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slattlicker · 7 days ago

Note

Schlatt has said in a chuckle sandwich ep that he buys expensive furniture (VERY EXPENSIVE)

and so imagine ted is at his place and he spills something on the couch and so schlatt gets really mad righttt

but later schlatts like fucking u on the couch and u cum/squirt all over it and you think he’s going to be really mad but he loves it and makes u do it again <3

╭﹐✦˚₊· 𖤐 * visitation rights ⋆.ೃ࿔*:･ ╮ imagine: he hires you to redecorate his condo. you hate the layout. he hates your attitude. the couch is the only thing worth keeping—so, naturally, you try to destroy it. ╰﹒♡₊˚๑ *✧﹒✦ ࣪ ˖ ┊

﹒₊✦ a/n: inspired by a sinful little ask about furniture, bodily fluids, and schlatt being possessive. i may have taken... several creative liberties ♡ hope that’s okay.

warnings: explicit content (MDNI !!!) · hate sex · exes with unresolved everything · belt kink · oral (f & m) · overstim · degradation · possessive behavior · cumplay · ruined furniture · pettiness as foreplay

✦ note: post-scene behavior may look like aftercare, but it’s more possessive than nurturing. emotional resolution is not present—please tread carefully if you’re seeking softness or a happy ending. there isn’t one.

enjoy, pervs ♡

✧✧✧

schlatt's pov

the condo was a fucking disaster.

to be clear, it was massive—open floor plan, polished concrete, floor-to-ceiling windows, and a view of the skyline that probably made architects weep. it screamed luxury. class. money.

but whoever had picked out the furniture should’ve been tried at the hague.

there was a sectional couch in deep emerald velvet—opulent, sculptural, stunning—and it clashed with everything else in the room. a glass coffee table sat crooked on a synthetic cowhide rug, as if begging to be put out of its misery. the wall art? faux-motivational quotes in metallic cursive. one said, “hustle in silence. let your success make the noise.”

schlatt stood in the middle of it all with a hand on his hip, coffee in the other, wondering how the hell he let it get this bad.

it wasn’t like he didn’t have taste. he did. for watches. cars. whiskey. leather. things that were loud in quality, quiet in branding. but interior design? that was austin’s thing.

and it was austin who noticed. who took one look around the condo during poker night, laughed for five full minutes, and said, “you live like a divorced banker who just lost custody.”

“fuck off,” schlatt had said.

“seriously. you need help.”

“i’ve got a guy, actually,” austin had added, wiping his eyes. “she’s brilliant. brutal. you’ll hate her. but she’s the best.”

that was three weeks ago.

and now here he was. dressed like he had a meeting on wall street. two undone buttons. rolex peeking from his cuff. coffee in hand like he wasn’t pacing a condo that looked like a tech startup’s idea of cozy.

he heard the knock and exhaled slowly. calm. in control.

he opened the door.

and there she was.

her.

✧✧✧

y/n's pov

you had prepared for this meeting like any other: portfolio, mood boards, fabric swatches, and an ironed outfit that screamed competence. you wore black. structured. polished. earrings small. hair perfect. lipstick unforgiving.

professional.

because you were. this was your job. not therapy. not nostalgia. not a goddamn walk down memory lane.

still, when the door opened, you had to pause for a millisecond.

schlatt.

older. broader. hair a little longer, face a little sharper. he wore the same brand of cologne, though—you caught it faintly as he stepped back to let you in. warm. smoky. familiar.

you ignored it.

“hi,” you said crisply. “i’m here for the walkthrough.”

he blinked. “you’re the interior designer.”

“i am.”

“you’re austin’s interior designer.”

you gave him a tight smile. “that a problem?”

“no,” he said quickly, stepping aside. “no, just—didn’t realize. i mean. wow.”

you walked in without further comment, heels tapping against the hardwood. the place was just as bad as austin had warned.

“jesus christ,” you muttered, surveying the couch. “you let a computer algorithm decorate this place?”

“it came mostly furnished.”

“and you just… kept it like this?”

“i’ve been busy.”

you didn’t respond. you were already taking photos, opening cabinets, checking natural light.

he hovered.

“you’re not gonna—like—mention it?” he asked finally.

you glanced at him. “mention what?”

“that we… you know.”

you tilted your head slightly. “oh. that.”

“yeah. that.”

you offered a dry smile. “ancient history.”

he blinked.

you turned back to your notes. “let’s keep it that way.”

it hit him harder than it should’ve.

because for a second, when he saw you standing there, he thought maybe—

but no. of course not.

you were here to work. you had your clipboard and your laser measurer and your pressed slacks, and he was just the idiot who didn’t know how to buy a rug that didn’t scream cryptobro bachelor pad.

he cleared his throat. “right. yeah. totally.”

you didn’t look up. you just said, “let’s talk about that couch.”

the couch was the only thing in the condo with any real value.

not because of the color. or the fact that it was modular.

because they bought it together.

six years ago. when they still shared keys. and spotify playlists. and the occasional sunday morning worth remembering. it had cost more than some people’s cars—custom italian velvet, deep emerald, walnut trim and brass feet, imported from milan. schlatt had haggled for it like a man possessed.

he remembered how proud he was when it arrived. how the two of them arranged the pieces together, testing configurations, arguing about the chaise. how they broke it in like it was sacred. movie nights. lazy mornings. one disastrous attempt at assembling ikea drawers while tipsy.

it was the only thing he fought for during the breakup.

he’d let you take the espresso machine. the knives. the record player. the apartment.

but not the couch.

and now you were standing in front of it like it meant nothing. like it was just another piece of evidence in the case against his taste.

he watched you jot something down in your notebook, tapping your pen against your chin. you were muttering to yourself. pacing. taking measurements. referencing swatches against the fabric.

and then you said it.

"it’s the only thing worth saving."

you didn’t look at him when you said it. but it stuck. worse than a knife, sharper than pity. because you didn’t say it like it meant anything. you said it like a professional. like someone doing a job.

still, it caught him.

because now you were designing around it.

you’d said it was the only anchor in the entire mess. that everything else had to go. but not the couch.

you circled it like it was art. you built your palette around it. you asked if he remembered the name of the fabric—of course he did. you held up a swatch of slate velvet and murmured, "this might finally do it justice."

and schlatt—who hadn’t thought about milan or memory or what it meant to sit on something shared until this very moment—suddenly couldn’t think about anything else.

✧✧✧

schlatt's pov

it had been three weeks since the initial walkthrough, and schlatt had more or less surrendered the condo to her.

not willingly. not graciously.

because she hadn’t just taken over his space—she’d taken over him. breezed in with that smug little clipboard, those stupidly expensive heels, her swatches and her attitude, and acted like he didn’t even exist outside of her vision board.

now she was seated at his kitchen island, tablet propped up like a guillotine, swatches fanned beside her coffee like an art exhibit. her blazer was flawless. her ponytail severe. she looked like she’d sue someone for misusing a throw pillow.

“mr. schlatt,” you said without looking up, “i’ve mocked up revised layouts for the media room, living room, and bedroom. i’d appreciate your feedback before proceeding with orders.”

he squinted at you. “you’re calling me mr. schlatt now?”

“it’s our professional dynamic.”

“you used to call me ‘baby’ when you wanted something.”

you tapped your screen. “yeah. and you never delivered.”

the grin that tugged at his mouth was involuntary. but you didn’t acknowledge it. you just rotated the tablet toward him, like you were dealing with a difficult client and not your ex.

“this is the proposed media room,” you said flatly. “lighting balance, scale, acoustic layout. i’ve matched the walnut paneling to matte black fixtures and hidden storage. clean. sharp.”

he leaned in. “sharp’s one word for it. looks like i’m about to start monologuing to the avengers.”

you arched a brow. “is that a complaint?”

he shrugged. “it’s the first time this place has looked like it belongs to someone with an actual spine.”

that earned him a flicker of a smile. sharp-edged. pitying. “glad to hear you’re growing one.”

you clicked to the next render.

“for the living room, i kept the sectional. temporarily.”

he tensed. “temporarily?”

you didn’t look up. “it’s the only item in here with visual weight. but it doesn’t fit the palette long-term.”

his voice dropped. “you remember that couch.”

you finally looked at him. “of course i do.”

a silence passed. ugly. heavy.

and then, like nothing, you held up a swatch. “i’m pairing it with smoked oak, brass accents, and tobacco suede. you said you liked warm tones, right? still masculine. just not… depressingly so.”

he scowled. “you saying my place is depressing?”

“i’m saying it feels like a linkedin influencer who drinks four raw eggs for breakfast and thinks a quartz coaster is interior design.”

“jesus.”

you smiled, thin and mean. “i’m trying to help.”

he stared at you. “you’re trying to win.”

“i already did. six years ago.”

he barked a laugh. “you left. that’s not winning.”

you turned the tablet one last time. “here’s the bedroom mockup. layered neutrals. clean textiles. a space for someone who doesn’t wake up and immediately ruin his own day.”

he looked at it. then at you.

and for the first time in the conversation, he didn’t have a comeback.

you took a slow sip of your coffee. “you have until friday to approve the first round of orders. if you ghost me again, i’ll assume you’re too emotionally fragile to make choices, and i’ll do it all myself.”

he leaned back, voice tight. “you always did love being in control.”

“and you always loved being told what to do,” you replied smoothly. “especially if i said it with my hand around your throat.”

his jaw clenched. you smiled sweetly.

“see you friday, mr. schlatt.”

✧✧✧

the condo looked good.

too good.

it had your fingerprints all over it—every clean line, every muted tone, every stupidly perfect shelf styling. and he hated how much better it was. hated that you were the reason.

all that was left was the living room.

and the couch.

your couch. that he fought to keep. that he won.

he walked in expecting to see you fluffing throw pillows or straightening lamps like usual—but you were standing over the tablet with that look on your face. the one that meant you were about to do something calculated and pretend it was casual.

“you’re redoing the living room?”

you didn’t even look at him. “it’s the final piece.”

he stepped closer. “what piece?”

you turned the tablet.

a couch. not the couch. just… a couch. sleek beige leather, boring brass legs, the kind of thing you’d see in a hotel lobby pretending to be chic. it looked like it came with a name like 'angled nugget chaise' and a fake sustainability pledge.

he stared at it.

then at you.

“you’re replacing my couch.”

“it’s not yours.”

that was fast. sharp.

he blinked. “i bought it.”

“we picked it. together.”

“six years ago.”

“and?”

he scoffed. “so what, now you’re just gonna design the whole place to passive-aggressively erase me?”

you looked up, deadpan. “trust me—if i was trying to erase you, i’d start with the whiskey stains in the bedroom and the framed photo of your own car in the hallway.”

“oh, fuck off.”

“no, really.” you tapped the screen with a manicured finger. “this one actually matches the palette. it doesn’t scream ‘mid-twenties man who cried during Heat.’”

he stepped forward. “that couch is the only good thing in this entire room.”

“it was the only good thing,” you corrected. “until i fixed the rest of it.”

his voice dropped. “you’re just pissed you didn’t get to keep it.”

“please.” you laughed, humorless. “if i wanted to keep it, i would’ve. i let you have it.”

“bullshit.”

you folded your arms. “you think i was gonna drag a 700-pound milanese monstrosity up three flights of stairs in a walk-up just to remind myself of you every day?”

his jaw clenched. “you think it reminds me of you?”

“god, schlatt,” you snapped, voice low, venomous. “you live like a man still clinging to the best thing he ever had and fucked up anyway.”

silence.

searing. ugly. real.

you both stood there, frozen. the couch between you like a crime scene neither of you could stop revisiting.

you arched a brow. “still can’t handle being told the truth, huh?”

he looked at the tablet again. “that couch is fucking ugly.”

“so were you. i still slept with you.”

his eyes snapped back to yours.

and for a moment—just one—there was no condo. no layout. no job.

just you. him. and six years of quiet, rotting history embedded in green velvet.

then he laughed. dry. humorless. “i’m flying out tomorrow.”

“good for you.”

“gone four days.”

you tilted your head. “i’ll hold down the fort.”

he watched you—suspicious. silent.

then turned away, muttering as he headed down the hall, “don’t touch the fucking couch.”

you didn’t answer.

just smoothed your blouse, closed the tablet, and gathered your things like a professional.

like someone who’d made peace.

like someone who hadn’t just been given a four-day window and a very, very stupid challenge.

and when the door closed behind you—

you were already texting your movers.

✧✧✧

he noticed the second he stepped through the door.

not because the replacement was ugly. god, no. it was—objectively—beautiful. italian leather, camel-toned, butter-soft. sleek lines. deep seats. the kind of thing you’d see in a luxury showroom with price tags that didn’t use decimals.

but it wasn’t his.

it wasn’t theirs.

the couch was gone.

the emerald velvet. the walnut trim. the brass feet. the years of history sealed into the seams. gone.

he stood in the middle of his living room like someone had died there.

for a moment, he thought maybe he was losing it. that she’d just rearranged things. moved it to another room. he checked. bedroom: still the same. media room: untouched. storage: empty.

that fucking couch was gone.

✧✧✧

“austin.”

“hey, man! how was the trip?”

“austin. where does she live?”

there was a pause on the other end of the line. “…what?”

“the couch is gone.”

“oh.”

“she stole the couch.”

there was another pause.

then, cautiously: “schlatt. buddy. you’re the one who said she could take full creative lead.”

“i meant the walls! the bookshelves!”

austin sighed. “you’re calling me because your ex—who you kept hired—replaced the couch she probably still dreams about burning, and now you’re having a meltdown?”

“it’s our couch...she wouldn't burn it.”

“yeah...you remember that she left you six years ago, yeah?”

“i want her address.”

austin groaned. “god, it's JUST a couch!”

“austin.”

“fine. but i’m not bailing you out if this turns into a felony.”

✧✧✧

he shows up at your place just before sundown.

no warning. no text. no civility.

he knocks once, hard, and waits.

when the door opens, you look stunned for half a second—until your eyes flick to the man in front of you, and your mouth curls like you’ve been waiting for this.

“you took the couch,” he says.

you blink once. innocently. “i updated the layout.”

“you took the couch.”

you lean against the doorframe. “and replaced it with one better suited to the home’s color story and modernized atmosphere. i even upgraded the seating depth.”

“that couch is mine.”

you snort. “please. you barely noticed it in the shop window, you were so worried about being early to the Duomo. you just paid for it.”

he steps forward. “you had it removed while i was out of state. that’s premeditated.”

you fold your arms. “and what are you gonna do? call the cops? tell them your evil ex reclaimed the overpriced sofa you emotionally imprinted on like a fucking duckling?”

he scowls. “you don’t even want it. you just wanted to take it away from me.”

you smirk. “exactly.”

it hits him like a slap. because she’s not even denying it.

“you’re insane,” he says.

“you’re welcome,” you repeat, stepping back toward the door.

but instead of retreating like a normal person, he moves. fast.

“schlatt—”

he wedges his foot in the doorway and muscles his way past you like he owns the place.

“are you serious—?”

“i’m taking the fucking couch.”

“you are not taking the couch.”

“it’s mine!”

“you gave me control over the layout!”

“i didn’t say steal the one good thing i had left!”

he’s already halfway into the living room, arms braced against the back of the couch like he’s going to deadlift it out the door by sheer rage and spite.

you follow after him, seething. “do you have any idea how deranged you sound right now?”

“oh, i’m sorry, are you not the one who surgically extracted my soul-couch while i was 900 miles away?”

you whirl around the arm of the couch to face him. “you abandoned that couch to a fake cowhide rug and a hustle grind mindset poster. i fucking rescued it.”

“you kidnapped it!”

“you’re lucky i didn’t torch the rest of your awful furniture and salt the earth!”

he lunges. not at you. at the couch, like he’s going to hoist it right over his shoulder and walk out the door. it doesn’t budge.

you shove his arm. “get your hands off it!”

he shoves back. “get your hands off me!”

you stumble, nearly trip on the rug, and he instinctively grabs your arm—steadying you—and then—

there’s a beat.

just one.

the grip doesn’t loosen.

your face is close to his now. too close. breathing hard. cheeks flushed. chest heaving.

you hiss, “let. go.”

but you don’t move.

and neither does he.

his voice drops. rough. “you don’t even want the couch.”

your eyes flash. “no. i just want you to suffer.”

and then—

he kisses you.

hard.

rough and hot and furious.

your teeth clash. your hands push. pull. your mouths crash like something breaking. it’s not tender. it’s not sweet.

it’s years of resentment and want and what if all igniting at once.

you break for air, gasping, but don’t move away. he’s still gripping your arm, and your hands are fisted in his shirt like you might throttle him or yank him closer. or both.

“you’re such an asshole,” you breathe.

“you stole my fucking couch,” he growls back.

you grab his face. he kisses you again.

this time, it’s worse. this time, you moan into it.

and that’s all it takes.

something in him snaps—like your mouth unlocked a door he’s been holding shut for six years.

he pushes you backward without breaking the kiss, hands gripping your waist. you hit the back of the couch hard—the couch—and he crowds you against it like a man who’s been starving.

“this what you wanted?” he growls against your mouth, lips slick, voice wrecked. “steal my shit, bait me into losing it—was that the plan?”

“no,” you gasp, shoving at his chest, only to claw his shirt back toward you. “i was just aiming to piss you off. the rest is a bonus.”

he huffs out a laugh, biting at your jaw, dragging his teeth across your skin until you shudder. “you’re a goddamn menace.”

“and you’re predictable,” you shoot back. “you think i didn’t know you’d come for it?”

his mouth is hot on your neck now, biting just hard enough to make you hiss.

“you always were a fucking brat,” he mutters.

you dig your nails into his back. “you always liked it.”

he growls—actually growls—and lifts you like it’s nothing. your back hits the couch cushions and he follows, mouth devouring yours, one hand already sliding up your thigh with zero patience, zero hesitation.

“gonna fuck you right here,” he murmurs, voice low and venomous. “on the couch you stole. gonna make it mine again.”

“you wish,” you breathe, grinding up against him. “you couldn’t handle me then.”

“oh, sweetheart.” his hand slips between your legs, and you gasp. “i can handle you just fine now.”

you arch under him, legs wrapping around his waist on instinct. he’s kissing you like a man drowning—rough, relentless, with teeth and tongue and six years of anger slamming into every movement.

you hate him. you hate him so much.

but god, he still knows exactly how to ruin you.

your blouse gets shoved up. your bra pushed aside. his mouth is on you, sucking and biting hickies into your skin.

“you want it rough?” he mutters. “you want me to remind you what this mouth can do? what these hands used to do?”

“you owe me,” you gasp, nails dragging down his back. “you owe me six years of orgasms and a new espresso machine.”

he huffs a laugh, breathless. “fine. let’s settle the debt.”

and then he’s moving down.

fast. desperate. determined. you don’t even have time to be smug. you barely have time to breathe.

because the second his mouth hits you—

you go silent. eyes wide. breath caught.

his tongue is cruel. precise.

your hand flies to his hair before you can stop yourself—fingers curling in tight, nails scraping across his scalp like you’re staking a claim.

he groans into you.

it’s low. guttural. monstrous.

and he doubles down.

tongue dragging through you in slow, devastating strokes, nose brushing where you’re aching, lips sucking your clit into his mouth with a rhythm so deliberate it makes your toes curl.

“fuck—” you breathe, voice wrecked.

he doesn’t let up.

he doesn’t want to let up.

because this is about more than making you come—it’s about proving something. about punishment. about pride. about planting his name back into your skin with nothing but his mouth.

you pull his hair harder, tilting his head just so—and he lets you, humming against you like he wants you to take control just to prove he’ll rip it right back.

your hips twitch, buck, grind—and his hands tighten on your thighs, holding you in place like you’re some desperate little thing he’s keeping pinned just to watch you squirm.

“stay still,” he mutters, voice muffled. “you wanted this.”

you don’t answer. you just tighten your grip in his hair and pull.

he grunts at that. nips at your clit in retaliation— enough to make your legs jerk as you yelp at the sudden pain.

your thighs are trembling. your grip on his hair is bruising. your head tips back against the couch cushions, mouth falling open, every breath a broken little sound you hate giving him—but you can’t stop.

not when he’s flicking his tongue just right. not when he’s groaning into you like he likes this. like he missed this.

he pulls back, spitting warm and lazy right onto your cunt—then spreads it with his tongue, slow and smug.

“still with me?” he mutters, thumb pressing hard at your inner thigh to hold you open.

you glare down at him. “barely.”

“good.” his mouth finds you again. “shut up.”

and you do. because the second he locks back in, there’s no room to talk. just heat. pressure. tongue working you over like he’s methodical about it, like there’s a pace he’s decided on and he’s not changing it for anything.

your hips twitch again. he slams a hand down on your stomach—flat, solid, grounding.

“don’t move.”

you’re barely breathing now. hands twisted in his hair like rope. mouth open but nothing coming out.

your head spins.

he hums against you, tongue flicking harder now. tighter circles. crueler rhythm. like he can feel how close you are and wants to make it hurt.

“fuck, schlatt—”

he cuts you off with a sharp slap to your thigh. not hard. not gentle. just enough to sting.

“don’t say my name like that,” he growls. “you know what to call me when i'm giving you everything you want.”

you bite your lip at that, the title stuck in your throat.

he notices.

his mouth curls into something slow. smug. dangerous.

“hm,” he says, tongue flicking once—deliberate, precise—right over the spot that makes your breath hitch. “thought so.”

you glare down at him, eyes glassy. your voice comes out low. strained. “don’t get cocky.”

he drags his mouth over your cunt again, slow and wet. “oh, baby.” another stroke. “i’m already there.”

you want to hit him. you want to ride him.

you want to wipe that look off his face with your thighs around his head and your fingers digging into his shoulders like you’re anchoring yourself to a sinking ship.

but right now, you’re boneless—wrecked—half-shaking and flushed all the way down to your chest.

he sits back on his heels, lazily licking his fingers like he’s tasting victory.

then he nods at you—chin tilted, tone cool. “on your knees.”

you don’t move.

he waits.

one beat. two.

you roll your eyes. “still bossy.”

“and you still like it,” he says, already reaching for his belt.

you hate that he’s right.

you push up slowly, legs unsteady, jaw tight—but you go. you kneel in front of him, still flushed, still breathing hard.

he pulls his pants down just enough, cock already hard, flushed, leaking at the tip.

you look up at him, glare sharp.

he tilts his head.

“what’s the word?” he asks.

your lips part. the word still burns. still chokes.

but the way he looks at you—like he knows you’ll say it, like he’s earned it—

your throat clicks.

“…sir.”

his breath stutters.

just for a second.

then it’s like a switch flips—his eyes go darker, his grip in your hair turns solid, possessive.

“fuck,” he mutters, voice low, rough. “there she is.”

the belt slides from his loops with that unmistakable hiss of leather, and you freeze—not scared. just…watching.

he holds it up. lets it hang between two fingers. then steps forward and wraps it around your throat. snug. not choking. not yet.

he pulls it just enough to lift your chin. make you look at him.

“keep your mouth open and your manners sharp,” he warns. “you know what to call me.”

you blink up at him, wide-eyed. lashes fluttering.

then your mouth curls.

and you murmur—soft, sweet, poisonous—

“yes, daddy.”

his expression snaps.

the belt tightens—not harsh, just a warning. his free hand grips your jaw.

hard.

“try again.”

you smile, all teeth. “master?”

his hand slams to your cheek—not a slap, not quite—but a sharp tap, a reset. his thumb pushes your jaw open.

“you’ve got one more chance to behave,” he growls. “say it right.”

you tilt your head just enough to test the belt's pull.

and purr, "sir."

his jaw clenches. nostrils flaring.

then his hand is back in your hair, belt still tight in his grip.

“open your mouth, since you’ve got so much to say.”

you do.

he feeds it to you inch by inch, slow and steady, keeping control with the belt as a leash—guiding you like he’s done this a thousand times.

you hollow your cheeks. he groans. head tipping back for a second before locking eyes with you again.

“that’s it. just like that.” he hisses between his teeth. “always took my cock so fucking well.”

you hum around him, eyes narrowed.

his hips twitch.

“fuck, don’t—don’t pull that shit,” he mutters, voice tight. “you hum again, i’m gonna come down your throat too soon, y/n."

you do it again.

harder.

and his hand tightens on the belt. yanking you forward just a little—not enough to choke, but enough to remind you who’s holding the leash.

“you’re such a fucking brat,” he growls. “look at you. on your knees. drooling all over me like this is what you were made for.”

spit’s already running down your chin. you don’t care.

you grip his thighs for balance, working your mouth over him, letting him hit the back of your throat and stay there.

he groans—deep. fucked. eyes fluttering. “goddamn.”

you bob your head, slow at first, then faster, messier—let your nose press to his skin, let your spit coat everything.

he’s cursing under his breath now, hand gripping the belt like he’ll lose it if he doesn’t have you tethered.

“good fucking girl,” he grits out. “look at you. letting me use your mouth like it’s mine. like you never left.”

you look up at him, eyes glassy, face wrecked.

his hips snap forward at a punishing pace.

you gag. swallow around him. don’t pull away, no matter how sore your throat is gonna be in the morning.

he groans—loud, uncontrolled. “shit, i’m gonna—”

you pull off with a loud, wet pop.

he looks ruined. flushed. chest heaving. belt still clenched in one fist like he’ll drag you back if you try to run.

you wipe your mouth with the back of your hand.

then smirk.

“missed this, sir?”

he stares down at you.

“get on the couch,” he says, voice like gravel. “hands and knees.”

you start to turn, blouse still bunched up beneath your arms, skirt hiked up, underwear somewhere on the floor.

he stops you with a tug on the belt.

“hold on.”

you glance back, breathless. “what now—”

rip.

the sound of fabric tearing cuts through the air like a gunshot.

you jerk as your blouse splits down the middle—threads popping, buttons scattering across the floor like shells.

“jesus—!”

he grabs the back panel, yanks again, and it comes clean off your arms, tossed over the couch without ceremony.

“you don’t get to look like you’re still in control,” he mutters, already reaching under you to pull the bra straps down. “not when you’re drooling all over my cock and soaking my couch.”

your bra barely holds on for another second before he snaps the clasp and peels it off like an afterthought.

you’re left in just your skirt, belt still looped around your throat, breath coming fast.

he steps back, takes you in—naked from the waist up, flushed, wrecked, trying to pretend you’re not into this.

then?

he rips the skirt at the zipper.

doesn’t even try to undo it.

just fists the fabric and pulls, and when it tears at the seam, he grins like it’s his favorite sound in the world.

you gasp, spinning halfway toward him. “that skirt was custom!”

he grabs your jaw, fingers digging in just enough to make you still.

"does it look like i give a fuck, dollface?"

then he turns you.

bends you over the couch like you weigh nothing.

hands and knees, belt still snug around your neck, chest bare, legs spread. what’s left of your outfit barely clings to you—torn, wrinkled, meaningless.

his palm lands hard on your ass once—twice—and then he’s lining up behind you, fist still wrapped in the belt around your neck.

“spread.”

you do.

you’re still catching your breath when he pushes inside you with a brutal thrust.

no warning. no easing in. just ownership.

your entire body jolts forward, hands scrabbling against the cushion.

“fuck!” you choke, back arching, walls clenching around him like your body’s trying to process the shock.

he groans—low, rough, like something primal just cracked inside him.

“still so fucking tight,” he mutters, fingers digging into your hips like he needs to ground himself. “six goddamn years, and you’re still perfect.”

you laugh—breathy, sharp. “don’t get soft on me now.”

he slams into you harder.

you yelp.

“that soft enough for you, sweetheart?”

you twist your head, glare over your shoulder. “i’m not the one simping.”

he growls and grabs the belt again, yanking your head up as he leans over you.

his voice is a rasp against your ear.

“say it again.”

“what?”

“say my name. right.”

you grit your teeth, spit pooling in your mouth.

“…sir.”

he groans, biting down against your shoulder—not enough to draw blood, just enough to make you jump.

“good girl,” he mutters. “knew you’d come back to me.”

“wasn’t for you,” you snap. “it was for the couch.”

his hips snap forward so hard the couch creaks under both of you.

you scream.

“liar,” he says. “i bet you planned this. you continued working for me...just to get fucked like this. to be ruined like this. and you know what?”

you’re gasping. shaking.

“just for that—you’re gonna come two more times,” he growls, “before i even think about pulling out.”

your laugh is wrecked. bitter. “what, trying to make up for six years of failure all at once?”

he grabs your hips tighter—slams in deep. you yelp.

“still running your mouth, huh?”

“still overpromising and underdelivering,” you bite back, breathless. “some things never change.”

he leans over you, the belt pressing against your throat as his body folds over yours. you feel him everywhere—skin, heat, teeth against your neck.

“say that again,” he hisses. “say it after you cum so hard you forget your own name.”

you whimper—but your tone’s still defiant. “bet you said that before you missed the launch party i wasn’t invited to.”

he stills.

his breath hits the back of your neck.

“you left,” he says, voice low. controlled. dangerous.

you shove back against him, grinding. “you let me.”

the next thrust is brutal.

you cry out, face pressed to the cushion, fingers fisting the ruined fabric beneath you.

“i told you i needed time after that promotion—”

“you vanished,” you spit, choking on the words. “you finally made it big, and i found out from a tweet.”

“you weren’t there at the party!”

“i wasn’t on the list, asshole.”

he growls and pulls the belt tighter—not choking, just enough to keep your breath on a leash.

“you think i just forgot about you?” he snaps. “that couch was the only fucking thing i kept because it mattered.”

your voice breaks. “you think that makes it better?”

“i think you wanted me to leave it. so i couldn’t have anything we built together.”

you twist beneath him, gasping, hate and arousal knotted together like wire. “i wanted you to look at it every day and remember you fucked it all up.”

“you think i don’t?”

his voice is wrecked now. too honest.

“i sit on this couch every goddamn night,” he mutters, thrusts slowing. “and all i think about is how you looked the day we bought it. that stupid smile. the fucking champagne. you remember that?”

your breath hitches.

“…yeah. i remember you spent half your paycheck on it.”

he slams back in—deep. angry.

“yeah. i fucking did.”

you’re trembling now—overstimulated, furious, close.

“schlatt—”

he growls, “try again.”

“…sir.”

“good girl.”

his hand drops to your clit—fingers circling fast, mean.

you sob through your teeth, legs shaking. “i’m—i’m gonna—”

“do it,” he snaps. “do it while i’m inside you. while you’re on this fucking couch we both worked and bled for.”

you cry out as it hits—sharp, brutal, a full-body collapse that steals your breath and leaves you soaked all over again.

he groans loud behind you, grip tightening, pace faltering. “one more.”

you shake your head. “i can’t—”

“yes you can. you will. you owe me.”

you try to speak. to push back. but he doesn’t stop.

not until you're twitching.

not until you're a mess of tears, spit, sweat, and slick.

you’re already coming—sharp, sudden, clenching around him so hard he chokes on his breath. you gasp, eyes squeezing shut, mouth open against the cushion as your whole body convulses.

but he doesn’t stop. not for a second.

his rhythm stutters, then doubles down.

“uh-uh,” he growls, hand slamming back to your hip, cock still fucking into you without mercy. “we’re not done.”

you whimper. “schlatt—”

“sir.”

your voice breaks. “sir—please, i can’t—”

“yes, you fucking can.”

then he yanks you up.

one brutal pull, and your spine is flush against his chest, his arm locked tight around your waist to hold you upright. he keeps fucking you—deep, relentless—while your knees barely stay under you, every muscle twitching from the last orgasm.

his other hand grabs under your thigh and lifts, forcing one leg up and open across the couch cushion, wide and vulnerable.

you try to squirm, but he’s got you pinned—mouth at your ear, voice a low snarl.

“touch yourself.”

you hesitate, shaking.

“i said—” he thrusts in harder, hips slapping loud against your ass— “touch yourself.”

your hand flies down. fingers shaking, slick already everywhere. you circle your clit like he told you to, gasping, sobbing, overstimulated out of your mind.

“harder.”

you obey.

your other arm reaches back, blindly grabbing at him—fingers tangling in his hair like you need leverage just to stay conscious.

he groans, hips stuttering as your nails scrape over his scalp.

“that’s it,” he breathes. “fucking mess. just like i remember.”

you’re whining now—nonsensical, desperate, legs quaking.

his mouth is at your jaw, then your cheek, then your neck, biting hard enough to leave something.

“you wanna cum again?” he hisses.

you nod frantically. “y-yes—fuck, yes, sir—”

his pace slows—not softer. just calculated. controlled. cruel.

“then say it,” he growls. “say you’ll give me the couch back.”

you choke. “wh-what?”

“say it.”

his thrusts stay steady, thick and deep and devastating, hitting everything with no mercy.

you squirm in his grip, breath caught between a sob and a scream.

“c’mon,” he murmurs into your ear, voice almost sweet. “you’re not gonna make me ask again, are you?”

your hand’s still between your legs, rubbing fast, shaking. you’re right at the edge—vision blurred, body twitching.

“say it,” he commands. “say it and i’ll let you cum again.”

“okay,” you gasp. “okay, it’s yours—fuck—you can have the couch back—”

“louder.”

“i’ll give it back—fuck—sir, i’ll give it back—!”

that’s all he needed.

“good girl.”

his hand drops from your thigh to your clit, slapping it once—wet and mean—and you scream.

you come again like a flood.

like your whole body’s been wrung out, broken open, used. it splurges out from where you're still connected to him, hitting the couch with an audible squelch, and his groan is the loudest yet.

“fucking look at that,” he mutters, watching the mess spread under you. “you just squirt all over this thousand-dollar couch for me, huh?”

you can’t answer.

you can barely breathe.

and that’s when he lets go.

his arm slips from around your waist and you drop—sloppy, gasping, twitching—straight down into the ruined cushion.

your legs give out completely.

you collapse into the mess you made, thighs still shaking, cunt dripping, face flushed and slack. you try to push yourself up, but your arms aren’t listening.

he steps back and watches you. wrecked. ruined. leaking and twitching on a soaked designer couch like it’s your only purpose.

his hand wraps around his cock—wet from you, flushed, pulsing—and he starts to stroke.

fast. aggressive. claiming.

“look at you,” he mutters, panting. “fucking pathetic.”

you lift your head weakly, blinking up at him through your lashes.

he grips your hair with his free hand—pulls your face up, not gently, not tender. just enough to make sure you’re watching.

“you want it on the couch?” he breathes. “or on that pretty little mouth that won’t shut the fuck up?”

you can’t speak. you just open your mouth.

invitation.

his groan is pure filth.

“of course you do,” he mutters. “of fucking course you do.”

it doesn’t take long.

not with the image of you soaked and broken under him.

not after watching you come so hard you gushed for him.

he strokes faster, hips twitching—

“take it.”

—and he cums.

with a grunt, his cock twitches in his hand and ropes of hot cum paint across your lips, your chin, your cheek—everywhere.

you flinch, but don’t pull away. you let it happen.

you let him mark you.

he releases your hair. you slump against the cushion again, breathing hard, face sticky, thighs wet, skin flushed from hairline to chest.

there’s a beat of silence.

he tucks himself back into his pants, exhaling slow like he just wrapped a goddamn meeting.

then—without a word—he walks into your kitchen.

your kitchen.

like he’s done it a hundred times. like he never stopped knowing where everything is, even if he's never been here before. are you this predictable with where you keep everything?

you hear the fridge door open.

a cap twist.

the clink of glass.

you don’t even try to move.

you’re still sprawled out—soaked, twitching, your cheek stuck to the cushion. your legs feel like overcooked noodles and your brain is full static.

footsteps return.

he rounds the couch, drink in one hand, chilled water bottle in the other, paper towel tucked under his arm.

sits on the clean end of the couch like it’s a fucking chaise lounge.

and then?

he pulls you gently—almost absentmindedly—across his lap.

you end up draped over him, belt still around your neck, skin sticky and hot, face flushed with exhaustion and—fuck—humiliation.

he hums to himself.

sets the glass on the side table.

cracks the water open, holds it to your lips.

you sip automatically. you’re too stunned to do anything else.

then he sets the bottle down, takes the paper towel, and starts wiping his cum off your face like it’s the most normal thing in the world.

no rush. no embarrassment. just the kind of slow, self-satisfied care you give to something you own.

he undoes the belt around your throat, finally. tosses it beside him.

you don’t thank him. you don’t speak. you don’t cry.

but your eyes sting—because this isn’t about the sex.

it’s about the fucking couch.

you gave it back.

you promised him.

he sees it. sees you. the way your jaw tightens. the flicker of shame.

and he smiles.

soft. evil.

“y/n,” he says, taking another sip of his drink. “you can have visitation rights.”

you want to shove him off the couch. but instead, you lay there.

silent. face clean. body ruined.

couch: totally, utterly his.

#i literally don't think i can write a pwp #i AM one of those people that needs a plot #so enjoy the most toxic couple ever LOLOL #vuewrites #jschlatt #schlatt #jschlatt x reader #schlatt x reader #jschlatt headcanons #schlatt headcanons #jschlatt imagines #schlatt imagines #jschlatt x you #schlatt x you

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jollmaster · 1 month ago

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if Aisleverse were to play out like of hazbin, how would you change it?

Like, what events in the episodes(or the episodes themselves) play out? Example: masquerade (idk if angel works for val in this au-)

well :D

I'll try to roughly describe how I would fit this into three seasons/thirty episodes (I don't see any reason to stretch the story out too much)

so here comes THE PLOT

season 1

meeting Charlie, Vega and their startup (a shelter for sinners during Exterminations), Charlie's meeting to Alastor and Niffty; Vega, of course, suspects that Alastor is just out for some further gain, and Niffty is just living life and doesn't mind working

information about Charlie's childhood, growing up and views in the first half of the season: we should know very well what motivates her and why she thought about injustice against sinners

story of her failed marriage to Seviathan, independent motherhood and the fact that even with all this, Seviathan helped her with the building of the asile

overall the first season focuses on simple local stories, basic world building and basic character information

but, of course, with hints that Vega has secrets, and Angel Dust hired as a janitor for a reason, being absolutely terrible at household chores

the only one with whom everything is crystal clear at the moment is Niffty, but without delving into her mortal past, because she doesn't remember much; it's known where she worked before Charlie's orphanage, and her connection to the Cannibal town and its governor is well-known

Alastor is a charming sarcastic lad, and Charlie is annoyed by that, but they're fun to flirt with each other, nothing serious

the small season boss is sir Pentious, but he works as a comedy villain

wake-up call boss is Valentino, and the story gets even darker by the finale; Angel worked for him as a security guard for prostitutes for a dose of drugs and has a vague idea of the inner workings of the sinners-overlord system

Vees as the main villains will be gone for a second season while enough Valentino

Charlie helps Angel finally get away from Valentino, by breaking their magical blood contract thanks to her half-brother, Asmodeus (Valentino is tainted by Asmodeus' blood), and it gives you reason to think that Charlie's been holding back A LOT about family ties

cliffhanger: Vees triumvirate and a hint that the main characters will have PROBLEMS with them

season 2

the beginning of the season is the meeting of the overlords through Alastor; among all the others, we get to know lady Rosie fully for the first time and learn about her and Alastor's acquaintance

there's no intrigue: they're JUST husband and wife in "couple who have been friends for a long time, but married for smth like ~10 years by human standards and still full of passion (in a non-sexual way)" stage, that's all

yes, Alastor has a personal life, and he's just a man

Charlie doesn't know it yet; however, Charlie quickly learns of Alastor's marital status when he decides to make more useful connections and decides to meet the local dark elf neighborhood governoress in person

in response to the question "why didn't you tell me you're married?" Alastor replies "you didn't ask"

more information about overlords (some of them try to save and care for people, some of them just use ones; story about Angel's family and Salvatore's sect)

again simple stories, but with a tighter focus on the characters and their pasts

Husk, who was introduced in the first season in a "haha funny grumpy cat that Niffty found in the attic" way and who slowly became local psychologist, turns out to be more complicated, and much older

he has no connection to Alastor, except that Alastor has caught his sunset as an overlord, and Husk prefers to keep the status quo and not talk about it MUCH

in general, this is where we learn more about Alastor, including his past; he has no long-range plans, he is absolutely satisfied with his current position

Pentious moves from hostility to neutral status and makes a truce with Cherri Bomb, Angel's friend who once helped him to escape from Valentino's tower; they start to become friends on the background of common interests, but so far very cautiously

Charlie visits Eden again, and Emily meets her already as an older friend; Charlie asks her to find more information on her friends-sinners, as he notices that it is the preservation of their sanity and memory that helps them to hold up better in the atmosphere of Sheol

in general, in the second season Charlie discovers that she can not only give the sinners shelter during the Exterminations, but also cure their mentality

speaking of the Exterminations: since the timeline of events is five years, they happen, but Adam's face and Adam himself remain a mystery to us (we know the exorcist leader's name, but haven't seen him in person)

Vees are the main villains, and Vox's conflict with Alastor is not so much forceful as ideological: Vox heavily clings to human life and customs, Alastor argues that a new order must be adopted

in the final episode Velvette brings the exorcist's head

cliffhanger: Adam in Eden removes helmet, but his face is NOT shown yet

season 3

no one knows yet that the finale is going to be fucked up

the beginning of the season is a celebration of the last days of the Week of the world creation: the main characters have bonded enough and we've gotten used to the local world enough to show that Sheol can be very friendly and creative

how sad it would be if suddenly things got even WORSE! COCYTUS BREAK AND LONG WINTER

yay, a reason to update the skins

Adam doesn't agree to remove Exterminations JUST because of winter (oh please, you're like children)

Charlie has a beef with her father, who didn't deign to warn her, knowing she had important business to attend to

in the first half of the third season, Lucifer Morningstar is introduced face-to-face fully (he's only appeared in Charlie's past and flashbacks before, not near his daughter in current timeline), and we sure even more that he's a crappy father and a tired millennial ruler who doesn't care about posterity

full disclosure of their history with Adam, albeit only from Lucifer's perspective (shown in such a way that we realize HOW unreliable he's as a narrator)

Naamah, Lucifer's fourth wife, is surprisingly friendly to Alastor and happy to see him; Alastor is confused because he doesn't yet know that he is only the FOURTEEN person in the entire story to survive eating the flesh of a demon

Pentious, who in the season 2 finale decides to join Charlie's gang, finally becomes their friend and bromances with Cherri

Vega's final closing arc, because Charlie becomes convinced of her origins; however, it's a secret that everyone guessed (Vega is clearly older than she said, clearly not just a prostitute and behaves more like a brawler)

no one puts it to her fault, especially Husk, who knew about it from the beginning; they're close friends, and Husk is used to keeping quiet about the past if it doesn't affect anyone

it's this season's final confrontation with Adam and the destruction of the asile (we're already attached to this place)

ofc some hellborns, include part of cannibal branch and local rural imps, help them

sir P dies, one of Charlie's dragon sons dies, all get traumas

Charlie takes her full form, and Adam is amazed that she's, well, a human girl in appearance

Charlie resolves the issue of bloodshed through a raised level of diplomacy; Adam doesn't agree to stop the Exterminations because it's a form of mercy and end to eternal suffering (sinners don't die fully unless their throats are slit with sacred steel)

Charlie is forced to agree with him, but unexpectedly Adam rebukes Lucifer for his obligation to allow sinners to be purified through Purgatory: Lucifer closed it when Adam started Exterminations after the first Crusade

final boss is LUCIFER MORNINGSTAR

Lucifer doesn't give the appearance of being happy to see him; after short (and almost failure for him) fight he, in his usual dismissive manner, allows Charlie to open Purgatory and become its mistress

somewhere in Eden sir Pentious is freaking out that after death he is human again and can walk on his feet

somewhere in Sheol Nifty is freaking out that she has both eyes back to normal and less headaches

redemption works even through death and rebirth, and the process of body rebirth can be reversed through a good attitude and restored sanity

Charlie's gang in final epilogue episode

winter has ended, spring has come

Charlie becomes the queen of Purgatory and continues to help mortals

Razzle stays with her as dragon son bodyguard, so Charlie is the mother of dragon literally

Vega and Angel remain her most loyal companions

Vega refuses to return to Eden because she believes she will be more useful here, in a place where humans have a hard time

she finds her father in the foreshadowing of Sheol, on the banks of Styx (he kept sanity and body), and bursts in tears after his "hello, María, my little girl" (her mortal name is María de la Vega); it's the first time when we see how she's crying

Angel preaches to sinners, being a sinner himself who has traveled a difficult path, and hopes to redeem and meet his sister in future

now we're free; will see you again, but not yet, not yet

Alastor says "my work here is done" and leaves to live his best life in Sheol: he's returning to half-woods-half-civilized roots as the most natural life for someone between human and deer

at least, he's a part of this world now like Goethe's Erlking, and he really loves this world

Cherri Bomb stays close to Purgatory with her recently deceased brother, Aidan, and one-eyed crow demon Frank (he was sir P's beloved egg boy), whom she promised Pentoius to take care of

she also helps humans and has finally begun to uncover her badly scarred face (she ties up her hair with Pentious' scarf, which he gave her shortly before his death)

sir Pentoius himself befriends Emily, helping her explore the question of redemption further, but the memories and scales on hands are forever with him

Niffty basically doesn't care, but for now she helps Charlie while continuing to be friends with Alastor and Rosie, for whom she's become a named niece or even almost an adopted child

Husk plays off the "Walking the Earth" trope, symbolically returning to his nomadic roots and carrying Charlie's word across the lands of Sheol

when Husk is asked what his name was when he was alive (he's the only one from Charlie's gang whose real name was never known), Husk laughs and says that it doesn't matter no more

we can choose to be better 🎵🎶

#hazbin hotel #hazbin hotel: asileverse au #hazbin hotel au #asileverse #charlie morningstar #vaggie #angel dust #alastor #niffty #husk #cherri bomb #sir pentious #adam #lucifer morningstar #vees #hazbin hotel rewrite #hazbin hotel critical #asileverse au: lore

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starberry-cupcake · 2 months ago

Note

Oh? Can you go more in depth about the writer for atla and the treatment of azula?

Oh, boy. I'll try.

CW under the cut: harassment, toxic workplace situations, misogyny.

Aaron Ehasz was the head writer for ATLA, which is something often overlooked. I've made comments about this before and people at the time seemed to think I was referring to either DiMartino or Konietzko, so I guess his important presence in the writing of the show isn't as well known. Even if he's responsible for a lot of it.

Back in 2019, several allegations were made about Ehasz in regards to his treatment of women, harassment and toxic working environment. These allegations came from different endeavors and contexts, such as his work in animation, his startup and his time as creative director in Riot Games. Here are some articles about this that are still around, I know there are more: x, x, x, x, His lacking response towards these things is still up on his twitter/x account.

A couple quotes from the articles with some of the experiences shared are:

"In addition to treating her like his own personal assistant, he is accused of transitioning her editorial duties to a group and shut down her ideas. Later, she recounted how he told her that he planned to hire her full time, had her lay off several team members and then released her from her position without an explanation. What's more, she said he would bring his children to work and leave them with female production staff members without asking. According to this account, he later attempted to sabotage her career, telling fellow industry members that "I'm a shrieking violent harpy who he was scared of cause when I was leaving I did acts of physicality.""

"It was just so much shutting women down, not taking women seriously, not listening to women, firing a woman and then shit talking her,"

"The general feeling was always… this is Aaron's company, Aaron's show, Aaron's stories to tell (yes, even the ones about women, POC, and lgbtq+ characters), and if you didn't agree you were constantly at risk,"

"I would consistently cry going into work/cry in the bathrooms, not understanding what was wrong with me as a worker because I consistently felt like nothing. I was told that I was ungrateful for my job to my face… We weren't silent at the company either. We wanted to fix things!! We talked about stuff constantly, we just weren't taken seriously."

"I was an Editor. My job was to work with narrative and enforce a style and make sure things stayed consistent. I took my job very seriously. Aaron had me do small tasks like arrange his meetings, personally remind him about his appointments, and try and arrange things for his convenience. At every point of my REAL JOB, which was editing, he ignored me. He even took editing away and made it a group activity that everyone did on a projector on the wall. I voiced how this is NOT how you do my job, and he didn’t care. He kept doing it. I put up with things till the point that I made a correction on something very politely. He told me dismissively “Editing should not get in the way of writing”"

There are more accounts and I remember at the time there were more news sites with information, but that's the general idea.

Now, about Azula.

I could write a lot about her. I've said a lot about her through the years, with different levels of articulation, because I was young once. People have already written a lot about her, better than I could. But, for a general context of where I'm coming from, I'm going to try to explain.

I always felt like she was a character in which the show dropped the ball. Big time.

She was a girl. She was 14 years old. She was a kid like the other kids we see on the show.

Yet, she was depicted as unhinged and unredeemable for it.

She was shown falling apart, she was relentlessly depicted as unloved (especially by her family but also others around her), her isolation was framed as being always her own fault. She violently unraveled by the end of the series, to the point of suffering severe hallucinations, and she was visibly not treated with the same amount of compassion other characters did.

Again, she was a 14 year old child.

Her own uncle, a grown man with a past of war crime, who had his own redemption and is depicted as a hero, who chose to become guardian of her brother, says that "She's crazy, and she needs to go down".

What makes Azula, age 14, beyond hope but his nephew worthy of being cared for? Why is she seen as a monster since she's a literal child? Why was he allowed to grow and change, to have another life and be seen as a hero but she is already too spoiled to be allowed to grow?

At the end of the series and start of the comics, she has been institutionalized, something the writing shows as a proof of Zuko's compassion. Still, first we see her in the comics after the end of the series, she shows up like this:

They choose to depict a 14/15 year old who was put in an institution after a severe breakdown, abandoned by her family and monitored 24/7 as a teenage Hannibal Lecter.

The comics try to give her more depth but fail into giving her the narrative she deserves, especially with what they did with Ursa and how she chose to forget her children.

They use Azula, writing-wise, as a full-on villain. Everything they add to her seems to be with the purpose of making her "earn" her demise.

They treat her mental health as a threat and something that makes her "bad", they don't give her any semblance of redemption and they always, irrevocably, make her to be left alone, something that is always framed as being what she "deserves".

Zuko's feeble attempts to get close are framed less as Azula deserving it and more as instances for Zuko to prove how kind and caring and heroic he is. Because he did deserve a redemption arc. One that is still today considered one of the best written redemption arcs in television.

This is something that I think gets incredibly glaring when you look at Legend of Korra and compare the two.

Audiences in general didn't respond as well to Korra as they did to ATLA, and the reasons for that are varied and depending on who you ask, but Korra had very different writing, especially in the last two seasons.

To me, seasons 3 and 4 are the most effective and better developed, and also happen to be the ones in which they delve into the subjects of mental health, trauma and emotional regulation with the character of Korra.

Korra had different writers for different seasons. DiMartino and Konietzko did season 1, season 2 was done by Tim Hedrick and Joshua Hamilton and they were joined, in seasons 3 and 4, by Katie Mattila, who had worked in ATLA as well. Katie wrote specific episodes that deal with sibling rivalry and with mental turmoil, like Old Wounds and The Calling. I don't know who did what but, to me, the difference in how certain things are treated, especially with girl characters, is very clear.

I can't draw a 1 on 1 comparison between Ehasz's behavior and Azula's treatment, but I can certainly say, as a writer and an editor, that personal biases are always present in what you create and, unchecked, it leads to representations that respond to said biases and limited POV.

I can't assure that Ehasz was thinking of Azula in one way or another, that's between him and his deity of choice, but I can say that a man who treats women the way he has, certainly has a kind of bias in his use of said characters and the way to portray them that might take certain things with less respect or a lack of empathy than I would want in the media I'm partial to.

ATLA is, ultimately, always circling the subject of redemption and forgiveness, of empathy and change. It is less nuanced in its take on good vs evil than Korra, because the story has a different audience and aim, but Aang is all about compassion and he is the Avatar for that series. Still, Azula seemed to be less deserving of that compassion in the eyes of the writers.

And this is not about what she did or didn't do as a character, she isn't a Real Person, she doesn't DO things.

This is about the optics that portray her in a way in which the audience is meant to feel towards her animosity, fear and rejection. It isn't about what she did, because she's a fictional character, it's about why those writing chose to portray her story in this way.

And, with the context we have now, I think we can imagine a few reasons.

#ask #long post #luly rambles #azula #tw harrassment #i didn't know whether to use read more #but due to the content warnings #i thought it appropriate

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thatfoolsophie · 4 months ago

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more about how i'm imagining these:

1. howl hires michael to run errands for his weird startup and pretty soon 50% of his job is keeping howl from committing tax fraud

2. grad student and high school student who are roommates for some reason

3. howl rents out a room of his house to michael but never charges rent and michael doesn't know if he's just forgetting or doing it on purpose but he deals with so many angry aunts on howl's behalf that it's probably even

4. howl was not planning on adopting a kid and michael frankly had some reservations but it means a lot to them

5. michael is interested in studying the same topic that howl is doing his phd in and gets assigned to shadow him and howl is like oh cool i have a minion

6. see above but at a job

7. they just vibe against all odds

#ive read a couple modern aus but they understandably focus on howl & sophie #but the thing howl and michael have going on could be SO funny #for five minutes after encountering them sophie is like howl why do you have a random teenager in your house #and then she switches to michael why are you living with this loser #sorcerer's apprentice #howl jenkins pendragon #michael fisher #poll tag

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mariacallous · 4 months ago

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Within just the last week or so, Elon Musk’s DOGE hit team of mostly young, almost exclusively male engineers and executives have done the following:

Pushed a website live to track “savings” that showed no savings for several days, and made it trivially easy for random people on the internet to make changes to it.

Published classified information on that same website.

Got called out for accidentally inflating that savings amount by $7,992,000,000, and doubled down on their inaccuracy before they fixed it.

Fired hundreds of people who work on nuclear security, then scrambled to rehire them, except they had nuked all the work email addresses and personnel files so they didn’t know how to get in touch.

Basically the same deal, except with the US Department of Agriculture employees working to protect the country from a looming bird flu crisis.

Rehired a 25-year-old engineer with a stack of racist tweets to his name.

Spouted a bunch of nonsense conspiracy theories about who’s getting Social Security benefits. (Okay, that was all Musk.)

That’s just a sampling. It doesn’t include the damage born of purging thousands of workers across multiple government agencies, the consequences of which will reverberate in both obvious and unexpected ways for a generation—not to mention the near-term impact that arbitrarily spiking the unemployment rate will have on the US economy. It doesn’t include the opportunity cost of tossing hundreds of government contracts and programs into a bonfire.

This is just the truly dumb stuff, the peek behind the veil of DOGE, the confirmation that all of this destruction is, in fact, as specious and arbitrary as it seems. When in doubt, tear it all down, see what breaks, assume you can repair it—maybe with AI? It’s the federal government; how hard can it be?

This is incompetence born of self-confidence. It’s a familiar Silicon Valley mindset, the reason startups are forever reinventing a bus, or a bodega, or mail. It’s the implacable certainty that if you’re smart at one thing you must be smart at all of the things.

It doesn’t work like that. Michael Jordan is the best basketball player of all time; when he turned to baseball in 1994, Jordan hit .202 in 127 games for the AA Birmingham Barons. (For anyone unfamiliar with baseball stats, this is very bad. Embarrassing, honestly.) Elon Musk is the undisputed champion of making money for Elon Musk. As effectively the CEO of the United States of America? Very bad. Embarrassing, honestly.

Just look at all of those firings. DOGE has targeted so-called probationary employees first, often without regard for their skill or necessity of their roles. Do you know what a probationary employee is? It’s people who have been in their position for less than a year, or in some cases less than two years. That means new hires, sure, but also experienced workers who recently transferred departments or got promoted.

Not only does DOGE not seem to understand this, it has given no indication that it wants to understand. These are the easiest employees to fire, legally speaking, so they’re gone. It even changed the length of the probationary period—from one year of service to two—in order to super-size its purge of the National Science Foundation.

It takes a certain swashbuckling arrogance to propel a startup to glory. But as we’ve repeatedly said, the United States is not a startup. The federal government exists to do all of the things that are definitionally not profitable, that serve the public good rather than protect investor profits. (The vast majority of startups also fail, something the United States cannot afford to do.)

And if you don’t believe in the public good? You sprint through the ruination. You metastasize from agency to agency, leveling the maximum allowable destruction under the law. DOGE’s costly, embarrassing mistakes are a byproduct of reckless nihilism; if artificial intelligence can sell you a pizza, of course it can future-proof the General Services Administration.

Worse still, none of this will actually help DOGE make a dent in its purported mission. What’s efficient about firing people you have to scramble to hire back? What are the cost savings of a few thousand federal employees compared to the F-35 program? What are we even doing here, actually?

There are two possible explanations for this mess. One is that Musk and DOGE have no interest in the government, or efficiency, but do care deeply about the data they can reap from various agencies and revel in privatization for its own sake. The other is that a bunch of purportedly talented coders have indeed responded to a higher civic calling, but are out here batting .202.

Musk did have a rare moment of self-awareness late last week, during an Oval Office appearance with his four-year-old son and President Donald Trump. “We will make mistakes,” he said. “but we'll act quickly to correct any mistakes.”

So far he’s half right.

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zaynesbratjoy · 3 months ago

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Tech, Tears & Tacos

hi. this story is kind of a mess.

there’s romance (sort of). Includes all lads men. if you're into cringe, chaos, and random shit

welcome. Please make this popular.

lower your expectations.

and let's do this.

Part 1:

“I think I wanna throw up,” I muttered, swirling my coffee like it was some kind of magical potion that could somehow make me feel better. Full milk, of course—because I hate myself. Also, I’m pretty sure I’m lactose intolerant. What if I fart in the interview? God, that would be horrible.

“Definitely wanna throw up,” I mumbled again, tugging at the stray hairs that had somehow escaped my professional-looking ponytail. I pulled it tighter, fingers shaking as the anxiety was about to implode.

“Ah, shit. Please, just—ugh—I’d throw up right now if I could.” I exhaled dramatically, clutching my stomach as I pushed out the stress-dump I had perfected for any inconvenient situation in my life. God, why was I doing this? Well, better than farting in public. Getting rid of that is a whole other disaster.

“Hello, my name is Leila Dylan, and I’m here applying for the Operations and Strategy Manager role,” I announced with what I hoped was a professional tone, flashing a smile that screamed, “I’m definitely faking it.”

I wanted to puke. This guy—this guy sitting across from me was... fine. Too fine. Too good-looking. Fuck.

I tried to focus on his face. How could someone be so... handsome yet make me feel like I was trapped in an Instagram ad? That jawline? Chiseled. Why?

Caleb—oh, right. Caleb. He had dark brown hair, almost too neatly swept to the side like he spent hours each morning perfecting his look. His piercing green eyes were the real weapon, though. They were sharp. Like a knife, cutting straight through my entire existence. Those eyes knew things—probably even things about me I wasn’t ready to confront. He wore a light blue button-down shirt that clung to his shoulders in that way only guys who clearly work out can pull off. Oh, and the silver watch on his wrist? Probably cost more than my entire apartment.

He chuckled lightly, which made me want to throw up even more. He had this... aura about him. Like he could break you down with just a smile. And right now, he was breaking me down with nothing but his presence.

“So, Mrs. Dylan, I see you’ve only been in the same field for about three months according to your resume. Can I ask why you didn’t stay longer?” Caleb asked, leaning back in his chair, arms crossed. His voice was smooth, but there was an edge to it, like he already knew the answer and was waiting for me to screw it up.

I blinked. I wasn’t prepared for this. Yeah, who am I kidding? I didn’t prepare. I get called a lazy-ass all the time. Honestly, it hits me right in every goddamn interview. Fuck, working anyway...

“Well, it was a startup. The company itself had a financial crisis, and—” I trailed off. Why the hell is he laughing?

His smile was still there, almost smug. I suddenly became hyper-aware of my leg shaking under the table.

“You do realize you’re applying to another startup, right?” Caleb interjected, amusement dancing in his eyes.

Yeah, what a dumb bitch I am.

“Right,” I muttered, feeling like I might collapse at any moment. “But I mean, that really isn’t my fault, sir. I’m sure you saw my portfolio... it speaks for itself.” Yeah, real convincing, Leila.

His gaze flickered to my resume. I could feel him flipping through it, his smirk never leaving.

“Last question,” Caleb said, his gaze unwavering. “Why should we hire you?”

I don’t even know why I’m here. Giving up wasn’t an option... yet.

"Uh..." I fumbled, trying to dig myself out of this hole. "I’m a fast learner, extremely adaptable to any work environment. All my experiences, even the ones in different fields, allow me to be a... a potential candidate for this role?"

Nice one, Leila. You barely believe yourself.

Caleb raised an eyebrow. Yeah, that eyebrow didn’t have any confidence in me either.

“Right... experience.” He flipped through my resume again, scanning it like a hawk. “Four online courses and barely any work experience.”

My face flushed. I fought the urge to squirm. What was I even doing here?

Leila swallowed her pride. “Well... yeah, haha...” I laughed awkwardly. “But the thing is, sir, you know this position is rare and... the field is still developing in the current world, so...” I trailed off, unsure of how to finish.

Fuck it. I give up.

Caleb kept staring at me, his gaze unyielding. The silence stretched for a few seconds before he finally smiled. But this time, it wasn’t smug.

“Alright, Mrs. Dylan. We’ll be in touch,” he said, his voice still composed. But there was something in it. Something... mischievous.

Busted. You broke-ass.

“Wait—hold on,” he said, suddenly leaning forward.

I just wanted to be freed, please. I sat down again.

“Before you go, I just have to ask—if you were a type of sandwich, which one would you be, and why would you be the most underrated, yet secretly superior sandwich on the menu?”

Okay, yeah. Funny guy. He thinks he’s being creative, doing corny shit like that. And yet... still looks cool. God, I hate pretty privilege.

“Uh…” Was this man for real?

I stared at him, and laughed. “A... a sandwich? Are you... serious?”

“Come on, it’s a simple question. What’s your secret sandwich superpower?”

“Well, on a daily basis, I’d go with an egg salad sandwich, avocado with eggs—plain choices ‘cause... simply I don’t cook. But on the menu? I’d go with the juiciest, full of meat, extra-sauce thing. Uh... , I hope this isn’t part of the interview- Okay, sorry, that's it.”

Caleb laughed, a full, rich sound that only made me want to dig myself a hole and crawl in.

“Wait, oh no, did I mess up? I think I should've said, ‘Oh, it’s the avocado sandwich—it’s simple, but has... avocado...? So it’s like work but... creativity added?’”

I didn’t know whether to be relieved or horrified. He’s looking like an idiot now, thank God.

“I love you,” Caleb said.

“What? ...Is this—”

“For me, Mrs. Dylan, you're hired. But yeah, protocol... gotta discuss with the CEO first,” he interjected.

I laughed. Pretty hard. He grinned.

“Uh, what?” I said, without thinking. I don’t even know what to say at this point.

“We’ll be in touch... if you know, you know. Double meaning—”

“Ha? Thanks. I’ll go now.”

I walked out quickly. And, of course, I farted once I exited the room.

Sipping on my hot tea, wrapped in my blanket, “Do I freak out?” I said, Facetiming my homegirl.

“I still don’t understand why he said ‘I love you’ after a freakin’ sandwich question, and why the hell he asked a sandwich question in an interview!” my girl asked.

“I think this whole company is cracked. I don’t know, it feels like a joke, a prank... Man was serious at first but boom, then he seemed like a retarded 10-year-old,” I continued. “But why a company about that specializes in creating immersive digital experiences—think a mix between interactive storytelling apps, virtual AI companions, and gamified mental health tools... all that shit yet seemed... so dumb.”

“Girl, with your damn answers and that messy-ass resume of yours, I don’t think... well, of course, I’m not letting you down, but come on, let’s be real, are you even confident they’ll hire you? Bitch, you don’t want to work, why’d you do that?” Expected from her to say, yeah.

“To pay the fucking bills, Hannah. Obviously, if it’s not for that, I swear I’d do anything but work. I wanna practice electric guitar, ice skating—no, wait, I guess I’m too fat for that. Anyways, I think—” I got interrupted by her.

“Wait, you said QuantumHaven is the name of the company?”

“Yup.”

“Open the screenshot I sent you now!”

“That’s Sylus—oh no, oh no, how????”

“Your fucking ex is running the company? You didn’t know for real?” she laughed.

There’s no way I’m in.

---------------------------------

First time writing, don't come at me

It'll get better, please believe in me

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scary-grace · 11 months ago

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the new postmodern age (chapter one) - a Shigaraki x f!Reader fic

Written for @threadbaresweater's follower milestone event, and the prompt 'a day at the beach'! Congratulations on the milestone, and thanks for giving me a chance to write this fic.

dividers by @enchanthings

Before the war, you were nothing but a common criminal, but in the world that's arisen from the ashes, you got a second chance. Five years after the final battle between the heroes and the League of Villains, you run a coffee shop in a quiet seaside town, and you're devoted to keeping your customers happy. Even customers like Shimura Tenko, who needs a second chance even more than you did -- and who's harboring a secret that could upend everything you've tried to build. Will you let the past drag both of you down? Or will you find a way, against all odds, to a new beginning? (cross-posted to Ao3)

Chapters: 1 2 3

Chapter 1

You believe in second chances.

Before the war, you were living on the margins, just like the rest of even the pettiest criminals were. No one would hire someone with a record, even if the record was for something nonviolent, and that meant that you were always hungry, always freezing in the winter and getting heatstroke in the summer, always one step away from doing something worse and getting put away for good. You were going nowhere fast, and no matter how hard you tried, you couldn’t get back on your feet. It was a struggle to get up in the morning.

But after the war, something changed. Not a lot, but enough, because after a heartfelt public plea from the hero who saved the day, the world decided to care a little bit about people like you. The government passed new anti-discrimination laws, including one banning hiring discrimination against people with criminal records, and for nonviolent criminals like you, they opened up an extra opportunity – a choice between job training or a startup loan for a small business, so you could pay down your fines and restitution while adding something good to society. Sure, it was all in the name of preventing new villains from being created, but you’ll take it. You took it, picked up a loan, moved out of the city to a small town on the coast, and decided to open up a coffee shop.

You’re not really sure why you picked a coffee shop. Maybe because the town you moved to didn’t have one yet, or maybe because you used to hang out in them a lot when you had nowhere else to go. And the program you’re part of worked exactly like it was supposed to. You had to hire people to help you get the building you chose up to code, and that meant you met people in your new community. You showed those people that the criminals they hated were people, too. You’ve paid most of your fines and you’re able to break even anyway, and even though there’s a sign on the door telling everyone that you’re a convicted felon and you have to answer any questions you’re asked about it, you have customers.

Not just customers – regulars. People whose kids you’ve seen grow up, people who talk to you when they see you out and about. After five years of trying, you’ve finally carved out a place where you belong. So yeah, you believe in second chances. How could you not?

You stand back from your front window, admiring the latest addition. There’s the sign identifying your business as one sponsored by the Nonviolent Criminal Reintegration Act, but just above it, you’ve added a bigger sign: Free Internet Access. Osono, whose bakery makes the pastries you sell, studies it alongside you. “Free access? Shouldn’t it be access with purchase?”

“I thought about it a lot, but no.” You’re sort of lying. You thought about it for two seconds and that was it. “This is better.”

“It’ll attract riff-raff.”

That’s the kind of comment that used to really piss you off, but you know Osono. You know it’s just a blind spot, and you know how to respond. “Most things are online these days. Job applications, apartment listings, information on government assistance. When I was in trouble before, free internet access would have helped me a lot. And I usually bought something anyway, even if it was just a cup of coffee.”

“Not a pastry?” Osono nods at the trays stacked on her cart, and you remember that she’s waiting for you to open the door. Oops. You unlock it in a hurry and prop it open with a rock you pulled up from the beach. “Where were you getting food?”

“Wherever I could.” You were hungry a lot. And sick a lot, because sometimes you had to eat things that were expired. You don’t like to think about that very much. “I stole sometimes so I wouldn’t starve. I’ve paid it all back by now.”

“You know how to take responsibility,” Osono says. She slides back the door on your pastry case without asking and starts loading things in. “I wish more of them were like you.”

“Most of us are,” you say, as gently as you can manage. “We just need a fighting chance.”

Sometimes people forget that you’re a criminal, that you’ll carry your record around for the rest of your life. You can’t let them forget. Osono nods in the way that tells you she’s humoring you and lifts a tray of pastries you haven’t seen before out of the cart. “These are a new recipe I’m trying out. What do you think?”

“They’re pretty,” you say. “Is that chocolate in the filling?”

“And cinnamon. They aren’t vegan, but there aren’t any common allergens in them.” Osono passes you the recipe anyway, and you scribble down the ingredients on the back of the name card you’re making, just in case someone asks. “Tell me how they do, all right? If they sell decently I’ll add them to my rotation.”

“Will do.” You help her with the last few trays. “Thanks, Osono. Say hi to the kids and Naoki for me?”

“Will do.” Osono wheels the cart back out the door, then pauses to study the internet access sign. “Good luck with this.”

“Thanks.”

You wait until the delivery van pulls away before you start rearranging the pastries to your preferred setup. You add “new arrival” to the label for the new pastry, then touch the lettering to turn it a pleasant but eye-catching green before placing it front and center in the case. Then you set up your espresso machine, wake up the cash register, switch on the lights and take down the chairs from the tops of the tables – and only then do you switch on the other sign in your window. It’s seven am. Skyline Coffee and Tea is open for business.

It’s grey and cold, and the low tide is closer to noon today, which means you’re in for a busy morning as the people who walk the beach daily stop in for food and coffee first. Only one person orders one of the new pastries, but almost everyone comments on the free internet access. They say the same kind of thing Osono said, and you say the same thing you said to her if they hold still long enough for you to answer. You say it nicely. It’s an effort to say it nicely, sometimes, but it’s worth doing.

Past noon, things slow down a bit. You decide to speed-clean the espresso machine, and you’re so focused on your work that you don’t notice the customer. It’s possibly also the customer’s fault, since he’s peering at you from over the pickup counter instead of standing by the cash register, and when he barks the question at you, it startles you badly. “What’s the password?”

“On the WiFi?” You tuck your burned hand behind your back. “No password. Find a place to sit down and have at it.”

The customer looks disconcerted. Or at least you think he does – the lower half of his face is covered with a surgical mask, and given that he doesn’t have eyebrows, it’s hard to read his expression. “Why?”

“Why isn’t there a password?” You haven’t gotten that question yet. “I want people to be able to use it if they need it.”

“They’re gonna watch porn.”

“Me putting a password on the WiFi wouldn’t stop that,” you say. “And I’m not the internet police. If somebody starts acting up, I’ll deal with it. If not – just use headphones.”

The customer’s expression twists. “I didn’t mean me.”

“Sure.” You’re not a moron. “It’s not my business what you do. Unless your business starts messing with my business. Seriously. Knock yourself out.”

The customer turns away, and you spend a second being extremely grateful that you went for single-occupancy bathrooms instead of multiple-stall bathrooms before you go back to cleaning the espresso machine. Your hand hurts, but it’s nothing running it under cold water won’t fix later. When you straighten up, there’s someone at the counter.

It’s porn guy, who you really shouldn’t call porn guy. Innocent until proven guilty and all that. You dry your hands and hurry over. “What can I get for you today?”

“Black coffee.”

“Sure. Anything else?”

The customer glances at the pastry case and shakes his head. Then his stomach growls. He knows you heard it. What little of his face is visible above the mask turns red. “No.”

“Tell you what,” you say. “I’ve got these new pastries the bakery wants me to try out, but next to nobody’s tried one yet. If you agree to tell me how it was, you can have it half off.��

“I have money.” The customer shoves a credit card across the counter to you, and you see that he’s wearing fingerless gloves. Or sort of fingerless gloves. They’re missing the first three fingers on each hand. “I don’t need help.”

“No, but you’re helping me out.” You add the pastry to his order and discount it by half, then fish it out of the case with a pair of tongs. “For here or to go?”

“Here.” The customer watches as you set it on a plate. “What is that?”

“It’s babka.”

“I can read. What is it?”

“I don’t really know,” you admit. Maybe that’s why people aren’t buying them. “The filling’s chocolate and cinnamon, though. It’s hard to go wrong with that. It’ll be just a second with the coffee.”

You fill a cup, then point out the cream and sugar. Then you realize you still haven’t tapped the customer’s card. You finish ringing up the order and glance at the cardholder’s name. Shimura Tenko. He hasn’t been in before today. You’re not the best with faces, but you never forget a name.

Shimura Tenko sets up shop at the booth in the farthest corner, and although you sneak by once or twice to check on him, you’re pretty sure he’s not watching porn. People don’t usually take notes when they’re watching porn. It looks like he’s working or something. Working remote, but he doesn’t have internet access at home? Or maybe he does, and he’s just looking for a change of scenery. That’s a normal thing to do. A change of scenery is one thing Skyline Coffee and Tea is equipped to provide.

Speaking of that, it’s been a while since you changed out the mural on the café’s back wall. Your quirk, Color, lets you change the color of any object you touch, and choose how long the color sets. You’ve used it for a lot of things over the years, but now you mainly use it to create new murals every few months or so. The back wall’s been a cityscape since the fall, when you saw a picture of Tokyo’s skyline at night and got inspired. Maybe this weekend you’ll switch it out for something a little softer. If people wanted the city, they’d stay there instead of coming here.

Customers come in and out, a few lingering for conversations or to test out the free WiFi, but Shimura Tenko stays put, somehow making a single cup of black coffee last until you give the fifteen-minute warning that you’re closing up shop. Another person might be pissed about someone hanging out so long without buying anything else, but you’ve been there. You let it go, except to ask him how the babka was as he’s on his way out the door. He throws the answer back over his shoulder without looking your way. “It was fine. Nothing special.”

Fine, sure. When you go back to clear his table, you find the plate it was on wiped clean. There’s not even a smear of the filling left.

“Check this place out!” Your probation officer leans across the counter, eyes bright, out of costume and way too enthusiastic for eight in the morning. “It’s looking great in here. You changed something. New color scheme? New uniform?”

“Nope.” You don’t get nervous for your check-ins, but you don’t like the fact that they’re random. Today’s not a good day. “There’s some new stuff on the menu, and in the pastry case. Maybe that’s it.”

“No,” Present Mic says, drawing out the word. He turns in a slow circle, then whips back around with a grin. “When did you repaint that wall?”

“I didn’t paint it,” you say. It’s best to be honest. “I used my quirk. I’m not making money off of it and it’s not hurting anyone, so it falls within the terms of my probation.”

“Take it easy there, listener. I’m not trying to bust you,” Present Mic says. Heroes always say that. You know better than to buy it. “It looks good. Really brightens the place up.”

“I thought it could use it,” you say. “It’s kind of a rough time of year.”

Cold weather always brings you lots of customers, but people are sharper, unhappier, and if they’re in the mood to take it out on someone, they pick somebody who can’t make a fuss or hit back. Somebody like you. You’ve learned not to take it personally. “Not too rough financially. You’ve made all your payments on time. I checked.” Present Mic is peering into the pastry case. “How’s that free internet access thing going for you?”

“Not so bad,” you say. “The connection’s pretty fast, so I get people in here who are taking online classes, or working remote. I’ve only had to kick one person out for watching porn.”

“Yeah, he filed a complaint,” Present Mic says, and your stomach drops. “You made the right call. Don’t worry.”

You’re going to worry. It’s going to take all day for that one to wear off. “I haven’t had problems with it otherwise.”

“Why’d you do it?” Present Mic gives you a curious look. “Free stuff brings all kinds of people out of the woodwork. Why give yourself the headache?”

“I want this to be the kind of place I needed,” you say. “Somewhere safe where nobody would kick me out if I couldn’t buy more than one cup of coffee, where I could use the internet without getting in trouble for it. A headache’s worth that to me.”

It’s quiet for a second, but Present Mic being Present Mic, it doesn’t last. “You really turned a corner, huh? Hard to believe you were ever on the wrong side of the law.”

“We all could be there,” you say. “It only takes one mistake.”

Present Mic sighs. “You’re telling me. Did you catch the news last week?”

“The thing with Todoroki Touya?” The surviving members of the League of Villains all went through their own rehab, and they’re on permanent probation – and last weekend, Todoroki Touya, formerly known as Dabi, lit somebody’s motorcycle on fire after they followed him for six blocks, harassing him the whole way. “I saw. Is he getting revoked?”

“Nope. The other guy was way out of line, and the panel ruled that the majority of people – former villains or not – would have reacted similarly under that kind of pressure.” Present Mic rolls his shoulders, and his leather jacket squeaks. “All I can say is, he’s lucky we’re in the business of second chances these days. Or fifth chances.”

“Why so many?” you ask. “The rest of us are on three strikes, you’re out.”

“Yeah, but you have to mess up a lot worse for it to count as a strike,” Present Mic points out. “If I had to guess, I’d say it’s a guilt thing. This whole rehab thing is Deku’s idea. And Deku never got over what happened with Shigaraki.”

Members of the League of Villains died leading up to the final battle, but of the five who made it that far, only one of them was dead at the end of the war – Shigaraki Tomura, their leader. To most people, it was good riddance to the greatest evil Japan has ever seen, but Deku’s always been publicly against that viewpoint. Insistent that All For One was the true villain. Regretful that the war ended with Shigaraki’s death, too. “Since he couldn’t save him, he’s stuck on saving the other four,” Present Mic continues. “Which equals infinite chances. So far Todoroki’s the only one who’s needed them.”

You nod. Present Mic stretches. “Let’s take a walk,” he decides. “I’ll buy coffee for both of us.”

“I can’t leave,” you say. “I don’t have anybody else to watch this place. If a customer comes by –”

“Half an hour, tops. Come on.” Present Mic produces a wallet from the inside of his leather jacket. “The sooner we leave, the sooner you can come back.”

You lock up, hating every second of it, and follow Present Mic into the cold, a to-go cup of your own coffee in your hands. Present Mic runs through the usual list of questions, the ones that cover your mindset as much as they cover your progress on your program requirements. Some of them are about how you’re getting along with the civilians in town, and you know he’ll be checking in with some of your customers, seeing if their perception lines up with yours. It feels invasive. Intrusive. Some part of you always pushes back. You always quiet it down. You made this bed for yourself, coming up on a decade ago. Now you have to lie in it.

“I’ve got some news,” Present Mic says, once he’s finished with the questions. “The program’s considering early release for some of the participants.”

“Why?”

“The legislative review’s coming up, and they want success stories,” Present Mic says. “You know, people who clawed their way out of the criminal underworld to become productive members of society. I’m putting your name on the list.”

You almost drop your coffee. “Really?”

“Yeah,” Mic says. He seems taken aback by your surprise. “I mean – you’re kind of who this thing was designed for, listener. You caught your first charge when you were underage, for a nonviolent crime, and the rest of your case is a perfect example of just one of the many problems Deku won’t shush about. Now look at you. You’ve got your own business, you’re paying back your debt to society, you’re participating in civilian life. There are civilians who don’t do that much.”

Of course they don’t. Actual civilians don’t have to prove they have a right to exist. “If you’re approved for early release, the government will waive interest on your startup loan, and I heard a rumor that they’re considering wiping charges off people’s records,” Mic continues. “It’s a pretty good deal, listener. And you’re making a pretty weird face.”

“Sorry,” you say, trying to fix it. “I mean – felonies are a forever thing. They don’t get wiped.”

“It’s just a rumor,” Mic says, and pats your shoulder. “Even if that doesn’t pan out, you could use a break on the interest. Anyway, it’s not a sure thing, but I put your name up. You’ve got as good a shot as anybody.”

You think that’s probably true, which is weird to think about. You’ve been behind the eight ball since you were in high school. Present Mic throws down the rest of his coffee, then turns back the way the two of you came. “Let’s go. I saw a pastry I wanted to buy, and I bet you have a customer or two.”

You’ve heard things about other program participants’ probation officers taking things without paying, but you got lucky with Present Mic – he always pays. Sometimes he even gives you a hard time for setting your prices too low. And he’s right about the customers. When you get back, one of your regulars is sitting cross-legged, leaning back against the locked door with his hood up and his laptop open.

It’s Shimura Tenko, who you never saw before you started offering free internet, and who’s turned into a regular ever since. The two of you don’t talk the way you do with some of your other regulars – something about the mask and the hood and the gloves tells you that Shimura isn’t looking to make friends. But he shows up two or three times a week, orders black coffee, and camps out in the corner of the café until closing time. Sometimes you can talk him into a pastry, and it’s always a babka. Whether he orders one or not, he’s always hungry when he comes in.

Shimura looks up as you and Present Mic approach. His eyes narrow, then widen abruptly, almost comically shocked. Then he slams his laptop shut, rockets to his feet, and books it, vanishing down the street and around the corner. You feel a surge of frustration. “Can you not scare my customers?”

“I’m out of costume. Even when I’m in, nobody’s scared of me.” Present Mic is lying. You’d have been scared out of your mind to run into him back in the day. “Damn, that guy was skittish. What’s his deal?”

“He’s one of my regulars.” Was one of your regulars, probably. People don’t react the way Shimura just did and come back for more. You unlock the door, feeling strangely dispirited. “Which pastry were you thinking about?”

Present Mic sticks around for an hour or so, long enough to talk to a few customers who don’t run away from him. Most of your regulars have seen him before. He leaves a little bit before noon, after eating three pastries he paid for, and as usual, the café quiets down in the afternoon. You don’t mind. Today wasn’t a good day even before Mic put in a surprise appearance and scared off a customer for good. Days like today, you’d rather have the place to yourself.

Sometimes in the midst of proving you’re a model citizen to anybody who looks your way, you forget that there’s a reason you weren’t. It wasn’t a good reason. Your family wasn’t rich, but you always had what you needed and some of what you wanted. Your parents weren’t perfect, but they loved you. You weren’t the most popular kid at school, but you always had someone to talk to. And none of that mattered, because you felt hollow and miserable and lonely no matter what else was going on around you.

Nothing you did or said could make you feel better. Everything felt the same, and everything felt awful, and no matter how hard you tried to explain, to ask for help, to raise the alarm, you couldn’t get your point across. You had a good life. What did you have to complain about?

The judge who handed you your first conviction said pretty much exactly that. You’ve heard that the sentencing guidelines for minors have changed, that untreated mental health issues are considered a mitigating factor these days, but back then it didn’t matter at all. You got help at some point. You take your meds like you’re supposed to, and you did therapy until you realized the people who monitor your probation were reading your notes. And you’re older now. You know the hollow feeling goes away. But that doesn’t mean it’s any easier to tolerate when it’s here.

You’re hanging out behind the counter, staring at your most recent mural and wishing you’d chosen something less cheerful than the field of wildflowers that’s currently decorating it, when the door opens. You barely have time to get your game face on before Shimura Tenko steps up to the counter. “Um –”

“How many heroes are you friends with?” Shimura asks shortly.

“I’m not friends with Present Mic,” you say. “That was a spot check. He’s my probation officer.”

Shimura blinks. He has crimson eyes and dark lashes, matching his dark hair. “Huh?”

“My probation officer,” you repeat. “I’m a convicted felon.”

“Don’t lie. They’d never let a convicted felon run a coffee shop.”

“I got a loan,” you say. “Through the Nonviolent Criminal Rehabilitation Act. It says so on the sign.”

“Your sign says free internet access.”

“Underneath that.” You wonder if it’s really possible that Shimura didn’t see the other sign. Maybe he was just too hyped at the prospect of free internet to look any harder. “How long have you lived here?”

“Five years.” Shimura looks defensive now. “What’s it to you?”

Five years, and you never saw him before today. He must keep to himself. “Nothing. I just – I thought everybody around here knew. I’m not very quiet about it. I’m not allowed to be.”

“Why not?”

You don’t want to do this right now, but rules are rules. “Part of the Reintegration Act involves educating civilians about where criminals come from – like, how a person goes from you to me.”

Shimura snorts. It’s rude, but not anywhere close to the rudest thing someone’s done to you when you talk about this. “The government thinks the people who are best equipped to educate about this are the actual criminals, so I’m legally obligated to answer any questions people ask me – about my record, about why I did it, about the program and why I’m doing that. So they understand what’s happening and why it’s happening. For transparency.”

“And that means anybody can question you, any time,” Shimura says, eyes narrowing.

“Yep. Stop, drop, and educate.” You wait, but he’s quiet, and you’re tired enough and hollow enough that the suspense gets to you first. “You can ask what I did. I have to tell you.”

Shimura nods – but then he doesn’t ask. About that, at least. “It’s dead in here. Did Present Mic clear everybody else out?”

“No. It gets quiet on sunny days when the tide’s low.” You nod through the window, and the sliver of beach visible between the buildings across the street. “I was thinking about closing early.”

“Why?” Shimura’s voice holds the faintest shadow of a sneer. “To walk on the beach?”

To lay facedown on your bed and wait for tears that won’t come, and won’t make you feel any better if they do. “Now you’re here, so I’m open. Do you want the usual?”

Shimura hesitates. Then he shakes his head. “Go home.”

“I’m open,” you repeat. You don’t want him to complain to Present Mic like the actual porn guy did. “Do you want the usual or do you feel like something new?”

“The usual.”

“Come on,” you say. He glares at you over his mask. There’s an old scar over his right eye. “There’s nobody here. Nobody’s going to catch you drinking something that actually tastes good.”

“The usual,” Shimura Tenko says, and crosses his arms over his chest. “And –”

He glances at the pastry case, and you see his expression shift into disappointment. It makes you sadder than it should, but you can fix it easily. You slide the babka you saved on the faint hope that he’d come back out of hiding and into full view. “One of these?”

Shimura stares at it for a full fifteen seconds before he looks up at you. “You saved it for me.”

“Yeah.” You pride yourself on knowing what your regulars like. You don’t want someone you see a few times a week to leave unsatisfied. “One babka and one black coffee, coming up.”

Shimura holds out his card, then hesitates. You’ve never seen him look uncertain at all. “And whatever you think tastes better than black coffee. One of those.”

“Really?” You can’t hide your surprise, or what an unexpected lift it is for your mood. “You won’t regret it. Which flavors do you like?”

“I don’t care.” Shimura waits while you swipe his card, then tucks it away. “This was your idea. I’m going – over there.”

He gestures at the back corner. “I know where you like to sit,” you say. “I’ll bring it out.”

As soon as he leaves, you get to work. You need to nail this. He’ll laugh at you if you bring him a tea latte, so it needs to have an espresso base. What goes well with babka? You already have chocolate and cinnamon on board – what about caramel, or hazelnut? Does he even like sweet things? He must, if he keeps ordering the damn babka. Maybe hazelnut, but what if he’s allergic? You pitch your voice to carry and see him startle. “Do you have any allergies?”

“Not to food.”

You wonder what he’s actually allergic to as you start pulling espresso shots for a chocolate hazelnut mocha. You really hope Shimura likes Nutella, because that’s exactly what this is going to taste like. Using bittersweet chocolate syrup instead of milk chocolate fixes it partway, but when you pour off a tiny bit to try it, it still tastes a lot like something you’d eat out of a jar with a spoon.

Whatever. You’re committed now. You don’t have a choice. You pour it into a cup, make some vague gesture at foam art, and carry it and the black coffee through the empty café to Shimura’s table. “One black coffee and one drink that actually tastes good.”

Shimura eyes the second cup. “What’s in there?”

“You said you didn’t care.”

“Yeah, well, now that I know you’ve done time I’m not sure I can trust you,” Shimura says, and you lock your expression down. That one hurt. A lot. He drags the cup towards himself with his right hand and lifts it to his mouth as he pulls down his mask with his left, but you’ve lost interest in the outcome. You turn and head back to the counter, trying not to feel like someone’s slapped you in the face and convincing yourself at least a little that it works.

You screw around behind the counter, taking inventory and counting down the minutes until last call, but Shimura’s back at the counter with forty-five minutes to go, an empty cup in his hand. It’s not the cup you put the black coffee in. “Fine. You win. I want another one of these.”

“Yep.” You set your clipboard aside and head back to the cash register to ring him up. “For here or to go?”

“Here.”

“I’m closing soon. To-go’s probably better.”

“Are you kicking me out?” Shimura asks. You look up at him, make eye contact, and whatever he sees in your face sets him off. Not in the way you thought it would. “Before, about the doing time thing. You know I was kidding, right?”

“Sure you were. Do you want a receipt?”

“Hey,” Shimura snaps. “It was a joke.”

“Not a good one.”

“Yeah, it was. If you –” Shimura breaks off, his scowl clear even from behind the mask. “Look, I’m sorry, okay? I wouldn’t have said that if I didn’t get it.”

“Get it,” you repeat. “You’ve done time?”

“Yeah.” Shimura Tenko covers the back of his neck with one hand. “No charges, but – yeah, I did time. So it’s funny.”

“It’s still not funny.” You lift the empty cup out of Shimura’s hands and turn to start making a second Nutella-esque mocha, trying to decide if you feel better or not. “It’s just not mean.”

A shadow falls across you as you work. Shimura’s following you along the edge of the counter. “So am I getting kicked out or what?”

“Yes,” you say. “In forty-five minutes, when I close.”

Shimura’s eyes crinkle ever so slightly at the corners. You wonder what his smile looks like under that mask, but you’ve got espresso shots to pull, and you need to focus if you don’t want to burn your hand. You look away, and when you look back again, he’s at his table, laptop open, mask on, chin propped in his gloved hand. No charges, but he’s done time. You didn’t expect that. Even though you’ve spent the last five years of your life trying to prove that you’re no different than anybody else, it still catches you by surprise to learn that one of your customers is like you.

You bring the second drink by his table, then start working through your closing checklist. He stands up with five minutes to go, just like clockwork. He leaves without another word, as usual, but when you step outside, he’s still standing there. “You didn’t ask why.”

Why he did time? “Neither did you,” you say.

“Yeah, but I won’t break probation if I don’t answer.”

“It’s the principle of the thing,” you say. It’s not quite dark, but the sun’s almost down, and the shadows are growing long. Late March already, but it feels like you’ve got a long way to go before spring. “If I want people who meet me to look at the person I am now, I have to do the same thing for them.”

Shimura Tenko makes a sound, half-laughter and half-scoffing. “They sure did a number on you,” he says. You turn and walk away, and his footsteps follow yours. “Hey. Come on. There’s no way you’re that sensitive.”

“I’m not,” you say. “I’m just having a bad day.”

A bad day, and you never get a day off. Even if the café’s not open, you’re still in sunshine mode every second, making sure that the people who want to treat you like a criminal look absolutely insane for doing it. You fought hard for this life. You’re glad you fought for it. And today more than usual, you’re just really tired. “I’ll see you later, okay?”

“Yeah,” Shimura says. You’re glad he doesn’t try to apologize again. You know it would be painfully insincere. “How did you know?”

“Hmm?”

“The pastry. How did you know I’d come back?”

“I didn’t,” you say. “I just hoped you would.”

You don’t know why you hoped. Maybe because he’d clearly been waiting a while when you and Present Mic got back. Maybe because you remember how much it mattered to have somewhere else to go, whether you had a place of your own or not. Maybe because you’ve gotten sort of a sense of him over the past few months, and you know he’s the kind of person who pretends not to want the things he wants. Wanting the coffee shop he hangs out in to be open and to have his favorite pastry available is such a reasonable thing to want. You were hoping he’d come back so you could give it to him.

Shimura doesn’t say anything. You keep walking, and he doesn’t follow you. When you glance back over your shoulder as you round the corner, you see him standing just outside of Skyline Coffee and Tea, staring intently at something. You can’t say for sure. But you’re pretty sure it’s the sign that explains about the NCRA.

A while back, you read that some countries set aside two days to commemorate a war. One day to celebrate that it ended, another to mourn that it happened at all. When it comes to the war you lived through, Japan does things differently. There’s just one day, a national holiday, where every government office closes and most businesses do, too. For most people, it’s a day to celebrate. There are carnivals, street fairs, concerts, parties. It’s been a holiday for exactly four years and a whole host of traditions have already sprung up around it.

But there’s one person who never celebrates, and it didn’t take you long to come around to his way of thinking. On April 4th, the fifth annual Day of Peace, you close the café early and make the trek to Kamino Ward.

You’re not sure how Kamino Ward became the place. Maybe because the final battlefield’s been overtaken by celebrations, and at least some people still see Kamino as hallowed ground. The place where the Symbol of Peace made his last stand. The place where the Symbol of Fear passed the torch onto his successor. You get there a little while before sunset, and you join the hundreds of people who’ve already gathered there. The crowd looks smaller than it did last year, and it hasn’t grown much by the time Midoriya Izuku, known to the world as Deku, climbs onto the steps leading up to the All Might statue’s plinth.

Someone hands him a microphone, which he takes with hands that tremble ever so slightly. He’s only twenty-one, and he looks old before his time. “I’m here,” he starts, then swallows hard. “I’m here because we didn’t win. Not really. If you’re here instead of at a party somewhere, I think it’s probably because you lost something. Something, or someone, who was important to you. Something you can’t get back.”

It’s quiet. It’s always quiet after he says something like that. “I’d like to think we did something. That we changed for the better,” Deku continues, “but I think we can only say that if we don’t forget what we had to lose for it to happen. So, um – you know the drill. If you brought a candle, great. If you didn’t, we have some. You can say the thing you lost if you want – we have a microphone – but when you’re done, light the candle and put it down somewhere that feels right to you.”

He takes a deep breath, lets it go. “And then you can go. But I’ll stay until they all burn out.”

People swarmed the first two years. This year they form a line, stepping up to light their candles one by one. You never know what to say when it’s your turn, because it’s not something specific you miss. The way things used to be was awful. You don’t miss that, and you weren’t close enough to anybody to lose someone who mattered in the war. But April 4th has never felt like a happy day. It feels wrong to you to be setting off fireworks and throwing parties in response to a war that almost destroyed the world.

A lot of people say names when it’s their turn to light a candle. Some say places. Some share an ideal they lost, a hero they venerated who fell from their pedestal, a dream they had that will never come true. Each lost thing named is met with respectful silence. But just like last year and the year before, there are three names that aren’t, no matter who says them. “Big Sis Magne. Bubaigawara Jin,” says Toga Himiko as she lights her candle. Say Todoroki Touya and Sako Atsuhiro and Iguchi Shuichi, who still answers to Spinner, as they light theirs. “Shigaraki Tomura.”

There’s always whispering after their names, especially Shigaraki’s. But Deku always goes last, and Deku always shuts them up. He lights his candle and grasps the microphone, speaking clearly, firmly. “Shigaraki Tomura.”

You remember what Present Mic said, about how Deku never got over failing to save Shigaraki. Deku was sixteen when he won the war. Still a kid. Was saving Shigaraki really his job? Maybe that’s the point of all this. It was everyone’s job to stop villains like Shigaraki from being created, and you all failed, so it fell to Deku – and he failed, too. It’s one big, sad, ugly mess. When you’re honest with yourself, you’re not surprised that most people try to cover it up with fireworks.

People begin to filter out of the memorial park, and you find a place to sit down. It’s not like you have somewhere else to go. The others who say settle in as well, in small groups amidst the rows and clusters of candles. You’re within earshot of one of the groups. Without meaning to, you find yourself listening in.

“They’d have hated this,” Todoroki Touya is saying, his voice low and bitter. “Every second of it.”

“Big Sis Magne wouldn’t have. And Twice would have liked it,” Toga Himiko says. Her voice is soft. “All the candles. He’d say it’s like his birthday.”

“Yeah. Sure.” Todoroki Touya’s voice goes even quieter. “Do any of us know when his birthday was?”

It’s quiet. “Shigaraki would hate this,” Todoroki states. “You know he would. What did he tell you to tell Spinner, Deku?”

Deku doesn’t answer. Spinner does. “Shigaraki Tomura fought to destroy until the very end.”

“Yeah,” Todoroki says. “To destroy. And Deku made him a martyr.”

“He destroyed a lot of things,” Deku says quietly. “All For One is gone. One For All, too – there’s never going to be another Symbol of Peace. He destroyed the way we saw villains. We don’t just get to look at what they’re doing right now. We have to think about how they got there. And he destroyed how we saw ourselves.”

“Yeah?” Spinner says. “How?”

“We didn’t think we were responsible for other people,” Deku says. “Now we have to be.”

It’s quiet again. This time it’s quiet for a while. “Whatever,” Todoroki says. “I’m going home. See you all at the next sobfest.”

“He always says that,” Spinner says, once his footsteps have faded. “He’s gonna get tanked at home and text us just like he did last year.”

“I miss Tomura-kun,” Toga says, her voice softer than before. “I thought we’d all be together at the end.”

“I know,” Deku says. “I’m sorry.”

“And you’re sure –” Spinner breaks off. “You’re sure you couldn’t get his ashes or something? So we could –”

“There was nothing left of Shigaraki,” Deku says. “I’m sorry.”

“Yeah,” Spinner says. Toga sniffles. “We know.”

The group splits, Toga in one direction, Spinner in the other. A moment later, Deku walks past you, and you do everything you can to fade into the background short of turning yourself camo-colored. It doesn’t work. “Did you hear all that?” Deku asks. You nod. He sighs, or sniffles, maybe. He looks younger up close. “You were here last year, right?”

“And the year before,” you say. The longer you look at him, the worse shape he’s in. “Um, are you okay?”

“It’s just –” Deku’s eyes well up, suddenly. “It’s hard. I can’t say what I want to say to them.”

“Why not?” you ask stupidly, and he shakes his head. “Um – do you want to sit down?”

You wouldn’t ask another hero that, but you feel like it’s worth the risk. Even though he’s twenty-one, you can’t look at him and see anything other than a kid, and it feels wrong to let a kid stand there and cry. Deku sits down next to you. “I know I’m not supposed to ask,” he starts, his voice watery, “but you never say anything when it’s your turn. Most people don’t come here. Even the ones who lost somebody would rather be at a party somewhere. Why do you come back?”

You have to think about it for a second. Deku cringes. “Sorry. You don’t have to answer.”

“I sort of do.” It might hit your probation requirements, and even if it doesn’t, you should explain anyway. “What you said earlier, in your speech – I’m one of the people the world got better for. My life would have been awful if it had stayed the same. But in order for me to have this life, we had to have the war.”

“What did you do during the war? Were you in a shelter?”

You shake your head. “The shelters banned people with criminal records,” you say. Deku’s eyes widen. “Nowhere would let me in.”

It wasn’t all that different from the way you were living before – not much food, not very safe. The only difference was a sharp increase in the number of abandoned buildings for you to crash in. But it looks like you’re making Deku feel worse, not better, and you scramble into part two of your explanation. “I’m one of the NCRA participants. That program only exists because of the war – and you, because you won’t let people forget why the war happened. So I want to remember why the war happened, too. And I want to honor it. Them.”

“Him,” Deku corrects, and your stomach clenches. “I wonder what he thinks of all of this. If it’s enough. If it’ll ever be enough. I mean, obviously it’ll never be enough for him, because he doesn’t – I mean, I can’t ask him, but I know he can see it. I don’t know where he is, but if I could just ask him –”

You didn’t realize Deku believed this strongly in the afterlife. You sit quietly, and after a few seconds, he remembers you’re there. He glances at you, embarrassed. “Sorry.”

“It’s okay,” you say. “Do you not get to talk about it very much?”

“No,” Deku admits. “People want to move on. And I don’t really blame them. But I can’t. Not until I know for sure.”

It’s quiet for a little bit. He wipes his eyes. You watch the candles flicker down a few millimeters more. “You’re in the NCRA,” Deku says finally. “For job training, or did you get a loan?”

“I got a loan,” you say. “I run a coffee shop now. With free WiFi.”

“Do people like it?”

“I think so,” you say. You think of the kids who come to study, the people who use the WiFi for remote work, the old people who walk the beach every morning and stop by for coffee and pastry afterwards. “I have regulars, anyway. And people talk to me now. They never used to.”

“People talk to me now, too,” Deku says. “It’s nice.”

“Yeah,” you agree. “It is.”

It is, but it’s not quite what you meant, and you don’t want to interrupt when Deku starts talking about the NCRA. It’s not just that people talk to you. They talked to you before, but now they see you – not as a criminal, but as a person like them, minus the squeaky-clean record. That’s new, and that’s good. You know even less about Shigaraki Tomura than Deku does, but even if he’d hate what’s happened to the world he wanted to destroy, you’re thankful anyway. The world is better now. It’s better because of Deku, and Deku’s the way he is because of Shigaraki.

There are fireworks going off over the bay, distant enough that you can’t hear the sound. Closer than that, you hear music and laughter from a street party you passed on your way here from the train station. Deku trails off after a while, and you don’t speak up again. The two of you sit in silence until the last of the candles burns away.

You get home late, and it’s an early morning opening up the café. Luckily for you, everybody else is also running late courtesy of the holiday yesterday. Osono comes by fifteen minutes off-schedule and full of apologies, and while you’ve got your doors open by seven, it’s not until seven-fifty-eight that your first customers come through the door. It’s a double shot of espresso kind of day, and while you’re pulling them, your customers tell you about the parties they went to last night. When they ask what you did, you tell them you went into the city. It’s not a lie.

After the slow start, the shop stays quieter than usual, quiet enough that when Shimura Tenko rolls up just past noon, there’s still plenty of babka left in the pastry case. You start his order before he’s even opened the door – one black coffee, one Nutella-flavored nightmare – and he stops to drop off his stuff at his usual table before he comes up to the counter. You can tell he’s disquieted by something. “Did Present Mic come by and scare everybody off again? How are you going to keep this place open if no one’s here?”

“Mornings are a lot busier than afternoons,” you say. “And spring’s my quietest season, anyway. No tourists like there are in the summer, and it’s not very cold.”

“Yeah.” Shimura glances around, still displeased. “This place had better stay open.”

“It will,” you say. “One shot of espresso or two?”

“Three.”

“Three? It’s your funeral,” you say, but you pull the extra shot. “Late night last night?”

“I went to a party,” Shimura says. You nod. “It was my birthday.”

“Happy birthday.” You cancel half his order. You give people a free drink on their birthday, if you know it and they come in. “Your birthday is April 4th? That’s a tough draw, especially the last few years.”

“You’re telling me.” Instead of retreating to his table like usual, Shimura hovers at the bar. “What about you? Did you go to a party?”

You shake your head. “I went into the city.”

“Which city?”

“Yokohama,” you admit. Shimura’s eyes narrow. “I go to the vigil at Kamino. I have every year they’ve done it.”

“Really,” Shimura says, skeptical. “Why?”

Deku asked you the same question. You have a feeling Shimura won’t like the answer, but it’s the only one you have. “My life is better than it was before the war, because of what happened in the war. I want to be thankful for that. It doesn’t feel right to me to go to a carnival.”

Shimura doesn’t say anything, just watches you. It makes you feel weird. “If I’d known it was your birthday, though, I’d have gone to a party for that. It was your birthday way before it was the Day of Peace.” You’re babbling, and Shimura still hasn’t said a word. “Not that you’d invite me to your birthday party or anything.”

“I didn’t know you’d want to go,” Shimura says slowly. The espresso machine beeps, and you focus on it way harder than you’d do under ordinary circumstances. “Look, I – it wasn’t my party. Just a party. It’s not like I went in a fucking birthday hat.”

“That would look pretty weird with your hood still up,” you say. Shimura makes an odd sound. You look up and see the corners of his eyes crinkling again. “Still, though. I’ll remember for next year. I’ll get a cupcake or something. Even if you don’t want somebody who’s done time at your birthday party.”

Shimura laughs at that. Actually laughs. Your chest constricts, filling with warmth in a way that feels out of proportion to the situation at hand. “I only want people who’ve done time at my birthday party,” he says. “Don’t try to give me that drink for free. You letting this place go under would be a shitty birthday present.”

“Too late. It’s already free and I’m not rerunning the sale.” You pour the black coffee and set it down on the pickup counter, followed by the godawful Nutella drink. “Happy birthday plus one.”

Shimura rolls his eyes, but they’re still crinkled slightly at the corners. He doesn’t respond until he’s already halfway back to the table, and he’s so quiet that you have to strain your ears to hear. “Thanks.”

You should say something. Something like “you’re welcome”, or “any time”. Something that sounds like good customer service, instead of what you’re worried will come out of your mouth if you open it right now. The conversation is over. Nothing else needs to be said. You turn to face your small workspace, searching for a distraction. There has to be something you can clean.

It’s been so long since you had a crush that you barely remember what it’s like, but you’re pretty sure you have a crush on Shimura. As far as crushes go, he’s kind of a weird pick – because he’s a customer, because he’s not the friendliest, because he hasn’t given any indication that he likes you at all. He likes babka and free internet and the horrible off-menu mocha you make just for him. That’s it.

It feels weird to have a crush. Weird in how normal of a thing it is to do, when you’ve been so focused on looking normal and pretending to be normal that you haven’t done anything actually normal in a while. But maybe this is a good thing, and maybe it’s okay. You might get released early from your NCRA requirements, and even if you don’t, you’re doing well. You can afford to like somebody again.

The café stays quiet, and with two hours left before closing time, you’re getting bored. Bored, and you haven’t switched out the mural since before your last check-in with Present Mic. Now’s an okay time for that. You scribble a sign to prop up on the counter – I’m here, just yell – and head towards the back wall. You have to pass Shimura to get there, and as you do, he looks up. “I’m not looking,” you say. “I’ll just be over here.”

“Doing what?”

“A new mural,” you say. “Pretend I’m not here.”

Shimura decides to start right away, and you flex your fingers more out of habit than anything else. Then you set your hand on the wall and activate your quirk, changing the entire wall from the wildflower mural back to the same blank neutral as the others. That’s a good start. Now you just need to figure out what you’re going to do with it.

Actual muralists sketch and line their work. They work from references and they draft the design before they actually start painting. You know that because you used to want to be a muralist yourself. You could sketch and line things, but these days you’re more about feelings than anything else, and feelings take color. You block the wall into a few sections – you remember to do that, at least – and fill in general colors, running your fingers along the edges to blur them together. Grey base and sides. Dark-colored middle. The entire upper half of the wall is light. It’s not until you’ve added the half-circle above the horizon that you get a real understanding of what you’re making.

It's another cityscape, or the ruins of one, something you saw in photos or maybe in person. It looks a lot like the sunrise view from Kamino Ward, the sky on fire with deep purple and orange and pink and gold, the reflection of those colors splashed across the sea, the wreckage of the city bathed in morning light. You’ve done enough therapy to psychoanalyze yourself, and it’s not hard to see what you were going for with this. Things are horrible. Things were horrible for a long time before today, but the sun is still rising, and the sunrise is still beautiful. And it’s a lot easier to see now, with all the other stuff out of the way.

“That’s not paint.”

You weren’t expecting Shimura to say anything, and you weren’t expecting him to pay attention to what you’re doing. But when you look back over your shoulder, you see him staring, his phone set aside, the lid of his laptop shut. “It’s not paint,” you say. “Just my quirk.”

“How does it work?” Shimura asks. You turn back to your mural, and you hear him get to his feet. A moment later he’s standing beside you, answering his own question. “You can change the color of things you touch. And decide how long it stays that way.”

“Yeah.” After using it your whole life, you’re pretty good at it. You can fine-tune stuff, enough to add shading to the buildings and the rubble at the sides and bottom of the mural without compromising the light from the sunrise. “Not a very powerful quirk.”

“You could still cause trouble,” Shimura says. You could. And you did. “This is how you got your charges, isn’t it? Stuff like this.”

“Graffiti? Yeah,” you say. You remember the rush you got the first time you tagged something, the first time you spilled your thoughts and feelings in a way no one could ignore. “Except when you do that, you get charged with trespassing and vandalism, and when they figure out they can’t remove it, you get charged with destruction of property. Throw in malicious unlicensed quirk usage and – boom. Felonies.”

“That’s stupid.”

“Me or them?”

“Giving somebody a felony for painting stuff on walls.” Shimura studies what you’ve done so far. “All of these have been yours, right? Is this the same stuff you were painting before?”

“Not always,” you say. This conversation falls under your NCRA obligations, but it doesn’t feel like it’s the reason Shimura’s asking – and it’s not the reason you’re telling him. “When I first got into it, it was just words or sentences. Stuff I couldn’t figure out how to say out loud. The first time I really got busted, it was for tagging the side of my parents’ house.”

“Your parents called the cops on you?”

“And pressed charges,” you say. He’s staring at you again. You pretend you don’t notice and fuss over the shoreline in the mural. “I got better at it when I was older. The art got better, anyway. But I got in more trouble because of where I put it. And I guess what was in it.”

“Anything I’d have seen?”

“I don’t know. Where did you hang around?” you ask. You got booked in most of the big cities in Japan during your criminal career. “Uh, I did the UA barrier. The one with the – you know.”

“The human shields?” Shimura bursts out laughing. “Did you have a sibling in Eraserhead’s class or something?”

“No, I just thought it was stupid to do the Sports Festival a week after what happened,” you say. Shimura snickers. “It felt like they were using the kids as props to distract from how much of a mistake they’d made, and I was mad about a lot of other stuff, too, and – yeah. I kind of went off.”

You really went off. There’s no other way to describe triggering the UA barrier on purpose at two am so you could make a crude mural of All Might, Endeavor, Hawks, and Best Jeanist hiding behind a bunch of kids in school uniforms. Shimura is still snickering. “Damn. I’m surprised they call you nonviolent with how bad you hurt their feelings.”

“They had to replace the whole barrier,” you say, and Shimura wheezes. “I’m not trying to be funny.”

“No, but it is funny.” Shimura glances at you over the edge of his mask. “And now you run a coffee shop and make things like this.”

He looks away from you, back to the mural. “Is this something real? It looks familiar,” he says. Before you can answer, his eyes widen, and he says it himself. “Kamino Ward. Why would you paint it like that?”

“It’s how I see it in my head. Or how I feel it. I don’t really know.” You reach out and use the tip of your index finger to highlight one of the buildings that’s still standing in sunrise gold. “What do you think?”

“I don’t know.” Shimura reaches out and touches it with one gloved hand. “People are going to be pissed at you.”

“If they recognize it.” You’re not too worried. “Most people just look at the colors.”

“I recognized it.”

“You’re not most people.”

You instantly wish you hadn’t said a word. Shimura Tenko glances at you quickly, then looks back to the mural. “Yeah,” he says. “I was there.”

Your stomach drops. “You were?” you repeat hopelessly, and he nods without looking your way. “I’m sorry. It’s – insensitive. I’ll take it down –”

“No.” Shimura catches your wrist before you can make contact with the mural. “Leave it. I was gone for this part. It’s a nice view. The horizon, I mean.”

That’s your favorite part, and you’re not even done with it yet. “I still have some stuff to add,” you say. Shimura nods but doesn’t let go of your wrist. You pull at it slightly. “I need this back.”

“Fuck. Sorry.” Shimura recoils like you’ve burned him, then backs away. Way too far away. You’d say he was making fun of you, except you can see his eyes over the mask, and they’re expressive in spite of his complete lack of eyebrows. “Sorry. I don’t usually – touch people.”

“It’s okay.” Your wrist feels tingly where his hand made contact, and there are butterflies in your stomach. He doesn’t usually touch people, but he touched you. “Thanks for stopping me.”

Shimura turns away completely. “I have to work.”

“Yeah. I didn’t mean to distract you.”

“I know.” Shimura slides back into his booth. You turn back to put the finishing touches on your mural.

He’s right about it. In the hour left before you close, at least one customer who trickles in gives you a hard time for putting up something so upsetting. You listen to his concerns, but you stick to your guns, and when he sits down to wait for his order, you see him watching it. Just like Shimura is, the screen of his laptop long since gone dark.

#shigaraki x reader #shigaraki tomura x reader #tomura shigaraki x reader #shigaraki x you #tenko shimura x reader #shimura tenko x reader #shigaraki tomura #shimura tenko #x reader #reader insert #coffee shop rehab fic #man door hand hook car door #a bisquared production

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darkficsyouneveraskedfor · 1 year ago

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Bittersweet 2

No tag lists. Do not send asks or DMs about updates. Review my pinned post for guidelines, masterlist, etc.

Part of the Sweet and Spicy AU

Warnings: this fic will include dark content such as dubcon/noncon, and other possible triggers. My warnings are not exhaustive, enter at your own risk.

18+ only. Your media consumption is your own responsibility. Warnings have been given. DO NOT PROCEED if these matters upset you.

Summary: Your startup business catches the eye of a powerful rival.

Character: Loki Laufeyson

Please comment and reblog if it’s not too much. I always love getting to chat about these stories and hearing all your ideas! You all are wonderful and loved.

It’s baking day. Your kitchen is stolid with the heat of the oven and the treats cooling on the counter. Your apartment has been converted into a pseudo chocolate factory; though you wouldn’t claim Wonka’s glory. You are certain to keep to food-safe standards however and so your morning began with sanitization, another two hours on top of a long day.

It’s a few weeks out to the next show; a local festival that hosts all sorts of local shops, though the biggest attraction are the musical acts. Even so, you’re hustling as best as you can. You spent a portion of the baking show profit to get a kiosk in the mall for the holiday weekend. It’s a big deal, you expect a crowd and now you have an idea of how much you’ll need to bring.

You sigh as you tally up what you have so far. You’ll be in the kitchen all week at this rate and you don’t think even then you’ll meet your set quota. You’ll still do well but you can’t help the echo of that man’s words. You’re hitting a wall on your own.

And you’re running low on red cacao. You frown at the slack canvas bag. That’s another trip to the bulk seller down by the freeway but that’s so far out, it’ll eat at least an hour and a half off your day.

He’s right. That pompous snakish man is right. You can’t keep up with the demand.

No, you can. You’ll bake into the night if you have to. It’ll be cooler then, anyhow. You inventory your cupboards as the oven radiate with heat. You have a list. Tomorrow you can get to that but for now, you’ll start packaging the chocolates in the fridge.

You count out the truffles and fudge squares precisely. Each one in a sleeve or a box. You’ll add all the little details later; a ribbon, a bow, a seal. You yawn at the repetition but aren’t bored by it. Having your own business isn’t exactly dull, if anything it’s tantalizingly stressful.

Your tablet dings as the baking show you keep on stream quiets for the notification. The woman’s voice returns to full volume as you approach to check the icon in the margin. It’s from your online shop front. Between the physical work, you can’t forget about the healthy tide of orders coming in virtually.

It adds to the weight on your shoulders. You slump and drag down the notification bar. It’s large order and before you can skim each item, another notification sweeps in. You tap the inquiry so that the message opens.

The inquiry is labeled with the same order number that just came up. You squint. ‘...requires in-person to order address...’ You don’t do that. It isn’t an option but the customer’s tone comes of insistent even over text. They promise a gratuity and underline that they did pay for the expedited option.

That’s the first position you’re hiring when you can make the space. A customer service representative because you hate this. You go back to review the full order. It’s a lot; a lot of baking and a lot of money.

You’ll have to make it work yet there’s this needling voice in the back of your head, slithering and sharp, you can’t keep this up forever.

🍫

Surely, it’s the wrong address.

You idle in your large SUV, the nearly two-decade old model puttering between the sleek modern cars the fill the spaces outside the luxurious storefront. You gulp as you peer up at the moniker. You recognise the brand and the logo.

Black Snake. It’s some sort of trick. You should have been suspicious.

The chocolatier isn’t unknown to you beyond your encounter with its owner. While the headquarters are nestled right at the heart of your city, there are locations across the country and even a few international. The local start-up boomed onto the front page and you can’t say it had nothing to do with your own come up. You offer a more affordable option with the same premium taste.

You suppose he doesn’t like the competition. You wouldn’t either but you put yourself out there against the Black Snake monopoly knowing you would be trudging uphill. You get out and try not to think too much.

You unlock the hatch and take out the large box stamped with your business name; Sweet Nothings. You approach the front door, trying to see through the tinted windows that form the front wall, and it opens before you can reach it. Shoot, he’s expecting you.

“Ah, right on time,” Loki greets as he checks his watch. “I see you’ve no branding on your vehicle.”

You try not to cringe. He has an eye for detail. You bite down on your smile.

“Hello again,” you try to act like his foreboding hasn’t haunted you for a week, “I have everything in here--”

“I didn’t see a reselling clause on your terms of service,” he proclaims smugly, “these should be popular.”

“Ah,” you hesitate as he steps out of the door to hold it open for you, “you’ve paid so I guess I can’t stop you.”

“Mm, and how is business then? You are quick to respond. Can’t be very hectic, then.”

You take the jab like a weathered boxer. You don’t flinch, you just keep going. You stride inside and look around. You carry the box to the empty space the counter.

“As promised, I will transfer a fee for your trouble,” he follows quickly.

“Thanks, uh, I should--” you face him as he blocks your path.

“You’ve a pop-up. This coming weekend.”

The advert is at the top of your online shop. Of course, he would know. His diligence is starting to eke you out.

“I do,” you confirm, “so I should be off.”

“Yes, you have much work to do. Tell me, how many ovens do you have going?”

Your expression falls, “you spent all this money to mock me?”

“No, I’m simply discussing business. Seeing as I am experienced, I thought I might offer some sage advice,” he flutters his long fingers.

“I appreciate that, really, but I am running a business, same as you, so if you would like to discuss that, you are more than welcome to make a proper appointment with me. Like a business person.”

He snickers at the slant in your voice, the tone that insists you’re legitimate like him.

“I didn’t see that option on the store front,” he counters.

“You have my card,” you sniff and step around him. “Feel free to let me know if you have any concerns about your order.”

“Wait--” He calls after but you’re already halfway through the door.

#loki #dark loki #dark!loki #loki x reader #sweet and spicy #au #series #bittersweet #mcu #marvel #thor #avengers #drabble

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mostlysignssomeportents · 1 year ago

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Microsoft pinky swears that THIS TIME they’ll make security a priority

One June 20, I'm live onstage in LOS ANGELES for a recording of the GO FACT YOURSELF podcast. On June 21, I'm doing an ONLINE READING for the LOCUS AWARDS at 16hPT. On June 22, I'll be in OAKLAND, CA for a panel and a keynote at the LOCUS AWARDS.

As the old saying goes, "When someone tells you who they are and you get fooled again, shame on you." That goes double for Microsoft, especially when it comes to security promises.

Microsoft is, was, always has been, and always will be a rotten company. At every turn, throughout their history, they have learned the wrong lessons, over and over again.

That starts from the very earliest days, when the company was still called "Micro-Soft." Young Bill Gates was given a sweetheart deal to supply the operating system for IBM's PC, thanks to his mother's connection. The nepo-baby enlisted his pal, Paul Allen (whom he'd later rip off for billions) and together, they bought someone else's OS (and took credit for creating it – AKA, the "Musk gambit").

Microsoft then proceeded to make a fortune by monopolizing the OS market through illegal, collusive arrangements with the PC clone industry – an industry that only existed because they could source third-party PC ROMs from Phoenix:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/08/ibm-pc-compatible-how-adversarial-interoperability-saved-pcs-monopolization

Bill Gates didn't become one of the richest people on earth simply by emerging from a lucky orifice; he also owed his success to vigorous antitrust enforcement. The IBM PC was the company's first major initiative after it was targeted by the DOJ for a 12-year antitrust enforcement action. IBM tapped its vast monopoly profits to fight the DOJ, spending more on outside counsel to fight the DOJ antitrust division than the DOJ spent on all its antitrust lawyers, every year, for 12 years.

IBM's delaying tactic paid off. When Reagan took the White House, he let IBM off the hook. But the company was still seriously scarred by its ordeal, and when the PC project kicked off, the company kept the OS separate from the hardware (one of the DOJ's major issues with IBM's previous behavior was its vertical monopoly on hardware and software). IBM didn't hire Gates and Allen to provide it with DOS because it was incapable of writing a PC operating system: they did it to keep the DOJ from kicking down their door again.

The post-antitrust, gunshy IBM kept delivering dividends for Microsoft. When IBM turned a blind eye to the cloned PC-ROM and allowed companies like Compaq, Dell and Gateway to compete directly with Big Blue, this produced a whole cohort of customers for Microsoft – customers Microsoft could play off on each other, ensuring that every PC sold generated income for Microsoft, creating a wide moat around the OS business that kept other OS vendors out of the market. Why invest in making an OS when every hardware company already had an exclusive arrangement with Microsoft?

The IBM PC story teaches us two things: stronger antitrust enforcement spurs innovation and opens markets for scrappy startups to grow to big, important firms; as do weaker IP protections.

Microsoft learned the opposite: monopolies are wildly profitable; expansive IP protects monopolies; you can violate antitrust laws so long as you have enough monopoly profits rolling in to outspend the government until a Republican bootlicker takes the White House (Microsoft's antitrust ordeal ended after GW Bush stole the 2000 election and dropped the charges against them). Microsoft embodies the idea that you either die a rebel hero or live long enough to become the evil emperor you dethroned.

From the first, Microsoft has pursued three goals:

Get too big to fail;

Get too big to jail;

Get too big to care.

It has succeeded on all three counts. Much of Microsoft's enduring power comes from succeeded IBM as the company that mediocre IT managers can safely buy from without being blamed for the poor quality of Microsoft's products: "Nobody ever got fired for buying Microsoft" is 2024's answer to "Nobody ever got fired for buying IBM."

Microsoft's secret sauce is impunity. The PC companies that bundle Windows with their hardware are held blameless for the glaring defects in Windows. The IT managers who buy company-wide Windows licenses are likewise insulated from the rage of the workers who have to use Windows and other Microsoft products.

Microsoft doesn't have to care if you hate it because, for the most part, it's not selling to you. It's selling to a few decision-makers who can be wined and dined and flattered. And since we all have to use its products, developers have to target its platform if they want to sell us their software.

This rarified position has afforded Microsoft enormous freedom to roll out harebrained "features" that made things briefly attractive for some group of developers it was hoping to tempt into its sticky-trap. Remember when it put a Turing-complete scripting environment into Microsoft Office and unleashed a plague of macro viruses that wiped out years worth of work for entire businesses?

https://web.archive.org/web/20060325224147/http://www3.ca.com/securityadvisor/newsinfo/collateral.aspx?cid=33338

It wasn't just Office; Microsoft's operating systems have harbored festering swamps of godawful defects that were weaponized by trolls, script kiddies, and nation-states:

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

Microsoft blamed everyone except themselves for these defects, claiming that their poor code quality was no worse than others, insisting that the bulging arsenal of Windows-specific malware was the result of being the juiciest target and thus the subject of the most malicious attention.

Even if you take them at their word here, that's still no excuse. Microsoft didn't slip and accidentally become an operating system monopolist. They relentlessly, deliberately, illegally pursued the goal of extinguishing every OS except their own. It's completely foreseeable that this dominance would make their products the subject of continuous attacks.

There's an implicit bargain that every monopolist makes: allow me to dominate my market and I will be a benevolent dictator who spends his windfall profits on maintaining product quality and security. Indeed, if we permit "wasteful competition" to erode the margins of operating system vendors, who will have a surplus sufficient to meet the security investment demands of the digital world?

But monopolists always violate this bargain. When faced with the decision to either invest in quality and security, or hand billions of dollars to their shareholders, they'll always take the latter. Why wouldn't they? Once they have a monopoly, they don't have to worry about losing customers to a competitor, so why invest in customer satisfaction? That's how Google can piss away $80b on a stock buyback and fire 12,000 technical employees at the same time as its flagship search product (with a 90% market-share) is turning into an unusable pile of shit:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/02/21/im-feeling-unlucky/#not-up-to-the-task

Microsoft reneged on this bargain from day one, and they never stopped. When the company moved Office to the cloud, it added an "analytics" suite that lets bosses spy on and stack-rank their employees ("Sorry, fella, Office365 says you're the slowest typist in the company, so you're fired"). Microsoft will also sell you internal data on the Office365 usage of your industry competitors (they'll sell your data to your competitors, too, natch). But most of all, Microsoft harvest, analyzes and sells this data for its own purposes:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/11/25/the-peoples-amazon/#clippys-revenge

Leave aside how creepy, gross and exploitative this is – it's also incredibly reckless. Microsoft is creating a two-way conduit into the majority of the world's businesses that insider threats, security services and hackers can exploit to spy on and wreck Microsoft's customers' business. You don't get more "too big to care" than this.

Or at least, not until now. Microsoft recently announced a product called "Recall" that would record every keystroke, click and screen element, nominally in the name of helping you figure out what you've done and either do it again, or go back and fix it. The problem here is that anyone who gains access to your system – your boss, a spy, a cop, a Microsoft insider, a stalker, an abusive partner or a hacker – now has access to everything, on a platter. Naturally, this system – which Microsoft billed as ultra-secure – was wildly insecure and after a series of blockbuster exploits, the company was forced to hit pause on the rollout:

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2024/06/microsoft-delays-data-scraping-recall-feature-again-commits-to-public-beta-test/

For years, Microsoft waged a war on the single most important security practice in software development: transparency. This is the company that branded the GPL Free Software license a "virus" and called open source "a cancer." The company argued that allowing public scrutiny of code would be a disaster because bad guys would spot and weaponize defects.

This is "security through obscurity" and it's an idea that was discredited nearly 500 years ago with the advent of the scientific method. The crux of that method: we are so good at bullshiting ourselves into thinking that our experiment was successful that the only way to make sure we know anything is to tell our enemies what we think we've proved so they can try to tear us down.

Or, as Bruce Schneier puts it: "Anyone can design a security system that you yourself can't think of a way of breaking. That doesn't mean it works, it just means that it works against people stupider than you."

And yet, Microsoft – whose made more widely and consequentially exploited software than anyone else in the history of the human race – claimed that free and open code was insecure, and spent millions on deceptive PR campaigns intended to discredit the scientific method in favor of a kind of software alchemy, in which every coder toils in secret, assuring themselves that drinking mercury is the secret to eternal life.

Access to source code isn't sufficient to make software secure – nothing about access to code guarantees that anyone will review that code and repair its defects. Indeed, there've been some high profile examples of "supply chain attacks" in the free/open source software world:

https://www.securityweek.com/supply-chain-attack-major-linux-distributions-impacted-by-xz-utils-backdoor/

But there's no good argument that this code would have been more secure if it had been harder for the good guys to spot its bugs. When it comes to secure code, transparency is an essential, but it's not a sufficency.

The architects of that campaign are genuinely awful people, and yet they're revered as heroes by Microsoft's current leadership. There's Steve "Linux Is Cancer" Ballmer, star of Propublica's IRS Files, where he is shown to be the king of "tax loss harvesting":

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/24/tax-loss-harvesting/#mego

And also the most prominent example of the disgusting tax cheats practiced by rich sports-team owners:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/07/08/tuyul-apps/#economic-substance-doctrine

Microsoft may give lip service to open source these days (mostly through buying, stripmining and enclosing Github) but Ballmer's legacy lives on within the company, through its wildly illegal tax-evasion tactics:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/10/13/pour-encoragez-les-autres/#micros-tilde-one

But Ballmer is an angel compared to his boss, Bill Gates, last seen some paragraphs above, stealing the credit for MS DOS from Tim Paterson and billions of dollars from his co-founder Paul Allen. Gates is an odious creep who made billions through corrupt tech industry practices, then used them to wield influence over the world's politics and policy. The Gates Foundation (and Gates personally) invented vaccine apartheid, helped kill access to AIDS vaccines in Sub-Saharan Africa, then repeated the trick to keep covid vaccines out of reach of the Global South:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/04/13/public-interest-pharma/#gates-foundation

The Gates Foundation wants us to think of it as malaria-fighting heroes, but they're also the leaders of the war against public education, and have been key to the replacement of public schools with charter schools, where the poorest kids in America serve as experimental subjects for the failed pet theories of billionaire dilettantes:

https://www.ineteconomics.org/perspectives/blog/millionaire-driven-education-reform-has-failed-heres-what-works

(On a personal level, Gates is also a serial sexual abuser who harassed multiple subordinates into having sexual affairs with him:)

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/13/technology/microsoft-sexual-harassment-policy-review.html

The management culture of Microsoft started rotten and never improved. It's a company with corruption and monopoly in its blood, a firm that would always rather build market power to insulate itself from the consequences of making defective products than actually make good products. This is true of every division, from cloud computing:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/09/28/other-peoples-computers/#clouded-over

To gaming:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/27/convicted-monopolist/#microsquish

No one should ever trust Microsoft to do anything that benefits anyone except Microsoft. One of the low points in the otherwise wonderful surge of tech worker labor organizing was when the Communications Workers of America endorsed Microsoft's acquisition of Activision because Microsoft promised not to union-bust Activision employees. They lied:

https://80.lv/articles/qa-workers-contracted-by-microsoft-say-they-were-fired-for-trying-to-unionize/

Repeatedly:

https://www.reuters.com/technology/activision-fired-staff-using-strong-language-about-remote-work-policy-union-2023-03-01/

Why wouldn't they lie? They've never faced any consequences for lying in the past. Remember: the secret to Microsoft's billions is impunity.

Which brings me to Solarwinds. Solarwinds is an enterprise management tool that allows IT managers to see, patch and control the computers they oversee. Foreign spies hacked Solarwinds and accessed a variety of US federal agencies, including National Nuclear Security Administration (who oversee nuclear weapons stockpiles), the NIH, and the Treasury Department.

When the Solarwinds story broke, Microsoft strenuously denied that the Solarwinds hack relied on exploiting defects in Microsoft software. They said this to everyone: the press, the Pentagon, and Congress.

This was a lie. As Renee Dudley and Doris Burke reported for Propublica, the Solarwinds attack relied on defects in the SAML authentication system that Microsoft's own senior security staff had identified and repeatedly warned management about. Microsoft's leadership ignored these warnings, buried the research, prohibited anyone from warning Microsoft customers, and sidelined Andrew Harris, the researcher who discovered the defect:

https://www.propublica.org/article/microsoft-solarwinds-golden-saml-data-breach-russian-hackers

The single most consequential cyberattack on the US government was only possible because Microsoft decided not to fix a profound and dangerous bug in its code, and declined to warn anyone who relied on this defective software.

Yesterday, Microsoft president Brad Smith testified about this to Congress, and promised that the company would henceforth prioritize security over gimmicks like AI:

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2024/06/microsoft-in-damage-control-mode-says-it-will-prioritize-security-over-ai/

Despite all the reasons to mistrust this promise, the company is hoping Congress will believe it. More importantly, it's hoping that the Pentagon will believe it, because the Pentagon is about to award billions in free no-bid military contract profits to Microsoft:

https://www.axios.com/2024/05/17/pentagon-weighs-microsoft-licensing-upgrades

You know what? I bet they'll sell this lie. It won't be the first time they've convinced Serious People in charge of billions of dollars and/or lives to ignore that all-important maxim, "When someone tells you who they are and you get fooled again, shame on you."

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/2024/06/14/patch-tuesday/#fool-me-twice-we-dont-get-fooled-again

#pluralistic #microsoft #infosec #visual basic #ai #corruption #too big to care #patch tuesday #solar winds #monopolists bargain #eternal blue #transparency #open source #floss #oss #apts

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