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redroomreflections · 8 months ago

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Let's Make A Movie

Natasha Romanoff xfem!reader

The Loud House Universe

The one where they make a tape ;)

Warnings: bondage, strap use, penetration, things only married couples do of course /s ;)

w/c: 2.9k

Making a sex tape was never on your list of things to do. It's just one of those ideas that fell into your lap. The idea of being able to watch and replay your time with Natasha became more enticing the more you thought about it. When you brought it up to her she'd been weary of your requests but on board. She had stipulations though. You couldn't show her face, and it could only be viewed in the bedroom. That was all well and fine. If anything, those two rules were a turn-on. Oh, and she wanted to top you.

It couldn't be a manufactured moment. It needed to be organic and real. It had to be raw and unhinged.

So, you waited. It didn't take long. Your sex life was great so it wasn't like you had to wait for her to initiate anything. The opportunity presented itself within a month. You were in the tower this time, the high-security building feeling more private than your own apartment somehow. You had been in the midst of a heavy makeout session when she reached for the camcorder. You were a little embarrassed by how fast you'd set up the camera but it had paid off.

"Is it recording?"

"Uh-huh."

Natasha hummed, taking the camera from your hands and moving away to get the right angle.

"You have a minute to get naked, baby," She teased.

"What happens if I don't?"

"Then I don't get to fuck you and you don't get to fuck me"

That was an empty threat, she would let you fuck her either way. Still, you complied and stripped, the cool air of the room making your nipples perk.

"On the bed," She commanded.

You moved to lay back on the bed, looking up at her with anticipation. You were already wet, pussy clenching at the sight of her. knowing that the camera was there somehow added to your heightened senses.

She was dressed down in a tank top and underwear, and her hair was wild. Her makeup had smudged slightly, her lips swollen from kissing. Her green eyes looked black, her pupils blown. She was beautiful. She set the camera down and crawled on the bed, kneeling over. She stroked your neck with one hand, managing to keep her balance, as she pulled you in for another kiss. You could taste the vodka on her tongue.

Her kisses were aggressive and possessive. She kissed you like it was her only chance. Like the world would end in a second. Like it was her last meal. Her hand gripped the side of your face as her other moved down to play with your nipples. it would be a lie to say you weren't already wound up. Natasha kneaded and pinched, noting how your kisses became sloppier as you struggled to breathe through her ministrations. She gave your nipple one last tug before traveling further down, running her fingers along your ribs, then your hip bones, finally dipping a single digit into your dripping heat with no warning.

"Shit, Nat," You whined, head falling back onto the pillows.

"God, baby. You're so wet already."

Natasha was the most observant woman you'd ever met. She could tell if your day was off or if something was bothering you with just one look. The same skills translated to the bedroom, or at least, the porn studio. You smiled in your head at the inside joke.

"What's funny?" She asked as she took her finger from your pussy, collecting your juices, before swirling it over your nipple.

"Nothing. You're just driving me crazy."

"Good." She said before dipping her head to take your nipple into her mouth. She flicked the nub with her tongue before biting down softly.

"Fuck," You hissed, bucking your hips up into her.

"Easy, sweetheart. We're gonna take our time tonight."

The promise of a drawn-out night made you clench. She chuckled, her breath tickling your breast. She switched breasts, sucking the other nipple into her mouth. She wanted to tease you. Wanted to see how needy she could make you. It was hard for her to not give in and fuck you herself. She knew she'd cave eventually.

"Mmm," You moaned, your hand going to the back of her head to get her closer. She suckled your breasts, licking, biting, and pulling at them. By the time she was done, they were hard and swollen.

She moved her head lower, licking your skin until she got to your belly button. You were a mess of arousal and her spit, your pussy aching for her attention.

"You want my mouth?" She asked, lips trailing even lower.

"Yes."

"Where? Be specific."

"I want your mouth on my pussy."

"I think I have other ideas," She said.

You were confused at first until she began to move her mouth up again. Your disappointment must've been evident because she chuckled, kissing the tip of your nose.

"Don't worry, baby. I'll give you what you need. But not yet. You can handle a little more teasing, can't you?"

You nodded and she grinned, "That's what I thought." She leaned over to the nightstand, rummaging through it before pulling out a few items.

"You're tying me up?" You questioned.

"Only for a little bit."

She moved the pillow you'd been leaning against, moving it off to the side.

"Hands up," She ordered.

You followed her directions, lifting your arms above your head. She bound your hands together, securing them to the headboard.

"Comfy?"

"Yeah,"

She kissed you again, softer than the previous ones. It was tender and loving. When she pulled away, her expression was one of pure adoration.

"What do you say, if you need to stop?"

"Red."

"Good girl."

Natasha's fingers trailed down the valley of your chest and stomach, stopping just shy of your throbbing pussy. She spread your legs and positioned herself between them. She lowered her head to your left thigh, peppering it with kisses. Then she nipped at the flesh.

"Ow!" You squeaked.

She did the same to the other thigh. Then the next. The bites got harder each time. Soon enough, there was a ring of teeth marks on your thighs. They stung, and you were sure they'd leave bruises.

"You're marking me up, Tasha."

"I know," She said. She moved down to your thighs and positioned them so that you were open just enough to place the vibrator between them. Then she tied your ankles.

"Are you gonna fuck me with that thing?"

"Yes. But I'm not done yet."

"Not done with what?"

"With you," She answered.

She placed the vibrator on the first setting and held it against your pussy, making sure to press it against your clit. The feeling made you gasp. She moved the toy up and down, slowly.

"Wait, wait, Nat, fuck, wait," You begged. She had the decency to wait.

"Are you okay?"

"I'm fine it's just..." You breathed.

She removed the toy and kissed the side of your head.

"Thank you," You sighed.

"Do you want to stop?"

"No. Not yet."

"Okay,"

Natasha kissed the corner of your mouth. It was so innocent. She kissed your cheeks, and then your forehead, and the tip of your nose. Her lips brushed against yours as she spoke, "I'll try to be easy. But I'm not promising anything."

"Okay,"

She pressed the toy against your clit again. The vibrations were soft, but you were already sensitive.

"Oh God," You groaned.

"Too much?"

"No, keep going,"

Natasha moved the toy from your clit to your entrance. She pressed the toy inside you. The stretch was nice and you clenched around the object.

"Shit," You arched your back. With your legs and feet bound you couldn't move as much as you wanted. She removed the toy to place it at your clit again, readjusting your hips, before allowing the vibrator to rest there. Your hips twitched.

"Fuck,"

"Good?"

"Mmmhm," You nodded.

She kept the vibrator at a slow pace, watching as your eyes fluttered. She loved seeing you like this. Helpless.

"You look so pretty, baby,"

You were too busy concentrating on the pleasurable sensations to respond.

She reached over to the nightstand, taking the camcorder in her hand to get a closer look. Her rule of keeping your faces out of it had gone out of the window. She wanted to capture everything about you that made you sexy.

"Open your eyes," She whispered.

You listened, opening your eyes and staring up at her. Her hair was mussed and her lips were plump and shiny. Her breasts heaved with every breath she took.

"You're so beautiful," You told her.

She blushed, smiling, "Flattery will get you nowhere."

"You're the most gorgeous woman I've ever seen,"

"Sweet talker," She said. She directed the camcorder to your face, focusing on your lips. Then she directed it to your breasts hard and shiny with her saliva, the toy, and the apex of your thighs.

"How are you doing?"

"Feels good, Tasha,"

"You look like you're having a good time,"

Your only response was a nod.

"Can I go harder?"

"Please."

She turned the vibrator up. The sensation was overwhelming. Your toes curled. You didn't know what to focus on. The toy, her stare, or the camera.

"Jesus, Tasha," You cursed. The sensations felt overwhelming yet so damn good.

"How many times do you think I can make you cum?" She asked.

"Fuck, Tasha. I-I don't know,"

"I think I can get at least three."

"Shit, I-" You couldn't finish your thought, the orgasm hitting you out of nowhere. You hadn't realized how close you were.

"Oh fuck, Tasha." You moaned. Your thighs tried to close but they were tied down, your pussy pulsed, and you arched your back, the toy only pressing into your clit the more you bore down.

"God, look at you," Natasha murmured.

When the pleasure finally subsided, you were a panting mess. You couldn't speak, not that you could even if you tried.

"Are you okay?"

"Uh-huh."

"Did you like that?"

"Mmm."

"You came so hard, baby." She placed the camera down again. "Can you give me another one?" She pushed the toy back to your entrance, thrusting it into you.

"Fuck, fuck, fuck, Nat." You were hypersensitive, but the pleasure was worth the ache.

"Does it hurt?"

"A little,"

"I can stop,"

"No, please don't,"

"What's the magic word?"

"Please,"

"Good girl," She praised.

Natasha was rough, her thrusts unrelenting. She was focused on nothing else but the way you moaned and squirmed, the way you cried out. Her nails scraped against your belly, digging into your sides.

"Fuuuuck," You keened.

"God, you're so perfect, baby."

You couldn't even respond, you were too consumed with the ecstasy. She reached for the camera again, recording your flushed and sweaty face.

"I love you," She told you.

"L-love y-you too," You gasped.

"I'm gonna make you cum again. Are you ready?"

"Yeah,"

She thrust the toy in and out of you.

"Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck," You chanted. Your thighs trembled and your hips jerked, but she kept them in place with her free hand.

"Open your legs," She demanded as you struggled against your restraints. You did as told and she repositioned the toy. She turned it up to the highest setting.

"Tasha, Tasha, oh God,"

"Just let go," She urged.

Your eyes squeezed shut and your jaw fell open. Natasha's voice was distant as the blood pounded in your ears. It was too much.

"I-I-I'm gon-gonna,"

"Go ahead, baby."

You came. Your vision went white, your body seized, and you cried out.

"Shit, baby," Natasha cursed.

The waves of pleasure hit you again and again. It felt like an eternity before the high began to fade. She allowed you to come down this time, watching as your chest heaved, before she placed the camera down again.

"What's your color?"

"G-green."

"Good. Can I get another one? I'll be gentle."

You were exhausted, but the thought of her bringing you to another climax was too tempting.

"Yes,"

Natasha removed the toy from your entrance. You felt empty. She crawled over you, straddling you, reaching down to expose her clit. She positioned herself just above your pelvis bone.

"Ready?"

"Mmmhm,"

She rubbed her clit against you, grinding her hips. It wasn't about getting you off this time. She needed to chase her own orgasm. And, well, you had to admit that it felt really fucking good.

"F-fuck," Natasha moaned. Oh, how you wished you could touch her. She spread her wetness over you, her juices mingling with yours, as she dripped.

"You feel so good, baby,"

Her hips jerked and stuttered, and you could tell she was close. She placed her hands on your shoulders, effectively pinning you down, as she used you for her pleasure. She rutted against you harder, faster, her clit catching the right spot, and she came.

"Shit," She gasped. Her mouth was parted, her head falling back. She rode out her orgasm before her body collapsed. She buried her face in your neck, still breathing heavily.

"You're amazing," You praised, "So good. So pretty."

Natasha smiled, kissing your shoulder, before laying her head on you.

"Are you going to untie me now?" You asked.

"In a minute." She breathed. It was almost like something else entirely came over her. "You're like my doll." She mused.

"Am I?"

"Mmm, my favorite plaything." She said. "I could just fuck you all night if I wanted. Make you come until you beg me to stop." She leaned up, planting a kiss against your lips. Then another one. And another.

"I would let you, if you wanted,"

"That's good. Cause I'm not done." She said, "I'll never be done with you. You're mine."

"I am," You agreed. She reached up to untie you, massaging your wrists.

"Turn over," She demanded.

You were exhausted.

"It'll feel good. I promise."

You rolled over onto your stomach.

"Are you okay?"

"Green,"

"Good,"

Natasha positioned her body against yours, her breasts resting on your back.

"I'm going to fuck you so good," She whispered. You could tell by her fumbling around that she'd gotten the strap. A rare occasion for her to wear it. You guess for your sex tape it would be appropriate.

For the next few minutes, Natasha treated you like a doll. She used her strength to position you, your face resting against the pillows, as she forced you to arch with your ass in the air, perfectly ready for her. She rubbed the toy against your wet slit.

"Ready, baby?"

"Fuck, please."

"Mmm, that's a good girl."

Natasha thrust into you. You were a bit overstimulated. Her thrusts were rough and the angle allowed her to hit deeper. You didn't know if you'd be able to handle it. But she promised you would feel good. You trusted her.

"Fuck," She cursed, "You're so tight, sweetheart."

"Tasha,"

"I got you."

She thrust harder. Faster. One of her hands moved to grip your hip, the other tangling in your hair.

"Shit, shit, shit," You whined. The slight ache had turned into something new. You felt so full and hot. The pleasure was so intense that you could feel it at your fingertips.

"You take me so good, baby. So fucking good."

"Fuck,"

"You look so beautiful, all tied up and fucked out,"

"Mm,"

She opened your ass cheeks, never stopping her thrusting but to spit on the puckered hole.

"Tasha,"

"Shh, I'm taking care of you,"

Natasha's finger probed the area before pushing in. The feeling was new. Her thrusting became softer and the pace slowed but never stopped.

"Does it feel good?"

"Fuck, fuck, fuck, feels so good, Tasha. Oh, fuck."

"I knew you could handle it,"

She used her other hand to take control of your hips, all you could do was grab onto the sheets, as you laid open-mouthed.

"I'm gonna make you cum again."

"Yes,"

"Yes what?"

"Make me cum. Please."

Natasha leaned down to rest against your back. Her breath was hot and the added weight made you feel pinned. It was the last push you needed. Your body seized and you cried out. Your eyes fluttered, but she didn't stop.

"Tasha, wait, it's-"

"It's okay. I'm not done."

The pleasure was blinding. It hurt. But it was the most satisfying pain. Natasha pulled her finger out, changing hands and reaching down to rub your clit.

"Shit, fuck,"

"Good?"

"Mmhm,"

"Are you going to cum again?"

"Mm, I can't."

"You can," She insisted.

Her movements were sloppy, and you were sure the bed would collapse soon.

"Cum for me," She begged.

"Fuck, Nat, oh God, I-I'm-I'm-fuck, fuck,"

You came. Your orgasm is more intense this time. Your hips moved of their own accord, not knowing whether to push her away or keep her close. Natasha's thrust never faltered.

"One more, sweetheart. Come on."

"Tasha," You sobbed, "I can't,"

"Yes, you can,"

Her thrusts got slower, shallower.

"Breathe," She said, leaning over to whisper in your ear. Her thrusts slowed. She ground into your ass, drilling the cock into you, while her fingers toyed with your clit.

"That's it, baby. Just let go."

Your body went rigid, and a scream caught in your throat, as the orgasm ripped through you. You collapsed. Your legs gave out. You couldn't think. Natasha fucked you through it as she sweet-talked you.

"I know baby," She said. "I know your pussy feels so good right now. It's what you needed." She eventually slowed her hips.

"Thank you," You slurred, barely able to stay awake.

"No, thank you," She laughed.

Natasha pulled the cock out, undoing your restraints.

"You were so perfect."

"I feel drunk." You sighed. She leaned over to kiss your back, rubbing your ass cheeks, and pressing her thumb against your hole. She wanted more but she knew tonight this was your limit.

"Tasha,"

"I love you."

"Love you, too,"

(if you know how many times Natasha made R cum you get a cookie)

#natasha romanoff #black reader #natasha x reader #black widow x reader #black widow x female reader #natasha x you #natasha romanov #theloudhouseau #natasha romanoff smut

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acstation206 · 10 months ago

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I messed up. /j

Introducing...

THE AMAZING DIGITAL ARCADE PARTY!

Yeah, that's right, I caved in.

Basically the exact same show except its established lore and setting is more largely inspired by archive compilations of popular vintage arcade games of the 80s and 90s such as Pac-Man’s Arcade Party, as well as the different takes within the sci-fi / fantasy genre by the likes of Wreck-It Ralph, Tron: Legacy, and Infinity Train.

= BACKGROUND (in a nutshell) 💿 =

In an attempt to save their dying business, C&A developed and manufactured the first hybrid arcade game of its own kind that combined other popular arcade games and home console games with virtual reality. However, just as the company’s luck was turning around, numerous lawsuits from game companies by the likes of Nintendo and families were filed against the company for their product, from apparently “ripping-off” Super Mario Bros. in its entirety to causing many children to either inexplicably fall unconscious or suffer from amnesia after the cabinet’s headset was put on. Just then, as C&A announced they’ll be temporarily recalling the product to fix its issues, a shocking discovery was already made by investigators that would soon bring the company to its demise: the game’s AI had gone rogue, and once a human mind dies from losing one of the games in any way, they are either permanently reincarnated as a personified cartoon character of themselves or just straight up die in real-life depending on the outcome.

= ART N’ STUFF 🎨 =

(might wanna make a separate masterpost for that in the future but oh well)

NES Ragatha

Pomni and Caine redesigns

= Q&As and BOUNDARIES (sort of) 🎙️ =

"Are there any plans to make a full webcomic out of this?" - Uhhhh, mayyybe? I'm not entirely sure, honestly. While there may be a few side comics and artwork from my head I want to get out sometime, I don't really have much plans for this AU that'll be worth telling a full story right now since I feel there is plenty of things that I've yet to figure out and develop in a matter of time, particularly the setting and characters (especially considering the OG show itself has only 2 episodes out as of writing and I only have mobile apps like ibisPaint X to make this all possible at the moment).

"Can I make fanfics and OCs for this AU?" - Of course! I've seen a lot of incredible things from the community, especially in regards to alternate universes, so you're absolutely more than welcome to share whatever's on your mind as long as your heart's in the right place. I can't really guarantee I'll see every bit of it since I do have some personal biz of mine to take care of at any moment, but I'll be happy to reblog them whenever I get the chance. Just tag me and we all good. :)

"Are there any canon ships in this AU?" - Yes. Yes, there are. Well, only BunnyDoll (Jax x Ragatha) to be specific. HOWEVER, you are free to ship whoever you want here! Showtime (Caine x Pomni), ButtonBlossom (Pomni x Ragatha), it's all okay. The choice is yours, a romantic buffet! (Plus, depending on the quality of my writing, I'm not even planning to dwell too much into it for now, aside from the side comics that will.)

That's all for right now. Enjoy! :)

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mostlysignssomeportents · 2 years ago

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Autoenshittification

Forget F1: the only car race that matters now is the race to turn your car into a digital extraction machine, a high-speed inkjet printer on wheels, stealing your private data as it picks your pocket. Your car’s digital infrastructure is a costly, dangerous nightmare — but for automakers in pursuit of postcapitalist utopia, it’s a dream they can’t give up on.

Your car is stuffed full of microchips, a fact the world came to appreciate after the pandemic struck and auto production ground to a halt due to chip shortages. Of course, that wasn’t the whole story: when the pandemic started, the automakers panicked and canceled their chip orders, only to immediately regret that decision and place new orders.

But it was too late: semiconductor production had taken a serious body-blow, and when Big Car placed its new chip orders, it went to the back of a long, slow-moving line. It was a catastrophic bungle: microchips are so integral to car production that a car is basically a computer network on wheels that you stick your fragile human body into and pray.

The car manufacturers got so desperate for chips that they started buying up washing machines for the microchips in them, extracting the chips and discarding the washing machines like some absurdo-dystopian cyberpunk walnut-shelling machine:

https://www.autoevolution.com/news/desperate-times-companies-buy-washing-machines-just-to-rip-out-the-chips-187033.html

These digital systems are a huge problem for the car companies. They are the underlying cause of a precipitous decline in car quality. From touch-based digital door-locks to networked sensors and cameras, every digital system in your car is a source of endless repair nightmares, costly recalls and cybersecurity vulnerabilities:

https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/quality-new-vehicles-us-declining-more-tech-use-study-shows-2023-06-22/

What’s more, drivers hate all the digital bullshit, from the janky touchscreens to the shitty, wildly insecure apps. Digital systems are drivers’ most significant point of dissatisfaction with the automakers’ products:

https://www.theverge.com/23801545/car-infotainment-customer-satisifaction-survey-jd-power

Even the automakers sorta-kinda admit that this is a problem. Back in 2020 when Massachusetts was having a Right-to-Repair ballot initiative, Big Car ran these unfuckingbelievable scare ads that basically said, “Your car spies on you so comprehensively that giving anyone else access to its systems will let murderers stalk you to your home and kill you:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/09/03/rip-david-graeber/#rolling-surveillance-platforms

But even amid all the complaining about cars getting stuck in the Internet of Shit, there’s still not much discussion of why the car-makers are making their products less attractive, less reliable, less safe, and less resilient by stuffing them full of microchips. Are car execs just the latest generation of rubes who’ve been suckered by Silicon Valley bullshit and convinced that apps are a magic path to profitability?

Nope. Car execs are sophisticated businesspeople, and they’re surfing capitalism’s latest — and last — hot trend: dismantling capitalism itself.

Now, leftists have been predicting the death of capitalism since The Communist Manifesto, but even Marx and Engels warned us not to get too frisky: capitalism, they wrote, is endlessly creative, constantly reinventing itself, re-emerging from each crisis in a new form that is perfectly adapted to the post-crisis reality:

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/31/books/review/a-spectre-haunting-china-mieville.html

But capitalism has finally run out of gas. In his forthcoming book, Techno Feudalism: What Killed Capitalism, Yanis Varoufakis proposes that capitalism has died — but it wasn’t replaced by socialism. Rather, capitalism has given way to feudalism:

https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/451795/technofeudalism-by-varoufakis-yanis/9781847927279

Under capitalism, capital is the prime mover. The people who own and mobilize capital — the capitalists — organize the economy and take the lion’s share of its returns. But it wasn’t always this way: for hundreds of years, European civilization was dominated by rents, not markets.

A “rent” is income that you get from owning something that other people need to produce value. Think of renting out a house you own: not only do you get paid when someone pays you to live there, you also get the benefit of rising property values, which are the result of the work that all the other homeowners, business owners, and residents do to make the neighborhood more valuable.

The first capitalists hated rent. They wanted to replace the “passive income” that landowners got from taxing their serfs’ harvest with active income from enclosing those lands and grazing sheep in order to get wool to feed to the new textile mills. They wanted active income — and lots of it.

Capitalist philosophers railed against rent. The “free market” of Adam Smith wasn’t a market that was free from regulation — it was a market free from rents. The reason Smith railed against monopolists is because he (correctly) understood that once a monopoly emerged, it would become a chokepoint through which a rentier could cream off the profits he considered the capitalist’s due:

https://locusmag.com/2021/03/cory-doctorow-free-markets/

Today, we live in a rentier’s paradise. People don’t aspire to create value — they aspire to capture it. In Survival of the Richest, Doug Rushkoff calls this “going meta”: don’t provide a service, just figure out a way to interpose yourself between the provider and the customer:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/09/13/collapse-porn/#collapse-porn

Don’t drive a cab, create Uber and extract value from every driver and rider. Better still: don’t found Uber, invest in Uber options and extract value from the people who invest in Uber. Even better, invest in derivatives of Uber options and extract value from people extracting value from people investing in Uber, who extract value from drivers and riders. Go meta.

This is your brain on the four-hour-work-week, passive income mind-virus. In Techno Feudalism, Varoufakis deftly describes how the new “Cloud Capital” has created a new generation of rentiers, and how they have become the richest, most powerful people in human history.

Shopping at Amazon is like visiting a bustling city center full of stores — but each of those stores’ owners has to pay the majority of every sale to a feudal landlord, Emperor Jeff Bezos, who also decides which goods they can sell and where they must appear on the shelves. Amazon is full of capitalists, but it is not a capitalist enterprise. It’s a feudal one:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/11/28/enshittification/#relentless-payola

This is the reason that automakers are willing to enshittify their products so comprehensively: they were one of the first industries to decouple rents from profits. Recall that the reason that Big Car needed billions in bailouts in 2008 is that they’d reinvented themselves as loan-sharks who incidentally made cars, lending money to car-buyers and then “securitizing” the loans so they could be traded in the capital markets.

Even though this strategy brought the car companies to the brink of ruin, it paid off in the long run. The car makers got billions in public money, paid their execs massive bonuses, gave billions to shareholders in buybacks and dividends, smashed their unions, fucked their pensioned workers, and shipped jobs anywhere they could pollute and murder their workforce with impunity.

Car companies are on the forefront of postcapitalism, and they understand that digital is the key to rent-extraction. Remember when BMW announced that it was going to rent you the seatwarmer in your own fucking car?

https://pluralistic.net/2020/07/02/big-river/#beemers

Not to be outdone, Mercedes announced that they were going to rent you your car’s accelerator pedal, charging an extra $1200/year to unlock a fully functional acceleration curve:

https://www.theverge.com/2022/11/23/23474969/mercedes-car-subscription-faster-acceleration-feature-price

This is the urinary tract infection business model: without digitization, all your car’s value flowed in a healthy stream. But once the car-makers add semiconductors, each one of those features comes out in a painful, burning dribble, with every button on that fakakta touchscreen wired directly into your credit-card.

But it’s just for starters. Computers are malleable. The only computer we know how to make is the Turing Complete Von Neumann Machine, which can run every program we know how to write. Once they add networked computers to your car, the Car Lords can endlessly twiddle the knobs on the back end, finding new ways to extract value from you:

https://doctorow.medium.com/twiddler-1b5c9690cce6

That means that your car can track your every movement, and sell your location data to anyone and everyone, from marketers to bounty-hunters looking to collect fees for tracking down people who travel out of state for abortions to cops to foreign spies:

https://www.vice.com/en/article/n7enex/tool-shows-if-car-selling-data-privacy4cars-vehicle-privacy-report

Digitization supercharges financialization. It lets car-makers offer subprime auto-loans to desperate, poor people and then killswitch their cars if they miss a payment:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4U2eDJnwz_s

Subprime lending for cars would be a terrible business without computers, but digitization makes it a great source of feudal rents. Car dealers can originate loans to people with teaser rates that quickly blow up into payments the dealer knows their customer can’t afford. Then they repo the car and sell it to another desperate person, and another, and another:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/07/27/boricua/#looking-for-the-joke-with-a-microscope

Digitization also opens up more exotic options. Some subprime cars have secondary control systems wired into their entertainment system: miss a payment and your car radio flips to full volume and bellows an unstoppable, unmutable stream of threats. Tesla does one better: your car will lock and immobilize itself, then blare its horn and back out of its parking spot when the repo man arrives:

https://tiremeetsroad.com/2021/03/18/tesla-allegedly-remotely-unlocks-model-3-owners-car-uses-smart-summon-to-help-repo-agent/

Digital feudalism hasn’t stopped innovating — it’s just stopped innovating good things. The digital device is an endless source of sadistic novelties, like the cellphones that disable your most-used app the first day you’re late on a payment, then work their way down the other apps you rely on for every day you’re late:

https://restofworld.org/2021/loans-that-hijack-your-phone-are-coming-to-india/

Usurers have always relied on this kind of imaginative intimidation. The loan-shark’s arm-breaker knows you’re never going to get off the hook; his goal is in intimidating you into paying his boss first, liquidating your house and your kid’s college fund and your wedding ring before you default and he throws you off a building.

Thanks to the malleability of computerized systems, digital arm-breakers have an endless array of options they can deploy to motivate you into paying them first, no matter what it costs you:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/04/02/innovation-unlocks-markets/#digital-arm-breakers

Car-makers are trailblazers in imaginative rent-extraction. Take VIN-locking: this is the practice of adding cheap microchips to engine components that communicate with the car’s overall network. After a new part is installed in your car, your car’s computer does a complex cryptographic handshake with the part that requires an unlock code provided by an authorized technician. If the code isn’t entered, the car refuses to use that part.

VIN-locking has exploded in popularity. It’s in your iPhone, preventing you from using refurb or third-party replacement parts:

https://doctorow.medium.com/apples-cement-overshoes-329856288d13

It’s in fuckin’ ventilators, which was a nightmare during lockdown as hospital techs nursed their precious ventilators along by swapping parts from dead systems into serviceable ones:

https://www.vice.com/en/article/3azv9b/why-repair-techs-are-hacking-ventilators-with-diy-dongles-from-poland

And of course, it’s in tractors, along with other forms of remote killswitch. Remember that feelgood story about John Deere bricking the looted Ukrainian tractors whose snitch-chips showed they’d been relocated to Russia?

https://doctorow.medium.com/about-those-kill-switched-ukrainian-tractors-bc93f471b9c8

That wasn’t a happy story — it was a cautionary tale. After all, John Deere now controls the majority of the world’s agricultural future, and they’ve boobytrapped those ubiquitous tractors with killswitches that can be activated by anyone who hacks, takes over, or suborns Deere or its dealerships.

Control over repair isn’t limited to gouging customers on parts and service. When a company gets to decide whether your device can be fixed, it can fuck you over in all kinds of ways. Back in 2019, Tim Apple told his shareholders to expect lower revenues because people were opting to fix their phones rather than replace them:

https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2019/01/letter-from-tim-cook-to-apple-investors/

By usurping your right to decide who fixes your phone, Apple gets to decide whether you can fix it, or whether you must replace it. Problem solved — and not just for Apple, but for car makers, tractor makers, ventilator makers and more. Apple leads on this, even ahead of Big Car, pioneering a “recycling” program that sees trade-in phones shredded so they can’t possibly be diverted from an e-waste dump and mined for parts:

https://www.vice.com/en/article/yp73jw/apple-recycling-iphones-macbooks

John Deere isn’t sleeping on this. They’ve come up with a valuable treasure they extract when they win the Right-to-Repair: Deere singles out farmers who complain about its policies and refuses to repair their tractors, stranding them with six-figure, two-ton paperweight:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/05/31/dealers-choice/#be-a-shame-if-something-were-to-happen-to-it

The repair wars are just a skirmish in a vast, invisible fight that’s been waged for decades: the War On General-Purpose Computing, where tech companies use the law to make it illegal for you to reconfigure your devices so they serve you, rather than their shareholders:

https://memex.craphound.com/2012/01/10/lockdown-the-coming-war-on-general-purpose-computing/

The force behind this army is vast and grows larger every day. General purpose computers are antithetical to technofeudalism — all the rents extracted by technofeudalists would go away if others (tinkereres, co-ops, even capitalists!) were allowed to reconfigure our devices so they serve us.

You’ve probably noticed the skirmishes with inkjet printer makers, who can only force you to buy their ink at 20,000% markups if they can stop you from deciding how your printer is configured:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/08/07/inky-wretches/#epson-salty But we’re also fighting against insulin pump makers, who want to turn people with diabetes into walking inkjet printers:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/06/10/loopers/#hp-ification

And companies that make powered wheelchairs:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/06/08/chair-ish/#r2r

These companies start with people who have the least agency and social power and wreck their lives, then work their way up the privilege gradient, coming for everyone else. It’s called the “shitty technology adoption curve”:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/08/21/great-taylors-ghost/#solidarity-or-bust

Technofeudalism is the public-private-partnership from hell, emerging from a combination of state and private action. On the one hand, bailing out bankers and big business (rather than workers) after the 2008 crash and the covid lockdown decoupled income from profits. Companies spent billions more than they earned were still wildly profitable, thanks to those public funds.

But there’s also a policy dimension here. Some of those rentiers’ billions were mobilized to both deconstruct antitrust law (allowing bigger and bigger companies and cartels) and to expand “IP” law, turning “IP” into a toolsuite for controlling the conduct of a firm’s competitors, critics and customers:

https://locusmag.com/2020/09/cory-doctorow-ip/

IP is key to understanding the rise of technofeudalism. The same malleability that allows companies to “twiddle” the knobs on their services and keep us on the hook as they reel us in would hypothetically allow us to countertwiddle, seizing the means of computation:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/12/algorithmic-wage-discrimination/#fishers-of-men

The thing that stands between you and an alternative app store, an interoperable social media network that you can escape to while continuing to message the friends you left behind, or a car that anyone can fix or unlock features for is IP, not technology. Under capitalism, that technology would already exist, because capitalists have no loyalty to one another and view each other’s margins as their own opportunities.

But under technofeudalism, control comes from rents (owning things), not profits (selling things). The capitalist who wants to participate in your iPhone’s “ecosystem” has to make apps and submit them to Apple, along with 30% of their lifetime revenues — they don’t get to sell you jailbreaking kit that lets you choose their app store.

Rent-seeking technology has a holy grail: control over “ring zero” — the ability to compel you to configure your computer to a feudalist’s specifications, and to verify that you haven’t altered your computer after it came into your possession:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/01/30/ring-minus-one/#drm-political-economy

For more than two decades, various would-be feudal lords and their court sorcerers have been pitching ways of doing this, of varying degrees of outlandishness.

At core, here’s what they envision: inside your computer, they will nest another computer, one that is designed to run a very simple set of programs, none of which can be altered once it leaves the factory. This computer — either a whole separate chip called a “Trusted Platform Module” or a region of your main processor called a secure enclave — can tally observations about your computer: which operating system, modules and programs it’s running.

Then it can cryptographically “sign” these observations, proving that they were made by a secure chip and not by something you could have modified. Then you can send this signed “attestation” to someone else, who can use it to determine how your computer is configured and thus whether to trust it. This is called “remote attestation.”

There are some cool things you can do with remote attestation: for example, two strangers playing a networked video game together can use attestations to make sure neither is running any cheat modules. Or you could require your cloud computing provider to use attestations that they aren’t stealing your data from the server you’re renting. Or if you suspect that your computer has been infected with malware, you can connect to someone else and send them an attestation that they can use to figure out whether you should trust it.

Today, there’s a cool remote attestation technology called “PrivacyPass” that replaces CAPTCHAs by having you prove to your own device that you are a human. When a server wants to make sure you’re a person, it sends a random number to your device, which signs that number along with its promise that it is acting on behalf of a human being, and sends it back. CAPTCHAs are all kinds of bad — bad for accessibility and privacy — and this is really great.

But the billions that have been thrown at remote attestation over the decades is only incidentally about solving CAPTCHAs or verifying your cloud server. The holy grail here is being able to make sure that you’re not running an ad-blocker. It’s being able to remotely verify that you haven’t disabled the bossware your employer requires. It’s the power to block someone from opening an Office365 doc with LibreOffice. It’s your boss’s ability to ensure that you haven’t modified your messaging client to disable disappearing messages before he sends you an auto-destructing memo ordering you to break the law.

And there’s a new remote attestation technology making the rounds: Google’s Web Environment Integrity, which will leverage Google’s dominance over browsers to allow websites to block users who run ad-blockers:

https://github.com/RupertBenWiser/Web-Environment-Integrity

There’s plenty else WEI can do (it would make detecting ad-fraud much easier), but for every legitimate use, there are a hundred ways this could be abused. It’s a technology purpose-built to allow rent extraction by stripping us of our right to technological self-determination.

Releasing a technology like this into a world where companies are willing to make their products less reliable, less attractive, less safe and less resilient in pursuit of rents is incredibly reckless and shortsighted. You want unauthorized bread? This is how you get Unauthorized Bread:

https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2020/01/unauthorized-bread-a-near-future-tale-of-refugees-and-sinister-iot-appliances/amp/

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

https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/24/rent-to-pwn/#kitt-is-a-demon

[Image ID: The interior of a luxury car. There is a dagger protruding from the steering wheel. The entertainment console has been replaced by the text 'You wouldn't download a car,' in MPAA scare-ad font. Outside of the windscreen looms the Matrix waterfall effect. Visible in the rear- and side-view mirror is the driver: the figure from Munch's 'Scream.' The screen behind the steering-wheel has been replaced by the menacing red eye of HAL9000 from Stanley Kubrick's '2001: A Space Odyssey.']

Image: Cryteria (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:HAL9000.svg

CC BY 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en

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are-we-art-yet · 2 months ago

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Is AWAY using it's own program or is this just a voluntary list of guidelines for people using programs like DALL-E? How does AWAY address the environmental concerns of how the companies making those AI programs conduct themselves (energy consumption, exploiting impoverished areas for cheap electricity, destruction of the environment to rapidly build and get the components for data centers etc.)? Are members of AWAY encouraged to contact their gov representatives about IP theft by AI apps?

What is AWAY and how does it work?

AWAY does not "use its own program" in the software sense—rather, we're a diverse collective of ~1000 members that each have their own varying workflows and approaches to art. While some members do use AI as one tool among many, most of the people in the server are actually traditional artists who don't use AI at all, yet are still interested in ethical approaches to new technologies.

Our code of ethics is a set of voluntary guidelines that members agree to follow upon joining. These emphasize ethical AI approaches, (preferably open-source models that can run locally), respecting artists who oppose AI by not training styles on their art, and refusing to use AI to undercut other artists or work for corporations that similarly exploit creative labor.

Environmental Impact in Context

It's important to place environmental concerns about AI in the context of our broader extractive, industrialized society, where there are virtually no "clean" solutions:

The water usage figures for AI data centers (200-740 million liters annually) represent roughly 0.00013% of total U.S. water usage. This is a small fraction compared to industrial agriculture or manufacturing—for example, golf course irrigation alone in the U.S. consumes approximately 2.08 billion gallons of water per day, or about 7.87 trillion liters annually. This makes AI's water usage about 0.01% of just golf course irrigation.

Looking into individual usage, the average American consumes about 26.8 kg of beef annually, which takes around 1,608 megajoules (MJ) of energy to produce. Making 10 ChatGPT queries daily for an entire year (3,650 queries) consumes just 38.1 MJ—about 42 times less energy than eating beef. In fact, a single quarter-pound beef patty takes 651 times more energy to produce than a single AI query.

Overall, power usage specific to AI represents just 4% of total data center power consumption, which itself is a small fraction of global energy usage. Current annual energy usage for data centers is roughly 9-15 TWh globally—comparable to producing a relatively small number of vehicles.

The consumer environmentalism narrative around technology often ignores how imperial exploitation pushes environmental costs onto the Global South. The rare earth minerals needed for computing hardware, the cheap labor for manufacturing, and the toxic waste from electronics disposal disproportionately burden developing nations, while the benefits flow largely to wealthy countries.

While this pattern isn't unique to AI, it is fundamental to our global economic structure. The focus on individual consumer choices (like whether or not one should use AI, for art or otherwise,) distracts from the much larger systemic issues of imperialism, extractive capitalism, and global inequality that drive environmental degradation at a massive scale.

They are not going to stop building the data centers, and they weren't going to even if AI never got invented.

Creative Tools and Environmental Impact

In actuality, all creative practices have some sort of environmental impact in an industrialized society:

Digital art software (such as Photoshop, Blender, etc) generally uses 60-300 watts per hour depending on your computer's specifications. This is typically more energy than dozens, if not hundreds, of AI image generations (maybe even thousands if you are using a particularly low-quality one).

Traditional art supplies rely on similar if not worse scales of resource extraction, chemical processing, and global supply chains, all of which come with their own environmental impact.

Paint production requires roughly thirteen gallons of water to manufacture one gallon of paint.

Many oil paints contain toxic heavy metals and solvents, which have the potential to contaminate ground water.

Synthetic brushes are made from petroleum-based plastics that take centuries to decompose.

That being said, the point of this section isn't to deflect criticism of AI by criticizing other art forms. Rather, it's important to recognize that we live in a society where virtually all artistic avenues have environmental costs. Focusing exclusively on the newest technologies while ignoring the environmental costs of pre-existing tools and practices doesn't help to solve any of the issues with our current or future waste.

The largest environmental problems come not from individual creative choices, but rather from industrial-scale systems, such as:

Industrial manufacturing (responsible for roughly 22% of global emissions)

Industrial agriculture (responsible for roughly 24% of global emissions)

Transportation and logistics networks (responsible for roughly 14% of global emissions)

Making changes on an individual scale, while meaningful on a personal level, can't address systemic issues without broader policy changes and overall restructuring of global economic systems.

Intellectual Property Considerations

AWAY doesn't encourage members to contact government representatives about "IP theft" for multiple reasons:

We acknowledge that copyright law overwhelmingly serves corporate interests rather than individual creators

Creating new "learning rights" or "style rights" would further empower large corporations while harming individual artists and fan creators

Many AWAY members live outside the United States, many of which having been directly damaged by the US, and thus understand that intellectual property regimes are often tools of imperial control that benefit wealthy nations

Instead, we emphasize respect for artists who are protective of their work and style. Our guidelines explicitly prohibit imitating the style of artists who have voiced their distaste for AI, working on an opt-in model that encourages traditional artists to give and subsequently revoke permissions if they see fit. This approach is about respect, not legal enforcement. We are not a pro-copyright group.

In Conclusion

AWAY aims to cultivate thoughtful, ethical engagement with new technologies, while also holding respect for creative communities outside of itself. As a collective, we recognize that real environmental solutions require addressing concepts such as imperial exploitation, extractive capitalism, and corporate power—not just focusing on individual consumer choices, which do little to change the current state of the world we live in.

When discussing environmental impacts, it's important to keep perspective on a relative scale, and to avoid ignoring major issues in favor of smaller ones. We promote balanced discussions based in concrete fact, with the belief that they can lead to meaningful solutions, rather than misplaced outrage that ultimately serves to maintain the status quo.

If this resonates with you, please feel free to join our discord. :)

Works Cited:

USGS Water Use Data: https://www.usgs.gov/mission-areas/water-resources/science/water-use-united-states

Golf Course Superintendents Association of America water usage report: https://www.gcsaa.org/resources/research/golf-course-environmental-profile

Equinix data center water sustainability report: https://www.equinix.com/resources/infopapers/corporate-sustainability-report

Environmental Working Group's Meat Eater's Guide (beef energy calculations): https://www.ewg.org/meateatersguide/

Hugging Face AI energy consumption study: https://huggingface.co/blog/carbon-footprint

International Energy Agency report on data centers: https://www.iea.org/reports/data-centres-and-data-transmission-networks

Goldman Sachs "Generational Growth" report on AI power demand: https://www.goldmansachs.com/intelligence/pages/gs-research/generational-growth-ai-data-centers-and-the-coming-us-power-surge/report.pdf

Artists Network's guide to eco-friendly art practices: https://www.artistsnetwork.com/art-business/how-to-be-an-eco-friendly-artist/

The Earth Chronicles' analysis of art materials: https://earthchronicles.org/artists-ironically-paint-nature-with-harmful-materials/

Natural Earth Paint's environmental impact report: https://naturalearthpaint.com/pages/environmental-impact

Our World in Data's global emissions by sector: https://ourworldindata.org/emissions-by-sector

"The High Cost of High Tech" report on electronics manufacturing: https://goodelectronics.org/the-high-cost-of-high-tech/

"Unearthing the Dirty Secrets of the Clean Energy Transition" (on rare earth mineral mining): https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/apr/18/clean-energy-dirty-mining-indigenous-communities-climate-crisis

Electronic Frontier Foundation's position paper on AI and copyright: https://www.eff.org/wp/ai-and-copyright

Creative Commons research on enabling better sharing: https://creativecommons.org/2023/04/24/ai-and-creativity/

#ai art #ai art discourse #discourse #ai discourse

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namtech-institute · 4 months ago

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Looking to boost your career in Smart Manufacturing? This step-by-step guide walks you through the certification process in India, helping you gain industry-recognized skills and stay ahead in the evolving world of advanced manufacturing. Get insights on courses, eligibility, and career benefits with NAMTECH!

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#digital manufacturing course #industry 4.0

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dnaayan-blog · 3 months ago

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IMPORTANT QUESTIONS OF ELECTRONICS FOR COMPETITIVE TEST PREP. ❤️

Impact of Semiconductor Technology on Everyday Life Discuss the influence of semiconductors on modern communication and connectivity. Explain how they power artificial intelligence and machine learning. Highlight the role of semiconductors in the development of advanced medical technologies. The primary knoledge you nee to know about curcuits , diode , register and transister , also know about , how does it works?

The most used semiconductor material is silicon, which is widely used in producing integrated circuits (ICs), also known as microchips. These chips contain multiple transistors, which act as switches that allow the flow of electricity to be controlled, enabling complex electronic functions.

Total Resistance in a Parallel Circuit

Problem: Three resistors, R₁ = 6Ω, R₂ = 12Ω, and R₃ = 18Ω, are connected in parallel. Find the total resistance.

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lackadaisycats · 4 months ago

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Hello Tracy, I've been a fan of Lackadaisy since the webcomic days and want to ask a quick question regarding Patreon. I'm also an indie creative myself and currently trying to raise funds for a show I'm working on. What are the best ways to market myself online, and what are some ways to obtain money for the production of merchandise that doesn't involve crowdfunding?

Any specific advice I could give about marketing oneself online at this point would be pretty outdated. I started making Lackadaisy years back, when the internet had a rather different geography and culture. DeviantArt was where all the art kids were. That is, of course, no longer the case.

My generalized advice, though, would be to start working on your project, start sharing it in some form, even if it's just concept art or experiments at this phase, and start building an audience. Nothing speaks to the quality and appeal of whatever it is you're making like the thing itself does. Pick your poisons, as far as social media goes, but probably don't focus solely on one. Platforms don't remain useful or pleasant places to be forever. Set up an avenue for viewers to support you (Patreon, Ko-fi, or something like it), but don't expect supporters to come flooding in all at once. The internet is awash with so many creators and shows and influencers and distractions, it's hard to make waves. Tenacity will be your ally, though. You are likely going to be pursuing your project on the side and possibly working at a loss for a while as you build. Keep things small scale, especially if you're working solo, or with a small team of people. Audience growth and support may eventually start allowing you to expand your ambitions. It's important to do the thing you're doing out of love for the art, for the project itself, for the experience of doing it, and not because you're expecting rounds of applause, accolades, and money to come rushing at you. There's no guarantee that last part will happen...so at least make sure you're having fun doing whatever you're doing.

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

About merchandise --

You can incur the upfront cost of producing, say, a small run of enamel pins. Sell them on your own shop storefront or offer them to supporters at certain tier levels and see how long it takes to earn back the production cost such that you start earning a little bit of profit. Get a feel for how well you can handle packaging and shipping things yourself. Test the waters before making any large merch orders, and don't order vast amounts of something that you don't have room to 'warehouse' in your own home.

You can go the print on demand route. It's got its drawbacks - like slim returns - but it allows you to offer an assortment of merch items without the huge risk of paying big manufacturing fees upfront. It can also do the fulfillment/shipping part for you. I did pretty okay selling prints this way for a time. (Research and be selective about what services you use here, though. Some have gotten markedly worse over the years.)

I know Patreon offers a subscription level for creators that includes some merch production and fulfillment. I haven't personally used it, though, so I'd ask around to see what other creators' experiences have been like with it.

One thing I would suggest relying more heavily on, especially at first, is digital/downloadable rewards, like PDF ebooks or digital sketchbooks - things like that. Shipping supplies and postage costs are ever-increasing and can easily end up putting you in the red. Also, if you have an international audience, it may be difficult to reach them with tangible merch items.

You might also check out some nearby conventions to see if they'd be a good fit for you and your project. Apply for artist alley space at one of them if that's appropriate, or investigate whether or not it'd be worth it to get a dealer table. You might even find someone willing to share dealer space with you for a trial-run.

At some point, when you have enough of an audience to warrant it, seek out a merch partner. Or, they might come scouting for you if they think you have something going that'd be soundly marketable.

#lackadaisy #lackadaisycats #q&a #merch #marketing #advice

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jezabelle9299 · 7 months ago

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Secret Santa S.R x FEM!reader

Overture- You brought stockings to put on everyone's desk, with a small surprise inside your boyfriends. But of course you can just tell him it was you. That's no fun

CWs-Spencer is NOT athletic

A/N- I simply could not work on homework or finals today. It was snowing outside so my most pressing matter was looking at that for 20 minutes that turned out to actually be well over an hour. If it doesn't make any sense then just pretend it does, ok? This was like 4 different plots before I landed on this-- But if you want to read the other things I'm doing this month you could do that HERE

In order to beat everyone to the office you had to leave before the sun was up, normally making it an impossible task, but today it was worth it. The team was getting almost a week of holiday leave, and you wanted to perform a little surprise. You bought some simple stockings, adding little felt and glitter letters to personalize them. You spent almost an hour last night filling them for each person with candy and little trinkets you thought each of them might like. Of course, you wanted to stay anonymous– hence the early hour.

You ran the file room on their floor, keeping up the digitizing of records, and finding paper files for the agents when needed. Almost no one needed, so you got close with Spencer very quickly. Close turned into a huge crush, which turned into a now 7 month long relationship. That 7 month long relationship led to you now, borrowing a cart from the mailroom to transport all of these stockings to your boyfriend and all of his wonderful colleagues’ desks.

You had a plan– you were going to see just how good of a profiler he really was. There would be no note on them, and you knew his team would never suspect you as the bearer of gifts. They rarely needed something, and when they did Spencer was the first to jump up and grab it for them. They all figured he had a little crush on you, which while true– it was much more than that.

When the team showed up, all around the same time– they immediately noticed the stockings hanging from the side of their desks. They looked around, seeing if anyone was lurking around waiting for their reaction, but you were already tucked away in your small office. You waited, almost expectantly for Spencer to figure out who it was, but as the day went on, he was stumped. Accusations were thrown around among the team, the glitter on some of the stockings leading straight to Penelope, then to JJ, even some people saying it was Spencer. But yet was anyone to suspect you– even Spencer.

It wasn’t until around 4 o’clock, you were getting ready to go home early, and as the team had just about finished all of their paperwork they were saying their goodbyes. Derek put on his Santa hat, and decided to tease Spencer about his ‘little crush’ on you.

“Hey, maybe that filing girl you’re obsessed with made them– she could be your secret admirer.”

Derek laughed, but Spencer didn’t. He knew everything about you by this point– you told him everything about your day, most days. You couldn’t keep a secret even this small– but the idea stuck somewhere in the back of Spencer’s brain.

And there it stayed, until he was packing up for the day. When he was grabbing his stocking off of its little hook, supporting the bottom while he pulled on the top, he felt something on the inside– snug against the fabric. not something that could come from a manufacturer, either. He unpacked the entire thing, right on his desk, and hand sewn into the bottom of the sock was a little pocket. He folded the whole thing inside out so he could open it, finding a folded up post-it note that only said “Come find me when you figure it out” with a little star next to it. He knew then that Morgan was right, that you were his secret admirer— Well secret to everyone else at least.

He quickly packed his belongings, including his new little gift, moving even faster when he saw the time– it was almost 7. He hopped on the train, and bounded up the stairs to your apartment. Once he got to your door he was a certifiable mess– his cardigan was hanging off one of his shoulders, his hands full and he was crouching trying to catch his breath. Adorable.

Just as you were wondering if he’d actually notice the small pocket, a hasty knock on your door caught your attention– it was definitely Spencer.

“Hi Spence, how was work?” You were stifling the giggle threatening to come out. He kept trying to catch his breath, not looking up at you when he held up your small yellow note.

“You found me!” He finally looked up at you when he got back fully standing, still visibly exhausted. You were wearing your little pajamas, and Spencer could hardly think of words to describe you right now.

“You look really pretty.”

“Thank you– are you ok?”

“Yeah, just– I ran here from the train station.” Again you had to stifle a laugh because why on Earth would he run when it was only a 15 minute walk.

“Can I ask why?”

“You were waiting on me– it took me so long to figure it out, I didn’t want to waste another second.”

“You’re so sweet– and you’re just in time. I was about to put on a movie, and I have one more surprise for you.” You opened the door the rest of the way, motioning for him to come inside your apartment. He set his things down, and– finally being able to take a full breath, asked the question that was on his mind the whole train ride– I mean when did you have the time?”

“How did you plan all of this?”

“I have a lot of time at work. Now the last surprise.” You grabbed a pair of pajama pants off your dining room table, matching in print to the ones you had on now.

“Matching?”

“Yeah– but only if you want to wear them, you don’t have to of course, and I promise I won’t be upset– I mean I know I kind of just sprung this whole thing on you and–” Spencer grabbed your face gently with both of his hands and that finally got you to pause to breathe.

“I love them. And– and I love you.” He’d never said that to you, or anyone, before. But it felt right.

“I love you too Spencer.”

“How about you get situated, I have an outfit change to get to.” He held up the pajamas you got him as he gave you one more kiss on the cheek.

#spencer reid fanfiction #spencer reid x reader #dr spencer reid #spencer reid fluff #spencer reid x fem!reader #spencer reid #spencer reid x you

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rsthemewp · 1 year ago

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marlynnofmany · 3 months ago

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Unexpected Blue

The ship’s engine changed pitch suddenly, and before I could worry about it, the intercom binged with an announcement from the captain.

“We’re making a brief detour,” she said. “A different courier didn’t quite make it to their destination, and they need us to do the dropoff. Should be an easy one. Mur and Robin, you’re next up.”

So I was. Dang. I’d thought I had some time before the next delivery, but it looked like reading in the crew lounge would have to wait. I turned back toward my quarters, leaving the sound of Telly purring under the heat lamp behind me. She’d probably still be there when I was done. I left my reading tablet in my quarters and hurried to the cockpit.

Captain Sunlight was already talking to Mur while Kavlae took us in for a landing. The view on the main screen was eyecatching: a nearby sun brighter than the captain’s scales, and something exceptionally reflective on the barren landing pad.

Is that the other ship? I thought, squinting. Ow.

Kavlae muttered about manufacturing regulations and adjusted the screen’s filters. The view dimmed, but not to the point where she couldn’t see where to land.

Mur huffed. “I don’t trust the judgement of anyone who flies one of those.” Several of his tentacles were crossed in irritation, with others tapping on the floor.

“I have my reservations as well,” said the captain. “But this delivery is both small and urgent, and they’re offering a more than reasonable cut of their rates. I understand the item is farming supplies of some sort. Needed in a hurry.” She glanced up at the view of the approaching landing pad. A figure in an exo suit waited outside the other ship. “Let’s hurry to the airlock.”

We hurried. I had the easiest time of it, walking at my normal long-legged pace while Captain Sunlight trotted along with dignity and Mur was a whirl of tentacles. We made it there as the engines whined a landing.

The nearest intercom beeped, and Kavlae’s voice spoke from the single speaker. “Ready? Our contact here looks ready to hand over the item.”

Captain Sunlight pressed the button and spoke back. “Go ahead.”

On the other side of the door, air whooshed and the outer hatch opened. I peered over the captain’s head to see somebody in an exo suit step inside, place a box on the floor, then run back outside and wave at us.

The hatch closed while the captain made a thoughtful sound. Air wooshed again.

Through the intercom, Kavlae said, “They’ve transferred a good-faith payment and another message to hurry. I’ve already scanned for known contagion. Grab it and I’ll take off.”

When our door opened, Captain Sunlight strode in and picked up the medium-sized white plastic box, then carried it out into the hallway, checking every side for damage. A gust of cold air followed, and the door slid shut behind her. Engine pitch said we were rocketing into space again. Good old artificial gravity meant I didn’t have to give it a moment’s thought. I could focus on the mystery item instead.

“So how close is — Wait, is that a timer?” I asked as I caught a glimpse of a digital readout on the far side of the box. The numbers were awfully low. Minutes.

“Yes,” said Captain Sunlight tersely. “Kavlae is hurrying. We’re going to land somewhere unofficial; be prepared to hop down if there isn’t a suitable landing pad and she has to hover.”

“Is it a farm?” I asked, thinking back to the earlier conversation.

“Do we need exo suits?” Mur asked. That was a better question.

Captain Sunlight shook her head. “No, the moon we’re headed to has standard air. The first delivery ship crashed on one that doesn’t. They almost reached the right one, then had a power failure. Assistance is some ways out.”

Mur wove his tentacles together in a new way that looked just as judgmental as the last. “Of course they had a power failure. They’re lucky they didn’t give that moon a new crater.”

“Their poor choice in transportation is not our problem,” declared the captain. “This is.” She handed the box to me. It was surprisingly light, though something slid inside when I tilted it to look at the timer.

That was a really short amount of time. “What happens if we’re late?” I asked.

Mur scowled. “That had better not be one of those fertilizer bombs.”

“The client said specifically that it’s not explosive,” Captain Sunlight told him.

“That’s just what someone hoping to trick us into doing something dangerous would say,” Mur replied.

“They had a respectable rating. Well. Respectable enough for someone with a delivery vehicle that breaks down if you look at it wrong.”

“There’s no way to look at it right.”

The intercom beeped. “Coming in for a landing,” Kavlae reported. “Farms and ranches, as promised, with permission from the property owner to hover over the road in front of her house. Air and weather are good. Be ready to run.”

Captain Sunlight pressed the button with a look at us. “Ready.” She stood to the side.

Mur grumbled, “Do we really need two people for this? It’s a one-person carry.”

“Best to follow protocol,” the captain told him. “And you get to catch it if she trips.”

“Hey, that happened one time,” I objected.

“This would be a bad time for twice.”

“Good point.”

Mur sighed dramatically, but took a position next to me at the airlock. In moments, the engines made their hovering-but-not-landing whine, and both doors opened.

Reddish dirt road, gray and yellow bushes, a domed house with ridges that looked like a seashell plopped on the ground, and several other fences and whatnot that I didn’t have time to take in.

There were seconds left on the timer, and a long driveway to run down.

As I tucked the box against my side and placed a hand on the doorstep, I felt the disturbing sensation of something moving inside of it. I jumped down and took the box firmly in both hands. It almost jumped out of my grasp.

Mur saw. “It’s moving?” He leapt after me with a plop. “Is it a faulty auto-drill? Those are dangerous! Don’t hold it too close to you!”

From the airlock, Captain Sunlight called, “Run!”

I gritted my teeth, held it at arm’s length, and ran towards the farmhouse. The sun reflected hot off the architecture, the wind in my face was hotter, and whatever was in the box jolted eagerly against the side. I desperately hoped that I wasn’t about to get a drill through my hand.

But the client was there on the front step waiting for me: a middle-aged Frillian woman wearing overalls that looked like they’d been a deep space jumpsuit once, cut to shape with gardening shears. Her frills were waving happily. Good sign.

“Just in time!” she declared as I skidded to a stop, holding the box with the timer toward her. She plucked it from my grasp. I caught my breath and tried not to look too relieved.

Tentacles slapping dirt told me Mur had joined us. I focused on breathing evenly and wondering what the client was about to do with that knife.

Without a word, she sliced the box open as easily as if it was cardboard and not industrial shipping plastic. That was some knife. But she didn’t open it; she clapped a hand on the top to keep it shut while she sheathed the knife at her belt. With the way the box was jumping, I was impressed she hadn’t cut her fingers.

When she moved forward with purpose, I danced aside to let her pass. Mur scrambled out of the way. The client strode over to a fenced-in area that had mesh over the top, looking something like a large chicken coop. She bumped a latch with an elbow, opened a little door, then shoved the box through and dumped its contents onto the ground.

Something round, brown, and furry tumbled free.

Mur asked, “Is that an animal?”

When it stopped rolling and stayed perfectly round, I said, “It looks like a coconut.”

It jumped some more, prompting Mur to guess again. “Is it an egg with fur?”

The client just grinned at us, clearly enjoying this.

I thought wildly of Mexican jumping beans back on Earth, and the larva that grew inside. Surely not.

The thing stopped jumping and kind of wiggled in place, and I heard a scratching sound. There was a flash of motion on the far side of it. Amazed, I stepped to the side for a better look. The client joined me, and so did Mur. The three of us watched a small blue creature crawl out of a hole in the nut, then spread its wings for what had to be the first time. It looked like a feathery moth the size of a kite, with a row of crab legs along the front. The feathers shone iridescent blue in the sun.

The client tutted beside me. “It’s not ultramarine at all! Those liars. I am going to tell everyone. What a waste. Just another blue.” She tapped the wire mesh with a palm. “Hey all, come meet your new friend!”

The bushes along the edge of the coop that I hadn’t been paying attention to — the ones I��d subconsciously assumed were covered in big blueish leaves — exploded into a cloud of vivid blue wings. They swirled around the coop before coming to land on every available surface, fanning their wings in the sun. It was a glorious sight.

“I really hoped to breed some ultramarines,” the client said with a sigh. “Oh well, maybe I can find a reputable seller next season. Thanks for the rush delivery. You’ve got a feather on you.”

“What?” I asked, but she was already plucking it out of my hair and handing it to me.

“Keep it if you like; my stock is carefully screened for everything. Oh, and you’ve got — well, that’s valuable stuff in some circles.”

She was talking to Mur now. I looked down to see my squidlike crewmate covered in a fine dusting of blue iridescence. A glance at the feather showed it to be trailing similar dust across my fingers.

Mur said, “I shall take that under advisement,” then he began tentacle-walking back toward the ship with as much dignity as he could muster.

Normally I would have had the client sign for the delivery, but this one was a rush job without the usual paperwork. “You’ve been in touch with our ship, right? Got everything settled?”

“Yes, I authorized the payment when you got here,” she said. “Your pilot assured me all was well, and she was right.” She glanced back at the coop full of blue. “Well, as right as can be. I should have known not to trust a breeder who flies that brand of ship.”

“Was that the actual person you bought it from?” I asked, thinking of the silver disaster. “Not another delivery company?”

She waved a hand. “He does a lot of things. Never sticks with any of them long enough to get anywhere. Like I said, I should have known.”

“If it makes you feel any better, he’s currently broken down on a cold moon with the repair services a ways out.”

She smiled. “That does make me feel better. Thank you. Now I must be off to warn everyone else not to believe that liar, and you should make sure your friend there gets all of that off. I’m told his species doesn’t react well to it.”

“Good to know, thank you. I’m sure our medic will be all over it.”

“The extra dust will brush off that easily enough,” she told me, pointing at the feather. “Goodbye!”

I said my goodbyes and more thanks, and hurried after Mur. I carefully dusted off the feather as I went, leaving a trail of brilliant blue glittering in the breeze.

~~~

These are the ongoing backstory adventures of the main character from this book.

Shared early on Patreon! There’s even a free tier to get them on the same day as the rest of the world.

The sequel novel is in progress (and will include characters from these stories. I hadn’t thought all of them up when I wrote the first book, but they’re too much fun to leave out of the second).

#I explained my inspiration for this one on Patreon #some of it is probably clear by the end #but definitely not all #my writing #The Token Human #humans are weird #haso #hfy #eiad #science fiction #writeblr

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