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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.

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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!

Image: Drahtlos (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Motherboard_Intel_386.jpg

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

cdessums (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Monsoon_Season_Flagstaff_AZ_clouds_storm.jpg

CC BY-SA 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/deed.en

#pluralistic #transmediale #lectures #enshittification #big tech #berlin #mcluhan lecture #Youtube

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wlntrsldler · 29 days

Note

If the boys played “never have I ever” in an interview, what would be revealed to the public?

I SPRINTED TO MY COMPUTER

here's the transcript of poisoned mercury's buzzfeed interview where they played never have i ever as part of their press tour to promote their new album:

interviewer: thank you guys for coming!

luke *smiling while he fixes his mic*: thanks for having us :) we were just talking about how we used to do buzzfeed quizzes when we were younger.

travis: there were many days where we'd be in luke's house back in connecticut and completely forget that we were supposed to be rehearsing because we got caught up trying to figure out which inside out emotion we were.

interviewer: well, i'm glad to hear it because today we're gonna play a game of 'never have i ever.'

chris: unrelated but i fucking love that show. team paxton for life.

luke: dude no. ben is clearly the right choice.

connor: ok mr. enemies to lovers, of course you'd say that.

luke: shut up???!

travis: i think if we took the inside out quiz again right now, i'd get disgust because that's how i feel being in a band with two idiots who are so in love with their girlfriends.

connor: swear to god if i hear another "no you hang up first," from either one of you *looks at chris and luke* i'm blowing my brains out.

interviewer looks around the room, trying to ask the producers what she should do. the video editors are already stressing because they know they have to bleep out a lot of the words the boys are using.

interviewer: .... so let's start with the first question. never have i ever gone skinny dipping.

chris: fuck, how did you get all of us on the first question?

connor: yeah we've gone skinny dipping a few times, but the most recent was last summer. mama c-- shoutout mama c, we love you!

luke: yeah, we love you mama!

connor: she put all of us on timeout and we spent the entire summer at a music camp and on our last night, we all went skinny dipping at the lake with our roommates.

luke: oh shit, i forgot about that. those were good times. *looks at chris* i miss camp bro.

chris: me too.

travis *stares deadpan into the camera*: do you see what we have to deal with?

interviewer: never have i ever had a crush on a friend's sibling.

travis: guilty.

chris *turns his head so fast*: given that you're related to connor and luke is an only child, you better be talking about a non-band friend.

travis *shrugging*: your older sister is hot, rodriguez.

chris: stay away from my sister.

luke *looks at the interviewer with wide eyes*: next question or you'll have a video to submit to worldstar.

interviewer: oh! uh, okay-- never have i ever accidentally posted something to my main account instead of my private or close friends one.

connor *cracking up*: castellan, wanna take this one?

luke *blushing*: this feels like a targeted question because we know the infamous video of me with the handsome squidward filter on (the hozier incident) that was supposed to go on my close friends story! i was so embarrassed. to be clear, i was JOKING. i don't actually flirt like that.

travis: i've seen you flirt with y/n, and you in the squidward video had more game than you normally do.

luke *teasing because he knows travis does not want a relationship*: and yet who's single between the two of us?

connor: oh he got you there.

travis: y/n, if you're watching this, you deserve better. he's a loser. i have better friends i can set you up with.

luke: five star, if you're watching this, you're stuck with me. there's no going back.

interviewer: never have i ever had a song written about me.

chris: this is a great pivot to promote our sophomore album's lead single, "kiss her you fool!" we wrote this song about our front man, luke, here. our second album "optimism don't come easy (unless it's with you)" is out now.

interviewer: i love that shameless self-promo.

connor: i think we as a band can benefit from having some shame, but thank you.

chris *turns to luke*: this will also come as a shock to you, but there's another song out in the world that's kinda about you.

luke: huh? which one?

travis: quinnie, remember her? she was in cabin 7. she wrote the bulk of it, but y/n actually gave her the idea. chris and connor helped her with instrumentals and the song is sick.

connor: it was amazing. quinnie is so talented. if you guys haven't heard her music, i highly, highly recommend it. the song we're talking about is called touch tank. you guys should check it out.

chris: agreed. she's also just a fucking cool person. she's one of our closest friends in the industry.

travis *making a heart with his hands*: we love you, quinnie!

interviewer: okay, final question since we're running out of time. never have i ever gone on a world tour for my band's second album.

luke *laughs*: i see what you did there. that was good.

connor: we are soooooo excited to announce that we're going back on tour! this summer, we'll be seeing all your beautiful faces again. tickets go on sale this friday! we hope to see you there!

luke: check out our band's twitter for more information on how to get tickets and to see if we'll be coming to a city near you.

chris: we miss seeing you guys!

travis: see you guys so soon! we love you!

interviewer: that's all the time we have for today. thank you guys so much. it was a pleasure!

#frances writes #poisoned mercury chats #lol this was fun #luke castellan x reader

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keen-li · 5 months

Text

"IT JUST SLIPPED"

Today you had to shoot a cooking talk show like video for your YouTube channel. You were so excited and happy cause you had two special guests. Bangchan and felix.

You had a hard time sleeping cause you were so nervous today. And as you walk through the studio towards the set up kitchen you get even more nervous.

"Have they arrived?" You ask your assistant as she walks beside you.

"Yes they just got in" as she says that the nervousness sinks in more.

Its the first time you and any straykids members are filming something together, you have many reasons to be nervous but the main reason is you're afraid you might slip up. Slip up? Yeah you're afraid you might accidentally call chan 'baby' like you always do when you're with him. But most of the time when you're with him it's not infront of large lights and cameras.

Nobody knows that you two have been dating, not your companies, not your crew, not even you're assistant, it's still kinda new so you wanna keep it low. The only people who know you and chan are dating are his members. Who said they found out when they all "accidentally" saw you and chan's chats. The defenders were han and Lee know, when you saw those two open there mouths to defend you knew it was bullshit. Who accidentally reads three months worth of conversations in front of others accidentally.

You were kinda mad and embarrassed that they read your messages cause you and chan had some spicy texts and pictures in there. But chan promised to talk to them and keep his phone better which made you feel better.

And it seemed like chan's talk did work on them, cause they never brought up any of the messages or made any silly joke about it. They only congratulated you and made you feel comfortable.

You see the familiar figure of your boyfriend and his bandmate walk in straight to you. You and chan give eachother smiles hoping no one noticed cause you and him need to keep this a secret.

When they approach you, felix first, you share greetings and give eachother hugs. When chan hugs you he tries to not make it obvious by placing his hand a little lower on your back.

"I missed you" he whispers into your ear and you feel the heat consume you.

"Shut up were supposed to be undercover" you joke.

"But I missed you too" you confess still in a whisper.

You two missed each other like you didn't text and facetime everyday when you can.

He walks by you as he greets the crew.

After sometime and getting things ready it's time to film.

Since its your youtube channel and show you have to be the one to introduce them.

"So today we're gonna do a little cook and chat" you begin to say to the camera.

"But before we do I wanna introduce you to two people" you give a look to chan and felix as they take it as a sign to get into frame. They give their biggest smiles to the camera as they bow to it and to you which you return as well.

They give their intros and you smile at them as they express how they're happy to be here and how much they've always wanted to be on your show. It makes you blush but it's not like you didn't know. One of the reasons this filming idea came up was because chan expressed to you how much you he wanted to be on your show. And after both of your companies accepted, the date was set.

You and the boys laugh as you answer some funny questions and chop up some food. One of the questions led to chan having to tell an embarrassing story which makes everyone in the studio laugh. You also end up telling a story and chan can't help but watch as you smile and giggle when you tell the story.

He always loved hearing you talk and express yourself, it's one of his favourite things about you. Feeling his loving gaze on you, you glance at him and warn him making him look away and focus on washing the lettuce.

You're cutting some cucumber when it slips from the grip of the knife and cuts you a bit.

You hiss catching everyone's attention. Chan looks at you worried as he watched you rush to the sink. It kills him how he can't just run over to you and care for your wound just because people might find out.

"I'm good guys" you say but it doesn't help lighten chan's heart.

Felix notices his uneasiness and taps him on the back. "She's okay bro relax" he doesn't pay much attention to that as he watches a staff wrap your finger with a bandaid.

After you get back you grab a new knife and new cucumber as chan stares at you still uneasy.

"I'm okay chan" you smile at him and he feels a little more relieved when you say it directly to him, maybe it's your smile that comforts him. But he still wishes he had been the one to help you.

You continue to shoot the video as chan takes over the cutting duty and puts you in egg boiling duty. Which you rolled your eyes at. He's so protective, as if you couldn't burn yourself with hot water.

After you're done with the shooting, chan approaches you.

"Let me see your hand" he grabs your hand not even letting you choose whether or not he can see your hand. But you let him cause he's just trying to be caring.

"Are you okay?" It's a question he keeps asking you and you don't know if you wanna answer him again.

"I'm fine chan, now let go of my hand before someone sees us." He doesn't take heed to your words and continues to examine your finger touching I lightly which you find comforting.

"You don't look fine. Want me to give you a hug?" He says slowly moving into you. If no one has noticed the two of you someone's gonna notice now. You try and push him away giggling at his words, you really don't want your cover blown but chan doesn't seem to care. He doesn't care actually.

"Baby I'm okay" you say a little louder than you expected. You immediately move away from chan and stare at the people now staring at you. If the company hears about this you're screwed.

"I meant chan" you laugh awkwardly.

"It just slipped" you try and assure the people around you. You know they couldn't care less but you'd never know who'd be a snitch.

"I call everyone baby anyways" chan laughs as you try to convince yourself.

It's no use they heard you clearly.

.....

Its been been seven days since your cooking episode with chan and felix aired. And you heard some rumours and theories going around on the Internet.

So you decided to check on the comments yourself.

Chan giving y/n those loving eyes

I want someone to look at me like the way chan's looking at her

If these two aren't dating I'm gonna take y/n

These two gotta be dating look at the way he's looking at her.

I can feel the tension between them

The chemistry between these two.

Kiss already

You didn't realise the tension between you and chan was so obvious. Maybe it's the way you spoke and looked at eachother. And after watching the video for yourself you can definitely see it.

"Our love can't be hidden" chan said when you brought the issue to him. You laughed, he doesn't take this seriously huh?

#fanfic #bang chan #skz channie #bangchan x reader #bangchan x y/n #bangchan imagines #idol au #bangchan fanfic #bang chan x reader #bangchan fluff #christopher bang

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dwobbitfromtheshire · 1 year

Text

Eddie Munson is the kind of guy who would have a pet raccoon. . . Well, actually, it's just a raccoon who happened to come around occasionally, but Eddie takes care of her. Anyway, he would strap the raccoon to his chest in one of those cloth papoose things, and walk into Family Video with her. To Steve and Robin, it just looks like he's holding a baby.

"You to meet your new mommy? Yeah, you do," Eddie would coo at her.

"Eddie, is that a baby?" Steve asked in confusion.

"Yep, she sure is. She's our baby," Eddie grinned proudly.

"Our baby?!" Steve asked.

"Oh, thank God, I'm no longer bored," Robin said.

"You want to come see her?" Eddie asked his boyfriend.

"Eddie, please tell me you didn't steal someone else's baby," Steve said with a sigh.

"Well, she was just crawling around outside, and she looked hungry. She needed a good bath too," Eddie said. "What was I supposed to do? Leave her outside?"

"No, you take her to Hopper," Steve replied.

"And what's Hopper going to do with her, Steve? Really?" Eddie asked.

"I don't know, find her parents, maybe?" Steve asked with a scoff.

"That would be hard to do," Eddie said and then gasped. "He could get El to use her powers to find them. Aw, but that would mean that we would have to give her up."

Steve looked softly at Eddie and walked around the counter towards him, putting a hand on his shoulder. Robin watched, popping candy into her mouth.

"I know it would be difficult, but I imagine that - Eddie, that's a raccoon," Steve said.

"Yeah, of course she is. What did you think I was talking about?" Eddie asked, and then his eyes went wide. "Oh, did you think this was an actual baby? I'm not sure how you got that from what I said, but okay? You and your baby fever, Stevie. Here, this will tide you over."

Eddie took off the papoose and handed the raccoon off to Steve. He started to complain but then stopped.

"You gave her a bath, right?" Steve said.

"Yeah, and cleaned her teefs," Eddie said. "I hope you don't mind, but I used your toothbrush."

Steve sighed and shook his head before turning back to the raccoon in his arms. Okay, she was kind of cute. No, she was really cute. Steve wagged a finger at her, and she reached up, grabbing it with her hand.

"Oh my God, she's holding my finger with her little hand," Steve said. "She is a baby."

"That's a raccoon, Steve," Robin told him and received glares in return.

"What should we name her?" Steve asked.

"Wednesday," Eddie replied eagerly.

"Like Wednesday Addams?" Steve asked.

"No, for my favorite day of the week," Eddie said. "Yes, for Wednesday Addams."

"Wednesday Munson," Steve tested it out. "It fits!"

"Aww, baby, she's getting my last name?" Eddie asked.

"Duh," Steve said. "When we get married, I want us both to have your last name."

"Aww, baby, but you know this is not a proposal. I want it to be as dramatic as possible," Eddie said. "With a big speech."

"Already working on it," Steve said.

Eddie wrapped his arms around Steve's waist, looking over his shoulder and looking at Wednesday fondly.

"We're a family," he whispered.

"Oh my God, I'm no longer interested in this," Robin said as she walked off. "It's a goddamn raccoon."

And that's how Steve and Eddie became parents to a raccoon. Robin eventually became interested when they made her godmother. Did she put her in a little sailor outfit? You bet your ass she did. It's what good godmothers do.

#stranger things #eddie munson #joseph quinn #stranger things s4 #eddie stranger things #eddie munson lives #steve harrington #steddie #steve x eddie #steve harrington x eddie munson #steddie ficlet #ficlet #steddie dads #steddie raccoon dads #robin buckley

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carolmunson · 8 months

Text

it's like sugar sometimes.

(older!modern!dad!eddie)

welcome back to the: orange colored sky setlist a/n: this can be read as a stand alone, give or take some references. but as a pre-cursor: you and eddie are about twelve years apart, meeting in late twenties early thirties, his late thirties early forties. you're deeply in love and we're fast forwarding a bit and now you have a kid. shout out to my nephew because without countless videos of him being the same age as the baby in this fic i would not now how babies baby. cw: pure fluff. pure dad eddie goodness. pretty tame. some mild arguing and swearing. some saucy kisses at the end. a new entry for the fall frenzy extravaganza. this fall frenzy is in honor of @jo-harrington who said i could do whatever, so here we are lmao.

songspiration: how sweet it is (to be loved by you) | james taylor

The ride to the orchard is going much better than you were expecting after such a rough morning. Tears from the moment Gwen came into your room just before four in the morning because she had a bad dream. Then it was too hot for her in bed with both of you, then she was too cold, then Ed’s snoring kept you both awake until she couldn’t keep her eyes open anymore. Then there was the kicking and stretching and rolling around. Aren’t they supposed to sleep like logs? She just turned three. Ed woke up refreshed, frowning when he turned over to see you sitting up against the headboard reading with puffy tired eyes. “Hey,” he says softly as to not wake Gwen who was curled up into his side, “She come in last night?” “Another bad dream,” you shrug, looking at him over your book, “I don’t know if she’s really having them or if she’s just starting to have a little regression period. Maybe we can get her a new night light or something.” “Why don’t you try to go back to sleep for a little and I’ll get her ready,” he asks, voice still raspy from sleep, “I’ll just take her into the shower with me.” You smile lazily at him and nod, looking over at the clock on his night stand – a little past six. Maybe an extra forty-five would do you some good before you went to the orchards upstate. Gwen’s eyes open up to her dad awake, her face contorting when she sees him. “Had a bad dweam,” she sniffles, reaching her arms out. “Poor Gwen, you had a bad dream?” Eddie coos, pulling her up out of bed with him, “Tell me all about it, angel.” Her babbles echo down the hall even after Ed closes the door behind them.

Piercing sobs woke you up instead of your alarm, though that went off right after to remind you that there’s a whole day you have to start. You rub your eyes and groan, sliding out of bed and stepping into your slippers. You grab your robe, shrugging it on as you leave the bedroom and wincing while another cry pours out of your toddler and goes straight to your chest. “I know, honey, I know,” you hear Eddie soothe, “But we’re gonna go do something so fun. You wanna go pick a pumpkin, right?” “No pumpki-i-in,” she sobs, deep and guttural. You open the door to her room slowly, a very teary Gwen stands in the corner, hair wet in a new set of pajamas. You look at Eddie, pulling out an outfit for her and laying it on her toddler bed. “What’s goin’ on, in here?” you ask gently. “Gwen doesn’t wanna get dressed to go apple picking,” Eddie says quietly, “She wants to watch Blue’s Clues.” “Wan’ see Bl-blue, mommy,” she sobs, “Pwease.” “Hey, hey,” you try your best to settle her, “Thank you for saying please, honey. We can still see Blue but daddy has to get you dressed first.” “Did she eat?” you ask, pulling Gwen up to your hip while she cries into your shoulder. “Yeah, she had some mini waffles and a banana,” he opens her closet and fishes out a tiny pair of Chuck’s to go with her outfit – a little black sweatshirt screen printed with the Halloween movie poster paired with a set of leggings meant to look like jeans. “Did you eat?” you smile, coming over to him to plant a kiss on the cheek. “Yeah, her leftovers,” he laughs, “There’s a cup of coffee waiting for you on the counter.” “Thank you,” you nudge him, feeling Gwen squirm and whine while she tries to shimmy down from your hip, “Okay, okay.” “Gwen, please,” Eddie begs with a twinge of frustration in his voice when she makes it to the door, on her tiptoes to reach the handle, “Let’s just get you dressed and you can watch Blue’s Clues while we do your hair.” She stomps, wet curls bouncing with her when she does, “Wanna watch now, pwease!” “Thank you for asking nicely Gwen, but that doesn’t always mean you get your way,” he explains. She shrieks, loud enough that your eyes squint, stomping again onto the fluffy white carpet below her, “I wanna watch Blue’s Cwue’s!” “Why don’t you take a deep breath for me, huh?” Eddie asks her, he pats your lower back on the way to the door. A silent way of letting you know to just go get yourself ready, he can handle the rest, “Do we need to take a time out?” “No time out,” she starts to cry again when you slip out of the room. More frustrated whines and wails boom down the hall, dissipating while you make it down the metal staircase to the coffee on the counter. Your heart swells when you notice that he already emptied and reloaded the dishwasher.

After you’ve packed some snacks for later and gotten yourself dressed, you make your way back upstairs. You approach the bathroom with your coffee in hand, Gwen’s sippy cup full of water in the other. Her bubbly squeals respond back to whoever is talking to her, barely looking up from Eddie’s phone to look at you when you open the door.

“Who’re you talking to, miss girl?” you ask, putting her sippy cup next to her on the bathroom counter. “Steeb,” she says, eyes glued to the screen, much happier than she was before. “She’s watching 90s Blue’s Clues?” you laugh at your husband who’s busy splitting her Gwen’s hair into a middle part, looking in the mirror that she’s sat in front of. “No, she’s FaceTiming with Steve,” he shakes his head, pulling one section back into a high pigtail. “Hi peach!” Steve’s voice rings from the phone, he lowers it back down to parentese to address Gwen, “Is that mommy? Can you say hi to her for me?” “Steeb say hi,” Gwen says, lifting the phone up, showing the screen to the ceiling of the bathroom. You take the phone for a second, seeing Steve’s annoyed face in the frame.

“You’re on thin ice,” he says, his fiancee’s laugh ringing out of frame, “I can’t believe you’re going this week when we’ll be there in two. You always go before we come to visit.” “There will be plenty of apple picking trips to do together when we move, I promise,” you assure, “She starts gymnastics and swimming next weekend, we won’t have another time to do it.”

“Gymnastics?” he asks, “Does she have tights? Leotards? What can I get her?”

“She has like, I don’t know Steve – forty leotards? She’s gonna grow out of half of them in six weeks,” you explain, “Don’t worry, your husband got it covered.” Eddie snickers, wrapping an elastic around one of the ponytails in his fingers. “Well if she’s gonna grow out of them then she’ll need more,” he scoffs, “I’ll get some sent over.”

“You’re impossible,” your eye roll is something Steve is just as used to as Eddie is. Gwen whines again, reaching for the phone with grabby hands, a quiet ‘Steeby’ escaping her. “I can hear her asking for me, gimme back to my girl,” he sighs. You hand the phone back to Gwen who giggles when Steve makes a funny face at her through the screen. “Look how pretty those ponytails are. Daddy did such a good job,” Steve coos at her. “We payin’ be-yoo-dee sawon,” Gwen explains. Eddie looks up at you, whispering ‘Can you grab her bows for me?’ You nod, reaching into the bottom drawer to snatch a basket full of bows, holding them out to him while he picks.

“Beauty salon,” Eddie corrects softly, “Orange or black bows?” “Bwack,” she says, waving him off like you do when you’re busy, “I’m on da phone, daddy.” “Yeah,” you say, meeting her sass, “She’s on the phone, daddy.”

He lets a ‘pfff’ push out of his lips while he grabs two black bows from last halloween, little sparkly spider webs parked in the center. You leave them to it, heading down to get the car packed up and make sure you have Gwen’s bag set up before you leave.

Despite the dramatics, the ride is going well. Gwen happily eats an apple sauce packet in her carseat while the two of you sip on coffees and eat breakfast sandwiches from a drive thru off the highway. It’s nice to get out of the city for a while and get Gwen used to the idea of not being in it anymore. The drive consists mostly of James Taylor’s greatest hits because Gwen is her Grandpa Wayne’s baby before she’s anyone else’s. She hums along to Carolina and sings only the chorus of Mexico. Her favorite song is Mockingbird even though it’s Carly Simon featuring James Taylor. The two of you throw it on the record player every other day to sing it to her, even if she doesn’t ask for it. It’s selfishly your favorite song, too, just ‘cause you get to see your husband play along with you. “And if that better way ain't so, I'll ride with the tide and go with the flow, And that's why, I keep on shoutin' in your ear, Saying (yeah, yeah) whoa-whoa-whoa-whoa, whoa-oh.” You lean your head back on the passenger’s side to make eye contact with Gwen through the visor mirror who giggles back at you. She mimics your ‘whoa-whoa-whoa’, shimmying in her carseat with her shoulders. Gwen’s no stranger to shimmying, always finding some way to dance off beat to Ed’s music when he plays at a venue she can be at or practices at home. His number one fan.

“Oh-wange twees, mommy,” Gwen says, tiny finger pointing out the window at the foliage lining the road. “I see them, aren’t they pretty Gwen?” you nod back at her. Eddie’s head turns slightly to watch her watch the trees, eyes shining at each change of color hits her. His heart beats a little quicker knowing she’s able to make those distinctions between orange, red, and yellow – too smart, getting too big. “Daddy’s git-tah,” she yelps, pointing hard at a tree covered in dark red leaves while Eddie slowly turns down the entrance of the orchard. Gwen lets out a tiny ‘woah’ when the car jostles that makes him laugh, he wishes she’d stay this little forever. “Yeah, that’s the same color as daddy’s guitar, good job sweetheart,” he smiles back at her, “Are you ready to pick some apples so we can make Uncle Stevie a pie for when he visits?” “Ya!” She nods, happy and excited. She doesn’t know what he said, but whenever he talks to her with a smile she’ll do whatever he asks and vice versa. Still ‘sort of rockstar’, definitely ‘meant to be father’. Parking is less of a nightmare than expected since it’s early in the day – most families come after the first morning nap, at least that’s what the mom groups told you on Facebook. Gwen hardly naps anymore, but you won’t be surprised if she knocks out earlier than usual tonight. Eddie gets the backpack full of Gwen’s essentials and you grab the baby. “I have to carry you through the parking lot, babe,” you say when she starts to bounce in your arms, eager to run on the grass in her sneakers. “Wanna walk, please,” she begs, her hands on your cheeks while you make your way towards the entrance. “You can walk when we get inside but there’s lots of cars out here and no stop lights,” you say, batting her hand out of your hair when she reaches for it, “I’ll put you down in a little bit.” “You think we should take the stroller?” Ed asks from the trunk. “They have wagons, we can just pull her around,” you shrug, “I don’t think the back up stroller is good for this kind of place, we’d need the one at home.” Eddie shrugs, joining you on your walk to the entrance to get your empty bag and your wagon, putting Gwen at the back as you get to the trees. “Walk, please,” she begs again. You hesitate, it’s just too big of a place and she’s a runner, “Honey, I would love it if you–” “Let her walk,” Eddie says, “She’ll get bored after a few minutes and wanna watch anyway, just let her walk.” “Come here Gwen, hold my hand,” he says, offering a tattooed hand to her pudgy one. She clumsily crawls out of the wagon, bouncing over to her dad to put her hand in his. He pulls her up once, making her squeal and giggle as she floats next to him. “More, more!” she laughs, letting Eddie swing her ahead a few more times while you all make your way through the trees.

She likes apple picking more than you expected, arms up constantly to be lifted onto the branches to grab some off of every few trees. Gwen had a good eye, better than you and Eddie, for super crisp ones – pointing up and jumping to get at them. If she was a little bigger you wouldn’t be surprised if she climbed up the trees with the ease of a jungle cat. Your husband encouraged it, climbing up the branches like he was still twenty – sitting with his legs dangling off and having you pass your toddler to him. “Please be careful,” you warn, passing her up to him. “Babe, I know what I’m doing,” he scowls, a hint annoyed before changing his expression for Gwen when he helps her onto the low branch with him. “You don’t have to be a jerk, I just want her to be safe,” you snap back. “And I’m keeping her safe,” he says with a smile as to keep your daughter none-the-wiser. Still looking at Gwen while she reaches for another apple. She hands it to Eddie who hands it to you, your fingers brush. “Sorry,” he says, looking down at you, “I’ll be careful. We’re not very high, but you’re right. I’ll be careful.” “Thank you,” you nod, taking the apple and pressing a ghost of a kiss to his knuckles. He blushes red, red, red. Red like the leaves, red like his guitar. “Why s’pink, daddy?” Gwen asks, passing him another apple. “I just love mommy very much, honey,” he smiles, pressing a kiss into her hair, “She makes me turn pink like a heart.” “Like on da phone,” she says, clinging to him like a koala when he slides down off the low branch with her. “Yes, like on the phone,” he nods. You’re not Peach 🍑 in his phone anymore. You’re The Wife 💗. Right now he’s Gwen’s Dad in your phone because you got in an argument two months ago and haven’t changed it back to Rockstar Husband 🎸❣️because ‘Gwen’s Dad’ makes you laugh too much. He hates it. “How you like them apples, G?” you ask when Eddie puts her down in the wagon, she looks up at you confused and shrugs; brown curly pigtails bouncing at she does. “Kids today,” you shake your head at Eddie while you press onward, “No culture.”

“No culture,” he agrees enthusiastically.

You peruse, the bags you bought are filled to the brim with apples. Some red, some green, a few yellow so Gwen can try them and see if she likes them. It’s a calming walk, the chatter of other families, the squeaky roll of the wagon, the rustle of the trees when the early autumn wind catches them. Eddie holds your hand loosely, always needing to keep touching you in some way, always wanting to keep you close to him. You look back, Gwen going between looking around at the other families and playing with her V-Tech phone. Eddie goes from walking slow to speeding up to make the wagon jostle just to hear Gwen’s giggles peal through the trees. After about an hour of walking and picking, you’re about as pooped as your toddler should be. Once you get to the tree line you see the farm and market down at the base of the hill, a little relieved that you’ve all made it to the end of the road unscathed.

That is, until Gwen climbs out of the wagon when it comes to a stop and without warning, books it towards the edge.

“Gwendolyn Rose!” Eddie’s call is rough and loud out of fear, but it sounds like anger. Gwen stops short, startled, falling backwards onto the seat of her leggings. Like clockwork the first whine starts, building up into a needy, sad wail. You know they’re crocodile tears so you keep your pace with the wagon behind you. Your husband however, despite the constant reminder that she knows he’s easy, rushes forward without a second thought. “Oh no, my baby girl, shh, shh. I’m sorry,” he coos, reaching down to hoist her up onto his hip, “I didn’t mean to yell, sugar. You just got daddy scared is all. I’m not mad.” Gwen wipes her face, pushing away tears that never fell, sniffling and hiding her face in his neck. He rubs her back while she settles, guilt tugging on the lines between his brows.

“No baby girl,” Gwen pouts, “I’m big girl.”

“Oh that’s right, you’re my big girl,” Eddie grins, kissing her cheek. She’s not amused, frowning down at him while she pushes up against his shoulder to squirm out of his hold. “That’s a very grumpy face, Gwenny,” you giggle. “Hey, are you mad at me?” he asks up at her before popping her back down onto her feet at the edge of the tree line, “Why’re you lookin’ so mad?”

“I’m big,” she announces, little foot stomping on the grass below her. Eddie lets a sigh out through his nose and kneels down to her level. She takes several deep breaths and you both know it’s the beginning of what could be a very long second tantrum of the day. “I know, you’re a very big girl,” he nods, “But what do mommy and daddy say you have to do when we don’t have you in the stroller?” “Hode hands,” she repeats back in a whine. “That’s right, we hold hands – and if we’re not holding your hand you’re supposed to stay close, right?” He watches her nod, tucking a finger under her chin to make sure she’s absorbing what he’s saying. Her lower lip juts out, cheeks puffing while her shoulders sulk. “I walk by - by mysewf,” she urges, sniffling, “Pwease.” “Not today, sugar. I’m sorry,” he sighs, cupping her cheek in his palm, “I have a fun idea, do you wanna get on daddy’s shoulders and you can tell us how far we are from the farm?” She brightens up a little, giggling when he reaches down to tickle her sides before scooping her up to lift over his shoulders. He groans the way old men groan when they lift something and you stifle a laugh, smiling up at Gwen when she smiles down at you. “Hi mommy,” she beams, waving her tiny hand. “Hi baby,” wave back lazily, the shoddy sleep you had last night starting to settle into your eyes. “Do you see the farm, Gwenny?” Eddie asks, she nods enthusiastically, “Maybe we can go get you a donut, how does that sound? Will that make you happy?”

“Ed,” you click your tongue, “She’s never gonna get to sleep later.” “We’re making memories, babe,” Eddie says, reaching up to hold Gwen’s hands to keep her steady, “Some extra sugar won’t hurt her.”

“Yeah, you love extra sugar, don’t you?” you laugh.

“Matter of fact, I do,” he smirks, shooting you a wink. He laughs when he sees two of those twelve foot Home Depot skeletons posed outside the front of the market, promoting their haunted hayride with signs and other silly decor, “Shit, that’s fuckin’ metal – s’ridiculous.”

“S’dic-yoo-liss,” Gwen repeats. “S’ridiculous, Gwennifer!” Eddie repeats back in concurrence. “Sss’tick-you-luss,” she bounces, laughing when he laughs. They have the same one, though his has years on hers, gruff with age, with cigarette stains.

Pumpkins get picked, warm donuts devoured, the morning finally feels like it’s coming to a close. You park Gwen down at a picnic table while Eddie goes to get the goods, hanging out with your threenager who can barely keep her eyes open. You’re thankful you still have the wagon because there was no way you’d be able to carry all of it back to the car. Caramel apples, cider donuts, three gallons of apple cider, honey sticks, pumpkin pie, and anything else Eddie thought was good enough to bring home for the season weight heavy in the brown paper bags in his arms. He comes back sheepishly, biting his lower lip when you look at the bags and then at him.

“Hm,” you hum pointedly.

“I just really like fall flavors, peach,” he shrugs, “And the old lady at the front was so sweet telling me about the deals I couldn’t not get everything.” “You’re such a sucker,” you laugh with a roll of your eyes, “You ready to head out?” He nods, ticking his forehead at Gwen whose cheek is smushed against your chest, eyelashes brushing the tops of her cheeks, “Looks like this pumpkin’s ready to go.”

“She’s out,” you say softly, brushing her hair away from her face, “Lasted five minutes on my lap.”

“Let me get a picture to send to Steve,” he says low enough that it doesn’t wake her, “The background is perfect.” “Ed you have a thousand pictures of her from today,” you complain. “Shh, shh, come on,” he smiles, taking out his phone – you know he’s only snapping Gwen by the way he lowers the camera to your lap. He puts the bags in the wagon while you slowly stand with her wrapped around your front. You wait at the entrance for him to pull the car around, leaving the wagon behind. She doesn’t wake up when you pop her back in the car seat, slowly rolling out of the parking lot with the rest of the afternoon in your wake.

“I got her a little gourd painting kit, somewhere in those bags,” he says, “She can make some decorations.” “Oh she’ll love that,” you nod, peeking at her sleeping face in the visor mirror again, “I’ll do it with her before dinner.”

He pulls in slowly at a stop sign, hand reaching out to snake into yours, pulling it to his lips to bless you with soft kisses on the back of your hand.

“Thanks for such a good day, baby,” he murmurs.

“You’re very welcome.”

Later on, just before dinner, Eddie hears a tiny knock on his office door paired with two giggles from his favorite girls.

“Yes?” he calls out. The door creeps open and he hears you whisper, ‘Ask ‘Are you busy, daddy?’

“You busy, daddy?” Gwen pipes up. He shuts his computer, moving away from the two additional screens. “No, honey, never too busy for you,” he smiles, creases by his eyes showing up through his glasses, “Do you have something to show me?”

“Yeah,” she nods, pulling on your hand to pull you into the room. He uses the same candles he always has, deep spice, like his cologne. Warm like the way he holds you. Still in his hunter green Dickie’s overalls from this morning.

You give Gwen her little pumpkin that she painted to present to her dad, beaming with excitement while he looks it over.

“Such a good job, Gwenny,” he coos, “Are these –”

“I did bats,” she grins, finger touching the sparkly black sort of bats adorning the outside. Covered in glitter and sequins, falling onto his office floor.

“You did bats? For Halloween?” he asks. You shake your head no, smiling big when Gwen goes on to explain.

“No cause, daddy, cause you have bats,” she hurriedly explains, “Issa daddy pum-kin.” She reaches to his left arm, pointing at the bat tattoos on the inside when he was a kid. She runs her finger over them, “See, bats like daddy.”

��That’s so sweet, honey,” he coos, “Is it for me?” “Yeah,” she squeaks, “For here.” “For your office,” you say for her, trying not to giggle when his eyes shine with tears. She could give him a piece of trash and he’d cry over it, “‘Cause you have so many Halloween decorations in here.” He laughs, looking around at all the tour posters he has from bands he’s seen over the years – to a three year old they probably are a little scary. “And what did you say it was when you were done, Gwen?” you ask, “What did you say daddy would think the pumpkin was?” “Fucking med-oh,” she giggles. “Oh my god,” he sighs, thumb and forefinger immediately going to temples. “Fucking metal,” you repeat back him, knowingly, “Wonder where she got that.”

He tries not to laugh when he looks down at Gwen, “Don’t say that word, baby, that’s a bad word.” “Sowwy,” she whispers. “It’s okay, you didn’t know,” he grins, pulling her in to kiss her all over. She shrieks the way babies shriek when they’re excited and runs out of the office toward her bedroom at the end of the hall. You turn to go after her before feeling Eddie’s hand on your shoulder. “Hey,” he says quietly in your ear, you shiver, “Remember when you said I like a little extra sugar?”

Your cheeks burn hot, turning to him, “I do.” He leans in slow, lips capturing yours in a way that they only do when you both get to be alone, “Don’t forget to keep givin’ me some.” “I won’t,” you murmur back, letting him kiss you deeply one more time before pressing a slow kiss to your favorite place under the hinge of your jaw, “You’re bold, Munson.” He shrugs, breaking away, “Needed somethin’ sweet.”

As if he isn't sweet enough. Eddie spends the rest of the night looking up ways to preserve a painted gourd.

masterlist | fall frenzy | ko-fi

#eddie munson x reader #eddie munson x you #dad!eddie #dad!eddie munson #older!eddie #older!eddie munson #modern!eddie munson #eddie munson #eddie munson fluff #eddie munson fanfiction #eddie munson smut #eddie munson fan fiction #eddie munson imagine #eddie munson fanfic #eddie munson x female reader #eddie munson x reader fluff

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michanvalentine · 1 month

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Things about Vincent Valentine that I read around and piss me off.

"Vincent should have done more!"

It is one of the most common observations. And I hate it! What he was supposed to do exactly? Ok, let's take a step back and pretend we're in the real world and not in a fantasy action video game. Vincent was a highly trained Turk and an excellent marksman. That's not enough to say that he was definitely also a cold piece of shit ready to do any job. In fact, I believe that Vincent was the exact opposite of this and that he was not cut out to be a Turk at all. Which is why he got into trouble. "Stern and upright" is how Square Enix describes him, so we're talking about a person who has great morals and a high sense of duty. And these two things don't always go together. To this we must add the naivety he had as a young man (evident in DoC) and his great empathy towards others (which FF VII Rebirth is highlighting a lot). So when Lucrecia decided to use the fetus as an experiment, Vincent found himself in an impossible situation, where morality and duty were at odds. Human experimentation disgusted him, but his role was as a bodyguard, nothing more. His duty was to watch and let the scientists do their work. Furthermore, at that moment no one could imagine what the result of such experiments would be and what Sephiroth would do in the future. So we're talking about a man torn by his own principles, full of doubts and, lest you forget, heartbroken. It is not easy to act in a situation like this. But he couldn't ignore his own morals, so despite his role he tried to reason with Lucrecia first and then he confronted Hojo, with the consequences we know. Did he have to kidnap Lucrecia? Did he have to kill Hojo? Did he have to burn the Shinra Mansion to the ground? Let's be honest, normal people don't act this way. And Vincent Valentine was the sanest one in the middle, so he paid for it. But even if Vincent had freaked out and gone down the path of violence, there would have been consequences and it would probably have ended the same way.

But let's go back to Lucrecia for a moment. Vincent's naivety and empathy did not allow him to notice the red flags. He only saw the best and deepest part of her, the fragile, kind and brilliant one. When she pushed him away, he still behaved as correctly as possible. He stepped aside, hoping that she would be happy. There is no selfishness, there is no possessiveness. This is called unconditional love, and it is very rare. Should he have claimed Lucrecia for himself even if she didn't want it? Fight the other man to get the woman back? Continue to chase her proclaiming his love like a crazy? These are some traits of toxic masculinity. Vincent left her absolute freedom, he respected her choices as a woman, as an adult and as a scientist, even if his sensitivity allowed him to understand some things before she could notice them herself. And that's why Vincent's question "are you sure this is what you really want" hurts so much. He knew it. He knew she would love that child.

The fact that Vincent feels like a failure who was unable to protect the woman he loved and her child is understandable. But this is only his feeling, his perception of himself in a situation way bigger than him. So no one will ever be able to get it out of my head: Vincent Valentine did everything a good man with his hands tied behind his back could have done. He went out of line for Lucrecia and Sephiroth, and was killed for it.

#vincent valentine #ffvii #ff7r #ff7 #final fantasy vii #final fantasy 7 #final fantasy rebirth #lucrecia crescent #The Rebirth Vincent is bringing back memories #dirge of cerberus

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yeahxsurexokay13 · 8 days

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forget about us - mason mount

summary: yn and mason have been broken up for 5 months and both have apparently moved on from each other but then yn's unexpected new single happens

warnings: the song mentioned is 'forget about us' by perrie because i have been obsessed with it ever since it came out !!!! but for the sake of the smau i have decided to completely ignore the parts where she talks about not wanting to go back to where they were lol

y/n.y/l

Liked by taylorswift and 1.075.733 others

y/n.y/l well, here's the truth of it

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fan1 spill the tea bestie we're all ears ☕☕☕👂🏼👂🏼👂🏼

fan2 we're getting nEW MUSIC EVERYBODY

jackgrealish Reckon this one will make the pre match playlist?

y/n.y/l we'll have to see if it passes the vibes check 🥸

fan6 so it's a break up song 🥲 confirmed.

fan3 are these lyrics? 👀

user1 looks like we're about to get the inside scoop on the breakup

fan4 don't bother zooming in on slide 3 it doesn't work

jobebellingham 👩🏽‍🍳

y/n.y/l 🤫

fan7 WHAT DOES HE KNOW

fan8 not jude's brother commenting.........

selenagomez Love seeing you in your element 🫶 liked by y/n.y/l

fan5 Here come the tissues 🤧🤧

y/n.y/l

Liked by perrieedwards and 1.790.201 others

y/n.y/l big thanks to @/edsheeran for helping me put my heart into words and to the amazing @/allieavital for directing this mv with such brilliance and kindness.

'forget about us' song and mv are yours at midnight!!! 🌃

view all 3.802 comments

fan1 aaAAAAAAAHHHHHHH ASFJK

niallhoran YES! Been hyped for this release. Let's goooo!

y/n.y/l thank you! this means so much coming from you!!! x

fan2 i've been trying to make out what the song might be about by this 5 second video and it's safe to say i have nothing

fan3 like wth is she supposed to be seeing on those tvs?

fan4 CAN MIDNIGHT HURRY UP PLZ AND THANK YOU

edsheeran It was an honour to work on this with you. Can't wait for everyone to hear it 🙌 liked by y/n.y/l

fan5 can't wait to watch and listen 💖

fan6 already preparing myself emotionally for this song bc if it's about Mason idk if i'll survive 😭😭😭

fan7 yn's music always hits differently when it's inspired by real life experiences 😮‍💨

y/n.y/l

Liked by masonmount and 1.507.893 others

y/n.y/l fuk sad feelings

tagged: madelyncline

view all 3.410 commets

fan1 a negroni… sbagliato… with prosecco in it

y/n.y/l oh stunning

fan2 MASON IS BACK IN THE LIKES EVERYBODY MOVE

fan4 what if he heard the song?

fan2 he DEFINITELY heard the song lol

madelyncline Did you know i am obsessed with you?

y/n.y/l giggling and kicking my feet i love u bb

fan3 I spy with my little eye... Mason in Y/n's likes 🚢🚢🚢🚢🚢🚢🚢

fan5 this has me imagining all sorts of scenarios please let this mean something

fan6 my babies @.y/n.y/l @/madelyncline 😍❤️

fan7 UR SO PRETTY WTH

y/n.y/l

📍 portsmouth

Liked by sophiaaemelia and 2.390.276 others

y/n.y/l writing about how much i want one direction to get back together next

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fan1 AS SOON AS I SAW THE LOCATION I KNEW OMFG

fan2 my heart is so happy 🥹🥹🥹🥹🥹🥹

user1 You and Mason are too cute! But seriously, we need that One Direction reunion song.

declanrice ❤️

fan6 "but when I hear your name, it's still so raw. do you ever feel the same way too?" looks like he did!!!

fan3 okay this wins for the most creative way of saying 'we're back together' lol so happy for you two 💕💕

user2 i'd stream that song on repeat until it happens

fan4 mum and dad arE BACK TOGETHER YAY

fan5 if your song works, I'll be forever indebted to you!!!

user3 been rooting for you two since day one!! so happy to see you back together 🥰

masonmount Your biggest fan forever ❤️

y/n.y/l my number 7 ♥️

#singer!reader #social media au #football smau #mason mount smau #mason mount x reader #mason mount imagine

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russellsppttemplates · 17 days

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could you do a Carlos blurb where Carlos and reader takes Clara and Piñon to spend time with Carlos Sr and Reyes while he and reader take a mini trip just between the two of them together and during the trip, Carlos sr. keeps them updated like taking the girl to the park, making cookies with Reyes and watching the Real Madrid game together

"Look at the picture my mother sent to the group chat!", Carlos said as he looked at his phone, his hand shielding his eyes from the sun first and then covering the screen so you could look too. You were both sharing a sun lounger and even though your hat was covering your face from the sunshine, it was still dark enough as you cuddled into your husband's embrace, properly seeing the phone now.

Carlos whisked you away for a romantic getaway, counting on his parents to look after Clara and Piñon, who were more than happy to take them for as long as you needed to recharge your batteries. You had been spending most of your time chilling by the pool or the beach and you were planning to do a small hike tomorrow if the temperatures weren't too high.

"She looks so happy going down the slide!", you pointed out, scrolling through the small collection your mother in-law had sent to show you how much fun your little girl was having in the park, followed by a video of Piñon running around.

On your hike break before you did it all the way back to the start and then the hotel, you had enough service on your phone to check if everything was well back home. Your phone beeped with a notification from your father in-law.

The shirt we got for her fits her really well! was attached to the picture Reyes sent, your little girl on her Real Madrid jersey you remember Carlos Sr. buying as soon as he learned he was going to be a grandfather, claiming the baby would always have to know and recognise the best football team in the world.

"She looks so cute!", you showed Carlos as he smiled, "we need to take her to an actual game someday, it's been a bit since we've watched a game from the stands", he said, kissing your shoulder.

"Should we go now? We'll be back in time to watch the game", you suggested, getting up and pulling him up with you.

"We can have a nice dinner out and I'll watch the game later, I don't mind", Carlos offered, "we're supposed to be spending time together and I don't want it to get in the way of that".

"Please, as if it bothers me", you giggled, kissing his stubbly cheek, "besides, I absolutely do not mind seeing you all riled up when you watch football and especially when it's warm out and we have a TV in the outside area of the room where you could watch the game shirtless", you wiggled your eyebrows, earning a slap on your ass, "you're incredible, cariño".

Abuela and Clara made some cookies! We'll try and save some for when you come back, but we can't make any promises! 🤭

Attached to it was a smiley picture of your daughter with a wooden spoon on her hand as she whisked the sugar into the eggs it seemed, "Oh, she'll be on her sugar high tonight...! I bet my mother hasn't been able to tell her she can't have more cookies", Carlos chuckled.

"She's been having so much fun, though, I bet she's out like a light by the time they get her to bed", you reasoned, "she's so grown up already, she's not our baby anymore", you pouted.

"We could look into that, though", Carlos said as you looked up at him, "I wouldn't mind having another little one, we agreed Clara should have siblings and if you're up for it, I think the age gap would be good right now", he offered.

Kissing his chest, you trailed all the way to his lips, "sounds good to me".

(Thank you for sending this in ✨️)

#carlos sainz blurb #inês writes blurbs #f1 blurb #f1 x reader

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performing-personhood · 1 month

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I learned a kind of funny thing and I need to tell you bc it's important, cmere. Lean in so the others can't hear okay?

Ok so like

I know that the reason we are the way we are is because at some point we took up some space - as people do - and someone turned to us and went "whoa, excuse you! What do you think you're doing" or something, right? And they were, like, surprised and offended that we took up space and told us to stay real small and subservient? And we were pretty young, you and me, and we didn't really grok Peopling yet and so we assumed that everyone else was going to have that expectation too?

Okay I just learned: that isn't true at all, that person was just an asshole.

Babe. BABE. This is big.

Ok do you realize ??? that most people when they're around someone - anyone, this is important, it's an unconscious reflex and happens rather automatically - and that person is like "I have an opinion and desires and also some needs and I am going to express them openly" Did you realize, because I didn't, that most people completely intuitively go "oh! There's another person here! Lemme just scootch over so they fit better :)" PEOPLE MAKE ROOM FOR YOU.

People don't ignore us, when we're silently having wants and needs and waiting our turn to be noticed, they just have similar very loud brains and have no idea because beung corporeal is Distracting™️. Not only do people just need a reminder that you're there, they're totally happy to accomodate. In a distinctly "ope! My bad, lemme just- here-" sort of way.

My spouse has a loud brain and drowns it out with Mario Kart. I've spent most of my life quietly entertaining myself in all of these instances, because at some point someone told me I was supposed to "go play" and nobody wanted to play with me so I entertained myself right? Okay. Well I recently had a sea change and decided I was gonna pop my headphones in and watch TV on my tablet when he was doing his Mario Karting. Because the boy will easily go for four hours and I just spontaneously realized that it would actually be ridiculous if he got butthurt at me for putting some quiet tv on for myself instead of watching a grown man play the same video game for hours.

You know what happened? Not only did nobody's feelings get hurt, but I have never made it more than twenty minutes into a show before he ends a match and switches the console off. And I have never asked him to do so. When I'm over there doing my own thing with my own TV show like a person instead of just scrolling on my phone trying real hard not to exist, somewhere in his unconscious he goes "there's a whole other human being on the other end of the sofa from me. I want to turn this off and engage with that person!"

Okay do you understand what I am telling you??

When you behave like a human person and treat yourself like a human person, other people also instinctively treat you like a human person and they're happy to be reminded that they get to engage with you. The person in our past that reacted differently and got mad at us for being a person, plainly and simply: they were just being an asshole to us.

The people we love want to engage with us. Almost all of them!!! And not only that?? Most other human beings feel the same way.

Huge. Big huge.

Don't take my word for it baby cakes okay, take a sec and muster up the courage (it'll be scary the first time, but the thinking about it is always scarier than doing it I swear) and then get back out there and practice being your very own human person occupying human people space, around someone who loves you, and just... watch what happens. The first time someone warmly, graciously, voluntarily accommodates you is the greatest feeling a corporeal being can experience, and you deserve it too.

#recovering people pleaser #recovering from abuse #recovering from trauma #recovering codependent #recovering from cptsd #cptsd recovery #actually cptsd #just neurodivergent things #actually neurodivergent #mental illness #things I learned in therapy #therapy works

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unholybacon355 · 2 months

Text

Late Present

Nayeon x Male Reader

Words Count: 6.3k

A/N: Hope you enjoy reading this because I had a great time writing it. Originally this was supposed to be not longer than 2k words (Even shorter if I could) but the most I wrote the most I wanted to add things, and at the end the result is this.

Again. Hope you have fun and enjoy reading this.

That day after dinner you had received a message from your girlfriend. In it she said that she had left you a video in a shared folder in the cloud, but that you couldn't open it until you were completely alone. Well, now it was already night and you were lying in your room. That qualified as being completely alone. Although of course, you were still at your parents' house so you would have to use headphones to watch the video on your laptop.

It was the second week of January and you were visiting your parents' house, in the town where you had grown up. Now lying in your childhood bed you placed the computer on your lap and opened the video. A shot of the bathroom in the apartment you shared with your girlfriend instantly appeared on your screen. It wasn't a very big place but at least it had a bathtub, and that was exactly what you were looking at.

The video showed a shot of the bathtub filled with water about half full and some candles placed on the shelves of the walls. For now there was no sign of your girlfriend or anyone or anything else. After something like a minute you heard noise coming from outside the shot, and after a few more seconds your girlfriend appeared on the scene while smiling at the camera and making a greeting gesture with her hand. She sat on the edge of the bathtub. wearing a white coat, and at first glance nothing more than two adorable pink bows in her blonde hair, which made it fall into two pigtails, one on each side of her face. The robe, on the other hand, only partially showed her legs, from the knees down.

“Hi babe. I hope you're having a good time at your parents' house. I... Well, I wanted to give you one last Christmas gift. I know it's been weeks but as you know I was very busy and didn't have time to do it before.” Nayeon smiled at the camera as if apologizing for the delay. “Anyway, it's better that you receive it now that we're not together, so you'll miss me even more.” With a small giggle she stood up and slipping her robe off her shoulders let it fall to the floor, where it piled up next to her feet. Nayeon was obviously completely naked under the robe, which now made for an interesting contrast to her hair decorations.

Quickly understanding where this was going, you paused the video and got up to lock the door and turn off the light in the room. You lay down again with the laptop on your stomach, but this time you undress completely before returning to bed. You were ready to enjoy your girlfriend's gift without interruptions, so you pressed play once again.

Nayeon instantly turned around, showing her full body in front of the camera, and still with that smile on her face, she asked. “Oppa, do you like what you see?” Oppa. She always drove you crazy when she used that word, because she only used it in private. It was like something secret for the two of you. On the other hand of course you liked what you saw. Nayeon's smooth skin completely exposed to you, her small but firm breasts crowned with those beautiful light brown nipples, her delicious ass, or even her hands and feet. Everything about your girlfriend drove you crazy, obviously so did the place where her legs met, that magnificent place of pleasure with silky lips and a small mop of hair that Nayeon liked to keep to frame the beauty of her crotch.

The mere sight of your naked girlfriend was enough to make you hard instantly. You took the liberty of starting to caress yourself very slowly while she leaned down to light one by one the candles that she had placed before. Then your girlfriend left the frame and you saw how the light went out. When Nayeon re-entered the shot, her skin shone with the yellowish glow of the candlelight. There were several of them, and they were placed strategically, so you could actually still see quite well. That is if now interesting shadows were created here and there, making the contrast help to better highlight Nayeon's curves, which made your cock throb in your hand.

Your girlfriend got into the bathtub and sat inside facing the camera. The water covered her up to the height of her ribs, and as a result of the reflection of the candles you could hardly see what was below. “I hope you enjoy my gift.” Nayeon shyly bit her lower lip before leaning back against the wall of the tub and starting to play with her breasts.

At first it was just gentle touches and caresses on her nipples, but soon she began to get a little more daring and use her fingers to play and press her delicate pleasure buttons. You heard a small moan through your headphones, and that made you start moving the hand that was stroking your cock a little faster. But just a little faster, you didn't want to rush things because you imagined that wouldn't be all.

Soon more moans began to leave Nayeon's mouth, as she became more energetic with the caresses of her nipples. “Love, I miss your mouth on my tits so much. It always made me so wet when you suck my nipples." Your cock throbbed at the memory of her hard nipples in your mouth.

Now your girlfriend lowered her hand to caress her belly and put it under the water, which could only mean that she was taking care of the most sensitive part of her. New and louder moans confirmed your suspicions. While one hand rolled one of her nipples, the other created small waves on the surface of the water, which further distorted her vision. It was clear that Nayeon was enjoying the moment, as she had now tilted her head back so you could only partially see her face, but you knew from firsthand experience that her cheeks had turned red, and that her mouth was hanging open in a silent moan.

Now the only sound you heard was the water crashing against the edges of the bathtub, and Nayeon's heavy breathing. But you could see how her arm moved, and how her hand completely took one of her breasts to give it gentle squeezes, before releasing it and going back to playing with just the nipple. You had to admit that the shadow that the candles created on your girlfriend's tits made them look even more appetizing, and also made you salivate.

Just as you were going to start properly masturbating, Nayeon stopped her movements, sitting up straight again and removing her hand from the water. In fact, you could see how her cheeks were red, but what she did next didn't give you time to appreciate the pretty blush on her skin. Well, as you had seen many times, she put her hand on her mouth to clean her own juices from her fingers. Nayeone sucked her digits as if they were a cock, making eye contact with the camera and opening her mouth so you could see how her tongue ran over every curve of her fingers, collecting the precious nectar.

“Fuck, I'm so delicious.” Nayeon exclaimed when her fingers were clean. The taste of her nectar was something you knew quite well, so you could confirm that it really was delicious. You loved drinking it straight from her crotch, eating her until she came in your mouth while she held you in position by wrapping her legs around your head. And she loved sucking your cock when it was soaked with her own juices, because above all things Im Nayeon greatly enjoyed herself during sex.

You knew that behind this loving gesture of recording a video so that you could touch yourself thinking about her, there was also the fact that Nayeon loved the attention. She loved being the center of attention and being told how beautiful she was, because she knew she was, but that didn't mean she was going to be unfaithful to you. Each and every time she had rejected the people who made advances to her, because she loved you and only you. Nayeon needed the eyes of the world on her, but she only had eyes for you. Which made you a pretty lucky person, because to be honest your girlfriend was way above your league.

“Have you enjoyed it so far?” Of course you were enjoying it, your hard cock was enough proof of that. "I hope so. But don't despair because the best comes now.” Nayeon blew a kiss to the camera before getting down on her knees, once again revealing her lower body, then she turned around and leaned over to show you her butt. “Do you see well?” She asked as if you would be able to answer her, but you were grateful for the gesture of her keeping the conversation alive at a time like this. Then with a giggle she used one of her hands to grab one butt cheek and stretch it a little, letting you see a metallic sheen where her anus should have been.

“Damn naughty girl.” You exclaimed involuntarily, at the revelation that Nyeon had had a plug in her butt this entire time. You smiled wondering why you hadn't seen it coming, especially when you knew your girlfriend really liked those types of toys. Nayeon had a wide variety of them, and she liked to use them whenever she could. For your part, in the most diverse situations you liked to put your hand in her pants or under her skirt, to check if she was wearing one of them. For example, you knew that she loved going to the nearest store with a plug plugged into her butt, or going for short walks in the park carrying her favorite plug.

“Mmnnghh Oppaaaaaaa… I miss you. I want your hand to be the one that holds my buttock. Or would you rather spank me because I've been a bad girl?” She then released her buttock to hit him with her hand, which was accompanied by a small moan. The thing was, you weren't sure if she deserved a punishment for being a bad girl, or instead she deserved a gift for being like that. In any case, you would have to deal with that dilemma later because right now you were more busy watching how your girlfriend opened her butt again with one hand and with the other began to play with the plug that she had plugged in.

Small moans from Nayeon let you know that she was really enjoying the little tugs she gave the toy. She held it tightly by the base with the tips of her fingers, and pulled on it until the widest part threatened to come out of her rectum, then she let go and the toy entered her ass again on its own. You were well aware that your girlfriend loved that, because on many occasions it had been your hand that had been pulling on the toy, while Nayeon dissolved into moans lying on your lap. But right now she was kneeling in the middle of the bathtub, spreading her butt and pleasuring herself. And you were hundreds of miles from that bathtub, masturbating to the delicious moans and the beautiful view of what your girlfriend was doing.

You had already reached a fairly pleasurable rhythm as you moved your hand up and down on your member. Speeding up when Nayeon moaned more or said something dirty, and slowing down when she stopped moving to give her butt a rest. More spanking made you increase the pace of your hand again, which in turn made your precum come out and bathe your entire glans with that natural lubricant. You let out a small moan, more like a sigh than anything else, but you still had to stop to deal with how much Nayeon's gift was turning you on, because you had to remember that you were still at your parents' house. It was already late at night, but you didn't want anyone to hear you masturbating to a home movie of your girlfriend anyway.

You bit your lower lip to suppress more sounds as you moved your hand again with considerable speed, as Nayeon was moaning pleasantly. She suddenly pulled harder on the toy and this time pulled it out completely, making a sucking noise as it left her rectum and leaving her anus open. The glowing light of the candles allowed you to see how Nayeon's anus slowly closed in a rather obscene way. At that moment you would have done anything to put your fingers there, or to rim that beautiful opening with your tongue. And as if her thoughts were connected, Nayeon put the fingers that had previously been in her vagina back into her mouth, and she sucked them, covering them with saliva. Then she put her middle and ring fingers into her own rectum, taking advantage of the saliva and all the foreplay.

“Babe… I miss your big dick stretching my little asshole so much.” Your girlfriend's words came to you fully charger of sensuality and sincerity as you watched how she played with her fingers, putting them in and out of her anus completely. "I miss you. Fill me again with your hot milk.” In an act that seemed incredible and fascinating to you, Nayeon said those words with a pout. Only she could do something so innocent in the middle of an act as obscene as recording herself masturbating through her ass, and still look adorable. One more example of how incredible your girlfriend was.

By God, that duality drove you crazy. Your cock almost exploded at the sight of that tender gesture on her face, remembering the many times you had come all over Nayeon's face while she made that same pout. Because if there were other things your girlfriend loved besides being the center of attention and having a plug plugged into her ass—aside from you, obviously—that was you ending up in her face. Nayeon loved feeling how the thick ropes of your semen hit her face and ran down her perfect features. All to end up cleaning herself with her tongue, and sometimes sharing a kiss with you. After all, if she had received your cum on her face so lovingly, the least you could do was kiss her.

Your cock throbbed again as you watched Nayeon insert a third finger into her anus and leave it inside her for a few seconds. "I miss you so much. My ass feels so lonely without you inside.” She removed her fingers from her and shook her butt from side to side, showing off her rectum that once again remained open for a few seconds, as if inviting you to fuck her. Of course you couldn't because it was a video, but you would have liked nothing more at that moment than to be in that bathtub with your girlfriend having a good time.

Now Nayeon took from behind some shampoo bottles an object unknown to you, which she had clearly prepared previously, along with a little bottle of what was clearly lubricant. The object in question was similar to a plug, except for the fact that it had a fairly wide hole in the center. Apparently it was made of glass, or some similar material, as it was completely transparent. After all, it was like a glass tube at least two inches in diameter and four in length, with fins on one end to prevent it from being inserted completely or to be able to grab it.

Your girlfriend put the toy in her mouth and, with her elbows resting on the edge of the tub, she looked back at you with that cute but naughty face. The face she used when she was planning some mischief. All this while she was shaking her butt again. At this point it was clear where that toy was going to end up.

“Now the good stuff begins.” Nayeon took the toy and coated it well with lube, before placing it on her butt where it entered with almost no effort on your girlfriend's part. Her entrance was already quite dilated by the plug and fingers. A not at all suppressed moan told you how pleasurable this was for Nayeon, it was a shame that she couldn't know how much you were enjoying it too.

Now the light of the candles allowed you to see the glazed shine of the object plugged into Nayeon's back entrance, and in an almost perverse way it also allowed you to see the inside of your girlfriend. Somehow despite not being so close to the camera, and only illuminated by the glowing flames of the candles, the transparency and action of the toy made it possible for you to see the inside of your girlfriend's rectum. The obscene and exciting game that your girlfriend was playing left you speechless, this was perhaps the dirtiest thing you had ever seen her do. Well, except maybe for that time in the elevator at that mall.

“Isn't it a beautiful sight?” Nayeon shook her butt again, but this time it was a thousand times more obscene and provocative because of the new toy. That exciting scene was taking you to a new level of pleasure, so much so that you had to slow down the pace at which you masturbated because you didn't want to finish before watching the video completely. Now you move your hand slowly, but applying more pressure with your fingers on your cock, giving deep pumps to the very base of your member.

“But I bet you want to see something even better. Want?" Again that tender tone that highlighted the duality of the moment and drove you so crazy. A wide smile that showed off your girlfriend's bunny teeth, and even her gums, followed that innocent-seeming question. Nayeon then took one of the shampoo bottles, and presented it to the camera, standing it on the palm of her hand, as if this were all a commercial. A very obscene and twisted one. Only at this point did you realize that what your girlfriend was holding was not a bottle of shampoo at all.

The object in question was neither more nor less than a bottle of lubricant, but not just any one. No, it was a one liter bottle of a type of lubricant that you had wanted to try for a while, but every time you tried to buy it was sold out. What made it special was that it imitated semen, at least in its texture and viscosity. So you could say that Nayeon was holding a one-liter bottle of fake semen in her hands.

“I bought it online last month along with the toy. I asked Momo if she could use her address so you wouldn't suspect anything.” Without losing that adorable smile, and with an expression of pride on her face, she let out a small giggle. “We should try it together next time.” Was that shame what you were seeing on Nayeon's face? It was almost impossible to believe that your girlfriend blushed at that proposal, when she was literally recording a porn video in which you could see the inside of her guts. She bit the tip of her index finger before blowing a quick kiss to the camera and turning so you wouldn't see the red on her cheeks, but it was too late for that. It almost made you feel bad that you were masturbating right now, but the duality of the video made you keep pumping.

Regaining her composure, Nayeon uncorked the bottle and, holding her ass up as much as she could, poured a generous amount onto her ass. The viscous whitish liquid landed at the height of her tailbone and began to slowly drip downwards. Soon you almost had a heart attack, because you were watching the fake semen being spilled by gravity into your girlfriend's ass. You had a prime view of Nayeon's gaping anus being filled with lube.

A gasp that wasn't for excitation caught your attention. “It's cold, but feels so good.” So what had caused your girlfriend to gasp was the difference in temperature between the fluid and her insides. You found it funny, but you didn't have time to laugh because now Nayeon was pushing the rest of the lubricant in with her fingers, so that it too would enter her. Immediately afterwards she again poured a generous amount onto her butt. “I wish it could be your milk that fills me. Oppaaaa, I want to feel how you overflow my insides with your semen.”

God, it kept driving you crazy how she kept saying those obscenities in such an innocent voice. The funny thing was that Nayeon wasn't doing it just to provoke, it was something she really couldn't control. She had even been scolded at work for treating a client with that same voice. Of course, there was no tone of voice that could make it seem tender as Nayeon put more lubricant through the toy, to the point that it seemed like she couldn't get more inside her.

The fake semen, in a fact you thought impossible, had filled the toy to the brim. So if Nayeon moved her butt roughly, some drops would fall directly onto the bath water. Apparently putting as much lubricant as possible inside her was the ultimate goal of having used that toy, because now your girlfriend was removing it, leaving only the liquid in its place. You again saw how Nayeo’s anus closed, this time even slower than the last, leaving the fake semen trapped inside her.

Once again, showing off her obscenity, Nayeon put the toy in her mouth and sucked it as if it were a lollipop. She even managed to stick her tongue inside the toy’s hole and pick up some of the lube. “God, I'm delicious. Now I understand why you love to eat my ass.” Your ever-so-modest girlfriend put the now completely clean toy to the side and leaned over the edge of the tub again. Her position lifted and she naturally spread her butt cheeks a little, offering you once again that perfect view of her puckered rear entrance. By flexing the muscles around it a little, Nayeon managed to make a small amount of lubricant come out of her, which slid down the edge of her buttock and thigh.

The next thing your girlfriend did was move her butt up and down, in the best twerk she could do in that position, moaning with the movement as the liquid stirred inside her and excited her even more. “Nngghhh!! Hooneeey, I'm so full. Just thinking that it could be your cum moving inside my guts makes my pussy drip.” She used the hand that hadn't touched the lube to separate the folds from her delicate vulva, as if she were offering herself to you, and then with those same fingers she drew circles over her soaked pussy. “It feels good… But I miss having you inside me. I want to put your cock in my mouth so bad.”

Then Nayeon opened her mouth and stuck her tongue out as far as she could, putting on the same expression she did when she gave you a head. With her free hand she imitates the movement she normally makes when masturbating you, moving her hand back and forth in front of her mouth. Making the whole show like when she gave you one of those delicious blowjobs that only she knew how to give, and you liked to receive. It's not like you had much experience in that regard, you had only had relationships (Don't even dare call that sex, because that was going too far) with a couple of people before Nayeon but your girlfriend had adapted so well to what you liked that it was impossible for anyone to know you better than her. Once again, you thought, irrefutable proof that your girlfriend was in a league completely above yours. You were grateful that she decided to be with you in the only way you could at that moment, jerking your cock frantically at the sight of Nayeon giving an impeccable blowjob to the open air. How lucky the air was too.

Fresh moans from Nayeon were what brought you out of your reverie and brought you back to reality, where your girlfriend had decided that she had had enough of teasing herself and had inserted two fingers inside her pussy. She had her knees as far apart as the narrow space inside the tub would allow, while her fingers moved in and out at a pace almost as frenetic as your own hand moved. It was as if despite the physical and temporal distance you were still connected, like in one of those ancient legends. Except this time the red thread seemed to connect your cock to her clit, something almost poetic.

Moans and the faint sound of small waves crashing against the walls of the tub were all you could hear now. Your girlfriend alternated between fucking herself with her fingers, and taking them out to rub her needy pussy before putting them back in again. Soon a third finger joined the party, doing the job that right now you were too far away to do. While the hand between her legs fucked her own pussy, Nayeon moved her other hand to her butt. Where a mischievous finger began to trace circles on the wrinkled entrance.

Your heart skipped a beat because you knew what was coming next, Nayeon was going to fuck herself in both holes at the same time. You were aware of how much she liked that too, which is why you had often proposed to have a threesome, but she always rejected it. It was incredible how your girlfriend always refused your offer, not because she didn't like the idea of the threesome itself, but because she didn't accept that someone else could enjoy the enormous pleasure of fucking her. Although it was obvious that you weren't her first partner (she should have learned all those things somewhere) Nayeon's love and attachment to you surpassed any obscenity she could think of. So your only companions when making love to your girlfriend were the many (Many) toys you had, and your own fingers. In some ways, especially when it came to sex, that love was kind of sick, but it worked pretty well for the two of you. Other than that you were a rather loving and somewhat clingy couple, sometimes even sharing tight hugs in public. But not as tight as the finger Nayeon had just shoved up her ass.

Well, to be honest that finger couldn't be that tight considering all the foreplay, and since just a few moments ago it had been inside that same hole accompanied by two other fingers. The fact is that now Nayeon was the fullest she had been that night, with three fingers in her pussy, along with her ass overflowing with fake cum and a naughty finger inside. Clearly that wasn't going to be enough to make her cum if she had gone to all that trouble to prepare her ass like that, so you weren't surprised to see how a second finger passed smoothly through Nayeon's anus.

A new sound joined the melody as Nayeon abruptly withdrew her fingers from her pussy, making a sucking noise like a loud POP! that echoed throughout the room. But that wasn't the only new sound, no, because now those fingers had entered your girlfriend's mouth. So the moans were now muffled and interspersed with sucking noises as Nayeon hungrily sucked on her own fingers. She would take them out and put them back in up to her knuckles, and then take them out again. She would occasionally separate them and swirl her tongue around them to clean them as well.

“The taste is almost as delicious as your semen.” A small giggle made your girlfriend look shy once again in the middle of that obscene scene, but she quickly regained her composure and put her fingers back into her pussy because she had already cleaned all the sweet nectar that covered them, and it was time to collect more. The other hand now also had three fingers inside her, fucking her anus in sync with the one she has in her vagina. When one of her inserted her fingers the other withdrew, always maintaining the rhythm and one of her two holes completely stretched out. The process also caused more and more lubricant to drip from her anus, so by this point her luscious thighs were all stained with fake semen. You didn't understand how liquid didn't stop coming out of her, Nayeon had really filled herself to the brim.

After a few minutes of pleasuring herself, the rhythm of Nayeon's fingers became more erratic. So now she sometimes put her fingers completely in her pussy and completely took out the ones she had in her ass, separating them as they came out to maximize the pleasure . Since she no longer had her mouth occupied, she was able to moan with lust once again.

“Babe, I'm sooooo close.” She drawled as she shoved her fingers into her ass, and used her other hand to draw circles on her clit. “Am I allowed to cum? I’ve been a good girl.” She looked directly at the camera, biting her lower lip in a sexy way, but using her eyes to once again put on that tender expression. Creating that duality in her face that she knew drove you crazy. "I think I deserve it." She said again with that tone that was trying to sound childish and mischievous at the same time.

Since you clearly couldn't respond to that, what Nayeon did instead of waiting for your approval was to massage her clit harder and spread the fingers in her ass as far as possible. It was so evident that she was close to her climax because now all her weight was resting on her chest leaning on the bathtub, and on her knees because her excitement had made her lift her feet and make them emerge from the under water. Where they had been hiding all this time.

Of course you loved Nayeon's feet too. You loved kissing them, licking them, painting her nails, and also fucking her feet and cumming all over her perfect toes. So the sight of her fingers curled in arousal, framing how she massaged her clit and stretched her dripping anus was what finally brought you to the point of no return. With a moan that you could not suppress, you discharged all your semen in powerful jets that gushed from your tip, and even flew over your laptop, landing on your chest. Your hand, which you had tried to prevent that from happening, was filled with your thick cum. Which trickled back over your cock, making you wonder if this was what it would feel like to be inside Nayeon's butt right now.

With your breathing still heavy, you focused again on the video, where your girlfriend was still masturbating, but so erratically and spasmodically that it was evident that she wasn't going to last much longer. You would have been able to see her sensitive pussy dripping with that delicious nectar, if it hadn't been for all that lubricant that was dripping from her ass and soaking your girlfriend's folds. Now the outside of her vagina was completely covered by the slippery liquid, making it look white.

What was also covered, but by a different substance, was your girlfriend's back. The light from the candles reflected on a hundred beads of sweat that had begun to appear on her, making it look as if her skin were covered in a bunch of pearls. That pearly shine made her look so damn beautiful, that this time it was your heart what you felt pumping instead of your cock.

With a single moan, the loudest you had heard from her so far, and in the midst of new and reinforced spasms, you witnessed Nayeon reach her climax. Her orgasm was much longer lasting than yours, making her legs and lower torso tremble. Her fingers on her butt slipped completely out, splashing lubricant out of the tub. Now her hand on her vulva had remained still, covering it completely, as if trying to contain the throbbing in her lips, while her toes were curled so much that they threatened to dig into her soles. It was clearly the strongest and most pleasurable orgasm you had ever seen your girlfriend have.

After a long minute where your girlfriend did not stop involuntarily moving some of her muscles, as a result of her pleasurable orgasm, you could see how she slowly moved the hand she had holding her vagina again. Now Nayeon was patting her lips, as if trying to calm herself, while she slowly lowered her feet back to the bottom of the bathtub.

Panting like she had just finished running a marathon, and with small spasms still running through her lower half, you watched her place her arms crossed over the edge of the bathtub and rest her head on them. The same way she did when she was napping, except this time what she wanted to do was expose her butt to the camera. You could see how her anus was still closing when she did that. She said nothing because probably still was out of breath to speak, so you had no idea what she had in mind right now.

To your surprise, for the umpteenth time that pleasurable night, what Nayeon did was push with the muscles of her rectum to make what was left of the lubricant come out of her. Slowly a thread of viscous liquid began to flow out, which became thicker as the seconds passed. Now the fake semen was not only soaking her ass and vagina, but it had also completely covered your girlfriend's meaty thighs. The scene itself was so obscene, but what topped it off was when there was almost no lube left inside Nayeon. That's when her butt started making farting noises because of the lube and how open her anus was still.

That sound made your cock so hard again in an instant, that you were sure you could use it to hit diamonds and break them. Your hand was still full of your own cum, so you used it as a sort of natural lubricant to pump your aching cock again. You weren't masturbating frantically like you did before, instead you were just stroking your shaf at a slow pace, greatly enjoying each of the movements of your hand.

Apparently the sonata of your girlfriend's butt had stopped, because now you only heard her breathing, still somewhat agitated. It had really been a very good orgasm for her, and certainly for you too. Nayeon then turned to face the camera, but she still remained kneeling in the middle of the bathtub. It made you a little sad not to be able to continue seeing her butt, which although it wasn't big had a wonderful shape. Plus her small buttocks were the perfect size to fit in your hands. As compensation you got a perfect view of her sweat-soaked chest, where her breasts rose and fell in a rhythmic way as a result of her breathing. In addition to being able to see, now from the front, her soaked pussy, that was still dripping lubricant as if it were your semen after having finished inside your girlfriend.

With a wide smile on her face, Nayeon washed her hands in the same water from the bathtub, water that had now turned white due to all the lubricant spilled in it. When she decided that her hands were clean she looked at the camera, and you could see her eyes shining. “Did you enjoy it?” She asked with that tender and loving voice that characterized her so much, while she played with one of her pigtails. A small giggle accompanied the question. “I bet you enjoyed it as much as I did. ”You didn't know if you had enjoyed it as much as she did, since her orgasm was much more violent than yours, but you were sure that your level of pleasure had been very high.

“Next time I want to have you playing with my butt… It's going to be so much fun.” The really funny thing here was how Nayeon had regained that shyness that some people hated because they thought she was fake, but you knew she was sincere. Your girlfriend used both hands to play with her ponytail as she looked away from you, as if she was embarrassed to admit that she wanted you to fuck her ass. As if she herself had not been minutes ago doing something much dirtier and obscene. Your girlfriend was quite a case.

"I love you baby. I hope to see you soon, I really miss you.” She puffed out her cheeks for a second in a brief pout. “Let me know if you liked my gift.” Then, she blew you a kiss and stretching out one of her hands, you saw how she turned off the camera, ending the video.

“What a great Christmas present”, you thought to yourself. Now you feel like you should reward Nayeon for this, and also buy Momo a nice gift for helping her hiding the things. “Definitely the best gift this Christmas”, you decided as you postponed getting out of bed because you definitely needed a shower. After all, your hand, cock, and chest were still covered in your own cum.

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