#PAIN sackler

[hyperallergic]

Nan Goldin has always been a documentarian. The new film “All the Beauty and the Bloodshed” feels less like a biography than a natural extension of her life’s work, a kind of collaboration between director Laura Poitras and the famed photographer on a cinematic memoir. 

 The film’s structure forcefully posits multiple parallels between the world Goldin grew up in and the one she fights in today — between AIDS and the opioid crisis, between historical and contemporary neglect of the marginalized, between queer life then and now. 

Read the full review.

[luxe-pauvre]

“Familiarity with beauty can only breed more beauty,” he [James Rorimer] liked to say.

Patrick Radden Keefe, Empire of Pain: The Secret History of the Sackler Dynasty

[lem0nademouth]

hey uh opioids aren’t the problem. a lot of other things - corporate greed, lack of access to preventative healthcare, poverty, policing, the criminalization of prescription medication & cannabis, ableism, racism, lack of access to abortions and contraceptives - all of those and more are the problem. opioids are life saving medications. “alternative pain management” rarely works. but it’s so much easier to blame a drug than it is to accept the blame yourself.

[cesaray]

[thequeereview]

Film Review: All the Beauty & the Bloodshed ★★★★★

Film Review: All the Beauty & the Bloodshed ★★★★★

Oscar and Pulitzer Prize-winning documentary filmmaker Laura Poitras’ exceptional All the Beauty and the Bloodshed—which was Queer Lion-nominated and won the Golden Lion for best film at Venice—weaves a compelling dual narrative that shifts between an unflinchingly personal portrait of photographer Nan Goldin’s life and career, and a focus on her recent campaign to hold those culpable for the…

[hedgehog-moss]

My top 10 nonfiction reads of 2023 (the asterisked ones are in French with no translation as of yet) :

Belle Greene, Alexandra Lapierre

The Indomitable Marie-Antoinette, Simone Bertière

Reporter: A Memoir, Seymour Hersh

Red Carpet: Hollywood, China and the Global Battle for Cultural Supremacy, Erich Schwartzel

Empire of Pain: The Secret History of the Sackler Dynasty, Patrick Keefe

Servir les riches, Alizée Delpierre*

La Comtesse Greffulhe : L’ombre des Guermantes, Laure Hillerin*

Le Courage de la nuance, Jean Birnbaum*

The Book Collectors of Daraya, Delphine Minoui

Flowers of Fire: The Inside Story of South Korea's Feminist Movement, Hawon Jung

[qqueenofhades]

top ten non-fiction (general) books and top ten history books?

Naturally, whenever I volunteer to talk about books, I completely forget everything I have ever read, but we'll try to overcome this. Since it is impossible for me to pick them from all-time, I'll do this list from what I have recently read and enjoyed, including both nonfiction and history specifically since most of these fit that bill somehow:

Society of the Snow by Pablo Vierci. Just finished this last night, and it's the source material for the Netflix film of the same name, of the 1972 plane crash of an Uruguayan rugby team in the Andes and their incredible survival odyssey. If you've seen the film, you know how harrowing and also incredibly moving it is.

Pretty much anything by David Grann, including The Wager, Killers of the Flower Moon, Lost City of Z, etc. The Wager is his newest one, though people may have heard of Killers of the Flower Moon, but they're all good. He's up there with Erik Larson as one of my favorite writers of utterly gripping and novelistic nonfiction.

Speaking of Erik Larson: pretty much anything by, including Dead Wake, The Splendid and the Vile, In the Garden of Beasts, etc. Most people will have heard of and/or read Devil in the White City, but his other stuff is equally good. His newest, The Demon of Unrest, is a bit slower than some of the others IMHO, but it's also about the beginning of the Civil War and the crisis at Fort Sumter and is important reading in our current perilous moment.

Challenger: A True Story of Heroism and Disaster on the Edge of Space by Adam Higginbotham. A forensic and incredibly detailed history of the Challenger space shuttle disaster in 1986.

A Travel Guide to the Middle Ages, by Anthony Bale. This is an entertaining and readable introduction to mobility in the Middle Ages: who traveled, where they went, what they thought, and how they reacted and wrote about the other cultures they encountered, from both east and west. Definitely a good entry point for the layman who has heard the "medieval people never traveled/went anywhere" stereotype and knows it's wrong, but wants to know more HOW.

Into the Silence: Mallory, the Great War, and the Conquest of Everest by Wade Davis. Another incredibly detailed doorstopper history book that reads like a novel, exploring 19th-century British imperialism in Asia, the race to climb Mount Everest, the Great War, and more.

Emperor of Rome and SPQR by Mary Beard. These are both incredibly accessible starting points for studying Rome, written by a renowned classicist with a knack for making her historical material and concepts easy to understand and entertaining. Don't be put off by the length of either of these, as they read easily.

The Wide Wide Sea and The Kingdom of Ice by Hampton Sides. The former is his newest book, about the last voyage of Captain Cook, and the latter is my favorite of his other books, about the 19th-century USS Jeannette polar expedition. He is a writer of incredible skill, thoughtfulness, and detail in handling subjects of empire, exploration, colonialism, maritime history, and adventure.

Empire of Pain: The Secret History of the Sackler Dynasty, by Patrick Raddon O'Keefe. A compelling, disturbing, mesmerizing, and infuriating account of the Sackler family, the creation of OxyContin, and the opioid epidemic in America.

Master Slave Husband Wife, by Ilyon Woo. Now, this one is a bit cheating since I haven't actually read it yet (it's on hold at the library), but it's won the Pulitzer Prize for history so I'm fairly sure it's going to be good. It's about 19th century slaves-turned-abolitionists William and Ellen Craft and their race- and gender-bending journey to freedom and anti-slavery activism.

[luulapants]

I started rewatching House and can we just talk about how medically ridiculous their treatment of his opioid addiction is??

The first episode where they really address it, Cuddy accuses him of being addicted to Vicodin (specifically mentioning that his does has doubled since she first hired him). He says, I'm not addicted, I just need it for pain. These are treated as different entities and it is never considered that drugs a person needs can be addictive.

She then challenges him to go one week without his pain pills, cold turkey. She says he'll go through withdrawal, which is obviously true because anyone who has been on any opioid for an extended period of time will experience withdrawals if they are not carefully weaned off the drugs. This is because opioids are inherently physically addictive. House, bizarrely, claims that he will not experience withdrawal and will simply be in pain. This is because he is Not Addicted to the Super Addictive Drug.

House, predictably, starts showing withdrawal symptoms. Everyone regards this as incontrovertible evidence that House is Addicted to Drugs. No one mentions that there are tons of non-opioid, non-recreational drugs that you have to wean off slowly to avoid withdrawal symptoms. Having withdrawals in their view is clear evidence of being Addicted to your drugs, which is different from Needing the drugs. All of this is insane.

Anyway, what a bizarre relic from the end of the Sackler opioid push, removing any perceived danger from the drug itself and entirely assigning blame to an individual's personal relationship with the drug.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

The Sacklers woulda gotten away with it if it wasn't for those darned meddling feds

The saga of the Sacklers, a multigenerational billionaire crime family of mass-murdering dope-peddlers, is an enraging parable about how the wealthy, the courts, and sadistic high-powered lawyers collude to destroy the lives of millions, profit handsomely, and evade justice.

But there's an unexpected twist to this tale. After the Sacklers procured a sham bankruptcy that denied their victims the right to sue while leaving their fortune largely intact, the Supreme Court – yes, this Supreme Court – saw through the scam and froze the process, pending a full hearing:

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/10/us/supreme-court-purdue-pharma-opioid-settlement.html

The Sacklers basically invented modern, legal dope peddling. Arthur Sackler, the family's original crime-boss, revived the practice of direct-to-consumer drug marketing, dormant since the death of the medicine show, to peddle Valium. An aggressive and shrewd lobbyist, Arthur built the family fortune and, more importantly, its connections:

https://www.timesofisrael.com/how-the-sackler-family-built-a-pharma-dynasty-and-fueled-an-american-calamity/

A generation later, the family's business company created Oxycontin, and procured misleading and false research about the drug's safety kickstarting the opioid epidemic, whose American body-count is closing in on a million dead. Armed with inflated claims about opioid safety, the Sacklers' pharma reps bribed, cajoled and tricked doctors into writing millions of prescriptions for oxy.

This scam had a natural best-before date. As ODs flooded America's ERs and bodies piled up in America's morgues, it became increasingly clear that something was rotten. The Sacklers pursued a multipronged campaign to keep the truth from coming to light, and to keep the billions flowing.

On the one hand, they hired McKinsey to find novel ways to encourage doctors to keep writing prescriptions and to convince pharmacists to turn a blind eye to abuse. McKinsey had all kinds of great ideas here, including paying pharma distributors cash bonuses for every overdose death in their territory:

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/03/business/mckinsey-opioids-settlement.html

When the issue of these deaths came up in public, the Sacklers blamed "criminal addicts" for their own misery, stigmatizing both people who desperately needed pain relief and the people who'd been deliberately hooked on the Sacklers' products. The legacy of this smear campaign is still with us, both in the contempt for people struggling with addiction and in the cruel barriers placed between people in unbearable agony and medical relief.

But mostly, the Sacklers kept their names out of it. They laundered their reputations by donating a homeopathic fraction of their vast drug fortune to art galleries and museums in a bid to make their names synonymous with good deeds.

The Sacklers didn't invent this trick. Think of the way that history's great monsters – Carnegie, Mellon, Rockefeller, Ford – are remembered today for the foundations and charities that bear their names, not for the untold misery they inflicted on their workers, their crimes against their customers, and the corruption of governments.

But the Sacklers made those Gilded Age barons seem like amateurs. They invented a modern elite philanthropy playbook that Anand Giridharadas documents in his must-read Winners Take All, about the charity-industrial complex that washes away an ocean of blood with a trickle of money:

https://memex.craphound.com/2018/11/10/winners-take-all-modern-philanthropy-means-that-giving-some-away-is-more-important-than-how-you-got-it/

As part of this PR exercise, the individual Sacklers kept their names and images out of the public eye. For years, there were virtually no news-service photos of individual Sacklers. When journalists dared to criticize the family, they used vicious attack-lawyers to intimidate them into retractions and silence (I was threatened by the Sacklers' lawyers).

They also worked their media mogul pals, like Mike Bloomberg, who added their names to the "Friends of Mike" list that Bloomberg reporters were required to consult before writing negative coverage:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/02/29/friends-of-mike-enemies-of-the-people/#sacklerbergs

But Stein's Law says that "anything that can't go on forever will eventually stop." As lawsuits mounted, the Sacklers found themselves increasingly synonymous with death, not charitable works. But like any canny criminal, the Sacklers had a getaway plan.

First, they extracted vast sums from Purdue and shifted it into offshore financial secrecy havens:

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-purduepharma-bankruptcy/sacklers-reaped-up-to-13-billion-from-oxycontin-maker-u-s-states-say-idUSKBN1WJ19V

Even as this money was disappearing into legal black holes, the Sacklers demanded – and received – extraordinary protection from the courts, who aggressively sealed testimony and materials presented through discovery:

https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa-courts-secrecy-judges/

When this gambit finally failed, the Sacklers insisted that were down to their last $4 billion, and, with trillions in claims pending against them, they declared bankruptcy.

When a normal person declares bankruptcy, they are required to divest themselves of nearly everything of value they possess, and then still find themselves hounded by cruel arm-breakers who deluge them with threatening calls and letters:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/05/19/zombie-debt/#damnation

But for the richest people in America, bankruptcy is merely a way to cleanse one's balance sheet of liabilities for any atrocity you may have committed on the way, without giving up your fortune.

The Sacklers are a case-study in how a corrupt bankruptcy can be conducted.

Purdue Pharma presents a maddening case-study in the corrupt benefits of bankruptcy. When it was announced in March, many were outraged to learn that the Sacklers were going to walk away with billions, while their victims got stiffed.

First, they converted their victims' right to compensation into "property" that the Sacklers themselves owned. This transferred jurisdiction over these claims from the regular court system to the bankruptcy court. A bankruptcy judge – not a jury – would decide how much each of these claims was worth, and then what how much of that worth these victims (now recast as creditors) would be entitled to through the bankruptcy.

Thus tens of thousands of claims were nonconsensually settled without a trial, by an administrative judge with no criminal jurisdiction, not a federal judge who'd undergone Senate confirmation:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/03/31/vaccine-for-the-global-south/#claims-extinguished

These "coercive restructuring techniques" are not available to everyday people who are drowning in student debt or credit-card bills – these are the exclusive purview of the wealthiest Americans, who enjoy a completely different bankruptcy system that is rigged in their favor.

Three judges – David Jones and Marvin Isgur of Houston and Bob Drain of New York – hear 96% of the country's large corporate bankruptcies:

https://www.creditslips.org/creditslips/2021/05/judge-shopping-in-bankruptcy.html

These judges are unbelievably horny for corporations, embracing a legal theory "that casts the invention of the limited liability corporation alongside that of the steam engine as a paradigmatic development in the pursuit of prosperity":

https://prospect.org/justice/how-do-you-solve-a-problem-like-the-sacklers-purdue-pharma-bankruptcy/

Now there are more than three bankruptcy judges in America, so how do the nation's biggest companies get their cases heard by these three enthusiastic Renfields for corporate vampirism?

They cheat.

For example: when GM was facing bankruptcy, it argued that it was a New York company on the basis that it owned a single Chevy dealership in Harlem, and got in front of Judge Drain.

The Sacklers were – characteristically – even more brazen. They really wanted to get their case in front of Judge Drain, the nation's most enthusiastic supporter of "third party releases," through which bankrupt billionaires can wipe the slate clean, securing dismissals of all claims by the people they wronged.

Drain is also uniquely hostile to independent examiners, "an independent third-party appointed by the court to investigate 'fraud, dishonesty, incompetence, misconduct, mismanagement, or irregularity…by current or former management of the debtor."

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3851339

If you're the Sacklers, hoping to keep two thirds of your billions and extinguish all claims by your victims, there is no better helpmeet than Judge Robert Drain of the Southern District of New York.

So, 192 days before filing for bankruptcy, the Sacklers opened an office in White Plains, New York (a company may claim jurisdiction in a specific court once they've operated a business there for 180 days).

Then they filed a bankruptcy in which they altered the metadata on their casefile, inserting the code for a Westchester county hearing into the machine-readable, human-invisible parts of the documents they uploaded to the federal Case Management/Electronic Case Files (CM/ECF) system (they also captioned the case with "RDD, for "Robert D Drain").

They chose their judge, and the judge obliged. UCLA Law's Lynn LoPucki is one of the leading scholars of these bankruptcy "megacases," and has written extensively on why these three judges are so deferential to corporate criminals seeking to flense themselves of culpability. She sees judges like Drain motivated by "personal aggrandizement and celebrity and ability to indirectly channel to the local bankruptcy bar. The judge is the star and the ringmaster of a megacase – very appealing to certain personalities."

Thus, these judges are "willing and eager to cater to debtors to attract business…[an] assurance to debtors that…these judges will not transfer out cases with improper venue or rule against the debtor…"

https://www.fulcrum.org/concern/monographs/02870w66d

This kind of judge-shopping goes beyond the Sacklers; the cases that Drain and co preside over make a mockery of the idea of America as a land of equal justice. "Prepack" and "drive-through" bankruptcies are reliable get-out-of-jail-free cards for capitalism's worst monsters: private equity firms.

Whether PE murdered your grandmother by buying her care-home and putting each worker in charge of 30 seniors:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/portopiccolo-nursing-homes-maryland/2020/12/21/a1ffb2a6-292b-11eb-9b14-ad872157ebc9_story.html

or poisoned your kids by filling your neighborhood with carcinogens:

https://www.webmd.com/special-reports/ethylene-oxide/20190719/residents-unaware-of-cancer-causing-toxin-in-air

limited liability wipes the slate clean.

30% of America's bankruptcies are private equity companies using the bankruptcy system to wipe away claims for their misdeeds, while keeping a fortune, thanks to the shield of limited liability.

Take Millennium Health, JamesS lattery's fake drug-testing company, which promised to help nursing homes figure out whether seniors were abusing (or selling) their meds by testing their piss for angel dust and other drugs. Slattery defrauded Medicare and Medicaid for millions, borrowed $1.8 billion (Slattery got $1.3 billion of that). He eventually walked away from this fraud after paying a mere $256m to settle all claims, and kept a fortune in assets, including the 40 vintage planes his private company ("Pissed Away LLC" – I am not making this up) owned:

https://prospect.org/justice/how-do-you-solve-a-problem-like-the-sacklers-purdue-pharma-bankruptcy/

For the wealthy, bankruptcy is the sport of kings, a way to skip out on consequences. For the poor, bankruptcy is an anchor – or a noose. This is by design: judges who preside over elite bankruptcies speak of their protagonists as heroic "risk takers" and tiptoe around any consequences, lest these titans be chained to a mortal's fate, costing us all the benefits of their entrepreneurial genius.

PE companies helped the Sacklers design their own bankruptcy strategy, and it was a standout, even by the standards of Bob Drain and his kangaroo bankruptcy court. But now, the Supreme Court has pumped the brakes on the whole enterprise.

The judges ruled that the exceptions the Sacklers took advantage of were intended for bankrupts in "financial distress" – not billionaires with vast fortunes hidden overseas. In so doing, the court threatens all manner of corrupt arrangements, from "the Boy Scouts, wildfires and allegations of sexual abuse in the church diocese — where third parties get a benefit from a bankruptcy they themselves aren’t going through.”

The case was brought by the DoJ's US Trustee Program, which lost in the Second Circuit when it tried to halt the Purdue bankruptcy and argued that the Sacklers themselves had to declare bankruptcy to discharge the claims against them.

Now the Supremes have hit pause on the bankruptcy the Second Circuit approved, and will hear the case themselves. It's only one step on a long road, but it's an unprecedented one. Some of the country's filthiest fortunes are riding on the outcome.

Going to Defcon this weekend? I’m giving a keynote, “An Audacious Plan to Halt the Internet’s Enshittification and Throw it Into Reverse,” tomorrow (Aug 12) at 12:30pm, followed by a book signing at the No Starch Press booth at 2:30pm!

https://info.defcon.org/event/?id=50826

I’m kickstarting the audiobook for “The Internet Con: How To Seize the Means of Computation,” a Big Tech disassembly manual to disenshittify the web and bring back the old, good internet. It’s a DRM-free book, which means Audible won’t carry it, so this crowdfunder is essential. Back now to get the audio, Verso hardcover and ebook:

http://seizethemeansofcomputation.org

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

https://pluralistic.net/2023/08/11/justice-delayed/#justice-redeemed

Image: Edwardx (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Serpentine_Sackler_Gallery,_June_2016_05.jpg

CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/deed.en

[luxe-pauvre]

From an early age, he evinced a set of qualities that would propel and shape his life — a singular vigour, a roving intelligence, an inexhaustible ambition.

Patrick Radden Keefe, Empire of Pain: The Secret History of the Sackler Dynasty

[ausetkmt]

Pain killer: an empire of deceit and the origin of America's opioid epidemic

Pain killer: an empire of deceit and the origin of America's opioid epidemic

In Pain Killer, Barry Meier breaks new ground in his decades-long investigation into the opioid epidemic.

Between 1999 and 2017, an estimated 250,000 Americans died from overdoses involving prescription painkillers, a plague ignited by Purdue Pharma’s aggressive marketing of OxyContin. Families, working class and wealthy, have been torn apart, businesses destroyed, and public officials pushed to the brink. Meanwhile, the drugmaker’s owners, Raymond and Mortimer Sackler, whose names adorn museums worldwide, made enormous fortunes from the commercial success of OxyContin.   In Pain Killer, Barry Meier tells the story of how Purdue turned OxyContin into a billion-dollar blockbuster. Powerful narcotic painkillers, or opioids, were once used as drugs of last resort for pain sufferers. But Purdue launched an unprecedented marketing campaign claiming that the drug’s long-acting formulation made it safer to use than traditional painkillers for many types of pain. That illusion was quickly shattered as drug abusers learned that crushing an Oxy could release its narcotic payload all at once. Even in its prescribed form, Oxy proved fiercely addictive. As OxyContin’s use and abuse grew, Purdue concealed what it knew from regulators, doctors, and patients.   Here are the people who profited from the crisis and those who paid the price, those who plotted in boardrooms and those who tried to sound alarm bells. A country doctor in rural Virginia, Art Van Zee, took on Purdue and warned officials about OxyContin abuse. An ebullient high school cheerleader, Lindsey Myers, was reduced to stealing from her parents to feed her escalating Oxy habit. A hard-charging DEA official, Laura Nagel, tried to hold Purdue executives to account.   In Pain Killer, Barry Meier breaks new ground in his decades-long investigation into the opioid epidemic.

He takes readers inside Purdue to show how long the company withheld information about the abuse of OxyContin and gives a shocking account of the Justice Department’s failure to alter the trajectory of the opioid epidemic and protect thousands of lives. Equal parts crime thriller, medical detective story, and business exposé, Pain Killer is a hard-hitting look at how a supposed wonder drug became the gateway drug to a national tragedy.

From the Pulitzer Prize–winning New York Times reporter who first exposed the roots of the opioid epidemic and the secretive world of the Sackler family behind Purdue Pharma, Pain Killer is the celebrated landmark story of corporate greed and government negligence that inspired the Netflix limited series Painkiller.   “This is the book that started it all. Barry Meier is a heroic reporter and Pain Killer is a muckraking classic.”—Patrick Radden Keefe, author of Empire of Pain New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice

[thetorturerwrites]

Lylas

Summ: Adam Sackler was never one for beating around the bush, but this level of blunt was beyond comprehension - even for him.

Notes: Purely self-indulgent filth. There will probably be other parts to this because I cannot get it out of my head, but I have no set time frame for it. Also, I do not apologize for the extraneous world-building in my smut. That's just how I roll... (Also also, some of this might be in response to the fact that not everything has to be squirting...)

~

“You should let me fuck you.”

The cavalier way he said such a bizarre thing made you short circuit. Astonished, you stopped mid-shoelace-tie and stared up at him. Adam Sackler was never one for beating around the bush, but this level of blunt was beyond comprehension - even for him.

“What?! Why?”

He grinned down at you because, with you right there on the ottoman, you sat eye level with his dick. With that cheshire grin turned on you, you unexpectedly forgot how to breathe. You’d never looked at Adam that way before, but with one question, he upended your world view. Adam was lethally beautiful, and he knew it. Shaggy black hair swept back and forth over his dark eyes to match his moods - off to the right for mischievous, low over the brow for brooding. It was easy to admit he was a looker, but you’d never considered him to be anything beyond that. A big, glaring red flag permanently hung over his head since the day he walked into your house. Now, though…

He certainly watched, and enjoyed, the struggle going on in your mind and not-so-casually slid both hands smoothly, purposefully into the pockets of those well-worn, low slung, faded blue jeans and leaned his hips forward at you. Of course you looked. Who wouldn’t? Catching yourself, you forced your eyes up to his green t-shirt, but that wasn’t much help because it fit him offensively well. Painted on would be an understatement. Adam was all wide shoulders and shelf-like pecs, and suddenly, you understood his sex appeal. Forcing your face into a placid mask, you waved him off and bent to finish tying your damn shoe. Time to get the fuck out of this room.

You forgot, however, that you’d asked him a question.

“One, you bring home shitty dudes. Two, I don’t want to date. After that last bullshit…”

The last bullshit being the most recent round of Hannah and Jessa, both idiot girls who ran roughshod over Adam and his tender heart. On more than one occasion, you’d seen fit to murder one right after the other, but nobody could tell Adam anything. He was a right pain in the ass and a whole pervert, but he was also kind and doting, a thing those two heifers took advantage of too often. He was also stubborn to a fault, and when he believed a thing, or when he wanted something, he would pursue it 100%. He’d believed in them, but even he had to admit they were trash in the end.

“... this would be the perfect solution.” You realized he’d not stopped talking while you took that mental break, and you struggled to focus. “One stop shop.”

Shoe finally situated, you stood, pretending not to be acutely aware of the way he watched you smooth the wrinkles from your plum blouse and rub the wrinkles out of the thighs of your pants. Masquerading as confident, you jabbed at the air between you.

“First? Rude.” Although, internally you admitted you brought home shitty dudes. They never seemed shitty until they walked out the door, leaving you unsatisfied and annoyed. All dudes were shitty, though, weren’t they? There was no earthly reason to believe Adam was any better despite how much he believed himself superior.

“Second? Jim and Carly would shit kittens.”

Jim and Carly were your parents - his mom and your dad, specifically. They met in Tahoe on a Friday and were married by the following Sunday. Secretly, you believed Carly was in it for the money because Jim was - no two ways about it - loaded, but she genuinely seemed to love your dad. After all the heartache he’d endured, you found you couldn’t begrudge him that happiness, even if it made your teeth itch. In a blur, the Sacklers moved into Jim’s mansion on the hill, filling it with more noise than either of you could remember. With internships, college, and the damn economy, it made sense for everyone to live at home; so, you all had to learn to live together.

Well, sort of. Jim and Carly never stayed home long enough to get used to anybody, really. Jetsetters, they called themselves, which left the rest of the household free rein.

At the mention of your part-time parents, Adam took a step forward, brow piqued, lips pursed.

“You in the habit of sharing all the naughty details about your love life with dear old daddy, baby sister?”

He only called you that when he wanted to rile you up or when he wanted something - both true in this case.

“Me?” You laughed, a full-on, hold your belly laugh. “Ha! You’re not exactly shy about the vast number of “dirty sluts” (you even treated him to finger quotes) you’ve found in the area, Sackler. You don’t need to tell us anything about your love life, you shit, because everybody already knows!”

Wiping delighted tears from your eyes, you shook your head. It really was too absurd.

“No, this is… too weird, and not for nothing, it's kind of creepy. I promise you’ll find shiny new sluts to fuck just around the corner at what’s-her-face’s block party. But please, wait five minutes so I can vacate the premises before you do whatever it is you do.”

~

Adam loved it when you laughed. He spent an inordinate amount of time trying to make you laugh because your eyes sparkled in such a pretty way, and your face softened all over. To put it plainly, you lit up from the inside. After Hannah��s crazy and Jessa’s perpetual moodiness, he simply enjoyed watching you laugh because it was easy to get you to do it. Easygoing and whip smart, he found he enjoyed the mental sparring with you because you could keep up, and you weren’t so fucking dramatic. 

That started everything.

Soon enough, he couldn’t get you - or your laugh - out of his head. Finding out about all the other faces and noises you made infected his brain. Now, when you laughed, his eyes trailed away from your face to the rest of your body because he wanted to see the effect of that laugh all over you. The bob of your breasts when he got you particularly good, the way you often held your waist and huffed at him, drawing attention to your generous hips - the details of you affected him far more than they should have and made him want to affect you just as much. 

If he was completely honest, he didn’t give a single shit if Jim or Carly ever found out. He was pretty sure he still wouldn’t give a shit if your relationship was by blood rather than marriage. He was going to fuck you. It was only a matter of time.

“Those are good reasons, baby sister, but that’s not a no…”

~

The problem was that Adam was right.

“Hey, uh..” The shitty dude you’d escorted to your front door turned at the threshold, beet red and stammering. “I’ll call you, yeah?”

You didn’t even remember his name.

“Sure. Yeah. Whenever?”

Probably more abruptly than you should have, you shut the door in his face and then let your forehead fall against it with a loud thud. You threw your fists in the air, irritated and crabby. Meeting him was nice. The party was pleasant; the wine flowed freely. His kisses tasted like candy, and the way he nibbled your neck was delightful.

After the banter, the ride home, and the bourbon, however, Rick… Robin?... Roger? Yes, Roger was all talk and no substance. His bed-game was decidedly lacking. All he’d accomplished was a nice warm-up, whiskey dick, and no grand finale for you. 

“It's. -thunk- Not. -thunk- That. -thunk- Hard!”

“Whatcha’up to, kid?”

You shrieked, jumped a foot off the floor, and spun with fists raised to knock the threat out, in theory at least.

“Jesus fucking Christ, Sackler. You scared the shit out of me.”

Rubbing at your sternum to calm the racing of your heart, you slumped back against the door. You concentrated so hard on regulating your breathing that you didn’t hear him shuffle closer. Nor did you notice him leaning over you, his thick left arm braced on the door above your head, until his crooked index finger lifted your chin. Only then did the alarm bells ring because damn that was a sexy move. And Christ on a cracker he smelled good - salt from the ocean blended with caramel spice. It made your mouth water. 

“Feel like now’s the time for I told you so,” he quipped, the corner of his mouth lifting. “Tell you what…” The arm that was overhead slithered over your torso, settling a good bit of his weight across your shoulders. “I’ll do this, and you can tell people I forced you.”

He winked, and a second later, his warm hand slid into your DIY sleep shorts. You’d worn the ugly cut-off sweatpants pair to dissuade your date from lingering. Now, you wished you’d found an actual pair of pants because the shorts only gave away how traitorous your cunt was. Skillfully, Adam’s middle finger found the groove between your tacky labia, using the residual (barely) slickness from your failed attempt at sexy times with… Rufus? Ryan? Regardless of his name, his touches were clumsy compared to this. Adam kept an even pace and the exact right amount of pressure, sliding in the perfect way to coerce more wetness from your entrance and carry it back to your swollen clit.

You croaked, straight up sounded like you swallowed a frog because as his fingers defiled you south of the border, his stare wrecked you up north. His beautiful brown eyes were whiskey warm tonight, softened at the edges but intently focused upon you. You could get drunk on those kinds of eyes. If he gazed at all his conquests like this - as though nothing else mattered - you understood the pull. It moved, his stare, from your eyes to your mouth and back. You nearly begged him to kiss you but this was already so strange, so taboo. 

And yet… and yet…

~

He’d never been so fucking pleased to be right in his life.

All he had to do was get you there, and he’d win the argument. Roman, a guy he met on the track, was manufactured to be an idiot and would never figure out how to fuck right, even if his life hung in the balance. How he'd managed to even meet you was beyond understanding. 

Adam, however, had been fucking since he was 14, and he’d long since learned all the magic buttons. It was the one good thing to have come from his years struggling with sobriety. Replacing alcohol with sex taught him a lifetime’s worth of skills. Skills he now used to pull another squeak from your pouty mouth. Each time the pad of his finger caught your hood, the reluctant peep you made shot straight to his dick. He wasn’t sure if he would manage to not fuck you tonight, but he reminded himself that he had to play the long game.

For a solid 30 seconds, he rubbed only at your clit, back and forth, back and forth. He set a very specific rhythm that had you twisting beneath him deliciously. Your yelping grew louder and louder until one in particular cracked, and that was his cue.

“Hold my shoulder.” He nudged your nose with his to get your attention and nodded when both of your hands came up to rest on his chest and biceps. “That’s it.”

He couldn’t help himself from licking at the way your mouth popped open when he slid his fingers inside of you. The way the corners turned up was too tantalizing to ignore.

~

Mother Mary of God… He was inside you. Granted, it was only his fingers, but they belonged to your step-brother. Your face burned, but the hundred objections your brain conjured died at the back of your tongue because fuck, they were good. Two fingers, middle and ring, had you whining like a schoolgirl as he carefully, deliberately explored you. He wasn’t awkward about it like every other dude who’d been in your pants. He didn’t stab at your cunt as though he’d miraculously grown a jackhammer for a hand.

Nope. He took his time, slow and steady. He noted the angles and ridges that made you moan. And when he found that perfect spot, the spot that made you curse far louder than you intended, he stayed right there. There was no in and out anymore, no poking or prodding. Once he found it, his touch shifted from up/down and in/out to side to side. You came unfuckingglued. All ten fingers dug into hard flesh. You all but leapt into his arms as he rubbed at your tight bundle of electric nerves from the inside. And the more you responded, the faster he went.

“There’s nobody here, kid. Let’s hear it.”

You couldn’t have swallowed the cries for every dollar your dad invested in this huge-ass house. Your hips bucked against Adam’s expert manhandling, chasing that elusive sort of orgasm you can only get from someone else. Closer and closer it crept. Tighter and tighter you wound. From you knew not where, you found your voice, though it was scratchy and broken.

“D-don’t stop un-until I sh-sh-shake.”

His dark brow lifted, but he didn’t argue. It was a thing hardly anybody knew (because hardly anybody could fucking deliver), but a great orgasm, a really fantastic one, made you shake. Not tremble. Not wiggle. A full-body, clack your teeth kind of shake. On another day, you’d have been embarrassed to tell him that, but you watched determination change his face from amused and entertained to keenly interested. His efforts inside your cunt multiplied until you went rigid. He wanted to see it, clearly, but more than that, you wanted it, salivated for it. Right here on the cusp, you didn’t care that it would happen at his hands.

With your head tipped back, eyes screwed shut, and mouth agape, that hot-wet bud of ecstasy finally bloomed, and you wailed. It was electric, shooting sparks into your fingertips, but somehow, in the very middle of it, both of your hands wrapped around his wrist on the off chance he’d stop right at the best part, which they all did, but Adam only chuckled and carried right on fucking you stupid with nothing but two fingers.

Vulgar sounds squelched out around his fingers to accompany the vulgar things he whispered in your ear. Dirty girl with your pants around your ankles. Are you always this easy? Who’s the best big brother ever? Your pussy gushed; your ears rang. You rode his fingers like a champion, reveling in the quake and the rag-doll rattling of your insides.

The whole thing was indecent, fit for film, really.

~

Don’t fuck this up. Don’t fuck this up. You cannot fuck her tonight. Do not fuck this up.

Long game. Long game. Long game.

You fell back against the door, wincing when he extricated his fingers. He wanted to wrap himself around you and keep pushing, but he held back. This was a delicate operation, and straying too much to either side would fuck it all up. You’d either blow up at him and feel like he actually assaulted you, or you’d never speak to him again. Neither was a winning scenario. Tamping down his near-manic need to taste you, he gently traced your lips with his gummy fingers until you opened your eyes.

“That was some show, kid.”

Confusion crinkled the corners of your eyes, and he nuzzled your chin, matching the fire in your cheek with his own. He understood. His proposal wasn’t normal, and how much you’d obviously enjoyed it probably had you all up in your feelings. Hovering his mouth above yours, so close he could feel your breath, he fought himself over whether you needed to be kissed.

But when you lifted ever so slightly onto your toes, seeking it out, he clenched his jaw hard and fought the urge to fuck you right here on the floor. Somehow, he kept his shit together, and he thought certainly he deserved a goddamn medal for valor. He pushed away and veered you towards the stairs.

“Time to go, little sister. It’s past your bedtime.”

~

For a week, Adam cornered you at least once a day to stuff your pussy full of his thick fingers and make you beg. After that first time, he knew exactly how to play you, and he delighted in drawing it out until you pleaded for him to make you cum. You’d mistakenly said his name during your second encounter, and now, he wouldn’t come anywhere near the things that made you shake without hearing it.

You never considered yourself the begging type, but it turns out that when someone knows precisely the way to touch you and the exact right way to make you scream as you climax, begging becomes much more palatable. It also turns out that whether Jim and Carly were home didn’t make a single bit of difference because when Adam texted you his offer from across the kitchen table, you ran after him like the house was on fire.

That’s how you wound up here, sitting on the edge of Adam’s desk, naked as the day you were born, legs spread obscenely wide and panties crammed in your mouth to keep you muffled if not quiet. With one hand deftly driving into your messy cunt and one wrapped around your hip to coax it into a rocking motion, he all but pulverized your sanity. Up was down, left was right, and “brother” was just another fucking word. As you inched higher and higher up climax mountain, you rationalized you weren’t really doing anything wrong. He’d never fucked you in any other way than this. He wasn’t a real brother, either. There was nothing wrong with a little fun, right? Sure, it was strange, but when he… fuck when he hit that spot right… right there… your brain went…

“You should let me fuck you,” he murmured against your throat, a throwback to what started all this.

It crackled in your prefrontal cortex, and you pushed at his bare chest, babbling incoherently because part of you thought it was the worst idea ever, and part of you thought it would be the best fucking thing in the history of ever. They argued with each other behind your eyes. That was too far. Wasn’t it? But it would feel so good. You couldn’t, possibly. Right? Sure, you could. Twice on Sunday, even. Surely, he had plenty of other options. Didn’t he? Who fucking cares?

“Just a little, kid. I’ve made it good for you, yeah? Just the tip.”

Your thoughts on the matter were irrelevant, it seemed, because the clink of his buckle launched you into a panic. You tried to escape his grip by leaning back, but he clenched his arm around your back, making escape impossible. Struggling to keep calm, you realized it felt ridiculous and performative to panic because you splayed across his desk like you were posing for his calendar. You gawked at him, eyes shining with something you couldn’t quite pin down because processing that your step-brother was about to put any part of his dick inside you was overwhelming. This was too much, too forbidden.

“Now, don’t look at me like that.” He rubbed soothing circles into your ribcage and stepped in. You felt the weight of a cock you’d never seen laying against your swollen pussy, eliciting a low groan. “Only for a minute. Stay right there; don’t move.”

And then, there it was. The round head of Adam’s cock slowly breached your body’s sticky barrier and scrambled your senses. Tears formed. Your chest heaved - because you wanted him to ravage you, to fuck you dumb and blind, but you just couldn’t. Right?

Maybe your inner monologue wasn’t so silent. Or maybe he read your mind. Something changed, though, from “just the tip” to an iron grip and his right hand over your gagged mouth as he snapped his hips and slid all the way home.

~

Adam expected you to shout, to have an outright tantrum and draw far too much attention to the situation. Instead, you shuddered against him the way you did when you came all over his fingers - not as hard but definitely unmistakable.

“That’s it. S’good cock, isn’t it? Told you you’d like it.”

Testing the waters, he withdrew about halfway and slowly pushed in again, absolutely loving the way you moaned in response. He’d nearly cum in his pants when you let him shove your panties into your mouth, and whenever he looked at you still gritting your teeth into them, his dick throbbed. With no firm objection, he unwound from his caging stance and took proper hold of your perfect, meaty ass. He scooted you closer to the edge of his desk, damn near falling off, so he could get his demanding dick inside you from tip to root right fucking now.

~

Adam’s cock was fat. There was no other way to describe it. He filled you up so completely you couldn’t even blink. The slide of his girth against your insides was dizzyingly good, and all you could do was cling to his shoulders.

And when he started talking? That dirty way with that sexy-ass voice?

It fucked you all the way up.

The things he said to you, too, differed from the things you’d heard him say to his hook-ups. They were filthy sluts, not even worthy to come over in the daylight, just a hole for him to get off to. You were his dirty little sister, though, weren’t you? Too cock-drunk to even say no to big brother. You loved his fat cock, didn’t you? You’d let him fuck you whenever he wanted, wouldn’t you?

You were positively, expertly, no two ways about it done for.

Like a dick-addled fool, you nodded along with all of it. You’d say whatever he wanted as long as he kept packing more and more of his missile cock into your aching cunt. Maybe that’s what you wanted - to be reduced to an object, a fuckdoll sister he’d turn inside out at his whim with no recourse to say no. When that idea took hold, you vibrated against him. You generally didn’t orgasm from penetration alone, but by sheer size, Adam rubbed at every single one of your spongy triggers with each stroke. Coupled with the downright pornographic thoughts in your fucked-out head, you whined like a petulant child, overcome by the effort it took to keep quiet, to keep yourself coherent.

“What the fuck is going on here?”

Your eyes flew open, tracking the voice to its owner, who leaned against the doorframe, arms crossed over a very familiar broad chest. You burned from ears to toes, knowing this looked exactly like what it was, and there was no pretending it was anything else. Even worse, your deviant fantasy abruptly shifted to include these extra details - wind-faded jeans, threadbare gray cotton shirt bleached by the sun, and a brush of red across a nose and cheekbones matching those you'd looked up at for days. He was a carbon copy of the man currently demolishing your boundaries by burying himself to the hilt in your body.

Ben, Adam’s twin, the wayward son, had finally home from his camping trip to the desert.

~

Adam nestled his face in your neck to hide his smugness. He knew his brother would be home today, and he timed everything around the fact Ben said he’d be here early afternoon. Edging you was a cake-walk. He’d been practicing all week, and when he saw the text asking if he needed anything from their favorite pizza place, he knew how much time he had to get you right and ready so Ben would find you well and truly empty-headed and sexed out. 

Ben wasn’t sold on having you. He half liked the idea, but he thought it was more trouble than it would be worth. More than once, though, Adam caught him lazily stroking himself while watching you run down the beach or sunbathe by the pool. It would only take a nudge to get his brother fully invested. Adam played the moment, and specifically you, perfectly, and holy shit if this wasn’t one for the books. You and your round eyes, searching for an explanation that would make sense of why he was balls deep in your tight cunt on a Saturday afternoon.

“Someone’s been a bad girl,” he said to his brother, licking a stripe across your thundering pulse. “What do you think, bad girl, wanna show Ben how you shake?”

~

You sobbed. There was nothing for it because Adam’s cock never stopped. His brother’s presence in the room didn’t faze him one bit, and it took a full minute for you to realize it was some of that twin bullshit you were always on them about. Of course they’d seen each other fucking. They probably fucked lots of people together. You bristled with humiliation because it was obvious Adam set this up, but your pussy, smart bitch, clutched at his every thrust, considerably more so when he asked you such a depraved thing.

Meeker than you intended, you nodded because yes, you did, in fact, want to show Ben how you came. 

Adam shifted his weight, pulling out of your sloppy cunt for only the time it took to put your feet on the floor and turn you to face Ben. He hummed as he grabbed your hips, pulled you back against his body, and let his cock find his target. Your head dropped on a moan as he filled you back up because it was even better this way. You had surer footing, could brace yourself on the desk’s corner, and didn’t have to concentrate on not falling. Using fistfuls of your hips as leverage, Adam crashed into you, sending jolts throughout your already overstimulated body. It was glorious.

And then, Ben’s boots came into your line of sight, followed swiftly by his muscular hand around your throat, silver rings cool against your heated flesh. You tracked beauty mark to beauty mark, wondering when the constellations kissed his cheeks. You should have been mortified. Ben finding you here with Adam should have struck you dead there and then, but it only emboldened you because his eyes weren’t full of judgment. He wasn’t disgusted by what he saw. His honey-gold gaze, laced with hunger, burned into you possessively. He held you by the neck, the strength of his grip waxing and waning in time to your heartbeat, while his brother plowed you from behind. When his voice wiggled its way into your ear, your knees nearly buckled. Adam’s was clear but devious, which made his filthy quips more surprising because they were hard to expect. Ben talked very little. His voice, which you didn’t truly appreciate until this moment, was rough and low, like his very voice box was calloused.

“Is this the first time he’s fucked you?”

You whimpered, eyes drifting shut until you felt a rough tap at your cheek. His face, all furrowed brows and licked lips, telegraphed that next time, he’d slap you proper. Pushing yourself to stare straight into his eyes - it was like looking into the sun - you nodded again, feeling every bit of your desire dribble down your legs because one brother was great, but two was immaculate.

“Is this the last time he’ll fuck you?”

Your guts clenched, and you reached out to stabilize yourself by laying both hands on Ben’s chest, which you already understood was only because he allowed it. Without a second thought, eager even, you shook your head. You’d reached the point where you’d let him - no them - do whatever they wanted whenever they wanted it because holy goddamn.

Adam chose this moment to increase the speed with which he fucked you into oblivion. His hips slapped against yours, hands clamping down onto your shoulders for better leverage. Your eyes crossed, and you nearly swallowed your gag. With one hand on Ben, you reached up to grip Adam’s fingers, anchoring yourself between the two of them. They were your literal rock and a hard place, and they worked in tandem to drive you thoroughly crazy. Ben’s hand slipped between your legs, fingers finding your slippery clit. You howled, spine waking up to tingle and dance. 

“Fuck, there it is,” Adam groaned behind you. 

What else could you do but give him what he wanted?

~

His brother had told him about the way you shook when you orgasmed, and he really had thought nothing of it. Most people did that, didn’t they? If you did the job right, there was always a tremor in the legs, a wobble in the walk.

Ben was not prepared for the way you shook when you came.

For a second, he thought you were about to have a seizure, but he watched your face smooth out in pleasure, watched your lips turn up at the very corners, and he was flat out shocked by what he’d just witnessed. 

You loved it. Loved being fucked. Loved coming so undone your mind stopped working. For him, it was the way you smiled as you came. The shaking was stunning, of course, but nobody he’d ever fucked before had goddamn smiled - beamed! - through their climax. It was truly the sexiest thing he’d ever seen.

And then he grinned like the devil himself because fucking hell…

“You’re fucked, little sister. You know that?” 

He scooped some of your slick onto his finger and popped it in his mouth. Shit, you even tasted like candy.

“Well and truly fucked.”

[theunstuffedpepper]

Fun filled weekend with my brother and sister in law! We did a touch-a-truck event in the rain, ate lunch at a great brewery, and I got some 1:1 time to catch up with my SIL. After they left Sunday morning, Holden and I played in the sandbox while Derrick napped, and I did some bird watching while we played too. Can’t help myself. Then the four of us hit our favorite lunch spot.

Last week was incredibly exhausting with a hectic work schedule and I’m feeling run down from it. Debating whether I’m getting sick—fingers crossed I’m not. Derrick had a good night of sleep last night, so I’m hoping for one more tonight and to feel more rested tomorrow.

The weather here today was nothing short of perfection. Having all the windows open is good for the soul. I’m getting so stoked for this spring season.

I’m trying to read Empire of Pain by Patrick Radden Keefe.. it’s about the Sackler dynasty and their involvement in the opioid crisis. It’s slow going.

Just finishing up bedtime with my littlest dude, then it’s a shower and a hot cup of tea for this girl. Happy tax day y’all 😆

[weareallstoriesintheend]

Little rituals // Pinky promises with Sackler

Aka pinky size kink

-the last anon you smooched

Oh I wonder who this could be 😉

I made it cute so sorry for the lack of kink lol

Pinky Promise (Adam Sackler x Reader)

“You never promise!” he exclaimed, paddle-size hands flapping around in indignation. Adam had been your roommate for two years and not once had you promised him anything, and that fact drove him crazy. You were precious about your promises and honestly his mischievousness unnerved you on the best of days, so you teased him about it and dangled it in front of him like a carrot for a rabbit.

Your laughter only made him more exasperated, “The thought of you holding me to something is… terrifying.”

You mocked a shudder and he huffed before storming off into the bathroom. The door rattled the frame behind him, “One day!” he shouted, the sound muffled through the wood of the door.

Rolling your eyes, you went back to cooking dinner, “In your dreams Sackler!”

-----------

His eyes zeroed in on you, squinting suspiciously, “Seriously kid, what the fuck is up with you and promises?”

He waved an accusatory and expectant pinky finger in your face; you were sitting on the sofa trying to read your book and he was hunched in the opposite corner like a gargoyle. He’d been trying all weekend to get you to agree to something, thrusting his over-sized pinky at you for every opportunity. Would you promise to buy him a pizza later? Or take a shower cause you apparently ‘stink’? Or would you promise to marry and repopulate the earth with him if you were the last two people on earth?

“I don’t promise lightly Sackler, what can I say?” Once again you shrugged, the annoyance on his face was making you more stubborn and far more amused.

-----------

 It was the first time you’d seen him cry. His sister had been in town.

You knew family stress got to him, honestly the more you heard about them the more you understand why he was a little…. out there.

All you did was sit and listen; you’d never seen him like this so mostly your silence was just the result of being dumbstruck. There was something so painful about the tone of his voice, like years of tiredness piled on top of him in one dinner with his sister and he had boiled over.

There had been yelling, apparently, some threats that set Adams teeth on edge and then he’d come home.

“I’m better off on my own, crazy fuckin’ family don’t deserve me anyway,” he ranted, harshly rubbing the heels of his palms into his eyes. You watched him quietly, unsure of the right thing to say.

He buried his face, fingertips massaging the hairline at his temples. He was still whisper-muttering to himself as you watched him.

“Adam…” you said, but he just grunted into his palms.

You sighed, “Adam….”

“Jesus, what kid?” he huffed, leaning up and glaring at you. His face was red, dampness was smudged around his eyes.

His eyes dropped from your face and zeroed in on what you were holding out to him. Your pinky finger.

You extended it like an olive branch with a tentative smile. His face burst into a toothy grin, his shoulders relaxed down from up around his ears and he turned his body to face you like he had to fully commit to the action.

Slowly he curled his fingers to his palm bar one, the pinky. Cautiously, like a nervous animal, he returned the gesture.

You raised your eyebrows encouragingly as the tips of your two fingers touched.

Your finger wrapped around his securely, your hand seeming baby-like against the gargantuan size of his, “I promise you’ll never be on your own.”

[tanadrin]

Do you think the Sacklers knew the harmful effects when pushing opioids in America or did they have good intentions?

Honestly I’m not convinced the problem is the American healthcare system overprescribing opiates. The problem might be not taking pain seriously, and cutting people off from necessary medication that allows them to live pain-free (or at least with reduced pain), thus forcing them to seek out dangerous black market alternatives.

Opiate addiction isn’t great, but the moralizing way it’s talked about makes me suspicious.

[jurassicworldtieindrpepper]

Reading List

to be updated constantly

Articles:

"Why Women Online Can’t Stop Reading Fairy Porn" by C.T. Jones for Rolling Stone

"They Called 911 for Help. Police and Prosecutors Used a New Junk Science to Decide They Were Liars." by Brett Murphy for ProPublica

"‘I Think My Husband Is Trashing My Novel on Goodreads!’" by Emily Gould for The Cut

"Woman in Retrograde" by Isabel Cristo for The Cut

"The unwanted Spanish soccer kiss is textbook male chauvinism. Don’t excuse it" by Moira Donegan for the Guardian

"I Started the Media Men List" by Moira Donegan for The Cut

"What Moira Donegan Did for Young Women Writers" by Jordana Rosenfeld for The Nation

"The Key Detail Missing From the Narrative About O.J. and Race" by Joel Anderson for Slate

"The Coiled Ferocity of Zendaya" by Matt Zoller Seitz for Vulture

"OJ Simpson died the comfortable death in old age that Nicole Brown should have had" by Moira Donegan for The Guardian

"Norm Macdonald Was the Hater O.J. Simpson Could Never Outrun" by Miles Klee for Rolling Stone

"Trans Stylists and Makeup Artists Are Reshaping Red Carpet Looks. Will They Get the Credit They’re Due?" by James Factora

"The ‘perfect Aryan’ child used in Nazi propaganda was actually Jewish" by Terrence McCoy for The Washington Post

"There Are Too Many Books; Or, Publishing Shouldn’t Be All About Quantity" by Maris Kreizman for Literary Hub

"An O.J. Juror on What The People v. O.J. Simpson Got Right and Wrong" by Ashley Reese for Vulture

"Super Cute Please Like" by Nicole Lipman for N + 1 Magazine

Essays:

Not That Bad: Dispatches from Rape Culture edited by Roxanne Gay

Creep: Accusations and Confessions by Myriam Gurba

"On Chappell Roan and Gen Z Pop" by Miranda Reinert

"In Memory of Nicole Brown Simpson" by Andrea Dworkin

"My Gender Is Dyke" by Alexandria Juarez for Autostraddle

"Columnists and Their Lives of Quiet Desperation" by Hamilton Nolan

Nonfiction:

Belabored: A Vindication of the Rights of Pregnant Women by Lyz Lenz

The Feminine Mystique by Betty Friedan

This American Ex-Wife: How I Ended My Marriage and Started My Life by Lyz Lenz

The Gentrification of the Mind: Witness to a Lost Imagination by Sarah Schulman

Savage Appetites: Four True Stories of Women, Crime, and Obsession by Rachel Monroe

The Sexual Politics of Meat: A Feminist-Vegetarian Critical Theory by Carol J. Adams

Eros the Bittersweet by Anne Carson

Who Owns This Sentence? A History of Copyrights and Wrongs by David Bellos & Alexandre Montagu

The Once and Future Sex: Going Medieval on Women's Roles in Society by Eleanor Janega

Moby Dyke: An Obsessive Quest to Track Down the Last Remaining Lesbian Bars in America by Krista Burton

University of Nike: How Corporate Cash Bought American Higher Education by Joshua Hunt

What it Feels Like for a Girl by Paris Lees

Female Masculinity by J. Jack Halberstam

The Theory of Everything Else: A Voyage Into the World of the Weird by Dan Schreiber

Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers by Mary Roach

Better Living Through Birding: Notes from a Black Man in the Natural World by Christian Cooper

Rivermouth: A Chronicle of Language, Faith, and Migration by Alejandra Oliva

Unlikeable Female Characters: The Women Pop Culture Wants You to Hate by Anna Bogutskaya

Born a Crime: Stories From a South African Childhood by Trevor Noah

Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents by Isabel Wilkerson

The Lady from the Black Lagoon: Hollywood Monsters and the Lost Legacy of Milicent Patrick by Mallory O'Meara

Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End by Atul Gawande

Stone Butch Blues by Leslie Feinberg

Eyeliner: A Cultural History by Zahra Hankir

Against Technoableism: Rethinking Who Needs Improvement by Ashley Shew

The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny and Murder by David Grann

Know My Name by Chanel Miller

Empire of Pain: The Secret History of the Sackler Dynasty by Patrick Radden Keefe

Novelist as a Vocation by Haruki Murakami

Rape-Revenge Films: A Critical Study by Alexandra Heller-Nicholas

Fiction:

To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf

Middlemarch by George Eliot

Just as You Are by Camille Kellogg

Just Happy to Be Here by Naomi Kanakia

The Misadventures of an Amateur Naturalist by Ceinwen Langley

Family Meal by Bryan Washington

Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton

The Mountain in the Sea by Ray Nayler

Ring Shout by P. Djèlí Clark

My Heart Is a Chainsaw by Stephen Graham Jones

An Island Princess Starts a Scandal by Adriana Herrera

Blackouts by Justin Torres

We Do What We Do in the Dark by Michelle Hart

Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro

Less Is Lost by Andrew Sean Greer

The Faithless by C.L. Clark

Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir

The Poppy War by R.F. Kuang

The Disenchantments by Nina LaCour

Everything Leads to You by Nina LaCour

Bliss Montage by Ling Ma

Pachinko by Min Jin Lee

The Institute by Stephen King

Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke

Frankenstein: Junji Ito Story Collection by Junji Ito

Her Body and Other Parties: Stories by Carmen Maria Machado

Young Mungo by Douglas Stuart

The Dark Forest by Liu Cixin

Snuff by Terry Pratchett

Travelers Along the Way: A Robin Hood Remix by Aminah Mae Safi

Only a Monster by Vanessa Len