#everything about his design is *chef kiss*

[cyanide-sippy-cup]

Waited until after the strike week to talk about this but I had like a whole post about how we should be positive about the new ATLA and then uh.

We got the Percy Jackson special. Shitty live action movie. New streaming adaptation that promises it will be more accurate and well written and what the fans want. And then it comes out and it's... not that.

Well at least we can go back to the trailers and pretend the show's not out yet while we enjoy the vibes presented there.

[risestarkiss]

✨The Fashionista✨

Rise Ramblings #234

While watching “The Clothes Don’t Make The Turtle,” I noticed something.

I found it interesting that Raph, Mikey, and Leo were content with Raph’s outfit choice until Donnie stated that he wasn’t “in love with it, ya’ know.”

Suddenly, Raph declares “I’m a disaster!” Albeit ridiculously endearing, it was a little strange to see his sudden shift from moderately content to absolute dissatisfaction. Huh…

Then, the disaster twins decide to help him out.

Take a note of their outfit choices.

Raph tries on all of these fits and more.

Donnie’s first choice is a mild “no.” Leo’s choice is a hard “NO.” (Not surprising, lol.) But then, the overwhelming consensus lands on Raph’s fourth outfit, which ended up being Donatello’s other pick for his brother.

So, in summary, Raph tried on his personal choice for an outfit, of which they rejected. Then, ultimately, Donatello picked out an outfit for his brother, and that pick ended up being perfect. Hmm…

Then I noticed something else. In this episode, we never get a Donnie “curtain reveal” moment, to our disdain. I mean, Raph, Leo, and Mikey got to try on several different outfits in order to get their brothers' opinions before landing on that “perfect outfit, you know the one.” All of his brothers got to shine. Why not DonTron?

Then it hit me.

The try-ons were to get their brothers' opinions and approval. And, for his brothers' choices, he was a major contributor in assisting them in pulling their looks together.

What if, bear with me, Donnie didn’t need the "curtain scene" because he was so confident in his fashion sense that he didn’t need to ask his brothers for help to pick out a great look.

…or they figured out how to break Hypno’s spell before he could get a “curtain reveal.” BUT STILL-

Look at his outfit choices in this episode. Some of his wardrobe changes were off-screen, but all of them were fire.

(I added the baseball cap pic because it makes me happy. I wish we'd seen more of that fit.)

To me, he makes some really smart choices for himself, pushing the envelope of what is expected and taking chances: an open collar with no tie for a “black tie” event, a beanie and spiked wristbands for their “gansta look,” no socks with loafers (a viral fashion trend that actually began in Africa) with old man slacks in his reclined pose. *muah* Chef’s kiss!

But Don’s fashion sense doesn’t just shine in this episode.

In “Reparin’ the Baron” the boys go to Draxum’s apartment. Leo and Donnie show up in some extra nice “Sunday Dinner” twin drip.

The gold is in the details. Everything Leo is wearing, Donnie rocks its compliment: for Leo’s round collar, Donnie’s is angled, for Leo’s blue shirt, Donnie’s is white, For Leo’s light slacks, Donnie’s are dark. Blah blah blah. It’s so good!

Look at the winter fit in Snow Day.

Again, Donnie is Leo’s perfect compliment. As a pair? Fire.

Donnie has “the eye.” I can go on and on with examples, but I’ve said all of that to say this…

In the future, we see that Donatello’s technology had major pull in the resistance. He had drone ships patrolling the skies. He built and designed Leo’s arm, Casey’s chainsaw-hockey stick, and Casey's mask. The list goes on…

But, when Donatello from the past see’s Casey’s clothing from the future, he says this:

We know about the “Genius Built” brand. We’ve seen that logo on all of his tech up to this point. But, here he didn’t just say “Genius Built.” He said, “Genius Built Apparel.”

“Apparel” is not a tech brand. “Apparel” is a fashion brand. Of course, tech is incorporated into the clothing, but still.

This means that past Donatello secured this trademark with plans of creating a fashion brand, comparable to the likes of Gucci, Ralph Lauren, or any other modern clothing brand, as a subsidiary of “Genius Built,” the tech company.

And why not? The evidence has been in front of us this entire time. He has a sharp eye for style, fashion, and trends. It is easily canon that he can sew. Splinter sewed their ninja garbs in “Insane in the Mama Train,” and there is a sewing machine in the house.

They already learned Ninjutsu through basically osmosis, so learning to sew is not too far-fetched.

And here it is, right in front of us, Casey’s entire ensemble, from mask, to weapons, to clothing, was made by Donatello in the middle of the apocalypse under the brand name “Genius Built Apparel.”

And that was just in the bad future. Resources were limited, they didn’t have access to much of anything in that broken world as they were survivors of a devastating Krang invasion. Yet, he created all of this.

However, now that they’ve changed the future, his future as a fashion designer is limitless. Think of what Donatello could produce with unlimited resources, unlimited technology, and unlimited creative freedom.

Tech genius. Clothing designer. Fashionista. Future Genius Built Apparel Owner and CEO. I’m sorry, but I have to call it...

Donatello Hamato of the present, of the bad future, and of the good future is a fashion icon, the likes of which the world has never seen. ○○○○

Update: I've decided to make this concept into a mini-comic series!

[ozzgin]

Request/Idea-

Male Yandere Lawyer x Female Embroider Reader (a lady who works as a tailor is fine too)

Imagine a man falling head over heels for that newly employed lady who hand embroiders beautiful handkerchiefs in a luxury shop he visits to get his custom suits! And he just trying to coax her into dating him, marrying him, and becoming his stay at home wife (and mother of his children eventually) 🥰🤭

Age difference? I need some DILF Daddy energy more in my life (but don’t make him an actual father…yet)

P.S. I adore your OCs and writing. And your artwork is way too fucking good! You’re art is just *chef’s kiss* infuckingcredible

-👘

Ooh, you know what this reminds me of? I have a yaoi volume from Scarlet Beriko, “Queen and the tailor”, about an interior designer that visits a legendary tailor whose suits will supposedly help you achieve success. The tailor turns out to be a scary looking, blunt man but nonetheless extremely talented. I liked the premise a lot, so it’s definitely interesting to try out a different perspective.

In this case I have the image of a patient, soft-spoken reader and a hurried, short tempered lawyer. Comically different but in a way that eventually works out, you know? Also thank you for the kind words!

Yandere!Lawyer x Embroiderer!Reader Headcanons

Featuring a Reader that is blissfully unaware the lawyer she just stared dating has their entire life together already sorted out.

Content: female reader, age gap, older yandere, obsessive behavior

Your eyes begin to hurt mildly, so you look out the window and blink repeatedly, trying to refresh your poor sight. Such detailed works always strain you terribly, but you love seeing the finished result. Others must, too, given your handkerchiefs are often sold out the very same day. Right before your needle pierces the silk canvas anew, the door opens with a burst and you jolt. An older man in a suit, arguing loudly over the phone. He’s drumming his fingers over the counter, eyes darting around in search for an attendant. You know the type quite well, so you hurry over with the hoop still in your hand. “Might I help you with anything?” You mouth discreetly. He turns to you, stares for a couple of seconds, and promptly ends his call.

Out of all the places, he certainly didn’t expect regretting his rusty, unpolished flirting skills in a luxury tailor shop. Yet here he is now, clumsily mumbling something about his new suit he’s come to pick up and wondering how to connect that with your number. The name’s the easy part, as it’s neatly and conveniently printed out on the little badge pinned to your collar. Everything else, not so much. You excuse yourself and return moments later with his order. Shit. You tilt your head, confused by the delayed response, worrying whether you forgot something. Next time. He’ll figure it out for sure next time he comes here.

If there’s one good thing about his career, it’s that his eyes have been trained to spot every detail. For example the embroidery hoop you gently held while speaking to him, so he knows exactly what his next custom order will be. Truth be told, he didn’t anticipate your popularity and long waiting times, but a calculated raised tone with a sprinkle of intimidation has convinced the employee to assign him to you as earliest priority. Whether he can flirt remains to be seen, but arguing with others? Child’s play.

“Thank you for coming again today.” You bow slightly and extend the gift bag. “Although, I must say…I’ve never seen you using these before. What has caused your sudden interest in handkerchiefs?” Rather bold of you to begin such conversations, but your curiosity is too great. No matter how hard you try, you can’t imagine why a blunt, nonchalant man like him would abruptly become passionate about embroidery. A lover? You smile faintly at the idea. Whoever it is, they’ve taken quite the challenge upon themselves. The lawyer frowns at the inquiry. It seems you’re just as observant as him. Maybe this shall be the pretext he can finally cling onto. So he presents it in the factual truth you’d hear in a courthouse: it’s his excuse to see you. You raise your eyebrows in surprise. Well now, isn’t it just silly? He could’ve simply asked. Buying countless expensive handmade items instead of plainly confessing his intentions…He stumbles, flustered. The same man whose ruthless reputation has even reached your humble ears is anxiously awaiting your response with a deep blush on his face.

The childlike innocence doesn’t last long. You’ve agreed to date him and that’s great, but he’s a man with little time that has known exactly what he wants for many years. When he laid his eyes on you he didn’t imagine cheesy coffee dates as you discuss your favorite color and cautiously breach the topic of intimacy. What’s the point? He’s already certain he’ll spend the rest of his life with you. Skip the unnecessary steps. On the other hand, you’re not as cooperative as he’d wish. Truly, the tangible proof that opposites attract. You’re always calm and take your time with everything. It’s almost frustrating how easygoing you are. When asked when you’re moving in with him, you just smiled and wondered out loud what could be wrong with your small studio above the shop. Marriage? Good question, you never thought about it.

Oh, the irony. Last time a client was being particularly difficult, your lawyer boyfriend pulled him out by the collar under the mortified stares of the other attendants and shoppers. The exact attitude he himself would’ve shown before, yet this time it’s different. Of course it is, it involves you. His thin patience runs out if it’s you. That’s all there is to it. Can you blame a man for following his heart? They say you should always chase your dreams; he prefers hunting them down efficiently, and the shotgun is pointed in your direction. His sweet, exquisite prey he can never get enough of.

Finally you agree to move in with him. Your hesitation was maddening and he’d started coming up with downright psychotic alternatives to convince you, such as your studio burning down after a vicious attack of some unknown hooligans. So it was rather wise of you not to push someone that knows the law like the back of his hand, even if you aren’t aware of it yet. He enthusiastically guides you around your new forever home, omitting unimportant details. The spare office he emptied for a future nursery? You’ll get to that later.

He can’t wait to spoil you. See, that’s the advantage of dating an older man. He’s gotten his life sorted out a long time ago. All that was left was finding you. You just need to be a darling and behave. He knows you will. After all, you’re his talented little embroideress that won’t have to worry about anything else ever again.

[veritasangel]

Fave thing to do with you

ft. Gojo, Geto, Nanami, Megumi, Choso

⋆ ˚｡⋆ any pov ୨୧˚ warnings: none, slight mention of drinking in choso's

↣ this was kinda rushed so i'll probably edit it more tomorrow

wc: 1.k

Nanami Kento - cooking with you

Nanami loves doing domestic things with you.

It’s a constant reminder that you’re his partner and he’s just so thankful to do mundane things with you, like chores.

Cooking’s a little better though because you both get to enjoy tasty food together afterwards.

There’s something so peaceful to Nanami about cooking together. He’s got something on the stove whilst you chop vegetables, humming happily to yourself as some music plays in the background. He’s grateful to come home to you after work, enjoys the simplicity of spending time together like this

“I said stop-“ you laugh as he approaches you, “C’mere you got sauce on your face.” He laughs as he approaches you with some kitchen towel.

“I got sauce on my face because you let it splutter everywhere.” You finally compose yourself enough to let him tenderly wipe your cheek.

“Well if you had put the lid on the pot like I asked, it wouldn’t have spluttered anywhere.” He sighs, shaking his head as he looks down at you, pulling you in for a brief hug and a kiss before returning to chef mode and judging your cutting skills on the veg with a smile on his face.

Fushiguro Megumi - reading together

You love reading, he loves reading so why not do it together?

He likes that even though you’re reading different things, you can still chill together silently.

Quality time is his love language and so laying on his bed with you as you both enjoy your hobbies is enjoyable

Some might argue it’s antisocial but you guys don’t agree. There’s nothing more  relaxing than feeling no pressure to talk with someone, just enjoying the comfortable silence between you both as you both read away. The lingering touches every now and then reminding you of the other’s presence.

You’re laying on his bed as he threads a hand through your hair, only occasionally stopping to flip the page as he holds the book with one hand. You’re lying down in between his legs, head on his chest as you read your own book.

“You comfortable, sweetheart?” he asks, looking away from his book momentarily to glance at you.

“Mhm, are you?” you mumble, looking up at him as he smiles and nods, kissing your forehead tenderly before the two of you return to your books.

Gojo Satoru - snuggling with you as he sleeps

Such a busy life that when he sleeps, he sleeps.

It’s one of his favourite things in life, after you of course and so snuggling in bed with you is perfect for him.

Will sleep for so long if you’re in his arms.

He will honestly fall asleep anywhere, especially with you. You’ll be chilling together and the moment your hand runs through his hair, he’s out. And once he’s asleep, you’re stuck because he refuses to let you leave his arms until he’s well rested. He just adores being so close to you in such a relaxed and peaceful state.

“Mhm, stop moving.” he mumbles, voice low from sleep.

“It’s like four in the afternoon toru, we have stuff to do, we can’t just be napping like this.” you laugh as he pouts up at you.

“Can’t we just reschedule our plans?” he grins, chin resting on your chest.

“We already did that yesterday.”

“I guess we did, oh well, one more day won’t hurt them.” he smirks mischievously as he snuggles up further into you, already drifting back to sleep.

Suguru Geto - taking you on motorbike rides

There’s something about seeing you on his bike that he loves

Maybe it’s a possessive thing but loves when you cling onto him during rides, especially if you’ve only ever been on one with him.

It’s been his safe place to just go on these rides and clear his head so he loves sharing that with you now.

He’s very passionate about his bike so he was definitely over the moon when you showed an interest. Tells you everything about the design and the model and can’t wait to get you on it. Spends forever convincing you to, selling it as hard as he can.

And when you finally join him, he’s obsessed with the sight. Takes a billion pictures of you with your helmet on as you sit on his bike.

“You look good like this.” he grins, pressing his helmet to yours.

“So not normally?”

“Of course you do, idiot, it’s just different- makes me feel more possessive of you, actually.” he teases as he leans against the bike, looking down at you, “Soo, you up for a late night ride again tonight?”

Kamo Choso - going to concerts with you

I reckon you both met at a concert so now he just has a soft spot for them.

Gets to enjoy his favourite music with his favourite person.

And you’re all dressed up, looking pretty so it’s a nice bonus for him.

Similar to Megumi, he enjoys when the two of you can both appreciate something together without necessarily talking. He sings along to the music with you as you both sway to the beat.

A hand around your waist practically all night so he doesn’t lose you to the crowd, because god knows that’s happened before and he freaked out for a good 10 minutes before you returned with drinks in hand. (you got a lecture that night)

“I can’t hear you, what did you say!” you have to shout slightly to be heard over the speakers as you turn around and look up at him.

“I said that you look good under these lights.” he says, gesturing to the twinkling overhead lights.  

And you can’t help but grin as you look up at him, “And you look hot, Cho!” you call out and he has to steady you slightly because he knows you’re already tipsy, shaking his head with a knowing smile.

༄ m.list

© veritasangel ↣ 𝘥𝘰 𝘯𝘰𝘵 𝘤𝘰𝘱𝘺 𝘢𝘯𝘺 𝘰𝘧 𝘮𝘺 𝘸𝘰𝘳𝘬𝘴

[heraxic]

Hello :o

I just wanted to say thank you (and also thank crumb) for getting me back into thinking about Karl Heisenberg 24/7.

I really love your artstyle, from the amazing expressions (especially the peeved/angry ones) to the scribbly lineart. As someone that’s trying to learn to draw more digitally, I really like to observe your stuff o.o

Your Moldy Family comics are funny, cozy, sweet and comforting all at the same time, and they made me discover and appreciate Eveline (oh man I love how much of a goth tween she is), and the way you draw Heisenberg (his physicality if that makes sense, his clothes, his hair, his everything) is just *chef’s kiss*.

As a former Greek Mythology child, that AU is so so nice owagh. I love all the monster adaptations/designs, it’s all so clever: I love that Kyril is scaley, hairy AND has wings (which I feel aren’t depicted often nowadays with gorgons), Alina is so majestic, with the black tipped limbs and the blood soaked dress, and the daughters being harpies/sirens(?) is also so perfect.

Idk if you’ve already said it, but what is it about Karl’s character that made him interesting to you?

I hope it makes sense (I’m a bit tired) and thank you again for the excellent food :]

Thank you so much!!!<<<3333

he lives in my head rent free…. his crusty-ass hair and barrel-shaped bod gets me every time

im glad you like my scribbly lineart! I tend to get concerned whether it really looks like anything haha

I miss drawing the mold family but i think my forte has always been fantasy, especially cause i love mythology more than anything. That’s not to say i wont go back to the modern mold family though

For greek au karl i wanted him to look like someone had haphazardly stuck animal parts to him so it’d look deliberately unnatural for him to have a relatively normal human body under all that-

I’m not sure i can fully describe why Karl is so interesting. Surface level, being voiced by Neil Newbon is always a big plus and his face model Joel Hicks is awesome-looking. His character design matches his abilities and personality really well, and speaking of personality, queer-coded villains who make a big show out of everything are always going to be my favourite. His gritty, masculine aesthetic is really inspiring in terms of gender as well. On a deeper level, in spite of all the terrible things he’s done, i find him sympathetic and relatable. After decades spent in a highly dysfunctional family, not living on his own terms, completely alone, I need him to finally be okay and get better for his own sake, with the support of people he trusts. It’s the same reason i love Eveline. Morally dark-grey characters who deserved better and could’ve gotten better with a good support system.

[strawberrystepmom]

gojo x f!reader. reader and gojo are married, reader is wearing heels and earrings. a little bitty love note for my valentine. wc 1.3k | divider thanks to cafekitsune 💓

Tuesday nights have long been decreed to be designated date nights in the Gojo household.

Bearing in mind how busy the two of you tend to be, this standing appointment doesn’t always work out the way it was planned when you started the tradition and there have been several occasions where you and Satoru have had “dates” in the form of sharing meals from miles away via video chat but tonight, he is all yours. In the flesh, a day ahead of what is widely viewed as a romantic holiday, and wearing your favorite dress shirt with a smirk across his face.

“So, I’ve been thinkin’.” He announces from across your walk-in closet, fastening the buttons on either side of his wrists and walking in your direction. Raising your eyebrows while you fasten in your favorite pair of earrings, you hum at him, concealing a smile to the best of your ability.

“That can be a dangerous thing.”

Your husband chuckles and joins your side, leaning down to press his face against yours. He steals a glance at your reflections in the small mirror atop your standing jewelry box and puckers his lips, turning his head enough that he can kiss you before suggesting what is on his mind.

“Remember how we used to pretend to get engaged to get free dessert?”

Snorting, you nod, attempting to secure the back of your earring onto the post keeping it in your lobe. Satoru grabs the small piece of metal from you and takes over, leaning down as close as he can to you to get the job done.

“I recall.”

Of course you remember all of the times he pulled a fake ring out of his pocket for attention, applause, and a celebratory slice of cake he didn’t have to purchase despite absolutely being able to afford it. The first time you were mortified, hot cheeked and taken aback by the possibility he may have actually been proposing to you, but each time it became easier to react the way that would make people happiest for you. Keeping the absolute lack of romance in his actual proposal in mind, you’ve always held these fake ones close to your heart.

It feels like he spent years proposing to you culminating in the real thing - how romantic is that? Both of you insist that you aren’t romantics yet the way you love each other speaks for itself.

“Let’s do it again.”

“Oh you’re dastardly,” you tease with a half smile, your palms smoothing out any wrinkles in his dress shirt while fiddling with the buttons keeping it closed. “You really want to?”

“Duh, it’ll be fun.”

Despite yourself, you laugh at your husband’s antics and remove your palms from his chest to slip your ring off. Your lower lip dips out in a pout with each inch the golden band moves and Satoru’s heart squeezes in his chest watching it. Maybe he shouldn’t have suggested such a silly stunt, no matter the laughs that would be shared over it later.

“Are you sure you’re okay with this?”

Nodding, you grab his hand and face his palm upward, depositing your band in the smooth center of it, followed by the engagement ring you wear stacked with it. Your left finger is bare for the first time in years and you wiggle it with a giggle, shoving it upward in the direction of his face.

“For old times sake.”

It’s a very good thing the two of you picked a restaurant that deviates from your usual plans otherwise this entire little plot would fail spectacularly. Tadashi, the chef at your favorite place close to your home, would have spotted the two of you in a second and given you a wry smile and tutted at your dishonesty.

“Are you sure this is gonna work? We seem pretty, I dunno…married?” You question everything happening right now, unexpectedly feeling a little insecure about lying. The click of your heels on the sidewalk perfectly mingles with Satoru’s footsteps that he intentionally shortens when the two of you are together. There are so many subtleties that will give you away including the mere fact you are obsessively in love with each other and fail to hide it.

Your husband simply chuckles and shakes his head.

“Hopefully they’re giving out the good desserts tonight,” your husband mutters while weaving his fingers in between yours and swinging your joined hands between your bodies. He’s so effortlessly boyish sometimes you want to be annoyed but find it difficult to be when the stars are twinkling just right and the cool air nipping at his cheeks makes them a rosy pink.

If you loved him less, you’d be more frustrated. Adoration is a balm that soothes most of your frustration with him at any given time so you’re happily preparing to go along with all of this, smiling at the hostess standing at the front of the restaurant when you enter.

“Two for Gojo,” he proudly states to the woman who whisks the two of you off toward your reserved table. You smile at her the entire time but you notice her smile dim after she catches sight of your joined hands. With a nod, she moves so you can slide into your chair and he does the same and you hum to yourself.

“That was weird, right?”

Satoru just shrugs and you roll your eyes, picking up the menu and scanning over it once. Your waiter arrives with a polite half bow and immediately, your husband’s face lights up. It’s too late to tell him to stop whatever he’s planning now, his right hand dipping under the table to fish around in his pocket for your engagement ring.

“Are we celebrating anything tonight?”

The server’s words immediately make you panic and your eyes widen when Satoru pushes his chair out and stands, presenting a very familiar ring in his palm. Taking a deep breath, you gasp and do your best to feign shock and surprise, noticing the same horrified look on the server’s face when he glances at Gojo’s hands.

“Yes, we are. We are getting married!”

Glancing at his left hand, you immediately notice what the shock is about. Rather than fuss at him you rush to cover your mouth with your right hand and nod rapidly as though you are totally taken aback. Holding your left hand out, he slips your ring back onto its home finger. He beams at you with every movement, practically bursting with joy, and seats him back at the table across from you.

“You forgot to take your ring off,” you whisper-hiss out of the side of your mouth and your husband looks down at his left hand that grips the edge of the dinner table. Sure as anything, the golden band you slipped on the digit years ago glistens under the low restaurant lighting and you fight the urge to giggle and blow the entire operation wide open. The clearly uncomfortable server bows his head at each of you, filling your empty water glasses for the sake of having something to do, before scurrying away with his head pointed firmly toward the ground.

“He probably thinks I’m your mistress now.”

Satoru shrugs in response, tilting his head to the side.

“You are my wife, my mistress, and the love of my life, what can I say? The plan worked perfectly if he believed it.”

Rolling your eyes, you reach across the table and run your thumb over his fingers and the gold band adorning his ring finger.

“You’re such a romantic.”

He smirks and wraps your hand in his.

“But I’m your romantic.”

The two of you are so lost in your own little world you don’t realize the server and hostess off to the side discussing the married man proposing to another woman, gesturing wildly at each other. Fake proposal aside, you are excited to have an evening to enjoy with the man who shakes your world up at every opportunity and he glances at the menu for a scant moment before turning to look up at you, blue eyes narrowed.

“Do you think they’ll still give us dessert?”

Laughing, you shrug and squeeze his hand.

“I think we should probably plan on just buying one this time.”

[mockerycrow]

Congrats on the milestone! It has been an absolute dream reading your works (and binge-reading them on my designated MH days) Your ability to write is just- chefs kiss. You deserve all this, keep it up!

For my request:

Reboot Ghost reacts to GN Reader wearing a compression shirt/ tight clothes because Reader has worn baggy clothes ever since they met?

Again, congratulations on the milestone!

-1θ

MY EYES ARE UP HERE (Ghost x GN!Reader) — 4K CELEBATION

lolol i’m gonna cry?? thank you, anon!! 💗

YOU AND GHOST have been gym partners for a while now. It wasn’t meant to be a thing, but it just ended up being a thing anyway. At first it was coincidental; meeting at the gym on accident fairly late in the afternoon, the whole nine yards. You’ve always worn baggy sweatpants and sweatshirts to the gym—even your uniforms were always a bit big on you. Ghost definitely noticed, but he didn’t ask or bother you about it. Your uniforms weren’t too big to be out of regulations, and what you wore during your conjoined workouts didn’t seem to bother you too much.

You’re running a bit late, maybe by five or six minutes. Ghost checks his watch, his foot tapping against the ground. He decides if you don’t show after a few more minutes, he’ll just go ahead and work out on his own. Just then, the door to the gym swings open. Ghost hears you let out a harsh breath before he sees you, but he freezes in place when he does. You’re wearing a black, tight long-sleeve compression shirt that hugs your body, tucked into your black pair of shorts—where you’re wearing black, skin tight compression leggings underneath. Ghost’s brain empties of everything he was thinking.

“I’m sorry I’m late,” You breathe out, walking over to him and setting down your gym bag. “It seems I haven’t done laundry, so I threw on what I could find.” You look at Ghost who doesn’t respond—his brown eyes are peering down at you, but not.. you. More like your body. When you realize this, you laugh despite the hot feeling rising from your neck to your face. “Ghost?” You chuckle, crossing your arms over your chest. Ghost blinks and his eyes flicker up to your face, looking like a deer in headlights. “Sorry, I— uh..” He sputters, his fingers tightening into fists.

You grin at the sight of Ghost, of all people—being flustered. Maybe you should bust out the compression shirt more often, you think, seeing the way his eyes keep flickering to your body.

[l1ve-l4ugh-lov3craft]

HI, CAN I TELL YOU ABOUT THE AKKALA CITADEL?????

Yes? Wonderful. Come, friend, have a seat. I have...a lot to say lol

Eight years later and I am STILL not over how absolutely genius this fortress is, like are you kidding me????? Everything from location to design to its inside defenses is just *chef's kiss* PHENOMINAL, and so because I have no filter, I am going to barf all my thoughts I've had on it in the past many many years.

Before we begin, shoutout to the WONDERFUL video by Zeltik that touches on this a bit and gave me a wonderful basis for my brainrot in the first place. Definitely go and watch it it's fabulous NOW! Let's get into the madness shall we? First let's talk about the location cos OHHHH MY GOSH. This was, hands down, THE best place they could have possibly put a fortress of this magnitude in Hyrule and I am going to tell you why. First of all, allllllll along the northern and northwestern border of Hyrule, there's those massive canyons

Passing over that in a way that would be effective military-wise is kind of impossible, so it provides a natural defense from invaders from those directions.

If you were to come from the South, you would hit the Gerudo desert and not only have to face the might of the Gerudo military, but also cross this EXPANSIVE, scorching desert before you can even make it to Hyrule field, and by that time, the royal leader could have very easily sent an army to intercept anyone trying to attack, so that's right out.

Which leaves coming from the Faron region next which is okay??? I guess??? but that's a LOT of swamp and forest you have to cross through, AND you go right past the Great Plateau where any army would have been seen and intercepted eventually. This takes us closer to the eastern coast of Hyrule, and you would be hard pressed to try and travel through Necluda, cos just l o o k at all these mountains you'd have to cross:

Horrible. And you probably don't want to go through Zora's Domain cos that's yet another heavily fortified and well prepared city in and of itself (please ask me about this one too I beg of you I love talking about Zora's Domain)

Any military leader with a brain isn't going to go through Death Mountain for obvious reasons, so really, all that leaves is this tiiiiiinnnyyy vulnerable spot in Akkala

And where did they put the citadel??? Right at the heart of that vulnerable spot >:D Like a boss.

AND SO! if invaders came in from that coastline, they have three options: They can take the path through the Akkala Highlands, they can go through the Torin Wetlands and up to the pass it connects to, or they can take the trail up to the Sokkala Bridges. All of these are TERRIBLE OPTIONS Akkala Highlands path: If they come up this way at the start

this will work allll the way until they get about here:

once they get here though, you are now not only bottlenecking an entire army meant to invade a kingdom (so probably roughly 1,000-1,300 people), but you're also directly under the shadow of the Akkala Citadel. There are archers there to fire on you, and they had a canon post on that side to potentially fire either at the incoming soldiers or fire at the opposite canyon wall to rain debris and rocks on them.

TERRIBLE for the other army.

And even if some did manage to survive, it would be painfully easy for the infantry at Akkala Citadel to send foot soldiers down below to cut them off.

SO THERE GOES THAT OPTION (and admittedly, I think it's probably the worst of the three)

Next option is to go through the Torin Wetlands and up into that same pass by the Citadel

this is ALSO a bad idea because the Torin Wetlands are a DELIGHTFUL tactical advantage for Hyrule. Once you get to that pass, you have the same problems as option one, but now you first have to pass through this wide marshland to get there. This will immediately slow down your army, and if that wasn't bad enough it's also in clear freakin view of the citadel and so they would be able to send their entire militia of archers and potentially even cannoneers to fire on the advancing army and take a bunch of them out before they could even make it to that pass.

So a smart general may say the best option is to go around the long way.

now this eliminates the pass and also slowing down at the marsh, and you could even make it almost all the way to the citadel without hardly any losses probably BUT! The first hurdle is those bridges. Wonderful for Hyrule, terrible for the opposing army. The three Sokkala bridges are SMALL, even smaller than the pass an army would have to go through with the other two options. This military leader would basically have to send their soldiers single file unless they have a way to expand the bridges to make them wider (which, admittedly, could be possible with a bit of foresight, but for now for simplicity's sake let's just assume they didn't think that far ahead).

This brings in an EXTREMELY slowly advancing army right to the heart of the Akkala Citadel's battery.

There are three locations with canons we see in BOTW that cover pretty much the entire open area the opposing army would come in on. And when you look at the amount of space each post covered

There is not a SINGLE spot in that valley a cannoneer couldn't easily reach. And, of course they would continue to have archers to pick off individual soldiers as well.

And if SOMEHOW

BY SOME MIRACLE

enough soldiers make it through that hell to be enough of a problem, there are plenty more soldiers in the citadel to cut them off as they come up the hill AND IF THAT'S NOT ENOUGH! there was this:

by the time we get to botw, it has been destroyed, but that is ANOTHER smaller stronghold that was probably pretty well manned in and of itself.

AND WHAT'S MORE

There's even this long cliff road with very little room to operate, so it would be extremely easy for the citadel to send over some soldiers to post up there and cut off anyone who tried to make it past. And with so little room to operate, it would not go well.

Ain't NOTHING getting past the Akkala Citadel, guys.

And that isn't even touching on the fact that the whole thing is build of solid stone??? And carved into a mountain??? The entire reason it fell in the first place was because the Guardians had enough of fire power to destroy the citadel that they had never seen before (also they could climb walls but that's a side note). This implies that no one in Hyrule or the neighbouring kingdoms had even CLOSE to that level of destructive power, so to try and raze it to the ground would have been impossible.

AND!! it was the most heavily fortified fortress in Hyrule second to the castle itself, and to most likely their military personnel would have been equal too, if not slightly more than even Hyrule Castle. That's A LOT of people!! With most likely endless support and resources from the castle and villages nearby as well.

It was placed geniously, it had impenetrable defense, it had a potentially endless supply of resources and people to use said resources, it was just

argjfbdkjgbks You guys don't understand how much I THINK about this place aghhhhhhhhhh

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Inkjump Linkdump

For the rest of May, my bestselling solarpunk utopian novel THE LOST CAUSE (2023) is available as a $2.99, DRM-free ebook!

It's the start of a long weekend and I've found myself with a backlog of links, so it's time for another linkdump – the eighteenth in the (occasional) series. Here's the previous installments:

https://pluralistic.net/tag/linkdump/

Kicking off this week's backlog is a piece of epic lawyer-snark, which is something I always love, but what makes this snark total catnip for me is that it's snark about copyfraud: false copyright claims made to censor online speech. Yes please and a second portion, thank you very much!

This starts with the Cola Corporation, a radical LA-based design store that makes lefty t-shirts, stickers and the like. Cola made a t-shirt that remixed the LA Lakers logo to read "Fuck the LAPD." In response, the LAPD's private foundation sent a nonsense copyright takedown letter. Cola's lawyer, Mike Dunford, sent them a chef's-kiss-perfect reply, just two words long: "LOL, no":

https://www.techdirt.com/2024/04/19/apparel-company-gives-perfect-response-to-lapds-nonsense-ip-threat-letter-over-fuck-the-lapd-shirt/

But that's not the lawyer snark I'm writing about today. Dunford also sent a letter to IMG Worldwide, whose lawyers sent the initial threat, demanding an explanation for this outrageous threat, which was – as the physicists say – "not even wrong":

https://www.loweringthebar.net/2024/05/lol-no-explained.html

Every part of the legal threat is dissected here, with lavish, caustic footnotes, mercilessly picking apart the legal defects, including legally actionable copyfraud under DMCA 512(f), which provides for penalties for wrongful copyright threats. To my delight, Dunford cited Lenz here, which is the infamous "Dancing Baby" case that EFF successfully litigated on behalf of Stephanie Lenz, whose video of her adorable (then-)toddler dancing to a few seconds of Prince's "Let's Go Crazy" was censored by Universal Music Group:

https://www.eff.org/cases/lenz-v-universal

Dunford's towering rage is leavened with incredulous demands for explanations: how on Earth could a lawyer knowingly send such a defective, illegal threat? Why shouldn't Dunford seek recovery of his costs from IMG and its client, the LA Police Foundation, for such lawless bullying? It is a sparkling – incandescent, even! – piece of lawyerly writing. If only all legal correspondence was this entertaining! Every 1L should study this.

Meanwhile, Cola has sold out of everything, thanks to that viral "LOL, no." initial response letter. They're taking orders for their next resupply, shipping on June 1. Gotta love that Streisand Effect!

https://www.thecolacorporation.com/

I'm generally skeptical of political activism that takes the form of buying things or refusing to do so. "Voting with your wallet" is a pretty difficult trick to pull off. After all, the people with the thickest wallets get the most votes, and generally, the monopoly party wins. But as the Cola Company's example shows, there's times when shopping can be a political act.

But that's because it's a collective act. Lots of us went and bought stuff from Cola, to send a message to the LAPD about legal bullying. That kind of collective action is hard to pull off, especially when it comes to purchase-decisions. Often, this kind of thing descends into a kind of parody of political action, where you substitute shopping for ideology. This is where Matt Bors's Mr Gotcha comes in: "ooh, you want to make things better, but you bought a product from a tainted company, I guess you're not really sincere, gotcha!"

https://thenib.com/mister-gotcha/

There's a great example of this in Zephyr Teachout's brilliant 2020 book Break 'Em Up: if you miss the pro-union demonstration at the Amazon warehouse because you spent two hours driving around looking for an indie stationer to buy the cardboard to make your protest sign rather than buying it from Amazon, Amazon wins:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/07/29/break-em-up/#break-em-up

So yeah, I'm pretty skeptical of consumerism as a framework for political activism. It's very hard to pull off an effective boycott, especially of a monopolist. But if you can pull it off, well…

Canada is one of the most monopoly-friendly countries in the world. Hell, the Competition Act doesn't even have an "abuse of dominance" standard! That's like a criminal code that doesn't have a section prohibiting "murder." (The Trudeau government has promised to fix this.)

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/editorials/article-an-overhauled-competition-act-will-light-a-fire-in-the-stolid-world-of/

There's stiff competition for Most Guillotineable Canadian Billionaire. There's the entire Irving family, who basically own the province of New Bruinswick:

https://www.canadaland.com/podcast/dynasties-2-the-irvings/

There's Ted Rogers, the trumpy billionaire telecoms monopolist, whose serial acquire-and-loot approach to media has devastated Canadian TV and publishing:

https://www.canadaland.com/podcast/canadaland-725-the-rogers-family-compact/

But then there's Galen Fucking Weston, the nepobaby who inherited the family grocery business (including Loblaw), bought out all his competitors (including Shopper's Drug Mart), and then engaged in a criminal price-fixing conspiracy to rig the price of bread, the most Les-Miz-ass crime imaginable:

https://www.blogto.com/eat_drink/2023/06/what-should-happened-galen-weston-price-fixing/

Weston has made himself the face of the family business, appearing in TV ads in a cardigan to deliver dead-eyed avuncular paeans to his sprawling empire, even as he colludes with competitors to rig the price of his workers' wages:

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-06-12/a-supermarket-billionaire-steps-into-trouble-over-pandemic-wages

For Canadians, Weston is the face of greedflation, the man whose nickle-and-diming knows no shame. This is the man who decided that the discount on nearly-spoiled produce would be slashed from 50% to 30%, who racked up record profits even as his prices skyrocketed.

It's impossible to overstate how loathed Galen Weston is at this moment. There's a very good episode of the excellent new podcast Lately, hosted by Canadian competition expert Vass Bednar and Katrina Onstad that gives you a sense of the national outrage:

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/podcasts/lately/article-boycotting-the-loblawpoly/

All of this has led to a national boycott of Loblaw, kicked off by members of the r/loblawsisoutofcontrol, and it's working. Writing for Jacobin, Jeremy Appel gives us a snapshot of a nation in revolt:

https://jacobin.com/2024/05/loblaw-grocery-price-gouge-boycott/

Appel points out the boycott's problems – there's lots of places, particularly in the north, where Loblaw's is the only game in town, or where the sole competitor is the equally odious Walmart. But he also talks about the beneficial effect the boycott is having for independent grocers and co-ops who deal more fairly with their suppliers and their customers.

He also platforms the boycott's call for a national system of price controls on certain staples. This is something that neoliberal economists despise, and it's always fun to watch them lose their minds when the subject is raised. Meanwhile, economists like Isabella M Weber continue to publish careful research explaining how and why price controls can work, and represent our best weapon against "seller's inflation":

https://scholarworks.umass.edu/econ_workingpaper/343/

Antimonopoly sentiment is having a minute, obviously, and the news comes at you fast. This week, the DoJ filed a lawsuit to break up Ticketmaster/Live Nation, one of the country's most notorious monopolists, who have aroused the ire of every kind of fan, but especially the Swifties (don't fuck with Swifties). In announcing the suit, DoJ Antitrust Division boss Jonathan Kanter coined the term "Ticketmaster tax" to describe the junk fees that Ticketmaster uses to pick all our pockets.

In response, Ticketmaster has mobilized its own Loblaw-like shill army, who insist that all the anti-monopoly activism is misguided populism, and "anti-business." In his BIG newsletter, Matt Stoller tears these claims apart, and provides one of the clearest explanations of how Ticketmaster rips us all off that I've ever seen, leaning heavily on Ticketmaster's own statements to their investors and the business-press:

https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/antitrust-enforcers-to-break-up-ticketmaster

Ticketmaster has a complicated "flywheel" that it uses to corner the market on live events, mixing low-margin businesses that are deliberately kept unprofitable (to prevent competitors from gaining a foothold) in order to capture the high-margin businesses that are its real prize. All this complexity can make your eyes glaze over, and that's to Ticketmaster's benefit, keeping normies from looking too closely at how this bizarre self-licking ice-cream cone really works.

But for industry insiders, those workings are all too clear. When Rebecca Giblin and I were working on our book Chokepoint Capitalism, we talked to insiders from every corner of the entertainment-industrial complex, and there was always at least one expert who'd go on record about the scams inside everything from news monopolies to streaming video to publishing and the record industry:

https://chokepointcapitalism.com/

The sole exception was Ticketmaster/Live Nation. When we talked to club owners, promoters and other victims of TM's scam, they universally refused to go on the record. They were palpably terrified of retaliation from Ticketmaster's enforcers. They acted like mafia informants seeking witness protection. Not without reason, mind you: back when the TM monopoly was just getting started, Pearl Jam – then one of the most powerful acts in American music – took a stand against them. Ticketmaster destroyed them. That was when TM was a mere hatchling, with a bare fraction of the terrifying power it wields today.

TM is a great example of the problem with boycotts. If a club or an act refuses to work with TM/LN, they're destroyed. If a fan refuses to buy tickets from TM or see a Live Nation show, they basically can't go to any shows. The TM monopoly isn't a problem of bad individual choices – it's a systemic problem that needs a systemic response.

That's what makes antitrust responses so timely. Federal enforcers have wide-ranging powers, and can seek remedies that consumerism can never attain – there's no way a boycott could result in a breakup of Ticketmaster/Live Nation, but a DoJ lawsuit can absolutely get there.

Every federal agency has wide-ranging antimonopoly powers at its disposal. These are laid out very well in Tim Wu's 2020 White House Executive Order on competition, which identifies 72 ways the agencies can act against monopoly without having to wait for Congress:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/08/13/post-bork-era/#manne-down

But of course, the majority of antimonopoly power is vested in the FTC, the agency created to police corporate power. Section 5 of the FTC Act grants the agency the power to act to prevent "unfair and deceptive methods of competition":

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

This clause has lain largely dormant since the Reagan era, but FTC chair Lina Khan has revived it, using it to create muscular privacy rights for Americans, and to ban noncompete agreements that bind American workers to dead-end jobs:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/25/capri-v-tapestry/#aiming-at-dollars-not-men

The FTC's power to ban activity because it's "unfair and deceptive" is exciting, because it promises American internet users a way to solve their problems beyond copyright law. Copyright law is basically the only law that survived the digital transition, even as privacy, labor and consumer protection rights went into hibernation. The last time Congress gave us a federal consumer privacy law was 1988, and it's a law that bans video store clerks from telling the newspapers which VHS cassettes you rented:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_Privacy_Protection_Act

That's left internet users desperately trying to contort copyright to solve every problem they have – like someone trying to build a house using nothing but chainsaw. For example, I once found someone impersonating me on a dating site, luring strangers into private spaces. Alarmed, I contacted the dating site, who told me that their only fix for this was for me to file a copyright claim against the impersonator to make them remove the profile photo. Now, that photo was Creative Commons licensed, so any takedown notice would have been a "LOL, no." grade act of copyfraud:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/10/21/the-internets-original-sin/

The unsuitability of copyright for solving complex labor and privacy problems hasn't stopped people who experience these problems from trying to use copyright to solve them. They've got nothing else, after all.

That's why everyone who's worried about the absolutely legitimate and urgent concerns over AI and labor and privacy has latched onto copyright as the best tool for resolving these questions, despite copyright's total unsuitability for this purpose, and the strong likelihood that this will make these problems worse:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/05/13/spooky-action-at-a-close-up/#invisible-hand

Enter FTC Chair Lina Khan, who has just announced that her agency will be reviewing AI model training as an "unfair and deceptive method of competition":

https://thehill.com/policy/technology/4682461-ftc-chair-ai-models-could-violate-antitrust-laws/

If the agency can establish this fact, they will have sweeping powers to craft rules prohibiting the destructive and unfair uses of AI, without endangering beneficial activities like scraping, mathematical analysis, and the creation of automated systems that help with everything from adding archival metadata to exonerating wrongly convicted people rotting in prison:

https://hrdag.org/tech-notes/large-language-models-IPNO.html

I love this so much. Khan's announcement accomplishes the seemingly impossible: affirming that there are real problems and insisting that we employ tactics that can actually fix those problems, rather than just doing something because inaction is so frustrating.

That's something we could use a lot more of, especially in platform regulation. The other big tech news about Big Tech last week was the progress of a bill that would repeal Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act at the end of 2025, without any plans to replace it with something else.

Section 230 is the most maligned, least understood internet law, and that's saying something:

https://www.techdirt.com/2020/06/23/hello-youve-been-referred-here-because-youre-wrong-about-section-230-communications-decency-act/

Its critics wrongly accuse the law – which makes internet users liable for bad speech acts, not the platforms that carry that speech – of being a gift to Big Tech. That's totally wrong. Without Section 230, platforms could be named to lawsuits arising from their users' actions. We know how that would play out.

Back in 2018, Congress took a big chunk out of 230 when they passed SESTA/FOSTA, a law that makes platforms liable for any sex trafficking that is facilitated by their platforms. Now, this may sound like a narrowly targeted, beneficial law that aims at a deplorable, unconscionable crime. But here's how it played out: the platforms decided that it was too much trouble to distinguish sex trafficking from any sex-work, including consensual sex work and adjacent activities. The result? Consensual sex-work became infinitely more dangerous and precarious, while trafficking was largely unaffected:

https://www.gao.gov/assets/gao-21-385.pdf

Eliminating 230 would be incredibly reckless under any circumstances, but after the SESTA/FOSTA experience, it's unforgivable. The Big Tech platforms will greet this development by indiscriminately wiping out any kind of controversial speech from marginalized groups (think #MeToo or Black Lives Matter). Meanwhile, the rich and powerful will get a new tool – far more powerful than copyfraud – to make inconvenient speech disappear. The war-criminals, rapists, murderers and rip-off artists who currently make do with bogus copyright claims to "manage their reputations" will be able to use pretextual legal threats to make their critics just disappear:

https://www.qurium.org/forensics/dark-ops-undercovered-episode-i-eliminalia/

In a post-230 world, Cola Corporation's lawyers wouldn't get a chance to reply to the LAPD's bullying lawyers – those lawyers would send their letter to Cola's hosting provider, who would weigh the possibility of being named in a lawsuit against the small-dollar monthly payment they get from Cola, and poof, no more Cola. The legal bullies could do the same for Cola's email provider, their payment processor, their anti-DoS provider.

This week on EFF's Deeplinks blog, I published a piece making the connection between abolishing Section 230 and reinforcing Big Tech monopolies:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2024/05/wanna-make-big-tech-monopolies-even-worse-kill-section-230

The Big Tech platforms really do suck, and the solution to their systemic, persistent moderation failures won't come from making them liable for users' speech. The platforms have correctly assessed that they alone have the legal and moderation staff to do the kinds of mass-deletions of controversial speech that could survive a post-230 world. That's why tech billionaires like Mark Zuckerberg love the idea of getting rid of 230:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/03/facebooks-pitch-congress-section-230-me-not-thee

But for small tech providers – individuals, co-ops, nonprofits and startups that host fediverse servers, standalone group chats and BBSes – a post-230 world is a mass-extinction event. Ever had a friend demand that you take sides in an interpersonal dispute ("if you invite her to the party, I'm not coming!").

Imagine if your refusal to take sides in a dispute among your friends – and their friends, and their friends – could result in you being named to a suit that could cost hundreds of thousands of dollars to settle:

https://www.engine.is/news/primer/section230costs

It's one thing to hope for a more humane internet run by people who want to make hospitable forums for online communities to form. It's another to ask them to take on an uninsurable risk that could result in the loss of their home, their retirement account, and their life's savings.

A post-230 world is one in which Big Tech must delete first and ask questions later. Yes, Big Tech platforms have many sins to answer for, but making them jointly liable for their users' speech will flush out treasure-hunters seeking a quick settlement and a quick buck.

Again, this isn't speculative – it's inevitable. Consider FTX: yes, the disgraced cryptocurrency exchange was a festering hive of fraud – but there's no way that fraud added up to the 23.6 quintillion dollars in claims that have been laid against it:

https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/US-v-SBF-Alameda-Research-Victim-Impact-Statement-3-20-2024.pdf

Without 230, Big Tech will shut down anything controversial – and small tech will disappear. It's the worst of all possible worlds, a gift to tech monopolists and the bullies and crooks who have turned our online communities into shooting galleries.

One of the reasons I love working for EFF is our ability to propose technologically informed, sound policy solutions to the very real problems that tech creates, such as our work on interoperability as a way to make it easier for users to escape Big Tech:

https://www.eff.org/interoperablefacebook

Every year, EFF recognizes the best, bravest and brightest contributors to a better internet and a better technological future, with our annual EFF Awards. Nominations just opened for this year's awards – if you know someone who fits the bill, here's the form:

https://www.eff.org/nominations-open-2024-eff-awards

It's nearly time for me to sign off on this weekend's linkdump. For one thing, I have to vacate my backyard hammock, because we've got contractors who need to access the side of the house to install our brand new heat-pump (one of two things I'm purchasing with my last lump-sum book advance – the other is corrective cataract surgery that will give me lifelong, perfect vision).

I've been lusting after a heat-pump for years, and they just keep getting better – though you might not know it, thanks to the fossil-fuel industry disinfo campaign that insists that these unbelievably cool gadgets don't work. This week in Wired, Matt Simon offers a comprehensive debunking of this nonsense, and on the way, explains the nearly magical technology that allows a heat pump to heat a midwestern home in the dead of winter:

https://www.wired.com/story/myth-heat-pumps-cold-weather-freezing-subzero/

As heat pumps become more common, their applications will continue to proliferate. On Bloomberg, Feargus O'Sullivan describes one such application: the Japanese yokushitsu kansouki – a sealed bathroom with its own heat-pump that can perfectly dry all your clothes while you're out at work:

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-05-22/laundry-lessons-from-japanese-bathroom-technology

This is amazing stuff – it uses less energy than a clothes-dryer, leaves your clothes wrinkle-free, prevents the rapid deterioration caused by high heat and mechanical agitation, and prevents the microfiber pollution that lowers our air-quality.

This is the most solarpunk thing I've read all week, and it makes me insanely jealous of Japanese people. The second-most solarpunk thing I've read this week came from The New Republic, where Aaron Regunberg and Donald Braman discuss the possibility of using civil asset forfeiture laws – lately expanded to farcical levels by the Supreme Court in Culley – to force the fossil fuel industry to pay for the energy transition:

https://newrepublic.com/article/181721/fossil-fuels-civil-forefeiture-pipeline-climate

They point out that the fossil fuel industry has committed a string of undisputed crimes, including fraud, and that the Supremes' new standard for asset forfeiture could comfortably accommodate state AGs and other enforcers who seek billions from Big Oil on this basis. Of course, Big Oil has more resources to fight civil asset forfeiture than the median disputant in these cases ("a low- or moderate-income person of color [with] a suspected connection to drugs"). But it's an exciting idea!

All right, the heat-pump guys really need me to vacate the hammock, so here's one last quickie for you: Barath Raghavan and Bruce Schneier's new paper, "Seeing Like a Data Structure":

https://www.belfercenter.org/publication/seeing-data-structure

This is a masterful riff on James C Scott's classic Seeing Like a State, and it describes how digitalization forces us into computable categories, and counts the real costs of doing so. It's a gnarly and thoughtful piece, and it's been on my mind continuously since Schneier sent it to me yesterday. Something suitably chewy for you to masticate over the long weekend!

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

https://pluralistic.net/2024/05/25/anthology/#lol-no

[kezzanza]

What type of boyfriend do you think jude would be?

A/N: first of all, i literally love this ask bc i think of this every 5 business days so thanks for making me put it in writing :)

Jude seems like the guy that would pick you up in a million dollar car, take you to your favorite high-end restaurant and ask you to be his with delicate chocolate lettering on a dessert.

But that's not really him.

The day he asks you to be exclusive, he calls you over to his place under the guise of helping him learn to cook. You both make a mess in his kitchen as you attempt to make your favorite meal—at his request, of course. You're laughing at the sauce all over his apron when he looks over at you—undeniable fondness in his eyes. It's not words written by a chef or spelled out in balloons when he asks. It's Jude's hands cradling your face, his voice softly saying your name and asking: "will you be mine?"

He kisses you when you say yes and you feel like crying—the tender moment scraping your heart raw. Your relationship starts with tears and somehow, that aspect never leaves.

Mostly, it's happy tears. You tear up whenever you watch Jude lift up a trophy, knowing how much hard work he put in. You tear up when he brings you to award ceremonies, his blinding smile meeting yours from the stage.

Sometimes, it’s simply tears of sadness. You fight over Instagram likes, tabloid headlines and models in his DMs. The argument only ending once you started crying, Jude stopping mid sentence to embrace you in his arms.

He hates seeing you cry, especially when it's because of him.

It takes a few weeks, but not you had both grown past that—Jude keeping his likes and follows clean, you doing your part to ignore the media.

Still, even now when you knew it was all fake, you hated seeing articles with Jude and random pretty faces paired off with him. But the media's presence in Jude's life is just one of those things you had accepted.

There are other things about Jude that you came to terms with. His competitiveness would always mix into your relationship in the form of jealousy. He wouldn't get angry but he hated the way men would drag their eyes all over you. You always assured Jude there's no man you wanted how deeply and intensely you wanted him. On nights he was particularly tense, you would laugh and tell him women were doing the same to him—just more subtly.

That would only make him frustrated, which was what you wanted, because it made Jude fiery. Passionate. He made love like he played football, which is to say with intensity, stamina, and unyielding focus. Every touch deliberate. Every movement full of energy. Leaving you breathless and exhilarated, as if you were in the final moments of a thrilling game.

Jude is charming, talented and good looking, but that was just the surface. In reality, he is one of the most complex people you know.

He wears thousand dollar designer but nothing made him happier than your homemade gifts—the pottery you made for your six month anniversary, the scarf you knitted for his birthday, the scrapbook you put together just cause. His attention to detail when it comes to you is second to none. You told him your favorite flower once months ago, now your shared apartment never lacks the pretty petals.

But the thing about him that never fails to amaze you is how much love he has to give to the world. A young fan would never be denied a signature. A grandma would always get a kiss on the cheek. No matter how busy or tired he was, he always made time for others.

There's nobody that knew this more than you.

When he is traveling between cities or stuck in traffic, he calls just to hear your voice. On rare free weekends, he whisks you away to charming little towns and quiet villas.

You ask him once, "Me or football?", and your voice is more sincere than the humorous tone you intended.

Jude looks at you with eyes dripping honey and says, "You, always you. The game is my passion, but you're my heart and my everything."

[aryas-faces]

House of the Dragon Review

The Good:

- Aegon and Tom Glynn Carney. Aegon is the one compelling character this season, and his arc is great. He tries to be a good King but can’t protect his son. He tries to get Alicent’s love, but can’t no matter what. He tries to save his people but he gets destroyed in the process. He trusts his brother who betrays him. And Tom acts with his whole heart and soul. They’re truly the only good this season and the only reason I’ll keep watching

- Larys, Matthew Needham, and his relationship with Aegon. Just *chef’s kiss* The best relationship on the show. So much manipulation but genuine growing fondness too. Can’t wait to see Tom and Matthew inevitably do press for season 3 together and talk about the relationship in depth

- Ramin’s score. He is the only thing that’s consistent through GOT and HotD

The Meh:

- Rhys Ifans is a great Otto, but they criminally underutilized them

- Rook’s Rest was an amazing episode but they still had Rhaenyra be the hero by giving her a “divine” reason to go to war

- Episode 1 also was meh because Blood and Cheese being botched ruined what would otherwise be a great episode

- Ep 2 is similar to Ep 1. LOVED the Green scenes and the Twin scene, but they had Rhaenyra feel bad about what happened which is SO out of character. I also don’t like the propaganda angle they took with Blood and Cheese with Otto

- Aemond becoming his book self was great, but it was done rushed and sloppily. They underutilized both Aemond and Ewan

- Phia and Helaena are also great but again, criminally underutilized

- Olivia is a fantastic actress, despite what they did to Alicent

- The Dragon seeds being burnt by Vermithor would be in the Good if they didn’t try to brush it off and still claim Rhaenyra’s innocent

- Daenon and Alys scenes were either incredible or a total snooze fest. No inbetween. They were repetitive and not all the Daemon haunted scenes were necessary. Matt and Gayle are great though

- Criston and Fabien are underutilized, especially post Rook’s Rest

The Bad:

- What they did to Alicent. It is unforgivable. They threw her character away in favor of Rhaenyra. They can’t stand the thought that a woman doesn’t worship Rhaenyra

- Everything with Team Black. This is not hyperbole. The scenes were dull, designed to sanitize them so they are the Good guys and destroy them in the process. The actors, I’m sorry to say, are not on the level of the Green actors. Even the better Black actors (Emma and Steve) have stiff moments through the season

- Sexual humiliation and degradation of the Greens. This isn’t the place to get into it, but people have talked about it elsewhere

- Sanitizing Rhaenyra still, even after episode 7 and trying to make her a hero

- Sanitizing Viserys. The man raped Alicent and abused his children that weren’t Rhaenyra. Why are the Greens holding him in high regard?

Overall, I’d say a 5/10. All it took was the show having Black centered episodes to descend into GOT season 8 levels, since the Green episodes are SIGNIFICANTLY better

[cherriteaa]

MITSUYA X HIS RUNWAY QUEEN

Mitsuya x Black fem reader

A/n: This was requested!! It was part of a 2 person request so I'll reply to the actual request when I do Smiley's

SPOILED. YOU WILL BE TOTALLY SPOILEDDD BY HIM GOOD GOD.

I'm talking handwritten love notes, handmade plushies and outfits, jewelry, making sure at LEAST ur nails are always done, flowers, everythinggg.

He seems to me definitely the gift giver romantic kind of guy. Esp if you're just as stylish as him. Even when yall are younger, and he hasn't gotten his big designer paycheck yet, he's still finding ways to spoil you. Including learning how to do nails. And he can do ANYTHINGGG you want. French tips, painted designs, charms, different shapes, dip, acrylic, rhinestones, ANYTHING. That man is a master at nail art. And he's starting to get really good with doing your hair. He makes a big thing of it, going to the store the day prior to hair day to get the cut fruit for you and everything. He's SO cute. He's already getting used to doing Mana and Luna's hair, so he's got the patience for it.

Always sends goodmorning/goodnight/checkin texts. He's the easiest communicator ever. I feel like if you guys ever do have arguments, they're shortlived. He's great at getting to the heart of the issue calmly and without using damaging/hurtful words.

He's another cuddly guy. Loves inviting you over afterschool to cuddle and just spend quiet time with eachother before he has to get up again to make sure his sisters are taken care of ect. If you stay over, he's more than grateful if you help him out. Be it with dinner, or with the girls. It takes a huge load off his shoulders. During these times, he likes to come up behind you and wrap his arms around your waist, resting his cheek against you. Something about you just helping out with / being around his family brings a domestic feel that he adores

He love love LOVES to have you wear his stuff. His clothes, things he's designed, his jewelry, anything. He thinks you look sooo cute

Romantic dates as much as he can manage. He's one of those 'if he wanted to, he would' guys. Not every romantic date has to be expensive. He finds all kinds of new and cute ideas for dates. He likes to keep the relationship interesting, and more importantly, keep you feeling like his princess.

He's never afraid to let people know you're dating. He'll invite you to toman meetings, and he isn't afraid to hold your hand or kiss in public. As far as it isnt anything too steamy, he's totally fine with it

HE'S A COOOOK. That man can definitely cook, and he has a bunch of recipes in his arsenal to keep Mana and Luna from getting bored of foods. He likes to show off and pretend to be some celebrity chef in the kitchen after inviting you over for a meal or something.

He likes to tease a little. All in good nature. He isnt the type of guy to poke at insecurities though. More like screenshotting typos you made, and making fun of long gone slightly embarrassing events like you tripping or something. He never means to make you feel bad, just to get a giggle or two. He's the type of boyfriend who will need his girlfriend to keep him in check sometimes. Not that he's out there starting random arguments, but in the sense that he'll start to overwork himself, and he'll get burnt out if you don't say something. And he'll be really grateful if you do.

Mitsuya is the type of guy to do promise rings, and then melt down the material your ring was made out of to infuse into your wedding band. He'll talk about you with his last name, and he's very open to talking about the future with you. He's one of the best types of guys to have around. He'll never leave you behind, and he'll gently push you just enough when you start slacking on your goals. Not only that, but he's the kind of guy who'll notice you're overworking you're stressed before you notice yourself. He's 10000% husband material, and the best thing about being in a relationship with him is that you both encourage eachother to grow and better yourselves together.

A/n: Requested Mitsuya Hc's! I hope they're to your liking <33

Reblogs, Requests and Comments are appreciated!!

My requests are : Open!

[late-draft]

Hello! I just saw your posts about the Last Air Keyholder AU and—dear Agni!

Listen, this is beautiful. This is awestriking. This is *chef kiss*. I've always loved the initial sci-fi designs for ATLA, so it's incredible that someone's using them as a base/inspiration for an AU.

Also—your unapologetic, deliberate use of tropes? This is something extremely rare to see in narrative (tropes being intentionally used as a device) and I can't wait to see what shape they take here. Count me in!

I love this AU so far and have so many questions!

What is the vibe for the Fire Nation here? The vibe for the cities, the architecture, the worldbuilding, the culture—things like that. From the brief description we got, some parts of your world reminded me of Neo Tokyo from Akira, but maybe that's not what you're going for.

According to your previous sketch (and my inner romantic); is ZK going to happen in this AU? How do you see a possible relationship between them developing here?

Are you planning on adapting major canon plot points moving forward?

I have, like I said earlier, a lot of questions about this! But I don't want to smother you so this is all I'll ask for now. Can't wait to see what you show us next.

Have a nice day!

Hello! Thank you!! Yess a good usage of tropes is like running into a song you love that you heard many times, and still you crank the volume up! The fandom is like 20 years old, is it possible that not much stuff has been made for the sci-fi idea?

You're absolutely right, I gotta lean onto the king of megacities Neo Tokyo from Akira, but I wouldn't have the aesthetic be completely identical to it. There's mystical aspects in this AU too, and here's my initial attempt to throw together a fast vertical slice.

Light conditions are really important in a setting and in this AU I'd have a lot of the runtime happening during dawn or sunset. There's an aura of orange light floating in but very rarely direct sun rays due to the high buildings. There should however, be lots of traffic lights of all kinds. I'm already immersed in quite a few projects that feature megacities, but each one has a different flavour and I'd be overjoyed if I manage to correctly convey each one. In this ATLA AU, there's no specific time period from IRL that would be used as a reference. All nations are grouped and mixed similar to Republic City from LoK, but this AU is noticeably way more sci-fi than the 1920s LoK. There's a large focus on all kinds of transportation and roads/railways that accompany them. Highrise buildings are specifically Fire Nation in design and ownership (usually). Lower levels have a mix of everything but they do use leftover materials and mostly cement and metal. Ground and below ground levels are brick and a maze of pipes, through which strange disused cables snake. Sometimes they tangle in great masses…

I'm certain important characters from canon will appear, but I'm definitely not gonna follow the canon plotline strictly. Stuff like "Well there was a village being attacked by Hei Bai, so this AU has to have a village being attacked by Hei Bai…" nothing like that. I'm taking way more freedom in this AU to ensure that characters go through specific things that would be very useful to them and which allow the natural usage of respectively fitting tropes. But I'm not treating this AU as exclusively mine and nobody else's, so anyone can give suggestions! (please give suggestions!!)

Katara and Zuko first meet "racing on the opposite sides" of Aang. From starting out as Katara on her bike assisting the Avatar during chases while the banished prince is attempting to capture him, they sort of move into situations where they race each other. Zuko figures out that Katara is a major reason why all of his attempts thus far failed so he tries to change strategies and trip up Katara in whatever non-harmful way he can imagine. He's convinced, he must demonstrate, that her speed on a bike is not unreachable to him on his rollerblades. And if he shows off a couple of tricks along the way, so be it. :)

More stuff coming up

[dreadpirateella]

uhhhh so I couldn't wait and finished The Neon Void... AND I HAVE THOUGHTS

putting a cut here bc this is gonna be loooong

and spoilers for all of Neon Void ofc

Dude ok just the writing in this?? This fic is SO well written like omg. All of the action scenes come across SO well, and as someone who can't write a fight scene to save my life, I just really appreciate that. Everything is so easy to follow.

AND THE DIALOGUE???? SO perfect omg. Everything felt so in character like this could be a whole season of the show. The way Leo's hysteria is written is just so crazy and so incredible. Like it's so clear that he's losing his mind but also so clear that he's still Leo. I'm just in love with it

and the looming threat of the Krang parasite?? Such a good like consistent villain. You can never go too long without remembering its presence and realizing what a massive threat it is!

The miscommunication between Leo and everyone else about what he plans to do with the key is also just incredible. The way they thought he was so far gone as to use it to release the Krang? That's just so heartbreaking.

AND THE REVEAL???? I just need to talk about it like genuinely it's SO well done. It feels a little out of nowhere (/pos!!!) and I really think it works bc it just totally catches everyone by surprise. Leo not even realizing that he's exposed until a few seconds pass it just perfect. Wondering why his entire family is staring at him like that and then realizing that they know is just *chefs kiss*

I LOVE everyone's anger when Void messed with Leo's stuff. Him stealing Donnie's bracelet and messing up his room, like you can feel the anger from the rest of the family and it's SO good.

also side note??? Mikey cutting Leo's arm off??? freaking awesome I LOVE when Mikey gets to go crazy

The emotions in this fic are just SO palpable. Like I felt the grief and heartache and confusion and anger radiating off of these characters through my screen. Every chapter is just so soaked with emotion it's freaking incredible. The writing in this fic is just phenomenal.

The brother's ninpo calming down and comforting Leo is also just such a good little repeated detail. Leo finally being able to contact his ancestors because he's back with his family once again is just SO good and so sweet. Karai is the most comforting presence known to man 😭

AND FUTURE LEO AT THE END???? was NOT expecting that I love it so dang much. Everyone in Leo's little mindscape journey at the end just yelling at him to go back to his family is just so so so sweet to read. And Leo's decision when he destroyed the key to stay with his family was just so beautiful. It just felt so right.

And everyone's reactions to every situation just feel so natural!!! I was reading it and something would happen and I'd be like of course that's how they'd respond to that! All of the Hamatos having that realization hit them that yes this is Leo and yes he's actually here is just so bittersweet to read. Knowing they grieved for FIVE years and now here he is right in front of them. It's just so emotional

I'm definitely gonna have more thoughts about this as more time passes so maybe expect more rambles?? and maybe some fanart too!!! Void's design is just too cool not to draw.

This fic sent me on a roller-coaster of emotions and I couldn't be more thankful for it. Thank you SO MUCH @sugarpasteltmnt for writing and sharing this incredible piece of art with all of us. You're incredible.

TLDR: I'm in love with this fic please go read it I'm gonna think about it for the rest of my life

[thought--bubble]

Breakin You In

Will (Salad Days ) X (Rich Girl Reader)

Warnings After The Cut

Will Masterlist

Full Masterlist

Banners by @arcielee

A/N: This was purely self-indulgent. I absolutely LOVE Will. Everything about him is chefs kiss so I legit imagined this scenario (Might need therapy IDK) so I thought I would share some of my crazy.

Warnings:: Smut, Virginity loss, Drinking, corruption kink, praise.

You are a good girl. That's what your friends called you. It's what your parents boasted about you, how your older brother teased you. A good girl. Great student, great grades comes from a great two parent household with a daughter son and a family dog. All the perfect ingredients for you to grow up into some successful adult and achieve all the things your parents have planned for you.

But at 18 freshly graduated with one last summer before uni you were ready to rebel and you knew exactly how you wanted to do it. Your friends all came from the same area. A well off nice area just outside of Derby filled with nice homes with nice cars in the driveways, but when they wanted a little fun they knew where to find the real parties, the parties where everyone went wild happened down in Derby proper.

The kids down there might be broke, come from broken homes or bad situations but one thing they did know was how to have fun and your friends loved to venture down there, and as long as they showed up with a wallet full of cash they were welcomed with open arms.

You had joined them on a few of these excursions before. Usually the designated driver. It was your responsibility to make sure all of your friends made it home and did so in one piece. Which you always did. because you, you are a good girl.

But tonight, tonight was going to be different. Tonight was the night you were going to catch his eye instead of being the invisible observer. All those times you had gone to these parties sipped on water and watched everyone have fun there was one person in particular you always kept your eyes on.

And that someone was named Will. He was handsome, as gorgeous as he was tall, with ocean blue eyes, shaggy blonde hair and a swagger that had you swoon, and every time you went to these outings, a different girl on his arm. sometimes it would be someone you knew, other times someone you didn't recognize, but never the same person and always someone dressed up and clearly looking for fun, and the worst part? Never you.

You, usually in a jumper and jeans hair down with a beanie on have never so much as caught him glancing at you, which is something you were determined to change tonight.

Your best friend Ashley is the assigned designated driver tonight and is fully aware of your plan. She was shocked at first but then decided she wanted to help. So she came to your house early with some clothing options for you to look through.

"you sure this doesn't look absolutely ridiculous?" you ask while checking yourself out in the mirror.

You are wearing Ashley's skin tight black mini dress. You aren't as curvy as Ashley but you had some feminine curves and this dress was definitely built specifically to show them off.

"You look like a snack" she winks at you. "but we have to do something about the shoes you can't wear runners"

"I know, I went out and bought two pairs of shoes today because i knew I wouldn't fit into any of yours" You hold up a pair of chunky Mary Janes and a pair of Chunky healed ankle boots.

"I was hoping for..... something a little more pointy.... but the boots should suffice" Ashley grabs the boots from your hand turning them over "Yeah, these are actually pretty cute"

"You got the stockings?" Ashley asks while wiggling her eyebrows.

"Yes I just don't understand how exactly these are supposed to stay up on my legs?" you hold the sheer black thigh high stockings you had bought at the store today as Ashley had suggested.

"You snap them into this" She holds up a black silky garter belt and you swallow.

"Right, obviously," you chuckle nervously as you take the belt and buckle it into place under the dress and over the small black lace thong you also purchased today.

"Ok" you release a deep sigh and shake your limbs. "Let's go"

The entire ride down to the city, you are wracked with a mixture of nervous and excited energy your leg bouncing in the passengers seat.

"Calm yourself," Ashley rubs your knee. "You look incredible.... if he don't go after ya he's blind"

She pulls up down the street from the dingy old flat, and you can already hear the music playing as you step out of the car.

Ashley holds your hand, your other friends Sasha and Katheryn trailing behind.

"time for your entrance" Ashley teases.

"What do i do?" you ask as she laughs.

"You just walk in the look will do all the heavy lifting"

There are a few people hanging out front smoking cigarettes, they briefly nod as you and your friends pass.

Then you walk in, the air is hot and the smell of alcohol fills the room. People are laughing a few dancing a couple or two kissing on the couch or against the wall.

You squeeze Ashley's hand tightly. "Lets just get you a drink yeah?" she drags you through the crowded room as your eyes flit about looking for him, and you find him easily enough. Sitting with his friends a whiskey in hand laughing about something or other. No girl on his arm. Not yet, it's still early. Not that you would let that stop you tonight.

you reach the kitchen table that is set up with some plastic cups and random bottles of booze. A cup in the middle of the table stuffed with cash. Its known if you're one of the rich kids you are expected to put some money in this cup when you come.

You take out some cash and jam it into the cup.

"Awe the pretty ones don't have to pay" You turn to see one of Will's close friends Tom smiling at you. You know he is one of his closest friends because they always stand around together before will finds his girl of the night.

"That's ok I don't mind" you smile at him as Ashley pours you a drink.

"You been out here before? Don't think i've seen ya" he questions as he moves slightly closer.

"Been here a few times yeah" You take the drink from Ashley.

"Obviously she's been her before ya knob" Will interrupts putting his hand on Tom's shoulder "Just usually aint drinkin" he gives you a sly smile as he leans over the table taking the whiskey bottle towards him to refill his cup.

You blush hard the corners of your mouth raising even though you are desperate to play it cool.

Tom catches this and rolls his eyes. "That would be the way of it"

You look at him confused while Will just chuckles.

Ashley leans into you whispering into your ear "I'll be in the main room by the door if you need me"

You look at her bewildered this is exactly what you wanted but now that you are about to be left alone with him you have gone into full panic mode.

"So what's changed then?" He asks as Ashley passes by him making her way from the area.

"W-w-what?"

"well, your drinkin" he motions to the cup in your hand. "You've.... changed your style up a bit" he raises his eyebrows and smirks. "so.... what's changed?"

"I... Ummm " you can't think of anything to respond to that with that wouldn't sound stupid, but begin to panic when you realize that stuttering also sounds stupid.

He chuckles and walks closer to you cup in hand. "Why's the quiet good girl dressed up like a bad girl tonight?.... you got plans? Something...." he moves right up next to you and whispers "New you wanna try?"

You feel a chill run down your spine. "C'mere i'll show ya how to have fun" his hand slides into yours and he winks and pulls you toward the roar of the party, and just like that for tonight you're the girl his arm is around while he's laughing with his friends. You're the girl sitting on his lap while he plays cards, a cigarette hanging out of his mouth.

Finally it's you, and you are eating up every moment, as he stands in a circle with his friends, his arms around your midsection his head resting on your shoulder you feel satisfied. The alcohol coursing through your veins and his breath on your neck as he talks and laughs. The sporadic kisses he places on your neck and shoulder in between talking. Everything about this night has been perfect.

"Hey" he whispers rubbing his nose against the shell of your ear. "Come upstairs with me" Your eyes go wide and your stomach flips. You're filled with nerves but, these are the best kind of nerves so you nod your head and he smiles.

He wraps his arm around your shoulder pulling you from the group as they continue talking Tom shooting will a knowing glance. Will doesn't acknowledge this look, keeping his gaze locked on you.

He takes your hand and gently guides you upstairs as Ashley watches you go from her place leaning against the wall in the main room. A small smile on her face accompanied by a look of shock.

She didn't think you would actually do it and honestly you really didn't think you would either but here you are your hand in his as he leads you up the stairs of this dingy place, of whom you don't even know who the owner is but you follow him anyway. You follow him with a smile on your face and a chest burning with anticipation. Any thoughts of turning around and going back downstairs vanish when he turns around and gives you that smile. The smile you have dreamed about, the smile you thought could never be yours but for tonight, just for tonight, that smile is for you and you will hold on to it for as long as the night allows.

When you reach the landing your legs start to shake and he chuckles as he brings you into a nearby bedroom and closes the door.

"i've got the good girl upstairs all by herself..... what am I to do now?" he smiles as he walks closer to you. You swallow, your eyes are wide and your body is trembling and you want him to do whatever it is he wants.

he wraps one arm around your back and pulls you to him sliding his other hand up the back of your neck and into the base of your hair.

"What are you thinkin sweetheart?" he asks as he gently rubs his nose against your cheek. You breath in sharply at a complete loss for words.

"I.. I... ummm" your cheeks flush red with embarrassment, "I've ummm... never done this before"

He chuckles as he guides you towards the bed walking you backwards.

" I guess i'm breakin you in then, aren't i darlin?" He lays you back on the bed and clicks his tongue.

"Such a good girl.... and i've got you all to myself"

He crawls on top of you grabbing one of your thighs and pulling it up to his hip as he brings his lips down on yours in a gentle sweet kiss.

You smile into the kiss and he pushes himself against you. "Never thought I would get you up here" he whispers.

"Never thought you even saw me" you say as you lean up to kiss him again but he pulls back.

"Course i saw you. All beautiful standing there alone." he kisses you slow and sensually the soft click of your mouths the only noise in the room. "Thought to myself, that girl is out of my league. Too smart, Too pretty, too ... good" He kisses you again pressing his body up against you with more pressure.

You grip the back of his neck pressing your lips harshly to his. he pulls back slightly and chuckles. "But if you're looking to be bad tonight.... then i'm your man"

he slides his hand down between your legs pushing your thong to the side and you shiver. as he starts to gently and slowly rub your pearl you moan quietly.

"That's a good girl" he whispers as he nibbles your cheek. He slides a finger into you while rubbing your pearl with his thumb. "So very good" he breathes heavily while you arch your back. The intense pleasure washes over you like a tidal wave. He slides a second finger in and speeds up his pace.

"Please, Please" You don't even know what you are asking for but whatever it is you know you want it and that he can give it to you.

"Oh don't worry darlin, i got you" He quickens his pace again his other hand under your back steadying you and you ride out the sensation.

"Oh, holy - ahh" You open your eyes wide and gasp and you are absolutely rocked by an explosion of pleasure unlike any other you have ever provided to yourself.

he looks down at you will a smile and a chuckle. "Mmmmm.. still such a good girl" he takes out a condom and quickly gets it on positioning himself between your thighs.

"Hold onto me, I promise i'll take it slow" in a daze you nod and grab onto his shoulders as he pushes into your core. it feels like a lot of pressure not exactly pleasurable but not painful.

he growls and bites his bottom lip "fuccccck ..... That's fucking magnificent"

he pushes in slowly until your hips are pressed together. He bites gently at your neck "You ok?"

"Yeah" you struggle to get the words out ass the discomfort starts to fade being replaced with a feeing of fullness.

He starts to move in and out gently. "this o-o-ok?" he says between labored breaths.

"Yes" you sigh the fullness making way for a pleasurable feeling, that feeling building with each gentle buck of his hips.

"So good.. You are so fucking good." he nibbles at the tip of your ear as his pace becomes more regular and his breathing heavier.

"Your so good" you moan back at him.

"No i'm not, but i'll steal something good even if it's just for the night" he pistons his hips into you gradually getting faster and faster. That feeling from before building in your stomach once again.

That feeling builds and builds as he moves faster and faster holding your hips tightly. "give me one more. One more to remember" he demands as his hips slam into yours with purpose. "Be my good girl"

Your legs tense around him like a vice holding him in place, as your eyes roll back in your head a feeling of Euphoria and endorphins flowing into every crevice of your being.

"Good girl.." he grunts and slams into you harder gripping you tight "Good fucking girl!". His thrusts get sloppy and desperate. "Fuck! So fucking....." he grunts loudly and then stills dropping his head onto your chest. he keeps his eyes closed head down but runs his fingers along your cheeks.

"You're so good" He whispers barely loud enough for you to hear it. The two of you lay there for what feels like hours but must have only been about 20 minutes. You make your way back downstairs on unsteady legs.

"Oh the classic walk of shame" Ashley muses as she watches you descend. You give her an annoyed look and the middle finger as you hear Will chuckle from behind you.

"You ready to go?" Ashley asks

"Yeah in just a couple minutes" you respond pushing some hair behind your ear. Ashley nods and walks off no doubt to find Sasha and Katheryn Sasha and Katheryn. Will takes your hand and walks you outside lighting a cigarette.

"You're off to some fancy university in Autumn aren't ya?" he asks looking unbothered as he flicks his cigarette.

"Imperial College" You smile at him as he looks away.

"Makes sense" he nods gently.

Ashley and the girls come out heading toward the car Ashley waving you over.

Before you go to her you place one last kiss on his lips and smile. then walk off to join Ashley and the girls. Will stands there just watching you walk away smoking his cigarette in thought.

"another one to add to the list then?" Tom joins him in his cigarette while nudging his shoulder.

"Nah mate she's far too good for the list" Will says voice low and serious.

"You'll see her again then?" Tom says slightly shocked.

"Nah, i'm not quite good enough for that" he looks away. "I'm gonna call it a night mate" Tom nods at Will as he leaves and starts his walk home.

In the car on your way back home Sasha and Katheryn are in the back seat drunk and giggling. Ashley turns and grabs your knee giving it a little shake.

"You can finally drop that good girl title huh?" she laughs

You stare out the window hair a mess and still in a daze.

"Nah..... I'm still a good girl"

To be added to taglist click here

[nyarlathotep-thecrawlingchaos]

as much as i love buggy, i’m gonna request sanji for the fluffy alphabet!

let’s go foooor… C, D, N, U, and Y please! (my goldfish brain forgot if you said five at the most lol)

i love your work sm and i really wish you all the best!

Yay flirty chef!! Most of the requests for the Fluffabet have been Mihawk so far, which I am NOT COMPLAINING ABOUT I love him a very abnormal amount; but Sanji is just so precious and writing for him just

*melts into a silly giggling puddle*

Aaaaanyway. I very much want to thank you for requesting the letter U, I've kind of been looking forward to it, since it gives me creative freedom to brainstorm further and deeper into the characters and their quirks/psychologies, and I always love doing that.

Thank you for the request, and I hope you enjoy!!!

Also feel free to come back and make requests for Buggy, as I've gotten none for him yet at all. Sad clown noises.

Also also, since someone else asked, requests for the Fluffy Alphabet will remain open until all letters are claimed for all characters; and I'll still accept requests for other characters I haven't listed if I feel I can write them and do them justice, I just listed the ones I did because they're the ones I've written the most. Until I state on my Masterpost that requests are closed, they are very much open!!

C is for Courtship (How would they court you?)

“The heavens must be dull these days with their most beautiful goddess stuck down here.”

Firmly believes it was love at first sight, and Sanji is absolutely determined to win you over. As much as he wants to pull you in by your hands, wrap his arms around you, and tell you he’s loved you since the moment he first laid eyes on you; he also doesn’t want to overstep any boundaries and risk blowing his chances.

Flirty, flirty, flirty. He can’t help it, it's just what he does—but he’s respectful about it, dropping silly little lines designed to make you giggle, hopefully make you blush a little. Beyond that, though, he’s going to make every effort possible to legitimately get to know you; your likes and dislikes, your goals, your dreams, everything, wanting to ensure that you know he’s interested in you for more than just being a pretty face that happened to catch his eye.

If you flirt back, you’re never going to be able to get rid of him, he’s your responsibility now, basically a lost puppy that followed you home, end of story.

He’s bent on impressing you, so your first date he’s going to insist on cooking for you, just the two of you—meeting you with a bouquet of your favorite flowers (he made sure to ask in passing about your favorites at some point beforehand), with a light kiss on the cheek and a soft touch at your waist.

D is for Domestic (Do they want to settle down? How are they at cooking and cleaning and other such household chores?)

“No, no, you sit down and relax, I can handle this, love. Really.”

Settling down with you would be a dream come true. He does have his dream of finding the All Blue, but if you’re willing to come with him on that adventure, then the journey there would be just as much of a dream to him as the destination itself.

It doesn’t take him very long at all to decide that he wants to spend the rest of his life with you, and he’ll do anything to make that happen.

He’s quite cleanly and organized in general—having spent the better part of his formative years working in a professional kitchen, it’s become a force of habit. If something needs to be cleaned, to be tidied up or organized, he’s going to do so automatically, without even really thinking about it. He would much rather just see you relaxing, will probably protest a bit about you “doing too much” if you lift a finger to so much as sweep a floor.

You already know that cooking is handled. Cooking, kitchen maintenance in general. That goes without saying. Even if you enjoy cooking as well and you want to cook with him (absolute bonus, he loves cooking with you), he’s going to be right behind you wiping down the counters, washing and drying all the dishes as you go before you even have a chance to drop them in the sink.

N is for Needs (What do they need in a healthy relationship?)

“I don’t know how I ever survived without you in my life, sweetheart.”

Sanji can be a bit on the needy side. It isn’t that he lacks confidence, or that he absolutely requires constant reassurance—he just adores you, and wants to spend every minute possible with you, making sure that you know how precious you are to him.

If you’re near him, he needs to be touching you in some capacity. Whether it’s subtle, his hand resting at the small of your back while he stands next to you, or his arm curled around you and touching your waist; or if he’s pulling you back against him, arms around your waist or hands at your hips, resting his chin at your shoulder and pressing a kiss to your cheek, he always wants to be close to you.

Constantly telling you how much he loves you, showering you with praise for every little thing you do. If it gets to be too overwhelming he will back off—but you’re still going to catch him out of the corner of your vision with his own eyes glued to you, smiling and sighing as if you’re the single most incredible thing he’s ever laid eyes on.

That being said, if you argue about anything at all, he’ll be an absolute wreck, apologizing incessantly and begging your forgiveness; and he might need a fair amount of reassurance after the fact that you aren’t upset anymore. He can’t stomach the thought of upsetting you, because losing you would utterly devastate him.

U is for Unique (What’s something unique about them that no one knows but you?)

“It’s fine, just couldn’t sleep. Thought I’d get a head start on breakfast. You can go back to bed.”

Cooking is of course his passion—but it can, and sometimes does, double as a coping mechanism. He has a deeply troubled past, and every so often it might plague him in the form of nightmares.

In which case you’ll often  wake up to find his side of the bed empty; to find him in the kitchen in the wee hours of the night or morning, while everyone else is asleep, either prepping meals for the day or experimenting with new recipes to set his mind at ease.

He’s happy to accept if you offer to help, or if you just decide to sit up with him and offer your company. He’ll probably try to convince you to go back to bed, that there’s no need for you to lose sleep, but he’s not going to turn you down if you insist. It’s a gamble whether or not he’ll talk with you about what’s bothering him, or if he’ll keep a bit more quiet than usual while he immerses himself in his work. Either way, he appreciates your presence and your support more than you could ever know.

The menial, repetitive task of preparing ingredients in particular offers a pillar of stability and structure that helps him to breathe a little easier, to sort through that turmoil and make better sense of it; while the act of experimenting with something new helps steer his mind back to the present rather than dwelling on what woke him in the first place.

Y is for Yearning (What’s something that they yearn for when you’re separated?)

“Oh, no, love, I assure you, I definitely missed you more.”

It would be better to ask what he doesn’t yearn for. He simply can’t stand being apart from you, for any length of time. It isn’t that he doesn’t trust you, that doesn’t even cross his mind. He knows you’ll come back to him. He just can’t stand the length of time that you aren’t there.

Your touch, your scent, your face, your eyes, your body—your smile, your laugh, your voice, your embrace, your kisses—whether it’s minutes or hours or days that you happen to be apart, you’re the only thing that he can think about, having you back by his side, in his arms, safe and sound.

Life on the sea isn’t the safest, and he’s going to spend the entire time you're apart worried that something might happen to you. Even if you’re capable of handling yourself, he would feel much better being with you, knowing that he’s there to keep you safe.

And when you are together again, he makes it very clear just how much he missed you, all but literally gluing himself to your side, incessant in his insistence of how much he missed you, how he doesn’t ever want to spend that long apart again.

Even if it was only five minutes. Doesn’t matter, time is irrelevant, any amount of time away from you is far too long.