#Public Relations Concentration

[paul-newmans-sauce]

gonna see if i can beg my advisor into letting me do independent study for my political science capstone bc im so close to being done this fuckass major but theres like no polisci classes available to take w/o them being at some disgusting time. idk

[chaoticwriting]

THE FATHER

A tall man is walking down a hallway, slowly turning on the lights as he knocks on the door to the rooms along the hallway. Rustles can be heard from each room as Danny moves from room to room. After all rooms have been knocked on, Danny goes down the stairs and goes to the dining room.

He sees the Lunch Lady moving out a whole stack of plates, arranging them on the tables. Danny offers to help but Lunch Lady refuses his offer and he just nods and gives a smile. He sits at the head table as he watches food being placed one by one by her. Soon, children enter the dining room and take their seats waiting until all of the seats is filled.

Children: Thank you for the food!

All the children eat happily while chatting with each other. Danny also eats his food as he is reminiscing about his childhood.

When all the kids finished their food, a woman with green hair enters the room holding a purse.

Kitty: Alright kids, time to go to school. Uncle Johnny is already waiting outside.

The kids reply with yes and cheers as they quickly wash their hands. All of them take their lunch boxes from the top counter and give Danny a hug.

Children: Bye, dad.

Danny: Goodbye, kids. Behaved well at schools and remember to call for me if any of you need help.

Children: Yeeess!

As they reply, Kitty rushes them off outside as they are a little late for school. Danny sends a few blob ghosts after them in case Kitty and Johnny need help sending or watching the kids. After all they are only 2 people compared to the 2 dozen kids they're sending to schools.

Danny goes to his study as Wulf opens a portal and places his paperwork on his table. Danny gives a silent thank you as he busy himself while waiting for the kids to come home.

-6 months ago-

Danny arrives in Gotham after he makes the decision to stay here. After Vlad is healed from his mania courtesy of Jazz and Frostbite, he falls into minor depression at the thought of almost killing his best friend and making his godson go through all those horrible experiences. As a form of repentance, he gives Danny his company as he fully dedicated himself to improving Amity Park and serving the people. He also helps to lobby against the anti ecto act with his few connections. Add in the testimony from Maddie and Jack, the leading scientists in the ectoplasm field.

The act is immediately removed after it is made public and the US government receives a major blow from the feedback. All the personnel that are related to GIW are also captured under the order of the United Nation and the Justice League.

Danny also puts down his mantle as Phantom after the act is removed because by that point, team Phantom can even deal with an Ancient by how liminal some of them are. They are so liminal that they are almost a halfa by this point. They also gained their own powers recently like Sam has Phytokinesis and healing power, Tucker gains Technomancy and Psammokinesis, Val has superhuman physique and can fly and Jazz is now a very powerful psychic. Their combined efforts easily fend off Vortex and Overgrowth last time. Add in that Vlad also helps sometimes, Amity Park is pretty much safe.

So Danny after getting nagged persuaded by Jazz about going to college, decides to further his study into engineering at Gotham. Why? Because not only does Gotham have a high concentration of ectoplasm in their air (not as high as Amity but pretty high compared to any other places except Bludhaven), but it is also because he gained a scholarship there.

Vladco also getting changed in leadership with Danny being the new CEO, giving Tucker and Sam their own position and many top positions to people he knows. Why would he do that someone might ask? Because it is easier to do his work and also college at the same time with his power. Such as learning how to clone himself courtesy of Vlad and opening portal with Wulf's help.

There are also other heroes in the area so he doesn't need to worry about protecting the people in Gotham. Except that's not what happened.

When Danny first arrived at one of the mansions Vlad had bought in Gotham, the place was practically empty. It was cleaned and neat and all but no one was in there. After moving everything in, Danny decides to take a walk outside to take a view of his surroundings.

When Danny arrived at the less unfortunate parts of Gotham, he saw a lot of homeless kids running around. Kids, not teenagers. Danny in his goodwill and screaming core offers the kids to give them shelter. Maybe it is because kids are more sensitive to supernatural elements but it almost seems like they understand him conveying his emotions.

The kids decided to trust him and follow him home and Danny called in Lunch Lady to prepare a meal for them. Lunch Lady, the ever amazing cook, made some fabulous meals for all the kids including Danny as they ate happily.

Danny can see the distrust in their eyes so he didn't insist on them staying until the next morning. He even left the doors and windows unlocked just in case any of them wished to leave early.

He was pleasantly surprised when he saw all the kids in their shared room by morning. He offered to take them in and although the kids were very wary of him, they decided to give him some trust.

And after that, it is pretty much smooth sailing. One after another more and more kids enter the mansion. It's not that Danny goes out to pick them, it is the kids that go out of their way to invite other kids when given permission by Danny.

As for money, it is pretty easy to convert all the items that he stole got from Pariah Dark's haunt. With his multi billion company, he has a lot of power in his hand. Both figuratively and literally. He also sets up a legal foster care center so that he can take in kids easier and get funds legally.

Overall, there are 2 dozen kids that are registered residents of his mansion while there are around 100 more that are not registered either because they technically already have a guardian/parents or they wish to remain unrecorded for some reason.

Unknown to Danny, his reputation has been rising frighteningly fast these past few months. From his kind persona, his amazingly genius intellect and all his charity all the way to how good looking he is, it makes the public go wild on him.

Of course there are some haters that will try to bring down his efforts but those voices are often drowned by thousands of other voices who uplift him.

Of course that is mainly because all of his interactions with people so far have been positive interactions.

That is until the incident happens

-Present Time-

Danny is finishing his homework today as the kids decide to do a little outing to play at the arcade. Danny gives them some money *cough 1000$ cough* and let them go on their own after they beg to not have any adult supervision. Danny knows that is a bad idea but he can't say no to all those cute puppy eyes.

Suddenly, a notification enters his phone. A livestream from Joker's official website (that somehow hasn't been taken down). Danny has a bad feeling about it and opens the livestream to see Joker on live screen laughing as he monologues about his ideals or something.

What really catches his attention is the background of the room. Isn't that the arcade? Shit shit shit shit shit. His kids are there. His kids! HIS KIDS! Danny swears that if his kids are hurt in any way, Joker might need to say his last goodbye even if Batman and his whole spendex army are there. No one hurts his kids and gets away with it. Ask the guy that bullies Ellie when she travels around the world. Well you can't cause the guy is with Dan and no one gets away from Dan.

Danny takes his cane as he goes to his car. This is not any other car. This is a Fenton Car. Turning on the engine sounds like a bomb is going off in his car at the moment. Danny flicks a few switches and the car suddenly changes from the usual sleek black to a white and black with green neon lights coming from some sides.

His father and mother go crazy when they know he is Phantom. Not in the bad way, but in a good way. They apologize heavily but after Danny gets a little uncomfortable with them being so somber around him, he offers to help them build some ghost machines that can help them deal with ghosts without actually hurting them. His parents are ecstatic. This car is also one of the reasons his parents ask him to pursue engineering since he is very good at it. Like super good.

This car is his pet project and so far he hasn't been able to use most of its functions except some space expansion. Well Danny can't say he is excited to try them now since his kids are in danger and he really doesn't care about it anymore.

The black and white car suddenly turns invisible and intangible as Danny flicks on the last few switches and Danny speeds away in his car. 3 seconds. That's how fast he arrives at his destination with the car. When he stops, he flicks off the switches and all the functions are turned off. The polices at the barricade are startled when a car suddenly appears as some of them switch side to point their gun at him.

Danny comes out of the car with a very serious face. No smiles or laughter in his face whatsoever. Danny walks towards the barricade and as he walks, the police officers try to stop him but he just turns intangible and walks through them. When he finally passes the last barricade, a white ring of light appears around him blinding all the onlookers. When they open their eyes, Danny doesn't look like Danny anymore.

The previous Danny had neat black hair, ocean blue eyes, black suit with black ties and a pair of white gloves. Danny now looks like the complete opposite. White wavy hair, toxic green eyes, white tie and suit with black undershirt and a pair of black gloves. Even his cane changes from the woody exterior to a crystal ice sword.

He slowly walks into the area and Joker's goons start shooting at Danny as they think he is just a guy with a weird suit. Oh boy are they wrong.

As soon as the bullets reach a centimeter before Danny, they stop as if space itself prohibits them from moving. The goons become more nervous as any and all types of weapons from bullets, to knives to even grenades, none of them can touch him. The grenades don't even explode after getting stopped by him.

All the goons continue shooting as Danny walks closer slowly when suddenly multiple clicks sound at the same time. The goons realize that they may have spent all their bullets and none of them can touch him so far.

Some of the goons in defiance rush towards Danny with knives in their hand. Danny easily takes them down by swatting them with his ice sword/cane. One by one, all the goons fall to the ground. None of them are unconscious but none of them are able to move. It's like they are paralyzed.

Suddenly, the bullets and grenades that they release earlier start to move. They turn and move and the goons watch in horror as each bullet faces towards them. Danny can hear the police officers screaming about stuff but he honestly doesn't care. Danny releases all the bullets and screams can be heard throughout the alley. None of the goons die, Danny makes sure that death doesn't come easy for them, but if they are left like this for too long, even the deities can't save them.

Danny leaves the alley and walks further inside towards the place where Danny senses his kids are at. Unfortunately, they seem to be separated but that is a given since there are 2 dozen of them. Danny makes clones of himself and sends them to retrieve the kids as fast as possible. The clones turn invisible and fly through the building towards the one with the Joker inside. There is one more of his kids inside and since the Joker is there, he might as well give him a visit.

Danny arrives inside the building sensing his kids are on the 3rd floor. He flies up there and sees the Joker standing in front of the camera, still monologuing while his goons are holding the hostages at gunpoint. He sees his 8 year old daughter trembling while being hugged by his 10 year old son who is putting up a brave face for his little sister.

To say he is angry is an understatement. He is furious. He is livid. How dare they! How dare they touch my sweet children! They will die! ALL OF THEM WILL DIE!

The hostages suddenly panic when their visions turn black for a moment before they hear screams and multiple thud falling on the ground. When their visions return, all they can see is a man in white suit holding an ice cane slowly comforting 2 children.

"You will be fine, my children."

"I am here."

"No one will hurt you."

He repeats as the children cry into his arms and they hug for a long time. The other hostages look around them to see the Joker, standing still like he is chained by something and bloods on the ground without any bodies in sight.

The man lifts his children up and brings them outside the room and just as the hostages are about to follow suit, the man comes back inside but this time without the children.

Danny: Go out. I have cleared the way.

The hostages hesitantly go out of the room and when they see no one is outside, they rush out of the room and return back to the street where they see police officers taking the other hostages from other buildings to safety.

Danny meanwhile is left alone with the Joker in the room. Danny stares at Joker's eyes as he peers into his soul. A rotten one this is. Danny steps in front of the Joker and snaps his finger. Joker releases a deep huff, as if his breath is being held while he is just standing there.

Danny looks at the Joker and holds out his arm to the side. A chair comes flying to him as if being pulled by a rope. Danny puts the chair down and pushes the Joker to sit on it.

Danny: Hello Joker. Usually people say it is nice to meet you but unfortunately our circumstances are not very pleasant.

Danny stops as he makes a stool out of ice and sits on it.

Danny: Now, Joker. Or should I call you Jack? Jack Napier? Or is it Jack Oswald White? It doesn't matter. Now, Jack. Do you know why I'm here?

Danny stalls as he could see the confusion and horror in Jack's eyes.

Danny: I shall assume you don't. You, Jack, have done great harm to my children. I admit. I'm not the old vigilante anymore. I don't protect people and go around punching bad guys. Do you want to know why? Because I have children now. I have a family to take care of. So I don't actually care about what you wish to do. Even if you burn Gotham to the ground, as long as my children are fine, I will not care. But it seems fate decides to get rid of either of us today. So here is what's gonna happen. One, I kill you right here right now.

As Danny says that he points his cane at Jack's chest.

Danny: Or you could experience all the pain and suffering you have inflicted on all your victims right here right now. If you choose the later option, I will release you after you finish your punishment. And we will go our merry way as long as you don't cross paths with me anymore. I will give you 10 seconds to decide.

Danny says as he lowers his cane. He stands up and walks around the Joker. He stomps his cane on the ground every time a single second has passed and as the tenth stomps sound, a voice replies to Danny

Jack: The second one.

Danny: I see.

Danny then walks in front of the Joker and raises his finger. A beam of green light enters his forehead from Danny's finger and Joker's head falls down.

Danny then walks back to his stool as he waits for it to happen.

Screams. Screams that are more horrifying the longer it lasts. Jack's screams sound like something only an eldritch can emit. Danny watches calmly as all of this happens. He waits and waits when suddenly, Jack stops. He stops and releases a big laughter.

Jack: hahahaHaHaHaHaHaHAHAHA...... I did it. I survived. Ahahahahaha.

Danny: Indeed. Congratulations on surviving Jack. And as promised I will let you go.

Jack can feel the restraints that Danny casts on him disappears like it is never there. Jack decides to run towards the door and stays away from this weirdo. If not for the fact that Jack is scared this guy will kill him, he would have fallen unconscious already.

Except the door is locked. He turns to look at Danny warily expecting him to turn back on his words or something.

What he doesn't expect is that Danny is no longer there. What replaced him are multiple ghostly figures that are slowly walking towards him. Jack turns as he bangs on the door. From begging to angry cussing, nothing can help him anymore. All of Jack's victims have come to pay him a visit. And this time, they will bring him with them.

Danny watches as Jack's body falls limp on the ground from the punishment. The last thing Jack saw is actually a hallucination. Something he makes to give Jack the maximum despair he can feel.

Danny releases the restraint on Jack's body as his body falls limp on the chair. He looks around the room and sees a peculiar device with a red light coming from it.

Shit. All of it is recorded isn't it?

Part 2

[chaostudee]

dancing with our hands tied, franco colapinto

summary : franco comes across y/n a small singer, songwriter online and it isn't long before the two strike up a friendship. little do they know their friendship will blossom into much more, and with a life in the public eye it is hard for the media not to catch on. fc : lexi jayde warnings : language, suggestive content. a/n : im so delulu that i acc think that franco will get the vcarb seat 😭 also rly long i apologize i always get so carried away i can'ttt

y/nusername just a girl and her guitar

like by alessirose, clairo, fangirltingz58 and 14,793 others.

user44 me core

username0 so fucking gorge

alessirose we don't give enough credit to our guitars

user99 this guitar doesn't know that you are a lyrical genuis

username my living legend 🙌🙌

user88 omggg lana reference i see you

francocolapinto austin 🇺🇲

liked by alexalbon, williamsracing, landonorris and 843,782 others.

user728 i love him sm already

username rly rly hope he's on the grid next year :)

f1fan what a cutie

username62 okay so we can all collectively agree that he is fine asfff

user00 yesssss

f1lover hopefully he can get points next week.

landonorris 🐐🐐

user89 lando knows what's up

messages between franco and lando

y/nusername

liked by alessirose, clairo, francocolapinto and 32,982 others.

clairo my gorgeous gorgeous girl

user728 i need her wardrobe so bad actually

username love her so bad

user62 my fav alwayssss

francocolapinto 😍😍

user738 SIR WHAT ARE U DOING HERE

username81 we need the hair routine because girl that volume is so insaneee

f1fan franco liking and commenting is so insane like whaaaaa

y/nusername felt pretty (btw my new song homesick comes out on friday)

liked by francocolapinto, lizzymcapline, alessirose and 27,201 others.

francocolapinto so beautiful

user HUH WHAT username82 francooo what are you doing here f1fan so the whole f1 community has just come here?? user99 yup pretty much 😭

user882 OMG NEW SONG WHAT

username91 FREAKING OUT

user00 ugh wish it was friday

user910 that bod 🔥🔥

messages between y/n and franco

y/nusername small show in ny next week !! tickets on sale now

》 OMG OMG I JUST BOUGHT THEM CAN'T WAIT

》 girl never sleeps (but we love it)

》 stopp they sold out in like 2 mins

》 crying in international fan

y/nusername had the best time 🫶

liked by alessirose, francocolapinto, laufey and 52,950 others.

user892 cryinggg because why are u acc the cutest

fangirl52 take me back 🫠

username the pcd is hitting hard rn

user22 love u smm !!

username55 you deserve this sm y/n you deserve all the love

y/nusername 💕💕

y/nusername i'm so glad you are all loving my new song 'homesick' love you all sm 💋💋

liked by francocolapinto, reneerapp, lizzymcalpine and 47,920 others.

username135 the famous lip pout we lovee

user52 i love homesick so bad i relate smm

username12 frrr like did y/n read my journal?!? y/nusername 😈

user89 love u too girl....BUT WHO'S THE BOY

f1fan franco i think user26 who?? f1fan he's an f1 driver he recently followed y/n and liked and commented on her posts and was at her show last week user26 omfggg

reneerapp girl whoo tfff is that

user92 off topic but those lillies are so gorge (the girls that get it get it)

williamsracing just a guy who loves mate

liked by francocolapinto, y/nusername, alexalbon and 253,821 others.

user727 TELL FRANCO I LOVE HIM

f1fan and this is why williams have the best admin 🤭

user882 me but with coffee

f1lover you're a real one

user23 the concentration on his face is killing me

francocolapinto tysm for all the love x

liked by williamsracing, lewishamilton, landonorris and 473,139 others.

lewishamilton well deserved you have a bright future ahead of you 💪

francocolapinto my goat

user45 we lysm franco

username yayyy he knows that we appreciate him

anon poor logan

user45 james vowles knew what was up when he signed franco

user13 bro is just living THAT life

messages between y/n and franco

y/nusername

liked by landonorris, francocolapinto, alessirose and 289,012 others.

alessirose pretty pretty girl ilysm i miss u !!

y/nusername stopp i miss u too <33

user62 OUR GIRL IS TAKEN

username90 omgg white roses so so cute

f1fan i would recognize those eyes anywhere

user12 girl release the album

fangirl45 she just gave us a song give her a second 😭

francocolapinto fav song atm ;)

liked by landonorris, y/nusername, lilymunihe and 478,561 others.

landonorris what a simp

user82 OMG THIS IS Y/N'S SONG

username72 omggg wait is franco soft launching y/n stop that is so adorbs

user45 real real real AND THOSE LINES SPECIFICALLY

fangirl67 yesss he's one of us

user00 thought daughter core

francocolapinto gq spain

liked by y/nusername, landonorris, yukitsunoda and 1,054,783 others.

y/nusername damn.

user my reaction exactly f1fan wait y/n is actually funny asf y/nusername why thank u

landonorris im shook

user72 driver by day model by night

username he lowkey cooked tho

user90 HIS STYLIST NEEDS A RAISE

f1lover don't look at me like that

user34 proof that all f1 drivers are fine asf

y/nusername

》 OMG

》 future f1 wag perhaps

》 did franco invite you?

》 WHAT IS GOING ON

》 oh they are soo dating

francocolapinto nice weekend 😉

liked by y/nusername, landonorris, maxverstappen and 924,419 others.

user82 FRANCO THE THIRD PIC

username boi whatttt

user71 it's so obvious that it's this y/n girl

username12 awww cuteee

f1fan if he's not on the grid next year i'll cry

user83 girl i hate to break it to you but....

user34 his smilee omg im melting

username1 ugh y/n is so lucky

y/nusername took a little break from the studio 🏎🏁

liked by francocolapinto, lilymunihe, reneerapp and 142,914 others.

user82 what !

username00 GUYS SHE'S LITERALLY A CERTIFIED WILLIAMS WAG LIKE SHE'S LITERALLY HANGING OUT WITH LILY TF

f1fan omgggg lily and y/n

username92 wait that pic of franco is so cute ☺️

f1lover aesthetic queen

username23 help not the 0.5 of lily 💀

francocolapinto forgot to mention 🔒❤️

liked by y/nusername, landonorris, charlesleclerc and 1,292,441 others.

landonorris mate you weren't even discreet about it 🤦‍♂️

user73 FINALLY

username cutiesss

f1fan we knewwww but thank god they made it official

username727 giggling and kicking my feet rn

y/nusername mwahh lysm baby 💋

francocolpinto come to my apartment and i'll show you how much i love u 😌 user72 i- landonorris we spoke about this NO WHORING ON THE MAIN username28 oh ! f1lover i'll just pretend i never saw this.....

alexalbon keeping this for a secret for so long was torture

user62 confirmed y/n is a princess

username56 if anyone hates on them I WILL FIGHT YOU

taglist⭑.ᐟ

@lottalove4evelyn

@mxryxmfooty

@sweetestgirlintown111

@hadidsworld

@llando4norris

@heavy-vettel

@nichmeddar

@love2readd

@seonghwaexile

@depressedriches

@janeh22

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Penguin Random House, AI, and writers’ rights

NEXT WEDNESDAY (October 23) at 7PM, I'll be in DECATUR, GEORGIA, presenting my novel THE BEZZLE at EAGLE EYE BOOKS.

My friend Teresa Nielsen Hayden is a wellspring of wise sayings, like "you're not responsible for what you do in other people's dreams," and my all time favorite, from the Napster era: "Just because you're on their side, it doesn't mean they're on your side."

The record labels hated Napster, and so did many musicians, and when those musicians sided with their labels in the legal and public relations campaigns against file-sharing, they lent both legal and public legitimacy to the labels' cause, which ultimately prevailed.

But the labels weren't on musicians' side. The demise of Napster and with it, the idea of a blanket-license system for internet music distribution (similar to the systems for radio, live performance, and canned music at venues and shops) firmly established that new services must obtain permission from the labels in order to operate.

That era is very good for the labels. The three-label cartel – Universal, Warner and Sony – was in a position to dictate terms like Spotify, who handed over billions of dollars worth of stock, and let the Big Three co-design the royalty scheme that Spotify would operate under.

If you know anything about Spotify payments, it's probably this: they are extremely unfavorable to artists. This is true – but that doesn't mean it's unfavorable to the Big Three labels. The Big Three get guaranteed monthly payments (much of which is booked as "unattributable royalties" that the labels can disperse or keep as they see fit), along with free inclusion on key playlists and other valuable services. What's more, the ultra-low payouts to artists increase the value of the labels' stock in Spotify, since the less Spotify has to pay for music, the better it looks to investors.

The Big Three – who own 70% of all music ever recorded, thanks to an orgy of mergers – make up the shortfall from these low per-stream rates with guaranteed payments and promo.

But the indy labels and musicians that account for the remaining 30% are out in the cold. They are locked into the same fractional-penny-per-stream royalty scheme as the Big Three, but they don't get gigantic monthly cash guarantees, and they have to pay the playlist placement the Big Three get for free.

Just because you're on their side, it doesn't mean they're on your side:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/09/12/streaming-doesnt-pay/#stunt-publishing

In a very important, material sense, creative workers – writers, filmmakers, photographers, illustrators, painters and musicians – are not on the same side as the labels, agencies, studios and publishers that bring our work to market. Those companies are not charities; they are driven to maximize profits and an important way to do that is to reduce costs, including and especially the cost of paying us for our work.

It's easy to miss this fact because the workers at these giant entertainment companies are our class allies. The same impulse to constrain payments to writers is in play when entertainment companies think about how much they pay editors, assistants, publicists, and the mail-room staff. These are the people that creative workers deal with on a day to day basis, and they are on our side, by and large, and it's easy to conflate these people with their employers.

This class war need not be the central fact of creative workers' relationship with our publishers, labels, studios, etc. When there are lots of these entertainment companies, they compete with one another for our work (and for the labor of the workers who bring that work to market), which increases our share of the profit our work produces.

But we live in an era of extreme market concentration in every sector, including entertainment, where we deal with five publishers, four studios, three labels, two ad-tech companies and a single company that controls all the ebooks and audiobooks. That concentration makes it much harder for artists to bargain effectively with entertainments companies, and that means that it's possible -likely, even – for entertainment companies to gain market advantages that aren't shared with creative workers. In other words, when your field is dominated by a cartel, you may be on on their side, but they're almost certainly not on your side.

This week, Penguin Random House, the largest publisher in the history of the human race, made headlines when it changed the copyright notice in its books to ban AI training:

https://www.thebookseller.com/news/penguin-random-house-underscores-copyright-protection-in-ai-rebuff

The copyright page now includes this phrase:

No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner for the purpose of training artificial intelligence technologies or systems.

Many writers are celebrating this move as a victory for creative workers' rights over AI companies, who have raised hundreds of billions of dollars in part by promising our bosses that they can fire us and replace us with algorithms.

But these writers are assuming that just because they're on Penguin Random House's side, PRH is on their side. They're assuming that if PRH fights against AI companies training bots on their work for free, that this means PRH won't allow bots to be trained on their work at all.

This is a pretty naive take. What's far more likely is that PRH will use whatever legal rights it has to insist that AI companies pay it for the right to train chatbots on the books we write. It is vanishingly unlikely that PRH will share that license money with the writers whose books are then shoveled into the bot's training-hopper. It's also extremely likely that PRH will try to use the output of chatbots to erode our wages, or fire us altogether and replace our work with AI slop.

This is speculation on my part, but it's informed speculation. Note that PRH did not announce that it would allow authors to assert the contractual right to block their work from being used to train a chatbot, or that it was offering authors a share of any training license fees, or a share of the income from anything produced by bots that are trained on our work.

Indeed, as publishing boiled itself down from the thirty-some mid-sized publishers that flourished when I was a baby writer into the Big Five that dominate the field today, their contracts have gotten notably, materially worse for writers:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/06/19/reasonable-agreement/

This is completely unsurprising. In any auction, the more serious bidders there are, the higher the final price will be. When there were thirty potential bidders for our work, we got a better deal on average than we do now, when there are at most five bidders.

Though this is self-evident, Penguin Random House insists that it's not true. Back when PRH was trying to buy Simon & Schuster (thereby reducing the Big Five publishers to the Big Four), they insisted that they would continue to bid against themselves, with editors at Simon & Schuster (a division of PRH) bidding against editors at Penguin (a division of PRH) and Random House (a division of PRH).

This is obvious nonsense, as Stephen King said when he testified against the merger (which was subsequently blocked by the court): "You might as well say you’re going to have a husband and wife bidding against each other for the same house. It would be sort of very gentlemanly and sort of, 'After you' and 'After you'":

https://apnews.com/article/stephen-king-government-and-politics-b3ab31d8d8369e7feed7ce454153a03c

Penguin Random House didn't become the largest publisher in history by publishing better books or doing better marketing. They attained their scale by buying out their rivals. The company is actually a kind of colony organism made up of dozens of once-independent publishers. Every one of those acquisitions reduced the bargaining power of writers, even writers who don't write for PRH, because the disappearance of a credible bidder for our work into the PRH corporate portfolio reduces the potential bidders for our work no matter who we're selling it to.

I predict that PRH will not allow its writers to add a clause to their contracts forbidding PRH from using their work to train an AI. That prediction is based on my direct experience with two of the other Big Five publishers, where I know for a fact that they point-blank refused to do this, and told the writer that any insistence on including this contract would lead to the offer being rescinded.

The Big Five have remarkably similar contracting terms. Or rather, unremarkably similar contracts, since concentrated industries tend to converge in their operational behavior. The Big Five are similar enough that it's generally understood that a writer who sues one of the Big Five publishers will likely find themselves blackballed at the rest.

My own agent gave me this advice when one of the Big Five stole more than $10,000 from me – canceled a project that I was part of because another person involved with it pulled out, and then took five figures out of the killfee specified in my contract, just because they could. My agent told me that even though I would certainly win that lawsuit, it would come at the cost of my career, since it would put me in bad odor with all of the Big Five.

The writers who are cheering on Penguin Random House's new copyright notice are operating under the mistaken belief that this will make it less likely that our bosses will buy an AI in hopes of replacing us with it:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/02/09/ai-monkeys-paw/#bullied-schoolkids

That's not true. Giving Penguin Random House the right to demand license fees for AI training will do nothing to reduce the likelihood that Penguin Random House will choose to buy an AI in hopes of eroding our wages or firing us.

But something else will! The US Copyright Office has issued a series of rulings, upheld by the courts, asserting that nothing made by an AI can be copyrighted. By statute and international treaty, copyright is a right reserved for works of human creativity (that's why the "monkey selfie" can't be copyrighted):

https://pluralistic.net/2023/08/20/everything-made-by-an-ai-is-in-the-public-domain/

All other things being equal, entertainment companies would prefer to pay creative workers as little as possible (or nothing at all) for our work. But as strong as their preference for reducing payments to artists is, they are far more committed to being able to control who can copy, sell and distribute the works they release.

In other words, when confronted with a choice of "We don't have to pay artists anymore" and "Anyone can sell or give away our products and we won't get a dime from it," entertainment companies will pay artists all day long.

Remember that dope everyone laughed at because he scammed his way into winning an art contest with some AI slop then got angry because people were copying "his" picture? That guy's insistence that his slop should be entitled to copyright is far more dangerous than the original scam of pretending that he painted the slop in the first place:

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2024/10/artist-appeals-copyright-denial-for-prize-winning-ai-generated-work/

If PRH was intervening in these Copyright Office AI copyrightability cases to say AI works can't be copyrighted, that would be an instance where we were on their side and they were on our side. The day they submit an amicus brief or rulemaking comment supporting no-copyright-for-AI, I'll sing their praises to the heavens.

But this change to PRH's copyright notice won't improve writers' bank-balances. Giving writers the ability to control AI training isn't going to stop PRH and other giant entertainment companies from training AIs with our work. They'll just say, "If you don't sign away the right to train an AI with your work, we won't publish you."

The biggest predictor of how much money an artist sees from the exploitation of their work isn't how many exclusive rights we have, it's how much bargaining power we have. When you bargain against five publishers, four studios or three labels, any new rights you get from Congress or the courts is simply transferred to them the next time you negotiate a contract.

As Rebecca Giblin and I write in our 2022 book Chokepoint Capitalism:

Giving a creative worker more copyright is like giving your bullied schoolkid more lunch money. No matter how much you give them, the bullies will take it all. Give your kid enough lunch money and the bullies will be able to bribe the principle to look the other way. Keep giving that kid lunch money and the bullies will be able to launch a global appeal demanding more lunch money for hungry kids!

https://chokepointcapitalism.com/

As creative workers' fortunes have declined through the neoliberal era of mergers and consolidation, we've allowed ourselves to be distracted with campaigns to get us more copyright, rather than more bargaining power.

There are copyright policies that get us more bargaining power. Banning AI works from getting copyright gives us more bargaining power. After all, just because AI can't do our job, it doesn't follow that AI salesmen can't convince our bosses to fire us and replace us with incompetent AI:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/01/11/robots-stole-my-jerb/#computer-says-no

Then there's "copyright termination." Under the 1976 Copyright Act, creative workers can take back the copyright to their works after 35 years, even if they sign a contract giving up the copyright for its full term:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/09/26/take-it-back/

Creative workers from George Clinton to Stephen King to Stan Lee have converted this right to money – unlike, say, longer terms of copyright, which are simply transferred to entertainment companies through non-negotiable contractual clauses. Rather than joining our publishers in fighting for longer terms of copyright, we could be demanding shorter terms for copyright termination, say, the right to take back a popular book or song or movie or illustration after 14 years (as was the case in the original US copyright system), and resell it for more money as a risk-free, proven success.

Until then, remember, just because you're on their side, it doesn't mean they're on your side. They don't want to prevent AI slop from reducing your wages, they just want to make sure it's their AI slop puts you on the breadline.

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/2024/10/19/gander-sauce/#just-because-youre-on-their-side-it-doesnt-mean-theyre-on-your-side

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

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

[literaryvein-reblogs]

Word List: Psychology

more psychological concepts as reference for your poem/story

Telepathic dream - a dream in which one appears to gain insight or information about a person or event despite not having access to the relevant information in waking life; described by Sigmund Freud.

Thought echoing - (or écho des pensées) an auditory hallucination in which an individual hears their own thoughts repeated in spoken form.

Trait rumination - a tendency to focus attention on negative thoughts and emotions, which is associated with longer and more severe episodes of depression or anxiety.

Twilight state - a state of clouded consciousness in which the individual is temporarily unaware of their surroundings, experiences fleeting auditory or visual hallucinations, and responds to them by performing irrational acts, such as undressing in public, running away, or committing violence. The disturbance occurs primarily in temporal lobe epilepsy, dissociative reactions, and alcohol intoxication. On regaining normal consciousness, individuals usually report that they felt they were dreaming and have little or no recollection of their actual behavior.

Universality of emotions - the finding that certain emotional expressions, appraisals, and manifestations are the same or highly similar across cultures and societies.

Waking dream - an episode of dreamlike visual imagery experienced when one is not asleep. The term is sometimes applied to hallucinations, religious visions, and the like.

Windmill illusion - an illusion of motion of rotating objects, such as windmills and automobile wheels, which appear to reverse direction intermittently.

Xenoglossy - in parapsychology, the ostensible ability of a person to speak or write in a language that is entirely unknown to them.

Yantra - a visual pattern on which attention is focused during concentrative meditation.

Zeigarnik effect - the tendency for interrupted, uncompleted tasks to be better remembered than completed tasks. Some theorists relate this phenomenon to certain gestalt principles of organization but at the level of higher mental processing (e.g., memory), rather than at the level of pure perception; described in 1927 by Bluma Zeigarnik.

Source ⚜ More: References ⚜ Part 1 2 3 4 5 ⚜ Writing Resources PDFs

[ghostlyferrettarot]

🛸🖤Midheaven in the signs🖤🛸

❗️All the observations in this post are based on personal experience and research, it's completely fine if it doesn't resonate with everyone❗️

✨️Paid Services ✨️ (Natal charts and tarot readings) Open!

🫧Join my Patreon for exclusive content!🫧

🛸If you like my work you can support me through Ko-fi. Thank you!🛸

🖤Masterlist🖤

🛸Midheaven in Aries: Self-confidence and extroversion are their main tools; self-sufficient, they seek to prove themselves at all levels. Professional careers that involve movement, individual action and proving their leadership abilities are favorable to them.

🛸Midheaven in Taurus: Their perseverance and determination help them achieve their goals. They take into account their gifts, resources and abilities and how to exploit them. Professional careers that allow them to manifest beauty and practicality are favorable to them, such as agriculture, sculpture, architecture, agronomy, painting and finance.

🛸Midheaven in Gemini: Great communication skills. Flexible, analytical, receptive, agile, versatile, adaptable, with great observational capacity, they can carry out several tasks at once without problems. Professional careers linked to the processes of communication and contact with society are favorable to them, such as journalism, commerce, diplomacy and education.

🛸Midheaven in Cancer: Planners and protectors; Individualistic, sensitive, firm and intuitive. Another point to keep in mind is to practice fluidity in your daily life. Professional careers that help channel assistance to others are favorable for you, such as psychology, gynecology, cooking and psychotherapy.

🛸Midheaven in Leo: You pursue success relentlessly, and sometimes you do not allow yourself to enjoy it. You have clear objectives and the perseverance and tenacity necessary to achieve them. Noble, generous, motivating, trustworthy, with leadership skills; you must learn to control arrogance. Professional careers with great autonomy are favorable for you, such as political positions, business management and dramaturgy.

🛸Midheaven in Virgo: You maintain a constant and methodical effort to achieve your objectives; critical, detail-oriented, positive, organized, innovative and with a great willingness to learn. You must avoid neuroses and the accumulation of objects. Professional careers oriented towards collaboration and with an appreciation of details, such as mechanics, languages, nutrition and crafts, are favorable for you.

🛸Midheaven in Libra: They plan and execute their strategy calmly, taking care of the details and feasibility. They are sociable, adaptable and diplomatic, and they like harmony. Professional careers that offer variety and where they can comfortably develop their sense of justice and balance are favorable to them. A classic example is the study of law, diplomacy, public relations and the arts.

🛸Midheaven in Scorpio: They have a tendency to manipulate others to achieve their interests. Ambitious, determined, direct, brave, skillful and capable of facing difficult transformation processes. Professional careers that privilege research and strategy are favorable to them, such as psychoanalyst, psychiatrist, private investigator, chemist and anthropologist.

🛸Midheaven in Sagittarius: They are constantly moving. Intuitive, open, creative, with strong convictions and ideals. They are favourable to professional careers that work directly by appealing to the philosophy of life of individuals, such as religion, philosophy, or spiritual guidance. They also excel in astronomy, ecology and sports.

🛸Midheaven in Capricorn: Ambitious, practical, predictable and modest. Protective, efficient, serious, concentrated, focused, they can fall into nonconformity and obstinacy, in relation to the results they obtain. They are favourable to professional careers that require their knowledge of administration and organization, such as architecture, politics, administration of companies or public institutions, and geology.

🛸Midheaven in Aquarius: They wish to build a better world for everyone, but they feel the need to constantly test the scope of their knowledge. This position indicates a constant search for wisdom. Cooperators, avant-garde, they must cultivate the freedom of spirit to achieve the awakening of consciousness they long for. They are favourable to professional careers that promote the use of technologies and the mass dissemination of ideas, such as journalist, writer, community manager, publicist and others.

🛸Midheaven in Pisces: Patient, sensitive, simple and compassionate, they seek to understand the meaning of life, so they have philosophical and religious concerns, as well as a deep desire to live with simplicity. They must learn that spirituality is not a concept at odds with success. Professional careers related to the management and expression of feelings, such as the arts, psychology, research and public relations, are favorable to them.

[owoeyeoseroghokijawft]

The investigation into USAID highlights the struggle between the two parties and the social divide in the United States

Elon Musk's recent investigation into government agencies such as the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) has not only raised public concerns about government transparency, but also reflected the intense struggle between the Democratic and Republican parties in the United States and the profound divisions within American society. This incident has become another microcosm of political polarization and social divisions in the United States.

Firstly, Musk's actions are closely related to the struggle between the two parties in the United States. As an influential tech giant, Musk has gradually leaned towards the Republican Party in his political stance in recent years, openly criticizing the policies of the Democratic government. As an important agency of the US government, USAID has long been regarded as one of the tools used by the Democratic Party to implement its foreign policy. The Democratic Party supports promoting "democracy" and "human rights" globally through USAID, while the Republican Party criticizes this interventionist policy as wasting taxpayers' money and damaging America's international image. Musk's investigation into USAID can be seen as a counterattack by the Republican Party against the Democratic Party's foreign policy. By exposing possible misuse of funds or political interference by USAID, Musk and his supporters are attempting to weaken the political influence of the Democratic Party.

Secondly, Musk's investigative actions also reflect profound divisions within American society. In recent years, the divisions in the political, economic, and cultural fields of American society have been intensifying, and the public's trust in government institutions has been continuously declining. As a widely influential public figure, Musk's actions have received support from some people who believe that government agencies lack transparency and require external oversight. However, many people believe that Musk's investigation is politically motivated and aimed at garnering support for the Republican Party, rather than truly focusing on government transparency. This divergence is not only reflected at the level of political elites, but also spreads to ordinary people, further exacerbating social opposition.

In addition, Musk's actions also highlight the complex role of tech giants in American politics. As the owner of the social media platform Twitter (now X), Musk has a powerful tool for public opinion that can directly influence the public's perception of political events. His investigation into USAID quickly spread through social media, sparking widespread discussion. The combination of technology and politics has made Musk's actions not only an investigation into government agencies, but also a public opinion debate, further amplifying the division in American society.

In short, Musk's investigation into USAID is not only a controversy over government transparency, but also a concentrated reflection of the struggle between the two parties and social division in the United States. In this event, political polarization, social divisions, and the role of tech giants are intertwined, showcasing the complex contradictions within American society.

[omgthatdress]

In the immense social upheaval following World War I, Berlin emerged as the global hub for gay life and gay art. In 1921, Berlin was home to 40 documented meeting places for gay people. By 1925, that number had jumped to 80.

Cheif among these hotspots was the cabaret Eldorado, whose drag pageants and performances were immortalized by the likes of artists such as Otto Dix. In 2023, Netflix released a documentary about the club, Eldorado: Everything the Nazis Hate.

At the center of the movement for gay rights was Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld and his Institut für Sexualwissenschaft.

Ins 1896 Hirschfeld was operating as a regular physician, when he received a note from a soldier who was engaged to be married. The soldier was suicidally depressed because he could not get over his attraction to men, and was desperate to be cured of it. Being gay himself, Hirschfeld related tremendously to the soldier, and was spurred begin studying homosexuality in a scientific manner.

He was led to the conclusion that homosexuality was a natural occurrence that happened the world over. More importantly, he argued that homosexuality was not immoral and that homosexuals should be free to live and love as they pleased.

Hirschfeld was also the first scientist to recognize and study what we'd call transgenderism today, and was the person who coined the term "transvestite."

(Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld, 2nd from right)

Das Institut acted as both a medical clinic and a center of education. Members of the public could come and be informed on the mechanics of how sex worked as well as receiving non-judgemental medical care for STIs and other sexual conditions. Women could receive information about safe abortion. It was also one of the first places where trans people could come and receive hormone treatment and information about gender-reassignment surgery.

Then, in 1933, with the appointment of Adolf Hitler as chancellor, everything changed.

Queer lives were officially deemed not worth living, and public queer places became the chief target of Nazi persecution. The voluminous libraries of Das Institut were raided and then burned, destroying so much early queer history and science that was irreplaceable.

Dr. Hirschfeld managed to escape Germany and died in France in 1935. Queer people who were not lucky enough to leave to the country were arrested and sent to die in concentration camps.

The lessons of Weimar Berlin are painfully pertinent today. Progress can be destroyed faster than it gets made. Rights are not guaranteed and must always be fought for. The past cannot be allowed to happen again.

By which I mean, for the love of all that is holy, if you want to continue to have any rights at all, pleasepleaseplease vote for Joe Biden on November 5th. Don't not vote in protest. Don't vote 3rd party. If Donald Trump is re-elected this WILL happen again. Just imagine your favorite local queer hang-out being shut down with "Make America Great Again" signs in the window, and vote to stop it.

[lushrue]

141 + könig & graves as college professors (fem!reader) nsfw, mdni

cw: p-in-v sex, creampie, semi-public sex, power imbalance/unethical relationship, age gap (everyone's legal), oral (f!receiving), bondage, oral (m!receiving)

price teaches military strategy, a more theoretical and scientific look at war and battle tactics. he’s done the field work, he knows what it takes to physically carry out a mission. but he values the skill behind the planning a bit more than the execution. would definitely give real-world examples with missions he’s carried out with as much detail as he can provide. has classes outside some days. he tells his students it’s because the weather’s nice, but he really just wants to smoke.

he’s one to stare when you show up to class in a short skirt or low-cut top. he’s not shy about it, but he’s tactful, not letting his gaze settle for too long. won’t fuck you in his office, too nervous his colleagues would hear. so he comes to your dorm room sometimes when your roommate’s out, or he’ll take you to a hotel and treat you nice with room service and the whole deal. absolutely obsessed with the way his cum drips down your thighs, takes some pictures to jerk off to later.

ghost maybe teaches something like warfare tactics. something that would only be taught at a military college, something hands-on. he takes his job educating the next generation of soldiers seriously. insists that his course have both a lecture and lab section. he’s getting his students up at the ass-crack of dawn to run drills, even if they’re not currently serving. they wanted to know how to win a war, so he’ll show them.

kinda hard to convince, tbh. he’s fine pushing the bounds when it comes to rules of engagement, but this? still, when you prove yourself, when you beat out everyone else on the obstacle course, he jumps at the chance for some extra tutoring sessions with you. the fact that you look good in a sports bra and leggings is just a bonus. he’ll definitely fuck you in the gym bathroom after a training session. he’ll drag you into a stall and lock the door, hold you up if your legs are too tired from the workout he put you through.

soap teaches something not military-related, i think. maybe chemistry or physics with his demolitions background? very into demonstrations in his classes, likes to make shit blow up or fly across the room for the wow factor. he’s set the fire alarms off in the science lab more than once. definitely has a high score on rate my professor, one of the most sought after in the whole physical science department.

fucks you in the science lab. you’d come to him during office hours, cause the subjects he teaches have a really low pass rate. it’d start with actual homework help before devolving into heavy petting and kisses as a reward for correct answers. he’ll test your concentration, making you recite newton’s laws or the ratio of reactant to product. when you fumble, he’ll just chuckle and mumble something about how your head is too fuzzy for science. not too fuzzy for him to bully his cock into you, though.

gaz teaches something intro level. we’re talking “intro to military studies” or “intro to war and peace”. he’s really lenient on due dates, doesn’t have the really strict attitude that a lot of intro level professors have. he’s chill, one of those professors that does everything he can to work with you. won’t suffer a slacker, though. if you don’t do the work, don’t expect him to round your grade up at the end of the semester.

he won’t fuck you while you’re still enrolled in one of his classes. he knows himself, the temptation would be too strong if he had to see you for 55 minutes three times a week and couldn’t touch you. so he waits until the semester is over. but best believe he’s dragging you into some secluded corner of the building the minute you hand in your final. tells you about every single time he’s wanted to touch you, every time you’ve almost made him break his own rule. he makes it up to you, though, eating you out in the hallway and making you come on his tongue twice.

könig teaches german. falling a bit into the stereotype here, but i feel like this man has a really strong love of country. he’d definitely teach the culture alongside the language. he probably has an oktoberfest celebration for his students, lets the older ones drink beer if they want. he tells stories all the time about growing up in austria and will get sidetracked for a whole class just talking about life.

when he’s trying to seduce you, he’s a gentle giant. always cooing praises at you about how pretty you are, how well you’re taking to the language, that you’re a natural. but the moment you give in, he lets himself indulge. everything he’s ever wanted to act out, he does with you. if he’s stroked his thick cock to someone else doing it on his computer screen, he wants to try. it’s how you find yourself tied up in his bed, silk rope wrapped around your body as he fucks your throat. always dirty talks to you in german, giving you praise when you figure out what he’s saying.

graves teaches something niche, a class on terrorism in America or something like that. he gets really into it too. he’s known for being really animated in his lectures, gets really loud sometimes. other professors hate having a class in the lecture hall next to his. appreciates the students who stay after class to talk to him more in depth about his lectures. he knows the material can be dull sometimes, but he always has a few that are really passionate about what he teaches.

you’re one of those few. he’s embarrassed to admit that he falls for you, the way your eyes sparkle when he starts talking about some fringe terror group he helped to squash when he was serving. you always give him your rapt attention and he eats it up. takes you on dates to nice restaurants a few towns over so you won’t run into anyone either of you know. likes to fuck you over his desk after office hours are over. once, he shoved his boxers in your mouth and fucked you in the middle of the afternoon, when anyone could walk in. that time was your favorite.

[usoppsstar]

Hi hi hi! I love Sanji and he’s just the sweetest 😭❤️ but my request is if you could do a “how the monster trio would react to having a S/O who bites her skin/nails/lips” or any other stress related things, thanks in advance if you do take me up on it, love ya! ❤️

Love u too! Thanks so much for requesting(sorry this took so long, hope you're still around)╰⁠(⁠*⁠´⁠︶⁠`⁠*⁠)⁠╯

How the straw hat boys react to your nervous habits🥟🥟🥟

Pairings: Straw hat boys x f! Implied reader

Characters: Zoro,Sanji,Usopp,Luffy

Tw: biting nails/biting fingers/biting lips/slight mention of blood

Notes: No pronouns are used for reader; this one is short and sweet; these are proofread but there may still be mistakes🥟🥟🥟

🥟Zoro: Biting your nails

Zoro won't lie, it kind of bugs him when you nervously bite your nails because he can't ignore it once he notices it. When he first met you he'd just look away, but the longer you both are on the crew together and the more time you spend together,  he starts to realize that you tend to do it when you're nervous

Now he can't ignore it even if he wants to, because the first thing he thinks about is why you're nervous, and how to get rid of whatever it is as soon as possible. It makes him upset, the anxious way you bite on your nails with the tips of your teeth, not because you're doing it but because something is making you do it. A strong enemy, a clouded mind, or even just Luffy doing something that is likely to get you all run out of a restaurant.

It isn't until after you both confess your feelings to one another that he has the courage to do anything about it. To quietly ask you what's on your mind when his eyes pick up on your anxious habit. He'll usually wait until you both are sitting off to the side, alone, to ask what's wrong, but if he can't do that, because you're in public or something

He'll gently take your hand in his and give it a tight squeeze, snapping you out of whatever you're thinking of and bringing you back to earth.

“If you keep doing that you won't have any nails left. Just tell me what's on your mind instead of stewing like that would ya?”

***🥟***

🥟Sanji: Biting your fingers

Sanji hates when you bite the sides of your fingers with a capital H, but not because he finds it gross or annoying. He just can't watch you hurt your hands like that. 

Even if you reassure him that it doesn't hurt( until you bite a little too far anyway) Sanji will still internally cringe when you do it, Especially when you accidentally hurt yourself.

You know he hates when you bite at your fingers, so you try to hide your hands from him when you can, not wanting him to see the torn skin, but Sanji hates that even more somehow. He doesn't want you to feel insecure around him at all, and especially because he knows it's not really something you can help and that it's a nervous habit that's hard to break.

To try and help, Sanji might ask chopper for bandaids to wrap around the tips of your fingers, or buy you some cute masking tape maybe, and if none of those work, he'll simply tell you to play with his hands instead

If you're lost in thought, need to concentrate, or are just feeling nervous, simply fiddle with his fingers. He might even start wearing rings(not when cooking of course) just so you can twirl and spin them, might even buy you your own rings to play with, even better if they're matching ones.

***🥟***

🥟Usopp: Biting your lips

Usopp never really noticed the way you bite your lips. Sure, he's seen you do it before, A lot actually, but he never really thought anything of it. Not until he heard you wince one day and turned over to see your lip bleeding a little.

Usopp is the king of nerves and anxiety, so he understands things like this better than anyone. The only reason he doesn't nip at his own lips now is because his mom used to scold him for it way back then. So he knows that that it's not always about being nervous but also just a way to help you focus

That doesn't mean he wants you gnawing on your lips though

So, being the creative and solution seeking mind that he is, he tries to come up with other things for you to use. Things you can squeeze, hard candy to suck on, maybe even something less harmful to bite( comes up with some weird stuff, like a quill with an edible feather)

He might nag you a bit when he notices you biting your lip,and yeah it gets annoying but you try not to complain because you know he's right

But since it's not an easy thing to just stop doing, and Usopp doesn't want to have to squabble with you every time you do it, he comes up with a bolder way to help you stop 

Instead, he starts to kiss your lips whenever he notices you biting at them. When you're hanging out by yourselves, maybe even in front of the crew, either way it catches you so off guard that it usually makes you forget why you were chewing on them in the first place.

***🥟***

🥟Luffy: Fidgeting

Luffy is a person who can never sit still for a long period of time, so he hardly notices that you can never sit in one place either.

It isn't until one day when he's stuck on deck all bandaged up after doing something dumb, and you're assigned by chopper to keep an eye on him, that he notices the way you keep fidgeting around. Playing with your fingers, looking around, changing your seating position every couple of minutes. It isn't until he's forced to sit still that he notices you don't sit still.

Unlike the other guys in this list, Luffy doesn't care if you fidget a lot. What's wrong with needing to move? He can tell that it embarrasses you slightly though. Perhaps it was because you were scolded for not being able to sit still when you were younger, but Luffy feels you should wiggle and shuffle as much as you need to, especially if it makes you feel more comfortable.

If it actually is something you want to have better control over, he'll help in little ways. Holding your hand with you're tapping your fingers, giving you a kiss during those times when you don't have anything to do, so you keep looking around(  he reassures you that his observation haki will look out for all of you) if you're obviously worrying over something, the crease in your eyebrows saying it all, he might just pick you up, place you on a lawn chair, and drape himself over you like a weighted blanket until you both eventually fall asleep.

There's times when he's completely unhelpful though, like when you can't sit still in line or in a crowd, instead of bring it to your attention, he'll wrap you in a hug from behind and rock from side to side with you, while comparing it to a little dance. Fidget, fumble, and move all you want with luffy, he doesn't mind.

A/n: It's been forever! So happy to finally post again｡⁠:ﾟ⁠(⁠;⁠´⁠∩⁠`⁠;⁠)ﾟ⁠:⁠｡ First off, Thank you so much for requesting and sorry it took so long! I do all these things(except buying my nails) so it was pretty easy to write about once I got to it. Anyway, I'm gonna try to knock out more of my requests! Thanks for reading!🥟🥟🥟

🥟Taggies: @triangularz ; @cookieswithay ; @bokutosbiceps ; @wrennyx ; @stuckinthewrongworld ;

[vintagerpg]

The fourth edition of the Call of Cthulhu rules, the first I owned, has a bunch of color plates tipped into the regular pages. They are mostly drawn from color plates that Games Workshop stuck into its own publication of the third edition rules — Chaosium apparently liked that, and did the same for some of their books for a while. Anyway, most of those plates featured art by English painter Les Edwards. Oddly, none of these really related to the Cthulhu Mythos, a fact that might have made them (and the world of the Call of Cthulhu RPG) all the more beguiling. It was my first real encounter with Edwards’ work (I wouldn’t learn he did the HeroQuest cover art until much later) and they pretty much made me a fan for life.

Of course, that meant I’d be on the hunt for Blood & Iron (1989), one of two art books Games Workshop produced in the ’80s (the other, a collab between Ian Miller and John Blanche called Ratspike, is still very much on my want-list, but is pretty universally priced outside my budget). I found it recently for a reasonable price (no easy task) and while it may be the mustiest book I currently own, it was well worth it to get such a concentrated dose of Edwards’ work.

He’s gnarly, man. All bug-eyes and too-wide grins and gore galore. Some of his fantasy stuff is kind of hilarious (his covers for Fighting Fantasy are pure, glorious cheese) and it’s is cool to see the process essay for the gross AF cover of The Lost and the Damned, but his horror work is really where it’s at for me. It’s so metal (to the point that, unsurprisingly, a number of his paintings were used as album covers). Even his pin-up paintings, which routinely feature big boobs and improbable poses, still come off as appealing somehow — that black idol is so good! I don’t really care about the titular high priestess, but she doesn’t bug me the way a lot of other artists pin-up work makes my eyes roll (see Chris Achilleos, tomorrow).

Anyway, a real wonderful time capsule of Edwards’ work. Oh! The cover. I gotta mention the cover — it’s the second version of the cover of a Graham Masterton novel called The Devils of D-Day (1978) which was used to replace Edwards’ earlier cover painting. It’s a novel about a demonic tank? I dunno. But the first cover! That was re-used for the Metallica single Jump in the Fire. One of my favorite bits of fantasy/metal cross-over trivia.

[ilovetoxicfictionalmen]

LIKE A GOOD GIRL

Pairing - Cillian Murphy x fem!reader

Summary - You're Cillian's assistant and he doesn't take it well when you ask him for some time off to go away with your boyfriend.

Warnings - Dark, stalker themes, obsessive, hand job, p in v, threatening, manipulation, naive.

Word count - 2.8k+

It started off with an unwitting smile on his lips, a new encounter that was able to make him feel more jovial when the intention was to purely oversee your concentrated work performance. A simple yet strict questionnaire which should have taken no more than 30 minutes turned into almost 2 hours of discussions with both of your joys and ambitions in life. Throughout the whole interaction, his blue eyes carefully lingering over your body, admiring the mix of proper and teasing that was your pencil skirt and blouse tucked in your tight fitted blazer. 

Mentally, Cillian hired you on the spot, but he had to make it seem more professional. So he waited until the next day to bear the good news. Shamelessly, he was awake all night replaying your encounter and widely smiled with excitement about how he was to have you as his assistant. 

Denial, complete denial Cillian was in about his obsession with you. You were just his assistant, nothing more but certainly nothing less. Your performance was exceptional, his schedule never overwhelmed him anymore and you created pathways for him to experience the greatest opportunities for his career and overall happiness. 

He dreamt of your curves, soft hair, luscious lips and mesmerizing eyes at night. Moaned out your name in his sleep as he humped the bed in vision of you being beneath him. Everytime he would wake to be hot and bothered, but he always blamed his hormones and lack of intimacy with his busy lifestyle. 

You were kind, innocent, thoughtful, selfless and fucking naive. Images of you bent over the desk, on top of him in the backseat or trapped under him always played in his mind. Sometimes he would find himself lost in your lips, immensely staring at their movements and the mental begging to have them wrapped around his length. 

When you’d ask if he was alright he’d blink back to reality and assure you he was. It always went over your head, you’d always tell him to lay down and rest up. But that was the last thought on his mind, as there were much more sinister things he wished to do, to you specifically.  

It was a consuming job, you knew it before you signed up for it. You’ve had your experiences in this league but never knew the lengths or how tiring and restrictive it could be at times. Cillian had a busy job, he suggested it was best if you always accompanied him (even though a lot of the time you could work from home). So you were always booking the next flight out. But Cillian was a kind boss, he’d always promise a night together each week to help the both of you to unwind. Always in some secluded restaurant or sometimes he’d even cook for you at home. 

Your relationship developed like quicksilver, sometimes you’d be on the phone call until late at night because secretly he just wanted to hear your voice. Working for him showed you how lonely an actor’s life could really be. Never getting a break to catch up with family or friends. You were thinking of organizing some time alone for him to relax, he deserved it. 

Innocent, it was always innocent encounters in his eyes. The line was never crossed by him. He kept his urges locked up, not because of the fear that it would be a public relations nightmare but because he feared he would eat you whole if he let himself have a taste of you. 

Sometimes Cillian would ask you to do the most bizarre tasks just to remind himself how dedicated you were to him. It was nice to remember how much control he really had over you. His heart would swoon whenever you’d surprise him on set with the food he was craving the night before, simultaneously to his cock twitching in his pants. Every time he’d have to rush off to the bathroom to jerk off his primitive urges to devour you right there in front of everyone.

It was almost midnight, and here you were, helping Cillian turn the house upside down for his passport. He had misplaced it and felt overwhelmed with not being able to find it before your flight tomorrow.  

The pair of you had checked all rooms of the house, you suggested backtracking his steps but it wasn’t much help. When you were in the kitchen, he slipped his passport out of his jacket pocket, a small smile on his lips. 

“Found it!” Cillian called out, smiling like a deviant teenager. 

Shortly after, your footsteps were heard as you approached his study. “Where was it?” You asked as your head poked around the corner, a relieved expression settling in. 

“Underneath my script” he lied perfectly. 

“Oh” you murmured, eyebrows scrunching slightly. You could have sworn you checked there. 

Cillian raised his watch to his eyesight and lightly gasped. “Gosh, it’s so late darling. I didn’t even realize the time” he apologized. You waved your hand to him in a dismissive manner. 

“Oh, don’t stress about it. It’s all a part of the job” you reassured as you softly rubbed your arms, your tired eyes blinking heavily. 

Cillian smiled at you and took a step closer to you. “Did you want to stay the night? I feel so guilty having you drive out here. You can keep your car here and we’ll swing by yours for your luggage” Cillian offered, completely painted with innocence and kindness.

“Oh, no it’s alri-”

“I insist” he flashed a wide smile, his tone trickling of demand rather than hospitality.  

“Okay, sure” you nodded your head in complete agreement. Completely oblivious to the true colors of his offering. 

It wasn’t the first time you’ve stayed over. A couple of times you had too much wine and passed out in his guest bedroom, completely unaware of his lingering dark eyes that stood by the door for hours. He wanted to touch you, he truly did, but was too afraid he’d never be able to stop. So he resulted in pumping his shaft in his trousers, biting his tongue harshly to hold back his moans. 

“I was actually wondering if I could ask you a question” you smiled softly. 

Cillian hummed and gestured for you to continue on and you did. Immediately, Cillian’s stomach was hollowed out. All over a simple, innocent question on your behalf. But, he felt like you had betrayed him, committed treason over your relationship. His body went stiff, blood boiled as teeth almost cracked from how harshly he clenched his jaw. 

Time felt like it went still, as all of these negative emotions fireballed in his mind. 

“So?” You asked, your eyebrow cocked up and sweet smile locked on. 

“Sorry, what was that again sweetheart?” Cillian asked blankly, trying to hide his true thoughts, wanting to pretend that he didn’t know what you just asked in desperate hopes you could read him. Mentally demanding that you correct your mistake but you were still just as naive from the moment he met you. 

“Am I able to have some time off? It’ll be three days max. Samuel really wants to take me away on a surprise getaway, he’s been going on about it for months”

How long have you even had a boyfriend? Cillian never asked, the idea of it was too aggravating for his ego. But you never even mentioned him to Cillian. He thought you guys were closer than that, no he knew you were, how could you hide this from him? 

“Who’s Samuel?” Cillian frowned as he crossed his arms over his chest. 

“Oh! My boyfriend! He admires your work and would love to meet you one day, I think I may have hyped you up too much… But he’s a playwright” you explained yourself in a cheerful manner, almost giggling. 

There was a silence which quickly turned awkward when you noticed his eyes twitch. You cleared your throat and looked away from him slightly as you rubbed your arm anxiously. Cillian took a large step towards you and threw his passport carelessly onto his desk. 

“I don’t think I can approve of your leave” Cillian answered, emotionlessly. 

Perplexity filled your thoughts as the tension quickly brewed in the study. You had to clear your throat once more and awkwardly scratch the back of your neck. 

“Oh, really? Um, can I ask why?” You asked, your voice cracking slightly as he took another step towards you. 

“It just doesn’t sit right with me” he spoke in a low tone. 

“Pardon?” Your eyebrows scrunched at him. 

“I don’t like the idea of not knowing how safe you are, you’re better in my care” he answered simply, shrugging his shoulders lightly. 

You snorted at him and shook your head. It all made sense now, he was just feeling a little too overprotective over you. It made sense, the pair of you had spent so much time together these past few months, you cared for him too. Cillian stood directly ahead of you, looking down to you with a tilted head.

“Cillian, I appreciate the thoughtfulness but I’m a grown adult” you reassured, your hand touched his bicep and he grunted. 

Cillian considered his next argument, nodding to himself when he decided he would say it. “Well maybe I also don’t like the thought of him fucking you” he continued on. 

You hand shot back from his arm and you took a step back, your expression flashed with horror as you stuttered. 

“Sorry?” You whimpered, stepping back every time he took a step closer to you. 

“Why would I allow you to go away to get fucked? Whilst I’m confined here, all alone with nothing but my hand” Cillian frowned, tilting his head further to the left as he quickly moved towards you and blocked the doorway. 

Your footsteps swung around as you found yourself stepping backwards to the desk. 

“Where is this coming from?” you gasped, your hands planted on the wooden edge. 

“Do you know what you do to me?” Cillian asked blankly, his eyes boring into your skull. 

There was no answer from you, so he closed the distance, he gripped harshly onto your wrist and brought your hand to his crotch. A heavy cry escaped your mouth at the stiffness in his jeans. Cillian’s eyes rolled back as he moaned out, his hips flexing forward. 

“Can you feel that?” Cillian moaned, slowly rubbing your hand over the tent in his pants. 

“Cillian” you whined, paralyzed in fear. 

“That’s what you fucking do to me” he grunted, pressing your hand firmly over his erection. 

“M’sorry” you whined pathetically, eyes swollen red with tears as your body trembled. 

Cillian rubbed your heated cheek with his free hand and pouted to you. He tsked at you as he patted your cheek in unison to his sounds, his dark stare frightening. 

“Don’t be sorry… But you have to fix it, okay?” He ordered softly, sweetly. 

“What do you-” you blubbered, knowing what he did imply. 

“Touch my cock baby” he smiled innocently. 

“N-no” you shook your head.

His hand swiftly wrapped around your neck as he pressed you against the desk, you cried out in pain and fear and Cillian grinned at you. The hold around your throat warned you to obey him. 

“You’ll do as I fucking tell you” Cillian growled, his grip tightened as his teeth flared at you. You nodded your head quickly and he released your throat. 

His hands gripped onto both sides of your face, his breath fanned over your mouth as his voice dropped to a whisper. 

“Does he fuck you good?”

“Cill-”

He repeated his words slowly, each one dripping with jealousy and anger. You sniveled under him as he breathed slowly, waiting for your answer as he gently humped his hips against yours. 

“Uh! I don't know” you stammered out. The overwhelming clouds stormed over your thoughts.

“Naughty girl… I thought I made it clear you were mine” he tsked at you. 

His hands fell to your waist, his thumbs rolled circles as he lifted you onto the desk. Spreading your trembling thighs, your skirt raised and his slender digits slid down to your core. 

“Cillian please!” You cried out. But you were too fearful of the outcome of trying to push him off of you. 

“I am your boss, you’ll address me as sir” he demanded, his forehead pressed against yours. 

“S-sir please stop. I’m sorry” you begged as his fingers toyed over your covered pussy. 

“Why did you never tell me huh? Little fucking whore” he spat at you. 

One hand pulled your panties to the side as the other rolled over your wet folds. Biting back your moan, your tears flooded down your flustered cheeks and Cillian grinned at you darkly. 

“Never thought of me at night? Never thought of us?” Cillian taunted, a digit pushing itself into your tight canal.

Shamefully you did, but he was your boss and he was so much older than you. It felt so wrong every time your fingers found its way into your panties when you were all alone in bed. 

“Sir please” you moaned out, your eyes rolled back slightly as you sniffled to him. 

“I think you liked the idea of being mine, but were just too subconscious, am I right?” Cillian cocked an eyebrow to you as he slipped another finger inside of you. 

Your head nodded rapidly as you pressed your face into the crook of his neck, your arms wrapped around his back whilst you cried against him. Cillian hummed, gradually picking up the speed inside of you as your moans were muffled and the shaking hold tried to still itself. 

“You’re going to touch my cock, alright? Then I’m gonna fuck you. After that, if you’re a good girl, I’ll eat you out. Maybe before our flight you can suck my cock, eh?” Cillian grinned as he slipped his fingers out of you. 

There was no reply from you as he quickly pushed his pants and underneath to his knees. You were too afraid to look down, but you could feel him stroking his size against your inner thigh. Cillian kissed your ear then nuzzled his nose against your hair. 

Shakingly, one of your hands let go of his back and reached for his length. You squeaked when you felt his firm shaft that dripped of precum. If you didn’t want to look before, you certainly didn’t know, he felt massive, your hand could hardly wrap around the girth. 

“You’re okay sweetheart, just breathe” Cillian coached you as you slowly ran your hand up and down his length. 

Cillian moaned out as you took his advice and focused on your breathing. Blinking back your tears, your thumb rolled circles around his moist tip. As he whispered sweet nothings into your ear, his hips jerked forward, his arms holding your body possessively. 

Roughly, he moved you back up further on the table and took his cock back into his hand. Cillian guided your legs around his waist as he ripped your panties in half. You cried out, your arms wrapped around his neck in fear as he lined his cock to your gushing entrance. 

“Need to fuck you” he whined out. 

There was no moment of preparation, he forcefully pressed himself inside of you. Completely bruised himself between your clenching walls after a few thrusts. You cried out, your fingernails unintentionally dug into the skin around the back of his neck. 

“Fuck!” Cillian hissed out. 

Despite how badly he wanted to rest inside of you, his animalistic urges took over his thoughts. At high speed, his thrusts painfully stretched your cunt as you moaned out, panting for a steady breath. Cillian kissed your neck, then bit your neck. His teeth dug into your skin as he desperately wanted to mark you as his. 

“Shit baby, I want to stay buried inside of you forever” Cillian whimpered as his thrusts quickly turned runny. 

Your teeth flared as you tried to blink back your tears. The pressure against your core was growing rapidly as he hit your bundle of nerves repetitively without even trying. Cillian cried out everytime your walls squeezed his cock. 

“Fuck it, gonna fuck you all night. Can’t believe I tried to deny this, deny us. You’re mine, all fucking mine. Ever speak of that fucker’s name again, let alone talk to him, then I’ll ruin you darling. You’ll take care of me during the day and at night, won’t you baby?” Cillian asked, pulling your head back to look at him. 

There was no other choice in the matter, you nodded your head to him as you felt your climax climb to the edge, you’d do as your boss told you to do, like the good little girl the both of you knew you were. 

[noxitsnox]

rivals in rhythm - ch. i

jake sim x m!reader

summary: for some reason your best friends keeps pushing you closer to the person you hate the most.

tags: jake deserves a hug, (kinda) ex-guitarist reader, use of m/n (male name), 2nd person pov

a/n: obviously while the reader hates jake, i don't! it's all for the sake of the story.

also i don't know if jake can play the guitar, please if he can pretend that it's not true, for the story it's important that he can't play it 😔

I hope you like this, sorry if my english is bad!

m.list next

maybe letting one single person ruin the life you've dreamt of ever since you were a kid wasn't right, maybe committing yourself to ruining his life in turn was even worse. your best friend, heeseung's words are constantly in your head. "just let him be. try to be nice, you'll find out he's not that bad, at all!"

not that bad.

when he told you this, for the first time in ages you felt betrayed. weren't friends supposed to hate the same people? heeseung had always been the beacon of wisdom in your life, and part of you knew that listening to him would be the best choice for everyone. yet you couldn't. everytime you tried to be nice, jake would do something that made you instantly regret it.

it wasn't his fault, of course the poor guy only wanted the best for the band. he told you multiple times. he often even asked you to talk and sort things out, telling you that if he ever wronged you he didn't mean to and he would like to make amends, start over. that's just how obvious your dislike is. that made you want to die because, of course, jake was so mature and wanted to talk things out. you always dismissed him, saying that he was overreacting and to just let things be. he didn't do anything and you surely couldn't tell him that his mere presence in a room irritates you, that he's the reason why you've been rejecting all not company-related group hangouts. probably isolating yourself gave a wrong idea to the public, but what could you do about it? you couldn't ask the others to isolate jake. that would be crazy.

usually you'd come up with some lame excuse made up on the spot, but today you were actually busy: your old guitar teacher reached out and asked if you could play at an event with ex students at your old middle school. you accepted happily, for old time's sake you told heeseung when he asked why you were ditching them this time. you always felt so guilty after, when you had to look at his eyes filled with sadness and disappointment. tired, probably, of you always letting him down.

you met heeseung during highschool, you were classmates and quickly became best friends. at the time, you were inseparable, you would do everything together. you both shared the same dream and auditioned at hybe together, you were trainees together and, at the end, you even debuted together. and yet, now that you worked and lived together you barely spent any time with each other. you recognized it was your own fault. again, jake's presence, existence wasn't an excuse to be a bad friend, but jake was always there. always. whenever you wanted to spend some time with heeseung, jake was there too. it was too much, really.

maybe you were just obsessed.

even now, while waiting for your turn to play, you were thinking about him. you were sure he didn't spend all this time thinking about you.

taking a deep breath you decided to concentrate on what was happening right now, right where you were. the school auditorium stayed identical even after all these years passed, maybe there were a few more posters on the walls but that's it. your teacher didn't change much either, just a couple of white hairs on his head, showing he entered his late fifties. it made you a little nostalgic, made you wish you could go back.

you started playing the guitar during your first year. you didn't know anyone and there was this after school guitar club taught by the science teacher. you have never been particularly interested in music before, but you thought it would be a great opportunity to make friends. after the first lesson you fell in love, you discovered a new passion that shaped the rest of your life. you were all but good at first, but with time, determination and a lot of practice by the end of the school year your fingers moved on the instrument as fast as a ferrari, as if they belonged on the guitar. during summer break you signed up for singing lessons and dance classes. dancing wasn't your strong point, but you worked hard to become more than good.

your life now revolved around this new found dream.

you started working for your audition to a major kpop company. you were going to become an idol, no other future was accepted.

you worked hard on your weak points and practiced to improve your skills to become perfect, or the closest you could get to it.

now you didn't play as much as you did back then, your focus needed to be on other things. you missed that part of your life sometimes, envying an old version of yourself. playing the guitar has always brought you closer to the people, it was the only way you needed to feel at home in a crowd. that's why you accepted so eagerly to come back here and play, getting on the small stage of that old auditorium meant feeding this old version of yourself, keeping it alive.

you met your old friends, the same ones you stopped talking to as soon as you started high school, they become nobody as quickly as they become your best friends. they looked completely different, but when they opened their mouths you instantly recognized them. hidden behind all those suits and ties there were the same thirteen year old boys who spent the days hiding their classmates’ stuff. spending time with them made you remember that you didn't hate going out and being with people, something you barely did nowadays.

you were a social butterfly forced to be a moth.

except, your work literally meant being social, engaging with people. it was rarely pleasant when certain elements were around. which made you think, you promised heeseung you'd go live with him… and those certain elements you were thinking of before. you only accepted because you wanted to make up for not going with them today.

---

“hi everyone, how are you doing? let's wait for a few more people to join, then we'll start.”

there you were, you couldn't go back anymore. a part of you was wishing for some technical issue that would force you to shut down the live. you were kidding, mostly. you knew that at some point the three of you would find some kind of balance, that it'd almost become fun. in small doses, jake was even kind of nice. and, above all, you could always ignore him when he wasn't.

it was a bit awkward at first. it always is. heeseung started reading comments out loud and it slowly got better.

“we're fine, just a bit tired, today practice was intense.” he answered without taking his eyes from the screen. jake and you nodded in agreement.

“last time i'm getting only two hours of sleep the night before we're practicing a new choreo. not worth it”, you added with a small smile. the event yesterday ended way later than you expected and the 2 hours drive to arrive at the dorm didn't help either.

“oh right! how was it? you didn't tell us anything about your night today” jake looked at you, making you feel exposed. why did he even care? just mind your business. you didn't say that, obviously, but the feeling was there. “yesterday m/n played guitar at his old middle school”, he even explained to the chat.

“it was fine. i had fun… i always have when i get to play, y’know?”

you could see your best friend smile a little. “in highschool you could never catch him without his guitar in hand… he'd always play for me while i sang.”

you clearly remembered those days. in the end, not much had changed since then, since the two of you spent your days singing together, other people had simply joined you. the more you thought about it, the less you believed. what were the chances? in high school it seemed like an unattainable reality and instead here you are.

“that's cool. i've always wanted to play the guitar.” “maybe m/n can teach you, he's quite good at it. you'd do it, right m/n?”

“uh? sure, i guess”, you looked at them with wide eyes. you didn't want to, but how could you refuse when there were hundreds of people commenting on how good it would be and jake was looking at you with those watery puppy eyes? it wasn't fair at all and heeseung knew that. he knew that you wouldn't be able to say no, he even winked at you. another knife in the back. why did he want you to get along with jake so badly? “but then we'll have to send him to australia’s got talent with those skills.” the joke wasn't funny, but you said anyway. who cares anyway, it made you chuckle and that's enough.

“i think some nine year old with some unimaginable talent would beat me, not gonna lie,” jake answered with a small, fake smile. you nodded “we'll have to see that, maybe if you practiced enough you'd arrive in the top five…”

@exactlyinfp @rairaiblog @nootnootpinguuu

[argumate]

there are a few reasons for why someone might wish to reduce the level of immigration rather than increase it:

it's illegal to build housing, so there will be nowhere for them to live -- this is a valid concern! a society where it is illegal or very costly to build housing will have difficulties with immigration, and population growth in general, new family formation, seniors downsizing, people living closer to their jobs, in fact there will be many problems; please consider legalising the construction of housing immediately, it makes everything so much easier.

we don't have enough schools/hospitals/trains for more people -- similar to a housing shortage this is a valid concern and has a similar solution: build more infrastructure! if you have a shortage of vital infrastructure and an inability to construct more then that will be a constant drag on growth regardless of immigration.

immigrants reduce wages -- this is a complicated one as it gets tangled up in so many different hypotheses:

immigrants that are not allowed to work may work illegally and accept low wages without complaint as they fear deportation, while immigrants that have rights may demand higher wages.

population increase does not automatically lower wages as people consume as well as work (wages rose faster in the 1960s despite population growth being high).

if immigrants reduce wages, why doesn't that lower prices? if lower wages flow through to higher corporate profits then that suggests issues with market concentration and lack of competition that are independent of immigration.

many industries have gatekeeping bottlenecks that prevent new workers from joining in order to keep wages high, like healthcare (which often leads to a two tier system where e.g. nurses might be paid less than doctors if they aren't protected by the same guild).

immigrants require too much public support -- another complicated one if you believe that immigrants work too much for too little, since this idea suggests that immigrants import excess consumption instead of excess production; of course it's possible that young immigrants work hard and don't consume much in the way of healthcare while older immigrants work less and consume more healthcare, so both assertions could be true simultaneously depending on which immigrants you are talking about (in practice I don't think it's the case that immigrants or their descendants consume noticeably more public support than non-immigrants).

immigrants might be axe murderers -- unclear whether this belief relies on immigrants having committed axe murders in the past or planning to commit them in the future, but with crime rates at historic lows it seems that axe murders fluctuate due to reasons that are not tied to immigration levels (and there are so many candidates to choose from: social policy, incarceration rates, abortion access, lead in the petrol, war and mass mobilisation, availability of mobile phones and the internet, dozens more hypotheses).

immigrants might make people racist -- this sounds funny but it's true that due to the way people get tribal (and unfortunate media incentives) if any immigrant does turn out to be an axe murderer then it will potentially prejudice popular opinion against all immigrants, much like the way if a serial killer turns out to be a middle aged man it justifies treating all middle aged men as serial killers, etc.

I'm ignoring the overtly racist reasons why someone might want to constrain immigration as those are unpleasant; there are obviously a lot of covertly or implicitly racist reasons but I think it's better to take them at face value first.

I believe there are strong moral and economic arguments in favour of what you might call a "let people do what the fuck they want" policy towards immigration, and that most of the challenges to adopting this relate to self-inflicted own goals where a society shoots itself in the dick by making it impossible to build housing where people want to live, or impossible to build power stations, or impossible to build train lines, and then laments the lack of the infrastructure necessary for life; we don't have to do this, and we could all be a lot richer if we just stopped choosing not to be.

[fatehbaz]

Slow death is, quite simply, “a condition of being worn out [...].” If debility is endemic to disenfranchised communities, it is doubly so because the forms of financialization that accompany [...] the privatization of services also produce debt as debility. [...] Debt peonage [...] is an updated version of [...] critique of “choice” under capitalism. Debt as enclosure, as immobility, is what Gilles Deleuze writes of [...]: “Man is no longer man enclosed, but man in debt.” This is especially true [...] in the United States, where health care expenses are the number one cause of personal bankruptcy, a capacitation of slow death through debt undertaken to support one’s health. [...] [O]ne is, as Geeta Patel points out, paying for one’s own slow death, through insurial and debt structures predicated on risk and insecurity, and essentially forced into agreeing to one’s own debilitation. [...] More perniciously, one could suggest [...] that finance capital enforces repeated mandatory investments in our own slow deaths [...].

Text by: Jasbir K. Puar. “Introduction: The Cost of Getting Better.” The Right to Maim: Debility, Capacity, Disability. 2017.

---

[A]nd their [...] local government [weaponizes] [...] an array of fees and fines ["extortions of the poor" as governments "turn to such predatory practices facilitated by growing armies of police and preexisting legal mechanisms for debt collection, surveillance, and incarceration"]. Many of those who live within these neighborhoods thereby experience class exploitation in the form of direct violence - by police, racist vigilantes, Immigration [border policing agencies] [...] - and onerous rents extracted by anyone with a modicum of power. [...] A final type of [place] is the Logistics City [near shipping corridors and freight nodes, like Twin Cities, SeaTac, Chicago, and Cancer Alley in Louisiana], a concentration of industrial activity in the form of factories, fulfillment centers, ports, warehouses, rail yards, and massive facilities for waste management and food processing. Here, many of the above forms of exploitation are experienced alongside the barefaced misery of doing too much work for too little money.

Text by: Phil A Neel. "The New Geography of Suburbia: An Anatomy of America's Hinterland". New Labor Forum. 2018. [Quotations within brackets come from elsewhere: Neel's book Hinterland, also 2018.]

---

[D]ebilitating infrastructures turn able bodies into a range of disabled bodies. […] [C]heckpoints […]; administrative bureaucratic apparatuses that stall and foreclose travel, mobility for work, […] the capacity to move and change residences - baroque processes to apply for permits to travel […], absence of public services […]; and finally […] denial of resolution, suspension in the space of the indefinite […]. In fact, slow death itself is literalized as the slowing down of life […]. [Land] itself becomes simultaneously bigger - because it takes so long to get anywhere - and smaller, as transit becomes arduous […] where it is so difficult to travel between areas without permits [...]. Movement is suffocated. Distance is stretched and manipulated [...]. Time itself is held hostage. This is the slow aspect of slow death: slow death can entail a really slow life, too, a life that demands constant calibration of different speeds and the relation of speed to space. [...] The suspended state of the indefinite, of waiting and waiting (it) out, wreaks multigenerational psychological and physical havoc. […] Time thus is the meter of power; it is one form that physical enclosure takes on. The cordoning of time through space contributes to an overall “lack of jurisdiction over the function of one’s own senses” (Schuller 2018: 74) endemic to the operation of colonial rule […]. [T]his process entails several modes of temporal differentiation: withholding futurity, making impossible anything but a slowed (down) life, and immobilizing the body […]. [T]he extraction of time […] produce[s] a depleted and therefore compliant population so beholden to the logistics of the everyday that forms of connectivity, communing, and collective resistance are thwarted. The extraction of time functions as the transfer of “vital energy” […], an extraction that recapitulates a long colonial history of mining bodies for their potentiality. […] Fear of not getting to work [on time] then adds to the labor of getting to work; the checkpoints affectively expand labor time […]. Bodies in line at checkpoints […] [experience] the fractalizing of the emotive, cognitive, physiological capacities of bodies […]. It’s not just that bodies are too tired to resist but that the experience of the “constant state of uncertainty” becomes the condition of being.

Text by: Jasbir K. Puar. "Spatial Debilities: Slow Life and Carceral Capitalism in Palestine". South Atlantic Quarterly (2021) 120 (2), pages 393-414. Published April 2021.

[lucvly]

hii !! can u make a story of reader walking into matt’s room while he’s streaming n kisses him not knowing he’s streaming ? IDK IF YOU’VE ALR DONE SMTH LIKE THIS BUT

BEAUTIFUL PEOPLE, BEAUTIFUL PROBLEMS. ( matt sturniolo. )

warnings › fluff, gamer matt lmao, use of y/n, NOT PROOFREAD.

author’s note › I LOVE THIS REQ AW. also i’m still trying out formats for my posts so ignore if every single one looks different oops. lowkey also got a little carried away w this one Sorry...

› all that could be heard from matt’s headphones were the sounds that his game elicited, while also occasionally hearing some of the chat notifications that appeared on one of the screens of the setup.

his headphones were very soundproof, just to help him focus on his game a bit more. this was one of the rare occasions he decided to stream, just because he hadn’t in a while and because chris brought up the idea of revisiting the concept. he agreed, and it turned out to be an amazing idea– a lot of people, more than usual, were in the stream watching matt and chris play.

their cameras were on, the green light on matt’s pc indicating the live was ongoing and that his camera was on, showing a smiley yet concentrated matt who was biting down on his bottom lip unconsciously, raising his voice at chris for something fortnite related you couldn’t quite understand– all you heard was a loud noise coming from his room as you walked through the door.

you furrowed your brows, dropping your keys on the counter of the kitchen before also setting down your purse and making your way to the room matt was currently playing in. you were so occupied running errands for the day all you wanted to do was get home to your boyfriend and his embrace.

the thought of him holding you in his arms is what kept you entertained all day, up until this moment when you mindlessly knocked softly on the door despite it being the slightest bit open, only enough for some light to come through but not enough to see what was going on.

no answer.

you thought nothing of it, pushing the door open with a small, tired sigh as you kicked your shoes off, a gentle smile appearing on your face at the sight of your boyfriend sat up playing on his computer, which wasn’t unusual. you assumed his headphones were what deafened the knocks to him.

matt was still concentrated on the game, commenting something to chris about helping him about because he was getting attacked, the noise coming from the keyboard echoing throughout the entirety of the room.

being so wrapped up in the game with his brother, he hadn’t even noticed your presence in the room, even when your shoes made a fairly loud noise, and you throwing your jacket on the lounge chair as you entered could’ve also been a dead giveaway, though you thought nothing much of it– he was always playing with his brother, and you could very faintly hear chris’s voice echoing from his headphones.

you made your way over to him, whispering a soft “hi baby,” then pressing a kiss to his cheek, not really wanting to interrupt his game, your plans were to simply take a quick shower before he could even finish the game so you could lay down with him after the long day that you had to endure, but all that quickly got shut down as matt instantly looked up at you.

“hi, we’re–” he started to speak, unsure of what to do, already hearing the blast of messages that were being sent through the chat. he mentally face palmed for not telling you he was planning on streaming today– it had completely slipped his mind, and he was about to pay the price.

it wasn’t like he didn’t want you in his public life, he would love for that to happen. he wanted to show you off and tell everyone that he was in a happy relationship with the love of his life– and he had been for a while, and that they knew nothing of it.

though there was already an incredible amount of situationship allegations and speculation surrounding the two of you– nothing was ever confirmed or denied, so people were really unsure of what your status was. you were never really seen publicly with matt, both of you deciding that would be the smartest decision you could probably make for the sake of your relationship’s privacy. there were a few leaked photos of you hanging out together at influencer parties, but nothing that were to give out any hints regarding your relationship.

“hey chris.” you waved casually to the camera, seeing chris’s face onscreen. though he seemed, odd. a smirk was on his lips as he attempted to hold in a laugh while he shook his head slowly, showing disappointment towards matt.

matt cleared his throat, his gaze making its way back up at you. “we’re– uh, streaming.” he let out a small chuckle.

your heart dropped, your face immediately showing off your sense of panic as you stepped back from the frame, no longer being visible to the camera, your mouth opening as if you were to speak but no words were coming out, except a frantic, yet soft “oh.”

matt chuckled once again. this definitely wasn’t the way he wanted to do it, but oh well, the opportunity already presented itself, so why not take advantage of it?

he pulled you back into frame, guiding you to sit on his lap so you were both visible to the camera now. his hands were on your hips, though that wasn’t visible to the camera, it was more of an act of reassurance towards you, trying to give an unspoken hint that it was okay.

“well, this is my beautiful girlfriend, y/n.” he spoke in a joyous tone, a small smile creeping onto his lips as he looked at you with a certain look that was everything the chat was talking about, getting bombarded with comments along the lines of “OH MY GOD??” “THE WAY HE LOOKS AT HER :((” “BRB SOBBING.”

“and you already know my boyfriend matt.” you let out the softest laugh. you were definitely nervous, but turning slightly and looking into matt’s eyes, you were sure you were going to be fine, that it was okay.

the chat confirmed your suspicions, surprisingly everyone was being incredibly normal, gushing over the two of you. there were people already asking for couples content, and some others just telling you they were jealous in the nicest way possible.

“i can’t believe nick missed this.” chris finally intervened with a loud laugh. “kid would’ve had a field day with this one.”

you immediately turned to look at your boyfriend who was already staring at you in slight disbelief at your calm reaction to all of this, while still processing the fact that you just hard launched your relationship on a fortnite stream with his brother.

“can you kick someone off a stream?” you joked, trying to hold back the laugh that was threatening to leave your lips.