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seventeenpins · 9 months

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Can we perhaps have something where stepdad Joel makes reader squirt-😗

alskdfjal yes of course this is so perfect :))) thank u for the prompt 💕

practice makes perfect

pairing: stepdad!joel miller x f!reader

word count: 2.5k

summary: follow-up to bad girl. your mom decides to go out one night, leaving you and your stepdad at home alone together. feeling hurt and petty in response to his wife's cheating, he has no qualms with fucking you in your mom's bedroom. you make a mess.

warnings: okay lets go, a lot of fucking (so much fucking), stepcest, infidelity, oral sex (mentioned), unsafe piv, SQUIRTING, dirty talk, fingering, daddy kink, age difference (reader is late 20s, joel is mid-40s), a bit of dom/sub vibes, multiple orgasms, creampie -- let me know if i missed anything?

a/n: i am so completely blown away by the response to my first stepdad!joel fic -- thank you all so much for the comments and reblogs and messages, i fuckin cherish them all. as always, pls feel free to reach out. i hope you enjoy this instalment!

for the first week after joel walked in on you, you were half convinced your entire experience with him had been a fever dream. you hadn't seen all that much of him on account of a big project he's been grumbling about, something about a delayed material delivery that pushed him closer to a deadline than he'd prefer. you were busy yourself, too, going out with friends and spending long hours on some of your freelance work.

there were moments, though, that you'd catch one another and there'd be a glint of something in his eye.

one night, you, your mom, and joel are all sat at the table for a family dinner. your mom has drained her wine glass twice already, and is reaching for the bottle again as she tells you both, "i'm afraid i can't stay for long tonight, i just got a text from vera. sounds like she's having a bad night and needs a friend."

joel makes a sound like a snort that he follows up with a cough. "poor vera," he says, "she's been havin' an awful rough time lately, hasn't she? it's like she's inconsolable every other day."

"yes," your mom says, "she has been going through so much."

joel stares at her for a moment and you almost expect him to challenge her on it, but then he lets out a breath and smiles.

"you're such a good friend, baby," he tells her and she grins before turning back to her glass of wine and taking a big gulp. joel fixes you with a knowing stare and smirks. you both know she's not going to vera's.

after she finishes picking at her plate, she announces that she needs to get ready and dips out of the room.

"so, vera, huh?" you ask and joel snorts.

"can't believe your momma forgot she made me follow that woman on instagram months ago. according to her recent posts, she's currently travelling through iceland."

you roll your eyes and laugh, "seriously?" you ask, and joel nods.

"you'd think she'd be a better liar by this point," you say, and joel smiles but winces a little too.

it's not a game. you know it's not a game. just because you're used to your mother's antics doesn't mean it isn't new to joel, and he's only known for certain for a week that she's been unfaithful to him and that's gotta hurt. despite whatever's going on between you two, you know joel's heart is aching.

you're pretty sure you've just poured salt in the wound.

"i'm sorry, joel," you say, suddenly embarrassed, "i didn't mean to- i don't know. i didn't mean to make fun of it. i know you're dealing with... a lot."

joel shrugs and relaxes, "ah, it's alright sweetheart. just something i need to deal with. but you've done nothing wrong."

"okay," you say, and it's only then that you realise how close you've been leaning towards one another. at the sound of your mother's heels on the stairs, joel clears his throat and the two of you put more distance between yourselves.

your mother's voice carries down the hallway. "will you two be alright without me? i know you haven't had a chance to spend much time together."

"i'm sure we'll manage." you say, and joel smirks.

"she's a real good girl," he says, "'m lovin these opportunities to get to know her better."

"i'm glad to hear it," your mom says, and smiles between the two of you as you do your best not to choke.

"ya look great, baby," joel says, eyebrows raised as he looks your mom up and down. "cute dress. that makeup's gonna get ruined with your face masks, though, huh?"

she blushes and waves him off, "you know i like to get all get dolled up for my girls night," she says, "i can wipe the makeup off later."

"i'm sure you will," he says, and though you can hear the edge to it, you don't think your mom can. he presses a kiss to her cheek.

"i might be home late," she tells you both, "don't wait up!"

"no worries, baby," joel says, "in fact, if vera's having such a hard time, maybe you should make it a sleepover"

your mom grins and it's dazzling and heartbreaking. it's moments like this that you can see exactly why so many men have fallen in love with her. "that's a great idea, honey," she says, "i think i'll do just that! i'll see you both in the morning."

with a swish of her hair, your mom has left through the front door. joel groans, folding forward and resting his head in his hands, letting out a low "fucking jesus" before he sits back and composes himself. he lets out a deep sigh and then turns to look at you and shakes his head, closing his eyes, resigned.

you're not sure what's appropriate. you nearly reach out to deliver a comforting pat to his hand, but change your mind at the last moment, instead batting your hand out like a cat's paw and then recoiling.

joel's eyes weren't, apparently, closed. he sees your indecisive gesture, frowns, and gives you a look, before laughing. "you're okay, sweetheart," he says, his voice still tinged with the rumble of laughter, "it's all a lot to deal with. but i'm managing. and guess what?"

"what?" you ask.

"we've got a whole night to ourselves. just the two of us."

"oh yeah?" you ask, and you suddenly feel hot all over. joel's staring at you with such a darkness in his eyes that you're certain you're already wet.

"'f that's something you'd like, that is." joel smiles and it's almost unexpected the way he checks in with you, that he still has the capacity to focus on your needs. in his position, you might just be out to take what you could get, wholly and selfishly.

he's so... considerate. fuck he turns you on.

"i've got an idea," you say, and you take him by the hand and lead him upstairs.

you can feel his body stiffen when you stand in the doorway to your mother's bedroom. "you want me to fuck you in here?" he asks, and you can't parse his tone.

you're worried that you've gone too far, that despite the filthy way he fucked you only a few days ago, you've hit a barrier you should never have crossed, but you nod. before you can ask is it too much? he's growling "yes" and dragging you into the room.

he pulls you into a kiss, frenzied and feral, his teeth biting at you, nipping at your lips and cheeks, laving kisses down your throat. before you know it, you're both fully naked, clothes littered all over the floor of the room and joel's teeth are gently biting down on one of your nipples as he rocks his hips against yours.

"are you gonna let me take care of you? gonna let daddy take care of you?" he asks, "use your words."

"yes, daddy," you tell him.

"ya know," he tells you, running a hand down your sternum and resting between your breasts, feeling the rise and fall of your breathing, "there have been a few times i've gotten home late these past few days, and when i walked past your bedroom door i could swear i heard the sweetest little moans."

you blush and look away from him.

"uh-uh," he says, tipping your chin up, making you look at him, "were you thinkin' bout me?"

you nod. "yes daddy" it's the truth, after all.

"good girl," he smiles, "thank you for being honest with me. now i already know you're a dirty girl, what with all your naughty videos. and i know you're a fuckin' slut the way you spread your legs so easily for me."

"yes daddy," you echo.

"but what i don't know," he says, and his voice is velvet and dangerous, his pupils blown with hunger, "is just how many surfaces in this room i can bend you over and fuck you till you're so cock drunk you can't speak."

your eyebrows shoot up and your jaw drops.

"i ain't even started with you, honey," he smiles, and he drops to his knees.

it's a fucking marathon.

he eats you out at the foot of your mothers bed till you're panting, his lips glistening with your slick and he makes you feel so good you're certain you're gonna die.

then, your positions are reversed, joel trying his best to plant his feet into the carpet so he doesn't melt off the bed altogether, while you kneel before him. he fucks up into your throat, delighting in every vibration your moans and swallows provide.

soon, you're pressed up against the dresser, your fingers gripping onto the drawer handles as he fucks into your pussy from behind.

then against the bookshelf. the closet doors. there's a moment where joel gets closer than he'd like to coming and he has you grab onto the floor lamp as he eats your pussy again on bended knee, only this time you're standing up and trying your best not to crumple onto him when he makes you come a fourth and a fifth time.

you're starting to get overstimulated. no, you are overstimulated, but it's in the most oddly delicious way. joel has you folded over the foot of your mom's bed, your knees on an ottoman, the rest of you pressed against the mattress, fists groping at sheets, holding on for dear life.

it's a good angle, hell, it's the perfect angle. not only does it feel incredible, it helps prop your ass up to a height that allows joel's huge cock to fuck you deeper without too much more effort, gripping your hips as he pounds into you. the best part, though, is that you're both at the perfect angle to see yourselves in the full length mirror.

"jesus christ, baby," joel is saying, "you see how deep i am? feel how deep i am? pussy's so tight around this cock. can almost feel myself in here," he says, and presses two fingers against your tummy.

you moan, using every ounce of strength you have left to keep your ass in the air and take joel's cock so nicely.

"it feels so good, daddy," you sob, "it's so big, making me come so many times. fuck, i can feel it building- it feels so good, you make me feel so good-"

"yes, baby," he growls, "let go for me, let me feel you come stretched so pretty 'round daddy's dick."

"fuck, daddy," you whine, because you realise it's a different sensation that's been building and even though you know what it is, you've never quite reached an orgasm like this before. "i'm gonna come, daddy! i'm gonna fuckin come-"

"shit, baby," he says as he starts to feel hot wet spurts of liquid splashing out of you, "oh fuck, you gonna wet my cock with your cum?"

you're screaming now, so fucked out and overstimulated

"oh, shit honey, yes-" joel shouts, a man possessed, as he pulls his cock out from you and rubs furiously at your clit, moaning loudly as you gush all over his hand. "oh, i'm gonna need more of that," he groans, and you can't find words to argue. he fucks back into you, hitting that same spot, finding that same pressure.

"could fuckin drink this, baby," he says, "comin' all over my cock like the fuckin whore you are. look at us, baby, look in the mirror and don't you dare close your fucking eyes."

you obey. it's a struggle to get your eyes to even focus, but when you do, you're sent over the edge again and again and again.

the two of you look so fucking good, the jiggle of your ass, the angles of your bodies and the way you slot together, the tan of joel's arms, his muscles, his control, the silver of his hair.

his breathless mantra "good girl, good girl, fuckin' take it, such a good girl-," as you take everything he gives you and more.

he finds a rhythm for fucking every last drop out of you. he'll give you a few harsh, deep thrusts and then pull out and rub your pussy till you aren't gushing around him anymore. then he'll slap your pussy with the head of his cock, making you shudder before he stuffs it back in and builds you up again.

your thighs are drenched and the wetness down your legs is cooling. you've lost count of the number of times he's made you come like this, but finally, you're shaking so hard you can't bear it and his thrusts are getting staggered.

he's breathless when he manages to ask, "you want me to fill up this lil pussy? fill it full of daddy's cum?"

"yes, yes, yeesss-" you beg, and you watch your reflection as joel's hips stutter a final time and he lets out a strangled groan as he loses control and fucks his release into you.

the second after he comes, he collapses onto you but you're so weak and fuck-drunk you collapse, too. joel rolls off of you so you can breathe, but then both of you are laughing. you're disgusting, covered in sweat and spit and squirt and cum, but joel dips a finger into your pussy and then licks up the combination of juices.

seeing your awed expression, joel shrugs and then smiles, a little embarrassed. "just needed to taste ya like this," he says, and it's incredibly endearing.

after a few more minutes of laying around in messy, sticky comfort, joel gets up. and then- "shit".

"what's wrong?" you ask as you look up at him and he's- laughing?

you look down at what he's looking at -- the ottoman. you've drenched it entirely. it's at least three shades darker than it was to begin with, and reeks of sex.

"well," you say, "that's not ideal."

"guess i'll have to buy your momma a new one," he says, rubbing against his temples and barking out a short laugh. then he leans down and presses a gentle kiss to your lips, and one to your forehead.

"you go have a shower," he tells you, "i'll take care of this mess, and then let's get some snacks," he winks, and you smile.

he starts to back out of the room when you call to him, "so, mom's gonna be gone all night-" you start to say, tentative.

"you already askin' for round two?" he asks, incredulous.

"if we're calling all of that-" you gesture around the room, "round one? then yeah. i'm asking for round two."

"dirty girl," he laughs, "you're fuckin insatiable!"

"that's not a no-" you point out.

"no, it's not a no," he says. "let's refuel. rehydrate. and get right back to it."

#joel miller smut #tlou #joel miller x reader #joel miller x you #joel miller fanfiction #tlou fanfiction #tlou fic #joel miller x f!reader

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mochinomnoms · 1 month

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me trudging back into your inbox, head hung in shame: ... i'm back asking for more kalim thoughts. specifically smutty ones

Well I SUPPOSE I could sacrifice some of my time for kalim thoughts. *slams a massive stack of books onto my desk* I have a few.

Kalim is one of the human characters that has a breeding kink. You can't tell me the guy with over 30 siblings from a relatively happy family wouldn't be into having a big family and consistently knocking you up. He doesn't mind how messy it gets, how many rounds it takes, Kalim wants a big family and by god he's gonna get it. I really hope you have a decent amount of stamina because Kalim has a surprisingly high libido and short refractory period. That or he is just very motivated.

A product of being spoiled and having the best of the best at his fingertips, but Kalim loves dressing you up in the prettiest lingerie and jewelry! He prefers silky material that flows against your skin like water, with lots of ribbons for him to unwrap you like a present with plenty of jewelry that clinks every time you move with him. After all, you're the most priceless treasurer that he has, why not dress you up as so? And don't worry about getting them dirty, he's happy to buy you replacements, so you can get as messy as you want!

Something a little unexpected, but Kalim is into free-use. As I said, he has a surprisingly high libido and massive breeding kink, he would very much like to fill you up as often as possible. Our sweet Kalim just wants to feel good and make you feel good as often as possible, and what better way than being ready to go at any time! Honestly, you could stretch, and he's ready to go, so it's best for everyone involved to just let him use you as much as he needs. And he is needy, but such a giver as well, so it's a win-win.

#mochi asks #twst #twisted wonderland #kalim al asim #kalim al asim x reader #kalim al asim smut #!breeding kink #!free use

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seat-safety-switch · 6 months

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I've spoken about it many times before, but being a handyperson is a sort of curse. Once you can fix things, then it's hard to give up on fixing things. There are lots of broken objects in my home that would have been better off lining the inside of a dumpster, rather than been blown apart my living quarters for months on end while I traced some ultimately-irredeemable fault that would only fill me with rage when I found it.

Of course, nobody expected that when all the rich people left for the space station, taking capitalism with them, folks down here would just plain ol' stop working. All the factories went dormant as we realized our bosses were powerless without their bosses. Now if something broke, you'd have to come crawling to a local repair person. Can't just go buy something new from the store, where nobody wants to spend their days working so they can show you which box to buy. Nothing on the shelves anyway. Gotta fix what you have. Cruel warlords like myself now held sway over an entire neighbourhood at a time, using our exotic powers of "knowing which way to turn a screwdriver" and "put some grease on it."

Now, I spend all my days fixing other peoples' things, as opposed to before, when I spent all my time fixing my own things. Don't worry, it's not a bad life. I get paid in food, mostly, although some neighbours have offered me now-worthless money and gold bars.

Sometimes I think about heading down to the park, enjoying humanity's first free days since the industrial revolution. Art, poetry, music, free love, hand-churned ice cream: these are all things they took from us. Then I realize that the park rangers expected their sprinkler array fixed a couple weeks ago, and I can't well show my face there if it's still leaking through the improvised cork o-rings I had to make for it.

At night, I look up at the sky and see the exhaust of the space station glowing as it ejects spent rods from the reactor. I think about the mean-time-before-failure statistics of the oxygen scrubber. I wonder if they have anyone good at repairs up there. Probably not, but I'm sure they can tell someone to tell someone to make a new scrubber from the materials they don't have in their superterran prison. More valuable skill, that one.

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mostlysignssomeportents · 3 months

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My McLuhan lecture on enshittification

IT'S THE LAST DAY for the Kickstarter for the audiobook of The Bezzle, the sequel to Red Team Blues, narrated by @wilwheaton! You can pre-order the audiobook and ebook, DRM free, as well as the hardcover, signed or unsigned. There's also bundles with Red Team Blues in ebook, audio or paperback.

youtube

Last night, I gave the annual Marshall McLuhan lecture at the Transmediale festival in Berlin. The event was sold out and while there's a video that'll be posted soon, they couldn't get a streaming setup installed in the Canadian embassy, where the talk was held:

https://transmediale.de/en/2024/event/mcluhan-2024

The talk went of fabulously, and was followed by commentary from Frederike Kaltheuner (Human Rights Watch) and a discussion moderated by Helen Starr. While you'll have to wait a bit for the video, I thought that I'd post my talk notes from last night for the impatient among you.

I want to thank the festival and the embassy staff for their hard work on an excellent event. And now, on to the talk!

Last year, I coined the term 'enshittification,' to describe the way that platforms decay. That obscene little word did big numbers, it really hit the zeitgeist. I mean, the American Dialect Society made it their Word of the Year for 2023 (which, I suppose, means that now I'm definitely getting a poop emoji on my tombstone).

So what's enshittification and why did it catch fire? It's my theory explaining how the internet was colonized by platforms, and why all those platforms are degrading so quickly and thoroughly, and why it matters – and what we can do about it.

We're all living through the enshittocene, a great enshittening, in which the services that matter to us, that we rely on, are turning into giant piles of shit.

It's frustrating. It's demoralizing. It's even terrifying.

I think that the enshittification framework goes a long way to explaining it, moving us out of the mysterious realm of the 'great forces of history,' and into the material world of specific decisions made by named people – decisions we can reverse and people whose addresses and pitchfork sizes we can learn.

Enshittification names the problem and proposes a solution. It's not just a way to say 'things are getting worse' (though of course, it's fine with me if you want to use it that way. It's an English word. We don't have der Rat für Englisch Rechtschreibung. English is a free for all. Go nuts, meine Kerle).

But in case you want to use enshittification in a more precise, technical way, let's examine how enshittification works.

It's a three stage process: First, platforms are good to their users; then they abuse their users to make things better for their business customers; finally, they abuse those business customers to claw back all the value for themselves. Then, they die.

Let's do a case study. What could be better than Facebook?

Facebook is a company that was founded to nonconsensually rate the fuckability of Harvard undergrads, and it only got worse after that.

When Facebook started off, it was only open to US college and high-school kids with .edu and k-12.us addresses. But in 2006, it opened up to the general public. It told them: “Yes, I know you’re all using Myspace. But Myspace is owned by Rupert Murdoch, an evil, crapulent senescent Australian billionaire, who spies on you with every hour that God sends.

“Sign up with Facebook and we will never spy on you. Come and tell us who matters to you in this world, and we will compose a personal feed consisting solely of what those people post for consumption by those who choose to follow them.”

That was stage one. Facebook had a surplus — its investors’ cash — and it allocated that surplus to its end-users. Those end-users proceeded to lock themselves into FB. FB — like most tech businesses — has network effects on its side. A product or service enjoys network effects when it improves as more people sign up to use it. You joined FB because your friends were there, and then others signed up because you were there.

But FB didn’t just have high network effects, it had high switching costs. Switching costs are everything you have to give up when you leave a product or service. In Facebook’s case, it was all the friends there that you followed and who followed you. In theory, you could have all just left for somewhere else; in practice, you were hamstrung by the collective action problem.

It’s hard to get lots of people to do the same thing at the same time. You and your six friends here are going to struggle to agree on where to get drinks after tonight's lecture. How were you and your 200 Facebook friends ever gonna agree on when it was time to leave Facebook, and where to go?

So FB’s end-users engaged in a mutual hostage-taking that kept them glued to the platform. Then FB exploited that hostage situation, withdrawing the surplus from end-users and allocating it to two groups of business customers: advertisers, and publishers.

To the advertisers, FB said, 'Remember when we told those rubes we wouldn’t spy on them? We lied. We spy on them from asshole to appetite. We will sell you access to that surveillance data in the form of fine-grained ad-targeting, and we will devote substantial engineering resources to thwarting ad-fraud. Your ads are dirt cheap to serve, and we’ll spare no expense to make sure that when you pay for an ad, a real human sees it.'

To the publishers, FB said, 'Remember when we told those rubes we would only show them the things they asked to see? We lied!Upload short excerpts from your website, append a link, and we will nonconsensually cram it into the eyeballs of users who never asked to see it. We are offering you a free traffic funnel that will drive millions of users to your website to monetize as you please, and those users will become stuck to you when they subscribe to your feed.' And so advertisers and publishers became stuck to the platform, too, dependent on those users.

The users held each other hostage, and those hostages took the publishers and advertisers hostage, too, so that everyone was locked in.

Which meant it was time for the third stage of enshittification: withdrawing surplus from everyone and handing it to Facebook’s shareholders.

For the users, that meant dialing down the share of content from accounts you followed to a homeopathic dose, and filling the resulting void with ads and pay-to-boost content from publishers.

For advertisers, that meant jacking up prices and drawing down anti-fraud enforcement, so advertisers paid much more for ads that were far less likely to be seen by a person.

For publishers, this meant algorithmically suppressing the reach of their posts unless they included an ever-larger share of their articles in the excerpt, until anything less than fulltext was likely to be be disqualified from being sent to your subscribers, let alone included in algorithmic suggestion feeds.

And then FB started to punish publishers for including a link back to their own sites, so they were corralled into posting fulltext feeds with no links, meaning they became commodity suppliers to Facebook, entirely dependent on the company both for reach and for monetization, via the increasingly crooked advertising service.

When any of these groups squawked, FB just repeated the lesson that every tech executive learned in the Darth Vader MBA: 'I have altered the deal. Pray I don’t alter it any further.'

Facebook now enters the most dangerous phase of enshittification. It wants to withdraw all available surplus, and leave just enough residual value in the service to keep end users stuck to each other, and business customers stuck to end users, without leaving anything extra on the table, so that every extractable penny is drawn out and returned to its shareholders.

But that’s a very brittle equilibrium, because the difference between “I hate this service but I can’t bring myself to quit it,” and “Jesus Christ, why did I wait so long to quit? Get me the hell out of here!” is razor thin

All it takes is one Cambridge Analytica scandal, one whistleblower, one livestreamed mass-shooting, and users bolt for the exits, and then FB discovers that network effects are a double-edged sword.

If users can’t leave because everyone else is staying, when when everyone starts to leave, there’s no reason not to go, too.

That’s terminal enshittification, the phase when a platform becomes a pile of shit. This phase is usually accompanied by panic, which tech bros euphemistically call 'pivoting.'

Which is how we get pivots like, 'In the future, all internet users will be transformed into legless, sexless, low-polygon, heavily surveilled cartoon characters in a virtual world called "metaverse," that we ripped off from a 25-year-old satirical cyberpunk novel.'

That's the procession of enshittification. If enshittification were a disease, we'd call that enshittification's "natural history." But that doesn't tell you how the enshittification works, nor why everything is enshittifying right now, and without those details, we can't know what to do about it.

What led to the enshittocene? What is it about this moment that led to the Great Enshittening? Was it the end of the Zero Interest Rate Policy? Was it a change in leadership at the tech giants? Is Mercury in retrograde?

None of the above.

The period of free fed money certainly led to tech companies having a lot of surplus to toss around. But Facebook started enshittifying long before ZIRP ended, so did Amazon, Microsoft and Google.

Some of the tech giants got new leaders. But Google's enshittification got worse when the founders came back to oversee the company's AI panic (excuse me, 'AI pivot').

And it can't be Mercury in retrograde, because I'm a cancer, and as everyone knows, cancers don't believe in astrology.

When a whole bunch of independent entities all change in the same way at once, that's a sign that the environment has changed, and that's what happened to tech.

Tech companies, like all companies, have conflicting imperatives. On the one hand, they want to make money. On the other hand, making money involves hiring and motivating competent staff, and making products that customers want to buy. The more value a company permits its employees and customers to carve off, the less value it can give to its shareholders.

The equilibrium in which companies produce things we like in honorable ways at a fair price is one in which charging more, worsening quality, and harming workers costs more than the company would make by playing dirty.

There are four forces that discipline companies, serving as constraints on their enshittificatory impulses.

First: competition. Companies that fear you will take your business elsewhere are cautious about worsening quality or raising prices.

Second: regulation. Companies that fear a regulator will fine them more than they expect to make from cheating, will cheat less.

These two forces affect all industries, but the next two are far more tech-specific.

Third: self-help. Computers are extremely flexible, and so are the digital products and services we make from them. The only computer we know how to make is the Turing-complete Von Neumann machine, a computer that can run every valid program.

That means that users can always avail themselves of programs that undo the anti-features that shift value from them to a company's shareholders. Think of a board-room table where someone says, 'I've calculated that making our ads 20% more invasive will net us 2% more revenue per user.'

In a digital world, someone else might well say 'Yes, but if we do that, 20% of our users will install ad-blockers, and our revenue from those users will drop to zero, forever.'

This means that digital companies are constrained by the fear that some enshittificatory maneuver will prompt their users to google, 'How do I disenshittify this?'

Fourth and finally: workers. Tech workers have very low union density, but that doesn't mean that tech workers don't have labor power. The historical "talent shortage" of the tech sector meant that workers enjoyed a lot of leverage over their bosses. Workers who disagreed with their bosses could quit and walk across the street and get another job – a better job.

They knew it, and their bosses knew it. Ironically, this made tech workers highly exploitable. Tech workers overwhelmingly saw themselves as founders in waiting, entrepreneurs who were temporarily drawing a salary, heroic figures of the tech mission.

That's why mottoes like Google's 'don't be evil' and Facebook's 'make the world more open and connected' mattered: they instilled a sense of mission in workers. It's what Fobazi Ettarh calls 'vocational awe, 'or Elon Musk calls being 'extremely hardcore.'

Tech workers had lots of bargaining power, but they didn't flex it when their bosses demanded that they sacrifice their health, their families, their sleep to meet arbitrary deadlines.

So long as their bosses transformed their workplaces into whimsical 'campuses,' with gyms, gourmet cafeterias, laundry service, massages and egg-freezing, workers could tell themselves that they were being pampered – rather than being made to work like government mules.

But for bosses, there's a downside to motivating your workers with appeals to a sense of mission, namely: your workers will feel a sense of mission. So when you ask them to enshittify the products they ruined their health to ship, workers will experience a sense of profound moral injury, respond with outrage, and threaten to quit.

Thus tech workers themselves were the final bulwark against enshittification,

The pre-enshittification era wasn't a time of better leadership. The executives weren't better. They were constrained. Their worst impulses were checked by competition, regulation, self-help and worker power.

So what happened?

One by one, each of these constraints was eroded until it dissolved, leaving the enshittificatory impulse unchecked, ushering in the enshittoscene.

It started with competition. From the Gilded Age until the Reagan years, the purpose of competition law was to promote competition. US antitrust law treated corporate power as dangerous and sought to blunt it. European antitrust laws were modeled on US ones, imported by the architects of the Marshall Plan.

But starting in the neoliberal era, competition authorities all over the world adopted a doctrine called 'consumer welfare,' which held that monopolies were evidence of quality. If everyone was shopping at the same store and buying the same product, that meant it was the best store, selling the best product – not that anyone was cheating.

And so all over the world, governments stopped enforcing their competition laws. They just ignored them as companies flouted them. Those companies merged with their major competitors, absorbed small companies before they could grow to be big threats. They held an orgy of consolidation that produced the most inbred industries imaginable, whole sectors grown so incestuous they developed Habsburg jaws, from eyeglasses to sea freight, glass bottles to payment processing, vitamin C to beer.

Most of our global economy is dominated by five or fewer global companies. If smaller companies refuse to sell themselves to these cartels, the giants have free rein to flout competition law further, with 'predatory pricing' that keeps an independent rival from gaining a foothold.

When Diapers.com refused Amazon's acquisition offer, Amazon lit $100m on fire, selling diapers way below cost for months, until diapers.com went bust, and Amazon bought them for pennies on the dollar, and shut them down.

Competition is a distant memory. As Tom Eastman says, the web has devolved into 'five giant websites filled with screenshots of text from the other four,' so these giant companies no longer fear losing our business.

Lily Tomlin used to do a character on the TV show Laugh In, an AT&T telephone operator who'd do commercials for the Bell system. Each one would end with her saying 'We don't care. We don't have to. We're the phone company.'

Today's giants are not constrained by competition.

They don't care. They don't have to. They're Google.

That's the first constraint gone, and as it slipped away, the second constraint – regulation – was also doomed.

When an industry consists of hundreds of small- and medium-sized enterprises, it is a mob, a rabble. Hundreds of companies can't agree on what to tell Parliament or Congress or the Commission. They can't even agree on how to cater a meeting where they'd discuss the matter.

But when a sector dwindles to a bare handful of dominant firms, it ceases to be a rabble and it becomes a cartel.

Five companies, or four, or three, or two, or just one company finds it easy to converge on a single message for their regulators, and without "wasteful competition" eroding their profits, they have plenty of cash to spread around.

Like Facebook, handing former UK deputy PM Nick Clegg millions every year to sleaze around Europe, telling his former colleagues that Facebook is the only thing standing between 'European Cyberspace' and the Chinese Communist Party.

Tech's regulatory capture allows it to flout the rules that constrain less concentrated sectors. They can pretend that violating labor, consumer and privacy laws is fine, because they violate them with an app.

This is why competition matters: it's not just because competition makes companies work harder and share value with customers and workers, it's because competition keeps companies from becoming too big to fail, and too big to jail.

Now, there's plenty of things we don't want improved through competition, like privacy invasions. After the EU passed its landmark privacy law, the GDPR, there was a mass-extinction event for small EU ad-tech companies. These companies disappeared en masse, and that's fine.

They were even more invasive and reckless than US-based Big Tech companies. After all, they had less to lose. We don't want competition in commercial surveillance. We don't want to produce increasing efficiency in violating our human rights.

But: Google and Facebook – who pretend they are called Alphabet and Meta – have been unscathed by European privacy law. That's not because they don't violate the GDPR (they do!). It's because they pretend they are headquartered in Ireland, one of the EU's most notorious corporate crime-havens.

And Ireland competes with the EU other crime havens – Malta, Luxembourg, Cyprus and sometimes the Netherlands – to see which country can offer the most hospitable environment for all sorts of crimes. Because the kind of company that can fly an Irish flag of convenience is mobile enough to change to a Maltese flag if the Irish start enforcing EU laws.

Which is how you get an Irish Data Protection Commission that processes fewer than 20 major cases per year, while Germany's data commissioner handles more than 500 major cases, even though Ireland is nominal home to the most privacy-invasive companies on the continent.

So Google and Facebook get to act as though they are immune to privacy law, because they violate the law with an app; just like Uber can violate labor law and claim it doesn't count because they do it with an app.

Uber's labor-pricing algorithm offers different drivers different payments for the same job, something Veena Dubal calls 'algorithmic wage discrimination.' If you're more selective about which jobs you'll take, Uber will pay you more for every ride.

But if you take those higher payouts and ditch whatever side-hustle let you cover your bills which being picky about your Uber drives, Uber will incrementally reduce the payment, toggling up and down as you grow more or less selective, playing you like a fish on a line until you eventually – inevitably – lose to the tireless pricing robot, and end up stuck with low wages and all your side-hustles gone.

Then there's Amazon, which violates consumer protection laws, but says it doesn't matter, because they do it with an app. Amazon makes $38b/year from its 'advertising' system. 'Advertising' in quotes because they're not selling ads, they're selling placements in search results.

The companies that spend the most on 'ads' go to the top, even if they're offering worse products at higher prices. If you click the first link in an Amazon search result, on average you will pay a 29% premium over the best price on the service. Click one of the first four items and you'll pay a 25% premium. On average you have to go seventeen items down to find the best deal on Amazon.

Any merchant that did this to you in a physical storefront would be fined into oblivion. But Amazon has captured its regulators, so it can violate your rights, and say, "it doesn't count, we did it with an app"

This is where that third constraint, self-help, would sure come in handy. If you don't want your privacy violated, you don't need to wait for the Irish privacy regulator to act, you can just install an ad-blocker.

More than half of all web users are blocking ads. But the web is an open platform, developed in the age when tech was hundreds of companies at each others' throats, unable to capture their regulators.

Today, the web is being devoured by apps, and apps are ripe for enshittification. Regulatory capture isn't just the ability to flout regulation, it's also the ability to co-opt regulation, to wield regulation against your adversaries.

Today's tech giants got big by exploiting self-help measures. When Facebook was telling Myspace users they needed to escape Rupert Murdoch’s evil crapulent Australian social media panopticon, it didn’t just say to those Myspacers, 'Screw your friends, come to Facebook and just hang out looking at the cool privacy policy until they get here'

It gave them a bot. You fed the bot your Myspace username and password, and it would login to Myspace and pretend to be you, and scrape everything waiting in your inbox, copying it to your FB inbox, and you could reply to it and it would autopilot your replies back to Myspace.

When Microsoft was choking off Apple's market oxygen by refusing to ship a functional version of Microsoft Office for the Mac – so that offices were throwing away their designers' Macs and giving them PCs with upgraded graphics cards and Windows versions of Photoshop and Illustrator – Steve Jobs didn't beg Bill Gates to update Mac Office.

He got his technologists to reverse-engineer Microsoft Office, and make a compatible suite, the iWork Suite, whose apps, Pages, Numbers and Keynote could perfectly read and write Microsoft's Word, Excel and Powerpoint files.

When Google entered the market, it sent its crawler to every web server on Earth, where it presented itself as a web-user: 'Hi! Hello! Do you have any web pages? Thanks! How about some more? How about more?'

But every pirate wants to be an admiral. When Facebook, Apple and Google were doing this adversarial interoperability, that was progress. If you try to do it to them, that's piracy.

Try to make an alternative client for Facebook and they'll say you violated US laws like the Digital Millennium Copyright Act and EU laws like Article 6 of the EUCD.

Try to make an Android program that can run iPhone apps and play back the data from Apple's media stores and they'd bomb you until the rubble bounced.

Try to scrape all of Google and they'll nuke you until you glowed.

Tech's regulatory capture is mind-boggling. Take that law I mentioned earlier, Section 1201 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act or DMCA. Bill Clinton signed it in 1998, and the EU imported it as Article 6 of the EUCD in 2001

It is a blanket prohibition on removing any kind of encryption that restricts access to a copyrighted work – things like ripping DVDs or jailbreaking a phone – with penalties of a five-year prison sentence and a $500k fine for a first offense.

This law has been so broadened that it can be used to imprison creators for granting access to their own creations

Here's how that works: In 2008, Amazon bought Audible, an audiobook platform, in an anticompetitive acquisition. Today, Audible is a monopolist with more than 90% of the audiobook market. Audible requires that all creators on their platform sell with Amazon's "digital rights management," which locks it to Amazon's apps.

So say I write a book, then I read it into a mic, then I pay a director and an engineer thousands of dollars to turn that into an audiobook, and sell it to you on the monopoly platform, Audible, that controls more than 90% of the market.

If I later decide to leave Amazon and want to let you come with me to a rival platform, I am out of luck. If I supply you with a tool to remove Amazon's encryption from my audiobook, so you can play it in another app, I commit a felony, punishable by a 5-year sentence and a half-million-dollar fine, for a first offense.

That's a stiffer penalty than you would face if you simply pirated the audiobook from a torrent site. But it's also harsher than the punishment you'd get for shoplifting the audiobook on CD from a truck-stop. It's harsher than the sentence you'd get for hijacking the truck that delivered the CD.

So think of our ad-blockers again. 50% of web users are running ad-blockers. 0% of app users are running ad-blockers, because adding a blocker to an app requires that you first remove its encryption, and that's a felony (Jay Freeman calls this 'felony contempt of business-model').

So when someone in a board-room says, 'let's make our ads 20% more obnoxious and get a 2% revenue increase,' no one objects that this might prompt users to google, 'how do I block ads?' After all, the answer is, 'you can't.'

Indeed, it's more likely that someone in that board room will say, 'let's make our ads 100% more obnoxious and get a 10% revenue increase' (this is why every company wants you to install an app instead of using its website).

There's no reason that gig workers who are facing algorithmic wage discrimination couldn't install a counter-app that coordinated among all the Uber drivers to reject all jobs unless they reach a certain pay threshold.

No reason except felony contempt of business model, the threat that the toolsmiths who built that counter-app would go broke or land in prison, for violating DMCA 1201, the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, trademark, copyright, patent, contract, trade secrecy, nondisclosure and noncompete, or in other words: 'IP law.'

'IP' is just a euphemism for 'a law that lets me reach beyond the walls of my company and control the conduct of my critics, competitors and customers.' And 'app' is just a euphemism for 'a web-page wrapped enough IP to make it a felony to mod it to protect the labor, consumer and privacy rights of its user.'

We don't care. We don't have to. We're the phone company.

But what about that fourth constraint: workers?

For decades, tech workers' high degrees of bargaining power and vocational awe put a ceiling on enshittification. Even after the tech sector shrank to a handful of giants. Even after they captured their regulators so they could violate our consumer, privacy and labor rights. Even after they created 'felony contempt of business model' and extinguished self-help for tech users. Tech was still constrained by their workers' sense of moral injury in the face of the imperative to enshittify.

Remember when tech workers dreamed of working for a big company for a few years, before striking out on their own to start their own company that would knock that tech giant over?

Then that dream shrank to: work for a giant for a few years, quit, do a fake startup, get acqui-hired by your old employer, as a complicated way of getting a bonus and a promotion.

Then the dream shrank further: work for a tech giant for your whole life, get free kombucha and massages on Wednesdays.

And now, the dream is over. All that’s left is: work for a tech giant until they fire your ass, like those 12,000 Googlers who got fired last year six months after a stock buyback that would have paid their salaries for the next 27 years.

Workers are no longer a check on their bosses' worst impulses

Today, the response to 'I refuse to make this product worse' is, 'turn in your badge and don't let the door hit you in the ass on the way out.'

I get that this is all a little depressing

OK, really depressing.

But hear me out! We've identified the disease. We've traced its natural history. We've identified its underlying mechanism. Now we can get to work on a cure.

There are four constraints that prevent enshittification: competition, regulation, self-help and labor.

To reverse enshittification and guard against its reemergence, we must restore and strengthen each of these.

On competition, it's actually looking pretty good. The EU, the UK, the US, Canada, Australia, Japan and China are all doing more on competition than they have in two generations. They're blocking mergers, unwinding existing ones, taking action on predatory pricing and other sleazy tactics.

Remember, in the US and Europe, we already have the laws to do this – we just stopped enforcing them in the Helmut Kohl era.

I've been fighting these fights with the Electronic Frontier Foundation for 22 years now, and I've never seen a more hopeful moment for sound, informed tech policy.

Now, the enshittifiers aren't taking this laying down. The business press can't stop talking about how stupid and old-fashioned all this stuff is. They call people like me 'hipster antitrust,' and they hate any regulator who actually does their job.

Take Lina Khan, the brilliant head of the US Federal Trade Commission, who has done more in three years on antitrust than the combined efforts of all her predecessors over the past 40 years. Rupert Murdoch's Wall Street Journal has run more than 80 editorials trashing Khan, insisting that she's an ineffectual ideologue who can't get anything done.

Sure, Rupert, that's why you ran 80 editorials about her.

Because she can't get anything done.

Even Canada is stepping up on competition. Canada! Land of the evil billionaire! From Ted Rogers, who owns the country's telecoms; to Galen Weston, who owns the country's grocery stores; to the Irvings, who basically own the entire province of New Brunswick.

Even Canada is doing something about this. Last autumn, Trudeau's government promised to update Canada's creaking competition law to finally ban 'abuse of dominance.'

I mean, wow. I guess when Galen Weston decided to engage in a criminal conspiracy to fix the price of bread – the most Les Miz-ass crime imaginable – it finally got someone's attention, eh?

Competition has a long way to go, but all over the world, competition law is seeing a massive revitalization. Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher put antitrust law in a coma in the 80s – but it's awake, it's back, and it's pissed.

What about regulation? How will we get tech companies to stop doing that one weird trick of adding 'with an app' to their crimes and escaping enforcement?

Well, here in the EU, they're starting to figure it out. This year, the Digital Markets Act and the Digital Services Act went into effect, and they let people who get screwed by tech companies go straight to the federal European courts, bypassing the toothless watchdogs in Europe's notorious corporate crime havens like Ireland.

In America, they might finally get a digital privacy law. You people have no idea how backwards US privacy law is. The last time the US Congress enacted a broadly applicable privacy law was in 1988.

The Video Privacy Protection Act makes it a crime for video-store clerks to leak your video-rental history. It was passed after a right-wing judge who was up for the Supreme Court had his rentals published in a DC newspaper. The rentals weren't even all that embarrassing!

Sure, that judge, Robert Bork, wasn't confirmed for the Supreme Court, but that was because he was a virulently racist loudmouth and a crook who served as Nixon's Solicitor General.

But Congress got the idea that their video records might be next, freaked out, and passed the VPPA.

That was the last time Americans got a big, national privacy law. Nineteen. Eighty. Eight.

It's been a minute.

And the thing is, there's a lot of people who are angry about stuff that has some nexus with America's piss-poor privacy landscape. Worried that Facebook turned Grampy into a Qanon? That Insta made your teen anorexic? That TikTok is brainwashing millennials into quoting Osama Bin Laden?

Or that cops are rolling up the identities of everyone at a Black Lives Matter protest or the Jan 6 riots by getting location data from Google?

Or that Red State Attorneys General are tracking teen girls to out-of-state abortion clinics?

Or that Black people are being discriminated against by online lending or hiring platforms?

Or that someone is making AI deepfake porn of you?

Having a federal privacy law with a private right of action – which means that individuals can sue companies that violate their privacy – would go a long way to rectifying all of these problems. There's a big coalition for that kind of privacy law.

What about self-help? That's a lot farther away, alas.

The EU's DMA will force tech companies to open up their walled gardens for interoperation. You'll be able to use Whatsapp to message people on iMessage, or quit Facebook and move to Mastodon, but still send messages to the people left behind.

But if you want to reverse-engineer one of those Big Tech products and mod it to work for you, not them, the EU's got nothing for you.

This is an area ripe for improvement, and I think the US might be the first ones to open this up.

It's certainly on-brand for the EU to be forcing tech companies to do things a certain way, while the US simply takes away tech companies' abilities to prevent others from changing how their stuff works.

My big hope here is that Stein's Law will take hold: 'Anything that can't go on forever will eventually stop'

Letting companies decide how their customers must use their products is simply too tempting an invitation to mischief. HP has a whole building full of engineers thinking of new ways to lock your printer to its official ink cartridges, forcing you to spend $10,000/gallon on ink to print your boarding passes and shopping lists.

It's offensive. The only people who don't agree are the people running the monopolies in all the other industries, like the med-tech monopolists who are locking their insulin pumps to their glucose monitors, turning people with diabetes into walking inkjet printers.

Finally, there's labor. Here in Europe, there's much higher union density than in the US, which American tech barons are learning the hard way. There is nothing more satisfying in the daily news than the latest salvo by Nordic unions against that Tesla guy (Musk is the most Edison-ass Tesla guy imaginable).

But even in the USA, there's a massive surge in tech unions. Tech workers are realizing that they aren't founders in waiting. The days of free massages and facial piercings and getting to wear black tee shirts that say things your boss doesn't understand are coming to an end.

In Seattle, Amazon's tech workers walked out in sympathy with Amazon's warehouse workers, because they're all workers.

The only reason the tech workers aren't monitored by AI that notifies their managers if they visit the toilet during working hours is their rapidly dwindling bargaining power. The way things are going, Amazon programmers are going to be pissing in bottles next to their workstations (for a guy who built a penis-shaped rocket, Jeff Bezos really hates our kidneys).

We're seeing bold, muscular, global action on competition, regulation and labor, with self-help bringing up the rear. It's not a moment too soon, because the bad news is, enshittification is coming to every industry.

If it's got a networked computer in it, the people who made it can run the Darth Vader MBA playbook on it, changing the rules from moment to moment, violating your rights and then saying 'It's OK, we did it with an app.'

From Mercedes renting you your accelerator pedal by the month to Internet of Things dishwashers that lock you into proprietary dishsoap, enshittification is metastasizing into every corner of our lives.

Software doesn't eat the world, it enshittifies it

But there's a bright side to all this: if everyone is threatened by enshittification, then everyone has a stake in disenshittification.

Just as with privacy law in the US, the potential anti-enshittification coalition is massive, it's unstoppable.

The cynics among you might be skeptical that this will make a difference. After all, isn't "enshittification" the same as "capitalism"?

Well, no.

Look, I'm not going to cape for capitalism here. I'm hardly a true believer in markets as the most efficient allocators of resources and arbiters of policy – if there was ever any doubt, capitalism's total failure to grapple with the climate emergency surely erases it.

But the capitalism of 20 years ago made space for a wild and wooly internet, a space where people with disfavored views could find each other, offer mutual aid, and organize.

The capitalism of today has produced a global, digital ghost mall, filled with botshit, crapgadgets from companies with consonant-heavy brand-names, and cryptocurrency scams.

The internet isn't more important than the climate emergency, nor gender justice, racial justice, genocide, or inequality.

But the internet is the terrain we'll fight those fights on. Without a free, fair and open internet, the fight is lost before it's joined.

We can reverse the enshittification of the internet. We can halt the creeping enshittification of every digital device.

We can build a better, enshittification-resistant digital nervous system, one that is fit to coordinate the mass movements we will need to fight fascism, end genocide, and save our planet and our species.

Martin Luther King said 'It may be true that the law cannot make a man love me, but it can stop him from lynching me, and I think that's pretty important.'

And it may be true that the law can't force corporate sociopaths to conceive of you as a human being entitled to dignity and fair treatment, and not just an ambulatory wallet, a supply of gut-bacteria for the immortal colony organism that is a limited liability corporation.

But it can make that exec fear you enough to treat you fairly and afford you dignity, even if he doesn't think you deserve it.

And I think that's pretty important.

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/2024/01/30/go-nuts-meine-kerle#ich-bin-ein-bratapfel/a>

Back the Kickstarter for the audiobook of The Bezzle here!

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heartlilith · 5 months

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Sun in the Houses - Solar Return Chart

A Solar Return Chart "refers to the time when the Sun returns to the exact position it was in at the time of your birth in your natal chart. Since the Sun takes approximately 12 months to complete its cycle. Hence, a Solar Return happens every year. And, since this journey begins at the time of your birth, the return usually happens a day or two before or after your birthday" (via)

I like to think of an SR Chart as a yearly Natal Chart. You can see where the planets of your SR Chart fall into your Natal Chart or you can view your SR Chart by itself. I think both are important to acknowledge because you might relate to one chart more than the other or you might relate to both charts. For example; if you have Sun in the 10th house of your SR Chart but it falls into your 2nd house of your Natal Chart, look at both houses below (Sun in the 10th and Sun in the 2nd).

It's also important to remember that your sun sign will be the same every year, so if you're a Leo Sun in your Natal Chart, you'll be a Leo Sun every year in your SR Chart. Your Sun Sign might stay the same but the house it falls in and the aspects it makes will be different.

The Sun in your SR Chart represents where your focus is for the next 12 months, where you'll be concentrating the most. It also represents key themes that show up for you throughout the year. It's crucial to look at how your Sun is aspected to get a better glimpse of how you this placement will affect you.

Calculate your Solar Return Chart

Sun in the Houses

1h: Sun in the 1st house of your Solar Return Chart means your focus will primarily be on yourself, your physical appearance, and how you approach life. Since your natal sun sign would be your solar return rising, it could make for a more transformative and prosperous year. This year, you might decide to reinvent yourself physcially in some way; you may start working out or you could get tattoos. You could dye your hair or revamp your wardrobe; something that puts an emphasis on your individuality and that asserts your identity through physical appearance. It could also mean that your personality is more noticeable in some way and the people around you take notice. Since your rising sign affects the way you approach the world, it could also mean that you assert confidence in various aspects of life. Meaning, wherever you go you go with confidence; whether that be the workplace, school, or at home; you're generally more confident in all aspects of life (of course this also depends on the signs occupying corresponding houses). You might find that you get more attention this year (good or bad depending on aspects) or feel more comfortable with getting attention. You may go through something that changes your approach to life and the world around you. Remember you don't have to have intent, you could find that these things happen on their own, naturally.

Advice: Focus on how you want to appear to the world this year, put yourself and your needs first, and don't be afraid to express yourself - it's a great time to do so. People will pay more attention to you, so try to stay out of drama and scandals. Instead; aim to inspire the people around you.

2h: Sun in the 2nd house of your Solar Return Chart puts focus on your finances, your self-esteem, and your material possessions. Depending on how the Sun is aspected, it could mean that you're motivated to find other sources of income in order to bring more stability into your life. Check where the lord of your 2nd house is in your SR Chart (if 2nd house is in Taurus - check where Venus is in the houses, if it's in Gemini, check where Mercury falls in your houses). This can indicate how you can create another source of income. If it's in the 3rd house; writing and communicating can help you make more money, like blogging or becoming a free lance writer. If it's in the 5th house, creating and selling a product could help or even babysitting. You could also be focusing on saving money and budgeting. Your self esteem and values could change depending on how it's aspected. For example: Sun opposite Uranus could indicate that your self esteem fluctuates and is unstable for this year, along with your finances. Sun sextile/trine Jupiter could indicate that this year will bring wealth and you'll be secure within yourself. Sun in the 2nd house could make you focus more on material possessions; you could buy more stuff (purses, make up, clothes, jewelry) in order to boost your self esteem. You might stand up for yourself more when you notice people disrespecting you or you might need to change your personality in some way; if people are taking advantage of you, you might notice you need to act more assertive, for example.

Advice: Save your money incase unexpected expenses come up, take time out for yourself to practice self care, occasionally buy yourself a gift, learn how to invest

3h: Sun in the 3rd house of your Solar Return Chart puts focus on communication, siblings, short distance travel and transportation. This could manifest as keeping a journal this year to write down your thoughts and experiences. You may notice you're more curious this year and find ways to satisfy your curiosity; through reading, online research, and short distance travel. You may travel to new places like a new restaurant, a new beach, a new place that's close to where you are now. You're more inclined to share your thoughts and opinions with confidence and engage in meaningful conversations with others. You could make friends with people through similar interests; joining a book club and meeting a new friend or finding a new library to go to and meeting someone there. You will be full of mental energy that could manifest as anxiety depending on how your Sun is aspected. The relationships with your siblings might change for better or for worse or you might notice you spend more time with them. You might want to get involved in your community by volunteering, substitute teaching, reading to the elderly. You could start a successful blog that shares information on what you're interested in (astrology, fashion, psychology).

Advice: Getting into therapy would be very beneficial now, try new things and hobbies, join interesting clubs and try things you normally wouldn't.

4h: Having your Sun in the 4th house of your Solar Return Chart can bring family, your mother, and your home environment into focus. You might start thinking about starting a family, or someone in your family could become pregnant. You might visit your family a lot more this year and spend more time with them or your parents might visit your home a lot more. You'll want to focus on making your home more "homey" and decorating it in a way that aligns with who you are. You may become closer with your mother and spend more time with her. If harshly aspected, you may notice your mother (4h) and your father (Sun) may divorce or fight a lot more this year (this depends on other placements too). You may find that you'd rather be at home than go out, you'll be more introverted and prioritize comfort. You may have to stay home against your will due to duties related to children or maybe you have to stay home to take care of your mother or parents. Depending on Sun aspects, this could mean harmonious relationships with your family or it could mean more arguments. You might order a 23 and Me test to find out more about your ancestry and nationality.

Advice: Spend more time trying to get your family together, create happy memories with them and take pictures so you can look back on it. Focus on your home space and implement things that make it more comfortable. Invite people over for events or maybe throw a house warming party.

5h: Sun in the 5th house means focusing on hobbies, creativity, having fun, your inner child and children in general this year. This could mean less work and more play, whether that happens naturally or intentionally. You might take off work to go on vacation or even take work off to do something fun with your kids. You might pick up an old hobby or a new hobby that takes up your free time. Going out, being with friends, going to parties, throwing parties, or doing whatever your definition of fun is will be highlighted this year. You may notice that you're around more children this year which could result in connecting with your own inner child. For example, blowing bubbles with kids or pushing them on a swing could remind you of your own happy childhood memories. Connecting with your inner child this year is crucial; eating your favorite childhood meal, looking through old photos, or engaging in conversations with kids will be really beneficial. Self expression through hobbies, art, or writing can interest you this year. Since Sun in home in the 5th house, this almost always gaurantees an overall comfortable year (if Sun is badly aspected, this placement could make the aspects less intense). You could be more extroverted, creative, and carefree this year. You may find that you go on more dates or spend time on dating apps.

Advice: Focus on pleasure. What makes you happy? Your inner child happy? Try expressing yourself through artistic endeavors. Don't take life so seriously this year.

6h: Sun in the 6th house in the Solar Return Chart can indicate increased focus on physical health and wellness, daily routines, and your relationship to your peers/coworkers. This year you could end up making a dietary change; becoming a vegetarian or simply cutting out sugar. You could focus on what makes you feel good physically; working out and eating healthy. Depending on how the Sun is aspected, this could help you to "glow up" this year. You may try out yoga, pilates, or another workout class that interests you. Your daily routines will help you become more confident. We already talked about working out and eating healthy; this could also mean starting a skincare routine, a bedtime routine, or simply jotting down tasks in your planner. You may seek out alternative healing methods as well, again check aspects. This could include Traditional Chinese Medicine (acupuncture, medicinal herbs) or reiki and meditation in order to benefit your health. Relationships with peers/coworkers will be in focus as well, whether positively or negatively is up to the whole chart itself. Your energy levels can also be affected by the Sun and its' aspects.

Advice: Don't gossip in the workplace, adopt a pet, focus on how to spend your time more efficiently, start implementing positive habits in your daily routines.

7h: Sun in the 7th house in the Solar Return Chart can indicate focusing on love relationships, one on one friendships, and open enemies. You will want to get along with people in your life, you'll strive to have harmony and balance in these relationships. If you don't have a romantic partner, this might be the year that you meet someone special. Write down what qualities you want in a partner and see how they correspond with your natal 7th house. Manifesting and actively seeking a partner could help but it might just happen without your intention! If you have a romantic partner already, the Sun here makes you buckle down and really work on making the relationship flourish, or even taking it to the next level. This could be as big as getting engaged or married, or it could mean moving in together. It could be as little as meeting their parents or having them meet yours. All of this depends on the rest of the chart and if you look at house placements and aspects you can get a better sense of how you'll grow closer. The same goes for one on one connections in terms of friendships. You might grow closer to a friend or friends over the year. The 7th house also rules open enemies. Depending on aspects of the Sun this can be more or less prominent. Sun square Mars, for example, may mean that men with Aries or Scorpio-like qualities (doesn't have to be their Sun sign but can be) can brush you the wrong way or these people could even start arguments with you.

Advice: Focus on the positives and express to your lover or friend what you appreciate about them. Treat others the way you want to be treated. Stick up for yourself in a way that creates peace or better yet, kill the haters with kindness. Ask yourself why certain traits and aspects of other people bother you.

8h: Sun in the 8th house puts focus on personal and financial transformations, self discovery, intimacy, and shared resources. I won't lie, the 8th house can be a tough bid. All houses have their good and bad qualities but the 8th house is all about change which is uncomfortable for most. The good part about 8th house Sun is when you look back on your Solar Return a year from now, you'll be changed in a significant way. It can be hard but it will make you stronger, wiser, and more aligned with your higher self. You will face obstacles this year that will take you out of your comfort zone whether that's intentional or not. You may move out of your parents house and live across the country. You might go to therapy and realize why you act the way you do. You might be moving into your dorm in college this year. Think radical change. You might break up with your partner, move out, quit your job and move back home. It's hard to say exactly what will happen without seeing the rest of the chart because the 8th house rules "Deep personal transformation - " and that's it. Say your 8th house lord is in the 10th house, you'll experience a transformation related to your reputation or career, you may get fired or promoted in a significant way. Your reputation could take a blow or you could become famous. It's hard to tell, again, without looking at the whole chart.

Advice: Take things in stride, try to be your best self, trust yourself and the universe. Be careful with financial matters and contracts. Dive into taboos.

9h: Sun in the 9th house puts learning, long distance travel, and higher education into focus. You will want to expand your horizons in some way whether that be going to college, traveling and learning about different cultures, exploring spiritual practices, or seeking out profound experiences that lead to personal growth. Your year might consist of traveling abroad somewhere and learning about the place's culture. You could appreciate this culture and their values and implement it into your own life. You might go to college or take a course online that interests you in a way that others courses didn't. This course might alter your personality in some way. Say the course is about world religion, after learning about it you might explore it on your own time, for example; Buddhism (technically a philosophy but I digress...), you might take interest in their practice of meditation. You start meditating and it completely changes the way you view life, this could lead to a whole new belief system. You might take up a yoga class and after a couple months you might join your yoga class on a retreat somewhere; this could impact you tremendously and might change your course of life. After the retreat, you might become a yogi or start practicing something intense like Kundalini yoga. The possibilities with this house are endless, but they all start with being curious and wanting to learn something new. Take the first step by exploring other interests, you never know how they will affect your life!

Advice: Try something new this year, be open to new opportunities, quiet your inner critic and be spontaneous, don't let anxiety and insecurity get in your way.

10h: Sun in the 10th house of your Solar Return Chart could bring your career, reputation, and father (or dominant parent) into focus. This could indicate a need to be promoted or recognized by authority in terms of your career. You could get a raise or "climb the corporate ladder", you could find your true passion and open up a business. You might find that your relationship with your father or father figure impacts your personality in some way. You might grow closer or grow farther apart, you might recognize how the relationship affects you in your daily life. Sun in this house brings confidence into the workplace and depending on the aspects, coworkers could be jealous or threatened by that or you might get along well with them and gain popularity. Your reputation could be affected this year either negatively or positively; the Sun here on its own indicates that it will be affected positively but if squares or oppositions are present, it could go the other way. For instance, if Uranus squares your 10th house (aka MC/Midheaven), you might gain a reputation for being irresponsible or unreliable. If you have Venus sextile your MC, you may gain a reputation of being lovable and sociable and your relationship with your boss will be positive.

Advice: Be confident in the workplace and share your ideas. Don't be afraid to stand out. Try your best to create harmonious relationships with coworkers and if you're being treated poorly, stand up for yourself in a mature way. Ask for that promotion or raise.

11h: Sun in the 11th house of the Solar Return Chart puts friendships, community, and social media into your focus for the year. You will have the desire to expand your social circle or it can happen on it's own! You will want to be surrounded by like minded people that share your interests and ideas. The sign that occupies this house in your SR and Natal Chart can give you greater insight. If you have Scorpio in the 11th house of your Natal Chart, the friends you gain might hold some sort of power, they might transform you in some way (and this is true throughout your whole life). The ruler of the 11th house in your Solar Return Chart, say for example; Taurus, would fall into your Natal 5th house. Meaning the friends you make could have Scorpio/Taurus/Leo and even Aquarius placements (fixed signs). You could meet them through your children (the parents of your child's friend or you could connect with someone at a daycare while picking up your kids). You could meet these friends at a Paint n' Sip. You could meet a friend while going on a double date (think 5th house themes). Either way, they'll most likely have fixed sign energy and have planets falling in your natal 2nd, 5th, and 8th, and 11th house. Other than that, you may focus on getting more involved in your community; this could be volunteering or donating clothes to your local goodwill. You could become famous on social media! Or you could gain followers and attract more likes and comments on your posts.

Advice: Put yourself out there and join groups that spike your interest in order to connect with like-minded people. Get involved in your community or donate to a cause that you believe in. Raise money for the less fortunate or buy a meal for the homeless, you could start a chain reaction.

12h: Sun in the 12th house of your Solar Return Chart puts solitude, reflection, hidden enemies, and endings into focus for the year. This indicates that you'll be more introverted than ever, even if your Sun sign is the most extroverted of all the zodiac signs. You'll prefer to be alone which could sometimes lead to a feeling of loneliness. Sun in the 12th house could mean that you're your own worst enemy. Let go of limiting beliefs or insecurities; it's a good time to release problems relating to your ego since the 12th house also rules endings. The Sun shines a bright light on the house of the unknown, this could lead to finding out secrets or uncovering truths that could hurt your self esteem. If you're spiritual, you could connect more to your beliefs in some way (starting to pray more, going to church on Sundays, or reading books on Chakras and Crystal Healing, for example). If badly aspected, you could be hospitalized or in need of rehabilitation of some sort. Don't use drugs, don't gamble, don't take unnecessary risks. Focus on your mental health and reflect on who you are and what you'd like to change. The Sun in the 12th house could also signify an "ego death" which could put you through something significant that could change every aspect of who you are, since the Sun is the self. This could be as serious as a near fatal car accident or a near death experience of some sort (especially if Pluto/Mars are prominent). It could be as simple as helping others out and realizing that the collective is more important than the self and ego. Be patient with yourself this year and trust your intuition. Please, trust your intuition.

Advice: Don't take unnecessary risks, trust your gut, develop your psychic powers, start a dream journal, see a therapist. Ask for help when you need help, help someone in need, put yourself in other peoples' shoes. Go on a retreat and work on your relationship with yourself.

#astrology #astro observations #astrology community #astro #astro community #rising signs #leo #sagittarius #scorpio #cancer #solar return #solar return chart #sun in houses #sun in sr chart #solar return sun #astrology houses

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megistusdiary · 11 months

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blade… or danheng.. corruption + breeding

love the way you think honestly!! blade is literally so mf fine 🙈🙈🙈

dom!blade (ren) x sub!gender neutral (anatomy/pronouns) reader

warnings: little to no previous experience for reader, fingering in front of mirror (reader receiving), praise/degradation mix, reader is wearing a collar 🤭

"aww, you shouldn't have!" you cheerfully grinned at blade, holding your new wrapped up 'gift' box from him. you shook it a little, trying to hear if there was any rustling about.

blade's hand covered your own, lips quirked up in amusement. "just open it already."

"okay, okay." you obliged, turning away from him and unfastening the indigo ribbon tied around the box. you gently tugged the entire thing off, tucking it away into your pocket.

the second the lid came off, your glee slowly morphed into confusion. on a layer of tissue paper was a strip of leather.

upon further investigation, and carefully picking it up, your eyes widened at the realization of what this item was.

"it's...a dog collar?" you asked him, pausing to study the material. "...thanks..?"

blade scoffed, shaking his head and taking it from you. "it's not for a dog. it's for you." he leaned down towards you, shaking it tantalizingly. "wanna try it on for me?"

your face grew hot, free hand coming to press the back of your palm to your heated cheek. "i mean...sure."

this all stemmed from some silly conversation a while ago about wanting to try something new. exploring new things could be fun, you had told him, admitting that you lacked experience in the subject.

of course, he was more than happy to help you learn.

blade carefully opened the collar up, fastening it around your neck, slipping his fingers beneath the band to ensure it wasn't too tight. "good?"

your fingers came up to skate across the leather, lips parting as his hands covered yours. "do you want to see what it looks like?" his breath ghosted over the shell of your ear, feeling you nod against him.

he tugged you towards the full-length mirror in your room, angling your chin in such a way to admire the collar for himself. "it looks nice on you, doesn't it?"

you turned away, feeling thoroughly embarrassed, but you couldn't help the subtle rubbing of your thighs.

blade found this all rather amusing, directing his attention to your shifting stance. "you're really getting off to seeing yourself in a collar, huh?"

you immediately froze in place, feeling his chest shake with little rumbles of laughter as he gripped your hips. "it's okay," he cooed, though his tone was so cold. "you want me to help you?"

biting the inside of your cheek, you nodded rapidly, feeling him tug you onto the floor with him. "you better behave for me. i'm not in the mood to dole out punishments." he suddenly grabbed a fistful of hair, gently tugging your hair to have you leaning against him. "but that doesn't mean i won't."

he kissed your cheek quickly before releasing you. focusing instead on tugging off your clothes. your hands reached around to play with the slit in his top before his hand smacked your bare thigh.

a yelp of his name tumbled out as your thighs closed around his hand. "ren-" you frowned, feeling him push your legs open again.

"now, why don't you show me how you like it first?" blade moved his hand upwards, teasing you with his fingertips, leaving goosebumps behind. "i'm your puppet, just for now." he placed his hand where you could reach.

your hand came to cover his, hesitating for a moment as you dragged his fingertips over your thighs. you shifted awkwardly, turning to protest.

"why can't you just do it for me?" you huffed feeling him bite at your neck gently.

"indulge me, just this once. don't be such a whiny brat." he snapped, feeling you tremble a little from his voice.

you slowly moved his hand to cup between your legs, biting your lip when he moved his fingers a bit on his own accord. "do you have any, um, you know." you averted your eyes as he reached over to grab a bottle that you were quickly snatching from his grasp.

you applied some of the slick material onto your hand, rubbing some onto blade's hand before continuing to guide his hand around your sensitive areas.

you carefully moved him closer to your entrance, circling both of your wet fingers there as you leaned back against him, heaving a sigh.

"if i'd have known you'd be this needy, i would've taken care of you a long time ago." blade admitted, hearing you scoff at him.

"just...shut up please." you groaned when you began to slide his fingers into you, hips twitching as his thicker fingers filled you up. you let out a little gasp as you moved them deeper, thighs shaking.

"watch the mirror too." blade reminded, gripping your chin with his other hand and moving your head to watch your bodies.

you pushed another one of his fingers in, bouncing your hips a bit as blade grinned.

"riding my fingers already like the dirty little thing you are..." blade murmured, shaking his head.

"ren, please, more." your lips fell into a pout, the slick noises from you riding his fingers echoing through the room.

"but watching you is just so damn entertaining. if you can ride fingers this good, i'd love to see how you treat the real thing." his eyes fixated on your lower region. your thighs were straining from exertion but also a hesitation. you were holding back out of fear for his hand. how sweet.

"if you were riding me for real, you wouldn't have to hold back. fuck, i'd be pulling your hips down at my own pace." a sinister look passed over his face briefly that had him leaning over you even more.

"and at the very end, if you're good, i'll fill you up completely. you'll be dripping out onto the bed, a little trembling mess on the sheets." he felt you clench around his fingers without even thinking, eyes glazed over as you imagined the scenario playing out.

"doesn't that sound perfect, hm? don't zone out on me now..."

#honkai star rail smut #hsr smut #blade x you #blade hsr #honkai blade #blade smut #blade x reader #hsr x y/n #hsr x reader #hsr x gender neutral reader #gn reader #gender neutral reader #star rail smut #✎─𝘥𝘪𝘢𝘳𝘺 𝘦𝘯𝘵𝘳𝘪𝘦𝘴 ❛ ༉‧₊˚#💌─𝘢𝘳𝘪𝘴 𝘩𝘢𝘴 𝘮𝘢𝘪𝘭! ༊*·˚

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astroismypassion · 11 months

Text

Astrology observations 🌸🌸🌸

Credit goes to my Tumblr blog @astroismypassion

🌸If you have Virgo Venus, you could feel like you can have the most rewarding, stable partnerships with people who have a 6th house Synastry with you. If you are Taurus Venus, you could resonate more with 2nd house Synastry. If you have Cancer Venus, you connect best with people you have 4th house Synastry with.

🌸I noticed with Mars in the 12th house Synastry is that the Mars person (who most often has secret feelings for the house person) is more "spiritual" about the connection. They have this "if it's meant to be, it will be" passive approach towards starting the connection.

🌸Venus sextile/trine Neptune in a Synastry chart means that Venus person is easily inspired by the Neptune person, hence being more creative. Meanwhile, Neptune person could have material, financial benefits from Venus person, such as getting more lavish, expensive gifts, free dinner, more clothing etc.

🌸In Synastry, when one person's Saturn is negatively aspecting the other person's North Node, they North Node person can feel like this person is slowing down their life purpose and career. North Node person feels like Saturn person wants them to prioritize them and relationship they have with them (starting a family for example, being more present in the connection) rather than their career goals and life purpose.

🌸If both people end up dating their Saturn sign, they view each other as trophies or like a most prized possession. If you have Pisces Saturn, you could see your partner with Pisces Sun as a trophy.

🌸I'm noticing a pattern that I'm starting to develop in a little theory. Often men who have for example Gemini Sun mum, often go for women who have Gemini Moon in their chart. Or if their mum is Taurus Sun, they pick a woman who has Taurus Moon.

🌸Often times people who have Scorpio over the 4th house tend to overshare and claim they are "an open book", when in reality you don't really know much about them personally or what is happening with them or their life.

🌸People who have Mars in the 9th house LOVE to travel (especially long-distance), but I noticed with them, they at some point have this weird, unique, "rebel" phase when they just rebel against travel and kind of don't want to leave their home or hometown that they are used to.

🌸Libra Moon can get pregnant, expect a baby with a person that is already married.

🌸You can start feeling like they brought you closer to who you truly are at your core level around the sign over your 8th house. Like you become more you through the connection with this person, not necessarily "lose" yourself in the connection.

🌸 Partners of women who have Virgo Mars always admire their woman’s modesty and how humbke they are.

🌸People with Scorpio or Aries over the 4th house might really like the gym, but also kinda dislike themselves for how much take actually enjoy it.

🌸 For fitness motivation always look at the people who share their Sun sign with your Mars sign. For example: if you have Scorpio Mars, you might be really interested in a workout routine of a Scorpio Sun, such as Kendall Jenner. If you have Cancer Mars, you might want Cancer Sun Gisele Bündchen to leak her workout routine. The same goes for if you want to have a personal trainer, it’s best if this person has Sun sign of your Mars sign, because they will be able to motivate you better than others.

🌸 Gemini Juno could have a partner that diets or often does cleanses.

🌸 People who have Neptune Ascendant aspect might view the gym as a sanctuary or like personal therapy.

🌸 Young musicians who have Capricorn Venus make songs that even the elderly like to listen.

🌸 In Synastry Venus opposite Mars can mean that Venus person can act differently at home with their Mars partner versus when they are in the public with them. While Mars person is always their authentic self at all times.

🌸 People who have Cancer or Capricorn over the 8th house could attract a partner that acts like their mother (in case of Cancer over the 8th house) or their father (in the case of Capricorn over the 8th house).

🌸 Pisces Mercury and Neptune aspect Mercury can sometimes be mentally quite lazy or passive. They would rather challenge themselves to do a task, chore physically than mentally. For example, they would rather learn how to skate than learn biology.

🌸Capricorn, Pisces, Aries and Libra Moons are prone to be more emotionally insecure, especially when in a partnership. That's why they need validation on a daily basis or often.

Credit goes to my Tumblr blog @astroismypassion

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whore-ibly-hot · 1 year

Text

What Friends are For.

Yandere!Best Friend x Innocent!Reader

Warnings: AFAB reader (not the case with all my stuff.), yandere content, smut, dub-con, manipulation, corruption kink, overstepping boundaries, toxic friendship.

(An: My first smut, not exactly my best, it's been in the drafts a while 😑. If you enjoy, leave a comment or feel free to request something!)

💜👿💜👿💜👿💜👿💜👿💜👿💜👿💜👿

You sigh as you roll over to look at your best friend Carl, who seems more focused on his phone than the movie that blares from his TV. When he invited you to this sleepover, you didn't expect him to act so off. The whole evening he's been a little strange, constantly fidgeting and looking at you when he thinks you're distracted.

Suddenly, a knock sounds on the door of his room, and his older sister Sherri pokes her head in with a smile. "Hey guys, me and Dan are gonna go to a checkup for the baby and see a movie after, are you two good to stay here?" She asks. "Yeah, we'll be fine, we're not babies-" Carl mumbles as he shifts from his spot on the bed, dropping his phone onto his lap. Sherri rolls her eyes, and exclaims that she was just trying to say goodbye. "I'll see you later, Sherri!" You smile sweetly as she nods in response and bids you farewell. You hear the downstairs door slam as her and Dan leave, saying something about calling the babies doctor.

"It's really cool Sherri's having a baby, Don't ya think?" You ask, turning over to Carl. He shrugs, clearly not too enthused about the whole ordeal. "I guess, she's kind of a pain in the ass with all the, uh-" He thinks "Hormones n' shit." You let out a small laugh. He grins in response and leans back against the window frame just above his bed. "But, at least now that she's pregnant I don't have to hear them fucking upstairs everynight." He shudders as he recalls the many sleepless nights of him clutching a pillow over his ears in an attempt to drown the explicit noises. You fake a gag in response. He then groans, flopping over and burying his face in the pillow. "Having to hear that shit isn't exactly great for trying to get off, fuck I'm backed up." You look up, your brows creased in confusion. "Um, 'Backed up'?" You repeat, confused. "Y'know, like, I haven't gotten any in a while?" He says, sighing when your confusion doesn't lessen at his crude explanation. "I haven't fucked lately. That's what I mean." Your eyes go wide and you look down at this. "Oh, I'm sorry?" You respond, unsure how to approach that situation. You're not familiar with anything of that nature, especially not when it comes to guys anatomy.

"Nah, you ain't gotta apologize. It's not like you can help." He says coyly, glancing at you while trying to suppress a grin. He watches as you sit with a serious expression, deep in thought. "Well, maybe I could help..." You eventually mutter, only making his grin grow wider. He knows he's got you now. "I mean, I'm not gonna say no." He pats the bed beside him, and you nervously stand to sit beside him. "I don't really have any, um, experience with this stuff." You admit, and he only nods understandingly. "It's okay, I happen to be an expert with this stuff, just do what I say, alright?" He asks. You nod. "C'mere." He pats his outstretched legs and leans up against his headboard. You slowly climb up onto his legs, trying not to be clumsy. One of his hands immediately moves to your hip, while the other cups one of your breasts through your shirt. "What are you doing?" You ask, feeling his hands explore parts of you. "Well, I can't just get it up right off the bat, I gotta get ready." He explains.

"Fuck, you look good, but-" He pauses, making you look at him with concern. "I don't know if it's gonna be enough." He sighs. He knows he's lying, just getting to touch your over your clothes gives him enough jerk-off material to last him for the next year, but you don't know that. You're so eager to help, and god, he knows you'd look even better naked, letting him touch and use whatever he wants on you. "What should I do?" You ask, not wanting to disappoint him. "Take off your shirt." He winces at how over-eager he seems, and tries to correct. "Uh, it would help, I mean." You nod, unsure. As you unbutton the front of your shirt, you feel a pit form in your stomach, making you feel a bit nauseous. You try to shake it off as just nerves, and soon your shirt is dropped off the side of Carl's bed. You sit still, looking down as Carl ogles your chest. "Look at this," He coos, touching the simply lacey bra holding your breasts. "Y'know, if I didn't know better, I would think you wore this for me." He snaps the bra strap, startling you. He laughs at the squeak of surprise you let out, before his hand slips to the back of your bra. You shiver a little as he unhooks the bra and lets it hang loosley from your shoulders. He pulls it down, now completely exposing your breasts to him.

He squeezes your left breast, trying to gauge your reaction. You tremble a little, the feeling of his hands on you is not completely terrible. "Yeah, feels kinda good, huh?" He whispers, and you can only manage a small nod. "Try doing this yourself, just rub them with your hands, try to be gentle at first if it feels bad." He says. Your hands shake slightly as you place them over your breasts, nervously beginning to rub the tender pink buds as Carl watches with a predatory gaze in his eyes. It feels odd and sensitive at first, but after a few moments small tingles shoot from your chest, making your breathing slow. "Yeah, there you go..." He eggs you on. Despite his massive hard on pressing against his pants, he fights the need to get off in favor of playing around with you a bit more. "Keep going for me, okay? I'm gonna try something real quick." He says.

Carl's hand lands on your thigh, slowly slipping under your skirt and grinning when they part slightly out of instinct. You continue to rub your chest trying to continue the good feeling and ignore the growing bad feeling that remains in your stomach. Carl looks up, watching your face as he cups the front of your panties. "Uh-" You gasp a little, feeling pressure on that very sensitive spot between your thighs. "Keep playing with your tits baby, I'm just explorin' down here." He coos, turning his attention back to his hand. He strokes over your panties, prodding gently at your clit. "Oh, C-carl?" You ask, the shock of pleasure emitting from the simple touch makes you jolt. "Yeah?" He asks. "What are you doing, down there?" You ask. "Nothing, just gonna make you feel real good. Why don't you help me out, strip these off for me, m'kay?" He asks, feigning sweetness. You nod softly, slipping the garments off your thighs. His finger begins rubbing your clit gently, the strange feeling practically making you buckle and fall down onto him. "Hey, it's cool, c'mon... you can lay on me." He encourages, his free hand pushing your weak frame down against him. As he continues rubbing, you feel a knot forming in the stomach, different from the nausea you felt earlier. You let out a few noises, too overwhelmed to be ashamed by the lewd sounds slipping from your lips.

"Mm- Carl, feels funny-" You choke out. "Come on, baby, I need more than that, can't just feel 'funny' when you're this wet for me." He chuckles. "Feels good, F-feels so good." As the feeling in your stomach builds, you feel overwhelmed and a bit frightened, but your instincts tell you to chase the feeling, You begin to jolt your hips against Carl's hand, only making his brows raise with his smile. "Woah, takin' the lead huh? You might be more sensitive than me, huh?" You don't respond, continuing to buck against his hand. "Oh god, something's happening, I'm-" You cut yourself off with a moan. "Gonna cum for me, fuck, I'll make you cum. Say how good I make you feel, c'mon." He pants, his cocky attitude fading to pure lust. When you don't respond, too wrapped up in pleasure, he pulls his finger back. You practically scream at the sudden lack of stimulation, feeling that high fading fast. "Carl, please-" You whine. "Say how good I make you feel." His tone is less friendly, and it makes you shiver, though you're too desperate to resist. "You make me feel so good, so good. Please, m-make me feel good again." You whine. He begins to rub again, but not nearly enough to get back that high. "Faster, please." You moan. He grins at how helpless and worked up you are, the feeling of knowing he's in control is almost enough to make him cum with you. "Say who's doing this to you, m'kay? Fuck, I want the whole neighborhood hearing you whore yourself out to me, c'mon." You whine again, but fulfill the request. "You, Carl. Y-your the one touching me, making me feel so good, A-ah..." A few more sudden strokes and you feel yourself coming undone, your pussy convulsing around nothing as you spout unintelligible phrases. The feeling is so overpowering that you collapse naked onto Carl's chest. Panting heavily, you glance up. He's got a boyish smile, and he moves to stroke one of the hairs from out of your face. "So good for me, huh? Such a good friend." As he says this, you remember the reason you did this in the first place. "But, I didn't help you, y'know..." You trail off, suddenly shy after all that happened. He shrugs, and says "You did plenty, besides, we'll have time for me later." He says, You blush at the suggestion. "You mean you want to do something like this again?" You ask. He nods.

"C'mon, you're my best friend, and after seeing you like that, all needy and desperate, I'm not gonna end it here." He suddenly moves so he's now over you, with you pinned against his headboard. "It's gonna feel so good baby, you right here, under me. Fuck, your pussys gonna feel so fuckin' tight, letting me ram n' and out." He pants. Your face pales at the notion. This was supposed to be a one time thing, and you had planned on losing your virginity much later in life, to whomever you married.

"C-carl, I did this because you wanted help, I can't, I mean, I'm not ready to-" You pause. "Go all the way." His smile fades a little. "Why? You don't gotta be scared, I'll be gentle. I'm your best friend, remember?" He tries to keep himself calm, and not scare you off with his frustration. "But, surely there's other people who would do stuff with you." You say, trying to make some distance between you and Carl. "Course' there is. I'm a fuckin' smokeshow." He scoffs. "But I don't want to do it with anyone but you, got it? And you're not gonna do it with anyone but me." His voice is low now, and there is a glimmer in his eye you don't recognize. You shiver as you ask "W-why not?" He rolls his eyes. "Because, you offered to help me. You're not gonna hurt a friend, and break our promise, right? I still need your help." He coos, making you look away in guilt. "I guess..." You mumble, tensing when you feel a pair of lips on your neck. "That's my baby." He presses his weight gently against you.

"This is why you're my best friend."

#reader insert #tw.dark content #tw.yandere #x reader #yancore #yandere #yandere boy #yandere content #yandere fanfiction #yandere oc #yandere smut #tw.dubcon #tw.corruption #yandere x reader #yandere fantasy #smut #afab reader #oc carl

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merakiui · 22 days

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feel free to delete if this is perhaps too raunchy of an ask!! but how do u think the twst guys masturbate? do they use their hands, fleshlights/onaholes? are they loud or quiet? do they rely on their imagination or sexual material? etc etc lolol

I'm sorry that this is a bit of a sleazy question, but it has been pestering me ^^;;

Nothing is ever too sleazy when it comes to smut. <3 this ask gave me so many thoughts,,,

✧ Riddle only ever masturbates when it's absolutely necessary (i.e. he needs to de-stress and relax or it's a poorly timed erection that won't go away and he's too impatient to wait it out). Sometimes his mind wanders when he's studying. He doesn't mean for it to, but he often thinks back on the day's events when he's settling down for the evening and suddenly you pop into his mind and his brain is working overtime...... orz he uses his hand and lotion/lube and gets off to lewd thoughts in his imagination. It gets the job done. I like to imagine he's eerily quiet because he fears someone might hear him. That, and he probably learned how to do everything quietly after living so many years under his mother's roof. >_< he's biting his lip or stuffing his tie in his mouth to muffle any sounds that may slip out.

✧ Trey does it when he feels like it. All he really needs is his hand and some lotion and he's good. Sometimes he doesn't even use lotion; it really depends. I like to think Trey watches hardcore porn even though he seems like he may be into soft, sweet vanilla things on the surface. Definitely enjoys food play porn. Cater probably gifted him an onahole, and Trey uses it and imagines it's you. Does the trick every time. :) he's quiet, save for the few occasional grunts and groans.

✧ Cater absolutely watches porn. He scrolls through his favorite swimsuit models' Magicam accounts while he's moving his hand up and down along his dick. <3 sometimes he browses the selection of sex toys on his favorite online erotic stores. Although I also think he has a folder full of pictures of you and he looks through those when he's masturbating. You could be fully clothed and yet he's imagining cumming all over that cute, smiling face... depending on the day and how horny he is, he can be either loud or quiet while he's masturbating.

✧ Ace,,,, I want to preface this by saying he absolutely has a cum sock. T_T and you know he'll never tell you which one it is, so never ask to borrow socks from him for whatever reason. Sure, he washes it, but do you really want to use a sock that has been wrapped around his dick more than once in the past? ;;;;; Ace definitely watches porn. He masturbates a lot. Typical horny guy who has sex on his mind often. He's not very loud, but then he's also not very quiet either. He tends to lose himself in the sensations.

✧ Deuce tries not to masturbate all the time, but he can't help it. It's the same situation as Ace: he's a horny guy who gets worked up over the smallest things. A breeze could probably get him hard. </3 you don't know this, but the majority of his hard-ons are the result of you. He thinks of you all the time... things you say and do make him feel so hot. He uses his hand. It's impossible to use any toys in a dorm with three other roommates, and his hand makes things easy and simple. He tries to be quiet (he really does), but he grunts and breathes heavy a lot. >_<

✧ Leona's too lazy to search for porn that'll get him off, so he just sits back, shuts his eyes, and fucks into his hand at the thought of you. Ideally, it'd be much better if you were here and he could sink himself into your tight heat. Leona's a mess when he's in rut. He always tells you to keep away if you know what's good for you because even he's not sure he'd be able to restrain himself if you came into his room smelling so sweet while he's in rut. He's not very loud. Soft groans, maybe a growl here and there, but for the most part he's quiet.

✧ Ruggie does it more often than one might think. It's hard work running errands for Leona. He's got to get some stress-relief in somehow! He doesn't use anything fancy. Just his hand and some porn will do. Most of the time, though, he thinks of you. It's a little embarrassing how hard and needy he gets when he's fantasizing about you. <3 lots of whimpering and soft groans...

✧ Jack does it when he feels like it or when it's absolutely necessary. I feel like Jack often represses his horny thoughts by exercising and working out, so he doesn't masturbate often. The usual hand and lotion combination. It's bad when he's in rut, though. No logical thoughts in his brain. Just the ever-present desire to fuck and mate and breed.

✧ Azul......... my beloved darling. <3 he bought an onahole at the suggestion of a certain blue-haired board game club member and it was over for him. orz I think Azul whines a lot. He's panting like he's in heat. He gets so wrapped up in his fantasies. I don't think he's an avid porn watcher, but then this is because he's picky and has very specific tastes (it's you. you're the specific tastes). In merform, he uses one of those full body onaholes and pretends it's you. One tentacle wrapped around the silicone waist and bouncing it on his hectocotylus. He's definitely broken more than one sex toy LOL. Accidentally filled one of his onaholes with eggs and was so frustrated that it wasn't you. :(

✧ Jade is a menace (part one) because he's a Shameless Freak who is too curious for his own good. Instead of a cum sock, he probably has a jar. He makes it a fun game to see how much he can fill within a certain amount of time lol. Jade's sex fantasies are CRAZY. Sometimes he gets off to porn; sometimes his thoughts are enough to have him cumming into a tissue or his hand (or the jar). He's definitely more quiet than he is loud. In merform, anything goes. Jade's gotten great practice fingering his slit, so he'll use this expertise on you when the two of you finally fuck.

✧ Floyd is a menace (part two) because he does it all. Uses spit, lube, lotion, blood????? It doesn't matter how clean or viable it is; he wants to try it. He's messy with it. Probably has a cum sock as well. Human sex toys are so fascinating to him, so he's willing to sample it all. Whatever catches his interest, really. Most days if he's feeling something quick he'll just use his hand and look at things on his phone. Definitely has vocal range when he's masturbating. Some days he's loud and other days he's quiet. Like the above, Floyd's also down to do anything and everything in merform. You should 100% eat him out when he's in merform. Quickest way to have the eel wrapped around you (literally and figuratively).

✧ Kalim does it whenever he feels like it! He's also curious and wants to try all manner of things. He used an onahole once and was hooked. It's just so great. <3 he's even named it after you. T_T I think Kalim's louder than most when he really gets into it, but other than that he can be quiet sometimes. Not always, though. He throws his head back and gasps a lot when he's on the verge of cumming, eyes squeezed shut as he succumbs.

✧ Jamil does it when he has time. </3 his schedule tends to get busy when he's looking after Kalim, balancing his own life, studying, club stuff....... I like to imagine Jamil gets horny so easily and quite often, but he's the repressed type of horny because he never has enough time for himself!!! When he does masturbate, it's usually just with his hand. He hardly makes any noise, save for the occasional groan or pleasured hum.

✧ Vil does it whenever he's in the mood. It's healthy for the mind and body to masturbate every now and then, so it's not like he's against a little self-care time. <3 he probably sets aside time for it on the days when he knows he'll need some stress relief. Sometimes these things can't be planned for, so a little spontaneity is okay. I feel like Vil doesn't get too complicated with it (that's saved for when he's with you hehe), so he probably just uses his hand. If he's using any sort of toys, he makes sure the material is safe and won't hurt him or his skin. He's also very picky when it comes to toys and other products like lube and lotion. Most days his hand is enough. I think he's the type to gasp. Maybe a low moan here and there. In any case, all of his sounds always sound so beautifully debauched.

✧ Rook......... it goes without saying he does it whenever he wants and can get off to anything and everything. orz especially candid pictures of you!!!! I think he's also a type who is willing to try all kinds of things. He prefers the sensuality of skin to skin contact, so he's more than fine with using just his hand. "As nature intended," he'll probably say. T_T Rook is a hunter who is always so eerily quiet and stealthy. I like to think it's much the same when he's masturbating. Mostly quiet, save for the occasional sound every now and then.

✧ Epel also falls into the category of Ace and Deuce. He's a little sex-brained sometimes. >_< but can you blame him? There was hardly anyone else in Harveston his age and now he's at NRC and you're there and he's just,,,, down horrendous. I feel like he tries so hard to sound "manly" or more mature, but the truth is that he whimpers and whines like he's in heat when he gets really into it. Mainly uses his hand, but I think he'd be curious and buy an onahole for himself.

✧ Idia.......... T_T this one is already self-explanatory, but he's using his hand, lube/lotion, an onahole based on his favorite anime girl, etc. He watches hentai and reads r18 doujinshi of his favorite series. He's probably one of the few twst characters who does it so frequently. Lots of pent-up horny. OTL if you're chatting with him online, he jerks off to your messages. He keeps clips of your voice from the times you VC in Magicord and he replays them while he's fucking the onahole like he intends to knock it up. ^^;;; I think he whines a lot, but then maybe he's good at being mostly quiet when he's masturbating. Either way, he's left breathless every time.

✧ Malleus didn't even know pornographic imagery and videos on cellphones existed, so his idea of porn is probably a tasteful nude painting. Imagine the Renaissance nudes, but Malleus's probably commissioned someone to paint you like that. He's so sexually awkward, so an exposed ankle or shoulder or even an outfit that looks so wonderful on you could get him worked up. ;;;;;; he probably uses his hand, but sometimes he ruts into his pillows/sheets. orz he groans a lot. He definitely visits you post-masturbation and greets you as if he wasn't just picturing you beneath him, writhing and sobbing in pleasure. Post-nut clarity for Malleus is just him realizing you'd be much better than his hand or bedsheets.

✧ Lilia uses and does it all. He loves experimenting. He's always curious and willing to try everything once. At this point the question is: what hasn't he done? Sometimes he's quiet and sometimes he's loud. Sometimes he watches hentai (as per his online friend's recommendations) and sometimes he uses his imagination. He's always finding ways to try new things. Although lately he's enjoyed using your mouth. <3

✧ Silver does it when he's feeling up for it. I imagine he doesn't get horny very often, but when he does......... 👀 he just uses his hand and nothing else, but I'm sure he's heard from others how good certain things are. Silver's so genuinely honest, so I feel like he'd want to know if there's any merit to an onahole versus an actual hole (your hole). Something to try in the future perhaps... I think he can be quiet, but then I also imagine he groans softly a lot!!!

✧ Sebek....... he tries not to, but the horny always catches up to him. He does it more often than you'd think, but he refuses to use anything other than his hand. He's stubborn! Definitely makes a lot of noise and he doesn't even realize it.

✧ Rollo didn't do it much (only when it was a necessity), but after meeting you that changes. He goes from going weeks without touching himself to doing it nearly every other day. You make him feel so insatiably horny. He usually just relies on his imagination, but sometimes I like to picture him reading erotic literature. >:D he definitely relies on his hand and lotion/lube, and he's also another one who is scarily quiet.

✧ Neige does it fairly often! He likes using his hand, but then he also likes using an onahole. He's so obsessed with you to the point where I think you'd be the only thing that can get him properly worked up. He cums to thoughts of you, to pictures of you, to the sound of your voice, to the smell of you, to your clothes... he's so cute,,, definitely the type to whine and be noisy if he's really feeling good.

✧ Che'nya also does it often! He's a curious cat, so he'll want to try all kinds of things. He does it all. His ability to turn invisible makes him great for watching you during private times or secretly groping you in a crowded place and you're completely unaware of his presence hehe. He's also got a vocal range, and it really depends. Sometimes he can be so quiet, and other times he's so loud you think he's in heat.

✧ Fellow....... tell me you can see the vision: room dimly lit by candlelight or something and Fellow's leaning back against the headboard of his bed and he's slowly running his hand along the length of his lubed up cock. Slow and steady, dragging it out, edging himself to thoughts of you! >:D I feel like this is one of his favorite ways to masturbate. He has time. <3 why rush? He's not as loud as you may think. When he's alone, he probably gasps and groans a lot. The type to squeeze his eyes shut and bow his head when he's on the verge of cumming.

#twisted chit chat #n/sfw

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daechvvitas · 1 year

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BOYFRIEND MATERIAL

how i think each member would be like as a boyfriend part one - hyung line edition

WARNINGS: mentions of daddy k ink, praise k ink, brat taming, d*ggystyle, oral, bee dee ess em, degradation

A/N: this is a mixture of sfw/nsfw. thanks for requesting, anon! minors, dni.

NAMJOON

He's the most self conscious about the songs he writes about you. You're his biggest source of inspiration, so that means he wants the lyrics to be perfect. It throws him off kilter because normally, he can write a song in one sitting. Even in an ER room. But when they're about you, it's different. He likes the challenge, though. He feels like it makes him a better writer.

He points out baby shoes and clothing to you every time you guys are at a store. He's still not sure if he wants to have a kid or not but he can't help but still find the items super fucking adorable.

He has a bit of a daddy k ink. He never thought he would been into it but the first time it slipped out of your mouth, his brain went to static and he fucked you harder than he'd ever done before.

He buys you books specifically curated to your taste. Even more, he buys himself a copy too so that he can keep up with what you like.

He talks you through sex. It's full of a lot of praise and encouragement. "Look how good you're taking me" and the sorts. He also loves hearing validation from you that it feels good and he's doing well.

He hates when the two of you argue but he physically cannot stop himself from having the last word. What can I say? The man likes to be right. And sometimes, that stubbornness can lead to huge blow outs. He always makes it up to you, though. After a cool-off period, he'll come back with calmer logic and won't rest until the situation is resolved.

SEOKJIN

He always makes you meals, even when his schedule is insane. If he has to wake up in the wee hours to have it cooked and waiting in the fridge for you, then so be it.

He's a brat tamer. And he's damn good at it. Even if you don't have a particularly submissive nature, he'll have you a whimpering, shaking mess by the end of the night. But those intense nights come with the best aftercare. He'll run you a bath, make you food, and give you a ton of cuddles.

He's insistent on doing things for you, even if it annoys you. Grabbing things from high places, opening doors... You name it. He just likes showing how much he cares about you through action.

He's the type to jokingly rile you up but then end up actually getting really mad, which leads to arguments that could have been avoided.

Unfortunately, he has a bit of the gamer boyfriend syndrome. He does not like being interrupted when he's playing his games. He is a sucker for you, though. So he's willing to free up one of his hands to give you the attention you so desperately want. And no, he doesn't plan on muting his mic so you better keep those moans quiet.

He takes personal offense if he's not your bias or if you rocking any BT21 character that isn't RJ. He'll definitely give you a playful but bombastic side eye until you either change or admit that he is the only option to be your bias.

YOONGI

He wouldn't consider himself a 'romantic' but he shows that he cares through quality time. Even if you're just in the living room watching a show, he'll always quietly sit next to you. Just so you know he's always there.

Alternatively, he loves when you do the same. His genius lab is a sacred place that even his members don't dare to enter unless it's for work. But for you? It's an open door policy. Your presence motivates him more than it distracts him.

Speaking of his studio, the two of you have definitely fucked there. Multiple times. The first time it happened was just sort of a spur of the moment type of things but now, you live to bend over for him, chest pressed against the knobs of his music equipment as he thrusts into you.

He shares his food with you without any complaints or annoyance. If he notices you want a taste of whatever he has, he immediately offers it to you. Not even just a bite, either. He'll give you the whole thing.

He likes taking his time with you. There's a lot of foreplay where the tongue technology comes in hand. He loves to lick you, taste you, make you fall apart with just his mouth.

He prefers dates at home over dates out of the house, but he'll indulge you if you really want a night out. However, his ideal night would be cooking you both dinner, plenty of whiskey, and of course, you.

HOSEOK

Prepare to be touched all the time. Not even just sexually (though we'll get to that). He's just a very touchy feely boyfriend. Cheek kisses, hugs from behind, gripping your thigh. He just wants to feel your skin against his.

He loves sharing tea with you. He remembers every single piece of gossip you tell him, even if he doesn't know the parties involved, and enthusiastically picks whatever side you're on. In return, he always keeps you updated on the drama and insanity of his members' lives. There's really no secrets between you both.

He's a dom, for sure. When it's just the two of you behind closed doors, he feels comfortable enough to strip back the sunshine side and get to play with the darker side of him without judgement. He also finds it so hot that you trust him enough to go on wilder extremes together — tying you up, blindfolding you, spanking you. He craves having control over you.

His favorite form of aftercare is giving you a massage. Typically, he has you folded up like a pretzel as he has his way with you. So making sure your body is taken care of afterwards is of utmost importance. As he massages you, he likes to sweetly shower you with compliments just so you know that any degradation that occurred during sex does not hold true in real life.

He's the first to like your social media posts. Yes, he has notifications on just to make sure he's the first. It could be a selfie or a random picture of the sky and he's the first on the post, showering you with emojis.

Sometimes, he needs personal space. You didn't do anything wrong. But when things get hard at work or overwhelming in his personal life, he has the tendency to retract instead of engage. He doesn't ever have the heart to tell you that but you can tell by the short answers or less enthused interactions. The best thing you can do is give him that space to work through his head.

#namjoon x reader #jin x reader #yoongi x reader #hoseok x reader #bts headcanons #bts x reader #bts imagines #bts as boyfriends #bts scenarios

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httpiastri · 6 months

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charles leclerc x sainz!reader, 18+ mentions

charles is waiting for you outside the club once your uber arrives. it's like he knew when you were going to arrive, like he had a tracker on you – or like he was just waiting for the first best person to get his hands on.

"if it isn't my favorite sainz sibling," he says when he opens the car door for you, his handsome grin flashing down at you as you step out. "had a good day in the paddock?"

"probably better than you," you joke, your hand landing on his shoulder to give him an apologetic rub. "my brother was upgraded to the podium, but you were disqualified, so..."

"shit happens." charles shrugs before snaking his arm around your waist, leading you into the club. "my day is about to get a lot better, though."

a chuckle leaves your mouth. his fingers move up and down your side as you make your way to the bar, and charles slows down every once in a while to greet some friends and other acquaintances.

you wonder what this looks like to those who don't know. you attached to his hip, his tight grip on your side, your body leaning against his. but to those who do know, the sight is nothing strange or unusual. despite how much you both try to deny it – not only to others but also to yourselves – you're drawn to each other like magnets.

"buy me a drink, will you?" you ask.

he's facing you now, and his hand still hasn't left your hip. "no, i don't think so." you raise your eyebrows, tilting your head to the side at his words. "i know what it would lead to. and we both made a promise not to go there, didn't we?"

"maybe so. but..." you pull your fingers through your hair, shaking out your locks. "what if i make it up to you?"

"and how would you do that?"

you pretend to think about it for a moment, pursing your lips. "i'll tell you the color of my panties."

charles pauses, his mouth dropping slightly open as his expression grows blank. you can practically see the gears turning in his head, and you have to let out a laugh.

"oh, you're actually considering it?" you ask teasingly, shooting him a wink as he just blinks at you.

his free hand drags across his face and he drags his hand down his face. his voice is low when he speaks. "shit, you can't just say that."

"why?"

he groans and his eyes wander across the room, hoping that looking away will save his cheeks from growing even hotter than they already are. "it makes me think things i shouldn't think about. not when i'm trying to stay away from you."

your hand on his cheek makes him look back down at you. you know what he's thinking, you can see it in his eyes. he wants you – and you want him too. "you hate it, don't you?" you smile up at him. "me being your teammate's sister?"

"so much."

your hand moves from his cheek to his neck, fingers playing with the short strands for a moment. you have to step closer to reach the back of his head, dragging your hand through his digits as his warm breath fans over your face. his adams apple bobs when he gulps, his eyes hazy and gaze weak.

it's so easy for you to get to charles. you always leave him feeling weak in his knees, like the breath has been sucked out of his lungs, like the annual butterfly convention is located in his stomach.

you know he won't be able to refrain. he'll have to give in.

"this would get so messy," he says, voice low as a whisper.

the dress you're wearing is so short that charles doesn't have to reach far down to find the edge of it. his fingers pinch the material, the corners of his lips turning up when it rides up even higher on your thigh. "you know it's worth it, though," you answer simply, trying your best not to lose your cool. you don't want him to see what effect his actions have on you – you are supposed to be the teasing one.

his thumb draws circles into the inside of your thigh, and you squeeze your legs together instinctively. the action reminds him of how he's seen you before, legs clenched around him with your hands in his hair just like now, and the thought causes his brain to short-circuit (and the tent in his pants grow). he shakes his head, unwillingly pulling his hand away from you to grab your hand. "okay. you win," he mutters, intertwining his fingers with yours. he pulls your hand up to his mouth to place a quick kiss on the back of it, as if to show you that he isn't actually as upset as the playful frown on his face tells you, before dragging you with him to the door again.

"i always do, don't i?"

"shut it."

"wait, i wanted you to buy me a drink-"

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nostalgebraist · 2 months

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the light, and the glass

So there's this particular quality I have, as a fiction writer, and I have very little sense of how common or rare it is.

The quality is closely related to that famous Michaelangelo quip, about his sculptures being "already complete within the marble block":

The sculpture is already complete within the marble block, before I start my work. It is already there, I just have to chisel away the superfluous material.

This is how I feel, too, about my works of fiction. They feel like "real things" that "already exist," in some important sense, before I write them down -- or, indeed, before I even fully know what they contain.

So, for instance, if I haven't yet thought of an ending for a story I'm playing with in my mind, I nonetheless have a vivid sense that this particular story has an ending, and that this ending already is whatever it happens to be. It's only that I haven't managed to "see" it yet.

To clarify the point, consider the contrast between this thing, and two relatively familiar ways of thinking about how fiction gets made:

Conscious, goal-directed craft/artifice. Intending to write a Satisfying Plot in which each character has an Arc, the Story Beats follow logically from one another and are arranged with what is called Good Pacing, the proverbial Cat is Saved, etc., and "solving for" these desiderata in a conscious manner. Or, intending to create something much more outré and unsettling than all that -- but having some specific set of (outre, unsettling) intentions in mind, at the outset, and concocting/arranging the elements of your work in a conscious way guided by these intentions.

Free-wheeling, self-expressive "creativity." Just do whatever, man! Follow your bliss. The canvas is blank and anything is possible. Whatever you feel like putting into that empty space, go ahead and put it there. (The key thing being that, after "putting something there," you'll look and recognize something with origins in you, and your own whims and feelings at a particular moment.)

For me, though, the process of writing, and even of "ideating" (plotting, etc.), feels like a kind of transcription or channeling, as opposed to either of the above.

When I say "channeling," here, I don't mean that I have some actual, mystical belief in a supernatural object revealing itself through me. Not in the woo-woo sense anyway; whatever is really going on here, I am sure it "merely" involves the mechanics of the human mind, as implemented in the physical human brain and body.

But I do mean that it feels a lot like that. Like the story -- and not just the story part of the stories, but the whole thing, the "art object" -- has some real prior existence outside of me, first.

Like I am merely doing my best to "get it right," to be a perfect transmitter for the radio signal. To "do justice" to the "real thing," in the secondary act of writing words onto a page.

To be a courier who transports a valuable object from some originary otherworld into a place which happens to be called "existence" -- and to ensure, as much as possible, that it suffers no disfiguring scrapes during the journey.

----

I should say, though, that there's a lot of the "#1" above in my process too, the conscious-artifice thing.

Except... when I do that kind of thing, the intentions all come from the "real object," and my goal is to fill in whatever I can't see of that object so that everything I can see is preserved.

So: I will come to know, surely and indefeasibly, that the story must have some particular feature. (An event, a little moment, a character feeling a certain way at a certain time, even a specific turn of phrase.) Better to say: I know the story does have this feature. I see it in the marble.

But I can't see everything that's there, already, in the marble. And sometimes these glimpses-from-the-beyond are strange, inconvenient, difficult to "fit" into the current story (or perhaps into any story) in a natural-seeming manner.

And that's my task, when I'm doing the conscious-artifice thing: to take this collection of axiomatically-present glimpses, and build a structure around them into which they can "fit," naturally and even logically, just as if they were ordinary story-building-blocks like their neighbors, being placed here and there for ordinary story-reasons.

----

This has various implications. For one, it determines which kinds of writerly anxieties I suffer from, and which types leave me alone.

Like, I have virtually no self-doubt about my "ideas." About the overall, large-scale goodness-or-badness of the thing I'm creating. At least, not when considered "in principle," in an idealized sense that abstracts away from my actual capabilities as a guy who puts words on pages.

"Was this story, as a whole, a good idea?" is a question I find difficult to ask myself. Even when applied to smaller units, like specific plot points, this kind of question simply goes nowhere when I attempt to think about it. Insofar as my mind can cough up any answer, that answer looks like:

Yes

(after a moment, with mounting bewilderment) Yes, obviously -- how strange even to ask!

(after another moment, and as an afterthought) ...but if it weren't any good, is that really my business? It's not like I came up with it. I was asked to keep it safe and bring it into reality, and I take that duty seriously, but once it has reached its destination I wipe my hands of the matter. Don't shoot the messenger!

It's not, just, that I feel like the "real thing" "already exists." I also feel, always, that the real thing is... really good.

I deeply, thoroughly trust the Muse / Higher Power responsible for originally "making" this stuff. (To speak in relatively woo-woo terms, for ease and clarity.)

The Muse / Higher Power is a seriously skilled artist, much more so than little-old-me; if She makes any errors at all, they are not really mistakes, but "are volitional and are the portals of discovery."

And what's more, there is a sacred, unearthly gleam to the artifacts She makes, perhaps having something to do with that Fairyland, that place-other-than-"existence," in which they are originally made.

It feels like an honor to be designated as a courier for these enchanted things. Perhaps not a deserved honor -- on which more below -- but it's never the nature and value of the transported goods that I doubt.

(There is a definite sense of ritual to the thing that I do, here; a sense of connecting with some other place, definitively apart from our mundane here-and-now, and likewise more important/primary/etc. than the latter. Hence, perhaps, my tendency to not-write for long stretches, and then write in long sustained bursts for many hours at a time, which need a good deal of preliminary building-up-steam before they fully get going; it takes time to pierce, and then fully cross, the veil between worlds. And the various imprints of this stuff on the works themselves are not hard to see, once you're looking for them; they are of course especially transparent in TNC.)

All that being said, I do suffer persistently from a different anxiety.

When Michaelangelo said the thing about the sculpture "already complete within the marble block," he said it as... Michaelangelo.

As a famous, incontrovertibly masterful craftsman. Not a guy likely to suffer from doubts about his ability to put the chisel to the marble block, and reveal precisely that shape which was already there, inside.

But I'm not Michaelangelo. I'm not even sure I'm a good craftsman, much less a great one.

Certainly I've never conceived of myself in this way, even aspirationally. (Well, maybe I did in childhood and adolescence, but that was a very different thing from what I'm talking about now.)

I don't do what a person would do, if they wanted to be a Writer, and strove to be the best one they could. I don't, for the most part, practice my craft. I write because there's a Real Thing that only I can see, and it's not going to make into Existence any other way.

And since I don't write by habit or as practice -- since I only write at times when a Real Thing is in need of some incarnating-work, and I'm the only one around to do it -- I'm not exactly an ideal candidate for the job.

I am like a man who never especially wanted to be a sculptor, never practiced the trade, and was never more-than-ordinarily good with his hands, even... who is then, suddenly, struck with a very literal version of the experience Michaelangelo described.

Who, suddenly and inexplicably, begins to actually see a sculptural masterpiece lurking inside, whenever he looks at a faceless marble block.

What is our protagonist to do? Naturally, he will find a chisel, and begin chipping away. He will feel that these things need to be freed from their prisons, released and revealed to all the world, so that all the world can delight in them as he already does.

But he will be very aware of the unfamiliar way the chisel sits in his hand; of the way that hand trembles, and fails to meet the mark, and sometimes shaves off precious bits of what was really and originally a beautifully formed hand -- so that the hand, in the realized artwork, forever bears some oddity of shape which was not a part of what he saw inside the block, but only a consequence of his own shameful incompetence.

He will feel that his works, such as they are, are an odd mixture of amateurish craft and direct, divine inspiration. Insofar as he is Great, it will be because he has had Greatness thrust upon him, from without. He will feel, sometimes, that his successes have been obtained through a kind of cheating, not won fair-and-square.

And he will feel, always, a particular kind of (justified) impostor syndrome: an awareness that what he is doing, when he sits down before the marble block with the chisel in hand, is a very different sort of thing than what is usually called "sculpting," and what is being practiced by careful, hard-working aspirants just down the road, at the local workshop. The students there call themselves "sculptors," and our protagonist supposes he must call himself a "sculptor" too -- but he knows that behind this coincidence of language, a vast and strange chasm is hidden.

(I worry that this metaphor sounds flattering to me -- I am divinely inspired, they are merely toiling away and following the rules -- when I don't mean it that way at all.

In particular, note that there is nothing in our story to rule out some of the "real" sculptors down the road from also being visionaries who see the finished work in the block. Indeed, I got the metaphor from Michaelangelo, who was precisely this way.

I am only saying that all the conceivable configurations of craft/inspiration are in fact possible: just as it is possible to be skilled but uninspired, it's possible for inspiration to strike someone who lacks the capacity to fully realize its content. And that is how I feel, about my own attempts to create.)

----

When I was getting near the end of Almost Nowhere, and struggling with this kind of feeling, Esther would often reassure me by saying: "you are the light, and you are the glass it shines through."

In other words: you are a transmitter, and you are the source of the transmitted signal. Remember that in actual fact, the "real thing in the marble" came from your own little brain, just as much as the rest of it did. In actual fact, if there is a Muse and a Higher Power, it is really just an additional part of the same creature that holds the chisel, and worries over its trembling hand.

I did, indeed, find this very reassuring. And that's a funny thought, in a way! I imagine that for some people -- and indeed for me, in many other endeavours -- the same sentiment could easily have the opposite effect.

"It's all on you. It's all your responsibility. If any of it is bad, there's no one else to blame. If there is any 'Higher Power' at all, it is only the one inside you at all times, and not able to save you through unexpected intervention, from some true outside."

But I already believed, thoroughly, in the magical potency of the goods I was charged with transporting. If I was (somehow!) their maker, too, then (somehow!) the root of that glimpsed, alien magic was in me.

And so, perhaps, I could trust myself to ferry them into Existence without ruining, without even much dimming, the fairy-gleam from elsewhere that made them what they were.

#blah blah blah

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