enter the market until marginal price equals marginal cost"

This (seemingly) portrays a model where new companies "entering the market" is how prices go down. Like say there are Firms A, B, and C, engaging in oligopolistic pricing for a normal good; what happens is some new Firm X (with the same production costs) emerges with the sole business strategy of "offer prices lower than them because they are skimming" and it drives everyone's prices down in a race to the bottom. That, in a sense, competition between identical firms drives the price equilibrium.

That isn't very true, not in practice and not even theoretically; the 101 stuff just sort of biases you to see it that way. Firm X above is being rational in one way but silly in others; why would it enter a market where its competitors are making healthy profits just to fuck that up, knowing it has no advantage they can't immediately replicate in response? And pay all the fixed costs other firms have already paid to make that 0.1% profit? In real life firms almost never do this, they compete over (actual or perceived) advantage or market segmentation. And it also means that - if all firms are truly the same in a market - cooperating on price, far from being aberrant behavior, is the natural thing to do. Why would I look at my rival firm and lower my price to "undercut" them, knowing that they 100% can just lower it too? We both lose, immediately. In practice, companies often set their prices by looking at the prices of competing firms and matching them!

Many things actually drive the price equilibrium of course, but one of the biggest - and most useful for our purposes - is the substitution effect. If companies defacto cooperate on prices all the time, why is the price not infinity? Well because if you are selling steaks and set the price to infinity, I'm not gonna buy it! I can just buy chicken, for me it's pretty much the same. And chicken is cheaper to make than steak. As a chicken firm, I totally can set my price under your steak and you can never, ever match it; that is a real advantage, one from asymmetries of production. The price of steak is driven by the need to compete with chicken much more than it is driven by the need to compete with "other steaks". And so on down a chain of a million desires and costs and needs.

So to wrap this around to antitrust, there is a common idea out there that monopolistic pricing is increasing from the past because if I look at different industries, so many of them today are consolidated into 2-3 big firms. Your grocery stores are all Giant or Safeway or w/e it is in your city, if you are buying a TV Samsung & LG are half the entire US market. How could these companies not collude on price? Of course they do, and they don't need explicit agreements that would violate extant FTC regulations to do it; they can just softly communicate and feel out cooperation. So you gotta break them up and change the rules so they can't do that.

The trap is thinking this is any different if it was 10 firms - it really isn't! Maybe marginally, sure, and if it was 2000 firms yeah okay the sheer chaos would probably create some price churn; but in the past prices were not driven down by the diversity of firms making price cooperation impossible. The long history of guilds, business associations, chambers of commerce, and so on shows that they had plenty of avenues for cooperation - and often did straight-up set prices. Meanwhile, when Wal-Mart, Target, Aldi, and others all cut prices at around the same time, they are not mainly competing with each other. If they were they would just mutually agree to not do that, without even saying anything! How stupid do you think they are? That isn't hard to do. Instead they are competing with Amazon; with boutique local stores; with restaurants; with the changing price of labor; with shifting consumer sentiment and expectations. The industry concentration doesn't matter.

Until it does of course! Because what is the substitution good for oil? They exist of course, but they ain't cheap; people will still buy gas at gigantic ranges of prices. Here, the fundamental structure of the market is monopolistic - and also a geopolitical clusterfuck, but let's not get into that. Producers openly rig prices sometimes, and antitrust actively regulates against it, and it is a hot mess of governments and companies and all that. Are people who hold patents engaging in monopoly pricing? Obviously, that is the point of patents! It is by design; but there are tons of arguments to be made around creeping exploitation of the IP system. Sometimes hundreds of firms in a dominant market niche will offer complex, bundled products where the price of each piece of obfuscated and the value is subjective, but consensus is you can't not buy the product or you will be screwed and since you can't tell what the product even is, let alone how valuable it is, you can't object when they set the price - I hear these are called "universities", but they go by other names in other sectors.

All of the above are something like "monopolies", which maybe are getting worse over time, but they are monopolies for different, product-specific reasons. I think there is a good deal of FTC work and other reforms that could be done in the US to identify areas where this kind of rent extraction is happening. But what it doesn't look like is opposing blanket industry consolidation. And in fact the correlation is honestly pretty weak. Because identical firm competition does not drive the price equilibrium.

[togglesbloggle]

Why do you think tumblr will die in only a few years?

Answer with jargon: a strong correlation between recent economic shifts and chaotic choices by major tech companies is most easily explained if the 'traditional' social media platforms of 2005-2020 are mostly a zero-interest rate phenomenon.

Longer answer, with less jargon: Even though Musk's takeover is making all the headlines recently, the last year has in fact seen major shakeups at many social media platforms, so Twitter is actually part of a trend. Almost inevitably, these are cases of social media companies trying to find a way to squeeze more money out of their userbase (Reddit), cut costs dramatically (Twitter), or both. This marks a sudden departure from a much more relaxed attitude towards revenue in the Pictures Of Cats industry, where the focus was historically more on expanding the userbase to a global scale and then counting on world domination to sort of <????> and then the company would become profitable eventually.

We joke, correctly, that Tumblr has never been profitable. But the entire structure of ad-supported content curation between human users is deeply suspect as a business model; IIRC Twitter was never profitable either, and Facebook has been juicing its numbers in very shenanigany ways. Discord was actually making money on net last I checked, at least a bit, so they're not all completely in the hole. But even if you take the accounting figures at face value, none of these companies has anything like the amount of money that their cultural prominence would suggest. Instead, they're heavily fueled by investment dollars, money given by super-rich people and institutions in the expectation that fueling the growth of the company now will pay off with interest later.

So what changed?

I'm not an expert here, but I'll do my best to muddle through. The American Federal Reserve has one mandate that dominates all others (sometimes called the 'dual mandate'), and one primary tool that it uses to enforce that mandate. The goal is to maintain low (but nonzero) rates of inflation and unemployment, which in their models are deeply interlinked phenomena. The tool is 'rate hikes', or more specifically, tweaking the mandatory rate of interest that banks charge one another when making loans.

As a particular consequence of this, hiking the rate also means that bonds start paying out much better. When the rate hike goes through, that affects people who let the government borrow their personal cash- that is, people who buy bonds- as well as institutions like banks that lend to one another. A rate hike means that you, personally, can make a little extra money by letting the government borrow it for a while. The federal government of the US is a rock-solid low-risk choice for this kind of moneymaking scheme, so the federal interest rate sort of defines the 'number to beat'; to attract investors, a company has to give those investors money at a better percentage than whatever the feds are offering. Particularly since a company is a lot more likely to go out of business than the state!

To wrap this back around to the Pictures Of Cats industry: the higher the rate hike, the better your company needs to be doing (or the less risky it needs to be as an option) to attract big investment dollars. Very high rates make it very hard to convince people to invest in business activity rather than the government itself, and very low rates put moonshots and big dreams on the table, investment-wise, in a way that wouldn't otherwise be possible. Social media companies were one of these big dreams.

In the great financial crisis of 2008, the Fed took the dramatic step of reducing their rate to zero, trying to juice the economy back to life. And ever since then, they've kept it there. This has produced an unprecedented amount of funding for very crazy stuff; it's part of what has allowed so many weird new tech companies (Uber, streaming services, etc.) to get so much money, so quickly, and use that to grow to massive size without a clear model of how they're ever going to make money. This state of affairs kept going for quite a while, with no clear stopping point; that zero-interest environment has been one of the shadowy forces in the background that shaped fundamental contours and limits in how our Very Online World has grown and developed. Until COVID.

Or rather, the bounce back from COVID: we suddenly saw a massive spike in inflation and an incredibly strong labor market, as employees quit in record numbers, negotiated higher salaries, and found better work, and at the same time supply chain issues and other economy stuff caused prices to climb dramatically. Recall the Fed's 'dual mandate', to control the employment rate and inflation. This was, basically, kicking them right in the jooblies. They responded in kind, finally finally raising their rates for the first time in 15 years. For some of the people reading this, it'll be the first significant shift in their entire adult lives.

The goal, as I understand it, is to fight inflation by reducing the amount of outside investment into private companies, forcing them to hire fewer people and pay smaller salaries, ultimately drawing money out of the working economy and driving prices back down by lowering demand for everything. You get paid less, so you eat out less, and buy at cheaper restaurants when you do, so restaurants have to compete harder by lowering their prices; seems pretty dodgy to me as a theory, but it's the theory. And the first part will almost certainly work- companies are going to see less investment.

For social media companies that are still paying most of their salaries with investor dollars instead of revenues, this is especially catastrophic. Without outside investment, they're just a massive pile of expenses waiting to happen, huge yearly costs in developer salaries and server fees. This is why, all of a sudden, every social media company is suddenly making bonkers decisions. They're noticing that nobody wants to give them any more money! So they're trying to figure out how to live a lot more cheaply, to actually somehow for reals turn their giant userbases in to some kind of actual revenue stream, or both.

Tumblr is kind of the ur-example of this kind of thing, supporting a very large userbase with no coherent plan whatsoever to start paying its staff with our dollars instead of investors' dollars. When interest rates were low and Scrooge McDuck had nowhere else to hide his pile of gold coins, a crazy kid with a dream was the best alternative available to him. But now, unless something changes, he's going to notice he can just buy bonds instead, and that crazy kid can go take a hike.

That's why I think Tumblr is living on borrowed time, though I don't know how much. Like all cartoons, the economy doesn't really fall off a cliff until somebody looks down and notices they've been standing on thin air this whole time. But they always fall eventually; that's the gag.

[simplyraeblue]

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ALL CHARACTERS AGED UP !femreader x !virginshoto you've had a crush on your friend shoto for a long time, and unbeknownst to you he's been crushing as well. not only that, he wants you to be his first time; for everything WARNINGS/TAGS: swearing, fluff, suggestive, shoto is kind of a simp word count: 2,707 A/N: oopsy daisy real quick short post because I couldn't help myself and the idea of sweet shoto wouldn't leave my brain... little cutesy filler part before they hit home base (˵ •̀ ᴗ - ˵ ) ✧ also I was listening to The Archer x Not Strong Enough while writing this... linked here if you want to listen while you read!

part one | part two | part three |

part four | part five

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you were desperate to ignore the incessant barrage of notifications from Mina. just moments ago, you had dragged yourself off your feet, finally collapsing onto the couch after a grueling day. the minute you sank into the cushions, your phone erupted with a flood of calls and text messages. exhaustion weighed on you heavily, and each buzz and ping felt like an assault on your already depleted energy. it wasn’t until the hundredth call that you finally gave in and answered.

“what do you want, Mina? I’m absolutely wiped out,” you groaned, trying to inject a note of humor into your voice despite how drained you felt.

Mina’s voice came through the receiver with an overly enthusiastic tone, almost too cheerful for your weary brain to handle. “get dressed up; we’re going to a fancy restaurant!”

you sighed heavily, rubbing your eyes in frustration. “did you not just hear me say I’m exhausted? I have zero energy left, and honestly, I’d rather not spend any more money right now.”

Mina’s response was an impatient tsk, filled with exasperation. “I don’t care how tired you are or what you want. put on something fancy and forget about the cost. be ready by seven-thirty, or I’m coming over there to drag you out myself.”

you wanted to argue more, but the stubborn resolve in Mina's voice told you this was a battle you wouldn’t win. plus, deep down, you knew she was right. maybe a change of scenery and some good company was exactly what you needed to recharge. with a resigned sigh, you checked the time on your phone—it was already past six.

“fine, fine. I’ll be ready,” you grumbled, hoping your tone conveyed the minimal enthusiasm you felt.

“great!” Mina replied with an exaggerated cheerfulness. “see you soon!”

you hung up and stared at your reflection in the darkened screen of your phone. despite your fatigue, you found a sliver of motivation. you stood up, stretched, and began to rummage through your closet. picking out a sleek dress and a pair of heels that hadn’t seen the light of day in months, you couldn’t help but feel a small spark of excitement. maybe this would be a good distraction after all.

as you prepared yourself, you tried to push aside the lingering thoughts of your long day. you opted for minimal makeup and a quick hairstyle, focusing on just enough to look presentable without draining what little energy you had left. by the time you checked the clock again, it was nearly seven-thirty.

just as you were about to head out the door, you heard an unexpected knock. you’d assumed Mina would just text you the address and meet you there. curious and a bit puzzled, you opened the door and started to say, “Mina, I promise I’m ready—”

but it wasn’t Mina standing there. instead, Shoto was at your doorstep, impeccably dressed in a sharp black suit. he held a bouquet of flowers, the rich colors and delicate petals contrasting with his formal attire.

“apologies for letting mina trick you,” Shoto said, his voice gentle and warm as he offered you a reassuring smile. “I wanted this to be a surprise.”

“Shoto, what’s going on?” you asked, your confusion mingling with a touch of excitement as you accepted the flowers, your cheeks flushing at the unexpected and thoughtful gesture.

“I’m taking you on a proper date,” Shoto replied, his eyes meeting yours with a sincerity that made your heart skip a beat. he extended his arm toward you, a subtle invitation. “I figured it was about time, especially considering the… less conventional things we’ve been up to.”

you stared at Shoto for a moment, your mind racing to process what was happening. the bouquet in your hands felt surprisingly heavy, its fragrance filling the air with a sweetness that contrasted with the formal setting.

“a proper date?” you echoed, trying to reconcile this unexpected turn of events with the casual plans you had made with mina.

“yes,” Shoto affirmed, his tone steady and sincere. “I wanted to do something special, something more meaningful. and mina kindly agreed to help with the surprise.”

you took a deep breath, a mix of nervousness and excitement bubbling up inside you. “this is… really unexpected. but also, kind of amazing.”

Shoto’s smile widened, and he gently took your hand, guiding you out the door. “I’m glad you think so. I’ve been looking forward to this. let’s make it a night to remember.”

as you walked down the stairs and into the cool evening air, you glanced back at your apartment, feeling a mix of disbelief and anticipation. Shoto’s presence was reassuring, his calm demeanor helping to ease your lingering fatigue. he led you to a sleek, black car parked by the curb, its polished surface reflecting the city lights.

“where are we going?” you asked as he opened the car door for you, his touch lingering just a moment longer than necessary.

“it’s a surprise,” he said with a playful glint in his eye. “but trust me, it’ll be worth it.”

you settled into the plush leather seat, watching as Shoto got in beside you and started the engine. the car glided smoothly through the city streets, and you found yourself enjoying the rare luxury of simply being present in the moment.

Shoto made small talk as he drove, his voice soothing and easy to listen to. he talked about the restaurant he had chosen, the dishes they were famous for, and the ambiance he hoped you would appreciate. the conversation flowed effortlessly, and you could feel the genuine interest and care behind his words.

when you finally arrived at the restaurant, it was even more beautiful than you had imagined. the elegant exterior was bathed in soft, warm light, and the interior exuded an atmosphere of refined sophistication. Shoto guided you inside, where you were greeted by a host and shown to a private table with a stunning view of the city skyline.

“Shoto, this is insane,” you gasped, your voice barely above a whisper as you gazed out the window. the city below sparkled like a sea of stars, the lights stretching out as far as the eye could see. the extent of it all hit you suddenly, making you acutely aware of just how much effort and expense this must have entailed. “you didn’t have to go all out like this. I would’ve been perfectly happy with something more… quaint.”

Shoto extended his hand across the table, his touch gentle yet reassuring as he clasped yours. his smile was soft and genuine, a look of quiet pride in his eyes. “I wanted to do this. for you.”

throughout the evening, Shoto’s attentiveness and thoughtfulness made you feel cherished and valued. the meal was exquisite, each course a culinary delight, and the conversation never faltered. as the night progressed, you realized that Shoto’s surprise was not just about the setting or the food but about the effort he had put into making this night special for you.

by the end of the evening, as you sat back and savored the last of your dessert, you felt a deep sense of contentment. Shoto reached across the table, taking your hand in his once more.

“there’s actually another reason I planned this night with you, y/n,” Shoto said, his voice a bit hesitant. he lifted your hand gently, pressing a soft kiss to your knuckles. as he pulled away, you noticed a faint pink hue spreading across his cheeks, a blush that made him even more endearing.

“okay, now you’re gonna make me worry,” you joked lightly, trying to ease the tension with a playful laugh. but his nervous gulp made your own anxiety spike, and a flutter of unease began to settle in your stomach.

“I… shit, I don’t know how to put this,” Shoto murmured, his gaze dropping to the floor as he struggled to find the right words. he turned his eyes to the sprawling cityscape outside, and you felt a pang of anxiety, your heart racing in your chest. “I care about you, quite a lot.”

“I care a lot about you too, Sho,” you responded softly, hoping to reassure him. his eyes met yours again, filled with a mix of vulnerability and hope.

“I’m sure this might feel very sudden, and maybe a tad rushed,” Shoto continued, his voice trembling slightly. he squeezed your hand with a tenderness that sent butterflies fluttering in your stomach. “but, after all these years of having a crush on you, and the past few weeks of growing closer, I think… no, I know I’m falling in love with you, y/n.”

the room seemed to hold its breath as Shoto’s words hung in the air. you could feel the weight of his confession pressing gently against your heart, and the enormity of the moment made your mind swirl with a mix of emotions.

for a moment, you were silent, processing the depth of what he had just shared. Shoto’s fingers still rested lightly around yours, his gaze searching yours with a blend of hope and trepidation.

“I… wow,” you finally said, your voice soft and trembling with emotion. “I had no idea you felt this way.”

Shoto’s cheeks reddened further, and he shifted uncomfortably in his seat. “I didn’t want to rush things or make you feel pressured. I just needed you to know how I really feel.”

you took a deep breath, feeling a surge of warmth and affection for him. the realization that he had been holding these feelings for so long, and that he had chosen this special evening to reveal them, made your heart swell.

“I’ve been feeling the same way,” you confessed, your voice gaining strength. “I didn’t know how to say it either, but I’ve been falling for you too, Shoto.”

a look of pure relief and joy spread across his face, and he squeezed your hand once more, his eyes sparkling. “really? you mean that?”

“yes,” you nodded, smiling through the tears that had formed in your eyes. “I mean it. I’ve been feeling this way for a while, but I didn’t want to rush things either.”

Shoto’s expression softened into a tender smile, and he leaned forward, his forehead resting gently against yours. “I’m so glad we’re on the same page,” he murmured. “I want to take things at a pace that feels right for both of us. I just wanted you to know how much you mean to me.”

you closed your eyes, savoring the closeness and the sincerity of the moment. “I want that too,” you whispered, your heart full of hope and happiness. “let’s see where this takes us.”

as you both leaned across the table, your lips yearning to mold against his, Shoto suddenly smirked and broke the moment. “hopefully to home base,” he joked, the playful glint in his eyes causing you to snort with laughter. his smirk widened as he heard your reaction, and he leaned back in his chair, letting out a hearty laugh that was both infectious and endearing.

as Shoto continued laughing, you felt a wave of boldness and excitement. standing up from your chair, you made your way around the table, feeling a sense of exhilaration that made you disregard the curious glances from other diners. with a determined stride, you leaned in close to his ear, your breath warm and tickling his skin. “let’s take this special evening home, shall we?” you whispered, and you could almost sense the shiver of anticipation that ran through his body.

Shoto’s reaction was immediate—his face flushed with a deep, embarrassed pink. this wasn’t the end goal for him tonight, not by any measure. he wanted you to understand that his confession was heartfelt and sincere, and he hoped you knew that it wasn’t just a pretext to move things forward physically.

“I—seriously?” Shoto asked, his voice dropping to a low, almost incredulous murmur. you could see the nervousness flickering in his eyes, and it only made you more determined. reaching out, you offered him your hand with a reassuring smile, trying to convey your genuine affection and support.

“unless you don’t want to make a home run?” you teased, raising an eyebrow playfully. Shoto’s reaction was immediate and comical—he stood up from his chair with such urgency that he almost knocked it over. “wow there, eager are we?” you laughed, watching as he fumbled slightly, trying to regain his composure.

“if you keep teasing me, we’re not making it back to your apartment,” Shoto groaned, his voice tinged with frustration and amusement. he pulled you gently towards him, placing a tender kiss on your cheek. as he lingered there for a moment, you could feel the warmth of his breath against your skin, making your heart race. “I’d hate to have to take you in my car,” he added with a playful edge, clearly struggling to keep his own excitement in check.

his warning tease almost came true, because when you two made it to the car he nudged you against the side of the vehicle, letting his hands roam a little too much for the public as he kissed you fervently.

you would’ve let him take you in the car, white hot desire burning inside of you so quickly that you felt like you’d die if you didn’t have him on top of you.

even when you made it back to your apartment, you both barely made it in the door as he started pawing at your dress. Shoto had to restrain himself from ripping the tight fabric that fit so well around your ass, thinking he needed to try and remain as gentlemanly as possible.

you became a tangle of limbs as his lips met yours, hungry and needy, the two of you stumbling your bedroom. you guided him to sit on the edge of the bed before you started to work on the buttons of his shirt, sliding it over his shoulders and discarding it on the floor.

Shoto could only watch in awe as you stepped back, slowly working on the zipper of your dress (thank god you chose one with a side zipper), before letting it drop to the ground.

“you’re so beautiful, y/n,” Shoto whispered, his voice barely more than a breath. his gaze remained locked on yours, though he clearly wanted to let his eyes wander over your now exposed skin. he had seen you like this before, sure, but it never failed to take his breath away, each time more intense than the last.

you settled yourself on his lap, your body fitting comfortably against his. a soft, tender smile played on your lips as you leaned in to place a gentle kiss on his mouth. “you make me breathless, Sho,” you murmured, your lips brushing against his as you spoke. “absolutely, and utterly, starstruck.”

Shoto’s eyes fluttered closed for a moment, savoring the kiss before pulling away slightly. his gaze was dreamy, half-lidded with a wide, affectionate grin spreading across his face. “will you be mine?” he asked, his voice filled with earnest desire. “call me your boyfriend, and I’ll call you my girlfriend. we’ll make our friends sick with pda, go on dates all the time, and I promise I’ll treat you like a princess. we can cook together, sleep together, do everything you want to do. I’ll follow you, I’d follow you anywhere.”

your heart swelled with emotion at his heartfelt words. overwhelmed by the depth of his promise, you kissed him deeply, pouring all your passion into the embrace. the kiss was intense, a shared declaration of the love and commitment you both felt. “that sounds perfect to me, boyfriend,” you whispered, the term feeling both exhilarating and right as it fell from your lips.

the moment you said the words, shoto’s arms wrapped around you tightly and flipped the two of you so that you laid bare underneath him.

“can I make love to you, girlfriend?” Shoto’s face was pink with lust and emotions, and his gaze was filled with a deep desire that made you feel like the only girl in the world.

“yes, Shoto.”

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Link to Bakugo x reader here

(word count: 2,328)

Link to Kirishima x reader here

(word count: 902)

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