#and the job was no longer up on their website | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

nadvs · 2 months

Text

cam girl (part two)

pairing rafe cameron x female reader

rating explicit 18+

summary you work two jobs. by day, you’re a maid for the cameron household, where rafe degrades you any chance he can get. by night, you’re a cam girl, hiding your face so nobody can recognize you. when you discover your new subscriber, the filthy-mouthed man obsessively paying you to do everything he can think of, is rafe, you’re not sure what to do next.

» masterlist

+:★:+*━━━*+:★:+*━━━*+:★:+*

The next time you log in to the cam website, your heart is racing. Throughout your classes that day, all you could think about was how hot the session with the man you thought was a stranger was last night.

But he isn’t a stranger. He lives in the mansion you get paid to clean twice a week, where he taunts you every chance he gets, practically fucking you with his eyes.

Does Rafe know it’s you on the camera? Is this a sick little game he’s enjoying, thinking you don’t know it’s him? Or maybe he’s aware you know who’s behind the account and he wants to see if you’ll say something about it?

But you do such a good job hiding your face. He can’t know it’s you.

You wonder if it’s wrong to continue doing the nightly private sessions knowing his identity. But when you remember how much joy he gets from berating you while you clean his house, you figure it’s ridiculous to care about the ethics of it.

You try to focus on the fact that you’re making so much money. Rafe gave you over $1500 last night. And he wants to keep paying you for every session. At this rate, you won’t have to worry about bills or your college tuition at all.

You closed your cam girl account to all other subscribers and posted a note that you were no longer streaming. The truth was, you were, but for one man only.

The thought of Rafe lying in bed jacking off to you turns you on before you even start the chat with him.

You take a deep breath, your hand hovering over your laptop trackpad. Rafe Cameron is going to watch you get naked and touch yourself and it makes your stomach feel like it’s flipping.

You start the private session.

Your screen fills with the image of you from your lips down to your feet as you’re curled up on your bed. You’re in a sheer white nighty with no bra or panties on underneath, your body hardly hidden beneath the smooth fabric.

Rafe called your tits perfect last night, so you figured he’ll appreciate you having them on display right when he logs in.

figure8 has joined the session.

You swallow hard.

figure8: been thinking about you all day princess

His words give you butterflies. You try to keep your confidence at the same level now that you’re aware of who’s on the other side of the chat. You refuse to be intimidated knowing it’s Rafe.

“Yeah? What about me?” you ask.

figure8: how pretty that pussy is and how im gonna watch you fuck it from behind

You feel the blood rush to your face. You know he has a filthy mind from the comments he makes to you at his house while you work, but this is more than you ever expected.

“Should I go slow for you again?” you whisper. “I know you like that.”

figure8: what a fast learner

You smirk. There’s the Rafe you know. He has such a natural talent for mocking you.

“You like this little outfit?” you ask him, your hands running down the fabric on your chest, fondling your tits. “I wore it special for you.”

figure8: so fucking hot. bounce those tits for me

You sit up on your knees and arch your back, lightly bobbing on the bed with your hands up in your hair. He has a perfect view of your chest beneath the sheer nighty, your nipples hard under the fabric as your tits jiggle up and down.

figure8: damn. i’d leave hickeys and bites all over those tits. you like to get bitten dont you princess. i know you like it rough

With every other viewer you’ve had as a cam girl, you’ve lied about your preferences just to get tips, but with Rafe, it’s like he knows exactly what you want. You haven’t had to lie to him once.

“I fucking love it rough,” you moan. You put your hands up to your tits and squeeze hard. “I want you to leave marks on me.”

figure8: i’d leave them all over your tits and your ass

“Yeah? Would you spank me? Hard enough to leave a handprint?” you ask, turning around and slowly lifting the nighty over your butt. You stick out your ass for him and sway it slowly for him.

figure8: fuck yes. shake your ass

You spread your knees wider and obey, looking back to watch your body on the screen. The thought of Rafe lying in bed fisting his cock while he watches you makes you get even wetter.

figure8: straddle your pillow. i wanna see how you’d ride my face

You tilt the laptop down so he doesn’t see above your mouth as you move to grab a pillow from behind the computer. You readjust the screen then straddle the pillow, the cotton soft against your naked core.

You start to buck your hips, shuddering immediately. You’re dazed already, desperate for his hands on you, as you rub your body against the pillow.

“I’d ride it fast like this,” you say breathily, humping the pillow.

figure8: my needy girl. my dick is throbbing watching you

figure8 tipped you $200.

figure8: that’s for riding it so well

“Thank you,” you purr, still grinding the pillow. The feeling of getting paid while doing something that feels so good is intoxicating. You’d do anything Rafe’s filthy mind desires.

figure8: don’t cum yet. i’m not done with you

You bite your lip in frustration.

“Okay,” you say heatedly. You slow down your thrusts, back still arched as you await your next instruction.

figure8: show me how you finger yourself. get your pussy nice and close to the camera

You shift to spread your legs in front of the camera, seeing yourself on full display for him.

figure8: start with one finger. i want you to work up to four. can you do that princess?

“I can do that,” you say shakily. You insert a forefinger into your warm, tight hole and let out a contented sigh.

figure8: pump it in and out slowly. add a second finger when you’re ready

You obey, stretching yourself out a bit before adding a second finger. Slowly, you add a third and writhe a bit. You push your hand back and forth, watching yourself on the screen.

You add your pinky finger and slightly tense up, your body rolling.

figure8: breathe through it. you can do it

You let out a shaky exhale as you continue, watching your fingers disappear inside of you.

figure8: good girl stretching that pussy out so nice. i bet you taste so fucking good. taste yourself for me

The request is so sinful, so unlike anything you’ve ever been asked to do. You slowly pull your fingers out of yourself, bringing your hand up to your mouth, making sure he can see your lips.

“I’ve never done this before,” you say to him.

figure8: you’ll do a lot of new things with me, princess

You taste your wetness, sucking on your fingers for him with a slurp loud enough for him to hear. It’s such an animalistic, depraved act, and you find yourself wishing you could do it with him in person, have him watch you do this in the same room.

figure8: god i want to taste you so bad

“I want to taste you, too,” you whisper. If only Rafe knew how accessible you were to him, in his house twice a week. “You know, you can send me photos whenever you want.”

figure8: desperate to see this dick aren’t you

You smile. He could not be more correct. You don’t know how you’ll manage to be around him in person and act normal knowing what you know.

Your stomach heats when you see that he sent a photo. He’s holding his cock, the curve of it so perfect, a pearl of precum leaking out of the tip.

“I want to use my mouth on you,” you keen. “My pussy is aching for it.”

figure8: i know you’d love the taste, princess. show me how you’d take my cock doggy style

Finally. You pick up your dildo and turn around, backing up towards the screen. You angle to slide the toy in slowly, feeling it fill you up, then move your hand so he can view you clearly.

figure8: i can see you dripping

Sure enough, you look down on your sheets to see drops of your own wetness. This man has got you hornier than you’ve ever been.

“That’s what you do to me,” you rasp. “Fuck, I bet you’d destroy me.”

figure8: that pussy would grip my dick so well. i’d fuck you so hard

“Can I please do it now?” you say breathlessly, throbbing with need.

figure8: only because you asked so nice

You dip your arm between your hips, knees sinking into your bed as you lean so your cheek is pressed against the mattress and out of the camera’s frame. You hold the base of the toy and shut your eyes and imagine Rafe’s warm, hard cock inside of you instead of a dildo you have to control.

Breathy moans spill out of you as you thrust the dildo in and out of your slick cunt. You picture him behind you, his hands on your hips as he ruthlessly thrashes in and out of you.

The orgasm slowly builds and builds.

“I’m gonna come,” you say, muffled. You bite your tongue, stifling the urge to call him by his name. Your eyes roll back as the orgasm ripples through with a powerful force, making you shake with pleasure.

When you finally regain enough energy, you sit up and turn to look at the laptop again. To your delight, you see that Rafe sent another photo.

You look closer at the image to see his cum sprayed across his muscular stomach, the white splashes of his pleasure glistening atop his abs.

“Shit,” you rasped. The image is so sexy that you feel yourself getting aroused again.

figure8: see what you do to me? i never cum this fucking fast

figure8 tipped you $100.

figure8: use the money to buy this. have it ready tomorrow

He sends a link in his next message. You open it to see a sex toy website. The page he sent is for a rose vibrator.

“I’ve always wanted one of these,” you say breathily. “Thank you, baby.”

figure8: dont use it without me watching. understand?

“Yes,” you say.

figure8: sleep. you’ll need your rest for what im doing to you tomorrow

figure8 tipped you $1000.

Rafe leaves the chat. You follow his instructions, ordering the toy right away and selecting the option to have it delivered tomorrow. What is he planning?

You decide to do some more online shopping, finding a top you know he’ll like.

After you buy the items, you stare at your laptop, reeling from what just happened.

You look at the pictures he sent again. Rafe was always such a cocky asshole whenever he taunted you at work and it definitely isn’t from overcompensation. He’s so well-endowed that you know it’d hurt so good having him inside you.

How would he react if you told him you were the girl he was jacking off to? Would he be embarrassed? Or relieved he could fuck you for real? Because you’d let him have sex with you. After tonight, there’s no doubt about it.

You close the laptop. It’s Thursday, meaning you’ll likely see Rafe in two days when you’re back at the Cameron estate on Saturday as scheduled. You typically see him around the house, but there are times where you don’t run into him at all.

You don’t know if you’d prefer to see him or not. How could you act normal after having him talk to you like that, after seeing his naked photos?

You try to go to bed right away, but your head is spinning.

The next night, you log in wearing skimpy white panties and the pink tank top you bought the night before, the word “princess” stretched across the front in white cursive letters.

Rafe joins the private session and you can imagine the smirk on his face once he sees your outfit.

“Hi, baby,” you coo, pinching the peaks of your nipples poking beneath the shirt. “You like my top? Bought it last night.”

figure8: its perfect. i want you to spoil yourself with every dollar i give you

You giggle and hold the small silicone rose toy up the camera.

“I was tempted to use it, but I didn’t,” you admit. “Promise.”

figure8: good girl. i hope you got your rest last night. im not paying you til you cum three times tonight

“Oh, my God,” you laugh. “Three? I don’t know…”

figure8: you can do it, princess. take ur panties off but keep that shirt on. don’t want u to forget who u belong to

His possessiveness is so attractive that you feel yourself getting wet already. You slide your underwear off, spreading your legs and putting yourself on display for him.

figure8: tell me what you’d want me to do if i was there. you’d like my head between your legs wouldnt you

You giggle, “You read my mind.” You put your fingers on your clit and close your eyes, imagining curling your fingers in Rafe’s hair as his tongue presses against your middle.

You would have never guessed that Rafe Cameron likes eating pussy, always having assumed he was selfish in bed. But he’s been surprising you since the first message he sent.

“I’d want you to start off kissing me right here,” you purr, “then you’d start using your tongue. Then you’d suck my clit.”

figure8: then i’d put my tongue deep inside your tight cunt

Reading the words makes you tremble. You lower your hand to spread your lips open and show him your opening.

“Right here?” you tease.

figure8: i want my face all wet from you

You groan, imagining his pretty face glistening, his pink lips swollen from eating you out.

You grow wetter and wetter as you touch yourself.

figure8: get the toy

You eagerly pick it up and hold your finger over the “on” button.

“Which setting?”

figure8: whatever will make u cum the hardest, princess

“You get off on me feeling good, don’t you, baby?” you tease.

figure8: those sounds you make are so fucking perfect. i’m already rock hard

“You want me to be loud?”

figure8: don’t hold back. i’ll count your orgasms with you ok? and on the third one, we’ll cum together

This man could not get any sexier if he tried. You curiously explore the toy, finally turning it on and hearing it buzz immediately.

You place it on your clit and the pleasure is instant. You let out a sharp exhale, imagining Rafe touching himself while he watches you.

The toy buzzes and suctions on you and it doesn’t take long at all for the first orgasm to roll through you. You don’t stifle the moan that comes out of you, knowing he’s enjoying it.

figure8: that’s one. that was so fast, princess

“I was horny all day,” you confess.

figure8: thinkin about me?

“Mhm. That picture of your cum all over your stomach is so fucking nice.”

figure8: then u can imagine how much i enjoy watching u fuck urself

“I want a video of you rubbing your cock,” you say impulsively. “I want to hear your sounds, too.”

figure8: you’re such a needy girl

“It’s why you like me,” you flirt. He doesn’t respond right away, making you anticipate that he’s recording a video for you.

A file from him pops up in the chat. You eagerly play it, watching six jaw-dropping seconds of his hand moving up and down the thick girth of his dick in his dark bedroom, his heavy breathing filling your ears.

“God,” you whimper. “I’m ready to go again.”

You pick up the toy and place it on your clit, pressing it down hard as it pulls another orgasm out of you after a minute. You moan out a jumbled, high-pitched mess of “oh, fuck”s as you cum.

Your muscles are tingling and tired. You’re not sure you can give yourself a third orgasm.

figure8: two. not done yet

“Maybe we stop here?” you whisper. “I’m already so weak.”

figure8: are u going to be a good girl or not

“I will,” you resign. “I will.”

figure8: go again. on the max setting

Feeling spent but determined to please him, you put the toy on your sensitive clit again. You hang your head back, looking up at your bedroom ceiling as you press the button a few times to turn on the highest level.

The toy’s suction and pace is brutal and unforgiving. You cry out from the overstimulation, writhing beneath it. The forced orgasm rises inside you and you groan loudly as you cum, tremors ripping through your body.

You’re panting when you turn off the toy and sit up to look at the chat. Rafe sent another photo. His hand is holding his cock at its base, the swollen shaft covered in his cum.

figure8: would u lick this up?

“Every fucking drop,” you say, wishing you could have orgasmed with him inside of you.

figure8 tipped you $2000.

figure8: extra for being so good

The high of the orgasms, of your bank account growing all because this man wants to watch you pleasure yourself, makes you feel like you’re floating.

“I belong to you,” you tell Rafe drunkenly, unable to imagine letting anyone else watching you like this ever again.

figure8: yeah you fucking do. that pussy is mine

“All yours,” you whisper.

figure8: ill see u tomorrow. good job today princess

Rafe exits the chat, leaving you a heaving mess.

Your heart feels like it twists reading his last message. He surely means he’ll see you on camera tomorrow… but what if he means at the estate for your housekeeping shift?

No, he doesn’t know it’s you. He can’t. You breathe out a tired sigh and take a long, hot shower before going to bed.

Your shapeless uniform is scratchy against your skin as you walk into the mansion the next day, still not sure if you want to run into Rafe or not.

You finish up cleaning downstairs and move up to the bedrooms, leaving Rafe’s room for last.

When you enter his room, it’s empty, the late morning sun hidden behind the blinds covering his big windows. You hear the shower in his ensuite running. You curse to yourself, suddenly nervous to see him. Maybe you can quickly collect the laundry and leave before he gets out.

You start to strip the bed, picturing the photos he sent you of himself on it, fucking his own hand and cumming with you. He lies right here, typing dirty things to you, watching you fuck yourself.

You’ve only unbuttoned one button of the duvet cover when you hear the shower faucet get turned off. Shit.

You rush to unbutton the cover, but you finish just as the door squeaks open behind you. You can’t bring yourself to look at him.

“I’ll give you some privacy,” you mumble, keeping your back to him and leaving the bed half-done.

“You’ve seen it all already,” Rafe huskily says behind you. You freeze for a second.

You shyly keep your eyes on the hardwood floor as you turn. When you look up at him as he towers over you, his mouth merely inches away from yours, you see he’s wearing nothing but a towel wrapped around his hips.

His hair is wet, his broad chest spattered with water drops. He smells amazing from the body wash he used and his eyes are heavy lidded and his smirk is so damn self-satisfied.

“Why do you look so surprised? You really think I didn’t recognize that pretty mouth right away, princess?”

{ read part three here }

#rafe cameron #rafe obx #rafe x reader #rafe outer banks #rafe imagine #rafe smut #rafe fic #rafe x you #rafe fanfiction #rafe cameron fic #rafe cameron smut #obx fanfiction #obx fic #obx x reader #obx smut #mine #rafe cameron x reader #outerbanks rafe

2K notes · View notes

lady-raziel · 6 days

Text

and alright, here's my last (let's hope) and boldest take yet. lots of people have been talking about the level of staff (around 25-ish people) at watcher, and whether downsizing that number could have been a potential avenue of reducing costs before just jumping to a subscription model. at first i was like yeah, i'm not sure that there needs to be 18 people involved in making a lets play. i was in the fucking trenches in the unus annus days and i'm still amazed how markiplier and ethan nestor managed to put out pretty well edited videos every day for a whole year with only a handful of editors and a couple people filming. what unus annus was trying to do and what watcher is trying to do are obviously pretty different, but the point is that you really don't need a whole crew of people to make lots of different types of content and do it well.

i still think there probably doesn't need to be a whole production crew involved with the creation of some of the simpler types of content watcher puts out. however, i don't think the size of the staff is the real problem. in fact, i think the staff of watcher probably should have been larger.

let me explain. if i begrudgingly go to one of my most detested websites (linkedin. *bleeegh*) and look up watcher, i can see that pretty much every person on staff is in a creative role of some sort by their own admission. at first glance, its like, oh, that makes sense. they're making creative products, it's natural that they should all be in creative roles. however, once you think about it for a little longer from a business perspective, that fact is really concerning.

after all, by watcher's own definition, this is a production studio. this is a company. So in this sea of creative roles, who's doing corporate planning? Who's managing finance? Who's doing payroll? Or brand outreach? Or human-freaking-resources??? you can hire outside groups for all this. i'm aware. but those services cost a lot of money to contract too. i'm just finding it concerning that there is pretty much no one on full time staff that is there to at least do some of this stuff. if watcher wants to be a big-boy company, that's fine, but that means you have to pay some people to be part of your company to do the not-fun business stuff like accounting. or resource management.

if they want to be a real company, they should actually have a lot more people on staff to deal with all the non-creative parts of running a company. even if they contract out most of it, you want at least a few people that are your people and don't actually work for someone else. that's how you don't get screwed over or end up in a contract you can't get out of.

which leads me to my last train of thought. like, as i go through the staff of watcher and look at what they do, it really seems like one of the ONLY people who's job it was to look at the business side of things WAS steven lim in his role as CEO. and thinking about that, i'm like god, can you imagine?? here's a guy who just wants to create cool stuff too but as one of the few people who has to think about the realities of Brand and the Business, HE has to be the one to burst the bubble. He as CEO has to say no to people and make decisions to make sure the company survives. In a group of creative people who just want to make things they're interested in, no expense spared, he was probably the guy who had to stay at least a little tethered to reality.

I'm not about to say that steven lim isn't to blame here. everyone involved in making the decisions that have led up to this point is part of this. but shit, it absolutely sucks to have to be the person at the end of the brainstorm session when everyone is coming up with their best ideas and to have to say "guys, i don't think any of these things are possible unless we make some big decisions."

is that what happened at watcher HQ? i don't know. at this point, with radio silence from everyone, speculation is all we've got. but if you follow the thread of a bunch of creatives striking out on their own to make their own business after being burned by their former employer, despite not knowing really how to run a business, and then only hiring fellow creative people and not other people who actually run business things... well, all of this starts to make slightly more sense in WHY none of watcher's actions make sense. everybody wants to stick it to the man and be their own boss with their own business, until it actually comes to the hard parts of doing that. at that point people start to realize, "oh, maybe some of the things that existed at my old job were there for a reason, actually."

all this is why lots of creatives striking out and starting their own businesses don't work in the end. they're thinking about in terms of creative products still, when they really need to be focusing more on the "business" part of the "creative business." it's sad. it sucks. it destroys a lot of good ideas and good people, because one person in every company like that has to be the one who thinks practically. could this have been avoided if watcher had been hiring people all along to manage this business and not just adding people to add to the creative output? maybe. even then it might not have been enough to curb other predictable impulses that led us down this path.

i feel bad for watcher, and i feel bad for the fandom. but i can't help but wonder if this was always the kind of situation we were going to end up in, and we just missed some of the warning signs because ALL of us were thinking, "well, that could never happen to us. we're different. not the Ghoul Boys."

#watcher #watcher tv #two stupidly long thinkpieces in one morning? wow! what a bargain!#just don't ask which of my responsibilities i'm ignoring by typing all this out

643 notes · View notes

youngbunny · 2 months

Text

As someone who grew up on Rooster Teeth, who consumed so much of their content during my formative years, today's news hits a little harder. I'm so upset for the people who lost their jobs and livelihoods due to this huge downsizing on WB part (not to mention the fact most of them found out through a twitter post!) - it pains me to hear that some of their projects will never get a real conclusion or that the hard work they have been putting in for years might be forgotten.

I'm holding out hope that there will be some sort of archival process or maybe the RT website will remain live so that people can watch what is there (maybe no longer behind a paywall?).

That being said, RT was never a perfect company and to pretend that it was is doing a disservice to everyone who has been hurt by the decisions of their coworkers, the treatment of BIPOC by the audience, and toxic work environment that surrounded their productions. We should not use this time to discredit those experiences, but remain aware that these situations can coexist simultaneously.

For the cast/crew/production teams that have led these projects, I am hopeful that this will not be the last time we see them apart of content. I know most people are concerned about the state of RWBY, RVB, Gen: Lock, etc, and I do think these IP's will be picked up. If we're lucky, they will be along with the teams responsible for them in the first place. But I urge you to not use this time to talk about these shows, but instead send some comfort to those who are now out of a job.

#roosterteeth #rooster teeth #RWBY #gen lock #RVB #red versus blue #red v blue #rt #achievement hunter #ah #funhaus #lets play

562 notes · View notes

bodyswappertransforming · 2 months

Text

Once upon a time, in a quaint suburban town, there lived a young man named Ryan. Ryan was in his mid-twenties, working a steady job at a local bookstore and leading a quiet life. But beneath his conservative exterior, Ryan harbored a secret – he was gay, yet afraid to embrace his true desires due to the conservative values of his upbringing.

One day, while browsing the internet, Ryan stumbled upon a website dedicated to the leather and kink community. Intrigued yet hesitant, he found himself drawn to the allure of the leather harnesses, the dominance, and the freedom of expression.

As the days went by, Ryan's curiosity grew stronger, and he found himself fantasizing about exploring this hidden world of pleasure and taboo. One night, as he drifted off to sleep, his subconscious took over, and he found himself in a vivid dream.

In his dream, Ryan was transformed into a vision of masculinity, clad in a leather harness and all the gear of a seasoned leatherman. His confidence soared as he strutted through the crowded streets, feeling the eyes of admiration upon him.

Awakening from his dream, Ryan felt a newfound sense of empowerment. He decided to take the plunge and delve into the world of leather and kink. With trembling hands, he reached out to a local leather organization and expressed his interest in learning more.

To his surprise, he was met with open arms and acceptance from the members of the organization. They welcomed him into their community, guiding him through the intricacies of leather culture and helping him embrace his true self.

With each passing day, Ryan grew more comfortable in his own skin, shedding the shackles of his conservative upbringing and embracing his sexuality with pride. Eventually, he found himself becoming a member of BLUF (Breeches and Leather Uniform Fanclub), a prestigious organization within the leather community.

Through his journey of self-discovery, Ryan learned that true strength lies in embracing who you are, unapologetically and without fear. And as he stood tall in his leather harness, surrounded by his newfound brothers, he knew that he had finally found his place in the world.

As Ryan stood in front of the mirror, admiring himself in his full leather uniform, he felt a surge of arousal coursing through him. The tight leather pants hugged his body in all the right places, accentuating every curve and muscle. His heart raced as he ran his hands over the smooth surface of the leather, feeling the heat building between his legs.

Unable to resist the temptation any longer, Ryan reached for the array of leather accessories laid out on the table nearby. With trembling hands, he fastened the leather cuffs around his wrists and ankles, reveling in the sensation of restraint and submission.

His breath hitched as he picked up the leather collar, adorned with gleaming metal studs, and fastened it snugly around his neck. A feeling of power surged through him as he imagined himself at the mercy of a dominant partner, ready to obey their every command.

With each piece of leather he added to his ensemble, Ryan felt himself slipping deeper into a state of arousal and ecstasy. He longed to explore the depths of his desires, to surrender himself completely to the pleasures of the leather and kink world.

Lost in his fantasies, Ryan closed his eyes and let his imagination run wild. He imagined himself bound and gagged, at the mercy of a dominant leatherman who knew exactly how to push him to the edge and beyond.

As he opened his eyes once more, Ryan felt a sense of liberation wash over him. In embracing his kinks and desires, he had discovered a newfound sense of freedom and empowerment. And as he stood there in his full leather glory, he knew that he was ready to embark on a journey of exploration and self-discovery unlike any other.

#mental change #bodyswap #BLUF #LEATHERMAN #LEATHER #GAY

547 notes · View notes

mostlysignssomeportents · 7 months

Text

Pluralistic: Leaving Twitter had no effect on NPR's traffic

I'm coming to Minneapolis! This Sunday (Oct 15): Presenting The Internet Con at Moon Palace Books. Monday (Oct 16): Keynoting the 26th ACM Conference On Computer-Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing.

Enshittification is the process by which a platform lures in and then captures end users (stage one), who serve as bait for business customers, who are also captured (stage two), whereupon the platform rug-pulls both groups and allocates all the value they generate and exchange to itself (stage three):

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

Enshittification isn't merely a form of rent-seeking – it is a uniquely digital phenomenon, because it relies on the inherent flexibility of digital systems. There are lots of intermediaries that want to extract surpluses from customers and suppliers – everyone from grocers to oil companies – but these can't be reconfigured in an eyeblink the that that purely digital services can.

A sleazy boss can hide their wage-theft with a bunch of confusing deductions to your paycheck. But when your boss is an app, it can engage in algorithmic wage discrimination, where your pay declines minutely every time you accept a job, but if you start to decline jobs, the app can raise the offer:

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

I call this process "twiddling": tech platforms are equipped with a million knobs on their back-ends, and platform operators can endlessly twiddle those knobs, altering the business logic from moment to moment, turning the system into an endlessly shifting quagmire where neither users nor business customers can ever be sure whether they're getting a fair deal:

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

Social media platforms are compulsive twiddlers. They use endless variation to lure in – and then lock in – publishers, with the goal of converting these standalone businesses into commodity suppliers who are dependent on the platform, who can then be charged rent to reach the users who asked to hear from them.

Facebook designed this playbook. First, it lured in end-users by promising them a good deal: "Unlike Myspace, which spies on you from asshole to appetite, Facebook is a privacy-respecting site that will never, ever spy on you. Simply sign up, tell us everyone who matters to you, and we'll populate a feed with everything they post for public consumption":

https://lawcat.berkeley.edu/record/1128876

The users came, and locked themselves in: when people gather in social spaces, they inadvertently take one another hostage. You joined Facebook because you liked the people who were there, then others joined because they liked you. Facebook can now make life worse for all of you without losing your business. You might hate Facebook, but you like each other, and the collective action problem of deciding when and whether to go, and where you should go next, is so difficult to overcome, that you all stay in a place that's getting progressively worse.

Once its users were locked in, Facebook turned to advertisers and said, "Remember when we told these rubes we'd never spy on them? It was a lie. We spy on them with every hour that God sends, and we'll sell you access to that data in the form of dirt-cheap targeted ads."

Then Facebook went to the publishers and said, "Remember when we told these suckers that we'd only show them the things they asked to see? Total lie. Post short excerpts from your content and links back to your websites and we'll nonconsensually cram them into the eyeballs of people who never asked to see them. It's a free, high-value traffic funnel for your own site, bringing monetizable users right to your door."

Now, Facebook had to find a way to lock in those publishers. To do this, it had to twiddle. By tiny increments, Facebook deprioritized publishers' content, forcing them to make their excerpts grew progressively longer. As with gig workers, the digital flexibility of Facebook gave it lots of leeway here. Some publishers sensed the excerpts they were being asked to post were a substitute for visiting their sites – and not an enticement – and drew down their posting to Facebook.

When that happened, Facebook could twiddle in the publisher's favor, giving them broader distribution for shorter excerpts, then, once the publisher returned to the platform, Facebook drew down their traffic unless they started posting longer pieces. Twiddling lets platforms play users and business-customers like a fish on a line, giving them slack when they fight, then reeling them in when they tire.

Once Facebook converted a publisher to a commodity supplier to the platform, it reeled the publishers in. First, it deprioritized publishers' posts when they had links back to the publisher's site (under the pretext of policing "clickbait" and "malicious links"). Then, it stopped showing publishers' content to their own subscribers, extorting them to pay to "boost" their posts in order to reach people who had explicitly asked to hear from them.

For users, this meant that their feeds were increasingly populated with payola-boosted content from advertisers and pay-to-play publishers who paid Facebook's Danegeld to reach them. A user will only spend so much time on Facebook, and every post that Facebook feeds that user from someone they want to hear from is a missed opportunity to show them a post from someone who'll pay to reach them.

Here, too, twiddling lets Facebook fine-tune its approach. If a user starts to wean themself off Facebook, the algorithm (TM) can put more content the user has asked to see in the feed. When the user's participation returns to higher levels, Facebook can draw down the share of desirable content again, replacing it with monetizable content. This is done minutely, behind the scenes, automatically, and quickly. In any shell game, the quickness of the hand deceives the eye.

This is the final stage of enshittification: withdrawing surpluses from end-users and business customers, leaving behind the minimum homeopathic quantum of value for each needed to keep them locked to the platform, generating value that can be extracted and diverted to platform shareholders.

But this is a brittle equilibrium to maintain. The difference between "God, I hate this place but I just can't leave it" and "Holy shit, this sucks, I'm outta here" is razor-thin. All it takes is one privacy scandal, one livestreamed mass-shooting, one whistleblower dump, and people bolt for the exits. This kicks off a death-spiral: as users and business customers leave, the platform's shareholders demand that they squeeze the remaining population harder to make up for the loss.

One reason this gambit worked so well is that it was a long con. Platform operators and their investors have been willing to throw away billions convincing end-users and business customers to lock themselves in until it was time for the pig-butchering to begin. They financed expensive forays into additional features and complementary products meant to increase user lock-in, raising the switching costs for users who were tempted to leave.

For example, Facebook's product manager for its "photos" product wrote to Mark Zuckerberg to lay out a strategy of enticing users into uploading valuable family photos to the platform in order to "make switching costs very high for users," who would have to throw away their precious memories as the price for leaving Facebook:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/08/facebooks-secret-war-switching-costs

The platforms' patience paid off. Their slow ratchets operated so subtly that we barely noticed the squeeze, and when we did, they relaxed the pressure until we were lulled back into complacency. Long cons require a lot of prefrontal cortex, the executive function to exercise patience and restraint.

Which brings me to Elon Musk, a man who seems to have been born without a prefrontal cortex, who has repeatedly and publicly demonstrated that he lacks any restraint, patience or planning. Elon Musk's prefrontal cortical deficit resulted in his being forced to buy Twitter, and his every action since has betrayed an even graver inability to stop tripping over his own dick.

Where Zuckerberg played enshittification as a long game, Musk is bent on speedrunning it. He doesn't slice his users up with a subtle scalpel, he hacks away at them with a hatchet.

Musk inaugurated his reign by nonconsensually flipping every user to an algorithmic feed which was crammed with ads and posts from "verified" users whose blue ticks verified solely that they had $8 ($11 for iOS users). Where Facebook deployed substantial effort to enticing users who tired of eyeball-cramming feed decay by temporarily improving their feeds, Musk's Twitter actually overrode users' choice to switch back to a chronological feed by repeatedly flipping them back to more monetizable, algorithmic feeds.

Then came the squeeze on publishers. Musk's Twitter rolled out a bewildering array of "verification" ticks, each priced higher than the last, and publishers who refused to pay found their subscribers taken hostage, with Twitter downranking or shadowbanning their content unless they paid.

(Musk also squeezed advertisers, keeping the same high prices but reducing the quality of the offer by killing programs that kept advertisers' content from being published along Holocaust denial and open calls for genocide.)

Today, Musk continues to squeeze advertisers, publishers and users, and his hamfisted enticements to make up for these depredations are spectacularly bad, and even illegal, like offering advertisers a new kind of ad that isn't associated with any Twitter account, can't be blocked, and is not labeled as an ad:

https://www.wired.com/story/xs-sneaky-new-ads-might-be-illegal/

Of course, Musk has a compulsive bullshitter's contempt for the press, so he has far fewer enticements for them to stay. Quite the reverse: first, Musk removed headlines from link previews, rendering posts by publishers that went to their own sites into stock-art enigmas that generated no traffic:

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/oct/05/x-twitter-strips-headlines-new-links-why-elon-musk

Then he jumped straight to the end-stage of enshittification by announcing that he would shadowban any newsmedia posts with links to sites other than Twitter, "because there is less time spent if people click away." Publishers were advised to "post content in long form on this platform":

https://mamot.fr/@pluralistic/111183068362793821

Where a canny enshittifier would have gestured at a gaslighting explanation ("we're shadowbanning posts with links because they might be malicious"), Musk busts out the motto of the Darth Vader MBA: "I am altering the deal, pray I don't alter it any further."

All this has the effect of highlighting just how little residual value there is on the platform for publishers, and tempts them to bolt for the exits. Six months ago, NPR lost all patience with Musk's shenanigans, and quit the service. Half a year later, they've revealed how low the switching cost for a major news outlet that leaves Twitter really are: NPR's traffic, post-Twitter, has declined by less than a single percentage point:

https://niemanreports.org/articles/npr-twitter-musk/

NPR's Twitter accounts had 8.7 million followers, but even six months ago, Musk's enshittification speedrun had drawn down NPR's ability to reach those users to a negligible level. The 8.7 million number was an illusion, a shell game Musk played on publishers like NPR in a bid to get them to buy a five-figure iridium checkmark or even a six-figure titanium one.

On Twitter, the true number of followers you have is effectively zero – not because Twitter users haven't explicitly instructed the service to show them your posts, but because every post in their feeds that they want to see is a post that no one can be charged to show them.

I've experienced this myself. Three and a half years ago, I left Boing Boing and started pluralistic.net, my cross-platform, open access, surveillance-free, daily newsletter and blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/02/19/drei-drei-drei/#now-we-are-three

Boing Boing had the good fortune to have attracted a sizable audience before the advent of siloed platforms, and a large portion of that audience came to the site directly, rather than following us on social media. I knew that, starting a new platform from scratch, I wouldn't have that luxury. My audience would come from social media, and it would be up to me to convert readers into people who followed me on platforms I controlled – where neither they nor I could be held to ransom.

I embraced a strategy called POSSE: Post Own Site, Syndicate Everywhere. With POSSE, the permalink and native habitat for your material is a site you control (in my case, a WordPress blog with all the telemetry, logging and surveillance disabled). Then you repost that content to other platforms – mostly social media – with links back to your own site:

https://indieweb.org/POSSE

There are a lot of automated tools to help you with this, but the platforms have gone to great lengths to break or neuter them. Musk's attack on Twitter's legendarily flexible and powerful API killed every automation tool that might help with this. I was lucky enough to have a reader – Loren Kohnfelder – who coded me some python scripts that automate much of the process, but POSSE remains a very labor-intensive and error-prone methodology:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/01/13/two-decades/#hfbd

And of all the feeds I produce – email, RSS, Discourse, Medium, Tumblr, Mastodon – none is as labor-intensive as Twitter's. It is an unforgiving medium to begin with, and Musk's drawdown of engineering support has made it wildly unreliable. Many's the time I've set up 20+ posts in a thread, only to have the browser tab reload itself and wipe out all my work.

But I stuck with Twitter, because I have a half-million followers, and to the extent that I reach them there, I can hope that they will follow the permalinks to Pluralistic proper and switch over to RSS, or email, or a daily visit to the blog.

But with each day, the case for using Twitter grows weaker. I get ten times as many replies and reposts on Mastodon, though my Mastodon follower count is a tenth the size of my (increasingly hypothetical) Twitter audience.

All this raises the question of what can or should be done about Twitter. One possible regulatory response would be to impose an "End-To-End" rule on the service, requiring that Twitter deliver posts from willing senders to willing receivers without interfering in them. End-To-end is the bedrock of the internet (one of its incarnations is Net Neutrality) and it's a proven counterenshittificatory force:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/06/save-news-we-need-end-end-web

Despite what you may have heard, "freedom of reach" is freedom of speech: when a platform interposes itself between willing speakers and their willing audiences, it arrogates to itself the power to control what we're allowed to say and who is allowed to hear us:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/12/10/e2e/#the-censors-pen

We have a wide variety of tools to make a rule like this stick. For one thing, Musk's Twitter has violated innumerable laws and consent decrees in the US, Canada and the EU, which creates a space for regulators to impose "conduct remedies" on the company.

But there's also existing regulatory authorities, like the FTC's Section Five powers, which enable the agency to act against companies that engage in "unfair and deceptive" acts. When Twitter asks you who you want to hear from, then refuses to deliver their posts to you unless they pay a bribe, that's both "unfair and deceptive":

https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/10/the-courage-to-govern/#whos-in-charge

But that's only a stopgap. The problem with Twitter isn't that this important service is run by the wrong mercurial, mediocre billionaire: it's that hundreds of millions of people are at the mercy of any foolish corporate leader. While there's a short-term case for improving the platforms, our long-term strategy should be evacuating them:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/18/urban-wildlife-interface/#combustible-walled-gardens

To make that a reality, we could also impose a "Right To Exit" on the platforms. This would be an interoperability rule that would require Twitter to adopt Mastodon's approach to server-hopping: click a link to export the list of everyone who follows you on one server, click another link to upload that file to another server, and all your followers and followees are relocated to your new digs:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/12/23/semipermeable-membranes/#free-as-in-puppies

A Twitter with the Right To Exit would exert a powerful discipline even on the stunted self-regulatory centers of Elon Musk's brain. If he banned a reporter for publishing truthful coverage that cast him in a bad light, that reporter would have the legal right to move to another platform, and continue to reach the people who follow them on Twitter. Publishers aghast at having the headlines removed from their Twitter posts could go somewhere less slipshod and still reach the people who want to hear from them on Twitter.

And both Right To Exit and End-To-End satisfy the two prime tests for sound internet regulation: first, they are easy to administer. If you want to know whether Musk is permitting harassment on his platform, you have to agree on a definition of harassment, determine whether a given act meets that definition, and then investigate whether Twitter took reasonable steps to prevent it.

By contrast, administering End-To-End merely requires that you post something and see if your followers receive it. Administering Right To Exit is as simple as saying, "OK, Twitter, I know you say you gave Cory his follower and followee file, but he says he never got it. Just send him another copy, and this time, CC the regulator so we can verify that it arrived."

Beyond administration, there's the cost of compliance. Requiring Twitter to police its users' conduct also requires it to hire an army of moderators – something that Elon Musk might be able to afford, but community-supported, small federated servers couldn't. A tech regulation can easily become a barrier to entry, blocking better competitors who might replace the company whose conduct spurred the regulation in the first place.

End-to-End does not present this kind of barrier. The default state for a social media platform is to deliver posts from accounts to their followers. Interfering with End-To-End costs more than delivering the messages users want to have. Likewise, a Right To Exit is a solved problem, built into the open Mastodon protocol, itself built atop the open ActivityPub standard.

It's not just Twitter. Every platform is consuming itself in an orgy of enshittification. This is the Great Enshittening, a moment of universal, end-stage platform decay. As the platforms burn, calls to address the fires grow louder and harder for policymakers to resist. But not all solutions to platform decay are created equal. Some solutions will perversely enshrine the dominance of platforms, help make them both too big to fail and too big to jail.

Musk has flagrantly violated so many rules, laws and consent decrees that he has accidentally turned Twitter into the perfect starting point for a program of platform reform and platform evacuation.

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

https://pluralistic.net/2023/10/14/freedom-of-reach/#ex

My next novel is The Lost Cause, a hopeful novel of the climate emergency. Amazon won't sell the audiobook, so I made my own and I'm pre-selling it on Kickstarter!

Image: JD Lasica (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Elon_Musk_%283018710552%29.jpg

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

#pluralistic #twitter #posse #elon musk #x #social media #graceful failure modes #end-to-end principle #administratable remedies #good regulation #ads #privacy #benevolent dictatorships #freedom of reach #journalism #enshittification #switching costs

795 notes · View notes

tuliptic · 5 days

Text

My Way: Finding My Place in Adulthood

Don’t be afraid, dreams are everywhere, just keep going as I always have, this is my way.

Henlo adults here, this is another reading for y’all. This reading is specifically targeted to all adults: young adults to ease their minds; regular adults to get used to adulthood. Adulthood is really… Something… And this is coming from someone who’s turning 30 soon. I still have no grasp about what I’m doing, how I’m living my life, etc. Adulthood is still scary to me, though I have to say I’m seeing myself getting better and better day by day. Taking baby steps is important, as we all grow from what we experience.

Close your eyes, meditate on this topic and ask yourself the question: How am I supposed to move around in adulthood, being an adult? Breathe in and out, make sure your mind and heart is calm. Then, open your eyes to see which pile talks to you the most/draws you in the most. Once you’ve found your pile, scroll down to the respective parts to see what are the messages for you.

Pile 1 - Pile 2

Pile 3 - Pile 4

Disclaimer: This is solely for my entertainment purposes. Take only whatever you feel like it. If it doesn’t resonate, it’s okay to just drop it. Also, I do not consent to my work or images being used by third parties on this platform or other websites as well.

Decks used: Luna Cat Tarot Deck (Major Arcana), Linestrider Tarot Deck, Sweet Dreams Oracle Deck, Starcodes Astro Oracle Deck.

Pile 1: Don’t be afraid, dreams are everywhere

One card to represent you: The World

I feel like there’s some sort of fear and enlightenment here. Some of you have an idea of what you want to do or achieve in your life, some of you know your life purposes, most of you are content with how your life is right now and are just going with the flow. However, all have a certain discomfort in common, which is fear of uncertainty. Most here may have earth influence in your chart, where stability is needed, where you are able to hold certain control over your own life. What if I do this and I could no longer go back? What if I give up my job and pursue something else? You have the answers to these questions, but you’re not ready to take the first step because of how certain you are that things will not go as you planned and hence, you’re in a standstill. (PS: Some of you may be into spirituality as well, and you might be called to use this gift to achieve enlightenment for yourself and the people around you.)

1. What are the expectations I have for myself? - Four of Wands rx

For some reason, I feel that… You expect difficulties. You don’t expect or believe good things can come to you without lessons or pain. You believe in fairness and balance, that amazing things can only come to you if you put in the effort and work hard. Hence, you tend to not take certain opportunities either because you think you don’t deserve it or you don’t think you’re capable of it. In a sense, I’d say that this way of thinking has caused quite some conflict and tension, not allowing you to enjoy the peace and security you usually like. What has brought you comfort in the past is now hindering you to accept new happiness in.

2. Feasibility on achieving those expectations? - Seven of Cups rx

Seven of Cups is a card of illusion, but with it in reverse, it is a card of choice. This relates back to the first card pulled, the card to represent you. You know what to do, you are capable of doing it, but there’s fear holding you back. Or maybe, fears. To you, you’re not only jumping out of your comfort zone, but into a danger zone where you have no idea how to manage the risks. Accept your fears, let yourself fall, let yourself fail. Have courage, believe that you’ll still be able to stand up after the fall and grow better from it. You’ll be surprised with what you’re capable of.

3. What are my weaknesses and how do I compensate? - Death rx

This card here is very self-explanatory: You fear change. That’s it. You prefer stability over anything else, and you fear losing control over what you have. What is yours needs to remain yours. This may stem from insecurities that were caused by traumas when you were younger, may it be people leaving you, or being disappointed by others, or something else. It has definitely affected your thought process, your understanding of the world and your way around it. The first thing that came into my mind was therapy, because there are some deep-seated issues that you may have. You’ll need to identify your fear, the root cause of it, work it out, and step out to try something new, constantly regenerating yourself on the way.

4. What are my strengths and how do I get better at them? - Nine of Wands

You’re resilient. You may not think so, thinking that how you function is just the norm and everyone else does the same. No, you’re different. You have gone through a lot of things and those experiences help you manoeuvre yourself around the present issues, and you learn as you grind through the challenges presented. People may see you as an inspiration with how you manage to not dim your lights through the darkest nights. You need to know that you have a side like this, and that you’re able to encourage others through you being you. Shine. Accept yourself and shine brighter, be the inspiration you’ve wanted to be. You’ll be surprised with how things will fall in place and come to you.

5. What is it in adulthood that I should focus on? - Eight of Wands

I’d say building connections would help you in the long run. Eight of Wands is a card that talks about action, which is… Again, self-explanatory. But what sort of actions should you be taking? In what field? Connections and networking. I’d say most of you have a way with words, or some may even have 3H or 11H placements. By building a web of connections, you’re able to gather information and help from various parties that will help you to get on the right track. Some may even push you towards the direction that you want to head to. Be proactive in making friends, talking to people, and taking the first step. Once you throw yourself out, people will know you and will be able to provide the support you need. And then you can vroom your way.

6. What are the directions and advice that I need to know/hear? - Five of Pentacles rx

One comforting message here is that difficult times shall pass. You may think you overcame something but there’s more to work on, which you’ll realise that the issue you face is still affecting your decision making as of current. You’ve got to review your past and learn your lessons, know that you can’t afford to stay in this mindset for long. This card acts as a sign that it’s time for you to move from feeling insecure to a more adjusted mindset, which will be prompted when you see new perspectives. You will be receiving messages from your guides and higher selves in various forms. Trust your gut feeling, believe in every reason that makes you feel better.

Overall energy: The Tower, Five of Cups rx

The themes of lesson, growth and replacing things and values that no longer serve you. Liberation will come to you when you move past that phase that’s holding you back. Hmm… Lemme reword myself. This pile gives me the feeling of something promising is coming, but you’ll need to go through the lessons (aka accepting that good things can come to you without your expected cost, it’s alright to fail, the need to find out the root cause of insecurities, etc). Life will present opportunities to learn, and will bring in new people for you to grow together. You know you are loved. If you don’t know it, now you do. Believe it.

Pile 2: Finally we begin

One card to represent you: The Empress

I would say that you have a gentle energy, you’re the person others go to when they’re feeling down or when they need some advice. You radiate a warmth that’s calming, providing a space of comfort for the hurt and wounded to rest and heal. You are intuitive, tho I have to say that your wisdom outshines it. It’s not just wisdom, it’s not just gentleness, but also a sense of belonging, a place where one returns to. Your intuition is what gives you the ability to see through things, people as well as the unknown. Some of you may have clair abilities, especially claircognizance.

1. What are the expectations I have for myself? - Ten of Pentacles

I would say that you expect to build a life, build a family of your own, to be your own source of whatever you want. You do not want to rely on other people for things, especially financial abundance and happiness. You want to be your own provider so that you would feel secure with it, and that you’ll be able to contribute or give out what you have without needing to be conscious of how others look at you. There’s a hint of family themes among this, so it could also be you wanting to be the provider in your new found family without losing your own independence, if this makes sense.

2. Feasibility on achieving those expectations? - Ace of Swords rx

It’s doable, but it’s difficult. I feel that there’s quite some conflict between you and your family, resulting in you wanting to build a new family or to have your own found family. There’s this tension in you that is blocking a lot of blessings, I’d say. There’s a lack of clarity and undefined goals, preventing you from achieving success and happiness (depending on what you define them as). You will need to review your expectations, to set clear and measurable goals, only then you’ll be able to see your progress and further decide on how you want to proceed or to make changes along the way. Do not try to cover up facts or find excuses. You know that it’s not going to help you in the long run. Face it, accept it, work with it.

3. What are my weaknesses and how do I compensate? - The Sun

Optimism is great, but being overly optimistic is not good. You tend to see the good side of things and may end up beautifying them, exaggerating them, or even fabricating them unconsciously. For some reason, I’m also seeing that you may be beautifying self-sacrificial tendencies, or attempt to attract people with your pain. You want to shine, want others to pay attention to you. Some of you may be prideful, but some would use whatever they’re “lacking” to attract attention. Example: Your friends use iPhone, and you use Android. Instead of saying you want to be different, you probably will go with the approach of “people who use iPhones are just keeping up with the trend and thinking that’s the higher end”, when in reality you can’t afford an iPhone. This is just an exaggerated example illustrated here for you to have an idea.

4. What are my strengths and how do I get better at them? - Death

Change is your forte. Some of you may not know it, but some of you do (and perhaps do not accept it). It’s not flexibility that we’re talking about, but more of an open-mindedness along with acceptance. Once you’ve overcome your weakness, you will be more open to listening to what others have to say, and forming your own opinion based on whatever information you’ve gathered (from others, from your own research, as well as updating outdated data). The transitioning phase will be smoother during then, when you shift from the old to the new. Right now, I’d say that there’s still a part of you who’s unable to accept that you’re wrong, or incorrect at certain things. There’s no fault in having pride over your knowledge, but if it is hindering you from improving, then you may need to work on that.

5. What is it in adulthood that I should focus on? - The Emperor

Focus on your goals and what you want to achieve. For you, I’d say, one of your goals would probably be something that’s legacy related, may it be inheriting something (finance, career, skills, connections, etc.) or starting a new legacy (starting your own company, building network from scratch, starting to take up a very specific and niche role, etc.). I would also say that you’ll need to look straight ahead. The Emperor can’t afford to look around, only focusing on the path that’s in front of him where he tread carefully but boldly, carving the steps out for his people to follow (somewhat a legacy too). Do not be distracted, do not easily give in to temptation.

6. What are the directions and advice that I need to know/hear? - Eight of Cups rx

First thing I’d like to say is that your journey is going to be lonely. It’s not just going on that journey alone, but it’s something akin to a burden or a mission that you can’t tell anyone. You may have tried telling a family or a friend about it, and they don’t think it’s a big deal, resulting in you swallowing the pain alone, no longer willing to trust. The disappointment and disillusionment has uhhhh thicken around you. Think of them as fogs around you, and as they thicken, the more difficult it is for you to see your path. That. Communication with boundaries is very important for you right now, where you can put a balance between the socialisation and exposing yourself thoughtlessly. It’s difficult for some people, where you unknowingly overshare too much. Learn from it, find out a way that works for you. Open yourself to things, allow yourself to be open to inspirations from things and people around you.

Overall energy: Strength, Six of Swords rx

You’re strong, knowing where to go and how to reach your destination. Just that whatever that’s happening around you is preventing you from moving forward. You’re holding a lot of things back because whatever situations you’re in, but your passion and faith in life is strong enough to support you. You are doing your best with whatever you have right now, looking for opportunities in life’s challenges and learning the lessons. It is a difficult time, but have faith that things will turn for the better. Prepare your boat, and once the wind blows, set sail.

Pile 3: No matter what I’m going my way, to the place I’ve dreamed of every night

One card to represent you: The Chariot

I would say that you’re someone who’s goal oriented. You know what you want and you'll work towards it. I would also say that you may be impatient at times, wanting to achieve things in a short time. It feels like you feel that you're running out of time, especially when you compare yourself to your peers. For example, people your age have been talking about career advancement while you're still figuring out what to do, or your friends are married with kids and you're still single and feeling miserable. You know you're on the right path at your own pace, and you appreciate your days and blessings, but sometimes you just feel anxious about being “left out”.

1. What are the expectations I have for myself? - Three of Swords rx

You expect yourself to be healed from your wounds and traumas soon. You want it quick, you want it urgently, and you’re pushing yourself far more than you can deal with at the moment. You probably may have gone through some childhood traumas and you’ve left them as they are. It may be due to the society or environment you grew up thinking that whatever you experienced was normal (Asian families, perhaps?). You thought vulnerability was a fault until recent years, where you learn to accept and honour them, and from there you proceed to heal your inner wounds. You may have thought that once you’re done with Phase 1, you can immediately complete Phase 2 of your healing, and… Sorry to break it to you, it’s not gonna happen that way.

2. Feasibility on achieving those expectations? - Two of Swords

It feels like you’re asking yourself the question: Am I healed or not? And your answer to it is either yes or no. Which… Is not how healing works. Healing is a process; a journey, not a mathematical equation which is either right or wrong. You may think you’ve been healed but in reality, you may not have achieved that yet. You’re not seeing a lot of things yet, which is why you need to rely on your senses, especially hearing. You need to learn to listen to the whispers of others, may it be your friends or your guides. You are not alone, you have people accompanying you through this journey because you are loved. Healing is not linear, so take your time.

3. What are my weaknesses and how do I compensate? - The Fool rx, The Devil

I would say that you have expectations and you may think you’re living up to that, believing that you’re better and you live like it. … Lemme rephrase myself: You think you’re alright and that you’re living as how you expect yourself to be when you are not. It’s like you’re putting on a mask to deceive yourself and to show others that you’re doing fine. There’s this saying that you’ll need to fool yourself first if you want to fool your enemy. That’s you. You’re pretending and putting up an act, which will eventually cause your downfall to be greater than what you’ve experienced. Your insecurities are devils in disguise, which you probably know of. Now that you know of this side of yours, you will need to think and use your brain to figure out as you go.

4. What are my strengths and how do I get better at them? - Four of Swords rx, Eight of Pentacles rx

I would say that you’re very action based, and you think a lot. One thing that’s special about you is that you know when to stop thinking. Unlike most people, once they start thinking, they spiral into their thoughts and have no way out. You, however, know when to stop and how to pull yourself out from that headspace. From there, you then use that energy and time to focus on earth-themed items, such as career, work, fame, building something, etc. You’re basically the healthy combination of brain and physical energy, making sure both of these aspects are taken care of, working on them when others are still trapped in their heads. If you think that you do not have this trait, maybe you can try it out. I believe all can achieve this, but your pile is able to tap into it easily as compared to others.

5. What is it in adulthood that I should focus on? - Four of Pentacles

Learning to focus on yourself, to put yourself first before others. I’m not sure if you’ve been called selfish for putting your needs above others, but you’re not. You can only share when you have extra/excess, and that’s when sharing becomes something comfortable and meaningful. Remember, you are not supposed to burn yourself to warm others. Let yourself have your own time, build connections with yourself and with others. Collaboration is something that you can work on, may it be work related projects or personal projects. Passion projects are things that will help you redirect your energy, and for you to keep yourself occupied when you realise your thoughts are jumbled up again with the excess energy.

6. What are the directions and advice that I need to know/hear? - Three of Cups

I would say that you will need to build your own home with people you trust in, with people you’re comfortable with. You may have gone through quite some family trauma, and your safe space may no longer lie with it. Remember, home is where the heart lies. As long as you feel comfortable, comforted and safe, you are home. For some reason, you may have been seen as the black sheep of your family. You have been told that you have great communication skills (may also have 3H placements), and it would be great if you know how to use that skill to its full potential. There’s more you can do with it, may it be drawing people to you, or drawing people away from people who harmed you.

Overall energy: Judgement, Wheel of Fortune rx

I feel that you tend to judge yourself a lot, or people may have passed their biased judgement onto you when you’ve decided to not go their way. There are also some… Remnants? Of feelings of unjust? You have felt that life was unfair and things have not been going your way. Though you may have put that thought aside real quick cuz you believe in yourself more than what the stars or fate has said. You prefer to take things into your own hands instead of whatever higher beings there are out there, and I’d say that you’re doing a good job with it.

Pile 4: I admit it now life is a long marathon, the difference is that I set the course

One Two cards to represent you: The High Priestess, The Lovers rx

The first word that came to me is intuitive. You know you’re intuitive and you have used your intuition on a lot of things that came into your life, may it be making decisions or using it to discern those who come close to you with agendas. But still, you probably have some… Troubles with love? Not necessarily romantic ones, but platonic and love towards yourself as well. For some reason, I feel that you may feel called to be a lover. It can be self love, but personally, I feel that the energy here is more outwards, where you are supposed to love others, and yet there’s no one out there deserving of your love. Some of you may have 12H or Pisces placement as well, which may give others an impression of being dreamy or drunk in love. (My logical head thinks so, but for some reason I’m feeling that heart-clenching feel, as well as a sense of loss. Not sure how to phrase it well tbh.)

1. What are the expectations I have for myself? - The Moon rx

Weirdly, for some reason, I’d say that you expect yourself to be… Different? You know you’re different and that you may sometimes feel that you are unable to align with how this world functions. Hence, when you feel you’re becoming too “earthly”, you may feel torn, because you expect yourself to do or achieve “unearthly” things, eg: to be a spiritual guru, to do reiki healing, etc. You are definitely one pile that is more prone to the spiritual side of the world, where you’ll often have a nagging feeling at the back of your head when you’re not doing anything of that sort.

2. Feasibility on achieving those expectations? - The Empress

It is definitely something achievable, that is, if you focus on healing yourself as well as creating meaningful bonds with the people around you. One of the main themes of The Empress is to nurture, which you are called to not only nurture the people around you, but also to nurture yourself. You will also need to be with the right group of friends who will be able to help you flourish (and of course, you helping them as well, as this is a mutual relationship). I honestly don’t know what else to say about this because the message is repetitive, and I think you know it as well.

3. What are my weaknesses and how do I compensate? - Two of Cups rx

This card in this position talks about tension, deception or even lack of trust between you and your spiritual side. For some reason, I’m feeling that you are holding too strongly to a certain thought or a belief. It causes stress and fatigue, making you lose hope in the process. Instead of taking a forced “temporary” approach, it would be better for you to reflect on what it brings you, and to let go of past beliefs that no longer serve you. Two of Cups is supposed to be a card of joyful celebration, a union between two parties. You will need to turn the card upright. It’s time to release the old and embrace the new, only then you’ll be able to grow into your very best self.

4. What are my strengths and how do I get better at them? - Six of Swords rx

I would say that one of your strengths is special, because it is not so to a lot of people. You do not let your problems push you, but you work your way with it. See, most people’s first reaction is to solve the problem or to run away from it, but you choose to live with it and rebuild your life around it. There’s a part of you that is unwilling to make your life a mess by running and avoiding the problems. You surrender. Not in a negative way. You surrender the pain and stress, you abandon the old, limiting beliefs, and you live in the present. The best way I can describe it is… It’s like you’re a monk, where you live with whatever that is happening around you. Waves (troubles and challenges) are around you, and you’re on the boat, keeping yourself calm, not bothering with what the world is doing, keeping your calm. It's like you know there's a life after death and that you're working on it right now instead of being present in the current earthly life.

5. What is it in adulthood that I should focus on? - Ace of Wands

Ace of Wands is the first card in the Minor Arcana. What I’m picking up from here is that you’ll need to create a new beginning for yourself. I wouldn’t say it’s The Fool kinda journey, because The Fool’s journey is of meeting people and learning the lessons on the way. Your kind of journey is understanding what you want, seizing opportunities, and turning your enthusiasm into actions. You have an idea of where you want to go, when you want to reach there, how you’re going to move, with whom you will want to travel on this journey. I would also say that it would be a great time for you to filter your circle so that you’ll be able to go on this journey with the least distraction.

6. What are the directions and advice that I need to know/hear? - Four of Pentacles rx This is a time where you should consider relaxing your mind and remember that you cannot control what others are doing or holding. You know you have enough, and instead of focusing on the action of others, focus on yourself instead and how you can block out the noises. With this done, you will be able to move from a period of control and fear and anxiety to a stage of being more open (and blank). It’s like… Once you are able to clear your mind, those noises no longer mean a thing to you, and you’ll be able to focus on yourself and what you want to achieve. I’m also picking up words like “zen”, “calm” and “enlightenment”. … Yeah the word “monk” too.

Overall energy: The Devil, The Chariot

I am feeling some self-sabotaging themes here. It may sound difficult to accept but I do think The Devil here talks about you, where you’re embodying some traits, thoughts or beliefs that you’re unwilling to let go. Y’know how some things turn toxic when there’s excess or if you hold onto it for too long? That. It’s burdening you and you probably are actively trying to run away from it. I’m having the image of you being annoyed at how you’re not progressing, and you end up flipping the table, scattering all the plans you’ve made for yourself. Probably some big changes are bound. Clear up the space and welcome your spirit guides to show up in wondrous and unexpected ways.

#tuliptic #🌷#pick a card #pick a pile #pick a picture #tarot reading #general tarot reading #self related reading #aite another reading here #i finally finished deciphering the cards and have completed this reading #i'll be doing some proofreading (if i have the strength to do so)#hopefully this reading sheds some light or gives you a lightbulb moment to work things out #hopefully you guys had fun with this #cheers

160 notes · View notes

adventuringblind · 3 months

Text

So Powerful, So Vulnerable

Landoscar x Reader

Genre: Hurt/Comfort, Mafia AU, more crack than anything with the way I wrote it.

Summary: Lando has a meeting on neutral ground. Oscar has to make the switch. How'd she get caught in a petty crossfire?

Warnings: Attempted r@pe, gun violence, knives, blood,

Notes: This was far more fun to write than I expected. Another request done!

Masterlist // Request Form // My Website // buy me a Ko-Fi

She sighs, watching Lando hit his head on the steering wheel of the car. She wants to laugh at his dramatics. You'd think he wouldn't be so whiny since he's in charge of the areas strong Mafia, but she knows the truth.

"I Just - they had one job!" He moans and throws in a fake cry for good measure.

Oscar keeps throwing her looks from where he's spread out on the backseat. He and Lando also make it a point to keep her in the passenger seat and switch who drives. "It's an easy fix. Ten minutes tops, in and out, then back to our original plans." The Aussie shrugs.

"You'll make the switch?"

"Obviously, and if they shoot first, I'll shoot better."

~~~~~

The club rages around her. Not her preferred method of doing business. Dealing with people isn't her strong suit unless it's with a bullet to the head from the top of a building. Knives are fun to when things get messy.

The crowd is safer than the car if this does go south. Not that she's expecting it to, but better safe than sorry.

Oscar is already gone. He drops the money and gets the hostages while Lando goes to meet them on neutral ground. Simple as that.

Her job is to look pretty and watch the door that Lando had disappeared through. Mocktail in hand to make it look like she's part of the normal crowd.

Technically speaking, they'd only been together for the last year. Her and Oscar much longer than that. Though she has a sneaky suspicion Lando kept assigning both of them to the same jobs for a reason. If any jobs came up that required Lando to go out and needed people with him, they were the first he contacted.

If she had to guess, she'd say he orchestrated this relationship. She wouldn't have it any other way. It's not like any of them know how to do anything normally.

She tries not to grimace as a man saunters up to her. His movements unflattering and he smells like cigarettes. Her nose scrunches up in an effort to fight back her gag.

"You here all alone?" Even his voice is grating to her ears! Can this get even worse?

"My boyfriend is busy killing the guy that flirted with me earlier."

"Yeah right, anyone with that kind of attitude must be hard to flirt with." He scoffs. How mad would her partners be if she stabbed this man? No - she can't - they are trying to finish a deal. She'd blow the whole thing if she did that.

Actually - this guy looks familiar... She takes another drink of the non-alcoholic beverage.

"You alright? you look a little flushed."

"Yeah I'm-" Shit, she knows this feeling. More than that, she knows this man.

He's a hitman for the other gang. The one who has Lando's men. The one he's meeting with right now.

Her heart lurches. The fog in her head and heat are too much. Her body is going to give out on her.

She ends up stabbing him. The knife strapped to her thigh finds a home in Mr. Hitman's chest. He cries out in pain but doesn't pull it out. He smiles at her instead.

She tries to bolt, but three other sets of hands pin her. They drag her outside. The ground scraping against her skin in an uncomfortable way.

She sees the hitman fall to the ground; hears the thud as the pull her out the back where he was trying to follow.

Damn, she kind of liked that knife too. She'll have to go back for it later.

They already have Lando outside. Her blurry vision is enough to see him covered in blood, licking his lips. "You trying to take my girl?"

"Shut it, Norris. This is payback for what you did."

They start attempting to remove her clothes. Like she was going to go down without a fight. Her nails dig into the skin of whoever is close by. She pulls as hard as possible, skin from another getting stuck in her nails as she does.

Her body doesn't have the energy for more than that. She misses her knife. This would be easier if she still had it. The stabbing motion isn't difficult, and gravity would help.

"Get your filthy, fucking hands off of her!"

There is another round of fists clashing. "Maybe you shouldn't have killed four of my guys."

"You killed mine first! They made the deal exactly as intended and you still put a bullet through their skulls!"

This was all a setup then. They were planning on them showing up. Though, there is no way they know about Oscar. If they never intended on sending someone to make the switch, then they wouldn't have anyone on the roof.

Hands are everywhere, wrestling with her clothes. They don't get far, their intentions now clear. The shot echoes off the buildings. To close to be from the roof.

The man directly in front of her crumples to the ground. The spray of the blood from the shot sticks to her skin.

"I believe Lando said not to touch her." Oscar stands there holding the smoking gun.

She watches the fight break out around her. It's messy and loud, but her boys come out on top. As per usual with these things. She would've gladly joined in if these stupid drugs would let up.

The boss had scrambled away with his tail between his legs. Serves him right after this stunt. "Did he really not like you that much?" Oscar throws a raised eyebrow at Lando.

"Jealousy, I think." They work in tandem to heave her body upright and support her back to the car. "What happened on the roof?"

"I was waiting for any kind of signal but got nothing. Nobody showed up. So, I came back down and was greeted by six guns pointed at my head."

"They shot first, I presume?"

"But I shot better."

She doesn't need to see the smirk to know it's there.

~~~~~

The hot water of the bath feels exceptional against her skin. They'd scrubbed at blood for far too long. The raw skin finally being soothed is relaxing.

The drugs still haven't worn off. Her motor function is lacking, and her words are slurring together, but it's better than it was.

Lando and Oscar are keeping her upright. Her body resting against theirs. Fingers caress her skin. This is safety.

"Can't believe we've had to cancel our date." Lando plops three rubber ducks inside the bath. Oscar's ducks, mind you.

"Frankly, I think we could consider that a date. We went out, got covered in blood, now we're having a relaxing bath."

"You just don't like going out."

She's going to fall asleep here. Relaxed and at peace with her boys. The possibility of drowning unlikely. "I love you both."

"You're drugged and still got blood on you."

"Sexy."

"I killed someone for you."

"Romantic."

210 notes · View notes

rthko · 9 months

Text

Gay men have an incel problem. There's no doubt that "attractiveness" is a loaded concept and that beauty standards correlate with power relations, but it is rare to find a discourse framework so dogmatic in its association of beauty with privilege. It's morally just, then, that "privilege" be knocked down a peg. That guy who won't let you, specifically, fuck him? He's your oppressor, and if you're feeling more bold he's an airhead. He's catty and shallow. He's a disease-riddled drug abusing slut. He's probably insecure and has no self worth outside of sex and parties. See how quickly the logic of "punching up" becomes the pickup artist technique of "negging." The object of your desire, who it's your birthright to have sex with, is unapproachable, but you can bring him to your level and assert control by making him insecure.

One of the most glaring exceptions I can think of to the notion of beauty as power includes those who maintain a certain physique for sex work. The stripper or "OnlyFans gay" could be outed and fired from his day job, the boy who pays his living expenses through sugaring lives at the mercy of these relationships, the full service sex worker could face the full brunt of state violence and incarceration. What power do they really have? Apparently just enough for gay sex workers to be a consistent target of incel-style harassment on The Website Formerly Known as Twitter.

Since all parties involved are men or in some way adjacent to manhood, it's hard to apply a predictable script of gender relations to these interactions. But it's hard not to see a resemblance between "jocks" and "Chads," "twinks" and "Stacys," "InstaGays" and "E-Girls." If this all sounds ridiculous, it is. But half a century of "Castro Clone" discourse has borne no fruit. Insightful conversations on intra-community power relations and people excluded from gay life on account of their bodies are too often overshadowed by a politics of sexual entitlement and resentment. It is then no longer about disparities of race, ability or class but 20 year olds with Lana Del Rey profile pics who have nothing to add to the conversation but their own unfunny memes and bitterness. Log off.

382 notes · View notes

why-animals-do-the-thing · 8 months

Note

i remember the houston zoo had shoebill storks on display several years back, but they no longer do and i wasn’t able to easily find information about what happened to them, which i was sad about because i loved them. how do you go about looking for information about stuff like that? is there a public place other than their main website where they log changes to what animals they have?

There isn’t a public place that zoos track transfers, unfortunately. There’s a forum called ZooChat that often does a pretty good job keeping an eye on species movements for animals individual posters care about, so you can check there.

Internally to the industry, animal moves are often tracked on a software called ZIMS / Species360, but not all facilities pay to have an account and so you can end up with dead ends if animals move to a non-ZIMS institution. (Fun fact, this is where a bunch of the missing snow leopard “scandal” in Conservation Game appears to have come from - those cats didn’t vanish into the ether for sketchy reasons, it’s probably an artifact of how data is recorded in ZIMS about non-user facility transfers.) Unfortunately there’s no access to that data unless you’re employed at an institution that pays for it.

Your best bet for tracking animal movements is to look for social media announcements or news articles. The sending facility might not publicize a move, but the media in the receiving facility’s area might feature a cool new animal. This is easier when you’re looking to find rare and really visually stunning animals like shoebills and doesn’t work quite as well when you want to say, find out where your favorite squirrel money went.

Honestly, I’d also just call or email the zoo and ask. Tell them you love the species and would like to know where their bird was transferred to see if it’s close enough to go see. The office staff might not know - they might have to ask the registrar, which is who handles all the animal paperwork and records - but they should generally be able to help you!

(heck yes shoebill buddies I haven’t seen one IRL and I desperately want to)

#shoebill shorks #finding zoo animals #zoo industry

369 notes · View notes

project-sekai-facts · 7 months

Text

Project SEKAI 3rd anniversary: Brand New World - recap post (MK-II)

(main promotional art / title screen)

I thought it would be useful to make a post recapping everything we know about the 3rd anniversary update, since we’re getting closer and closer to the anniversary now and there’s gonna be a lot of changes to keep up with. I’ll continue to update this as more stuff is released with both character/story information and general game updates and other news (goes without saying but spoiler warning for this post).

Note that all of this applies to the JP server only.

Official site link

Section 1 - Characters & Story

This is probably the bit people are more interested in

New stock artworks for each unit have been released on the 3rd anniversary website! In addition, character bios using the new arts have been released on Twitter! The Virtual Singer bios have not changed, but the ones for the human characters have, and I've added translations of these in the character section just a bit below here. You can find these new bios linked below:

Virtual Singer

Leo/need (Ichika) (Saki) (Honami) (Shiho)

MORE MORE JUMP! (Minori) (Haruka) (Airi) (Shizuku)

Vivid BAD SQUAD (Kohane) (An) (Akito) (Toya)

WonderlandsxShowtime (Tsukasa) (Emu) (Nene) (Rui)

25-ji, Nightcord de. (Kanade) (Mafuyu) (Ena) (Mizuki)

Videos about the "path every unit has taken and what comes next" are being released on YouTube! These are essentially just PVs for the third anniversary and feature past event cards + quotes alongside the new stock arts for each character. Note these videos are in Japanese and do not have subtitles for any other language.

Leo/need

MORE MORE JUMP!

Vivid BAD SQUAD

WonderlandsxShowtime

25-ji, Nightcord de.

Leo/need

In Get Over It., Leo/need receives an offer from Yoshiki Shindou to sign on to the record label he works for, Solis Records. Leo/need accepted the offer and signed a contract with Solis, making them professionals. However, they have yet to officially debut as a professional band.

Ichika

She has a cool appearance, but in reality she is a kind girl who cares about her friends. She formed Leo/need with her childhood friends Saki, Honami and Shiho, and they became professional musicians like they longed to be. She is the guitarist and vocalist for the band and also writes lyrics for their original songs. She has recently taken up the challenge of producing music using the Hatsune Miku software.

School year: 1st -> 2nd Class: 1-C -> 2-A Job: Staff at a fast food joint Height: 161 -> 162cm Other notes: She is no longer class rep, and has joined the broadcasting committee because she wanted to play music she liked on the radio and improve her MC skills

Saki

A cheerful mood-maker who always has a smile on her face, she serves as Leo/need's keyboardist. Having been sick and unable to attend school for a long time, she values spending time with others, enjoying her youth and being close to the hearts of those who are suffering - things that are all reflected in her songwriting.

School year: 1st -> 2nd Class: 1-C -> 2-B Job: Waitress at carino/carina cafe Height: 159 -> 160cm

Honami

The drummer of Leo/need, an honour student who excels at academics and athletic, and who has a kind and gentle nature. She used to worry about making decisions because she didn't want to hurt people, but through her band activities, she has learnt to have the courage to take charge and stand up for herself. Now, she supports Leo/need with her newfound strength.

School year: 1st -> 2nd Class: 1-B -> 2-A Job: Housekeeper for Kanade Height: 166cm Other notes: She's continuing to be a member of the beautification committee

Shiho

Leo/need's bassist. Due to her stoic nature, especially when music is involved, she is often misunderstood by those around her to be an asocial loner. However, she is very fond of everyone in Leo/need, who have worked with her to fulfil her dream of becoming a professional musician.

School year: 1st -> 2nd Class: 1-A -> 2-B Job: Livehouse staff Height: 159cm Other notes: due to Saki growing, she is now the shortest member of Leo/need. She also joined the animal caretaker committee because she liked volunteering there occasionally in 1st year

MORE MORE JUMP!

In Re-tie Friendship, MORE MORE JUMP! considers making the move to their school’s credit-based course, after their idol and school schedules start to clash. In the end they decide to change course, with the decision becoming official in STEP by STEP!.

Minori

A pure, hard-working girl. She is the only member of MORE MORE JUMP! with no prior experience as an idol, but was able to prove herself to fans through many activities, and was even able to perform a solo concert with her group just like she'd always dreamed. Now, she's continuing to work hard with her group to become known nationwide and be able to peform live at a dome venue.

School year: 1st -> 2nd (on credit course / not full time) Class: 1-A -> 2-D Job: Waitress at carino/carina cafe -> none (quit to focus on idol work) Height: 158 -> 159cm Other notes: She's going to continue as a member of the animal caretaker committee

Haruka

Former top idol and member of the nationally famous group, ASRUN. She is currently a member of MORE MORE JUMP!, and after the group's first solo live, is even more motivated to continue pursuing her idol career. She recently decided to transfer back to her school's credit system, alongside Minori, so that she can dedicate more time to her work once again.

School year: 1st -> 2nd (on credit course / not full time) Class: 1-C -> 2-D Job: None Height: 163cm

Airi

Former member of the idol group QT. With her strong passion and pride for being an idol, she is a powerful source of motivation for her groupmates. She is also skilled at planning and schedule management, and completes the tasks that are essential for MORE MORE JUMP!, since they don't belong to an agency.

School year: 2nd -> 3rd (on credit course / not full time) Class: 2-D -> 3-E Job: None Height: 156cm

Shizuku

Former center of the idol group Cheerful*Days, which is still popular now. She had bit of a rift with the members of her former group after leaving because things didn't work out between them, but was able to reconcile with them a bit after they appeared on a TV show with MORE MORE JUMP!, and is now moving forward in a positive way.

School year: 2nd -> 3rd (on credit course / not full time) Class: 2-D -> 3-E Job: None Height: 168cm Other notes: She is no longer on the beautification committee and has joined the healthcare committee because she wanted to try something different

Vivid BAD SQUAD

The squad was told the truth behind RAD WEEKEND, that being that the event was held as a swan song for Nagi, who passed away a few weeks afterwards due to terminal cancer. Taiga then challenged VBS, EVER, Arata and Kotaro to a singing battle, easily defeating them all. EVER decides to take a hiatus from street music, while Arata leaves town. Vivid BAD SQUAD decide that they need to work even harder if they want to surpass RAD WEEKEND, and Ken temporarily closes WEEKEND GARAGE so he can become their mentor.

Kohane

Although she used to be shy and timid, she became more confident in her singing through friendly competition and encouragement from her teammates, and through the training of Taiga, one of the members of the group who held the legendary RAD WEEKEND event. Although she was once defeated by her mentor and became frustrated because of it, she was able to stand up to Taiga and declare that she still wanted to surpass RAD WEEKEND.

School year: 1st -> 2nd Class: 1-A -> 2-A Job: None Height: 156cm Other notes: She joined the beautification committee due to the workload being less than the animal committee

The cheerful, sincere and open-minded poster girl of WEEKEND GARAGE. While working to organise an event that surpasses the legendary RAD WEEKEND held by her father and his teammates, she was shocked to learn the secret about what happened to Nagi, the person she looked up to most. However, after learning about Nagi's true feelings from her father, she was able to pick herself up and once again vow to surpass the legend.

School year: 1st -> 2nd Class: 1-A -> 2-A Job: Waitress at WEEKEND GARAGE -> none (WEG is closed while Ken mentors VBS) Height: 160cm Other notes: She left the disciplinary committee, and is now on the broadcasting committee

Akito

A hard-working person who practices diligently to make his dream of surpassing the legendary RAD WEEKEND event come true. The weight of the secret behind RAD WEEKEND almost made him give up, but he was reminded of the passion he had for his dream, which inspired him to get back up and push forwards.

School year: 1st -> 2nd Class: 1-C -> 2-A Job: Sales assistant at a clothing store -> none (quit to focus on VBS) Height: 174 -> 176cm Other notes: He's taller than KAITO now

Toya

A young prodigy born into a family of famous classical musicians. Whilst aiming to surpass the legendary RAD WEEKEND event, Toya has been trying his hand at composing music for his group. Despite being overwhelmed by the true level of the legendary event, with the experience he has acquired so far, he hopes to overcome the barriers with his teammates and see what lies ahead.

School year: 1st -> 2nd Class: 1-B -> 2-B Job: None Height: 178 -> 179cm Other notes: He's still a member of the library committee

Bonus note: Kohane and Toya still do not call their teammates outside their respective partners by their first names.

Second note: Akito's bio refers to his fes story unlike everyone else's that allude to past event stories. Read his fes story.

WonderlandsxShowtime

In Our Happy Ending, Rui proposes that WonderlandsxShowtime begin operating as a freelance unit instead of as Phoenix Wonderland cast. Emu initially declines, but her brothers encourage her to go with the others, since she’s still young and should take the opportunity to get out there while she can. After one more show at PXL, WxS’ contract is terminated and they officially become freelancers.

Tsukasa

The chairman of WonderlandsxShowtime, who aspires to be the biggest star in the world. After a variety of experiences as a cast member, he developed a desire to see the wider world and learn more about his craft. Eventually he decided to leave the Wonder Stage with his troupemates and take the next step.

School year: 2nd -> 3rd Class: 2-A -> 3-C Job: Phoenix Wonderland cast -> freelancer with WonderlandsxShowtime Height: 172 -> 173cm Other notes: He is no longer class rep. He instead became a disciplinary committee member because he wanted to get away from the Oddball 1 image in his last year. However if he does anything against the rules with Rui he's kicked off.

Emu

A girl with an innocent personality and boundless positivity. Her dream is to uphold her grandfather's legacy and protect Phoenix Wonderland, and she was prepared to part ways with the rest of WonderlandsxShowtime members who were leaving to pursue their dreams because of this. However, her siblings and friends encouraged her to step outside the park so she can gain experience before pursuing her dream.

School year: 1st -> 2nd Class: 1-B -> 2-B Job: Phoenix Wonderland cast -> freelancer with WonderlandsxShowtime Height: 152cm Other notes: She's running for class rep

Nene

A young girl who aspires to become a world-class musical actress. Her confidence in singing was shattered during a rehearsal for one of her recent performances, but she took the experience as an opportunity to reaffirm her passion. She is determined to learn and experience as much as she can in the wider world with her troupemates.

School year: 1st -> 2nd Class: 1-B -> 2-A Job: Phoenix Wonderland cast -> freelancer with WonderlandsxShowtime Height: 156cm Other notes: She got put on the library committee because she lost when drawing lots with some classmates over the role

Rui

A genius director who goes at his own pace. He used to work alone, but found a place to belong in WonderlandsxShowtime, who accepted him and his shows. He recently sought a way for him and his troupemates to be able to follow their dreams without going their separate ways. In the end, everything led to the best possible 'grand finale' where all of them can continue to perform together whilst pursuing their individual dreams.

School year: 2nd -> 3rd Class: 2-B -> 3-C Job: Phoenix Wonderland cast -> freelancer with WonderlandsxShowtime Height: 180 -> 182cm Other notes: He is still a member of the gardening committee

25-ji, Nightcord de.

As her mother continues to try and cut her off from 25-ji, Nightcord de., Mafuyu’s mental health continues to decline and her grades start to slip. Her mother finds out that she didn’t do as well on her finals as usual, and attempts to confiscate her phone, breaking it in the process and completely cutting Mafuyu off from N25. Mafuyu finally comes clean about everything with her mother, however her mother is completely apathetic and tries to manipulate her into thinking that none of it is her fault. Mafuyu ends up running away from home as a result.

Kanade

25-ji, Nightcord de.'s composer. She was happy to see that her songs were having more and more of an effect on Mafuyu, but was one day approached by Mafuyu's mother telling her to stay away from her daughter. However, after the way Mafuyu's mother talked and acted made her feel uncomfortable, Kanade refused her demands and chose to stay by Mafuyu's side.

School year: N/A (attends online school; equivalent to 3rd year) Job: None Height: 154cm

Mafuyu

25-ji, Nightcord de.'s lyricist. She lost sight of her true self due to her mother constantly pushing her to be a "good girl", but she came to find a place to belong in N25. However, her mother tried to take that away from her, pushing Mafuyu to her limit and causing her to run away from home and seek refuge in Kanade.

School year: 2nd -> 3rd Class: 2-B -> 3-B Job: None Height: 162cm Other notes: currently living with Kanade. She's still class rep as she was requested to be one by her teacher and classmates

Ena

25-ji, Nightcord de.'s illustrator. She isn't naturally talented at art, but she has developed the strength to keep drawing even after she's harshly criticised. Ena is a very straightforward person, and was irritated by Mafuyu being reluctant to communicate her feelings with her mother. However Ena can sense a definite change in Mafuyu since they first met, and will continue to watch over her closely as a friend.

School year: 2nd -> 3rd (still attending night school) Class: 2-D -> 3-D Job: None Height: 158cm

Mizuki

25-ji, Nightcord de.'s video editor. They were worried about Mafuyu's deteriorating relationship with her mother, but felt like they couldn't help due to being unable to face up to their own secrets. However, they realised from their own experiences that some things can be gained from running away from painful situations, and tells Mafuyu that it's okay for her to run away if things get too much to handle.

School year: 1st -> 2nd Class: 1-A -> 2-B Job: Sales assistant at a boutique Height: 163cm -> 165cm

Updated relationship diagrams for each unit can be found here

Section 2 - Song campaign

Anniversary Songs

youtube

The third anniversary song has been announced! The title is NEO and it was produced by JIN! Below is JIN's comment on the song (via @/pjsekai_eng on Twitter). Marasy also confirmed that he did the piano parts in this song!

HachiojiP was commissioned to produce this year's extra hard song. No further information has been revealed at the moment.

Song Campaign

The song campaign hint sheet has been revealed! Although... there's no hints this year, just blank tiles. The songs will be revealed during the next and final wandasho channel.

Note: blank tiles include special characters

ANSWERS

Tengaku by Yuuyu-P (covered by Ichika/Shiho and Rin)

Manimani by r-906

Melancholic by Junky (covered by MMJ and Rin)

Buta ni Natte yeah yeah by Neru (Len 3DMV)

Koi wa Sensou by Ryo (covered by Vivids and Miku)

Devil Janai mon by DECO*27 x PinocchioP

Sukina Koto Dake de ii Desu (covered by Emu/Rui and Miku)

Tsugai Kogarashi by hinayukki@sigotositeP

Kamippoi na by PinocchioP (covered by N25 and Miku)

Dear by 19 -iku-

Outside of the song campaign, Wagamama Hime by Fujiwo (covered by Emu/Nene and Miku), and Akuyaku ni Kiss Scene wo by 40mP (covered by MMJ and KAITO + 3DMV) will be added.

New Commissions

Every unit will get a new commissioned song that isn't tied to an event, including the Virtual Singer unit. These will be added one per month for the next 6 months. The first up will be Virtual Singer, with their new song I'm Mine by halyosy. A preview can be found here. It will also have a 3DMV.

Section 3 - Game updates

So far we know that the daily login will be changed so that every day you will now receive 15 wish pieces and 50 gems, and that the number of virtual coinsx300 that you can exchange from the wish piece exchange will be increased from 10 to 15 times.

Some packs will also be removed from the shop. The sewing bundle, music card bundle, stamp bundle, and coin bundle will be discontinued due to changes in contents. The 2nd anniversary variety bundle will be permanently discontinued.

(source)

Wandasho chanel news

the following was announced during the 3rd anniversary wandasho channel!

The new unit outfits found at the top of this post will be implemented as free 3D costumes

The original outfits for all SEKAI-variant Virtual Singers will be added as 3D costumes (only starter vsingers will be getting 3D costumes for the new outfits). You can get these costumes by reading the respective Vsinger's debut event (ie: reading Secret Distance will unlock N25!MEIKO's costume)

All characters will have new casual outfit Live2Ds, and some characters will have new school uniforms as well

The new stock arts at the top of this post will be added as new 2* cards

A new tap SFX and note skins will be added. These are optional and can be changed in settings.

Titles will be added for playing with 2nd year and 3rd year members

More than 180 new area conversations will be added! An option to switch to area conversations before and after the age-up will also be implemented

New loading screen 1-komas will be added! These will replace the old ones, which will be moved onto the official website

Character profiles will be revamped!

New elements will be added to custom profile editing

You will now be able to play a live show to the end even after hitting 0 life. You will not get good rewards for failing the song though.

New commissioned songs will be added for each unit!! These will be added one-per-month. Virtual Singer is also getting a new song! More details will be announced later (and can be found in the song campaign section of this post)

A card's power will be renamed to "performance"

Unit ranks will be removed due to serving no purpose anymore

EX Missions are finally being added! These were announced a long time ago but ended up getting postponed. These are additional character rank missions for after you max out a character's CHRank.

Some normal character rank missions will have their cap increased to account for content released since the last cap increase, including number of cards, costumes, alt vocals, side stories, etc

Character rank titles will be updated to account for new max level

Player rank cap will be increased and have a new title added to account for that

A title will be added for 4 years login so players can start working towards it

Several Virtual Live effects, such as the confetti and balloons, will cost less Virtual Coins due to the game constantly replacing everything that gives your Virtual Coins with Wish Pieces

Rewards for reading event stories will be changed from 2 music cards + 50 gems per chapter to 100 gems + 50 wish pieces + 2 music cards per chapter (!!). This will only apply to events released after 3rd anniversary and no compensation will be given for the previous 107 events because the devs aren't that nice

Players that rank between 4 and 10 on an event will no longer get a top 10 title, but a title with their specific placement on it

Top 1500 and 2500 title will be added

T50K - T300K reward crystals increased to 300

T11 - T200K will get additional skill up scores

changes to master rank event bonus has been made for 4* and BD cards. refer to the bottom row in the below image

3D graphics update!

There's been a massive update to the game's 3D models! They now have improved shading and animations! A PV demonstrating can be found here!

The songs that won the 3DMV improvement campaign (Umiyuri Kaiteitan, IF, Cinema, TONDEMO-WONDERZ, and IDSMILE) will have their 3DMVs changed as part of this update.

These will be released on Youtube tomorrow, links in the above bullet point

6th generation (2018) and below iPads will not be able to run the game after this update

Alongside 3D models and the 5 winning MVs, the gacha animation has also been remade

UI updates!

The game will be getting a massive UI overhaul, some images can be found below

A side story menu will be added alongside the event and main story menus.

New difficulty: Append!

A new difficulty will be added, called Append. It requires playing with 3 or more fingers, similar to the Proseka Ultimate songs! The difficulty range will be Lvl23-38!

The first 12 songs to receive Append charts will be Tell Your World, NEO, Hibana -Reloaded-, Stella, MORE! JUMP! MORE!, Vampire, Cinema, Pheles, TONDEMO-WONDERZ, Telecaster B-boy, I nandesu, and Gehenna!

Append will have a new note type, called Trace. It is similar to a slide note from Bandori.

The Intense Voice of Hatsune Miku will also have a lvl 35 Append chart added for a limited time, starting on September 30th. This will be the full version of the song for added challenge.

New event type: World Link!

Described as "stories where you will witness new possibilities in the SEKAI due to change in characters' feelings". By the 4th anniversary, every unit will get one World Link format unit event.

The event will be formatted in parts, known as chapters. Each chapter will be focused on a different character and have its own event ranking and story, and will run for only a few days. At the end of the story, changes might happen in the SEKAI...

Event ranking will be split into two sections: chapter and overall. Chapter score is accumulated during each chapter, and overall tallies your points throughout the entire event (so it is possible to tier one chapter and still get low overall rank because you ignored the other 3). Chapter ranking will have new special titles for ranks 1-100, but everything below T200 will keep the same titles as have always been used.

Event exchange will be split in a similar way, with a chapter exchange and general exchange. Chapter exchange can only be used with the pt badges earned during the specific chapter, but any leftovers can be converted and used in the general exchange.

Event bonus will work a little differently in these events, with the introduction of support units. If you've played like any other idol game you will know what these are, but for those who don't, then basically it allows you to add extra cards to a team that although can't be used and will not affect score, they can raise your event bonus for your main team. In World Link events, the support team will have 12 slots. Refer to the translated images from @/pjsekai_eng on twitter above.

The first World Link event will be for Niigo, and will be held between the 8th and 20th of November! After that will be VBS in January, WxS in March, MMJ! in May, L/n in July, and Virtual Singer (!!) in August.

Section 4 - Lives

Project SEKAI's 3rd live has been announced, titled Evolve!! The live will be held in two locations: Tokyo on January 26th-28th, and Osaka on February 17th & 18th 2024!

A promotional video can be found here.

To commemorate the announcement of the live, a livestream will be held on the 13th of October at 11am UTC, featuring Yukki, Mayushii, Akina, Daichan and Minoringo. The stream can be found here. During the stream, highlights of the live's "evolution" will be shown.

The official account for all information about the live is, as always, @/pjsekai_live on Twitter

During the stream it was announced that the setlist will vary between the day and night performances, with certain members getting more songs during day performances, and certain members getting more songs during night performances. These are organised as two duos per unit (excluding Leo/need), with one at the day performance and one at the night performance. The duos and their possible songs are as follows:

Day performance:

MMJ: Haruka & Shizuku (Nostalogic, Chikyuu Saigo no Kokuhaku o, Shoujorei)

VBS: Vivids (Rettou Joutou, Just Be Friends, drop pop candy, Odo, PaIII.SENSATION, Teikoku Shoujo, Pheles, Koi wa Sensou)

WxS: Tsukasa & Rui (Dappou Rock, Buriki no Dance, KING, Fixer, Nonsense Bungaku)

N25: Kanade & Mafuyu (Jishou Mushoku, Cutlery, Meru, Kokoronashi)

Night performance:

MMJ: Minori & Airi (Ren'ai Saiban, Marshmary, Setsuna Trip)

VBS: BAD DOGS (Fragile, Doctor=Funk Beat, Yobanashi Deceive, Ifuudoudou, Yuurei Tokyo, Garando, Ame to Petra, Aun no Beats, Taemanaku Aiiro)

WxS: Emu & Nene (Dance Robot Dance, Positive☆Dance Time, Rimokon, Alien Alien, Netoge Haijin Sprechor, Wagamama Hime)

N25: Ena & Mizuki (Charles, Venom, Gehenna)

A connect live to celebrate the third anniversary has been announced. This was actually announced a month ago but I forgot about it and we didn't get art until now. It is titled Memorial Stage and will be held on the 8th of October!

A login story for the live will be available from October 6th.

Section 5 - Event and gacha

The next event will be centered around the unit reps, with all of them being limited gacha cards, except Kohane who will be the exchange 3*. KAITO and MEIKO will be the fes cards. The event is called Hello Good Day! and is an Ichika banner.

And as usual, limited paid costume gacha. Here are previews of the costumes from this year's edition.

Section 6 - Project SEKAI Academy

Project SEKAI Academy is a program for young Vocaloid-Ps who will carry the next generation. 10 applicants under the age of 24 can win a place and be mentored by OSTER Project and Hiiragi Magnetite. 3 more unannounced Voca-Ps will also take part in the program. Each producer will make one song during the program, and one lucky student will have their song added to the game! More info can be found on the official website.

Section 7 - Animation

That's right. We got an anime! ...Well kinda.

Starting from the 30th, digest animations of the 5 main stories will be sequentially released on Youtube. The trailer for Leo/need's animation, animated by P.A. WORKS, is above.

The animations are all around 5 minutes long.

Links below

STELLA (Leo/need)

HOPE (MORE MORE JUMP!)

RESOLVE (Vivid BAD SQAUD)

HAPPINESS (WonderlandsxShowtime)

SELF (25-ji, Nightcord de.)

Section 8 - Miscellaneous news

Project SEKAI will be doing a collab event with the KaraokeKan chain of karaoke clubs starting in late October. There will be themed drinks, as well as prizes that can be won by singing certain songs! The promotional art was drawn by Rozuki.

As of today (17th September), posters promoting the anniversary have begun to appear on public transport in Japan! Tomorrow posters will begin to appear in major cities. These posters contain the class registers for the next in-universe school year! The new classes are written in the character section.

A Blu-ray and CD of this year's SEKAI Symphony will be released on November 29th! A preview video can be found on Twitter.

Project SEKAI will be collabing with SANRIO!! A teaser of some of the promotional illustrations can be found here. More details will be announced in October.

From Midnight JST on the 29th (15:00 UTC on the 28th), illustrations will be released on Twitter showing the characters' last days before moving up a grade. Four will be released throughout the day, at midnight, noon, 6pm and 10pm (all JST).

A livestream celebrating the anniversary will be held on the 29th September at 23:30 JST / 14:30 UTC. It will feature Yukki, Honchan, Akina and Hiichan on the panel. The stream can be found here.

Finally after 2 years of waiting, Volume 2 of the SEKAI cover albums has been announced. Track lists and release dates below. Note that Hello,World and ray have been excluded from the Leo/need album, possibly due to being part of an artist collab. Their full versions have been available on YouTube for about two years anyway so not overly bad. Aun no Beats has been excluded from the VBS album for unknown reasons (probably copyright).

songs in italics do not have a full version MV on youtube already

Leo/need (March 6th)

Lost One no Goukoku

Ghost Rule

Shinpakusuu#0822

Bokura Mada Underground

Asagao no Chiru Koro ni

Lost and Found

Calc.

Amanojaku

Yomosugara Kimi Omou

Hello,Worker

Attract Light

Kaisei

MORE MORE JUMP! (February 7th)

Happy Halloween

Karakuri Pierrot

Shoujorei

Kokoroyohou

Darling Dance

Vampire

Torinoko City

Lonely Universe

Kimagure Mercy

Booo!

Shinkai Shoujo

Setsuna Trip

Vivid BAD SQUAD (February 21st)

Alter Ego

Garando

Odo

Ame to Petra

PaIII.SENSATION

DAYBREAK FRONTLINE

Teikoku Shoujo

Pheles

Egoist

Taemanaku Aiiro

Shanti

WonderlandsxShowtime (January 24th)

Nonsense Bungaku

Yī Èr Fanclub

Rimokon

Kami no Manimani

Goodbye Sengen

Alien Alien

Odore Orchestra

Ego Rock

Love ka?

Netoge Haijin Sprechor

1925

Okochama Sensou

25-ji, Nightcord de. (January 10th)

Villain

Usseewa

Aishite Aishite Aishite

Mousou Kanshou Daishou Renmei

Meru

Gehenna

Phony

Deichuu ni Saku

Non-Breath Oblige

Sore ga Anata no Shiawase to Shite mo

Irony

Inochi Bakkari

#MK-II bc tumblr broke the first one #project sekai #project sekai spoilers #this is REALLY long btw #finally. after 12 hours i can sleep

340 notes · View notes

thefallennightmare · 6 months

Text

Miracle-fifteen

Pairings: Noah Sebastian x Reader

Warnings/Tropes: forced proximity, slight enemies to lovers, slow burn, smut, angst, fluff, mentions of death, and swearing.

Summary: Reader is the merch girl for Bad Omens. It wasn't what she wanted to do with her life but when her mother got sick with Alzheimer's, reader took a job where she could to help with the costs. She thought it would be a one-time gig but the longer she was on the road with them, the harder she fell for Noah Sebastian; even if he wanted nothing to do with her. She needed a miracle to save her mom and her future.

Author Note: Since this one is in Noah's POV, it's kind of short because I didn't want to give too much away for what's going to happen next in the Readers POV. With it being so short, I'll make it up to you guys with an extra long one for chapter sixteen!

Tags: @ada-clarence @nonamessblog @thescarlettvvitch @malice-ov-mercy @crimson-calligraphyx @theoneandonlykymberlee @yumikitten @blackveilomens @cherrymedicine13 @thebadchic @notmaddihealy @jay02bo @beaker1636 @jakekiszkasguitarpick @punk-pr1ncessxoxo @er3nslovergirl @iamdesolate @lma1986 @jessitpwk @themodern-daywednesday @writethrough @bngurngheart @dreams-that-are-anwsered @loeytuan98 @omens-in-reverse @loverofagoodbeard @jay02bo @niicoleleigh

NOAH

"You're a fucking idiot," Folio seethed, eyes slicing me in half.

My gaze was glued to the door, not wavering even with the various sets of eyes burning into me. None of them mattered. The only one that did slapped me in the face and walked through the door moments ago. I said some nasty, hurtful, things to Y/N, but the words slipped out of my mouth before I even thought of the repercussions. I was so hurt with how she'd been avoiding me the last few days and when she was around me, all I could think about was how she broke up with me because she'd rather deal with things alone. I wanted to be with her to help her with her mom but she continued to push me away before falling into Folio's arms.

I knew there was nothing to be jealous or upset over with their friendship but the part of me that couldn't get over parts of my past kept screaming at me they were hooking up. Then when I saw her post more pictures on her Only Fans page earlier, all I saw was red. When we were together, she never posted, so I'd assume she was doing it out of respect for us, which I never would have told her too since it would be her choice. But only a few days of being single, she was back to post pictures of herself; not the typical half covered.

My angel was naked in all of her gorgeous glory for everyone on that fucking website to see and do gods know what else.

Like you're one to judge. Remember that time in the small tour bus bathroom? She was on the other side of the door in her bunk while you came all over your hand.

Shaking the thoughts from my mind with a scowl, I turned to look at Folio.

"Screw you," I gritted out. "I don't need a lecture from you."

Folio stared at me with wide eyes before scoffing. "I'm not trying to start shit with you, Noah."

Bryan and Nick muttered something to Davis and Matt then soon, the four of them left to most likely find where Y/N went. They left me alone with Folio and Jolly, who stayed as a buffer in case things got heated.

"What the hell is the matter with you?!" Folio demanded.

Throwing off my jacket, I ran a hand through my hair. "It's none of your business."

"Bullshit," Folio spat. "It's everyone's business because you brought us into it. You didn't have to bring up those things, but you did because you felt upset about something so small as a friendship. Maybe if you weren't such an asshole to her, maybe she would have came to you with these things about her mom."

"She's dealing with that on top of finding out that her whole life is basically a lie," he continued.

"She pushed me away," I reminded Folio.

Who in turned rolled his eyes. "That didn't mean you had to walk away. She needs you, Noah. For once in your life, stick to something good. That's what she is for you; good. Stop letting your past dictate your future with her because you're afraid."

With one final look, Folio slipped past the door, leaving me alone with Jolly.

He gave me a stern gaze. "You crossed a line, Noah. I know it bothers you that Y/N went to Folio with these things about her past and her mom but that doesn't make it right. Just because you're dealing with shit from Rachel-."

"Don't say her fucking name," I gritted out through clenched teeth.

Jolly hesitated for a moment. "She fucked you up, we all know that. But pretending that you're not still dealing with it is bullshit."

"I'm not," I defended. "It happened years ago and I haven't thought of her since the night I left."

"Rachel cheated on you. Throughout your entire two-year relationship. That's why you left."

With a long breath, I fell onto the couch in the green room. "I don't need to be reminded, Jolly."

"YN isn't Rachel. She wouldn't hurt you like that," he said while sitting next to me.

I knew that. I also knew it was wrong of me to compare what Rachel did to me in the past to Y/N now. Rachel cheated on me any chance she could find. I invited her with me on Bad Omens' first tour but she declined so she could stay back at our place to invited guy after guy over. The only reason I found out was because I came back early from tour one night and caught a guy mid thrust into her.

After that, I packed up all of my shit to move in with Jolly. I couldn't stay in the place we shared knowing what she did there. I told the rest of the guys what Rachel did but none of them really know how bad it fucked me up.

Only Jolly did.

The trust issues. The constant worry if I'm enough for whoever I'm with. The fear of walking into the same thing; with Y/N and Folio.

Even dealing with all of that, it gave me no right to say those things to Y/N. She didn't deserve it, especially with what she'd been going through the last few days.

"I think the two of you need to sit down and actually have a discussion about what's going on. Although it doesn't excuse what you said, you need to tell her how you're dealing with some things in your past relationship and projecting it onto her," Jolly said.

I rested my head in my hands, suddenly the realization of everything I said to Y/N replaying in my mind.

"I said some fucked up shit, Jolly. I put her personal business out in front of all of you and compared it to basic porn."

"Wait," Jolly shifted in his seat. "It's true? About the Only Fans?"

I nodded. "I don't know why she's doing it."

"What's going on with her mom?"

As I opened my mouth to speak, the door to the green room bursted open and in walked Folio, whose eyes blazed with fury.

"You need to call her; now," he demanded.

"She won't talk to me," I shot back while rasing to my feet.

Our set was about to start and the last thing I needed right now was to be getting lectured by Folio.

"Do you know why Y/N had to leave?" Folio asked.

When I shook my head, exasperated, he continued. "Her mom, who has Alzheimer's, drove and crashed her car into a tree. She's in the hospital right now."

My heart sank to the pit of my stomach, the guilt eating away at my insides.

"Where's Y/N?" I asked, suddenly not giving a shit about our show tonight.

Folio shook his head. "She's gone, Noah. She packed up her shit and found a flight back home. But don't act like you give a shit about her. You threatened to fire her because she needed to leave. Why? Because you're upset that she's talking to her friends? That's all we are to her, friends. She's fucking crazy about you, dumbass. The two of you being together was the best thing to happen to her in a long time."

"I fucked up, Folio," I muttered.

"Understatement," he deadpanned. But then let out a long breath, the anger easing away from his shoulders. "I never intended to come between you two, Noah."

"I know," I nodded. "It's my own fucked up mind that's pushing her away and creating tension between you and me."

Folio raised a brow. "Is it because of Rachel?"

When Jolly noticed the way my jaw ticked and fist clenched, he answered for me with a nod. "I already gave this speech."

My heart hammered in my chest, the fear of finally losing Y/N creeping in. "I really fucked up."

"Where exactly is Y/N now?" Jolly asked when he heard the sadness in my voice.

"Davis is driving her to the airport. It wasn't cheap, but she was able to find a last-minute flight home," Folio said.

Silence fell between us for a long moment, the three of us staring at each other wondering where to go from here.

"We can't cancel the show," Jolly finally said.

Folio agreed. "There's only three shows left. Y/N said she would have our balls if we canceled the rest of the tour because of this. Once were done, we can check in on her."

I remained quiet, my mind running through a handful of different thoughts. Mostly ones of the ways I would go about making this up to Y/N. There was a chance she wouldn't forgive me and never want to see me again.

Could I live with that?

Hell no.

Would I bend over backwards and prove to her how much she means to me?

I thought then back to that night of the first party she attended at my place. It was right before we were heading out on tour, her first tour with us. I couldn't keep my mind off of her that entire night as she talked with Davis, who she knew from highschool, and then Folio. He was always easy going which would explain why she retreated to him.

When it came to the group shot, I purposely made it to be that she was next to me. Before, I watched her from afar but in that moment, having her that close to me made my heart warm with adoration. She was breathtakingly beautiful and her voice sounded like a sweet symphony. I wanted to bathe in the warm glow that radiated off of her, before I dulled it with my own issues.

When she smiled? Fuck, it lit up the entire space.

I remember being so nervous for the picture but when she eased into my touch around her lower back; I found myself staring at her instead of the camera. In that moment, I knew how fucked I was for her. She had me wrapped around her little finger and I would have given her everything she ever wanted.

Until you fucked it up.

Running a hand over my face, I let out a long sigh before looking at Folio. "I'm sorry for being an asshole to you."

He gave me a curt nod. "I'm not the one that needs an apology, Noah."

"I know," I nodded while looking at the tattoo on my thumb of the angel wings.

Would I bend over backward to prove to her how much she means to me?

Without fucking question.

#noah sebastian #noah sebastian and reader #noah sebastian x reader #noah sebastian reader insert #noah sebastian smut #forced proximity #enemies to lovers #slow burn

246 notes · View notes