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ellewritesx · 2 months ago

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(part two of the sugar, baby series)

Summary: Before he can break you in, he needs to know exactly where you break.

Warnings: sugardaddy arrangement, fingering, oral (f!receiving), use of vibrator, mention of handcuffs, blindfolding, a panic attack, repeated use of safe words, a ton of ''good girl'' (oops), dom!Harry, it just gets kind of intense guys

A/N: i had so much fun writing this and i've got sooo much still in store for the series! i have no idea how this ended up being almost 5k words cause it feels shorter than anything else i've written but yk what i'll take it. let me know if you like this x

Word Count: 4,870

...

The morning after that first night with Harry, you wake up to the shrill buzz of your phone, a new notification lighting up the cracked screen. Bleary-eyed, you swipe it open and freeze. Your stomach drops. You blink once. Twice. But the number doesn't change.

Ten thousand dollars.

Deposited directly into your checking account at six o'clock in the morning. For a moment, all you can do is sit there, fingers trembling slightly where they clutch the device, heart hammering against your ribs like it's trying to punch its way free. It feels unreal, like a glitch in the system, like some impossibly generous mistake you should scramble to correct.

Before you can spiral too far, another notification rolls in.

Harry: For your trouble. Don't get any ideas, it won't always be this generous.

You don't know if he's joking.

Still in your pajamas, still half-numb, you stumble over to the kitchen table and open your laptop. In a daze, you pay off two months' rent in advance. Clear the electricity bill that's been relentlessly stacking up with threatening red letters. Kill the last of your credit card debt, the looming, gnawing anxiety that's been a permanent fixture in your life for as long as you can remember. With one click, it all vanishes. Just like that. You release a breath you didn't know you were holding.

You sit back in the wobbly wooden chair and stare at the zeros. No debts to pay off. Rent covered for months. You blink slowly, feeling weightless and heavy all at once.

You should cry. You'd expected you would. But no tears come. Only a heavy, eerie kind of calm. Like you were standing on the edge of something vast and bottomless and have just taken your first step backwards, away from the deep end.

Later that afternoon, your phone pings again.

Harry: Quit the fucking cafe. Waste of time.

You stare at the message, thumb hovering over the screen. It would be so easy. To type out a resignation email, walk out of that dingy little shop with its sticky counters and fluorescent lights that make your head ache, and never look back. To let Harry sweep you up and off your feet and stay at home, maybe pursue a hobby.

But you don't. You type out a short, almost defiant reply. Can't. I like it.

You don't explain that working keeps you tethered to yourself. That hard work isn't just something you do; it's part of who you are. You've never had anything handed to you before. You've worked for every scrap, every small victory, every breath of air above water. Walking away from that would feel too much like walking away from yourself, even if a selfish, aching part of you wants to.

You wonder if your answer will piss him off. You wonder why a wicked little part of you wants it to.

When he doesn't reply, you expect to be iced out. Canceled. Game over before it even begins. It makes your stomach churn in fear. But the next day, after a particularly exhausting shift, a message comes through, curt and demanding:

Harry: Come to mine tonight. 9PM. Need to finalize terms.

His tone is sharp and professional, but something about it makes a subtle anticipation bloom between your legs anyway. You spend an hour picking out an outfit, second-guessing yourself the whole time. In the end, you settle on something simple. Comfortable, but soft. Easy to take off. You tell yourself it's practicality, but the fluttering in your stomach calls you a liar.

You take the bus to his place, cringing at the cost of a ticket until you remember that you've got more than enough money now. Hell, you could've ordered a limousine if you'd liked.

You never visit this part of the city. The people here wear designer sunglasses that cost more than a year's worth of your salary (besides, what's the point of wearing sunglasses when it's nearly pitch-black outside?), peering over them at you like they can sense that you're not like them. That you don't belong here.

When you knock on his door, Harry answers immediately, like he's been standing just behind it, waiting. His lingers in the doorway, broad shoulders framed in a loose black hoodie, sweatpants hanging low on his hips, his curls damp like he's just stepped out of the shower. The faint smell of vanilla and mint clings to his skin, warm and heady in the cool night air.

He leans against the doorframe, appraising you silently for a moment with those unreadable green eyes, and something tightens inside your chest. You wonder if he notices the dark circles under your eyes you've tried covering up, exhaustion having clawed its way into your skin, unrelenting. You wonder if he resents it, a reminder that you aren't fully his yet. That you still belong, even a little, to a life outside of what he's trying to build around you.

''Come in,'' he says finally, voice low and gravelly. It's not a request.

You step inside, heart hammering.

"You're late," he says without looking at you, voice dry, turning his back on you and walking back into the apartment like he already knows you'll follow.

Your breath stutters. "Five minutes."

He only shrugs, like it doesn't matter, like you don't matter, and maybe you don't, but something in the way he leaves the door open, wide and waiting, soothes the sting a little. An invitation, even if it's a sharp-edged one.

The apartment smells like expensive cologne and the faintest trace of smoke, like he aired it out but not quite enough. The lighting is low, casting long, moody shadows across the heavy furniture: sleek, cold, and obscenely rich. Dark leather sofas. A steel-and-glass coffee table. No rugs, no paintings, no photos. No personal touches at all. You take a few cautious steps inside, pulse thrumming, letting your eyes roam while he moves into the kitchen.

The place feels like a model home. It's sterile. Hollow. Like a space meant to impress but never to be lived in. There are no family portraits, no framed snapshots of drunken nights with friends, no messy piles of mail or keys on the counters. Just the necessities. Barely even that. You wonder what kind of person chooses to live like this. You wonder if he even notices the loneliness curling in the corners of the room, or if he's too used to it by now to care.

You hear the clink of glass behind you; Harry fixing himself a drink. Something amber and expensive sloshes into a crystal tumbler. Without asking, he pours a second drink, slightly lighter, and sets it down on the counter with a muted tap.

Decided for you, like everything else. You take a small sip. It's good. He knows you better than you think.

When he finally turns back to face you, he's cradling his drink lazily in one hand, the other tucked into the pocket of his sweatpants. He cocks his head, surveying you like you're something he's bought and isn't quite sure he's satisfied with yet.

"Clothes off,'' he orders without ceremony, without even offering the barest pretense of conversation or kindness.

You blink, caught off-guard by the bluntness of it, the complete lack of foreplay, not sexual, but social. No small talk. No polite lies to smooth the way. Just a command.

Your fingers twitch at your sides, the blood in your veins boiling unpleasantly with offense. It's not like you didn't know what this was (you agreed to it, after all), but still, something about the way he dismisses any human interaction and social norms you're used to stings a little more than you're prepared for. Like you're less a person, more an object now. A thing he's purchased fair and square, and can use however he sees fit.

For a split second, you hesitate. The frown that flickers across your face is small, barely there, but it flashes quick and instinctive before you can school your features.

And Harry sees it. Of course he does. His eyes sharpen, a glint of something unreadable flickering behind the casual facade. He lifts the tumbler to his mouth, sips slowly, never breaking eye contact.

But he doesn't apologize. Doesn't explain himself. Doesn't soften the command. He just lets the silence stretch, heavy and deliberate, until the only thing you can hear is the faint hum of the busy bustling outside and the sound of your own breathing.

Still, something shifts almost imperceptibly in the air between you. Like he's offering you a choice, even if it's silent. Testing you. Waiting to see if you'll push back or fold.

Your fingers reluctantly move to the zipper of your dress, fumbling slightly. The fabric feels heavier than it should, thick and stubborn under your touch. Your cheeks flame with heat as you let it pool around your ankles, the air cool against your bare skin. You don't dare meet his eyes. Your panties come next, sliding down your legs in a slow, humiliating crawl.

You stand there, naked and flushed, heart jackhammering, feeling less like a goddess offered up on a velvet throne and more like a product left bare on a shelf for inspection.

Harry finishes his drink in one long swallow, sets the glass down with a sharp clink. Then he moves, slow, deliberate, until he's standing right in front of you, close enough to feel the heat radiating off his body. Two fingers tilt your chin up until your gaze locks with his.

"Color?" he asks quietly, almost gently, surprising you.

The simple question unravels something in you. You swallow hard. "Green," you whisper, the word catching slightly in your throat.

His mouth curves, not a smile, exactly, but something close. Satisfaction. Approval. Good girl.

You don't know if you're trembling from the cold or from the way he's looking at you like a man starved.

"On the bed," he orders, voice lowering, rougher this time.

You hesitantly walk toward the bed, your nerves buzzing like an electric current, your skin prickling under his watchful gaze. He follows behind at a leisurely pace, his steps deliberate, as though he owns every inch of the space between you two.

When you sit, knees pressed together tightly, a nervous instinct, you can feel his eyes on you, sharp and calculating. He doesn't say a word, but his stare is almost suffocating, like he's dissecting every tiny twitch of your body. You think you're hiding it, the tension coiling in your gut, the sharp breath you can't quite control, but Harry notices. He always notices.

"Spread."

You hesitate, just for a second, but that's enough. A flicker of amusement passes over his features, the kind that tightens your chest even more. You obey, reluctantly, the cool sheets beneath you feeling too uncomfortable, too foreign, your breath stuttering as you do what he says. He slowly kneels before you, like he's got all the time in the world, his hand casually holding something you hadn't even seen him grab: a slim, black vibrator, sleek and intimidating.

Your stomach flips. You open your mouth, but the words get stuck somewhere between wanting to beg him to stop and wanting to prove yourself.

"We're gonna test your limits," he says simply, his tone darker, more serious now. "Gotta know what you like. What you don't."

You swallow. "I thought we were... going to talk about the arrangement. Finalize the terms?"

He smirks, slow and cruel. "We are, baby. This is part of it."

Your heart races as he rolls the vibrator between his fingers, eyes glinting as he examines you. He's studying your every reaction, every subtle change in your body language.

You shift uncomfortably. Your hands are trembling, but you try to control it. You're not good at this, not good at admitting when you're not okay, not good at showing your hesitance.

The vibrator hums to life with a quiet buzz, low at first. He starts slow, teasing the inside of your thighs, moving closer to your hips, barely brushing against where you need him. Your body clenches, straining towards it instinctively. He watches you, eyes focused, reading every tiny twitch in your expression, every sharp intake of breath, every subtle, desperate movement of your body.

"No lying," he says, voice serious now. "I'll know."

You nod shakily.

His fingers hover near your skin, just enough to make you ache for his touch, but not enough to relieve the pressure building inside you.

"Beg."

"Please," you whisper, barely audible.

"Please, what?"

"Please touch me."

His smile deepens, satisfied, and he presses the vibrator firmly against your clit. Your hips jerk violently at the sensation. You need more, so much more, but it's too much at the same time. Your body can't decide what it wants.

"Good girl," he murmurs, his voice low and guttural.

He keeps the vibrations steady at first, gentle pulses that send waves of heat and discomfort through your body, your breath ragged, eyes shut tight. But then he turns it up, gradually increasing the intensity, and you feel like you're losing your mind.

Your body is already sensitive, already overstimulated from a long day at work dealing with insufferable customers, and the more he pushes, the more your thoughts scatter.

When the toy brushes lower, teasing your entrance, your body tightens reflexively. You flinch. You can't help it. The discomfort, the anxiety, it all hits at once.

He immediately pulls back, eyes narrowing as he watches you, still calm, still in control.

Your breath is shallow, your chest rising and falling too quickly, too erratically. You're embarrassed. This is not the reaction he was hoping for. He's watching you, scrutinizing you.

"That's a no, then?" he asks, voice still cool, but there's a hint of something else, a hint of curiosity.

You blink quickly, nodding hesitantly as you try to steady your breathing. Your chest is tight. Your hands are still fisted in the sheets, trying to ground yourself, but it's hard.

He clicks the vibrator off, the absence of the buzzing almost as deafening as the silence between you. He moves up the bed toward you, his gaze softening just a little, but the dominance in his posture remains.

"You should tell me when you don't like something," he tells you, voice low, almost like he's lecturing you, but there's no harshness in it. ''It's not my job to guess what you want. You've gotta speak up when things aren't okay."

Your throat tightens. "I didn't want to... disappoint you."

He laughs softly, not unkind but with an edge of exasperation. ''You're not a fucking robot, baby. Don't play me for one. I'm not paying for you to pretend.''

His bluntness cuts through the shame, leaving you raw, exposed.

"Let's continue," he announces, the smirk tugging at his lips. You nod, dazed, unable to think clearly.

He presses his lips to your neck, nipping at the skin with sharp little bites, and you gasp, your whole body reacting to him.

He doesn't give you time to recover before his hand disappears under the bed, pulling out a pair of handcuffs. The cold metal glints in the dim light, and your stomach plummets, dread pooling at the pit of your stomach. Your eyes flick to the cuffs, to him, to the way he's watching you, waiting. You don't want to seem weak. But the panic is rising, bubbling just under the surface.

He sees it. That flicker of fear. And to your shock, he tosses the cuffs aside without a second thought.

"No?" he says, arching a brow, the coolness of his voice making your heart beat faster. ''That's alright.''

You don't know whether you're relieved or disappointed. But you're grateful, more than anything, that he noticed. That he cared.

He shifts you, gently but firmly, positioning you on your stomach, ass up. He pins your hands behind your back, his grip firm but not painful, his fingers like iron. You can't move, can't escape, but it doesn't feel like punishment.

"This," he mutters, low and dark with satisfaction, his voice laced with something rough and possessive. "This I know you like."

You can't help the soft whimper that escapes your lips as his body presses against yours, grinding slow and punishing, drawing out each movement. Your mind starts to unravel as he moves over you, your body arching into him automatically, desperate for more.

Harry's hands let go of your hands and stroke slow along your arms, down your sides, grounding you in the bed's soft sheets. His touch is almost tender, but his voice stays steady, purposeful, like he's still holding back, still working toward something darker.

''Wanna try something,'' he mutters, his mouth brushing over your ear. ''Think you can handle that, baby?''

You hesitate, heart jumping a little too fast in your chest. But you nod, eager to please, eager not to disappoint him, even if there's a pit opening up inside your gut.

He notices the slight delay in your answer, a flash of reassurance passing over his face before he pushes up from the bed and retrieves something from one of the drawers in the nighstand beside his bed: a long strip of black silk. Smooth, intimidating.

You tell yourself you're fine. You tell yourself you can handle it.

He straddles your hips, pinning you lightly to the mattress with the weight of his body, and your breath catches when he brings the silk to your face, letting it ghost across your cheeks. He watches you, studying every twitch of discomfort, every tiny tremble of your lips, but when you don't say anything, he smiles, slow and satisfied.

"Good girl," he breathes, tying the blindfold tight around your eyes.

Darkness falls immediately. Your world narrows to the sound of your breathing, too loud in your ears, and the rough scrape of Harry's sweatpants against your bare skin.

You feel his hand trail down your side, but you can't see it coming, can't prepare for the way it jolts through your body, can't anticipate where he'll touch next. The loss of control makes your heart hammer faster, panic starting to simmer under the surface.

It's fine. It's fine.

Except it's not.

You can't see him. You can't read him. You can't breathe.

The air in the room feels too thick, too heavy. Your chest tightens, your hands gripping at the sheets helplessly, your body locking up beneath him. You try to stay quiet, you try not to ruin it, but your breathing gives you away, short, ragged little gasps that stutter out of you uncontrollably. The harder you try to stop it, the worse it gets.

At first, Harry doesn't notice. His hands are moving, teasing, rough and unrelenting, dragging noises out of your mouth you don't even recognize. But when you whimper softly, not in pleasure, but in fear, you feel him freeze above you. His body goes stiff. You realize, even through the roaring of your rapid heartbeat in your ears, that he's gone completely silent.

''Take the blindfold off,'' he commands sharply.

You struggle to move, shakily reaching up, but he swats your hands away and rips it off himself, tossing the silk onto the floor. His face is right there, inches from yours, his brow furrowed, his mouth drawn into a hard line.

''What the fuck do you think you're doing?'' he demands, voice low and cold and furious.

You flinch, shrinking down into the bed, heat flooding your cheeks in shame. You don't know what to say. You don't know how to fix it.

He sees the panic still written all over you, the way your hands are still trembling, the way you're practically vibrating with anxiety. His mouth curves into something crueler, something sharper, the fire of burning frustration clear in his eyes.

He's disappointed. You've responded poorly to nearly everything he's into. You bet he's offended. You bet he regrets picking you.

"You think I'm mad you're uncomfortable?" he growls, voice harsh enough to make your stomach drop, like he knows exactly what you were thinking and he doesn't like it. "I'm not mad you didn't like it. I'm mad you didn't fucking say so."

Your throat closes up, tears stinging behind your eyes, but Harry doesn't let up. He grabs your chin roughly in his hand, forcing your gaze up to meet his.

''You have a mouth. Use it. I'm very fucking strict about my safe words. You hear me?''

You nod quickly, shame burning through you, but it's not enough for him. Not nearly enough. He sits back on his heels, looming over you, voice cool and clinical like he's disciplining a disobedient pet.

"You're gonna sit there and answer me properly," he says, voice sharp enough to cut. "And you're gonna think about what you say. Understand?"

You nod, small and desperate.

"Use your fucking words."

"Yes, Harry."

"Good," he mutters, eyes narrowing.

He leans in a little, his hand wrapping around your throat, not squeezing, just holding. His thumb strokes lazily over your pulse, feeling it race.

"What do you say," he begins, voice low, "if I've got my hand around your throat... just like this... and I'm fucking you slow, deep, making you feel so full you think you're gonna split apart... and it feels good, but my pace is leaving bruises? Hm?"

You blink up at him, breathing shaky. "Yellow." Slow down.

His mouth twitches, the ghost of a smile. "Good girl."

"What do you say if I'm making you suck me off, not letting you breathe, holding your head down, spit and tears dripping off your chin, and it starts feeling like too much at once?"

You shiver, heat flooding through your body at the image, even as shame creeps higher up your throat. "Yellow," you whisper.

"Louder."

"Yellow, Harry."

He nods, satisfied, squeezing your jaw in his hand.

"And what if I decide to cuff you to the bed," he murmurs, "and leave you there for hours. Touch you, tease you, never let you come. What then, hm? What if you realize you fucking hate it?"

Your breath stutters. "Red." Stop.

"Say it like you mean it."

"Red!"

"Good girl."

He shifts closer, his knees spreading your legs wider, his hand sliding dangerously low along your stomach, stopping just before your core.

"What if," he growls, "I'm slapping your clit, making you sob for it, and you're struggling to breathe?"

You flush so hard your vision blurs.

"Yellow," you stammer.

"Good girl," he praises darkly, the words sliding over your skin like a brand. "Now, what if I'm spanking you... so hard you can't tell if you love it or hate it... and you panic? What do you say?"

"Red!"

"And if you want to fucking leave?"

"Red, Harry, red!"

He pulls back finally, still watching you, chest rising and falling in slow, measured breaths.

"You don't ever sit there like a dumb little doll and hope I notice," he says, voice cold and cutting. "If you feel it, anything, you say it. If you even think about feeling it, you say it. Got it?"

"Yes, Harry," you breathe.

His hand cups your cheek roughly, thumb pressing into the corner of your mouth until you open obediently for him. His face softens, barely, the smallest flicker of reassurance in his gaze.

"Good girl," he mutters. "That's better."

He doesn't touch you right away, just sits there, watching you through hooded eyes, the heat of his body wrapping around you like a heavy blanket. Your chest is still heaving, nerves buzzing just under your skin, but you force yourself to stay still, to breathe. You've earned that tiny nod of approval, the glint of something warmer in his expression. You don't want to lose it now.

"Lie back," he says finally, voice low but not sharp anymore. You obey immediately, heart hammering, limbs trembling a little with the aftershocks of your panic and the brutal interrogation that followed. But he doesn't punish you for it. He doesn't mock you or push. Instead, his hands slide over your thighs, slow and steady, coaxing them apart with a patience that makes your breath hitch.

The first touch of his fingers is almost unbearably gentle, just the barest ghost of contact over your folds, tracing the wetness there like he's reacquainting himself with you. His thumb brushes your clit so lightly you barely feel it, and a broken sound escapes your throat.

"Shh," he murmurs, voice soothing. "We go slow. Yeah?"

You nod, desperate to be good, to show him you can handle it, and he rewards you by pressing a little more firmly, circling your clit in those slow, devastating spirals that make your hips twitch off the bed. His free hand anchors your thigh down, keeping you open, keeping you grounded.

He works you open with maddening care, two fingers sliding in eventually, curling shallowly inside you, his palm keeping constant pressure against your clit. Every movement feels deliberate, measured, for you, not for him. There's none of the bruising pace from before, none of the overwhelming force. Just the steady building of heat, the way your body starts to bloom under his touch.

At one point, you feel his mouth replace his hand, the scrape of his stubble against your inner thigh, the warm flick of his tongue over your clit making you whimper. He's thorough, almost clinical about it, not showy or indulgent, just focused, relentless, coaxing you higher and higher until your body locks up, shuddering through a release so gentle it almost feels like floating. He licks you through it, slow and steady, until you're gasping and twitching under him, pushing weakly at his shoulder.

He pulls back then, finally, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, and looks at you, really looks at you, like he's checking that you're still whole.

"You did good," he says quietly as your eyes flutter closed. You feel the mattress shift when he gets up.

You barely register him moving around the room, but when you blink open your heavy eyes, there's a cold bottle of water being pressed into your hand. You clutch it gratefully, gulping it down while he disappears into the ensuite. A few minutes later, he comes back, tosses a towel onto the bed without a word, and jerks his chin toward the open bathroom door.

"Shower's yours."

You stumble toward it on shaky legs, grateful for the excuse to hide your face. His bathroom is ridiculously luxurious, heated floors, fluffy towels, expensive soaps that smell like cedarwood and spice. You take your time, letting the water wash away the sticky remnants of your anxiety, trying to piece yourself back together.

When you return to the bedroom, he's already under the covers, scrolling lazily through his phone like he hasn't just shattered you and stitched you back together in the same hour.

You hesitate for a moment, but he flicks the blanket up wordlessly, making room for you. Your heart swells a little, and you slip in beside him, careful not to touch him unless he invites it.

For a long moment, there's only the soft sounds coming from his phone, the quiet hum of the city outside his window.

But you can't help yourself. The questions bubble up, tentative and trembling, before you can think better of it.

"Harry?" you whisper.

"Hm?"

You pick at the edge of the blanket, voice barely audible. "Are you... seeing other people?"

He doesn't look at you. Just scrolls once more, then locks his phone and sets it on the nightstand. He turns his head toward you.

"No, baby," he says simply. "I told you this arrangement is exclusive. You're the only one."

Your breath catches.

"And... and how often would I... I mean, how often would you want to... see me?"

"Couple times a week. More, if you're okay with that."

"And... the payment?"

He smirks slightly. "We'll work that out. Money. Gifts. You can have whatever you like."

You chew your lip, heart pounding. "And if I... if there's something I can't do? Or I... I can't—"

"You say no," he interrupts bluntly. His voice is firm, leaving no room for misinterpretation. "You use your fucking words. I don't want your obedience unless you're giving it to me freely. Understand?"

You nod quickly, throat tight.

He watches you for a long moment, something shifting in his expression, almost imperceptible. And then, so quietly you almost miss it, he says:

"Don't like when people fake things with me. Had enough of that for a lifetime."

Your heart squeezes painfully in your chest. You don't know the story behind those words. But you know it's not a conversation you're meant to push. Not tonight.

So you just murmur a soft "Okay", and burrow a little closer under the covers.

He doesn't touch you. But he stays close, close enough that the heat of him soaks into your skin, close enough that when you finally drift off, you swear you feel the edge of his pinky finger brush against yours, the smallest, secret tether.

...

thank you so much for reading! i appreciate any and all support so remember to like, comment and reblog. requests are open! 💕

sugar, baby series tag list

@indierockgirrl @prettygurl-2009 @cherryflavoredbyme @dipmeinhoneyh

general tag list

@2601-london @mads3502

...

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treasure-mimic · 2 years ago

Text

So, let me try and put everything together here, because I really do think it needs to be talked about.

Today, Unity announced that it intends to apply a fee to use its software. Then it got worse.

For those not in the know, Unity is the most popular free to use video game development tool, offering a basic version for individuals who want to learn how to create games or create independently alongside paid versions for corporations or people who want more features. It's decent enough at this job, has issues but for the price point I can't complain, and is the idea entry point into creating in this medium, it's a very important piece of software.

But speaking of tools, the CEO is a massive one. When he was the COO of EA, he advocated for using, what out and out sounds like emotional manipulation to coerce players into microtransactions.

"A consumer gets engaged in a property, they might spend 10, 20, 30, 50 hours on the game and then when they're deep into the game they're well invested in it. We're not gouging, but we're charging and at that point in time the commitment can be pretty high."

He also called game developers who don't discuss monetization early in the planning stages of development, quote, "fucking idiots".

So that sets the stage for what might be one of the most bald-faced greediest moves I've seen from a corporation in a minute. Most at least have the sense of self-preservation to hide it.

A few hours ago, Unity posted this announcement on the official blog.

Effective January 1, 2024, we will introduce a new Unity Runtime Fee that’s based on game installs. We will also add cloud-based asset storage, Unity DevOps tools, and AI at runtime at no extra cost to Unity subscription plans this November. We are introducing a Unity Runtime Fee that is based upon each time a qualifying game is downloaded by an end user. We chose this because each time a game is downloaded, the Unity Runtime is also installed. Also we believe that an initial install-based fee allows creators to keep the ongoing financial gains from player engagement, unlike a revenue share.

Now there are a few red flags to note in this pitch immediately.

Unity is planning on charging a fee on all games which use its engine.

This is a flat fee per number of installs.

They are using an always online runtime function to determine whether a game is downloaded.

There is just so many things wrong with this that it's hard to know where to start, not helped by this FAQ which doubled down on a lot of the major issues people had.

I guess let's start with what people noticed first. Because it's using a system baked into the software itself, Unity would not be differentiating between a "purchase" and a "download". If someone uninstalls and reinstalls a game, that's two downloads. If someone gets a new computer or a new console and downloads a game already purchased from their account, that's two download. If someone pirates the game, the studio will be asked to pay for that download.

Q: How are you going to collect installs? A: We leverage our own proprietary data model. We believe it gives an accurate determination of the number of times the runtime is distributed for a given project. Q: Is software made in unity going to be calling home to unity whenever it's ran, even for enterprice licenses? A: We use a composite model for counting runtime installs that collects data from numerous sources. The Unity Runtime Fee will use data in compliance with GDPR and CCPA. The data being requested is aggregated and is being used for billing purposes. Q: If a user reinstalls/redownloads a game / changes their hardware, will that count as multiple installs? A: Yes. The creator will need to pay for all future installs. The reason is that Unity doesn’t receive end-player information, just aggregate data. Q: What's going to stop us being charged for pirated copies of our games? A: We do already have fraud detection practices in our Ads technology which is solving a similar problem, so we will leverage that know-how as a starting point. We recognize that users will have concerns about this and we will make available a process for them to submit their concerns to our fraud compliance team.

This is potentially related to a new system that will require Unity Personal developers to go online at least once every three days.

Starting in November, Unity Personal users will get a new sign-in and online user experience. Users will need to be signed into the Hub with their Unity ID and connect to the internet to use Unity. If the internet connection is lost, users can continue using Unity for up to 3 days while offline. More details to come, when this change takes effect.

It's unclear whether this requirement will be attached to any and all Unity games, though it would explain how they're theoretically able to track "the number of installs", and why the methodology for tracking these installs is so shit, as we'll discuss later.

Unity claims that it will only leverage this fee to games which surpass a certain threshold of downloads and yearly revenue.

Only games that meet the following thresholds qualify for the Unity Runtime Fee: Unity Personal and Unity Plus: Those that have made $200,000 USD or more in the last 12 months AND have at least 200,000 lifetime game installs. Unity Pro and Unity Enterprise: Those that have made $1,000,000 USD or more in the last 12 months AND have at least 1,000,000 lifetime game installs.

They don't say how they're going to collect information on a game's revenue, likely this is just to say that they're only interested in squeezing larger products (games like Genshin Impact and Honkai: Star Rail, Fate Grand Order, Among Us, and Fall Guys) and not every 2 dollar puzzle platformer that drops on Steam. But also, these larger products have the easiest time porting off of Unity and the most incentives to, meaning realistically those heaviest impacted are going to be the ones who just barely meet this threshold, most of them indie developers.

Aggro Crab Games, one of the first to properly break this story, points out that systems like the Xbox Game Pass, which is already pretty predatory towards smaller developers, will quickly inflate their "lifetime game installs" meaning even skimming the threshold of that 200k revenue, will be asked to pay a fee per install, not a percentage on said revenue.

[IMAGE DESCRIPTION: Hey Gamers!

Today, Unity (the engine we use to make our games) announced that they'll soon be taking a fee from developers for every copy of the game installed over a certain threshold - regardless of how that copy was obtained.

Guess who has a somewhat highly anticipated game coming to Xbox Game Pass in 2024? That's right, it's us and a lot of other developers.

That means Another Crab's Treasure will be free to install for the 25 million Game Pass subscribers. If a fraction of those users download our game, Unity could take a fee that puts an enormous dent in our income and threatens the sustainability of our business.

And that's before we even think about sales on other platforms, or pirated installs of our game, or even multiple installs by the same user!!!

This decision puts us and countless other studios in a position where we might not be able to justify using Unity for our future titles. If these changes aren't rolled back, we'll be heavily considering abandoning our wealth of Unity expertise we've accumulated over the years and starting from scratch in a new engine. Which is really something we'd rather not do.

On behalf of the dev community, we're calling on Unity to reverse the latest in a string of shortsighted decisions that seem to prioritize shareholders over their product's actual users.

I fucking hate it here.

-Aggro Crab - END DESCRIPTION]

That fee, by the way, is a flat fee. Not a percentage, not a royalty. This means that any games made in Unity expecting any kind of success are heavily incentivized to cost as much as possible.

[IMAGE DESCRIPTION: A table listing the various fees by number of Installs over the Install Threshold vs. version of Unity used, ranging from $0.01 to $0.20 per install. END DESCRIPTION]

Basic elementary school math tells us that if a game comes out for $1.99, they will be paying, at maximum, 10% of their revenue to Unity, whereas jacking the price up to $59.99 lowers that percentage to something closer to 0.3%. Obviously any company, especially any company in financial desperation, which a sudden anchor on all your revenue is going to create, is going to choose the latter.

Furthermore, and following the trend of "fuck anyone who doesn't ask for money", Unity helpfully defines what an install is on their main site.

While I'm looking at this page as it exists now, it currently says

The installation and initialization of a game or app on an end user’s device as well as distribution via streaming is considered an “install.” Games or apps with substantially similar content may be counted as one project, with installs then aggregated to calculate the Unity Runtime Fee.

However, I saw a screenshot saying something different, and utilizing the Wayback Machine we can see that this phrasing was changed at some point in the few hours since this announcement went up. Instead, it reads:

The installation and initialization of a game or app on an end user’s device as well as distribution via streaming or web browser is considered an “install.” Games or apps with substantially similar content may be counted as one project, with installs then aggregated to calculate the Unity Runtime Fee.

Screenshot for posterity:

That would mean web browser games made in Unity would count towards this install threshold. You could legitimately drive the count up simply by continuously refreshing the page. The FAQ, again, doubles down.

Q: Does this affect WebGL and streamed games? A: Games on all platforms are eligible for the fee but will only incur costs if both the install and revenue thresholds are crossed. Installs - which involves initialization of the runtime on a client device - are counted on all platforms the same way (WebGL and streaming included).

And, what I personally consider to be the most suspect claim in this entire debacle, they claim that "lifetime installs" includes installs prior to this change going into effect.

Will this fee apply to games using Unity Runtime that are already on the market on January 1, 2024? Yes, the fee applies to eligible games currently in market that continue to distribute the runtime. We look at a game's lifetime installs to determine eligibility for the runtime fee. Then we bill the runtime fee based on all new installs that occur after January 1, 2024.

Again, again, doubled down in the FAQ.

Q: Are these fees going to apply to games which have been out for years already? If you met the threshold 2 years ago, you'll start owing for any installs monthly from January, no? (in theory). It says they'll use previous installs to determine threshold eligibility & then you'll start owing them for the new ones. A: Yes, assuming the game is eligible and distributing the Unity Runtime then runtime fees will apply. We look at a game's lifetime installs to determine eligibility for the runtime fee. Then we bill the runtime fee based on all new installs that occur after January 1, 2024.

That would involve billing companies for using their software before telling them of the existence of a bill. Holding their actions to a contract that they performed before the contract existed!

Okay. I think that's everything. So far.

There is one thing that I want to mention before ending this post, unfortunately it's a little conspiratorial, but it's so hard to believe that anyone genuinely thought this was a good idea that it's stuck in my brain as a significant possibility.

A few days ago it was reported that Unity's CEO sold 2,000 shares of his own company.

On September 6, 2023, John Riccitiello, President and CEO of Unity Software Inc (NYSE:U), sold 2,000 shares of the company. This move is part of a larger trend for the insider, who over the past year has sold a total of 50,610 shares and purchased none.

I would not be surprised if this decision gets reversed tomorrow, that it was literally only made for the CEO to short his own goddamn company, because I would sooner believe that this whole thing is some idiotic attempt at committing fraud than a real monetization strategy, even knowing how unfathomably greedy these people can be.

So, with all that said, what do we do now?

Well, in all likelihood you won't need to do anything. As I said, some of the biggest names in the industry would be directly affected by this change, and you can bet your bottom dollar that they're not just going to take it lying down. After all, the only way to stop a greedy CEO is with a greedier CEO, right?

(I fucking hate it here.)

And that's not mentioning the indie devs who are already talking about abandoning the engine.

[Links display tweets from the lead developer of Among Us saying it'd be less costly to hire people to move the game off of Unity and Cult of the Lamb's official twitter saying the game won't be available after January 1st in response to the news.]

That being said, I'm still shaken by all this. The fact that Unity is openly willing to go back and punish its developers for ever having used the engine in the past makes me question my relationship to it.

The news has given rise to the visibility of free, open source alternative Godot, which, if you're interested, is likely a better option than Unity at this point. Mostly, though, I just hope we can get out of this whole, fucking, environment where creatives are treated as an endless mill of free profits that's going to be continuously ratcheted up and up to drive unsustainable infinite corporate growth that our entire economy is based on for some fuckin reason.

Anyways, that's that, I find having these big posts that break everything down to be helpful.

#Unity #Unity3D #Video Games #Game Development #Game Developers #fuckshit #I don't know what to tag news like this

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fashion-runways · 1 year ago

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hi!! new pinned post, because the last one had gotten long again-- if you want to read previous posts, here's the first one, here's the second one. the tl;dr from those is that my dad got wrongfully imprisoned abruptly, our place was raided, the cops broke a bunch of shit and took a bunch of our things and still haven't returned them, they left all the broken things for us to spend money in repairing, we had to spend money on a lawyer, trips to visit him, new clothes, medicine and food for him in jail, etc. it was a mess, way more details in both posts. he's back home now, with an ankle monitor because technically his case isn't being investigated yet, they haven't done anything about it at all, the case hasn't moved one ounce lmao it's great, always trust the judicial system and cops!! ugh, anyway!

we found a therapist for my dad who can help her deal with all the stuff he had to deal with while in prison, all the bullying, the depression, the starving, the separation, etc. he needs to get a bunch of other medical appointments, has to get surgery, among other things, but for now things are much better on that front. that being said, he did lose his job and my old redbubble account got suspended without a warning months ago, plus argentina's economy is... really bad right now. food prices rise every day, public transportation prices went up like a 200% in a couple of weeks, salaries are low and stuck there, subsidies are gone, the local peso keeps falling, we have an absolute psychopath as a president who spends more time insulting or threatening anyone who oppose him than caring about people. it's a disaster. for updates on argentina in english, this person on twitter makes very good informative threads if you're interested.

anyway, i used to make around 30/40 dollars a month in redbubble, and that used to help adding up to the donations i got here, and it got suspended, so now i make like 1/2 dollars on teepublic monthly. so... it's a huge loss. there's a lot of things me and my mom are in charge of paying-- groceries, power and water and gas, medicine (she's diabetic, i have some sort of chronic sinusitis), our dog and cat's food and medicines, wifi, phone bills, public transportation, healthcare, my dad's new therapist... so, you know, i really need anything people can donate. even if it's just a single dollar, literally any amount helps. i love fashion so much and i love this blog, i work really hard on it even when my brain says no, and i really appreciate how much you guys love it too. i love seeing people discover new styles, new designers, new things to be inspired by. so, yeah... i'm never going anywhere, but i do need help to basically stay afloat.

as usual, my kofi link is this one: https://ko-fi.com/fashionrunways and my teepublic link is this one: https://www.teepublic.com/user/dinah-lance. thanks for being around and sharing and reblogging my posts, thanks for asking questions about fashion, and of course thanks for helping to the ones who can, and thanks to the ones who can't too, i know how that feels like, don't worry about it. love you 💖

#text posts

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mostlysignssomeportents · 5 months ago

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It's pretty easy to cut $2 trillion from the federal budget, actually

Picks and Shovels is a new, standalone technothriller starring Marty Hench, my two-fisted, hard-fighting, tech-scam-busting forensic accountant. THIS IS THE LAST DAY to pre-order it on my latest Kickstarter, which features a brilliant audiobook read by Wil Wheaton.

If Elon Musk wants to cut $2t from the US federal budget, there's a pretty straightforward way to get there – just eliminate all the beltway bandits who overcharge Uncle Sucker for everything from pharmaceuticals to roadworks to (of course) rockets, and then make the rich pay their taxes.

There is a ton of federal bloat, but it's not coming from useless programs or overpaid federal employees. As David Dayen writes in a long, fact-filled feature in The American Prospect, the bloat comes from the private sector's greedy suckling at the government teat:

https://prospect.org/economy/2025-01-27-we-found-the-2-trillion-elon-musk-doge/

The federal workforce used to be huge. In 1960, federal employees were 4.3% of all US workers; today, it's 1.4%. Zeroing out the entire federal payroll would save $271b/year (while beaching the US economy!), a mere 4% of the federal budget.

On the other hand, zeroing out the budget for federal contractors would save over a trillion dollars – the US spends 4 times more on private sector contractors than it does on its own workers, and while some of those contractors are honest folks giving good value for money, the norm is for federal contractors to pick the public's pocket and then use the proceeds to lobby for more fat contracts.

One key job we ask our federal employees to do is root out private sector fraud in federal contracting. We should hire more of these people! Private contractors steal $274b/year from the public purse – nearly enough to pay for all the employees in the federal government:

https://www.gao.gov/assets/gao-23-106285.pdf

Musk doesn't know any of these, and he doesn't care to know. As Dayen writes, he's doing "policy by anecdote." Take Ashley Thomas, the director of climate diversification for the US International Development Finance Corporation. Musk sicced a mob on her, decrying her for doing a "fake job" that was somehow related to "DEI." But Thomas's job isn't employment diversification – it's crop diversification.

If Musk wanted to run DOGE as a force for waste-elimination, he wouldn't be attacking the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and PBS (whose budget accounts for 0.012% of federal spending). He wouldn't be attacking federal fiber subsidies (he's mad that he can't get more subsidies for his dead-end satellite service that caps out at one ten-millionth of the speed of fiber). He wouldn't be attacking high-speed rail (which competes with his Tesla swasticars). He wouldn't be fighting with the SEC (which defends the public from costly stock swindles, which is why they've been investigating Musk for seven years).

He could, instead, go after private sector Medicare waste. 33 million seniors have been suckered into switching from federally provided Medicare to privately provided Medicare Advantage. Overbilling from Medicare Advantage (whose doctors are ordered to "upcode" patients to generate additional bills) costs the public $83b/year:

https://www.medpac.gov/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/Mar24_ExecutiveSummary_MedPAC_Report_To_Congress_SEC.pdf

Medicare Advantage patients are, on average, healthier than Medicare patients (Medicare Advantage giants like Unitedhealtcare cream off the cheapest-to-service patients). Yet, this healthy cohort costs more to treat than their sicker cousins on the public plan – the fraud costs us about 11-14% of the total Medicare bill, and we could save $140b/year by zeroing that out:

https://pnhp.org/system/assets/uploads/2023/09/MAOverpaymentReport_Final.pdf

Zeroing out Medicare Advantage overbilling would pay for "an out-of-pocket spending cap, a public drug benefit, and dental, hearing, and vision benefits" for every Medicare patient with tens of billions to spare.

Of course, as Dayen points out, the guy in charge of Medicare is Dr Oz, who has spent years shilling for Medicare Advantage, while holding massive amounts of stock in Unitedhealthcare, the nation's largest Medicare Advantage provider, and the worst offender for Medicare Advantage overbilling.

Then there's Medicare itself. Rates for Medicare doctor reimbursement are set by committees of specialists, who award themselves sky-high rates while paying rock-bottom wages to the frontline general practitioners who do the heavy lifting. Lowering specialists rates to match the rates paid in Canada and Germany would save the federal government $100b/year:

https://cepr.net/rfk-jr-physicians-pay-schedules-and-the-elites-big-lie/

Then there's Big Pharma. For years, Congress legally forbade Medicare and Medicaid from negotiating drug prices, which is why the US government pays the highest rates in the world for drugs developed in the US, with US federal subsidies. US drug prices are 178% more than other wealthy countries, and many drugs are sold at 20-30x the cost of production:

https://aspe.hhs.gov/reports/comparing-prescription-drugs

A few of these drug prices are going to come down in the coming years, thanks to timid, but long overdue action from the Biden administration. To really tackle a source of government waste, the US government could use its "march in rights" to federalize production of the most expensive drugs:

https://prospect.org/day-one-agenda/force-drug-companies-to-lower-prices/

One possibility floated by economist Dean Baker is for the US government to invest $100b/year in clinical trials, keeping the patents for itself and licensing multiple manufacturers to compete to produce these publicly owned drugs, which would save an estimated $500b/year:

https://cepr.net/financing-drug-development-what-the-pandemic-has-taught-us/

Then there's price-gouging, useless middlemen like Group Purchasing Organizations who soak the public purse for $20b/year – a "moderate" enforcement action could cut that to $10b. Speaking of eliminating middlemen, community health centers are a way cheaper source of care than big hospitals – $2371/year cheaper per patient, per year. By subsidizing these, the US government could save another $20b/year:

https://www.ohiochc.org/news/310956/Landmark-Study-Confirms-Medicaid-Cost-Savings-at-Health-Centers.htm

Next, Dayen moves onto the Pentagon, which pulled in $841b last year but has failed seven consecutive audits:

https://thehill.com/policy/defense/4992913-pentagon-fails-7th-audit-in-a-row-but-says-progress-made/

The DoD firehoses money over private sector contractors, like the $3.6b it hands over to Musk's Spacex every year – a number Musk hopes to grow through Spacex's participation in a new consortium:

https://www.ft.com/content/6cfdfe2b-6872-4963-bde8-dc6c43be5093

Military contractor wastage is the stuff of legend, like the $2t F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, a lemon that has over 800 outstanding defects and was just greenlit for another year's worth of full funding:

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-07-13/lockheed-f-35-s-tally-of-flaws-tops-800-as-new-issues-surface

This kind of wasteage isn't merely shameful, it's illegal. The Nunn-McCurdy Act requires that these large-scale boondoggles be reviewed with an eye to shutting them down. But when beltway bandits like Northrop Grumman’s produce expensive lemons like Sentinel, the DoD continues to hand public money to them, citing "national security":

https://www.defense.gov/News/Releases/Release/Article/3829985/department-of-defense-announces-results-of-sentinel-nunn-mccurdy-review/

The DoD contracts out so much of its essential functions that it literally doesn't know what it has. It pays contractors and subcontractors to produce parts for its systems, but has no way to know if those parts have actually been produced. Meanwhile, private equity rollups like Transdigm have merged every single-source aerospace supplier and jacked up the price of spare parts for existing military systems, pulling down 4,500%+ markups:

https://theintercept.com/2019/05/28/ro-khanna-transdigm-refund-pentagon/

To estimate the easy military savings – the ones that won't require shutting down jobs programs scattered in every key Congressional district – Dayen takes the CBO's estimate and cuts it in half, to get an annual savings of $150b/year.

Then there's general prodcurement, where the GAO estimates the US loses $150b/year to bid-rigging and another $521b/year to fraud (the USG also spends $70b/year on management consultants who do no discernible useful work). Dayen estimates the annual savings from "stringently enforcing fraud and abuse, insourcing operations, and no longer paying for bad advice" at $150b/year.

Then there's tax cheating. The IRS estimates that it undercollects about $606b/year in taxes. The top 1% account for $163b/year of that (Elon Musk's own effective tax rate is just 3.27% as of the five years preceding 2021, the year for which we have his leaked tax return; he paid no taxes in 2018). Every dollar the IRS spends on auditing brings in $2.17 in tax, and every dollar the IRS spends auditing the wealthy generates $6.29 in tax. A dollar spent auditing the top 10% brings in $10:

https://www.timesfreepress.com/news/2024/dec/01/opinion-the-irs-shows-what-government-efficiency/

Audits are durable sources of tax. People who've been burned by an audit are far more honest in the decade after that audit.

The GOP has zeroed out Biden's IRS increases. The CBO estimates that a fully funded IRS could easily increase the taxes it collected by a net figure of $200b/year.

There's also new sources of tax. Dayen likes Dean Baker's proposal for taxes on stock returns: just add dividends and stock appreciation at the end of the year, then multiply by the tax rate. Baker says this is a loophole-free way to bring the effective corporate tax rate up from 20% to 25%, generating $65b/year:

https://cepr.net/winning-the-tax-game-tax-stock-returns/

This would be especially hard on heavily financialized companies with "impossibly high stock price/earnings ratios" – e.g. Tesla.

Dayen also proposes rejigging the tax rate on retirement and health insurance plans, where nearly all the tax breaks are scooped by the highest earners. The Tax Policy Center has $1.12-$1.38t/year worth of other tax reforms that would shift the tax burden from working people to the idle rich:

https://taxpolicycenter.org/briefing-book/what-are-largest-tax-expenditures

Dayen says, "let's ask for about 20% of that" and ballparks the tax income at $200b/year.

How about subsidy cuts? $10b/year in fossil fuel subsidies. Eliminating the notorious sources of fraud in crop insurance would save $5b/year:

https://www.gao.gov/assets/gao-06-878t.pdf

There's $7b/year in subsidies to the Home Bank Loan system and $5b/year lost to pass-through entity loopholes.

Add it all up and you're saving $1.4215t/year without even breaking a sweat, just by tacking (some of) the country's worst looting and tax evasion. Dayen points out US expenditures will fall even more than this, because it won't be paying as much T-bill interest if it doesn't spend this money. We could also just make the Fed stop using the blunt, expensive tool of interest rate hikes to manage inflation. There's plenty of scenarios where interest payments result in the remaining $580b/year in savings, bringing the total up to $2t.

Now, sucking $2t/year out of the US economy all at once – even $2t in waste and fraud – would not be good for America! That kind of economic shock would bring the US economy to its knees, for years to come. All that money still fuels the demand side of the economy. But a slow rampup, and more public spending on useful programs (say, climate resiliency and retrofitting), would strengthen the economy while still bankrupting the fraud sector.

DOGE is wildly unpopular with the American electorate – even large pluralities of Republicans think its stupid. Campaigning on cutting fraud and profiteering would be a wildly popular way for Democrats to separate themselves from Republicans. Few Democrats are rising to the occasion, though.

Check out my Kickstarter to pre-order copies of my next novel, Picks and Shovels!

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/2025/01/27/beltway-bandits/#henhouse-foxes

Image: Steve Jurvetson (modified) https://www.flickr.com/photos/jurvetson/52005460639/

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

#pluralistic #doge #elon musk #Vivek Ramaswamy #beltway bandits #procurement #government efficiency #public sector capacity #gao #government accountability office #david dayen #the american prospect

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stump-not-found · 1 month ago

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hrgh rambled on vc about theraprism bill for hours and i woulda kept doing it . will tuck it safely under the read more

institutes are banal in their cruelty . agency is a complicated subject . bill is a cornered rat who's always been a cornered rat . what does he look like in a scenario where he's back at square one ?

i think he'd lock tf in honestly . tbob wasn't a bad attempt . like the book was a mess of him oversharing, but he managed to get something out the door that wasn't meant to . high security facility for tyrants and he still slipped something thru the cracks -- that's interesting ! i wanna play in that space which takes into account bill cipher is competent and more than willing to rip his fate out of the jaws of whatever sick punchline the universe is setting up for him

i think bill cipher can have his moments of patheticness . he's fun to put in the blender for a lil bit i also enjoy a bill cipher jamba juice from time to time

i just also think he got where he was in life for a reason . he's charismatic . he's funny . people genuinely like him, a natural born cult leader . he's extremely smart, and knowledgeable . he's willing to do a lotta shit most people wouldn't which already puts him ahead of the game

i think the thing that's the most fun about bill being in the theraprism is when you acknowledge he's a person . he's been put in a place where he no longer has any agency . his entire life has been chasing any scrap of agency he can get, and never feeling like he's got it . i love that thread, because this wouldn't be anything new for him -- bill's never had agency as far as he's concerned . always clawing his way for the right to exist

he's a cornered rat, he's always been a cornered rat, and he's gotten pretty god damn good at clawing his way back to the top . i think it's fun being able to explore what that looks like, how that power struggle would function in a place where he is pretty well and truly powerless

then if you throw ford into the mix, now he's got a wedge . and it's fun playing with bill trying to reconcile the ways he wants to use ford as leverage, with the reality that ford is his weakness . that doesn't change just because bill beefed it big time . the fact he won't acknowledge that just about dooms him to it, and that's awesome . i love cycles man. keep pretending that love did not undo you in a mind-bogglingly brief amount of time, i'm clapping and cheering about it yippeeeeee

ohhh it's just so fun . take my man and have him lock tf in . i wanna see him clawing at those walls and being a genuine threat to the system, while coming to terms with the fact that reincarnation is just about inevitable

it's such a weird fucking situation . you can talk so much about personhood, and agency, and how he took those things from others, but like . dude you still deserve to be a person . you still deserve to be treated well . so did all the people you hurt . theraprism presents such a good pressure chamber to have a narrative exploring how someone like bill reconciles those facts, if ever

rooting for you man . i think your success is more narratively interesting than failure

oh goddd and don't get me started on the meta implications of reincarnation as a narrative representation of how so frequently "character redemption" equals the death of the original character, replacing them with someone completely different, usually "good" and "domestic" hhhhhhh

turn him into a moth . turn him into a human . at the end of the day his personality has been so twisted and warped it's not even the same person anyways

my tuoyyyyys

#stump talks #i wanna play in the space that letting bill out of the theraprism in your classic handyman scenario would be genuinely dangerous #that bill would see this for the opportunity that it is #like he may not be playing with a full deck #but at least he's finally at the fucking table #and if there's one thing bill is good at . it's loading his deck and forcing the odds in his favor #even if it fails . lil rat man behavior i love it #like and what's fun is whether or not he wants to #he is growing and changing as a person . for good or for worse #he is no longer the ruler of the nightmare realm . he will never again be the ruler of the nightmare realm #bill cipher DID die #now he's gotta deal with what it means to be bill cipher now #hhhhgghghhhgggghhh #oh i need time to write more prose . i feel like this format of narrative discussion never gets the point across quite right lol #it's got no context . context matters #but i gotta rambleeee

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brucewaynehater101 · 1 year ago

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Alright. Willis Todd being an abusive father to Jason is a trope often utilized. Comparing this version of him to Bruce's reactions to Red Hood is fantastic. Lots to analyze there.

However, I raise you. There needs to be more fanwork addressing the classism behind Willis Todd being characterized as an abusive alcoholic. In some version of canon, Willis Todd was a good dad in a shitty situation. He was poor, his wife (Catherine) was sick, and he had a newborn baby he needed to provide for. In this horrid situation, where he has no family to fall back on and no higher education to obtain a decent well-paying job, he tries to get quick money. He's desperate to keep both his wife and son alive.

Catherine turns to drugs because it's easier and cheaper to buy drugs than healthcare. The pain she experiences is debilitating, and she'd do anything to not feel pain for one godsdamned second. Unfortunately, this turns into an addiction.

This ultimately shapes the way that Jason views crime. Bruce, while he may be sympathetic to individuals who resort to crime to pay their bills, will not understand huddling in Crime Alley in the dead of winter as he debates whether to buy food or pay for heating. He won't understand the bitterness, hatred, pain, and resignation of never having enough money to survive as you get chewed up again and again.

If Jason's dad is just an abusive criminal, that not only perpetuates the notion that all criminals are evil, but it will shape how Jason views those who commit crime. Breaking the law doesn't make someone bad. There's plenty of reasons people commit crime, whether to survive, protect someone, or something else. The issue, especially in Gotham, is the system that perpetuates wealth inequality through bribes and unethical governmental practices.

Anyway, I think Jason's Red Hood is more fleshed out if it accounts for him acknowledging the desperation behind goons and small-time criminals because he grew up without other options.

#dc comics #dc universe #jason todd #catherine todd #willis todd #as far as i know catherine's health problems (outside addiction) are implied but not explicitly stated #yes jason did crime as well as a kid but seeing your father commit crime to survive is another matter #bruce commits crime out of choice not survivalistic need #bruce has suffered but he doesn't have this experience or understanding that Jason did #bruce and jason can both understand logically that gotham systems are fucked but jason knows it intimately #jason being bitter and angry at the world for the wealth inequality and corrupt/cruel systems in place should come up more

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weiwardromance · 3 months ago

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HELP A DISABLED QUEER DUDE GET OUT OF HIS LIVING SITUATION

hi! i'm plum- a lot of you probably know me as cosmo though! i've been planning to move out with some long-time friends for just over a year now, but the date has been repeatedly pushed back for a few family reasons, among other things.

my mother, who i am dependent upon for transportation until i move, has stated that next month she is going to be charging me for basic essentials as a "trial run" for existing in the "real world," conveniently one month before i was set to move out in june. i already pay a share of rent and utilities, but now she is going to start charging me for food and transportation- telling me that i'll need to uber to the bank to get cash in order to pay for the state-sponsored public transit system i qualify for through my psychiatric care. it's been hard for me to save for numerous reasons, and just as i've been able to finally get money in my account, our food insecurity and the new restrictions mom is putting on me are going to result in me being stuck here for even longer. she's been manipulative and asserted that i shouldn't move out for a while, constantly moving the goalposts and doing things to sabotage me, and while i have my own hangups about calling her an abusive person, this is just textbook financial abuse. i cannot live in this household anymore, and i'm sick of being manipulated and strongarmed into staying in a housing situation that isn't good for me.

once i'm living with my friends, i'll have a financial cushion and space to be able to get a job to help pay my share in addition to my social security benefits, but right now, i need help. i need to rapidly accumulate as much savings as i can to cover things like my phone bill, any changes i'll need to make to my ID, and a bit extra to help cover my share of groceries while i wrangle the SSA into getting my new address (and a new bank account) on file. i don't have a solid goal other than a vague "over one hundred dollars", so anything helps me here, no matter how small.

thank you for taking the time to read, and please reblog if you can!!

MOVED OUT AND HAPPY NOW!! DISABLING RBS, TYSM!

#financial aid #mutual aid

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reasonsforhope · 7 months ago

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"It’s technically possible for the UK to achieve its goal of having a clean power system by 2030, and doing so should reduce electricity bills and bolster the country’s energy security, the grid operator says in a study commissioned by the new Labour government.

The context

The UK recently shut its last coal-fired power plant and aims to slash its use of gas turbines as it seeks to all but eliminate fossil fuels from its electricity mix by the end of the decade.

In 2023, renewables and nuclear accounted for 62% of the country’s electrical output, while fossil fuels held a 38% share. Under the 2030 clean power target, fossil fuels (gas) would be reduced to less than 5% of the mix.

The latest

“The analysis concludes that clean power is a huge challenge but is achievable for Great Britain by 2030,” the National Energy System Operator said in a statement as it published the study.

Overall system costs are unlikely to increase if the target is met, and tariffs could in fact decline as legacy power contracts expire and if the state makes sufficient progress on energy efficiency gains, flexibility mechanisms, improving grid connection processes, and overall policy modernisation.

Significant investments are required in a short amount of time, but they would allow the UK to become a “leader” in new technologies while also reducing the country’s exposure to potential energy price shocks stemming from spikes in international gas prices, as was the case after Russia invaded Ukraine.

NESO’s analysis shows that clean technologies — renewables and nuclear — will be able to produce at least as much power as Great Britain consumes in total in 2030...

“A clean power system for Great Britain will deliver a backbone of home-grown energy that breaks the link between volatile international gas prices; that is secure and affordably powers our homes and buildings; that decarbonises the transport that we take to school and work; that drives the businesses of today and catalyses the innovations of the future.”

Next steps: The government will now consider NESO’s advice as it develops its clean power action plan later this year."

-via The Progress Playbook, November 5, 2024

#uk #united kingdom #clean energy #renewables #wind power #solar power #fossil fuels #decarbonization #europe #good news #hope

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norrisradio · 4 months ago

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almost

⚡︎ pairing: yuki tsunoda x chef!reader | ⚡︎ wc: 1.1k ⚡︎ genre: fluff, angst, humor ⚡︎ recommended listening: midnight city, m83 • fine line, harry styles • the archer, taylor swift • talk, khalid & disclosure • adore you, harry styles ⚡︎ incoming radio: my first ever fic on this account has to be dedicated to my the love of my life @tsunodaradio . if i was the one to get them into F1, they were the one who gave me my love of writing.

⚡︎ summary: It was a tradition. A secret. A fleeting thing that only existed within the neon-lit haze of race week.

The first time you met, he was stealing food.

Or at least, that’s what it looked like.

It was just past midnight, and you were stacking chairs when you caught him—ballcap tucked under his arm, hoodie pulled low over his face, fingers curled around a skewer of chicken satay that wasn’t his. You’d left it sitting on the counter for less than thirty seconds, meant for a post-rush snack, but now it was halfway to his mouth, his expression frozen somewhere between guilt and shamelessness.

"Technically," he said, chewing as he spoke, "this was unattended."

"Technically," you echoed, crossing your arms, "you’re an entitled asshole."

He grinned at that, like you’d passed some kind of test, and then tossed a crumpled bill onto the counter—far more than what a single skewer was worth. "Keep the change, chef."

And that was that.

The next time he showed up, it wasn’t to steal food. Not really.

He came back the following year, race week in full swing, stepping into your kitchen like he belonged there. This time, he waited until you handed him a plate before taking a bite. "Better service than last year," he mused, mouth full. You only rolled your eyes. But you let him stay.

It became a thing.

Every Singapore Grand Prix, without fail, he found his way to you. Always late at night, always when the world had quieted down. He never told you when he was coming—never texted, never called—but somehow, he was always there.

You’d hear the creak of the door, feel the shift in the air before you even looked up. Sometimes he’d lean against the counter like he owned the place, sometimes he’d slip onto a stool and watch you work, sometimes he’d take a skewer straight off the grill like it was his God-given right.

A few drinks sometimes lingered in his system, but never too many—just enough to soften the sharp edges, to make him stay a little longer. You never asked if he was coming from a party or a meeting or some late-night walk meant to clear his mind. He never asked why you stayed so late at the restaurant.

It was just understood.

And you liked him best like this—loose-limbed and a little reckless, spinning a chopstick between his fingers, commenting on your technique like he knew a damn thing about food.

"Too much salt.""You’re eating for free. Shut up.""You love me."

He said it like a joke, like he was testing the weight of the words in the air. You rolled your eyes, shoving a bowl toward him, watching as he took the first bite. But you never said no.

And maybe you did.

But neither of you said it. That wasn’t the point of this.

It was a tradition. A secret. A fleeting thing that only existed within the neon-lit haze of race week.

Until this year. Until now.

Until tonight, when Yuki stands in your doorway, hands shoved into the pockets of his hoodie, and—for the first time—doesn’t move.

The air between you feels heavier than usual. Maybe it’s the race. Maybe it’s the exhaustion dragging at his limbs, the adrenaline finally burning out. Or maybe it’s the fact that, this time, he didn’t just show up to eat.

This time, he lingered.

Dinner had stretched longer than usual, silence slipping into spaces that used to be filled with easy conversation. He’d eaten slower, eyes flicking to you between bites, like he was trying to memorize something. You caught him staring once, and he didn’t look away.

Now, in the doorway, you see it again—that almost hesitation. Like he wants to say something he never has before.

"Do you ever get tired of leaving?"

You don’t know why you ask it. Maybe you already know the answer. Maybe you just want to hear him say it.

Yuki exhales, the ghost of a laugh passing through his lips. "Do you?"

You tilt your head. "I don’t leave. You do."

And there it is—the truth of it. The thing neither of you have ever acknowledged.

His fingers twitch at his sides. He looks back—just once, like he’s considering staying. Like, for the first time, he’s wondering what would happen if he didn’t walk away.

And then he steps forward. It’s almost like a reflex—he doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t need to. His hand finds your jaw, his thumb pressing into your skin as he pulls you close, his lips crashing against yours like this has been waiting for years.

It’s fast. Hungry. Full of things that neither of you have said out loud. His kiss tastes like spice, like the long hours of work and the briefest hint of something more. You pull him closer, fingers knotting into his hoodie, and for the first time, neither of you think about the morning.

Your back hits the counter. His hands slide down, gripping your waist like he’s trying to ground himself, like he’s afraid this is just another thing that will disappear when the night is over. You don’t stop him. You let him have this—let yourself have this—because for once, there’s no audience, no cameras, no pressure to be anything but what you are.

There’s just you. Just him. Just this.

When the kiss breaks, you’re both breathing heavily. His forehead presses against yours, his eyes wide, searching yours like he’s looking for something. For permission, maybe. Or an answer.

"We don’t have to talk about this," he says, voice quiet. "But we can’t pretend it didn’t happen."

You can’t say anything. You don’t need to. There’s something heavy in the air, but it’s not fear. It’s anticipation.

The night stretches on, tangled between the quiet moments of touch, of words unspoken, of almost.

But as the first light of dawn seeps through the kitchen window, Yuki is pulling on his jacket, zipping it up with slow precision.

"I should go," he says, the weight of it more present than ever. You want to tell him to stay, to make him stay, but you don’t.

He glances at you one last time before stepping toward the door. But as his hand rests on the knob, there’s that pause again. That fleeting moment where he could do something different. He could walk back to you. He could kiss you again.

But he doesn’t.

"See you next time," he says, the words thick with meaning this time.

And then he’s gone.

You stand in the stillness of the kitchen, the smell of spices lingering in the air, and you wonder—maybe for the first time—if you’ll ever stop saying goodbye.

Because you know how this goes.

Yuki Tsunoda always leaves in the morning.

But maybe, just maybe—

One day, he won’t.

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