#because the block feature is GREAT

[takaraphoenix]

Sometimes you see a post with a take so bad, you instantly hit "block" on the OP without needing to know any more about them.

And sometimes you see a post with a take so bad, you instantly hit "block" on the OP and then go back and scroll through the notes to also block the loudest, most atrocious people agreeing with the post.

[sillyfairygarden]

i wrote 1.5k of the next botb chapter AND 1k of my new fic WAHOO

[tariah23]

Ppl never talk about gintama, soul eater, houshin engi (CLASSIC, my god), and zatch bell whenever they bring up shounen like it sucks so bad

[t00thpasteface]

the real antidote to the problem of "everyone is beautiful and no one is horny" is watching old horny shows like mash. nothing but perfectly normal-looking, homely, average people in that show who hook up with each other or unseen partners on a regular basis. hawkeye is absolutely drowning in sex and the man has such a bizarre mismatched set of randomly strong and weak facial features on a noodle body with dogshit posture. and it's GREAT. you can't tell how soft his jawline is because there's always a woman kissing his neck and blocking the camera. i know i riff on people saying they want to fuck mulcahy until he has a religious epiphany but as a butch lesbian with that exact face shape it's been so healing to be like. ohhhh ok so sexuality and attractiveness isn't just limited to the perfect beautiful poreless people on netflix. i understand now

[cherrypikkins]

@dimiclaudeblaigan asked for a tutorial on how to begin drawing. Good news! If you can draw a funky looking stick man, you have already started!

I think that stick people are a great starting point for artists because of the things you can learn from them that will be important later on.

If you are able to draw a circle and a couple of lines, you can easily put together a stick person.

Congratulations! You have started to draw. :)

A stick person is a very minimal artistic representation of a real life person. It is simple yet recognizable, and is widely used in art, media, and signage.

But what can a stick person teach us about drawing people that look more like… well, people? Lets have a look!

By simply adding a few more lines, we can add a pair of eyes and a mouth. Maybe even a little triangle nose! Or half circles for ears. We can now draw a face, which provides a basis for all sorts of expressions.

These simple additions can allow us to explore the wide range of human emotion and individuality.

This may seem like the basics of the basics. But that is what we want! In order to get to the point where we are able to draw complex, elaborate representations of humans and objects, we will need to start with simple shapes like lines and circles and build our understanding from there.

For instance, lets give our stick person some cool new features, such as hands and feet. I chose little squiggly circles to represent hands, and triangles to represent feet.

We can go a step further and modify the body of the stick person to include shoulders, hips, elbows and knees. These parts of the human body are quite complex in real life But here, all we need to do is add a few simple lines and dots to our stick person.

The lines provide some additional structural elements to our stick person's body, which are the shoulders and the hips. The dots indicate the points of articulation - elbows and knees, the places where the arms and legs bend!

Now we can use our stick person to show us an even wider range of human movement, action, and expression.

Our little drawing of a human being is evolving! All it took was adding a few more lines and shapes here and there.

By elongating some of the existing lines and making the head an oval instead of a circle, we can give our stick person proportions that resemble that of a real life human.

By this point, we have managed to add more complexity to our stick person simply by using our ability to draw lines, circles, and other basic shapes!

These basic ideas are the building blocks that will enable us to create more complex shapes.

The next part may be a considerable step up if you are absolutely new to drawing, but I have decided to include it in order to show you how complex objects like the human body can be built from shapes that are a bit more complex than circles and lines.

For example. Two ovals and a rectangle can be combined to create a cylinder.

Six squares can be combined to create a cube, or a box. Here, each square is distorted slightly depending on which way the cube is facing.

Note that the back faces of the cube and the bottom of the cylinder are hidden. These shapes allow us to visualize that which should not normally visible.

A sphere from all perspectives can be represented by a circle. But we can make it more like a sphere by adding lighting and shadow if we so desire.

Cubes, cylinders, and spheres are examples of 'solid shapes' because they consist of 3 dimensions.

Lets see how these solid shapes can be used to compose the human body.

By stacking three cylindrical objects, we can create a torso. Two spheres have been added to form shoulders, while a smaller cylinder forms the neck.

An arm is an alternating sequence of spheres and cylinders connected together. Note that the hand has been simplified for this example.

We can apply these solid shapes to the rest of the body to give us a more recognizable representation of the human form. It doesn't even have to be perfect. And just like that, our stick figure now has a silhouette that is unmistakably a person!

In the above examples, notice that we kept the stick person at the beginning while building up the shapes and solids around it. This is because the stick person serves as a guide for positioning the body and its various parts -> also known as posing.

You can do the same thing to everyday objects! Here, I drew a wine glass by stacking these three dimensional solid shapes.

The cup and its contents are two ovoid shapes that were cut in half. The stem is a very thin cylinder shape. The base is a cylinder with a slightly wider bottom.

Solid shapes help inform us how objects and parts of the human body may appear from different perspectives.

For example, a sphere can be used to demonstrate how the human head appears when looking up or down, turned to the side, or tilted at an angle.

With these examples, I hope I have managed to convinced you that if you can draw a circle and a couple of lines, you can draw a person! You just have to train your eye to recognize the simple shapes within complex objects. Try it with everyday objects as well! Or even your favourite media! A drawing subject can be as simple or as complex as you envision it to be.

Once you have mastered that, there are many aspects of drawing you can explore from here that may require you to seek additional resources or a fellow artist's advice.

Last of all, remember that drawing is an iterative process. Even if you draw something correct the first time, you will need to draw it again and again to get it right all times! And by making small changes like the ones we explored in this tutorial, your drawings will gradually transform!

I hope what I've demonstrated here are enough to provide the basics of how to get started with drawing objects and people, and also to help refresh more experienced artists. :) Hopefully I didn't go too off topic with what was requested, and let me know if there are any more questions I can answer.

Cheers :3

[lightseoul]

cw. gn!reader, worker!reader, prohero!katsuki, aged-up (25), pining lmao (if you look extra closely)

“You’re late.”

At the sound of the pro-hero’s all-too-familiar gruff voice, you freeze, ass barely touching the chair you were about to sit on.

From where he sits across from you, Bakugou is now scowling.

Great, you think to yourself. Twenty seconds in and you’ve already triggered the beast.

“Sorry,” you say with the most apologetic smile you can muster. “Something urgent came up.”

At that, his scowl deepens, and his eyes seem to search for something as they flicker over your features. You feel yourself getting warm under the intensity of his gaze.

Three years of working under him and it still flusters you—being studied so blatantly by the #2 Pro-Hero, Bakugou Katsuki.

“What possibly could’ve been more urgent than an important meeting with your fucking boss?”

You internally scoff at his tactlessness, though you manage to seem unfazed on the outside. At the very least, the three years of being the HR head of the Dynamight agency have taught you how to deal with a certain someone.

Bakugou’s eye twitches so minutely, probably out of annoyance brought by the feigned innocence written all over your face.

You could lie and let the conversation move forward. But you’re feeling a little reckless, still reeling from that damned phone call you had a few minutes ago.

So you tell him the truth.

“I just got dumped over the phone.”

You expected a disinterested harrumph in response, not a choking fit over the ice-cold water he just downed.

You jump on your feet, circling the table to—supposedly—gently pat his back. Before you do so, though, you hesitate, hand awkwardly frozen mid-air, wondering for a second if touching any part of your boss’s body could put you in HR danger.

Once you gathered practically everyone in the restaurant’s attention and Bakugou has stopped coughing, you hesitantly circle back and sit on your chair.

“Are you okay?” you ask, as he wipes his mouth angrily with his napkin.

“‘m fine,” he croaks, not meeting your gaze for a moment before finally looking you in the eye.

He looks like he has something to say, but his words never come. His mouth merely opens and closes ever so slightly, you could’ve missed it if you weren’t staring at it.

Why are you staring?

“Great,” you shoot him a smile, grabbing one of the menus and thumbing through the decidedly sticky pages.

A pause.

“...You could’ve canceled, you know.”

At the sound of his uncharacteristically quiet voice, you look up, surprised.

“What?”

He sighs, probably irritated by your confusion. “You could’ve canceled the meeting,” he explains, “I would’ve understood.”

You can’t help but smile at him, the feeling of gratitude blooming in your chest. At the sight of it, he looks away, solemn.

“A commitment is a commitment,” you reply. “We already blocked off the hour to meet with the restaurant owner, and I don’t want to waste your precious time off patrol.”

“...Even though you just got dumped?”

Your heart throbs painfully at the mention of what just happened to you, but you quickly school your expression into a neutral one.

“Especially because I just got dumped.”

He chuckles. “What, you the type to throw yourself into work when life gets extra shitty?”

You playfully roll your eyes at his jab. “Don’t act like you don’t do that yourself, Bakugou-san.”

“I wasn’t,” he defends, smirking as he leans back against his seat. “Was just curious.”

Before you can even register what he just said, a waiter suddenly appears to your right, startling the both of you.

Bakugou then proceeds to order for himself, and as he does so, you study his face despite yourself, heart weirdly thrumming at the implications of what was just said.

“Make sure to have the report ready by 5 PM tomorrow,” he says, breaking the silence as you walk towards where he parked his car. “‘m planning to stop by the office to read it before the night shift starts.”

“Got it.”

Before you know it, you’ve already arrived. Despite yourself, your heart sinks at the thought of going home. Whether it’s because you literally just got dumped unceremoniously or because the surprisingly pleasant meeting is coming to an end, you don’t know.

Bakugou turns to face you, a hand in his pocket and the other fiddling with his keys. “You sure you don’t need a ride?”

You nod. “The bus station is just a few blocks away.”

A silence falls upon you.

Again—there’s that serious look on his face as he studies you so intensely, it almost feels like scrutinizing. You’ve always felt vulnerable under Bakugou’s sharp gaze, but today it’s been extra piercing.

Finally accepting that it’s the end of the day and it’s time to go home, you nod again—more cheerfully this time—before you turn to leave.

You’re about a few feet away from him when he calls your name.

“For what it’s worth,” he semi-shouts, “it’s that dumbass’ loss.”

tagging. @katsukis1wife @rinalou @loverboyrin @brunnetteiwik @beabe19

[fixyourwritinghabits]

How to Tell If That Post of Advice Is AI Bullshit

Right, I wasn't going to write more on this, but every time I block an obvious AI-driven blog, five more clutter up the tags. So this is my current (April 2024) advice on how to spot AI posts passing themselves off as useful writing advice.

No Personality - Look up a long-running writing blog, you'll notice most people try to make their posts engaging and coming from a personal perspective. We do this because we're writers and, well, we want to convey a sense of ourselves to our readers. A lot of AI posts are straight-forward - no sense of an actual person writing them, no variation in tone or text.

No Examples - No attempts to show how pieces of advice would work in a story, or cite a work where you could see it in action. An AI post might tell you to describe a person by highlighting two or three features, and that's great, but it's hard to figure out how that works without an example.

Short, Unhelpful Definitions - A lot of what I've seen amount to two or three-sentence listicles. 'When you want to write foreshadowing, include a hint of what you want foreshadowed in an earlier chapter.' Cool beans, could've figured that out myself.

SEO/AI Prompt Language Included - I've seen way too many posts start with "this post is about..." or "now we will discuss..." or "in this post we will..." in every single blog. This language is meant to catch a search engine or is ChatGPT reframing the prompt question. It's not a natural way of writing a post for the average tumblr user.

Oddly Clinical Language - Right, I'm calling out that post that tried to give advice on writing gay characters that called us "homosexuals" the entire time. That's a generative machine trying to stay within certain parameters, not an actual person who knows that's not a word you'd use unless you were trying to be insulting or dunking on your own gay ass in the funniest way possible.

Too Perfect - Most generative AI does not make mistakes (this is how many a student gets caught trying to use it to cheat). You can find ways to make it sound more natural and have it make mistakes, but that takes time and effort, and neither of those are really a factor in these posts. They also tend to have really polished graphics and use the same format every time.

Maximized Tags (That Are Pointless) - Anyone who uses more than 10 one-word tags is a cop. Okay, fine, I'm joking, but there's a minimal amount of tags that are actually useful when promoting a post. More tags are not going to get a post noticed by the algorithm, there is no algorithm. Not everyone has to use their tags to make snarky comments, but if your tags look like a spambot, I'm gonna assume you're a spambot.

No Reblogs From The Rest of Writblr - I'm always finding new Writblr folks who have been around for awhile, but every real person I've seen reblogs posts from other people. We've all got other stuff to do, I'm writing this blog to help others and so are they, the whole point of tumblr is to pass along something you think is great.

While you'll probably see some variation in the future - as people get wise to obviously generated text, they'll try to make it look less generated - but overall, there's still going to be tells to when something is fake.

I don't have any real advice for what to do about this (other than block those blogs, which is what I do). Like most AI bullshit, I suspect most of these blogs are just another grift, attempting to build large follower counts to leverage or sell something to in the future. They may progress past these tattletale features, but I'm still going to block them when I see them. I don't see any value in writing advice compiled from the work of better writers who put the effort in when I can just go find those writers myself.

[lovesickry]

- (e)x marks the spot ⁴

┈⋆⭒ lando norris x reader [2.5k]

.𖥔 ݁ ˖ ⎯ synopsis: basically what the title says, Martin garrix feature, random other character also featured. .𖥔 ݁ ˖ ⎯ contains: 18+, toxicity, minors dni, unedited. .𖥔 ݁ ˖ ⎯ a/n: um based on an audio I heard the other day

lando didnt get angry, lando got distant. the week you broke up, you think you spoke a grand total of 3 times. one being the time in which you broke up. it was mutual, but god sometimes you think you missed him far too much.

it had been a painful and monotonous few months of swiping through countless dating apps. losing count of how many of the dates had been just as mediocre and forgettable as the last. today, you hoped would be different, his name was Liam. he had rescheduled the initial date and now invited you to a gig at a club in London. he picked you up at 8 , he was nice, less talkative than you but funny enough. arriving at the club was chaotic, the line was around the block and your mouth dropped when you realised Liam was walking straight past it, to the guy on the door.

"should be on the list, under Martin" he said, before the guy waves him through.

you follow him in, his hand leading yours swiftly through the crowds of people, purple light obscuring your vision. the first drink hits you much too slow as you look next to him and smile at a joke you can't remember him telling. the music seems to have a kind of buzzing effect on the air particles which surround you and mixed with the alcohol its intoxicating. Liam's hand is on your back as he guides you further into the sweaty pit of dancers, near the DJ booth. your mind is fuzzy and Liam's hands are all over you, focusing on the small of your back uncovered by your top. you close your eyes for a amount and wait for the beat to drop as the bass seems to shake the floor. opening your eyes, your met with the figure of Liam now approaching the DJ booth and you follow him like a lost dog, not wanting to get lost in the crowd. hes leaning over the swarms of people towards the sweaty man in the middle wearing a cap and he ushers you forward.

"Martin this is y/n" he turns around and immediately you know you're fucked.

of course it was him, someone you already knew, that's great.

you'd met Martin Garrix on a number of occasions in Monaco when still with lando, never alone though, you wonder if he recognised you.

he shakes your hand as if strangers, though with a kind of smirk that unsettled the sediment in your stomach.

"lando should be round here somewhere" he responds, answering the unasked question.

"thanks" you answer curtly.

once it has been an acceptable amount of time between introductions you whip your head around in the hopes for Liam to lead you out of this maze but he is nowhere to be seen and there is another face in the crowd who seems to have just spotted you. your eyes widen, your sober enough to know your heart should not be beating this fast. you frantically look around for a sign of your date and spot him 2 bodies away, you squeeze your way to him and begin in the best possible fashion to try and repel lando. you knew if he came up to you, you'd regret anything you did. you always did with lando. Liam must have not got the message you were trying so desperately to send him, because the next word coming out of his mouth made your breath halt.

"Oi! Lando! mate!" he shouts with a wave and smiles over to the man in a button down shirt.

you see his head perk up and look around before he spots an eager looking Liam, next to a blank faced you. fuck, this was it now wasn't it? christ.

" 'm just gonna go get a drink " you hurriedly tell Liam.

"alright" he dismissed.

you leave just as lando reaches him and shakes his hand harshly before pulling him into a hug, do they actually know each other? you quickly whip your head forward as you navigate your way to the bar. you respect the irony, that you're reaching for the item that was most likely to make the bad decisions, in the hopes you would not make them, but that piece of information seemed to slip your mind.

you arrived at the bar, in a heightened state, visually tense and anxious as you ordered a vodka lime and soda, and then another one, putting them all on Liam's opened tab.

you stand against the bar and wonder if this was all a kind of karmic punishment for something, as Lando and Liam make their way directly towards you.

"fuck me" you mutter under your breath before they both step into your view.

"hmm 'm need a drink too" Liam slurred out.

"also... this is lando" he explains, gesturing to the figure next to him whom eyes seemed much too dark to be purely thoughtless.

you're frozen, why does that happen.

"we know each other" he interrupts before you can get anything out, looking you up and down with a small smile.

"oh great" he says, obvlious to lando's innuendo while he orders his drink

lando is already standing dangerously close to you and you dont have the energy or will to tell him to stand back. you missed him, as much as you were afraid to admit it, his touch was soothing to your stiff, aching body.

"havin' fun?" he questions in your ear, lip brushing the cartilage.

shivers run down your spine as you think of a witty response and come up blank.

Liam is metres away against a beam chatting with another random guy as lando moves to face you.

"missed you"

"lando, dont"

"oh come on" "you're saying you didnt need saving from whatever the hell that was, think he liked me more than you, and I dont even have a pair of tits"

god he was so vulgar, you hated it.

"Liams nice" you say, not knowing if your convincing yourself or lando of this statement.

"sure he is" he says, gesturing to where Liam now was leant against a wall while a blonde girl seemed to be very interested in him.

theres nothing to say, not anything you can think of, theres too much history and you want to say too much, but your mind is swimming and the alcohol is blurring everything you want to say into an uncontrollable lust for his touch.

he's sincere when he grazes his fingers over his arm and brings you closer to him.

"let me make it up to you" he whispers to you, before bringing his drink to his mouth before offering it you.

your heart and stomach squeeze at the prospect, body all but keening into him, your hand reflexively gripping his arm, which is now tense under you touch, his muscles taut and hard.

"missed you so much" he says, again, whispering and then taking a sip of his drink. you're not sure how much he means it, but you're not sure how much you mean what you're saying either.

"we broke up for a reason" you say, trying so desperately to be the voice of reason between the 2.

"did we?" he says.

that seals it, just this once, you acknowledge that he doesnt treat you right but he never said he would, at least you know his feelings are real, you think, he'd always been the obsessive type.

"ye-" you try and get out, but its useless, your body has made your decision for you and it wants needs lando.

"no" he interrupts.

your eyes meet his and his gaze is hard, fixed on you. not threatening but possessive as his lips get closer to yours.

the kiss is blurred with animosity and tenderness as he holds you so tightly you might fall through him.

"my place is like 5 minutes away" he says, pulling away, out of breath.

"thought we were gonna fuck on the floor?" you say, hoping to break the stiff tension surrounding you both.

"you wish" he remarks, reaching for his phone.

-

the short drive is torture as Lando teases your inner thighs. Liam long forgotten as he whispers vulgar, horrible things in your ear while his hands stroke the soft sensitive skin.

when you arrive at his apartment there is no longer any control between the two of you, lando swings his door open, nearly launching it off its hinges as you both collide in an ugly gnashing of teeth fighting for any type of control over the other. you palm his boxers and his tongue stutters for a moment causing you to gain the upper hand while your other hand moves between his tangled curls. the kiss is bruising and leaves you out of breath as his mouth leaves yours and moves to your neck.

"mine? yeah?" he says to you before gently biting on your collarbone and leaving what feels like a large hickie to find tomorrow morning.

"yeah" you breath out, embarrassingly high pitched.

he laughs into your skin, while his mouth worships your collarbones, his hands begin untying your top and dragging the thin fabric down. you whine as his lips leave your skin and his eyes darken at the sight.

"fuck your tits are perfect" "almost forgot"

the praise runs swiftly and hotly to your core as his hands immediately rise to knead your breasts and his mouth begins fervently kissing them. you're so wet christ its embarrassing , your rubbing your legs together and silently begging lando to pay youre core any semblance of attention.

"want something?" he teases, obviously noticing the squirming.

"want you so bad" you say, unbuttoning his already low shirt.

"knew you did baby" he says, smiling and ridding himself of his shirt now simply unbuttoned and thrown to the floor.

"shut up" you say, rolling your eyes.

"says the girl begging for my dick" he retorts, hands fiddling with the button of your skirt as he pushes against you to lie down on the bed. he opens your legs and licks his lips.

"yeah youre definitely not this wet for Luis" he says, purposefully getting his name wrong

"Liam" you say, still stubbornly keeping a thread of dignity.

"Liam" he says with a crude laugh, before lightly licking up your slit causing you to shiver.

"wet for me. huh baby?" he repeats

"yeah" you say, high pitched and breathless as lando introduces a finger to your throbbing cunt.

"what's my name?"

"lando" you say, praising him.

"good" he says, before diving back into you.

he's scarily good with his mouth and your legs are shaking before you even have time to think of the repercussions of this decision.

"he didnt do that, did he?" his face flushed and wet from your cunt. "gonna tell me how good I am"

"you're chatty tonight" you breath out, lando had always been a talker, never been able to shut his mouth for too long at a time.

"you fuckin' love it" he hums while undoing his trousers, your staring at him through your eyelashes and he pretends to not notice, not to care. he returns to you, hard and hot and ready.

“you gonna be good for me baby?” he taunts.

you just look at him, unable to give him any satisfaction by responding.

"do you want me to be good?" you ask, breathlessly.

"no" he says, hands planted on your thighs.

"look at me baby" he says

you mindlessly reply as he slowly pushes himself inside of you.

"fucking hell" "missed you" "shit"

god you hated when he was right, when you fit together so well, when he felt this good. your bodies moulded together, warm bodies, your hands clutching at his back as he slowly draws himself in and out, prying a reaction out of you. lando puts his head down and begins kissing up your neck once again, biting and nipping whenever he saw fit, slowly building his rhythm.

"smell so good baby" "did I get you that perfume?" he asks, suddenly voice clear as he stopped his movement inside of you, your cunt still squeezing him. you're suddenly mentally conscious to answer his question.

"yes" you whisper, still remembering the day he had bought it for you, the smile plastered on your face when he gave you the small wrapped package tied with some string.

he does not respond but resumes his actions harsher than before filled with a boiling rage at the idea of you wearing his perfume for someone else. your jaw is slack, eyes fluttering and your stomach is tightening at his continues hard thrusts.

"aw getting tired, getting close?" he taunts, tongue flicking out to touch your ear.

suddenly he interrupted the equilibrium of the warmth that encompassed both of you, the sweat, the heat, the salt that seemed to hover in the air. rolling off of you and then lifting you on top of him. now looking down at him he looked absolutely fucking sinful, perfectly perfect, you could feel your eyes droop and your face blush at the sight as he lifted you slightly and began to lower you down.

"fuck-fuck" you mutter through your staggered moans and whimpers.

"so pretty baby" he says, eyes boring into you as a glaze covered your eyes.

he sensed your exhaustion, your need for release and decides to be nice.

"c'mon let me do it" he mutters, bringing you down so your chest is against his and he can do all the work for you.

"put your head in my shoulder baby" he says as you adjust your face so it settles in the crane of his neck, deeply inhaling his scent before you take time to leave a little gift of your own for the next day.

"ill do it, ill make it better" he promises as he grabs your hips with a bruising grip and begins pushing you up and down onto him.

"I got you" he reassures, your breath getting more and more fractured with each movement inside you.

"aw baby" he whispers, youre so close, right on the fucking edge, and then he stops, he grows still, he releases your hips and he stops.

"only me yeah?" he asks, tilting his mouth towards your head nestled in his neck. "nobody else" he continued.

you'd say anything if he'd just keep going, but you'd be lying if you said this wasn't the truth.

"just you" you mutter "only you" "fuck" you gasp finally as he begins moving again.

and youre right there again, just hanging on, your eyes squeeze shut, your stomach squeezes and your hand seems to claw at any available skin. meanwhile lando's breath is becoming far more erratic, his grunts much more aggressive as he pounds relentlessly into your soaking cunt.

"I love you" he finally says, before surrendering. "I love you" you respond before joining him

you'd think it was heaven the way you came together, beautifully and slow, breaths matching the other as he kissed every inch of skin available to him and you wrapped your arms around his warm body.

maybe tomorrow you'd regret it, maybe tomorrow you'd hate him, but right now, he was yours. you loved him.

[art]

Creator Spotlight: @jijidraws

Jiji Knight is a latina pinup illustrator. Her work is overall geared toward thick ladies and dedicated to fat positivity out of a purely selfish need to create art she wished she had seen growing up. She often features sexy and soft macabre themes on vibrant or sweet colours and takes great joy in making folx feel good about themselves with her work. She holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Illustration and operates out of her very sunny hometown of Las Vegas.

Check out our interview with Jiji below!

Have you ever had an art block? If so, how did you overcome it?

Oh my gosh… I have art blocks all the time. My favorite way of overcoming it is by making fanart. Funnily enough, that’s something I don’t do in my own work anymore. But there are still IPs I return to that still bring joy to my heart. I love returning to drawing Sailor Moon like when I was in first grade. Or I’ll even look up the last fashion week and start drawing the fashion week outfits from the Paris or New York show. Stuff like that is what gets my creative juices flowing.

What medium have you always been intrigued by but would never use yourself?

Resin. Resin art is so stunning. People make the most amazing and beautiful sculptures using resin, and I don’t think I could ever bring myself to play with something so complicated. There are a lot of ways to cure it, and sometimes, it doesn’t cure properly…I already work with enough chaos as it is! I respect resin artists, but I don’t think I would ever touch it. I’ve admired it from a distance. There is an artist I follow who does these resin layer paintings. So they’ll paint a layer of resin, then cure it, and paint on top of the cured layer. They build up these amazing paintings using resin…I could never. Maybe one day!

What is one interaction you had with a fan of yours that has stuck with you over the years?

I still remember…It was my first and only Flame Con in New York. I had a fan come up to my booth. They didn’t say hello or that it was nice to meet me. They started to cry! They cried, and the first words out of their mouth were, “I’ve never seen myself in artwork before.” So, of course, I started to cry! So we were just crying across the table at each other. It was just one of the sweetest interactions, and it really sticks with me still to this day.

What is a recent creative project that you are proud of?

My latest collaboration with the artist Missupacey. We’ve been collaborating for two years now, and our last collaboration was for Midsummer Scream. It was two very cute clown girls, and I designed our T-shirt. It was one of the most fun projects we’ve done in a long time. We love doing collaborative work because it keeps working in the art industry fresh—being able to bounce ideas back and forth. So we do it where someone picks the color palette, and someone picks a theme. We’ll get references together, put them on a big board, and send each other sketches. It’s really nice to work with somebody else.

How has technology changed the way you approach your work?

Honestly, it changed everything. I mean, I used to draw for myself a lot. And while I still do that, I now predominantly draw for my Patrons. For a while, I was drawing for the internet. So I was drawing stuff people wanted to see in terms of plus-sized versions of characters—a plus-sized Poison Ivy or a plus-sized Sailor Moon. My Patrons have allowed me to start drawing for myself again. But technology, for a while, essentially dominated what direction I was taking with my art, so I’m grateful to take some of that power back.

If there is one thing that you want art enthusiasts to remember you by, what would it be?

Body positivity. I would love for them to remember that there is an artist making work that is making people feel good about themselves and about the way they look at themselves.

Top tips on setting up an Artist Alley booth?

Have a method of taking money, have a method of displaying your work, and have a way to take a break. I have a plastic picnic cover that costs like a dollar at any store. All I have to do is clip it to my display grates, and it covers up my entire display. I feel secure enough to take time for myself in a 10-hour workday to eat something, go to the restroom, or even take a moment to breathe and reorganize my inventory. So it’s so funny that this one-dollar piece of plastic is like the most life-saving item in my display of items.

Who on Tumblr inspires you and why?

@mayakern comes to mind. She is another body-positive artist who expanded into making body-positive clothing. She’s amazing, and just to see someone else out there promoting body positivity. Maya’s been doing it longer than I have, I believe. It feels good to know that I’m not alone. Her work is always stunning, and I love her body-positive DnD characters and the fact that she’s still plowing through the clothing industry. For example, she’s expanded from skirts to button-downs and even custom-wrap shirts. I love to see what she’s doing, and it inspires me to pursue different avenues with my own work.

Thank you so much for stopping by and sharing, Jiji! Be sure to check out their Tumblr blog over at @jijidraws.

[wip]

Please make it possible to hide users' posts without blocking them. Like, in cases where a person hasn't done anything wrong to be blocked, but you just don't like their posts.

Answer: Hello, @deithwen!

As it turns out, we’ve received this feature request a lot over the years. Usually, it comes in as wanting the ability to “mute” other blogs on Tumblr. While we would love to build it, we’ve balked at it a bit because of its technical and product complexity. Let us explain what that means:

In terms of technical complexity, our current blocking feature is closest to how “muting” would work. Our current blocking feature may seem simple, but it’s very complex because of how big Tumblr is. Every time we fetch a list of blogs for you or anyone on Tumblr, we have to also fetch the list of who you’re blocking, and who’s blocking you, and filter out anyone with that block relationship. This mapping of who’s-blocking-who is stored in a directional way right now, so the “cost” of loading that list gets higher the more people you’re blocking and the more people who are blocking you. If you’re blocking 1,000 blogs, we have to check that list a lot. If you’re being blocked by 1,000 blogs, that’s another big list to check against.

In technical terms, this is a “many-to-many” relationship, which is almost always incredibly difficult to manage while not degrading the experience of using a platform like Tumblr. The more people who are blocking, the harder it is to store those lists in a way that’s easy to check, but we’re working on making it smoother. The vast majority of people don’t block many others, if at all, so it’s never been a huge problem. But the outliers who block thousands of others (or are blocked by thousands of others) can degrade performance for everyone over enough time.

Adding muting would throw on top of that yet another list of blogs to check, increasing the complexity of something that’s already pretty complex. It helps that muting would be one-directional and not bi-directional (as in, it doesn’t matter who’s muting you), but, as that list of muted blogs grows, your experience may degrade further. So we’d need to solve for that, which is definitely doable. It would just take time—and lots of it.

And, as a product, Tumblr is already pretty confusing to people trying to figure out what “blocking” means already, as well as our other filtering options. Up until fairly recently, blocking was almost entirely one-directional, the opposite way you’d expect: blocking made it so the blocked person couldn’t see you, not that you couldn’t see them. We’ve been updating blocking to work both ways instead, which is more common on social media these days. Similarly, the options to filter tags versus content cause a lot of confusion because they don’t work the same way as each other.

So if we wanted to add another filtering option to that mix, “muting” blogs, we’d need to be conscious of how all of those options work together—and are confusing in context with each other. We should really clean up that experience to be more streamlined and simple, not more complex. And I didn’t even mention the oddity of how different settings apply to your primary blog versus your sideblogs if you have more than one blog!

Taken together, it is a great idea for us to clean all of this up, improve our existing options here, and add “muting” for even more control and granularity. Sadly, however, it just isn’t high enough on our list of priorities to tackle anytime soon. We don’t want to simply tack on muting for the sake of doing it—we want to do a better job than that. I hope that makes sense!

Thanks for your question. It was an important one to address. If anything should change here, you will get news through the usual channels: here at WIP, or at @changes. 

[stealth-black-leg]

watching dressrosa as a spaniard is so funny like you can't even begin to imagine

because at first you're just delighted to see your country serving as inspiration for one piece; between the architecture, the food, the dancing... it's great! you already knew that oda draws inspiration from real countries for his islands, but it never ocurred to you that you'd ever see your own!

then you get to the corrida colosseum and i know what you're thinking: that's roman! and yes, sure, gladiator fights and coliseums are generally associated with italy, but here's the thing: spain was a roman province for a long time, we do have plenty of roman ruins that include small coliseums, and we also have bullfighting rings! bullfighting evolved from gladiator fights, and the arenas are basically coliseums. so, while the corrida colosseum in dressrosa features gladiator fights, it's not entirely roman in its inpiration: there's a bull fighting in luffy's block, and there's the name! in spanish, "corrida" is the name of a bullfighting event, thus "corrida colosseum"

but. well. as it happens, words tend to have more than one meaning. and while "corrida" means what oda presumably researched it means when he named the dressrosa coliseum, it has a second, more widespread meaning.

"corrida" is slang for "ejaculation"

get any average spaniard, say the word "corrida" to them, and they'll be way more likely to think of sex than bullfighting. of course, context matters, and since the corrida colosseum is shaped like a bullfighting arena, the spanish braincell associates the "corrida" in there to the meaning oda was going for. but that doesn't mean that this picture out of context isn't absolutely hysterical for any spaniard:

and then there's that thing about how our former king shot and killed his younger brother, but that's a story for another day

[padfootagain]

The Car Trap

Hi!!!!! Here I am again, back to my old antics! Yes, I’m adding one more person to my masterlist. Yes, I am going to hell for this, and you know what? I’ll have such a great time!

Anyway, no one asked for this, except for me, as I was desperate for some Hozier fics, and couldn’t find any new ones anymore! So, here we go! Hope you like this, let me know what you think!

****

Pairing: Hozier x reader

Warnings: Angst, fluff, angst to fluff! Friends to lovers, snowed-in… in a car… *hihihihihihhi!!!*

Summary: You're offered a job in Switzerland, and you're ready to accept it. It would offer you a new beginning, a way to forget about the love you have for your best friend. But a trip through a snowstorm with Andrew might change everything...

Word Count: 7282

Hozier’s Masterlist - Main Masterlist

This trip was a disaster.

A fucking, outrageously terrible disaster…

The weather was terrible, for a start. And that was a statement made with an Irish reference, which was saying a lot. It had been raining so hard you had to stop the car for a while as you could not see the road ahead at all. Then it was time for so much wind that your fingers were cramping over the strength used to hold the wheel. Four hours later, it was getting dark, the sun already setting and the sky heavy with clouds that blocked all sunlight. And it was snowing.

Fucking snowing.

Great. Wonderful. Lovely.

Oh, but if only the problem was held by the capricious weather… no… no, this was but a part of the issue. You could even say that this was the top of the iceberg, just a tiny fraction of the shit you were buried under.

Because your phone had died. But then again, you had no signal anyway to get the help of a friendly and absolutely annoying GPS; and in the passenger seat by your side, your best friend was struggling with a fifteen-year old map that was so out-of-date that it might as well have not existed for the help it got you…

You were lost. You were fucking lost, in the middle of nowhere, while it was getting dark and snowing and there was nothing manmade in sight to ask for help.

Wonderful. Truly, wonderful.

Oh, and that was without mentioning that the best friend in question was also the man you had been in love with for years but had never dared confess your feelings to.

Outrageously bad, that road trip, really…

Andrew picked up his phone to get some more light, his glasses perched haphazardly on his nose as he tried to decipher names printed on the large map splayed across his laps; hair held back in a low bun, allowing you to see his focused features.

“So?”

He merely hummed in response, a long finger following a dark line.

“Do you have any idea where we are?” you insisted.

“None whatsoever,” he shook his head.

He sat back in his seat, before rubbing his eyes.

“I mean… we’ll end up crossing a village at one point if we keep going along this road,” he sighed. “I don’t have a better plan for now.”

“We might have to stop at one point, though. The snow is getting heavy.”

“I had never envisioned dying from the cold in the middle of nowhere on some random Irish road…” Andrew joked, his tone almost contemplative, and you couldn’t refrain a chuckle.

“And with you! Absolutely not. There’s no way I’m dying with you, of all people.”

“Why not? You don’t want to see me dying?”

“I don’t want my last moments to be shared with someone as annoying as you.”

He tried to throw back some witty remark, but his laughter was too much to handle.

He had pushed back the seat as far as possible, of course, in an attempt to accommodate his long limbs, but even in this position, his legs were not fully extended before him, his knees hitting the dashboard at every bump of the road.

You forced your gaze to go back to the road again, squinting your eyes to see through the heavy snow that fell now, instead of lingering on his legs.

God… you were so damn ridiculous…

His quiet rumble of a laugh finally died out, but a smile remained set on his features, even though his tone was serious as he spoke again.

“We can still turn the engines on every once in a while to get some heat.”

“Won’t that drain the battery or something?”

“If we don’t do it too much, it should be fine. Besides, it’s not minus twenty outside, relax. We’ll be fine.”

You merely nodded, falling, as always, for the safety in his quiet voice and the warmth of his tone.

Besides, it was easier to believe in the certainty of his voice, in its soothing sound, than to face the snow falling more and more heavily outside, the night creeping over the distant mountains, right beyond the green fields. Their silhouettes were almost made invisible now by the low light, you could only guess their shadows. Despite the headlights, you could barely make out the stony walls on each side of the road, mostly devoured by ivy and thickets. You had slowed down your pace, driving slowly in fear that a wild animal would suddenly jump in front the car, or that you would miss a random house set by the road.

It was also easier to focus on the silly story he was using to quieten your mind rather than to mention the reason behind this trip across the countryside.

You were leaving.

You were leaving Ireland to settle in Switzerland for a job. Or well, nothing was fixed for now, but you had an amazing opportunity. A first trip to the country to meet your future boss in person was planned for the following week, and at the end of these three days spent in Geneva, you had to sign your contract. You would then have about a month to find a place and move there.

So, you and your best friend had decided to enjoy a little road trip together. Driving all the way to the other side of the country. Staying at an Airbnb near the western coast. Enjoying four days together spent by the sea, the cliffs, and an awful lot of chips and beer.

You had been puzzled by Andrew’s reaction when you told him about your new job. He had seemed… unphased by it.

Of course, with his career, he was often away, and you were used not to live close to each other for long periods of time. Still, you were always one of the first people he visited whenever he was home. And while he stayed in Ireland, you spent most of your time together. As if he wanted to soak in as many moments as he could before he would leave again. And yet, when you told him that you would move to another country, he didn’t even blink. He gave you a smile, congratulated you, offered you a warm hug, and that was it. He asked about the job, about the place where you would live… and that was it. No disappointment in the thought of you leaving. No sadness at the thought of not having you around. No heartbreak whatsoever…

But then again, you were a fool for hoping that he would feel this way. Because he was… Andrew. Absolutely-lovely, amazing-hair, siren-voiced, hilariously-witty, unbearably-gentle Andrew. You had been friendzoned a few weeks after your first encounter, and you had no reason to believe that his feelings had changed. Actually, this new job, you took it as an opportunity to forget him. Move on. And not only because many miles would separate your homes, but because you weren’t leaving on your own.

Another one of your colleagues, Tom, had been approached by the same company as you had. He had already accepted the offer, and he was thrilled when he learned that you were leaving for Geneva as well. You knew he had a crush on you. He was pretty obvious about it. If he had never crossed a line, it was clear that he wanted you to give him a chance. And who knew? Perhaps this new beginning, with another man that you quite frankly found great, could mean you finally moving on from your stupid crush on your best friend. A new start, in another country. After spending a few weeks getting used to this new place, this new corporation, this new workplace… perhaps you would give Tom a chance. You desperately needed to forget Andrew, after all…

Of course, you didn’t know that you were completely, utterly wrong… about everything. That Andrew wanted to cry at the mere thought of you leaving. That he held you too tight and for too long that afternoon when, bathed in the neon light of your kitchen, you told him you were moving so far away from him, because he didn’t want you to see the tears in his eyes. He didn’t have the right to hold you back. He was but a friend to you, and friends needed to be supportive, and this was such a great opportunity for you, and… and he was only your friend.

Only your goddamn friend. As if Andrew hadn’t longed to be much more than that after a mere week spent in your company. But you had met before he would leave, touring for his second album, the timing was all wrong. He couldn’t ask you out for a couple of dates just to get you attached to him, before he would disappear for months on the other side of the planet. That wasn’t fair. He wanted to do things the right way. So, he kept his distance at first, unwilling to get too attached himself. But then, when he came home months later… you weren’t single anymore.

The fool… he had lost his chance. And over the years, the two of you had built such a great friendship that he didn’t want to take the risk anymore. Besides, he was certain that you didn’t see him this way. You had been in relationships, he had been in relationships… you had never showed any sign that would make him feel that he was more than a friend to you. Even when he tried to get you jealous, at the beginning, right after your break-up… but it didn’t work. The lure fell into the water in a deafening defeat, and he had made up both his mind and heart. You weren’t interested. He didn’t blame you. With his chaotic lifestyle.. who in their mind would settle for that?

Did it stop Andrew from still being in love with you, even after all this time? No, of course it did not. And the thought that you wouldn’t be home with him anymore…

He looked away, through the window, just to hide the tears that rose to his eyes all over again. He rested his elbow against the cold window, his lips to the back of his hand, biting lightly in the skin to calm down. He had no right to try to hold you back… no right at all… Was it your fault if he was enough of a fool to fall for his best friend? The cliché was almost too much to bear…

When he turned to you again, though, he couldn’t help the warm, fond feeling that invaded his chest at the sight of you. During the moment of silence you were both bathing into, disturbed solely by the wind and the tires over the frozen road, the night had almost conquered the last remnants of sunlight that lingered there, held against the eastern riff of the mountains. The headlights and the dim lights coming from the headboard were enough for him to see your features, though. They were enough for him to long to brush that strand of hair behind your ear, to lean across the car to kiss your cheek, to feel the warmth of your skin, even if for just a second, against his lips…

God, he didn’t want you to leave. What would he do if you left? When would you see each other? Never… If he spent so much time touring and you weren’t home…

God, he would move to Geneva with you if you asked. Even if it were to keep him as a mere friend, that was how badly he needed you in his life…

“Andy… I’m not sure I should keep driving…”

Andrew shook himself out of his thoughts, forced his attention back to the road ahead. You could barely see the road at all, as it was slowly turning white, just like the patches of grass between the road and the low walls…

Andrew shook his head.

“We can’t just stop in the middle of the road either. Just… drive slowly. Let’s try to find somewhere to park.”

You nodded, frowning in your focus.

You kept on driving for a while longer. The night was stark black when you finally found a small space by the road where you could safely park. There was still no house in sight, though… not that you could have seen anything beyond a five meters radius anyway…

You turned off the engine, let the lights go dark. Andrew turned on the light of his phone again.

“You should save some battery,” you argued.

“Got plenty, don’t worry.”

“So… now, what?”

“Now, we wait.”

“And if it keeps on snowing all night? Should we try to get some sleep?”

He merely nodded, setting his phone between the two of you to shed some light all over the tiny space of your car. Andrew reached behind him to get your coats from the backseat.

“We should put these on while they’re still warm.”

You didn’t complain when Andrew unfolded your warm coat, holding it up so you could easily slip your arms inside; nor did you stop him when he straightened it around your frame, reached for the zipper, and closed it for you.

And perhaps it would have been wiser for you to do so… but then again, you were human.

You were still trying to regulate your heartbeat while Andrew was putting on his own coat.

And for the first half-hour, everything was easy. You turned the engines back on for a few minutes when it got too cold, but in such a weather, you were worried your car wouldn’t start with a low battery. After all, it wasn’t exactly brand new.

“What if we get stuck in here?” you asked, worrying about the snow that didn’t give any sign of stopping.

“We’ll freeze to death, probably. At least the cold will preserve our bodies.”

“Good news for the police officer who’s gonna open the door. The smell won’t be too bad.”

“Exactly.”

“How long do you think before they find us?”

“Oh… at least a few weeks, if it snows enough.”

“Don’t you think anyone would notice a car covered in snow by the side of the road?”

“Not if there’s enough snow on it.”

You were the first to break, unable to be serious any longer. And Andrew’s laugh soon found yours, a deep rumble shaking the air around you.

“We won’t get fully snowed in,” Andrew reassured you as your laughter receded, in favour of the hushed quiet of winter. “Don’t worry. Besides, we’re not going to stay here all night. We’ll just wait until the worst of the storm passes. I can drive the rest of the way, if you want.”

“I can keep driving. I think I’ll try to take a nap while we wait though. I need to focus.”

Andrew merely nodded as an answer, adding a soft humming for good measure, before he would offer you a warm smile. He reached for something in his pocket, and put on a beanie and some gloves.

“I’ll keep an eye out,” he added, shifting to get more comfortable, the seatbelt since long discarded.

You tried to do the same, sliding the seat back to get more room to move around. Your eyes settled on Andrew’s features one more time before they closed.

But there was no way you could fall asleep. Beside your troubled mind, you were getting uncomfortably cold again. Enough for your teeth to chatter for a moment, until you tightly set your jaw.

You felt warm skin brush the back of your freezing fingers, heard the low, unapproving humming that Andrew let out at the touch.

“Take these, Y/N.”

You blinked your eyes open, while Andrew was already pushing a glove into your palm.

“You’ll be cold,” you argued, but you were met with a fond glare.

“You are cold.”

You gave up, took the gloves he offered. So large around your hands, the wool soft and still holding the warmth born from his own skin. You tried to stop him from planting his beanie on your head too, but failed.

“You need to stay warm! You’re a singer! You can’t catch a cold!” you tried to argue, but Andrew was already pulling the wool down to cover your ears.

“Don’t worry about me. I’m just fine. Besides, you’re the one who’s always cold.”

“Am not!”

“Are too! Who wears a woollen scarf in June?”

“It was cold!”

“You could turn into an ice cube if left unattended.”

With a great sense of maturity, you stuck out the tip of your tongue, making him chuckle.

It was better, but you were still cold, and so was Andrew now. He was shaking slightly, rubbing his hands together, burying his mouth and nose in his woollen grey scarf to warm it with his breath. But when he tried to shed some light outside again, the snow was still too heavy to drive safely.

“I can’t feel my fucking toes,” he complained, but there wasn’t much that you could do.

Except that you could. It was stupid, probably ineffective, but you were too cold to think straight.

“What if we hugged?”

Andrew let out a laugh.

“I like the sentiment, but that would hardly warm my toes.”

“Isn’t sharing body warmth a surviving technique?”

“Do I look like I would survive in the wild?”

“No, you would either bump your head in a branch so hard you’d knock yourself out to fall right into an endless pit… or you would be spotted by lions from miles away, you and your long limbs…”

“Exactly.”

There was silence again, for a couple of minutes, and you didn’t dare to break it. Instead, you let your eyelids fall again. He had refused to hold you, it was speaking volumes. What if you had made him uncomfortable? What were you expecting anyway? You were just a friend…

A gentle tug on your sleeve made you look up at him.

“Come here.”

“What?”

“We’re both cold, come here. You’re right, body heat sounds like a good idea.”

You joked in an attempt to hide the way your heart jumped in your chest.

“We both know you simply like to be held. Even by me.”

“Anything if I can avoid losing my toes.”

You wished you could claim that the manoeuvre that led you to lie with Andrew was a graceful one, but it truly wasn’t. After bumping into every surface possible and hitting your head against the ceiling twice, you were, however, finally secured in Andrew’s arms.

You moved around a little, trying to get comfortable, but in the tiny space of the passenger seat, there was nowhere for you to lay but on top of him.

If your nerves were getting the better of you at first, you couldn’t help but unwind as Andrew wrapped his arms around your frame, engulfing you within his embrace, pressing you closer to him, even though it didn’t seem possible.

He closed his eyes as he breathed in the sweet scent of your shampoo, but you didn’t notice. You didn’t notice either the way his heart sped up under his ribs, the way his breath caught in his throat. You never seemed to notice. Andrew reckoned that he was pretty obvious, although he did try to hide it all, but you never noticed anything. He couldn’t hide it, though. Even if this would lead nowhere, even if he didn’t stand a chance, he couldn’t help it. Loving you. In all the years he had known you, he had never been able to help it. Perhaps that was what love was all about. Loving beyond reason. Loving even when he wished he didn’t. Loving, and hurting, and having no regrets about it. Hurting, and being willing to go through all this pain all over again, for just a moment more…

He heaved a sigh without noticing, his eyelids lifting to be faced by a wall of darkness spotted with white snowflakes. He was ridiculous. You were leaving, that was the final proof he needed to be certain that he was nothing but a friend to you. If you felt anything for him, you wouldn’t be leaving… right? He had not left. He could have moved to the US a thousand times over, but you were in Ireland. Of course, you weren’t the only reason for him to stay, but you were easily the most important one, the one that carried the most weight.

What was the point of going home after a tour or a long recording session, if home wasn’t where you were?

Pathetic. That was what he was, pathetic…

Besides, you deserved better than what he could offer. Waiting for him for months on end? A constant back-and-forth between nations, a life stuck in a suitcase? No… no, you deserved better than that. Better than what he could offer you. Better than him…

And you were leaving. Final proof…

He held you tighter, and almost released it all in a breath.

Don’t go. Please, don’t go…

“Andy?”

He merely hummed in response.

“I’m pretty sure this is doing nothing to keep us warm.”

“I think it helps.”

“We’re wearing too many clothes.”

“Are you offering a game of strip-poker or something?”

You didn’t look up at him, face still buried in his shoulder, and yet he knew you were rolling your eyes.

“I must be crushing you.”

“You’re breaking all my bones, indeed.”

You tried to move away, but his hold tightened, and he looked down at you with confusion.

“What are you doing?”

“Saving your life? Avoiding you to be crushed to death?”

“I was joking. I’m alright.”

“Really?”

“Yeah… yeah, that’s… nice.”

You weren’t sure what to make of such comment, so you remained quiet instead, breathing deeply his scent, feeling it numb your senses.

“I’ve never seen such a snowstorm,” he pointed out, gaze lost into the darkness ahead.

“Me neither.”

“Not in this part of the world, at least.”

“Typical of Ireland to send me the storm of the century as a farewell gift.”

You felt Andrew tensing under you, his voice was colder than usual as he spoke, but you weren’t sure what to make of it.

“When will you leave? For good, I mean.”

“I have a month after this short stay to find myself a place to rent and get to work.”

“But you’ll come back to visit, right?”

“Yeah, of course! I mean… when I’m on vacation. To see my family.”

“Will I get some free housing in Geneva, then?”

“You thief, as usual.”

“You know me. Always the rascal.”

You closed your eyes as he started to rub your back, the gesture gentle and amazingly soothing.

“Aren’t you afraid to go there on your own?”

“Yeah… yeah, a little bit,” you admitted in a breath. “But… at least Tom will be there.”

“Tom?”

“Yeah, you know? My colleague? He’s very nice, I like him a lot. We’re leaving together.”

His tall frame tensed again, you caught the way his breath staggered.

“What do you mean Tom is leaving too?”

You stared into his hazel eyes; these eyes you dreamt of at night, the ones you adored. They had taken the hue of leaves before Autumn, deep green in a ray of sunshine. They always did when tears came to his eyes. And indeed, you were surprised as you fell into his gaze to find it blurred with tears.

“You… you’re leaving with him?” he asked, voice deeper than usual, shaky, vulnerable.

You were aware, now more than ever, of how close you were. You stared up at him, lost in his eyes, and you thought of how it would be so easy to lean up and kiss him, make his frown melt away, shush his worry with your lips…

“I thought… why…?”

You shrugged, unsure of what he meant to say.

“We’ve been approached by the same company. We’ll both move to Geneva.”

“Together?!”

“I mean… at the same time, yes.”

“But you’re…”

So that was it then… you had found someone else again. And this time you were leaving in another country with this man and…

And Andrew had lost you for good.

He was only too aware of how close the two of you were, of how easy it would have been to simply lean down to kiss you. Press his lips to yours, forget you were choosing someone else…

But he couldn’t forget. He couldn’t take it.

Instead of leaning closer, he pushed you away.

“Get off.”

You frowned at the roughness in his voice, the coldness in his tone, and Andrew wished he could control himself, be gentle, the way you deserved, but he needed to get away if he wanted to keep breathing…

“Please, get off me.”

You blinked tears away, and he hated himself for being the cause of such a sight, but he didn’t stop you when you ungracefully pushed yourself back into the driver’s seat. And Andrew watched as you stared at him, expectant, like you didn’t understand that you were breaking his heart in a million pieces…

And he couldn’t take it.

You were so surprised when Andrew opened the door and climbed out of the car that you didn’t stop him. He was already out of sight when you shook yourself enough to grab his phone, the only source of light available, and jumped out of the car as well.

The wind was bitterly cold as it assailed your cheeks, the snow rough and sharp digging into your skin.

“ANDREW!”

You hurried around the car, struggling with the slippery ground.

Above the wind, there was nothing to be heard but your own voice. Betrayed by the night, even this sound seemed to fade too fast to reach anything out of your sight. And Andrew was nowhere to be seen, the darkness too thick for that, the elements howling too loudly.

“ANDREW!”

A thud. A groan. A hiss. You followed the sounds in a hurry, and sure enough, mere seconds were needed to find your friend half-lying in the snow, a hand gripping at the low stone wall.

“ANDY!”

You kneeled by his side, uncaring of the sharp sting of the frozen ground under your knees.

“Are you alright?”

But he nodded, without a word. He seemed in pain, you brushed a loose strand of his hair behind his ear, and he leaned into your touch without noticing.

“You’re okay? What the fuck are you doing?!”

“You’re leaving for him, right?”

“What on earth are you talking about?!”

“TOM! FUCKING TOM!”

He moved away from your touch, but winced as he leaned against the wall. Your eyes grew round in worry, and when you turned the light towards the stones, there were traces of blood there.

“Oh God… Andy, you’re hurt!”

“It’s nothing,” he shook his head.

“Let me see…”

But he stood up instead, and you followed close. He was towering you, the way he always did. The difference in height had not been so obvious in the car, but now, he was standing before you in his full, impressive height, and the way he glared made it more intimidating than usual.

“You’re really leaving for a fucking guy you met at work?!”

You frowned, shaking your head.

“Andy, I’m not…”

“Have you lost your fucking mind?!”

“Andy…”

“For how long have you two even been together?”

“We’re not! We’re not together.”

It was his time to frown in confusion.

“What?”

“Tom and I, we’re not together. We’ve been approached by the same company, that’s all. Although, if I’m being honest… I might give him a chance.”

“What?”

You noticed how he was out of breath, of course you did. He didn’t seem angry anymore, just…sad. Unbearably sad…

“Well, he’s nice… and… I know he likes me. But… can we go back to the car now?”

“Don’t go with him.”

You stared up at him, his hair messed by the wind as more strands were breaking free from his bun. Snowflakes stained the dark locks with white. Some got caught in his long eyelashes. The biting cold was turning his sharp cheekbones red. In the dim light, you couldn’t believe the words that were coming out of his mouth, even though you could see the lips moving with the vowels, closing with consonants…

“Don’t go. Y/N… don’t go.”

These were words you were longing to hear, and yet, now that he was finally speaking them out loud, you couldn’t take them in.

He had acted like he didn’t care for weeks, and now, all of a sudden, he claimed that he was hurting?

“That’s rich coming from someone who spends barely any time home.”

You knew you were being mean, and you felt guilty as a shock of pain ran through Andrew’s features, enough so to bring tears back in his eyes. Still, you didn’t take your words back.

“That’s not the same. This… this is still my home.”

“This is a great opportunity for my career. This would be a new start. I’m excited about it. And Tom is nice. He likes me. He wants me…”

“You’re saying that like you don’t have a family and friends and people who love you already.”

“You know what I mean. This is a great opportunity, Andy. I want to take it.”

You noticed the way he clenched his jaw, the way the muscle jumped there as he lowered his gaze to the ground, nodding slowly.

“You’re right… that’s a great opportunity. You should take it…”

But instead of you agreeing, he was surprised as you huffed in annoyance, and turned your back to him.

“Get your arse back in the car, come on.”

“Y/N…”

“I don’t understand what you want, Andy!” you hissed as you turned back to him, and he hated the sharpness in your voice, it felt like a knife. “You act like you don’t give two fucks about me leaving for weeks! And now… now you’re acting like you want me to stay…!”

“Of course, I want you to stay! But I’m your friend, I’m supposed to be here for you, and to support you and encourage you…”

“So you’re glad that I’m leaving?” your voice rising into a shout, and his tone matched yours when he answered, making you tremble under his deep, powerful voice.

“Of course not! Are you listening to yourself?! Why would I want you to move to fucking Geneva!”

“Because you didn’t say a thing about it!” you were crying, but you didn’t even notice, too busy letting your feelings out, at long last. “Because everyone else tried to convince me to stay, and you didn’t!”

“I tried to be supportive!”

“Well, I didn’t want you to supportive!”

“What did you want then?!”

“The truth!”

“Well, I don’t want you to leave! Here’s your fucking truth! And I don’t want you to leave with fucking Tom! I want you to choose me!”

He was out of breath now, and as he moved closer to you and the light you still held tightly in your hand, you finally noticed that he was crying as well.

“Choose you?” you asked, confused and slightly calmer, even if your voice kept on shaking. “Why would you want me to choose you…?”

“BECAUSE I LOVE YOU!”

The words were out before he could hold them in; failing this time at this game he had played a thousand times before, every time the words almost slipped out, when he bit his tongue until it hurt so you wouldn’t hear his heart. Your eyes grew round like you were surprised, shocked even, like this was not the most obvious truth in the world, like he had not spent years loving you in secret, leaving traces of his bleeding heart all over the place…

He almost wanted to laugh at you, at your round eyes and parted lips and all that snow caught in your hair and the way he longed to kiss that shock off your face. He didn’t though. Because you took a step back, and he read fear in your eyes, and he realised then that you were slipping away, sand between his fingers although he tried to hold tight.

“Y/N…” he breathed, voice taken away by the wind before it could reach you.

You hurried to the car instead of answering, and he followed you this time, shivering in the cold. And once you were back in the safety of your vehicle, the seats had lost their warmth, and the tiny space between the two of you seemed unbearably vast, a chasm you would never be able to close or cross.

You were both staring out by the windshield, while the snow finally receded. You could start driving again…

“Can you say something?”

“We should try to drive again.”

“Y/N… please…”

But as you turned to him, it was to stare at his palm, not his gaze.

“You’re bleeding.”

Andrew followed your gaze, looked down at his own hand. There was a long cut across the palm, red with blood, darkened with dirt on some spots. In the dim light, it was hard to tell how deep the cut was. It hurt, that was for sure. And yet, he didn’t care. You were more painful than an open wound.

“It’s nothing…”

“Let me see.”

You took off the gloves he had lent you, and Andrew didn’t have the strength to stop you as you gently reached for his hand, cradled it in yours, held it to the light to get a better view. Your skin was warm and soft against his cold one, and the thought that you could hate him, that you could resent him for sharing feelings he knew as unrequited made the tenderness of your hold almost unbearable.

“How did you hurt yourself?”

“I slipped in the snow. Caught myself to the wall. Sharp stone.”

You heaved a sigh, the sound was almost annoyed, but not quite. More like… worried.

“Hold the light, would you?”

He didn’t think as he obeyed, yielding to your will, the way he always did. You grabbed a bottle of water and some tissues from the glove box, and started to slowly clean up his cut. You were leaning closer to do so, and Andrew couldn’t help himself as he leaned forward as well, longing for your nearness, basking in the touch of your hand as it came back to cradle his, drawn to you like a moth to a flame.

The breath he let out before speaking again was shaking.

“Do you hate me?”

You looked up, seemed to realize how close the two of you were. You could easily lean up and kiss him, and he could easily lean down and press his lips to yours. Instead, you both remained motionless, perfectly still, merely staring while he waited for an answer you thought was too obvious to be spoken.

“Why would I?” you asked back.

“Because… because we’re friends. And I caught feelings. And… maybe you hate me now that you know that I don’t… I don’t see a friend in you at all. Now that you know that I lied.”

But you didn’t answer, instead, you lowered your gaze again, and Andrew jumped and let out a hiss as you pressed the wet tissues against his broken skin.

“I’m not angry,” you finally reassured him. “I’m just… I don’t really believe you, I think.”

“What? Why wouldn’t you?”

You shrugged, and despite your claim of being calm, the smile that formed on your lips was bitter when you spoke.

“For how long have we been friends? And you’ve never said anything? Never felt anything, until I decided to go away? And now, all of sudden, you’re catching feelings?”

“I’ve never said these feelings were new.”

“You friendzoned me, back in the days. Do you remember that?”

Andrew winced, but nodded anyway.

“This… this was different.”

“Because I was just a friend?”

“Because I was the one leaving. Because it wasn’t fair to ask you out just to disappear for months while I was touring.”

Finally, you looked up again, trying to read something in his eyes, and whatever it was, Andrew hoped that you would find it there. He hoped you could see that he was being earnest, that he meant it, that there was no doubt to have. He had never doubted his love for you, even if he had refrained it. It had been a truth he had relied on for years. With a bit of luck, you might want to rely on it too…

“But then you came back… why didn’t you say anything then?”

“You weren’t single anymore. It was my turn to get friendzoned.”

The ghost of a smile formed on his lips, a soothing offering. But it was sad all the same.

“And after that?”

“After that… you were already my best friend. You… I didn’t want to lose you. And you… you deserved better than that. You deserve better than what I can give you. Waiting around while I disappear for months, what kind of life is that?”

You stopped breathing as he lifted his unharmed hand up to your face, brushing his fingertips across your cheek, the way he had longed to for years.

If his heart was staggering behind his ribs, if his breath was caught in his throat because of this gentle touch of your skin, when he closed his eyes to gather his strength, there was a tear breaking free.

“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I know you don’t feel the same,” he shook his head as he opened his eyes again, falling into your gaze, and he saw there the same tears he tried to withhold in his own eyes. “I know it’s a one-sided thing. I didn’t… I didn’t want to break everything. I’m sorry.”

He was surprised when you shook your head and leaned into his touch, forcing his hand to open so he could cradle your face in his palm, long fingers disappearing into your hair and tenderly brushing your skin.

“God, you’re such an idiot.”

He raised a surprised eyebrow, not daring to move or reply. You started laughing, and he was at a loss.

“We’re both so damn stupid!”

He had to blink to make sure that he wasn’t imagining your movement as you slowly closed the gap between the two of you, as you leaned up to meet him. He was too surprised by it to meet you halfway; he was too taken aback by the feeling of your lips against his to kiss you back. It took him a couple of seconds to process that this was truly happening, that he was not, in fact, lost in one of the many dreams he’d had of this moment. But then your hand was in the mess of his curls, and you were pressing your lips more firmly against his, and he allowed himself to believe that you wanted this as well, that perhaps he had been, indeed, such an idiot for failing to see what was right in front of him, the same way you had missed all of his gestures along the years.

And you wished you could admit to yourself that you were keeping control over the situation, having instigated the kiss, but you melted into his touch the second Andrew responded and kissed you back. His hold on your face tightened slightly, a tinge of desperation held in the gesture. You tightened your hold on his wounded hand, and he responded by twisting his wrist until he could hold onto your hand too. You chased after him as he pulled away, but he left only for a second, just long enough to tilt his head slightly to the side, bettering the angle of his next kiss so he could deepen it. And the second you could properly taste him on your tongue, you lost track of everything but him: the warmth of his scent, the softness of his touch, the smoothness of his skin, his curls running through your fingers, the gentle scratching of his beard, and the overwhelming feeling of being kissed by him. The feelings he poured into the intimate gesture… no one had ever kissed you like that before…

When you broke apart, at long last, both of you breathless, blinking the dizziness of the kiss away in an attempt to find back an earthly footing, Andrew pressed his forehead to yours, afraid, perhaps, that if he got too far, he would wake.

“I don’t see you as a mere friend either, in case that was still unclear,” you clarified, tone half-joking, making him smile.

“Right…”

“You’re okay?”

“Just… trying to assess whether I’m awake or dreaming right now.”

Playfully, you pinched his shoulder, making both of you laugh.

“Awake,” you confirmed. “Even your wild imagination could not have pictured the storm of the century as a background for our first kiss.”

“First? Can I have another, then?”

You couldn’t refrain a giggle, gently shaking your head at him, brushing your nose against his in the process.

“A true thief, as always.”

“Of the worst kind only.”

His thumb caressed your cheekbone, soft touch across your soft skin, making your eyes flutter shut as your heart lost its rhythm.

“If you want to take this job in Geneva, we can still make it work.”

You lifted your eyelids again and pulled back, just to fall right into his hazel eyes.

“Just… don’t choose Tom…”

You shook your head, giving him a reassuring smile. Your hands moved to hold his face in both of your palms, to make sure he would keep staring at you as you answered.

“Fuck Tom. Fuck Geneva. I’d rather go on a date with you.”

Andrew let out a chuckle, eyes crinkling as he smiled. Still, he had tears in his eyes all over again.

“You said it yourself, though. It’s a great opportunity for you.”

“I want to stay. If we give this a try, I want to stay.”

“Y/N…”

“I’m sure.”

“I’ll be away for months…”

“And you’ll be the one paying for the plane tickets, I’m not emptying my bank account when I’ve got a millionaire as a boyfriend.”

You both laughed, and Andrew nodded, at last.

“Fair enough.”

You were about to speak but didn’t have the time, Andrew was leaning to kiss you again instead, and you couldn’t complain, didn’t want to stop his fall towards your mouth.

He hissed and pulled away too fast though, after mere seconds, looking down at his wounded palm that he had tried to press against your back.

“I should clean this up, and then we can keep on driving,” you proposed, and Andrew agreed with a nod, obediently holding his hand still while you took care of him. He did lean to kiss your forehead a couple of times though, and you were both still quite amazed that he could do it, or that he wanted to.

You would have to get used to it though. After the storm had passed, after you had found your way back onto the right road, after you had reached your destination, there was plenty of time to talk, to confess feelings you had both refrained for too long, for holding onto each other too tightly, for kissing until lips were bruised and numb and yet still willing.

Perhaps, this trip was not such a disaster, after all…

[silverflqmes]

heey, i really loved your writing!! could you write a fluff where kageyama has a crush on seijouh's manager and doesn't know how to approach because of certain people (oikawa and kindaichi lol) ?

sorry if something is spelled wrong, I'm using the translator 😞❤️

lovee from Brazil!

໒⦂ 𝐌𝐄𝐒𝐒𝐀𝐆𝐄 𝐈𝐍 𝐀 𝐁𝐎𝐓𝐓𝐋𝐄.

notes. first song that came to mind^ by taylor swift ( ofc ) but anyway.. hello anon! much love to you in brazil<3 i hope this drabble is too your liking, not very confident in my take on kageyama but we cope.

genre. fluff ( kinda cliché.. )

tobio kageyama x gn!reader.

tobio wasn’t exactly what many would call, in tune with their feelings. in fact, he sucked at expressing what he felt. so much, that any emotions could easily be compared to crashing waves.

feelings surface and take the skies to great heights, only come crashing down and return to the expanse of water.

though it wasn’t completely his fault. many factors prevented him from expressing himself in a normal and understandable way. this time around, it was two students from his old junior high that stood in the way — yuutaro kindaichi, and no surprise here — tooru oikawa.. whom he didn’t have the best relationship with.

and what exactly were they blocking him from? well, his feelings towards you.

once upon a time ago, you had also attended kitagawa daiichi and have been kageyama’s crush for as long as could remember. no one could compare to you no matter how many times he tried to disregard his feelings.

now that you attended aoba johsai, he feared he might never get to tell you of his sentiments towards you.

the one opportunity he had to speak with you was during the practice match early into the school year, and at the singular opportunity he received to approach you, when he didn’t just feel like a face in a crowd.. kageyama became completely tongue tied.

like a fool he choked on his words before spouting a pathetic excuse of a greeting once kindaichi had arrived with kunimi to pull you away from him.

now, he was met with a new opportunity.. one that featured no aoba johsai, no court and zero volleyball — just the two of you, and the beach.

the raven haired setter had come with his sister for the day, saying to him that he had needed sun and a break from his cherished sport. the odds of you showing up were zero, and yet, here he was.. proven wrong once more.

miwa, upon seeing you playing blissfully in the water with a friend you had brought down to the beach with you, had of course nagged her younger brother, urging that it was fate. how often was it that you showed up to the beach at the same time as your crush without that knowledge, anyway?

still, the first year had refused to approach you. how could he when you were having so much fun? you’d freeze up completely if you had to hear another failed attempt at a confession.

despite being so close to him, you felt so far away for him. out of his league, out of reach.. and it terrified him to take those few steps in approaching you. who was to say you wanted him anyway if he spoke up? for all he knew someone else was in the picture.

there was just too much at risk, and he wasn’t sure if he was ready to hear your rejection.

“tobio.. you’re gonna lose her completely with the rate you’re going at.” his older sister sighed out, draining her bottle of coke. “nobody’s here to stop or make you feel judged in any way. and i can tell you right now,” she paused, pushing her sunglasses up a bit. “you’re not getting a better opportunity than this one.”

his lips pursed together as he stole another glance at you before looking at the emptied glass bottle in his hand. “it’s pointless trying, onee-san. she came here to enjoy herself and relax — not witness an embarrassment of a confession, if i even get one out.” the words would be completely jumbled, so much that it was sure to sound illiterate. like a baby trying to get their first word out.

he wondered if he could just get his feelings across without standing there to tell you. if he could do it that way, surely the confession would get across, and it won’t have cost him his dignity.

the elder eyed the younger for a moment before letting out a hum. “if this was volleyball, surely you’d have found a way around this by now.” she spoke up before laying back in her beach chair. “facing defeat has made you too comfortable, tobio.”

his lips parted to throw back a retort before, wanting to defend what little pride he had left, but his thoughts failed him when they couldn’t form into a sentence. miwa was right, painful as it was to admit. he gave up way too easily, all because of vulnerability.

his gaze lingered on the glass in his hand for a little while longer, the sea beyond twinkling in the distant horizon.

and just like that, an idea struck him. “nee-san, do you have a paper and pen i can borrow?”

“i’m telling you hana-chan, every conversation we’ve had just ends up in word vomit when he addresses me — considering yuutaro-kun and oikawa-senpai always intervene..” you sighed out to your friend from johzenji, pursing your lips together. “i feel bad each time we talk because of it.”

the brunette lowered her sunglasses to her face, letting out a hum. “volleyball boys do tend to hold onto their grudges, otherwise they’d be more like my team.. and they’re certainly a draining bunch.” it was like hosting a kid’s birthday party everyday when it came down to managing. “maybe you should try contacting him outside of volleyball?” she suggested, sipping on her smoothie.

your lips pursed together. “i probably should, he was a really good guy back in junior high.. despite what everyone says about his behavior with volleyball.” an awkward laugh seemed to have left your lips at the memories. “but i miss having him in my life, i just don’t know if he feels the same way..”

“what’s that?” the manager spoke up, sitting upright.

raising a brow, you turned to look at your friend. “i said i don’t know if he feels the same way..”

“no no.” misaki shook her head, pointing to the shore. “that, over there.” she corrected, lifting her shades.

you blinked at her finger, following its direction before narrowing your eyes to see what she had been referring to. the sun wasn’t quite helping your vision, in fact- whatever it was, the sun reflected it in a way that made you get up to go look for yourself.

if someone threw trash into the sea with garbage bins scattered all around the beach to maintain the cleanliness, you were seriously going to throw hands.

as you approached the shallow water, you kneeled to pick up the discarded bottle, wondering who on earth couldn’t just get off their ass and throw away a coke bottle.

but as you got a better look, you found a paper inside. at first glance it might have been a wrapper for a straw, however it wasn’t crumbled up like trash. rather — it was rolled up.

part of you thought you might have found the krabby patty secret formula somehow by its appearance. glass bottle and a note? a child would have surely thought similarly and opened it to see.

and like a kid.. curiosity got the better of you.

twisting off the cap, you flipped the bottle over to shake the letter out, eager to see what you might find. maybe even treasure — although that was farfetched.. even for you.

unraveling the message, however, you found none of the things you anticipated. in fact, you were met with very the last scenario that could have possibly crossed your mind.

dear y/n,

um.. i’m no good with words, but uh, you probably noticed that the last few times we saw each other. and i have no hope that whatever i say will be any better here.. especially with limited space, but i’m hoping that i can put my feelings into words a little easier without my pride getting in the way, awkward meetings, or our old schoolmates.

i like you, a lot.. and i have for a really long time now — since kitagawa daiichi. but i’ve just, had a hard time bringing those feelings across to you, so i never got the chance, especially when we go to different schools.

just feels like the universe doesn’t want me with you every time i try to speak up, so i decided to write them instead, hoping they get to you in this message.

if you don’t feel the same, i understand- i just hope we can remain friends, and that i haven’t made things even more awkward than they already were between us.

yours sincerely,

tobio kageyama.

shock painted your features as you read the name nine more times, scanned the contents of the letter before looking behind you.

tobio was somewhere on the beach and you hadn’t even seen him. he could have made an approach as well, but his fears, you guessed, of rejection.. told him not to.

finally, as your eyes were ready to give up the search, a sliver of blueberry caught your gaze. bingo.

“y/n?? where are you-”

“one minute, i think i saw someone i know!” you quickly intercepted hana, rising from your crouched position to run a few umbrellas down.

there was one with a duo underneath that resembled one another, and if your memory served you correctly — that was tobio and his older sister. miwa, if your memory hadn’t failed you.

the setter seemed to be his own world for a moment, filing his nails as part of his routine. even outside of the court, he still had to maintain his habits.

“tobio, i’m off to get us more drinks.” the female spoke up after looking up, smiling to herself. “be right back~”

kageyama let out a noise of agreement, only lifting his head a smidge to nod before pausing when he noticed a figure across from him — your figure.

either you just noticed him, or you had actually received the haphazard message in the bottle he had sent. and by the looks of it, it had been the latter.

“y/n..” he breathed out, lowering the filer in his hand as he watched you approach him.

the butterflies from every occasion he had encountered you this past year seemed to have returned to his stomach. was this what hinata felt before every match..?

“tobio-kun, it’s been awhile.” you smiled a little, letting out a sheepish laugh. “surprised to find you here, it almost feels like fate.. except no distractions this time for us to finally put everything out on the table.”

his heart seemed to accelerate with pace, the nerves increasing almost tenfold. rejection, he could just sense it coming. “um, well.. i already said how i feel, considering you got the letter.” he spoke up, eyeing the emptied beverage in your hands.

at his reasoning, you lifted the bottle before humming. “true, but i didn’t actually hear it from you. for all i know it could have been something of your sister’s doing.”

tobio, blushing profusely, nearly found himself barking back a response — a frequent habit of his. but as he eyed your expecting gaze, he faltered, lowering his head in defeat.

“how will i know if by saying it, i won’t just end up being made into a fool..?” he mumbled, pursing his lips together.

as you took a step closer, you gave him a knowing stare. “let me do you a better one, how are you so sure i’ll make you into a fool? you’re aware of your feelings.” you paused before pointing to yourself. “but you’re not aware of mine, it seems.”

his lips parted to retort before he froze up. “wait- your feelings? you..”

a smile returned to your lips as you sat beside him. “i like you, tobio-kun. are the feelings i read true?” you asked him, tilting your head curiously.

the color on his cheeks seemed to darken as he avoided your intent gaze for a moment before nodding. “they’re as i wrote them.. i really do like you, y/n — and i meant every word i said.. i was just scared you might’ve felt.. differently.”

“well,” you grabbed his hand, grinning brightly. “rest assured the feelings are mutual at long last!”

notes. sorry this is rushed and written in like 7382393939 different sittings.. hoping i was able to fulfill your request somewhat?? idk how in character he is.. but anyway, ty for the request anon and sorry for the very long wait ahaha.. please enjoy!

↳ return to main masterlist . request rules . send an ask

[kalims]

the package deal

summary. random scenarios I think about daily

content. scenarios, fluff, not proofread

featuring. jamil, ace, floyd, gender neutral

note. @merotwst hello beh para ito sayo 🥺 SORY ITS VERY LATE I GOT BUSY

scenarios are by order of the names ^^ & double post as an apology for inactive-ness LOL

your personal basketball shield

"what in the great seven are you doing?"

"I'm doing nothing, I'm completely innocent." you nervously reply before adding; "and I'm um... a student from room C."

well the first part made you look suspicious now.

but the second part is a lie though.

you in fact, are not a student from room C. you purposely left out mentioning what year you were in all together in favor of hopefully, having your identity still anonymous the remainder you'd still be inside the court.

speaking of. you aren't even supposed to be here right now.

the student eyes you weirdly, and you refrain from sweating bullets under their gaze.

for your own sake you just ignore them and focus on the court, your eyes immediately zeroes on the seemingly tight block (attempt at this point) at floyd, but he doesn't have any problem getting past them at all. you blink and he had already slammed the ball in and hung off the net like he's trying to play monkey bars.

to be fair your getup is immensely out of place, you're wearing all black, the hood is over your head and you're wearing shades which wouldn't have been strange if you hadn't wore it indoors. a black jacket to match when it's 36 degrees outside? yeah right.

in all honesty you're trying to gaslight yourself that you're just here to show support for one of your friends but you hadn't spared a wink of a gaze in ace's direction ever since you had entered.

instead you're staring at an empty spot at the bench, usually occupied by a certain someone you know. yet it isn't, you're just staring in hopes that he'll magically appear out of thin air and leave you something to stare at.

you're a mixture of confusion, and disappointment. this isn't very independent boss of me. you sweatdrop, pining over a boy... was not part of your plan.

maybe getting hit by a basketball flying off court and miraculously in your direction wasn't too but thankfully before you could screech bloody hell and break your nose, a palm reaches out and literally slaps the ball away casually?

you peek out your arm and peek up at jamil who doesn't even look at you and stares in the direction of which where the ball had come from with unblinking eyes (it seemed kind of intense but you don't want to question it.) he's wearing his signature club wear, his water bottle present in his other hand and a towel over his shoulder. the slightly dampened fringes that frame his face tells you that he had gone to wash up.

"you should be aware of your surroundings." he chides.

and he finally looks at you, you swear you just exploded.

you don't have it in yourself to reply to the echo of an apology from the court but is only able to stare dumbly at jamil who stares back.

... this is awkward.

"thanks..." you trail off, flabbergasted and warm as hell. maybe you shouldn't have used a jacket? maybe it was the weather? definitely!

before you know it, he stalks off with a tilt of his head and you believe you're being delusional again when he keeps looking in your direction whenever he scores like... it's for you.

covering the edges of a table

"I can't believe you spend time with trey."

unsurprisingly there's a deadpan directed to ace, not from deuce, riddle, nor cater but from you. sure he's just teensy tiny little bit bothered because well, it's not like he considered those other people romantically and there's been a silent promise to himself to prove that he is in fact; not as dumb as you think he is when you look at him like that.

usually when 'that' comes into mind ace would have imagined it to be a look he gives you daily, like you're sure he's the biggest idiot of the world but he's your idiot. he definitely does not want to get into detail but it's those looks people in love give which he used to cringe about.

ironically enough he's one of the subjects daydreaming about it.

you get him? he wanted that look not this one.

ace throws up his arms in the air with a deep sigh. "I live with him but that doesn't magically make me good in cooking, plus... trey bakes!" he rolls his eyes, speaking with a matter-of-factly tone.

you squint at him.

"have you not tasted trey's homemade dishes for dinner? those are to die for."

"no I haven't." he snaps.

"to think you even have the resident cook of scarabia mentoring you..." you continue, dodging a spatula that was thrown at your head. you frown at him in mock disappointment. "now now, you really wanna get charged for assault?"

from across the counter ace gives you the forbidden triple fuck you fingers. there's a silly pink apron he wears because you stole the only one which doesn't give his eyes a seizure, a red one. red looks good on you, he thinks but then his eye twitches.

when he had invited you over most of the second and third years had gone out for a camp, right now the first years are rejoicing the absence of their strict dorm leader and cooped up themselves in their respective rooms, eating every single junk food in the rules.

so that meant no one was really willing to cook, even ace wanted take out but you gracefully intervened.

to be fair you were hungry and the food would arrive at like 2 hours with how much ordering the residents had done.

"I think it's ready." he scratches his head, looking more unsure than you.

"you think?"

just then the timer beeps.

"how hard is it to make curry..." you shake your head, grabbing a set of utensils... to use, somehow.. even you aren't that experienced because all crowley does is send you microwavable food from the convenience stores and only the pizza was decent enough to call nice.

his brow creases. "not that hard."

"do it then."

"..."

ace just stares at you, leans over and slaps you over the head. while you've been a victim of many of these, you didn't expect him to literally lean over the counter to do that. "assault." you comment dryly, you curse under your breath when it goes flying under the table.

"it's your word over mine." he shrugs. blinking when you crouch. "what are you doing?"

"I dropped them because of your criminal ass." you roll your eyes, reaching over to grab the scattered utensils all over the floor, great. now you have to wash them too.

only when you realize that there was a possibility of hitting your head (which by the way, was never a fun experience. you're sure there's a carved up line from how many times you've hit it on your head.) when your head indeed bumps, but it's not exactly the hard surface that sends a jolt of sharp pain up your head.

instead there is a soft cushion. it ruffles your hair a bit and you're immensely confused.

you immediately look up when you stand up, unharmed but ace is just looking away from you. stirring the... pot which is weird cause there hasn't been any seasonings put in it.

you shrug.

missing the red ears.

getting hit by a ball to his face but he pretends it doesn't hurt because you're there

you're surprised that basketball even exists in this world when they apparently can't tell the difference between magishift and football, you're practically itching to slap someone when you explain the similarities between the two and they still have the audacity to deadpan at you like they're the most different things to ever exist!

namely, some idiot named ace trappola.

maybe leona too since he was giving you a stinky side eye but you don't want to get slapped back too.

what you appreciate though is floyd, you can't tell if he's just a big, strong ball of idiocy or the smartest person between all the people listening cause he seemed to be the only one interested in what you were saying.

and he even agreed that they were similar! albeit even if his usual manners are confusing floyd isn't that much of a guy that agrees with people a lot so it's a shocker.

and you're confused why he seems to be so attached to you. the tweels are almost always together, where one is, always is the other trailing along. so you're a little concerned because you can't take the presence of the resident friendly terrorists of the schools.

floyd was always following you around till he just wordlessly shoves a flyer of a game that's about to occur in his club, a wide grin on his face as he boasts about how he's on the starting line up and 'going to crush the other team.' literally or figuratively? you don't know but.. probably both.

basically he wanted you to watch so here you are.

not to exaggerate or anything but he is indeed, crushing the other team. a whooping 17 point lead between them, of course NRC leading. you'd be more confused if they weren't the one in first if they have floyd. (who apparently attends practice like one time a week but just enough to stay at the club...)

not to mention before it even started floyd had mentioned something along the lines of decimating the other team for your name. which is floating around the borderline of romantic and insanity.

for your delusions you will believe it romantic.

you're torn if you should cheer for the team, cause you know. you are technically part of NRC so it's natural but you know floyd would get all pouty, in a bad mood so you hesitate. vice versa because if you cheer for floyd you're gonna get weird looks cause so far, he's been doing selfish plays, not passing but scoring.

well this is the least villainous thing a student from a school that worships villians can do...

floyd is playing well, you would not like to admit that you're staring because he looks a little too good in that uniform... sweaty, pushing his hair back with a grin as he glowers at his opponents and sends them into peeing their pants. it works though cause they almost always hesitate when floyd is the one they're up against.

just wow.

you're just 100% sure you're watching a basketball god who would ascend to a higher life form if he wasn't so lazy till there's an abrupt silence that definitely isn't normal.

thankfully you catch the sight of a ball being... shoved to floyd's face like a dunk? should you really be thankful to witness that.

and for once entirety of the room agreed on one thing for that person. rest in piece.

floyd rubs his face and narrows his eyes, it almost looked like he was about to tear up but you swear he looked at you and immediately forced a wobbly grin, closing his eyes so the tears wouldn't fall and opens them to stare at the poor guy intensely.

in the distance you could hear a vague chuckle of jade.

"you don't know where to dunk, lil' guy?" floyd flashes them a sharp toothed grin, ironically you witness their soul leaving their body at the sheer intensity he excludes. most held their breaths cause they're sure that he would have started quietly threatening them but... there's no threats.

almost like he's holding back to act unfazed?

the 'lil guy' gulps and can't even muster up an answer.

floyd smiles at him. "I'll show you."

before the game ended that player left with a red round stain on their face, clear evidence of floyd's 'accidental payback.'

... now he's asking if you've seen how he's carried the team.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

The enshittification of garage-door openers reveals a vast and deadly rot

I'll be at the Studio City branch of the LA Public Library on Monday, November 13 at 1830hPT to launch my new novel, The Lost Cause. There'll be a reading, a talk, a surprise guest (!!) and a signing, with books on sale. Tell your friends! Come on down!

How could this happen? Owners of Chamberlain MyQ automatic garage door openers just woke up to discover that the company had confiscated valuable features overnight, and that there was nothing they could do about it.

Oh, we know what happened, technically speaking. Chamberlain shut off the API for its garage-door openers, which breaks their integration with home automation systems like Home Assistant. The company even announced that it was doing this, calling the integration an "unauthorized usage" of its products, though the "unauthorized" parties in this case are the people who own Chamberlain products:

https://chamberlaingroup.com/press/a-message-about-our-decision-to-prevent-unauthorized-usage-of-myq

We even know why Chamberlain did this. As Ars Technica's Ron Amadeo points out, shutting off the API is a way for Chamberlain to force its customers to use its ad-beshitted, worst-of-breed app, so that it can make a few pennies by nonconsensually monetizing its customers' eyeballs:

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2023/11/chamberlain-blocks-smart-garage-door-opener-from-working-with-smart-homes/

But how did this happen? How did a giant company like Chamberlain come to this enshittening juncture, in which it felt empowered to sabotage the products it had already sold to its customers? How can this be legal? How can it be good for business? How can the people who made this decision even look themselves in the mirror?

To answer these questions, we must first consider the forces that discipline companies, acting against the impulse to enshittify their products and services. There are four constraints on corporate conduct:

I. Competition. The fear of losing your business to a rival can stay even the most sociopathic corporate executive's hand.

II. Regulation. The fear of being fined, criminally sanctioned, or banned from doing business can check the greediest of leaders.

III. Capability. Corporate executives can dream up all kinds of awful ways to shift value from your side of the ledger to their own, but they can only do the things that are technically feasible.

IV. Self-help. The possibility of customers modifying, reconfiguring or altering their products to restore lost functionality or neutralize antifeatures carries an implied threat to vendors. If a printer company's anti-generic-ink measures drives a customer to jailbreak their printers, the original manufacturer's connection to that customer is permanently severed, as the customer creates a durable digital connection to a rival.

When companies act in obnoxious, dishonest, shitty ways, they aren't merely yielding to temptation – they are evading these disciplining forces. Thus, the Great Enshittening we are living through doesn't reflect an increase in the wickedness of corporate leadership. Rather, it represents a moment in which each of these disciplining factors have been gutted by specific policies.

This is good news, actually. We used to put down rat poison and we didn't have a rat problem. Then we stopped putting down rat poison and rats are eating us alive. That's not a nice feeling, but at least we know at least one way of addressing it – we can start putting down poison again. That is, we can start enforcing the rules that we stopped enforcing, in living memory. Having a terrible problem is no fun, but the best kind of terrible problem to have is one that you know a solution to.

As it happens, Chamberlain is a neat microcosm for all the bad policy choices that created the Era of Enshittification. Let's go through them:

Competition: Chamberlain doesn't have to worry about competition, because it is owned by a private equity fund that "rolled up" all of Chamberlain's major competitors into a single, giant firm. Most garage-door opener brands are actually Chamberlain, including "LiftMaster, Chamberlain, Merlin, and Grifco":

https://www.lakewoodgaragedoor.biz/blog/the-history-of-garage-door-openers

This is a pretty typical PE rollup, and it exploits a bug in US competition law called "Antitrust's Twilight Zone":

https://pluralistic.net/2022/12/16/schumpeterian-terrorism/#deliberately-broken

When companies buy each other, they are subject to "merger scrutiny," a set of guidelines that the FTC and DoJ Antitrust Division use to determine whether the outcome is likely to be bad for competition. These rules have been pretty lax since the Reagan administration, but they've currently being revised to make them substantially more strict:

https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/justice-department-and-ftc-seek-comment-draft-merger-guidelines

One of the blind spots in these merger guidelines is an exemption for mergers valued at less than $101m. Under the Hart-Scott-Rodino Act, these fly under the radar, evading merger scrutiny. That means that canny PE companies can roll up dozens and dozens of standalone businesses, like funeral homes, hospital beds, magic mushrooms, youth addiction treatment centers, mobile home parks, nursing homes, physicians’ practices, local newspapers, or e-commerce sellers:

http://www.economicliberties.us/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/Serial-Acquisitions-Working-Paper-R4-2.pdf

By titrating the purchase prices, PE companies – like Blackstone, owners of Chamberlain and all the other garage-door makers – can acquire a monopoly without ever raising a regulatory red flag.

But antitrust enforcers aren't helpless. Under (the long dormant) Section 7 of the Clayton Act, competition regulators can block mergers that lead to "incipient monopolization." The incipiency standard prevented monopolies from forming from 1914, when the Clayton Act passed, until the Reagan administration. We used to put down rat poison, and we didn't have rats. We stopped, and rats are gnawing our faces off. We still know where the rat poison is – maybe we should start putting it down again.

On to regulation. How is it possible for Chamberlain to sell you a garage-door opener that has an API and works with your chosen home automation system, and then unilaterally confiscate that valuable feature? Shouldn't regulation protect you from this kind of ripoff?

It should, but it doesn't. Instead, we have a bunch of regulations that protect Chamberlain from you. Think of binding arbitration, which allows Chamberlain to force you to click through an "agreement" that takes away your right to sue them or join a class-action suit:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/10/20/benevolent-dictators/#felony-contempt-of-business-model

But regulation could protect you from Chamberlain. Section 5 of the Federal Trade Commission Act allows the FTC to ban any "unfair and deceptive" conduct. This law has been on the books since 1914, but Section 5 has been dormant, forgotten and unused, for decades. The FTC's new dynamo chair, Lina Khan, has revived it, and is use it like a can-opener to free Americans who've been trapped by abusive conduct:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/10/the-courage-to-govern/#whos-in-charge

Khan's used Section 5 powers to challenge privacy invasions, noncompete clauses, and other corporate abuses – the bait-and-switch tactics of Chamberlain are ripe for a Section 5 case. If you buy a gadget because it has five features and then the vendor takes two of them away, they are clearly engaged in "unfair and deceptive" conduct.

On to capability. Since time immemorial, corporate leaders have fetishized "flexibility" in their business arrangements – like the ability to do "dynamic pricing" that changes how much you pay for something based on their guess about how much you are willing to pay. But this impulse to play shell games runs up against the hard limits of physical reality: grocers just can't send an army of rollerskated teenagers around the store to reprice everything as soon as a wealthy or desperate-looking customer comes through the door. They're stuck with crude tactics like doubling the price of a flight that doesn't include a Saturday stay as a way of gouging business travelers on an expense account.

With any shell-game, the quickness of the hand deceives the eye. Corporate crooks armed with computers aren't smarter or more wicked than their analog forebears, but they are faster. Digital tools allow companies to alter the "business logic" of their services from instant to instant, in highly automated ways:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/02/19/twiddler/

The monopoly coalition has successfully argued that this endless "twiddling" should not be constrained by privacy, labor or consumer protection law. Without these constraints, corporate twiddlers can engage in all kinds of ripoffs, like wage theft and algorithmic wage discrimination:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/12/algorithmic-wage-discrimination/#fishers-of-men

Twiddling is key to the Darth Vader MBA ("I am altering the deal. Pray I don't alter it further"), in which features are confiscated from moment to moment, without warning or recourse:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/10/26/hit-with-a-brick/#graceful-failure

There's no reason to accept the premise that violating your privacy, labor rights or consumer rights with a computer is so different from analog ripoffs that existing laws don't apply. The unconstrained twiddling of digital ripoff artists is a plague on billions of peoples' lives, and any enforcer who sticks up for our rights will have an army of supporters behind them.

Finally, there's the fear of self-help measures. All the digital flexibility that tech companies use to take value away can be used to take it back, too. The whole modern history of digital computers is the history of "adversarial interoperability," in which the sleazy antifeatures of established companies are banished through reverse-engineering, scraping, bots and other forms of technological guerrilla warfare:

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

Adversarial interoperability represents a serious threat to established business. If you're a printer company gouging on toner, your customers might defect to a rival that jailbreaks your security measures. That's what happened to Lexmark, who lost a case against the toner-refilling company Static Controls, which went on to buy Lexmark:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/06/felony-contempt-business-model-lexmarks-anti-competitive-legacy

Sure, your customers are busy and inattentive and you can degrade the quality of your product a lot before they start looking for ways out. But once they cross that threshold, you can lose them forever. That's what happened to Microsoft: the company made the tactical decision to produce a substandard version of Office for the Mac in a drive to get Mac users to switch to Windows. Instead, Apple made Iwork (Pages, Numbers and Keynote), which could read and write every Office file, and Mac users threw away Office, the only Microsoft product they owned, permanently severing their relationship to the company:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/06/adversarial-interoperability-reviving-elegant-weapon-more-civilized-age-slay

Today, companies can operate without worrying about this kind of self-help measure. There' a whole slew of IP rights that Chamberlain can enforce against you if you try to fix your garage-door opener yourself, or look to a competitor to sell you a product that restores the feature they took away:

https://locusmag.com/2020/09/cory-doctorow-ip/

Jailbreaking your Chamberlain gadget in order to make it answer to a rival's app involves bypassing a digital lock. Trafficking in a tool to break a digital lock is a felony under Section 1201 of the Digital Millennium Copyright, carrying a five-year prison sentence and a $500,000 fine.

In other words, it's not just that tech isn't regulated, allowing for endless twiddling against your privacy, consumer rights and labor rights. It's that tech is badly regulated, to permit unlimited twiddling by tech companies to take away your rightsand to prohibit any twiddling by you to take them back. The US government thumbs the scales against you, creating a regime that Jay Freeman aptly dubbed "felony contempt of business model":

https://pluralistic.net/2022/10/23/how-to-fix-cars-by-breaking-felony-contempt-of-business-model/

All kinds of companies have availed themselves of this government-backed superpower. There's DRM – digital locks, covered by DMCA 1201 – in powered wheelchairs:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2022/06/when-drm-comes-your-wheelchair

In dishwashers:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/05/03/cassette-rewinder/#disher-bob

In treadmills:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/06/22/vapescreen/#jane-get-me-off-this-crazy-thing

In tractors:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/05/08/about-those-kill-switched-ukrainian-tractors/

It should come as no surprise to learn that Chamberlain has used DMCA 1201 to block interoperable garage door opener components:

https://scholarship.law.marquette.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1233&context=iplr

That's how we arrived at this juncture, where a company like Chamberlain can break functionality its customers value highly, solely to eke out a minuscule new line of revenue by selling ads on their own app.

Chamberlain bought all its competitors.

Chamberlain operates in a regulatory environment that is extremely tolerant of unfair and deceptive practices. Worse: they can unilaterally take away your right to sue them, which means that if regulators don't bestir themselves to police Chamberlain, you are shit out of luck.

Chamberlain has endless flexibility to unilaterally alter its products' functionality, in fine-grained ways, even after you've purchased them.

Chamberlain can sue you if you try to exercise some of that same flexibility to protect yourself from their bad practices.

Combine all four of those factors, and of course Chamberlain is going to enshittify its products. Every company has had that one weaselly asshole at the product-planning table who suggests a petty grift like breaking every one of the company's customers' property to sell a few ads. But historically, the weasel lost the argument to others, who argued that making every existing customer furious would affect the company's bottom line, costing it sales and/or fines, and prompting customers to permanently sever their relationship with the company by seeking out and installing alternative software. Take away all the constraints on a corporation's worst impulses, and this kind of conduct is inevitable:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/28/microincentives-and-enshittification/

This isn't limited to Chamberlain. Without the discipline of competition, regulation, self-help measures or technological limitations, every industry in undergoing wholesale enshittification. It's not a coincidence that Chamberlain's grift involves a push to move users into its app. Because apps can't be reverse-engineered and modified without risking DMCA 1201 prosecution, forcing a user into an app is a tidy and reliable way to take away that user's rights.

Think about ad-blocking. One in four web users has installed an ad-blockers ("the biggest boycott in world history" -Doc Searls). Zero app users have installed app-blockers, because they don't exist, because making one is a felony. An app is just a web-page wrapped in enough IP to make it a crime to defend yourself against corporate predation:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/08/27/an-audacious-plan-to-halt-the-internets-enshittification-and-throw-it-into-reverse/

The temptation to enshitiffy isn't new, but the ability to do so without consequence is a modern phenomenon, the intersection of weak policy enforcement and powerful technology. Your car is autoenshittified, a rolling rent-seeking platform that spies on you and price-gouges you:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/24/rent-to-pwn/#kitt-is-a-demon

Cars are in an uncontrolled skid over Enshittification Cliff. Honda, Toyota, VW and GM all sell cars with infotainment systems that harvest your connected phone's text-messages and send them to the corporation for data-mining. What's more, a judge in Washington state just ruled that this is legal:

https://therecord.media/class-action-lawsuit-cars-text-messages-privacy

While there's no excuse for this kind of sleazy conduct, we can reasonably anticipate that if our courts would punish companies for engaging in it, they might be able to resist the temptation. No wonder Mozilla's latest Privacy Not Included research report called cars "the worst product category we have ever reviewed":

https://foundation.mozilla.org/en/privacynotincluded/articles/its-official-cars-are-the-worst-product-category-we-have-ever-reviewed-for-privacy/

I mean, Nissan tries to infer facts about your sex life and sells those inferences to marketing companies:

https://foundation.mozilla.org/en/privacynotincluded/nissan/

But the OG digital companies are the masters of enshittification. Microsoft has been at this game for longer than anyone, and every day brings a fresh way that Microsoft has worsened its products without fear of consequence. The latest? You can't delete your OneDrive account until you provide an acceptable explanation for your disloyalty:

https://www.theverge.com/2023/11/8/23952878/microsoft-onedrive-windows-close-app-notification

It's tempting to think that the cruelty is the point, but it isn't. It's almost never the point. The point is power and money. Unscrupulous businesses have found ways to make money by making their products worse since the industrial revolution. Here's Jules Dupuis, writing about 19th century French railroads:

It is not because of the few thousand francs which would have to be spent to put a roof over the third-class carriages or to upholster the third-class seats that some company or other has open carriages with wooden benches. What the company is trying to do is to prevent the passengers who can pay the second class fare from traveling third class; it hits the poor, not because it wants to hurt them, but to frighten the rich. And it is again for the same reason that the companies, having proved almost cruel to the third-class passengers and mean to the second-class ones, become lavish in dealing with first-class passengers. Having refused the poor what is necessary, they give the rich what is superfluous.

https://www.tumblr.com/mostlysignssomeportents/731357317521719296/having-refused-the-poor-what-is-necessary-they

But as bad as all this is, let me remind you about the good part: we know how to stop companies from enshittifying their products. We know what disciplines their conduct: competition, regulation, capability and self-help measures. Yes, rats are gnawing our eyeballs, but we know which rat-poison to use, and where to put it to control those rats.

Competition, regulation, constraint and self-help measures all backstop one another, and while one or a few can make a difference, they are most powerful when they're all mobilized in concert. Think of the failure of the EU's landmark privacy law, the GDPR. While the GDPR proved very effective against bottom-feeding smaller ad-tech companies, the worse offenders, Meta and Google, have thumbed their noses at it.

This was enabled in part by the companies' flying an Irish flag of convenience, maintaining the pretense that they have to be regulated in a notorious corporate crime-haven:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/05/15/finnegans-snooze/#dirty-old-town

That let them get away with all kinds of shenanigans, like ignoring the GDPR's requirement that you should be able to easily opt out of data-collection without having to go through cumbersome "cookie consent" dialogs or losing access to the service as punishment for declining to be tracked.

As the noose has tightened around these surveillance giants, they're continuing to play games. Meta now says that the only way to opt out of data-collection in the EU is to pay for the service:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/10/30/markets-remaining-irrational/#steins-law

This is facially illegal under the GDPR. Not only are they prohibited from punishing you for opting out of collection, but the whole scheme ignores the nature of private data collection. If Facebook collects the fact that you and I are friends, but I never opted into data-collection, they have violated the GDPR, even if you were coerced into granting consent:

https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2023/11/the-pay-or-consent-challenge-for-platform-regulators.html

The GDPR has been around since 2016 and Google and Meta are still invading 500 million Europeans' privacy. This latest delaying tactic could add years to their crime-spree before they are brought to justice.

But most of this surveillance is only possible because so much of how you interact with Google and Meta is via an app, and an app is just a web-page that's a felony to make an ad-blocker for. If the EU were to legalize breaking DRM – repealing Article 6 of the 2001 Copyright Directive – then we wouldn't have to wait for the European Commission to finally wrestle these two giant companies to the ground. Instead, EU companies could make alternative clients for all of Google and Meta's services that don't spy on you, without suffering the fate of OG App, which tried this last winter and was shut down by "felony contempt of business model":

https://pluralistic.net/2023/02/05/battery-vampire/#drained

Enshittification is demoralizing. To quote @wilwheaton, every update to the services we use inspires "dread of 'How will this complicate things as I try to maintain privacy and sanity in a world that demands I have this thing to operate?'"

https://wilwheaton.tumblr.com/post/698603648058556416/cory-doctorow-if-you-see-this-and-have-thoughts

But there are huge natural constituencies for the four disciplining forces that keep enshittification at bay.

Remember, Antitrust's Twilight Zone doesn't just allow rollups of garage-door opener companies – it's also poison for funeral homes, hospital beds, magic mushrooms, youth addiction treatment centers, mobile home parks, nursing homes, physicians’ practices, local newspapers, or e-commerce sellers.

The Binding Arbitration scam that stops Chamberlain customers from suing the company also stops Uber drivers from suing over stolen wages, Turbotax customers from suing over fraud, and many other victims of corporate crime from getting a day in court.

The failure to constrain twiddling to protect privacy, labor rights and consumer rights enables a host of abuses, from stalking, doxing and SWATting to wage theft and price gouging:

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

And Felony Contempt of Business Model is used to screw you over every time you refill your printer, run your dishwasher, or get your Iphone's screen replaced.

The actions needed to halt and reverse this enshittification are well understood, and the partisans for taking those actions are too numerous to count. It's taken a long time for all those individuals suffering under corporate abuses to crystallize into a movement, but at long last, it's happening.

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/2023/11/09/lead-me-not-into-temptation/#chamberlain

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

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