#or like that whole thing about rich people getting richer

[catboyfurina]

Lethal company is such a fun game I wish real capitalism were about playing labyrinth maze

[honeytonedhottie]

how to be rich and luxurious⋆.ೃ࿔*:･🌺

we must first understand that being rich is a state of mind. you could be broke and not poor. never poor. poor is a state of mind. and that choice that u make to be rich or poor is ultimately yours cuz u control ur thoughts.

so how do we radiate luxury and become luxurious? through having luxurious thoughts. we know that what we think manifests so lets think things that make us richer in every aspect of our lives. 

LUXURY IS AN ENERGY ; 

when you exude the energy of luxury, YOU’LL ALWAYS BE LUXURIOUS. the luxury that u exude will manifest. thoughts manifest. have luxurious thoughts -> a luxurious reality WILL manifest. its rly that simple ✨

CULTIVATING LUXURY ENERGY ; 

u cultivate luxury energy, like i mentioned before, through luxury thoughts. but if ur not used to thinking luxury thoughts/have a lack or poverty mindset, here are some affirmations to start and guide thinking. 

im grateful that im so abundant and rich in the things that i love

im like barbie cuz i have more then enough of everything

i have SO much, that i can bless others with my riches

i live my life lavishly

you can cultivate luxury by doing things that make u feel rich and luxurious. some things that help me to feel that way are. 

drinking drinks from a designated cup or wine-glass 

silky robes are EVERYTHING. or wearing lingerie and matching bra and panty sets

consistently practicing self care every single day 

wearing jewelry 

ofc everyone has different things that make them feel rich and different classifications for what luxury is and isn’t and that’s your choice to make ultimately. 

i recommend making a list of what makes u feel luxurious and doing that often. literally when i go to costco or a whole-sale store and have free samples i feel luxurious 😭 bcuz im INDULGING. 

that goes to show that u dont need to do the most to feel luxurious right at this moment. and that leads me to my next point. 

INDULGE YOURSELF ; 

don’t deny yourself the things that u desire and the things that you want. if u want ur fun little drink, have ur fun little drink. get ur nails done, take urself shopping every now and then. if u can’t afford to get these done, do it yourself. 

you have the ability to make yourself feel special and luxurious. the idea to this is to cultivate the feeling of being rich or the feeling of abundance and luxury. 

start a collection that you can have a lot of, change the perspective in which u see the things that u already own. kind of like seeing a cup have full then a cup half empty? 

THINGS TO BE RICH IN ; 

be rich in knowledge, be rich in culture, be rich in relationships, be rich in beauty. be rich in whatever interests that u might have. 

to be rich in knowledge -> seek higher education, study, read lots of books, start writing and seeking knowledge in whatever interests you 

to be rich in culture -> learn more about ur own culture and the culture of other people. explore and educate yourself on religion and customs that interest you. be well versed in another language or in something that’s important in todays media and pop culture

to be rich in relationships -> don’t close yourself up to meaningful relationships that you have. don’t take everything seriously and practice being social. 

to be rich in beauty -> take impeccable care of yourself and your body. pamper yourself every single day and pick up habits that serve the highest good for your appearance. 

to be rich in ur interests -> become well versed as i said before in whatever it is that interests you. there are countless resources online that can help give you information and direction on going about ur interests. 

[tarotwithavi]

How will your future partner make you feel?

＊*•̩̩͙✩•̩̩͙*˚*•̩̩͙✩•̩̩͙*˚＊*•̩̩͙✩•̩̩͙*˚˚*•̩̩͙✩•̩̩͙*˚＊*•̩̩͙✩•̩̩͙*˚˚*•̩̩͙✩•̩̩͙*˚＊

＊*•̩̩͙✩•̩̩͙*˚*•̩̩͙✩•̩̩͙*˚＊*•̩̩͙✩•̩̩͙*˚˚*•̩̩͙✩•̩̩͙*˚＊*•̩̩͙✩•̩̩͙*˚˚*•̩̩͙✩•̩̩͙*˚＊

How to choose a pile?

Close your eyes and take a deep breath and ask the angels to show you the right pile for you and open your eyes. The first pile that catches your attention is the right pile for you.

Masterlist

Paid services : OPEN

THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR YOUR LOVE AND SUPPORT 💞🍓

＊*•̩̩͙✩•̩̩͙*˚*•̩̩͙✩•̩̩͙*˚＊*•̩̩͙✩•̩̩͙*˚˚*•̩̩͙✩•̩̩͙*˚＊*•̩̩͙✩•̩̩͙*˚˚*•̩̩͙✩•̩̩͙*

Pile 1

They will make you feel as if all those lonely days were worth it, all the time you spent looking for love was worth it. They'll make you feel like you never have before. You'll be more confident in their presence, feeling as if you are the only woman/man in the entire universe. They'll make you feel so special that you may start wondering if your life is a dream. I see that you might get too attached to them, or they might get too attached to you, but either way, there is a sense of obsession. Being so infatuated with each other that you can't see anybody else. They'll make you realize that the time you spent alone was all for a better reason. The time you spent working on yourself was worth it. They'll make your stagnant life more enjoyable. I see that you may feel like you live a really boring life, but they'll make your life more interesting. You'll wake up every morning thinking about what will happen today, how your day will be, and what you will do together. They'll bring stability in your life and they'll make you feel heard and understood. They'll respect your boundaries and treat you the way you want to be treated. You'll feel as if you have won a lottery.

＊*•̩̩͙✩•̩̩͙*˚*•̩̩͙✩•̩̩͙*˚＊*•̩̩͙✩•̩̩͙*˚˚*•̩̩͙✩•̩̩͙*˚＊*•̩̩͙✩•̩̩͙*˚˚*•̩̩͙✩•̩̩͙*

Pile 2

They'll make you feel understood. You might have been misunderstood your whole life, or people seem to outcast you for no reason. But with them, you'll feel at home. They'll know everything about you and understand you without you having to say anything, almost as if they can read your mind. They'll know exactly what you want or need. They'll always be there to support you and protect you no matter what happens. You'll feel like yourself in their presence, and you'll feel like you don't have to change yourself or be somebody you're not. You'll pay no attention to whatever somebody says anymore. You'll feel no pressure to hide parts of yourself. You'll have a lot of deep conversations with them, finally having somebody to talk about your interests with. You may have a lot of knowledge about stars, dinosaurs, or something unusual. And they'll listen to you. They'll also provide emotional stability by always being there for you. I see that you guys will work together on something.

＊*•̩̩͙✩•̩̩͙*˚*•̩̩͙✩•̩̩͙*˚＊*•̩̩͙✩•̩̩͙*˚˚*•̩̩͙✩•̩̩͙*˚＊*•̩̩͙✩•̩̩͙*˚˚*•̩̩͙✩•̩̩͙*

Pile 3

Your future partner will make you feel incredibly passionate and alive, bringing a spark into your life that you might not have known was missing. They will make you feel beautiful, not just by complimenting your looks, but by making you feel valued and cherished for who you truly are. I see that they are really rich/financially stable so With them, you'll feel financially secure, as they support you in achieving your goals and creating a stable future together. They'll teach you so many new things, whether it's about the world, different cultures, or even about yourself, transforming your perspective in ways you never imagined. Most importantly, they'll change your perspective about life, helping you see things from different angles and inspiring you to grow and evolve into the best version of yourself. Their presence will transform your everyday experiences, making life richer and more meaningful. They'll make you feel more creative and passionate about your hobbies. I see that they may become your muse or vice versa.

＊*•̩̩͙✩•̩̩͙*˚*•̩̩͙✩•̩̩͙*˚＊*•̩̩͙✩•̩̩͙*˚˚*•̩̩͙✩•̩̩͙*˚＊*•̩̩͙✩•̩̩͙*˚˚*•̩̩͙✩•̩̩͙*

[piratefishmama]

Fake it Till you Make It | Part 9

Eddie felt like he’d been dipped directly into some kind of crazy world where nothing made sense. Or rather where everything he thought was true, was actually the opposite.

He was in an opposite world where despite being the obvious odd one out, he was being made to feel comfortable instead of ostracized.

These rich people? Not assholes.

Steve Harrington? Not a douche.

Okay so… that was only two things, but they were two pretty huge things on the Munson Doctrine that he’d now need to mentally re-write

Especially when the response to “we’ve known each other since high school but—but I guess I never really thought much about him until I saw him with Robin at The Hideout, apparently he was making sure my band was child safe for Dustin and the other kids and I—"

Was, “your band?” Interrupting him may have been rude but Lynda looked damn near sparkly eyed at the idea of him being in a band, as if middle-class people like the parents he’d freaked out thus far only thought they knew how to behave to appear richer, and rich people were actually this whole weird little species of their own. “Steven here has always sort of gravitated toward talented people, first Nancy, I’ve never known a girl quite as driven to be heard by the people around her as that one and I’m a lawyer, I really admired her for that.”

“You did?” Steve asked in surprise, why had they never said anything?

“Of course I did! Karen told me she wanted to be a journalist, gosh let me tell you she’ll make an incredible journalist someday, we’re already proud of her.” They knew she wanted to be a journalist? They were proud of her? “Then there was Robin—"

“Robin is my friend.”

“Oh, I know” he didn’t like how she said that word, that know, she couldn’t know-know, right? How would she—how could she? No… no she couldn’t. Robin had never said anything, never hinted at anything, she was terrified of being known, scared of the consequences. It’d taken being stuck in a broken elevator at work and him freaking out about enclosed spaces to come out to him, and he’d had to, in a moment of panic so sure he was going to die in there, come clean about his crush on her for her to do it! “That doesn’t change the fact that you had a crush on her first, don’t think we don’t know about that, we do. Your children are loud.” Dustin. It had to be Dustin. Not the queer thing, the crush thing. He’d never even told the little snot about that, he’d just noticed it, latched onto it, and like a dog with a high prey drive, just refused to let go, shaking it around until it was nothing but tatters. “She’s so talented in linguistics. and languages aren’t easy let me tell you, I don’t know what she intends to do but she’ll go far in it when she gets there.”

Steve was just kind of waiting for the other shoe to drop, still semi-convinced that the whole thing was performative and that the second Eddie left, the moment Steve was on his own with them, they’d pull the rug out and it’d have all been for ‘show’ and they weren’t supportive at all.

He was ‘dating’ a musician. Not a rich one. An unknown musician from an unknown band, living in a trailer park, with zero prospects, zero connections, and frankly a terrible reputation around the parents of Hawkins for his little fake date scheme.

Surely that had to be breaking some kind of unwritten rule for rich kids. Right? Surely his parents would have expected more from him, right?

Surely this wasn’t actually okay… was it? Was it really okay? Could it be okay? If… if he actually wanted that? Would it continue to be okay, or were they just saving face until it was safe to return to being the disappointed set of parents he’d come to know as an adolescent?

“I didn’t know you paid that much attention…” Eddie squeezed his hand, he didn’t have to look at him to know he’d fixed those bring brown eyes on him all warm and supportive. There for him, if he needed him to step in.

If he needed him to make it all about him again, to shine the spotlight on himself in either a positive or negative light, Eddie would.

He squeezed back, he’d be okay.

“Oh sweetheart… we may not be the best at showing it, but we’re not blind. You were just a little harder to speak to when you were younger, all those parties, and the drinking, the drugs—”

“It was just—”

“Marijuana is a drug, son.” John finally spoke up and that was the end of that argument, although Eddie was visibly trying to hide a grin as the towns resident ex-drug dealer who’d maybe supplied that marijuana once or twice. “Not one a boy that age should have been consuming.” True, he’d kill the kids if he ever caught them smoking weed unsupervised.

Maybe if he was there, he’d let them do it once just to show them what it was like. But once would be the maximum, and they’d be supervised!

He’d been unsupervised surrounded by strangers with alcohol and bad decisions to make. He was lucky he hadn’t wound up knocking some poor girl up or something equally life destroying.

“Yes, like your father says it was difficult, your father and I… we had to be the bad guys more often than we’d have liked and then things at the office got busy and well… maybe all that put a strain on things, but we were never not paying attention, I’m sorry we made you think that.” Another gentle squeeze. Eddie was there.

He'd continue to be there.

“So Stevie here has a type is what I’m hearing” Eddie finally spoke up, breaking the tension, a small but warm smile on his face that Steve appreciated more than he could possibly say.

“So I like people to be passionate about what they like! I like intelligent people—”

“Oof, puts me out of luck then” Eddie cut in with a dramatic little pout on his face, hand over his heart.

“Are you kidding me? You’re smart, you’re really smart!”

“Dude I failed high school like, three times. Pretty sure they finally let me graduate out of pity.”

“Yeah but that was bullshit, not everyone is good at school. I barely passed an I’m still half certain I only did cause of the sports shit.” Maybe the money thing too “but you can come up with all kinds of stuff on the fly, I know you ‘DM’ for that dungeons and demons shit an you deal with Dustin, Mike, AND Erica like a pro and honestly that takes some work the kids are nightmare children normally, so it’d probably be actual hell when you have to believably improv their characters taking a liking to some random NPC you’ve conjured up to be a weird little one time interaction and—and I know you can recite Shakespeare! And come up with your own Shakespeare-like poems, that SOUND like Shakespeare, and you write your songs which is cool, and you play guitar which is tricky I know I tried once it’s not easy, and in debate, people couldn’t keep up with you ever and—” and he was rambling.

“—Dragons…” Eddie gently cut him off, eyes wide but his smile… it looked like a cross between awe and affection. It was beautiful, and the dimple was there which made it extra pretty. Fuck why was Eddie Munson so goddamn pretty all of a sudden?

Was it even sudden? “Huh?”

“Dragons… you know NPC, but you don’t know it’s Dungeons and Dragons…” he sounded so fond, so soft spoken it was strange… but a good kind of strange that made Steve’s cheeks warm “you—you know all that about me?”

“W-well… yeah I mean—we’re dating, of course I know about the Dungeons and Dragons stuff I—” he could explain it away for his parents but Eddie, who was in on their fake dating thing, emphasis on the fake couldn’t be so easily fooled.

“No, not the D&D stuff… the Shakespeare thing, poetry, debate class, you saw that?”

It was his turn to be bashful, to be shy, to squeeze that hand, to be honest about something he’d never thought too hard about but god he had to now, didn’t he? “…You were hard to miss, Eddie.” He’d grown up, he could appreciate what he’d scoffed and rolled his eyes at back when he was a dumb teenager, he could admit that he’d seen Eddie, that deep down, despite the scoffing, the eye rolling, that deep down he liked that.

Deep down he’d always liked Eddie. He just wished he’d have been less of a douchebag, maybe they’d have known each other sooner.

“Ehem” Lynda gently cleared her throat, not cruelly, her smile definitely a little mischievous, a little ‘i'm going to be INSUFFERABLE about this’ but not trying to break up the moment, she just had to ask “Eddie… I’m not sure if you still live at home, but… if you do, are your parents… okay with you being away for a week with total strangers? Do… do they know about—”

“Ah! Uhm, yeah! Well, yes and no. My parents aren’t really… around, I live with my Uncle Wayne, he took me in when I was a kid.” He wasn’t going into that story, and nobody could make him for the sake of a fake date scheme “He knows about me… uh… about us… he’s okay with it, but he did ask that he meet you both before we go, if I’m allowed to come with you?”

“We’d be thrilled to have you, Eddie, he can meet us any time he likes.”

Main Goal. Achieved.

Part 11

[isagrimorie]

It’s always frustrating whenever the BAU tackles a case where either the victimology or UnSub has similarities to Prentiss’s background/upbringing but the writers rarely use it to give insights on Prentiss or have Prentiss’s background provide some insights into a case.

As an example, The Performer is an episode featuring Gavin Rossdale as a rockstar whose kayfabe was being a Vampire ala Lestat but fake.

The show could have dove a little into the goth community, a community Emily Prentiss used to be a part of. Did they do that? Unfortunately, no, they hung a lantern on it. The writers had Penelope tease Emily about how she used to dress Goth. Even though, Emily still dressed like one but corporate style.

In the episode, Pleasure is My Business. The UnSub grew up around wealth and privilege and then used sex work to lure her victims.

We discover in Lauren that Prentiss was in a similar enough situation re: Operation Valhalla.

Ala The Americans show, Prentiss used intimacy to get close to Ian Doyle.

Emily Prentiss became Lauren Reynolds because she matched Doyle’s type.

I know the writers had a vague idea of Prentiss’ past only that the writers had breadcrumbs pointing to a rich, mysterious past. They don’t have a crystal ball, but the privileged background could have been a jumping off point for a discussion, an insight to the UnSub’s thoughts.

In the season 16 episode, Orpheus Wrecks, the writers could have again used that case as a way to get more insight into Prentiss’ hidden personal life. As a Politician’s kid, and a somewhat savvy political operator herself, Prentiss would have been as familiar, if more, to the DC wonk space as Bailey was.

Prentiss would also be familiar with the Beltway Elite app even if she didn’t use it herself.

(As a former Spook, the idea of having an app like that in her phone would give Prentiss OpSec paranoia. She would not want her photo distributed everywhere. Being on Politico was enough of a headache for her tbh).

I know Prentiss’ whole thing is she wanted to distance herself from her mother’s political life but she would still have friends and would have known more people as she climbed up the ladder in the FBI.

Other shows like Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Elementary, and Person of Interest almost always use a kernel of similarity/parallelism in their various cases of the week as a jumping-off point to tell a richer story about their characters.

Criminal Minds does but selectively.

This is what makes the show frustrating. You can always tell when the show could have threaded the Case/Monster of the Week and connected the case to one of the characters.

Morgan and JJ also needed more exploration. The only one the writers they consistently use this with is Reid.

To the writer’s credit they have vaguely gestured at Emily’s mysterious past— setting up Emily’s existential crisis about her morality in the face of what she’s done while she worked for CIA and JTF-12.

But then the show goes several episodes mentioning the problem, an arc villain, and it’s frustrating!

(I sometimes lowkey wish some Whedon trained writers joined Criminal Minds to establish a good character-to-case ratio. Like, Jane Espenson. Or someone from Person of Interest writers room joining the Evolution writers team. The idea of Denise Thé writing for the CM ladies makes me yearn because delicious character development + inventive messed up twists. Erica Messer does a good job showrunning— a different job altogether than just writing for the show. But also— I yearn! Think about a POI caliber writer in a CM writers room! It would be so good to have, IMO. Not that PoI was entirely perfect either, I have my frustrations too!)

——

Chris Mundy seemed interested in delving into the internal lives of the characters, especially Emily’s. Demonology was really important for our understanding of Emily Prentiss.

Her guilt, her low-key self-loathing— the way she runs from the people she loves because she thinks she’s not worth it. The way she can conform to be anyone to fit into a situation and not stand out.

Her casual regard for sex as a tool to help her get accepted. All things that were helpful for Prentiss when she became a spy.

As Michael Westen from Burn Notice said: “People with happy families don’t become spies. A bad childhood is the perfect background for covert ops.”

TLDR— It’s just frustrating because they’re always nearly at the cusp of a great character driven procedural but then almost always back off from giving us really good food.

[clementine-thedestroyer]

Valeria x reader with an underground fighting ring AU, and reader is someone who understands how the whole thing works- you’re not the strongest, you’re not the best- you understand that the fights them selves are more often than not ways for rich men to get richer.

You’re not afraid to accept money to take a loss- in fact, that’s almost your entire job. You’re one of the disposable people there for the one who actually know how to fight to beat up. The way you look at it, you’re more of an actor than a fighter. You job is to take a couple hits, throw a few punches, then lay down and let your boss make their money.

Really, you just need the money. You’re struggling to make ends meet and if you think about it… it’s a relatively low amount of time spent for the money you’re getting out of it.

So when you’re getting ready for a match against Valeria, you kinda knew what you were getting in to. Just stay standing and fight back long enough for the crowd to be entertained, but don’t break yourself over it. After all, you’ll have to do this again next week- at least, if you want to make rent.

So you get into the ring, expecting everything to go as normal- except, it doesn’t.

When you stepped up to face her, she took one look at you and sneered.

“Where’s your parents, little girl?” She yelled, her tone patronizing and nasty.

You clench your jaw, set on ignoring her as you widened your stance and put up your hands.

Maybe if you were lucky, you’d actually land a hit and wipe that smug look off of her face for a moment.

But that quickly turns out to be the opposite of what happens.

The woman you were fighting had skill beyond anything you’d come to expect from these fights. She was clearly someone who knew how to fight- she had skill and form that was vastly superior to the scrappy, improvised style of fighting you were used to.

She lets you dodge her punches for a few minutes- even letting you throw some of her own until the jeers from the crowd became too much.

You don’t even have a moment to register the switch in her demeanor before you’re flat on your back, the wind knocked out of you and your eyes wide as you gasp for breath. Then, she’s her foot’s on top of you, in the center of your chest and keeping you down against the floor.

Your eyes meet and she laughs, taking her foot off you and nudging your side as you struggle for air.

“What, you can’t take a hit? You can’t exactly throw a punch either, are you sure you’re in the right place?”

You grit your teeth and try to sit up- but before you can make it more than an inch off the ground you’re being flipped over and the woman is straddling your back, pinning your arms behind you easily.

“Stay down.” She growls, and her nails dig into the skin of your wrists as she speaks.

You yelp, trying to buck her off, which only succeeds in giving her reason to grab a handful of your hair and wretch your head up.

Reflex tears sting at your eyes as she leans down to whisper in your ear.

“Go home, chica. This isn’t the kind of place for girls like you.” She says, before letting go of your hair and letting your head smack against the ground.

After that, she stands up, raising her fist and taking her victory lap as you struggle to peel yourself off of the floor. She doesn’t spare you so much of a second glance as the two of you clear the ring- making way for the next fight of the night.

You leave that night with a lump on your head and your pride and ego considerably more bruised than usual- which is something to say considering a normal night here for you dose usually involve throwing fights.

But, after that, blank, unmarked envelopes containing the exact amount of money you need to make rent that month start appearing on your doorstep every month, with the most recent one containing a date, time, and address along with the note “wear a dress”.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

The (open) web is good, actually

I'll be at the Studio City branch of the LA Public Library tonight (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!

The great irony of the platformization of the internet is that platforms are intermediaries, and the original promise of the internet that got so many of us excited about it was disintermediation – getting rid of the middlemen that act as gatekeepers between community members, creators and audiences, buyers and sellers, etc.

The platformized internet is ripe for rent seeking: where the platform captures an ever-larger share of the value generated by its users, making the service worst for both, while lock-in stops people from looking elsewhere. Every sector of the modern economy is less competitive, thanks to monopolistic tactics like mergers and acquisitions and predatory pricing. But with tech, the options for making things worse are infinitely divisible, thanks to the flexibility of digital systems, which means that product managers can keep subdividing the Jenga blocks they pulling out of the services we rely on. Combine platforms with monopolies with digital flexibility and you get enshittification:

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

An enshittified, platformized internet is bad for lots of reasons – it concentrates decisions about who may speak and what may be said into just a few hands; it creates a rich-get-richer dynamic that creates a new oligarchy, with all the corruption and instability that comes with elite capture; it makes life materially worse for workers, users, and communities.

But there are many other ways in which the enshitternet is worse than the old good internet. Today, I want to talk about how the enshitternet affects openness and all that entails. An open internet is one whose workings are transparent (think of "open source"), but it's also an internet founded on access – the ability to know what has gone before, to recall what has been said, and to revisit the context in which it was said.

At last week's Museum Computer Network conference, Aaron Straup Cope gave a talk on museums and technology called "Wishful Thinking – A critical discussion of 'extended reality' technologies in the cultural heritage sector" that beautifully addressed these questions of recall and revisiting:

https://www.aaronland.info/weblog/2023/11/11/therapy/#wishful

Cope is a museums technologist who's worked on lots of critical digital projects over the years, and in this talk, he addresses himself to the difference between the excitement of the galleries, libraries, archives and museums (GLAM) sector over the possibilities of the web, and why he doesn't feel the same excitement over the metaverse, and its various guises – XR, VR, MR and AR.

The biggest reason to be excited about the web was – and is – the openness of disintermediation. The internet was inspired by the end-to-end principle, the idea that the network's first duty was to transmit data from willing senders to willing receivers, as efficiently and reliably as possible. That principle made it possible for whole swathes of people to connect with one another. As Cope writes, openness "was not, and has never been, a guarantee of a receptive audience or even any audience at all." But because it was "easy and cheap enough to put something on the web," you could "leave it there long enough for others to find it."

That dynamic nurtured an environment where people could have "time to warm up to ideas." This is in sharp contrast to the social media world, where "[anything] not immediately successful or viral … was a waste of time and effort… not worth doing." The social media bias towards a river of content that can't be easily reversed is one in which the only ideas that get to spread are those the algorithm boosts.

This is an important way to understand the role of algorithms in the context of the spread of ideas – that without recall or revisiting, we just don't see stuff, including stuff that might challenge our thinking and change our minds. This is a much more materialistic and grounded way to talk about algorithms and ideas than the idea that Big Data and AI make algorithms so persuasive that they can control our minds:

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

As bad as this is in the social media context, it's even worse in the context of apps, which can't be linked into, bookmarked, or archived. All of this made apps an ominous sign right from the beginning:

https://memex.craphound.com/2010/04/01/why-i-wont-buy-an-ipad-and-think-you-shouldnt-either/

Apps interact with law in precisely the way that web-pages don't. "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/

Apps are "closed" in every sense. You can't see what's on an app without installing the app and "agreeing" to its terms of service. You can't reverse-engineer an app (to add a privacy blocker, or to change how it presents information) without risking criminal and civil liability. You can't bookmark anything the app won't let you bookmark, and you can't preserve anything the app won't let you preserve.

Despite being built on the same underlying open frameworks – HTTP, HTML, etc – as the web, apps have the opposite technological viewpoint to the web. Apps' technopolitics are at war with the web's technopolitics. The web is built around recall – the ability to see things, go back to things, save things. The web has the technopolitics of a museum:

https://www.aaronland.info/weblog/2014/09/11/brand/#dconstruct

By comparison, apps have the politics of a product, and most often, that product is a rent-seeking, lock-in-hunting product that wants to take you hostage by holding something you love hostage – your data, perhaps, or your friends:

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

When Anil Dash described "The Web We Lost" in 2012, he was describing a web with the technopolitics of a museum:

where tagging was combined with permissive licenses to make it easy for people to find and reuse each others' stuff;

where it was easy to find out who linked to you in realtime even though most of us were posting to our own sites, which they controlled;

where a link from one site to another meant one person found another person's contribution worthy;

where privacy-invasive bids to capture the web were greeted with outright hostility;

where every service that helped you post things that mattered to you was expected to make it easy for you take that data back if you changed services;

where inlining or referencing material from someone else's site meant following a technical standard, not inking a business-development deal;

https://www.anildash.com/2012/12/13/the_web_we_lost/

Ten years later, Dash's "broken tech/content culture cycle" described the web we live on now:

https://www.anildash.com/2022/02/09/the-stupid-tech-content-culture-cycle/

found your platform by promising to facilitate your users' growth;

order your technologists and designers to prioritize growth above all other factors and fire anyone who doesn't deliver;

grow without regard to the norms of your platform's users;

plaster over the growth-driven influx of abusive and vile material by assigning it to your "most marginalized, least resourced team";

deliver a half-assed moderation scheme that drives good users off the service and leaves no one behind but griefers, edgelords and trolls;

steadfastly refuse to contemplate why the marginalized users who made your platform attractive before being chased away have all left;

flail about in a panic over illegal content, do deals with large media brands, seize control over your most popular users' output;

"surface great content" by algorithmically promoting things that look like whatever's successful, guaranteeing that nothing new will take hold;

overpay your top performers for exclusivity deals, utterly neglect any pipeline for nurturing new performers;

abuse your creators the same ways that big media companies have for decades, but insist that it's different because you're a tech company;

ignore workers who warn that your product is a danger to society, dismiss them as "millennials" (defined as "anyone born after 1970 or who has a student loan")

when your platform is (inevitably) implicated in a murder, have a "town hall" overseen by a crisis communications firm;

pay the creator who inspired the murder to go exclusive on your platform;

dismiss the murder and fascist rhetoric as "growing pains";

when truly ghastly stuff happens on your platform, give your Trust and Safety team a 5% budget increase;

chase growth based on "emotionally engaging content" without specifying whether the emotions should be positive;

respond to ex-employees' call-outs with transient feelings of guilt followed by dismissals of "cancel culture":

fund your platforms' most toxic users and call it "free speech";

whenever anyone disagrees with any of your decisions, dismiss them as being "anti-free speech";

start increasing how much your platform takes out of your creators' paychecks;

force out internal dissenters, dismiss external critics as being in conspiracy with your corporate rivals;

once regulation becomes inevitable, form a cartel with the other large firms in your sector and insist that the problem is a "bad algorithm";

"claim full victim status," and quit your job, complaining about the toll that running a big platform took on your mental wellbeing.

https://pluralistic.net/2022/02/18/broken-records/#dashes

The web wasn't inevitable – indeed, it was wildly improbable. Tim Berners Lee's decision to make a new platform that was patent-free, open and transparent was a complete opposite approach to the strategy of the media companies of the day. They were building walled gardens and silos – the dialup equivalent to apps – organized as "branded communities." The way I experienced it, the web succeeded because it was so antithetical to the dominant vision for the future of the internet that the big companies couldn't even be bothered to try to kill it until it was too late.

Companies have been trying to correct that mistake ever since. After three or four attempts to replace the web with various garbage systems all called "MSN," Microsoft moved on to trying to lock the internet inside a proprietary browser. Years later, Facebook had far more success in an attempt to kill HTML with React. And of course, apps have gobbled up so much of the old, good internet.

Which brings us to Cope's views on museums and the metaverse. There's nothing intrinsically proprietary about virtual worlds and all their permutations. VRML is a quarter of a century old – just five years younger than Snow Crash:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VRML

But the current enthusiasm for virtual worlds isn't merely a function of the interesting, cool and fun experiences you can have in them. Rather, it's a bid to kill off whatever is left of the old, good web and put everything inside a walled garden. Facebook's metaverse "is more of the same but with a technical footprint so expensive and so demanding that it all but ensures it will only be within the means of a very few companies to operate."

Facebook's VR headsets have forward-facing cameras, turning every users into a walking surveillance camera. Facebook put those cameras there for "pass through" – so they can paint the screens inside the headset with the scene around you – but "who here believes that Facebook doesn't have other motives for enabling an always-on camera capturing the world around you?"

Apple's VisionPro VR headset is "a near-perfect surveillance device," and "the only thing to save this device is the trust that Apple has marketed its brand on over the last few years." Cope notes that "a brand promise is about as fleeting a guarantee as you can get." I'll go further: Apple is already a surveillance company:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/11/14/luxury-surveillance/#liar-liar

The technopolitics of the metaverse are the opposite of the technopolitics of the museum – even moreso than apps. Museums that shift their scarce technology budgets to virtual worlds stand a good chance of making something no one wants to use, and that's the best case scenario. The worst case is that museums make a successful project inside a walled garden, one where recall is subject to corporate whim, and help lure their patrons away from the recall-friendly internet to the captured, intermediated metaverse.

It's true that the early web benefited from a lot of hype, just as the metaverse is enjoying today. But the similarity ends there: the metaverse is designed for enclosure, the web for openness. Recall is a historical force for "the right to assembly… access to basic literacy… a public library." The web was "an unexpected gift with the ability to change the order of things; a gift that merits being protected, preserved and promoted both internally and externally." Museums were right to jump on the web bandwagon, because of its technopolitics. The metaverse, with its very different technopolitics, is hostile to the very idea of museums.

In joining forces with metaverse companies, museums strike a Faustian bargain, "because we believe that these places are where our audiences have gone."

The GLAM sector is devoted to access, to recall, and to revisiting. Unlike the self-style free speech warriors whom Dash calls out for self-serving neglect of their communities, the GLAM sector is about preservation and access, the true heart of free expression. When a handful of giant companies organize all our discourse, the ability to be heard is contingent on pleasing the ever-shifting tastes of the algorithm. This is the problem with the idea that "freedom of speech isn't freedom of reach" – if a platform won't let people who want to hear from you see what you have to say, they are indeed compromising freedom of speech:

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

Likewise, "censorship" is not limited to "things that governments do." As Ada Palmer so wonderfully describes it in her brilliant "Why We Censor: from the Inquisition to the Internet" speech, censorship is like arsenic, with trace elements of it all around us:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uMMJb3AxA0s

A community's decision to ban certain offensive conduct or words on pain of expulsion or sanction is censorship – but not to the same degree that, say, a government ban on expressing certain points of view is. However, there are many kinds of private censorship that rise to the same level as state censorship in their impact on public discourse (think of Moms For Liberty and their book-bannings).

It's not a coincidence that Palmer – a historian – would have views on censorship and free speech that intersect with Cope, a museum worker. One of the most brilliant moments in Palmer's speech is where she describes how censorship under the Inquistion was not state censorship – the Inquisition was a multinational, nongovernmental body that was often in conflict with state power.

Not all intermediaries are bad for speech or access. The "disintermediation" that excited early web boosters was about escaping from otherwise inescapable middlemen – the people who figured out how to control and charge for the things we did with one another.

When I was a kid, I loved the writing of Crad Kilodney, a short story writer who sold his own self-published books on Toronto street-corners while wearing a sign that said "VERY FAMOUS CANADIAN AUTHOR, BUY MY BOOKS" (he also had a sign that read, simply, "MARGARET ATWOOD"). Kilodney was a force of nature, who wrote, edited, typeset, printed, bound, and sold his own books:

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/arts/books/article-late-street-poet-and-publishing-scourge-crad-kilodney-left-behind-a/

But there are plenty of writers out there that I want to hear from who lack the skill or the will to do all of that. Editors, publishers, distributors, booksellers – all the intermediaries who sit between a writer and their readers – are not bad. They're good, actually. The problem isn't intermediation – it's capture.

For generations, hucksters have conned would-be writers by telling them that publishing won't buy their books because "the gatekeepers" lack the discernment to publish "quality" work. Friends of mine in publishing laughed at the idea that they would deliberately sideline a book they could figure out how to sell – that's just not how it worked.

But today, monopolized film studios are literally annihilating beloved, high-priced, commercially viable works because they are worth slightly more as tax writeoffs than they are as movies:

https://deadline.com/2023/11/coyote-vs-acme-shelved-warner-bros-discovery-writeoff-david-zaslav-1235598676/

There's four giant studios and five giant publishers. Maybe "five" is the magic number and publishing isn't concentrated enough to drop whole novels down the memory hole for a tax deduction, but even so, publishing is trying like hell to shrink to four:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/11/07/random-penguins/#if-you-wanted-to-get-there-i-wouldnt-start-from-here

Even as the entertainment sector is working to both literally and figuratively destroy our libraries, the cultural heritage sector is grappling with preserving these libraries, with shrinking budgets and increased legal threats:

https://blog.archive.org/2023/03/25/the-fight-continues/

I keep meeting artists of all description who have been conditioned to be suspicious of anything with the word "open" in its name. One colleague has repeatedly told me that fighting for the "open internet" is a self-defeating rhetorical move that will scare off artists who hear "open" and think "Big Tech ripoff."

But "openness" is a necessary precondition for preservation and access, which are the necessary preconditions for recall and revisiting. Here on the last, melting fragment of the open internet, as tech- and entertainment-barons are seizing control over our attention and charging rent on our ability to talk and think together, openness is our best hope of a new, good internet. T

he cultural heritage sector wants to save our creative works. The entertainment and tech industry want to delete them and take a tax writeoff.

As a working artist, I know which side I'm on.

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/2023/11/13/this-is-for-everyone/#revisiting

Image: Diego Delso (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Museo_Mimara,_Zagreb,_Croacia,_2014-04-20,_DD_01.JPG

CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

[scoutswritingcorner]

Not Meant To Be

Vox x GN!Reader

A/N: Listen to Pork Soda by Glass Animals cause it’s based off of that. We don’t know of Vox’s past but I’m making something up and running with it. SET SOMEWHERE IN THE 1950’s!!

TW:KINDA DARK SO BE AWARE! Talks of death, secret relationships, talks of NSFW but nothing too explicit, talks about very bad crimes, murder, sorry gang no happy ending.

You both used to be business partners in life, one handled the dirty work while the other ran the whole thing. The normal brains over brawn situation. Naturally he would be the face of the whole operation, he had the smarts, the calming smile and the confidence of a man who can control the room. You were always behind him, where he went you followed much like his own shadow. That’s what people called you as well, it didn't matter if it was to your face or not, you were his shadow. The shadow who had one foot in the grave and the other in the deep trenches of the mafia but working with him made it feel like you weren’t knee deep in dead bodies, blood money and drugs.

You knew better to get your hopes up, you’d live and die in the chains of your business venture. But, Vox made it so much easier, taking you by the arm and dragging you to rich sophisticated parties that were filled with different celebrities. Allowing you to taste the expensive foods and alcohol that was richer than your own blood. He never treated you as his shadow, only his business partner, the business partner that stayed with him after long nights and laid in his bed after he had gone off to bed wondering if you had regretted any of your choices. Pulling you into empty rooms and treating you as if you were his priceless jewel he had stolen from the bank.

Yet, nothing could’ve prepared you for the heartbreak and soul crushing realization that he was murdered by your own family. “He was getting too chummy with you. He needed to be taken care of.” The Don’s lapdog whispered to you as you walked into the crime scene. You didn’t get to mourn, you couldn’t show them the weakness he had become. Days later when you were hiding from your recent stunt for shooting the Don in a run down motel far from the city is when you saw it. The headlines on the papers, ‘Local TV Star found dead in motel after recent rumors of illegal drug ring and fraudulent exploits come to light.’ Your heart sank and you rolled the paper up, you knew Vox wasn’t a “clean” man but this was a surprise to you. You missed the loud mouth fucker. You couldn’t leave, they were looking for you and even then, you already signed your ticket down to hell once you stepped into that office all those years ago.

Your hands gripped the paper in your hands as you stared at the ever freezing picture of Vox in the paper, his wide smile showing off all of his pearly white teeth. Tears collected in your eyes as you stared down at him, he was such a fucking idiot. You were a fucking idiot for getting him twisted in the wicked game you called your life. There was a reason you were the brawns of the duo, nothing but muscle and a personal weapon to get people to back off. You were nothing but a bleeding heart and your heart shattered for a man who truly was never in your grasp, he was too high on the pedestal and you were leagues behind him.  He was your Achilles and you were his Patroclus. 

You were never destined for anything greater except to be what you are while he was everything. He was your everything. But now he was gone and they were outside coming for you, your time was coming to an end. In a matter of seconds, the door had busted open and the people you’d come to know as your “family” grabbed you, roughly throwing a sack over your head and dragged you out of the motel room and into the back of a car. You didn’t fight. The less likely you are to fight them the easier it would be for you to accept your fate. The ride was silent except for some hushed whispers as someone pressed the gun to the side of your head.

It was an hour later when the car came to a stop and then you were being guided onto a dock, then a boat. They pushed you to sit down and tied rope to the ends of your feet, silent the whole time before the bag was ripped off of your head and you stared at the eyes of the man who you came to know as your brother. “Why did you do it?” He asked, helping you stand up from your spot. 

“You killed him.” You glared at him, the rope they tied around your wrists burned you, “We had to. He was getting too chummy with you, he knew too much.” The man spat picking up the cement brick that had been tied to the other end of the rope. You didn’t need to answer him, you just let the brick drag you down into the dark waters.

You’d see your loud mouth fool soon. But this time there was no more hiding.

[hatchetings]

is it wrong to say i don't think calling wiggly the villain of black friday is totally 100% correct (it is correct to a certain extent but viewing it by it’s theme it’s not as correct)

since black friday displays an anti-capitalist message, and wiggly's main goal is to fuck over the world, or at least the usa (capitalist country) and does so using capitalism to his advantage, but obviously not in a way that the audience would take it as pro-capitalist, because that's exactly what it's not.

wiggly shows an anti-capitalist message that only the audience understand. not the characters, as they are under manipulation.

and depending on whether your a capitalist or anti-capitalist, the role of wiggly changes. it also changes whether you view it from your own perspective or a character perspective.

for capitalists (and honestly government officials, but they're the exact same thing let's be honest), this is the exact thing that they don't want capitalism to be portrayed as. capitalists tend to be wealthy as well, and a line from wilbur, who has been manipulated to spread a message as such from wiggly, says "the poorer get poorer, and the rich, well, they just get richer." and statements like this pisses capitalists off, because they KNOW it's true.

point here being, capitalists themself have a reason, in their minds, to not side with wiggly.

for anti-capitalists, shouldn't we side with this message? wiggly isn't really the villain, more so just unethical and a bit manipulative with the his messaging and how he feels. yeah, he's fucking over millions of people doing it, but he's also spreading a message that needs to be spread to an audience.

now, looking through the character perspective, holy shit he's terrible, but then again, indulging in capitalism, which to be fair is inevitable in the united states.

but it's also the fact that instead of spending time with their children or people they care for, they're more focused on getting a toy their kid didn't want, not even thinking if their kid asked for it. the only person we see realize this is tom... anyways. kids, especially younger kids without affiliation to any kind of gift (so... not hannah), like tim, aren't effected by wiggly's manipulation because they just want their family and the people around them, they don't need products to fill in gaps in their life. and they don't need an abundance of money or products to feel happy.

also the shoppers actively have the mindset that buying this toy will make their kids, or themselves, feel happier in the long run which just isn’t true.

so it depends on who you’re viewing it from. i guess i might be a bit biased as someone who’s 15, but who knows.

viewing it from an audience perspective, yeah i don’t see wiggly really isn’t THE villain, he’s spreading an anti-capitalist message which is woo! so cool. maybe don’t kill people in the process next time but. you’re trying, wiggly. that’s all we can ask

also thinking, the lib don't fucking care about money, they're eldritch gods. inheritly they don't give a shit about capitalism, they don't need the money. now, it doesn't make them inherently anti-capitalist, but again, with the anti-capitalist of black friday, i am inclined to believe that's more of how at least wiggly feels about capitalism. use it to end the world, it was a ridiculous concept anyways, kind of statement.

i think i went on a bit of a ramble i am so sorry

my point is just. to me wiggly is not the villain of black friday.

to me it’s the government & president goodman

anyways yeah i’m anticapitalist because i’m a diabetic and why is my insulin like 500 fucking dollars without health insurance even though the people who discovered insulin WANTED it to be free (i could go on a whole other rant about how capitalism is screwing over healthcare, and not just companies but like caring for your health, as capitalists within production companies actively decide to increase prices of life saving medical equipment because they’re aware the disabled people NEED them to survive will pay ANYTHING to have them… but then this would be longer than it is so. i could say how stupid health insurance is too but that’s for another day)

am i a little out of it? probably but that's okay, don't take anything i just said too seriously. or do i don't care 💚

[superblysubpar]

We'll Call It Love masterlist | It Had To Be You masterlist

the song: Kiss Me by Sixpence None The Richer // It Had To Be You playlist

warnings: this story is a part of the series We’ll Call It Love, and much of it would be spoiled if you read this first. It’s linked above, and I hope you love it! | series warnings pertain | Steve's parents are DICKS | A little foreplay action, but no real smut warnings aside from a small ass slap - oh and a there if you squint breeding kink hint for one sir steve harrington

2.7k words

A/N: I've hoped you've liked the first two little stories before this and maybe you're catching on to the theme now? There's two more after this one, and I hope they wrap up things for this little world nicely for you. This one in particular, is what started the whole idea of this collection of stories randomly? Don't tell the others, it might be my favorite. There was a very real incident with myself and green paint and my husband finding me in the state similar to reader 😳, I have @loveshotzz and @sweetsweetjellybean to love always and thank for convincing me to make it into a little fic, which obviously turned into more 💛

He sees the familiar girl sitting alone at the bar, and he weaves his way around dimly lit tables and people dressed as fancy, if not more so, than he is. He slides onto the stool next to her, resisting the urge to run his hand through his gelled hair. 

“Hey, I’m so sorry I’m late.” 

Leigh waves off his apology with her perfectly manicured hand as she takes a sip of the martini in front of her. Rolling her eyes big with a smile around the rim. 

Steve raises two fingers to get the bartender’s attention from the end of the rich wood counter as she swallows. 

“I just figured you decided to not go through with it, was gonna give you another half hour before I called your dad to tattle on you.”

Steve’s stomach tenses, knuckles tapping the counter as he grimaces. 

Leigh’s hand rubs his shoulder, speaking softly, “Hey I was just kidding. What’s going on in that big, Harrington brain, huh?”

The bartender lays a cocktail napkin in front of Steve, nodding as he orders, raising three fingers, “Macallan.” Before he turns to look at her. 

Kind eyes and an understanding smile he blows out his breath and quietly asks, “You really want to do this?”

Leigh shrugs, her hand slipping from his shoulder to grab the martini again, taking another large gulp. 

“I’m still down if you are?”

Steve nods, fingers swiping down the glass that’s set in front of him as he stares into the amber liquid and thinks about you. 

“You sure? Last time I saw you at that benefit thing, you talked about moving to Northern California and working for that environmental law firm. You just…don’t seem like the kind of girl that wants to work for her dad forever and do…this?” 

He sort of gestures pathetically to himself which Leigh snorts at, pressing her palms to flushed cheeks. 

Steve closes his eyes, shaking his head, “I didn’t mean, I mean I know you, we did, like five years ago, but that-”

“Steve,” Leigh interrupts, laughing. 

“Sorry.” He rubs at his eyes, fingers freezing when she sighs. 

“So, who is she?”

Steve opens his eyes to see Leigh’s all knowing gaze and smirk and he folds almost instantly telling her your name. 

“We sort of had…a date? Last weekend? Except it wasn’t a date,” he sips on his drink, finishing the story of the two of you with the most recent events while Leigh sits and listens patiently. 

He shakes his head as something in his stomach sinks at the same time his heart starts beating harder when he thinks about last weekend.

“Because, we don’t date, or she doesn't want to date, and then we had sex, and like, good sex. I’ve never had that kind of sex, sex…like emotional? But I don’t think…I can’t wait for her to…choose me? Because what if she never does, right? Isn’t that the cardinal rule of dating? Don’t think you can change someone?”

He hates how much he’s talking, how much of his guts he’s literally just spilling all over the place, but he’s needed to talk about it for a long time, and he certainly can’t tell Robin. 

Leigh sips her martini thoughtfully before she asks, “Does she know about this?” She gestures between the two of them. 

Steve shakes his head, swallowing before he quietly admits, “Nobody does, well, no, I told Robin I was dating you. Because she kept pestering me about what was going on and I…”

He trails off, at a loss for words as Leigh hums. 

“Well, that’s problem number one right there buddy. It sounds like you’re asking her to open up and you’re keeping some things heavily guarded too.”

Leigh glances at her watch and hops off the stool, smiling, “I have that dinner with a client. And I think you have a lot of thinking to do tonight Steve Harrington. I’ll see you tomorrow, whatever you decide.”

She kisses his cheek and Steve turns towards his glass, downing the last of it as he pulls out his phone and opens your contact. 

Steve: Hey could we talk tonight? We could go out? Or I could come over? You: I’m sorry, I really want to but I’m sick. 

He stares down at the text back from you the whole ride up the elevator and down his hallway. Are you actually sick? Or are you avoiding him because last weekend scared you? 

His key turns in the lock too easily and he closes his eyes as he pushes open his already unlocked front door, taking a deep breath before he steps inside. 

John Harrington frowns at the bottle of Scotch in his hands, eyes narrowed at the bar in his son’s apartment. 

“Is this all you have?”

“Hey dad, long time no see. I’m doing great, thanks for asking.”

His father rolls his eyes in an eerily familiar way and Steve turns to the cabinet above his fridge, and pulls down the bottle for his father. 

“Happy Birthday,” Steve grumbles.

John eagerly takes it, “Ah! Yes.”

Thank you son, you’re the greatest. No problem dad, glad you like it. 

His dad finally looks at him and frowns. “Is that what you wore for your drinks with Leigh?”

Steve looks down at his custom made and fitted three piece suit, tie, Italian loafers, leather belt, and cufflinks and a watch that all cost more than his college tuition. 

“I-”

“Your mom is hanging up the suit for tomorrow in your closet, why don’t you go let her pick out a better tie for din-”

Steve’s already power walking past his dad, hurriedly trying to make sure his mother is not in his closet, but it’s too late. 

The sliding door gives him an easy view of his mom, who’s holding the picture nobody really knows about. Steve looks over his shoulder and thankfully his father has sat himself down on the couch, turning on the news. 

Steve carefully and quietly closes the closet door behind him, whispering, “Mom, I can explain-”

“You went to college?” Her voice is hoarse as her fingers trail over the tassel and degree. 

He swallows, fingers curled into fists at his sides as he lets out a shaky breath.

“Yeah. I did.”

Vivian Harrington nods, and when she looks up at her son, he feels like she’s sort of seeing him for the first time in his life. 

Her eyes that match his are glassy, and her head tilts as if she’s taking in his features like she doesn’t really know him at all. Maybe she doesn’t. But it’s that look that gives him the courage to keep going.

“Can I have a rain check on dinner? There’s somewhere I need to be tonight. Someone I need to see.”

Maybe his mom sees something in his eyes, or hears it in his tone, but the way her eyes travel over his face, searching, it’s easy to see when understanding falls across her features.

“Sure, honey.” She puts the picture back down with a sad smile, her voice hesitant but forceful at the same time as she asks, “But we’ll see you tomorrow? For the brunch?”

He knows she’s not really asking and he nods.  

“Yeah, of course.”

So when it’s her name flashing across his phone when you wake him up, the guilt washes over him. He doesn’t know what to do. 

He locks his phone and closes his eyes, thinking about everything you told him last night. 

Thinking about how you said that nobody could have a love like them. That it’s a love story you witness once. How since then, you haven’t believed in it or even tried to. 

“I’m sorry, I gotta go, my parents are here and…” he sighs, touching his forehead to yours, willing you to just tell him right now. Willing himself to just take the leap. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay.” Your fingers circle around his wrist as you whisper sleepily to him. 

He could spend his whole life waiting for you to never change your mind. 

Never really getting every part of you. Not the way he wants. 

As much as it hurts, as much it will keep hurting for a long time, he wants all of you, or nothing at all. 

Steve looks at your lips before he kisses them, trying to memorize how soft they are against his own. How it just seems to work. 

“I’m sorry. I’ll…I’ll see you at the game later. I…” 

He groans as his phone buzzes in his pocket and he kisses you so quickly, too quickly, and then he’s gone. And he’s worried he’s never going to get to kiss you again. 

Steve answers the phone as he shuts your front door. “I’m sorry, I’ll be there in-”

“Did you get it out of your system?” 

Steve stops in the hallway, gulping, “What?”

“Did you get it out of your system?”

He bangs his forehead against the wall, fingers clenching around the vest and jacket he holds. Steve’s jaw is tense, stomach tight as he blinks away the damp feeling pooling in his eyes. 

“I don’t know.”

“Steven-”

“I’ll see you soon.”

He hangs up and walks to the stairwell. 

What the fuck is he supposed to do?

“Jesus fucking christ!” 

Your hand is over your heart, a brush dropped in the bucket of paint, and your boyfriend smiles from the other side of the makeshift dog gate. 

“Don’t do that!” You squeal, only half mad he almost scared you to literal death standing in the doorway all ominous, but overall you’re ecstatic to see him, your heart racing faster than it should for both reasons. You turn down the music you were blaring and singing along to loudly so he can hear you. “What are you doing here? You weren’t supposed to be home till Monday!”

Steve’s looking at you from the other side of the gate with this intense look that makes an entire box of bouncy balls dump out inside of your stomach. 

“What?” You ask nervously, looking around the room that’s half painted and back at him as you take a few steps towards the doorway.

He seems to visibly shake a thought from his brain, his cheeks turning pink as he clears his throat. 

“Nothing, I, uh, like the color.” 

Your body fills with heat as you take a few steps closer to him, both of you staring up and down each other’s bodies a little hungry, a little impatiently. 

“Yeah?” You’d be embarrassed by how soft and girly your question comes out except Steve is clearly thinking and feeling things, his fingers curling around the doorframe a little tighter with each step you take, which only spurs you on to tack on, “I know you said the office could be whatever color, and when I was standing in front of the paint samples, this one spoke to me. Made me think about a shirt this guy I really like wears.”

“Oh?” He asks, fingers reaching forward so his thumb can brush across your cheek. It feels a little rough and you’re certain he’s tracing over paint you somehow managed to get on your face. 

You hum, stomach warm from the feeling of his skin touching yours after so long apart. Your eyes greedily take in the scruff on his jaw that he’s let grow and the deeper tan his skin has. The numerous new freckles you swear he didn’t have when he left. Your mouth waters a little bit as your eyes wander to his covered up arms and shoulders, impatient to find out how many more there are.  

“It’s kind of like the olives he hates on his pizza too.”

Steve’s fingers roam down your neck, thumb dragging on the chain hidden under his white shirt. 

“Sounds like a smart guy for hating those disgusting things,” he softly banters. 

“Mm, debatable. It’s also kind of like the green in his eyes.”

Your body leans over the gate, closer to him, fingers reaching for the collar of his shirt till your noses bump each other’s. It’s hard to breathe, when all you can smell is cedar and mint and practically taste the coffee on his lips he must have been drinking to stay awake.

“Well, he sounds like quite a guy, to inspire a whole room’s paint color.” Steve speaks slowly, one hand around the back of your neck, the other dragging down the curves of your side as you both breathe sharply, the small space between your mouths electric. 

“He’s okay,” you offer with a shrug. 

“I like the overalls,” Steve ignores you, nose running down the bridge of yours as he nudges closer.

“Thanks, they were my mom’s when she was pregnant with me.”

Steve’s eyes flash from that comment, his adams apple bobbing in a loud and harsh swallow. 

“Oh?”

You giggle, your top lip hitting his in a brief pass and it’s intoxicating. 

“Easy tiger. Not in the cards just yet.”

“But it is, someday?” He squeezes at your waist, bottom lip just barely bumping between yours, his head tilting just barely to get a better angle. 

“Sure. Play those cards right and when the time comes…”

Steve’s lips slot over yours, his hands pull at the back of your neck and waist until you’re both pressed up against the gate. 

His tongue swipes over your bottom lip lightly, teasing, as his fingers brush down your jaw and he breaks away from you, breathing heavily. 

“I missed you so much.”

“You’re never leaving for that long again.”

You both laugh into another kiss as you speak at the same time. Refusing to part your mouths as you try to climb over the gate causing it and both of you to clatter to the ground. Inigo comes racing from the bedroom where he was sleeping. 

He runs at Steve, panting happily and jumping onto his chest from your tangled pile on the ground. 

“Hey buddy, I missed you too,” Steve laughs, squeezing his eyes closed and trying to dodge the lab’s tongue. 

“Dude, he is my boyfriend. Also you’re such a traitor, you never greet me like this.”

“Are you talking to me or the dog?” Steve laughs as Inigo wiggles and yips on his stomach when you push yourself up to standing. 

“Where are you going?” He calls after you.

“To get the peanut butter kong so he’ll be busy for hou-Steve!”

He’s snaked his arms around you, pulling your back to his chest forcefully. His mouth attacks your neck and cheeks and jaw from behind. Hot and wet open mouthed kisses you giggle at which only makes him do it more. 

Steve squeezes his arms around you, holding your ass tighter against his clearly worked up lower half as you stumble towards the freezer with him behind you still. Inigo makes it all the more difficult as he races around your legs. 

“Steve, babe…” you moan as his mouth slows down, warm lips pressing right behind your ear as his fingers work on the buckles of the overalls. 

He hums, pushing you up against the counter next to the fridge a little rough, a little dirty with the way his mouth and teeth and tongue are working on your neck. Your fingers slip on the counter, searching for purchase. “I love you, so much, really-fuck.”

Inigo barks at the base of the freezer, reminding you of why you’re telling Steve to stop. 

“I love you too, why do I feel like there’s a but coming though?” He pulls at the overalls, until they’re dropping at your ankles leaving you in his white shirt and black panties that he groans at, slapping at your ass and grabbing at each cheek with both hands as his nose drags down the back of your neck. 

“You gotta go wash your face and hands before we keep going, you smell like Inigo’s breath and your fingers cannot be inside of me after-”

“I hate this dog!” He proclaims, stomping down the hallway, grumbling a shouted, “He seems a decent fellow, I hate to kill him!”

Inigo cocks his head adorably at you, tail thumping against the tile. You pull out the red overstuffed with peanut butter kong and give it to him, patting his head as you whisper. “That does seem to put a damper on your relationship, but don’t worry buddy, he loves you.”

And you race down the hallway towards Steve in your bathroom shouting, “How dare you threaten my dog Harrington. Prepare to die!”

[p0rchc0ll4ps3]

comparing case notes on the ride home at the end of a long day

did all the perspective myself! it kinda' turned out jank but it's what it's. i'll get better at it eventually

really tried to capture the essence of revachol architecture style with this. the metro lines were built by the communards in '79 of the last century, about 11 years into the dictatorship. various cities in revachol have metro, but none are as extensive as jamrock's metro. however, due to mismanagement and embezzlement and war, a lot of the metro stations remain unfinished, especially in the poorest parts of the city (for example, it was never finished in the coal city district of jamrock, which is big enough to count as it's own city. the metro line was dug out, but the tracks were never layed due to the project never reaching completion and due to the commies not really caring to build out there. in the valley of the dogs, which is in west jamrock and about as poor as coal city, the metro wasn't even built at all due to there being a huge immigrant population out there and a lot of bullshit from the government). anyways a lot of homeless people live out in those abandoned stations. this among a billion other things really adds to how much east revachol and its slightly richer cities really think lowly of west revachol and jamrock despite not being much better off themselves

the metro cars and the metro stations are built in the neo-perikinassian style that the communards favored for all their structures (neo-perikinassian is an elysium equivalent to our neo-classical style). this style intends to give a vibe of old world richness and power and strong authoritative government, while also attempting to create a strong, national revacholian architectural style, celebrating insulinde's original pagan origins by reflecting traditional folk patterning. communism in revachol wanted to be purely revacholian, taking zero influence from the colonies that revachol used to rule over. the dictatorship did away completely with insulinde's original colonial past, trying to embrace a new totally revacholian identity and erasing anything deemed not revacholian. unfortunately, revachol is an immigrant country, with a history of colonialism and slavery, and a LOT of that has become a huge part of revacholian and insulindian culture. revachol is a melting pot, a mixture of influences from all over. the communists tried to erase this and make a new identity, but of course this attempted to erase everything else that makes revachol revachol. so in trying to make a new, purely revacholian identity, they erased true revachol from the books.

anways, they favored the neo-perikinassian art style with folk embellishments, but because revachol is revachol, there are also a whole lot of style moderne (revachol's art deco, a lot of airships, sunrises, and anti-pale shit) and noul stil (revachol's art nouveau which involves a lot of ocean and air organic motifs instead of flowers and the like) influences of course. as you can see here, there's noul stil motifs in the way that the lights are pearls and that they have waves on them. in fact, to go on yet another tangent, revachol's 'new disco' architecture, which started in jamrock during the new with the building of skyscrapers and new buildings in the style and spread to the rest of revachol, is a modern day revival of style moderne and noul stil that combines elements of both (i get a very og wizard of oz emerald city vibe).

anyways that's my lore essay. i really wanted to capture the feeling of being in revachol, specifically jamrock. the metro cars are also slightly based off bucharest's communist metro cars as well as the newer ones, but of course with a lot of wood instead because revachol and elysium are in a sort of era with their technology that mixes something of a industrial revolution 1890s victorian london, 1910s america and big cities right before the advent of skyscrapers and cars but also 1920s tech, and 1970s radio tech and all that shit. idk. some fucked up conglomeration

also guy on the left is someone from my de server's oc. i don't know their tumblr otherwise i'd tag!

oh and i tried to capture some kind of how the people of revachol are in general all types of people from many different ethnicities etc. and and the guy in the back looking at harry is one of jean's friends, enzo, who, after getting rejected from the rcm for being too violent (which is a big deal bc the rcm celebrates violence), joined la puta madre and now works to double-cross both lpm and rcm, doing what benefits him best. when jean and harry got captured by the lpm about 3 years back and almost died, it was enzo who saved them. enzo's one of jean's many connections he has in the city. harry doesn't remember him (but he will eventually. he has to figure out at some point where that big nasty scar on his stomach's from).

btw i spent like a wholeass hour or two one day trying to figure out what type of wood revachol would have because the commies use ONLY LOCAL RESOURCES. so i needed to figure out what type of wood they'd have. and i figured it was some kinda' birch with a very specific ashy grey wood. of course you can't see it here bc of the color-grading but yeah. know that i did research on that. ok?

anyways if you read this whole thing thank you very much for reading and congrats on getting thru it hahahaha. i really need to figure out a name for this au bc this is NOT kurwitz's elysium LOL

[toxicwasteempire]

Foreshadowing in book one for Sidestep secret.

We all know by now but did we always? How many of us picked up the clues for the first book?

I personally was 100% convinced Sidestep was a Re-Gene before I started to play Retribution. This is because my mind is huge™ (Lying). It is interesting how it isn't information the first book is withholding, it keeps bringing it up to the point it feels natural once you read it once again with that knowledge. It doesn't hide it, it's just not said explicitly.

This is not a exhaustive list. I did one playthrough and took every reference, just so you all see my point. Remember, this is all just from one playthrough.

Is not foreshadowing (or is it?) but the phrasing is interesting knowing that Sidestep was made to do undercover missions. At the start, one things they're talking about gender norms in general but Sidestep was taught those in a clinical, artificial environment, with the goal of being as unassuming as possible. Only cuckoos are socialized this way, something that separates them from other Re-Genes.

More clear impossible and this is at the start of the game. Close your eyes and imagine baby Sidestep in a test tube. 🧪👶🏻

Tech-savvy Sidestep knows the capability of modern science, they're a product of it. Is the topic of race and heritage touchy because they see themselves as having no heritage or is do they consider Re-Gene culture as their heritage. (We know they have a unique language) If the latter is true, they would also feel isolated from it, since cuckoos are set apart.

Here is The Point™ it occurs in every playthrough. The existence of Re-Gene is explained and Sidestep is shown extremely distressed after calling the Special Directive. This is the point where it's practically confirmed there's story between Sidestep and the GeniTech corporation. it's difficult to not at the very least suspect.

I mean, the whole situation is stressing Sidestep the fuck out. If her crying, sobbing and throwing up about this isn't suspicious I don't know what is.

"You see Re-Genes have NO HUMAN RIGHTS because a CEO (of a company that kicked off after moving somewhere without a bioethics board) ~~claimed~~ that Re-Genes, allegedly 😒, are not sentient. Oh, you see they can mimic 😋🤗 so if you see some acting alive that's just silly pretending Which is why they have to be BRANDED as the MINDLESS OBJECTS they are just so nobody confuses them for actual people. 🙄 They have no mind after all. Or so they say. 😒 They are used for war... Do what you want with that info."

The way Sidestep talks immediately sends off alarms. Putting aside her being a Re-Gene, it is very clear the moment the Re-Genes are mentioned, the text is also putting in question the apparently known fact that they are not sentient.

Even if Sidestep had not been revealed to be one, I would've be on the side of the Re-Genes. Made by a sketchy enterprise somewhere with little to no regulations, they're marked to make sure nobody confuses them for a human, sent to make rich people richer in proxy wars abroad. The company says uuhhm actually they have no soul so it's okay if they got not human rights. 💕 And I'm supposed to believe that? Go away

Also a journalist was straight up murdered. Como cosa rara.

So the supposedly mindless robots need to have their thoughts shielded from possible telepaths 🤔 how weird.

There's show of kinship if you chose to save the Re-Gene. You see me and I see you. We are the same. We don't deserve this.

Sidestep stop hating your body challenge (impossible)

The first one can assume she's talking about being a villain but we know better.

Kinship between Sidestep and Heartbreak. They both being treated like less than a person. I see you. You see me we are the same etc. We also get a glimpse of her life in The Farm.

If you already got the inclination to believe sidestep is Re-Gene mid playthrough, the game proves you right with texts like this.

My poor mew meow...

Being serious, one assumes their tragic backstory means Sidestep's childhood was sad. When actually is simply non existent.

[magicalrocketships]

Random fic ask i just made up: What is the nearest book to you right now, or what is the last movie you watched, and what would a fic based on that book/movie look like?

Any ship you want, and drawing however heavily or lightly on the plot of the book/movie as you want 😊

What a marvellous random fic ask you just made up. I'm just going to press pause on what I was actually going to talk about in this post and just circle around to the thing I've actually just been watching, which is ANOTHER detective show where the serious and methodical detective is derailed by being partnered (officially or unofficially) by a extrovert sometime-confidence-trickster who trades in being liked.

All I'm saying is (obvs acab) so let's throw this one BACK IN TIME, say the 1950s, and make Max a PRIVATE DETECTIVE somewhere around Monaco and have Daniel fall into his path as a bit of a playboy with a series of richer friends and girlfriends who kind of pay his way, and nobody really minds that Daniel can't afford to be in their set, because everyone loves him. Daniel's a bit bored, but he's got to keep in with the crowd who pay his way, and then there is a MYSTERIOUS DEATH at a club, and MAX shows up to investigate on behalf of some rich relative of the dead guy, and the whole time he's trying to investigate, there's this handsome vaguely hungover guy who keeps hanging around and asking questions and being annoying and getting in his way, but who actually gets doors open for Max because Max can't be bothered playing nice and he doesn't know the right people.

Daniel, fascinated by this single-minded, sometimes rude Dutch guy who always wears a variation of the exact same off-the-peg suit, and who is sharply focused on getting to the bottom of the death at the club, and Daniel finds himself blowing off his friends and the current divorcee paying his way in order to track possible leads through the back streets, and breaking into a YACHT and spending three hours cramped in a tiny room trying to listen to an illegal card game through the wall, and the whole time Max is pressed up against him, his breath warm against Daniel's throat, and Daniel's hand just settles on the curve of Max's ass, and Max trembles a little beneath his touch but they have to focus on the MYSTERIOUS DEATH and not on the way Daniel's lifelong need to be close to men is suddenly thrown into sharp focus.

And maybe it turns out that it's someone in Daniel's set, and Daniel's faced with the choice between telling the truth to Max or lying and saving his friend, and he chooses his Max and his rich friends exile him from their group. So it's just Daniel, trailing after Max, and Max takes him to this boat moored in a harbour down the coast, and it's small and familiar and private, and it's Max's, and it's where he goes when he's not working a case. And he takes the boat out to sea and makes a very boring lunch of soup and bread, and Daniel's sunbathing in small shorts, and they eat lunch and then Max, impulsively, leans over and presses his mouth to Daniel's. Daniel beams like the sun, and kisses him back.

Also, each subsequent mystery is just focused on someone else on the grid, like the mysterious death of Fernando's extremely rich wife, (Lance in the wings with his alibi and a lot more money than Fernando's wife) or George being framed for the death of the controlling partner in his law firm, eventually exonerated by photographer Alex, or the one with the BEES and the mysterious German guy who owns them. Saving unlucky Charles from always being in the wrong place in the wrong time, except this time he's discovering the body by tripping over it and finding the murder weapon stashed in his apartment. OH GOD maybe Charles is the Prince of Monaco. Anyway, whatever. And each mystery ends with Max and Daniel out on their boat, Daniel in a series of tinier and tinier shorts, Max with his gin and tonic and Daniel with a ridiculous cocktail, Max flushed with the sun and Daniel not regretting any of his choices in leaving his old life behind to solve mysteries with Max.

Please note that at no point in this ask did I refer to the rather lengthy Sweet Home Alabama AU plot I forced Sarah to listen to last week, which got out of hand and got too angsty and where I left it, Daniel was in hospital for the second time and Max was following him half way across the world and nobody was even mentioning divorce, so that went well. Two thumbs up to that.

[bts-trans]

231105 RM's Instagram Story

Response

…myself feel like someone else. Especially when people say stuff like "be more mysterious", or "if you want to be respected, don't get too close". I do that kind of stuff because it's just who I am as a person, I have no need to make things look good. I've been through a lot of pain and felt loss and suffered and shed tears. Having experienced all that, the attempts to filter myself, my efforts to become someone else - it all seems so insignificant and unnecessary. My life is too short for me to try and suppress everything. I feel like I should just feel everything I feel and live happily. Relationships with people cause disharmony? distrust? discomfort? Well those are also feelings I feel and are all a part of my life. If I have something to say, I just end up saying it. I'm bragging? Maybe, so what? Let's do that too, let's just go ahead, if nobody in the world bragged, why would that word exist, why would it mean what it does? I'm no Hong Gil-dong* - pride, envy, greed, anger are all part of life, of being a person. If it has a name, it's not something to be treated as evil, but something we should just face head on and accept. Whether it's about me or someone else, all of it makes my life richer. Just like there are no stories without conflict. When I think about things that way, it feels like I've lived my whole life until now touching things with mittens on. I'm happier now that I've taken them off. Books are great, but you're not a book, you're not someone else, and you're definitely not David, made of stone. I hope you can just become you.

(T/N: *The protagonist of the very famous story 'Hong Gildong jeon', written during the Joseon dysnasty. Hong Gil-dong is a Robin Hood-like character who stands against social hierarchies and steals from the rich to give to the poor. Overcoming his low birth status to become a hero and a king, he is seen as invincible, righteous figure.

2. The picture is a screenshot of a comment on this YouTube video. The video is an audiobook of the Korean translation of 'Oraculo Manual y Arte De Prudencia', or 'The Art of Worldly Wisdom' by Baltasar Gracián. 🔗https://youtu.be/Qkt4phMoCP4?si=txGX1C00ND9nHgda)

Trans cr; Aditi @ bts-trans © TAKE OUT WITH FULL CREDITS

[the-l00ker]

(to clarify I mean this from a writing perspective. Like I don't think the writers necessarily, originally intended for Stolas to be racist and when you break it down I think they were going for him being more classist but at face value he seems racist.

Put together, and at face value he's racist. Breaking it down and from a narrative point, it seems he was supposed to be classist. WHICH IS STILL A BAD not defending the man in that front

Genuinely don't think they intend for Stolas to be a completely racist person/didn't intend for old (season 1) Stolas to be racist, but when you look at it all put together he's definitely got SOME racist energy.

But they definitely doubled down in season 2 on "old Stolas was racist bc of the people he grew up with"

But I'm just breaking down why I DON'T THINK THEY ORIGINALLY WANTED IT TO BE THAT WAY and it wasn't really an error, it was more of a one-track mind approach)

Someone on twitter said that Stolas is racist

ALSO DON'T GO TRACKING THEM DOWN TF?!+

...

BUT HE'S NOT-

(from a writing perspective/break down perspective)

He has been conditioned into being classist. Stella's the racist one-

✨🧵AhEm🧵✨

When lil Stolas was meeting Blitzo for the first time, and he bows to him, paimon says something along the lines of "don't bow, he bows to us idiot" before smacking him over the head

Paimon implies ( and outright says) that he should bow to him because he's not worth it, because they're better then them. Richer. Power. Just "better"

However Stolas, continues to treat them like equals even when they're playing. He doesn't look down on Blitzo for being an Imp. But Stolas doesn't acknowledge that they have different lives because Stolas is rich.

He just assumes Blitzo could read, has a education and wants to learn but changes his tune when Blitzo awkwardly stares at him and suggest something else.

In the future right after the whole "omg you slept with someone" happens to Stella.

Stella says "You slept with an Imp in our fucking bed!" now today isn't a discussion of how much of a narcissistic bitch Stella is so we'll leave it out there to chill

BUT Stella says you slept with an Imp. Not a person. But an Imp. STELLA IS THE RACIST ONE BECAUSE SHE ONLY SEES HIM AS AN IMP AND NOT AN ACTUALLY PERSON

(and if you don't see it, imagine saying "I can't believe you slept with a person of colour!" that's basically what Stella said)

Stolas doesn't even acknowledge it, saying he didn't have enough time to get a Motel. Stolas doesn't say anything about Blitzo being "just an Imp" he just talks like he's sleeping with anyone.

You could literally change Blitzo name for anyone else and I'd still work.

But here's the thing, Blitzo is one that see Stolas as a bit of a racist because he thinks Stolas was the one who bought him for a day or so.

Like he thinks Stolas bought him. But it wasn't Stolas. It was Paimon, he bought him so that he won't have to deal with Stolas being upset. Stolas didn't even have a choice in the matter so it wasn't his fault.

But here's how he's UNINTENTIONALLY classist.

AhEm

Literally the entire relationship and dynamics-

Stolas technically bought the IMP services TWICE, once in the trailer/pilot and another in the Loo-Loo Land episode.

Stolas rented Blitzo team out for the day, because Stolas was paying him to do so. He practically bought Blitzo's time.

He looked down on Millie and Moxxie because he really only intented to buy out Blitzo time and not there's. He didn't need protection as we can see at the episodes end, he just bought Blitzo's time for entertainment. FOR ENTERTAINMENT

Stolas initially thought that he was entitled to Blitzo's time because he bought out THE WHOLE BUSINESS SERVICE FOR ONE DAY.

And at the beginning of the Stolas literally says "We're rich and we're hot, people want our money and our bodies" HE'S IMPLIES THAT HE'S SUPERIOR TO EVERYONE ELSE NOT BECAUSE THEY'RE IMPS OR HELL-BORN DEMONS

IT'S BECAUSE THEY'RE RICH! AND HE ACKNOWLEDGE THAT!

And then he tells Blitzo that he'll pay him for his time- HE'S LITERALLY THROWING MONEY AT HIS PROBLEMS HOPING IT'LL BE OKAY BECAUSE THAT WHAT HIS DAD DID!

And in the Harvest Moon episode Blitzo defends Stolas because Stolas is literally the secondary breadwinner with in his business. If Stolas dies then Octiva gets the book and then Blitzo doesn't have it, so they can't make money anymore.

Stolas again is in someway shovelling money to stay in someone's life, taking advantage of the fact that Blitzo NEEDS HIM.

But in the episode Truth Speaker, that's when Stolas changes his mindset (all be it, off screen) he realizes when Blitzo is endangered but he can't just throw money at problems and actually has to do something to keep him safe.

This is the first time that he is not thrown money at a problem and it worked.

Moving on in the story Stolas has some on screen and off screen character development, in which the power dynamics and throwing money as every single problem isn't right anymore and it was never right.

Because before then he'd been practically throwing money in the face a not-so-successful-at-the-time Blitzo just for his company.

That was some level of autonomy in that relationship but it was mostly him just throwing money and buying him out and buying his time.

It Highlights the absolute wealth difference between the two characters.

Before the episode Truth Seeker, Stolas was indeed a classist character it may have not been as obvious as some other characters but he was a bit classist at the least.

Before the episode Truth Seekers, Stolas saw Blitzo as somewhat below him, because he could just afford to buy him out. But after realising that he was indeed a person and could be hurt, I believe after that episode is when he actually begun to care.

Ozzie's was the eventual big push for him to get better. It was obvious that Stolas WAS embarrassed to be with Blitzo. And not because he was an Imp like Ozzie implied because Stolas could have just clapped back with "AND TF ABT U BITCH?? HUH?"

No, it's because Ozzie made the Association that since he was with an Imp, then that equals poor, which equals embarrassment, which equates to him asking why did you throw away your marriage for someone who is poor?

Because I don't think Ozzie would have been racist, on stage, infront of other Imps and his Imp boyfriend.

After this episode we can see that he has a change of heart and a change in which he views things. After this episode he realizes that Blitzo's feelings could no longer be bought because he'd made him genuinely upset and there was no amount of money you could throw on that 🔥dumpster fire 🔥to make it okay

By that point the business was already successful so it was no longer a matter of money.

After this Stolas has some off screen development it seems. Better himself as a person and truly beginning to see equals but as a consequence he had to acknowledge over pain and the sheer power he had in the relationship.

That's when in the episode Oops, Stolas decides to get Big Boss Ozzie-mozzie Crystal to try and end this constant power dynamic and classism that was in their relationship.

I'm in the episode we can Stolas helping out his "equal" when it came down to Fizz. He didn't just turn around and go "well he's an Imp, icky not helping him. I'll come back later"

He sat there through the entire thing helping Ozzie out, not out of obligation. He literally could have left but didn't because he didn't see Fizz as Ozzie's problem, he now saw Fizz as a genuine person.

And the set up to this was great because Ozzie would have had to sign away alot of money to get Fizz out of trouble, and its a nod back at when old him would have probably just threw money at this problem but instead of that he advises his "equal" to NOT throw money at the problem and instead read the entire contract to make sure that everything goes well.

LIKE OLD STOLAS WOULD NOT HAVE CARED ENOUGH TO READ THAT ENTIRE THING, AS MUCH AS HE LOVES WORDS

this act alone not only let Fizz and Blitzo work shit out but also showed the viewer that he had changed for the better, and he was going through character development to not be a dick

And now we're at Full Moon and at this rate Stolas has already had all the necessary character development off-screen to no longer be as classist as he was before, and it's a bit disappointed that this was in highlighted a bit before but you gotta read through the line sometimes

Stolas now sees them as equals. But he hadn't shown Blitzo that. Blitzo is still scared of Stolas and his influence and status and money, last Blitzo check he'd had to spend time looking for Stolas daughter so that he won't be as mad and he won't banned him from the book.

An honestly if he had it his way Blitzo probably never would have went to the human realm to help look for his daughter.

But at that rate it was out of sheer obligation-

And as much as the episode tries to play it off as a gag, Blitzo still has to drop everything to help him out, YES because he does care but also out of fear of losing his only source of income.

So for Stolas to rock up in Full Moon and be like, "I see you as an equal and I love you" WOULD HAVE FUCKED BLITZO SHIT UP

Because all Stolas and his family did was, BUY HIM, BUY HIS TIME AND MAKE HIM FEAR FOR LOSING HIS ONLY SOURCE OF INCOME ON MULTIPLE OCCASIONS-

He'd only been inadvertently put down by Stolas not because that was Stolas intention but because that's what is actions gave off in terms of vibes.

And that's why in the Helluva universe Stolas is unintentionally a classist character, to which he didn't know about it UNTIL IT WAS TOO FUCKING LATE-

No I will not be taking question. Yes this took me 30 minutes to write because of my inability to spell. Shush!

[dusty-daydreams]

One big pet peeve of mine is that we are meant to believe that Whistledown has only ever written the truth, and the show actually frames it that way. But I'm sorry, if your method of gathering information is to stand against a wall and listen to the hot goss floating around you, how can you possibly know that these stories are even true? Fake rumors get around very easily, and Penelope is hardly shown to be a diligent journalist who factchecks everything three times before she prints it. We are not meant to believe that Whistledown has ever ruined anyone through a false rumor, but from what we know about her methods, I find that very hard to believe.

Oh definitely anon!

We don’t have access to the entirety of Whistledown’s paper that comes out at least weekly while the season is ongoing, as the show doesn’t have time to read out six columns of close type spread out over two full pages, and most of it isn’t relevant to the story, which is focusing on the dramas of the Bridgerton family, to whom Penelope is close enough that she witnesses a lot of these things first hand.

But if the rest of the sheet, the other four to five columns for example are filled with gossip about people to whom Penelope is less directly connected then there is absolutely no way all of it is the truth.

Gossip snowballs with implications, and if one of Penelope’s sources is the whispers of footmen, then there is no possible way it is all accurate.

The servants in these homes likely gossiped and exaggerated extensively, both as a way to entertain themselves through long days of tedious work without breaks, and as a small petty revenge against the class system. Hell we do it in this day and age gossiping about people richer than us and how terrible they are as a way to make ourselves feel better for having less.

The working class people living alongside these misbehaving filthy rich people are going to be making up cruel little rumors about their bosses, on the understanding that only other servants would be hearing them.

Imagine the poor maid who hates her mistress who is cruel to her saying she isn’t a virgin to entertain a footman she has a crush on who then gossips about it to other footman at a ball. Then it gets published as fact in the latest Whistledown, the mistress engagement is broken off and the mistress becomes so much crueler to her maid.

Or worse a maid who knows for certain her mistress isn’t a virgin who gets fired because she is the only person who knows other than the debutante and her lover, and the only place that Lady Whistledown could have heard that from.

Aside from all of that, we have seen that Penelope writes without thinking, and regrets what it says the next day. Like she is a modern day drunk texter not a regency era person writing long hand and going for a hour long carriage ride across town to get someone to print it and publish it. Like she isn’t bothering to read things over and give herself opportunity to think things through with a whole lot of time to do so.

For example, writing a hit piece about Colin while she is mad and regretting it the next morning this season.

There is no way she is bothering to think through or fact check anything potentially ruinous about the people she doesn’t care about, if she isn’t doing for the people she claims to love.

So yeah, there has to be a whole collection of people whose reputations were ruined by Penelope publishing untrue rumors. Let alone the women who were ruined by true information that Penelope publishes because it makes her feel powerful.