#good news for government employee

[bereft-of-frogs]

I went to lunch with my mom and got some extremely devastating financial news*

*my dad isn't going to pay for my AAA membership anymore TT.TT

first they made me get my own car insurance last year (and someone hit my car 3 weeks later because of course) and now this??? I have to pay for my own AAA membership?????????

But I'm just a baby* (*33 years old)

[andromedasummer]

cannot understate how useful and wonderful BWB texts are. having a supply of such cheap, easily digestible and expertly written essays and insights on new zealand history, politics, social problems, indigenous rights and pacific rights and history, tragedies, media and more is such a boon in an era where misinformation is so easily spread and when its so difficult to find thoroughly researched writing on often niche topics like news media in nz or the coverage of the christchurch earthquakes or the history of unionization in the country. i hope one day say ive read and own them all

[zvaigzdelasas]

In the week since the International Court of Justice ruled that the Israeli government is plausibly committing genocide and ordered it to prevent potential further acts of genocide, Israeli forces have only continued committing atrocities against Palestinians.

Buoyed by the staying support of American officials, Israeli forces have killed at least 874 Palestinians and injured at least 1,490 in Gaza since last week’s ICJ ruling, according to Palestinian Health Ministry figures from Saturday, January 27, to Friday, February 2. That’s not to mention other acts of Israeli violence in the occupied West Bank and Jerusalem.The loss of life should not be dismissed as “collateral damage,” contrary to what Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said.[...]

Backgrounding the atrocities in Gaza is the broader misery the entire population faces. The BBC noted that UNICEF’s biggest concern is the “estimated 19,000 children who are orphaned or have ended up alone with no adult to look after them.” CNN reported that Palestinians are eating grass and drinking polluted water amid famine conditions. The Guardian reported that 50-62 percent of all buildings in Gaza have likely been damaged or destroyed.

Earlier this week, a federal court affirmed the ICJ’s finding that Israel may be carrying out a genocide and warned the Biden administration to reconsider its unconditional support for Israel’s war effort. [...]

The Intercept asked Sen. John Fetterman, D-Pa., to comment on the court rulings that the accusations of genocide by Israel are credible. “I don’t accept that. I reject [the ruling of the International Court of Justice]. I don’t believe that is Israel’s intention: to commit genocide,” said Fetterman, who has emerged as one of Israel’s most staunch Democratic defenders, on Thursday. “I do believe that their goal is to neutralize or dislodge Hamas from that. And I believe that they certainly do not want to take the lives of any innocent Palestinians and I certainly don’t assign higher value to my children versus a Palestinian child. I mean, I wouldn’t want anybody to die throughout all this tragedy, and it’s just an awful situation.”

Within hours of the ICJ issuing its ruling last Friday, Israel alleged that 12 of 30,000 — 0.04 percent — employees of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East were involved in Hamas’s attack on October 7. The United States immediately suspended its funding of UNRWA, the largest provider of humanitarian aid in Gaza, spurring a cascade of other nations to follow suit.

Sky News later obtained an Israeli document that actually downgrades the allegation to 0.02 percent of UNRWA staff (six people) being involved in Hamas’s attack. Sky News reported that the documents, which allege further ties between UNRWA and Hamas “make several claims that Sky News has not seen proof of and many of the claims, even if true, do not directly implicate UNRWA.”

The contrast between the U.S. decision to pause funding based on unverified allegations and its unwillingness to reconsider its military funding of Israel, despite serious allegations of genocide, is stark.

Fetterman also said that he supports the suspension of funding to UNRWA. When asked why the standard of suspending funding while investigating serious allegations doesn’t apply to the Israeli government, Fetterman dodged the question.

Fetterman: Well, again, it — well, it’s not. We need a full investigation and find out just how much a part of it was about that and how much, you know, the old question: how much they knew and when they knew that.

The Intercept: So you’re saying that for Israel as well?

Fetterman: Yeah, OK, so good, all right, well good.[...]

Reporter Said Arikat confronted State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller on the tension Wednesday. “I’ll say with respect to the charges of genocide [at the International Court of Justice], we believe that they’re unfounded,” Miller said. “We continue to support Israel’s right to take action to ensure that the terrorist attacks of October 7th cannot be repeated, but we want them to do so in a way that complies with — fully with international humanitarian law.”

Miller was then asked about Israel receiving aid even as Israeli government officials call for the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians and maintain good standing in government.

“When the secretary traveled to Israel on his most recent visit,” Miller said, “he made clear that he thought it was important that the Israeli government speak out against those matters and those comments publicly and reiterate that it is not the policy of the Israeli government to force Palestinians from Gaza.”[...]

Two days after the ICJ ordered the Israeli government to prevent and punish incitements of genocide from public officials, National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich were among 11 cabinet ministers and 15 coalition members of the Knesset who rallied at conference hosted by hundreds of settlers calling for the settlement of Gaza.

On Tuesday, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant reportedly told members of the Knesset’s Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee that afte​​r their military campaign ends, Israel will maintain military control of Gaza, so it can operate similarly to the way it does in the West Bank.

On Thursday, Smotrich said that allowing aid into Gaza contradicts the goals of Israel’s campaign, and that he spoke with Netanyahu, who supposedly assured him that things will change soon. Israeli ministers Benny Gantz and Gadi Eisenkot reportedly called to limit humanitarian aid as well. Meanwhile, at aid crossings, people in Israel have taken cue from their leaders, attempting to block aid trucks from entering Gaza, where hundreds of thousands of people — including the hostages held by Hamas — are at risk of starvation and malnutrition, every day since the ICJ ruling.

One clip even shows a right-wing activist telling an aid truck driver, a Palestinian citizen of Israel, that “I am the owner here, you are a slave here.”

2 Feb 24

[robertreich]

Project 2025: The MAGA Plan to Take Your Freedom 

A second Trump term would be more dangerous than the first — in part because of something called Project 2025, a plan to extend Trump’s grip into every part of your life.

Trump’s gross incompetence in his first term wasn’t all bad. It kept some of his most extreme goals out of reach. That’s why his inner circle, including more than 20 officials from his first term, have written a step-by-step playbook to make a second term brutally efficient.

At nearly a thousand pages, it’s longer than most Stephen King novels, and a lot scarier. The Associated Press wasn’t kidding when they called it “a plan to dismantle the US government and replace it with Trump’s vision,”

Project 2025 is a road map to ban abortion, give greedy corporate oligarchs everything they want, and strip Americans of our most basic freedoms — all without needing any support from Congress.

There’s more to it than I can get into, but here are three things I want you to know.

#1 How would Project 2025 work?

Every nonpartisan government agency would be turned into an arm of the MAGA agenda.

Some of the worst things Trump reportedly tried to do as president — like having the military  shoot protesters or seize voting machines to overturn the election  — were only stopped because sensible leaders in the military or the professional civil service refused to go along with it.

In a second term, there would be no sensible leaders in the military or professional civil service because Trump would fire anyone more loyal to the Constitution than to him.

Trump started the process in October 2020 with an executive order that would have let him fire tens of thousands of civil servants and replace them with MAGA henchmen. I’m talking about traditionally non-political positions, like scientists at scientific agencies and accountants at the IRS.

Trump could not act on the executive order then because he lost the election. If he wins now, he’s pledged to pick up where he left off and go further…

TRUMP: …making every executive branch employee fireable by the President of the United States.

#2 Project 2025 is about controlling Americans’ lives & bodies

Restricting abortion is such a big part of Project 2025 that the word “abortion” appears 198 times in the plan.

Trump largely made good on his campaign promise to ban abortion.

Thanks to Trump’s Supreme Court justices, 1 in 3 American women of childbearing age live in states with abortion bans. Project 2025 would make that even worse, without needing new laws from Congress.

Page 458 of the playbook calls for a MAGA-controlled FDA to reject medical science and reverse approval of the medications used in 63% of all abortions, effectively banning them.

Page 455 plans “abortion surveillance” and the creation of a registry that could put people who cross state lines to get an abortion at risk of prosecution.

Another way around Congress is to enforce arcane laws that are still technically on the books. Page 562 plans for a MAGA-controlled Justice Department to enforce the Comstock Act of 1873, which bans the mailing of “anything designed, adapted, or intended for producing abortion.” This could be used to block the shipment of any medications or medical instruments needed for abortions.

But Project 2025’s control of American families goes even further. It plans for government agencies to define life as beginning at conception — a position at odds with the process used for in vitro fertilization.

Page 451 declares that “Families comprised of a married mother, father, and their children are the foundation of a well-ordered nation and healthy society,” thereby stigmatizing single parents, same-sex couples, unmarried coparents, and childless couples.

Project 2025 even takes a stand against adoption, declaring on p. 489 that “all children have a right to be raised by the men and women who conceived them.”

#3 Project 2025 would turn America into a police state.

Maybe you live in a blue city or state, where you think plans like arresting teachers and librarians over banned books (which is on p. 5) could never happen. Well, guess again.

Trump has said one of the big things he’d do differently in a second term is override mayors and governors to take over local law enforcement.

Page 553 lays out how to do this, and even plans for Trump’s Justice Department to prosecute district attorneys he disagrees with.

Immigration enforcement is to be conducted like a war, with the military deployed within the U.S., and millions of undocumented immigrants rounded up and placed into newly constructed holding camps. This is outlined starting on p. 139.

Members of the Project 2025 team also reportedly told the Washington Post about plans to invoke the Insurrection Act to deploy the military against anti-Trump protests.

There is much more to Project 2025. There are more than a hundred pages of anti-environmental policies that would help Trump make good on what he reportedly promised to do for oil executives if they contribute a billion dollars to his reelection. It would make drilling and mining a top national priority while killing clean energy projects, barring the EPA from regulating carbon emissions, and replacing all government climate scientists with climate deniers.

There are even cartoonishly cruel plans like slaughtering wild horses. Yes, that’s really in there on p. 528.

I thought I understood the stakes of this election, but reading this plan… Well, it gave me chills. If Trump gets the chance to put this plan into place, he will. The country it would turn America into would be hard for any of us to recognize.

[stillmonsterz]

you know i'm down

pairing: jay x reader

genre: smut

summary: it's march 2020 and you're stuck in the house with your stepfather during lockdown. can the two of you keep it together?

warnings: stepcest, unprotected sex, swearing, dubcon, panty-sniffing, virus mention, COVID implication (?),

word count: 3.8k

--

“Yeah. Yeah, I know, things are getting crazy, but try to keep your head up, yeah? You’ll be safe,” Jay said into his phone, his forehead creasing as he spoke. His newly wedded wife had taken a trip to visit her mother shortly after their marriage, but now the government was advising that she stay where she was. The news was scaring her, and it scared Jay, too, but he couldn’t let her know that. He was her steadfast protector, her bastion, and so he reassured her that everything would be okay.

“And you’ll take care of her too, yes?” she asked firmly, referring to her daughter.

“Of course, honey. I’ll take care of her like she’s mine,” Jay said, rubbing his forehead. “I promise.”

“You’re so good with her,” his wife said. “You know, she really likes you, right?”

“I really like her, too,” Jay said softly, and it was the truth. His wife and her daughter had moved in with him three short months ago, and neither of them had caused trouble. On the contrary: Jay wished that he could see more of her daughter so they could be closer. He wanted to be a good stepfather, but she was always holed up inside of her room.

They exchanged goodbyes, I love yous, and promises to stay safe, and then Jay was alone on the couch with his own thoughts. If he sat there for too long, stewing in fear, he would lose his mind. Jay turned the television on and checked the news. They were strongly advising people to stay put for at least two weeks, and Jay made a mental note to coordinate with his employees about this in a few hours. No point riling people up and forcing them to worry about work so early in the day.

Jay was sitting on the couch with lips set in a line when you had tentatively crept down the stairs, worry etched on your features. He turned the television off and assessed you carefully. You were so similar to your mother in stature and facial features, but Jay doubted that his wife would ever don the dolphin shorts and hoodie combination you were so fond of wearing. Of course, you made it look cute. You shuffled over to him, wringing your hands. 

“Mom really can’t come back?” you asked, hovering near the other end of the couch.

Jay nodded, setting his phone on the side table. “Yeah, they really want to curb the spread of the virus,” he said, smoothing his hands down his legs. “She’ll be okay, though. There’s a lot of food at her mom’s house, and she won’t be alone. It’ll only be two weeks.”

Your lower lip trembled, and you looked away from Jay as you tried to calm yourself down. You rubbed your hands along your arms, and Jay could see that you had goosebumps. “You don’t think she got it, do you?” you asked in a wavering voice. 

“Oh, sweetheart,” Jay said quietly. “Look at me.” When you refused, obstinately staring at the ground, his voice became firm. “Look at me.”

You lifted your head, and he spread his arms and gestured for you to come to him. He wrapped you in his embrace, rubbing your back. You leaned on him, kneeling in between his legs as you hugged him tightly. “There’s no way that she caught it,” Jay said soothingly. “She’s been with her family the entire time. She hardly went off their property.”

“I’m just so worried. I’ve never lived through anything like this before,” you said falteringly, pulling away so you could look at his face. Jay knew you were looking at him to check for chinks in his armor, a sign of doubt. He pulled his features into a convincing mask of resoluteness and confidence. 

“It’ll all be okay,” he said, running his thumb along your cheek. “Look on the bright side, you won’t have to commute to school for two weeks.”

You chuckled, looking down as you smiled. “You’re right, Jay.” Jay liked that you didn’t try to call him Dad or Daddy. When he had first met you after a few months of dating your mom, he had been pleased to find that you weren’t the archetypal bratty stepdaughter. Instead, you were sweet and intelligent, and you hardly asked him for a thing. Jay stroked your hair comfortingly and kissed your forehead. 

“You wanna watch a movie together? Would you like that?” You nodded your assent, and Jay reached around for the remote and went on Netflix. He put something lighthearted on for you, and shortly after the movie started you rested your head on his chest. Belatedly, Jay realized that it might be somewhat inappropriate to hold you like this, with you curled up in his arms, kneeling between his legs. But you were so worried, and you needed a guiding figure there, so what else could he do?

Jay continued to rub your back as you watched the movie together. At some point, though, Jay’s attention permanently moved from the film onto you, and he studied your features closely. His wife was a very pretty woman, and started to realize that her daughter was a very pretty girl. 

Maybe this lockdown wouldn't be so bad, if he could get closer to you.

–

The next day, Jay took stock of everything in the kitchen. Thankfully, they tended to bulk-buy, so he didn’t think that they would have to go shopping for two weeks. Yesterday, you hadn’t eaten dinner, blaming your nerves for curbing your appetite. He decided to surprise you with a pancake breakfast. He smiled as he imagined you eating pancakes. You’d look so adorable with full cheeks…

As he started to gather the ingredients, he heard footsteps padding on the tiled floor. 

“What are you doing?” you asked quietly. Jay turned to face you, and his breath caught. You were rubbing your eyes, looking around the kitchen, and you were so cute. Jay swallowed thickly and returned his attention to the array of supplies in front of him. 

“Just making breakfast,” he mumbled. “Pancakes.” 

“Can I help?” He heard you come closer, and he could smell your body wash. It was fruity and playful; something from Victoria’s Secret or Lush, a store like that. It went so well with your natural fragrance, Jay had to resist the urge to sniff the air.

“Nah, it’s fine,” Jay replied, kneeling down to find where the pans were stashed. It was his house, but his wife had reorganized the kitchen to her liking, so he had trouble finding things. 

“I want to help,” you said, and Jay looked up at you. A mistake. How could he refuse those earnest eyes of yours?

“Yeah, sure,” he said, hoping he came off as nonchalant. He gave you some instructions, well-aware that his voice was somewhat strained. Jay watched you bustle around the kitchen, shamelessly checking you out. Guilt nipped at him, but he reasoned that it was just looking. There was nothing wrong with looking. And when you wore little shorts like that, you were asking to be looked at, really. 

Jay snapped himself out of it and returned his attention to cooking. He flipped the pancakes without using a spatula, and you clapped. “I wish I could do that,” you said. 

“Here, I’ll show you.” Jay wrapped your hand around the end of the pan and covered it with his own. “You have to utilize a certain flick of the wrist, but put pressure on your index finger, your middle finger, and your thumb…” When you successfully flipped a pancake with his help, you giggled, and he felt warm. Like a proud father, he thought. Just like a proud father.

As you two ate breakfast together, he could see your happiness returning. You must have been so worried about your mother, and he was glad to see you shoveling pancakes in your mouth and laughing about some video your friend had sent you. 

“You’ve got syrup all over your mouth,” Jay said, smiling. Before you could wipe it yourself, Jay wet his thumb and wiped it off, relishing in the opportunity to touch your lips. “I bet you were such a messy kid,” he murmured.

“I was,” you said with a self-deprecating laugh. “My mom was always running after me with Wet Wipes.” 

Jay chuckled at the thought, retracting his thumb. “I’m sure she didn’t mind. You were probably a cute kid, too.”

You groaned. “I was so cute. I have no clue what happened.”

You got pretty, Jay thought. 

“You think I’m pretty?” you asked, a smile playing on your lips, and Jay realized that he had carelessly complimented you. 

Jay cleared his throat. “Of course you are,” he said, desperately trying to center himself. “You look just like your mother.”

You nodded, still looking pleased with the compliment, and Jay could feel his heart racing out of his shirt. You were going to be the death of him.

–

The next day, after dinner, (another collaboration between the two of you), you had announced that you would do the laundry. Jay shook his head and handed his plate to you. “You do the dishes,” he said, smiling slyly. “I’ll take care of the laundry.”

You begrudgingly took the plate and stacked it on top of yours. “I hate doing the dishes.”

Jay laughed and ruffled your hair as he walked past you. “Doing things you hate builds character,” he called behind his shoulder. 

As soon as he got upstairs, he made a mad dash to your bedroom to retrieve your laundry basket. He didn’t have a lot of time. Jay opened your door and bent down to examine the white hamper. Pawing through your clothes, he shakingly retrieved a pair of your panties. It was painfully conservative. Weren’t girls your age supposed to be wanton little sluts? He held it up, examining it closely. Common sense told him to put it back, morality told him to put it in the hamper, and his own conscience was screaming at him to just drop the fucking panties. But something stronger compelled him to hold the panties to his nose and sniff them deeply. Your scent was intoxicating, and he sighed. Jay took a few more deep sniffs before he dropped the panties back into the hamper and walked down to the laundry room. 

It was lockdown, he concluded as he set the basket down. Lockdown was driving him crazy, turning him into a libidinous beast. Never mind that it had only been three days - three days was enough. Three days of being forced to watch as your stepdaughter pranced around in shorts that just barely hid her tight little ass, of having to smell her, of knowing that there was pussy that he couldn’t get to…that would drive a monk to drink. As long as he didn’t act on it, Jay reasoned, he’d be fine. 

-

Over the next week, you and Jay had fallen into a routine. You ate breakfast together, then you dispersed to your separate rooms- you had to do online school, and Jay had to navigate running a business over Zoom. You would eat lunch together, discussing the virus, your problems, or just comfortably sitting in silence. 

Then you squirrel away back to your room. When that happened, Jay would generally do two things in an interchangeable order. He would either retire to his office and read a business management book or go over his emails, or he would rub his dick raw in his ensuite bathroom to the thought of stepdaughter pussy. Pornography wasn’t necessary; he could just close his eyes and imagine you in those stupid shorts, imagine you taking them off and crawling towards him, imagine his hands groping your forbidden body.

 After that, he would cook dinner for the two of you, and you would watch a movie together. You liked to rest your head on his shoulder, saying that that’s how you and your mother would watch movies. So Jay would wrap his arm around you, his other hand clenching the armrest of the couch so tightly his knuckles turned white as he tried to fight off his basest urges. After that, you would go to your room, and Jay would go to his room and edge himself for half an hour. 

Then, he would text your mother and tell her that he loved her.

–

A week after the lockdown had been announced, Jay checked his appearance in the mirror in the living room and frowned. He had a meeting in an hour, but he noticed that he was developing a unibrow. Normally, his wife would help him pluck the hairs.

You walked downstairs and noticed Jay scowling at himself. “What’s wrong?” you asked, standing next to him. By now, just your scent went straight to his cock, making it stir, and Jay sighed.

“Your mom’s not around, so now I’m turning into a caveman,” he said, pointing at his eyebrows. 

Your face brightened. “I can pluck them for you!”

Jay’s face fell, but he quickly put on a mask of indifference. “Oh, you don’t have to, I can figure it out,” he said, waving his hand.

You reached out and grabbed his hand. “Please, Jay? It’ll be so fun. It’ll be therapeutic. Please?”

You were the devil, he decided, the devil cloaked in the vestments of a college student. “Fine,” he relented, and you cheered.

Jay wearily stood next to the mirror as you sprinted up the stairs to get your tweezers. You bounced back down shortly, opening and closing the tweezers with the steeliness of a surgeon. 

“Sit down,” you ordered, pointing at the couch in the living room. Jay obeyed, sitting down on the far end of the couch. You straddled his waist.

“What are you doing?” Jay asked, his voice somewhat panicked.

“I have to get close to you,” you replied. Jay realized that his reaction was unwarranted and he was doing a shit job of acting like he didn’t want to fuck you, so he nodded. 

As you plucked his eyebrow hairs, Jay rested his hand on her waist to stabilize you. He stared at you as you worked; you were so lovely when you focused. Jay decided not to fight it, just for now. He languidly rubbed a circle around your waist as you plucked his eyebrows, and his other hand rested on your knee. If Jay tried, he could almost forget who you were. He could just pretend like there was no relation, that you were a stranger, that it wasn’t wrong to feel like this.

“Done!” You put the tweezers on the side table and examined his brows by tilting his head this way and that. Jay continued looking at you. He leaned back so that he was resting fully on the armrest, and your chest pressed against his due to the slight shift in position.

Jay’s voice was low and rough. “How does it look?” His hand still caressed your waist over your hoodie, and he noted that you made no move to get up.

“Very nice,” you replied, both hands still on his face. “You look very handsome now.”

Jay smiled slightly, looking you up and down. “Yeah?”

You looked in his eyes and nodded. “Yeah.”

Jay wasn’t sure who had leaned in first, but he did know that he was the one who deepened the kiss. You tasted incredible, and you weren’t a bad kisser, either. Your lips were soft and you took your time; your hands still cupped his cheeks. Jay’s hand slipped from your waist and worked its way up your hoodie, resting on your stomach. His other hand crawled up your leg, and he was endlessly grateful that you wore those dolphin shorts all the time. 

You were the one who probed your tongue at the entrance of his mouth, and you were the one who ran it along his teeth. He stroked his tongue along yours, tilting his head even further. Your hands slipped from his cheeks to rest on his shoulders.

Strangely enough, as he made out with his stepdaughter, Jay felt no qualms. All he could focus on was how good it felt, on how warm your little mouth was, on the way your body tensed as he ran his hands over you. Jay brought his hand higher, from your stomach to your ribs, until it was resting just below your breasts. He waited for you to pull away, to tell him to stop, but when you didn’t, he continued. Jay’s hand cupped your breast, and he briefly broke the kiss.

“You didn’t wear a bra?” he asked in an accusatory tone, kneading your breast. 

You shook your head.

“You wicked little minx.”

You shrugged, placing your hands behind his neck. “I normally don’t wear bras around the house. I mean, it’s just you and me in here.”

“No,” Jay whispered. “It’s not ‘just’ me.” Jay leaned in to kiss you with renewed fervor. His other hand slipped up into your shorts, fondling your upper thigh. Gently, Jay began to push you down onto the couch, until he was resting his full body weight on top of you. His hand groped at your chest, and he used both of his hands to pull your hoodie off. Finally, finally, he would get to see your body without a massive piece of fabric hiding it.

Jay moaned as soon as he saw your naked torso. He momentarily stopped kissing you to suck your tits. Both of his hands ran up and down your thighs, and he relished in your little gasps and whimpers. Jay took his mouth off of your breast and looked up at you. “You like that?”

You nodded, your face contorted in pleasure. “I like it, Jay.”

You had all but given him the green light to do whatever he wanted to your body, and almost without his knowing he began grinding his hips against yours. After leaving sloppy kisses all over your breasts, Jay kissed you again, sucking your tongue over and over again. 

He continued to rut against your clothed pussy, the friction assuaging the painful stiffness he felt in his cock. Jay knew he was pathetic. He knew how degenerate, how desperate, how sick he was. Only a freak would dry hump their stepdaughter on the couch. He didn’t even last an entire week. Still, he couldn’t bring himself to fully care, let alone to stop. Jay ground his crotch into yours, pressing you deeper into the couch, and he groaned in your mouth. 

His hands were all over you now, stroking your back, your chest, your stomach, your thighs, and he was dimly aware of your own hands snaking up his shirt. 

Jay broke the kiss again, sweat dripping down his nose. “You can’t tell anyone,” Jay said frantically as he began to unbuckle his belt. “Got that? Not your friends, not your classmates, not your mom. Do you understand me?”

You nodded, but that wasn’t enough. “Do you understand me, sweetheart?”

“Yes,” you said hoarsely, your lips already swollen. “I won’t tell anyone.”

Jay tossed his belt to the side and tugged his jeans down. “Our little secret, right?”

You shimmied out of your shorts. “Our little secret.”

Jay slid your panties down your legs and parted your legs, pushing one up the couch and leaving the other to hang off of the side. He glanced at you as he worked his cock a few times. “Are you a virgin?”

You shook your head. 

“Good.”

“Why?”

“I’d never fuck a virgin the way I’m about to fuck you,” Jay said. Your eyes widened in apprehension, and Jay smiled.

He pushed himself inside of you roughly. As soon as he felt your pussy tighten around his cock, its warmth enveloping him, he swore. “Oh, fuck.” Jay kept your legs pushed open as he inches himself into you. At first, he shallowly thrusts into you with about half of his length. You’re already shuddering like a whore, whining and shaking, but you aren’t wet enough for his liking. Jay reached his hand down and stroked at the area above your vagina lips, eventually finding your clitoris. He rubbed it, just enough to get you nice and sopping wet. It didn’t take long, either; you must have been as pent-up as he had been, judging by the way you were gasping. Even just a few inches had you stuttering out some words that would make your mother blush.

He pulled out of you slightly, swirling his hips, before slamming his cock into you again. You moaned, a sound so gorgeous that he had to continue. Jay pounded your pussy mercilessly, his hands keeping your legs split open. His balls slapped against your thighs almost painfully as he kept up his pace. 

“Should have done this at the start,” Jay huffed. “Should have been inside you the second lockdown started.”

You opened your eyes. “Why didn’t you?”

Good question. Why hadn’t he just fucked you like this when you had come running to him for comfort? Why had he bothered waiting? For propriety? For politeness? None of that mattered. The only thing that mattered now was the feeling of your pussy gripping his cock. 

Jay smiled slightly as he imagined how your mother would react to this: her daughter splayed out on the couch, her tits bouncing up and down, her hand covering her mouth so her moans won’t echo all over the house, and her stepfather in between her legs, fucking her ruthlessly. The scary thing was, Jay didn’t think he could stop even if your mother had walked in. Your pussy felt too good, too tight, too warm, too inviting. 

You were so wet that Jay could hear it, his cock making obscene noises as it ravaged your hole. Jay pulled out of you, breathing heavily. He dragged you from the couch and laid you flat on the rug. 

“On all fours,” he said raggedly. “Now.”

You were weak, but you obeyed his instructions, displaying your red, aggravated pussy for him. Jay mounted you and fucked you like a dog, chasing his orgasm. His hands groped around your chest and he grabbed your tits while he pounded you. He leaned his head back and let out a primal moan.

Soon, your arms gave out and you collapsed onto the floor. Jay didn’t pull out of you, couldn’t pull out of you. He braced his arms on either side of you and slammed into you, pressing his entire body weight onto you. 

He felt his orgasm approaching, and he sped up, grunting and groaning. Jay felt like he would die if he didn’t cum, and he fucked into you mindlessly. When his orgasm hit, he let out a strangled scream. He could feel the pleasure from his cock all the way to his fingertips; his hairline tingled as he emptied himself out in your pussy. 

Jay didn’t know what he would do next. He didn’t know how you would act around each other. But he knew, without a shadow of a doubt, that he had to do this again and again with you.

[gootarts]

as of 8/3, the most recently updated version of this post is here (it's a reblog of this exact post with more info added)

as a lot of you know, limbus company recently fired its CG illustrator for being a feminist, at 11 pm, via phone call, after a bunch of misogynists walked into the office earlier that day and demanded she be fired. on top of this, as per korean fans, her firing went against labor laws---in korea, you must have your dismissal in writing.

the korean fandom on twitter is, understandably, going scorched earth on project moon due to this. there's a lot currently going on to protest the decision, so i'm posting a list here of what's going on for those who want to limit their time on elon musk's $44 billion midlife crisis impulse purchase website (if you are on twitter, domuk is a good person to follow, as they translate important updates to english). a lot of the links are in korean, but generally they play nicely with machine translators. this should be current as of 8/2.

Statements condemning the decision have been issued by The Gyeonggi Youth Union and IT Union.

A press conference at the Gyeonggido Assembly will occur on 8/3, with lawmakers of the Gyeonggi province (where Project Moon is based) in attendance. This appears driven by the leader of the Gyeonggi Youth Union.

The vice chairman of the IT union--who has a good amount of experience with labor negotiations like these--has expressed strong support for the artist and is working to get media coverage due to the ongoing feminist witch hunts in the gaming industry. Project Moon isn't union to my knowledge, but he's noted that he's taken on nonunion companies such as Netmarble (largest mobile game dev in South Korea) by getting the issue in front of the National Assembly (Korea's congress).

Articles on the incident published in The Daily Labor News, Korean Daily, multiple articles on Hankyoreh (one of which made it to the print edition), and other news outlets.

Segments about the termination on the MBN 7 o' clock news and MBC's morning news

Comments by Youth Union leaders about looking into a loan made to Project Moon via Devsisters Ventures, a venture capital firm. Tax money from Gyeonggi province was invested in Devsisters in 2017, and in 2021, Devsisters gave money to Project Moon. The Gyeonggi Youth Union is asking why hard-earned tax money was indirectly given to a company who violates ESG (environmental, social and governance) principles.

Almost nonstop signage truck protests outside Project Moon's physical office during business hours until 8/22 or the company makes a statement. This occurs alongside a coordinated hashtag campaign to get the issue trending on Twitter in Korea. The signage campaign was crowd-funded in about 3 hours.

A full boycott of the Limbus Company app, on both mobile and PC (steam) platforms. Overseas fans are highly encouraged to participate, regardless if whether they're F2P or not. Not opening the app at all is arguably the biggest thing any one person can do to protest the decision, as the app logs the number of accounts that log on daily. For a new gacha such as Limbus, a high number of F2P daily active users, but a small number of paying users is often preferable to having a smaller userbase but more paying users. If the company sees the number of daily users remain stable, they will likely decide to wait out any backlash rather than apologize.

Digging up verified reviews from previous employees regarding the company's poor management practices

Due to the firing, the Leviathan artist has posted about poor working conditions when making the story. As per a bilingual speaker, they were working on a storyboard revision, and thought 'if I ran into the street right now and got hit by a car and died, I wouldn't have to keep working.' They contacted Project Moon because they didn't want their work to be like that, and proposed changes to serialization/reduction in amount of work per picture/to build up a buffer of finished images (they did not have any buffer while working on Leviathan to my knowledge). They were shut out, and had to suck it up and accept the situation.

Hamhampangpang has a 'shrine' section of the restaurant for fans to leave fan-created merch and other items. They also allow the fans to take this merch back if they can prove it's theirs. Fans are now doing just that.

To boost all of the above, a large number of Korean fanartists with thousands of followers have deleted their works and/or converted their accounts from fanart accounts to accounts supporting the protests. Many of them are bilingual, and they're where I got the majority of this information.

[note 1: there's a targeted english-language disinformation campaign by the website that started the hate mob. i have read the artist's tweets with machine translation, and they're talked about in the second hankyoreh article linked above: nowhere does she express any transphobic or similarly awful beliefs. likewise, be wary of any claims that she supported anything whose description makes you raise eyebrows--those claims are likely in reference to megalia, a korean feminist movement. for information on that, i'd recommend the NPR/BBC articles below and this google drive link of english-language scholarly papers on them. for the love of god don't get your information about a feminist movement from guys going on witch hunts for feminists.]

[note 2: i've seen a couple people argue that the firing was for the physical safety of the employees, citing the kyoani incident in japan. as per this korean fan, most fans there strongly do not believe this was the case. we have english-translated transcripts of the meeting between the mob and project moon; the threats the mob was making were to......brand project moon as a feminist company online. yes, really. male korean gamers aren't normal about feminism, and there's been an ongoing witch hunt for feminists in the industry since about 2016, something you see noted in both the labor union statements. both NPR and the BBC this phenomenon to gamergate, and i'd say it's a pretty apt comparison.]

let me know if anything needs correction or if anything should be added.

[darnell-la]

𝗧𝗛𝗘 𝗕𝗘𝗔𝗦𝗧 𝗕𝗥𝗢𝗞𝗘 𝗢𝗨𝗧

pairing: dark!project x!wolverine x government employee!reader

warnings: held to work, reader on her period, project x gone wild, killing, hunting/sniffing down, rough sex, oral (fem receiving), creampie, kidnapped, new life, etc.

note: we wish…

follow our Instagram @ darnell.la so we can start posting random videos, photos, edits and memes of the people we write about!

————————————————————————

𝟯𝗥𝗗 𝗣𝗘𝗥𝗦𝗢𝗡 𝗣𝗢𝗩

Working for the government isn’t how people think. Yes, you get paid a good amount, but you’ll be a slave to them forever or until you mysteriously die.

Y/n tried quitting last year after the government started bringing mutants in. At first, they were locking the bad ones up. She had no problem with that until they started experimenting on and tortuous them. Good and bad. It didn’t matter.

She had no family, so she thought she’d be able to get away with saying she’d tell the world what they do under the white house.

She hasn’t seen home since that day. They have a special room here at her job, just like the rest that tried to leave. They knew she had no family. They only hire people who people wouldn’t question if they don’t show up anymore.

Y/n is currently checking up on Project X, who’s in his cage. She begged her job to never put her with him because of his past actions. Anyone who gets near him dies.

After y/n pulled her stupid stunt to quit, they started making her work down here, being the only one to work alone with him, ever.

They told her how unusually quiet he was when she entered the room. Usually, he groans and growls, making as much noise as he can to break out, but now, he just stands there, watching her for the hours she’s in the room with him.

“Been a long week, project x — Wished you talked to me so you could tell me your name,” y/n sighed as she sat on her working chair, ready to start her long night shift.

Logan who was named Project X after the government had pushed himself onto his feet from an unusual smell. A smell he’d never smelt before.

He couldn’t explain the smell he was smelling, but he knew it smelt good. His pupils grew as his heart rate quickened. He felt hungry all of a sudden. He was just fed…

“Aye, buddy, wassup?” Y/n asked as an alarm went off, telling her his heart rate had risen. Y/n looked through the computer schedule, seeing if anyone had given him any shots today that could’ve raised his heart rate, but there were none. Even if there were, why was his heart beating fast now?

Y/n looked at Logan after hearing him growl for the first time ever. The view made her own heart rate rise. He was looking right at her, hands gripping the metal poles as his teeth pushed together, showing the slightly longer fan teeth.

“Woah — Relax, buddy,” Y/n said as she stepped towards the cage to see if he had hurt himself somehow. As soon as her foot passed the yellow line that had “don’t cross” written big on it, a hand reached for her.

Y/n backed up with a scream. She’s never been attacked by any mutants. Ever.

Logan tried reaching further, trying to squeeze through the bars, but he couldn’t. He grew angry when he couldn’t. He knew the smell was coming from her once she got close.

He’s never felt like this in his life. It’s like his body took over and began acting like the animal he was.

Logan shouted as he forced his claws out, now scratching at the metal bars. Y/n’s body was overcome with fear. She was stuck for. A few seconds until she saw the metal on the cage, move. They’re not supposed to move.

Y/n quickly ran over to her desk and pressed the big red button that was there just in case Project X had broken out. She didn’t care if he wasn’t out. He was getting there.

“Help! Help!” Y/n screamed as she ran over to the door, pressed the button to leave. They usually have to let her out. “What’s wrong, Ms. Y/n? Your shift isn’t over yet,” a guard said.

“He’s breaking out! Project x is breaking out!” She yelled into the speaker. The guards had looked at each other, never having this happen to them on their shift. They didn’t know what to do at first.

“Please, let me out! Let me out!” She yelled again, snapping them out of their slow thoughts. One of the guards pushed a button to let her out and the other pressed an alarm, alarming every guard that Project X was breaking out.

After hearing the alarm “Project X” alarm, y/n knew he was more dangerous than she thought.

Logan fought for a while, getting wilder after y/n escaped him until one of the bars broke. He kicked the bar, causing it to fly across the room, allowing him to squeeze through and escape.

The wild man shouted before walking out of the room he’d been in for who knows how long.

He heard footsteps come around the corner. He was ready to get through anyone who tried to get in his way.

“Hands and knees, Project X! Hands and knees!” A guard yelled. Logan smirked before running at the group of guards, killing every single one.

Y/n ran faster after hearing the guard and then yelled right after. She knew Project X had killed them. She was scared she was next.

As Logan was fighting, he was fixated on sniffing y/n out. He knew which way she ran, but had to track her down from the way she smelt.

Every second that passed, she smelt better. He’s never smelt that smell in his life, yet, he needed it like he’s had it every day of his life.

Y/n finally made it to her room, closing and locking her door. She hoped he didn’t know where she slept. He shouldn’t. He’s never been outside of that room.

As time went by, it got quiet. The guards yelling at least. The alarms were still going off, but at least the yelling was gone, right? That means they got him. Right?

Y/n said on her bed, looking at the door to be prepared, but nothing happened. No one was near, she thought.

The young lady sighed as she turned her head. As soon as her eyes left the door, it was kicked open. Y/n screamed as she jumped further onto her bed, head turning towards the door.

“Augh,” he growled low with a smirk as he fixed his posture and walked into y/n’s room slowly. How did he know where she was? The man closed the girl's door, locking it, which she thought was going to be impossible by the way he kicked it open.

She thought kicking it open was impossible, but forgot, the door was light metal. Metal he would definitely be able to get through.

“P-Please don’t hurt me. Please! I-I’ll do anything! I’ll break you out. I swear!” Y/n said as her back hit the wall as she stayed on her bed. He ignored her offer, still grinning at her as he stepped closer.

“Please — What do you want from me!?” She yelled at him, pissed off that he won’t speak. Why is he coming after her? How did he find her?

Without answering her, Logan lunged at her. She screamed in the most horrific scream she’s ever screamed. She thought her life was over until he heard the man laugh.

Y/n’z eyes opened looking at what he was laughing at. He was laughing at her. Was he going to laugh while he shredded her body?

“What are you laughing at? Just get it over it!” She yelled in his face. He liked how feisty she got. Actually, he loved how feisty she was. Even though he hated how he got, it looked hot on her. Watching her yell, turned him on even more.

Logan ignored her again as he slowly moved down her body. She watched him, looking directly into his eyes, not knowing what he was going to do.

That was until he sniffed and groaned with his eyes shut tightly. “That’s where it’s comin’ from,” his raspy voice spoke before he ripped at y/n’s work jeans. They were thick, but no match for him.

Y/n screamed, shook at his actions and even his sentence became he’s never spoken around her. She was convinced he couldn’t speak.

Y/n thought she couldn’t be more surprised until the muscular and sweaty man ripped her panties off. She went to yell at him, but her voice got trapped in her mouth after he buried his face in between her thighs.

Y/n’s back arched, not able to speak for the first few seconds until she finally let out a loud moan, eyes rolling back to the point it slightly hurt.

“F-Fuck!” She screamed, head finally popping up to look down and in between her legs. “Fuck — No! No, please!” She kept screaming, but her voice sounded more cracked.

The man growled on her heat, slurping and slobbering all over cunt.

He didn’t know what came to him. He didn’t know why he loved the smell and taste of her. Years ago, he’d get icky when women said they were on their period, but something about being locked up for years and his mutant abilities being boosted made it impossible for him not to have a taste.

“N-No,” y/n’s back arched again, trying to close her legs, but the man used his huge hands to keep her legs separated. He knew she was close. He needed that smell over on his and in his mouth.

The man mumbled on her cunt, praising her but she couldn’t hear him. Her head went blank as she came undone all over his face.

If this was a normal human, he for sure would’ve drowned, but not Logan. He wished he could drown in her sweet juice.

“Fuuck, bub,” the man groaned as he leaned up, now moving over her until he was face to face with her. Her head was laid back on her sheets. He knew he drained her, but he needed more.

“Don’t pass out on me, princess. It’s been a while since I’ve gotten my cock wet, and you’re gonna be the first to drench it,” he said as he leaned back and off of her bed.

He was covered in blood. All of the guards and y/n’s. He thought it would be mindful to wet a towel in her room and wash his face off. He wanted her to faint from the good fuck he was about to give her. Nothing else.

“You know, baby? I always wanted to break outta here — But after I saw you? Fuck — I saw no need,” Logan said as he crawled back over y/n, sniffing up her body. “Not at all,”

“P-Please,” y/n’s low voice spoke. She was tired and needed to rest. It’s been a long week, and the way he just ate her out, made it longer. She’s on the line of passing out. “D-Don’t hurt me,”

“Ian gonna hurt you, bub. Gonna fill you up then get us outta here,” Logan said as he pulled his jeans down, freeing his cock. She had no idea what was going on or what he was saying. She was out of it.

“You’ve been comin’ in my little room for a month. You talk a lot, but I never mind. I find it shitty how these people could keep a pretty thing like you trapped in here with an animal like me,”

“Maybe it’s my luck — Just know, Ian, leavin’ heat without you. You belong to me now,” the man said. What was he talking about? Y/n was so confused that she felt pressure in between her legs.

The man let pour a shaky groan, feeling the young woman squeeze him tighter than he thought she could. It’s been a year, but he worse if it hadn’t, she’d still feel this amazing to him.

“Fuckin’ hell, y/n,” Logan spoke, triggering her slow-thinking mind. How did he know her name? “Have you been restricted from sex for decades too? You’re so fucking tight, fuck,” Logan was surprised.

“T-Too much — Too much!” Y/n gained some energy back to cry out and slap at his upper body. “Ah huh? Really? Can’t take a cock, baby? Can’t take my cock, baby?” Logan sounded more aggressive by the second.

“Been locked up for so long, I don’t give a fuck if I break you. I’ll put you back together, don’t worry. But you wouldn’t stay fixed for long,” he chuckled as y/n struggled to hold her moans.

“Cryin’ on my cock — Might be my new favorite thing, bub,” he said as he looked at her face. She looked so pretty. He wondered how she’d look with his huge cock in his mouth.

Ever since she stepped into his experimental room with one of her dress uniforms, he’s been feeling something for her. She was pretty, and after hearing her speak to him for weeks without him saying anything back, he fell in love with how smart she was.

Now that’s a woman he’s wanted for years…

“F-Fuck,” y/n gripped his shoulders, digging her nails into his skin. He loved the slight pain she gave him. “Names Logan, baby. Moan my name,” Logan said in a desperate voice.

She was confused. His quick switches confused her. “Moan my fuckin’ name before I stuck your ass neck,” he threatened. The man looked down, looking at the way his cock was coated in her blood and cum. She was a squirted and creamer.

“L-Logan,” she cried out, scared he was going to fuck her ass like he threatened. As much of a monster he seemed like now, he didn’t want to hurt her. He knew anal was something he’d have to get her comfortable with one day.

“Logan,” she moaned again, even if he didn’t ask for it. She was so close. Again. “That’s it, bub — Got me so fuckin’ close,” he snapped his hips, building the perfect rhythm to fuck her in.

Watching her mouth part and eyes cross as they rolled back was the last straw. The man’s hips stuttered, wanting y/n he was going to cum in her.

She wanted to freak out, but she couldn’t. She just laid there, moaning his name as she released on him again.

“Oh, fuck!” The man shouted as he spilled in her. Cumming at the same time wasn’t something he was expecting, but that was it for him. He was officially tied to her.

Logan wanted to speak to y/n. Ask her if she felt good, but he noticed she had passed out. “Once you wake up, you’ll be home,” he said, knowing exactly where he was heading.

Logan had slipped one of y/n’s nightgowns on her before picking her up and carrying her through the halls, avoiding the guards who were looking for him. They had cameras everywhere, yet the guards on duty tonight were fucking idiots.

Once they made it out, he ran through the street, trying to find a bus that would leave the city. After running around for too long, he decided to break into a drunk, placing y/n in the back and then driving off before anyone stopped him.

“We’re here, bub,” Logan spoke, hours away from Washington. His parents owned a cabin in the woods next to a highway in Oklahoma.

He knew it would be hard, but he was keeping y/n. He couldn’t let anyone else get what he smelled off of her. He was wild for her.

ᴘᴀʀᴛ ᴛᴡᴏ

ᴘᴀʀᴛ ᴛʜʀᴇᴇ

ᴘᴀʀᴛ ғᴏᴜʀ ᴄᴏᴍɪɴɢ sᴏᴏɴ...

[headspace-hotel]

Going through the bills proposed in the kentucky 2024 legislative session and some of the things being proposed are

make a PFAS Working Group

require homeless shelters to provide free menstrual products (it's actually disturbing that they didn't already)

require schools to provide free menstrual products

create harm reduction centers and lower penalties for possessing controlled substances

require insurance to pay for cancer screenings (okay. low bar but okay)

abolish the death penalty (actually has a couple republican sponsors)

decriminalize cannabis

make fluoridation of water in districts optional (?????)

make coal the "state rock" of Kentucky

Prohibit children from being interrogated in a "deceptive manner" (?)

Make weight discrimination illegal

pay schools to food grown at kentucky farms to provide for school meals at low income schools (hey that's rad)

Lower the age of carrying a concealed deadly weapon from 21 to 18 (?????????????)

Require companies to give their employees earned paid sick leave

Impose restrictions on the collection of biometric data by private entities

Allow poultry to be sold at farmers' markets and at farms

pay for cancer screenings for firefighters

let pregnant incarcerated people have midwives or doula services

require that public high school curriculum include instruction on the history of racism

Remove Robert E. Lee Day, Confederate Memorial Day, and Jefferson Davis Day from the list of public holidays (WE HAVE THOSE?!!?!?!)

Retroactively expunge some cannabis convictions

"Prohibit public school districts from expanding any resources or funds on diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging or political or social activism; prohibit public school districts from engaging in diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging" (HUH?????)

require schools to give kids a lunch period of at least 30 minutes (the bar is in hell)

provide scholarships for teachers to help the teacher shortage and give teachers compensation for planning time

require schools to have defibrillators

make it so a homeless person doesn't have to pay to get a copy of their birth certificate

require a working smoke detector to be present in any house sold (...did we not already have this?)

create the Kentucky Urban Farming Youth Initiative

Require local governments to lower minimum square footage requirements for housing, and facilitate multifamily housing, manufactured housing, and "tiny homes," and require that zoning laws have a "substantial connection to protection of public safety, health, and usage of property" (This could be a good thing??)

require hiring and licensing authorities to allow people convicted of a crime an opportunity to get a job

Propose a new section of the Kentucky Constitution that guarantees the right of an individual to buy, sell, or use a certain amount of cannabis and to grow a small amount of cannabis plants, and put this on the ballot (LET'S FUCKING GOOOOOO LET THE PEOPLE DECIDE please this would be so funny)

Now let's watch how many of the good and basic common sense laws get left to die by Republicans because Republicans are ghouls

this is why it's important to vote in local elections, this is the kind of stuff that's being decided upon

[traveler-at-heart]

Live, Love, Natalie Rushman

Summary: Based on a request by @lynattyx - Natasha and R meet when she's working undercover at Stark Industries.

Natasha Romanoff x Fem!R

Live Love Legal

The sign was meant to be a graduation joke, but you still placed it on a shelf in your very serious, very corporate office.

Even now, as you were promoted to Senior Associate -the youngest at Stark Industries- and you had a bigger space, with a breathtaking view of Central Park and Midtown Manhattan.

It was your first day, and you were determined to make things right. Top of the list, onboarding Miss Potts’ new paralegal assistant. Your secretary (holy crap, you had a secretary!) had called to informed you she was waiting at the front desk.

“Natalie?” you called, imagining the woman with red hair and black slacks was the new assistant.

Though, you were not prepared for the sight that greeted you when she turned around, striking green eyes and a perfect smile in place.

“You must be Y/N”

The way her raspy voice caressed every syllable of your name almost made you weak in the knees.

But this was work, and you couldn’t lose your shit over the most beautiful woman you’d ever seen.

“Yes. Come with me, I’ll show you around”

Pleased with the firmness of your voice, you gave Natalie a tour of the office, pointing at different areas where most meetings took place. You also showed her where to find the information of everyone she might need to contact, and then you went up to Pepper’s office. The short elevator ride was littered with small talk, and you considered a success how your cheeks flushed only once.

“Come in” Pepper said and you opened the door, Natalie right behind you. “Y/N, happy first day as an associate. And you must be Natalie Rushman”

After a brief introduction, you were ready to leave both women to work.

“If you need anything, just let me know” you said to Natalie before going back to your office.

“Anything?” she said with a small smile. Perhaps it was all in your head, or the woman had really managed to make the question sound… loaded.

“Of course” you said, heat going to your cheeks.

Once the elevator doors were shut, you leaned against the wall, wondering if you’d imagined Natalie’s parfume still lingering in the air.

Maybe that sign at your office should read Live Love Lesbian instead.

—

It had been a week - a busy, insane week- but Natalie hadn’t needed your help with anything. While you wanted to feel relief, because you had enough on your plate, you were actually disappointed. Those green eyes and that beautiful voice would not leave your thoughts.

To your displeasure, you weren’t the only one.

“Tony” you said, feeling a headache as you entered your office first thing in the morning and saw him behind your desk, feet up.

“Y/N. How’s the new job going?”

“It would be better if you gave the government some information about those suits. But I will say I love my new parking space”

“Right! New is good” he agreed, not moving from your chair. “Like that new girl. Natalie Rushmore…”

“Rushman” the headache intensified.

“Right, whatever. Isn’t she good?”

“Ask Pepper”

“I mean I did, and she told me to stop before  I did anything that might get me sued for harrassment”

“Pepper’s right. You can’t go around sleeping with your employees”

“I was only flirting” he spun around and you had enough, finally kicking him so he’d stand up. “I was never inappropriate to you, right?”

“That’s because I’m gay, Tony”

“And do you think Natalie might be…?” you glared at the man and he was quick to explain. “I hear there’s a sixth sense involved in the whole experience”

“Leave before I throw you out the window, Stark”

“You’re no fun” he complained, winking as he shut the door to your office.

—

The next time you saw Natalie was as you prepared a meeting with new VC investors and the board.

“I need you to place the NDAs in the binder that we’re sending to legal…” Pepper said and Natalie stopped walking. The sudden halt made you turn your attention. It wasn’t hard to understand what that look meant. She had forgotten. Pepper insisted. “You did send the NDAs, right?”

The hardness of her tone made you flinch, and you spoke before thinking about what could happen.

“Actually… I asked Natalie to hold off on that. I wanted to double check the IP section but completely forgot about it. I’m sorry, Pepper”

“Ok, it’s fine” the woman said, pinching the bridge of her nose. “Just make sure it’s ready before the presentation”

You nodded, and turned to walk down the hall to find the documents. Natalie followed right behind you, and you almost didn’t hear the quiet thank you she whispered your way.

“Don’t mention it”

Truly, you had forgotten all about it by the next day, until you found a latte waiting at your desk.

It was exactly how you took it, and you were very particular about your coffee.

“How…?” you wondered out loud.

“I notice things” Natalie said from the doorway. You flinched, amazed at how stealth she could be.

“And you’re silent. Like a ninja. Or a spy” you drank again, chuckling at the ridiculous comparison. “You didn’t have to, I didn’t do anything”

“This job is very important so it does mean something to me, Y/N”

The way she said your name had you blushing, so you nodded and thanked her.

“Have you noticed the bar around the subway station?” you asked as she turned to leave. “Great food, pool table. It’s fun, if you ever want to stop by”

“Oh, you don’t want to play pool against me” she warned and you chuckled.

And yet, the next week you were both there, eating and drinking past midnight. Natalie wasn’t kidding when she said her aim was impeccable and when you lost the third game in a row, you admitted defeat and offered to buy her coffee and a scone of her choice the day after that.

That’s how it became a bit of a habit, to buy coffee for two on certain mornings. If you knew Natalie had an early morning, you’d be the one to drop off a steaming cup of espresso with a danish scone.

Sometimes, you’d find a cup from the cafe around the corner, your name and a smile srcibbled across it.

You were working overtime to convince yourself that you did not have feelings for her. That the nights at the bar, the coffee or lunch time you spent together was nothing more than a friendship.

Until one night, when you were both working late. Your desk was a mess of scattered paperwork, all thanks to Tony’s idiotic actions. Pepper was the new CEO of Stark Industries while he made mess after mess.

“God, I hate him” you read a complaint filed by the police against Tony, who had gotten drunk and worn his suit during his birthday party.

There was also another thing that bothered you about that night. The memory of Natalie, all laughs and flirty eyes as Tony showed her how the suit worked.

You hadn’t realised how hard you were biting the pen until Natalie called your name.

“You have ink all over your lip” she said with a smile and you brought a hand to your mouth, the liquid leaving a bitter taste.

“Oh my God, is the ink toxic? Am I gonna die?” you panicked, looking around for a napkin. Natalie giggled, approaching with a hankerchief.

“It’s fine. Here” the redhead leaned forward, and you blushed as her soft hands cleaned your lower lip. Natalie held your chin between her thumb and index finger, satisfied with the result.

“Thanks” you said, unable to keep your eyes from going to her lips. The action wasn’t lost on Natalie, and before you could apologize, she leaned forward, capturing your lips in a searing kiss.

“Now you have ink too” you said, laughing at the small stain on her lip. She smiled against your mouth, but the happinness was short lived as an explosion made you look outside. “Wow. What the hell was that?" you said, turning around.

It looked like drones were chasing after an Iron Man suit. Natalie grumbled and stood up.

"I have to go"

"Nat?" you followed her down the hallway.

The woman was gone, an apologetic look on her eyes as the elevator doors shut.

—

No calls, no messages, nothing. Not even an email.

You asked IT to keep her account active, just in case.

It had been a whole year; and maybe time to give up hope.

You couldn’t shake the feeling that something was terribly wrong. Natalie had disappeared right after Vanko had tried to kill Tony. Maybe she’d gotten hurt and someone was covering it up?

Whatever it was, the few times you asked Tony about it, he seemed irritated and quickly changed the subject.

And yet, here you were, still looking for answers, resisting the urge to give up on someone who had, for all intents and purposes, ghosted you.

You sighed, turning to look out the window of your office.

Imagine your shock when you saw a fleet of alien ships flying around New York City.

—

Natasha’s eyes were trained on Stark Tower. Were you there? Had you been able to get somewhere safe?

“Romanoff” Rogers called and she looked around.

“Need a lift” she said, creating a plan. All she had to do was take a small detour to your office and then she’d kick Loki’s stupid ass.

However, as she threw the alien off his own ship, she looked around and realised there was no easy way to land.

“Oh, God!” you shouted as a ship crashed through your window. To your surprise, instead of a weird looking creature, it was being flown by…

“Natalie?” you practically screamed, sure that you were having a fever dream.

“Come on, there’s no time. Let’s take you somewhere safe…”

“The whole city is under attack, that’s kind of impossible right now” you yelled, following her closely. “And what the hell is going on with you? Where have you been? And why are you dressed like that?”

It was hard not to notice the tight unitard that adjusted perfectly to every curve in her body.

“Watch out!” the woman said, pushing you aside. She rounded the corner, preparing her guns and shooting against the aliens. Turning casually to you, she spoke in a calm demeanor, as if discussing what movie to watch. “Would you like the short or long story, detka?”

“I don’t think we have time for long stories, Natalie. Is your real name even Natalie?”

“Well, it’s Natasha Romanoff so… close enough?” she said with a weak smile and you glared.

An arrow flew by and Natasha cursed under her breath. You understood why a second later when an explosion shook the building.

“Clint! I’m at Stark Tower, do not engage!” Natasha held a hand to her ear, speaking through comms. She then turned to you and smiled, leading you by the hand to the emergency stairs. “Where were we?”

“Natasha Romanoff. I guess you’re not a paralegal either… oh my God!” you yelled as you spotted a giant green creature coming up the stairs.

“Hulk, Rogers needs back up” Natasha said, completely unfazed by the monster. “Come here” she asked, taking you to a hallway.

“Nat, a bunch of crazy shit is happening and you’re not losing your mind”

“Well, there’s your next answer. I’m a former assassin, born and raised in Russia. Now a SHIELD agent” once the coast was clear, she made you stand up and follow her to the conference room. “I was working undercover to get some info about Tony’s stupid ass. And then I met you. I was about to ask you out on a date because I like you, but the mission was over and I was instructed not to engage again”

“You like me?” you repeated, ignoring the explosions around the city.

“Out of all the things I just said, that’s the one you’re sticking with?”

“Well, duh. Because I like you too” you smiled, pulling her closer for a kiss.

“Now’s not the time” a metallic voice said. You turned to find Tony floating outside the window and you glared. “I was called for an extraction”

“What?”

“Come on, it’s not safe here. Tony will get you out and I’ll meet you once this is over, ok?”

“You better not disappear on me again, Natasha Romanoff”

“Wouldn’t dream of it” she promised.

Once Tony carried you to a safe part of the city, you waited for him to put you down and remove his helmet to slap the back of his head.

“Why?”

“I asked you about her a million times, Tony. You could have told me why she left so suddenly”

“Now you know. I’ll get you a nice restaurant reservation to make up for it. Gotta go!”

As he flew away, you couldn’t help but smile.

Natasha liked you back.

—

Dust settled and emergency services began to approach the city, aiding with evacuation. Your eyes searched Natasha’s as you walked around.

“Detka”

“Are you ok?” running up to her, you brought your hands to her face. She had a small cut in her forehead and seemed tired, but she was alive.

“Yeah. It was fun”

“Fun? I hope our date doesn’t include this type of fun.”

The woman laughed and pulled you close to her.

"Alien invasions are a six month anniversary kind of thing" she joked. You laughed, but kept your eyes on her cut, looking concerned. “I’m ok, really. Nothing a shower won’t fix”

“How about a kiss?” you offered and she smiled, leaning forward to meet your lips; it was short and sweet. A promise of more to come.

“Let’s go back to my place” you said and Natasha’s eyes widened. “For you to shower. Clean that cut, get some sleep. And then, we’ll talk about that date”

“You have yourself a deal”

[marasmadness]

hii could you possibly do a jj x emily x reader smut fic where they are protective over her and maybe someone else flirts with her idk 🫶

What We Deserve || J.J x E.P x reader

a/n: changed it slightly bc I kept getting stuck and scrapped this like three times but hope you guys like it :)

CW: dark!jemily x sunshine reader, guns, violence, Emily and JJ turning to revenge, slightest past Emily angst, stalking and sexual harassment (a man who later becomes irrelevant), threesome, age gap, smut, mild gunplay, strap-on sex, oral sex, face-sitting, daddy kink (one time), light choking, praise (she holds your hand and talks you through it🥰)

“I can stay tonight,” you offered up easily, trying to hide the fact that you were incredibly eager at the possibility of not returning home tonight.

Emily looked up from her desk, baffled by why you would ask to spend the night working, and scrutinized your body language with her eyes. This was something Garcia had warned you about when she recommended you for the job position Emily and JJ were trying to fill. They were excellent profilers, or at least formerly, but their old habits never left them.

After the two women turned to a more avenging and under-the-table profession, they turned to Garcia for her usual tech intel, but as she remained a current government employee, she was unable to give them her usual assistance. Instead, she recommended you, “her protégé,” she claimed.

You had offered up your nights to the older woman four times in the last two weeks, which wouldn’t be unusual for a demanding corporate job, but this wasn’t that. The couple worked from their grand home with three offices to exceed all their work needs. You assisted them on the tech side of things and were an expert at tracking people down. In this case, it was usually whatever unpunished psychopath or scumbag they were currently hunting.

“Why don’t you want to ever go home?” Emily questioned, resting the end of her pen on her lip. Her question was in no way rude, despite her consistently assertive tone. She just wanted to know why anyone would rather spend their nights working at a new job with few people to talk to and staring at a mini computer screen than return to a cozy apartment.

“No, it’s not that. I’m just willing to help out here,” you replied, rubbing your knuckles against the fabric of your pencil skirt.

JJ, who was shuffling through a paper trail you just printed out, profiled you cockily without even looking up. “ Lying? Didn’t think you had it in you sunshine,” the blonde quipped.

The "Sunshine" nickname and “Learn that from Garcia?” Jokes have been nonstop since you started. You weren’t sure how much of your demeanor you actually picked up from spending plenty of time with Penelope or if it just stemmed from the fact that you were generally quieter and gentler than the two women who kept guns tucked underneath their blazers at all times.

Emily flicked JJ’s shoulder as she slid behind JJ’s chair to reach a final cabinet, a subtle way of telling her to cut it out, but she couldn’t help the small smirk that crossed her face. She tipped her head toward you, pointing across the hall. “Go grab your work and bring it back here. Shut the lights off on your way back too.”

You quickly pivoted around, treading to the conference room to grab a folder and your laptop. For two vigilantes, they were incredibly organized. You assumed that’s what made them so good, and their FBI experience probably helped. You returned to work in their office, working through the list of wanted profiles and trails for the two women. At some point, Emily appeared behind you, watching as your fingers flew across the keyboard. You restrained your instinct to flinch as her hands grasped your shoulders.

After two hours, the glare of your laptop screen blurred before your eyes. Entirely zoned out, you jumped slightly when Emily’s hands found your shoulders, her breath rushing across your ear. “Go home, rest; it’s late,” the gravelly sound of her voice sounded from just above your shoulder.

“You’re still here working though,” you protested out, pointing out how her and JJ were still camped out at their desks with no intent of leaving anytime soon.

She raised her eyebrow, catching you off guard when she spun your chair around, pressing her knee into the seat beside your thigh. “That was an order. You’re no help if you come back tomorrow sleep-deprived. JJ and I have been on this schedule for years. We’ll sleep when we retire.”

You listened, gathering up your stuff. Your keys jangled against your side as you stopped to linger in the doorway before making your way out to your car.

The streets were pitch black and mostly empty as you drove to the low thrum of the radio. Your fingers bounced anxiously on the steering wheel while pulling into the parking lot beneath your apartment complex. It was late; nobody would still be out and about, and your trip up to the 3rd floor would be uninterrupted. You reassured yourself. You were right to some extent. The stairwells were empty and a little eerie.

Your hand closed around your doorknob when the reason you were reluctant to return home called out, making you flinch in the dark. “Late night?”

“Mhm,” you replied dismissively while hurriedly fumbling for your keys. You could see his silhouette in his shadow as he stepped out of his apartment and turned down the hall toward yours.

“What kept you out late?”

“Just work.” You didn’t look up, pushing your door open roughly. Slipping inside, you were a second too slow. ”Good night, Ro,” you said sternly, attempting to close the door as he appeared in your doorway. Your heart started thumping in your chest as his palm slapped against the already splintering door.

“Hey, wait up, what’s the rush?” He grinned, holding his weight against the door to keep it open. You froze, only able to keep the door at the crack it was, and no further. Too focused on your sweaty hands gripping the door, you missed the soft clicking pair of footsteps until it was too late.

Two strong hands engulfed your body, one sliding around your waist and pulling you against a warm torso, and the other expertly clamping down on your mouth. Your eyes darted back and forth, catching a whirl of raven hair between you and the door. Without your half of the balancing act, the door slammed up against the wall, leaving Ro and the stranger in your apartment facing off.

“May I help you sweetheart?” A sickly sweet and familiar voice rang out, throwing your stalkerish neighbor for a loop. Emily.

You were dragged backward slightly, out of view, forcefully but not violently. A blond wave of hair fell over your shoulder, and vanilla perfume became mixed in with your heavy breaths. Emily, and JJ.

Ro suddenly stepped back into the hallway. ”Who the hell are you? Wait, you were on the news. You were in the FBI.”

“Catching on so quickly,” Emily taunted while revealing her gun from her side, raising it casually. “Step inside, close the door behind you, scream and you won’t make it back out alive,” she instructed, waving the barrel of the gun as she spoke.

He obeyed, if only out of obvious terror. JJ stepped out of the shadows with you in her grasp. Out of angry instinct, he lurched toward you. “Crazy bitch.”

JJ defensively tightened her bicep around your body, moving you behind her. She and Emily moved as one fluid, deadly unit. Sharp, efficiently placed pressure on Ro’s shoulders from Emily made him drop to the floor like a fly, his knees cracking against the floor. The point of JJ’s boot dug into the flesh of his leg, threateningly close to his crotch.

Emily was back to looming over him, hands steady as she clicked the gun against his temple. ”Here’s how this is going to work. We managed to find video footage of you breaking into this apartment, stalking, and harassing, and that’s just the surface—things that we found in seconds. If, and that’s a questionable if you leave here alive, so will we, because if you turn us in, we turn you in, and with all the cameras disabled in this apartment, who are the courts more likely to believe former FBI agents who left peacefully and with high credibility, or you?” Silence. “That’s what I thought. You’ll also be ending your lease within the next 24 hours, and I highly suggest your next place be at least 25 miles from this apartment. Last but not least, apologize.”

You saw him wince at the pressure from the weapon or Emily’s voice as he looked up at you from the ground.

“ I-, I’m sorry! Ah!” He yelled out as Emily knicked the side of his head.

“Do fucking better, and I’m not one to dish out third chances, so make it good.”

You nearly blacked out at the scene unfolding in front of you. His apology played like a distant voiceover in your head; JJ’s hands felt hot against your skin; and you didn’t even start to leave this dazed state until Emily was forcefully leading your now-former neighbor out of your apartment.

Emily guided you toward the back of your apartment while JJ locked it up, not before surveying the hallway twice.

Flicking on a dim light, Emily braced herself against the doorframe as you turned around to face her. “So, “I can totally work late,” was actually Mr. insecure fucking stalker?” She prodded, adding a slight imitation of your voice into her tone.

“He wasn’t a stalker; he was just gross and pushy. He asked me out when he first moved in; I said no, and he never really let it go,” you explained in an attempt to descalate.

Emily scoffed, removing her blazer as she invited herself to sit down on your bed with her hands pressed into her thighs. “Honey, he intercepted you every time you came home, couldn’t take no for an answer, and knew your schedule by heart. Why didn’t you just tell JJ or me? We could’ve handled it.”

You circled around the room, still attempting to process what had happened. “Okay, and by handled, do you mean go fucking insane?” You asked in a raised whisper, tangling your almost-twitching fingers in your hair. “You cannot just pull a gun out from underneath your blazer and hold it to someone’s head while your wife threatens them with credentials she no longer even has!”

Emily stood up quickly, untucking her blouse from her pants with her sharp movements. “And he can’t just monitor your life and push his way into your apartment!” She shot back with fire in her tone. You seemed to have hit a nerve. Your best guess was that wherever this anger was coming from, it also had to do with whatever reason she left the BAU for, something she had yet to reveal to you. “He had no right, and you’re not responsible for his actions. Look at me,” she commanded, tipping your chin toward her gaze with two fingers. “Even if you said yes, he would still behave as he always has, as a creeping coward. I spent my whole career chasing carbon copies of men like him. Nothing will change their sense of entitlement from believing they deserve women who they could never appreciate or understand.” Finishing, her chest rose up and down with emotion as you remained still in her grip.

“Is that why you quit?” You asked, slightly steering the conversation back toward her. “Because of people getting what they didn’t understand or deserve?”

“Yes, I was tired of having to put people I cared about or wanted to care about,” she added, refocusing on you, “in danger and not being able to be the one who served repercussions.”

Feelings you had pushed down since day 1 rose up in your throat. “And have you ever contemplated what you deserve?” you asked as a more relaxed smile curled on her lips.

She nodded as her eyes flickered down your skin. Her forehead glistened with unexpired anger and effort as she swiped a piece of damp hair from it.

“And what’s that?” you asked. Moving your hands backwards, they landed on the dresser, feeling as if the space between you and Emily was growing closer and closer, more intoxicatingly suffocating.

“You.” JJ’s smooth and confident voice filled in the blank for Emily, and you felt your entire body flush with warmth. She had been walking by the door with silent steps and filled in the rest with context. While her calm and mildly seductive reaction to the scene surprised you, it only made Emily grin, curling her fingers to invite the blonde into the room as she shut the door behind her. Emily had seen the way her wife’s gaze soaked in your body the first day you stepped in the door with a bright smile, making her hungrily sink her teeth into her lip. Emily admittedly had quite a similar reaction.

Distracted by JJ’s appearance, you hadn’t noticed Emily’s shift until you felt her body press up behind you and her lips dance across your neck. Removing her gun from her side, you expected her to put it on the nightstand beside you, so you were taken aback when she pressed the edge up against your ribs, leaving you to feel the cool metal through the thin material of your shirt. All the air left your lungs as she slowly dragged it up your skin, her deep red-painted nails leaving a trail of scratches in their wake. The barrel of the gun followed the curve of your chin until she used to tip to guide your gaze up to hers. Trust me, at least for tonight.” She placed the gun on your nightstand with dangerous amusement flashing across her eyes.

Sitting on the edge of the bed, she pulled you between her legs, unbuttoning your shirt with nimble fingers until it slipped off your shoulders. Slipping her hands beneath the hem of your skirt, her fingers grazed against the skin of your lower belly, the cold metal of her rings making you tense.

She slowly and seductively removed the rest of your clothes, taking her sweet time to soak in every inch of your body. You followed her lead as she charmingly held out her hand to help you climb up and kneel on the mattress. She followed, settling at the top of the bed. “Come up here; let me taste you.” She rapped your thighs until you were straddled over her body. Her suave confidence and eagerness to aid in your pleasure were new to you and created a confusing knot of feelings in your stomach. Your knuckles turned white with your grip on the headboard, holding yourself up delicately.

Emily wet her lips, curving them into a smile. “Sit means actually sit, love.” Her hands gripped the back of your legs, dragging your throbbing cunt onto her mouth. A satisfied groan left her lips, vibrating through you.

Behind you, JJ’s nonchalance surprised you. In every other environment, she was incredibly overprotective. In this case, both the people she was ever overprotective of were right in front of her, so she was happy to pour a drink, sit back and watch… or at least for a moment.

Through your muffled thoughts brought on by Emily’s lips wrapping around your clit and her hands kneading at the flesh of your thighs, you heard JJ’s glass clink on the table before her hands appeared on your body. You felt the mattress sink beneath you as she climbed up on the bed behind you, cupping your breasts in her hands as her lips trailed along your neck. “If I’m gonna let you fuck my wife, I think it’s only appropriate that I get something as well, don’t you, doll?” She murmured, her breath leaving a trail of warmth along your skin, until she found your mouth, sinking her teeth into your bottom lip. A soft whine escaped as she pulled away, taking her touch with her, and sat down next to you.

Your knuckles grew white against the headboard as Emily’s tongue curled against the walls of your tongue, drawing you closer and closer to a shattering orgasm. JJ, next to you was only contributing to your arousal as she undressed herself and raked her long, blond hair out of her face with a ravenous look. Your body tensed on quivering thighs resting on either side of Emily’s head as she pulled your cunt down in her mouth, flattening her tongue against your sensitive nerve. A stew of moans and expletives fell from your lips as you coated her tongue, and she looked up with a slick, lopped grin as if she had just won a trophy.

Without more than half a breath, she was up and directing you between JJ’s legs, driven by lust-induced vigor. “Eat her out,” she commanded with a soft air of confidence.

Focused on pleasuring JJ, you only caught a blur of Emily in your peripheral vision, slipping out of black work pants and letting her belt hit the ground. Arched between JJ’s legs, she secured her feet over your shoulders, trapping your head between toned thighs as you delved into her cunt. The blonde’s head sank back with a guttural moan as you circled and sucked at her clit.

You stuttered as Emily caught you off guard, dragging her fingers down your spine until she squeezed your ass. JJ’s hands found their way into your hair, guiding your back down between her legs with a sickly soft tone, but you didn’t miss the smirk shot at Emily over her head. “Focus baby, okay? Don’t worry about her.”

You listened, far into the hazy trance of the women surrounding you. As your tongue roamed JJ’s pussy you could feel Emily’s grasp on your hips, positioning them to her likely, and then what came as a startle from your lack of awareness was the silicon texture of her thick strap gently teasing your entrance as you brought her wife closer and closer to an orgasm.

She pistoned the faux-cock inside of you, and you choked out a gasp that made JJ’s hips stutter as she arched her back off the mattress. “Fuck, almost there, doll, let me come on your tongue.” Her words slowly morphed into pants as she reached her climax, with a heaving chest and a tight grip on your hair. Her legs relaxed on your shoulder as Emily continued thrusting into you, the slight ridges of her strap against your walls leaving you gripping at JJ with desperation. JJ found your hands. Running her thumbs across your knuckles with soft praise. “Come for daddy, baby,” she mumbled into her forward before leaning up into Emily’s brief breathless kiss. Your three sheening bodies were intertwined in various ways. The room was filled with obscene noises and sounds from the lingering exhaustion of pleasure.

With close attention, JJ caught on when you were close, using two fingers to drag your chin upwards, forcing you to look her in the eye as your juices coated Emily’s cock. As you came, Emily’s hand wrapped lightly around your throat, adding an extra starry haze to your orgasm. You collapsed in a euphoric state on JJ’s lap. She chuckled at your fucked-out state, running her hands through your hair. Emily wore a similar smile of satisfaction as she left a trail of light kisses down the back of your legs. She was the one to get up and go to the bathroom, preparing to help the three of you clean up and collapse back onto your queen-sized bed in a dreamlike sleep.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

The specific process by which Google enshittified its search

I'm touring my new, nationally bestselling novel The Bezzle! Catch me SATURDAY (Apr 27) in MARIN COUNTY, then Winnipeg (May 2), Calgary (May 3), Vancouver (May 4), and beyond!

All digital businesses have the technical capacity to enshittify: the ability to change the underlying functions of the business from moment to moment and user to user, allowing for the rapid transfer of value between business customers, end users and shareholders:

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

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

https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/24/naming-names/#prabhakar-raghavan

Which raises an important question: why do companies enshittify at a specific moment, after refraining from enshittifying before? After all, a company always has the potential to benefit by treating its business customers and end users worse, by giving them a worse deal. If you charge more for your product and pay your suppliers less, that leaves more money on the table for your investors.

Of course, it's not that simple. While cheating, price-gouging, and degrading your product can produce gains, these tactics also threaten losses. You might lose customers to a rival, or get punished by a regulator, or face mass resignations from your employees who really believe in your product.

Companies choose not to enshittify their products…until they choose to do so. One theory to explain this is that companies are engaged in a process of continuous assessment, gathering data about their competitive risks, their regulators' mettle, their employees' boldness. When these assessments indicate that the conditions are favorable to enshittification, the CEO walks over to the big "enshittification" lever on the wall and yanks it all the way to MAX.

Some companies have certainly done this – and paid the price. Think of Myspace or Yahoo: companies that made themselves worse by reducing quality and gouging on price (be it measured in dollars or attention – that is, ads) before sinking into obscure senescence. These companies made a bet that they could get richer while getting worse, and they were wrong, and they lost out.

But this model doesn't explain the Great Enshittening, in which all the tech companies are enshittifying at the same time. Maybe all these companies are subscribing to the same business newsletter (or, more likely, buying advice from the same management consultancy) (cough McKinsey cough) that is a kind of industry-wide starter pistol for enshittification.

I think it's something else. I think the main job of a CEO is to show up for work every morning and yank on the enshittification lever as hard as you can, in hopes that you can eke out some incremental gains in your company's cost-basis and/or income by shifting value away from your suppliers and customers to yourself.

We get good digital services when the enshittification lever doesn't budge – when it is constrained: by competition, by regulation, by interoperable mods and hacks that undo enshittification (like alternative clients and ad-blockers) and by workers who have bargaining power thanks to a tight labor market or a powerful union:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/11/09/lead-me-not-into-temptation/#chamberlain

When Google ordered its staff to build a secret Chinese search engine that would censor search results and rat out dissidents to the Chinese secret police, googlers revolted and refused, and the project died:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragonfly_(search_engine)

When Google tried to win a US government contract to build AI for drones used to target and murder civilians far from the battlefield, googlers revolted and refused, and the project died:

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/01/technology/google-pentagon-project-maven.html

What's happened since – what's behind all the tech companies enshittifying all at once – is that tech worker power has been smashed, especially at Google, where 12,000 workers were fired just months after a $80b stock buyback that would have paid their wages for the next 27 years. Likewise, competition has receded from tech bosses' worries, thanks to lax antitrust enforcement that saw most credible competitors merged into behemoths, or neutralized with predatory pricing schemes. Lax enforcement of other policies – privacy, labor and consumer protection – loosened up the enshittification lever even more. And the expansion of IP rights, which criminalize most kinds of reverse engineering and aftermarket modification, means that interoperability no longer applies friction to the enshittification lever.

Now that every tech boss has an enshittification lever that moves very freely, they can show up for work, yank the enshittification lever, and it goes all the way to MAX. When googlers protested the company's complicity in the genocide in Gaza, Google didn't kill the project – it mass-fired the workers:

https://medium.com/@notechforapartheid/statement-from-google-workers-with-the-no-tech-for-apartheid-campaign-on-googles-indiscriminate-28ba4c9b7ce8

Enshittification is a macroeconomic phenomenon, determined by the regulatory environment for competition, privacy, labor, consumer protection and IP. But enshittification is also a microeconomic phenomenon, the result of innumerable boardroom and product-planning fights within companies in which would-be enshittifiers try to do things that make the company's products and services shittier wrestle with rivals who want to keep things as they are, or make them better, whether out of principle or fear of the consequences.

Those microeconomic wrestling-matches are where we find enshittification's heroes and villains – the people who fight for the user or stand up for a fair deal, versus the people who want to cheat and wreck to make things better for the company and win bonuses and promotions for themselves:

https://locusmag.com/2023/11/commentary-by-cory-doctorow-dont-be-evil/

These microeconomic struggles are usually obscure, because companies are secretive institutions and our glimpses into their deliberations are normally limited to the odd leaked memo, whistleblower tell-all, or spectacular worker revolt. But when a company gets dragged into court, a new window opens into the company's internal operations. That's especially true when the plaintiff is the US government.

Which brings me back to Google, the poster-child for enshittification, a company that revolutionized the internet a quarter of a century ago with a search-engine that was so good that it felt like magic, which has decayed so badly and so rapidly that whole sections of the internet are disappearing from view for the 90% of users who rely on the search engine as their gateway to the internet.

Google is being sued by the DOJ's Antitrust Division, and that means we are getting a very deep look into the company, as its internal emails and memos come to light:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/10/03/not-feeling-lucky/#fundamental-laws-of-economics

Google is a tech company, and tech companies have literary cultures – they run on email and other forms of written communication, even for casual speech, which is more likely to take place in a chat program than at a water-cooler. This means that tech companies have giant databases full of confessions to every crime they've ever committed:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/03/big-tech-cant-stop-telling-on-itself/

Large pieces of Google's database-of-crimes are now on display – so much, in fact, that it's hard for anyone to parse through it all and understand what it means. But some people are trying, and coming up with gold. One of those successful prospectors is Ed Zitron, who has produced a staggering account of the precise moment at which Google search tipped over into enshittification, which names the executives at the very heart of the rot:

https://www.wheresyoured.at/the-men-who-killed-google/

Zitron tells the story of a boardroom struggle over search quality, in which Ben Gomes – a long-tenured googler who helped define the company during its best years – lost a fight with Prabhakar Raghavan, a computer scientist turned manager whose tactic for increasing the number of search queries (and thus the number of ads the company could show to searchers) was to decrease the quality of search. That way, searchers would have to spend more time on Google before they found what they were looking for.

Zitron contrasts the background of these two figures. Gomes, the hero, worked at Google for 19 years, solving fantastically hard technical scaling problems and eventually becoming the company's "search czar." Raghavan, the villain, "failed upwards" through his career, including a stint as Yahoo's head of search from 2005-12, a presiding over the collapse of Yahoo's search business. Under Raghavan's leadership, Yahoo's search market-share fell from 30.4% to 14%, and in the end, Yahoo jettisoned its search altogether and replaced it with Bing.

For Zitron, the memos show how Raghavan engineered the ouster of Gomes, with help from the company CEO, the ex-McKinseyite Sundar Pichai. It was a triumph for enshittification, a deliberate decision to make the product worse in order to make it more profitable, under the (correct) belief that the company's exclusivity deals to provide search everywhere from Iphones and Samsungs to Mozilla would mean that the business would face no consequences for doing so.

It a picture of a company that isn't just too big to fail – it's (as FTC Chair Lina Khan put it on The Daily Show) too big to care:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oaDTiWaYfcM

Zitron's done excellent sleuthing through the court exhibits here, and his writeup is incandescently brilliant. But there's one point I quibble with him on. Zitron writes that "It’s because the people running the tech industry are no longer those that built it."

I think that gets it backwards. I think that there were always enshittifiers in the C-suites of these companies. When Page and Brin brought in the war criminal Eric Schmidt to run the company, he surely started every day with a ritual, ferocious tug at that enshittification lever. The difference wasn't who was in the C-suite – the difference was how freely the lever moved.

On Saturday, I wrote:

The platforms used to treat us well and now treat us badly. That's not because they were setting a patient trap, luring us in with good treatment in the expectation of locking us in and turning on us. Tech bosses do not have the executive function to lie in wait for years and years.

https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/22/kargo-kult-kaptialism/#dont-buy-it

Someone on Hacker News called that "silly," adding that "tech bosses do in fact have the executive function to lie in wait for years and years. That's literally the business model of most startups":

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40114339

That's not quite right, though. The business-model of the startup is to yank on the enshittification lever every day. Tech bosses don't lie in wait for the perfect moment to claw away all the value from their employees, users, business customers, and suppliers – they're always trying to get that value. It's only when they become too big to care that they succeed. That's the definition of being too big to care.

In antitrust circles, they sometimes say that "the process is the punishment." No matter what happens to the DOJ's case against Google, its internal workers have been made visible to the public. The secrecy surrounding the Google trial when it was underway meant that a lot of this stuff flew under the radar when it first appeared. But as Zitron's work shows, there is plenty of treasure to be found in that trove of documents that is now permanently in the public domain.

When future scholars study the enshittocene, they will look to accounts like Zitron's to mark the turning points from the old, good internet to the enshitternet. Let's hope those future scholars have a new, good internet on which to publish their findings.

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/2024/04/24/naming-names/#prabhakar-raghavan

[why-animals-do-the-thing]

Over the last few years, I’ve begun to heavily encourage people to think of a zoo or aquarium or sanctuary being accredited as conveying important information about their ethos / operations / politics - but not as an inherent indicator of quality. Why? Because accrediting groups can be and are fallible. There are issues with all of the accrediting groups and programs, to varying degrees, and so they’re just a piece of information for a discerning zoo-goer to incorporate into their overall opinion. I just saw a news article go by with some data that proves my point.

First off, good for Houston, no commentary that follows is directed that them.

This isn’t the first time I’ve seen a headline like this - there was one a couple years ago, about Cheyenne Mountain Zoo in Colorado also getting a perfect inspection. But here’s what bugs me about it.

If you see/hear the phrase “Facility X has been accredited by Y organization, which holds the highest standards in the world for this type of facility”, it kind of implies that facility X meets all of those standards, doesn’t it? Not most of them, not the majority. When you hear that a zoological facility has gone through a rigorous process to earn an accreditation branded (by the accrediting org) as “the gold standard” in the industry… the general public is going to interpret that as saying these facilities are in compliance with every single rule or standard. And what these headlines tell us, alongside the commentary from AZA in the articles, is that it’s not only not true - it never has been true. Most AZA accredited facilities apparently don’t meet all the AZA standards when they’re inspected, and that’s both okay with them and normal enough to talk about without worrying about the optics.

Let’s start with the basic information in the Houston Chronicle article, which will have been provided to them by the zoo and the AZA.

“Since it's inception in 1974, the AZA has conducted more than 2,700 inspections and awarded only eight perfect evaluations throughout the process's 50-year history. Houston Zoo's final report is 26 pages long — and filled with A's and A-pluses."

Okay, so… doing that math, less than one percent of AZA accreditation inspections don’t meet all the standards at the time of inspection. But, wait, that’s not just what that says. That bit of information isn’t talk about AZA accredited facilities vs the ones that got denied accreditation: this is telling us that of facilities that earned AZA accreditation, basically none of them meet all the standards at the time. This isn’t talking about tabled accreditations or provisional ones where they come back and check that something improved. Given that math from earlier, this information means that most - if not all - AZA accredited facilities have repeatedly failed to meet all of the standards at one point in time … and have still been accredited anyway.

That tracks with what was said about Cheyenne Mountain Zoo, back in 2021 when they got their perfect accreditation.

“Cheyenne Mountain Zoo has earned an incredibly rare clean report of inspection and its seventh consecutive five-year accreditation from the Association of Zoos and Aquariums (AZA). In nearly 50 years of accreditations, CMZoo is only the fourth organization to earn a ‘clean’ report, which means there wasn’t a single major or minor concern reported”

Seven consecutive accreditation processes - and only one of them where they actually met all the standard at the time.

Here’s what the AZA CEO had to say about Houston’s accreditation achievement in that article, which reinforces my conclusion here:

"AZA president and CEO Dan Ashe says the multi-day inspection process, which occurs every five years, has been described as "comprehensive, exhausting and intimidating."

"We send a team of experts in who spend several days talking to employees, guests and the governing board. They look at animal care and husbandry. They look at the governance structure and finances. They look comprehensively at the organization," Ashe explains. "For a facility like Houston Zoo to have a completely clean accreditation and inspection is extremely rare. These inspectors are experts, it's hard to get to the point where they can't find something.""

Now, here’s the rub. We, as members of the public, will never have any idea which standards it is deemed okay for a given AZA facility to not meet. All of the zoological accrediting groups consider accreditation information proprietary - the only way we find out information about how a facility does during accreditation is if they choose to share it themselves.

On top of that, it’s complicated by the fact that last time I read them AZA had over 212 pages of accreditation standards and related guidance that facilities had to comply with. Now, AZA doesn’t accredit facilities if there are major deviations from their standards, or if there’s an issue on something important or highly contentious. So - based on my completely outsider but heavily researched perspective - this probably means that most zoos are in non-compliance with a couple of standards, but not more than a handful.

To make trying to figure this out even more fun, it is also important to know that AZA’s standards are performance standards: whether or not they’re “met” is based on a subjective assessment performed by the accreditation inspectors and the accreditation committee. This means that what qualifies as fulfilling the standards can and does vary between facilities, depending on who inspected them and the composition of the committee at the time.

So why do I care so much? Because when it comes to public trust, branding matters. AZA has gained a reputation as the most stringent accrediting group in the country - to the point that it can lobby legislators to write exceptions into state and federal laws just for its members - based on how they message about their accreditation program. How intensive it is, how much oversight it provides, what a high level of rigor the facilities are held to. That… doesn’t track with “well, actually, the vast majority of the zoos meet most of the standards most of the time.” People who support AZA - people who visit AZA accredited zoos specifically because of what it means about the quality of the facility - believe that accreditation means all the standards are being met!

To be clear: most AZA zoos do meet some pretty high standards. It’s likely that what are being let slide are pretty minor things. I expect it’s on stuff the facility can improve without too much hassle, and it might be that doing so is probably part of what’s required. There’s not enough information available to people outside the fold. But I will say, I don’t think any zoo is getting accredited despite AZA having knowledge of a serious problem.

Where I take issue with this whole situations is the ethics of the marketing and branding. AZA frames themselves as being the best-of-the-best, the gold standard, when it turns out that most of their accredited zoos aren’t totally in compliance, and they know and it’s fine. They seem to be approaching accreditation like a grade, where anything over a certain amount of compliance is acceptable. The public, though, is being fed a narrative that implies it’s a 99/100 pass/fail type of situation. That’s not super honest, imho, which shows up in how there’s zero transparency with the public about it - it goes unspoken and unacknowledged, except when it’s used for promotional gain.

And then, like, on top of the honesty in marketing part, it’s just… something that gets joked about, which really rubs me the wrong way. Like this statement from the media releases for the Cheyenne Mountain accreditation:

“Another of our ‘We Believe’ statements is, ‘We value laughter as good medicine,’” said Chastain. “To put this clean accreditation into perspective, when I asked Dan Ashe, AZA president and CEO, for his comments about how rare this is, he joked, ‘A completely clean inspection report is so unusual, and so unlikely, it brings one word to mind — bribery!’“

So, TL;DR, even AZA accreditation is designed so that their accredited zoos don’t have to - and mostly don’t - actually fully meet all the standards. I’d love to know more about what types of standards AZA is willing to let slide when they accredit a facility, but given the proprietary nature of that information, it’s pretty unlikely there will ever be more information available. AZA accreditation tells you what standards a zoo aspires to meet, what their approximate ethics are, and what political pool they play in. When it comes to the quality of a facility and their animal care, though, sporting an accreditation acronym is just a piece of the larger puzzle.

[good-chimes]

Based on @tibbycaps’s very funny convexian hitman au, where vexes Cub and Scar have been ‘voluntarily’ employed as hitmen by the governing NHO.

YR 1, DAY 1 OF CONTRACT

Receptionist: Hello and welcome to the NHO! We are proud to protect the citizens of Hermit City. How can I help you?

Cub: We want to get past those security barriers.

Receptionist: Uh…so you’re…visitors?

Scar: We’re employees!

Cub: Since this morning.

Scar: We have a contract and everything. We’re totally official and definitely allowed in the building.

Receptionist: Um. Do you have your passes?

Cub: Oh, yeah, yeah, of course. Just a moment.

Scar: Do we have passes! Of course we have passes. Cub, give her the passes.

Receptionist: Sir, that’s an aluminum bottle cap.

[The visitors examine the item.]

Scar: Looks like an employee pass to me.

Cub: My bad. What about this?

Receptionist: That’s a penknife. That’s a sandwich wrapper—that’s a library card—I mean, it’s the right shape, but—that’s a driver’s license which is obviously not yours—that’s a fifty-dollar bill—that’s a second driver’s license for a completely different person. Sir, literally none of these things are employee passes.

Cub: Yeahhhhh, but do you get paid enough to notice?

Receptionist: Do you have a line manager? Or, um, a hiring manager? Who’s in charge of you?

[The visitors consult.]

Scar: Someone is, probably.

Cub: Might be Beef.

Receptionist: Uh, Director Beef is, uh, one of the heads of the whole organization. Are you sure?

Cub: Eh.

Scar: He did have a nice suit. Good shoes, too! Shame about the soot stains afterwards.

Receptionist: Okay, I’ll…just ping my boss… and I guess we’ll just start the process to get you passes. Let me take your first and last names, please?

Scar: Mister Scar GoodTimes, and this is Cub.

Receptionist: Cub?

Cub: Yup.

Receptionist: That’s a nickname…?

Cub: No, it’s a full name. Cub. Uhhhhh. Fan.

Receptionist: Sir, did you just look at that baseball pennant?

Cub: Yeah. Huge coincidence.

Receptionist: Okay, I’ll send them to print…orientation booklet…fire exits…do you need any accommodations for your, er, your wings?

Cub: Naw, they’re not real in this dimension. Go straight through physical matter. Walls, people—

Scar: —bars, safe doors—

Receptionist: Um.

Cub: Vex joke. Cultural.

Receptionist: Oh, right, you’re Vex! Like—what were those guys called who ate that policeman on the news…? ConVex!

Cub: Noooooo, no, no, we’re nothing like them. We’re real upstanding citizens.

Scar: I heard those two went to prison.

Cub: To super jail.

Scar: For a thousand years!

Manager: Excuse me, I’m the head of front desk and security, what’s going on here?

Receptionist: Oh, hi, boss, these gentlemen were just—

Manager: I can see what they are! This should have been escalated as soon as they turned up. You should have known to call me the minute you saw a Vex!

Receptionist: They haven’t done anything wrong.

Manager: Not done anything wrong—you mean they haven’t eaten anyone yet.

Cub: I haven’t had my coffee.

Scar: I have! Who do you want us to start with?

Manager: Come with me, please. The Directors want to see you.

Scar: [voice retreating as the visitors are escorted away] This is a fancy office. I like the art.

Cub: Did you know you can turn that photocopier into a laser canon?

Manager: This is why they put you in prison! Stick close to me! Please stop touching things!

NOTICE TO FRONT DESK STAFF

The copier tray is to be loaded from the correct angle only. It is not a ‘useless piece of shit’, you are handling it incompetently.

HR will not be dealing with complaints of ‘substandard management’. HR are here to deal with your pay slips. Complaints of substandard management should be addressed to your manager, who will take appropriate action.

Colleagues are to act with caution around new NHO agents ‘Cub’ and ‘Scar’. Minimal contact is advised. Security can be contacted via the panic buttons.

YR 1, DAY 36 OF CONTRACT

Cub: Hey. Picking up a delivery.

Receptionist: Of course, sir. Have you got a parcel ticket?

Cub: Sure, give me an example and I’ll forge you one right now.

Receptionist: I just needed the number—never mind. Let me take a wild guess based on your deliveries so far: is it the crate that’s green and glowing?

Cub: Huh, thought it would be blue. Maybe a kind of teal.

Receptionist: Well, we only have one that glows. It makes a buzzing sound when you get near it.

Cub: Ohh yeah, that’s the one.

Receptionist: Last time you got a delivery it was snakes.

Cub: Important experimental material.

Receptionist: Can you let us know if it’s snakes again? Only I need to find a heat lamp if you’re out on a mission.

Cub: Oh, yeah, right. I can build a heat lamp for you to keep here. You want something for it?

Receptionist: Okay, sir, for the last time, I don’t know where all your unmarked fifty-dollar bills come from, but it’s not normal to bribe building staff to do our jobs. 

Cub: Yeah? No deal, huh?

Receptionist: …Can you really turn the photocopier into a laser?

NOTICE TO FRONT DESK STAFF

URGENT: ALL STAFF MUST STAY AWAY FROM THE PHOTOCOPIER UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE

YR 1, DAY 82 OF CONTRACT

Receptionist: Good afternoon, welcome to the headquarters of NH—Scar?

Scar: Hello there! How’s it going?

Receptionist: Hey, Scar?

Scar: Uh-huh?

Receptionist: Your whole arm is covered in blood.

Scar: Blood? Oh, this blood? Don’t worry, don’t worry, everything’s fine. It’s not my blood. How was your weekend?

Receptionist: Are you sure it’s not your blood? That looks like someone sliced through your whole sleeve!

Scar: [tastes his own arm gingerly] Wait, yeah, some of it is mine. Just this bit, though.

Receptionist: Don’t eat it, oh my God.

Scar: It’s fine, Cub says we’re immune to all pathogens.

Receptionist: Seriously?

Scar: Nah, I think he just said that because I took his research away from him when he had the flu.

Receptionist: You should go wash that wound. That can’t be healthy. What have they got you doing out there?

Scar: Oh, y’know, this and that, we solve problems. We’re problem solvers. In fact we signed a contract to do that, so I guess we keep solving problems forever. Can I have one of these mints?

YR 1, DAY 145 OF CONTRACT

Cub: Gooood afternoon. What a beautiful day. Y’know, this kind of day makes me think, the thing about human perception—

Receptionist: The what.

Cub: The thing about human perception is it’s subjective. I did a PhD on this. So sometimes you could think you saw someone bring something into the office that you need to write down in the biohazards register, but actually, you could report to your boss there wasn’t anything there.

Receptionist: Sir, you are trying to hide an eight-foot-tall Venus fly trap behind your back. It’s taller than you are.

Cub: Seven foot at most.

Receptionist: [sighs] I guess I didn’t see anything. You want a mint?

NOTICE TO FRONT DESK STAFF

Cascaded from Legal: Employees are required to familiarize themselves with the new and expanded Dispute Resolution Policy.

Pursuant to this, threatening to eat your senior manager is NOT an approved method of settling conflicts and WILL result in disciplinary action.

Lava traps are ALSO EXPLICITLY DISALLOWED.

YR 2, DAY 407 OF CONTRACT

Receptionist: Cub, you don’t have to bribe me to get into the building after hours. You literally work here. I know you have a 24-hour pass. Just use it on the main door.

Cub: Yeah, but where’s the fun in that?

Receptionist: Try bribing an IT tech for codes to the secure areas instead.

Cub: Got those already. Phishing email. But y’know, all the techs make triple what they pay you.

Scar: And! I wanted a mint.

Receptionist: The mints are FREE.

Scar: It tastes better if it’s not!

Receptionist: That doesn’t make ANY sense! You two get back here and explain!

NOTICE TO FRONT DESK STAFF

Please find attached the Employee Satisfaction Survey. As always, we look forward to listening to your views to make NHO a Great Place To Work. Participation is mandatory.

Our recent payment settlement unfortunately means no raises this financial year.

Operational note: does any Front Desk team member know how to disconnect the ex-photocopier from the power supply without it immediately blowing up? You are all being very unhelpful about it???

YR 3, DAY 763 OF CONTRACT

Receptionist: Oh, hey, Scar.

Scar: …

Receptionist: Wait—Scar? Buddy? Are you okay?

Scar: Have you seen Cub?

Receptionist: Not since last week, I think.

Scar: Oh.

Receptionist: It’s the night shift. Was he supposed to meet you?

Scar: Yeah. They gave him a solo mission, and I dunno what time he was supposed to get back, either, but it wasn’t two o’clock in the morning. I’m just gonna…hey, can I wait down here? Until he gets in?

Receptionist: Sure. If you pull the chairs together, I guess you could make a kind of bed. I’ll keep an eye on the cameras.

-

Scar: I mean, nothing can take down Cub, right? That man’s a tank, I tell you. A genuine tank.

Receptionist: Yeah. Definitely.

Scar: He would have called me if something went wrong.

Receptionist: He would’ve.

Scar: What time is it?

Receptionist: Just gone 3am.

-

Receptionist: Look, if you’re not going to sleep, I’m ordering you pizza.

Scar: Ooooh. Let’s get wings and make a night of it while we wait. Catch!

Receptionist: This is two hundred dollars.

Scar: Yeah, can we get sides?

-

Receptionist: Just gone 4am, before you ask.

Scar: I didn’t ask!

Receptionist: I saw you open your mouth. You’re really worried, aren’t you.

Scar: Noooo, I’m not worried. I never worry about Cub.

Receptionist: Cub’s always seemed way too capable to have a problem with a mission.

Scar: Yeah.

Receptionist: You two go back a long way, huh?

Scar: There’s just the two of us. It’s always been just the two of us. And, I’ll be honest, I like this work, we have fun doing it, but why’d they send him out solo? And you know what’s worse, I can’t even ask! If we put a foot out of line, we— [breaks off into a coughing fit]

Receptionist: Are you okay?

Scar: I’m fine, I’m fine! I’m fresh as a daisy.

Receptionist: It sure sounded like your own throat just tried to cut you off.

Scar: Well, maybe I just care a lot about the office Data Combustion Policy.

Receptionist: I think you mean the Data Protection Policy? On second thoughts, I remember last year’s Christmas party, so maybe not—oh, hey.

Scar: What?

Receptionist: I saw something on the cameras, is that—

Cub: Yo.

Scar: Oh my God Cub I was so worried.

Cub: ‘m fine. [blurrily] Are those buffalo wings?

Scar: You are so not fine. You can have wings when you’re lying down!

Cub: ‘m taking these wings.

Receptionist: Here’s the first aid kit. You need to close the bag or the rest of the wings will fall out, guys. Guys. Look where you’re going. You have to open the doors before you go through them. Take the first aid kit with you!

YR 5, DAY 1561 OF CONTRACT

Receptionist: Good morning, and welcome to—oh, it’s you two. You brought a guest?

Cub: Howdy. This is Grian.

Grian: Apparently I work here now. Apparently I have “limited employment options”. Someone told me I’m lucky I’m not dead.

Scar: Haha, Mondays, am I right! So he’ll need a pass, and maybe a helping hand if she spaces out in the atrium.

Receptionist: Sure…oh, Grian, you’re on the system already. Here, take a temporary pass, and we’ll have your real one ready by lunchtime. Uh, if you need any help—

Grian: Wait, my date of birth is wrong on your screen. It’s the year before.

Receptionist: Did you just…read that backwards from the others side of my computer?

Scar: Wow, Grian, another nosebleed?

Grian: Shut up.

Cub: Your brain must be shrivelled up like a raisin by now.

Grian: Still works better than Scar’s!

Scar: [leans on the reception desk as the other two leave, bickering] Sooo…Grian’s not allowed outside without a Director’s approval.

Receptionist: Is that right?

Scar: Scary stuff, huh? If you happened to see him leave with us, and we just forgot to show you a permit…can I convince you into some sort of deal? As a friend?

Receptionist: You know, you can just ask a friend to do you a favor, you don’t have to pay me. I’ve known you for five years. I’m not gonna turn you in.

Cub: [calls] You coming, Scar?

Scar: I gotta go! Grian’s just a Watcher, she’s not dangerous. Grab some cash from Cub’s bottom desk drawer. They don’t even search our office anymore, so it’s just labelled ‘proceeds of crime (not)’. Cub’s traps will let you past.

Receptionist: Wait, are you—was that person—a Watcher—holy shit—

Scar: See ya later! Get the money!

Receptionist: [rolls eyes] Of course, sir. Have a nice day.

*chau Grian uses he/she pronouns

*Check out tibby’s chau tag!

[facts-i-just-made-up]

i need a list of your shortest facts to read off to friends in udder dead pan. most of the recent facts are too long to read off.

My shortest few factoids-

I've never written any short factoids.

I never tried to do one.

Short facts are hard.

Billionaire Howard Hughes once attempted to make a film of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea and the production would become one of Hollywood’s greatest disasters, taking the lives of over 90 actors and crew, costing nearly half a billion dollars, destroying an entire island, and almost causing a 3rd world war. A party was held to mark the start of production at one of Hughes’ seaside homes and was sadly marred when a drunken Hughes began shooting into the air with his crossbow and killed an albatross, which fell into the punch bowl, offending several actors, who departed the production. This caused a massive production delay during which Hughes bought up over 50 warehouses (including the world’s largest building at the time) to hold the sets and specially built water tanks until casting was replenished. Two of these warehouses burned down (including the world’s largest building fire at the time), destroying the sets which then had to be rebuilt. By the time Hughes decided to cast unknown actors in the lead roles, ten more major set pieces had rotted away delaying the production further. Finally in October of 1948 the new sets and all actors were in place on the luxurious island of Bikini Atoll. The crew was to arrive at the shooting location on October 26th but was delayed by weather. This turned out to be a good thing as the United States conducted an unannounced nuclear test on October 27th, annihilating the island and the sets completely. The island is still toxic, and Howard Hughes, who owned the island, was compensated only $212 for his losses by the government. Undeterred, Hughes began again with fresh sets, and new actors as the previous group had long since departed by 1950. This time, production finally began and footage was shot. It was never developed however because despite the expenditure of $800,000 on pyrotechnics for the first scenes shot, nobody had thought to temperature-protect the film canisters, which were opened at the lab and found to have melted completely into what amounted to large plastic pucks. Hughes filmed the scene again, at the same cost, and then a third time when he was not satisfied with a background extra’s hair. This new footage too was lost when it was captured by rebellious 1950s teenagers who held it for ransom. They asked only $50 but Hughes refused to pay on principle. The actors and crew were even more upset than Hughes that their work had been for nothing and so began the “Leagues Riots” of 1951. What sets remained were once more burned down, this time in protest. Then the real problems began. By then, the Disney production was under way and Hughes spent millions more to spy on and sabotage the rival production. Several Disney employees fell victims to car bombs, others to arsenic poisoning, and one to auto-erotic asphyxiation, but Hughes was not considered responsible for that particular event. Walt Disney, of course, declared war. The “War Between The Sets” began in 1953 as Hughes forces were driven off by Disney’s hired guns, the Mouseketeers which in those days were a fully armed paramilitary force. This skirmish took seven lives, but it was only the beginning. Hughes used his government contracts to secure two bombers and arms weighing in excess of 500 tons, all of which were dropped on Disney owned installations. Disney’s retaliation was severe. Hughes hotels burned days after, there were so many fires that Vegas and LA were both lit as bright as daylight even at midnight from the blazes. Hughes responded with bombings and drone strikes, with “drone strikes” in 1953 referring to dropping bees on ones enemy. The conflict at one point threatened to spill over into Russia’s Southern American interests, leading the president to demand Hughes back down before turning the cold war into a nuclear conflict. By the time a truce was called, Disney’s film was in theaters and Hughes was ready to call it a loss.

Mice can't fart.

[robertreich]

Who’s to Blame for Out-Of-Control Corporate Power?    

One man is especially to blame for why corporate power is out of control. And I knew him! He was my professor, then my boss. His name… Robert Bork.

Robert Bork was a notorious conservative who believed the only legitimate purpose of antitrust — that is, anti-monopoly — law is to lower prices for consumers, no matter how big corporations get. His philosophy came to dominate the federal courts and conservative economics.

I met him in 1971, when I took his antitrust class at Yale Law School. He was a large, imposing man, with a red beard and a perpetual scowl. He seemed impatient and bored with me and my classmates, who included Bill Clinton and Hillary Rodham, as we challenged him repeatedly on his antitrust views.

We argued with Bork that ever-expanding corporations had too much power. Not only could they undercut rivals with lower prices and suppress wages, but they were using their spoils to influence our politics with campaign contributions. Wasn’t this cause for greater antitrust enforcement?

He had a retort for everything. Undercutting rival businesses with lower prices was a good thing because consumers like lower prices. Suppressing wages didn’t matter because employees are always free to find better jobs. He argued that courts could not possibly measure political power, so why should that matter?

Even in my mid-20s, I knew this was hogwash.

But Bork’s ideology began to spread. A few years after I took his class, he wrote a book called The Antitrust Paradox summarizing his ideas. The book heavily influenced Ronald Reagan and later helped form a basic tenet of Reaganomics — the bogus theory that says government should get out of the way and allow corporations to do as they please, including growing as big and powerful as they want.

Despite our law school sparring, Bork later gave me a job in the Department of Justice when he was solicitor general for Gerald Ford. Even though we didn’t agree on much, I enjoyed his wry sense of humor. I respected his intellect. Hell, I even came to like him.

Once President Reagan appointed Bork as an appeals court judge, his rulings further dismantled antitrust. And while his later Supreme Court nomination failed, his influence over the courts continued to grow.  

Bork’s legacy is the enormous corporate power we see today, whether it’s Ticketmaster and Live Nation consolidating control over live performances, Kroger and Albertsons dominating the grocery market, or Amazon, Google, and Meta taking over the tech world.

It’s not just these high-profile companies either: in most industries, a handful of companies now control more of their markets than they did twenty years ago.

This corporate concentration costs the typical American household an estimated extra $5,000 per year. Companies have been able to jack up prices without losing customers to competitors because there is often no meaningful competition.

And huge corporations also have the power to suppress wages because workers have fewer employers from whom to get better jobs.

And how can we forget the massive flow of money these corporate giants are funneling into politics, rigging our democracy in their favor?

But the tide is beginning to turn under the Biden Administration. The Justice Department and Federal Trade Commission are fighting the monopolization of America in court, and proposing new merger guidelines to protect consumers, workers, and society.

It’s the implementation of the view that I and my law school classmates argued for back in the 1970s — one that sees corporate concentration as a problem that outweighs any theoretical benefits Bork claimed might exist.

Robert Bork would likely regard the Biden administration’s antitrust efforts with the same disdain he had for my arguments in his class all those years ago. But instead of a few outspoken law students, Bork’s philosophy is now being challenged by the full force of the federal government.

The public is waking up to the outsized power corporations wield over our economy and democracy. It’s about time.

[codenamesazanka]

My prediction on what was Scissors-kun's deal ended up being pretty correct: he was indeed abused - horrifically so, being tied up and locked away - and then abandoned by his family during the war because of his quirk. Except Horikoshi actually exceeded my expectations and revealed that it wasn't because of behavioral issues (not that it would've justified it! Never. but I was imagining a parallel to Toga), it was only because his quirk was a random mutation, and also his family sewn his mouth shut.

Because thing is. The set up for something like this was here all along. I predicted it based on things that were already happening in the story. Continued fear of 'abnormal' quirks; horrific domestic violence enacted due to this; Heroes never catching wind of this because this was from a family that weren't consider 'Villains', so this was Scissors-kun's normal. And this normal broke and the dark secret got revealed only because something extraordinary happened - the country collapsed. Scissors-kun family left him, so he was able to escape.

But... none of this is apparently going to be addressed. The happy ending is Scissors-kun being found and helped, instead of any widespread, far-reaching, systemic change that would prevent shit like this. No, 'but it's obviously going to be addressed off-screen' doesn't count. The story brought up on-page and explicitly that quirk discrimination is a thing, that abusive quirk counseling/treatment is a thing, that abuse and abandonment of children is a thing. I expect the solutions to be on-page and explicit as well, and not just 'if I reach out when it's not my business, then...!'

(Also. it is their fucking business. They're government employees. Their job is to save people and guarantee the welfare of all citizens. it is very much their business.)

I'm not upset that Scissors-kun isn't Shigaraki; never really expected that in the first place. Shigaraki died. Deku fucking failed. I've come to terms with it. I'm not upset that Shigaraki wasn't saved, but this kid was; not even in the meta-, story-, character-sense, because, fine, he's replacement goldfish Tenko, but I'll take the 'we'll do better next time', it's a good thing this kid gets saved, it's what Shigaraki would've wanted, it's what the League fought to destroy for. It's even good that The Old Lady has become a better person.

What baffles me is that this save occurs pretty much because of nothing except the purported 'What Deku Showed The World That Day (When He Killed A Man)'. This save isn't because Heroes and civilians have more awareness of victims. This save isn't because society is promising to stop quirk discrimination. This save isn't because Ochako learns of Toga's abusive parents and so sets out to tackle this issue of quirk-related domestic violence. This save isn't because Deku has lead a new movement to stop bystander inaction. (Moreover, about 'bystander inaction' - Scissors-kun lists 5 other people outside his immediate family of Dad/Mom/Sis who knew about him... and did nothing. His uncle, his aunt, his grandparents, his great-grandfather - if they didn't directly help sew Scissors-kun mouth shut, they still turned a blind eye and never alerted authorities. (Tenko explicitly states this as one of the factors that led to him lashing out, but I guess the story forgot about it long ago, so. Even with the memories sharing of Chapter 417 and 418, Deku never sees this.))

As I said above, none of the issues that lead to Scissors-kun being in the circumstances he was in has been addressed.

This save isn't because any random civilian has decided to help - because any rando can and should help! This isn't even because Old Lady came to the guilt-ridden conclusion herself to do better.

This save is because Old Lady, carrying the burden of guilt, watched Deku kill the kid she didn't save all those years ago (tho she doesn't know it) and is apparently inspired by this act of "I can't help but do something" to finally take action (as helpfully narrated by Hawks). It's not because civilians have done any deep thinking about the rot that permeates their culture; it's because Deku was a hard-working murderer on TV. There were dozens of other people on the street. Real change should've been a whole crowd of people seeing Scissors-kun and wanting to help - someone giving him a blanket or offering him shoes while another calls for an ambulance???

But whatever. I just want to state this: the first thing that truly saved Scissors-kun was Shigaraki's destruction. Without it, his family would've stayed in that house and kept him locked up. It's really only because of Shigaraki's destruction that Scissors-kun even got the opportunity to find freedom and get his hand held.