#its the dopamine addiction for real

[wearethewitches]

Somehow I have replaced tiktok with spider solitaire and I'm not sure how to feel about that

[friiday-thirteenth]

i think social media should have like. a closing time. when it hits 10pm or whatever in your timezone it should just calmly close down and instead of the screen going NO MORE. GOODNIGHT there should be a little sticky note that says "closed now, come again tomorrow!" and that way people would be able to shut off from it all. this is important to me.

[hyperlexichypatia]

Neuroscience is real and important (while still beset by the same implicit and explicit bias problems as all human science and medicine), but pop culture understanding of neuroscience has absolutely made society worse, and I hate it. Every popular invocation of "dopamine," "serotonin" "trauma," "the prefrontal cortex," and "epigenetics" is used to justify some logically and/or ethically terrible conclusion. Recently I saw someone say that she lift weights to boost dopamine "Because my body doesn't make its own." My sibling in neurochemistry, that is your body making its own! A chemical your body produces when you exercise is still being produced by your body! Furthermore, why are we repeatedly told that exercise is good because it boosts dopamine, but video games and social media are bad, because they boost dopamine? Are dopamine-boosting recreational activities good or bad? The obvious answer, of course, is that it's just moralistic judgment -- exercise is Virtuous, games are not -- dressed up in neurochemical justifications. People even talk about being "addicted to dopamine" as if being "addicted" to a substance produced by one's own body can even be a meaningful or coherent concept. I'm not saying there aren't evidence-based things people can do to protect their neurological health (one that I strongly recommend is wearing a helmet). I'm saying that pop neuroscience is not a sound basis for logic, philosophy, ethics, morality, law, or public policy. If you're going to make an ethical or public policy argument using "the brain" or "brain chemistry" as a justification, consider, instead, not doing that. Instead, consider that other people know what's best for their own brains without your expounding on "dopamine" and "trauma."

[valorascult]

𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐃𝐚𝐫𝐤 𝐒𝐢𝐝𝐞 𝐨𝐟 𝐒𝐞𝐥𝐟 𝐈𝐦𝐩𝐫𝐨𝐯𝐞𝐦𝐞𝐧𝐭 / 𝐒𝐞𝐥𝐟 𝐂𝐚𝐫𝐞 (𝐭𝐡𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐝)

**disclaimer**

I am not against self improvement. Wanting to be the best version of yourself is your birthright. There are a lot of helpful books, ‘gurus’, articles, practices, etc; that are beneficial & have valuable information to share.

That being said, lets move forward.

Many start their ‘self improvement journey’ when they are at their lowest because that’s when you are most aware that something is ‘wrong’ - making you more vulnerable / susceptible to deception & addiction.

It usually starts by reading a book, watching a yt video, etc;. You watch / read one and then continue to consume more, because ‘maybe the next one will finally get me to where i need to be’ - not understanding that this is just another form of entertainment and procrastination.

There is satisfaction after immediately reading a self help book. You have a quick rush of ‘I’ve accomplished something’ (dopamine) - giving you the illusion of progress until you get stuck inside a cycle and realize, nothing has changed.

Sitting behind a screen is not the self improvement you think it is. Is there good knowledge shared? Yes, of course, but the real self improvement starts by actually DOING. Living life will give you more answers than binging content.

Action Faking - ‘the practice of confusing being 'busy' with making actual progress towards an intended goal and often involves a lot of over-analysing and planning, but very little meaningful action.’

Listening to someone talk about their own lives & share their own improvement stories is not going to help YOU. Gurus try to fit everyone into a mold when self improvement is not a ‘one size fits all’ & when something doesn’t work for someone after its worked for others, they usually see themselves as a ‘failure’ so they move onto the next thing that doesn’t fit them & this becomes a pattern, soon they start to build levels of guilt and shame.

Before consuming anything, you should know the specific problem you want to solve, if not, you are coming into something without a strong foundation, soon, you will start to believe there are 500 other things wrong. Don’t get sucked into a black hole.

Also, understand that many other these therapists, psychologists, content creators, etc; all thrive off of people who are at their lowest. It’s important to know when someone really wants to help vs when someone keeps wanting you to come back. The industry is worth billions.

Many have been accustomed to pacifying the silence. Always picking up the phone, turning the tv on, listening to music when there is downtime, instead of tapping into our bodies - their thoughts and feeling have now become distorted & influenced by ‘the noise’.

Fake positivity instead of facing reality is an issue within itself. These ‘positive’ messages / posts about encouragement and ‘never giving up’ convinces you that it’s ‘wrong’ to changes paths / passions in life & you then see yourself as a failure instead of a soul, growing.

With all of that being said, remove yourself from artificial motivation & start doing. I have nothing against self improvement, but I do have an issue with the addictive side of it that seems to only profit a select few.

xoxo,

valora

[nenelonomh]

get addicted to real dopamine

TW: mention of self-harm

dopamine is a neurotransmitter that plays a significant role in our brain's reward system, associated with feelings of pleasure and satisfaction. it is released during enjoyable activities like eating, exercise, and social interactions, reinforcing behaviours that are essential for survival. however, the term "addiction" typically refers to compulsive engagement in rewarding stimuli despite adverse consequences.

some examples of these consequential behaviours include substance abuse, reckless driving, unsafe sex, self-harm, neglecting health, overeating, and poor financial decisions.

the best way to break free from such harmful behaviours is to replace your negative habits with positive ones. finding healthy alternatives that fulfil the same needs as harmful behaviour, and seeking professional help if needed

for further reading, click the links below. ray family therapy, breaking bad habits reimagine, understanding harmful habits: the psychology behind our actions

but that's not what this post is about. i just felt the need to touch on it, since it is a huge positive of being addicted to real dopamine.

to experience the positive effects of dopamine naturally, you can engage in activities that promote its healthy levels, such as:

regular exercise: physical activity is known to boost dopamine levels and improve mood. during exercise, especially when it's challenging yet achievable, the brain's reward centre, particularly the nucleus accumbens, releases dopamine. this release is part of the brain's reward system, which is being activated during pleasurable activities, reinforcing behaviours that are beneficial for survival and well-being.

the release of dopamine during exercise contributes to feelings of happiness and accomplishment (improved mood). it also contributes to enhanced memory, attention and problem-solving skills, stress reduction, and better motor performance.

balanced diet: dopamine is produced from amino acids, particularly tyrosine and phenylalanine, which are found in protein-rich foods. consuming a diet that includes adequate protein ensures that your body has the necessary building blocks to produce dopamine.

benefits of dopamine from a balanced diet include enhanced mood, improved cognitive function, increased motivation, and regulation of movement. dopamine is involved in the brain's reward system, which motivates us to repeat behaviours that are pleasurable or beneficial (increased motivation). it is important for motor control, so proper levels can help with coordination and movement.

adequate sleep: quality sleep is crucial for regulating neurotransmitter levels, including dopamine. it helps to maintain the sensitivity and function of dopamine receptors. sleep deprivation can lead to a decrease in dopamine D2 receptors, which are associated with arousal and reward.

dopamine is involved in regulating the circadian rhythm, our internal body clock that dictates when we feel awake and when we feel sleepy. adequate sleep helps keep this rhythm consistent, which in turn supports healthy dopamine levels.

adequate dopamine levels contribute to a state of alertness and wakefulness during the day. sufficient sleep can help regulate the stress response, which is partly mediated by dopamine.

mindfulness and meditation: these practices can increase dopamine levels and improve focus and concentration. additionally, they can enhance the efficiency of brain pathways that process sensory information, which may lead to increased dopamine release.

higher dopamine levels can lead to feelings of calmness and contentment, improving overall mood. regular mindfulness practice can help maintain a positive balance of neurotransmitters, including dopamine, which can reduce stress. by increasing dopamine, meditation can help regulate emotions, leading to better mental health outcomes.

learning new skills: the process of learning can increase dopamine production, as it's associated with reward and motivation. this reward system encourages the continuation of learning and skill development.

new experiences, such as learning new skills, can reset key brain circuits, enhancing the ability to learn and adapt to new situations. activating dopamine receipts through learning can lead to improved cognitive flexibility and the ability to switch between tasks or thoughts more easily.

also, releasing dopamine due to learning new skills contributes to a positive mood, making learning an enjoyable way to regulate emotions.

in summary, these operations can stimulate healthy dopamine release, which has so many positive benefits. it's a natural and rewarding way to promote personal growth and mental health.

for further reading on the topic of healthy dopamine release, see the links below: medical news today, how does dopamine affect the body? healthline, how does dopamine affect the body? very well health, what is dopamine? cdc, about adverse childhood experiences healthline, 10 best ways to increase dopamine levels naturally bbc, learn something new to boost your brain psychology today, dopamine's role in learning and memory

i hope today's post was helpful. ❤️ nene

(photo credit: pinterest)

[nanabrainrot]

Perversion, Immersion [Pervert!Roman Roy]

Roman Roy discovers the magic of deepfakes, filtering through more and more images of you. He’s lucky you’re an entertainer at heart.

Warning! This piece is NSFW! It contains a dominating female reader and a perverted Roman. Dub-con due to nonconsensual use of her face in deepfake pornography. Praise kink, humiliation kink, and mixed signals.

WC: 1599

Part I | You are reading Part II | Part III

Part II

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The industrial revolution and its consequences have been a disaster for mankind. The advancement of technology served as a grim reminder that Roman would not be increasing in his addiction and obscenity since you had found out about it: the existence of deepfakes had only exacerbated this progression in depravity. Masturbation is natural, occurring in all facets of life where self-pleasure can set off dopamine receptors; the problem in humanity is the structure of manufactured morality. Ignorance is bliss reigns true but the lingering feeling of adrenaline as his camera roll started to become full of the public images of you.

LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, your youth had led you to being tech savvy and your beauty had led you to indulging in regularly posting pictures of yourself. Classy, but suggestive. Most photos of you were perfectly posed, half-lidded eyes and a little grin but not too big. Feeding them into the websites provided him this constant pleasure: your face projected on the porn star.

Enough angles fed made it seamless. It was no longer the porn star’s face, but yours. The mouth ajar and knit brows but the voice - the voice was too far off. It was maddening. What did you sound like moaning? Not that he would likely ever be able to get that comical assembly of moans and grunts that were restricted to the world of porn for the sake of theatrics. And everyday the collection grows, the number of porn stars with a body like yours are not in short supply. The amateur videos really add to the authenticity of it as he downloads it to his phone, sending the file in his emails before trying to delete the evidence. Or not. You really didn’t seem give a damn that he was basically fantasizing about you.

You don’t seem bothered now too.

“What’re you staring at like that for?”

His skin goes cold, pores erupting into goosebumps and hairs standing on end. No fear, just adrenaline.

It’s you.

Your face edited with that stupid website. Face covered in a load of cum as you looked up at the camera with lips wrapped around the bulbous tip of a dick. Silence.

Quiet. Stillness.

Until the first noise rips out of you: a real authentic snorting laugh. You stumble back with your head back - like a hyena - snorting and trying to breathe as tears well from the lack of air as you wheeze at Roman fumbling over his words and trying to rectify the frozen screen yet again. A vein pulses in his head as he starts to randomly pound buttons and mutter a string of curses at the frozen screen before you regain your composure with a grin.

“You’re a photoshop pro, Roman? Or did you master it to beat it to this pic of me?” you scoff smiling as you leaned back against the wall.

“No - just, you fuckin’ uh - this is a chick who just kind of, um - oh my god, y’know what? Fuck is your issue it’s just a pic as a joke and you literally fell for it -“

“A joke? Me sucking dick is a funny joke?” you snort, struggling to hold back a laugh as the vein pulsed in his head harder.

“Hysterical. You don’t get comedy and it’s not even you - just some uh chick who looks like you. You think you’re only chick who looks like that in the world?”

“Roman, I don’t have any nudes out there. Camera shy,” you start, drawing closer to him with little clicks of your heels, “and that ‘chick’ has the mole near my eye.”

He glances back at the screen before immediately drawing back to whip back and view your face - over and over. He looked like he’d break his neck like that.

“What? If you wanna see me suck dick you can just ask me.” His face simultaneously drains of blood and flushes all at once, dick confused if it should get hard or stay shy and soft in his trousers.

“What?”

“What do you mean what? I know you heard me,” you drawl, “do you not want me to suck it?”

“I do! I mean, uh,” he coughs leaning back to look cool and collected, “I do… but not, um, today. Y’know, I like to test the waters? I’m a verbal guy you just keep that chatting and it’ll be your dick audition. Since you’re literally craving it if you’re offering like that -“

“Then take out your dick.”

Quiet.

“I don’t uh - want you to watch me,” he choked, “talk to me, c’mon, start that dirty shit since you’re so horny like that-“

“Take out your dick. You stupid or something? Why do I need to walk you through unzipping and taking your dick out?” You rolled your eyes but seemed to oblige, walking toward the door where your phone was on a table by. Back to him, you leaned over - round ass taunting him in the tight fabric of your skirt. Garters on display.

“I’m not even gonna look at you, since you wanna be a baby about it… probably don’t wanna see your nasty dick,” you scoff and start scrolling through your phone as your knees lightly shifted weight to weight to make your ass move a bit. It’s enough to spark the little shame that he loved to make him start palming himself through the trousers.

“Tch, you stroking your dick to my ass? Good,”

Hard breaths. Harsh huffs. Fiddling with the flesh to reach orgasm at a sight. Because you couldn’t be bothered to let him touch you. Too good to be soiled by a disgusting, sorry man like himself.

“You wish you could touch me, don’t you?”

A huff.

“Yeah…”

“Don’t even fuckin’ try. You’ve been a creep,” you huff, “stuffing pics of me into some website to jack off to.” Your ass taunted him, probably fleshy under the tight pencil skirt. Untouched by him, undeserving of touching it.

“Say it. Say you’re a creep,” you scoff.

Breath hitching, the way you play him like a fiddle, has the veins of his cock throbbing and his balls tightening uncomfortably. If he came too fast, you’d laugh. If he didn’t come at all, he’s a brick with a dick. Takes too long to cum? Roman can’t cum off a pretty broad and you could scoot off and tell everyone Roman’s as close to gay as an old Rome orgy. The way you suddenly stand straight has him anxious - reeling at fast movements and change as he always had.

You turn on your heel, that stone face meeting his eyes. The statuesque positioning only serves to make him reel more internally, softening just a little at the way your face returning to its natural stoic expression; he was starting to miss that coy girlish giggle you did when you saw his screen frozen again in the grim series of misfortunes called his life.

He gets hard again as you draw closer, slow strides and the sound of your kitten heels scraping the floor as you come closer with your hands fiddling with the buttons of your professional workwear that always screamed “office minx” with the way the buttons were always a little spread and trying to free your tits from its confines.

“You’re cute. Do me a favor since I’m being so nice to a creep like you,” you coo sweetly like glazing your malicious half-hearted words in icing to make it palatable. If you’d called him a simmering piece of dog shit and stepped on his balls, he’d probably harden the same anyway.

Two pieces of clothing sit on his desk, ragdolled by gravity and no longer clinging to the owner but still reeking of your perfume. Something halfway between girlish and womanly, it has a floral note that Roman breathes in clearly from where he is now: suckling at your tit.

Your eyes closed, soft huffs of minty breath from those puffy peppermints on your desk, cooing and petting his head like a puppy. Those nails scratching at the back of his neck; it’s a gentle movement that leaves him reeling, leaves his cock twitching and balls tightening drawing closer and closer and closer -

“Good boy, good boy… not so creepy, you’re so good… you can cum, baby boy,” you coo.

The sensation is different. Used to his ejaculations being spurred by the feeling of being talked down to, when he spills to you pressing soft kisses to his hairline it feels too close to intimacy.

And intimacy was debilitating.

The spent on his hands is warm and he is naming 4 things he can touch as just: cum, cum, cum, and cum. You slip back on your bra and button-up (a tad more wrinkled than it was earlier) and the wafting scent of your perfume is contaminated by the musk of his cologne.

Your eyes are stone again and your face unchanged. Mellowed with time and that time was only seconds. The sweet sugar of your voice spills through his hands like sand and he wishes it was more solid, like a horse wanting a sugar cube after a subpar trick. You stink of him as you mutter goodnight, grabbing the bag and leaving once you had your fill, and your silhouette lost in the hallway as his office door clanks shut.

The only evidence that you were here at all is the bit of chapstick, strawberry and $3 and generic, still sticky on his hairline.

The taste of sugar depletes and his mouth feels dry. Can tomorrow come any quicker? Any quicker than him?

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THANKS FOR READINGGH FOLLOW FOR PART 3 THIS WAS SUPPOSED TO BE POSTED AT NOON ON THE DOT BUT HAD TO BE POSTED LATER BC MY WIFI BLEW OUT NO ONE GET MAD 😭

EDIT 9/9/23: PART 3 IS UP N LINKED THANK YOU MY FELLOW AMERICANS

[dumbslxtclub]

you're on your own, kid | e.m - part twelve

eddie munson x singlemom!reader

summary: set after the events of season four, Steve has disappeared and is presumed dead in the upside down. broken and now left to deal with your pregnancy alone, Eddie takes it upon himself to support you to the best of his abilities in Steve’s absence.

chapter summary: as your relationship with eddie blossoms, the weight of truth reaches it's breaking point.

content warnings: fem!reader, adult language, adult themes, unplanned pregnancy, angst, hurt/comfort, some canon divergence/au, mentions of death, reader is 20, anxiety, heavy angst, fluff, no use of y/n, slow burn, brief mention of vomiting

word count: 10.8k+

a/n: some of this was inspired was inspired by the poem ‘i wish i were two dogs then i could play with me’ by anne carson. I apologise for the long absence, life has been crazy but I’m very proud of this chapter and I hope you enjoy! sorry in advance for the angst it’s about to get real. as always, shoutout to @dickfics69 for helping me xx

taglist: @lezzy-bennet @harrypotteranna23-blog  @reidstea @sashaphantomhive  @bexreadstoomuch @audhd-dragonaut @littlepotatobeansworld @ches-86  @tlclick73 @fckyeahlames @gnocchey @astrolockley @sidthedollface2 @micheledawn1975  @3rd-conchord @eddiesbabe95 @taintedcigs @harry-bowie-mercury @micheledawn1975​

↳  one / two / three / four / five / six / seven / eight  / nine / ten / eleven

Part Twelve: Lovely To Sit Between Comfort and Chaos

Who knew scanning video tape barcodes could be so fun? An inherently arduous task made tolerable thanks to the warming weather, every monotonous motion laced with sun-soaked dopamine. The stale interior of Family Video is washed in a stream of sunlight, the clear sky leaving no interruption for the desired warmth.

The chill of winter has all but dissolved, the new season budding in blossoms dancing in lush trees and children without jackets in the park. But, beneath the surface, something more has begun mingling in your blood. Your veins are laced with the giddy joy of a new beginning, something fresh and exciting. Like the first pages of a good book, popping open a fresh bottle of wine. As with all beginnings, they have their own tonality, an addictive vibrancy that makes them so elusively special. Ebbing with firsts, ‘what ifs’ and unadulterated hope. Leaving you behind the store counter with a schoolgirl grin, completing the most mundane of tasks with enthusiasm. With every video returned into the system, another mountain forms as Robin returns to the front desk. She picks up the two latest additions from the pile, examining them with scrutiny.

“Woof. 9 ½ Weeks AND Body Heat? Someone had a big weekend.” She places them onto the steel rolling shelves, beginning to categorize the sections. Monotonous doesn’t even begin to describe the store’s activities, Robin falling especially victim to their dullness today. “Speaking of, did you get up to anything interesting?”

“Well, Audrey’s learnt how to chuck her bottles across the room. So I guess you could say things were pretty wild around my neck of the woods.”

“Guess I’ll cancel her pee-wee baseball lessons then.” She quips back, busying herself with the tapes. 

It’s a funny thing, dishonesty. How it sits on the roof of your stomach, digging its heels into your gut whenever it sees fit. You’ve elected not to tell Robin about your date with Eddie, nor your second kiss, for a myriad of reasons. As your closest friend, you understand that she is just looking out for you, protecting your vulnerable heartspace. With your connection to Eddie growing, complication is bound to follow. And in such a budding stage, it just doesn’t make sense to make a mountain out of a molehill. 

When you’d first approached her about your potential date with Andy, she’d responded in a similar manner, driven by protectiveness. But you knew, she could see an innate craving for something more than she could provide. It was only natural. Your new identity was tied to being a mother, full stop. It had been a long time since you felt wanted, attractive, desired. A longing to be wined and dined, treated like so much more than milk-providing breasts on legs. And she wanted you to get back out there, into the real world and away from your comfortable nest of motherhood. You are strong, Robin is well aware of this, fighting the urge to protect you and Audrey from the big bad world. Of course, hindsight is a funny thing, and she should have ripped Andy a new one before he had the chance to do anything stupid. To assume he was capable of being a decent human being for an evening was clearly expecting too much.

But with Eddie, it’s so different. Comfortable in ways you couldn’t articulate, you felt a sense of consistent safety you hadn’t experienced in a long time. Life has just become easier with him around, day to day tasks much more enjoyable in his company. And so, you’ve resolved to just dip your toes into the idea of it evolving into something more. It’s not so much lying as it is withholding the truth. 

With the final tape scanned in, you toss it onto the shelf, nearly bowling over Robin’s efforts in the process. She shoots you a warning glare before sighing, glancing melancholically at the clock.

“Ah, all that stands between me and a turkey sandwich is…” She picks up a video at random and glances down at it. “... Xanadu?! Oh my god-”

She drives the cart around the corner, cussing out the poor customer's choice in film. Smiling at her antics, you busy yourself tidying the cluttered desk. Taped to the monitor is a curated collection of film pictures Robin had Jonathan develop. The ultrasound photo still sits in prime position, with a copy of the hospital image below it. Another picture is tacked to the corner of the screen showing you and Robin cuddled up in bed with Audrey sandwiched between you, all in accidentally coordinating shades of blue. You remember that night, Eddie had dropped by after work and lost it laughing at the three of you perched in bed like the grandparents in Willy Wonka, quickly racing to the kitchen to retrieve Jonathan’s camera. Moments immortalized in stillness, energetic happiness radiating out of them.

So lost in the memory, you barely register the sound of the bell above the front door ringing.

“Late return charges got you grinning like that, sweetheart?” Averting your gaze, you watch as your babysitter of choice enters the store. Eddie shoots you a warm smile, one hand gently supporting the black carrier strapped to his chest. Audrey, pacifier in mouth, faces outwards with limbs dangling aimlessly in the confines of the holder. It’s hard to miss the small purple bow clipped to the crown of her head, something that was not part of her ensemble when you dressed her this morning. Like maneuvering his own personal puppet, Eddie picks up her limp wrist to wave it in your direction. The docile baby glances up at the metalhead with curiosity, seeking out the phantom manipulating her arm.

“I can’t rent you R-rated films with a minor present, I’m afraid.” You quip with a smile, pressing your palms into the counter.

“Shit.” Eddie points to the door, backtracking a step and glancing down at Audrey. “Let me just go and tie her up out front real quick, alright?”

“Please don’t tie my daughter up on the street like a dog.”

“Oh, I wasn’t talking about her.” Eddie grins. “But maybe we should lock in that date before we break out the ropes and collars, hm?”

His comment immediately causes your cheeks to flush, suddenly feeling stifled in your sickly green vest. Images of compromising positions flood your mind, notably featuring the handcuffs strung up in Eddie’s bedroom. An awkward chuckle escapes your throat, Eddie’s smile faltering at the sight.

“I- I mean… fuck, oh-” His hands quickly fly to Audrey’s ears, protecting her from his cursing. “- just, pretend I never said that, okay?”

“Not a chance. You’re never living that one down, Munson.” Your melodious laughter sets Eddie free. “Where’ve you two been today?”

“Y’know, just all of her favorite places. Had to head into the shop to pick up my paycheck, the guys couldn’t get enough of her. ‘Specially Bob, or Ed, I forget- he’s been going on about her for weeks so I thought if she visited he might shut up about it.”

“Using my daughter as bait? Classy.”

“You know me all too well, sweetheart.” He’s quick to catch the pacifier as it tumbles out of Audrey’s mouth, her face screwing up in disgust while he tries to feed it back to her. “Oh, and she met a dog today. It was a beast of a thing, a Rottweiler or something. Don’t think I’ve ever seen her so excited, she grabbed its ears and everything. Thought it might bite her head off. It did lick her on the face though, but I suppose that’s good for her immune system.”

“Sounds like you two have been on quite an adventure.” With Audrey now within arms reach, you lean over the counter to give her a kiss on the forehead. Her eyes light up at the sight of you, giving Eddie enough time to quickly shove the pacifier back into her mouth.

“Speaking of which… what are the chances of you getting work off this Friday afternoon?” His voice is hushed, and laced with an edge of the cheekiness you’ve come to adore. With a quick survey around the shop, you inspect to make sure Robin is out of earshot.

“I think I could pull some strings.”

“Good, good. I might have something fun planned for us.” Eddie smiles sheepishly, readjusting the weight of the carrier. “And, as much as I hate to admit it, I think Henderson might finally be ready to go solo with Squid.”

“Is that right?”

“Yeah, I mean- I didn’t see anyone chewing on the electrical cords so that’s an A in my books.”

“Glad to see you’ve got high standards.” You tease, the grin on Eddie’s face only growing..

“I sure do.” 

-

Quick question, what the hell does one wear on a date? For your outing with Andy, Robin took charge of your wardrobe and crafted an outfit with complete ease. The stakes were lower, you suppose, not overly concerned with your appearance. But for today’s mystery date with Eddie, you’re finding yourself digging into the deepest crevices of your wardrobe for something that screams I’m trying, but not too hard. And, as fate would have it, nothing is jumping out at you. That shirt? Too old. These pants? Don’t fit anymore. Those socks? They’re Audrey’s, not sure how they got in here…

Huffing, you plant yourself on the floor in a nest of unacceptable garments. Your daughter sits peacefully in her bouncing recliner, gaze contently following your every move while she gums at her caterpillars antennae. Grabbing two half decent short-sleeve tops, you hold them up in the baby’s direction.

“What do you think, little miss?” Audrey continues her chomping assault, not at all interested in your predicament. You sigh, tossing the shirts into the pile of mediocrity. “God, it’s easy for you. You look cute in everything.”

Articulating your last word with a tickle, you drink in the way her mouth spreads into a toothless smile. She’s really beginning to grow into her own looks, her features forming beyond the universal blob baby look. Her hair is getting a slight wave to it, still comedically thick on her head. Pouty lips combined with her chubby cheeks give her maximum squishability factor. And as you look down at the mess of clothes covering the floor, you can’t help but cast your mind 16 years into the future. Rummaging through your daughter’s wardrobe in search of the perfect first date outfit, taking her to the mall just outside of town hunting down the dreamiest of prom dresses. It’s all racing by before your eyes. A spiral begins to form if you think about it for too long, so you quickly dedicate yourself to the task at hand.

In the end, you decide to keep it simple. A boxy button-up paired with some acid-wash mom jeans and a leather belt. Your hair is on its last legs before wash-day, so you elect to tame it with a bandana wrapped at the nape of your neck to hide the greasy mess. And Converse to complete the ensemble, because, you know, you don’t have all day. Your babysitter will be here any minute.

Dustin is smilier than usual, if that’s even possible. Grinning from ear to ear, watching you dart across the room with his hands on his hips. Making no effort to help you find your keys, but rather engaged watching your one-man Monty Python sketch.

“All ready for your big date?” The teenager articulates the last word with a suggestive raise of his eyebrows. It stops you in your tracks, shooting daggers his way and doing little to wipe his smile away. 

“For the last time, it’s not a date!” You lie through your teeth back to him. “I told you, we’re just going to hang out as friends. Adult friends. You know, without the presence of a baby.”

“Sure, sure. So, you got all glammed up for nothing?”

“Oh my god, I am not glammed up!” Glancing down at your outfit, you subtly worry that you may come off as trying too hard.

“I’m just saying…” Dustin throws his hands up defensively, the traces of a smile still playing on the corner of his mouth. “... you do look really nice, though.”

A humble grin makes itself known, abandoning your fruitless search to cross over to the younger boy. With figures like Steve and Eddie in his life, it’s easy to see where Dustin gets his chivalrous manners from. 

“Aw, thanks, Dusty.” Flinging your arms around his shoulders, you pull him in for a tight squeeze with the explicit purpose of embarrassing him. The teenager relents quickly, giving your back a firm pat as you hold him to you in a vice grip. Giggling at the way he squirms in your arms, you take a few wobbly steps to keep him locked into place.

Burrowing your face into his mess of curls, you allow yourself to indulge in the comfort of his embrace. He’s always been a cuddly kid, and perhaps you weren’t aware of how much you needed this until now. The pair of you stand there for a beat, allowing the moment to morph from playful teasing into genuine support. Two kids, sharing a history of pain, guilt and loss. Finding solace in one another, the older enveloping the younger and soothing whatever lingering ache burns beneath their collective sorrow. He misses Steve. God, how he misses him. 

It seeps through the pores of his fingertips, gently caressing your spine in small circles. As if, if you were to listen closely, beyond the dull hum of the refrigerator and the scattered bird calls outside, you could hear it. The tiniest voice, buried beneath unkempt curls, asking will it ever go away? And you both know the answer. It won’t, but you’ll learn to live with it. Together.

Biting back the swell of tears wetting your tongue, threatening to make themselves known, you refuse to crumble before him. Not today. Not on a day as happy as this. 

If it’s true that Eddie has little experience with dating, he sure as hell masks it well. With a handful of daisies clutched in his fist, he’s the epitome of confidence as he raps on your door three times. Claiming the flowers were for Audrey (and definitely not for you), he quickly shuts down Dustin’s insinuations before shuttling you out the front door to his chariot. He always opens the door for you, but the small gesture makes you giddy with girlish excitement. And as soon as he joins you in the dingy interior, positive the pair of you are out of Dustin’s prying eyeline, he leans over the center console to press a chaste kiss to your cheek. The brief contact causes your heart to skip, chapped lips meeting soft skin so casually it’s disarming. A calloused thumb brushing your chin, edging your face in the direction of him, drinking in every imperfection dancing across your skin in the fading afternoon light. Noses lingering inches from one another, wrinkles forming at the edges of his eyes preceding a Cheshire-cat grin.

“Ready for our next adventure?”

With a nod, clicking the gears into drive, the van rolls out of the sun-bathed trailer park and onto the winding roads out of town. It’s easy, the silence that exists between you while you tune out to the sound of whatever metal cassette is shoved into the car’s stereo. Pulling further and further out of the small town, away from the noise. The bustle of life, the judgemental whispers. To some unknown destination, where the two of you will be free to just be.

It comes into view around half an hour into the drive, sticking out like a sore thumb against the lush forest surrounding you. A kitschy, neglected sign with what appears to be a beaver toothily smiling down at you, waving its unoiled, mechanical arm at passers-by. Silly Putter Mini Golf. Pulling into the tiny parking lot, you study the loud canary yellow clubhouse building while Eddie clambours out of the driver’s side. It’s totally cheesy, down to the pathetically flickering lightbulb on the welcome sign. And you couldn’t love it more.

Swinging the passenger side door open, your date extends his ringed hand outward.

“Ready to get your putt on?”

With utmost ease, Eddie sinks the ball on his second shot. You could be mad at his seemingly god-given talent, but it’s hard to stay upset watching his hips sway like that in those dark jeans. Even at a children’s putt-putt course, he’s shown no interest in dressing more family friendly. Under your breath, you mutter praise to the inventor of muscle tank tops, now privy to the way his sinewy muscles flex with each stroke of the golf club. Occasionally, the handle of the club would clink against his wallet chain draped out of his pocket, drawing your attention back to his narrow hips. As far as you were concerned, you were a winner tonight, regardless of the scores.

“Yes! Gotta catch up, sweetheart. I’m beating you by…” He pulls the small scorecard out of his back pocket and grins. “... five points.”

Shooting a distrusting look in his direction, you pace to meet him on the prickly astroturf. 

“What?! I thought you said it was three?” 

Snatching the page away, Eddie holds it tauntingly above your head. He swings it around like a kite, mocking your stature while the only other family here passes by you with milkshakes in hand.

“That was before you hit the windmill twice on the last hole. Bit embarrassing, if you ask me.” He pokes, a shit-eating grin still plastered on his face. “Tell you what. You make this in less than two shots, I’ll call it even. Even throw in some fries afterwards, as a sign of good showmanship.”

A competitive energy charges through your body, a daring smirk playing on your face. Through your lashes, you challenge the metalhead’s smug demeanor, flirting with the notion of friendly competition.

“Deal.”

With a newly confident stride, you make your way to the fluorescent pink tee you’d picked out for yourself, placing the equally obnoxious green ball atop it. It’s a fairly easy set up, two small hills creating a valley that would lead you straight to the hole. A mechanical crocodile snaps out of the wall sporadically, directly in line to your goal, hinges chomping at nothing. You assume the stance, needing to bend over slightly to accommodate the child-sized putter you were gripping. The crocodile seems to be popping out every five seconds, and so you brace yourself until it begins its certain retreat. Drawing your putter back, you hear it click against the ball, knowing immediately you overshot it. The ball rolls over one of the bumps in the turf, into a direct line with the crocodiles elongated snout, sending it back in your direction with a pathetic tumble. 

“Shit.” You groan, attempting to tune out the smug laughter behind you. A tattooed arm comes into view over your left shoulder, pointing to the red flag sticking out of the ground.

“The holes over there, sweetheart.” Eddie quips matter-of-factly.

“Gee, thanks. What would I do without you?” Shooting daggers at your entirely too-smug date, you elbow him in the ribs before setting off in the direction of the ball. It seems your jab did little to quell Eddie’s laughter, who quickly catches up to you.

“Think you need to work on your form.”

“There’s a form needed for mini-golf?”

“Mhm, form I possess by the bucketful.” God, he’s a smug little shit sometimes.

Incredulous, you welcome his challenge with wide-open arms. “Alright then, genius. Enlighten me. Show me how it's done.”

Eyebrows disappearing into his messy bangs, Eddie’s doe eyes twinkle with boyish mischief, a prominent dimple playing deep into his cheek.

“Here.” Placing his hands on your shoulders, he maneuvers you in the direction of your goal, now partially obstructed by the protruding crocodile snout. “Line ‘er up.”

He angles himself around you, back pressed to abdomen, warmth emanating from the thin cotton of his shirt against yours. His feet shuffle to either side of yours, boxing you into his cradling hold. Snaking his bare arms along yours, starting at your elbow, each finger wrapping gently around the girth of your forearm. He lingers a moment too long, you don’t complain. Slowly working his way down to your wrists, locking his digits around the boney flesh. Breath on the nape of your neck, adrenaline pumping too fast for you to look anywhere but the lime-green golf ball at your feet. 

“That’s it…” His chest rumbles against your ribcage, coaxing vibrations of praise causing your fingertips to go numb. “Nice and gentle, okay?”

One slow nod is all you manage, feeling his gaze burning into your profile. You watch as the rusting reptile makes itself known against the fake grass, gaping jaws ready to foil your next putt. As it begins its retreat, you take a deep inhale, feeling your ribs expand against the comfort of Eddie’s sternum.

“Go.” Barely a whisper is required, his lips so close to your ear you can practically feel their plush sanctuary. In tandem, Eddie gently pulls your wrists sideways before encouraging you forward with perfect momentum. Metal meets plastic with a firm thud, propelling the ball forward. It rolls, and a collective breath is held. As if the future of the world hinges on this single stroke. Picking up sand and debris along the way, the bright sphere travels across the turf towards its goal. It hits the lip of the hole before tumbling in with a clatter, sending your arms skyward in celebration as you discard the putter.

“Yes!” Gleaming with joy, you spin on your heels to press a firm finger into Eddie’s chest. “In your smug, stupid face, Muns-”

Victory is swiftly cut short as an arm wraps around your hip, grip settling in the groove of your waist. You slot perfectly into the crook of his lean body, softness meeting strength entirely channeled into closing the gap between you. The sheer momentum of it knocks a sigh loose from your chest, clinging to the anchor of his chest with bunched fists entangled in his shirt. His free hand nestles beneath your chin, a firm thumb pressing and guiding your eyeline up to his. Eddie shines with pride. Smiling from ear to ear, shaking his head at your antics with pure amusement, feeling the contagion of your joy. 

Angling your chin slightly higher, Eddie presses his lips down onto yours with fervor. A blend of your two previous encounters, it’s passionate yet careful, a marriage of wanton desire and delicate care. You lean into it, drawing him closer by the cloth adorning his torso, chasing the taste of his kiss. As if to commit it to memory, to learn how it sits in your mouth and if the needy aftertaste ever dissipates. Muscles not just for decoration, but with the greater use of keeping you pressed intimately to his body. His thumb brushes against the groove of your jawline, dancing across the expanse of skin he is yet to be acquainted with. But there will be time for that later. Eddie is the one to pull away, a proud grin still plastered on his face.

“Good job, sweetheart. Ready for your prize?”

Food always tastes better when someone else is paying for it. The fries have the perfect crunch to them, the outer a golden brown against the fluffy white potato now filling your mouth rapidly. Eddie claims that they only came in a package deal with two cans of soda, but you have an inkling he may be lying about that. Your date watches as you shove the greasy food into your mouth, taking a long sip of his Coke.

“Looks like you’re enjoying your winnings over there.”

“Mmm-“ You mumble through a mouthful of starch. “Feels like there’s a birthday party in my mouth.”

Eddie’s brows furrow with amusement at your choice of words, shaking his mane of curls.

“Shit, actually, there’s something I don’t know about you. When is your birthday?”

Swallowing the thick mass of carbs, you slyly redirect your gaze to the quickly-emptying plastic basket before you, picking at a few deep-fried crumbs.

“Next week…” You pray to the heavens your admission was mumbled low enough for Eddie to catch it as some ambiguous month in the distant future. But it seems the years of heavy metal assaulting his ear drums has done little to subdue his sense of hearing.

“Next week?!” Theatrically, Eddie slams his soda down on the picnic table, likely taking off some of the tragic peeling paint in the process. He looks positively incredulous, brows raised to maximum height behind his bangs. “And you’ve been keeping this a secret, why?”

“I wasn’t keeping it a secret! I just didn’t think it was that big of a deal-“

“Not that big of a-“ Fingers splayed on the periwinkle blue wood, he braces himself forward with a deep inhale. “Sweetheart, now I’m gonna have to plan a big bash in less than a week. How could you do this to me?”

As if it’s the biggest inconvenience he’s ever encountered. Chuckling nervously, you wave your hands in a flurry before his deadpan expression.

“Oh no, absolutely not. Uh-uh, not happening.”

“But-”

“Eddie.” Your tone is firm, gaze boring into his. “I’m turning twenty, it’s not even an exciting number. Plus, I have a baby, in case you forgot. Not sure how many nightclubs would let the pair of us in. If it means that much to you, I’ll have you and some of the kids over for a movie. That’s my limit, though.”

Eddie huffs, resolving himself to defeat. “Fine. No strippers, then.”

“Oh, now that you mention strippers…” A grin takes over your face as you waggle a fry in his face, likely sending salt fragments onto Eddie’s shirt. Before you can bring it to your awaiting mouth, he swats the perfectly good fast food out of your hand, sending it catapulting to the ground for some poor, underpaid teenager to clean up later.

“Party in your mouth, huh?” He quips, stealing the larger of the two potato sticks stuck to the paper lining the basket. He pops it into his mouth with a grin, shooting you a suggestive look.

“You’re the worst.”

“I know.”

The energy between the two of you is so, so easy. You sip your cool soda, indulging in the sugary carbonation clinging to your teeth. Eddie does the same, studying a terribly constructed pyramid situated on one of the holes. No pressure to speak, or not speak, just basking in the glow of one another’s company. The air is cool under the downlights, a mild spring evening setting the scene for what a true date night should look like.

“I’ve gotta ask-” You begin through a mouthful of food, somewhat unceremoniously. “- how’d you get so good at mini golf? I just wouldn’t expect you to be the kind of guy to spend his free time at a place like this.”

“Ooft, judging a book by its cover, are we?” Eddie places his drink back on the picnic table, grinning beneath the fluorescent snack bar sign. 

“Oh, never. Heavy metal and putt-putt go hand in hand, as far as I’m concerned.”

Eddie shakes his head, grinning while he peers down at the condensation accumulating on the metal can.

“I, uh- I used to bring Dustin out here.”

“Dustin? Really?”

“Yep.” There’s a loaded silence between the pair of you, something that isn’t uncommon as you exchange stories of your past. “After, um- y’know, everything happened. He kind of… shut down. A bit like you did, for a while. Didn’t want to play DnD, or see anybody, really. So this one day, I just drove over to his place and dragged him out of bed saying ‘C’mon, butthead. I’m taking you outta town’. He kicked up a bit of a fuss, but I just sort of army-marched him out the front door. We drove around for a while, not really talking and stumbled on this place. He shot me that stupid grin of his for the first time in forever, so we came in. It sort of became a weekly thing after that, and I hate to admit that I actually enjoyed it after a while.”

Swirling a fry around in too much ketchup, your meal is all but forgotten as you find yourself enthralled by Eddie’s recollection. That all too familiar pang of sadness returns, regret manifesting quickly in your body. You wish you were there for Dustin. You should have been. You wish you were stronger earlier, able to provide him with the care he so desperately needed. In the past few months, you’ve watched the teenager really step up, busying himself with baby books in order to be the best ‘uncle’ he could be. He’s a close second behind Eddie when it comes to making Audrey smile, lapping up every second he gets with her. God, Steve would be so proud of him.

“He’s a good kid, even if he’s an annoying little shit sometimes. And Steve…” His thought trails off, running his finger around the edge of the soda can. “... Steve was good for him. Gave him someone to look up to, a role model sort-of. Almost like a big brother, I guess. So I didn’t mind running around a shitty mini-golf course with a creepy beaver sign if it made him happy.”

Abandoning your meal, you reach across the table to take Eddie’s hand in yours. The tips of his fingers are cold from the refrigerated beverage, and you wrap your palm around the icy skin with warm reassurance. 

“You’re a good man, Eddie.”

Eddie’s lips curve into the most imperceptible smile, humble and felt almost entirely inward. For a fleeting second, he wonders if that could be true. 

Eddie was meant to drive you straight home. The roads were quiet at this time of night, no traffic bar the occasional truck making its way in the opposite direction of the small town he unfortunately called home. He couldn’t remember the last time he felt this full. Not literally, of course, given you guzzled down the majority of hot food before he had a chance to get to it. But it didn’t matter, not the slightest. 

He felt proud. 

Proud while he watched you dig through the bucket of tees, looking for the perfect Barbie pink one that wasn’t chipped or dirty. Proud of his excellent golfing form, thankful for all the practice he’d gotten through restless evenings with Henderson. Proud of the way you jumped up and down, hands raised to the heavens as you sank your shot in half the time it had taken you on every other hole. Proud of how he scooped you into his arms, like every cheesy rom-com he’d had the displeasure of watching. Proud of the part he had to play in your happiness. Proud to be seen with you.

He was meant to drive you straight home.

He had every intention of doing so. 

Satiated with pride, he could resolve to spend the remainder of his evening grinning stupidly to himself in the isolation of his room. The humble home across the trailer park suddenly feels closer, anyway. Until, your hand snaked its way across the center console onto his thigh, your touch feather light but the weight heavy. For a brief moment, he wonders if you reached for something but overshot, a simple mistake. And then, you linger. Fingernails scratching the course denim clinging to his legs, shockwaves sent down his skin with every delicate stroke. Absent-minded. Loaded.

He knew the stakes had just been raised.

The two of you had been close like this dozens of times before, particularly in your pregnancy. Eddie never saw the need for one of those pregnancy pillows advertised on late-night infomercials, when you apparently saw him as the perfect substitute. Back then, those exchanges meant almost nothing. A tiny back scratch here and there, drawing small circles on your forearm while you dozed off with your entire body weight pressed to his shoulder. Thoughtless interactions, designed purely to comfort and set you at ease. The familiarity that has perhaps always existed between the pair of you, now morphing into something new.

Thumb smoothing the faded-black material, tiny rotations etched over and over.

Hypnotic.

The bravery that overtook him was phantom, ghostly desire edging his knee ever so slightly further in your direction. As if to say please, don’t stop. I’m right here. His eyes remain firmly locked onto the dark road, using only the occasional streetlight to guide his path. Besides, he doesn’t need to look at you to feel your gaze on his cheek. Not that he could bring himself to, if he tried. He wonders if he blacked out earlier. Got hit in the head with a rogue club and passed out, ascending to a heaven in which he would be fortunate enough to experience such a sensation. Heart pounding in his chest, he lets out an unsteady exhale as your fingers snake deeper into the groove, caressing at more sensitive flesh. Inward, where the skin is far more sensitive. 

Eddie isn’t a greedy man.

Until he is.

“Baby…” The foreign pet name slips out as a moan, barely perceivable beneath the soft hum of the cassette’s tune filling the car at a low volume. Somehow, in those two syllables alone, he crosses a line. Bares his soul to the wolves, knowing well the potential ramifications, the bloodshed that follows vulnerability.

The digging of your fingernails into the meaty flesh at his utterance is his breaking point. The green light he sought out. With cautious fervourency, he pulls off the road quickly, wheels clattering along the asphalt excuse for a truck stop. The car is quickly clicked into park before the metalhead can cognise it, tearing the constricting seatbelt off his body. Your hand never leaves its spot.

Turning to you, wide-eyed with want, he pauses. Gives himself whiplash from the flurry of activity leading to the sudden stillness. It’s intrinsic, no need for words anymore. Redundant wastes of breath.

His lungs hitch, adrenaline pulsing in the tips of his fingers. 

Can we?

Lips parted ever so slightly, a rise of your chest and dazed fluttering of eyelids answers.

Yes.

It’s not clear who lunges first. What is clear is how your bodies instinctively shape around one another, quick to absolve the space between you. Lips collide with lips, desperately seeking respite. Wanton moans are pulled effortlessly, fistfuls of hair tangled in clammy fingers drawing the two of you impossibly close. Imperfect fumblings as shirts are clutched desperately, fueling the fire burning in the pits of Eddie’s stomach. The pace is entirely unsteady, soft brushes bleeding into firm tugs of teeth piercing tender flesh with just the right amount of force. Embarrassing, unadulterated need at the forefront of every motion, and neither of you cared. God, it’s almost perverse. How Eddie corrupts something so soft, so sweet, with every fevered kiss. Like he’s tainting you with his taste, as if he could lap enough of you up and absolve his unworthiness. The likelihood of that working is slim, but god damn Eddie is willing to try. 

It’s still not enough. 

The plastic console separating you is driving him mad. He needs to be able to grab, clutch, caress every square inch of you with no obstructions. You make him bold. 

Bold enough to slip his wandering hand beneath your far thigh, the smallest hithering motion enough to feel the weight shift above his palm. Unceremoniously, you clamber over the glove box after unclipping your seatbelt, haphazardly swinging your foot into the horn. The beep echoes through the isolated rest stop, a mumbled apology being quickly swallowed by Eddie’s lips. Blindly guided, he directs your knees to either side of his hips, showing no qualms with the limited driver’s side legroom. His hands find your hips, tentatively hovering above his lap, shaky thighs taking the brunt of your weight. With small, caressing circles of your hip bone, he soothes you as he always has. Encourages you to share the pressure, begging to be the bearer of it. No wrong answer, only whatever you’re comfortable with. Perfect the way you are. 

Ringed fingers press gently into the small of your waist, drawing you closer still to his body. This seems to encourage you to relent to your tiring muscles, finding solace on Eddie’s tense thighs. A safe distance, but so close to danger. To unbridled want. Neither of you care.

Eddie’s eyes flutter shut as you speckle kisses along his cheek, dancing down his jawline and finding sanctuary on his neck. Nipping slightly at his pulse point, he can’t help but squeeze a bit tighter. Relishing in your exploration, mentally mumbling Hail Mary’s for his good deeds from past lives that lead him to this euphoria. A gasp escapes his throat as you latch onto a particularly sensitive spot, causing his hands to seek refuge on the meat of your hips. He squeezes, eliciting a similar wanton moan that vibrates against his stubbled skin.

“Is- is this good?” A sentence loaded with various meanings tumbles out, his grip loosening slightly. 

“Mmm.” You murmur, tracing the familiar trail back along his jaw and to his aching lips. “So good. So good to me, always.”

A knot forms in the pit of Eddie’s stomach. So good. So good. For you. That’s all he’s ever wanted to be. It fucking underscores every day, trying to do right by you. Constantly trying. He lives for it. For the smiles, the exhales of safety, the reassurance, the comfort…

It’s gotten him more hooked than a drug ever could.

So why. 

Why can’t he accept it?

The praise, the love, everything you dish out effortlessly. But to want and to deserve are very different things, the latter being something that Eddie factually knows he is not entitled to. 

It returns, a tidal wave of despair crashing over his heart, encasing it in a riptide of emotional debris and darkness. The taunting ticking of the second hand that haunts him constantly, the grip on his happiness slipping…

“Hey.” He gasps out, ringed fingers grazing your cheek as he pulls away. So close still he can see the flushed-red outline of your lips, the blissed out expression in your eyes quickly morphing to concern.

“Shit, you okay?” You pull back, brushing a loose curl out of the frame of his face.

“Yeah, ‘m fine.” A stabilizing breath does little to quell the erratic beating of his heart. “Just- maybe we should, like, take things a bit slower? I- I just don’t want all this to be too much, too fast.”

Brows furrowing slightly, it’s hard to miss the minute disappointment reflected across your face.

“Oh. No, yeah, of course.” Letting out an awkward chuckle, your unoccupied hands take to fidgeting with your now-loose blouse. “Sorry, didn’t mean to get carried away…”

“No, no-” Eddie reassures, a smile growing on his sore lips despite the gnawing ache in his chest. “Fuck, you were- it was perfect.”

A bashful grin cuts through the nerves etched into your skin. “Yeah?”

“Yeah.” God, you make him too bold. Cradling your chin between his thumb and forefinger, he dips forward to steal another miss from you. “Just want to do things right. Be a gentleman and all that.”

“You? A gentleman? Since when?” You poke.

“Since always.” The tone returns to easy as always, if not charged with a certain afterglow of electricity.

“So, what’s the next step in the courting ritual then?”

“Dunno. Guess I’ll have to pull off a grand gesture of some kind.”

Thursday afternoon, counting down the minutes until the clock strikes 5pm and frees you from this grind. Happy fucking birthday to you. 

Robin has been fussing over you non-stop for the past 24 hours. Apparently, a little birdie told her about your upcoming birthday (something you’d diligently kept private), sending her into a frenzy. She insisted on at least taking you out for dinner to celebrate your birthday at Benny’s, and practically stuffed her version of appropriate birthday attire into a duffle bag this morning for you to change into post-shift. In all her festive glory, she returned from her lunch break with a pink-frosting covered cupcake and tried to involve no less than three customers in a group rendition of Happy Birthday that was less than successful. And despite the unwarranted theatrics, you can’t deny your gratitude. Seeing how she dotes on you, dedicating her every movement that day to your happiness. And frankly, it’s not dissimilar to every other day. The love, the care that the two of you feel for eachother simply heightened for your first day of your twenties. Luck has never been a word you’d use to describe your life, but today, it feels fitting.

Keith has been goaded into closing the shop up solo tonight, Robin sparing no detail of the utmost importance to this diner dinner. She’d also arranged for Eddie to bring Audrey along, clocking in around 12 total hours of unpaid babysitting and a bushel of brownie points. Then, once the grown-ups have hung out, some of the younger kids will bike to the trailer park for a late-night movie. Spending the remaining hours of your birthday with everyone you love.

The small bathroom cubicle adjoining the workroom is cluttered with makeup and clothes, the two of you primping yourself in privacy. Tonight’s outfit of choice appears to be a band tee, tied at the waist with a flowing maxi-skirt, clashing in your mind but makes sense to Robin, apparently. To level the playing field, she dug out some of your nicer boots for the occasion. Internally, you worry for Audrey, and how it’ll be once Robin realizes she has two life-sized Barbie dolls to dress up. But secretly, you like it. It feels very you, whatever that means now. Comfort meets expression, an identity crafted beyond Mom.

Smiling at yourself through the rusty bathroom mirror, Robin swipes on her mascara.

“How do you feel? Older and wiser yet?” Robin asks, eyes bugged out in concentration.

“More of the former, I’d say.” You chuckle.

“What about the outfit? I felt pretty proud of it, very rocker-chic meets fairy princess.”

“It’s great, Rob. All of it.” Lips pursing together in an emotional smile, you drink in the image before you. You look your age. No dark circles or fine lines present, concealed under just the right amount of makeup. Hair just the way you like it, not confined to a three-day-old ponytail. You recognise her, from another life. The girl you used to be. And she’s so happy to see you.

Robin shoves the mascara tube into her tote bag, throwing it over her shoulder. “Ready to hit the road?”

With a nod, you hold the door open for her, the imposing fluorescents of the video store coming back into view. 

“Oh, nearly forgot. We’ve gotta make a pit stop along the way, if that’s alright with you?” Following her trail, the two of you burst out the front doors and into the brisk evening towards your Pinto.

“Sure.” You reply. “Just lead the way.”

“Robin, where the hell are we?” Glancing around one of the seedier streets of Hawkins, you shrug your handbag a little closer under your armpit and remind yourself that you did, in fact, lock your car. It’s fairly innocuous, an assortment of goods shops and a vintage record store, but you’ve never ventured this far into the heartland. Robin is a few paces before you, studying the signs of various closed businesses along the road. Her face lights up as you approach one particular building. 

“Bada-boom.” She announces with a proud grin, stopping in front of a large, black building. The paint is sun-faded, lined with scratched-off band posters graffitied with lewd scribbles. Against the dark sky, your only indication of the name etched into the doorway awning comes in the form of a passing car blaring its lights.

“The Hideout?” It rang a bell, yet you could not work out for the life of you what the two of you were doing here. “Dude, is this a nightclub? It’s a Thursday!”

“Not exactly…” Her brazen smile makes you slightly nervous. “More of a live music venue. I’ve just gotta pick something up from here, then we’ll be off to dinner. ‘Kay?”

“Alright, maybe I’ll just wait outside-” “No!” Robin quickly clears her throat. “I mean- I’m not leaving you out here on these mean street all alone without me to protect you.”

Shooting you a bright smile, you have to take at face value that she’s being entirely serious right now. Locking her arm through yours, she urges your unwilling feet further to the entrance.

“Is it even-” Answering your half-finished question, Robin pushes open the door to the venue, the interior pitch-black. “Are we even allowed to be here?”

“Yes, dingus! Just c’mon…” Once again, you’re placing literal blind faith into your closest friend. She might as well have tied Eddie’s bandana over your eyes as she did at Christmas, nothing but the slightly sticky floor beneath you to guide you forwards into oblivion. Her arm is your liferaft, swimming through pitch-black waters towards god knows what. In the distance, you hear a strange scuffling of feet, not belonging to either you or your co-worker. It sends chills down your spine, suddenly feeling very out of your depth. It’s disorienting, and totally alien.

“Seriously, Robin. Can we-” Your hushed tone is directed to the girl beside you, who stops in her tracks. You plant yourself beside her, the strangest feeling of being able to make a figure out through the void before you. A fleeting moment of movement, another shuffle of shoes on tacky wood ground. 

And in the flash of an eye, brightness burns your retinas, momentarily blinding you. It forces you to squint, a desperate attempt to identify these unfamiliar surroundings. A spotlight of sorts bears down on you before Robin quickly releases you from her vice grip and jumps to the side. But as one sense is returned, another is quickly abused, a raucous sound brutalizing your eardrums.

“Surprise!” Numerous voices call out at the top of their voices, unable to be individually dissected amongst the barrage of confetti poppers bursting into the sky. As your eyes grow accustomed to the warm spotlights around the venue, you make out familiar shapes. A mess of scruffy curls buried beneath a baseball cap. Two young boys with arms slung around one another jumping up and down, perfectly manicured bangs flinging haphazardly. The flash of a camera you’d borrowed months ago. There’s only a few of them, but their energy fills the space tenfold. 

And, at the center, you see a lean figure with a Kirk Hamlett haircut raise a squirming lump high above his head, not unlike a certain Disney movie that wouldn’t come out for another good eight or so years. Eddie, in what can only be described as his best cut-off band tee, proudly holds Audrey high above the group, her chunky legs bunched up to her body as she looks around entirely confused. As the last syllable of their celebration dies off, as if on cue, Audrey’s face screws up in a dramatic pout, a loud cry echoing through the venue at a volume the others only could hope to have achieved. Eddie’s face quickly transforms to worry, eyes squinting with embarrassment.

“Oh, fu-” Eddie quickly lowers her, cradling her head towards his collarbone. “Shit, didn’t mean to scare you, Squid.” 

Shushing her and pacing a step towards you, he bounces your baby from side to side. Her cries begin to lull, her fist tucked tightly at his clavicle for emotional support. Likely giving his neck a few scratches from her razor-sharp fingernails, she clings to the neckline of his shirt like a spider monkey, pulling it down with a subdued whimper and revealing one of his tattoos.

“Eddie? What-” You’re stunned. Shell-shocked from the sudden onslaught of sensation and attention, closing the space between you and the metalhead.

“How’s this for a grand gesture?” Spinning on his heel, Dustin rushes over to present a frosting-covered monstrosity on the bar. The icing is baby pink, with large globs that could be letters on top, with a handful of mismatched candles shoved into the floury concoction.

“Ta-da!” The younger boy grins, fixing one of the especially lop-sided candles. “Sorry it’s nothing special, I didn’t have much time to work on it…”

“You- you threw me a birthday party?” You ask, wide-eyed to Eddie.

“Ah-” He raises a finger, readjusting the subdued baby in his arms. “A surprise birthday party. In case you missed the keyword over the little hellraiser's scene-stealing cry.”

That familiar feeling returns. Overwhelmed by love and eyes solely on you. A small pile of presents sits on one of the bar tables, along with a few cards. Far more modest than the endowment you received from the group months earlier. Smiling faces, slightly tentative as they attempt to interpret your expression. But that thumping in your chest is not from anxiety this time. It’s from an overflowing sense of gratitude. 

A teary smile takes over your face, rushing to embrace Eddie and Audrey in a tight bear hug. The baby nestled between you burbles and squirms, and you raise your lips to the shell of Eddie’s ear to whisper a heartfelt “thank-you”.

The party is in full swing. Of the faces huddled in groups around the intimate venue, you initially only recognise half of them. Mike, Lucas and Will order root beer from the bar under Eddie’s strict supervision, not wanting any wasted minors on his track record. Dustin and Erica are engaged in a heated conversation with a few older boys, each of them wearing shirts printed with the name Corroded Coffin. You’d only crossed paths with them a handful of times at campaign nights, but they shared Eddie’s welcoming nature, trying to involve you in their conversation about elves or something. Nancy and Robin were trying to liven up the dance floor, which mostly involved Nancy swaying to the beat and Robin putting on a full-scale musical number around her. With Audrey not in the arms of any of her allocated babysitter’s arms, there was only one place left to search. Jonathan was taking a picture of the group in the adjacent booth, El and Max grinning either side of an unfamiliar face. His long, dark hair proved most entertaining for the infant on his lap, a glazed-over expression dancing in his red-rimmed eyes. 

“Woah, woah! That’s not for playing with, little dudette. Try this instead, I know it keeps me entertained.” From his Hawaiian shirt pocket, he pulls out a small set of keys, passing them to Audrey’s greedy fingers. She squeals, flinging the keys up and down in delight.

“God, she’s so cute.” El gushes, smoothing her pint-sized overalls over her legs.

“I know, right. She looks so much like Steve, it’s insane.” Max affirms. “Alright, Argyle. Quit hogging her.”

The redhead scoops her hands around Audrey’s waist, bringing her up to eye level with a cooing expression. 

“You know they’re born without kneecaps? How gnarly is that?” Argyle states, turning to El with complete sincerity.

“No way that’s true.” Max shoots the older boy a signature dead-pan look, readjusting Audrey in her arms, who is now getting a good amount of drool on the keychain.

“Swear on my life! I read it somewhere, they’re born without propellers.”

“You mean patellas?” El corrects.

“Yeah, that’s the one! Or maybe it’s dogs I’m thinking of…”

It’s beautiful, watching over your own party as a voyeur. An event that has brought together all of the closest people in your life, the common thread being you. It makes you sick with love.

“How’re you enjoying the event, sweetheart?” Eddie’s voice reaches you before he does, a glass of tan-colored liquid in hand.

“It’s perfect, really.” You reply with a grin. “All that’s missing are the Jell-o shots.”

“Gonna treat us to another Flashdance number?” Cheeks flushing over his statement, you stammer a response.

“How- how did you…”

“Don’t think I’d forget a spectacle like that.” He winks, a devilish grin spread across his lips. “Livened up that night’s dealings, that’s for sure.”

It’s strange, remembering a time before this. A time when Eddie was just a face in the crowd, Steve the undisputed King of Hawkins, and you with no clue what the coming years held in store. It feels like a lifetime ago, and simultaneously feels like an eternity you’ve spent with this eclectic family by your side.

“Getting on the beers tonight, Munson?” You tap a nail against the edge of his glass teasingly.

“Nah, confiscated Henderson’s root beer for my own selfish purposes.”

“You’re not gonna have a celebratory drink with me tonight?” Eddie shakes his head.

“Don’t think so, sweetheart. Sounds a bit cliche, but I feel weird drinking around Squid. Just don’t want to be the kind of guy who does that around a baby, makes me feel like my dad or something.”

You swear your heart swells to three times its normal size. He might be the most considerate man you’ve ever met.

“Besides…” Eddie continues, pointing to the Hellfire boys. “... don’t want to be a mess on stage for the grand finale of the night.”

You gasp, mock excitement written all over your expression. “Strippers?!”

Eddie shakes his head with a laugh, wrapping his arm around your shoulder.

“Maybe later, if you ask nicely.”

He did it.

Eddie pulled it off. From the house-shaking rendition of Happy Birthday, to the (in his humble opinion) absolutely killer set courtesy of Corroded Coffin, to shuttling the younger kids home before the bar opened to the public. He fucking did it. He did good.

The dingy bar is now filled with the usual patrons, the bouncers not bothering to check the ID’s of the occupants inside who could pass for being over 21. Last he saw you, you were dancing arm in arm with Robin and Nancy, screaming Everybody Wants to Rule The World at the top of your lungs. He’d never seen you so free, so vibrant. Moving like no one was watching, twirling and laughing and holding your friends. Just as you deserved to be. A twenty-year-old for one night, before another 364 days devoted to being a mom.

The cool breeze is welcoming, soothing his warm skin under the clear night sky. Stars swimming in the endless expanse of night, delicate kisses of light kissing the pitch-black veil. He can breathe. It used to be suffocating, looking up at the infinite nothing. It would clog Eddie’s throat, choking him in bleak nothingness. Wrap him in a coat of terror, a black mirror designed to play back every fateful mistake of his miserable life. Now, it welcomes him. And he isn’t afraid to embrace it. Baby steps, learning to love the dark parts of his being.

In his arms, he rocks Squid back and forth gently. She’s long since dozed off, the burden of being the life of the party clearly hung too heavy on her tiny shoulders. On her ears sit the smallest fluffy earmuffs, an investment courtesy of Dustin just for tonight. She was the best little groupie he could have asked for. At one point, Robin brought her onstage and placed her feet on the ground, bopping her up and down to the music. The crowd roared, and she giggled and squealed like she was the headliner act. Might have shown the band up, honestly. Eddie didn’t mind.

He’s getting better at stealing moments with her. Giving into his need to dote on her unabashedly. He could stare at her for a lifetime, and that wouldn’t be enough. He needs to imprint in his mind the way her eyelids flutter when she sleeps, commit to memory the O-shape of her mouth when she lets out a sleepy yawn. He wants to record her laugh, keep it forever. He wants every waking second to be dedicated to her.

“Have a good night, Squid?” He mumbles, lightly stroking the bridge of her nose. “Not bad for your first party, eh? Just you wait until your birthday. All of this will look like child’s play.”

Squid wriggles restlessly, burrowing into Eddie’s chest. Against his sternum, he can feel the rhythmic rise and fall of her breath, the tiny grunts of sleep deep in her lungs. It makes him grin like a mad-man.

“Y’know, I’m gonna let you in on a secret.” He readjusts her carefully in his arms, hushing his tone slightly. “I think- I think you and your mom are the best things that have ever happened to me.”

His words hang heavy in the still air, the empty alleyway the only recipient to his confession.

“Can you believe I was scared of you? Of these tiny hands-” He tickles her palm with his pointer finger, the baby clasping around it instinctually with unbridled strength. “- and these little feet. God, I’m pretty stupid, aren’t I? You can tell me, I won’t be offended. But, I’ll tell you something, just between you and me. There are much scarier things out there. And I’m not talking about monsters or alternate dimensions, although I do promise to protect you from that, cross my heart.” He raises his free hand to his heart, as if the sleeping infant would know any different.

“In this big, bad world, I think the scariest thing is to be alone. And I’m gonna make sure you never feel that way, if I can help it.”

Eddie is rambling, word vomit spilling past his lips faster than he can contain it. No scapegoat of weed or alcohol to blame his honesty on. He gently rocks Squid back and forth, the motion soothing both of them. 

“Y’know, I know you’re not mine. But-” Teeth bite down on the inside of his cheek, fingers pulling down her overalls. “- I dunno, it kinda feels like you’re mine in my heart.”

With a deep exhale, Eddie allows his honesty to wash over him in all its brutal glory. Knee-buckingly raw, and he leans into it, for once. Allows the love to pump through his veins with every beat of his cynical heart, waking up parts of him he thought were gone for good. But the moment of solitude doesn’t last long before Robin comes barreling out of the back door, almost crashing into the nearby trash cans.

“Shit, sorry. Did I wake her?” She apologizes, sloshing her half-finished gin and tonic onto the pavement.

“Nah, you’re in luck. Squid’s out like a light.” He pulls out another milk crate, beckoning the tipsy liability over. “Having fun in there?”

“Yeah, yeah- I am.” It’s a half thought, words dancing on the tip of her tongue not ready to be spoken yet. “The kids get home alright?”

“Eventually, had to drag most of them out by the end. Henderson wanted to hide in the bathroom and then ‘blend in with the older crowd’.”

“Wonder where he learnt that one from.” Robin smiles, nudging the metalhead.

“Hey, don’t look at me. Wasn’t my doing, for once…”

“Mmm…” She replies, taking a swig of her mixed spirit. Staring down at the lime slice, she swishes the glass around as if deep in thought. Glazed eyes laced with melancholy, radiating off her being.

“Something on your mind?” Eddie asks, angling his body more in her direction.

Robin’s mouth screws up as if she’s tasted something bitter, unable to bring her gaze to meet the man before her. But he doesn’t need to look her in the eyes to see the tears swelling on her waterline, quivering with her next sentence. 

“We have to tell her…” Her voice is barely louder than a whisper, suppressed anxiety trickling in with every syllable. 

Eddie feels his blood run cold, the familiar pang of dread hanging low in his stomach. He shakes his head defiantly.

“Not tonight, Rob. Please…” The plea is firm, fraying at the edges. Not ready to face the inevitable.

“No, no. Not tonight, but it needs to be soon.”

“Can we please not do this right now?” Eddie doesn’t mean to be so forceful with his words, but fear is a powerful thing. It poisons his blood, pushed further through his system with every erratic beat of his heart.

Robin’s eyes continue to well up with stinging tears, her grip on the glass tightening. “The guilt is eating me alive, Eddie. I just… I don’t know how to do it.”

Eddie sighs, desperate to keep what little control he possesses. 

“We need to do it the right way, got it? You, me, Henderson and her. We can all sit down and…” Robin runs her hand through her hair with exasperation at Eddie’s suggestion. Even the gentlest of options sounds like a monumental task. “Just give it a bit more time…”

“There is no more time!” She retorts, her volume loud enough for her to quickly glance down at the sleeping baby to make sure she didn’t wake her.

Eddie stands up, readjusting Squid in his arms. He’s doing his best to stay calm, and not let the inevitable spiral begin, a fruitless battle. “I’m not doing this right now, okay?”

The liquid courage is working wonders on Robin right now, standing up to face the metalhead eye-to-eye. “Don’t act like you don’t feel the same way, Eddie. You know as well as I do that she has a right to know.”

Eddie’s mouth is open and ready to voice another stern reply, when it’s interrupted by a meek voice behind him. The soft tone does little to soothe the ache growing in his abdomen, not daring to look over his shoulder at the source. 

“I have a right to know what?”

Haze. 

Disorder. 

Stumbling your way through the overbearing smog flooding your consciousness. Gripping to the worn sofa in your living room like it’s a buoy, the only thing grounding you in painful reality.

It’s fragmented, the onslaught of new information cluttering your mind, unable to be sifted through logically.

Owens.

Lowering yourself to the ground, you’ve lost all faith in your legs to keep you upright. Sea legs giving out beneath you, collapsing under the weight of a burdened mind. You quickly put Audrey in her bassinet the second you arrived home, stepping back from her small body like she was made of fire. Delicate, precious, amidst the crumbling ruins of life.

Found.

No. 

No, you need someone to cling onto. Polyester beneath your fingernails can never compare to flesh and blood, pumping with life and hope and comfort. Oh god. Craving arms, muscle and sinew engulfing your body, soothing and shushing like you’ve done with your baby countless times. Desperate for the luxury of kindness.

No one to dote. 

No one to care. 

No one to witness the mortifying pain of existence. 

No one to observe the torment they cursed you with in the first place.

Steve.

Crawling up your throat like bile, burning your esophagus as hot lava. You’d welcome the respite of vomit, the substance of it, the satisfaction of exorcism. But no, the painful tar claws its way through your tract, bringing biting tears to your eyes. Hell manifesting in your being. Truth collapsing with a heavy hearted I’m so sorry, bouncing off the walls of the narrow alleyway while you retreated. Words spilling out helplessly from your loose tongue, rage of betrayal driving every consonant and syllable. To never see you again, let alone speak to you. 

The loss of everyone, everyone. Robin, Dustin, Nancy, fuck- Eddie. They all knew. They coaxed you through the loss, never allowing for hope to breed. Lies built on mountains of lies, a shamble foundation of friendship. Arms that held your daughter with gentleness and altruism, seemingly all fabricated. Tainting her with every touch, every smile, tongues bleeding as they bit back the truth. Too numb to cry, to even indulge in the agony of feeling.

Beginnings are special, because most of them are fake. Artificial and man-made, entirely composed of brain chemistry and justifications. The person you become after your first glass of wine was already there, fretting below the surface of your facade, chipping away at the mask you present to the world. They never left.

You are at the end of beginning.

[robin1729]

creation is wrong?

As someone who has always been into telling stories, I was obviously instantly fascinated with the idea of being an influencer. So, I started watching interviews of influencers I admire. And they talked about how to create a reel that grabs people's attention, that keeps them glued to the screen till the end, that makes them want to see more of your content.

And then, I saw a lot of the same influencers talk about how addictive social media has become, with its endless scroll and constant dopamine hits. And I was like, what do you mean? Aren't you part of the problem? You are the ones designing your reels specifically so that they give people that dopamine hit, so that they keep coming back for more.

So maybe some creation is wrong? Even shows today are made to be binged. Ten episodes released at a time, every episode ending with a cliffhanger, so you don't close the app, switch off the tv, shut down your laptop.

You could argue that people who are rotting in bed all day (not always a thing to look down upon; depression is real, people) will simply find something else to rot with. They'll binge watch movies, youtube, or a million other things we have now. Did people not rot in bed all day before the internet? They definitely did, right? Does that make it okay to make it easier for them to do that? To create with the explicit purpose of keeping them hooked to their screens?

You can always just throw up your hands, cite free will, and say "hey, creators will create, we are not forcing over-consumption on anyone." You could argue that I am doing the same thing right now. Maybe you, and yes I am talking to you now, my dear reader. Maybe you are doom-scrolling through Tumblr right now, and I am contributing to it. I did write a title that I thought was attention-grabbing. I am writing this post in a way that I think is the most interesting, hoping you'll read till the end. I could say, we definitely have way too much content available to us now, and you would simply reply "But isn't that a good thing? You can write, shoot a movie, make music from absolutely anywhere in the world, and if you are good (and sometimes even when you are not), there is a chance that people will see it! It's why you have an audience, albeit a very very small one, in like 4 days of making this account, Robin." Though I don't know why you would call me Robin, that is obviously not my real name.

I don't know what the answer is. We desperately want things to be either black or white, the world would be so much easier to understand then. But most of the time they're just grey. They have good things and bad things about them. And you can't really stop the world from going down a path, can you? So I guess you just roll with the punches.

[ghouljams]

ghoul i beg you use your eternal knowledge (jk) on one such as me and explain how threat is a sex addict even though they dont experience sexual attraction.

like i understand ace people have sex because of xyz, its a fun activity for them etc.

but how does it work for threat themselves? like if they arent attracted to crybaby why do they do it? does threat get something out of it? and what exactly is threat addicted to, the act of sex itself, the release at the end of it? it cant be crybaby or soap since theyre not attracted to them.

my brain is just terribly confused and i might have a migraine

Oh I am so excited to answer this and talk about Threat's meta you have no idea. I could write essays on Threat and the work that went into their character.

The short answer for anyone that doesn't want to read meta is this: Threat is addicted to the endorphin rush of sex, they're addicted to feeling good and feeling in control, sex for Threat is a means to an ends not an expression of attraction. They are romantically interested in Crybaby and I think it's unfair to say they're not attracted to Crybaby, but it's a different sort of attraction. Crybaby is like.... like finding a really good dealer, Threat is attracted to what Crybaby can give them(sex) but not Crybaby herself. If that makes sense.

On to the meta...

So the long version of Threat's sex addiction is this: they were conceptualized as a character that only cares about Soap for one thing(sex) but doesn't care about him as a person, sort of as a mirror to Soap's own addiction to artists. So sex addiction was something I thought would be an easy "this is what you're doing to people" that I could use against Soap. Threat is not attracted to people, they're attracted to what they get out of people, the sex and the meal afterwards.

I think a lot of the way I think about Threat's asexuality and sex addiction comes from my own ideas on sex and sexuality which is that they are two completely different things. Having sex(or not having sex) is a physical thing that you do and really is only impacted by your sexuality in terms of who you have sex with. But even then there are a lot of circumstances that lead people to different sexual encounters. The thing Threat gets out of sex is the endorphin rush, they get the good happy feelings and the chemical dopamine release.

There's a lot about Threat's feelings about romance that impact their idea of sex, which also is impacted by their sexuality. Threat is what I would call demi or grey Romantic. They don't really have the right settings for romance, and finding Crybaby was a lot like finding a needle in a haystack. Threat views sex(and intimacy generally) as consumptive, as something they take without any real care fir the person they're having sex with. So Love also becomes consumptive, which is great for Crybaby who also views love in terms of bondage and consumption. Threat likes sex with Crybaby, but that also isn't why they're with her, they're with her because they've twisted up their own version of love with her.

Now with Soap it's a power thing. Threat is addicted to the power that they can get from Soap during and after sex. The fae trap on their back functions sort of like a repurpose-er taking the tethers that want to latch onto Threat and turning them into webs for Threat to pull magic off of(or cut people with depending). Threat is also a bit of an adrenaline junky so having Soap actively hunting them and also having sex with them is just great for all the nice chemicals lighting up their brain. The release is great, but Threat also gets some sort of reward after sex, be that magic or physical (blood and guts) food, which keeps them coming back for more and more and more.

Threat knows what to say and how to pretend they're attracted to people, but it's an act. They can pick out what other people would find attractive and compliment it, but they don't really get it. It's all a facade meant to lure people in so Threat can get what they want out of them.

Actually, in a way Threat is addicted to Crybaby... Crybaby is stable, she's a safe house, she'll always take Threat back and bare her neck, it's a power play for Threat and it works every time. Threat is not a powerful fae by any stretch, they're strong compared to humans but next to Soap they're barely on the same scale. Threat wants that power and sex is the best way they know how to get it.

So yeah idk if any of that makes sense, but anyway Threat has chemical imbalances that they're medicating with sex because Witch won't sell them weed and it's not like they're going to fall in love or feel any attachment to the people they're sleeping with so they have no qualms with murdering them afterwards. Crybaby is a romantic exception. Soap is an adrenaline exception. Threat is attached to Crybaby because they're in love with her, but that has nothing to do with sex. Actually if they stopped having sex that would be great for Threat because sometimes they really want to bite her head off afterwards...

[eatmangoesnekkid]

My Second Belly Dance Teacher and Friend

I am compassionately twirling out of Germany on the train making my way back to Amsterdam to see my 2nd belly dance teacher. Yes I am blessed to have 2 teachers because each one teaches differently and I get to develop a more dynamic practice. I had homework to do on my side belly waves and shimmies 🧘🏿‍♀️🌊 and she will test me this evening. Germany is definitely not my country🤣🤣 but I love giving love and care, one of the prime roles of a lover archetype in practice. Being a lover isn’t just about dancing, playing, art, music, sex, nature, animals, or loving your way through this reality, it is a real care practice, as I see all of the above as ways we care for others. I do believe that an embodied belly dancer could dance and her sacred dance would bring back the eyesight of a blind person who gets to witness her, to feel her…in their heart. Feeling is always key. In my travels, I sense how she could journey around the world and heal ailments in the bodies of weaker or compromised people through her belly waves and breast rotations—that pure kundalini innocence. Because when a person sees/feels/perceives a beautiful, lighthearted, open-hearted woman (one who is holding pain/hurt in her heart/spirit) and interacts with her in the slightest way, their body naturally releases chemicals called “endorphins” that cause them really feel good and even healthier and more powerful or capable. These lost forbidden arts I hope to revive and reclaim in my lifetime and I see myself getting to that place in my heart one day. When people think of Oshun, they tend to omit two of her most important skills-her ability to care for the sick and her warrior aspects, but we must remember that it's either all of it or none of it. ☀️

I do believe that it’s important as you learn these medicinal arts that are not only medicine for others, but medicine for your own mind, body, and spirit—whether you learn on YouTube or with a teacher, you 'womb' yourself and don’t blast on social media right away. I see women do this as well when they start a new work out program. Embody your practice first then share or you may find that you dilute your progress and become stagnant because social media tends to take us away from our heart and its purity of passion to embark on a new skill or habit imperfectly, and drown us in our ego and its need for constant approval and addiction to comparing and contrasting. This was a big learning for me that the ancestral mothers whispered. Much of social media emanates a frequency of disembodiment —pretending to be embodied. Some of the most vibrant, brilliant, and embodied artists, dancers, writers, and singers I adore like Sade and Tracy Chapman don’t have a social media presence. They lead private lives and create in the dark, in mystery and silent ritual. They aren't under the constant bombardment of notifications, distractions, or stress nor operate with the common "text-neck" which malnourishes the female body and blocks the lymphatic pathways from detoxifying the face, upper back, and shoulders, the death-grip to more wrinkles (however beautiful, merely sharing for Aunties who buy toxic anti-aging cremes), and neck, shoulder, and back inflammation/pain. More than the fact that these women are aging backwards as a result of their private lifestyles and the accompanying incontrovertible power, there is benevolent advanced intelligence in the quiet, whether you are creating books or music or dilating your hips in a new dance practice or abductor workout regiment. While in the learning curve or creative process, discretion and care are needed.

Having an audience occasionally cheer on your progress can be a nice feeling due to the quick dopamine hit but it can easily become like a drug and it matters more that you see yourself and believe in you. “Giving birth” is multidimensional, multidisciplinary, and not something that everyone should be privy to seeing. Eventually you openheartedly share your gift, but not in the early or mid-developmental stages. And yes feeling stronger in your body from the discipline (and sometimes discomfort of) working out is also a gift that you give to this world.

This life is so temporary and we all asked to be here so be here fully grounded in your feet, legs, and hips and overflowing in your gifts. Embody the art. Midwife the dancer. Share the baby when it’s time. Mm, One loveliness 🫀🫀🫀🫀

[sygol]

heyyyy listen... you need to eat carbohydrates to survive, stop wilting away like a loser. you dont have what it takes to kill yourself, and thats because you were born to live.

-> get outside, -> get in the fucking sun, -> get in the rain, seriously, -> put your phone away, -> get off the computer, -> go into the real world -> acknowledge what is beautiful, what is joyous, -> find it: i promise you its there.

get it: religions, they show their gratitude towards the world in their rituals, because it works. it makes you happy. im not going to start slinging christianity to you LOL, but there are reasons why cults persist: they sell you happiness in a complicated way, people are suckers for that. you can blind the vast majority of people with a carrot on a stick,

but im here today to tell you, you can DIY. skip the cults, skip the bullshit. today, and today now create your very own CARROT ON A STICK, give yourself a quest, seek to leave your zone of comfort, its time to get a little uncomfortable, since youre wasting away anyway, might aswell make that discomfort go to a purpose, go ahead: i'll get you started with some ideas:

in a public place, engage a stranger in conversation, whats the worst that could realistically happen? seriously just go ahead and ask someone if they've had any dreams lately, practice asking yourself in the mirror casually with confidence, thats the only thing you have to practice, the rest will happen naturally.

okay maybe thats not your thing, perhaps try the oldest adage in the book: "take a hike". look, i dont have time to explain this one, it works and thats why it's been said for all of human history.¹

give yourself a reason to quit doing drugs. if youre at the beginning of your drug curve you dont have to take this advice, i know you dont want to but im still going to tell you: that you need to be connecting with yourself and not lying, figure out yourself if you must, but those of you at the end of the curve, get real, thats not cutting it anymore, put it down, trust me, life has a lot of good highs. if youre gonna fucking die you might aswell have a good time on the way out, and hey maybe on that path youll suddenly see that you have a new peak to seek....

⛰️

hahaha time to make some art, time to create something, do something youve never done before, seek out a new friend, fuck, maybe you need a magic spell for that, i don't know, bring whatever ritual into it that you must, but it's important to explore.

the algorithms on your phone are designed to prey on you, they will throw every attack at you that they can, and they will see which ones are successful, and then they will breed those attacks with eachother, they will rip you apart, not in a sexy way, this is the new era of drugs. algorithms and user interface designed to make you addicted. im not telling you not to use them, but acknowledge what those are, whether its a chemical in your brain making your dopamine spike or its a flash on your screen, it'll rot your brain in the same fucking way, i swear to you.

1. hey, i believe some creative liberties were used in this sentence, and do not reflect a truth that is realistically provable, but while youre down here in the foot note section, im going to whisper a secret to you: i love you and the society we live in is made of paper

[roygbivsystem]

Song lyrics that are so system coded:

"Im so sick of myself. rather be rather be anyone anyone else" - Jealosy, jealousy by Olivia Rodrigo

"I cant help fracturing" - Unraveling by the crane wives

"Latey I've been talking with a ghost He tells me all the places I should go He makes me paint my face so that I know That I'm not the only the person in my soul" -Two face by Jake Daniel (@greychaos0 thanks for the suggestion)

"maybe i wasnt there" - pride by Kendrick Lamar (@starry-city-sys thanks for the suggestion)

"The voices cannot hold my hand, They keep me company at very best, distract me from my loneliness" - Partner in crime by Madilyn Mei

"and if I were someplace else, And if i were someone else, And if i were not myself, Would this be easier?" - Easier by Crane Wives

"Last year I had a breakdown Thoughts tellin' me I'm lost gettin' too loud Had to see a therapist, then I found out Somethin' funny’s goin’ on up in my house" - The Search by NF (@sleepless-sys thanks for the suggestion)

"Call me crazy but I made friends With all the voices in my head" - Voices by Hidden Citizens (@sleepless-sys thanks for the suggestion)

"Ihave these dreams where im me again, and they almost feel like they're real, its as if i have self esteem again, its as if im starting to heal" - Dopamine Addict by Alec Benjamin

Editing this every time i find more!

Put your lyrics in the comments and ill add them :)

[fangerine]

i just saw perfect days and i don't want a smartphone anymore. like, i genuinely don't want this thing anymore. i'm starting to think about all the times i've missed something beautiful existing in front of me because i felt the need to look down at my screen. how much time have i wasted getting quick hits of dopamine instead of getting true enjoyment from something as simple as the sunshine rippling through the trees? i'm wondering when my appreciation for real beauty met its death by way of an addiction to artificial blue light. there's no surprises or moments of amazement when you're constantly attached to the interwebs.

but i want to be surprised. i want to be amazed. i want to feel life again through my own skin, not another mindless swipe or tap.

[denimbex1986]

'Scientific grunt work doesn’t render very well on the silver screen. But neither do most jobs, or for that matter, most people. When it comes to theoretical physicists and aesthetic appeal, it’s best to channel quantum mechanics and suspend your disbelief.

Enter Oppenheimer, where Brigadier General Matt Damon says things like, “This is the most important thing to ever happen in the history of the world!” And, “We’ve given them an ace. It’s up to them to play the hand.” No doubt these sentiments were actually delivered as 700-page memorandums, Pendaflex-foldered and date-stamped. But this is Hollywood we’re talking about. You’ll find little in the way of stationery here, at least not on screen. And when the occasional differential equation rolls into frame, writer/director Christopher Nolan cuts smartly away before the audience might nod off.

To Nolan’s credit, Oppenheimer is a terrifically researched film. But it’s a film nonetheless, and translating sprawling, decades-long military sagas via camera necessitates shortcuts. I’m not a vetted expert on nuclear history but I’ve dabbled, having acted as research assistant for a 2020 treatise on plutonium production. This is to say that I’m familiar with the players.

I know, for example, that Matt Damon is far too cuddly, good-looking, and agreeable to portray the irascible Leslie Groves, nicknamed “Greasy” by his fellow West Point cadets. I know that Niels Bohr, the Danish physicist with a famously soft, nigh-unintelligible voice, is misrepresented by Shakespearean enunciator Kenneth Branagh. Nolan’s rolodex runs deeper than Wes Anderson’s these days, and if there’s a gripe to be had with Oppenheimer, it’s that everyone involved is just too damned sexy.

But, again, this is Hollywood, and where Nolan leaves the beaten path of record he generally does so to sate our dopamine addiction. Come to think of it, I haven’t been inside an actual physics department in a while. Maybe the professors really are incredibly gorgeous.

Luckily for Nolan, the subject of his cinematic obsession was a high-cheeked academic anomaly. The poet Edith Jenkins, who overlapped with J. Robert Oppenheimer in leftwing circles, describes his “precocity and brilliance… his jerky walk, feet turned out, a Jewish Pan with his blue eyes and his wild Einstein hair.” Manhattan Project scientist Robert Wilson agrees, admitting that he was “caught up by the Oppenheimer charisma,” “his style, the poetic vision of what we were doing.”

No, Oppy’s jawline never approached the artful chisel of Cillian Murphy’s, but there are unmistakable parallels—a bit elfin, a bit skeletal—to be drawn. Certainly Oppenheimer availed himself of more mistresses than your average mid-century physicist. Nolan spends perhaps too much time focusing on one of them (Jean Tatlock, played by Florence Pugh) and mentions a second in passing (Ruth Tolman, a bit part Louise Lombard), while avoiding speculation of yet others, such as when Berkeley cops found grad student Melba Phillips sleeping in Oppy’s car somewhere in the Coastal Range, the professor himself suspiciously absent.

Oppenheimer’s messy personal life makes him an ideal candidate for exposé—look no further than Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin’s bestselling American Prometheus, Nolan’s source material. But here I’ll return to Hollywoodization, for it’s one thing to get wind of Oppenheimer’s foibles and quite another to see Florence Pugh writhing hallucinatorily on his lap during the 1954 AEC security hearings.

If Nolan goes too far in this film, if he stretches the Oppenheimer envelope past its roomy Pendaflex accommodations, it’s in the context of Oppy outside the Manhattan Project. Despite magnificent wartime subject matter—not all of which is touched upon—Nolan can’t quit his blockbuster tropes. Monochrome senate hearings, petty political twists (how is RDJ’s aide still employed?), Oppy’s fingers gracing Emily Blunt’s as she asks for a cocktail science primer.

Maybe audiences require such touchstones to contextualize the rest of the film. Nolan seems to think so. But as the string section swelled during a trite turn in the relatively forgettable career of Lewis Strauss, I found myself wishing we could’ve stayed put in New Mexico, on the high mesa that forms this film’s heart.

Nolan’s feat comes in recreating Los Alamos, a critical American moment with more than enough narrative to forgo some of the politico-romantic schlock that drags this thing to a three-hour runtime. Fascinated by character, by gray morality, Nolan found Oppy such an attractive case study that it nearly steered his magnum opus (I do think this film qualifies) off track. Each of the factual and immensely complicated bomb-related obstacles—for example, thunderstorms the morning of the Trinity Test—holds a world-changing thrall entirely separate from the whims of one man, no matter how chiseled his jaw.

Speaking of moralistic study, there’s one character who escapes Oppenheimer scot-free: Matt Damon’s overly fit and preposterously understated Leslie Groves. “I’ve known General Groves since I was 2nd lieutenant,” said the real-world David Nichols (cast as Dane DeHaan) in a 1965 interview. “To start off with, I would say he is the biggest son-of-a-bitch I’ve ever met, bar none.”

“Impatient, brusque, intolerant,” writes Robert S. Norris in his comprehensive Groves biography Racing for the Bomb. “He had few close friends, and others generally kept their distance.”

“When you looked at Captain Groves, a little alarm bell rang ‘Caution’ in your brain,” said a colleague.

Damon bulked up, lumped up—whatever—for his role as Nike executive Sonny Vaccaro in this year’s Air. But it’s a serious leap from office park Vaccaro to Army taskmaster Groves, who even in his 1970 New York Times obituary suffered the redundant label of, “a chunky, heavyset man, with a tendency toward paunchiness.” More unfounded than Damon’s weight, however, is a good guy nature cultivated over decades of Good Will Hunting television marathons, Invictus advertisements, and so on.

Cillian Murphy’s shell-shocked victory speech presents a nice commentary on the ethical morass of atomic weaponry. But Damon/Groves makes for an even juicier moralistic target, and he’s let off the hook with that aforementioned one-liner: “We’ve given them an ace, it’s up to them to play the hand.” If anyone bore responsibility for detonating two atomic bombs over civilian populations, it was General Leslie R. Groves, the only person playing said poker game in the first place.

Racing for the Bomb explains, “Groves, sitting atop his security pyramid, was the only person who knew everything about the bomb project—more than the chief of staff, more than the secretary of war, more than the president.” He was therefore “singularly concerned with the bomb, with getting it finished, tested, and used, and his superiors deferred to him time and again to make the choices that would make this happen.”

Nolan illustrates how the bomb haunted Oppenheimer. Groves, cinematically absent after Trinity, showed no such regret. Critiquing the general’s 1962 autobiography Now It Can Be Told, the Saturday Review wrote, “Groves is motivated by a simple and all-sufficing patriotism that is untroubled by what others see in the atom. He does not probe for any new vision of national interest in the age he helped create.”

Simple and all-sufficing patriotism—sounds familiar. Make of it what you will.

The only Oppenheimer character who comes across as legitimately malevolent is Benny Safdie’s terrific Ed Teller. Maybe I fell for Teller because Safdie, a director by trade, looks more like a physicist than a cologne model. Still, I get the sense that Safdie studied his source material. When he pipes up about the “Super”—the hydrogen bomb—his eyes hold nary a flicker of regret. And he keeps doing so despite repeated disdain from his colleagues.

Look, I get it, I really do, on the attractiveness quotient. This is a movie, and if scientists and bureaucrats don’t suffice for a visual study then we’ll goddamn pretend. It’s only sensible that Ernest Lawrence— who, per physicist Jeremy Bernstein, “looked a bit like a country bumpkin”—becomes Josh Hartnett. That Lewis Strauss, a crooked-toothed self-made paper pusher, turns into silver fox Robert Downey Jr. I guess I even understand why Olivia Thirlby got thrown in out of absolutely nowhere, probably as Lilli Hornig, though I can’t recall her name being said aloud.

Nolan had to beautify this stuff because the big screen is a beautiful place. He gets most of the issues absolutely right, and I’ll be pulling for him come Oscar season. I doubt I’ll wind up remembering Emily Blunt’s Kitty Oppenheimer, Matthew Modine’s Vannevar Bush, or whoever the hell Rami Malek was supposed to be. But I’ll surely remember the Trinity Test, fingers trembling over that big red button, “10-9-8” and the towering explosion and the pressure wave—even if, no shade at Nolan, David Lynch already did it better on television.'

[jacquelinesbookclub]

The Eyre Affair – Jasper Fforde

“Jasper Fforde has gone where no other fictioneer has gone before” claims The Guardian in the front cover endorsement. What a load of genetically re-engineered dodo crap. Who amongst us hasn’t day-dreamed about going into the books we love and meeting our favourite characters? That’s where it all starts for us “fictioneers”. The first stories we tell are clunky re-imaginings of the things that speak to us, we get enraptured by a story and it motivates us to share that story too. It’s a tale as old as human communication. Oral and written tradition is just this, sharing stories, and over time we add parts of ourselves to the narrative and mould it to better fit us. It’s how we learn to tell our own stories, by first copying the things we love. “Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery that mediocrity can pay to greatness”, or so it has been said.

Lately I’ve been attempting to shift my time-use away from consumption and towards creation. I had found myself trapped endlessly scrolling social media, or watching stuff I don’t care about just to have something on the telly. I felt like I was wasting my time and getting nothing out of any of it. But the real kick in the arse was watching my kids emulate that same behaviour, and being unable to connect with them on any conversational level for the two days a week they live with me because they’d rather hide themselves away in a hole of Sonic memes from TikTok via Gacha Life via YouTube shorts. And how could I blame them? I was in my own hole of complaining about Formerly-Known-As-Twitter drama and voyeuristically watching old men build things with their hands (my guilty pleasure). None of us were engaged, and all of us were miserable. So I turned off the TV, deleted half the apps from my phone and YouTube from my Switch, and loaded up on art supplies from the dollar store, ready to set an example and give us all something to bond over. And it worked! (Mostly. As I’m writing this, my daughter is watching Spirit Rangers on Netflix and I’m listening to music with my headphones on. Lets just call it parallel play, alright?)

By the end of the first day without the addictive pull of easy dopamine machines, both of my kids had written multi-thousand word short stories. My daughter (10yo), who’s special interest is kid horror like Poppy Playtime and Five Nights at Freddy’s, wrote about a little girl with a traumatic past who solves puzzles and befriends the big scary monsters. My eldest (12yo) on the other hand is big into anime, their favourites right now being My Hero Academia and Tengoku Daimakyo. They wrote a character driven isekai turned reverse-isekai slice of life, naturally. Given the freedom to write whatever they wanted without guidelines from teachers, both of them re-told their own favourite stories with a personal flair. This is how we learn to tell stories, it’s how we learn anything really, through repetition. Just like how babies learn to speak by imitating the sounds its parents make until it learns meaning and context, in imitating the stories we love, we learn story structure, flow, framing, technique, effective use of dialogue and thematic meaning. It’s not the only way we learn, of course, we get taught the nuts and bolts of writing in school, and some take that all the way through university in order to perfect their craft, but I think that’s all polish. The people who study writing are the people who have a passion for the craft they’ve learned through personal experimentation, and it’s passion that is key for motivation.

In response to a recent live stream question about encouraging a creative design environment in the classroom, Adam Savage (of Mythbusters fame) said “New skill acquisition, for me, has always been based on desire.” Without the desire to emulate, without the love of a story or stories, our writing is dead before it’s even born. Writing is a slog sometimes, it doesn’t come easily to any but the luckiest few, so we need the love of the influence to fuel the work. I’m not just talking about the derivative copy cat stuff we all practice on, even the most original novels have influence. The reason we have genres of literature is because of the influence of authors who came beforehand. In 1818 Mary Shelley publishes Frankenstein, in 1886 Robert Lewis Stevenson publishes Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, in 1896 H.G. Wells publishes The Island of Dr Moreau. We have science fiction as a genre because authors read science fiction stories and said “I want to write that too.”

The world Fforde has created in The Eyre Affair is one that those of us who were teased for being bookworms as children would long for. It’s a world in which people wear their love for their favourite stories proudly on their sleeves. Where literature is so important that the British Government have a Special Operations group dedicated to preventing book crimes. Imagine if people cared that much about literature in real life? Could you imagine people door-knocking and handing out pamphlets to argue their theories of who wrote Shakespeare? People changing their names and their dress to honour their love of poet John Milton? Imagine hundreds of people torch and pitchfork protesting over the possibility of Jane Eyre being changed. This all sounds hauntingly familiar, actually. There is one place in the real world where people have such strong opinions of their favourite stories: fanfiction.

Savage continues: “It’s frankly within pop-culture you’re often going to find a lot of intersection of desire for a thing.” Our modern internet is lousy with pop-culture, it’s incredible just how pop our culture has gotten. It drowns out any culture that isn’t pop by smothering it in mounds of double extra servings of pop. Our pop is so pop we had to create hyper-pop to contain it, another magnitude added to the pop-Richter scale, and boy oh boy, is there desire for it. I have many criticisms about fanfic, both the art and the culture, but I’m not going to go on a tirade here. What’s important is that people are doing it. They’re taking the stories they love and expanding upon them, putting their own spin on their favourite characters and creating something new and interesting out of it. As Savage says “I personally don’t care where somebody gets interested in creating something, I just want the act of creation to occur.”

The Eyre Affair is a love letter to the stories that compel Fforde, like Arthur Conan Doyle’s Through the Magic Door made narrative. Published in 1907, Doyle’s collection of essays is adamant that popular fiction is vital to creativity, so this isn’t new age thinking. What is new is that we have more accessible places to share with each other, to create community around the things we love, and yet it still feels so closed off. When we say fanfic we think of a subsection of the internet filled with wierdos, from Trekkies and X-philes in the 90’s, to whatever is popular in fanfic today, I don’t know, what are you into? Is it Gideon the Ninth? Y’all still doing One Direction? Whatever the case, it’s delegated to a shadowy basement corner filing cabinet and forgotten by the rest of the literary world, and that’s a shame, because it is often where our most base fantasies as readers play out.

“Gone where no other fictioneer has gone before”? Fforde goes where all of us go, that’s what makes this book so compelling, only he does it in public where everyone can see.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

How to ditch Facebook without ditching your friends

Facebook users claim to hate the service, but they keep using it, leading many to describe Facebook as "addictive." But there's a simpler explanation: people keep using Facebook though they hate it because they don't want to lose their connections to the people they love.

Calling Facebook "addictive" plays into the company's own mythology, the sales-pitch they make to advertisers, in which they claim to be neuro-sorcerers whose mastery of "big data" and "dopamine loops" can sell anything to anyone, which is why you should buy ads on their service.

The simpler explanation - that Facebook is holding the people you love hostage, and you'll put up with a bad situation in order to stay connected to them - has many advantages over the "evil sorcerer" hypothesis. For starters, it doesn't require that you accept Facebook's own self-serving and improbable claims about having invented a mind-control ray. Instead, the "hostage-taking" explanation rests on a visible, easily verified fact: if you leave Facebook, the service won't let you send messages to the people who stay behind.

Economists have a name for this: "switching costs," this being everything you have to give up when you switch from one service to another. Internally, Facebook's product managers are very frank that they deliberately design their products to have the highest possible switching costs:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/08/facebooks-secret-war-switching-costs

Here's how their thinking goes: if leaving Facebook is easy, then we have to treat our users well or they'll go somewhere else. But if leaving Facebook is painful, then they'll stick around, even if we abuse them. The higher the switching costs are, the worse we can treat our users without risking their departure.

Now, digital technology has intrinsically low switching-costs, because the only digital computer we know how to build - a Turing-complete Von Neumann machine - can run every program we know how to write. Someone can always figure out how to plug something new into something old.

Plugging something new into something old is called interoperability. There's no real technical barrier to plugging a new service into Facebook, so that you could quit Facebook, join the new service, and continue to send messages to the friends you left behind. If Facebook was federated with lots of non-Facebook services, the switching costs would plummet.

Facebook might treat its users better if they could leave. But even if Facebook's notoriously awful corporate culture meant that it continued to abuse its users despite falling switching costs, it wouldn't matter as much, because those users could easily leave Facebook and find a better service.

That hypothetical "interoperable Facebook" is the subject of a new white paper and narrated slideshow I've just launched with @EFF, called "How to Ditch Facebook Without Losing Friends."

https://www.eff.org/interoperablefacebook

The impetus for this project was our collective frustration with the implementation of the EU Digital Markets Act, an otherwise very promising interoperability law that will force all kinds of tech companies to lower switching costs by offering APIs to rivals:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2022/04/eu-digital-markets-acts-interoperability-rule-addresses-important-need-raises

The DMA is incredibly promising, but the implementation could create chaos and discredit the idea of interop altogether, thanks to the decision to start with mandating interop in end-to-end encrypted ("E2EE") messaging services like Whatsapp and Imessage.

The thing is, secure, encrypted messaging is hard to do well, and even minor errors in E2EE can expose all users of the service (not just in the EU) to risk. There are deep-pocketed, vicious cyber-mercenaries like the NSO Group who weaponize these tiny, subtle errors to make interception tools for the world's worst dictatorships.

Cyber-weapons like NSO's Pegasus are used to attack opposition figures, human rights workers and journalists. Pegasus was key to the Saudi government's kidnapping, murder and dismemberment of Jamal Khashoggi.

Making interoperable E2EE is a great idea, but it's a long-term standardization project that must proceed with the utmost caution, and the DMA imposes an unrealistic timeline on interop for E2EE. I think they're either going to miss that deadline, or, worse, press on with an immature standard despite security risks.

It's a little baffling that the EU would start with E2EE, given the difficulty - especially when interoperable social media is such an obvious way to shatter the market power of the largest tech companies in the world.

I have a theory, though: I think that every EU policymaker has experienced interoperable messaging through SMS. If you've used your Dutch phone in Brussels to send a message to a German colleague having a vacation in Spain, it's easy to imagine a multi-vendor, seamless, interoperable messaging system.

The problem is that SMS is a dumpster-fire, an absolute security disaster that has been compromised over and over again in increasingly horrible ways. SMS works well, sure, but it fails very badly.

Meanwhile, interoperable, federated social media was snuffed out decades ago, with the death of Usenet (enclosed and suffocated by Google) and the enclosure of blogs and other promising successors. It's likely that the decision-makers who decided to start with E2EE have never experienced federated social media and have no easy way to imagine what it would be like.

Hence this "interoperable Facebook" project. We describe how federated social media would work:

[Image iD: A dialog box confirming account migration from Facebook]

How you would move your account from Facebook to an interoperable platform run by a co-op, nonprofit or startup;

[Image ID: A dialog box seeking a user's consent to maintain a connection to an off-platform user]

[Image iD: A dialog box allowing a user to set universal preferences for off-platform communications]

How your friends' consent to send their messages to you would be obtained;

[Image ID: A dialog box telling a user that members their service can't join a community]

[Image ID: A dialog box warning that an off-platform user has been blocked for violating community standards]

[Image ID: A dialog box telling FB users that an off-platform user has been blocked]

How a federated service could impose different moderation policies than Facebook's, permitting things Facebook prohibits and vice-versa.

It's hard to imagine how interoperable social media might work, but some lawmakers have got their heads around the idea; the US ACCESS Act would create an interoperability mandate for social media.

Getting the ACCESS Act passed - and getting the DMA on track - will need lots of public support for the idea of interoperability as a way back from an internet composed of "five giant websites filled with screenshots of text from the other four":

https://twitter.com/tveastman/status/1069674780826071040

That's why we made this design fiction; to help people understand why we need interop, and how it would work. We need to get past the self-aggrandizing Big Tech story of evil sorcerers "addicting" us to their services and focus in on the real problem: Big Tech took everyone we love hostage inside their walled gardens. We need to smash those walls!