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mostlysignssomeportents · 7 months

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Lies, damned lies, and Uber

I'm on tour with my new, nationally bestselling novel The Bezzle! Catch me TONIGHT in PHOENIX (Changing Hands, Feb 29) then Tucson (Mar 10-11), San Francisco (Mar 13), and more!

Uber lies about everything, especially money. Oh, and labour. Especially labour. And geometry. Especially geometry! But especially especially money. They constantly lie about money.

Uber are virtuosos of mendacity, but in Toronto, the company has attained a heretofore unseen hat-trick: they told a single lie that is dramatically, materially untruthful about money, labour and geometry! It's an achievement for the ages.

Here's how they did it.

For several decades, Toronto has been clobbered by the misrule of a series of far-right, clownish mayors. This was the result of former Ontario Premier Mike Harris's great gerrymander of 1998, when the city of Toronto was amalgamated with its car-dependent suburbs. This set the tone for the next quarter-century, as these outlying regions – utterly dependent on Toronto for core economic activity and massive subsidies to pay the unsustainable utility and infrastructure bills for sprawling neighborhoods of single-family homes – proceeded to gut the city they relied on.

These "conservative" mayors – the philanderer, the crackhead, the sexual predator – turned the city into a corporate playground, swapping public housing and rent controls for out-of-control real-estate speculation and trading out some of the world's best transit for total car-dependency. As part of that decay, the city rolled out the red carpet for Uber, allowing the company to put as many unlicensed taxis as they wanted on the city's streets.

Now, it's hard to overstate the dire traffic situation in Toronto. Years of neglect and underinvestment in both the roads and the transit system have left both in a state of near collapse and it's not uncommon for multiple, consecutive main arteries to shut down without notice for weeks, months, or, in a few cases, years. The proliferation of Ubers on the road – driven by desperate people trying to survive the city's cost-of-living catastrophe – has only exacerbated this problem.

Uber, of course, would dispute this. The company insists – despite all common sense and peer-reviewed research – that adding more cars to the streets alleviates traffic. This is easily disproved: there just isn't any way to swap buses, streetcars, and subways for cars. The road space needed for all those single-occupancy cars pushes everything further apart, which means we need more cars, which means more roads, which means more distance between things, and so on.

It is an undeniable fact that geometry hates cars. But geometry loathes Uber. Because Ubers have all the problems of single-occupancy vehicles, and then they have the separate problem that they just end up circling idly around the city's streets, waiting for a rider. The more Ubers there are on the road, the longer each car ends up waiting for a passenger:

https://www.sfgate.com/technology/article/Uber-Lyft-San-Francisco-pros-cons-ride-hailing-13841277.php

Anything that can't go on forever eventually stops. After years of bumbling-to-sinister municipal rule, Toronto finally reclaimed its political power and voted in a new mayor, Olivia Chow, a progressive of long tenure and great standing (I used to ring doorbells for her when she was campaigning for her city council seat). Mayor Chow announced that she was going to reclaim the city's prerogative to limit the number of Ubers on the road, ending the period of Uber's "self-regulation."

Uber, naturally, lost its shit. The company claims to be more than a (geometrically impossible) provider of convenient transportation for Torontonians, but also a provider of good jobs for working people. And to prove it, the company has promised to pay its drivers "120% of minimum wage." As I write for Ricochet, that's a whopper, even by Uber's standards:

https://ricochet.media/en/4039/uber-is-lying-again-the-company-has-no-intention-of-paying-drivers-a-living-wage

Here's the thing: Uber is only proposing to pay 120% of the minimum wage while drivers have a passenger in the vehicle. And with the number of vehicles Uber wants on the road, most drivers will be earning nothing most of the time. Factor in that unpaid time, as well as expenses for vehicles, and the average Toronto Uber driver stands to make $2.50 per hour (Canadian):

https://ridefair.ca/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/Legislated-Poverty.pdf

Now, Uber's told a lot of lies over the years. Right from the start, the company implicitly lied about what it cost to provide an Uber. For its first 12 years, Uber lost $0.41 on every dollar it brought in, lighting tens of billions in investment capital provided by the Saudi royals on fire in an effort to bankrupt rival transportation firms and disinvestment in municipal transit.

Uber then lied to retail investors about the business-case for buying its stock so that the House of Saud and other early investors could unload their stock. Uber claimed that they were on the verge of producing a self-driving car that would allow them to get rid of drivers, zero out their wage bill, and finally turn a profit. The company spent $2.5b on this, making it the most expensive Big Store in the history of cons:

https://www.theinformation.com/articles/infighting-busywork-missed-warnings-how-uber-wasted-2-5-billion-on-self-driving-cars

After years, Uber produced a "self-driving car" that could travel one half of one American mile before experiencing a potentially lethal collision. Uber quietly paid another company $400m to take this disaster off its hands:

https://www.economist.com/business/2020/12/10/why-is-uber-selling-its-autonomous-vehicle-division

The self-driving car lie was tied up in another lie – that somehow, automation could triumph over geometry. Robocabs, we were told, would travel in formations so tight that they would finally end the Red Queen's Race of more cars – more roads – more distance – more cars. That lie wormed its way into the company's IPO prospectus, which promised retail investors that profitability lay in replacing every journey – by car, cab, bike, bus, tram or train – with an Uber ride:

https://www.reuters.com/article/idUSKCN1RN2SK/

The company has been bleeding out money ever since – though you wouldn't know it by looking at its investor disclosures. Every quarter, Uber trumpets that it has finally become profitable, and every quarter, Hubert Horan dissects its balance sheets to find the accounting trick the company thought of this time. There was one quarter where Uber declared profitability by marking up the value of stock it held in Uber-like companies in other countries.

How did it get this stock? Well, Uber tried to run a business in those countries and it was such a total disaster that they had to flee the country, selling their business to a failing domestic competitor in exchange for stock in its collapsing business. Naturally, there's no market for this stock, which, in Uber-land, means you can assign any value you want to it. So that one quarter, Uber just asserted that the stock had shot up in value and voila, profit!

https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2022/02/hubert-horan-can-uber-ever-deliver-part-twenty-nine-despite-massive-price-increases-uber-losses-top-31-billion.html

But all of those lies are as nothing to the whopper that Uber is trying to sell to Torontonians by blanketing the city in ads: the lie that by paying drivers $2.50/hour to fill the streets with more single-occupancy cars, they will turn a profit, reduce the city's traffic, and provide good jobs. Uber says it can vanquish geometry, economics and working poverty with the awesome power of narrative.

In other words, it's taking Toronto for a bunch of suckers.

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

https://pluralistic.net/2024/02/29/geometry-hates-uber/#toronto-the-gullible

Image: Rob Sinclair (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Night_skyline_of_Toronto_May_2009.jpg

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

#pluralistic #uber #hubert horan #fraud #toronto #geometry hates cars #urbanism #ontpoli #olivia chow #self-regulation #transport #urban planning #taxis #transit #urban theory #labor #algorithmic wage discrimination #veena dubal

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not-the-cheese · 1 year

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one sentence(ish) summaries of every magnus archive episode PART 2

(eps 61-110) thank u for the funny comments and tags on the last part i love u guys

the rest of these may take a while as i've caught up to where i am currently in the podcast but i will finish them like in a month i promise

----

61. the thrilling sequel to man does not open coffin: man DOES open coffin.

62. surely this doctor can find an easier way to scam people out of money than putting them in a little book.

63. THE DARK ATE MY BROTHER IN LAW.

64. this is possibly the plot of laura croft tomb raider

65. mmm crumchy

66. what's the opposite of an unboxing video

67. as close to a coffeeshop au as you're going to get from this podcast

68. Doctors hate him! Man REFUSES to die from tuberculosis!

69. your college's psych department has the worst idea ever.

70. reverse death note

71. not even death will stop this woman from taking the british subway

72. man doesn't want to be low key racist in his last moments before getting eaten

73. police versus the second coming of dark jesus

74. lady is haunted by an ad for coffee

75. mike crew says "uh fuck it let's just put this guy on a skyscraper forever"

76. ryan from buzzfeed unsolved breaks into a train yard and suffers consequences

77. you're not a enough of a bitch to be my real mom

78. man gets harassed by his cousin and then exorcises him

79. you know that chase scene in scooby doo with the doors

youtube

80. stupid idiot motherfucking jurgen leitner

81. i have been personally victimized by the sequel to the hungry hungry caterpillar

82. pov: elias threatens to cancel you

83. mannequin takes matters into its own hands after people don't like its pitch for a new window display

84. a hoarder put newspaper on my friend's face :(

85. hey there's maybe a little man upon these stairs?

86. man gets got by a squiggly thing in the dark.

87. plumber is so oblivious to spooky happenings around him that it possibly saves his life.

88. guys i think this guy likes to dig

89. lesbian investment banker finds a new, less evil job: arson!

90. guy who turns people's bones starts a gym where he promises not to turn your bones! (he is lying)

91. i was stalked by lightning for 10 years and i all i got were these stupid scars

92. jonah magnus is a bad friend // another day another elias slay

93. ocd is no match for purple fuzz

94. let the bodies drop gently to the floor let the bodies drop gently to the floor

95. im so sorry my brain refuses to remember what the war ones were about but i think one guy got gently kissed on the forehead so that's pretty nice.

96. diversity wins! the not-quite-human delivery men who stole your identity and business are maybe gay?

97. man gets gaslighted by an entire town about a hole

98. 🎶mister sandman bring me a dream, actually don't, please stay far from me 🎶

99. another one bites the dust

100. archival assistants face off against the general public (they lose)

101. jon finally levels up high enough to unlock an eldritch horror's tragic backstory

102. LOCAL MAN MARRIES BUG

103. peppa eats a clown and they cover her in concrete instead of congratulating her.

104. pennywise stole my brother's skin

105. it's world war z baby

106. Something Big Is In Space.

107. man is interrogated about the time he saw thomas the train roasts people alive and also sans is there

108. actor is stalked by mask who liked his monologue so much that it tells its mask friends to come watch.

109. sometimes a family is just a serial killer's daughter and that guy who maybe killed some vampires

110. yeah man those spiders be eating

Part 1 |

#tma #i hope this convinces you to listen to tma #the magnus archives #sasha james #jon sims #podcasts #gay podcasts #elias bouchard #peter lukas #melanie king #gerard keay #jonathan sims #martin blackwood #jonmartin #funny #one sentence summaries #sillyposting #Youtube #queer

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blondephil · 6 months

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hello (one of the) resident phannie data analyst(s) here with some parasocial stats on dnp’s movie tastes! following: distribution of dan and phil's ratings overall, movies they each rated 5 stars, their lowest-rated movies, and the similarities + differences in their tastes

(lore moment: yes i am a data analyst in my real job. yes i surprised myself with wanting to do this in my spare time. but then i remembered when we read dracula in college (yes i was an english major) and i graphed like, how many times dracula was referred to as vampire versus monster or something. so i shouldn’t be surprised.

first up, their overall rating patterns and by ~special status~ (i.e., wall-e, kill bill, avatar, lmao, plus big hero 6 for the fun of it)

dan’s rated 304 movies and phil’s rated 305. both of them have mean and median ratings of 4 with min 1 and max 5.

both rated kill bill vols. 1 and 2 a 5. wall-e got a 4.5 from dan and a 4 from phil (phake phans). both gave avatar a 3.5. and big hero 6 3.5 (dan) and 4.5 (phil)

rating distribution:

i did analyses here by genre but i need to fix the output (i’m writing all of these based on the markdown document from my phone on the subway, but i need to fix the outputs and i don’t have my computer. so those are pending but there are other genre analyses that i could do & haven’t yet!)

while i was sorting through the data i got the impression that dan overall rated movies higher than phil. so, among movies that they've both rated, here's some information

number of movies dan rated higher than phil: 65

Empire Strikes Back, Blade Runner, Return of the Jedi, My Neighbor Totoro, Back to the Future II, Nightmare Before Christmas, Toy Story, Phantom Mence, Donnie Darko, Attack of the Clones, Finding Nemo, Oldboy, The Notebook, Batman Begins, Brokeback Mountain, WALL-E, (500) Days of Summer, Up, The Hangover, Drive, The Cabin in the Woods, The Avengers, The Dark Knight Rises, Life of Pi, Skyfall, The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, Whiplash, The Amazing Spider-Man 2, Room, The Hateful Eight, The Force Awakens, Manchester by the Sea, Deadpool, La La Land, Moonlight, Rogue One, Call Me By Your Name, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 2., Wonder Woman, Spider-Man: Homecoming, I, Tonya, Thor: Ragnorak, Phantom Thread, Roma, The Favourite, The Lighthouse, Toy Story 4, Midsommar, Ad Astra, Knives Out, Soul, The Green Knight, No Time to Die, Don't Look Up, Spider-Man: No Way Home, Turning Red, Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, Thor: Love and Thunder, The Banshees of Inisherin, The Fabelmans, Glass Onion, Beau is Afraid, Barbie, Oppenheimer, Poor Things

number of movies phil rated higher than dan: 55

Star Wars (New Hope), Blair Witch Project, Requiem for a Dream, Memento, Ocean's Eleven, Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, Iron Man 2, Thor, Captain America: The First Avenger, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, Moonrise Kingdom, Iron Man 3, Gravity, Prisoners, The Wolf of Wall Street, The Grand Budapest Hotel, Captain America: The Winter Soldier, The Imitation Game, Nightcrawler, John Wick, Gone Girl, Big Hero 6, Jurassic World, The Martian, The Revenant, Nocturnal Animals, Split, Get Out, Baby Driver, The Disaster Artist, Dunkirk, The Shape of Water, The Greatest Showman, The Last Jedi, Ready Player One, Crazy Rich Asians, A Star is Born, Rocketman, Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood, Joker, The Rise of Skywalker, The Invisible Man, A Quiet Place Part II, Greenland, Tenet, Malignant, Eternals, The Matrix Resurrections, Scream (2022), Nope, Prey, Talk to Me, Avatar: The Way of the Water, The Super Mario Bros. Movie, Mission Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One

number of movies they rated the same: 99!

Alien, ET, Gremlins, Back to the Future, Top Gun, Aliens, Home Alone, Silence of the Lambs, Jurassic Park, Pulp Fiction, The Lion King, Se7en, Scream, The Fifth Element, Titanic, The Truman Show, The Matrix, Magnolia, Spirited Away, Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, Spider-Man, Lost in Translation, Kill Bill, Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, Kill Bill Vol. 2, Mean Girls, Howl's Moving Castle, Children of Men, The Dark Knight, Pontypool, Inglourious Basterds, Avatar, Toy Story 3, Inception, Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, Black Swan, The Social Network, 21 Jump Street, The Hunger Games, Silver Linings Playbook, The Conjuring, Snowpiercer, Her, Thor: The Dark World, The Hunger Games: Catching Fire, Boyhood, It Follows, Guardians of the Galaxy, Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance), Interstellar, Ex Machina, The Witch, Avengers: The Age of Ultron, Mad Max: Fury Road, Inside Out, Ant-Man, Captain America: Civil War, Your Name., Arrival, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, mother!, It, Blade Runner 2049, Hereditary, Black Panther, Annihilation, A Quiet Place, Avengers: Infinity War, Captain Marvel, Us, Avengers: Endgame, Parasite, It Chapter Two, Marriage Story, Uncut Gems, 1917, Black Widow, The Suicide Squad, Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, Dune, Last Night in Soho, The Batman (2022), Everything Everywhere All at Once, X, The Northman, Top Gun: Maverick, Bullet Train, Barbarian, Pearl, M3GAN, Dungeons and Dragongs: Honor Among Thieves, Evil Dead Rise, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 3., No Hard Feelings, Saltburn, Priscilla, Society of the Snow, Saw X, Leave the World Behind

i didn't analyse this by genre or anything, but i could -- so if you're interested lmk!

the 5 movies with the most different ratings between dan and phil

- Iron Man 2 (dan: 2, phil 3.5)

- The Greatest Showman (d: 2.5, p: 4)

- Malignant (d: 3, p: 4.5)

- Scream (2022) (d: 2.5, p: 4)

- Beau is Afraid (d: 3, p: 1.5)

Interesting that even though dan has more higher rated movies, 4/5 of these ones phil rated higher.

next, their 5-star movies

dan's five stars: 80

Alien, Empire Strikes Back, ET, Blade Runner, Gremlins, Back to the Future, Top Gun, Aliens, Stand by Me, The Grave of the Fireflies, My Neighbor Totoro, Back to the Future II, Home Alone, Silence of the Lambs, Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, Jurassic Park, Nightmare Before Christmas, Schindler's List, Pulp Fiction, The Lion King, Toy Story, Fargo, Scream, The Fifth Element, Hercules, Neon Genesis Evangelion, Titanic, The Truman Show, The Matrix, Fight Club, Magnolia, The Emperor's New Groove, Donnie Darko, Moulin Rouge, Shrek, Spirited Away, Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, Finding Nemo, Kill Bill, Oldboy, Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, Shaun of the Dead, Kill Bill Vol. 2, Howl's Moving Castle, Revenge of the Sith, Brokeback Mountain, No Country for Old Men, The Dark Knight, Inception, Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, The Tree of Life, 21 Jump Street, The Avengers, Life of Pi, Skyfall, Under the Skin, Whiplash, Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, Interstellar, Mad Max: Fury Road, Sicario, The Hateful Eight, La La Land, Arrival, mother!, Blade Runner 2049, Avengers: Infinity War, First Man, The Favourite, The Lighthouse, Parasite, Midsommar, Uncut Gems, 1917, Dune, Everything Everywhere All at Once, Top Gun: Maverick, Oppenheimer, Poor Things

phil's five stars:

Star Wars (New Hope), Alien, ET, Gremlins, Back to the Future, Top Gun, Aliens, Home Alone, Silence of the Lambs, Jurassic Park, Pulp Fiction, The Lion King, Scream, The Fifth Element, Titanic, The Truman Show, The Matrix, Magnolia, Requiem for a Dream, Memento, Spirited Away, Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, Kill Bill, Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, Kill Bill Vol. 2, Howl's Moving Castle, The Dark Knight, Inception, Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, 21 Jump Street, Interstellar, Mad Max: Fury Road, The Revenant, Arrival, Dunkirk, mother!, Blade Runner 2049, Avengers: Infinity War, Parasite, Uncut Gems, 1917, Dune, Everything Everywhere All at Once, Top Gun: Maverick, Terminator 2: Judgment Day, The Shawshank Redemption, Gladiator, Little Miss Sunshine

overlap: 39

Alien, ET, Gremlins, Back to the Future, Top Gun, Aliens, Home Alone, Silence of the Lambs, Jurassic Park, Pulp Fiction, The Lion King, Scream, The Fifth Element, Titanic, The Truman Show, The Matrix, Magnolia, Spirited Away, Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, Kill Bill, Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, Kill Bill Vol. 2, Howl's Moving Castle, The Dark Knight, Inception, Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, 21 Jump Street, Interstellar, Mad Max: Fury Road, Arrival, mother!, Blade Runner 2049, Avengers: Infinity War, Parasite, Uncut Gems, 1917, Dune, Everything Everywhere All at Once, Top Gun: Maverick

& their lowest rated movies...

dan: matrix resurrections (1) , thor: the dark world (1.5), the rise of skywalker (1.5)

phil: crimes of the future (1), attack of the clones (1.5), thor: the dark world (1.5), don’t look up (1.5), the matrix resurrections (1.5), doctor strange in the multiverse of madness (1.5), beau is afraid (1.5), black bear (1.5)

not even chris hemsworth could save thor the dark world, i guess (kat dennings, though…)

movies they logged on the same date:

note that this is like, non-exhaustive, because this is only based on their diaries that list the date. i think in reality they've watched most of these movies together. frequently dan logged a couple days after phil which aren’t shown here. procrastination queen

Pontypool, Eternals, The Northman, Nope, Barbarian, The Banshees of Inisherin, Glass Onion, The Super Mario Bros. Movie, Beau is Afraid, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 3., Mission Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One, Saltburn, Poor Things, Priscilla, Saw X, Leave the World Behind

movies that one logged and not the other:

dan but not phil: 85

The Exorcist, Stand by Me, The Grave of the Fireflies, Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, Home Alone 2, Schindler's List, Fargo, Romeo & Juliet, Hercules, Men in Black, Neon Genesis Evangelion, The Mummy, The 13th Warrior, Fight Club, The Emperor's New Groove, Moulin Rouge, Shrek, Legally Blonde, Monsters, Inc, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, Scooby-Doo, 28 Days Later, Matrix Reloaded, Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl, School of Rock, Matrix Revolutions, Saw, Shaun of the Dead, Shrek 2, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, Revenge of the Sith, The Devil Wears Prada, Borat, Casino Royale, No Country for Old Men, Death Proof, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, There Will Be Blood, Tropic Thunder, Slumdog Millionaire, Moon, District 9, Fantastic Mr. Fox, The King's Speech, We Need to Talk About Kevin, The Tree of Life, X-Men: First Class, Prometheus, Argo, Les Miserables, Django Unchained, World War Z, Pacific Rim, Under the Skin, 12 Years a Slave, American Hustle, The Babadook, The Lego Movie, x-Men: Days of Future Past, 22 Jump Street, Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, The Theory of Everything, Green Room, Sicario, Spotlight, The Big Short, 10 Cloverfield Lane, The Conjuring 2, Train to Busan, Hacksaw Ridge, Doctor Strange, Hidden Figures, Logan, You Were Never Really Here, Game Night, Isle of Dogs, First Man, The Ballad of Buster Scruggs, Suspiria, Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, Glass, Hustlers, Pig, Violent Night

phil but not dan: 86

Jaws, The Terminator, Beetlejuice, Die Hard, Terminator 2: Judgment Day, Groundhog Day, The Shawshank Redemption, Leon: The Professional, The Usual Suspects, The Frighteners, The Sixth Sense, Being John Malkovich, American Beauty, The Green Mile, Gladiator, Catch Me if You Can, Elf, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Little Miss Sunshine, Pan's Labyrinth, The Prestige, Zodiac, Spider-Man 3, Iron Man, Juno, Lake Mungo, Twilight, Zombieland, Kick-Ass, Brave, Evil Dead, The Great Gatsby, Now You See Me, Monsters University, Man of Steel, About Time, Dallas Buyers Club, Edge of Tomorrow, The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 1, The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 2, The Boy, Raw, Finding Dory, Suicide Squad, Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, John Wick: Chapter 2, Lady Bird, The Ritual, Happy Death Day, Deadpool 2, Ocean's 8, Ant-Man and The Wasp, Bird Box, Booksmart, Crawl, Spider-Man: Far From Home, The Platform, Black Bear, Palm Springs, The Empty Man, The Innocents, Titane, Old, Free Guy, The Black Phone, Fresh, Watcher, Bodies Bodies Bodies, Ambulance, Aftersun, Crimes of the Future, Fall, Bones and All, The Menu, Sanctuary, Do Revenge, Smile, Hellraiser (2022), Mr. Harrigan's Phone, Plane, Missing, Infinity Pool, Past Lives, Knock at the Cabin, Scream VI

i’m interested to see how this varies by genre!

miscellaneous non-statistical things that made me parasocially emotional and/or laugh during this process:

they watched nope together on christmas eve 2022 <3

dan rated moulin rouge a 5 <3 nature boy <3

he also rated shrek a 5. of course. (valid).

4.5 from dan and 4 from phil from the notebook

5 from danny for brokeback mountain <3 and a 4.5 from philly

cmbyn, yes, has its issues, but dan rated 4.5 and phil 4

the shape of water got a 4.5 from monsterfucker phil lester (dan gave it a 4)

surprisingly phil rated rocketman higher than dan! surprising because dan liked so many musicals

dan gave hustlers a 3.5. i don't know why i think this is funny, but i do. phil doesn't have it logged or rated, lmao.

a 4 (d) and a 3.5 (p) for barbie!

phil gave twilight a 3. lol.

phil also gave do revenge only a 3.5. tragique.

phil watched a LOT of horror alone in october 2022 (aka while dan was on tour). anyway he's just like me <3

#dan and phil #dnp #phan #dan howell #phil lester #twitter says letterboxd should have been gatekept i say 1) know your phannie history! 2) this is nothing their usernames are so obvious you #think they didn’t know this would be found? be fr!

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inthedayswhenlandswerefew · 1 month

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Where Will All The Martyrs Go [Chapter 10: Nobody Likes You, Everyone Left You]

A/N: I sincerely apologize for the delay, but Maggie Sundays are back, besties!!! And we have a new poll! Be sure to check it out AFTER you finish Chapter 10 🥰

Series summary: In the midst of the zombie apocalypse, both you and Aemond (and your respective travel companions) find yourselves headed for the West Coast. It’s the 2024 version of the Oregon Trail, but with less dysentery and more undead antagonists. Watch out for snakes! 😉🐍

Series warnings: Language, sexual content (18+ readers only), violence, bodily injury, med school Aemond, character deaths, nature, drinking, smoking, drugs, Adventures With Aegon™️, pregnancy and childbirth, the U.S. Navy, road trip vibes.

Series title and chapter title are lyrics from: “Letterbomb” by Green Day.

Word count: 6.8k

💜 All my writing can be found HERE! 💜

Let me know if you’d like to be added to the taglist 🥰

Here’s how it happens.

Let’s say you’re on a subway, or at a bus stop, or walking in or out of a grocery store, maybe fumbling with your purse or corralling small children, or talking on the phone, or wondering how you’re going to make rent, or trying not to drop one of your shopping bags, and out of nowhere some stranger lurches over and grabs you. They are filthy and noxious and moaning, and you assume they are insane, or on hard drugs, or maybe both. Your fellow upstanding citizens rush to your aid and the assailant is apprehended and carted off, unbeknownst to you surely to infect many more blithely unaware victims.

Maybe you notice that you were bitten, even just barely, even just a scrape of the teeth hard enough to scratch the skin; maybe you don’t. If you do notice and you seek medical attention, the best a doctor will offer you is disinfectant and antibiotics, maybe a rabies shot if they’re extra ambitions. Perhaps you have too much on your plate already without a detour to the doctor’s office (or perhaps you don’t have medical insurance), and you opt for at-home remedies, a vigorous scrub with hydrogen peroxide and a large rectangular Band-Aid slapped on top. Of course, none of this will do you any good. It was over the moment a drop of zombie saliva slipped painlessly into your bloodstream and began to replicate there like an invasive species, like an insurgent force. It only takes once.

You go home, and maybe when you start to feel really bad you call an ambulance and go to the hospital, and when you turn you bite anyone you can get your claws on there. Maybe you die at home and then attack your partner, your children, your parents, your roommates; maybe this new version of yourself ends up chewing bits of gristle off the bones of your dog or cat or ferret. And if any of your victims manage to escape once you’ve gotten a taste of them—no matter how fleetingly, no matter how trivially—they are sure to die in agony and reanimate too, and to pass along this plague you’ve gifted them, the bloodiest game of telephone.

Now millions are getting sick, fevers, headaches, purging, bleeding, but where do people go when they need a doctor? The hospitals are overrun, the clinics are swarmed, and doctors and nurses are falling ill too. There are unimaginable reports of the carnage. There is censorship to smother the panic. There are public figures vanishing from sight. There are zombies-in-progress boarding planes, checking into hotels, tottering onto cruise ships with armfuls of luggage, sweating through their bedsheets in crowded military barracks, silently ticking timebombs as the world as everyone knows it hurtles towards its end.

You would be amazed what people can refuse to believe. Once you believe something, that makes it real.

~~~~~~~~~~

There are no shovels, so Cregan tills the earth with his axe and then you dig with your hands. There are no headstones, so Rhaena finds a large sand-colored rock and writes on it with a jagged piece of slate: Baela and Briar, Summer 2024. Then she hesitates, the slate hovering in afternoon air, amber sunlight and eighty degrees, dust thick in the wind. She wants to say more. There needs to be more. How can two lives end with five words? At last Rhaena adds: Mother and child who perished en route to California. They were loved. They mattered.

“That’s good, Rhaena,” Luke tells her, voice gentle, hands on her shoulders. She stares at the grave for a while, and you don’t have time to waste; the bear could return, there might be wolves or mountain lions, eventually the sun will set and you will be stranded in an infinite darkness like the ocean at night. But Aemond waits until Rhaena is ready. She tucks the shard of shale into her backpack, and then you are fleeing once again: from this day, from this world.

You hike back to I-80 and walk west towards the next ranch. All of you are here in south-central Wyoming, and yet none of you are: you are in the earth with Baela, you are back in Nebraska where Jace died, you are in Ohio where he was swept away by a river, you are in Pennsylvania where you and Rio climbed down from a transmission tower, you are in your lives before the world ended: Saratoga Springs, Boston, cliffs overlooking the Pacific Ocean, a part of Kentucky called the Wildlands. Aegon is limping along on his own and shoving Rio away each time he tries to pick him up.

“Stop,” Aegon says, wincing and exhausted, his bandages coated with dust.

“Come on, Honey Bun. You’re going to rip your foot open—”

“Stop it!” Aegon demands. “I’m not going to slow you down anymore! I’m not going to be a burden!”

There is a sound you don’t immediately recognize: a rumbling, a squealing. A car is pulling up alongside you. Instinctively, you unholster one of your M9s and raise it as you turn.

“No, no, no, we’re cool!” a woman says, showing you both of her hands. She is around fifty and driving a Subaru Outback; there is a man in the passenger’s seat, perhaps her husband, and two wide-eyed, hoodie-swathed teenagers in the backseat. “Are you…are you guys okay?”

All of you stare blankly at her: shellshocked, distraught, covered in dirt and blood. “Yeah,” Daeron says eventually.

The woman peers around, east, west. “Do you have a car or something?”

“We have a Tahoe,” Cregan says. “It’s out of gas.”

“We have a few cans in the trunk,” the Subaru woman replies. “I can give you one, five gallons. That will get you to Rock Springs, and you should be able to find more supplies there. We came through that way, it wasn’t too bad.” And then, before anybody can ask if she’s serious, the woman steps out of the car and opens the hatchback. She lifts out a red can and hands it to Rio, who is standing the closest.

“Thank you, lady,” he says, astonished.

“I’m sorry about that,” you tell the woman, meaning the fact that you were prepared to shoot her.

Rhaena adds: “We’ve had some…bad experiences.”

The Subaru woman smiles. “Haven’t we all. Where are you headed?”

“West Coast,” Aemond answers quickly: vague, guarded, inviting no further disclosures.

She nods; she can’t trust you, and you can’t trust her, and everyone agrees, an unspoken acknowledgement of what the world is like now. “Well, you don’t want to go anywhere near Salt Lake City.”

“But that’s the only direct route,” Aegon says, crestfallen.

“I know.” The Subaru woman is sympathetic. “And it’s going to burn a hell of a lot of gas and time to drive all the way around, but you have to. There are tens of thousands of zombies, and a lot of people are trapped there without fuel. I’m telling you, if someone sees you driving by in a working vehicle, they’ll try to put a bullet in your head so they can take it. So don’t give them the opportunity.”

“Okay,” Aegon says glumly, already pulling his map out of the pocket of his khaki shorts to plot a new course.

“Stay far away from Chicago,” Rio offers the Subaru woman in return. “And any nuclear power plants.”

“We’re headed south,” she says, then grins. “I’ve got a sister in eastern Tennessee. We’re going to learn how to fish and cook moonshine and make clothes out of deer hide, and live up in the mountains where nobody will ever bother us.”

People glance at you, the resident Appalachian; and you remember the crackling of woodstoves, flecks of ice in the creek, kicking up snow as you ran through the woods, following tracks of deer and opossums and raccoons. “It’s a beautiful place. I think you’ll like it.”

Rhaena asks the Subaru woman: “Is there anything we can do for you? To thank you for the gas?”

“Oh, I couldn’t take from a bunch of bloodied people who are stranded on the side of the interstate.” But her eyes catch on the pistol in your hand and stay there, envious, longing. You have another, so you give it to her.

“The safety is on. There are only nine bullets left, unfortunately.”

“That’s nine more than I had before,” the Subaru woman says as she takes the U.S. Navy’s standard-issue Beretta. Then she says to everyone: “Good luck.”

“Same to you, ma’am,” Cregan replies. The Subaru woman gets back into her car and disappears eastbound with her family. The nine of you that are left—ten, if you count Ice—trek back to the Tahoe, where Rio pours five gallons of combustible liquid gold into the gas tank.

Rhaena climbs into the driver’s seat and turns the key in the ignition. The rust-red Tahoe growls to life, the engine idling. Then she rests her arms on the steering wheel and breaks down sobbing. In the passenger’s seat, Aegon looks up from his map—which he is annotating with a glittery green gel pen—to gaze at her with shining, wounded eyes. After some hesitation, he extends a hand to hold one of hers. From the seat behind Rhaena, Luke is rubbing her shoulders and murmuring words you can’t hear.

Aemond says softly: “Rhaena, you can take some time if you need it.”

“No,” she insists, her voice quivering but determined. “We can’t wait. We have to get as far as we can before dark.” She shifts the Tahoe into drive, guides it onto I-80, and speeds west towards Rock Springs and the Utah border.

Rio is saying something to you, but at first you can’t grasp it. Helaena is scratching Ice’s ears as the massive grey wolfdog lies sprawled across her lap. Daeron is sniffling and wiping his eyes with the sleeves of his orange t-shirt. Cregan is talking to Aemond about needing to find an auto shop so he can get supplies to change the Tahoe’s oil and filter. One of Aegon’s mixtapes whirls in the CD player:

“My face above the water

My feet can’t touch the ground, touch the ground

And it feels like I can see the sands on the horizon

Every time you are not around…”

You are watching Aemond, your heartbeat growing loud in your ears. He won’t look at you at all.

~~~~~~~~~~

As the sun begins to set, you find a vacant house on the outskirts of Coalville, Utah overlooking the Echo Reservoir. You wash away the remnants of Wyoming in the cool blue water, dried blood and caked-on dirt, hopes eclipsed by horror. Dinner is soup spooned out of cans from the pantry—Dinty Moore beef stew, Campbell’s condensed chicken noodle—and caffeine-free sodas, Sprite and Fanta and Seagram’s Ginger Ale. Then Rhaena and Luke go straight to bed, and Helaena scuttles through the house with a flashlight to search for clothes, making each person a separate pile on the dining room table: large flannel shirts for Cregan, pastel-colored polos for Aegon. Aemond and Cregan are outside on the front porch, Daeron is carving sticks into arrows on the kitchen floor, Aegon has been passed out in one of the children’s bedrooms since Aemond debrided his burns again and dosed him with the last of the Vicodin. Fortunately, Helaena found a translucent orange prescription bottle of Tramadol in the upstairs bathroom, so Aegon won’t have to suffer too much tomorrow.

Rio tosses and turns on the living room couch. You know what’s wrong, but you have to wait for him to say it. You stay with him, kneeling on the beige carpet in the murky artificial luminance of Rio’s Moonbeam flashlight, threading your fingertips through his dark curls. And then at last Rio asks something that you know must have crossed his mind a thousand times since you left Saratoga Springs, but he’s never voiced aloud: “What if Sophie and the baby are dead?”

“They’re not.”

“But you don’t know, nobody knows—”

“Bryan, they’re not dead,” you say, and he is listening.

“I joined the Navy for Sophie.” And of course, you’ve heard this before. “I was just a stupid kid who couldn’t commit to anything, not work, not school, not a future with her, so she dumped me. And I decided I was going to get her back by proving I could make commitments after all. I could sign my life away for five years, and come out of it as someone who would be a good husband and father. And now…what if by enlisting and being so far away when everything happened, I abandoned her? What if…what if she’s gone, and she died terrified and in pain and alone, and I’m the reason why?”

“Sophie and the baby are waiting for you in Odessa. You have to believe that until we get there.”

“Because if they’re not, my life is over?” he asks bitterly, this man you have never known to be wrathful, defeated, weak, hopeless. But these are beasts that live inside all of us, waiting to be shaken awake by the perfect string of calamities.

“I believe they’re still alive.”

And Rio looks at you, wanting desperately to be convinced. “Why?”

You’ve never believed that you are someone who knows the right things to say; but you have to try. “If your parents’ community in Odessa is like you’ve always described it to me, I can’t think of a better place for someone to hide from all the disorder and the violence. It’s remote, but there’s support from other families who are living the same way. People have gardens, cows, goats, pigs, chickens, enough canned food to live on for years, homemade clothes and systems to collect rainwater. There are women who’ve had five homebirths and men who’ve built houses with their own hands. And the people in Odessa have guns and know how to use them. I think when you told Sophie to go there, you saved her life. And now she and the baby are both waiting for you to come home.”

“We’ve crossed this country by raiding dead people’s homes.”

“Yes. And we’ve seen plenty of living ones too.”

Rio takes a deep breath, staring up at the ceiling; and now he is calmer. “Okay,” he says, grabbing your hand where it rests on his head and smacking a noisy kiss onto your knuckles. “I’m sorry. Thank you. I think I’m done freaking out for tonight.”

“You good?”

“I’m good.”

“Try to sleep.”

Obediently, Rio closes his eyes, and within five minutes he’s snoring.

You rise and open the door to the front porch, thinking of what you’re going to tell Aemond when he is low, distracted, wary: You did everything you could, Aemond. It’s not your fault. It’s this world, it’s poison, it’s cursed, and you can’t turn back the clock to when it wasn’t. You’re just one man. But you can try to save the people who are left.

Yet Aemond does not speak to you, doesn’t even notice you; when you peek outside you are on his blind side, and he is deep in conversation with Cregan as they keep watch in the moonlight.

“I mean, yeah, I’ve been thinking about that too, man,” Cregan is saying. “A mansion by the ocean sounds nice and all, don’t get me wrong, but that ain’t me. I don’t see myself somewhere like that forever. Hell, I’ve never even seen the ocean, and to be honest I never really cared to. But a community of folks who are living off the land out in the woods? Those are my kind of people, that’s a place I could be useful…”

You retreat back inside the house, flashlights and shadows, doubts and fears. You stand there in the quiet for a while, then go to Aegon’s bedroom, where he is awake now and snuggling with Ice in a child’s bed shaped like a red racecar, listening to his pink Sony Walkman—Ava, the gleaming rhinestones proclaim—through one earbud.

Aegon coos as he ruffles the dog’s shaggy grey coat: “You’re so sweet, Blue Raspberry Icee. You were always my favorite flavor. Do you miss 7-Elevens too? Wrinkled old hot dogs and taquitos on rollers, drenching tortilla chips with the nacho cheese and chili dispenser? Did you guys even have 7-Elevens in Iowa? No offense, but your home state kind of sucks. It’s just fields and barns and whatever. You would have loved Boston. You could have fetched my golf balls when they rolled into ponds.”

Then he sings along to the song he’s listening to, effortlessly melodic but so softly you can barely hear him:

“You really had me going, wishing on a star

But the black holes that surround you are heavier by far

I believed in your confusion, you were so completely torn…”

Aegon spots you in the doorway. He smiles, then turns serious when he gets a good look at your face. “You okay, Mint Chocolate Chip?”

He feels like the only person you can say this to. You confess in a weak, hoarse whisper: “I hate this world.”

Aegon offers you the other earbud. “Then let’s go somewhere else.”

~~~~~~~~~~

“Come on,” you say to Rhaena as Rio and Luke rummage around inside the Shell gas station for food, drinks, batteries, medicine. You know they’re fine; you’ve already cleared the store, and you can hear them in there laughing. Rio is telling Luke about the bizarre Thanksgiving dinner you once had in Chinhae, South Korea: duck instead of turkey, fried rice with pears and squash instead of stuffing, candied sweet potatoes for dessert, a choir of solemn schoolchildren brought in to sing—for reasons you will never understand—Africa by Toto. You take your remaining M9 out of its holster. “Target practice.”

“Really?” Rhaena asks excitedly. She volunteered to stay back at the little blue mobile home with Aegon, Daeron, and Helaena—only a mile away—but you knew she needed a distraction. Truthfully, you do too. Aemond is in the Tahoe somewhere searching for gas with Cregan, a strange new alliance. He still hasn’t really spoken to you. You are trying to give him what he needs, but you don’t understand what that is.

It took all of yesterday to navigate around Salt Lake City, stopping every few hours to scrounge for gas, gallons siphoned piecemeal from cars, trucks, motorcycles, boats on trailers, four-wheelers left forgotten in garages and backyards. It was after nightfall when you rolled into Battle Mountain, Nevada, a gold mining town in what is known as the Cowboy Corridor, beginning at West Wendover just over the Utah border and ending in Reno. Today supplies must be replenished; tomorrow I-80 will take you to Winnemucca, where U.S. Route 95 branches off north towards Oregon while remaining on I-80 leads southwest through the Sierra Nevada Mountains and into the Bay Area of California. A decision needs to be made, which means Aemond will have to talk to you tonight. You’re relieved. You don’t want to have to be nervous and watchful with him, studying every inflection of his voice, reading some dire premonition in each line that creases his face. You’ve spent enough of your life that way already.

Battle Mountain is cloudless and hot and sandy, dry shrubs and gnarled mesquite trees, flat secretless earth. Staggering towards the Shell are three zombies, all dressed in faded blue uniforms like a mechanic’s or a miner’s. You hand Rhaena your M9.

“How many bullets do you have left?” she says, still a bit giddy.

“Fifteen. And you can have five of them.”

She raises the pistol and closes one eye. “I’m going to miss.”

“Well you’re not going to hit anything if you don’t turn off the safety.”

Rhaena giggles. “Oh, right. Whoops.” She clicks the tiny lever, then takes aim again.

“Line up your sights. Front looks like an I, back looks like a U. Put the I in the center of the U, and keep looking at that front sight. That’s where your bullet is going. Don’t blink when you fire. Don’t be scared of the recoil, that’s not your problem, your priority is getting the shot. Your arms are a little stiff…yeah, perfect, nice and limber. The recoil won’t hurt so much that way. Don’t try to fight it, just accept that it’s going to happen. If you’re all tensed up because you’re anxious about the recoil, it’ll throw off your aim, so forget about it.”

“Okay,” Rhaena says. “I am actively attempting to forget.”

“Remember, try not to blink.”

“Don’t tense up. Don’t blink.” A few seconds pass, and she pulls the trigger. There is a spray of dark curdled blood from one of the zombie’s collarbone, but it’s still stumbling towards the Shell. “Damn,” Rhaena says defeatedly, then tries to pass the M9 back to you.

“What are you doing? You have four more shots.”

“But I’m going to miss. I’m going to waste them.”

“Practice isn’t wasteful. You have to know how to do this in case something happens to me.”

“You do it,” Rhaena insists. “I’m terrible.”

“Is it alright if I help you?”

“Yeah,” she says, her doe-like eyes brightening. “Okay. Totally.”

“Go ahead and aim.”

She raises the pistol and peers through the sights. You stand behind Rhaena, place your hands lightly over hers, adjust her angle just barely. When she fires—she’s still tensing up just before she pulls the trigger, a common mistake—you hold the M9 steady. The bullet explodes through the same zombie’s rot-soft skull and the corpse tumbles facedown into the dust.

Rhaena gasps, exhilarated, triumphant.

“No celebrating yet. There are two more.”

“Right.” Very businesslike, she lines up the next shot. You provide your slight adjustments; a second zombie receives a lethal dose of lead.

“Want to do the last one on your own?” The third zombie is quite close now, maybe ten yards. It should be an easy kill.

“Okay…but if I miss, you have to save me.”

“Obviously.”

All on her own, Rhaena aims and pulls the trigger. She hits the zombie near the top of its head; an inch higher, and it would be functionally unharmed. But the corpse’s skull snaps back and its blood and brains spill out onto the asphalt of the parking lot, and it is of no further danger to anyone. It is carrion for the scavengers: raccoons, foxes, condors, vultures, crows.

“And with one of your allocated bullets to spare,” you say with a smile, accepting the M9 when Rhaena surrenders it. “Good progress.”

“That felt great,” she admits, perhaps a little dazed.

You know what she means. “It’s nice to have some control over what happens in your life.”

Luke is saying to Rio as they reappear from inside the Shell: “Maybe those Korean children were singing Africa because they knew your unit had been in Djibouti. Maybe they thought you were homesick for it or something.”

“Oh my God, you know what, kid? You might be right. I never even thought of that.”

“Find anything?” you ask.

Rio shrugs, adjusting the straps of his backpack. “A few bags of trail mix, a box of Band-Aids, some Life Savers, cans of Arizona tea. Oh, and Marlboro Golds for Honey Bun.”

“You shouldn’t be encouraging Aegon to smoke. It’s bad for him.”

“Give him a break, he’s sad and crispy.”

You can’t think of a rebuttal. The four of you walk back to the mobile home.

In the small patch of parched dirt that serves as the driveway, Cregan is—with great difficulty—shimmying out from beneath the Tahoe. Then he reaches back under to grab a pan of old motor oil. “Just about done here,” he announces. “Gotta put the fresh oil in and then we’re set for another 5,000 miles.”

You glance around. Ice is panting in the narrow aisle of shade of a mesquite tree. Aegon is napping on the tiny front porch, sprawled on his back and snoring, his plastic neon green sunglasses shielding his eyes; Helaena is surrounded by a jumble of empty cans and stirring a pot of Chef Boyardee spaghetti and meatballs as she heats it over a fire. She begins dishing out bowlfuls of it. Rio, Rhaena, and Luke all graciously accept their dinner.

“Did you guys find gas?” you say to Cregan.

“Not much. A few gallons.”

“Where’s Aemond?”

“Said he’d be back soon.”

“What?” You are incredulous. “You left him? He can’t be alone out there, Cregan. Someone has to watch his blind side.”

“He ain’t alone. He took Daeron.”

“What’s Aemond looking for?”

“He didn’t say. I didn’t ask.” Now Cregan is pouring a bottle of Pennzoil into the Tahoe, and Rio is prodding you with a bowl of Chef Boyardee spaghetti and meatballs, and Aegon is waking up and yawning loudly.

“What’d you bring me?” he says, lazy and grinning; and when he receives his pack of Marlboro Golds, he immediately sticks one between his teeth and lights it. Luke goes to sit by a shrub and then jumps up when he hears a rattling noise. Almost too swiftly for you to process it, a streak of red-gold scales slithers across the earth and vanishes into the desert.

“Western diamondback rattlesnake,” Helaena notes. “Venomous. Potentially fatal.”

“Great,” Luke says, carrying his bowl towards the front door of the mobile home. “I think I’ll eat inside.”

Aemond and Daeron don’t return until shortly before dusk, the sky turning to rust, lavender, gold, fire, blood. When they walk in, Rhaena is curled up on the floral couch—shredded in spots by a cat, though there are no signs of it now—and reading Mockingjay. Luke is sitting with her and keeping watch with periodic peeks out the window. Ice is resting with her muzzle propped on her large front paws. You, Rio, Cregan, Helaena, and Aegon are playing Uno on the floor.

“What color?” Aegon asks Helaena when she puts down a wild card.

“Blue.”

He groans. “How do you always know what I don’t have?!”

“Rhaena,” Aemond says, and then tosses something to her that glints in the artificial, sickly yellow radiance of the flashlights. She catches them in midair: a set of keys. She is mystified.

“What are these for?”

“The Ford Expedition that’s parked outside.”

“What?!” Luke says, twisting around in his seat to snatch the curtain aside and peer through the window. “Oh wow. Yeah, it’s out there.”

Rhaena is staring confoundedly at Aemond. “Why do we need a Ford Expedition?”

“Because that’s what you’ll be driving tomorrow.”

“What’s wrong with the Tahoe?”

“They will be driving the Tahoe to Oregon,” Aemond says, pointing to you, Rio, and Cregan. “We are taking Expedition to California.”

Everyone is too stunned to speak at first; even Daeron looks at Aemond doubtfully, as if this is the first time he’s learning of it. Aegon’s hand hovers frozen in the air above the draw pile of Uno cards. Ice whimpers.

Rio chuckles uncertainly. “You’re…you’re joking, right?”

“No, I’m not,” Aemond says. “When we leave Battle Mountain tomorrow, you’ll take I-80 to Winnemucca. We’ll take Route 305 south to Austin and then head west so we can get off the interstate and avoid the Reno area.”

Your voice comes out dark and poisonous. You can feel your eyes glaring, searing; Aemond won’t look at you. “What are you talking about?”

“We can’t stay together?” Luke asks.

“No,” Aemond says again, and now he’s getting impatient. “We have two different destinations. That’s been the situation since the day we met, and now it’s time to split up.”

“Why can’t we all travel to one place and then the other?” Rhaena says. “We could drive to the Bay Area, see what’s going on at the beach house, and after—”

“I can’t wait,” Rio interrupts. “My wife and baby are in Oregon, I’m going straight there even if no one else is.” As distracted as you are, you touch your palm to one of his broad shoulders. You’re going too. You promised.

“So we’ll drive to Oregon first,” Aegon says agreeably. “Right? We could do that. Go north and then swing by the Bay Area later.”

Aemond shakes his head. “It’s almost impossible to find gas now. There is just enough in the Tahoe to last it until Winnemucca, and just enough in the Expedition to get it down to Austin. There is no guarantee we’ll be able to find more. Every day there’s less gas and food and bullets, because there are less places that haven’t already been looted. There are 400 miles between where we are right now and either Odessa or San Franscisco. There are another 400 miles that separate those two destinations from each other. So let’s say we drive all the way to Oregon and then can’t find any gas to go south to the Bay. How long do you think we’d last like this on foot? A month? Because that’s how long it would take us, assuming not a single rest day. So if we travel to one location together, there’s a good possibility we’ll all be trapped there.”

“Maybe I’m okay with getting trapped in Oregon,” Aegon mumbles.

Aemond lashes out fiercely. “Are you serious? What about Criston, what about Mom?!”

“Maybe there are some things about home that I don’t miss!”

“Then go the fuck to Oregon!”

“You know I have to stay with you!”

Aemond scoffs. “Because you’re so capable of protecting anyone.”

Aegon rubs his sunburned face with both hands. He murmurs softly, miserably: “I’m trying, Aemond.”

“So that’s it?” Rhaena says, staring at you and Rio and Cregan, stunned and mournful. “We’ll just never see each other again?”

Aemond shrugs and averts his gaze. He doesn’t have an answer; maybe he doesn’t care.

Aegon turns to Cregan accusingly. “You helped plan this?”

“Nah,” Cregan says, avoidant and downcast, which is unusual for him. “I mean…I said I didn’t really see myself spending the rest of my life with a bunch of millionaires in a California mansion on the seashore, and that’s still true. I’d rather live in Oregon with people who are more like me. But that’s different than wanting to split up forever. I could always try to find y’all later for a visit, I guess…”

“Sure,” Aemond replies briskly. “Whatever you decide to do afterwards isn’t my problem. But you get them to Odessa first.”

Rhaena bursts out with sudden urgency: “This feels wrong. Don’t you see how this is wrong?! We’ve been through so much together, and now we’re just going to wave goodbye and disappear? Leave them to fend for themselves?”

“You want to add 400 miles to our trip?” Aemond asks her, and Rhaena falls silent.

“You know,” Luke begins. “We…we’ve already lost people. Maybe Aemond’s right. Maybe we’re forgetting how dangerous the world is now. It would be great if we could stay in contact, but the most important thing is to get everyone safely to where they need to be.”

“Exactly,” Aemond says, and something jolts awake in you as you remember what he told you in Nebraska, and in Wyoming, and in so many quiet moments that you’ve shared since you met, each an oasis in the desert. He said we would figure it out. He said he wasn’t going anywhere.

“So you were lying when you pretended not to know what we were going to do when we got to Nevada.”

Aemond nods towards the front door. “Can I talk to you outside for a minute?”

You stand up; Rio watches you apprehensively, wondering if he should follow. Your eyes flick to his. I’m fine. He relents, redirecting his attention. Aegon is slumped and despondent; Helaena is starting to cry, and Cregan tries to console her. She’s saying that something bad is going to happen, but she doesn’t know what.

On the porch of the mobile home, beneath a lilac sky pierced with stars, Aemond does not attempt to hold your hands or kiss you goodbye or give any other indication that you have ever been someone who mattered to him. “This isn’t personal. This is what gives everyone the best chance of survival.”

“You’re afraid of making a mistake and getting hurt,” you tell him. “And I understand, I know what that feels like, but Aemond…with the way the world is now…you can’t afford to wait for things to happen or cut them loose to see if they’ll come back to you. You might not get another chance.”

“You’re going to be fine,” Aemond says flatly. “Your route is safer than ours. Less cities, less zombies.”

“You’re honestly going to act like you are completely unbothered by the thought of never seeing me again?”

“I don’t know what you expected. I’m just some guy who helped get you off a transmission tower back in Pennsylvania.”

“Really? That’s all you are?”

And then Aemond smirks to himself, a cynical, mocking twist of his lips, something so dismissive and so cruel you almost believe for a razor-thin second that you could hate him. “Look, I’m not the one for you. Go to Oregon. Fuck Cregan.”

“There is nothing romantic between me and Cregan!”

Now Aemond seems annoyed. “Well, you two seem exceptionally suited for each other.”

“Because we both grew up shopping at Dollar General and know what it’s like to have an alcoholic parent?! That makes us soulmates, that’s the end of the calculation?!”

“Then find a man like him!” Aemond flares. “That’s what you really wanted, right? That’s what you were after this whole time. Some hero to convince you he’s worth it. Someone to break you in.”

You are seething, thunderstruck. “And you just said that in the most hurtful way possible to…what, prove how little you care about me?”

“I didn’t say I don’t care about you.”

“Then why are you doing this?”

“We were never going to end up in the same place.”

“Except we were, you told me that, you told me we’d figure something out, I mean, you…you…you said you’d be there if I wanted kids someday, what was that if not some kind of commitment?!”

“You don’t trust me,” Aemond says, so sharply and so abruptly it startles you.

“I do,” you object softly.

“No, you don’t. And I don’t blame you. But there’s nowhere for us to go from here.”

You can feel yourself becoming young and powerless and desperately afraid. “Please don’t do this, Aemond. It won’t bring Jace or Baela back. If we don’t have a plan before we split up, this is over. We’ll never find each other again. We’ll never have another chance.”

And he shakes his head like this was such a needless mistake. “I knew you’d fall in love with me.”

He’s leaving, you think, hazy and omnipotent like a nightmare, the present inseparable from the past and the future. I left my family and now my family is leaving me. “I’m not in love with you,” you reply as ruthlessly as you can. “I think you’re right. Cregan is a better man.”

“Yeah,” Aemond snaps.

“And I need someone like him.”

“Yeah,” Aemond says again, staring into the west where the last rays of the sun are sinking below the horizon, you erased as you stand where his left eye would once have seen you.

“And you need someone who’s going to fuck with your head so much you can’t possibly mistake it for something real.”

You walk back inside the mobile home and leave him speechless in the dying light.

~~~~~~~~~~

“I drew this for you,” Aegon says, handing Rio a folded piece of paper torn from Helaena’s spider notebook. It’s a map, illustrated in forest green gel pen ink. “Your route is actually really straightforward, it’s impossible to get lost. You’ll follow I-80 northwest to Winnemucca, then Route 95 north until it intersects with Route 140, and you stay on 140 all the way to Odessa. The only real city you’ll go near is Klamath Falls in Oregon, and I’ve marked that. Route 140 mostly stays along the outside, but you can cut it wider if things look dicey. The whole trip is just a couple days by car, assuming you don’t have to spend too long hunting for gas. But listen…” He points to the green dot labelled Winnemucca. “Between here and Denio Junction up by the Oregon border, there’s 100 miles of nothing, just desert. So make sure you have more than enough supplies to last you in case something happens. Then from Denio Junction to Adel is another 85 miles with no towns in between. So just…be careful, okay? You’re not back east anymore. Things are a lot farther apart, and it’s harder to find everything. If you run out of gas or bust a tire, you can’t just call AAA to come pick you up.”

“We got it,” Rio says, touched but trying not to dissolve into too much sentimentality. The three of you are standing in the short dirt driveway the next morning, Aegon putting most of his weight on his good leg. Cregan is waiting behind the wheel of the Chevy Tahoe that once belonged to his parents. Ice is peering out at you through one of the rolled-down windows. “Thank you, Honey Bun.”

“No problem. Now flip it over.”

Rio does; on the back of the first map is another, this one from Odessa south to the Bay Area, a place just north of San Francisco called Bolinas.

“Go all the way to the coast and follow it down,” Aegon says. “You don’t want to bump into Santa Rosa, Sacramento, Stockton, Modesto, San Jose, any of those places. Too many people.” Then he smiles, kind and warm. “I’m going to see you guys again, one way or the other. But first I have to make sure Aemond is safe. And Rio has to meet baby Otter.”

Rio laughs. “Man, don’t even joke about it. I’m seriously concerned that’s my firstborn’s name.”

“If you end up not staying in Odessa, leave me a note carved into a tree trunk or something so I can track you down.”

“You do the same at the beach mansion.”

“Totally.” Then Aegon turns to you; and although he’s still smiling, his eyes—those pools of murky, melancholy blue that remind you of the Gulf of Tadjoura, Corpus Christi Bay, the East China Sea, the Indian Ocean—are catastrophically sad. “Tortilla Chip, it’s been real. Don’t forget about me.”

“I don’t think I could even if I wanted to.”

He pats your backpack and winks, and you don’t understand why until ten hours later when you’re lying on the rooftop of an abandoned RV in Winnemucca, Nevada, gazing up at the stars as Rio and Cregan swap stories to weave affinity until it’s thick like a braid: Rio hiding a dead lemon shark in the Jeep of an officer he hated when you were stationed at Key West, Cregan’s fiancé leaving him after she got a field hockey scholarship to the University of Iowa. You haven’t found any gas for the Tahoe yet. You’ll have to search again tomorrow. You reach into your backpack for a pack of Life Savers and instead are surprised to discover Aegon’s pink Sony Walkman. The rhinestones spelling out a doomed little girl’s name glint in the moonlight.

You slip in both earbuds and press play. Aegon left it paused at an Enrique Iglesias song; you assume he must have been thinking of Rio.

“You look at me and, girl, you take me to another place

Got me feelin’ like I’m flyin’, like I’m out of space

Something ‘bout your body says, come and take me

Got me begging, got me hoping that the night don’t stop…”

You try to see constellations in the night sky instead of random, indifferent distant suns. You try not to remember the way Aemond was when you thought his mark on you was permanent.

“Girl, I like the way you move, come and show me what to do

You can tell me that you want me, girl, you got nothing to lose

I can’t wait no more

I can’t wait no more…”

You spot a glimmer of light among the stars and choose to believe it is a comet rather than a fighter jet, or a forgotten satellite, or the refracted remnants of a solar storm, or something you only imagined and that never existed at all.

#aemond targaryen x reader #aemond targaryen #aemond x you #aemond x reader #aemond x y/n #aemond targaryen x y/n

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grapejuicestyless · 2 months

Text

We Can Run Away

Harry Styles x fem!reader

Summery: She was everything he ever wanted, and she was clueless about everything he ever was. And somehow, they understood each other all because of the subway.

Harry usually wasn’t one to take the subway after a long night. Often, he was in some black van on his way to his bed minutes after he sang out the last note, the crowd still roaring with excitement from the set inside as he departed from the venue. But tonight, Harry was still wide awake after his set finished. Instead, he’d stayed behind, fixing things up backstage until the very last fan had left the arena, leaving Harry almost completely alone in the large space that was once filled with the love and laughter of anxious fans screaming his name.

So tonight, Harry decided to walk among the quiet folk and take the empty train back to where he was staying for the night. The subway only ran this late on nights like tonight. Nights where people were destined to be out late, living their young lives dancing in the pit and accompanying their children in the nosebleeds.

Harry hopped on the last train home, the emptiness of the car relaxing, his bag settled down beside him and a book on his lap. He found the atmosphere was a perfect place for him to wind down from his extended high, to tire him out and help him doze off peacefully tonight.

There was only one other person with him late at night. A young woman who wore frayed jeans shorts, boston clogs with bunched up socks, and the deepest red sweatshirt he’d ever seen. She looked like she wasn’t aware of the time, wide awake with a calm smile on her face as if the day was brand new.

The morning had just began to roll around, but darkness still covered the sky. Not even breaking three a.m. yet and still, she could have fooled him into believing it was nearly noon if not for the emptiness surrounding them.

She was no bother to Harry though, so he patiently flipped through his book, rereading some of the pages because his mind wandered off in the middle of the paragraphs and he couldn’t focus. But just before he decided to set the book down for the night and enjoy the rest of the ride, a soft voice spoke up.

“I love that book.”

Harry looked up to see the calm girl looking back at him. She had red lips and gentle eyes. The kind that pulled you in if you looked too deeply. The kind any person would trust blindly, and the kind that held a complex kind of innocence in them.

At first, he simply nodded, unaware of what he was supposed to say and not up for a conversation, but he couldn’t seem to pull his eyes from the captivating girl across from him.

“A Little Life, right?” The girl asked, persistently looking for a small conversation to fill the gaps of silence on the short ride across the city.

“Yeah.” Harry nodded, a small smile spreading across his face. “You have good taste.”

The girl simply shrugged.

“It’s a classic, right? I think everyone should read it at some point.”

“I don’t think everyone would enjoy it, it’s a little slow.” Harry commented, enjoying hearing the girls voice.

“Maybe.” The girl shrugged again, “But that’s what makes this one so good. It makes everything feel more real when it takes time for everything to crash down. The fall doesn’t happen overnight.” She defended.

“I take it you really love this book then.” Harry laughed quietly at the conversation.

“Yeah, you could say that.”

The train fell quiet again, but Harry couldn’t have gone back to reading if he tried. He placed the bookmark between the pages and instead took time to admire the way the book looked between his hands.

“I love the cover too. I wish I took that photo every day.”

Harry raised a brow, observing the cover more closely than he had before.

“I’m a photographer.” The girl added, and Harry hummed.

“What kinds of photos do you take?” He couldn’t help but ask.

“I mainly help with shoots for magazines. Vogue, Rolling Stone, Elle. I’ve been around the industry for as long as I can remember. Sometimes I help take photos for movies, which is cool, but mainly I just take photos for myself nowadays. You know, just letting my friends play dress up and creating the things I’ve been wanting to for a while.”

With the way she spoke about her job, Harry had not a single doubt that she held the most sincere love for the art she worked within. The kind girl talking quietly, but quickly about what she did and why she loved it, Harry wished she had kept rambling to him so he could have kept listening.

“What about you?” The girl asked suddenly, catching Harry off guard. He stumbled around for an answer before deciding on something vague.

“I work in music. I sing.” Harry nodded his head, watching how the girls eyes lit up in interest.

“That’s so cool, do you play shows ever?” The girl asked and Harry couldn’t help but bite back a laugh. He was sure he had glitter from his outfit he danced around stage in stuck to his face still and feathers from boas curled in his hair.

“Sometimes, yeah.” Harry smiled at the girls innocence.

“Do you play around here ever?”

“You ask a lot of questions.” Harry smiled.

“I’m just trying to pass time.” The girl responded quickly. “So do you?”

Harry nodded. “Yeah, sometimes.”

The girl hummed.

“I’m Y/n, by the way.” She extended her hand, and Harry mouthed her name back to her after she’d spoken it. Just to see how it would feel on his tongue.

“I’m Harry.” She repeated his name softly like an echo as he took her hand in his to shake it.

The robotic voice announced the final stop, and Harry watched as Y/n stood in a way that mirrored his movements. He figured he didn’t mind the fact that his walk home wouldn’t be as lonely as he thought, and in fact, he found himself silently praying that she would walk the same way as him as they stepped onto the platform.

“I hope you’re not following me, Harry.” Y/n joked as their footsteps fell into sync, sweaty palms shoved into their front pockets and their eyes adverting each others.

“Maybe I just want to know more about you.” Harry smiled. He decided he liked the way Y/n made him feel. Like he was desperate for the next sentence to come out of her mouth. Like he needed to know what she had to say. But maybe he was just getting tired.

“There’s not much else to know. I live a pretty boring life, I think you’ll find.”

“Well, there’s nothing wrong with that.”

“I didn’t say there was.” Y/n smiled, and Harry found himself blushing.

“I think the quiet can be good.” Y/n stated softly, looking at the way her feet fell between the large squares on the sidewalk. “It can be lonely, and that can be sad sometimes, but I don’t really mind it if I get to keep my peace.” She explained thoughtfully.

“Do you think about this often?” Harry couldn’t help but ask.

“When you live alone you have the time to think about a lot of things.” She responded, and Harry simply nodded.

“I like the quiet life too. It’s nice to step into the storm once in a while and see where you get dragged, but it’s nice to know where you’ll end up in the morning without a doubt.”

Y/n hummed at Harry’s response.

“I used to party a lot in college.” She laughed at herself. “Which is hard to believe now because I feel like my back was broken by a thousand bricks somewhere in my mid twenties but, I get what you mean. It was fun when it was cool, and when I had people I liked going out with. But I think I’d much rather prefer to know I’ll end up in my own bed in the morning.”

Harry couldn’t help but laugh at the girl beside him. Her toothy grin and her crinkles by her eyes. Harry imagined her a few years back, he imagined taking her to all the best spots in the city he could rack off in his mind. He figured she would be the life of the party. She made him feel like the subway was some first class plane ride and the trash rolling beneath his feet was golden.

“Are you always this talkative?” He laughed softly.

She shrugged.

“My mom would agree. She said when I was younger I would talk to anything that had ears. Sometimes she’d catch me pulling the grass outside because I liked to braid it, and she said I would be talking to myself. But I always told her I was talking to the butterflies.” She laughed at herself.

“What about you? Do you always entertain strangers on the subway?”

“Well, we aren’t really strangers anymore.” Harry argued. Y/n smiled at him.

“I guess not.” She shook her head thoughtfully.

“I don’t, usually, though.” Harry sighed. “But you’re nice enough. Easy to talk to, I guess.”

“Anyones easy to talk to when they can’t shut up.” She joked, and Harry simply laughed at her for the millionth time.

“I guess so.”

As their laughter fizzled out into giggles, a warm silence wrapped around them, the humidity of the summer air sticking to their skin like glue. Harry caught Y/n’s eye every few steps, swallowing repeatedly as if by doing so, he would think of something else to say.

“Are you from here?” She asked softly.

“Somewhat. What about you?”

She shook her head.

“I’m from the east coast. The United States.” She said softly.

“Why’d you leave?” Harry couldn’t help but ask.

“The city wasn’t for me. I wanted to live by a beach so I left to where I could find that. But then I guess that wasn’t what I wanted either. I think maybe I was made for the city, just not…that one.” She sighed in the middle of her sentence, like the memory of home was daunting to her.

“What about London? What drew you to it?” Harry asked softly.

Y/n shrugged, her eyes flickered to the ground.

“It reminded me of home without having to be there.”

Harry didn’t know what to say to that, but she didn’t really seem sad when she said it. Almost like it was some kind of relief.

“My mom said there was something really wrong with me when I was a kid, but I’ve always liked who I am.” She smiled up at Harry honestly, holding her hands in her palms.

“You know, I like that I can talk for hours, I like that I apologize all the time, I like that I’ve lived out my twenties the way I should have. I like when my bangs grow past my ears, and I like running because it reminds me of running in the park, and I’m not sorry because I love the girl who looks back at me in the mirror because she’s a collection of everything she’s ever loved and I think thats neat.” She ranted, a smile on her face the whole time, and breathy laughter escaping her lips.

Harry wanted to say something, to smile and agree that he also enjoyed her sticking around, but she had stopped a few feet back, her shoes wiping against a small brown doormat with no welcoming message painted on it.

“This is my stop.”

“Will I ever see you again?” Harry asked desperately from afar, like he couldn’t enter her space if he tried.

“Maybe.”

“Well, I really like the person you are too, I’d like to see you again.” He added, his words quick and desperate.

“You know where I live, Harry.” She stated simply, a smile on her face.

And it was true, he did. But she wasn’t on his way home. He’d passed his house a few blocks back, and somehow he hadn’t even noticed.

“What if you leave again?” He couldn’t help but ask.

She simply smiled.

“We can run away together.”

#harry styles x reader #harry styles x y/n #harry styles x you #harry styles imagine #harry styles fluff #harry styles angst #harry styles #yn x harrystyles #fine line harry styles #harry x reader

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fitgirlfemdom · 10 months

Text

✧∘* ✧･ﾟbigger guys✧∘* ✧･ﾟ

you meet me at the gym. maybe i caught your eye from the squat rack or maybe you watched as a downed a bottle of water during a break. it doesn't matter--we get to talking. eventually, you realize, i come to that gym everyday, and soon we get to exchanging numbers. i come across as this demure, young cardiobunny with a bit of an obsession for you, and maybe you're just looking to score.

it doesn't matter. i tell you that i like bigger guys. you ask me about my opinion of you, and i suggest that you could eat a few more calories. after all, it's bulking season. you don't really think that your 10% body fat is gonna maintain all the way to summer, do you? i suggest a mass gainer shake brand, and although you forget most of our conversation, on your way home, you couldn't help but stop by a grocery store and pick some up.

that's when i start asking you about it. i recommend, after our respective work-outs when we're downing out protein shakes, you take your mass gainer at the same time. it's efficiency, after all. you say you want to ease into it, but after meeting my eyes as the bottle touches your lips, something changes in you.

i go to the gym everyday, and when i see you enter, i ask about the shakes. you did bring some with you, right? you won't get any gains if you don't eat right after! didn't you know that? and that brand isn't even that good anyway. who told you to get that? let's head to your place after--i'll show you how to make a real shake.

that's when it becomes a daily routine--well, it started to, before your lethargy got to you. post-workout, i'd head over and whip up something special for you--gobs of peanut butter, mass gainer, heavy cream, protein powder, the works--all in the comfort of your own blender. you start to question if all of this is really necessary, but i did tell you big guys were better, and are you gonna tell me i'm wrong? look at you. don't get self-deprecating now. i like how much you've gained!

the daily work-out dates turn to me seeing you after, crashed out on the couch. you head to the gym a few times a week, but not as commonly as before. you've just been so tired lately, i get it. rest days are even more important for recovery, though. it's doctors' orders-you need more sleep, and you need more shakes. when you're not ordering DoorDash, i'm the one cooking for you. a shake goes with every meal--it's mandatory. and you love it. they taste good! why think so hard about it when i'm smiling when you do it?

in fact, going to the gym at all is just cutting down the muscle you already have, don't you know that? you need some time to regain mass. you might as well quit your job--it's so demanding, isn't it? i could support both of us easily, and why would i want you to risk burning more calories out and about? it'd be much easier for you to sit on the couch and regroup, watch some TV, watch some porn, and eat.

you quit your job, because it's sucked the soul out of you, honestly. you've moved in with me, because there's no reason to live separately when we spend all our time together. you can't go five minutes without one of my shakes or my meals, after all. you're honestly a real glutton now, if i'm being honest. whenever i return from my daily gym visit, i make sure to bring you plenty of take-out, or three pizzas, or a few Subway footlongs, just to make sure you're well-fed. you've added probably 100lbs of mass at this point. it'd be a shame for all that hard work to go to waste.

you barely move from the couch, and i think it's starting to get to you. your gym buddies are all wondering what happened, and you can barely get the strength to sit-up by yourself, but that mental turmoil seems to dissipate when you're eating. it just tastes too good, doesn't it, baby? you're so full, but you love when i bring a fork to your lips, or a slice of pizza to your mouth. you love when i nod affirmatively, smiling as i watch you down another one of my shakes.

you especially love when i ride you. all those past memories, memories of athletic prowess, of high school cheerleaders, of locker room chats, all seem to fade away. the rush of a new PR, the delight in pumping iron, it's all gone. you spread your thick, plumped-out thighs outward and i straddle you as the TV plays. it's hard to get a good hold on your cock with that gut in the way, but you're so hard, so needy, so hot--i plunge myself on it right away. you feel my tight, toned body squeeze the life out of you, hearing the wet slaps of your balls on my defined, perky ass. you might not be able to move as well now, but i certainly can. i'm the tightest you've ever had, and my tits are pressed up against your face.

you're sweating, and you're not even moving. well, not intentionally, anyway. your tits are bouncing more than mine, let's be honest. everything about me is perky and defined, firm--even my ribs are apparent. but you? you're a pig. your moans almost sound like oinks, that's how much pressure you've put on your body. you stare up at me riding your cock, and because of your porn-rotten brain and how pathetic you are, you cum almost immediately, like always. doesn't matter. i give you a hearty dose of Viagra with your mass gainer shake after, and i use your cock for the next few hours. i get horny after the gym, what can i say?

you've blown at least four loads into my wet cunt at this point, and although my stamina hasn't faltered, you're completely spent. your cock is so overstimulated, you wince at the slightest touch. i know this, baby, and i care about you so much, so i make sure i've licked every inch of it clean. i stare up at you from this angle, but i can barely see your face behind your gut. you've really let yourself go, haven't you? you're shaking, overfed, overstimulated, bound to this couch under your own poor decisions. why even leave the house? they're all just gonna make fun of you. you think your gym buddies won't have a few choice words to say about you when you make your return?

you don't care about this, about any of this. your brain is so melted from the constant dopamine, the constant pleasure, that you've lost all self-awareness. your daily schedules consists of cable TV, countless hours of porn and touching your pathetic cock, and, of course, eating everything in sight. you're a complete degenerate, but you're my complete degenerate.

i did tell you i liked bigger guys.

#feedee encouragement #feedee feeder #feedee piggy #feederist #feeding kink #ffa #male feedism #male feedee #gaining weight on purpose #chubby guy #gaining kink

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lurkiestvoid · 4 months

Text

You're being targeted by disinformation networks that are vastly more effective than you realize. And they're making you more hateful and depressed.

(This essay was originally by u/walkandtalkk and posted to r/GenZ on Reddit two months ago, and I've crossposted here on Tumblr for convenience because it's relevant and well-written.)

TL;DR: You know that Russia and other governments try to manipulate people online. But you almost certainly don't how just how effectively orchestrated influence networks are using social media platforms to make you -- individually-- angry, depressed, and hateful toward each other. Those networks' goal is simple: to cause Americans and other Westerners -- especially young ones -- to give up on social cohesion and to give up on learning the truth, so that Western countries lack the will to stand up to authoritarians and extremists.

And you probably don't realize how well it's working on you.

This is a long post, but I wrote it because this problem is real, and it's much scarier than you think.

How Russian networks fuel racial and gender wars to make Americans fight one another

In September 2018, a video went viral after being posted by In the Now, a social media news channel. It featured a feminist activist pouring bleach on a male subway passenger for manspreading. It got instant attention, with millions of views and wide social media outrage. Reddit users wrote that it had turned them against feminism.

There was one problem: The video was staged. And In the Now, which publicized it, is a subsidiary of RT, formerly Russia Today, the Kremlin TV channel aimed at foreign, English-speaking audiences.

As an MIT study found in 2019, Russia's online influence networks reached 140 million Americans every month -- the majority of U.S. social media users.

Russia began using troll farms a decade ago to incite gender and racial divisions in the United States

In 2013, Yevgeny Prigozhin, a confidante of Vladimir Putin, founded the Internet Research Agency (the IRA) in St. Petersburg. It was the Russian government's first coordinated facility to disrupt U.S. society and politics through social media.

Here's what Prigozhin had to say about the IRA's efforts to disrupt the 2022 election:

"Gentlemen, we interfered, we interfere and we will interfere. Carefully, precisely, surgically and in our own way, as we know how. During our pinpoint operations, we will remove both kidneys and the liver at once."

In 2014, the IRA and other Russian networks began establishing fake U.S. activist groups on social media. By 2015, hundreds of English-speaking young Russians worked at the IRA. Their assignment was to use those false social-media accounts, especially on Facebook and Twitter -- but also on Reddit, Tumblr, 9gag, and other platforms -- to aggressively spread conspiracy theories and mocking, ad hominem arguments that incite American users.

In 2017, U.S. intelligence found that Blacktivist, a Facebook and Twitter group with more followers than the official Black Lives Matter movement, was operated by Russia. Blacktivist regularly attacked America as racist and urged black users to rejected major candidates. On November 2, 2016, just before the 2016 election, Blacktivist's Twitter urged Black Americans: "Choose peace and vote for Jill Stein. Trust me, it's not a wasted vote."

Russia plays both sides -- on gender, race, and religion

The brilliance of the Russian influence campaign is that it convinces Americans to attack each other, worsening both misandry and misogyny, mutual racial hatred, and extreme antisemitism and Islamophobia. In short, it's not just an effort to boost the right wing; it's an effort to radicalize everybody.

Russia uses its trolling networks to aggressively attack men. According to MIT, in 2019, the most popular Black-oriented Facebook page was the charmingly named "My Baby Daddy Aint Shit." It regularly posts memes attacking Black men and government welfare workers. It serves two purposes: Make poor black women hate men, and goad black men into flame wars.

MIT found that My Baby Daddy is run by a large troll network in Eastern Europe likely financed by Russia.

But Russian influence networks are also also aggressively misogynistic and aggressively anti-LGBT.

On January 23, 2017, just after the first Women's March, the New York Times found that the Internet Research Agency began a coordinated attack on the movement. Per the Times:

More than 4,000 miles away, organizations linked to the Russian government had assigned teams to the Women’s March. At desks in bland offices in St. Petersburg, using models derived from advertising and public relations, copywriters were testing out social media messages critical of the Women’s March movement, adopting the personas of fictional Americans.

They posted as Black women critical of white feminism, conservative women who felt excluded, and men who mocked participants as hairy-legged whiners.

But the Russian PR teams realized that one attack worked better than the rest: They accused its co-founder, Arab American Linda Sarsour, of being an antisemite. Over the next 18 months, at least 152 Russian accounts regularly attacked Sarsour. That may not seem like many accounts, but it worked: They drove the Women's March movement into disarray and eventually crippled the organization.

Russia doesn't need a million accounts, or even that many likes or upvotes. It just needs to get enough attention that actual Western users begin amplifying its content.

A former federal prosecutor who investigated the Russian disinformation effort summarized it like this:

It wasn’t exclusively about Trump and Clinton anymore. It was deeper and more sinister and more diffuse in its focus on exploiting divisions within society on any number of different levels.

As the New York Times reported in 2022,

There was a routine: Arriving for a shift, [Russian disinformation] workers would scan news outlets on the ideological fringes, far left and far right, mining for extreme content that they could publish and amplify on the platforms, feeding extreme views into mainstream conversations.

China is joining in with AI

[A couple months ago], the New York Times reported on a new disinformation campaign. "Spamouflage" is an effort by China to divide Americans by combining AI with real images of the United States to exacerbate political and social tensions in the U.S. The goal appears to be to cause Americans to lose hope, by promoting exaggerated stories with fabricated photos about homeless violence and the risk of civil war.

As Ladislav Bittman, a former Czechoslovakian secret police operative, explained about Soviet disinformation, the strategy is not to invent something totally fake. Rather, it is to act like an evil doctor who expertly diagnoses the patient’s vulnerabilities and exploits them, “prolongs his illness and speeds him to an early grave instead of curing him.”

The influence networks are vastly more effective than platforms admit

Russia now runs its most sophisticated online influence efforts through a network called Fabrika. Fabrika's operators have bragged that social media platforms catch only 1% of their fake accounts across YouTube, Twitter, TikTok, and Telegram, and other platforms.

But how effective are these efforts? By 2020, Facebook's most popular pages for Christian and Black American content were run by Eastern European troll farms tied to the Kremlin. And Russia doesn't just target angry Boomers on Facebook. Russian trolls are enormously active on Twitter. And, even, on Reddit.

It's not just false facts

The term "disinformation" undersells the problem. Because much of Russia's social media activity is not trying to spread fake news. Instead, the goal is to divide and conquer by making Western audiences depressed and extreme.

Sometimes, through brigading and trolling. Other times, by posting hyper-negative or extremist posts or opinions about the U.S. the West over and over, until readers assume that's how most people feel. And sometimes, by using trolls to disrupt threads that advance Western unity.

As the RAND think tank explained, the Russian strategy is volume and repetition, from numerous accounts, to overwhelm real social media users and create the appearance that everyone disagrees with, or even hates, them. And it's not just low-quality bots. Per RAND,

Russian propaganda is produced in incredibly large volumes and is broadcast or otherwise distributed via a large number of channels. ... According to a former paid Russian Internet troll, the trolls are on duty 24 hours a day, in 12-hour shifts, and each has a daily quota of 135 posted comments of at least 200 characters.

What this means for you

You are being targeted by a sophisticated PR campaign meant to make you more resentful, bitter, and depressed. It's not just disinformation; it's also real-life human writers and advanced bot networks working hard to shift the conversation to the most negative and divisive topics and opinions.

It's why some topics seem to go from non-issues to constant controversy and discussion, with no clear reason, across social media platforms. And a lot of those trolls are actual, "professional" writers whose job is to sound real.

So what can you do? To quote WarGames: The only winning move is not to play. The reality is that you cannot distinguish disinformation accounts from real social media users. Unless you know whom you're talking to, there is a genuine chance that the post, tweet, or comment you are reading is an attempt to manipulate you -- politically or emotionally.

Here are some thoughts:

Don't accept facts from social media accounts you don't know. Russian, Chinese, and other manipulation efforts are not uniform. Some will make deranged claims, but others will tell half-truths. Or they'll spin facts about a complicated subject, be it the war in Ukraine or loneliness in young men, to give you a warped view of reality and spread division in the West.

Resist groupthink. A key element of manipulate networks is volume. People are naturally inclined to believe statements that have broad support. When a post gets 5,000 upvotes, it's easy to think the crowd is right. But "the crowd" could be fake accounts, and even if they're not, the brilliance of government manipulation campaigns is that they say things people are already predisposed to think. They'll tell conservative audiences something misleading about a Democrat, or make up a lie about Republicans that catches fire on a liberal server or subreddit.

Don't let social media warp your view of society. This is harder than it seems, but you need to accept that the facts -- and the opinions -- you see across social media are not reliable. If you want the news, do what everyone online says not to: look at serious, mainstream media. It is not always right. Sometimes, it screws up. But social media narratives are heavily manipulated by networks whose job is to ensure you are deceived, angry, and divided.

Edited for typos and clarity. (Tumblr-edited for formatting and to note a sourced article is now older than mentioned in the original post. -LV)

P.S. Apparently, this post was removed several hours ago due to a flood of reports. Thank you to the r/GenZ moderators for re-approving it.

Second edit:

This post is not meant to suggest that r/GenZ is uniquely or especially vulnerable, or to suggest that a lot of challenges people discuss here are not real. It's entirely the opposite: Growing loneliness, political polarization, and increasing social division along gender lines is real. The problem is that disinformation and influence networks expertly, and effectively, hijack those conversations and use those real, serious issues to poison the conversation. This post is not about left or right: Everyone is targeted.

(Further Tumblr notes: since this was posted, there have been several more articles detailing recent discoveries of active disinformation/influence and hacking campaigns by Russia and their allies against several countries and their respective elections, and barely touches on the numerous Tumblr blogs discovered to be troll farms/bad faith actors from pre-2016 through today. This is an ongoing and very real problem, and it's nowhere near over.

A quote from NPR article linked above from 2018 that you might find familiar today: "[A] particular hype and hatred for Trump is misleading the people and forcing Blacks to vote Killary. We cannot resort to the lesser of two devils. Then we'd surely be better off without voting AT ALL," a post from the account said.")

#propaganda #psyops #disinformation #US politics #election 2024 #us elections #YES we have legitimate criticisms of our politicians and systems #but that makes us EVEN MORE susceptible to radicalization. not immune #no not everyone sharing specific opinions are psyops. but some of them are #and we're more likely to eat it up on all sides if it aligns with our beliefs #the division is the point #sound familiar?#voting #rambles #long post

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the-gimmick-archive · 4 months

Text

Pinned post. (Will update.)

This is a shared blog made to archive important things that happen in the gimmickverse.

The current mods are: @justazebra (admin), @i-dont-know-how-to-name-this.

If we make a mistake, please tell us.

Please @ us if you see an important event happen, especially wars.

Send us an ask if you want to know about a certain event, we’ll do our best to find it.

If you have the link to something important that we didn't archive yet (especially if it happened before this blog started existing), please send it to us.

List of arcs and events:

The color war:

Earliest point in the arc we could find. The purple revolution begins. Green joins the revolution.

That time when figuratively everyone got possessed:

Earliest point in the arc we could find.

The UwU revolution:

Earliest point in the arc we could find.

Sealand dying and being revived:

Death. Revival. Death again, but this time they become death's assistant.

IKEA-Party City War:

Earliest point in the arc.

Goose god vs. Waste management war:

Earliest point. Waste management also declaring war. Goose god and waste management making an alliance to stop @/france-unofficial from attacking bean and making Bean sad.

New Zealand vs. Australia war:

Earliest point. New Zealand changing targets to England instead.

Bean getting kidnapped:

Earliest point.

Bean getting kidnapped again (by gimmick nose thief this time.):

Earliest point. Waste management selling their soul so they can see bean again. Molossia scratching and paralyzing Sealand. Sealand getting their souls stolen by gimmick nose thief.

List of gimmick blogs (copied from @/gimmick-simp, @/antarcitica-official, and @/celestial-same-picverse, and then added some missing ones):

@totally-official-gmail @totally-amazon @pizza-hut-official @spotify-official @truly-jcjenson

@bigbasket-notreally @discorddotcum-official @homedepot @im-pandora-i-promise @femboy-totally-bing

@kahoot-official @100percent-shell-oil @assistant-to-the-shell @truly-bath-and-body-works @definitely-tiktok-trust

@unofficially-joann-fabric @its-sanrio-official @the-real-gmail @apple-unofficial @jack-in-the-box-official

@official-arbys @officialtinder @realgoogleslides @reallytimhortons @officially-ikea

@claires-unofficial @barnes-and-noble-official @realgoogleclassroom @real-sephora @pizza-hut-unofficial

@google-news-official @totally-official-gmail @bingle-official @basically-bumble @def-bjs-guys

@official-opera-gx @official-firefox-nightly @the-mcdonalds @realgoogledocs @mcdonalds-official

@totally-bing @operagxreal @official-fedex @firehouse-subs-fr @k-f-c-official

@the-real-google @totally-ikea @taco-bell-unofficial @spotify-kids-real @the-real-victorias-secret

@subway-official @big-mayo-official @/realsafari @incognito-mode-official @burgerking-official

@definitely-wikipedia @the-one-and-only-pornhub @the-one-and-only-duckduckgo @its-target-official @yes-im-youtube-kids

@walmart-the-official @duothelingo @firefox-official @femboy-hooters-real @fedex-official

@yamaha-official @youtubefr @actually-x @reality-official

@femboy-google-news-official @50percent-shell-oil @yahooo-official @totally-airbus @the-official-spirit-airlines

@100percent-chipotle @unofficialvine

@totally-brazil @totally-italy @very-real-australia @the-province-of-nova-scotia-real @official-new-zealand

@russia-totallyofficial @quebec-official @india-official @india-reblogs @telangana-official

@denmark-official @pakistan-official @definitely-brasil @non-tyrannical-usa @antarcitica-official

@spain-unofficial @definitely-canada @france-unofficial @the-state-of-georgia-official @official-denmark

@denmark-forreal @official-ireland @texas-real @massachusetts-official @new-york-for-real

@definitelytherepublicofireland @true-blue-straya @totally-germany @official-the-united-states @totally-france

@forever-scotland @germany-official @sovereign-state-of-alaska @guatemala-official @republic-of-molossia

@actually-alberta @the-principality-of-sealand @totally-oregon @yugoslavia-official

@the-chill-planet-uranus @the-serene-moon-luna @earth-fan @deimos-moon-of-terror @officially-capricorn

@the-radiant-sun @the-ringed-planet-saturn @the-red-planet-mars @the-real-uranus @celestial-same-picverse

@officially-taurus @the-lovely-planet-earth @posts-with-10000-notes-in-spirit @/i-hesitantly-say-ok

@i-say-not-ok @i-say-ok @the-us-navy-offical

@woo-in-different-lengths @official-garlic-bread @shakespeare-official-reblogs @gimmick-thief @hold-my-dr-pepper

@oscar-wilde-official-account @the-real-illinois @i-say-grape @the-kingdom-of-norway @denmarklandia-official

@i-say-bean @sweden-official @antarcitica-official @gimmick-nose-thief @gimmick-thief-thief

@tamil-nadu-official @tamilnadu-official @anti-totally-bing @antiquitian-empire @rocks-anon

@tagswoman @actual-aspec-military @pansexual-spaceforce @the-aplatonic-cavalry @the-pointing-anon

@bi-poly-space-station @bisexual-airforce @aro-sp-ace-force @nonbinary-coastguard @demi-demolitions

@queer-military-authorities @queer-military-treasury @the-missiles-guy @the-official-goose-god @the-official-gemini

@actual-transgender-navy @genderfluid-marine-corp @real-australian-army @real-hottopic

@same-pic-of-venus-everyday @same-pic-of-the-earth-everyday @same-pic-of-the-moon-everyday @same-pic-of-mars-everyday @same-pic-of-jupiter-everyday

@same-pic-of-saturn-everyday @the-real-uranus @same-pic-of-neptune-everyday @steve-not-anon @metal-frisbee

@earth-fan @not-10-salmon-in-a-png @same-pic-of-halleys-comet @same-pic-of-callisto-everyday @same-pic-of-eris-everyday @same-pic-of-kepler-186f-everyday

@same-pic-of-haumea-everyday @same-image-of-7-iris @book-nonsie-not-anon @celestial-same-picverse @same-pic-of-pluto-everyday

@same-pic-of-juno-everyday @same-pic-of-polaris-everyday @tomblrmartian @same-pic-of-a-blackhole-everyday @same-pic-of-the-stars-everyday

@alpha-centauri-everyday @same-cosmic-cliffs-pic-every-day @rose-nebula-always @same-pic-of-makemake-everyday @same-picture-of-europa

@same-pic-of-the-lagoon-nebula @star-that-eats-the-sun @jupiter-fan

@same-pic-of-triton-everyday @pq-anon @same-pic-of-ceres-everyday @same-pic-of-wolftopia-everyday

@same-pic-of-mars-everyday @same-pic-of-tres2b-everyday @samepicofthewowsignaleveryday @same-pic-of-the-blue-moon @same-image-of-hr8799e-every-day

@samepictureofsednadaily @moon-of-fear-phobos @totally-neptune-official @corvus-the-constellation @official-nissan

@hollowknight-reference @microsoft-edge-official @arethosewordsinthebible @the-gimmick-doctor @i-say-doot-doot

@i-say-ok @discord-marriage-bot-real @literally-leo @literally-luxembourg

@/same-pic-of-a-dictionary-daily @/same-pic-of-mercury-everyday @/hateful-daystar @//court-artist-under-the-stars @/samepicofproximacentaurieveryday @/same-pic-of-the-sun-everyday @/same-pic-of-the-blood-moon @/same-pic-of-uranus-everyday @/same-pic-of-venus-every-day @/same-pic-of-trans-jupiter @/ton-618-real @/same-pic-of-alpha-centaur-24-7 @/same-pic-of-andromeda-everyday @/same-pic-of-a-bagel-everyday @/same-pic-of-titan-every-day

@putting-iris-in-places @communist-usa-real

(Sorry if you didn't want to get tagged.)

#gimmick blog #gimmick account #into the gimmickverse

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bangaveragewhitewine · 1 year

Text

Pinch Me

After your first date with a familiar face from home, waking up next to Steve feels like something out of a dream.

This is a follow on from Clean Slate but can be read as standalone fic.

Word Count: 4.5k

Warnings/Content: Both you and Steve are in your late-twenties and were in school together; you met again on a blind date almost ten years later. This is an 18+ fic; oral (reader receiving), penetrative sex. Spoiler but use of ‘good girl’ in a sexy content. Steve Harrington being a smooth mf comes with it's own warning.

I have tried to leave physical descriptions as neutral and inclusive as possible! Some mentions of anxiety and insecurity. Plenty of kissing to make up for that!

Author’s Note: Clean Slate was intended to be a one off fic but here we are! This is my first attempt at smut in a fic, so hopefully it’s not horrendous! Thank you for reading, enjoy!

Thank you to my lovely @specialagentmonkey for beta reading for me💖

Once again, this is an 18+ fic. Please do not do any AI fuckery with my work or repost on other sites.

(divider by me)

Ever since you were little, your bed had been one of your favourite places. Soft sheets, books on the bedside table and a perfectly curated stack of pillows all topped off with the quilt you had made with your grandma before her arthritis got too bad.

In your mom’s photo albums there was more than one snapshot of you as a sleepy toddler with a wild bed head peeking up from your pillow on Christmas morning. Another few of you reading Nancy Drew in a pillow nest with a gap toothed smile.

By now, you had made your own little nest out in the big bad world now; a surprisingly roomy studio with big windows and noisy neighbours on one side. You had bought new sheets and a duvet printed with dusty pink roses on porcelain white cotton, curated a new stack of pillows and added too many decorative cushions on top of the same quilt that had made the move with you to Indianapolis and on to Chicago. There were still books on your bedside, a little dish for your jewellery to sit in while you slept, and an accumulation of lip balms, pillow mist and a candle or two to set the mood.

After long shifts and bad dates, your bed was still your haven. When you were particularly anxious, you could still hear the shrill of your old alarm blaring in your ears; the sound of that clock that had dragged you from sweet dreams in your beloved bed on chilly winter mornings. Some mornings, as you rode the subway to work, you swore you could hear your bed’s own siren song calling you to get off at the next stop, come home to read and nap the day away.

The sanctuary was for you alone, save for an occasional sleepover with your best friend Annie. Your dates were never invited to stay and make themselves comfortable. But this morning, waking up with Steve Harrington in your bed? That was new.

It was safe to say that your blind date went well. Really well.

You had resolutely avoided talking about school, only mentioning people each other might have remembered in the context of a story about your lives outside Hawkins. Steve was still in touch with a lot of people from home. You recognised some of their names; Robin who grew up a street away from you, Eddie Munson who you knew from art class and the occasional house party in your youth, even Nancy Wheeler. The way he lit up with so much fondness for ‘his kids’ who weren’t kids anymore made your face ache from smiling.

And Steve had listened, wanted to hear how you had liked Indianapolis for college (he had spent some time there too before making the move to Chicago with Robin after Eddie had sussed the place out and found an apartment near his own for them that they still shared). He had asked about your job, your life in the city, and took a real interest in you.

His attention had stayed on you, never straying to see who else was around or looking for an escape route. His honeyed gaze had stayed focused, watching how you used your hands when you spoke and dipped occasionally to look at your lips. Steve’s hand had stayed close by when his fingers weren’t outright intertwined with yours. He did this thing with his thumb, stroking it across the bone of your wrist, and a few times he had squeezed your hand while you spoke as if to say ‘go on, I’m listening’ - it was so centering for your often anxious mind.

You had a few more drinks, picked a few songs on the jukebox, kept talking and talking until you were sitting close enough to hear Steve’s stomach growl, making his cheeks flush pink.

“I know a pizza spot close by if you’re hungry?” you suggested.

“DiFontaines?” Steve smiled a little, nodding at your suggestion. “Yeah I love it. Let’s go.”

Neither of you wanted to end the night yet, say goodbye. So you didn’t. Instead you headed hand in hand into the warm night air, nicely buzzed and in search of hot pizza and crispy cold sodas.

The sun had dipped in the sky, taking the worst of the heat with it, but the night stayed humid and sticky. Despite the warmth, Steve held your hand and between stories, as you walked down the next block, he lifted his arm to twirl you when you passed a bar blaring Achy Breaky Heart onto the street; Billy Ray’s crooning was eclipsed by your laughter.

“You’re such a dork,” you giggled, pushing him gently before Steve quickly hugged you against his side again. Never had you felt so comfortable on a first date - but this wasn’t just any blind first date.

“Dork?! You been talkin’ to Robin?” Steve smiled down at you, sparking heat in your belly.

“Guess your reputation precedes you, Harrington.” With a burst of bravery, owing it to your younger self, you bounced up on your toes to peck his cheek before taking off a few steps ahead, turning to grin back at him as he jogged to catch up before you swerved into the pizza place.

You joined the line of late night pizza lovers and Steve had slipped an arm around you, leaned his chin on your head as your heart pounded hard. “So, what’re we getting?” he asked.

The familiarity of it all made you feel fuzzy around the edges, his thumb stroking your shoulder, the heat of him pressed against your side.

“It’s probably sacrilegious but the New York style slice, veggie or… artichoke.” Feeling brave again you cover his hand with yours and squeezed. “You?”

“Okay so we’re both sinners then.” He hummed, considering his options. “You’re vegetarian right?”

“Yeah, I try to be.” You liked how he had remembered a tiny detail from a story told hours ago.

“Okay. Four cheese then.”

“You sure?” Your interest piqued.

“Yeah, ‘course. You might not want a goodnight kiss if I have pepperoni breath.”

You swear your jaw dropped as Steve schooled his smile, watching the group of tipsy tourists ahead of you order their slices before his eyes darted back to you.

Steve was more timid, his voice quieter as he filled the silence between you when you had been too stunned to answer. “It’s also totally fine if you don’t want to kiss me, sweetheart. I know I can lay it on ki-“

Instead you rocked up to close the gap between you, ignoring the pinch of your sandals to lay a kiss onto his lips. Steve was quick to cup your cheek, keeping you there to kiss you back just as sweetly.

His nose has nudged against yours before he let you go, gazing into each other’s eyes until your attention was pulled to ‘order or get out’. His arm had stayed around you as you placed your orders, splitting a third classic deep dish slice between you so you wouldn't be run out of town with torches and pitchforks.

Full of pizza and soda and bravery, you had taken Steve’s hand again and strolled through the sticky Chicago night, steering him toward your apartment with the guise of proving that the same pink scrunchie you wore in high school was in fact on your bedside table. You both knew what you were really suggesting.

Part of you niggled away, expecting him to make a polite excuse to head home instead. But Steve only had eyes for you and sealed the deal with another kiss. You lost yourselves in each other, feeling younger together, and made out with Steve’s back against the shutters of somewhere long closed for the night as he squeezed your hips and you toyed with the ends of his hair. It was with regret that he had to tear himself away from your lips to hail a cab for you both, where you did your best to behave on the way to your apartment.

As you lay in bed that next morning, watching how Steve’s chest rose and fell with breath, how soft he looked in sleep, you felt warm and happy. His golden glow was just as dazzling in the morning light.

Your night together had been unrushed. Steve hadn’t just hit it and quit it with you. No, instead you had kissed and kissed, making out and letting your hands roam like two teenagers except there was no hurry; no seven minute deadline or someone pounding on a guest room door to see if it was occupied. The rumours in school had been true; Steve Harrington was an amazing kisser. You had listened to a friend of a friend rave about his soft lips after a lucky spin the bottle in junior year; now you had tasted him for yourself, you understood why she had brought it up so much. But Steve was in your bed now, not hers, you thought smugly.

On the way from the couch to your bed, he had unzipped your dress and you made sure his powdery blue shirt wouldn’t be too creased in the morning, draping it over the back of a chair instead of leaving it balled up on the ground.

Steve had made sure you knew how beautiful he thought you were, kissed you everywhere before taking his time with you and spent an age between your legs as he worked you open for him. Lying there the next morning, you could feel your face heat up when you remembered how his touch set you on fire. The pleasant all over ache weighed you down into your mattress.

With a messy bed-head, Steve woke a little after you and saw you smiling dreamily to yourself. He reached out to pull you closer, tucking his face into your neck.

“Mornin’.” His voice was gravelly and deep.

“Morning.” You brush his hair back gently and dot a kiss to his forehead before stroking your fingers over his shoulders soothingly, dragging them down his arm.

“S’nice,” he said, lips moving against your neck before he pressed a few kisses there.

Lying face to face on your pillow, your fingers played with the fine gold chain that settled around his throat, dipping lower into the thick hair on his chest.

“I had a really good time last night.” Steve’s fingers walk up your arm, before twirling your hair around one carefully.

When you look up at him, he’s got this little smile on his face. He inches closer, letting his gaze drop to your own smiling mouth before you share a slow morning kiss.

“Me too,” you whisper, settling your hand on the side of his neck before returning his kiss again. Your fingers skate across and behind the lobe of his ear, the underside of his jaw and the shade of stubble there.

With his large soft hands, he drags you closer still, pressing you right up against him. The t-shirt you had pulled on after the sweat on your body had started to cool last night was rucked up over your hip as Steve’s thumb strokes the dip there.

You sigh into his mouth, feeling warm all over despite the chill of your box fan to cool the room down. This morning you're warmed by the heat and glow that radiates from Steve Harrington, hotter than the sun itself.

“You’re really beautiful,” he murmurs against your lips, shifting his weight so you’re on your back again with one of his thighs slotted between yours. Steve brushes your hair back, fanning it out over the pillow before dipping down to kiss you again. He leaves you breathless before his lips trail lower to your jaw and neck.

It’s an intimacy you hadn’t had with anyone in a long time, feeling safe enough with Steve to let yourself be loved on like this. You will yourself to be present with him, bask in his glow as it warms you, but barbs of anxiety have crept in to distract you.

Last night was amazing, slow and syrupy and tender. If that had been the last time you ever saw Steve Harrington you could have probably died happy - happier than before anyway. But instead he stayed, and as he kisses you again (morning breath ignored and forgotten). Steve didn’t care that you had faded into the background of your shared high school halls, he had loved how you had the bravery to break out of Hawkins and be you now.

Steve notices you tensing up and peels himself back, thumbing your cheek again as he says your name. “Do you want me to stop?” he asks, concern in his eyes. It makes your heart ache.

You shake your head and cover the hand on your cheek. “No. Never.” You pull him to you again and relish the weight of him on top, your hands over his shoulders. “I’m getting in my head. You’re straight out of a dream, Steve. I feel like asking you to pinch me.”

You feel a little embarrassed about being quite so honest with him like this, but he oozes a magnetism and calmness that makes you want to tell him everything. But you don’t want to scare him away, be left waiting for another call that’s not coming, or hear him say ‘that was fun but I’m not looking for anything serious right now’.

He smiles and leans his weight on one strong arm so he’s not totally crushing you. “I can, if you want. But I promise I’m real. And I’m just some guy.”

You laugh. “Some guy? Nah Steve, I think you might be some sort of apparition. Or like, a Greek god.” You squeeze his bicep for emphasis. “Definitely dreaming.”

Steve rolls his eyes, playful, and pinches your cheek lightly. “See? Silly.” He presses a kiss to where he pinched before going in for another on your smiling mouth. Steve was not shy or stingy with his kisses, you had learned. You liked that a lot.

“I think you’re pretty amazing, y’know. If you’re not sick of me yet, would you wanna go for breakfast with me?” Steve kneels up between your thighs, the sheets pooling around his hips. Your eyes go right to the white Calvin’s pulled tight over the thickness of him. Your eyes rake up over his body until you’re caught staring, ogling, and Steve smiles when you pull a pillow over your face. You certainly hadn’t been so shy last night; he laughs and lifts it away to gaze down at you, hoping you will say yes.

“C’mere. Then you can take me for breakfast.” You coax him back down, hooking one leg over his hip. “Prove to me again that you’re not just in my imagination?”

Steve grins and rolls himself down over you. “You been imagining me like this? Scandalous,” he teases before resuming his kisses from earlier, which you are eager to return. Your bodies move together, hips tilting toward each other seeking out that pressure that makes your tummy sizzle. As Steve’s hands slip under your sized-up sleep shirt again, your own dips down to cup him through his underwear. His breath hitches, eyes fluttering shut.

“Baby…”

Baby.

You smile and repeat the movement firmer this time before beginning to coax him to hardness, breaking your hold on him only to help him remove your tshirt. It’s lost to the floor along with Steve’s briefs. His breath is hot against your mouth as your bodies press together. The feeling of Steve’s hands on your breasts draws out a whine that’s swallowed by another kiss; his hands are so big and they feel like they are everywhere, like Steve is everywhere. His mouth and hands trail lower, spreading you out for him on your dusty rose bedsheets. He cups you there, thumb swiping in a delicious rhythm that has you gasping against his shoulder.

“I’ve got you,” he whispers, kissing the tops of your breasts. “Let me hear those pretty noises again, baby. Please?”

You whimper as his fingers ease you open, so gentle like the polite ‘please’. Steve had proven he was a talker already last night, his words making you feel hot all over as he had pushed so carefully inside, turning tipsy giggles into needy gasps. You felt the same heat engulf you now as he lay wet kisses to your tummy, your hips, pausing only so that he could lie comfortably between your thighs after shouldering his way between them.

He’s looking up at you, his cheek against the meat of your thigh. Lips curve into a smile when you meet his gaze, and he closes his eyes when you stroke his hair back. One of his hands takes yours and rests together on your belly as he dips to kiss you where you need him, humming against you when you gasp his name.

Your eyes drop closed, fireworks bursting behind them as he makes you feel so good. The once or twice any other man had done this was lacklustre in skill and enthusiasm, which Steve possessed in every cell of his being. When you chance looking at him you spot his hips shifting against the mattress, chasing relief for his own ache which makes you moan louder. His whispered “good girl” sends your eyes rolling back into your skull.

Steve brings you to your peak quicker than anyone ever had before. Mindful that you might be a little tender from the night before as he presses one long and thick finger inside before a second joins it a few moments later, gentle but with a purpose of making you forget your own name. His shoulder presses firm against your thigh, spreading you wider as his fingers pump steadily, keeping the pace and press against the spot inside you that makes you feel fit to explode.

You squeeze his arm while your capacity for coherent speech vanishes, focusing only on the swirl and suck of his mouth and the crook and curl of his fingers. It’s so sudden, and you swear you’ve never made a noise so loud as you moan for him, trembling all over. He whispers his praise against your thigh before bringing his mouth back to where you’re weeping for him and doesn’t stop until your thighs are crushing his ears, muffling your voice.

Chest heaving, you feel him move up to check on you. He brings you close, holding you as you glow with him and presses feathery kisses to your hairline. “You still with me? Not still dreaming about me?”

“Mm, think I died,” you manage, peeking up at him with teary eyes. Another tender kiss to the dopey smile on your lips. “Thank you.”

“No need to thank me, sweetheart.”

His grin is deservedly cocky, earning himself the warm grasp of your hand around his length. The prettiest frown graces his face as you squeeze and slowly pump your hand, your lips moving to his neck.

Steve’s gaze moves from your face, dragging down your body to where your hand holds him. His size makes your hand look small and you feel the kick of his arousal on your palm. You manage to swing one wobbly leg over him, sitting on the breadth of his thighs with new confidence as he holds you steady.

You lean across him, earning kisses to your chest as you fish for a condom to rip open and roll on to him before lowering yourself down into his lap.

Sinking your teeth into the fat of your lower lip at the stretch of him, Steve huffs out a breathy swear against your chest. His hands settle on your hip and thigh, grounding and never rushing as you breathe into the feeling of him inside you before beginning to move.

“Fuck,” he murmurs, watching you in awe. “So pretty f’me.”

That spurs you on, chasing the tingle deep in your abdomen. Your fingers lace with Steve’s on your thigh, the other hand braced against the wall behind his shoulder.

His head leans back by your hand, turning to kiss your wrist as you move in his lap. You curl your arm around him, bringing each other close as his hips hitch up to meet you.

“So good, baby,” he murmurs, kissing you again as his breath comes quicker now. “You’re so fuckin’ pretty.”

Gasping his name, you hold him tight to you as you move together. He can’t take his eyes off of you, “Good girl, so gorgeous.”

Messy kisses broken by gasps and Steve’s praise are traded back and forth. His hands feel huge where they hold you at your waist.

The cord of pleasure deep in your pelvis winds tighter. Steve’s jaw twitches as he holds on to you, and you kiss the tense muscle before whispering, “You make me feel so good.” The sound he makes is almost a whimper and he squeezes the meat of your ass. Your hips continue their rise and roll, you feel like every cell of your body is aflame.

Steve watches you, praising words fanning the fire low in your belly. The burn in your thighs makes you pause and he takes the chance to kiss you stupid again.

“Feel good? Yeah?” When you nod, feeling spaced out, he pecks your swollen lips and whispers, “Let me take care of you, sweetheart.” You wonder if he lets anyone take care of him, return his generosity and affections.

He is so gentle as he holds you to his chest and slouches lower on the bed. You close your eyes at the feeling of being held like this, cheek to his broad shoulder. His feet are flat and firm on the bed and the experimental thrust up into you makes you sigh his name. Steve sweeps your hair to one side so that he can kiss your neck again, checking in with you before continuing.

His name echoes on your bedroom walls as he grazes the elusive spot inside of you; the way you press right against his pelvis gives a rub of friction that makes lightning zing through your limbs. “That’s it. Huh? Right there?” His voice is tight as he drives up into you again, faster now with the new angle.

You can hardly summon the sense to make a sentence, babbling now with how good he’s making you feel, the occasional broken curse or plea. After last night and this morning, the neighbours won’t be happy or forget Steve’s name anytime soon - not that you give a fuck.

You kiss him again, though now you’re both so far gone it’s messy and needy, hot breaths against each other’s cheeks. The lick of his tongue against yours makes you shiver. You feel ready to burst, pleasure building as his hips drive up hard into you

With the feeling of him so deep inside of you, you fall over the edge again. The feeling of your orgasm, clenching and fluttering and soaking, drags him with you, groaning against your neck when his hips slam and stutter still. His arms are tight around you, both heaving deep breaths together.

Steve eases you both down onto your sides, tangled together. You feel dazed and heavy but the stroke of Steve’s fingers on your hip, his hot breath on your collarbone grounds you until the sounds of Chicago on a Saturday morning remind you that this wasn’t a dream.

“You okay? That.. Jesus…” Steve’s voice is breathy, but you hear his smile.

“Yeah. I’m…amazing.”

“Yeah, you are.”

There’s comfortable silence as you both come back to earth.

After a few moments Steve dots kisses to your cheeks, forehead and nose before he eases out of you to bin the full condom. Soon you’re back in bed with him, held safe in his arms. His cheeks are pink and you want to squeeze them.

“You’re so gorgeous, Steve.” Your fingers brush over the moles dotted along his cheekbone, and he catches your hand to kiss your fingers sweetly in distraction. “Hey. Look at me, Harrington.”

“Back to Harrington?” he teases, looking into your eyes with faux intensity to make you giggle. “M’lookin’.”

“Steve. Steven.” You match his teasing with pretend-seriousness.

“Not Steven. Please, baby.” His mouth turns down, exaggerating his unhappiness with you, but the stroke of his fingers on your hip say otherwise.

“Ms O’Donnell called you Steven.”

“Please don’t bring O’Donnell up while my dick is still out.”

You both dissolve into giggles, pressing your face against the chain on his chest. “Shut up, she had that much of an effect on you?! Calling you Steven gets you all worked up? Okay perv, good to know.”

“You’re sick in the head.” His voice is shaky with laughter against your hair. “S’a good thing you’re cute.”

“Mhm. Definitely a sicko. Two cute sickos.” You take his face in your hands again. “You’re a great date Steve Harrington.”

He smiles, but it falls a little - you just about catch it. It makes your heart hurt. Your inability to just say that you don’t want this to be a one time thing makes you want to pull your own hair out.

“I do my best. I had so much fun with you. I’m just kinda… sick of first dates though. Yknow?”

“I do know. But that’s not how last night felt.”

There’s a flash of recognition in his eyes as he nods.

“Definitely helped that we had a bit of a head start on the ‘where are you from?’ shit..” There’s a twinkle of playfulness in his heart wrenching sincerity.

“I hate that part.” You look into his eyes. It makes your chest flutter, how he looks at you.

“I know we didn’t know each other all that well in school..”

“Since kindergarten.” Your shrug is tiny, you smile playfully as he groans.

“Since kindergarten. Shit. What’ve I been doing all this time…” he asks the ceiling.

“Same as me. Getting out of Hawkins. Going on crappy dates...”

“Mm, true. Growing up, I guess.” He’s quiet for a moment, “Last night wasn’t crappy. Best date I’ve been on in a long long time.”

“Me too. I think I’ll let you take me out again, if you want to…” you say, whispering bravely as you act all playful despite your hammering heart.

The smile on Steve’s face makes the butterflies in your stomach swoop again. You weren’t the only one who felt so dimmed by dating around, having your heart broken. There’s a beat of silence, charged electric as Steve looks at your lips and you touch his chain again.

“You like pancakes, or waffles?” Steve’s eyes twinkle.

You squeeze the bulk of his bicep. “French toast.”

His head tips back in laugh, showing off his delicious throat. “Oh she’s fancy?”

“She is.”

He leans in to kiss you in more time. “I can do fancy, baby.”

“You’ve done fancy twice. Fancy is hungry, Steve.”

Your laughter echoes in the golden morning light that fills your room as his fingers skate over your ribs, finding the ticklish spots before he hauls you as close as possible again.

Steve’s nose presses against your cheek, smooching one more kiss there before sitting up to find his pants. As you stargaze at the constellation on his broad back, you think this might just be the start of something really amazing.

comments, reblogs and likes are not simply appreciated - they are cherished

#steve harrington x reader #Steve Harrington x you #stranger things #steve harrington fanfic #Steve Harrington x fem!reader #steve harrington #Steve Harrington x y/n #steve harrington is a total dreamboat #my fic #steve harrington fanfiction #steve harrington fic #steve harrington oneshot #steve harrington imagine #steve harrington fluff #stranger things fanfiction #steve harrington x f!reader #steve stranger things #Steve Harrington smut #bangaveragefics

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ezkel · 14 days

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James' phone is full of mobile phone games because he sees the rage bait ads and downloads them every time because the ads piss him off so much. he plays them for a few hours, loses interest and never touches them again. but forgets to uninstall, so he's just got hundreds of games installed that he never plays.

Sirius plays those gacha games, like afk arena. he's very competitive about it and is in the top ten of every leader board. he spends real money on the games and spends hours everyday making sure he's still on leaderboards.

remus has two games on his phone, one is a word based puzzle game, one is subway surfer for Sirius when he gets bored.

peter has papas pizzeria type games on his phone. he's always playing them, and all his papas restaurants are incredibly developed and he's spent years playing them.

barty plays exclusively bloon tower defense. he's completed every map, he has top scores in every category. he goes feral every time there's an update.

Evan plays a few different games but mainly is "forced" to play btd6 with barty in multiplayer mode because he enjoys watching Barty strategize a game with cute monkeys.

Regulus doesn't play phone games, but his phone is full of downloaded games because James keeps taking it to log into his social medias and keeps seeing the ads and downloading them. the only times regulus plays them is because James has found a good multiplayer and has managed to convince regulus.

Pandora is still attached to cookierun kingdom. she's number one on the leaderboard and has maxed out every cookie.

dorcas plays those mystery games. and gets pissed every time they limit her daily moves, refuses to pay for them. she has previously stolen regulus or bartys credit cards to pay for extra moves. she downloads whichever gacha game Marlene is currently attached to to watch the leaderboards to witness the rivalry, but doesn't play them.

Marlene plays gacha games with Sirius, tries to beat him in the leaderboards, steals his credit card information to buy packs. she's also in the top tens. she doesn't care about the leaderboards she just wants to beat Sirius and laughs at him everytime she overtakes him on the boards.

Mary plays games like episode. she constantly complains about how stupid it is that she'd have to pay for the good outfits and choices. she does not enjoy the games but she's hooked.

lily plays cookie run kingdom because Pandora gives her heart eyes everytime she mentions the game. she doesn't put much time into it but enjoys to check in on it and visit Pandora's kingdom to see the pretty arrangements she's made.

#james potter #sirius black #remus lupin #peter pettigrew #barty crouch jr #evan rosier #regulus black #pandora rosier #pandora lovegood #dorcas meadowes #marlene mckinnon #mary macdonald #lily evans #wolfstar #jegulus #rosekiller #pandalily #dorlene #i do all these things

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nexus-my-beloved · 1 month

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Alright, welcome to my ramble about why Five/Lila in s4 makes absolute complete sense and why everyone tearing it down and making derogatory remarks make me ridiculously angry when they refuse to really think about it.

UMBRELLA ACADEMY S4 SPOILERS !

One of the biggest things I'm seeing people do/say about season 4 is that adding a love interest for Five ruined it or that Five "wouldn't do that" and that it was extremely out of character. At a glance, yes, that can make sense, but if you stop to think about it for five seconds longer than it becomes increasingly apparent that it MAKES SENSE.

Another thing people keep complaining about it the fact that Five was being a homewrecker/Five was being an awful person/etc. What people are doing is they are neglecting to acknowledge the fact that the relationship was as much as Five's persistence as it was Lila's. Lila was not roped into a relationship, she was just as much into it as he was! If you are going to call out Five, remember that you need to call out Lila, too.

Now that my baseline points are out there, let me explain:

When Five was in the apocalypse the first time, he felt completely alone in a barren wasteland. He was isolated, and young, and he wanted to get back to his family to save them. While he waited, though, he grew extremely attached to the first thing he could that gave him any kind of company: Dolores. He cared about her and even loved her, to a degree, proven by how he threatened to shoot Luther in s1 for trying to drop her out a window and by how he kissed the hallucination of a human Dolores when under the influence of Jayme's hallucination venom. Whether the love was real or not, he felt that it was, and it was a result of forced proximity and a lonely person wanting affection ("we only had each other")

When Five ended up trapped in the subway, he was lonely in yet another wasteland with more dangers than before. He felt isolated from the world around him, wanted to get back home to save his family (sound familiar yet?) but this time he was years older. He and Lila spent seven years on that subway, alone, together, and as would happen with forced proximity they got close. (I've heard people argue that they would've had a good sibling dynamic and that the romance ruined it, but the parallels between Lila and Dolores here are kind of obvious, I thought.) Five got attached to Lila, cared about her, and grew to love her (again, whether it was true love or not, that didn't matter when he thought he loved her, at least). In fact, throughout the entire show, Five has never smiled like he did when he was with Lila. He was happy. He did love her.

Often, Five is the one blamed for the relationship (that I have seen; I haven't yet seen ANYONE say Lila was also at fault). The issue is, Lila was the one who was married, the one who had kids, and yet she encouraged the relationship anyway. She didn't think she would get back to Diego, after a while. They were making the best of what they had, and personally, I don't think anything is wrong with the fact they had a relationship while in the subway - neither of them thought they would get home. Lila wasn't intending to cheat, she just didn't think she'd be able to get back to them and wasn't going to spend the rest of her life miserable. Five wasn't intending to play homewrecker, he fell in love and she encouraged it - what was he supposed to do? They were together of their own free wills. I think it's alright that they were together, but if you're going to blame anyone about it, both of them deserve blame because both of them were equal parts into the relationship.

I have heard people say that the stopping to rest was out of character and that it wasn't the same Five who fought 45 years in an apocalypse to get back to his family. That's the thing, though, isn't it? Five has done nothing but work to save his family since he was thirteen years old. 45 years in an apocalypse, a hellish two-ish weeks between saving them from a falling moon, WWIII in the 60s, and trying to get them out of a hotel that was hellbent on killing them. Then, when they get out, no powers, they all go their separate ways and he is no longer right with his family. He spends six years without them, working for the CIA, because working is all he knows how to do now (it's clear he hardly has a life for himself, seeing as everyone else's life was shown but Five had nothing outside of work), and when he gets put in another apocalypse for seven years you all are mad at him for wanting to have a break? For wanting something domestic? At face value, yes, it seems out of character, and it seems slightly selfish compared to his past actions, but when you really think about it IT MAKES SENSE HE'D WANT A BREAK. His life since he was 13 has been dictated by running himself ragged for his family's sake and now he might not be able to get home (similar to how it was in his first apocalypse). He's not at fault for wanting to go somewhere that he can rest. Wanting to have some sense of domesticity with Lila isn't bad.

The entire arc made sense! Five and Lila shared an experience with the commission. Both of them had been subject to The Handler and they could bond over it. Both had been through different apocalypses/problems (Hotel Oblivion, Lila was there in the sixties, they were now in the subway together) together, and both knew what it was like to get irritated by a crazy family (both, consequently, being subject to the Hargreeves). Sure, they fought in the past, and in past seasons their relationship would have never worked, but in that subway? In the subway it made sense. In fact, the show could have gone well either with or without their relationship, but adding in the relationship added to the watcher feeling the same level of defeat as Five did at the end. Losing everything, now having to lose his life, it gives the watcher empathy after watching the breakup.

Truly, I haven't seen anyone say that Five deserved sympathy for the breakup. He did deserve it, though: he was made to fall in love with Lila, and then the moment she found out they could go home, she was running off to leave like she was ready to ignore that they ever happened. He had been in love with her, made her gifts, called her "love", said that he "aimed to please" as he tried to make her happy, held her so gently when he'd kiss her because he was sweet and tender and this was the first real love he'd gotten to have, and he wanted to do it right. Then, the moment he told her she could go home, she was ready to leave, and she looked him in the eyes and said that "it was survival", practically throwing his heart to the ground and shattering it. They'd spent seven years together and he'd grown to love her and she made it seem like she was just biding her time and never truly loved him in the first place. Imagine how he must have felt? And yet he still loved her anyway. He'd known that she had been annoyed with Diego sometimes, and because he was in love and upset after getting his heart broken it made SENSE that he'd be bitchy towards Diego. Yes, she was Diego's wife, but Five was in love with her, and he was jealous that after everything they went through Diego still got to have her. He fought Diego to get out that frustration, even if (in my heart of heart's) it wasn't really frustration at Diego, but instead just generalized feelings of hurt. He dealt with it the way he dealt with things in the past: he fought. Five was forced to be a fighter, and it was the end of the world, it's not like he'd allow himself to cry. If anything, Five fighting Diego was the MOST in character thing they could've done after that, and yet people are upset at him for fighting his brother! That final "it's over, Five" that Lila said after breaking up the fight broke his heart, you could see that, in both his face and the way he blipped to the subway, ready to leave. He was heartbroken, there didn't seem to be a way to end this apocalypse, and again, Five wanted to rest. He loved her, she hurt him, and yet he STILL held her when she broke down after sending her family and the kids away on the train. He was strong, but you could tell he was hurting.

Their relationship wouldn't have worked anywhere besides the subway but it happening there made perfect sense, it made for a good feeling of Five experiencing defeat and the idea that he could never truly be loved, by family or otherwise. (Dolores couldn't reciprocate, Lila tossed him aside the second she could go home, Reginald surely was no father figure and there's no doubt he likely didn't see Grace as much of a mother, his siblings were always upset with him for some reason or other even if he was just trying to save them and out of this whole time, I believe he's only ever been called a good brother twice. He only got told that twice after his years of suffering for his family's sake.)

So, in conclusion, the Five/Lila arc made sense, it fit well with the story, there were good implications if you bother to think about them, Lila was just as much at fault as Five, Five was NOT super out of character for being a man just wanting a break (he even said it himself, it was a break, not giving up), and I'm so sick of hearing people just talk shit about them. Thank you for coming to my ramble, if you were a hater before, I hope I changed your mind, and to everyone that agrees with me thank you.

#umbrella academy s4 #umbrella academy season 4 #umbrella academy #the umbrella academy #five hargreeves #lila pitts #five/lila #lila/five #tua season 4 #tua s4 #tua #tua spoilers #tua season four #tua s4 spoilers #nex rambles #nexus speaks #enjoy my rambles #umbrella academy analysis

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sleepiexx · 1 year

Text

Better Than Your Average Sleep Medication

Carlos Oliveira x fem!Reader

Note: it is real hard trying to find words to describe a vagina and a penis without getting cringy

Summary: Carlos is a pal and helps (Y/N) fall asleep.

Warnings: afab reader, smut

Word Count: 2074

(Y/N) and Carlos had been spooning in bed for hours, though neither could sleep. Ever since the Racoon City incident, insomnia seemed to take over more and more.

“I can’t sleep,” she huffed, “can you?”

He shook his head, “Me neither.”

She hummed in dismay, “It’s like ever since everything went down, all I’m seeing when I close my eyes is RC and those… things.”

His eyebrows furrowed. He knew the feeling, of course, but some part of him felt that he was partially to blame. Although, realistically, none of it was his fault, shit added up. He’d thought back to it a million times. What he could have done different, saving (Y/N) sooner, better, not putting her on the subway car that got ripped up by Nemesis, moves he could have used on Nikolai to grab the sample and save those infected. It was all dead ends, yet the simple fact that he had worked for Umbrella gave him a sense of responsibility toward (Y/N) and helping her in the aftermath of the tragedy.

(Y/N) herself had grown attached to Carlos in the midst of the disaster. Although she hadn’t known him before, he protected her every step of the way. Even taught her to protect herself. The trauma bond they built was what made it so easy for him to wiggle his way into her life outside RC. To repair what he felt he’d broken.

He’d take it all one step at a time. Now, his mission was coaxing her to sleep. But how to take her mind off of everything? A thought popped into his head, as though there were a lightbulb shining above him.

“I have an idea on how to help, do you trust me?” He asked.

“With my life.” She murmured.

He nodded, voice seemingly deepening, “Tell me if you want me to stop.”

Before she could voice her confusion, his hand moved down from where it was wrapped around her side to gently press against her bare stomach where her shirt had ridden up. He gave her time to object before slowly slipping his hand toward the waistband of her night shorts. She allowed him to put his hand in her pants, breath hitching as his hand slid over her underwear.

She bit her lip as his fingers traced up her clothed pussy, testing the waters. Steadily, he cupped her, pressing his hand directly against the area where she felt need growing. With his middle and ring finger, he once again traced her from vagina to clit, letting them linger in the clit area where he pressed down, slowly moving his fingers in circles.

She let out a quiet moan, feeling herself growing wetter.

“Does that feel good?” Carlos husked.

(Y/N) let out a shaky breath, “Mhm, so good.”

“Are you okay if I take these off?” He muttered, lightly snapping the waistband of her underwear against her skin before continuing drawing patterns into her covered clit.

“Please,” she whimpered.

He wasted no time, pulling down her shorts and underwear at the same time and tossing them somewhere to his side. Still in the spooning position, he grabbed her top thigh and pulled it back so it was flush against his own, spreading her out for easy access.

With the barrier between his fingers and her vulva gone, he dipped the tips of them into her vagina, wetting his fingers so he could glide them across her slit. His fingers now lubed up, he graced her clit with his touch once more. She gasped at the feeling.

He started off slow but quickly fastened his pace as she moaned for him.

“Nnngh Carlos,” she whined, writhing in his arms, back arching.

“So responsive,” he cooed, placing kisses to the crook of her neck.

Her mind became fuzzy, taken over by pleasure. She closed her eyes, chewing on her bottom lip in attempts to muffle at least some of her moans. Her jaw went slack at the feeling of Carlos licking up her neck before biting down and sucking.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck.” She cried. She tapped on his arm to get his attention. “Inside… need you inside me.”

“My fingers or-”

She cut him off, “Your dick, need your dick, Carlos, please.”

With the state of his penis, he wasn’t one to object. The combination of her moans and her squirming right up against his crotch had him rock hard. But, ever the gentlemen, he still wanted to help her finish at least once before penetrating her.

“Would it kill your drive if I got you to cum on my fingers first?” He asked.

She shook her head, “Mm-mm.”

With her okay, he didn’t hesitate. Now that he knew he had to prep her to take him, he gently slid his middle finger inside of her, having his thumb take over rubbing her clit.

After pumping just his middle finger in a few times, he added his ring finger. He curled them inside of her before going back to pumping them in and out. As he got into a rhythm, his mouth drifted back to her neck, going back to where he left off in marking her up.

“Carlos,” her moans spilled out more frequently as she felt her orgasm fast approaching, “I’m- fuck, ‘m close.”

He detached from her neck, tilting his head up so his lips brushed her jaw. “You gonna cum for me?”

“Yes, oh god yes.” She shook as her orgasm tore through her, cumming all over Carlos’s hand. He smirked against her jaw, fingers never once stopping until she came down from her high.

When he finally pulled his hand out, she turned over so she could look at him. Her gaze shifted from his lips to his eyes before she grabbed fistfuls of his shirt and pulled him in for a passionate kiss. He reciprocated, pulling away only to laugh.

“Someone’s eager, huh? Why don’t you let me pull my cock out before you swallow me whole?”

Dazed from her recent orgasm, she whispered a quiet, “Please.”

“Your wish is my command,” He muttered. He stood and took off his shirt, pausing for a second when he got to his pants and looking down at her, “Take off your shirt for me, yeah?”

She nodded, scrambling to pull her shirt over her head. She tossed it across the room like Carlos had done with her other articles of clothing and went back to watching Carlos strip.

He pulled down his pants, leaving his underwear on so that he could drag out her eager gaze watching him. Ever so slowly, he slid his boxers down off his legs and stepped out of them. Her eyes widened at his size. She hadn’t realized how much he was packing until now.

He walked to the edge of the bed where (Y/N) was splayed out, ogling him. He took his penis in one hand and laid it on top of her stomach, showing her how big he really was.

As she felt the weight of him on her stomach and saw his length and girth, she murmured, “Jesus you’re huge.”

He tilted her chin up so she was looking directly into his eyes. “We don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do.”

“I want this.”

“You sure?”

“Yes.”

He hesitated for a short moment, looking into her eyes and finding only pure desire (and maybe a little bit of adoration too, but emotions are too much to deal with for one night).

“I’ll start slow and then you tell me when you adjust, okay?” He asked. She nodded in agreement.

With the reassurance from her desperate gaze and eager nods, Carlos wasted no more time.

He rubbed his penis down her vulva from clit to vagina, slowly pressing the tip in. He carefully pushed in, inch by inch, keeping watch of (Y/N)’s facial expressions to make sure she wasn’t in pain. He planted his arms on either side of her, leverage for when he would eventually start thrusting. His arm muscles tensed when he bottomed out, she had a similar reaction, tensing her jaw.

When (Y/N) finally adjusted, she tapped his forearm, “You can move.”

And he did. He started off slow, exploring her body to find out her inner workings. What made her tick, what pleasured her to the highest extent. His experiments offered high reward.

As Carlos switched up the angle ever so slightly, (Y/N) let out a loud whimper. His eyes flitted to her face and he leaned down so his cheek would be flush against hers.

“Oh?” He rasped, thrusting again in the same spot, pleased with the noise that spilled from her lips, “Did I find your sweet spot?”

He knew without a doubt that he had, but he wanted her to admit it. He smirked as she nodded and whined, “Mhm.”

Carlos sped up the pace, keeping the exact same angle. (Y/N) clenched hard around him, leading him to let out a long moan, closer to his fast-approaching end.

As he nailed her g-spot over and over again, she reached her hands up to grip his back. He adjusted too, moving his arms so that they wrapped around her waist, one hand on her lower back. He took their close proximity as a chance to kiss her, bodies and lips pressed together as Carlos continued thrusting. They exchanged muffled moans and saliva, both dreading having to separate for air.

After they parted, Carlos felt her tap his shoulder, he looked down at her, ready to stop in case she was about to tell him to do so. “What do you need, princess? You want me to slow down? Stop?”

(Y/N) shook her head, “Mm-mm, I wanna mark you, can I mark you?”

Carlos laughed at the question, “Baby, if you saw how many marks there are on your neck right now, I don’t think you’d feel the need to ask. Go ahead.”

She nodded, trailing kisses across his neck and collarbone, moving lower. He groaned loudly as she bit down right on his upper pec, sucking on it for a good length of time to ensure it left a mark. She kissed where she bit and then continued kissing his neck.

He could feel his resolve breaking down but he was dead set on making her finish first. He slipped one hand down to her clit, fingertips gently rubbing patterns into it. As she felt herself on the edge, she buried her head into the crook of his neck and bit down. He grabbed her jaw and pushed her down into the pillow, making her whine.

“No hiding, sweetheart, I wanna watch you cum.”

He got his wish, with Carlos’s words being the tipping point, (Y/N) came. Her orgasm was intense, mouth open, moaning, practically clawing up Carlos’s back.

As Carlos got close to his own end, he let out a whimper. “Fuck, I’m gonna cum, where do you want it?”

“I’m on birth control, just stay inside me, please.” She pleaded, shaking.

He did not object, spilling inside her while whispering sweet words of praise in her ear, “Atta girl, just like that. Fuck, such a good girl.”

His erratic thrusting slowed and he gently pulled out. He couldn’t help but watch his cum leak out of her, mesmerized at the sight. As it leaked onto the sheets, he finally realized he should probably clean up.

After kissing (Y/N)’s forehead, he leaned in and whispered, “I’ll be right back,” before heading to the bathroom to wet a washcloth with warm water. He hurried his way back to the bedroom so he could clean her up.

He looked at her apologetically while she winced at the feeling of the wet washcloth touching her sensitive heat, “I’m sorry baby, I’ll hurry up.”

She nodded and tried to muffle any sounds of discomfort and leftover arousal that escaped her mouth from the contact.

“All right, all done.” He muttered, tossing the dirty rag into the clothes hamper.

She looked down at herself, “there’s cum all over my side of the bed.”

“We’ll just have to snuggle on my side then,” he smiled, crawling into bed and patting the area next to him, “I’ll deal with it in the morning, don’t worry.”

She nodded, cuddling up to his side.

“Goodnight, Carlos.” She whispered.

“Goodnight, (Y/N)”

#carlos oliveira x reader #carlos oliveira x you #carlos oliveria x reader #carlos oliveira #resident evil x reader #resident evil 3 remake #resident evil fic #resident evil smut #carlos oliveira smut #carlos oliveria smut #smut

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fictionalmenmakemecry · 11 months

Text

Fuckin' with the Ecosystem- Chapter 4

Character: Carmy Berzatto x Reader

Summary: You decide it was time for a new chapter. You pack up everything in New York and drive back to Chicago with Carmy by your side. Due to the stress you both feel from the move, you're both on edge which leads to a mess you have to deal with.

Warnings: Angst, cursing, fluff

A/n: Chapter 4 is here! The further this goes the more twisty it's gonna get! I'm only getting started. Poor Carmy always has the best of intentions but seems to get caught on the delivery. Thank you for all of the support guys. I really appreciate it. I have a taglist going, let me know if you want to get added!

If you haven't read, here's: Chapter 1 , Chapter 2 and Chapter 3

Enjoy!

As you put the key in your door and walk into your apartment, it hits you that you're starting a new chapter. Once you made the decision to move to Chicago, you rang your landlord, letting him know that you were moving out. He wasn't too pleased to hear about it. You told him that you'd find someone to sublet it for the remaining 3 months you had left on your lease. You knew it wasn't going to be a challenge as New York was continuously dealing with a renting shortage.

The two weeks flew by. You felt like you were always catching up on what needed to get done. But never being able to finish a task completely. You put an ad out for your sublet, and to say people were desperate was an understatement. You had several responses in minutes and multiple viewings arranged. Once you picked the few people who were good to sublet, you handed it over to your landlord, as he had the final approval. Within a day of that, you had an official date to move out, and suddenly, everything felt real. Before this, in your mind, you felt like you could change your decision, and it would have been okay. But now, you don't have an apartment next week, so now you had to move, whether you had wanted to or not.

"Getting cold feet?" Carmy voice spoke out of your phone.

"No, no.. just seeing my things in boxes is... making it real" you looked around seeing your frames leaning against the wall and your possessions all over the place disorganized.

"Your flight is good?" You asked, bring your focus back on the task on hand.

There was a moment of silence.

"Yea, think so. Here, let me send you the link to my flights" Carmy muttered

Your phone vibrated with an email notification labeled as "NY flight".

"Okay... well... I guess I'll see you tomorrow then?" You asked, feeling your stomach flip realizing you'll be seeing him.

Since you've been so busy organizing everything, you forgot the whole point of the actual move. To start a new job in a new city, with great people and a close old friend. The stress was nearly over when it came to closing the chapter in New York, and was replaced that was excitement for Chicago.

"Sure will, don't stand me up." You sensed a smile off of him

You waited at the arrival gate, scanning the bundles of people coming out. Your eyes hopped face to face, until you finally recognized one. He walked up to you with open arms carrying his backpack on one shoulder. He was wearing his wool coat and white shirt combo. Always a classic for him. You gave a quick hug, breathing in his usual smell which was a mixture of cigarettes, deodorant and gum.

Carmy was relieved to see you waiting there. He noticed you before you noticed him. A warm sensation spread across his chest when your eyes landed on him and a smile broke out on your face immediately.

You both hopped on the subway, Carmy telling you everything that happened since you've been gone. He explained how Richie, Fak and Marcus has been busy breaking down the place. While Tina and Ebra have enrolled into a short eight week course in culinary school. Syd has been busy researching new flavors and themes for the restaurant.

"Suga' has been dealin-"

"IRS are being a pain in the ass" You cut him off walking down the street getting closer to your apartment.

"Yeah.. how did you know?" Carmy looked over surprised.

"We've been chatting on the daily. She keeps me in the loop. She's also been helping me find a place in Chicago." You grinned at him pulling out your keys as you came up to building.

"Oh.." He hummed and looked down.

"So, you know everything already. Why didn't you stop me?" He asked, him now feeling out of the loop.

"I like the sound of your voice babes" You mocked, opening the door.

You looked back at Carmy, who followed you into the lobby, giving you a smirk.

You both arrived at your apartment and swung the door open. He followed you in, dropping off his bag at the door.

"I have most of the small things packed away. It's alotta awkward big stuff I'm gonna need help with." You turned around to see Carmy looking around while walking further into your living room.

You felt vulnerable now that he was standing in your safe place. The place you called home for 4 years.

"I know- its not much bu-"

"It's.. its nice. Cosy," he landed his eyes back you, giving a gentle smile.

Your apartment was small and not the most modern. But over the years, you tried your best to make it yours. Your kitchen was a joke. You barely could swing a cat in it. But lucky for you, you worked in a restaurant which mostly kept you fed and you never really cooked anyway.

"That kitchen is an abomination," He stated, pointing at it in shock.

You chuckled knowing he was going to judge your kitchen.

"You wanna know the worst part?" You walked over and grinned.

You leaned over to the stove which was crammed in the corner of the kitchen. You opened the door of the oven. The door stopped 3/4 of the way before hitting the wall in front of it. You glanced over to Carmy who's jaw was open. He raised his arms to his head in dismay.

"What the actual fuck" He uttered, walking away with his head shaking.

With a busy couple of days ahead of you, you started getting errands done. Tomorrow was the final day, and there was still a lot of shit that needed to get sorted. He started breaking down your your bed frame and tables you had.

"Ikea piece of shit" He muttered to himself as he struggled with taking out a screw that was stripped.

"Who the fuck made this bed?" He yelled out to you from the bedroom.

You smiled to yourself, knowing he was going to love the answer.

"Take a guess" you yelled back.

"Dickhead Nick" He spat finally getting the screw loose.

You giggled to yourself hearing the string of curse words Carmy was uttering.

"Finally" He huffed, after half an hour of struggle.

You popped your head around the corner and watched Carmy gather the parts of the frame and put them all together in the corner of the room. The frame was heavy, but Carmy lifted it like it was nothing. You couldn't resist looking at his arms flexed with the movement of each piece. His arms against the tight sleeves of his shirt.

"You okay?" You snapped back to notice Carmy looking over at you, dusting his hands off.

"Yeah- yeah, sorry. I'm just tired," You walked away, feeling yourself blush from the thought of getting caught admiring him.

Carmy went to collect the rental truck as you finished off putting the last few things in boxes. That night, you both slept on the floor with a blanket and pillow. It didn't matter how uncomfortable it was. You were exhausted to the point of passing out.

You woke up with the sounds of your alarm. You picked up your phone to see 5:00 am. You looked over to the sight of Carmy laying on his stomach, his face smooshed into the pillow with his mouth half open. As you sat up, the floor boards creaked, making him stir. He stretched out his arms, yawning. His white shirt tossed beside him.

"Warm?" You rubbed your eyes.

He looked at you with his eyes half open. You flicked your eyes to the white bundle beside him. His eyes followed, and realized what you were talking about.

"Um- yeah. This place is fuckin' boilin' at night," he muttered sleepily, sitting up.

"Yeah, that's the one thing I don't like about this place." Your eyes traveled down to his bare chest. His gold chain resting against his skin. Your dragged your eyes away before he noticed.

You thought back to years ago when he was way more scrawny. He really had grown into his... physique. His shoulders were a lot more toned and built than you remember.

Hold up, you caught yourself. You stopped yourself going down that rabbit hole. It's been awhile since you've gotten any but you and Carmy have never been like that.

He leaned over and pulled his shirt over his head, tossing his hair all over, pushing his arms through.

"So... let's get ready, and pack the final things in the truck, sweep the place, and we should be good to go before traffic gets bad," you commented getting onto your feet and made your way to the bathroom.

"Heard" He mumbled rubbing his eyes.

You both worked your way through the apartment and played Tetris a little with trying to cram as much as possible in the truck.

"I'm tellin' you, if you take that out, you're just going to undo all the work we did last night." You grunted, getting annoyed with the constant struggle of your belongings.

"Lemme try." Carmy snapped back, glaring at you.

He handed you the box that you were both struggling to fit. You were beyond exhausted, and the thought of driving 12 hours put you in a further bad mood.

You watched, annoyed, as Carmy readjusted the lamp that was taking up too much space.

"I know you don't wanna have this in front with us, but you goin' hafta." He took out the tall lamp awkwardly, losing his patience with it. He wiggled it and angled it out. Then, he took the box off of you. He slotted it into the gap that was left behind by the lamp. He slammed the doors and turned to you, a small smile appearing on his face.

"What?" You barked, frowning back at him.

He stared at you for a moment.

"Nothin," he shook his head, the smile still on his face.

If he was honest, he couldn't stay annoyed at you when he looked over and saw how pissed you were, holding your lamp. He thought about how rough you both were . Your hair tied away from your face, and his just a bush on his head. Both sporting bags under your eyes. You standing there holding a lamp angerly, just shifted something inside him. To him, you looked ... cute? He couldn't place the words. He dismissed the thought quickly but with the remnants of the smile left behind. You both had a lot of shit to get through today, and he's thoughts weren't on top of the list.

You entered your old apartment for the last time. Completely empty. The walls looked bare after so long filled with your favorite pictures and posters. You walked through all the rooms and checked the closets to make sure nothing was left behind.

You glanced down the hallway to see Carmy leaning against the wall, playing with the truck keys absent-mindedly. Two months ago, you were minding your business, figuring out your next job in New York. With one phone call, now you're moving to Chicago to work in a non-existent restaurant.

You made your way back to him, and you took one more look before closing the door.

"Ready?" He asked, looking back at you.

You nodded, smiling back at him.

With a long road ahead of you, you decided to take turns driving the truck. Carmy offered first. You didn't know if because he saw how tired you were, or he was just being kind. Twenty minutes into the journey, you were conked out.

One arm on the steering wheel, the other resting on the door, he would glance from time to time over to you. You leaned up against the other side of the truck with your head against the window using your hoodie as a make-shift pillow.

Carmy had a constant knot in his stomach the last week. He felt excited to see the plan that you made actually happen. It really did feel like a new beginning had started. The restaurant being remodeled and you moving to Chicago, it felt real. For once, he was actually feeling hopeful about the future.

Along the journey, you made a few pitstops for bathroom breaks and snacks.

"Where... ar wehh?" Carmy lifted his head feeling the truck coming to a stop outside a gas station.

" I dunno, fuck middle nowhere Pennsylvania," you said before getting out of the car.

"Still? Fuckin' hell. How big is this state?" He groaned, readjusting his head.

You came back with two energy drinks, and you threw him a bag of chips.

"Thanks," he mumbled

"It's the only payment you're getting for helping me move." You smirked, cracking open a can.

You heard him give a light chuckle before putting his head down again.

Once the sun came up, you both felt more awake. It a crisp winter morning. Cold, fresh, but the sun was shining with a clear sky.

You pulled over for another pit stop.

"Huhh" Carmy readjusted in his seat, completely disorientated from his power nap.

"Needa pee" you said restlessly.

"Again?" Carmy complained

"Energy drinks run through me"

The truck came to a halt. You jumped out and raced inside, barely waiting for the automatic doors to open fully before going in.

Carmy sat up in his seat and decided it was his turn to drive. He made his way to the driver side. He thought to himself for a moment before turning on the truck, putting it into drive, and pulled away.

He had no idea what got into him, but he wanted to fuck with you.

He had moved the truck to the other opposite side of the gas station, to the point where you would have to turn around to see it as you walked back to the old parking spot.

He watched the door waiting for you to come out. His hand resting against his mouth, tapping his finger on the steering wheel.

You walked out in the direction where the truck was parked, to see it not there anymore. You swore you parked it right there, took glance around to your left and right.

Were you losing mind?

Did Carmy take off?

Doubtful but it did pop into your mind.

Carmy continued to watch from the driver seat. A sneaky smile emerging on his face, he watches you look around. He could tell you thought you were losing your mind.

He gave the steering wheel a light push, and a short horn blared out of the truck. He saw you whip around from the sound, and a smile popped up on your face.

You went to the truck and got in the passenger side.

"You fucker" you giggled punching him lightly in the arm.

"Gotta keep you on your toes." He chuckled, rubbing this arm where you hit.

"I thought you dipped." You said securing your seat belt.

"Na, I'm not that bad," Carmy pulled out of the gas station.

For the next couple of hours, you chatted about random things, trying to keep you both dying from boredom. The conversation would get interrupted with Carmy's road rage of people cutting him off and traffic building up as you got closer to the cities.

"Why the fuck would Google Maps bring us on this route, it's slammed" He glanced at his phone

"Cause someone wanted to avoid tolls" You rolled your eyes to him.

"You fuckin' think I'm willing going to pay 90 dollars to those bastards?" He lightly hit the steering wheel in frustration.

"Well it would only be half-"

"It's not about the money..." He broke off as you both crawled along the road.

Nine hours into the twelve hour road trip, and both of you were starting to feel it. You were looking rough to begin with, but now you both felt just as rough.

With you behind the steering wheel again, you glanced over and saw him gaze out the window, his head leaned back. You didn't know if he was asleep. The sun was slowly starting to make its way down. The dusky sky was followed by an early dark night.

"Pull over at the next gas station." Carmy spoke up, looking over at you.

"Why?" You checked your rearview mirror and blind spot before turning your blinker on.

"Chicago is a mess when it comes to one ways. It'll be easier if I drive the rest of the way" He explained licking his lips.

You didn't fight him on this. You hated driving in a new city, the stress of the traffic, especially in a truck that was a lot bigger than your old car, you were glad he offered.

You switched sides and felt a ping of sadness that the road trip was near to an end. You were glad that the move was finally over, but wished you appreciated being around Carmy more. You felt the need to cling onto every minute spent with him. The feeling that you got in your stomach, your gut. You haven't felt that in a long time. The peace you had with him when cruising down the highway.

"What's your address?" He asked as you pulled up to a stop at a red light.

You pulled up your email confirming your lease contract on your new apartment. He glanced over, his eyebrows immediately popping up.

"You're fuckin' kidding me, ight?" He scoffed.

"What?" A hint of worry in your voice.

"Could you have picked a rougher neighborhood?" He asked sarcastically.

"I asked Sugar an-"

"Suga hasn't a fuckin' clue. Why didn't you ask me? Or anyone else...." He ridiculed.

"It can't be that bad." You dismissed his attitude, trying to reassure yourself.

There was a moment of silence with the red light turning green.

"Fuck- okay. it's fine. But if any- I mean any shit goes on, you immediately call me or Richie, okay?" He took his eyes off the road staring at you.

"Yea- yes, of course" You nodded pressing your lips in a fine line.

As you traveled through Chicago, you looked through the perspective of it as your new home. You took note of maybe some cafes and shops you wanted to go visit. You started to see more and more neglected buildings as you got closer and closer to your new apartment.

"I didn't have many options." You blurted out.

"With the timeframe I had and what I can afford right now. It was between this place and another, but I would have to wait another week before getting the other place, " you explained, feeling uneasy looking out at the streets.

"W-why didn't you tell me? We could have worked something out? You know I would have fixed you up with somethin'," He said softly.

You looked over and saw his eyes soften. You felt guilt, layered on top of all the negative feelings that were in your stomach right now.

"I didn't want to be in the way. I felt like I was already a burden with taking you away from the restaurant for the last couple of days" You brought your head down not wanting to go down this train of thought.

Carmy brought his hand up to his face and rubbed his forehead. He didn't want to make the situation worse. He wanted to pick his words carefully, feeling your uneasiness beside him.

"Look, the place isn't probably that bad and it's not forever" He gave a small smile trying to comfort you.

"Six months" You whispered feeling completely disheartened by the change in atmosphere in the last couple of moments.

"Yea- that's good. That'll fly by" He smiled again.

But it was too late, his first reaction was the real one and not what you needed. To move to a big city by yourself is hard enough. To do it in the bad part of town is not something you wanted to also deal with.

"What number?" He asked, looking out his side window

"Two thirty," you whispered.

Carmy continued down the street at a slow speed, keeping track of the numbers on the buildings.

"Here" He pointed in front of him pulling over to the curb.

You didn't even want to look. The weight in your stomach was keeping you from looking up. The adrenaline from New York had worn off, leaving you with disappointment and worry.

Carmy hopped out of the truck and was looking at a building that was a little run down, but the entrance was clean, and there were no dodgy people around that he noticed right away. He looked up and down the street to see a corner shop and a laundromat closest. He instinctively took out a cigarette and light it inhaling the smoke. He turned back to the truck window to still see you in the seat, looking down.

"Shit" He muttered to himself knowing he fucked up. He had to say exactly what was on his mind. He couldn't just keep it to himself and wait til' you got here. He mindlessly kicked a pebble on the ground while finishing his cigarette, trying to think what would be the best thing to do. He didn't want to make things worse. You were both on your reserves when it came to energy and patience with each other. He didn't want to stumble at the final hurdle.

After a few minutes, you heard the door being pulled open on your side.

"Hey... Look, I'm sorry... this is a really nice building from what I can see..." He braced his arm on the door jam.

"You're just sayin-"

"I'm not... I'm really not. I'll promise to tell you if your apartment looks like a shithole when we go see it"

You looked up to see his dead serious face break into a smile. You felt a smile creep up on your face even though you didn't want it to.

"C'mon" He nodded up, bringing his hand out for you to grab.

He helped you down off the truck, and you went inside with him right behind.

As you went to the building managers office, he walked around feeling out the place. He walked to the mailing room, which was a mess with piles of neglected mail from past tenants.

The place overall smelt like stale bleach. It was dated and worn, but it was clean. He was grateful for that.

"Got it"

He noticed how quiet you were. He would looked over and you give him a weak smile. But deep inside he knew you weren't okay. He wanted to hug you and hold you. He never had the intension to hurt you and he was pissed off with himself that he did.

You made your way to the fourth floor and made a wrong turn on the hallway before turning back.

"Here it is, 46C," you hummed, sticking the key in the hole.

With the door swinging open, you both walked in. The layout was close to your old apartment. The door opened to the living room with a hallway to your left where the kitchen and bedroom lead.

You walked into the living room where blank walls faced you with two windows looking out to the street below.

"Bathroom isn't bad" you heard Carmy call out further in the apartment.

You walked over to see him sitting on the toilet lid.

"I see you're giving it a test ride," you chuckled.

"Someone has to." He shrugged jokingly.

Him seeing you chuckle, even if it was a light one made him feel somewhat better than he didn't completely wreck the evening.

You turned around to see the bedroom directly across. It could comfortably fit a queen bed, which was a relief. From the pictures, you couldn't tell if the bed would be cramped in it.

"So, I was thinking the bed would be here?" You whipped around, spreading your arms, imitating the size of the bed.

"In the middle?" Carmy asked walking in behind.

You nodded, turning around to face the wall.

"Yeah... I think that would work," you grinned seeing the potential in this room.

You continued to imagine how the rest of your belongings would fit in your new bedroom.

"Let's get started. There's a lot to move still," he made his way out of the room.

The curse words that were uttered from both of you as you awkwardly moved the big pieces of furniture first. It was a close call when it came to the mattress fitting in the elevator. Carmy was adamant that it was going to fit.

"No way in fuckin' hell was I gonna drag this shit up four floors." He gave out as he was crushed against the elevator holding the mattress.

Both of your faces were flushed red and sweat gleaming from the heavy lifting.

Carmy and you struggled as you dragged the plastic covered mattress down the hall to your apartment. It was the last of the big pieces with mostly boxes left to carry.

Another hour, and the truck was finally empty. You took your phone out of your pocket to check the time. Eight o clock shined back at you.

"Damn, getting pretty late" You huffed, pushing the stray hairs from your face.

"I'll return the truck tomorrow," you continued watching Carmy close the back doors of the truck.

You stood there looking at each other for a beat.

"I better head home," Carmy said, taking a few steps back.

"What? No- I owe you dinner. It's the least I could do", you crossed your arms, feeling the cold around you.

"You sure?" He checked, with his head down looking up through his lids.

With Chinese on your lap, you looked across to see Carmy lean up against one of your many boxes with his legs stretched out in front of him on the floor.

"You're right, it's pretty good," you hummed, enjoying the burst of flavor in your mouth.

Carmy nodded along, tucking into this food eagerly.

The apartment was mostly quiet with the odd random distant yell from outside, you presumed to be crackheads.

"I know you won't believe me, but I really do like this place" He looked up around your living room.

"The location is shit, but..."

"I know, but this place has potential." You smiled, finishing off his sentence.

"Yeah," He said in a soft tone, turning up the corners of his mouth.

His eyes lingered on yours for a moment. You traveled your eyes down his neck, chest, and down his arms.

You would be lying to yourself if you didn't notice his arms when he helped your lift heavy boxes. He refused to let you lift anything that he thought you might struggle with. He was considerate. Always thinking about you in a way that no one else would. Your friendship meant so much to you. In a moment like this, you felt that you might need his friendship a lot more than he might need yours.

Here you are, in Chicago. Working with one of your closest friends. Nothing else is here, only him. The vulnerability you felt in that moment, developed fear that you hadn't felt before.

"I can't believe you're actually here" Carmy spoke out, breaking your swirling thoughts.

"I know, it's just hitting me too," you said in a dissociated daze.

His eyebrows furrowed for a brief moment, wondering what you were thinking. Were you regretting your decision?

"I think you'll like Chicago," He said positively, keeping his eyes on you.

"Mhmmm," you murmured, your eyes glazed over and your mind in another world of your own.

"Y-you're not regretting your de-"

You snapped out of your trance and glanced over to Carmy to see his face covered in concern.

"No- no, no." You shook your head and smiled reassuringly.

He played with the food left over on his lap.

"Well... um.. you know I'm here, right?" He questioned.

"I know," you murmured, bringing your head down.

"I'm not goin' anywhere." He continued, leaning forward, trying to meet your eye line.

There was this sadness that you couldn't shake since getting here. You could feel it deep in your stomach. Was it anxiety? That reality has finally hit you in the face? The excitement that you felt earlier wasn't there and it worried you even more.

Carmy knew there was something up. You weren't present since you've arrived. It was a long few days for both of you, and it could have been exhaustion, but he didn't want to leave you alone. He felt guilty just walking away, especially when something was up.

You kept your head down, not wanting to make eye contact with him. You were afraid that if you did, you would completely break down and cry.

A moment later, you just heard him shuffle. You felt a warm hand on top of yours. You saw inked fingers grasp yours and a body of warmth wrapping you in a hug.

You couldn't hold back. You felt your tears spill over. You turned into his chest and buried your face into his white t-shirt.

"It's okay... you'll be okay. " He hummed and pressed you closer to him.

You sat there for a couple of moments. No other words were spoken. His embrace eased the anxiety that you were feeling. You had no idea what came over you. This was not the feeling you were expecting when first moving in.

You eventually pulled away, wiping your puffy eyes. Your face was red hot from all the crying.

"I-I'm sorry." You forced a smile on your face.

He looked at you with a comforting smile, his blue eyes flickering between yours.

"Don't be." He whispered, his arm still wrapped around you.

"I'm.... just glad to be here for you." His thumb caressed the back of your hand.

Both of you sat in your new apartment floor in between several boxes scattered. The apartment was cold and bare, but Carmy was radiating heat. You leaned into him with your legs against each other. You looked away from his kind blue eyes and sniffled. You wanted to savor this moment. The peace you felt with him.

Your soft hand under his rough fingertips made him realise that he would be happy staying like this all night. If you wanted him there, he wouldn't budge. His thoughts carried on from what your hand felt like to what maybe your lips would feel like. He could only imagine the tenderness he would feel against his.

What the hell is wrong with you?

She needs you. Don't fuck this up.

You eventually looked up at him again. Your eyes gazed at his beautiful messy hair, his fatigue blue eyes, and... his lips.

You went back to his eyes to catch him looking down at your lips. Your breath caught in your throat. Both of your eyes met in that second. Your faces inches away from each other.

Both of you scared to lean in. Both of you wanted it more than anything.

His rough fingertips grazing your cheek so lightly.

In that moment, you realized what you were risking. Did you really want to go down the same path you went down before? You move for a boy, fall for a boy... get hurt by a boy.

Carmy was all you got right now. You didn't want to risk anything that would make you lose that. As much you wanted to kiss him and give into every urge you had, the sting of your previous mistake was still there in the back of you mind. In this moment, you needed to take a step back before you did something you might regret.

You dropped your head not wanting to look into his eyes with what you were going to say next.

"Carmy...I-I can't," your voice barely audible.

"Fuck, I'm sorry- I don't..." He fumbled.

"I just... I've been here before. I can't make the same mistake,"

Carmy pulled away from you completely. His hands left yours, you felt the absence of heat immediately after he pulled away.

"I-I fucked up, I'm sorry" He shuffled to his feet.

"It's not that..." You tried to get words out, but before you knew it, Carmy had grabbed his jacket and was on his way out.

"Carmen," you sternly called out, getting up from the floor.

But the door was already shut. Your gut was twisting back and forth. You were so dazed on what just happened. It was too fast for you to even digest. You stood there for several moments trying to understand what was going on.

The last thing you wanted to do was hurt him. You felt your stomach churn realizing that you might have destroyed one of your closest friendships. You wanted him, you wanted to explain how you felt. You wanted him to convince you that you weren't making a mistake.

The deep feeling of anxiety in your stomach had emerged again, only this time much worse. As tears rolled down your face, you barely had the energy or will to tear the plastic wrapping off your mattress and root in the box, that was labeled 'bedding', to get a pillow and blanket. You let your body fall back on the mattress and instantly closed your eyes. This was suppose to be a new beginning in a new city. That clearly wasn't happening now that you've hurt one of the only people who you were close to in this city. The sirens in distance helped you phase into a deep sleep. Fatigue finally taking over your body. You didn't have any energy left to do anything else.

Carmy got back to his apartment, his stomach in knots. repeating the last moment he had with you. Remembering the pounding in his heart when looking into your eyes. Then, the sensation morphing into a sharp pain when you said his name in a negative tone.

He couldn't stop thinking about it over and over. He didn't even remember walking home. After you said his name, everything turned into a blur. The tone in your voice made him feel ashamed of himself. Were you disappointed in him as a friend when you needed him most? That you thought he was trying to take advantage of you at your most vulnerable? All these thoughts were whizzing around in his brain. His rational thoughts were no longer pushing through.

Should he have stayed to explain himself? Explain what he felt for you was something real that he's never had before. It's the surest thing that he has in his life right now, his feelings for you.

The last few days his thoughts made it plainly obvious that he wants to be more than friends. He was able to admire you when he usually couldn't. The everyday you. The you that was sleeping, eating, just living. He caught himself smiling to himself multiple times for no real reason. The only difference was, he was around you.

He kicked his shoes in the corner, dropping his jacket on the ground before dropping back on the couch. To say he was deflated was an understatement. The thought of seeing you tomorrow would usually make his pulse speedup but now, he felt a sinking feeling in his stomach.

He went through all the awful scenarios in his head. Were you going to ignore him? Or tell him to fuck off? Or tell him that you only ever saw him as a friend? Nothing else.

The last one drove a lump in his throat. He knew he wasn't going to get much sleep tonight. He didn't even care if he didn't. The only thing he wanted now was tomorrow to go by as fast and painlessly as possible.

Chapter 5

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mostlysignssomeportents · 1 year

Text

Iowa's starvation strategy

I don’t really buy that “the cruelty is the point.” I’m a materialist. Money talks, bullshit walks. When billionaires fund unimaginably cruel policies, I think the cruelty is a tactic, a way to get the turkeys to vote for Christmas. After all, policies that grow the fortune of the 1% at the expense of the rest of us have a natural 99% disapproval rating.

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/2023/04/19/whats-wrong-with-iowa/#replicable-cruelty

So when some monstrous new law or policy comes down the pike, it’s best understood as a way of getting frightened, angry — and often hateful — people to vote for policies that will actively harm them, by claiming that they will harm others — brown and Black people, women, queers, and the “undeserving” poor.

Pro-oligarch policies don’t win democratic support — but policies that inflict harm a ginned-up group of enemies might. Oligarchs need frightened, hateful people to vote for policies that will secure and expand the power of the rich. Cruelty is the tactic. Power is the strategy. The point isn’t cruelty, it’s power:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/06/25/roe-v-wade-v-abortion/#no-i-in-uterus

But that doesn’t change the fact that the policies are cruel indeed. Take Iowa, whose billionaire-backed far-right legislature is on a tear, a killing spree that includes active collaboration with rapists, through a law that denies abortion care to survivors of rape and forces them to bear and care for their rapists’ babies:

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/16/us/politics/iowa-kamala-harris-abortion.html

The forced birth movement is part of the wider far-right tactic of standing up for imaginary children (e.g. “the unborn,” fictional victims of Hollywood pedo cabals), and utterly abandons real children: poor kids who can’t afford school lunches, kids in cages, kids victimized by youth pastors, kids forced into child labor, etc.

So Iowa isn’t just a forced birth state, it’s a state where children are now to be starved, literally. The state legislature has just authorized an $18m project to kick people off of SNAP (aka food stamps). 270,000 people in Iowa rely on SNAP: elderly people, disabled people, and parents who can’t feed their kids.

Writing in the Washington Post, Kyle Swenson profiles some of these Iowans, like an elderly woman who visited Lisa Spitler’s food pantry for help and said that state officials had told her that she was only eligible for $23/month in assistance:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2023/04/16/iowa-snap-restrictions-food-stamps/

That’s because Iowa governor KimReynolds signed a bill cutting the additional SNAP aid — federally funded, and free to the state taxpayers of Iowa — that had been made available during the lockdown. Since then, food pantries have been left to paper over the cracks in the system, as Iowans begin to starve.

Before the pandemic, Spitler’s food pantry saw 30 new families a month. Now it’s 100 — and growing. Many of these families have been kicked off of SNAP because they failed to complete useless and confusing paperwork, or did so but missed the short deadlines now imposed by the state. For example, people with permanent disabilities and elderly people who no longer work must continuously file new paperwork confirming that their income hasn’t changed. Their income never changes.

SNAP recipients often work, borrow from relations, and visit food pantries, and still can’t make ends meet, like Amy Cunningham, a 31 year old mother of four in Charlton. She works at a Subway, has tapped her relatives for all they can afford, and relies on her $594/month in SNAP to keep her kids from going hungry. She missed her notice of an annual review and was kicked off the program. Getting kicked off took an instant. Getting reinstated took a starving eternity.

Iowa has a budget surplus of $1.91B. This doesn’t stop ghouls like Iowa House speaker Pat Grassley (a born-rich nepobaby whose grandpa is Senator Chuck Grassley) from claiming that the cuts were a necessity: “[SNAP is] growing within the budget, and are putting pressure on us being able to fund other priorities.”

Grassley’s caucus passed legislation on Jan 30 to kick people off of SNAP if their combined assets, including their work vehicle, total to more than $15,000. SNAP recipients will be subject to invasive means-testing and verification, which will raise the cost of administering SNAP from $2.2m to $18m. Anyone who gets flagged by the system has 10 days to respond or they’ll be kicked off of SNAP.

The state GOP justifies this by claiming that SNAP has an “error rate” of 11.81%. But that “error rate” includes people who were kicked off SNAP erroneously, a circumstance that is much more common than fraud, which is almost nonexistent in SNAP programs. Iowa’s error rate is in line with the national average.

Iowa’s pro-starvation law was authored by a conservative dark-money “think tank” based in Florida: the Opportunity Solutions Project, the lobbying arm of Foundation For Government Accountability, run by Tarren Bragdon, a Maine politician with a knack for getting money from the Koch Network and the DeVos family for projects that punish, humiliate and kill marginalized people. The Iowa bill mirrors provisions passed in Kentucky, Kansas, Wisconsin and elsewhere — and goes beyond them.

The law was wildly unpopular, but it passed anyway. It’s part of the GOP’s push for massive increases in government spending and bureaucracy — but only when those increases go to punishing poor people, policing poor people, jailing poor people, and spying on poor people. It’s truly amazing that the “party of small government” would increase bureaucratic spending to administer SNAP by 800% — and do it with a straight face.

In his essay “The Utopia of Rules,” David Graeber (Rest in Power) described this pathology: just a couple decades ago, the right told us that our biggest threat was Soviet expansion, which would end the “American way of life” and replace it with a dismal world where you spent endless hours filling in pointless forms, endured hunger and substandard housing, and shopped at identical stores that all carried the same goods:

https://memex.craphound.com/2015/02/02/david-graebers-the-utopia-of-rules-on-technology-stupidity-and-the-secret-joys-of-bureaucracy/

A society that can’t feed, house and educate its residents is a failed state. America’s inability to do politics without giving corporations a fat and undeserved share is immiserating an ever-larger share of its people. Federally, SNAP is under huge stress, thanks to the “public-private partnership” at the root of a badly needed “digital overhaul” of the program.

Writing for The American Prospect, Luke Goldstein describes how the USDA changed SNAP rules to let people pay with SNAP for groceries ordered online, as a way to deal with the growing problem of food deserts in poor and rural communities:

https://prospect.org/health/2023-04-19-retail-surveils-food-stamp-users/

It’s a good idea — in theory. But it was sabotaged from the start: first, the proposed rule was altered to ban paying for delivery costs with SNAP, meaning that anyone who ordered food online would have to use scarce cash reserves to pay delivery fees. Then, the USDA declined to negotiate discounts on behalf of the 40 million SNAP users. Finally, the SNAP ecommerce rules don’t include any privacy protections, which will be a bonanza for shadowy data-brokers, who’ll mine SNAP recipients’ data to create marketing lists for scammers, predatory lenders, and other bottom-feeder:

https://www.democraticmedia.org/sites/default/files/field/public-files/2020/cdd_snap_report_ff.pdf

The GOP’s best weapon in this war is statistical illiteracy. While racist, sexist and queerphobic policies mean that marginalized people are more likely than white people to be poor, America’s large population of white people — including elderly white people who are the immovable core of the GOP base — means that policies that target poor people inevitably inflict vast harms on the GOP’s most devoted followers.

Getting these turkeys to vote for Christmas is a sound investment for the ultra-rich, who claim a larger share of the American pie every year. The rich may or may not be racist, or sexist, or queerphobic — some of them surely are — but the reason they pour money into campaigns to stoke divisions among working people isn’t because they get off on hatred. The hatred is a tactic. The cruelty is a tactic. The strategic goal is wealth and power.

Tomorrow (Apr 21), I’m speaking in Chicago at the Stigler Center’s Antitrust and Competition Conference. This weekend (Apr 22/23), I’m at the LA Times Festival of Books.

[Image ID: The Iowa state-house. On the right side of the steps is an engraved drawing of Oliver Twist, holding out his porridge bowl. On the left side is the cook, denying him an extra portion. Peeking out from behind the dome is a business-man in a suit with a dollar-sign-emblazoned money-bag for a head.]

Image: Iqkotze (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Iowa_State_Capitol_April_2010.jpg

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

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