#low code app development and no code app development

[a-fox-studies]

17 April 2023

Yes, it's still the same low-quality pictures (I really need a better phone) and the same desk (I am yet to find study locations, thinking of a park a few roads away from home).

After a week of literally no time to study, I have returned! Reviewing certain concepts, learning and relearning - it's a pleasant evening.

[madison3442]

What are the advantages of low-code development?

In today's digital environment, companies are using low-code development platforms to create faster software and applications by automating manual processes. In addition, we are creating new ways to develop applications by allowing developers across the organization to create applications. According to Gartner, the global market for low-code development technology is expected to reach $ 13.8 billion in 2021 and increase by 22.6% from 2020. Despite ongoing efforts to optimize costs, the increase in remote development during the COVID-19 pandemic continues. To increase code acceptance.

Low-code software development software eliminates time-consuming tasks for developers and simplifies the world of application development. This blog focuses on the benefits of low-code development that encourages developers and businesses to switch to a low-code development platform.

What is Low Code Development?

Low code is an application development platform that enables faster delivery of applications with minimal manual coding. In technical terms, low code is a set of tools that developers use to build applications within a visual drag-and-drop interface, including a complete user interface, integration, data management, and logic.

Low-code development platforms include:

● Visual IDE (Integrated Development Environment)-An application that allows developers to create program computer programs, workflows, and data models. ● Service and backend connection: Data storage and retrieval.

● Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) software tools for developing, debugging, implementing, and managing software in test, performance, and production environments.

Why is low code important?

The low-code development platform helps IT organize new processes and build applications faster. With the right low-code tools, every member of your IT team can develop a flexible and reliable business platform across the platform to improve application delivery. These platforms provide applications that generate user interfaces and business logic through an interactive drag-and-drop interface. Most software, called low code, creates services based on the user interface.

Another variation, no-code, also includes drag-and-drop visual development. However, unlike basic code, this is primarily intended for business people or other IT people who may not know the actual programming language but want to develop applications for specific use cases.

Five Benefits of Low Code Development

1. Better business insight

In today's digital world, we need to respond quickly and accurately to market changes and opportunities to reach our business goals. Low code helps developers quickly meet almost all IT business needs and create software with minimal risk.

By making the software development process agile, the low-code platform allows developers and engineers to work more efficiently and ultimately makes the business more flexible and agile.

2. High-speed development

All software development projects usually take longer than expected to complete. According to a survey by the Project Management Institute, almost half of IT projects are behind.

Low-code development platforms can dramatically speed up the software development process. Initial stages, such as collection requirements, will continue to take as long as before, but low-code development platforms use pre-designed templates and other "building blocks" that shorten the event process itself.

3. Less need for information technology

Enterprise teams use low-code development tools to implement new processes and applications without IT permission. The low-code development platform focuses on innovation for everyone and provides a way to develop software without the help of IT. As a result, users who develop simple programs with low code quickly follow the simplest methods and avoid common mistakes when developing programs.

4. High speed repeat

The low-code development platform helps developers quickly replicate and modify current processes to keep up with market development. For example, submit changes to a secondary task, request documentation, and provide a review history for quick reviews of changes. 5. Cross-platform function

The low-code development platform allows you to create an application or software once and deploy it to multiple devices. It also means that developers can add new features and updates only once per application. These features provide the best user experience on desktops, mobile devices, tablets and more.

Summary

Low-code development is currently a popular technology. The benefits they offer help organizations save money and keep their budgets. In addition, low-code platforms are evolving over time, increasing the likelihood that enterprises will continue to use low-code platforms. If you're discussing the benefits of this blog, it's time to make the right changes.

[satolune]

──── BEAUTIFUL GIRL ♡

nerdjo, his pregnant girlfriend and his baby (and sometimes suguru) ♡ art creds here

When you nervously showed him the positive pregnancy test in your shared room at the penthouse,૮₍ daddy nerdjo ⑅₎ა froze for a solid ten seconds, then immediately pulled up a dozen tabs on prenatal vitamins, baby name generators, and a shared Google Doc titled “Baby Project v1.0.”

૮₍ daddy nerdjo ⑅₎ა insisted on turning one of his spare rooms into a nursery right away, sketching floor plans on graph paper and ordering a star-projector ceiling light so the baby could “have her own little galaxy every night.” (he wanted a baby girl so bad, kept insisting that the baby HAD to be a girl)

He started a meticulous pregnancy tracker app on his phone, color-coded by trimester, complete with weekly bump photos he took with his fancy camera while you were both still in hoodies and sweatpants between lectures.

૮₍ daddy nerdjo ⑅₎ა would drive you to every prenatal appointment in his sleek car, blasting whatever playlist you had chosen turned down low, and holding your hand the entire time while asking the doctor way too many hyper-specific questions.

He researched the healthiest snacks obsessively and kept the fridge stocked with cut fruit, Greek yogurt, and those fancy imported juices, proudly announcing each new “approved” food like he’d unlocked a rare achievement.

Late-night study sessions turned into him reading baby development books out loud to you while you rested your head on his lap, his free hand gently on your growing belly.

૮₍ daddy nerdjo ⑅₎ა cried quietly in the car after the 20-week ultrasound when he saw her little profile on the screen, then immediately printed it out and laminated it for his wallet.

He started calling her “Pixel” as a nickname because she was “the best new character in our life’s game,” and it stuck even after you picked her real name.

During the pregnancy, ૮₍ daddy nerdjo ⑅₎ა would drag Suguru into their usual late-night study sessions just to show off the latest ultrasound printout he kept in a protective sleeve, zooming in on “her perfect little pixel profile” while Suguru sipped coffee and called him a sap.

૮₍ daddy nerdjo ⑅₎ა assembled the crib with the precision of someone defusing a bomb, triple-checking the instructions and adding extra safety features he found on niche parenting forums.

when you went into labor, ૮₍ daddy nerdjo ⑅₎ა was a whirlwind of calm panic—grabbing the hospital bag he’d packed weeks in advance while driving you there safely.

In the delivery room, ૮₍ daddy nerdjo ⑅₎ა held your hand the whole time, feeding you ice chips and whispering nerdy encouragements like “You’re clearing the hardest boss fight, baby.” Then he saw his daughter and broke into full-on happy tears, glasses fogging up.

The first time he held his daughter, ૮₍ daddy nerdjo ⑅₎ა was a complete mess of awe and love, rocking her so gently while murmuring stats about newborn reflexes he’d memorized.

Back at the penthouse, he set up a whole command center with a baby monitor that had night vision and an app that sent stats to his phone so he could “data mine her sleep cycles.”

He bought a baby carrier that looked like a little tactical vest and wore her around the penthouse while reviewing lecture notes, calling it “multi-tasking DLC.”

First bath time was a whole event: ૮₍ daddy nerdjo ⑅₎ა had the water temperature checked three times, rubber duckies lined up, and recorded a video for memories.

૮₍ daddy nerdjo ⑅₎ა insisted on taking her to campus in a fancy stroller, proudly introducing her to professors and friends between classes like she was a little star.

Diaper changes became a strangely efficient process; he had it down to a science with wipes warmers and a changing pad that played soft melodies.

He baby-proofed the entire penthouse with outlet covers, corner guards, and even pressure sensors on low cabinets “just in case she unlocks parkour mode early.”

૮₍ daddy nerdjo ⑅₎ა would hum video game themes as lullabies, and surprisingly, Pixel always settled down faster to the Zelda soundtrack.

When she had her first real laugh, ૮₍ daddy nerdjo ⑅₎ა FaceTimed Suguru mid-laugh and held the phone so close the audio glitched, yelling, “Did you hear that?! She’s got my humor! She's hilarious!"

He bought matching nerdy onesies for the baby and insisted on a “family photo op” with Suguru during one of their hangouts, forcing his best friend to hold her while he took 47 pictures from different angles.

During study breaks on campus, he’d wheel the stroller over to wherever Suguru was and dramatically unveil her like she was a limited-edition figurine, saying things like “Behold, the final boss of my heart” while Suguru pretended to be annoyed but always ended up playing peek-a-boo with her.

When she started crawling, ૮₍ daddy nerdjo ⑅₎ა sent Suguru a 15-second video of her scooting across the floor with the caption “She’s already faster than you bro” followed by ten laughing emojis.

Suguru once joked that the baby looked more like you than him, and ૮₍ daddy nerdjo ⑅₎ა spent the next week sending side-by-side comparison photos with annotations pointing out her “obviously Gojo-coded” features.

For her first birthday party, ૮₍ daddy nerdjo ⑅₎ა made sure Suguru was there early so he could watch his best friend hold the birthday girl in her tiny party dress, getting a little misty-eyed again while muttering, “she's so cute...”

[xrisen-phoenixx]

heyhey could u do something like a reader figuring out how to mess with BEN's code (?) and maximize his sensitivity 👀 👀

ABSOLUTELY I CAN!

Sensitivity

B.E.N. x GN!Reader

TW: Smut (I think this is borderline wireplay, but I do not know much about wireplay 💔)

He/It pronouns used for B.E.N.!

B.E.N. was connected to every single electronic device in this mansion, which made it extraordinarily hard to figure out which device he was actually connected to. B.E.N. was pretty much a fusion of a bunch of different spirits that had developed its own personality, which meant he was tied to a specific device, or so you guessed based on your knowledge on spirits. However, despite how hard it’d be to figure out which electronic he was connected to, you were determined to find out which one it was. B.E.N. was notorious for fucking with everyone else’s device. Whether it was corrupting files, bugging out apps, autoscrolling whatever app you’re on, just annoying shit. It only got worse when you two started dating. You’d cover your phone camera? Suddenly, your tv was turned on. You wanted to get back at him somehow.

After you thought through where his device may be, you realized it was realistically in his room, as he’d probably need it to recharge. So, you snuck into his room while he was out. The moment you slipped into his bedroom, you were almost taken aback by the sheer amount of devices everywhere. Several pcs, laptops, tvs, phones, tablets, and more were scattered across the room like decor. You immediately assumed it was probably one of the pcs or tablets, but you didn’t end up finding any sign of a file specific to him, or any evidence that he’d be linked to the device, so you moved on to the laptops. Still, absolutely no luck. After searching every single device in his room, you were stumped. Did he have his actual device hidden, or were you just missing it?

Concerned that it may just be hidden, you double checked each device before searching his room for any hidden devices, but all you found were a couple of seemingly dead or broken gameboys. With a huff, you search the other electronics in the public areas, since you didn’t think he’d be connected to someone’s personal device or anything. After checking the other available devices, you frowned at your failure. You make your way back to his room, racking your brain about what you could possibly do from this point.

As a final attempt to figure out what the hell he was attached to, you plugged in the gameboys, seeing if they were still even alive. To your surprise, one of them lit up after a few minutes. You immediately dove in, trying to find his file, which didn’t take long at all. Alright, B.E.N., let’s do this. You immediately went into the coding of his game file, messing with his settings, heightening the sensitivity of the controls, similar to the mouse sensitivity on pc games. You assumed it would be like maxing out the settings on a pc, would make him turn significantly more than he had meant to, make him move faster or slower than he intended, just pulled him out of control. So imagine your surprise when every electronic in his room switched on, and he appeared on the main tv, visibly disheveled.

“Quit it. Now.”

You raise an eyebrow, confused by his appearance, but you brushed it off to what you originally assumed, disorienting him and causing his mobility to be impaired, hence why he was pissed off with your meddling. So, you continued, completely unaware of what your amateur hacking was actually causing. You smirked and started to mess with the controls of the game boy, thinking it would make him walk around like a rc car. However, he didn’t move. He visibly tensed, and you heard a low groan emit from the tv. Suddenly, you realized what your tampering had done. Oh, this opened a new ballgame.

You slowly ran your finger over the controls of the gameboy, lightly pressing the forward button, then the back button, which seemed to be doing something to him. He had an iron grip on the screen, whatever he had found to hold while you tortured him. Eventually, you stopped taking your finger off of the controls, sliding up and down on the movement button. The screen was static as he let out another groan, one that seemed to be a mix of annoyance and pent up frustration. You kept your movements minimal, amused by his reactions to you touching the controls of the gameboy. You continued to slowly stroke the controls, enjoying the soft whimpers emitting from his tv. You smirked at his response, gently pressing down, which made the static on the other screens worse.

“Does that feel good, B.E.N.?”

You tease, bringing the gameboy up to your mouth and running your tongue over the control button you’ve been abusing. He genuinely whined at that, almost collapsing in response as he nodded to your words, too overwhelmed to actually form words right now. He was pale, beads of sweat pouring down his face as he stared at you in a mix of annoyance and need. The touches were too much for him, he seemed to be struggling to handle the way you were touching the controls, earning more whimpers and desperate whines from him. Oh man, you were enjoying the shit out of this, just teasing the shit out of the buttons.

However, you realized your mistake once his hand shot through the screen and grabbed the side of the tv. For some reason, you had convinced yourself he was stuck where he was due to your touches. You very quickly discovered that was not the case, and you were in immediate danger of his wrath. So, like anyone in your situation would do, you shot up from sitting on his floor and tried to make a break for it back to your bedroom. However, you didn’t make it far at all. The door slammed shut in front of your face, and you slowly turned to see him standing out of the tv, staring you down. Your eyes wandered down to his very visible bulge in his pants, and you began to realize just how fucked you were. Gameboy still in hand, you tried to push a button or two to catch him off guard long enough to escape, but that really didn’t work for you.

Instead of reacting how you had hoped, he basically lunged forward, grabbing your forearm and tugging you against his chest. He grabbed the gameboy out of your hands, and tossed it out of your reach before grabbing you by the throat and forcing you to look at him. The action made you shrink into yourself a bit, and his expression made you swallow hard, which he obviously felt, and decided to tighten his grip on your neck in response to. He was close, inches from your face, and his voice was low, almost a whisper, which just made him a little scarier.

“Did you think that was cute? Messing with things you have no idea about? Hm?”

You shake your head no, but he can tell you’re lying by the way you’re fighting the urge to smile, and somewhat failing. That was okay. He’d fuck that smug look off of your face, leave you in the same position you had caused him to be in. He pulled you over to the bed by your neck before bending you over the edge, shoving your head down against the sheets. You were now feeling significantly less confident, and that only continued to diminish as you heard his belt coming off. He didn’t even speak to you enough to tell you what to do, just tugged your hands behind your back and tied them with his belt. Oh, you were so in for it.

Gun to your head, you wouldn’t be able to tell how many hours had gone by. Apparently, given by his stamina, he had been recharging during the time you had been fucking with his gameboy. How else could he be able to keep this up for so long? Your legs were basically jelly, trembling with each thrust, not actually holding you up at all. No, B.E.N. was pretty much doing that, one arm around your waist slamming you back against him whine his other hand held your head down into the pillow he had put under your head at some point. You had no recollection of getting a pillow, but it was there.

“B.E.N., please- I-I’m sorry-!”

You whimpered out against the pillow, only earning a hard smack on your ass for it. You whined into the pillow, feeling his hand grab your hips and yank you back onto his cock harshly, making tears well back up in your eyes. You weren’t even sure when you had started crying, much less stopped to start again. You could hear B.E.N. groaning quietly, although you weren’t sure if it was because of how tight you were squeezing him or because of your broken, whiny voice. He had barely spoken to you, leaving you to grovel and beg for his forgiveness with absolutely no gratification to your requests. Suddenly, you felt him yank you up by your hair, making you whimper again.

“Yeah? You’re sorry? You don’t seem too sorry.”

You whined as he slammed into again, dragging another orgasm out of you, which caused tears to stream down your cheeks. You had lost count of how many times he had made you cum. It was enough to start to hurt, you knew that much. Your thighs were even starting to cramp from tensing up over and over from cumming. You weren’t even sure if he had came more than maybe twice. He seemed more focused on just overstimulating you to the point that you couldn’t function, and he was doing a pretty damn good job of it.

“I-I am-! P-please-!”

You begged again, hardly able to keep up with what he was doing to you. Your words were slurred, your eyes were hazy and unfocused, and you felt almost dizzy, like the room was spinning from how much he had exerted your body. You couldn’t even grab the sheets to ground yourself, your hands were trapped behind your back by his belt, minimizing your ability to move any at all. Suddenly, you felt B.E.N. pull out, and you whimpered, both at the loss of feeling, and out of worry that he was going to slam back into you. However, he instead grabbed you off the bed and pulled you to stand up, which caused you to collapse onto your knees, which he somewhat caught you, just enough that it wouldn’t hurt you.

“If you’re so sorry, you’re going to prove it, got it?”

He watched as you nodded dumbly, and he snickered. He grabbed the pillow your head had been on previously and tossed it onto the floor, motioning for you to kneel on it, which you did. You could feel how wet your thighs were from a mix of your and his release, although it was mostly yours. You could already tell that his pillow was going to be covered in cum by the time you got up, which made your cheeks heat up in embarrassment. You didn’t have much time to dwell on that though, as he guided your head to his cock. When you just stared, almost dazed, he smacked your cheek, just hard enough to snap you out of it without hurting you.

“Open.”

You obliged, opening your mouth and sticking out your tongue like he had taught you to do. He mumbled something under his breath that you didn’t quite catch and stared down at you. If you thought he was going to guide you, you were sorely mistaken. You wanted to make it up to him, you were going to do all the work, even as fucked out as you were now. It took you a couple seconds to realize that, but once you did, you gently took him into your mouth, eyes locked up on his as you ran your tongue over what little bit you had fit so far. You felt reassured when you heard him groan and felt his hand tangle in your hair once more.

You took him about halfway before choking a little, which was when he decided to take back over. He just wanted you to take as much as you felt you could fit before making you take the rest. After all, you had quite a bit to make up for, didn’t you? He shoved your head down until your nose was flush against his pelvis. You whimpered and began choking even worse, too worked up to focus on relaxing your throat. He pulled you off and you fell into a coughing fit, whimpering quietly between gasps and coughs. He grabbed your hair and made you look up at him again.

“Guess we’ll need to bend you back over.”

“N-No! P-please-!”

“That was pathetic. You know better, I expect better. Do you understand me?”

“Y-Yes sir.. I’m sorry.”

“Much better.”

Satisfied with your response, he guided his cock back into your mouth, immediately bottoming out again. You focused on not choking quite as bad this time, immediately relaxing your throat to keep from repeating last time. You adjusted rather quickly this time, and he held your head still as he fucked your throat, admiring how tears welled up in your eyes and saliva built up in the corners of your mouth, slowly dripping down your chin as his cock slid in and out of your mouth. You looked so pretty like this, already fucked out of your mind and just letting him use your mouth.

Each time he hit the back of your throat, you had to fight the urge to gag or choke. Your face felt wet, both from tears and from saliva, which made you feel embarrassed knowing he would make fun of you for it after how much you teased him earlier. You felt his movements speed up, which caused you to whine softly around him. That earned a groan from him as he shoved your head down against his pelvis once more. You whimpered as you felt him cum down your throat, warm streaks of cum filling your mouth and throat. He slowly pulled you off, wiping any of his cum that spilled out off of your face and pushing his thumb into your mouth to make you lick it up. Your eyes were unfocused and hazy, your face messy, and your legs still weak and sore. You were perfect like this, in his opinion.

He helped you up onto the bed and cleaned you up, noting how you struggled to keep your focus on him. You glanced over at the gameboy you had fucked with, and gently reached a hand out to signal him to hand it to you.

“Here, I’ll fix it…”

“Hah, fuck no. You’re never touching this again.”

[fatterbiggersofter]

Eating Himself Out of Office 2: Working from Home (BHM, WG)

This continues from the first part and is heavily inspired by @evermore-xxl's fantasy about her partner gaining a substantial amount of weight after taking an office job; their (non-feedist) partner @cryptidmothmen is also due some inspiration credit :)

~

It’s his first morning working from home after he'd eaten himself too heavy for his office chair at work. Weeks of office-subsidized meals, an increasingly-ravenous appetite, and the gentle encouragement of his loving partner have ballooned his softening body out of his wardrobe several times over. Every big part of him has become even bigger. Every roll doubled. Every fold deepened. He’s sleeping in later than usual since he doesn’t have to commute, but a rumbling hunger in his belly still wakes him up earlier than his alarm.

His girlfriend is curled against his back, her arm wrapped around his side and resting against his sizable belly. She wakes up and sees he’s already scrolling a food delivery app for breakfast. Three breakfast sandwiches from a fast food place are queued, then a fourth. He hesitates a second, then adds a fifth. A coupon offer prompts a sixth. Six. The number alone has her mind buzzing; working out the calories would have her worked up in seconds. She stirs, her hand sliding from his belly to the thick rolls at his side, settling on his back where she gently rubs, letting her fingers catch on the newly-formed folds.

“Did you want something?” he asks, punching in his employer code that subsidizes the food and delivery so the cost is close to that of the workplace cafeterias; an additional benefit for those approved to work remotely. Those cheap, filling cafeteria meals have been the major contributor to his ballooning up nearly eighty-five pounds since earning his cushy, sedentary, office-based promotion ten months ago. Several sizes up in his clothes, gradually developing a habit for six or more meals per day, and one broken office chair later, it’s left him with some rather indulgent habits.

“I’m okay, you get your breakfast,” she says, squeezing him once more before watching his soft, swollen body start to maneuver itself to standing, the weight shifting and plopping and stacking until he’s on his feet. She hears him in the kitchen making himself a bagel, slathering it in cream cheese, to tide him over until his real meal arrives.

While he’s in the shower, she gathers up some snacks and sets them into a bowl on his desk, ensuring he’ll have plenty to eat without leaving the comfort of their second bedroom, now home office. Chips, cookies, pretzels, granola bars — everything a growing guy might want to munch on throughout the workday.

“Hey where did those new pants go?” he calls from the bedroom. She joins him, seeing him laying on the bed, his joggers mostly up his thighs, but stuck against the bottom of his belly and ass. She knows these are the bigger pants. She knows that just two weeks ago they’d fit him fine, but that his thighs have been taking the bulk of his extra weight these last couple weeks. Fortunately she’s planned ahead and has the next size up tucked away in the closet. He’s grateful, but a little too winded to fully express it as he shimmies the old ones off and slides the new, huge pair slide up his chunky, soft legs.

His latest work shirt, a 4XL, fits around his rounding torso… mostly. He thinks he’d managed to fully button it, but the lowest button is forced apart too much by his belly hang to be fastened. It’s too low down below the equator of his belly anyways, so he doesn’t even notice there’s a button down that far to try. He sits himself in his gaming chair, another recent purchase that’s heavily reinforced to stand up to his weight, though she notices that his sides and butt are oozing dangerously close to the sides already. He opens his laptop to start the day, but he's barely logged in before the doorbell rings. His thick arms make to push himself from the chair, but she’s quick to tell him she’ll retrieve the food, noticing how pleased he looks to just let his weight plop back down into his seat. It's like he's meant to be doted on, she thinks as she heads for the front door.

She brings him his first delivery and can tell how he's managing to eat so much during the day: he’s nearly perfected typing and scrolling on his laptop with one hand while using the other to eat. His bites are greedy and delighted, his mouth full as he chews and instinctively grins. She glances into the room a couple times over the next half hour, watching the pile of empty breakfast sandwich foil wrappers grow until a punctuating groan and belch tells her he’s finished his first proper meal. She toasts him another bagel, smothers it in cream cheese, and wordlessly drops it off for him with a peck on his cheek while she collects his discarded wrappers.

During his first meeting of the day, she pulls out a boxed muffin mix (adds in some extra chocolate chips) and bakes a half-dozen large muffins. He wanders into the kitchen, attracted by the sweet smell, and has eaten half of them before 10:00. His lunch delivery, a family-sized order of wings and fries, shows up at 11:00. At noon, she makes them each a sandwich, his having contents proportional to his size. She replenishes his trove of desk snacks before he returns to his seat after lunch. He emerges into the kitchen shortly after to grab a muffin, a few cookies, something to drink, but the gaps between his appearances grows as the afternoon progresses. She delivers him the last muffins and a bowl of chocolate chips to round out his afternoon eating.

Bite by bite, his belly swells against his tightening shirt. She catches a glimpse of just how much belly is resting in his lap when he's sitting, typing away at whatever task he's working through. He is, she decides, very cute when he's working away like that. Naturally she grabs him some pretzels and lemonade from the fridge. She's trying to do the mental math of how many calories he must've eaten across the whole of the day, but she can't do it without losing count, remembering some snack she left off the list, or thinking of some additional thing in the cabinet he'd be delighted to see her come in with. And he is always delighted to see her entering the room with something delicious for him.

He's still lingering in his desk, his shirt unbuttoned halfway up his protruding belly as the evening rolls around. She thinks he's working late, but when dinner is nearly ready she finds he's actually relaxing in his chair, resting his hand on his middle scrolling his phone.

"Good stopping point for dinner?" she asks.

"Already?" he asks, his hands pressing on his swollen middle. "I guess I could eat," he grins. It takes him a little more effort to heave himself from his chair. She doesn't fail to notice, taking in how his body moves at this size. She would never want him hurt or uncomfortable, but her mind wanders to wondering what the weight limit of his gaming chair is. How could she not when he's so beautifully filling it up like that?

He claims he's "not that hungry" for dinner, so she just offers him a small bowl of stew with a couple buttery, homemade biscuits floating like puffy clouds on top. And whenever that bowl gets close to empty she takes it for a refill and another biscuit. He eats nine of them, slowly sinking into completely laying on the couch beneath his broth-filled, biscuit-packed belly and giving her that pleading look that prompts her hands to meet his groaning gut without hesitation.

She eases the strain, hand-feeding him a cookie as soon as he seems to have enough room for it. She's not certain whether he's hungry, can't find any motivation to refuse the next cookie, or just enjoys having her attention so fully on him like this. She makes it easy for him, running her hands along the swelling softness of his sides, shoulders, back, arms and legs. She traces every stretch mark, affectionally feeding and soothing him until he's too heavy and tired to get up. They snuggle together on the couch late into the evening until he's sufficiently mobile and motivated to journey back to their bed.

It feels like a normal day for him. Eating that much, nearly beaching himself by the end of it. But for her this is the first day of a new routine.

Two weeks at home shouldn't have been enough time to leave too much of an impact on his waistline or his habits…

But by the time he's notified that his new office chair is available, he's gotten quite acclimated to his lifestyle working from home. She's evolved from nonchalantly offering him snacks throughout the day to more playful, outright enabling and challenging his appetite. He's moved less and eaten more in these last two weeks than ever before, but he doesn't really feel how much he's been enabled until his first day returning to his office.

Getting dressed was a dual effort: she helped him get tucked into his shirt and pants so he didn't have to fuss with the buttons. Tying his shoes was sure to be a strain, but she took care of it without even needing him to ask. An extra big breakfast had his tight shirt straining for dear life, but she offers him an enormous sweater that gave him some leeway on some of the tighter buttons, should he need it.

With his lunchbox as fit to burst as he was, he heads out the door and slowly maneuvers the six steps down to the driveway, feeling his walk has started moving him side to side more than before; his weight forcing his movement to adopt the slightest of waddles. She watches him make his way down the driveway, hesitate, then push himself into the seat of the car, almost like he was getting too big to fit. She tells herself she's just fantasizing about that last detail, but she can't be sure with how big he's looking.

She's thinking about what he'd be most excited to see she's baked for him when he arrives home. She's been approved to work remotely as long as she likes, and even with him out of the house there's plenty for her to do. She finds herself so deep in thought about how cute and big he's looking that she almost misses his work bag sitting on the counter. Grabbing it and darting down the stairs with ease, she makes it to the car window before he's managed to pull out from the driveway.

"You'll need this," she says, as he rolls down the window.

His chunky hand reaches out to meet hers, but she's locked onto two details inside the car. First, his belly is absolutely pressing against the steering wheel. Not just brushing against it; even with the seat all the way back, his belly is firmly resting against the wheel, bulging above and below it. Second, his lunchbox is already half-eaten. Even after a full breakfast, he's not even made it out of the driveway before breaking into the food she's packed for him. He looks a little sheepish that she's noticed, like he's been caught doing something he shouldn't, but she gives him a kiss on his plump cheek and says she'll be excited to see him home later.

He munches away on his remaining snacks during the short commute, leaving the packaging remnants in his car to clear out when he gets home. The walk to his office feels longer than he remembered, but he's forgotten all about that once he's got a double cafeteria breakfast in front of him. Buttery croissants, two meat and cheese omelettes, fruit, a couple muffins. His only limit seems to be the physical space on his tray. But even getting lost in the first of the day's delicious meals can't totally distract him from the repeated reminders that he has, without a doubt, gotten much bigger.

The sides of the bathroom stalls feel snug. His hands accidentally hit on the doorway of his office when he walks through. There's a creaking under his feet when he walks down one particular section of hallway that he's sure he'd have noticed before. The new chair in his office is certainly sturdy, but it's not exactly comfortable and seems to be a little too narrow for his butt. Instead of breaking it in, he elects to take his meetings in the cafeteria for the rest of the day. No one minds the different meeting location, but inevitably each of his coworkers wants to grab a snack, presenting him with ample opportunities to grab additional meal after meal. He's topped himself out after eight meals over the course of the day, truly pinned to the cafeteria bench by the end of his final meeting, struggling to muster the strength to wobble to his car and commute home.

The journey feels long. The car feels like it's squeezing him. The drive feels unpleasant without something to snack on. The driveway feels unending. The steps up to the door feel harder than he remembers. But everything feels right again when he's out of his uncomfortable office clothes and splayed out on his couch munching on some (pre-dinner) peanut butter brownies.

"How'd you make out today?" she asks from the kitchen, her hands busy preparing the next delicious meal he'll devour.

"Eh," he says, groaning a little as he adjusts himself under the weight of his belly. "Much prefer working from home. I missed you, of course. But it's easier being here and all."

"Why don't you put in for more remote days?" she says. "Just go in for the important meetings, I'm sure your boss won't mind."

He realizes she's right. Being home for two weeks hardly seemed to make a difference in his work output, but going into the office has clearly left a cloud of inconvenience hanging over his mood and the quality of his day.

So he does exactly that. And he finds that really there aren't that many important meetings. He relishes finding his calendar open enough that he can talk himself into staying home the following day. And the day after that. And then staying home the remainder of the week feels reasonable.

She loves getting to work with him from home, too. Knowing he's getting more than enough to eat. Having cute moments to admire and joke with each other during the day. Watching her love for him slowly swell his softening body out further and further with each passing meal. The accumulating bloat of his middle settling into more weight as the days compound into weeks.

He goes in once after a month, then stays home for six uninterrupted weeks following that. She's watching him practically swell by the day. Then comes the occasion he very truly must commute in for.

His boss, its been announced, is retiring. There's a big meeting about the division, and a happy hour following that to send the boss off in celebratory fashion.

"How about I drive you in?" she suggests, watching the color drain from his face as he tries his very best to squeeze into the largest set of pants she's ordered for him to date. "That way you can have some drinks, if you like," she says, knowing he's unlikely to fit behind the wheel based on her last glimpse of his driving.

He agrees, flushing a little when he has to ask for her help to scoot the passenger seat back all the way after not being able to reach the release underneath the seat himself. She's warm and nonchalant, telling him how much fun he'll have at his big work event.

And she's right. He jokes with his coworkers, makes small talk, snacks on enough appetizers to make a meal even by his standards, takes a few drinks down, and then he learns some news that he can't wait to share when he gets home to his girlfriend.

The car dips heavily to one side when he plops down in the car that evening, his hands grabbing at the button of his pants under his heavy belly to undo it before he bursts them open. He's a little goofy from his drinking, playing coy with her about the big news he gets to share with her, insisting it waits until they arrive home.

She prods him, verbally and then with her fingers on his exposed belly, but he doesn't release his secret until he's walking up the front steps. He's made it up the first three when he pauses, taking a big breath, then continues up the last three, pausing in the doorway. She means to be looking at his grinning face, but all she can see is that his sides are literally pressing against both sides of the doorway as he rests against it.

"I got the big promotion," he says. She's elated, of course, taking in every benefit this will mean for him professionally. More money will be great, especially since their food budget has been ballooning recently…

He's more than prepared for the workload. She shares his celebration eagerly, watching him add more and more about how excited he is, his proud face wobbling and full and cute.

"And now that I'm the boss, I'm deciding that I can work from home full-time," he says with a grin, pushing himself through the front door.

She's stopped still at the foot of the stairs, beaming up at him with so much love and anticipation in her heart, knowing that every extra dollar of this promotion is going to be undoubtedly sunk into softening him up even more.

The only question she has now is how big he'll end up getting.

"This is going to be huge for you, babe," she says, following him in, going for the kitchen to get him something to eat.

<<< Part 1 | Part 3 >>>

[muiitoloko]

Burn Protocol

Summary: When Anthea sends a coded message mid-foreplay, Mycroft Holmes insists on dictating the response—without removing his mouth from between your thighs. Precision, after all, is a form of dominance.

Pairing: Mycroft Holmes × Fem! Reader

Warnings: Smut

Author's Notes: Based on The Taste of Restraint.

Also read on Ao3

The sheets were warm. Heavy. Draped over your lower half like a cocoon, muffling sound and scent and sensation into something darker, more primal. Only your shoulders and head peeked out from the duvet. The rest of you—your thighs, your hips, your cunt—was beneath it. And so was he.

Mycroft Holmes, the man who could bring entire governments to their knees with a phone call, was between your legs with devastating focus.

His hands held your thighs apart with calm authority, thumbs anchored at the creases where your hips met bone. His tongue moved with that same brutal precision he applied to everything else—methodical, relentless, maddening. Every flick, every suction, every deliberate sweep was done like he was solving you. Like he’d memorized your anatomy in blueprints and was now executing a field operation.

You gasped when he flattened his tongue and dragged it upward in one long, slow stroke—only to pause and press his mouth to your clit with a low hum that reverberated deep through your core.

And then—buzz.

The phone.

On the bedside table.

Mycroft didn’t stop.

Didn’t even lift his head.

His hand, still resting over your lower belly, tightened slightly—pressing down in that subtle, possessive way he’d developed the first time he realized he could feel the way your body clenched around nothing when he applied pressure. Like he knew what was coming. Like he was holding it in place. Delaying it. Commanding it.

Buzz.

“Mycroft,” you whimpered, hips twitching as his tongue made another maddening circle.

“Answer it,” he said from beneath the covers, voice muffled but unmistakably steady. “It could be urgent.”

You whimpered. “Can’t you—just—”

“I’m not stopping,” he murmured, mouth brushing your slick folds with every word. “But I want you to read it.”

You blinked, breath catching.

“You want me to—what?”

The duvet shifted, and his voice me again—quiet, warm, amused.

“My password is Triskelion-4-Echo. Capital T.”

You stared at the phone, the lock screen glowing faintly in the low light.

Mycroft Holmes had just given you the password to his phone.

And then gone back to eating you out like it was a footnote.

You were too stunned to move at first. Trust, for Mycroft, was a complicated thing. He didn’t give it. Not easily. Not freely. And certainly not when it involved his device—the one that held the pulse of half a dozen national agencies and enough blackmail to set fire to Parliament if he so chose.

Your cunt fluttered helplessly around nothing, and you whimpered again, trembling fingers reaching for the phone.

“Now,” he said, his tongue flicking just beneath your clit like punctuation.

You unlocked it.

The interface was sterile. Efficient. Barely customized. He had one wallpaper—a minimalist rendering of the Union Jack—and fewer apps than a retired bishop.

A message banner glowed at the top of the screen:

Anthea: TULIP REQUESTS IRON TEA / 9.26 GREEN–RED / BLACKBIRD SINGS / ETA?

You squinted, your brain scrambling to make sense of the phrases.

“It’s from Anthea,” you managed, your voice breaking on the last syllable as Mycroft drew your clit into his mouth and sucked.

“Read it,” he murmured against you.

You did.

Haltingly. Voice shaking. Every word stammered out as he licked into you again—slow and thorough—dragging pleasure up your spine like he was testing how well you could speak with his mouth replacing your thoughts.

“Tulip requests iron tea—nine twenty-six—green-red—blackbird sings—ETA?”

There was a pause.

Then Mycroft hummed in contemplation.

Not sexual.

Not teasing.

Just thinking.

His tongue didn’t stop.

Of course it didn’t.

“Mm. She’s moving the Prague asset early,” he said absently, sliding one hand lower to gently press a finger into you while his mouth stayed on your clit. “I told her to delay until Monday.”

You arched off the bed, sobbing his name.

“Mycroft—I can’t—”

“Yes, you can,” he murmured, his voice a feather-soft blade as he curled his finger and flicked his tongue in perfect tandem. “You will.”

You gripped the edge of the mattress with white knuckles, phone still clutched in your hand, the message glowing in your peripheral vision like some holy relic.

He trusted you.

Not just with his body.

With this. With that.

With everything.

And he hadn’t stopped.

In fact, he’d only intensified.

The sheets were still half-draped over your hips, but the part covering his head had been pulled back just long enough for him to murmur, "Reply. Dictate this precisely." His voice had been devastatingly calm. Steady. Like he wasn’t halfway buried between your legs with your thighs shaking against his ears.

You had gaped at him, eyes wide, cunt fluttering helplessly as your grip tightened on his phone. “I—I can’t—”

“Yes, you can,” he’d murmured, not unkindly. “Anthea is waiting.”

And then, in his voice—cool, exacting, maddeningly composed—he began to dictate:

"Proceed IRON. TULIP confirm RED. Keep singing. ETA now 09.42. Use window."

You typed with fingers that barely obeyed you, your lower half spasming as he resumed—no, doubled down—on his efforts. His mouth moved with surgical precision, tongue slow, then quick, then slow again. A rhythm designed to disarm. To fracture. To control.

The kind of precision only Mycroft Holmes could maintain while issuing covert clearance codes mid-cunnilingus.

Just as you were about to press send, he paused.

Lifted the sheet off his head again.

His dark hair was slightly mussed, lips slick, eyes sharp and glittering with calculation. He looked at the message. Then up at you.

“Do not misspell ‘proceed.’ Or ‘confirm.’ If Anthea sees a typo, she’ll assume I’ve been compromised and activate the Burn Protocol.”

You blinked at him.

He blinked back.

“I’m—" you croaked. “I’m being eaten alive.”

“Yes,” he said simply, his fingers now stroking softly along your inner thighs. “Do focus.”

You stared at him.

And he—without breaking eye contact—smirked. Just barely. Enough to make your blood fizz.

And then, without another word, Mycroft pulled the sheet back over his head and resumed.

With enthusiasm.

You whimpered, voice cracking. “You—bastard—”

The only reply was his tongue flattening against your clit, followed by a pointed swirl that made your hips twitch clean off the mattress.

He was ruthless. Not hurried, not hasty—but relentless. Intent on making you fall apart while your thumbs hovered over a piece of encrypted communication that could destabilize an entire operation.

You forced your vision to focus on the screen again, blinking hard as you read over the message.

Proceed IRON. TULIP confirm RED. Keep singing. ETA now 09.42. Use window.

Your fingers hovered over send.

And then he sucked.

Not lightly. Not teasing.

Possessively.

You screamed—half into the pillow, half into the air—and your thumb hit the screen almost by reflex.

Message sent.

You collapsed back into the sheets, body trembling, the phone falling from your hand and landing somewhere on the duvet.

Beneath the blanket, Mycroft exhaled a soft sound—barely audible—but you could feel the pride in it. The smugness.

And then he spoke, lips brushing your soaked folds.

“You taste sweet,” he murmured, tone scholarly now. “Like your lips. Possibly sweeter.”

You whimpered, twitching.

“Must be the fruit,” he mused, almost clinically. “You’ve eaten nothing but peaches and nectarines for a week. I’ve been waiting to see if it would affect your—”

You kicked under the covers, gasping, “Mycroft—stop analyzing—”

He laughed.

Soft.

Maddening.

And then licked again.

Slow.

Languid.

Possessive.

You shoved the sheet off his head in fury—grabbing a handful of his dark hair—and glared down at him.

He looked up at you from between your legs, still poised, composed, that single arched eyebrow lifting as if to say, Yes?

“You’re evil,” you hissed.

“And yet,” he murmured, his voice dragging over your skin, “you’re about to come on my face again.”

You didn’t get a chance to argue.

Not when his mouth closed around your clit again—low, precise, demanding.

You screamed his name.

He didn’t stop.

Didn’t need to.

You were his.

And he—God help you—was home.

[beaniesayshi]

Thursdays, week Seventeen

tags: modern AU, Sukuna x f!Reader, graphic designer!Reader, tired girl x tired man, Sukuna's soft and quiet, reader's a bit of a yapper, reader exhaustion realism, quiet intimacy, slow burn, slice-of-life, minimal dialogue, subtle yearning, emotional restraint | wc: 2.9k

← Week Sixteen · Week Seventeen · Week Eighteen → Masterlist · ao3

Thursday, 9:00 p.m.

You had genuinely believed that this week could not possibly top the last. You were wrong. It was, unfortunately, worse.

The issues began innocently enough on Tuesday. The first development build of the app was delivered, and as you clicked through the screens, something tight settled in your chest. Everything looked… almost right. The colours were close to the specified palette, but not accurate; the font weights were technically correct, but inconsistent across screens. Most frustratingly, the margins looked perfectly acceptable in isolation until you noticed the consistent, nagging asymmetry: every button sat just a little too low or too close to the edge. It was almost right, but not really, and that was somehow worse than if it had just been broken. You could have let the client see it and hoped they’d be the ones to raise the issue, but it was your name on the design, even if your hands never touched the code, so you escalated. 

Even though you sent screenshots, detailed notes, requested they check the style guide again, the response you got was dismissive and so matter-of-fact it made your stomach turn: It doesn’t matter. It’s good enough and the client won’t notice. Instead of taking your feedback seriously, someone actively chose to ignore you. Worse still, they pushed the flawed version live to the client’s staging server. The client noticed immediately, exactly as you had known they would.

Suddenly, you were the one being called in to answer for mistakes that were not yours. You were answering for the developer’s carelessness and the product manager’s arrogance. The tone in your boss’s reply email was icy, making it brutally clear that, in their eyes, you were the problem. In the end, you had raised your voice and taken it personally. That, of course, was another thing your boss did not tolerate: emotional outbursts. As far as they were concerned, the only path to continued employment was to pretend everything was fine while you were berated for something that wasn’t your fault.

To protect yourself and your work, you spent this morning documenting everything and screenshotting the conversations with developers where you flagged the issues and the responses they gave you.

Now, hours later, there was nothing in the world you needed more than a complete mental reset. To relax, sleep until eleven in the morning, eat an unholy amount of deeply satisfying junk food, and for just one single day, forget you even had a job.

The first is the only one you feel you could actually achieve. You won't admit it, not even to yourself, but it’s Pink who helps with that. Instead, you cling to the idea that it’s the routine of grocery shopping itself, the familiar loop through the aisles, that does the work.

You’re halfway down the snack aisle when you realise you’ve picked up the same bags of gummies three weeks in a row now. A silly, small habit, but one you can’t seem to break. Holding the bag in your hand, you glance toward the end of the aisle, when something moves in the corner of your eye.

He’s coming toward you, and you can spot him from a mile away, not just because of the distinctive, faded pink hair, but because of the sheer predictability of his outfit. Dressed the same as always: black jeans, slightly worn at the knees, and a black oversized hoodie with the sleeves pushed up to his elbows, revealing the inked bands around his wrists.

There’s a basket in one of his hands, nearly full with his usual haul of nut mix bags and energy drinks, and his free hand is digging through the groceries, fingers fishing for something specific.

When you reach the middle of the aisle, you both lift what’s in your hands at almost the exact same moment.

You’re holding your gummies. He’s holding a small brown-gold packet of something you don’t recognise at first, named using a kanji you haven’t read in a long time. You glance at it in a slight confusion, but finally realise it’s roasted kinako sticks, the cheap snack that used to sit near register counters in corner shops when both of you were kids.

You blink once, caught off guard by his choice, then lift your bag slightly higher in response and his head tilts a little. For a moment he doesn’t look like the stoic man you’re used to, but like a younger version of himself. It doesn’t really matter what the shift is, because it makes you grin widely anyway. 

To your surprise, he smiles back. It’s a little reluctant, barely a twitch at the corner of his mouth, but it’s undeniably real. And it lingers just long enough for you to be sure you didn’t imagine it.

As you walk through the rest of the aisles together, you pause briefly at the drinks shelf, knowing you’ll need something cold for tomorrow’s lunch break. He steps ahead toward the refrigerated section and picks up a protein shake, the same one he’s been grabbing for the last few weeks. He drops it into the basket, then grabs a few more and does the same, stocking up without a second thought.

You turn into the last few aisles, pick up a large bag of rice, then check the perpetually half-empty shelf with the canned tomatoes, snagging the last two. He stops to scan the shelf with instant noodles but doesn’t grab anything, just lets his eyes move over the options. The fact that he’s still there beside you, like it’s not even a question, gives you the peace you’ve been craving all week.

At the checkout, he moves to the express lane on the left, which is miraculously empty, while you take the one next to it with one person waiting. He finishes first, gathers his bags, and waits just outside the automatic doors, same as always.

You finish scanning your things, carefully separating the chilled items from the dry goods as you bag them. You pull your totes over your shoulders, cradle a paper bag of fruit in your arms, and step outside into the mild evening air.

He meets your eyes the moment you exit and gestures with his chin toward the lot. You nod once, already moving in the direction you know by heart now.

You reach your car first, balancing the bags awkwardly against your hip and setting the heaviest one down on the asphalt so you can pop the trunk. The latch sticks the way it’s been sticking for weeks, the hinge catching halfway before it finally releases with a small shudder, and you mutter under your breath about replacing it when you finally have a day off.

He’s only a few steps to your left, his own bags hanging low against his side. When the hinge snags again as you lift the trunk lid, he speaks for the first time today, his voice a low, gravelly sound.

“Careful with that hinge.”

You look up at him, one hand still gripping the stubborn latch.

“It’s been doing that for a while,” you explain with a small shrug. “I keep meaning to look up how to fix it, but I always forget.”

He sets his bags down next to your bumper, reaches out a hand but stops short of touching anything. Instead, he angles his wrist and gestures. “Lift it higher first, just a little. Then pull.”

You frown slightly, skeptical, but try it the way he shows, lifting the lid higher before pulling. The latch comes free with a smooth, quiet click, the resistance gone. It’s such a small, ridiculously simple thing you almost laugh at your own weeks of struggle.

“That’s it?”

His expression stays neutral, but the smallest hint of amusement flickers in his eyes. “That’s it.”

You exhale a soft, genuine laugh anyway, then glance up at him with a bright, appreciative smile. “Thanks, Pink.”

Something like the beginning of a smile flickers across his mouth, that he seems to swallow as quickly as it forms. 

Turning back to your task, you load the bags into the trunk, then tug the blanket you keep in the back free from underneath them and sling it over your arm. When you turn toward his Jeep, he’s already setting his groceries onto the backseat. His shoulders are angled slightly away, like he’s focused on arranging things, but as he leans in, you catch a glimpse of his ear. The tip of it is faintly pink, the colour unmistakable this close, standing out against his skin.

The sight makes your chest warm, but you don’t say anything about it, smiling to yourself as you adjust the blanket over your arm and follow him around the car.

Before he steps away from the side of the car, you climb fully into the back and cross your legs, leaning back against the interior wall. A moment later, he sits down across from you, one leg folded low against the mat, the other bent, an arm resting loosely across it.

For the first time since you met, you’re sitting directly facing each other instead of side by side, close enough now that you can clearly see the dark lines of ink on his wrists even in the dim light.

You rip open your bag of gummies with a satisfying tear and set it down on the floor between you. His roasted kinako sticks follow a moment later after he tears the wrapper neatly and lays it flat. The faintly sweet, nutty smell reaches your nose almost immediately.

“It’s kinako sticks,” he explains before you can ask. “Corner shop near my school had them by the register. Ten yen each back then. We’d save change for them.”

You nod slowly, picking one up and biting into it. It’s soft and sweet, dissolving on your tongue, the roasted soybean flour leaving a slight, pale powder on your fingers. “‘s good,” you say quietly, enjoying the simplicity of the taste. “I remember seeing them before, but I never tried them.”

He takes one too, chewing slowly, his gaze distant for a moment. “Comfort food,” he says, then lifts his chin toward your gummies. “This yours?”

You chuckle, staring at the brightly coloured packaging, tracing a cartoon character with your finger. “Kind of. I’ve been buying them since high school. It’s not even the taste anymore. Just… habit.”

“Makes sense.” He runs one hand slowly through the pink strands of his hair, stopping at the back of his neck and pressing his fingers there. Your head tilts slightly in concern, but you don’t ask.

You eat like that for a while, trading between the gummies and the kinako sticks, while the low hum of the radio from the front seat drifts into the cabin. It’s warm enough that you don’t need the blanket, but you drape it across your lap anyway, fingers playing idly with the edge of the wool as you think of his question.

“I cook when I actually have time,” you start. “Nothing fancy, nothing you’d see in a restaurant, but still real meals. Miso soup from scratch with proper dashi, grilled fish with daikon, soft-boiled eggs in soy marinade. Sometimes fried tofu, if I’m not too tired to deal with the oil. I like things that take a bit of time. Especially stuff my grandmother used to make. I think it makes me feel like I’m doing something useful with my hands when everything else feels too much, or when my job turns to shit again and I feel like I’m constantly losing control.” 

You take a breath and glance at him, then back down at your lap.

 “It’s stupid, I know. It’s just food, but there’s something really… I don’t know, grounding about washing rice until the water’s perfectly clear and cooking it properly. I like the routine of it.” 

You pause for a second, not embarrassed, just realising how much you’ve said. 

“Anyway. I don’t do it every week. Usually I don’t have the energy or really… just time. But when I feel like I’m going to break a little… like really break down… I make ochazuke. Rice, hot green tea, some salmon or pickled plum, nori, whatever I have in the fridge. It’s so simple I don’t have to think about the steps, and I always feel better afterwards.”

You give a small shrug. “That’s my comfort food, I think.”

The way he listens makes it feel like it’s the most natural thing in the world for you to be telling him all this. When you finish, he stays quiet for another second, then tilts his head slightly, the pink of his hair catching the light. 

“Ochazuke’s good. Haven’t eaten it in a long time.” He looks away from you, shifting his gaze to his left, watching the people moving in the parking lot. “I don’t cook much. Simple things. Rice, eggs, whatever’s easy. Mostly, I just eat konbini food when I’m tired. Stuff I don’t have to think about.” He exhales softly. “But that doesn’t really… fix anything.”

You glance at him, watching his profile, and he doesn’t meet your eyes, keeping his gaze on the flicking light of the store sign.

“Maybe that’s why I don’t cook,” he finally murmurs, his voice a little quieter. “If I did, I’d have to stop long enough to feel like shit.”

It doesn’t feel right to fill the space just because it turned personal, so you don’t. He didn’t ask for comfort or solutions, and you’re not trying to give them either, letting the moment exist the same way he lets your rambling do when you talk too long without meaning to. You sit with it, holding the silence with the same patience he’s shown you for weeks.

Eventually, fidgeting with the corner of your blanket again, you offer quietly, “That makes sense.”

The song playing now is one of the slower, moodier ones on his CD, a low, repetitive bassline with a quiet melancholy threaded through it. You’re not actively listening, but at some point you realise you’ve started to sway your head a little to its rhythm.

Still watching the lot, his gaze fixed on an invisible point near the horizon, he murmurs, “Joy Division.” You lift your eyes to his face, but he doesn’t seem to notice until he adds, almost as an afterthought, “This one’s called Atmosphere.”

Somehow, the man looks more distant than before, even sitting this close to you. And it’s yet another time you’re listening to this band in his Jeep, so you guess it must be one of his favourites and promise yourself to finally look it up later.

You pop another gummy into your mouth, more for something to do with your hands than anything else, and when the song fades out, you add the first trivial, unrelated thought that comes to mind.

“I miss those pens from school,” you say. “The ones with six colours you’d click back and forth.” You let out a soft laugh. “I didn’t even need them, but I liked the sound.”

“Those were everywhere,” he snorts quietly, his eyes closing for just a brief moment. “Everyone tried to click all the colours at the same time and jammed them.”

You smile, absentmindedly folding and smoothing the fabric of the blanket in your lap. “You?”

He looks down at his hands, watching his fingers worry the edge of the kinako packet, then lifts his gaze back to you. “Used to get melon ice from a street cart near my school. Bright green. Tasted kind of fake, but it was better than school lunch.” He pauses. “My brother loved it too.”

You try to picture it in your mind, the way he might have looked as a kid or a teen, the ghost of a smile on his face, his younger brother beside him, wondering how similar they were back then and are now. 

“Sounds nice.”

His posture eases slightly, his head tilted just a little as he looks at you across the narrow space of the Jeep. The phone resting near his thigh lights up, and you glance at it automatically before looking away just as quickly, hoping he didn’t take it as prying. Before you do, you catch the time on the screen, the clock shows ten-fourty.

Remembering how long tomorrow is going to be, you start gathering the wrappers, smoothing them out of habit before folding the blanket neatly over your knees and stacking it in your arms. You’re focused on doing it properly, and you miss the way he shifts once, like he’s about to say something, then doesn’t.

Instead, he settles back against the interior again, one hand resting idle on his knee, watching you finish as if there’s no reason to hurry you along. By the time you finally move to climb down from the trunk, he still hasn’t moved nor looked away.

“Drive safe, Red,” he says when your feet meet the asphalt.

You smile, warmer than before. “You too, Pink.”

And like every week before, he stays inside until your lights come on and doesn’t leave until you’re gone.

tags: @5seos @nerdjoenjoyer @nakiich  @sspiralma

← Week Sixteen · Week Seventeen · Week Eighteen → Masterlist

[are-we-art-yet]

Is AWAY using it's own program or is this just a voluntary list of guidelines for people using programs like DALL-E? How does AWAY address the environmental concerns of how the companies making those AI programs conduct themselves (energy consumption, exploiting impoverished areas for cheap electricity, destruction of the environment to rapidly build and get the components for data centers etc.)? Are members of AWAY encouraged to contact their gov representatives about IP theft by AI apps?

What is AWAY and how does it work?

AWAY does not "use its own program" in the software sense—rather, we're a diverse collective of ~1000 members that each have their own varying workflows and approaches to art. While some members do use AI as one tool among many, most of the people in the server are actually traditional artists who don't use AI at all, yet are still interested in ethical approaches to new technologies.

Our code of ethics is a set of voluntary guidelines that members agree to follow upon joining. These emphasize ethical AI approaches, (preferably open-source models that can run locally), respecting artists who oppose AI by not training styles on their art, and refusing to use AI to undercut other artists or work for corporations that similarly exploit creative labor.

Environmental Impact in Context

It's important to place environmental concerns about AI in the context of our broader extractive, industrialized society, where there are virtually no "clean" solutions:

The water usage figures for AI data centers (200-740 million liters annually) represent roughly 0.00013% of total U.S. water usage. This is a small fraction compared to industrial agriculture or manufacturing—for example, golf course irrigation alone in the U.S. consumes approximately 2.08 billion gallons of water per day, or about 7.87 trillion liters annually. This makes AI's water usage about 0.01% of just golf course irrigation.

Looking into individual usage, the average American consumes about 26.8 kg of beef annually, which takes around 1,608 megajoules (MJ) of energy to produce. Making 10 ChatGPT queries daily for an entire year (3,650 queries) consumes just 38.1 MJ—about 42 times less energy than eating beef. In fact, a single quarter-pound beef patty takes 651 times more energy to produce than a single AI query.

Overall, power usage specific to AI represents just 4% of total data center power consumption, which itself is a small fraction of global energy usage. Current annual energy usage for data centers is roughly 9-15 TWh globally—comparable to producing a relatively small number of vehicles.

The consumer environmentalism narrative around technology often ignores how imperial exploitation pushes environmental costs onto the Global South. The rare earth minerals needed for computing hardware, the cheap labor for manufacturing, and the toxic waste from electronics disposal disproportionately burden developing nations, while the benefits flow largely to wealthy countries.

While this pattern isn't unique to AI, it is fundamental to our global economic structure. The focus on individual consumer choices (like whether or not one should use AI, for art or otherwise,) distracts from the much larger systemic issues of imperialism, extractive capitalism, and global inequality that drive environmental degradation at a massive scale.

They are not going to stop building the data centers, and they weren't going to even if AI never got invented.

Creative Tools and Environmental Impact

In actuality, all creative practices have some sort of environmental impact in an industrialized society:

Digital art software (such as Photoshop, Blender, etc) generally uses 60-300 watts per hour depending on your computer's specifications. This is typically more energy than dozens, if not hundreds, of AI image generations (maybe even thousands if you are using a particularly low-quality one).

Traditional art supplies rely on similar if not worse scales of resource extraction, chemical processing, and global supply chains, all of which come with their own environmental impact.

Paint production requires roughly thirteen gallons of water to manufacture one gallon of paint.

Many oil paints contain toxic heavy metals and solvents, which have the potential to contaminate ground water.

Synthetic brushes are made from petroleum-based plastics that take centuries to decompose.

That being said, the point of this section isn't to deflect criticism of AI by criticizing other art forms. Rather, it's important to recognize that we live in a society where virtually all artistic avenues have environmental costs. Focusing exclusively on the newest technologies while ignoring the environmental costs of pre-existing tools and practices doesn't help to solve any of the issues with our current or future waste.

The largest environmental problems come not from individual creative choices, but rather from industrial-scale systems, such as:

Industrial manufacturing (responsible for roughly 22% of global emissions)

Industrial agriculture (responsible for roughly 24% of global emissions)

Transportation and logistics networks (responsible for roughly 14% of global emissions)

Making changes on an individual scale, while meaningful on a personal level, can't address systemic issues without broader policy changes and overall restructuring of global economic systems.

Intellectual Property Considerations

AWAY doesn't encourage members to contact government representatives about "IP theft" for multiple reasons:

We acknowledge that copyright law overwhelmingly serves corporate interests rather than individual creators

Creating new "learning rights" or "style rights" would further empower large corporations while harming individual artists and fan creators

Many AWAY members live outside the United States, many of which having been directly damaged by the US, and thus understand that intellectual property regimes are often tools of imperial control that benefit wealthy nations

Instead, we emphasize respect for artists who are protective of their work and style. Our guidelines explicitly prohibit imitating the style of artists who have voiced their distaste for AI, working on an opt-in model that encourages traditional artists to give and subsequently revoke permissions if they see fit. This approach is about respect, not legal enforcement. We are not a pro-copyright group.

In Conclusion

AWAY aims to cultivate thoughtful, ethical engagement with new technologies, while also holding respect for creative communities outside of itself. As a collective, we recognize that real environmental solutions require addressing concepts such as imperial exploitation, extractive capitalism, and corporate power—not just focusing on individual consumer choices, which do little to change the current state of the world we live in.

When discussing environmental impacts, it's important to keep perspective on a relative scale, and to avoid ignoring major issues in favor of smaller ones. We promote balanced discussions based in concrete fact, with the belief that they can lead to meaningful solutions, rather than misplaced outrage that ultimately serves to maintain the status quo.

If this resonates with you, please feel free to join our discord. :)

Works Cited:

USGS Water Use Data: https://www.usgs.gov/mission-areas/water-resources/science/water-use-united-states

Golf Course Superintendents Association of America water usage report: https://www.gcsaa.org/resources/research/golf-course-environmental-profile

Equinix data center water sustainability report: https://www.equinix.com/resources/infopapers/corporate-sustainability-report

Environmental Working Group's Meat Eater's Guide (beef energy calculations): https://www.ewg.org/meateatersguide/

Hugging Face AI energy consumption study: https://huggingface.co/blog/carbon-footprint

International Energy Agency report on data centers: https://www.iea.org/reports/data-centres-and-data-transmission-networks

Goldman Sachs "Generational Growth" report on AI power demand: https://www.goldmansachs.com/intelligence/pages/gs-research/generational-growth-ai-data-centers-and-the-coming-us-power-surge/report.pdf

Artists Network's guide to eco-friendly art practices: https://www.artistsnetwork.com/art-business/how-to-be-an-eco-friendly-artist/

The Earth Chronicles' analysis of art materials: https://earthchronicles.org/artists-ironically-paint-nature-with-harmful-materials/

Natural Earth Paint's environmental impact report: https://naturalearthpaint.com/pages/environmental-impact

Our World in Data's global emissions by sector: https://ourworldindata.org/emissions-by-sector

"The High Cost of High Tech" report on electronics manufacturing: https://goodelectronics.org/the-high-cost-of-high-tech/

"Unearthing the Dirty Secrets of the Clean Energy Transition" (on rare earth mineral mining): https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/apr/18/clean-energy-dirty-mining-indigenous-communities-climate-crisis

Electronic Frontier Foundation's position paper on AI and copyright: https://www.eff.org/wp/ai-and-copyright

Creative Commons research on enabling better sharing: https://creativecommons.org/2023/04/24/ai-and-creativity/