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mostlysignssomeportents · 1 year

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Greenwashing set Canada on fire

On September 22, I'm (virtually) presenting at the DIG Festival in Modena, Italy. On September 27, I'll be at Chevalier's Books in Los Angeles with Brian Merchant for a joint launch for my new book The Internet Con and his new book, Blood in the Machine.

As a teenager growing up in Ontario, I always envied the kids who spent their summers tree planting; they'd come back from the bush in September, insect-chewed and leathery, with new muscle, incredible stories, thousands of dollars, and a glow imparted by the knowledge that they'd made a new forest with their own blistered hands.

I was too unathletic to follow them into the bush, but I spent my summers doing my bit, ringing doorbells for Greenpeace to get my neighbours fired up about the Canadian pulp-and-paper industry, which wasn't merely clear-cutting our old-growth forests – it was also poisoning the Great Lakes system with PCBs, threatening us all.

At the time, I thought of tree-planting as a small victory – sure, our homegrown, rapacious, extractive industry was able to pollute with impunity, but at least the government had reined them in on forests, forcing them to pay my pals to spend their summers replacing the forests they'd fed into their mills.

I was wrong. Last summer's Canadian wildfires blanketed the whole east coast and midwest in choking smoke as millions of trees burned and millions of tons of CO2 were sent into the atmosphere. Those wildfires weren't just an effect of the climate emergency: they were made far worse by all those trees planted by my pals in the eighties and nineties.

Writing in the New York Times, novelist Claire Cameron describes her own teen years working in the bush, planting row after row of black spruces, precisely spaced at six-foot intervals:

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/15/opinion/wildfires-treeplanting-timebomb.html

Cameron's summer job was funded by the logging industry, whose self-pegulated, self-assigned "penalty" for clearcutting diverse forests of spruce, pine and aspen was to pay teenagers to create a tree farm, at nine cents per sapling (minus camp costs).

Black spruces are made to burn, filled with flammable sap and equipped with resin-filled cones that rely on fire, only opening and dropping seeds when they're heated. They're so flammable that firefighters call them "gas on a stick."

Cameron and her friends planted under brutal conditions: working long hours in blowlamp heat and dripping wet bulb humidity, amidst clouds of stinging insects, fingers blistered and muscles aching. But when they hit rock bottom and were ready to quit, they'd encourage one another with a rallying cry: "Let's go make a forest!"

Planting neat rows of black spruces was great for the logging industry: the even spacing guaranteed that when the trees matured, they could be easily reaped, with ample space between each near-identical tree for massive shears to operate. But that same monocropped, evenly spaced "forest" was also optimized to burn.

It burned.

The climate emergency's frequent droughts turn black spruces into "something closer to a blowtorch." The "pines in lines" approach to reforesting was an act of sabotage, not remediation. Black spruces are thirsty, and they absorb the water that moss needs to thrive, producing "kindling in the place of fire retardant."

Cameron's column concludes with this heartbreaking line: "Now when I think of that summer, I don’t think that I was planting trees at all. I was planting thousands of blowtorches a day."

The logging industry committed a triple crime. First, they stole our old-growth forests. Next, they (literally) planted a time-bomb across Ontario's north. Finally, they stole the idealism of people who genuinely cared about the environment. They taught a generation that resistance is futile, that anything you do to make a better future is a scam, and you're a sucker for falling for it. They planted nihilism with every tree.

That scam never ended. Today, we're sold carbon offsets, a modern Papal indulgence. We are told that if we pay the finance sector, they can absolve us for our climate sins. Carbon offsets are a scam, a market for lemons. The "offset" you buy might be a generated by a fake charity like the Nature Conservancy, who use well-intentioned donations to buy up wildlife reserves that can't be logged, which are then converted into carbon credits by promising not to log them:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/12/12/fairy-use-tale/#greenwashing

The credit-card company that promises to plant trees every time you use your card? They combine false promises, deceptive advertising, and legal threats against critics to convince you that you're saving the planet by shopping:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/11/17/do-well-do-good-do-nothing/#greenwashing

The carbon offset world is full of scams. The carbon offset that made the thing you bought into a "net zero" product? It might be a forest that already burned:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/03/11/a-market-for-flaming-lemons/#money-for-nothing

The only reason we have carbon offsets is that market cultists have spent forty years convincing us that actual regulation is impossible. In the neoliberal learned helplessness mind-palace, there's no way to simply say, "You may not log old-growth forests." Rather, we have to say, "We will 'align your incentives' by making you replace those forests."

The Climate Ad Project's "Murder Offsets" video deftly punctures this bubble. In it, a detective points his finger at the man who committed the locked-room murder in the isolated mansion. The murderer cheerfully admits that he did it, but produces a "murder offset," which allowed him to pay someone else not to commit a murder, using market-based price-discovery mechanisms to put a dollar-figure on the true worth of a murder, which he duly paid, making his kill absolutely fine:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/04/14/for-sale-green-indulgences/#killer-analogy

What's the alternative to murder offsets/carbon credits? We could ask our expert regulators to decide which carbon intensive activities are necessary and which ones aren't, and ban the unnecessary ones. We could ask those regulators to devise remediation programs that actually work. After all, there are plenty of forests that have already been clearcut, plenty that have burned. It would be nice to know how we can plant new forests there that aren't "thousands of blowtorches."

If that sounds implausible to you, then you've gotten trapped in the neoliberal mind-palace.

The term "regulatory capture" was popularized by far-right Chicago School economists who were promoting "public choice theory." In their telling, regulatory capture is inevitable, because companies will spend whatever it takes to get the government to pass laws making what they do legal, and making competing with them into a crime:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/06/13/public-choice/#ajit-pai-still-terrible

This is true, as far as it goes. Capitalists hate capitalism, and if an "entrepreneur" can make it illegal to compete with him, he will. But while this is a reasonable starting-point, the place that Public Choice Theory weirdos get to next is bonkers. They say that since corporations will always seek to capture their regulators, we should abolish regulators.

They say that it's impossible for good regulations to exist, and therefore the only regulation that is even possible is to let businesses do whatever they want and wait for the invisible hand to sweep away the bad companies. Rather than creating hand-washing rules for restaurant kitchens, we should let restaurateurs decide whether it's economically rational to make us shit ourselves to death. The ones that choose poorly will get bad online reviews and people will "vote with their dollars" for the good restaurants.

And if the online review site decides to sell "reputation management" to restaurants that get bad reviews? Well, soon the public will learn that the review site can't be trusted and they'll take their business elsewhere. No regulation needed! Unleash the innovators! Set the job-creators free!

This is the Ur-nihilism from which all the other nihilism springs. It contends that the regulations we have – the ones that keep our buildings from falling down on our heads, that keep our groceries from poisoning us, that keep our cars from exploding on impact – are either illusory, or perhaps the forgotten art of a lost civilization. Making good regulations is like embalming Pharaohs, something the ancients practiced in mist-shrouded, unrecoverable antiquity – and that may not have happened at all.

Regulation is corruptible, but it need not be corrupt. Regulation, like science, is a process of neutrally adjudicated, adversarial peer-review. In a robust regulatory process, multiple parties respond to a fact-intensive question – "what alloys and other properties make a reinforced steel joist structurally sound?" – with a mix of robust evidence and self-serving bullshit and then proceed to sort the two by pantsing each other, pointing out one another's lies.

The regulator, an independent expert with no conflicts of interest, sorts through the claims and counterclaims and makes a rule, showing their workings and leaving the door open to revisiting the rule based on new evidence or challenges to the evidence presented.

But when an industry becomes concentrated, it becomes unregulatable. 100 small and medium-sized companies will squabble. They'll struggle to come up with a common lie. There will always be defectors in their midst. Their conduct will be legible to external experts, who will be able to spot the self-serving BS.

But let that industry dwindle to a handful of giant companies, let them shrink to a number that will fit around a boardroom table, and they will sit down at a table and agree on a cozy arrangement that fucks us all over to their benefit. They will become so inbred that the only people who understand how they work will be their own insiders, and so top regulators will be drawn from their own number and be hopelessly conflicted.

When the corporate sector takes over, regulatory capture is inevitable. But corporate takeover isn't inevitable. We can – and have, and will again – fight corporate power, with antitrust law, with unions, and with consumer rights groups. Knowing things is possible. It simply requires that we keep the entities that profit by our confusion poor and thus weak.

The thing is, corporations don't always lie about regulations. Take the fight over working encryption, which – once again – the UK government is trying to ban:

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/feb/24/signal-app-warns-it-will-quit-uk-if-law-weakens-end-to-end-encryption

Advocates for criminalising working encryption insist that the claims that this is impossible are the same kind of self-serving nonsense as claims that banning clearcutting of old-growth forests is impossible:

https://twitter.com/JimBethell/status/1699339739042599276

They say that when technologists say, "We can't make an encryption system that keeps bad guys out but lets good guys in," that they are being lazy and unimaginative. "I have faith in you geeks," they said. "Go nerd harder! You'll figure it out."

Google and Apple and Meta say that selectively breakable encryption is impossible. But they also claim that a bunch of eminently possible things are impossible. Apple claims that it's impossible to have a secure device where you get to decide which software you want to use and where publishers aren't deprive of 30 cents on every dollar you spend. Google says it's impossible to search the web without being comprehensively, nonconsensually spied upon from asshole to appetite. Meta insists that it's impossible to have digital social relationship without having your friendships surveilled and commodified.

While they're not lying about encryption, they are lying about these other things, and sorting out the lies from the truth is the job of regulators, but that job is nearly impossible thanks to the fact that everyone who runs a large online service tells the same lies – and the regulators themselves are alumni of the industry's upper eschelons.

Logging companies know a lot about forests. When we ask, "What is the best way to remediate our forests," the companies may well have useful things to say. But those useful things will be mixed with actively harmful lies. The carefully cultivated incompetence of our regulators means that they can't tell the difference.

Conspiratorialism is characterized as a problem of what people believe, but the true roots of conspiracy belief isn't what we believe, it's how we decide what to believe. It's not beliefs, it's epistemology.

Because most of us aren't qualified to sort good reforesting programs from bad ones. And even if we are, we're probably not also well-versed enough in cryptography to sort credible claims about encryption from wishful thinking. And even if we're capable of making that determination, we're not experts in food hygiene or structural engineering.

Daily life in the 21st century means resolving a thousand life-or-death technical questions every day. Our regulators – corrupted by literally out-of-control corporations – are no longer reliable sources of ground truth on these questions. The resulting epistemological chaos is a cancer that gnaws away at our resolve to do anything about it. It is a festering pool where nihilism outbreaks are incubated.

The liberal response to conspiratorialism is mockery. In her new book Doppelganger, Naomi Klein tells of how right-wing surveillance fearmongering about QR-code "vaccine passports" was dismissed with a glib, "Wait until they hear about cellphones!"

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/05/not-that-naomi/#if-the-naomi-be-klein-youre-doing-just-fine

But as Klein points out, it's not good that our cellphones invade our privacy in the way that right-wing conspiracists thought that vaccine passports might. The nihilism of liberalism – which insists that things can't be changed except through market "solutions" – leads us to despair.

By contrast, leftism – a muscular belief in democratic, publicly run planning and action – offers a tonic to nihilism. We don't have to let logging companies decide whether a forest can be cut, or what should be planted when it is. We can have nice things. The art of finding out what's true or prudent didn't die with the Reagan Revolution (or the discount Canadian version, the Mulroney Malaise). The truth is knowable. Doing stuff is possible. Things don't have to be on fire.

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

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/16/murder-offsets/#pulped-and-papered

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moonstruckme · 9 months

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“Wow,” Morgan sighs happily, “I don’t know which one of you is more whipped.”

i'm so obsessed with this line from one of your recent spencer reid works and i would loooove to see more of this dynamic if you're interested in doing it 💗 maybe more moments of them being soft/whipped for each other and the team noticing it? thank youuu!!

Thank you lovely!

cw: mention of kidnapping (more a backdrop than anything)

Spencer Reid x bau!reader ♡ 1k words

Spencer really wishes he’d remembered his gloves. The air is biting, fresh powder glistening on the deep green spruces whose boughs stoop under its weight. It’s picturesque, and yet the snowfall couldn’t have come at a worse time. It’s impeded their search party by hours, potentially dooming the kidnapping victim they’re all braving the weather for. Spencer keeps his hands stowed in his coat pockets.

“Hey.”

He turns as you and Emily come up behind him. You’re both dressed better than he is, actual winter wear as opposed to the tweed coat he’d worn into the police station that morning. Even so, your cheek and nose are look chilled as you smile at him. You carry a disposable coffee cup in each hand.

“Hi,” Spencer says, taking the one you extend to him. His numb fingers are grateful for the warmth of it. “I thought you guys were interviewing the uncle?”

Emily’s shaking her head before he’s finished speaking, mouth pulling in discontent. “That was a dead end. He and his sister have been estranged for years. He doesn’t know anything.”

A frown tugs at your features as Emily talks but you perk up quickly when you feel your boyfriend’s gaze. “We figured we’d be more helpful here,” you say brightly, “and also that you might want some liquid reinforcement.”

“Thanks.” He does a little toast with his disposable cup and regrets it immediately, but thankfully you smile. Spencer isn’t sure how he got so lucky; it seems like he can get away with any number of weird things and you’ll find them endearing every time. “There hasn’t been much progress here either. If they left any sort of tracks, the snow covered it up. I’m not…” he lowers his voice, angling his head away from the others in his group. “I’m not sure we’ll find her alive in this.”

“We’ve still got eight hours,” Emily points out.

She’s right, he tells himself. There are eight hours left in the forty-eight hour window. But that’s also just a statistic. And as someone whose brain is packed full of statistics, Spencer knows that they’re not always reflective of reality. The eight hours his team has left might be more for hope than anything else.

Emily drifts ahead of you in the group and you bump your shoulder lightly into his, forcibly derailing his train of thought. He looks over at you. Your lips are tipped up, just a little. Not faking anything, but understanding, a quiet promise that regardless of how today turns out, you’ll be in it together. He finds it easier than expected to return your smile.

“Oh, I almost forgot.” Your hair curtains your face as you look down, unzipping your jacket to dig something out of the interior pocket. “You left your gloves at the station.”

“Yes.” You laugh at his eagerness as he takes them from you. “I can’t believe I forgot them, thanks so much for bringing them.”

“Of course, it was no problem.” Your eyes skim the trees. Spencer suspects that if your face weren’t already so pink it’d be coloring now. “I figured you might need them, so.”

“You were right.”

Your gaze flits to his as you grin, then falls to where he has his gloves held bunched with his coffee cup. “Oh, do you want me to take that so you can put them on?”

“That’d be great,” he says, relieved.

He holds the cup out to you. You reach for it, but when your fingers brush his in the transfer, you gasp, covering his hand with yours.

“Spence,” you say softly, remonstrance gentled. “Your hands are freezing!”

“They’re not as bad as they were before. What are you doing?”

You’ve taken one of his hands in yours and appear to be inspecting it closely. “Checking if your fingernails are blue.”

“They’re not,” he laughs, though he lets you finish your perusal until you’re satisfied. “I would know if I had frostbite. I’d be able to identify the symptoms early on.”

“They’re just so cold,” you fret. “I’ve never felt skin that cold before.”

The tops of his hands are still freezing, but his palms and the pads his fingers have warmed from the coffee cup. “I’m not sure they’re colder than your face,” he says, pressing his free hand to one of your cheeks.

Unsurprisingly, your skin is cool to the touch, but you smile warmly as you push your cheek into his palm.

“Okay, you two,” Emily says without turning around, “less fraternizing on the job.

You straighten immediately. “We were just—”

“Being cute and coupley?” Uncannily, Morgan appears on Spencer’s other side. He has no idea when his nosiest coworker had drifted back from the front of the group. “We know. But could you save it for the hotel later? Even all the sparks flying off you two can’t melt all this snow, and I want to get out of here sometime before dark.”

Spencer suspects his face is about as red as yours as he looks down to pull on his gloves. Morgan relishes in it, raising an eyebrow at you.

“And don’t think I didn’t notice that you brought pretty boy here a coffee and not me.” He tsks. “I didn’t expect such blatant favoritism from you, sweetheart. I’m disappointed.”

“I was carrying yours,” Emily says, her tone conveying an eyeroll so effectively she doesn’t need to follow through with the action. She pushes a disposable coffee cup into Morgan’s chest.

He doesn’t look one bit sheepish as he takes it, though Spencer notices you trying to repress a grin that’s bordering upon smug.

“This has lipstick on the lid.”

Emily shrugs. “I finished mine in the car.”

“So you started on mine?”

“I sampled.”

“You’re lucky I exhibit such blatant favoritism,” you say quietly to Spencer under their bickering. “I finished mine in the car too.”

He raises his eyebrows, and you shake your empty cup as proof. Spencer takes your hand, wrapping it around his coffee cup. “We’ll share.”

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spurbleu · 2 months

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lassitude ✩︎‧︎⁎︎

[ken sato x afab reader]

S. the first time you are vulnerable with Ken Sato, you are half asleep. and for the first time, he is willing.

warnings: none, split pov

a/n: sorry for my lengthy absence, it got extremely busy for me lmao. i dont really like this- but i feel like i cant do much to make it better so here it is

word count: 1.7k

࿓༚︎︎‧⁎︎✳︎⁎︎‧︎༚︎࿓︎

The mumble of the morning stirred you from the pockets of your mattress. It was barely noticeable- the shift of the comforter- cool early air pooling between the hairs on your arm. The faint creak of the floorboards, (never good at keeping secrets) the spruce mumbling an Irish goodbye.

It would be a lie to say you didn’t see it coming. The sight of him.

Skin relearning to stretch over shoulder blades, peeking through your lashes in familiar foresight. The way his hands searched for his clothes through the birth of daylight- its first breaths placid against the bedsheets.

It all felt too beautiful- the apathy. Buried in lithe, lifeless blankets rather than the rhythm of his pulse, the plush of his embrace. The sudden emptiness of morning’s coffin, quilt seams ripped by the assumption that a goodbye wasn’t necessary.

Ironic- for how lonely the man seemed to be, he looked lethargic in the act of leaving. Near comfortable as he dressed, relief from the reclusive slump of his posture breaching a harsh breath that left the gaps of his teeth.

You were more awake now- enough to question why you cared.

He made it easy- cleaned up half the mess, took the other half out the door. And when it was time to ruin it again, he did it with kindness- gentleness in his absence. There was nothing you should’ve resented- he was doing you a favor. But you found yourself hating it more.

You knew it wasn’t a superiority complex- you were near equals as you slept next to each other. It wasn’t that he didn’t like you, because you knew within the next 12 hours, he’d be back again, pale in the face of his own affair.

Confounding. The principle that if he knew he was going to come back, why leave at all?

It struck you then- the putrid smell of your own confusion. The anger you held in the bed of your heart, fueled by the weak and needy creature of your own vulnerability. Its chubby hands wringing the veins that curled around your ribs. It spoke for you.

“Ken.”

It was weaker than you thought it would be- no louder than a whisper. At first, I didn’t even sound like his name- only a pathetic mumble that spelled out his silhouette. It became a bit more tangible, louder, when he turned to face you.

“Good morning.”

He slung his bag over the dip of his shoulder, dressed in the clothes from last night. They were wrinkled now, creased in the same shape as your bed, your floor, your home. It was hauntingly poetic- how he seemed to carry you with him in the quietest of ways.

A crease formed under the base of his lips- a smile. Still dry in early hours- complimenting the tanned sections of his jaw- spring kisses breaking the occasional sallow of his face. It was small, but under the shadow of his tousled hair, it looked near blinding.

(But that was Ken for you, wasn’t it? Blinding. Bright in the ways that make the air in your nose cold- fresh. Humane.)

“…Do you…need something?”

Fuck.

You should’ve followed the script. Typewriter font, black indifference, pretending to be asleep when he crept out the door. Feigning casual when reading the ‘text later’ note he’d leave on the counter of your kitchen, next to a day old, crushed protein bar (although, it would always be your favorite flavor).

But instead, you sat curled into the headboard of your bed, sheets protecting your fluttering gut as sleep fogged the more cohesive thoughts. It peeled back, though, the sensitive ones.

You wanted him to stay.

Although it felt like the first time you had admitted it to yourself, you found the blemish of your confession everywhere.

The pucker of your carpet beneath his socks. The indent on the left of your mattress- matching the round of his shoulder. The cool breath that escaped your lungs- collapsing against the rim of your heart.

And in the brevity of nerve, the one that spoke his name with so little foundation before, you answered him.

“Stay.”

࿓༚︎︎‧⁎︎✳︎⁎︎‧︎༚︎࿓︎

It’s the tilt in your voice that curves under his adam’s apple in a slow gulp- dry. The softer tones blooming under your tongue, coloring your bottom lip in a nude pink- stainless and genuine. Your lash line drooping into a word that looked foreign to the valley of your cheekbones.

Please.

He mirrored you. The slow breath that hollowed ribs, the sharper edges of his shoulders bending to the will of your own. Even his smile began to falter into the same wary, desperate line that creased the corners of your cheeks.

The effortless effect you had on him.

He knew it was happening, somewhere in the canyon of his bone. Mind disconnected from the marrow, as the better parts of him seemed to reflect every vice of yours. Although it was maddening, conscious clawing at the cushion of his skull, he had learned to embrace it.

Held it as he cradled you- bow of your spine splitting his chest in two- revealing the plusher parts of him, affection safely shadowed by the midnight and your snore. (He’d never admit it to you, but he sleeps better in your bed than he does his own. Although Mina suggests it’s about the company rather than the mattress).

Similar to your aftertaste, he was familiar with your vulnerability- a lot worse at hiding it than you might think.

The haphazard stack of protein bar wrappers in the trash (ashamed to say he counted, once. You’ve eaten every single one he’s given you). The grip on his sweatshirt when you pull him through your door- flushed fingertips eager on the cool metal of its zipper. Even while you sleep your body betrays, burrowing yourself into him as if somehow, you’ll leave a mark (equally ashamed, but just a bit more hopeful, he wants you to).

Selfishly, he loved it. How much you made him feel wanted- needed, even. How the cage of your chest opened for him, his nails the shape of a key as he dug into the softer parts of you. Grime dyeing cuticles red, and he’s convinced that if he asked to crawl within you, you’d let him.

Reluctantly, if so. Looking away, pink on your cheeks, spurred by the flash of his teeth. Unwilling to admit he had asked you before you could have offered.

A begrudging devotion.

He swallowed it, syrup sweet against the cast of his teeth.

“You want me to…stay?”

He let his bag drop to the floor, relishing that as he took a step closer, knees to the bed, the center of your throat bobbed. Contrast to your bold request, a shyness in the creases under your eyes and mouth. It reeked of yearning, and made an illness bloom on Ken’s tonsils.

You nodded slowly as he came to lay next to you. If he listened more closely and focused less on the cross of your arms, he would have heard your heart pulsing a morse that sounded dangerously, sweetly, like his name.

“Yes.”

“Why?” Classical, predictable, the way his smirk warmed the edges of his lips.

“Because you never do…” anxious- eyes searching excuses for the lack of a real answer- “…and the protein bars are getting old.”

A genuine laugh furrowed the flesh beneath his collar bone, morning voice still breaking from the aridity of unuse. “What if I left an apple this time?”

You leaned into his chest, pulling the covers to your shoulder. God, did you look good like this. Tucked into him, a little wanting, a little kind. “You’re so boring. If you’re going to leave, at least give me something good.”

Ken placed a hand to his wounded heart. “Boring? Since when is your favorite flavor of healthy boring?”

You sank back onto the mattress, and he followed you, now facing you with his hands folded under his cheek, squishing his dopey smile. Although he didn’t know it- he looked beyond childish- silly in all respects. But that’s what you liked about him, wasn’t it?

“Since the last 200 times.” You exaggerated, imitating him as you leaned on your own hands.

He searched you- not dissimilar to the way he accesses another player. The gate of their shoulder, the click of their jaw- or that slight competitive crinkle that tugged the corners of their lashes- angered by his run before he even hit the ball.

Being in the sport for so long, he had become accustomed to observing others- even from afar. Off the field, he’d find himself looking between the normalcy of strangers under the dark tint of his sunglasses. Envious- to live in blissful ignorance at their own open, bleeding hand.

He supposed that’s why he liked you. Equally as guilty of your own susceptibility- heart on your wrist. But goodness- even this close to you, he couldn’t read the glass over your eyes. As if you were those paintings behind velvet ropes- details clear from a distance, but fogged when you stand too close. Imperfections visible- but never telling.

(did Michelangelo find the Sistine Chapel just as beautiful from the floor as he did from his ladder?)

He hummed, a hand coming to trace the spring freckles that appeared on the plain of your cheek. His heart purred as he watched it bloom, every circle he drew spurring ripples of pink. He was so charmed- to see exactly what he did to you- so closely.

“Alright,” his hand drifted to the strands of hair that covered your ears, tucking it to see just a little more of your blush, “no more protein bars.”

You sighed against his face- and for a moment he was reminded how he had been there- on your lips. The stench of his own fervor- honey sweet between the cracks of its clay.

“Thank god- I was really getting sick of them.”

In his arms, you both dipped into a lullaby of silence, the sunrise cradling the fragile parts of your embrace. Those pockets of insecurity- the questions of why you asked for him to stay, and why he did. The looming assumption that this made you more than what you had been before- made you something, made it different.

You could have spent hours there, steeping in the change- elementary kids too scared to admit they ‘like-liked’ each other. Instead, you both fell asleep again.

࿓༚︎︎‧⁎︎✳︎⁎︎‧︎༚︎࿓︎

When you awoke- you were alone.

Once you slipped out of bed, it was well past 11. Your light feet and sweltering head brought you to the kitchen counter- where you found a plate of eggs, toast, coffee, and a note.

----

Home Soon.

-Ken

ps. hope this is better than the protein bars.

#ken sato x reader #ken sato x you #kenji sato x reader #kenji sato x you #ultraman rising #ken sato #kenji sato #fanfiction #fanfic #oneshot

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gothsuguru · 10 hours

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WAIT . I FORGOT . shadow chiaroscuro………. save meeeeeee shadow chiaroscuro …………

OMFGGGGGGG YOU AND ME BOTH………. sorry to anon who asked me abt how it’s going w art curator!geto ages ago omg baby i haven’t even resumed it…… SOON I PROMISE! BUT RAHHHHHH this is gonna be a such a long fic i think 😭 but i’m SO excited i have a lot of it plotted out it’s just wonky rn so i may have to edit the plot outline and then write it BUT <333 i love art curator geto…….. his painting being titled “kenjaku”…… brain was in the stratosphere when i thought of that i won’t lie…

BUT HEHE BASICALLY!!!! the plot is that fashion designer!reader goes to the museum and sees suguru’s exhibit and is enthralled by his paintings (lots of gothic horror -> tie in to jjk heian era curses/jjk monsters) and reader wants to meld fashion along w art so it’s gonna kinda be that journey of not only them getting to know each other, but also CREATING something together ((this is so vague i know BUT IN MY DEFENSE I’M STILL BRAINSTORMING…… SNIFFLES……. anyways! gonna make suguru so hot & sophisticated & shy it’s bonkers))

but hehe here’s some snippets of the actual kenjaku painting :3 might use one of the lines for suguru’s dad in premonition of love i haven’t decided yet 😗

#asks #ari tag <3 #THANK YOU AGAIN FOR ASKING ARI HEHE ILYSMMMMMMMM #can’t wait to show haigojo my Beloveds <3 #also i’m still reworking the snippets they sound kinda wonky so i need to edit them & fix it 😭#also i need another fucking word for mirth…….. i used that damn word to the fucking GROUND 😑#BUT WAHHHHH I HOPE YOU LIKE THE FIC WHENEVER THE HELL IT COMES OUT NDNDNDNDN #EDIT: I SPRUCED IT UP A BIT AND I THINK IT’S A LIL BETTER NOW OMG S/O TO THIS ASK GAME IT’S HELPING ME FIX THINGS HEHE #snippets

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arc-misadventures · 27 days

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The Lady’s Next Door

The 'Milf next door' when she says she just going to say 'hi' to that cute blond boy your daughters friends with.