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ladylooch · 8 months

Note

(Ik your requests are closed so pls don’t feel super pressured to write but you write Nico perfect everytime so I choose you :3)

So we all know neeks isn’t into anything super hardcore or kinky when it comes to sex. But when he’s particularly frustrated with hockey or the media he can get a bit rough, needing to take his emotions out on something. (Here’s the angsty part? Idk if this even counts as angst but) maybe one night after a rough game you’re kind of just letting him use you as he needs, but he kinda ‘blacks out’ for a sec and gets a little too rough with you. Nothing super dramatic but you have to say something about it and he’s instantly reeling himself back in and profusely apologizing and completely shifting focus to make it up to you. Poor baby is in near tears over hurting his girl.

His Superstar- Nico Hischier

A/N: I just love the way I was selected for this blurb. Hahahah! I love you anon 🤭 fluff my feathers, bby. You know it works. Also, you know I have to be big sis here and address this theme: communicate with your partners. Keep it safe and respect boundaries.

Warnings: SMUT 18+ Content, sexual boundaries talk

If one more reporter asks Nico if he’s frustrated with his lack of scoring so far this season, he might have to show that reporter just how frustrated he actually is by popping them in the face.

Day after day, he stands up there in front of their cameras and microphones, answering questions he really doesn’t want to.

It never gets easier. The vets told him it would in this first season as captain. It doesn’t. He still has to resist hulking out at some of the dumbass questions and comments he gets in his media scrums.

But when he gets home to you, none of that matters. He falls into your world where he isn’t an NHL captain. He isn’t a multimillionaire who is underperforming. He isn’t an international superstar.

He’s only yours. Y/N’s Nico.

You, his sweet girlfriend, were waiting for him in the kitchen with fudge brownies using the chocolate his mom sent from Switzerland. He knew exactly what he wanted from you when he saw you in those tiny, red shorts you know drive him nuts.

And it wasn’t food.

You were unsuspecting, chewing on your bottom lip at the outward frustration you saw gathering in Nico’s eyebrows on social media that morning. He was at the rink longer- getting treatment. But the wildness in his eyes when he walked in did not prepare you for the position you were currently in.

Nico slams into you deeply again. It feels incredible. You moan out your approval to him again. He has you on the kitchen table so he can use his thick thighs to pound at full throttle. Nico rarely gets like this and the excitement of it all has your nipples piercing the air, meeting his groans. His hands come up, groping your breasts as he leans over you more. He is so far gone, whispering in Swiss German, losing control of himself completely as he pushes harder into you. The table moves slightly. You reach out for his arm for safety, holding and rubbing at him while moaning his name.

Nico grabs both of your arms, pinning you down with his palms on both your forearms. You are so close to reaching your climax. You open your legs wider, taking him deeper. Your breathing stutters and you move to pull your arms from his grip to hold his shoulders for security. Nico forces his fingers deeper into you. You’re eyes snap open in unease. You try again. Now his grip is uncomfortable.

“Nico let go.” You stutter abruptly, feeling panic close your throat. It takes him a moment to hear your words. His head is knocked back as he begins to dribble into you. The reaction of his impending orgasm has him tightening further. “Nico! Stop!” You yell suddenly. Nico snaps to immediately, releasing your arms. You push at his abdomen until he falls out of you.

“What!? What happened!?” You are still splayed beneath him, completely exposed. You suck in a shaky breath, trying to ground yourself. You can tell he didn’t mean to, but you suddenly feel very naked and uncomfortable. Nico can see that. He grabs his jacket on the chair to his right, draping it over you. His expression is worried. He tentatively reaches out for your hand. You lace your fingers together. “Did you say something and I missed it?”

“Yeah.”

“I’m so sorry. Oh my god. Baby, what did you say? I didn’t hear. I’m so sorry. I’m so…” He trails off, dashing a hand through his hair. He looks around the table frantically, trying to find the pants you both dropped on the floor in haste.

“Nico.” You call, reaching for him to come back to you. He is berating himself internally. You can see it with every twitch of his facial features. His shoulders are slumping inward as he leans over you, reaching out for your cheek then recoiling his fingers. You grab his hand, placing it there and leaning into his touch. “Can you please calm down so we can talk about it?”

“I hurt you!”

“No you didn’t.”

“I crossed a line!”

“Yes, but unintentionally.” You sit up, very aware of your naked core settling against the kitchen table. You open your arms and Nico steps in. He presses his forehead to your shoulder, his jacket still covering most of your naked body. You turn so you can brush comforting kisses along his stubbled jaw. “I asked for you to let go of my arms.” Nico shakes his head.

“I didn’t hear.”

“I know.” You murmur, “That’s why I yelled.” He nods.

“Are you okay?”

“Yes. I am okay. And I want to finish, but can we not do it this way anymore?”

“Of course.” He nods. He pulls away to look at your face. “I’m so sorry. I did not hear you. I would never keep doing something you weren’t comfortable with.”

“I know, Neeks. Now let me finish you off on the couch.” You smile, wrapping your arms around his shoulders. He lifts you up, walking to the leather couch. He chuckles as you shiver when your back hits it, like always. The air of safety returns as you straddle his lap, sliding down until he’s fully sheathed inside of you. He grips your hips tenderly, creating a line for you to buck yourself into.

When he came into the apartment, he wanted to take you his way. But now, watching you ride him so good, he thinks about how much better this is. You always have better ideas than him. The bed you picked. The apartment you moved into together. The bedding. This couch.

And this fucking tempo. His head falls back; his belly burns with fire. Your inner walls suck him deeper and he releases white ribbons into you.

“Baby.” He moans against your mouth as you wetly kiss him in praise. You’re not quite there yet. He sinks deeper into the couch cushions as you use him for your own pleasure. He watches with heavy and lustful eyes, biting his bottom lip when you shout his name to the ceiling. He curls forward, groaning, gripping himself into your chest as you pulse around his sensitive cock. He shivers when your nails drag along his shoulders, leaving red scratches as you bounce up and down once more.

“Oh god.” You croak out when you find your voice. “That was… Fuck.”

“You’re a superstar, baby.”

“Thought that was you?” You murmur, raking a hand through his mused, brown locks.

“No… Right now I’m only yours.”

#Nico Hischier X Reader #Nico Hischier Smut #hockey writing #NHL imagine #NHL fan fiction #my writing

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reinekes-fox · 1 year

Text

Interactive WIPs w Demo

Grey Swan I - Birds of a Rose

The Divine Flock. Some call them crazy, some even dangerous. Some even say the cult is hiding dark secrets. But, in all your life you have yet to find one. After all you should know should there be any dark secrets: you are a member after all! A member, not only of the Divine Flock, but also of the Avis Academy, the best school the cult has. Your life is quiet and follows a strict routine, at least until two Strays from the outside, the normal, world are allowed in the normally so closed off grounds and as a newly appointed Wing it is your job to keep an eye on one of them. With their arrival some of those dark secrets may finally come to light…

You ARE not playing as a BIRD!!!

DEMO https://dashingdon.com/go/13119

Genre: Urban Fantasy, Dark Academia.

Moniker for MC: Wing MC.

Genderselectable MC: cis male or female, trans male or female. However due to growing up in a cult, MC wont know that trans is a thing/what it means, this is something MC can learn about. The same goes for sexual orientation: play as gay, bi, straight, aroace or ace, but be prepared for consequences.

Pick your level of devotion: be a devout follower of the teachings of the Divine Flock, reject it partly or wholly, or simply not care. All of it will have consequences.

Choose one of various school clubs, your volery, and get an unique storyline. Ranging from dance to school security, to managing your social media page.

Important people: Your flock, a group of younger pupils you were responsible for before the Strays arrived. You may not be their Wing on paper anymore, but you still hold a special place in their heart! They do miss you and are looking forward giving you a present on your birthday!

Your volery: whichever volery you joined, you are going to met pupils that are just as enthusiastic about your chosen interest as you are! Some more than others.

Your parents. It’s another question if the relationship between you is good, but important it surely is!

ROs: Fuchsia King

Chase Watson

Wing Droznik Juschka

Wing Astoria Rapace

-only for Peacocks: Marter

-only for Swans: Elrond/Estelle Falkenflug

-Vampire route: Sebastian Voss

-AMAB Raven RO: Marcel Rabenschlag

Grey Swan II - Hawks and Doves

Unless otherwise stated you are playing as a normal human! Two legs, two arms, internal organs, hopefully a brain too. We will see how much of this organ stays intact after state propaganda, will we?

Someone once said that you were the most happiest youth in the world after the Great Heartbeat, that had shattered the old world. Earlier you would have agreed in a heartbeat, wearing the light green uniform of your state youth organisation. But now? When war has come to Avistrions shores and news reels show only destruction ?

Choose your gender, way of thinking and stance while growing up in a religious dictatorship on the giant island Avistrion. Be a devout follower of the Divine Flock, the only thing that survived the earthquake that devastated the earth. Or be the Vulture, trying to rip it to shreds, while wearing the badge of youth leadership… where will you be when war strikes your so closed off country? Which side will you be on when it ends? Will you even survive long enough to see the outcome?

Moniker for MC: Fugol MC.

ROs

Agon Falkenflug Adler/Weihe Habichtklau

Johanna/Nikola Arra

Grey Swan III - Wisteria Birds

Wisteria Birds (fantasy, drama, angst)! Currently on pause.

You are beautiful, trained in art and music. You are deadly, trained in the unique weapons that no one except you can use. You are dying. Kept alive by the very same thing that keeps you save from others abusing their power over you… You have no rights. But you can do whatever you want, even kill, without having to fear any consequences. You are the most pleasant death that anyone can wish for. You are an artwork. And all you are supposed to be is look pretty, show of your owners wealth. But oh, you could become so much more…

You play as a highly specialised trained entertainer… an Artwork, expensive companion to the rich and noble ones in Aklant, a country with rigid rules and unspoken laws, strict class divide and obsessed with anything that shows how rich they are… or at least let them appear rich. Artworks themselves are outside of this all, freed from all those social chains, but not seen as human… maybe its time to change that? Or leave the status quo as it is, up to you!

Moniker for MC: Artwork MC.

ROs:

Fauconniers, your potential buyers:

Chevalier Armand Sanson Alexandre Desrosier Others, you may work together with one or more of them? “Mouette” Sanglant du Verdier

You have been a Hound, the human companion of a vampire, for years.

Until you find yourself among the undead and masterless after a night where everything went wrong… leaving you with no other choice but to move back in with your parents.

ROs (will expand)

Theo Grimm

Agent Rosa Caleb

Marian Viorel

Ghibli inspired! Mainly Howls moving castle.

You play someone from our world who ends up in another world! Since this is an aspect I greatly enjoyed in the book and was really sad they didnt include in the movie, there will be chances of jumping between the worlds (and of course becoming a magician too!).

ROs, some are locked into specific magic combinations:

Opera Job and changing into Animals: Santu Cajarin

Changing into Animals: Rosalind Eagledancer

#interactive fiction #birds of a rose #wisteria birds #if #cyoa #urban fantasy #dark academia #vögel der rose #low fantasy #hundsnächte #dog nights #citadel of dancing birds

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racefortheironthrone · 7 months

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Was the Comics Code as bad as the Hays Code?

That's a really good question!

I suppose it depends on what you mean by "as bad" - are we talking about the overall impact of the Code on American pop culture or are we talking about the actual content of the Code and what it banned and/or mandated in terms of artistic expression?

I've written a little bit about the Hays Code here, but my main focus was on subtextual judaism in Hollywood generally rather than what the Code was and what its impact on American cinema was.

So what did the Hays Code actually include?

One of the few positive things you can say about it is that the men who devised it were quite clear and forthright about what would and wouldn't be allowed, in comparison to the vagueness and inconsistency of the modern MPAA. So here's the list of what couldn't be shown:

Pointed profanity—by either title or lip—this includes the words God, Lord, Jesus, Christ (unless they be used reverently in connection with proper religious ceremonies), Hell, S.O.B., damn, Gawd, and every other profane and vulgar expression however it may be spelled; (You'll notice that the Code is very much a snapshot of the transition from silent movies to "talkies," with the discussion of how profanity is spelled as well as produced via "lip.")

Any licentious or suggestive nudity—in fact or in silhouette; and any lecherous or licentious notice thereof by other characters in the picture;

The illegal traffic in drugs;

Any inference of sex perversion; (i.e anything having to do with LGBT+ people and culture. For more on the impact of the Hays Code on the LGBT+ community, see the excellent documentary the Celluloid Closet.)

White slavery; (the 1920s version of sex trafficking, but with added racism!)

Miscegenation;

Sex hygiene and venereal diseases;

Scenes of actual childbirth—in fact or in silhouette;

Children's sex organs;

Ridicule of the clergy;

Willful offense to any nation, race or creed; and (this one was really honored in the breach more than the observance when it came to nations, races, and creeds of non-dominant groups in society.)

The following things could be shown, but "special care be exercised in the manner in which the following subjects are treated, to the end that vulgarity and suggestiveness may be eliminated and that good taste may be emphasized:"

The use of the Flag;

International Relations (avoid picturizing in an unfavorable light another country's religion, history, institutions, prominent people and citizenry); (again, depended a lot on what country you're talking about.)

Arson;

The use of firearms;

Theft, robbery, safe-cracking, and dynamiting of trains, mines, buildings, et cetera (having in mind the effect which a too-detailed description of these may have upon the moron); (I guess the idea was that the MPPDA believed very strongly in the idea that media could affect people's behavior through imitation, but the use of the word "moron" gives me eugenics vibes.)

Brutality and possible gruesomeness;

Technique of committing murder by whatever method;

Methods of smuggling;

Third-Degree methods; (i.e, torture)

Actual hangings or electrocutions as legal punishment for crime; Sympathy for criminals; (this was a big one; Hollywood had done very well from gangster films, so a lot of creators had to do some careful threading of the needle to keep the genre alive. One dodge that they came up with was that they would have a duplicate "final reel" in which the gangster would have their inevitable comeuppance, and then remove the final reel when the censors had left the theater. Very popular with white rural teens.) Attitude toward public characters and institutions; (again, Hollywood shifting from being anti- to pro-establishment.)

Sedition;

Apparent cruelty to children and animals;

Branding of people or animals;

The sale of women, or of a woman selling her virtue;

Rape or attempted rape;

First-night scenes; (i.e, wedding nights)

Man and woman in bed together; (hence the eventual TV practice of showing married couples in separate beds in the 50s)

Deliberate seduction of girls;

The institution of marriage;

Surgical operations;

The use of drugs;

Titles or scenes having to do with law enforcement or law-enforcing officers;

Excessive or lustful kissing, particularly when one character or the other is a "heavy".

So in general, we can say that the Hays Code was extremely sex-negative, very concerned about crime and anti-establishment thinking, sexist, racist, and homophobic, and in general afraid of offending anybody.

So what about the Comics Code Authority?

So this is what the Comics Code looked like in 1954:

Crimes shall never be presented in such a way as to create sympathy for the criminal, to promote distrust of the forces of law and justice, or to inspire others with a desire to imitate criminals. If crime is depicted it shall be as a sordid and unpleasant activity.

Policemen, judges, government officials, and respected institutions shall never be presented in such a way as to create disrespect for established authority.

Criminals shall not be presented so as to be rendered glamorous or to occupy a position which creates a desire for emulation. In every instance good shall triumph over evil and the criminal punished for his misdeeds.

Scenes of excessive violence shall be prohibited. Scenes of brutal torture, excessive and unnecessary knife and gunplay, physical agony, the gory and gruesome crime shall be eliminated.

No comic magazine shall use the words "horror" or "terror" in its title.

All scenes of horror, excessive bloodshed, gory or gruesome crimes, depravity, lust, sadism, masochism shall not be permitted.

All lurid, unsavory, gruesome illustrations shall be eliminated. Inclusion of stories dealing with evil shall be used or shall be published only where the intent is to illustrate a moral issue and in no case shall evil be presented alluringly, nor so as to injure the sensibilities of the reader.

Scenes dealing with, or instruments associated with walking dead, torture, vampires and vampirism, ghouls, cannibalism, and werewolfism are prohibited.

Profanity, obscenity, smut, vulgarity, or words or symbols which have acquired undesirable meanings are forbidden.

Nudity in any form is prohibited, as is indecent or undue exposure. Suggestive and salacious illustration or suggestive posture is unacceptable.

Females shall be drawn realistically without exaggeration of any physical qualities.

Illicit sex relations are neither to be hinted at nor portrayed. Rape scenes, as well as sexual abnormalities, are unacceptable.

Seduction and rape shall never be shown or suggested.

Sex perversion or any inference to same is strictly forbidden.

Nudity with meretricious purpose and salacious postures shall not be permitted in the advertising of any product; clothed figures shall never be presented in such a way as to be offensive or contrary to good taste or morals.[16]

You'll notice the similarities when it comes to the Codes' attitude to sex, sexuality, crime, and symbols of authority - so to answer the first part of your question, I would say the CCA was pretty similar to the Hays Code (in part because Charles F. Murphy, who drew it up, was deeply unoriginal and basically cribbed off the Hays Code throughout).

However, there are also some significant areas of difference that have a lot to do with the unique circumstances of the 1950s moral panic over comics. See, in the 1950s, superhero comics were considered deeply uncool and old hat - they had been huge in the 40s during the war, but by the 50s the biggest genre in comics were horror, crime, and romance comics (with cowboy comics bringing up the rear). To quote myself from another post:

"This gave rise to a moral panic in the 1950s, although more accurately it was part of the larger moral panic over juvenile delinquency. The U.S Senate established a Juvenile Delinquency Subcommittee of the Judiciary Committee in 1953 to investigate the causes of juvenile delinquency and comics became a major target. While Wertham’s book is best known today for its assertions that Batman and Robin were teaching young boys to be gay and Wonder Woman was teaching young girls to be lesbians, the main focus of the Subcommittee [edit mine: and Wertham's academic work] was on horror and crime comics for their depiction of sex, violence, and “subversive” attitudes to law and order."

The CCA made it impossible to publish two of the most popular genres in the industry for a generation (the CCA relaxed its stance on horror stuff a bit in the 70s, which is why Marvel trend-chased werewolves and vampires the moment they could get away with it), which not only scrambled the medium (and potentially created space for the Silver Age of superhero comics to flourish) but drove the former titan EC Comics practically out of business. (Indeed, William Gaines of EC Comics believed that the CCA had been specifically worded to drive him out of business.)

So in some ways, the CCA was worse.

#subtexual judaism #cultural history #film history #hays code #comics #comics meta #comics code authority #cinema

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thisisthinprivilege · 11 months

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How can I overcome internalized fatphobia? How can I not hate what I look like when I'm fat?

This is going to be a different process for everyone, so I'm not sure what will work for you. I will let you know what worked for me, and hopefully you find it helpful.

Deprogramming Step One: Coming to grips with having been programmed in the first place. Beauty standards change from age to age, they are not inborn as far as our research is able to conclude. There's perhaps a weak preference for facial symmetry, but that's about it. Weight-based beauty standards have not only varied wildly through human history, they vary in our very own era, between-cultures. Often what we believe we find beautiful has been programmed into us from a very early age. There's no conspiracy, it's simply how cultural preferences are transmitted within-culture: through the adults we look up to, media, and reinforced by peers. That's not to say deprogramming is a simple matter. It's very difficult. I wonder now, almost 15 years after starting my own journey to deprogram myself, whether who I find beautiful or attractive is rooted in beauty standards I saw reflected as a kid or teen.

Deprogramming Step Two: Define and avoid thin-centric messaging. A big part of this for me was controlling the media I consumed. I unsubscribed to cable, for instance, because of the intrusive and omnipresent weight loss ads. That was 15 years ago, but it's surprising how similar some streaming services/channels are in terms of ad length and intrusiveness these days. Unfortunately, tiktoks/reels aren't entirely controllable. Even though I don't consume weight loss or diet content, weight loss/diet tiktoks/reels pop up occasionally. Besides ads, you should also consider whether your magazines, books, movies, and shows over-focus on the stories of thin people, or demonize fat people. Obviously, stop watching exploitative shows that turn the lives of fat people into sideshows or sob stories. More controversially, you might want to temporarily unsubscribe or mute fat activist content. Fat activism is a highly stressful space where we confront the hatred of fat people explicitly. It's not great for deprogramming thin-centric messaging, because fat activists will be talking about thin-centric messaging from a critical perspective. Take a break, for a while.

Deprogramming Step Three: Exposure to fat-positive content. This is the fun part of the process, where you get a chance to rewrite the aesthetic coding in your brain! I suggest searching out fat models who wear the kind of clothing you like, fat role models who share your interests, fat positive videos showcasing fat people doing amazing things, fat positive art, fat positive fiction and movies, and so on. Fatshion is full of fat positivity. Be wary of "body positive" content, as it can still be subtly or explicitly fatphobic. I warn you, after a few months of exposure to a different aesthetic, thin-centric media is gonna look hella strange. You'll go to see some romcom-flavor-of-the-month movie and be like, "Where are all the fat people? Why is everyone super skinny?"

Deprogramming Step Four: From theory to practice. This step is about starting to wear the clothes you want to wear, being loud and proud to exist as a fat person in public, being romantically bolder if romance is your thing, being more assertive and confident in your body, traveling to the places you've always wanted to go, doing things you were holding back doing before, etc. You may need to dwell in Step Three for a while, or revisit it over and again, in order to complete Step Four. This doesn't mean becoming an activist. This means becoming your authentic self without fat-related qualms. Yes, you will still be constrained by the greater world around you. Traveling, going out to eat, dating, interviewing for jobs, even going to a fucking concert will present constraints and bigotries that smaller people (everything else held equal) don't have to face. But you can now see them as constraints placed on you, not as constraints you place on yourself or that are in any way deserved. Hopefully, you will be able to face them without it destroying your sense of self-worth.

Deprogramming Step Five: The authentic self...? We know that as fat people we are not morally or otherwise inferior to thin(ner) people. So what does it mean to leave our best and most authentic lives, as fat people? This is the human question, that all humans share with each other equally. We are connected to each other, each on our own grand journey to answer this question. When you are able to separate the sociocultural difficulty of being a fat person in a fat-hating society from your own life journey, you have one less barrier to manage in answering the great human question. At this stage, you'll feel calm and comfortable in your body, and surprised when people point out your fatness or treat you differently for it. They're distracted by false moral categories, while you have better things to do. Does anyone ever permanently dwell in this stage? Probably not. But I feel like this most of the time, now. It takes a lot to drag me back into the world where one of the worst things you can call another human is "fatty." I've got books to read and write, math to learn, art to create. A life to live, where my possibilities are not defined by the size of my body.

-ArteToLife

#thin privilege #thin-centric society #deprogramming fat hatred #fat positivity #fat acceptance #fat activism #tips for overcoming fatphobia

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heavyhitterheaux · 3 months

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The Mighty Fall

Molly's Tale as told by @snows-blog-of-fiction

Heaux Tales of Jack Harlow

Nothing in life is ever easy, is it? It reels you in, gets you all excited for the end result, and just when things are *really* starting to get good, it’s snatched out of your reach, like a toy on the top shelf. I, for one, should have taken better caution. I should have known the perfect relationship with the hottest new rapper in the game - all six-foot-three of a curly-haired, freckled, blue-eyed Southern gentleman who had a smile to light even the darkest days - would eventually come to a screeching halt. I just didn’t realize it would take six months to do so.

*Come Home The Kids Miss You* has been released. I was at the release party, ready to interview Jack for my media journalism final. I had to impress. I had to make sure the questions weren’t repetitive from every other interview. And most importantly, I had to look my very best. I don’t get starstruck, let alone have celebrity crushes. But something about him was extremely magnetic. Was it the looks? The flirty vibes? Or maybe it was the mystery.

For as big as he was, he sure did hide a lot. “Right this way,” his manager, Neelam, led me to the VIP room. As we passed the invitees, I couldn’t help but take in their expressions of shock and envy, as if they were all thinking the same thing: “why is *she* VIP and not me?” One woman’s glance captured my attention. It was a mix of concern and pity, like she knew something I didn’t. Opening the doors of the VIP room, my heart caught in my throat as I gazed at the man who would eventually destroy my life. He wore all black, complete with sunglasses, which were removed upon my entry, and a toothpick hanging out of his mouth.

The table in front of him had bottles of Sprite and Pellegrino, and the entire room smelled of cologne with a hint of weed.

This is where innocent girls come to die

“Evening, Mr. Harlow,” I extended my hand for a shake, and he accepted it

. “Call me Jack,” he grinned widely. “Or call me yours. Whichever you’d prefer.”

Goddamn, those eyes

Even if I looked away, I could feel them on me. I cleared my throat, maintaining my composure. I wasn’t going to fold that easily.

“Do you try that pickup line on everyone?”

“Only the very special ones,” he murmured lustily.

Was that a wink?

“This is an interview, not a date.”

“Well, we better make the interview quick, then. And if we’re both lucky, we can still make a date happen.”

That’s where I folded like a damn lawn chair. To be frank, I’m not sure if the interview even happened. Everything was such a blur. Each time he’d open his mouth, I just fell deeper, like he had physically cast a trance that caused me to stutter and stumble.

Who am I? Why am I falling so easily? Why can’t I snap out of it?

But even so, I wasn’t about to complain about the night taking a turn. He ditched his own party to take me for a drive. Normally I’d have 911 on speed dial if a man I barely knew was driving us to the parking lot of an abandoned store, but him… I trusted him. I trusted him enough to consent to us fucking in his backseat.

My first time

He drove me back to my apartment a while after we talked and got to know each other, and handed me a slip of paper on my way out. “Call me, Molly,” he blew me a kiss as I stood in disbelief.

The couple of months that followed were nothing short of a whirlwind. He was here, there, and everywhere but Louisville, as he was filming White Men Can’t Jump and doing international festival appearances. Still, he made sure to call and FaceTime me every day. Our relationship was blooming, but I couldn’t tell anybody, as a requirement of the NDA. Even when he invited me to go on tour with him that fall, I couldn’t talk about it. But I couldn’t say no. And then we went to Europe. If this man was inviting me to Europe, for a whole damn month, then we were secure. It was all going the way it was supposed to. Until the day after the tour had wrapped.

It was 8:30 am, and I awoke before him. Normally I’d get straight up to begin my morning routine, but today, I was in no rush. We’d been going and going for the whole month - the past several months, really - and today was our “us” day before we were set to fly home.

We had a dinner reservation that evening, after a day of sightseeing and shopping. He did owe me a new Prada bag, too. But something in my head was bothering me. I wanted to brush it off as me just overthinking like I tended to do, but it seemed like more than just that. Something in my gut had convinced me that this day was going to start and end horrifically, and there was nothing I could do to prevent it. It had all been going according to plan, but I guess the Good Lord always has a bigger plan.

My thoughts were interrupted by the sounds of Jack stirring awake. He rolled over and placed a cold hand on my thigh, making me jump a little.

“Morning, baby,” he rasped. God, his morning voice was enough to make my knees buckle. Enough to get me wet, as if we hadn’t fucked four damn times in a row the night before.

“Morning,” I held his hand.

“Why are you so cold?”

“It’s chilly in here,” he wrapped himself around my legs, closing his eyes again.

“That’s cause you only ever sleep in a tank top,” I giggled.

“Maybe if you had another layer, you wouldn’t be so damn freezing.” His only response was a couple of snores, before he jerked himself awake again.

“Were you saying something?”

“Boy,” I laughed out loud, and he did, too.

“Why don’t you get in the shower? That might wake you up.”

“Mmmph, can’t I just stay here?” his eyes were threatening to close again.

“Well, you could, but you also smell. Go wash up, baby.”

“Fiiine.” He grabbed a pair of boxers and sweats before heading into the bathroom, as I flipped on the TV, trying to find something mindless to play in the background while I checked social media. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Jack’s phone light up, and my curiosity got the best of me as I read what text he had received.

Xiomara ❤️‍🔥🤞🏻: “Good morning on your end babyyy I’ll see you soon 😘”

*Excuse the fuck out of me?* I already knew his passcode, so I typed it in to do a little digging. Come to find out, this Xiomara woman was his fucking wife. The mother of his children. And clearly not an important asset to him considering she’d been so hidden from everyone who interviewed and interacted with him at all.

Digging a little deeper, I discovered even more gut-punches. Not only was he married with children and failed to tell me, but I was also the side bitch to Vanessa, Grace, Alyssa, Jessica, Mariah, Brie, Gabrielle, Tahira, Noelle… the names just kept coming. Each of them saying the same thing.

“Can’t wait to see you soon pookie 😋”

“When are you coming back? I miss your dick.”

“Love you! Text me when you wake up!”

And he’d send them all the same response: “You n me forever baby. Love u. ❤️‍🔥❤️‍🔥❤️‍🔥”

This motherfucker… I allowed myself to be heated for one more minute before taking some deep breaths, then screenshotting the messages like crazy. Once I captured what I needed, I sent the photos from his phone to my phone, where I then saved each one in a private folder. I heard Jack step out of the shower, so I went back and deleted the screenshots from his camera roll. He didn’t like anyone but himself touching his phone, and besides, I had all the evidence I needed to do the next step. He emerged from the bathroom, a towel around his hips, but this time I wasn’t mesmerized by the sight of his dripping wet abs.

“Baby, what’s wrong?” he noticed my solemn expression.

First of all, I’m not your damn baby, so jot that down.

“I just got a call from work.” “They know you’re still on PTO, right?”

“Yeah, but…” I faked a catch in my throat.

“They need me to come back early. Turns out they fucked up and didn’t realize my time off was supposed to end yesterday.”

“Oh, damn. Seriously?”

By his tone, he knew I was plotting something, but he didn’t say anything.

“Yes. They said I’m not in trouble, but I just need to get back to Louisville right away.” I got up and started packing a bag.

“I’m sorry, Jack. I didn’t want it to end like this.”

Double meaning.

“Don’t be sorry, babe,” he said. “You just pack your bags, and I’ll drive you to the airport. But don’t worry, I’ll be back on Saturday and we can pick up where we left off.”

Don’t count on it.

“Thanks for understanding.”

As we piled into the car Jack rented, I pulled out my phone from the passenger seat and got right back to work. I loaded up the screenshots I had saved, then sent a message to both Deuxmoi and TMZ.

”This may be hard to believe, but I’m Jack Harlow’s girlfriend. Or, at least, I assumed I was. Come to find out, however, I’m just one of many side pieces he likes to drag around and rap about, as I’ll show you here. We all know he’s a private man, but does he have to be so private that he hides away a literal wife and children? Ladies, beware, for nothing can ever be what it seems.”

Send.

“Here we are,” Jack announced once we pulled up to the gate.

“Want me to wait with you inside?”

“No, I’ll be okay,” I smiled half-heartedly.

“I’ll text you when I’m back in the states.”

“Fly safe,” he leaned in for a kiss.

“I love you.” The most sour kiss I’d ever tasted from that man’s lips.

It didn’t take long for my little message to make its rounds. I’d only been in the airport for less than an hour when I got one last text from Jack:

“What the fuck did you do?”

Deuxmoi had a new post on their story.

TMZ had published an entire article.

Stan Twitter was going off the rails.

#JackHarlowIsOverParty was the biggest trending topic worldwide.

“What needed to be done. Bye now!” As my flight was called to board, I blocked his number. I sat waiting for takeoff and blocked his Instagram and Twitter. The flight crew gave their safety instructions and I muted his music on Spotify and deleted all traces of him on my phone. The plane rose into the air, and I settled back into my seat with no remorse, feeling sorry for all the girls he made those empty promises to.

So fatal. So tragic. And oh, so preventable.

Didn’t anyone tell his actions have consequences?

#jack harlow #jack harlow fic #jack harlow imagine #jack harlow concepts #jack harlow x reader #jack harlow fanfic #jack harlow angst #jack harlow imagines #heaux tales of jack harlow #jack harlow fluff

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princesssmars · 1 month

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i love your shiv nsfw fic!!! you're so good at writing them, could you write another shiv roy x female reader smut fic? it's so hard finding them these days

no strings

a shiv roy x reader.

you're time studying abroad is nearly over, and you luck out with a job working for a luxury boating service. this summer the billionaire roy family is vacationing, and the youngest daughter gives you an exciting proposal.

wc : 1.391

contains : fluff. semi angst. smut. talks of fxfxm threesome. exhibitionism : tom watches you and shiv go at it. oral and penetrative sex (receiving).

a/n : anon why did i literally have a dream with tom and shiv the night you sent this...and you are so right why is the shiv tag so dead omg i came a year after the show ended thinking i’d be fed 💔 also thanks for saying i’m good every time i write smut i laugh bc i’m a big baby.

when you signed up for a summer job, you sure as hell weren't expecting this.

at least you had the excuse of this not being a very croatian or italian custom. coming here to study was something you did on a whim, and wouldnt be the first time you made a crazy decision just because, you still had flashbacks to the time you skinny dipped with people who you had just met at a bar an hour earlier.

thankfully over the years your exploring ways had toned down to a reasonable amount. after all, you couldnt be a luxury stewardess who was always getting in to trouble. the clients did insane background checks, seriously, one old bastard asked what it was like going to such an average kindergarten.

but for now, it was fine. it paid well, you only had to serve rich pricks for a few days at a time, and it was helping pay off your student loans. plus if you bat your eyes at the right people you got a considerable tip.

your coworker and friend, petra, suggested you do a little more for some extra money, but you shrugged it off with a laugh each time. the last thing you wanted was to have some crazy millionaire getting too attached to you and causing trouble in your normal life.

but your final semester has ended, you’ve made plans to move back home to jersey at the end of the summer, and that only leaves you with a few more jobs until you’re done with this job. you tried, you really really tried to keep your wits about you, but one of the clients is contacting you before the family lands to the boat with an offer.

a threesome. with her and her husband. no strings attached.

the service you worked for normally declined telling you the names of who your team will be working for, even going as far as to lock your phones on the boats to make sure you weren’t posting them during their private time.

but even you, now living halfway across the world, knew about this family. the roys, owners of one of the biggest media conglomerates of the past era. it was hard not to see reports in the morning from atn news, or the insane amount of advertising you’d see about their international mediterranean cruises.

(well, after their recent scandal about sexual misconduct in the fucking senate, you had a feeling you wouldn’t be seeing too many ads anymore.)

you were sure it was the daughter of the family calling you, recognizing her voice over the phone and being confirmed when she met up with you before she got on the boat. she was gorgeous and a little scary, enjoying the scent of her perfume when she slides the nda over to you to sign.

it was exciting, working on the boat and seeing her eyes occasionally trailing your figure. maybe it would’ve been more enticing if every time her husband looked at you he didn’t look like one of those hanging cat posters. shame, he was cute.

you’re cleaning up one of the tables after the family had eaten a crazy short dinner. you’re still reeling after witnessing how dysfunctional these people were when your phone buzzes on your pocket, courtesy of shiv pulling a few strings. the text from her is just her cabin number and a time that’s ten minutes ahead. short and to the point.

when you knock on the door you can hear a conversation on the other side come to halt, fast footsteps coming to the door before yanking it open. you’d seen her earlier in the day but got did shiv look gorgeous, ginger hair framing her face as the soft lighting of the room illuminated her bare shoulders.

she’s smiling at you, all sickly sweet as she leads you into the room before locking the door behind you, telling you to just sit on the bed. the bed is large and soft, and your mind wanders about how these people can have whole hotel rooms on the ocean and still be so unhappy when a throat clearing knocks you out of your thoughts, the husband sitting in a chair across the bed to your left. he gives a little smile and a wave and you do it back.

“this is tom. he’s just gonna watch us for a while, ok?” she checks in with you, crossing her legs as she sits next to you, softly moving your hair behind your shoulder. you nod. “good. tel us if you don’t like something.”

you try to nod again but her palm is on your cheek and bringing your face to hers, soft lips kissing you like she’s starving. her tounge is in your mouth, and when you try to move your body to sit on her lap she’s pushing you back, resting your back on the bed. you can faintly hear the fabric of tom’s clothes as he moves on his seat.

she urges your pants down your legs, barely waiting for you to kick off your shoes before she’s rubbing you through your panties, biting and nipping at the skin of your neck as you left out small moans into the air.

“sure you don’t wanna touch her, tom? she’s so soft, so pretty.” she licks a line up your throat and to your mouth, swallowing your moan in her mouth. her husband doesn’t reply and you don’t dwell on it for long. you’ve heard of exhibitionists before, looks like her husband is one of them.

you bite her bottom lip and revel in the groan you feel in her mouth and chest, your own muffled noise escaping when she stuffs a finger inside you. she’s using her thumb to rub at your clip while she thrusts, pulling away from the kiss to look at your face.

it feels good but it’s not enough, which you make clear when you beg her under your breath to give you more of anything. thankfully she doesn’t seem to be in a teasing mood, not thanking any time to push her second finger inside of you.

“oh, fuck-“ your leg kicks out and you fist the sheets as you focus on the pleasure. it’s clear she’s done this before, skilled in the way she hits your g spot at just the right angle and rubs your clit. her head turns to likely look at her husband, while yours flops on the bedsheets.

you’re so distracted you don’t notice them having a small chat, mind on cloud nine. you do notice when she dips her head to kiss your chest that’s exposed after she unbuttoned your shirt, then dips lower, and lower, and lower-

when you feel her mouth circle your clit in your mouth you let out an airy moan, feeling the ball in the pit of your stomach grow. she eats you out just like she kisses you, sloppier than you expected for someone that’s looks as polished as she does. her hands are squishing the fat of your thighs, and when she shakes her head from side to side in your pussy you cum, trying to soundproof your moans into your arms as the other clutches at her head.

she helps ease you down from your high, placing kisses on your clit and your thighs and even cleaning you up with her mouth as you let out fast shaky breaths. you’re given maybe a few minutes of relaxation before she’s tugging your pants back up, buttoning up your shirt before giving a quick pat to the top of your thigh.

“that was fun, huh?”

you laugh, nodding your head since you can’t find the words. you push yourself up on your arms, staring up at the woman above you as she smiles down at you. your eyes drift to her husband who’s still sitting on the armchair, face flushed and taking in quick breaths like he’s the one who just got fucked instead of you.

“yeah, yeah it was fun.”

you collect yourself, fixing up your hair in the mirror on the wall as shiv leads you to the door.

“saw in your file you’re from jersey. maybe we’ll call you sometime once all this shit blows over, yeah?”

this summer couldn’t end fast enough.

#succession hbo #succession #succession x reader #shiv #shiv roy #siobhan roy #shiv roy x reader #siobhan roy x reader #tom wambsgans

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sargeantposting · 5 months

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ARTICLE: The Florida Man of Formula 1 (2023)

Source: Michael M. Grynbaum, The New York Times Series: F1, 2023

Logan Sargeant, the only American driver in Formula 1, is zipping around the narrow streets of Baku, Azerbaijan, at roughly 200 miles an hour. His head bounces inside the cockpit as a wheel shudders over a rumble strip. It’s hard to hear over the banshee shriek of his V6 engine, carrying three times the horsepower of a run-of-the-mill Porsche Carrera.

Then the noise stops, and Baku vanishes. We’re inside a low-slung brick building nestled in the Oxfordshire countryside. The track, projected onto a CinemaScope-sized wraparound screen, was a mirage, part of a sophisticated training simulator. (F1 rules prohibit driving the real cars between races.) Mr. Sargeant climbs out of a replica driver’s seat wearing athletic pants. He won’t need a fireproof suit until later.

In three weeks’ time, Mr. Sargeant will do this for real: wind whipping his visor, G-forces of up to six times his body weight pressing on his neck, the ever-present threat of a catastrophic crash as he is watched by roughly 70 million people around the world. For now, it’s time for lunch. “Is chili bad for you?” he asks, digging into a bowl at his team’s commissary. “I don’t think it’s that bad.”

Williams Racing, in Grove, England. It was founded in Oxfordshire in the 1970s, but it’s now an American subsidiary: a Manhattan private equity firm, Dorilton Capital, bought the company in 2020 for an estimated $200 million.

F1 teams employ hundreds of employees and spend hundreds of millions of dollars developing the world’s most sophisticated racecars.

Reaching Formula 1, the highest level of international motor sport, is a big step for Mr. Sargeant, 22, a South Florida native who began racing rudimentary cars known as karts at 6 years old and this year joined the Williams Racing team as the first full-time American F1 driver since 2007.

For Formula 1 itself, finding a hometown hero for American fans is a giant leap.

Although it is enormously popular in Europe, F1 struggled for decades to break into the United States. That began to change in 2016, when the sport was purchased for $4.4 billion by the Colorado-based Liberty Media, owned by the cable magnate John Malone. Liberty ramped up its social media — F1 had barely kept a YouTube page — and backed a popular Netflix documentary series, “Drive to Survive.” Once geared toward aging white men, F1 now has a younger and more diverse fan base. American TV viewership is up 220 percent from 2018, and the sport made $2.6 billion in revenue last year.

Still, a subset of F1 devotees complain about what they see as an overemphasis on entertainment and ginned-up drama. Under Liberty, they argue, pure racing is taking a back seat to cheap tricks to reel in casual viewers. And they often use a dirty word for it: Americanization. “It is becoming more and more like Formula Hollywood,” Bernie Ecclestone, the 92-year-old Briton who built F1 into a global business, griped last year. “F1 is being made more and more for the American market.”

The backlash reached a crescendo at last week’s Miami Grand Prix, which was added in 2022 as a showpiece for American fans. In a prizefight-style pre-race ceremony, the rapper LL Cool J introduced the 20 drivers one by one amid swirling smoke and a squad of cheerleaders. Nearby, Will.i.am conducted a live orchestra playing the rap song he recently recorded with Lil Wayne as part of a “global music collaboration” with Formula 1. (The lyrics rhyme “Max Verstappen,” the name of the sport’s top driver, with “your champion.”)

“Pandering to the American audience is killing @F1,” wrote one fan on Twitter, echoing criticism that bubbled up across numerous F1 websites. Even the racers complained: “None of the drivers like it,” groused Lando Norris, a Briton who drives for McLaren. Undeterred, Liberty announced that the bombastic pre-race sequence would be featured at several more grands prix this year.

In the United States, F1 has long been associated with a certain European mystique, most famously, the louche glamour of the Monaco Grand Prix.

In the United States, F1 has long been associated with a certain European mystique. Its drivers race across the Ardennes forest (Circuit de Spa-Francorchamps in Belgium), the plains of Lombardy (Italy’s Autodromo Nazionale di Monza) and, most famously, the louche glamour of the Monaco Grand Prix. The sport’s stateside image could be summed up by the 2006 comedy, “Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby,” which featured Sacha Baron Cohen as a pretentious French F1 driver named Jean Girard, a snooty Eurotrash foil to Will Ferrell’s macho NASCAR cowboy.

In 2023, F1 can feel a bit more Ricky Bobby than Jean Girard. In Miami, drivers circled a track built in the parking lot of the Dolphins football stadium, past an artificial Monaco-style “harbor”: blue-painted asphalt topped with ersatz yachts. A new Las Vegas race in November will have cars zooming down the Strip past Caesars Palace. Meanwhile, traditional races in France and Germany are gone.

Katy Fairman, a journalist based in Brighton, England, who runs the F1 podcast “Small Torque,” said she was surprised by the spectacle when she attended a race in Austin, Texas. “There were girls with pompoms,” she said. “I remember watching it and thinking, Oh my gosh, this is so different from anything I’d seen F1 do in a long time.”

Ms. Fairman conceded that some Europeans find the American hullabaloo “tacky.” But she added: “When it’s something to do with America, I think Europeans are quite judgmental. I think it’s just a bit of lighthearted fun. You guys like to have a party.”

The arrival of Mr. Sargeant, who grew up about an hour’s drive from the Miami racetrack, has spurred new interest, including a profile and photo shoot in GQ, and he’s happy to play the part. “What’s up America, let’s bring that energy!” he shouted to the cameras after LL Cool J introduced him as “the local boy done good.”

But as with F1, there are growing pains. In Miami, Mr. Sargeant finished last, his race ruined on the first lap when he damaged a front wing. After the checkered flag, he apologized to his team, his voice barely a whisper: “I’m so sorry. I can’t believe it.”

Weeks earlier, in an interview in England, Mr. Sargeant had demurred about the pressure of wearing the stars and stripes. “I try not to get too caught up in the talk of the role of ‘first American,’” he said. “It’s still very early for me, and I have a lot to learn still.”

If Mr. Sargeant doesn’t perform, there are dozens of drivers eager to take his spot. “At the moment,” he said, “I just have to worry about staying here.”

For a globe-trotting athlete, Mr. Sargeant can be soft-spoken and endearingly self-conscious.

‘I just want to get back in the gym.’

Before his tough Miami weekend, Mr. Sargeant was asked how he would celebrate a top 10 finish. “Honestly, it might sound lame, but probably just go back to my house and get in my bed for another night before I go back to London,” he replied. “That’s all I want to do.”

For a wealthy, handsome, globe-trotting athlete, Mr. Sargeant can be soft-spoken and endearingly self-conscious. It’s not unusual for someone who, like a tennis prodigy or Olympian gymnast, has devoted their life since childhood to a sole pursuit.

Mr. Sargeant was 6 when he and his brother Dalton got a kart from their parents for Christmas. “No one in the family was really even that much into racing,” Logan said. “We just picked it up as a hobby, something to do on the weekend.” He began winning junior races around the country — too easily. To reach the next level and pursue Formula 1, he’d have to leave behind his friends and beloved fishing excursions for life on a different continent: “We just needed a higher level of competition, and at the end of the day, that was in Europe.”

Mr. Sargeant left Florida before his 13th birthday, bouncing between Italy, Switzerland and Britain as he raced on the European junior circuit; in 2015, he became the first American to win the Karting World Championship since 1978. “As a kid, it was tough,” he recalled. “Coming from Florida, being outdoors all the time on the water, great weather — it was literally vice versa.” He eventually settled in London, where he spends most days working out with a trainer. “I get away from a race weekend, and I just want to get back in the gym,” he said. “I hate that feeling of leaving slack on the table.”

It is incredibly difficult to nab a seat in Formula 1. Today’s drivers are physical dynamos trained to optimize their reflexes and performance levels down to how well they can withstand jet lag — critical in a sport that this year will include 23 grands prix spread over five continents. F1 teams employ hundreds of employees and spend hundreds of millions of dollars developing the world’s most sophisticated racecars. But it’s ultimately up to the driver to execute.

It also helps to have money. Lewis Hamilton, the seven-time world champion and F1’s only Black driver, is an exception, having grown up on a London council estate. Many F1 competitors are the sons of multimillionaires (and some billionaires) who can bankroll pricey travel and high-tech cars.

Mr. Sargeant falls into the scion category. He hails from a wealthy Florida asphalt shipping family. His uncle, Harry Sargeant III, is a former fighter pilot and onetime finance chair of Florida’s Republican Party who has been sued by the brother-in-law of King Abdullah II of Jordan and whose name turned up, tangentially, in the 2020 impeachment of former President Donald J. Trump. (Harry was not accused of any wrongdoing.)

Logan’s father, Daniel Sargeant, worked alongside Harry until the brothers had a falling out. In a 2013 lawsuit, Harry accused Daniel of misdirecting $6.5 million in corporate funds “for the purpose of advancing the international cart racing activities” of his sons, Logan and Dalton; that litigation was eventually settled.

In 2019, Daniel Sargeant pleaded guilty in federal court in New York to foreign bribery and money laundering charges related to his business dealings abroad. He is free on a $5 million bond and is awaiting sentencing. A Williams spokesman said that Logan Sargeant was not “in a position to comment” on any of the legal matters involving his family.

In F1, none of this particularly stands out. The mother of Mr. Sargeant’s Williams teammate, Alexander Albon, was jailed in Britain for swindling millions of pounds in fraudulent sales of high-end cars. A Russian racer, Nikita Mazepin, was booted from the sport after his oligarch father, a close ally of President Vladimir V. Putin, was sanctioned following the 2022 invasion of Ukraine.

James Vowles, the Williams team principal, said in an interview that he hired Mr. Sargeant for his speed, not his U.S. passport. “I’m incredibly pleased that the sport is growing in America, but I think it would be anything but disingenuous to say that Logan’s here for any other reason than I think he’s got this pure talent,” he said.

In his F1 debut in Bahrain in March, Mr. Sargeant finished 12th, outpacing this year’s two other rookies. “He has this insatiable desire to be better, to want more,” Mr. Vowles said. “He’s a perfectionist, and I like that in him.”

Tooting around in a Vauxhall Astra

Britain, where Formula 1 originated in 1950, remains the sport’s spiritual home, where most of its 10 teams are based. Williams was founded in Oxfordshire in the 1970s, but it’s now an American subsidiary: a Manhattan private equity firm, Dorilton Capital, bought the company in 2020 for an estimated $200 million.

It was an important cash infusion for a team that had struggled to keep up with rivals. Manufacturers like Mercedes-Benz pour enormous resources into their F1 teams, which double as an elaborate global marketing campaign and an in-house innovation farm; tech developed for F1, like engines that recycle braking energy as an accelerant, can trickle into consumer vehicles.

Formula 1 car simulators at the Williams Racing factory.

Formula 1 drivers practice on sophisticated training simulators.

The Williams campus is a humdrum brick pile that could be mistaken for an office park — a far cry from McLaren’s space-age complex an hour’s drive away. Many F1 teams provide their drivers with a high-end sports car for personal use; Mr. Sargeant commutes in a Vauxhall Astra, a compact.

Even the team’s sponsors are relatively down-market; whereas the official watch of Ferrari is Richard Mille (starting price: $60,000), Williams has a deal with Bremont, whose timepieces retail for significantly less. (On a recent visit, a Williams press aide was quick to extract a spare Bremont watch from his pocket and ensure Mr. Sargeant was wearing it whenever a photographer hovered.)

Given the huge costs, corporate partnerships are crucial to F1, part of the reason the American market, with its abundance of affluent consumers and wealthy brands, has proved so tempting. Gerald Donaldson, a journalist who has covered F1 for 45 years, recalled how cars were gradually taken over by corporate logos starting in the late 1960s.

“Marlboro paid all the Ferrari bills, including the drivers, for many years,” he said in an interview. “There are eager companies who want the publicity.” Mr. Sargeant’s car features ads for Michelob Ultra beer and an American financial firm, Stephens. In Miami last weekend, beachgoers spotted an airborne banner reading “Go Logan!” alongside the image of a Duracell battery.

Last year, the Miami race was viewed on ABC by 2.6 million people, the biggest American audience for a live F1 telecast. Ratings for this year’s race fell about 25 percent, perhaps a result of a duller-than-usual season dominated by one team, Red Bull.

Still, viewing data show that F1 is expanding beyond affluent cities associated with elite sports: In 2022, its top five American TV markets included Asheville, N.C., and Tulsa, Okla. ESPN is clearly betting on more growth. When the sports network renewed its broadcast rights last year, it agreed to pay $90 million annually — up from the $5 million-a-year deal it signed in 2019.

Liam Parker, a former adviser to Boris Johnson who now leads communications at F1, said the sport was intent on rectifying past mistakes. “We were too arrogant,” he said. “We couldn’t understand why the American fan base wasn’t falling in love with us.” But he also pushed back on the complaints that Liberty’s efforts to raise the entertainment factor had stripped F1 of something essential.

“This whole argument of ‘Americanization,’ it’s a very crude way to describe things,” he said. “We shouldn’t ignore things that can improve things for new and core fans. It’s about giving people more choices in the modern era. It’s modernization of access to everyone.”

Mr. Hamilton, arguably the biggest celebrity of the current F1 lineup, has offered his own endorsement of Liberty’s approach. “I mean jeez, I grew up listening to LL Cool J,” he told reporters in Miami. “I thought it was cool, wasn’t an issue to me.”

For all the debates over elitism, good taste and corporate rap collaborations, the core appeal of F1, when you get right down to it, may be something simpler — something Mr. Sargeant got at when asked in the interview if he had loved cars as a kid.

“I absolutely love driving, as you can imagine,” he said. “But to be honest, I’m not one of those people who studies cars and, you know, likes to know every detail of every single car. It doesn’t really interest me.”

“The part that interests me,” he concluded, “is driving them as fast as I can go.”

Eliza Shapiro contributed reporting from Miami. Kitty Bennett contributed research. Michael M. Grynbaum is a media correspondent covering the intersection of business, culture and politics. A version of this article appears in print on May 14, 2023, Section BU, Page 1 of the New York edition with the headline: The Florida Man Of Formula 1.

#logan sargeant #year:2023 #source:newspaper #one of the best logan articles imo #feel free to message me if you want me to gift you a copy of this article from the NYT with my subscription

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abdalmottekokeh · 2 years

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‏‎ما الفرق بين برامج Adobe Adobe PhotoShop Adobe illustrator Adobe InDesign Adobe Audition Adobe Premiere Adobe After Effects Adobe XD Follow Me 👇🏻 @AbdAlMotteKokeh My Account links : Facebook : https://www.facebook.com/AbdAlMotteKokeh Instegram : https://www.instagram.com/AbdAlMotteKokeh YouTube : https://www.youtube.com/@AbdAlMotteKokeh HASHTAG : The Main Idea : #Adobe #Program #Programs #PC #proud Post type: #video #short #shorts #reels #training WebSite : #SocialMedia #Social #Media #Meta #Facebook #Instagram #youtube Location : #international #world #arabic #uae Copyrights : #Abdalmottekokeh #mottekokeh #page #channel #GraphicDesign #Graphic #Design #PhotoShop #ai‎‏ https://www.instagram.com/p/ClHKwlYNJk9/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

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killervelveteenrabbit · 3 months

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This former “gifted kid” felt seen as hell during the “Make It, Don’t Break It” ep. I experienced so many things Lunella did:

Having everything come so easy, and then feeling blindsided when hit with a challenge or an assignment that you can’t manage, or even one that requires a little extra effort.

Difficulty accepting constructive criticism and being completely unable to deal with it when it’s mean-spirited or even comes out too harsh.

Internalizing someone’s intimation that you aren’t doing your best or could do better, playing it inside your head on repeat to the point it drowns out everything else.

Shutting out family, friends, hobbies—everything you enjoy—because whatever assignment you’re working on must be flawless. You have a reputation to uphold, after all.

Disdaining group projects because you think you work better alone. Besides, all those other lazy dum-dums in your class will only hold you back, or they’ll expect you to do all the work. Then you find out that the other kids got the job done and they had more fun doing it.

Experiencing a personal setback, like an unexpectedly bad grade on a test, or a public humiliation, like losing a major competition, and going fetal with negative self-talk and despair. If you’re not the smart kid—no, not just the smart kid, but the smartest kid—who are you and what good are you? Your family or the few friends you’ve allowed yourself to have might try talking you down from the ledge. But it might take you a while, if ever, for what they’re saying to register. And if you don’t have a supportive family, you don’t have any friends, or that monologue is complicated and amplified by underlying mental illness, you might crack up completely.

In the time and place where I grew up, taking care of your mental health wasn’t a thing. If you needed therapy, medication, or simply an extended break, there was something irrevocably wrong with you.

And guess what? The generation after me is doing just as bad or worse. Social media is exposing kids to an endlessly scrolling highlight reel of people smarter, richer, thinner, and more popular than them. So-called moral guardians are trying to dictate what books they can read, what subjects they can learn in school, what pronouns and bathrooms they’re allowed to use, and even how they’re allowed to wear their hair. Our very planet is one dry fart away from bursting into flames and the grownups aren’t taking any meaningful action to stop it—meanwhile, they’re made to feel like history’s greatest monsters for not using paper straws.

Now more than ever, we need stories and messaging like what this episode is putting down. That’s especially true for us “gifted kids”, to whom so much has been given but from whom so very much—maybe too much—is expected.

#lunella lafayette #moon girl and devil dinosaur #mgadd #mental health #mental illness #gen z #gifted kid burnout #gifted kid syndrome #former gifted kid #gifted kid problems #perfectionism #make it don't break it

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coochiequeens · 1 year

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In news that will shock no one…

William Thomas, known to the world as Lia Thomas, made headline news when he was permitted to swim on University of Pennsylvania's women's team, break records, and win competitions. After some investigation of his social media accounts, it's highly suspected that he suffers from an abnormal sexual desire called autogynephilia.

William Thomas was ranked 462nd on the men's swim team before he decided to identify as a woman and call himself Lia Thomas. Soon enough, he was the fastest swimmer on the women's swim team at University of Pennsylvania and was even allowed to compete at women's meets, where he broke records and stole medals from hard-working female athletes. At the Ivy League championships, Thomas won the 500 free final by over 7 seconds. At University of Akron's Zippy International, he beat his teammate by more than 12 seconds in the 500 race. Later, in the 1650 freestyle, he beat a female opponent by 38 seconds.

The more medals he won, the more attention he gained from the media and the more he was praised by trans activists everywhere. Thomas was even nominated for the 2022 NCAA Woman of the Year Award (he was denied the award in the end). But the more that people dive deep into Thomas' social media use, the more it becomes clear to them that he suffers from an abnormal sexual desire called autogynephilia.

What Is Autogynephilia?

The simplest way to explain autogynephilia is when a man gets sexually aroused when he himself embodies a woman's characteristics, appearance, outfits, etc. YouTuber Red Moon RADio: Redfem Radio interviewed Masha Jagasdottir, an expert in childhood development and social services. Masha helped explain what an autogynephilic male is.

"First of all, it's a paraphilia. So that category of mental illness, mental distress—it's basically like a mapping error of internally experienced desire," she says. "To cut all the nuance away, it's basically a male-bodied individual who's mapped his entire sexual desire onto himself as a female. And the draw in that comes from the fact that it's the only woman that he'll ever be able to control completely, is his own body. So he wants the embodied feeling of suppressing and humiliating a woman."

"It's really important for them to go out in public, in female spaces, because part of the thrill is watching other women have to swallow their disgust. It's a paraphilia that is absolutely in the same category as zoophilia and pedophilia," Masha continues. "These are actually deeply distressing antisocial paraphilias. It's dangerous for the self and dangerous for society."

This fetish has resulted in many men coming forward as trans, presenting themselves as women to the world, and insisting that they be accepted as normal members of society. It's impossible to know just how many men who call themselves trans women are actually struggling with autogynephilia. It's safe to say that many of these men are not actually trans but rather autogynephilic, and they find sick sexual pleasure in pretending to be women. Walt Heyer, a man who detransitioned after living as a woman for several years, suspects that the umbrella term "transgender" has inadvertently included many individuals who wrestle with autogynephilia, which he describes as "a condition where a man will dress up, look at himself in the mirror as a female, and the female he sees in the mirror becomes the object of his sexual affection."

Lia Thomas Is Suspected to Have Autogynephilia

Nicole Wawro, also known as @feministrecovery_ on Instagram, shared a wide range of information from Thomas' private Instagram account @liathimas, revealing that he has some very disturbing interests that all point to his autogynephilia (also referred to as AGP). She posted a 4-minute reel on Instagram sharing that Thomas announced on his private Instagram that he opted in for a surgery to castrate himself. Naturally, he waited until after the swim season at UPenn and after the FINA ruling said he wasn't able to compete on the women's team to get this procedure done. Thomas made the announcement using 2 cherry emojis next to a pair of scissors, clearly joking about (and even celebrating) the fact that he chopped his testicles off. However, while Nicole was working on the veracity of this story, she also found a lot of other information about Thomas that was greatly disturbing.

"Lia is smart. All the photos he posts of himself are squeaky clean," Nicole says. "However, the photos he likes, the photos he is tagged in by friends, and the accounts he associates with tell a very different story about a very different Lia."

His online activity strongly suggests that he gets sexually aroused by dressing up as a woman, which is a very common characteristic of autogynephilia. Nicole points out that he often likes photos about sexual fetishes of cross dressing, people getting together for trans orgies, and women getting beat up by men who identify as trans females. For example, Fallon Fox, the male MMA fighter who called himself a trans woman and broke open a female fighter's skull in the ring, bragged about it on Instagram, "Me on crushing women skulls." Thomas liked the post, along with another Fallon Fox post where he is doubling down on the fact that he beat another women to a pulp.

Thomas also is seen liking posts about AGP, including a cartoon of an "AGP trans" person who is dressed up as a girl in a pink dress, and has an erection as he looks at himself in the mirror. This furthers the suspicion that he gets some kind of sexual arousal from cross-dressing. Thomas has also liked many other photos of men cross-dressing as women, as well as posts about "sexploration."

Nicole even found that Thomas liked posts of his friends practicing paganism and Satanism, as well as pictures of crass pornographic cartoons. Apparently, Thomas has even shared photos of his own sex dungeon that he built with his boyfriend, complete with a wall of BDSM toys and kinks.

"If this was just about his personal life and his preference as a gay man and his fetishes, we would have just left it there," Nicole says. "But it's not. Lia represents what it means to be all-American. He has lobbied to be in the women's locker room on the basis that he feels like a woman, not because he has any sexual arousal. He presents himself as a squeaky clean athlete with no ulterior motive. But parents deserve to know there is a darkness about allowing any man into the locker room that claims that they just feel like they should be there."

Perhaps even more disturbing is the fact that less than 4 years ago, Thomas seemed to be living a normal life as a young man. He proclaimed he was in love with his girlfriend and he dressed and acted like a male.

And now just a few years later, he shows a completely different story on Instagram, even if it's kept fairly private. But it's important to understand that autogynephilia is an abnormal sexual desire that manifests into a darkness that has infiltrated women's spaces, all under the guise of trans acceptance and compassion.

#William Thomas #AGP #university of pennsylvania #men in women’s sports #TIMs and kink

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withswords · 2 years

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as usual tumblr is acting very high and mighty about knowing things that other people might not know, and getting very meanspirited about twitter refugees who haven’t heard of goncharov. additionally, there’s a lot of misinformation and jokes floating around that are probably just confusing a lot of people further, which is kind of unfair. the reason you’ve never seen goncharov is because until pretty recently nobody had since the 1970s!

tumblr has always had a thriving community of lost media enthusiasts, and the search for goncharov was kickstarted on here in 2020 after the discovery of a pair of shoes with a label that seemed to promote martin scorsese’s goncharov, a mysterious mafia movie nobody had ever heard of, leading to the ironic ‘this idiot hasn’t seen goncharov’ meme. however, under the surface, a few intrepid lost media excavators wondered, why hadn’t they seen goncharov? was this movie a total hoax?

then in late 2020- an event that got somewhat lost in the jumble of tumblr’s destiel election haze- gonch-heads found an interview with columbia pictures studio head david begelmen (best known for an embezzlement scandal that would be revealed a few years later) that mentioned goncharov. recently the unearthed movie has received praise for its striking visuals, for being a movie truly ahead of its time for the intended 1973 release, so people are often surprised to learn that goncharov was one of the all time production clusterfucks at columbia.

the interviewer quotes begelmen saying, “We don’t say that word [Goncharov],” in a tone that comes across almost scolding. when asked for clarification, he adds: “You know in theater they have the Scottish play? We have that ****ing Naples movie.”

when you look into it, it’s easy to see why goncharov was internally considered a cursed production. there are more thorough posts out there about all the disasters on the set of goncharov, but i’ll go over the two big ones. the enigmatic presence of ilya was created by practical necessity. his role was originally much larger, before the actor died on set (from a heart attack supposedly unrelated to the filming), and much of his part had to be scrapped. studio shakeups as columbia nearly went bankrupt (not helped by goncharov’s ambitious budget) and moved shooting from gower street to burbank resulted in much of the physical film going missing, thought to be destroyed until nearly 15 years later. around this time, rather than attempt to go into reshoots for an expensive nightmare led by a rookie director, the filming was canned completely.

i think because scorsese is so high profile now, people forget that in 73, he was barely scorsese. he was an up-and-coming director with some borrowed clout, but goncharov was a costly mistake that nearly ended his career. there’s a reason he rarely speaks about it. this was only compounded by matteo j.

a lot of people out there will tell you that j was the real director of goncharov, and this is false, if not an understandable mistake. matteo j has been off the grid for decades now and there’s a lot of speculation about who he was, his involvement with the original goncharov project, and why he went underground. there are rumors that he ran afoul of the actual mafia, but in my opinion that’s just sensationalism- you might as well say that the goncharov curse took him out. all we REALLY know is that he was at some point an employee of columbia pictures who gained access to the lost reels of goncharov.

j may at best be responsible for compiling his recovered goncharov footage in the late 80s, into a film which he tried to release in italy in partnership with procacci, who was attempting at that time to break into production and due to the low profile and attempted studio coverup at columbia was not fully aware of the film’s history. there are conflicting accounts of how much influence j’s editing has on the film, with some people considering him basically the marcia lucas of goncharov, and others believing him to be an opportunist taking advantage of a mostly-finished piece of art for his own gain.

obviously the studio intervened before the film’s actual release, but much of the promotional material including the poster, the shoes, etc. came from this time. it seems that columbia came to some kind of agreement with j vis a vis distribution and profits, probably in the hopes of cashing in on scorsese’s by then ascended name, which was of course splashed across the top of every goncharov poster you can find. however, the release was called off a second time once scorsese himself got wind of it.

and that seemed to be the end of it. the completed goncharov went into the columbia vault, with only a handful of misremembered bootlegs and chopped-up local tv airings even attesting to the fact that it ever existed, until a leaked copy appeared with no warning on archive.org. this seems to have been a prelude from a disgruntled netflix employee to the distribution of the film through the service (although, of course, in inferior aspect ratio, ‘remastered’ and with several scenes edited). you can still find copies of the original film on archive if you want to experience it as... well, it’s hard to say what the ‘intended’ goncharov experience is with such a complicated history behind it, but as close to intended as we can get. i don’t know if scorsese has softened on j’s version of the movie after all this time, or if he’s just let his grudge over it go. all i know for sure is that goncharov really has earned the title of the greatest mafia movie never made

#goncharov #unreality #long post

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jakethesequel · 6 months

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I didn't "get" the TikTok social media format - thought it sucked and made no sense and had none of the features I actually want in a social media - until YouTube started pushing Youtube Shorts, and now I understand. The Tiktok/Shorts/Reels social media model is taking most of its design cues from slot machines. I'm sure other people have written about this, but I wasn't able to really internalize the feeling until Youtube pushed Shorts to the top of my app and made me experience it for myself.

The video, the content, takes up the whole screen. Other features, like descriptions and comments sections, are minimized if present at all. Pausing and scrubbing are also made difficult or impossible, often if you miss something you just have to rewatch the whole thing and at that point you'd rather just go on to the next video. Often any kind of links in the title/description/comments are banned, ostensibly to prevent spambots and phishing, but...

All of these features serve the same thing the sounds, lights, and secluded booths serve for slots: to make sure nothing is going to distract you from the machine. To keep you investing your money and/or your time. Banning links is obvious, why encourage you to visit another site, visit the competition, when they can keep you here? Pausing the video, reading the description or comments, that'll just slow you down and then you might start thinking about "hey, what time is it?" and "oh yeah I have these other things to do" instead of scrolling to the next Content and thinking about that instead. Content is too short for you to put on in the background while you do other things, like a regular youtube video. Even if you tried, the Content won't just end and be silent while you finish up, giving you time to think about what to do next. Nah, it repeats itself, it loops over and over, annoying you into scrolling to the next video (and the next, and the next, and the next). Every aspect of these apps is designed for maximum engagement, and designed with the same features casinos use to create addictions!

They do this to sell ads, of course. People on regular youtube (or any similar site, just using the hegemonic one as shorthand) often use adblocker, and even those who don't, they skip the ad as soon as they're allowed. Because they're here to watch the video they clicked on, from their recommendations or their subscribed channels, not the ad that pops up before it. The ad is an unexpected intruder. Mandating a short-form runtime - but not Vine short, because that's too short to retain engagement - helps. If people are watching 20-minute videos, you can only sell so much ad space before you're even worse than regular TV. But if people are watching 1-minute videos, you can get away with showing even just 1 ad for every 5 videos, and be tolerated way more than 4 ads in 1 long video, despite having the same adspace-per-minute!

Plus, throwing a bunch of short Content at the user is way easier to generate an algorithmic profile off of and sell that information to targeted advertisers. A simple watched/swiped metric over hundreds of shorts with constant engagement; versus the complexity of analyzing "well, you watched 15 minutes of a 30 minute video and then clicked away, but left a like and a comment" over far fewer longer videos with intermittent engagement.

The biggest advantage of that? They can now get around that "intruder ad" effect I mentioned. When you click on a youtube video, you expect the get the video you clicked on. Any ad that comes up before it is an annoying little unexpected intruder, and even if you aren't savvy enough to have uBlock installed, you're going to click Skip Ad as soon as you can to get what you actually came for. So what do TikTok/Shorts/Reels do? They take away your ability to choose what you watch. All you can do is ask for the algorithm to give you a new video, there's no list of recommendations to choose from. Now the ads aren't intruders, because you weren't expecting anything else. You aren't primed to reject it for being in the way. On top of that, ads are disguised as Content. The break between ad and video on Youtube is clear, ads have their own space and are noticeable. Even the ads on an infinite scroller like tumblr or twitter have some things to mark them out as not being normal posts. On the new slot-machine socials? There's maybe an "ADVERTISEMENT" highlighted before the title in the intentionally deficient description section, one word in a section that takes up less than 10% of the screen space, at the very bottom where it's probably covered up by your thumb. Because the algorithm lets them slot it in between very similar Content, and you have no idea what Content to expect next, and the mandatory "this is an ad" labels are designed to be unnoticeable; by the time you realize what you're watching is an advertisement, you've already watched most of the ad. Long past when you would've already hit Skip otherwise.

Like I said, I'm sure others have talked about this, but it's been driving me crazy now that I've seen it for myself. I'm glad people have caught on to how gacha games create addiction; hopefully we can start to do the same with these predatory apps. I honestly don't know which is worse. Gacha games take your money, but these advertising algorithms manipulate your mind. Mostly into spending your money, yes, and that's creepy enough in itself, but it's also easily used to manipulate not just wallets but votes and political opinions. It's no accident that reactionaries, fascists, and conspiracy theorists thrive on Youtube Shorts.

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inthemaelstrom · 21 days

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ART ISN'T SUPPOSED TO MAKE YOU COMFORTABLE

By Jen Silverman (NY Times)

(Mx. Silverman is a playwright and the author, most recently, of the novel “There’s Going to Be Trouble.”)

When I was in college, I came across “The Sea and Poison,” a 1950s novel by Shusaku Endo. It tells the story of a doctor in postwar Japan who, as an intern years earlier, participated in a vivisection experiment on an American prisoner. Endo’s lens on the story is not the easiest one, ethically speaking; he doesn’t dwell on the suffering of the victim. Instead, he chooses to explore a more unsettling element: the humanity of the perpetrators.

When I say “humanity” I mean their confusion, self-justifications and willingness to lie to themselves. Atrocity doesn’t just come out of evil, Endo was saying, it emerges from self-interest, timidity, apathy and the desire for status. His novel showed me how, in the right crucible of social pressures, I, too, might delude myself into making a choice from which an atrocity results. Perhaps this is why the book has haunted me for nearly two decades, such that I’ve read it multiple times.

I was reminded of that novel at 2 o’clock in the morning recently as I scrolled through a social media account dedicated to collecting angry reader reviews. My attention was caught by someone named Nathan, whose take on “Paradise Lost” was: “Milton was a fascist turd.” But it was another reader, Ryan, who reeled me in with his response to John Updike’s “Rabbit, Run”: “This book made me oppose free speech.” From there, I hit the bank of “Lolita” reviews: Readers were appalled, frustrated, infuriated. What a disgusting man! How could Vladimir Nabokov have been permitted to write this book? Who let authors write such immoral, perverse characters anyway?

I was cackling as I scrolled but soon a realization struck me. Here on my screen was the distillation of a peculiar American illness: namely, that we have a profound and dangerous inclination to confuse art with moral instruction, and vice versa.

As someone who was born in the States but partially raised in a series of other countries, I’ve always found the sheer uncompromising force of American morality to be mesmerizing and terrifying. Despite our plurality of influences and beliefs, our national character seems inescapably informed by an Old Testament relationship to the notions of good and evil. This powerful construct infuses everything from our advertising campaigns to our political ones — and has now filtered into, and shifted, the function of our artistic works.

Maybe it’s because our political discourse swings between deranged and abhorrent on a daily basis and we would like to combat our feelings of powerlessness by insisting on moral simplicity in the stories we tell and receive. Or maybe it’s because many of the transgressions that flew under the radar in previous generations — acts of misogyny, racism and homophobia; abuses of power both macro and micro — are now being called out directly. We’re so intoxicated by openly naming these ills that we have begun operating under the misconception that to acknowledge each other’s complexity, in our communities as well as in our art, is to condone each other’s cruelties.

When I work with younger writers, I am frequently amazed by how quickly peer feedback sessions turn into a process of identifying which characters did or said insensitive things. Sometimes the writers rush to defend the character, but often they apologize shamefacedly for their own blind spot, and the discussion swerves into how to fix the morals of the piece. The suggestion that the values of a character can be neither the values of the writer nor the entire point of the piece seems more and more surprising — and apt to trigger discomfort.

While I typically share the progressive political views of my students, I’m troubled by their concern for righteousness over complexity. They do not want to be seen representing any values they do not personally hold. The result is that, in a moment in which our world has never felt so fast-changing and bewildering, our stories are getting simpler, less nuanced and less able to engage with the realities through which we’re living.

I can’t blame younger writers for believing that it is their job to convey a strenuously correct public morality. This same expectation filters into all the modes in which I work: novels, theater, TV and film. The demands of Internet Nathan and Internet Ryan — and the anxieties of my mentees — are not so different from those of the industry gatekeepers who work in the no-man’s land between art and money and whose job it is to strip stories of anything that could be ethically murky.

I have worked in TV writers’ rooms where “likability notes” came from on high as soon as a complex character was on the page — particularly when the character was female. Concern about her likability was most often a concern about her morals: Could she be perceived as promiscuous? Selfish? Aggressive? Was she a bad girlfriend or a bad wife? How quickly could she be rehabilitated into a model citizen for the viewers?

TV is not alone in this. A director I’m working with recently pitched our screenplay to a studio. When the executives passed, they told our team it was because the characters were too morally ambiguous and they’d been tasked with seeking material wherein the lesson was clear, so as not to unsettle their customer base. What they did not say, but did not need to, is that in the absence of adequate federal arts funding, American art is tied to the marketplace. Money is tight, and many corporations do not want to pay for stories that viewers might object to if they can buy something that plays blandly in the background of our lives.

But what art offers us is crucial precisely because it is not a bland backdrop or a platform for simple directives. Our books, plays, films and TV shows can do the most for us when they don’t serve as moral instruction manuals but allow us to glimpse our own hidden capacities, the slippery social contracts inside which we function, and the contradictions we all contain.

We need more narratives that tell us the truth about how complex our world is. We need stories that help us name and accept paradoxes, not ones that erase or ignore them. After all, our experience of living in communities with one another is often much more fluid and changeable than it is rigidly black and white. We have the audiences that we cultivate, and the more we cultivate audiences who believe that the job of art is to instruct instead of investigate, to judge instead of question, to seek easy clarity instead of holding multiple uncertainties, the more we will find ourselves inside a culture defined by rigidity, knee-jerk judgments and incuriosity. In our hair-trigger world of condemnation, division and isolation, art — not moralizing — has never been more crucial.

#antis #purity culture #purity wank #why I write fanfic #because I can't publish my morally ambiguous OCs

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