#Direct selling platform

[directsellingnow]

RBI Warning: इन 13 फॉरेक्स ट्रेडिंग प्लेटफॉर्म्स से रहें सावधान!

RBI Warning: भारतीय रिजर्व बैंक (RBI) ने मंगलवार को अनधिकृत (unauthorised) विदेशी मुद्रा (foreign exchange) ट्रेडिंग प्लेटफॉर्म्स की चेतावनी सूची (alert list) को अपडेट किया है और इसमें 13 नई कंपनियों को जोड़ा है। इन कंपनियों को न तो विदेशी मुद्रा कारोबार (forex trading) करने का अधिकार है और न ही ये इलेक्ट्रॉनिक ट्रेडिंग प्लेटफॉर्म (electronic trading platform – ETP) के तौर पर काम कर सकती हैं। अब…

[divinedomainn]

Stream and Scream | reader x multiple men

play previous song? || ◁ PART 1 ▷ || play next song?

summary : After another horny stream, you drop the bomb: fuck-a-fan fridays—seven weeks, seven fans, seven filthy videos. masks on, faces hidden, just you and one lucky subscriber tangled up on camera each week. All they have to do? strip down, get hard, and show you why it should be them. Auditions start now.

contains : camgirl!reader x a whole ass roster, rotating cast, university AU, smut, porn with kinda a crack plot, casual sex, anonymous sex, exhibitionism, recording, oral sex, piv sex, rough kinky sex, everyone wants to fuck reader, horny simp men

A/N : and so it starts!!! is everyone ready to see the submissions from your favorite horndogs? :) (also i hope you can tell whose who hehehe) i'm trying to keep the writing inclusive for every sort of female presenting person so let me know how i've done!

The next few weeks passed in a blur of lace, lube, and direct deposits that made your head spin. What had started as a desperate half-joke had morphed into a full-blown empire - your empire. The girl who once contemplated selling her underwear for gas money was now clearing rent, tuition, groceries, and still had enough left over to drop serious coin on clothes and silk bed sheets.

You’d gone to the next level. Your friends were of course benefitting from your suspiciously newfound wealth, you casually said you had found a better part-time job, never letting them know the truth when you decided to take them shopping. Not yet at least.

Private requests were your bread and butter. You weren’t just good anymore - you were a professional tease, a digital siren with a library of toys, outfits, and vocal tones that could bring grown men to their knees. They paid for everything; soft whispers, rough talk, slow stroking, filthy roleplays. Some just oddly wanted to hear your moans on loop. Others wanted personalized videos where you called them by username and told them exactly what you’d do if they ever had the balls to show up in person.

You were making big bank. Like “accidental tax bracket change” big. Like “should probably consult a financial advisor” big.

And the men?

Oh, the men were obsessed.

Especially the regulars. Their usernames lit up your screen night after night, tipping with reckless abandon, flooding the chat with unfiltered thirst. You didn’t know who they were in real life, yet, but their personalities bled through the screen in such vivid, chaotic little ways.

EmoWithaBoner was yearning. Desperate in a way that made your chest clench and your thighs twitch. His messages were usually soft, almost sweet - You deserve everything, You looked so beautiful tonight - until something cracked open inside him mid-message and he’d type something crazy like: I would lick your cunt until you beg me to stop. Now that had gotten a small “Oh.” out of you. He wanted to worship you and ruin you all at once.

SixEyesOnly was a fucking menace. Flirty, cocky, constantly sending emojis that were way too smug for someone probably watching with only one hand available. His tips were ridiculous, like, spend $300 just to watch you eat grapes in a bad wig slowly sort of ridiculous, and his messages read like he was trying to fluster you on purpose. You assumed it was some sort of control thing with him, throwing money at people and getting them to do it. No complaints from you.

TempleOfSin was smooth, a little poetic, a little filthy. He asked for long, descriptive videos where you described what you were wearing, how you’d touch him, how you'd taste. He liked to also order roleplay videos where you pretended to worship him like he was some sort of God. Sometimes he called you his loyal little follower. You didn’t ask questions.

daddyissuez was feral. No other word for it. His requests were blunt, primal, always toeing the line of what the platform allowed and your own, now lacking, self-control. He liked spit, degradation, and power games. His tipping was sporadic and a lot less compared to the others, though, it was enough to keep him in your attention.

OfficeAfterHours was different. Polite. Polished. His messages came like little business memos laced with innuendo. “You looked stunning tonight. That color suits you,” followed by a $200 tip telling you to buy more in the same color. Never crude, always composed. It made him stand out more, somehow. Like a man who didn’t need to beg. A man who expected what he wanted, and always got it.

And then there was KingOfRot.

Unpredictable. Crude. Arrogant. He dropped tips like they were nothing. $500 just because you looked at the camera in a way he said was like a ‘deer in the headlights’. Odd, but $500 was a good amount to keep your mouth shut. He called you “pet,” “whore,” “delicious little thing.” You should’ve blocked him. Instead, you kept reading his messages twice over with your jaw unhinged and in wonderment whether or not he actually said that. His energy was intense and you hated how hot that was.

Which brings us to tonight.

You were perched in your new silk sheets, ring light warm against your skin, wearing your most transparent slip where your nipples were clearly on display and a smug little smirk behind that now iconic mask of yours. You’d hyped this stream for days - teased it on your feed, hinted at it in DMs. The chat was already on fire and you hadn’t even said a word yet. Tonight was a big one.

EmoWithaBoner: god ur so fucking hot tonight SixEyesOnly: i logged in 15 minutes early and i still feel late :(( OfficeAfterHours: You’ve outdone yourself this evening. KingOfRot: Come on, get to the fucking point, girl.

You grinned, slow and lethal, dragging your fingers along your inner thigh and ignoring KingOfRot.

“Well,” you purred, “I figured since you’ve all been very generous lately… it’s time I give something back.”

SixEyesOnly: oh fuck You licked your lips, loving the short little power trip it gave you. “I’ve been thinking,” you said, voice sweet and dangerous. “Maybe it’s time to start a little… tradition.”

You paused for dramatic effect.

“Fuck-a-Fan Fridays.” You bit your lip. Boom. Chat detonation. SixEyesOnly had sent you $200 just for the phrase.

EmoWithaBoner: you’re joking SixEyesOnly: oh shit baby TempleOfSin: Perfect. KingOfRot: You say when and where, pet. daddyissuez: i’ll be first. fuck the line OfficeAfterHours: I trust you've thought this through..

You leaned in close. OfficeAfterHours was cute in the way he was concerned for you. “I mean, why stop at one, right?” You giggled, cheeks burning behind your mask as you kicked your feet a little bit out of the view of your webcam. “I was gonna keep it casual, but um… yeah. What if I made it a thing? Like, a series?”

Another pause. You leaned in even closer, lowering your voice to a conspiratorial whisper that still carried heat.

“One fan. Every Friday. For seven weeks.”

You crossed your bare legs over one another, your slip rising on your thighs as you did so. “Seven Fridays. Seven people. Seven chances to fuck the brains out of a very nervous, very willing woman who cannot believe she’s actually saying this live right now.”

You sat up again, brushing the slip back into place like your nipples weren’t clearly on display.

“I mean..obviously, we’ll keep it anonymous. Like, we’re not stupid here. Masks. No faces. Just hands. Bodies. And my camera.” The chat was still in full meltdown, comments stacking so fast the shitty platform could barely keep up. Your heart was pounding, your skin warm and tingling from the high of it all—of watching them fall apart just from your voice, your words, the soft shift of silk and skin. You hadn’t even done anything explicit yet, and they were on their knees.

God, it was addictive.

You stretched your arms overhead with a soft sigh, the movement pulling your slip just high enough to tease your hips. A final little gift before the curtain dropped.

“I think that’s enough for tonight,” you said with a giggle, feigning innocence even as your gaze sparkled with something much dirtier. “You guys are gonna give me a heart attack.” SixEyesOnly: no no no don’t leave yettt!! :(( KingOfRot: You owe me for the buildup, woman. You tilted your head, lips curving into a sweet little smile as you leaned forward, giving them just one more generous view of your tits before the curtains closed.

“But before I go…” you said, voice slipping into something quieter, softer, like a secret you didn’t mean to share. “If you’re serious about Fuck-a-Fan Fridays… I want you to show me.”

The pause that followed had its own kind of weight. You watched the chat stall for half a second. The anticipation was thick enough to choke on.

“Send me a message,” you murmured, “with a picture. No face. Just your body, and cock, obviously.”

You let your fingers trail down your own torso, to your hips, your thighs, hinting at what you wanted to see. “Let me see what I’d be touching.. What I’ll be fucked braindead by.” EmoWithaBoner: fuck i’ll take a hundred SixEyesOnly: don’t lose your mind too much baby KingOfRot: It’ll be mine you dream about when you touch yourself. OfficeAfterHours: Submission will follow shortly. No face. Clean framing. High quality.

You had to laugh—giddy and a little breathless. You honestly didn’t think they’d go this feral.

“Think of it as an audition,” you said, tucking your knees to your chest, playing sweet again. “Show me what you’re offering. How you’d fit against me. In me.”

You smoothed your hand up your own thigh, lazily now, teasing.

“And just so you know,” you added with a little grin, “I’m only really looking at the ones who’ve tipped enough to keep my attention. You know who you are.”

Oh, they most definitely did.

The seven of them were already scrambling—photos incoming, tips rolling, blood leaving their brains. You didn’t need names. Their usernames were burned into your memory. Their obsessions with you were paying your bills.

“Goodnight, boys,” you whispered. “Impress me.” The second you ended the stream, you collapsed backward into your pillows with a dazed little laugh, limbs spread like you’d just run a marathon and won a gold medal in filth. The glow from your laptop cast a soft haze across your legs, the screen already lighting up with the chaos you’d left behind—tips still pouring in, messages stacking, your inbox begging for attention.

And the photos?

Oh, they were already flooding in, from people you didn’t want, but it was there regardless - upping your activity.

You rolled onto your stomach, chin resting in your palm as you clicked open the first one with a half-curious, half-unhinged smile.

No face, just like you asked. Neck down. The guy was standing in front of a mirror, one hand wrapped tight around his cock, the other lifting his hoodie to show off his chest. His abs were flexed. His cock hard enough to cast a shadow.

You blinked. Let out a slow breath.

“…Damn.”

Another one came in. Different guy, different vibe—tattoos on his hips, hand slick and stroking himself in a dimly lit bathroom, captioned: Fridays look good on me. Want to see how I look underneath you?

“Oh my god,” you whispered, laughing as you pulled your legs up behind you. “This is real. I’m really doing this.”

And you were. One fan. Every Friday. Seven weeks. Seven videos. Each one getting posted to your feed, available for your hundreds of subscribers to watch, rewatch, tip on, comment under, and probably break their dicks to.

It wasn’t just a hookup. It was content. Premium content.

Still riding the rush, you opened your messaging panel and started typing.

New Mass Message Sent to All Subscribers:

Hey babes— If you missed the stream tonight (rip to you), here’s your official invite.

Fuck-a-Fan Fridays is happening. Starting next week, I’ll be choosing seven of you to spend one very intimate night with me. Every Friday for the next seven weeks, I’ll be posting a new video. One fan. One full-length scene. Just me… and whoever impresses me the most.

How to audition:- Send me a photo. - Neck down only. No faces. Masks will be worn on camera, so full anonymity will be protected. But I need to see everything. Cock out. Hard. Your body. Your vibe. The way you'd look on camera—underneath me, on top of me, behind me, inside me.

Show off a little. Or a lot.

Make me want it. Let the auditions begin.

xoxo,

—Your girl

taglist : @frozenmallows @90s-belladonna @moncher-ire @kunareads @blublublubby @grignardsreagent @soozeu @mochiivqi @sweetsformysoul @killak9mi @celloccino @gurlhere4fluff @syubseokie

[mothman-etd]

I have talked a few times about Psychological Operations or psyops on here, but I would like to point out a real world example of a PO Operation that was found out recently by the Department of Justice.

Before that though, If you would like to read more about the actual position of a PO soldier, you can look no further then the PO benefits page on the US Army special operations recruitment website (https://www.goarmysof.army.mil/PO/).

Personally I feel like many people still believe psyops to be some kind of conspiracy theory instead of a fairly standard military division in almost all modern militaries, anyways onto the example.

The US Department of Justice is going after (indicting) two RT (Russian state media) employees for committing fraud and violating the Foreign Agents Registration Act.

Basically they created a front "media" company in Tennessee, translated russian propaganda videos into english, then paid right-wing influencers to promote (reblog/retweet/talk about on streams) said videos.

Three of the named influencers that I could find were Tim Pool, Dave Rubin and Benny Johnson.

I honestly have no idea who these three are, but supposedly their platforms have millions of followers. Also, some of these influencers were paid up too $100,000 a week to promote their videos and messaging.

So to summarize, Russia setup a fake company to pay American influencers to repeat their lies so that their followers would interpret those lies as legitimate since their were coming from a source they trust.

When people talk about election interference this is what we are talking about.

$100K a week is insane money for most, I am sure many people would be hard pressed to not sell their soul for that much money. Many of the videos from this media company were lies about the Ukraine war, and looking into Tim Pool it seems he also has a very anti-Ukraine stance (Audio from one of this podcasts https://v.redd.it/41xgvuri0vmd1/DASH_AUDIO_128.mp4)

I generally do not talk about my job on here, but corporations used to pay me to run seminars to help train their employees on spotting these types of attacks--mainly targeted psyops attacks from nation states to hack into their company via end user interaction.

Or in layman's terms, to help companies protect themselves from Russian Ransomware Thieves and Chinese Intellectual Property/Information collectors. Both of these being extensions of the Psychological Operations military divisions of each country.

I am really not sure how to end this post other than I am just trying to show people how real it is that the militaries of the world are spending obscene amounts of money in trying to influence your opinions and day to day life via your internet consumption.

Surf responsibility, be very wary of anyone telling you not to vote and don't believe everything you see/hear on TikTok/youtube/twitter/Insta etc etc

[elsaclack]

Yeah okay so like I said in the tags of the last post I’m rising from my tumblr grave to say that the ban on TikTok is symptomatic of a MUCH larger and more terrifying problem. Because yes, on its surface it’s silly dances and asmr and cooking videos and whatever, but in truth and at its core, TikTok single-handedly revolutionized the way 170 million Americans communicated with each other AND the rest of the world. Non-Americans love to point out how America-centric Americans are, but fail to realize that we are purposefully raised in an isolated, insulated environment where we are told from basically day 1 that America Is The Best and not to even bother taking a look around because it’s all downhill from outside of here. TikTok has, for MANY Americans, single-handedly destroyed that notion and allowed them (us!!) to broaden our world-view and realize that actually, things are better in other countries, and it did so in a kind, empathetic, and compassionate way.

And yeah most people wake up to the truth of that on their own as they get older, but holy shit!! The VAST majority of the Americans on TikTok are millennials and gen z (and even some older gen alpha)!! People who are becoming disillusioned with “The American Dream” (said with the HEAVIEST sarcasm) while they’re still school-aged or are just entering young-adulthood!! People who are entering - or TRYING to enter - the American workforce who suddenly have an unfiltered window into non-American lives and are wondering why tf we’re struggling and penny-pinching and toeing the line of poverty while our rich elected officials sit around and fight and argue over everything that actually matters to the citizens they supposedly represent and get richer all the while. THAT is why they’re banning the app, and that fact alone should terrify every single American citizen.

Not to mention the precedent it sets for other social media platforms!! You think some nebulous, unproven, and unfounded “threat to national security” will stop with TikTok?? They’ve already censored Adult Material on tumblr, who’s gonna stop them from coming back and doing it again or getting rid of it altogether for the exact same reason? It’s a blatant act of censorship and a direct attack on the American first amendment right to free speech.

NOTHING radicalized me the way tiktok did. I watched people in my life who were STAUNCH Trump supporters in 2016 AND 2020 wake up to the truth and vote blue for the first time in their lives BECAUSE OF TIKTOK, and did so with al the nuanced understanding that even Democrats are severely failing this country, but are at least better than the alternative. That level of awareness and presence in the average US citizen scares American politicians.

The fact that the vast majority of them - including the ones loudly opposing the ban!! - bought stock in Meta BEFORE the ban was legalized/upheld by the Supreme Court?? That Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk were legally allowed to lobby congress to ban TikTok when BOTH stood to DIRECTLY financially gain from their biggest competitor being banned in the US and are guilty of unethically gathering data and selling it to MULTIPLE third parties?? The fact that Trump is now teasing that he may or may not intervene to save TikTok when he was the one who talked about banning it in the first place AND ALSO OWNS HIS OWN COMPETING SOCIAL MEDIA PLATFORM??

It’s the burning of Alexandria. It’s the loss of a significant chunk of culture. It’s the sharp and sudden loss of contact with the rest of the world for more than half of all American citizens. It’s the loss of $240 BILLION dollars in the GDP when the country is already TRILLIONS of dollars in debt. And on an individualistic level, it’s the loss of millions of small businesses and primary income streams for so many individuals and families who found their primary audience on TikTok. Is the app perfect? HELL no. Are there significant changes needed to make it a safe environment for all users? ABSOLUTELY. But that can also be said of ANY social media platform. TikTok openly fostered connection and communication and creativity and compassion that is completely unique to that platform! It made so many people - myself included!! - feel less alone. I get the feeling I know what the general consensus is about TikTok on this site, but the ban on this app should scare the shit out of everyone.

[dduane]

Status report: In the "Adventures In Staying Housed" department...

Greetings to the Bluesky folks who've dropped by! Just to confirm what's going on:

We're hoping to sign the lease on our rented house early next this week, but we have some rental arrears that we're very much hoping to be able to deal with in the short term. Some extra cash flow in the short term would be a really big help.

With that in mind, may I possibly point you at the following SF and fantasy ebook bundles at our ebook store? All are DRM-free and come with our lifetime replacement guarantee if you lose the files or your reading device, change platforms, or whatever. (With this caveat only: due to Brexit, we can no longer sell into the UK. Our profound apologies.) And once you buy a book from us, you own it. Period.

Our store's full inventory of the revised/edited Young Wizards young adult SF/fantasy novels, and the interstitial works that go with them, is here:

All the current works in the LGBTQ-centered Middle Kingdoms adult fantasy universe are here:

And if you're feeling expansive, our entire store inventory—36 ebooks at present—is here:

Finally: if you're all ebooked up at the moment, but you'd still like to be of assistance... after some public-demand style noodging we've finally installed a Ko-Fi. If you choose to go this route, please consider yourself thanked in advance for your thoughtfulness! We very much appreciate it.

Thanks, everybody! ❤ ...And we very much look forward to enlarging your TBR pile. :)

[reasonsforhope]

Article | Paywall Free

"A bid to break up Alphabet Inc.’s Google is one of the options being considered by the Justice Department after a landmark court ruling found that the company monopolized the online search market, according to people with knowledge of the deliberations.

The move would be Washington’s first push to dismantle a company for illegal monopolization since unsuccessful efforts to break up Microsoft Corp. two decades ago. Less severe options include forcing Google to share more data with competitors and measures to prevent it from gaining an unfair advantage in AI products, said the people, who asked not to be identified discussing private conversations.

Regardless, the government will likely seek a ban on the type of exclusive contracts that were at the center of its case against Google. If the Justice Department pushes ahead with a breakup plan, the most likely units for divestment are the Android operating system and Google’s web browser Chrome, said the people. Officials are also looking at trying to force a possible sale of AdWords, the platform the company uses to sell text advertising, one of the people said.

The Justice Department discussions have intensified in the wake of Judge Amit Mehta’s Aug. 5 ruling that Google illegally monopolized the markets of online search and search text ads. Google has said it will appeal that decision, but Mehta has ordered both sides to begin plans for the second phase of the case, which will involve the government’s proposals for restoring competition, including a possible breakup request.

The US plan will need to be accepted by Mehta, who would direct the company to comply. A forced breakup of Google would be the biggest of a US company since AT&T was dismantled in the 1980s."

-via Bloomberg, August 13, 2024

[checkeredflagggs]

Glazed and Confused

Pairing: Lando Norris x Potter!Youtuber!reader

Summary: when lando fails to make a simple mug, fans direct him towards your YouTube channel

a/n: I took 1 hr long class on pottery and quit. Don’t like the feel of it, have mostly forgot literally everything about it so…🤷🏻‍♀️

a/n 2: I really struggled to get lando’s voice down and don’t really think I did. Oops 😬 will work on that for next time (also plz ignore that changing of the handles. I try to keep them accurate but again I’m not on those social media platforms so…)

a/n 3: I tried to make sure that this reader was never gendered or given a race — there’s one photo near the end that depicts 2 white smaller hands but I think that is the only time. Please let me know how I did, if you could

Pottery Made Easy has posted

potterymadeeasy

liked by user1, user2, and 2316 others

pottermadeeasy: my newest video (mugs and bowls, pt 2) is now up! In it I show you ways to add a little flourish and decorations to the pieces you made from part 1!

view all comments

user1: thank you your majesty! Easy to understand and so so easy to follow!! (unlike my professor 🙄😬)

user2: right? If they either stopped mumbling or spoke up…

user1: might be asking too much of someone born in the 1800s 😭🙄

user2: unfortunately

user3: god your work is so gorgeous. Do you sell anything?

potterynadeeasy: occasionally! I’m based in Monaco rn and a friend owns a shop and sometimes they let me use a shelf or 2

user4: ohh! I’m in France. Plz plz plz make an announcement when you will next have some ready! I’d love to own a piece

potterynadeeasy: of course lovely 😊 vague plans are to have some ready in the next week or 2!

user4: seriously?!? Marking the calendar right now!

user3: you have no idea how jealous I am right now…

potterynadeeasy: dm me! I might be able to ship it to you depending on where you are!

user3: faints bless you

user5: landonorris here! They might be able to help you

user6: be so for real right now. It’ll take a miracle to help landonorris

user7: I hate to be a negative nancy but…yeah. That latest stream was bad bad landonorris

user8: I dont even know…that clay flew… landonorris

user9: would hate to be his cleaner…

lnupdates

liked by user5, user6, user7, and 1,897,455 others

lnupdates: some of our favorite moments from Lando’s latest stream where he was attempting to make a ceramic mug…bowl? It was certainly an interesting one to watch

view all comments

user5: interesting is one way to put it. Tragic is another

user6: no but really…that was. I legit have no words

user7: he needs to watch potterymadeeasy! I love their videos

user8: oh? I haven’t heard of them

user7: they’re a Monaco based potter that has a lot of simple how to videos!

user8: just watched one of them! And god their voice…🥵

user7: oh my god right?!?

user5: but are they gonna be enough to help lando?

user7: well they certainly couldn’t make it any worse tbh

user9: you got this lando! Pottery isn’t something easy to pick up - you just gotta keep trying!

user10: yeah! There was definitely some improvement by the end

Bluesky

Private DMs

landonorris

liked by oscarpiastri, charles_leclerc, maxverstappen1, and 2,790,469 others

landonorris: progress! these ones were mostly standing. I’m not done yet though - catch me tomorrow night giving it another go

view all comments

user11: those looked good! Most definitely an improvement!

user12: he’s almost there! It’s literally just the little things now

user13: oh how far we’ve come! In less then a year he’s gone from flying clay to something that could generously be called a bowl

user14: and an “artistic” vase!

oscarpiastri: definitely better then last time

landonorris: mate…

oscarpiastri: you don’t pay your cleaner enough

landonorris: mate!! get out of my comments

charles_leclerc: keep trying! Maybe one day you’ll get there

landonorris: yeah say goodbye to your Christmas present

charles_leclerc: 👎🏻

alex_albon: will be there! And will definitely be recording - gotta have proof 😂

landonorris: is it national bully lando day here or something?

user15: yes

user16: yes

oscarpiastri: yes

charles_leclerc: yes 👍🏻

georgerussell63: yes

alex_albon: yes!!

maxverstappen1: yes

danielricciardo: yes!

carlossainz55: yes!

landonorris: you freaking muppets!

user17: ok but am I the only one who noticed he kept looking to the side and like beaming?

user18: no but I thought I was going insane? Like he was so soft?

user17: yeah! definitely getting the feeling he wasn’t the only one there. Just who are you looking at?

user18: dare we say little lando norris has a partner now?

landonorris

liked by potterymadeeasy, oscarpiastri, carlossainz55, and 2,723,944 others

landonorris: haha! I did kt! A mug a vase and a bowl!! On to the next step - glazing! And you muppets didn’t think I could do it

view all comments

user19: woohoo! Congrats lando! Those look so so good!

user20: and those glazes are gonna be fire when they’re done. I use the same brand and colors he did and they turn out AMAZING

user19: ok don’t be shy drop the names plz

potterymadeeasy: those look great!

landonorris: thank you! Had a great teacher 😉

user21: ariana (potterymadeeasy) what are you doing here?

user22: thoughts are being thunk

user23: unthunk those thoughts right now

user22: sorry…thots are being thunk rn

user23: nurse she’s out again!

user21: really? Under my comment thread?

user24: I’ve connected the dots.

user25: you’ve connected shit

user24: no I’ve connected them

user25: god get a life

charles_leclerc: congrats!

carlossainz55: it only took a few months…

alex_albon: a couple of different throwing wheels

georgerussell63: and 3 different cleaning companies

landonorris: I’m gonna run you all over with my car

mclaren: legally this is a joke

landonorris

liked by potterymadeeasy, danielricciardo, carlossainz55, and 2,922,713 others

landonorris: first round of my ceramics are currently cooking in the kiln. Starting a new batch and stretching my creative skills

view all comments

user26: holy shit those look INCREDIBLE

user27: I’m so shocked! I just started watching the old streams so like in the course of a day he went from wet clay lumps to these masterpieces

user28: I’m so so proud of him - I’m currently trying to get into pottery and ceramics and watching him keep at it is so inspiring

user26: user28 you can do it! Persistence is key

oscarpiastri: man thinks he’s Picasso now…but for real congrats lando. Those look good! And functional too

landonorris: I’m only gonna give you the lumpy ones actually

oscarpiastri: I’m good thanks

landonorris: 🙃

oscarpiastri: honestly proud of you. You’ve come a long way

landonorris: thanks mate!

oscarpiastri: I’m also glad you can stop calling me crying about your latest fuck up

landonorris: you muppet!

danielricciardo: too soon to call dibs on that dragonfly mug?

landonorris: after the way you continuously kept laughing at me?

danielricciardo: in encouragement?

landonorris: 😑

danielricciardo: 🥹🧡?

landonorris: fine 🙄

user29: ok yeah good job on those designs and whatever but are we gonna mention those HEART MUGS?!

landonorris: 😂🧡😉

user29: get back here and answer some questions! What? Does? That? Mean?

landonorris: 🏃🏻‍♂️💨

user29: SIR!

maxverstappen1: i see you’re finished making my present but really? Matching heart mugs?

landonorris: not actually for you!

maxverstappen1: heart❤️ been broke💔🤕 so many times⏰ i don’t know❌🤷‍♀️ what to believe ����🙏

landonorris: …who are you and where is max?

maxverstappen1: I thought what we had was special

landonorris: not my favorite relationship anymore! Sorry 🧡

maxverstappen1: 💔

potterymadeeasy: those look good!

landonorris: I had a good teacher 🧡

potterymadeeasy: flatterer

landonorris: always 😉

User22: !!!

User23: shut up shut up shut up

landonorris

liked by yourpriv, oscarpiastri, maxverstappen1, and 3,123,321 others

landonorris: kiln unveiling and some upcoming projects!

listen. when I randomly decided that I wanted to learn how to make ceramic dishes, it was mostly because I wanted to make something with my own 2 hands — and when I wasn’t immediately good at it, I decided that I wouldn’t stop until I was.

Its been a long couple of months with a lot of struggles but I can finally say that I’m proud of how far I’ve come. It hasn’t been easy but the journey and the process has been fun and i genuinely can’t wait to see what comes next!

view all comments

user30: I’m? Crying? 😭

user31: omg same!!! To see how far he’s come and to hear that he’s finally proud of himself too…

user32: we’re excited for you too!

user33: excited? For what? Some more mediocre “Art” by some mediocre man?

user32: go fuck yourself. And get out of my comments. And off lando’s page

used34: user33 how about you go get some sun and maybe shove some kindness up yours! 🖕

oscarpiastri: seriously, congratulations. Those look incredible

landonorris: thanks mate! I do appreciate your support

oscarpiastri: and my cupboards appreciate your work

user34: 🩵🩵 ahhh he’s giving away his pieces

alex_albon: it’s been a fun ride watching you!

landonorris: thanks i think

alex_albon: no problem!

alex_albon: and could you send me the name of your newest cleaning crew? They most be ungodly good

landonorris: and there it is… cleaningcrew

alex_albon: anyway i could get a series of mugs inspired by albon_pets?

landonorris: I’ll need a lot of pretty good pictures

alex_albon: on it 🫡

landonorris: in fact I might need to visit in person

albon_pets: yay! We love ❤️ getting visitors

user35: UMMM?!? That 5th photo?!?

user36: IS THIS A SOFT LAUNCH? DOES LITTLE LANDO NORRIS FINALLY HAVE A PARTNER AGAIN?!?

landonorris: 🫢🤫

user36: YOU CANT KEEP GETTJNG AWAY WITH THIS

landonorris: 😂🏃🏻‍♂️💨

yourpriv: my love, I’m so proud of you! Putting yourself out there in the world to learn something new is never easy but you have done it with amazing persistence and talent.

landopriv: babe… you know I couldn’t do it without you

yourpriv: oh I have no doubt you would have gotten here on your own

landopriv: no. No i don’t think I would have. I’m a fast guy and I’m used to fast results. When I reached out to you, it was a last resort last string. If it didn’t work out with your help, I was honestly going to quit. You pushed me to get better, to stick with it till I made it.

yourpriv: 🥹🥹🥹

landopriv: I’m serious. Thank you for everything you’ve done for me — i love you 🧡

yourpriv: 🥹🥰🧡 I love you too hun

maxverstappen1: can’t lie — it was a fun ride watching you fail but I also can’t wait to see what you make next

landonorris: …thanks for your support 😑🙄😅

maxverstappen1: you know it!

landonorris

liked by yourpriv, charles_leclerc, maxverstappen1, and 2,997,245 others

tagged: yourpriv, potterymadeeasy

landonorris: no time for a soft launch. Thank you honey for teaching me pottery and for designing such a bomb ass helmet!

comments have been limited on this post

potterymadeeasy: Lando! We had a plan!

landonorris: 🤷🏻‍♂️

landonorris: love ya!

potterymadeeasy:…love you too!

[destroyingangelneveragod]

HELLO MY LOVES

Good morning my friends!!!! This is a post for my dear friend Samah. @samah-2 is a mom with very young children and a family she needs to support. They have only 11 percent of their current goal. Can we try and get that to 25 percent by Christmas/Hanukkah????? Please!!! Or even by the 20th! Lets do this. This is urgent, they are in dire circumstances and really need support, especially with the worsening weather and ongoing israeli violence.

Please tag friends on here, send it it to them, share with your families, do whatever you can. Maybe in the tags, say if you donate and encourage a match. Even 5 dollar matches can go a long way if you have a platform.

It goes without saying that I should not have to beg people to donate. I know we are all in rough times but even a tiny amount and direct effort towards visibility can help.

[doyoulikethissong-poll]

ABBA - Waterloo 1974

"Waterloo" is a song by Swedish pop group ABBA, with music composed by Benny Andersson and Björn Ulvaeus and lyrics written by Stikkan Anderson. It is first single of the group's second studio album of the same name, and their first under the Atlantic label in the US. This was also the first single to be credited to the group performing under the name ABBA. The title and lyrics reference the 1815 Battle of Waterloo, and use it as a metaphor for a romantic relationship.

In 1974, "Waterloo" represented Sweden in the 19th edition of the Eurovision Song Contest held in Brighton, winning the contest and beginning ABBA's path to worldwide fame. The song differed from the standard "dramatic ballad" tradition at the contest by its flavour and rhythm, as well as by its performance. ABBA gave the audience something that had rarely been seen before in Eurovision: flashy costumes (including silver platform boots), a catchy uptempo song and simple choreography. It was the first winning entry in a language other than that of their home country; prior to 1973, all Eurovision singers had been required to sing in their country's native tongue, a restriction that was lifted briefly for the contests between 1973 and 1976 (thus allowing "Waterloo" to be sung in English), then reinstated before ultimately being removed again in 1999. Watch the performance in Swedish here. Sveriges Radio released a promo video for "Waterloo" that was directed by film director Lasse Hallström, whose first notable English-language film success was What's Eating Gilbert Grape in 1993. ABBA recorded the German and French versions of "Waterloo" in March and April 1974; the French version was adapted by Alain Boublil, who would later go on to co-write the 1980 musical Les Misérables.

The song shot to number 1 in the UK and stayed there for two weeks, becoming the first of the band's nine UK number 1's, and the 16th biggest selling single of the year in the UK. It also topped the charts in Belgium, Denmark, Finland, West Germany, Ireland, Norway, and Switzerland, while reaching the Top 3 in Austria, France, the Netherlands, Spain, and Sweden. Unlike other Eurovision-winning tunes, the song's appeal transcended Europe: "Waterloo" also topped the charts in South Africa, and reached the Top 10 in Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Rhodesia, and the US (peaking at number 6, their third-highest-charting US hit after number 1 "Dancing Queen" and number 3 "Take a Chance on Me"). In 2005, at Eurovision fiftieth anniversary competition Congratulations: 50 Years of the Eurovision Song Contest, "Waterloo" was chosen as the best song in the contest's history.

"Waterloo" is featured in the encore of the musical Mamma Mia!. The song does not have a context or a meaning. It is just performed as a musical number in which members of the audience are encouraged to get up off their seats and sing, dance and clap along. The song is performed by the cast over the closing credits of the film Mamma Mia!, but is not featured on the official soundtrack. It is also performed as part of the story in the sequel, Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again, by Hugh Skinner and Lily James.

The Australian film Muriel's Wedding (1994), features "Waterloo" in a pivotal scene in which lead Toni Collette bonds with the character played by Rachel Griffiths. The film's soundtrack, featuring five ABBA tracks, is widely regarded as having helped to fuel the revival of popular interest in ABBA's music in the mid-1990s. "Waterloo" features prominently in the 2015 science-fiction film The Martian. The song plays as the film's lead, played by Matt Damon, works to ready his launch vehicle for a last-chance escape from Mars. In "Mother Simpson", the eighth episode of the seventh season of The Simpsons, Mr. Burns plays "Ride of the Valkyries" from a tank about to storm the Simpson home, but the song is cut-off and "Waterloo" is played, to which Smithers apologizes, advising he "must have accidentally taped over that".

"Waterloo" received a total of 89% yes votes!

(the video is posted by ABBA's own account, not Eurovision's = safe to watch)

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Prime’s enshittified advertising

Prime's gonna add more ads. They brought in ads in January, and people didn't cancel their Prime subscriptions, so Amazon figures that they can make Prime even worse and make more money:

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2024/10/amazon-prime-video-is-getting-more-ads-next-year/

The cruelty isn't the point. Money is the point. Every ad that Amazon shows you shifts value away from you – your time, your attention – to the company's shareholders.

That's the crux of enshittification. Companies don't enshittify – making their once-useful products monotonically worse – because it amuses them to erode the quality of their offerings. They enshittify them because their products are zero-sum: the things that make them valuable to you (watching videos without ads) make things less valuable to them (because they can't monetize your attention).

This isn't new. The internet has always been dominated by intermediaries – platforms – because there are lots more people who want to use the internet than are capable of building the internet. There's more people who want to write blogs than can make a blogging app. There's more people who want to play and listen to music than can host a music streaming service. There's more people who want to write and read ebooks than want to operate an ebook store or sell an ebooks reader.

Despite all the early internet rhetoric about the glories of disintermediation, intermediaries are good, actually:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/06/12/direct-the-problem-of-middlemen/

The problem isn't with intermediaries per se. The problem arises when intermediaries grow so powerful that they usurp the relationship between the parties they connect. The problem with Uber isn't the use of mobile phones to tell taxis that you're standing on a street somewhere and would like a cab, please. The problem is rampant worker misclassification, regulatory arbitrage, starvation wages, and price-gouging:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/02/29/geometry-hates-uber/#toronto-the-gullible

There's no problem with publishers, distributors, retailers, printers, and all the other parts of the bookselling ecosystem. While there are a few, rare authors who are capable of performing all of these functions – basically gnawing their books out of whole logs with their teeth – most writers can't, and even the ones who can, don't want to:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/02/19/crad-kilodney-was-an-outlier/#intermediation

When early internet boosters spoke of disintermediation, what they mostly meant was that it would be harder for intermediaries to capture those relationships – between sellers and buyers, creators and audiences, workers and customers. As Rebecca Giblin and I wrote in our 2022 book Chokepoint Capitalism, intermediaries in every sector rely on chokepoints, narrows where they can erect tollbooths:

https://chokepointcapitalism.com/

When chokepoints exist, they multiply up and down the supply chain. In the golden age of physical, recorded music, you had several chokepoints that reinforced one another. Limited radio airwaves gave radio stations power over record labels, who had to secretly, illegally bid for prime airspace ("payola"). Retail consolidation – the growth of big record chains – drove consolidation in the distributors who sold to the chains, and the more concentrated distributors became, the more they could squeeze retailers, which drove even more consolidation in record stores. The bigger a label was, the more power it had to shove back against the muscle of the stores and the distributors (and the pressing plants, etc). Consolidation in labels also drove consolidation in talent agencies, whose large client rosters gave them power to resist the squeeze from the labels. Consolidation in venues drives consolidation in ticketing and promotion – and vice-versa.

But there's two parties to this supply chain who can't consolidate: musicians and their fans. With limits on "sectoral bargaining" (where unions can represent workers against all the companies in a sector), musicians' unions were limited in their power against key parts of the supply chain, so the creative workers who made the music were easy pickings for labels, talent reps, promoters, ticketers, venues, retailers, etc. Music fans are diffused and dispersed, and organized fan clubs were usually run by the labels, who weren't about to allow those clubs to be used against the labels.

This is a perfect case-study in the problems of powerful intermediaries, who move from facilitator to parasite, paying workers less while degrading their products, and then charge customers more for those enshittified products.

The excitement about "disintermediation" wasn't so much about eliminating intermediaries as it was about disciplining them. If there were lots of ways to market a product or service, sell it, collect payment for it, and deliver it, then the natural inclination of intermediaries to turn predator would be curbed by the difficulty of corralling their prey into chokepoints.

Now that we're a quarter century on from the Napster Wars, we can see how that worked out. Decades of failure to enforce antitrust law allowed a few companies to effectively capture the internet, buying out rivals who were willing to sell, and bankrupting those who wouldn't with illegal tactics like predatory pricing (think of Uber losing $31 billion by subsidizing $0.41 out of every dollar they charged for taxi rides for more than a decade).

The market power that platforms gained through consolidation translated into political power. When a few companies dominate a sector, they're able to come to agreement on common strategies for dealing with their regulators, and they've got plenty of excess profits to spend on those strategies. First and foremost, platforms used their power to get more power, lobbying for even less antitrust enforcement. Additionally, platforms mobilized gigantic sums to secure the right to screw customers (for example, by making binding arbitration clauses in terms of service enforceable) and workers (think of the $225m Uber and Lyft spent on California's Prop 22, which formalized their worker misclassification swindle).

So big platforms were able to insulate themselves from the risk of competition ("five giant websites, filled with screenshots of the other four" – Tom Eastman), and from regulation. They were also able to expand and mobilize IP law to prevent anyone from breaking their chokepoints or undoing the abuses that these enabled. This is a good place to get specific about how Prime Video works.

There's two ways to get Prime videos: over an app, or in your browser. Both of these streams are encrypted, and that's really important here, because of a law – Section 1201 of the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act – which makes it really illegal to break this kind of encryption (commonly called "Digital Rights Management" or "DRM"). Practically speaking, that means that if a company encrypts its videos, no one is allowed to do anything to those videos, even things that are legal, without the company's permission, because doing all those legal things requires breaking the DRM, and breaking the DRM is a felony (five years in prison, $500k fine, for a first offense).

Copyright law actually gives subscribers to services like Prime a lot of rights, and it empowers businesses that offer tools to exercise those rights. Back in 1976, Sony rolled out the Betamax, the first major home video recorder. After an eight-year court battle, the Supreme Court weighed in on VCRs and ruled that it was legal for all of us to record videos at home, both to watch them later, and to build a library of our favorite shows. They also ruled that it was legal for Sony – and by that time, every other electronics company – to make VHS systems, even if those systems could be used in ways that violated copyright because they were "capable of sustaining a substantial non-infringing use" (letting you tape shows off your TV).

Now, this was more than a decade before the DMCA – and its prohibition on breaking DRM – passed, but even after the DMCA came into effect, there was a lot of media that didn't have DRM, so a new generation of tech companies were able to make tools that were "capable of sustaining a substantial non-infringing use" and that didn't have to break any DRM to do it.

Think of the Ipod and Itunes, which, together, were sold as a way to rip CDs (which weren't encrypted), and play them back from both your desktop computer and a wildly successful pocket-sized portable device. Itunes even let you stream from one computer to another. The record industry hated this, but they couldn't do anything about it, thanks to the Supreme Court's Betamax ruling.

Indeed, they eventually swallowed their bile and started selling their products through the Itunes Music Store. These tracks had DRM and were thus permanently locked to Apple's ecosystem, and Apple immediately used that power to squeeze the labels, who decided they didn't like DRM after all, and licensed all those same tracks to Amazon's DRM-free MP3 store, whose slogan was "DRM: Don't Restrict Me":

https://memex.craphound.com/2008/02/01/amazons-anti-drm-tee/

Apple played a funny double role here. In marketing Itunes/Ipods ("Rip, Mix, Burn"), they were the world's biggest cheerleaders for all the things you were allowed to do with copyrighted works, even when the copyright holder objected. But with the Itunes Music Store and its mandatory DRM, the company was also one of the world's biggest cheerleaders for wrapping copyrighted works in a thin skin of IP that would allow copyright holders to shut down products like the Ipod and Itunes.

Microsoft, predictably enough, focused on the "lock everything to our platform" strategy. Then-CEO Steve Ballmer went on record calling every Ipod owner a "thief" and arguing that every record company should wrap music in Microsoft's Zune DRM, which would allow them to restrict anything they didn't like, even if copyright allowed it (and would also give Microsoft the same abusive leverage over labels that they famously exercised over Windows software companies):

https://web.archive.org/web/20050113051129/http://management.silicon.com/itpro/0,39024675,39124642,00.htm

In the end, Amazon's approach won. Apple dropped DRM, and Microsoft retired the Zune and shut down its DRM servers, screwing anyone who'd ever bought a Zune track by rendering that music permanently unplayable.

Around the same time as all this was going on, another company was making history by making uses of copyrighted works that the law allowed, but which the copyright holders hated. That company was Tivo, who products did for personal video recorders (PVRs) what Apple's Ipod did for digital portable music players. With a Tivo, you could record any show over cable (which was too expensive and complicated to encrypt) and terrestrial broadcast (which is illegal to encrypt, since those are the public's airwaves, on loan to the TV stations).

That meant that you could record any show, and keep it forever. What's more, you could very easily skip through ads (and rival players quickly emerged that did automatic ad-skipping). All of this was legal, but of course the cable companies and broadcasters hated it. Like Ballmer, TV execs called Tivo owners "thieves."

But Tivo didn't usher in the ad-supported TV apocalypse that furious, spittle-flecked industry reps insisted it would. Rather, it disciplined the TV and cable operators. Tivo owners actually sought out ads that were funny and well-made enough to go viral. Meanwhile, every time the industry decided to increase the amount of advertising in a show, they also increased the likelihood that their viewers would seek out a Tivo, or worse, one of those auto-ad-skipping PVRs.

Given all the stink that TV execs raised over PVRs, you'd think that these represented a novel threat. But in fact, the TV industry's appetite for ads had been disciplined by viewers' access to new technology since 1956, when the first TV remotes appeared on the market (executives declared that anyone who changed the channel during an ad-break was a thief). Then came the mute button. Then the wireless remote. Meanwhile, a common VCR use-case – raised in the Supreme Court case – was fast-forwarding ads.

At each stage, TV adapted. Ads in TV shows represented a kind of offer: "Will you watch this many of these ads in return for a free TV show?" And the remote, the mute button, the wireless remote, the VCR, the PVR, and the ad-skipping PVR all represented a counter-offer. As economists would put it, the ability of viewers to make these counteroffers "shifted the equilibrium." If viewers had no defensive technology, they might tolerate more ads, but once they were able to enforce their preferences with technology, the industry couldn't enshittify its product to the liminal cusp of "so many ads that the viewer is right on the brink of turning off the TV (but not quite)."

This is the same equilibrium-shifting dynamic that we see on the open web, where more than 50% of users have installed an ad-blocker. The industry says, "Will you allow this many 'sign up to our mailing list' interrupters, pop ups, pop unders, autoplaying videos and other stuff that users hate but shareholders benefit from" and the ad-blocker makes a counteroffer: "How about 'nah?'":

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/07/adblocking-how-about-nah

TV remotes, PVRs and ad-blockers are all examples of "adversarial interoperability" – a new product that plugs into an existing one, extending or modifying its functions without permission from (or even over the objections of) the original manufacturer:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/10/adversarial-interoperability

Adversarial interop creates a powerful disciplining force on platform owners. Once a user grows so frustrated with a product's enshittification that they research, seek out, acquire and learn to use an adversarial interop tool, it's really game over. The printer owner who figures out where to get third-party ink is gone forever. Every time a company like HP raises its prices, they have to account for the number of customers who will finally figure out how to use generic ink and never, ever send another cent to HP.

This is where DMCA 1201 comes into play. Once a product is skinned with DRM, its manufacturers gain the right to prevent you from doing legal things, and can use the public's courts and law-enforcement apparatus to punish you for trying. Take HP: as soon as they started adding DRM to their cartridges, they gained the legal power to shut down companies that cloned, refilled or remanufactured their cartridges, and started raising the price of ink – which today sits at more than $10,000/gallon:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/09/30/life-finds-a-way/#ink-stained-wretches

Using third party ink in your printer isn't illegal (it's your printer, right?). But making third party ink for your printer becomes illegal once you have to break DRM to do so, and so HP gets to transform tinted water into literally the most expensive fluid on Earth. The ink you use to print your kid's homework costs more than vintage Veuve Cliquot or sperm from a Kentucky Derby-winning thoroughbred.

Adversarial interoperability is a powerful tool for shifting the equilibrium between producers, intermediaries and buyers. DRM is an even more powerful way of wrenching that equilibrium back towards the intermediary, reducing the share that buyers and sellers are able to eke out of the transaction.

Prime Video, of course, is delivered via an app, which means it has DRM. That means that subscribers don't get to exercise the rights afforded to them by copyright – only the rights that Amazon permits them to have. There's no Tivo for Prime, because it would have to break the DRM to record the shows you stream from Prime. That allows Prime to pull all kinds of shady shit. For example, every year around this time, Amazon pulls popular Christmas movies from its free-to-watch tier and moves them into pay-per-view, only restoring them in the spring:

https://www.reddit.com/r/vudu/comments/1bpzanx/looks_like_amazon_removed_the_free_titles_from/

And of course, Prime sticks ads in its videos. You can't skip these ads – not because it's technically challenging to make a 30-second advance button for a video stream, and doing so wouldn't violate anyone's copyright – but because Amazon doesn't permit you to do so, and the fact that the video is wrapped in DRM makes it a felony to even try.

This means that Amazon gets to seek a different equilibrium than TV companies have had to accept since 1956 and the invention of the TV remote. Amazon doesn't have to limit the quantity, volume, and invasiveness of its ads to "less the amount that would drive our subscribers to install and use an ad-skipping plugin." Instead, they can shoot for the much more lucrative equilibrium of "so obnoxious that the viewer is almost ready to cancel their subscription (but not quite)."

That's pretty much exactly how Kelly Day, the Amazon exec in charge of Prime Video, put it to the Financial Times: they're increasing the number of ads because "we haven’t really seen a groundswell of people churning out or cancelling":

https://www.ft.com/content/f8112991-820c-4e09-bcf4-23b5e0f190a5

At this point, attentive readers might be asking themselves, "Doesn't Amazon have to worry about Prime viewers who watch in their browsers?" After all browsers are built on open standards, and anyone can make one, so there should be browsers that can auto-skip Prime ads, right?

Wrong, alas. Back in 2017, the W3C – the organization that makes the most important browser standards – caved to pressure from the entertainment industry and the largest browser companies and created "Encrypted Media Extensions" (EME), a "standard" for video DRM that blocks all adversarial interoperability:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2017/09/open-letter-w3c-director-ceo-team-and-membership

This had the almost immediate effect of making it impossible to create an independent browser without licensing proprietary tech from Google – now a convicted monopolist! – who won't give you a license if you implement recording, ad-skipping, or any other legal (but dispreferred) feature:

https://blog.samuelmaddock.com/posts/the-end-of-indie-web-browsers/

This means that for Amazon, there's no way to shift value away from the platform to you. The company has locked you in, and has locked out anyone who might offer you a better deal. Companies that know you are technologically defenseless are endlessly inventive in finding ways to make things worse for you to make things better for them. Take Youtube, another DRM-video-serving platform that has jacked up the number of ads you have to sit through in order to watch a video – even as they slash payments to performers. They've got a new move: they're gonna start showing you ads while your video is paused:

https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2024/09/20/youtube-pause-ads-rollout/75306204007/

That is the kind of fuckery you only come up with when your victory condition is "a service that's almost so bad our customers quit (but not quite)."

In Amazon's case, the math is even worse. After all, Youtube may have near-total market dominance over a certain segment of the video market, but Prime Video is bundled with Prime Delivery, which the vast majority of US households subscribe to. You have to give up a lot to cancel your Prime subscription – especially since Amazon's predatory pricing devastated the rest of the retail sector:

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

Amazon's founding principle was "customer obsession." Ex-Amazoners tell me that this was more than an empty platitude: arguments over product design were won or lost based on whether they could satisfy the "customer obsession" litmus test. Now, everyone falls short of their ideals, but sticking to your ideals isn't merely a matter of internal discipline, of willpower. Living up to your ideals is a matter of external discipline, too. When Amazon no longer had to contend with competitors or regulators, when it was able to use DRM to control its customers and use the law to prevent them from using its products in legal ways, it lost those external sources of discipline.

Amazon suppliers have long complained of the company's high-handed treatment of the vendors who supplied it with goods. Its workers have complained bitterly and loudly about the dangerous and oppressive conditions in its warehouses and delivery vans. But Amazon's customers have consistently given Amazon high marks on quality and trustworthiness.

The reason Amazon treated its workers and suppliers badly and its customers well wasn't that it liked customers and hated workers and suppliers. Amazon was engaged in a cold-blooded calculus: it understood that treating customers well would give it control over those customers, and that this would translate market power to retain suppliers even as it ripped them off and screwed them over.

But now, Amazon has clearly concluded that it no longer needs to keep customers happy in order to retain them. Instead, it's shooting for "keeping customers so angry that they're almost ready to take their business elsewhere (but not quite)." You see this in the steady decline of Amazon product search, which preferences the products that pay the biggest bribes for search placement over the best matches:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/11/06/attention-rents/#consumer-welfare-queens

And you see it in the steady enshittification of Prime Video. Amazon's character never changed. The company always had a predatory side. But now that monopoly and IP law have insulated it from consequences for its actions, there's no longer any reason to keep the predator in check.

Tor Books as just published two new, free LITTLE BROTHER stories: VIGILANT, about creepy surveillance in distance education; and SPILL, about oil pipelines and indigenous landback.

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/2024/10/03/mother-may-i/#minmax

[scarlettgauthor]

A plea

Readers! Billionaire-haters! Comrades! I have a request for you, from the bottom of my self-published indie author heart:

Please buy your books from places other than Amazon.

I am not saying do not buy books. I am definitely not saying pirate books (authors need to be paid in order to keep writing). I am just asking you to shift your purchasing to a non-Amazon platform. Any of the non-Amazon platforms.

We all know that Bezos is using his bajillions of dollars to make the world an actively worse place. We know he's sucking up to Trump because all billionaires are the same, and all they care about is their money. We know he's at least partially to blame for this second Trump presidency. I think the world would be a much better place if Amazon didn't exist.

I hate Amazon and Bezos as much as it's possible to do, but I literally can't survive as a self-published author without selling on Amazon. I earned $1094.26 in royalties (through Draft2Digital) in January, and $863.46 of that was from Amazon sales. Even with the criminally low royalties I get from Audible because I choose to sell elsewhere instead of locking myself into their monopoly, I get between $200-300 a month in royalties from them as opposed to $75-150 a month from Author's Republic, which publishes my audiobooks to everywhere else on the internet.

I hate depending on Amazon, but I can't quit Amazon unless readers do.

My plea to readers is this: Get off Amazon. Get off Kindle. See if you can buy books directly from the independent authors you like (like through my shop on my website!). If you depend on Kindle Unlimited or Audible subscriptions to keep up with your voracious reading habits, try your local library instead. You can get so many books and audiobooks through Libby!

If I was getting 80% of my sales through avenues other than Amazon, it would be easy to take the financial hit and drop them. Currently it's the other way around, and unfortunately I do still need money to live.

I know for many people doing a complete Amazon boycott is not possible. I still occasionally use Amazon for stuff like printer toner, or camp chairs for a concert on short notice, or other housewares I would be happy to buy in an actual store except that in-person shopping has been so degraded by Amazon that's no longer an option. I'm not perfect, and I'm operating within a system that is stacked against me.

But books aren't any of those things. They're not two-day free delivery on groceries and pantry staples for a disabled person who can't safely leave the house. They're not a houseware that you'd have to drive a full hour to buy in person from the one shop that still has it available. There are so, so many other options available in the world for book purchasing, even if you don't have access to a cool local bookstore.

Even if you can't get to a Barnes & Noble.

Even if you don't have a good local library.

There are OPTIONS.

(I, for one, love Bookshop.org, but just look at the Books2Read link for Red, the Wolf, and the Woods! There are 14 non-Amazon retailers, plus I sell direct! Bookshop has just launched ebook sales to support local bookstores, too!)

Please, consider changing your book shopping habits! Ask your friends to change their book shopping habits! It's a small thing, but it's a small thing that means a big improvement for authors, and for the world.

Thank you.

[queerromancerecs]

Non Amazon book resources

Look, I know Amazon is a sensitive topic. It has been allowed to dominate the market, and for indie writers, it is a huge (if not their main) source of income. Personally, as an indie writer, I have tried to always keep my work available elsewhere (because you can't trust Amazon not to screw you over, I mean just look at Audible. For those who don't know, Audible royally fucks over authors, and the narrators don't do that great either). But even for me, the loss of Amazon sales would highly affect my ability to keep going without getting another job or three. So I get it. Nonetheless, they cannot be trusted not to drop queer writers and readers, so it's best to have alternatives now.

If you are a reader or an indie author looking for different platforms to buy and/or sell books, even if only to start branching out a little, here is a list.

I doubt it's comprehensive. Feel free to reblog with more.

Kobo and Kobo Plus -Kobo is the biggest online 'Zon alternative. Kobo Plus is sort of like KU. On either one, you get points for buying books and can use the points to get more books. Works for ebook and audiobooks. (And, if you have a non-Kindle ereader, it works for Kobo but it also works for like, fanfiction. I'm just saying. I got a refurbished Kobo a while ago and it's lovely.)

Bookshop.org -print as well as ebooks (authors, make sure you click "expanded distribution" on your bookselling platform of choice if you want your stuff for sale with Bookshop--which also benefits local bookstores!)

Smashwords/Draft2Digital - mostly ebooks but D2D does have a print option

Itch.io - ebook only (but gives a larger chunk of profits to authors than 'Zon does. Authors take note.)

Rainbow Crate -special edition print queer books. (I know there was some controversy with them but I am out of touch and don't know what it was, and most people who use them seem happy with them??? but if you know other queer/romance book crate services, lemme know)

The Ripped Bodice -brick and mortar stores but you can also shop online

Check out your local bookstores---many will order print copies for you if you request them

The authors' websites if they do direct sales

Barnes & Noble- yeah, it's a corporation and they are not great either, but it's not Amazon and sometimes a well-meaning relative gets you a gift card. And, for the moment, they do in fact sell queer romance and queer fiction. I know because I just used a gift card to get a paperback of The Prince and the Assassin. lol

Powell's Books- Portland's famous book store sells new and used books (and you can browse the stock online) --print only. They sell queer romance as well. I got a copy of Drag Me Up by RM Virtues there. That's not super relevant, but I was pleased :)

New link: Queer Books Weekly-- free and affordable books with queer protagonists

Tubby & Coos Bookshop: curates pocket bookstores featuring underrepresented voices

And from user @bobthebenevolentpirate (thank you!)

Giovanni's Room in Philadelphia was founded in 1973 and is “The Oldest & Very Best LGBTQ & Feminist Bookstore in the Country.” They ship to US addresses, but you can also email them about international shipping. The people who run it are lovely humans and have started providing harm reduction supplies/info to people to respond to the needs of the community! They deserve all the support

Also consider library books!

And for those in America--you can use library apps to read books. Yes, the authors still get paid! Libby is a big one. You can get audiobooks too, AND it can connect you with the Queer Liberation Library.

Also there is Hoopla - digital content

In Europe, I know there is Vivlio, which is French and I believe sells ereaders and also ebooks.

[polkadotzzzz]

sweat and sweet temptation!

synopsis: a city girl’s summer on a quiet farm leads to unexpected encounters, where boundaries blur and desires awaken. what begins as an escape soon becomes something she never imagined.

a/n: i have no words....just pure filth for you all :3 enjoy ladies

18+, mdni, farmer sevika, city girl reader, farm life, sevika weighs a lot, reader also sort of likes that, sevika has a big tummy that reader strokes :3, cunnilingus, vaginal fingering, strap on, strap on sex, fat kink????, sweat, like a lot of it, mentions of food???????, body hair, size difference, basically, sevika is like 300 pounds n ur like....idk 90 lol

chapter I: heatstroke and honey

the sun hated you. that was the only logical conclusion.

it beat down like it had a vendetta, turning your thighs slick where they stuck to the cracked leather seat of your grandpa’s rustbucket pickup. the air reeked of gasoline and cut grass, your glittery pink nails tapping out an annoyed rhythm on your phone case as you refreshed instagram for the eighth time in five minutes.

nothing. no service. again.

you blew a bubble, slow and loud, letting it pop obnoxiously before snapping your gum back between your teeth. grandpa didn’t even flinch—he was too busy humming off-key to some ancient country song as the truck rattled down the dirt road.

you adjusted your crop top for the hundredth time, tugging it down over your stomach, which was not made for this heat. your tiny jean skirt bunched up every time the truck hit a bump, which was every five seconds.

“this place is literally the middle of nowhere,” you muttered, wiping a line of sweat from your temple. “like, how is this even legal? it’s giving human trafficking vibes.”

grandpa just chuckled. “you’ll get used to it, sweetheart. fresh air’ll do you good.”

you rolled your eyes so hard it gave you a headache. “fresh air smells like cow ass.”

“then you’re finally smellin’ somethin’ real,” he said, eyes twinkling in the rearview mirror. “we’ll hit the market before we head back to the house. your grandma wants that apple jam she likes.”

“you guys don’t have amazon or something?”

another chuckle. “not everything’s deliverable, sugar. some things you gotta earn.”

you sank back in the seat, crossing your arms and stewing in your own sweat and bitterness. a whole damn summer stuck here while your friends partied without you. no clubbing. no rooftop bars. no air conditioning.

just you, bugs the size of birds, and the backwoods hellscape your parents called a “character-building opportunity.”

────

the farmers market looked exactly how you imagined it—quaint, dusty, full of people who probably didn’t know what gluten was. tables lined the parking lot of a tiny church, shaded by canopies and umbrellas that did absolutely nothing to block the sun. people milled around carrying tote bags full of peaches and squash like that was a fun thing to do on a saturday.

you trudged after your grandpa, already annoyed, already over it. your platform sandals kicked up little clouds of dirt with every step, and you made sure your gum popped extra loud just for the looks you were getting.

he chatted with some old guy selling pickles while you scanned the rows of tables, bored out of your mind—until you saw her.

or maybe felt her first.

the heat got heavier in her direction. like it thickened around her.

she was leaned back in a folding chair behind a rough wooden table, arms crossed under her chest, flannel sleeves rolled up to her elbows. her thighs spread wide, dark jeans stretched tight around them, boots caked in dry mud. one boot rested on the edge of a wooden crate like she owned the ground under it. a worn ballcap shaded her face, but not enough to hide the way her jaw flexed when she chewed on a stalk of straw.

she had a dozen jars of homemade jam stacked in front of her—simple labels, no frills—but it wasn’t the jam people were staring at.

she smelled like sun and sweat and woodsmoke. like whatever hard work did to a person over years and years. her skin was brown and streaked with a fresh sheen of sweat, a few strands of dark, messy hair stuck to her neck under her hat. the muscles in her arms didn’t look like gym muscles. they looked earned. ropey, real, heavy.

your stomach did something stupid.

you blinked and realized you’d just been standing there, staring like a moron.

she raised her eyes to you, and the corner of her mouth curled.

“well,” she drawled. voice low and scratchy, like gravel on velvet. “ain’t you a sight.”

you snapped your gum and tilted your head, defaulting to brat mode. “a sight for sore eyes, i know.”

her smirk deepened, slow and dangerous. her gaze flicked down your body—your glittery eyeliner, your crop top, the stretch of thigh your skirt barely covered—and then back up again, lazy and hot as july.

“somethin’ like that.”

you flushed, hating how your skin betrayed you. you weren’t even sure if it was from the heat or the way she looked at you like she could snap you in half—and might enjoy doing it.

“grandpa,” you hissed as you turned away, tugging on his sleeve. “that’s the jam lady?”

he followed your gaze and chuckled again. “that’s sevika, yep. been bringin’ her jam home for years. best damn apples in the county.”

sevika stood, and it was like a barn wall moved. she was easily over six feet, wide as a fridge, and every inch of her looked like it could crush you without trying. she moved slow, unbothered, wiping her hands on a rag pulled from her back pocket.

“got that honey apple batch your wife likes,” she said to your grandpa. then, to you: “you helpin’ him carry stuff today, sweetheart, or just here to bless us with your sass?”

you scowled. “i’m here against my will, actually.”

“lucky us,” she muttered, sliding two jars into a bag.

you hated that your thighs clenched just a little when her fingers brushed the jar lids. rough hands. big hands. calloused, worn, strong.

she handed the bag over, her fingers brushing yours for a heartbeat too long. “careful now. that jam’s sweet enough to rot your teeth.”

you snapped your gum again. “good thing i have a perfect smile.”

her smile said she didn’t believe in perfection, but she might make an exception just to ruin you.

────

you didn’t speak the entire ride home.

not that you could, with the way your heart was still thumping dumb in your chest and your thighs were glued together under your skirt like your body was trying to keep a secret. you hated how easily that woman—sevika—had crawled under your skin. hated the way her eyes followed you like she’d already decided what kind of sounds she’d pull from your mouth if you gave her the chance.

the truck bounced over a pothole, jolting you hard enough that your bare thigh smacked the hot leather seat.

“ow! jesus,” you snapped, adjusting yourself again. “does this truck have any suspension?”

grandpa just chuckled like everything was hilarious. “gotta say, you handled yourself well back there.”

“what, at the barnyard bake sale?” you rolled your eyes, blowing another bubble. “i deserve an oscar.”

“i meant with sevika.”

you froze. “i didn’t do anything.”

“oh, she noticed you, alright. always does when she sees something pretty walk by.” he threw you a look. “don’t play dumb.”

“i’m not playing anything,” you mumbled, shifting again, crossing and uncrossing your legs. “she was just... gross. sweaty. big.”

he snorted. “didn’t stop you from gawkin’ like a deer in headlights.”

you glared out the window, watching fields roll by. she was gross. and huge. and smelled like hard work and heat and sweat. you could still feel the weight of her stare on your bare skin, could still hear that slow southern drawl winding around her words like honey. it was disgusting how your stomach flipped just remembering it.

“gross,” you muttered again. but your thighs squeezed together all the same.

────

the farmhouse your grandparents lived in was old, two stories with peeling white paint and a porch that creaked under every step. you’d barely had time to set down your suitcase before grandma started talking about chores and “helping out around here.” you weren’t even safe in the kitchen—every drawer had knives that looked like they’d killed someone.

and to top it off? the jam sat right there on the counter like a goddamn temptation. you glared at it for a solid five minutes while scrolling your phone and pretending you weren’t still thinking about rough hands and drawled-out pet names.

you popped another piece of gum and took a spoonful of the apple jam straight from the jar just to prove a point. it was good. disgustingly good. sweet and tart with just enough spice to burn the back of your tongue.

stupid hot farmer bitch knew what she was doing.

that night, lying on the twin bed in your upstairs room with a ceiling fan that did nothing but push the heat around, you did something you swore you wouldn’t.

you searched her name.

just “sevika southern jam farmer” into every social media app you had.

nothing. of course. no digital footprint, no selfies, not even a facebook page. she was the kind of woman who probably didn’t believe in passwords or smartphones.

you chewed your gum louder, annoyed and slightly turned on by that fact.

your fingers hovered over your phone keyboard again. search: local farmstands. search: homemade jam vendor. you even tried sevika sweaty arms hot milf.

nothing but tumblr results from 2012 and a pinterest board called “southern butch vibes.”

you threw the phone across the bed with a groan and flopped back into the pillow, pressing your thighs together again. you hated the way your body wouldn’t listen. hated how that damn smirk haunted your brain every time you closed your eyes.

the way she said sweetheart like she was tasting the word. like she wanted to see what else she could call you once she had you bent over her lap.

you turned over with a frustrated grunt.

and then, like a curse, you heard grandpa call from downstairs.

“up early tomorrow! sevika’s needin’ help harvestin’ for the market. you’re goin’ with me!”

you sat up straight, heart in your throat.

“no the hell i’m not!” you yelled back.

“yes the hell you are,” came the reply.

you stared at the ceiling fan as it spun lazily overhead.

you’d be on her farm. in her space. with her sweaty, powerful, infuriating body walking around like she owned the damn world.

you swallowed hard.

this summer was going to kill you.

and not softly.

────

chapter II: rotten apples, dirty hands

you woke up in a tangle of sheets, sweating through your tank top and cursing whoever decided this house didn’t need air conditioning. the sun was barely up, light filtering through gauzy curtains in gold and pink streaks, and you were already miserable.

and then you remembered.

the farm.

sevika.

your stomach did a dumb little flip, and you cursed again, dragging yourself out of bed and throwing open your suitcase. if she thought she’d see you in some dusty-ass overalls like a damn peasant, she had another thing coming.

you picked a skirt that barely covered your ass, bubblegum pink with white trim, and a matching crop top that clung to your tits like a prayer. your bra was optional, your makeup was glittery, and your bubblegum popped loud enough to echo through the hallway.

by the time you made it downstairs, grandpa just shook his head.

“she’s gonna throw you into the pig pen.”

you winked. “only if she wants a show.”

────

the drive to sevika’s farm was all bumpy dirt roads, the kind that made your thighs jiggle and your teeth rattle. when you pulled up, the barn loomed in the distance, big and red and sun-bleached. apple trees stretched behind it in neat little rows, heavy with fruit, their leaves whispering in the wind.

and there she was.

sevika stood near a rusted-out pickup, one arm hoisting a wooden crate up like it weighed nothing. her flannel was rolled to the elbows, thick forearms covered in dirt and sweat, a piece of straw tucked into the corner of her mouth. her skin gleamed under the sun, tanned and slick with heat, and her thighs strained against worn jeans as she set the box down with a grunt.

you nearly choked on your gum.

“morning,” grandpa called out, grabbing another crate from the back.

sevika looked up, and when her eyes landed on you?

a long pause.

a smirk.

“well, i’ll be,” she drawled. “you really brought the barbie doll.”

you snapped your gum loud, hands on your hips. “this barbie don’t do manual labor.”

sevika cocked her head. “you’re wearin’ about six inches of skirt and not a single inch of sense. you’ll do whatever i tell you to, sweetheart.”

your stomach dropped.

grandpa just laughed and waved her off. “she’s all yours.”

sevika wiped sweat from her brow and gave you a once-over so slow it made your skin prickle. “guess i’ll have to put her to work.”

“touch me and i sue.”

“touch you and you melt,” she shot back without missing a beat.

she handed you a basket. wooden, big, heavy. you glared at it like it had personally insulted you.

“you’re pickin’ apples today,” she said. “trees won’t bite. you might break a nail, though. tragic.”

you blew a bubble and stomped after her into the orchard, her boots crunching dry dirt, yours slipping in your platform sandals. you could already feel sweat dripping down the back of your neck.

“this is hell,” you muttered.

“nah,” sevika called over her shoulder, “hell would be me makin’ you shovel pig shit.”

you nearly turned around.

she laughed—a low, throaty rumble that made your thighs clench. she knew what she was doing. every slow stride, every roll of her thick shoulders, every casual spit of that straw between her lips was calculated.

the apples were big and ripe and high up in the trees, and your tiny little arms didn’t stand a chance. you stood on your tiptoes, straining, skirt riding higher and higher until—

“sweetheart.”

you jumped. sevika was behind you, close enough that you could feel the heat coming off her skin like a furnace. she reached past you, arm brushing your side, and plucked the apple down with ease.

“you’re gonna break that pretty back,” she murmured.

your breath hitched.

she smelled like woodsmoke, sweat, and something warm and deep—like summer and sin wrapped in one big brutal package.

“i don’t need your help,” you snapped.

“didn’t say you did. just enjoyin’ the view.”

you spun around, flustered, the apple forgotten in your hands. “pervert.”

sevika leaned in, one arm braced on the tree behind you, caging you in without touching. “you keep wearin’ skirts like that, and callin’ me names with your mouth all shiny from gloss? you’ll find out i ain’t a gentleman.”

you didn’t breathe. couldn’t.

she smiled slow. “get pickin’.”

────

by the time you were done, your legs were covered in dirt and your top stuck to your skin. the basket was half-full—because apples were heavy, thank you very much—and you were pretty sure you had sunburn forming along your shoulders.

sevika didn’t say a word when you came back wheezing, dragging the basket behind you.

just raised an eyebrow. “you call that work?”

you flipped her off and collapsed under a tree.

she walked over, leaned against the trunk beside you, and popped the cap on a beer. she didn’t offer you one. just drank, throat bobbing with every swallow, sweat still glistening down the side of her neck.

“you’re gonna die out here,” she said casually.

“not before i sue you for harassment.”

she turned her head. “tell the judge what? that i looked at you too long while you were bent over shakin’ your ass like it owed you money?”

you gasped.

she grinned.

you wanted to slap her. or kiss her. or both. at the same time.

“i hate you,” you hissed.

sevika drained the rest of her beer and tossed the bottle into a bin. then she crouched down beside you, her thighs spreading wide, elbows on her knees, gaze dropping to your mouth.

“no, darlin’,” she said, low and rough. “you want me. and you hate that you do.”

you swallowed hard. and for the first time since you got here, you couldn’t think of a damn thing to say.

────

chapter III: dirty hands, dirtier thoughts

you were still trying to catch your breath under that tree when sevika stood, stretched her massive arms over her head, and said, “time to clean up.”

you blinked. “don’t you have, like, a hose?”

she snorted. “a hose? what is this, summer camp?”

and then she walked off—toward the barn—sweat sticking her flannel to her back and those thick thighs moving like sin under denim. you scrambled up, brushing off dirt from places you didn’t know could get dirty.

inside the barn, it was worse. hotter. the air thick with hay dust, the scent of apples and animals, wood and sweat. sunlight streamed through the cracks in the slats, catching particles in golden rays. you hesitated at the door, suddenly aware of your sticky thighs and the way your glittered lip gloss felt too much.

sevika stood at the workbench near the far wall, back turned, tugging off her flannel.

and you… froze.

her broad, scarred shoulders gleamed under the light. her white ribbed tank top was soaked through, clinging to the thick slope of her back, the curve of her waist, the roll of soft stomach that peeked out every time she reached up. her bra strap peeked out from under one shoulder, twisted like she hadn’t noticed or didn’t care.

you swallowed hard.

then harder when she turned and caught you staring.

“you lost?” she asked, reaching for a rag and wiping the back of her neck.

you cleared your throat. “no. i just—wanted to see what kinda cleaning we were doing.”

she raised an eyebrow. “didn’t know watchin’ me get half-naked counted as chores.”

“maybe if i’m lucky,” you shot back.

and something shifted.

her mouth twitched into something feral. “you flirtin’ with me, sweetheart?”

you looked her dead in the eye. “what if i am?”

she dropped the rag. took one step forward. then another.

the barn suddenly felt very small.

her boots thudded across the floor, each step echoing until she stopped in front of you—towering, glistening, breathing slow and deep like she was measuring you up.

your back hit the barn door.

“don’t tease me, little girl,” she said low, voice rough as gravel. “i bite.”

you looked up at her, heart jackhammering in your chest. “i bruise easy.”

“good.”

her hand lifted—just two fingers—and she brushed a bit of hay from your shoulder, trailing down your bare arm slow enough to make goosebumps rise. her callouses scraped the soft skin of your inner elbow.

your breath hitched.

and then—

“SEVIKA!”

you jumped.

she sighed.

some old guy’s voice floated through the barn from outside. “we got a busted water line by the back fence!”

sevika didn’t look away from you. she just muttered, “cockblockin’ son of a bitch,” under her breath, then tilted her head.

“you stay here. don’t touch shit. you hear me?”

you nodded, too fast, still trying to breathe normal.

she leaned in, mouth near your ear. “i will finish what i started.”

then she was gone. just boots thudding away and a slammed barn door.

you stood there, flushed and buzzing, thighs pressed together and heart hammering. and god help you, you wanted more.

────

she drove you home that afternoon—your grandparents’ truck being “too old for these damn hills,” as grandpa said.

you climbed into the passenger seat of sevika’s dusty pickup, the leather seats hot against the backs of your thighs. she adjusted the mirrors, cracked the window, and peeled off down the dirt road with one hand on the wheel.

the other? resting right on your knee.

you froze.

her fingers were wide and rough, resting just heavy enough to make a point. she didn’t squeeze. didn’t tease. just let the weight of her hand stay there while the sun dipped low behind you both and the road hummed beneath the tires.

“you’re awful quiet,” she said after a few miles, eyes still on the road.

you wet your lips. “i'm getting felt up by a senior citizen.”

that earned a low, genuine laugh—deep in her chest, like she didn’t laugh often but you got it out of her anyway.

“careful, sweetheart,” she said, voice like whiskey. “keep talkin’ like that and you’re gonna end up sittin’ on more than my passenger seat.”

you squeezed your thighs shut. hard.

by the time she dropped you off, the sun had dipped behind the hills. fireflies were blinking in the tall grass, and your grandparents’ porch light flickered on.

she didn’t get out of the truck.

just leaned back in her seat, wrist draped over the wheel, eyes on you.

“you show up tomorrow,” she said, voice low.

you raised an eyebrow. “or what?”

sevika smiled slow. “or i come lookin’ for you.”

then she peeled off into the dark, tail lights glowing red like a warning.

────

chapter IV: no panties, no problem

you showed up to the farm the next morning just after sunrise, same as sevika told you. no ride this time—just your glittery pink sandals crunching down the gravel road, your phone tucked in your bra, and your skirt barely covering anything at all.

it was thinner than usual. shorter, too.

and underneath?

nothing.

not a stitch.

you’d looked yourself in the mirror that morning, chewed your gum slow, tilted your head, and said out loud: let her work for it.

by the time you reached the barn, the air already smelled like grass and sweat, and sevika was tossing hay bales like they weighed nothing. just her tank top today. stuck to her back. her thighs wide in those old jeans, boots caked in dirt. a smear of something dark ran down her arm, and her brow glistened.

she didn’t look up when you walked in.

“’bout time,” she muttered. “grab that ladder. you’re helpin’ me in the orchard.”

you blinked. “you trust me on a ladder?”

sevika looked at you then—real slow. her eyes flicked down your legs, to the hem of your skirt, then back up.

something dark sparked behind her smile.

“no,” she said. “but i’m willin’ to watch you fall.”

────

the orchard smelled like sunshine and ripening apples. birds chirped. bees buzzed.

and you?

you climbed a ladder while sevika held it steady at the bottom.

“reach up,” she called, voice lazy, “grab that one on the left.”

you stretched—knowing exactly what you were doing.

the skirt rose.

the breeze hit your bare skin.

and from down below?

sevika’s silence was louder than anything.

you plucked the apple. slowly. made sure to wiggle just enough on your way back down.

when your feet hit the grass, sevika handed you a basket without a word—but her jaw was tight. her fingers grazed yours. her gaze lingered a little too long.

“you do that on purpose?” she finally asked, wiping sweat off her neck.

you blinked up at her, all wide-eyed innocence. “do what?”

she didn’t answer.

just picked up her own basket, turned, and muttered, “keep climbin’, sweetheart.”

and so you did.

all morning.

bending, reaching, climbing—your skirt dancing high on your hips, the summer air licking every inch of exposed skin.

every time you came back down, sevika looked ten seconds closer to snapping.

and god, it made you feel powerful.

────

by the time the baskets were full, the sun was high, and your thighs were sticky from sweat and mischief.

sevika led you to the shed out back. it was small, wooden, and cooler than the orchard, shaded by big trees and full of old tools, empty crates, and the sharp smell of sawdust.

she cracked open a bottle of water and took a swig, then passed it to you. her fingers brushed your mouth when you drank.

you licked the rim when you handed it back.

her gaze dropped to your thighs.

“you got a death wish, city girl?” she murmured.

you took a step closer.

“maybe i just like dangerous things.”

and there it was—that flash in her eyes, like she was this close to grabbing your waist, pressing you against the wall, and seeing just how many times she could make you whimper her name.

but sevika didn’t move.

she just smirked, took another sip of water, and said, “ain’t no panties under that skirt, huh?”

your breath caught.

you said nothing.

didn’t have to.

sevika laughed, low and wicked.

“mm. thought so. you keep playin’ games, darlin’, one of these days i won’t stop myself.”

she turned and walked out—boots thudding, sweat glistening on her shoulders, leaving you alone in the shed with your own heartbeat pounding between your legs.

and not even a scrap of fabric to hide it.

────

chapter V: thunder rolls, a storm’s a-comin

the storm hit like a wall, just as sevika said it would earlier today.

"a storm's a-comin doll, you ever see rain before?"

the barn door slammed shut behind you, sealing in the humid, electric air. the world outside was darkening, but the inside of the barn was filled with that thick, musky scent of hay and dust. the kind of smell that wrapped around your skin like a secret.

you pulled your shirt away from your body, letting out a little huff of frustration. the rain was coming down in sheets now, the kind that soaked you in seconds. your skirt clung to your hips, and the damp fabric did nothing to cool the fire building in your chest.

“gonna be stuck here a while,” sevika’s voice rolled over you, low and steady.

you glanced up at her, your heart skipping a beat at the sight of her framed in the doorway, rain streaking down her face. her flannel shirt was already soaked through, sticking to her muscles, every curve and dip of her frame outlined perfectly. there was something about the way she moved, slow and controlled, as if she knew exactly what you were thinking.

and maybe she did.

you reached up to grab the ladder, feeling her eyes on you as you climbed. each step took you higher, showing off your bare legs and the way the skirt slipped up your thighs, inch by inch. you didn’t wear panties again—just the soft, damp fabric of your skirt brushing against your skin, knowing full well what it would do to her.

when you reached the top, you felt the weight of sevika’s presence below you. it was more than just her towering figure, more than her steady gaze—it was the way she filled the space around you, thick and undeniable.

“i told you,” she said softly, stepping up behind you, “you keep temptin’ me, and one of these days, i won’t be able to stop myself.”

her voice was rough, gravelly—like it always was when she was worked up. you could feel the heat coming off her as she climbed up the ladder behind you, each movement deliberate, controlled. her boots hit the rungs with a heavy thud, and you felt the vibration all the way up your spine.

you didn’t turn around. you didn’t need to. you already knew she was there, just a few inches behind you, close enough to feel her breath on your neck.

the top of the ladder creaked under her weight, and then she was there, standing beside you in the loft, the rain hammering against the roof above.

you pulled in a shaky breath, trying to keep your cool as sevika’s hands reached for the hay bales.

but she didn’t move right away. she lingered.

her fingers brushed against your arm, just enough to make your skin flare with heat. her touch was a promise, soft but firm. you shivered as her calloused fingertips traced along your wrist, and you dared to look at her. her eyes were darker now—heavy with something you couldn’t quite name. a storm all its own.

“you’re always gettin’ under my skin,” she growled, her voice a low rumble, “even when you ain’t tryin’.”

you swallowed, heart hammering in your chest. “i’m not trying. but you keep looking at me like that.”

sevika chuckled, low and slow. “like what?”

“like you wanna tear me apart,” you breathed out, feeling the heat radiating off her. the air around you felt thick, close, like every inch of space was charged with electricity.

she stepped closer.

one of her hands found your hip, big and firm, holding you in place. she leaned in, close enough to taste the rain on her skin. you could feel the way her chest pressed against yours—warm, strong, like a wall of muscle.

and then—finally—her lips found yours.

it was rough, desperate, the way a storm should feel. her kiss was hungry, deep, and you couldn’t fight back the way your body melted into hers, the soft groan that slipped from your throat.

sevika’s hand slid to the back of your neck, pulling you even closer, her body heat searing you through your clothes. you could feel her everywhere—her strength, her roughness, her raw desire.

the rain outside pounded harder, but it didn’t matter. not when sevika was there, holding you in her arms, her lips tracing the line of your jaw, then down to your neck.

“you keep playin’ with fire, sweetheart,” she murmured, lips grazing your skin. “one of these days, you’re gonna get burned.”

you pulled her closer, your hands digging into the wet fabric of her shirt, feeling the muscles under her skin, the heat of her body pressing against yours.

“i’m counting on it,” you whispered back.

────

her lips were on your neck now—hot, dragging, greedy. she kissed like she was starving, like you were something she’d been aching for, something she shouldn’t touch but couldn’t help herself.

and gods, it worked.

you tilted your head back, giving her more. her teeth scraped your skin, just enough to leave a mark, just enough to make you gasp. and sevika growled at the sound of it. like it lit her up from the inside.

“that skirt,” she rasped, one hand tightening on your waist, “you wore it on purpose, didn’t you?”

you nodded, dizzy with heat. “yeah.”

her hand slipped lower, brushing down the back of your thigh—slow, deliberate. when she reached under your skirt and found nothing underneath, her breath hitched.

“well, fuck me,” she muttered. “you’re a goddamn menace.”

she gripped the back of your bare thigh, fingers sinking into your skin like she meant to leave bruises, and you whimpered, soft and spoiled, pressing yourself into her like you needed her to keep touching you.

“i thought about this,” you confessed, voice thin and shaky. “climbing up here with nothin’ on. knew you'd be watchin’.”

“oh, i was watchin’,” she murmured, dragging her mouth up to your ear. “and i knew you were beggin’ for it. you wanted me to see what a filthy little brat you are.”

you let out a soft moan at that, your thighs clenching around nothing.

sevika didn’t waste time. she shoved the crates aside with one hand, like they were nothing, clearing a space in the hay. then she lifted you—just picked you up like you weighed nothing—and laid you down on your back, hay scratching at your bare thighs, skirt bunched around your waist.

her eyes dragged down your body, and for a moment, she just looked.

rain pounded the roof like war drums, but all you could hear was your heartbeat in your throat and sevika’s slow exhale.

“you don’t even know what you’re askin’ for,” she said, climbing over you. “but i’ll show you.”

and when she got between your legs, when her calloused hand slid up your thigh and she found how wet you were—she cursed, low and filthy.

you grabbed at her shirt, trying to pull her closer, but she caught your wrists and pinned them above your head with one hand.

“nuh-uh,” she said, voice dark and thick with heat. “you wanted a storm, baby? you got it. now lie back and take it.”

her fingers dragged through you—slow, slick, knowing. and when she dipped one inside you, thick and curling, you arched off the hay and let out a sound that echoed through the barn like sin.

sevika smirked, sweat and rain dripping from her jaw onto your chest.

“you’re gonna make such a mess, sugar. hope you’re ready to clean it up with that smart little mouth of yours.”

and then she added a second finger.

you’re already trembling by the time her fingers sink in deeper, your thighs spread wide in the hay, hips twitching with every slow thrust of her hand. her grip on your wrists doesn’t let up—not for a second. she keeps you pinned, helpless, her body looming over yours like thunder, heat pouring off her in waves.

the storm outside rages louder, but inside the barn, it’s just the two of you—sweat, slick, hay, and heat.

“look at you,” she mutters, voice thick like molasses, slow and sticky. “drippin’ all over my hand. all from a little touch.”

she curls her fingers inside you, and you gasp—back arching, toes curling in your muddy boots. her hand is so big, palm rough against the softness between your legs. her thumb presses down, slow, circling, and you bite your lip so hard it hurts.

“don’t do that,” she murmurs. “i wanna hear you. wanna hear that bratty little mouth beg.”

you do. you whimper. you whine. “please.”

“please what?”

“please don’t stop.”

that gets her. sevika groans low in her throat, hips grinding into the hay like it’s killing her not to fuck you raw right then and there.

“you’re dangerous,” she says, breathless, still working her fingers in and out of you with a rhythm that’s cruelly patient. “you don’t even know what the hell you’re doing to me, do you?”

you reach for her again, this time with a little desperation. and this time, she lets go of your wrists.

you grab fistfuls of her flannel, trying to pull her down to kiss you, but she leans just close enough to ghost her lips over yours without giving it up.

“oh, now you want my mouth?” she teases, voice rough. “what happened to all that sass, city girl? you were real mouthy this mornin’.”

“i’m—fuck—sorry,” you breathe.

she smirks. “that’s more like it.”

then she lowers her mouth to your chest, tongue hot and messy, licking a path down the valley between your breasts. she shoves your soaked shirt up, mouth closing around one nipple, her free hand still fucking into you slow and deep.

you cry out—your hands flying up to grip her shoulders. she moans into your skin, like the sound of you breaking apart turns her on more than anything.

“i could ruin you right here,” she growls. “make you come so hard your legs won’t work for a week. leave you fucked out and pantin’ in the hay.”

“then do it,” you whisper. “please, sev. i want it.”

that’s all it takes.

her thumb moves faster, circles tightening, her fingers pumping deeper—so much pressure, so much need building in your gut.

“come for me,” she growls. “be a good girl and soak my fuckin’ hand.”

you shatter. loud. breathless. soaking her fingers with a messy, shameful cry. she works you through it, slow and sweet, not stopping until your thighs twitch and your breath stutters.

she pulls her fingers out finally, slow, dripping, then brings them to her lips and sucks them clean—never breaking eye contact.

“taste like peaches,” she mutters. “knew you’d be sweet.”

you’re sprawled out, ruined, skirt hiked up and makeup smudged, hair stuck to your cheeks with sweat and rain.

and she leans over you, kisses the corner of your mouth real slow and dirty.

“tomorrow,” she says, breath hot. “we ain’t waitin’ for rain.”

────

chapter VI: orchard heat, the favor returned (pt.1)

it’s a scorcher the next day. humid, sticky, the kind of heat that clings to your skin and drips down your back before noon. the orchard’s alive with cicadas and the heavy scent of overripe apples hanging thick in the air. you’d barely gotten through your chores before your brain started melting. and all damn day, sevika’s been eyeing you like she knows exactly what you’ve been thinking about since the barn.

and she does.

by sundown, when the sky is streaked orange and pink, she pulls you into the shade of the biggest tree in the orchard. her hands are dirty, fingers stained from sap and soil, and she’s drenched in sweat—flannel wide open, tank underneath soaked through, clinging to the swell of her broad chest and the thick muscle along her arms.

her belly peeks out where the shirt rides up—soft, big, warm. you can't stop staring.

“you been thinkin’ about last night?” she asks, voice rough as gravel, leaning her weight against the tree, towering above you like temptation itself.

you nod, cheeks flushed, heart thudding in your chest.

“good,” she grins, cocking her head. “then get on your knees, city girl. show me that mouth ain’t just for talkin’.”

and you drop for her—knees hitting the dry grass, breath shallow as you look up at her.

she’s massive like this. towering. one foot planted between yours, the other braced against the tree root. thick thighs covered in dirt-caked jeans, belt buckle half undone, belly rising and falling as she pants in the heat. her body’s a lot—tall, broad, heavy with muscle and the kind of fat that comes from years of eating good and working hard. her stomach soft, her hips wide, her chest heaving.

and then you get a whiff of her—sweat and earth and something feral.

“don’t shave,” she mutters, watching your eyes trail down. “ain’t got the time or the patience.”

she ain’t lying. hair trails thick and dark from her navel downward, coarse curls already peeking out above her jeans. her pits are soaked, dark patches spreading beneath her arms, and when she lifts one to rest against the tree, it hits you full in the face—her. raw, real, musky.

and god, you want it.

you tug open her belt with trembling fingers, fumbling to get her jeans down. she doesn’t help—just watches you, chest rising, lips parted, a line of sweat trickling down her neck into her cleavage.

“fuck, look at you,” she mutters. “all glitter and gloss, on your knees like a good girl.”

her pants fall to mid-thigh, and you get your first full look at her.

she’s soaked. hair curling wild across her thick, meaty thighs, sweat glistening on her skin, the scent of her slick and heat making your head spin. her clit’s swollen, peeking from the hood, twitching with every pant.

you lean forward, tongue out, tentative.

she growls. “no teasing.”

so you dive in.

you lick her like you mean it—messy, wet, obscene. her taste is strong, earthy and musky, a little tangy from the sweat, and so fucking good. you moan against her, lips slick with her, your hands gripping her thighs just to hold yourself steady.

her body jerks when you suck, and she bites down a curse, hand flying to your head.

“you filthy little thing,” she pants, hips rocking forward. “lick it up. just like that.”

you bury your face deeper, licking from her dripping entrance all the way up to her clit, then wrap your lips around it and suck, tongue flicking rapid and tight. she groans, deep and hoarse, hips grinding hard against your face now.

she’s heavy—so heavy—you can feel her weight in every inch of your body. her thigh presses to your cheek, solid muscle and soft fat, pinning you there. her belly’s brushing your forehead, slick with sweat, her scent in your nose, mouth, everywhere.

your fingers dig into her ass, pulling her closer, and she hisses, grabbing a handful of your hair.

“shit—gonna come—don’t stop—”

you don’t. you can’t. you want her to come undone. you want to drown in her.

and then she breaks.

her thighs quake. her stomach tightens. she lets out a deep, shuddering moan that shakes through her whole body—and you keep sucking, keep licking until she jerks and swears and finally grabs your head with both hands, pulling you off her pussy with a wet pop.

“goddamn,” she mutters, breathless, sweat pouring down her face. “you tryin’ to kill me, sugar?”

you look up at her, your mouth glistening with her, eyes blown wide and dazed.

“just repaying the favor,” you whisper.

────

chapter VI: orchard heat, you earned it, now she's gonna take (pt.2)

your lips are still glistening, chin sticky with her, and sevika looks down at you with something dark in her eyes—like she’s barely hanging on, like she wants to ruin you and hold you at the same time.

she tucks herself back into those worn, low-slung jeans, knuckles dragging across her soaked belly, and you just sit there panting, thighs clenched, still on your knees in the grass.

you’re shaking, honestly. from the heat, from the taste of her, from the way her voice dips low when she finally speaks.

“you’re a fuckin’ mess,” she says. “c’mere.”

you barely get your legs under you before she grabs you—thick arms wrapping around your waist like you weigh nothin’, like she was built for it. and she was. that body? meant for holding, for breaking girls like you open. you squeak as she hauls you up off the ground, then throws you down in the grass under the apple tree like a sack of flour—wind knocked out of you, skirt flying up, thighs parted.

“gonna show you what a real woman feels like,” she mutters, crawling over you, and god, she’s big.

all heat and weight and hair, flannel falling off her shoulder, tank pulled low and stretched tight over her huge tits. her belly presses to yours, soft and heavy, and her thighs bracket you, muscles flexing as she shifts to pin you flat.

you writhe, hands reaching up to grab her shoulders, but she catches your wrists easily in one big, calloused hand and pins them above your head.

“mm-mm. you made me come,” she growls, mouth brushing your ear. “now i get to take my time.”

and take her time she does.

she licks a line down your throat, sweaty and slow. bites your collarbone. sinks her teeth into the soft flesh of your breast through your little pink tank top until you gasp and arch beneath her.

her other hand—big, blunt-fingered and rough from farm work—skims down your body and shoves your skirt up.

no panties. you came prepared.

sevika growls.

“little tease,” she hisses, dragging a filthy finger down your bare slit. “wanted me to see this pussy first chance i got?”

you nod, breath hitching.

“use it, baby,” you whisper. “i want it.”

and she does.

she’s got two fingers in you before you can even moan, thick and unrelenting, fucking you open like she owns it. she presses her full body weight down—soft belly pushing into your ribs, thighs caging you in, her arm flexing beside your head—and it’s too much, the heat, the sweat, the feel of her hair dragging along your bare skin.

her scent is everywhere—feral, musky, unshowered and wild—and it drives you crazy.

“gonna stretch you out,” she pants, her lips right at your neck. “make this spoiled little body feel it.”

you moan so loud it echoes off the trees.

she adds a third finger, and your hips buck up hard, tears leaking from the corners of your eyes.

“f-fuck, sev—”

“you’re gonna take it,” she growls, grinding the heel of her palm against your clit as her fingers curl deep. “gonna take all of me.”

and you do.

you take it until your legs are trembling, until your voice is gone, until you’re sobbing against her chest, your hands fisted in her soaked flannel, begging for more, for everything.

she makes you come three times under that tree before she finally lets you go.

and when she pulls back—big body rising from you like a storm breaking—she leans down, wipes your face with the hem of your own tank top, and kisses you with the kind of messy, possessive hunger that says, you’re mine now.

────

chapter VII: ride it, cowgirl, you brought this on yourself.

you’re already up in the loft when she walks in.

the sunlight filters through the cracks in the wood, casting golden stripes across the hay bales, across you. legs swinging where you’re perched, dress hitched up scandalously, phone dangling from your fingers, gum snapping between your teeth. you don’t even look up when you hear her boots on the stairs.

but you feel her.

all six-foot-four and three hundred pounds of her. the loft creaks beneath her weight as she climbs, slow and deliberate. like she knows you’re waiting. like she’s in no damn rush.

you finally glance over, and there she is.

sweaty as hell already, just from loading crates below. flannel tied around her waist, white tank soaked through across her tits and stomach. her arms look even bigger in this light—roped with muscle, tan skin gleaming, thick veins bulging from effort. she’s breathing heavy. hair a mess. and she’s staring right at you.

you suck your gum back between your teeth and tilt your head.

“need help with somethin’, farmer?”

her nostrils flare.

“you’re not wearin’ a damn thing under that dress, are you?” she asks, voice low and wrecked.

you smile. swing your leg again. “you tell me.”

she’s on you in seconds.

slams your phone down onto the hay. grabs you by the hips and drags you forward so your legs fall open, that thin dress riding up. her breath stutters.

“jesus fuckin’ christ,” she growls. “look at you. drippin’ already, huh?”

you nod, biting your lip. “all for you.”

she doesn’t even bother teasing this time.

sevika shoves you back onto the hay, kneels between your legs—her big thighs spread wide, heavy body blocking out the sun—and runs her tongue from your knee to your thigh, tasting the sweat and sweetness clinging to your skin.

you writhe.

“you knew what you were doin’,” she murmurs, voice like thunder. “climbin’ up here with that pussy bare and ready.”

“i wanted you to come find me,” you whisper, fingers already fisting in the hay.

and god, she does more than that.

she climbs up onto you, settles her full weight over your smaller body, presses her hot, hairy thighs around your hips and grabs your wrists to pin them above your head again.

“you’re gonna ride me today,” she growls. “earn it.”

and baby, you do.

she lies back in the hay, chest heaving, that tank top riding up to show her belly, soft and full and sweat-damp. she pulls her jeans down just enough to free her strap, and it’s huge, thick and curved and strapped to those broad, scarred hips.

you crawl over her like a girl possessed.

straddle that big farmer’s lap, hands on her belly, her tits, her face—kissing her filthy, mouthing at her jaw while you grind down. her hands grip your hips like vise clamps, guiding you, slow at first.

then rough.

you bounce on her, crying out, drenched and desperate. her strap hits deep, her stomach slaps against yours, the hay sticks to your back and thighs. her big hands never stop moving—grabbing your tits, spanking your ass, pulling your dress down so she can suck marks into your chest while you ride her like she owns the whole damn county.

and she does. and now? she owns you.

“fuck, baby,” sevika groans, sweat dripping off her chin. “you ride me so good.”

you’re panting. “t-tell me i’m your girl—tell me this pussy’s yours—”

she slaps your ass, hard enough to echo in the barn.

“you’re mine,” she growls. “this pussy’s mine. you hear me?”

you scream when you come, full-body shaking, collapsing against her slick chest while she holds you, heavy arm across your back.

and when you finally roll off her and catch your breath, she tucks a piece of straw behind your ear, grinning like a goddamn devil.

“you wanna sleep out here tonight, sugar?” she asks, smirking. “or should i carry you back to the house?”

you bite your lip, cheeks flushed.

“…hay’s fine.”

────

chapter VIII: breakfast of champions, you like waking up here now.

no more rolling your eyes. no more groaning about roosters or dusty boots or early mornings. not when they mean her.

you’re out of bed faster than ever. a quick splash of water on your face, dress yanked over your head, a slap of clear gloss. no panties again—habit now. you like how it makes you feel all day. loose. bare. ready.

she notices, every time.

the walk to her place is still long—dirt crunching under your sandals, sun already warming your skin—but you like it. like the ache in your thighs from yesterday’s riding, the faint sting of hay scratches on your back. little reminders.

she’s already up, of course. has been for hours. the tractor’s silent now, barn doors open, the smell of breakfast hitting you before you even see her.

inside?

a massive wooden table and an even bigger plate of pancakes.

towering. twelve, at least—stacked high, drowning in syrup, melting butter dripping down the sides like something sinful. there’s bacon too. eggs. a glass of milk. and right across from it: a little pink plate with two pancakes, already cut into neat quarters, a few raspberries on the side.

she doesn’t say a word when you walk in—just eyes you up and down real slow, her big hand sliding her chair back as she leans back in it.

“come sit,” sevika grunts, nodding to the chair next to hers. “figured you’d be hungry after yesterday.”

you raise an eyebrow. “you trying to fatten me up or something?”

she smirks. god, that smirk.

“nah. just feedin’ my girl right.”

my girl.

it makes your knees feel weak.

you sit beside her. her knee brushes yours under the table, thick and warm and firm like everything else about her. and then she tears into her food.

jesus.

fork in one hand, a slab of butter in the other. she eats like she’s starving—cleans up five pancakes before you’ve barely touched your second. syrup clings to her fingers. her jaw flexes with every bite. she’s loud, too. chews. groans. washes it all down with a swig of milk that dribbles down her chin and into the thatch of hair on her chest where her tank top gapes open.

she wipes her mouth with the back of her hand.

“somethin’ wrong with yours?” she asks, glancing at your still-full plate.

you blink, cheeks hot. “n-no. i just—how the hell are you still eating?”

she laughs—booming, belly-shaking.

“big girl’s gotta keep her strength up,” she says, leaning in, eyes dragging down your body. “especially when you’re keepin’ her busy all night.”

you look down at your plate to hide the flush crawling up your throat.

you never thought you’d like being around animals, sweating in the heat, or walking through dirt barefoot. but now? you like the work. you like sevika. like her attention, her food, the way she always has something for you—cold lemonade, extra sunscreen, a clean flannel when you get dirty.

you love when her giant shadow falls over you while you’re watering tomatoes. when she lifts bales of hay like they weigh nothing. when she leans over your shoulder to show you how to hold the rake properly and you can feel every inch of her warm, wide chest brush against your back.

she treats you like you matter.

and even though you're still spoiled, still pouty sometimes—you’re starting to understand the language of sweat and sunburns and syrup-covered mornings.

you reach across the table and steal a strip of bacon off her plate.

she raises a brow. “you bold now, huh?”

you smirk back. “feedin’ your girl right, remember?”

she grins. leans in close. her flannel still smells like hay and hard work.

“damn right i am.”

────

by noon, the sun’s brutal. your thighs are sticking to the porch swing, your gloss long gone, and your hair’s tied up in a messy knot with a rubber band you found in one of her junk drawers, your hair tie- thin and pink had snapped somewhere between lifting hay and picking apples. sevika ruffles every time she walks past.

“c’mon, apple pie,” she calls from the kitchen. “lunch is ready.”

odd nickname. perhaps it was because you were so sweet. you hoped so.

you step inside and stop short.

the whole table’s covered.

you blink. “are we feeding the entire county?”

she shrugs, wiping her hands on a kitchen towel. “nah. just you and me.”

just you and me.

you swallow hard.

there’s fried chicken—crispy, golden, still steaming. mashed potatoes drowning in gravy. sweet corn cut fresh off the cob. fluffy biscuits, a bowl of honey butter. collard greens. mac n’ cheese so thick and creamy you can see the strings of cheese clinging to the spoon. iced tea in big mason jars. and, of course, a slice of pecan pie sitting off to the side like dessert’s already decided.

sevika moves around the kitchen like it’s nothing—big, broad back to you as she grabs a fork. the floor creaks under her. every time she turns, her stomach brushes the counter, and it makes something flutter deep in your belly.

you sit down, still staring. “you really cook all this?”

“mhm.” she flops into the chair beside you, makes it groan under her weight. “told you i like feedin’ my girl.”

then she goes to town. watching her eat is… something else.

she doesn’t hold back. doesn’t care if the gravy drips down her chin or if her fingers are shiny with grease.

her bites are huge.

you watch her demolish two legs of chicken before you even finish scooping potatoes. she eats like she works—big, bold, messy.

you shouldn’t like it. you shouldn’t. but your thighs are pressed tight together under the table, lips slightly parted as you watch her chew and swallow. watch the way her throat moves. the sound of her low grunt when she reaches for more.

it's filthy. you're not even eating anymore. just sitting there, heat pooling under your skirt, watching her devour food like she hasn’t eaten in a week.

“i like feedin’ you,” sevika says around a bite, mouth still full, voice thick with pleasure. “like seein’ you lick your fingers. makes me think about what else you’d lick.”

you nearly knock over your tea.

she grins, eyes gleaming.

you clear your throat, try to grab a biscuit, your hands shaky. you dunk it in your mashed potatoes just like she taught you and bite.

“somethin’ on your lip,” she says suddenly.

you glance up. she’s watching you close, still chewing, but she reaches out—big hand cupping your jaw with fingers rough and warm.

she smears her thumb across the corner of your mouth. and then, slow as molasses, she presses that same thumb against your bottom lip.

“go on,” she murmurs. “clean it off.”

you don’t even hesitate.you wrap your lips around her thumb, sucking gently.

your tongue slides over the pad of it, tasting salt and gravy and something darker underneath. her breath hitches.

you feel her twitch next to you.

“jesus,” she mutters.

you pull off with a pop and lick your lips.

“don’t want your sauce to go to waste,” you say sweetly.

she stares at you like she might break the damn table. there’s gravy still on her chest, her neck glistening with sweat. you imagine licking it clean. imagine her pressing you down into the mashed potatoes, holding you there with a greasy, syrup-slick hand around your throat.you shift in your seat, thighs rubbing together.

“you full yet?” she asks, voice low.

you nod. “yeah.”

but your eyes stay on her plate—still piled high—and your voice goes a little breathless as you add, “but i wanna watch you finish.”

she leans back, sets her fork down.

“well,” sevika says, slow and dark, “i got a lot more in me, sweetheart.” you bite your lip. and you believe her.

────

you don't even realize you're doing it. just sitting there like a dumb little doll in your tiny skirt and tank top, watching her finish off a second helping of biscuits and gravy with a low groan in her throat, her belly pushing up against the edge of the table like it’s part of the feast.

she leans back with a deep sigh, rubbing at her stomach under the hem of her stretched-out shirt.

"you really put it away, huh,” you tease, even though your breath’s shallow. you’re still clenching your thighs like it’ll help the ache growing worse by the second.

she just smirks. “gotta keep all this up somehow.” her hand drops to her soft middle with a lazy pat, thick fingers spreading over her curve like she knows exactly what it does to you. “you starin’, sugar?”

you bite your lip. “maybe,”

you whisper.

sevika pushes her chair back with a low creak. then she spreads her legs wide and taps her thick thigh.

“well, c’mere and sit in my lap if you wanna stare that bad.

your mouth goes dry. you hesitate for a split second—but then you're moving. slowly. purposefully. sliding into her lap, your thighs pressing down against the heat of hers, her bulk under you so solid and wide that you feel tiny and delicate by comparison.

she wraps one heavy arm around your waist. the other? it slides right up the back of your skirt. no panties. her breath hitches. you feel her freeze for a second. then: a low, broken chuckle. “well, well,” she murmurs. “came ready to get your ass felt up, huh?”

you nod, lips parted, your chest rising fast against hers. “i figured i’d be climbin’ ladders later,” you breathe. “didn’t wanna deal with anything... in the way.”

she groans, head tipping back.“you’re gonna kill me.” she grabs two handfuls of your ass, palms big enough to nearly cover it all, and starts kneading, rough and slow. her fingers dig in, calloused and demanding.

you rock into her touch without meaning to, little gasps slipping from your mouth as she explores everything you gave her.

“y’really got no shame, huh,” she mutters into your neck, lips dragging over your skin. “teasin’ me all morning in that little skirt, swayin’ those hips like you don’t know what they do to me.”

“i know,” you whisper. “i like what it does to you.”

she groans again—louder this time. her stomach grumbles under you. “fuck, you wanna help me digest, sweetheart? i got all this food sittin’ heavy in me and nowhere to put this energy.”

“use me,” you say, breathless.

“use me how you want.”

her arms tighten around you.then she stands up. with you in her arms like you weigh nothing. like her aching, overstuffed belly isn’t a thing at all as she lifts you and sets you down right on the edge of the kitchen counter, pushing your legs open with her knee.

“i’m gonna ruin you,” she growls, voice low, rough, full of hunger. “ruin you right here with gravy still on my chin and syrup on my shirt.”

you gasp. wrap your arms around her neck. “please.”

you wouldn't be walking tonight.

────

chapter IX: under the steam, you liked her shower

the farmhouse creaked in the heat of the evening, cicadas humming outside like a lullaby made of sweat and dust. the sky was bruised purple and gold, and the air clung to your skin like syrup. after a full day mending fences, hauling hay, and baking under the southern sun, you were sun-tired and aching in the bones. but you weren’t alone—sevika was right beside you, sweat dripping from the tip of her nose, her broad shoulders rolling with each step.

dinner had been heavy. comforting. a mountain of spaghetti slathered in thick, garlicky sauce, with an entire loaf of buttery bread to match. you sat across from her, your plate half-eaten, while she went back for thirds. her fork twirled with effortless hunger, sauce smearing her lip as she groaned low, chewing with lazy satisfaction. her belly, full and warm, stretched the hem of her tank top. you couldn’t stop watching the way her body moved—like she was built for excess, for indulgence, and proud of it.

after the last bite, sevika leaned back in her chair with a loud, satisfied sigh and gave you a lazy look.

"you smell like a cow’s ass," she drawled, lifting her chin. "c’mon. shower time."

you didn't resist when she tugged you by the wrist, guiding you to the tiny bathroom just off the kitchen. the shower wasn’t meant for two—but that didn’t stop her. steam billowed the moment the water hit the tile, and sevika began stripping right there in front of you, with no ceremony. her flannel, soaked with sweat, hit the floor with a wet thud, followed by her tank and jeans.

she was huge. bigger than life. hair curled around her thighs and belly, glistening in the soft amber of the flickering light bulb overhead. her body bore every sign of a life earned by muscle and survival: stretch marks, a gut heavy with comfort, calloused feet, broad hips, thick thighs, arms like tree trunks.

you swallowed hard, unsure if it was the heat or the sight of her that made your knees weak.

"get in," she said simply.

you obeyed, stepping into the cramped stall, water cascading down your back. before you could even shiver, she joined you. her belly pressed into your chest, pushing you against the cool tile wall with a gentle but unyielding force. you squeaked, hands bracing behind you, but sevika only grinned.

"don’t act like you don’t like it," she whispered, hot against your ear.

your hands, trembling, reached for the soap. you lathered your palms and, slowly, hesitantly, began to glide them across her stomach.

it was soft. warm. massive. you couldn’t even span it with both hands, just ran your fingers along the swell, over the curves of her waist, under the underside where her gut met her thighs. she exhaled sharply, pleased.

"mmm. that’s it. wash me proper."

her belly pinned you in place, slick with suds, your cheeks flushed crimson. she ground into you, slow and teasing, letting you feel all of her—every heavy inch. you bit your lip to keep from moaning.

"you like cleanin’ me, sugar?" she teased, eyes glinting. "you gettin’ off on it?"

you were. you couldn’t lie. the heat, the weight, her voice—it was all too much. your hands roamed lower, tracing the crease where belly met thigh, lathering the soft, hairy skin with reverence.

sevika’s hand found the back of your neck and pulled you forward, pressing your face against the curve of her side.

"bet you never had a woman like me before, huh? bet you thought you’d spend your summer sippin’ lattes, not buried under three hundred pounds of real farm girl."

your whimper was all the answer she needed.

steam swirled around you both as the water pounded down, a soundtrack to the quiet moans and heavy breathing. you stayed there, rubbing her down slowly, like you were memorizing her through every drop of soap and every inch of skin. she let you, head tilted back, enjoying the worship.

and when she kissed you—deep and lazy, tasting of garlic and sweat and something sweeter—you clung to her, letting the rest of the world fall away.

because here, under the steam, with your hands on her belly and her weight keeping you warm, you felt like you finally belonged.

────

you wake up tangled in sevika’s sheets, her body heavy and warm behind you, one thick arm draped over your waist like it belongs there. the scent of her—earthy, musky, a little sweet like hay and sweat—clings to your skin. your thighs ache in a way that makes you blush just thinking about it.

downstairs, the smell of food wafts up—bacon, eggs, and something buttery. you throw on one of her shirts, oversized and smelling like her, and pad barefoot to the kitchen.

she's already at the stove, shirtless under her flannel, her broad back glistening with a sheen of sweat, her messy hair tied back. she’s humming, and when she turns, there’s that crooked grin.

“mornin’, sugar.”

you mumble back a greeting, cheeks flushed as you sit at the table. she sets down a plate in front of you—three eggs, half a slab of bacon, toast glistening with butter. then she drops hers down. her plate? double yours. stacked high like a feast. she eats like a damn bear, but somehow it just makes her hotter.

"didn't think you'd be up after last night," she says with a knowing smirk, taking a huge bite of toast. "you looked like you were about to melt in that shower."

you avert your eyes, flustered. “you didn’t help.”

she laughs low and rumbly. “didn’t hear you complainin’ while your hands were all over me.”

she reaches across the table and brushes your thigh under the table with her calloused fingers. you squirm. she’s already working on her second plate, and watching her eat, the way she devours everything with zero shame, makes your stomach twist with something that isn’t just hunger.

“you keep starin’ like that, and i’m gonna think you want me to have you for dessert too.

you take a shaky breath as you watch her continue to eat—watch the way she licks butter from her fingers, the way her thick throat bobs with every swallow. your thighs press together under the table, heart thudding. you feel ridiculous, sitting there with a fork in your hand and dirty thoughts in your head before 9 a.m.

but you want to give something back. you want to do something for her.

when she gets up to rinse her plate, you follow quietly, watching her broad back flex with every movement. she's humming, content and casual. she doesn't notice your steps until your hands are sliding under her flannel, fingertips grazing the slope of her belly, soft and solid and warm.

she stiffens, just a bit. “what’re you up to, darlin’?”

“i wanna make you feel good,” you murmur, voice smaller than you intend it to be. you press a kiss between her shoulder blades. “let me take care of you for once.”

she huffs a low breath, but doesn’t stop you. “you sure?”

you nod, pressing tighter to her back, her belly pushing you back a little just from how big she is. she smells like soap, sweat, and woodsmoke, and you sink into it.

you guide her to the chair and she lets you—sprawled out, thick thighs spread, flannel half open. her belly is round and soft in the early light, rising and falling with each breath. her chest heaves under the wife-pleaser still clinging to her, soaked through in places.

you kneel.

your fingers are trembling as you run them over her thick thighs, over stretch marks and coarse hair, across the curve of her belly. she groans softly as you press your lips to it, kiss the softness like it’s sacred.

“you don’t gotta—”

“i want to,” you interrupt, nuzzling into her warmth.

she’s still for a long moment. then she tips her head back and lets you have your way, your hands and lips worshipping her like it’s all you’ve ever wanted to do.

you trail your fingers over her soft skin, your heart racing as you kneel before her. the sheer size of her overwhelms you in the best way—the way she towers over you, the way she fills the space. your lips follow the curve of her belly, pressing gentle kisses, feeling the heat of her skin, the slight rise and fall of her breath.

sevika watches you, eyes heavy with something darker, something approving. her hands settle on the back of your head, fingers threading through your hair as you take your time, savoring every inch of her. there’s a soft, contented rumble in her chest, a sound that makes your pulse race.

when you nudge her thick thighs apart, your gaze flicks up to meet hers. her eyes are hooded, lips parted just enough to show the edge of a smile.

“don’t stop, sugar,” she murmurs, voice low and rough.

you lean in, planting your lips on the softest, most tender part of her—just below her navel. you kiss her, slow, gentle, then work your way down with your lips trailing over the curve of her belly. your fingers follow, brushing against the coarse hair on her skin, feeling the heat that radiates from her body.

her fingers tighten in your hair, urging you closer, deeper. she guides you, but you don’t need any help—this is what you’ve wanted. to be this close to her, to touch her like she’s everything you need.

her breath catches when you move lower, your hands and lips exploring the space between her thighs. you kiss the inner curve of her leg, feeling her pulse, the heat from her skin making you dizzy. her body tenses slightly, but it’s a good tension, the kind she can’t hide.

“you’re so damn beautiful,” you whisper, just above her skin, the words leaving a mark in the air.

sevika’s hand moves from your hair to your shoulder, pushing you back slightly, her lips forming a teasing grin.

“you’ve got a way with words, sweetheart,” she says, voice thick with desire. she pulls you up, her grip firm and possessive, and she holds you close, breath against your ear. “you wanna do more for me, huh?”

you nod before you can stop yourself, eager to show her how much you’re willing to give, how much you need to give.

her lips crash into yours, hungry, but it’s not just about the kiss. it’s everything—the way she holds you, the weight of her body pressing you into the wall, the scent of her filling your lungs, the roughness of her hands as they slide over your skin.

“then take it,” she growls against your lips.

her hands move like she’s been waiting for you to ask—lifting your shirt over your head, her fingers sliding over your curves with ease. her body presses against you, chest to chest, and you feel her weight, her warmth, her strength. you can’t stop the shiver that runs through you, the way your pulse quickens, the way your whole body reacts to her.

you reach up, tracing her jawline, feeling the rough stubble there, the heat of her skin, the undeniable pull between you.

“sevika,” you murmur, your voice thick with emotion, “you’re everything i never knew i needed.”

her hand lands softly on the back of your neck, holding you in place as she pulls you back into a kiss, harder this time. it’s not gentle, but it’s not cruel—it’s need. you feel her press her full weight against you, and it’s overwhelming in the best way.

she pulls away just enough to look down at you, eyes smoldering, a wicked grin pulling at her lips. “you think you’re the only one who can give? wait ‘til i’m done with you.”

────

chapter X: don’t wanna leave, picking apples has become a daily routine for you

it happens during dinner. just a regular tuesday night. your grandparents' dining room table creaks under the weight of roasted chicken, string beans, thick cornbread dripping with butter—half of it made from sevika’s produce, her apples, her jams. you’ve been the one cooking more lately. helping out. staying in. laughing with them.

you almost forgot what day it was.

until your grandpa clears his throat, eyes soft but firm, and says—

“so,” he starts, slow, “just wanted to ask if you’ve started packin’ yet.”

you pause mid-bite.

“packing?”

“well, it’s almost september, sweetheart.” your grandma’s voice is warm, gentle. “figured you’d be headin’ back soon.”

back.

back to the city.

back to your apartment and rooftop parties and mall food courts and too-short attention spans.

your fork clinks against your plate. you blink, staring at the table, suddenly unable to swallow.

“oh,” you say.

“we’ve got a buyer lined up,” your grandpa adds. “for the farm. upstate couple. quiet folks. we’ve been thinking it’s time. you know, slow things down.”

you nod.

it’s the polite thing to do.

but your ears are ringing.

you can barely taste the chicken anymore. you can’t hear the rest of the conversation over the blood rushing in your head. and all you can think is—i'm not ready. i don’t want to leave.

because she’s still here.

because sevika’s muddy boots are probably kicked off at her door right now, her flannel peeled off and tossed somewhere near the sink, and you don’t want to be anywhere else. not when she looks at you like you’re worth slowing down for. not when her touch makes you feel real for the first time in your life.

that night, you don’t sleep.

you sneak out around midnight. walk down the dirt path barefoot, skirt too thin, arms folded tight. the moonlight slices through the trees and your breath catches when you see the soft yellow glow in sevika’s window, the way it always is when she’s still up late reading or fixing something in the barn.

you don’t knock.

you just open the screen door and step inside. her eyes meet yours from across the room.

“hey,” she says softly, brow furrowed. “what’s wrong?”

you stand there trembling, throat tight, eyes stinging.

“i don’t wanna go,” you whisper.

sevika rises slowly, big frame stretching in the lamplight, shirt riding up her belly. she crosses to you in three strides and pulls you into her arms, warm and solid and smelling like hay, tobacco, and something that feels like home.

“you don’t have to,” she murmurs into your hair.

“but i do,” you say, voice breaking. “they’re selling. my grandparents. it’s—it’s done.”

she stiffens.

and then she holds you tighter. like she’s scared too. like she doesn’t know how to ask the question forming behind her teeth.

you pull back just enough to look up at her.

“i wanna stay,” you say, “with you.”

"then stay" she says.

you don’t give sevika a straight answer that night.

just curl against her chest and let her hold you until the morning breaks, until the light cuts through the curtains and reality settles like dust on your skin. she never asks again—not out loud. she doesn’t need to.

the next few days, you scramble.

you beg your grandparents, half-hearted at first, then desperate.

“can’t we stay a little longer?”

“i think i finally found a rhythm here…”

“wouldn’t it be better to wait until next spring?”

“i could help out more—run the market table, maybe even work the orchard…”

they exchange looks. that kind of knowing glance that says more than words ever could.

“sweetheart,” your grandma says gently one morning over breakfast, “you hated this place when you got here.”

you swallow hard. “i was wrong.”

“about what?”

you hesitate. “everything.”

but the papers have been signed. the new owners are sending movers. boxes are stacking up near the front door. your grandma starts handing out mason jars of sevika’s jam like going-away gifts. you don’t pack your things. you just… shut your door and lie there in bed, scrolling mindlessly through your phone, dozens of unread messages from city friends pinging at the top.

“where the fuck are you”

“you better be back for halloween or i’m slapping you”

“babe i just got us tickets to the rooftop dj set next month get ur glitter ass BACK”

they don’t know you anymore.

not really.

you don’t even know yourself anymore, except when you’re barefoot in the fields or in sevika’s pickup truck with your thighs sticking to the seat and her calloused hand brushing your knee. you know yourself when you're sitting on her lap while she tells you the difference between a john deere and a massey ferguson, or when you're pressed against her chest in the barn with straw in your hair and your panties balled up in your fist.

you know yourself best when you’re with her.

and that self isn’t ready to leave.

but your time’s up.

the night before your departure, you walk the edge of sevika’s orchard, the moon hanging low and gold over the fields. you can hear the wind pushing through the tall corn, the crickets loud in the dark.

you find her at the barn, shirtless, her heavy body slick with sweat from loading up the last bales for the season. she doesn’t say anything when she sees you.

you just stand there, arms crossed tight against the chill, eyes burning.

“i’m leaving tomorrow.”

a nod. slow. she sets the last bale down with a grunt.

“i know.”

“i asked them to stay.”

“i figured.”

“they said no.”

silence.

you take a step forward, then another.

“i didn’t think i’d care this much,” you admit.

sevika’s breath catches in her throat. her eyes flick down to your lips, your hands, the hem of your hoodie—hers, you stole it last week and never gave it back.

you close the distance, chest tight, voice a whisper now.

“i don’t want to go back to that life. i wanna stay out here. with the dirt, the sweat, the heavy things. with you.”

still, she doesn’t move.

but her jaw tenses. her hands ball into fists. she’s scared too—you can see it in the way her mouth softens, her eyes refuse to meet yours.

“then stay,” she rasps.

“i can’t.”

you both fall quiet.

somewhere in the dark, an owl hoots.

and all at once, you realize—this isn’t a love story with an easy ending.

it’s real.

it’s hard. and messy. and full of aching gaps.

but god, you want her.

you want this.

you take her hand. it’s big and rough and warm. you press your mouth to her knuckles, eyes stinging.

“i’ll come back,” you promise. “i don’t care how long it takes.”

she just pulls you in. lets your head fall against her chest again. and for the rest of the night, she holds you like she’s afraid if she lets go, you’ll disappear forever.

────

epilogue: the cold city, her warm skin

the city felt like a cage, even as you tried to convince yourself otherwise.

college was a whirlwind of classes and late nights, lectures and new faces, but your mind was always half a world away — back in that small southern town, beneath the endless stretches of apple trees, where sweat and earth mixed in the air like an intoxicating perfume.

you kept the letters you sent to sevika tucked away in your drawer, ink smudged from hurried notes and trembling hands.

each one was a whisper, a confession, a thread reaching across the miles, carrying pieces of your heart home.

"dear sevika," you wrote one night, after a particularly hard day of exams,

"the city is loud and empty without you. the buildings are tall but cold, and i miss the warmth of your skin, the way your laughter fills the room like sunlight through the barn windows. when i close my eyes, i can still taste the syrup on your pancakes, feel the weight of your body pressed against mine, steady and safe. i’m counting the days until i can come back to you, to the farm, to the sweat, to the apples, and to us."

she wrote back too, her words like the steady rhythm of a heartbeat you could feel through the paper.

she told you about the crops, the changing seasons, the stubborn weeds she battled and the slow, steady growth of her orchard.

she described how the sun baked the fields golden and how the smell of fresh-turned earth stayed on her skin after a long day’s work.

her letters smelled faintly of hay and sweat, and that was the sweetest scent of all.

time moved in strange ways — slow and fast, filled with longing and hope — until finally, the day came when you stood on that cracked farm road again, suitcase in hand, heart pounding louder than you thought possible.

the farmhouse stood there, the porch light flickering as twilight settled, and then you saw her.

sevika. still massive and powerful, every inch of her telling stories of earth and strength.

her flannel hung loose around her broad shoulders, stained with dirt and sweat, her belly soft and full beneath the fabric, her calloused hands tucked into the pockets of her worn jeans.

her hair was streaked with silver now, but those dark eyes — fierce, tender, unyielding — held all the fire you remembered.

“you’re back,” she said, voice low and rough, a smile tugging at her lips.

you dropped your bags, your breath catching.

“you’re home.”

you fell into each other like the earth embraces rain — thirsty, desperate, full of life.

she pulled you close, her hands warm and steady on your back, and you traced the curve of her belly with your fingers, marveling at how much she had grown, how much she had held onto, how much she held you now.

you kissed under the fading sky, the world shrinking to just you two, to the soft rhythm of your hearts beating in time.

days melted into nights and back again.

you worked the farm side by side, learning the language of the land, her teaching you how to listen to the trees and the soil.

mornings began with giant stacks of pancakes dripping with syrup, her laughter booming through the kitchen, her hands steady as she poured coffee and wiped syrup from your lips.

afternoons were spent tangled in the grass, sun-warmed and sweaty, her body a fortress around you, her breath hot against your neck.

the nights were yours alone.

she was heavy and strong, the weight of her body grounding you, her hair wild around your face, her scent raw and alive.

you worshipped each other — every curve, every scar, every calloused palm and soft whisper.

her hair grew wild, her skin kissed by the sun and sweat and time, and you loved every inch of her, every secret the earth had carved into her.

your parents called less and less, their voices tinged with disappointment when they heard you weren’t coming back to the city.

they disowned you, made it clear the farm and sevika weren’t the life they wanted for you.

but you didn’t care.

here, beneath the apple trees and the wide open sky, you were free.

here, you were loved.

one afternoon, as the sun dipped low and the orchard smelled of ripe fruit and rain to come, sevika pulled you close.

“you stay,” she said, her voice soft but sure.

“this is where you belong.”

and you smiled, because you knew it was true.

you were home.

────

epilogue, (pt.2): the honeysuckle heat of home.

your days began to blur together in the most beautiful way.

you woke each morning wrapped in the weight of her — limbs slung over you like anchors, her breath warm against your neck, her belly brushing your spine as she shifted, groaning softly in her sleep.

you’d roll over and kiss her chest, nestling there, listening to the slow, steady thrum of her heartbeat like it was your favorite song.

you made coffee while barefoot in the kitchen, her behind you, hips swaying lazily against yours as she reached around to grab the sugar.

sometimes she’d lift you onto the counter without a word, her palms spreading across the backs of your thighs, and just stand there, forehead against yours, soaking you in like sunlight.

you didn’t always speak — you didn’t have to.

some mornings you’d head into the orchard right away, baskets in hand, her massive frame silhouetted against the sun.

you’d watch the muscles shift beneath her skin as she worked, sweat clinging to her in ways that made your throat tighten.

sometimes you’d sneak up behind her just to wrap your arms around her soft belly, rest your cheek against the curve of her back and breathe her in.

she always leaned into you with a low grunt of satisfaction, her hands still working even as you clung to her like a second skin.

you sold jam on saturdays.

set up your little table at the farmer’s market, her towering presence a magnet for attention — rough hands, sharp jaw, worn boots, belly rounding beneath her apron like a harvest moon.

she’d let you talk to the customers while she leaned on the table, chewing sunflower seeds, watching you with eyes half-lidded in adoration.

and when you got too hot or tired, she’d shove a lemonade into your hand and drag you behind the tent, her palm splayed across the small of your back, muttering, “you work too damn hard, city girl.”

you’d lean into her, your temple against the sweat-slick swell of her stomach, and nod.

because you did. but for her, you’d do

────

epilogue, (pt.3): greying hairs and peace.

years passed like petals in the wind.

sevika got grayer.

you got lines around your eyes.

the farm never stopped needing you — weeds to pull, fences to mend, jars to fill, apples to pluck.

but the world got quieter.

softer.

you started dancing in the kitchen more.

you kissed without reason.

you laughed like you had all the time in the world.

your parents never called again.

they sent back the letters unopened.

but it didn’t matter — not really.

because for the first time in your life, you weren’t reaching toward someone who’d never reach back.

you were building something.

with her.

you planted more trees.

painted the bedroom walls a soft peach.

put up wind chimes in the porch archway that clinked and clattered like a lullaby in storm winds.

sometimes you’d lie in bed and whisper about the life you’d carved out —

the one no one ever expected,

the one you almost didn’t choose,

the one that saved you both.

“you know,” she’d murmur, her lips pressed to your shoulder, “i think you were the best damn thing that ever happened to me.”

you’d smile.

“funny. i was just thinking the same thing.”

and that was it.

no grand epiphany, no cinematic swell.

just mornings of sunlight in mason jars.

just sweat and apple blossoms and the way she held you like you were the only soft thing she'd ever been allowed to love.

you never needed more than that.

not when forever looked like her.

not when forever smelled like earth and jam and sun-warmed cotton.

not when forever was a woman with a strong back, a big belly, and hands that never let go.

and so you stayed.

and stayed.

and stayed.

until staying became the only story you’d ever need to tell.

until her name was stitched into the seams of every quiet hour.

until the apple trees bent low with fruit, and your heart —

well.

it was full.

THE MOTHER FUCKING END BITCHES!!

#i love pussy

#wheres my fat butch

#just wanna be a girl w her farmer butch

#i want that tangy fat puss

[dduane]

Status report: In the "Adventures in Staying Housed" dep't...

Greetings to the Bluesky folks who've dropped by! Just to confirm what's going on:

We're hoping to sign the lease on our rented house in a couple/few days (as soon as the dust from the St. Patrick's Day bank holiday has settled), but despite best efforts, we've got some rental arrears that we're very much hoping to be able to deal with in the short term, to make sure the signing happens. Some extra cash flow in the short term would therefore be a really big help.

With that in mind, may I possibly point you at the following SF and fantasy ebook bundles at our ebook store? All are DRM-free and come with our lifetime replacement guarantee if you lose the files or your reading device, change platforms, or whatever. (With this caveat only: due to Brexit, we can no longer sell into the UK. Our profound apologies.) And once you buy a book from us, you own it. Period.

Our store's full inventory of the revised/edited Young Wizards young adult SF/fantasy novels, and the interstitial works that go with them, is here:

All the current works in the LGBTQ-centered Middle Kingdoms adult fantasy universe are here:

And should you be feeling expansive, the bundle containing our entire store inventory—36 ebooks at present—is here:

...Finally: if you're all ebooked up at the moment, but you'd still like to be of assistance... after some public-demand style noodging, we've finally installed a Ko-Fi. If you choose to go this route, please consider yourself thanked in advance for your thoughtfulness! We very much appreciate it.

Thanks so much, everybody! ❤ ...And we very much look forward to enlarging your TBR pile.

(And our deepest thanks, also, to those who've already become involved in this effort, one way or the other. We're thinking of you with constant and amazed affection.)