#But they are small by Core standards
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bet-on-me-13 · 8 months ago
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DPxBNHA Prompt
@evilminji recently made a Post about DP x MHA and I'm in love with the idea of those 2 fandoms together. (I'm gonna tag this dpxdc just to spread it around but there won't be much dc in it. Maybe a few crumbs here and there)
So! Quirks came into existence the same day Danny became a Halfa. He wasn't directly responsible for it, but when the Portal opened it released a truly Massive amount of Ectoplasm into the world at large. The Dr's Fenton didn't notice it at first, because Amity Park had always had that level of Ectoplasm and all of their Sensors were within the City Limits.
The Ectoplasm released onto the world quickly and integrated with multiple Humans across the Planet, and eventually enough Ectoplasm gathered in a single Human to form the first Proto-Core, aka Quirk. That human was the Glowing Baby.
This phenomenon spread across the world as the situation in Amity Park devolved. The GIW knew for certain that these "Meta Abilities" were the result of Ectoplasm Contamination, and doubled down on Amity Park to try and fruitless contain the spread. Not that it would have worked, the Portal opening had sent a Shockwave across the fabric of Reality, creating mini-portals that continued to feed Ectoplasm to the Earth.
Eventually the day came when Amtiy Park was Evacuated from the Mortal Realm by Clockwork for it's own Protection. It's disappearance was blamed on a newly awakened Quirk destroying the entire Town, which was used to feed the flames of hatred in the Early Dawn Era.
Then one day, Amity Park returns. In Japan of all places.
Clockwork had dragged the entire Town through Time, to an Era that would accept their abilities. It was placed in the countryside of Japan. Clockwork had considered putting them in a dimension of Heroes, bur decided that would like to stay in their home dimension for now.
Thats the basic world building, but there are other parts we can expand upon in this AU
For Example, OFA and AFO
All for One was the first True Core in the 1st Gen of Quirks, but he was born with a Defect that made him unable to generate his own Ectoplasm. He felt a Hunger that could never be satiated, and eventually found a way to feed that hunger by absorbing the Proto-Cores of other people into his own True Core, stealing their Quirks.
One For All was the Opposite, born as an empty True Core but without the insatiable Hunger that his brother had. Then AFO force fed him a Stockpile Core and it fused with his own, giving him the power to Generate and Stockpile his own Ectoplasm.
He also had the power to Pass On his Core to another Body, basically just passing on his power. Then his Successor did the same, and their successor, and their Successor. Eventually we reach the 9th Holder of OFA, and the Singularity.
In this world, the Quirk Singularity isn't just an event where Quirks grow too powerful for their Bodies to handle, it is an event where the Proto-Cores of Quirk Users experience an Apotheosis, and change from Proto to True Cores. True Cores which the Human Body can't handle having.
But it's different for OFA. It was a True Core from the beginning, born within a Human Body, and it has the power of 6 other Proto-Cores within itself all ready to Apotheosis into True Cores themselves. When OFA is passed onto zuku Midoriya, it floods him with 7 Cores worth of Ectoplasm, and turns him into a Halfa.
When Danny and the rest if Amity Park reappear in Japan, they find not only a world populated by mostly Liminal Humans, but also a Powerful Halfa who doesn't even know he is a Halfa. Maybe even 2 if All Might also experienced the same Apotheosis?
Thoughts?
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dykedvonte · 10 months ago
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Ulysses obsession with the Courier is a special type of sad to me cause the Courier’s part was so important but so unwitting. They had no idea what was in the package they delivered and neither did he. Neither had an idea of what it could’ve done and the Courier was only caring out their job (mind you the Courier could be killed via notes in the express contract if they don’t). To them it was just another regular delivery to the divide and one that they likely thought would help, just like all the ones before.
It’s so tragic for Ulysses to hold so much ire to the Courier when it really was the case of it could’ve been anyone. Anyone could have delivered that package but they did and so he focused the blame on them and it destroys what he is trying to instill in the courier on a fundamental level.
#like yeah the courier delivered the package but in the end that’s a job#any random courier could’ve delivered it especially since we know in the past the factions were farther apart and this travel was a smidge#safer but courier six got it and this Ulysses blamed them#like I don’t care much for Ulysses because I think lonesome road embodies don’t shoot the messenger at it core#and what people focus on doesn’t focus on the fact that in the bigger picture#everything went wrong because two factions were at war and at some point the codes would have been delivered#and the divide destroyed cause with how close it is to NCR territory it would of been found#like there is an inevitable and too many people treat Ulysses as if he knows more or is more aware of the idiosyncrasies of conflict#when he’s like fundamentally flawed just at the standard of being a legion apologist STILL and just how focused he is on one persons#involvement cause yeah choices matter even the small one but I think Veronica’s quest says it best with a line from the courier#you can’t control what they do#like the courier couldn’t and can’t control what they deliver and yet it’s got them in hot water multiple times#like do you think they enjoy being shot or knowing they are indirectly responsible for activating the annihilation of a community#to me it’s hypocrisy to be willing to end the world or one world to prove a point and whatever argument made that only military factions#suffer forget there are innocent civilians suffering that had no part and Ulysses is no better than the Courier#I don’t like devils advocate and a lot of the dlc just feels like that but idk I know people love it but the depth is just not there for mr#ulysses fnv#fallout#fallout new vegas#courier six#the courier#lonesome road#the courier has very little personality outside what we give them but some lines and delivery paint a picture#like uhhhh undertale deltarune rules ig
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bwarkz · 2 years ago
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terfs in the replies are writing off this horrific incident and even trying to defend this kind of outburst because “this wouldn’t have happened if trans women never tried to use women’s bathrooms!”
that’s not the point. the point is this is far from the first time this has happened, and it won’t be the last. the point is this kind of reaction isn’t just hurting trans women, but it’s making cis women who don’t fit your idea of traditional white western femininity feel unsafe.
you can’t write this off as ‘collateral damage’ when you’re hurting the very people you claim you’re trying to protect. i thought you cared about cis women? that’s why you’re doing all this right? to protect them? but how many times has this reaction actually kept someone safe from a predator pretending to be a woman? now compare that to the amount of times your rhetoric has hurt innocent and vulnerable women.
so who’s actually being hurt here? is it you, because someone who might be a trans woman wanted to pee? or is it other women, who just wanted to use a public restroom in peace but couldn’t because you harassed them? those women are now scared and insecure that they look too masculine to be treated with human decency. is it really worth it?
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tenrose · 2 years ago
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Romantasy is the new bit-lit
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captain-ultimat-doggo · 4 months ago
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Humans entering space and realizing we are so small. We are mice compared to these giant races with their advanced machinery and technologies and experiences beyond us- except that we're humans. And our engineers dive into the new tech and once we learn the principles we also soon realize how Inefficient everything is. Their "microchips" are the size of cars, their storage drives are basically buildings, and they somehow store less data than ours. So, human companies take advantage, and tech starts rolling out. Massive and there's a lot of wasted space so that it can be managed with larger hands/pincers/claws/tentacles, but also so much more efficient than anything the galaxy has seen before.
Human technicians start hopping ships and upkeeping the general maintenance, the stuff that most aliens put off or don't notice because they never access the crevices of their ships. As human companies become more popular and lead the tech world in everything from warp cores to game stations ("it's so compact! How are the graphics so good?" Says a 60' tall grimbleback, holding a new VR headset that has all of its components included because it's so BIG by our tech standards), soon many things have accessibility ports for humans to be able to use as well. This means that these shiprats hoping ship to ship cause such a huge improvement in everything running smoothly, and there's a huge downtick in pests on ships because those "pests" are not only big enough and aggressive enough to bite a pitbull or a person in half, they're invasive to so many planets and humans hate nothing more than dog killing planet overrunning monsters.
All the while, from the Aliens perspective, humans are an elusive race that don't fraternize much with them. You almost never see a human as most places aren't exactly safe for the little things to run around in. They do export so much stuff though, and the custodial staff at the Central Galactic Outpost insists that there's more humans around than any other race if you just know where to look.
And sure it's somewhat known that some of the little daredevils hop ships and help out in exchange for room and board, usually without permission, but that can't be that common, can it?
Maybe your ship is running better this cycle ever since you stopped at the last station, that just means that tuneup was better than you thought. And maybe for some reason that program you were working on last night is finished when you wake up, but you're so tired maybe you finished it before you passed out. Somehow that faulty light in the galley has fixed itself as well, which is odd, but maybe the Engineer finally got to it. You'd know if there was someone else on your ship.
Right?
... You leave a little bowl of berries out as a thank you, just in case. You're not sure what humans like but you've heard they have a sweet tooth.
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staff · 2 years ago
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Tumblr’s Core Product Strategy
Here at Tumblr, we’ve been working hard on reorganizing how we work in a bid to gain more users. A larger user base means a more sustainable company, and means we get to stick around and do this thing with you all a bit longer. What follows is the strategy we're using to accomplish the goal of user growth. The @labs group has published a bit already, but this is bigger. We’re publishing it publicly for the first time, in an effort to work more transparently with all of you in the Tumblr community. This strategy provides guidance amid limited resources, allowing our teams to focus on specific key areas to ensure Tumblr’s future.
The Diagnosis
In order for Tumblr to grow, we need to fix the core experience that makes Tumblr a useful place for users. The underlying problem is that Tumblr is not easy to use. Historically, we have expected users to curate their feeds and lean into curating their experience. But this expectation introduces friction to the user experience and only serves a small portion of our audience. 
Tumblr’s competitive advantage lies in its unique content and vibrant communities. As the forerunner of internet culture, Tumblr encompasses a wide range of interests, such as entertainment, art, gaming, fandom, fashion, and music. People come to Tumblr to immerse themselves in this culture, making it essential for us to ensure a seamless connection between people and content. 
To guarantee Tumblr’s continued success, we’ve got to prioritize fostering that seamless connection between people and content. This involves attracting and retaining new users and creators, nurturing their growth, and encouraging frequent engagement with the platform.
Our Guiding Principles
To enhance Tumblr’s usability, we must address these core guiding principles.
Expand the ways new users can discover and sign up for Tumblr.
Provide high-quality content with every app launch.
Facilitate easier user participation in conversations.
Retain and grow our creator base.
Create patterns that encourage users to keep returning to Tumblr.
Improve the platform’s performance, stability, and quality.
Below is a deep dive into each of these principles.
Principle 1: Expand the ways new users can discover and sign up for Tumblr.
Tumblr has a “top of the funnel” issue in converting non-users into engaged logged-in users. We also have not invested in industry standard SEO practices to ensure a robust top of the funnel. The referral traffic that we do get from external sources is dispersed across different pages with inconsistent user experiences, which results in a missed opportunity to convert these users into regular Tumblr users. For example, users from search engines often land on pages within the blog network and blog view—where there isn’t much of a reason to sign up. 
We need to experiment with logged-out tumblr.com to ensure we are capturing the highest potential conversion rate for visitors into sign-ups and log-ins. We might want to explore showing the potential future user the full breadth of content that Tumblr has to offer on our logged-out pages. We want people to be able to easily understand the potential behind Tumblr without having to navigate multiple tabs and pages to figure it out. Our current logged-out explore page does very little to help users understand “what is Tumblr.” which is a missed opportunity to get people excited about joining the site.
Actions & Next Steps
Improving Tumblr’s search engine optimization (SEO) practices to be in line with industry standards.
Experiment with logged out tumblr.com to achieve the highest conversion rate for sign-ups and log-ins, explore ways for visitors to “get” Tumblr and entice them to sign up.
Principle 2: Provide high-quality content with every app launch.
We need to ensure the highest quality user experience by presenting fresh and relevant content tailored to the user’s diverse interests during each session. If the user has a bad content experience, the fault lies with the product.
The default position should always be that the user does not know how to navigate the application. Additionally, we need to ensure that when people search for content related to their interests, it is easily accessible without any confusing limitations or unexpected roadblocks in their journey.
Being a 15-year-old brand is tough because the brand carries the baggage of a person’s preconceived impressions of Tumblr. On average, a user only sees 25 posts per session, so the first 25 posts have to convey the value of Tumblr: it is a vibrant community with lots of untapped potential. We never want to leave the user believing that Tumblr is a place that is stale and not relevant. 
Actions & Next Steps
Deliver great content each time the app is opened.
Make it easier for users to understand where the vibrant communities on Tumblr are. 
Improve our algorithmic ranking capabilities across all feeds. 
Principle 3: Facilitate easier user participation in conversations.
Part of Tumblr’s charm lies in its capacity to showcase the evolution of conversations and the clever remarks found within reblog chains and replies. Engaging in these discussions should be enjoyable and effortless.
Unfortunately, the current way that conversations work on Tumblr across replies and reblogs is confusing for new users. The limitations around engaging with individual reblogs, replies only applying to the original post, and the inability to easily follow threaded conversations make it difficult for users to join the conversation.
Actions & Next Steps
Address the confusion within replies and reblogs.
Improve the conversational posting features around replies and reblogs. 
Allow engagements on individual replies and reblogs.
Make it easier for users to follow the various conversation paths within a reblog thread. 
Remove clutter in the conversation by collapsing reblog threads. 
Explore the feasibility of removing duplicate reblogs within a user’s Following feed. 
Principle 4: Retain and grow our creator base.
Creators are essential to the Tumblr community. However, we haven’t always had a consistent and coordinated effort around retaining, nurturing, and growing our creator base.  
Being a new creator on Tumblr can be intimidating, with a high likelihood of leaving or disappointment upon sharing creations without receiving engagement or feedback. We need to ensure that we have the expected creator tools and foster the rewarding feedback loops that keep creators around and enable them to thrive.
The lack of feedback stems from the outdated decision to only show content from followed blogs on the main dashboard feed (“Following”), perpetuating a cycle where popular blogs continue to gain more visibility at the expense of helping new creators. To address this, we need to prioritize supporting and nurturing the growth of new creators on the platform.
It is also imperative that creators, like everyone on Tumblr, feel safe and in control of their experience. Whether it be an ask from the community or engagement on a post, being successful on Tumblr should never feel like a punishing experience.
Actions & Next Steps
Get creators’ new content in front of people who are interested in it. 
Improve the feedback loop for creators, incentivizing them to continue posting.
Build mechanisms to protect creators from being spammed by notifications when they go viral.
Expand ways to co-create content, such as by adding the capability to embed Tumblr links in posts.
Principle 5: Create patterns that encourage users to keep returning to Tumblr.
Push notifications and emails are essential tools to increase user engagement, improve user retention, and facilitate content discovery. Our strategy of reaching out to you, the user, should be well-coordinated across product, commercial, and marketing teams.
Our messaging strategy needs to be personalized and adapt to a user’s shifting interests. Our messages should keep users in the know on the latest activity in their community, as well as keeping Tumblr top of mind as the place to go for witty takes and remixes of the latest shows and real-life events.  
Most importantly, our messages should be thoughtful and should never come across as spammy.  
Actions & Next Steps
Conduct an audit of our messaging strategy.
Address the issue of notifications getting too noisy; throttle, collapse or mute notifications where necessary.  
Identify opportunities for personalization within our email messages. 
Test what the right daily push notification limit is. 
Send emails when a user has push notifications switched off.
Principle 6: Performance, stability and quality.
The stability and performance of our mobile apps have declined. There is a large backlog of production issues, with more bugs created than resolved over the last 300 days. If this continues, roughly one new unresolved production issue will be created every two days. Apps and backend systems that work well and don't crash are the foundation of a great Tumblr experience. Improving performance, stability, and quality will help us achieve sustainable operations for Tumblr.
Improve performance and stability: deliver crash-free, responsive, and fast-loading apps on Android, iOS, and web.
Improve quality: deliver the highest quality Tumblr experience to our users. 
Move faster: provide APIs and services to unblock core product initiatives and launch new features coming out of Labs.
Conclusion
Our mission has always been to empower the world’s creators. We are wholly committed to ensuring Tumblr evolves in a way that supports our current users while improving areas that attract new creators, artists, and users. You deserve a digital home that works for you. You deserve the best tools and features to connect with your communities on a platform that prioritizes the easy discoverability of high-quality content. This is an invigorating time for Tumblr, and we couldn’t be more excited about our current strategy.
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smallblueblondie · 11 months ago
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Please stop ignoring that white supremacy is a huge core element of radfem/terf ideology.
Like yes they hyperenforce gender roles and stereotypes on all cis women, but it is primarily women of color that they target and accuse of being predatory and "not real women" when they're targeting cis women.
The metrics of "real woman vs trans woman" that terfs love to share are almost all just white eurocentric beauty standards. Small nose, thin fine hair, little/no body hair, petite but somehow curvy, hell I've even seen a post saying skin lightness is a determiner.
Terf/radfem circles are racist at their core. You cannot separate radical feminism from it's violently white supremacist roots. You can't have "anti-racist radical feminism", that's a fucking oxymoron. There is a very clean path from terfs to tradfems/tradwifes, to just straight up conservative republican women.
Yes yes always, terfs are super misogynistic. They hurt all women by forcing them back into the little impossible painful boxes that they claim they're fighting. But one of their biggest targets other than trans women is black women. Not to mention ignoring, discrediting, or just straight up trying to erase all the hard work that black trans women did for queer rights.
Radical feminism is very much transphobic, homophobic, and misogynistic. I'm not saying stop addressing it as such. Don't ever do addressing it as such!
But radical feminism is white supremacy in a coat of pink paint. Please never forget that when talking about how it hurts us all.
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prokopetz · 5 months ago
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Perhaps you've talked about this before, but what do you view as D&D's "comfort zone" as far as the rules expectations are concerned? If I'm playing a 5e game with my friends, what kinds of stories are generally going to be most enjoyable to run with the ruleset as it exists already?
Broadly speaking, D&D's narrative comfort zone revolves around stories about small groups of highly skilled weirdos whose core competences lie somewhere in the vicinity of "hurting people and breaking things", trying to achieve a goal that can be accomplished by travelling from point A to point B (and hurting or breaking whatever they find when they get there). This journey will take the form of a picaresque series of set-piece encounters, characterised by the ever-present threat, if not necessarily the eventuation, of violence, in which various only-semi-avoidable horrible things will happen to the group – potentially up to and including death – and they will do horrible things to others in turn. Though the framing of this series of set-pieces may involve some sort of mystery or intrigue, the rules don't care about that dimension of the story's premise and offer few tools for engaging with it; rather, the spotlight lies on the logistical dimension of the journey – i.e., how the group marshals the limited resources available to them in order to accomplish the getting-from-point-A-to-point-B part.
(Some folks reading this may be thinking "wait, you just described a completely standard RPG", and given the influence of D&D on the evolution of that standard, you're not wrong; however, if that was your reaction, it may be worthwhile to back up and count how many weirdly specific assumptions about the shape of the game's story I just outlined – there may be a few you didn't realise you were making!)
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nikibogwater · 5 months ago
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Actually while I'm thinking about it, I just wanna say that the more live-action remakes Disney shlups out like shoveled manure, the more amazed I am that Cinderella (2015) exists. It breaks literally every standard of Disney's LA remakes.
It's not a shot-for-shot remake of the original 1950 animated film, though it does include small references and homages to it, but only when such things can be incorporated organically into the story.
The creators understood and respected the cross-cultural significance of the Cinderella story. They didn't want to "fix" it, or add some wacky twist to it, they just wanted to make the best possible version of the Quintessential Cinderella that they could.
Everything that could be done practically was done practically. The carriage was a real, the horses pulling it were real, and all of the other animals (with the exception of the mice and lizards, since their performance was a lot more involved than the others') were real living animals, the lizard footman and goose carriage driver were wearing prosthetics instead of just having their animal features added in post, the Fairy Godmother's dress had little LED lights sewn into it so that it would actually glow for real, the ballroom set was built by hand and included real chandeliers with more than 2000 total candles that were all actually lit for the scene, and I could go on but you get the point.
There's a ton of attention paid to little details that make the world feel real and lived in. Ella's shoes are always a little scuffed and dirty. Her farm dress is faded and wrinkled. When she breaks down and runs away to the woods, she rides her horse bareback (which, once again, was a thing Lily James actually did, no stunt-double or editing in post), because not only is that something a country girl like her would know how to do, but it also makes sense that with as upset as she is, she wouldn't want to waste time with saddling the horse. When she's dancing with the prince, it's visually obvious that he is leading her and giving her cues because of course Ella wouldn't know the latest ballroom dances, and would need him to guide her through it.
Hey speaking of dancing, y'know what else this movie does that no other LA remake has been allowed to do (at least not to this extent)? ROMANCE. Land sakes alive, this is one of the most unabashedly and yet still tastefully romantic movies I've ever seen. Ella and Kit are just oozing romantic chemistry from the moment they lock eyes for the first time. It all comes down to the fact that these two characters both have the same core values of courage and kindness, which makes their admiration for each other feel grounded and believable. Richard Madden also really sells Kit's feelings for Ella with the way his eyes go all big and soft whenever he looks at her. And don't even get me started on Lily's performance as Ella. Her quiet awe that someone as powerful as the prince loves her. The timidity and fear that she's not really worthy of that. The selfless determination to protect him from her family's cruelty, even if it means she'll never see him again, I'm just-- *banging my fist against the table and screaming into a pillow*
Absolutely god-tier costume design. No notes, I think Sandy Powell's work speaks for itself. Btw, in case you were somehow still wondering, yes, Ella's ballgown is fully practical--those layers upon layers of dreamy silk skirts are real. CG was only used to brighten up the blue color to make her stand out from the crowd more.
Wicked stepmother was allowed to actually be wicked. The movie never tries to make you sympathize with Lady Tremaine, or shift the blame off to someone else. And her villainy is given an extra layer of depth with the reveal that she is a dark reflection of Ella. They've both lost people they loved, but where Ella refused to let her grief get in the way of kindness, Lady Tremaine became utterly consumed by it. She views the death of her first husband as a sort of twisted justification for pursuing all her worst impulses. She despises Ella for her ability to flourish even while enduring terrible suffering, for being everything Lady Tremaine was either unable or flat-out refused to be.
Also Cate Blanchet absolutely SLAYS in this role. Hands-down my favorite portrayal of the wicked stepmother character.
Anyways, TLDR: Cinderella (2015) is the only Disney live-action remake that can justify its own existence and that's because it actively defies everything the LA remakes are today.
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wanders-in-wonderland · 11 days ago
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Doctor’s Orders
“Miss, please follow me into the exam room.”
I look up to see a sweet nurse smile at me and wave me over. I smile back at her and stand up from the waiting room chair, following her through the doors of the clinic. She leads me into a standard exam room and after giving me quick instructions to take off my clothes and get comfortable, she leaves me, promising the doctor will be here to see me shortly.
I look around the sterile room, taking in framed stock images tastefully arranged along the walls and the stack of various medical pamphlets about STDs and safe sex. I take a deep breath and start to undress. I’ve waited so long to come see this doctor and I’m not going to let my nerves get the best of me now. The doctor I’m here to see is a specialist in anorgasmia, the inability to orgasm.
I’ve never been able to achieve orgasm, no matter what I’ve tried. Numerous partners have tried, I’ve purchased countless toys and lubricants, even going as far as trying hypnosis. Nothing has worked and I had almost given up hope when I’d stumbled across this doctor and his specialty.
It took months for me to get an appointment, and the screening process was incredibly intensive. Apparently, he’s extremely selective in the patients he chooses to see so when I got the call that he was willing to fit me into his schedule, I was ecstatic. Maybe I can finally say goodbye to my inability to orgasm.
A soft knock at the door startles me and I watch as the doctor opens the door and steps into the room, letting the door swing shut behind him. He’s younger than I thought he’d be. I’d been picturing a middle-aged man, maybe with some greying hair and glasses. Instead, he’s handsome, fit, and I can see the sparkle in his eyes as he greets me cheerfully.
“Good afternoon! I’m sorry for the wait but I hope you’re comfortable! It is lovely to meet you.” His voice is smooth, comforting, and when I extend my hand out to shake his outstretched one, his touch is gentle but strong.
I smile back at him, feeling some of my previous anxiety fade away. “No worries at all, I’m happy to be here.”
I watch as he opens grabs a chair and sits in front of the computer, logging in to pull up my medical chart. “Now, let’s see here, you’re here for anorgasmia I see.” I feel my cheeks flush at the clinical way he’d said it and he catches my blush as he glances up from the computer screen.
He gives me a comforting smile, “Don’t be embarrassed. A lot more women experience anorgasmia than people think, and it’s something that we can fix. I promise, there is nothing to be embarrassed about here.”
I give him a small smile back, the sincerity in his words soothing me.
“Now, I know you filled out a very long questionnaire already and I’ve already reviewed that so we’re going to get right to a physical exam to start.” He pushes away from the computer and stands up, walking over to where I’m sitting on the exam table.
“Can you take off your bra and underwear for me, please?” I nod, steeling my nerves before following his instructions. My nipples immediately harden into peaks at the cold air of the exam room and I feel so exposed with my entire body naked in front of him.
He unhooks stirrups from the bottom of the exam table and clicks them into place. “Prop your feet into there for me and spread your legs,” his voice is purely professional and I do what he asks. Placing my feet into the stirrups leaves me completely exposed and a small shiver goes through me as cold air brushes against my core.
“Now lean back and look up at the ceiling for me. We’re going to start with just a simple physical exam to make sure everything is normal anatomically. Then, we’ll move on to a few other tests for sensation and sensitivity. If at any point you have questions or concerns, don’t hesitate to tell me, okay?” He looks at me with care and I nod back, feeling comforted by his words and clear attentiveness.
He rolls his chair to between my propped-up legs and takes a seat, facing me. “My hands are a little cold but don’t worry, we’ll warm up in no time.” I let out a gasp when his indeed cold hands come to rest on my thighs. His fingers are gentle as he brushes against my center, his movements confident as he pokes and prods around.
I stay still as I feel him gently pull me apart, letting cold air rush against my core and clit. I bite back a gasp at the sensation. I feel him press against my clit, maneuvering my clit hood out of the way to reveal the bud. A swipe of his finger against my exposed bundle of nerves makes me jolt and I let out a sharp gasp this time.
“Sorry! How did that feel?” He asks, his voice apologetic.
I take a second to gather myself before answering. “It felt intense. Good but almost a little overwhelming.”
“Hm, that’s good,” he says, “That means you have a fair amount of clitoral sensitivity. We’ll do a more in-depth examination later but it’s a good sign.”
I hear the scrape of his chair against the floor and glance up to see his standing. “I’m going to grab some lubricant and we’ll do an internal exam next.” I nod and watch as he squirts a dollop of lube onto his fingers.
He settles himself back in between my legs and I shiver at the cold feeling of the lube. He’s purely professional as he spreads the lube over me and slowly works a single finger into me. I bite my lip to tamp down any sounds I want to make.
“I’m going to test your g-spot next,” he says and I feel his finger crook upwards inside of me, brushing against the spongy clump of nerves inside of me. The sensation shoots through me and I led out a slow breath.
“That’s it, you’re doing really well. Tell me if anything hurts, okay?” His fingers scissor inside of me and I let out a soft whimper. “Does that feel good?” His voice comes out in a lower register than before. “Come on, use your words. I can’t help you if you don’t tell me how it feels.”
I whimper again, “Mm yes, it feels good.”
“Good, so you have no problems with vaginal arousal and lubrication,” he says, his voice almost a purr now. “Don’t hold back, we want to make sure you’re giving your full reaction to everything that’s happening to help me understand what’s happening here.”
At his words, I let out another whimper, feeling the slow drag of his fingers against the sensitive walls of my pussy. He presses his fingers against my g-spot again and my back arches as pleasure shoots through me.
“Tell me, is this level of sensitivity and sensation reflective of how you normally feel during intercourse?” I take a second to catch my breath and think before I answer him.
“I think so, I’m usually pretty sensitive to sensation, it just never seems to culminate into an orgasm. A lot of times, I get too overstimulated to continue and I can’t cum.”
“Hm, I see,” his voice takes on a more contemplative tone. He pulls his fingers out of me, and I almost want to whimper at the loss.
“Well, I have a few theories but I’m going to do a more hands-on test to get a clearer answer of what we’re dealing with here. Lie back for me and relax.”
I lean my head back, staring up at the ceiling of the room and I feel him walk away for a second. He reappears at my side for a moment, and suddenly, I feel something encircle my wrist and hear a click. I jerk in surprise, glancing down to see that he’d cuffed me down to the table. My eyes meet his and smiles at me.
“Don’t worry, this is just to keep you still during the examination. The less movement there is from you, the easier it is for me to do my job. If at any point, you feel uncomfortable, tell me and we’ll stop, okay?” His words soothe the panic that rose up in my chest at the idea of being restrained and I give my consent. He smiles at me and makes quick work of clicking my other wrist into a cuff. Next, my ankles are strapped down to the stirrups and my thighs held apart by more cuffs. There’s even one that goes around my waist to keep my torso still.
“Good, how do you feel? Are any of the restraints hurting you?”
I shake my head in response, “No, I’m okay.”
He smiles at me again and I watch him open a drawer from across the exam room. “We’re going to introduce some equipment to help me get a better gauge of what we’re dealing with here.” My eyes widen as I watch him pull out several industrial looking sex toys.
“Let’s start with clitoral stimulation,” he says, setting down the toys except for one. He shows me the toy, it looks almost like an electric toothbrush with a wider body and a very thin head. “This is a very precise vibrator. Most commercial vibrators people tend to purchase have a much larger surface area, which can be very good for folks who are highly sensitive in all areas, but it doesn’t offer much precision in targeting specific parts of the clitoris. This one doesn’t have that problem since it has a much smaller head. Now this one is also pre-set to have 10 very well-calibrated intensity settings. Depending on your reaction to each setting, I can make better conclusions about your clitoral sensitivity. We’re going to go through the settings from low to high and I want you to continue to be vocal and tell me what you’re feeling, okay?”
I nod, “Okay, but what if I get too overstimulated?”
He gives me a comforting smile, “Just tell me and we’ll stop and re-evaluate if it happens.”
I nod again and he sits back down between my legs to get started.
I hear the toy click on, presumably at the first level based on the low, quiet buzzing sound its emitting. I gasp when I feel his fingers gently pull my pussy apart to reveal my clit, already erect and throbbing from his earlier treatment.
A moan escapes from my throat when I feel the toy make first contact. It feels so much more intense than any other toy I’ve ever had. The precision of the toy and the ease in which he handles it means that the vibrations are pressed right against my exposed clit, forcing the collection of raw nerves to submit to the sensations.
“How’s that?” He asks, his voice making me scramble to get ahold of myself to give a coherent response. “It feels so intense but in a good way.”
“Good, that’s good. Just relax and let yourself feel.” He murmurs, keeping the vibrator pressed tightly against me.
My eyes drift shut as I feel the sensation overtake me. The pleasure is forming a haze around my mind, every thought getting chased away by the feeling between my legs.
I hear his voice again, “I’m going to increase to the second setting. Just stay relaxed for me.”
I let out a whimper in response as the toy clicks up a level. The pleasure intensifies but there’s also a building sensation of raw overstimulation that is starting to arise. We’re nearing the point where I would normally stop and take a break but I don’t want to tell him that yet. I want to let him keep going, because maybe today is the day I finally get to cum.
I bite back a whine and clench my fists at my sides.
“Increasing to level 3 now.” He says, resting a hand on my thigh as his other one holds the toy firmly against me. The increase this time makes a cry rip out of me and my eyes fly open to meet his.
“Ah- it’s so much, I’m getting overstimulated.” I whimper out, my hands clenching and unclenching in an effort to control myself. He nods but doesn’t make any move to pull the toy away or decrease the setting.
“Try and tough it out for me for a bit more, I want to see if we can overcome the overstimulation.” He gives me a comforting smile and gently pats my thigh.
I take a deep breath and nod, letting my eyes drift shut.
“Increasing to level 4 now,” he says and the vibrator switches to a higher intensity before I can protest.
“Wait! Wait, please, just give me a moment, please!” I gasp out as the sensations shoot through me entire body. He shakes his head, “You’re doing great, just relax and let it happen.”
I whine as tears are gathering in my eyes. I’m walking the very thin line of pain and pleasure as the vibrator forces breathtaking feeling onto me while riding my nerves to the sharp edges of overstimulation. I hear his voice again and my heart drops when I register his words. “Increasing to level 5.”
A scream bursts out of me as all of the sensations compound and increase. It’s too much, I can’t do this. I can’t tell if I’m close to cumming, I just know that I’ve been absolutely thrown over my threshold for sensation and I can’t take anymore. I sob out my begs to my doctor.
“Please! No more, please stop! STOP! It’s too much! I can’t take it!” My body is shaking and I’m fighting with everything I have against the restraints but nothing gives. His hand on my thigh has turned into an iron grip, holding me down so I can’t even shift my hips to escape the relentlessly accurate vibrations.
“PLEASE! STOP!” I sob. There’s nothing to save me. He doesn’t listen, he might’ve said something to me but I’m too far gone to hear. All I know is the torturous pleasure dominating every single nerve of my body.
Beneath the horrible overstimulation, I feel a warm thread of something else. Something pulsing through my body, filling me with pure pleasure. I whimper as the feeling starts to build, my every muscle seeming to tighten in response to it.
There’s a knot building in my stomach, spreading throughout my body. Coupled with the overstimulation, I feel ravaged and decimated, every nerve pulled bare and shocked by the live wire of sensation that’s forced upon me. Before I can even begin to articulate it, I feel the vibrator kick up another setting and I scream as it shatters me.
I cum. For the first time in my life, I cum. My scream seems to shake the very foundation of the building we’re in as the pleasure, pain, and sensation flood my body, every cell of my body bursting with it. I can’t do anything except ride the relentless wave of pleasure, my entire body a slave to the whims of that horrible, terrible, delicious, mind-altering pleasure.
I slowly come down from the high of my first orgasm, gasps shaking my body as my mind struggles to reengage with reality. I blink tears out of my eyes, and I look up to see my doctor standing over me, holding the toy that he’s mercifully removed from my clit.
“Good job, sweet girl,” he purrs, running his hand up my thigh to cup my pussy gently. The soft motion is enough to make me whimper. “How did that feel, darling?” The terms of endearment make me pause but I’m too hazy to really digest it all.
I clear my throat and swallow, my voice raw from the screaming and begging. “I- It felt really good but it was so much,” I whisper, “I don’t know if I can do that again.”
He smirks and suddenly, I’m hit with a wave of uncertainty. There’s a glint in his eye that wasn’t there previously and it makes me nervous. Something about the way he is looking at me is so different now than earlier, with his cool professionalism and niceties. Now, I feel like a specimen under a microscope and he, the scientist who plans on dissecting me.
“I think, I think I need a break. Can we finish this appointment another time?” I murmur, pulling slightly at my restraints and looking at him.
He lets out a low laugh that makes my skin pebble with nerves. “Oh no, now that I know what the problem is, I can’t let you leave until we fix it. What kind of doctor would I be if I let my patients leave without being cured?”
I shake my head, “I don’t understand,” I whisper. “You made me cum, doesn’t that mean I’m cured?”
He smirks at me and he slides a finger into my pussy, making me gasp. “Not at all, we’ve proven that you indeed can orgasm, but there is still much to be examined in terms of the extent of your orgasms. Plus, we have several more levels of this vibrator to get through and we haven’t even begun to work on your pussy and g-spot yet.”
My eyes widen at his words and the curling feeling of fear truly takes root inside of me. “Wait no, please, I don’t want to continue with any of that anymore. Please, just let me go!”
The look on his face is one of glee as he sees my terror become apparent. “Now now, you don’t want to leave against my medical advice, do you? Plus, darling, you consented to following through with my professional recommendations when you signed up to be a patient. There’s no backing out of this now. And especially when I know how sensitive of a whore you are, darling.” He chuckles.
I whimper, “Please, no, I don’t want this.”
He bends down to lean in close to me. “Well, I don’t give a shit about what you want. You are the most unique case of sensitivity I’ve ever seen, and I plan to take full advantage of that while I have you here. So be a good girl for me and enjoy this.” He presses his lips to the side of my neck and the feeling makes me tremble.
He ignores the rest of my protests and goes back to sitting between my legs. I watch in fear as he holds up the vibrator and clicks it on. “We stopped at level 6 last time, that’s where we’ll resume. And scream all you want, sweet girl, these walls are soundproof and won’t let a speck of sound through.”
I do indeed scream when he presses the vibrator against me again.
This time, there’s no build up of pleasure or stimulation. It all slams into me all at once and I writhe against my restraints as everything overwhelms me. I vaguely hear a low laugh permeate the space around me but I can’t focus enough to pick out any other noise amidst my own sobs.
My doctor stops giving me any verbal cues, not that I’m coherent enough to even understand at this point. All I know is the punishing vibrator held against my clit, ravaging my body and turning me inside out. The claws of pleasure are embedded deep into my psyche and my body is at its complete whim.
I have no idea how much time has passed or whether I even stayed conscious for the entire duration of the torture but eventually, I realize that he’s stopped. The vibrator is off but my body was still shaking from phantom sensations, every inhale of air a sharp stab, and every sob a reminder of how broken I am.
Slowly, I register the sound of his low laugh. I whimper as I blink away my tears to look at him. “You, my sweet girl, are truly remarkable. I don’t think you realize since you were so out of it, but we were at the highest setting for the past ten minutes and you didn’t even cum once. I’ve never come across someone so fucking sensitive and yet so resistant to orgasm. It’s incredible because you don’t seem to become desensitized either.”
I whimper and my voice cracks when I speak. “Please, please, just let me go. I can’t handle any more. I won’t tell anyone about this, please just stop doing this.”
He smiles at me and for a brief moment, I see the professional, nice, kind, good doctor from earlier. But all my hope is washed away when I feel his fingers press against my core again.
“I can’t do that, darling. We still have your precious pussy left to work on,” his voice is filled with excitement and it makes me want to cry because I know what is coming next and I’m not sure I will survive.
I watch him exchange the vibrator for a huge dildo. He smirks and presses a button on the underside of it and the entire thing begins to vibrate. “I think we can go ahead and skip to the higher settings here.”
Tears fill my eyes and I shake my head at him as pleas fall from my lips. He ignores me as he lines the dildo up with my core. I tremble as the vibrations make me shudder without the toy even breaching me yet.
He catches my eye and I watch as he gives me a wink and proceeds to slam the dildo home inside of me. I arch my back and let out a devastated cry. The toy fills me to the brim, the vibrations ravaging my sensitive walls and my g-spot in a way that makes my eyes roll back.
I’m sobbing and shaking as he drives the dildo in and out of my pussy. Every movement against my overstimulated walls tortures me. The pleasure digs its claws into me and drags me back into its embrace. My entire being submits and I feel my mind’s grasp on my sanity loosen as every single facet of my existence narrows to pleasure.
Each thrust seems to make my sensitivity grow, every single muscle in my body aching and begging for relief. I feel his hand clamp down on my thigh as the other continues to work the dildo inside of me. I want to rip myself out of my body to make this torture end but there’s nothing I can do. Every push and pull shoves my body higher and higher to a peak that I can never seem to reach. There’s no culminating release of pleasure to make this all better, no soft wash of an orgasm to soothe every jagged nerve. There’s only him and the torturous pleasure he imparts onto my very soul.
An unfathomable amount of time later, I feel him finally turn off the toy and pull it out of me. I barely register the lewd sound of my cunt clenching around the toy, my pussy still weeping with arousal even after the devastation he brought upon me.
“Please,” I whimper. “Please, are we done? Please, I can’t take anymore, please let me go.”
He brushes my hair off my forehead and he smirks at me. “Oh, sweet girl, I can’t let you go now. I’m going to be keeping you as my perfect little toy. There are still so many other things I want to try on you. I’m going to push every single limit you have until you break for me.” A soft whine escapes from me and I know there is nothing I can do to convince him otherwise. My head lolls from exhaustion and I feel my grasp on consciousness start to loosen.
The last thing I hear is his voice. “Sleep, sweet girl, I’ve got you.”
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soup-mother · 1 year ago
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Tumblr is an interesting website because you see people repackaging bog standard conservative arguments such as "if you're against the death penalty you support pedophiles", "you can't be a good person if you're not religious", "veterans are good and must be respected" and "copyright law and small business are the vital core of the economy" into a pseudo progressive thing in the name of "nuance", because ppl talking about hating all cops or whatever is too "black and white" for them.
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leclerc-hs · 1 year ago
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broken lamps - cl16
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Pairing: charles leclerc x fem!reader Summary: anon request 'Charles flying to see his lover in another country but getting so needy he ends up fucking her in the hallway of her apartment on the floor.' Warnings: smut, 18+, spitting, unprotected sex Word Count: 1,239 Author's Note: please comment any thoughts!!! I love hearing feedback. I had fun writing this!! Hopefully it's up to your standards. I'm still new at this whole writing thing. BUT ANYWAYS CHARLES P2!!! BITTERSWEET END TO THE SEASON. CAN'T BELIEVE ITS OVER. TIME TO TOSS THE SF-23 IN THE TRASH!!!!!! French edits made by @shewantsvengeance!!!!
✦ .  ⁺   . ✦ .  ⁺   . ✦ ✦ .  ⁺   . ✦ .  ⁺   . ✦
CHARLES WAS NOT a particularly needy person. In fact, one would say that he tended to be self-sufficient and independent. But when he was needy, he was needy. And quite demanding too.
He wasn’t supposed to be home for another two days, but he couldn’t bear the idea of having to wait longer.
For three long weeks, the absence of your touch weighed heavily on him. Your inability to attend the races due to work in the past few weeks had taken a toll, unraveled his composure and pushed him to the brink of madness.
Which is how he found himself standing in front of your door in the middle of the night, urgently pounding his knuckles into it. A suitcase at his side, and his hair disheveled. He was already hard. He hasn’t even seen you yet, and he could already feel the blood rushing to his cock.
You could barely unlock the door before feeling him push it open and slamming it shut, leaving his suitcase abandoned in the hallway of the apartment building – long forgotten in the heat of the moment. 
He was so needy. He couldn’t think straight. He couldn’t even wait to go down the hallway to the bedroom.
His lips immediately pressing into yours as he pulled you into him.
“Bébé, I need to feel you,” He groaned in between kisses, pushing you up on top of the table in the entry way of your apartment. His hands exploring every inch they could find, kissing and biting into your skin with intense desire. He repeatedly brushed himself up against your lace covered core, letting you feel just how hard he was. How much he wanted you. How much he needed you.
It was almost too easy. You were only in a silk robe, with lace underwear and a thin tank top.
“Charles,” you moaned, feeling the pads of his fingers slip past the lace to rub your clit in soft circles. You gazed up at him as he hastily pulled down your spaghetti strap tank top, allowing your breasts to spill over the fabric. His other hand immediately pinching your nipple in between his thumb and forefinger.
The attack of his hands on your nipples and your clit was enough to send you over the edge quickly. He knew your body like the back of his hand. Like it was his. Because it is.
“So fucking hot,” Charles groaned as he watched the lace of your lace underwear dampen from your orgasm. “Missed you so much baby,” he leans over to press his lips to yours amidst your moans.
Your hands roamed his body, which was still mostly clothed, aside from his sweats half shoved down. Too impatient to fully get undressed. You glanced down at his cock; it was smooth, and you could see the precum dripping from it. Poor baby, you thought.
“I need you,” you squeezed his biceps as Charles stood up straighter and looked down at you.
His gaze darkened, and you could feel it penetrating your soul. It carried a possessive intensity. His left hand firmly gripped your hip, anchoring you to the small entryway table. He stood between your legs, leaving them spread completely.
“Gonna take all of me like a good girl, right?” He mocked as he aligned himself with your entrance. He didn’t push in right away, just held it there as he stared down at you pressed against the table. Like you were his own personal feast. 
You couldn’t find the words. All you could do was nod your head eagerly.
“Look at you,” his fingers rolled one of your nipples between them slowly, “my sweet little girl just waiting to be fucked hard until you cum all over my cock.”
“Please,” you begged. You were not against begging. Especially if it meant you could finally feel him. You couldn’t slip out another beg before he pushed himself right into you. The burning stretch eliciting moans from both of you.
“Merde,” he hissed. The squeeze of you on his cock was heavenly. “So warm, ma chérie” He was ravaging you now. There was something different with Charles tonight, not by much – but a slight difference. He was more urgent and eager than normal. Like you would disappear into thin air if he didn’t grip your hips so tightly. 
His gaze never faltered from yours as his hips rocked into yours aggressively. The room was full of breathy moans and the entry level table banging into the wall along with each thrust of Charles hips into you. 
The force of his hips sent the small white lamp tumbling to the floor, shattering it no doubt. Neither of you bothered to glance at it. Too unraveled in each other. It was as if you didn’t even hear the lamp break.
One of your hands grasped your knee closer to your chest, while the other gripped onto Charles bicep of the arm that pressed into your neck. His hand squeezing your neck ever so slightly with just the right amount of pressure.  
“Charles, I’m going to,” you didn’t even finish your sentence before he cut you off.
“Yeah? Again? That quick?” He was so fucking cocky. “Open up for me, baby.” 
You didn’t even have to question what he meant. Instantly opening your mouth, he spit a string of his saliva into your mouth. His eyes burning into your soul. You felt your pussy clench around his cock at the feeling of his saliva hit your tongue.
“Fuck. Your tight pussy can barely fit me, huh?” It was so tight. Charles could feel himself shuttering at the feeling. “Need to stretch you out. Three weeks was too long?” His hips were faltering with each thrust as he felt himself edging closer to his orgasm.
A sound similar to a sob claws out your throat as his cock perfectly hits your g-spot. Over and over and over. 
“Please, I need to,” you were a whimpering mess. Charles found it so endearing how hard you would try to wait for his permission. 
“Not yet,” You thought you could cry on the spot. Until he yanked you off the table and onto the floor. You now straddling him.
“Rub that pretty pussy all over me baby,” He was leaned up on his two arms, looking at you with an eyebrow cocked and smirk. “Get yourself there.”
You felt yourself immediately working yourself over his cock. His eyes were all over the place. Looking at your face, the bounce of your breasts, and the way he disappears into you. The position driving him much deeper than before and the feeling of your clit brushing against him was too much.
It was like he knew. Knew all the signs that you were there. “Oui, mon amour,” he replied, “let me feel you.”
It was only a few more strokes before you felt yourself cumming all over Charles. The sound of your moans getting choked up as you pulled Charles up closer and pulled his lips to yours. 
He quickly rolled over you, pulling out and releasing all over your tank top, some hitting your breasts. 
You were exhausted, a limp pile of bones, as you felt him collapse down onto you. Not even caring that his cum was all over you both now. He just wanted to be close to you. 
You were smiling hard up at him. Soft laughs were now leaving your mouth, “Guess I should buy a new lamp.”
He scooped you up and carried you to the bed. The bed he couldn’t make it to earlier.
“Unless you want another lamp to break, let’s not bother.” 
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lqveharrington · 14 days ago
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hii, i would love for you to do ‘the prophecy’ with fred weasley and ravenclaw reader!! thank you so much 💓
The Prophecy | F.W.
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summary: fred’s starting to feel insecure in your relationship, and trelawney’s reading doesn’t make it any better.
pairing: fred weasley x ravenclaw!reader
includes: use of Y/N, insecure fred, a lot of overthinking, angst, fluff at the end
a/n: for some reason, this prompt stumped me so bad. so sorry if it’s not up to the usual standards 😭
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One, two. One, two, three, four.
You impatiently counted how many times the alarm on Trelawney’s stupid clock would go off until she realized it wasn’t a crystal ball predicting a Hufflepuff's future. All you wanted was class to be over and be in the arms of your loving boyfriend, but they changed the house pairings for electives. Instead of Gryffindor and Ravenclaw, it was Ravenclaw and Hufflepuff. Luckily, you still had all your core classes with Gryffindor.
As you lazily blew on the small braid you gave yourself in your boredom, a crack of lightning struck right outside, causing Trelawney to jerk in surprise with horror etched into her face. It looked like she had just seen the grim itself.
She whipped her head around and looked directly at you, taking your hands in her shaky ones. She read your palm like the lines had magically changed since last class, muttering quietly to herself until cleared your throat in confusion.
“My dear, you will receive ill-advised news by the end of the week.” She whispered and pulled your hand closer to her buggy eyes, furrowing her brows when she saw your life line. “Expect your spirit to be broken and rebuilt by the one you trust the most.”
Your lips kissed you teeth in an unsettling manner. Was this your punishment for not listening to her and sometimes making fun of her? Did she want to make you feel bad about your life choices? Sure you bored out of your mind in class but that didn't mean you wanted a horrid reading.
Your eyes flickered toward the dark sky outside again, watching as the lightening struck louder than the last. Trelawney sighed and patted your hand shut, dismissing everyone with a quiet wave. Everyone looked at her in bewilderment before slowly leaving the tower, murmuring amongst themselves.
Furrowing your brows and flexing your hand, you took your things and hastily made your way down the ladder, narrowly avoiding your face splattering on the stone floor. You always believed in everything factual — Ravenclaw, through and through — and you weren't actually sure why you chose Divination as your elective. The crystal balls and tea leaf readings never seemed credible, always predicting the same things over and over again.
However, the Weasley Twins loved Divination. They often made up their readings and passed with Outstandings. George believed he had a natural aptitude for the class whilst Fred said he had unlocked his inner eye. But what they both heavily believed in was Trelawney's words — which you thought was utter rubbish.
When you had Divination with them in sixth year, she told them that they would encounter a horrible noise, sending someone they love plummeting. That same week, Harry retreived his golden egg from the first task and revealed it to be screeching merpeople in the common room, causing the twins to drop him from their shoulders to cover their ears. From that day onward, they clung onto her every word like it was the sacred truth.
Which it wasn't.
Shaking all thoughts of Divination out of your mind, you made your down to the Great Hall. It was your potions study hall with the rest of the sixth years, and you needed time to decompress after whatever stupid prophecy Trelawney read off you.
You scanned the hall and smiled when you saw the twins, Lee, Alicia, and Angelina already working on their forty-inch essay for potions. Well, the girls were working on their essays. The twins and Lee were playing Exploding Snap — although they weren't very subtle with it.
The look on your face meant nothing but trouble. You shook your head and messed with them, putting your hands on the twins' shoulders and holding back a laugh when you saw them jump and pretend to work on their essays. Lee looked up at you and shook his head in amusement, nudging the two Weasleys to look behind them.
George was the first to turn and rolled his eyes when he saw you, scooting over so you could sit in between him and Fred. He took your bag and put it beside his on the ground, still grumbling under his breath.
"Blimey, Y/N. I thought Snape was going to take points off and give us detention again." George nudged your side with his elbow, ruffling your hair in the process.
"Again? What did you lot do in the few minutes it took for me to get here?" You tease and tuck a stray piece of hair behind your ear, grabbing your own parchment out with only ten-inches left for your essay.
You quietly worked on your essay while ensuring the mischievous trio stayed on task, every so often glancing up to make sure they were doing anything stupid. As you wrapped up your essay, you looked up to your right and met Fred's eyes. You gave him a soft smile but only earned a half-hearted, tight-lipped nod back.
Parchment crinkled under your hold before you released a breath. You pursed your lips and went back to your essay, forcing back the tears of frustration from spilling out. For the past two weeks, Fred began to grow more and more distant from you. You weren't sure what exactly prompted him to do so, but he wouldn't give you an answer and the rest of your friends... Well, they didn't know if you wanted to know from them.
You felt like you were slowly sinking further away from him and you couldn't do anything. Biting your tongue to stop anymore thoughts, you turned in your essay to Snape and swiftly left the Great Hall with no spare glances toward the Gryffindors.
The states of pity from your friends only made you feel like you were crumbling into forever broken pieces.
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You sat with your back against a great oak, throwing another stone into the Black Lake. The ripples echoed and repeated until they settled, the small bubbles diminished.
The rays of the sun hit your eyes, causing you to wince softly. You turned to the side and fully expected Fred to be sitting next to you, a small frown etching its way to your lips when you saw nothing but the Hogwarts castle.
Fred usually came with you whenever you needed to relax, but thinking about the past few weeks only hurt your heart.
As the whispers from the Forbidden forest grew stronger and the sun slowly descended behind the trees, you shut your eyes and leaned your head against the tree. You wished you didn’t have to leave your spot; you were only just beginning to clear your mind.
Frustratedly, you rub your closed eyes with the palms of your hands, freezing when someone spoke from behind you. That someone having an all too familiar voice.
"Love, you're going to irritate your eyes."
Your head whipped around to stare at the boy you fell deeply in love with last year at the Yule Ball. The glare you threw at him could’ve petrified him. "You have no right to call me love after ignoring me for two — almost three — weeks.”
Fred swallowed thickly and sat on a boulder beside you. He knew he was in the wrong for avoiding you for so long without telling you the truth. He believed that it was better for you not to know, but what good was it in the long run?
"I know, I'm sorry." He mumbled and bit his lip, looking down at his tattered shoes rather than meeting your eyes. "It's okay if you never want to see me ever again or choose to hate me, but I avoided you because — " He paused and squeezed his eyes shut. Godric, he was going to sound like such a stupid prick. "Because of a prophecy Trelawney gave me."
Your mouth parted ever so slightly before you threw a small rocks at his legs. Your voice rang out clear and loud, reminding him of his own mother. "Are you kidding me? Frederick Gideon Weasley! You've been avoiding me because of a stupid reading?”
"I'm sorry! But what she said about me made it seem like you needed someone better!" He let your rocks hit him and huffed, frustration bubbling within himself. He took in a breath before looking back over at you. "She told me that the something I love will succeed but only if a great weight of unstableness no longer burdened it."
You crease your brows in confusion and drop the rest of your rocks onto the ground, shaking your head as he clenched and unclenched his fist. "What are you talking about?"
"Love, you're bloody brilliant." Fred met your eyes for the first time in days. All he wanted to do was have you in his arms again and press kisses everywhere he could, but he still owed an explanation to you. "You've passed all your OWLs with flying colors and you've studied so hard for you NEWTs." He buried his face in his hands and sighed. "I'm the burden that will hold you back if you choose to stay with me."
Your initial annoyance and anger melted away at his words, eyes softening at the sight of his dejected state. "Freddie, you're not a burden to me or anyone — “
He let out a laugh that sounded more like a scoff. "I have no money. When you need support, you wouldn't get any from me. I'm not good enough for you."
Five seconds of utter silence took over. The fluttering of the owls delivering mail overhead and the sounds of the curfew bell were the only things that were heard.
Before Fred could even register what was happening, you flung yourself into his arms and rested your head on his. He froze before wrapping his arms around your midsection, burying himself into your chest. He breathed in your scent, body releasing all the tension he had stored inside.
This wasn’t the first time Fred has ever felt insecure about your relationship. There had been other times where he felt like he wasn’t good enough for you, but you were always there to reassure him whenever he voiced them to you. It was horrible to see him act like someone other than his usual self. You loved who he was and you wouldn’t change it for the world.
“Freddie…” You rub his back gently and feel him melt into you. “I don't need any money. Your words are enough support for me.”
He only nodded in response, missing your touch after days of avoidance. Fred felt your move around so you were sitting beside him, your hands moving to turn his head toward you.
You smiled at him and thumbed his cheeks. "And didn't I tell you not to believe everything Trelawney says? I doubt she was taking about our relationship." You pressed a light kiss to his lips before pulling him into another hug, "I love you, Freddie. Don't ever forget that."
When he didn’t say anything, you pulled away and looked over his features, brows furrowing as you saw his teary eyes.
"Fred —?”
"I love you so much, woman." He murmured before capturing your lips in a mind-searing manner, feeling you smile into the kiss. Fred pulled away for a breath before placing another tender kiss to your lips, thumbing the bottom lip when you pulled away in a daze. "You're my soulmate."
You grin shyly and lean your head on his shoulder, looking up at him. "No more overthinking, okay?" You watched as he nodded at you, his face flushing a deep shade of red when you began to pepper kisses on his neck. Each kiss meaning the same thing.
I love you. I love you. I love you.
Fred took your hand in his and kissed your knuckles, chuckling when you got flustered over a simply gesture. "You might make me fall even deeper in love with you."
You hummed and pressed one last kiss to his lips, both of you grinning like idiots in love. "Have I changed the prophecy yet?"
"Hm, you'll have to let me check again." He said softly and gave you one final breathtaking kiss, squeezing your hip. "I think so."
"I love you, Fred Weasley." You sigh happily and kiss his cheek. “Don’t you ever forget that.”
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estrellogy · 8 months ago
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Astro Notes Pt. 3
I have a lot of thoughts and observations that I want to share 😭 If you have any recommendations, please let me know as well 🤍
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- People often see 7th house as their ideal partner, but YOU are meant to embrace traits of that sign for growth.
For example, a Libra rising will begin to see more personal growth after learning positive traits from Aries e.g. Being more assertive, believing in themselves instead of looking for others’ approval, putting themselves first, etc.
- This might be a controversial opinion, but I don’t think minor asteroids influence your chart. Asteroids like Bride, Groom, and other very specific ones. The interpretations for them can usually be found somewhere in your main placements already. It can make you over complicate your chart and feel even more disconnected with yourself because you don’t focus on your core energy.
Not every small detail about you has to be explained by astrology. At the end of the day, you’re a person with free will and complex experiences that shape you beyond astrology. This is just a tool, not a determiner of your life.
- Pluto in 5th house 🤝 destroying/deleting your creative works when they’re not up to your standards
- The difference between Venus/Pluto hard versus soft aspects is in their expression. They all are intense, magnetic, and obsessive to some degree. However, hard aspects have a harder time owning these traits so they tend to swing between extremes (e.g. total obsession and then indifference). The soft aspects are just as intense and can have the same toxic tendencies as the hard aspects, BUT they have an easier time accepting it as a part of them and seem more ‘stable’.
- 6th house placements are so overlooked! That’s literally the house of your health and daily life. I notice that when you work with your 6th house energy effectively, other areas of your life also improve.
It’s interesting that 6th house comes right before 7th house of relationships. In order to be in a relationship with someone else, you have to take good care of yourself first!
- Aries and Mars aspects (especially hard ones) can overpower other aspects in your chart until you learn how to master that energy and channel them into something productive
- Jupiter in 12th house used to be seen as negative. But I think Jupiter here is one of the luckiest placements to have. This is the placements of coincidences happening in their favors, things lining up in crazy ways, book falling off the shelf right at the page they need to read. Their experiences feel divine.
They are very connected to the Universe, Source, Spirit Guides, or whatever you believe in! Anyone can with practice, but these things come more naturally for them.
- Shoutout to my Virgo Venus and Capricorn Mars for being the only things that stop me from going off the rails 😍
- Saturn in 11th house often feel unloved by the people around them due to earlier experiences with rejection. Saturn is trying to teach them to unconditionally accept themselves. Also, those bad experiences teach them how to read people a lot better and spot the ones with bad intentions. The reward from Saturn will be genuine, solid, and loyal friendships/connections.
I’m so glad you guys enjoy these silly notes! I have a ton of fun making them 😭
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baby-yongbok · 5 months ago
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Only You
Seo Changbin x afab!Reader
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✧ Genre - Smut - personal trainer!Changbin ✧ Word Count - 1.1k ✧ Warnings - Unprotected sex (Wrap, wrap, wrap it up) [i think that's it] ✧ a/n - thought of this at 4am & wrote it in my notes half asleep. it's lightly edited. Changbin has just had my heart in a headlock lately..+ reader is depicted as chubby/plus size and is a POC ♡
✧ Masterlist ✧
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Leg day is the bane of your existence, well, it used to be. You’ve been going to a new gym for awhile now and the owner of the small spot offers personal training. He’s assigned Thursdays as leg day and at first you dreaded it but now things are a bit different.
"Mm, fix your form. Right leg out a bit more." Changbin pants below you as you dip down into yet another squat.
You learned in the second month of working with Changbin that he can get pretty… hands on when training you. You’ve also noticed that he only gets this involved with you. You’re the only client that he allows to stay late.
 You throw your head back as you struggle to keep yourself stable with the foam roller he’s placed in front of you. 
"Bin, can we please do this another way." He tsks, planting both hands on your waist to guide you down. He only does this with you.
"You've been skipping squats." He taps your right leg in a silent attempt to get you to correct your form again. "What kind of trainer would I be if I let you do that?"
You dip down again, this time it's perfect, you can tell by the way he sighs beneath you. His head lulls back for just a second as you take all of him. You settle into a deep squat in his lap, sheathing the length of his cock in your warmth. 
He only does this with you. 
"Bin, my legs are fucking burning." Your protests are breathy and followed by deep moans that reverberate through the empty gym. The dim lights highlight the sweat forming on your brow and the slick coating his cock. "Please just help me." 
Changbin sighs, feigning annoyance as he runs a hand through his damp locks. His hands find the dip of your waist as he moves you forward just enough for his lower half to hover off of the bench as he leans back into the leather.
"Hold the squat." He positions himself, holding you steady. "Keep your core tight."
Humming, You take a deep breath. "Binnie, seriously, my legs are - ah my god." 
His hips snap into you before you can finish your sentence. He smirks at you through the mirror as he watches your face twist in pleasure. Your eyes snap shut, your teeth sink into your bottom lip and your thighs tremble ever so slightly. You’re so pretty like this.  
"You wanted help." His hips snap up into you again, this time followed by another thrust and then another until he's drilling into you at a relentless pace. 
"I'm helping, aren't I? Think this is easier?" Moans are all that he gets in response. Your nails dig into the foam roller as you try your damn hardest to keep yourself up.
"Breathe, baby." You clench around him, milking a moan from his chest. "Gotta breathe while I fuck you, okay? Hold that position, you're almost done."
Changbin allows himself to indulge in the warmth of you for a second before it ends. He throws his head back with a sigh as he takes in just how perfectly your cunt swallows him. 
He never meant to cross this boundary with you, he had every intention of treating you like a standard client. He’d train you for the amount of time you paid for then you’d leave, but then he started falling for you. 
He started paying extra attention to your cute workout sets and the way you looked while lifting weights. He started noticing the way you’d only look at him when you came for training. He has two other trainers, handsome men who compliment you regularly but you only looked at Changbin. Only him. 
Then he asked you out and when you said yes he tried to take it slow. He tried to wine and dine you but when he caught your eyes wandering down his frame during a late night training session he knew he just had to have you. The rest is history. 
Since then he’s taken a special sort of pride in training you. He does what he has to to make sure that you have a good session even if that means having you bent over or precariously perched on some machinery while he rearranges your guts as he sees fit. 
“Bin, that’s deep that’s so fucking deep, I can’t.” You whine, eyes locking with his through your debauched reflection. 
"You got it, baby. Just hold it like that, just like that.” He moves firmer and deeper into you, dragging against your walls and hitting spots that you could only dream of. “You jus' gotta cum. Cum for me and you're all done baby, c'mon."
Your cunt squeezes him as you fight to keep your core tight. Every contraction and deep breath drives you closer to the edge and aids Changbin as he follows close behind. 
"Fuck, baby please, I'll cum. I'm gonna cum." You're whining, crying into the air as the burn in your legs matches the pending snap deep in your stomach.
"Cum, please. 'M gonna cum. Gonna fill you, please baby, fucking doing it" He whines right back. His voice is thick yet high with need and it snaps the band and breaks the dam that has you gushing all over him. 
Changbin's orgasm promptly follows. He fills you up, ropes of sticky white coating your pulsing walls. 
You collapse mid orgasm and he catches you. He holds you in his arms and lets your cunt milk him dry before he turns you in his lap, cock still plugging your hole, and cuddles you into his chest. 
"That's my baby." He pants, smirking down at you. "Did so well."
"I can't - can't feel my legs." You chuckle breathlessly. "Can we please be done, Bin?"
"We're done, bunny. Let's hit the showers and maybe I can finally take you on that date, yeah?" He lifts you with ease, carrying you over to the men's shower room. The sound of his sneakers padding over the linoleum of the empty space is soothing in your post-fucked state. 
"Baby?" He calls, and you drift out of your haze just a bit. "You can't stand, can you?”
"Nope" You hum a reply, grinning up at him. 
"Hm." He sits you on the counter, leaving you for a second to set up one of the showers. "Can I fuck you against the shower wall?" He calls out to you and you giggle. The sound makes him smile. 
"What about our date?" You call back. He reappears, naked with a wide smile. 
"We might have to reschedule.”
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mostlysignssomeportents · 2 months ago
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Expert agencies and elected legislatures
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If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:
https://pluralistic.net/2024/11/21/policy-based-evidence/#decisions-decisions
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Since Trump hijacked the Supreme Court, his backers have achieved many of their policy priorities: legalizing bribery, formalizing forced birth, and – with the Loper Bright case, neutering the expert agencies that regulate business:
https://jacobin.com/2024/07/scotus-decisions-chevron-immunity-loper
What the Supreme Court began, Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy are now poised to finish, through the "Department of Government Efficiency," a fake agency whose acronym ("DOGE") continues Musk's long-running cryptocurrency memecoin pump-and-dump. The new department is absurd – imagine a department devoted to "efficiency" with two co-equal leaders who are both famously incapable of getting along with anyone – but that doesn't make it any less dangerous.
Expert agencies are often all that stands between us and extreme misadventure, even death. The modern world is full of modern questions, the kinds of questions that require a high degree of expert knowledge to answer, but also the kinds of questions whose answers you'd better get right.
You're not stupid, nor are you foolish. You could go and learn everything you need to know to evaluate the firmware on your antilock brakes and decide whether to trust them. You could figure out how to assess the Common Core curriculum for pedagogical soundness. You could learn the material science needed to evaluate the soundness of the joists that hold the roof up over your head. You could acquire the biology and chemistry chops to decide whether you want to trust produce that's been treated with Monsanto's Roundup pesticides. You could do the same for cell biology, virology, and epidemiology and decide whether to wear a mask and/or get an MRNA vaccine and/or buy a HEPA filter.
You could do any of these. You might even be able to do two or three of them. But you can't do all of them, and that list is just a small slice of all the highly technical questions that stand between you and misery or an early grave. Practically speaking, you aren't going to develop your own robust meatpacking hygiene standards, nor your own water treatment program, nor your own Boeing 737 MAX inspection protocol.
Markets don't solve this either. If they did, we wouldn't have to worry about chunks of Boeing jets falling on our heads. The reason we have agencies like the FDA (and enabling legislation like the Pure Food and Drug Act) is that markets failed to keep people from being murdered by profit-seeking snake-oil salesmen and radium suppository peddlers.
These vital questions need to be answered by experts, but that's easier said than done. After all, experts disagree about this stuff. Shortcuts for evaluating these disagreements ("distrust any expert whose employer has a stake in a technical question") are crude and often lead you astray. If you dismiss any expert employed by a firm that wants to bring a new product to market, you will lose out on the expertise of people who are so legitimately excited about the potential improvements of an idea that they quit their jobs and go to work for whomever has the best chance of realizing a product based on it. Sure, that doctor who works for a company with a new cancer cure might just be shilling for a big bonus – but maybe they joined the company because they have an informed, truthful belief that the new drug might really cure cancer.
What's more, the scientific method itself speaks against the idea of there being one, permanent answer to any big question. The method is designed as a process of continual refinement, where new evidence is continuously brought forward and evaluated, and where cherished ideas that are invalidated by new evidence are discarded and replaced with new ideas.
So how are we to survive and thrive in a world of questions we ourselves can't answer, that experts disagree about, and whose answers are only ever provisional?
The scientific method has an answer for this, too: refereed, adversarial peer review. The editors of major journals act as umpires in disputes among experts, exercising their editorial discernment to decide which questions are sufficiently in flux as to warrant taking up, then asking parties who disagree with a novel idea to do their damndest to punch holes in it. This process is by no means perfect, but, like democracy, it's the worst form of knowledge creation except for all others which have been tried.
Expert regulators bring this method to governance. They seek comment on technical matters of public concern, propose regulations based on them, invite all parties to comment on these regulations, weigh the evidence, and then pass a rule. This doesn't always get it right, but when it does work, your medicine doesn't poison you, the bridge doesn't collapse as you drive over it, and your airplane doesn't fall out of the sky.
Expert regulators work with legislators to provide an empirical basis for turning political choices into empirically grounded policies. Think of all the times you've heard about how the gerontocracy that dominates the House and the Senate is incapable of making good internet policy because "they're out of touch and don't understand technology." Even if this is true (and sometimes it is, as when Sen Ted Stevens ranted about the internet being "a series of tubes," not "a dump truck"), that doesn't mean that Congress can't make good internet policy.
After all, most Americans can safely drink their tap water, a novelty in human civilization, whose history amounts to short periods of thriving shattered at regular intervals by water-borne plagues. The fact that most of us can safely drink our water, but people who live in Flint (or remote indigenous reservations, or Louisiana's Cancer Alley) can't tells you that these neighbors of ours are being deliberately poisoned, as we know precisely how not to poison them.
How did we (most of us) get to the point where we can drink the water without shitting our guts out? It wasn't because we elected a bunch of water scientists! I don't know the precise number of microbiologists and water experts who've been elected to either house, but it's very small, and their contribution to good sanitation policy is negligible.
We got there by delegating these decisions to expert agencies. Congress formulates a political policy ("make the water safe") and the expert agency turns that policy into a technical program of regulation and enforcement, and your children live to drink another glass of water tomorrow.
Musk and Ramaswamy have set out to destroy this process. In their Wall Street Journal editorial, they explain that expert regulation is "undemocratic" because experts aren't elected:
https://www.wsj.com/opinion/musk-and-ramaswamy-the-doge-plan-to-reform-government-supreme-court-guidance-end-executive-power-grab-fa51c020
They've vowed to remove "thousands" of regulations, and to fire swathes of federal employees who are in charge of enforcing whatever remains:
https://www.theverge.com/2024/11/20/24301975/elon-musk-vivek-ramaswamy-doge-plan
And all this is meant to take place on an accelerated timeline, between now and July 4, 2026 – a timeline that precludes any meaningful assessment of the likely consequences of abolishing the regulations they'll get rid of.
"Chesterton's Fence" – a thought experiment from the novelist GK Chesterton – is instructive here:
There exists in such a case a certain institution or law; let us say, for the sake of simplicity, a fence or gate erected across a road. The more modern type of reformer goes gaily up to it and says, "I don't see the use of this; let us clear it away." To which the more intelligent type of reformer will do well to answer: "If you don't see the use of it, I certainly won't let you clear it away. Go away and think. Then, when you can come back and tell me that you do see the use of it, I may allow you to destroy it.
A regulation that works might well produce no visible sign that it's working. If your water purification system works, everything is fine. It's only when you get rid of the sanitation system that you discover why it was there in the first place, a realization that might well arrive as you expire in a slick of watery stool with a rectum so prolapsed the survivors can use it as a handle when they drag your corpse to the mass burial pits.
When Musk and Ramaswamy decry the influence of "unelected bureaucrats" on your life as "undemocratic," they sound reasonable. If unelected bureaucrats were permitted to set policy without democratic instruction or oversight, that would be autocracy.
Indeed, it would resemble life on the Tesla factory floor: that most autocratic of institutions, where you are at the mercy of the unelected and unqualified CEO of Tesla, who holds the purely ceremonial title of "Chief Engineer" and who paid the company's true founders to falsely describe him as its founder.
But that's not how it works! At its best, expert regulations turns political choices in to policy that reflects the will of democratically accountable, elected representatives. Sometimes this fails, and when it does, the answer is to fix the system – not abolish it.
I have a favorite example of this politics/empiricism fusion. It comes from the UK, where, in 2008, the eminent psychopharmacologist David Nutt was appointed as the "drug czar" to the government. Parliament had determined to overhaul its system of drug classification, and they wanted expert advice:
https://locusmag.com/2021/05/cory-doctorow-qualia/
To provide this advice, Nutt convened a panel of drug experts from different disciplines and asked them to rate each drug in question on how dangerous it was for its user; for its user's family; and for broader society. These rankings were averaged, and then a statistical model was used to determine which drugs were always very dangerous, no matter which group's safety you prioritized, and which drugs were never very dangerous, no matter which group you prioritized.
Empirically, the "always dangerous" drugs should be in the most restricted category. The "never very dangerous" drugs should be at the other end of the scale. Parliament had asked how to rank drugs by their danger, and for these categories, there were clear, factual answers to Parliament's question.
But there were many drugs that didn't always belong in either category: drugs whose danger score changed dramatically based on whether you were more concerned about individual harms, familial harms, or societal harms. This prioritization has no empirical basis: it's a purely political question.
So Nutt and his panel said to Parliament, "Tell us which of these priorities matter the most to you, and we will tell you where these changeable drugs belong in your schedule of restricted substances." In other words, politicians make political determinations, and then experts turn those choices into empirically supported policies.
This is how policy by "unelected bureaucrats" can still be "democratic."
But the Nutt story doesn't end there. Nutt butted heads with politicians, who kept insisting that he retract factual, evidence-supported statements (like "alcohol is more harmful than cannabis"). Nutt refused to do so. It wasn't that he was telling politicians which decisions to make, but he took it as his duty to point out when those decisions did not reflect the policies they were said to be in support of. Eventually, Nutt was fired for his commitment to empirical truth. The UK press dubbed this "The Nutt Sack Affair" and you can read all about it in Nutt's superb book Drugs Without the Hot Air, an indispensable primer on the drug war and its many harms:
https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/drugs-without-the-hot-air-9780857844989/
Congress can't make these decisions. We don't elect enough water experts, virologists, geologists, oncology researchers, structural engineers, aerospace safety experts, pedagogists, gerontoloists, physicists and other experts for Congress to turn its political choices into policy. Mostly, we elect lawyers. Lawyers can do many things, but if you ask a lawyer to tell you how to make your drinking water safe, you will likely die a horrible death.
That's the point. The idea that we should just trust the market to figure this out, or that all regulation should be expressly written into law, is just a way of saying, "you will likely die a horrible death."
Trump – and his hatchet men Musk and Ramaswamy – are not setting out to create evidence-based policy. They are pursuing policy-based evidence, firing everyone capable of telling them how to turn the values espouse (prosperity and safety for all Americans) into policy.
They dress this up in the language of democracy, but the destruction of the expert agencies that turn the political will of our representatives into our daily lives is anything but democratic. It's a prelude to transforming the nation into a land of epistemological chaos, where you never know what's coming out of your faucet.
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