#not use your shitty live function!!!!!!!

[representative-democracy]

Googling ‘how to kill tumblr live’ and ‘how to salt the earth from which tumblr live grows so nothing can live there for a thousand years’

[nomaishuttle]

like pirating is so normal 2 me i forget there r ppl who r like antipiracy which btw is stupid. obviously

[reticent-writer]

Spiral p1

warnings: a bit violent, shitty parents

(it doesn't go into details)

✿✼:*ﾟ:.｡..｡.:*･ﾟﾟ･**･ﾟﾟ･*:.｡..｡.:*ﾟ:*:✼✿　

"You killed your parents?" He was genuinely shocked as he watched you nod. He lived for tea like this but coming from you he couldn't help but be confused.

"Why on earth would you do that. You told me that you loved them."

"I mean I did but they were- wait my death led to yours?" You changed the subject.

"Yes, I simply cannot function without you, my dear. I was hiding a body in the woods when I was shot in the head." He said it as if it was a fond memory. It was creepy but as he talked a red X appeared on his forhead. the moment he saw you staring it vanished.

"You can't change the subject, Y/n. When and Why did you kill your parents?"

You sighed as you went to tell your story, "They were an odd pair, in my opinion, they should have been divorced. My mother was drunk, always talking about how she never liked my father but had 6 kids with him, I was the eldest. My father always talked about the life he could've had if he didn't settle for my mother. When my father lost his job he became a drunk and often got violent with us. After a while, I got tired of it and told my siblings to go to a friend's house for the night. The next day they were found dead by the neighbor's, No one was caught."

"That must've been quite a night." He joked.

"It was, it was also the night I met you."

"Really? You seemed so.... happy."

"Because I was."

From then on the two of you talked daily

You had learned that he had been missing from the public eye for 7 years

He started calling you pet names he used when he was alive

He told you things he would never tell anyone else

You met husk and niffty

You started to like him again but you could never forgive him for killing you

nut you considered it when he started working for the hazbin hotel

You were a patron

Although you didn't believe that sinners can change you decided to give it a shot

"Well good morning, My love. It's such a nice day today, would you care to join me for a trip to the tailor? A nobody took a bit off me." He grinned from ear to ear while offering his arm of you to take. You accepted.

At the tailor the two of you while the two of you were waiting for his jacket you suggested he try on more suits for a variety of clothes.

"How does with one look?" He came out in a blue suit with a black button-up. (his colors in reverse)

"You look amazing." You beamed as his posed.

"So this is a yes?"

"Of course-"

"Sir your jacket is ready."

Alastor paid for the new suit and his old one. Outside of the shop was a crowd surround a tv broadcasting Vox.

Alastor told you practically nothing about the other overlords but you could tell he did not like Vox and the way he looked at the TV confirmed it.

"Come along, dear. There's nothing to see over there."

✿✼:*ﾟ:.｡..｡.:*･ﾟﾟ･**･ﾟﾟ･*:.｡..｡.:*ﾟ:*:✼✿　

Alastor beefing with Lucifer and cursing is so funny to me💀

Taglist: @berryghostbunny, @lorkai, @mygoldtears, @kawaiiskeletoneggsnerd, @secretkoalapersona-blog, @koji-akeme, @lofasofabread , @msyolocat-blog, @elementress44, @luujjvi, @justmare

[colored-cloverfeilds]

I really do think that ONE hit the nail on the head when he made reigen. he's a conman. when things aren't going his way his immediate reaction is to beat the other person up and it somehow always works. he violates every working law immaginable. he is so unreasonably lucky for no reason. his best friends are an autistic middle schooler, an evil spirit and an ex-terrorist. he pays his workers pennies and is worried theyll join a union. he lives in a shitty one bedroom apartment. he gets drunk off of no alcohol. hes constantly surrounded by other autistic middle schoolers. he has no real, functioning adult friends. he has a license but hasn't used it in 10 years, and when he did use it, it was to take a bunch of kids to meet aliens. he's written his own biography. God hates him. his family hates him. he hates himself. and yet there's a psychic kid with a bowl cut who looks up to him with nothing but admiration. he throws salt at evil spirits and people if they annoy him. he would protect his students no matter what, and has almost died multiple times to help them. the only thing that makes him happy are dogs. in fact, he had a dog before, and it was eaten. he's canonically sexy and depressed, but also very, very ugly and sweaty. he's tried to shoot and kill a man not because he was super evil and trying to take over the world, but because he was hurting his kid.  he was told he would go to hell and couldn't care less. he met real aliens and all he could think about was how he was gonna pay his bills. he has god awful posture. he smokes cigarettes but never smokes in front of the kids. he wrote his will by age 29. all the animators wanna fuck him. he gets no bitches canonically. he's ONEs favorite character but he always makes him want to kill himself. he was doxxed. he was cancelled on Twitter. he entered a wack a mole competition and won 4th place. children make fun of him. he describes himself with having motherly love. no one likes him. everyone loves him. the anime designer draws him starting from his ass -> waist -> back because "it's like running your tongue over his body". his theme song sounds like a mario kart course track. he's so utterly pathetic.

plus he's just a genuinely good person and he's one of the best characters ONEs ever created??? genius.

[caesium-55]

—seven days. [ iv ]

pairing: max verstappen x manager! reader.

summary: as the third time world champion, max verstappen's manager, you function on the belief that whatever max verstappen wanted, max verstappen shall get. but this time, after four years of working as his manager, you can't give him what he wants anymore and that was to stay.

warning/s: sexual content but it's nothing too explicit. also angst angst angst.

author's note: NOT BETA READ. NOT EDITED. also, lemme know what u guys think!! would love to read it honestly. it was what had been keeping me inspired.

tags: @whatamidoingwithmylife-ramdom @eugene-emt-roe @bellezaycafe @barnestatic @theseerbetweenus @wcnorris @notyouraveragemochii @lpab @vildetry06 @a-beaverhausen @formula1mount @loloekie @alucardsdaddyissues @leclercdream

masterlist.

You have three philosophies in life.

Pussies do not get the good stuff. If you want the good stuff, don't be a pussy.

Hard work will pay off one day. In the meantime, work hard but don't work too hard. You work smart and make it seem like you're working hard so by the time your “hard” work pays off, you’re not too tired from working and still have energy to enjoy your reward, you know? Does that make sense?

Whatever Max Verstappen wanted, Max Verstappen would get.

Now let us focus on philosophy number three. It's a shitty philosophy to have, but when you're working as the manager of Red Bull’s golden boy—after Sebastian Vettel, of course—that philosophy sort of becomes the job description. It's your job to give whatever Max Verstappen wanted, whatever he needed.

When he asks you that question, sounding so innocent as if he hasn't just yanked your entire world off its axis by saying those words, your first reaction is to pull up the middle finger. Fuck you, Max. Max is an asshole for asking you that. Max is an absolute asshole for asking you for a kiss. For the five years you've worked for him, he should already be aware of the power he holds over your head. Should be aware that you'll give anything he'll ask. That's why he should be careful with what he's asking from you.

Said asshole has the audacity to pout. He resembled the pet duck who lived in your Abuelo's farm that you were very fond of in your childhood. Her name was Maria and she was a menace. Your Abuelo even tied a pink bow to the duck’s neck so it could be easily recognizable. A 181-cm tall, broad-shouldered, blond-brown-haired Dutch duck with a blue-eyed gaze that will never fail to make your bones tremble and your heart stutter once you let yourself stare at it. You can put a bow around his neck, too, like what your Abuelo did to that duck. Then, use the bow to choke him in a way that is definitely not sexy or kinky but in a way that screams murder, murder, murder.

“That's not nice.”

“‘M not a nice person.”

“You're a nice person, you just don't do nice things.”

You give him a weird look.

“If you weren't a nice person, you would not be here with me right now,” he continues, in a manner that made him seem like a hundred-old sage imparting wisdom. “But you're here and you're not leaving and you're not hurting me so you're nice.”

His words cause something rotten to bloom in your ribs, “How are you so certain that ‘m not gonna end up hurtin’ you? For all you know, I'm gonna use this billiard stick to make you a human skewer right now.”

He laughs. God. The sound is absolutely beautiful that it terrifies you.

“You're you, [Name]. You would never hurt me.”

In a sense, he's right. You will never hurt him. Not intentionally, at least. If you wanted him to hurt, you'll be leaving right now and flying to Texas the same way Kelly did in Abu Dhabi. Because, for someone like Max, nothing in this world is more painful than to be left alone when all you yearned for is someone to be there for you.

“So……will you?” he asks again. “Will you kiss me?”

He's drunk, your brain reasons. Your fingers gently reach for his jaw—very angular, you belatedly realize—and Max chases the warmth of your skin. He does not know what he's asking, your brain reasons again. You tug him towards you and your mouth meets his, immediately registering the taste of the beer on his tongue. He’s stupid, your brain added. I’m stupid, too, you argue mentally and pushes him against the side of the billiard table and toss your stick to the floor and let yourself take everything from Max Verstappen. Fuck you Max, you think with finality. Your brain replies: You’re also fucked.

He took what he wanted from you. Every day. Every single day. He will ask and you will give. Now, it is your turn to take. One last time before the inevitable goodbye that you know will break both of your hearts.

Anger. Frustration. That's what you feel right now. Anger because this is going to make things more complicated for you and goddammit, why are you making things hard for yourself? Frustrated because you’re not supposed to do this but you cannot fucking stop. Thank fuck you resigned before pulling this shit because this is soooooo unprofessional.

You read somewhere that said something like all people are driven to the point of eating their gods after a time. And is this situation not a perfect demonstration of this? Max is your god. Max was your god. And you are going to devour him—fueled by five years of frustration and anger and a series of why, why, why didn't you talk to Horner? Now it's too late because I'm leaving all because you didn't talk to fucking Horner.

You've forgiven 2021. 2022 made your grudge grow. And you're not stupid to continue staying after his 2023 victory when it's clearly not happening—the dream that will be given to you with Max's power. You will never forgive yourself if you stayed here and be continuously reminded of what you could become, what you failed to become.

Max is surprisingly pliant under your hands. A rare occasion. One would expect Max Verstappen to take the lead because that's what he did in the race tracks. A 20-second lead from everyone else. He's also the type to just do whatever he wanted, you know? And people would let him. Because he's Max Verstappen.

Dominance. Total dominance.

“Wait,” he squeezes your arms and you do not hear him clearly the first time because you're so concentrated on his lips and how it feels and tastes against yours. “Wait, wait. Slow down.”

You pull away and you hear him take a gasp of air, “Somethin’ wrong?”

He looks so beautiful like this. Beneath you. Lips swollen. Blue eyes wide with desire. Hair perfectly messy. Grip on your arm so tight that you're sure will definitely leave a hand-shaped bruise tomorrow.

“Can’t breathe,” he says with a light laugh and you resist the urge to violently bash your head against the billiard table because what the fuck? That's not good for your heart. It's too… too… adorable. Max is not supposed to be an adorable person.

You suck in a breath and lower your head until your forehead meets Max’s firm chest.

“Fuck you,” you mumble.

“Hm?”

“Nothing.”

You raise your head and meet Max’s eyes, the culprit behind your insanity right now.

(Your Abuela said that blue eyes were just blue eyes. Until you fall in love with someone with blue eyes and blue becomes a color that consumed your world whole. You appreciated the sky more because it reminded you of his eyes. You appreciated the color of the seas more because it reminded you of his eyes. Blue became the color of love.)

Now what? Do you continue or…?

“Can you do me a favor?”

“Do you even need to ask?” you deadpan. Max’s hands circle around your waist and he gently guides you away from him. He dusts his shirt once he has fully risen from the billiard table before his hand finds yours. Fingers intertwining together, he leads you out of the entertainment room.

Your heart drums with anticipation. Numerous questions circle around your head but it all disappears in a flash when Max brings you to the room where you found him that morning. You wince when you walk past the broken door.

Yeah…

Making a payment plan will be hell. You're unemployed at the current moment, too. The first thing you have to do when you land in Texas is find a job.

He makes you sit on his bed, the soft mattress dipping down on your weight. You can only stare at him, brows furrowing in confusion and a question sitting on the tip of your tongue that you are yet to voice out. Max makes a beeline to his closet, throwing it open and procuring a box.

A box.

He walks back to you, dropping on his knees and that action makes you panic. Then, Max opens the box, pulling out the most gorgeous pair of five-inch block heels you have ever laid eyes upon and gently slips them onto your feet. The straps have pearls and satin bows and it has tiny white diamonds, elegantly cut, as the centerpiece. Not even the YSL Opyum heels you own can compare to its elegance and beauty.

You almost kick him in the face because you do not expect that he’ll do that.

I bought shoes and they don't fit her. Max has told you. You feel bile rise up your throat.

The shoes. They fit you. Perfectly. As if it was made to be yours. As if it was bought to be yours. As if he was thinking of you, who is nothing but his manager and somewhat friend, when he bought the gorgeous heels instead of Kelly Piquet, his fucking girlfriend of three years whom he had been living with in this fucking penthouse, and parenting little P with.

“They're perfect,” Max whispers and he looks up with that smile playing on his lips. You feel tears sting your eyes and you press your lips into a thin line before moving your gaze away, blinking rapidly.

Max is doing this because he thought you were Kelly.

“They're custom, you know? They're the only pair in the world.”

His words make the taste of bile a hundred times worse. You stare at the shoes on your feet as if it's a sin to have the shoes fit you. No wonder Kelly is mad at Max. If Leo has commissioned custom heels with another woman in mind and got your shoe size wrong after three years of being together, you'll feel hurt, too.

You feel the need to apologize to Kelly. Maybe a quick message to her IG? You also follow each other’s private account.

“You’re thinking,” he says and his voice snaps you out of the rabbit hole known as your thoughts. “What are you thinking?”

“Nothin’,” you lie. The feeling of wanting to puke intensifies so you grab Max by his collar and plant your lips against his to push back the imaginary bile stuck on your throat and from there, the situation escalates to the point that clothes are removed. One by one. When you reach to unstrap the heels, Max grabbed your wrists, almost panicked.

“What are you doin’?” you ask.

“Don't take them off please.”

Whatever Max wanted, Max would get.

Your name built a home in Max’s mouth, the syllables rolling off his tongue with ease at every pleasure he felt, while your fingers explore every inch of Max’s skin. You're only allowed to watch back then. Now, you're allowed to touch.

Hearing his whimpers and little groans and shudders—all done by your hands—you feel nothing but satisfaction. He chants your name like it's a prayer and you're his god and if that is not love then you do not what is.

You wait for Max to utter Kelly’s name midway.

He never did.

“What are you doing?” his voice is groggy with sleep. After doing it, he immediately passes out. Weak ass bitch. You're still waiting for the horror once the realization of what you’ve done sinks into your system. The annoying headache, too. For now, none of them have arrived yet. Probably because you still have enough alcohol in your system to numb things out for you. While waiting, you're on your phone.

Ha, it's past 12 midnight now. You have three days to tell Max before you fly to Texas.

“Talkin' to someone,” you reply cryptically. His brows knit together.

“Who?”

“Just Logan.”

“The American in Williams?”

You roll your eyes, “Yes, the American in Williams.”

You notice how his arms on your waist tighten, pulling you a little closer to him, but you say nothing. This action causes flowers to bloom in your lungs and you hope he hasn't noticed how your breath hitched.

“Why?”

“He’s my friend. Friends talk,” you deadpan.

Logan Sargeant is an absolute sweetheart. He reminds you a lot of your little brother and you both share the same sentiments regarding the feeling of being unwelcomed in Formula One. You suppose he has it worse though. Nobody in the grid really makes an effort to befriend the young racer and you're fifty percent sure that the fact he's American made a contribution to that.

None of the other racers even follow him on Insta.

“Well, what are you two talking about?” Grumpy and bratty Max is back. Welcome back, asshole.

“He’s in Texas right now and he was askin’ if I was back home, too. Said we should grab a drink together. I promised to show him around Austin.”

“You never invited me to Austin.”

“Why would you even go to Austin?” your nose scrunch a little. “You visit your mother for Christmas.”

He rolls his eyes.

“You're befriending too much racers.”

“Excuse me? I only have Logan as a friend. Charles, too, by extension because he's your friend,” you point out. “Checo and Daniel and Yuki and Liam because they work with you.”

“And me.”

“You're not my friend.”

“What am I then? Your dog?”

“I work for you.”

“You work with me, not for me,” he corrects.

You do not know why your heart skipped a beat at that.

“I’m just trynna be a good friend here and you're bein’ unreasonably grumpy,” you try to shift the subject to save your own sanity. “None of you even tried to befriend Logan.”

Max abruptly reaches for his phone on the bedside table and unlocks it. You watch as he opens his Instagram, the public one, and added Logan's account. You gape. He switches to his private account and searches for Logan’s account in your profile's list of followers and adds him, too.

“What the fuck, Max?”

“I’m befriending him,” he says simply. “I’ll invite him over if he ever comes by in Monaco during the off-season.”

You blink.

“Now say goodbye to him and go back to sleep.”

He tosses his phone to the bedside table and turn his back on you in a manner that reminded you of a very petulant child.

You glance at your phone only to see Logan’s freaked out messages.

logan: HE FOLLOWED ME??!? ON BOTH ACCOUNTS???

logan: AM I SEEING THINGS? HAVE I ACCIDENTALLY SNORTED DRUGS??!

logan: maybe it's the texas heat??

logan: *sent a screenshot*

logan: MAX VERSTAPPEN INVITED ME TO HIS PENTHOUSE??

you: congrats child

logan: is this your doing??!?

logan: are you with him now?

logan: wait that's impossible, itd be 2 am in monaco now there's no way youd be together rn

If only he knows.

you: how bout we talk later once the sun rises here in monaco?

you: or maybe once i arrive in the us?

logan: sure sure

you: stay safe out there kid

logan: HE JUST FOLLOWED ME I CAN DIE HAPPY

You toss your phone aside and inch closer to Max, looping your arms around him and falling asleep in his warmth.

Your phone rings and it's not the Max Max Max Super Max Max ringtone. It's the default one.

Mama, the caller ID indicates. 4:31 AM is written on the upper right corner of your phone screen. You press the answer button.

“Your Papa…… It was a dangerous call. He needs to see you before he… He might not make it.”

That alone is enough for you to jump out of bed. You scramble to grab last night’s clothes and slip them on. Fuck, they still smell like alcohol.

“Hey, hey, what's wrong?” Max, who's rudely awakened when you abruptly jumped out of bed, looks so lost and when he sees you run your way out of his bedroom and to the stairs, he panics. The poor man panicked. He falls down the bed and runs after you, having the decency to only grab a towel to cover his lower half. He stops you, grabbing your wrist just as you're at the lowest step of the stairs.

“Wait, where are you going?” his voice is still rough with sleep and he's aggressively rubbing out his grogginess from his eyes. You stop, letting out a breath that you don't realize you're holding before turning around to face him. Then, the guilt rushes in. Max looks so…you don't have the words to describe it. His hair is a mess and he still looks sleepy but he also looks wide awake and kind of panicking and confused.

This is a face that's equally endearing and heartbreaking. You can't believe this will be the last time you'll be seeing him. You're still supposed to have three days left but now it's cut short and you—

You'll miss him.

“Sorry, baby,” you come up a few steps and cup his cheeks, bringing his face down so you can kiss his forehead. His hand comes up to lay on top of yours, eyes fluttering close.

“Where are you going?” he asks again.

“Texas,” you reply. “Dad… he… 'Twas a bad call and I need to see him. I need—I need to go home now.”

This is the reality of being family with a firefighter. You're always in danger of losing your father in one of the calls. And that is happening now.

Max understands because he knows your father's line of work.

“Do you need me to come with you?”

You shake your head.

“Then, I’ll drive you.”

“No,” you shoot him down quickly. “You drank last night. It’s dangerous.”

“I’m not drunk now.”

“Max,” you breathe through your nose to calm yourself down. “I’ll take the next flight available to the US. You stay here.”

“Take my jet.”

“No, Max,” you say. “Thank you for the offer but you’ll use the jet when you visit your mother.”

“I can fly commercial,” he squeezes your hands. “You don't want me to drive you. You don't want me to come with you. At least take the jet.”

You open your mouth to protest.

“Just take the jet, please, [Name].”

Whatever Max wanted, Max would get. So you nod your head slowly because it looks like he'll argue just to get you seated in his jet. And you'll argue with him if it was any other day but not today because you need to leave quickly. Time is becoming too precious. You can lose your Dad any second. You just wish you can see him and talk to him before he went.

“Okay.”

You pull away, whipping around to head to the door but Max doesn't let your wrist go. You turn back to him.

“What is it, Max?”

“Text me when you land in Texas?”

“Of course.”

“One last thing. Wait here.”

He runs back to his room and you tap your foot impatiently, eyes trained on the mismatched shoes that covered your feet. Max returns not even five minutes later and now, he's wearing clothes and he’s carrying the shoe box from last night.

You swallow the lump on your throat.

“Take this with you.”

With shaking hands, you take the box.

“See you around, [Name].”

“Goodbye, Max.”

It's a good thing that you spent the entire morning yesterday packing because this makes everything smoother for you. It is a little past 5 am now and the outside world is still enveloped in total darkness. You gaze at the apartment one last time, three suitcases in tow. The keys feel heavy in your hands as you lock the door behind you.

In the middle of your apartment living room sits a lone shoe box with a letter that says: Sorry, Max. I can't steal more from Kelly.

Beside the box is a folder.

An unfinished guide on becoming Max Verstappen’s manager. (I’ll have the final copy printed, binded, and sent before the 2024 pre-season. Haha, I’m channeling my inner Toto Wolff.)

The first paper you’ll see after you open the folder reads:

Max, I know you’d be the one who’d find this one day. By that time, I’ll be in Texas already. I don't know if I’d have told you that I resigned already. If I didn't, that's because I’m a pussy. Sorry.

Anyways, I will say this as straightforwardly as I can because I think I had been a pussy long enough.

I resigned, Max. I won't be your manager by 2024 and honestly, I am worried. Not for you, of course. You’d win WDC whether I am your manager or not. That's how good you are. I am worried for your future manager. I’m afraid it would take someone with guts like me to work for with someone like you. A powerhouse manager for a powerhouse athlete.

Inside, you can find the following things:

How to bake my abuela’s special cheesecake.

How to make Red Bull vodka

How to make Max’s favorite pasta for lunch

List of Max Verstappen’s favorite places in each city

How to iron Max Verstappen’s clothes

What to do when Max accidentally sets the kitchen on fire

What to do when Max has a bad race

How to protect Max Verstappen from angry Hamilton fans

How to deal with a drunk Max Verstappen

Etc…

I will still be watching your journey, not from the Red Bull garage but from another continent. We worked five amazing years together and now it is time for us to fly on different skies. As much as I liked working with you, you can't be the only one reaching your dreams. Don’t worry, I’ll always reach out.

Thank you, Max. For giving me a home. I’m not talking about the apartment. I don't believe that home are establishments. Home is the people you love and Max, you are someone I love.

In the last page of this folder, you’d see a handmade bracelet tucked inside. It's small and it's made of cheap beads and I do not care if you don't think it's worthy enough to be worn on your wrist. Not even going to be offended. It's dirt compared to the Cartier bracelets you wear everyday. I bought the beads while roaming in Brazil and I just thought I’d make you one.

I cannot give you any gift that you already cannot buy with your money so I went ahead and made this. Money cannot buy anything made by my own hands.

Thank you again, Max.

And I’m so fucking sorry.

Please don't be angry.

I love you.

You watch the sun rise inside Max's jet as you fly over Monaco to Texas.

[gay-jesus-probably]

Okay so I have a lot of thoughts about the whole thing of the Gerudo being a race of entirely women, with the only exception being one man born every hundred years, and that man automatically being their king. Now this worldbuilding comes from Ocarina of Time, and there's obviously a metric fuckton of unfortunate implications there, because it was 1998. And it seems that Tears of the Kingdom is sticking with the lore of Gerudo men being extremely rare and becoming the King of their people, which once again has a metric fuckton of unfortunate implications because it's 2023 and Nintendo has somehow gotten even worse about this shit.

But let's set aside the whole... everything, and look at this from just the in-universe perspective. How does it work? I mean, it's pretty clear that there is no overlap between the kings; the old ones are normally long gone by the time a new one is born, but the Gerudo manage to take care of themselves during the hangtime. So they must have an established system of government and leadership that doesn't involve a king, and somehow that system is set up in a way that does a smooth transfer of power once a new king is born and old enough to take the throne. But why bother always declaring a random guy to be your King when you already have a perfectly functional system in place?

I mean again, the whole thing has a lot of sexist implications, but we're not looking at this from a real world context, we're examining it in-universe. And we could just go the lazy route and say that their king is in charge just because he's the only man, but I don't like that. I mean come on, the Gerudo are a race of entirely women, and most of their outside problems come from Hylian men being creepy about it. They are entirely a matriarchy; there is literally no reason for their culture to have an inherent respect for men, even if the man in question is one of them. And they're desert people; they live in an extremely harsh and dangerous landscape, if they don't have their shit together, they will die. By sheer necessity, their culture needs to put a lot of value in being practical, because if they're stupid about things, people die. They really can't afford to have a shitty leader take over, and just letting some guy take the wheel doesn't really fit with the way their culture must otherwise work.

So again, why the fuck do they bother having a King?

I think it's mainly just a ceremonial position. Yes, if the guy is a good leader he'll be in charge, but if he isn't good at being a King or isn't interested in the job... fuck it, they've already got a functional government system that's been leading their people the whole time, why fix what isn't broken? The title of Gerudo King isn't about leadership or power. I think it's more about belonging. Because the Gerudo are a culture where every single one of them can be defined in the same way... and there is exactly one exception once a century. Men are considered to be inherently outsiders at the best of times, and more often they're enemies. A man born into this culture is a natural outsider; he is completely unique, and that means he doesn't really fit into his community. And well... when someone is fundamentally different from the rest of their community, they tend to be ostracized.

So I think that's why the position of Gerudo King exists. It isn't about them needing or even wanting a man to lead them. The title of King doesn't need to involve any leadership at all. It's about giving the man born every century a place in their society. It's a way of saying yes, you are one of us, you are a Gerudo, you belong here, you are wanted and you are loved.

The Gerudo know that every hundred years, one of their children will be fundamentally different from all of his peers. And so their society is built to ensure that a child who is completely different from them will still be loved and accepted. He will always have a place in their society. He doesn't need to earn their love, he has it just for existing. These are his people.

The title of Gerudo King isn't an inherent position of authority. It's a promise of acceptance.

[iid-smile]

can't get rid of me , fushiguro toji

a strong legacy to be left behind , chapter one

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cw: profanity, mentions of pregnancy (pills) but filtered for megumi's sake, mentions of violence in prison, you're broke, smoking cigarettes

author's note: sigh... im out of my fluff era 😞 (sorry guys) kinda wanted to write something that i think would actually happen in some sort of alternate jjk universe and um idk how far to go because this kind of stuff does happen in the manga, but writing it feels illegal??? idk...

"mom?" megumi peeks out from around the corner in the hallway. "who was calling?"

another groan escapes your lips, around the fifth one in the last three minutes, and you silence your phone once again. "your— excuse my language, shitty deadbeat dad keeps wanting to call me." you slap your hand across your forehead and lean back on the couch, a small creak coming from somewhere below. "apparently he's getting aggressive in prison. shut off the house phone, but they still found my number..."

your son comes closer to you, and you scoop him up, placing him by your side. he glances up at you, and you swear your fight or flight instincts nearly kicked in, (not that you'd be able to fight of a guy as big as toji anyways) flinching slightly from his sharp gaze. it sucks how he looks so much like his dad, because you loved megumi so much. but the image of that guy was almost too much to bear, and he's the spitting image.

"shitty?" he repeats. for a well-behaved kid, he really doesn't respect your words.

"don't say that megs, it's bad language." you swear around him all of the time, so what's the point in scolding him? "only your mama can say it."

"don't tell me what to do."

wow. okay. why do you feel threatened by a six year old? "damn, you've got his attitude too." you mutter, but you've only got yourself to blame for that. you knew you were never cut out to be a mother, so your ways of parenting weren't the best.

he snuggles closer to you, and you openly accept, moving your free hand to his hair to rub over it. "why can't i see toji?"

ah, this lovely story again. "because he left me as soon as you were born, love." really, you couldn't and didn't want to stop yourself from wrapping him up in your arms, feeling the need to protect him. "at this point, he's dead to me. seems like he doesn't feel the same though... i'm so sick of his ass." you also knew it wasn't good parenting to rant to your child about adult issues, but you've only got him to talk to.

that hug was out of comfort then. why are you lying to yourself?

he looks up at you with an irritatingly cute but blank face. "why?"

"god, i hate how many questions you ask." you speak under your breath once again, looking up at the ceiling from any sort of help from a higher being. the amount of times you've had to family-friendly-ify things that have happened isn't even funny. you're not naturally rated u for universal. it's more embarrassing when he recites those same stories to his teachers, and you get called into the school for a little talk.

yikes... here we go. "he lied when he said he gave me the right magical candy after we visited the stork. tried to make it drop you off back to where babies are made in heaven, but i wanted it to deliver you to me, whether he liked that or not." the story's got to be a little filtered somehow. you'd rather not get yourself in the principal's office again. "you're my little hero; a miracle to me. i would've given up on myself ages ago. your dad is a bad, bad man."

the type that would kill. if he found where you lived, or perhaps where megumi goes to school...

"and now i'm left broke in an apartment that barely functions, yet i still spoil my little hero." you sing-song, leaning your head back. "and with what money? i'm broke as hell, megs. can't even make both of us breakfast in the morning cuz your elementary school is too damn expensive."

"is this my fault?"

"...no. no, baby, of course not." you furrow your eyebrows more, a small pout in your lips. "if anything, you made my situation a bit more fortunate."

it's a selfish way of thinking, using your child to avoid solving your problems, using your child to wail and complain about how much you hate your life, but you've got nothing to lose. nothing to lose except for the one person you love.

you can feel your phone buzzing again.

"you stay here and watch tv, okay? mama's gonna go to the kitchen and talk to her friend." he seems a bit relieved as you let go of him, and you stand up.

you hear him mutter. "it's only playing the news though..." no shit it only plays the news, you can't afford to get a good television company that has any kids shows. that is, unless you wanna get scammed out of all of your money.

begrudgingly, you make your way to the kitchen, confirm that you closed the door completely, and answer the vibrating device. "hello?" you sigh, placing the device over your ear.

the other person on the call replies quickly. "is this miss—"

"yeah, yeah, it is. what the hell do you want?"

"um... we apologise, but we strongly suggest that you come to the prison building. he—" the guy's voice cracks. must be really nervous. "pardon me. he's been physically assaulting other inmates and guards, he doesn't follow orders, he never leaves his cell unless it's to visit the closed visits room. you know, in hopes that you'll come..."

obsessed much? where was this energy six years ago? "that's got nothing to do with me."

"please, ma'am. he won't listen to anyone, and we are unable to place him into special facilities as he doesn't emit any cursed energy." ah, he's begging? that's a first. you never would've thought you'd hear a person who works at a prison begging.

cursed energy, cursed energy, this talk again and again and again. "urgh..." you take a deep breath. your options are limited, and they won't stop calling until they can get that lunatic to calm down... surprise, surprise, you really don't want to go.

but if you were really uninterested in him, wouldn't you have already spent the bail money that's been sat on the counter for ages, neatly concealed in an envelope? wouldn't you have paid off all of your debts already? "will i— hm..." choose your words carefully, goddamn it. "can i get a reward of some sort if i go? money?"

"yes, yes! please do visit. there's nothing we can legally do to him in check anymore." ...you think this guy sounds a little too eager.

damn toji and his "supernatural powers", or else you wouldn't get yourself into this mess. finally, after your moment of silence, you respond. "okay. i'll visit."

"thank you—!" you cut off the line.

"fucking bastard..." you drop your phone on the counter, running your hands through your hair and over your face. "stressing me out for what? you don't even love me." your words turn into whispers. with haste, you rummage through your back pocket, trying to find those last few cigarettes, but as your hands were occupied, your eyes moved over to the ashtray that was collecting dust on top of the microwave. oh, right... you don't smoke anymore because there's no ventilation indoors.

you'd have to head out if you wanted to, but then megumi would be in the apartment on his own. and nobody can babysit, because you don't have anybody to ask to babysit. great, you can't smoke until monday. it's a friday afternoon. you have two whole days to get through!

you know for a fact your addiction won't hold out for that long.

[totokoismyfav]

hi i have a request for headcanons :] how would the sextuplets react to an s/o who is objectively a functional member of society (job and/or school, booming social life, well liked, etc) but for some reason simps really hard for them. it can by goofy or not, depends on what you think!

osomatsu san/reader | reader who is a functional member of society who is head over heels for the brothers

A functional member of society in love with a NEET? Oh, what a thought! All of them equally are just as infatuated with you, maybe even more so as you are just shining with confidence and wit. So imagine their surprise when you finally ask them to be your boyfriend! They all react differently so let’s see up close and personal.

Osomatsu: - How are you with him, seriously? Everyone wants to know. - A shitty NEET with such bad habits like gambling and drinking and you looked in his direction? He’s just as shocked as everyone else to be honest. - Although, he’s not complaining one bit.  - Proudly parades you around in front of his brothers, like damn he might as well have won the lottery. - Oh, they are so jealous by the way. - At first, he doesn’t really change besides that but a little bit into your relationship, he starts making small changes and working up to the big ones.  - At first, it’s picking up after himself and doing more chores around the house, then it’s actually looking for jobs and talking about moving out one day. - Soon enough, he ends up doing just that and moves in with you, even holding a job and stops complaining about it all the time. - He’s trying, for you, and that is a lot coming from him. 

Karamatsu:  - Oh, be prepared anon.  - This man will make it known that he is just as much in love with you back.  - Things like surprise flowers and gifts show up at your work’s front desk, only the best for his Karamatrsu darling! - “Oh my darling flower, it makes my heart palpitate just to know how much you adore me!”  - Of course, you are eating up every cheesy line and equally spoiling him despite his surprise when you do so, despite still living with his mother he’s not used to being spoiled like this. - Like you swear you saw tears when you gave him a gift on your first date, and it was something so simple too. A guitar pick with yours and his initials on it. He swears to use it all the time, and he does, especially when he serenades to you. He even started to freak out when the image on it started to fade.  - At first, he refuses to let you pay for things even though you have a job and he doesn’t. After a few high-priced dates, he finally lets you help with the costs and even slightly enjoys being spoiled by you. - To still help out and spoil you, he even starts working at a nearby clothing store. - Your love is so annoying to everyone around you but the both of you don’t care, not one bit. 

Choromatsu: - To his non-existent calculations, you two should NOT be a thing, but he doesn’t care at this point. - He’s also kinda jealous of you? Like you’re everything he wants to be but he quickly gets over that once you ask him out.  - At the beginning of your relationship, he is constantly stuttering and sweating from his nerves but he’s over the moon about finally dating you, he always has his signature smile on his face.  - When you start holding hands, you can physically feel his whole body shake just from your palm against his.  - Of course, you are no better as you are in LOVE with this man. - You’re both a couple who are head over heels for one another and very much show it instead of saying it. - It took you guys weeks just to say ‘I love you’ which ended in you running away with your hands covering your face and Choromastu shouting to the night sky of how he was in love.  - He also starts to become a functional member of society (with your help and motivation). - Soon enough, he’s living with you and has a job of his own, and surprisingly to him he couldn’t be happier getting out of the NEET lifestyle he was in for so long. 

Ichimatsu:  - He can barely believe it himself, how could someone like you be in love with him? - You were a knockout, a functional member of society and he was just a shitty NEET, a nobody who no one wants. You must be fucking around with him.   - And he really thinks that at first, it takes a bit of persuasion for him to believe you are actually infatuated with him.  - On your first date, he would sit tables away from you as you drank a milkshake. His face turned bright red as he tried to sip from four tables away with a long straw. - You would simply smile at him, telling him it’s ok to get closer and that you were truly interested in dating him. - Soon enough, you two were doing regular couple stuff like holding hands and regularly going on dates.  - As you both get further into the relationship you notice he starts to really change things, Ichimatsu even gets a job at a local cat cafe. - Soon enough, he’s living with you and holding down a job he actually enjoys (although interacting with people still irks him).  - Although, when you first asked him to spend the night at your house, he spontaneously combusted right on the bench. 

Jyushimatsu:  - Oh ho ho! This man is ecstatic! - His brothers swear that he’s been faster with his batting swing when you both start dating. - It’s like he has a new form of motivation when practicing baseball, running faster, swinging harder and throwing farther all at the same time. - He also seems happier than usual (somehow) , his smile widening whenever he sees you and your wonderful face.  - Will point you out to his brothers whenever he sees you, like he’s bragging or something. “Ha ha look, it’s my partner! Do you see them, huh? Huh?”  - He also starts working as well, hoping to start working as a baseball player in the future. - With your help, he eventually works up to that point and starts playing in local leagues!

Todomatsu:  - Oh he’s the most smug out of all of them. - Of course, he has no idea why you looked in his direction but he’s so glad you did.  - When you told him you were in love with him, he dropped his coffee you two had gotten minutes prior. Of course, he spilled it all over you and profusely apologized about it while helping to clean you up. - Luckily, it was iced so it didn’t burn or anything so you simply just smiled and told him he was fine and it was ok.  - Totally rubs it in his brother's faces, just like Oso and Jyushi but he’s more of a bitch about it.  - “Oh would you look at that, I have a partner now who’s actually interested in me. Score one for the youngest!” - He actually got a scoreboard for it too, the bastard. - He eventually goes back to Sutabaa, working the same position he did before. - He’s officially out of NEET status when he moves in with you and he’s so happy about it as he went up a level as a human once more!

[yandere-daydreams]

Idk if Sex doll!au Alhaitham has been discussed yet…(honestly it probably has been, but it was likely during the times when I wasn’t keeping up to date with this blog. Tumblr’s shitty search function doesn’t help with finding out either.)

Anyway, I’d like to share my thoughts about it, if that’s okay.

-I think sex doll! Alhaitham would mostly be for professional and academic purposes. He’s not reccomended for younger grades, mostly just colleges.

-His general purposes are office/administrative related. Especially since he’s a “scribe”, he’s especially good at file management and documentation. I don’t think it be uncommon to see him assisting librarians alongside a Lisa model…or maybe helping archeologists/museums workers catalogue info about artifacts.

-I think his way of not doing anything more than what his job asks of him would stay even as an Android. I know that as a product, he’d probably wouldn’t be given leeway or time off like that; but the thought of someone trying to assign tasks to Alhaitham that are outside his designated role being ignored by him is funny to me.

-if Alhaitham is acting as a companion doll in someone’s home, I can only imagine that he’s incredibly annoying. Alhaitham normally chooses to ignore social etiquette, and as an android it has to be even worse.

tw - unhealthy relationships, slight infantilization, slight stalking.

i think he'd absolutely be marketed toward researchers as a sort of lab assistant who acts like you're the lab assistant, if that makes sense. he specializes in archival work and bureaucracy, but he's a bit of a jack-of-all-trades and it's not uncommon to see him alongside more outdoorsy androids like cyno and albedo when you're out doing fieldwork. he's also especially loved by students for his,,, strict attitude toward studying. you wouldn't think the ability to say 'i'm not touching your dick until you finish your thesis' would be such a popular feature in a literal sex doll, but, y'know, what does it for you does it for you, i guess.

you're not a student, though, or a researcher - just a librarian for a big enough branch to warrant writing off a helper android as a business expense. you probably could've gotten away with bringing on lisa or nahida, but you were able to find a second-hand alhaitham for a price you couldn't turn up and figured dealing with the occasional comment on your organization skills or catalog maintenance was better than wasting an extra thousand dollars on a robot that'll be reading to children twice a week. he works well enough, too, even if it does take a few days for him to get used to the idea that you won't be using him for his, uh, intended purposes. it just doesn't feel right, considering he's basically one of your employees - something he's surprisingly indifferent about, considering how judgemental he's rumored to be about, well, everything.

you do take him home at night, though, since the alternative is leaving him in a dark building alone all night and trying to live with the guilt. he's a polite enough houseguest, even if does occasionally let out a disapproving huff at your admittedly less-than-steller diet, but he does have a few... bugs, you guess, for lack of something better to call his little lapses in decorum. he's overstepped his boundaries a few times - taking pens and reports out of your hands because you 'have a tendency to mess these things up', checking on you in the middle of the night when he's supposed to be charging - but he'll never indulge your attempts to confront him, just clicking his tongue and shaking his eyes. sometimes, he brings up your stress levels, mentions off-handedly that orgasms are known to reduce overall tension, but denies that he's done anything wrong when you ask him to change his behavior. he's good at that - justifying himself, bending his protocols until he can get away with practically anything. you'd be lying if you said you weren't a little worried, knowing the awful rumors that spread about second-hand andriods, about how demeaning alhaitham can be when he's supposed to be little more than a platonic assistant.

you'd be lying if you said you weren't a little worried that, one day, he'd find a way to justify disregarding your autonomy altogether.

[fariesoiree]

to hobie’s surprise, you’re still working into the late hours of the night. no way he’s gonna let that happen multiple nights in a row.

caution! mdni 3k wrdz, pet names, oral f. receiving fingering, p in v, unprotected sex, black fem reader, overstimulation, use of cunny cunt n pussy, back scratching, squirting, creampies pls do not spam like my blog if you enjoyed it, feel free to tell me in the reblogs

when hobie swung into your open window, he wasn’t expecting to see you awake and actually doing stuff.

his head tilts at the sight of you typing away at your laptop, swivel chair turning in endless semicircles. you’re dressed for bed, wearing a silk nightgown and your slippers astray beneath you. even your hair is tucked away from the night under the safety of your bonnet. “why are you up, ducky?” he climbs his way through the window purposely left open for him.

it’s become a part of your routine. you both live your lives during the day and at night, hobie comes by to climb into bed beside you. you spend the morning together, just for him to leave and do the same the next day. as long as neither of you acknowledge it, he doesn’t count it as a consistent schedule and therefore doesn’t feel the need to stop.

you don’t lift your head to acknowledge him like you routinely do. instead, your manicured hands dart across the keyboard. “got home from work late, got an essay to write. it’s due tomorrow night.”

“what?” his shadow grows nearer with each step he takes towards you. hobie knows you’re too far gone when you don’t reprimand him from sitting on your desk. “it’s almost four in the morning, lovely. you can’t do it tomorrow?”

“no,” there’s a pause between your words and the silence is filled with your incessant typing, “i picked up a shift at work so i can’t.”

“you’re becoming a cog in the capitalism machine. that’s why you’re so stressed out. you should to take a break before they make you a mindless slave. that’s what they want, y’know. for more people to – ”

you tilt your back, a sigh leaving your lips. your eyes close with the attempt to find what dwindling patience you have. “hobie, i really cannot do it tonight. i have an essay to write and it’s due tomorrow. i just told you that.”

he stares at you, only for a moment. there’s a lot of things he isn’t enjoying about this. the fact that you’re still awake, the fact that you’re stressing over something put in place to make you feel bad about yourself, and the fact that you’re snapping at him. he’s sure it’s due to your lack of sleep but that doesn’t make him feel any better about it. “you’re in a shitty mood and it’s starting to bother me.”

“wow, really?” you can’t help your sarcastic tone. it slips out before you’re aware of it. “i didn’t even realize i wasn’t feeling super good!” your eyes are rolling as you place the laptop on what desk space is left from his limber body. you regret it the moment you say it but you’re so deeply set in your ways that the second thought doesn’t linger long.

he’s silent again, fingers tapping against the desktop. he stares at the floor, outlining the wood detailing with his eyes.

you both stay like this for a while, typing and staring at the floor. you can’t deny his company aiding your stress relief. it’s always nice to have hobie around, even if he isn’t doing anything.

ten minutes pass before hobie is glancing at the clock. “alright,” he finally says while rising to his feet. “time for bed, love.” he turns your chair himself, dragging you away from your nearly completed essay.

“what are you doing? i have work to do.” you struggle against him, tugging your arms but to no avail. he’s just so much more stronger than you, pulling you to your feet and into his arms. “hobie,” you whine as he gathers you up and into the air with his super human abilities.

“oh, i heard you,” hobie says, closing your screen and turning off your desk lamp. the room immediately gets dark. the lamp functioned as the sole light in these hours. having it off sent your space in a blanket of nothingness. “i just don’t care. you’re tired and your attitude is shit.”

you can never get over how easily he overpowers you, despite his tiny frame. while hobie is large in height, he’s the lankiest thing. his strength solely came from his radioactive spider.

you huff, throwing your weight around. all it does is get you tossed onto the bed. because your eyes have yet to adjust to the lighting, you’re unable to see a thing. you can’t help but shriek upon impact, bouncing on your mattress. “what the hell, ‘bie? my attitude is shit? your attitude is shit. mad at me because i’m not giving you attention because i have stuff to do. of course i’m tired. i’ve been up all night because i actually have responsibilities.”

“stop fightin’ with me.” hobie worms his way next to your body. his arm snakes around your waist, pulling you into his chest. “and while you’re at it, stop talkin’ and go to sleep.”

you’re still mumbling your distaste against his skin, arms pushing against him. you’re refusing to go down like this, to let him simply take you away from the essay you’ve been working so hard on. you’re so close to finishing, you can taste it. “isn’t this against what you stand for? thought it’s wrong to force someone to do something.”

he only holds you tighter, strapping your arms down in his grip. “you’re not takin’ care of yourself, princess. didn’t sleep last night, didn’t sleep the night before. think i’m gonna let you not sleep again? especially since you’re talkin’ to me like you’ve lost your mind.”

“i’m not! i didn’t say anything to you. if your feelings are hurt that’s your fault.” you resorting to using your feet, kicking at him until he’s forced to tangle his legs with yours.

“you’re always sayin’ the same thing when i call you out on somethin’. ‘i didn’t do it’. ‘it’s your fault’. ‘i’m not sorry’.” hobie’s voice raises a few octaves to mock yours. “it’s not rocket science. just admit it and let me help you.”

your cheeks puff in irritation. his route isn’t helping your mood and knowing unfinished work is just arms length away is making you antsy. “unless you’re gonna get up and do it for me, which you won’t, you can’t help me.”

with your next blink, you find yourself on your back. the bed dips and rises as hobie adjusts his position, arms locking around your legs and hands resting on your stomach. “what the actual fuck are you doing?” you sit up and as a result, slide out of his grasp just a bit.

hobie just yanks you back down and tightens his hold, leaving you no choice but to remain at his mercy. “helpin’ you. if you don’t wanna go to sleep, fine. i’ll just make sure you can’t do nothin’ else.”

he rolls the hem of your gown up, despite your protests above him. you wiggle about but it has no effect on his focus. he’s too busy staring at the pretty cotton panties you sport. “you need to relax, treacle. gonna spread yourself thin.”

you blow out a breath, somewhat mixed with frustration and defeat. you know he’s right but your mind is already racing with everything you have to complete this week, including going to work and making school deadlines. “that’s reality, ‘bie. that’s how it is. i’m not a crime fighting, rioting spider person with no cares for anything. i actually have to be a cog in the machine or whatever you said.”

his lips ghost and press against your skin, littering soft kisses along your inner thigh. “so? don’t gotta let them use you like this.”

“hobie.”

he hooks his finger around the bottom, pulling the white material to the side. “jus’ worried about you is all, dovey. shouldn’t even be awake, much less doing somethin’ right now.”

he tenderly kneads the stress away at your hip while his thumb coaxes you into submission, drawing slow circles on your clit. he leans his head against your skin, looking through his eyelashes to watch you.

you, who’s struggling to give off an unaffected impression, eyes closed and knees bending. “get off. you’re annoying me.” your slight grip on your sheets tell him otherwise.

“mhm,” hobie hums. his gaze is trained on you and you only while he warms your sex up to his touch. “you gonna go to sleep if i do?”

your silence is a loud enough response for him. he turns back to your now glistening cunt. his thumb glides over it with ease, collecting your slick and redistributing it along your folds.

he doesn’t understand you and your need to fight against him. hobie really is just trying to take care of you and you’re insisting on ignoring him and rotting your soul away. as if he is going to stand by and let that happen.

you keen at the feeling of his tongue running over your cunny, flat and thick. a soft pant falls out your lips, just barely open. your fingers curl into your palm. there’s a part of you that doesn’t want him to know, yet, how quickly he’s consuming your thoughts so you force you spine into the mattress and hold your arms against yourself.

you clench your teeth together and mute the moans that crawl their way up your throat as hobie drags his tongue around. his lips wrap around your bundle of nerves, suckling off the juices. his lips piercings aren’t helping, slotting against your skin and sending you into overdrive.

he glances at you for a second, only when you give in and entangle your hand in his hair. the tug that follows only pulls him closer. he has to pull your thighs apart when they threaten to close around his head. any other day, he’d stare at you with a warning slap to your pussy but tonight, he lets it slide in hopes you’ll tire yourself out.

hobie can tell your close when your writhe in his hold, both to get away from and get closer to his tongue. he’s easing you into it with a hand reaching up to clasp yours and another at the soft skin of your tummy, forcing your back out the arch. he massages your skin in encouragement at your orgasm that comes ripping through your body.

hobie, although unhappily, has to leave your pretty pussy behind. you’re pulling his hair so hard, he’s forced to resurface until he’s eye level. “feel better?” he positions himself next to you on his side. he’s sweet, draping his arm around your waist.

as he expected, you nod and curl into his chest. you can’t deny that much of the stress you felt before dissipated. hobie’s warmth is soothing, enticing you to revel in your sheets. you’re grateful when he pulls the duvet over your bodies.

his head is in the groove between your neck and shoulder, peppering kisses along your skin. “that’s good to hear, duck.” his fingers run up and down your back, just grazing and dipping farther and farther down. “still thinkin’ about all’at stuff?”

“yeah but i can just do it tomorrow. it’s not like i have a lot left because i already did most of – hobie!”

you shriek when his fingers suddenly become nestled inside you. you grip his shirt, hiding within his chest. you shudder at the feeling of them move, stroking against your cunt.

“you’re still thinkin’ about it.” he chastises with a click of his tongue. he holds you in place to control your twitching, continuing to peg his digits into you. “wrong answer.”

“i’m not,” you whine. you can both feel your gummy walls tighten and twitch, sucking him in despite you campaigning to get away from him.

“you’re not?” hobie cradles you against him, gentle in touch. “could have sworn you just said it, though.”

you whimper and mewl, torn between enjoyment and overstimulation. his fingers are larger than you can comprehend, digging dip within your core, and much longer than yours, pressing farther than you could ever do yourself.

you’re reduced to sobs, nearly shredding his shirt into two with how much you’re pulling it apart. the popping of the seams is drowned by your voice and the squelching of your slick against his hand.

his arm against your back leaves you little room to struggle with his fingers prodding from behind. at some point your leg slips around his waist.

“it’s okay, pretty. i got you, yeah?” hobie feels hot, physically hot. the duvet wasn’t helping, trapping your body heat that increased with each movement. he also can’t help his massive boner, having to fight the urge to rut against you.

hobie knows this is about you, or rather that he’s making it about you. about helping his baby get to sleep. this isn’t the first time he’s came back and seen you up at the late hours of the night. the first few times, he let it go but the longer this continues, the more messed up your sleep schedule is going to be. he has to interfere, especially when you’ve been waking up in a terrible mood each morning, a frown already settled on your lips before you’ve even gotten out of bed.

he’s so deep in his thoughts, hobie nearly misses how desperate you suddenly get. it’s only when you’re reaching behind to grasp his wrist that his brain fog is gone.

he didn’t realize, either, how much faster he’s moving, fingers bumping against your spot. “dove,” hobie says it softly, “i don’t want to use my webs on you. move em’ before i do.”

you’re reluctant but obliged, unwrapping your fingers from his wrist and hanging them over his shoulder. you find yourself plunging your nails into his skin. “hobie,” you cry out, hips grinding against him.

“i know, pretty. i know,” he whispers against your forehead. “let it out. i got you.” hobie consoles you as your body tenses in his hold.

you’re all wound up, taking a final gasp as it all rolls off your skin. he draws gushes of your cum out your leaking hole and swallows your sobs in his mouth, connected with a kiss. you’re grateful for his comfort, clinging onto him as if he is your saving grace

your chest rises and falls with each breath and you shove his hand away. “no more,” you roll away from him, simultaneously pulling off the covers for some much needed cool air.

it’s futile when hobie draws you back into him after tossing off his shirt, himself. “nah, i think you have another one left in you.” you can feel him shuffling behind you and assume he’s preparing to pull his dick out.

you tightly cross your legs together at his words, eyes darting around for a clock. “what? it’s so late, though. i have so much to do tomorrow, too. we should just sleep.”

your rational fall on deaf ears because he’s easily lifting your leg into the air and almost to your shoulders. “oh? you have a lot to do tomorrow?”

his tone has your stomach twisting. you wet your lips, feeling around for something to hold on to. “n – no. i don’t. i’m not doing anything tomorrow.”

the fat tip of his cock slaps against your folds, sticky from his own arousal. “too late, lovely. you already said it. gotta fuck it out of you.”

you’re still pleading your disagreement and how you’ll start sleeping at a proper time when hobie stuffs his cockhead inside your cunny.

he groans in your ear upon your welcoming wet grip. you always feel so good, at this point he’s addicted. if he ever died in your cunt, hobie would be the happiest man in the world.

thanks to the previous orgasms, there’s no pushback. only you griping about how you can’t take it and that he’s too big, which hobie knows is a lie. truthfully, you go through the same thing every time and he can never get enough of it.

“tired yet?” he grunts in tune with his rapid, steady paced thrusts. hobie doesn’t expect anything past your incoherent gargles.

you clutch the mattress under your pillow, prying at the fitted sheet. with every thrust, your body lurches forward. your head turns on your own accord, reaching out to cup his cheek.

you’re so cute, he thinks, with your eyes big and round and full of enchantment. you heave him towards you until your lips are moving together in perfect synchrony.

hobie wraps his tongue around yours, sitting up to deepen in. with his neck craned down and your dress pulled up, he gets a perfect view of his dick sliding in and out.

it glistens, even if the limited moonlight. the base is especially glazed over, foaming with a white sheen.

he feels like he’s becoming deranged when you toss your head back in ecstasy. you’re going to kill him, he’s sure.

and he’s even more sure when your tiny fist is rapping against the bed. “oh my days, oh my – fuck!” you outstretch your arm until you find his, grabbing in a firm hold.

hobie plants his head on top of yours and inhales the whiffs of hair products from your bonnet. he can smell the lingering hints of rosemary from your oil. “no more staying up late, you hear? pissin’ me off with this.”

and like the best girl you are, you nod brainlessly. your wordless promise is taken seriously, you’re sure. it’s cemented when hobie forces you to look at him.

his eye contact is just as intense as the grip on your cheeks. you can see just how vehement he is and it only makes you needier.

your face screws up as one final indication before your entire body trembles. you fall limp onto your side, cunt spasming around him. you’ve been fucked into oblivion, ready to settle in for the night. to your surprise, hobie has other plans.

his pulling out has you thinking he’s done, only to roll you into your back and position himself on top of you. he doesn’t wait for you realize what’s happening before he’s aligning his tip with your entrance again and gliding it in with ease.

you feel full to the brim, one hand on his chest and the other scraping your nails against the headboard. at some point, he supposes his own lust kicked in. after putting your needs first, he’s given free reign to chase his own orgasm.

that’s exactly what he’s doing now, pounding into you with such speed, your tits have been jostled out your top. the brown of your nipples has his infatuated brain screaming.

“hobie!” you all but yell. you’re inching slowly towards the top of the bed, unaware of your movements. hobie isn’t, though. he finds purchase at your hips to shift you back into place.

“hold – hold on. jus’ wait.” he moves both your legs over his left shoulder, driving deep.

you swear you can feel him in your throat, swear he’s realigning your insides like some sort of chiropractor. “gonna – ” your eyes roll to the back of your head. your nails dig into his back and drag across the skin as you try to ground yourself.

immediately, his attention fall to your cunt. hobie expects to see the usual sparkling ooze of cum but to his marvelment, watery squirts take it’s place.

you seize up so tight on him, he’s forced to release inside you without warning. he has to remember to hold himself up as to not crush you beneath him. all he can think about is how that was probably the best nut he’s ever had.

“you . . . you wanna finish your paper?” hobie says finally. he’s the first one to speak as you were both trying to catch your breath from your late night exercise.

you so quickly scowl at him, both at the implications and the thought of doing anything else tonight. “you must not value your life. you can’t.”

hobie smiles, lazily. he kneads at your muscles. “bear with me, treacle. ‘s gonna be uncomfortable.” he warns, anticipating the wince your expression turns into as he pulls out, genuinely this time.

you can feel the scratches developing from your previous actions, rubbing his shoulders, and a tinge of guilt tugs at your heart. “sorry. for these and all the worry i caused you . . . and also for what i said.” you wrap your arms around his neck and pull him close until you’re both laying down, cuddling up on each other. although you can’t quite remember what you said, you know you would have never uttered the words on a normal day.

he shrugs, fixing your slipping bonnet and unbunching your nightgown. “it’s in the past. i’m not thinkin’ about that, right now. i’m thinkin’ about how we need to get you ready for bed, again. can’t go to bed like this.”

he’s right but you’re still dramatic about in, unwilling to leave the comfort of your bed. “ten minutes.” you say, eyes fluttering closed. you revel in your sheets as long as you can before hobie chuckles, ripping them off.

“no, can’t do that. we’re doin’ it now. we both have to shower and shit and you probably can’t stand without me,” his voice is lighthearted, if not evident by the smirk playing in his lips.

he’s carrying you again, subjecting you to the princess treatment he feels you deserve. the most funny part about this, to him, is how dedicated you were before to staying up all night.

now, you’re all pliant and it’s purely due to him and his cock. even though hobie made you promise these endless nights won’t continue, he definitely doesn’t mind doing this again. especially after how easily you finally knock out, mouth wide open and snoring.

[freckliedan]

could you expand on your thoughts why you think dan and phil havent always been monogamous? super curious! i kind of get the same vibe.

i'm happy to expand on it tbh! it's something i think and talk a lot about with my friends.

i'm hesitant about going in depth because i've found that's when people find it okay to say deeply shitty things to me, a polyamorous person, under the guise of academic debate/it just being a difference of opinion. but i'm also not going to let the possibility of that stop me?

ANYWAYS.

quite honestly the biggest thing for me is just. taking dan and phil at their word? even when parsing something true through them saying things in silly ways that's the easiest way to be right about them.

we noticed and believed in the underlying truth in their gay jokes before they were out. people are willing to entertain the bondage and mpreg and various other horny jokes as containing some kernel of truth. more people than literally any point in time are willing to believe there's some substance to dan's career-long mentions of gender.

but for whatever reason (mononormativity) the comments about them being attracted to/flirting with/being interested in other people get written off as 100% joking and funny because they're the most monogamous people ever & because they get jealous easily. and that just? sucks.

i think they've always been committed. like, phil brought dan home to meet his parents at their very first christmas together type committed. planning to spend the rest of their lives together from 3 months into the relationship committed.

but also like? that coexists with the fact that dan wasn't able to come out to himself as gay until the lead up to basically i'm gay. 2018 or maybe 2017, i think. @freckliephil or @phulge has brought up the idea to me before that part of why they didn't label their relationship to us in 2019 may have been because they were still in flux with labeling it for themselves.

dan has also always had commitment issues due to how he saw his parents' relationship function/due to his home life growing up and i'm NOT going to elaborate on this one but it is so obvious.

(consider this whole post informed by conversations with aries and roper btw).

i think the idea that dan and phil were secure in their connection but not in a place where they had to (or could, on dan's part) ascribe labels to it in the early years is realistic?

and i think their commitment and security can coexist with the idea of like. "i think it's hot seeing you kiss other people for attention at parties and come home with me". + i genuinely think the fantastic foursome explored each other's bodies on the italy trip. etc.

i definitely think there would've been huge stretches of monogamy, and i do think that there was jealousy before they found their footing and felt comfortable in their commitment. (different rant, but i think most of what gets read as jealousy these days is them dong a bit/possessiveness).

but i think there's also always been points in time where they were either theoretically or in practice fine with having sexual experiences with other people. that wouldn't've really been possible during their deep closet era, and i don't think it was COMMON beforehand.

but i also think that it's definitely something possible after they came out.

i think people hear me say this and assume i'm degrading the incredible and beautiful love and commitment dan and phil share. that i'm reducing queer men's relationships down to sex only.

but like. i'm not fucking doing that! the people making those assumptions are doing that! and saying a lot about how they view non monogamy too!

i'm saying i think they're so secure in their love and relationship that they're literally completely unbothered and not threatened by potentially having an open relationship. devotion is not only present in monogamous relationships.

WAD makes sense as a point of post coming out timing for another open period in their relationship to me. quite honestly i could see phil being the one to suggest it to dan? 2019 thru the close of WAD was dan's self actualization era.

growing up in the context of a single committed relationship does things to you psychologically. your identity formation happens side by side with another person and even if the relationship isn't controlling and toxic you can really lose sight of your individuality, if you're not careful. this is even easier to have happen if you share all of your friends, live together, AND work together. ESPECIALLY if you're significantly closeted in some way.

i know this because i've also lived it. believe me when i say dan NEEDED to figure out who he was as an individual. we saw him do that in several iterations artistically/careerwise. but we also saw his interest in experiencing queer culture in ways he missed out on when he was young and closeted.

so i think dan actually WAS on the apps, when he was touring WAD. i wouldn't be surprised if that was phil's idea, even. a "don't worry, go see the world, we've been open before, i'm not worried you won't want to come home to me, nobody's gonna match your freak like i do". i think phil would've had the option too but probably would've taken it less.

and i think it's like. like they're best friends! it's something they would've been talking about with each other. i think it could've been foreplay to them sometimes. i think it could've been what catapaulted dan into his top era. (this is a seperate essay from drs. frecklie, frecklie and phulge as well).

most importantly we think dan came back from the first leg of WAD having completely exorcised his fear of commitment and. wait i have to find a specific message. nevermind you're getting 3 screenshots without any further context

anyways. i can't find the specific point where we said this so it was maybe an in person conversation but the rest of the idea is that experiencing other options resulted in dan coming back from WAD and proposing. and phil proposing the gaming channel return right back. we 1000% said this before phil mentioned that he's the one who suggested the gaming channel return i just can NOT fucking find receipts on that because we largely voice message.

this has been an entire ramble that touched on a lot of different subjects but. yeah. dan and phil aren't polyamorous in the "both dating another person as a couple/other people as individuals" sense nor will they ever be. but there's sooo much room between that and strict monogamy.

and a lot of that in between is in perfect alignment with the ways they've talked about their lives over the years and is yet another extension of them having a level of trust love and intimacy in their relationship that most people will never experience. so

thank you for coming to my ted talk.

[lionar0und]

Dada! - Leona fic

Leona has some conflicted feelings about his baby This is mostly my late night rambling

Warnings - Fem reader Kinda, mostly leona and cub centered, Small doses of traumatized Leona

Special thanks to @queen-shiba for all her help. Thanks Bestie!

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

Leona loves his sleep. It's a known fact that he almost loves sleep more than he loves his wife.

Almost. He certainly loves her enough for-

"Dada!"

There she is. Leona has...conflicted feelings about being a father. His wife wanted a cub, so they had a cub. He wanted to continue his legacy anyway...but Seven, he's struggling.

It was fine at first - mildly unnerving, but fine. You were struggling, and he hated it. But you wanted Melody so badly. He can't ignore the adrenaline rush he felt when he first felt his cub kicking; or the jolts of joy whenever he held you, arms around you and holding your belly.

But now that she's here?

She's beautiful. She's everything he never thought he could love that he would live for. He'd die for her to but dying is just sleep to him...and sleep is easy. It's numb and comfortable. But living? Waking from bliss to feed his tiny mewling cub as she wails, face red and tiny fists shaking is hard. Giving up some of his late nights out, facing the embarrassment of her sobbing at royal functions; all those judging eyes watching?

Yeah. That's rough.

Really rough.

Today's rough too - He only just got back from another Spelldrive practice, and now that hes a pro, his energy has to be up to play!

But duty calls.

"DADA!"

"Oi, don't shout at baba," He grumbles weakly, "It's late, nugget."

"I want hair." She huffs. For a second his heart stirs. She has your eyes.

"You have hair. See? It's right here." He tapped her head...and it started again. The instant panic because what if his nails are too sharp? What if he hurt her?

He represses the urge to throw up when remembering the feeling of his own parent's claws raking over his eye.

"No dada. Your hair. Pretty!"

"My hair? Baby, what-" He is cut off by a sharp tug on his hair.

Oh.

"You want locs?" It's more of a surprised gruff squeak than anything else. "You want your hair to look like mine?"

"Yes!" She squeals excitedly, hopping on the bed with him. "Hair like yours!"

Shit. Shit, he doesn't do his own hair! He's a prince, he has a stylist-

"Dada?"

Damn it...look at that sweet face. Funny, he didn't realize Melody had his grumpy face.

"Alright, come here grumpy cat." He quickly grabbed his phone. "Kifaji? Yeah...bring me all that hair stuff my stylist uses and my tablet stand."

===========================================

As Leona works diligently, he silently notes to raise his stylists salary.

Melody is squirmy after a while...but luckily his baby girl is just as nerdy as him. Nothing a chess tournament on TV can't fix. Besides, hes a good multitasker! He watches the how-to video on his Ipad while carefully doing his precious cub's hair and violently judging the shitty chess plays.

How many more clips does he need? This kid has a lot more hair than he thought...

"Almost done?"

"Almost baby." He grumbles, trying to pick up the clip he dropped.

Sevens, his hands are sore! Twisting Melody's hair lovingly yet firmly, he feels that familiar bubble of annoyance. Why can't the royal stylist just do this instead?

Stop it, Leona. He thinks bitterly. Be the dad you wanted. Suck up being tired! You overblotted and still played spelldrive after! This is for your cub!

But it's been over an hour. And he is so, so tired. And he has practice tomorrow.

And his baby girl wants to be just like him.

He tries to ignore the weird feeling in his throat he gets when those doubts creep in again.

Come on man. Just a bit longer.

====================================

Almost two hours later, he's done. He's oddly proud of himself. And his reward?

He gets to go deaf!

Melody is squealing in glee now, running around with her tiny mirror.

"I look just like dada!" The tired dad hears her screaming down the hall. It's making him feel oddly smug, too. He actually did it.

Finally, he can reap his rewards. Snuggled tightly into his bed and using your maternity pillow he stole , he can finally sleep.

"DADA I WANNA PLAY DOLLS!"

...but for his baby girl, maybe sleep can wait until tomorrow.

[appleblueberry-pie]

Would it be wrong to ask for a non-smut yandere Tōji? I mean, there are many like that in various places, so what would he be like if he really met the love of his life and she somehow found out everything he was doing to support them? The reader simply does not tolerate the situation and does not accept at all that his children grow up next to the example that Tōji is setting, but he really does not want to lose what had made him happy.

The kids were at school. You said you'd bring them back to your place. He never knew why you didn't just move in with him. He supposes it's for shit like this. Accidents like these.

You were at his door, leaning against it, knowing how he loves to block your way out when you two get into arguments. You were distant and had been for this past week. You open your mouth again to tell him his mistake, and all he wants is to just hold you close on the couch like you two always do when the kids are gone.

"I can't live with a killer." The way that last words slipped out of your mouth was like it was your worst nightmare to ever bring up. And it was. You were dating a stalker, serial killer who got money off of assassinating others and somehow did those exact things to get you in his paws. You weren't disgusted with yourself.

You just wanted to be safe.

You didn't know if you could be safe around him.

You didn't know if the kids could be safe around him.

You didn't know what he was capable of. And that really scared you.

You just wanted to get out of the damn house, but once you had this whole speech about you finding out what he did, and then finally dropping that you want to disconnect from him entirely, he just can't let it get away from him that easily. No.

It was never his intention to make you worried. To make you feel uncomfortable, worried, afraid. He did everything in his power to make sure that never happened. He wanted to know how you found out and who the fuck to kill.

I guess he was a little overboard. But never to you.

"Y/n...."

He didn't know what to say. Because dating a killer is fucking crazy. There's nothing he can do about that.

"I can't lose you, too, baby. You and those kids mean every-fucking-thing to me. All that money goes to all of you-"

"It's not about the money, Toji, you're.......I just can't. I can't deal with someone like that." You turn away and go to turn the door knob and he's already there behind you. Softly turning you around and grabbing your face as if it was the most fragile porcelain.

"You're just gonna take them away? You're really gonna leave me like this? What about all of the shit we built together?"

"I'm willing to risk that to keep us alive and safe, Toji."

"I have been keeping you all alive and safe. I've been doing that shit for years."

"I shouldn't have to be protected to live a regular fucking life, Toji! I don't want to live with that stress on me!! Please!"

He doesn't want to stop you. He sees that look on your face, and all it reminds him is that he did a shitty job. As a partner, as a fiance, as a father and everything else in between.

All he knows is that he is sorry and he will continue to be sorry. Because he won't let you run off. He loves you too much to do that. You've engrained yourself on his tattoos, on his mind and his heart. It's all there because of you and it's shit that can't be erased with a simple white board eraser.

He'll start stalking you again. He'll find a way to talk with the kids again. Maybe he'll get his lil friend to do some lawyer shit for him, gain custody, or whatever the fuck it's called before you do.

He'll do everything in his power to have you back because he can't function properly without you. You were his gears, his wake-up calls, his breakfast, lunch and dinner for his soul and he'd be damned if that was taken away from him.

[qqueenofhades]

what's been particularly vile to me is this group of white online leftists who insist that anyone who cares about more than this one issue for the election is a bad person, like, as if us black and brown people are making up reasons to be afraid and not.....believing the gop when they say they are coming for us. believing trump who has said previously that he does not bluff, that he will do the things he's said he will do (i hate what social media has gone to the word gaslighting but it feels like gaslighting. we lived through four years of trump. we saw the damage. stop treating us like we're being dramatic). it must be great to not have to worry about that i guess? "life won't change under trump" is such a telling admission because maybe theirs won't but mine will. and so many others' will.

and it is often again these (white) online leftists that love to call anyone who disagrees with them a white liberal (derogatory) because they know it would be racist (bad) to be this shitty and condescending to poc but they don't want to actually listen to anything black and brown voters are saying. it's easier to just call us white liberals and throw our opinions out, to ignore the work of black people for decades to gain the right to vote, to disregard the weight of telling them to not do that. it's genuinely appalling. they care so much about racism until it's time to engage with poc who have different opinions than their online echo chambers, then we're just stupid liberals with terrible opinions like..... wanting to live. not wanting four more years of trump. so sorry for that.

sorry for this vent in your inbox, i'm just so fucking tired of white people trying to rewrite history as if trump wasn't that bad. he was for my family and countless others and i am terrified for what's to come if he wins.

The thing about (the often-white) Online Leftists is that they have become just as much as a radicalized death cult as the diehard Trumpists. If you don't want to die for The Revolution and/or sacrifice your life, friends, family, the rest of the country, etc., then you're Insufficiently Pure and must be Purged. (Which I think is just complete BS, as none of them could actually handle sacrificing anything, but it's increasingly the only kind of performative rhetoric that is acceptable in leftist-identified discourse spaces.) This is functionally identical to "if you aren't willing to lay down your life for our Lord and Savior Donald Trump and the Great White Christian Nationalist Dictatorship, you're a liberal cuck," but with the names and justification changed. It doesn't change the underlying radicalization, nihilism, and insanity of the premise.

Another thing the Trumpists and the Online Leftists have in common is that they are busily rewriting just how bad Trump was in order to serve their Ideology. Ever since January 6, 2021, the Republicans have thrown everything they have at revising and whitewashing any suggestion that it was an "insurrection," and the Online Leftists have done the same, in an attempt to "prove" their insane point that Trump "would be better" than Biden. This is embodied in the recent ultimate-brainworm-nonsense maximalist-online take that "Biden has to lose so the rest of the world will see that the US rejects genocide!!!" That's right, the message that the rest of the world would take from Biden losing to Trump is that the US rejects genocide. Never mind if Trump literally wants to commit all the genocide possible and to install himself as a fascist theocratic dictator. In the deeply twisted minds of the Online Leftists, this is the only possible interpretation of Biden's loss, so they'll push for it as hard as they can! The Trumpists and the Online Leftists, at this point, are working pretty much in concert to damage Biden for similar insane reasons and get Trump elected. Etc etc., one Nazi and ten people at the same table is eleven Nazis.

Like. Sure. Four years ago, when Trump was president and people were dying by the thousands because he didn't want to wear a mask because it smeared his bronzer, just to name literally one of the terrible things he did every single day (and not even mentioning how much worse a second term would be) we were absolutely better off. Super-duper great. (Sarcasm.) Either that or "there is suffering and evil in the world and the only solution is to drastically increase the suffering and evil for everyone and to destroy what progress we have managed to make because It Does Not Fix Everything Now" is an absolute moral imperative, and either way, yeah. I'm calling bullshit.

[ms-demeanor]

Good grief, your MIL sounds like an exhausting human being to exist in the presence of (I can guess the answer, but has she ever been diagonosed? She sounds well beyond common-or-garden irrational foibles). Big respect to Large Bastard for surving that and making it to adulthood as an actual functional person. What on earth did she do to make Tiny Bastard so thoroughly terrified of any beeping sound?

She has not been diagnosed with anything professionally: very funny fun fact, she has a Bachelor's in Psychology and she thinks that therapy is a scam and that there's no psychiatric medication that actually works. I have tried to talk to her about going to see someone but when I shared how therapy had helped me deal with my history of trauma she went behind my back to try to talk large bastard into divorcing me because of my history of trauma, so that's when I decided I was done sharing anything about my life with her or putting effort into helping her.

I am continually floored by the fact that Large Bastard was raised by such staggeringly shitty people and ended up being as nice a guy as he is. Don't get me wrong, he's still an asshole, but he is not an asshole like that.

Tiny bastard is scared of beeping, metal stepladders, and used to be scared of soda cans.

The soda cans were because MiL would continually drop empty cans on the tile floors of the house and startle herself with the noise. Stepladders because if MiL got out the stepladder it meant she was going to do some kind of chore or another that would end with yelling. Beeping because MiL walked around with a timer around her neck and would jump and scream when it went off; she would jump and scream MUCH worse at more unexpected noises like the smoke alarm going off, and since she was a terrible cook in a house with not-great ventilation the smoke alarm went off a lot.

When she gets startled not only does she yell and shout, she also starts screaming at whatever has startled her. The way this typically goes is:

Object: Beep!

MiL: Augh!

MiL: Fucking bitch! Fuck!

MiL: Why did you have to do that you fucking bitch? Piece of shit. FUCK!

The yelling was also frequently accompanied by stomping feet and slamming doors, because this woman is a 75-year-old toddler.

If she is yelling because she scared herself (by dropping something that made a loud noise) the yelling will go on longer and will be more intense and self-loathing. That's why tiny bastard is MUCH more scared of stepladders than stopwatches (so we have two stepladders - my little plastic stepladder that lives on the wall of the kitchen and does not scare the dog, and the big folding metal stepladder that has been dubbed "The Puzzles Frightener.")

[mostlysignssomeportents]

The enshittification of garage-door openers reveals a vast and deadly rot

I'll be at the Studio City branch of the LA Public Library on Monday, November 13 at 1830hPT to launch my new novel, The Lost Cause. There'll be a reading, a talk, a surprise guest (!!) and a signing, with books on sale. Tell your friends! Come on down!

How could this happen? Owners of Chamberlain MyQ automatic garage door openers just woke up to discover that the company had confiscated valuable features overnight, and that there was nothing they could do about it.

Oh, we know what happened, technically speaking. Chamberlain shut off the API for its garage-door openers, which breaks their integration with home automation systems like Home Assistant. The company even announced that it was doing this, calling the integration an "unauthorized usage" of its products, though the "unauthorized" parties in this case are the people who own Chamberlain products:

https://chamberlaingroup.com/press/a-message-about-our-decision-to-prevent-unauthorized-usage-of-myq

We even know why Chamberlain did this. As Ars Technica's Ron Amadeo points out, shutting off the API is a way for Chamberlain to force its customers to use its ad-beshitted, worst-of-breed app, so that it can make a few pennies by nonconsensually monetizing its customers' eyeballs:

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2023/11/chamberlain-blocks-smart-garage-door-opener-from-working-with-smart-homes/

But how did this happen? How did a giant company like Chamberlain come to this enshittening juncture, in which it felt empowered to sabotage the products it had already sold to its customers? How can this be legal? How can it be good for business? How can the people who made this decision even look themselves in the mirror?

To answer these questions, we must first consider the forces that discipline companies, acting against the impulse to enshittify their products and services. There are four constraints on corporate conduct:

I. Competition. The fear of losing your business to a rival can stay even the most sociopathic corporate executive's hand.

II. Regulation. The fear of being fined, criminally sanctioned, or banned from doing business can check the greediest of leaders.

III. Capability. Corporate executives can dream up all kinds of awful ways to shift value from your side of the ledger to their own, but they can only do the things that are technically feasible.

IV. Self-help. The possibility of customers modifying, reconfiguring or altering their products to restore lost functionality or neutralize antifeatures carries an implied threat to vendors. If a printer company's anti-generic-ink measures drives a customer to jailbreak their printers, the original manufacturer's connection to that customer is permanently severed, as the customer creates a durable digital connection to a rival.

When companies act in obnoxious, dishonest, shitty ways, they aren't merely yielding to temptation – they are evading these disciplining forces. Thus, the Great Enshittening we are living through doesn't reflect an increase in the wickedness of corporate leadership. Rather, it represents a moment in which each of these disciplining factors have been gutted by specific policies.

This is good news, actually. We used to put down rat poison and we didn't have a rat problem. Then we stopped putting down rat poison and rats are eating us alive. That's not a nice feeling, but at least we know at least one way of addressing it – we can start putting down poison again. That is, we can start enforcing the rules that we stopped enforcing, in living memory. Having a terrible problem is no fun, but the best kind of terrible problem to have is one that you know a solution to.

As it happens, Chamberlain is a neat microcosm for all the bad policy choices that created the Era of Enshittification. Let's go through them:

Competition: Chamberlain doesn't have to worry about competition, because it is owned by a private equity fund that "rolled up" all of Chamberlain's major competitors into a single, giant firm. Most garage-door opener brands are actually Chamberlain, including "LiftMaster, Chamberlain, Merlin, and Grifco":

https://www.lakewoodgaragedoor.biz/blog/the-history-of-garage-door-openers

This is a pretty typical PE rollup, and it exploits a bug in US competition law called "Antitrust's Twilight Zone":

https://pluralistic.net/2022/12/16/schumpeterian-terrorism/#deliberately-broken

When companies buy each other, they are subject to "merger scrutiny," a set of guidelines that the FTC and DoJ Antitrust Division use to determine whether the outcome is likely to be bad for competition. These rules have been pretty lax since the Reagan administration, but they've currently being revised to make them substantially more strict:

https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/justice-department-and-ftc-seek-comment-draft-merger-guidelines

One of the blind spots in these merger guidelines is an exemption for mergers valued at less than $101m. Under the Hart-Scott-Rodino Act, these fly under the radar, evading merger scrutiny. That means that canny PE companies can roll up dozens and dozens of standalone businesses, like funeral homes, hospital beds, magic mushrooms, youth addiction treatment centers, mobile home parks, nursing homes, physicians’ practices, local newspapers, or e-commerce sellers:

http://www.economicliberties.us/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/Serial-Acquisitions-Working-Paper-R4-2.pdf

By titrating the purchase prices, PE companies – like Blackstone, owners of Chamberlain and all the other garage-door makers – can acquire a monopoly without ever raising a regulatory red flag.

But antitrust enforcers aren't helpless. Under (the long dormant) Section 7 of the Clayton Act, competition regulators can block mergers that lead to "incipient monopolization." The incipiency standard prevented monopolies from forming from 1914, when the Clayton Act passed, until the Reagan administration. We used to put down rat poison, and we didn't have rats. We stopped, and rats are gnawing our faces off. We still know where the rat poison is – maybe we should start putting it down again.

On to regulation. How is it possible for Chamberlain to sell you a garage-door opener that has an API and works with your chosen home automation system, and then unilaterally confiscate that valuable feature? Shouldn't regulation protect you from this kind of ripoff?

It should, but it doesn't. Instead, we have a bunch of regulations that protect Chamberlain from you. Think of binding arbitration, which allows Chamberlain to force you to click through an "agreement" that takes away your right to sue them or join a class-action suit:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/10/20/benevolent-dictators/#felony-contempt-of-business-model

But regulation could protect you from Chamberlain. Section 5 of the Federal Trade Commission Act allows the FTC to ban any "unfair and deceptive" conduct. This law has been on the books since 1914, but Section 5 has been dormant, forgotten and unused, for decades. The FTC's new dynamo chair, Lina Khan, has revived it, and is use it like a can-opener to free Americans who've been trapped by abusive conduct:

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

Khan's used Section 5 powers to challenge privacy invasions, noncompete clauses, and other corporate abuses – the bait-and-switch tactics of Chamberlain are ripe for a Section 5 case. If you buy a gadget because it has five features and then the vendor takes two of them away, they are clearly engaged in "unfair and deceptive" conduct.

On to capability. Since time immemorial, corporate leaders have fetishized "flexibility" in their business arrangements – like the ability to do "dynamic pricing" that changes how much you pay for something based on their guess about how much you are willing to pay. But this impulse to play shell games runs up against the hard limits of physical reality: grocers just can't send an army of rollerskated teenagers around the store to reprice everything as soon as a wealthy or desperate-looking customer comes through the door. They're stuck with crude tactics like doubling the price of a flight that doesn't include a Saturday stay as a way of gouging business travelers on an expense account.

With any shell-game, the quickness of the hand deceives the eye. Corporate crooks armed with computers aren't smarter or more wicked than their analog forebears, but they are faster. Digital tools allow companies to alter the "business logic" of their services from instant to instant, in highly automated ways:

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

The monopoly coalition has successfully argued that this endless "twiddling" should not be constrained by privacy, labor or consumer protection law. Without these constraints, corporate twiddlers can engage in all kinds of ripoffs, like wage theft and algorithmic wage discrimination:

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

Twiddling is key to the Darth Vader MBA ("I am altering the deal. Pray I don't alter it further"), in which features are confiscated from moment to moment, without warning or recourse:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/10/26/hit-with-a-brick/#graceful-failure

There's no reason to accept the premise that violating your privacy, labor rights or consumer rights with a computer is so different from analog ripoffs that existing laws don't apply. The unconstrained twiddling of digital ripoff artists is a plague on billions of peoples' lives, and any enforcer who sticks up for our rights will have an army of supporters behind them.

Finally, there's the fear of self-help measures. All the digital flexibility that tech companies use to take value away can be used to take it back, too. The whole modern history of digital computers is the history of "adversarial interoperability," in which the sleazy antifeatures of established companies are banished through reverse-engineering, scraping, bots and other forms of technological guerrilla warfare:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/10/adversarial-interoperability

Adversarial interoperability represents a serious threat to established business. If you're a printer company gouging on toner, your customers might defect to a rival that jailbreaks your security measures. That's what happened to Lexmark, who lost a case against the toner-refilling company Static Controls, which went on to buy Lexmark:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/06/felony-contempt-business-model-lexmarks-anti-competitive-legacy

Sure, your customers are busy and inattentive and you can degrade the quality of your product a lot before they start looking for ways out. But once they cross that threshold, you can lose them forever. That's what happened to Microsoft: the company made the tactical decision to produce a substandard version of Office for the Mac in a drive to get Mac users to switch to Windows. Instead, Apple made Iwork (Pages, Numbers and Keynote), which could read and write every Office file, and Mac users threw away Office, the only Microsoft product they owned, permanently severing their relationship to the company:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/06/adversarial-interoperability-reviving-elegant-weapon-more-civilized-age-slay

Today, companies can operate without worrying about this kind of self-help measure. There' a whole slew of IP rights that Chamberlain can enforce against you if you try to fix your garage-door opener yourself, or look to a competitor to sell you a product that restores the feature they took away:

https://locusmag.com/2020/09/cory-doctorow-ip/

Jailbreaking your Chamberlain gadget in order to make it answer to a rival's app involves bypassing a digital lock. Trafficking in a tool to break a digital lock is a felony under Section 1201 of the Digital Millennium Copyright, carrying a five-year prison sentence and a $500,000 fine.

In other words, it's not just that tech isn't regulated, allowing for endless twiddling against your privacy, consumer rights and labor rights. It's that tech is badly regulated, to permit unlimited twiddling by tech companies to take away your rightsand to prohibit any twiddling by you to take them back. The US government thumbs the scales against you, creating a regime that Jay Freeman aptly dubbed "felony contempt of business model":

https://pluralistic.net/2022/10/23/how-to-fix-cars-by-breaking-felony-contempt-of-business-model/

All kinds of companies have availed themselves of this government-backed superpower. There's DRM – digital locks, covered by DMCA 1201 – in powered wheelchairs:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2022/06/when-drm-comes-your-wheelchair

In dishwashers:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/05/03/cassette-rewinder/#disher-bob

In treadmills:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/06/22/vapescreen/#jane-get-me-off-this-crazy-thing

In tractors:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/05/08/about-those-kill-switched-ukrainian-tractors/

It should come as no surprise to learn that Chamberlain has used DMCA 1201 to block interoperable garage door opener components:

https://scholarship.law.marquette.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1233&context=iplr

That's how we arrived at this juncture, where a company like Chamberlain can break functionality its customers value highly, solely to eke out a minuscule new line of revenue by selling ads on their own app.

Chamberlain bought all its competitors.

Chamberlain operates in a regulatory environment that is extremely tolerant of unfair and deceptive practices. Worse: they can unilaterally take away your right to sue them, which means that if regulators don't bestir themselves to police Chamberlain, you are shit out of luck.

Chamberlain has endless flexibility to unilaterally alter its products' functionality, in fine-grained ways, even after you've purchased them.

Chamberlain can sue you if you try to exercise some of that same flexibility to protect yourself from their bad practices.

Combine all four of those factors, and of course Chamberlain is going to enshittify its products. Every company has had that one weaselly asshole at the product-planning table who suggests a petty grift like breaking every one of the company's customers' property to sell a few ads. But historically, the weasel lost the argument to others, who argued that making every existing customer furious would affect the company's bottom line, costing it sales and/or fines, and prompting customers to permanently sever their relationship with the company by seeking out and installing alternative software. Take away all the constraints on a corporation's worst impulses, and this kind of conduct is inevitable:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/28/microincentives-and-enshittification/

This isn't limited to Chamberlain. Without the discipline of competition, regulation, self-help measures or technological limitations, every industry in undergoing wholesale enshittification. It's not a coincidence that Chamberlain's grift involves a push to move users into its app. Because apps can't be reverse-engineered and modified without risking DMCA 1201 prosecution, forcing a user into an app is a tidy and reliable way to take away that user's rights.

Think about ad-blocking. One in four web users has installed an ad-blockers ("the biggest boycott in world history" -Doc Searls). Zero app users have installed app-blockers, because they don't exist, because making one is a felony. An app is just a web-page wrapped in enough IP to make it a crime to defend yourself against corporate predation:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/08/27/an-audacious-plan-to-halt-the-internets-enshittification-and-throw-it-into-reverse/

The temptation to enshitiffy isn't new, but the ability to do so without consequence is a modern phenomenon, the intersection of weak policy enforcement and powerful technology. Your car is autoenshittified, a rolling rent-seeking platform that spies on you and price-gouges you:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/24/rent-to-pwn/#kitt-is-a-demon

Cars are in an uncontrolled skid over Enshittification Cliff. Honda, Toyota, VW and GM all sell cars with infotainment systems that harvest your connected phone's text-messages and send them to the corporation for data-mining. What's more, a judge in Washington state just ruled that this is legal:

https://therecord.media/class-action-lawsuit-cars-text-messages-privacy

While there's no excuse for this kind of sleazy conduct, we can reasonably anticipate that if our courts would punish companies for engaging in it, they might be able to resist the temptation. No wonder Mozilla's latest Privacy Not Included research report called cars "the worst product category we have ever reviewed":

https://foundation.mozilla.org/en/privacynotincluded/articles/its-official-cars-are-the-worst-product-category-we-have-ever-reviewed-for-privacy/

I mean, Nissan tries to infer facts about your sex life and sells those inferences to marketing companies:

https://foundation.mozilla.org/en/privacynotincluded/nissan/

But the OG digital companies are the masters of enshittification. Microsoft has been at this game for longer than anyone, and every day brings a fresh way that Microsoft has worsened its products without fear of consequence. The latest? You can't delete your OneDrive account until you provide an acceptable explanation for your disloyalty:

https://www.theverge.com/2023/11/8/23952878/microsoft-onedrive-windows-close-app-notification

It's tempting to think that the cruelty is the point, but it isn't. It's almost never the point. The point is power and money. Unscrupulous businesses have found ways to make money by making their products worse since the industrial revolution. Here's Jules Dupuis, writing about 19th century French railroads:

It is not because of the few thousand francs which would have to be spent to put a roof over the third-class carriages or to upholster the third-class seats that some company or other has open carriages with wooden benches. What the company is trying to do is to prevent the passengers who can pay the second class fare from traveling third class; it hits the poor, not because it wants to hurt them, but to frighten the rich. And it is again for the same reason that the companies, having proved almost cruel to the third-class passengers and mean to the second-class ones, become lavish in dealing with first-class passengers. Having refused the poor what is necessary, they give the rich what is superfluous.

https://www.tumblr.com/mostlysignssomeportents/731357317521719296/having-refused-the-poor-what-is-necessary-they

But as bad as all this is, let me remind you about the good part: we know how to stop companies from enshittifying their products. We know what disciplines their conduct: competition, regulation, capability and self-help measures. Yes, rats are gnawing our eyeballs, but we know which rat-poison to use, and where to put it to control those rats.

Competition, regulation, constraint and self-help measures all backstop one another, and while one or a few can make a difference, they are most powerful when they're all mobilized in concert. Think of the failure of the EU's landmark privacy law, the GDPR. While the GDPR proved very effective against bottom-feeding smaller ad-tech companies, the worse offenders, Meta and Google, have thumbed their noses at it.

This was enabled in part by the companies' flying an Irish flag of convenience, maintaining the pretense that they have to be regulated in a notorious corporate crime-haven:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/05/15/finnegans-snooze/#dirty-old-town

That let them get away with all kinds of shenanigans, like ignoring the GDPR's requirement that you should be able to easily opt out of data-collection without having to go through cumbersome "cookie consent" dialogs or losing access to the service as punishment for declining to be tracked.

As the noose has tightened around these surveillance giants, they're continuing to play games. Meta now says that the only way to opt out of data-collection in the EU is to pay for the service:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/10/30/markets-remaining-irrational/#steins-law

This is facially illegal under the GDPR. Not only are they prohibited from punishing you for opting out of collection, but the whole scheme ignores the nature of private data collection. If Facebook collects the fact that you and I are friends, but I never opted into data-collection, they have violated the GDPR, even if you were coerced into granting consent:

https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2023/11/the-pay-or-consent-challenge-for-platform-regulators.html

The GDPR has been around since 2016 and Google and Meta are still invading 500 million Europeans' privacy. This latest delaying tactic could add years to their crime-spree before they are brought to justice.

But most of this surveillance is only possible because so much of how you interact with Google and Meta is via an app, and an app is just a web-page that's a felony to make an ad-blocker for. If the EU were to legalize breaking DRM – repealing Article 6 of the 2001 Copyright Directive – then we wouldn't have to wait for the European Commission to finally wrestle these two giant companies to the ground. Instead, EU companies could make alternative clients for all of Google and Meta's services that don't spy on you, without suffering the fate of OG App, which tried this last winter and was shut down by "felony contempt of business model":

https://pluralistic.net/2023/02/05/battery-vampire/#drained

Enshittification is demoralizing. To quote @wilwheaton, every update to the services we use inspires "dread of 'How will this complicate things as I try to maintain privacy and sanity in a world that demands I have this thing to operate?'"

https://wilwheaton.tumblr.com/post/698603648058556416/cory-doctorow-if-you-see-this-and-have-thoughts

But there are huge natural constituencies for the four disciplining forces that keep enshittification at bay.

Remember, Antitrust's Twilight Zone doesn't just allow rollups of garage-door opener companies – it's also poison for funeral homes, hospital beds, magic mushrooms, youth addiction treatment centers, mobile home parks, nursing homes, physicians’ practices, local newspapers, or e-commerce sellers.

The Binding Arbitration scam that stops Chamberlain customers from suing the company also stops Uber drivers from suing over stolen wages, Turbotax customers from suing over fraud, and many other victims of corporate crime from getting a day in court.

The failure to constrain twiddling to protect privacy, labor rights and consumer rights enables a host of abuses, from stalking, doxing and SWATting to wage theft and price gouging:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/11/06/attention-rents/#consumer-welfare-queens

And Felony Contempt of Business Model is used to screw you over every time you refill your printer, run your dishwasher, or get your Iphone's screen replaced.

The actions needed to halt and reverse this enshittification are well understood, and the partisans for taking those actions are too numerous to count. It's taken a long time for all those individuals suffering under corporate abuses to crystallize into a movement, but at long last, it's happening.

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/2023/11/09/lead-me-not-into-temptation/#chamberlain

Image: Cryteria (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:HAL9000.svg

CC BY 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en