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#but as long as their primary support is made
animerunner · 1 year
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Actual comment I saw on the John and Kate plus 8 situation: Well there adults now why are they still siding with her
Me:…because magically turning 18 doesn’t suddenly magically change your opinions on things? Realizing your in an abusive situation like that can take time and deconstruction. And realistically is more likely to happen once those 6 aren’t around her constantly
And they have trust fund so the amount of connection should be withering away. But they need to start seeing it themselves before they can realize what is wrong here
And that can take time
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jvzebel-x · 1 year
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🦋
#ive been in kind of a depressive low point for. a sec now lmao.#it swung down after the months of Bad Mania in response to the meds balancing out i think idk.#either way ive been in a weird state of disassociative depression for a couple months now#but i can feel it swinging back as the month goes on&we get closer&closer to autumn lmao.#right about now for a couple different reasons is when my Internal Balance starts to shift yearly in response to the anxiety#that i wasted all the sunshine. 🫠🫠🫠#idk. its putting me in that weird spot where my depressive episode isn't exactly Over yet#but i can already feel that buzzing in my bones going on lmao.#its also bringing up weird thoughts i guess as my brain scrambles for actual reasons to be so anxious#&just like when i wake up in pain that always bleeds over into reasons to be Angry not Anxious bc Angry is easier lmao.#like hypocrisy has been a topic of discussion in my life recently bc of everything back home&if i let my head spiral for too long#ill end up back at the point where my shithead ex told me for 3yrs that i was a hypocrite w double standards#w his primary example being that he Let Me talk to other guys but i didnt Let Him talk to other women#w the one sole example being how after i moved my entire life across an ocean to an entirely foreign place where i had no support but him#i was made extremely uncomfortable when i found out he'd been talking to his ex during the entire process.#so my attitude toward that translated into i guess a weird boundary that i never actually set bc he enjoyed to call me a hypocrite lmao.#its just weird having my thoughts slide from discussions about hypocritical actions involving Lahaina&its handling by the fake state#over to old thoughts about how i just let someone call me a hypocrite to my face for years bc he wanted to w no actual reason lmao.#&this sort of All Over The Board weirdness is really only something that happens in these strange Inbetween times for me.#... pls for the love of everything holy let this fucking be over soon lmao i solve these problems Poorly bc these time periods#wreck my impulse control lmao.
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reasonsforhope · 2 months
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Kamala Harris just announced that her vice president will be Minnesota governor Tim Walz. Based on the coverage so far I'm really reassured by this decision.
The Washington Post did an obviously great job of making a prepared article for each option, considering how long an article they had up 7 minutes after the announcement.
((Okay technically it's not an official announcement yet it's "according to three people familiar with the pick, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a decision that is not yet public." But listen. I am 99% sure this is a weather balloon. (Meaning: a deliberate leak to gauge reaction.) Because the sheer weakness or incompetence on the part of the Harris campaign that it would take for three people to all confirm that within a few hours hours of each other and the planned announcement it is massive.))
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-via The Washington Post, August 6, 2024
Honestly this decision, from everything I've read and can tell, looks like it's brilliant politics.
Important Context: The vice president(ial candidates)'s job in an election is not to be similar to the president. The vice president's job on the ballot is very, very much specifically to be different from the president. Why? So they can cover each others' weaknesses. Especially regionally.
(Sidenote: I feel a bit ridiculous saying this. But genuinely if you want to get a stronger understanding of how US elections really work. Go watch seasons 6 and 7 of The West Wing. Genuinely, a lot of politicians have said - especially back in its day - that that was the most accurate depiction of an election they'd ever seen. Also specifically features an entire arc about a contested Democratic primary convention, so also very good if you're interested in understanding weird nominating convention shenanigans.)
From the article:
"Harris’s choice for a running mate was among the most closely watched decisions of her fledgling campaign, as she sought to bolster the ticket’s prospects for victory in November and rapidly find someone who could be a governing partner. In picking Walz, she has selected a seasoned politician with executive governing experience and signaled the importance of Midwestern battleground states such as Wisconsin and Michigan.
Walz’s foray into politics came later in life: He spent more than two decades as a public school teacher and football coach, and as a member of the Army National Guard, before running for Congress in his 40s. In 2006, he defeated a Republican to win Minnesota’s 1st Congressional District--a rural, conservative area--and won reelection five times before leaving Congress to run for governor.
Walz was first elected governor in 2018 and handily won reelection in 2022. Though little-known outside his state, Walz emerged publicly as one of the earliest names mentioned as a possible running mate for Harris, and in the ensuing days he made the rounds on television as an outspoken surrogate for the vice president...
“These are weird people on the other side. They want to take books away, they want to be in your exam room. … They are bad on foreign policy, they are bad on the environment, they certainly have no health care plan, and they keep talking about the middle-class,” Walz told MSNBC in July. “As I said, a robber baron real estate guy and a venture capitalist trying to tell us they understand who we are? They don’t know who we are.”
Walz also has faced criticism from Republicans that his policies as governor were too liberal, including legalizing recreational marijuana for adults, protecting abortion rights, expanding LGBTQ protections, implementing tuition-free college for low-income Minnesotans and providing free breakfast and lunch for schoolchildren in the state.
But many of those initiatives are broadly popular. Walz also signed an executive order removing the college-degree requirement for 75 percent of Minnesota’s state jobs, a move that garnered bipartisan support and that several other states have also adopted.
“What a monster. Kids are eating and having full bellies, so they can go learn, and women are making their own health-care decisions,” Walz said sarcastically in a July 28 interview with CNN when questioned whether such policies would be fodder for conservative attacks, later adding: “If that’s where they want to label me, I’m more than happy to take the [liberal] label.”
Walz also spoke at a kickoff event in St. Paul for a Democratic canvassing effort, casting Trump as a “bully.”
“Don’t lift these guys up like they’re some kind of heroes. Everybody in this room knows--I know it as a teacher--a bully has no self-confidence. A bully has no strength. They have nothing,” Walz said at the event, sporting a camouflage hunting hat and T-shirt.
Walz has explained that he felt some Democrats’ practice of calling Trump an existential threat to democracy was giving him too much credit, which prompted his decision to denounce the GOP nominee instead as being “weird.”
“I do believe all those things are a real possibility, but it gives him way too much power," Walz said on CNN’s “State of the Union” regarding the Democrats’ rhetoric. “Listen to the guy. He’s talking about Hannibal Lecter, shocking sharks, and just whatever crazy thing pops into his mind.”
If Walz is elected vice president, under state law, Minnesota Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan (D) would assume the governorship for the rest of his term. Minnesota Senate president Bobby Joe Champion, a Democrat, would become lieutenant governor."
-via The Washington Post, August 6, 2024
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This guy. Sounds like. fucking Moderate swing-state/rural/Midwestern/southern/"heartland"/working class white voter catnip. He sounds like he's also a very smart politician and strong campaigner. And he's apparently genuinely a good guy with a good record, too.
He sounds like he's going to do a really good job of appealing to voters in several of the big deal swing states without being from any of them specifically. Which means it doesn't feel like pandering to one of the states involved (and thereby spurning the others), which is also great.
(Also he was the one who started "weird" @ conservatives and I think we should take that seriously as a very good political instinct/move. Judging in large part by how it has so clearly hit an actual nerve with conservatives like so little else. Also hugely relevant: that post going around about how part of why conservatives are so upset about "weird" is because in the Midwest, "weird" specifically also implies anti-social or harmful behavior.)
Officially feeling more optimistic about Trump not winning in November
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qqueenofhades · 2 months
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oh god is biden dropping out? i don't know what happens then
Jesus effing Christ.
Few thoughts:
The billionaire Democratic donors got their way, apparently. All I saw was that the big-dollar donors were secretly putting pressure on the rank-and-file Democratic elected officials (i.e. House and Senate) to denounce Biden or not get any more money, and other shameful backroom maneuvering to knife Biden. I will refrain (lol, no I won't) from speculating that billionaires of any political stripe feel threatened by Biden's increasingly progressive tax/wealth redistribution policies, and saw their chance after the bad debate performance to knife him. Because until further notice, I'm going to think that was the biggest factor.
I don't know if there's an actual health condition that made Biden agree it was the best time (in fucking July) to step down, but if this was an issue, there needed to be planning last year, at the earliest, to prepare for a new successor. I don't know what's going on. This is a clusterfuck on many, many levels.
However: it is true that this does change things and not necessarily only for the worse, as long as Harris is immediately confirmed as the new nominee and this stupid Democrats In Disarray nonsense, which is giving the media exactly what they want, is put to a fucking end. If Harris is also swept aside and the billionaire donors try to install their preferred "Centrist!!!" candidate (lol Manchin or some shit) with an equally antidemocratic closed-door Star Chamber convention, then yes, we're fucked. Because the Congressional Black Caucus and African American voters saw exactly what the rich white man billionaires were trying to do by torching Biden and then Harris, and they are not going to play ball with some Magical White Man replacement.
If Harris is immediately confirmed as the new nominee (and to the best of my knowledge Biden has endorsed her), then she has a chance of reinvigorating the race. There were a lot of Americans who did not want either Biden or Trump. I suspect they were fucking braindead, but so be it. Harris has apparently polled pretty and increasingly well in recent days (in some cases actually better than Biden) and again, there is no remotely small-d democratic alternative to her. The billionaire donors already trashed the duly elected (by the primary process) Democratic nominee. If they do the same to Harris, then yes. We will have Trump and there won't be any more democracy in this country on either side, because the Republican big-bucks donors will gleefully pick up where the Democratic big-bucks donors left off.
Jesus fucking Christ.
The message needs to be "Harris is Joe's successor, she is younger and already has four years of experience and is the only candidate." Anything else is a fucking gift from god to the Republicans, once more getting trashed after Trump's terrible RNC speech. Maybe she can then pick Whitmer or Shapiro (both popular and effective Democratic governors of swing states, MI and PA respectively) as a running mate, but the nominee has to be Kamala. There is no other fucking choice. This is already enough of a mess.
If that can happen, and the fucking donors can refrain from fucking it up, then... okay. It's not great, but it does change things. It makes the ticket younger. It makes it historic (first Black female president beating Trump would be amazing). It could reach people disenchanted with the current two-old-white-guys setup.
This is an incredible sacrifice on Biden's part and I only wish that I could believe he did it voluntarily, rather than being forced out by a small class of rich people worrying about his policies getting too progressive.
I wish him only the best and I recognize this decision was taken under extreme pressure. If we then lose to Trump, I hope everyone who forced Biden out burns in hell.
I was a diehard Biden supporter not because I loved the guy personally, but because he was the only choice for preserving democracy in America. The essential stakes of the election have not changed, even if the billionaires just knifed us in the fucking back, possibly to nobody's surprise, because R or D, they are not our friends.
Kamala is the only choice. I will now have to defend her as hard as I did for Biden. She needs to beat Trump. There is nothing else to it. If you think she can't, then you need to work at helping her do that. There is already enough calamity and doom. We do not have a choice. We cannot lose sight of what is at stake here.
Kamala Harris/Whitmer and/or Shapiro and/or Buttigieg 2024.
The end.
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gothicprep · 2 years
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i've been meaning to write something for a while now about how misinformation is not a partisan issue, it's just an issue in general. i was mulling over writing something about how infowars waterboards statistics into saying whatever alex jones wants – i'll still probably do that in the future – but it's not something that exactly supports my thesis here.
but, lucky me, i had a perfect example fall into my lap this week.
so, was andrew tate taken into custody over twitter beef with greta thunberg? the short answer is "no" but i'll elaborate.
here's the primary romanian news report about the cops taking the tate brothers into custody. the way that this has been reported in US news media has basically been that a pizza box in andrew tate's video response to thunberg helped romanian authorities confirm his location. here's a daily beast article that insinuates this:
In a video rant he uploaded to Twitter, in which he smoked a cigar and tried to brush off the online spat, he unwittingly displayed a pizza box from a local pizza chain—alerting authorities looking for him to his presence in the country.
here's the problem with that, though – none of the romanian journalists who reported on this story said anything about the pizza box thing. there's also a huge problem with these stories just... citing each other.
if you dig through the citation loop long enough, you end on this daily star article that cites tweets (jurnelism!) from, of course, alejandra caraballo
According to Alejandra Caraballo, a writer and clinical instructor posting on Twitter: “Romanian authorities needed proof that Andrew Tate was in the country so they reportedly used his social media posts.
(as an aside, if you follow her on twt, i'd heavily recommend against doing that. she spews bullshit like her life depends on it and i think this is inexcusable.)
these are caraballo's tweets in question:
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the source for this is the romanian article i linked to earlier in this post. it doesn't say any of this. at least, the english translated version of it doesn't. for what it's worth, i'm not a romanian speaker, and i don't have any benchmark for judging if google's translation service is missing linguistic nuances. here's what it actually says:
Sources close to the investigation stated, for Gândul , that shortly after the completion of the computer expertise, the authorities waited for the right moment to catch the Tate brothers, who were always out of the country.
After seeing, including on social networks, that they were together in Romania, the DIICOT prosecutors mobilized the special troops of the Gendarmerie and descended, by force, on their villa in Pipera, but also on other addresses.
it's also probably worth pointing out that tate's villa was previously searched in april. while the article does say that social media was used to help confirm their location, it doesn't say anything about pizza boxes. and, like, given that tate is a prolific social media poster and was tweeting out videos of romania on sunday, i think it's safe to assume they had a wealth of other information to go off.
and if you don't want to take my word for it, nyt and wapo both reported that the spokesperson for the romanian prosecutor presiding over the case denied the pizza box thing:
Speculation online centered on whether a distinctive pizza box featured in one of Mr. Tate’s tweets to Ms. Thunberg had helped lead the authorities to him, but Ramona Bolla, a spokeswoman for the Directorate for the Investigation of Organized Crime and Terrorism, told The New York Times on Friday that that was not the case.
anyway, ain't it funny how caraballo's made the fuck up pizza tweet got 76 million views, 97k retweets, and 525k likes, while her appended correction got 78k views, 100 retweets, and 820 likes. her initial "source: my mind" tweet is still up. ain't. it. funny.
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is Jewish Voice for Peace actually Jewish? I've heard a couple different things about that but no sources
@gryphistheantlerqueen also asked:
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Whooo boy. So this has been sitting in the inbox for a few months, I wrote up a draft, and then it just sat... until this past week, when some new JVP BS hit the fan and gave me the kick to finish it.
Sooooo...
Verdict: Not Actually Jewish
(updated verdict after finding out about the “self-managed conversion” and “teacup mikvah”) Jewish, technically, and that "technically" is doing a lot of heavy lifting, and is actively debatable without access to a detailed breakdown of JVP’s actual membership rolls. 
In general summation, JVP is a far-left radical antizionist group that is headed by a few visibly antizionist Jews and whose membership rolls are either a strong minority or outright majority of non-Jews, based on variable statistics that they've released. Although they claim that the “majority of their members and staff are Jewish”, this seems to be both statistically unlikely and actively suspicious due to their noted tendency to instruct even non-Jewish members to speak #AsAJew on social media, and their instructions to do “self-managed conversions”.  However, due to their title, they are very popular with people who want a Jewish Stamp Of Approval for demonizing Israelis and Zionist Jews as a result. In effect, they are Jewish in the same way that people like Candace Owens and Hershel Walker are Black—as self-tokenizing minorities who throw the rest of their ethnic group under the bus in exchange for power and political access.
And despite the claims that they are “inspired by Jewish values and traditions” (as put on their website) and “oppose anti-Jewish hatred,” JVP routinely engages in antisemitic rhetoric, up to and including blood libel and antisemitic conspiracy theories, and acts as a shield against non-Jews who also engage in antisemitic rhetoric so long as the non-Jews in question remember to shout "For Palestine!" first. This is not an exaggeration. 
The primary example of their in-house antisemitic rhetoric is their "Deadly Exchange" program, where they explicitly and conspiratorially blame Israel as being responsible for American police brutality and militarization. However, for all of their fearmongering and blame-casting on the subject—as if American cops needed outside help in brutalizing minorities or gaining military-grade handmedowns from the Pentagon, both of which are explicit claims of the "Deadly Exchange" program—they have a hard time actually identifying specific deaths associated with the international training seminars they're holding up as responsible.
One of the the closest they've come to a specific allegation is claiming that "former St. Louis County police chief Timothy Fitch trained with the Israeli military three years before Michael Brown’s killing and the Ferguson uprising." (Note: this was in a video that appears to have since been made private.) But Darren Wilson worked for the Ferguson PD, not the St. Louis PD, and Fitch retired months before the killing. So he was in a completely different police department, and this is the closest JVP comes to pointing to specific deaths or acts of brutality that they blame on Israel. Everything else is literal fearmongering--up to and including the classic conspiratorial tropes of "secretive Jewish governmental influence".
JVP has also happily supported the words of white supremacists like Richard Spencer, taking his “You could say that I’m a white Zionist in the sense that I care about my people," statement at face value, using it as the basis for entire articles where they compared Zionism to White Supremacy as a deliberate misrepresentation of the ideology that is common on the extreme political Left (you can compare that treatment again with how Candace Owens treats the word "Woke" on the Right). Even when the Charlottesville "Unite the Right" march happened, JVP wasted no time in comparing Zionism with the very ideology fueling the people chanting "Jews Will Not Replace Us," saying that Zionism is "Jewish racial supremacy" and calling for a universal condemnation of the ideology as a form of White Supremacy... which was the exact sort of message that many of those same White Supremacists would have happily agreed with.  So JVP is essentially siding with literal White Supremacists,  even as they claim that "Jews are not the primary victims of White Supremacy."
JVP also engages in Holocaust revisionism, such as with this lovely quote from Cecilie Surasky, the deputy director of JVP, “I believe it is critical to situate the genocide of Jews in a broader context, and not as an exceptional, metaphysically unique event. Some 6 million Jews died, but another 5 million people were also targeted for annihilation.”
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(another quote, from an article by Surasky, which compares Netanyahu to Hitler.)
This is just straight revisionism of the entire Holocaust and the unique fixation the Nazis had on the Jews. Literally, even when they were losing, they were diverting resources from the war just to kill more Jews. Quote Hitler himself, "Jews must be prevented from intruding themselves among all the other nations as elements of internal disruption, under the mask of honest world-citizens, and thus gaining power over these nations." The very basis of the Nazi ideology paints Jews as an existential threat to the human race's peace and security—a far cry from JVP's claim that the Jewish suffering in the Holocaust wasn't unique or exceptional.
Additionally, JVP ignores or re-envisions Mizrachi Jewish history. They call the very term Mizrachi “Zionist rhetoric,” and refer to Mizrachi “immigrants,” (“Deadly Exchange,” pg. 16-17), and claim “the Israeli government facilitated a mass immigration of Mizrahim” (“Our Approach to Zionism”) as though those weren’t the direct result of the mass expulsion of and violence against Jews in MENA countries. These weren’t immigrants, these were refugees. 
And as for the question of “Are they Jewish?”, well...
Statistically, they are not representative of the Jewish population as a whole, 90% of whom identify as some degree of Zionist in the sense of “Supporting Jewish self-determination.”  One does not need to be Jewish to join JVP, as they proudly state on their website. Their membership rolls are also extremely obfuscated, and the fact that they encourage their followers, whether Jewish or not, to post and speak “as Jews” on social media makes it even more difficult to figure out what percentage of their membership is actually Jewish.  Furthermore, they have instructions for their members to engage in “self-conversions” that are not acceptable to Jewish law or tradition, and misuse/appropriate other sacred Jewish traditions to the point that “blasphemy” is an accurate description, with their instructions on the mikvah (a sacred bath) being outright offensive.  
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(note that one has to be completely nude and bare of any adornment or makeup to use the mikvah, which is a pure pool of collected rainwater to be immersed in, for context on the above... misuse.  Trying to claim this as being “in line with sacred Jewish tradition” is like trying to claim to be Catholic while also saying that the Pope is the Antichrist and that using beer and a doughnut for the Eucharist is acceptable. For more information on mikveh, see: The Jewish Virtual Library, Aish, myjewishlearning, or Chabad.
There's also no altar.
The irony of asking people not to appropriate while doing this is astonishing.)
It’s also telling that they straight up say they are “claiming” the practice as their own.
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Furthermore, JVP has hosted panels on “antisemitism” in the past... headed by people who are not only not Jewish, but who have been credibly accused of antisemitism in the past.  
JVP has also endorsed The Mapping Project Boston, which was a Boycott, Divest, and Sanction (BDS) subsidiary, listing every “Zionist” organization in Boston, Mass. This included Jewish schools, elder homes, community centers, disability centers, and more; all of them painted with scary and misleading “links” to non-Jewish organizations to insinuate Jewish control of the state and city governments, invoking age-old antisemitic tropes of a conspiracy of Jews as they did so:
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(first image is the Mapping Project, the second is a 1938 Nazi political cartoon)
The Mapping Project also, and this is my personal favorite, accused Harvard University of doing “racist science” for engaging in archeological and genetic studies of Jews and Jewish history.  Tellingly, BDS actually disavowed The Mapping Project (albeit for bad optics, not for the rank antisemitism they were promoting)... but JVP has not, even though the Mapping Project’s entry for the ADL reads as follows:
Masquerading as a “civil rights” group, the ADL is a counterinsurgency and espionage organization whose mission is to protect the mutual interests of the US and Israeli governments, and to eliminate solidarity among oppressed peoples, especially concerning Palestine. The ADL spies on and criminalizes activists (using its connections to governments, police, schools, and corporations) while undermining their work by pushing its own state-sanctioned, pro-“Israel” agenda. And while the ADL claims to represent Jews and to fight “antisemitism” on their behalf, the organization has supported anti-Jewish state violence and sanitized Nazis. The ADL cannot be reformed: it must be dismantled and whatever resources it has should go towards repairing the many harms it has done. (Emphasis added.)
Of course, JVP has also engaged in similar conspiracy-toned antisemitic dogwhistles, such as this fun bit from their first Deadly Exchange video:
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So clearly (to me at least), they have no problems with The Mapping Project’s tone and presentation.  
And this isn’t even going into JVP’s routine promotion of blood libel, their egregious double standards, their approving of pogroms, their active support for Hamas terrorists and demonization of Hamas’ victims, their attempted revisionism of Jewish history, their abject rejection of Jewish culture, and their other actions that show not just bias, but outright hatred for 90% of the world’s Jews.  
As one commentator put it, JVP as an organization is very much like Autism Speaks is to Autistic people--a thinly disguised hate group that views the people they’re supposedly speaking for as the problem, and themselves as promoting the Solution.  To this moderator, they’re the equivalent of the Association of German National Jews, who were also known as the Jews for Hitler; they wanted to abandon Judaism and embrace Naziism... and they got sent to the gas chambers anyway.  
Mod Joseph
Sources:
www.adl.org/resources/backgrounder/jewish-voice-peace
www.jewishvoiceforpeace.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/Mikveh-Guide-for-Jewish-Voice-for-Peace-Outlined.pdf
(and also just... a general experience/exposure to them on social media, where even the most progressive actions taken by Israel, such as the recent ruling regarding queer Palestinians being able to claim sanctuary in Israel, being labeled as “pinkwashing”)
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archieimagines · 2 years
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touching din | din djarin
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Summary: The three times that Din bends his own rules and engages in physical touch. 
his primary love languages are acts of service and physical touch. i will die on this hill. i started this one just to indulge in the thoughts of touching his lovely face. it’s been in the works for a while and although i know it’s far from perfect, i’m glad that it finally gets to see the light of day! warnings: bad language, potential incoherence? idk i’m very tired but i hope you like it tags: plenty of fluff, plenty of indulgent, sfw touching, and then a good handful of angst. rollercoaster central. this takes place over a period of time, so part of it comes after finding out grogu’s name, which is why he’s referred to as many things! word count: 4650 written by: archie support me on ko-fi!
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The travelling between planets would’ve been excruciating if not for your life partner and your adoptive child. The three of you made rather an unorthodox family. A runaway from Corellia, a Mandalorian and a… a sweet ball of green. An unorthodox family, indeed, but loving.
The Child chirped and bubbled away on your lap, apparently having a conversation with you while you sat in the pilot seat. You listened attentively, made agreeing noises at all the right moments, the lights of hyperspace travel filling the cabin with slow flashes. He really was so cute. You’d tell him it often, and you’d tell him that Din thought so too, even if he’d never say it. That much was obvious.
It was in the way he carried him, the way he protected him. The occasional pat to his head, or the quiet rub to his long ears as he slept. He wasn’t the type to openly say it, but it was clear, and that was what counted.
The Child reached out to the knob atop the gearstick, fingers wiggling.
“Baby, no. We have to always ask Din about the ship, hm?” You bounced him gently on your knee in an effort to ease the sad coos- but there was no need. A gloved hand reached around you, exposed fingertips closing on the ball. It was unscrewed and placed into the waiting green hands, content whirs and chatters soon filling the air.
The warmth in your chest grew into a smile as you dropped your head back, peering up at the helmeted man that stood just out of sight. “That’s a yes, then?”
A nod. “That’s a yes.”
“I didn’t hear you come up.”
He nudged his head to the Child, voice soft, “You were having an important conversation.”
And then he did what you loved.
He reached a slow hand out and stroked it over the top of your head, coming to a gentle hold at the nape of your neck, and leaned in. Your eyes fell closed as the cool beskar met between your brows, and you didn’t need to see him to know his eyes were closed too.
A beskar kiss.
You heard a soft sigh through his voice modulator. This was the way his people would show love. He made no move to break away, even from the awkward angle at which he leant. He savoured the moment, breathed with you, his thumb running back and forth over your skin. You weren’t sure if he could feel the goosebumps that his touch rose every time, his fingertips slipping into the lower roots of your hair.
He loved to touch you, you could tell. It wasn’t easy, and these moments were few and far between with his action-packed lifestyle, but the tenderness of these touches clearly meant so much to him. To you.
Without disturbing the occupied bundle on your lap, you reached for Din’s other hand. It hung by his side until you took it in your own, slowly raising it to place your kiss on the knuckles of his fingers. You kept it there a while, backs of his fingers to your lips, his helmet pressed to your forehead. The warmth of those digits filled a void left by the cold beskar. The warmth of human touch.
Long moments slipped by as you absorbed it until you became self-conscious. He hadn’t pulled away, but you weren’t even sure how he’d felt about it with his covered expression, so you let out a resigned sigh and lowered his hand.
But he surprised you.
His fingers opened up instead, laying delicately on the side of your jaw, his similar hold on the back of your neck still in place.
His thumb reached out to meet the corner of your lips, before tentatively, almost shyly, brushing over the centre of them.
He wanted more.
You were only too happy to oblige, lips raising into a delicate peak, placing a tender kiss to the pad of his thumb. Soon, he shifted, placing his index finger there instead. Then his middle. Each of his fingers tapped to your lips, and you made sure to place your affection on the tip of each one, giving in to the urge to smile.
He loved this.
You heard the tinned sound of a sigh before his fingers slipped away once again, soon followed by his reluctant leaning away.
He stood tall above where you sat, visor staying fixed on you. He was just looking. Just peaceful. You shone an easy smile, somehow both cosy and breathless from the moment.
His helmet turned towards the green being on your lap.
He blinked up at Din, and soon, a confused coo filled the cabin.
Din shrugged one shoulder. “You’ll get it when you’re older.” And with that, he settled back into the passenger seat, arms crossing over his chest. “Rest up,” he called, presumably to the pair of you. “We’ll touch down for fuel in six hours.”
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Din’s bunk was the epitome of comfort. Cramped, yes. Warm, yes. Especially with two bodies. It’d easily become stuffy in there with the panel sealed while the pair of you shared his thin mattress, and you’d always wondered how he managed to keep his helmet on even in that environment. Or perhaps… He couldn’t feel the stuffiness because of the beskar. Or maybe… He was just always stuffy in there, used to closed air.
Your eyes raised from where you’d had them closed, cheek pressed to the chest of his flight suit to mimic sleep. Early mornings after a long, well-deserved sleep often came like this, and there was something so soul-healing about laying there to absorb his calm, peaceful presence before getting up for what would likely be another day of action.
Watching his visor for long moments, working out if he was still sleeping or looking back at you- it had become somewhat of a hobby. Sometimes, you had convinced yourself, if you looked hard enough, you could see the slightest shape beneath the vision slot of his helmet.
You weren’t sure if they were really there. But, in the dim light of the bunk, you could swear the bridge of his nose casted a shadow that caused a darker shadow inside the mask. His lashes were dark and long, and they fluttered slowly as his eyes closed in steady blinks, looking back at you with such leisure.
But then… Had you made that up?
You squinted, straining your eyes until you were sure— yes, you’d made it up. He was still sleeping.
But it didn’t hurt to imagine he had long lashes and a strong nose, perhaps even a strong brow to match. It didn’t hurt to imagine you could see the faintest outlines of the man you love.
Sated, you turned your cheek back to his chest, eyes falling closed to mimic his slumber. Or at least—
“Morning.”
— What you thought was slumber. 
His voice was groggy in the modulator; that intimate morning voice. Deeper, softer than usual.
It brought a smile to your lips. “Morning, my love. You were awake?”
“I have been for a while.” His arm tightened snug around your body in his hold, half atop his. “I like to watch you wake up.”
A soft laugh. “Not creepy, hm?”
“Not even a little bit.”
Silence lapsed with his low tone. All was quiet. Not the whirring of the ship, not the sounds of the forest he’d landed the Crest in the clearing of. Only the delicate air of his breathing inside his mask, catching in the voice modulator so quietly that ordinarily, you wouldn’t be able to hear it.
The thought stirred a deep intimacy in your chest. No one else would get to hear this. No one else would get to lay with him like this, press against his armour-free body like this. You splayed a hand over the cloth of his chest, toes wiggling from an uncontainable contentment with how your leg rested over his. Not an ounce of beskar between the two of you.
But yet… 
Gentle fingertips trailed upwards, over his upper chest, swirling delicate patterns in the creases of his fabric. Your eyes remained closed, focusing everything on him, the warmth that met your touch when you worked past the collar of the flight suit, meeting the skin of his neck.
It wasn’t the first time you’d touched him so. Of course, after this long together, you’d been intimate many a time-- You were both human, after all... But the helmet had always stayed on.
Your fingertips splayed over his throat, and it vibrated with his low hum.
It was no secret by now. He loved to be touched.
You could just imagine him there beneath the visor, eyes closed, brow relaxed. His face caught in a long moment of calm where it was often riddled with worry, or effort from the fighting. Bringing him such serenity like this was the least you could do for him, showing him that he’s loved. So, so loved.
Slowly, your touch crept just a little further up, seeking his jaw. But as your knuckles knocked the edge of his helmet, a gentle hand closed around your wrist in warning. He didn’t need to speak.
Your voice was the softest murmur. “I won’t take it off. Can I just- Feel you?”
He didn’t move, not for a while. You raised your eyes, peering up at him from where you were nestled in his chest, as if you could possibly read his facial expressions.
His hold eased, thumb lazily rubbing over your veins before letting go, and you found a buzz of warmth in your chest. He trusted you with his most precious boundary. Silently, you vowed to always protect that trust.
Delicate fingers worked upwards, feeling for hair from his chin. But, a soft gasp- There was no beard. The gentle prickle of cropped hairs caught your fingerprints as they swiped along his jaw, and you marvelled at it.
“You shave?” The words came out with a soft, amused breath of disbelief, eyes rounded in surprise. For some reason, it’d always made sense that he’d be bearded, long-haired. He had no reason to shave, knowing that no one would ever see, but now that you knew, it clicked.
Of course he’d shave. Din was a particularly thorough person, he was always driving himself forward to do a perfect job of his work: of course he’d take care of himself too.
“If it grows too long, it’s uncomfortable. Catches in the modulator.”
“Ah,” you hummed, brushing along the ridge of his jaw in the confined space. There was something about feeling his jaw move as he spoke, verifying that he really was human, really did have goings-on behind the mask that shielded him from the world. There wasn’t much room in there to move freely, only your fingers able to reach his face, but it was comfortable. You could feel the soft sway of his breath on your touch. “What colour is it?”
“Black. Brown, black.”
You hummed, eyes fixed on his visor lazily, though you weren’t really looking at him. You were visualising as you studied the contours of his lower face, mapping him out as best as you could in your mind, nails brushing through the stubble on his cheek. They trailed towards the corner of his lips, where you noticed the strands got longer. A moustache?
The smile that lifted your face was automatic, beaming at the realisation. You followed the direction of it, above his upper lip, soon finding a little sparse patch on his philtrum. Your eyes drifted closed, imagining the way it might feel to kiss him now that you knew this; how his facial hair would scratch your upper lip, your chin. Perhaps it would be almost sore on your skin if you kissed him long enough, hot enough--
His lips raised to press a real kiss to the centre of your fingers. Slow, shy, even a little clumsy.
A rich gasp pulled from your throat. It was electric to feel his lips on your skin, pressing the affection directly onto you, after these long years of going without.
You let your fingertips lower, finally feeling the shape of his lips, that subtle cupid’s bow as it raised into yet another peck, slow and tender against your touch. Your brows drew together, fighting the emotion that welled up in you, trying to make you cry. You weren’t all too sure why-- this was just- so much. It was so much, to feel him like this, to receive his first kisses like this. Something you’d never even imagined you could have.
“Don’t cry,” he murmured against your fingertips, tone almost a caress. His own fingers raised to brush at the corner of your eye. One must’ve slipped out.
You didn’t even know he was looking at you. Your lashes fluttered open, gaze meeting where you imagined his eyes would be. “I can’t help it,” you whispered. “You’re perfect.”
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He’d lied to you. He’d massively, irrevocably, intentionally lied to you.
Your jaw ached from your grit teeth as you fought back angry fires in your heart, determined not to cry until you’d pulled your family safely off this forsaken, evil planet.
Din had been tasked with a mission of political undertones involving the spice market. He was masking as a bounty hunter to get information, so this time, the importance was in keeping the right people alive.
Of course, it didn’t work, and those people were now trying to kill you.
Your fingers trembled as you fought against the clock and the jolts of blasters firing at the ship to strap Grogu into his passenger seat. Your eyes were bleary, but you had to focus, secure him in safely. You wouldn’t take anyone’s safety for granted after this stupid stunt.
“Get her in the sky!” Din shouted up through the hatch, pushing his voice so loudly against the fighting and blasters below that it almost outgrew the modulator, his real voice peeking through. 
Grogu’s sweet eyes peered up at you, giving a questioning gurgle. The poor thing had no idea what was going on, was probably terrified by it all, and even your demeanour on top of it, but you didn’t have time to explain.
“We need to go!”
You buckled the baby in tightly and fought your emotions to ruffle a quick hand atop his head, hoping to soothe him even a small degree before falling into the pilot’s seat, specifically buckling yourself in, and jamming the engine on with jerky movements. 
The Crest resisted you, far too old and rickety by now to be good for quick getaways with a cold engine, but with some slow drags, turbulence from knocking through trees and extra laser blasts from below, she was finally in the air.
You heard the distinctive sound of fighting downstairs, someone being kicked off the ramp at an easy 400 feet altitude, and then the mechanical sound of the ship being closed off again. 
The ladder creaked with Din’s climbing, and you didn’t look back to him as he collapsed into the other passenger seat, not ready to talk to him yet. You were still seething, and wouldn’t engage with him until you’d pulled up safely out of the planet’s atmosphere.
Long moments of quiet dragged by. He knew you by now. He didn’t need to see more than the square set of your shoulders to know that he shouldn’t speak yet unless he wanted to upset you more. That, and you still didn’t look at him even as the minutes neared a full hour, focused on getting to the nearest hyperspace route.
He glanced to Grogu, who sat there blinking, clueless as he could be. He must’ve known something was going on, even if he didn’t know what exactly Din had done.
Din reached a gloved hand out, petting lightly on the green boy’s head. He still didn’t speak.
Eventually, your frustrated fires ebbed into a more containable state, you shifted the Crest into light speed, and unbuckled your belt with a heaved sigh. “Downstairs, Din.”
You stood, instructed Grogu not to touch a thing, headed down the hatch, and pointedly avoided looking at Din the whole time.
The body of the ship was chaos. Lazed burns in everything the three of you owned, strewn across the floor and torn from the struggle. Clearly, he’d really had to put up a fight. 
It was his own fault.
Boot on metal as he stepped onto the floor beside you. You finally looked at him.
You didn’t need to see his face to know he was exhausted. It was in the way he held himself, the way his arms just hung there by his sides, strong shoulders visibly slouched to the trained eye.
You reeled on him. “Why didn’t you let me in on it?”
Silence.
“Less of that, Din. Speak to me, I need to understand.”
There was a pause before his voice came. Firm, but gentle, as if pointedly trying to keep the peace. “You wouldn’t understand.”
“Then make me understand.” You pulled an upturned crate closer and planted yourself on it, trying to keep the buzz in your veins under control, but your tone was clipped nonetheless as you gestured to a crate nearby. “Go ahead, let’s hear it.”
He sighed and tugged the crate over, perched on the corner of it opposite you. His knees were parted and elbows on his thighs, hands clasped together as he thought through his facts. The best way to make you see that he’d done the right thing.
“I couldn’t tell you my true location because if you knew, your presence would have soiled the plan.”
“So you’re telling me I’m a hindrance.”
“No.”
“That’s certainly what it sounds like-”
“It needed full discretion to work. I’d told them-”
“I can keep fucking secrets, Din.”
“I know you can.”
“So you lied? Told me you were on the other side of town? How was I supposed to get to you if something went wrong?”
He sighed, his head dropping forwards in exasperation. “I told you to stay on the ship.”
“That’s not always possible. You know it’s not! Hunters still have fobs fixed onto Grogu, Din, there’s no escaping that!”
“I couldn’t have you interrupting or we’d all be dead. I’d told them I was alone- no, look at me.”
Your jaw was aching from how you grit your teeth as you forced yourself to look up at that visor, the weight of frustrated tears brimming at your waterline. You gave a small nod.
“Listen,” he started. “I’d told them I came alone. If you’d known my location, you would have interrupted.”
“To save your skin? Yeah, I would.”
“Exactly. We’d both be dead, and the hunters would take the kid.”
“You think I can take care of him without you? We don’t stand a chance without you around, Din.”
He paused. Quiet lapsed, and you had no idea what he was thinking. Sometimes, he really gave nothing away, and it was infuriating. He didn’t let you in. He would rarely open up to you about what was going on inside that beskar that hid everything from you. Everything.
Sometimes, you were sure you didn’t even know the man you were committed to. He held so much of the power in this setup. He knew everything about you, everything was done by his thinking, and yet he didn’t need to disclose much at all. He’d keep you in the dark about everything.
What he was feeling, what he was thinking… Hell, even when he smiled at you he kept it to himself. You’d grown to handle those, but this, actively lying to you. As if you couldn’t follow instructions. As if you couldn’t be trusted.
You sighed as the drops in your eyes welled up enough to fall over your cheeks. You pulled yourself off the crate and approached the ladder to the cabin, calling over your shoulder. “Go clean up or something,” you sniffled, “I need a minute away from you.”
The clang of footsteps behind you, a gentle hand on your shoulder.
“Hey. Look at me.”
“I can’t, Din.”
“Why not?”
Such a simple question, such an impossible answer. You closed your eyes, struggling to pick out words that might illustrate what’s going on inside. The ache that sank your chest, that made your throat feel heavy with uncried frustrations. None of this was okay. Perhaps after you’d cooled down, you’d be able to see that mask as anything other than a barrier between you, that keeps him safe from your eyes. But for now, you couldn’t bare it. You scrambled to express it, but all you could let out was a strained “It hurts.”
Another moment of silence. Then, carefully, “What hurts?”
Clearly, he didn’t mean for his words to bring on the tidal wave of emotions and thoughts that you’d been keeping at bay.
“This, Din. All of this! Living in a ship, wondering if I’m gonna make it back in every time I step out of it, and not even being in on missions that risk your life! It’s like you’re cut off from me. Like we just live in the same space and I’m just there to entertain you. But it’s- it’s-!” You heaved a sigh, head buzzing with the force of the thoughts that were spilling out. They were so honest and raw from brewing for far too long. They must’ve been sharp as they came out, they must’ve hit him like a ton of bricks.
But of course, that damned beskar hid everything.
“It’s hard to be with a man who doesn’t trust me.”
For once, his voice rose. “I trust you more than anyone in the gal-!”
“You almost died because you didn’t trust me enough to let me in! You’d rather die than trust me!”
“That’s not how I-”
“That’s what your actions are telling me, Din. They always do. You never tell me what you’re thinking. I have to guess, but I can’t even read your fucking face. I live my life in question marks because you don’t even give me the option to-”
“You know I can’t show you my face.”
A deep breath left you, shaky and tired. So much pressure had alleviated in your head, like you’d finally emptied the contents of your mind onto a platter before him. And now that you could see it too, heard what you’d said, you felt almost ashamed for it.
Criticising the beskar was too far. That was his way of life, and had nothing to do with how he felt towards you. For sure, it was frustrating sometimes for you didn’t even know what your life partner looked like, but his culture was part of him. And you loved him.
“I know. I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have-- What are you doing?”
He reached by you to snatch some fabric from a nook, and he folded it into a long strip without so much as a word.
“I’m- I’m trying to apologise-”
“You don’t have to. How can you trust a man you can’t see, right? We’ve been together so long, and you still don’t know who I am.”
You were stunned beneath the guilt that crashed over you. He took your words in so deeply, and fed them back to you plainly. You could see how you must’ve hurt him, with sentiments like this.
Your eyes welled with tears again. Whatever had come over you had clearly wanted to hurt him, but that wasn’t you. Your thoughts were too chaotic to pinpoint, swarmed with hurt and pain that was only now built on by the fact that you’d treated him so terribly. You’d sworn to him long ago that you accepted his Mandalorian binds, loved them even, but you’d let them get in the way with one incident.
“Don’t cry,” he spoke, modulated voice gentle. “I’m- I’m understanding you.” A calloused thumb brushed along your outer lashes to pause any tears that wanted to fall. “Let me help.”
And there was darkness.
He tied his makeshift blindfold behind your head in a loose knot, keeping your eyes in darkness. “Din? What is this?”
He kept quiet, and you heard shifting, something being placed aside.
“Why do you never-”
You cut yourself off when his hands took your wrists and lifted them gently, until your palms splayed on his stubbled cheeks. He gave a long sigh, and you imagined he’d closed his eyes.
Your heart jolted. He was here before you, bare, no helmet. When he spoke, his voice rang out clear and pure, the true timbre of his voice without modulation.
“I said, I trust you more than anyone in the galaxy.” His face moved with his words beneath your touch. “I’d move planets for you.”
He left you breathless. You dove at the chance, fingers tracing over his cheekbones, the bridge of his nose. It stood high and strong, just like you’d always imagined.
“This… This isn’t risky? I didn’t mean to offen-”
“You didn’t offend me. I know it’s hard, I feel it too.” He guided your hands to his lips, and he placed gentle kisses to your fingers.
The lump in your throat welled up again, your nose stinging from the tears that you tried to hold back. The thought of him struggling with his culture simply because he wanted to be close to you. “You do?”
“You know how many times I wanted to take it off? This seems… This is the best way. I’m not breaking any rules.”
You gave a watery, sniffly laugh. “This is the way?”
A hum of humour. “This is the way.”
You let your touch wander over his face, mapping it as well as you could. The curve of his eyelids, the strength of his browbone. He breathed softly, and you could feel the air on your palms as it pushed through.
You wove your fingertips into his hairline, pushing his locks back and bunching them up in your grasp behind his head. It was surprisingly long with unruly waves, and so, so soft.
He leaned in with a sigh until his forehead met yours, hands falling to their home on your waist.
And before you knew it, his lips were on yours. His warm, sweet lips fit perfectly against yours, and your head spun. It was so much, feeling him so close after nearly losing him, arguing with him, and your first kiss in the long years of being his. The first actual kiss.
He was unsure and clumsy in his affection, a little hesitant.
Clearly, this was his first one ever.
You let a hand trail to his jaw, guiding with a gentle touch. He soon settled in, became more confident in his kiss, even if it was still clumsy.
And it was perfect. The determined nibbles to your lips, the soft scratch of his moustache on your upper lip, the way he tugged you closer even as you were pressed against the ladder.
When it finally slowed to a stop, he murmured softly, so much closer than he’d ever been. The sound reached deep inside your mind to soothe your soul and make you crave more of his kiss. “I won’t ever treat you like that again. I’ll give you full disclosure of my missions, every single one. Alright?”
“Alright,” you agreed, breathless and flustered, “On one condition.”
“Hm?” He was clearly lost in this touch, so starved for so long, and it showed in his voice. He was utterly entranced with this new feeling, someone else’s fingers on his skin, words the last thing on his mind.
“We do this more often.”
A low laugh rumbled in his chest, nose nudging on the tip of yours. “Deal.”
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derinwrites · 5 months
Text
How can I make money writing fiction?
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I'm gonna be straight with you. There is no guarantee that you'll make enough as an independent writer to make it worth your time. You very well might -- I make a liveable wage as an independent writer -- but many don't. Most writers I know also have a job. And luck plays a big part in it.
If you're interested in going forward in spite of this, you have two main options for monetisation open to you, and you are going to have to pick one. I call them the sales model and the sponsorship model, and you are going to have to pick one.
The sales model involves writing stories and selling them to readers. You can put books up on Amazon or Smashwords, sell them direct from your own website, enlist the help of a traditional publisher to handle that for you and let them decide where to sell, whatever -- the point is that your money is made from the sale of books to readers. If you go with a traditional publisher, you're using this model (though they will give you some of the money ahead of time in the form of an advance). Most indie authors also use this model, publishing through draft2digital, Ingram Spark, direct through Amazon, whatever. I've never relied on the sales model and can't give you any advice on how to do this, but Tumblr is full of indie authors who probably can.
The sponsorship model involves soliciting small amounts of money from various readers over time. This is ideal for web serials, and it's what I use. I use Patreon, which is designed specifically for this purpose, but you can use other sites such as ko-fi. This model involves providing regular content for free, with bonuses for those who support you.
"Can't I do both? Sell books and have a Patreon?" You absolutely can! I know several indie authors with a Patreon. I sell my completed books as ebooks and will eventually sell them as paperbacks. But your time and attention is limited, and so is your audience's, and you're going to have to half-arse one of these in order to have enough arse to whole-arse the other. You're going to make a lo of decisions that benefit either the sponsorship model or the sales model, not both. So pick your primary income source early and commit.
I can only advise on writing web serials and using the sponsorship model, so I'll go ahead with that assumption. If you want to make a liveable wage doing this, not only will you need luck, you'll also need patience. This is not a fast way to build a career. at the end of my first year of doing this, I had one single patron, and they were a real-life friend of mine. When I reached an income of $100/month, I threw a little party for myself, I was so happy. It had taken such a long time and was so much work. I reached enough to cover rent/mortgage after I'd been doing this for more than four years. It's a long term sort of career.
Here are some general tips for succeeding in this industry, given by me, someone with no formal training in any of this who only vaguely knows what they're talking about:
Have a consistent update schedule and STICK TO IT
The #1 indicator for stable success in this industry (aside from luck, which we're discounting because you can't do much about that) is having a consistent update schedule. Your readers need to know when the next chapter is coming out, and it should be coming out regularly. Ideally, you should have no breaks or hiatuses -- if you're in a bus crash or something, that might be unavoidable, and your readers will understand if you tell them, but if you're stopping and starting a lot for trivial reasons, they WILL abandon you. You can't get away with that shit if you're not Andrew Hussie, and I'm pretty sure Andrew Hussie doesn't message me for career advice on Tumblr. If you find you need a lot of hiatuses to write fast enough then you're updating too often; change your schedule. A regular schedule is more important than a fast one (ideally it should be both, but if you have to pick between the two, pick regular).
2. Pay attention to your readership, listen to what they want from you
Your income is based on a pretty complicated support structure when you're using the sponsorship model. this model relies on people finding your story, liking your story, and continuing to find it valuable enough to keep paying you month after month. This means that your rewards for your sponsors should be things that they value and will continue to pay for ('knowing I'm supporting an artist whose work I enjoy' counts as a thing that they value, to my great surprise; there's a lot of people giving me money just for the sake of giving me money, so I can pay my mortgage and keep writing for them without needing a second job), but it also means supporting the entire network that attracts readers and keeps them having the best time they can with your story -- being part of a rewarding community. Because this is advice on making money, I'm going to roughly divide your readership into groups based on how they affect your bottom line:
sponsors. People giving you money directly. The importance of keeping this group happy should be obvious.
administration and community helpers -- discord moderators, IT people, guys who set up fan wikis, whoever's handling your mailing list if you have a mailing list. You can do this stuff yourself, or you can hire someone to do it, but if you're incredibly lucky and people enjoy being a part of your reader community, people will sometimes volunteer to do the work for free. If you are lucky enough to get such people, respect them. They are doing you a massive favour, and they're not doing it for you, but to maintain a place that they value, and you have to respect both of those things. My discord has just shy of 1,300 members and is moderated by volunteers. I'd peel my own face off if I had to moderate a community that large. If you've got people stepping up to do work for you, you need to respect them and you need to make sure that they continue to find that rewarding by doing what you can to make sure that the community they're maintaining is rewarding. Sometimes this means taking actions and sometimes this means staying the fuck out of the way. Depending on the circumstances.
fan artists. Once you have people drawing your characters, writing fanfic of your stories, whatever, treat these like fucking gold. Give them a space to do this, and more importantly, give them a space to do this without you in it. Fanworks are a symptom of engagement with your work, which is massively important. They are also a component of a healthy community, an avenue for readers to talk to each other and express themselves creatively to each other. Third, fanworks act as a bridge for new readers. When readers share their art on, say, Tumblr, it can intrigue new people and get them into the story. Your job in all of this is to give them the space to work, encourage them as required or invited (I reblog most TTOU fanart that I'm tagged in on Tumblr, for instance), and other than that, stay the fuck out of their way. These people are vital to the liveblood of your community, the continued engagement of your audience, and the interest of your sponsors. Some of the fan artists will be sponsors themselves; some won't be. Those who aren't sponsors are still massively valuable for their art.
speculators, conversers, theorists, livebloggers, and That Guy Who's Just Really Jazzed For The Next Chapter. Some people don't make art but just like to chat about your story. These people are a bedrock of the community that's supporting your sponsors and increasing your readership, and therefore are critical to your income stream. Give them a place to talk. Be nice to them when they talk to you. Sometimes, they'll ask you questions about the story, which you can choose to answer or not, however you feel is appropriate. They'll also want to chat about non-story-related stuff with each other, so make sure they have a place to do that, too.
that guy who never talks to you or comments on anything but linked your story to ten guys in his office who all read it now. Some of your supporters are completely invisible to you. You can't do anything for these people except continue to release the story and have a forum they can silently lurk on if they want to. But, y'know, they exist.
If you want to focus on income then these are, roughly, the groups of people that you will need to listen to and accommodate for. You can generally just make sure they have space to do their thing, and if they want anything else, they'll tell you (yes, guys, paperbacks will be coming eventually). Many people will fit into multiple groups -- I have some sponsors that are in every single one of these groups except the last. Some will only be in one group. A healthy income rests on a healthy community which rests on accommodating these needs.
3. If you can manage it, try to make your story good.
It's also helpful for your story to be good. Economically, this is far less important than you'd think -- there are some people out there writing utter garbage and making a living doing it. Garbage by what standards? By whatever your standards are. Just think of the absolute laziest, emptiest, hackiest waste-of-bandwidth story you can imagine -- some guy is half-arsing that exact story and making three times what you'll ever make on Patreon doing it. And honestly? Good for him. If he's making that much then his readers are enjoying it, and that's what matters. Still, one critical component of making money as a writer is writing something that people actually want to read. And you can't trick them with web serials, because they don't pay in advance -- if they're bored, they'll just stop. So you have to make it worth their time, money and attention, and the simplest way to do that is to write a good story.
This hardly seems mentioning, since you were presumably planning to do that anyway. It's basic respect for your audience to give them something worth their time. Besides, if we're not interested in improving our craft and striving for our best, what are we even writing for? I'm sure I don't need to tell you to try to write a good story. The reason I list this is in fact the opposite -- don't let "I'm not a good enough writer" paralyse you. The world is full of someday-writers who endlessly fuss over and revise a single story because it's not good enough, it's not perfect, they're not Terry Pratchett yet. Neither was Terry Pratchett when his first books were published. If you're waiting to be good enough, you won't start. I didn't think Curse Words was good enough when I started releasing it -- I still don't. I started putting it out because I knew it was the only way I'd get myself to actually finish something. I don't think it's all that great, but you know what? An awful lot of people read it and really enjoyed it. And if I hadn't released it, I'd have been doing those people a disservice.
Also, it taught me a lot, and based on what I learned, Time to Orbit: Unknown is much better. If I'd never released Curse Words, if I hadn't seen how people read it and reacted to it and seen what worked and what didn't, then Time to Orbit: Unknown wouldn't be very good. And it certainly wouldn't be making me a living wage, because it was the years writing Curse Words that started building the momentum I have today.
And Time to Orbit: Unknown as it is today has some serious problems. Problems that I'm learning from. And the next book will be a lot better.
So that's basically my advice for making money in this industry. Be patient, be lucky, be consistent. Value your community; it's your lifeline, even the parts of it that don't directly pay you. And try to make your story as good as you can, but make that an activity you do, not a barrier to prevent you from starting.
Good luck.
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natailiatulls07 · 6 months
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Can you do reader is Lando’s little sister and favourite but they barely see each other cause reader is at boarding school and she surprises him at the race. Also cameo of some other drivers too please.
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Lando Norris x sister!reader
Summary - Request above xo
Warning - Like one swear one
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During her last year of primary education, Cisca and Adam both sat their youngest child down and discussed the possibility of boarding school. 
Both knew it would be hard for the whole family to separate. Yet they both also knew that it would make their lives a lot easier. 
With Landos up and coming career in motorsport racing and the rest of their children's careers also slowly building up, neither parent wanted to deprive or abandon Y/n. So with her agreement, they enrolled her into a well reviewed and well known boarding school a few miles out of Bristol. 
Laurence Crawford Boarding.
The first few days, of course she was homesick. Missing Lando more than anyone else in the family. Of course. But eventually Y/n made friends and was becoming more and more independent by the day.
-
“Hey Mum!” The young girl giggled down the phone. She was in her shared dorm with a few friends when Cisca called. “Annie! No stop! Ew!” 
Cisca took note of her daughter's divided attention, taking an easy guess that she was hanging out with a few friends. “Hi sweetheart, am I calling at a bad time?” Even though neither could see each other, she had a warm and proud smile on her face just thinking about how far Y/n has come.
The innocent giggle down the phone grew quieter and quieter. Y/n was walking away from her friends. “Sorry mum, yeah I can talk. We were just having a games night in my dorm…” Ciscas heart just warmed, happy that her youngest child was growing up and maturing.
“Oh no worries, go and hang out with your friends! Have fun!” And with a couple goodbyes and a ‘I love you’ between the two, Y/n was back hanging out with her friends. 
-
Unlike her younger years of boarding, Y/n hadn’t been home from school on the weekend in a long while. She couldn’t; especially with her exams quickly approaching, she was in her dorm studying and revising most  weekends.
This meant the youngest Norris hadn’t seen her family in a few weeks. Of course she had spoken to them but hadn’t been home since the end of January, and they all understood why. It was harder for some to swallow that pill - well harder for one person particularly e.g Lando.
The Silverstone grand-prix was just around the corner and all he wanted was for his youngest sister to be there. Yeah it was selfish but he missed her, to be far the last time the two saw each other was early January. He missed her so much.
“Are you sure you can’t just take the exam early and then come and support me?” His rough voice rang through Y/n's phone whilst she was highlighting her revision. Lando wasn’t even trying to hide his annoyance.
A gentle laugh followed by a sigh was heard from Y/ns side of the call. “I’m sorry Lan…I can’t ask them to move the exam, it’s against the rules of the exam board…”
She didn’t have an exam that week actually, she was lying. Y/n was going to be in Silverstone that sunday. It’s just that Lando didn’t know, oh no it was a surprise.
What he thought was happening was that everyone else from his immediate family would be there, except Y/n. 
Everyone was in on the surprise. All excited to see the pair reunited. Surprises were always one of the things the Norris family loved to do.
-
Y/n - Good luck today! I’ll be juggling revision and watching the race, I hope to hear our national anthem pleaseee  Lando - Thank you angel, don’t wear yourself out Y/n - I should tell you the same thing
Lando thought she’d be tucked away in her dorm room whilst they were texting back and forth. A vast contrast to her current location; in the passenger seat of Oliver's car. The sun was shining through the windshield and down over her bare knees.
Y/n was wearing a white summer dress, some comfortable trainers and her signed mclaren 4 cap. Looking ready to spend the day in the British summer sun supporting one of her older brothers. 
She was smirking. He really had no clue about this. “Okay so he thinks I’m still at school, oh my god I can’t wait!” 
With her gcses, Y/n hadn’t been to a race in a long time and she missed it; watching from her dorm was not the same. In her dorm, she didn’t get that real excitement that would course through her like it would in the McLaren garage.
Looking over to Oliver, he was also smirking. Just remembering how he had to deal with Landos sulking and the clear signs that Y/n was by far his favorite. “Yeah he’s gonna be so happy when he sees you!”
-
Once they arrived, Y/n was quietly escorted through the back way to the McLaren garage. They couldn’t have the press ruining the surprise. Luckily for Y/n, her spot in the garage couldn’t be seen from anywhere Lando would be.
She stood between her parents whilst her other three siblings stood on either side Cisca and Adam. “I’m so excited!” When she was handed her headset, the girl got even more excited because she could hear her brother's voice through the radio. 
He had yet to win his first grand prix and she hoped he would get to that top step of the podium, especially at his home race. And hopefully without him knowing she is here, he will focus on that exact outcome. 
-
It was a hard race, lots of action and stress. Something Y/n liked, she hated a boring race - this sport was about racing, not riding cars in the same positions in several circles. But the most important thing to note from this race was the number four McLaren parked in front of the number one place in Parc Ferme.
The papaya garage was very much in celebrations, including the Norris family. Turning to face her mother with tears in her eyes, she noticed how Cisca also had tears in her eyes. “He did! He did!”
Adam, who is also over the moon with the win, takes her hand and starts to lead her over to the Parc Ferme to surprise the driver. Reaching the Parc Ferme they stand waiting amongst the McLaren staff and up against the barriers.
Lando pulls himself out of the car and makes his way to celebrate with his team. It’s only when he moves to give Adam a hug that he notices his little sister and he gasps. 
“Y/n?” He can’t believe his eyes, he thought she was back in her boarding school revising. 
Immediately the driver breaks from his father's embrace and races to collect Y/n in his arms. The two siblings were laughing and crying together. Finally reunited after a long time, in their opinions. 
After a few seconds, Lando moves to collect her face in his hand gently - trying to see if his eyes are deceiving him, they weren’t. “I thought you had an exam!” He shouts over the cheers around the two of them. 
Y/n just smirks cheekily and shakes her head. “Nope! Surprise!” Soon her smirk turns into a groan when Landos hand moves to mess up her hair, laughing breaking out between them once again. 
Everyone saw. The cameras around Parc Ferme all broadcasting the reuniting of two siblings who just missed each other. “You’re such a little shit!”
Shrugging her shoulders, Y/n smiled. “Everyone was in on it! Our family loves a surprise!” So when Lando turned to look at his father, Adam just nodded - Happy to reunite two of his children.
-
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quitepossiblytall · 3 months
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I’m not voting 3rd party because America’s 3rd party choices are trash. On the merits, they are just not a good choice and I wouldn’t trust any of them to be a better president the Joe Biden.
1)They have not made it on the ballot in enough states to actually win the election. Williamson fully lost the democratic primary to Joe Biden. The people have already spoken.
2) Cornel West is a political hack who is being used by the republicans to syphon votes from Biden. He’s mismanaging his campaign - he spent more money on graphic design than petitions to get on the ballot. He supports republican education policies (google Classic Learning Test. A conservative backed replacement to the ACT and SAT that focuses on “western literature”. It’s supported by DeSantis, if that is any indication of quality).
3) Jill Stein is a millionaire who larps as a activist, while actively lying about the Biden administration and generating wealth (she’s worth 7 million dollars and inherited half a million from her parents) from the very industries she claims to be against (big banks, big oil, military industry, big pharma).
5) Neither Jill Stein nor Cornel West are truly anti-genocide. They’re pro-Putin. Meaning they would allow the genocide of Ukrainians to continue. West wants to fully dismantle NATO, which would put former USSR countries like Estonia, Poland, Latvia, and Lithuania in danger of Russian aggression without NATO protection. Both are a threat to the sovereignty of former Soviet Union countries.
6) All of our presidential candidates this year, aside from Jasmine Sherman are 70+. So, if Biden is too old, so are all of them.
7) Marianne Williamson, one time spiritual advisor to Oprah Winfrey, lost to Biden in the primary. People didn’t vote for her in the primary - full stop. She’s a wacko, who describes AIDS as “angels in Darth Vader suits”. She’s a pseudoscience pedaler and an anti-vaxxer (long before COVID-19), excuse me a “safe-vaxxer”, who once tweeted that the “power of the mind” could save people in the path of hurricanes. She is wrong about both mental and physical health (because pseudoscience), calling clinical depression “a scam”.
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HOTD has made many interesting choices in their adaptation of the story of the Dance. One of their favorite excuses for many of their questionable choices is "feminism". Why did they remove Alicent's ambitions and autonomy? Feminism. Why is Rhaenyra less proactive and hesitant? Feminism. Why are Daemon and Otto the primary active agents in the lead up to the Dance? Well women can't be in the wrong or violent, so feminism.
These choices are the farthest thing from feminist; they're sexist, end of story. Every decision surrounding the women of the Dance reeks of benevolent sexism. One of the most obviously sexist decisions made is the purposeful removal of female cooperation and friendship.
Rhaenyra in F&B has many female allies and friends. Her ladies in waiting loved her so much, one of them, Lady Elinda Massey gouged out her eyes at the sight of Rhaenyra's death. Lady Jeyne Arryn, Lady Alysanne Blackwood, and Lady Sabitha Frey/Vypren are just a few examples of ladies who fought for Rhaenyra (Alysanne and Sabitha literally fought in battles). Lady Fell chose death over betraying her oath to Rhaenyra.
Now, we haven't had any opportunity to meet most of these women I listed in the show. Lady Fell was portrayed as she was written in the book, a very minor character who simply foreshadowed how most of the realm would choose Rhaenyra over Aegon. Elinda Massey, however was reduced to an unnamed servant, not even a lady in waiting. Her treatment is an echo of one of my biggest issues with HOTD, the treatment of Laena and Rhaenys.
Laena was Rhaenyra's dearest friend in the book, in fact it's implied that they had a romantic relationship. Whether you believe that telling or not, it's undeniable that she and Laena were extremely close. They chose to betroth their children while they were infants, Rhaenyra flew to Laena's bedside during her final labor, and she stood vigil with Daemon over Laena's body.
All of that closeness and intimacy was removed in the show to make room for Alicent. So let's break that down: they removed a long and healthy relationship between two women and replaced it with a short-lived (in terms of screen time) friendship that quickly fell apart and turned into an intense rivalry. Reinforcing an old stereotype of female friendship: that it is entrenched in rivalry and toxicity and can quickly be turned to enmity. Alicent was so quickly and easily turned against Rhaenyra and it's even implied that she was jealous of Rhaenyra long before they became enemies.
Rhaenys in the book was an ardent supporter of Rhaenyra. She happily claimed Jace, Luke, and Joff as her grandsons, advised Rhaenyra to go to war, and gladly flew against Aegon and Aemond.
Meanwhile, in the show, Rhaenys was turned into one of Rhaenyra's rivals. She constantly challenged Rhaenyra's ideas, dismissed her as a naive child, disliked her children, and even considered backing the Greens. On top of that, they turned her into yet another "peaceful" woman. She advises against the war, and seems to continue to do so in season two. Rhaenys is virtually unrecognizable in the show. They chose to take a woman who tried to prevent a younger woman being wronged by the patriarchy the same way she was and turned her into a bitter woman who resents Rhaenyra (for most of the show).
HOTD claimed to have wanted to tell a story about how the patriarchy pits women against each other. That's all very well and good, but that's not what they actually did. They took a story where a woman is wrongfully usurped because of her gender and is supported by many other women and turned it into another tired female rivalry story.
Rhaenyra has no female friends aside from Alicent. Laena was turned from her dearest friend/lover into simply a rival for Daemon's affection. Rhaenys was turned from a supportive mentor and defender to someone who took out her resentment for the system on a fourteen year old who only starts to support her when she's proven "peaceful".
HOTD chose to perpetuate a harmful stereotype about women: that we constantly view each other as threats/rivals and can't have truly healthy relationships with other women. Rhaenyra had women who supported and cared for her in the book, in the show all she has is Alicent. A woman who abused and undermined her for ten years, raised her children to hate her, and usurped her. Every change HOTD made in the name of "feminism" solidified just how sexist it really is.
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anexperimentallife · 4 months
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So you want leftist candidates? Here's how you get them:
First off, you have to understand that the far right didn't just wake up one day and say, "We should fuck up the country!" They have been OPENLY working for decades to fill literally every elected or appointed government position they could with Christian Dominionists and other right-wingers, and these folks show up to the polls EVERY SINGLE TIME.
When I was a kid in a far right church in the 1960s, they openly discussed how important is was to get their people into office who would help pass legislation to persecute/imprison/kill anyone who didn't follow their religion. If there's no one sufficiently right-wing running, they'll vote for whomever is closest, even if it gags them. And I cannot emphasize enough that they have long term goals that they are willing to take--and HAVE taken--generations to achieve.
The overturning of Roe v. Wade, for example, is a DIRECT RESULT of the decades-long effort by the far right to boost the most far-right-leaning candidates they could find. They've been talking for decades SPECIFICALLY about getting enough far right judges in SCOTUS to overturn Roe v. Wade. And these SCOTUS appointments are for LIFE, so these judges get to set policy for your GRANDCHILDREN.
So yes, the overturning of Roe v. Wade was only made possible because Trump was able to appoint three SCOTUS judges, in addition to all the other federal judges he appointed. Amd they're talking about going after same-sex marriage, minority rights, etc.
(Hell, the judge in charge of his secret documents case is one that he appointed--she has indefinitely postponed that case,by the way.)
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And you don't think local school board elections are important? Have you not seen the news about all the anti-queer policies, and all the book-bannings? This, also, has a generational effect.
Meanwhile the left refuses to turn up to the polls because none of the candidates are pure enough. So guess why things are getting worse?
If the Left turned out for the most left-leaning candidate at EVERY SINGLE ELECTION, whether local or state or whatever, including primaries, we'd start seeing more leftist candidates. Yes, that means that if there's a choice between two extreme right wing candidates, you vote for the least extreme one.
I know I keep emphasizing that this is not just about POTUS, but POTUS does figure in, of course (among other things, who do you think appoints judges for congress to approve?).
So swallow this pill: Anything shitty Biden is doing, the shitgibbon will do MORE of.
"Not gonna vote Biden because he supports genocide, so I'd rather the guy win who ALSO supports genocide, wants Russia to invade more countries, thinks it's fine if China retakes Taiwan, wants a nationwide abortion ban, removal of civil rights for minorities, wants to overturn same-sex marriage (which the right-leaning majority in SCOTUS are already talking about), to cut back the role of congress in checking executive actions (including workarounds to avoid the need for congressional confirmation for presidential appointees), to remove federal employee protections so federal personnel can be replaced with Trump loyalists, and so on! That'll teach those Dems a lesson! THEN they'll be sorry. And fuck everyone the bad guys hurt, because I'll still be PURE. So what if top GOP officials want to actually NUKE Gaza?"
That's fucking kindergartner thinking.
Yes, Biden is a piece of shit, but I am not waxing at all hyperbolic when I say that a second orange shitgibbon term, with a far-right-majority SCOTUS--especially if the GOP manages majorities in both houses of congress--may be the end of what little is left of Democracy in the US. Not gonna argue about it, because I don't waste my time with petulant children.
Look at the GOP's plans for a Republican administration, and tell me you think it sounds better than another term of Biden. Hell, they've even set up online trainings and loyalty tests to narrow down potential federal hires to those who will commit to follow Trump without question.
I repeat: If you want more leftist candidates, if you want more worker power, if you want billionaires taxed, if you want to protect minorities and the queer community, you have to adopt the strategy that the right has used, educate yourself about what candidates stand for, and show up EVERY SINGLE TIME. Again, that includes primaries.
So many of us on the left would rather sit in the basement dreaming of some magical revolution that's going to fix everything, giving ourselves and others purity tests, and proudly announcing that we're... boycotting democracy by not voting(?), "because none of the candidates are a good choice."
Yeah, the left refusing to vote--or only voting in presidential elections--while the right turns up every time is exactly how we got here.
And you have to support the most left-leaning candidate even if it makes you gag, and even if "most left-leaning" means "not as openly fascist." This is the ONLY way you can be assured of candidates getting further to the left in the future. (Note that this means learning about your local candidates.)
"But voting won't fix--" I never said it was going to fix everything. There's no rule that if you vote, you can't volunteer with Food Not Bombs, or run for school board, or demonstrate, or circulate petitions. It takes more than voting, but voting has to be PART of our strategy.
You also have to accept that it may take decades to change course, and that you're not going to like every candidate you have to vote for.
The right didn't just magically get the orange shitgibbon into office overnight. It took decades of work. And if we want decent human beings in charge, we have to be willing to do the same.
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thef1diary · 5 months
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Little Big Blurbs
— Mr. Bear & Bearman
Saudi Arabian gp 2024, Bella meets Ollie.
Series Masterlist
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wc: 1.8k
Based on these requests though I kinda changed parts of the plot, aka I forgot about the sky sports broadcast part until after I finished writing 🫣
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It was the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix which was one of the hottest races on the calendar.
Since you had never gone to the country before, Max had warned you about the heat that this time of year would bring. For your daughter in particular, iced cold water in reusable bottles was one of the primary items you had stocked up on in preparation.
Although Isabella enjoyed summer, the humidity in Jeddah caused her hair to stick to her forehead, a sensation she rapidly grew aware of and disliked.
She was not a big fan of the sun blazing down on her, but still wanted to support Max. Even after he had suggested that both of you could join him for the next race in Australia, she didn't budge on her decision to watch the race in Jeddah. Isabella had made it clear that would choose to go to every race that she was able to, especially since it would give her an excuse to skip a few days of school before and after the weekend as well due to travelling.
Isabella was wearing an airy navy blue dress to show her support for her favourite team. She wore a cap with Max's driver number printed on it, as well as sunglasses to keep the sun from stinging her eyes. In addition, a small battery-powered fan rested on her shoulders to keep her cool all throughout the day.
Since Max was required to be in the garage hours before you and Isabella planned to arrive, you entered the paddock on race day with only your daughter.
You held her free hand while you walked further in the paddock, glancing at her a few times and chuckling at her choice of attire which was adorably cute for her age.
With her hand that wasn't held onto yours, she held her favourite teddy, Mr. Bear. Ever since she had retrieved it—or rather rescued it—from her father's house, she hasn't gone anywhere without it in fear of losing or forgetting it again.
Although you hadn't spotted Max, Isabella quickly waved at another driver decked out in a red Ferrari polo and blue baggy jeans—her second favourite driver.
Charles bursted into laughter when he first saw her, immediately commenting on the fan, "I want one."
Isabella tilted one of the two mini fans' direction towards him and he exaggerated a sigh of relief, finding her instant response to his words cute and told her that he appreciated her action. He turned it back towards her after a few moments, knowing that it was to prevent her from excessively sweating or even getting a possible heat stroke.
Then, he looked at you, "hey, why don't I show you around the Ferrari garage?"
You thought about it for a moment, never having been in any other garages except RedBull and RB. "I'm not too sure about that, you know, considering I'm with Max," you shrugged.
He chuckled, "you have no idea how many times he's come by, c'mon it won't take long." He extended his hand towards you but didn't grasp onto your hand, letting you know that you still had a say in the matter and that he would promptly end the conversation and accept your decision if you declined once more.
"Then, I will walk you to your lovesick boyfriend," he muttered quietly enough that Isabella didn't hear.
Dropping your mouth in faux offense, you lightly smacked his shoulder with your hand. "Lovesick? I saw him a few hours ago."
He shrugged, "few hours too long."
You briefly looked down at your daughter who was silently beaming and you knew that she would love a little tour of the Ferrari garage.
You playfully clasped your palm in his for a moment, making him chuckle, "okay then, show us around."
"Great, I can also introduce you to Ollie," Charles commented as he lead you towards the garage that showcased an enlarged version of the iconic prancing horse on the building.
Furrowing your brows, you asked, "who's Ollie?"
"He's a F2 driver, filling in for Carlos because of his illness," Charles briefly explained, pointing at another person who was wearing the same team gear as him.
"Right there." Charles called him over, and you noticed that the driver looked visibly younger than any other Formula 1 driver currently on the grid.
Unfortunately, right as Ollie was introduced to you and Isabella by Charles, the older Ferrari driver was pulled away by other team members that required his presence. "It's alright, he can show you around," Charles suggested.
With a sheepish smile on Ollie's face, he nodded, "I'll show you around, but I will say, I'm still learning everything myself,"
Exploring the garage, you noticed that one of the biggest differences was the colour of the items, other than that most of the things were similar in each garage. Where the Redbull garage was filled with navy blue, Ferrari was an infamous red. Despite being close to the Ferrari drivers, it had felt like you entered a different world since you were used to staying in the Redbull garage.
Your daughter quickly befriended Ollie, mainly since he wasn't immune to her antics and cute little pout. One question led to another and he was happily answering them all to the best of his ability. While most of their conversation was filled with laughter, you could also hear some bickering between them.
In the sea of red, you spotted a man wearing the rival team colours, and even though his back was turned to you, it was easy to tell that it was Max. While Charles had said that the other team drivers can come by the garage, he failed to mention that they would get stared at oddly because of the contrasting colours that made him stand out.
Once he turns around and spots you, he quickly makes his way towards you with the corner of his lips turning downwards. "Why are you here?" He asks, panting.
"Charles suggested a tour. Why are you out of breath?" You retorted. He bends over and rests his palms on his knees. "I looked for you everywhere, I thought you were coming straight to my garage."
He had initially checked his phone for a call or message from you since you weren't in his side of the garage, but the battery died. Max underestimated the amount of walking it would take to check the entire paddock to find you because he couldn't wait after putting his phone on charge.
You placed your palm over your mouth to hide your smile. "I was, but look there," you pointed at your daughter. She was currently carried by Ollie on his back while he showed her all the little details that would be too high up for her to see otherwise.
Max walked over to Ollie, slowly getting to know him better throughout the weekend. Max liked him a lot as the younger driver reminded him of himself when he was younger, albeit a little different but the passion to race was similar.
Although, Ollie didn't need to know that since the words leaving Max’s mouth contrasted his thoughts. "Show her all the red you want, but the only red she'll like is Redbull," Max tells Ollie, catching Isabella’s attention too.
“Maxy look, Ollie got me a bear!” She exclaimed, sliding off the younger driver’s back and holding up the teddy bear. There was a small version of the Ferrari cap stitched on to its head along with a Ferrari polo as well.
“Very nice, princess, did you say thank you?” He asked and earned a nod from the little girl. While she walked closer towards you, Ollie responded to the statement Max said.
"I don't know, maybe you'll have to ask her which red she prefers."
"Are you challenging me?" Max quips, raising his brows. Ollie shrugged nonchalantly, "maybe I am."
"I’ll have you know that I am very competitive," Max added, earning a sigh from you. "Max, are you seriously arguing with a kid, that too over Bella?"
He looked at you in disbelief, "he's trying to convince our Bella to like Ferrari over RedBull, he's brainwashing her."
"I don't know about which one I like better, but I will say that I’m also going to be supporting Ollie this race, since it's his first in F1.”
Max frowned at you, then looked at Ollie, "seriously? First my Bella and now my girlfriend too? Count your days."
The younger driver looked at you with concern visible in his eyes, “he’s not serious is he?”
You shook your head, “not at all,” but at the same time Max replied, “of course I am.”
You ignored your boyfriend’s words for a moment, placing a hand on Ollie’s shoulder. "Raising Isabella has just made him a bit more protective," you explained.
"You both have a beautiful daughter, but you don't have to worry about her here," he looked at Isabella who had interrupted Charles’ conversation with his engineer but neither men minded the intrusion.
You called your daughter over, not wanting her to be a disturbance in the garage especially on a busy day like today. Before you could respond to Ollie’s comment, Max beat you to it. "You’re driving for Ferrari, that is enough of a reason not to trust you.
“He’s joking,” you added to lighten the mood, especially since Max’s humour was not obvious to many people. Ollie on the other hand, added his own cheeky retort, "you trust Charles."
Isabella returned to your side and it was time to leave the garage since Max was probably needed at his garage too. Your daughter’s hands were occupied by two teddy bears, and you couldn’t help but ask, “what are you going to name it?”
“Bearman, after Ollie.” Her response caused a sigh to leave Max’s mouth but you chuckled looking at him. “Mr. Bear and Bearman, that’s nice.”
Isabella stopped in her tracks, “mama, can I watch the race from that garage?” She asked pointing to the Ferrari garage that you just began walking away from.
You looked at Max, expecting to see another frown on his face but seeing a smile instead. He shrugged, “if she wants.”
“Are you sure?” You asked, finding the difference in his mood concerning. “Yeah, Ollie’s a good kid.” His smiled revealed that he had no ill intent regarding Ollie, he was just a little overprotective over Isabella.
Isabella spent that qualifying day cheering on Ollie while sitting along with you and his family, who were already enamoured by the little girl as well. When he returned with a good starting position, especially considering it was his first ever race in Formula 1, he hugged Isabella just as tight as he hugged his father, already considering her like a little sister.
Little Big Blurb taglist (let me know if you want to be added): @keerysfreckles @d3kstar @xjval @hc-dutch @the-untamed-soul @multi-fandom-fan221b @lilymurphy03 @shreks-best-tits @nessacarty1 @ldynblack @lighttsoutlewis @ur-fave-ave @namjoonswaifu @llando4norris
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comradesummers · 1 month
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The take that Maddie's childhood wasn't great but Buck had it so much worse is so infuriating. I know Buck is the fandom's favorite, but why are you straight up lying about Maddie to prove that Buck had it worse? Can't they both have had shitty childhoods? Because canonically, they sure as hell did.
To recap, Maddie watched her little brother slowly die and then her parents moved her away from any one who knew Daniel and forced her to never speak of him again. Like I cannot stress how fucked up this is. They completely isolated this traumatized child from any support system she may have had and literally forbade her from grieving. That's insane. And on top of that, they parentified her and made a nine year old the primary caretaker of a baby all while neglecting them both. Also Maddie talks about how her mom would tell her that she wanted to kill herself. You know like a normal thing to say to or in front of your young daughter. And that's just how they treated her when she was a kid. When she got with Doug (at only 19!) her parents basically disowned her, thus ensuring that she would not feel safe to come to them when the relationship became abusive, which is probably a big reason she stayed for so long. And people are always talking about how the Buckley parents never visit Buck when he's grievously injured in the hospital. They also don't visit Maddie in the hospital after her husband kidnapped her and nearly stabbed her to death, even though we know Buck called and told them about it.
Unlike some of the Buck girlies, I don't feel the need to compare. The Buckley parents were awful to both of their living children (and frankly to Daniel as well for erasing his memory like that). I just object to the idea that Maddie somehow had it better than Buck because it is so obviously not true. And I find it really interesting that when it comes to male characters like say, Dean Winchester, people will write endless meta about how parentification is abuse. But when a female character is parentified by her parents people think it's not that bad because it doesn't seem as unnatural for a girl to be forced into a caretaker role, even if she was literally nine years old.
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fleurhcss · 6 months
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✩♬ ₊˚.🎧⋆☾⋆⁺₊✧ 𝐑𝐨𝐜𝐤, 𝐚𝐧𝐝? – Han x FEM Reader!
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cw : guitarist and singer, rockstar, semi public sex, concert, bfwb to lovers, little bit crazy, perm han, love your thighs
sw : choke kink, biting, oral (both), piv, unprotected sex, humping, blowjob, hair pulling, pet names, MDNI.
wc : 6.600 words
synopsis : You and Jisung have been friends since primary school. A unique friendship. He had a special personality, quirky, a bit manic in some ways. Whereas you were always shy and kept to yourself. You always supported him, even in his budding career as a rock star. You loved the way he held the stage. Unfortunately, this job deprived him of many of life's pleasures, such as sex. One day he made a suggestion which, despite your initial embarrassment, you did not refuse. You were also sexually frustrated because you had never found a man who met your standards. And Jisung was the perfect man. So you began to be best friends with benefits. One day he will start his performance with a new look that will drive you crazy and this will result in a long and hot sex session.
a/n : this is the third fic that I wrote here and I'm so happy to see that a lot of you really liked this plot so after some waitings here for you the full story !!! 🎀 Hope u enjoy this, let's see in the next one !!! 🤍🤍🥰I opened a ko-fi account, i will post there some stories and drawings, if you want to support me i will be grateful to anyone who wants to give me tips, ITS NOT OBLIGATORY
MASTERLIST
[ HARD SMUT ]
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You and Jisung have always been best friends. You met him in primary school when you were just two kids. You still remember the afternoons you spent together eating snacks and helping him with his homework. He was truly a child full of surprises and talents, he could do anything and you followed him everywhere because you loved him. Jisung was a part of you, you shared everything with him. You were two completely different personalities: you were kind, calm, shy and quiet, and he was quirky, eccentric, talkative, who loved to be the centre of attention and show off his talents, but you knew that deep down he was a kind-hearted person, despite some of his peculiar behaviour that you could sometimes not understand. Jisung really was a personality in his own right. He was unique, and that was what made this friendship unique. No one was like Han Jisung. Like your best friend. And no one would ever be. Never. You were a part of each other and had made a promise to each other. Over time, even your different passions and paths had failed to separate you. You had a job that reflected your personality, a simple bartender and photographer, while he, with a brilliant personality, had become a big shot in music. A wonderful rock star. A lifestyle that perfectly reflected his: free, flamboyant, unique. Han Jisung was simply the rock itself.
Unfortunately, however, our duties often and willingly take us away from what is pleasurable. And indeed it did. Because of the time you spent between the café and the photo studio, you could rarely go out at night to find a man to take to bed. And the frustration was high; you felt the physical need to get laid like never before. To get rid of all the stress weighing on your shoulders. Jisung's situation was no different. With his life as a musician, between studio work and concerts scattered around the country or even on tour, he never had time to relax and indulge in his manly pleasures. He had always been a bit of a playboy in his high school days, you well remember him taking advantage of every party to get into bed with some girl. It was amazing how the next day he would tell you everything in detail and you would tease him about his performance in bed. He was so sweet and convincing when he told you about his talents in bed.
However, when he started to devote himself to music, everything changed. No more tales of strange performances in bed. On the contrary, he would tell you how frustrating it was not to be able to take anyone to bed because of lack of time and fame. If he was caught, he would surely end up in the middle of a scandal, and he was determined to avoid that. He hated having to apologise for indulging his pleasures. Also because you were aware of your best friend's strange habits in bed.
Yes, because Han Jisung loved to play strange bed games with anyone who came along. You were in eighth grade when he first told you about one of his crazy nights at a party. He had left bite marks all over the girl's body and had fucked her in a position that you weren't sure you fully understood when he described it to you. Even less did you think it was normal to prepare the girl with the neck of a wine bottle. But that was Jisung, as special in bed as he was in real life.
Sometimes you were afraid of what she might do when you were not around. He was a strange personality and you loved that about him.
Every once in a while, before he went off to the studio for rehearsals or the release of a new album, he would drop by to tell you about the latest happenings over a good cup of coffee. He remembered how you take it from your high school days and loved to bring you breakfast every morning and tell you about the previous day. It gave you the feeling that nothing had changed over the years. You and Jisung were still the same kids in primary school, fighting over which stickers to put under the desk to make it your own.
You loved this side of your friendship, you felt more and more connected to him in every way, it was as if the longer you went on, the more nothing changed. It warmed your heart and you were grateful. You followed him to every concert in the country, leaving the café under the leadership of your clique of friends. Occasionally you took the opportunity to travel and see his concerts around the world, and when you couldn't join him, he would call you and you would stay up all night. He would always send you videos of where he was going, full performances just for you. You were his privileged fan and he loved it all.
Whenever he came back from tour, you would find him at your door with two beers and two pizzas, ready to spend the next two days with you, telling you about his colourful life away from home while on tour. And you smiled broadly when he told you of his madness and when he held you close to him after months of not feeling the contact of your body and the scent of your skin, which he loved madly. You remember how many times he told you how much he loved your perfume, whether it was some new scent you had bought or the simple smell of your skin after a hot winter shower.
Nothing could compare to the feeling of having a Han Jisung as your friend, as your best friend. It was like having a holiday home all to yourself, only in this case the holiday was for life and nothing could change that fate. Not even his crazy ideas about you, or those strange illuminations he had at night, telling you to follow him through the streets at four in the morning, or to play in the playground.
°❀⋆.ೃ࿔*:・
It was so strange to think about how you had ended up in that situation with Jisung. Him naked at your side, caressing your skin with his lips.
One day, you remember exactly when and how it happened, you were eating a good kebab, he was complaining about how frustrating his life was since he could no longer take anyone to bed with him. You were about to choke on your beer when the idea came out of his mouth. "Yes, we could help each other! You give me pleasure and I give you pleasure. It's a fair deal, see? So I can show you my talents, you who have heard so much about them for so long," he said excitedly, clapping his hands. Do you remember how you looked at him in shock, your cheeks almost burning? You almost didn't choke on your salad. You were embarrassed, you didn't think your best friend could think such things, with you too. With you. Did Jisung really want to fuck you? You were a bit afraid that it would ruin your friendship. But on the other hand I felt he was right, you were the only one he could go with and he was the only one you had time to spend with. It was an offer with merit, and in the end quite tempting. You were shy, but at the same time you didn't want to turn down the offer, after all Jisung was your best friend, what could go wrong that it wouldn't work out? after all, no man reflected your standards and Han Jisung was really the perfect man. Muscular body, slim waist and long legs. Strong arms, a beautiful face with a predatory look. Jisung was simply ethereal.
"Jisung, are you sure about what you are asking me?" you asked, still a little incredulous. "Of course, Princess. I trust no one but you, and among other things, your body is wonderful, you have gorgeous thighs, I would love to stick my face in them." He whispered in your ear, making you blush. You hadn't expected him to be like that. This boy was a constant surprise. He bit your neck, then took a sip of beer and blinked at you. He was going to drive you crazy, you were more than sure. No one could make you like him, it was amazing the power he had over you.
You sighed and looked at him, "All right, I'm in, but don't get any strange ideas Han". You continued to eat as a huge grin appeared on his face.
And when you saw him grinning, you knew it was over for you.
That's how you ended up where you were now, in Han Jisung's arms, naked in his bed. Secretly, perhaps not so secretly, you loved the way he drew strange patterns on your skin, the way he kissed you and branded your breasts. You were always at his mercy. You caressed his warm stomach skin as he almost massaged your shoulder with his eyes closed. You felt him move underneath you to reach for the water and take a sip before he kissed your hair and began to slide his hand down to your bottom, cupping it in his hands and letting out a giggle. He was amazing, that boy, he would never change.
He ran a hand up your back, cupping your neck from behind and letting the back of your neck tilt back, biting your lower lip and pulling it towards him as he massaged your buttocks. You loved the little touches he would give you after a long session of sex. Also because he had worn you out enough that night. You knew how crazy he was in bed, he always proved it to you, and this time he had only confirmed the theory. He had chosen to eat you, laying you on your stomach on the mattress and taking your legs, wrapping them around his neck as he teased your hole with two fingers. You loved it when he pulled at your pussy lips with his teeth, it drove you crazy the way he squeezed as if he wanted to pull them away from you. "What are you thinking about?" He distracted you from your thoughts, you giggled as you thought about him and what you had done in bed just before. "About you and your extraordinary sexual performance," you laughed and then planted a soft kiss on his lips. He patted your bottom as he burst out laughing and covered his face, then rubbed it and rested on his elbows. His chest was full of your marks, as were your breasts. He had enjoyed branding you that night.
"I have a concert tomorrow, are you coming? I will be wearing a new look and there will be a new song on the set list, I hope you like it, Princess." He smiled and then slipped under the covers and catapulted himself over your body, laughing and kissing your stomach. "Of course I'll come, Jisung. I could never miss a concert of yours. I'm curious too. What are you going to do? Will you come back with blue hair like in high school?" you scoffed. He knew how much you had loved that high school period; blue hair had been your favourite look.
He smiled and jumped out from under the covers, towering over your body, your naked intimacies colliding and making you moan. It was literally driving you crazy. "No, something sexier, I have a performance in store that will blow your mind and you will be in the VIP station with backstage access. I need my princess to recharge, in fact I'm feeling very tired right now, I need a healthy recharge." He grinned. And that sneer could only mean one thing with Han Jisung. Another round. This guy really never got tired when you went to bed. "You really are a lost cause, Han," you said, stroking his hair as he rested his chin on your belly. "And you adore me so much." He laughed, then reached between your legs and began to bite your thighs. He loved your thighs and told you so every time you fucked.
"You have no idea how much I love the taste of your skin under my lips." He whispered, still licking away traces of his cum that were present along your thighs. Another thing you loved about fucking was the fact that you were both clean, no protection and on the pill. So he would release inside you and you loved the feeling of the heat spreading inside you.
He kissed your intimacy and began to slowly run his tongue over it as he cupped your thighs. He took a bite and began to penetrate you with his tongue. He may have given you heaven on a silver platter. He squeezed your buttocks and continued to move his tongue inside you, nimbly moving his hot muscle which, on contact with your already hot walls, seemed to plunge into the hidden, fiery caves of the pleasure circle. He broke away to get some air and took the opportunity to bite one thigh and continue to leave marks all over it, again not stopping there but continuing up the thigh as well. "You cannot understand the desire I have for you. You are delicious. My favourite dessert." He slid two fingers together with his tongue to spread you as wide as possible, even though you were not tight because of the act he had already performed earlier; it wasn't your first time together but he wanted you to be not only comfortable but as pleasurable as possible. He didn't mind giving you pleasure vicariously, especially as he knew how much you enjoyed his actions. He began to move his fingers inside your opening, almost simulating the same movements as his tongue, only the latter went much deeper. From two fingers he went to three and he was sure that he had uncovered your sensitive spot because you moaned. And that could only make Jisung competitive. He started to hit that spot while he used his tongue to lubricate it, after all, no one forbid you to come several times in one night.
The more he looked at your naked body, the more Jisung blinked with eyes filled with lust. Caught in a burning passion that could only be stopped by satisfying it, the boy held your thighs tightly and pushed himself into you for the umpteenth time, almost exhausting you. So he was surprised when he saw you rise, but without a word he let you go to see how far you would go. And so he eased you down, laying on the back of your bed that had accommodated you until then, before moaning hoarsely as he fully felt your tight walls welcoming his member from head to toe, "Holy shit baby...you are so tight, how is it possible that I just fucked you."
He placed his veiny hands on your tight waist to help you move as uncontrollable moans and gasps escaped from both your lips. You were about to reach the climax, but it was too soon for him to stop this inexplicable pleasure; he would have gone on indefinitely just to hold you and fuck you. He smiled mischievously as he watched you gain confidence and begin to jump on his member faster and faster. You grabbed his neck, pulling his hair back, and he made you tighten your grip, looking at you with piercing eyes. "Don't be afraid to hurt me Mummy - do whatever you want to me. You have no idea how much you drive me crazy." He whispered convincingly as he moved closer to your ear before relaxing under your captivating touch. You loved having that effect on him. To see when you were fucking tired after long sessions without having to see him squeeze you into strange positions. Jisung was enchanting in everything he did, which drove you crazy.... You felt completely at his mercy.
You groaned when you felt him bite your shoulder and turned around to see the teeth marks on your shoulder.
He giggled in amusement and took your chin in one hand and kissed you hard while holding your side with the other, helping you to move faster and faster.
You grinned to yourself, especially when you saw how helpless Jisung was against your touch. "Please make me cum, you're so good, fuck Princess" he moaned into your ear.
Your tongues intertwined as you sought each other out. You sucked on the older man's as you rose and fell on his intimacy. You loved the feel of his hands gripping between your waist and buttocks; it was a sensation that went to your head. "Do you want to come? Who am I not to please you, baby?" You smiled amiably, but with a hint of mockery, not because you wanted to tease him, but because you wanted to provoke him further. You wrapped your hands around the young man's neck and pressed your now joined bodies closer together. You continued to thrust until you tightened around the young man's length and poured yourself onto him. But it was not over there, he had not yet come and you had regained your strength to finish there. You had to give him his endurance for the performance. You continued to move quickly on his member until you were close to his ear. "Why don't you fuck me, hard, use me, cum inside me". You were provoking him. And who was Han Jisung to deny you that? You pulled away and licked the line that connected the beginning of his jaw to his chin. You loved provoking him, it was his favourite part. Especially to see his reaction.
He took you by the neck and pulled you closer to his face, barely laughing at your words. "Oh, but baby doll, we're not done yet." As he spoke, he had brought his free hand to your intimacy to collect some of your moisture, which he immediately brought to his mouth, not taking his eyes off you for a moment, wanting to enjoy your expression as you realised he was tasting you. And that drove you crazy. You loved the look Jisung always reserved for you. He licked his fingers and then looked at you with a mocking grin, determined to take what was coming to him. His member ached from how hard it was and he didn't want to waste any more time, "Do you want me to use you, baby doll, mh? Do you want me to fuck you?" He whispered lasciviously in your ear before grabbing your waist again with both hands, squeezing you and holding you still as he had you lie back against the mattress and began to thrust hard and fast on your sensitive spot again. The uneven rhythm allowed Jisung to enjoy your screams as he picked up the pace after a short pause. It was like music to his ears, so much so that he soon found himself moaning along with you. "Fuck baby you are so tight. How I love this feeling." He whispered into your ear. You were crazy about this Jisung. You worshipped him. "Mh...fuck Jisung faster please, I could come again at any moment..."
The last thrusts were harder than the others, he poured himself completely into you, moaning your name in the climax, followed by you, now exhausted.
"You have no idea what I have in store for you tomorrow baby, it will be the most memorable fuck of your entire life. Even the walls will fucking know your name." He laughed, then bit your thigh.
°❀⋆.ೃ࿔*:・
It had been a tough day at work, you hadn't heard from your best friend and you were sure he was getting ready for the concert that would be this night. In fact, you had already planned your outfit for the evening: a black sheath dress over the thigh with a braid on the chest, a leather jacket and your beloved black knee-high boots. You had also thought of a make-up that would drive Jisung crazy and bring out the colours of your skin.
As soon as you got home, it didn't take you more than two minutes to catapult yourself into the shower and wash up. You were ready in no time, and when you looked in the mirror for the first time in months, you felt really pretty. Beautiful, in fact.
You were really curious about what Jisung had in store for you that night. He had been teasing you until he left your house the day before. He had said that he was going to change his look and you were sure that he was going to do something to his hair as it was the first thing that usually he would change. But you were also very curious about the song he was going to perform in preview this night, as it had not yet been released on any platform. You were sure he would come up with something sexy, as he usually did when he came up with these sudden things. You giggled to yourself. As you grabbed your last things and left the house, you had a smile on your face, happy and curious to see this new side of Jisung. You didn't even need a note, because by now your best friend's security and staff knew you well, not least because you had been caught making out in his dressing room a couple of times and Jisung had been forced to reveal everything to his manager, who had teased him about being desperate. You remember laughing at the look on Jisung's face at that moment.
It had been a tough day at work, you hadn't heard from your best friend and you were sure he was getting ready for the concert that would be this night. In fact, you had already planned your outfit for the evening: a black sheath dress over the thigh with a braid on the chest, a leather jacket and your beloved black knee-high boots. You had also thought of a make-up that would drive Jisung crazy and bring out the colours of your skin.
As soon as you got home, it didn't take you more than two minutes to catapult yourself into the shower and wash up. You were ready in no time, and when you looked in the mirror for the first time in months, you felt really pretty. Beautiful, in fact.
You were really curious about what Jisung had in store for you that night. He had been teasing you until he left your house the day before. He had said that he was going to change his look and you were sure that he was going to do something to his hair as it was the first thing that usually he would change. But you were also very curious about the song he was going to perform in preview this night, as it had not yet been released on any platform. You were sure he would come up with something sexy, as he usually did when he came up with these sudden things. You giggled to yourself. As you grabbed your last things and left the house, you had a smile on your face, happy and curious to see this new side of Jisung. You didn't even need a note, because by now your best friend's security and staff knew you well, not least because you had been caught making out in his dressing room a couple of times and Jisung had been forced to reveal everything to his manager, who had teased him about being desperate. You remember laughing at the look on Jisung's face at that moment.
When you arrived at the entrance to the park where the concert was to take place that night, you were greeted by the staff who escorted you to your reserved seat in the VIP box. Whenever Jisung gave a concert, you felt important just because you were accompanied by his bodyguards. You usually visited him before each concert, but this time you didn't want to spoil the surprise. You wanted to discover his much-vaunted new look at the same time as the performance. You bit your lower lip when the announcer started talking about Jisung and the concert as an introduction, and tugged at your lip fur when the first VCR started. Jisung was truly breathtaking; you had never seen a boy with such refined beauty. He had such delicate and sweet features, but at the same time he was so masculine. Every time you looked at him, you were amazed that his petite body was so well defined and muscular. He was just spectacular. Maybe he was the only guy you would want to fuck no matter who your best friend was. Jisung was the kind of guy you thought was perfect just the way he was. You wondered what he would be like as a boyfriend. But perhaps your mind began to fantasize too much about a hypothetical and almost unlikely relationship with him.
When Jisung appeared a few minutes later and greeted everyone with a big smile, the staff almost had to bring you a glass of water to get you back. It was his usual winking look, that look that drove you crazy, especially when he stuck out his tongue and raised his eyebrows. But it was not that that had particularly impressed you. It was the long-awaited "new look" he had to show off. Her hair was permed, it wasn't quite curly, but he'd waved it to set off his face. It was simply stunning. He wore a shirt with the sleeves rolled up to his elbows, black trousers that dangerously bandaged his toned legs, and his beloved ankle black boots. Not to mention the inexhaustible amount of jewellery he always wore. You could even see his gleaming nose and lip piercings from under the stage.
His eyes caught yours and he winked, and for the first time you actually blushed under his amused gaze. He licked his lips and craned his neck, then approached the microphone. "I want to dedicate this song to someone special. It's new, you've never heard it before, and I want to give you a sneak preview. It's called 'Don't Say'," he finished, picking up his electric guitar and starting to sing. Your lips were open, Jisung made you tremble when he sang, he was really born to be on stage. He had the air of a rock star. His movements, his voice. He was magnificent. You started to feel hot when he threw his knees over the edge of the stage to start a guitar solo. How crazy he made you when he played, he really made your head spin. With that tongue stuck between his teeth, that defiant look. And then that hair, that curly hair falling down over his face, it really drove you crazy. You felt that night that you could have let that boy do anything to you.
You imagined what it would be like to pull his hair like that, to have those curls trapped between your fingers, your fingers trapped in those curls. You bit your lower lip so hard that you felt blood coming out from too much force. You imagined Jisung on top of you, fucking you so hard that you went crazy, arching your back and rolling your eyes. He was the only one who could make you feel like that. You knew that. You had had enough experiences in your life and Jisung, your best friend, had been the best. Now you understood and mostly believed what he told you about his performance in bed, because you had experienced it yourself on your skin, on your body. Jisung could do it, and that drove you crazy. You would have wanted him all to yourself, all the time. Not just for simple fucks, although they weren't that at all. He would take care of you afterwards, spend time with you. You weren't just a one-night stand. Or just a one-night stand friend. Jisung was in love with you, and if you had only understood the way he looked at you, you would have realised it much sooner. He adored you so much. But just seeing him on stage with that erotic look on his face as he smoothly ran his fingers over the guitar strings made you realise how attractive he was even when he was doing normal things. You were crazy about him, and you realised it just by watching him play.
When he unbuttoned the first four buttons of his shirt during his speech, leaving only two, you squeezed your thighs because you were soaking wet. You were sure that Jisung would tease you even more if he saw you in that state. That was typical of him. He loved to see you under him, moaning and trembling at his touch. Well, how could you not when he reserved that feline look for you. Normally Jisung had such big eyes that he looked like Bambi, you always called him "Squirrel Boy" because of his cheeks or "Bambi Boy" because of his eyes. But when you were under him and he was fucking you, his look was that of a hungry panther who would not be easily sated by you. You were very sure of that. Also, because when you were in bed, the rounds were always three or two, you remember how he once lasted until dawn. It was one of your best fucks.
You returned the look he had reserved for you for a few moments, and you quickly realised that he wanted to take you backstage with him after the concert. You were a little scared after what happened last time, when you were caught. You thought he was a bit of an exhibitionist. Also because it was to be expected, given his personality.
His manager came to see you in person, rolling her eyes; she knew exactly what was coming, and maybe you did too. Jisung was a lost cause. You bit your lower lip again and made yourself comfortable on the small sofa in his dressing room while the manager asked for the door. "Please be discreet, don't make too much noise." She giggled, sending a trail of blush down your cheeks. You looked around and waited for your best friend to arrive, probably stuck at the meet and greet taking pictures with fans. All the more reason for you to be quiet. Or at least you were the one who had to keep a certain voice tone. Every time you fucked the morning after, you had to drink one of those hot herbal teas with honey. And that had always made Jisung sneer and boosted his ego.
°❀⋆.ೃ࿔*:・
About half an hour after you arrived in his dressing room, the elder's slender, toned figure peeked through the door, his neck craned to one side with his customary wink. He watched you as he finally unbuttoned his shirt and pulled back his semi-curly hair.
He approached you slowly, as if to support the pace of a panther, as if to seduce you. It was an erotic vision. His unbuttoned shirt revealed his toned tan chest, the two nipple piercings reflected in the room as he licked his lips, playing with the piercing in them. You tightened your legs and lost your breath and he noticed it well. "So I see you enjoyed the show quite a bit, very much so my new look, did you?" He laughed as he spread your legs with one knee and rubbed it against your wet cunt. You were unable to respond, as if the cat had really eaten your tongue. In this case, the cat was him. "I can see that you enjoyed it very much. Look at you, princess, all wet just for me." He whispered on your lips and then began a ravenous kiss. He wanted to devour you and you gladly let him.
"You don't know how much, Jisung," you rested your head on the back of the sofa you were sitting on. "Oh, well, I really do notice it, Princess. But you have to be quiet until we reach my apartment, let me tease you a little now," he grinned and then lowered himself between your legs and began to take long bites of your thighs. He loved your thighs, he had told you so many times since you had become what you were at this moment: best friends with benefits. It seemed almost strange to say, but it was true. Although you thought of Jisung as something more than just friends. Who knows what he thought.
Your hands began to ruffle his hair, tugging at the curls at the base of his neck, noting how remarkably well his hair actually grew and how extremely beautiful it made him look. As he left marks and brands on your inner thigh, his curls wrapped around your fingers, you rolled them around your index finger and bit your lower lip. Jisung droves you crazy. When he stood up, you looked down at him, feeling his gaze go straight into your veins and especially between your legs, as the fabric of your panties was now completely wet. But he took advantage of this detail. Yes, he lowered his trousers and you thought he was going to fuck your mouth, but in fact he pulled out his already erect cock and spread your legs even wider and began to rub the length between your covered and wet folds. Now it was hard to hold back your moans. And to help you, he covered your mouth with his hand. His movements were fluid as he trapped his lip between your walls, simulating a fuck. "You're so wet princess, all for me. So warm. God, if only I could fuck you right now." He moaned as he pushed the tip between your pussy covered by the wet fabric of your panties. "MphfJis...I'm...about...to...come!" You said disjointedly because of his hand.
He took your chin with the hand that was covering your mouth and opened your mouth with two fingers, playing with your tongue as he fucked your walls again. "Me too baby, open your mouth." He said and began to fuck your mouth as his thumb made room under your panties and began to move quickly over your clit. This made you roll your eyes back and moan in a way that made his cock jerk. He was driving you crazy. This was going to be the best fuck of your life and you were sure of it.
After several thrusts he poured into the warm walls of your throat and you into your panties and onto his thumb. You almost bit his cock. "You did great baby." He said, leaving your lips to swallow and clean up the cum that dripped down your chin. You did, licking it off as he licked his thumb and lowered himself between your thighs to lick off your humour and rip off your panties. "We won't be needing these anymore." He laughed and threw them into the trash. You almost screamed, you were still very sensitive down there. "You're crazy Han Jisung, you know they can hear us," you said, biting your lip. "Let them hear baby, you are mine and only I can fuck you like this." He whispered in your ear and then pulled you towards him. "Come on, let's go. We have a long night ahead of us Princess." He said, slapping your thighs and pulling on his jacket without putting his shirt back on.
He dragged you with him and left the room, shouting to his manager that he was going home. You were open-mouthed; you had never seen him so eager to fuck you. When you reached the car, all he did was squeeze your thigh as he stepped on the accelerator. Your legs were close together and the fact that you were not wearing panties allowed your vaginal lips to rub between them and wet the seat of Jisung's car. Perhaps a little too much, as the older man noticed and put his hand between your labia and began to rub them. "Jisung, please, I am too sensitive..." you begged him, but that did not stop him, for it only brought another grin to his face.
"Princess, that is not even the beginning."
Indeed he was right, for as soon as you arrived at the elder's house you were immediately thrown into bed and stripped of all your clothes. And now you found yourself naked beneath the still covered body of your best friend. And as he rubbed his covered knee over your naked intimacy, he began to undress until he too was naked in front of your eyes. He lowered himself onto your breasts and began to bite and suck on them, especially your sensitive nipples. Your legs were tight around his waist so that his erect intimacy rubbed against your already sensitive and wet cunt. In fact, as he bit your skin from your neck to your collarbone and your tits, you felt the tip of his cock pushing and rubbing between your walls. "I can feel you so fucking wet for me." He moaned into your ear as you gasped out unconnected words, including his name. "Jisung please fuck me, I can't stand it anymore."
"As you wish my princess." He sneered and then grabbed you by the throat, squeezing you almost to the point of suffocation, and thrust into you, immediately beginning to move with a force you did not believe he had. You moaned like never before and it drove you mad. The way he slapped and rubbed his cock between your walls. His hands slid gently over your hips, massaging and squeezing. It was wonderful, the feeling of your walls around him, around his member, the warmth that only your body could have given him. You squeezed again until his intimacy touched perhaps your inner and weakest part. His lips roamed over your bare skin, lingering here and there to leave marks, bites, kisses. Now and then he focused on your nipples, tormenting them, biting carefully, pulling with his teeth and then sucking. Again. His hands also came to cupping your buttocks, spreading them, massaging them, so to your hips and thighs. Then he began to give you more precise, powerful, almost violent thrusts . "You are fucking magnificent." He whispered in your ear, then bit your earlobe and went back to kissing that bare skin, long since unbleached. He was hungry, you were his favourite dish, his delicacy. If he could, he would have fed on your perfect body all the time.
At that moment, all you could think about was Jisung and how he made you feel by fucking you. For a moment you could not understand where you were. Your mind was clouded with bliss, heat enveloped your whole body like a thick cloud. You couldn't help but melt into the arms of the boy whose name you couldn't stop saying, thrust after thrust.
You dug your nails into the flesh of his arms that blocked your breath, seeking support as you felt your body slowly melt with pleasure, almost too overwhelming to bear. You clung to his lips; it was hard to pull away. You grinned mischievously and rested your hand on the boy's, enticing him to tighten his grip on your neck. You tried to get closer and closer to his body, this pathetic closeness was not enough for you, you wanted more, you felt the need to become one with him. You rested your forehead on his and began to move your pelvis against his.
He pulled away from your body, tightening his grip around your neck as you continued to moan his name. You were sure the older man's neighbours had heard all the times you had screamed his name. But you wanted more and more, you were greedy for his cock, you couldn't get enough of it and you just wanted to feel his hot cum dripping down your thighs. You were addicted to his cock. It was pleasurable to feel the sensation of his nails gripping your flesh, branding it and making it his. Your walls also tightened around his member from the stimulation and God, God only knows how much pleasure Jisung felt at that moment. You began to thrust more and more with your pelvis, helping him with the thrusts. The older man took both of your legs and decided to bring them to your chest so that he could thrust more accurately. To say that you had both become a moaning mess seemed a fairly obvious thing to say, as that had been the case. He lay down by your side, not getting out of you, now you were lying on your side, your legs against his chest as he fucked you, holding you tight from the waist as he knocked the air out of you. "Fuck you are so warm and tight even though I fucked you yesterday. You always welcome me so well, mhh, baby like this, hold me like this," he whispered in a hoarse, almost lazy moan in contrast to the thrusts he was giving you. By now your brain had been disconnected.
"I fucking want you all to myself forever. You are only mine, no one can ever fuck you like I can." He pushed even deeper. "I'm yours Jisung, you're the only man for me." you moaned as you grabbed his hair with one hand, the hair that had driven you crazy all night long, and pulled it, and with the other grabbed your clit, stimulating it. "And you, my only woman," he growled, then moved your hand away and began to move his fingers quickly to facilitate your orgasm.
"Princess... Mhh I'm about to fucking cum," he moaned into your ear and then gave precise strokes inside you. "Mhh ... Jis ... m...e to...oh ..." you cried out, only to come in warm spurts onto his hand and he cums into you. But he did not come out of you, rather he overpowered you and resumed his thrusts, overstimulating you as he rode out his orgasm. "Fuck your walls always so warm and welcoming to me, let's rock all night baby." He growled.
And so you fucked until dawn, rocking all night long.
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determinate-negation · 7 months
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“This raises the question: if industrial production is necessary to meet decent-living standards today, then perhaps capitalism—notwithstanding its negative impact on social indicators over the past five hundred years—is necessary to develop the industrial capacity to meet these higher-order goals. This has been the dominant assumption in development economics for the past half century. But it does not withstand empirical scrutiny. For the majority of the world, capitalism has historically constrained, rather than enabled, technological development—and this dynamic remains a major problem today.
It has long been recognized by liberals and Marxists alike that the rise of capitalism in the core economies was associated with rapid industrial expansion, on a scale with no precedent under feudalism or other precapitalist class structures. What is less widely understood is that this very same system produced the opposite effect in the periphery and semi-periphery. Indeed, the forced integration of peripheral regions into the capitalist world-system during the period circa 1492 to 1914 was characterized by widespread deindustrialization and agrarianization, with countries compelled to specialize in agricultural and other primary commodities, often under “pre-modern” and ostensibly “feudal” conditions.
In Eastern Europe, for instance, the number of people living in cities declined by almost one-third during the seventeenth century, as the region became an agrarian serf-economy exporting cheap grain and timber to Western Europe. At the same time, Spanish and Portuguese colonizers were transforming the American continents into suppliers of precious metals and agricultural goods, with urban manufacturing suppressed by the state. When the capitalist world-system expanded into Africa in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, imports of British cloth and steel destroyed Indigenous textile production and iron smelting, while Africans were instead made to specialize in palm oil, peanuts, and other cheap cash crops produced with enslaved labor. India—once the great manufacturing hub of the world—suffered a similar fate after colonization by Britain in 1757. By 1840, British colonizers boasted that they had “succeeded in converting India from a manufacturing country into a country exporting raw produce.” Much the same story unfolded in China after it was forced to open its domestic economy to capitalist trade during the British invasion of 1839–42. According to historians, the influx of European textiles, soap, and other manufactured goods “destroyed rural handicraft industries in the villages, causing unemployment and hardship for the Chinese peasantry.”
The great deindustrialization of the periphery was achieved in part through policy interventions by the core states, such as through the imposition of colonial prohibitions on manufacturing and through “unequal treaties,” which were intended to destroy industrial competition from Southern producers, establish captive markets for Western industrial output, and position Southern economies as providers of cheap labor and resources. But these dynamics were also reinforced by structural features of profit-oriented markets. Capitalists only employ new technologies to the extent that it is profitable for them to do so. This can present an obstacle to economic development if there is little demand for domestic industrial production (due to low incomes, foreign competition, etc.), or if the costs of innovation are high.
Capitalists in the Global North overcame these problems because the state intervened extensively in the economy by setting high tariffs, providing public subsidies, assuming the costs of research and development, and ensuring adequate consumer demand through government spending. But in the Global South, where state support for industry was foreclosed by centuries of formal and informal colonialism, it has been more profitable for capitalists to export cheap agricultural goods than to invest in high-technology manufacturing. The profitability of new technologies also depends on the cost of labor. In the North, where wages are comparatively high, capitalists have historically found it profitable to employ labor-saving technologies. But in the peripheral economies, where wages have been heavily compressed, it has often been cheaper to use labor-intensive production techniques than to pay for expensive machinery.
Of course, the global division of labor has changed since the late nineteenth century. Many of the leading industries of that time, including textiles, steel, and assembly line processes, have now been outsourced to low-wage peripheral economies like India and China, while the core states have moved to innovation activities, high-technology aerospace and biotech engineering, information technology, and capital-intensive agriculture. Yet still the basic problem remains. Under neoliberal globalization (structural adjustment programs and WTO rules), governments in the periphery are generally precluded from using tariffs, subsidies, and other forms of industrial policy to achieve meaningful development and economic sovereignty, while labor market deregulation and global labor arbitrage have kept wages extremely low. In this context, the drive to maximize profit leads Southern capitalists and foreign investors to pour resources into relatively low-technology export sectors, at the expense of more modern lines of industry.
Moreover, for those parts of the periphery that occupy the lowest rungs in global commodity chains, production continues to be organized along so-called pre-modern lines, even under the new division of labor. In the Congo, for instance, workers are sent into dangerous mineshafts without any modern safety equipment, tunneling deep into the ground with nothing but shovels, often coerced at gunpoint by U.S.-backed militias, so that Microsoft and Apple can secure cheap coltan for their electronics devices. Pre-modern production processes predicated on the “technology” of labor coercion are also found in the cocoa plantations of Ghana and Côte d’Ivoire, where enslaved children labor in brutal conditions for corporations like Cadbury, or Colombia’s banana export sector, where a hyper-exploited peasantry is kept in line by a regime of rural terror and extrajudicial killings overseen by private death squads.
Uneven global development, including the endurance of ostensibly “feudal” relations of production, is not inevitable. It is an effect of capitalist dynamics. Capitalists in the periphery find it more profitable to employ cheap labor subject to conditions of slavery or other forms of coercion than they do to invest in modern industry.”
Capitalism, Global Poverty, and the Case for Democratic Socialism by Jason Hickle and Dylan Sullivan
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