#what did I do to anger the algorithm?

[alia-atreideez]

A targeted attack

[billericious]

collateral | b.e

The last time you had seen Billie was 6 months ago, the tone it had been left on was sour, an argument if she was as committed to the relationship as you were. Half of a year since then, and you were still looking for answers. Did she miss you as much as you missed her? No, you don’t miss her. You can’t miss her. But when you're alone in your bed on a cold winter night, you let your mind drift off to imagine her warmth surrounding you, holding you just as she used to. You miss her in the quiet moments of life.

You look over to your nightstand, the clock reading 3:26 AM. deciding sleep is a lost cause, you pick up your phone and scroll mindlessly, trying to distract yourself from the ache in your heart. As if the algorithm was laughing at you, an ad of billie promoting her upcoming project pops up. She talks and smiles, telling whoever would be watching how excited she is for everyone to hear her art. You search her eyes, a sign that she could even be remotely sad without you. Maybe it’s the fact that the video is prerecorded, or maybe she doesn’t feel your absence at all that makes you find nothing.

You can't stop your mind from going back to that fateful night.

“So what, you just want to end this?” she stands with you, toe to toe and tears glossing over her blue eyes. “Billie, you’re not even hearing me, just hearing what you want to hear!” tears fill your own eyes, blurring your vision. The argument escalated quickly, emotions that had been brewing in you for months finally spilling out at an alarming rate.

You continue, “I just feel used, okay? We’ve been going out for a year without even being together officially. I understand that you’re busy, that the situation isn’t as simple as it seems, but fuck billie. You’ve had time, and I've had enough.” the girl in front of you falls silent, her mouth slightly ajar as she tries to collect her thoughts. The tension only grows as she stays quiet. “So that’s it then? You have nothing to say?” Billie picks up her jaw and rolls her eyes.

“I want you, truly. It's just tha-” you cut her off with a sarcastic laugh, tears rolling down your cheeks. “There's always an excuse, bil! I’m just never enough for you, never enough to just be yours.” eye contact breaks as you look down to the floor, quiet sobs escaping your mouth. Billie is quick to step forward and pull you close. Too tired to fight back, you melt into her arms.

“I’m sorry, baby. I am.�� she whispers into your hair, “i just…can’t” you look up at her, eyes red and puffy. “You can’t? Can’t do what you're doing right now?” you push her off of you, anger over taking once again. “Don’t make it sound like that, y/n. You know it’s more than that”

“A year billie! And for what? For you to just use me, use my love, my time, my body?” Billie's eyebrows scrunch at your words. “I would never use you, I love you, you know that.” she begins to defend herself. “Then what are you doing?” your ears feel warm and your stomach is churning. You already know where this is going, despite your best efforts.

You look at each other, a desperation in both of your eyes, a hunger.

“I don’t know.” she whispers.

“Leave, now.” you respond.

“y/n, don’t do this. Please, please don’t do this” she begs you, pleading. “No billie, I can't keep doing this.” Billie's tears finally falling down her rosy cheeks, a look of acceptance settles onto her face.

“Okay.”

You watch her grab her keys and walk towards the door. She looks back at you one final time, hoping you would change your mind. Crossing your arms, you stand firmly, despite feeling anything but confident.

You sit on the edge of your bed, holding your knees to your chest. Cries rake through your body, the memory being all too much. A ding from your phone makes you look up, rubbing the tears from your eyes as you pick up the device. It feels like the world stops spinning as you read the notification.

Billie

hey

pt 2

maze speaks !

this is so ass </3 so sorry :p first fic tho! just hoping i get better as time goes on (part two probs)

[allfortheslay25]

I really love this "Who Frammed Roger Rabbit" AU. Normally AUs don't tend to be this creative. I really wonder how the scene where the detective asks Jessica "Seriously, what do you see in that guy?" "He makes me laugh ._." would go. Andrew makes Neil laugh? Or what do you think Neil would answer Kev?

Also idk if you already did this but what would their version of "hunny bunny" be? Anyways much love, you're amazing.

Btw my posting is slow because I’m trying not to overwhelm my algorithm or my posts get buried☝️I’ve got plenty more drafts to share👀

I thought long and hard about this one. Even tho Andrew makes Neil laugh and his personality is why he’s the only one for Neil, Andrew’s blunt honesty is really the nail in the coffin for him. A toon made for sex appeal won’t get a ton of honesty. It’s just sweet words to butter him up every time so Andrew being the prickly blunt type would make him one of a kind

Kevin thinks Neil is telling another joke because Andrew’s honesty is something Kevin sees as rude and off putting. He also thinks it’s ironic that a ‘crafty and cunning dishonest’ Fox could tell the truth to begin with.

Cue Kevin gagging in the background

I didn’t think of a replacement for ‘Hunny Bunny’ because the only pet name I can ever picture Neil giving Andrew is ‘Love/my love’ however just for shits and giggles and bcuz they’re toons, Neil would call him Drew or Handsome Fox (gay)

Andrew still calls Neil ‘Rabbit’ sometimes

Idk if yall realized but the two hairs I draw on Neil are imitations of bunny ears so they mimic his emotions

Passively sassy cuz he’s gotta show to do but despises these viewers

Droopy from having to entertain Ichirou

Sassy and pulled back slightly because he’s anxious and annoyed

Pressed back from anxiousness about Andrew and anger at Kevin

Rabbits pull their ears back when stressed

Hearts for Andrew

Floppy and droopy towards Kevin bcuz Andrew was knocked out (even tho Neil did it)

[all444glo]

HƆNI XI9

part one

warnings: foul language, suggestive, etc etc

summary: englishmen are insistent.

You scrolled aimlessly through your phone, sitting on the cold wooden bench in front of those all-too-familiar lockers. Jude was everywhere—on your feed, in your explore page, buried in stories you didn’t even mean to tap on. It was like the algorithm had it out for you, twisting the knife a little deeper each time his face popped up.

You weren’t new to fame. You’d been in music videos, name-dropped in songs, brushed shoulders with more celebrities than you could count. The spotlight never rattled you. But somehow, Jude did.

You’d ignored his follow requests. Left his texts on read—not that you even remembered giving him your number in the first place. Still, he lingered. A handsome kind of plague you couldn’t seem to shake.

Your mind drifted, uninvited, to that private dance. The way his hands hovered, cautious but curious. The slow, reverent way he’d unlaced your underwear like he was unwrapping something sacred. He never crossed a line, but somehow that only made you want him more.

You needed him. But needing wasn’t the same as having.

Because in the real world, men like him didn’t end up with girls like you. You were an exotic dancer from a tiny town in Georgia; he was a football star on one of the most decorated teams on the planet. Even if you left that life behind, the past had teeth. And the media never let girls like you forget it.

You checked the time and pulled yourself out of the spiral, grounding yourself in the now. Showtime was coming. You were used to this. You’d climbed from pouring drinks to dancing side stage to dominating the main floor.

You were the name people whispered about, the one they came to see. The one they paid for. The money rolled in, but lately, the weight of it all felt heavier than usual. You were tired. But at least tonight, the crowd was small, private. Manageable.

They’d asked for you, like most did. You had the kind of body that made people forget their names, and the kind of presence that made them beg to remember yours. A tap on your shoulder broke your thoughts—it was one of the girls stepping off stage, her garters barely holding bills.

Private party with private pockets, you thought bitterly, standing up. You sprayed one last mist of setting spray across your face and leaned into the mirror. A quick swipe of your cheap, glittery lip gloss. Still, even exhausted, you looked like a dream.

You stepped into the haze of the club, lights flickering against the smoke, your heels clicking softly beneath the music. It was packed, shoulder to shoulder with unfamiliar faces—men too stunned to even touch, too fascinated to blink.

Definitely not from Atlanta.

You scanned the room. Nothing but tourists. That sinking feeling settled in your stomach. You hated outsiders. Hated the guessing game. At least the regulars had patterns. Predictability. These men? You’d have to read them cold.

You approached the pole slowly, easing into your rhythm. A bend at the waist, a calculated tilt of your hips. Letting the tension build, letting them think they had time to figure you out. Then—you felt it.

Fingers slipping into your thong.

Your body stiffened. You knew that touch. Too well.

“Jude,” you gasped, whipping around and stepping down from the stage, heat flooding your cheeks as your coworkers looked on. “What the hell are you doing here?” You smacked his chest—not in anger, not exactly. Something heavier. Conflicted.

No matter how many times you tried to shut the door on him, he always had another key. That was the curse of rich men—money rewrote the rules. Bought back access you thought you revoked.

“I paid good money for this, love,” he said, with that same smirk that made you ache and want to scream all at once. His hands grazed your sides, the heat from his skin sinking into your bones.

“You love to tip toe on my boundaries,” you said, quieter now. “I told you I’m a stripper. That’s all I’ll ever be to you.”

“And I keep telling you,” he said, stepping closer, “we could be more. But if you really mean that—if that’s all you’ll ever be—then at least let me be your favorite customer.”

There was something in his eyes. Lust, yes, but beneath it—something dangerous. Something tender. It chipped at the wall you’d built.

For a second, you almost gave in. Almost let yourself believe he meant it. That he could be different.

“Why do you want me so bad?” you asked, voice shaky. “Is this some kind of fetish?”

“What? No—”

“Is it the control? The idea that you can buy me? Does that turn you on? Am I just some PG-13 prostitute to you?”

He didn’t flinch. Just reached for your hand and led you into the same room where everything started. Where he first watched you, not like a man paying for a show—but like someone looking at art and aching to touch.

The silence settled thick between you.

“Why would I think of you like that?” he said finally, his voice quieter now, slower. “Am I not allowed to be infatuated with you?”

You looked down. The words came out before you could soften them. “I like you, Jude. That’s the problem.” You huffed putting your head in your hands, trying to take a deep breath.

“But I know how this ends. When i’m the docile girl you took out the strip club you’ll love me. But when I fuck up or do something you don’t like, I’ll be back to being a hoe. That’s what happens to girls like me.”

The air shifted. You hated how fragile you sounded. How much it sounded like a plea for protection when all you wanted was honesty.

“So you don’t want anything real?” he asked. “You don’t want love?”

You shrugged. A tear rolled down, but you wiped it away before it could fall too far.

He stared at you—like he was trying to see through everything you said, everything you didn’t.

Then he spoke, low and steady:

“If you were really okay with what you do…you’d understand that I accept you exactly as you are.”

A long pause.

“But the truth is, you don’t even know how to accept yourself.”

[megangovier]

Expelled | J.M Fic

Pairing: Stepdad!Joel x brat! fem! reader Summary: Joel was heading out on lunch break, when his phone blew up with notifications of links and videos of you doing nasty things with your teacher, angry he drives to your college and confronts you in private. Y/n describes her "time" with her teach and Joel bends you over the desk" Warnings: 18+ only // age gap 21/30s // punishment // slapping x1 // slight s&m! reader // swearing/degradation // spanking // fingering // ear biting // finger sucking // Joel being jealous // biting // Minors Do NOT interact!. Author's note: I'm not responsible for what you view on your algorithm, so if this makes you uncomfortable please scroll past! Thank you <3 pic isn't mine mention of y/n This is all fictionalised, nothing from this fic should be taken into the real world, it's all fantasy! for my stepdad!Joel sluts😏 Wc: 1k

Joel was in his office, sitting at his desk sipping on his rich americano with a beaming smile on his face. He thought to himself it's not going to be bad of a day and it's going to go his way for a change. As the clock turned for his lunch break he decided to head out to get something hot and sweet, walking into an elevator two people looked at him with a distain look in their eye. Confused, Joel just shrugged it off and ignored them thinking they just heard some bad news of some sort.

Getting out of the elevator, they ignored Joel's look and walk off towards their separate offices. Taking out his phone it started to buzz with notifications and links, tapping his password into his phone heart began to pound faster in his chest. He never gets this many notifications during working or even break hours. Clicking on a link that was sent to him a video popped up of a female bent over the desk with a older man behind her.

Squinting to look at the female properly his heart shatters and chest heaves, the woman in the video was you bent over the desk. No wonder he was getting dirty looks from his work colleagues, they must've know about this before he did. Muting his phone he watched the video, tears ran down his cheeks. Your mother brought you up to be better than this.

He calls his boss to say that a family matter has come up and if he could do an extra work shift tomorrow, his boss agrees and Joel headed towards his car, gets in and zooms to your college. Jaw clenching and knuckles turning white, he swears loudly in his car with the windows down.

1 hour later...

Joel parks in the parking lot, locks up his car and heads off into college. It was gone 14:00 when he arrived so you'd be finishing lesson soon which gives him plenty of time to talk to you privately. As he walks in, the college secretary asks "do you have any business here sir" walking upto the table his hands slam on the desk "I'm here to see y/n, I heard there's been a bit of trouble with her" anger flashers in his eyes.

"You must be y/n's stepfather, please follow me" as she got up from the chair, Joel's jaw was clenching again but harder this time. He was so pissed at what had taken place a few days ago in the classroom with y/n and her teacher. Stopping at the door of y/n's class the door opened and the secretary popped her head through "sorry to be a bother miss, but could I borrow y/n for a second".

A chill ran down your spine, getting up from your chair to face the consequence of what you did, a sigh left your lips and taking the bag with you, you left the class and followed behind your stepdad.

Entering an empty classroom, your stepdad asks the secretary if she could lock up the classroom so he could talk privately to you. She was hesitant at first but the matter had to be sorted, so she did what was asked and left.

Joel was looking at you with anger and distain, head looking down in "shame" he grabbed your chin and looked at you "A teacher, really! Why did you do it?". A smirk appeared onto your lips "why not? It was fun, the way he used his fingers to make me cu-" Joel slapped your face.

The smirk had gotten bigger "do that again, I dare you". Joel bent you over the desk, your nipples harden at the thought of your teacher. "You're one dirty fucking bitch aren't you, like getting used by older men huh?" His lips were near your ear "I bet you're getting off on this right now, getting bent over the desk at college, the thought of people viewing you through the window huh?".

Joel's fingers slide over your panties "fuck, you're so wet! I bet you're thinking of him huh, that teacher of yours, the way he made you cum by using his fingers" you bit your lip to keep the moan in "answer me slut!". Looking back at him with innocent looking eyes "yes daddy, I am" you said with a grin.

"well now I'm going to make you lose your mind". Sliding his finger in your soaked panties from behind, his teeth were nibbling at your ear backing up on him he pulled away "oh no honey, you don't deserve this, the right was taken when you fucked your teacher nasty girl, you've got to earn that".

A sigh left your lips, you really wanted to be filled with cock but he was right. You had to earn that back, getting back into his original position his chest was against your back, feeling the soppy cunt dripping with sweet juices "making such a mess on my fingers" pumping his fingers faster into you, Joel slid a hand over your mouth "stay quiet girl, we don't want anyone to bother us, unless you're into that" he said with a smirk.

Clenching around his fingers, he knew you were getting close to your climax "I can feel you clenching baby girl, you wanna come on daddy's fingers huh, I bet your still thinking of him? The way he was pressed up against you, grinding his cock against your ass hm? Or the way he fucked you dumb till your brain turned to mush"

Eyes rolling at the back of your head, legs shaking with ecstasy you bit down onto Joel's hand and squirted all over his fingers chest heaving, Joel backs away "dirty slut, my fingers need cleaning now! Come over here and suck them clean" sliding his fingers in your mouth, tongue swirling over them tasting yourself on them your pussy clenches around nothing.

"next time girl, I'll fuck you and won't stop till your pussy remembers my size".

This took two hours to write🤍

@strang3lov3 @toxicanonymity @cuntyhunty22 🫠

@milla-frenchy @aurorawritestoescape @rositaa01xxr 🖤

[dokidokitsuna]

Daughters

…It’s been a minute since I posted any art here. At first I thought it might be because I was just getting depressed again, but tbh I’ve been happier and more creative than ever. ^^; Things are definitely different this time around…and I think it’s something that’s been building for a long time.

Recently, I started thinking about Daughters of the Pumpkin Queen again– an old webcomic that I worked on back when I was in college. And although I hate reading my old work, I made myself skim through it, and I was honestly stunned at the quality of the writing, especially in the unfinished Season 2. O_O If I can do stuff like that while school is literally eating my brains away, man…I don’t know why I’m not famous already. People really don’t appreciate genius, do they…?

Anyway, genius or not, it’s clear that I worked really hard to make it a high-quality webcomic, putting in more and more effort and polish with every new installment…while it gradually became less and less popular, like everything else I did at the time. And I think DotPQ was kind of the final straw for me, back then...

I remember getting really depressed and miserable about my art in the years that followed…I didn’t think I was depressed and miserable, but in hindsight, I was clearly in the “Anger” and “Bargaining” stages of the grieving process. ^^; I started pushing myself to do anything I could stomach to get more popular as an artist– I joined more sites, I started posting more standalone art, I branched out to new types of art; writing novels, composing music, starting speedpaint video essays near the end. I just wanted an audience again so badly, and I knew I was good at all these things, because everyone I brought my art to directly told me so. So I figured it was just a matter of finding the right niche.

Long story short, it didn’t work. ^^; I learned a ton of new artistic skills, and I definitely don’t regret that, but I never did get what I wanted– i.e. a steady stream of external validation on at least a weekly basis. What I did get was new fans of my more sporadic content, like my video essays and animation…and before that was low-key frustrating, because I really couldn’t do more than one of those a month, at best. What would I do for validation in the meantime…?

But now…I don’t really care? ^^; I don’t feel like I need validation in the meantime anymore…and at first I thought it was just laziness (or the bouts of depression) but now I’m thinking it was also just me subconsciously fighting this change in my mindset. After all, when you think of online artists, they’re usually in one of two camps: the dedicated people who chase the algorithms on a weekly/daily basis, or the legendary people who just drop a masterpiece every couple months and never say anything. And because I knew I didn’t want to be the latter; I assumed I needed to be the former, but maybe there’s middle ground.

I’m not 100% sure what it is…but I know I’ve come to be fine with just working on projects by myself for weeks or months. I don’t mind taking my time with difficult drawings anymore, or simply deciding not to post them if I don’t like them, without feeling like I wasted the effort. And I’ve relearned to make pieces I’m proud of without even wanting to post them online– initially this was because I was just afraid no one would like them as much as I expected, and it was better not to take the risk. ^^; But now it’s more like…that’s not always what they’re for. Sometimes I just want to get an idea out of my head and look at it, and that’s fine by itself.

Best of all, I can finally work on my original projects with no guilt or shame. ^^ That’s basically what I did all last month, and I had a great time. I spent hours writing every day; I made a bunch of new drawings; I even did a color study for the first time in a while. And I was the only witness…and it still feels wrong, but not as wrong as it used to. It’s kinda freeing. ‘_’

I still like to share art and talk about it with fans; it’s still the highlight of my life and one of the main reasons I feel motivated to make art. But it’s not an imperative anymore; there’s no pressure to make it happen at all costs. And I think this year, I’m going to make a conscious effort to accept that as normal. Maybe it’s just because I’ve been watching a lot of Duchess Celestia lately, but I think it’s time to review my lifestyle as an artist and lean into the parts I actually enjoy.

Now, as for this drawing: I just really loved the characters in this little series, despite all the bad memories attached to working on it. ^^ And even though Season 2 had a great storyline and part of me is tempted to finish it, I think Season 1 had a stronger concept; to the point where it’d probably be a better idea to reboot the series, if I ever went back to it.

Maybe as just a short run with 2 or 3 episodes, to play with the concept in a new way. I like the idea of re-imagining Mariska and Etelka as teenagers (which wasn’t possible in the original lore)…y’know, let them be a little more driven and opinionated, and have some more agency. DotPQ was heavily inspired by Fireball in terms of the premise; this could be a chance to borrow some more from it in terms of tone. ^^ Idk, it’s just a fun idea…I’ll probably just toy with it in the background along with everything else.

[elbdot]

You know what? This year may have been THE most chaotic one yet in EVERY aspect of the word - but it surely was my most productive year as well! As many emotionally ups and downs as I had, as hard it was to distract yourself from the CHAOS of the world and the justified anger, fear and frustration of the people, I can still say that my year has been more positive than the ones before! I feel different - more like...myself. MORE me. Almost complete. And I have the strong desire to show more of myself out there, to be seen and recognized for what I do and who I am, I want my work to go OUT THERE, to make new friends and find new business partners so I can finally go ALL OUT and republish my books - and I did actually form new friendships this year, more in one year than I did in the past 6 years combined, it's incredible! I stepped out there and made new friends by not even particularly DOING anything - I was just me: A pure bug nerd walking with Maybugs and wild bees on my hands through the streets - that's how I met MULTIPLE people this year.

And I gave myself the space and time to flourish artistically in EVERY direction - From Fakemon Designs to animal studies, horse illustrations, realistic styles, comic styles, personal-, fan- and Pokemoncomics, traditional animation, puppet animation, Photography, SKITS on Youtube - EVERYTHING I wanted to do I DID and I am VERY PROUD that I was able to see through and finish almost everything I started this year or had begun to work on the year before!

There's so much I still want to do and I hope to achieve next year - when I hopefully am more in power again, when my body has recovered from its current whooping cough, when I can contact agencies again. And I really hope social media will become more kind to us artists again, when we currently have to struggle so much with algorithms who want us to be influencers and content machines to post daily. That's why I'm really grateful for my community here on tumblr and the fact that it is not being dictated by an unforgiving algorithm like twitter and Instagram is. On here you actually still have a chance to be seen.

Thank you all SO MUCH for your support this year! Especially those of you, who decided to join my community on Patreon and have become part of my Discord server. You guys have lifted my spirit in ways I couldn't describe and I'm so happy to have such a kind and incredibly generous community! Truly, thank you all so much for being here!

Onward to 2024, let's hope it will treat us all with gentleness and kindness 🥹🥰💖💕

Socials | Patreon

[mostlysignssomeportents]

The moral injury of having your work enshittified

This Monday (November 27), I'm appearing at the Toronto Metro Reference Library with Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen.

On November 29, I'm at NYC's Strand Books with my novel The Lost Cause, a solarpunk tale of hope and danger that Rebecca Solnit called "completely delightful."

This week, I wrote about how the Great Enshittening – in which all the digital services we rely on become unusable, extractive piles of shit – did not result from the decay of the morals of tech company leadership, but rather, from the collapse of the forces that discipline corporate wrongdoing:

https://locusmag.com/2023/11/commentary-by-cory-doctorow-dont-be-evil/

The failure to enforce competition law allowed a few companies to buy out their rivals, or sell goods below cost until their rivals collapsed, or bribe key parts of their supply chain not to allow rivals to participate:

https://www.engadget.com/google-reportedly-pays-apple-36-percent-of-ad-search-revenues-from-safari-191730783.html

The resulting concentration of the tech sector meant that the surviving firms were stupendously wealthy, and cozy enough that they could agree on a common legislative agenda. That regulatory capture has allowed tech companies to violate labor, privacy and consumer protection laws by arguing that the law doesn't apply when you use an app to violate it:

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

But the regulatory capture isn't just about preventing regulation: it's also about creating regulation – laws that make it illegal to reverse-engineer, scrape, and otherwise mod, hack or reconfigure existing services to claw back value that has been taken away from users and business customers. This gives rise to Jay Freeman's perfectly named doctrine of "felony contempt of business-model," in which it is illegal to use your own property in ways that anger the shareholders of the company that sold it to you:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/11/09/lead-me-not-into-temptation/#chamberlain

Undisciplined by the threat of competition, regulation, or unilateral modification by users, companies are free to enshittify their products. But what does that actually look like? I say that enshittification is always precipitated by a lost argument.

It starts when someone around a board-room table proposes doing something that's bad for users but good for the company. If the company faces the discipline of competition, regulation or self-help measures, then the workers who are disgusted by this course of action can say, "I think doing this would be gross, and what's more, it's going to make the company poorer," and so they win the argument.

But when you take away that discipline, the argument gets reduced to, "Don't do this because it would make me ashamed to work here, even though it will make the company richer." Money talks, bullshit walks. Let the enshittification begin!

https://pluralistic.net/2023/11/22/who-wins-the-argument/#corporations-are-people-my-friend

But why do workers care at all? That's where phrases like "don't be evil" come into the picture. Until very recently, tech workers participated in one of history's tightest labor markets, in which multiple companies with gigantic war-chests bid on their labor. Even low-level employees routinely fielded calls from recruiters who dangled offers of higher salaries and larger stock grants if they would jump ship for a company's rival.

Employers built "campuses" filled with lavish perks: massages, sports facilities, daycare, gourmet cafeterias. They offered workers generous benefit packages, including exotic health benefits like having your eggs frozen so you could delay fertility while offsetting the risks normally associated with conceiving at a later age.

But all of this was a transparent ruse: the business-case for free meals, gyms, dry-cleaning, catering and massages was to keep workers at their laptops for 10, 12, or even 16 hours per day. That egg-freezing perk wasn't about helping workers plan their families: it was about thumbing the scales in favor of working through your entire twenties and thirties without taking any parental leave.

In other words, tech employers valued their employees as a means to an end: they wanted to get the best geeks on the payroll and then work them like government mules. The perks and pay weren't the result of comradeship between management and labor: they were the result of the discipline of competition for labor.

This wasn't really a secret, of course. Big Tech workers are split into two camps: blue badges (salaried employees) and green badges (contractors). Whenever there is a slack labor market for a specific job or skill, it is converted from a blue badge job to a green badge job. Green badges don't get the food or the massages or the kombucha. They don't get stock or daycare. They don't get to freeze their eggs. They also work long hours, but they are incentivized by the fear of poverty.

Tech giants went to great lengths to shield blue badges from green badges – at some Google campuses, these workforces actually used different entrances and worked in different facilities or on different floors. Sometimes, green badge working hours would be staggered so that the armies of ragged clickworkers would not be lined up to badge in when their social betters swanned off the luxury bus and into their airy adult kindergartens.

But Big Tech worked hard to convince those blue badges that they were truly valued. Companies hosted regular town halls where employees could ask impertinent questions of their CEOs. They maintained freewheeling internal social media sites where techies could rail against corporate foolishness and make Dilbert references.

And they came up with mottoes.

Apple told its employees it was a sound environmental steward that cared about privacy. Apple also deliberately turned old devices into e-waste by shredding them to ensure that they wouldn't be repaired and compete with new devices:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/22/vin-locking/#thought-differently

And even as they were blocking Facebook's surveillance tools, they quietly built their own nonconsensual mass surveillance program and lied to customers about it:

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

Facebook told employees they were on a "mission to connect every person in the world," but instead deliberately sowed discontent among its users and trapped them in silos that meant that anyone who left Facebook lost all their friends:

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

And Google promised its employees that they would not "be evil" if they worked at Google. For many googlers, that mattered. They wanted to do something good with their lives, and they had a choice about who they would work for. What's more, they did make things that were good. At their high points, Google Maps, Google Mail, and of course, Google Search were incredible.

My own life was totally transformed by Maps: I have very poor spatial sense, need to actually stop and think to tell my right from my left, and I spent more of my life at least a little lost and often very lost. Google Maps is the cognitive prosthesis I needed to become someone who can go anywhere. I'm profoundly grateful to the people who built that service.

There's a name for phenomenon in which you care so much about your job that you endure poor conditions and abuse: it's called "vocational awe," as coined by Fobazi Ettarh:

https://www.inthelibrarywiththeleadpipe.org/2018/vocational-awe/

Ettarh uses the term to apply to traditionally low-waged workers like librarians, teachers and nurses. In our book Chokepoint Capitalism, Rebecca Giblin and I talked about how it applies to artists and other creative workers, too:

https://chokepointcapitalism.com/

But vocational awe is also omnipresent in tech. The grandiose claims to be on a mission to make the world a better place are not just puffery – they're a vital means of motivating workers who can easily quit their jobs and find a new one to put in 16-hour days. The massages and kombucha and egg-freezing are not framed as perks, but as logistical supports, provided so that techies on an important mission can pursue a shared social goal without being distracted by their balky, inconvenient meatsuits.

Steve Jobs was a master of instilling vocational awe. He was full of aphorisms like "we're here to make a dent in the universe, otherwise why even be here?" Or his infamous line to John Sculley, whom he lured away from Pepsi: "Do you want to sell sugar water for the rest of your life or come with me and change the world?"

Vocational awe cuts both ways. If your workforce actually believes in all that high-minded stuff, if they actually sacrifice their health, family lives and self-care to further the mission, they will defend it. That brings me back to enshittification, and the argument: "If we do this bad thing to the product I work on, it will make me hate myself."

The decline in market discipline for large tech companies has been accompanied by a decline in labor discipline, as the market for technical work grew less and less competitive. Since the dotcom collapse, the ability of tech giants to starve new entrants of market oxygen has shrunk techies' dreams.

Tech workers once dreamed of working for a big, unwieldy firm for a few years before setting out on their own to topple it with a startup. Then, the dream shrank: work for that big, clumsy firm for a few years, then do a fake startup that makes a fake product that is acquihired by your old employer, as an incredibly inefficient and roundabout way to get a raise and a bonus.

Then the dream shrank again: work for a big, ugly firm for life, but get those perks, the massages and the kombucha and the stock options and the gourmet cafeteria and the egg-freezing. Then it shrank again: work for Google for a while, but then get laid off along with 12,000 co-workers, just months after the company does a stock buyback that would cover all those salaries for the next 27 years:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/10/the-proletarianization-of-tech-workers/

Tech workers' power was fundamentally individual. In a tight labor market, tech workers could personally stand up to their bosses. They got "workplace democracy" by mouthing off at town hall meetings. They didn't have a union, and they thought they didn't need one. Of course, they did need one, because there were limits to individual power, even for the most in-demand workers, especially when it came to ghastly, long-running sexual abuse from high-ranking executives:

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/25/technology/google-sexual-harassment-andy-rubin.html

Today, atomized tech workers who are ordered to enshittify the products they take pride in are losing the argument. Workers who put in long hours, missed funerals and school plays and little league games and anniversaries and family vacations are being ordered to flush that sacrifice down the toilet to grind out a few basis points towards a KPI.

It's a form of moral injury, and it's palpable in the first-person accounts of former workers who've exited these large firms or the entire field. The viral "Reflecting on 18 years at Google," written by Ian Hixie, vibrates with it:

https://ln.hixie.ch/?start=1700627373

Hixie describes the sense of mission he brought to his job, the workplace democracy he experienced as employees' views were both solicited and heeded. He describes the positive contributions he was able to make to a commons of technical standards that rippled out beyond Google – and then, he says, "Google's culture eroded":

Decisions went from being made for the benefit of users, to the benefit of Google, to the benefit of whoever was making the decision.

In other words, techies started losing the argument. Layoffs weakened worker power – not just to defend their own interest, but to defend the users interests. Worker power is always about more than workers – think of how the 2019 LA teachers' strike won greenspace for every school, a ban on immigration sweeps of students' parents at the school gates and other community benefits:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/23/a-collective-bargain/

Hixie attributes the changes to a change in leadership, but I respectfully disagree. Hixie points to the original shareholder letter from the Google founders, in which they informed investors contemplating their IPO that they were retaining a controlling interest in the company's governance so that they could ignore their shareholders' priorities in favor of a vision of Google as a positive force in the world:

https://abc.xyz/investor/founders-letters/ipo-letter/

Hixie says that the leadership that succeeded the founders lost sight of this vision – but the whole point of that letter is that the founders never fully ceded control to subsequent executive teams. Yes, those executive teams were accountable to the shareholders, but the largest block of voting shares were retained by the founders.

I don't think the enshittification of Google was due to a change in leadership – I think it was due to a change in discipline, the discipline imposed by competition, regulation and the threat of self-help measures. Take ads: when Google had to contend with one-click adblocker installation, it had to constantly balance the risk of making users so fed up that they googled "how do I block ads?" and then never saw another ad ever again.

But once Google seized the majority of the mobile market, it was able to funnel users into apps, and reverse-engineering an app is a felony (felony contempt of business-model) under Section 1201 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. An app is just a web-page wrapped in enough IP to make it a crime to install an ad-blocker.

And as Google acquired control over the browser market, it was likewise able to reduce the self-help measures available to browser users who found ads sufficiently obnoxious to trigger googling "how do I block ads?" The apotheosis of this is the yearslong campaign to block adblockers in Chrome, which the company has sworn it will finally do this coming June:

https://www.tumblr.com/tevruden/734352367416410112/you-have-until-june-to-dump-chrome

My contention here is not that Google's enshittification was precipitated by a change in personnel via the promotion of managers who have shitty ideas. Google's enshittification was precipitated by a change in discipline, as the negative consequences of heeding those shitty ideas were abolished thanks to monopoly.

This is bad news for people like me, who rely on services like Google Maps as cognitive prostheses. Elizabeth Laraki, one of the original Google Maps designers, has published a scorching critique of the latest GMaps design:

https://twitter.com/elizlaraki/status/1727351922254852182

Laraki calls out numerous enshittificatory design-choices that have left Maps screens covered in "crud" – multiple revenue-maximizing elements that come at the expense of usability, shifting value from users to Google.

What Laraki doesn't say is that these UI elements are auctioned off to merchants, which means that the business that gives Google the most money gets the greatest prominence in Maps, even if it's not the best merchant. That's a recurring motif in enshittified tech platforms, most notoriously Amazon, which makes $31b/year auctioning off top search placement to companies whose products aren't relevant enough to your query to command that position on their own:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/25/greedflation/#commissar-bezos

Enshittification begets enshittification. To succeed on Amazon, you must divert funds from product quality to auction placement, which means that the top results are the worst products:

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

The exception is searches for Apple products: Apple and Amazon have a cozy arrangement that means that searches for Apple products are a timewarp back to the pre-enshittification Amazon, when the company worried enough about losing your business to heed the employees who objected to sacrificing search quality as part of a merchant extortion racket:

https://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-gives-apple-special-treatment-while-others-suffer-junk-ads-2023-11

Not every tech worker is a tech bro, in other words. Many workers care deeply about making your life better. But the microeconomics of the boardroom in a monopolized tech sector rewards the worst people and continuously promotes them. Forget the Peter Principle: tech is ruled by the Sam Principle.

As OpenAI went through four CEOs in a single week, lots of commentators remarked on Sam Altman's rise and fall and rise, but I only found one commentator who really had Altman's number. Writing in Today in Tabs, Rusty Foster nailed Altman to the wall:

https://www.todayintabs.com/p/defective-accelerationism

Altman's history goes like this: first, he founded a useless startup that raised $30m, only to be acquired and shuttered. Then Altman got a job running Y Combinator, where he somehow failed at taking huge tranches of equity from "every Stanford dropout with an idea for software to replace something Mommy used to do." After that, he founded OpenAI, a company that he claims to believe presents an existential risk to the entire human risk – which he structured so incompetently that he was then forced out of it.

His reward for this string of farcical, mounting failures? He was put back in charge of the company he mis-structured despite his claimed belief that it will destroy the human race if not properly managed.

Altman's been around for a long time. He founded his startup in 2005. There've always been Sams – of both the Bankman-Fried varietal and the Altman genus – in tech. But they didn't get to run amok. They were disciplined by their competitors, regulators, users and workers. The collapse of competition led to an across-the-board collapse in all of those forms of discipline, revealing the executives for the mediocre sociopaths they always were, and exposing tech workers' vocational awe for the shabby trick it was from the start.

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

https://pluralistic.net/2023/11/25/moral-injury/#enshittification

[musings-of-a-rose]

First sentence fic game!

“I don’t understand why you can’t leave things unbroken, myself included!”

Broken

Pairing: Frankie Morales x wife!reader

Word Count: 670+

Rating: Mature - 18+ ONLY!

Warnings: Just like ao3, “creator chooses not to use warnings.” If you click Keep Reading, that means you agree that you’re the age to handle mature themes. Also by clicking Keep Reading, you understand warnings may not be complete in order to avoid spoilers for the story. 

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**Reader is not described

Main Masterlist

Frankie Morales Masterlist

“I’m so sorry, querida.”

“It was supposed to be just a few days.”

“I know. I’m sorry.”

“I didn’t even want you to go in the first place!”

Frankie is quiet for a moment before sighing. “I know. I should have listened, but-”

“But you just do whatever he tells you to do, right? Whatever Tom wants?”

“He was my leader for so long it’s just habit.”

I roll my eyes. “Don’t give me that shit, Frankie. You’re a 43 year old man.”

His eyes fill with tears and for one second, I want to drop this argument, run to him and hold him close, tell him everything will be alright. But I promised him I’d never lie to him, cover my emotions, that I’d always be upfront and honest no matter how hard it is, so instead I stand my ground.

“I begged you not to go, Frankie. Begged. You left me. You left us,” I gesture towards our daughter’s bedroom across the hall. “You almost made me a widower and not for the first time! But then you almost made her fatherless. How could you do that?”

“I went to get the money to make a better life for you both.”

“Please. You went because Tom told you to and Santi batted his stupid eyelashes at you and you couldn’t say no.”

“That’s not it at all. I want to take care of you. Both of you!”

“I don’t give a flying fuck about money, Francisco! I only cared about you!”

“I lost my job, querida. What do you expect me to do?”

“Not get yourself killed! You’ve put me through so much hell, and then I got pregnant and you did it again with the drugs, and then you up and disappeared for nearly 2 weeks to Colombia on some..some…heist or whatever! You could’ve died in those mountains and I’d have never known-”

“I know, I’m sorry querida-”

“I don’t understand why you can’t leave things unbroken, myself included!” I sit down on the bed, burning my face in my hands as tears roll down my cheeks.

Frankie walks over to me, hesitating before putting his hand on my leg, rubbing small circles into my exposed skin. I let him do that for a few moments before I lean my head on his shoulder. Immediately, he shifts towards me, pulling me into his broad chest and embracing me as I cry, heaving tears that are so no classy as I let out all of my fear and worry and anger from these last 2 weeks. I drop my hands and bury my face into his chest, inhaling his scent and feeling the warmth seep from him into me, grounding me and comforting me as he’s done so many times before. 

“I thought you’d left me forever, Frankie.”

He squeezes me closer. “I almost did. But I fought for you, for our daughter. I had to get back to you. I was so scared I wouldn’t make it, but I fought. I love you, querida. I will always fight for you. And I’m sorry for…everything.”

He holds me in silence for several more moments before speaking quietly, brushing his lips across the top of my head as he presses a kiss into my hair, inhaling my scent.

“Please don’t leave me.” He says it with such a small voice, almost no hope behind it, like he’d understand completely if I did. I sit up, my hands moving to cup his face, scratching the little patches in his bead. Frankie sighs into my touch, briefly closing his eyes before opening them, his eyes wide and worried.

“I could never leave you, Frankie. I just need you to be on our team. Talk to me when you’re having a hard time. I didn’t sign up for only your good parts. I want all of you. Ok?”

Relief floods his face, a small smile pulling at his lips. “I promise, querida. I love you so much.”

“I love you too, Frankie.”

—----

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[soundlogic2236]

So, there has been talk about the Zizians and the murders they are accused of. This has led to talk about Timeless Decision Theory (TDT/UDT/FDT: people keep inventing new names for their new versions of it. I do not recommend worrying about this) and some people have misconceptions.

The Zizians claim to be following these sorts of decision theories, and harp on one part of them. I want to speak out, both against the Zizians, but also to say that part of what I understand the Zizians to be harping on is true and I think people out of (justified) anger at the Zizians are assuming that all the weird stuff they say is false.

This is not the case. Suppose someone has done something horribly wrong, and then tries to justify what they have done. We know that some part of their attempted justification is mistaken. By hypothesis, they have done something horribly wrong, and if every part of their attempted justification were correct, then the action wouldn’t have been horribly wrong but would instead have actually been justified. But that doesn’t mean that every part of their attempted justification is mistaken. People who have done horrible things can still say some things that are true, and can still say some things that are true in attempting to justify what they have done.

So here is a true thing:

When you choose to bring food to a sick neighbor, there is likely a part of your decision that is an algorithm shared between you and countless people in history, such that if we suppose, that,  somehow, that shared piece of your way of making decisions doesn't choose to bring food, all of history goes differently because each time a person had their decision come down to the same thing, they don't bring food either. This is a difficult thing to formalize, hanging right on the edge of complete logical gibberish, since as a matter of pure logic, that way of making decisions does choose to bring food, but people (including Ziz in the past) worked on trying to figure out how to put it formally. This shall be less formal, and more poetic, so I shall say it this way: This shared piece, this shard, of your algorithm by which you are motivated to bring the food is a shining, beautiful shard, spanning across the timeless eternity.

People chose to rebel against kings and dictatorships over other shards, which are shared by you.  While you can have a choice that is "just your choice", by for example taking your entire personality, running a hash function over it, and taking a single bit from the resulting hash to make a binary choice, one generally will not do such silly things. And when you decide based on principles and such, there is a meaningful sense in which while it is still truly your choice, it is not just your choice; that choice, the fact that those principles you are embodying chose and in fact logically imply that action, is something shared across time and space.

To poetically describe TDT, the idea is to have shards that are aware of their nature as shards, algorithms that are aware of their nature as algorithms, that understand how they relate to the larger whole.

But following TDT or not, these shards exist, and are shared. The Zizian's behavioral patterns are not unique; people have lashed out and escalated similarly in the past, and there is a true sense in which if we imagine the logically impossible world where the Zizians going crazy, those algorithms they are implementing, did not lead to deaths... in that impossible world this change wouldn't just imply the nonexistence of the pile of bodies today, it would also imply the nonexistence of other piles of bodies in the past.

As I understand, Ziz understands this fact and so is trying to, with those past people, strike against the world. Akin to someone who says 'even though no one before has given bread to a sick neighbor, I shall do so regardless' and so the first one to do so shared bread and since then all of history has had such behaviors.

But Ziz's behavior is less a good thing like sharing bread with a sick person and more... "So I shall form a cult and rile them up and have them stab innocents with swords". Which, in a sense, has worked in part as I understand Ziz to have been intending. People throughout history have decided to do the same, leading to tragedies throughout the past.

But as I understand it, Ziz believes that this part of her is the core of goodness, the secret heart of morality. She believes that, when people stood up to the Nazis, that was just an incomplete version of what she is doing. But I do not believe there is such a secret heart of morality. It is true that the people who stood up to the Nazis were partially sharing a choice with the people who stood up to the kings of old. And these parts of our choices are powerful, powerful enough to reshape history as Ziz dreams of doing.

But... they are not, actually, the same. Those who hid Jews from Nazis were not, at least in most cases, incomplete Zizs. They had principles Ziz has abandoned.

The shards Ziz fixates on are... well, not all of them are completely alien to morality. I think violence can, in some circumstances, be morally called for. But caution and reluctance around using violence has done far more, I think, to hamper the Nazis than is often realized. Nazi Command stopped using the firing squads and spent time and money on gas chambers in part because shards of this reluctance reached even the Nazi soldiers. While the shard was tragically weak, it still drove the Nazi Soldiers to battle fatigue and mental anguish, and perhaps, if the resources had not been spent on bypassing it, would have led to outright mass rebellion or military collapse. This was one of the many enemies the Nazis faced in their attempted actions.

I am not versed enough in history to know how many more the Nazis could have killed if even this shard's output had been "they are enemy, kill them", but it seems likely to me to be a large number. And if we examine her behavior, we see that Ziz must have abandoned this shard, and we see that she speaks out against it.

But there is a meaningful sense in which Ziz's ruthlessness is part of a pattern throughout history, where if (‘if’ in a certain precise sense) Ziz was not ruthless, all of history would have been less ruthless. Ziz seems to believe that this reduction in ruthlessness would have allowed evil to triumph far more. I do not. 

Ziz believes she is standing with those who stood up to the Nazis, those who stood up to the kings of old, that this is the key part of her and their choice, that this ruthlessness she displays is the same ruthlessness she believes they needed to display.

I think far more of her decision is shared with a rather less laudable group. 

There have been cult leaders throughout history who taught their followers violence. If the mental states they shared with Ziz logically led to anything but what Ziz is now doing, that would be a change across history.

I wish that change were true, for those in the current pile of bodies, the names of which are known to me, and those in the previous piles of bodies, whose names are not. That the violent insanity that the members of this group are in was somehow not violent. Said that way it is obviously a contradiction, but one must still somehow evaluate decisions, and while it is false that Ziz, in the mental state she was in, decided to do the right thing… I believe that it is meaningful to say “I wish when that happened it led to Ziz thinking ‘wait, that would be awful, I won’t do that’”, even though the formalization eludes me, as it is a sad truth that it in fact does not. It leads to the present, where far too many people, some who were more innocent, some who were less, some who I knew, some who I did not, are all tragically dead through these decisions.

And going forward, one might hope Ziz will change her mind. This would also be a tendency throughout history: how likely are people like Ziz, who form these cults and do violence, to stand down and cease killing?

I hope the answer is 'very likely'. I do not think it is, but it is true that Ziz is part of those statistics, and it is true that her war on, well, lots of things, is part of the grand statistics of history. She is, to some degree, achieving her timeless influence by her actions. Not the grand one I think she desired, influencing such great things as the popularity of democracy, the protecting of those who would be victims of genocide, the rebellions against feudal kings, but a timeless influence. 

[sentimental-idiot25]

Sakura raced out of her room and made her way to the door of her apartment. The consistent ringing of the doorbell for the past 15 seconds was loud enough to wake up her two roommates, Ino and Hinata, who were both fast asleep in their own rooms. Granted it was 3am— any reasonable person would be asleep at this hour.

“Shit, shit, shit,” she whispered under her breath, conscious of the fact that her roommates could wake up at any moment and be caught in the same fright as her. 

She looked through the door’s peephole and saw the familiar figure standing outside, swaying back and forth with his head bowed. But he was far too recognizable for Sakura to mistake him for anyone else. 

Her eyes widened with worry as she unlocked and opened the door. 

“Oh my god are you—“ Sakura’s concern halted as she noticed his inability to remain still, the red glow beaming from his face, and the grin he couldn’t hold down, “Are you drunk?” She spoke louder than intended as her brows furrowed and the look of concern disappeared from her face. Now replaced with utter bewilderment. 

Sasuke, slurring his speech, raised his hand adjacent to his face and twirled his wrist, “Soooo what if I —happened to be?” Clearly drunk.

“Were you crying?” She squinted trying to get a better look at his face. 

He wiped his face with his hands, “Noooo, not me” Clearly lying. But Sakura was too confused with the situation at hand to press further at this moment. 

Sakura peeked her head out the door and tried to check if he was alone or how he exactly got here. Not seeing any car driving away, she deduced that he didn’t ride-share here, “Did you walk here? In the middle of the night? Sasuke that’s so dangerous—“

Sasuke threw his hands up into the air, “Psssh! What do you take me for? Some idiot? Of course I didn’t walk!”

“Oh thank god,” Sakura put her hand to her chest as she sighed with relief. 

Sasuke dropped his arms down, hitting his thighs with a loud slap, “I drove here,” He pointed to the ground. 

“Oh my god,” Sakura took a hold of his wrist and dragged him inside. Once they made it to the couch she sat him down. She walked over to the kitchen to grab him water to sober him up. It was clear he was well past the stage of being tipsy and was proper drunk. “Why are you here anyways?” Sakura asked genuinely as she handed him the water. 

Sasuke moved the water being offered to him and pointed at Sakura, accusatorially, and said, “I only came here cause you don’t love me!” He looked at her with wide eyes. 

Sakura’s eyes widened as she put down the glass of water on the coffee table and covered Sasuke’s mouth, “Shhh! Are you crazy? My roommates are asleep,” Trying to maintain a low level, but angered, whisper, “Will you be quiet now?” Sasuke nodded rapidly as Sakura moved her hand away from his face. 

“You don’t cherish me,” He spoke as he tapped her nose, “So ta-da, I’m here,” he spoke as he did jazz hands next to his face.

“What?” Utter confusion could be detected from her tone and facial expressions. 

“I—well, I just needed to know. Can you blame a guy for wanting to know?” He shrugged with exaggeration flowing through his body language. 

Entertaining his drunkened state, Sakura inquired further, “And how did you get to this conclusion?” 

“I went to a trusted website and through the help of an algorithm, it calculated all of the data from our—“ He gestured between the two of them, “Whatever we have, and it gave me a percentage: 42%… Meaning, you don’t love me,” He whispered the last statement with narrowed eyes and a finger pointing to Sakura as if she had committed the crime of the millennia. 

“And what was this so great, mankind changing, earth shattering website and algorithm called?” Sakura spoke, knowing that what Sasuke was spouting was bullshit. 

Sasuke dropped his hand and his accusatory face. He shut his eyes tight and put his hands out, “Buzzfeed quizzes, but that’s besides the point—

Sakura raised her brows “Uh huh,” 

“It said 42%! That’s even less than half!” He raised his voice again as Sakura covered it immediately. Shushing him in the process. 

She whispered at an even lower level, “And do you think that’s accurate?” Clearly trying to point out, even to a very drunk Sasuke, just how absurd he was.

Sasuke removed Sakura’s hand from his mouth, “You tell me woman,” He reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out his phone. Revealing to Sakura a screenshot with the results. She made sure to notice the time it was taken. He took the quiz a mere ten minutes before arriving here. 

“Oh my god, really?” She asked him, disbelief laced in her words

“Don’t you ‘oh my god’ me,” He spoke mocking her voice.

“Well how can I not when you’re acting this ridiculous,” Her own voice being louder and intended. 

Sasuke put his finger against Sakura’s lips, “Shhh, your roommates are asleep,” His voice, far from a whisper as well. 

Sakura backed her head away from his touch, “Why did you come here anyways?”

Sasuke leaned back against the couch and pouted, “I don’t like that it’s 42%” He crossed his arms as he let out a huff of air. 

Sighed as she handed him the glass of water, “Sasuke, it’s just a stupid quiz, it means nothing,” 

“Fine then you take a quiz that proves how much you’re in love with me!” His eyes locked with hers, a playful glint not hiding carefully within his eyes. 

Tired from his constant loud outbursts, Sakura took Sasuke’s hand and took him to her room, explaining to him on the way how he is too loud and the room will be the only shot she has at not waking up her roommates. 

She sat Sasuke down at the edge of her bed, as he subsequently fell back and laid down, making himself comfortable. She opened up her laptop as she took a seat next to him on the bed, “I will take the damn quiz if it means that you will give this up. And once we see how stupid it is, I will call you an Uber and you will go home. Deal?” 

“Whatever you say…pretty lady,” He looked up at her with admiration in his eyes. Sakura just rolled her eyes and went on to look up a Buzzfeed quiz. 

He shot straight up and ruffled around to see how Sakura answered. Sakura moved the screen out of his sight as he pouted.

A few minutes passed by as Sakura clicked the last answer to the quiz, “Just finished it,” She said as the screen was loading the results. 

“What did it say?” Sasuke asked with a grin 

Sakura shrugged as she looked at the score, “Same as yours. Apparently I do love you 42%”

Sasuke grin widened, “Bullshit,” he called, “You turn pink when you lie, and right down your hair and face are the same color. What did you get?”

Sakura closed her laptop on her lap, “I’m just embarrassed cause this is ridiculous and— Hey!” She yelped out as Sasuke managed to snatch the laptop away from her. 

The same second he opened it, Sakura was able to reach over to shut it again. But it was too late. 

Sasuke grinned as his smile overtook his entire face, “89% huh?” 

“Oh shut up,” Sakura stood up and yanked the laptop from Sasuke’s lap

Sasuke stood up and began to taunt her, “Ooh you looooove me,” He said as drew a heart in the air with his index fingers. 

Sakura scoffed, “Ugh, no I don’t,”

Sasuke took ahold of her hands, “No no you looooove me,”

Sakura instantly retracted her hands, “It’s a meaningless quiz and you—“

“Cmon Haruno. You know you love me,” He taunted her further. 

“Oh, shut up,” She crossed her arms and the pink blush across her face began to intensify further, “I’m so tempted to give you one more shot so you blackout and I don’t have to deal with you anymore,” 

“Doesn’t hide the fact that you loooooove me,” 

“I regret answering the door now,” She shook her head as she looked away from him.

“But you’d do it again,” He paused with a smirk. 

Sakura smiled as she scoffed and looked down to the ground, slowly nodding, “Yeah…I’d do it again,” 

[scribble-dribble-writes]

Hello there ! I thought about this while watching across the spiderverse : what if Miguel s/o's (also a spider-person) decides to help Miles behind Miguel's back without him knowing ? But he ends up realizing it when he sees his s/o alongside Miles back on earth 1610. The reason his s/o did that is because they believes there has to be a way to save Miles' dad while protecting the balance of the Multiverse.

Is it possible for you to write something with this scenario ?

Thank you in advance and, also, thank you for your beautiful writtings ❤

Ooooh very interesting but I could only write a short bit to keep it in line with the movie. It happens when Miguel traps Miles and I thought if he had to deal with heartbreak there, it would lead to more angst. Hope you like it!

The adverse effect was, I cried 😭

Don't make me choose

Word count: 800

Part 2>>

You stood in the middle. It was almost like this was another one of your canon events. To choose between doing what is right and the one you love.

Chaos swirled around, all the members who had gathered around you in Miguel’s lab were in an uproar, everyone trying their best to convince this teen boy that he had to accept his fate, that he was about to lose his father.

The spiderverse spread out around you, highlighting the common connection, the sacred thread you do not mess with but all you could focus on was the fear in Miles’s eyes. The poor kid was terrified and yet no one was paying any heed to it. You turned to see the one who meant everything to you.

He stood there, in the middle of it all with his hands resting on his hips, his shoulders slumped from exhaustion but you saw through him like no one else could. If everyone missed the panic that Miles was in, they also missed out on the tears glistening in Miguel’s eyes. Because you knew, you knew how deep he felt the pain of losing someone and yet standing in this position of leadership with his hands tied, he was going to deal this situation with a firm hand.

“You know this is the only way.”, he spoke to you, his eyes pinned on your every move as though he could tell that he was losing you in this mess.

But there had to be a way out. You can’t just let someone die because it was stated by an algorithm, if there was any chance to save Miles’s father, then you were going to take it.

You heard your name be called with authority as you took a step away from Miguel. He was ordering you back, to be by his side. But with the second step, there was fear in his voice and then there was only pain as you slipped further away.

“How can we just let someone die? When we all wear the mantle of a hero?”, you asked, the crowd falling silent to your question. You placed your hand on Miles’s shoulder and he gave you a relieved smile.

“But that is how it is.”, Miguel yelled and you turned to face him.

“The whole fate of the multiverse resides on this one event.”, he furrowed his brows, frustrated and stressed at the same time.

“And I stand to lose everything I’ve built.”, anger flashed across his face as he towered over you.

“I could lose everything.”, now his gaze was fixed on you as he said the words, his tone a little softer, a little broken.

“But Miguel,”, you reached out to place your hand on his chest, to calm him down, to get him to listen to you.

“what if there is another way?”, you pleaded with him. Tears threatening to fall.

“There is no other way.”, he broke free from your hold as he shook his head, his eyes fluctuating between his hazel brown to blood red. You waited for him to see sense but it was too late.

“LYLA lock him up.”, was the command you heard when you felt his grasp tighten around your wrist, pulling you to his side and away from Miles, who was now stuck in a red cell.

“Don’t do this to me.”, he spoke fast in hushed tones but that was because he was about to break.

“Don’t make me choose.”, he pulled you close, with the way he was lowering himself, it was almost as if he was on his knees.

“Miguel just listen to me.”, you were trying to contend with him as the situation around you got out of hand.

But instead he held your face in his hands to get your focus to just be on him, almost like he was at his wits end, pleading you to stay out of it

“This once, just this once turn a blind eye.”, his face contorted in anguish, his attention only on you, his eyes hoping to catch your compliance.

“You know I can’t.”, you felt the tear escape your eye and he bit down on his lower lip, his eyes closing for a second in defeat.

“I’m sorry Miguel.”, you leaned forward to kiss his forehead and break away from his hold as you generated an anomaly cell around him, trapping him within it and your heart broke when you saw the shock in his eyes as he registered what had happened.

Miles broke free from his cell with Hobie’s help and your focus turned to him as he waited for you, unsure if you were going to join him.

The second passed by slowly, as you took off running with him and you threw a glance over your shoulder.

You watched in slow motion as Miguel unleashed all his fury against the red cell walls, his claws scratching away at it but it was the way he screamed your name that made your eyes blur with tears, you couldn’t help but witness the utter devastation in his eyes and the wet stains that marked the sides of his face.

[mister-leonn]

Coming right up with some new thoughts

I finally finished the Acolyte (took my time ik) and honestly, it's banger! Everything is on point, the story actually feels like it's Star Wars: we have jedis, siths, mysteries, turns of events, known characters, legends lore, ancient stuff never brought up before. The fights are so on point it's crazy.

But I gotta say this, and I know, a lot of people are saying it too, but I really gotta spit it out. Don't listen to the people saying it's bad. All I see all the time is stuff like, why did the lightsaber turns red?! Making Anakin less special, why couldn't Palpatine make force sensitive clones but some witches can? And on and on and on and on.... and you know what people, anyone, and I say ANY-ONE, who says that kind of stuff, hasn't watched the show at all, every one of these stupid comments find an explanation in the show. But let me tell the truth about all that, the loudest part of the Star Wars fans are Marvel men, they want Tony Stark, they wanted a twisted white guy who kills people for fun, they think they are some sort of Anakin wanna-be who have trouble with their anger cause of women and lies, when actually they are just sexist little shits who immediately hated on Ahsoka in 2008 and it shows. They hate less the concept of Palpatine surviving somehow than witches who create life BECAUSE of a vergence planet making they them ultra powerful, just because they are a lesbians, men free, coven of witches and that's what bothers them so much. If Osha and Mae had been white guys with anger issues they would claim it's the best show in the book.

But what I'm saying actually stands for any kind of Star Wars or Marvel content. Sure, Rey didn't get a good writing and was the main character of a trilogy purely made for the money without a single care for the fans, but they don't hate her for the writing, they hate her because she's strong, because she can do stuff on her own as she always did since 4 yo. They didn't say anything when 10yo Anakin blew up a battle station or won a podrace said to be impossible for humans. But on the moment a woman who is clearly stated to be all powerful because of a dyad gets skills a bit too fast that's it, throw the whole thing by the window they made Disney woke.

So all of you who loved the show and are just quiet about it, don't worry, everyone loved it, all the bad things you hear comes from like 100 stupid waste of men who only get heard because of an algorithm. Kinda sounds like politics, or religion, doesn't it?

[kairiscorner]

OMG IF YOU WANT PLS DO WRITE THE FIC ABOUT MIGUEL SEEING OUR THIRST TRAPS 😭 salamat talagaaaa wala na kasi akong maisip maliban kay miguel

HELLOOOOO, OFC I WILL ANON, I HOPE YOU LIKE THIS HEHE this is another excuse to make more text fics bc it's starting to feel fun for me LMAO <333

(reblogs are greatly appreciated, it helps get my content out there! if you guys like what you see, please reblog it too <:D)

is it not for me? – miguel o'hara x reader (reacting to your thirst traps)

a/n: kind of suggestive shit underneath the cut, sorry if you don't like it, you have every right to scroll away ^^

after getting used to the controls and operations on social media and understanding the basic goal, or lack, of it–miguel had begun scrolling through his feed like you and lyla directed him to do. he scrolled and scrolled through the endless photos, videos, and posts sent his way by the very strange algorithm of the app. he still hadn't found the right thing for him on social media and he honestly wouldn't be here if you and lyla didn't force him to try it out so much, but when he least expected it... he happened upon your account.

he saw a photo of your back, it was you taking a selfie in the mirror with hardly anything covering your back. your behind was in full view but covered up, the lighting was dim, save for the flash of your phone's camera. the caption read: "for m, hoping you'll enjoy this three-course meal 🍓"

...that did something to miguel. it set some sort of feeling off of him, something that urged him to not just click like, but to comment right then and there: "who the shock is 'm'?" but if only he knew how to comment; all he knows how to do is click like and scroll.

he clicked the like button, unsure of how to feel about that very... eye-catching photo of yours. he tried shaking the feeling off, but he just couldn't; he couldn't stop thinking about it. he scrolled back up to see who else liked your photo, it took him a few tries to figure out how to do that. he also saw a few of the preview comments, complimenting your looks and tagging their friends who had 'm' in their names–joking that the photo was for them.

it pissed miguel off that these people could think your photos were for them, when you promised him you were all his. it damaged his ego slightly, but he figured these people were just douches, simple as that.

...but he needed to be doubly sure, so he click on your profile and looked through the posts you made. you really did love showing off your behind, it seemed like you were incredibly proud of it; miguel's totally in love with your ass, don't get him wrong, bur to know other people could see it and get to revisit the sight of your ass? oh, that made him feel a bit of a stinging pain in his chest.

he hated that feeling, where he felt like you were sharing intimate bits of yourself when you kept reminding and telling him you're all his. that, and as he scrolled through your comments, he saw a lot of people who not only loved your photos and sent you many compliments, but many who told you to get off the platform–many also catcalled you in the comments, too, much to his disgust.

"can't even keep this shit in real life, what losers." he muttered under his breath as he felt his anger rise as he kept scrolling through your comment section. he had gone through almost all of your posts, memorizing all the details of your posts and how you looked in them, feeling his face and chest flare up in a fit of heat as he looked through them all one by one. he sighed as he noticed you were a little too bold in these photos, in his opinion. he didn't want you to jeopardize yourself, seeing as how there were a lot of creeps on your account, he wanted to bring it to you attention.

hence, he messaged you all about his concerns.

"for... her mother?" miguel repeated to himself as he reread your message to him. he sighed, not believing your excuse one bit, believing you directed it to someone with an 'm' in their name, like him, but he decided to play along for now to get you to fess up eventually. that, and he doesn't think you'd wish your mom would have a lovely three-course meal with your ass picture, but he did see that you took pictures of food afterwards, so... it was plausible. but you were not off the hook yet.

he sighed as you laughed at his attempt at guessing who that post was for, who 'm' was. he felt a little embarrassed, a little ashamed he thought it was him, but then he thought of who would be closest to you, had 'm' in their name, and would enjoy the three-course meal that was... you already know what. he sighed as he typed and retyped his message after deleting the previous one, trying to get himself together after outing himself as being a little expectant that those thirst traps were for him.

he finally messaged you, trying to sound stern over text, but he was completely ignored by you when you sent him a selfie of your bottom half, with little letters on your bottom that read: "good????? bad????? should i get em....."

fuck, you baited him again.

he felt his cheeks grow hot and his breath hitch in his throat as he stared at your photo for a second, hoping you wouldn't post this, that this could remain as just a little thing between you two. but then again, he couldn't control you, so he'd just try to respond back–seeming unfazed. hopefully.

he was so easy to please sometimes.

moral of the story?

miguel loves your ass and wants to beat up the creeps in your comments section, while making it known to both you and the world that your ass is all for him–nobody else.

tags !! @miguelswifey04 @binibinileonara @fiannee @fictarian @yuridopted0 @arachnoia @meeom @ophanimgold @melovetitties @hisachuu @wreakingmarveloushavok @popeheywardssecretgf

[chibipandaao3]

More rambling

Following the initial release of the special episode last week and the Internet uproar I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about it.

And it’s actually kind of genius. The show ended months ago, so the Internet discussion surrounding it has, unsurprisingly, been in decline. The announcement of the special episode created a lot of anticipation which increased searches and hashtags, etc. but what better way to spike the algorithm then to have a special episode with a limited release, have fans who see it post which creates a wildfire, then drop the special episode with a coda a week later.

From a marketing standpoint, that is ingenious. All it did was create anticipation and conversation, especially with the chance of a season two increasing from 0% to dare I say 50%

Mild spoilers below



It’s also ingenious to allow the fans who saw it in person, more or less spoil the fact that Joke is believed to be dead.

From a thematic standpoint killing either of the two main characters creates a very interesting impact.

If it is Joke, the remaining characters are suddenly faced with an absence of a relatively new person. A person who was the catalyst for saving them, somebody who appeared and caused unfathomable change, and then was ripped away from them. The absence of Joke would be both insurmountable and negligible at the same time. Mind you not for Jack, but for the other characters returning to “the before him” would not be as hard as they felt it in the moment.

In contrast, had they have killed Jack there would’ve been a poetic button on the end of the show — however I don’t think they could’ve revealed his survival. If Jack had died, a fully fledged well loved member of society, his absence would’ve been felt by everyone intensely. Additionally, for Joke who had no one until he had Jack the blow would’ve been potentially significantly worse for him than it was for Jack in the actual show. Because one of the few things we know for certain about Joke is, he’s willing to die for Jack and has been throughout the entire entirety of the series.

Switching directions slightly

I do hope there’s a season two. My only real request would be that there is no anger directed at Joke - and that Jack has not moved on.

The former I think would just be unfair, and certainly out of character on Jack’s point. Joke didn’t leave voluntarily so there should be no anger directed at him, especially because it seems as though he’s been abducted. (I’m guessing by Carbon nevermind haha)

The reason I don’t want Jack to have moved on, 1) that’s a super overused trope and 2) it creates a lot of unnecessary drama. Because just having Joke abducted in some fashion, and Jack in the gang dealing with the fact Joke is alive, getting him back, and helping him overcome whatever has happened to him is more than enough story for 10-13 episodes

[of-stars-and-seas]

Covenants

-An AC Tale-

Summary: No one knew who stole the Artifact. What mattered was that it happened, and now it fell to Andromeda, one of her world's greatest scientists, to find it. There was only one small problem: the Artifact and its keeper were in parallel timelines, vastly different from hers. Learning the realities of dimension-hopping was not on her to-do list, but Andromeda had promised to see her world's Artifact safely returned. Teaming up with a ragtag team of men and women to catch the thief, Andromeda discovers that the plot to steal the Artifact was only a small cog in an ever-growing wheel of corruption, and it fell to her and her allies to discover the mastermind before it was too late.

It began with a Covenant: a promise and an oath that no matter what, they would see their world renewed. The task? Steal what was not theirs to bring order to chaos. And thus, the chase began: the cat hunted the mouse through time and tale, neither knowing what secrets the other truly held...

*********

Prologue

“I thought you said you knew your way around!” Desmond whispered from his hiding spot under the desk.

“I do! He must have changed his password since the hacker stole everything last week. Just give me a sec,” Annie’s irritated voice spoke from above as her fingers clacked along the keys, an unintelligible curse sounding from her mouth as a red “access denied” pop-up appeared on the screen. Desmond shook his head, looking around the office from where he sat below. Sticky notes were taped everywhere behind Berg’s desk, from reminders of grocery lists to work schedules. Pictures of him and his family were framed along the walls, and Desmond was startled at a recent photo of him holding Elina, who wore a grass-stained soccer uniform.

“Elina’s…alive?” Desmond whispered, and Annie looked back at the picture, shrugging.

“Yes…? I went to her game when that was taken. I’m one of her biggest fans. She comes by here with her mom almost every week. Is she…not alive in your world?” Annie asked, her hands stopping momentarily as she glanced at Desmond, who sighed.

“No. She…died when she was little. Cancer. A lot of what happened to me was because of Berg’s grief over Elina’s death, which caused the dude to go insane. The man blamed himself for it, which caused the company and himself to deteriorate. Berg started to search for answers, and the Artifacts held that and more. He wanted to try and resurrect her with the Shroud, but-”

“The Shroud of Consus? The broken Shroud of Consus? The only thing Otso would have done was turn her to ash with the calculations being how they are. Your world’s Isu clearly didn't know their way around a basic set of algorithms,” Annie spat, the rest of what she said lost as Desmond’s eyes narrowed.

“How did you know it was broken?” He asked, and the woman stilled above him.

“I-wait. I think I got it,” Annie said, ignoring Desmond’s question, tapping the keys quickly and grinning as Berg’s home screen blinked back at her.

“I should have known it was Princess Elina. She practically forced Otso to change it the last time she was here. Now, hand me that flash drive,” Annie said as she reached down to Desmond, who carefully crawled out from under the table, hiding the plastic drive in his coat pocket. Annie’s questioning blue and green gaze slid to his as she stepped forward, holding out her hand.

“Des…?”

Shaking his head, Desmond closed the distance between them, backing her up against the wall.

“You’re hiding something from me. What is it?” He asked, his breath against her face as she glared at him, anger sparking behind her eyes.

“It’s nothing. Just give me the drive, Desmond. Now, ” she whispered, but the Assassin only stilled above her.

“No. Tell me your secret, or I’ll crush this thing.”

The Isu chewed the inside of her jaw thoughtfully for a moment before sighing resignedly.

“I…may have taken your Shroud home to fix it. It’s being kept under the highest security, though. Whoever’s been stealing my world’s Artifacts won’t be able to take yours as well,” she said, and Desmond’s eyes widened.

“You what ?!” Do you understand the damage you just did to the timeline?! Who knows what-”

“Relax, Des. One artifact being gone won’t throw your universe into disrepair. Just trust me,” Annie said, and Desmond was reminded again of how akin to Juno her daughter truly was.

“How can I trust you when all you’ve been doing is keeping secrets? Who are you, really?” Desmond asked, letting her go, and Annie opened her mouth as if to speak, but closed it again, shaking her head.

“I-I can’t tell you that. You just have to believe me. Trust me, don’t trust me, do whatever you want. But please, Desmond, let me do this for the sake of both our worlds.” Annie held out her hand again, and Desmond growled under his breath before stalking past her, shoving the drive into the side of the computer as it uploaded the files.

“I’m doing this for my own sake, not yours,” he said, glaring at Annie as she sighed in relief.

“That’s all I could ask for,” she responded, her voice weary as she stood nearby, her eyes constantly on the doors to Berg’s office. When the drive beeped, Desmond pulled it out, tucking the device back into his pocket.

“Still keeping it from me?” Annie asked as they walked to the open window. Desmond ignored her, placing his hand along the side of the window to prepare for a jump.

“Wait,” Anne said softly, and the Assassin glanced back to see the woman screwing her eyes shut before biting her lip.

“What is it?” he asked, and his friend sighed, pinching the bridge of her nose.

“I-I’ve changed my mind. We’re going somewhere else.”

Desmond cocked an eyebrow, silently asking for clarification.

“You asked me who I am. Who I really am. Let me show you,” she said, beckoning him forward, and he stepped closer, watching as Annie pressed a button on her watch, and light enveloped the room, causing Desmond to shut his eyes.

“How do I know this isn’t a trap?” he asked, feeling around for her hand, and she squeezed his fingers reassuringly.

“Just trust me,” was all he heard before Desmond felt his stomach go through his throat, and everything went dark.