#cost-per-mille

[neoswami]

A Real-World Example of PPC Marketing Strategies

New blog! Let's create a real-world example to show how businesses utilize PPC marketing and SEO to connect consumers and what they search for with what marketers are looking to promote.

by Kimberly Eugene, 05/04/2023 Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com Search engine marketing (SEM) and search engine optimization (SEO) tools are being used increasingly by marketers to reach their customers due to their ability to connect consumers to what they search for with what marketers are looking to promote.  The two main tactics within SEM are pay-per-click (PPC) advertising and SEO, and…

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#ads #Adwords #bidding strategy #bounce rate #click-through rate #content marketing #conversion rate #conversions #cost-per-acquisition #cost-per-mille #CPA #CPM #CTR #CVR #digital marketing #Google Ads #Google Ads preview tool #Google Analytics #keyword research #keywords #Kimberly Eugene #marketing #negative keywords #pay-per-click #PPC #PPC Marketing #PRTYNVRNDS LLC #real world example #return on investment #ROI

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Greenwashing set Canada on fire

On September 22, I'm (virtually) presenting at the DIG Festival in Modena, Italy. On September 27, I'll be at Chevalier's Books in Los Angeles with Brian Merchant for a joint launch for my new book The Internet Con and his new book, Blood in the Machine.

As a teenager growing up in Ontario, I always envied the kids who spent their summers tree planting; they'd come back from the bush in September, insect-chewed and leathery, with new muscle, incredible stories, thousands of dollars, and a glow imparted by the knowledge that they'd made a new forest with their own blistered hands.

I was too unathletic to follow them into the bush, but I spent my summers doing my bit, ringing doorbells for Greenpeace to get my neighbours fired up about the Canadian pulp-and-paper industry, which wasn't merely clear-cutting our old-growth forests – it was also poisoning the Great Lakes system with PCBs, threatening us all.

At the time, I thought of tree-planting as a small victory – sure, our homegrown, rapacious, extractive industry was able to pollute with impunity, but at least the government had reined them in on forests, forcing them to pay my pals to spend their summers replacing the forests they'd fed into their mills.

I was wrong. Last summer's Canadian wildfires blanketed the whole east coast and midwest in choking smoke as millions of trees burned and millions of tons of CO2 were sent into the atmosphere. Those wildfires weren't just an effect of the climate emergency: they were made far worse by all those trees planted by my pals in the eighties and nineties.

Writing in the New York Times, novelist Claire Cameron describes her own teen years working in the bush, planting row after row of black spruces, precisely spaced at six-foot intervals:

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/15/opinion/wildfires-treeplanting-timebomb.html

Cameron's summer job was funded by the logging industry, whose self-pegulated, self-assigned "penalty" for clearcutting diverse forests of spruce, pine and aspen was to pay teenagers to create a tree farm, at nine cents per sapling (minus camp costs).

Black spruces are made to burn, filled with flammable sap and equipped with resin-filled cones that rely on fire, only opening and dropping seeds when they're heated. They're so flammable that firefighters call them "gas on a stick."

Cameron and her friends planted under brutal conditions: working long hours in blowlamp heat and dripping wet bulb humidity, amidst clouds of stinging insects, fingers blistered and muscles aching. But when they hit rock bottom and were ready to quit, they'd encourage one another with a rallying cry: "Let's go make a forest!"

Planting neat rows of black spruces was great for the logging industry: the even spacing guaranteed that when the trees matured, they could be easily reaped, with ample space between each near-identical tree for massive shears to operate. But that same monocropped, evenly spaced "forest" was also optimized to burn.

It burned.

The climate emergency's frequent droughts turn black spruces into "something closer to a blowtorch." The "pines in lines" approach to reforesting was an act of sabotage, not remediation. Black spruces are thirsty, and they absorb the water that moss needs to thrive, producing "kindling in the place of fire retardant."

Cameron's column concludes with this heartbreaking line: "Now when I think of that summer, I don’t think that I was planting trees at all. I was planting thousands of blowtorches a day."

The logging industry committed a triple crime. First, they stole our old-growth forests. Next, they (literally) planted a time-bomb across Ontario's north. Finally, they stole the idealism of people who genuinely cared about the environment. They taught a generation that resistance is futile, that anything you do to make a better future is a scam, and you're a sucker for falling for it. They planted nihilism with every tree.

That scam never ended. Today, we're sold carbon offsets, a modern Papal indulgence. We are told that if we pay the finance sector, they can absolve us for our climate sins. Carbon offsets are a scam, a market for lemons. The "offset" you buy might be a generated by a fake charity like the Nature Conservancy, who use well-intentioned donations to buy up wildlife reserves that can't be logged, which are then converted into carbon credits by promising not to log them:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/12/12/fairy-use-tale/#greenwashing

The credit-card company that promises to plant trees every time you use your card? They combine false promises, deceptive advertising, and legal threats against critics to convince you that you're saving the planet by shopping:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/11/17/do-well-do-good-do-nothing/#greenwashing

The carbon offset world is full of scams. The carbon offset that made the thing you bought into a "net zero" product? It might be a forest that already burned:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/03/11/a-market-for-flaming-lemons/#money-for-nothing

The only reason we have carbon offsets is that market cultists have spent forty years convincing us that actual regulation is impossible. In the neoliberal learned helplessness mind-palace, there's no way to simply say, "You may not log old-growth forests." Rather, we have to say, "We will 'align your incentives' by making you replace those forests."

The Climate Ad Project's "Murder Offsets" video deftly punctures this bubble. In it, a detective points his finger at the man who committed the locked-room murder in the isolated mansion. The murderer cheerfully admits that he did it, but produces a "murder offset," which allowed him to pay someone else not to commit a murder, using market-based price-discovery mechanisms to put a dollar-figure on the true worth of a murder, which he duly paid, making his kill absolutely fine:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/04/14/for-sale-green-indulgences/#killer-analogy

What's the alternative to murder offsets/carbon credits? We could ask our expert regulators to decide which carbon intensive activities are necessary and which ones aren't, and ban the unnecessary ones. We could ask those regulators to devise remediation programs that actually work. After all, there are plenty of forests that have already been clearcut, plenty that have burned. It would be nice to know how we can plant new forests there that aren't "thousands of blowtorches."

If that sounds implausible to you, then you've gotten trapped in the neoliberal mind-palace.

The term "regulatory capture" was popularized by far-right Chicago School economists who were promoting "public choice theory." In their telling, regulatory capture is inevitable, because companies will spend whatever it takes to get the government to pass laws making what they do legal, and making competing with them into a crime:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/06/13/public-choice/#ajit-pai-still-terrible

This is true, as far as it goes. Capitalists hate capitalism, and if an "entrepreneur" can make it illegal to compete with him, he will. But while this is a reasonable starting-point, the place that Public Choice Theory weirdos get to next is bonkers. They say that since corporations will always seek to capture their regulators, we should abolish regulators.

They say that it's impossible for good regulations to exist, and therefore the only regulation that is even possible is to let businesses do whatever they want and wait for the invisible hand to sweep away the bad companies. Rather than creating hand-washing rules for restaurant kitchens, we should let restaurateurs decide whether it's economically rational to make us shit ourselves to death. The ones that choose poorly will get bad online reviews and people will "vote with their dollars" for the good restaurants.

And if the online review site decides to sell "reputation management" to restaurants that get bad reviews? Well, soon the public will learn that the review site can't be trusted and they'll take their business elsewhere. No regulation needed! Unleash the innovators! Set the job-creators free!

This is the Ur-nihilism from which all the other nihilism springs. It contends that the regulations we have – the ones that keep our buildings from falling down on our heads, that keep our groceries from poisoning us, that keep our cars from exploding on impact – are either illusory, or perhaps the forgotten art of a lost civilization. Making good regulations is like embalming Pharaohs, something the ancients practiced in mist-shrouded, unrecoverable antiquity – and that may not have happened at all.

Regulation is corruptible, but it need not be corrupt. Regulation, like science, is a process of neutrally adjudicated, adversarial peer-review. In a robust regulatory process, multiple parties respond to a fact-intensive question – "what alloys and other properties make a reinforced steel joist structurally sound?" – with a mix of robust evidence and self-serving bullshit and then proceed to sort the two by pantsing each other, pointing out one another's lies.

The regulator, an independent expert with no conflicts of interest, sorts through the claims and counterclaims and makes a rule, showing their workings and leaving the door open to revisiting the rule based on new evidence or challenges to the evidence presented.

But when an industry becomes concentrated, it becomes unregulatable. 100 small and medium-sized companies will squabble. They'll struggle to come up with a common lie. There will always be defectors in their midst. Their conduct will be legible to external experts, who will be able to spot the self-serving BS.

But let that industry dwindle to a handful of giant companies, let them shrink to a number that will fit around a boardroom table, and they will sit down at a table and agree on a cozy arrangement that fucks us all over to their benefit. They will become so inbred that the only people who understand how they work will be their own insiders, and so top regulators will be drawn from their own number and be hopelessly conflicted.

When the corporate sector takes over, regulatory capture is inevitable. But corporate takeover isn't inevitable. We can – and have, and will again – fight corporate power, with antitrust law, with unions, and with consumer rights groups. Knowing things is possible. It simply requires that we keep the entities that profit by our confusion poor and thus weak.

The thing is, corporations don't always lie about regulations. Take the fight over working encryption, which – once again – the UK government is trying to ban:

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/feb/24/signal-app-warns-it-will-quit-uk-if-law-weakens-end-to-end-encryption

Advocates for criminalising working encryption insist that the claims that this is impossible are the same kind of self-serving nonsense as claims that banning clearcutting of old-growth forests is impossible:

https://twitter.com/JimBethell/status/1699339739042599276

They say that when technologists say, "We can't make an encryption system that keeps bad guys out but lets good guys in," that they are being lazy and unimaginative. "I have faith in you geeks," they said. "Go nerd harder! You'll figure it out."

Google and Apple and Meta say that selectively breakable encryption is impossible. But they also claim that a bunch of eminently possible things are impossible. Apple claims that it's impossible to have a secure device where you get to decide which software you want to use and where publishers aren't deprive of 30 cents on every dollar you spend. Google says it's impossible to search the web without being comprehensively, nonconsensually spied upon from asshole to appetite. Meta insists that it's impossible to have digital social relationship without having your friendships surveilled and commodified.

While they're not lying about encryption, they are lying about these other things, and sorting out the lies from the truth is the job of regulators, but that job is nearly impossible thanks to the fact that everyone who runs a large online service tells the same lies – and the regulators themselves are alumni of the industry's upper eschelons.

Logging companies know a lot about forests. When we ask, "What is the best way to remediate our forests," the companies may well have useful things to say. But those useful things will be mixed with actively harmful lies. The carefully cultivated incompetence of our regulators means that they can't tell the difference.

Conspiratorialism is characterized as a problem of what people believe, but the true roots of conspiracy belief isn't what we believe, it's how we decide what to believe. It's not beliefs, it's epistemology.

Because most of us aren't qualified to sort good reforesting programs from bad ones. And even if we are, we're probably not also well-versed enough in cryptography to sort credible claims about encryption from wishful thinking. And even if we're capable of making that determination, we're not experts in food hygiene or structural engineering.

Daily life in the 21st century means resolving a thousand life-or-death technical questions every day. Our regulators – corrupted by literally out-of-control corporations – are no longer reliable sources of ground truth on these questions. The resulting epistemological chaos is a cancer that gnaws away at our resolve to do anything about it. It is a festering pool where nihilism outbreaks are incubated.

The liberal response to conspiratorialism is mockery. In her new book Doppelganger, Naomi Klein tells of how right-wing surveillance fearmongering about QR-code "vaccine passports" was dismissed with a glib, "Wait until they hear about cellphones!"

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/05/not-that-naomi/#if-the-naomi-be-klein-youre-doing-just-fine

But as Klein points out, it's not good that our cellphones invade our privacy in the way that right-wing conspiracists thought that vaccine passports might. The nihilism of liberalism – which insists that things can't be changed except through market "solutions" – leads us to despair.

By contrast, leftism – a muscular belief in democratic, publicly run planning and action – offers a tonic to nihilism. We don't have to let logging companies decide whether a forest can be cut, or what should be planted when it is. We can have nice things. The art of finding out what's true or prudent didn't die with the Reagan Revolution (or the discount Canadian version, the Mulroney Malaise). The truth is knowable. Doing stuff is possible. Things don't have to be on fire.

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/2023/09/16/murder-offsets/#pulped-and-papered

#pluralistic #logging #pulp and paper #ontario #greenwashing #a market for lemons #incentives matter #capitalism #late-stage capitalism #climate emergency #wildfires #canada #canpoli #ontpoli #carbon offsets #self-regulation #nerd harder #epistemological chaos #regulatory capture #Claire Cameron #pines in lines

[netherworldpost]

With the various rumors and releases of Tumblr possibly changing how they do things... (gestures to the vague rumor mill)...

Zines.

I really think we as Folks Who Make Things and Folks Who Like Art Writing Poetry Music Comics Other Things need to explore zines. And I mean ZINES. Nothing glossy. Nothing fancy.

Very. Cheap. Zines.

I've been threatening mentioning I was going to create a guide on how I'm going to approach this -- and I'm going to -- but I am also realizing in the writing I Do Things Highfalutin because I am who I am + had a career in graphic design.

Let's talk about how you can make a zine very cheaply and very pretty.

STEP ONE: SUPPLIES

Very bright paper. I like "Astrobrights" because they are absurdly bright. Here is a link in a store I like. I buy a lot of paper and envelopes from them. You can generally find Astrobrights in big box office stores. It prints on laser printers and ink jet and photocopiers.

Very bright envelopes. What's that? Astrobrights has envelopes?! AM I SOLVING PROBLEMS let's not get ahead of ourselves.

Letter paper is 8.5" x 11" and is the most common size in the united states (overseas folk will have to use this advice with a grain o'sea salt and search yer own waters).

A9 envelopes are a letter sheet folded in half.

A2 envelopes are a letter sheet folded in half, then folded in half.

#10 envelopes are your common long envelopes, letter paper folded in thirds.

Pick the size you like.

If you want to get big and fancy, Tabloid is 17" x 11" -- so double a letter sheet. This gets tricky to work with but is neat in sizing.

STEP TWO: ZINE CONTENT

Do you know how to use InDesign or similar program? Use that.

No? Use Google Docs or Word or whatever other program and ramble.

Want something special? Write out some or part with a sharpee or pen.

Mix and match both.

If you are feeling fancy, design it like a booklet -- mock up a sheet of blank paper as if it were a brochure. If not, just design it straight up and down like a letter. There are no zine laws.

STEP THREE: ZINE PRINTING

Print at home on your home printer.

Don't have a printer at home? Print it at work (don't get fired)

Can't? Your local library may be able to help.

You need 1 copy on white paper.

FedEx Office has photocopiers. Your local library may too. Or your job.

Print 1 copy of your zine on white paper and then photocopy the rest onto colorful paper (or white paper, it be yer zine seadog).

Or print everything on the color paper if you have access to free printing, that's fine too.

The photocopy setup is purely "printing tends to cost more than photocopying."

If you want to slash prices, print 2 per sheet and have FedEx office cut them for you, this will cost $1 - $5 depending on how many sheets you are dealing with. This is for when you're doing a LOT of zines at once.

Or use their manual paper cutter yourself for free.

STEP FOUR: ZINE STAPLING

"Long reach stapler" is what I recommend. There are a few varieties. They tend to be $20 - $30.

Or just use 1 sheet!

STEP FOUR: ZINE POSTAGE

A single first class stamp for 1-2 pages. If you get up to 3+, go to the post office and ask them to weigh a comp you have assembled.

This is a guideline.

It's a really good idea to check at least once how much your zine weighs just in general. Post offices have scales. And are pretty. And have stamps.

OKAY ENOUGH LUSTING FOR THE POST OFFICE FROM THE GHOTS POST OFFICE BLOG BACK TO WORK

STEP FIVE: ZINE MAILING

This is actually the most difficult part. Label printers exist with various costs -- if you're starting out? Go with printable labels.

Your office supply shop will have them and they'll have templates you can drop in the customer addresses.

Save yourself time by using this label as the thing that seals the envelope -- don't lick envelopes.

A key tenet to staying in business is constantly reviewing physical (and mental) labor and stressors and reducing them as much as possible.

Return address labels are intensely cheap in literally every online printer, google "return address labels." Make sure you have this because at least a few of your shipments will come back to you.

STEP SIX: ZINE PRICING

Okay here is where we get uncomfortable because we're talkin' coins.

Prices are based on above links. You can get whatever paper you want, so this is guidelines. All numbers rounded up.

Payment processing ($0.30) + $0.05 sheet + $0.15 envelope + $0.66 first class postage = $1.16 base cost

$1.16 + 2.9% of $1.16 payment processing = $1.20

Plus taxes. I'm not getting into tax figures YOU DO THAT (just say 30% for easy math, this is not saying "your taxes are 30% or that mine are" I am saying "I am going to factor 30% for this equation to complete this guide".)

I did not include the mailing label (it will be $0.01 - $0.05 depending on how fancy and how many you buy) because you have the option to just write things and also it fits into the rounding of the above.

If you use Patreon, include your fees. Probably replace the above processing fees with your patreon processing... fees? I don't use patreon I don't know how it works.

Retail option 01: $1.50 - 1.20 = $0.80 gross - 30% = $0.09 / net / zine.

Retail option 02: $2 - 1.20 = $0.80 gross - 30% = $0.56 / net / zine.

Retail option 03: $3 - 1.20 = $1.80 gross - 30% = $1.26 / net / zine.

Should it be $1.50? Should it be $3.00? MORE? LESS?! That is for you to decide. Base it on what your zine contains, how long it takes you to write/draw/etc. it and how you want your flow to be.

STEP SEVEN: ZINE FREQUENCY

When my shop launches, it'll have a zine once a month. We are going to offer a subscription option + a "I just want 1" option.

You can do a zine monthly, or every few months, or whatever.

Keep in mind that the purpose of doing this is to break the dependency on social media marketing.

KEEP IN MIND AS AN AUDIENCE MEMBER TO A CREATOR YOU LIKE THAT THEY ARE DOING THIS TO BREAK THEIR DEPENDENCY ON SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING.

If you have a lot of energy and an audience that comes to your shop a lot? Consider doing a zine monthly.

If you do not have a lot of energy and/or your audience is tapped for cash frequently? Considering doing 1 zine per season.

Consider 2 zines a year if that works better for you!

NO RULES ONLY JOY

Not sure? Experiment! Be upfront! "This is new. I'm figuring this out. Billionaires are tinkering with these things and we gotta figure something else out."

BONUS STEP: NETHERWORLDPOST.COM

so hi I'm atty and I'm your loud long rambler today

Netherworld Post Office used to be @evilsupplyco and now we are rebranding in prep of relaunching. Same person behind the rambles and comics, new name with a more focus (mail instead of mail + seemingly everything else in experiment)

if you enjoyed this ramble and/or like ghosts, monsters, witches, mermaids, and fun stories and projects focused on cozy Halloween, you may like us when we finish the rebranding and relaunching in autumn 2023.

email sign up (the zine will come when we are open)

WHETHER YOU JOIN MY LIST OR NOT

I really, really, really hope you consider doing a regular, or irregular, zine. Something outside of email, something outside of social media, something that connects I MADE A WEIRD THING and the people who say I LOVE THIS WEIRD THING YOU MADE.

The walls are closing in on free social media as a platform for people who make weird things to build audiences for free or very cheap.

And with that...

netherworldpost.com as one final hat pass

good luck folks

thanks for listenin' to the ol' ghost

#small business #small business marketing #small business fun #zines #zine #making zines

[seat-safety-switch]

Storage is the defining problem of our age. Two hundred years ago, our ancestors had fifteen or twenty things in their houses, max. And one of them was "bed." Now, we have a lot of clutter. Sure, it's down from the peak of the 1970s, when we needed thirty-six different pieces of electrical equipment just to listen to racist people in our general area, but we still have too much stuff.

Self-storage companies have exploded. Not literally, although that did happen to the one near me from some dude cooking shatter, but they are immensely profitable. If you receive a bunch of heirloom furniture from Crazy Aunt Ethel, you won't have enough room for it in your single bedroom basement apartment. You shove all of it into a self-storage bay, and keep paying the monthly bills, waiting until you can have a house big enough to place some heirloom furniture in.

The storage companies know this. They'll give you a low "sucker" rate at the start, and then start cranking up the fees. And you'll keep paying them. It's cheaper to kick in $5 more a month, than it is to ask your friend Ted to borrow his pickup truck so that you can drive all your shit across town to a competing storage unit, who will do the exact same thing.

How do you fight back, ideally without having to throw away a bunch of coffee tables from 1953 and incurring the eternal wrath of Aunt Ethel's shade? You have to let the storage unit make money for you. The obvious way is electricity. With electricity, you can run all kinds of things, from a seedy cryptocurrency mining operation, to an illegal online betting parlour. And the storage folks know this, which is why they don't provide power to your unit, and wrap the unit's lightbulb in an impenetrable steel cage. They are used to dealing with your average, run-of-the-mill cheap scumbag.

Don't let that stop you: despite what your neurochemistry is telling you, you are an exceptional cheap scumbag. You don't need their electricity; you can generate your own. The answer? Rats love running on little hamster wheels. You can make thirty, forty cents a month, per wheel. That's money in your pocket, and all it will cost you is a bit of expired cheese and a lot of old Subaru blower motors. Sure, it's not going to be great for any couches or clothing that you leave in the unit, but who ever heard of a heirloom sofa bed? Throw that shit out, ideally by leaving it in a unit and no longer paying the bill. You don't need to cling to memories: you're rich now, atop your rodent power empire.

[sayruq]

 As the escalation of the conflict extends to its 19th day, a staggering 2.2 million people are now in urgent need of food. Prior to the hostilities, 104 trucks a day would deliver food to the besieged Gaza Strip, one truck every 14 minutes. 

Despite 62 trucks of aid being allowed to enter southern Gaza via the Rafah crossing since the weekend, only 30 contained food and in some cases, not exclusively so. This amounts to just one truck every three hours and 12 minutes since Saturday. 

[...]

International Humanitarian Law (IHL) strictly prohibits the use of starvation as a method of warfare and as the occupying power in Gaza, Israel is bound by IHL obligations to provide for the needs and protection of the population of Gaza. In 2018, the UN Security Council adopted resolution 2417, which unanimously condemned the use of starvation against civilians as a method of warfare and declared any denial of humanitarian access a violation of international law. Oxfam said that it is becoming painfully clear that the unfolding humanitarian situation in Gaza squarely fits the prohibition condemned in the resolution. 

Clean water has now virtually run out.  It’s estimated that only three litres of clean water are now available per person – the UN said that a minimum of 15 litres a day is essential for people in the most acute humanitarian emergencies as a bare minimum. Bottled water stocks are running low and the cost of bottled water has already surged beyond the reach of an average Gaza family, with prices spiking fivefold in some places. A spokesperson for the UN Agency for Palestinian Refugees (UNWRA) pointed out that some of the food aid allowed in - rice and lentils - is useless, because people do not have clean water or fuel to prepare them. 

A series of airstrikes have left several bakeries and supermarkets either destroyed or damaged. Those that are still functional, can’t meet the local demand for fresh bread and are at risk of shutting down due to the shortage of essentials like flour and fuel. Gaza’s only operative wheat mill is redundant due to the power outages. The Palestinian Water Authority says Gaza's water production is now a mere 5 percent of its normal total, which is expected to reduce further, unless water and sanitation facilities are provided with electricity or fuel to resume its activity. 

Notably, essential food items, like flour, oil and sugar, are still stocked in warehouses that haven’t been destroyed. But as many of them are located in Gaza city, it is proving physically impossible to deliver items due to the lack of fuel, damaged roads and risks from airstrikes.  

The electricity blackout has also disrupted food supplies by affecting refrigeration, crop irrigation, and crop incubation devices.  Over 15,000 farmers have lost their crop production and 10,000 livestock breeders have little access to fodder, with many having lost their animals. Oxfam said that the siege, combined with the airstrikes, has crippled the fishing industry with hundreds of people who rely on fishing losing access to the sea. 

#palestine #free palestine #free gaza #gaza #genocide

[holy-puckslibrary]

━ 𝐬𝐰𝐚𝐧 𝐬𝐨𝐧𝐠.

main masterlist

pairing(s) — JT COMPHER x reader (main); TYSON JOST x reader (side); COMPHER x JOST (brief) wc — 14k synopsis — what's a reunion without some groveling?

note — this takes place a few of years after part one, go out with a bang (post-college/college au — tyson and kate are now out-going seniors!) sorry not sorry for the length of this behemoth, i got carried away per usual <3 there are more parts to come, and i would absolutely love to hear any theories/predictions if yall have any!

specific content warnings listed below the cut.

cw — cameos on cameos on cameos, we're at a party so drinking and mention of dr*gs + yacking (no description), drinking games, sorority terms/processes, me getting too invested in multiple subplots and potential background ships, soft!service!dom!JT makes my peabrain go brrrrr, everybodies a bit masochistic because i, registered heathen, am masochistic, reader’s wearing a short skirt for plot reasons, slight compher x josty, oral (reader receiving 2x), unprotected piv (i know, i know, i know i need help), me letting my brat self take the kink reins, praise baby praise, angst AND IM NOT SORRY, + happy fluffy bits... possible cliffhanger??? 

Staring up at the Alpha Chi house is like stepping back in time. 

Like trying on an old pair of shoes you found while deep-cleaning your closet only to find their once-perfect fit gone. Growth is funny that way; you never realize just how far you’ve come until it pinches you.

You’ve outgrown this place, though not from a lack of love or any great tragedy. It occupies a different place in your mind, just as you’re a different person than you were three years ago. 

Your younger self would balk at this development, wouldn’t believe it’d one day feel too small. You can’t fault her for that near-sightedness. In college, your whole world existed on one street. You had everything you needed then between two stop signs.

But your world is bigger now, and your needs are different too. 

Still, it feels good to try on your past for the night. Even if it's a tad ill-fitting. 

The drive between your new life and your old one hadn’t been too bad, but that’s probably because you didn’t do much of said driving. JT got the engine going before you could even make a grab for the keys and, despite spending the last year in the literal trenches of clinical rotations and shelf exams, refused to switch at the halfway mark. Yet, your boyfriend is practically vibrating with excitement as you cross the all-too-familiar threshold hand-in-hand. 

“This is so weird,” JT remarks, his lips low to your ear. His musky cologne, warm and woody, does its best to soothe your nerves.

As you survey the crowd, you nod. 

He didn’t need to elaborate further for you to understand because you were already thinking the very same thing. Watching students, the vast majority as unfamiliar to you as you are to them, milling around your old haunt stirs an odd, uncanny feeling akin to a surreal dream. You’re well-acquainted with the setting, almost to an uncomfortable degree, and you don’t think you’re all that different, but everything still feels foreign.

All the right pieces are there, and you’re sure you’ve put them in their proper places, but the image won’t behave.

You quickly realize the only thing that’s misplaced is you. Grief hangs from your back like a wet blanket. 

“Look what the cat dragged in, boys!”

A burst of riotous laughter shakes much of the gloom from your system.

Gabe Landeskog barrels into your boyfriend like an overgrown puppy. Gray-blue eyes twinkling under the rainbow of LEDs, he embraces you both in a warm hug, not minding that the spontaneous act of affection has just cost him an entire Solo cup.

“Compher and the missus,” the blonde addresses you both with a wide grin and a big palm to a cheek each; he gives JT’s a quick pat but merely cups yours. 

His breath still smells of spearmint and something spicy, an imposing combination your eighteen-year-old self could never find comforting. Just another thing that's different now. If you could package the scent for all the little moments of nostalgia, you would. 

“I was starting to think we’d have to drag you from the city kicking and screaming, but alas! You've left the cozy, vanilla bubble of your own volition for a weekend of debauchery with your favorite degenerates.”

JT’s affectionate eye-roll is big and dramatic even in your periphery. The levity brings a smile to your face. It grows wider and wider, enduring until your cheeks burn. If anyone deserves some light-heartedness, it's your sleep-deprived, perpetually-stressed boyfriend.

“A night, Landy. We’ve got to be back by tomorrow night to relieve the dog sitter,” your boyfriend amends with a pat to Gabe’s flushed cheek, returning the favor. 

The older man groans like the overgrown boy he is and will always be. “Look at you, Mr. Responsible. All domestic and shit. With a fur-baby and everything. I bet it’s as well-trained as your firstborn.”

Your eyes follow the line drawn by Gabe’s strong chin past the entryway through to the room used for table-top drinking games.

Half-kneeling on the rickety table you helped customize a few years back is Tyson Jost, head tilted to the sky as he guzzles down the center cup. More beer spills down his chest than into his mouth, effectively turning his white tee sheer. The crowd is comprised mostly of giddy sorority girls who don't mind a bit. 

Free booze and a free show—lucky them!

Once the plastic cup is empty, he crushes it in his palm before sinking the balled plastic into the basketball hoop on the adjacent wall. The converted dining room swells with hoots and hollers so quickly you would’ve thought Tyson emerged from some mythic quagmire, blood-soaked and victorious. But there are no winners in Rage Cage; everybody loses.

Tyson’s loopy grin falters when he registers you and JT on either side of Gabe.

You would like to say nothing’s changed between the three of you over the past couple of years. That you’re just as close as you’d been in college, that distance hadn’t done as much damage as it has.

You'd be lying if you did. 

You tried your best to keep him in the loop; you really did, but that didn’t end up mattering much.

JT hardly had time to socialize with you most of the time, and you’ve practically lived together since graduation. He, like you, tried, but at some point, his bandwidth could no longer accommodate Tyson’s sporadic texts and calls. Many of which came in the dead of night, when your boyfriend’s head was either buried in a textbook or in the pillow beside yours.

Whenever you could, you invited the forward to spend the weekend in the city with the two of you. You even went so far as to offer to put him up in a hotel between your and JT’s respective apartments, knowing your adult salary could stretch further than the Atomic tips he was splitting with Tyler. He always had something conflicting going on, and it didn't feel like your place to question the authenticity of his reasons, so you just kept extending the invitation, hoping things would align eventually.

After finally taking the leap and signing a lease together, you decorated the guest room with Tyson in mind. He’s yet to see it, still.

Your little Kate, on the other hand, needs a frequent flyer program.

A small part of you felt this shift was inevitable once JT went from best friend-slash-unrequited crush to full-blown, live-in boyfriend. Despite Tyson’s insistence on you finally hooking up and “putting everyone out of their misery,” his smile didn’t meet his eyes when JT broke the news that it wasn’t a one-night thing.

Maybe his “little crush” hadn’t been so little after all. 

If that’s the case, you can't blame him for avoiding your slice of grown-up love like the plague. It just would've been nice if he hadn't left you in the dark, wondering where and how you fucked up enough to get iced out.

Tyson responded to every third or so text of yours, so you mostly kept up with him and his life through Kate, who briefly dated him between ill-fated Gunnar stints, and social media. You weren’t sure how often he spoke to JT; after several attempts that ended with your boyfriend clammed up and irritated, you stopped asking.

Judging by how tense he is beside you right now, you have a pretty good guess.

“Yikes,” Gabe drawls. “Trouble in paradise?”

You remain carefully quiet, allowing your boyfriend to decide what, if anything, to share. This—whatever it is —feels like it's more so between them two than Tyson and yourself.

JT clears his throat so hard it cuts through the music blaring through the packed house—some remix you don’t remember learning the words to. “Trouble? Nah, Josty’d have to give us the time of day for that.” 

Gabe laughs, but you know JT isn’t trying to be funny. You can taste the undercurrent of bitter resentment. It’s impossible not to without an artificial buzz.

There’s no time to dwell because a flurry of red hair darts through the crowd dispersing out of the dining room and straight into your arms. A fresh, but faintly-candied scent tickles your nose as the cool metal of a bracelet digs into your neck. 

Kate.

“Fuckin finally!” The almost-grad squeals directly into your ear.

Definitely drunk. Or high—or both. 

“Don’t look at me,” you say, beaming when she pulls back. “I wasn’t driving.”

Kate swats JT’s chest with her open palm. “And this is why we don’t let you drive anywhere, Grandpa.”

The playful jab makes your smile deepen. His driving made her tardy to a ZBZ charity gala one time over a year ago when she made the mistake of hitching a ride with you, and she’s probably brought it up a million times since. Kate pretends to hold a grudge, JT pretends to find it aggravating, and you get to sit back, enjoying the warm camaraderie overfilling your cup.

The pair have been friends almost as long as you've been friends with either of them, but since your graduation, they’ve settled into something more serious and more genuine. Where your connection to Tyson wilted outside the conveniences of college, your relationship with Kate matured and flourished. She’s more than just your chapter-appointed Little Sister to JT now, having become more of a true sister than anything else. Hence the juvenile teasing.

“Well, we’re here now. Alive.”

Your little snatches your hand in hers, tugging you away from JT, who feigns offense.

“And now I’m stealing your girlfriend in retribution for making me wait. Go do… whatever it is you two heathens used to do at parties. We have a pong title to defend.”

“Excellent idea, Madame President,” Gabe declares, hands roughly massaging the male ginger’s shoulders. He tosses a wink in Kate’s direction.

Before the other ginger can drag you away for good, your boyfriend catches your free wrist, pulling you back to him so his lips can find your ear. Breath hot, he drops his voice an octave, “President’s bathroom. One hour. Nod if you understand.”

Your chin dips, quick and subtle confirmation.

“Good girl.”

As your respective keepers separate you, JT shoots you a wink of his own. Then, you lose him in the crowd.

Kate leads you through the sea of party-goers to the living room, her grip on you tight and comforting. Her thumb rubs small circles on the inside of your wrist as you approach the table, almost as if privy to your worry. Kate is incredibly perceptive; she can read someone’s mind without even looking at them. With you, her Spidey senses transcend county lines, so it’s no real surprise she deduced your current condition from no more than your erratic pulse thumping against her palm. 

When you reach the bustling folding table commandeered for the BP tournament, Kate does all the talking.

It’s not too hard to get on the bracket despite the late entry with two newly-minted Alpha Chi brothers manning the post. The absolute last thing they want to do is get on the bad side of the president of their sister chapter (Kate) and the girlfriend of a legendary former chapter president (you). The pairs for the current game are only a couple of throws in, so it’s going to be at least ten minutes before it's your turn.

“You, my dear, look thirsty,” Kate declares through a mischievous grin.

You let her pull you towards the kitchen across the hall but have more difficulty than you expect actually getting there. Every few steps, someone stops either you or Kate. Mostly the latter, but she’s quick to show you off to whoever’s trying to seize her attention. Apparently, Kate’s been building quite the mythos of your time on campus, and it’s very… dizzying, to say the least.

“Kit-Kat!”

Kate abandons the poor freshman boy shooting his shot (and missing fantastically) in favor of the feminine voice sliding into the conversation.

In the blue-ish hue washing over the small space, you’re having a hard time placing her, but she seems very keen on making your acquaintance.

“Blake Meyers,” the newcomer announces, extending her hand with a smile.

You take it, giving her your name and a matching expression in return. The flattened vowels are distinct and recognizable, as is the last name. 

“Meyers?” you ask, attempting to work it out.

“Ava’s younger sister,” Kate interjects. “And one of our best steals this past recruitment.”

Blake blushes so brightly her freckles disappear.

You remember that feeling. What it was like to have an older member, especially someone as established and accomplished as an outgoing ZBZ president, go out of their way to make you feel special. You have zero doubt Blake will be walking on air for the foreseeable future, any of the common little doubts about whether or not she made the right choice vanishing.

“I was really hoping I’d get to meet you tonight,” the freshman tells you bashfully. “Kate gave the most beautiful speech about you and your legacy on Preference Night, and when she told me you might be coming with your boyfriend, I had to put a face to the name. And Jenny was the one who pref-ed me, so it seemed like—I don’t know, a non-negotiable?”

Jenny is one of the twins Kate took her junior year, and she couldn’t have picked better. It gave you peace of mind knowing your Kate would have good people around her once you couldn’t physically be there for her.

You won’t be surprised if Jenny takes Blake as her little. Kate pref-ed her, and before that, you pref-ed Kate. It’s basically a family tradition.

Not long after you thank Kate for her generous words and Blake for her kindness, Thomas, one of the new initiates in charge of the beer pong table, flags you down for your game. Not ready to end your conversation, invigorated by the breezy, jovial chatter your new life lacks, you tug Blake along with you.

Between exceptionally beautiful throws (if you do say so yourself), you learn more about Blake and her roommate and fellow ZBZ spring initiate, Emory. They pepper you with questions: about your first-year college experience, advice on getting the best room possible on the sophomore floor for mandatory live-in, whether or not you got anything particularly valuable in the various leadership positions you held, and what fraternities to steer clear of. You’re more than happy to answer them all. Kate sprinkles in comments and jokes occasionally, but she mostly defers to you so she can celebrate the end of a smooth second term as president.

Once Kate and you have successfully defended your title, you pass the torch to the future of your chapter. Blake and Emory make quick work of the first challengers and are close to a similar sweep with the second pair when your little remembers her earlier mission: refreshments.

This time, you both keep your heads ducked as you speed through the dancing bodies and make a beeline for the dinged-up lockers propped against the wall. You can’t help but smile when you see her reach for the lock—your old lock.

Every upperclassman (and a few select friends of the chapter, like Alpha Chi Sweethearts such as Kate and, once upon a time, yourself) is assigned a secure, personal locker in the oversized kitchen for quick access to personal items. During parties, they essentially become personal coolers. At your very last formal chapter meeting, you will-ed the hunk of metal down to Kate, along with the more sentimentally valuable items you wanted to leave behind with her.

“Wait, can you even drink?” Kate asks you from where she’s kneeling. Sarcasm scrunches her brows together.

“Hilarious,” you reply with a playful glare. “And before you loudly ask about the non-existent fetus like the devious bitch you love being, don’t. Unless you want to give JT an aneurysm."

Kate fishes out two slim, chilled cans as she grumbles about how boring you two have become in your “old age.” She shoves a ratty sweatshirt—an old favorite of Tyson’s—back into the small locker, quickly refastens the lock, and scrambles the dial. Then, she returns to her full height beside you.

“So, do you want to tell me what that wink from Gabe was about?” you ask, brow cocked.

“Do you want to tell me what your horndog of a boyfriend whispered in your ear?” Kate counters.

“Touché.”

Kate cracks open a Spindrift Spiked and slots it into your waiting palm. She taps the rim with her own, then sighs back against the cluttered kitchen island. She’s going to crack, you know it. Kate, even when she has a secret she wants to keep, never stays quiet for long. Especially not when you’re the one doing the asking.

“Okay, so, d’you remember how Tyson was, like, completely apathetic after we broke up right before Heaven & Hell last Halloween?”

You nod, recalling how irritated she was over FaceTime while you helped her pick a costume out of your box of hand-me-downs. You did your best not to laugh because Kate was clearly distressed, but it was kind of hard not to when she was buried in a heap of red and white feathers, wearing a too-small tutu dotted with rhinestones.

Kate takes a sip of the spiked strawberry lemonade before elaborating, “Well, I was understandably pissed—Don’t give me that look, okay? I know I broke up with him, but he shouldn’t have been that blasé that soon—so, I hatched a plan.”

You shake your head, laughing. Kate and her schemes.

“I wasn’t planning on taking Gabe as my date, but when I ran into him at Atomic the day before�� I don’t know; I just couldn’t resist. I mean, Tyson worships the man. If anyone’s getting a reaction, it’s Landy. I had to.”

“And?” you prod. 

“And…” she stalls, eyes darting around the kitchen in search of pesky eavesdroppers, cheeks lit up like a Christmas tree. “…we might’ve done it in the backseat of his truck.”

“I’m scared to ask where.”

She buries her face in your shoulder. “The venue’s parking lot.”

Your eyes bulge so hard you, for a split-second, worry they’ll pop out of your head onto the sticky hardwood and land amongst the discarded cans.

“And I didn’t tell you because I was so scared you and JT would hate me,” Kate moans into your skin. She shifts to peer up at you, hesitant. “You don’t, right?”

“I don’t think I’m even capable of hating you, Katie-Kat, let alone for something as silly as banging a hot blonde,” you giggle, and she’s quick to join you. Lowering your voice, “Especially the hottest of hot blondes.”

“I’m so telling JT you said that,” she teases, pulling away.

You shrug and take your first sip. “Go ahead. He’ll agree.”

“And this is why you’re my favorite couple,” she says, bumping her hip against yours. “The worst part is Tyson didn’t even care about that either! At the post-game, when he saw my lipstick smeared all over Gabe’s neck, he high-fived him. Tyson fucking high-fived him for screwing me. His ex-girlfriend! How supremely demented is that?”

“I wish I had an explanation for you, but I don’t. I’m starting to think I didn’t know him as well as I thought I did.”

Kate takes hold of your unoccupied hand and squeezes it three times.

“I’m guessing things haven’t gotten any better?”

You shake your head, eyes downcast like there’s something super interesting between the floorboards. “I know he’s busy, and we’re busy, but he’s acting like our friendship meant nothing.”

“Not to start a therapy session in the middle of a rager, but did you... did you ever actually talk about That Night? I know you said JT whispered, but how positive are you that Josty didn't hear him?"

A few months after That Night, your guilt was on the brink of hemorrhaging. It was only a matter of time before the other shoe dropped; you broke down in the middle of Talladega Nights. Fucking Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby. All fat tears and snotty, incoherent spiraling, your chest heaved as JT rubbed your back. He was quiet, more concerned than confused, until you calmed down enough to explain what’d been weighing on your conscience. 

Then, your boyfriend looked clueless—because he was. JT didn’t remember his heat-of-the-moment pseudo-promise to taint Josty’s image of you.

After a scene or two, you broached the subject you’d both been avoiding since getting together. You wanted to apologize, and not that you needed JT’s permission, but you felt it wasn’t entirely your amends to make. He agreed but was adamantly opposed to operating on assumption alone. If Tyson was truly upset by the pillow talk he overheard, JT reasoned, he was old enough to be frank about it.

You found yourself agreeing, but also not? On the one hand, you could see this being an instance of your anxious mind making a mountain out of a molehill, finding fault where there’s none. But you knew Tyson, and you knew how sensitive he could be. 

Something shifted that night. You’d known then, too, even in the hazy afterglow. His despondency wasn’t subtle, and it wasn’t uncommon for his dejected expression—his forced smile dipped in feigned nonchalance—to visit you in therapy sessions or in your nightmares.

But every time you typed and re-typed one remorseful novel after another, every time your gun-shy thumb hovered over his contact, every time you nearly drove out to your alma mater to track him down… You couldn’t get yourself to see it through. 

At first, it was the nerves, the fear of hearing his pain and seeing his anger. Then, it was your own temper, stoked by indignation, that rose with every sign of withdrawal. Now, it’s just plain, garden-variety sadness.

It was—is disappointing how cleanly he severed ties. There one day and gone the next, no blow-out fight or melancholic hear-to-heart. Tyson was there; he was within reach, but at the same time, not at all. The casual dismissal is worse than outright rejection; the door ajar but wholly uninviting.

"In the moment, I was certain he didn’t. Now? Fuck, the percentage drops every time I replay it in my head,” you murmur, remorse bogging down your confession. "I know you made a point not to bring it up when you were together, but did he ever, I don’t know, say anything?"

Kate shakes her head. "No, sorry. But it's not like we actually did much talking anyway."

You snort despite your woes.

“Alright, that’s enough doom and gloom for one night. How’s my nephew?” Kate asks, bright smile chasing the blues away with all its might.

It’s a distraction and a good one, too. She listens intently as you prattle on about the bi-weekly training sessions you’re starting next month to help with the leash pulling and the ridiculous pet parents you’ve met at the dog park near your apartment. She inquires about the fluffy lamb she brought over the last time she stayed with you—it lasted all of a day in his over-excited grip—then gushes over another variation she saw last week while getting litter for Salem, her diabolical tuxedo cat.

By the time Kate has your phone in her hand, swiping through the designated album and asking more questions than each picture really warranted, you’re feeling a bit better.

Noticing the clock, you stumble through a totally-not-suspicious excuse to venture upstairs—alone. Kate shoots you a knowing look but doesn’t give you a hard time. To be honest, she’s just glad you came tonight. Instead of a witty jab or half-hearted guilt trip, she slips a gold foil square into your unsuspecting palm and sends you on your way with a supportive swat to the rear.

Access to the second floor during parties is typically mediated by two to three gatekeepers, depending on the scale and projected rowdiness of each gathering. Three’s the magic number tonight: two up-and-coming juniors and an outgoing senior. They grant you passage with little more than a nod of acknowledgment.

“What? No riddle this time?” you tease over your shoulder.

The senior, an engineering major with a penchant for brain teasers, answers with a hoot. Cale Makar shakes his head, both amused and flattered you remembered his signature move. His puppy crush on you is an open secret. “I was given strict instructions to ‘keep the shenanigans’ to a minimum with you, Your Majesty.”

“JT?” you venture a guess, hand paused on the paint-chipped banister. He’s the only one who still sprinkles in the silly nickname these days.

“Landy, actually.”

Well, close enough.

You shouldn’t be surprised. It wouldn’t be the first time the former chapter president enlisted Cale, his little, to assist in your and JT’s more salacious antics.

As soon as Gabe had the defenseman under his wing, he was putting him to work. Not that the younger blonde particularly minded, as his affinity for creative, slightly devious schemes rivaled that of Kate’s. It was Cale, you later found out, who ran interference during Semi Formal… while you were defiled on the balcony.

“Still doing his bidding, I see.”

He counters with that lopsided “Get Out of Jail Free” grin. “What can I say? The man puts up a mean bribe.”

As if cued, Cale’s companions, who you now recognize as Alex Newhook and Bowen Byram, step into view. In Alex’s raised grip is a case of Labatt Blue, and in each of Bowen’s, a bottle of bottom-shelf cabernet. You doubt the trio would notice or mind the subpar quality, though. Between their happy heads, Cale fists a bottle of champagne you know he’ll misplace before he can polish it off.

“Jesus, how drunk is he?” you tease, the follow-up to an exaggerated gasp.

Sure, the quality’s shit, but their haul is far more valuable than your appraisal of their job; it’s a frat house, not Buckingham Palace.

“Not drunk enough to not see you here with us.” Cale’s voice tapers off, his pale eyes tracking someone stalking down the hall before nervously flicking up to the ceiling, “…and not up there with JTC.”

JTC — Talk about a blast from the past.

An anticipatory tingling erupts between your inner thighs just knowing he’s up there right now waiting for you. This is the part of your “homecoming” that excited you most and had been since the moment your boyfriend pinned the invite from the alumni association onto the fridge.

As blissfully domestic as your life together has become, it lacks the spontaneity your college life had been brimming with. Your sex life could never be categorized as mundane or clinical, but you’re finding it difficult to replicate the adrenaline rush stealing secret moments inherently provided.

Sometimes, in your more (admittedly) desperate moments, you’ve caught your fingers moving beneath the sheets to mindlessly chase the thrill of those fleeting intimacies, despite how awful the constant wondering and wallowing felt then or, maybe because of it, pain and pleasure are uniquely human indulgences sought in equal measure. When intertwined, they’ve been known to satiate masochistic cravings the way a sad movie or a sprawling, high-speed rollercoaster might.

However, this time, your risk-spurned euphoria will be at your own hand. The newfound agency—the ability to choose when, how, or if any risk is involved—has you darting up the stairs with a fire under your soles.

Before you round the corner and disappear down the hall, you make sure to call out, “Thank you for your service!” accompanied by a two-finger mock salute. You don’t stick around to catch their responses, though.

As you make your way down the dim corridor, you run smack into a very giggly Sarah Jones, just shy of your destination. Eyes distant and wide, she attempts to apologize for something—Something about sabotaging the Big-Little pairings your senior spring?—but it’s more bubbles than actual words. You nod along, still not quite sure what you’re accepting an apology for but too antsy to forge ahead to play detective. Your purposeful strides went unnoticed in her cloud of intoxication and nostalgia, but Erik Johnson, who’d been JT’s vice president, mercifully ushers his inebriated fiancé out of your path by the shoulders.

You offer him a faint smile of gratitude as they head in the opposite direction.

Over the music, you faintly hear Sarah begin chattering on about something unrelated, your reunion long forgotten already. You can’t help but chuckle a little on behalf of your younger self, who would’ve gawked at snobbish Sarah Jones drunk and voluntarily slumming it in a ramshackle house on Greek Row. And sporting a rock from a Degenerate on Ice (her nickname for your brother fraternity, not yours), too? That would’ve been the icing. But, the older, more mature, once-weekly-therapy iteration of yourself is happy she’s happy.

Thoroughly amused but happy nevertheless.

As you reach for the tarnished doorknob of the president’s suite, the rickety door flings open to reveal your boyfriend, all flushed cheeks and frenzied eyes.

JT pulls you inside, lips easily taking possession of yours, the heel of his lived-in/loved-on sneaker nudging the door shut. The hinges groan in protest to the rough treatment. Still fussy as ever. This house is a goddamn time capsule, you muse. Neither of you has the patience for benevolence. If it jams, it jams. That’s a future-self problem. Diligence now would only slow you down.

And would a prolonged stay on memory lane really be all that bad?

Your boyfriend cages you so close that when he manages more than panted praise between hot-and-heavy touches, the words barely fit in the gap between your mouths. “I was beginning to think you stood me up, sweetheart.”

The light-hearted accusation is semi-whispered, somewhat hoarse, in the way his voice always sounded when he came home from a long shift at the hospital downtown or post-game at the height of his collegiate career. JT isn’t a hard person to read—downright wolfish when he’s homing in on a target—but the low, raspy tone makes his intent glaring.

Your body thrums with anticipation.

“Never,” you croon back. A breathy moan sweetens your voice, courtesy of the calloused hand inching up the back of your bare thigh, bypassing the hem of your skirt with no effort or resistance. Arms looping around his neck, you make an inquiry: “Is there a reason we’re in your old bedroom instead of, I don’t know, the king-sized bed in the honeymoon suite you insisted we spring for?”

Tufts of faint copper tickle your cheek. Your boyfriend lands a kiss on your crowd-warmed forearm. Then, much to your displeasure, he steps out of the tight embrace.

“Y’know, I remembered something earlier when I was downstairs,” JT supplies in an apparent non-answer.

He guides you, as understanding rises in your mental periphery, through the barely-lit space toward the Jack-and-Jill bathroom between this room and the next. Then, he flicks on the secondary light, the dimmer of the two, before tugging you over yet another threshold. His fingers twitch at his sides, lascivious.

You stare back at him expectantly, vision tunneling as you wait, wait, wait.

The latch might as well have been a starting pistol; the subtle click ringing in your eardrums like the sonic crack of a live round; his breath a plume of smoke from a charged muzzle well beyond its flash point. Pent-up, needy tension burns hot and burns brighter. Residue from the night prior aflame; you, a moth seduced.

JT drives forward. Stalking, like a cat on a bird, until he’s pinned you to the door. His dash was easy, made short and hasty by the starting block eagerness in your dilated eyes.

Mouth descending on your sensitive neck, hips grinding his want into your squirming form, harsh belt buckle nudging just right with each sharp rut.

“There’s still one thing left on my college bucket list.”

He sinks the candor in with his incisors. Not hard enough to break the skin, but that was never his intention. The sting is a reminder. Of your shared past, of his unwavering desire—of who is in charge.

Message received. Loud and clear.

JT leans away to admire his handiwork. One big hand poised at your jaw, and the other braced beside your head, keeping your shyness from blocking the perfect view; you’ve never been able to hide from him and never will.

His curious thumb deviates from the original objective to caress the skin, now splotched violet and angry. Softly, at first, like he’s committing the damage to memory. Then, emboldened by a sudden piercing hiss forcing itself from your throat, JT pushes down on the tender spot. The cruel, unexpected pressure pulls pitiful bleating cries from your undulating chest.

This is no longer an expedition to gather intel; it’s a primal instinct.

For a few moments, he just holds you like this. A cloistered existence made worthwhile by him occasionally digging deeper into the column of your throat, the pressure taking on a raptorial quality. Your boyfriend wears his herald grin at a rakish angle. It unfurls with refined delicacy, an effective diversion for his next endeavor. Breathe like a precision instrument; the sharp phantom-edge fans across the sucked-raw skin with unhurried ease.

There isn’t enough alcohol in your system to dull the twinge — and you’re glad for it. It’d be a crime to dilute a burn this good, this all-consuming. You crumble between him and the door, your world only this big. His name tumbles out with a pulled-candy moan, completely devoid of dignity.

JT’s chest rumbles beneath your clammy palms. “You gonna be a good girl and help me tie up loose ends?”

His strawberry-blonde crown dips to nuzzle your cheek. Hot tongue tracing an experimental line, JT groaning as it does. The muscle trawls for tears you didn’t realize you shed, humming through the pursuit. The low-pitched moan sends a chill straight down your spine right to your toes.

The hand gripping your jaw lowers so his fingers are able to coil themselves around somewhere more advantageous — your neck. Your eyelids flutter, woozy. His firm squeeze, just enough to make everything spin and keep you still, has become blissfully familiar over time, but your breath still hitches like it’s the first.

“Hm, sweetheart? Don’t be rude. I asked you a question.”

Your lips part, a barbed retort to his condescension on your tongue, but all you can push out is the strangled yelp of a wounded animal.

The hand by your temple no longer rests against the door. In the fog, it snuck up under your skirt; JT never meant to get an answer out of you; he just likes to watch you squirm. Likes to have something to reprimand you for.

His nimble fingers dance over the thin, sodden material pulled taut over your heat. Less touching, more hovering. Small, lazy movements that betray how well he can play your body. They float above the tingling bundle of nerves, further movement pending, contingent upon your obedience.

“P-please,” comes your pouted whimper.

“Focus for me, pretty baby. Tell me what I want to hear. Come on, let me make things easy for you. I can feel how badly you want to — and you aren’t in a position to be difficult, are you?”

You give in, and though the words you babble are largely unintelligible, JT’s ultimately satisfied.

“Such a good listener I’ve got myself. But you’re always to eager to please, aren’t you? You might throw stones from behind that tough girl act, but it’s just that: an act. I have a puddle in my hand to prove it.”

His frankness sears your face.

You’ve acquired a tolerance for his raunchy silver tongue through months of close proximity, but the mechanism is shoddy at best. Stalls and misfires galore. Against all odds (said “odds” being his fingertips toying with the edges of fabric between your thighs), you summon up a tawdry retort from the growing arsenal. “Don’t l-let it go to waste, Compher.”

It's not your best work, but much better than the slurred gurgle that preceded it.

He loves how you manage to be any sort of cheeky with him, even with your head swimming, stuttering and all.

“I don’t think it matters, sweetheart. I know there’s no shortage. Plenty more where it came from.”

With your knee, you nudge his hard-on and supply some honey-tongued snark of your own. “Is that your ego, or are you just excited to see me?”

Your boyfriend chokes out short-lived mirth. Then, with an accompanying smile, his tongue presses to the inside of his cheek. Amused, but by the sting of the remark’s undeniable truth, not your cleverness. The protrusion moves just below his bottom lip as he swipes the muscle over his teeth, a half-second sardonic gesture. It calls attention to your impudence without dignifying it with a verbal reply.

His brow lifts to negate any confusion, feigned or otherwise. “Are you going to keep being a brat, or are you going to let me fuck you with my fingers?”

You gulp down your ready-mixed wisecracks.

“Nothing to say now?” JT taunts. “Funny how that works.”

Fuckin’ wisenheimer. His voice is so haughty you have to bite your lip to keep your foot out of your mouth, unwilling to jeopardize your impending pleasure for short-term gratification.

Your boyfriend’s smugness—and your subsequent annoyance—becomes irrelevant when your panties are roughly pushed to the side, and his thick finger slips past your taut entrance. Tip to knuckle in one succinct trust; your startled gasp drowns out the noise rising up through the floorboards.

Hips bucking forward—you just can’t help yourself—you're in search of some friction to marry with the blinding stretch. He’s made the tensile opening accommodate far more in length and thickness, but not like this. Rarely does he create space where there is barely any, having forgone tenderness. Slowly widening a gap with gentle pressure, not demanding room like it’s already his to occupy.

Your surprise drips down his hand.

The bliss—the relief, is palpable. Your head dips into the crook of his neck, and the gravity of the situation felt for the first time.

Before, you didn’t see any substance in a tipsy frat bathroom hook-up. The older you got, the more pointless it seemed, especially with an established, long-term partner. The novelty wasn’t lost on you, of course, but that’s all you’d written it off as.

Countless collegiate nights were spent imagining one like this one. A moment where your inescapable feelings for him would be matched outright. When the pressure of his stifled emotions would build too fast to keep them from boiling over, too mighty in stature. Suddenly overcome by unrequited feelings of his own, unable to uphold all the ridiculous unspoken platonic conventions with the same authority he commands now.

This is important. For your past and present selves. The significance of this overdone, soapy teen drama scenario cannot be overlooked because it underscores the progress you’ve made together. Years of dancing around one another, the unconventional catalyst and nontraditional timeline, every hushed conversation in the wee hours before responsibilities wake, the sleepless nights and the snooze-filled afternoons—this ostensibly clichéd moment is an amalgamation of it all.

One thought rises above the frenzied rest: Was this here all along?

Is this what was waiting on the other side of the aimless pining and the confusion and the hurt?

The journey might’ve been fucking hell, but the view from here is pretty damn heavenly.

Overwhelmed by your epiphany and his dexterous motions, you moan into his skin far louder than your pride would’ve otherwise allowed outside your shared apartment.

His arrogant laughter grates before it really registers. Venom secretes from your salivary glands when it does, but the melted retribution never makes it past your lips. His second finger robs it of the opportunity, and the third sends all thoughts out your ears. The light circles over your clit cloud your vision, nails digging into his jersey-clad back—I’m feeling nostalgic, he’d said. In more ways than one, apparently.

“S’good—wanted this for so long, Compher—k-kept wishing it was you that night, not Miles.”

JT seethes at the admission, curling his fingers until your knees buckle and you’re entirely reliant on him to keep you off the floor. Even as your mind slips further and further away, your hips manage to move in time with his hand. Meeting each stroke with equal hustle and vigor, a clear end goal on the horizon.

Then his thumb drops away, his hand coming to a halt, and he steps back. 

Away.

Frustration pushes the amassed tears waiting in the wings down your cheeks. Emotion runs down your face; a heavy spill indeed.

“I don’t ever want to hear another man’s name outta your mouth when it’s my fingers buried in your pussy.” His jealousy is well-polished. Manicure-smooth, like he’s been maintaining its luster in preparation for this very occasion. "—'specially not the motherfucker that made sure I heard all your pretty sounds through the walls.”

You’d grin if you weren’t so miserable.

That’d been your intention. It wasn’t anything Miles had or did that made him different from the rest of the chapter (who all, at one point or another, tried their luck with JTC’s hot best friend), just simply when he decided to shoot his shot. The only reason you’d been out in the first place was because you reached your breaking point, no longer able to stomach what you felt for JT, and you made sure Miles knew this before you let him call an Uber.

Despite playing for the same team, the pair shared a touch-and-go rivalry. You never knew if the intensity would result in a sweeping victory or an in-house, all-out brawl. If they ever saw eye to eye, you’d of never known. Miles needed no convincing to push JT’s buttons.

There was some heavy petting, nothing more. The only time Miles saw you undress was to change into the pajamas he lent you before knocking out on his futon, leaving you to take the bed. But JT didn’t know that. If sitting in their chapter house’s kitchen at 5 o’clock the next morning didn’t raise suspicion, the non-Compher borrowed t-shirt and ruffled hair certainly did.

Back then, he refused to ask. Even though you could see how badly he wanted to pry. Miles didn’t have anything he worth sharing, so JT was left to fill in the blanks.

You’d tell him the truth later, but right now, you wanted to see what milking his assumptions could get you.

“Did you like what you heard?”

His jaw ticks. Your hips push against his with a knowing simper.

You lean forward, closing the space he forced, lips barely brushing his ear, “Did you get off on it? Fuck your hand picturing yourself in his place… wishing it was my pussy instead?”

You hear the thud before you feel your head against the door or his hand back around your throat, his fingers deep between your walls again. The everywhere-throb makes you laugh. Giggle, really.

He squeezes until you’re no longer capable of mockery. His pace hastens, leveling out only once your thighs have started shaking around his wrist, knees cutting off his circulation elbow-down. Somehow, he keeps going despite the icy tingle. His determination overrides physical discomfort, knowing how close you’re getting. Feeling it in the distinct fluttering around his digits, seeing it in your trembling, swollen bottom lip.

“You’re so full of shit.” His mouth twitches at your throaty moan. A defiant hint of levity circles his pupils; he never stays riled up for long when it’s you yanking his chain. “You’re lucky I love you.”

You kiss him then, messy and crude, love-drunk. He tastes like your chapstick and gin, with a biting citric aftertaste —Grapefruit, maybe?—and you suck it in like you haven’t had a drop of water in days. And, in turn, he drinks down every choked sob and nonsensical half-thought you babble, every drop shooting straight to his loins.

He drives into you with fervor, humming as his tongue slips against yours, iron bulge omnipresent. The hand around your neck loosens but never leaves its post, thumb stroking your pulse point. I know everything about you, his movements whisper. Over and over, in and out. He, just as much as you, gets lost in the repetition.

“Don’t want him, never wanted him. Jus’ you—Always you.” It comes out slurred, mushy like your head, like your heart.

JT’s cock isn’t immune to affirmation and twitches through his too-tight jeans. Groaning, “Go on, sweetheart. Scream my name. I want every single person in this house to know exactly who’s fucking you this good.”

You do just that, writhing on his hand, eventually burying your face into his warm neck when it gets to be too much. He continues fucking you, and you continue crying for him, the pathetic little whimpers muffled now by his body.

JT guides you through the rest of your orgasm, as he always does. He watches your face carefully on the comedown, searching for any sign of regret or discomfort. When he finds none, he cradles your shaking form against his solid chest, the hand that, only moments ago, tore you apart, soothing you back down to earth. Once you’ve settled, he walks you back and away from the door.

A startled yelp falls from your lips when you feel the chilly edge of the countertop. You pull away from your boyfriend, brows furrowing with confusion.

His hand taps the outside of your thigh. "Up."

You’re having a hard time keeping your eyes open, let alone stringing thoughts together, so the command is met with inaction. Impatient as ever, JT wordlessly hoists you where he wants you and sinks down to his knees, big hands cupping yours.

“What’re you doing?” Strained, barely above a whisper.

He stares up at you with dopey, lovestruck eyes. “Come on, Compher. You can gimmie another one, can’t you?”

You aren’t an idiot. Often sleep deprived beyond belief and, more often than not, fucked-out on JT’s… Well, anything—but definitely not an idiot. You knew exactly what that loaded gun of a pet name implied the moment he used it. It first slipped out during a frantic supply closet rendezvous midway through your company’s holiday party, then a few more times in the months after.

It hasn’t lost its sparkle. It does make you more and more impatient each time he flashes it, though.

Fuckin’ tease.

Your fingers burrow in his hair, tugging from the root until his eyelids flutter prettily. “As long as you let me return the favor after—need to taste you so bad.”

“Deal,” he mumbles into your skin a half-second later.

His hands push your already-short skirt up, bunching it atop your hips and out of the way. Your boyfriend takes the time to remove the fabric barrier this time, and you don’t miss the way he tries to slip them into his back pocket without you noticing. Likely because it’d normally be a tease-able offense.

But not tonight, not right now.

Instead, you let a shiver speak for itself. The risqué gesture reminds you of the pair he used as a pocket square when his parents took you two to a celebratory dinner following his white coat ceremony. The rumble of his chuckle tells you his mind went there, too.

JT leans in, big eyes never moving from yours, his warm exhale fanning over your swollen folds. The tooth-marked bruise forming on the side of your throat pricks in tandem response. The action, a repeat of your boyfriend’s earlier antics, naturally yields similar enough results. He catches on, inching forward to—

Something bangs against the door.

His face falls; your heart seizes.

“Occupied!” your boyfriend barks, hands paused but gripping you tightly. He looks like he’s on the verge of exploding.

A full, lilting sound barrels into the door—too-good-to-be-true laughter. His breathy timbre is an unsteady balance of cocksure and skittish; a preference for one side or the other is blurred by the wood in its way. “It’s me, dickhead.”

Then, the curtain is lifted. A pocket of silence ushers in a stillness that cracks like a bolt from the blue.

Shocked doesn’t even begin to cover how you feel right now. You most definitely suffered a concussion somewhere in all JT’s reprimanding; you’re hallucinating right now. That, or the singular seltzer in your system magically turned psychotropic after consumption.

Waiting in the threshold is Tyson Jost. A quarter-drunk fifth of Jack in one hand and that goofy, irrepressible smile plastered on his face. Almost frozen in time—good-humored, untouched. As if nothing’s happened, nothing’s changed. Suave, and standing there like he hasn’t ignored you for months on end, like your and JT’s absence in his life wasn’t felt the way the Tyson-sized void in yours was.

Idle and morose, his eyes are the only defectors to his blasé demeanor. Timid and downturned, akin to a kicked puppy, they beg you and your boyfriend to assuage his guilt. An olive branch, a white flag in the wind. Amid their vulnerability, they still manage to cut into you in a way that feels too intimate, too honest—too much.

The worst part of this charged maelstrom is knowing Tyson isn’t capable of being cruel on purpose, then or now. It's bittersweet.

Careless or callous, it hurts all the same. It’s difficult to sift through the muck and decide which feelings should guide your actions when there’s no easy place to lay blame.

A gnarly, muddy morass of emotion climbs out of your gut and fills your throat, threatening to make an appearance each time you dare to exhale. You’re nervous and confused, elated and optimistic, angry and reproachful. The burn of betrayal rushes up your neck and across the bridge of your nose, but all the words you’ve stockpiled for this rainy day stick to your tongue like tar. Dark, thick, and flammable—your silence is probably for the best.

Bronze eyes, somber beneath the fan of flaxen lashes, adopt a strange aloofness that doesn’t suit his face. Lacquered just so as to protect the gooey softness beneath, the finish does nothing to obstruct or disguise his desirous longing or a brand of blues you’ve never seen in him before.

The intensity of your braided gazes is sanguine at best, duplicitous at worst, but disorienting all the same.

Anxiously, you chew on time; you’re trying your best not to swallow minutes and hours in big gulps. Your attempts to savor their confounding guilty-pleasure flavor are as futile as hoping the animosity would dissipate on its own. Or wishing the distance was just a nightmare you were on the verge of waking up from.

JT’s pulse races against your skin. He’s just as affected, just better at hiding it.

“Took you long enough,” is what JT says in greeting from the floor, dry words flung over his shoulder to curb the growing tension. Blithesome and biting and far more hospitable than you imagined.

All you can do is blink, slack-jawed; there are pieces you’re missing.

JT chuckles at your expression. He pecks your inner thigh to regain your attention. “Fuck now, talk later. Sound good?”

His words crack any and all inhibitions. Like opening the door to a cage, his reassurance grants your mind and heart the permission to succumb to the wave of emotions—lust overtaking the pack with ease.

Eyes still stuck on the ghost in the doorway, you nod your head in agreement. It’s as if you’re afraid your voice might rupture the bubble.

“Figured you’d be a little parched, baby.” Tyson, voice becoming jocular as ever, wags the bottle as he shuts the door behind himself. His tone might be light-hearted, but his gaze is anything but. Starved is the only way you can think to aptly describe the shadow. “And we can’t have that, now can we?”

You barely register JT vacating the prime real estate to accommodate his best friend, and subconsciously, you scoot closer to the edge. You knew you missed him, but you underestimated how needy you’d become if he ever stood before you again.

Both men notice.

Grinning, Tyson takes hold of your jaw. His hand emits a small tremor of unease, hesitant where JT had been demanding. The accidental brush of his fingertips over your boyfriend’s trailed claim rattles free a melancholic whimper. Your eyes glaze over, watering as your neck cranes up at him. He gently tilts your face to the side to assess the damage. You can feel his eyes raking over the marred skin, a sensation akin to your boyfriend’s weaponized breath. Goosebumps rise in their wake.

In reference to the Neanderthal surveying you over his shoulder, Tyson sniggers. “Filthy bastard.”

Charming as ever.

“She deserved it.” JT’s nonchalant shrug is more dismissive than his verbal nod.

Wicked eyes twinkle. “Oh, I don’t doubt that.”

You pinch his side, offended. Nevertheless, you purr at the certitude dripping from his husky vibrato.

He yelps and bats your hand away. “Got you good, didn’t he?”

You nod.

The baby talk-adjacent voice is demeaning, but with your only shield burning a hole in your boyfriend’s back pocket, lying about the effect it's having would be pointless.

Propriety is becoming increasingly moot, as this conversation circling around you carves space for new possibilities.

“Poor thing,” Josty hums, his thumb coasting back and forth over your jaw. His breath is smokey-sweet, honeyed. “M'gonna make it all better. Open up, baby.”

It’s something straight out of an early aughts raunchy teen comedy, the way he holds your mouth open to pour whiskey straight down, doing so without the lip ever touching either one of yours. The thin stream drags slightly as it goes down, but you’d never know watching the pillowy spirit disappear into you. You’re too eager to impress them both to give in and react—to the burn in your throat or the circumstances of this affair. You guzzle the oaky vanilla-clove flavor, smiling dumbly at the toasted aftertaste, all too happy to take anything and everything you’re given.

Still, either by virtue of Tyson’s lingering tipsiness or your inattention, some of the amber liquid escapes over your bottom lip, dribbling over your chin and down in between your cleavage. There isn’t enough time to consider wiping it off; Josty’s mouth is sucking you clean before the bottle even hits the counter beside you.

“Would be a shame…” Tyson starts, briefly interrupting himself with a succession of wet, open-mouthed pecks he’s decided to spoil your décolletage with, “…to let it go to waste.”

JT’s begrudged scoff cuts through the trance. “Jesus, kid. Where’d you learn that? What the fuck have you been doing? Or should I be asking ‘who' you've been doing?"

Tyson flinches at the coarse overtone the questions carry. A blink-and-you’ll-miss-it sort of reaction only you’re close enough to feel. He just laughs into your neck rather than humoring JT or feeding into whatever he’s implying.

You’re too woozy to toss in your two cents in favor of either side.

Cold countertop lapping up your wetness, the burning palm cupping your face to aid the pursuit of sugary lips, the memory of his tongue gliding over your sticky skin—your boyfriend a few paces away, watching. That’s more potent than any liquor, mixed or straight. It doesn’t take long for you to pull away, in a there-but-not state of mind, to slouch against Tyson’s chest. Head heavy, warmed and spinning.

Happy.

“Somethin’ special, aren’t you?” Tyson muses as he kneads the tender spot where your hairline meets your neck. You peck his forearm.

“As sweet as this reunion’s been, you came up here for a reason. Get to it; we don’t have all night. I imagine La Tornade will be wanting his bathroom back eventually.”

You whimper at the sharp edge of his voice, even though you weren’t the intended target.

JT’s dark drawl was laden with protective affection for you, his devotion hardened by a hue of discontent reminiscent of a paternal chide. An outsider looking in might not see beyond the mediator-in-shining-armor ruse, mistakenly pruning away JT’s thorny pain and rotted grief, but you know better. The situation and him. While genuine, his defense of your bruised feelings is a trojan horse for his own. He’s conveying his rage how he can: under the guise of selflessness.

Tyson gulps, eyes downcasted, then nods. He understands as well as you do. When he finally looks up, the shadow’s fallen over his face once more, cloud drooped low overhead.

“You’re scaring me, Josty.”

This makes him laugh, his mood brightening a tad. “If anyone should be scared, it’s me.”

In your periphery, you catch JT urging him to continue with a stiff glare.

“I-I’ve been such an ass. I—I just care so damn much. About you. About Compher, and our friendship. When you graduated, m-my whole world changed. Like someone gutted my life, scooped out all the good, comfortable stuff and left me with the shell. I felt like I lost my people. Like I was left behind. And then I had to watch you two get closer than ever—without me. It fucking sucked, and I didn’t cope well. Didn’t cope at all, really. Kate’ll tell you, she took the brunt of my tailspin.”

You can’t help but snort despite the thick emotion welling up behind your eyes. The boys smile, too. Things look up.

Tyson takes your hand in a tight squeeze; his pulse jumps into your palm. “But that’s no excuse for what I did—didn’t do. How I treated you. You were trying so hard, and all I did was punish you for it. For constantly reminding me you guys are there and not here. For moving on with your life like you’re supposed to.”

He claims JT’s old spot knelt between your parted knees. “And I’m sorry. So deeply sorry, baby. Please let me make it up to you—let me apologize properly.”

Tears of his own shine up at you from his flushed cheeks. Gently, you take his face in your hands, rubbing away the spilled emotion with the soft pads of your thumbs.

A silent pardon.

The walls throw back the echo of his low, audible content—of relief.

“Is this okay?” His voice is barely a whisper, dwindling to a hush as the question tapers off.

Too determined to quiet his audible fear of rejection—and to have his mouth on you as fast as humanly possible—to bother with words, you nod immediately.

“With how much she’s been dripping onto the counter since you walked in, what do you think?” JT interjects, mood vastly improved.

Your cheeks and neck heat just as he intended.

The younger forward chuckles, hands massaging up and down your sensitive thighs, gripping them as if holding himself back from lunging too soon.

A predator lurking in the brush, lying in wait.

“I wasn’t gonna say anything. Didn’t want to embarrass her.” He winks up at you, confidence rising to the surface once more. You have to fight to maintain eye contact; he’s that stupidly attractive. “ —was try t’be a gentleman.”

You’re a flurry of butterflies, a whimpering mess.

Tyson wants to tease your body; it’s in his nature. But he won’t. Namely, because he can’t. No matter how good some old-fashioned edging would eventually make you feel, he’s already on JT’s shit list as is.

Besides, he’s only been fiending for a taste since you introduced yourself to him. And there's no time like the present...

Your guttural scream—an appropriate, albeit mortifying reaction to his baby pink lips enveloping your swollen clit—pumps his chest full with pride. Tongue flat, he charts the length of your heat with a gentleness you hadn’t thought your collective excitement would allow for. His hands coast over your legs, syncing with his mouth, until he physically cannot wait any longer. One final pass, one so agonizingly slow your greedy hips thoughtlessly vie for more of anything, brings his wistful, fidgeting digits to rest at the apex of your thighs.

“Pause.”

JT’s clipped command is a bucket of ice water.

Your vocal annoyance is matched by Tyson’s, but you both know how delicate a game you’re playing.

With his thumb still lazily swirling to your clit, Tyson’s inquisitive head begins to turn around. Before he gets anywhere worthwhile, it’s swiftly spun back into place by your boyfriend’s firm hand.

You can’t even convey how hot you find JT’s fingers casually twisting in his friend’s curly mop—just the way you love; all you manage is a warbled, mostly airy cry. Your distressed state worsens watching the show unfold between your lax, parted knees: reluctant, fluttery lashes over neon cheeks; a rosy, glistening bottom lip sacrificed to cage mousy whimpers, his ragged breathing betraying all effort toward feigning indifference to JT’s self-assured manhandling.

Your boyfriend snickers at your expression, a fish lingering open-mouthed for a surface sip, an ill-attempt to supplement a natural mode gone inadequate. No matter how much oxygen your widened jaw draws in, it never feels sufficient. A bottomless pit, a balloon with a fatal puncture wound. Gone before your depleted brain could make use of it.

“Have to make sure he does it right, don’t I, sweetheart?” JT’s voice is smooth and low, charring by the second; he’s enjoying the view as much as you are.

Tyson rolls his tawny eyes. Half-hearted annoyance. “Controlling much?”

“I know what my woman needs.”

The look you share with your friend is unequivocally feral.

And the growl JT hurls back, a low-pitched rumble permeating the tight space with little effort on his part, is just plain mean.

His attitude could not be more arrogant. The cavalier persona makes you shiver, and Tyson’s breath hitch. Humming, your boyfriend tugs on his curls until the two’s eyes are locked. Inescapable. The brunette gasps as he tries desperately to hold his eyes open, waiting with bated breath.

JT licks his lips, triumphant. “Open her up for me, will ya?” Mischief catches in the light as quickly as it falls into your boyfriend’s lap. His grip tightens, and Tyson whimpers like a naughty puppy caught red-handed. “Don’t screw around, ‘kay? She needs all the help her tight pussy can get, and we don’t have all night.”

Panting, his nod is the only affirmative he can muster up. And the only one his limited range of motion will allow for. Smug and pleased enough, JT all but throws his friend into your fire, his nose bumping where you’re most sensitive. 

You actually yelp.

Holding your torrid gaze, Tyson dips his marriage and middle into you. You groan out what you meant to be his name—But who knows? And who fucking cares?—unable to control yourself while he’s finally touching you like this. Finally back.

Tyson finger-fucks you at an even pace, steadily pushing you up the hill. His satisfaction is tangible when he pulls out and away, so very delighted by your wonton hiss of annoyance. Even more so when the volume hikes up in response to the slippery pads of his fingers circling your clit. Your lewd whines harmonize with your audible arousal as he works it back into your fragile skin, playing with your wetness, utterly fascinated.

“What d’ya think, baby? Think you’re wet enough to take another finger?” JT’s tone is as cocky as his stupid rhetorical question. He, however, made no move to conceal his growing impatience.

“Mhmm,” you murmur, head like a rubber ball hitting the pavement. Still, you remember your manners. “Please—c-can I? Can I have another?”

His smile is pure adoration, dreamlike.

JT’s reverent eyes stay with you, but his words pour down over the eager man on the floor as he coaxes you halfway to heaven. “You heard her, kid. Give the lady what she deserves.”

Kid—Tyson hates when people call him that, but he especially loathes JT's usage. There’s barely an age difference, but with the way everyone acts, it might as well be decades. It seems like no matter what he does to prove himself, he’s still the baby. Every additional candle is like an annual slap in the face, a mockery that won’t end.

He can feel anger and frustration curdling low in his stomach just thinking about all the attempts that fell flat, and he decides to put the grumbling to good use. The vibration is red-hot and deliberate against your responsive, slick center, irritation like lighter fluid.

He gives you more than just three fingers. He splays all three—wide. Even as they stroke your soft inner walls, Tyson keeps you stretched so as to leave no slack. Your boyfriend wants you open? Tyson will fucking tear you apart, happily. (Yes, spite is a factor.)

Highly sensitive and spread to the limit, you ascend far quicker than usual. Fisting a bushel of golden-brown curls, nails digging rapt half-moons, you guide his willing face to the necessary places to see yourself through. Every slight adjustment has your entire body jerking haphazardly as it struggles to process the rocketing shockwaves.

JT’s hand retreats—only slightly—to make way for yours, to give you more leverage to fuck yourself through it. Less than a foot away, your boyfriend’s chest heaves in time with yours, his eyes pits of lust you dive into with clumsy enthusiasm.

During one particular, delicious pass, the tip of Tyson’s tongue catches your strained entrance, and when you unexpectedly gush against his mouth in response, he begins lapping over and around your carnal connection.

“Holy shit — Ty, I-I’m — I’m — “

The denouement of your climax is nothing short of glorious, as rude of a sentence interruptor as it was. Half-mewls and purred praise rain down from your loosened lips, eyes screwed shut.

Tyson melts over the way you take control of your orgasm, so unabashed and authoritative. You go after what you want; he respects that majorly. And getting to feel and taste what makes you tick doesn’t hurt either.

Neither do you and your pretty, throbbing walls cutting off blood flow while your boyfriend tugs his hair from behind.

“Just like that, keep fucking her through it. Did so good—doin’ so good for us.”

JT’s praise sends the brunette’s unoccupied hand right to his bulge.

This is the best he’s felt in months.

There’s the mythical balance of bliss-to-tension to key up his senses, shooting white-hot tingles of want from his head to his feet and flaming between his ribs, affection for you. You forgive him, JT forgives him, and, most importantly, he forgives himself.

He feels buoyant with his face coated in your climax, so much so that it runs down from his chin to his neck, staining the collar of his beer-soaked tee; he hopes you might return his favor later.

Josty’s guilty hand is knocked away by a firm toe.

“Y’haven’t earned it, bud,” his mentor chides.

The delinquent appendage flops lamely at his side for a split second, then lifts beside his nose to join its partner at your slick core. As if remembering there’s work to be done, a goal to attain. Beneath this new asset, your achy, spent clit pulses, egging him on with every thump, thump, thump.

Tempting him to do something, to take it further…

He thinks about it. Fuck, does he think about it—you can see the tape winding in his eyes.

JT can read Tyson’s mind through his skull, apparently. “Don’t even think about it, kid. Her last one’s mine, but you’re more than welcome to watch from right here.” —Your boyfriend points to the remaining space between the sinks, knowing it’ll be close quarters for you both— “Just remember: I only said watch. This is groveling, not a treat.”

And Tyson does. Without question or complaint, he’s just fine sitting next to you, sitting pretty.

He’s always been the perfect teammate. Always willing to do whatever it takes, regardless of the role. The only difference is he no longer wants his anxiety to be the sole motivator behind said selflessness.

Finally ready to play fearless.

JT helps you down; Tyson hops up.

Immediately, your attention fractures. Split between messy brown curls and lust-blown pupils and your own disheveled appearance: smudged makeup, knotted hair, mauled neck, and spit-stained, bruised lips. Thank fuck you’re graduated and gone. Otherwise, you’d never live this down—Kate might treat you to a taste of would-be campus humiliation later if she’s feeling particularly charitable, though.

Your boyfriend’s grip is heavy on your hips. Happy to have you back. You feel one hand coast over your lower back and down to grope your ass as if trying to keep you in the palm of his hand. White-knuckle hold withstanding, JT presses his chest flush to your backside and uses his free hand to yank every remaining hindrance to your navel.

He wants you on display.

Your gasp is rivaled only by Tyson’s pitiful whimper and twitching, touch-happy fingers.

The ginger’s chuckle is molten and deep, mouth barely a breath from your ear, his eyes pinning Tyson still.

Your mind rewound back to when he made this proposition, wondering how the hell you got from there to here.

“Bend over, sweetheart. Arch that back nice and pretty so we can show Josty what a good girl he’s been missing out on—what a filthy thing you’ve turned into.”

As soon as you’ve done just that, your boyfriend drives home. It’s fast and dirty; primal. He knows there’s no need, but JT marks his territory anyway.

You watch Josty’s mouth part like he’s about to ask you something. Staring through his eyes as if ducking into his pesky daydreams and up-too-late musings, all specifics watery and indistinct.

Ultimately, you wind up disappointed by silence. But, with the slow return of your boyfriend’s bare cock between your soft inner walls, it dawns on you; JT had used a condom last time. Even made Tyson retrieve it for him. The depth of your relationship is sinking in; that’s what you’re now watching. He’s mulling over the information, caught somewhere between wanting to swallow his guilt one go and choking on his own assumptions.

JT follows your charged concern, performs a similar triage, and then gives you a concise nod through the fogged-up mirror.

I’ll handle it.

At that, your walls noticeably ease, and he shudders, groaning as even more of him sinks deeper to occupy the newfound space. He gets a few strokes out before Josty slots his body between your palms to lean in. Here, he does something that collapses the simple but effective status quo. 

“Fuck, kid. K-Keep doing that.”

Keep rubbing your clit.

Keep playing with you.

Keep being an accessory to his pleasure. To yours.

Be present.

Be here.

“Such a fucking mess, baby. Don’t know how Compher gets anything done with you there, sweet and ripe for the taking.”

The two halves of Tyson’s demeanor are antithetical, and infuriatingly so, a saccharine smile split open by filth. It paints a sordid picture that must stand for itself, as you find it impossible to pluck out of thin air any coherent thoughts.

Be that as it may, your friend did not set out for a reply. At least not one other than the befuddled stuttering you’re doing.

A familiar palm shoots to your raw neck—tender, inside and out—lightning quick. You're yanked up before you can blink. JT mercilessly nips at the gaps in between his tight grip, hips pushed just as firm against the swell of your backside.

Still, he furthers their madcap banter. “I dunno either, Josty. And, believe me, the little vixen sure as hell doesn’t make it any easier. Sometimes I think she’s tryna milk me dry for good.”

If Tyson Jost were ever going to cream his pants—post-pubescence, it would be now.

Like, right fucking now.

The proclamation of your third orgasm is wondrous. Proud. Grateful. One of your hands flies back to catch the nape of JT’s neck to steady yourself as he continues pistoning in and out of you. Tyson's generous touch stays, too.

Your back arches this go around, head rolling against your boyfriend's shoulder before slipping back down towards the counter, free palm absorbing the impact of the abrupt sway. Too much, too much—it’s all too much for your tender muscles and soupy brain to handle. You surrender to the plethora of sensations, each more overwhelming than the last—half-collapsed back against into your boyfriend, half-crumbled forward into his best friend’s damp, tented lap.

“Not gonna last, sweetheart—y’feel too damn good, s’tight and warm, always strangling my cock—know you’re close, too. Gonna give me what you promised, Compher? Please, pretty girl—need to feel your perfect pussy squeezin’ me dry.”

It's refractory; your world goes from washed-out to vivid and back, over and over, as though impatiently flipping between channels.

You’re a tangle of sticky limbs and physical reverie, blanketed by a warm afterglow and cleared air. Body scaffolded by muscular forms on either side, your mind gives your body permission to slacken at last. JT’s arm winds around your midsection when it becomes clear the all-consuming exhaustion is giving way to the relaxation that eluded you for so many months. Tyson massages your arms, your hands still cemented to his knees. Your head drops to his shoulder, too heavy for your bruised neck.

For a long while, no one says a thing. Not intentionally or for fear of disturbing the peace; there’s simply no need. No words exist to shoulder that much weight, none able to capture precisely what emotions swirl between you. Silence says enough—silence says it all.

Banging cuts through your sex-drunk stupor. Again. The abrupt sounds function like metaphorical smelling salts, restoring consciousness and rousing decorum laid dormant. Your mutual, unadulterated bliss circles the drain in the absence of a psychological plug, ripped free, half-baked.

JT reluctantly leaves you empty and dripping, tucks himself away, and cracks open the door—only as wide as is necessary. Behind his imposing physique, you remain hunched over Tyson, waiting for your boyfriend to make the problem go away; you’re too tired to take any initiative.

Golden hair and familiar grey-blue eyes fill the gap, shining in your periphery. Barely a sliver, that’s how much of this your boyfriend’s willing to share with the world. You like that, and judging by his lopsided grin, so does Tyson.

“Paging Mrs. Compher!” Gabe hollers over JT’s head. “Clean up on aisle ‘Kate.’”

Just hearing her name puts you back in action. Damn you, maternal instincts.

You scramble to right twisted fabric and smeared makeup to a soundtrack of expletives. It’s pointless, though, because nothing settles how it should. No amount of smoothing, brushing, or tucking seems to help. Hazy vision and the legs of a newborn fawn don’t exactly lend themselves to effective primping.

And it’s not like you’ve got a hickey-remover magic wand stashed in your purse, either. 

Accept your fate, you acquiesce with a sigh.

Tyson does a piss-poor job muffling his laughter, which lands him a crisp swat to the chest.

As you stumble over, you catch the end of your boyfriend’s irritation. “—and you’re sure there isn’t anyone else to hold her hair back? Why can’t you do it?”

The gears in Gabe’s skull clank so loud you can hear them over the audible chaos seeping into your haven—he’s intoxicated, not stupid.

“CupKate wants her mommy.” The blonde winks at you over JT’s shoulder. His tongue gives a knowing click of approval at Tyson’s equally disheveled state. “And what do you care, Compher? Smells like you three already made your express trip to Pound-town, USA. How was it? I hear the weather’s hot and steamy this time of year.”

“Real mature, Landy, real mature,” JT scoffs.

The sound just revs him up. “Says the fucker who’s locked in a frat house bathroom with his girlfriend and his best friend. One of whom, might I add, looks like they got mauled by a hormonal freshman after a high school dance.”

“Can you two go measure your dicks, I don’t know, anywhere but in the way? I have a child to tend to.” 

You almost have to laugh. At the situation and at the words coming out of your mouth. At Kate, sick to her stomach like a kid who ate too many sweets on a holiday. 

Years have passed, but you’re all still the same.

“Me-yeoh!” Gabe sing-songs while miming what you assume are claws scratching at nothing.

Again, his drink is the sole casualty of his jubilation. A golden wave sloshes over the rim and onto the floor. The spray makes JT’s jaw tick.

The former winger offers a sheepish grin in repentance. “Whoops?”

Your boyfriend steals a glance to check that you’re decent, then side-steps out of your way with an exasperated sigh. His dilated gaze flits over your ruffled appearance, shamelessly drinking in the state of your throat but tripping over the questions dancing in your eyes.

He juts his head in Landy’s direction with a sardonic eye-roll. “Go on. Save your damsel, Mother Hen. I’ll fill you in on in the Uber back to the hotel.”

“Meet you out front?” You ask, and he nods.

You dart back to Tyson, plant a chaste peck on his flushed cheek, and then repeat the gesture with JT and his peeved lips. It’s faint, but they instantly soften for you.

Before they know it, you’re slipping out the door. Gabe gets an affectionate pat on the shoulder as you squeeze by him before you disappear in the direction of the Girls Only bathroom; no significant differences, only marginally cleaner and occasionally stocked with helpful accouterment—chivalry isn’t dead!

Lingering in the wake of your departure, Gabe sways like an inflatable man on the curb of a car dealership. A smirk twists his lips. “Nicely done, boys. Nicely done. Can’t say I thought we’d see the day—or that either of you had it in ya—but I feel like a proud father.” He wipes a phantom tear, the final straw. “Makes you wish you listened to Daddy Landy sooner, huh? Think of all the lost ti—”

JT slams the door in his face. Through the wood, Gabe cackles.

The two men slip back into sync as they wordlessly scrape themselves back together with the time and privacy you were not afforded. 

As JT yanks his jeans back into place, his belt clanking around like a bell’s hourly chime, a black velvet box tumbles to the floor, and Tyson’s stomach along with it.

The air shouldn’t, but it turns on a dime. Their progress is seemingly more fragile than expected.

“If—uh, wow.” A crunchy, anxious bark of a laugh cuts his thought in half.

JT doesn’t interrupt; he holds space for the blossoming discomfort.

Tyson rubs the tense knots along the back of his neck as his eyes drill into the floor. “If I’d known this would be our swan song, I would’ve tried to enjoy it more. I don’t know—savored it, I guess?”

“This,” JT says, scooping up the dud he hopes isn’t hanging fire. “— is what I wanted to talk to you about earlier.”

Before they got into it in the garage, before they’d been forcibly separated by Erik and Nate. Before they, punch-drunk and drunk-drunk, teetered between tears and anger in the shadowy, too-quiet backyard.

They spun in circles until they had nowhere to move but on. To make amends, to stumble through chary half-apologies that mean more than they say.

JT’s alleviation was short-lived; his calm trepidation squashed before it could fly. Tyson now understands why.

Tyson balks. “Me?”

Your boyfriend sighs through his nose, pinching the bridge. He’s bidding time. Digging for the right words but knowing there are none.

“I love her—and I know you do, too. I’m not upset; she makes it hard not to fall for her.”

Tyson’s head hangs lower, chagrined.

JT continues, “I’m going to ask her to marry me, but I didn’t want to do it without talking to you. Without making sure you’d be okay. Eventually. The last thing I wanted was for you to be blindsided or to feel even more left out.”

Tyson can’t help but snort at the sheer absurdity. “Left out… God, how pathetic am I? Getting all butt-hurt over a relationship that isn’t even mine.”

“Pathetic was going AWOL.”

Josty winces. He doesn’t argue because he has zero ground to stand on.

“But feeling something? Far from it.”

“I didn't—don’t want to take her from you. You have to know that, Compher.” The hurt’s been hammered from his voice. Left behind is softened sincerity.

JT’s smile is just as downy. “I do, and you’d be wasting time by trying.”

Josty chokes on an unforeseen bubble of laughter.

You love JT Compher so openly and ardently it might as well be a neon sign plastered to your forehead. He’s always been it for you. There’s never been any competition, Tyson Jost included.

“Thank god we got this ironed out before the wedding,” the older forward chuckles as he leans back against the counter.

They’re side-by-side, as they should be.

“Why’s that?”

JT digs into his other pocket and pushes something into the palm of his best friend, whose cheeks flame tout de suite in response. With a bump of his shoulder, your boyfriend tacks on, “Something to remember tonight by.”

Tyson shoves the memento into his own pocket, then raises a quizzical brow.

Your boyfriend grins.

“The best man pining over the bride while giving the groom the cold shoulder would make for an awkward wedding, don’t you think?”

⤑ to my inbox💌

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All of the stories and fantasies written or discussed on this blog by the owner or by followers are purely fictional and are not intended to offend any parties.

©2024 @holy-pucks, all rights reserved. I do not give consent for any of my work to be copied, re-posted, or translated here, on Tumblr, or on any other platform. Reproduction of any content from this blog is considered plagiarism.

#in conversation: go out with a bang #in conversation: swan song #in conversation: sharing is caring #sharing is caring verse #jt compher x reader #jt compher smut #jt compher fanfiction #jt compher x reader x tyson jost #jt compher x y/n #jt compher x you #tyson jost x reader #tyson jost smut #tyson jost fanfiction #tyson jost x jt compher #hockey romance #hockey smut #nhl smut #hockey rpf #nhl rpf #nhl fanfiction #nhl imagines #nhl fic #hockey fic #nhl players x reader #*ೃ༄ by holy pucks

[pokemoncenter]

On "shiny mills"

I have seen much discussion here of 'shiny mills', supposed breeding mills which cause untold harm to Pokemon to make a profit from selling Pokemon with the 'shiny' mutation.

To be blunt- Such mills do not exist. They are nothing more than scaremongering.

Allow me to explain.

The mutation in Pokemon commonly known as "shiny", is among mutations surprisingly common. The general consensus is that the "shiny" mutation is expressed in roughly one in four thousand individuals. However, such a trait is recessive, so even methods to attempt to select for it fail, and it will generally not be more than one in two thousand.

The more astute readers will understand the impossibility of a so-called "shiny" mill from simply that. To birth two to four thousand Pokemon, to simply have one product that can be sold? The costs would sink such a business in a heartbeat. The narrative is often that Pokemon are bred for quantity over quality, given horrific health issues and underfed, and then when a Pokemon is not shiny, it is released into the wild to suffer. As though thousands of Pokemon released per single shiny Pokemon obtained would not completely devastate any ecosystem they were in.

However, I ask that you not misunderstand. Illicit, illegal, and unethical breeding mills for Pokemon do exist. Statistically, some of such mills must eventually produce a shiny Pokemon, which is then sold for exorbitant prices while its health issues are hidden. But this is not the same as a "shiny mill"- The term "shiny mill" is nothing more than a meaningless boogeyman. Ways to look down upon those who have shiny Pokemon. Ways to feel justified in attacking others.

Statistics is a strange thing. There has been at least one case of a reputable breeder who, through nothing more than sheer coincidence and statistics, produced an unusual volume of shiny Pokemon close together. There was nothing special or wrong done- Merely that sometimes, unlikely coincidences do happen.

The breeder was harassed out of business for being a "shiny mill".

Please consider this when you next post fearmongering or stories about 'rescuing Pokemon from shiny mills'.

There is no such thing as a shiny mill. Economically and ecologically, they are completely impossible.

#pokeblogging #pkmn irl #unreality

[allthecanadianpolitics]

For the past year and a half, residents near Old Mill Drive and Bloor Street West have had to contend with a rather disruptive addition to their neighbourhood. In March 2022, the city commenced a storm sewer project to put an end to local basement flooding. According to the City of Toronto, a micro-tunneling boring machine was about 95 per cent done its job when it became ensnared in steel rods. The initial cost to retrieve it was pegged at $9 million, but that has since nearly tripled to $25 million.

Continue Reading.

Tagging: @politicsofcanada

#Ontario #Toronto #cdnpoli #canada #canadian politics

[planesawesome]

The SR-71, along with her sisters A-12 MD -21 and YF -12, was built at the Lockheed Skunk Works plant in Burbank, California, in the early 1960s. Kelly Johnson, designer of the Blackbirds and his prestigious crew of engineers set out to design and build perhaps the most remarkable aircraft in aviation history. Working with Titanium, a metal that had desirable characteristics for the high heat environment of Mach Three flight, proved in itself to be a daunting challenge. The metal had never been forged in large quantities and the quality had to meet strict controls for consistency. In addition, the US had to import the metal indiscreetly from the largest source in the world; the USSR. The landing gear on the SR-71 is the largest single piece of forged Titanium. Other segments of forged Titanium was made oversize and then milled to exact tolerances for stringers, fuselage and wing construction. At the end of construction almost 90% of the Blackbirds material consisted of Titanium.

~First time stealth was applied to an air frame~

Stainless steel was used for hydraulic and fuel lines. From the ground up the Blackbirds were designed to withstand the 900+ degree temperatures on the surface skin at Mach three or better. There were expansion joints in almost all fittings as the aircraft grew several inches from the high heat generated. To make the aircraft stealthy, plastic composite panels shaped like a triangle were inserted on the outer perimeter of the wing surfaces. There were alternating titanium and composite plastic wedges designed to break up the incoming radar signals. Rudders were canted inward for the same reason. The paint consisted of minute iron ferrite balls and the cost per quart of Blackbird paint was nearly $400. Needless to say, the entire aircraft was not regularly repainted but rather spot painted as needed. Exotic alloy metals such as Hasteloy X and ceramics were used in the construction of the Pratt & Whitney J-58 engines. Temperatures in the afterburner sections reached 3200 degrees Fahrenheit.

Leland Haynes is my source of some of the facts.

~ Linda Sheffield Miller

[neoswami]

The Best and Worst Digital Marketing Initiatives

Key factors to remember when engaging with your audience on social media. by Kimberly Eugene, 04/21/23 Photo by Vlada Karpovich on Pexels.com Coupled with market research, clear objectives, and the appropriate digital marketing strategy, digital marketing can be a great way for brands to better connect with their audience. Heineken’s Success with Digital Marketing Initiatives Brands such as…

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#communications #content marketing #cost-per-acquisition #cost-per-click #cost-per-mille #CPA #CPC #CPM #digital marketing #Google Adwords #impressions #keywords #Kimberly Eugene #links #marketing #online sales #pay-per-click #PPC #PRTYNVRNDS LLC #search engine results pages #search engines #search marketing #sem #seo #serp #social media #social media marketing #social media platforms #social networking

[addamatic]

“Something I’ve been thinking about a lot in the current battle over the future of (pseudo) AI is the cotton gin.

I live in a country where industrial progress is always considered a positive. It’s such a fundamental concept to the American exceptionalism claim that we are taught never to question it, let alone realize that it’s propaganda.

One such myth, taught early in grade school, is the story of Eli Whitney and the cotton gin. Here was a classic example of a labor-saving device that made millions of lives better. No more overworked people hand cleaning the cotton (slaves, though that was only mentioned much later, if at all). Better clothes and bedding for the world. Capitalism at its best.

But that’s only half the story of this great industrial time saver. Where did those cotton cleaners go? And what was the impact of speeding up the process?

Now that the cleaning bottleneck was gone, the focus was on picking cotton as fast as possible. Those cotton cleaners likely, and millions of other slaves definitely, were sent to the fields to pick cotton. There was an unprecedented explosion in the slave trade. Industrial time management and optimization methods were applied to human beings using elaborate rule-based systems written up in books. How hard to punish to get optimal productivity. How long their lifespans needed to be to get the lost production per dollar. Those techniques, practiced on the backs and lives of slaves, became the basis of how to run the industrial mills in the North. They are the ancestors of the techniques that your manager uses now to improve productivity.

Millions of people were sold into slavery and worked to death *because* of the cotton gin. The advance it provided did not, in fact save labor overall. Nor did it make life better overall. It made a very small set of people much much richer; especially the investors around the world who funded the banks who funded the slave purchases. It made a larger set of consumers more comfortable at the cost of the lives of those poorer. Over a hundred years later this model is still the basis for our society.

Modern “AI” is a cotton gin. It makes a lot of painstaking things much easier and available to everyone. Writing, reading, drawing, summarizing, reviewing medical cases, hiring, firing, tracking productivity, driving, identifying people in a lineup…they all can now be done automatically. Put aside whether it’s actually capable of doing any of those things *well*; the investors don’t care if their products are good, they only care if they can make more money off of them. So long as they work enough to sell, the errors, and the human cost of those errors, are irrelevant. And like the cotton gin, AI has other side effects. When those jobs are gone, are the new jobs better? Or are we all working that much harder, with even more negative consequences to our life if we fall off the treadmill? One more fear to keep us “productive”.

The Luddites learned this lesson the hard way, and history demonizes them for it; because history isn’t written by the losers.

They’ve wrapped “AI” with a shiny ribbon to make it fun and appealing to the masses. How could something so fun to play with be dangerous? But like the story we are told about the cotton gin, the true costs are hidden”

[jones-friend]

How to Horde

Horde Decks, or PvE EDH, is something I’ve had a good time playing with and I wanted to share my notes here!

The idea behind horde is 2+ survivors with a shared life total are battling against a horde deck, where all damage dealt to the horde mills that many cards from the top of the horde. The horde is allowed one or more reveals each turn. Consisting of token and nontoken cards, the horde reveals cards from the top of the deck until a nontoken card is revealed. That card is cast with infinite mana and all revealed tokens enter play. The horde’s creatures have haste and must attack every turn. Players win if they reduce the horde deck to 0!

Building the Horde

Start with a theme. Theme is the most important part of the deck. Horde mode arose during the zombie craze of the late 00’s. Traditionally a horde deck is 60 token cards and 40 nontoken cards with tokens at 2/2 with a few stronger 5/5 thrown in. Flavor is king when it comes to horde, so the first thing you’ll want to do is pick a theme that has a broad base of tokens. Phyrexian invasions, zombie hordes, onslaughts of beasts, killer robots, legions of soldiers, theres a lot of fun unifying themes to pick from.

The traditional horde token has 2 power 2 toughness, so if you use higher power tokens like 3/3 beasts consider adding more nontoken cards. You can make the horde harder with less nontoken cards (more tokens per reveal) or easier with more nontoken cards (less tokens per reveal). I like to find a diverse base of tokens with varying power and/or keywords, but I recommend to make at least 30 cards (half your token base) the same token.

Building a horde deck is a fascinating exercise bc mana cost and rarity are entirely irrelevant. Cards that are normally considered weak can blow out the game and cause a sudden and unhappy loss.

Preventing your opponents from blocking for a full turn can be devastating. When building a horde you aren’t looking for complex card interaction like you would with a deck. You’re looking to build a series of challenges for the survivors to overcome. Much more like dm’ing a game of EDH than trying to win it.

When packing removal be sure to “game-ify” the removal. For example I would play Ravnica at War in a horde with multicolor permanents at stake so the boardwipe impacts the horde as well, but a monocolor EDH deck could slip by. Board wipes can help even out a horde out of control or set the players back a few paces. Try to stay away from flat out boardwipes, try to give some kind of choice or interaction with it from the survivor’s side. You also want to avoid removal that forces the horde to make a choice. Tribute to the Wild is a great card for Horde impacting the survivors and taking off an artifact/enchant per player. If the horde does make a choice it should do so randomly, without affecting its own permanents if possible.

You should also be aware of how the rules work for direct damage on survivors. They share a life total, but are counted as individual opponents for the sake of direct damage. For example Red Dragon will deal 4 damage to the survivors per survivor. Even though its an uncommon it can deal 8-16 damage just by entering the field. Crackling Doom deals 2 damage to the survivors per survivor and they each have to make a sacrifice.

You can also add cards that help the survivors. Whenever the horde draws a card they are allowed to play it during the pre combat main phase. While Vision Skeins lets the horde draw and play two more cards that turn each survivor draws 2. Shah hits for 6 trample damage BUT if survivors let it stay out they’ll each draw 3 making more of a game out of this reveal. Enslaved Horror lets each survivor recur a creature.

Be VERY wary of letting the horde steal, and do so carefully. The horde’s infinite mana can break the game and this often makes the horde makes choices which we want to avoid doing. For example Intellect Devourer lets the horde steal and play from hands but only whatever the players give it. To me this is reasonable. So if players give the horde a comet storm it will multitarget everything for infinite damage and the game will end. Speaking of, also be wary of X cost cards. The horde has infinite mana and will cast for the highest value of X. So Comet Storm is a bad add because it ends the game when revealed.

Playing the Horde

The horde is designed to play autonomously, so the player piloting the horde should be able to also play. I give the survivors 30 life +10 per player, though other people do 20 life per player. Decks that play more traditional mtg using combat to deal damage and win are ideal as some archetypes get messy with the format. If anyone plays mill I recommend on cards like Mind Grind that mill for lands to mill until a nontoken card is revealed instead of a land. If Poison is in the game I recommend milling a number of cards whenever the poison threshold is reached (anywhere 20-50 cards or half of whats left).

In EDH players will gain momentum the longer the game goes on and eventually will begin to overtake the horde. I recommend adding another reveal each time a damage threshold is met. I prefer to add a second reveal whenever the survivors deal 20+ damage to the horde deck and this has worked nicely. You can also do 15/30, two reveals after 15+ damage and three reveals after 30+ damage. This usually matches the power of the survivors and keeps the challenge going.

Adding Goodies

You may be tempted to add extra goodies like Background enchantments or war chests that give bonuses during the game. If you decide to make sure the horde works as intended first. Once you have the horde going then start adding extras. Its up to you how to award them. One angle I recommend is adding a flavorful emblem that causes each horde reveal. For example in a phyrexian invasion horde you could have Breach emblems that read “the horde reveals a nontoken card”. And each time a condition is met add another breach token adding another reveal making the game harder. You can also add emblems related to major characters for flavor. In a phyrexian invasion where incubator tokens are used you could make an Atraxa emblem that reads “at the end of your turn proliferate all permanents you control”.

And that’s my guide to horde! Pick a theme, 60 tokens, 40 nontokens, and go nuts with it. Remember this is for fun, you aren’t trying to murderize the survivors, and really lean into the flavor of your horde. If you’ve made any or will make one I’d love to see it!

#Mtg #magic the gathering #buy singles not sealed

[stairnaheireann]

#OTD in 1759 – Arthur Guinness signs a 9,000 year lease at £45 per annum and starts brewing Guinness.

Arthur Guinness is left £100 (about $147 US dollars) in the will of Archbishop Price. He uses the money and signs a 9,000-year lease on an unused brewery at St. James’s Gate, Dublin. It costs him an initial £100 with an annual rent of £45 – this includes crucial water rights. The brewery covers four acres and consists of a copper, a kieve, a mill, two malthouses, stabling for 12 horses and a loft…

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[pokemon-card-of-the-day]

Pokemon Card of the Day #3026: Zebstrika (Lost Thunder)

Zebstrika existed for one job, which was draw support. Drawing cards was, of course, very important in a card game, and Zebstrika being able to get rid of your hand to get 4 new ones was pretty powerful. The only limit was the once per turn thing, which meant you could have multiple chances at it. It was, however, on a Stage 1, and it wasn't like this did anything else. That meant taking up deck space, and assured that Zebstrika would have a harder time making it into decks than you might have thought at first.

110 HP wasn't incredible for a Stage 1, but wasn't the worst either. Most strong hits would KO through that, but this also meant that they couldn't always just go to a weaker back-up to get rid of that card drawing. There was a Fighting Weakness here, which could still matter in SUM-On where Zebstrika saw a lot of its play. The main issue was Buzzwole, as the others tended to reach 110 in some way without specific needs being met. The Metal Resistance was rarely a big deal, with the occasional Stakataka-GX being the closest thing to a notable place where it could change an outcome. The Retreat Cost was 1, so it wasn't going to be stuck up front too easily.

Sprint was a fantastic Ability. Once during your turn, you could discard your hand and draw 4 cards. You did have to make sure you weren't tossing something really important for later, but if the time was right you could get through a bit more of your deck to help set up. This was especially nice when running a deck that could make use of discarded cards, usually Energy. Zapdos decks could get an early use of Tapu Koko Prism Star from this sometimes, and Reshiram & Charizard-GX tended to include Fire Crystal to recover lost Fire Energy. Malamar decks also had an argument here, but getting both the Malamar and Zebstrika lines in one deck, along with the actual attackers, got pretty clunky and took up tons of Bench space so it wasn't too common to see that.

Head Bolt did just 60 damage for a Lightning and a Colorless Energy, so it was rare to want to use this for attacking purposes. Not impossible, but rare.

Zebstrika was a really nice card for decks that were more likely to make use of a lot of discarding and had the deck space and bench space to fit a Zebstrika line or two. Generally, if you wanted to mill through your deck quickly, Zebstrika was worth strong consideration. A lot of decks did do without it, leaving Zebstrika to play in some early Lightning decks, a few Fire decks, and a few control decks as a result. It was very good at doing exactly what you'd think it would do, so if the discard and draw 4 thing was a priority for a deck, this was going to make the cut. It wasn't as powerful as Dedenne-GX, of course, which also cut into its use, but could be re-used and therefore had a niche even by then.

#pokemon #pokemon tcg #card of the day #zebstrika #lost thunder

[a-tarassia]

luglio col bene che ti voglio

Luglio per me è un brutto mese. Di solito luglio è quel mese in cui cedo alle tristezze, qualunque esse siano al momento. Fa caldo, io soffro moltissimo di pressione bassa e circolazione, inizia a farmi male il corpo, gambe soprattutto e arriva quel languore interiore che immagino sia dovuto ad alcuni transiti stagionali introspettivi che mi fanno vivere le cose che accadono con più dramma, nervosismo e frustrazione. Adesso, vista forse anche la stanchezza, la sensazione è più di pre depressione che tristezza, sono giù di tono, demotivata, indolente. Tutto quello che accade non mi va bene, faccio cose che in altri momenti mi avrebbero riempito di energie e contentezza, mentre adesso preferirei starmene sul divano a scollare tiktok, è nettuno che s’è messo di traverso, sicuro, ma anche che luglio mi ammazza l’anima. Io, però, che mi conosco e conosco la depressione, cerco di spingere la notte più in là forzandomi in attività che so che normalmente mi tirerebbero su di morale, quindi vado in giro, in bici, faccio sport, mangio frutta, metto lavatrici, guardo bellissimi panorami e faccio bagni rinfrescanti dove posso. Circa un paio di settimane fa ero seduta a bordo piscina, era una di quelle domeniche in città in cui avresti mille cose da fare, ma non hai voglia e allora decidi di buttarti in piscina e fare la gara di scivoli, io e luca lo facciamo, proviamo varie posizioni sugli scivoli per vedere quale è più veloce in base alle diverse variabili fisiche. Ero seduta a bordo piscina e mi sono resa conto dopo di aver avuto un momento di dissociazione perché guardavo l’acqua, quel blu tipico delle piscine cittadine, con le tipiche ondine in superficie della gente che si muove e pensavo a quando a luglio era estate davvero, l’estate della gente di mare negli anni ‘90, di quel periodo in cui non hai niente da fare e noi degli anni ’80 eravamo ancora comitive densissime di ragazzi figli di famiglie numerose, minimo due figli di età vicina, a volte tre, al sud anche quattro. La mia comitiva eravamo tipo 40 persone d’estate, ragazzi che vivevamo lì, altri che venivano dal nord e restavano per tipo due mesi chè i genitori lavoravano e loro venivano dai nonni, dagli zii, nessuno o pochi facevano le vacanze all’estero, i voli low cost non esistevano ancora e le famiglie erano troppo numerose, coppie senza figli ve n’erano poche e allora le vacanze estive duravano mesi interi e avevi tempo di farti l’abitudine e la vita diventava diversa per un tempo che all’epoca era lunghissimo. Arrivava l’estate, le mie spiagge venivano invase, arrivava quel tipo che ti piaceva che era cambiato e c’era il fratello più piccolo che intanto era cresciuto, ma anche la cugina nell’arco dell’anno trascorso s’era fatta una ragazza e quindi una concorrente in più o forse alla fine della stagione anche un’amica, tutto poteva succedere. Noi bramavamo quelli che arrivavano, loro desideravano noi che eravamo esotici e abbronzati già a maggio, noi restavamo a vivere anche l’inverno del mare grigio e solitario e loro ci invidiavano, loro se ne andavano nelle città con i cinema e noi li invidiavamo. Mia cugina veniva che era fidanzata col solito di sempre e dopo due giorni lo mollava dalla cabina telefonica per poi riprenderselo a settembre. I giri in motorino, il gregge di ombrelloni, le partite a beach volley fino le nove, i nostri genitori che sanno che siamo al mare, tanto telefonini non ce n’erano e quindi dovevi vivere a fidarti per forza. Le prima canne sotto ai ponti della ferrovia, la ferrovia che passava direttamente  sopra la spiaggia. Il mettersi d’accordo giorno per giorno su dove vedersi e fare la conta di chi manca. Chi scende per primo fa lo squillo a casa. Il primo bacio dietro casa di zia che faceva un caldo torrido e dovevamo rubarle la legna per il falò, tu che mi vomiti addosso durante il falò. Prendiamo il pedalò tanto lo so che poi i maschi giocano a tirarci giù e noi urliamo come se non sapessimo nuotare, tanto chi ti crede sei nato qui, nuotare è la seconda cosa che hai imparato dopo camminare. Le partite a biliardino. I bagni di notte.

Poi man mano le giornate si accorciano, i primi temporali estivi, arrivano i giorni delle partenze, qualcuno parte presto, nemmeno metà agosto, altri tirano fino poco prima dell’inizio delle scuole, conti i giorni che mancano, inizi a fare i ritrovi per i saluti, domani parte Tommaso, giovedì parte Silvia e Roberta e Carmelo quando vanno? Inizia quel treno di malinconia di un pezzo di vita che finisce, quando vivi in un posto di mare ti abitui a dare la scadenza a qualcosa fin da piccolo. Devi fare i conti con questa cosa che la spensieratezza esiste, ma cambia, ritorna e poi cambia, impari a salutare e riabituarti. Riabituarti è doloroso, io lo soffro ancora. Noi avevamo un rituale per decretare la fine dell’estate, appena anche l’ultimo turista era andato via facevamo una pigiama part a casa di uno di noi, ci ritrovavamo una notte intera a raccontarci le cose e rivivere dei momenti e piangere e confessare i segreti, Poi finisce davvero le case si svuotano e sembrano abbandonate, ti riabitui alla vita lenta del mare d’inverno, ricominci con i tuoi ritmi, il gruppo dei soliti, le giornate più corte e le tue intimità e di nuovo quando arriva l’estate con un’onda violenta trascina via quello che conosci e pulisce tutto, ti porta novità e tu devi ripartire, ancora. Tutto questo è finito, il gregge di ombrelloni sulla spiaggia non c’è più e le estati sono sempre più corte. Le cose continuano a finire e ricominciare.

La malinconia della vita di mare è dentro di me, luglio mi uccide, per me è un mese di resa dei conti, finisce una vita e ne inizia un’altra, nel disegno del mio calendario interiore è un punto di rottura prima di agosto, che si trova da solo, come un’anomalia, mese senza spazio né tempo, luglio invece è traguardo prima del nuovo inizio.

Mese di depressione e speranza. Certe volte voglio buttarmi dal balcone, certe volte me ne vado al mare.

Così.

[ilpianistasultetto]

Quando uno sputa in alto per fare andare lo sputo piu' in alto possibile, e' sicuro che poi gli ricade sul viso. Negli anni, due campioni assoluti del "lancio dello sputo verticale" sono stati Meloni e Salvini, piu' il secondo che la prima ma distanziati solo da un pelo, cavalcando in quel modo sbrigativo e spicciolo il tema dei migranti per raccattare voti. Adesso che sono al governo provano a schivare quella gragnuola di liquame molliccio misto a schiuma che gli ricade sul viso ma senza successo...Meloni che puntava il dito affinche' certi presidenti del consiglio venissero indagati per omicidio ogni qualvolta moriva qualche migrante adesso che ricopre lei quel posto se ne sta quatta quatta, zitta zitta e Salvini che avrebbe sparato o arrestato e rimpatriato ogni migrante clandestino che sbarcava sulle nostre coste sembra un desaparecido o, ancor meglio, sembra Guarnacci, quel pugile suonato interpretato da Gasmann nel film "I mostri" . Per adesso siamo ad oltre mille sbarchi al giorno, 10volte gli sbarchi 2022, ma la bella stagione potrebbe far esplodere il fenomeno. E cosi, adesso che sono al governo gia' si pensa a una bella sanatoria di 500mila illegali fatta passare per flussi regolari in maniera tale da dare una bella mano ai vari Briatore, Santanche' e ai tanti amici imprenditori che li hanno finanziati fornendo loro manodopera a 3euro l'ora, poi sara' colpa dei comunisti se il Paese sara' ricolmo di stranieri.. @ilpianistasultetto