SaL anon here bestie and I'm afraid it's time. It was bound to happen at some point during the hiatus, but I feel like now that it's here we should rip the bandaid off and talk about all the reasons the sperm donor arc is some if the stupidest shit I've ever seen. So let's start with what really pissed me off this week which is KR's comments about this storyline. Can't remember the exact quote but something like "Buck needs to be happy with himself, figure out what he wants, it's important to

do that before being happy in a relationship, blah, blah, blah" to which I thought "Why indeed KR this is true which is exactly why WE SHOULD HAVE SEEN THIS HAPPEN LAST YEAR WITH THE WHOLE TAYLOR RELATIONSHIP!!" This is exactly how that story was set up, constantly showing Buck's misery, his half-hearted ily, the chance to realize he needs more than just a person that doesn't leave to be happy. And absolutely nothing came of it. We spent a whole season with this BS only to have it end with no growth for Buck. And NOW you think it's time to address this 🙄🙄🙄??!! Also this leads into my second bitchy observation. Part of the appeal of having a break up growth arc was it was relatable. Maybe we haven't all experienced it but I'd argue most people can relate to the idea of leaving (or being left) a relationship that isn't bad but isn't what you want. Eddie's breakdown arc last season was relatable, not because we all know what PTSD like but we can all appreciate the idea of bottling up hurt and pain because we don't want to face it or keep a brave face for those we love. What exactly am I supposed to be connecting to with this donor BS?? We all don't have an innate desire to have kids, or do a big favor for a sorta friend we once knew. I have a complete emotional disconnect from this storyline and don't see that changing. So next let's talk about how fucking illogical every part of this story is (on a side note I laughed at the fans out-googling the 911 writers on so many things, reminds me of my science RNM  science sin compilations). Anyway, just why would anyone approach their friend they barely keep contact with to do this particular favor (maybe they explained but honestly I've blocked so many of those scenes from my long term memory)?? Why not a close friend (or relative even)? If you're going for emotional distance why not just an anonymous donor? The whole premise feels so contrived. Probably gotta leave it here for now since I'm getting sleepy. But i'm not close to being done (i'm not even done with this one point) so i hope ypu're ready for more of an inbox full later. Feel free to respond to what I do have because honestly bestie, this may take awhile.

My friend, as always your thoughts are perfectly on point! First, YES that growth was what SHOULD have come out of Buck having a relationship where he recognized he was clinging to something that wasn’t fulfilling for him and being the one to call it quits. But with the cheating added into the mix and then the Jonah mess, Buck didn’t end the relationship on “his” terms, he was pushed by her actions and needing to protect his friends. And ya know what? It might have worked if they had it end in 5a, and then spent 5b with Buck figuring out how to be happy with himself and what he wants. Also, what TF was 5x18 if not TWO instances of it being stated what Buck wants?! First with the Maddie “isn’t that what love is?” conversation and then the firefam “someone to have your back” conversation. 

ANYWAY, fine, Buck still needs to learn what the key to happiness is, but please tell me why after how much we had to suffer through that BT mess, we are having yet another season of Buck clinging to something that isn’t right for him and won’t make him happy, just because he thinks doing something to make someone else happy is important even if it hurts him. If the WHOLE point of the BT mess was showing Buck being a “settler” and a “clinger” then why are we right back in the same place with him settling for being a donor not a dad, and clinging on to this couple like he’s going to be ‘fun uncle Buck”? You KNOW that couple isn’t going to want a constant reminder of how they “failed” to make a baby “on their own”, or risk their kid (or Buck) getting too attached. Not to mention how awkward it would be for them to explain their sperm donor just being around all the time. Also what was the point of Hen asking if he could have a child out there and walk away, if he can JUST be a donor and nothing more, if the storyline is showing him constantly acting like he’s going to be fulling involved in this kids life? How is ANY of this helping Buck figure out how to be happy with himself when he’s still putting himself and his needs behind other people’s who are using him for parts? What happened to him figuring out the right “couch” and how to be “at ease” and Lev’s death being something that hit him super hard and made him start thinking about his life? Because all of that got abandoned in favor of this soap opera level pointless “drama”. Thanks, I hate it.

As far as connecting to the storyline, I don’t even think it’s just about some people not wanting kids and therefore not being able to connect, it’s about the way this story is being told. Because you’re right, even people without war-related PTSD could relate or at least emotionally connect to Eddie’s arc. But with Buck, we aren’t given enough/consistent info about his thoughts and feelings to connect with! He seems unsure when he talks to Hen and that “donor not dad” line really seemed to throw him for a loop. So the audience was prepared to see him struggle with this decision a bit, maybe saying “let me think about it” and then an episode or 2 later (after some interactions with a call and/or Eddie/Chris, or Maddie (and maybe Jee) make him re-evaluate things), he tells them no, because he’s realized he can’t just donate and walk away. (Even weighty arcs like the lawsuit and Eddie’s fighting arc only lasted a couple episodes so this would be easy to wrap up within the confines of 6a) Instead he says “yes” immediately without talking to Eddie, Maddie, or Bobby or taking into real account what Hen said. Okay, fine, so he’s said yes, now it’s time for the family history to come into play or a talk with Eddie or Maddie or Bobby right?! Wrong! It’s time to forget about it for a month! Then, when it finally comes back, it’s got two conflicting things happening at once. Thing one: It’s all a big joke! Buck is telling Hen about his masturbation habits (which as everyone has pointed out is actually NOT what you should do which Buck would know if he was doing all that research on what to eat and everything, but that would require the WRITERS to do that research and OPP! Either they didn’t bother, or decided this was “funnier” than the facts 🙄). Buck is getting cock-blocked by the sperm bank! Buck’s firefam is eavesdropping on the reveal when Buck get’s accosted at work and they get caught staring! How funny is that?! (🙄🙄🙄 NOT actually funny but of course it’s never addressed) But then we have thing two. Which is the fact that despite the writing playing this off as a joke, they’re also making sure Buck isn’t telling anyone besides Hen, and makes it clear he doesn’t want her to tell anyone else. Why not? Why would Buck keep this a secret from his sister that he always goes to for a listening ear? From his best friend who isn’t afraid to give him tough talks when he needs them? From his father figure whose advice he respects? The answer if this was in an earlier season with better writing would be that he knows he’s not making the right choice and isn’t ready to confront the truth. But we don’t get any indication of that either! Just Buck desperate to do his donation, apologetic to the couple when he can’t get it done and doubling down on his commitment and excitement to do this for them, and a continued joy in the whole thing, with no indication that anyone is gearing up for a big talk with him. So why was Buck sooo desperate to not let anyone know? The audience is being given two different messages at the same time! Buck is super excited about doing this in his words, and Buck is also super concerned about the people closest to him finding out that he’s doing this in his actions. But since we don’t see him expressing that worry, and we don’t see the team expressing any worry behind his back about it, the audience doesn’t know how they are supposed to be emotionally connecting to this story. I know you’ve got another ask planed on how we’re past the point of being able to satisfyingly wrap up this arc now that a baby has been made so I’ll save some rant for that, but just focused on what we have seen, the arc doesn’t make any sense on what Buck is truly feeling and therefore what the audience should be connecting to within the storyline. 

As for why they asked Buck, his buddy said it was because Buck was a good, kind, selfless person and you can’t tell that from a genetics facts sheet at the sperm bank. Which is....a) grossly manipulative, especially for someone like Buck which dude HAD to know, and b) isn’t even a tiny bit factually true! Yes kids have their own personalities and what they like and enjoy may not always line up with what their parents do, but your child being a good and kind person is sorta down to you teaching them to be good and kind. It isn’t going to just *happen* because of “genetics”. My guess is they approached him because he IS good and kind and they figured he would say yes, with the added bonus of him being a physically healthy person with on the surface level, probably “good” genetics.

Anyway, I tried to give this storyline a chance, just like I did with the impending BT breakup, but just like last season, it’s reached a point where pretty much whatever they do is going to result in Buck being the “victim” again and being the one to be “left behind” instead of being able to make the choice himself to leave a situation that isn’t good for him, meaning again, no real growth, and more of Buck being stuck having scenes and arcs entirely outside the firefam/his job. And as we saw with 4x14 and 99.9% of s5 and the BT relationship, KR doesn’t like anyone in the firefam being involved in Buck’s personal arcs. (Probably because if they WERE, he might actually learn something and be able to grow a little and we just can’t have that.)

#eddie your feelings are showing

thinking about how one of the reasons i’ve always felt we haven’t really seen eddie outwardly React to buck being in danger is bc he’s never really been in a situation where he wasn’t Absolutely Sure he could save buck. like with the truck bombing, eddie is clearly agitated when they can’t get to buck but once he can?? he’s holding buck’s hand and helping hen treat him while the others work to lift the truck bc he knows he can pull buck to safety when the time is right. same with the factory explosion. they don’t linger on eddie’s reaction much but, again, as long as he can find buck he knows he can get him out. and he does. he’s the first one to grab the rope and the first one to reach him which infers a lot about the moments we didn’t see. 

but now, eddie’s screaming buck’s name and trying to pull him to safety but he can’t. so he has to lower him to the ground instead. he has to put buck’s safety in everyone else’s hands. and as soon as he’s off the truck he runs to buck’s side again but bobby drags him away and makes him drive. so he spends three minutes driving to the hospital, not sure if buck’s even alive, and as soon as they stop he’s the one demanding to take over compressions. he’s the one yelling at the doctors to “Do more,” because he’s not allowed to do anything else except wait now.

and, on the one hand, it’s devastating to watch eddie slowly start to crumble because he clearly feels so helpless. but also, even through all that helplessness, even though this is the first time he really doesn’t know if he can save buck........he still did???

because he was the one to get buck’s heart beating again.

and that. that is something i going to need three to five business days to recover from, frankly

S7 of the weewoo show more than ever

I hate that it makes so damn much sense to make buddie in love but they don't tell each other bc FUCK-

I could explain it further but I'm too sleepy to do it

I can't believe we waited 7 seasons for Buck to kiss a man and it wasn't even the person he literally legally shares a kid with

Listen -

Buck and Eddie should not get together by the end of the sixth season. Controversial, I know, but hear me out.

Buck is with Natalia for the foreseeable future while he processes his own relationship with death, what it means that he almost died, and who he is now. I think the magic will wear off soon once, after Buck's feelings about his death change or they realize, besides death, they don't have much in common, and then Buck will be alone again.

However, Eddie will not.

I think Eddie will maybe put himself back out there, taking a sudden chance on a random connection to see if it pans out to something more. Especially after this latest episode where it looks like he's taking that message of "we don't have the time we think we do" to heart. And maybe it's with a guy. A cute guy he likes but he's still a little bit hung up on a certain someone.

So what happens then is, because Eddie doesn't want to waste any more time, he corners Buck to tell him that he has feelings for him and he doesn't have to reciprocate but Eddie had to express them otherwise he was gonna explode. And then leaves Buck alone to process what he said. Which... there is a lot.

Now Buck and Natalia could have already ended things, or this could be the nail in the coffin because Buck realizes he does have someone special, who sees him for who he is, who he has already made a life with, and he and Natalia aren't exactly the picture of the future Buck had in mind and he lets her down gently. All the while planning what he will say to Eddie in response because he now has discovered a new world of possibilities open to him.

Meanwhile, having "closed the book" on any chance of being together with Buck, Eddie and this new guy actually name their relationship and Eddie is giddy to see where this goes, as well as unafraid to make his feelings, and who he is, known to the world (and his family).

This all comes to a head at Chimney and Maddie's wedding (if this season, if not, whatever party/event the firefam attend together during the finale) where Buck is waiting for Eddie to arrive to steal him away for a private conversation only to be stunned into silence when Eddie arrives on the arm of a handsome stranger.

"Who's this?"

"My date. My... boyfriend."

Buck loses his nerve to confess to Eddie and congratulates Eddie on the new relationship and helps them find their seat, wearing a smile he doesn't mean, and then after going away to stew in private so he doesn't ruin Maddie's big day. He does his best, but he's noticeably off for the rest of the day.

All of this happens so that way we're going into season 7 with pining and jealous Buck (which is only fair after Eddie was the same for 2 - 3 seasons).

talk 2 me abt scream into nothingness!!

!!! okay!!

it's actually a v basic premise, i'd go as far as to say it's the most obvious choice for a photocheer fic, but there's just so little out there i'm gonna put it out there myself n_n

anyway, everybody lives/no upside down au, which means jonathan has no reason to leave hawkins and nancy has had no reason to break up with steve. but jonathan is still v infatuated w nancy - nothing canon happened, after all, so he's been the borderline creep/guy who doesn't think his actions have consequences for a While now. i am Decimating my poor boy in the name of character development

so they get paired together in a class for either a bog project or just as classmates + therefore work buddies throughout the year. at first jonathan skulks like "ik you don't want to be seen w me, i'm a creep i'm a weirdo [various other radiohead noises]" and just offers to do all the work bc that's usually how it goes. but chrissy cunningham doesn't shy from her work. she can do it all! he's just jon.

anyway she tries to get through to jonathan, to no avail. eventually twigs that he's into nancy. (this is where i stumble though tbh, bc i usually write high school content being senior year, which means steve won't be there. unless a) since this is AU he gets held back, or b) he stays as an assistant coach and jonathan resents him for "turning" nancy into the kind of person who sneaks away with a member of the faculty but i kinda hate those implications so idk)

chrissy offers to try and get between steve n nancy. if jonathan wants. (i can't stop the cheerscoops i'm sorry) jonathan gets ultra defensive and verbally attacks chrissy like ugh you girls are all the same 🙄 all you think people care about is romantic validation 🙄 and chrissy gets real upset by it and runs away. maybe isn't in class the next time. and jon starts to feel bad. he apologises to chrissy and she doesn't accept it but also she still sits next to him in class. and he tries to engage w her but she p much just sets her own tasks and jonathan his and they can just put their work together.

i'm also in two minds about whether jonathan starts to see the error of his ways as a result of just that, or whether to drag it out and have them lock horns back n forth a few times until finally they have EITHER (my brain is just neverending forks in the road lol, this is why i have anna to pick for me) one especially heated argument that just ~explodes into passion~, or they finally have a heart to heart and get it all out there.

I'm kinda scared that they're gonna try doing something romantically with Buck and Kameron. I just want Buck to be happy but this is not it.

SaL anon here bestie and, well, that episode happened. I have a lot of thoughts, that I'm sure we'll get to, but if I had to summarize I'd say KR looked at the only successful thing in S5 (meaning Eddie's storyline) and in all her originality decided to do it for Buck, but put it through a half cutoff funhouse mirror and we got THAT. I'll have more to rant about later but for tonight let's take a break and enjoy wedding planning shenanigans over on LS (please LS, i need some fun). Good luck 🍹🍸

Guuuuuurl. This episode. I haaaaate that we got TOP TIER acting, from Oliver and Peter especially, and some really cool framing and camera angels and an interesting *concept*, and then the WHOLE episode was let down at every turn by the writing not making any sense and contradicting its own narrative within the episode! Like, pick a lane! It was so weird!

I am READY to sit and watch LS with zero thoughts and just relax because damn. How are you going to take something as simple as "Buck has a found family that loves him and doesn't need validation from his parents or to save others to be worthy of love" and bungle it THAT badly? Add to that the incompetent twitter girlies who don't know the difference between 85 people leaving a fan rating on the fan rating website, and official TV viewership ratings showing how many people tuned in (hint! It wasn't the Buddie stans that didn't show), plus the typical you're stupid if you don't Get It crowd, and I am tiiiiiired.

Can we all just admit that the cast is great but the showrunner is shit and consequently drags everything down?

ANYWAY

Yes, time for LS fun, wedding planning shenanigans and I'm gonna go work on a puzzle and then sleep because this time change fuuuucks me up. Can't wait to hear the rest of your thoughts!

literally just woke up in the middle of the night with this realisation:

haven't jolink also had the 'if I die will you take my kid?' conversation?

unless I'm misremembering things because it's 3am and I just woke up 😅

(about luna at least - I know the scout side of things is different because of amelia)

I went to check, 18x05, they do have the conversation Jo is freaking out AND Link offers it like it's a given. Complete why are you even asking, of course I'm taking her. The jolink parallels are very real, but no one is quite doing that one like buddie lol

i do love how we're all like. in denial of the part of the promo where jonah attacks hen. he won't hurt her actually because i will kill him with my mind before he even gets the occasion <3

Nothing says "You're in Germany" like telling a random, non-bureaucrat "They bill it under the name 'paragraph 43 B' and charge between 120 and 180 bucks, typically." and getting the reply "In reference to which law, please?"

Paying consumer debts is basically optional in the United States

The vast majority of America's debt collection targets $500-2,000 credit card debts. It is a filthy business, operated by lawless firms who hire unskilled workers drawn from the same economic background as their targets, who routinely and grotesquely flout the law, but only when it comes to the people with the least ability to pay.

America has fairly robust laws to protect debtors from sleazy debt-collection practices, notably the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act (FDCPA), which has been on the books since 1978. The FDCPA puts strict limits on the conduct of debt collectors, and offers real remedies to debtors when they are abused.

But for FDPCA provisions to be honored, they must be understood. The people who collect these debts are almost entirely untrained. The people they collected the debts from are likewise in the dark. The only specialized expertise debt-collection firms concern themselves with are a series of gotcha tricks and semi-automated legal shenanigans that let them take money they don't deserve from people who can't afford to pay it.

There's no better person to explain this dynamic than Patrick McKenzie, a finance and technology expert whose Bits About Money newsletter is absolutely essential reading. No one breaks down the internal operations of the finance sector like McKenzie. His latest edition, "Credit card debt collection," is a fantastic read:

https://www.bitsaboutmoney.com/archive/the-waste-stream-of-consumer-finance/

McKenzie describes how a debt collector who mistook him for a different PJ McKenzie and tried to shake him down for a couple hundred bucks, and how this launched him into a life as a volunteer advocate for debtors who were less equipped to defend themselves from collectors than he was.

McKenzie's conclusion is that "paying consumer debts is basically optional in the United States." If you stand on your rights (which requires that you know your rights), then you will quickly discover that debt collectors don't have – and can't get – the documentation needed to collect on whatever debts they think you owe (even if you really owe them).

The credit card companies are fully aware of this, and bank (literally) on the fact that "the vast majority of consumers, including those with the socioeconomic wherewithal to walk away from their debts, feel themselves morally bound and pay as agreed."

If you find yourself on the business end of a debt collector's harassment campaign, you can generally make it end simply by "carefully sending a series of letters invoking [your] rights under the FDCPA." The debt collector who receives these letters will have bought your debt at five cents on the dollar, and will simply write it off.

By contrast, the mere act of paying anything marks you out as substantially more likely to pay than nearly everyone else on their hit-list. Paying anything doesn't trigger forbearance, it invites a flood of harassing calls and letters, because you've demonstrated that you can be coerced into paying.

But while learning FDCPA rules isn't overly difficult, it's also beyond the wherewithal of the most distressed debtors (and people falsely accused of being debtors). McKenzie recounts that many of the people he helped were living under chaotic circumstances that put seemingly simple things "like writing letters and counting to 30 days" beyond their needs.

This means that the people best able to defend themselves against illegal shakedowns are less likely to be targeted. Instead, debt collectors husband their resources so they can use them "to do abusive and frequently illegal shakedowns of the people the legislation was meant to benefit."

Here's how this debt market works. If you become delinquent in meeting your credit card payments ("delinquent" has a flexible meaning that varies with each issuer), then your debt will be sold to a collector. It is packaged in part of a large spreadsheet – a CSV file – and likely sold to one of 10 large firms that control 75% of the industry.

The "mom and pops" who have the other quarter of the industry might also get your debt, but it's more likely that they'll buy it as a kind of tailings from one of the big guys, who package up the debts they couldn't collect on and sell them at even deeper discounts.

The people who make the calls are often barely better off than the people they're calling. They're minimally trained and required to work at a breakneck pace. Employee turnover is 75-100% annually: imagine the worst call center job in the world, and then make it worse, and make "success" into a moral injury, and you've got the debt-collector rank-and-file.

To improve the yield on this awful process, debt collection companies start by purging these spreadsheets of likely duds: dead people, people with very low credit-scores, and people who appear on a list of debtors who know their rights and are likely to stand on them (that's right, merely insisting on your rights can ensure that the entire debt-collection industry leaves you alone, forever).

The FDPCA gives you rights: for example, you have the right to verify the debt and see the contract you signed when you took it on. The debt collector who calls you almost certainly does not have that contract and can't get it. Your original lender might, but they stopped caring about your debt the minute they sold it to a debt-collector. Their own IT systems are baling-wire-and-spit Rube Goldberg machines that glue together the wheezing computers of all the companies they've bought over the last 25 years. Retrieving your paperwork is a nontrivial task, and the lender doesn't have any reason to perform it.

Debt collectors are bottom feeders. They are buying delinquent debts at 5 cents on the dollar and hoping to recover 8 percent of them; at 7 percent, they're losing money. They aren't "large, nationally scaled, hypercompetent operators" – they're shoestring operations that can only be viable if they hire unskilled workers and fail to train them.

They are subject to automatic damages for illegal behavior, but they still break the law all the time. As McKenzie writes, a debt collector will "commit three federal torts in a few minutes of talking to a debtor then follow up with a confirmation of the same in writing." A statement like "if you don’t pay me I will sue you and then Immigration will take notice of that and yank your green card" makes the requisite three violations: a false threat of legal action, a false statement of affiliation with a federal agency, and "a false alleged consequence for debt nonpayment not provided for in law."

If you know this, you can likely end the process right there. If you don't, buckle in. The one area that debt collectors invest heavily in is the automation that allows them to engage in high-intensity harassment. They use "predictive dialers" to make multiple calls at once, only connecting the collector to the calls that pick up. They will call you repeatedly. They'll call your family, something they're legally prohibited from doing except to get your contact info, but they'll do it anyway, betting that you'll scrape up $250 to keep them from harassing your mother.

These dialing systems are far better organized than any of the company's record keeping about what you owe. A company may sell your debt on and fail to keep track of it, with the effect that multiple collectors will call you about the same debt, and even paying off one of them will not stop the other.

Talking to these people is a bad idea, because the one area where collectors get sophisticated training is in emptying your bank account. If you consent to a "payment plan," they will use your account and routing info to start whacking your bank account, and your bank will let them do it, because the one part of your conversation they reliably record is this payment plan rigamarole. Sending a check won't help – they'll use the account info on the front of your check to undertake "demand debits" from your account, and backstop it with that recorded call.

Any agreement on your part to get on a payment plan transforms the old, low-value debt you incurred with your credit card into a brand new, high value debt that you owe to the bill collector. There's a good chance they'll sell this debt to another collector and take the lump sum – and then the new collector will commence a fresh round of harassment.

McKenzie says you should never talk to a debt collector. Make them put everything in writing. They are almost certain to lie to you and violate your rights, and a written record will help you prove it later. What's more, debt collection agencies just don't have the capacity or competence to engage in written correspondence. Tell them to put it in writing and there's a good chance they'll just give up and move on, hunting softer targets.

One other thing debt collectors due is robo-sue their targets, bulk-filing boilerplate suits against debtors, real and imaginary. If you don't show up for court (which is what usually happens), they'll get a default judgment, and with it, the legal right to raid your bank account and your paycheck. That, in turn, is an asset that, once again, the debt collector can sell to an even scummier bottom-feeder, pocketing a lump sum.

McKenzie doesn't know what will fix this. But Michael Hudson, a renowned scholar of the debt practices of antiquity, has some ideas. Hudson has written eloquently and persuasively about the longstanding practice of jubilee, in which all debts were periodically wiped clean (say, whenever a new king took the throne, or once per generation):

https://pluralistic.net/2020/03/24/grandparents-optional-party/#jubilee

Hudson's core maxim is that "debt's that can't be paid won't be paid." The productive economy will have need for credit to secure the inputs to their processes. Farmers need to borrow every year for labor, seed and fertilizer. If all goes according to plan, the producer pays off the lender after the production is done and the goods are sold.

But even the most competent producer will eventually find themselves unable to pay. The best-prepared farmer can't save every harvest from blight, hailstorms or fire. When the producer can't pay the creditor, they go a little deeper into debt. That debt accumulates, getting worse with interest and with each bad beat.

Run this process long enough and the entire productive economy will be captive to lenders, who will be able to direct production for follies and fripperies. Farmers stop producing the food the people need so they can devote their land to ornamental flowers for creditors' tables. Left to themselves, credit markets produce hereditary castes of lenders and debtors, with lenders exercising ever-more power over debtors.

This is socially destabilizing; you can feel it in McKenzie's eloquent, barely controlled rage at the hopeless structural knot that produces the abusive and predatory debt industry. Hudson's claim is that the rulers of antiquity knew this – and that we forgot it. Jubilee was key to producing long term political stability. Take away Jubilee and civilizations collapse:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/07/08/jubilant/#construire-des-passerelles

Debts that can't be paid won't be paid. Debt collectors know this. It's irrefutable. The point of debt markets isn't to ensure that debts are discharged – it's to ensure that every penny the hereditary debtor class has is transferred to the creditor class, at the hands of their fellow debtors.

In her 2021 Paris Review article "America's Dead Souls," Molly McGhee gives a haunting, wrenching account of the debts her parents incurred and the harassment they endured:

https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2021/05/17/americas-dead-souls/

After I published on it, many readers wrote in disbelief, insisting that the debt collection practices McGhee described were illegal:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/05/19/zombie-debt/#damnation

And they are illegal. But debt collection is a trade founded on lawlessness, and its core competence is to identify and target people who can't invoke the law in their own defense.

Going to Defcon this weekend? I’m giving a keynote, “An Audacious Plan to Halt the Internet’s Enshittification and Throw it Into Reverse,” today (Aug 12) at 12:30pm, followed by a book signing at the No Starch Press booth at 2:30pm!

https://info.defcon.org/event/?id=50826

I’m kickstarting the audiobook for “The Internet Con: How To Seize the Means of Computation,” a Big Tech disassembly manual to disenshittify the web and bring back the old, good internet. It’s a DRM-free book, which means Audible won’t carry it, so this crowdfunder is essential. Back now to get the audio, Verso hardcover and ebook:

http://seizethemeansofcomputation.org

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

https://pluralistic.net/2023/08/12/do-not-pay/#fair-debt-collection-practices-act

i need him so badly

sanji nsfw drabble w/ fem reader, mdni | first nsfw writing, go easy on me gang |

sanji had always respected you, and he made it painfully obvious in everything he did. he was always over the top for anyone he deemed attractive, sure, but with you he always tried a little harder. he'd serve you first before all, make snacks/beverages exclusively for you (not for anyone else unless they ask). I mean, he'd even sit beside you and fan you with a paper plate on a hot day if you asked.

he had an unmistakable bias for you, practically worshipping you. he would drop to his knees in an instant if you asked him with that pretty look you always give him when you request things. he was utterly smitten, and everyone could see it.

sanji gives you whatever he can without expecting anything in turn, which is why he is struggling to believe that you are in front of him, between his legs, sat on your knees and stroking his cock at such a languid pace that it makes his head spin.

one hand was tugging at his tie, the other combing through his hair. he's between staring at you with wide eyes and squeezing them shut, jaw slack. small, shocked laughs mix in with his heavy breathing and choked moans, and it only makes you smile.

pre-cum beads at his tip, and when you run your thumb over it, he shudders - melting into the chair he sat in and heaving a sigh. "feels, s'good..." he mumbles, sliding his hand down to grip his thigh to resist the urge to buck his hips up into your hand. even now, he respects you, and in response to the sweet gesture, you start to speed your hand up.

"you deserve it," you coo up at him, watching his eyes practically turn to hearts at your gentle, sultry tone. "always so sweet, need to treat you the way you need to be treated." his whole body tenses when you lean forward, dragging your tongue from the base of his cock to the tip, swirling it.

his gasps and moans are choked, and at some point, he slaps his hand over his mouth, tilting his head back. he's absolutely stunned this is happening, close to fainting the more he thinks about it.

sanji knew he probably wouldn't last long with your sweet hand wrapped around him, pumping him with your gradually increasing speed and praise dripping from your lips like honey - he just doesn't expect to nearly cum when you finally take him into your mouth.

his eyes roll back and he thrusts his hips up, muttering an apology into his hand and digging his heels into the ground to try to keep himself still. when he finally looks down at you again, he has to physically fight against fucking your mouth the way he's dreamed of doing.

reaching a trembling hand out to brush your hair from your face, his brows furrow and his heart skips a beat when you open your eyes to meet his. "so pretty," he groans, tangling his fingers in your hair. you hum around his cock, not missing the way it makes him flinch and choke on a moan, dragging your tongue along his length every time you bob your head.

you had almost always imagined the way sanji would look like in this situation, but you'd never expected it to be this good. you adjust to press your heel against your core, gently rocking your hips at the sight of the man above you. his hair is messy from combing his hand through it and tossing his head back in pleasure, blonde strands sticking to his forehead and sticking out in every way. his brows are curled up, eyes squinted, face red, and his bottom lip pulled between his teeth.

it makes you moan around him, closing your eyes and moving your head faster.

if he was always this pretty when you suck him off, then you'd for sure have to do this again.