#because i hate them for like corporate and personal reasons
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it looks like im paying the price for wearing crosses for ironic vampire dressing purposes now because now i spend my every waking moment with the hunchback of notre dame stage musical soundtrack because claude frollo tickles the back of my mind like DRUGS and i am begging. i am begging to be freed because youtube is starting to think i'm catholic because of this and i keep getting veggietales recommendations PLEASE. please this is because i want to be a vampire i am NOT religious i am just at the service of my brain's absolutely MERCILESS whims. no more. this is BEYOND humiliating for me
#molly speaks#please please please please let me go let me go let me go no more#no more#please#i have had enough of toxic old man now thanks#i swear up and down day in and day out that i hate disney i hate them i hate disney#and then BANG#i am 20 years old. i am 20 years old and i havent figured out and effective strategy to serve unwanted blorbos an eviction notice#lesbians and evil men moment i guess#should mention that this is just for ME personally#because i hate them for like corporate and personal reasons#i dont care if other people like them you can do what you want. enjoy yourself < 3#i dont think disney adults are cringe bc im not an asshole. do what makes you happy#this however#does not make me happy#it makes me want to eat the carpet
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So why do you hate the advertising industry?
Hokay so.
Let me preface this with some personal history. It's not relevant to the sins of the advertising industry perse but it illustrates how I started to grow to hate it.
I wanted to be a veterinarian growing up, but to be a vet you basically have to be good enough to get into medical school. I do not have the math chops or discipline to make it in medical school. I went into art instead, and in a desperate attempt to find some commercial viability that didn't involve moving to California, I went into graphic design.
I've been a graphic designer for about seven or eight years now and I've worn a lot of hats. One of them was working in a print shop. Now, the print shop had a lot of corporate customers who had various ad campaigns. One of them was Gate City Bank, which had a bigass stack of postcards ordered every couple months to mail to their customers.
Now, paper comes from Dakota Paper, and they make their paper the usual way. Somewhere far, far from our treeless plain there is a forest of tall trees. These trees are cut down and put on big fossil fuel burning trucks and hauled to a paper mill that turns them into pulp while spewing the most fowl odors imaginable over the neighboring town and loads the pulp up with bleach to give it a nice white color.
Then the paper is put on yet another big truck and hauled off to the local paper depot, then put on another big truck and delivered to my print shop, where I turned the paper into postcards telling people to go even deeper into debt to buy a boat because it's almost summer. The inks used are a type of nasty heat sensitive plastic that is melted to the surface of the paper with heat. Then the postcards are put on yet ANOTHER truck and sent to the bank, which puts them on ANOTHER truck and finally into the hands of their customers, who open their mail and take one look at the post card and immediately discard it.
Heaps and heaps and literal hundreds of pounds of literal garbage created at the whim of the marketing team several times a year. And thats just one bank in one city.
I came to realize very quickly that graphic design was the delicate art of turning trees into junk mail.
And wouldn't you know it there are a TON of companies that basically only do junk mail. Many of them operate under the guise of a "charity," sending you pictures of suffering children or animals and begging for handouts and when they get those handouts the executives take a nice fat cut, give some small token amount to whatever cause they pay lip service to, and then put the rest of the cash right back into making more mailers. "Direct mail marketing" they call it.
Oh but maybe it's not so bad, you can advertise online after all. Now that there's decent ad blocker out there and better anti-virus ads usually don't destroy your computer anymore just by existing.
Except now when I search for the exact business I want on Google it's buried under three or four different "promoted search items" tricking me into clicking on them only to shoot themselves in the foot because I searched for the specific result I wanted for a reason and couldn't use those other websites even if I felt like it.
And now we have advertising on YouTube and on every streaming service, forcing more and more eyes onto the ad for the brand new Buick Envision that parks itself because you're too stupid to do it on your own.
Oh thats ok maybe I'll get Spotify premium and go ad free and listen to some podcasts- SIKE we have the hosts of your show doing the song and dance now. Are you depressed and paranoid from listening to my true crime podcast about murdered and mutilated teenagers? That's ok, my sponsor Better Help can keep you sane enough to stay alive and spend more money.
It's gotten so terrible that now you have content farms, huge hubs of shell companies that crank out video after video to get more and more precious clicks. Which if the videos were innocuous maybe that wouldn't be so awful except now you have cooking hacks that can actually burn your house down and craft hacks that can electrocute you being flung into your eyes at the speed of mach fuck so some slimy internet clickbait jockey doesn't need to get a real job.
It of course goes without saying that animals are also relentlessly exploited by clickbait companies that will put them in compromising situations on purpose to create a fake fishing hack video or even just straight up killing them for sport by feeding small animals to a pufferfish that rips them apart for the camera.
And all of this, ALL of this doesn't even touch how adveritising is the death of art in general. Queer topics, any kind of interesting art, any kind of sex or substance use topics are scrubbed clean and hidden at the behest of advertisers.
Sex education, a nude statue, topics such as racism or sexism or bigotry in general have tags purged or hidden from search, even life saving information about SDTs or drug use, because if someone saw that and complained then Verizon might sell fewer tablets and we can't fucking have that.
Conservative talking heads often bitch and moan that they're being censored on social media. The stupid part is, they're right! They are being censored! But it's not by a woke mob, it's by ATT and Coca Cola not wanting their adspace sharing screen time with their stupid fucking opinions.
However, they won't ever figure that out, because the talking heads they get their marching orders from like Tucker and Jones ALSO rely on the sweet milk flowing from the sponsorship teat and they aren't about to turn on their meal ticket so they have to come up with even stupider shit to say for the train to continue rolling.
I managed to rant this far without even getting into the ads I see for the beauty industry. The other day a botox ad described wrinkles as "moderate to severe crows feet" as if wrinkles are a symptom of a fucking serious disease! Like having a flaw in your skin is a medical problem that you need thousands of dollars of literal botulism toxin to fix! I was incandescent with anger.
Advertising is a polluting, censoring, anti educational and anti art industry at it's very core. It destroys human connections, suppresses human thought and makes us hate our own bodies. It ads no value, actively detracts from value, and serves no real purpose and I believe it should be almost if not entirely banned.
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Aventurine doesn't like being understood, but he does like understanding other people. It is essential for manipulation, for scheming, for control. And he likes controlling you especially—for keeping you close but your heart a comfortable distance away, for opening your legs when he wants the pleasure of your body, for playing your emotions however he needs. And the day will come when that skill will be invaluable—the day when he must die without shattering you.
(Or: You are the only person in the universe who understands Aventurine in his mother tongue. He often regrets teaching it to you.)
5k words. gender neutral reader, established relationship, angst, non-graphic sex (reader bottoms, anatomy neutral), themes of cultural loss, references to slavery, aventurine’s canonically implied desire to die. MDNI.
Aventurine cannot lie in Avgin.
Deception does not come easily to him in his mother tongue. His command of it is too weak—and too kind. The universe was a different place in the days when his life was coloured by the warble of Avgin dialect. It felt simpler, partly because he was a child and partly because Sigonia was yet untouched by outsiders. There were no corporations, no casinos, no commodity codes. His entire world was sand, desert, mother, sister, father (or more often—ghost), goddess, tent, wagon, luck, sin, rain, blessing, Avgin.
Katican.
Aventurine is sure that he knew more than just those words. He was fluent as a child. He had conversations with his sister that were complex enough to make his heart hurt, though perhaps his heart was just constantly aching anyway. But the rest of his early words escapes him. He could maybe dredge them up if he thinks long enough, but he also isn't sure if his tongue and lips could form the shape of them anymore. Sometimes he still counts in Avgin, memorises phone numbers in it, but he doesn’t remember the last time he actually strung together a full sentence in the language.
When Aventurine was first stolen into slavery (a word that he had not known as a child, and still doesn't know in Avgin), he wasn’t given a Synesthesia Beacon. He had to rely on his ears and his wits, deciphering the harsh edges of the Katican dialect and then the strange garble of Interastral Standard Language. By the time he had a Beacon installed, it was already translating all speech into Standard—his dominant language.
Sometimes he feels a little aggrieved by it, but at least it wasn't Katican. He'd have blown out his brains if it were.
But it is easy to console himself: Avgin is not a useful language anyway. Dead languages have no value, and the Avgin dialect was killed along with its people. You can’t perform commerce in a dead language, can't negotiate contracts, can't enter a gambling den and use your silver tongue to rob people blind. You can't use a dead language to fell governments and extract resources; you can't use a dead language to bring an entire planet to its knees. You can’t use a dead language to gamble your life; you can't use it to save yourself from the gallows.
You cannot deceive people in a language that is defined by sand, sister, goddess, ghost.
Aventurine cannot lie in Avgin. His command of it is too weak, and there is no one left to which he can lie, anyway.
When you ask Aventurine to teach you his first language, he gives you an amused look.
“Why Avgin?” he asks. “No one speaks it anymore. I can teach you Common Sigonian if you’d like. Or we could learn Xianzhounese together. Maybe Intellitron code? I know a little.”
“You speak Avgin,” you argue.
“Not often,” he says. “And badly when I do.”
“But it's still your language. And I want to understand you.”
Aventurine has to stop himself from laughing. Understand him? He hates being understood. When people understand him, it makes him predictable. And unlikeable. Hardly a position from which he can manipulate people in.
You understand him well enough to know that.
“You'll have to give me a better reason than that,” he says neatly. “Make it worth my while. Reward me.”
You look at him as you ponder, your eyes lingering on his. Perhaps trying to read him, though he prefers to think you're just enjoying the sight of them.
“I’ll teach you my language as well?”
“You mean—you'll reward my hard labour with more work?” he says, lighthearted.
You frown at him despite the joke. “You don't want to understand me better than what a Synesthesia Beacon would allow?” He blinks, pausing. “It’ll be convenient too. We can talk shit about other people in public and no one will understand us.”
Aventurine considers you. He doesn't like being understood, but he does like understanding other people. It is essential for manipulation, for scheming, for control. And he likes controlling you especially—for keeping you close but your heart a comfortable distance away, for opening your legs when he wants the pleasure of your body, for playing your emotions however he needs. And the day will come when that skill will be invaluable—the day when he must die without shattering you.
He also likes the idea of talking shit in public.
“I'm listening,” he says, voice lilting. You lean in, smiling. Sweet. It makes his heart feel something he isn't used to. Something addictive. Something disgusting. He scrambles to cover it with one of the usual tools: humour or distraction or maybe just plain old lying—his most reliable weapon.
“I'll throw in a kiss?” you try.
He hums. “Just one?”
“One per day.”
“Three.”
“You drive a hard bargain.”
“Well, I am a businessman.”
You snort, but he knows you're endeared. You have very noticeable tells when you’re flustered.
“Okay,” you say. “Three kisses on days you teach me.”
“Deal.”
Aventurine remembers more Avgin than he thought he would.
It comes to him slowly, painstakingly. You aren't interested in structured lessons, and he wouldn't be able to provide them anyway. He has a nonexistent grasp of grammar aside from this sounds right and that sounds strange, and Avgin dialect is both so niche and so dead that no textbooks are available. The scholars have abandoned the language as much as the politicians abandoned its people. Aventurine only has you, his fragmented memory, and whatever questions come to mind as you live out your days with him.
Mostly, you ask him about basic vocabulary. Sometimes you ask him to repeat sentences from your conversations in Avgin, like he’s some kind of multilingual parrot. Each prompt forces him to wade through the fog in his mind, the one that’s been shrouding his childhood memories until now. He's startled at how naturally the old words roll off his tongue: One, two, three, four. Good morning. Good evening. Good night. Sweet dreams. Five, six, seven, eight. You're lying to me. Why do you always lie to me? I don't know what you're talking about. Nine, ten, eleven, twelve. Welcome home. Have you eaten? Have some bread. I made you stew. Twenty, thirty, forty, fifty. That was dangerous. I thought you wouldn't make it back to me. Sometimes I think you want to die. One hundred, one thousand, one million, one billion. I'm sorry. Come here. Let me kiss you. Don't cry. Don't cry. Don't cry.
When you say, How do I ask you to let me hold you, he answers easily. He'd heard the words so often as a child: Let me hold you, Kakavasha. Let Mama hold you. His mouth forms the sounds without conscious thought.
He regrets it almost immediately.
When Aventurine hears it from you—stilted, halting, but no less gentle—he stops breathing. Let me hold you. You say it all the time in Standard, but it feels different in Avgin. More painful. A strange sense of panic closes in on him when he's wrapped up in you, thinking in Avgin, thinking sand, sister, goddess, ghost. He holds you tightly, like the rags cut from his father’s shirt, or his mother’s locket won back from the shell-slashers, or a bag of poker chips beneath a card table, clutched within his trembling grip.
“Aventurine, is something wrong?” you ask in Avgin, and he replies in Standard with his usual smile.
“Hm? No. What could be wrong if I have you here?”
Lying is one of his greatest tools. Sex is another one. So he says, “I think I'd like my reward now,” and he runs his lips along your jaw, your pulse, the spot over your heart (there's a word for that in Avgin but not Standard, he tells you), until you're laughing. I thought you wanted three kisses, you tease, and he replies, Who said I wanted to kiss you on the mouth?
But he coaxes open your thighs, and once he's inside you, he collects his payment properly. He kisses you, and kisses you, and kisses you—and you swallow his lies whole.
There are some things that Aventurine doesn't teach you. Mostly, they’re things that he can’t teach you.
There are countless gaps in his Avgin. His speech is painfully childish—probably more childish than it was when he actually stopped speaking it. He doesn't know how to swear (something that disappoints you) and he doesn't know how to flirt (something that devastates you). He doesn’t know any words that would be useful for work either: commercialization, governance, stakes, winnings, profit. When you ask him what his job title is in Avgin (“Was senior management even a thing in Avgin society?”), he laughs and gives you the word for gambler.
Then there are the words that he remembers—has remembered his whole life—but never says. Not to you, and not to himself. He doesn't teach you any prayers. He doesn't teach you any blessings. He doesn't teach you about Mama Fenge, or the Kakava Festival, or how the rain fell when he was born. When you ask him, What holidays did you celebrate when you were little? he shrugs and says, We didn't have any. Sigonia’s too bleak to do any partying.
Then you ask him one day, while your bodies are spent in the afterglow of sex, sticky with sweat and sweetness, how to say I love you. And he goes quiet.
Love is a cheap word in Interastral Standard. In the language of globalisation and trade, love has been commercialised, commodified, capitalised for power. You say it to him in many contexts: I love this, I love that, I love you. He hardly ever reacts, and he's never said it back. It would feel unnecessary and also cruel if he did: Aventurine has only ever said the words himself as either a joke or a manipulation.
But love feels different in Avgin than in Interastral Standard, doesn't sound like a thing that can be traded or bought. Kakavasha only ever said the word love to his mother, to his sister, to his father's grave. Love in his mother tongue feels priceless.
When Aventurine thinks about you saying it—I love you, Kakavasha, in clumsy, earnest Avgin—something so painful swells in his throat that he can hardly breathe.
“There is no word for love in my language,” he tells you.
You blink. “Okay, then what's an idiom for it?”
“There is none. There’s no word or phrase expressing love.”
You raise a brow. “That’s hard to believe.”
“Is it?” He smiles. “There’s no Avgin in the known universe who cares about love. Only scheming, thieving, and treachery—and you can't do those things when love is involved.”
You look at him in alarm. “Why are you saying that?” You're practically squirming in your discomfort. “I don't know why you think I'd believe such a racist stereotype.”
“It’s not a stereotype,” he says. “I'm not talking about the Avgin culture. I'm talking about myself.”
After all, he is the only Avgin left.
It is an unfair thing to say. A cruel thing to say. After all the laughing and kissing and crying and fucking, after all the tender eyes and gentle words from you—it is probably the worst pain imaginable: I don't give a shit about you. He waits for you to cry.
But you only stare at him calmly, studying him. You brush the hair out of his eyes, seeing them clearly.
“If you lie to me all the time,” you say in Avgin, “eventually I'll stop believing anything you say.”
Aventurine is speechless. His heart does that addictive, disgusting thing again. He thinks about leaving, but then you say, Let me hold you, and he can't do anything other than obey.
Avgin dialect was once included in the Synesthesia Beacon list of functions. The Intelligentsia Guild added it before the Second Katica-Avgin Extinction Event, when the IPC was trying to get a political foothold on Sigonia via the Avgin people. The language was alive then, with enough value to be included into the Synesthesia LLM by the linguists.
But since the Extinction Event—since Kakavasha ran away from home—the Synesthesia data on Avgin has been stagnant, a fossil. Aventurine knows because he's subscribed to software updates for certain languages (Avgin Sigonian, Common Sigonian, Interastral Standard, and now your mother tongue). He gets pinged every time there's a new addition for slang, for neologisms—but there hasn't been a ping for the Avgin dialect since he had the Beacon installed. The live translation function hasn't even been available since the previous Amber Era. When he checks its page on his Synesthesia app, it's very clear why—
SIGONIAN, AVGIN DIALECT
SPEAKERS: 0
STATUS: Extinct
END OF SERVICE: 2156 AE
The complete death of the language has led to an irritating dilemma for you and Aventurine. You keep running into words that he doesn't know—this time not because of his childlike speech, but because they never existed in his language to begin with. Ocean, tropical, rainforest. Starskiff, accelerator, space fleet. Stock market, shortselling, mutual funds. Black hole, event horizon, spaghettification. All things that never came up for Kakavasha, but now come up for Aventurine, and the language has not evolved to include it.
He always wants to switch to Standard to discuss these things, but you're insistent on speaking in Avgin as much as possible. He doesn't know why, but he doesn't mind humouring you—partly because he likes to indulge you, and partly because he’s grown used to hearing the honeyed timbre of Avgin dialect in your household. The place would feel strange without it.
So you start filling the gaps with other languages, filtering them through the lyricism of Avgin. Loanwords, he thinks they’re called. You take ocean, tropical, rainforest from Amazian; starskiff, accelerator, space fleet from Xianzhounese; stock market, shortselling, mutual funds from Interastral Standard. For the astrophysics terms, you try directly translating them—with limited success.
“Can't I literally just say ‘black hole’?” you ask in Avgin, and he nearly spits out his coffee.
“Please don't. That's a dirty word.” He can't bring himself to say what it means, but from the way you’re laughing, you can clearly guess.
“I thought you said you didn't know how to swear.”
“You've just reminded me how.”
“You're welcome.” You look on the verge of cackling. Aventurine finishes his coffee and wonders when you're going to surprise him with your newfound vulgarity.
“Let's just do the space terms based on Standard,” he says. Begs.
“No, that's so boring.”
“Then let's do your language.”
You open your mouth. Close it. Give him a blank look.
“You don't know how to say those words in your mother tongue either, do you,” he intuits.
“Well, ‘spaghettification’ doesn't really come up in everyday conversation, does it?”
“Then maybe we don't need it.” He smiles, senses an opportunity. Smells blood. “How about ‘love’? I'd much rather know how you say that. I bet it sounds beautiful.”
You give him a long look. Your eyes are vulnerable when you share it: Love. I love you. He’s fascinated by the sound of it. Your voice is never that fragile when you say it in Standard. It's never so earnest. He repeats it, staring at you, and your gaze falls to the ground. His mouth curls.
“I like it,” he says. “Let's use that. It'll sound nice in Avgin.”
You try to recover. “Sure. That works. But back to ‘black hole’—”
And the two of you continue like that for days, weeks, months. It feels like a complete bastardization of his mother tongue on some days, in some conversations. Almost unrecognisable. But it doesn't feel bad. It’s all he has, it's all you have, and when he walks into your home, he starts speaking it without thinking: your bastard, patchwork language. The Avgin dialect that exists only in your house. A tongue that can only be understood by a liar.
And then, one lazy Sunday morning, he gets a familiar ping. He expects it to be Interastral Standard, as usual. The language balloons with each planet that the IPC colonises.
But instead, he opens his screen and freezes.
SIGONIAN, AVGIN DIALECT
SPEAKERS: 2
STATUS: Endangered.
SERVICE RESUMED: 2157 AE
NEW UPDATES: 103 loanwords and 5 neologisms added.
He can't stop looking at the status. Endangered. Endangered, which means dying, but alive. The Avgin dialect is alive again. The Intelligentsia Guild determined it, so it must be true. But Aventurine can't agree: there are no Avgin speakers in the known universe other than the two of you, and what you speak isn't real Avgin. The Avgin spoken by his mother and father and sister is dead; the Avgin spoken by Kakavasha is dead. The festivals are gone; the deserts have been terraformed. There are no wagons; there are no dances; there are no prayers. There are no blessings, and he has no home—
As long as you are alive, the blood of the Avgin will never run dry.
His throat locks up.
“Aventurine?” you ask. Your voice is drowsy, but concerned. “Is something wrong?”
He looks at you from his phone, a polished smile on his face.
“No.” His syllables are plain and efficient in the noise of Interastral Standard: “Just looking at details for a new assignment. It’ll be a long one.”
“Oh.” You frown. “Will you be away from home for a long time, then?”
He stops himself from swallowing. “Yes, I'll be away from the house. For several months, probably.”
“Okay.” Your voice is small. “Take care of yourself, okay? I'll miss you.”
Each word you speak resonates with heartbreak. It always does in these conversations, even in Standard—but the sorrow is amplified in Avgin. His mother tongue has an inherently sad quality to it, he's noticed. His people have lost so much over their history—their language is one of loss. It's his language of loss. Kakavasha did all his grieving in Avgin; Aventurine has never felt sorrow in Standard. When the language died, so did Kakavasha—and all his regrets with it.
“You'll come home to me, right?” you ask. It's a beautiful sentence in Avgin. A heartrending one. He feels something that he hasn't known since he was a child.
It's a feeling he has to kill.
“Yes,” he says in Standard. “Of course I'll come back.”
This is not the first time that Aventurine has been mistaken for dead, but this is the longest time.
The latest world to join the IPC network was a tough acquisition. It had been ruled by a despot who wreaked havoc on both the people and the planet, and who was too stupid and reckless to resolve conflicts with his trade partners. He probably would have blown up the whole star system had he been left to his own devices. Aventurine had no qualms about bringing him to ruin, nor did he have qualms about nearly dying in the process.
If things had gone his way, he'd either be dead or missing. This would have been the perfect opportunity to do the latter, actually—to be freed from the IPC. Free to drift alone, speaking with strangers in strange, unfamiliar tongues. No connection to his past, to the cruel history of his luck, to his commodity code. No tether to his inherently unjust destiny. But instead he's back in your house, pockets heavy with his borrowed wealth, speaking to you in his bastardised, childish Avgin. I'm sorry. Come here. Let me kiss you. Don't cry. Don't cry. Don't cry.
Your Avgin is—shockingly fluent. He doesn't know how. He can't think about it right now. All he can process is the wounded animal noise of your speech as you yell at him, as you cry. Like an injured songbird, or a weeping child. Why did you leave, why did you lie, why do you always lie to me, why don't you give a shit about me, you spit. Why do you want to die, why do you want to die, why do you want to die, you keep saying. Sand, sister, goddess, ghost, he keeps hearing. Sand, sister, goddess, ghost. Don't leave me, big sister. People will die. Why do you have to go?
“I’m sorry,” he tries again, this time in your language. “I'm so sorry. Come here. Let me hold you.”
You collapse into your mother tongue. Aventurine is both relieved and horrified. Relieved that he doesn't need to hear the language of his grief—horrified that he needs to hear yours. He's never heard you cry like this. He's never heard you break like this. These must have been the words you used when the soldiers found you hiding in your closet, when they dragged you out of your home. You were just a child.
Aventurine doesn't know the words you are using—you've never taught them—but he still understands them.
You're very malleable when you’re sad; even more so when you're hysterical. Aventurine understands this about you, and he understands how to calm you—this time in your native tongue—and he understands how to kiss you. He understands that you need to feel close to him. He understands that there are ways to accomplish this other than sex. A normal person would talk it out, have an honest conversation, come to a mutual understanding, and maybe even stop trying to kill himself. They wouldn't fuck you into the mattress while your face is still wet with tears.
But Aventurine is not a normal person. He doesn't know how to have an honest conversation, and he doesn't want to be understood. Lying is his greatest weapon, and sex is a close second. So he kisses you until you’re too breathless to cry, fucks you until you can't think, and makes you come so hard that you’re in too much bliss to grieve. And maybe it's horrible of him, but he enjoys it. He enjoys the way your body takes him in so easily, the way your nails dig into his back, the way you tighten around him when you climax, so wet and needy for him. The way you beg for him in your language for liars as he spends himself inside you: I love you, Aventurine, I love you, I love you, I love you—
Only because it feels good. This is all only because he enjoys fucking you. This is all only because you enjoy fucking him. This is all it'll ever be, and it'll be this way until he gets to meet his end.
(Some months ago, Aventurine started dreaming in Avgin.
It surprised him when he first noticed it. The last time he remembers having a dream in his native tongue, he was twelve years old and still in chains. And even then, it had become a sporadic, strange thing. Awful to wake up from. One minute he was with his mother and sister on a cool, rainy day, speaking fluently in Avgin as he laughed and played—and the next minute, he was being shaken awake in his cage, hearing the cruel lash of Katican.
But ever since he's started speaking Avgin with you, he's been dreaming in it. Vividly. Sometimes he's a child in these dreams, and sometimes he's grown. He's always back in the Sigonian desert, among the tents and the campfires and his family wagons. His mother and sister are alive. Sometimes his father is too. The skies roar with thunder and the stellar winds are always harsh, but they always keep him cocooned up in their arms. He's always warm.
Sometimes Aventurine dreams of nicer days. Clear skies, warm sun, cool breeze—all blessings from the Mother Goddess. On these days, he tends to be an adult, and you tend to be there with him. Your Avgin is fluent but strange, filled with funny loanwords and peculiar slang. His father likes the neologisms and starts using them—but only in wrong ways. His sister finds it embarrassing and keeps apologising to you.
His mother loves you. She loves you so much it hurts. This is how I know you're blessed, Kakavasha, she says, glowing. You’re so lucky to have found such a kind person.
Kakavasha knows this. He knows he's lucky, and in his dreams, that isn't a bad thing. In his dreams, his luck means that his home is not violently excised from his heart: his father never dies; his mother never dies; his sister never dies. The tents are not burned; the wagons are not destroyed. He is never forced to forget his people's dishes, their songs, their language, their joy. And in his dreams, his luck means that he meets you anyway, without all the loss and the chains and the lying.
In his dreams, he is able to bring you to the desert. He is able to teach you the Avgin he spoke as a child, to cook all the meals his mother used to make, to share with you their coffee and their tea. He teaches you prayers. He teaches you blessings. He tells you about Mama Fenge, about how the rain fell when he was born. He takes you to the Kakava Festival, shows you how to dance, sings to you all the Avgin songs until you're singing back. He presses his palm to yours in prayer; he kisses you in devotion, not avoidance.
Sometimes the two of you still fight, the same fights that you have in real life, but he handles them with honesty. He listens to you. He apologises to you. He tells you that he’ll change, and he means it—because this world is a kind one, and he has no need to be so cruel to you.
In this kind world, when you lay in bed with his arms tight around you, you smile at him and say, I love you, Kakavasha. You say it in Avgin—real Avgin, not the dialect born from genocide and deceit—and when he responds, there's not even a little bit of insincerity in his voice. Because Kakavasha never became Aventurine in these dreams, so he has no Interastral Standard in which he can lie to you, no silver tongue with which he can manipulate you, no commodity code that inspires his fear of being controlled by you. Kakavasha only knows Avgin, and he only has his sand, his family, his goddess, his home.
And he has you. Finally, he has you.
He kisses you, and kisses you, and kisses you—and then he tells you the truth.)
.
.
.
Aventurine cannot lie in Avgin.
You noticed this very early on: whenever he lies to you, he always switches to Interastral Standard. Probably he wouldn't be able to do it in his mother tongue. His command of it is too weak, and the words he knows are all too kind. He speaks with the innocence of a child, and children cannot deceive people in the way that adults can. Children cannot perform commerce or negotiate contracts. They cannot use a silver tongue to rob people blind. They cannot save themselves from the gallows.
So Aventurine’s Avgin is defenceless. Vulnerable. So vulnerable it hurts. You are not so vulnerable in your first language because your captors spoke it on occasion, and you learned to lie in it to gain their pity. You told Aventurine that knowing it would help him understand you, but this was a deception. Aventurine’s mother tongue was a language of trust, but yours is a dialect of abuse.
The Avgin language died before Aventurine could be gutted by it; this is why it disarms him so completely. This is why he’s so indulgent and so warm when you use it with him, why he yields to all your requests. Not requests for money or gifts—you’re certain those are meaningless to him—but for affection. Let me hold you. Let me touch you. Let me kiss you. He can never say no.
This is also why he loves hearing you speak his mother tongue, you think—it makes him feel at home, it makes him feel safe. Maybe it even makes him feel loved. He never seems so at peace speaking any other language, so you try to use Avgin as much as possible. You like seeing him happy. You like it even if it means you need to teach him your own native language in exchange, even when it means you need to hear him say all the things your captors used to say. You don't mind it if it's him. You never mind the harm he inflicts on you, especially not when it brings you closer to him.
It is convenient that he cannot lie in Avgin. You only wanted to learn it in the first place because he talks in his sleep—mostly in Standard, but sometimes in his native tongue. And now that you know he cannot lie in Avgin, you also know he's always being honest in his dreams. Honest when he throws his arms around you in his sleep. Honest when he grabs you so tightly that you bruise. Honest when he buries his face into your neck and whispers prayers into your skin.
Most of the words he says are common ones, the earliest vocabulary that he taught you. But there are some things he's withheld from you—and to learn those things, you had to track down linguists from the Intelligentsia Guild, bribe them with your dirty money, have them give you all their deprecated, extinct data. It felt two-faced, and it was violating, but it was the only way. You already know that Aventurine would rather die than translate his feelings for you, would never want this part of himself understood.
I'm sorry for always leaving you.
I'm sorry for making you cry.
I can't bear the thought of losing you.
Freedom would be too lonely without you.
I don't want to hurt you anymore.
I don't want to lie to you anymore.
I missed you.
I want you.
I need you.
I love you.
end
afterword
#aventurine x reader#hsr x reader#honkai star rail x reader#x reader#hsr smut#aventurine smut#lol it isnt really smut but it is nsft i suppose#nsft#yueshuo.fics
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Existential despair is so common in a person's twenties, I think, because up until that point, we've had a pretty clear road map for what's expected of us and we haven't had much reason to question that map. There are still a few milestones outlined for us (start a career, get married, make babies) but more and more young people are entering the post-school world and realizing:
A) that career thing just isn't happening like they said it would
B) I'm not ready to get married/I don't want to get married/marriage isn't the sort of life-altering event that it used to be
C) I'm not ready to make babies/I don't want a baby/I can't afford to raise children right now (see point A)
And in the absence of these milestones to shoot for (which one could argue weren't the promise of fulfillment they claimed to be in the first place), what we're left with is this aimless abyss of "the rest of our lives" sprawling out ahead of us with no indication of how it will go or what we should be doing to shape it. Young people start their first jobs, find they hate them, and think to themselves, "Is this it? Am I just supposed to do this job until I'm too old to do it or die first?"
Which is, yeah, really fucking depressing!! So here's my best attempt at an alternate roadmap for young people that don't vibe with the old model. Please feel free to add in your own suggestions!
Learn how you work and what you want out of a job. Unless you've been in a job-specific training program that gives you hands-on experience, your first jobs should be experiments. Learn how a full-time job feels for you, what elements are more or less difficult. Different workplaces have different cultures and expectations - what do you need out of a job environment? Do you need to find fulfillment in your job or is it enough for it to pay the bills and leave you time to find outside fulfillment? Do you want to climb a corporate ladder or are you content to hunker down as long as your bills get paid? This period of experimentation is exhausting and may feel like it's consuming your whole life.
Learn how to make time for things outside of work. Adapting to a full-time work environment often leaves you feeling so drained that you can't do anything but go home and collapse on the couch every day. That's fine - for a little while. But it can also become a habit. You need to learn how to do things after work or you'll go crazy. Go to a trivia night. Start an exercise schedule. Take a class in your community. Find volunteer work. Join a band. You will find that putting more things into your day makes you feel like you have more time, not less.
Find a community. Making friends as an adult can feel impossible. Where do you find these mysterious friends everyone seems to have?? This goes along with #2, though. As you start regularly attending the same activities, you will find that repeat interactions with the same people turn into friendships or at least friendly acquaintances. Say yes to invitations. Get involved in your local community. Strive to be connected enough to bump into people at the grocery store.
Unlearn bad lessons. We all internalize some messed up things when we're growing up. As you start off your adult life, that's the time to actively work at unpacking the things you've brought with you from childhood and deciding which things are helping you and which things are harming you. This might mean therapy or joining a spiritual group or reading new things or just making special time to be in your own head.
Learn the lessons you missed. In this, I mostly mean practical things. "Adulting." Areas of your day-to-day practical life that are causing you extreme stress are probably related to a knowledge or experience gap. Do you hate cooking and cleaning or were you not taught how to do it properly? Are you afraid of making medical appointments or is it just something new you're not used to? Does money make you queasy or do you need to learn how to make a budget?
Find something fulfilling. This can be your job. It can be volunteer work. It can be faith. It can be a hobby. It can be creating things. It can be challenging yourself physically. It can be activism. It can be going for walks in nature. Everyone finds fulfillment in different places. If you're not finding it where you are, look somewhere else.
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i registered to vote for the first time ( i feel old) now that im an adult but my state has closed primary elections which i was wondering if you have an opinion about. my initial thought was that its bad because i had to register democrat (rather than my states green party which represents my beliefs more) just so i could vote between democrat candidates, which feels like being pressured into supporting the weird pseudo two party system we have. but then i looked it up and apparently a reason for this is so that people from opposing parties wont purposefully mess up the votes just so that their preferred candidates have an easier time winning, and i think that makes sense too. but is that actually the reason theyve closed it or is it just to force us dem/republican?? cause it feels strange
Okay, look. I respect the fact that you're a young person, and I appreciate that you have not only registered to vote, but plan to vote in the primaries, so I don't want to lecture you too much. That said: I am taking you out for coffee, I am sitting you down, I am looking into your eyes, and I am urgently telling you the following:
The Green Party is a scam. It is a scam. It has existed for decades in American politics as an empty shell corporation weaponizing the good intentions of young people like yourself, because all it theoretically stands for "it's good to save the planet maybe." Which is not something that any non-insane person seriously disagrees with, but there is no world in which that cause is actually furthered by registering/voting Green (you mentioned that you did vote for Democrats, which -- good, but listen to me here, youngun, okay?) It ran Jill Stein in 2016 to siphon more votes from HRC, and this election it plans to run Cornel West, a pro-Russian tankie who positively equated Bernie and Trump, as another spoiler candidate. It does not stand for "protecting the planet" or America in any real way. It has never elected a single senator or congressman, let alone a president. It stands for empty performance/grievance political theater by those people who feel too morally superior to vote for/affiliate with Democrats, often because the internet has told them that it's not Cool or Hip or Progressive enough.
If your main priority is climate/the environment, you're doing the right thing by registering as a Democrat and voting for Democrats. (Also: the adjectival form is Democratic. It is the Democratic party and Democratic candidates, otherwise you sound like the Fox News host who wrote a book literally entitled "The Democrat Party Hates America.") They are the only major party who has in fact passed major climate legislation and have made environmental justice a central tenet of their platform. As opposed to the Republicans, whose Project 2025, along with the rest of its nightmare fascist prescriptions, openly pledges to completely wreck existing climate protections and forbid any new ones, just because we weren't all dying fast enough under their death-cult rule already. That's the main logical fallacy I don't get among both the Online Leftists and the American electorate in general: "the Democrats aren't doing quite enough as I'd like, so I'll enable the active wrecking ball insane lunatics to get in power and ruin even the progress we HAVE managed to make!" Like. How does that even make sense?
On a federal level, the Greens have contributed nothing whatsoever of tangible value to American or international climate policy/legislation, environmental justice, or anything else, because as noted, they don't have any elected candidates and mostly focus on drawing voters away from Democrats. There might be plenty of good candidates on the local or city level, which -- great! Vote away for Greens if they're available, or the only other option is a Republican! But on the federal/primary level, please understand: once again, they are a scam. There is no point in affiliating yourself with them. You're welcome to register Green and vote Democratic, if that makes you feel better or if you prefer having another label next to your name, but once again, I'm telling you in my position as a salty Tumblr elder that they have done nothing but harm to the causes they claim to care about, because "environment" is such a nebulous priority and has demonstrably been hijacked to stop the American government entity, i.e. the Democrats, that is actually working to improve on it.
As for your question: nobody is "forcing" or "pressuring" you to vote in primaries. By your own admission, you made a conscious choice to register as a Democrat in order to vote for Democratic candidates. If you were just a regular registered voter of whatever party affiliation, you would vote in the general election for whatever candidate the primary process produced. But if you are sufficiently vested and committed to that process that you would like to have a say in who is running under that party label, it is not unreasonable that you would register as a member of that party. Nobody has twisted your arm behind your back and made you do so; you are taking a considerable level of initiative on your own. Likewise, open primaries can be both a good and bad thing. This falls under the "the political system we have is flawed, but we can't magically pretend it doesn't exist and act according to our own fantasyland versions of reality" thing that I keep saying over and over. So yes, if you want a role in shaping the Democratic candidates who emerge from a Democratic primary process, you will usually register as a Democrat, and nobody has forced you to do that. It's that simple.
Likewise as a general programming note: I'm trying to cut back on politics a bit right now, because I don't have the spoons/bandwidth/mental health to deal with it. I apologize. So if you've sent me a politics-related ask recently and haven't received a response, I'm not deliberately or maliciously ignoring you; I just am not able to handle it as much as usual and will have to put it on pause. However, I feel as if this is important enough to be worth saying, so, yeah.
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Periodic reminder that you are not immune to reactionary radicalization through fandom.
We all know the "jokes" about how old bronies either came out as queer or became fascists - except they're not really jokes, and a lot of the queer ones admit to having been in the pipeline before they came out (some in a way that implies they never totally got out of said pipeline and don't understand the gravity of it),
GamerGate was an entire right-wing reactionary movement that was - and this is not hyperbole - partially responsible for turning fascism into a "legitimate" position by the American Overton window, composed entirely of people who feared losing their fan spaces,
We've had terfs right here on tumblr dot com BRAGGING about how useful fandom is as a recruiting space,
TJLC was a big pipeline for acephobia on this hellsite in particular, when people argued that headcanoning Sherlock as ace was inherently homophobic because it was denying a TOTALLY GONNA BE CANON (while the creators were promising that it wasn't going to be canon) gay pairing, and puritanical, and just HAVING that headcanon was saying that people COULDN'T ship Johnlock, all in the interest of a "fake" sexuality and "pretending to be oppressed" and oh whoops there you went,
We see people who all but center their fandom activity and identities around figuring out which people in predominantly queer fandom spaces are SECRETLY PEDOPHILES AND GROOMERS, acting consciously or otherwise under the assumption that predominantly queer fandom spaces are just massively infested with them in a way that other spaces are not for SOME reason, who twist the definition of "pedophilia" in these spaces until it covers shipping a 17-year old fictional character with an 18-year old fictional character, or a 30-year old with a 45-year old, or including an autistic character in a ship, and drawing two 17-year old characters kissing constitutes "child porn", and who unironically say we should bring back the Hays Code and Censorship Is Good Actually And Our Problem Is We Don't Do It Enough and this often becomes a pipeline to "sex ed is child abuse; people shouldn't even know what sex is until they turn 18; you need my consent to wear certain outfits in public if I see them as sexually charged, and Pride SHOULD be an assimilationist sideshow for our corporate overlords family-friendly party with no sadness or anger or ESPECIALLY acknowledgement of sex allowed",
We've seen otherwise progressive people defend literal hate symbols in fanart when pushback against the above brand of reactionaries gets corrupted into zero-nuance "it's us vs. them so anything they don't like is Good",
Even outside of those examples some of the most vicious, unapologetic, blatant queerphobic abuse I've seen in recent years hasn't come from right-wingers but from LGBT+ people, dressing their deep, violent, seething hatred for queer people who aren't exactly like them in a thin veneer of progressive language, who have become so convinced that they're the main character of the fucking universe that they think writing or enjoying a queer story that doesn't resonate with them is more queerphobic than sending a queer person who writes or enjoys such a story countless rape and death threats and denying their identity,
We've seen these examples again and again and again, and we keep seeing it again and again and again, so I am once again on my knees BEGGING people to recognize that this is not Something That Happens To Other, BAD People, or Something That Happens To People In BAD Fandoms, or Something That Happens To People On The OTHER Side Of Perennial Drama; this is something that CAN happen to you.
These things are the result of the fact that fandom is, by nature, a place of heightened emotion and if you don't know what to look out for that is very exploitable; you need to know the methods people use to do this, simply Being In The Right Fandoms or Liking The Right Ships is not enough.
So, if you see someone trying to convince you that you have the ONLY valid approach to any specific character, or ship, or show, or whatever, that your ship is activism and your fanfics are praxis, and liking something else or liking the same thing differently is Only For Bad People, that is the single biggest red flag that YOU NEED TO RUN, THEY'RE TRYING TO SELL YOU SOMETHING THAT YOU DO NOT WANT
#fandom#radicalization by fandom#serious tag#keeping the property values down#<- aka my tag for 'i doubt this will circulate but i dont want people who will get involved in this shit on my blog'#though i wont be mad if it does circulate because people need to realize this
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You spin my head around (like a record)
summary: hobie never believed in throwing his money away to useless big corporations. but, when you started working at his favorite record shop, he decided to make a small exception.
warnings: slight flirting, terrible british
a/n: i love this idea so so much and have many ideas for it so if you want a part 2 let me know!!!
If there was one thing hobie hated most, it was capitalism. Having to spend money on things you didn’t need but were marketed in a way that made you feel like you needed them, pissed him off to no end. Especially when it came to big corporations. He didn’t see the purpose of having to feed these ‘money-hungry pigs’, which would only end up causing harm to everything and everyone that got in their way. The only exception was small businesses. He never gave his money away on anything unless he desperately needed it, but that wasn’t often.
Until it came to you.
There was a particular record shop in the middle of the city that he occasionally visited. Mainly because it was the only one near him that actually had his favorite artists. – which were rarely sold due to how ‘underground’ they were. Don’t get me wrong, he liked his fair share of mainstream, popular artists, he just also liked his fair share of small garage punk bands. The kind of small bands you’d find playing at your local pub. But, the point is: that specific record shop was the only one he actually liked. But, that didn’t change his hatred for capitalism. Which meant he wasn’t shy to ‘borrow’ a few cd’s, or vinyls from that shop. Actually, he hadn’t once paid for anything, and he’d never once been caught. That’s just how things were. He’d never planned to feed into society’s corrupt ideations. Never. He would continue to visit that record shop whenever he pleased, but never once considered buying anything. That is, until a new employee started working there.
They were perfect. The living embodiment of utter perfection. Every time Hobie entered the shop he was greeted by a sweet smile from behind the till. Everything that person did drove Hobie crazy. - in the best way imaginable. That person was you. You’d only recently gotten the job, around a few weeks ago. It was simple enough, but it definitely was not your dream job. You only got it because you needed the money, even though the pay was barely enough to get you going for the week, it was something!
Despite never once having a proper conversation, Hobie knew he liked you. From your genuine, unrelenting kindness, to your style. He was fond of everything you did. And before he knew it, his occasional visits turned to him visiting whenever he could. Not because he wanted to actually buy anything, but because he wanted to see you. Any chance he got, he would rush straight over to you. It got to a point where he had memorised when you were working and when you weren’t.
And now, here he was.
“Are you actually gonna pay this time?” you asked him, familiar with his habit of pocketing cd’s and vinyls and then leaving. You never did anything about it for many reasons. One of which was because you did not get paid enough to deal with it. And also, because he was insanely attractive. He laughed. Not like an actual laugh. But, a small exhale, similar to scoffing. “Maybe I am,” he said, handing you the vinyl. You smiled at him and scanned the record, noticing the familiar album cover. “Oh sex pistols!” you exclaimed, mentally taking note of how his music taste was almost as beautiful as he was. “You’ve got good taste.” you said, before putting the record in a bag. You didn’t notice how he lit up at the sudden compliment; freaking out on the inside, but playing it off well. “You listen to ‘em?” he asked, his heavy accent now very prominent. Your smile never once faltered as you looked back at him. “I love them!” you said. You began to hum the tune to one of their songs, doing a dramatic little dance, which earned a small laugh from him.
“You know… It’s surprising that you’re actually buying something for once.” you commented, jokingly but also genuinely. He tilted his head to the side in response. “Oh yeah? How so?” he leaned against the till, hands in his pockets as he talked with you. “Well, I see you here all the time. - Almost every time I'm working, actually. And - I guess I kinda got used to you wandering around and then leaving. It’s kind of weird how this is the first time I’ve heard your voice.” you laughed, and his lips quirked up in a small, almost unnoticeable smile. “What’s wrong with havin’ a look around?” his voice was low, and he spoke innocently. Despite the both of you knowing he was anything but innocent. “We both know you’ve been having a bit more than a look around.” you said, in reference to the many times you’d seen him ‘borrowing’ a few cd’s. He laughed this time. In truth, he cherished this moment. As it had been the first time he’d heard your voice. You were sweet, funny, and apparently had good music taste. All three of those traits were almost impossible to be found in the people Hobie had met. There was just something about you that was so different from everything else. So unique and-
“That’ll be 24.99” you said, snapping him out of his thoughts. 24.99? He repeated in his head, confused. He could’ve sworn that the price tag said 30? Had you given him a discount? For literally the first time ever, he handed the money to you and paid. He regretted a lot of things, but getting to talk to you was not one of them. You handed him the bag and smiled at him once more. Hobie then realised this would probably be the only time he’d ever interact with you again. In a panic, he spoke up again.
“D’ya wanna spend time together after this? We could maybe listen t’the record? See if it was worth th’money?” While the usual confidence in his voice remained, there were hints of hesitation laced under his words.
“I’d love to!” you exclaimed, blatantly happy. He smiled, now exposing his teeth. “Lovely.”
“I almost forgot–here’s my number!” you pulled out a pen from your pocket and wrote your phone number on the paper bag that you put his vinyl in; trying to make it as neat and legible as possible. Once you were happy with it, you handed it back to him. “I get off work at 6. Call me then and we can organise something, yeah?” you offered, to which he nodded.
“It’s a date.” he said, and winked before turning around and exiting the shop; the jingling of the door suddenly sounded way happier than it usually did.
Maybe your new job wasn’t so bad after all.
hey pookie just wanted to let u know my requests are opennn and you wanna request something sooooo badly so why don't you just go over there and send one in thanks love u hope you liked that little fic
#. feb writes#hobie brown#atsv#hobie brown x reader#hobie brown x you#hobie x reader#across the spiderverse#atsv fic#atsv hobie#hobie spiderverse#hobart brown#hobie my beloved#spider punk x reader#spider punk#spiderman#spiderman atsv#spiderman atsv x reader#spiderverse#spider man: across the spider verse#hobie x you#itsv#hobie brown atsv#atsv x reader#spiderverse fic#hobie fic#hobie brown headcanons#hobie brown fluff#hobie brown fanfiction#hobie brown my beloved#hobie brown drabble
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Hey, so we don't talk enough about A Christmas Carol as being at least a little bit about not continuing a cycle of abuse and neglect, both against others and yourself.
In the book little Scrooge is left languishing over the holidays in a boarding school for some never-explained reason, but it is made very clear that this is miserable and unfair, and that his father is doing this on purpose. His sister specifically comes to tell him that "father is so much kinder now than he used to be, that home's like heaven." This also reflects a bit of Dickens's own childhood when his father went into debtor's prison and little Charlie was forced to support his family working full time in a shoe-blacking factory at the age of 12 (which is also why so many of his books seem to have a moral of "hey, kids are people too and maybe we shouldn't make them work in the mines.")
Whatever family reunion happened after didn't work out, because Scrooge continues believing that no one is coming to save him and pulling himself up by his bootstraps at the detriment of all other social relationships is the only way forward. And the more he lives by that philosophy, the more miserable he gets, because obviously he pushes away anyone who has that hope that he lost. They threaten to break down the walls he's built and teach him that a big pile of money doesn't have to be the only thing that he can rely on, if he'd just let himself be vulnerable and have a relationship with people who care about him, because they're out there even if he's ignoring them.
There is a certain type of person still very much out there who thinks this way. "I've never been happy in my life, so no one else has a right to be either. I was abused in my childhood so it's only fair that everyone else suffer as well." We see this in parents who still try to use corporal punishment, and in wealthy people who ignore the social factors keeping others down and scream that everyone else is just entitled, that only those who suffer and scrape deserve happiness. And they especially hate the people like Fred who represent the past that could have been, who have maintained hope for the future, and seem to be rubbing their optimism in your face, when in reality they're just maintaining hope because it's the only way you can survive.
It's so important for Scrooge to actually see the impact this thinking has on both himself and multiple generations. Rich people have this weird hangup about this story because they think Scrooge is bad because he's rich. He's not, he's bad because he's a horrible person and a miser - he doesn't use his money to better anything, including himself. Salting the earth, everyone suffers here, including him. And he learns that he's going to die old and alone without ever having spent or enjoyed his money, and that his family feels sorry for him, and that the nameless masses of poor people out there that he decries so much are in fact living, breathing people, including tiny disabled kids who don't deserve to suffer just because you decided life isn't fair.
In the end he takes responsibility for actually uplifting the people in the next generation who are trying to make the world a better place and no longer punching down, because it doesn't have to be this way. So many people out there just give up hope because things are hard and they think trying to improve things is a pointless exercise that makes them look dumb. How dare you grow a year older and not an hour richer! How dare you marry for love! That's the only thing more ridiculous than a Merry Christmas! When in reality, there are plenty of people who would love to see them happy if they just had a chance.
It's really sad that, while the language used to describe it has changed, these problems still persist. That people feel so wronged and isolated that they spend their days ensuring everyone else will be as well. That they fail to see their fellow humans as fellow humans who are just as deserving of love and kindness and a roof over their heads. I don't care what time of year it is, we should all be lifting each other up rather than tearing each other down.
#long post#rant#a christmas carol#charles dickens#history#books#literature#christmas#who hurt elon musk
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im word vomiting my headcanon list and id love to hear what you think!
*hobie gifting things that he finds to his partner like a crow. i can imagine they'd just randomly turn up, either on a desk or like they'll just find it in their bag or pocket, or that he'd just walk of and just hand it to them with no word
*hobie fell for his partner hard, though he kept it pretty well hidden from everyone except pav starts calling his 'loverboy', eventually the nickname catches on to the point his future partner starts using it as well(either b/c they like it and thay're oblivious or they know exactly whats going on and are teasing him about it)
*loves playful banter
*nicknames for daaaaaays with his partner
*hobie getting serious with a partner would be him gifting them something important, first thoughts are either a guitar pick of his or one of his favorite rings (its the most worn one he has, a simple metal one that you can literally feel the love thats gone into it. somehow it fits his partners finger perfectly)
i may be back with more, until then i salute you!
i agree with ur hc’s so much!! this is how i hc & tend to write hobie so, 100%! pls don’t hesitate if u think of anymore hehe
i’d love to expand! ~
- giving you gifts, to him, is like the ideal expression of love.
- because basically all of them are stolen, it’s a combination of his favourite things; stealing from big corporations, and seeing the beaming, heart-warming smile on your face when you open your bag and see a tiny trinket wrapped in newspaper.
- everytime you would come home, you’d find a new little addition to the house somewhere – notably: necklaces, rings, tiny ceramic statues or wooden decorations, pens, music (cd’s, vinyls, etc.) – especially if he’s been to camden market that day, his pockets would be full for you.
- when he started to fall for you, he low-key thought he was coming down with the flu.
- whenever you were around, his heart would flutter, his head dizzy and palms sweating – he considered getting medicine, until pavitr pointed something out.
- “how are you, loverboy?”
- “eh? you talking to me, pav?”
- “of course, hobie! little loverboy”
- “did you hit your head, bro?”
- pavitr would explain that he’d noticed hobie’s eyes glued to you whenever you spoke, hanging onto every word like gospel, and the way he flustered when you touched him, how he’d do anything in his power to be in your personal space.
- “shit.”
- “no! this is a good thing, my friend! love is the most bea—”
- “shit.”
- days went past of hobie avoiding you, he’d never been in love before, and it was scary to him
- his brain was only thinking of you, and he hated that he liked it. he hated that he wished for every thought to be of you.
- and he hated that he could see your body deflate when he avoided you, hated that your eyes looked sad when he turned away
- he hated that he liked loving you
- until, you caught him on his own one day, he was minding his business, relaxing on his lonesome whilst the others hung out in different dimensions.
- “hey, loverboy”
- a deer in headlights wouldn’t even come close to the shock on his face
- “loverboy?”
- loverboy? you were calling him loverboy?
- “yeah, loverboy, that’s you, isn’t it?”
- in all fairness, you were completely oblivious to the reason behind it – pav had simply just started calling him it when hobie wasn’t around, and it stuck
- “i-i guess so”
- clearing his throat, he willed his confidence back to the surface
- “you can call me anything you want, sweetheart”
- it wasn’t long before you were together, a gentle, but spontaneous kiss after a particularly dangerous mission one day sealing the deal between you both
- he was obsessed with you
- now he could be obvious about his feelings, he took that and ran with it
- his arm was essentially glued to your side, or over your shoulders, or anywhere where he could pull you in close to him
- he’d grab you by the belt buckles, dragging you towards him and welcoming you with a soft peck on the lips
- even in public, almost especially in public
- always have his hands in your back pockets, he says he hates the cliché-ness of it but he likes that he can hold you close whilst respecting your personal space – and he can feel your ass, but he doesn’t admit that outloud
- THE NICKNAMES.
- THE. NICKNAMES.
- this man is born and bred british, and over here we use nicknames more than actual names
- darling, sweetheart, love, lovely, all of those AND more are natural to him, anyway
- but he adds a special little “my” before them all now, now that you actually are his, and so “my darling”, “my love”, etc. are like a second name to you
- in bed, the nicknames would be even better, but i’ll leave that to your imagination…
- when things started getting a little serious, you’d been dating for months, all your friends and colleagues knew about him, your family as well (if you decide to tell them)
- you’re relaxing in hobie’s dimension, laying on his bed with your head on his shoulder, reading a book whilst he strums at his guitar softly. he’s humming a song you don’t recognise, but the sound of his deep melody was enough to lull you.
- “hey, love?”
- you hum in response
- “i wanna give you something.”
- sitting you up, he’d lay his guitar down and face you, grabbing your hand and bringing it to him
- “what are you—”
- he’d fiddle with his own hands for a second, before twisting his favourite ring off his index finger
- “here.”
- “hobie, are you—”
- “i’m not proposing, don’t worry. weddings are just a social nuisance that give us one more way to control each other. no. this is better.”
- you tilt your head and watch him, as he slides his ring onto your middle finger
- “it’s just a promise.”
- “a promise?”
- “a promise that i love you, and that i’m yours, innit.”
- “oh, hobie.”
- you cry a tiny bit
- and he hugs you tightly, kissing your forehead
- that’s when he knew it was serious with you, not only because of how he was so obsessed with you, and his heart melted at your touch, but because when he saw you with the ring on, his ring, his person, it just felt right. he didn’t ever wanna see you without it, or without him.
- “hey, hobie, did you mean what you said about marriage? you don’t wanna marry me one day?”
- “hey, i said i hate weddings. nothing about marriage. not if we do it our own way, you know?”
i love him so much. also pls stick around, couple of one shots & fics will be out this week!!! sorry they’re taking ages hehe
#hobie brown x you#hobie brown#hobie brown imagine#hobie brown fanfiction#hobie brown x reader#atsv hobie#hobie x y/n#hobie x reader#hobie x you#hobie spiderverse#hobie my beloved#hobie#spiderpunk#spider punk#spider punk x you#spider punk x reader#across the spiderverse#pavitr prabhakar#love bitesx
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The Saints Can’t Help Me Now (joel miller x fem!reader) (18+)
Part 3 of dom!joel series | Part 1 | Part 2 |
pairing: brat tamer!joel miller x fem!reader
summary: you can’t stop thinking about that suggestion that joel made after the first time you fucked, so you decide to do something about it
warnings/tags: [18+ MINORS DNI] no!outbreak, dom/brattamer!joel, age gap (Joel is 56, reader is 25), unprotected anal/consensual painal, anal fingering, anal creampie, buttplugs, discreet toy use in public, consensual filming of sex, dirty talk, daddy!kink, praise!kink, degradation!kink, slight humiliation!kink, pain!kink, dacryphilia, brief oral sex (m receiving), vaginal fingering, choking, spitting, spanking, hair-pulling, marking, a healthy dose of good ol’ fashioned blasphemy, alcohol consumption, pet names/degrading terms (darlin’, babygirl, pretty girl, princess, whore, slut, etc). reader is shorter than joel, has hair long enough to grab.
word count: ~9.7k | ao3
a/n: here we go again, besties. These two are occupying my brain rent free, i have so much i want to do with them. so here’s another beefy part for y’all. And if you have anything you’d like to see with them, let me know! I’d love to hear your ideas! My inbox is always open ♥️
Masterlist | Kofi
You’re feeling particularly spicy on a Thursday night after a rough day at work. Corporate drones harping about deadlines and imperfections in your work. The truth is, you know your mind is preoccupied. Joel has somehow managed to grab ahold of every single one of your thoughts and whisper sweet, filthy nothings into each one of them. Every encounter you have is better than the last. Every day you feel more compatible. Just the sound of his sticky sweet Southern drawl soothes an itch deep in your brain that you’ve been waiting years for someone to scratch just right.
When you get home, you strip down to your underwear and a tank top and let your mind drift off as you collapse into bed. A tingle sparks up between your legs as your brain fixates on one specific thing Joel had said to you when you were lying in bed after your first in-person encounter. It burrows in your psyche and you can’t let it go.
Joel has been busy at work all day, so messages between you have been sparse.
Joel [6:05 AM]: Good morning, babygirl. Think about me today
You [7:03 AM]: Sorry, my other booty call is on the brain docket for today
Joel [7:13 AM]: Watch it.
You [7:15 AM]: 😜
You both know there’s no one else for you right now. He knows he’s infiltrated your mind like a live bioweapon, tapping into your thoughts and desires at will for his own amusement.
The sole reason that gives you comfort is because you know you’re the only one for him as well, giving you leeway to tease and activate that jealous, possessive streak in him.
And as much as you hate to admit it, you kind of miss him. It’s only been a few days since the last time he elevated your soul from your body in the form of couldn’t-wait-another-minute, up-against-the-front-door sex and then eventual slow-steady-torturous sex in the comfort of his bed.
You fall victim to your current brain worm and pull out your phone.
You [7:45 PM]: Do you remember what you said to me after the first time we fucked?
Joel [8:02 PM]: I remember every thing I’ve ever said to you
Joel [8:02 PM]: Gotta or your bratty ass will find somethin to argue with me about 😉 Gotta know my shit
You [8:03 PM]: I have no idea what you’re talking about. I have never argued with you about anything
You [8:03PM]: 👀
Incoming Call: Joel Miller 🥵
When your phone screen lights up with a full-screen candid photo of Joel’s face, you know you’re in for it. Perfect. You eagerly hit “accept” and are greeted with Joel’s gorgeous, honeyed, scolding voice.
“Fuck are you doin’, lyin’ straight through those pretty lips of yours? Or, fingers, I s’pose.”
A smile is threatening to burst through said lips at this moment, but you fight against it for the sake of the bit you have going.
“I’m not sure what you mean, daddy.”
You can hear him rolling his eyes over the phone, and it thrills you to no end.
“Question for you. You ever not bein’ a fuckin’ brat?” He doesn’t sound angry, mostly just playful. You love that about him.
Shit, not love. You really, really like that about him.
“Not around you, no.” You stick your tongue out, despite him not being able to see you.
“Jesus. Lucky fuckin’ me.”
“Correct. Lucky you. As you’ve said before,” You scrunch your eyebrows and affect your best, yet still awful, impression of Joel, “‘What are the odds my wrong number was a bratty little slut like you. Just my type.’”
“I contest that.”
“Oh really? Let me look at your text to me from just a few minutes ago. Ah, yes, ‘I remember every thing I’ve ever said to you.’” You read back, imitating him once again.
“I don’t sound like that.”
“But you said it. You said both of those things.”
“Okay, what about what I said to you that first night? There a question?” Joel asks, intentionally steering the conversation as far away as possible from you mocking him. Although you know it’s not a competition, you take that as a bratty win. You grin brightly to yourself at your victory.
“Maybe I was just making conversation,” You offer, attempting nonchalance.
“Mmm. ‘Course. Couldn’t possibly be you creamin’ your little panties at the thought of me claimin’ that beautiful asshole, right?”
Your cheeks burn at the confirmation that he remembers exactly what he said to you. You swallow and nibble at your bottom lip. “Couldn’t be that. Definitely…not.”
“Hmm. Well, good thing you’re a big girl who can use your words to express what you want.”
“Yup…” You bite into your lip to stifle a laugh.
“Alright,” Joel says in a strained grunt, and you guess he’s adjusting whatever position he’s in. When you hear a tinny jingling followed by a zipper in the background, you can tell precisely what he’s doing. “Well, if you don’t got nothin’ else to talk about, I’ll just—”
“Iwantyoutofuckmyass.” You wince to yourself as it all comes out in a rapid jumble.
“Pardon?” You can tell Joel has a shit-eating grin on his face on the other end of the line. He heard you loud and clear. But he wants the win on this one.
You sigh and enunciate, “I want you to fuck my ass. Please. Daddy.”
“Good girl, using your words,” Joel teases.
“Shut up,” You mumble.
“Now, now, is that how we get what we want?”
“Yes…” You mutter childishly.
You hear him sigh back at you but with much more of an edge. “You better count your lucky stars I’m not with you right now.”
You smirk, and then you count, “One…two…three…four…”
Joel lets out a short, descending whistle. “Fuckin’ hell, little girl. My palm is twitchin’. Come on over here. I fuckin’ dare you. Smack you so hard your head’ll fuckin’ spin.”
This time you can’t contain the laugh that explodes out of you.
“Oh, you laugh all you want right now, babygirl. You ain’t gonna be laughin’ nearly as hard when my cock is rearrangin’ your fuckin’ insides through that puckered little asshole.”
“So that’s a yes?”
“It’s a ‘you’re gonna get what you deserve’ is what it is. Whether that’s a positive or a negative for you I guess we’ll find out.”
A wide smile stretches your cheeks. “It’s a yes.”
“Yeah, yeah,” He mutters dismissively. “You got a plug in that little bedside drawer of fun?”
You glance over at your side table, the contents of which you have committed to memory. “Not one as big as you.”
“Good. Still want you tight when I break you open.”
“Fuck, daddy,” You sigh out, your fingers dancing at the band of your panties. But before you can do anything at all, Joel’s voice rings harsh and definitive over the line.
“Don’t you fuckin’ touch yourself. Misbehavin’ all over the fuckin’ place and you really think you deserve to come?”
You pout, dipping the tips of your fingers into your underwear rebelliously. “I think I always deserve to come. Besides, I already heard you undo your pants anyways.”
“It’s not your business right now what I’m doin’ in my own home. Now get your fingers outta your goddamn panties.”
“How do you—”
“You’re not as difficult to read as you may think, darlin’. You’re in a mood, you’re pushin’ your boundaries with me. But when I hang up this phone, I know you’re gonna do as you’re told. Know why?”
You consider being obstinate, but your curiosity wins out. “Why?”
“Because when it comes down to it, you don’t want to disappoint daddy. Do you?”
You look down at your fingers, halted just shy of where you desperately want them, and glare. Because he’s always fucking right, and it’s infuriating. Your hand retracts and instead clenches into a fist as you crash your head onto your pillow in frustration.
When you don’t speak, Joel pipes in, “That’s okay, you don’t need to answer that one, darlin’. I already know.”
You mutter under your breath, “Totally fine for you to do what you want when you’re alone, but when I wanna do something…”
“That’s exactly right, Miss Priss. Because you do as I say. And you love every second of it.”
Your responding gripe is unintelligible, and you hear him chuckle.
“Sweet dreams, babygirl.”
“Bye,” You grunt, ending the call and dropping your phone to your chest with a groan. A minute later your phone buzzes again.
Joel [8:17 PM]: I want you in your biggest plug all day tomorrow. Startin first thing in the morning. Be at my place at eight pm. Properly fed and hydrated. Cleaned to your comfort and plugged.
Joel [8:18 PM]: Don’t disappoint me, babygirl ❤️
You narrow your eyes stubbornly at the second text. You shoot him back a picture of you flipping the bird at the camera in front of the blatant wet spot on your panties.
Joel [8:23 PM]: Atta girl 😘
—
If you thought yesterday was rough, today was fucking brutal. You could not bring yourself to give a single shit about work.
You’d done as he instructed—of course you did—and even woke up early to give yourself time to prepare. First thing after relieving yourself and showering, you took your sweet time acclimating yourself to your biggest plug. The toy in question, just as you suspected, was nowhere near Joel’s true size. It was maybe a little over half his girth, which was better news for your day ahead, but would likely prove a challenge later tonight.
You’d sent off a photo to Joel of your face bearing the most overtly saccharine grin.
You [8:25 AM]: [Image Attached]
You [8:25 AM]: Thank you so much for making this the most unbearable day of my life 🙃
Joel [8:53 AM]: So glad you’re having such a good day darlin. Enjoy it cause believe it or not this will probably be the funnest part.
You [8:55 AM]: You think?
Joel [9:14 AM]: I do. Because I think you’re drastically underestimatin how much I’m about to hurt you
You [9:16 AM]: You say that like that thought didn’t just soak my panties immediately
Joel [9:22 AM]: Jesus. Masochistic little slut. Fuck you drive me crazy.
Joel [9:23 AM]: Keep the rest of your thoughts to yourself today. I’ve got a very important meeting tonight that I don’t intend on missin and I can’t afford any delays or distractions at work
You [9:26 AM]: Yes daddy 🍆🍑💦
Joel [9:28 AM]: Fuck. Goodbye.
The remainder of your workday passes teeth-grindingly slow. More than once you catch yourself intentionally rocking in your chair just to feel the plug press a little deeper and make your pussy surge. You’ve never been more appreciative of having your own cubicle in an infrequently visited portion of the office. You’d at least had the foresight to put on a panty liner prior to leaving the house, which has proven useful given the perpetual state of arousal you’ve been in all goddamn day. You go back and forth to the bathroom multiple times to wipe away the accumulation of fresh slick between your folds.
But you never touch for too long. The idea of getting off in a bathroom stall sounds increasingly tempting as the hours tick by, but you obey. You could use a loophole, say he never specified that you couldn’t get off today. But his voice echoes unflappably in your head: You don’t want to disappoint daddy, do you?
And right now you really, truly don’t. So you persist.
—
By the time 7:50 PM rolls around you’re already in his fucking driveway. Sitting at home had been driving you thoroughly batshit. Even factoring in the amount of time you spent eating dinner, showering, getting ready, and cleaning yourself out until you were positive no accidents would be had, you had still been chomping at the bit.
You sit impatiently in the driver’s seat, eyeing the front door. Do you knock early? He had said 8 PM. You don’t know how rigid he was about that time. You can’t tell if he’s even home yet since he typically parks in his garage, which is closed at this moment, and you only see a dim entryway light on inside. When you glance at the clock again, it still reads only 7:52. You throw your head back against the headrest and groan.
Joel puts you out of your misery shortly after, poking his head out the door and gesturing with it toward the inside of the house with a playfully put-out expression on his face. You stumble out of the car and nearly wipe out on the pavement in your haste to get this night the fuck going. Joel does nothing to hide his amusement, his crow’s feet crinkling drastically as he laughs at your cartoonish impatience.
Once you’re safely inside, Joel kisses you relatively chastely, to your dismay, and offers you a drink.
“Yes, please. I feel like I’m about to burst out of my fucking skin.”
Humor glistens in his eye as he pours rosé into a wine glass. “What, long day?”
“You’re not funny,” You comment frigidly as he hands you the glass.
“Y’don’t submit to me ‘cause I’m funny though, do ya,” He replies, tipping his already prepared whiskey tumbler toward you with a nod before taking a swig.
You sigh as you fall back against the counter and you take your first blissful sip of alcohol. As a refreshing warmth courses through your blood, you level him with an impassive look. “No, I submit to you because you’re a pathetic, horny old man and I have a desperation kink.”
Joel quirks an eyebrow along with the corner of his mouth, halting his glass just shy of his lips. He rakes his eyes up and down your body gratuitously and mutters before taking another sip, “Damn, you are in a mood today, aren’t ya?”
“And it’s entirely your fault. You gonna do something about it?” You challenge, swirling the blush-pink beverage around your glass.
“What if I said no?” Joel poses, leaning back against the kitchen island opposite you and fixing you with an unreadable expression. “What if I said, ‘If you’re gonna be a contemptuous little brat, you don’t get fucked. That you can turn your disobedient, plugged-up little ass around and go home.’ And that’s your punishment.”
You smirk at him. “You wouldn’t dare. Your dick is already trying to tear a hole in your jeans and every second that goes by you’re salivating over the thought of what my ass looks like with this toy in it. Punishing me like that means punishing yourself, too, and you’d never deny yourself your own sick, twisted pleasure. Would you, daddy?” You cock your head to the side daringly, wondering how far he’ll let you push him.
Turns out, the answer is not much further.
In a split second, Joel is pushing himself off the counter and yanking your head back at the scalp with a snarl. Your resolve crashes at your feet as you whimper in genuine shock at the display of domination. Your wine sloshes over the edge of the glass, splashing onto your knuckles but fortunately sparing anywhere else of mess.
Your breathing is labored at the angle he has your head at, straining your throat. Joel’s mouth dips to your neck and scrapes his teeth down the length of it, ending in a sharp bite where your neck meets your shoulder.
The action has you gasping, your free hand flying to the back of his head to keep him there. He sucks and nips at the skin until it’s guaranteed that you will be leaving his house with a physical, visible indication of his ownership of you.
“Insuff’rable little brat,” He spits out at you as he forces your gaze up toward him. “Think you’re so goddamn smart, huh? So goddamn funny.” He slams his whiskey sloppily on the counter behind you and you jump at the sound. A whiskey-soaked hand cups your neck, pressing in at the sides until you can feel your face heating with the effort it takes to breathe. The smell of the liquor on his breath and fingers assaults your nose and inexplicably sends a pang of desire down to your core.
“Hmm? You think you’re funny?” He asks pointedly, using the hand on your neck to jostle you into giving him an answer.
“No, sir!” You rasp out through your choked vocal column. “‘M sorry!”
Just as your mind starts to feel like it’s floating away and your vision begins to darken, Joel relinquishes his grip on your neck. You suck in a large breath, panting as you try to restore the oxygen to your brain.
“Next time you wanna be smart with me,” Joel growls, inches from your face, “Remember I control how easy you breathe.”
Joel snatches his tumbler from behind you and steps back to lean against the counter once more. As your blood pressure slowly decreases, you brave a glance over to him. And the motherfucker is grinning into his drink like he didn’t just put the fear of god into you at the drop of a hat. A shudder rips its way down your spine and out your fingers and toes. You set your glass down behind you, shaking slightly.
“Shit.” You roll your neck around in a circle, rubbing at the front where you’re now horribly concerned he might have left bruises.
“Wasn’t nearly hard enough to leave marks,” Joel assures as he finishes off his drink. “You want marks, I’ll give you marks, but not unless you ask. Not there. That one I know you can hide,” He nods toward the blazing mark at your neck and shoulder.
“I think I’ll pass on the strangulation marks for now,” You wince, massaging the skin. “Doesn’t accessorize well with business casual.”
Joel studies you for a moment before shaking his head with a small laugh. “The look on your face when I grabbed you by the hair just now…Be lucky if you didn’t just squeeze that plug so hard it turned to dust.”
A scowl befits your features. “You’re fucking psychotic.”
Joel tilts his head with an upturned grin, as if admitting fault. “Only cause you let me be. Why, ‘D’I scare ya?”
“You meant to scare me.”
“Just a little. Always gotta remind you who’s boss.”
You take a deep breath and pull your shit together. You down the rest of your wine in one go and close the couple of feet between you, splaying your hands out on Joel’s chest. “Can we play now?”
“Thought we already were,” Joel says with a roguish smile.
“I mean,” You take one of Joel’s hands and guide it to where you’re bare and dripping beneath your dress, “Play.”
Joel smirks at you as he dips a finger into your folds, running the flat of it up and down your clit. You tremble at the attention, your forehead falling onto his chest.
“Poor baby’s been all worked up since yesterday, hasn’t she? If you obeyed daddy, that is.”
“I did,” You sigh, clenching your fingers into his t-shirt as his hand moves southward.
Joel hums as he reaches the hilt of your plug, pressing on it rhythmically as you moan into him. “Feels like a little princess plug you got there. That right?”
You nod into his chest and your mouth drops open in a whine as Joel grips the jeweled end of the plug with his thumb and forefinger and pulls at it gently. The bulbous end presses at the rim of your asshole from the inside, testing the pressure and effort it would take to pop it out, then pushes back in. Joel fucks you shallowly just like this, mounting the pleasure already swirling in your stomach. The torture of today–and last night–is wreaking havoc on your senses, and you already feel embarrassingly close to orgasm, exposing yourself by the way you start to babble nonsensically into him.
“Mmm, I’d know those sounds anywhere. You gonna come just from this, babygirl? Just from me fuckin’ you with your princess plug?”
“I just n-need to f-fucking tap my clit, daddy, please.”
Joel shakes his head. “Mm-mm. You come like this or not at all.”
You sob into his chest as you rock back onto his hand. “Daddy, I’ve n-never…I always h-have to…”
“Listen to me, baby,” Joel floats into your ear as he continues to fuck you with the toy, “You can do it. Filthy sluts like you can get off on much less. Been such a good girl, not touchin’ yourself 'cause I said so. Your pussy loves this. You were soakin’ my fuckin’ hand before I even did a single thing. Little cunt’s cryin’ 'cause it loves gettin’ fucked up the ass so much. Ain’t that right?”
Joel’s words have the pressure in your core threatening to break the dam. You’ve never been able to come without touching yourself, but the combination of Joel’s actions and his dirty talk have you banging at the door of release, clawing desperately at the wood, and jerking at the handle.
“Keep talking daddy, please don’t stop!” You beg, thrusting your hips back in a feverish attempt to push the plug deeper.
Joel laughs cruelly, thoroughly enjoying your dire need to reach your peak as he picks up the pace of his fingers on the taper. “Dirty fuckin’ whore, fuckin’ herself on this plug like she can’t wait to have daddy’s cock destroying her little asshole. That what you been waitin’ for, huh? For daddy to spread those plump little cheeks and ram his cock into that tight fuckin’ hole? Huh?”
“Fuck, daddy!” You scream as your orgasm takes you by the throat like Joel just had minutes before, ripping your climax from you as you gush down your legs as well as Joel’s wrist. Your asshole spasms around the plug, clenching for dear life before relaxing and clenching again. Your legs tremble and threaten to give out as he tightens an arm around your waist, holding you up as wave after wave of pleasure tears through you in what is undoubtedly the most intense orgasm you have ever had.
He fucks you through the aftershocks with smatterings of praise. “Good fuckin’ girl. That's my fuckin’ girl, comin’ all over daddy’s hand. So fuckin’ good.” Joel slides down the lower cabinets onto the floor, easing you down with him and holding you tight against him as the tremors work their way out of your body. “Such a good girl, knew you could do it for daddy.”
“Fucking hell,” You pant out, melting as Joel’s hand scratches soothingly at your back. “That was…I can’t…”
Joel chuckles into your hair. “You looked so pretty comin’ like that, babygirl.”
“I’ve never been able to do that before. Without at least touching. Fuck.”
“And what do you have to say to me for that?”
“Thank you so, so, so much, daddy,” You sigh into his neck.
“You’re welcome, babygirl,” He rumbles, kissing your head.
“You shouldn’t have rewarded me for riling you up, though. I’m about to become a fucking menace. If this is what I get for making you mad...”
Joel snorts. “Believe me, this is in preparation for the shit I’m about to put you through. Just you wait, little girl. ‘Boutta get a real rude awakening.”
“Mmm. I’m okay with that right now.”
“Okay, babygirl,” He placates. “We’ll see.”
It takes several minutes for you to fully calm down, cheek pressed against Joel’s broad chest and his hand tickling your back over your dress.
“Can’t believe I’ve already made you come once and I still haven’t seen what that toy looks like inside you.”
“My patient and long-suffering Dom,” You tease, kissing the hollow of his throat.
“Shut up,” He grumbles, but you can tell he’s smiling a little. “Up on your hands and knees, babygirl.”
You groan at the thought of having to leave your comfy Joel cocoon on the kitchen floor, but you extract yourself and get into position.
“This is a cute dress,” Joel remarks, brushing his hands over the thin fabric covering your ass.
“Cute enough you didn’t rip it off me the second I got in the door, I guess. Or maybe that makes it not cute enough,” You ponder as Joel glides his hands up the backs of your thighs, taking the dress with him as he goes until you’re exposed entirely.
“Either way, I’ll tell you somethin’, this,” Joel runs his thumb over the purple jewel on the end of the plug, “was worth the fuckin’ wait.”
“You like it?” You ask, peering at him over your shoulder coquettishly.
“I love it,” Joel confirms, parting your cheeks for a better view. “Perfect for a pretty little princess, just like you.”
You giggle, wiggling your ass a bit for him. “You think I’m a perfect little princess?”
“You’re my perfect little princess. My perfect troublemaker. My perfect pain in the ass.” He ducks his head to bite a kiss into the flesh of your asscheek.
“Happy to please,” You preen.
“Should get that as a tramp stamp,” Joel jokes, kissing your lower back right where that would be.
“No, I already decided on ‘Property of Daddy’ for my tramp stamp. Maybe I’ll get this one on the inside of my lip so you see it when you put your fingers in my mouth.”
A growl comes from Joel’s chest as he bites down on your ass again. “Shouldn’t love the idea of you permanently markin’ yourself for me so much. Maybe I’ll have to give you a little somethin’,” He wonders aloud. “Somethin’ that makes you mine.”
“I think I’d like that.”
“Good.” He gives a final squeeze to your cheek and swats at it playfully. “Alright, pretty girl. Want you to crawl to those stairs and wait for me.”
You look ahead, the base of the ascending stairs a straight shot from where you are now. “Crawl, huh?”
“That’s what I said.”
You move luxuriously, swaying your hips as you go to showcase your “jewelry”. You can’t help but smile when you hear a reverent, yet irreverent, “Goddamn,” from behind you.
At the base of the stairs, you sit up on your knees and wait for him. You take in the image of Joel, seated on the tile of his kitchen with a hand resting on one bent knee and one leg extended, devouring you with his eyes. The sheer adrenaline this man instills in your very blood continues to blow you away. Any way he looks at you, any way he talks to you has your heart racing and the desire to please him overpowering your senses.
As you stare back at him, having crawled and knelt at his instruction with not much of a second thought, you have an incredibly overwhelming feeling that you are in serious fucking trouble. That you might be falling in too deep.
When he hoists himself up off the floor and saunters over to you with his gaze locked on yours, you swallow. He takes your chin in his large hand and your brain turns to mush, eyelids fluttering closed as he holds you so fucking delicately in his grip, like a baby bird.
“My beautiful girl.”
Your heart soars and you blink open to drink in the admiration on his face as he looks at you.
The moment finally breaks when Joel makes a head motion toward the stairs, “Alright, scurry on upstairs. Time for daddy to have his fun.”
You’re only a teensy bit ashamed of how quickly you obey.
Joel lifts his shirt off as he enters the room behind you, tossing it aside and working at his belt.
“Dress off?” You ask tentatively, fingers on the hem of the garment.
The corner of Joel’s mouth tilts up as he steps out of his pants and drops his phone onto the nightstand. “Dress off.”
Once that has joined the mess of clothing on the floor, Joel is beckoning you onto the bed as he lays against the pillows, stroking himself leisurely.
“Come give daddy a little kiss.”
You situate yourself on your stomach between his legs and he guides the head down to your lips. You place a closed-mouth kiss to the slit, precome clinging to your lips before breaking off.
“Little more,” He encourages, “Get daddy nice and wet.”
Joel slides into your mouth with a groan as you take him down. Your tongue laves at the underside as you hollow your cheeks around him, coming back up to suck wetly at the head and run circles around the tip.
“That’s good, baby. That’s plenty. Just love feelin’ that sweet mouth on my cock.”
“I like tasting you, daddy.”
“Next time I’ll come down that tight throat, baby. But tonight I want to put it somewhere else. Let me see that plug again.”
You shift onto all fours, presenting your ass to him.
“Let’s see how stretched this little hole is.” Joel grips the plug and wiggles it back and forth as he pulls. You wince as your hole re-opens around the thick metal bulb, widening to accommodate it on the way out. Your hole rapidly contracts at the emptiness left, puckering again. “Fuckin’ gorgeous.”
Joel poises the bulb at his mouth and spits, using the plug to re-lubricate your hole so he can push it back in again. “Hungry little asshole. Sucks it right back in.”
Joel watches your hole stretch around it a couple more times and then casts it aside. He experiments with just his pointer finger, slipping it past the ring until it’s fully encased inside you. He fucks you with it gently, licking his lips as you take him with no resistance.
Before he gets too entranced, he withdraws and rummages in his bedside drawer for a bottle of lube. He slicks up two fingers and drizzles the cool liquid over your hole, startling you momentarily. “You’re okay, babygirl,” he pacifies with a hand stroking your hip, “Just relax.”
“I’m relaxed,” You protest, rolling your shoulders. You look back as Joel meets you with a skeptical look. “I’m relaxed, daddy.”
“Okay,” Joel sings with a note of uncertainty. He traces circles around your rim, distributing the lube and preparing you for another finger. You're pleased when his two fingers slide in with no pain, the lube helping exponentially. “Shit, this is so fuckin’ pretty. Such a little anal slut. Beggin’ me to fuck you up the ass.”
“Yes, daddy. Want you in all my holes,” You moan as his movements increase inside you. He really does feel fucking fantastic like this. Anal has always been something you’ve had a fascination with. The taboo element of it, fucking a hole that isn’t expressly meant–or built–to be fucked has always flooded you with arousal. To you, the act of someone fucking your ass is them saying “I own you” without the actual words–although the words are also pleasing to hear in the right context.
And there isn’t a fucking doubt in your goddamn head that Joel owns you–every fucking part of you. And even though tonight’s activities were your idea, your decision, you let him take you like it was his.
As Joel adds in a third finger, the stretch becomes more real. He is as gentle as he can restrain himself to be, using his own intuition and reading your body’s signals as you open up for him. A plethora of curses careen out of you as his pace picks up, your ass accepting what he has to give you almost faster than your own brain does.
“That’s right, babygirl. Take these fuckin’ fingers. Gonna be beggin’ to have them back when I’m balls deep inside with this big cock.” Joel’s breath grows heavier, strained little grunts flowing out as his control slips and he plows you with his fingers.
“Jesus Christ!” You scream out as he pistons his fingers in your asshole, filling you up just right in a way that makes you want to scream and beg him for more. All at once his fingers disappear and grasp at your hip instead, and you groan disappointedly at the highly inhumane decision.
Joel is abruptly at your ear, his front pressed against your back. “Jesus ain’t here to help you, babygirl. He’s long gone. ‘Bout as useless to you as your pussyhole is to me right now,” he says with a slap to the front of your cunt that makes you buck forward.
“Daddy, please put your fingers back,” You whimper.
Joel laughs, tinged with coldness. “You lookin' for salvation, babygirl? Absolution?” Joel removes his hand from your pussy and locks it around your jaw, forcing it up into the air. “You get that through me now. Want you worshipping this cock every day, twice on Sundays.”
“Yes, daddy,” You whine, attempting to rock yourself back against hard Joel’s cock bobbing at your lower back.
Joel scrapes his upper teeth down your cheek, then nips aggressively on your jawline. You expect him to move on from your little speech mishap, but it seems to have set Joel off.
“‘F you’re gonna thank that fucker for anything, it better be for makin’ you so goddamn holy. Blessin’ me with so many goddamn options to violate this little body of yours. This smart little mouth,” He shifts two fingers from your jaw into your mouth and hooks them, leaving your mouth gaping, “this juicy little cunt,” his other hand palms your pussy, “And daddy’s new favorite. This tight, sinful little asshole.” Joel meets your hips and rolls his stiff cock against your ass. The hole in question clenches at his words, begging to wrap back around something, anything.
“A little angel sent from heaven just for me to defile,” Joel growls, licking a broad stripe up your cheek and sending a shiver down your spine, “Isn’t that right?”
You nod as well as you can with Joel’s fingers in your mouth, pressing down on your tongue.
“You think Jesus would be proud of you, babygirl?” Joel’s tone is vaguely haunting as his hot breath skitters across the side of your face. “On your hands and knees, gettin' your asshole reamed by a man over twice your age?”
You growl in frustration, thrusting your hips back against Joel and jerking Joel’s fingers from your mouth with a sharp twist of your head. “I don’t fucking care what Jesus thinks of me!”
There’s fire in Joel’s eyes as he releases his hold on you. Moments later that fire is manifested in a loud smack on your asscheek. You moan leaning back into it.
“Fuckin’ right you don’t. Who do you worry about pleasin’ now?” Joel grunts out, landing another hard spank to your ass.
You squeal at the impact and muster out a quiet, “You.”
Smack.
“Who?”
Smack.
“You, daddy!”
Smack.
“Who do you worship now, huh? Who do you fall on these fuckin’ knees for now?” Joel growls through gritted teeth.
Smack.
“You, daddy!” You scream.
Smack smack smack.
“Don’t you fucking forget that,” He spits out with a final slap to your angry, smarting skin. “Next time you mention another man’s name while I’m inside you, deity or not, you won’t be able to sit for a month. Understood?”
You nod with a distorted whimper from your ravaged vocal cords. “Yes, sir.”
Then Joel is in front of you, hand squeezing your jaw. “Open your fuckin’ mouth.”
You drop it wide with your tongue out, just how you know he likes. You start to salivate as you anticipate his own shooting into your waiting mouth, something absolutely filthy that you have truly grown to love in the few times he’s done it. You see him glance down at your tongue, then back up to your eyes. And then he does spit. But he aims it at the bridge of your nose instead, splattering all over your face. You reel back, startled, blinking hard to keep it out of your eyes. When you look back up at Joel he has one eyebrow raised in a challenge, like he’s begging you to talk back.
“What do you say?” He growls.
You bite your lip with a smirk. “Thank you, daddy.”
His spit travels down the side of your nose and down to your lips as you stare him down.
“Leave it,” He orders as more saliva gathers on your lips and overflows toward your chin. With an obstinate tongue, you lock eyes with him and lick him off gratuitously.
Joel glares at you for a second before he puffs a laugh out of his nose and shakes his head. “You’re gettin’ far too smug for my likin’, you little brat. Like I showed you in the kitchen, I don’t like bein’ too predictable. Makes you act too big for your britches.” He takes his thumb and swipes the remainder of his spit up to your forehead, massaging it into your skin.
You narrow your eyes at him playfully. “I disagree. I think you like me smug. Gives you something to do. If you were just laying there barking orders at me and I never gave you attitude, you’d get bored.”
Joel cracks a smile and smooths a hand over your hair. “I do like ‘em naughty, don’t I?”
“Preaching to the choir a bit on that one, aren’t we, Jesus?” You tease indulgently.
An incredulous look crosses his features as he shakes his head again at you in astonishment. “Fuckin’ hell, you little shit. Insubordinate till the day you fuckin’ die, I swear.”
You smile broadly back at him. “And very proud of it.”
Joel rolls his eyes and strikes a motivating hand on your ass. “Go on, stick that insubordinate little ass in the air for me so I can fuck the smart right outta your mouth.”
You giggle, but you oblige, turning around so your ass is high and proud in front of him and your face snuggled submissively in his bedding.
“Goddamn. Always such a fuckin’ sight like this. Perfect little cockslut just for me.”
“Just for you, daddy.”
“I think this greedy little hole is ready for me, hmm?”
“So, so ready, daddy.”
“Good girl.” Joel finds the discarded lube in the sheets and reapplies it liberally to his cock and your asshole. “Gonna be a nice, big stretch to fit me, huh? But you like it when daddy hurts ya, don’t you baby?”
“Yes, daddy,” you whine as Joel tests the limits of your hole with the head of his cock. Not breaching the ring, but pressing into it tentatively.
“Fuckin’ shit. That’s a tight little hole, babygirl. Just how daddy likes it.” He cautiously rolls his hips into you, and you feel your ass opening up to him in small increments. The sting is fierce despite Joel prepping you well. He just happens to be fucking huge.
When Joel finally gives a final push to pop the head inside, you intake a sharp breath through gritted teeth and clutch at the sheets for dear life. “Fuck, daddy. T-that’s so fu-fucking big. H-hurts.”
“Fuckin’ Christ, look at you,” Joel groans, rubbing the ring of your asshole as it stretches around him. You don’t even have the gumption to tease him about his use of blasphemous language. You just whine.
He steadies himself on your hip as you feel him shift behind you, careful not to slide deeper while you adjust. Soon after you hear a small shutter sound and you crane your neck to see his phone aimed directly at where the two of you meet.
He tosses the phone onto the bed by your face. “Look at that, babygirl. How fuckin’ good you look wrapped around me.”
This is the first time either of you have ever visually documented any of your experiences together, but it was on both of your respective “yes/no/maybe” lists as a “yes”, and it exhilarates you to bring another kink you both have into reality, even in the most incremental way.
You lift onto your elbows and take the phone, marveling at the picture. Your hole is red and swollen, but not too drastically. It looks obscene, Joel’s cock so large in comparison. The image has your pussy leaking a fresh wave of liquid, wetting the creases of your thighs. “That’s so fucking hot, daddy.”
Joel massages your asscheeks, taking in the real thing in front of him. “Alright, baby. Deep breath. Let me in.”
You drop the phone in front of you and lay your head on the sheets again. You inhale through your nose, and on the exhale Joel pulls your hips into him as he presses forward. You yelp at the surge of pain, but Joel doesn’t move anymore after that, letting you adjust again.
“How much more?” You whimper. He motions for you to hand him the phone. He snaps another photo and a quiet sob escapes when you see he’s only halfway inside. “Fuck. What did you say before? Acting too big for my britches? Kinda feeling like that right now.”
Joel chuckles, running a hand up and down the slope of your back. When he speaks his voice is thick with sass. “Thought you liked it when it hurt.”
“Fuck, I do. But this is…wow. Never had something this big up there before.”
“I know, baby. But we’re gonna do it, and you’re gonna take it.”
A defeated sound is muffled by the sheets.
“What’s your safeword, babygirl?”
“Honeysuckle,” You recite easily.
“Good girl. Now look at that picture and focus on how beautiful your tiny hole looks gripping my cock.”
You sink your teeth into your lip and nod.
You feel more lube coating yourself and Joel as you stare mesmerized at the photo. As he pushes himself the rest of the way inside, you cling to the phone despite your eyes going a little glassy and the image going blurry. But you do it, and you take it, just like Joel said.
Joel showers you with praise as his hips press firmly against your ass. You already feel exhausted, but your pussy is very awake. The briefest shift of Joel inside you has your neglected hole throbbing, completely betraying what being violated like this is doing for you.
“You okay, babygirl?”
“Yeah, I’m okay. It’s just really intense,” You squeak out breathily.
“Bet you’re wishin’ I wasn’t so big now, huh? All fun and games when it’s your pussy gettin’ beat up. She’s made to take a big daddy like me. But this? Nah, you gotta be a real pathetic little cocksleeve to beg daddy to put it up your ass, knowin’ full well how fat his cock is. How long he is. Such a fuckin’ slut.” He spanks your ass again and a soft moan comes out of you.
When you don’t respond verbally he laughs. “Don’t got anythin’ to say to that, Miss Smart Mouth? Not like you got daddy’s cock in there to shut you up right now. Go on, talk back.”
“No, sir,” You say quietly.
“See, now she’s all proper and respectful. Just as I thought. Stuff her full’a cock anywhere and she don’t got much to say. Textbook fuckin’ cockslut. Isn’t that right? Got you right in the dictionary with that picture there of your greedy ass in the sky squeezin’ this dick.”
The shameful words wash over you like a hot bath soaking your sore muscles. You love the way he talks to you like this. The shame ignites a fire in you, an unmatched arousal that drives your need to please him entirely. But also with the need to see what he’s doing to you.
“Film it.”
Joel is silent for a second.
“Please,” You add for good measure.
“You want me to film it, babygirl? You want proof of just how good you take me?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Shit. Alright, then. Give the phone to daddy.”
You hear the blip of a recording starting and Joel pulls out just barely with one hand spreading a cheek open. You suck in through clenched teeth and a piece of you is severely regretting your decision-making skills. You have no idea what you were thinking, letting Joel bait you into this with his post-coitus charm that first night. Despite it being far from your first time being fucked up the ass, you were being completely genuine when you said he was the biggest thing you’ve ever had up there. But horny, pre-sex you can be pretty ambitious. You can talk a big game and you do pride yourself on being a willing fucktoy for Joel.
But shit, this fucking hurts.
“Make all the sounds you want, babygirl. Love hearin’ exactly what I do to you.”
“Hurts, daddy,” You whine.
“Bet it does, baby. Havin’ daddy break you open like this. You knew what you were gettin’ into, didn’t you?”
You don’t dignify his justifications with an answer, you just moan into the bed as he drags himself out a little further.
“I think it’s a fittin’ punishment for you misbehavin’ all the fuckin’ time. Taste of your own medicine.”
You grumble, distracting yourself by fiddling with the sheets.
“That really how you wanna remember this? Bein’ all grumbly while I’m puttin’ you in your place?”
“You’re grumbly all the time,” You mutter stubbornly.
Joel’s eyebrows shoot up at you. “I’m sorry? Would you like to repeat that again? Right into the camera. See where it gets you.”
You glance up to see Joel directing the phone at your face and chicken out. “No…”
Joel slaps your ass again, hard, and you cry out. “You wanna rethink how you respond to me?”
“I’m sorry, daddy. I’ll be good.”
“That’s more like it. Cut the fuckin’ sass and let daddy take what’s his. I don’t give a fuck if it hurts. You know how to stop it if it’s too much.”
You take a deep breath and nod.
“Don’t you worry, baby. Once I fill you up a few times you won’t even remember your fuckin’ name. Just ‘daddy, daddy, daddy’ like the cockdumb little slut you are.”
And then he slams back into you.
And fuck him, he’s right, your mind goes completely blank.
Joel’s pace is grueling as he pounds into you. You can tell he’s putting on a show for the camera, ensuring that it captures him sliding in inch by inch. His grunts are timed with the impact of his hips. His skin is sticky with lube each time he retracts from you, amplifying the union of your bodies with a solid thudding sound on each thrust. The pain isn’t nearly as razor-sharp as only a few thrusts ago, but it’s enough to still have you wincing. It for sure does not hurt enough for you to safeword. In fact, it has dwindled down to the level of torture you crave. Enough pain to remind you who you belong to, and enough pleasure to remind you exactly why.
A constant stream of noise—some pleasure, some pain—drifts around the room courtesy of yourself. Joel has been relatively nonverbal since he began really fucking you, mixing his own noises—only pleasurable ones for him, the cruel motherfucker—in with yours.
Joel’s thrusts don’t stop as you hear him say, “Smile for the camera, babygirl.”
You think you might want to kill him. You are so far from wanting to smile, not even sure you could manage it if you tried. The best you could probably do is a wincing grimace, which is exactly what he ends up capturing anyway since that is the perpetual state of your face at the moment.
“Aww, ‘smatter, baby?” Joel jerks forward in a particularly brutal thrust, and you call out desperately for him. “Still sting a little bit?” He asks, voice dripping with feigned sympathy.
You grunt through your teeth,”F-f-fuck you.”
Joel tosses his head back with a pitiless laugh. “Gettin’ a little feisty, are we, babygirl? Forgettin’ our good girl manners?”
“How about—hnnng—next time—fuck—you try it, sir?”
His laughter booms out again. “Oh, baby, I’m not the one who’s a constant glutton for punishment, am I? You need this,” Joel rams into you for emphasis, making you cry out again, “Need me putting you in your place like this. ‘S’why you were fuckin’ born. To be a fuckin’ brat and have me fix you right.”
Your throat feels raw from your screaming and babbling, your fingers sore from clutching the sheets, and the devil’s combination of pain and pleasure has tears losing grip of their slippery hold and cascading down your burning cheeks.
“Fuck, that’s what I like, baby. Cry for me, cry with this cock tearing you apart. Just for daddy.” He spurs them on with another assault of his hand on your ass in rapid succession. It does the job, the seemingly bone-deep ache from him smacking you over and over on already debauched flesh forcing more tears from you. You can only imagine how fucking explicit this looks on camera.
As the pain flourishes, your vision starts to narrow and a calming trickle of adrenaline starts to take hold of you. And suddenly you feel like you’re fucking floating. Almost like the weight of the pain is lifting and only leaving room for pleasure. Thoughts begin to ebb away into a desperate chant inside your head. You need this. You need this. You need this. You need him to give you this.
Joel must instantly recognize the shift because his thrusts immediately increase in speed and strength. “There we go. Fuck, baby, just like that, yes. Let go. Such a good fuckin’ girl. Keep takin’ it, just like that.”
Your moans become wanton and charged with desire, wanting him harder, wanting him deeper. You crave him, mind jumbled with thoughts of how you could possibly inject him into your very bones. You and Joel, Joel and you, fucking like this forever. Moan after moan, orgasm after orgasm. Until nothing exists in the entire universe but this. But you two.
And Joel can read it without you saying a fucking word.
The bed sinks beneath you and then Joel is so deep inside you, you think you might pass out. Your eyes roll to the back of your head as you let out the most primal, guttural moan you’ve ever made in your fucking life. Peeking back you see the phone discarded on the bed and Joel propped up on flattened feet, driving his cock down into you as his hands press hard between your shoulder blades and imprint you further into the mattress. As your periphery starts to shrink, honing in on your joined movements, Joel’s hips begin to stutter and his grunts grow louder.
“Fuck, shit. Gonna fill this asshole up, babygirl. Oh shit.” Joel fills you deeply and wholly, and you feel him explode inside of you. He presses forward into you until your knees give out beneath you and leave you prone with Joel, tacky with lube and sweat, clinging to every inch of your skin. Your breath comes in stilted as the world begins to fade back in.
“Fuck,” Joel gasps reedily into your neck, weakly attempting to raise himself onto his forearms to free you of his dead weight. He rolls his hips into you boldly, pushing his come deeper inside of you. “All filled up. Want you like this all the fuckin’ time. Overflowin’ with me.”
You whimper as you thrust your own hips into the bed.
“You still need to come, babygirl?”
You nod desperately. “But stay inside. Please.”
Joel exhales heavily. “Alright, I’m gonna flip you over, but I need to pull out for a second. Okay?” You nod again in agreement.
Joel makes quick work of slipping out of you and turning you onto your back. You grab the backs of your thighs and spread open for him.
“That’s my girl,” he coos, his honey drawl both soothing your hot skin and teasing your pussy. “Gimme the phone again.”
Your hands scramble to find his phone, eventually landing on it and handing it over. Now that you have a proper view of him, you can see how hungry he looks as he stares down at the screen. How his eyes dart from the artificial rendering to your actual flesh, like he doesn’t know where he wants to look more.
His cock is only half-hard as he lines up with your fucked out hole, but the memory of his stretch has him sinking back in relatively easily.
“So fucking beautiful, baby,” He whispers, dipping two fingers into the opening of your severely neglected pussy. “Wanna fill up every one of these holes at once someday. See you all plugged up, tied to my bed, completely at my mercy.”
You moan at the words, silently cursing him for putting more fucked up ideas in your head that would result in you being just as destroyed for him as you are now. Your fingers begin to seek him out frantically.
“Uh-uh. Hands above your head, baby,” He directs. He waits until you comply before plunging his two fingers inside of your pussy.
“Oh fuck, daddy,” You gasp, hips already rolling back down onto his fingers and cock. “So full.”
“I know, baby. Let me feel you squeeze my fingers.” You obediently clench your pussy muscles, which automatically has you clenching around his cock as well. Joel growls at that, and you’re pretty sure you can feel him stiffening again inside you.
“Please make me come, daddy.”
Joel’s fingers thrust into you with haste as he adds a third finger with minimal pain, evidence of your pussy having become accustomed to Joel’s size from your increasingly frequent encounters. He curls them just right as he starts to slowly move his hips into you again.
“Oh god,” You pant out breathily, “Touch my clit please, I’m so fucking close. I don’t think I can again…not like before. Please.”
“Touch yourself, baby. I’ve only got one hand and I wanna see you fall apart. Want the camera to see it. You got my permission to touch.” Your hand launches between your legs and rubs hurriedly at your clit as Joel continues working both your holes. “Good fuckin’ girl, touch that pussy, baby. Make yourself come with me all shoved up inside you.”
You knew you wouldn’t take much, and his words jettison you off the edge with startling force, your hips bucking wildly underneath your fingers. You vaguely hear the bloop of a recording ending as you catch your breath. Joel leans into you, mouthing at your sweat-slick neck.
“Got me all fuckin’ hard again.”
“‘M Sorry,” You mutter hazily, lacing your fingers through his damp curls.
You’re surprised to feel Joel pulling out of you gingerly given his current state.
“I’ll give you a break,” Joel consoles, kissing sweetly along your jaw. “Be back in a minute.”
You furrow your brows and hook a leg over one of Joel’s to lock him in place. “Mm-mm. Stay.”
Joel laughs softly into your skin. “Baby, I gotta take care of this or I’ll probably get grumpy.”
“I like you grumpy,” You reassure, scratching at his scalp with your nails and hearing him sigh at the sensation.
“Sure had a lot to say about it a few minutes ago.”
“Unlike you, daddy, I don’t remember half the shit I say to you. I just say bullshit to wind you up.”
“Cheeky little devil,” he chuckles into your neck.
Joel just holds you for a moment, face buried in the crook of your neck and fingers running up and down your thigh as you scratch at his head soothingly.
“Saw you enter subspace for a minute there, didn’t I?” Joel asks gently, recalling your moment of focused euphoria from earlier.
You’re not sure why that makes you blush, but it does. “I think so, yeah.”
“Feel good?”
“Amazing.”
“Well, I got a goal for the future then.” He kisses your cheek tenderly. Joel shifts onto his side to wrap his arms around you fully, and you feel his still-erect cock brush against your hip.
“How about…” You guide Joel until he’s hovering above you with a quizzical look, “How about I let you fuck my pussy.”
An amused expression crosses Joel's face. “‘Let me’? You’re gonna let me fuck what’s mine?” He teases.
You roll your eyes dramatically and poke him in the side. “I was trying to be nice.”
With a smirk, Joel hauls you down the bed as you giggle and wrap your legs around his waist. He plants his hands on either side of your head, towering over you. “You’re right. I don’t like when you’re nice. I much prefer you naughty.”
You smile matter-of-factly and push off on his shoulder. “Go clean your dick, then come back and fuck me senseless again. I don’t need an infection.”
“Fair point,” He acknowledges with a tilt of his head and foists himself off the bed.
As Joel stumbles into his ensuite, he calls over his shoulder, “Put your plug back in. Wanna fuck you while my come is still stuffed up your cute little ass. See me drippin’ outta both your holes at the same time.”
The brazenness of his words has your cheeks growing hot. After making quick work of his order, an easy feat given how much wider your hole is now, you grab his discarded phone. You pull open the first video from tonight and settle into the pillows. Your fingers wend their way down to your still-glistening cunt as you watch, captivated by your own personal porn.
You take in the way he fucks you, the way he talks to you, the way he pushes you to your limits. Mulling over how he had you coming without touching your clit and entering subspace for the first time ever, and you can’t help but think…
You are thoroughly, catastrophically fucked.
Next Part
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Almost everybody has at least a *little* bit of a point.
Yeah. Even them. And being wrong about everything else doesn't actually change that. They might not know how that point should actually be interpreted, they might come to foolish or even actively harmful conclusions from that point. They might radically overstate how prevalent or important the point is. But don't fall into the trap of refusing to acknowledge things that are true just because a bad person says them.
I cannot tell you how many times I've seen someone from a group I belong to dunking on someone from some outgroup, even a very harmful outgroup, and in doing so, denying basically true things that we would absolutely agree with if we were talking about them in private.
I dunno. Maybe it bugs me for neurodivergent reasons. Maybe I'm a pedantic ass.
The other day I got into a massive fight online with a guy in a feminist group because he was squabbling with a bit of a dipshit who pointed out that men are under a lot of pressure to become financially successful, and that's why they do stupid shit like get into crypto.
And like... rather than say "yeah, men are still expected under hegemonic masculinity to be breadwinners, despite the advances of women into the workforce, the economy being in shambles and the middle class having been whittled to a toothpick at this point. We need to work as feminists to challenge that gendered expectation, and as leftists to rebuild the power of labour to allow everyone, both men and women, to have a living wage that can allow for a family and a dignified life." This other feminist guy decided instead that, since the concept of men being pressured to be economic providers was being used in a way that sounded like it was suggesting that women only want to date rich men, it was redpill propaganda and, therefore, fascist misinformation. He went with, "what are you talking about, Gen X killed the concept of corporate success as marker of personal worth, everyone agrees that being a workaholic is bad and unattractive now. The idea that you think you'll be judged for being poor is a lie spread by the right to radicalize you into hating women." He did not react well when I pointed out that he was just as wrong as the other guy was. More wrong, actually.
And like...you can build multiple arguments from the same data point. Some are well reasoned, some aren't. Someone can feel pressure and assume it's much more widespread than it is, or that it takes a much more extreme form than it really does. But if you're going to coherently argue against an idea, you have to honestly appraise the situation and figure out what grains of truth it has in it. You have to acknowledge that core root of truth and show them how it means something else.
If, instead of doing that, you just deny the true thing because the other person's argument is built on it and you want to stamp it out? Because, hey, they interpreted it wrong, it's not like they really believe something true? You act as though a fact used to support a lie is also a lie. And if you do that, and argue against the facts because their conclusions are stupid, you construct a little world where, in refusing to accept both their flawed argument AND the fact it's based on, you become more wrong than they are. And you make the deeply foolish choice of picking a fight in that world. And if it's on the internet, that little world can become pretty big. Tactically, it's about the dumbest thing you could do. It ensures that they will keep fighting you because...you're fucking obviously wrong? It radicalizes people, because suddenly the only people who will acknowledge the truth on this thing they care about are other terrible people. It makes your side look dogmatic and ignorant. And apart from all of that...it gets things completely backwards.
Your principles are what you want to use to change the world for the better. You believe them because you honestly believe that following your principles improves things, because they are based on a solid grasp of how the world works. Your beliefs follow from what is true. If you flip it so that whether something is true is based on whether it supports your beliefs...that's a bad road to go down.
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delloso de la rue is such an interesting character to me but I don’t think it’s for any of the reasons that the rest of the fandom likes rue for. oscar played them in such a metatextual way and it’s like, does he know? does he know how complicated and selfish and thoroughly flawed character he ended up creating? ruehob is so... fascinating to me and it’s not because I like the romance of it. there’s just such a twisted rotting core to it when you compare it to chirp & her wife, or even binx & andhera (and it’s FANTASTIC. I wish people didn’t shy away from how truly miserable ruehob is because that’s what I’m into)
it's like. you are delloso de la rue. you are an owlbear, under a spell of glamour. you have chosen to serve the court of wonder and at heart, you are a romantic. this year, you are planning what they say will be the very last bloom, and you are drowning in the narrative perfection of it.
you do not like the court of wonder. you do not like the duty you hold. you do not like that you are in this pretty, lithe form you have chosen for yourself. but here are things you do like: love, romance, and EXCITEMENT. you meet two lords of the wing and you want to bear witness to love matches so badly that you make a wager for it. you want this to be the last, best bloom. you want this so ardently and selfishly that you are willing to fall for the first person you see who will fit this narrative (star crossed monsters in courts that don't accept them, what could be more perfect?) while ignoring everything you already have - because it's not enough for you.
you say want love but you HAVE love. you say you want acceptance - but you could have that, too. you don't want love, you want the CONCEPT of love - the kind that people read storybooks about, that little owlbears dream of at night. you want romance. you want to be swept off your feet. you don't want acceptance, because acceptance and love is duty and you are beginning to hate the concept of duty. acceptance is (as hard as a knight pledging themselves to a different court for the sake of someone they love) as easy as realizing that of all the forms that the fae can take an owlbear is nowhere NEAR the most monstrous. the queen of air and darkness isn't even corporeal, half the courtiers of hoof and claw are feral beasts - but that realization is not grand enough for you.
you meet hob and you hold his paws in yours and you tell him (with tears in your eyes, so they sparkle better in the moonlight) that you feel - not alone - for the first time in your life (because it's something someone in a sweeping romance would say) and you (forget wuvvy, who followed you from her own court and accepted everything of who you were and repackaged herself smaller, neater, tidier like you, because that's what you wanted in the court of wonder) tell him that no one will ever use him again (while you use him to satisfy that hungry selfish hole in yourself that demands not LOVE but ROMANCE) because you love (what he represents, could represent for the grand romance of the sweeping fairytale you imagine your life could be if only someone loved you) him.
#a court of fey and flowers#delloso de la rue#wuvvy#ruehob#acofaf#sorry I have like. so many feelings about this#and meanwhile chirp and her wife and binx and andhera are like.#they love and it's not beautiful it's not picturesque but it is real and true#like actually I don't hate ruehob I just wish people realized it's uhmmm Fucked up lol#can we all make a pact to get into howfucked up they are like if someone told me they were toxic I'd be into it#but no ppl treat it as such a perfect romance and it's like. Divorce be upon ye#repackaged from a convo I had with fiovske#i looove your wuvvy art
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I basically only post and read posts in my bubble aside from occasionally scrolling through Real Tumblr, but people’s takes about US politics on this website are fucking unbelievable. They talk about our government as if it didn’t save us from a pandemic-induced financial collapse, pump trillions of dollars into public works, not to mention substantially invest and rein in pharmaceuticals, and is instead some sort of ultra-neoliberal-corporate kitty shooting machine.
Like let’s be for real. Do they…know what the government does? How it works? Do you know what a conservative is? Do you know what an authoritarian is?
Because a system of government whose citizens are all lucky it has had continuous peaceful transfer of power for centuries could very well have its greatest norm violated—that those who reject its legitimacy must be rejected—and we don’t blink an eye.
Because the first major investment against climate change, coupled with life saving investments into healthcare, cancer research, and drug costs could be shredded by indiscriminate fiscal conservatives who don’t care if we die in forest fires, cancer from pollution, lose insurance because we’re jobless, or, apparently, all die in a fricking plague.
Because a foreign policy establishment that had finally reversed two decades of foreign intervention in favor of a normalization strategy aimed at reducing American foot presence, drone strikes, and indiscriminate killings is about to be replaced by the whims of a man who dropped the “mother of all bombs” on the Middle East, gave American soldiers up to Russian bounty hunters, extorted a foreign leader for political favors and arguably indirectedly resulted in that country being BRUTALLY INVADED BY AN IMPERIAL NEIGHBOR, is in the pockets of CCP-funded billionaires, and WANTS TO “FINISH THE JOB” IN GAZA.
Because a President who is against family separations and promotes a path for DREAMERs and more legal immigration and rights for unodcumented people could be replaced by a man who wants to separate families, PUT UNDOCUMENTED PEOPLE IN CONCENTRATION CAMPS, RESTRICT EVEN LEGAL IMMIGRATION, ESPECIALLY THAT OF MUSLIMS, AND SHOOT MIGRANTS.
Because a President who stopped a repeat of the Great Recession and the painful decade that followed it with strong fiscal stimulus which CUT CHILD POVERTY IN HALF BEFORE CONSERVATIVES MADE IT EXPIRE, then managed to cut deficits and presided over a decline in inflation, resulting in record high real wages (aka taking into account inflation) for workers is going to be replaced by a President who wants to TARIFF ALL FOREIGN GOODS by 15%, CUT TAXES FOR THE FILTHY RICH AND THE TAX ENFORCEMENT TO STOP THEM, INCREASE CHILD POVERTY AND UNINSUREDNESS by cutting gov’t programs, and HURT UNIONS which by every measure will lead to lower wages, higher prices, and more poverty and starvation.
Because a President who has pledged to sign a bill codifying Roe v. Wade (which has yet to be possible in recent memory, whatever these kids say), who enshrined the right to marry someone of the same sex or different race, who supports the Equality Act which would enshrine LGBTQ protections into the law, could be replaced by THE MAN WHO REMOVED AMERICA’S RIGHT TO ABORTION, whose Christian nationalist supporters want to END SEXUAL FREEDOM as we know it including TARGETING IVF AND BIRTH CONTROL, who wants to reverse LGBTQ discrimination law in favor of Christian bigots who hate queer and trans people, and who demonizes that community to win political support.
Ask yourself if you really think there’s no difference between the two. Ask yourself if a reasonable person given these facts would choose the latter. Ask yourself why you see so much propagandizing against the reasonable choice. Ask yourself why so many people seem to have opinions on this when they “don’t even go here”.
Maybe I’m just preaching to the choir here. Maybe people who say this inane stuff wouldn’t vote anyways. Maybe somehow we’re screwed anyways. Maybe people will stupidly vote third party and we’re fucked. Maybe this will get me attacked.
I don’t care anymore. If I have to see one more fucking post acting like we live under the fucking Evil Empire while a SELF PROCLAIMED DICTATOR is about to end the best streak of decent governance I’ve ever seen in a while, I just can’t anymore.
#us politics#abortion rights#abortion#biden#trump#joe biden#election 2024#climate change#climate crisis#gaza#palestine#israel#middle east#christian nationalism#lgbtq#trans rights#poverty#economy#economics#politics#healthcare#human rights#immigration#misinformation#disinformation#donald trump#american
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I understand how important it is to be able to criticize the President, and am not at all of the belief he should be beyond critique, but the critiquing of Biden makes me so nervous. (That's not to say I agree with every decision he's made - I absolutely do not). But I feel like people see things he's done wrong and decide they won't vote for him because of it. I'm not sure if enough people have the ability to see that he's done things wrong but also is our only hope of staving off literal fascism.
So many people talk about how sick they are of it constantly being a lesser of two evils situation, constantly having to vote for a candidate they hate because the other side is worse (I heard it in 2020, 2022, etc), and I guess I just- I don't really get it? We're here because they didn't do that in 2016. All of this could've been avoided had the result been different then. I just feel like people don't comprehend how different of a place we'd be in if Hillary won and engage in all this cognitive dissonance to make themselves feel better about being part of the reason she didn't.
Like.... this has been a long-running topic of discussion on my blog, not least because it is so inexplicable and maddening. It also shows how terribly shallow most people's understanding of the American political process is, and how toxic the "I can only vote for a candidate if every single personal belief/position of theirs matches mine" belief is, as well as how much damage it has done to American democracy even (and indeed, especially) by people who technically don't identify as right-wing. Yell at Republicans all you like (God knows I do, because they're the worst people on earth) but they vote. Every time. Every election. Every candidate. Whereas the Democratic electorate still holds out for Mister Perfect, and it very definitely is Mister Perfect. The amount of "evil HRC!!!" Republican-poisoned Kool-Aid that so-called progressives drank in 2016, and then afterward when they insisted they could have voted for someone like Elizabeth Warren and then didn't do that in 2020, is... baffing.
Frankly, I don't care if Hillary Clinton's personal positions on XYZ issue were the most Neoliberal Corporate Centrist Shill to Ever Shill (and Online Leftists' intellectual skills being what they are, I seriously doubt that they were using any of those words correctly and/or accurately). American policy is not made by "personal dictate of the ruler," or at least it shouldn't be, because we are not an absolute monarchy. We rely on the operation of a system with input from many people. As such, if Hillary had been elected, we would have 2-3 new liberal justices on SCOTUS and have secured civil and environmental rights for the next generation. Roe would be intact, and all the other terrible rulings that SCOTUS has recently handed down wouldn't have happened. We wouldn't have had January 6th, the attempt to stage a coup, all the tawdry scandals, our national security being at risk because of Trump stealing classified documents and probably selling them to Russia and/or Saudi Arabia, etc etc. If you think that's in any way an equivalent amount of evil to what would have happened if Hillary was elected, or if she was "still evil!!!," then I honestly don't know what to tell you. She could fucking murder puppies in her spare time if she had preserved SCOTUS for us, WHICH SHE WOULD HAVE, BECAUSE SHE WARNED US EXACTLY WHAT WAS GOING TO HAPPEN.
(Hoo. Sorry. Still steamed. 2016 war flashbacks, again.)
In short, Hillary would have been a solid continuity Democrat and she would have signed whatever legislation a Democratic House and Senate passed, not to mention been hugely inspiring as the first female president. But because it's so important to the Online Leftists' moral sense of themselves that BOTH PARTIES ARE THE SAME!!!, they can't possibly acknowledge that ever being a factor, and/or admit that they have any culpability in not voting for her in 2016. It's like when you read the British press about any of the UK's equally numerous problems, and they BEND OVER BACKWARD to avoid mentioning that Brexit might be a factor. They just can't mention it, because then that means they might have made the wrong choice in pulling for it as hard as they did, and blah blah Sovereignty.
Basically, if HRC had been elected president, everything would be so much less terrible and terrifying all the time, we would be talking about her successor in 2024 as someone else who could be the "first," we could explore handing the reins over to Kamala as a Black/Asian woman, we could promote Buttigieg as the first gay president, etc etc. But because 2016 was so catastrophically fucked up, we are in damage control mode for the immediate future and every election is just as pivotal. And yet, because people think that the only thing that matters is a presidential candidate's personal views, we're stuck having the same old arguments and desperately begging people over and over to please vote against fascism, since that somehow isn't self-evident enough on its own. Yikes on Bikes.
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An interoperability rule for your money
This is the final weekend to back the Kickstarter campaign for the audiobook of my next novel, The Lost Cause. These kickstarters are how I pay my bills, which lets me publish my free essays nearly every day. If you enjoy my work, please consider backing!
"If you don't like it, why don't you take your business elsewhere?" It's the motto of the corporate apologist, someone so Hayek-pilled that they see every purchase as a ballot cast in the only election that matters – the one where you vote with your wallet.
Voting with your wallet is a pretty undignified way to go through life. For one thing, the people with the thickest wallets get the most votes, and for another, no matter who you vote for in that election, the Monopoly Party always wins, because that's the part of the thick-wallet set.
Contrary to the just-so fantasies of Milton-Friedman-poisoned bootlickers, there are plenty of reasons that one might stick with a business that one dislikes – even one that actively harms you.
The biggest reason for staying with a bad company is if they've figured out a way to punish you for leaving. Businesses are keenly attuned to ways to impose switching costs on disloyal customers. "Switching costs" are all the things you have to give up when you take your business elsewhere.
Businesses love high switching costs – think of your gym forcing you to pay to cancel your subscription or Apple turning off your groupchat checkmark when you switch to Android. The more it costs you to move to a rival vendor, the worse your existing vendor can treat you without worrying about losing your business.
Capitalists genuinely hate capitalism. As the FBI informant Peter Thiel says, "competition is for losers." The ideal 21st century "market" is something like Amazon, a platform that gets 45-51 cents out of every dollar earned by its sellers. Sure, those sellers all compete with one another, but no matter who wins, Amazon gets a cut:
https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/28/cloudalists/#cloud-capital
Think of how Facebook keeps users glued to its platform by making the price of leaving cutting of contact with your friends, family, communities and customers. Facebook tells its customers – advertisers – that people who hate the platform stick around because Facebook is so good at manipulating its users (this is a good sales pitch for a company that sells ads!). But there's a far simpler explanation for peoples' continued willingness to let Mark Zuckerberg spy on them: they hate Zuck, but they love their friends, so they stay:
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/08/facebooks-secret-war-switching-costs
One of the most important ways that regulators can help the public is by reducing switching costs. The easier it is for you to leave a company, the more likely it is they'll treat you well, and if they don't, you can walk away from them. That's just what the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau wants to do with its new Personal Financial Data Rights rule:
https://www.consumerfinance.gov/about-us/newsroom/cfpb-proposes-rule-to-jumpstart-competition-and-accelerate-shift-to-open-banking/
The new rule is aimed at banks, some of the rottenest businesses around. Remember when Wells Fargo ripped off millions of its customers by ordering its tellers to open fake accounts in their name, firing and blacklisting tellers who refused to break the law?
https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2016/10/07/497084491/episode-728-the-wells-fargo-hustle
While there are alternatives to banks – local credit unions are great – a lot of us end up with a bank by default and then struggle to switch, even though the banks give us progressively worse service, collectively rip us off for billions in junk fees, and even defraud us. But because the banks keep our data locked up, it can be hard to shop for better alternatives. And if we do go elsewhere, we're stuck with hours of tedious clerical work to replicate all our account data, payees, digital wallets, etc.
That's where the new CFPB order comes in: the Bureau will force banks to "share data at the person’s direction with other companies offering better products." So if you tell your bank to give your data to a competitor – or a comparison shopping site – it will have to do so…or else.
Banks often claim that they block account migration and comparison shopping sites because they want to protect their customers from ripoff artists. There are certainly plenty of ripoff artists (notwithstanding that some of them run banks). But banks have an irreconcilable conflict of interest here: they might want to stop (other) con-artists from robbing you, but they also want to make leaving as painful as possible.
Instead of letting shareholder-accountable bank execs in back rooms decide what the people you share your financial data are allowed to do with it, the CFPB is shouldering that responsibility, shifting those deliberations to the public activities of a democratically accountable agency. Under the new rule, the businesses you connect to your account data will be "prohibited from misusing or wrongfully monetizing the sensitive personal financial data."
This is an approach that my EFF colleague Bennett Cyphers and I first laid our in our 2021 paper, "Privacy Without Monopoly," where we describe how and why we should shift determinations about who is and isn't allowed to get your data from giant, monopolistic tech companies to democratic institutions, based on privacy law, not corporate whim:
https://www.eff.org/wp/interoperability-and-privacy
The new CFPB rule is aimed squarely at reducing switching costs. As CFPB Director Rohit Chopra says, "Today, we are proposing a rule to give consumers the power to walk away from bad service and choose the financial institutions that offer the best products and prices."
The rule bans banks from charging their customers junk fees to access their data, and bans businesses you give that data to from "collecting, using, or retaining data to advance their own commercial interests through actions like targeted or behavioral advertising." It also guarantees you the unrestricted right to revoke access to your data.
The rule is intended to replace the current state-of-the-art for data sharing, which is giving your banking password to third parties who go and scrape that data on your behalf. This is a tactic that comparison sites and financial dashboards have used since 2006, when Mint pioneered it:
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/12/mint-late-stage-adversarial-interoperability-demonstrates-what-we-had-and-what-we
A lot's happened since 2006. It's past time for American bank customers to have the right to access and share their data, so they can leave rotten banks and go to better ones.
The new rule is made possible by Section 1033 of the Consumer Financial Protection Act, which was passed in 2010. Chopra is one of the many Biden administrative appointees who have acquainted themselves with all the powers they already have, and then used those powers to help the American people:
https://pluralistic.net/2022/10/18/administrative-competence/#i-know-stuff
It's pretty wild that the first digital interoperability mandate is going to come from the CFPB, but it's also really cool. As Tim Wu demonstrated in 2021 when he wrote Biden's Executive Order on Promoting Competition in the American Economy, the administrative agencies have sweeping, grossly underutilized powers that can make a huge difference to everyday Americans' lives:
https://www.eff.org/de/deeplinks/2021/08/party-its-1979-og-antitrust-back-baby
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/2023/10/21/let-my-dollars-go/#personal-financial-data-rights
My next novel is The Lost Cause, a hopeful novel of the climate emergency. Amazon won't sell the audiobook, so I made my own and I'm pre-selling it on Kickstarter!
Image:
Steve Morgan (modified)
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:U.S._National_Bank_Building_-_Portland,_Oregon.jpg
Stefan Kühn (modified)
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Abrissbirne.jpg
CC BY-SA 3.0
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/deed.en
-
Rhys A. (modified)
https://www.flickr.com/photos/rhysasplundh/5201859761/in/photostream/
CC BY 2.0
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/
#pluralistic#cfpb#interoperability mandates#mint#scraping#apis#privacy#privacy without monopoly#consumer finance protection bureau#Personal Financial Data Rights#interop#data hoarding#junk fees#switching costs#section 1033#interoperability
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Hullo, I am so sorry if this ask is a weird one but. You are in the fandom for a long time, and I need to know, is it me or is the ACD SH fandom *not* insane?? Everywhere else where I've been, I see people turning on each other, fighting over characters and the morality of liking them and not liking them, telling people to go kill themselves and here. I have been in this corner of Tumblr for a few months now, and everybody seems normal? Am I just not deep enough yet to sew the drama, or is this really just a place where people hang out to enjoy something together??? Are we just too old of a fandom to do this?
(feel free not to answer if this is too weird or anything)
Sorry my reply got really long. I've broken it up with memes in the hope that it makes it more readable.
I've been in the fandom for a few years now, and I don't have much to compare against because I've generally avoided fandom spaces because they seem pretty intense (and I've not had a piece of media grab me quite like this before) but yeah it seems pretty chill?
I think there are lots of possible reasons why.
It might be that the fandom skews a little older, with lots of people who have enough life experience to know how to de-escalate tension when they encounter it, and when to walk away from the keyboard.
It might be that there's a century-old understanding that we're all playing a silly tongue-in-cheek game with characters from magazine stories that were never supposed to be analysed this way. Remember the term "canon" as used in fandom circles was invented by Sherlock Holmes fans (specifically my boy Ronald Knox) as a joke, a deliberate cute misapplication of a term used for discussing the Bible to something frivolous. Not taking yourself too seriously is very baked into Sherlockian culture.
I sometimes get glimpses from other fandoms of this puritanical attitude that to like or not like a character or a piece of work is somehow a moral act, and I find that... bewildering. A bit scary. To be a fan of Sherlock Holmes is inherently to love something dearly which also contains things which should be hated: racism, sexism, imperialism. I think that fans tend to be people well used to approaching literature with the level of nuance required to process that dichotomy. To acknowledge it rather than hide from it.
It might also be because it's public domain. A big blockbuster movie or pastiche by a celebrated writer is precisely as legitimate as every fanfic on Ao3. Or the CGI movie where they're gnomes. Or a slightly wonky point and click game someone is obsessively making in their spare time (...coughcougheveryonewishlist 'The Beekeepers' Picnic' onsteam) Sherlock Holmes belongs to everyone equally regardless of how much money and power they have, which is why I love it.
Like, I love him as a character, I love the Victoriana, I love the mysteries, but the #1 reason I've gone gaga over Sherlock Holmes these past few years is the joy of loving a thing which isn't controlled by a corporation and which does not exist to make money (anymore).
I'm not saying there's zero drama because I think when you get a bunch of people passionate about something there will always be a little drama. I'll see things like the jostling of people who are very protective of asexual readings of Holmes and people who are very protective of gay readings of Holmes, things like that. Feelings can run high when personal identity is involved. But I've never seen anything got too vicious.
Errrr yeah idk if you wanted an essay as a response but you got one!
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