#and they picked that design of all things to make a statue out of ://///

[nenoname]

ford's canon appearances in season 1

[trainsinanime]

I wonder: Do Americans know about american school buses? Not their existence in general, but how they're seen overseas.

Over here, they're one of the symbols of America, on par with the Statue of Liberty, the flag, the Eagle, and well ahead of any chain restaurant you can name. People won't know any US states, but they will know these vehicles.

The thing is, here in Germany, we don't have dedicated school buses. The general idea is that kids go to school on their own. When that's not practical, they're expected to use (and given free tickets for) public transit. Public transit is designed around this requirement; there are many places where there is a bus, and anyone can get on it, but the route and timetable really only makes sense for school children. In case a dedicated school bus is really needed, that's generally subcontracted out, and the lines either use something like a Sprinter Van for smaller routes, or a normal city or interurban bus (often a used one that's a bit older). School trips are normal public transit, or a rented bus, typically a coach or regional bus.

It's not a perfect system, in the past couple of years there's been an epidemic of people bringing their kids to school in their cars instead of letting them walk, which is less than ideal. It is what it is. But building a dedicated network of public transit lines only for students, and building dedicated vehicles only for that, has never occurred to anyone here.

Of course we know about these buses, from movies and such, but they're as foreign here as cacti or pick-up trucks (actually we're seeing more and more of these here) or yellow cabs (all europeans will assume all cabs in the US are yellow until they actually visit).

You do see these buses here at times, because people still generally like the idea of the US, even if they have a lot of issues with a lot of details, and so folks bring them over, along with stretch limos and stuff (also not really a thing here). And of course, if someone goes to all that trouble, they don't do it to haul school kids, they rent it out for city tours or as a party bus or whatever.

So you see these yellow things as a symbol of faraway places, scenic vistas, some vague undefined idea of freedom that doesn't necessarily hold up to any contact with reality, and it's just a huge part of the whole US aesthetic.

And then you go to a student exchange with the US, and you finally get the chance: You yourself get to ride in one of these iconic chrome yellow buses! It looks just like in the movies! You get in, you drive in them a little…

…and you realise they're shit. Just the worst buses in the western world. Terrible suspension. Uncomfortable seats with weirdly high backs (so they don't have to put seatbelts in, they just restrict how far kids can fly in an accident). Everything made out of the cheapest materials. Turns out the reason why the US uses school buses like that instead of normal modern city buses, which the US has, is to save money and because they just hate kids.

And then it hits you why US Americans say "as American as apple pie", a dish that is made and enjoyed literally anywhere in the world, instead of "as American as yellow school buses". Of course the Americans already knew all this. They got tortured by these things forever. It would never occur to them to see this as a symbol of America, it's just a normal part of life for them. It's a symbol of school and school life and sometimes normalcy, and tells us that these actors getting out of it are supposed to be teenagers, nothing more.

But most people in Europe have, of course, never ridden on these buses. So when they see them in movies and TV, that's a giant big yellow signifier that we're not in Hessen or Wallonia or wherever anymore. A symbol of a different world, one that may be at most a once-in-a-lifetime-experience for most people, just like a picture of a tropical beach, Mayan Pyramids, the Great Wall of China, or Hildesheim (there's no reason to go there twice). And I think Americans don't know that, and that's fascinating.

[dailymothanon]

I was watching a lot of Prime Soundwave clips lately, namely the ones where he uses his data cables, and the thing that stands out to me the most is how they’re So incredibly snake-like, even in sound design! The best instance was the scene where he was rescuing Laserbeak and turned back to pick up a piece he missed, and the pure silence of the scene with only the eerie wind and the near silent hissing/slithering noises of the cables (especially the way they moved) was just super snake-like that I figured it’d be very cool if in a human setting he’d have snakes for his cables! Do all the decepticons get jump scared when they notice the little snakes? Maybe (yes but I doubt Shockwave did), but Soundwave never pays them any mind. Maybe he could secretly record all the reactions for himself and makes little compilations. (Starscream will hate to ever admit how startled he got) I also think Prime Soundwave’s former higher status before he stepped down, he probably has quite the good fits still

Also just the line art/sketch here cuz I really cooked I think. Maybe Predaking would love the snakes

[yakutarts]

Nightmare and Dream but feral, non-skeletal body!

For the love of god PLEASE click on the image for better quality + close ups and clothed version under the cut!!

Would you kiss them?

Video process:

I made these using a specific context

A while ages ago I drew and posted a drawing of Nightmare and Dream on their light ball form but with some alterations/personal headcanons.

On the post, I expressed my desire to draw the twins in a universe were Nim didn’t need to give them bodies, and just let them grow naturally. And specifically give them an animalistic appearance, instead of a humanoid one like most artist do.

You can see on the process video that it took me 1000 sketches to make something that looked good and I was happy with, the video is obviously sped up, the total time it took me to make this was 28 hours and 15 minutes.

Now explaining some things:

Why are they so big?

I read on a post made by Joku that Nim, before giving them skeleton bodies, tried to make them human ones, but the pure amount of magic and power the twins had made the human bodies explode or some shit. So she picked skeletons since the magic could flow freely through the bones without being confined by muscle and flesh. That made me think if their power had physical forms, it would be gigantic. So I gave them gigantic forms to better represent their status of strength and power, beings made from raw magic to serve as guardians of all emotions throughout the multiverse, of course I needed to make them big and intimidating!

Why the horns?

Artistic design choice, I gave them little horns and a chubby tail in their light ball form to purposefully make them more animalistic, wanted to keep it while making these. Also just giving them a smooth head with nothing much going on looked weird and boring.

Why the draconian look?

Dragons had been created and depicted as symbols of pure power above humanity and worshipped as deities throughout several cultures around the world, different depictions of dragons has been one of the only things present among almost all cultures, like a default folklore creature. While I tried to incorporate other mythical creatures in the design, the draconic body plan felt more right due to the influence of dragons on human beliefs, and their representation as magical and powerful beings beyond human comprehension. Plus I just really love drawing dragons.

Why the clothing choice? Also why is Dream half naked while Nightmare has everything covered?

While designing the clothes for Nightmare, I used as reference clothing that usually royalty would wear, Nightmare has a really big ego and sees himself as a king, so he uses fancy, expensive clothing and jewelry, adapted and designed for his anatomy. Not practical for battle, but his corruption can go through the fabric without damaging it, and most people and monsters just run when they see him, so he doesn’t worry about it getting dirty or tearing, Nightmare just expects every soul to instantly submit when they see him, so he never worries about getting into a battle and getting dirty he has that big of an ego.

Dream is the opposite, his style of clothing much more practical for running, jumping, flying, fighting and general exercise. He has 4 bags in total, 2 on each side, inside them he keeps several items, be it healing food, magical artifacts, first aid kit, gifts he receives, stuff he buys or random things he finds and wants to take home with him. Dream’s crown is now a colar couldn’t figure out how to make it work with the head shape and horns, his cape is from his official design, but changed to white, was planning to make it yellow but when I looked at it my eyes hurt because there was too much yellow everywhere. I made Dream’s clothes with the intent to match his official design, I didn’t to the same for nightmare because a turtle neck with a hoodie on a dragon would make him more huggable than intimidating. Plus I like to think that the leg warmers was a gift from Blue, and the ring on his horn a gift from Ink. Didn’t add more stuff on him because I couldn’t think of something that would look good and match Dream’s vibe, the rest of his clothes on his official design didn’t translate well here. Oh, while I was drawing this, I drew the colar and the leg warmers first, without the cape, Dream looked like a twink with a pet play kink.

Side note; neither Nightmare or Dream see the use of clothes as a necessity or as decency. For them clothes are nothing but pure decoration and to show off status for Nightmare, they can wear full body suits, partial clothing, just jewelry, or nothing at all, which is what they usually go for when at home, wearing or not wearing stuff doesn’t make that much of a difference to them at all.

Do they act as animals or do they have human intelligence?

Despite me using the word “feral” all the time to describe them, they do not actually act as animals. I’m only using “feral” to describe their body/anatomy, Nightmare and Dream are fully sentient and have human level intelligence/awareness. They are capable of speech and have opposable thumbs on their front paws, they can grab, write, hold… do anything a human can do with their hands with dexterity. But they do have to use only hand one at a time, and balance themselves with the other. To use both hands, they have to be sitting, or be supported by something, they can balance themselves on their wings if they have to.

And now contradicting what I just said, they have some animalistic behaviors. The twins can growl, purr and roar. Despite Nightmare being able to use his tentacles and Dream being able to shoot magic arrows out of his wings, they to also scratch and bite while fighting. Since they are big and heavy, they can easily crush bone under their weight and their bite force is strong enough to split someone in half. If you need a reference, just use Smaug from The Hobbit, he has more or less the balance of animal behavior and human intelligence I’m looking for.

Expanding more on this, the twins stretch just like felines, and often sleep in positions usually cats sleep in (they don’t actually need to sleep but do anyway). Dream likes to go fishing, and by fishing I mean jumping in a lake and chasing the fish underwater. He finds it more fun than sitting around and waiting for the fish to come to you instead.

I guess you count their lack of necessity to wear clothes as animal logic too?

_________________

If you have any more questions about them, I will be happy to answer!

And yes, I do plan on making more drawings of Nightmare and Dream on this form!

Dreamtale belongs to @jokublog

Feral concept/design by @yakutarts (me)

[hoolaand]

Things Charles does whenever he's with you

💌: charles leclerc x reader

Little touches. Specially when he's with you. Maybe a lower hand on your back guiding you through the busy paddock or one hand on your thigh whenever he's driving. If not that, then it's certain to find him intertwining his hands with yours. Oh and caressing, it's a big part that he enjoys doing. Just the flicker and sensation of your hands caressing and touching his ones relaxes him, he doesn't know why. And he likes doing it back to you. It might be small, but those touches are never insignificant. Those are reminders for him to push farther and do better to make her proud.

Bracing you. Might sound weird at first but a mutual friend was the first first one to point it out to you. When you accidentally knocked over your spoon and bent to pick it up while sitting on the dining table, his eyes narrowed noticing your every single movement in a flash as if he was always watching you. His hands, acting on pure instinct, covered the cornered part of the table so when you picked up the spoon, your shoulder didn't hit the edge. You laughed at first, saying how sweet it was and maybe it was something he did because he noticed it at the moment, probably not a habit because you'd have to be pretty damn fast for that. And maybe that's what how he was because the next time you tried that, his hand indeed covered the edge again.

Small looks. Charles had a habit of making expressions, small expressions. A side eye when someone kept hovering to ask for an autograph during a private moment, a look of panic when the his PR manager could call or a pout when he saw Leo curling on your lap. Charles couldn't help it around you, it was like he had to let you know how he felt. Those little twitches in his eyebrow and smirks made you giggle every now and then.

Hand finding yours. A very obvious one and a fact probably everyone in his fanbase knew. Whatever pictures you both appeared in, maybe a midnight stroll, a walk after a date or sunbathing on his yacht, one thing was constant and that was holding hands. It was something he loved to do- feel your soft hands against his ones. Someone approaching you both? He'd grab your hands. After winning a grand prix, he'd grab your hands and kiss you on live tv. No matter what it was, in almost all the clips available between you both, holding hands was a must. There was even a little joke that Fred made in the Drive to Survive season saying that Charles would give up his formula 1 career if it meant he could superglue this hands to yours and everyone in the studio agreed.

Gifts. A lot of gifts. Some of them were luxurious, things from brands that were so top notch that you never even heard their name. Custom made jewellery, embroided dresses, designer bags and shoes that were still not yet in the market. But some days, he'd come home with something small. Something simple. Something intimate. A little cat doll no bigger than the size of his thumb with a pink bow on its neck, saying it reminded him of you. A ring that an old grandma sold him promising him that it would keep you healthy forever. A statue of a two cats laying on top of each other, with him quoting 'Us.'

Yapping. A big session of yapping was expected with this man. But always with a big smile. He's frustrated about the shitty Ferrari strategy? hold up, he has to call his pretty girlfriend back home and tell her about it for the next 3 hours. He prefers video calls whenever he's away and sometimes listens to the little voice memos he records at morning when you're sleepily talking and whining in bed. And whenever he's home, you both are talking and gossiping. It's like you both never run out of topics to talk about. Once he's listening to you rant about your bitchy boss and the next moment you're listening about the latest paddock gossip.

Kisses. Pecks and kisses. That's what he likes. Kissing you on your head, forehead and cheeks are practically a hobby now. He immediately goes on to kiss you whenever he hugs you. Doesn't even give a fuck about PR. Kisses you whenever he wants. Sometimes the kisses range from sweet to loving and most of the time, especially behind closed doors, they become desperate and needy. Was it mentioned about his kink for hickeys? Because this man gives you a hickey whenever he wants. Everytime you both have sex or have a heated make out session, you find yourself decorated with red hickies that even color correctors and concealer can't hide. Hickies not just on your neck, but on your chest and thighs. When you complain to him about it, he says sorry before giving you purple ones that same night.

[noircheols]

⸺ NO ORDINARY LOVE. 𝜗𝜚 ࣪˖ ִ𐙚

an anthology of love stories almost never told.

PREFACE. love has been far from perfect. you thought you would stumble upon prince charming organically. unfortunately, this is a big fat joke in the 21st century. reluctantly, you open the app store and download something you always believed were better off for finding potential enemies or friends with benefits... a dating app. it’s time to give your phone cupid’s bow and see who it hits!

PAIRINGS. svt x reader (seperate)

WARNINGS. suggestive, cursing, varies from fic to fic

SCHEDULE. every monday (i hope.)

TAGLIST. @jjjjeonww @shirebusking @shinwonderful @tokitosun @unlikelysublimekryptonite @wonkierideul @flwrshwa @syluslittlecrows @macapunoz @paradiseoflosers @seokmn @itsclda

open! please feel free to dm/reply/ask

STATUS. ONGOING!

AUTHOR'S NOTE. AAAAA i wanted to write something inspired by hinge's no ordinary love campaign. reading it was so lovely and i wanted to write something alongside the same premises. hinge if ur seeing this please dont sue me </3. THIS IDEA IS NOT MINE AT ALL simply something inspired by it. i hope you all enjoy!! peep the ugly header LMAO graphic design is my least fave thing ever as u can see. happy love month to all the losers (affectionate) who enjoy!! i hope you all find love in the people you adore, the music, food, and most importantly, yourself!!!!

NETWORKS. @kstrucknet

♡ ‎ kisses are always promises ── 𝐂𝐇𝐎𝐈 𝐒𝐄𝐔𝐍𝐆𝐂𝐇𝐄𝐎𝐋

a love story for people who deserve peace of mind and torment themselves for being unable to give others the same.

LIKES : popping boba, working out, my dog kkuma, giving gifts and making them feel special, confidence

DISLIKES : lack of effort, ghosts, fries (got doxxed for this)

♡ ‎ let your habits control you ── 𝐘𝐎𝐎𝐍 𝐉𝐄𝐎𝐍𝐆𝐇𝐀𝐍

a love story for people who want somebody they can be themselves without any qualms, flaws and all.

LIKES : somebody who keeps me on my toes, napping, taking photos of my pet rock, cashmere pajamas

DISLIKES : somebody who monitors my every behaviour, judgemental

♡ ‎ heaven knows i'm miserable now ── 𝐇𝐎𝐍𝐆 𝐉𝐈𝐒𝐎𝐎

a love story for people who are looking for the best in people (and always end up finding the worst).

LIKES : optimism, deer print, sunsets, big smiles, playing guitar, an open heart

DISLIKES : poor manners, gaming, isn't understanding, just don't be a horrible person lol

♡ ‎ swimming fool ── 𝐖𝐄𝐍 𝐉𝐔𝐍𝐇𝐔𝐈

a love story for people looking to dive head first beyond the surface of dating to understand themselves and their partner.

LIKES : exploring new possibilities but having somebody to call home, cat cafes, matcha, hmu huzz 👅👅👅

DISLIKES : misunderstands me and my humour (or chooses to), isn't on the same wavelength

♡ ‎ i don't wanna watch tv anymore ── 𝐊𝐖𝐎𝐍 𝐒𝐎𝐎𝐍𝐘𝐎𝐔𝐍𝐆

a love story for people who are scared to pick up their broken hearts and close themselves off from being hurt again.

LIKES : TIGERS, going to the arcade just for the dance machine, somebody to share fun memories with but also can feel safe with

DISLIKES : spicy food, pent up emotions, lack of ambition

♡ ‎ focus ── 𝐉𝐄𝐎𝐍 𝐖𝐎𝐍𝐖𝐎𝐎

a love story for people who know that seeing is believing, that to be loved is to be seen, and that to believe is to love.

LIKES : hoodies, gaming (league of legends, genshin, valorant), reading, somebody to sit in silence with after a long day

DISLIKES : obnoxious, believes things revolve around them

♡ ‎ chocolate strawberries ── 𝐋𝐄𝐄 𝐉𝐈𝐇𝐎𝐎𝐍

a love story for people who put up walls and are waiting for the right person to knock them down.

LIKES : anime (jujutsu kaisen, naruto, kimi ni todoke), personal space, my personal space being invaded

DISLIKES : my personal space being invaded, physical touch

♡ ‎ keep you close ── 𝐊𝐈𝐌 𝐌𝐈𝐍𝐆𝐘𝐔

a love story for people who know what they want, and knowing what you want makes you lonely.

LIKES : cooking, trying new cuisines and restaraunts, unboxing collectibles, being appreciated

DISLIKES : heights, avoidance, mess

♡ ‎ weather forecast ── 𝐋𝐄𝐄 𝐒𝐄𝐎𝐊𝐌𝐈𝐍

a love story for people who worry about being too much or too little, but never enough.

LIKES : long walks at public parks, cupcake-scented things, visiting the dog shelter, rock music (fun fact i was in a band!!!)

DISLIKES : nothing!!! everybody is awesome and cool in their own way :D

♡ ‎ cloudburst ── 𝐗𝐔 𝐌𝐈𝐍𝐆𝐇𝐀𝐎

a love story for people who don't appreciate what they have.

LIKES : art history, exhibitions, mala xianguo (or any other spicy food)

DISLIKES : being held back, long-term commitments, being deprived of choice, everything

♡ ‎ ‎stuck by the glue ── 𝐁𝐎𝐎 𝐒𝐄𝐔𝐍𝐆𝐊𝐖𝐀𝐍

a love story for people who are chronic people pleasers and give to the point of exhaustion.

LIKES : ballads, family, when somebody is caring and affectionate, tangerine flavoured desserts, iced americano

DISLIKES : making somebody upset, being found annoying, chan

‎ ‎♡ ‎ ‎starshy ── 𝐂𝐇𝐖𝐄 𝐇𝐀𝐍𝐒𝐎𝐋

a love story for people who deserve to be taken seriously.

LIKES : visiting record stores, charli xcx, cloudy days, making personalized spotify playlists for each other

DISLIKES : dismissive, puts me down

‎ ‎♡ ‎ ‎hot n cold ── 𝐋𝐄𝐄 𝐂𝐇𝐀𝐍

a love story for people who make up their mind and change it the next minute.

LIKES : somebody who loves having me around, doing everything together, somebody dynamic

DISLIKES : seungkwan (DNI!!!!)

@noircheols do not copy or translate

[kokonoooi]

Hehehehe, kokonoi x sugar baby head canons? How much would he pay his pretty little baby everytime she cum?🥴🧐

⋆˙⟡ — PAY TO PLAY ¥💲

⟡ headcanons for kokonoi with his sugar baby.

⟡ cw: fem reader. f!masturbation, light degradation, praise.

a/n: a request for my beloved mootie! (who loves to torture me cause she knows how much I adore Koko🥴.) dividers by @bernardsbendystraws and @cafekitsune

Kokonoi would pick his sugar baby from none other else than - the strip club.

Nobody could've used a lil boost in their financial status more than you could have right at the moment you met Koko.

It wasn't the first time you'd seen him in your club, but it was the first time he stayed to watch you dance.

You and you alone.

He was just supposed to be there for a meeting with the club's investors, but he couldn't let a pretty little thing like you out of his sight...

Within the first few weeks of being a sugar baby, your car was paid off, rent paid up for a year, and you might've had a few new designer bags in your closet. Maybe more than a few.

In a month's time, you really didn't need to go to work anymore, and most nights you didn't; you'd be at home, legs splayed wide open while on FaceTime with Koko.

Drooling out of both sets of lips as you held the expensive vibrator to your puffy clit, pretty manicured nails digging deep inside your hole until you make yourself cum and squirt all over your bedsheets.

You and Koko have a 'pay to play' relationship after all: he pays you to cum for him.

A cunning, money genius like Koko does everything with a purpose. Sure, he likes spoiling you with expensive things, paying your bills, paying for your feminine maintenance, etc. but it's even more fun for him when he gets to watch how absolutely drenched your cunt gets for him.

At this point, the Cash App notification sound could just about trigger an orgasm out of you; that's how often Koko was sending you funds.

The amounts would vary, depending on how many times you could make yourself cum, but he was never stingy with them - payments would come through before your fingers even leave your swollen entrance.

"Come on, baby, work those pretty fingers in that cunt for me."

"How bad do you want that new pair of shoes? That diamond necklace? You know it's all yours if you be a good girl and cum for me.."

"A pretty slut like you should be able to cum on command by now, hm?"

"Think I'll up your payment amount because you're so obedient.."

Koko's words always drove you over the edge, toes curling against the covers, the leather car seats, or even the cushioned couch in the corner of his office. Wherever and whenever he wanted you, you'd oblige.

Imagine your surprise when you one day receive a text from Koko that's not a request.

Koko💲:💬'Guess what, darling? I'm the new owner of your former club, so you can go ahead and quit stripping. I'll pay you personally and upfront, long as you keep that pussy wet for me.'

So you did quit. You did everything he asked of you and were rewarded handsomely.

Just wait until he starts fucking your pussy and paying you for every. single. orgasm that he gives you.

⟡ taglist. requests open.

©️kokonoooi. do not repost or plagiarize my works.

[artbyblastweave]

The thing about Aura theory is, I'm glad it's not canon but there's no real mystery about why people find it compelling, right? Because it would dovetail with a lot. Half the point of Amy's character is that being adopted by the Dallons is the familial equivalent of sticking a guy in a very slow trash compactor, and having her spend all her time next to the emotional-manipulation-equivalent of a cracked fuel canister is the perfect power-driven reification of that. This is a kid who's whole deal is that her brain is getting cooked by simplistic, judgmental narratives about good and evil picked up from her family, and over here you've got the perfect golden girl she can never measure up to, with a power literally designed to make everyone around her buy into traditional narratives about superheroes- a power she wound up with because of her own fears of failing to live up to those impossible, unrealistic narratives. And "Oh, I'm immune to your Aura via overexposure" is a very don't-upset-the-status-quo kind of lie for Amy to be telling herself. Altogether, if everyone involved is getting cooked like a hotdog by this thing- it's not thematically necessary but it would be aligned. The main reason not to do it, and the reason I think Wildbow went so far out of his way to shut it down within the text of Ward, is of course the implicit victim-blaming angle, the implication that if only that gosh-durned Victoria hadn't been so trigger happy with that aura of hers we could have avoided all that mess, she was "asking for it". And, fair's fair, a lot of bottom-of-the-barrel fanfic that came out between Worm and Ward worked that angle and it was as obnoxious and bankrupt as it sounds. But of course once you've committed to this plotline to the extent that Worm and Ward did you're kind of cooked on the unfortunate implication front anyway, too little too late

[richarlotte]

Things that are important to leveling up?

Refining your voice. 

Learning how to speak smoothly, clearly, and cohesively regardless of whether you have an accent or not. If you have an accent or choose to pick one up, work on it until you’re comfortable using it and can do so fluently. Your voice is your most powerful tool: knowing how to use it is an advantage not all women have. 

Learning how to introduce yourself. 

If there’s no one to make introductions for you, you have to be willing to make your own. You have to learn how to make a lasting impression using only a few words; you have to know which situations call for different introductions, and you have to free yourself from the fear of using your own name. 

Finding your Rome. 

The saying “When in Rome, do as the Romans do” exists for a reason; you cannot enter a situation you don’t know and act however you want. What I’m suggesting is that you find where your Rome is, find where you fit in best, and work with that situation. Most people stick to their own groups and social circles; focus on joining or creating your own; don’t start off big. 

Keeping your age in mind. 

The #1 thing I’ve noticed at my private university is that not everyone depends upon status symbols to carry them; the girls dating the sons of multi-millionaires aren’t wearing thousands of dollars worth of designer, and most people aren’t flaunting what they have 24/7. Skincare, dental care, haircare, thinness, and subtle procedures are signs of wealth, as is how a woman takes care of herself. Style yourself with your age and situation in mind. 

Figuring out who you have to befriend. 

Something very important I’ve learned from being in Los Angeles is that there is always someone who has the key to all the social events. Meet the person who understands your city’s social scene and befriend them; it will make things much easier in the long run, and you will have access to more. You don’t need to be involved in everything, but you do have to put yourself out there and meet people who are already in the know if you want to have options. 

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Defense (of the internet) (from billionaires) in depth

Picks and Shovels is a new, standalone technothriller starring Marty Hench, my two-fisted, hard-fighting, tech-scam-busting forensic accountant. You can pre-order it on my latest Kickstarter, which features a brilliant audiobook read by Wil Wheaton.

The only way to truly billionaire-proof the internet is to a) abolish billionaires and b) abolish the system that allows people to become billionaires. Short of that, any levees we build will need constant tending, reinforcement, and re-evaluation.

That's normal. No security measure (including billionaire-proofing the internet) is a "set and forget" affair. Any time you want something and someone else wants the opposite, you are stuck in an endless game of attack and defense. The measures that block your adversary today will only work until your adversary changes tactics to circumvent your defenses.

For example, mining all the links on the internet to find non-spam sites worked brilliantly for Google, because until Pagerank, there were zero reasons for spammers to get links to point to their sites. Once Google became the dominant way of finding things on the internet, spammers invented the linkfarm. This principle can be summed up as "Show me a ten-foot wall and I'll show you an eleven-foot ladder."

Security designers address this with something called "defense in depth": that's a series of overlapping defenses that are meant to correct for one another's weaknesses. Your bank might use a password, a 2FA code, and – for extremely high-stakes transactions – a series of biographical questions posed by a human customer service over a telephone line.

I've written extensively about defending a new, good internet from billionaire enshittifiers. For example, in this post, I described how Bluesky could be made enshittification-resistant with the use of "Ulysses Pacts" – self-imposed, binding restrictions on enshittification:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/11/02/ulysses-pact/#tie-yourself-to-a-federated-mast

A classic example of a Ulysses Pact is "throwing away the Oreos when you go on a diet." Now, it doesn't take a lot of work to devise a countermeasure your future, Oreo-craving self can take to defeat this measure: just drive to the grocery store and buy more Oreos. This even works at 2AM, provided you live within driving distance of an all-night grocer.

That doesn't mean you shouldn't throw away those Oreos. Depending on how strong your Oreo craving is, even a little friction can help you resist the temptation to ruin your diet. We often do bad things because of momentary impulses that fade quickly, and simply airgapping the connection between thought and deed works surprisingly well in many instances.

This is why places with fewer guns have fewer suicides of all kinds: there are plenty of ways to kill yourself, but none are quite so quick and reliable as a gun. People in the grips of a suicidal impulse who don't have guns have more chances to let the impulse pass (this is also why gun control leads to fewer all-cause homicides). So just because a measure is imperfect, that doesn't make it worthless.

If you're trying to give up drinking, you throw away all your booze, but you also go to meetings, and you get a sponsor who can help you out with a 2AM phone call. You might even put a breathalyzer on your car's ignition system. None of these are impossible to defeat (you can get an Uber to the liquor store, after all), but they all create friction between the thing you want, and the thing your adversary (your addiction) is trying to get. They strengthen the hand of you as defender of the sober status quo, against the attacker who wants you to relapse.

Critically, all these defensive measures also buy you space and time that you can use to organize and deploy more defenses. Maybe the long Uber ride to the liquor store gives you enough time to think about your actions so you call your sponsor from the parking lot. Defense is useful even when it only slows your adversary, rather than stopping your adversary in their tracks.

Scaling up from personal defense to societal-scale security considerations, it's useful to think of this as a battle with four fronts: code (what is technically im/possible?), law (what is il/legal?), norms (what is socially un/acceptable?) and markets (what is un/profitable?). This framework was first raised a quarter-century ago, in Larry Lessig's Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace:

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Code_And_Other_Laws_of_Cyberspace_Version_2_0.pdf

Lessig laid out these four forces as four angles of attack that challengers to the status quo should plan their strategy around. If you want to liberalize copyright, you can try norms (the "Free Mickey" campaign), laws (the Eldred v. Ashcroft Supreme Court case), code (machine-readable Creative Commons licenses) and markets (open access/free software businesses). Each one of these helps the other – for example, if lots of people believe in copyright reform (norms), more of them will back a Humble Bundle for open access materials (markets), and more lawmakers will be interested in changing copyright statutes (law), and more hackers will see reason to do cool things with CC licenses, like search engines (code).

But the four forces aren't just for attackers seeking to disrupt the status quo – they're just as important for defenders looking to create and sustain a new status quo. Figuring out how to "lock a system open" is very different from figuring out how to "force a system open." But they're both campaigns waged with code, law, norms and markets.

We're living through a key moment in enshittification history. Millions of people have become dissatisfied with legacy social media companies run by despicable, fascism-friendly billionaires like Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg and are ready to leave, despite the costs (losing contact with friends who stay behind). While many of them are moving to group chats and private Discord servers,tens of millions have moved to new social media platforms that advertise (though they don't necessarily deliver) decentralization: Mastodon (and the fediverse) and Bluesky (and the atmosphere).

Decentralization is itself a defensive countermeasure (code). When a service has diffuse power, it's harder for any one person to take it over. Federation adds another defensive layer, because users who don't like the way one server is run can move to another server, with varying degrees of data- and identity-portability. That makes it harder for server owners to squeeze users to make money (markets), and gives them an out if server owners try it anyway.

Federation with decentralization is my favorite anti-enshittification defense. It's powerful as hell. It's the main reason I endorse Free Our Feeds, an effort to (among other things) build more Bluesky servers to decrease the centralization and give users dissatisfied with Bluesky management an alternative:

https://pluralistic.net/2025/01/20/capitalist-unrealism/#praxis

That said, decentralization and federation are not perfect, set-and-forget defenses. Take email – the oldest, most successful federated system of them all. Email is nominally decentralized, but most email traffic goes through a handful of extremely large servers run by a cartel of companies (Google, Apple, Microsoft, and a few ISPs). These companies collude (or, more charitably, coordinate) to block email from non-cartel companies, in the name of fighting spam. This makes running your own mail server so hard that it is nearly impossible (that is, if you care about people actually receiving the email you send them):

https://pluralistic.net/2021/10/10/dead-letters/

What's interesting about enshittified email is that it didn't start with corporate takeover: it started with volunteer-maintained blocklists of untrustworthy servers that most email operators subscribed to, defederating from any server that appeared on the list. These blocklists of bad servers were opaque (often, their maintainers would operate anonymously, citing the threat of retaliation from criminal scammers whose servers appeared on the list). They had little or no appeal process, and few or no objective criteria for inclusion (you could be blocklisted for how your email server was configured, even if no one was using it to send spam). All of this set up the conditions to favor large email servers, and also had the effect of immunizing these large servers from appearing on blocklists. I mean, once three quarters of the internet is on Gmail, no one is going to block email from Gmail, even if a ton of spam is sent using its servers.

The lesson of email doesn't mean email is bad, nor does it mean decentralization and federation are useless. It doesn't even mean that blocklists of bad servers are evil. It just means that federation and decentralization are imperfect and insufficient defenses against enshittification, and that blocklists are useful, but very dangerous. It means that we should strive to keep our systems federated and decentralized, and watch our blocklists very carefully, and not rely on any of this as the only defense against enshittification.

Likewise, both Mastodon and Bluesky are built on free/open code and standards. That means that anyone can fork them, fix them or mod them. What's more, the licenses involved are irrevocable, making them very effective Ulysses Pacts. No one – not a CEO, not a VC investor, not a court or a blackmailer – can order someone to make their GPL code proprietary. The license is perpetual and irrevocable, and that's that.

Free/open licenses are excellent Ulysses Pacts and great code-related defenses against enshittification, but they, too, are imperfect and insufficient. Google, Facebook, Amazon, Apple and Microsoft have all figured out how to enshittify services that are built on free/open code:

https://mako.cc/copyrighteous/libreplanet-2018-keynote

And then there are all the companies that use free/open code and defeat the freedom and openness by simply violating the license, on the grounds that a decentralized, federated development community can't figure out who has standing to sue, and also can't afford to pay for the lawyers to do so:

https://sfconservancy.org/news/2022/may/16/vizio-remand-win/

That's not to say that code-based antienshittification measures are pointless – only to say that they need other measures to backstop them, as defense in depth. Let's talk about law, then. Both Mastodon and Bluesky are governed by legal entities that are, nominally, organized by charters that oblige them to eschew enshittification and be responsive to their users (Bluesky is a B-corp, Mastodon's code is overseen by a US nonprofit).

These structures are very important. I've been a volunteer board member for several co-ops and nonprofits (I was even once a volunteer for a nonprofit co-op!) and I'm familiar with the role that good governance can play in defending a project from internal and external pressures to betray its mission. That means I'm also familiar with the limits of these governance measures.

Take nonprofits: nominally, nonprofits are legally bound to serve their charitable purpose, and technically, stakeholders have legal recourse if they stray from this. But you don't have to look far to find nonprofits that have violated their charter and gotten away with it. Take the Nature Conservancy, which has become a key player in the market for fake "carbon offsets" that are used to justify everything from fossil fuel extraction to SUV manufacture:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/12/12/fairy-use-tale/#greenwashing

Or think of ISOC, who get tens of millions of dollars in free money every year from their stewardship of the .ORG registry, but who decided to hand over control of the nonprofits' TLD of choice to a shadowy cabal of hedge-fund billionaires:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/12/how-we-saved-org-2020-review

Co-ops, too, are powerful but wildly imperfect. REI is a member co-op that does lots of great things…and also busts unions:

https://prismreports.org/2024/07/17/rei-workers-unionizing-fighting-for-agreemment/

But REI is a paragon of social virtue compared to its Canadian equivalent, Mountain Equipment Coop, whose board was taken over by corrupt assholes who then sold the whole thing to a US private equity fund and change the name to "MEC":

https://pluralistic.net/2020/09/16/spike-lee-joint/#casse-le-mec

B-corps are far from perfect, too: while they are nominally required to serve a positive social purpose, in practice, they can violate that purpose with impunity, whether that through greenwashing:

https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20240202-has-b-corp-certification-turned-into-corporate-greenwashing

Or Kickstarter insiders taking a $100m bribe to help Andreesen-Horowitz do a crypto pump-and-dump:

https://fortune.com/crypto/2024/03/11/kickstarter-blockchain-a16z-crypto-secret-investment-chris-dixon/

None of this is to claim that B-corps, co-ops, and nonprofits are useless. Maybe we should just give up on organization altogether and have some kind of adhocracy? If you're thinking this will help, then you need to read Jo Freeman's "The Tyranny of Structurelessness" and learn how a "leaderless" group is actually led by its least scrupulous, most Machiavellian schemers:

https://www.jofreeman.com/joreen/tyranny.htm

At this point, you might be mentally designing a new corporate structure, one that's designed to correct for both the tyranny of structurelessness and the brittleness of co-ops, nonprofits and B-corps. Please don't do this. Rolling your own corporate structure is like rolling your own cryptography or your own free software license. It always ends in tears:

https://www.reuters.com/technology/artificial-intelligence/openai-remove-non-profit-control-give-sam-altman-equity-sources-say-2024-09-25/

I like co-ops, nonprofits and B-corps. They're powerful – but insufficient – weapons against enshittification. They need to be backstopped by other measures, like norms. Normative measures are very powerful! Of course, mass revolts of angry users don't always keep companies from enshittifying:

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/dec/30/reddit-moderator-protest-communities-social-media

But sometimes they do. The C-suite of Unity was shown the door after enshittifying their flagship product:

https://www.theverge.com/2023/10/10/23911338/unity-ceo-steps-down-developers-react

As was the enshittifying CEO of Sonos:

https://www.theverge.com/2025/1/13/24342179/sonos-ceo-patrick-spence-resignation-reason-app

And of course, these defensive measures reinforce one another. The public outcry against the .ORG selloff (norms) led to California's Attorney General stepping in (law), and after that, we more-or-less romped to victory:

https://www.theregister.com/2020/04/17/icann_california_org_sale_delay/

Markets are the final antienshittificatory force. If a social network is designed to be surveillance-resistant, it will be (very) hard to implement behavioral surveillance advertising. If a network is designed to support a many clients, it will be easy to implement an ad-blocker. Both factors make advertising-based businesses very unattractive to individual server operators, spammers, and VCs who back companies that operate elements of a federated server.

Same goes for systems that allow users to control the recommendations and other algorithmic aspects of their feeds (including switching these off altogether). The fact that Tiktok's users overwhelmingly use an algorithmic feed that they have no way to control or even understand is an anti-Ulysses Pact, an irresistible temptation for Tiktok to enshittify itself:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/21/potemkin-ai/#hey-guys

By contrast, it's much harder to pull those shenanigans with services that technologically devolve control over recommendations (code), making it less profitable to even try to attempt this (markets). And of course, if users refuse to tolerate this kind of thing (norms) and can hop to other servers (code), then any system that pulls that nonsense will lose lots of users and go broke (markets).

This defense-in-depth approach to decentralized social media pushes us to analyze both Mastodon and Bluesky through a tactical lens – to identify the weak parts in the defenses of each and shore them up.

Take Free Our Feeds and its attempt to stand up more Bluesky servers. This addresses one of the serious technical deficiencies in Bluesky (the lack of federation), and if lots of Bluesky users try it out, it will normalize the idea that Bluesky is a constellation of independently managed servers (norms). It also creates Bluesky alternatives with radically different commercial imperatives (markets), because the main Bluesky server is backed by venture capitalists, who are notorious for their enshittifying impulses.

But security isn't static – a tactic that works today won't work tomorrow if your adversary can figure out a way around it. Bluesky is a B-corp with an excellent board with some names I have profound trust for, but B-corps can abandon their public benefit purpose, and boards can be fired (and also even people you trust can talk themselves into doing stupid and wicked things, see .ORG).

If millions of Bluesky users flock to a rival service, one run by a nonprofit (markets), Bluesky's investors might be tempted to sever the link between Bluesky and that new server (code). That's what Facebook and Apple did to XMPP, an interoperable, federated messaging system that used to connect Apple users, Facebook users, and users of many other servers. They did this for commercial reasons (markets), to trap and lock in their users (code), and they got away with it because not enough users were outraged by this (norms) that they could get away with it.

When Bluesky's VCs fire the CEO, kick people like Mike Masnick off its board, and then defederate from Free Our Feeds' server, how do we make that more like Sonos or Unity (where the corporation capitulated to its users), and not like Reddit (where the user revolt was crushed)?

With social media, it's a numbers game. Social media grows by network effects: the more users there are in a system, the more valuable it is. It's not merely imperative to create alternative Bluesky servers, it's imperative to make them populous enough that cutting them off from the first Bluesky server will inflict more pain on the company than it inflicts on those other users. That's not a guarantee that Bluesky's future, enshittification-bent management won't go ahead and do it anyway, but it does increase the chances that if they press on, their users will take the hit to defect to free/open servers.

Bluesky has other problems besides its centralization, of course. The reason Bluesky is so centralized is that it's really expensive to run an alternative Bluesky server that provides a home for users who have left the main server (a "relay" in Bluesky-ese). Partly this is down to tooling: because no one has done it, Free Our Feeds will have to invent a lot of stuff to get that server up and running, but people who come later will benefit from whatever Free Our Feeds develops along the way.

But mostly, this isn't a tooling problem – it's an architecture problem. The way that Bluesky is structured demands a lot more of relays than Mastodon demands of "instances" (a loose Fediverse analog to relays):

https://www.techdirt.com/2025/01/21/the-technological-poison-pill-how-atprotocol-encourages-competition-resists-evil-billionaires-lock-in-enshittification/#comment-4253477

This is a code problem, and it's a hard one, but it's not insurmountable. The history of networked tools is the history of developers figuring out how to break apart large, monolithic, expensive services in cheaper, smaller, easier to develop. In other words, our defense in depth of Bluesky militates for more than one project – not just a "Free Our Feeds" but also a software development project to make it easier for anyone to free those feeds.

Which raises some important questions, the biggest being "Why bother?" After all, there's already a perfectly good Fediverse that could sure use the money and effort that Free Our Feeds is proposing to put into Bluesky. My main answer here is that the point of disenshittification is an enshittification-free internet, not a better Mastodon:

https://pluralistic.net/2025/01/20/capitalist-unrealism/#praxis

We want to set Bluesky users free because the problem with Bluesky isn't its users, it's the fact that there's no fire-exits those users can avail themselves of if Bluesky's VCs set it on fire:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/12/14/fire-exits/#graceful-failure-modes

But there's another good reason to do this, one that involves people who have no interest in using Bluesky: even if you don't want to use a better Bluesky, you likely have very good reasons to reach Bluesky users. Maybe you want them to help you organize against enshittification! Or maybe you just want to operate a real-world venue where people can gather and have a great time and support performers, and right now you're stuck advertising on Facebook and Instagram, and you don't want to end up being forced to use an enshittified, fire-exit-free Bluesky in the future:

https://www.dnalounge.com/backstage/log/2025/01/13.html

Of course, there's plenty of reasons to want to make Mastodon better. Many of Mastodon's features are absurdly primitive – the lack of threading support and quote-boosting sucks, and the supposedly opt-in system-wide search doesn't work, even if you opt in. Masto could sure use some of the money that Free Our Feeds is asking for to spruce up Bluesky.

This is true, but also irrelevant. Mastodon is stuck at around a million active users, while Bluesky has twenty times that amount. Crowdfunding a couple dollars per user to pursue software development is a reasonable goal, but raising twenty times that much is a lot harder:

https://mastodon-analytics.com/

The money being raised for Free Our Feeds isn't money that had been earmarked for Mastodon development, nor will abandoning Free Our Feeds redirect those funds to Mastodon development.

Which isn't to say that we shouldn't chip in to fund Mastodon development. I donated to the Kickstarter for Pixelfed, a Fediverse Insta replacement that has Meta so scared that they'll suspend your account if you even mention it:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/pixelfed/pixelfed-foundation-2024-real-ethical-social-networks

Adding Insta-like features to Mastodon is great. Fixing search, quoting, and threading would be great, too. We probably need some kind of governance efforts to keep volunteer-run, good faith defederation blocklists from exhibiting the same dynamics that email went through during the spam wars. There's some Bluesky features I'd love to see on Mastodon, like composable moderation and user-controlled, user-tunable recommendations. We also probably need some kind of adversarial press that closely monitors the governance structure for the Mastodon codebase and reports on process in standardization (I cannot overstate how much fuckery can take place within standards bodies, under cover of a nigh-impermeable shield of boringness).

Breaking Bluesky open is a priority. Keeping Mastodon open is a priority. But neither of these are goals unto themselves. The point is to set people free, not set technology free. Willie Sutton robbed banks because "that's where the money is." Right now, I'm interested in anti-enshittification measures for Bluesky because "that's where the people are."

Check out my Kickstarter to pre-order copies of my next novel, Picks and Shovels!

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/2025/01/23/defense-in-depth/#self-marginalization

Image: Mike Baird (modified) https://flickr.com/photos/mikebaird/2354116406

CC BY 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/

[anon-188]

series: the playboy’s edition 🖤 — ch. 2

pairing: AJ x f!reader | status: ongoing | masterlist

series summary: you're an editor. he's a headache headline. and for the next two weeks, you're stuck together. what could possibly go wrong?

series warnings: sexual and explicit content (18+), enemies to lovers, bachelor!AJ, billionaire!AJ, slow burn, strong language, mentions of past trauma.

a/n: AJ West has arrived. is that good or bad??? you tell me… 😉 i rewrote this like twice lmao. i hope you guys like it!! enjoyyy 🖤

⟢ ch. 1 | ch. 3 | ch. 4 (coming soon!)

By 11:30, you were seething.

Profiling AJ West meant too many things—all of which spun your head in different directions. It started with your job. Vivienne hadn’t just cleared your schedule for the day. She’d cleared it for the next two weeks. Just wiped it clean like it was nothing. Meetings? Gone. Interviews? Pushed. The projects you were actually invested in? No longer your problem.

And then there was Savannah—reassigned, just like that. “For the duration of your trip,” Vivienne had said, breezily, as if this were some all-expenses-paid getaway. Like spending two weeks tethered to AJ West, of all people, was something you would choose to do.

A fucking trip.

You scoffed just thinking about it.

And AJ himself? Don’t even get started.

There was a reason you’d never mentioned him in your column. Actually, you could probably give ten. But the main one? You didn’t trust anyone without a past. Not publicly. Not privately.

That was your job, wasn’t it? To look closer. To find the slant worth writing about—the angle beneath the gloss. 

So no, you didn’t trust someone who managed to make millions, no, billions, with a name that sounded like he pulled it from some online generator.

This was a man with global partnerships and more influence than half the Forbes list combined—and still, somehow, no traceable origin story that didn’t feel like it had been rewritten a dozen times and run through legal. 

How could someone build an empire without leaving a footprint? Be the face of power with none of the baggage?

Vivienne had looked at you like you were the crazy one when you pointed it out. Like AJ West was some kind of holy grail—too pristine to question.

Which was bullshit.

But what really sent you over the edge?

The car.

More specifically, the car sent to pick you up.

“Good morning. I’m here on behalf of Mr. West,” the driver had said, all polite and well-rehearsed as he stepped around the sleek front of the vehicle to greet you outside of the AURUM building. His name was Easton—first or last, you didn’t know—but what you did know was that he was AJ West’s personal driver.

He had said so. Plain and simple.

AJ West had actually sent his personal driver to pick you up.

And the vehicle? A black Range Rover Autobiography. 

Windows tinted to an almost obsidian opacity. The paint, glossy enough to reflect the entire street like a mirror. Inside, it was all smooth leather, gleaming trim, and silence designed to mute the outside world.

You shifted in the seat as Easton pulled into traffic, your eyes catching on the stitching beneath you. Immaculate, of course. The kind of detail meant to impress people who cared about things like that.

An eye roll came before you could stop it, something you had a feeling would become a regular occurrence over the next two weeks.

You had every intention of driving yourself. Like a normal person. Not being chauffeured around like some pampered accessory in a billionaire’s itinerary. Especially not for a man you already couldn’t stand.

This was supposed to be an opportunity. You knew that. A career-defining assignment, Vivienne had called it. And deep down, you knew she was right. AJ West was, by every professional measure, the kind of feature that turned bylines into brand names. His reach, his image, his name alone could catapult the January issue into record numbers.

But still—the devil wears Prada, right?

Only this time it was Dolce. Rolex. And Tom Ford black ties with matching custom suits.

“Fuck me,” you muttered under your breath, turning your head to look out the window.

“I’m sorry, miss. I didn’t catch that,” Easton said from the front, voice smooth and annoyingly polite.

“Nothing. Sorry,” you replied quickly, forcing the edge from your voice as you sank a little deeper into the seat.

You shook your head and tried to refocus.

Without really thinking, you reached into your work bag and pulled out the thin folder marked West, AJ. You’d already read it—twice, actually—but right now, it was less about the information and more about not unraveling.

So you flipped it open, fingers moving silently through the sparse pages.

The file was practically hollow. No real details, no flaws. Just clean lines and controlled messaging. A PR masterpiece and your worst nightmare.

You exhaled slowly and pushed the thought from your mind.

Not now.

Frustrating as it was, this was still your assignment. Which meant doing the job—even if every part of you wanted to be anywhere else. 

You swallowed your pride—barely—and sat back, letting the silence stretch.

Eventually, the car rolled to a slow stop in front of Lexford Tower.

AJ West’s glass fortress.

It stretched high above the city. Prestigious, formidable, and impossible to miss. The top floors belonged to West & Vale Capital, and somewhere up there—behind one of those pristine panes of glass—was his office. 

Even higher? His penthouse. You weren’t sure which word made your eye twitch more.

Easton stepped around to open your door.

“Thank you,” you said, slipping your bag onto your shoulder before stepping out and heading toward the entrance.

The front doors were massive. A revolving circle of glass and chrome set into the black stone facade. They spun slowly, purposefully, like the building itself had a schedule too important to rush.

Inside, the lobby was dark luxury in every direction—charcoal walls, deep espresso wood accents, a soft undercurrent of musk and tonka in the air. Everything was refined, intentional, and cold in a way that screamed money without trying too hard.

You didn’t make it five steps before a woman greeted you with a bright, practiced smile.

“Welcome, Miss Y/L/N.” Her voice was smooth, professional.

“Hi,” you replied, a little caught off guard that she knew exactly who you were.

“Elena,” she added, stepping to the side as she motioned for you to follow. “Mr. West is expecting you. Right this way.”

And just like that, you were moving again, heels tapping softly across the dark marble floor as you followed Elena toward the far corner of the lobby. The elevator was almost hidden in plain sight—clean lines, so understated it blended into the wall.

Once inside, Elena pulled a slim badge from the lanyard tucked beneath her blazer, scanned it against the panel, and waited for the soft beep that followed. The floor numbers lit up in a pale gold glow, and she pressed the button for the 54th floor. 

The doors slid shut with a quiet hush, and the elevator began to rise in silence. Only a faint hum of classical music filled the space—something delicate and string-heavy, probably chosen to keep tempers low and luxury high.

You shifted your weight slightly, letting your gaze move across the walls. Black lacquer. Brushed gold accents. Everything was streamlined. Elegant without being showy. Cold, but expensive.

The parallel was almost too obvious.

No unnecessary detail. No excess.

Just like him.

When the doors slid open, the 54th floor unfolded like the rest of the building—precise and deliberate. Deep colored walls. Matte black fixtures. The same weightless opulence you’d seen downstairs, only elevated. Literally and otherwise.

You stepped out, posture sharpening instantly—spine straight, shoulders drawn back. 

This was AJ West’s domain. Controlled. Luxurious. Intimidating. Every inch of space was crafted to reflect him without needing to say a word.

Elena led you to the receptionist’s desk, where she exchanged a few hushed words with the woman seated behind it—sleek bun, flawless makeup, not a single thing out of place.

You didn’t mean to eavesdrop. But standing this close, it was impossible not to hear it.

 “…just finishing up with legal,” the receptionist murmured, her voice crisp but quiet. “It’s a standard NDA—nothing to worry about.”

Standard. Right.

More like a morning-after clause dressed in business casual. 

You arched a brow, but kept your mouth shut.

The receptionist offered a placid smile, tapping something into her keyboard. “He’s clear now. You can send her in.”

Elena gave a subtle tilt of her head, then turned to you with a softer tone.

“Would you like me to take your coat?”

There was an ease in her voice, polite in a way that made the transition feel seamless.

You slid the coat from your shoulders and handed it over with a quiet, “Thanks.”

Then you were handed off again. Another woman appeared—equally polished, dressed in soft neutrals that matched the rest of the floor. She turned without a word and started down the hall. You followed, your heels muffled by the thick runner beneath your feet.

Finally, she stopped in front of a set of tall double doors. With one gentle push, she opened them and stepped aside.

“Take a seat. Mr. West will be with you shortly,” she said, offering a soft smile that felt just as rehearsed as everything else.

You gave a small nod, stepping into the office as the doors clicked shut behind you.

The room was draped in dark tones—muted, but rich. A continuation of the building’s aesthetic, but more personal somehow. The only real light came from the wall of windows stretching across the front of the room. Floor-to-ceiling glass pulled in the last of the morning light, casting a cool haze across polished surfaces.

The scent hit you next.

Warm and structured. There was cardamom, maybe, and something fresh. But under it all, it was grounded with a smoky pull. It didn’t match the scent in the lobby—this was different. You figured it was whatever fragrance had been chosen for the space, something intentional to match the rest of it. 

Subtle, but you liked it more than you expected to.

You moved farther in, eyes sweeping the space. Everything was perfectly placed—the desk spotless, the shelves arranged with just the right number of books and curated objects. Not a thing out of line.

If he actually did business in here, it sure as hell didn’t look like it.

Finally, you moved to one of the leather chairs across from his desk. You slipped your bag from your shoulder and placed it on the floor beside you, letting your hands rest lightly on your knees.

And in the same breath, the door opened behind you.

Reflex pulled you to your feet, hands smoothing over your clothes as you turned.

Then you saw him.

AJ West walked in like the air shifted to make room for him. Not dramatically. Not loudly. Just enough for the energy to tilt, the room recognizing its owner the moment he stepped inside. His suit was black, perfectly cut, and tailored so precisely it looked like it had been sculpted straight onto him.

His hair—light brown, thick—was styled back with a lift that bordered on effortless. The warm, golden undertones caught the light when he moved, highlighting the angles of his cheekbones and the sharp line of his jaw.

He tilted his head slightly, as if responding to a thought only he could hear, then lifted a hand to adjust the collar of his shirt with a quick flick of his fingers.

And there, just barely visible, you caught it: a flash of ink beneath the collar. A tattoo. Faint, but defined. It disappeared just as fast, the collar falling back into place like it had never happened.

His expression gave nothing away. No emotion. No acknowledgment. Just the same composed stillness you’d seen in every headline photo and profile. 

But his jaw told a different story—it was locked tight. Set like control was something he wore just as deliberately as his suit.

He crossed the room without pause, every step fluid and assured, like even the floor had been built to match his pace. Not once did he look your way. He just kept moving, straight toward the corner bar by the window. 

There, he poured a two-finger measure of whiskey into a crystal glass, the liquid catching in the light as it splashed softly against the sides.

Then he turned—his back to you, gaze fixed on the skyline. One hand wrapped around the glass, the other tucked neatly into his pocket. Like the view outside deserved more attention than the person standing in his office.

You watched him. Watched the way he sipped so casually, so unaffected, and something in you tightened.

Your tongue pressed against your cheek, a dry, humorless laugh slipping out as you lowered yourself back into the chair. You crossed your legs, reached into your bag, and pulled out your notepad, setting it on your lap. The click of your pen followed—precise, pointed, just loud enough to make a statement.

And then the real one broke through—

“Whiskey before noon. Bold choice. I’ll be sure to list that under ‘eccentric habits,’” you said, not bothering to hide the sarcasm as your pen moved against the page.

The comeback came instantly, like he’d been waiting for it.

“That’s interesting,” he said, voice steady and unimpressed. “Commenting on bold choices while wearing Louboutins to a meeting.”

The glass rose to his lips again, his posture unchanged. Still facing the window. Still completely unbothered.

You let the words sink in, your mouth pressing into a flatter line as you inhaled slowly. Your eyes narrowed at his back before you let out the softest scoff.

Asshole.

The word burned quietly in the back of your mind. No less sharp just because it went unspoken.

“I wore them to work,” you snapped, the bite slipping back into your voice. “Then ended up in this meeting with you.” 

Your fingers tightened around your pen, but you didn’t look away. “You walk around in pressed Armani suits, but what—draw the line at red soles?”

That made him chuckle—quiet, brief, and completely devoid of warmth.

“No,” he said, setting the glass down on the bar with a clink that somehow sounded final. “I draw the line at people who think fashion statements mean substance.”

Then he turned.

No longer just a figure in the room, he faced you fully now, stepping away from the bar with the ease of someone who never second-guessed their own presence. His eyes—blue and unflinching—locked onto yours as he moved toward you like the rest of the room didn’t exist.

You reached down, placing your notebook onto the leather chair beside you, and rose. Not out of politeness. Not out of professionalism. You stood because something in you refused to be looked down on. Especially by him.

“Funny,” you said, voice cool but edged in disdain. You met his stare. “I was thinking the same thing about you.”

He stopped just a few feet away, his eyes dragging over you in a glide that was too practiced to be casual, too unhurried to ignore. A flicker passed through them—calculated, exact, and gone before you could place it.

“This isn’t going to work,” he said, flat and certain. But his voice had shifted. Darker. Slower.

You didn’t step back. “Why?” Your chin lifted. “Afraid I’ll tell the world exactly who you are? Arrogant. High-handed. A fake.”

AJ stepped in without hesitation.

And in that quiet—when the room felt too still and too close—you caught it again. That scent. The one you noticed the second you walked in. 

It wasn’t the room. It was him. 

That warm, smoky sharpness threaded with something smoother. Spice wrapped in earth. Polished wood and expensive heat. It settled into your senses before you could stop it.

Undeniable. Unavoidable. Like everything else about him.

Then, his voice pulled you back.

It came low and cutting, the kind of tone that didn’t rise to meet the moment—it made the moment come to him. 

“What makes you think I care what you have to say about me?” 

You raised a brow. “You hired me.”

“No.” He corrected you without blinking. “My team hired you. Publicity, PR, whatever bullshit justification they made up.”

His tone didn’t waver.

“Don’t confuse that with me wanting you here.”

You held your ground, a slow burn building in your chest.

“You act like you’re so above it all,” you said, leaning in, your voice dropping just enough.

“But doesn’t your whole empire hinge on how the world sees you?”

His jaw ticked again. The same way it had when he walked in. A small tell, but a tell all the same.

Then—

“I don’t give a shit what people think.”

The words didn’t lift, didn’t snap. But there was weight in them, measured and heavy, like he’d said it a thousand times before but never meant it more than right now.

His next words came slower, each one cutting its way out. “People don’t want real. They want digestible. And I don’t care about either.”

Your gaze held his, taut and unwavering, neither of you willing to yield first. It wasn’t just tension—it was ego against ego. Fire pressed to steel.

“I’ll be sure to quote you on that,” you replied, your voice calm but biting, a perfect mirror to his.

Just then, another voice slipped into the room, breaking the standoff between you two.

“Please don’t,” the voice said, a soft laugh tucked beneath the words—its tone laced with the kind of light charm that made disruption sound like poise.

You turned on instinct, caught off guard—you hadn’t even heard the door open.

A woman was crossing the room, her heels nearly silent against the floor. Dressed in crisp cream and black, hair tucked neatly behind one ear, her smile was polished, knowing.

“Camilla,” she said as she approached, extending a hand. “PR director.”

You reached out slowly to shake it. Her grip was firm but kind. Still, you barely looked at her—you couldn’t. Not with AJ’s gaze anchored to you the way it was.

His eyes hadn’t left you. Not once. 

There was weight in the way he looked at you—as if he were cataloging everything from the way you stood to the curve of your mouth.

And when his eyes met yours again, they stayed.

“Mr. West, your publicist will join us when he’s finished wrapping up a phone call with the venue in New York,” Camilla said, trying to redirect the moment. “Would you like to get started without him?”

He didn’t answer. Just kept his eyes on you.

“Mr. West?” she prompted again, the calm in her voice thinning just slightly.

His response came slow, like he hadn’t even considered giving her the courtesy of a reply until now. But when he spoke, the words weren’t for her. 

They were for you. 

“Print whatever you want. Just don’t expect me to play nice for it.”

You blinked once. Not because his words got to you—but because it gave you the second you needed to lock it all back into place.

Then came your voice: measured and honeyed, weaponized in its politeness.

“With all due respect, Mr. West—which is none—if you were capable of playing nice, I don’t think your team would be this desperate for a feature.”

Your lips curved at the edges, soft and scathing all at once.

AJ didn’t flinch. But that jaw tightened again.

Out of the corner of your eye, you saw Camilla go still. Her lips parted like she meant to intervene, but the moment sealed itself too fast. You caught the faintest trace of dread in her eyes.

Like she finally realized this was a match made in hell.

Because it was.

Camilla cleared her throat—a final attempt to steer the moment back on track. She stepped in closer, her gaze flicking between AJ’s unreadable expression and the sharp edge still lingering behind your own.

Then, gently, with a smile just tight enough to betray the nerves beneath it, she tried again.

“Shall we?”

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[softvalentines]

ur such a doll, enthralled with u. could i req just any nsfw w/ patrick bateman

pairing: patrick batemen x reader cw: heavy mentions sex, kinda smut (?) afab reader, mentions of f!receiving oral

a/n: this is very sweet, thank you !!

patrick’s way too caught up in his own perfection, perched so high on that polished pedestal of his that the idea of eating pussy feels beneath him.

it’s not that he can’t — he just refuses to lower himself to that kind of intimacy, that vulnerability. to him, it’s a performance, a game of control and power, and the thought of getting his hands messy with something so... personal doesn’t fit into his carefully curated image.

he’d rather keep everything clinical, precise — the kind of fucking where he’s in total command, leaving no room for softness or tenderness. licking you out? no thanks. he’s all about sharp edges, cold efficiency, the kind of domination that leaves bruises, not wet warmth. he wants you overwhelmed, aching, but on his terms, not from something as unstructured as giving pleasure in that way.

and if you tried to suggest it? he’d smile, that perfectly polished, terrifying smile, so mocking it makes your gut twist a little then he'd brush it off with a cutting remark about how indulgences like that distract from more important things — like power, status, control. after all, patrick bateman is the man who consumes everything, but he picks and chooses what’s worth his time, and eating pussy? no, that’s not one of them.

instead, patrick’s idea of intimacy is a calculated dance of dominance, the kind where every touch, every whisper, every movement is designed to remind you exactly who’s in control. he thrives on the tension — the kind that leaves your skin tingling, your breath caught in your throat, desperate for his next move but never quite sure what it’ll be. his hands are cold but possessive, tracing patterns that leave you raw and trembling, because with him, it’s never about comfort. it’s about power.

he likes to watch, the way you respond to him — the flush rising on your cheeks, the way your pulse quickens under his gaze. his pleasure comes from that, from knowing he can bend you to his will without ever lowering himself to what he’d call “messy” or “unrefined.” it’s a performance for patrick bateman, a meticulous ritual where he’s always the predator, never the prey.

and maybe, just maybe, if you push him right, if you slip past that polished veneer of control and coldness, you catch a glimpse of something... raw. not tenderness, not softness — but a need just as sharp and insistent as his control. in those rare moments, when his mask falters just enough to reveal the man beneath, you realize that with patrick, the lines between pleasure and power blur until you can’t tell where one ends and the other begins.

but don’t expect him to admit it. after all, patrick bateman is too busy perfecting the image, too consumed by the high stakes game he plays, to ever let himself be vulnerable in the way eating pussy would require. maybe he'd think about it once, or even twice, think about the flavor of you on his tongue. it’s just not his style. and somehow, that makes the whole thing even more intoxicating.

[sprintingowl]

Picaresque Roman

I'm a fan of the Japanese ttrpg design scene. My first non-DnD game was Golden Sky Stories, and I really click with the prevalence of d6s and oneshot-oriented play.

However, my ability to speak/read Japanese is so immensely bad that it changed the trajectory of my life, so I generally have to keep my fingers crossed and hope for translations of the systems I'm excited about.

Hence, when Picaresque Roman came out in English, I scooped up a copy as fast as I could.

Picaresque Roman: A Requiem For Rogues is a competitive pvp tabletop rpg. Probably the closest equivalent to it is werewolf/mafia, but it's not that exactly.

The broad premise is that you're criminals in a hidden city and you're working together in an uneasy truce to take down a big juicy target. All of you are ultimately in it for yourselves, and one of you is a traitor---however there's no mechanic that lets you kill other characters.

Instead, you can gather information (everyone has info cards, which include things like their traitor status), forge truces (or force truces), and shake down each other (or the target) for cash or victory points.

It's a full-fledged rpg, with classes and skills and an action economy, but everything happens in little vignettes. You pick an action, you roll or talk, and that's your turn for the cycle.

It's tightly designed enough that you could play Picaresque Roman without any roleplaying at all and it would still be fun, or you could put a bit of flourish on every action you take and play out quick scenes when you make a truce or rob your target.

I think this might be one of those games where all it really needs is a box and a board and it'd cruise right past people's hesitation around roleplaying and become as popular as Gloomhaven. As is, I think it's a *good* rpg for introducing other people to rpgs, especially if they already vibe with gangster dramas, Guy Ritchie movies, the Yakuza series, or stuff like Black Lagoon or Akudama Drive.

[dragon-ascent]

Being honest, I feel completely unworthy of messaging such an esteemed writer as yourself, but hear me out

imagine, imagine reader from liyue, with very religious parents, like, full on worshipping rex lapis (offerings and crazy devotion level) , and then reader somehow got acquainted with our favourite dragon man ( I think that's all)

like, it's been living rent free in my mind

Have a great day 🤗

(sorry, English isn't my first language)

Oh pls don’t feel that way :] I’m not all that!! And wowie I can relate to super religious parents so here we go~

Growing up, Rex Lapis has been the centre of your world. It's been drilled into your mind that he is the sun that shines upon Liyue, the supreme being responsible for all the comforts of life you enjoy. The Mora you spend on the things you like, the rich soil that grows your favorite tea leaves, and even the structure of the residential buildings, meticulously designed by the Geo Lord himself. As such, for his millennia of toiling to bring Liyue to the pinnacle of flourishment, it is only natural that your parents would express their undying gratitude somehow.

So every weekend you're whisked off to the local temple (that people hardly visit after the death of the god) to pray that the coming week, too, shall be prosperous and joyful. A plate of silk flowers and some sweets for the deity, without fail. The priests even know you by name.

You also have clay models of the god in both human and dragon forms at home, and on special days you all make sure to pray nice and hard (though, honestly, your devotion only truly jumps out when you have an exam or an important date coming up).

The usual curses are banned at home--whenever you uttered a 'Goddamn it,' in annoyance at something, you would be met with a gasp.

"Do not use Rex Lapis' name in vain!" they would chide.

"I never specified which god I was damning," you would retort. "Maybe I was talking about the Raiden Shogun!"

Normally, such levels of devotion might be seen as exhausting. But one look at the various myths and texts surrounding Deus Auri and one thing becomes apparent--the god was a dashing man. Elegance and poise incarnate. That, alone, makes the fanaticism worth it. You suppose that even if he weren't a divine being, you would still find some way to worship him regardless.

At your parents' behest, you make sure to keep a small idol in Rex's likeness on your desk at your new job. Being a funeral parlor assistant requires a strong mind and a stronger heart, something only the rock-solid Geo Lord might be able to provide you with.

It's similar to how the Statues of the Seven portray him, that signature hood obscuring half his face. Tentatively, you reach out, hoping to siphon some strength for your first day at Wangsheng Funeral Parlor.

Then a tall figure steps in and, startled, you nearly knock the idol off your desk. "Wah!"

"Oh, forgive me. I did not mean to make you jolt." It's the funeral parlor consultant, gentle of disposition and handsome, amber eyes gazing into yours with a kindness that makes you feel a little tingly.

"It...it's okay." With trembling hands, you pick the idol up, examining it carefully. "Oh, good, it's unharmed." You heave a sigh of relief, cradling it to you for a moment before placing it back on the desk.

"A devout believer, I assume?" the man asks, his tone thankfully devoid of that edge of teasing or judgment other people generally seem to adopt. Refreshing.

"I guess you can say that," you answer, a shade sheepish. "He did do so much for us, after all."

A low, deep chuckle that turns your insides into goo. "Though he has passed, he will remain in our hearts forever." Ah, this fellow must also be religious. You wonder if he, too, goes to the temple on full moon days and if you might see him around. "Please, call me Zhongli. I trust you are settling in well?"

You introduce yourself, exchange pleasantries, and shake hands with him, and feel an electric warmth course through your being.

What on earth...?

You feel yourself start to grow a little hot, like you're basking in the presence of shining, molten gold...the grandeur of divinity wrapped delicately in a cocoon of innocuous humanity...

Oh, it must be because the fan isn't on. No wonder.

You laugh quietly, switch the fan on, pat Zhongli on the back and wish him a good day, and settle down to start your work for the week.

[revxwrites]

HELLO PEOPLE, GUESS WHO'S BACK! I took all week to finish this because i realized 9 of 12 of these characters didn't have a proper design for my rewrite :sob:

BUT ANYWAYS, design notes under the cut, plus explanations for certain design/ name choices and some silly headcanons n notes!

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Anaphiel "Aphmau" Phoenixlance

> Anaphiel; Herbrew: branch of God. A reference to how she's a reincarnation/ descendant of Irene.

>Phoenixlance is the last name she adopts once arriving to Phoenix Drop, making it appear as if Garroth and her were married (they in fact aren't).

>Anaphiel loves collecting small things, like feathers, rocks and flowers.

>Might not be the strongest, but she's a really good builder.

Garroth Phoenixlance (Ro'meave)

>He panicked when asked his last name, saying the first thing that came to mind, hence the origin Phoenixlance (begrudgingly he had to pick up lance training to make it believable).

> Garroth looks eerily similar to his father, causing him to have facial dysmorphia.

>His body is extremely stocky, making someone short like Anaphiel very small.

>Despite no longer living in his childhood home, he greatly misses his younger brother.

Laurence Kilgore-Zvhal

>Kilgore; Irish: son of the short lad. He might not be the tallest guy, but his handsomeness makes up for it.

>He got his ears pierced by Cadenza. His hair is also dyed to match her own.

>The locket he has is from his birth mother, while he doesn't remember her, he keeps it close to his being.

>Laurence's favorite flowers are carnations.

Dante Adalhard

>Adalhard; German: Noble Strength. He's a new guard, yet he's extremely noble to Phoenix Drop once he's brought to.

>His hair grew out ever since he left Boboros, he ties it with a piece of his deceased brother's cape.

>Dante keeps a communication amulet close to his heart, he isn't allowed to guard Anaphiel inside of meetings due to it.

>Dante's favorite flowers are Forget me Nots. He mentioned they used to grow around his home village.

Katelyn "The Fire Fist" Harlow

>Harlow; English: Army Hill.

>Member of the Jury of Nine. She has passive magicks which allow her to punch so fast her fist turns into flames.

>Her ears give away her status as a magicks user, which she hides with her side bangs.

>Katelyn loves cookies, her favorites being Shortbread cookies Nana makes.

Zane Ro'meave

>Wears a faceveil due to an accident he had.

>The people of O'khasis say he's like a phantom of sorts, some don't believe the High Priest is real, yet he very much is.

>Zane has very shaky arms and hands, many don't know the reason.

>He keeps his hair long to hide his face.

>Has poliosis, which makes some spots of his hair white, his lashes are white too.

>Zane loves his mother's Lemon Cake.

Aaron Lycan

>Ultima Werewolf.

>He hides his eyes with a red piece of fabric (it used to be from his son's cape).

>His necklaces hold meaning, he has one of his son's milk fangs, and a Crescent Moon Charm, which he uses to transform into werewolf form at will (reference to ep. 70 S1 where Aphmau uses one with Lucinda's guidance).

>Due to repressing his werewolf side for years, he is unable to turn without the assistance of his Moon Charm.

>Not much is known about the Ultima in this universe.

Lucinda Adie

>Adie; Latin: from Hadria. Hadria is a disctrict name in Pikoro, more specifically where the Lord and most nobles reside.

>Probably one of very few witches that wears makeup, she has a full routine each morning.

>Reincarnation of Menphia the Fury.

>Her hair is orange, but when she began practicing witchcraft her magicks became imbued with her hair, making it appear different.

Naname Ashida

>Naname; Japanese:  七 means "seven." 愛 means "love, affection, fondness."

>Short for her name is Nana, she prefers it over her full name.

>Mei'fwa, her fur color is black. Her whiskers are sensitive.

>Practices Animation Magicks, unbeknownst to her she can extend her magicks to more than reanimating dolls.

Nicole Von Ronsenburg

>Von Rosenburg; from Rosenburg. Rosenburg is a district of Scaleswind, more speficially the more religious sector which worships Irene.

>Despite being the Lord's daughter, she had no interest truly in ruling, loving to fight.

>Her fist is said to be as strong as Iron.

>Her pet fox Roxy, is quite rare, since artic foxes aren't meant to live in areas like Scaleswind.

Vylad Pineglade (Ro'meave)

>Shadow Knight. Has a stab scar on his back.

>People don't know of his existence, so he adopted a new last name to distance himself from his previous life.

>Has the choppiest hair in all of Ru'aun. He cuts it himself with a dagger.

>Conceals his face from everyone, not many know why.

>Sometimes he still tastes lemon from the cake he ate before his death.

Travis Valkrum

>Half demon, half human hybrid.

>The markings on his face are thanks to his father, first time he tapped into his demonic power his markings emerged.

>Emerald earring from his mother, Palacia. He still misses her dearly.

>Has fangs, pointy ears and a tail (which he stuffs inside his clothes), but doesn't possess horns.

>His magic color is green, but when in demon form it turns purple (wink wink nudge nudge).

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[jillsandwhichs]

Husbandly Duties

Chapter 3 to Joel Miller x Reader Smutshot Collection

Masterlist

Pairing: F!Reader x Joel Miller

Summary: It is yours and Joel's 3rd year wedding anniversary and he makes sure it is spent well

Status of your guy's relationship in this one shot: Married

WC: 5.7k

Type: NSFW

Warnings: Making out, Dirty talk, Slight foreplay, P in V, No protection, Joel cums inside of you, Missionary, Choking, Spitting kink, Joel is soft but not too soft, Clit rubbing & possibly more

A/n: Hi! Hope you all enjoy. Please check out my masterlist, there's a lot of stuff there. You can get to know me, you can see the rules of my blog and then you can see all of my fanfictions. You'll be able to find the previous chapters to this fic and upcoming ones. You'll also be able to find my Wattpad & AO3. Comments, reblogs & likes are appreciated. Thank you

Work, work, work and more work. This damn job is draining your mental health. You love being an office worker, sure, you get a lot of free time and the work you do isn't hard, at all, but it is so time consuming and insanely boring. You'd kill someone if it meant you could have a normal schedule and go home at a decent time. You miss your old job, it was crappy, but the schedule was great and you got to go home at the same exact time, every single day you worked there.

It is 8:00 PM already and you've been working since 10:30 AM, it's been a terribly long day.

What makes it a billion times worse is the fact it is your and Joels three year anniversary. In total, you've been together for five years, but you guys got married three years ago, it was a wonderful day filled with love and gleam. You miss it and you remember it like it was yesterday. Your dress was long and beautiful, you looked gorgeous. Joel was dashing that day, he is everyday of course, but that particular day he was perfect.

The day was beautiful too. August 13th 2012, your most favorite day. But with your luck, you had to work and Joel did not. You wish you could be home with him at this very moment, having a tasty dinner with him while watching a movie, then afterwards he rearranges your guts...

You've been day dreaming of that today, honestly. You've been horny, ovulation isn't for the weak. You've been craving your husband all fucking day. You'd do anything to be with him right now, you truly would.

Aside from that, you have to focus. You're on your final document, the more you concentrate, the faster it'll get done. Joel is going to pick you up from work, so that's something to look forward too and you can't wait to see him. You can't wait to be beside him again. You want to touch him, and kiss him, hug him, everything. You just miss your husband, so very much. It is definitely a mix of your clinginess, ovulation & sadness.

Alas, you began to transfer all your brain and will power into your work, the sooner, the absolute better.

-

Finally! You're finished. The first thing you did was whip out your phone to text your husband, hopefully the dummy didn't fall asleep. You know his job is also tough on him, he's a contractor, it is very hands on work and it's understandable that he is exhausted more than the average person. You began to type out your message until you officially finished it, then you sent it to him.

"Handsome, I finished working. Come get me. Love you."

You were so ready to be home.

Whenever you have to wait for Joel, you just relax in your office either on your phone or your computer. Luckily, despite this being a plain Jane office job, you have your very own office. It's designed to your liking. When you got it officially, Joel helped you decorate it; He's genuinely a life saver. One time, when he came to pick you up, he came up to your office to help you carry some things down... He ended up having to carry you as well due to your legs being way too wobbly...

You turned your computer off and slightly reorganized your desk top. When you come into work tomorrow, you don't want it to look the same as it does now. This is like a ritual at this point, cleaning up your work space daily. It's a great habit to have. You set your pens and pencils back into their case and you set your mouse pad back in its original position, placing the wireless black mouse on top of it. You made sure your personal spaces looked spotless and your desk was no exception.

Your phone buzzed on the white desk top, Joel messaged you. He never texts back too late. The longest you can recall was twenty minutes and that is because he was working. He's truly a wonder, no man you've met was willing to do such a thing, answering quickly. Your ex prioritized his games over you, it was exhausting but now, you have yourself a real man - Joel.

His message read:

"Alright sweetheart, on my way. I love you too."

The message made your heart melt.

Joel is such a sweet man. He's rough on the edges and cold at times, but he's your baby at the end of the day. You see sides of him that no one else does. His brother, Tommy, when you first met him described him as an asshole but once you got to know him, your perception totally changed. You are grateful for Tommy though, he introduced you to Joel. Without him, who knows where you would have ended up or whom you'd end up with.

Once you two started dating, you had asked Joel what he thought of you when he met you and his response was touching.

"I saw you and knew one day, we'd end up like this. How we are now, I just knew it after getting to know you little by little."

He even repeated those very words in his vows to you on your guy's Wedding day.

Oh how you miss that day - The amount of love and faith passed around that day was joyous. Now, today you get to celebrate it all over again, a tradition you are more than okay with uplifting. Last year, you put on your Wedding dress, Joel his suit, and you two danced around your living room. The little moments like that are precious and sacred. You don't plan to do that this year, you'd rather go home and eat something, but it is a sweet subject.

You found yourself biting on the end of your pen as you thought about him and all the two of you have been through. You're like a school girl who gets her very first crush. You're obsessed with Joel, you'll admit it. It isn't a bad thing, not at all. You're happy to be with a guy who has you all over him. If you weren't, it wouldn't be a very passionate and fulfilling relationship, now would it?

"Gosh." You giggled to yourself, dropping the pen into its case. You stood up and double checked your office - Everything is in check. You, unfortunately, do work tomorrow so you want this office to be pristine when you come back. You may be bored and spent, but you aren't those enough to put yourself through hell tomorrow morning. But, everything seemed well enough.

You decided you'd wait outside for him to arrive. There are benches surrounding the front of the large, industrial building that you could wait on. Usually, you stay in your office and await a message from him but the sooner you're out there, the absolute better.

With your phone, drink and purse in hand(s), you made way out of the office building. The company you work for primarily focuses on having customers purchase things you sell; You work in the department for selling goods such as food, clothes and more. Other departments include things such as outside work and children's toys and wear. This section has always worked best for you and it's HQ is massive, you've always felt important walking into and out of the establishment.

Your office was set on the third floor and you couldn't complain, others were in the sixth or seventh. All you have to do is use the elevator and leave. You won't lie, sometimes you're a bit nervous doing this, in fear of the wrong person being outside when you are as well. You shoved those scary thoughts to the side, wanting to focus on the good and the possibility of greatness.

Exiting your office, you saw one of your coworkers, Leroy, leaving his office too. "Hi." "Hey stranger, you heading out?" "I am. Joel is picking me up." "Good to hear, once again, happy anniversary to the two of you." "Thanks Lee, we seriously appreciate that." Leroy was always a kind soul. He's an older man, he's wise and witty, you've always enjoyed that about him. Joel has always been a bit sketchy about the men you endorse yourself with but Leroys never bothered him. In fact, they've spoken a good few times.

"You leaving as well?" "I sure am, I also won't be here tomorrow." "Why's that?" "My sons wife is having my grandchild tomorrow, I can't wait to meet the little one." Leroy expressed great love for his children and grandchildren. He has three kids, two sons and a daughter. He also has four grandkids, three from his son and this upcoming one from his second son. From the pictures you've seen, they're so stinking cute! "That's amazing Leroy, congratulations." You are happy for both him and the parents. Such a blessing.

Kids was never a topic you and Joel much discussed. You want them someday for sure, but not yet, you want to wait maybe another year or two. Joel is great with children from what you have seen. When he met your younger siblings, he was so gentle with them, even sat down and played with them. Moments like those make you want to have babies sooner but you must wait, it isn't the time... Yet...

The elevator began to desend both you and Leroy down it and onto the first floor where the exit was.

When it opened, you stepped out of it alongside him. The two receptionists said bye to you both.

"I'll see you soon Leroy, have a good time meeting your grandbaby." You said to him with a friendly voice. "I sure will, take care!" Leroy shouted as he got into his truck and drove off into the moonlight.

You were all alone. You sat down on the wooden bench near the entrance of the establishment and waited there. The drive from your home to your work isn't all too bad, maybe ten minutes at the most but Joel tends to speed on the back roads and that gets him here much sooner than normally. You couldn't wait to arrive at home. Something different about you is the smell of places, they bring you different feelings and senses.

At work, you feel normal, just fine & content. The way the atmosphere is at work is boring, you don't have much fun there ever and you truly only like it for its isolation purposes and it's amazing pay. Home smells like Joel, who is your comfort and your joy. At home, you can let loose and be your honest self - Your best version. You have transferred your home into what was once a regular, janky house into a safe space for you and your husband to gladly share.

If you and Joel do have children someday, they'll surely be smothered in affection.

Gazing up at the countless stars in the sky, you tried to pass the time. It felt like ages before Joel actually arrived. You are also just utterly impaitent, you want to be home now. "Ugh." You groaned out, tossing your head back on the bench, a pouty look forming on your face; You texted him.

"Handsome, hurry, I miss you."

That'll get him speeding.

Joel is a smart guy, he is safe but also risky all at once. You worry for him, of course you do, but you trust him with your life. You practically trust him with anything. If he had to perform a transfusion on you, honestly, you'd let him. Joel is your lover and you love him more than he could ever imagine. Some may find it questionable, how much you have faith in him, but you don't at all, it's just how it is when you're in a relationship like your very own.

A buzz came from your phone whilst you were roaming the never ending thoughts that spiral in your head.

"Just entered town baby, now you be a patient girl and wait."

That got you wet, bingo.

Joel being strict has always had you in a chokehold.

"Fine."

And send.

-

That very recognizable black, lifted truck pulled into the parking lot. It's headlights were shining brighter than a diamond as they came through. Joel tinted them, the beam of them dimming as he parked and got out of the truck. He looked as good as ever, your handsome husband. He didn't park too far from the building either, it'd be only a couple seconds to walk to it but Joel is too much of a gentleman to let you amble there alone.

"Hey babygirl." Joel said in his deep, Southern voice as he spotted you. "Hi honey." You stood up, running up to him and jumping into his burly arms. Joel accepted your hug with open arms, a chuckle emitting from him as he held you. "Ya miss me baby?" He squeezed you, kissing the side of your head and getting a whiff of your fruity scented hair - He loves it. "So much." "I missed you too." Joel gruffly mumbled against your neck, pressing kisses to it.

The hug was long and loving. You missed him very much, especially his touch. Your guy's anniversary means the world to you and him, you didn't want to waste anymore time.

"Take me home." You laughed, still being held by him. "Sure thing darlin'." He replied, not putting you down but instead carrying you to the truck. You do have a personal vehicle but it is in the shop right now, so Joel has been driving you to and from work. Even when you do have your car, he'll drive you sometimes just for extra time. It's sweet, truly. Joel opened the passenger side door, the truck light turning back on when he did. The truck smelt great, he must've inputted a new air freshener. "Get in baby." He patted your ass as you got into the truck.

You scoffed playfully, sitting down and buckling in. The smell was actually amazing; The scent was earthy and woodsy - It's definitely Joel's vibe. He then got in after you, an audible grunt being heard from him as he sat down. You couldn't help but smile and admire him. He is wearing a stained blue t shirt with faded blue jeans, it appears to be casual clothes, or his work clothes. He didn't have to work today, yet you did, kind of bullshit.

He started the truck up and began to drive you two home.

"Leroy is having another grandbaby." You started up a conversation. "Is that so? Well, good for him then." Joel responded. He didn't know Leroy as well as you. "Yeah, thought it was cool, the baby being born around our anniversary." You giggled, leaning against the center console and looking at Joel. "Sure. And by the way, happy anniversary baby." Joel added on. He didn't forget, you know that, you two exchanged some kisses and cuddles this morning in honor of it. "I'm sorry you had to work today, on our special day." Joel concluded.

He's such a sweetheart.

"It isn't your fault, honey, it's not really anyones." You commented, taking his free hand in yours. Joel glanced over at you and gave you a hearty smile, knowing how much today meant to you. "I have a surprise for you at home." "You do, what is it?" "Now doll, if I told ya, that wouldn't be much of a surprise now would it?" Joel chuckled, bringing your soft, small hand up to his face and kissing it gently. "Well, you already revealed there's a surprise at home for me." "I did." "So... Wouldn't that mean it isn't much of a surprise?" "Can you just be quiet, my dear?" He teased you, his corners creasing as he bellowed.

Oh that smile and the way his eyes change as he laughs, it warms your big heart. You love seeing Joel happy and well, it makes you feel out of this world. "I love you." "I love you sweetheart." He replied, putting your hand down and instead moving his hand to your thigh. You let out a soft sigh, enjoying his touch. Although, usually whenever he grabs your thigh, it turns into something much more but you won't complain.

You rested your head against the window, looking out at the night sky. It was pretty. Your Wedding night was gorgeous too. It rained that day though, you love the rain but surely not on your Wedding day. You kind of, in a way, hoped it would rain tonight. It would be something special to you. When it was raining that night, you and Joel kissed passionately under the dazzling moonlight, embracing each other as you did. It was so memorable and you often catch yourself thinking about it.

Also, you were very curious as to what the upcoming surprise Joel has for you is. It could be anything. It's obviously for your anniversary, so it has to be wonderful, right? Anything Joel does for you isn't taken lightly, you love it all and cherish it equally. He puts in the effort and that is what matters most to you. You'd just have to wait the car ride out to see what it was.

Joel's hand still rested on your thigh and he'd squeeze it every so often, making you more and more wet. It's not shocking - Joel's touch has always been able to do that to you. You couldn't wait to get home with him, maybe he'd let you have him tonight.

Sometimes he's just too tired and that is understandable, he's a contractor after all, a busy man, you'd never ever pressure him into something he isn't in the mood for. But hopefully, he's in the mood tonight.

-

Pulling into the driveway of your guy's shared suburban home, Joel released a grunt as he parked his truck directly in front of the garage; To him, it was pointless to waste time driving it into it. He took his keys out of the ignition and gave you a quick look of 'C'mon' before he then opened his door, hopping out of the truck. You did the same. As you climbed out of the truck, you saw Joel waiting at the front porch for you. Such a silly man.

You shut the door and ran up to him, a contagious giggle came from you. You were excited, curious on what this socalled surprise was going to end up being. "I'm going to need you to close your eyes." Joel said softly, his hands going to your hips as he caressed them; He plans to hold you as you walk, just for safety measures. "Okay..." You hesitated but closed them shut & tightly, truly not wanting to ruin the surprise at all.

"Alright..." Joel spoke out with his deep, gruff voice. He opened the front door and began to lead you through the house and up to your guy's bedroom. You knew that's where you two were headed considering he had to literally carry you up the stairs. "I'm nervous." "Don't be sweetheart." He kissed your cheek and set you down as you reached the top.

The sound of him opening the bedroom door was heard loud and clear and afterwards, he ushered you into the room. Already, it smelt lovely, like roses. "Mmm, the smell." "Glad you like it, doll." Joel hummed, his hands now going over each eye. "Now, babygirl, you ready?" "Yes, I am." You snorted, your arms resting at your sides. "Ok." Joel laughed, removing his hands and allowing you to finally see what he had done for you and oh, it was magnificent.

All across the bed were rose petals, scattered neatly. The lights were dimmed, causing the atmosphere to seem very sensual. There was also a tiny, red box on the bed that you didn't pick up immediately, but once you did, you took a quick scan of the rest of the room. It was fully cleaned, he actually cleaned for once. The bed was even wonderfully made, for now... On your guy's dresser were lit candles, and that snapped you out of reality.

"You dumbass, did you leave candles lit when you came to get me?" "Hon, it was a sacrifice I was willin' to make." You scoffed. This man sometimes... Although, you couldn't help but titter and the laughter only increased once you opened up the red box. You were surprised, that's for damn sure, but also super happy. Inside was the morning after pill and instantly, you knew what he was implying. "Jesus Christ." You began to laugh hard, too hard, to the point you flopped onto the bed.

Seeing you lose it, also caused Joel too.

"Gosh baby, this is just-" You laughed so hard, you couldn't breath and Joel had to calm you down.

"Alright sweetheart, breathe." He snickered, cupping your face in his larger sized hands. You let out a deep breath, trying to collect yourself but it was hard. This man went out of his way to buy an expensive ass pill just to be able to cum inside of you, such a jack rabbit. "Okay, okay, I'm good." You sat up and rested our head against his lap. "Joel Miller, you're such a funny man." "And Mrs. Miller, you're such a beautiful woman and I'd like you to let me show you just how much I love you tonight." Oh his words...

You sat up, climbing into his lap as fast as you could. You were so happy he was down for this, especially on a night like this one. You encased your arms around his neck as you pulled him in for a deep, long & passionate kiss. Joel's arms went around your back, pulling you as close to him as he could. He longed for this, all damn day and so did you. Your guy's lips moved in a sloppy manner as you made out, just wanting each other ASAP and not being able to remove your hands from one another.

He gripped your ass, grinding you against his lap as he held you. Your pussy only got more wet by the second, each push & each pull made you yearn for him badly. "Joel..." "I know baby." He huffed, going back to kissing you with love. You held onto his scruffy face, your nails scratching lightly against his beard, enjoying how manly he was. His lips felt so heavenly against yours, his have always been the perfect match. Your guy's lips were like puzzle pieces that were finally able to connect.

"Mmm, here." You suddenly pulled from the kiss and began to unbutton your work shirt with the help of Joel's needy hands. He speedily removed it, tossing it to the floor and his singular hand snapping your bra off; You two were getting into it immediately. Joel brought his head down to your breast, suckling on your nipple and in his other hand, fondling the breast beside it. "Oh!" You moaned, tossing your hand back as your fingers roamed through his shaggy hair.

Joel has a huge thing for your tits, he thinks they're perfect.

"My girls." Joel rumbled out, kissing your tits numerous times whilst rubbing them. You giggled as you watched him, he was like a kid with their prized possession. He went back to suckling on them, both of his hands holding your lower back now. You held his head in your hands, practically babying him as he licked your nipples and kissed your breasts. "You're so sexy." You whispered, kissing the top of his head.

Your husband looked up at you, desperation full in his eyes. It is so clear he craves you just as you crave him. He kissed you gently as he flipped you onto the bed, a cute chuckle releasing from you as he did. He laughed as well, seeing you all giddy was always sure to do the same to him. He crawled on top of you, his hands going to the end of his blue shirt, pulling it off with a smile whilst he gazed at you. "Are we just going to fuck with all these rose petals on the bed?" "Adds to it darlin', don't ya think?" He teased, going down to your neck and biting it.

You tittered, holding onto him as he marked his territory all along your neck. "Mmm, need you inside of me." You whined with a giggle. You seriously needed your husband at this point, you needed his member. "Oh, is that so?" "Mhm." You mumbled, looking up at him with soft, doe-like eyes. "Alright babygirl." Joel laughed, leaning up so he'd be on his knees.

His hands went to your waist, his hands fidgeting with the buttons of your tight, formal jeans. You were required to dress nicely, not casual, each day to work. You usually wore a blouse and jeans, which is exactly what you wore today. "Damn fuckin' jeans." Joel grumbled, unbuttoning all three of the tabs before practically ripping them off of you. You squealed, now only in your panties. Joel smirked, the sight of you absolutely jaw dropping.

"You're so fuckin' beautiful sweetheart." Joel praised you, your wetness increased when he did. You lifted your waist up, a groan coming from you whilst you did. You pulled down your underwear and handed them to Joel, expecting that he'd toss them to the side as always but instead, he balled them up and sniffed them, his brown eyes closing as he embraced your scent. "Lord..." Joel hummed, stuffing the panties into his pocket real quick.

"Babe!" You scoffed while giggling, "You never do that." "Can't help myself, you smell good." He responded; He can be so cocky sometimes.

You stared as he removed his jeans. His erect cock flung out from his tight boxers, his pre-cum visible due to the light in the room. You sighed softly as he climbed back on top of you. You held your legs up, knowing he'd eventually place them on his shoulders for more support... And so that he can go deeper inside of you, but that's beside the point.

He adjusted himself into a position that was comfortable for the both of you. Joel was not selfish, especially during love making. He put you before himself, making sure you always feel pleased and for fucking sure making sure you cum first, always. You can't even recall a time he came before you because he's always too worried about your please - Not an issue to you though. "Can't wait to feel ya." Joel mumbled, grabbing his dick and lining it up to your soaked entrance.

You accepted him, accepted every part of him and waited patiently for him to move inside of you.

The tip of his cock teased your entrance as he so slowly pushed himself inside of you. Inch after inch, you couldn't quite make a call as to when he'd stop until a few seconds later. A whopping 7 inches wasn't something to scoff at. "Oh baby." You whimpered, your arms wrapped around his torso and on his upper back. Your hands were flat on it, the heat emitting from his back absorbed onto your hand, bringing a heated feeling to your own body. "So fuckin' tight baby, you feel great." Joel muttered as he stopped himself inside of you.

He gave you a moment to adjust and get used to him. It was not common for you two to fuck without a condom, so it felt different, it felt better. You gave him a nod, letting him know you were ready and that he could move. "Alright baby, tell me to stop if needed." He was always so respectful. Ever since the first time you two had sex, he's been this way, it never changed no matter how comfortable you two got with one another. "Mhm." You nodded, your eyebrows scrunching as he began to slide in & out of your core.

Each movement felt wonderful. He was so careful, making sure you didn't get hurt by his upcoming roughness. Joel is a softie at heart, mainly with you. No matter the circumstances, you come first. "You're squeezin' me, fuck." Joel laughed, his forehead pressed against yours as he fucked your cunt, making you drip onto him. "Oh yes." You moaned, your hands quickly moving to his forearms for better stability. Your nails dug into them, your lip also digging into your lower one. "That'a girl." Joel chuckled, his speed increasing every so slightly.

You couldn't keep your eyes off of him and his body. He's so perfect, in every way, shape and form. You love this man to death. His cock stroked your walls beautifully, each push and pull earning a quiet whimper out of you. You held him close, the warmth of his body only enhancing the experience of this shared love making. "Fuck sweetheart." He grunted into your ear, his breath hot, it was sexy. "What?" You whined out, holding onto his head still. "I feel like I'm gon' cum already." You loved how he spoke to you.

He lifted himself up from the crook of your neck, his eyes on yours as he grinned at you. His pace began to quicken and the force of his hips increased in roughness, you didn't mind, you only embraced it. "Harder Joel." You panted, touching him all over. "Mmm, you're so pretty, such a pretty little sweet thing." Your husband groaned out to you.

The sounds of his manhood slamming against your womanly hood was loud and so lewd. It was very erotic and attractive in a way. The room smelt like floral and sex, two of your favorite things. You could smell the faded cologne on Joel too, your favorite scent he owns. You had on his favorite perfume, hopefully he took notice of that. "Can't wait to cum so deep inside of this pretty little pussy of yours." Joel managed to speak out, clearly so indulged inside of you. The pleasure was taking over him and you assumed this would be the first time he finished first.

As he gawked at you, you whimpered out a squeak as he began to choke you. Of course, it didn't hurt, he was like a gentle giant, making sure it was just a light grip. One hand held both of your wrists down against the bed whereas the other held your pale, little neck. "Just keep starin' at me, I wanna look into those soft eyes as I cum in you." His way of dirty talking was relentless and always brought you closer to the damn edge.

By the look on his face, you could so easily tell what he wanted to do next and he wouldn't have to ask you twice.

"Open that mouth babygirl."

The words made your stomach twist in the most pleasurable, divine way imaginable.

You opened your mouth up for him, a whine releasing from deep inside you as the hold on your neck tightened, along with his pumps becoming more sloppy and reckless. He spit in your mouth, his white salvia dripping into your pretty, pink mouth. He watched, glory in his eyes. This was something Joel was really into and when he had first brought it up to you, you were totally irked by it.

"Uhm, no baby, that's gross." "Give it a shot baby."

And you did, you never regretted it.

You swallowed his spit, your eyes watering as you did, not because you were grossed out or anything but because you were so fucking close to the edge, you could taste it. "Atta girl." He unpinned your wrists now, his free hand going down to your clit; He could tell you needed to cum now.

Gazing into his eyes, your eyes were filled with desire and lust, you longed for him all day and finally, he was giving you exactly what you wanted. His chokehold only brought you more pleasure as his fingers worked their magnificent magic on your nub. "Cum baby." He purred to you, his chokehold now moving into a caressing of your cheek. You couldn't cum yet, you wanted to hold back as long as you could but he wouldn't let up. Rubbing you faster, he said, "Hon, you gotta cum or else I'll finish first." He spoke so sternly, it was the tone you needed.

All around his dick, you came, your back arching. Joel shushed you lovingly as he held you close, still pumping himself into you. "Mmm, such a good girl, you did well." He praised you, his face buried in your hair. He embraced you so sweetly. You could feel him deep inside of you still, the sensitivity heightening, over stimulation occuring. "Please cum." You whispered, wanting him to just finish. "Kiss me then." Joel grunted, smashing his lips against yours. You cupped his face and licked his lower lip, your tongue swirling inside of his mouth now.

With a few more thrusts, Joel came deep inside of you. You could feel his warm seed shooting through you like a fish in water. You moaned loudly, loud enough for Joel's eyes to widen, then for a chuckle to come out afterwards. "Dear God." You sighed softly, coming down from your high and from the feeling of him - He recovered rather hastely.

Joel pulled out of you and grabbed a random T shirt of his, cleaning the two of you up with it.

"You best not wear that after you just wiped us off." "Imma wear it." Joel shut down your statement, you opened your mouth in disgust, but deep down it was pretty hot of him.

"Anywho, happy anniversary doll." Joel grunted, plopping down beside you and pulling you closer towards him. "Happy anniversary, Joel." You kissed his nose and soon, the tired man was out like a bulb.