#BUGGY'S PART WAS SO GOOD!!!

[miraclecherryblossomsblog]

Nah cuz op trailer do be good actually

[bluepallilworld]

The sun goes down and the creatures...

It is time...

Welcome to the party!

Here's the dark cream shipkids halloween collab!

Warning for blood, halloween music and some horror themed background elements ;3

Close-ups! (Click)

------------------------------------------------------------

Credits time!

The kids:

-Mimosa and Mu are mine

-Celestial Star and Luna Light belong to @help-im-a-gay-fish

-Estrella belongs to @shinechermont

-Aim belongs to @zu-is-here

-Ruby and Meridix belong to @orange-dreamzer

-Ares belongs to @puddle-of-creativity

-Nightingale belongs to @catlover31

-Soltice belongs to @laf-e-taffy

-Diaphanous belongs to @amarald

-Mirage belongs to @ari-cuno

-Mager belongs to @faeroviolet

-Fenzo belongs to @im-to-good-for-names

-Andromeda and Eclipse belong to @dragon-tamer-1

The background+ team (look at how big it was this year!!!):

- @diofasolia did the music (spooky scary skeletons :P) (I did some singing), the customized pumpkins, the bloody chair and the lovely lady coming out of the tv

-@orange-dreamzer did some bats, the big cake, a... flower a bit special and empty wrappers

-@pmd-appreciation did seats (pumpkin pouffe, dusty stool, skeleton armchair), the cauldron of snacks, horror movie poster, string of bats, the window, the drinks, the candles

-@amarald did the table, the black cat, the chocolate cherries and a witch hat

[shi0n]

wanna play skyrim.. i played it for like 400 hours when i was 12 and then nvr again

[forcebookish]

played enough (what. one hour? and VERY badly) of overwatch on pc that now i can't remember how to play it on the switch

[bobzora]

guys procreate dreams kind of sucks ass :(

[moongothic]

There's something so bizarre about not having touched the One Piece fandom with a tenfoot pole in almost 10 years, so going into any character tags for content is just. It's bizarre.

Like I go into the Crocodile tags to find posts about the Trans Croco theory (because that's what my brain has decided to get obsessed with right now)

And I end up coming across lots of Old Man Yaoi feat. Buggy

And like. Maybe it is just that it's been like almost a decade since I interacted with the fandom, and the fact that I wasn't looking for content of these specific characters ever before, so maybe this is perfectly normal and nothing new

But also a part of me feels like I can tell the fandom is getting older when we get Old Man Yaoi of Sir Crocodile and Buggy the Clown

[goblinbugthing]

uh. so id been planning on kirby a proper set of armour even before the gentle angel oneshot, so ive been working on designing it. i literally just finished it. so here it is

plus the shield i forgot to mention he also got from mk lol

also has claws now bc i said so (he grows really fast, like alarmingly fast)

(and yes they also have toe beans)

[bunnys-kisses]

｡ﾟ•┈꒰ა ♡ i like my men older - simon riley♡ ໒꒱┈• ｡ﾟ

you knew that your friends from school raised an eyebrow when you told them that you were dating a man almost double your age. you were in your twenties, while this 'simon' guy was close to fifty. you told them that he was an army man who had a gooey center for you.

your friends could see the upgrade in your laptop and the new knapsack with a logo that proclaimed it was expensive. the small chain around your neck with a 's' on it that you toyed with when they asked questions about him.

you looked happy, healthier even! you weren't eating minute meals and surviving off of black coffee. there was a little roundness to your cheeks now and you looked more alive. a glow to you that wasn't that while you trudged through your graduate program. so honestly, how could they complain?

if you had a glow to you, it was because you were often fucked out. most women your age through that dating an older man would mean having to go slow. be patient about technical difficulties regarding their cocks. that was what you expected from a man that old. especially one with aches and pains like simon. your poor si, he had been in the military his entire life. barely had the touch of a woman during that time! poor guy! of course you'll teach him all the ways a woman should please a man. the first time you ran your tongue on the underside of his cock he cam all over your head, and while you whined. it made you crazy hot. fucking simon was like fucking a live wire. he hadn't slowed down with age. he fucked like a stallion in breeding season. and he loved when he pulled his heavy cock into you. you once told him that he could be a cervix breaker. and he simply said, "well, if i break it... i can't breed it." which made you go slack jaw for a moment before he continued to rut up against you. you didn't expect a man of his age to have a breeding kink.

you practically begged your doctor to give you birth control, because he was not buying condoms. "don't fit in 'em, lovie." he said as he patted his clothed cock when you started dating. you knew that was impossible, condoms could fit a lot of things and while simon was fairly big. he could fit in a condom. but, no. when you tried to put them on yourself, he simply took it off, tossed it to the side and pinned you under his heavy weight. legs in the air as he rutted against you like a hungry animal.

he was so much bigger than you. wide shoulders, strong thighs and a bit of a gut to keep you folded under him. there was a masculine heft to him. he was strong, picking you up was easy to him even when you tried to tell him your weight. one time he gripped you by the waist with one arm and moved you out of the way. you kicked and squeaked as you were moved. but to simon it was easy as lifting heavy equipment. but that softness to some of his muscles really got you hot all over. it didn't help that part of your role as his girlfriend was to make sure that your man was fed. you cooked him meals and he over devoured in your sweet dessert. he loved you in an apron. all domestic and sweet for him. you were real wifey material. could easily be cooking meals for him and the kids in a few years. you can have a graduate degree and a few riley babies. "look good cookin' for me, darlin'. know how to make a proper meal for your man." you wouldn't admit but his words excited you.

simon can be a little... chauvinistic. it was just his age. while he respected female colleagues in the military and was beyond happy that you were getting your degree. he'd do things for you that you could clearly do on your own. like when you tried to fix the leaky tap in your flat. or when you try to carry all the groceries inside. yes, darling, you're a strong woman. but let him take over. take care of you. that was what a man did right? he'll cut the onions for you and try to fix your buggy wi-fi connection. he's pay for dinner every time and even get you dessert after. he'd wipe your face clear of the sweet treat you'd have. "don't ask her anything too difficult, johnny. she doesn't need to be thinkin' too hard." he once said with his hands over your ears and glared at his teammate. which only made the scotsman laugh. simon didn't mind if he had to take over. he'd never pull the rug out from under you, even when you were under him. you looked prettier under him, letting him take charge of your fucking. he took care of his girl, even when you whined and told him you were capable. there was no need to whine. simon needed to take care of his much smaller, much weaker baby girl. no need to break a nail trying to do stuff that simon could easily do for you.

even with the grey in his blond hair, he still kept up to you. there were times that you were too exhausted from day-to-day that you let simon rut between your thighs until he covered your round ass with his hot cum. you'd whimper which would turn into a yelp when he easily slipped his heavy cock into your sweet pussy. where it belonged. he fucked you heavily as his cum coated your behind, even trailing down your sloped back as you had your head in the covers.

"don't spill a drop off that pretty ass, baby girl. or else i'd might have to mark you again." thank god you liked your men older. <3

[fingertipsmp3]

Also forgot to mention a guy in my class today said that blogging is narcissistic. I just sat there like 🫠

[princessbrunette]

hi princess! I was just thinking about shy!reader ending rafe nudes for the first time 🫣 can u pls write abt it

⊹ ~ ⊹ ~ ݁. 🎀 ݁.⊹୨🐰୧ ⊹ . ݁🎀 . ݁~ ⊹ ~ ⊹

he wasn’t expecting it. he thought he’d have to work harder for you to open up like that.

it was toppers turn to swing, the group of them playing golf at the country club. rafe scowls in the sun, staring across the hills in thought knowing his younger friend often took ages to line up and get a good swing in. just as he was wondering what you would be up to right about now, lifting his wrist to check the time — his phone dings with a text and he reaches into his pocket, eyes lighting up in intrigue upon seeing it was your name on the screen, with one attachment.

he clicks on the picture and freezes.

it’s a selfie, you sat infront of the mirror in your bedroom. however, you look askew — clearly hot and flustered with your dress disheveled, one sleeve hanging off your shoulder nearly exposing your tit and the hem pulled up around your waist. you’ve got no panties on, legs open with your knees pointing up and feet flat to the floor and in the image you’re spreading your sloppy, wet cunt with your fingers, a mess of your own arousal coating you. the image is paired with a simple caption — ‘please come to my house i miss u :(’

now you were shy, like — hardcore shy. shit, it took you a while to even let rafe touch on you and fuck you without getting overwhelmed and wanting to cry everytime he looked at you. he couldn’t believe his eyes.

“holy shit. hooooly shit.” he drawls, beginning to pace a little, staring at the image and zooming in. topper gets distracted, turning his head.

“whats up?” he asks as rafe types a quick ‘Give me 15 mins baby’ into his keyboard. rafe glances up, lips parted at his two friends, staring at him for answers.

“shit uh, nah… nah don’t worry.”

he pockets his phone, looking to start packing up his stuff.

“nah c’mon man, what happened?” kelce comes towards him with a friendly grin and rafe lightly shoves him back by the shoulder, walking past to the golf buggy.

“i said don’t worry, alright? i uh, gotta roll though. see you guys around.” rafe punctuates his sentence with a scoffed chuckle of disbelief, swinging his golf bag over his shoulder.

“did… did something happen?” topper shakes his head.

“look, i gotta go see my girl alright, said she needs me. sending me pictures of her pussy all spread out n’shit. respectfully, m’not spending another minute with you suckers.” rafe holds up his hands, biting the bait and telling them anyway. he couldn’t help himself, at the end of the day; a boy.

kelce laughs in shock and toppers eyebrows raise, eyes widening as he says your name in questioning confirmation.

“yeah, who the fuck else?” rafe collects his last club from the buggy, slotting it into the bag.

“what— she’s like, the sweetest girl i know. super shy though, am i wrong?” topper seems in just as much as disbelief as rafe, who shrugs, beginning to walk backwards away from his friends.

“so i thought.” rafe calls out with a smirk, arms wide by his side before he spins around to make his way swiftly to your house to show him how much he appreciated your little text message gift.

⊹ ~ ⊹ ~ ݁. 🎀 ݁.⊹୨🐰୧ ⊹ . ݁🎀 . ݁~ ⊹ ~ ⊹

[peachesofteal]

Through Me (The Flood) - secret baby fic Simon Riley / female reader

Simon's short term rental is almost claustrophobic.

He tries to stay out of it, tries to keep himself busy. Active. After a week since you asked him to go home, to give you some space, he noticed he's lost weight. The thick of his ribs, his stomach, his thighs, has thinned out, cutting his bulk, exposing more muscle.

The grief feels more fresh than it has in years. Talking to you, telling you, has dredged up long buried things, agony and regret, pain that steals his breath and leaves him paralyzed. He forces himself not to think of it, but it still finds a way to creep in. To make him feel torn apart, turns him into a ghost.

He walks a lot. Walks to the store. Walks to the pub. Walks to the park. Sometimes he sits on the bench and watches mums push their buggies, wondering if it's something you might enjoy, if you were feeling better. Wishing he had made more of an effort to get you out of the flat, into the sunshine.

He's still walking to your building at night, standing under the tree, watching the lights flicker on and off. Your windows stay lit longer now, periods of sleep more infrequent, leaving him to worry that you're not getting enough rest, not taking care of yourself.

He walked all morning into early afternoon today. Tried to quell the nausea swirling in his stomach, tried not to watch the clock, or count the seconds. Tried to brace himself for the bittersweet he knew was coming.

>Hey, I'm going to be leaving pretty soon for work, and could be gone for a while. Could I see Orion before I go? Spend some time with him?

>Sure.

Your reply still rings in his ears. Short. Torturous.

But he doesn't blame you. He did it the wrong way. You have a child, his child, to protect, to take care of. Of course, you should be concerned. Maybe he should have found a better way to tell you. Maybe he shouldn't have told you at all.

A large part of him, the instinctual part, considered refusing you, when you asked him to give you some time, and he still hasn't made a decision about what he will do in the long run.

It would be so easy, to hide you away. To take you in the middle of the night, wake you up in a brand new home, high in hill, in a whole new country across a border.

When the knock on his door finally comes, he crams the overflow of emotion coursing through his heart into a teeny tiny box, and prays he'll be able to keep a lid on it.

"Hey." Orion turns in your grip, looking for Simon's voice, and you smother a wince at the shift in his weight.

"Hi." You look through him. Past him. To the left of his elbow, at his shoulder, the floor. Anywhere but his eyes.

"Thanks for letting me spend some time with him." Your lips go flat, but you shuffle the baby into his arms, managing to avoid skin to skin contact. It makes his stomach hurt worse than it already did.

"Of course, you're... you're his dad." You peek around him, trying to get a better look of the flat. "Do you uh, have stuff for him?"

"I went to the store."

"Okay. Well, good." You hand him the bag next. "I wasn't sure what you had so there are a few changes of clothes in there, just in case, and some bottles. They should probably go in the fridge. Diapers, some toys. Just in case... I didn't want.... I wanted you to have everything you might need." It's thoughtful of you, and he wants to smile, but you won't look at him.

"Thank you." You nod.

"Alright well, I'll come pick him up later? Just text me I guess, when you're ready. Hopefully he'll take a bottle."

"I can bring him-"

"No, that's okay." you cut him off sharply, shaking your head. He frowns.

"Why not?"

"I- I don't mind, coming by to get him."

"But if it's dark..."

"I can manage." You snap, and he purses his lips, but says nothing.

"Alright well, see you later then." You make some noncommittal noise, and then step closer, mouth pressing to Orion's cheek.

"Bye baby, love you." You finally look up at him, really look, and he holds his breath when he sees it all in your eyes. Pain. Confusion. Worry.

He did that.

The evening goes too fast. He manages to get Ry to nap, and drink over half a bottle, a huge win, but spends most of the time just holding him, walking him in circles in his flat, trying to memorize the feeling of his baby in his arms. He's fussier than usual, crying anytime Simon tries to put him down, which he doesn't mind, but concerns him. Is he like this at home, with you? Is this why you've been up more at night?

Still, it's over too soon, and when you're knocking on the door again, he stands on the other side a few seconds too long, wishing he had more time.

He's always wishing he had more time.

"How was he?"

"Good. More fussy than usual, but I got him to take most of a bottle. Is he doing alright?"

"He's been like this, the past few days. He's either going through a growth spurt, or developing some late colic. I hope it's the growth spurt." Oh no.

"Well, I'm here if you need anything. If you want me to take him at all." You nod.

"When uh... when are you leaving?"

"Two weeks or so. Once the guys get back, they'll have a few days debrief and then... we'll be off."

"Okay, well. Just let me know, when you want him again?"

"I will." He kisses Orion's cheek, whispering in his ear how much he loves him, before passing him to you. You have to reposition your posture to support his weight, and he winces. "Are you okay?" You blink at him, skeptical and surprised.

"I'm great Simon. Really peachy."

"Look, I know I really sprung-"

"Sprung? Is that what you're calling that? Simon... you blindsided me. You... you-" He holds up his hands.

"I'm much more careful now. I've learned a lot of hard lessons, and I would never, ever allow anything to happen to you or Orion." His shoulders slump, and he drops his eyes to the floor. Ashamed. Grief trying to work its way, trying to break him down just as it has all these years before. "I've learned from my mistakes." There's a long, uncomfortable since between the two of you, one that Orion fills with fussing, and then your voice cracks.

"Simon, that wasn't your fault.... I'm not... I'm not upset about... that. Or anything, that happened to you. I mean, I'm upset but not at you for that..." You take a deep breath. "I am upset for you, that those things happened to you, that you've been through such trauma, such horrible things." Tears wet your cheeks, but he doesn't move. Doesn't breathe. "I would never hold that against you. I'm upset about your job. And the danger it puts us in. I'm upset that I didn't know that you'd been gone for weeks, possibly months at a time. I'm upset that you promised me you'd be here, and then never mentioned the super secret task force that will... take you away from us." Orion cries, and you bounce him back and forth, finally looking Simon dead in the eye, facing him head on. "It feels like you've been lying to me, for weeks now. I thought we were in this, together, that we were- we were building something, together. Now it just feels like... I could lose you at any second instead. That Orion could lose his father, grow up without you." The last word rips from your lips in a sob, and you shake your head as he steps close.

"You will never lose me. Do you understand? That will never happen." He vows it, swears it, forces it out into the universe as a covenant, but you only shake your head again, sadly.

"You can't promise that."

[caramel-mousse]

I was skeptical of sanrio characters picross but its like if pokemon picross was actually fucking good

[fanaticsnail]

Dreaming of You

Masterlist Here

Word Count: 1,100+, 1,700+, 1,700+, 1,400+

Synopsis: They couldn't help it. You looked so heavenly in their dreams. The way they had you wrapped around their body as a marionette in their minds, dancing for them as they awoke to sticky blankets when they jolted upright. Their thoughts got the better of them, and they are wracked with guilt. Sir Crocodile, Buggy, Dracule Mihawk

Warnings: wet dreams, afab!reader, swearing, masturbation, dub con (Using your image to masturbate to), suggestive content, feelings, all individual 'x reader' drabbles, same reader!insert different outcome, chop-chop fruit shenanigans, angst, romance, smut, kissing, NSFW, 18+, MDNI.

Notes: Dreaming of You Masterlist Here, Please read the warnings. I am having a lot of fun with this series, but this one got away with me. They're only meant to be silly little drabbles between larger fics. Sorry for the lengthy read! Enjoy playing the part of a marine spy for Cross-Guild!

Tag list: @sordidmusings @nerium-lil @feral-artistry @since-im-already-here @writingmysanity @indydonuts @gingernut1314 @i-am-vita @carrotsunshine @mfreedomstuff @daydreamer-in-training @lostfirefly

Hips pressed against one another, huffing pants and gasps were collected in one another's lips and skin as he pinned your back against the wooden wall behind the burgundy curtains of the tent door. Legs collected over his hips, he held your left thigh in his right hand, his forearm caging you by slotting up between your right shoulder and the cool surface. 

Lusting and passionate, he drew intentional thrusts that were slow and deliberate enough to brush at your g-spot and mold your pussy to the contours of his thick cock. He slacked his jaw, his eyes swimming with emotion as he ground his pelvis against your clit with every heavy thrust. 

Your voice whimpered for him, stifling your mewls of pleasure by biting down into his shoulder and crying as he bullied his cock into your needy pussy. He groaned with you, rocking his cock in slow, languid thrusts up into your body. 

“Please,” you begged him, desperately clawing at his back and peppering his shoulders, neck and jaw with enthusiastic kisses, “We don't have long until the others come back.” He growled at your words, offering you a particularly mean thrust forward and a cruel bite against your neck. 

“A-Aah!” you gasped in shock, biting your lip and digging your nails into his shoulders harder. He sheathed his entire length greedily into you, his shaft twitching in bliss the moment he felt his blunt tip brush your cervix. His hips stapled yours against the wall he was bullying you against. 

“I don't care if they hear,” he barked against your neck, tracing his tongue over the bruise forming from his bite, “I don't care if they see.” He pulled back his hips only slightly before immediately propelling himself forward and forging his body against yours like soldering iron to a hot blade. 

“Let them hear,” he admitted, huffing against your neck as he rocked his hips into yours, removing his hand from hooking around your thigh to grip your neck and bring your gaze to meet his. “Let them see.” He plastered your parted lips with his own, desperate with tongue and teeth as he released your neck to hold your thigh once more. 

“I want them to hear,” he groaned into your mouth, rolling your cheek with his chin and kissing down your jaw, “I want them to see.” He trailed his needy kisses down your neck as he doubled his effort and sped up his rhythmic thrusting. 

As your core sucked him in each time he retracted, his mind was lost to him and was filled with primal desire. He needed them to hear your sweet moans and whimpers. He needed them to see who was making you feel this good. He needed you to know who you belonged to. 

“Say you're mine,” he growled, his lips mouthing up your neck, over your jaw and to your cheeks, “Say it.” He sped up faster, his cock hammering into you with every cruel, frenzied thrust. His hair was sticking to the dewy sheen of sweat against his forehead and neck, his brows furrowed as he glared into your eyes with an intensity he had never felt in life prior. 

“Say you're mine,” he barked at you, commanding you to fulfill his desires as his cock twitched within you. Your walls beckoned him closer, the thump of your ecstasy wringing his cock as he pistoned it within you had him desperately whimper and whine your name. 

“P-Please say you're mine,” he implored you in desperation, his fingers clutching your thigh in a heaping fistful as he continued to chase your mutual highs, “Tell me. Tell me your mine, and I'll be your slave.” He begged, kissing your lips and panting through his thrusts, “I'll be yours. Is that what you want?”

He chased your mutual high faster, rocking and pummeling into you with his heels digging into the floor. His belt buckle jingled atop his pants pooling at his ankles, your own pants discarded beneath you long ago. Leaning down, he took your peaked nipple into his mouth and rolled it over with his tongue.

A string of saliva attached from his lips to the puckered bud when he pulled away, huffing and panting at the lustful display of your breathing hitching. Body bouncing in sultry ripples with each thrust, he groaned as he felt his abdomen tighten with a familiar call of his imminent release. 

“Yes,” you whispered his name suddenly, clutching his neck and carding your hands through his hair, “Yes, I want that. I want you-...” You whined his name as he pistoned his length deep within you, “Please, I'm yours. Only yours.” 

He growled his pleasure at hearing your words into your lips, tongue lapping with yours and his hair brushing against your forehead. You hastily tugged him away from your lips by gripping the scruff of his neck and pulling hard. 

“W-What? Why are you-?” He began, his words halted by the intensity of your gaze. Your lips were parted, face flushed from a higher rise of hazy temperature, and skin forming lustful bruises and mapping his treasure with his marking kisses. 

“Make me yours,” you gasped at him, panting as your lust eclipsed your eyes, “Cum in me. I want it. Need it.” His eyes widened, and his jaw fell slack as his hips staggered their vicious thrusting deep inside you. 

“Fuck, I-I’m gonna-...” His abdomen tightened further, his eyes glowing black with luminescent lust as his seed spilled inside you with hot spurts, “I'm cumming-... hhah-... I-I’m cumming…f-f-fuck-...” Rope after rope of translucent cum released within your walls, the rhythm of your own ecstasy milking him with squeezing grasps on his throbbing cock. 

You called his name, throwing your head back as he trailed his eyes over your skin with adoration within his bliss. He couldn't get enough, reaching forward to collect your lips beneath his in a scorching mess of lips, tongue and teeth. With a desperate kiss to mold him against you completely, he forged an unspoken covenant to ensure you knew you were his and he was yours. 

Opening his eyes, the image of your blissed out afterglow faded from his vision. All that he was met with was the ornate ceiling in his bedroom, his cock twitching through the final waves of untouched pleasure. 

“No,” he growled, removing his duvet with his right hand and glancing at the lustful dance his swollen cock twitched with. A last spurt of cum spilled from the glossy slit and he immediately thrust the ruined blanket on top of his stomach to shield it from his sight. 

“Fuck.”

Sir Crocodile 

He balled his right fist, slamming it into the mattress beside his hip with a rumbling growl in his chest. Inhaling deeply, holding it for a few seconds, and exhaling slowly had him assess all that occurred to him with his night vision moments ago.

“Please say you’re mine. Say you’re mine and I’ll be your slave,” his own voice echoed in his mind, “I’ll fall to my knees and worship you in all ways. I’ll treat you like the deity I know you to be, showering you in praise and praying at your altar. Please.”

“I’m yours,” you whispered with half-hooded lessons, “I’ll only ever be yours, Sir Crocodile. Only yours.” He snapped his eyes awake, clenching his jaw impossibly tight and drawing his brows down in fury.

“I begged?” he snarled, reaching for a cigar and his flint-lock lighter, “I begged to claim you as mine?” He clicked his tongue before biting down on his cigar, lighting the end with a small flame and sucking in a sour lungful of smoke, “Utterly ridiculous.” 

Pulling the duvet away from his lap, he growled at the sticky ooze pooling at his abdomen before squaring his shoulders and walking to the adjoining ensuite in his master bedroom. The Cross-Guild tent did not have many luxuries, but he refused to go without simple pleasures while working with the disgusting clown. 

A bath was one such pleasure Sir Crocodile would not live without.

Running the water, he dropped each foot into the tub and sighed out at the contact of the freshwater rising to his thighs. The heat and steam eradicated his shame from his abdomen without much effort, melting it down and washing it away beneath the water. Groaning, he looked to his absent left hand and gazed down at the scarred stump. 

“We don’t have long until the others come back,” he heard your voice echo within his mind, drawing himself back to the dream and causing him to grimace in annoyance. He circled his palm and fingertips over his left forearm and molded the flesh within a firm grip. 

The pains on his phantom limb had returned, his mind racing and attempting to draw up distractions by any means necessary. Your midnight illusion was simply the latest commodity to preoccupy his attention with lustful desires, is how he rationalized such a shameful intrusion. 

He was a fourty-six year old man, not some prepubescent teenager so consumed with the need to fuck that their minds dreamed it into an untouched and sticky reality. The pain intensified, his teeth clamping in a rough hiss as the illusionary throb of his hand caused him to shake his arm from his grip. 

This was going to be a long and tiring day.

At the meeting, he was being short and harsh with anyone and everyone to cause him displeasure. His teeth snapped barks, his chest rumbling his fury and his hair was beginning to become disheveled. The clown was aggravating, and the swordsman’s silence was not as refreshing as it was under usual circumstances.  

His right hand only ever left his left forearm for the chance to draw up a cigar, yet the sour smoke did very little to soothe his pain, and his hand only seemed to make the intensity of the throbbing worse. As Mihawk and Buggy stood to leave the room, he remained behind and he finally hissed out a lengthy growl behind his clenched teeth at the pain. 

There was not a sound in the room, a slight ringing in his ears as the pain reached his head and dizzied his mind. Eyes scrunched tightly shut, he had no context for a gentle touch on his hand over his forearm until he snapped his purple eyes up to meet with yours. 

“Allow me, Sir Crocodile,” your smile illuminated your face, gently suggesting with your touch to remove his right hand from his left forearm. He attempted to fight the urge to bark at you, snap at you and give in to his desire to have you touch him. 

“And just what do you think you’re doing, Marine?” he growled, eyes narrowing and lips curling up into a deep snarl, “Who gave you the right to touch me-?”

“Oh, shut up. You've been horrendous today and I refuse to have this continue to be cause for your disgusting attitude,” you bit back, your own lips pulling back to reveal your snarl, “Let go of your arm and let me help you, damn it.” He immediately dropped his arm in favor of gripping your neck in a tight choke, bringing your face closer to his. 

“You dare to give me orders, Marine?” he roared at you, your teeth gritting back the pain and glaring into his eyes. “I was a former warlord, little spy. Now I hunt and kill your kind for a living.” As Sir Crocodile monologued, he remained ignorant of your hands working to find the clamps of his prosthetic hook and releasing the golden cover from his arm. 

“And now you touch me, spy? Offering me what, exactly?” he continued monologuing as you removed his hook and rolled up his embroidered sleeve. The pain in his forearm was so intense he could barely feel any relief of tension come from releasing his limb from the confines of his hook. “How are you going to help-... A-ah!” He gasped, his brows tugging up in the center of his forehead as he glared at you. 

Immediately releasing your neck, he looked down at his bare forearm within both of your hands and bit back a whimper. In his own grip, his scarred forearm felt hot and throbbing beneath his cooler temperature. In your warmer hands, his arm felt encased in an encumbering embrace like hot stones sizzling on a damp surface. 

Your thumbs traced the contours of his muscles, dipping between his bones and rolling his muscle between your fingers. The heel of your palm added a tight pressure to his ache, his breath coming out in rough pants the longer you held him in a tight grip. His eyes softened, his scowl loosening from anger to pain. 

Hissing and panting, an uncharacteristic whimper fell from his lips as you silently focussed on working the flesh within your skilled grip. Circling your thumbs and contracting your hands, you instructed him with calming and soothing words. 

“Deep breaths now,” you whispered in a slow and intentional hum, “In when I squeeze, and out when I release.” He nodded his head, feeling the soft roll of your hands over his skin. As you tightened his grip, his chest expanded with a lengthy inhale and exhaled as you withdrew. 

Repeating that motion, he felt the tension in his mind begin to release him from his illusions. Focussing on your movements as your voice soothed him with each direction, he didn’t expect his emotions to overcome him at such kindness. Your hard contractions over his arm eased up, your fingertips tracing the scars on the vacant nub and causing his flesh to tingle beneath it. 

“Better, sir?” halting your soft motions, you gently placed your hand on his forearm and held faint pressure over his skin. Reopening his eyes, he felt tangible relief wash its way over his face. Gazing into your eyes, you held nothing but empathy and gentleness in your twin orbs. He leaned down over your face, bringing contact between your two foreheads and offering you the slightest of smiles. 

“Why would you do that?” he whispered in an uncharacteristic soft voice, “Touch me like that? Offer me such kindness after all that’s occurred between us?” He raised his right hand and cupped the back of your head in a firm grip to hold you against him. 

“You didn’t kill me the moment I stepped into the red tent,” you smiled warmly at him, “Nor did you kill me any day thereafter.” Giving his arm another gentle squeeze, you glanced down at his missing limb and offered him a melancholy smile. He growled at your confession, searching your eyes for a further explanation. You huffed out a sigh, smiling further with a soft twitch up your cheeks. 

“I used to do this for my friend back at the marine base,” you offered him a glimpse at your history with your explanation, “Did it all the way up until the day she died. Said something about my hands feeling warm against her skin, different to her own temperature. Soothing.”

He chuckled at that, nodding against your head and closing his eyes shut in momentary bliss. That was why you felt so good on his skin, your skilled motions causing him aid and relief. You have done this before, and were offering it freely to him. 

“Oh?” he asked, his smile tugging at his cheeks and elevating the scar over his face, “And did she manage to say what she did without you by her side to aid her?” You laughed at him, breaking away your contact from his forehead and scrunching up your nose playfully. 

“I was always by her side, sir,” you confessed to him, nodding as you spoke, “She and I were inseparable, even in cabin quarters.” He nodded in understanding, looking down to his limb and back up to your eyes. 

“Well, if that’s the only solution for the pain I’m encountering,” he uttered, his lips curling into a wide smirk, “I would see you gather your personal effects and move into my cabin beside the tent, immediately.” You laughed at him, rising from his side and beginning to leave the meeting room. 

“I hardly think that would be appropriate. Don’t you agree, sir?” you question him, collecting your bag from the circular table in the center of the room. As you moved to leave the tent, a strong forearm snaked around your chest and grasped your shoulder, tugging you firmly into a broad chest. 

“Wasn’t a suggestion, Marine,” he whispered into your ear, the smooth rumble of his voice shooting tingles up your spine and causing you to gasp. “You’re mine now. Hear me?” He grazed his lips over your cheek and down your jaw in a slow motion. 

“Mine.”

Buggy

“Oh, what the fuck?” his nasally voice huffed, his makeup free face flushing with a hefty sprinkle of dark blush, “You’re fucking kidding me.” He reached down to his cock and fisted it in a pistoning motion. 

“Had to be you, didn't it?” he cursed your name in a pouty snarl, “The fucking spy.” He swirled his cock in his palm, growling at it before he simply detached it with his balls and brought it up to his face. He frowned in a deep scowl, drawing up his heckles as he began chastising his cock. 

“C’mon, man! How could you do this to me?” He growled at his cherry-red knob, choking it in his fist, “You think this is fucking funny? You think I want to see ‘em like this?” He drew up his other hand and slapped his knob, his pelvis wincing in response. 

“Out of bounds,” he berated his cock, “The spy is out of bounds. You know the spy is out of bounds.” He pinched his knob, choking it and only making his pleasure heighten. “N-Nnngh-... Not for thinking about, not for trying to fuck.” 

He whimpered, his priorly ruined orgasm still gluing his duvet to his stomach. He growled, hocking a wad of spit behind his lips. He spat on his cock in an attempt to degrade himself further, only leading to lubricating his ministrations and causing him to throw his cerulean colored hair back into his plush pillows in bliss. 

“Hhah-... The spy is not for you, you fucking idiot,” he gulped his confirmation, his cock thrusting itself in his fist beside his head as he frowned at it, “Think about something else,” he closed his eyes, meeting the thrusts of his cock with his hand as he tried to think about anyone else he could sheathe himself in. 

“Buggy, I-I’m gonna c-cum-,” he heard your voice whimper at him, his cock twitching in his hand beside his face, “Buggy, please can I cum?” He shook his head, attempting to picture anything else. Faceless breasts bouncing, ripples of an ass jiggling, parted lips panting and huffing with eyes scrunched shut-... Your voice calling his name with adoration pouring from your lips like honey. 

“Fuck, fuck, fuck,” he chanted, shaking his head and attempting to go back to the earlier images. He only pictured your hair, your skin, your perfume, and your lips behind his eyes. Those lips used to spell secrets, split in a perfect ‘O’ as he pictured you slicking his cock up in your needy cunt with your erupting ecstacy milking him of his heaping load. 

“Fuck! No, no, no, no, n-oooh!” He threw his cock away from his face to not shoot himself in the eye with his release. It spattered the wall in a secondary wave of sticky cum like a grenade exploding on impact. “Nnnngh-... F-Fuck. Fu-uck-... C-cumming-.” His abdomen contracted as he rode the remaining waves of his orgasm untouched and unstimulated. 

Ropes of guilt shot out of his small slit and coated the wall and floor in a sticky pile of pearlescent cum. He groaned your name, huffing and panting as his hips bucked up in an attempt to stimulate his detached cock. 

“N-... No…” he whimpered, bringing his palm up to his face and clapping it over his lips. “Not the spy. I can't-... I can't have the damn spy. They're a bloody marine, you fucking idiot,” he degraded himself further, rising from his bed and wiping his abdomen of the solidifying globs of sticky cum with his duvet. 

He reached his cock, staring at it as it looked like a pathetic, slobbering drunk as it lay in a pool of its own drool. He clicked his tongue at it, picking it up and dusting it off before reattaching it to his pelvis. Readjusting his balls, he found his red jumpsuit and messily thrust it over his body in one swell motion. Instead of throwing his arms through the sleeves, he tied the material around his waist and offered to remain shirtless. 

“Not the spy,” he whispered to himself as he exited his ornate living quarters at the Cross-Guild base. Making his way to the kitchen, he was halted by a soft hum reverberating around the room. 

A familiar somber tune painted the air with its melody, his eyes shutting and the corner of his mouth ticking up as he listened to the lyrics. Stepping into the room, he attempted to mask his nerves with his signature mischief written on his face. 

As he drew his eyes over your features, your back facing away and staring out the window by the sink, he couldn't help but have the mask of protection slip away. Your lips whispered the lyrics, your heart carried the tune. You were not in your marine uniform, nor were you adorning the attire Sir Crocodile purchased for your protection. 

You were dressed in simple, gray-coloured slacks that hung loosely around your hips. The top you were wearing was a cropped t-shirt with his Jolly Roger printed on the back. His lips parted in shock as he drank you in, listening to your soft singing and closing his eyes to experience it fully. 

Before he could manage to say a word to reveal his presence, your hums ceased and your voice lowly uttered your apologies. 

“Sorry, Captain Buggy,” you bow your head to him in greeting, “I was not assuming the three of you to be awake so early. If I bothered you with my noise, I apologize.”

“N-No bother,” he huffed your name and hastily gave his reply to you with a soft blush, “I-... I haven't heard that song since the old days. Way back when-... When Roger…” He trailed off, looking at a point just beyond your hips and against the sink beside you. 

“I love the old shanties,” you chased his gaze with your own, angling your chin down and attempting to pry his eyes up to meet yours, “They're either about drinking, fucking, or grieving.” Buggy met your gaze, grinning up at you with his teal eyes beaming. 

“Ah, two of my favorite pastimes,” he added his commentary, leaning in closer and a cheeky smile pulling at his cheeks, “I’m not one for fucking.” He shot you a wink, prompting you to laugh at his joke. Your laugh was music, each soft teeter was as radiant as a lilt from heavenly minstrels. After teetering off your laugh, he offered you a soft smile with his eyes wide and curious. 

“Would you mind…?” Buggy trailed off again, nervously clutching the back of his neck and cringing through his smile, “...Could you perhaps tell me why you decided to join us, again?” He released his hand from his neck and darted his eyes between yours. 

After taking a moment to collect your breath and mull over what it was he asked of you, shrugged and offered him a simple answer. 

“The Berry is good, and it’s mutually beneficial,” you nod at him, smiling with your answer, “You were the one who offered me a choice, remember?” Crossing your arms, you leaned your hips back on the sink and glared at him, “It was either: spy for the marines as a triple agent for your Cross-Guild with a livable wage, or have Crocodile or Mihawk take my head. I chose you, Captain.” 

As Buggy was reminded of his prior actions and offered you a sheepish smile in response. Stepping forward, he reached for your forearms and waited for you to flinch away or chastise him for such a soft gesture. In the wake of such a softness, he was pleasantly surprised when he felt your fingers interlace with his own and hold them beside him.

“You know, ‘m sorry ‘bout that,” he mumbled, looking to his toes and pouting his unpainted lips, “Didn’t mean t’ have it sound so bad.” You smiled in response, giving his fingers a gentle squeeze and angling your chin down to look at his uncovered fingers. 

“You know, you’re actually quite handsome,” you confessed in a breathy whisper, “The infamous Captain Buggy D Clown, genius jester, king of fools, and calamity of chaos.” You named his titles with a soft smile, looking up into his rainforest-colored eyes with such gentleness. 

“You-... You think I’m handsome?” He asked you, your soft laughter prompted his own to slip freely into the air. You unplaced your right hand from his left and cupped his cheek within your palm, running your fingers through his hair. 

“You’re usually dressed in makeup, with your long hair tucked under your hat,” you collected a strand between your fingers and rolled your thumb over the lengthy blue locks, “And, you usually don’t have this much skin revealed.” Looking down at his chest: his messy blue hair trailed down his chest, tapered off at his stomach, and picked up again like a cerulean trail leading to the assumed treasure beneath his red jumpsuit. 

“I’m not used to seeing this much of you, Captain,” you muffled, drawing your gaze back up to his with a rapidly broadening smile, “And I’m not mad about it.” Your eyes creased at the corners as you offered him a toothy grin in response to his vibrant blush.

The hue of his cheeks rivaled that of his nose and jumpsuit, his eyes almost weeping from the rapidly rising blood pooling in his face. His Adams apple bobbed at the compliment, gulping back a dry pit in his throat and swallowing it. 

“Y-You know,” he stuttered, chuckling to cover his nerves and squeezing your remaining hand in his in two short motions, “I… I take back my earlier sentiment, uh-... If you’re interested?” He continued stuttering and choking on his words as he clumsily cartwheeled around his intentions.

“Oh?” you smirked at him, raking your fingers through his hair and darting your eyes between his, “And what was your earlier sentiment again, Captain?” You trailed your fingers down to the end of his lengthy locks. 

He gulped his terror and humbled himself by offering you a short, huffed laugh. After taking a moment, his eyes twinkled in mischievous hope as he rejoined your eyes in a smiling gaze. 

“I am one for fucking…”

Mihawk

Amber eyes stared in horror at the ceiling, wide and unblinking as he replayed the final moments over and over again in his mind. He drew his right hand down to grasp around the steel girth of his deflating cock and wield it in his firm grip. 

“I want that. I want you, lord Mihawk,” You whined his name as he pistoned his length deep within you in his mind's eye, “Please, I'm yours. Only yours.” His breath hitched in his throat, his eyes twitching but remaining staring vacantly at the ceiling. Thumbing over the prior release, he hissed in agitation the moment his fingers collected his viscous eruption. 

“How fatuous,” he snarled, raising his duvet once more from his waist, “So puerile.” His face remained vacant, his eyes holding only a touch more agitation than his usual persona as he walked to his ensuite shower. Turning the taps, he didn’t wait to feel the rise in water temperature. 

Stepping into the freezing water, he made no reaction as the icy liquid pelted at his skin; not even blinking to dampen his rapidly drying eyes. The water began to elevate in temperature as he released his cock from the grip. Gathering his sandalwood soap bar in his hands, he began lathering himself in foamy suds and washing over his body with his shock and shame still evident on his features.

The only time he closed his amber eyes was when he washed over his face, scrubbing at his whiskered chin and massaging his cheekbones. As soon as his eyes closed, he only saw your face contorted in pleasure, your ethereal moans freely haunting him in his ears. Shaking his head beneath the water, he only saw your face and imagined your hands clawing at his back beneath the water. 

Horror and shock eclipsed his eyes upon reopening, his eyes remaining that way as he concluded his shower, dried himself off, applied his cologne and skin care products, and dressed himself in his pants and greatcoat. His fingers stuttered over the lacing on his outer greatcoat, his lengthy necklace almost choking him as he placed it over his neck.

Almost stumbling into the dining space, he searched in his mind for a reason something so juvenile could occur for someone of his age, standing, and stature. He had gone for so long without taking a lover, he barely felt any lusting urges overcome him anymore. It didn’t suit his routine, his monotony, or his lifestyle as a former warlord. 

His apathetic and bored stature coming from a place of loneliness in his sovereignty as World's Greatest Swordsman. His achievements were already so vast, and he had nobody to share them with - nor a desire to begin a courtship with someone akin to his title. He had no time to take a lover, no time to indulge in whoring as it took away from his duties tending his garden in Kuraigana, and his bounty collecting as Marine-Hunter for Cross-Guild. 

So, why did his mind replay your pleasure over and over again in a loop of falsified memory? The marine spy, the confidant to cross-guild, the whispering oathbreaker; all the titles he sought to bestow you with. His hands reached for the bottle in front of him, clasping the green glass in his hands and uncorking the waxy tip. Pouring the rouge liquid into a crystalline glass, he felt a presence to the side of him.

“Could you spare a glass for me, my lord?” your soft susurration drew his attention back to the present, prompting his eyes to flicker to you. He witnessed your soft smile, your gaze assessing his face and shoulders.

Wordlessly, he reached for another glass and began readying it for you. The dry liquid coated the glass, a soft drop spilling from the rim and down the stem which caused you to knit your brows in concern. 

“Everything okay, my lord?” you asked, reaching for a napkin and beginning to clean up the mess, “You seem out of sorts this morning. Berry for your thoughts?” You dabbed at the table with the wafer-thin paper and tidied up his spill without a second thought. His eyes followed your motions, almost viewing the dabs in slow motion the longer your hands lingered near him. 

His silence seemed to perplex you further, turning your shoulders and leaning your hips back against the marble counter and staring up into his unblinking eyes in response. His shaking hands reached for his wineglass and drew it up to his lips. His mustache dipped into the liquid, messily staining his upper lip with the tart tannins. 

Gazing at his shoulders, you noticed a loop of his shoulder straps seeming to bubble within the corseted lacings, your hands absentmindedly straightening the bonds without much thought. Mihawk choked on his liquid the moment your hands brushed against his shoulders. 

Feeling the warmth float from your fingertips to the exposed skin beneath the weighty jacket, his eyes widened briefly and his pupils narrowed in an accusatory glare. Huffing a nervous laugh as his soft choke and shaking your head, you reached behind you to the pile of napkins and began to raise it to his face and lightly pat at his stained skin. 

Reactionary, he immediately placed his glass down behind you with his right hand, his left clapped around your invasive wrist in a circled vice-grip. Your breath caught in your throat, darting your eyes around his face with your eyes wide and panicked. He immediately drew his face forward and captured your lips beneath his without restraint. He hummed into your lips, raising his right hand and carding his fingers through your hair to deepen the passion.

Lips, tongue, and teeth pulled and tugged at your mouth from the swordsman, his gentle moans and sharp breaths depicting his wanton need to join himself with you immediately. He was pent up for so long, restrained for so long, and his body betrayed him in a shameful display in his dreams as proxy to such desire. If his overnight visit from you as his midnight muse spoke for anything, it was that his needs were now becoming more insistent, prominent, and desperate to be satiated. 

And you were who he wanted to aid him in such a task. 

Your hands raised defensively beside you, your eyes were wide and staring at his furrowed brow and tightly clamped eyes. He continued pressing heated and passionate kisses against your lips with gusto. Not giving you time to adjust or react, he anchored himself between your legs and pinned you against the marble dining station. Lips trailing to your cheek and down your neck, he bit, nipped and sucked at your revealed skin. 

His hands looped around your neck and shoulders, drawing you against him with an incessant need to depict to you his desires with his unyielding grip. You gasped as his lips traced up your skin and returned to your lips, your hands dropping to brace yourself beside you on the marble surface. 

Pulling his lips away, he held your face stationary by palming at the scruff of your neck and holding your attention with his honey-colored eyes. His predatory gaze narrowed in on you as his bruise-kissed lips ticked up in his signature smirk. 

“There,” he snarled at you in soft agitation, before releasing your neck. He collected his wineglass and green bottle from behind you, keeping his face in close proximity. His smirk drew up further as he turned to walk away from you. 

Calling over his shoulder, he snickered his taunting remark at you before leaving through the door, “Now I can occupy your thoughts the same way you've been tormenting me in mine.” 

You stood there stunned, frozen in place as your lips still tingled with the feeling of his against yours. The silky scrape of his neatly cropped beard tickling your cheeks, the way his tongue brushed with yours, and the animalistic desire to consume you with his lust had your soul ignited. 

Turning to the marble bench, you claimed your wineglass and raised it to your lips, immediately gulping back the tart liquid in a heaping swig. Placing the glass in the sink, you stared at the door Mihawk just left through, your thoughts spiraling and sifting through all the possible scenarios of what his words meant, and what the kiss means for you now. 

Only Mihawk knew what he intended with the kiss, and after the morning meeting, he was going to give into his desires further and offer you a place in his bed to have his dreams become reality. 

[sordidmusings]

Cuddling Headcanons - Straw Hats and the Three Unwise Men

A/N: Just mulling over something sweet and something to reference back to for my own use in future writings. I just wanna give all of them some love tbh I am a slut for affection

Includes! Zoro, Sanji, Nami, Luffy, Usopp, Mihawk, Buggy, and Shanks

Warnings: gn!reader, all fluff, opla leaning for the most part but I think it can fit both pretty well, an innuendo or two

Part 2 (drabbles for each character) here!

Enjoy some guided daydreams!

Zoro

Partial touches during naps were how he started interacting with your personal space but your lap no longer belongs to you it is now his pillow 

Honestly, basically any of you is a pillow whenever he decides - I don't care if you are significantly shorter than him he will find a way to fall asleep on your shoulder 

For more contact, you need to be the one to cling to him but he does absolutely need to be touching you at least a bit 

Once he gets used to it he’ll give you a look any time you’re depriving him of his daily intake of physical affection (the sass king will always get his tribute)

He absolutely melts like a cat in the sun if you massage at any of his muscles, could be anything as much as an evening dedicated to working out every knot he has or as simple as putting intentional pressure behind your thumb as it circles and drags along his skin

He can get nervous about kissing you when it’s not on the lips - something about it feels more vulnerable to him somehow - so if he does venture to kiss your cheek or head or shoulder or hand please reassure him with a smile or your own kisses or a firm squeeze

He gets better about being seen hugging/holding you eventually, but will never get comfortable with giving more than pecks on the cheek or forehead around the others. Maaaaaaybe the corner of your lips if he’s feeling ~spicy~

Sanji

Back hugs, back hugs, back hugs-

He’s always making sure that the two of you brush hands or arms when near each other, even after you two establish a relationship it will always give him tingles 

Likes to be very intertwined when you cuddle - if he can somehow wrap around you more then he absolutely will

He is The Best at tracing shapes gently on your skin, just like with brushing hands he never tires of it because, wow, he gets to touch you! He still can’t believe it sometimes

Very good at making you feel cherished when he holds you because of the way he always seems to take his time and ease into it and constantly caress you not to say that there’s never a time he’s hurried and ravenous 

It also helps that he’s always whispering sweet nothings to you about how wonderful you are, how beautiful and precious and lovely and kind and capable and special

When he wants to trap you while cuddling, he wraps his legs around you and uses their absurd strength for evil

He will melt if you ever do the same to him and he will happily be at your whims to cuddle until you've decided it's enough, all of you could be under attack but he is staying right where you want until you decide that he needs to move

Loooooves showering you with sweet little kisses anytime you're cuddling

He can sometimes get carried away with pda because he forgets that there’s anyone else around whoops

Nami

She has her legs on your lap always - sometimes while she's laying/leaning back, sometimes with one leg hooked over one of yours, sometimes basically sitting on your lap

She likes to be the one that is held and feels most comfortable with her face snuggled into something (please nurture her and that scared, lonely inner child)

Enjoys brushing the tip of her nose across you, especially across your cheek or neck or the tip of your own nose

She likes to hook your arms together whether you’re standing next to each other during a convo or you’re walking or she’s sitting next to you, she just loves the casual contact and how she can use it to be playful and pull you around or use it to stay close and let others know that both of you are taken do not even think about it keep moving along dude

She’s very weak to hugs where you pick her up a few inches off the ground for a second, they send her heart racing (bonus points if you’re noticeably taller or shorter than her and do this)

She’s also weak for words of affirmation, especially when you speak them to her while you hold each other in the quiet hours of night 

For some reason literally being on your lap around others is fine but if you give her a kiss to the temple while that's happening? Suddenly it's Too Much, both in how sweet it is and also because she’s being perceived while it's happening

Luffy

Any/all contact is being had whenever he’s with you

If he’s on the floor next to you then your calf is now his teddy bear, if you’re on the floor near him he’ll snatched your torso with his legs, if you’re sat near him he’s wrapping both arms around one of yours to snuggle it

One of his favorites is leaning your backs against each other, he feels really supported and the way you occasionally lean and twist your head back to nuzzle his or give him a quick kiss makes him smile with the utmost joy

He will carry and move you around in the strangest ways - fireman carry, one arm around your waist while you’re upside down, your knees hooked over his shoulders while the rest of you hangs down, you trying to koala to his side, one time you were curled completely around his waist like a pool floaty - no one understands why you two can’t be normal

Likes to be the one to hold you so he can fidget when he needs without feeling like he has to unlatch you first, this is especially when you two are laid down and/or going to be cuddling together for awhile

PDA doesn’t bother him at all, he doesn’t give a fuck if anyone sees you snuggled up together, doesn’t even occur to him that he should care 

His playfulness will come out often with dramatic “mwah!” kisses, nipping at you, blowing raspberries on your skin, and the occasional tickling

Usopp

It’s necessary for him to have his arms wrapped around you some way 

Likes to be the big spoon to feel like he’s acting as armor and protecting you, it just hits the right place in his brain that has him feeling Big and Strong in the best way

He loves when you plant a kiss on his chest, especially if you aim one directly over his heart (that is totally at a normal rate plz don’t check)

He likes to play with your hair and/or massage your neck and scalp

Big into making sure wherever the two of you are cuddling is comfy, has many extra blankets and a selection of pillows by size and firmness

Always down to cuddle but feels more comfortable if you initiate first, especially when it’s a new thing between the two of you 

He simultaneously loves pda and is nervous about pda but that nervousness is absolutely gone when he’s drunk or even pretty buzzed

Good at incorporating his head into hugs - hooking his jaw on your shoulder or on top of your head, leaning his temple gently into the side of your head, bumping you softly with his forehead 

Need background noise while you go to sleep? He’s more than happy to hold you and turn on storyteller mode. Honestly, it’s one of his favorite things to do and he cherishes that time together

When it’s bedtime stories he’s telling, his voice is so low and soothing

Mihawk

This man needs to have his hands holding something on you (your hand, your shoulder, your waist, your thigh, your back, your ass lol), 

He likes to feel wrapped around you like hes hoarding you to himself, this leads to him enjoying you laying on his chest, having all of your weight on him has him feel like he’s fully possessing you

Will definitely kiss the top of your head/your temple/your forehead/basically whatever his lips are near, not a consistent bout of them, more one deliberate peck when the need strikes him (it’s also his customary goodnight to you)

Like the other swordsman, he will give you a look if you miss a habitual touch (especially if it’s the way you usually ran a hand through his hair with a kiss to the forehead before you left the castle, that was non-negotiable it had to happen), his stare however is more the 1000 yard variety and those bright yellow eyes will bore a hole through you until you understand what you did wrong

Something about this man makes me feel his temp runs hot but not in a way that bothers him, like he doesn’t feel hot or overheated but when you touch him the difference between you two is noticeable

It’s a damn good thing that he reciprocates your physical affection, even if 70% it’s just an arm coming around you, because his stony expression makes it easy to assume that your touches are unwanted 

This type of limited response is mostly for more casual cuddling like hugs or sitting next to each other because when you’re laying together his face is always soft and he’s much greedier to be pressing into you

Okay with some pda like quick and passing touches including kisses, but not a fan of anything more intimate when others can see

Buggy

The Chairrrrrr, as you’ve told him it’s circUS so both of you need to be on the throne (If he’s wanting to look extra powerful or intimidating you have no problem sitting at his feet and holding him like a heroine on a 70s fantasy novel)

He’s a big fan of any possessive gestures - arm around shoulders, back hugs, pulling you to wrap your arms around him, having you sit in his lap

He’s a cuddle switch for sure because sometimes he needs to hold you to remind himself that you’re his and sometimes he needs to feel held

Very fragile for gentle affection - please draw shapes on this man’s back, play with his hair and massage his scalp, give him head kisses, hand kisses, wrist kisses 

Feels like his heart will explode if you nuzzle your face into him whether its into his chest or the side of his head or good lord his pALM (He may have literally fallen apart the first time you did that and if you’re ever in the mood for some Entertainment bring it up) 

He is actually made for cuddling because if his arm is uncomfortable to lay on or starting to fall asleep? He can detach it and now it’s your stuffed animal. This can extend to literally any part of him that either of you feels is getting in the way of the perfect cuddle 

Need to feel needed? The way he’ll pull you into him and hold you like you’re going to disappear will let you know he needs you

Absolutely LIVES for pda, he gets to show you off to everyone and have your gorgeous self make him shine brighter in the spotlight? Nothing could be better

Shanks

Sharing his space often means one of you sitting between the others legs, whether one is on the floor in front of the other’s seat or y’all are laying down together with one settled further down the bed, this often leads to you laying your head on the hip or stomach or upper thigh of the other 

He mostly likes to be on his back or stomach and pretty splayed out, so you’ve adjusted yourself to gripping to him after he’s taken over the bed

It always makes him soft to think about you always choosing to cling to him without him having to hold you there, it really drives home that he’s something you actively want

Will grope you, sometimes sexually, but he also just likes the feeling of grabbing you, it’s somewhat of a manifestation of cute aggression 

He’s a sucker for getting his neck/shoulders/upper back rubbed while cuddling (which is a pain if he’s decided to be on his back) and he is not above bargaining for it or prodding you like an indignant pet each time you stop (very good puppy eyes), this is one of his favorite perks of having you in his lap

He’s another one to not care about being seen by others but not because it hasn’t occurred to him (like Luffy) but because anyone judging him is WAY less important than getting more affection from you 

His heart gets really tender when you lay with him and massage the stump of his arm and the shoulder above it because it helps with the phantom pains when he has them, it also help with the tension from using the muscles on that side to compensate, and it reminds him how the only thing about his arm that bothers you is that it hurts him

Part 2 (drabbles) here!

[louebel]

— [ 𝐋𝐎𝐕𝐄 𝐅𝐄𝐕𝐄𝐑 . . . 𝟐 .ᐟ ]

𝐩𝐚𝐢𝐫𝐢𝐧𝐠𝐬: sanji, zoro, mihawk, buggy × gn!reader 𝐢𝐧𝐟𝐨/𝐭𝐚𝐠𝐬: not proofread and rushed,, it's not as wholesome as the first and more calm + horny my bad, lowercase, gets a bit explicit with sanji and buggy at the end... i am deeply sorry not. rest is sfw, fluff, and... fluff. usage of "baby, sweetness, honey, good boy" (and... others? i forgot) in all of them except zoro's, lots of caresses and kisses! these are rather short,, anddd dripping divider by @ benkeibear :) 𝐬𝐲𝐧𝐨𝐩𝐬𝐢𝐬: you couldn't help but share the sudden warmth you felt with them, resulting in... a lot of kisses! ... and more. part one is here!! though idk should i repost it? since it's in my archived blog— eh idk maybe not.

— 𝐕𝐈𝐍𝐒𝐌𝐎𝐊𝐄 𝐒𝐀𝐍𝐉𝐈, wc. 699

"sanji... honey..."

a very pleasant smell engulfed the kitchen. sweet and homely, a dish that piqued your appetite. seagulls could be heard outside the sunny, the sun rising slowly to greet all those who continued their lives.

and then there were you two, already awake. sanji always got up earlier, and so you did too, wanting to keep him company at such early hours. you could still hear sanji's wails and the rivers of tears plopping onto the wood at your kind gestures, and you swore you saw the sunny sweatdrop that day. (you were definitely not imagining things...)

"hmm? yes, love?"

his voice was your greatest weakness. freshly awake, groggy with sleep... if only you could both rest right now — what you'd do to feel him tend to your scalp, brushing his treasured fingers upon you, perhaps humming a tune in your ears. you remembered his words: "because my love for you is so profound, i can't contain it" and now, every time he murmurs, you melt a little more, thinking of what he said. of course, not all the time, sometimes he just does it.

sadly, however, you couldn't go back to sleep. he had to cook, and he was going to treat you with the most delicious, mouthwatering breakfast ever, but you'd still be disappointed since what you wanted was... something else. you were so spoiled...

"i think i could get something else for breakfast... it's fine, right?"

now, you know sanji despised wasting food. it wouldn't really be a problem considering luffy, but... why didn't you say anything?

he glanced at you from his shoulder, a bit perplexed. he felt his heart flutter as you approached him, wrapping your arms around his waist, pressing your face on his tender nape.

"sweetness?"

"... those are definitely sweet," you pointed at the pancakes, already smiling, "but i think you're sweeter."

it was only morning, damnit. and yet here he was, already blushing, cheeks tinted a lovely shade of pink. a small chuckle rumbled from his chest, the cook lowering the heat as the first batch was ready, before turning to you and pressing a tender kiss upon your forehead.

"you do, love?"

"mhm. and, you know, i'd really like if you gave me some of your love right now. i think that's the most sweet... 'm thinking about just sitting here and kissing you all over while telling you "i love you, i love you, i love you" ," you brought his hand to your chest, smiling at how his visible eye softened. "feels really warm right here, just thinking 'bout it..." you were so wonderful that sanji might just die on the spot.

"oh, love... you can't just say those things so early..."

"hmm? and why not?"

"... m—might faint."

fainting in your arms didn't sound so bad though, he thought dreamily.

"ppff... if you faint, i won't shower you with kisses."

"i won't faint."

you giggled at his suddenly determined tone. tenderly brushing your lips around the side of his neck, you nudged his jaw, sliding your hands under his shirt, feeling him tense beneath your skimming fingers. his flesh felt firmer to the touch, lineaments of his abdomen and torso defined with each part you mapped.

"hmm... i love you so much, sanji. really love you, hon."

"... a—ah, getting handsy, aren't you?"

you loved how he got so flustered with just a couple of touches. he shuddered as you placed your hand on the crook of his neck, pulse quickening beneath your thumb. he was rather sensitive, there, too...

"you— you know, i, hnngh, think you're the sweetest..." he whimpered, his slender fingers finding your tantalizing ones.

"hmmm? is that so, honey?"

"y—yes — ohh... love..."

you were gliding dangerously lower...

"mmm... you're so hard, sanji." oh... "i think you should relax a bit before cooking..." oh my... "it's so early... you need proper rest." ba-dump.

"... i—i do, don't i? heh... hehe..."

"yeah, you do. come on... i'll show you just how sweet i am. will give you all my love. you want that, baby?"

"oh, ooh please... goodness, don't—don't hold back, mon ange..."

"mhm... good boy. relax..."

and soft moans soon filled the piquant kitchen — followed by smooches, wet sounds, and declarations of love from both ends.

you truly were the sweetest in his eyes.

— 𝐑𝐎𝐑𝐎𝐍𝐎𝐀 𝐙𝐎𝐑𝐎, wc. 388

"zoro... your face looks pretty kissable today."

sometimes, zoro had no idea what went through your head. you've both been sitting on the deck, zoro against the mast and you lying your head on his lap. he was going to take a nap but it seemed you were feeling chatty, so he decided to entertain you for a little while before he dozed off.

he had no idea what you were thinking, but he liked it.

"does it?" he mumbled, gazing down at you to see you shift in his lap, eyebrow raising as you got up and cuddled to his side, chin on his shoulder. he tilted his head slightly, seeing your pupils dilating at the sight of him; already quite big as the sun was setting. he smirked, though the expression on your face only made his heart beat faster.

you looked completely smitten.

"yep. very."

"hmm..."

smooch. smooch. smooch.

"oi..."

and he probably did, too, in his own way. he couldn't see it, but you did. how he relaxed, how he so softly sighed. you smiled, realizing just how much he laid himself bare to you. it wasn't the same trust he shared with luffy, no. it was something more intimate. something... sweeter. and with each osculate to his neck and jaw, zoro loosened just a bit further, his consciousness slowly slipping away.

"hm. thought you said my face." yet, he still taunted you, with that stupid smug grin on his lips. you rolled your eyes, continuing to pamper him with love.

"shut up. mm..."

smooch.

"love you, zoro. so much."

you slowly pushed him down on the floor, the swordsman tensing a little before following your silent command. you lay on his body, his arms splayed on the wood, eye closed as you kissed his eyelid, brow, and nose. a reddish hue colored his cheeks, chuckling as your tiny, adoring pecks tickled his skin.

so lovely.

" 'that so..?"

"yeah."

your eyes mitigated further, noting the corners of his mouth curve up more. you were lucky...

"mhh... y'know, i think you look pretty kissable today, too."

he'll rearrange his naps, just for you. with a kiss to your lips, he sealed the unspoken "i love you" with his tender actions — his heart all yours.

and he'd care for your own... like one of his swords.

— 𝐃𝐑𝐀𝐂𝐔𝐋𝐄 𝐌𝐈𝐇𝐀𝐖𝐊, wc. 338

perona was speechless. she knew, she knew. she knew that you were dracule's lover...

"miiiiihaaawk... will you look at me?"

but what she witnessed was as surprising as the first time you told her that.

you grinned at the sighing warlord, shutting his book as you've been pestering him for minutes. arms wrapped around him, kisses to his neck — he wasn't a man easily swayed, even by you. the armchair leaned back as he finally eased, your form against his soft.

"... do you have nothing to do?" he huffed, rather tired of your games. interrupting him was almost sin; perona had no idea how you lived. were these the privileges of being dracule mihawk's partner? he treated you so differently... how could you even fall for someone as brooding as him? every time she did something nice, like give him pastries or clean the castle as she had nothing to do, he'd ignore her completely. (though he appreciated it.)

"i do. i'm loving you." yet here he was, letting you speak and do as you wished with a faint smile on his face. he looked like a big cat.

"something other than that."

"hmm... no. i wanna love you right now."

the longer she watched from her little corner, the more her mind crumbled.

"... you're impossible."

"but you love me too. like how i love you. i love you a lot."

you were so... mushy. something that did not connect to mihawk at all — unless you were around. his actions conveyed what he felt, even if they were scarce at the moment.

"you..."

"like, a looot. you know? a lot. i really do."

but... no words would topple from his mouth, perona was sure of that.

"i reciprocate." incredibly sure.

"c'mon, say it." there was no way.

"... i love you too."

"there you go. good boy."

he could only sigh at your antics — though inside he felt as warm as a star. after that, perona left her hiding spot and dragged her jaw that sat on the floor.

— 𝐁𝐔𝐆𝐆𝐘 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐂𝐋𝐎𝐖𝐍, wc. 426

buggy was not happy.

he was not happy you gave him a kiss, in front of his whole crew, completely unbothered as you pretty much established he was yours. he did not like it. at all.

"just..! what do you think you're doing?! kissing me out of nowhere? they have no idea we're together! what if someone took a photo!—"

"did i tell you?"

"—tell me what?"

you chuckled while he blinked. it was always funny how simple it was to make him stop; one word and he'd immediately listen to you. it was as if his own temporarily had no weight, just to hear your own thoughts, only to slander them later or actually agree with them.

most of the time, he ended up stuttering. you loved how much he hated you teasing him; it became your favorite pastime.

"you look incredibly cute." your grin always meant trouble.

"my nose looks redder than usual??"

your chuckle the last sound he heard,

"no. you, look, cute. cute. adorable. precious." and your words forever his downfall.

you could see his cheeks gaining color, a pretty rouge that matched his lipstick and nose, mirth decorating your face at the view. he was just so, so so cute. but when he snorted and flailed his hands around with parts of his body floating at the use of his devil fruit... that's when he got even cuter.

"y—you say that all the time!" he squeaked and pointed at you, stomping closer to you to somehow look "threatening". in reality, he was just a cub. you kept on smiling, looking at him with an adoring gaze that managed to make his poor heart stop — your affection a treat he relished.

"i mean it." plus, when your voice had that adoring tone... he could do nothing but take what you said. maybe he was just making a big deal out of things...

"w—well! of course you mean it, hahaha! i'm... buggy the... aah..."

his eyes almost popped out of his sockets as you got closer to him; wrapping your arms around his waist, teeth nibbling his neck. a tiny, soft moan that made you shudder left buggy's lips, already trembling.

oh...

"... mm... love you so much, baby. 'm sure they don't mind the kiss... come here."

he could barely get a word in, before his squeals and whimpers reached even those outside, as all of his skin got caressed by your lips. soon, he was screaming "i love you too!" and your stunt was the last thing he thought about.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

“Disenshittify or Die”

I'm coming to BURNING MAN! On TUESDAY (Aug 27) at 1PM, I'm giving a talk called "DISENSHITTIFY OR DIE!" at PALENQUE NORTE (7&E). On WEDNESDAY (Aug 28) at NOON, I'm doing a "Talking Caterpillar" Q&A at LIMINAL LABS (830&C).

Last weekend, I traveled to Las Vegas for Defcon 32, where I had the immense privilege of giving a solo talk on Track 1, entitled "Disenshittify or die! How hackers can seize the means of computation and build a new, good internet that is hardened against our asshole bosses' insatiable horniness for enshittification":

https://info.defcon.org/event/?id=54861

This was a followup to last year's talk, "An Audacious Plan to Halt the Internet's Enshittification," a talk that kicked off a lot of international interest in my analysis of platform decay ("enshittification"):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rimtaSgGz_4

The Defcon organizers have earned a restful week or two, and that means that the video of my talk hasn't yet been posted to Defcon's Youtube channel, so in the meantime, I thought I'd post a lightly edited version of my speech crib. If you're headed to Burning Man, you can hear me reprise this talk at Palenque Norte (7&E); I'm kicking off their lecture series on Tuesday, Aug 27 at 1PM.

==

What the fuck happened to the old, good internet?

I mean, sure, our bosses were a little surveillance-happy, and they were usually up for sharing their data with the NSA, and whenever there was a tossup between user security and growth, it was always YOLO time.

But Google Search used to work. Facebook used to show you posts from people you followed. Uber used to be cheaper than a taxi and pay the driver more than a cabbie made. Amazon used to sell products, not Shein-grade self-destructing dropshipped garbage from all-consonant brands. Apple used to defend your privacy, rather than spying on you with your no-modifications-allowed Iphone.

There was a time when you searching for an album on Spotify would get you that album – not a playlist of insipid AI-generated covers with the same name and art.

Microsoft used to sell you software – sure, it was buggy – but now they just let you access apps in the cloud, so they can watch how you use those apps and strip the features you use the most out of the basic tier and turn them into an upcharge.

What – and I cannot stress this enough – the fuck happened?!

I’m talking about enshittification.

Here’s what enshittification looks like from the outside: First, you see a company that’s being good to its end users. Google puts the best search results at the top; Facebook shows you a feed of posts from people and groups you followl; Uber charges small dollars for a cab; Amazon subsidizes goods and returns and shipping and puts the best match for your product search at the top of the page.

That’s stage one, being good to end users. But there’s another part of this stage, call it stage 1a). That’s figuring out how to lock in those users.

There’s so many ways to lock in users.

If you’re Facebook, the users do it for you. You joined Facebook because there were people there you wanted to hang out with, and other people joined Facebook to hang out with you.

That’s the old “network effects” in action, and with network effects come “the collective action problem." Because you love your friends, but goddamn are they a pain in the ass! You all agree that FB sucks, sure, but can you all agree on when it’s time to leave?

No way.

Can you agree on where to go next?

Hell no.

You’re there because that’s where the support group for your rare disease hangs out, and your bestie is there because that’s where they talk with the people in the country they moved away from, then there’s that friend who coordinates their kid’s little league car pools on FB, and the best dungeon master you know isn’t gonna leave FB because that’s where her customers are.

So you’re stuck, because even though FB use comes at a high cost – your privacy, your dignity and your sanity – that’s still less than the switching cost you’d have to bear if you left: namely, all those friends who have taken you hostage, and whom you are holding hostage

Now, sometimes companies lock you in with money, like Amazon getting you to prepay for a year’s shipping with Prime, or to buy your Audible books on a monthly subscription, which virtually guarantees that every shopping search will start on Amazon, after all, you’ve already paid for it.

Sometimes, they lock you in with DRM, like HP selling you a printer with four ink cartridges filled with fluid that retails for more than $10,000/gallon, and using DRM to stop you from refilling any of those ink carts or using a third-party cartridge. So when one cart runs dry, you have to refill it or throw away your investment in the remaining three cartridges and the printer itself.

Sometimes, it’s a grab bag:

You can’t run your Ios apps without Apple hardware;

you can’t run your Apple music, books and movies on anything except an Ios app;

your iPhone uses parts pairing – DRM handshakes between replacement parts and the main system – so you can’t use third-party parts to fix it; and

every OEM iPhone part has a microscopic Apple logo engraved on it, so Apple can demand that the US Customs and Border Service seize any shipment of refurb Iphone parts as trademark violations.

Think Different, amirite?

Getting you locked in completes phase one of the enshittification cycle and signals the start of phase two: making things worse for you to make things better for business customers.

For example, a platform might poison its search results, like Google selling more and more of its results pages to ads that are identified with lighter and lighter tinier and tinier type.

Or Amazon selling off search results and calling it an “ad” business. They make $38b/year on this scam. The first result for your search is, on average, 29% more expensive than the best match for your search. The first row is 25% more expensive than the best match. On average, the best match for your search is likely to be found seventeen places down on the results page.

Other platforms sell off your feed, like Facebook, which started off showing you the things you asked to see, but now the quantum of content from the people you follow has dwindled to a homeopathic residue, leaving a void that Facebook fills with things that people pay to show you: boosted posts from publishers you haven’t subscribed to, and, of course, ads.

Now at this point you might be thinking ‘sure, if you’re not paying for the product, you’re the product.'

Bullshit!

Bull.

Shit.

The people who buy those Google ads? They pay more every year for worse ad-targeting and more ad-fraud

Those publishers paying to nonconsensually cram their content into your Facebook feed? They have to do that because FB suppresses their ability to reach the people who actually subscribed to them

The Amazon sellers with the best match for your query have to outbid everyone else just to show up on the first page of results. It costs so much to sell on Amazon that between 45-51% of every dollar an independent seller brings in has to be kicked up to Don Bezos and the Amazon crime family. Those sellers don’t have the kind of margins that let them pay 51% They have to raise prices in order to avoid losing money on every sale.

"But wait!" I hear you say!

[Come on, say it!]

"But wait! Things on Amazon aren’t more expensive that things at Target, or Walmart, or at a mom and pop store, or direct from the manufacturer.

"How can sellers be raising prices on Amazon if the price at Amazon is the same as at is everywhere else?"

[Any guesses?!]

That’s right, they charge more everywhere. They have to. Amazon binds its sellers to a policy called “most favored nation status,” which says they can’t charge more on Amazon than they charge elsewhere, including direct from their own factory store.

So every seller that wants to sell on Amazon has to raise their prices everywhere else.

Now, these sellers are Amazon’s best customers. They’re paying for the product, and they’re still getting screwed.

Paying for the product doesn’t fill your vapid boss’s shriveled heart with so much joy that he decides to stop trying to think of ways to fuck you over.

Look at Apple. Remember when Apple offered every Ios user a one-click opt out for app-based surveillance? And 96% of users clicked that box?

(The other four percent were either drunk or Facebook employees or drunk Facebook employees.)

That cost Facebook at least ten billion dollars per year in lost surveillance revenue?

I mean, you love to see it.

But did you know that at the same time Apple started spying on Ios users in the same way that Facebook had been, for surveillance data to use to target users for its competing advertising product?

Your Iphone isn’t an ad-supported gimme. You paid a thousand fucking dollars for that distraction rectangle in your pocket, and you’re still the product. What’s more, Apple has rigged Ios so that you can’t mod the OS to block its spying.

If you’re not not paying for the product, you’re the product, and if you are paying for the product, you’re still the product.

Just ask the farmers who are expected to swap parts into their own busted half-million dollar, mission-critical tractors, but can’t actually use those parts until a technician charges them $200 to drive out to the farm and type a parts pairing unlock code into their console.

John Deere’s not giving away tractors. Give John Deere a half mil for a tractor and you will be the product.

Please, my brothers and sisters in Christ. Please! Stop saying ‘if you’re not paying for the product, you’re the product.’

OK, OK, so that’s phase two of enshittification.

Phase one: be good to users while locking them in.

Phase two: screw the users a little to you can good to business customers while locking them in.

Phase three: screw everybody and take all the value for yourself. Leave behind the absolute bare minimum of utility so that everyone stays locked into your pile of shit.

Enshittification: a tragedy in three acts.

That’s what enshittification looks like from the outside, but what’s going on inside the company? What is the pathological mechanism? What sci-fi entropy ray converts the excellent and useful service into a pile of shit?

That mechanism is called twiddling. Twiddling is when someone alters the back end of a service to change how its business operates, changing prices, costs, search ranking, recommendation criteria and other foundational aspects of the system.

Digital platforms are a twiddler’s utopia. A grocer would need an army of teenagers with pricing guns on rollerblades to reprice everything in the building when someone arrives who’s extra hungry.

Whereas the McDonald’s Investments portfolio company Plexure advertises that it can use surveillance data to predict when an app user has just gotten paid so the seller can tack an extra couple bucks onto the price of their breakfast sandwich.

And of course, as the prophet William Gibson warned us, ‘cyberspace is everting.' With digital shelf tags, grocers can change prices whenever they feel like, like the grocers in Norway, whose e-ink shelf tags change the prices 2,000 times per day.

Every Uber driver is offered a different wage for every job. If a driver has been picky lately, the job pays more. But if the driver has been desperate enough to grab every ride the app offers, the pay goes down, and down, and down.

The law professor Veena Dubal calls this ‘algorithmic wage discrimination.' It’s a prime example of twiddling.

Every youtuber knows what it’s like to be twiddled. You work for weeks or months, spend thousands of dollars to make a video, then the algorithm decides that no one – not your own subscribers, not searchers who type in the exact name of your video – will see it.

Why? Who knows? The algorithm’s rules are not public.

Because content moderation is the last redoubt of security through obscurit: they can’t tell you what the como algorithm is downranking because then you’d cheat.

Youtube is the kind of shitty boss who docks every paycheck for all the rules you’ve broken, but won’t tell you what those rules were, lest you figure out how to break those rules next time without your boss catching you.

Twiddling can also work in some users’ favor, of course. Sometimes platforms twiddle to make things better for end users or business customers.

For example, Emily Baker-White from Forbes revealed the existence of a back-end feature that Tiktok’s management can access they call the “heating tool.”

When a manager applies the heating toll to a performer’s account, that performer’s videos are thrust into the feeds of millions of users, without regard to whether the recommendation algorithm predicts they will enjoy that video.

Why would they do this? Well, here’s an analogy from my boyhood I used to go to this traveling fair that would come to Toronto at the end of every summer, the Canadian National Exhibition. If you’ve been to a fair like the Ex, you know that you can always spot some guy lugging around a comedically huge teddy bear.

Nominally, you win that teddy bear by throwing five balls in a peach-basket, but to a first approximation, no one has ever gotten five balls to stay in that peach-basket.

That guy “won” the teddy bear when a carny on the midway singled him out and said, "fella, I like your face. Tell you what I’m gonna do: You get just one ball in the basket and I’ll give you this keychain, and if you amass two keychains, I’ll let you trade them in for one of these galactic-scale teddy-bears."

That’s how the guy got his teddy bear, which he now has to drag up and down the midway for the rest of the day.

Why the hell did that carny give away the teddy bear? Because it turns the guy into a walking billboard for the midway games. If that dopey-looking Judas Goat can get five balls into a peach basket, then so can you.

Except you can’t.

Tiktok’s heating tool is a way to give away tactical giant teddy bears. When someone in the TikTok brain trust decides they need more sports bros on the platform, they pick one bro out at random and make him king for the day, heating the shit out of his account.

That guy gets a bazillion views and he starts running around on all the sports bro forums trumpeting his success: *I am the Louis Pasteur of sports bro influencers!"

The other sports bros pile in and start retooling to make content that conforms to the idiosyncratic Tiktok format. When they fail to get giant teddy bears of their own, they assume that it’s because they’re doing Tiktok wrong, because they don’t know about the heating tool.

But then comes the day when the TikTok Star Chamber decides they need to lure in more astrologers, so they take the heat off that one lucky sports bro, and start heating up some lucky astrologer.

Giant teddy bears are all over the place: those Uber drivers who were boasting to the NYT ten years ago about earning $50/hour? The Substackers who were rolling in dough? Joe Rogan and his hundred million dollar Spotify payout? Those people are all the proud owners of giant teddy bears, and they’re a steal.

Because every dollar they get from the platform turns into five dollars worth of free labor from suckers who think they just internetting wrong.

Giant teddy bears are just one way of twiddling. Platforms can play games with every part of their business logic, in highly automated ways, that allows them to quickly and efficiently siphon value from end users to business customers and back again, hiding the pea in a shell game conducted at machine speeds, until they’ve got everyone so turned around that they take all the value for themselves.

That’s the how: How the platforms do the trick where they are good to users, then lock users in, then maltreat users to be good to business customers, then lock in those business customers, then take all the value for themselves.

So now we know what is happening, and how it is happening, all that’s left is why it’s happening.

Now, on the one hand, the why is pretty obvious. The less value that end-users and business customers capture, the more value there is left to divide up among the shareholders and the executives.

That’s why, but it doesn’t tell you why now. Companies could have done this shit at any time in the past 20 years, but they didn’t. Or at least, the successful ones didn’t. The ones that turned themselves into piles of shit got treated like piles of shit. We avoided them and they died.

Remember Myspace? Yahoo Search? Livejournal? Sure, they’re still serving some kind of AI slop or programmatic ad junk if you hit those domains, but they’re gone.

And there’s the clue: It used to be that if you enshittified your product, bad things happened to your company. Now, there are no consequences for enshittification, so everyone’s doing it.

Let’s break that down: What stops a company from enshittifying?

There are four forces that discipline tech companies. The first one is, obviously, competition.

If your customers find it easy to leave, then you have to worry about them leaving

Many factors can contribute to how hard or easy it is to depart a platform, like the network effects that Facebook has going for it. But the most important factor is whether there is anywhere to go.

Back in 2012, Facebook bought Insta for a billion dollars. That may seem like chump-change in these days of eleven-digit Big Tech acquisitions, but that was a big sum in those innocent days, and it was an especially big sum to pay for Insta. The company only had 13 employees, and a mere 25 million registered users.

But what mattered to Zuckerberg wasn’t how many users Insta had, it was where those users came from.

[Does anyone know where those Insta users came from?]

That’s right, they left Facebook and joined Insta. They were sick of FB, even though they liked the people there, they hated creepy Zuck, they hated the platform, so they left and they didn’t come back.

So Zuck spent a cool billion to recapture them, A fact he put in writing in a midnight email to CFO David Ebersman, explaining that he was paying over the odds for Insta because his users hated him, and loved Insta. So even if they quit Facebook (the platform), they would still be captured Facebook (the company).

Now, on paper, Zuck’s Instagram acquisition is illegal, but normally, that would be hard to stop, because you’d have to prove that he bought Insta with the intention of curtailing competition.

But in this case, Zuck tripped over his own dick: he put it in writing.

But Obama’s DoJ and FTC just let that one slide, following the pro-monopoly policies of Reagan, Bush I, Clinton and Bush II, and setting an example that Trump would follow, greenlighting gigamergers like the catastrophic, incestuous Warner-Discovery marriage.

Indeed, for 40 years, starting with Carter, and accelerating through Reagan, the US has encouraged monopoly formation, as an official policy, on the grounds that monopolies are “efficient.”

If everyone is using Google Search, that’s something we should celebrate. It means they’ve got the very best search and wouldn’t it be perverse to spend public funds to punish them for making the best product?

But as we all know, Google didn’t maintain search dominance by being best. They did it by paying bribes. More than 20 billion per year to Apple alone to be the default Ios search, plus billions more to Samsung, Mozilla, and anyone else making a product or service with a search-box on it, ensuring that you never stumble on a search engine that’s better than theirs.

Which, in turn, ensured that no one smart invested big in rival search engines, even if they were visibly, obviously superior. Why bother making something better if Google’s buying up all the market oxygen before it can kindle your product to life?

Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Amazon – they’re not “making things” companies, they’re “buying things” companies, taking advantage of official tolerance for anticompetitive acquisitions, predatory pricing, market distorting exclusivity deals and other acts specifically prohibited by existing antitrust law.

Their goal is to become too big to fail, because that makes them too big to jail, and that means they can be too big to care.

Which is why Google Search is a pile of shit and everything on Amazon is dropshipped garbage that instantly disintegrates in a cloud of offgassed volatile organic compounds when you open the box.

Once companies no longer fear losing your business to a competitor, it’s much easier for them to treat you badly, because what’re you gonna do?

Remember Lily Tomlin as Ernestine the AT&T operator in those old SNL sketches? “We don’t care. We don’t have to. We’re the phone company.”

Competition is the first force that serves to discipline companies and the enshittificatory impulses of their leadership, and we just stopped enforcing competition law.

It takes a special kind of smooth-brained asshole – that is, an establishment economist – to insist that the collapse of every industry from eyeglasses to vitamin C into a cartel of five or fewer companies has nothing to do with policies that officially encouraged monopolization.

It’s like we used to put down rat poison and we didn’t have a rat problem. Then these dickheads convinced us that rats were good for us and we stopped putting down rat poison, and now rats are gnawing our faces off and they’re all running around saying, "Who’s to say where all these rats came from? Maybe it was that we stopped putting down poison, but maybe it’s just the Time of the Rats. The Great Forces of History bearing down on this moment to multiply rats beyond all measure!"

Antitrust didn’t slip down that staircase and fall spine-first on that stiletto: they stabbed it in the back and then they pushed it.

And when they killed antitrust, they also killed regulation, the second force that disciplines companies. Regulation is possible, but only when the regulator is more powerful than the regulated entities. When a company is bigger than the government, it gets damned hard to credibly threaten to punish that company, no matter what its sins.

That’s what protected IBM for all those years when it had its boot on the throat of the American tech sector. Do you know, the DOJ fought to break up IBM in the courts from 1970-1982, and that every year, for 12 consecutive years, IBM spent more on lawyers to fight the USG than the DOJ Antitrust Division spent on all the lawyers fighting every antitrust case in the entire USA?

IBM outspent Uncle Sam for 12 years. People called it “Antitrust’s Vietnam.” All that money paid off, because by 1982, the president was Ronald Reagan, a man whose official policy was that monopolies were “efficient." So he dropped the case, and Big Blue wriggled off the hook.

It’s hard to regulate a monopolist, and it’s hard to regulate a cartel. When a sector is composed of hundreds of competing companies, they compete. They genuinely fight with one another, trying to poach each others’ customers and workers. They are at each others’ throats.

It’s hard enough for a couple hundred executives to agree on anything. But when they’re legitimately competing with one another, really obsessing about how to eat each others’ lunches, they can’t agree on anything.

The instant one of them goes to their regulator with some bullshit story, about how it’s impossible to have a decent search engine without fine-grained commercial surveillance; or how it’s impossible to have a secure and easy to use mobile device without a total veto over which software can run on it; or how it’s impossible to administer an ISP’s network unless you can slow down connections to servers whose owners aren’t paying bribes for “premium carriage"; there’s some *other company saying, “That’s bullshit”

“We’ve managed it! Here’s our server logs, our quarterly financials and our customer testimonials to prove it.”

100 companies are a rabble, they're a mob. They can’t agree on a lobbying position. They’re too busy eating each others’ lunch to agree on how to cater a meeting to discuss it.

But let those hundred companies merge to monopoly, absorb one another in an incestuous orgy, turn into five giant companies, so inbred they’ve got a corporate Habsburg jaw, and they become a cartel.

It’s easy for a cartel to agree on what bullshit they’re all going to feed their regulator, and to mobilize some of the excess billions they’ve reaped through consolidation, which freed them from “wasteful competition," sp they can capture their regulators completely.

You know, Congress used to pass federal consumer privacy laws? Not anymore.

The last time Congress managed to pass a federal consumer privacy law was in 1988: The Video Privacy Protection Act. That’s a law that bans video-store clerks from telling newspapers what VHS cassettes you take home. In other words, it regulates three things that have effectively ceased to exist.

The threat of having your video rental history out there in the public eye was not the last or most urgent threat the American public faced, and yet, Congress is deadlocked on passing a privacy law.

Tech companies’ regulatory capture involves a risible and transparent gambit, that is so stupid, it’s an insult to all the good hardworking risible transparent ruses out there.

Namely, they claim that when they violate your consumer, privacy or labor rights, It’s not a crime, because they do it with an app.

Algorithmic wage discrimination isn’t illegal wage theft: we do it with an app.

Spying on you from asshole to appetite isn’t a privacy violation: we do it with an app.

And Amazon’s scam search tool that tricks you into paying 29% more than the best match for your query? Not a ripoff. We do it with an app.

Once we killed competition – stopped putting down rat poison – we got cartels – the rats ate our faces. And the cartels captured their regulators – the rats bought out the poison factory and shut it down.

So companies aren’t constrained by competition or regulation.

But you know what? This is tech, and tech is different.IIt’s different because it’s flexible. Because our computers are Turing-complete universal von Neumann machines. That means that any enshittificatory alteration to a program can be disenshittified with another program.

Every time HP jacks up the price of ink , they invite a competitor to market a refill kit or a compatible cartridge.

When Tesla installs code that says you have to pay an extra monthly fee to use your whole battery, they invite a modder to start selling a kit to jailbreak that battery and charge it all the way up.

Lemme take you through a little example of how that works: Imagine this is a product design meeting for our company’s website, and the guy leading the meeting says “Dudes, you know how our KPI is topline ad-revenue? Well, I’ve calculated that if we make the ads just 20% more invasive and obnoxious, we’ll boost ad rev by 2%”

This is a good pitch. Hit that KPI and everyone gets a fat bonus. We can all take our families on a luxury ski vacation in Switzerland.

But here’s the thing: someone’s gonna stick their arm up – someone who doesn’t give a shit about user well-being, and that person is gonna say, “I love how you think, Elon. But has it occurred to you that if we make the ads 20% more obnoxious, then 40% of our users will go to a search engine and type 'How do I block ads?'"

I mean, what a nightmare! Because once a user does that, the revenue from that user doesn’t rise to 102%. It doesn’t stay at 100% It falls to zero, forever.

[Any guesses why?]

Because no user ever went back to the search engine and typed, 'How do I start seeing ads again?'

Once the user jailbreaks their phone or discovers third party ink, or develops a relationship with an independent Tesla mechanic who’ll unlock all the DLC in their car, that user is gone, forever.

Interoperability – that latent property bequeathed to us courtesy of Herrs Turing and Von Neumann and their infinitely flexible, universal machines – that is a serious check on enshittification.

The fact that Congress hasn’t passed a privacy law since 1988 Is countered, at least in part, by the fact that the majority of web users are now running ad-blockers, which are also tracker-blockers.

But no one’s ever installed a tracker-blocker for an app. Because reverse engineering an app puts in you jeopardy of criminal and civil prosecution under Section 1201 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, with penalties of a 5-year prison sentence and a $500k fine for a first offense.

And violating its terms of service puts you in jeopardy under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act of 1986, which is the law that Ronald Reagan signed in a panic after watching Wargames (seriously!).

Helping other users violate the terms of service can get you hit with a lawsuit for tortious interference with contract. And then there’s trademark, copyright and patent.

All that nonsense we call “IP,” but which Jay Freeman of Cydia calls “Felony Contempt of Business Model."

So if we’re still at that product planning meeting and now it’s time to talk about our app, the guy leading the meeting says, “OK, so we’ll make the ads in the app 20% more obnoxious to pull a 2% increase in topline ad rev?”

And that person who objected to making the website 20% worse? Their hand goes back up. Only this time they say “Why don’t we make the ads 100% more invasive and get a 10% increase in ad rev?"

Because it doesn't matter if a user goes to a search engine and types, “How do I block ads in an app." The answer is: you can't. So YOLO, enshittify away.

“IP” is just a euphemism for “any law that lets me reach outside my company’s walls to exert coercive control over my critics, competitors and customers,” and “app” is just a euphemism for “A web page skinned with the right IP so that protecting your privacy while you use it is a felony.”

Interop used to keep companies from enshittifying. If a company made its client suck, someone would roll out an alternative client, if they ripped a feature out and wanted to sell it back to you as a monthly subscription, someone would make a compatible plugin that restored it for a one-time fee, or for free.

To help people flee Myspace, FB gave them bots that you’d load with your login credentials. It would scrape your waiting Myspace messages and put ‘em in your FB inbox, and login to Myspace and paste your replies into your Myspace outbox. So you didn’t have to choose between the people you loved on Myspace, and Facebook, which launched with a promise never to spy on you. Remember that?!

Thanks to the metastasis of IP, all that is off the table today. Apple owes its very existence to iWork Suite, whose Pages, Numbers and Keynote are file-compatible with Microsoft’s Word, Excel and Powerpoint. But make an IOS runtime that’ll play back the files you bought from Apple’s stores on other platforms, and they’ll nuke you til you glow.

FB wouldn’t have had a hope of breaking Myspace’s grip on social media without that scrape, but scrape FB today in support of an alternative client and their lawyers will bomb you til the rubble bounces.

Google scraped every website in the world to create its search index. Try and scrape Google and they’ll have your head on a pike.

When they did it, it was progress. When you do it to them, that’s piracy. Every pirate wants to be an admiral.

Because this handful of companies has so thoroughly captured their regulators, they can wield the power of the state against you when you try to break their grip on power, even as their own flagrant violations of our rights go unpunished. Because they do them with an app.

Tech lost its fear of competitin it neutralized the threat from regulators, and then put them in harness to attack new startups that might do unto them as they did unto the companies that came before them.

But even so, there was a force that kept our bosses in check That force was us. Tech workers.

Tech workers have historically been in short supply, which gave us power, and our bosses knew it.

To get us to work crazy hours, they came up with a trick. They appealed to our love of technology, and told us that we were heroes of a digital revolution, who would “organize the world’s information and make it useful,” who would “bring the world closer together.”

They brought in expert set-dressers to turn our workplaces into whimsical campuses with free laundry, gourmet cafeterias, massages, and kombucha, and a surgeon on hand to freeze our eggs so that we could work through our fertile years.

They convinced us that we were being pampered, rather than being worked like government mules.

This trick has a name. Fobazi Ettarh, the librarian-theorist, calls it “vocational awe, and Elon Musk calls it being “extremely hardcore.”

This worked very well. Boy did we put in some long-ass hours!

But for our bosses, this trick failed badly. Because if you miss your mother’s funeral and to hit a deadline, and then your boss orders you to enshittify that product, you are gonna experience a profound moral injury, which you are absolutely gonna make your boss share.

Because what are they gonna do? Fire you? They can’t hire someone else to do your job, and you can get a job that’s even better at the shop across the street.

So workers held the line when competition, regulation and interop failed.

But eventually, supply caught up with demand. Tech laid off 260,000 of us last year, and another 100,000 in the first half of this year.

You can’t tell your bosses to go fuck themselves, because they’ll fire your ass and give your job to someone who’ll be only too happy to enshittify that product you built.

That’s why this is all happening right now. Our bosses aren’t different. They didn’t catch a mind-virus that turned them into greedy assholes who don’t care about our users’ wellbeing or the quality of our products.

As far as our bosses have always been concerned, the point of the business was to charge the most, and deliver the least, while sharing as little as possible with suppliers, workers, users and customers. They’re not running charities.

Since day one, our bosses have shown up for work and yanked as hard as they can on the big ENSHITTIFICATION lever behind their desks, only that lever didn’t move much. It was all gummed up by competition, regulation, interop and workers.

As those sources of friction melted away, the enshittification lever started moving very freely.

Which sucks, I know. But think about this for a sec: our bosses, despite being wildly imperfect vessels capable of rationalizing endless greed and cheating, nevertheless oversaw a series of actually great products and services.

Not because they used to be better people, but because they used to be subjected to discipline.

So it follows that if we want to end the enshittocene, dismantle the enshitternet, and build a new, good internet that our bosses can’t wreck, we need to make sure that these constraints are durably installed on that internet, wound around its very roots and nerves. And we have to stand guard over it so that it can’t be dismantled again.

A new, good internet is one that has the positive aspects of the old, good internet: an ethic of technological self-determination, where users of technology (and hackers, tinkerers, startups and others serving as their proxies) can reconfigure and mod the technology they use, so that it does what they need it to do, and so that it can’t be used against them.

But the new, good internet will fix the defects of the old, good internet, the part that made it hard to use for anyone who wasn’t us. And hell yeah we can do that. Tech bosses swear that it’s impossible, that you can’t have a conversation friend without sharing it with Zuck; or search the web without letting Google scrape you down to the viscera; or have a phone that works reliably without giving Apple a veto over the software you install.

They claim that it’s a nonsense to even ponder this kind of thing. It’s like making water that’s not wet. But that’s bullshit. We can have nice things. We can build for the people we love, and give them a place that’s worth of their time and attention.

To do that, we have to install constraints.

The first constraint, remember, is competition. We’re living through a epochal shift in competition policy. After 40 years with antitrust enforcement in an induced coma, a wave of antitrust vigor has swept through governments all over the world. Regulators are stepping in to ban monopolistic practices, open up walled gardens, block anticompetitive mergers, and even unwind corrupt mergers that were undertaken on false pretenses.

Normally this is the place in the speech where I’d list out all the amazing things that have happened over the past four years. The enforcement actions that blocked companies from becoming too big to care, and that scared companies away from even trying.

Like Wiz, which just noped out of the largest acquisition offer in history, turning down Google’s $23b cashout, and deciding to, you know, just be a fucking business that makes money by producing a product that people want and selling it at a competitive price.

Normally, I’d be listing out FTC rulemakings that banned noncompetes nationwid. Or the new merger guidelines the FTC and DOJ cooked up, which – among other things – establish that the agencies should be considering whether a merger will negatively impact privacy.

I had a whole section of this stuff in my notes, a real victory lap, but I deleted it all this week.

[Can anyone guess why?]

That’s right! This week, Judge Amit Mehta, ruling for the DC Circuit of these United States of America, In the docket 20-3010 a case known as United States v. Google LLC, found that “Google is a monopolist, and it has acted as one to maintain its monopoly," and ordered Google and the DOJ to propose a schedule for a remedy, like breaking the company up.

So yeah, that was pretty fucking epic.

Now, this antitrust stuff is pretty esoteric, and I won’t gatekeep you or shame you if you wanna keep a little distance on this subject. Nearly everyone is an antitrust normie, and that's OK. But if you’re a normie, you’re probably only catching little bits and pieces of the narrative, and let me tell you, the monopolists know it and they are flooding the zone.

The Wall Street Journal has published over 100 editorials condemning FTC Chair Lina Khan, saying she’s an ineffectual do-nothing, wasting public funds chasing doomed, quixotic adventures against poor, innocent businesses accomplishing nothing

[Does anyone out there know who owns the Wall Street Journal?]

That’s right, it’s Rupert Murdoch. Do you really think Rupert Murdoch pays his editorial board to write one hundred editorials about someone who’s not getting anything done?

The reality is that in the USA, in the UK, in the EU, in Australia, in Canada, in Japan, in South Korea, even in China, we are seeing more antitrust action over the past four years than over the preceding forty years.

Remember, competition law is actually pretty robust. The problem isn’t the law, It’s the enforcement priorities. Reagan put antitrust in mothballs 40 years ago, but that elegant weapon from a more civilized age is now back in the hands of people who know how to use it, and they’re swinging for the fences.

Next up: regulation.

As the seemingly inescapable power of the tech giants is revealed for the sham it always was, governments and regulators are finally gonna kill the “one weird trick” of violating the law, and saying “It doesn’t count, we did it with an app.”

Like in the EU, they’re rolling out the Digital Markets Act this year. That’s a law requiring dominant platforms to stand up APIs so that third parties can offer interoperable services.

So a co-op, a nonprofit, a hobbyist, a startup, or a local government agency wil eventuallyl be able to offer, say, a social media server that can interconnect with one of the dominant social media silos, and users who switch to that new platform will be able to continue to exchange messages with the users they follow and groups they belong to, so the switching costs will fall to damned near zero.

That’s a very cool rule, but what’s even cooler is how it’s gonna be enforced. Previous EU tech rules were “regulations” as in the GDPR – the General Data Privacy Regulation. EU regs need to be “transposed” into laws in each of the 27 EU member states, so they become national laws that get enforced by national courts.

For Big Tech, that means all previous tech regulations are enforced in Ireland, because Ireland is a tax haven, and all the tech companies fly Irish flags of convenience.

Here’s the thing: every tax haven is also a crime haven. After all, if Google can pretend it’s Irish this week, it can pretend to be Cypriot, or Maltese, or Luxembougeious next week. So Ireland has to keep these footloose criminal enterprises happy, or they’ll up sticks and go somewhere else.

This is why the GDPR is such a goddamned joke in practice. Big tech wipes its ass with the GDPR, and the only way to punish them starts with Ireland’s privacy commissioner, who barely bothers to get out of bed. This is an agency that spends most of its time watching cartoons on TV in its pajamas and eating breakfast cereal. So all of the big GDPR cases go to Ireland and they die there.

This is hardly a secret. The European Commission knows it’s going on. So with the DMA, the Commission has changed things up: The DMA is an “Act,” not a “Regulation.” Meaning it gets enforced in the EU’s federal courts, bypassing the national courts in crime-havens like Ireland.

In other words, the “we violate privacy law, but we do it with an app” gambit that worked on Ireland’s toothless privacy watchdog is now a dead letter, because EU federal judges have no reason to swallow that obvious bullshit.

Here in the US, the dam is breaking on federal consumer privacy law – at last!

Remember, our last privacy law was passed in 1988 to protect the sanctity of VHS rental history. It's been a minute.

And the thing is, there's a lot of people who are angry about stuff that has some nexus with America's piss-poor privacy landscape. Worried that Facebook turned grampy into a Qanon? That Insta made your teen anorexic? That TikTok is brainwashing millennials into quoting Osama Bin Laden? Or that cops are rolling up the identities of everyone at a Black Lives Matter protest or the Jan 6 riots by getting location data from Google? Or that Red State Attorneys General are tracking teen girls to out-of-state abortion clinics? Or that Black people are being discriminated against by online lending or hiring platforms? Or that someone is making AI deepfake porn of you?

A federal privacy law with a private right of action – which means that individuals can sue companies that violate their privacy – would go a long way to rectifying all of these problems

There's a pretty big coalition for that kind of privacy law! Which is why we have seen a procession of imperfect (but steadily improving) privacy laws working their way through Congress.

If you sign up for EFF’s mailing list at eff.org we’ll send you an email when these come up, so you can call your Congressjerk or Senator and talk to them about it. Or better yet, make an appointment to drop by their offices when they’re in their districts, and explain to them that you’re not just a registered voter from their district, you’re the kind of elite tech person who goes to Defcon, and then explain the bill to them. That stuff makes a difference.

What about self-help? How are we doing on making interoperability legal again, so hackers can just fix shit without waiting for Congress or a federal agency to act?

All the action here these day is in the state Right to Repair fight. We’re getting state R2R bills, like the one that passed this year in Oregon that bans parts pairing, where DRM is used to keep a device from using a new part until it gets an authorized technician’s unlock code.

These bills are pushed by a fantastic group of organizations called the Repair Coalition, at Repair.org, and they’ll email you when one of these laws is going through your statehouse, so you can meet with your state reps and explain to the JV squad the same thing you told your federal reps.

Repair.org’s prime mover is Ifixit, who are genuine heroes of the repair revolution, and Ifixit’s founder, Kyle Wiens, is here at the con. When you see him, you can shake his hand and tell him thanks, and that’ll be even better if you tell him that you’ve signed up to get alerts at repair.org!

Now, on to the final way that we reverse enhittification and build that new, good internet: you, the tech labor force.

For years, your bosses tricked you into thinking you were founders in waiting, temporarily embarrassed entrepreneurs who were only momentarily drawing a salary.

You certainly weren’t workers. Your power came from your intrinsic virtue, not like those lazy slobs in unions who have to get their power through that kumbaya solidarity nonsense.

It was a trick. You were scammed. The power you had came from scarcity, and so when the scarcity ended, when the industry started ringing up six-figure annual layoffs, your power went away with it.

The only durable source of power for tech workers is as workers, in a union.

Think about Amazon. Warehouse workers have to piss in bottles and have the highest rate of on-the-job maimings of any competing business. Whereas Amazon coders get to show up for work with facial piercings, green mohawks, and black t-shirts that say things their bosses don’t understand. They can piss whenever they want!

That’s not because Jeff Bezos or Andy Jassy loves you guys. It’s because they’re scared you’ll quit and they don’t know how to replace you.

Time for the second obligatory William Gibson quote: “The future is here, it’s just not evenly distributed.” You know who’s living in the future?. Those Amazon blue-collar workers. They are the bleeding edge.

Drivers whose eyeballs are monitored by AI cameras that do digital phrenology on their faces to figure out whether to dock their pay, warehouse workers whose bodies are ruined in just months.

As tech bosses beef up that reserve army of unemployed, skilled tech workers, then those tech workers – you all – will arrive at the same future as them.

Look, I know that you’ve spent your careers explaining in words so small your boss could understand them that you refuse to enshittify the company’s products, and I thank you for your service.

But if you want to go on fighting for the user, you need power that’s more durable than scarcity. You need a union. Wanna learn how? Check out the Tech Workers Coalition and Tech Solidarity, and get organized.

Enshittification didn’t arise because our bosses changed. They were always that guy.

They were always yankin’ on that enshittification lever in the C-suite.

What changed was the environment, everything that kept that switch from moving.

And that’s good news, in a bankshot way, because it means we can make good services out of imperfect people. As a wildly imperfect person myself, I find this heartening.

The new good internet is in our grasp: an internet that has the technological self-determination of the old, good internet, and the greased-skids simplicity of Web 2.0 that let all our normie friends get in on the fun.

Tech bosses want you to think that good UX and enshittification can’t ever be separated. That’s such a self-serving proposition you can spot it from orbit. We know it, 'cause we built the old good internet, and we’ve been fighting a rear-guard action to preserve it for the past two decades.

It’s time to stop playing defense. It's time to go on the offensive. To restore competition, regulation, interop and tech worker power so that we can create the new, good internet we’ll need to fight fascism, the climate emergency, and genocide.

To build a digital nervous system for a 21st century in which our children can thrive and prosper.

Community voting for SXSW is live! If you wanna hear RIDA QADRI and me talk about how GIG WORKERS can DISENSHITTIFY their jobs with INTEROPERABILITY, VOTE FOR THIS ONE!

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/2024/08/17/hack-the-planet/#how-about-a-nice-game-of-chess

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