#when you work in an industrial sector!!!

[yamada-ryo]

It can fly!

#test #when you work in an industrial sector!!!

[kalamity-jayne]

In case you were wondering where things are at in the film and television industry here's how post-production folks (editors, VFX, Colorists, etc) are doing. These screenshots are from The Blue Collar Post Collective's FB page (they are an International professional network for folks working in post).

This one is from a few months ago...

These are all from the past few days (from 2 separate Anon posts re "where to find jobs")...

My former post-supervisor really fucked me over and I've been unemployed for months. At this point I'm applying to jobs in grocery stores cause it's just dead dead dead out there. Winter is always the time of year you don't want to be without a film or series to work on but this just abysmal.

#Post-production #Film and Television #Unions and the strikes #documentary film and series #Movies #An assistant editor speaks #I work in the documentary sector which you would think wouldn't be affected by the strikes (for good and for worse) #but when the reality tv sector of the industry is doing bad then that means *everyone* is completely boned. #Also It's a reputation based industry #so 90% of the jobs I have had came from people cold emailing me ''Hey you came highly recommended from so&so. Are you available?" #And most years I'd get about a dozen of those emails a year with one of 'em usually resulting in a gig #not so this year😩

[racefortheironthrone]

Nobody is making anyone go into scriptwriting. No one is born in a Netflix company town where their dad takes them into the script mines at age 12. Fuck writers who want to get paid more than once for the same job. They should only get residuals AFTER all the people who do REAL WORK, like construction, grips, costume, makeup & animators etc. Most of them are much better at their jobs than writers especially for streaming services, and they are what screenwriters can lean on & novelists can't.

People need to realize that the unions for white collar people like WGA or SIEU or NEA (public sector unions are why cops who kill the people they were supposed to serve & protect remain employed get pensions) is not the AFL-CIO or any other historical union fighting for the lives of the people who built the country's industry and made it run, any more than the NRA are the Minutemen of 1775 New England.

First, go fuck yourself, you fucking scab. No, seriously - you don't come to my blog and spout off about what workers deserve unions and decent pay and what ones don't, like it's your fucking decision. The intellectual labor that writers perform is just as real as any other work done on a film set - "all who labor by hand or brain" is the inherent logic of industrial unionism for a reason.

Second, writers aren't asking to get paid more than once: residuals are deferred pay, you absolute moron. In Hollywood, whether it's writers or actors or voice talent or whatever, you get a small fraction up front - it's usually an ok check, depending on the union's day rates and so forth, but you can't make a living off stitching these together - and then most of your pay comes from monthly royalty checks that provide you with the income you need to live off when you're between jobs.

The problem is that, historically in Hollywood, residuals have been structured with a very long "tail" - the payments start out relatively low and then get more generous over time as the show has more seasons and (presumably) goes into syndication. This doesn't work with streaming's new business model, where increasingly shows are getting 2-3 seasons max and streaming services have become increasingly quick to not just cancel shows but yank them off their servers in order to avoid paying residuals.

So what WGA writers are fighting for is a system that ensures writers (but also actors and other creative workers, because the unions pattern bargain) get a fair share of the show's revenue, even if the show is only given 2-3 seasons.

Third, the U.S labor movement would not exist today if it wasn't for white collar workers and public sector workers. About half of the U.S labor movement - 7 million workers - is public sector, and those workers are overwhelmingly women of color, mostly working as either teachers or postal workers. Likewise, about half the U.S labor movement is made up of white collar workers, and we're graduate students and adjuncts and lab researchers, teachers and social workers, administrators and IT departments.

I'm both public sector and white collar, and I'm a member of an NEA union. I'm an adjunct professor who earns $6,000 a course and it's my job to get working adults with jobs and families who've never gone to college or who've been out of higher ed for a decade to graduate with a bachelor's or a master's. If you don't think that's real work, you're free to research and write all the lectures and powerpoints, deliver those in an entertaining and educational fashion, answer a flood of questions from students who need help navigating academia, and then grade all the midterms and finals and research papers.

#labor #wga strike #unions

[reasonsforhope]

hey, how do you cope with people saying we only have a small amount of time left to stop the worst effects of climate change? no matter how hopeful and ok i am, that always sends me back into a spiral :(

A few different ways

1. The biggest one is that I do math. Because renewable energy is growing exponentially

Up until basically 2021 to now, all of the climate change models were based on the idea that our ability to handle climate change will grow linearly. But that's wrong: it's growing exponentially, most of all in the green energy sector. And we're finally starting to see proof of this - and that it's going to keep going.

And many types of climate change mitigation serve as multipliers for other types. Like building a big combo in a video game.

Change has been rapidly accelerating and I genuinely believe that it's going to happen much faster than anyone is currently predicting

2. A lot of the most exciting and groundbreaking things happening around climate change are happening in developing nations, so they're not on most people's radars.

But they will expand, as developing nations are widely undergoing a massive boom in infrastructure, development, and quality of life - and as they collaborate and communicate with each other in doing so

3. Every country, state, city, province, town, nonprofit, community, and movement is basically its own test case

We're going to figure out the best ways to handle things in a remarkably quick amount of time, because everyone is trying out solutions at once. Instead of doing 100 different studies on solutions in order, we get try out 100 (more like 10,000) different versions of different solutions simultaneously, and then figure out which ones worked best and why. The spread of solutions becomes infinitely faster, especially as more and more of the world gets access to the internet and other key infrastructure

4. There's a very real chance that many of the impacts of climate change will be reversible

Yeah, you read that right.

Will it take a while? Yes. But we're mostly talking a few decades to a few centuries, which is NOTHING in geological history terms.

We have more proof than ever of just how resilient nature is. Major rivers are being restored from dried up or dead to thriving ecosystems in under a decade. Life bounces back so fast when we let it.

I know there's a lot of skepticism about carbon capture and carbon removal. That's reasonable, some of those projects are definitely bs (mostly the ones run by gas companies, involving carbon credits, and/or trying to pump CO2 thousands of feet underground)

But there's very real potential for carbon removal through restoring ecosystems and regenerative agriculture

The research into carbon removal has also just exploded in the past three years, so there are almost certainly more and better technologies to come

There's also some promising developments in industrial carbon removal, especially this process of harvesting atmospheric CO2 and other air pollution to make baking soda and other industrially useful chemicals

As we take carbon out of the air in larger amounts, less heat will be trapped in the atmosphere

If less heat is trapped in the atmosphere, then the planet will start to cool down

If the planet starts to cool down, a lot of things will stabilize again. And they'll probably start to stabilize pretty quickly

#Anonymous #ask #me #carbon removal #carbon sequestration #carbon emissions #air pollution #forests #afforestation #wetlands #regenerative farming #regenerative agriculture #agriculture #renewable energy #renewable electricity #solar power #wind power #climate change #climate anxiety #climate resilience #good news #hope #hope posting

[feminist-space]

"Seminario cited the recent report, “Employer-Reported Workplace Injuries and Illnesses,” that shows that the number of respiratory illnesses in the private health care and social assistance sector increased from 145,300 in 2021 to 199,700 cases in 2022, an increase of 37.5 percent.

...

As an industrial hygienist, Seminario was extremely critical that there were no experts in respiratory protection on the committee nor did it include engineers who developed ventilation guidelines. She believes that the HICPAC committee members are likely so opposed to respirators “because once you are into recommending respiratory protection, with that comes a full respiratory protection program from OSHA,” with penalties for violations.

An epidemiologist and consultant, Michael Olesen, echoed this, believing the changes reflect “pressure to remove liability from hospitals.” He added, “I take a very clear position that we should be having respiratory protection mandates in all healthcare settings right now.”

...

Many patients who spoke at the HICPAC meetings said they had gotten Covid-19 when they went to the hospital and that the new policies were keeping them from getting care.

Given that, Dr. Art Caplan, professor of medical ethics at New York University’s Grossman School of Medicine, previously told me that dropping masking requirements in hospitals is “utterly, completely, irresponsible.” Similarly, staff refusing to mask, even when a patient requests it, is a moral failure. “The first principle is, you must do what is in the best interest of your patient,” he said.

...

Several people were asked why they believe HICPAC is determined to water down protections. Consistently, respondents say, “to reduce liability.” Earlier in the pandemic, hospitals regularly tested patients and staff for Covid-19, and you could often tell where and how you became infected. Since staff are no longer masking and continue working when ill, and patients are not being tested on admission, you can no longer prove who infected you. Hospitals are the only ones who win in this scenario, absolving themselves of responsibility and liability."

#healthcare system complicity #this is immoral and unethical #cdc #hicpac #wear a mask #keep masks in healthcare #covid #rsv #flu #masks #respirators #n95 masks

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Prison-tech is a scam - and a harbinger of your future

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

https://pluralistic.net/2024/02/14/minnesota-nice/#shitty-technology-adoption-curve

Here's how the shitty technology adoption curve works: when you want to roll out a new, abusive technology, look for a group of vulnerable people whose complaints are roundly ignored and subject them to your bad idea. Sand the rough edges off on their bodies and lives. Normalize the technological abuse you seek to inflict.

Next: work your way up the privilege gradient. Maybe you start with prisoners, then work your way up to asylum seekers, parolees and mental patients. Then try it on kids and gig workers. Now, college students and blue collar workers. Climb that curve, bit by bit, until you've reached its apex and everyone is living with your shitty technology:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/02/24/gwb-rumsfeld-monsters/#bossware

Prisoners, asylum seekers, drug addicts and other marginalized people are the involuntary early adopters of every form of disciplinary technology. They are the leading indicators of the ways that technology will be ruining your life in the future. They are the harbingers of all our technological doom.

Which brings me to Minnesota.

Minnesota is one of the first states make prison phone-calls free. This is a big deal, because prison phone-calls are a big business. Prisoners are literally a captive audience, and the telecommunications sector is populated by sociopaths, bred and trained to spot and exploit abusive monopoly opportunities. As states across America locked up more and more people for longer and longer terms, the cost of operating prisons skyrocketed, even as states slashed taxes on the rich and turned a blind eye to tax evasion.

This presented telco predators with an unbeatable opportunity: they approached state prison operators and offered them a bargain: "Let us take over the telephone service to your carceral facility and we will levy eye-watering per-minute charges on the most desperate people in the world. Their families – struggling with one breadwinner behind bars – will find the money to pay this ransom, and we'll split the profits with you, the cash-strapped, incarceration-happy state government."

This was the opening salvo, and it turned into a fantastic little money-spinner. Prison telco companies and state prison operators were the public-private partnership from hell. Prison-tech companies openly funneled money to state coffers in the form of kickbacks, even as they secretly bribed prison officials to let them gouge their inmates and inmates' families:

https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2019/02/mississippi-corrections-corruption-bribery-private-prison-hustle/

As digital technology got cheaper and prison-tech companies got greedier, the low end of the shitty tech adoption curve got a lot more crowded. Prison-tech companies started handing out "free" cheap Android tablets to prisoners, laying the groundwork for the next phase of the scam. Once prisoners had tablets, prisons could get rid of phones altogether and charge prisoners – and their families – even higher rates to place calls right to the prisoner's cell.

Then, prisons could end in-person visits and replace them with sub-skype, postage-stamp-sized videoconferencing, at rates even higher than the voice-call rates. Combine that with a ban on mailing letters to and from prisoners – replaced with a service that charged even higher rates to scan mail sent to prisoners, and then charged prisoners to download the scans – and prison-tech companies could claim to be at the vanguard of prison safety, ending the smuggling of dope-impregnated letters and other contraband into the prison system.

Prison-tech invented some wild shit, like the "digital stamp," a mainstay of industry giant Jpay, which requires prisoners to pay for "stamps" to send or receive a "page" of email. If you're keeping score, you've realized that this is a system where prisoners and their families have to pay for calls, "in-person" visits, handwritten letters, and email.

It goes on: prisons shuttered their libraries and replaced them with ebook stores that charged 2-4 times the prices you'd pay for books on the outside. Prisoners were sold digital music at 200-300% markups relative to, say, iTunes.

Remember, these are prisoners: locked up for years or decades, decades during which their families scraped by with a breadwinner behind bars. Prisoners can earn money, sure – as much as $0.89/hour, doing forced labor for companies that contract with prisons for their workforce:

https://www.prisonpolicy.org/blog/2017/04/10/wages/

Of course, there's the odd chance for prisoners to make really big bucks – $2-5/day. All they have to do is "volunteer" to fight raging wildfires:

https://www.hcn.org/articles/climate-desk-wildfire-california-incarcerated-firefighters-face-dangerous-work-low-pay-and-covid19/

So those $3 digital music tracks are being bought by people earning as little as $0.10/hour. Which makes it especially galling when prisons change prison-tech suppliers, whereupon all that digital music is deleted, wiping prisoners' media collection out – forever (literally, for prisoners serving life terms):

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2018/08/captive-audience-how-floridas-prisons-and-drm-made-113m-worth-prisoners-music

Let's recap: America goes on a prison rampage, locking up ever-larger numbers of people for ever-longer sentences. Once inside, prisoners had their access to friends and family rationed, along with access to books, music, education and communities outside. This is very bad for prisoners – strong ties to people outside is closely tied to successful reentry – but it's great for state budgets, and for wardens, thanks to kickbacks:

https://www.prisonpolicy.org/blog/2021/12/21/family_contact/

Back to Minnesota: when Minnesota became the fourth state in the USA where the state, not prisoners, would pay for prison calls, it seemed like they were finally breaking the vicious cycle in which every dollar ripped off of prisoners' family paid 40 cents to the state treasury:

https://www.kaaltv.com/news/no-cost-phone-calls-for-those-incarcerated-in-minnesota/

But – as Katya Schwenk writes for The Lever – what happened next is "a case study in how prison communication companies and their private equity owners have managed to preserve their symbiotic relationship with state corrections agencies despite reforms — at the major expense of incarcerated people and their families":

https://www.levernews.com/wall-streets-new-prison-scam/

Immediately after the state ended the ransoming of prisoners' phone calls, the private-equity backed prison-tech companies that had dug their mouth-parts into the state's prison jacked up the price of all their other digital services. For example, the price of a digital song in a Minnesota prison just jumped from $1.99 to $2.36 (for prisoners earning as little as $0.25/hour).

As Paul Wright from the Human Rights Defense Center told Schwenk, "The ideal world for the private equity owners of these companies is every prisoner has one of their tablets, and every one of those tablets is hooked up to the bank account of someone outside of prison that they can just drain."

The state's new prison-tech supplier promises to double the amount of kickbacks it pays the state each year, thanks to an aggressive expansion into games, money transfers, and other "services." The perverse incentive isn't hard to spot: the more these prison-tech companies charge, the more kickbacks they pay to the prisons.

The primary prison-tech company for Minnesota's prisons is Viapath (nee Global Tel Link), which pioneered price-gouging on in-prison phone calls. Viapath has spent the past two decades being bought and sold by different private equity firms: Goldman Sachs, Veritas Capital, and now the $46b/year American Securities.

Viapath competes with another private equity-backed prison-tech giant: Aventiv (Securus, Jpay), owned by Platinum Equity. Together, Viapath and Aventiv control 90% of the prison-tech market. These companies have a rap-sheet as long as your arm: bribing wardens, stealing from prisoners and their families, and recording prisoner-attorney calls. But these are the kinds of crimes the state punishes with fines and settlements – not by terminating its contracts with these predators.

These companies continue to flout the law. Minnesota's new free-calls system bans prison-tech companies from paying kickbacks to prisons and prison-officials for telcoms services, so the prison-tech companies have rebranded ebooks, music, and money-transfers as non-communications products, and the kickbacks are bigger than ever.

This is the bottom end of the shitty technology adoption curve. Long before Ubisoft started deleting games that you'd bought a "perpetual license" for, prisoners were having their media ganked by an uncaring corporation that knew it was untouchable:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VIqyvquTEVU

Revoking your media, charging by the byte for messaging, confiscating things in the name of security and then selling them back to you – these are all tactics that were developed in the prison system, refined, normalized, and then worked up the privilege gradient. Prisoners are living in your technology future. It's just not evenly distributed – yet.

As it happens, prison-tech is at the heart of my next novel, The Bezzle, which comes out on Feb 20. This is a followup to last year's bestselling Red Team Blues, which introduced the world to Marty Hench, a two-fisted, hard-bitten, high-tech forensic accountant who's spent 40 years busting Silicon Valley finance scams:

https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250865878/thebezzle

In The Bezzle, we travel with Marty back to the mid 2000s (Hench is a kind of tech-scam Zelig and every book is a standalone tale of high-tech ripoffs from a different time and place). Marty's trying to help his old pal Scott Warms, a once-high-flying founder who's fallen prey to California's three-strikes law and is now facing decades in a state pen. As bad as things are, they get worse when the prison starts handing out "free" tablet and closing down the visitation room, the library, and the payphones.

This is an entry to the thing I love most about the Hench novels: the opportunity to turn all this dry, financial skullduggery into high-intensity, high-stakes technothriller plot. For me, Marty Hench is a tool for flensing the scam economy of all its layers of respectability bullshit and exposing the rot at the core.

It's not a coincidence that I've got a book coming out in a week that's about something that's in the news right now. I didn't "predict" this current turn – I observed it. The world comes at you fast and technology news flutters past before you can register it. Luckily, I have a method for capturing this stuff as it happens:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/05/09/the-memex-method/

Writing about tech issues that are long-simmering but still in the periphery is a technique I call "predicting the present." It's the technique I used when I wrote Little Brother, about out-of-control state surveillance of the internet. When Snowden revealed the extent of NSA spying in 2013, people acted as though I'd "predicted" the Snowden revelations:

https://www.wired.com/story/his-writing-radicalized-young-hackers-now-he-wants-to-redeem-them/

But Little Brother and Snowden's own heroic decision have a common origin: the brave whistleblower Mark Klein, who walked into EFF's offices in 2006 and revealed that he'd been ordered by his boss at AT&T to install a beam-splitter into the main fiber trunk so that the NSA could illegally wiretap the entire internet:

https://www.eff.org/document/public-unredacted-klein-declaration

Mark Klein inspired me to write Little Brother – but despite national press attention, the Klein revelations didn't put a stop to NSA spying. The NSA was still conducting its lawless surveillance campaign in 2013, when Snowden, disgusted with NSA leadership for lying to Congress under oath, decided to blow the whistle again:

https://apnews.com/article/business-33a88feb083ea35515de3c73e3d854ad

The assumption that let the NSA get away with mass surveillance was that it would only be weaponized against the people at the bottom of the shitty technology adoption curve: brown people, mostly in other countries. The Snowden revelations made it clear that these were just the beginning, and sure enough, more than a decade later, we have data-brokers sucking up billions in cop kickbacks to enable warrantless surveillance, while virtually following people to abortion clinics, churches, and protests. Mass surveillance is chugging its way up the shitty tech adoption curve with no sign of stopping.

Like Little Brother, The Bezzle is intended as a kind of virtual flythrough of what life is like further down on that curve – a way for readers who have too much agency to be in the crosshairs of a company like Viapath or Avently right now to wake up before that kind of technology comes for them, and to inspire them to take up the cause of the people further down the curve who are mired in it.

The Bezzle is an intense book, but it's also a very fun story – just like Little Brother. It's a book that lays bare the internal technical workings of so many scams, from multi-level marketing to real-estate investment trusts, from music royalty theft to prison-tech, in the course of an ice-cold revenge plot that keeps twisting to the very last page.

It'll drop in six days. I hope you'll check it out:

https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250865878/thebezzle

#pluralistic #the bezzle #marty hench #books #prison-tech #scams #jpay #securus #minnesota #prisones #shitty technology adoption curve #drm #enshittification #kickbacks #corruption #private equity #viapath #global tel link #bribery #aventiv #disciplinary technology #fcc #predicting the present #carceral state

[csanflower]

are you my soulmate?

pairing: idol/model! jungkook x part time staff! reader

genre: fluff, sfw

wc: 2.7k

synopsis: You offered to do some part time work for a Calvin Klein shoot to earn some quick cash. The job was simple. Do whatever the higher ranked people told you to do. You expected a simple job like making coffee or ordering lunch for the staff. You definitely did not expect the biggest star in the world following you around like a puppy, thinking you’re his soulmate just because a bell rang when you crossed paths with him…

*inspired by jungkooks comment abt hearing bells ring when he meets his soulmate ^^ BUT NOTE THAT THIS IS NOT SOULMATE AU

“y/n, thank you so much for helping us out! Our shoot today is extremely important for the company and we needed all the help we could get! You are aware of who the model is, right?” Sejin, your overall manager for the shoot today approached you as you entered the shooting area.

You immediately noticed how large scale this shoot was, compared to the other shoots you’ve been to before. As a college student interested in the modelling sector, you had always tried to find opportunities to get yourself familiarised with the industry, and at the same time earn some money to pay off your school fees. Thus you’ve dabbled in helping out with basic chores for shoots, such as buying coffee for the staff, organising the mess on the tables, or the occasional touch up of the model’s makeup. However, all of the shoots you’ve been to so far have been small scale, quick shoots, unlike this shoot which seemed to have about 100 staff members in a rush to get ready. Whoever the model was must have been a huge figure.

“Sorry, this job was kind of last minute so I didn’t have time to read up on the information. Who is the model?” You replied Sejin with slight embarrassment.

“It’s fine, no need to be sorry. The model is Jeon Jungkook of BTS! Do you know how many fans this guy has? This shoot is going to make our company stocks rise to the max!” Sejin laughed out loud at the mere thought of company stocks rising.

Jeon Jungkook? Wow. Who didn’t know Jeon Jungkook? He was the most famous and desired man in the whole South Korea — in fact maybe the whole world. Your jaw hung open. You were going to see Jeon Jungkook? Sure, you were probably not going to reach within a 10 meter radius of him as a small staff, but you were gonna be in the same room as him. You weren’t a big fan of him but you had heard of how famous he was. Jeon Jungkook was a household name. You’ve personally heard your mother and siblings fangirling over him. Who would have known that y/n l/n, the only one in the l/n family who did not fangirl over Jeon Jungkook would be meeting him first. You laughed to yourself, imagining your family’s reaction when you tell them about it.

“Ah, y/n, the shoot is about to start, i’m about to get busy. Could you do me a favour and help me get my file for todays shoot? It’s in my office, you should know where it is.”

“Sure! I’ll go now!” You immediately replied, hoping to do good job so you could get on his good side. You bowed at him quickly, before rushing to his office.

When you reached his office, you immediately found the file, with big, bolded letters written on it. “For Jungkook shoot! Extremely important!” You were about to grab it and leave, when you notice a golden bell beside it, with a post it note written on it. “Bring to the shoot! In case I need to get everyone’s attention since nobody ever listens to me anymore!” You laugh at the note, grabbing both the bell and the notes as you head out of the office.

As you walked in the hallway, you suddenly got a text message from sejin. You placed the bell on top of the file and barely balanced it with your left hand, as your right hand held your phone to read the message.

Help me take the bell too please! Thank you!! - Sejin

You inwardly praise yourself saving a trip back, trying to type a response to sejin with your right thumb.

Just as you were about to hit send, you suddenly felt a hard chest in front of you, harshly colliding into it, sending you to the ground.

Ding! The loud sound of the bell resonated in the empty hallway as it hit the ground.

“What the hell…” You rub at your painful head as you lay on the floor, rushing to get up to grab the file before its contents fly around.

Dischevelled, you grab the file and bell, hugging it close to your chest as you glared up at the person who caused the mess.

You definitely did not expect to see a pair of doe eyes looking at you curiously, with a glint of excitement in them. His mouth was open slightly in awe, as if he just saw an angel. But your jaw hung wider than his when you realised you just bumped into THE JEON JUNGKOOK?

“Oh…OH MY GOD! I’m so so so sorry!” You quickly sobered up, standing up and bowing at him multiple times. You avoided eye contact as you walked past him and tried running away in embarrassment.

But before you could leave, you felt strong, large hands grabbing your wrist.

“W-wait! Don’t go… who are you? Are you my soulmate?”

When you heard what he said, you almost burst into laughter. What? Soulmate? What was this famous star on? Was the most famous guys in the world really asking you if you were his soulmate? You let out a muffled laugh, trying your best to hold it in as you say, “Excuse me?”

“T-the bell. It rang when we bumped into each other. It’s fate.”

You finally let out your laughter at that, laughing uncontrollably at what you thought was a joke, until you noticed his hardened stare and realised maybe he was not joking.

“Um the bell rang because it fell on the floor… I don’t think we are ‘soulmates’, sorry man.” You said awkwardly.

The both of you stood in silence, staring at each other. After 30 seconds, the awkward tension started getting to you and you slightly bowed before walking away back to the shoot.

If you thought that would be the the end of the very weird experience, you were very wrong. As you walked, you could feel a presence behind you. Using your peripheral vision, you were 100% sure Jeon Jungkook, the world’s most desired bachelor was following you around like a puppy. You were starting to get annoyed, the other staff were starting to notice and the attention was definitely not what you needed. You whipped around, face to face with Jungkook.

“Why are you following me?” You ask infuriatingly.

At your annoyed tone, he lets out a small smirk, suddenly having some newfound confidence.

“I’m not following you, I’m going the same way as you.”

You let out a frustrated sigh, turning around and stomping at a quicker pace to the shoot area. Of course, he was still following you closely.

When you reached the shoot, you felt an instant relief with the amount of people bustling around.

“Jungkook is here!”

“What! Where?”

“Jungkook!”

The moment Jungkook entered the room behind you, people immediately took notice of him, running to be by his side and crowding around him. You took the opportunity to blend with the crowd and get away from him.

As you turned back to look at him, you noticed he was looking around for you, after losing you in the crowd. His eyebrows were slightly furrowed as he carried a small frown on his face, eyes glancing around the room trying to find you.

For a guy who could get any girl he want, he seemed weirdly obsessed with you. Did he really think you were his soulmate because of the bell? Maybe he was just playing with you like with other girls. You were just a nobody to him after all. You place the thoughts at the back of your head as you get back to work, finding Sejin.

“Thanks y/n, you can go take a lunch break. I’ll text you if I need you!” Sejin seemed satisfied at your swift pace as he released you for a break.

You give him a small smile as you walk out to the cafeteria with a sigh of relief. Taking one last glance at Jungkook, he still seemed to be trying to find you, with a small cute pout on his face as he seemed slightly frustrated at his futile attempts.

You sat down on an empty bench as you chewed on your sandwich, glad that you could take a short break before the real demands start coming in when the shoot gets busy.

Emergency: Contact some models to see if they’re available ASAP. Part time models OK. Get a variety. Jungkook being picky. He doesn’t want to work with Nari. - Sejin

You furrowed your eyebrows at the message. Jungkook didn’t want to work with Nari? Nari was the biggest female model in Korea. Why didn’t he want to work with her? She was ‘the most beautiful girl in Korea’ and every man loved her. Why did he have to be so uncooperative and make my job so hard? You quickly messaged your model contacts, asking them to come as soon as they could.

Of course, all of them immediately accepted. Who wouldn’t be dying to get an opportunity to model with Jungkook? You led the 4 models to the shoot, noticing the grim and dark mood as soon as you entered. You could tell there was tension due to Jungkook’s lack of cooperation.

When sejin noticed saw the models, his face immediately lighted up.

“Jungkook! The models are here! You can choose any of them to be your partner! These girls are all highly esteemed models and they are all experienced! Any of them would be a great partner!”

You could feel the girls beside you fixing their posture and making a juice pose as they awaited in anticipation for Jungkook to see them.

Jungkook looked up from his phone in disinterest, quickly skimming over the models until his eyes landed on you. Immediately, you noticed a glint of sparkle in his eyes, a child like smile on his face as he pointed at you.

“I want her.”

You instantly tensed up, staring at sejin in shock. You could feel the rest of the staff’s shock as well. You wanted to climb into a hole and die from the tension. Why did he have to cause so much problems for you?

“A-are you sure jungkook? Y/n is a beautiful girl but she’s a staff, not a model…”

You looked at Sejin in desperation, slightly shaking your head and telling him with your eyes that it was a no. However, Jungkook was relentless.

“If it’s not her, i’m not doing this shoot.” He said nonchalantly.

You wanted to smack his handsome little face so bad. You should have just stayed home today. Sejin walked over to you, pulling you aside apologetically.

“I’m so sorry y/n, but you know how important this shoot is to us. Could you please help us out this once? It’s just for today. We will pay extra and it’ll be a great experience! You want to work in the modelling industry in the future right? You could hear desperation in his tone.

You thought about it. Of course this would be a great experience for you, but you were so unprepared. What if you didn’t do well? Or worse what if his fans hated on you? You couldn’t handle that. But with Sejin staring at you so desperately, you felt that the guilt of rejecting him would kill you on the inside. You knew how excited he was for this shoot.

“Fine.”

“Thank you! Thank you so much y/n! Here take this file and read up on the looks for the shoot. I’ll bring you a makeup and stylist team ASAP. The shoot will start immediately when you’re ready!” He handed you a file with immense gratitude written on his face.

You reluctantly grabbed it from him, making your way to the makeup room as you tried to avoid the heated jealous stares of the girls around you. You glared at Jungkook as you walked past him, receiving a smirk in return.

When you reached the makeup room and sat on the model’s chair for the first time, you flipped through the file, reading the contents, your eyes widening and jaws dropping when you read it.

“Underwear shoot???!!”

You stared at yourself in the mirror after you had gotten your makeup and styling done. You were only wearing Calvin Klein underwear and a Calvin Klein jean jacket. Were you really about to do this? Of course, you looked hot. This was probably the hottest you have been in your whole 21 years of your life. But you were so nervous. You sucked in a deep breath, telling yourself: You have to do this well. This will give you many opportunities. Just suck it up.

You walked out awkwardly, feeling the heat of everyone’s stares. You could especially feel Jungkook’s heated stare.

“y/n! You look great! Come here! Let’s start the shoot!” Sejin commented in excitement when you came out.

You awkwardly walked over to in front of the camera where Jungkook was already waiting.

“Ok, y/n, I need you to sit on Jungkook’s lap and grab his neck while looking up innocently at the camera.”

You looked at Jungkook who had a smug look on his face as he waited for you to approach him. You tried not to stare down at Jungkook’s sudden exposed abs. Sucking up your embarrassment, you did as Sejin said.

Unexpectedly, the shoot went smoother than you expected. You managed to do many of the poses Sejin told you to do, even the intimate ones. Sejin even commented that you were a natural. Looking at the pictures taken, you also noticed that you somehow had a natural chemistry with Jungkook, with all your pictures with him seeming natural, like a real couple. In one of the pictures, you were straddling Jungkook as you both stared into each other’s eyes as if you both loved each other. You felt yourself blush as you stared at the picture. Despite the slight embarrassment, you couldn’t help but feel a new sense of pride when you were praised by everybody there, even staff members who previously did not even acknowledge your presence.

“And that’s a wrap! Thank you to everyone!” Sejin shouted.

You felt a flush of relief feel your body, a sense of tiredness taking over your body as you could finally relax.

You slowly got up from Jungkook’s shirtless body, looking away from him. You could still sense him staring at you as you walked away to change out of the uncomfortable undergarments.

After removing the extravagant makeup and changing into comfortable clothes, you walked out of the shoot feeling much more relaxed. You looked at the time on your phone, noticing it was already 11pm. Everybody must have already left by now.

You let out a content sigh, thinking back on the stressful day.

“y/n, wait! Dont go yet!”

Just as you were about to step out of the building, you heard a panicked voice behind you.

You turn around, seeing Jungkook who was panting hard as he bent down to catch his breath. He had changed into more comfortable clothing, with a hoodie and sweats, without any makeup on his face. Yet with such a natural look, he seemed so much more attractive to you. He must have ran after you if he was panting so much.

You crossed your arms, playfully smiling at him as you asked him why he stopped you. You felt a newfound sense of comfort with him after the shoot with him, maybe because you had been in such intimate positions with him.

“I-I need to tell you something. T-there’s something wrong with your phone. It doesn’t have your number in it…” Jungkook seemed nervous.

You looked at him in confusion, not understanding.

“W-wait! I mean there’s something wrong with my phone! It doesn’t have your number!” Jungkook hit his head in frustration, seeming actually annoyed at himself for not pulling off his pickup line correctly.

“So what do you want me to do about it?” You ask with a playful smirk on your face.

“You can fix it by giving me your number.” He said with a shy smile, still slightly embarrassed from his failed pickup line, as he reached out his phone to you.

You laughed out loud at his shyness and relentless determination. Jungkook laughed along with you shyly as you both shared a moment in the sweet darkness of the night.

You grabbed his phone from his hand, typing out your phone number.

*HII IM NEW TO TUMBLR i may make a part two depending on how wrecked i am after seven comes out :’)

#jungkook x reader #jungkook #jungkook imagines #jungkook fluff #jungkook romance #bts x reader #jungkook au #bts idol au #jungkook idol au #idol jungkook x reader #model jungkook au #calvin klein jungkook #jungkook ff #jungkook fics #bts ff #bts imagines #jungkook imagine #jeon jungkook x reader #jjk fic #jjk x reader

[genericpuff]

All That Glitters is Not Feminism - An Analysis of LO's Brand of "Feminism" and What Remains of its Fanbase (The Twist)

Alright y'all, I've been waiting a hot minute to talk about this because I wanted to see how it fully panned out before saying anything about it. And it's not even specifically about LO, but I do think it's very adjacent to it in a way that I'm sure you'll be shocked to hear. Much of it speaks to how we prop up white writers even at the expense of POC.

This is 'the twist' attached to my first post that I made just a couple hours ago that concerns an entirely other topic but I feel ties into this subject very well.

If you haven't heard, there's this author who recently fucked around in the Del Rey publishing scene.

Her name is Cait Corrain.

In the original tweet calling this person out, names were not dropped, but it was made very clear that what Cait did was unacceptable behavior.

You can read the entire thread that started it all from Xiran here:

There's also a GREAT recap thread from one of the affected authors, Bethany Baptiste:

I want to make it clear that Cait Corrain isn't just a debut author.

Cait Corrain is - or now, was (foreshadowing is a literary device that-) - a debut author who had an agent, a publishing deal with Del Rey (an imprint of Random House which is a MAJOR publisher) and even an upcoming Illumicrate deal - meaning, her book was going to be packaged in a monthly loot crate subscription shipped directly to people's doors, quite possibly one of the best marketing deals a debut author could ever get, usually unheard of in this industry. All the pre-reviews were strong and positive.

Cait's book was literally set up for success. All she had to do was sit back, relax, and watch the fruits of her labors roll in. She had written the book. It was ready for release. The hard part was technically over.

But I guess the racism brainrot got to her because as it turns out, since April - for EIGHT MONTHS - she's been making alternate accounts on GoodReads to review bomb the indie and debut works of her friends and peers, most of whom were POC and did not have the same opportunities set up for them as she did. There are loads of receipts to back this up that you can find in those above threads ^^^

To say that this is appalling is an understatement. This was an intentional and deliberate act of racism by a white queer writer who claimed to be "jealous" - of what, I can't imagine - so much so that she deliberately sabotaged her peers, people who had supported her and her book.

And then when she got caught? She doubled down on it and claimed it was a "friend", also an alternate account she made up.

The exchange between her and this made-up person is actually the funniest shit out of this entire thing, it's so poorly written and as soon as people noticed the time stamps were out of order, that was when it truly cemented her newfound clown status.

"oooooh he's standing right behind me, isn't he?" energy right here LMAO

yes keep expositing cait, that's really selling the "this is a genuine conversation that really happened with a real person" bit 🤡

Anyways, it became abundantly clear that Cait was just going to continue to dig her heels in over something she caused.

This has been a hot topic in the UnpopularLO Discord, not just because of how crazy of a situation it is that we had to talk about it - and we have people within the community who work in the literature and media sector - but because we noticed one very telling thing in the list of series that she had review bombed in her very own personal act of wrath.

You see, Cait made one fundamental mistake that led to her undoing - she didn't just review bomb the works of her peers, she positively reviewed her own book and others.

What's her book about though?

It's an Ariadne x Dionysus retelling set in space.

It's literally another "modern retelling" of Greek myth.

And wouldn't you know it, guess who else created a modern retelling of Greek myth that she included in her positive review raiding while she was sabotaging the work of her actual peers?

Now, I think it goes without saying that what I'm about to say should be taken with MOUNTAINS of salt, I'm sure a lot of you are reading the headline and going, "Ugh, really? You're gonna make this about LO? Could you give it a rest already???"

I need you to understand, with the current state of Rachel's fanbase and 'modern' Greek myth literature as a whole, at this point Lore Olympus - and the works that are literally inspired by it such as A Touch of Darkness - has basically become the shopping cart litmus test of basic decency. It's like when someone says they like Harry Potter - you can't take it automatically at good faith anymore, because there isn't a whole lot separating someone who simply liked Harry Potter as a kid and still rewatches the movies from time to time from someone who fully supports the politics and agenda of J.K. Rowling. No, not everyone who still watches the movies or reads the books fondly is a TERF by default, but it's justifiably a reason for suspicion when the consequences are often too dire to risk.

There's this thing that's been happening in the LO fanbase that I frankly saw coming, but has really recently started to hit its peak. It's what I call the "Kanye Effect", where the comic has become so absurd and backwards in its misogyny and white feminism that the only people who seem to be left supporting LO are the people who are legitimate white feminists and misogynists - because all the normal level-headed people fell off the comic ages ago (or transitioned into the critical side of the community).

I mentioned it in my last post, but it bears repeating - Rachel's fanbase has literally been shipping Hera, a victim of abuse, with her abuser, Kronos. I'm really hoping a lot of them realize how fucked up that is now that Hera herself has called it what it is - abuse - within the comic, but I also can't count on the LO fanbase picking up on that or even noticing it with how quickly people swipe through it each week, it's very apparent at this point that most of LO's readers don't know how to chew their food and don't pay attention when Persephone and Hades aren't onscreen.

But I'm digressing. Or am I? We're talking about Crown of Starlight after all. The debut Dionysus x Ariadne sci-fi/fantasy romance that was quite literally advertised using Lore Olympus as its baseline-

This. This is what the ongoing cultural erasure and white feminist uwu-fication of Greek myth is doing to the literary zeitgeist surrounding Greek myth as a whole. This is why we criticize Lore Olympus and works like it that are created by disingenuous people who only seek to use the assets of Greek myth material as a way to shoot themselves up into fame and stardom. This is why we demand better standards in the literature and webcomic industry, so that people like Rachel and Cait can't use their privileges to quite literally erase the source material that they used to make themselves famous in the first place.

If anything, Cait's actions didn't just affect the people she negatively review bombed, or the people she was affiliated with, but also the people she positively reviewed. While I don't support what Rachel creates, she wasn't the only one who Cait went out of her way to review positively from her alt accounts, there were many others as evident in the Google Doc - but all this really does is tarnish the legitimacy of these books and their ratings by artificially jacking up their numbers that are advertised to others.

Making Greek myth fanfiction or fun creative retellings was never the problem, but it's now being sabotaged alongside so many other genres and mediums by toxic white individuals who can't even keep themselves from committing hate crimes, let alone create something purely for entertainment that's transparent in its illegitimacy, lest it destroy the illusion that these people are qualified to speak over those whose voices are being stifled, often by these very same people. Many of these writers get caught and are still allowed to continue what they're doing - that was certainly what we feared with Cait.

Until today.

It was revealed today that Cait's book will no longer be featured in the Illumicrate May 2024 box.

Del Rey has dropped Crown of Starlight from their publishing schedule.

Daphne Press will be hopefully following suit.

And, most telling of all, Cait's own agent has severed ties with her.

For anyone not familiar with the inner workings of the publishing industry, Cait has essentially been blacklisted. Without an agent or a publishing house, she'll have to entirely rely on her own resources through self-publishing. Unless she manages to sneak her way back in under an alias (which I wouldn't put it past her to try) she no longer has access to the mainstream publishing industry that was already guaranteed for her before she let her 'jealousy' get the better of her.

Her career was already made for her. She had a red carpet laid out for her debut. Her book was getting good pre-reviews and she had quite literally nothing keeping her from her success. The best thing she could have done was nothing. Somewhere in her head, she made up a threat that didn't exist, and sealed her fate in acting on it, a self-fulfilling prophecy.

I think in these situations such as with Cait Corrain, Rachel Smythe, and - also recently and relevant - James Somerton, we need to become increasingly aware of how white voices are still overpowering POC voices, not just in their actions, but in the opportunities they're given over others which they then use to further stifle the voices of those they feel "threatened" by or feel entitled to speak over. While neither James nor Rachel have used sock puppet accounts to "take out the competition" (at least as far as we know lmao) James did quite literally steal the words and voices of queer writers who were deserving of their time in the spotlight, and Rachel's work is being quoted as "rewriting Greek myth" as if its blatant gentrification and appropriation should be marketed as some sort of positive.

It's all too common for these deeply-rooted prejudices to rear their ugly heads and for the people who carry them to act out in this way while justifying it as "jealousy" or "a mistake". This isn't jealousy. This isn't a mistake. This isn't someone "starting drama". This is genuine, targeted hate, with the intention of snuffing out the voices of others who should be empowered, not silenced.

All that time and effort, and for what? Racism and petty jealousy? It just goes to show, it doesn't matter how many opportunities you're given, how high up on the ladder you already are - it won't fix the deeply-rooted insecurity and racial pettiness that spurs people on to do such horrible things.

I've spent enough of my time and words today talking about Cait, and James, and Rachel. So to end this off, I want to join in with all the others who have highlighted the books that were review-bombed by Cait, and help in uplifting them so they can have successful debuts. I'll be pre-ordering a few of them, so I'll be happy to make dedicated posts for them in the future after they release. Please consider purchasing them for yourself if you want some new reading material <3

The Poisons We Drink by Bethany Baptiste:

So Let Them Burn by Kamilah Cole:

To Gaze Upon Wicked Gods by Molly X Chang:

Mistress of Lies by K.M. Enright

Voyage of the Damned by Frances White:

(I'm sure there are plenty others so if I missed any here, please let me know so I can add them here and check out their books!)

If there's any silver lining to this, I hope that it makes people aware of the media they consume and who it's being created by. I hope it makes people more willing to seek out the books that aren't getting the same opportunities as Cait Corrain and Rachel Smythe. I hope it's a wake-up call to the industry that matters like this need to be taken seriously and that POC writers are still being silenced under their own noses. And most of all, I hope it's a reminder that we shouldn't even need at this point that this behavior is not okay, no matter what level a person climbs to - that just because someone is part of one minority doesn't mean they're not capable of sabotaging another. It sucks that that has to be said, it sucks that despite these groups being so intersectional there are still people within them who submit to their deeply-rooted insecurities and find ways to feel threatened that they use to justify hateful behavior.

Having a platform is a privilege. It should never be weaponized against your own peers or those who you simply feel "threatened" by for no reason beyond your own imposter syndrome or doubts or internal struggles. Because as much as you may feel like you've earned where you are, that never gives you the right to weaponize your opportunities against others who were never given those same opportunities in the first place. "Feminism" is not using your power to crush "other women". "Progressiveness" is not exclusive to the progress that only benefits you.

I wish only the best to those who were affected by the actions of Cait Corrain. You deserve to be heard and seen and appreciated for the work you do and the abuse you've had to tolerate. I look forward to your debuts in 2024 <3

#cait corrain #support POC writers #crown of starlight #the poisons we drink #so let them burn #the voyage of the damned #mistress of lies #say isn't it funny how all the debut books cait tried to sabotage accurately describe her and her actions LOL #that's what we call irony #debut authors 2024 #booktok #webtoon critical #lore olympus critical #anti lore olympus

[dresshistorynerd]

The Real Cost of the Fashion Industry

Atacama Desert, in Alto Hospicio, Iquique, Chile. (source)

The textile industry is destroying the world. The industry is wasting massive amounts of energy and materials, and polluting the air, the ground and the water supplies. It overwhelmingly exploits it's labour and extracts wealth from colonized countries, especially in Asia. I assume we all broadly understand this, but I think it's useful to have it all laid out in front of you to see the big picture, the core issues causing this destruction and find ways how to effectively move forward.

The concerning trend behind this ever-increasing devastation are shortening of trend cycles, lowering clothing prices and massive amount of wasted products. Still in year 2000 it was common for fashion brands to have two collections per year, while now e.g. Zara produces 24 collections and H&M produces 12-16 collections per year. Clothing prices have fallen (at leas in EU) 30% from 1996 to 2018 when adjusted to inflation, which has contributed to the 40% increase in clothing consumption per person between 1996 and 2012 (in EU). (source) As the revenue made by the clothing industry keep rising - from 2017 to 2021 they doubled (source) - falling prices can only be achieved with increasing worker exploitation and decreasing quality. I think the 36% degrees times clothing are used in average during the last 15 years (source) is a clear indication on the continuing drop in quality of clothing. Clothing production doubled between 2000 and 2015, while 30% of the clothes produced per year are never sold and are often burned instead (source), presumably to prevent the returns from falling due to oversupply.

These all factors are driving people to overconsume. While people in EU keep buying more clothes, they haven't used up to 50% of the clothes in their wardrobe for over a year (source). This overconsumption is only made much worse by the new type of hyper fast fashion companies like SHEIN and Temu, which are using addictive psychological tactics developed by social media companies (source 1, source 2). They are cranking up all those concerning trends I mentioned above.

Under the cut I will go through the statistics of the most significant effects of the industry on environment and people. I will warn you it will be bleak. This is not just a fast fashion problem, basically the whole industry is engaging in destructive practices leading to this damage. Clothing is one of those things that would be actually relatively easy to make without massive environmental and human cost, so while that makes the current state of the industry even more heinous, it also means there's hope and it's possible to fix things. In the end, I will be giving some suggestions for actions we could be doing right now to unfuck this mess.

Carbon emissions

The textile industry is responsible for roughly 10% of the global CO2 emissions, more than aviation and shipping industry combined. This is due to the massive supply chains and energy intensive production methods of fabrics. Most of it can be contributed to the fashion sector since around 60% of all the textile production is clothing. Polyester, a synthetic fiber made from oil which accounts for more than half of the fibers used in the textile industry, produces double the amount of carbon emissions than cotton, accounting for very large proportions of all the emissions by the industry. (source 1, source 2)

Worker exploitation

Majority of the textiles are produced in Asia. Some of the worst working conditions are in Bangladesh, one of the most important garment producers, and Pakistan. Here's an excerpt from EU Parliament's briefing document from 2014 after the catastrophic Rana Plaza disaster:

The customers of garment producers are most often global brands looking for low prices and tight production timeframes. They also make changes to product design, product volume, and production timeframes, and place last-minute orders without accepting increased costs or adjustments to delivery dates. The stresses of such policies usually fall on factory workers.

The wage exploitation is bleak. According to the 2015 documentary The True Cost less than 2% of all garment factory workers earned a living wage (source). Hourly wages are so low and the daily quotas so high, garment workers are often forced through conditions or threats and demand to work extra hours, which regularly leads to 10-12 hour work days (source) and at worst 16 hour workdays (source), often without days off. Sometimes factories won't compensate for extra hours, breaching regulations (source).

Long working hours, repetitive work, lack of breaks and high pressure leads to increased risks of injuries and accidents. Small and even major injuries are extremely common in the industry. A study in three factories in India found that 70% of the workers suffered from musculosceletal symptoms (source). Another qualitative study of female garment workers and factory doctors in Dhaka found that long hours led to eye strain, headaches, fatigue and weight loss in addition to muscular and back pains. According to the doctors interviewed, weight loss was common because the workers work such long hours without breaks, they didn't have enough time to eat properly. (source) Another study in 8 factories in India found that minor injuries were extremely common and caused by unergonomic work stations, poor organization in the work place and lack of safety gear, guidelines and training (source). Safety precautions too are often overlooked to cut corners, which periodically leads to factory accidents, like in 2023 lack of fire exists and fire extinguishers, and goods stacked beyond capacity led to a factory fire in Pakistan which injured dozens of workers (source) or like in 2022 dangerous factory site led to one dead worker and 9 injured workers (source).

Rana Plaza collapse in 2013 is the worst industrial accident in recent history. The factory building did not have proper permits and the factory owner blatantly ignored signs of danger (other businesses abandoned the building a day before the collapse), which led to deaths of 1 134 workers and injuries to 2 500 workers. The factory had or were at the time working for orders of at least Prada, Versace, Primark, Walmart, Zara, H&M, C&A, Mango, Benetton, the Children's Place, El Corte Inglés, Joe Fresh, Carrefour, Auchan, KiK, Loblaw, Bonmarche and Matalan. None of the brands were held legally accountable for the unsafe working conditions which they profited off of. Only 9 of the brands attended a meeting to agree on compensation for the victim's families. Walmart, Carrefour, Auchan, Mango and KiK refused to sight the agreement, it was only signed by Primark, Loblaw, Bonmarche and El Corte Ingles. The compension these companies provided was laughable though. Primemark demanded DNA evidence that they are relatives of one of the victims from these struggling families who had lost their often sole breadwinner for a meager sum of 200 USD (which doesn't even count for two months of living wage in Bangladesh (source)). This obviously proved to be extremely difficult for most families even though US government agreed to donate DNA kits. This is often said to be a turning point in working conditions in the industry, at least in Bangladesh, but while there's more oversight now, as we have seen, there's clearly still massive issues. (source 1, source 2)

One last major concern of working conditions in the industry I will mention is the Xinjiang raw cotton production, which is likely produced mainly with forced labour from Uighur concentration camps, aka slave labour of a suspected genocide. 90% of China's raw cotton production comes from Xinjiang (source). China is the second largest cotton producer in the world, after India, accounting 20% of the yearly global cotton production (source).

Pollution

Synthetic dyes, which synthetic fibers require, are the main cause of water pollution caused by the textile industry, which is estimated to account for 20% of global clean water pollution (source). This water pollution by the textile industry is suspected of causing a lot of health issues like digestive issues in the short term, and allergies, dermatitis, skin inflammation, tumors and human mutations in the long term. Toxins also effect fish and aquatic bacteria. Azo dyes, one of the major pollutants, can cause detrimental effects to aquatic ecosystems by decreasing photosynthetic activity of algae. Synthetic dyes and heavy metals also cause large amounts of soil pollution. Large amounts of heavy metals in soil, which occurs around factories that don't take proper environmental procautions, can cause anaemia, kidney failure, and cortical edoem in humans. That also causes changes in soil texture, decrease in soil microbial diversity and plant health, and changes in genetic structure of organisms growing in the soil. Textile factory waste water has been used for irrigation in Turkey, where other sources of water have been lacking, causing significant damage to the soil. (source)

Rayon produced through viscose process causes significant carbon disulphide and hydrogen sulphide pollution to the environment. CS2 causes cardiovascular, psychiatric, neuropsychological, endocrinal and reproductive disorders. Abortion rates among workers and their partners exposed to CS2 are reported to be significantly higher than in control groups. Many times higher amounts of sick days are reported for workers in spinning rooms of viscose fiber factories. China and India are largest producers of CS2 pollution, accounting respectively 65.74% and 11,11% of the global pollution, since they are also the major viscose producers. Emission of CS2 has increased significantly in India from 26.8 Gg in 2001 to 78.32 Gg in 2020. (source)

Waste

The textile industry is estimated to produce around 92 million tons of textile waste per year. As said before around 30% of the production is never sold and with shortening lifespans used the amount of used clothing that goes to waster is only increasing. This waste is large burned or thrown into landfills in poor countries. (source) H&M was accused in 2017 by investigative journalists of burning up to 12 tonnes of clothes per year themselves, including usable clothing, which they denied claiming they donated clothing they couldn't sell to charity instead (source). Most of the clothing donated to charity though is burned or dumbed to landfills (source).

Most of the waste clothing from rich countries like European countries, US, Australia and Canada are shipped to Chile (source) or African countries, mostly Ghana, but also Burkina Faso and Côte d'Ivoire (source). There's major second-hand fashion industries in these places, but most of the charity clothing is dumbed to landfills, because they are in such bad condition or the quality is too poor. Burning and filling landfills with synthetic fabrics with synthetic dyes causes major air, water and soil pollution. The second-hand clothing industry also suppresses any local clothing production as donated clothing is inherently more competitive than anything else, making these places economically reliant on dumbed clothing, which is destroying their environment and health, and prevents them from creating a more sustainable economy that would befit them more locally. This is not an accident, but required part of the clothing industry. Overproduction let's these companies tap on every new trend quickly, while not letting clothing the prices in rich countries drop so low it would hurt their profits. Production is cheaper than missing a trend.

Micro- and nanoplastics

There is massive amounts of micro- and nanoplastics in all of our environment. It's in our food, drinking water, even sea salt (source). Washing synthetic textiles accounts for roughly 35% of all microplastics released to the environment. It's estimated that it has caused 14 million tonnes of microplastics to accumulate into the bottom of the ocean. (source)

Microplastics build up into the intestines of animals (including humans), and have shown to probably cause cause DNA damage and altered organism behavior in aquatic fauna. Microplastics also contain a lot of the usual pollutants from textile industry like synthetic dyes and heavy metals, which absorb in higher quantities to tissues of animals through microplastics in the intestines. Studies have shown that the adverse effect are higher the longer the microplastics stay in the organism. The effects cause major risks to aquatic biodiversity. (source) The health effects of microplastics to humans are not well known, but studies have shown that they could have adverse effects on digestive, respiratory, endocrine, reproductive and immune systems. (source)

Microplastics degrade in the environment even further to nanoplastics. Nanoplastic being even smaller are found to enter blood circulation, get inside cells and cross the blood-brain barrier. In fishes they have been found to cause neurological damage. Nanoplastics are also in the air, and humans frequently breath them in. Study in office buildings found higher concentration of nanoplastics in indoor air than outdoor air. Inside the nanoplastics are likely caused mostly by synthetic household textiles, and outdoors mostly by car tires. (source) An association between nanoplastics and mitochondrial damage in human respiratory cells was found in a recent study. (source)

Micro and nano plastics are also extremely hard to remove from the environment, making it even more important that we reduce the amount of microplastics we produce as fast as possible.

What can we do?

This is a question that deserves it's own essays and articles written about it, but I will leave you with some action points. Reading about these very bleak realities can easily lead to overwhelming apathy, but we need to channel these horrors into actions. Whatever you do, do not fall into apathy. We don't have the luxury for that, we need to act. These are industry wide problems, that simply cannot be fixed by consumerism. Do not trust any clothing companies, even those who market themselves as ethical and responsible, always assume they are lying. Most of them are, even the so called "good ones". We need legislation. We cannot allow the industry to regulate itself, they will always take the easy way out and lie to their graves. I will for sure write more in dept about what we can do, but for now here's some actions to take, both political and individual ones.

Political actions

Let's start with political actions, since they will be the much more important ones. While we are trying to dismantle capitalism and neocolonialism (the roots of these issues), here's some things that we could do right now. These will be policies that we should be doing everywhere in the world, but especially rich countries, where most of the clothing consumption is taking place. Vote, speak to others, write to your representative, write opinion pieces to your local papers, engage with democracy.

Higher requirements of transparency. Right now product transparency in clothing is laughably low. In EU only the material make up and the origin country of the final product are required to be disclosed. Everything else is up to the company. Mandatory transparency is the only way we can force any positive changes in the production. The minimum of transparency should be: origin countries of the fibers and textiles in the product itself; mandatory reports of the lifecycle emissions; mandatory reports of whole chain of production. Right now the clothing companies make their chain of production intentionally complex, so they have plausible deniability when inevitably they are caught violating environmental or worker protection laws (source). They intentionally don't want to be able to track down their production chain. Forcing them to do so anyway would make it very expensive for them to keep up this unnecessarily complex production chain. These laws are most effective when put in place in large economies like EU or US.

Restrictions on the use of synthetic fibers. Honestly I think they should be banned entirely, since the amount of microplastics in our environment is already extremely distressing and the other environmental effects of synthetic fibers are also massive, but I know there are functions for which they are not easily replaced (though I think they can be replaces in those too, but that's a subject of another post), so we should start with restrictions. I'm not sure how they should be specifically made, I'm not a law expert, but they shouldn't be used in everyday textiles, where there are very easy and obvious other options.

Banning viscose. There are much better options for viscose method that don't cause massive health issues and environmental destruction where ever it's made, like Lyocell. There is absolutely no reason why viscose should be allowed to be sold anywhere.

Governmental support for local production by local businesses. Most of the issues could be much more easily solved and monitored if most clothing were not produced by massive global conglomerations, but rather by local businesses that produce locally. All clothing are made by hand, so centralizing production doesn't even give it advantage in effectiveness (only more profits for the few). Producing locally would make it much more easier to enforce regulations and it would reduce production chains, making production more effective, leaving more profits into the hands of the workers and reducing emissions from transportation. When the production is done by local businesses, the profits would stay in the producing country and they could be taxed and utilized to help the local communities. This would be helpful to do in both exploited and exploiter countries. When done in rich countries who exploit poorer ones, it would reduce the demand for exploitation. In poor countries this is not as easily done, since poor means they don't have money to give around, but maybe this could be a good cause to put some reparations from colonizers and global corporations, which they should pay.

Preventing strategic accounting between subsidiaries and parent companies. Corporate law is obviously not my area of expertise, but I know that allowing corporations to move around the accounting of profits and losses between subsidiaries and parent companies in roughly 1980s, was a major factor in creating this modern global capitalist system, where corporations can very easily manipulate their accounting to utilize tax heavens and avoid taxes where they actually operate, which is how they are upholding this terrible system and extracting the profits from the production countries. How specifically this would be done I can't tell because again I know shit about corporate law, so experts of that field should plan the specifics. Overall this would help deal with a lot of other problems than just the fashion industry. Again for it to be effective a large economic area like EU or US should do this.

Holding companies accountable for their whole chain of production. These companies should be dragged to court and made to answer for the crimes they are profiting of off. We should put fear back into them. This is possible. Victims of child slavery are already doing this for chocolate companies. If it's already not how law works everywhere, the laws should be changed so that the companies are responsible even if they didn't know, because it's their responsibility to find out and make sure they know. They should have been held accountable for the Rana Plaza disaster. Maybe they still could be. Sue the mother fuckers. They should be afraid of us.

Individual actions

I will stress that the previous section is much more important and that there's no need to feel guilty for individual actions. This is not the fault of the average consumer. Still we do need to change our relationship to fashion and consumption. While it's not our fault, one of the ways this system is perpetuated, is by the consumerist propaganda by fashion industry. And it is easier to change our own habits than to change the industry, even if our own habits have little impact. So these are quite easy things we all could do as we are trying to do bigger change to gain some sense of control and keep us from falling to apathy.

Consume less. Better consumption will not save us, since consumption itself is the problem. We consume too much clothing. Don't make impulse purchases. Consider carefully weather you actually need something or if you really really want it. Even only buying second-hand still fuels the industry, so while it's better than buying new, it's still better to not buy.

Take proper care of your clothing. Learn how to properly wash your clothing. There's a lot of internet resources for that. Never wash your wool textiles in washing machine, even if the textile's official instructions allow it. Instead air them regularly, rinse them in cool water if they still smell after airing and wash stains with water or small amount of (wool) detergent. Never use fabric softener! It damages the fabrics, prevents them from properly getting clean and is environmentally damaging. Instead use laundry vinegar for making textiles softer or removing bad smells. (You can easily make laundry vinegar yourself too from white vinegar and water (and essential oils, if you want to add a scent to it) which is much cheaper.) Learn how to take care of your leather products. Most leather can be kept in very good condition for a very long time by occasional waxing with beeswax.

Use the services of dressmakers and shoemakers. Take your broken clothing or clothing which doesn't fit anymore to your local dressmaker and ask them if they can do something about it. Take your broken and worn leather products to your local shoemaker too. Usually it doesn't cost much to get something fixed or refitted and these expert usually have ways to fix things you couldn't even think of. So even if the situation with your clothing or accessory seems desperate, still show it to the dressmaker or shoemaker.

If it's extremely cheap, don't buy it. Remember that every clothing is handmade. Only a small fraction of the cost of the clothing will be paying the wages of the person who made it with their hands. If a shirt costs 5 euros (c. 5,39 USD), it's sewer was only payed mere cents for sewing it. I'm not a quick sewer and it takes me roughly 1-2 hours to cut, prepare and sew a simple shirt, so I'm guessing it would take around half an hour to do all that for a factory worker on a crunch, at the very least 15 minutes. So the hourly pay would still be ridiculously low. However, as I said before, the fact that the workers in clothing factories get criminally low pay is not the fault of the consumer, so if you need a clothing item, and you don't have money to buy anything else than something very cheep, don't feel guilty. And anyway expensive clothing in no way necessarily means reasonable pay or ethical working conditions, cheep clothing just guarantee them.

Learn to recognize higher quality. In addition to exploitation, low price also means low quality, but again high price doesn't guarantee high quality. High quality allows you to buy less, so even if it's not as cheep as low quality, if you can afford it, when you need it, it will be cheaper in long run, and allows you to consume less. Check the materials. Natural fibers are your friends. Do not buy plastic, if it's possible to avoid. Avoid household textiles from synthetic fibers. Avoid textiles with small amounts of spandex to give it stretch, it will shorten the lifespan of the clothing significantly as the spandex quickly wears down and the clothing looses it's shape. Also avoid clothing with rubber bands. They also loose their elasticity very quickly. In some types of clothing (sport wear, underwear) these are basically impossible to avoid, but in many other cases it's entirely possible.

Buy from artisans and local producers, if you can. As said better consumption won't fix this, but supporting artisans and your local producers could help keep them afloat, which in small ways helps create an alternative to the exploitative global corporations. With artisans especially you know the money goes to the one who did the labour and buying locally means less middlemen to take their cut. More generally buy rather from businesses that are located to the same country where the production is, even if it's not local to you. A local business doesn't necessarily produce locally.

Develop your own taste. If you care about fashion and style, it's easy to fall victim to the fashion industry's marketing and trend cycles. That's why I think it's important to develop your personal sense of style and preferences. Pay attention at what type of clothes are comfortable to you. Go through your wardrobe and track for a while which clothing you use most and which least. Understanding your own preferences helps you avoid impulse buying.

Consider learning basics of sewing. Not everyone has the time or interest for this, but if you in anyway might have a bit of both, I suggest learning some very simple and basic mending and reattaching a button.

Further reading on this blog: How to see through the greenwashing propaganda of the fashion industry - Case study 1: Shein

Bibliography

Academic sources

An overview of the contribution of the textiles sector to climate change, 2022, L. F. Walter et al., Frontiers in Environmental Science

How common are aches and pains among garment factory workers? A work-related musculoskeletal disorder assessment study in three factories of south 24 Parganas district, West Bengal, 2021, Arkaprovo Pal et al., J Family Med Prim Care

Sewing shirts with injured fingers and tears: exploring the experience of female garment workers health problems in Bangladesh, 2019, Akhter, S., Rutherford, S. & Chu, C., BMC Int Health Hum Rights

Occupation Related Accidents in Selected Garment Industries in Bangalore City, 2006, Calvin, Sam & Joseph, Bobby, Indian Journal of Community Medicine

A Review on Textile and Clothing Industry Impacts on The Environment, 2022, Nur Farzanah Binti Norarmi et al., International Journal of Academic Research in Business and Social Sciences

Carbon disulphide and hydrogen sulphide emissions from viscose fibre manufacturing industry: A case study in India, 2022, Deepanjan Majumdar et al., Atmospheric Environment: X

Microplastics Pollution: A Brief Review of Its Source and Abundance in Different Aquatic Ecosystems, 2023, Asifa Ashrafy et al., Journal of Hazardous Materials Advances

Health Effects of Microplastic Exposures: Current Issues and Perspectives in South Korea, 2023, Yongjin Lee et al., Yonsei Medical Journal

Nanoplastics and Human Health: Hazard Identification and Biointerface, 2022, Hanpeng Lai, Xing Liu, and Man Qu, Nanomaterials

Other sources

The impact of textile production and waste on the environment (infographics), 2020, EU

Chile’s desert dumping ground for fast fashion leftovers, 2021, AlJazeera

Fashion - Worldwide, 2022 (updated 2024), Statista

Fashion Industry Waste Statistics & Facts 2023, James Evans, Sustainable Ninja (magazine)

Everything You Need to Know About Waste in the Fashion Industry, 2024, Solene Rauturier, Good on You (magazine)

Textiles and the environment, 2022, Nikolina Šajn, European Parliamentary Research Service

Help! I'm addicted to secondhand shopping apps, 2023, Alice Crossley, Cosmopolitan

Addictive, absurdly cheap and controversial: the rise of China’s Temu app, 2023, Helen Davidson, Guardian

Workers' conditions in the textile and clothing sector: just an Asian affair? - Issues at stake after the Rana Plaza tragedy, 2014, Enrico D'Ambrogio, European Parliamentary Research Service

State of The Industry: Lowest Wages to Living Wages, The Lowest Wage Challenge (Industry affiliated campaign)

Fast Fashion Getting Faster: A Look at the Unethical Labor Practices Sustaining a Growing Industry, 2021, Emma Ross, International Law and Policy Brief (George Washington University Law School)

Dozens injured in Pakistan garment factory collapse and fire, 2023, Hannah Abdulla, Just Style (news media)

India: Multiple factory accidents raise concerns over health & safety in the garment industry, campaigners call for freedom of association in factories to ‘stave off’ accidents, 2022, Jasmin Malik Chua, Business & Human Rights Resource Center

Minimum Wage Level for Garment Workers in the World, 2020, Sheng Lu, FASH455 Global Apparel & Textile Trade and Sourcing (University of Delaware)

Rana Plaza collapse, Wikipedia

Buyers’ compensation for Rana Plaza victims far from reality, 2013, Ibrahim Hossain Ovi, Dhaka Tribune (news media)

World cotton production statistics, updated 2024, The World Counts

Dead white man’s clothes, 2021, Linton Besser, ABC News

#fashion #fashion industry #sustainability #sustainable fashion #sustainable clothing #environment #climate change #i will be continuing the series of how to see through fashion industry propaganda at some point #i just felt compelled to write this because i feel like people so often miss the forest for the trees in this conversation

[makingmoneyonline2023]

Profit from the Internet 2022

Profit from the Internet 2022 (new and fresh ways to work online)

Since the Corona virus invaded the world, the governments of countries have imposed a comprehensive social ban, calling on the masses to stay at home, as one of the precautionary measures to limit the spread of the virus, which depends primarily on mixing with one of the infected individuals, or whoever carries the virus without showing symptoms. . This ban lasted for nearly three months, and had a severe impact on people's lives, as well as work patterns, livelihoods and ways of working. The societal ban imposed a kind of stifling on the typical traditional methods of work, as working hours were reduced, and productivity in all sectors decreased due to the air, sea and land ban, which led to a scarcity of raw materials and industry inputs in general. There had to be a way out, and that was to profit from the Internet without hesitation, for sure! Profit from the Internet 2022 between truth and myth There are a lot of myths that fill the horizon about profit from the Internet, a team says that scams are permanent and widespread, and that money is not completely safe when you risk it in any online business, no matter how simple. And another team claims that the Internet is a fertile environment for profit, and it is a treasure that adventurers must search for and extract its precious treasures.

The truth of the matter is that both sides are wrong. We should not be overly pessimistic as the first group does, and we should not be overly optimistic as the second group does. Profit from the Internet is the contemporary image of the traditional business with all its successes, failures and difficulties. All the problems and difficulties that the traditional investor faces are faced by the online business owner (who took profit from the Internet as a real profession), but in different ways. But the end result is that working and profiting from the Internet is an actual fact, but it depends on study, skill and diligence. The abundant profit is not guaranteed, nor is the loss an inescapable measure.

Methods of profit from the Internet

  There are dozens of ways and methods that someone who wants to profit from the Internet can profit from, regardless of his educational level or educational qualifications, or even the age group to which he belongs. Below we mention the most important methods of profit from the Internet for the year 2022 in some detail.  

Profit from the Internet through e-commerce

 It is obvious that e-commerce is at the top of the list of various methods of profit from the Internet, as e-commerce has become a necessity in our time, especially with the spread of the Corona epidemic, and the social distancing that this imposes, and the lack of contact with others. It is undeniable that commercial activities are the most human activities in the whole world that push people to interact with each other, and deal closely, especially with regard to the circulation of goods and money, which is an easy way to transmit the virus from one person to another, which prompted many countries’ governments to provide Many incentive measures to push the public to abandon cash payments and go to electronic banking transactions, whether it is in the form of cash transfers through electronic wallets, or payment by payment cards or credit cards. In addition, the many benefits of e-commerce cannot be overlooked, especially online shopping, which is much easier than traditional shopping, and saves a lot of money, time and effort. The importance of electronic commerce is that it is simple and uncomplicated, as the basics of buying and selling (both sides of the business process) have been practiced since ancient times, so the process of starting to practice electronic commerce involves a few steps, and is very simple. First, you must select the item that we want to sell online. This includes determining the source of that commodity, whether the commodity is in the form of a finished product, or you will manufacture it. The next step is to determine the place of sale, which here means the online store, or the online selling platform. Once you have completed these steps, you will be ready to immediately start doing your business and start making profits, and really feel what it means to profit from the Internet. 

#Profit from the Internet 2022 (new and fresh ways to work online) #Since the Corona virus invaded the world #the governments of countries have imposed a comprehensive social ban #calling on the masses to stay at home #as one of the precautionary measures to limit the spread of the virus #which depends primarily on mixing with one of the infected individuals #or whoever carries the virus without showing symptoms. . This ban lasted for nearly three months #and had a severe impact on people's lives #as well as work patterns #livelihoods and ways of working. The societal ban imposed a kind of stifling on the typical traditional methods of work #as working hours were reduced #and productivity in all sectors decreased due to the air #sea and land ban #which led to a scarcity of raw materials and industry inputs in general. There had to be a way out #and that was to profit from the Internet without hesitation #for sure! Profit from the Internet 2022 between truth and myth There are a lot of myths that fill the horizon about profit from the Interne #a team says that scams are permanent and widespread #and that money is not completely safe when you risk it in any online business #no matter how simple. And another team claims that the Internet is a fertile environment for profit #and it is a treasure that adventurers must search for and extract its precious treasures. #The truth of the matter is that both sides are wrong. We should not be overly pessimistic as the first group does #and we should not be overly optimistic as the second group does. Profit from the Internet is the contemporary image of the traditional busi #failures and difficulties. All the problems and difficulties that the traditional investor faces are faced by the online business owner (wh #but in different ways. But the end result is that working and profiting from the Internet is an actual fact #but it depends on study #skill and diligence. The abundant profit is not guaranteed #nor is the loss an inescapable measure. #Methods of profit from the Internet #There are dozens of ways and methods that someone who wants to profit from the Internet can profit from #regardless of his educational level or educational qualifications

[am-i-the-asshole-official]

To preface this, I know there are parts of this that make me look bad. I know. I've been a substandard boss and I should've taken care of the situation a long time ago. But I'm in a bind and I really just need to know if I'd compound my assholishness by doing the main thing I'm about to ask.

I manage a manufacturing business that also has a delivery component. We make the product and make sure it gets where it needs to go--which I'm sure you understand isn't as easy as it used to be, with Amazon and Temu and all of those nipping at our nose. The manufacturing sector is working fine, no complaints, absolutely shipshape. It's in deliveries where the problem starts.

We have a newer employee who...let's just say stands out from the rest of the bunch, who are mostly old guard. They're reliable, I've been working with them for years, but they're set in their ways and have been giving the new guy shit, especially over his appearance. It's not even about something he can control, poor kid, but I don't want to get more specific than that. I've been so swamped with getting everything ready for the holiday season that I dropped the ball and let them treat the kid pretty poorly. I know I can't dictate what they do outside of work, so them leaving him out of social events was out of my hands, but I've caught them calling him just awful things when they thought I wasn't around. I should've come down harder but I was afraid our productivity would suffer as a result. (And if I'm honest, I thought a little bullshit would toughen the kid up. Our industry isn't for the faint of heart, after all.)

But now we're down to the deadline and I think he's our only option. He's the perfect choice, and the kicker is it's BECAUSE he's different from the rest of the guys. But I'd feel like a bit of an ass if I asked him to swoop in and save us after the way everyone's treated him. WIBTA if I asked Rudolph, with his nose so bright, to guide my sleigh tonight? Time-sensitive question, sorry mod, but maybe just this once you can move it up the queue? After all, I did bring you that Pokemon game you wanted more than anything when you were ten!

What are these acronyms?

#aita #am i the asshole #christmas #joke aita #unreality #hey wait hang on how did you know about the pokemon game

[arthenaa]

My pookie wookie bear please make the modern! Mizu x reader a series I beg 🙏just the thought of all the possibilities and domestic fluff has me foaming at the mouth. Your writing is literally Shakespeare to me😭

mizu as your roommate — mizu x f! reader

synopsis: you're not sure why and how people got the idea that you and mizu are dating but you're not. she's just your roommate.

context: prequel to blurred lines. pre-relationship. fluff. absolute fluff.

a/n: heyaaa guysss tysm for enjoying blurred lines and nocturne! ive already got an outline on how to continue the series. here's a little contribution to roommate!mizu hehe. prompt is highkey inspired by true events.

pre-roommate!mizu:

being roommates wasn't a decision that the two of you came to right away

it took quite a while and your relationship wasn't something that instantly clicked on the first try

to give you context, you and Mizu met at your freshman orientation afterparty

Mizu majored in industrial design while you studied (course) and was fortunate enough to be placed in the same sector as her

you knew no one and people closest to you were her and Ringo who majored in culinary.

you could tell that Mizu wasn't really into social interaction as much as you and Ringo did (at least on the same level).

although, she did reciprocate some type of conversing, some of it ultimately ended with her drifting away or tucked away into some corner.

you never really bonded with Mizu at first, finding her offhanded nature and cold reciprocation of your tries in interaction a bit too rude for your taste

and it wasn't like you saw her often around campus, your chances of interaction only relied on the fact that she lived in the same dormitory as you

it was around 2nd year, mid 1st semester that you overheard Mizu's problem with her roommate. She had personally reported it to your landlord when you had just returned from a walk break from reviewing for your midterms

apparently Mizu's roommate had been abusing the visitors rule in your dormitory and constantly brought their one night stands in their shared space which infuriated the blue eyed girl.

the landlord was tight on accomodations and so you had stepped in and brought up the opportunity to be roommates

it took some coercing and persuasion on your end as you wished to be on better terms with Mizu and also because well, she really had no other option

and so, on the second half and the rest of your stay (life maybe) in college, you became roommates with Mizu from ID122.

roommate!mizu

living with mizu was something you didn't expect to work so well

you were quite surprised by your shared dynamic, not ever having to deal with the fact that you had to adapt a huge gap between you and your roommate just to be able to coexist in one space

it surprisingly didn't take long for mizu to warm up to you

she was the epitome of a black cat—there are days she prefers silence and days she'd warm up to you with her gentle smiles

she's also pretty accommodating to you as her roommate

opting to go by where you're most comfortable with

she says that its because you've given her so much but she gives you too much credit

not with the way she acts around you

the domesticity that came along with you and mizu's natural chemistry in living together was something that just came

you suppose that mizu's constant gratefulness towards your accepting demeanor in providing her a home eventually led to this dynamic

the gal does housework with ease, has become a close confidant in just a matter of weeks, walks you to your classes when your schedules are aligned, and buys you food whenever you're feeling down

it isn't too long before the distance between the two of you gradually became closer

skinship became a common affair and while mizu's touches evoked a change of cogs in your relationship, the type of skinship that she shares with you is more of genuine appreciation or concern over your well-being

extending her hand as she assist you on going down the stairs, a hand on the small of your back when you're in a crowded place, running her hands mindlessly through your hair when you're having one of those movie nights, gently leaning your head to her shoulder when you're feeling quite sleepy during the commute to school

she also does the most simplest acts of service that often leaves you melting and warming at the thought

placing your favorite food on your plate when you're eating out, having late night drive outs just to clear your mind or hang out, getting you the most random trinkets and claim that she saw it on her way home from work or class and bought it out of impulse bc it reminded her of you

she always either has to be within a meter of your presence or a part of her skin touching against hers

and she isn't the type to be clingy, it just brings her some sort of comfort that you're within her line of vision

it was pretty much safe to say that mizu was your best friend and someone you held pretty close to your heart

your friend group with akemi and taigen came about during the 3rd semester of your 2nd year.

The three of you were placed in one group during a gen-ed class that all students of your college had to take

You were quite surprised to see mizu's hostility towards taigen after he had tried jokingly flirt with you

akemi was the one who apprehended him though

with mizu and taigen's weird rivalry and akemi's naturally captivating personality, soon enough the five of you became close friends

mizu often tells you her regret of letting taigen stick around and that it's causing her headaches from all the pain of having to see his face

most of their fights as well rooted from the fact taigen finds you cute and mizu does not like that

not when there's a weird relationship between him and akemi

you asked akemi once about it and how it doesn't bother her the slightest

she just gave you a smirk and rolled her eyes, "Taigen's a boy, Y/N. I'll never settle for that."

you think she's kinda cool

anyways, the suspicions started during one of the school events that your college was hosting

it was a battle of the bands event and really was a chill night for students to hang out and vibe to music

your previous roommate was performing and so you wanted to show your respect

taigen is a party person, ringo's good for anything, and akemi's part of the event core that's handling the flow of the event

mizu tags along bc she has nothing better to do but we all know she goes anyway bc you're going

anyways, you guys are seated at the front vibing and what not

due to the naturally loud acoustics of the place, mizu has to be leaning close to you to hear you while you're gushing about the performance of the bands

she sits close to you, chair and body angled to your direction while her head is leaned close to you. She smiles softly and replies with a gentle tone of her voice to your musings and taigen can't help but notice your dynamic

He sees you clinging to her arm, hand gently patting the top part of mizu's hand to the beat of the song that rests peacefully on your knee. if anyone saw the two of you right now, people would immediately assume that the two of you were dating and well, while the you were all in a friend group, taigen really hasn't gotten to know the two of you beyond your present selves and so he asks the closest person that got to know them before him and akemi did

"Hey Ringo," Taigen asks as he leans towards the tall man seated on his right—his eyes still trained on the duo absorbed in their own world. "Are they—?"

Ringo glances at the two of you before looking back at Taigen then shrugging with a smile.

Somehow that was the precedent to the on going inside joke within your group

After that night, you often find yourselves in random situations wherein people would be curious what the relationship between the of you is

it was a shock at first and you felt like all these questions were definitely something that these people considered but eventually arose due to Taigen's very loud mouth

the guy had tons of friend groups, blame him.

(Mizu almost decked him if you and Ringo weren't there to stop him)

while the predicament was certainly awkward, your relationship with mizu didn't really falter bc of it

it kind of grew stronger??? for some reason

you think its because you find it amusing when ppl are kind of 'oh wow now I get it' and mizu's nonchalant reaction to it unless they were really being very adamant in getting to know the details

you've since grown to get used to the comments and didn't really bother the jokes casted by akemi and taigen towards the two of you

akemi once joked to mizu if it was okay that she'd steal you from her and mizu just gives her a once over before chuckling at her joke.

you're not sure why her response was like that and eventually curiosity got ahead of you

you asked her about it after akemi had gone to order a set of macarons for her roommate, leaving the two of you alone at your booth

mizu only leans forward across the table and pinches your noise. you let a noise of annoyance before the raven-haired girl chuckles at your reaction.

"She can't." Mizu peers at you from under her lashes. She crosses her arms over her chest, eyes trained on you with an unreadable look in her eyes. There's some sort of confidence with the way that she carries herself. "I would know."

the jokes ranged from ringo calling you mom and dad, taigen cringing at your natural domesticity when they all came over at your dorm, akemi trying to get a rise out of mizu by coddling you

the jokes also came from the two of you

it was just fun getting a rise out of the people around you who were constantly rooting for the two of you to get together

you always joked that the moment you and mizu would be together would be a monumental achievement not to the two of you but to taigen and akemi's constant meddling

you teased mizu with endearments and the gal would only roll her eyes

eventually, that prompted the two of you to call each other bon or bonnie as an endearment. you claim its only for fun but akemi's giving you that side eye that tells a lot of things.

overall, mizu's just a wonderful roommate and someone that you could find a safe space in and be able to fully trust in. her character and personality speaks of direct truth and genuineness that allows you to fully warm and soften around her

so it really wasn't a surprise to you when you've realized that you've fallen in love with her

her existence, the way she talks, listens to you with her undivided attention, her accommodating nature, love for silence, and those eyes that always seem to find its way back to yours

even though your relationship wasn't something that was established until recently

you knew that she was yours as much as you were hers.

a/n: wahhh setting series off mwehehehe, feeling a bit productive tonight after finals so im multitasking comms and mizu requests! expect another one shortly maybe if im feeling it hehe

#arthenaa #mizu x reader #mizu blue eye samurai #mizu x you #the blue eyed samurai #the blue eyed samurai x reader

[artificial-transmutations]

Beating Recession

Recession sucked, that much was clear to Logan even before he checked his email inbox. When he saw a few replies to his job applications from the last days, he sighed. He didn't need to open the mails to know that the news was bad, but he did so anyway.

"We regret to inform you..." - Logan didn't even read on. He had lost his job as an apprentice electrician about half a year ago. The company was going under, and Logan, the youngest and least experienced worker, was the first to go. That's how it was in this business. Since then, he had applied to every single position that came up - but apparently, the current economic situation was so bad that nobody needed another worker.

Logan had hoped that his apprenticeship would get him a job, but the fact that he was only 20 and had not much practical experience hurt him. Slowly, money was becoming a pretty big problem. Whatever savings he had (for some real estate of his own! As if that was going to happen!) had melted away over the last months. His rent was due, and he had no income.

In fact, he was one month late with his rent already, and although his landlord had been cool about it, Logan did not see how he would be able to keep his apartment. He really, really wanted to avoid moving back in with his parents who had their own problems, too.

So, what was he going to do? There wasn't much more to do than keep looking for a job, even though his chances were slim.

He opened LinkedOut and looked for openings, just as he had done multiple times before this week. The sparse list of jobs had not changed, so Logan scrolled on.

He was about to give up again when a listing caught his eye.

"Escape unemployment today! Change™ job agency will find the perfect job, for the perfect you. Apply here!"

He had heard of such agencies before, and the results were not pretty. Usually, they just took the applicants' data and sold it on. They would claim to have found a job for you, but it usually wouldn't work out, and the applicant would have paid money for this useless service. Still, Logan was curious enough to click the link. If they wanted money, he would back out immediately - it was not like he had any to spare.

To Logan's big surprise, when he clicked the link, a new page opened, with a web-based chat interface. Before he could close the tab again, there was already a message in the window. It read:

"Kevin: Hey, and welcome to the Change™ job agency. My name is Kevin. How may I help you today?"

It was a nice surprise that they didn't try to sell him anything or even ask for his data before he had entered the website. Well, no harm done. He might as well give them a try. Hesitating slightly, Logan's fingers hovered over the keyboard before he typed:

"Hi. I'm Logan and I'm looking for a new job."

The answer came quickly, but not so quickly that Logan would suspect the other person to be a chatbot. After some moments, Kevin's reply appeared on the screen:

"Great. What kind of job are you looking for? And what kind of salary are we talking?"

Logan considered the questions. This was probably the point where they would ask him for his data. He silently cursed his excessive caution. Of course, they had to ask these questions. How else should they offer him anything?

"Uhm. My last job was as an apprentice electrician, but at this point I would be pretty happy about just any job. The salary should be high enough to pay my rent."

Logan hesitated before hitting enter. He didn't want to come over as quite so desperate, but the truth was, he was.

"Okay, no problem. Do you have a preferred working sector?"

What a weird question. Why did it matter what industry he preferred?

"Uhm, not really. I guess anything is fine."

"Very well. Before I look up what's there in our database, I would need some basic information about you. Namely gender, age, ethnicity and sexual orientation."

"Wait. What does my sexual orientation have to do with a job? Besides, why do you need to know my ethnicity? Is this even legal?"

Logan had typed furiously and pressed enter before thinking about his reply.

"I understand your confusion. We here at the Change™ job agency strive to find not only a job, but the best job for the best you, so we need to know what we're working with. It wouldn't be very appropriate to apply a person as an actress who is really good at sports, now would it? Of course, you have to understand that your answers are confidential and will not be disclosed to any third parties, especially not your future employer."

That was fishy deluxe. Logan really didn't want to feed some unknown job agency all that highly personal information. On the other hand,... what did he have to lose?

"Well, I guess it can't hurt. Uhm. I'm a male, 20 years old, I would call myself white and I'm heterosexual."

"Wonderful. One last question: Are you comfortable with nudity and public sexual activities?"

"Wait, WHAT? I mean, uhm, sure, I guess? I mean, why should I need that?"

"This question is purely to determine if we should also have a look in the adult entertainment section of our job offerings. Alright Logan, please stand by while I enter your data into our search engine."

Logan leaned back. He felt a bit uneasy about all that. But it was not like his answers could lead them directly to his apartment, so he felt relatively safe.

A minute or so passed, and Logan started to think that he had been tricked after all, but just as he was about to close the tab, a new message appeared.

"Sorry for the delay, I had a few calls. We found two jobs that could be a fit. The first one is an office job in a big insurance company. To be honest, it's not that good of a fit and it doesn't pay very well either."

"That's fine." Logan wrote. He was incredibly on edge now. Could it really be so easy to find a new job? And he even had a choice?

"What's the other one?" he added to his previous message.

"Okay, the other job is a bit more unconventional, but we have the feeling it could be a great match. It's an actor position in the porn industry, at the famous XXX Incorporated."

"Porn? What? Are you serious? I mean, I don't have anything against porn or nudity or whatever, but I'm not sure if this is the kind of job I want."

Logan felt mixed feelings. The prospect of being some office drone sounded pretty uninteresting and a low pay wasn't all that good either. But a porn actor? Logan had to admit, the thought felt somewhat interesting, but he doubted he had what it took for that? Weren't porn stars famously hung and well-built? That was certainly not Logan. Just as he pondered those thoughts, Kevin's answer appeared:

"I understand Sir. So, should we continue with the first job opening then?"

Logan bit his lip, but the curiosity got the better of him.

"Wait. What does the second job entail? I mean, I'm not exactly... equipped for the porn business."

"Well, as I have said: It's an actor position, so you would star in some new adult entertainment productions. While I understand your modesty, our records show that you are more than adequately gifted for this kind of job."

Logan felt confused. He absentmindedly scratched his crotch before he replied:

"Uhm, sorry, I don't think you understand. I don't really think my..." Logan paused. Was he really going to write that? It was embarrassing, but at least he could be reasonably sure he would never meet this Kevin in real life. So, he continued:

"... penis is big enough for such a position."

The answer came promptly.

"Really? Better have a look to be sure ;-)"

A winking smiley? That wasn't very professional. Actually, the whole sentence wasn't. Still, Logan couldn't stop himself from glancing at his crotch. What he saw made him take a double take. His soft cock was forming a visible and ample bulge in his jeans. Logan knew that he was slightly smaller than average, so that was ridiculous. It was almost a... a porn star-sized bulge!

He stared at his package, but it wasn't growing any smaller. With trembling hands, he opened his jeans. Immediately, a well-filled pair of boxers escaped the confinement of his jeans. The dick print of his soft member was clearly visible in his underwear, and it wasn't just much bigger than Logan remembered. It was among the biggest bulges he had ever seen in his life!

His hands explored the impressive manhood through his underwear and felt every centimeter of the hardening dick. He had no idea what had caused this growth, but he wasn't complaining. Before he could interact more with it, however, he noticed another message on the screen.

"Are you still there, Sir?"

"Sorry, yes." Logan hurried to reply. What was he going to write? "I was below average just a few moments ago but now I have one of the biggest cocks in human history"?

Instead, Kevin answered.

"Good! I trust you had a chance to inspect your assets?"

"Uhm, yes."

"So, have you made up your mind, or should I look into the office position?"

Logan was torn. He wasn't sure what he had seen just a moment ago. Still, his enormous cock that was half-hard in his boxers was there, undeniably.

"Let's go with the porn star position." Logan finally typed, and his heart was racing.

"Very good! Now, as I mentioned, the position is in the adult entertainment sector. Do you know the company XXX Incorporated?"

Logan thought quickly about it before replying: "No, sorry, never heard of them."

"That is not at all surprising, since they specialize in the adult sector for homosexual men. According to your data, you identify as heterosexual. I hope that won't be a problem?"

Of course, there was a catch. Logan had heard about these gay for pay people and he hesitated yet again. They paid well, supposedly, but...

"Uhm. Would that mean I would need to be on the receiving end?" He wasn't too close-minded and could imagine kissing another man if he had to, perhaps even receiving a blow job from one. But having another person fuck him in the ass? No, that was way beyond his comfort zone.

"I believe the technical term you are looking for is 'to bottom'." Kevin replied, and added another message shortly after:

"But the company is, in fact, looking for a 'top' actor. They put it like this: 'We are looking for a well-built top for our new productions.'"

Logan was relieved. While he was a gold star gay man (why did he put 'heterosexual'? That was utter bullshit!), he was a strict top. This position sounded better and better. Still, one thing raised some new doubts.

"Hold on. I'm hung like a horse, but I wouldn't say I'm very muscular or even fit. I'm not much of a gym goer."

"Are you sure ;-)?"

Again, with the winking smiley! Kevin sounded so very professional most of the time, but then there were these messages. Logan scratched the back of his shoulder with some effort. Whenever he raised his arms so high the mountains of muscle on his upper arms danced and made it difficult to reach his back. Logan suddenly realized that something had changed - again! His shirt strained against his muscular chest, and as he lifted his shirt, he could see some cobblestone abs on an otherwise flat stomach. His calves had become thicker and strong. His jeans, which had felt slightly loose earlier, now seemed to be getting tighter.

Logan had never been very athletic. His body was lean, but not fit or muscular. That had certainly changed. When he looked at himself, he hardly recognized himself anymore. A huge dick, and a studly body.

Logan shook his head and let the shirt fall again. Whatever was going on, it was not a bad thing, was it?

"Alright, so I'm a buff top with a big cock. Is there anything else?" he smiled as he wrote that.

"Actually, there is one further requirement, but given your cooperation so far I don't believe it will be much of a problem either." Kevin replied, in his professional tone again.

"And what would that be?" Logan was intrigued.

"The company is especially looking for a, and I cite, 'huge, dominant Black top with large dick. Intellectual capabilities are not required'. Are you feeling up to that task? ;-)"

This time, Logan immediately raised his shirt to watch his body change. As soon as he read the words, his skin began darkening, first a golden bronze and then a rich black. It was a gradual change but happened very quickly. His muscles became even more defined, and his body hair thickened and grew even darker.

He didn't know what 'intellectual capabilities' meant, but as his body grew larger and thicker, he felt a strange fog entering his mind. It was a little unsettling at first, but it wasn't entirely unpleasant. His usual thoughts quickly became overshadowed by his raising libido. As he grabbed his huge, Black throbbing cock, a dominant smirk crept on his mouth.

He turned his attention back to the computer and typed:

"Yeah, baby. I think I can make that happen. Just tell me who to fuck and I'll be there!"

He saw Kevin reply with a street address and a date and time, but Logan decided he would read that later. Now, his cock demanded his entire attention. He absentmindedly noticed his webcam turning on but paid it little attention. If Kevin wanted to watch him jerk his fat cock, he was very welcome to. After all, he just helped him find the job of his life!

That's certainly a way to beat recession! Also check out this blog!

#male transformation #muscle transformation #straight to gay #dumbing down #racial transformation

[flordeamatista]

𝗔𝗳𝘁𝗲𝗿 𝗛𝗼𝘂𝗿𝘀

pairing: ceo!silverfox!ari levinson x personal assistant!reader

concept:. One kiss will ignite all this, which will light my darkest fire for your body

word count: 3.6k

warnings: silver fox Ari, bossy boss, business trip, hot tub love time, fireplace love time, p -in- v, a tiny bit of man—ipulation edging, fing- ering, o-ra-l (f receiving), tiny wine body painting, sweet kisses, pu-ssy slap-ping, soft power imbalance, dumb-ification, praise, Sir k-ink, dirty talk, spanking, nickname ──(Princess, Sweetheart)

a/n: @navybrat817 When I was dancing with my other wips, I remember when you dropped this sweet silverfox Ari, leaving me daydreaming for months. I am grateful for you dropping him off so I can write him a beautiful story.

@lookiamtrying @/writing-for-marvel @sunshinebuckybarnes, thank you for letting me rant for months about him and brainstorm ideas.

lovely betas: @lunarbuck and @writing-for-marvel

the cute gif/line divider/moodboard made by me

thank you @jen-with-a-pen for making the silverfox ari image on the second moodboard.

Masterlist

As time passes, each note rests on each string.

Your eyes are captivated by the clouds you pass. One sky, one trip, and countless cloud formations.

The clouds reminded you how far away you were from your real destination, and you could only remember how you got on his plane.

“You wanted to see me, Sir?” you asked as you entered his office. He nodded and motioned for you to take a seat. “I have some important news to share with you,” he said. “We’ve just been awarded a large contract from a new client. There is a crucial business event next week that you must attend with me." Ari keeps typing on his computer without looking at you.

"I can't go," you say.  

Ari stops typing and looks up. "Why not?" he demands.

"I have my holiday, and I will be out of the country for a while."

“That is part of your job. You are expected to attend. You can pack up your things at the end of the day if you are unable to attend this business trip."

You look desperate in his eyes as you say, "My vacation was approved months ago." 

He pauses for a moment, then says, "I'm sorry, but this business trip is mandatory. You will have to postpone your vacation."

“I have given you access to my schedule. Do you mean you didn't read what was coming up? ” he asks in a dead tone. He is trying to point out that he had been clear with his scheduling and that it was your responsibility to be aware of what was coming up and plan accordingly.

As you leave Ari's office, you feel frustrated. You feel your heart sink as you think about all the time and money you’ve already spent preparing. You have been looking forward to this vacation for months, and now it seems like you will have to postpone it indefinitely.

Ari Levinson's name has become so familiar that nobody can escape it. He is a top influencer in the business world and is often a keynote speaker at industry events. His advice and insights are sought after by some of the most successful companies around the world. His reach is unparalleled, and he is an inspiration to many. 

From small startups to large corporations, Ari Levinson has been able to make an impact on nearly every sector. His success story is one that continues to be shared and celebrated as he continues to break boundaries in the business world. It would make many human bodies swoon to gaze into his lustful blue eyes. He is a true testament to the power of ambition and hard work.

Ari is a role model for entrepreneurs and business professionals who are looking to make a difference. His story is an inspiration to many who aspire to greatness. 

Ari Levinson is an icon.

However, you see the rude, uncaring, sexy heartless boss.

He often puts profits before people and shows zero regard for those he works with. His attitude contrasts starkly with his public image.

You and the hot silver fox icon are stuck in Switzerland in a cabin alone. This was supposed to be your vacation since he told you that you had to join him. You were supposed to be at the beach enjoying the sun with a drink in your hand in the Bahamas, not sitting next to a fireplace freezing your behind off.

You turn to him and ask why he dragged you here.

A mischievous glint appears in his eye as he tells you that success in this world comes from working until you can earn money while you sleep. "And I intend to show you just how to do that," he says with a smirk.

In the end, you will never be able to recall the wisps of a dream because he took a weekend full of sun and pleasure from you, and now you are flying into the cold.

He stands tall, proud of his body, gazing out the window, letting the cold winter air fill his lungs. His muscles tense up as he takes a deep breath in, his eyes focused on the horizon. He is ready to take on whatever the night might bring.

His eyes are shut tight as he savors the warmth of the fire. His feet are planted firmly on the ground as his hands reach for the stars. He is in his own world as he basks in the glory of the fire.

He takes another deep breath and turns back to the fireplace, determined to make it up to you. He adds a few more logs to the fire, watching the orange and yellow flames flicker against the night sky. He knows that he would do anything to make you happy, and he hopes that you will forgive him. He smiles, content in the knowledge that at least he tried.

Little did you know, the silver fox had an ulterior motive for bringing you to Switzerland. 

A smile spreads across his face as he watches you relaxing in a hot tub, washing away the stress of your long day. Clearly, he pushed you to the limit and saw your not-so-subtle eye rolls during the flight. He knows he has been too harsh on you, but he wants to ensure you succeed with him.

He lingers around your body tonight as he writes your name next to his.

Taking a deep breath, you let yourself sink deeper into the warm water, feeling your muscles relax with every step. If you can’t be in the sun, this is the closest you can get to feeling warm all over your body. The hot water embraces you with comforting warmth like a hug from a friend. You stay in the hot tub for as long as you can, allowing yourself to forget the stress of the day and simply enjoy the peace. Your boss has always made sure you don’t have a social life beyond being his personal assistant.

You have been trying to find a respite from the stress of the man's presence, and the soothing sound of the bubbling jets and the gentle hum of the motor are just what you need. The sound of his voice, however, is enough to break the illusion and bring you back to reality.

"Mr. Levinson, I don’t start until tomorrow morning. I am enjoying my free time. I need to relax, please," you say softly and finally put down your foot. It‘s time for you to relax after he stole your time off.

"Sweetheart, I apologize if I appeared harsh to you earlier this week, but you need to understand."

“I know! But let me relax tonight," you plead.

You sigh and open your eyes and stare at him with shock.

His desire for your body will reveal where his electric current resides.

When he opens the white robe's string with his strong hands, your heart races. He pulls it open, revealing his exquisite figure. You can't help but gasp in surprise. He suppresses a smile and nods. 

"Would you like some company ?” His sculpted arms flex as he reaches for the wine, and for a moment, you can’t take your eyes off him. He smirks, knowing his effect on you. He pours one glass of wine. You feel electricity between you, and you can tell he feels it too. 

You take a deep breath, trying to compose yourself. 

You can't help but stare, unable to take your eyes off him. 

You feel an overwhelming urge to touch him, to have him touch you. 

You feel a tingling sensation throughout your body as he stands in front of you, exposing himself to you.

As he dips into the hot tub, you can see the water wavering around him and towards you. He slowly submerges himself in the water, letting out a sigh of relief as his tension and stress slowly melt away. The steam rises slowly around him, enveloping him in a cocoon of warmth and comfort. 

You can't let your attraction to your boss get in the way of your job. But as he leans in closer, you feel yourself getting lost in his piercing gaze. Suddenly, the room feels too small and too hot. You try to focus on anything but him - the painting on the wall, the clock ticking away - but it's no use. Your mind keeps drifting back to him and how badly you want to give in to this forbidden passion.

Your breath comes out nervously as he floats closer to you. 

"Wine?” Taking a sip of his wine, he closes the distance.

"I don't have a glass," you mumble nervously as he invades your space.

You hold your breath as he draws closer, hovering his lips over you. You feel your heart racing as you close your eyes and wait, anticipating a kiss. He pulls away, leaving you disappointed and flustered. 

Then he nods at you to drink from his wine glass and slowly places it near your lips. You hesitantly sip, feeling the wine's warmth spread through your body. 

Drops of wine drip from your lips, and he touches your neck with his finger to stop them from falling further. "Drink more, Princess," he urges. He leans in again, trailing kisses down your neck and sending shivers down your spine. 

You feel nervous and excited as your heart races for a kiss. You take another sip of wine to steady yourself, noticing how his fierce azure eyes darken with desire.

He reaches for the bottle and pours more wine over your body. His hands caress your skin as he moves the bottle along, letting the cool liquid slide down your skin. His lips follow the path of the wine, leaving you trembling in anticipation.

One kiss will ignite all this, which will light my darkest fire for your body

He leans in and captures your lips in a passionate kiss.

The taste of wine on his lips is intoxicating as he takes another sip of you. 

When his lips touch yours, a wave of passion washes over you. You feel the warmth of his breath. You get lost in the moment, the world around you fading away. As the wine lingers on your tongue, it mixes with the taste of him. He deepens the kiss, feeling his arms wrap around you as he pulls you closer. The heat between you is palpable and electric, making every nerve in your body come alive.

He smiles and whispers in your ear "Let's make tonight one to remember" You can feel a shiver down your spine as you nod. 

Your new sweet obsession is his warmth, his smile your lust, his kisses your obsession 

"I know you're a good girl; you're going to do everything I say, aren't you?" he breathes deeply over your exposed neck. You nod, unable to form any words. 

A smile spreads across his face as he lowers his hands under the water and covers your pussy. "Princess, use your words." 

You let out a whimper, "Yes, Sir." He chuckles, pleased with your response, and kisses your neck again. His hands explore further as his grip tightens around you.

“My girl," he murmurs softly. "Do you know how hot you are? How insane you drive me? I can barely contain myself. I want you so badly," he whispers in your ear. 

His lips move down your neck, and his hands travel all over your body, exploring and caressing your curves. 

The words he whispers to you stir something in you as his lust rages inside.

"You have such a slutty little mouth," he murmurs against your ear, holding you still with one hand against your throat and the other under the hot water rubbing against your pussy. "I'm sure you're tight as hell. I'm looking forward to hearing the sounds you make as you stretch around my dick. Princess, I promise to let you feel every inch of my cock"

Against his fingers, you grind, your eyes closing as you're enthralled by the kisses he leaves across your jaw and neck.

You feel him slide his thumb across your skin before sweeping it across your clit. As he moves his finger gently inside you, you can feel the movement of the water.

The sensation of his hands touching you, and watching his face as he does so, is intoxicating. You want more of it. He moves his fingers in circles inside you, sending pleasure waves through your body. But he stops when you explode, teasing you. More of him, whatever he can do, is what you need.

It's more of his filthy words and thick fingers.

Put his passion for you into words through his touch

The air blows on your pussy while he holds onto your thighs. You feel the cool air of the night on your skin as you try to focus on your boss' words. 

It never occurred to you that you would be in this situation. You are lying on the floor next to the fireplace, naked in front of your boss, and the firelight enlightens the room. You were left to find comfort in the heat radiating from the floor, the only warmth you had after your swimsuit was carelessly discarded.

As you try to piece together the events leading up to this moment, your boss leans over and whispers against your pussy. 

He kisses you there, a slow sweep with his tongue from bottom to top, ending with sucking your clit between his lips. You grip the rug cover end in your fists and try not to grind your pussy toward his face. 

There's something about the way his tongue feels so freaking warm and soft. Then there's the way the scruff on his beard feels against it. It's lightly abrasive, and you're overwhelmed by the mix of sensations. You moan as you move closer, wanting to get close as possible. 

"My Princess has a wet pussy, doesn't she? Want me to play with it? Stick my fingers in it? Maybe later, she can welcome my dick?" Using the tip of his finger, he runs it around your pussy, then slaps it and puts you on edge. “You're so sensitive." His voice echoes in the room, satisfied that you're affected by him.

You moan. "Sir, You're teasing me."

He chuckles and leans in closer, his breath tickling your pussy. "I'm not teasing. I'm just trying to make you feel good." 

You hold your breath and scrunch your eyes shut as he exhales and laughs. "You can relax, Princess." He leans closer, his breath tickling your thighs. "It's just me." He pulls away, a smirk on his face. As he bites softly on the sides of your thighs, his gaze drifts to your pussy. "It's going to be a long night," he says softly.

Your hands clench in his salty pepper hair, and you shift your hips, intoxicated by his mouth on you.

I felt a deep sense of pleasure flowing with each kiss of lustful attention.

It is as if your soft sounds, your delicate moans, pull him deeper inside, just like the swell and the throb in his cock.

He couldn't resist the temptation any longer. He had to have you, all of you. The way your body moved and responded to his touch drove him wild with desire. He wanted to explore every inch of your skin, taste every part of you. Your innocence only made him want you more, to be the one who initiates you into a world of pleasure that only he can provide. As he plunges deeper inside you, he feels like he is finally complete.

"Fuck, this slutty pussy is begging for my cock," he says, slapping your thighs while your muscles clench around him, teasing you.

He grabs your hand and guides it over his body - smooth, warm, and inviting. His eyes are locked on yours, and you can feel his desire radiating from him. You can't help but feel a wave of pleasure wash over you.

He smiles despite the tension near his eyes, as though waiting for your response. "Tell me how this feels. How does my cock feel inside of you?" You bite your lip and moan softly. 

He slides his hips back and forth, pushing deeper and deeper into you.

You can feel his hardness pulsing and stretching you, and your pleasure builds with every thrust. "I feel like you're breaking me, but I'm full, hot, and - so alive, Ari. I need more, please." Your voice is barely above a whisper, but it's enough to make him shiver with desire. He leans down to capture her lips again, deepening your connection and losing himself in the sensations you bring out in him.

He slides his hips back and forth, pushing deeper and deeper into you. You moan in pleasure as you feel yourself getting closer and closer to the edge. He pulls out and then thrusts back in, pushing you over the edge as you reach your climax.

You moan into his mouth as he begins to thrust, your body arching and trembling with each stroke as he moves faster and faster. His strong hands grip your hips tightly as he drives into you, pushing you closer and closer to the edge. He pulls away and whispers in your ear, “Do you know why I hired you, Princess.” 

You look into his eyes, your body still shaking from the pleasure he had brought you. You gasp and whisper back, “No, why did you hire me?”

He smiles and pulls you close, kissing you deeply. “Because you are the most talented, and I always hire the best.”

The smug grin on his face lights up as he kisses your neck and shoulder, his fingers now playing with your nipple. His pace slows as your body begins to revive itself. The tip of his nose trails up your neck and shoulder as he marks your skin. "I knew from the moment I saw you that you were special. Your pussy had to be special to take my cock." His voice is hoarse and filled with desire, and his breathing heavy as he whispers these words into the air, emphasizing the power of his feelings for you.

"You're doing so well for your CEO, Sweetheart," he whispers, his lips against yours. "We have all week to explore every aspect of your performance." 

You run a hand through his salt-and-pepper hair. "Ari - I?" A second orgasm hits you before you can even speak, and your whole body tenses against him. 

You are his, so he owns everything about you 

As your climax approaches, Ari whispers, "You're mine." His hands press against your skin sending shivers down your spine. He leans in and kisses you again. "Mine," he repeats when the first spasm of pleasure makes you shudder and throw your head back. 

All that is audible are his grunts as he takes control of your body with each thrust. 

It was Ari's dirty secret that there was no conference; instead, he will keep himself warm by being inside of you for the entire week.

He knows you won't mind it.

This weekend is a winter storm, and he knows you'll need him to soothe your body and make you moan. This weekend, Ari is ready to wrap himself around you and provide the warmth and comfort you desperately crave; he will be your source of comfort in the midst of the storm. His skin is soft and inviting, begging you to let him into your heart for a moment of pleasure together.

As you hold each other, the world outside freezes away - it's just the two of you in this heat.

Your body ached, curved, and was drenched. It embraced him.

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[reasonsforhope]

"When Francois Beyers first pitched the concept of 3D ocean farming to the Welsh regulators, he had to sketch it on napkins. 

Today the seafood farm is much more than a drawing, but if you walked along the Welsh coastal path near St David’s, all you’d see is a line of buoys. As Beyers puts it: “It’s what’s below that’s important.”

Thick tussles of lustrous seaweed suspend from the buoys, mussels cling to its furry connective ropes and dangling Chinese lantern-esque nets are filled with oysters and scallops. 

“It’s like an underwater garden,” says Beyers, co-founder of the community-owned regenerative ocean farm, Câr-y-Môr. The 3-hectare site is part of a fledgling sector, one of 12 farms in the UK, which key players believe could boost ocean biodiversity, produce sustainable agricultural fertiliser and provide year-round employment in areas that have traditionally been dependent on tourism. 

Created in 2020 by Beyers and six family members, including his father-in-law – an ex-shellfish farmer – the motivation is apparent in the name, which is Welsh for “for the love of the sea”. ...

Pictured: Drone shot of Câr-y-Môr, which is on the site of abandoned mussel farms. Image: Scott Chalmers

Ocean farming comes from the technical term ‘integrated multi-trophic aquaculture’, which means a mixture of different seaweed and shellfish species growing together to mutually benefit each other. But it’s not just a way of growing food with little human input, it also creates ocean habitat. 

“You’re creating a breeding ground for marine animals,” explains Beyers who adds that the site has seen more gannets diving, porpoises and seals – to name a few – since before the farm was established.

Ocean farms like Câr-y-Môr, notes Ross Brown – environmental research fellow at the University of Exeter – have substantial conservation benefits.

“Setting up a seaweed farm creates an exclusion zone so fishermen can’t trawl it,” explains Brown, who has been conducting experiments on the impacts of seaweed and shellfish farms across the UK. 

Brown believes a thriving ocean farming industry could provide solutions to the UK’s fish stock, which is in “a deeply troubling state” according to a report that found half of the key populations to be overfished. “It would create stepping stones where we have safe havens for fish and other organisms,” he adds. 

But UK regulators have adopted a cautious approach, note Brown and Beyers, making it difficult for businesses like Câr-y-Môr to obtain licenses. “It’s been a tough old slog,” says Beyers, whose aim is to change the legislation to make it easier for others to start ocean farms. 

Despite navigating uncharted territories, the business now has 14 full-time employees, and 300 community members, of which nearly 100 have invested in the community-benefit society. For member and funding manager Tracey Gilbert-Falconer, the model brings expertise but most importantly, buy-in from the tight-knit local community. 

“You need to work with the community than forcing yourself in,” she observes. 

And Câr-y-Môr is poised to double its workforce in 2024 thanks to a Defra grant of £1.1 million to promote and develop the Welsh seafood industry as part of the UK Seafood Fund Infrastructure Scheme. This will go towards building a processing hub, set to be operational in April, to produce agricultural fertiliser from seaweed. 

Full of mineral nutrients and phosphorous from the ocean, seaweed use in farming is nothing new, as Gilbert-Falconer notes: “Farmers in Pembrokeshire talk about their grandad going down to the sea and throwing [seaweed] on their farms.” 

But as the war in Ukraine has caused the price of chemical fertiliser to soar, and the sector tries to reduce its environmental impact – of which synthetic fertiliser contributes 5% of total UK emissions – farmers and government are increasingly looking to seaweed. 

The new hub will have capacity to make 65,000 litres of sustainable fertiliser annually with the potential to cover 13,000 acres of farmland. 

But to feed the processing hub, generate profit and reduce their dependency on grants, the co-op needs to increase the ocean farm size from three to 13 hectares. If they obtain licences, Beyers says they should break even in 18 months. 

For now, Beyers reflects on a “humbling” three years but revels in the potential uses of seaweed, from construction material to clothing.  

“I haven’t seen the limit yet,” he smiles."

-via Positive.News, February 19, 2024

#wales #welsh #ocean #marine biology #aquaculture #marine life #marine animals #seaweed #sea scallops #oysters #united kingdom #uk #conservation #conservation news #overfishing #environmental news #farming #sustainable agriculture #sustainability #ocean farming #good news #hope

[diejager]

makarov hunting an/a (enemy? long assassin?) reader who doesn’t really want to work with him- reader knows their stuff, erasing tracks, setting up traps, etc- its a game

призрак Cw: canon-typical death, murder, assassination, mercenary, blood, tell me if I missed any.

You were a ghost —призрак in his mother-tongue. Appearing whenever you wanted and disappearing before anyone could find you, a phantom in the business of assassination, a killer without too high of a price. He’s watched the aftermath of your handiwork, the shows you played and the kills you made, they were a masterpiece he wanted to witness, to utilise for his goals. Even from the darkness of his solitary cell, locked away in the Gulag - the Zorgaya prison complex - he kept hearing about your endeavours.

You interest him, your brought out a certain excitement, made adrenaline pump in his blood, when you were first brought up. You were the a ghost - a wraith - that haunted the world, killing off men and women for the right number. You were a killer for hire, one of the best in the industry that even he - Vladimir Makarov - had attempted to recruit, to tie you down to his name and fame, to have you work for his purpose. Permanently.

But you were a slippery one, escaping whatever trap he carefully laid out for you, falling through his fingers, finding the smallest crack - mistake - in his plan that he once thought was full-proof. You were smart, feisty and skillful, able to see through his carefully crafted words for a hire, pushing past the firewall of his mind and planting a virus, corrupting his original purpose, rooting yourself into his sick mind. This feeling, the way his heart rammed against his rib when you sent a warning shot, or when you escaped from his grasp, this wasn’t love —no, he was a being detached from such frivolous affairs. He didn’t love. He couldn’t with his cold, dead heart. This was an obsession, Makarov obsessed over things, he knit picked, he stole and took apart.

Makarov was a being whose conscious transcended the likes of capitalist westerners who’ve corrupted his motherland, small-minded and parasitic politician who made the Soviet Union crumble to dust; whose forgone the primal needs that made humanity weak —vulnerable; Vladimir Makarov was better than any man.

That’s where stemmed his obsession with you, the need to hunt you down. You portrayed yourself as a being higher than him. A better strategist and killer than him. It went from word of mouth to ear, Makarov heard from the other guards and new inmate speak of you, you achievements, the spike in your demands and the people who were ready to give you an arm and leg to pay for your service. Powerful men and women routing you an undisclosed amount of money to kill of someone, to have them assassinated in their own bedroom, to be drowned in their own bathtub or to be poisoned by their own wine.

He had Konni keep a track on your work while he waited for the right time to be freed, jumping back to work once he landed in Russia. He took it on himself to follow your steps, he had a hand in every sector of the underworld, dabbing in everything to keep his hold over the world. He couldn’t find anything about you, neither your past nor your character, you were nameless and faceless, the hooded mask obscuring your face from the world. Makarov’s best couldn’t even track you through cameras and find your deposit account, it seemed as though you had a team of your own, working in the dark to keep your and their livelihood going.

You evaded his traps, able to figure out which deals were made by him as a ploy to catch you, to find the ghost that haunted his mind. You were a disease, a parasite that unknowingly clung to him. You knew him, the messages he received through the grapevines, taunting remarks and threats that made him see red. You were too skillful, erasing your steps, making it seem as if you were never there in the first place, uninvolved with it, but the world knew who committed the crime. This was a game - or so he liked to think - of cat and mouse, he preferred being the cat, the dangerous and cunning feline who stalked the small mouse, he had to swallow his pride and confess that he played the mouse as often as he played the cat, being hunted and narrowly escaping because you let him.

But this, this meeting was a surprise, to see his призрак stand before him, tempted by the proposition he had to offer you —without any underlying meaning or hidden thoughts.

“мы наконец встретились, Призрак.” (We finally meet, ghost.)

Taglist: @sae1kie @yeoldedumbslut @tallmanlover @distracteddragoness @vxnilla-hxrddrugs @konigsblog @havoc973 @im-making-an-effort @daisychainsinknots @0alk0msan @danielle143 @dont-mind-me-just-existing-sadly @tuttifuckinfruttifriday

#x reader #cod mw2 #cod mw2 x reader #mw3 makarov #makarov cod #makarov #vladimir makarov #cod makarov #makarov x reader #mw3 #call of duty makarov #vladimir makarov x reader #makarov x you #call of duty mw3 #cod mw3 #mw3 x reader #cod mw3 x reader #mw3 spoilers #vladimir makarov cod