#nor facebook offer

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Pluralistic: Leaving Twitter had no effect on NPR's traffic

I'm coming to Minneapolis! This Sunday (Oct 15): Presenting The Internet Con at Moon Palace Books. Monday (Oct 16): Keynoting the 26th ACM Conference On Computer-Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing.

Enshittification is the process by which a platform lures in and then captures end users (stage one), who serve as bait for business customers, who are also captured (stage two), whereupon the platform rug-pulls both groups and allocates all the value they generate and exchange to itself (stage three):

https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/21/potemkin-ai/#hey-guys

Enshittification isn't merely a form of rent-seeking – it is a uniquely digital phenomenon, because it relies on the inherent flexibility of digital systems. There are lots of intermediaries that want to extract surpluses from customers and suppliers – everyone from grocers to oil companies – but these can't be reconfigured in an eyeblink the that that purely digital services can.

A sleazy boss can hide their wage-theft with a bunch of confusing deductions to your paycheck. But when your boss is an app, it can engage in algorithmic wage discrimination, where your pay declines minutely every time you accept a job, but if you start to decline jobs, the app can raise the offer:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/12/algorithmic-wage-discrimination/#fishers-of-men

I call this process "twiddling": tech platforms are equipped with a million knobs on their back-ends, and platform operators can endlessly twiddle those knobs, altering the business logic from moment to moment, turning the system into an endlessly shifting quagmire where neither users nor business customers can ever be sure whether they're getting a fair deal:

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

Social media platforms are compulsive twiddlers. They use endless variation to lure in – and then lock in – publishers, with the goal of converting these standalone businesses into commodity suppliers who are dependent on the platform, who can then be charged rent to reach the users who asked to hear from them.

Facebook designed this playbook. First, it lured in end-users by promising them a good deal: "Unlike Myspace, which spies on you from asshole to appetite, Facebook is a privacy-respecting site that will never, ever spy on you. Simply sign up, tell us everyone who matters to you, and we'll populate a feed with everything they post for public consumption":

https://lawcat.berkeley.edu/record/1128876

The users came, and locked themselves in: when people gather in social spaces, they inadvertently take one another hostage. You joined Facebook because you liked the people who were there, then others joined because they liked you. Facebook can now make life worse for all of you without losing your business. You might hate Facebook, but you like each other, and the collective action problem of deciding when and whether to go, and where you should go next, is so difficult to overcome, that you all stay in a place that's getting progressively worse.

Once its users were locked in, Facebook turned to advertisers and said, "Remember when we told these rubes we'd never spy on them? It was a lie. We spy on them with every hour that God sends, and we'll sell you access to that data in the form of dirt-cheap targeted ads."

Then Facebook went to the publishers and said, "Remember when we told these suckers that we'd only show them the things they asked to see? Total lie. Post short excerpts from your content and links back to your websites and we'll nonconsensually cram them into the eyeballs of people who never asked to see them. It's a free, high-value traffic funnel for your own site, bringing monetizable users right to your door."

Now, Facebook had to find a way to lock in those publishers. To do this, it had to twiddle. By tiny increments, Facebook deprioritized publishers' content, forcing them to make their excerpts grew progressively longer. As with gig workers, the digital flexibility of Facebook gave it lots of leeway here. Some publishers sensed the excerpts they were being asked to post were a substitute for visiting their sites – and not an enticement – and drew down their posting to Facebook.

When that happened, Facebook could twiddle in the publisher's favor, giving them broader distribution for shorter excerpts, then, once the publisher returned to the platform, Facebook drew down their traffic unless they started posting longer pieces. Twiddling lets platforms play users and business-customers like a fish on a line, giving them slack when they fight, then reeling them in when they tire.

Once Facebook converted a publisher to a commodity supplier to the platform, it reeled the publishers in. First, it deprioritized publishers' posts when they had links back to the publisher's site (under the pretext of policing "clickbait" and "malicious links"). Then, it stopped showing publishers' content to their own subscribers, extorting them to pay to "boost" their posts in order to reach people who had explicitly asked to hear from them.

For users, this meant that their feeds were increasingly populated with payola-boosted content from advertisers and pay-to-play publishers who paid Facebook's Danegeld to reach them. A user will only spend so much time on Facebook, and every post that Facebook feeds that user from someone they want to hear from is a missed opportunity to show them a post from someone who'll pay to reach them.

Here, too, twiddling lets Facebook fine-tune its approach. If a user starts to wean themself off Facebook, the algorithm (TM) can put more content the user has asked to see in the feed. When the user's participation returns to higher levels, Facebook can draw down the share of desirable content again, replacing it with monetizable content. This is done minutely, behind the scenes, automatically, and quickly. In any shell game, the quickness of the hand deceives the eye.

This is the final stage of enshittification: withdrawing surpluses from end-users and business customers, leaving behind the minimum homeopathic quantum of value for each needed to keep them locked to the platform, generating value that can be extracted and diverted to platform shareholders.

But this is a brittle equilibrium to maintain. The difference between "God, I hate this place but I just can't leave it" and "Holy shit, this sucks, I'm outta here" is razor-thin. All it takes is one privacy scandal, one livestreamed mass-shooting, one whistleblower dump, and people bolt for the exits. This kicks off a death-spiral: as users and business customers leave, the platform's shareholders demand that they squeeze the remaining population harder to make up for the loss.

One reason this gambit worked so well is that it was a long con. Platform operators and their investors have been willing to throw away billions convincing end-users and business customers to lock themselves in until it was time for the pig-butchering to begin. They financed expensive forays into additional features and complementary products meant to increase user lock-in, raising the switching costs for users who were tempted to leave.

For example, Facebook's product manager for its "photos" product wrote to Mark Zuckerberg to lay out a strategy of enticing users into uploading valuable family photos to the platform in order to "make switching costs very high for users," who would have to throw away their precious memories as the price for leaving Facebook:

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

The platforms' patience paid off. Their slow ratchets operated so subtly that we barely noticed the squeeze, and when we did, they relaxed the pressure until we were lulled back into complacency. Long cons require a lot of prefrontal cortex, the executive function to exercise patience and restraint.

Which brings me to Elon Musk, a man who seems to have been born without a prefrontal cortex, who has repeatedly and publicly demonstrated that he lacks any restraint, patience or planning. Elon Musk's prefrontal cortical deficit resulted in his being forced to buy Twitter, and his every action since has betrayed an even graver inability to stop tripping over his own dick.

Where Zuckerberg played enshittification as a long game, Musk is bent on speedrunning it. He doesn't slice his users up with a subtle scalpel, he hacks away at them with a hatchet.

Musk inaugurated his reign by nonconsensually flipping every user to an algorithmic feed which was crammed with ads and posts from "verified" users whose blue ticks verified solely that they had $8 ($11 for iOS users). Where Facebook deployed substantial effort to enticing users who tired of eyeball-cramming feed decay by temporarily improving their feeds, Musk's Twitter actually overrode users' choice to switch back to a chronological feed by repeatedly flipping them back to more monetizable, algorithmic feeds.

Then came the squeeze on publishers. Musk's Twitter rolled out a bewildering array of "verification" ticks, each priced higher than the last, and publishers who refused to pay found their subscribers taken hostage, with Twitter downranking or shadowbanning their content unless they paid.

(Musk also squeezed advertisers, keeping the same high prices but reducing the quality of the offer by killing programs that kept advertisers' content from being published along Holocaust denial and open calls for genocide.)

Today, Musk continues to squeeze advertisers, publishers and users, and his hamfisted enticements to make up for these depredations are spectacularly bad, and even illegal, like offering advertisers a new kind of ad that isn't associated with any Twitter account, can't be blocked, and is not labeled as an ad:

https://www.wired.com/story/xs-sneaky-new-ads-might-be-illegal/

Of course, Musk has a compulsive bullshitter's contempt for the press, so he has far fewer enticements for them to stay. Quite the reverse: first, Musk removed headlines from link previews, rendering posts by publishers that went to their own sites into stock-art enigmas that generated no traffic:

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/oct/05/x-twitter-strips-headlines-new-links-why-elon-musk

Then he jumped straight to the end-stage of enshittification by announcing that he would shadowban any newsmedia posts with links to sites other than Twitter, "because there is less time spent if people click away." Publishers were advised to "post content in long form on this platform":

https://mamot.fr/@pluralistic/111183068362793821

Where a canny enshittifier would have gestured at a gaslighting explanation ("we're shadowbanning posts with links because they might be malicious"), Musk busts out the motto of the Darth Vader MBA: "I am altering the deal, pray I don't alter it any further."

All this has the effect of highlighting just how little residual value there is on the platform for publishers, and tempts them to bolt for the exits. Six months ago, NPR lost all patience with Musk's shenanigans, and quit the service. Half a year later, they've revealed how low the switching cost for a major news outlet that leaves Twitter really are: NPR's traffic, post-Twitter, has declined by less than a single percentage point:

https://niemanreports.org/articles/npr-twitter-musk/

NPR's Twitter accounts had 8.7 million followers, but even six months ago, Musk's enshittification speedrun had drawn down NPR's ability to reach those users to a negligible level. The 8.7 million number was an illusion, a shell game Musk played on publishers like NPR in a bid to get them to buy a five-figure iridium checkmark or even a six-figure titanium one.

On Twitter, the true number of followers you have is effectively zero – not because Twitter users haven't explicitly instructed the service to show them your posts, but because every post in their feeds that they want to see is a post that no one can be charged to show them.

I've experienced this myself. Three and a half years ago, I left Boing Boing and started pluralistic.net, my cross-platform, open access, surveillance-free, daily newsletter and blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/02/19/drei-drei-drei/#now-we-are-three

Boing Boing had the good fortune to have attracted a sizable audience before the advent of siloed platforms, and a large portion of that audience came to the site directly, rather than following us on social media. I knew that, starting a new platform from scratch, I wouldn't have that luxury. My audience would come from social media, and it would be up to me to convert readers into people who followed me on platforms I controlled – where neither they nor I could be held to ransom.

I embraced a strategy called POSSE: Post Own Site, Syndicate Everywhere. With POSSE, the permalink and native habitat for your material is a site you control (in my case, a WordPress blog with all the telemetry, logging and surveillance disabled). Then you repost that content to other platforms – mostly social media – with links back to your own site:

https://indieweb.org/POSSE

There are a lot of automated tools to help you with this, but the platforms have gone to great lengths to break or neuter them. Musk's attack on Twitter's legendarily flexible and powerful API killed every automation tool that might help with this. I was lucky enough to have a reader – Loren Kohnfelder – who coded me some python scripts that automate much of the process, but POSSE remains a very labor-intensive and error-prone methodology:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/01/13/two-decades/#hfbd

And of all the feeds I produce – email, RSS, Discourse, Medium, Tumblr, Mastodon – none is as labor-intensive as Twitter's. It is an unforgiving medium to begin with, and Musk's drawdown of engineering support has made it wildly unreliable. Many's the time I've set up 20+ posts in a thread, only to have the browser tab reload itself and wipe out all my work.

But I stuck with Twitter, because I have a half-million followers, and to the extent that I reach them there, I can hope that they will follow the permalinks to Pluralistic proper and switch over to RSS, or email, or a daily visit to the blog.

But with each day, the case for using Twitter grows weaker. I get ten times as many replies and reposts on Mastodon, though my Mastodon follower count is a tenth the size of my (increasingly hypothetical) Twitter audience.

All this raises the question of what can or should be done about Twitter. One possible regulatory response would be to impose an "End-To-End" rule on the service, requiring that Twitter deliver posts from willing senders to willing receivers without interfering in them. End-To-end is the bedrock of the internet (one of its incarnations is Net Neutrality) and it's a proven counterenshittificatory force:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/06/save-news-we-need-end-end-web

Despite what you may have heard, "freedom of reach" is freedom of speech: when a platform interposes itself between willing speakers and their willing audiences, it arrogates to itself the power to control what we're allowed to say and who is allowed to hear us:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/12/10/e2e/#the-censors-pen

We have a wide variety of tools to make a rule like this stick. For one thing, Musk's Twitter has violated innumerable laws and consent decrees in the US, Canada and the EU, which creates a space for regulators to impose "conduct remedies" on the company.

But there's also existing regulatory authorities, like the FTC's Section Five powers, which enable the agency to act against companies that engage in "unfair and deceptive" acts. When Twitter asks you who you want to hear from, then refuses to deliver their posts to you unless they pay a bribe, that's both "unfair and deceptive":

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

But that's only a stopgap. The problem with Twitter isn't that this important service is run by the wrong mercurial, mediocre billionaire: it's that hundreds of millions of people are at the mercy of any foolish corporate leader. While there's a short-term case for improving the platforms, our long-term strategy should be evacuating them:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/18/urban-wildlife-interface/#combustible-walled-gardens

To make that a reality, we could also impose a "Right To Exit" on the platforms. This would be an interoperability rule that would require Twitter to adopt Mastodon's approach to server-hopping: click a link to export the list of everyone who follows you on one server, click another link to upload that file to another server, and all your followers and followees are relocated to your new digs:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/12/23/semipermeable-membranes/#free-as-in-puppies

A Twitter with the Right To Exit would exert a powerful discipline even on the stunted self-regulatory centers of Elon Musk's brain. If he banned a reporter for publishing truthful coverage that cast him in a bad light, that reporter would have the legal right to move to another platform, and continue to reach the people who follow them on Twitter. Publishers aghast at having the headlines removed from their Twitter posts could go somewhere less slipshod and still reach the people who want to hear from them on Twitter.

And both Right To Exit and End-To-End satisfy the two prime tests for sound internet regulation: first, they are easy to administer. If you want to know whether Musk is permitting harassment on his platform, you have to agree on a definition of harassment, determine whether a given act meets that definition, and then investigate whether Twitter took reasonable steps to prevent it.

By contrast, administering End-To-End merely requires that you post something and see if your followers receive it. Administering Right To Exit is as simple as saying, "OK, Twitter, I know you say you gave Cory his follower and followee file, but he says he never got it. Just send him another copy, and this time, CC the regulator so we can verify that it arrived."

Beyond administration, there's the cost of compliance. Requiring Twitter to police its users' conduct also requires it to hire an army of moderators – something that Elon Musk might be able to afford, but community-supported, small federated servers couldn't. A tech regulation can easily become a barrier to entry, blocking better competitors who might replace the company whose conduct spurred the regulation in the first place.

End-to-End does not present this kind of barrier. The default state for a social media platform is to deliver posts from accounts to their followers. Interfering with End-To-End costs more than delivering the messages users want to have. Likewise, a Right To Exit is a solved problem, built into the open Mastodon protocol, itself built atop the open ActivityPub standard.

It's not just Twitter. Every platform is consuming itself in an orgy of enshittification. This is the Great Enshittening, a moment of universal, end-stage platform decay. As the platforms burn, calls to address the fires grow louder and harder for policymakers to resist. But not all solutions to platform decay are created equal. Some solutions will perversely enshrine the dominance of platforms, help make them both too big to fail and too big to jail.

Musk has flagrantly violated so many rules, laws and consent decrees that he has accidentally turned Twitter into the perfect starting point for a program of platform reform and platform evacuation.

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

https://pluralistic.net/2023/10/14/freedom-of-reach/#ex

My next novel is The Lost Cause, a hopeful novel of the climate emergency. Amazon won't sell the audiobook, so I made my own and I'm pre-selling it on Kickstarter!

Image: JD Lasica (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Elon_Musk_%283018710552%29.jpg

CC BY 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/deed.en

[hannieehaee]

THE BOY IS MINE (kofi/patreon exclusive)

18+ / mdi

summary: what happens when two pretty tennis players you'd been keeping your eye on both beg for a bit of your attention?

content: softdom!reader, sub!chan, subish(?)!vernon, reimagined version of the hotel room scene, not rlly following the movie plot, afab reader, pwp, smut, making out, a tiny bit of mxm (only kissing), three-way kiss, dry humping, boob worship, oral (m receiving), handjob, penetrative sex, etc.

wc: 3674 (full fic)

a/n: since i havent written any extra content for my kofi nor patreon even though thats one of the benefits i decided to wip up this short challengers inspired fic!! i hope those of u who read it enjoy c:

masterlist

find full version on kofi or patreon!

"Are you on facebook?", Vernon stopped you before you could take your leave.

"What?"

"He's asking for your number. And so am I," interrupted Chan.

"You both want my number?," you tilted your head in amusement.

"Seems so," said Vernon, taking a drag from his cigarette.

"I'm not a homewrecker," you rebutted.

Chan chuckled, "We don't live together."

"It's an open relationship," added Vernon, "You're at the hotel in Flushing, right? We're in room 102. Come hang out with us later."

"What, want me to tuck you in?", you challenged.

Vernon smirked at this, but did not fall for your bait, "We can just keep talking – about tennis, of course."

You nodded with a chuckle, continuing to walk away from them and back to your family, ignoring any rebuttals coming from them as you left, knowing that you'd likely find yourself at their hotel room in a few hours.

That was the last exchange you had with the two boys during in the aftermath of an after party that was meant to celebrate your latest win. It was also repurposed to commemorate the future opening of your upcoming foundation.

When you had first arrived at the party, you had obviously expected a bit of attention from the attendees, – specially considering you were the guest and of honor – but you had not predicted that you'd end up bumping into two fellow players who you just happened to have taken an interest in a while back.

Their names were Vernon Chwe and Lee Chan, two pretty boys who had clearly reciprocated your interest immediately upon meeting you. You knew Vernon to be a beast when it came to tennis, something which made you develop a special type of respect for him. Chan was a little less confident in his abilities, but as a seasoned tennis player you knew that there was immense talent hidden in there.

Upon taking a break from dancing, both boys had approached you, falling into conversation with you very quickly. It didn't take a genius to realize the clear attraction they felt towards you, nor could you deny that their demeanor towards you drew you in. Before you were pulled away to sign some autographs, they had insisted you meet them by the beach once you were free from your duties, an offer which you decided to accept.

After about an hour of hanging out by the beach, you had figured out their dynamic a bit.

Vernon was the more confident of the two, clearly the leader of the duo. Chan was a little more awkward than Vernon, but he still carried an air of confidence to his person that you enjoyed. It was also easy to tell that both these men wanted the night to go in a less than friendly way – at least based off the way they stared at you all night.

You knew you'd likely have to end up making a choice when it came down to it, but did you really have to? They seemed close enough for you to enjoy them both at once, you just had to play your cards right.

~

Standing outside their door, you knocked, gluing your ear to the wood in order to take in the commotion going on inside.

The sound of scrambling and hushed rambles as they readied themselves for you was entertaining to say the least. They were clearly not actually expecting you to come see them, but you couldn't blame them – you liked to make your presence unpredictable.

Suddenly, their steps got closer to the door, causing you to unglue yourself from it as they opened it. Their breathless states matched one another as they greeted you with an awkward 'hi' and 'hey,' leading you in.

After drinking for a bit whilst lounging around on the floor of the hotel room, you began asking each other questions to get to know each other. You'd come to find that they'd known each other since they were tweens, attending the same private school together and even sharing a few intimate memories together – the retelling of Chan's first time jerking off while Vernon guided him was nothing less than adorable to you.

Your interest was peeked. Despite being in adamant denial about not being interested in each other in any way that went further than platonic, a twisted part of your brain could not help but want to test out how far they'd be willing to go with you whilst together.

"We're out of beer," you said after a slight lull in conversation, getting up as they both gazed at your legs shamelessly.

With enticing eyes, you went to take a seat on the bed, smirking as you spoke again, "C'mere."

"W-which one?", asked Chan with wide eyes as Vernon took the lead and went to sit next to you. Chan quickly followed after him, taking a seat on the other side of you.

...

find full version on kofi or patreon!

note: this is just an extra fic for the ppl who subscribed to my kofi or patreon! ill still be posting as i usually do on here c: (a full vernon fic is coming soon<3)

[dameronology]

liar (bucky barnes)

based on the paramore song of the same name lol a.k.a the one where bucky barnes is scared of his own feelings a.k.a jazz is back in her bucky era

warnings; language

enjoy!!

-jazz

Bucky Barnes had never considered himself a liar.

If anything, he had a hard time not telling the truth. It escaped from his mouth before he even had the chance to think about; no, Steve, I think your new hair cut sucks and sorry Sam, she wasn’t actually checking you out, she was waving at the guy behind you. Call it a product of his years as an assassin - because he couldn’t recall being this truthful back in the war - but it was part of who he was now. Sometimes he thought it meant he should come with a warning; something to say don’t pull the pin on this grenade, because he won’t lie to your mum about liking her food. Would that have been the worst Tinder bio ever? Yeah, no doubt.

Bucky had a hard time even lying to himself. That had become clear as soon as you whirl-whinded into his life. That day was still as crystal clear in his head six months later. It had been an early morning at the SHIELD HQ - the F-train had been delayed an hour and he’d come sprinting into a national security meeting, Starbucks in one hand (he was already late, he figured five minutes more for a frappuccino wouldn’t hurt) and a jumbled apology ready to offer. Then, not two seconds later, you’d come sprinting through the door, smacking into the back of him and launching the iced coffee from his hand, into the air, and straight into the lap of the British prime minister. 

Bucky was late, but you’d been even later. He liked that about you.

You were a whirl-wind in his life; his best friend from that day forward and the reason he could let go of the breath he’d been holding for so many years. Meetings were never boring with you, nor was the paperwork after long missions or the early starts. Every time he was late, he knew you’d take even longer because maybe his commute from Brooklyn was long but you lived three blocks away from work and managed to sleep through every goddamn alarm you’d set. 

It was clear about exactly three seconds after you met that you and Bucky were not destined to just be friends. You knew it and he knew it but neither of you wanted to talk about it. Avoiding the truth wasn’t necessarily lying - Bucky was thankful for that, because he knew that if you asked, everything would come out. He wasn’t ready for that. He wasn’t ready for love. 

So, you both left it to rest (and maybe to rot). 

“I hate meetings,” you grumbled. It was eight o’clock on a Monday morning and thanks to a national security threat, you once again found yourself in the SHIELD meeting room earlier than you felt to be natural. “Can’t they just put this in an email?”

“Probably,” Bucky replied. “Hi guys, there’s a terrorist threat. If you see something, say something. Lots of love, the security council.” 

You snorted. “Did you know I have all of their emails sent straight to my spam?”

“I would do the same but I can’t work out how the Facebook app works,” he muttered. “Why are there so many buttons? What are cookies?”

“Buck, why would you have the security council on Facebook?”

“Isn’t that…” he paused, scratching the back of his head. “Isn’t that where emails go?”

You dropped your head in your hands and let out a groan. “I only just got you used to Twitter. I’ll leave it a few weeks before I overwhelm you with any more social media apps.”

“What about TikTok?”

“I am never letting you download TikTok,” you said. 

“Sam said that I should make thirst traps-”

“- please no!” you cut him off. “Never take life advice from Sam.”

Sam was sat across the table from you, a scowl on his face. He was a morning person - hell, the man had already been for a run that morning - but the combination of you and Bucky at any point in the day was enough to drive him up the wall. He glanced between you both, brown eyes calculating for a second, before a grin spread across his face. 

“Don’t worry, he doesn’t,” Sam chirped. “Remember last week when I told you to do that thing, Buck?”

Bucky’s eyes widened. “Shut up, Sam.”

“What thing?” you frowned.

“It’s not mine to share,” Sam shrugged. “But based on the last five minutes’ worth of interactions alone? I think it would be best to listen to me-”

“- I swear to god if you don’t stop talking!” Bucky cut him off; then he glanced at you, blue eyes wavering for a second. “Don’t listen to him.”

Sam knew that he was doing; playing devil’s advocate because a) it meant he could piss off Bucky and b) hopefully get two of his best friends to finally get together after months of pining. It had gotten to the point where him and Steve had literal bets on it. Not necessarily on if you would get together, but more on when. 

“I’m not, but you’re acting weird,” you said. “Want to share with the class?”

“No,” Bucky firmly said.

“Buck,” you warned; it was clear by your voice that you weren’t fucking around. “I don’t know what immature high school bullshit is going on right now but I don’t appreciate it.” 

“I’ll talk to you about it later, okay?” he said. 

“You’re an ass,” you replied.

Picking up your bag and coffee, you shuffled over to the other side of the meeting table where Steve was sat. He hadn’t said a word in any of this; you quite often cursed the lack of boundaries amongst the four of you, but you couldn’t fault Steve that morning. He’d kept to himself, simply watching in awe at the chaos that had just unfolded. 

You stopped in the seat beside him, glancing over at him. “If you say a word, I’ll hit you.”

“I’m not saying anything,” he held up his hands in defense.

The meeting was quick, thankfully. Even worse, it definitely could have been put in an email. You also couldn’t help but notice the British diplomats watching your coffee carefully every time you moved - that was a joke you could have made to Bucky, had he not managed to get himself into your bad books.

You’d barely been out the board room five minutes before you were practically wrestling him by the ear into a quiet corner. The meeting had been quick, thankfully. It hadn’t felt that way for Bucky, who’d been sat opposite you the entire time, barely avoiding your dagger-y gaze. If looks could kill, his vibranium arm would have had a fair few dents in it. 

“So?” you asked. “What was that all about?”

“It’s nothing,” Bucky quickly replied. “I promise-”

“- bullshit!” you cut him off. “Why are you keeping things from me, Buck?”

“I’m not.”

“You are!” you exclaimed. “Look, I don’t even want to know what you and Sam were talking about but at least have the common decency not to keep me out of a conversation that’s about me!”

“Why aren’t you mad at Sam too?!”

“Believe me, I have it out for Sam too but it’s worse when this stuff comes from you!”

Bucky thinned his eyes at you. “Why?”

“You know why.”

He sighed, shifting from one foot to another. Eyes to the ceiling for a second, he took a deep breath. 

“Sam told me last week that I should ask you out,” he said. “Said something about how everyone around us can see what we don’t, and that we’re kidding ourselves, and…”

You sniffed, trying to stay composed. It had been a long time coming, there was no denying that. Bucky had been avoiding the conversation because he wasn’t ready but you’d been avoiding it because you were terrified of the answer. Rejection from literally anyone else in the world would have been fine, but from him? There was no metaphor for that pain, or that fear. 

“And what?” you asked. “What do you think of that?”

He shrugged. “I think it’s…”

You both waited for a second, the tension in the air almost suffocating.

“...dumb.”

Your eyebrows shot up. “Dumb?!”

“Yeah?” Bucky sounded unsure. “We’re best friends, and-”

“- that’s bullshit!” you snapped. “Buck, I know you can be confusing but…if there’s one thing I am certain of, it’s that we are not just best friends and you know it!”

“Do I?”

You took a step back, sniffing. “Yeah, you’re right. It’s dumb. Forget I said anything.”

“Wait, don’t be like that-”

“- it’s fine, James,” you sniffed. “I’ll see you around.”

“Are we good?”

“Yeah, we’re good.”

(You weren’t good.)

“Okay, I’m glad. Call me later, yeah?”

“Yeah, of course,” you forced a smile.

(You weren’t going to call him.)

–

Five days.

That’s the longest Bucky had gone without talking to you since he’d met you and also the exact amount of time you’d been ignoring him for. He’d given in calling you after three days, and considered coming around your apartment after four, but then he got a last minute call onto a mission where your name was at the top of the call sheet. Fab. 

Bucky liked to consider himself a good flier, but it certainly would have been easier to co-pilot a jet with someone who was actually willing to talk to him. It was quite amazing, actually, to see the lengths that you were willing to go to all in pursuit of icing him out. 

“This is Barnes to air traffic control on QJ564. We’ll be approaching our destination in about five minutes, currently at 10,000 feet, over.”

“This is ATC to QJ564, you’re cleared for landing in Munich, runway four. Over.”

“This is Barnes to ATC on QJ564. Runway four confirmed, thank you. Could you also tell my co-pilot that I’m sorry and that I miss them? Over.”

“Uh…this is ATC to QJ564. Barnes says he’s sorry and that he misses you. Over.”

“This is Barnes’ co-pilot on QJ564, tell him that I think he’s a cun-”

“- this is Captain Rogers monitoring the channels for suspicious activity from the headquarters. May I remind the pilots aboard QJ564 of the appropriate workplace manners over professional channels? Over.”

After Steve’s voice, the lines went silent. Bucky glanced over at you, eyebrows raised. 

“That was rude.”

You continued to ignore him, attention turned to landing the jet safety. It wasn’t hard - Tony Stark had built a jet that practically landed itself, but it was still a good enough excuse to blank out your best friend for the next five minutes. Still, none of that conversation was worth the absolute castigating you were about to receive from Captain America as soon as you were back in New York. He was no fun sometimes. 

With the jet safely on the runway, you parked up at the airport and made your way down to the tarmac where the agents were waiting. All you had to do now was await instructions from headquarters on what to do next. That gave you more empty time with Bucky, who was stood next to you. So, you moved away and leant against the wheels of the plane, pulling out your phone to play Doodle Jump.

The call came through eventually, but it was to Bucky’s radio instead of yours. 

“Right, agents,” he began, though it was more a sigh than anything. “Coulson is currently ten minutes out on another quinjet to lead the mission. Agent (Name) and I have been removed from this operation for the foreseeable future so that we can sit in the jet, man the communications systems and re-take the online seminar about appropriate workplace language.”

“What?!” you exclaimed. “Nice one, Barnes!”

Bucky forced a smile, trying not to crack up in front of the fifteen junior agents stood in front of you. “Why we have to retake it is a mystery to me.”

“Good luck out there, guys,” you huffed. With that, you spun around and stormed back on board the jet. 

Bucky was hot on your heels, closing up the door behind him as he went. He didn’t really know what to say - somehow he’d made you angrier, now - but apolgoising profusely felt like a pretty good place to start. 

“So you’re talking to me now?” he asked, following you through the fuselage. 

“No!”

“You just did!”

“Fuck off, Bucky!”

“And again!”

“Leave me alone!”

He grabbed your arm, stopping you in your tracks. “I’m sorry, okay?”

“Sorry doesn’t even begin to cut it,” you huffed.

Taking a seat, you curled your legs up in front of you. You didn’t try and swat (or hit) Bucky when he leant down in front of you, which he took as a good sign. It was time to pull out the big guns. 

“Can I talk for just…maybe five seconds, possibly ten, without you interrupting?”

You nodded.

“I didn’t mean to hurt you. I never want to hurt you because you’re the last person in the world I’d ever want to upset but I was put on the spot by what Sam said, and then by what you said, and it freaked me out a little,” he began. “You and I both know that he’s right - but never tell him I said that - and honestly, the silence you’ve given me over the last five days made me realise that more than ever.”

You smiled. “What are you saying, Buck?”

“I love you,” he said. It was plain and simple, completely without hesitation and entirely with conviction. “I’ve known that for a while but I just didn’t want to admit it to myself, but like I said…five days without you made me realise I don’t even want to go five seconds without you.”

“That’s how you apologise,” you gave him a watery grin, poking him in the chest. 

“So?”

“So what?”

“Anything you want to say to that?”

“Oh, yeah!” you exclaimed. “I love you too.”

Bucky pulled you into a kiss; he held you flush against him, one hand holding the back of your neck, metal one gripping the back of your tac-vest. Despite everything, he was warm and you were certain then that you were never going to let him - if not a little ecstatic that you’d found a new way to shut him up. 

You both jumped back when you heard the doors to the jet go, only to turn around and see Phil Coulson on the phone, a glare on his face.

“What is it with you two and inappropriate work place behaviour?”

[ailithnight]

A few notes:

I originally planned to have this one have a couple of povs like the first, but then u got carried away writing feral Danny so, just Tim today.

I hope to get the next one out sometime this weekend cause it's harder to write when I have work.

Also, everyone thank @cursedzucchini for writing the comment that gave me the executive function to take these words out of my brain and put them in my phone. Reading that there was someone out there checking the tag for updates every day really motivated me.

Now, without further ado

Chapter 1

A King in Arkham

Chapter 2

Tim sighs, rubbing his temples and attempting to will away the sleep deprivation headache currently pounding on the inside of his skull. Pushing 80 hours awake, the last 38 of which have been spent combing backwards through any and all Arkham documents pertaining to one Daniel James Fenton.

He moved his hands away from his head, placing them on the fresh cup of coffee that had materialized while he was massaging, giving a cursory "Thanks" the retreating body. Normally, Alfred would have cut Tim off from caffeine yesterday. But it seems even the old butler was keen on something being found to justify pulling the kid out of Arkham.

Or maybe that was Jason fueling Tim's addiction. Man had been hovering since Batman called him back at the last break out. At least Dick had been able to reason better with the most volatile of the Wayne siblings.

"Picking him up and running won't do either of you any favors, Little Wing. It'll just put him and Hood on wanted posters. If you want him to have any shot at a life out here, you gotta let Bruce take it through the proper channels."

That had at least prevented Jason from snapping on anyone immediately, though he had seen fit to warn everyone that of they didn't have something by the next break out, he'd be doing it his way.

Which is why Tim had spent the last day and a half poring over every medical record, therapy session, schedule, action report, and discipline slip Arkham had on file that even mentioned Patient 26B.

Meanwhile, Oracle had her hands full trying to find any background information on the young ward. A task which itself was proving challenging because the place the kid came from seemed to have no digital presence at all. None. Not a Facebook or Twitter or MySpace pinging from the area. Not an email address or YouTube account. Not a single god damned website. Not even a .gov! Hell, the only reason they knew the city's name is because it was listed in the CPS paperwork from Chicago.

In other places, small towns and communities in the middle of nowhere, this wouldn't really raise any red flags. But Amity Park was not actually a nowhere town. It certainly wasn't a Gotham or Metropolis. But it was big enough to have formed a conurbation with the nearby city of Elmerton. Which had a perfectly normal digital presence. So Amity Park's lack of digital presence screamed Communications Blackout. A frighteningly strong one to still be giving Oracle the run around almost 2 days later.

Once Tim was finished reviewing Arkham reports, then the 3 weeks of documents from Daniel's stay in Chicago, he'd probably offer to help her. Though she might tell him to go the fuck to sleep instead.

For now. Tim was nearing the beginning of the kid's Arkham stay and; on top of not yet finding any clues as to why the kid was in Arkham, nor anything that could possibly exonerate him; the kid just made no damn sense!

His therapy sessions were all the same dead end.

The therapist would ask he he was feeling. The kid would apparently shrug, or sometimes mumble something the therapists could never quite catch.

They'd ask the standard suicide questions. "Any thoughts of wishing you could go to sleep and not wake up?"

A shrug.

"Any thoughts of wanting to take your own life or wishing someone would take it for you?"

Vehenement refusal bordering on a panic attack.

Move on to the hurting people questions.

"Any thoughts of wanting to harm other people?"

"No." According to the doctors, his tone here is immediate, calm, confident. Truthful. If the Arkham psyches are to be believed.

"Any thoughts of wanting to harm yourself?"

"No." Slower, quieter, meeker. Noted as a clear lie, citing the injuries as evidence.

"Then why do you, Danny?"

"I don't."

"Then where did your injuries come from."

"The ghosts," said with a sigh

At this point, it seems Daniel shuts down. He says nothing else for the rest of the session. Shows no outward response as the therapist tries to convince him there are no ghosts and Daniel must be giving himself those injuries.

2 and a half months. Daily therapy sessions. And every single one is the exact same script. The only differences are some minor notes as Daniel is passed around between therapists as they all inevitably get frustrated talking to the emotionless block of ice.

Outside of the therapy sessions and medical reports documenting the frankly horrifying amount of injuries Danny accumulates, there's not much in his file. He follows all instructions to the letter; never causes trouble for guards or other inmates; and every single locks malfunction, he has afterward been found lying on his bed in his cell staring at the ceiling. If he was somewhere else when the malfunction happened, security footage catches him walking there himself. If he was already in his cell, footage keeps him there the whole time.

Tim sighs again, clicking out of the medical report detailing the nasty bruise that had appeared on the kid's lower left back, then opens up the next file up without reading the name fully expecting it to be another tedious therapy session report.

Instead, he finds a discipline slip with the relevant security clip embedded at the top. The first frame is of the cafeteria. Daniel is sitting alone at a table in the top right. Tim's breath catches in his throat as he recognizes the demented clown in the center of the frame. Hastily, he plays the clip.

There is no sound but Joker appears to say something to the room. Daniel is suddenly standing, whipped around to face the clown. The Joker turns towards him. Daniel tenses. The Joker tenses.

In the next second, Daniel is on the Joker. He's kicking, scratching, biting. Absolutely feral as he just reigns fury upon the most feared and hated rogue in all of Gotham. Surrounding inmates are fleeing to the sides of the room as the Joker seemingly tries to get away from the kid, only succeeding in moving the "fight" around the room. It's hardly a fight. More like a vicious, brutal assault. Inmates cheer as blood appears on the floor. Guards move in, pulling the feral 15 year old off of the Joker; who stays down, potentially unconscious. 2 guards go to help the one currently attempting to restrain Daniel. 6 more converge on the Joker, blocking him from view. As soon as he can no longer see the Joker, Daniel seems to go limp in the guards hands. Then he tenses again, though not struggling. Tim just catches the beginning stages of what seems to be a panic attack before the clip ends.

Tim stares dumbfounded at the screen for several moments. When he snaps out of it enough to actually read the incident report, it is a basic transcription of what Tim just witnessed with confirmation that Daniel had a panic attack immediately after. The report also notes that other than the panic attack, Daniel seemed to sustain no harm. He was disciplined with 3 days without cafeteria privileges, so his meals were brought to his cell, and 3 days without Crafts room privileges.

A note at the bottom of the report reads "To prevent further incidents, Patient 26B and the Joker are no longer permitted to be in the same room or yard."

This makes Tim click out of the discipline slip -without closing it, just moving it to a different section of the batcomputer's massive screen- and scan the rest of the files. There are 2 more. One from a week prior and one from Daniel's first dat at Arkham. He opens both, placing them at points on the screen so that all 3 are visible.

The one from the week prior shows the Crafts Room. Danny is again in an upper corner. Time plays it. The door opens. Joker walks in. Seems to look at Daniel, then rushes him. Daniel looks up before the Joker makes it half way across the room, then in the next second meets him there. Another feral fight only broken up by the guards when the Joker stops moving. Again, Danny goes limp as soon as the Joker is out of sight. The rest of the report confirming a panic attack but no injuries. 2 days lost privileges.

The report from Daniel's first day again shows the cafeteria. This time, Daniel is center frame. Joker comes up behind him. Daniel tenses but doesn't turn yet. Joker seems to be saying g something, then laughs. Daniel hunches in on himself, seeming to mumble a response. Whatever he said makes the Joker laugh harder. Then he leans down over Daniel's shoulder, talking. Daniel seems frozen for not even half a second before he suddenly pushes himself out of his seat, straight in to the Joker, twisting as he goes to begin the attack. Since it's obviously the first time, the rest of the cafeteria freezes. No one reacts for a solid 6 seconds. Then guards are moving in, hauling the teenager away. The Joker stands unsteadily then takes a knee. He has to be led limping out of the room. Guards struggle to restrain Daniel until the Joker is gone, whereafter Daniel goes boneless, then begins panicking. Report confirms panic attack and no injuries. 1 day lost privileges.

Tim stares at the batcomputer for several minutes, trying very hard to process what he has just learned. His brain feels like soup. He rubs his eyes, looks at his coffee, grabs a comm to put in his ear. His voice is strained as he speaks.

Anyone nearby who can come to the cave for a minute?

Jason responds instantly.

Upstairs. Find something?

I don't... know. I just. Someone come confirm I didn't just hallucinate what I just watched and read.

Red Robin? What did you find?

Not saying until someone else can confirm it.

Red Robin

On my way down.

.

"What the actual fuck?"

[alisonfelixwrites]

Informed consent: chapter 6

Word count: 10,707

Harry was a man addicted.

Even after just the few little kisses he and Mia had shared outside in the hall, he knew he’d never find anything like her ever again. Nor did he want to. This was it, she was it and he was completely fine with it.

His eyes followed along her figure as she opened up the door for them, tip-toeing inside before she unzipped her boots and I followed her example, taking off my shoes.

She took off her coat as well and revealed the pretty floral top she wore today. Silently, she padded over to one of the closed doors in the apartment and stopped in front of it, listening for a moment. Mia then turned around with a small smile, “Hazel’s asleep.” She whispered.

Harry smiled back and nodded, also taking off his coat. The apartment was mostly dark and Mia flicked on a few lights in the living area. After closing the glass door that separated the bedrooms from the kitchen and living room, she stopped walking on her toes and she stopped whispering.

Harry found it endearing how she cared for her roommate’s wellbeing, careful not to make too much noise around midnight. On the other hand, he found everything Mia did endearing.

“Do you want anything to drink?” She asked, the usual tone of innocence in her voice. Harry slowly walked around the room again as if it was his first time being here and glanced at her over his shoulder, “Are you having anything?”

Mia shrugged softly, “Maybe some tea?”

“Tea’s good.” Harry smiled back before sitting down on the couch. Silence ran between them and both started overthinking just a smidge. Outside the door, the mood was a little hot and intimate. Now Mia was in the kitchen, busying herself with the tea as Harry nervously rubbed his hands up and down his own jean-covered thighs.

Maybe she didn’t like the kiss as much as he thought? Maybe she only invited him in to be polite? Maybe she didn’t want to take it any further and this was just a nice goodbye?

Harry knew that out of the two of them, Mia was supposed to be the nervous wreck and he was supposed to be the rational one. But this girl just turned his life upside down and he couldn’t rely on any knowledge he knew about women. Mia just managed to turn him so nervous for some reason.

“Here you go.” She softly smiled, breaking his train of thoughts as she joined him on the couch, putting down the tray with cups and the steaming water, “D’you want the same as last time? I also have like – uh… green tea or black tea. Or jasmine.” Mia listed.

Harry offered her a gentle smile, his fingers clasped together in his lap to keep his hands from shaking, “’M good, love. What you gave me last time was good.”

“Okay.” Mia breathed, trying to keep her trembling hands under control as she poured them both a cup. The apartment was silent as they got comfortable on the large couch, a decent distance between them.

Mia wanted to be closer, but she didn’t know how to ask him or what to do. She was so shy and reserved and found it hard to initiate anything. She hoped she didn’t give Harry the idea that she wasn’t interested, it was just hard for her to take those first steps. She had appreciated that he had done that up until now, as the more experienced one and seemingly the one with the level head as she struggled to find words whenever he was near her.

“So how did you two find this place?” Harry questioned as his eyes went around the room. He admired the apartment from his seated position on this very comfortable couch. His dorm was nothing compared to this, but he also knew he paid about one third of the price Mia had to pay for rent.

Mia sat up on the couch a little, happy for the breaking of silence, “Hazel’s older sister used to live here and rented it for a few years when in uni. So then she moved out and Hazel got the first pick. And I responded to her Facebook message in one of those groups, you know?”

Harry nodded, “Yeah. That’s cool.”

“And then she invited me over to check it out and get to know her, and we hit it off quite quickly. I didn’t think she’d like me all that much. Hazel’s so bubbly and spontaneous and I’m very quiet, especially when meeting someone at first. But I brought her flowers and she was very surprised.”

“You brought her flowers?” Harry asked with raised brows and Mia nodded, “I did. As a thank-you that she invited me and gave me a chance to see the apartment in person.”

Harry’s grin grew, “Well then of course she picked you. A sweetheart like you showing up with a bouquet of flowers, bet she was sold immediately. Who wouldn’t be?” The compliment rolled off his tongue easily and Harry didn’t miss the way Mia blushed slightly at his words.

She had done the same thing when he called her sweetheart back at the restaurant, and he found it – once again – completely endearing.

“Would you be sold?” Mia picked up her bravery and dared making eye contact with Harry, who tilted his head to the side with a small smile, “If you showed up at my door with flowers? Of course. I might be a man but I love receiving flowers.”

Mia giggled under her breath and nodded, “Okay.”

“How about you?”

“Oh,” Mia lifted her head with a gentle smile, “I’ve never received flowers. But I guess I’d really like it if someone did that, it seems nice.” Mia wasn’t sure why, if she was honest. Flowers seemed like a stupid thing, something disposable. They sat in a vase for a while, looking pretty, until they welted and you had to throw them out. Yet somehow, she loved the idea and it felt romantic.

“We’re going to have to change that soon.” Harry mused and Mia blushed again. Her heart was drumming against her ribcage and her fingers mindlessly played with her hair. She couldn’t take her eyes off of Harry, who was so enchanting and mesmerising she wasn’t sure if she’d ever get used to how beautiful he was.

“You’re staring, love.” Harry teased playfully and Mia nibbled her lip, casting her eyes down, “Sorry.”

Harry scooted a little closer, “Don’t apologise. It’s cute.”

Mia felt her cheeks heating as she twisted her fingers around a little and Harry shuffled a little closer, his knee bumping into hers on the couch. The steaming cups of tea on the table were a little forgotten as Harry’s hand found Mia’s, and he gently stroked the tip of his pointer finger over her middle knuckle, “You’re so cute.” He sighed out.

Mia lifted her eyes, falling back into that dreamy state when looking at him. She melted into the couch a little, their eyes catching together. Mia sighed through her nose, “You’re very sweet, Harry.”

“Yeah?” He softly smiled, “Am I a sweetheart as well?”

Mia giggled a little and nodded, “Definitely.”

“Then I guess we’re a pair of sweethearts, the two of us.” He mumbled playfully. Mia hardly knew how to contain her giddiness and Harry licked his lips, “Am I sweet enough to get a little kiss from you?”

Mia’s heart skipped a beat. Actually, it skipped two beats. The first because she realised Harry wanted to kiss her again and the second was more of a heart skip in anxiety because he wanted her to kiss him. Mia had been nervous the entire time, but it helped that Harry just guided her through, but now he wanted her to take initiative and make the move.

Harry saw the anxiety written all over her face and brought his hand up to gently stroke two fingers down her jaw, “Hm? Y’tasted so sweet earlier, can’t get enough.” He murmured to coax her. Mia exhaled a shaky breath, everything inside of her screaming to just kiss him.

Mia stayed silent, trying to think of how she could ask Harry to take over, how she could explain that she didn’t even know how to do this, until he once more sensed the spiral in her brain and inhaled a breath, “D’you want me to close my eyes?”

Her heart rate calmed down just a tad as she offered him a small smile and nodded, “Yes, please.”

“Okay.” Harry chuckled before licking his lips and leaning back on the couch, closing his eyes softly.

Mia took a moment to look at him. Her cheeks were pink, knowing she was about to kiss him but for the first time she didn’t try to hide it. He couldn’t see her either way. His lashes rested gently on the tops of his cheeks, just a hint of a smile tugging on his lips as he waited for her to make her move.

Mia repositioned her legs, adjusting a little on the couch until she was closer to him.

With her breath in her throat, Mia leaned in until she was just inches from him. Harry swallowed thickly, sensing her presence as he could feel the lengths of her hair resting on his arms with her hovering over him. Mia puffed out a soft breath that hit his lips before she took the leap and quickly pecked his lips.

She pulled back with red cheeks and Harry threw his head back in a cackle. “Mia,” He laughed, still keeping his eyes closed, “c’mere and give me a proper kiss. I wasn’t prepared, couldn’t even kiss you back.”

Mia bit her lip to hide her smile and exhaled before doing it again, her lips tingly from the first short kiss she pressed to his lips. She licked her bottom lip, leaned in and closed her eyes too before joining their lips together again.

Harry was more prepared this time, puckering his lips back against her and his hand immediately came up to softly grasp her chin and keep Mia in place. She shuddered at the touch but melted into it, keeping their lips together. Harry savoured the feeling of Mia’s soft lips against his. She was a little reserved but it surprised him altogether that she went for it.

He could feel her balled hands holding her up next to his thigh, the position just slightly uncomfortable for her.

They pulled back for air, Harry’s eyes dancing over her face as he used his thumb to softly hold her chin. He moved it up, tracing her moist bottom lip as he panted out breaths. Mia stared intently in his eyes, cheeks flushed and breath completely stolen.

She buckled through one of her elbows with a surprised gasp and Harry’s touch slipped from her lip. Mia held herself up and fought her smile, “Sorry.” She giggled, breaking the tension a little. Harry’s fingers ran up her covered arm as he smiled back, “’S okay, love. You’re not too comfortable, are you?”

Mia softly shook her head before drawing a breath, “But I want to be close to you.” She softly pouted, her bottom lip jutting out and Harry just wanted to bite it.

Harry swooned as he smiled at her, “I want to be close to you too, sweetheart.” He crooned before tucking some hair behind her ear, “D’you want to sit on my lap?”

Mia wondered to herself how she was going to survive this night, and how she was going to survive him in general. Her breath came out in a little stutter before she managed a nod. Harry hummed, “Go ahead, love.”

With her lip tucked tightly between her teeth, Mia kept her eyes on Harry’s as she swung her leg over his thighs. She watched intently as he had his gaze focussed on the way her legs split for him, his breath caught in his throat. Mia dared moving one hand to his shoulder, now sitting on his thighs on the couch, straddling him.

The longer they stayed silent, the redder her cheeks became until Harry’s eyes reached hers again – after dragging up her body in the most slow, torturous pace. He exhaled a sharp breath, “How’s that?”

Mia shifted a little, putting more of her weight on Harry’s shoulder with her hand as she readjusted herself. Her bunny slippers plopped to the ground and the material of her slacks tightened around her legs, “Comfy.” She breathed out.

“You look so pretty.” Harry praised in a murmur, his eyes dragging from her split thighs up to her face – not without lingering a little on her chest which was more on his eye level now. Harry was thinking the most sinful thoughts and tried hard to keep them to himself.

Mia was worth the wait, she was worth everything, Harry decided. But that didn’t mean he wasn’t growing hard in his pants just from her sitting on his lap like he had dreamed of. He wanted to take off her top with his teeth and have her whining out his name in that pouty voice of hers, begging for him as she ran her fingers through his hair and he had his lips around her nipple.

Harry exhaled a shaky breath and gently placed his palms down on the length of Mia’s thighs, keeping his eyes on her face, “This okay?”

She tensed up a little, partly because the touch sort of tickled her. She blushed a soft pink before nodding, “Yes.”

Harry shot her a gentle smile, “Good.”

Mia took a breath and licked her lip, “Can I kiss you again?”

“Of course, m’love. I want nothing more.” Harry’s grin grew, his dimples showing and Mia smiled back with a tinge of nervosity in it. Harry gently kneaded her thighs and then moved one hand to her free one, gently guiding it up to his shoulder too. Mia felt comfortable in the position, a little elevated from Harry as she sat perched up on his lap with her hands on his shoulders.

She bowed her head a little and leaned down just as Harry tilted his chin up, and they met in the middle. She sunk into him completely, fingers digging into his shoulders as their lips folded over one another. Harry felt him gripping her thighs a little harder as his eyes fluttered close and he kissed Mia back.

Slowly but surely, he dared slipping his palms up to her back. Mia left breathless kisses on Harry’s waiting lips, her body arching into him more as her form fitted his and they were flush together on the couch. Mia had never felt closer to another person.

They drew back for air, one of her hands now in his neck and the other on his shoulder. Her hair fell around them a little like a curtain and Harry bumped his nose into hers, catching her panting breaths between his lips, “Y’gonna let me in, love?”

Mia swallowed through the dryness in her throat, feeling his fingers dancing up her spine. She was going crazy. Her brain was exploding, her body was liquified and she couldn’t even think straight or speak, just nod. She was going to nod to whatever he suggested at this point, she just knew she wanted more of this, more of him.

She assumed that by letting him in, he meant he’d try the same thing he did outside the door when they first kissed. She nodded, their lips continuously brushing together. Harry hummed at her agreement, “Just let me do the work, yeah? Don’t have to do a thing, sweetheart. Jus’ open your lips a little for me, need to taste you.”

Mia swallowed down a moan that was threatening to spill from her mouth, and she arched more into him. Her breasts were pushed into his chest and Harry kept her close with his arms around her. She nodded again, “Y-Yes.” She whispered against his mouth, eyes still closed.

Harry rewarded her with a slight squeeze closer to his body and Mia keened into the touch, slipping her fingers up into his hair which made Harry tremble. He kept his eyes on her closed ones for a second before kissing her again. His lips smeared against hers, easily finding one another by now and he got her comfortable for a bit until dragging the tip of his tongue across her bottom lip again.

Mia felt the throbbing between her legs intensifying with the movement and involuntarily pressed herself down on Harry’s thighs, her fingers tightening in his hair before she used her final braincell to part her lips just a smidge.

Harry sighed through his nose when he felt it, easily slipping his tongue into her mouth to lick into her. Mia wasn’t sure what to do, but she wasn’t nervous anymore. Harry guided her through it, her lips following the shape of his as he opened and closed and with each open, he gently rolled his tongue inside of her mouth, licking over the roof and finding her own tongue.

Mia pressed herself closer into his chest, head tilted to the side as she felt dizzy upon feeling his wet tongue massage her own. She dared pushing her own tongue out to give him something back, and Harry grunted from the back of his throat as a response.

It spurred Mia on, trying again to kiss him back with each parting of his lips. Eventually they broke apart with a little smack to catch their breaths. Spit slicked lips and harsh breaths filled the room as Harry moaned softly, pressing his mouth to the column of her throat. His hand had travelled higher to tangle in her hair and his other one was in a more daring place – on her ass cheek that he could about fit in his entire palm. And Mia wasn’t even thinking of stopping him, she loved his hands on her too much to ever deny it.

Harry kissed up the side of her throat and her jaw, eventually kissing her bottom lip a few times and Mia leaned down before they were caught in another making out session. Harry gripped her ass and Mia involuntarily scooted up in his lap a little. She was fully hunched over him as Harry held her, and she had never felt more confident or sexy.

He was still taking the lead – which she was grateful for – but she was on top and somehow had the superior position. She knew Harry could throw her around like a rag doll if he really wanted to, but she felt sexy like this.

Scooting and shifting on his lap made Harry tense as he emitted another groan at her fidgeting and Mia’s eyes suddenly shot open when she felt the hardness against her thigh. 

She pulled back from the kiss sharply with wide eyes, and Harry lazily caught on with half-open eyes, moving his head along with hers, chasing her lips with his own. They were moist and pink and he pecked her lips once, “Sorry.” He panted, clearly already aware of why she was so surprised.

Mia caught her breath and stared down between them, seeing the bulge in Harry’s pants into his left leg. She nibbled her swollen lip, “A-Are you – uh…”

“Yeah.” Harry sighed while nodding, gently palming her waist, “’M sorry, love. Tried to stop it, I really did, but I can’t help it. Not when you’re kissing me like that and looking like this. I just really, really want you.” He murmured, leaning up again to catch her in a small kiss.

Mia wasn’t sure what to answer and Harry moved one hand up to cup her cheek, tracing his thumb over her wet lip, “’M not expecting anything, sweetheart. No worries. It’ll go away.”

“I-I’m not –“ Mia interrupted herself with a thick swallow, “I’m not ready for that.”

“I know.” Harry nodded, “I know, and that’s okay. We’re not in a rush, are we? Got all the time in the world.”

Mia felt herself relaxing a bit and nodded at his words, “Okay. Are you – uh… are you okay with that?”

Harry offered her a gentle smile and kissed her jaw, “Of course, m’love. I’m okay with anything if it’s with you. We don’t need to do anything until you’re comfortable and ready.”

Mia exhaled a relieved breath and then realised she was stroking her fingers through his hair without realising. She felt close to him, leaned all the way into him with their bodies pressed together. It was warm and comforting and safe and she puckered her lips softly to kiss the high of his cheekbone. She felt him smiling as he responded by kissing her jaw again.

“And… how many people have you… you know?” Mia carefully asked. She wasn’t sure if she wanted to know the answer, but on the other hand she felt like there was no right or wrong. Harry had only known her a few weeks and he was good looking, charming and young. She couldn’t hold it against him for experimenting and having experiences.

He chuckled into her throat as he slid his palms up her back again, “How many people have I been with?”

“Yes.” Mia squeaked out. Harry hummed, “Uh… eight, I think. Yeah, eight.” He settled on answering. 

Mia’s brows raised, “Oh.”

“Oh?” Harry snickered, “Is that a good or a bad ‘oh’?” He used his hands to pull Mia back, who abandoned her hand in his hair to tuck her own behind her ear and fiddle with the earring in her lobe – a nervous trait of hers that Harry had already caught on. She nibbled her lip and shrugged, “Just neutral. I-I don’t know, I was just curious. I’ve never – uh… I’ve never been with anyone.” She confessed in a whisper.

Harry smiled softly, “Why do you say that like it’s a bad thing, hm? I don’t care about that, Mia. You’re young and you just got to uni, it’s really not that exceptional that you haven’t slept with anyone. I have friends who haven’t taken that step, who wait for the right person or who just don’t feel like doing it. Everyone should just choose for themselves.”

Mia once more found herself surprised with Harry’s extremely laid-back reaction to anything she had ever been nervous about confessing to him. Her dyslexia, her asking him to read the menu, her not having kissed anyone and her being a virgin. She wasn’t sure what reactions she had expected, but Harry just made her feel so safe that she knew she could trust him.

She nodded at his words, feeling a little more confident already, “And when did you have your first time?”

He leaned back again in thought, puckering his lips, “Like a few weeks before I turned nineteen. Around new year’s, I think. I had been at uni for a few months by that time, in my first year.”

Mia felt loads better about herself. Harry had been with eight people in the timespan of nearly two years. Somehow she always thought she was really old to still be a virgin, like there was some clock hanging above her head and society pushed her into having sex and getting it over with. Mia had never been particularly interested in sex before meeting Harry, who just made her feel things she had never experienced before.

“Like I said, no need to rush.” Harry softly murmured, “We can take it slow, I’m completely fine with that.”

Mia smiled down at him, “Thank you.” She piped out, shortly kissing him again. Her toes curled from the sensation of having his lips against hers, and she just knew that by the time he walked out the door to go to sleep, she’d miss the feeling of him this close.

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

Mia couldn’t wipe the smile off of her face when she woke up the next morning. Her phone lit up with messages from Hazel – who was just in the other room – asking her if she could come in or if Harry was in Mia’s bed.

Mia blushed at the words and nibbled her lip, typing a message back to say that Harry went to sleep at his own place and that Mia was by herself, bundled in the warm covers. She wished Harry had stayed the night but once again found herself too shy to suggest anything like that.

She wasn’t exactly sure how to navigate this thing. She liked kissing him and feeling him close, but grew anxious at the thought of anything more than that – although it also excited her. Mia wasn’t sure if it was a right move to reject him the one second and invite him to stay the night the other.

So she got in her head and let him leave when they had been kissing for what felt like hours. She grew a little more confident in it, still letting Harry guide her through but her fingers had toyed with his soft hair and she learned he really liked that. Harry’s palms had constantly spread over her back or her thighs, with sometimes one palm dropping to the curve of her ass to assist her a little in shifting on his lap.

The bulge in his jeans that pressed against her thigh, hadn’t left until he did. She grew a little more used to it over time but had to admit it freaked her out at first. 

She didn’t expect it to be so… hard. It seemed painful, but Harry didn’t complain. He just held her close, took pleasure in licking into her mouth and pulling her through breathless kisses, and didn’t complain once about her weight on his legs.

Mia bit her lip with a wide smile when she noticed that even before Hazel spammed her with an array of messages – most of which just containing question marks and smirky emojis – she also had a text from Harry.

Message from: H. Sinclair

Good morning, beautiful. Had a good sleep? Xx

Mia giggled with her face buried into the covers, kicking her feet as she drew a breath, typing back.

Message to: H. Sinclair

Good morning, Harry :). I did, I just woke up. How about you? Xx

A knock on the door made Mia lock her phone, and she turned around in her bed before sitting up a little, “Come in, Hazel.”

The door opened with Hazel’s wide grin being the first thing Mia saw. Hazel poked her head in, “Hi.”

Mia giggled and wrapped my sheets around her body a little more, “Hi.”

Hazel squealed and ran in, jumping on the bed before getting under the covers on the other end. Mia smiled widely at her, both on their sides in the double bed. Hazel’s teeth shivered softly and she bundled the comforter around her a bit more, “Fuck, it’s such a cold day.”

“Hazel.” Mia scolded her cursing and she rolled her eyes, “Tell me how it went! I slept with ear plugs, you know, just in case you guys decided to do the nasty.”

Mia blushed at that, “Stop, we didn’t.”

“But you’re smiling either way.” She teased and Mia couldn’t hide her lips as they curled up high in a genuine smile, “I like him so much.” She confessed in a whisper.

Hazel squealed again and Mia giggled as she scooted a little closer, “Okay, okay, tell me everything.”

She told Hazel about Harry picking her up and taking them to that Italian restaurant. Mia of course didn’t let out the little detail about Harry being a perfect gentleman and offering to hold her freezing hand and tuck it both into his pocket.

Hazel gasped at that, praising Harry for being so respectful and said it sounded like something out of a movie. Mia found herself agreeing completely, because that was how it felt like. How he felt like. Mia told her about how she asked him to read her the menu and how Harry didn’t even question it but just did so without missing a beat. Hazel swooned over that as well and Mia blushed pink as she relived the entire dreamy night.

She continued how they talked about everything school and choices, how she spoke a little about her parents and Daniel and how he said that thing about butterflies. Mia couldn’t remember it very well because her ears had been so fuzzy while staring at him. His mouth just moved in such a mesmerising way, his teeth on display as he smiled wide and the dimples popping. It was almost enough to make her faint every time. 

“So then he walked me back here after we shared some dessert.”

“What’d you have?” Hazel interrupted them and Mia took a breath, “Red velvet cake.”

Hazel’s lips formed an ‘o’ as she broke out into a smirk, “That’s such a sexy dessert, damn Mia.”

“Oh, hush.” Mia chuckled before licking her lip, “Harry paid for dinner and promised me I could pay next time, and t-“

“So there’s gonna be a next time?!” Hazel gasped, once more interrupting Mia in all her enthusiasm. Mia grinned at her excitement and nodded, “I definitely hope so.”

“Continue, continue.” Hazel urged her, her glasses sitting a little funny on her nose as she laid on her side and the pillow squished them a little. Mia smiled, “Harry walked me home, went up to the door… and he kissed me.”

“He kissed you?!” Hazel exclaimed. Mia screwed her eyes shut with a loud giggle, “I know!”

“Oh my god! Fuck! Mia! Fuck!” Hazel cursed and Mia laughed out loud at Hazel’s inability to keep the nasty words down in pure excitement. Hazel nearly bounced on the bed, “Tell me more!”

“Okay, so,” Mia smiled, “he was really gentle about it, asked me if he could kiss me and I said yes.”

“Oh my god.”

“And then he suggested we went inside because the lights kept going on and off in the hallway. You know how they’re automatic and all, it’s actually really annoying.” Mia continued and Hazel eagerly nodded, “I know, I know. What happened next?!”

Mia blushed softly, “So – uh, we came in and sat on the couch for some tea. And we spoke a little and then he asked me if I wanted to kiss him. And I said yes, so he closed his eyes and – uh, I kissed him.”

“Oh my god.” Hazel repeated and Mia chuckled, “A-And then…” She drew a breath while turning pink, “I got on his lap.”

“Oh my god!” Hazel gasped this time.

“And we kissed more. Like… intense.” Mia punctuated it and Hazel’s eyes nealyr popped out of her head, “You snogged?!”

Mia hid her face and Hazel continued cursing out. Mia nearly choked on her giggles and pushed the comforter down below her chin, “He – uh, like really guided me through it. It was so nice, Hazel. He was so patient and sweet. He’s just so sweet.” Mia sighed dreamily.

“Well, fuck,” Hazel laughed, “I didn’t expect this.”

Mia nibbled her lip with a grin, “You didn’t?”

“Not really.” Hazel shrugged, “I mean, I didn’t think you’d like him that much, I would’ve thought him to not really be your type. But I guess that’s just… first impressions. Like the two of you just look so different, y’know? He’s all dark and tattoos and you’re basically a representation of bubblegum pink.”

Mia’s smile slowly faltered as she took in Hazel’s words, “Huh.” She murmured.

“But that’s good!” Hazel countered, “Like you’re exploring and he’s surprising you and you’re probably surprising him!”

But Hazel had somehow planted a seed in Mia’s brain and she wasn’t sure how to handle these emotions. This insecurity. Mia didn’t think she had a type. She knew she didn’t particularly find Daniel attractive, but also felt like that had more to do with his personality and how he carried himself. Harry was just so interesting. And smart. 

But, Mia realised, maybe she wasn’t his type. Mia was a class one overthinker and she knew that. Stupid things could keep her up, could make her worry, to the point she blew it out of proportion. She spun out and exaggerated things for herself, making an elephant out of a mosquito while she was unable to look at certain things from a distance or a different perspective.

Hazel was often the one to make her realise that things weren’t even half as bad as Mia had made them out to be in her head. Like when she was scared the entire cafeteria had heard her dropping her bottle of water before she picked it up with pink cheeks. Or how the entire school must’ve heard that she missed that final step and sort of clumsily stumbled down it. 

Whenever she saw that disappointment in her parent’s eyes after giving them certain news, Mia often lost sleep for weeks. Approval was truly what she lived for, some sort of validation. She thrived on it, receiving praise. 

She wondered if Harry’s stomach would still contract with butterflies if he got to know that side of her. Mia knew she wasn’t able to conceal it, at least not for long. 

Maybe Hazel was right. Maybe they were an unconventional match and whoever saw them together probably thought they didn’t fit and it wouldn’t last. Maybe Harry only liked the superficial layer of her that he had gotten to know.

Even though Mia tried to come to terms with her imperfections – and she had loads of them – she wasn’t sure if others wanted to learn them too. If Harry would appreciate her being not so perfect every once in a while. This anxiety about it mostly stemmed from her parents. Who did not approve of her being imperfect, even for the smallest of moments.

It was exhausting. And she wanted to shine bright for Harry, but she wouldn’t be able to do that at all times. Everything he had learned about her so far, he seemed perfectly happy with. Even the little parts she was less proud of, or maybe he was just good at concealing his reactions and was now complaining about it to his friends, about how he was stuck with this girl now after one date.

Mia shuddered in discomfort as the uncomfortable thoughts took shape and nestled in the far ends of her mind, clamping them into her veins as they sprouted and refused to leave. There wasn’t really an escape.

Hazel desperately tried to pull Mia from her train of thoughts, but she had boarded and had fastened the seat belt and was now steaming towards an unknown destination. She nodded and tried to follow along with what Hazel was saying, but it wasn’t really any use.

It wasn’t any use until a few hours later, when someone rang the doorbell.

Mia was hunched over her desk with papers scattered around. Her head already hurt from focussing on the letters so much while she tried to get through a particularly hard and boring lesson from earlier this week. She had zoned out a bit during it – her thoughts drifting to Harry obviously – but now had to catch up on it.

Her hair was in its signature braid as she wore cosy sweatpants with bunnies on them in pastel colours, matching her fluffy bunny slippers.

“Mia!” Hazel’s voice called from the hallway. Mia pulled the pink sparkly pen from between her lips, holding it safe there as she rummaged her notes for a particular quote she had trouble remembering. The pen dropped on the desk and Mia brushed the fly aways out of her vision before she padded over to the door of her bedroom to open it up.

Hazel’s grin was wide as ever and Harry had soft pink cheeks, matching the bouquet of flowers in his hand that was filled with a bunch of wildflowers in different shades of pink.

Mia stood frozen in the doorway, staring at Harry who was in her apartment in his winter wear. She recognized the signature beanie on top of his head to tame the curls.

“H-Hi.” Harry stupidly mumbled.

At this point, he really felt like he should’ve stayed home instead of listening to his idiot friends.

When Harry came home last night with the widest smile on his face, most of them were just returning from another night at the bar. He had ignored their texts all night – begging him to bring Mia to the bar with him and end their date there. He refused. Instead, he was melted into her on the couch with their tongues softly rubbing against one another.

It was Harry’s personal dream, having Mia curled up on his lap with her little breaths hitting his cheeks and her warm hands in his hair. He could’ve stayed like that forever, but inviting himself to stay the night just felt a little too blunt.

It was clear Mia wasn’t ready for anything sexual right about now. She needed time to get to know Harry, and that meant taking slow steps. He didn’t mind, just tried to be careful not to push her boundaries.

Maybe showing up the very next day with his coat dripping wet and a bouquet of flowers in his hands, was pushing her boundaries. He wasn’t sure. His friends had pushed him to do so, had begged him to make her his girlfriend. He had spent hours gushing about Mia after his date, for once not able to even keep his mouth shut even if they usually referred to him as the quiet one.

Liam, Louis, Niall and Zayn all sat with their eyes wide and their mouths open, silent on the couch with half empty beers on their laps as Harry told them all about his dinner with Mia, them both explaining their feelings and then walking her to the apartment where they shared a few little kisses.

He didn’t tell them he got a boner in his pants after about six seconds and it didn’t go away all night. Only on his walk back through the cold campus, his body relaxed a little even though he also missed her. He had sent her another text once he reached home and she replied, still awake to make sure he got home safely.

She was a true sweetheart, he had no other words for her.

And so his friends noticed his giddiness, his deep dimples, his fiddling fingers as he spoke about her with an excitement they had never seen in him before. And they urged him not to wait another second and make her his girlfriend. Immediately.

So Harry was a man on a mission, texting Mia to let her know he was shortly dropping by to see her. He now realised she probably never read that message. The look of shock on her face contrasted to the giddiness and smirk on Hazel’s.

Harry flicked her eyes to Mia’s friend, and she seemingly got the hint, clearing her throat, “I’ll be in my room.” Hazel announced before slowly slipping backwards and disappearing through another door. Harry had no doubt she was on the other side of it with her ear pressed to the wood.

“Harry…” Mia exhaled, biting her lip as she blushed and shifted on her feet, suddenly very aware that she wore the most horrendous outfit and wasn’t really prepared to see anyone, “Hi.” She settled on saying.

“I texted.” He blurted out, his heart hammering violently before he swallowed, “that I was coming over. B-But you were probably studying.”

Mia flicked her braid over her shoulder to rest on her back, “I was.” She felt a little flustered at his sudden appearance, but the shyness in his eyes softened her up like nothing else, “Aren’t you cold?” She softly asked.

Harry glanced down to his wet coat, “Uh, yeah, a little. It’s nice and warm here.”

“Come in.” Mia ushered him, padding over in her bunny slippers to close the door behind him and keep the warmth inside. Harry took steps inside, his shoes squeaking on the hardwood floors of Mia and Hazel’s apartment. He flushed a little pink as he licked his lips, nerves taking over.

Although he and Mia had been honest with one another last night – about both feeling butterflies and liking one another – it was still all new and fresh and they still hardly knew one another. He wasn’t sure how she dealt with surprises or if she was maybe focussed on her studying and didn’t appreciate the interruption.

“These are for you.” Harry murmured, shyly holding out the bouquet. He had picked out a soft pink, somehow not thinking twice when the man at the flower shop showed him the array of colours he could pick from. Mia blushed the same shade of pink and Harry instantly remembered why he was so drawn to that specific shade as he smiled softly.

Mia bit her lip while very gently taking the bouquet from his hands, “You got me flowers? Harry… Thank you. These are so beautiful.”

His heart nearly sighed in relief when he watched how she carefully let her eyes trail over the delicate flowers. He scratched the back of his neck now that he had his hands free, “You – you mentioned how you’d never gotten flowers before.”

Mia lifted her eyes in surprise, smiling softly, “I did.” She murmured, almost in disbelief that he remembered that part of their many conversations last night. Mia suddenly felt breathless, taking a quick step towards Harry before she noticed how wide his eyes got at the sudden close contact.

Her hand tightly held around the stem of the pink flowers, she stood up on her toes in an attempt to reach him, but could barely fit her lips against the hinge of his jaw. She was redder than the flowers upon plopping back down on the full soles of her feet and Harry exhaled a trembling breath, “Uh – I’m glad you like them.”

Mia licked her dry lips. All the confidence she had felt and had mustered up to kiss Harry – even if it was just on the jaw – had left her body like she had used it all up. The dark thoughts from the earlier morning kept ringing in her head but they were overpowered with admiration for Harry, who braved the rain to walk all the way to her apartment with flowers, no less. 

He listened to her. And her heart fluttered. Warmth flooded her and she offered him a genuine smile, one Harry returned immediately. His hand found her waist as he gently squeezed, and they felt like them again. Like no time had passed and Harry hadn’t left to go to his own home tonight.

Mia tucked a strand of loose hair behind her ear, “I’ll go put these in water. Do you want something to drink?”

Harry shrugged off his coat and shucked off his shoes, feeling right at ease now that they had passed through the awkward few first minutes of his surprise and Mia seemingly sort of dropped the invisible walls she had built up in the hours of them being separated. Harry took his beanie off too, running his fingers through his hair, “No, thanks. Smells great here, though.”

“Oh,” Mia’s voice came from the kitchen where Harry found her rummaging the cabinets for a vase, “I made soup a few days ago and we had some for lunch.”

His ears perked up, “Really?”

“Yeah.” Mia smiled, “you want some?”

Harry nibbled his lip, “I don’t want to overstep.” And Mia chuckled softly, “You’re not, I’m offering.”

He smiled and nodded, before noticing her struggle. Mia balanced on her tippy toes while her fingers desperately clawed for a vase on the top shelf. Harry snickered and approached her, “And I’m offering to take this for you. Step aside, sweetheart.”

Mia sighed in defeat and watched in envy as Harry easily reached for it – not even having to stretch all the way. It did give her a glimpse of his jumper riding up a bit and showing off a bit more ink on his tummy that she could only spot for a split second before he turned around with the vase, “Here you go.”

“Thank you.”

Handing her the vase, Harry didn’t immediately let go. Their hands clutched together around the vase and Harry made the split decision to lean down and press a short kiss to Mia’s lips, suspecting it’s what she tried earlier but her height was no match for his.

Mia blushed and smiled against his lips and Harry returned the easy grin before letting go of the vase. They were easy around one another now. And it felt normal and absolutely lovely. Something Harry could get used to.

He watched as Mia arranged the flowers in the vase, doting over how beautiful they were and how grateful she was as Harry brought spoonfuls of delicious homemade soup to his mouth. Mia loosened up after her initial shock of seeing Harry here.

Her headache miraculously disappeared as she sat at the table next to him and he rubbed gentle circles into her lower back as she explained something about a group assignment to him. Harry listened to Mia speaking with perked ears. She could talk about whatever, he was addicted to her voice and listening to her as she explained things passionately.

Hearing her talk about a group assignment was actually a little amusing. He could sense the frustration in her tone as Mia went on about one person in the group project who didn’t really participate. 

And he just wanted to kiss her, so he did. Mia didn’t mind that Harry cut her off in the middle of her sentence in favour of pressing his mouth to hers. He tasted like her soup and the entirety of the moment felt incredibly intimate to her.

Her chair scraped over the floor a little as Harry’s hands easily found her thighs and hoisted her back onto his lap to straddle him as if she was weightless. Mia’s legs dangled on each side of Harry’s thighs, hovering just above the ground as she instinctively wrapped her arms around his neck.

He hummed into her mouth, working her up to it softly for a bit before slipping his tongue back into her warm mouth. Mia keened into him, arching her back without really realising she wasn’t wearing a bra.

Through the layers of clothes, Harry could feel her nipples against his chest and he only pulled her closer. His arms were tight around her form as they melted together, an easy and gentle kiss shared between them with a lot less nerves than a few hours prior.

“These pants are very cute, Mia.” Harry teased in a breath against her lips. Mia giggled and buried her face into his neck, a gesture that made Harry fly on a cloud as pink as the flowers he got her. He was floating with her, always. 

“I wasn’t expecting company.” She whispered back, a gentle stroke of her fingers through his neck made Harry shudder. He pouted at her softly and Mia’s gaze dropped to his moist lip as Harry exhaled a breath, “’M sorry, I texted you… Wanted to see you.” He leaned in to speak against her lips, feeling like he didn’t want to be any further from her than about half an inch.

Mia nudged her nose against his affectionately, “No, I know. It’s so sweet. You showing up here, the flowers…” She sighed out, “You’re so sweet.”

“Only for you.” He admitted softly and they kissed again. The grip they had on one another was nearly painful and Harry kissed her cheek once, “Did I interrupt your studying?”

“Not really.” Mia shook her head, “I was just revising.”

“Need my help?” Harry offered, sliding his palms up her thighs. Mia wanted to moan.

She arched into him more, “Maybe. Do you – uh… do you want to go to my room for a bit? Or do you need to be anywhere?”

Harry’s heart did a backflip as he tightened his fingers into Mia’s thighs. He had wished for her to invite him over last night, just so they could cuddle and kiss and spend a night together – something so vulnerable he had hardly ever done before with someone. He couldn’t imagine waking up to someone that wasn’t Mia. Whenever he had in the past, he had felt annoyed.

Annoyed by how the other girl took up too much of his bed or numbed his arm or had all her hair in his face. Right now he’d let Mia do all three things to him and he’d thank her on his knees.

He was a man addicted.

“I’d love to.” He murmured, softly kissing her once. Mia smiled and gently kneaded his shoulder, “Okay.”

She was about to get up but Harry grabbed her hip and kept her down. Mia faced him with a small wondering frown and Harry drew a breath, “Before we go, I-I wanted to ask you something.”

“Oh?” Mia pulled back with her brows softly raised “Sure, go ahead.”

Harry cleared his throat softly, and Mia’s mind spun again with all different scenarios of what his words might be. The first one as bad as the next and each ending with her heartbroken and crying. What he actually said though, made her gasp softly in surprise.

“I was wondering i-if I could be your boyfriend.” He murmured.

“Oh, Harry.” Mia smiled, her heart beating out of her chest to be closer to his. She bashfully cupped his cheeks and surprised him with a firm yet soft kiss to his lips, one that had her blushing herself at how blunt she suddenly was. Her cheeks were lifted high in a sweet smile that made Harry sigh out dreamily.

“Of course. I’d love that.” She murmured. Harry smiled back, “Yeah?”

“Yeah.” Mia giggled, “To be honest, in my mind, you already were.”

Harry chuckled, “Really? When did I pass that test?”

Mia puckered her lips in thought, “Probably when you asked me out.”

“So I’ve been your boyfriend for all of two days?”

She threw her head back with a giggle, Harry gently squeezing her ribs as they expanded with her laughter. Mia and him stayed entwined for a few more minutes before deciding to go to her room. She carefully placed Harry’s used soup bowl into the dishwasher and even grabbed a tablecloth to clean off where the bowl had been on the table. 

He admired her care for the space she shared with Hazel and it was clear that Mia and her both tried to make the other just as comfortable in the apartment while both still learning how to live together.

And then he followed Mia – his girlfriend – into her bedroom. The space felt warm and was lit up by her desk light shining down on the chaos of notes and textbooks on her cluttered desk. 

Mia was a bit of a neat freak and she liked control. Harry could tell that much. So seeing her desk in that state was a little heartbreaking because it only went to show that she was struggling with that part of her life.

He stood behind her as she tried desperately to clean up a little. His hands on her shoulders, his lips on her temple like he had done it all her life and they were a married couple, “’S okay, sweetheart. You don’t have to clean up for me.”

Mia’s shoulders dropped a little in relief. It was the perfectionism she tried to uphold, but a glance over her shoulder didn’t show disappointment or disgust in Harry’s eyes at a part of her life that she was attempting to navigate.

She exhaled a small yawn and he affectionately turned her around and tucked some hair behind her ears, “Are you tired?”

Even though Mia was a girl untouched, Harry’s gentle fingers didn’t make her flinch or didn’t cause her anxiety to spike. She felt safe and comfortable around him, and part of that was definitely because she had drilled into her brain that he wasn’t expecting anything from her.

He hadn’t run for the hills last night when she said she didn’t want to sleep with him. Yet. If anything, he did the opposite. He stayed for hours, satisfied with just kissing and then showed up today without her having to ask, bringing her flowers.

He was an angel, Mia decided. And it felt too good to be true, he was the kind of man she read about or saw in movies. Her own personal McDreamy, her own version of him. And McSteamy too. All in one.

Mia nodded a little at Harry’s question, “Yeah, a bit. And it’s so boring.”

He offered her a lopsided smile, “I can imagine. D’you want to lie down for a minute and talk?”

Mia bit her lip, thinking of getting in the bed. With Harry. In one bed. She drew a sharp breath and forced a nod, “Okay.” She squeaked out, trying to hide her nerves. Mia padded over to her side of the bed, undoing the covers and sliding underneath them as she abandoned her bunny slippers on the floors.

Harry stood at the other end of the bed with an unsure look in his eyes, “Do you want me to get under the covers too?" He asked softly.

Mia pushed herself up on her elbow and opened up the blanket for him, “Yeah,” She braved through her nerves, “you’ll be a lot warmer.”

Harry curled his lips inside his mouth and nodded, accepting her offer of sliding into her bed. The mattress dipped with the extra weight and Harry was in the spot that Mia had sort of deemed to be Hazel’s spot.

“This is a comfy bed.” Harry sighed while humming, “I could fall asleep right here.”

Mia chuckled and bundled the covers a little tighter around her, “It is a comfy bed.”

“And a two-person, whew.” Harry exaggerated, “Haven’t had a bed as decent as this in years.” He referred to his single bed in the dorm room he rented out with his friends.

“I usually stick to my side though. I’m quite an easy sleeper and I never really mess up the covers during the night.” Mia spoke and Harry scooted a little closer to her, “Really?”

“Mhm.” She confirmed, “I just fall asleep in one position and stay like that, often I wake up in that same position.”

Harry’s brows raised, “Wow. Guess I’ll be the one disrupting your sleep from now on.” His comment was a little cheeky, and Harry worried for a second that he had overstepped by assuming they’d sleep together in the same bed now that they were boyfriend and girlfriend, but Mia just giggled, “I suppose. But you’ll be the one making the bed then every morning, cleaning up your mess.”

Harry let out a laugh, “Of course, love.”

She stared at him, curls floppy on the white pillowcase that had been untouched for the months she had lived here. Harry fit right in, like he had been in this room a billion times before and the apartment just fell in love with him the way Mia did.

She exhaled a trembling breath and gathered her courage, “Can I kiss you?”

Harry smirked a little and scooted closer until his hand found the dip of her waist underneath the warm covers, “Sweetheart, I’m your boyfriend now. Y’don’t have to ask.”

Mia smiled a little, “Really? I can just kiss you? Whenever?”

“Sure.” Harry smiled back before quickly pressing his lips to hers, “See? I’m doing it too.”

Mia’s heart beat faster as her legs grew a little restless, “Mhm. Y-You can do it again. If… if you want.” She stuttered and Harry snickered under his breath before taking her in a deep, long kiss.

Mia lost all track of her surroundings, Harry’s arms encaging her fully as they were flush together on the bed. Their mouths locked and moved together easily, tongues finding one another blindly as they kissed slow and passionate.

Harry shifted, pushing his leg up to part her legs and nudge into her hip so Mia rolled on her back a little more and he rolled with her. His body partly hovering over hers, Mia had more free range to play with his hair. 

The rough material of Harry’s jeans rubbed into the soft material of her bunny sweatpants, and their legs tangled together as they rolled around. Mia let him guide her, eyes closed while she hoped Harry didn’t accidentally roll them off of the bed or bump her head into anything. 

As Harry tried to crawl up a little higher, his leg bent with his thigh pressing right between Mia’s. She opened her mouth wider in a gasp and fisted his hair tight as she whimpered out a moan – a sound that immediately made her turn bright red as she avoided his eyes in embarrassment. Harry was breathless from the kiss and pecked at her jaw twice, “Sorry.” He mumbled, “Sorry, didn’t mean to do that.”

He was very considerate of Mia being inexperienced and her wish to wait, but that sound that just fell from her lips went straight to his cock. He was already half hard from kissing her and rolling around her crisp white sheets with her in his arms, and that was just the cherry on top.

He could only wonder what she’d sound like if he truly put in the work, if he truly pleasured her, if he knew her body like the back of his hand to get her to orgasm over and over and over again until she had to beg him to stop.

“Or did y’like it?” He carefully whispered into her skin. He worried that she’d be offended or that she’d feel unsafe at his question, but Mia swallowed – throat bobbing against Harry’s mouth as he kissed down the column of her throat – and tightened her thighs around his a little.

Harry smirked to himself and hummed softly, “Y’did?”

“Y-Yes.” Mia managed to croak out. She wished she could just communicate without words, because one, she had trouble remembering any as Harry touched and kissed her like this, and two, she felt too awkward to have a conversation with him.

She moaned into his ear when he accidentally pushed his leg between her thighs. It was almost embarrassing how pleasurable that had felt for Mia, but Harry being Harry of course didn’t make anything weird. His hand roamed her back and waist until he gently put his palm down where the fabric had ridden up and exposed Mia’s back a little.

He was still half on top of her, his fingers now tickling her bare skin as he moved the other hand to her thigh, gently positioning it in a way he saw better fit for what he was about to do. And what he did was push his thigh into her again. Mia arched slightly, fingers digging into his arms as Harry intently watched her face to find a good rhythm and a good amount of pressure.

It was a lot for her, and Mia stared up at Harry in wonder as he rocked her body softly with the pressure of his thigh pushing into her core. She gasped softly with each grind and involuntarily parted her legs wider.

There were layers of clothing between them – three to be exact – yet this already felt incredible. Mia struggled for air as Harry kept up the pace he had set, staring wildly into her eyes to see if she was okay with this.

“Fuck.” He grunted when she bucked her hips back into his leg, and Harry dropped his face in the crook of her neck. He groaned into her skin and kissed wherever he could reach until Mia was the one initiating the kiss. It was deep and once Harry took over, it took a bit of a rough turn. Spit slicked lips moved together at the same pace as Harry’s leg pleasuring her. 

Mia bent her legs to give him more room and Harry eventually groaned again and pushed her one leg down before slotting both of his between hers. Mia was spread wide, her eyes open in shock as Harry laid between her legs and had his arms around her.

“You okay?” He breathed as he eyed her reaction. He had felt her stiffening, and knew he had taken it too far. Mia forced him a small smile and nodded, “Yeah. C-Can we just cuddle a little bit?”

He dipped his head to press a kiss to her chin, “Of course, m’love. Let’s get you comfortable, yeah?” Harry spoke before rolling off of her. Mia felt like a baby to reject him, especially a guy so gorgeous who tried anything with her – but her body had sort of shut down and she hadn’t thought about this properly enough to really do anything.

She had to talk to Hazel about it, Mia decided. Hazel could give her decent sex education without making it weird, and she respected Mia enough to keep it serious and informative rather than tease her for it.

So Mia just followed Harry’s form as he went to lay on his back and then opened up his arm. She happily took the spot, snuggling into his side. She softly bent her leg to rest it over his one thigh, biting her lip when she could feel her knee brushing his hard-on in his pants.

Harry’s arm was around her shoulder and he gently stroked her over her jumper before pulling her a little closer, “Are you comfy?” He checked in a whisper and Mia tilted her head to look up to him a bit, “I am. ‘M sorry about before.”

Harry chuckled and shook his head, pressing a kiss to the top of Mia’s head, “Don’t apologize. Got carried away, I should be the one saying sorry. I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable.”

“You didn’t.” Mia murmured, “I just – uh… I need a little time.”

“I know. It’s fine, Mia. I promise. ‘M your boyfriend, aren’t I? I don’t care about that, I just care about being with you and keeping you happy.”

She bit her lip, appreciating his sentiment but also a little anxious that this could turn into some sort of dealbreaker. Mia tilted her head again to kiss his jaw, “Thank you.” She murmured, “I want you to be happy too.”

“I am.” Harry sighed, holding her a little tighter, “So happy.”

And Mia believed him, or at least she tried to. The two of them were left into a comfortable silence until Harry felt Mia completely sinking into him. One glance down showed her closed eyes, lashes resting on the tops of her cheekbones as she was in a little shallow sleep.

He didn’t find it too creepy that he stared at her for the entire duration of her nap. He couldn’t recall if it was ten minutes or an hour, he just couldn’t take his eyes off of the girl he could now call his girlfriend. It had been a quick few weeks, but he just couldn’t keep anything in when it came to Mia.

He of course wondered if he was pushing her too hard, taking too many steps, rushing through things. He made her his girlfriend after one date and she agreed, but it was quick. There was so much they didn’t know about one another, but the feelings were there. At least, his were.

He hoped her rejections really only had to do with the fact that she was a little nervous and wanted to take her time for anything sexual, and not that they stemmed from a place of her doubting how she felt about him, or maybe just not wanting those things with him. 

[tetrakys]

Are we all secretly Argentinian? A brief history of VPN in Beemoov's fandom

Once upon a time, when only High School Life and maybe Eldarya TO were out, players were able to choose their own bank when making a purchase on the games websites. Some banks were extremely cheap compared to others, the cheapest of all being Argentina. This from the perspective of people living in other countries. As an example:

2800 Gold coins were worth 39€ or 49$ or 400 ARS 400 ARS were the equivalent of 27$ in 2016.

So, clearly, anyone given the chance would spend less with such a big discount. And the chance was indeed given, since it was easy to just select another country's bank on the website.

Fast-forward a few years, the option to choose a bank was removed, and people could only use the bank associated to the country they were connecting from. It didn’t take much time for people to realise that it was enough to change IP via a VPN to make the games think you were connecting from Argentina and still access its bank. Additionally, Argentinian's currency was getting more and more devaluated in time and prices were never really adjusted at the bank. So, those 2800 Gold which were worth 400ARS or 27$ in 2016, were now worth 11$ in 2019.

This VPN trick has been around for years now. Not all players were aware of course, and not everyone was comfortable in using a VPN or able to. But still, quite a lot of people were doing so. Some of them even made a business out of it, recharging other people's accounts using a VPN and taking a fee for their "service".

Fast-forward again, to 2022. The VPN trick escalated, the secret was not that much of a secret anymore, especially because people were freely talking about it everywhere, Discord, Facebook, all social media really, even TikTok videos were made explaining how to do it. Very simply, too many people were using it. Consequently, Beemoov worked on it and managed to remove Argentina's bank from most VPNs for people playing from Europe and North America. (NOT South America, as I vaguely remember it was mentioned that they were trying to protect the Argentinians living in nearby countries). This led to a crazy uproar, mostly from the biggest fandom affected, the French one. People were leaving tons of messages on all socials demanding the reinstatement of Argentina, and also sending curses and death threats to Beemoov employees. The most recurrent message was of people outraged that the company had blocked VPNs without telling their players and demanding dialogue and compromise. On the other hand, Beemoov replied that VPNs were never a functionality of the games, and they don't need to discuss it with players.

Approximate translation of Beemoov's official reply (neither French nor English are my mother tongues so feel free to double check):

"Goodmorning. The use of VPN isn't a functionality offered by the game, just like it isn't normal use of the game to circumvent the base tariffs. Thus it's normal and logic that the company would put a stop at this technique. (Without having to communicate it since it's not a functionality of the game that we are retiring or modifying, but the exploitation of a fallacy.) The tariffs that each country pays are established according to their buying power. Of the 2 euros payment that can be done by the players via VPN Argentina, the company only earns a few cents. And with just a few cents it's clearly impossible to cover the costs of the episodes production and business costs in general, pay our employees, and create new content for our players. Under these conditions, it's certain that the company would eventually go bankrupt. (Like many of you wish, but us not that much.) To give you a less abstract example, it's as if someone would accept to see their salary of 1329 euros (minimum wage, for example) drop to 44 euros. Do you think this person would be able to live without any problem? We are sorry if our base tariffs are not convenient for you and we understand that they are not accessible to all of our players, but these are what allow the company to survive and to make new content. Of course like in all free-to-play games you are not obliged to pay and you always have the possibility of playing for free (and this is thanks to the players who pay the normal price)."

Fast forward again to this year, August 2023. The economic crisis in Argentina has led to high inflation and 22% devaluation of currency. All businesses have had to up their prices, including Beemoov. Those 2800 gold coins that used to be worth 400 ARS ~ 27$ in 2016, and then 11$ in 2019? Are now worth 1.14$. Beemoov has had to up the prices and now these are costed at 6,800 ARS (or 19.43$), an increment of 17 times its original value (but still less than the 2016 dollar equivalent).

Consequently, we have seen now the rest of the fandom, the part that hadn't been affected one year ago, going ballistic. And the same kind of threats and complaints that were posted last year by the European fandom are now posted by the American fandom. One would assume that only the Argentinians are complaining, rightfully so, since they are the ones directly affected. But actually most of the complaints come from people living elsewhere who were either using VPNs for their own benefit or created a business out of it.

(these are from 4 different people I found with just a 5 minutes search, we really live in a capitalist dream lmao)

Additionally, people have been upset about the company's reply. This message has been circulating in several social media, and people wonder if it's true or fake.

I don't know who originally posted so I can't say if it's true or not. (Personally I tend to believe it is.)

(Using Google translate here because I don't know a word of Portuguese, so please correct me if this is wrong.)

"To be fair, Latin America is far from our biggest customer, but that's not the point. Beemoov was forced to take action after numerous abuses by players (and in particular 80% of purchases from Brazil) using VPNs to connect to Argentina and take advantage of this country's poor financial situation to buy APs and other in-game currencies. The few players currently residing in Argentina are unfortunately affected by the situation and we are very sorry, but we could not remain inactive in the face of a fraud of this magnitude that puts the company's sustainability at risk (payment of employees, office rent, work equipment, taxes, creation of new content, etc... Each of these must be paid in euros following the French currency - as we are located in France)."

People have been particularly offended by that "LATAM isn't our biggest customer" which isn't hate, it's a fact. Despite the LATAM fandom being big (second only to France by number of players), the currencies of all the countries involved are worth less than euros, and that's why it can't be the biggest client, it's just math.

Some math below for who is interested, but feel free to skip: For example 1300 gold are costed 200 in mexican pesos which is 10.7 euros. Similarly this same amount of gold is 30BRL in Brazil, which translates to 1.6 euros. Compared, 1300 gold in France are costed 19 euros. (On top of these there are also bank fees and currency exchange fees). This means that, if no one were using VPN, it would take two mexican players for Beemoov to earn the same amount as they earn from a French player. And even more, 12 Brazillian players to pay what they get from one single French player. (Again, I'm not considering bank fees, so these numbers should actually be higher). Of course this is just an example on one single purchase. It's not representative of the whole bank. But with some very hacky math, approximately I think that LATAM doesn't contribute to more than a quarter of Beemoov's revenue (and keep in mind that for the past year LATAM could use Argentina VPN and Europe couldn't). Of course, again, this is veeeery approximate, but I remember Brazil wasn't included in Uncoven, so I think that if they are cutting another bank in the future it might be that one. This is not the case for New Gen of course since we know Brazillian is one of the languages included.

So, where are we now?

VPNs are still being used of course, not Argentina but other countries (mostly Brazil, Turkey, and a few others). I don't think there's any stopping VPNs for good in the old games, but I'm pretty confident the company might've found a way for New Gen.

What do I think of all this?

These up here are facts. Now my personal opinion is that things aren't that black and white. I totally agree with the fact that the company has expenses and needs to pay salaries of their employees etc etc. At the same time it's also true that for whatever business when a product is faulty prices are lowered. Eldarya ANE has not the same quality as the other games, prices should reflect that but they don't. Similarly, some episodes are released very bugged, and people have to replay 3, 4, 5 times to get the illustration they would've been able to get in one playthrough and should be compensated for that. In Moonlight Lovers there was a crazy bug for more than a year, me and the friends I made guides with had to replay each episode at least 5-8 times. I don't even want to try to estimate the amount of money I wasted on that game otherwise I would curl in a ball and cry. The company should've provided compensation to us and all the players who played Moonlight Lovers during that year, but they didn't. So when episodes are bugged and people have to replay many times I see VPNs as morally justified.

But bugs asides, the point is that if VPNs were used only a few times, and only by those players who really would not be able to play otherwise, then nothing would've happened. But as always, when something is abused the "authorities" try to put a stop to it. (Because really it's crazy that a middle-class European via VPN spends only a few cents on each episode and then expects to see more content. This isn't only fraud against the company, but also disrespectful toward the players who pay full price and allow the games to keep existing.)

However, I want to end this post with a positive message, if anyone made it this far it's earned. During my deep dive in the fandom to write this post, I saw that the trolls, the haters, the death and violence threats against Beemoov workers or other players, the wishes to see the company go bankrupt and everyone left without a job, all these came from Europeans and Americans alike. Seeing all these curses and threats in english, french, spanish, brazillian portuguese etc warmed my heart. There is no racism when it comes to hate, humanity sucks everywhere 💕

[elevenharbor]

bye #sesshome

STOP. STEALING. MY. ART. WITHOUT. MY. PERMISSION.

Didn’t want to do this, but enough is enough. I had to find out from others (while I am away overseas with limited internet) that multiple SessKag LATAM groups on facebook had been reposting my art & not crediting me (the artist), and even going as far as cropping my watermark out. To add salt to an open wound, I also found out someone made a T-shirt of my art without my knowledge.

l create SessKag art to share with the community. I get no monetary compensation from the hours of work I put in, nor am I asking for money (this is in part why I do not take commissions.) All I ask in return is to credit me, the artist, whenever they share my works. It is as simple as copy/pasting the original source, whether through instagram or tumblr.

yet this is so difficult to do, for some reason.

I know I am not going to get rich off of this. I know art theft is common. People make fanfic covers of my stuff. Art theft is hard to prevent unless I put everything behind a pay wall (ie Patreon) and even that isn’t foolproof.

I draw because I genuinely enjoy the community and what it has to offer.

But not this- blatant art theft.

but seriously, ya’ll have put a bad taste in my mouth. Enjoy not getting SessKag content from me because I’m out.

to those who’ve read this far, I ask that you help out fellow artists who face the same problem. If you see art that you know was made by someone else without proper credit, please flag the posts, or at least bring it to the page admin’s attention to give credit where credit is due.

block me, unfollow me, i don’t give a damn. I’m still going to create for other fandoms. Maybe if I am less salty I’ll think about posting under that tag again.

[angel-derangement]

full respect to insane people drama on the internet but it actually doesn’t hold a candle to the insane people drama I watched go down during the time I was in a christian group on a university campus. a guy (age 20) stormed out of my sister’s place during a big party bc she lit a spatula on fire on the barbecue and had the GALL to call the fire department in case it lit the roof on fire, so his wife (age 19) had to track him down on the streets bc he couldn’t drive. she had to walk him back and force him to apologise to my sister then he led a bible study in her front room during the party about anger. later that week he posted on the facebook page of a lady who had lost her 17yr old brother in a car crash that her brother deserved to die bc he had gone to schoolies. neither he nor his wife talk to me anymore bc he borrowed a pen and offered to drive it back over at 1am in the morning and I said no thanks keep it and he interpreted this as me leading him to stumble. none of these or any other events involved any drugs or alcohol.

[scoobydooisadetective]

Hi. I just wanted to ask if it's possible for you guys to post the English translation of the Spanish posts? Tumblr doesn't have the translation option like X or Facebook

Hi! I'm guessing you're speaking about this post. Sure, no problem. I think it's relevant for everyone to know how long he has been in these kind of situations. I'll try to do my best w/ translation and offer some context.

Luz said in her post:

"I don't have a Twitter, I consider it an intolerant and racist world, this is the social network where Tenoch has the most bots against him, he receives a lot of hate and they generate that hate. But yesterday in a group they sent this picture, it's a publication about a radio host saying Tenoch apologized to him for being a person "without education and without ethics" according to his words.

(In the tweet: I share with you the picture when #TenochHuerta apologized to me for behaving as an uneducated being, without ethics and as the chairo without words he has always been. If I had known, I would've charged $1,800...

Note: Chairo doesn't have a translation, but it's basically derogatory way to to describe an individual who holds a far-left ideology, specifically any person who thoughtlessly defends, idolizes, and fawns over a populist politician and demagogue with an attitude similar to that of a religious fanatic.)

I thought it was weird and I found a publication made by the director Alonso Ruizapalacios in 2015 where he explains what happened that day

(full text here: https://www.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=pfbid02fkKp1ZGWvpcweaavk8e13ke4HQj2k616EPv75JrrExeEB49DUGPL7m31WJzGDqqil&id=1369494912&mibextid=Nif5oz)

"COMMERCIAL BREAK!

A few hours ago, me and Tenoch Huerta went to promote our movie GÜEROS at the radio show "Charros vs Gángsters", hosted by Jairo Calixto and some José Luis Guzmán "Miyagi" (I confess I didn't know about him until today).

Since we arrived at MVS Radio in Polanco, we saw patrols and riot policeman surrounding the radio station and preventing the production van from passing through. The driver suggested it was "because of that reporter that they are going to fire."

Despite this rarefied atmosphere, the inteview about the movie went like most interviews in radio and TV he (Tenoch) helped with in Mexico: wih cordiality, but with simple and unexciting (no preparation), but overall with the hysteria that characterizes a large amout of the communicators in our country - a kind of perpetual nervousness about not leaving even a moment of pause, to "fill the air" with whatever, with an incessant strident chatter that passes for irreverence and freshness. Despite that, we promoted our move without problem, between jokes about the Partido Verde and bestiality.

At the end of our interview, Tenoch took the floor and said: "Before we leave, I'd like to comment something in a personal capacity, I think it's necessary to have dialog to clarify the situation about the communicator Cármen Aristegui and her firing from this radio station." In that moment "Miyagi", who had not heard a single word about Güeros nor had he looked up from his iPad during our entire conversation, ordered: "Let's go on commercial break!" and it was obeyed immediately in the cabin. After a awkward painful silence, Tenoch and I realized we had finished. After a painfully awkward silence, Tenoch and I realized that we were done. We approached to say goodbye to our hosts, who barely shook our hands, without looking us in the eyes. But before leaving Miyagi told us: “We opened the microphones for something else, not so that you could continue with that…” To which Tenoch responded “We just want to know what is happening with Aristegui.” And nothing else was said.

We went out of the MVS with our heads spinning aournd, trying to understand what had just happened. And we still continue to not understand...

My interpretation: We're still trapped in this climate where communicators -even those who brag about being irreverent- fear (maybe justifiably) about their continuity in the enterprises that pay their salary. We're still living in a climate of very litte solidarity and a lot of intolerance.

Maybe "Miyagi" simply made a mistake and acted on impulse, a byproudct of the frustration from reading trolls against him since he didn't defend Cármen Aristegui. Or maybe the sushi upsetted his stomach... But what he did was censorship, it's indisputable. Turning your back on such a valid and relevant question and go on commercial break when things get awkward, in true Televisa style, was something surprising to witness live.

I don't have information to venture an absolute theory about all of this, nor to affirm that it is censorship that comes from above, or if it's rather self-censorship, a product of fear. But that there's something rotten in Denmark, I have no doubt.

While I appreciate the space that was opened to talk about our film, I deeply regret the continuation of this state of fear we live in.

I'm sorry that our communicators don't look at us in the eyes. I'm sorry there's no room for pauses. And I'm sorry there's no time to listen.

Context on who is this journalist and why this happened:

On 12 March 2015, two journalists from MVS, Daniel Lizárraga and Irving Huerta, were fired after they used the station's brand name without permission in a newly created website known as MexicoLeaks, which leaked reports on government corruption. Aristegui issued an ultimatum and threaten to quit if MVS did not reinstate her two staff members. Four days later, MVS fired Aristegui after considering that she had crossed the line for issuing an ultimatum to the MVS management.

My friend Tenoch says: My name is José Tenoch Huerta Mejía, mexican.

I love who I am, where I live and with who I live.

I don't like what's going on in my country, it's not the country I grew up in, nor the one I want to live in.

I don't understand a lot of things and as many more I'm scared about what we're living.

It hurts my soul to know that thousands are no longer hugging their families when their time had not yet come.

I wonder what's up, what can I do so everyone can be alright, the truth is I don't know but I decided to talk and ask.

I have nothing against any politician or people in power, I just want a different country.

I don't want one where we're all poor to be equals, but one where we're rich at heart, pockets and tummy to decide what to do with our time in this land.

Yersterday I asked something I needed to know, the mic was open and I asked.

Today, someone went to my house, intimidated me while hiding their face behind a brown scarf and a newspaper. They took photos of me, laughed mockingly at me and then disappeared into the hallways of the place where I live and have called home the last four years of my life.

What did I do wrong? Ask, say that I don't like any of this, thinking that we could have a better life, think?

A lot of people supports and helps me, but what about those that don't have the fortune to be visible?

I write this and I cry because I don't want to live like this, we don't deserve to live like this.

Mexico hurts my guts.

My little corner on land that gives me food and air to breath, that gives me a house and family.

I love my country, I love my people and even you, who doesn't understand we can live in a better way.

Thank you for your support, for being there and might our voices and hearts always sing.

We deserve something better.

Then, Luz adds:

What really happened was that exactly 8 years ago, in that booth, there was no freedom of speech, Tenoch tried to speak about a topic and was quickly cut off. Another account later shared that Tenoch had reported that he was being followed and photographed.

What I'm trying to say is that they have always hated him for telling them to their faces what he thinks about some topic and that makes them angry, they "can't stand it." Now that he is doing a little better, they are trying by all means to ruin his career. Tenoch himself has mentioned it in many interviews, and they have paid the media to destroy him.

I think we have to be careful, those media and haters are always aware of all the publications about him and if it is something controversial they can manipulate, they will do it, have no doubt about that, even if it is from years ago.

Do not react, do not comment or retweet, only report the publication if it has racist content. Never try to talk to them, it's not worth it. (Personal note: Please listen to this!! Especially twitter folks, since it might be counterproductive. By fighting them, you're offering them more interactions because that's how the algorithm works).

---

Hope this helped!

[depressedbagpipe]

Enchanted (Prince Caspian x you)

Part II

Words: 3681 Warnings: caffeine, me forgetting how to properly write, also me forgetting the source material, ALSO me trying to write cute descriptions but failing miserably. A/N: again, i don't live in nyc, nor am i an architect so yeah. also, I'm taking for inspiration neil gaiman's short story 'the problem of Susan' that i haven't read so, again, don't look too much into it. sorry for the absence, but mental health is a bit scarce lately. Taglist: @just-levyy, @sergeantbuckybarnes

Part I - Part III

“Alright, tell me how you got here again?”

You sat your mug down on the coffee table, leaning back on the comfortable armchair as you stared at Caspian. 

He sipped his mug, somewhat enjoying the bitter taste of the dark liquid his reticent host had served him.

“Well, I was enjoying my morning stroll around the Narnian woods, you know. Cair Paravel was a bit far but something in me made me continue walking. And then I found this… thing,” Caspian kept talking, yet the longer he went on, the more you frowned.

You tried to keep up with his retelling, only catching bits of information about lions and fauns, but everything that came out of his mouth became weirder by the second. Only after he finally closed his mouth you realized you still had no idea where this person had come from.

“Right… so, um, we’re talking about… some… extra-terrestrial experience? Paranormal, perhaps?” you tried again, but Caspian’s frown made you discard the idea rather quickly. “Alright, so Narnia. And who are these friends you’re looking for? The Pennies?”

“Pevensies,” he corrected you, but there was no malice in his deep voice. 

“Right, Pevensies.Who are they?”

That threw Caspian into another tangent, describing how these friends of his were centuries-old royals who ruled before he did, but somehow made their way back a few years ago to help him fight his uncle.

Your coffee had gone cold by the time he finished. “So, like, is this some sort of… Hamlet situation?” you offered, failing to find the right words.

“Who is that?” he asked again.

“Hamlet?”

“Yeah.”

“You don’t know Shakespeare?”

“Shakespeare?”

“Forget it.”

“Alright.”

His accent was cute, at least, you thought. And what originally was fear of the strange man sleeping on your couch, now had been replaced by utter confusion.

“So, they’re British,” you spoke again.

“The Pevensies?” 

“Yeah. You said they’re from England, right?” you asked.

“Yes, Spare Oom.”

“I don’t think that’s a place,” you frowned, your mind swirling with possibilities.

“Have you ever been there?” Caspian asked you, with big dark innocent eyes.

You shrugged. “I’ve been to London once if that counts.”

“Do you think you could help me?” he spoke, and again, his eyes seemed to speak their own language.

There was naivité, and anxiety, and kindness. It was safe to say you had never seen eyes such as those.

You shrugged again, picking up your coffee, if only to give your hands something to work on, and an excuse to ignore his piercing stare. “I guess. Do they have Facebook or something?” You cut Caspian before he could talk again, noticing the way his nose scrunched in confusion. “Alright, is there any number, or address, that we can track?”

Caspian’s frown didn’t waver. 

“I… don’t think so,” he left his mug on the small table, bringing his hands together. He stared at them with a lost expression, and his shoulders seemed to get smaller with every breath he took.

It broke your heart to see him like this, even if you couldn’t even fathom where this strange man had come from. 

You had woken up that morning with a clear mission: getting him out of your apartment. You blamed your migraine and your smeared cupcake, as you opened your eyes and turned in bed a few times before checking the hour. For a second, you even thought that it could’ve been a dream. A weird, unfiltered, and totally bizarre dream. This was New York, after all. You had definitely seen weirder. But then you heard a muffled thump from the other room, and you somehow knew your guest had fallen flat on the carpet, probably tangled in the blanket you had gracelessly covered him with before locking yourself in your room, and it all came crashing down on you again. You had let a complete stranger crash on your apartment, and though it wouldn’t be the first time, it still felt wrong for some reason. He wasn’t a regular man, but you still didn’t know what his presence would turn your life into. 

You would have stayed in your bed forever, waiting for Caspian to get the memo and exit your life, but curiosity got the best of you, and slowly, you got up despite the slight chill that settled on your bones on the cold Monday morning, and you faced whatever fate had in store for you waiting on the other side of your door.

Making small talk had not been an option, either. As soon as Caspian saw you he stood up nervously, standing by your couch again with his hands behind his back and his hair ruffled. Again, you thought he looked cute. He had immediately tried to talk, but you had held a finger in the air.

“I need caffeine first,” you only responded.

You prepared two mugs, mentally facepalming yourself for not asking him whether he even wanted coffee, but you had never been a morning person and you had more important matters at hand.

And that’s how you had found yourself on the armchair, staring at Caspian with a small glare, only grasping bits of his story, but not enough to provide clarity about the hazy situation.

“Alright,” you said after taking a deep breath. “Well, Caspian��” you doubted. “Should I call you ���your Majesty’ or something?” you asked him first.

He let a soft chuckle, and for a second, you believed that sound was the only existing key to happiness. “Just Caspian.”

“Well, just Caspian, let me be frank with you,” you prepared yourself, sitting straighter on your seat and looking at him with what you believed to be a ‘harsh’ expression. “I still have no idea who you are, where you come from, and where you’re going. I still can’t believe I let you stay the night here, and, if I’m being honest, I’m having a bit of a hard time believing everything you just said,” you noticed Caspian’s sullen look, but you kept going. “I don’t know if you hit your head too hard on the concrete or if someone’s larping sword caused you some internal bleeding, but you need to understand that what you’re saying sounds insane. But,” you took a gulp, looking down at the floor for a second before meeting his somewhat hopeful gaze. “If what you’re saying is true… I can’t believe I’m about to say this, but I’ll help you.”

His entire face changed completely. A new spark illuminated his eyes, and it made you proud to be the cause of it. “Really?”

You found yourself nodding before you could answer. “Yeah. Though, it won’t probably be easy, Caspian. So, please, for your sake and mine, don’t put too much faith in this.”

He nodded, but his smile didn’t falter. And you wished it never would.

“Okay. I can promise that.”

“Good. Now, I guess we need to find out more about these friends of yours, right?”

He nodded enthusiastically. “Yeah. You would love Edmund.”

You nodded along, not even knowing who he was talking about. “Whatever you say, pretty boy.”

You said that as you got up, completely missing the faint blush on his cheeks.

***

Caspian looked ridiculous in your ex-boyfriend’s clothes. You had insisted he wore something different, take a shower, and have a proper meal, before even thinking about leaving your place that morning. Your ex had been a little shorter and lankier than him, so you couldn’t help to eye the way the shirt clung to his torso, making his arms look bigger. You even had to shake your head to physically remove your gaze from him, the casual attire feeling so domestic on him yet out of place. You didn’t fail to notice the many faint scars that littered his arms. For a second you wondered if he kept more of those hidden elsewhere, but you didn’t ask. It was small things like those that had you doubt your sanity. Every so often, you found yourself thinking that maybe he was being honest with you, but you didn’t give yourself time to think about what the repercussions would be if you were, indeed, hosting a fictional man on your couch from a different realm. A realm where animals talked and magic existed.

You had also profusely apologized for your cooking skills –several times. If he actually happened to be a king (which you doubted, but in the tiny odd chance that he was), you didn’t want to make a complete fool of yourself and throw him some burnt steak. You had felt this pressure before, especially with your parents, and even your ex, but with Caspian, it felt different. You had been looking carefully at him as he tasted his spaghetti, and the look of pure delight he sent you made you want to become a professional chef, even if the pasta was a bit undercooked and the sauce a bit too salty even for your taste. Anything to see his look again.

Caspian behaved like a newborn, and it didn’t help that he was a curious young man. You had noticed at first how he looked everywhere around your apartment, taking in every small detail, carefully touching and prodding whatever was in his sight. But now, two hours later, he had already made himself at home and clearly didn’t understand your annoyed faces and curt responses.

“So, you can communicate with other people through this?” he eyed your phone warily. 

“Yup.”

“And you command it to do your bidding?”

“Sure.”

“Are you a witch?”

“I wish,” you laughed at his horrified expression. “I could send you back with a flick.”

Caspian looked seriously at you. “In my land, witches aren’t all that welcome.”

You frowned. “Damn, don’t tell me you guys are afraid of powerful women too.”

He didn’t get the sarcasm in your voice. “The last witch that ruled in Narnia almost destroyed my kingdom. If it hadn’t been for Aslan and the Pevensies, not even I would be here today.”

You wanted to joke, you really did. But his voice was grave and deep with emotion. One look at him was all it took for a chill to cover your lungs. But then again, you weren’t one to back down from a fight.

“And what did she do that was so horrible? Did she accidentally unleash an eternal winter over your land?” you joked. Your eyes swiftly moved towards your DVD collection, falling onto Frozen’s case. 

“Yes.”

Thankfully, you weren’t drinking, otherwise, you would’ve choked to death.

He wasn’t looking at you anymore. His eyes were hard and set on the wall behind him. 

“It happened a long time ago, but Narnians still fear those dark times.”

“I’m… sorry,” you answered, but it felt empty even to you. 

He shook his head. “That’s why I need to go back. I don’t know what brought me here, but I cannot leave my kingdom unprotected. Only Aslan knows what sort of dangers they may be exposed to while I’m gone.”

This time, you properly looked at him. The creases in his forehead, and the worry evident in the bags under his eyes. He couldn’t be that much older than you, but for a second, his concerned words made it seem as if he held the weight of the world on his shoulders. And that was too much of a burden, even for him. 

He was standing rather rigidly in your living room, lost in his memories, despite never having seen such horrors. But the legends, the myths, the songs, and the tales, were abhorrent. A world without light, and happiness, only ice. A world where magic was divided by magic itself, and he knew that too well. And despite having always been kind and generous, some sick joke of fate had brought him here, to you, and he still didn’t know where that was. He thought about his people, his kingdom, constantly. But the cotton of his dark green shirt felt soft on his scarred skin. Whatever product you had forced him to use in his hair smelled of fruits he hadn’t eaten in months and that weird long yellow-ish food you had made him had tasted better than it looked. He was feeling oddly energized as well, and you obviously didn’t mention the coffee to him. Maybe he would think you were a witch, too.

You broke the silence, unknowingly saving Caspian from himself. “You said Aslan’s good, right?”

He blinked. “Yes.”

“Then, maybe this is a bit of a stretch, but hear me out. If you’re this… all-generous king or whatever, and this… evil witch is long gone, who’s to say it wasn’t Aslan himself who brought you here?”

You surprised yourself with that question. Certainly, you did pay attention, after all.

Caspian looked at you, carefully considering your words. “It might be a possibility, yes.”

Nodding, you continued. “And your friends? They left because, and I quote, ‘learned everything Narnia had to teach them,’ right?”

He nodded, suddenly feeling desperate. “That’s right. Aslan himself told them.”

“Then who’s to say Aslan didn’t send you here because there’s something for you to learn as well?”

You were crazy. You sounded crazy. You couldn’t believe that you were playing into whatever Caspian’s game was, but it seemed pretty evident to you. If the king was right, it seemed the only possible explanation. And somehow you knew, the man before you wouldn’t hurt a butterfly, despite the faint scars in his bare arms telling you otherwise, as well as the sword propped against the entrance’s wall.

Caspian remained silent, but his eyes widened. He too knew you were right. Aslan wouldn’t do something as grand without a reason.

“Perhaps… finding my way back is part of the challenge,” he spoke slowly, setting his eyes on you. 

You could only shrug. It felt like he was having this big spiritual moment, and you, ever so skeptical, didn’t know what else to offer him. 

“Perhaps,” you repeated. “You know what they say. ‘Maybe the real treasure was the friends we made along the way,’” you joked.

Caspian didn’t seem to get that. “That certainly sounds wise, my lady.”

You nodded with a pout, looking anywhere but at him. “Alright. Let’s look for the Pennies.”

“Pevensies.”

“That’s what I said.”

***

“Hey, Anne,” you greeted the nice lady at the front desk of your favorite local library.

“Oh, hello, dear! Long time no see! How was your Thanksgiving? You spent it with your parents, did you not?” she greeted you back, throwing a thousand questions in your direction as she usually did. 

Caspian noticed the way your shoulders tensed at the mention of your parents, and though he didn’t want to pry, he knew he would be soon asking you about that.

“Yeah, um, it was good. Listen, my friend and I are in a bit of a rush here,” you motioned to Caspian quickly. “Do you have any… information, on English families? Like their lineage? Possibly in the past century?”

Anne eyed you questioningly. “I think we do have some records around here, but it may take me a while to reach them,” she explained. “Why the sudden interest? Is this for your work?”

You nodded slowly, knowing there was no way you could explain your situation to anyone without them thinking you had suddenly gone mad. You still think you kind of were, but the man trailing after you like a lost puppy was a good indicator of the contrary. 

“Indeed.”

Anne clapped delighted. “Well, in that case, I shall fetch those documents for you!” she quickly got up and disappeared through a narrow door, no doubt leaving for the archive behind her.

You sighed as you leaned on the desk, staring at the library where rows of books lined up the walls. Caspian copied your movement and he too stared at the nearly empty space before him.

“So, your work, huh?” he asked in a soft whisper. 

Even though you were the only ones standing there, it felt wrong to speak any louder.

You nodded. “Yeah. It wouldn’t be the first time I had asked her for the weirdest things.”

“What do you do?”

You paused. “Spiritually, I’m an architect. In reality, I work at an office.”

“A what?”

You sighed again. “It’s this place, where you… work, pretty much every day. And you just… do stuff.”

Caspian looked at you, knowing there was more to it. But he also noticed the way you seemed to sigh more than necessary, and struggled to find the right words. It all kept adding to the mysterious puzzle you were, but Caspian wasn’t ready to ask yet.

He nodded in fake understanding, despite still having no idea what an office was. “Right. Sorry for asking.”

You shook your head. “It’s alright, really. I just… don’t really like my work that much.”

Caspian widened his eyes. “What do you ever mean? Architects in my country are treated as royalty. Creating any building is pretty much considered magic.”

You snorted. “Right. Well, I should’ve thought about that before moving to New York. There really isn’t that much space here to build anything anymore.” 

“Then why do you keep living here, if you hate it so much? Aren’t you free to roam around your kingdom?”

You paused. You knew that, deep down, he was right. There really was nothing tying you to the city. Your family lived elsewhere, and you knew the scarce friends you had here wouldn’t miss you that much if you left. You liked your apartment, and the views, and the nightlife, but you knew other places in the world could offer you as much and more. You even thought about Caspian’s life in Narnia, and you wondered what your life would be like there. 

Just his audacity made you angry. “It’s not that simple, Caspian.”

Thankfully you didn’t have to say anything else, because Anne was soon by your side once again, with several folders in her frail arms. Caspian quickly took the papers from her, and you raised your eyebrows when you noticed the way his arms flexed under the weight.

“Oh, thank you, dear. Okay, so I believe this is all we have. Be careful, some of them are really old and could easily fall out of their bindings,” she warned you, before sitting back down on her chair. “I’ll be here if you need me.”

“Thank you,” you said under your breath, your heart picking up for some reason. 

You led Caspian towards the desk at the back, away from prying eyes and ears, and forced him to sit down next to you. It was your favorite spot, the quaint corner at the far end of the library, surrounded by literary classics that no one ever seemed to look for. A big window decorated one of the walls, giving you as much light as needed as you promptly opened all the folders and carefully placed them all over the table, fast eyes scanning the words.

“Alright, we already tried tracing your friends on the Internet and that didn’t work, so this is the best we got,” you said with a whisper, knowing Anne would not hesitate to throw you out if you made noise.

“Books are the pathway to knowledge,” Caspian said as he crossed his arms. Again, you couldn’t ignore the bulges that formed on his biceps. 

You shook your head, registering his words. “Right.”

And that is how you spent the rest of the afternoon, reading about old English family lines, World War II’s mass mobilizations, and railway accidents that shook entire nations. 

Your eyes were almost red by the time the sun finally set, and you couldn’t hide your yawns any longer. Caspian was in no better shape himself. At some point, he had dropped his head on the table and his eyes were almost closed. A few stray hairs were framing his face, even after you had put his hair in a small bun earlier. You totally didn’t enjoy the way its softness felt between your fingers, and Caspian totally didn’t close his eyes in enjoyment when he felt your hands tread through his wild mane.

And only after you yawned for what it felt like the hundredth time, you found something. Literature Professor Hastings, on childhood, fantasy lands, and grief. The article was one of the first things you quickly discarded, but as you looked around the papers, a sentence stuck out to you from one of the sprawled loose papers. “A family of four suddenly became a family of one.” You reached for it with a frown, and you would’ve read it entirely if it hadn’t been for the faint bell announcing the library’s closing time. 

You shook Caspian awake, and though he pretended to not have been almost asleep, he got up anyway and helped you gather all the documents. 

“Will you be keeping that?” he asked when he noticed the article in your hands.

With a bite of your lip, you nodded.  “I don’t know why, but… I have a feeling.”

Caspian looked serious. “Then, by all means, keep it. Intuition is only a powerful ally in my world.”

You stared at him as you both walked back to the front desk, quickly giving everything back to Anne and checking the article out. 

Stepping out of the library, you took a deep breath, turning to Caspian. You took a few seconds to admire the city lights reflected in his eyes, but you composed yourself. Not even twenty-four hours ago you were still on a train coming back to the city from a dreadful weekend, and now you were helping a random man go back to the kingdom of Narnia (which, according to Google, didn’t exist).

“Hey, remember what I said this morning? About not getting your hopes up?”

He nodded. “Yeah.”

“Good. We’re still at it.”

“Got it.”

“Dinner?”

Caspian smiled. You noticed the wrinkles in his eyes when he did so, and you thought you wouldn’t mind seeing those again. 

“Sure.”

Part III

General Taglist: @angiewhoohooo, @azaleaniath, @mishaandthebrits, @celestialcharles

[ome-magical-ramblings]

Incense pt.3 , Blessings of Spirits.

First practical working with the Censer and I would like this to come out of the first and second sections that we did. Is that we make our own incense mix here. I will try to make it very simple and low on Ingredients. The reason I am starting with a blessing is that you want the censer to obtain blessing and virtue by blessing others.

Preparation for the Ritual is making the incense and we will work with: 1. one spoon of Sandalwood powder 2. one spoon of Brown Sugar or Arabic Gum 3. Add enough water to make a dough of the correct consistency 4. Few drops of olive oil. 5. 3 resin of frankincense and myrrh. You put all of them in a bowl and start making a "ball" and rolling all ingredient together until you get something pretty consistent and looks good to use and you let it dry some of the water covered in shrink wrap or something like that. You let it sit for 2 weeks or so and dry out. As you can see in the image below on the right it is the incense mix I made recently and on the right is the one I use after it dries out. Something you can do is put something to "help" the incense mix burn and you might need some testing and fidgeting with the stuff. It's not an easy process but at least you're not going through the route of making self-combusting incense.

The Ritual Proper

I have to emphasize that this isn’t a general offering and I don’t condone nor support the idea of “feeding spirits” randomly. That mean this whole ritual will be very specific in who you want you to give the offering or the blessing to, in the same logic of why you wouldn’t give money to random people in the street or you wouldn’t go to Facebook marketplace and say “FREE MONEY” and then put your location.

The Ritual Outline would be:

1) Prayer to God/Divine Creator. 2) Establishing “Overseers” of the offerings and boundaries. 3) Prayers to call the spirits. 4) Blessings and Thanksgiving. 5) Closure.

Part 1

You Establish some connection to divinity with the ritual and start by asking for guidance, you can of course use the Hidden Stele instead of Aphorism 14 from Arbatel here:

O Lord of heaven and earth, Creator and Maker of all things visible and invisible; I, though unworthy, by thy assistance call upon thee, through thy onely begotten Son Jesus Christ our Lord, that thou wilt give unto me thy holy Spirit, to direct me in thy truth unto all good. Amen.

Because I earnestly desire perfectly to know the Arts of this life and such things as are necessary for us, which are so overwhelmed in darkness, and polluted with infinite humane opinions, that I of my own power can attain to no knowledge in them, unless thou teach it me: Grant me therefore one of thy spirits, who may teach me those things which thou wouldest have me to know and learn, to thy praise and glory, and the profit of our neighbour. Give me also an apt and teachable heart, that I may easily understand those things which thou shalt teach me, and may hide them in my understanding, that I may bring them forth as out of thy inexhaustible treasures, to all necessary uses. And give me grace, that I may use such thy gifts humbly, with fear and trembling, through our Lord Jesus Christ, with thy holy Spirit. Amen.

Part 2

You would put a little put of the incense you made now.

Calling the cardinal Archangels, I usually recommend that people approach this as prayers. You can use format or ask a different thing from each archangel and in any case here’s a format for sake convenience:

“Oh [Archangel name] I ask for your guidance and protection in my ritual today, help me reach those who need my prayers and guide my hand toward those who benefit the most of it. Surround my work in infinite purified divine light of God that no malicious or malevolent spirit may enter and partake in this work, I beseech thee by the blood of Jesus Christ that no deceitful spirit is allowed in this chamber and this blessing is given by the Light of the World our Lord Jesus Christ. “

NOTE: I have to emphasise that the wording that no other spirit comes except those who are coming in light or benevolent. You don’t want to skip this step, you can use whatever form of invocation and with whatever else spirits you usually work but I have to repeat don’t throw the invocation just as free money on the street.

Part 3

You would put a little more of the incense you made now.

Since I am going through this ritual with an elemental focus on mind, now is the time to work with the prayer of elementals. You can use the elemental prayers and walk around the circle calling each elemental kingdom to pray with you!

Part 4

Now the Blessing of the spirit is that you would use the 🖖🖖 gesture toward each direction, where the ritual in Sepher Yetzirah is about sealing the Depths then this ritual is about Blessing the depths. You face each direction and use Numbers 6:24-26

24 ‘“The Lord bless you and keep you; 25 the Lord make his face shine on you and be gracious to you; 26 the Lord turn his face toward you and give you peace.”

Each Direction you’re sending the blessings to the spirits, ancestors, angels, elementals, and so on who came to receive the blessings. East, South, West, North, East up, East Down. Then Stand there give it a bit, you don’t need to do anything right now and you can stand for a bit.

Part 5

Closure helps establish that the spirit who came on their ways and not have any lingering presence. I use Aphorism 21 from Arbatel to be honest:

Forasmuch as thou camest in peace, and quietly, and hast answered unto my petitions; I give thanks unto God, in whole Name thou camest: and now thou mayest depart in peace unto thy orders; and return to me again when I shall call thee by thy name, or by thy order, or by thy office, which is granted from the Creator. Amen.

 'Those that lower their voice in the presence of God's Apostle – their hearts has God tested for piety: for them is forgiveness and a great reward.'

[ms-pbunny]

Creative brief

Hello Everybody! There will be some marketing content today. Consider that we are a railway firm that needs to come up with a unique purpose and concept. 🚂

Let's begin by outlining the objective. Its purpose is to increase public awareness of railroad track accidents in social media and the media.

What position will we take? We present ourselves as the brand of an everyday, well-known firm in Australia that transports people. Our core value is to offer secure transportation for the general population.

Who are we trying to reach? Here, a more thorough investigation is required. These may be consumers between the ages of 18 and 40, who generally fit the digital profile of Gen Z and millennials. Digital natives were immersed in screens, digital devices, and social media from the moment they were born. Here, we want the audience to be able to engage with the brand, therefore we'll target advertising campaigns to platforms like Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube in a way that allows users to access our content on any device.

Perhaps there is a different group that can persuade the target audience to support them? They're bloggers! people who are impacted by the influencer and have a large audience. Working together with them can be quite productive.

Does the brand possess additional resources, such as exclusive communication channels? Here, we can consider brief social advertisements on television, radio, or over railway station speakers. What information do we require? Perhaps people need to be shown what happens as a result of negligence and inattention at train stops because this is so clear. These are incidents that have already occurred to humans. Mentions of risks, videos warning about trains, brief messages and films on social media, announcements of warnings, in-person interaction, and briefings.

You have the option of launching targeted advertising to the target demographic on social networks, which will constantly engage with customers and remind them to behave safely at train stations. Please take note that neither the company nor the brand owns any media brands or pays for any media.

[beardedmrbean]

“Antisemitic writings” were found in a search of items belonging to the shooter who opened fire Sunday afternoon at Joel Osteen’s Lakewood Church in Houston, according to law enforcement.

The woman, identified as 36-year-old Genesse Ivonne Moreno, was carrying an assault-style rifle with the word “Palestine” written on it, according to two senior law enforcement officials briefed on the matter.

A motive is still not clear, but police said they believe Moreno acted alone. A dispute between Moreno and her ex-husband’s family, some of whom are Jewish, may be related to the shooting, Houston Police Commander Chris Hassig said in a news briefing Monday.

The shooter also made several statements during the course of the incident, but the officials declined to describe them. Law enforcement officials added that Moreno previously went by multiple aliases, including using both male and female names.

Moreno also brought her 7-year-old son with her to the church, the officials said. During the incident, the shooter stated she had a bomb, but a search turned up no explosive devices, officials said.

Preliminary tests done of chemicals found at the scene concluded that the materials did not pose any risk, Houston Fire Department Chief Sam Peña said at the Monday news briefing.

“The products on their own are benign, and they’re common products that we would see in other applications,” Peña said.

Law enforcement records show the shooter had at least six arrests since 2005, including unlawful carrying of a weapon, which she pleaded guilty to; evading arrest; and assault on a public official, which was pleaded to a lesser charge.   

Moreno has a documented mental health history and was placed under an emergency detention order by Houston police in 2016, Hassig said.

Maria Scott, who lived four doors from Moreno in the city of Conroe, roughly 40 miles north of Houston, said she did not know her well, but “people talked about her because she was wreaking havoc.”

She said a couple of years ago Moreno knocked on her door at 7 a.m. “insisting I go get my dogs out of her mother’s yard,” said Scott, 57. “She was just very stern and very, very angry for someone at 7 a.m.”

Scott said she heard from talk in the neighborhood that Moreno carried a firearm.

Another neighbor, Linda Giutta, wrote on Facebook that she and others from the neighborhood had raised concerns about Moreno with local law enforcement and the city council.

"No one could offer any kind of help," Giutta said in the post. "We are told to see something and say something but nothing gets done until it is too late."

Neither the police department nor Conroe's five council members immediately responded to requests for comment.

Police have publicly stated that two off-duty officers at the church returned fire, striking the shooter and killing her at about 1:50 p.m. Her son was also struck in the head during the incident and was in critical condition.

Police Chief Troy Finner said at a news conference Monday that the 7-year-old boy is “fighting for his life.” Police previously said the boy was 5 years old.

Another person who was injured, a 57-year-old man, was released from the hospital, Finner added.

He added that one of the off-duty officers is an agent with the Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission and the other is a Houston police officer.

Officials are investigating a wide range of possible motives given the writing on the weapon, but cannot yet conclusively say what led to the shooting. They have not ruled out terrorism or hate crime-related motives.

The shooting happened between services, as people were arriving for Spanish service, Osteen said. About 45,000 people attend services there every week, making it one of the largest megachurches in the country.

Osteen said that he was “in a fog” after the violence and that he was keeping the injured in his prayers.

“We don’t understand why all these things happen,” the pastor told reporters Sunday. “But we know God’s in control.”

In a subsequent statement on Facebook, Osteen urged his congregation to lean on their faith to cope with the anguish.

“Our community is devastated by today’s events and grateful for the swift actions of law enforcement,” he said. “Together, we will rise above this tragedy and stand firm in our commitment to love and support one another.”

[is-the-owl-video-cute]

I'd argue any house is a better living environment than the best fur cage for a fox purely on square footage alone. If the only other requirements for an enriched life are a high place to sit, a bone to chew on and a sand box, a house must be a fox paradise

say you know nothing about foxes or fur farms without saying you know nothing about foxes or fur farms.

Just because humans would be miserable in a fox pen does not mean a fox is, just because humans are comfortable in a house does not mean a fox is.

Foxes are largely nocturnal, occasionally crepuscular, animals that hunt largely by stealth and ambush. They are often territorial and enjoy spending their days hiding and sleeping, while spending their nights urinating on shrubs and finding food. When food is plentiful, many genuinely don’t do much, which is why you see so many overweight foxes in captivity, that and poor dietary management but I digress.

Foxes do not inherently need nor want a lot of square footage. If your mental image of a fur farm is a tiny cage that they can’t even turn around in, you’ve been listening to peta too much. Most farms offer foxes an indoor and outdoor section of their own, and a hide box as well as general enrichment items. They are culled fairly young and that is a good thing because animals bred for color are not bred to be compatible with long life. Forcing a wild animal with horrific gum disease to live in your house is more cruel than just euthanizing that animal.

Also, the mentality of “oh well this animal was in a bad condition before, so I have put it in a still bad but different condition that still doesn’t meet its needs” is what I will call the Snake Discovery Fallacy. There is nothing noble in taking an animal out of a frying pan to drop them into the fire. Wild animals do not belong in your house and they cannot thrive there. If this was actually about giving these animals a good life, they would be given proper outdoor enclosures with hands-off care to keep the animal comfortable, but that is never what a single one of these “rescues” want to do. They would much rather buy directly from a fur farm they slander later and keep ten foxes in their bedroom living off chicken nuggets and lettuce so they can kiss their “heckin chonker” foxes on the mouth to get old white people on Facebook to throw more money at them than a dollar day stripper.

They have no interest in proper animal husbandry because they see these animals as deluxe plush toys that can be exploited for profit. Which is ironic, because they’re supposed to hate farmers for that very flaw.

[ask-whiteblade]

"Love ?"

The absurdity of the word echoed in her mind for many seconds after she said it, but she didn't let any confusion show on her face even though she was preoccupied and wondered what could possibly link her to Love in any way.

But she was like any mortal being, the word meant so much more than she realized.

She agreed to sit at the card table and grabbed the cards that presented themselves to her in such a mysterious way. As mysterious and unsettling as the rest of this endless room. Full of negative emotion but void of any moral sense.

Poker was an unfamiliar game to her, the cards she observed at her hoof gave her a poor advantage. But strangely, it wasn't her cards that were most important here, nor the chips that were being offered, but simply the march of her thoughts.

The bets were placed, the chips gathered in the center of the table, and the other players who had invited themselves into the game at one time or another were drinking and laughing while chatting. The atmosphere was good and warm. An atmosphere that she had not known for so long.

The host quietly shuffled the cards.

There was no logical sense in the different steps, the rules were not respected, the order did not follow… nothing made any fucking sense.

Yet everything seemed so normal, so simple and so pleasant. The gloomy atmosphere was soon forgotten and White Blade's game partners, 4 in number, were chatting away.

"Will you let me drink alone?" Asked the stallion next to her, handing her a glass of champagne in that clear glass, revealing that strange purplish liquid with bubbles.

"If you invite me." Answered she to his translucent interlocutor. But whom she knew so well.

They smiled at each other and toasted to this evening.

Each player at the table simply tossed the chips, swapped cards, talked quietly, exchanged glances, laughed at the misfortune of others, saw their bets lost, saw their bets doubled. One Eye, sitting across from White Blade, smoked his cigar as if nothing had happened.

He spat out a big puff of smoke that covered the whole table for a moment, before the smoke faded away between White and him.

"You know it's a waste of time?" Her father's friend will tell her, as if she is stubbornly trying to keep this long-gone moment alive.

"I know…" She took a long look at her cards before glancing at her other playing companions, the three of them dead and frozen next to her, lying on the table as if they had been like this.

Intro - Here - Next

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mod - Part 2 of this little Dice event. Very inspired by the colors and the general theme. :)

@mymind-theirvisions

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Twitter, Tumblr, Instagram, Facebook - @basykail 

Autres blogs - @fate-inspiration @ask-whiteblade 

[cryptoagorism]

The dangers of the state's monopoly on identity

The state's monopoly on identity excludes vulnerable people from jobs, housing, healthcare and more.

This article originally began as a response to The Reboot's article, which discusses the dangers of perpetual tracking by Google, Facebook and Microsoft. [1]

While the tracking by Google, Facebook and Microsoft is definitely disturbing and can even put people in danger, the state's data economy is even worse, with far-reaching consequences. Few people talk about this, even though it affects millions of people's daily lives.

Via the government ID system, the state exerts a monopoly on identity and an obsession with tracking people from “birth certificate” to “death certificate”. Disproportionate KYC regulations actively exclude people without government-issued ID from necessary services, including jobs, housing and healthcare and even everyday things like online shopping, receiving mail, buying a sim card, doing volunteer work, taking classes, or visiting the gym or library.

Millions of people worldwide don't have access to government ID (the state refuses to print it for them) or can't show ID for safety reasons (e.g. they are a victim of abuse and don't want to be tracked down by the abuser). These people are often already in vulnerable situations (for example: stateless, undocumented or homeless people; activists, dissidents or refugees; victims of domestic abuse or adult victims of child abuse; or adults whose birth was not registered) and exclusion from basic needs makes it even more difficult to survive.

The state offers no alternatives nor solutions – if the state refuses to print a passport, national ID card or birth certificate for someone, this person can't appeal, get help from NGOs or lawyers, or find an alternative way to get ID. [2]

The state's system does not offer a procedure to register yourself, for example if you weren't registered at birth or your country of birth is dangerous to you. There are no steps you can take – no appeals, checklists, regularization, rehabilitation, special circumstances, friendly jurisdictions, nor identity issuer of last resort. You cannot earn access to ID via merit, vouches, oaths, good behavior, probation, community service, nor any other form of effort or compassion. Even if the individual would otherwise qualify for a skilled work, marriage or humanitarian visa and could provide a biometric photo and fingerprints, this is not enough.

Similarly, there are no non-state solutions. NGOs and religious organizations like the United Nations, Red Cross and Caritas don't issue alternative IDs; jurisdictional arbitrage such as Flag Theory requires an existing birth certificate or old passport; and non-government IDs from World Passport or Digitalcourage are not accepted. This lack of alternatives only cements the state's monopoly.

In the 1950s, the United Nations issued conventions on statelessness [3] and refugee status [4], but today countries still refuse to issue IDs for stateless people, people who weren't registered at birth, and people who have fled political, cultural or interpersonal persecution – whether by arbitrarily or discriminatorily denying applications for stateless status, refugee status or delayed birth registration, ignoring submitted applications, or not having a process for applications at all, while simultaneously criminalizing people without a legal identity. [5] In 2014, the UNHCR started a campaign to “end statelessness by 2024” [6], but today it is still impossible to get a stateless or non-citizen passport, and unlike the laissez-passer passports of the past, the United Nations no longer issues substitute IDs, despite that it could help millions of people to access necessities such as employment, housing and healthcare.

This condemns individuals purely and permanently to their circumstances of birth, which they could not influence and cannot change. As an adult, there is no way to enter the system. If you were born in the wrong place (e.g. stateless, refugee, dissident) and/or to the wrong people (e.g. child abuse, cult, no birth registration), there is no way to rise above your situation through effort, determination nor compassion.

The state's monopoly on identity is therefore an unethical, fatalistic single point of failure.

Even for individuals with ID, the name that the state prints on their ID may not correspond to the name that they use in real life, which could put them in danger. [7] Many countries restrict or even ban legal name changes, which endangers victims of abuse (such as adults who escaped from child abuse, domestic abuse, cults or gangs), who use a self-chosen name for a fresh start, to feel human, to recover from trauma or for physical safety reasons. [8]

As government ID is not universal and does not signify security or trust, government ID requirements only disproportionately and unfairly exclude people from services. [9]

Returning to the topic of “surveillance capitalism” – People can choose to stop using Google, Facebook, Windows or stock Android. There are many alternatives, such as DuckDuckGo, Mastodon, Linux and custom ROMs such as Lineage or Graphene. There are also ways to protect your privacy, such as reducing usage of social media, using a VPN or Tor, using a burner phone, using a pseudonym, or using cash or crypto instead of credit cards. [10]

In comparison, when the state coerces the vast majority of employers, landlords and hospitals to require government ID, there are only a few gray market alternatives left (e.g. under the table work, informal rentals for cash, doctors who accept out-of-pocket payments). [11]

It is a stark contrast: If you don't use Facebook for privacy reasons, you can still find different ways to keep in contact with friends and local events. If you can't rent most apartments because the landlord requires a passport or driver's license, you are very lucky if you can find a room in a shared apartment where your roommates deal with the contract for you and you pay rent to your roommates in cash. One thing can be an inconvenience, one thing can cause homelessness.

Many people believe government ID is the only way to trust that “someone is who they say they are”. [12] If someone admits that they don't have “proper ID”, they are often seen as untrustworthy, hiding something or even dangerous. [13] The equation of “ID = trust” not only leads to social stigma and exclusion, but can also lead to poverty and homelessness [14], threats of violence, or even indefinite detention (in many countries, cops can demand ID without a reason, and detain the individual until their legal identity is known – which can mean indefinite imprisonment for people who were never assigned a legal identity [15] [16]). Rather than “innocent until proven guilty”, this creates a situation of “guilty and no way to prove innocence”.

If innocence is not based on your actions, but purely on possession of government ID, it creates an impossible scenario when no jurisdiction agrees to print ID for you – from stateless people who literally have nowhere to go, to refugees who can't return to or interact with their country of birth for safety reasons, to adults whose births were never registered, to victims of child abuse, domestic abuse or cult abuse who don't use their birth name due to decades of trauma or worse the risk of being tracked down and returned. Instead of blaming authoritarian countries, uncooperative bureaucrats, abusive or neglectful birth parents, violent ex-partners or sociopathic cult leaders, the victim is blamed, distrusted and considered as a criminal.

In an ideal world, people would be judged on their actions and intent, rather than on circumstances of birth and decisions of bureaucrats. For housing, only your ability to pay rent would be relevant. For a job, only your skills and work ethic would be relevant. For healthcare, only your medical condition would be relevant (it would be against the Hippocratic Oath to deny medical treatment to people without ID, especially if they are paying out-of-pocket in cash).

For identity, it would be enough to say your name, get a vouch from a friend, landlord or employer, link to a social media profile, or use a non-government photo ID (such as from Digitalcourage or World Passport, which does not require birth registration or citizenship and allows self-chosen names).

For authentication, you would use a password or PIN (e.g. SMS code to pickup mail), physical key or card (e.g. mailbox keys, membership cards) or a cryptographic keypair (such as in PGP, Bitcoin or Monero).

For trust, word-of-mouth was the primary method before government IDs were invented (and made mandatory) in the 20th century. [17] [18] [19] Nowadays, word-of-mouth includes vouches from friends, online reviews, social networks, web-of-trust and memberships. Cash deposits and escrow systems (e.g. Bitrated) would protect against scams, theft or damage.

This meritocratic, non-government market is not theoretical. Permissionless free markets exist today – under the names of agorism [20], informal economies, black and gray markets, parallel economies and Second Realms – and offer hope and a means to survive to people in need. [21] [22] While NGOs have tried in vain to convince the state to print IDs for vulnerable people, these independent markets take a practical, grassroots approach to help people access work, housing and healthcare, even without government-issued ID. [23]

These free markets offer a way for people to take control of their situation. Human rights activists have campaigned since decades, while individuals have been left in limbo or excluded entirely from society, purely due to bureaucracy. In the 1950s, the United Nations called on nation-states to print IDs for stateless people, unregistered people and refugees – but seventy years later, the situation has only become worse, as more daily life necessities require government ID KYC every year, yet nation-states still refuse to print ID for millions of people.

Even worse, these people are not being accused of a specific crime and there is no real justification to deny printing IDs for them – their only “crime” is the vicious circle of not having papers because the state refuses to print papers for them. You would think economic exclusion – banned from employment, housing, healthcare, education, banking, travel, contracts, mail, sim cards and more – would be a punishment for only the most severe of crimes. But for stateless people, refugees, victims of abuse and people who weren't registered at birth, it is a punishment for being born. In this unforgiving situation, the informal economy provides an essential lifeline and way to survive.

Some examples include under-the-table work, informal apartment rentals, health clinics run by volunteers and anonymous sim cards. Most informal, agorist markets are local, based on word-of-mouth with cash-in-hand payments. The internet can also offer a place for an uncensored digital economy – such as for global trade [24], remote work, activism, fundraising [25] and community building – while cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Monero offer a way to send and receive money online without government ID or a bank account [26] [27] and withdraw to local cash when needed [28].

There are many reasons why people participate in agorist markets. It can be quicker and easier to rent out your spare room for cash, pay a doctor out-of-pocket instead of dealing with public health insurance, or hire an online freelancer for crypto. Bureaucracy doesn't just shut people out of the market, it also takes time and money to fill out forms, deal with months-long wait times, pay extortionate fees, and apply for government permission (which may be denied for arbitrary or discriminatory reasons). Agorism cuts the red tape, enabling people to access what they need in a truly free market.

As the state continues to ostracize and even criminalize vulnerable people, agorism provides not only hope of inclusion and equal opportunities, but a practical, proven solution which works today. For universal and safe access to daily needs such as employment, housing and healthcare, it is important to build and use agorist markets that are immune to the state's monopoly on identity, invisible to the state's data economy, and free for everyone to use.

The following books, articles and podcasts provide more information about agorism, as well as practical examples:

“An Agorist Primer” by SEK3 Book: https://kopubco.com/pdf/An_Agorist_Primer_by_SEK3.pdf

“Second Realm: Book on Strategy” by Smuggler & XYZ Book: https://ia801807.us.archive.org/34/items/second-realm-digital/Second%20Realm%20Paperback%20New.pdf

“Crypto Agorism: Free markets for a free world” by AnarkioCrypto Video: https://tube.tchncs.de/w/tPvohTaiocfg5LEsFjGqHN Slides: https://anarkiocrypto.medium.com/crypto-agorism-free-markets-for-a-free-world-d9c755e6ef11

“Fifty things to do NOW” by The Free and Unashamed Article: https://libertyunderattack.com/fifty-things-now-free-unashamed

Vonu Podcast Audio: https://vonupodcast.com

Agora Podcast Audio: https://anchor.fm/mortified-penguin

Monero Talk Podcast Audio: https://www.monerotalk.live

Hack Liberty Forum Link: https://forum.hackliberty.org

Sources:

[1] https://thereboot.com/why-we-should-end-the-data-economy/ [2] https://anarkio.codeberg.page/blog/roadblocks-to-obtaining-government-id.html [3] https://www.unhcr.org/what-we-do/protect-human-rights/ending-statelessness/un-conventions-statelessness [4] https://www.unhcr.org/about-unhcr/who-we-are/1951-refugee-convention [5] https://index.statelessness.eu/sites/default/files/UNHCR%2C%20Faces%20of%20Statelessness%20in%20the%20Czech%20Republic%20(2020).pdf [6] https://unhcr.org/ibelong/about-statelessness [7] https://blog.twitter.com/common-thread/en/topics/stories/2021/whats-in-a-name-the-case-for-inclusivity-through-anonymity [8] https://privacyinternational.org/long-read/2274/identity-discrimination-and-challenge-id [9] https://www.economist.com/christmas-specials/2018/12/18/establishing-identity-is-a-vital-risky-and-changing-business [10] https://anonymousplanet.org/guide.html [11] https://anarkio.codeberg.page/blog/survival-outside-the-state.html [12] https://sneak.berlin/20200118/you-dont-need-to-see-my-id [13] https://vonupodcast.com/know-your-customer-kyc-the-rarely-discussed-danger-guest-article-audio/ [14] https://www.statelessness.eu/blog/each-person-left-living-streets-we-are-losing-society [15] https://www.penalreform.org/blog/proving-who-i-am-the-plight-of-people/ [16] https://index.statelessness.eu/themes/detention [17] https://dergigi.medium.com/true-names-not-required-fc6647dfe24a [18] https://fee.org/articles/passports-were-a-temporary-war-measure/ [19] https://medium.com/@hansdezwart/during-world-war-ii-we-did-have-something-to-hide-40689565c550 [20] https://anarkio.codeberg.page/agorism/ [21] https://libertyunderattack.com/fifty-things-now-free-unashamed [22] https://medium.com/@Kallman/a-21st-century-introduction-to-agorism-5dc69b54d79f [23] https://kopubco.com/pdf/An_Agorist_Primer_by_SEK3.pdf [24] https://bitcoinmagazine.com/business/kyc-free-bitcoin-circular-economies [25] https://kuno.anne.media [26] https://c4ss.org/content/57847 [27] https://whycryptocurrencies.com/toc.html [28] https://blog.trezor.io/buy-bitcoin-without-kyc-33b883029ff1