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mrsdarkandyandere7 · 2 days

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❤ Yandere Lawyer ❤

▶ This is a yandere/dark work and it may contain triggering content so please READ THE WARNINGS before. Do not read if minor.

More at Masterlist

Female reader

WARNINGS: Obsession; Misogyny; slight Power Abuse.

This idea credit goes to @d-lioncourt cause she's the one that motivated me for this idea. Hope you like this :)

◾ Yandere! Lawyer who works in the top law firm of the country. He’s cold, determinate and calculative. Always thinking 10 steps ahead of everyone, carefully considering all possibilities and creating extensive back-up plans.

His job relies on his capacities and he always aims for the top. If he’s not recognized as the best lawyer available, then he doesn’t even know what he’s been doing so far.

◾ Yandere! Lawyer who doesn't care about how things are done as long as he wins the case in the end. Who said lawyers are saints?

He may be an advocate of the law but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t bend it to his will, finding sneaky gaps to reach his goal: win.

Isn’t that what makes him such a requested lawyer? Isn’t that what causes every big corporate company to try to sign him up, to offer several millions for him to represent them in court? Because everyone knows that he wins.

No matter what happens during the trials or how badly the opposite side tries, he wins. It’s an irrefutable truth and anyone that tries to contradict it is a complete and utter fool.

◾ Yandere! Lawyer who is upset enough when he’s informed that he’s gonna have to take a Pro Bono case for a random civilian. It’s frustrating to spend his precious time and expensive resources on a worthless someone.

It’s stupid and he'd immediately refuse it if it wasn’t for the strict order he receives from the higher ups.

◾ Yandere! Lawyer who rattles you up, insisting on long sessions so he can know your side of the story.

His questions feel like accusations and you hate spending long hours answering him. Makes you feel like you’ve actually committed a crime of sorts when the reality is none of that.

He knows you’re bothered by the way he pays attention to each of your words, taking mental notes of every minuscule detail so he can bring it up later.

He’s highly aware of how unnerving he can get and it’s fun to see you get so quiet and shy over it.

He loves it when people get intimidated by him and it’s particularly pleasant when a pretty thing like yourself gets too timid to spare him a few words.

◾ Yandere! Lawyer who drags the case much longer than it needs to. He could definitely end it in a blink of eyes, it would be so easy for him. A piece of cake.

But he doesn’t.

It’s exciting to see you on court, a helpless expression covering your whole face and your eyes at the verge of tears as your future lays on his hands.

So pathetically weak. You can’t even defend yourself, you need him to do that for you. To defend your honor, to protect you.

◾ Yandere! Lawyer who makes sure you know that despite it being a Pro Bono case, you owe him. He wants you to know that he’s winning this case for you, wasting his valuable time just to save your pathetic ass from those embezzlement charges.

That he’s the one saving you from going to prison - despite the very evident fact that you have such a weak personality that it’s practically impossible that you’d steal money from your boss.

◾ Yandere! Lawyer who takes every chance to hurt your feelings with snide remarks.

You look prettier when you cry, something so enticing about those shiny diamond-like tears that glow in your eyes and the miserable way you furiously blink to keep them at bay - to which you fail.

You’re crying because of him. That’s enough to make him buzz with a twisted sense of possession and control. He holds that much power over you.

◾ Yandere! Lawyer whose mind wanders over the tempting fantasies of returning home to you. You’d do a submissive girlfriend, he’s so sure of that. If he gave you a nasty slap and a few harsh words, you’d bend to his will so fast - like a obedient girlfriend should.

It would be so easy to control your life.

Order you to move in with him. Command you to become his stay-at-home girlfriend. Push you to cut off friends and family until only he remains.

Those misogynistic ideas keep him thinking about you longer than he should.

◾ Yandere! Lawyer who isn’t afraid to act upon his wishes and so he does. After a triumphing win on court, he leaves.

Storms off without even looking at you and you don’t even have the chance to thank him, but you forget about that quickly.

You have more pressing issues to focus on, such as rebuilding your life all again. Celebrate your win. Find a new job. Move on with your life the best as you can.

Your peace lasts exactly one week. And then everything comes down in rubbles.

Because then he comes to retrieve his payment.

#@mrsdarkandyandere7 #yandere x you #yandere x reader #tw: yandere #yandere concept #female reader #yandere headcanons #yandere oc x reader #yandere x darling #yandere imagines

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engie-ivy · 3 days

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(Inspired by @wolfstarmicrofic 's Alternative Universes theme! A sort of combined Performer AU and College AU🙂)

1058 words

Sirius Black's emotional break-up songs are topping the charts all over the world. But hearing those songs everywhere he goes, Remus is about to reach his breaking point.

With His Song

Home is where the heart is,

But it's not the concrete, nor the stone,

Not the room you sit in,

But the smile that lights it up.

Not the bed you sleep in,

But the heartbeat besides your own.

Home is where the heart is,

But it's not necessarily a place,

Sometimes, it's tracing the scars on someone's hand,

Sometimes, it's counting the freckles on someone's face.

It's been so long,

Coming home to you,

And did you know,

I could easily move on?

But the truth is,

I just don't want to.

If home is where the heart is,

Then baby, could it be,

That your home is still with me?

Mary lets out a sigh that seems to be coming from somewhere deep inside of her. “My god, I'm going to listen to that song on repeat for the rest of the week,” and after a moment she adds “potentially the rest of my life.”

“Then you're gonna have to get some headphones,” Remus says. “Because I'm already getting sick of hearing it.”

Mary gasps and clutches her chest. “Blasphemy!”

Remus gives her an unimpressed look. “I don't think you're using that word right.”

“‘Irreverence toward something considered sacred or inviolable’,” Mary states unfazed. “So yes, the perfect description of you insulting Sirius Black's music.”

Emmeline nods emphatically.

Remus sighs. “I'm not saying it's a bad song,” he says. “Just that I'm getting tired of hearing it everywhere, all the time.”

Mary opens her mouth to retort, but Emmeline interjects.

“I do sort of relate. It has gotten a painful tinge to hear the song, now that I know I won't be seeing Sirius Black perform it live…”

“You didn't get tickets for his show?” Marlene asks.

“No,” Emmeline sighs miserably. “I'm on the waiting list. Number 329.”

“Not as bad as Hestia. She's number 1550 or something.”

Emmeline shrugs. “In the end, it makes no difference. 329 or 1550, neither one of us is going to the concert. I mean, 329 people will have to die, and I don't reckon I'd be that lucky…”

“Emmeline!” Lily scolds.

“Well, that's the only excuse for not going to a Sirius Black concert, literally being dead,” Mary says. “I'd actually skip my mum’s funeral if I could see him live.”

“Mary!”

“No, no, Lils,” Emmeline says. “You don't know Mary's mum. If Mary were to miss out on seeing Sirius Black for her funeral, she'd actually come back from the death to haunt her.”

Mary nods. “She's a huge fan. Not going to a Sirius Black concert would be disrespecting her memory.” She glances over at Remus. “She might have some things to say as well if she hears that my actual roommate has openly disrespected Sirius Black’s music.”

Remus sticks out his tongue. “Sue me.”

“As soon as they create a law that makes depreciating Sirius Black illegal, which they should, I will!”

“Anyhow,” Emmeline says. “I haven't heard Sirius Black's voice for almost five minutes and I'm getting withdrawal symptoms,” and she reaches out to put the record back on.

Remus gets up to his feet. “That's my cue to leave.”

“You don't have to, Remus,” Lily says quickly. “If you really don't want us to, we won't put on his music. We value your company more than listening to Sirius Black.”

“Says who? Ow!” Emmeline rubs her shin where Lily kicked her.

Remus smiles at Lily. “Thanks, Lils, but it's okay. I have a paper I need to work on anyway.”

The moment Remus closes the door to his bedroom, he lets out a sigh that seems to be coming from somewhere deep inside of him.

Then, almost without thinking, he takes out his phone and punches in the number by heart.

“Hello?” The voice on the other end of the line sounds surprised and, dare Remus think, hopeful?

“You have to stop doing this,” Remus hears himself say. “No,” he then corrects himself. “You don't have to do anything. I'm asking you. Please stop doing this.”

“Remus, what are you talking about?” He seems to be walking away from something– A promo event? A fancy dinner? An exclusive party?– as Remus can hear the voices in the background grow softer. Remus feels a brief hint of satisfaction; no matter how big the event he's at, how important the people he's with, when Remus calls, he gets up and walks away to talk to him, but Remus quickly corrects himself, because it's not like that anymore.

“It's killing me,” Remus admits, pressing a hand against his forehead. “I understand, but… God, it's killing me.”

“Rem,” Sirius, because of course it's Sirius, says gently. “You're still not making much sense. What are you trying to say? Why are you suddenly calling me? Why… Why now?”

“Your latest releases,” Remus says, as he starts pacing the room, though he can barely take two steps before he reaches the opposite wall. It's rather telling of the difference between them, he can't help but think. Sirius undoubtedly in some grand building surrounded by dozens of people who would fall over themselves to cater to his every whim, and Remus hiding out in his eight square meter bedroom cluttered with textbooks and scribbled notes. “I get why you do it. I'm probably terribly biased,” he lets out a brief laugh. “But I think the songs you wrote when we were together, and even after we just broke up, are your best songs, so I get that you would want to release them, to share them with the world and show everyone once again just how bloody talented you are. And you have every right. They're your works, your creations. But gods, Sirius, I can't pretend anymore.”

“Pretend,” Sirius repeats, his voice almost a whisper, and Remus lets it all out.

“I can't pretend anymore that hearing those songs everywhere I go all the damn time doesn't make me want to die! That it doesn't just break me, to hear your voice sing those words, knowing what they once meant, and knowing that they don't mean that anymore! That you don't mean that anymore.”

“Remus,” Sirius interrupts sharply, and Remus immediately stops talking as Sirius speaks. “Do you really think I could sing those words like that, if I didn't still feel that way?”

And Remus’ breath catches in his throat.

#famous sirius black #singer sirius black #post breakup #academic remus lupin #wolfstar #wolfstar fanfiction #wolfstar fic #marauders #marauders fanfiction #marauders fic #sirius black #remus lupin #remus x sirius

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bettsfic · 1 day

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This may be a strange question, but as someone who has never gotten the hang of using notebooks in my day to day life (unless it's once in a while to outline something specific like a project for work), what are the kinds of things you write down in them?

for journaling, that's complicated. youtube always recommends me these "journaling will improve your life!" videos and i think they're very funny because i've kept a journal for 20 years and it has made me a worse and more miserable person. so i will not be writing any "how to journal" posts any time soon.

my commonplace notebook, however, is where i keep everything. every morning i write down the date, the hours i slept, and my weight. occasionally i track my mood and mental state, because when i meet with my psychiatrist i like to have cold hard data to give her. then beneath that, i write out my to do list for the day.

it's kind of a reverse bullet journal in that you fill it up with all the random ephemera of your life and then label the important bits with a highlighter and index it later.

more specifically i keep:

the books/movies/shows/etc that are recommended to me.

notes i take at the doctor's office, or when i do my taxes, or get my oil changed. i'm a compulsive note-taker. in fact i started a commonplace notebook because it calms me to have something to write on and with even in situations where that's weird. i'd rather look weird than be anxious.

ideas for fanfic, original work, newsletters, craft thoughts, workshop models, etc.

brainstorming/planning/prewriting stories.

tracking my WIP cleanout and annual goals.

doodling!

i think sometimes we get caught up in building spaces for things to keep them organized, like that's the whole point of bujo. you create a page layout to do a specific function and then you fill it out. but that doesn't account for the stuff you haven't made a page for, stuff that would be blight in a bujo. we also think that a whole page needs to be devoted to a specific thing, or a notebook needs to be devoted to its subject. but you an also just...not do that.

it's a lot of work to setting up a bujo. work i would love to have the energy and aesthetic inclinations to do. but i don't. so i do the next best thing which is fill up every page in the most chaotic way possible.

poorly scanned example pages under the cut:

these are notes i took during my rewatch of Mockingjay in preparation of writing Wind of the New World.

notes about leveling my Genshin team, and notes about a story i was working on. and a to do list.

working through a plot knot in Skinless.

Stardew Valley farm planning. and a grocery list i think.

i don't recommend this method for everyone. i think if i were to have read this post 2 years ago my thought would be, "what the fuck is wrong with you." but it works for me and makes me happy, and as long as all the important information is safely indexed and retrievable, it doesn't matter how messy the pages get.

#writing advice #commonplacing

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jeysuso · 10 months

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🌈🤨?

#jey uso #sami zayn #samijey #wweedit #mygifs*#jeysuso #wrestling tag #*#*alyssa edwards voice* i'm back back back again #if any motherfucker steals this i'm dragging you across broken glass face first #< for legal reasons that's a joke #anyway happy pride #i decided that as much as i hate having my gifs stolen #not creating things makes me More Miserable so #this is literally for myself

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cali · 7 months

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darkraiiiiii

#art #i was brewing up a complicated picture in my head too many factors intermingling and i put a requirement on myself that i would need to #feel a certain mood to create said picture cuz only then would it feel good and true but it was an impossible to achieve mood #and it made me miserable for a week i went to bed as soon as possible everyday to skip to the next one but today i woke up at 2am #and thought well maybe i should just draw something simple that i like it doesnt have to be high concept #so its just darkrai!!!! cuz its such a cooly! and its made out of shapes ive enjoyed drawing recently #smoking fire plumelike stuff u kno...#and i got to try out the spraypaint thing again cuz there was stuff i realized i coulda done better after the red 3 head hybrid pic #so i wanted to do it again. do u like these- with the spraypaint rendering? i will make more of them no matter what u say #but im about to go to bed now. i started the pic at 11am and finished at 8pm so 9hrs spent?! well the stenciling takes a long while in pain #i did the spraying in ms paint again and then composited it in paint net like usually.#also im typing much because the combination of coffee (which i try to make special and rare for me so it hits more cutely)#+ the euphoria that drawing gives me makes me talkative. but now.- ! im tired !! goodnight #pokemon #darkrai

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emdotcom · 2 months

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Idk why the fucken... Divide between "it was alternate universes" & "Paul is just trans" ideas for Petscop has to be torn into a cavern. Paul being trans DOES make sense, but requires you to ignore huge details that immediately make it not work. The alternate universes DO kind of make sense, but require you to extrapolate out a lot of info purposefully left unshown.

It's hard to describe what i want to say, here -- i do think Paul being trans makes sense, 'splains why he & Care "look eeriely similar," you could argue he's just thoroughly blocked out that part of his life enough to have forgotten Care entirely, etc. I like it, & i keep it as i also say "Yeah, it's that & the universes theory." It's not two switches that demand you can only flip on one of them -- you can have both. You can have neither. Do whatever

#em.txt #petscop #i think my big thing is just that. I don't think it was intended #& it is not my job as a queer person to sweep up crumbs from under the rug for proof that is not there #if a creator wished to create a trans character i would enjoy if they would say as such. but mr. petscop has not said as such #& while i love the theory. if i see one more mfer say 'this is OBVIOUSLY canon & if u say otherwise ur LYING'#or 'omg ppl gotta make up crazy theories before they believe a queer story is queer 🙄' i will bite you.#i understand you are used to no queer rep so you take these scraps of dust as truth.#but do not mock people that don't agree with the plate of nothing you're serving.#discourse #yeah i think I'm being petty enough to deserve this tag. i am sorry for being mean #paul transgender is inherently based but u r stretching as much as me #I don't think the universe theory is canon or intended. I don't think there is an answer to petscop #i think it just exists & doesn't matter what it was abf #the plot of it is chasing windmills & ending up nowhere forever & ever to waste your time & be miserable #why do we want a conclusive answer from that? the explanation of petscop is this:#idk wtf was going on here. but i sure am glad Paul got tf outta there

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opens-up-4-nobody · 7 months

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...

#aaaand that's 2 doctors that think i have bipolar ii 🙃#so the conceptualize rn would b that my mood is fucked but im using ocd to keep myself contained withing sorta normal parameters #which. i mean. that does kinda fit with observationally. i would create rules around: u arent allowed to get excited abt things u arent #allowed to enjoy things bc u cant handle it. u cant b normal abt how u enjoy things. or bc when i go to enjoy a thing #my mood is caped at being lightly miserable so its like well fuck being around ppl it makes me feel nothing #bc my focus and energy swing around like the light on a lighthouse. and in between that im miserable or feel nothing #and if its true that i am bipolar the reason i never noticed would b bc i very rarely experience euphoria. mostly i have high energy and #dont feel good. just fucking out of control. so mixed episodes i guess. but like idk. i guess i just think of bipolar as being extremely #destructive. and i mean r my mood issues a problem? yes. sometimes a really big problem. but idk. im still resistant to thr idea #lots of ppl get misdiagnosed as bipolar even tho the presentation is so specific. i guess i just doesn't wanna accept it and then have to #have been wrong if i was misdiagnosed. but i mean 2 doctors independently listened to me and thought hm sounds like bipolar so maybe im #just being stubborn. also no one else in my family thst i kno of is bipolar. ive got 2 uncles with adhd but not bipolar relatives #i dunno. i guess it doesn't matter so long as i can get it under control. im good at control. destructively good at control #unrelated #i guess its more that ive never done anything life ruining bc of my moods #mostly i just dont sleep much and make myself crazy. so ill probably die an early death or whatever lack og sleep causes rio #i meant rip lol

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anothermouse · 1 year

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I find it weird how ppl will say for reasons that systems are fake is that multiple alters talk similar or have similar interests. Have u ever met siblings. They talk similar and have similar interests because they've spent years together ya dork, as systems start to get along more they're gonna start sharing more interests and speech patterns just like you with people you spend a lot of time with lol. Also they all share a life, they have to be able to act like each other to get by and seem "normal."

#this isnt directed ive just noticed that me and willow steal each others interests a lot and its making me think abt all the ppl ive seen #using that reasoning in fake claiming. me and her dont really talk similar but i can imagine that happening with systems who #talk to each other or mask as each other more.#idk. its to our best interest to share skills and interests. if only one person likes/knows writing then we have a problem when we need to #write and they're not present. if only one person likes/knows guitar we're in big trouble in guitar class if they're not present.#and we NEED to get along to operate so its good for us to have things to bond over! we used to argue a lot and it was fucking annoying and #made life hard. i couldnt take care of the body and willow was depressed and it made the brain miserable and it sucked #so the more we can get along the better and i think having things in common is good for that!#like i said we dont really talk the same and for us that works just fine but for some systems that could create communication barriers.#idk. i just think ppl should think a little more about why alters might become similar over time. me and my cohost r literally like family #system #osdd #did #multiple #plural #edit: actually maybe i do pick up speech from her. she says 'my friend' a lot and sometimes im tempted to say it cus its nice #but i feel like it sounds weirder coming from me 😅#OH AND LOVELY. she uses the word lovely so much ive just picked it up. its such a good adjective #idk why usually you expect the host to be the one whos language people copy but i feel like i pick up things from willow more than she does #from me.

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mymarifae · 2 years

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i understand that the way language arts is taught makes the whole study of literature and narratives and themes and such seem like a boring, pointless endeavor. but it is so important to me and my sanity that you pay attention to the information presented to you in those classes. because it is integral. you will never be able to approach art in any form and come to your own, unadulterated conclusions and interpretations. you will not recognize propaganda when it is being spoonfed to you. and you will not understand that yes, the messages of the media and the art you consume do in fact subtly change your psyche and that’s why you can’t just blindly consume shit

#like you know the whole argument with the blue curtains example. 'the blue curtains symbolize the character's sadness' vs #'the curtains are fucking curtains.'#<- that latter viewpoint upsets me soooo fucking much because like oh my god you are missing the point #perhaps the author or the artist or whatever did not intentionally include blue curtains to symbolize sadness #in fact it's pretty likely that it wasn't intentional at all because that's just how creating art works #the POINT is you can draw out details to support the overall themes and messages and make them stronger and come to your own conclusions #different people will hone in on different details. that's the beauty of art.#you don't need any sort of 'correct' interpretation spoonfed to you and you should not expect it #so like. yeah the curtains might just be fucking curtains but how does approaching them as a Symbol affect our understanding of the story?#does the character open the curtains to let in the sunshine - thus freeing themself from their sadness?#or do they close the curtains and hide in the dark - trapping themself in the same miserable cycles?#sometimes things are just things to populate the empty spaces of a story and you don't necessarily need to think about them #but you Can think about them and that will make your experience all the more richer.#anyway.this whole thing means like a fucking lot to me 😂#i'm pursuing the career i am without caring about the difficulties and the dangers because i want to do what i can to be like.#a good fucking high school language arts teacher. and to properly impart the value and the IMPORTANCE of these lessons.

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equalseleventhirds · 1 year

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have chosen the demon workplace comedy to submit to class, which as i say it i realize i perhaps had bvm on the mind, altho it is drastically different as a story... nevertheless! i had fun with it, and it actually is better than the big tortured zombie metaphor i wrote, just bcos the big tortured zombie metaphor was. torturing me.

#someday that one will be good i betcha #it's more ~literary~ or w/e. woulda tugged at heart strings. but alas! the demon one was submitted #this one i hope will make me not miserable bcos oh god all the very sad sad stories in class #like i get it. metaphors. deep feelings. etc.#but ohhhh god i needed to be silly for a bit so i was #it's truer to who i am as a writer anyway #i love me a workplace comedy #yes i'll write big emotional things sometimes but I. LOVE. COMEDY.#......yes someone did bleed out dramatically bUT IT WAS FINE IN THIS ONE #anyway. 'i am a comedy writer' i shout to an uncaring universe #as i create more and more sad & dramatic & horrifying things.#but this time! this time i'll give my classmates my comedy bullshit. at last.

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supercutszns · 4 months

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rotten to the touch; luke castellan

series masterlist

wc: 3.2k

pairing: pre-tlt luke castellan x f! reader

synopsis: you’re pretty sure you’re an awful person. you’re pretty sure luke castellan is too. and you’re pretty sure you want to make out with him.

warnings: reader is flawed & not the greatest, luke is ... a little dark🫣, small mention of blood, swearing, lots of making out but no explicit nsfw, a bit toxic, & no more more ‘i can fix him’ or ‘i can make him worse’ it’s ‘he can make ME worse’

notes: this is… sluttier than my usual stuff so it’s not as good but i’m trying, feedback is appreciated! also i wonder what cabin we think this reader would be in, let me know where you’d place her im curious :) maybe i’ll write more of her in the future she’s interesting!! and thank you for 100 followers i am so grateful<3 designated song for this fic is crush by ethel cain

You are a miserable, wicked, asshole of a person, and everybody knows it. Including you.

It’s unclear to you why you turned out this way—every reason to blame never satiates the fury searing your insides. All the campers hate you. The counsellors, too. Even Chiron looks down on the viciousness inside you. You are Camp Half-Blood’s black sheep; a mean, bitter person with no love for the people around you. And it’s not just for show. You know you’re rotten. You know the anger will never go away.

It’s evident in the things you think about other people—the way you pick them apart in your head, toss them aside, because they just don’t see it. This miserable, unforgiving world, with children sleeping on wooden floors because the people who created you think you disposable. Because they can just make more of you. More, more, more, until one of you comes out rotten, born of all the ugliness they have inside them. You are the worst parts of Godly blood. The wrathful parts.

Everyone hates you. Everyone hates a person with an unquenchable anger.

But everyone loves Luke Castellan.

He’s a saint at Camp Half-Blood if there ever was one. Handsome, generous, kind. Goes out of his way to help out the new kids and gives them homes in his cabin. He’s the best swordsman in camp by a mile. Shit, you’d even love Luke Castellan if you didn’t know any better.

But you do, and you don’t, and it’s complicated, okay?

Because there’s something you know about Luke Castellan that nobody else does: he’s miserable and wicked, too.

You see it in his eyes sometimes. The way they look at you at dinner, when you’re picking at your food away from anyone else at your table. Something familiar rises in them, and your stomach twists. His body tenses whenever someone mentions his father, but the smiles he flashes are so charismatic nobody notices. But you do. It’s exciting.

During sword practice, he quips back and forth with the kids and laughs whenever they take a jab at him. He’s light, easy, carefree. But you see how he holds back, the tension in his shoulder, the way the arc of his sword never fully finishes. So you wait until everybody leaves and he’s alone, with the training dummies and the setting sun. And you. Hiding.

He slashes through them and spears through their heads. You see it, the gnashing of his teeth, the sweat curling down his cheeks. There’s something there. A chasm he’s hopeless to fill.

Before you know it, you’re going out of your way to catch him training alone. It’s creepy, you know, and awful, you know, but the more you watch him the more you see a sort of violence scabbed under his skin.

Whenever you see him now, the feeling you get is entirely foreign to you. It’s almost . . . longing.

Wherever she is, you’re pretty sure Aphrodite’s having a cosmic fucking laugh. And you’re sure she’s laughing double tonight.

The Aphrodite cabin is hosting some secret party for the older counsellors. You’re definitely of age to be a counsellor, but you’ve never been made one because that would probably make half the campers drop out. Chiron and Mr. D don’t know what to do with you. You’re sure you’ll be kicked out of camp soon for good.

But you’re here anyways, for a reason you don’t want to admit, and you stay tucked in a corner as the world around you mingles. Luke is on the other side of the room, lovely as always, laughing with a few other counsellors. He brings a drink up to his lips, and you have a startling thought of what it would be like to kiss him. And you’re fucked. You’re so fucked. Because for the first time in your life you want something tangible, something real. You want to hear him and feel him and pry him apart, and a part of you wants him to actually see you, see all the awful things that might make you the same. You feel like a teenage girl with a crush, and it is infuriating.

An Aphrodite girl comes up to you with a foolish smile. “Hey, sorry, you want a drink?”

“Fuck off, you idiot,” you snarl.

You wait for her to leave. She doesn’t. “You know, you don’t have to be so mean all the time,” she says evenly. “If you’re here, you might as well enjoy it. So yes, I want to give you a drink.”

“Have you ever thought that I’m not being mean? Maybe I just am.”

You glare at her. She looks you up and down. “Sure,” she shrugs, walking away. There’s a vivid picture in your mind of her falling through a hole in the cabin floor. It doesn’t soothe you, but at least the fantasy is there.

The night drones on. You’re sick of the smells and the laughs and the heat. And you’re sick of yourself. You can’t believe, underneath all your sourness, you came here to stare at a boy you barely know, and you don’t even know why. He’s fascinating, and you resent him, and he’s also beautiful. But he’s looked back at you all of three times tonight and you’re sick of the way your skin crawls when he does.

Leaving the cabin brings the relief of the cool night air, and the singularity of your body. You are the only one who feels this rage. You are the only one who hates.

To stave off your discomfort you walk around to the back of the cabin, to the crest of the hill facing the water. The stars above twinkle at you in spite. There’s a bitterness in your throat you want to wash down with something worse (maybe you should have taken that drink), but you know it won’t matter. Nothing matters. Those stars and whatever they hide are apparently the only important things in the universe, so why should anyone care about anything?

They stars only get brighter. It’s probably their goal to piss you off. You grunt, “Oh, fuck you,” to them. It’s not enough, never nearly enough to expel the rotten part of you. “Fuck you. Fuck off!” You groan at the sky. Nothing happens. Until:

“I’m guessing you’re not having a fun night.”

You whirl around. It’s hard to see in the dark, but whatever light is left catches a long scar on a cheek. Your stomach knots.

“Yeah, me neither,” Luke Castellan says, hands in his pockets as he meanders towards you.

Even when he’s close enough, you don’t say anything. If you do, you’re afraid it’ll be something ugly. Like I kind of want to make out with you. Are you awful too? I need a lobotomy.

The thoughts almost make you laugh. Been a long time since you’ve been funny.

He nods at the sky. “Those things don’t talk. You do know that, right?” He’s still so captivating, so self-assured, even when there’s no one around but you.

“Gods, you’re the worst,” you scoff. You really mean it, so you can’t look him in the eye.

“Then why have you been staring at me all night?”

It catches you so off-guard that you whip back to face him. He has an eyebrow raised and the itch of a smile that makes you burn with shame. “What the fuck are you talking about?”

He shrugs, leaning against the cabin wall. “I’m not stupid. You’ve been brooding in the corner watching me the second you came in.” He cocks his head to the side, adding, “Actually, you stare at me all the time. At meals and stuff. I really hope you don’t think you’re being subtle.”

You huff. “Okay, if we’re really being honest here, you started that! You do it too! All the time!”

His hands shot up like he was being arrested. “Hey, I never said I minded it. A guy’s . . . just gotta wonder. What’s up with you spying on me when I’m training alone, anyways?”

“You have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“You watch me when there’s nobody else around. I’m not blind. It’s weird. If you want tips you can just ask me. Or if you like what you’re looking at, at least be upfront about it.”

You speak before you can take in that last sentence, or the way his smile took pride in itself when he said it, or how embarrassed you should probably feel. “You didn’t answer my question about why you started staring at me first.”

The anger (shame) blinding you made you forget how close you are to him right now. Close enough to touch, but not enough to see. But almost there. Almost.

“People think you’re mean,” Luke says after a moment, his dark eyes probing you. The words curl out of his mouth slowly, like he’s choosing them all with care. “You’re rude. You never listen to anyone. You judge everything. They all think you’re awful.” Again, he looks you over. “I’m not so sure.”

“If I’m awful, then you’re awful,” you spit before he can say anything else.

He just shrugs. “Well, I guess that’s why I’m not sure.”

It’s irritating, his calmness. He has the same anger you do. How come he can just . . . shove it down? You try to unearth any fury in his eyes, but it’s too far back. Simmering. “Jesus,” you mutter, “You’re worse than me.”

He looks genuinely taken aback by this. His scar deepens when his brows wrinkle. “What?”

“You’re a pretender—that’s what you are.” It’s your turn now, to step closer, to make his skin crawl. “Look at you. Everyone loves you. You’re this perfect golden boy and you’re sweet and attentive and whatever the fuck but you know it’s one giant lie. At least I’m honest, but you just sit pretty and act like you don’t have that . . . thing that I have. Resentment. Insanity. Whatever you want to call it. We’re the same, but I’m the only one getting shit for it.”

Now, you are close enough to really see him. The patterns on the wood behind him frame the vision of his ever-shifting face. You realize that this, like most things are to Luke Castellan, is a challenge. You also can’t remember the last time you saw him lose one.

But when you play, you play to win.

“You don’t know that,” he dares.

“Oh, I do. You’re rotten, Castellan,” you sneer, index finger jabbed into his chest. You can feel his heartbeat if you concentrate. “And you’re not owning up to it, so you’re also a coward.”

However scathing you look, it isn’t enough. If anything it only makes Luke’s manner more playful. Nothing feels playful anymore. Everything, inside and outside of your mind, feels like constant, exhausting war. Maybe that’s why you don’t slap his hand off you when it wraps around your wrist, keeping it pressed to the middle of his chest. His heartbeat thrums through you.

He tilts his face towards you, grinning, “Then why do you want to kiss me?”

All right. What the fuck. It feels like you’ve been electrocuted.

“What the—what are you talking about?” You blunder, but he knows, of course he knows, because there’s something between the two of you that has been formed and understood by eye contact alone. He can probably read your mind. As much as you don’t want to admit it, you’d like to read his just as much.

He cocks his head. “I mean, you did call me pretty,” he teases, and it’s almost endearing. “You’re pretty like this too.” His other hand comes up to your face, and you’re surprised you don’t flinch when his thumb gently smooths the crease in your eyebrows. “Don’t call me a coward, heathen. Then we’ll both be embarrassed.”

The nickname makes you want to fight, but the touch makes you dizzy. “You don’t want to kiss me, Luke,” you say with all the control you have, which, right now, is increasingly sparse.

“You’ve gotta stop telling people what they want,” he muses. The hand on your wrist traces further down your forearm. The one on your face snakes around your hips. “One of your more disagreeable qualities.”

His words fan over you. That fire simmering in his eyes has finally come to the surface.

“One of?” You challenge.

“You let me make out with you and I’ll give you a whole list.”

You snort, hoping it hides the shortness in your breath. “What a charmer you are.”

His lips brush yours. “Well, that’s what makes me so rotten, isn’t it?”

There’s hardly time to unravel if that’s a question or a statement because you grab a fistful of his shirt and he kisses you. Your heart detonates. It is not rotten in the slightest.

His body is warm and firm. You smell the cabin wood and the drink on his breath. It all matters, and none of it does. You’re warm everywhere as he wraps both arms around your back, and the way he kisses is, unfortunately, exactly how you thought he would. Your hands are tentative in his hair. So is your mouth on his. But Luke is so deliberate in the way he kisses that you know he’s thought about this, too. It makes you all the warmer.

His hand takes your jaw and tilts it up. You know your neck is shaky with breath, and you’re pretty sure he’s admiring it. You don’t complain when he presses a kiss to your jaw, then another one, like he’s testing the waters. “You’re so nice like this,” he mutters almost to himself, thumb running across your neck. “If only people could see you.”

“Then they’d see how mean you are too, no?” You huff. “You don’t want that.”

Another kiss to your jaw. “Not yet, sweetheart.”

Whatever feeling is harbouring in your body right now, it’s so fulfilling it almost makes you uncomfortable. You want to reject it. You’re not supposed to want things. Worse, you’re not supposed to get things. Luke starts marking a path down your neck and you are so determined to enjoy this that you’d kiss a fucking baby if someone asked you to. You might as well be a saint.

He bites the pulse point on your neck, sure to leave a mark, and a shudder rips through you. You’re pretty sure the bastard starts laughing. You hit his shoulder in retaliation.

“Easy, heathen,” he reprimands in your ear, and you know he’s still smiling.

“Don’t—don’t call me that.” You hate that you start to smile, too, and that your stomach burgeons with butterflies when he pulls back to look at you.

He touches the corner of your upturned mouth, kiss-bitten and red. His expression is boyish. “Hard to when it makes your face do that,” he goads. “I thought it was impossible for you to smile.”

“Be quiet.” You thread a hand through his camp necklace and bring him closer. You can almost taste his mouth on yours, but he sweeps past you at the last minute.

He gently tugs your earlobe with his teeth and whispers, “Yes ma’am.”

Fuck him. Seriously. You might have to.

It’s a tangle of teeth and hands and smiles kept hidden, as you slip your fingertips beneath his shirt and he does the same, and you’re both angry and greedy and incredibly destructive, but it doesn’t matter yet. Now you’re just teenagers fooling around at the back of a party, and it’s the first good thing either of you have had in a long time. Luke leaves you gasping whenever his mouth hits certain places, maybe too many places, and he teases you accordingly. “So sensitive,” he taunts, pressing his knee between your legs so he can see you squirm. You rake your nails through his scalp and he tilts his head back to groan. It shuts him up for a while.

He bites your neck until you say his name. You trace lines on his stomach till he takes your hand in his own. You’ve been hungry for something your whole life, and you finally have something to sink your teeth into. For better or for worse.

After Hades knows how long, laughter floats out from the front of the cabin. Sounds of feet tripping over each other and muffled goodbyes. You pull away from Luke, chests heaving together. His hair is wild, his shirt crumpled, and he looks entirely satisfied with it. Smug little shit. “Party’s letting out,” you mutter.

“What a damn shame.” His hand rubs your jaw, and it’s too tender a gesture so you angle your head away to peek over the side of the cabin. You barely pay attention to the kids straggling back to their bunks.

“Is now the time you tell me all my horrible qualities?” You ask once you’re ready to look at him again.

He clicks his tongue against the roof of his mouth. “Actually, I came up with more since I said that so I’m pretty sure it’ll take more than one night.” He fakes a wince, “Might have to spread it out for a few days.”

You roll your eyes, “Oh, you ass.”

“I’ll give you one for starters.” You feel like a tornado when he kisses the juncture between your jaw and your neck. “Your hands are too cold.” They’re tucked underneath his shirt right now, pressed against his back. You don’t move them. “And,” he adds, “you’re incredibly crass.”

“Thanks, dipshit.”

“Thank you for proving my point, heathen.”

The commotion at the front gets louder, and you know your time to go undiscovered runs short. “You meet me again tomorrow, and I start telling you the rest?” He raises his brows.

The prospect both repulses and excites you, although perhaps they’re hand-in-hand. You tentatively reach up to trace the scar on his face. A faint, jagged line that holds scripture within it. His eyes flutter shut for a moment. “Even though I’m rotten?” You ask, and there’s an echo of mischief in your voice, too.

He’s got a strange expression when he looks at you. “That’s not true.”

He leans down, angles his head to kiss you. It’s slow, but bitter, and he bites down on your lip until you’re pretty sure there’s blood. “Luke,” you murmur, and he kisses you softer. You lean into him like a hapless, lovesick fool.

After you part, he loosens his grip on you. The bumbling campers have gotten louder. He stares at you, and you see the chasm in his eyes again, brimming with fire. Same as yours. You know you’ll see him tomorrow.

He says, “You’re not rotten. You’re right.”

And damn it, you really do believe him.

#perrie’s fics #luke castellan #luke castellan x reader #percy jackson #percy jackson and the olympians #pjo x reader #pjo series #pjo tv show #luke castellan smut #pjo #heroes of olympus #charlie bushnell #i like sexy evil people making out okay.#maybe will make a part 2 to this series because i’m just so fascinated by their weird little dynamic but we’ll see #i kind of hate this but WE MOVE ANYWAYS!!

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ao3commentoftheday · 5 months

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my biggest obstacle as a writer is that i desperately want to be a popular and well-known fic author, but my main fic inspiration comes from characters most fans don’t want to read fic for, or ideas that go against popular fanon/characterization and so are doomed from the start. i end up feeling paralyzed and like i can’t write the unpopular ideas I want to write, because i hate knowing i could have done better by writing something with broader appeal. but whenever i try to write solely for numbers i lose motivation while the halfway through the fic. so i end up unable to write anything and feeling miserable because of it.

i want to see my unpopular ideas come to life, but i don’t want to see my fics crash and burn and keep missing the chance to create fic that people really love. so most times, i don’t write anything, but i hate that i’m so hamstrung by my own anxieties. i so desperately wish i could create one of those extremely well-known long fics that most people love and always rec everywhere, but i feel like i’m completely incapable of that. i know i should be writing for myself, but i’m greedy and want results and for people to like my fic, however unlikely that is. wanting to write my ideas but knowing i’ll limit my audience if i do is something that’s constantly on my mind. do you have any advice for me?

My biggest question after reading your ask is simply: why?

You're very clear about wanting to be a popular writer. You want to write a fic that lots of people talk about, and you want people to know who you are. Have you examined that desire at all?

You say that the things you actually want to write are not the things that will make you a popular author. That means you have a choice:

write things you don't care about with no guarantee of becoming that Big Name Fan or

write things you love and enjoy spending time writing and know that BNF status will probably never happen.

Writing fanfic is really not a great way to try to become popular. It's an even worse way to try to become "famous" in any kind of way. So dig into what it is that you hope to get from the "broader audience" that you could appeal to by writing something you don't really like.

Are you trying to get a feeling of being liked? Respected? Looked up to? Do you want to be someone other fans look to for advice or for setting the tone of the fandom? Do you want love? Power? Some kind of community connection? Recognition of the effort you put into your works?

Some of those things likely will require you to pretend to be someone you're not. You might even manage to write that one big fic that gets thousands of comments and tons of people talking about it on tumblr (or wherever else you care about, social media-wise).

Others you can probably still get by writing your "unpopular" ideas but seeking out your fellow fans. It will take more legwork to find them and you'll need to be willing to be the first one to reach out for a conversation, but it can definitely be done.

I'll leave it up to you to decide what you actually want, anon. But take your time and scrape off the top layer of shiny thoughts about popularity first. Then you'll be able to see what's underneath.

#asks and answers

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shooting-love-arrows · 6 months

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Hi! Can I request more on the Yandere! Barabarian? I dont of anything specif besides that but, maybe about his and darlings' life now after marriage?

Hello to you too @misfortunateleprechaun,

Here it is! Hope to hear from you again and have a nice day (even if it's not a daytime)!

𝐘𝐀𝐍𝐃𝐄𝐑𝐄! 𝐁𝐀𝐑𝐁𝐀𝐑𝐈𝐀𝐍 and marriage headcanons

PAIRING: 𝐘𝐚𝐧𝐝𝐞𝐫𝐞! 𝐁𝐚𝐫𝐛𝐚𝐫𝐢𝐚𝐧 x reader (gender not mentioned/specified/implied) Tw. kidnapping, implied murder, blood, possessive tendencies, raids, marking, (at the end) horny yandere, grinding, mention of sex but nothing specific. A/N: There's a mention of a random name and celebration so don't fret that you don't know about something. Everything here is made up!

𝐦𝐚𝐬𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐥𝐢𝐬𝐭

When you are officially married to 𝐘𝐚𝐧𝐝𝐞𝐫𝐞! 𝐁𝐚𝐫𝐛𝐚𝐫𝐢𝐚𝐧, you not only become his lifelong partner and a soul connected to his own for all of eternity but you also become one of his people. This means everything related to your past should end up just like your village – turned to ashes. Forgotten and left behind. The only good things your parents did were creating you. The village? Don’t make him laugh! He never saw a more pathetic excuse of one before in his life. So stop wasting your tears on them and embrace your new family and him!

“Shh…my treasure…shhh…” 𝐘𝐚𝐧𝐝𝐞𝐫𝐞! 𝐁𝐚𝐫𝐛𝐚𝐫𝐢𝐚𝐧 tried to console you. Even when you continue to trash in his hold, hit him in the chest repeatedly or scratch at him, he only brought you closer and tightened his hold on you. 𝐘𝐚𝐧𝐝𝐞𝐫𝐞! 𝐁𝐚𝐫𝐛𝐚𝐫𝐢𝐚𝐧 didn’t understand why you were acting like that, hysterically sobbing and pushing him away. Nor ever was he forced to comfort the person who was acting like that. “Why are you shedding tears for them? Shhh... Let’s celebrate Night Of Miracles (made up celebration) with your new husband and family, hm?”

𝐘𝐚𝐧𝐝𝐞𝐫𝐞! 𝐁𝐚𝐫𝐛𝐚𝐫𝐢𝐚𝐧 teaches you about his culture and language. In those quiet moments shared between you, sitting by fire, he tries his best to be a teacher (and he fails miserably). Although he’s a scholar by no means, he truly wants to make you feel like you belong. To make you understand that what he did and was doing was good. And he finds it amusing when he has to point things out to you like to a toddler. What he can’t teach you about, he requests for someone in his tribe to take his place (of course not without marking you beforehand just to be sure everyone will know who you belong to).

“...and that’s why Trinus I (made up character) brought his beloved the head of his first wife.” 𝐘𝐚𝐧𝐝𝐞𝐫𝐞! 𝐁𝐚𝐫𝐛𝐚𝐫𝐢𝐚𝐧 finished the old tale and sighed in content. The story leaves you more traumatized than you already are. There were a few seconds of silence, before he smirked cheekily. “Now, let me tell you about their wedding night.”

𝐘𝐚𝐧𝐝𝐞𝐫𝐞! 𝐁𝐚𝐫𝐛𝐚𝐫𝐢𝐚𝐧 marks you a lot and daily. Either by leaving big and deep hickeys in the most visible places or by braiding your hair in a similar way, making you wear his family crest/sigli, offering his clothes to wear and so on. One thing for certain, everyone must know (if they don’t already) that you’re his.

𝐘𝐚𝐧𝐝𝐞𝐫𝐞! 𝐁𝐚𝐫𝐛𝐚𝐫𝐢𝐚𝐧 could only admire you when you walked out of your shared tent, wearing his shirt, hair braided with similar braids to his and hickeys displayed on your neck. 𝐘𝐚𝐧𝐝𝐞𝐫𝐞! 𝐁𝐚𝐫𝐛𝐚𝐫𝐢𝐚𝐧 didn’t know whether to be more aroused or start trotting like a peacock.

Just like any good husband, 𝐘𝐚𝐧𝐝𝐞𝐫𝐞! 𝐁𝐚𝐫𝐛𝐚𝐫𝐢𝐚𝐧 brings you all sorts of gifts from his raids. It doesn’t matter if you want something or not. Either way, he’s going to bring all sorts of objects to choose from.

“W-what is it?” Your voice cracked after 𝐘𝐚𝐧𝐝𝐞𝐫𝐞! 𝐁𝐚𝐫𝐛𝐚𝐫𝐢𝐚𝐧 pulled away from a searing ‘welcome back’ kiss. He was still covered in blood, sweaty, smelling like smoke and panting heavily. But what caught your attention was a big woolen bag thrown over his shoulder, material stretched to the max. 𝐘𝐚𝐧𝐝𝐞𝐫𝐞! 𝐁𝐚𝐫𝐛𝐚𝐫𝐢𝐚𝐧 only smirked and you watched, horrified, as he carelessly let the items from the bag spill on the floor. You saw clothes, silver dinnerware, money, jewelry (is that a finger with a ring still on?) and many other knick knacks. You gulped thickly. “For you!” 𝐘𝐚𝐧𝐝𝐞𝐫𝐞! 𝐁𝐚𝐫𝐛𝐚𝐫𝐢𝐚𝐧 proudly announced and puffed out his chest.

(NSFW-ish) A lot of sex. This man has high libido and – just like all barbarians – are led by their carnal desires. It’s guaranteed he’s going to bed you on a daily basis. It doesn’t matter where or when. If he wants to have sex with you, then he’s going to do so. It’s especially rough when he returns from raids or hunting trips, covered in sweat and oozing with adrenaline and need of you. Those are wild nights ~

“I need you…” 𝐘𝐚𝐧𝐝𝐞𝐫𝐞! 𝐁𝐚𝐫𝐛𝐚𝐫𝐢𝐚𝐧 growled in your ear and aggressively nuzzled his nose in your neck. Since the moment his body touched yours, he started grinding into you. He just loved your scent. It was working on him like an aphrodisiac, turning him into an untamable beast ready to devour you. His chapped lips continue to aggressively leave a trail of wet kisses from your earlobe, down your neck and – after tearing open your loose shirt – your shoulder. “I fucking want you. Now.”

All of the published posts on this account/blog belongs to @shooting-love-arrows. I do not consent to my works being: translated, stolen, published or reposted on this and other sites. Likes, reblogs, comments are highly appreaciated. Thank you.

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mostlysignssomeportents · 6 months

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Zuck’s gravity-defying metaverse money-pit

Tomorrow (Oct 31) at 10hPT, the Internet Archive is livestreaming my presentation on my recent book, The Internet Con.

Think of everything that makes you miserable as being caught between two opposing, irresistible, irrefutable truths:

"Anything that can't go on forever eventually stops" (Stein's Law)

"Markets can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent" (Keynes)

Both of these are true, even though they seemingly contradict one another, and no one embodies that contradiction more perfectly than Mark Zuckerberg.

Take the metaverse.

Zuck's "pivot" to a virtual world he ripped off from a quarter-century old cyberpunk novel (reminder: cyberpunk is a warning, not a suggestion) was born of desperation.

Zuck fancies himself an avatar of the Emperor Augustus (that's why he has that haircut) (no, really). The emperors of antiquity are infamous for getting all weepy when they run out of lands to conquer.

But the lachrymosity of emperors has little causal relationship to the anxieties of tech monopolists! Alexander weeps because he just loves a good conquest and when he finishes conquering the world, he's terminally bored. That's not Zuck's problem at all. When Zuck attains monopoly status, his company develops an autoimmune disorder, as his vicious princelings run out of enemies to destroy and begin to knife one another.

Any monopoly faces these destructive microincentives, but tech is exceptional here because tech has the realtime flexibility and speed that brick-and-mortar businesses can never match:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/02/19/twiddler/

Sociopaths with tech monopolies are worse for the same reason that road-rage would be worse in a flying car: adding new capacity to indiscriminate self-destructive urges turns ordinary car crashes into low-level airburst warfare:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/28/microincentives-and-enshittification/

The flexibility of digital gives tech platforms so much latitude to break things in tiny increments. A tech platform is like a Jenga tower composed of infinitely divisible blocks. The Jenga players are the product managers and executives who have run out of the ability to grow by attracting new business thanks to their monopoly dominance. Now they compete with one another to increase the yield from their respective divisions by visiting pain upon the business customers and end users their platform connects. By tiny increments, they increase the product's cost, lower its reliability, and strip it of its utility and then charge rent to restore its functionality:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/10/24/cursed-bigness/#incentives-matter

This is the terminal stage of enshittification, the unstoppable autocannibalism of platforms as they seek to harvest all the value created by business customers and end users, leaving the absolute minimum of residual value needed to keep both stuck to the platform. This is a brittle equilibrium, because the difference between "I hate this service but I just can't stop using it," and "Get me the fuck out of here" is razor-thin.

All it takes is one tiny push – a whistleblower, a livestreamed mass-shooting, a Cambridge Analytica – and people bolt for the doors. This triggers the final stage: the "pivot," which is a tech euphemism for "panic."

For Zuck, the pivot got real after a disappointing earnings call triggered a mass sell-off of Facebook stock, history's worst one-day value incineration, which lopped a quarter of a trillion dollars off the company's market cap:

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-12-19/dramatic-stock-moves-of-2022-led-by-meta-dive-nordic-flash-crash

This was when the metaverse became the company's top priority.

Now, in my theory of enshittification, the step that follows the pivot is death: "Finally, they abuse those business customers to claw back all the value for themselves. Then, they die":

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

Many people have asked me about the conspicuous non-death of Facebook! That's where I have to fall back on Stein's Law: "Anything that can't go on forever eventually stops." Facebook can't continue to annihilate value, alienate its workers, harm the public, hemorrhage money in support of a mediocrity's cherished folly forever. Can it?

Admittedly, it sure seems like it can. Facebook's metaverse pivot has thus far cost the company $46,500,000,000. That is: $46.5 billion. That's even more money than Uber torched, seeking to maintain the illusion that they will be able to create monopolies on both transport and the labor market for driving and recoup the billions the Saudi royal family let them use for the con:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/02/11/bezzlers-gonna-bezzle/#gryft

Don't worry: the Saudi royals are fine! They cashed out at the IPO, collecting a tidy profit at the expense of retail investors who assumed that a pile of shit as big as Uber must have a pony under it, somewhere:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/05/19/fake-it-till-you-make-it/#millennial-lifestyle-subsidy

Uber has doubled the cost of rides and halved drivers' wages, using illegal gimmicks like "algorithmic wage discrimination" to squeeze a little more juice out of the nearly exhausted husks of its workforce:

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

But Stein's Law hasn't been repealed. Drivers can't drive for sub-subsistence wages. Do that long enough and they'll literally starve: that's what "subsistence" means. We lost a decade of transit investment thanks to the Uber con, at the same time as traditional taxi drivers were forced out of the industry. Uber can't be profitable and still pay a living wage, and the fantasy of self-driving cars as a means of zeroing out the wage-bill altogether remains stubbornly, lethally unworkable:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/10/09/herbies-revenge/#100-billion-here-100-billion-there-pretty-soon-youre-talking-real-money

Which means we're at the point where you can get off a commuter train at a main station and find yourself stranded: no taxis at the taxi-queue, no busses due for an hour, and no Uber cars available unless you're willing to pay $95 for a ten-minute ride in a luxury SUV (why yes, this did happen to me recently, thanks for asking).

As more and more of us are exposed to these micro-crises, the political will to do something will increase. This can't go on forever. "Don't use commuter rail" isn't a viable option. "Walk three miles each way to the commuter rail station" isn't viable either. Neither is "Pay $95 for an Uber to get to the station." Something's gotta give…eventually.

"Eventually" is the key word here. Remember the corollary of Stein's Law: Keynes's maxim that "markets can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent." Sure, anything that can't go on forever eventually stops, but that is no guarantee of a soft landing. You can't smoke two packs a day forever – but in the absence of smoking cessation, the eventual terminus of that habit is stage-four lung cancer. Keep hammering butts into your face and your last smoke will come out a crematorium chimney.

Zuckerberg hasn't merely blown a whole-ass Twitter on the metaverse with nothing to show for it – he's gotten richer while doing it! In the past year, his net worth increased by 130%, to $59 billion, thanks to an increase in Facebook's share-price, driven by investors who stubbornly remain irrational, keeping the Boy Emperor solvent long past any reasonable assessment of his performance.

What are these investors betting on? One possibility is that the rise and rise of Facebook's share-price represents a bet on technofeudalism. Since the Communist Manifesto, Marxists have been predicting the end of capitalism. That end seems to have come, but what followed capitalism wasn't socialism, it was the return of feudalism, an economic system where elites derive their wealth from rents, not profits:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/28/cloudalists/#cloud-capital

Profit is the income you get from investing in capital – machinery, systems, plant – and then harvesting the surplus value created by workers who mobilize this capital. Capitalism produces massive returns for its winners – in the Manifesto's first chapter, Marx and Engels just geek out about how productive and dynamic this system is.

But capitalism is also a Red Queen's Race, where the winners have to run faster and faster to stay in the same place. Capitalism drives competition, as other would-be winners pile into the sector, replicating the systems that the current winners are using and then improving on them. This is why the prophets of capitalist end-times like the FBI informant Peter Thiel say that "competition is for losers."

Capitalism's "profits" stand in contrast to the feudalist's "rents." Rents are income you get from owning something that other people need to produce things. The capitalist owns the coffee-shop, but the feudalist owns the building. When a rival capitalist opens a superior coffee-shop and drives the old shop out of business, the capitalist loses, but the rentier wins. Now they can rent out an empty storefront in the neighborhood everyone's coming to because of that hot new cafe.

Feudal and manorial lords also made their fortunes by extracting surplus value from workers, but these rentiers don't care about owning the means of production. The peasant in the field pays for their own agricultural equipment and livestock – control over the means of production is necessary for worker liberation, but it's not sufficient. The worker's co-op that owns its factory can still find the value it produces bled off by the landlord who owns the land the factory sits on.

The jury's still out on whether American workers really see themselves as "temporarily embarrassed millionaires," but America's capitalists have a palpable, undeniable loathing for capitalism. The dream of an American "entrepreneur" is *PassiveIncome: money you get from owning something capitalists and/or workers use to create value. Digital technology creates exciting new possibilities for rent-extraction: a taxi-operator had to buy and maintain a car that someone else drove. Uber can offload this hassle onto its drivers and rent out access to the chokepoint it created between drivers and riders, charging all the traffic can bear. This is feudalism in the cloud – or as Yannis Varoufakis calls it, cloudalism.

In Varoufakis's Technofeudalism, he describes Amazon as a feudal venture. From a distance, Amazon seems like a bustling marketplace of manic capitalism, with sellers avidly competing to offer more variety and lower costs in a million independently operated storefronts. But closer inspection reveals that Amazon is a planned economy, not a market.

Every one of those storefronts pays rent to the same landlord – Amazon – which determines which goods can be offered for sale. Amazon sets pricing for those goods, and extracts 45-51% of every dollar those sellers make. Amazon even controls which goods are shelved at eye-height when you enter the store, and which ones are banished to a dusty storeroom in a distant sub-basement you'll never find:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/06/14/flywheel-shyster-and-flywheel/#unfulfilled-by-amazon

Zuck's metaverse is pure-play technofeudalism, Amazon taken to the logical extreme. It's easy to get distracted by the part of Zuck's vision that will convert us all into legless, sexless, heavily surveilled low-resolution cartoon characters. But the real action isn't this digitization of our fleshy wants and needs. Zuck didn't spend $46.5B to torment us.

The cruelty isn't the point of the metaverse.

The point of the metaverse is to rent us out to capitalists.

Zuck doesn't know why we would use the metaverse, but he believes that if he can convince capitalists that we all want to live there, that they'll invest the capital to figure out how to serve us there, and then he can extract rent from those capitalists and start earning "passive income." It's an Uber for Cyberpunk Dystopias play.

Zuck's done this before. Remember the "pivot to video?" Zuckerberg wanted to compete with Youtube, but he didn't want to invest in paying for video production. Videos are really expensive to produce and the median video gets zero views. So Zuck used his captive audience to trick publishers into financing his move into video. He fraudulently told publishers that videos were blowing up on Facebook, outperforming boring old text by vast margins.

Publishers borrowed billions and raised billions more in the capital markets, financing the total conversion of newsrooms from text to video and precipitating a mass extinction event for print journalists. Zuck kept the con alive by giving away (fewer) billions to some of those publishers, falsely claiming that their videos were generating fortunes in advertising revenue. These lucky, credulous publishers became judas goats for their industry, luring others into the con, the same way that the "lucky" guy a carny lets win a giant teddy-bear at the start of the day lures others into putting down $5 to see if they can sink three balls in a rigged peach-basket.

But when we stubbornly refused to watch videos on Facebook, Zuck stopped spreading around these convincer payouts, and precipitated a second mass-extinction event in news media, as the new generation of video journalists joined their predecessors in Facebook-driven unemployment. Given this history, it's surreal to see publishers continue to insist that Facebook is stealing their content, when it is so clearly stealing their money:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/04/saving-news-big-tech

Metaverse is the new Pivot to Video. Zuckerberg is building a new world, which he will own, and he wants rent it to capitalists, who will compete with one another in just the way that Amazon's sellers compete. No matter who wins that competition, Zuckerberg will win. The prize for winning will be a rent increase, as Zuckerberg leverages the fact that your "successful" business relies on Facebook's metaverse to drain off all the value your workers have produced:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/12/18/metaverse-means-pivot-to-video/

This can't last forever, but how long until Zuck's reality distortion field runs out of battery? That's the $46.5B question.

The market can certainly remain irrational for a hell of a long time. But the market isn't the only force that regulates corporate outcomes. Regulators also regulate. Europe's GDPR is now seven years old, and it plainly outlaws Facebook's surveillance.

For nearly a decade, Facebook has pretended that this wasn't true, and they got away with it. Mostly, that's thanks to the fact that Ireland is a corporate crime-haven with a worse-than-useless Data Protection Commission:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/05/15/finnegans-snooze/#dirty-old-town

But anything that can't go on forever will eventually stop. Facebook has finally been dragged into EU federal jurisdiction, where it will face exterminatory fines if it continues to spy on Europeans:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/12/07/luck-of-the-irish/#schrems-revenge

In response, Facebook has rolled out a subscription version of its main service and its anticompetitive acquisition, Instagram:

https://about.fb.com/news/2023/10/facebook-and-instagram-to-offer-subscription-for-no-ads-in-europe/

For €10/month, Facebook will give you an ad-free experience across its service offerings (it's €13/month if you pay through an app, as Facebook recoups the 30% #AdTax rents that the feudal Google/Apple mobile duopoly extracts).

But this doesn't come close to satisfying Facebook's legal obligations under the GDPR. The GDPR doesn't ban ads, it bans spying. Facebook spies on every single internet user, all the time. The apps we use are built with "free" Facebook toolkits that extract rent from the capitalists who make them by harvesting our data as we use their apps. The web-pages we visit have embedded Facebook libraries that do the same thing for web publishers. Facebook buys our data from brokers. Facebook has so many ways of spying on us that there's almost certainly no way for Facebook to stop spying on you, without radically transforming it operation.

To comply with the GDPR, Facebook must halt surveillance advertising altogether. There's no way to square "spying on users" with "you can't surveil without explicit consent, and you can't punish people for refusing."

And of course, "not spying" isn't the same as "not advertising." "Contextual advertising" – where ads are placed based on the thing you're looking at, not who you are and what you do – is hundreds of years old. Context ads underperform surveillance ads by a slim margin – about 5% – but they're vastly more profitable for publishers. That's because surveillance ads are feudal, controlled by rentiers like Facebook, who own vast troves of the surveillance data needed to run these ads. Traditional ad intermediaries (agencies, brokers) took 10-15% out of the total advertising market. Ad-tech companies – the Google/Facebook duopoly – take 51% out of every ad dollar spent.

Eliminate surveillance ads and you torch their feudal estates. Facebook will always know more about someone reading a news article than the publisher – but the publisher will always know more about the article than Facebook does:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/05/save-news-we-must-ban-surveillance-advertising

There are rents under capitalism, just as there are profits under feudalism. The defining characteristic of a system is what happens when rents and profits come into conflict. If profits win – for example, if productive companies beat patent trolls, or if news publishers escape Facebook's rent-extraction – then the system is capitalist. If rents win – if investors continue to bet large on the metaverse as its losses pass $50 billion and head for the $100 billion mark – then the system is feudal.

Anything that can't go on forever will eventually stop. The question isn't whether the platforms will eventually become so enshittified that they die – the question is whether they will go down in an all-consuming fireball, or whether they'll go down in a controlled demolition that lets us evacuate the people they've trapped inside them first:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/09/let-the-platforms-burn/

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/2023/10/30/markets-remaining-irrational/#steins-law

Image: Diego Delso (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Puente_de_las_cataratas_Victoria,_Zambia-Zimbabue,_2018-07-27,_DD_10.jpg

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

#pluralistic #mark zuckerberg #meta #enshittification #facebook #twitter #elon musk #billionaires #follies #failing up #metaverse #steins law #big tech #technofeudalism

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