#Sanitization Chambers

[nevermind-i-forgot-whats-that]

Sometimes, as much as I love internet communities and spaces, I really think a lot of people have spent so much time in sanitized, morally pure echo chambers that they lose sight of realism and life outside the internet.

I live in Alabama. My fiancée and I cannot hold hands down the street without fear of homophobic assholes. We have an abortion ban with no exceptions for rape or incest. We are one of the poorest states in the US with some of the lowest scores on metrics related to quality of life, including maternal mortality, healthcare, education, and violence. It’s not a coincidence that we are also one of the most red, one of the most Republican states in the Union. In 2017 the UN said the conditions in Alabama are similar to those in a third-world country.

Trump gave a voice to the most violently racist, sexist, xenophobic groups of people who, unfortunately for most of us in the Southern U.S., run our states and have only grown more powerful since his rise to power. The Deep South powers MAGA, and we all suffer for it.

We have no protections if they don’t come from the federal government.

I know people are suffering internationally and my heart is with them. However, this election is not just about foreign policy - we have millions of Americans right here at home living in danger, living in areas where they have been completely abandoned by their local leaders. We need this win.

No candidate is perfect, but for the first time in my voting lifetime I’m excited to vote. I’m excited for the Kamala Harris/Tim Walz ticket because they are addressing the issues close to home. They’re advocating for education as the ticket to a better life, but without the crippling student debt. They’re advocating for the right to love who you love without fear and with pride. Kamala has always been pro-LGBT+ and so has Tim. Again, if you’re queer in the South, we don’t have support unless it comes from the federal government, and we absolutely will not have support if the Republicans regain the White House.

Kamala speaks in length about re-entry programs to reduce recidivism and help people who have been arrested and imprisoned regain their lives. Tim Walz supported restoring voting rights to felons. In the South, you know who comprise the majority of felons? Members of minorities. It’s one of the major tools of systemic racism and mass disenfranchisement, and arguably the modern face of slavery (there are some fantastic documentaries and books that explain the connection between the post-Reconstruction South and the disproportionate rates of imprisonment for BIPOC). Having candidates who recognize this and want to restore the freedom and rights to people who have come into contact with the criminal justice system? And keep them from having to go to prison in the first place? That’s refreshing. That’s exciting.

I would *love* to live in a country where women’s rights are respected, where LGBT+ rights and protections are a given, where we treat former criminals and individuals experiencing mental health crises with respect and dignity. I would *love* to live in a country where education is free of religious interference and each and every citizen is entitled to a fair start and equal opportunities.

But I don’t live in that country. Millions and millions of Americans find their rights and freedoms up for debate and on the ballot.

Project 2025 poses the largest threat to the future of our democracy as we know it. We are being called to fight for the future of our country.

We have to put on our oxygen masks first before we can help others.

You don’t have moral purity when you wash your hands of the millions of us who are still fighting for own freedoms right here.

The reality is that a presidential candidate is a best fit, and not a perfect fit. But comparatively speaking? Kamala is pretty damn close.

[steveyockey]

While visiting the Majdanek concentration camp I, at that time a still fervent Zionist, had a strange revelation which I still cannot explain. While standing in the gas chamber—the walls covered in scratch marks and the hauntingly soft blue stains left behind by so many administrations of Zyklon B—it occurred to me: there was nothing ontologically evil about the perpetrators, nothing ontologically righteous or defeated about the victims; their fates were contingent on history. If this, even this, was contingent, then there must be something about the structure of the world that made it so.

When the Zone of Interest cuts to the Auschwitz of the present day, this memory rushed to the surface. That scene—long and wordless—seems to suggest that our contemporary atrocities will one day receive a similar memorialization, that such memorialization always sanitizes atrocity by placing it firmly in the past, even as we continue to live in a present it created; that we are, in turn, already sanitizing our own atrocities in the present. Even that, most chillingly, the Polish workers, like the Polish servants at the Auschwitz homestead, will continue to polish and clean Höss’s trophies. Höss and the Nazis may have lost the war, but present events make clear that their ideology lives on, polished up.

As the film ends with a cut to black, Mica Levi’s score fills the void: an ostinato of screams and trudging strings. The screams continue to pitch up, more voices added, a cacophony of screaming, and still the trudging line: history continues as one single catastrophe.

Walter Benjamin wrote that "Marx says that revolutions are the locomotive of world history. But perhaps it is quite otherwise. Perhaps revolutions are an attempt by the passengers on this train – namely, the human race – to pull the emergency brake.” The train: a resonance he could not yet have known. Unlike other concentration camps, the Nazis did not have time to destroy Majdanek prior to their retreat from the rapidly advancing Soviet forces. The bulk of the camp is not only intact, but theoretically still operational. The brake has not been pulled. Can you smell it? We’re in the zone of interest. We never left.

[navillee]

Zayne's subtle sub behavior pt. III

Let's bring some specific scenarios, shall we? What if Zayne is a secret sucker for your scent?

Back to the first appointment you had with Zayne after long years no see, even though he called out his own bluntness towards you out after you had left the doctor's chambers, there's another detail that kept taunting him other than his own behavior: your perfume. You see, Zayne isn't the type that has the best sense of smell, not when his nose got so habituated with the permanent smell of hand sanitizer, saline solution, and literally organs. He didn't even use a cologne, not after he watched a nauseous patient throwing up at Greyson's white coat in his internal days, at least. However, when you open the door, the vicious aroma filled up the entire chamber, imbuing Zayne's brain into an obsessed state that led him to act, as he would say, outside his own expectations.

As he headed home that day, all he could think was you. How you're even more beautiful then he could remember, how he could listen to your heart beat through the stethoscope – the reason because he became what he is now – his stupid nervousness that made it difficult to break the ice – quite literally – and that even more stupid cologne of yours. He wasn't able to focus properly for the rest of the day, and some voice at the back of his mind told him that the feeling would get worse when he got home.

One hour after diligent obsession, he made up an entire list with perfumes that presented in the description, the same aroma he felt emanating out of your skin. But it was nothing but innocent curiosity, it shouldn't cross any silly behavior out of him beyond that, right?

Two days after, before getting to the hospital, he saw himself at a perfumary. The excuse was that he needed to buy a cologne to himself, but ops! Why is Zayne standing on the feminine section, asking for the employee about some really specific perfumes? "Is that for your girlfriend?" His ears blushed, looking around while trying to find your scent, between every sample brought by the seller. "Just an old friend." He answers when he finally finds the one that matches exactly with the aroma that had him crazy two days prior.

He ended up buying it together with a masculine one that matches yours perfectly. At least, it was what the seller said so.

When he gets home that same day, he finds himself staring at the perfume bottle, unsure of what to do with that. He sprayed a little in his wrists, closing his eyes automatically as he inhaled the aroma. A long and heavy sigh left his throat, his muscles tensing up as he finds himself in such a pathetic situation as this one. What was in his mind now? He was acting like an obsessed perv!

Even though the perfume was objectively the same, something was missing. Even better putting: someone's missing. The scent of the perfume was good, he isn't denying that. But it wasn't divine as it felt on you.

Maybe your skin components bring out the scent differently from how it does on his wrist. Or even can be the fact that what droves him crazy two days prior was more to do with the concentration of your natural body sweat mixed with a small concentration of cologne.

Oh, poor doctor Zayne, even though he felt that sharp feeling of frustration on his guts, that didn't stop him from spraying your perfume on his bedsheets, letting him be enveloped by the closest he could get from your scent now.

He felt so relaxed that it didn't take long for him to fall asleep. So serene, damped in dreams about being closer to your, smelling that tempting aroma straight from the font.

When he woke up in the middle of the night, he couldn't feel more pathetic as he noticed how hard he was. That happened before, of course, when he was a teenager/young adult dealing with hormones. It was something mechanic that could be solved by taking a cold shower. But this time is substantially different. The images of the dream he had with you still cristal clear on his mind, and it would be such a waste not take advantage of them to solve his throbbing problem.

His closes his eyes again, guiding his hands inside his sweatpants, letting out a suffered sigh as he touched the sensitive skin of his hard cock.

It started just on the tip, but the movements migrated to fast, desperate ones in no time.

His leg muscles spreading them apart from each other and making his toes curl on top of his back arching was a clear indicator that he had never done that. Not outise the mechanical approach, where Zayne just was solving a biological reaction caused by muscle relaxation. No, that time he has you in his mind. To drunk on his own thoughts, gritting his teeth as the needy moans and raspy grunts insisted to scape, proving to himself how piteous the whole thing was.

He called your name until the entire time like it was some sort of pray. Begging you to bring your sweat, to finally make his bedsheets smell perfectly, just as you did with his on his hospital room that day. To make it divine, something only you can do.

Divine like in his dream, where you both fucked in his office, where he was reduced to his knees to adore you, like the servant he always knew he is. Where you praised and degraded him like he secretly desired you to.

"Oh...p-please! Have mercy on m-me~" Was the last coo he vocalized before relapsing all his dirty lust in ropes of thick warm cum all over himself.

His frenzy passed by, and after he cleaned himself and changed the bedsheets, he got back to sleep, ashamed by his own actions, hoping you somehow could be merciful enough to forgive his sin, after all, you're his goddess and he was just being your loyal devoted, right?

[loolilyumm]

I am screaming. Sobbing. Girlboss and fail-wife is my favorite dynamic. The way you draw is so pretty and your colors are so good plus people who draw 3 with sanitization scars are literally so cool I mean look at acht, there’s canonical examples of it. But literally going aaaa rn because I love your ocs.

We got Reese and Margot, how about 4 and 8?

OMG AHH IM SO SOSOSO HAPPY YOU LIKE THEM..AND THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR THE ASKS I LOVE ANSWERING THEM!! 🫶🫶🫶

I want to yap about my agents in separate posts so this one will be all about 8!

THIS IS OLIVE! She became agent 8 in the deepsea metro and has been a super active agent in the NSS ever since! They are like family to her - she lived with Pearl and Marina for almost 3 years before moving in with Reese! (Captain/Agent 3)

She was 14 during splatoon 1, and 16 during the events of octo expansion. Now in splat 3 she is 19!

She mains the dark tetra dualies but can use any weapon. She's super fast and agile so she likes weapons that work well with her speed.

She was an elite solider in the octoling army - she had just become one before she was ambushed by Cuttlefish and agent 3 (Reese) and they all fell into the metro.

None of them ended up falling in the same area of the metro, and Olive ended up being found by Tartar’s sanitized octolings and taken to the sanitation chambers to have her memory erased.

Side tangent - I have a specific idea in mind about how octolings are sanitized. If you want to watch this video, it explains it really well - https://youtu.be/zu4czvg5ClI?si=wFz1lABgkv7hz8Wk

But TLDR, there are 2 stages of sanitization. Stage one includes being wiped of all memories. The subject then has to go through a series of tests and trials before Tartar decides what to do with them based on how well they did. Then they get either blended or brainwashed into oblivion! 😆😆 woohoo yay! J think based on the side order diaries it kind of confirmed that 8 went through that first process…it just never said how so I made that part up. Lol

ANYWAY..!!! At the same time Olive is taken, Reese wakes up and begins searching for captain Cuttlefish. He doesn’t find him, but you know what he does find??!!?!?

WHOAAA WOWWW HE FINDS OLIVE

He’s like holy cow..! That’s the girl that was just attacking me…😦 and he’s like ahhh! I gotta help her!

But by the time the two of them make it out, he realizes that it’s too late. Her memory was completely wiped. The sanitization doesn’t leave any physical effects on her except for her eyes - they turned turquoise. The same color as the sanitized ink.

The two of them needed to find a way to find cuttlefish and get out of this creepy place, so they kept moving. Pretty soon they made their way into a train station and found cuttlefish waiting for them there!! And there was also a weird telephone that told Olive she was the newest test subject - and that passing all these trials was the key to getting her memories back and getting to the “promised land.”

Reese just went along with it because he assumed that was what octolings called the surface. He wanted to be a test subject too so he could help Olive, but the phone rejected him. No inklings allowed!

She was forced to go through hundreds of rigorous tests. She wanted more than anything to get back her memories and reach paradise. As she regained more memories, she realizes how different her old life was from the kindness these inklings were showing her now (and the two people on the radio called Pearl and Marina!). It just propels her toward finishing the tests, pushing herself to her limit, doing it not just for herself but for all of them.

She forms a really deep bond with these inklings. Cuttlefish is like a grandfather to her. Reese makes her heart flutter in ways she doesn’t even understand.

As the tests go on, she regains muscle memories from her days as an elite solider. She’s good at fighting. Really good. But these tests are really hard. 8 knows she can do it, but they’re really, really hard. And all these bad memories aren’t helping.

Through blood, sweat, and tears, Olive finally collects the 4 thangs and they can finally go to the surface! She is so proud of herself and feels on top of the world. Cuttlefish and Olive take the thangs to the telephone and wait for Reese, who’s out exploring the metro (one of the things he does to take up time and secure their safety). But the telephone is telling them they gotta go NOW and they can’t wait for Reese!

Cuttlefish and Olive say nope, nope, not happening. So they are forced into the blender and AHH!! OH NO VERY BAD!! EVERYONE FLIPS OUT AND…!!!

Reese appears and THROWS HIMSELF at the blender. Surprisingly, it works. The three of them leave the telephone and super jump through the hole Reese made in the ceiling. They’re going to get to the surface themselves.

Somewhere around the 4th phase, they are ambushed by a group of sanitized octolings. Olive gets separated from Reese and Cuttlefish. She is forced to keep moving and hope that they have made it to the elevator before her.

They have, but not in the way she thought! When she sees Reese’s partial sanitation, she doesn’t want to hurt him and holds back, resulting in herself getting injured very badly. She realizes this isn’t the friend she knows, and manages to defeat three and rescue him from brainwashing.

Soon after that she also saves the whole world and defeats Tartar. PERRIOODDD!! #slaythehousedown #girlboss

Reese and Olive got into a relationship soon after the events of octo expansion. They help each other through all the trauma of what happened down there and are the bestest friends and love each other so so much! Yay!!

And Olive got a new family that she loves so so much. YAYYY!!

AS OF SPLATOON 3…EBERYONE IS DOING AMAZING!! YAY!! Agent 4 is Olive’s new bestie. Margot (New agent 3) is like the little sister she never had. She and Reese have moved in together. She still does regular missions for the NSS and treats it as a full time job. She’s so proud of Reese for becoming captain. She couldn’t think of anyone more deserving.

I still haven’t decided what really goes down during the events of side order - I didn’t love that it was all a simulation, so idk how I’d write around that. I’ll figure it out! But for now, Let’s just say it’s not very fun for Olive.

BUTTTTT after the events of side order, she regains all of her lost memories (she left a few behind in Kamabo) and rediscovers herself.

HOLY CANNOLI I wrote a lot. I think about Olive so much and I hope you guys love her as much as I do.

If you guys have any questions about them whatsoever, please PLEASE feel free to send over an ask! I love answering them!!

IF YOU MADE IT THIS FAR…I love u. Mwah!

[muiitoloko]

Through the Wall

Summary: A virgin’s accidental voyeurism exposes her to the raw passion of Sheriff George, who discovers her secret and becomes determined to claim her innocence and her heart.

Pairing: Sheriff of Nottingham × Fem! Reader

Warnings: Voyeurism, virginity and Smut

Author's Notes: It took me a while, but I finally finished writing this one 😅 You can find the request for this story here!

Also read on Ao3

The castle was a labyrinth of grandeur and mystery, every corridor a new story waiting to be uncovered. You wandered through it, awestruck by the towering stone walls, the intricate carvings, and the sheer scale of the place. You had never been to a castle before, your life confined mostly to the cozy but unremarkable home where you had spent countless hours buried in books. Those books had been your escape, your window to the world, but they couldn’t prepare you for the reality of such a place.

It was fortunate that your father had brought you here, though you had a nagging suspicion it wasn’t purely for your enjoyment. The party the Sheriff of Nottingham was throwing in two days was a grand affair, and your father had made it clear that this was an opportunity to meet potential suitors. At your age, marriage loomed over you like a storm cloud, and you knew your father saw this as a chance to secure your future.

Leaning against a stone-framed window, you inhaled the crisp evening air. The sky was painted in hues of orange and pink, the sun setting beyond the castle walls. Despite the unease in your heart about your father’s intentions, you couldn’t deny the beauty of the moment. But your legs, weary from hours of exploring, begged for rest, and you decided to return to your quarters.

The wooden door creaked softly as you pushed it open, the cozy chamber within welcoming you with its warmth. But as you stepped inside, a strange sound caught your attention. It was faint at first—muffled noises, rhythmic and low. Your brow furrowed as you listened more closely, your curiosity piqued. Moving toward the wall, you pressed your ear against the cool stone, realizing the sounds were coming from the adjoining room.

The Sheriff’s room.

Your pulse quickened as the noises grew clearer—slapping, gasps, and moans. Heat rose to your cheeks as the realization of what you were hearing sank in. You hesitated, caught between curiosity and propriety, before noticing a small hole in the wall, likely a flaw in the old stonework. Your heart pounded as you leaned closer, peeking through the tiny opening.

The scene beyond made your breath catch in your throat. You couldn’t see much, just fragmented glimpses of the Sheriff’s long black hair and the curve of a woman’s bare back. But what you could see—and hear—was enough to make your face flush deeply. The Sheriff, George, stood tall and commanding, his hands gripping the woman’s hips as he drove into her with unrestrained fervor. His hazel eyes glinted with intensity, his black beard brushing against the curve of her neck as he growled low words you couldn’t quite make out.

The woman’s moans were unabashed, echoing through the chamber with every rhythmic slap of their bodies. Her hands clung to his shoulders, her head thrown back in pleasure. It was raw and primal, nothing like the sanitized descriptions in your books. The sheer passion of it, the way the Sheriff moved with such dominance and control, made your stomach twist with feelings you couldn’t quite name.

“Take it,” George growled, his baritone voice rough and commanding, the words sending a jolt through you. “Every inch, my little minx. You’ll remember who owns you tonight.”

Your breath hitched, and you stumbled back from the wall, your cheeks burning with shame and something else—something darker, deeper. You had never witnessed such intimacy, such naked desire. It was overwhelming, a stark contrast to the quiet, proper life you had always known. Virgin as you were, this was a glimpse into a world you had only read about in stolen moments with forbidden books. But this wasn’t fiction. This was real, raw, and undeniably human.

You pressed a hand to your chest, trying to steady your breathing, but the sounds continued to seep through the wall, the woman’s cries of pleasure mingling with George’s guttural moans. It was too much. You fled to the far side of the room, sinking onto the edge of the bed and burying your face in your hands.

This wasn’t what you had expected when you’d imagined exploring a castle. And yet, as you sat there, your heart racing and your body betraying you with a lingering heat, you couldn’t help but wonder if you had seen something you weren’t meant to see—or if some part of you had wanted to see it all along.

The noises began again, pulling you from the sanctuary of your book. You had been lost in the story for what felt like hours, curled up in a chair by the window in your chamber, the faint sound of the bustling castle barely reaching you. The Sheriff, George, had been surprisingly gracious that morning during breakfast, offering you free reign of his extensive library when you had asked your father for something new to read. You had accepted eagerly, thrilled at the chance to escape into stories far grander than your own.

But now, the words on the page blurred as your attention wavered. That sound—that unmistakable rhythm of pleasure—had returned, louder and more insistent than the night before. Your cheeks warmed at the memory of what you had witnessed through the tiny hole in the wall. You tried to focus on your book, telling yourself it was none of your concern. Yet your curiosity tugged at you, persistent and unyielding.

You placed the book on the side table, your pulse quickening as you moved toward the wall. Was George so enthralled with her that he sought her out every day? The thought intrigued you, the idea of a man so consumed by passion for his mistress. But when you pressed your eye to the tiny hole, your breath caught in your throat.

It wasn’t the same woman.

This one was younger, with auburn hair cascading down her back, her lithe body wrapped around George as he lifted her onto a table. His long black hair fell across his face as he growled into her ear, his hands gripping her thighs with an intensity that made your stomach twist. His hazel eyes burned with desire as he murmured words too low for you to hear.

The woman’s moans filled the chamber, her head falling back as George moved inside her with an unrestrained fervor. The slapping of their bodies echoed, and your cheeks burned with embarrassment—and something darker, deeper.

You had assumed he had a mistress, someone he adored and cherished in secret. But this? This was different. Was George the kind of man who did this with any woman who caught his eye? The thought unsettled you and yet intrigued you all the same. If he could do this with any woman… would he do it with you?

The question sent a jolt through you, your imagination betraying you as you pictured yourself in her place. George’s strong hands gripping your thighs, his hazel eyes darkened with desire as he whispered sinful promises in your ear. You shook your head, trying to banish the thought, but the image lingered, making your heart race.

You peeked again, unable to resist the magnetic pull of the scene before you. The woman clung to George, her cries of pleasure echoing through the chamber as he thrust harder, his baritone growls filling the air.

“Take it,” George growled, his hooked nose brushing against her neck as he kissed her hungrily. “You’re mine now. Do you understand that?”

The woman whimpered in response, her nails digging into his shoulders as he held her against the table. The intensity of his movements left no doubt that he was in complete control, his dominance both commanding and intoxicating.

A soft, involuntary cry escaped your lips, and you slapped a hand over your mouth, your eyes widening in horror. George froze, his hazel eyes snapping toward the wall as if he had heard you. Your heart pounded wildly as you scrambled away from the hole, pressing yourself against the far side of the room. Had he heard you? Would he come to investigate?

You held your breath, straining to listen, but the noises from the adjoining room had stopped entirely. The silence was deafening, and your mind raced with possibilities. What would George do if he discovered you had been watching? Would he be furious? Amused? Intrigued?

The thought of facing him made your stomach twist with both fear and a strange, unbidden excitement. But for now, you stayed frozen, your hand still pressed to your mouth, waiting to see if the Sheriff would come to your door—and what might happen if he did.

The Sheriff of Nottingham, George, paused mid-thrust, his hazel eyes narrowing as a sound interrupted his focus. A cry, soft yet distinct, had pierced through the muffled air of his chamber. His long black hair fell into his face as he stilled, his hooked nose flaring slightly as he tried to discern the source. Beneath him, the auburn-haired woman whimpered in frustration, her hands clutching his shoulders in an attempt to draw him back to their moment.

But George’s mind was elsewhere, his thoughts racing. That sound—where had it come from? His gaze flickered toward the wall separating his chamber from yours. He had placed you there deliberately, ensuring your proximity under the pretense of convenience. But the truth was far more selfish. He wanted you close. Close enough to imagine, close enough to tempt, close enough to claim if the opportunity arose.

His jaw tightened, and he leaned back slightly, his hands still gripping the woman’s thighs. Could you have heard? The thought sent a thrill through him, his cock twitching inside the whore beneath him. But he quickly shoved the excitement aside, forcing himself to think logically. The cry hadn’t sounded like pain. No, it was softer, more startled��like the sound of someone caught off guard. Could it have been… arousal?

“Sheriff,” the woman beneath him cooed, her voice tinged with impatience. She shifted her hips, trying to recapture his attention.

“Be quiet,” George snapped, his baritone voice sharp and commanding. His hazel eyes darkened as he pressed a hand firmly over her mouth, silencing her attempted protest. She whimpered beneath his palm, her eyes wide, but he didn’t remove his hand. He couldn’t risk another noise slipping through the walls to reach your innocent ears.

Your innocent ears. The thought was almost maddening. George knew your father had brought you here to parade you in front of potential suitors, but George had seen the way you looked at him—curious, nervous, intrigued. He had made it a point to be near you, to catch your glances, to stir something within you that no other man could. And now, the idea that you might have been listening, that you might have seen…

“Christ,” George muttered under his breath, his free hand gripping the woman’s thigh more tightly. She moaned against his palm, her muffled cries only fueling his conflicted arousal. A virgin, he thought, his teeth clenching. Untouched. Pure. Your father had mentioned it in passing, pride coloring his words as if your virtue were a prize to be flaunted. And it was—though not for the reasons your father imagined.

George leaned down, his beard brushing against the woman’s flushed skin as he growled lowly in her ear. “You’ll stay silent,” he ordered, his voice rough with barely restrained tension. “Or you’ll leave with nothing.”

The woman whimpered again, nodding obediently under his grip. Satisfied, George removed his hand, though his sharp hazel eyes stayed locked on her, daring her to disobey. He resumed his movements, slower this time, his mind still spinning with thoughts of you.

Had you been aroused by the sounds? Had you imagined yourself in the place of this whore? Would you blush and stammer if he confronted you, your wide, innocent eyes betraying the truth? George’s cock throbbed at the thought, and he thrust deeper, earning a muffled gasp from the woman beneath him. But it wasn’t her body he was truly thinking about.

“Take it,” George growled, his hooked nose brushing against the woman’s neck as he drove into her harder, faster. His words weren’t for her, not truly. “Take every inch. Remember who owns you.”

His mind conjured your image—your wide eyes, your parted lips, the way you had fidgeted nervously whenever he was near. Would you tremble beneath him like this? Would you cry out his name as he claimed you, your innocence surrendering to his dominance?

“Sheriff,” the woman beneath him gasped, breaking his reverie. He snarled softly, pulling out abruptly and stepping back, his chest heaving as he glared down at her.

“Leave,” he ordered, his baritone voice cold and final. The woman blinked up at him in confusion, her flushed body trembling as she tried to understand his sudden dismissal. “Now.”

“But—” she began, her voice tinged with desperation.

“Now,” George repeated, his hazel eyes flashing with irritation. “Before I change my mind about paying you.”

The woman scrambled to gather her clothes, her protests silenced by the sharp edge in his voice. As she slipped out of the room, George turned toward the wall, his expression dark and contemplative. He needed to know if you had heard—if you had seen. And if you had, he needed to know what you thought.

The Sheriff of Nottingham was not a patient man, and the thought of your wide-eyed innocence consumed him. If you had listened… if you had imagined… George smirked to himself as he considered his next move.

“Soon,” he muttered under his breath, his voice low and dangerous. “Soon, my sweet little bird. You’ll know exactly what it means to belong to me.”

The great dining hall was alive with the hum of conversation and the clinking of silverware, but George was notably absent. You had noticed, of course. It was hard not to, given his commanding presence. The servants had assured you he was dining in his quarters, preoccupied with party preparations. Yet something about the explanation felt… off.

Meanwhile, George prowled through your chamber like a wolf on the hunt. He hadn’t bothered with subtlety; the door had been left unlocked, an oversight he took full advantage of. His long black hair brushed his shoulders as he moved, hazel eyes scanning the room with sharp curiosity. He didn’t know precisely what he was looking for—evidence of your curiosity, a token of your innocence, or perhaps just the satisfaction of invading your private space as you had his.

And then he found it.

The hole.

A low chuckle escaped his lips as he crouched to inspect the flaw in the wall. It was small, almost imperceptible, but perfectly positioned. The angle wasn’t ideal, but it offered just enough of a view into his quarters to see more than you should have. His hazel eyes glinted with amusement and something darker as he realized the truth.

“So, my little bird,” George murmured to himself, a sly grin curving his lips, “you’ve been watching.”

Unable to resist, he leaned closer, his hooked nose nearly brushing the stone as he peeked through the tiny opening. From this angle, the room appeared quiet, undisturbed, but the memories of what had taken place there earlier that day brought a smirk to his face. He couldn’t help but test the hole further, sticking his finger into it and wiggling it slightly.

“Not much,” he muttered with a low chuckle, “but enough to entice a curious little virgin.”

He was still grinning, finger stuck in the stone, when he heard the door creak open behind him.

“Sheriff?”

George froze. He turned his head sharply, but the motion only lodged his finger deeper into the wall. Standing in the doorway, you blinked at him, clearly caught off guard. Your hair was slightly disheveled from dinner, your gown modest but elegant, and your expression a mix of curiosity and confusion.

“W-what are you doing in my chambers?” you asked, your voice uncertain but steady.

George cleared his throat, tugging subtly at his trapped finger, but it refused to budge. “The castle is mine,” he replied smoothly, though his cheeks betrayed a faint flush of embarrassment. “I can go wherever I please. Including here.”

You frowned, stepping closer. “But why… why are you at the wall?”

George gritted his teeth, giving his finger one last sharp tug, but it remained stubbornly lodged. “Inspecting the masonry,” he said, feigning nonchalance. “Shoddy work, really. Dangerous, even. A flaw like this—” He gestured vaguely with his free hand, the other still stuck. “—could compromise the structural integrity of the castle.”

You tilted your head, clearly not convinced. “And… your finger?”

“I was testing the depth of the hole,” George snapped, his voice laced with irritation. “Which, as you can see, is deep enough to cause serious concern.”

Your cheeks flushed as you pieced together what he had found. “You—” Your voice faltered. “You found it…”

“Found what?” George challenged, his hazel eyes narrowing as he finally yanked his finger free. He stumbled slightly but straightened quickly, brushing off his black tunic and adjusting his belt as though nothing was amiss. “If you’re referring to this—” he pointed to the hole, his tone laden with faux authority—“it’s a disgrace. A security risk.”

Your gaze darted to the wall, then back to him, realization dawning on your face. “You… you know.”

George smirked, stepping closer, his boots clicking softly against the stone floor. “Know what, my sweet?” he purred, his voice dropping to a dangerously low baritone. “That you’ve been spying on me? That you’ve been watching things you shouldn’t?”

Your cheeks burned, and you took a step back. “I-I wasn’t spying! I just… I didn’t know it was there until—”

“Until you saw something you liked?” George interrupted, his grin wicked as he leaned closer. His hooked nose nearly brushed your cheek, and his hazel eyes sparkled with a mix of amusement and hunger. “Tell me, little bird, did it make you blush? Did it make you ache?”

“Sheriff!” you gasped, mortified, your hands flying up to cover your face.

George chuckled, his voice rich and teasing. “Oh, don’t be shy now. You’ve already seen more of me than most have the privilege to. Or was it curiosity, hmm? A virgin’s curiosity, yearning to know what it feels like to—”

“Stop it!” you cried, your voice muffled behind your hands.

George leaned closer, his long black hair falling across his sharp features, the hooked nose casting a faint shadow over his smirk. His hazel eyes glinted with wicked amusement as he prowled closer to where you stood, cornered against the chamber wall. You could feel the heat radiating off him, his towering frame casting an imposing shadow over your much smaller figure.

“You didn’t answer my question, my sweet little bird,” he murmured, his voice a low baritone that sent a shiver down your spine. “Did it make you blush? Did it make you ache, watching me? Tell me,” he whispered, his hooked nose brushing tantalizingly close to your cheek, “did you imagine yourself in her place?”

You flushed a deep crimson, the embarrassment burning hot in your cheeks. “N-no!” you stammered, your voice trembling. “I didn’t imagine anything of the sort! My… my virtue belongs to my husband!”

George paused, arching a dark eyebrow. “Husband?” he repeated with a mocking lilt, his grin widening. “And where is this mythical husband of yours, hmm? Because I certainly don’t see him here, protecting what he so nobly owns.”

Your lips parted, but no words came out. You felt utterly cornered, both by his words and by his physical presence. His hazel eyes narrowed slightly, a flicker of disdain crossing his face.

“So what?” he sneered, stepping closer, his voice dripping with mockery. “You think your precious husband—who doesn’t even exist yet, mind you—would do what I can do for you? Would he make you blush like this?” He leaned closer, his voice a husky whisper. “Would he make you tremble?”

You swallowed hard, pressing your back against the cold stone wall as you tried to gather your composure. “He… he would,” you said defiantly, though your voice wavered.

George snorted, the sound laced with derision. “Ah, of course, the perfect, chivalrous husband,” he said with a dramatic wave of his hand, his black hair catching the candlelight. “But tell me this, little bird—has this imaginary husband of yours ever touched you? Has he ever kissed you? Has he ever made you feel the way I know I could?”

Your mouth went dry, and you shook your head quickly. “No! And he won’t… not until we’re married!”

The Sheriff laughed, a deep, rich sound that sent a jolt through you. “How quaint,” he said, shaking his head. “A virgin bride, saving herself for a man who will likely be as dull as a plowshare.” He leaned in closer, his hooked nose almost brushing against your neck as he whispered, “And yet, here you are, sneaking peeks at me through a hole in the wall. Tell me, my sweet, what were you hoping to see?”

You clenched your fists, mortified beyond words, but his taunting didn’t stop.

“Don’t deny it,” George continued, his voice dipping lower. “You wanted to see. You wanted to know. And now, here I am, offering you a taste of what you’re missing.”

Your breath hitched, your heart pounding wildly in your chest. “You’re not my husband,” you said weakly, your voice barely audible.

“Not yet,” George replied smoothly, his grin devilish. “But who knows? If your father offers a good enough dowry, I might be persuaded.” He paused, tilting his head as his hazel eyes bore into yours. “Now, answer me truthfully. Do you want to be in her place?”

The question hung in the air like a heavy weight, and you looked away, your cheeks burning. The silence stretched, thick with tension, until you finally whispered, “Yes.”

George’s smirk widened, his eyes darkening with triumph. “I thought as much,” he murmured, his voice like velvet. He reached out, brushing a strand of hair away from your face, his fingers lingering against your flushed skin. “And tell me, little bird,” he said, his voice dropping to a husky whisper, “what would you do if I made you mine right here and now?”

Before you could respond, George leaned in, his hooked nose brushing against your cheek as he tilted your face toward his. The kiss was sudden, a claiming as much as it was a caress. His lips were firm, his beard rough against your skin, a stark contrast to the softness of his mouth. The taste of him—rich, heady, and intoxicating—invaded your senses, leaving you breathless.

You gasped against his lips, but George took the sound as an invitation, his hand slipping behind your neck to deepen the kiss. His other hand found your waist, pulling you flush against him, and you felt the strength of his body, the undeniable heat of him pressing into you.

“You taste sweeter than I imagined,” George whispered against your lips, his voice thick with desire. His teeth grazed your lower lip, drawing a soft whimper from you. "Do you know how long I’ve waited for this moment? How many nights I’ve wondered what those shy little lips of yours would feel like beneath mine?"

"George—" you began, your voice trembling as you tried to summon your resolve, but he silenced you with another kiss, this one fiercer, hungrier. His tongue teased your lips, demanding entry, and when you hesitated, his grip on your waist tightened possessively.

“Don’t fight it,” he growled, his hazel eyes blazing as he broke the kiss, his lips hovering just a breath away from yours. "You’ve been curious, haven’t you? Wondering what it would feel like to be touched, to be kissed like this." His hand slipped lower, brushing over the curve of your hip, and you shivered at the sensation.

“I-I don’t…” Your protest faltered as his fingers traced the line of your jaw, tilting your head up to meet his gaze. His eyes were smoldering, filled with a dangerous mix of hunger and triumph.

“You do,” he said firmly, his voice leaving no room for argument. “You crave this, even if you’re too innocent to admit it. I see it in your eyes, feel it in the way you tremble beneath my touch.” He leaned in, his hooked nose brushing against the shell of your ear as he whispered, “Tell me, little bird—are you trembling because you’re afraid, or because you want me?”

Your knees weakened at his words, your breath hitching as his lips trailed down the side of your neck, leaving a burning trail in their wake. "George, this is… improper," you managed, though your voice lacked conviction.

"Improper?" George echoed with a wicked laugh, his teeth grazing your collarbone. "Is that what they’ve taught you in those musty books you cling to? That desire is improper? That surrendering to what you want makes you weak?" He pressed his body against yours, his arousal evident, and you felt your own resolve slipping.

“You’ll find I’m anything but proper,” he continued, his baritone voice dripping with seduction. His hand slid up your back, tangling in your hair as he claimed your lips once more, this time with an unrestrained fervor that left no doubt of his intent. "And by the time I’m done with you, little bird, neither will you be."

You whimpered against him, caught between the intoxicating pull of his dominance and the faint voice of reason urging you to stop. But when his hand slipped to your waist, his fingers brushing the sensitive skin just above your gown’s neckline, that voice was drowned out by the pounding of your heart.

“Say the word,” George murmured, his lips hovering above yours, his hazel eyes burning into yours with an intensity that left you breathless. “Tell me to stop, and I will. But if you don’t…” His hand slid lower, his touch igniting a fire in you that you hadn’t known existed. “Then you’re mine.”

Your lips parted, a soft gasp escaping as his hand tightened on your waist, anchoring you to him. The weight of his words, the promise in his gaze, left you teetering on the edge of a decision that could change everything.

And yet, when your voice finally emerged, it wasn’t a command to stop.

It was his name—a whisper, a surrender, a plea.

“George.”

The sheriff's grin widened as your whispered plea left your lips, his hazel eyes darkening with intent. His hands, strong and deliberate, slid down your sides, tracing the curves of your body as if committing them to memory. You trembled under his touch, unsure of what he intended, your innocence leaving you vulnerable to the overwhelming sensations he stirred within you.

"Relax, little bird," George murmured, his baritone voice low and rich, sending a shiver down your spine. "Let me show you what it means to be truly desired."

Before you could respond, he sank to his knees before you, his hooked nose brushing against the fabric of your gown as he pressed a kiss to your hip. Your breath hitched, your cheeks burning as you looked down at him in confusion and growing anticipation. His long black hair fell over his face as he began to raise the skirts of your dress, exposing the bare skin of your thighs to the cool air.

"George," you stammered, your voice trembling. "What… what are you doing?"

He didn’t answer immediately, his fingers deftly sliding under your skirts, pulling them higher and higher until the cool air kissed the bare skin of your legs. His touch was firm yet gentle, commanding yet reverent, and the contrast made your heart race. When his hands reached your underwear, he paused, his hazel eyes glinting with a wicked gleam as he looked up at you.

“Trust me,” he said, his voice dripping with sinful promise. Then, without waiting for your permission, he hooked his fingers into the delicate fabric and pulled it down. You gasped, your cheeks flaming as the intimate garment slipped down your legs, pooling around your ankles.

"George!" you exclaimed, mortified yet unable to look away.

"Shh," he soothed, his smirk never faltering. "I’ll take care of you, little bird. You’ve spent so long imagining what it would feel like. Let me show you."

Before you could protest further, he gently lifted one of your legs, guiding it over his broad shoulder. His grip was steady, his movements confident, as if he had done this a thousand times before. Your hands flew to his shoulders for balance, your breath coming in short, shallow gasps as you felt the heat of his breath against your most intimate places.

“George, please,” you whispered, though you weren’t sure if you were pleading for him to stop or to continue.

“You’ll thank me soon enough,” he growled, his voice muffled as he pressed his mouth to your center.

The sensation was unlike anything you had ever imagined. His tongue moved with practiced precision, teasing and tasting as he explored every inch of you. Your head fell back, a soft moan escaping your lips as your body reacted to the unfamiliar yet intoxicating pleasure. You tried to look at him, to see the man who was unraveling you so completely, but he was hidden beneath the skirts of your dress. All you could see was the faint movement of fabric, the telltale shifts and ripples as he worked his magic.

His hands gripped your hips, holding you firmly in place as his tongue delved deeper, circling and flicking with a skill that left you trembling. You bit your lip, trying to stifle the sounds of your pleasure, but it was no use. The moans spilled from you uncontrollably, each one louder than the last, until you could no longer hold back.

"George!" you cried out, your voice a mix of shock and ecstasy.

He growled against you, the vibration sending a fresh wave of pleasure coursing through your body. His grip tightened, his pace quickening as he drank in every sound, every tremble, every gasp that escaped you. It was as if he was devouring you, his hunger insatiable, his determination relentless.

“You taste sweeter than I ever imagined,” he muttered, his voice husky and low. "I could stay here forever, little bird, savoring every moment of you."

His words sent a shiver down your spine, the raw, primal edge to his tone both thrilling and terrifying. Your fingers dug into his shoulders, your body arching against him as the pleasure built to an almost unbearable peak.

"George, I—" you began, but your words were lost in a cry of pure bliss as he pushed you over the edge.

Your body trembled, your legs threatening to give out, but George held you steady, his mouth never leaving you as he prolonged your pleasure.

As the waves of pleasure subsided, you leaned heavily against the wall, your chest rising and falling as you tried to catch your breath. George, still kneeling before you, shifted beneath your skirts, his hands brushing your thighs as he attempted to extricate himself from the voluminous fabric. His muffled grumble reached your ears, laced with frustration and amusement.

“Damn women and their cursed skirts,” he muttered, his voice partially muffled. “How is a man meant to breathe under here?”

You let out a breathless laugh, your cheeks flushing as you reached down to help him. Your hands shook slightly as you gathered the layers of your dress, pulling them up and over his head. When his face finally emerged, his long black hair was mussed, his hazel eyes gleaming with mischief, and his beard—his beard was glistening with evidence of what he had done to you.

“Better,” George said, his lips curling into a smirk. He reached up, brushing a stray lock of hair from your face, his touch lingering. “Now, where were we?”

Your cheeks burned as he leaned in, his gaze fixed on you with a predatory hunger. “I could give you more, little bird,” he murmured, his voice low and seductive. “If you want it. If you’re brave enough to ask.”

Your heart raced, and for a moment, you were tempted. But then reality crashed down on you, and you shook your head, your voice trembling as you whispered, “I… I can’t. This… this is still my husband’s.”

George froze, his hazel eyes narrowing slightly before he let out a sharp, incredulous laugh. “Your husband?” he repeated, standing to his full height. His imposing frame towered over you, and his expression was a mix of amusement and annoyance. “You mean the husband you don’t have yet?”

He gestured to his face, his beard glistening with your essence, a wicked grin spreading across his lips. “Because, from where I’m standing, little bird, you’ve already given something of yourself to me. Or are you planning to tell your future husband about how the Sheriff of Nottingham made you cry out his name?”

Your breath caught, your cheeks flaming with humiliation and lingering desire. “I… I don’t know what to say.”

“Then don’t say anything,” George replied smoothly, his tone softening as he cupped your face in his hands. His thumbs brushed your flushed cheeks, his hazel eyes locking onto yours with an intensity that made your knees weak. “I’m not a patient man, but for you, I’ll make an exception.”

“What do you mean?” you asked, your voice barely above a whisper.

George leaned in, his hooked nose brushing against yours as his lips hovered just a breath away. “I’ll speak to your father,” he said, his voice a low growl. “I’ll negotiate the dowry myself. If taking you to my bed means putting a ring on your finger, so be it.”

Your eyes widened, your heart skipping a beat. “You’d… you’d marry me? Just for—”

“Just for your virginity?” George interrupted with a sly smirk. “No, little bird. For you. All of you. Your body, your mind, your fire. I’ve wanted you since the moment I saw you. And now that I’ve had a taste…” His hands slid down to your waist, pulling you flush against him. “I won’t settle for anything less.”

You stared at him, stunned. “You’re serious?”

“As serious as I’ve ever been,” George replied, his voice firm. “I don’t make a habit of sharing what’s mine. And you, my sweet little bird, will be mine.”

The possessiveness in his tone sent a shiver down your spine, but you couldn’t deny the thrill it sparked within you. “And what if my father refuses?” you asked, your voice trembling.

George chuckled darkly, his hazel eyes gleaming with confidence. “He won’t. Not when I offer him more gold than he’s ever dreamed of.” He paused, his grin softening into something almost tender. “You’re worth every coin, and more.”

Your heart raced as his words sank in, the weight of his declaration leaving you breathless. Could he truly mean it? Could the Sheriff of Nottingham—a man known for his ruthlessness and cunning—be willing to marry you just to claim you as his own?

Before you could respond, George leaned in, his lips brushing against your ear as he whispered, “Prepare yourself, little bird. Once I have you, I won’t let you go. Ever.”

[snovyda]

You see, from what I have witnessed, people outside of Ukraine are getting an incredibly sanitized version of this war's events. It's all part of the bigger practice, obviously. Just like the topics of ww2 are being sanitized in education.

When a prominent Ukrainian writer Oksana Zabuzhko had a public reading of her book in Zurich, she was explicitly warned to not mention the war, because "that would be traumatizing for the audience". They don't want to even hear anything that would be traumatizing!

Well guess what: it should be traumatizing. Nobody should be comfortable with this. Or with what has been happening in Syria, or Myanmar, or anywhere else.

"Kyiv still stands 😎" our allies say, because it's comfortable to say that and not "Mariupol lies in ruins, Mariinka, Volnovakha and Bakhmut are wiped off the face of the Earth, and we are still refusing to provide the aid Ukraine has been requesting for more than a year now after we made it give up on its defense capabilities in the first place".

I keep thinking about all the mass graves that we keep discovering on the liberated territories. And about all the mass graves that keep growing on the still occupied territories. About torture chambers, about filtration camps, about the mass kidnappings of children. About all the rape, organised, sanctioned. I keep thinking about the 7-year old girl whose body was recovered from one of the mass graves, with traces of sperm from 7 different men on her. About the children whose parents were tortured, raped and executed in front of them. And vice versa. About photos and videos of human heads russians put up on tree branches and poles near their positions.

Feeling uncomfortable? Good. You should be.

[juniperpyre]

i think my key issue with the sanitization of death eater characters is that it feels like people do not see their stories as tragic or empathize with the characters until we have a hc that's like "actually they were morally good the whole time!"

regulus black and severus snape are tragic characters and child soldiers no matter what side they were "really" on. even barty crouch jr, who may not have been groomed into being a death eater, is tragic when you spend a second to consider his relationship with his father. there are plenty of death eaters who we know are taking after their fathers in joining the cult. lucius malfoy, who was a prefect when the marauders enter hogwarts, most likely spread the death eater ideology, since the ideology is just a more extreme version/logical endpoint of what already existed in the wizarding world.

to me, these ideas are not headcanons, because they are heavily implied by the text. when jkr mentions malfoy in the deathly hallows that is not for no reason.

mallfoy's acceptance of snape and position of power are both highlighted in this sentence. we can infer that snape felt a sense of community for the first time in Slytherin. with malfoy as a prefect we can infer that the culture of Slytherin house lifted up bigots and those with an important family name.

this is a culture that breeds more bigotry. we know that Dumbledore did not step in to stop this cultural development in the 90s, after already seeing what it could do!!! so we can infer that he did not in the 70s. so a bunch of children were left alone in an echo chamber of hate. of course some of them became fanatics!!!

this doesn't mean they shouldn't be held accountable. but we cannot expect children to overcome cultural and political hegemony all alone. like.... that's just not how the world works. and it's tragic that children are fodder for fascist's wars, especially when the fact that the children were abused or neglected makes them more vulnerable to be fodder.

regulus and severus weren't treated as people, their humanity was denied by the fascist they served, bc that's how fascism works. exploring their characters as they are in canon, with full humanity, without needing to change their stories to see that humanity, is much more interesting to me. it is much more in the spirit of redemption and restoration.

[seeker-ophelia]

Ophelia Rants: Veilguard is Weird

I had another post (Review, Pt 4) composed about how much I love dragons, but the AMA kinda knocked me on my ass.

* * *  

[INTRO]

* * *  

I’m going to share the image I made collected from the results of my survey:

And while everyone only contributed one word for this, it IS possible for Veilguard to be ALL OF THESE THINGS AT ONCE.

Now. We need to take this with a grain of salt and remember that most of these responses came from tumblr, and often ones Social Media Frens are an echo chamber of ones own thoughts.

The words that repeat over and over are all similar; sanitized, shallow, underwhelming, trimmed, incomplete… Fun But Not Dragon Age.

And I could not agree with this more.

Caitie (YT: Ghil Dirthalen BS: Ghil Dirthalen), (Mythal’enaste her and her data-mining efforts) has released so much information from Datamining Veilguard. So much dialogue not used, paths ignored or forgotten, Keep choices abandoned, Lore identified.

Flipping through the Art Book shows how much time and effort and ideas have been put into DA4; all of its iterations. All the creativity, the different worlds, the different possible paths. YEARS of work, abandoned.

Which feels soooo… opposite. I’m not a writer. What’s the word for a complete opposite dichotomy in all things? Contradictory? Inconsistent? Irreconsilable? Antithesis?

How can Dragon Age be Sanitized and Shallow… but so much work be put into it?

* * *

[OPINION]

* * *

After I removed my emotional connection from Dragon Age, IMO, it really does feel like something is missing from this game. Even if one tries to lay down their preconceptions of what the game might have been in their dream world, this game, to me, could not decide what it wanted to be. Narratively, it’s a sequel to Inquisition. Solas’s story matters from Inquisition, the Inquisitor matters from Inquisition… and yet it spends so much time onboarding new players. The story feels simple, the world is straightforward, like its dumbed down for players new to the series.

Inquisition, even though in a gameplay sense it is different from Origins and 2, still feels like its building off of a complex world that the player might not understand. And when I played Inquisition, I hardly understood any of it. That’s part of the joy of Dragon Age. People who read LotR or Malazan or WoT or ASOIAF, don’t expect the author to hold their hand. They’re dumped, unceremoniously, into a world, and they have to figure it out themselves (figure it out through strategically placed tidbits from the author). Dragon Age (O through I), was a masterclass in this, I think. Somehow, no matter how deep you want to dive into the game, whether just playing superficially one-and-done, or playing it over and over to capture as much lore and depth as you can, Origins through Inquisition does that. It gives you just enough crumbs to keep you going, keep you questioning, and to point you enough in the right direction, that when you DID get a lore reveal right, you felt GOOD. Yes, plot-twists and subverting expectations are important, but so is letting your audience figure things out, giving them concrete answers. Veilguard drops you, sure, literally in Minratheous into a Gods Magic Ritual. But then it takes your hand, and skips with you through beautiful landscapes, phenomenal level design, and whirlwind combat, to place you right in front of the information you need. And then gives you a cutscene explaining, just in case you didn’t get it 😉).

We, as fans, need to realize that while the Personality of Veilguard is Toothless, the Lore, The Skeleton, is not.

Yeah, Epler said some things that hurt my feels during the AMA. (I’m ignoring the Solas stuff, because I really do believe Epler is speaking from a personal bias and not from a cannon-perspective. [edit: he just talked bout this on BlueSky]) But do you know why? Because they broke my personal headcannons. They proved MY theory crafting wrong. The real problem with Veilguard is that it came out too late. 10 years is too long to have people care so much about a game and theorize and craft worlds for themselves.

* * *

[LORE]

* * *

Superficially, VG dropped a lot of lore. But Deeply? To the DA Lore-Core? I don’t think they dropped ENOUGH.

[Image Credit: Helena Hansen on ArtStation]

HOW did Soals cleanse the dagger? HOW can Elgy & Ghill control the blight? HOW do they control their archdemons? HOW does the veil work? (How can it be weak with Elgy & Ghilly holding it up but 100%-strong-no-holes-perfectly-good with only Solas providing power for it?) HOW do spirits work? HOW do souls work? WHATS the difference? HOW does a Dragon-thrall-bond work? WHY isn’t Lusacan a Great Dragon? HOW does the rite of tranquility work? WHAT happens to Solavellan in the Fade? Is it different from what happens to a tricked Solas in the fade? WHAT happens now to Hawke/Stroud in the fade? WHAT is an orb? WHAT is a cube? WHATS the difference? WHERE is The Black City? WHAT is the ‘real blight’? (Because according to VG Solas, it’s still in the prison and its still super dangerous and way more dangerous than the blight that’s out in Thedas.) HOW did Solas burn his Vallaslin off? WHAT is the Calling? WHAT is the NEW song in the calling? WHY did ‘Mythal speak the calling’? WHY does lyrium sing? How is lyrium mined? WHY can tranquil work lyrium safely? HOW did Dirth & Falon split? WHY did Dirth & Falon split? WHERE are the rest of the Evanuris? WHERE is the Abyss? WHAT is the Abyss? WHAT do you MEAN there was more than 8 Evanuris?? HOW did you make your lyrium bodies? HOW can Elgar’nan destroy a FEELING?

WHERES MY ELVHEN DICTIONARY.

Obviously not ALL. But SOME of these NEEDED to be answered, or at least strongly alluded to, IN GAME. NOT in an AMA.

“We're leaving that ambiguous on purpose…”

“We haven't been SUPER specific about this…”

“I'm so glad these stories have their hooks in you! We have to leave some threads to tug on for future stories.”

What DID get answered in game?

Some of the Evanuris hats. Archdemons/Old Gods = Evanuris. Solas (w/ Mythal?) tranquil’d the Titans. Solas (accidentally) created the Blight. Solas used a Blood Magic Ritual to create the veil. Solas regrets a lot of things & has mommy issues. Worm-Solas (which, do not get me wrong, a million thank you’s and blessings for werm-Solas… But…) That’s it. That’s IT?

Oh, and there’s a shadow organization that’s been pulling all the strings from behind the scenes but I am NOT getting into how much I hate that idea in this post we don’t have time. Do we? No, we don’t. You know what, fuck it. This is my blog. Once you introduce that idea there is no way anyone NOT the author can know how much sway the puppeteer has over the marionette. ‘Oh it’s just a nUdGe, just a *whisper,* ‘they still have their free will’. Bitch get fucked what does that MEAN. That doesn’t MEAN anything its just a lazy retcon-y way to tie in a new villain to old material. Completely erasing the autonomy of they characters your fanbase has come to love (and love to hate). Do not corporate-speak at me with synergy and circle-back and deliverables. WHAT is a WHISPER? WHAT is a NUDGE? Because unless you lay it all out in an ELI5, NO ONE CAN KNOW- EXCEPT FOR YOU.

Ok obviously I have feelings about that we need to move on.

You can argue Veilguard was about the Evanuris, you can argue that Veilguard was about Solas. You can argue that Veilguard was about Regret and Pride and letting it all go. You can argue that Veilguard was about the ~*Power of Friendship*~ But for me, who has been obsessed with whatever the ever-loving-fuck has been going on in Thedas since 9.30 Dragon, Veilguard is about the Blight.

Corrine from the AMA: What really captures my imagination now that we've resolved some of the mysteries pertaining to the blight and the Elven gods, is exploring the aftermath of this crisis in a deeply destabilized Thedas.

Sorry… What did you answer? We actually know nothing about the Blight except that Solas created it, and with Antonie and Evka claiming the song has changed… what does that mean? Is a Titan consciously controlling the blight now? Is it soothed because Harding Soothed it? Is all the blight from the Kal-Sharok Titan? Are all their orbs/cubes in the Black City? Do the Executors control the blight? What is a calling, then? Will the Wardens never be called to the deep roads again? The Blight is different in a Warden than it is in a darkspawn, or an Archdemon? How? WHY? The wardens are just going to fade from existence because… all the darkspawn are just going to disappear now? Where in game is this stated as truth? Actually, in fact, ZERO questions were answered.

But Wait…

I feel like the news of the AMA COMPLETELY overshadowed the two IGN articles that came out; 1 & 2. Because… holy shit you guys. There was A LOT of lore dropped here.

Unfortunately for Epler & Corrine, and this is a hill I will die on, ALL OF THIS SHOULD HAVE BEEN ANSWERED IN GAME. The fact that it was NOT? Is inexcusable. You cannot drop giant lore reveals like this outside of the game and hope it smooths everything over. The lore dropped in these interviews could have been a DLC, a side quest in game, or at the very least a novel or WoT Vol 3.

* * *

[What IS Dragon Age?]  

* * *

I've used this photo before and I'll use it again I fucking love it so much

I wish Veilguard came out a year later, I would have waited longer, paid more for it, if it was a more a whole, inclusive game.

The problem with dumbing down a pre-existing franchise is that you’re alienating the fans that are carrying you on their shoulders. They carried you through a game-less 10 years, and through Andromeda. And you can bet your ass when they drop you, the new fans you roped in with VG are not going to be picking you up.

Dragon Age feels like it cannot find its identity. That Veilguard, inexplicably, does not feel like Dragon Age.

“But how can you explain what Dragon Age feels like when every Dragon Age that came before it was so different?”

New Protagonists, new companions, new locations, everything is different. On top of more meta things; new gameplay, new combat, new art styles, its all different.

So what makes Dragon Age, Dragon Age?

Well, when I was nervous about the game back in September, I asked Kala, when she got pre-access to the game, if she FELT anything.

“I’d love for you to touch on how the game made you FEEL… Did anything you played in Veilguard make you Feel™?”

She sent me a private message with 1 word: Yes.

We can go into the design decision to have the companions react with each other instead of Rook and how that can be alienating to the PC. We can talk about how shafted the romances were. We can go into how gentrified Minrathous and the Crows were. We can go into how child-locked the lore was. We can discuss the toothless-ness of Veilguard.

But Veilguard still made me Feel.

And, even if that emotion is anger, if Veilguard made you Feel, it did it’s job.

[presidenthades]

And now the behind-the-scenes for Lavender Ch. 8!

Usual disclaimer that these thoughts aren’t necessarily canonical to the fic verse until/unless I write them into the actual story.

Jace’s thought about how she can’t hover over the future king forever makes me a bit sad. It echoes Aegon’s thought about how Alicent eventually stopped cuddling him because future kings aren’t supposed to be cuddled. 😭 I like to think Jace will keep cuddling her son even after he’s grown up and insists he’s too big for cuddles though.

Jace knows how to manage Aegon. She also figures out very quickly how to manage Otto. It helps that she and Otto both try to find a diplomatic solution first, and they understand the necessity of compromise. They strongly disagree on the best way to handle Aegon, but they’re at least willing to discuss it in a civilized manner.

Unlike in canon, Otto decides to gracefully volunteer for retirement. He’s achieved his main goal (putting Aegon on the throne), and the realm seems like it will be stable for a while. He also has confidence in Jace’s ability to temper the worst of Aegon’s habits. So Otto decides to quit while he’s on top. Sure, he’ll miss governing, but he can handle a bit of boredom if it means his legacy remains intact.

I like to headcanon that Otto is secretly an infrastructure and urban planning nerd, and he’s always wanted to lead a big project where they revamp KL’s sewage and sanitation system. Everyone needs a hobby lol.

I love the image of Otto interviewing a bunch of kindergarteners for the role of Elenar’s future Hand. 😂

Corlys, like Otto, is also a curmudgeonly old man with a lot of pride and not the best temper. But Corlys has a much different dynamic with Aegon, so Aegon will be able to work with Corlys…for a while.

I think Otto secretly wishes Jace could be Aegon’s Hand, because Aegon would listen to her 99.999% of the time. But Otto is pragmatic and knows that being a woman will count against her, so it probably won’t happen unless everything goes perfectly during Aegon’s reign. He doesn’t explicitly praise Jace for her abilities, but there’s the unspoken implication that he thinks she’s doing a good job. He’s also probably patting himself on the back for ensuring that Aegon married her.

Helaena’s “ghost” references mean Larys. The Lord of Harrenhal (a very haunted place) has basically been hiding in the walls, much like a ghost. She says “it comes and it goes,” a repeat of her firefly riddle in Ch. 4. And “ghosts used to be men too” is foreshadowing that Jace uses Larys’s human weaknesses (lust) against him.

While he’s been in hiding, Larys has kept tabs on the royal family’s routine so he can identify the perfect time to strike. Aegon eats with Smallfolk buddies regularly, and a bunch of the Targs and Velaryons like to have date nights. This is Lavender’s less tragic version of Blood and Cheese (book, not show version), where B&C spend a lot of time scoping out the royal family’s routine before attacking. Larys has the advantage of a) his whisper network and b) leverage over a bunch of castle staff whom he helped hire. It’s not a coincidence that the maid stops Rhaena from following Jace to her chambers, where Larys is waiting. Larys is aware that Aegon has been reluctant to use any Kingsguard but Criston to guard Jace, so once again Larys strikes when Criston is resting.

I finished posting Lavender shortly after S2 ended, so I was able to include a reference to S2E8 where Larys mentioned storing most of his family money with the Iron Bank (I think that’s what he said? It’s been a while since I watched the episode and TBH I’m not inclined to rewatch it). Braavos had a fraught relationship with the Targs, but Jace is determined to attempt diplomacy wherever possible. The Iron Bank speaks the language of money, so she sent two trusted representatives (her father and the master of ships), who happen to be from mercantile houses, to negotiate.

I originally thought about Larys pressuring Jace to kill/poison Aegon, so it would be a) more B&C-like in that she has a Sophie’s choice between her husband and son, and b) to hammer home what she said about doing anything for her son’s sake, including imitating Alicent’s example. But Larys’s primary goal is to escape with a lot of money, and it would be very dumb of him to think he could stick around in Westeros scott-free after he facilitates Aegon’s death. So instead he decides to pull a kidnapping/ransom scheme.

I spent a lot of time thinking about how Jace outsmarts Larys. I try to avoid depicting sexual violence just for the shock and horror value, and I had to think about whether the breastfeeding scene made sense story-wise. I think it does. A lot of Jace’s story involves using her limited assets as a woman in a patriarchal world to solidify her own power. There’s been a repeated theme of Larys being like other men, beholden to their baser instincts. Also, taking something that gives Jace joy (nursing her son) and twisting it into something depraved (forcing her to participate in his kink) seems like the kind of thing Larys would do to demonstrate his leverage over her. But Jace, who has spent a lot more time than she’d like with Larys, figures out his weakness (forcing someone in power to do what he wants) and turns it against him.

The tree that Daeron climbs up to the balcony is the same tree that Aegon climbs in The Golds Ch. 3 after Jace locks him out.

Jace knows Larys might kill her when he reaches her. She could’ve tried to climb off the balcony to save herself, but she has a baby to think about. She would rather ensure Elenar’s safety and give him to Daeron, even if it means she’ll certainly be violently attacked. Luckily, Daeron the Daring has different ideas.

Jace is on the verge of a panic attack, but she still tries to be queenly and give orders. Her dad is here though, and he tells his daughter to let him handle it. 😭

Jace usually advocates for peace and non-violence, but she has some of that dragon blood. We see a flash of it when she’s pleased by the thought of Aegon mutilating Larys’s corpse for her sake. She also doesn’t hesitate to order the maids be executed, because the maids endangered her son.

I love Jace’s line to Aegon about how “yes, Viserys loved you, but that isn’t enough, you deserved better.” She gives Aegon the validation he needs: he was worthy of love from his own father. But she also reminds him that just because Viserys loved him, that doesn’t make what Viserys did OK. Otherwise Aegon might start feeling guilty about Viserys, and Viserys doesn’t deserve Aegon’s guilt.

Mysaria proves to be a useful ally, but Jace is skeptical whether Mysaria’s loyalty can be counted upon. She doesn’t think Mysaria should be given one of the most important jobs in the realm just because she helped Aegon once or twice. At best, Jace thinks maybe they should allow Mysaria a probationary/trial period.

Aegon knew nothing about fashion when he married Jace, but by the time his coronation rolls around, he’s picked up on a lot about clothes. He definitely knows his wife hates black. 😄 He’s unusually interested in planning the coronation because, as we find out later, he’s planning a surprise coronation for Jace too.

Jace loves dressing Elenar in mini versions of Aegon’s outfits. 🥰

I like to think Elenar says “bah” a lot because he’s steadily working toward his first word, which is going to be “Pa.”

It’s been a while since Jace and Aegon did their striptease study sessions, but she is kinda turned on when Aegon demonstrates he’s been doing his homework about past Targaryen coronations. 😆

Aegon makes two promises to himself in Chapter 1. First, everyone will know Jace is first among women. Second, he’ll build a nicer throne for her next to the Iron Throne. He achieve/works toward both promises this chapter. The throne one is self-explanatory. As for the first among women promise, that’s tied to his vow that he’ll publicly empower Jace as his equal. It’s unprecedented since the Conqueror’s time for a Targ queen to be the king’s equal (and there’s room to debate just how equal the Conqueror’s sisters were to him), so this is the start of Aegon and Jace making history.

Of course Otto hired a painter to capture the coronation. I imagine the final painting will look a lot like The Coronation of Napoleon where Napoleon crowns his wife Josephine, though it would be Aegon and Jace in those roles, respectively.

It seems important/symbolic for Rhaenyra to crown Aegon. She was heir before him, and she has a chance to weaken his claim after Viserys died. But for the sake of peace—and especially for Jace’s sake—Rhaenyra agrees to make this public gesture. It also allows her a moment to be mentioned in history books, which she’s always craved.

The crown fits Jace perfectly and isn’t as heavy as expected. More symbolism for how Jace was destined to wear a crown and how she is able to bear the weight of duty more easily than Aegon.

Aegon makes a point of publicly celebrating Elenar as the Prince of Dragonstone because Viserys never did that for him.

Aegon thinks nothing of letting his infant son chew on the Conqueror’s crown, a very important relic. His son is more important than the past. 🤷🏻‍♀️

[nardo-headcanons]

Writing Scientist Characters

this post is mainly an excuse to post a certain list of lab supplies I've made for a friend and infodump about lab work. but feel free to use this as a little resource when writing characters who are scientists and/or lab nerds. who knows, maybe it'll be of use.

General thoughts

Many people think it's a stereotype that scientist or nerd characters talk using complex technical jargon. While that is true to an extent, there actually is some kind of lab jargon. It varies across different labs and fields, but one thing they have in common is that it seeks to simplify, not the other way around.

gelelectrophoresis becomes elpho

microbiology becomes mibi

deioninized water becomes aqua dist

biochemistry becomes BC

sodium hydroxide becomes NaOH

They will probably not call a glass of water "silicon dioxide and h2o".

...and more. feel free to get creative. If you're writing in any other language than English, you can throw in one or two anglicisms as well. Also, most scientists will never gatekeep their work, and in an opposite fashion, will not shut up about it unless you make them. And no, most chemists do not know the entire periodic table by heart, only the most relevant elements. (main groups and a few commonly used metals of the subgroups) When it comes to characters doing the lab work, keep in mind that there are a lot more people involved than the scientist themself. Most scientists are more occupied with paperwork and data analysis, it is the laboratory technicians and assistants that do most of the practical work. They often have more lab experience than the scientists themselves.

Things you can have your lab nerd character do instead of making random chemicals explode

writing a lab report (and losing their mind over excel)

degreasing the glass bevel stoppers

removing the permanent marker from beakers (labeling is important)

complaining about the lack of funding of [their field] research

cleaning glassware

preparing specimen for examination

googling the most basic equations for their report

checking if the glassware and utensil collections are complete

steal single use plastic pipettes from their lab

pirating expensive textbooks

A list of laboratory supplies and utensils you can have them work with

Laboratory general (chem + bio)

Erlenmayer flasks, beakers, precision scales (3 digits), glass rods, metal spoons/spatulas, screw on glass flasks (autoclave compatible) test tubes, stopcock grease, dispensers with sanitizer and hand cream, gas burners, heating plates, eppendorf pipettes, pipette tips, Peleus pipetting aids, squirting bottles, liquid and powder funnels, incubator/drying chamber, round watch glasses, magnet stirring plates.

Microbiology Autoclave, petri dishes, agar plates, innoculation loops (reusable and metal), clean bench, microscope slides, microscope, drigalski-spatula, test tubes with clamping lids

Histology

Paraffin bath, water bath, scalpels, scissors, razor blades, microtomes (rotating microtome, slide microtome and freezing microtome), histocinette, tweezers (various kinds), ocular

Biochemistry

Sequencing robots, eppendorf tubes, gelelectrophoresis chambers, centrifuge

Analytical Chemistry

Photometer, kuvettes, burettes, mass spectro meters, UV bank (for chromatogrophies), pyknometers, melting point meter, porcelain mortars, pH paper, analytical scales (4 or more digits)

Prep Chemistry

Tripod/standing material, miniature lifting platforms, spiral condenser, colon condenser, round bottom flask (three necked and y- necked), filtration material, Separating funnel

Electrical engineering

Electric generators, Soldering iron, Clamp connectors, plugin connectors, ohm’s resistors, plug in lamps, condensers, transistors, PCBs, amperemeters, voltmeters, multimeters

Mechanics

Tripod/standing material, metal hooks, metal rods, mechanical stop watches, marbles, metal springs, Newton meters, laser motion detectors

Optics

Prisma (various kinds), various glass lenses (concave, convex, biconcave, biconvex), laser pointers, optical bench, mechanical iris diaphragm, looking glasses, monochrome lamps, lamp filters

Most used chemicals

Deionized water, ethanol, NaOH, HCl, H3PO4, NaCl (+ physiological NaCl solution 0.9)

Useful websites for writing science stuff

DNA sequence generator (simple): http://www.faculty.ucr.edu/~mmaduro/random.htm

DNA, RNA and protein sequence generator: https://molbiotools.com/randomsequencegenerator.php Annealing temperature calculator: https://tmcalculator.neb.com/#!/main

Medicine name generator: https://www.fantasynamegenerators.com/medicine-names.php Anything chemistry related: https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=chemistry

Commonly used software:

MS Excel

Yenka

CASSY Lab

LabView

SpectraLab

LIMS

LaTex

Slack

Scientist friends, feel free to add onto this.

Have fun writing!

[xantchaslegacy]

Keen Sense and Curiosity

Some more Phyrexia happenings; check out the story on Ao3 too if the spirit moves you ;)

The cavern was empty.

As empty as any place could be on a plane where even metal lived, and tunnels of living flesh laced through the world from surface to core, and back again.

Walls of matte metal enveloped the cavern, carved smooth in some places by patient hands, and elsewhere patched with stretches of rougher-hewn, and more frequently, unhewn steel. Pools of varying depth and size blotched the cavern floor, brimming oily fluid; a mixture of effluvia that seeped in from the Hunter’s Maze above, and runoff from the labs that pumped in through meat-pipes from the Surgical Bays below.

The liquid churned, filled the air above it with the thick scent of life. It glowed, reflecting the false sunlight of the Hunter’s Maze that shone through tunnels of mirrored steel, flooding the space with a placid light. The fluid hummed in many low notes, a liquid choir that sang, just then, for no-one.

Even absent the creatures of Phyrexia, the cavern was active.

Active, but empty.

Two predators stalked into the cavern.

Glissa and Vorinclex prowled through the space. Side by side, elf and hulking praetor, scanning for danger by sight and smell and sound. Watching each others’ flanks with the practiced instinct of packmates.

Glissa tapped her scythe against the porous steel of the cavern.

Nothing of concern, as far I sense.

Vorinclex growled, low, and lumbered forward.

I smell nothing alarming. Stay alert.

Glissa sniffed her concurrence and fell back to the shadows, watching her companion as he went.

Phyrexia’s tongue was efficient, but the language of beasts had a guttural elegance that script and speech wanted for. That the "civilized" coveted.

Vorinclex sniffed the air once. Twice.

“Prawn.”

Speak of the devil .

Jin-Gitaxias strode into the cavern through a rounded tunnel that sloped upward from the Surgical Bays. Two chrome-capped cronies accompanied to him, chattering in their sanitized tongue.

“Hm.” Jin turned his head at the sight of Vorinclex. “You aren’t tardy.”

“As agreed.” Vorinclex’s voice, guttural even when he displayed the full and disarming range of his articulateness, rolled from his throat at a growl in Jin’s presence. “Brave of you to saunter out of your sterile little bunker.”

“As agreed.”

This cavern was a compromise of a rendezvous. One of many pockets between the Hunter’s Maze and Jin’s Surgical Bays that had formed as a semi-organic side effect of the intentional terraforming that had created the layers of their new Phyrexia.

The place had proven of interest to both factions so far, exacerbating the developments of predators in the vicious swarm, and (by the accounts of the Progress Engine) expanding the scope of Jin’s research with equal explosiveness.

It was one of the precious few, if not only, places in Phyrexia where the Vicious Swarm and the Progress Engine dwelt in equal measure, and felt equally comfortable.

Or equally un - comfortable, Glissa mused . Depending on who’s around.

“Vorinclex.” Jin-gitaxias’ voice, metallic and self-important, rang through the chamber like a bell. “It is surprisingly civilized of you to leave your attack dog behind.”

G lissa only sneered from the shadows at that. It was impossible that Jin-Gitaxias did not now she was there.

Vorinclex snorted. “We are praetors. We do not fear to fight our own battles.”

“Battle…? This is a simple trading of knowledge to benefit both our factions in the work to come. I understand if such a complicated notion frightens a simple brute. If you prefer to turn your tail...”

“I would not waste a chance for Phyrexia’s evolution,” Vorinclex spat. “Though I doubt I’ll find anything useful to the Swarm in the body of some sulking cell-scraper.”

“I am equally skeptical,” Jin replied, “that the mass of flesh that transports your meager brain will prove of any interest to our synthesis. Still, Norn will insist we work more collaboratively sooner than later. What she wishes, we must actualize. Better we begin such efforts in advance. In any case, further exploring the opportunities this space has to offer for our experimentation is worth a pointless hour of diversion.”

“Your portion of this space,” Vorinclex corrected. “The properties of these pools will be a boon to accelerate the development of the swarm’s best predators.”

“That is the agreement,” Jin said. “Wasted as it is on you and yours.”

Glissa scowled. The arrogance of the Engine’s Praetor was a sort of grating that only the self-proclaimed “civilized” could manage.

“That is part of the agreement.” Vorinclex prowled closer to Jin along a strip of metal ground that divided two of the pools, and sat up on his haunches, lording the few inches of height his current body had over the other praetor. “Sharing this space. Are you ready to share your secrets as well?”

“For the good of Phyrexia,” he added, smirking with his voice, if not his actual maw. He dislocated his jaw, and spat something at Jin’s feet. A red-white blur bounced once with a dull clatter then lay still on the cavern floor.

A phyrexian’s head and upper body, red-muscled and clad in plates of white porcelain steel.

“A souleater,” Jin observed, in his dispassionate way.

“One of Norn’s,” Vorinclex said, picking at his teeth with a finger on his smaller limbs. “A lurker. She may approve of our cooperation, but I will not suffer her eyes and ears where they have no business.”

Glissa smiled grimly. The cavern had been cleared of members of the Swarm and the Engine alike in preparation for this meeting, in some cases by force. Those efforts had revealed this member of Norn’s Machine Orthodoxy sects, lurking about the sub-layer. She had personally beheaded the agent herself and eaten its body with Vorinclex.

Jin-Gitaxias stooped slightly to inspect the half-corpse at his feet. “Norn will be displeased with her servant’s dispatching.”

Vorinclex licked his chops. “Are you displeased?”

“I serve Phyrexia’s greater ends. I have no opinion on small matters.”

“So it pleases you to come here for Norn’s benefit?”

“There is every chance our Great Synthesis could benefit from this exchange,” Jin replied. His jaws hardly moved as he spoke. Glissa wondered if his vocal chords even required motion of the mouth to communicate, with all the modifications he’d made to his body. “Allow the two most advanced specimens of our respective factions to examine each other and find how our best qualities can be shared between our...separate efforts to advance Phyrexia. It will certainly benefit your blind efforts to learn from us, and Norn will undoubtedly want you operating at a greater capacity than you do now.”

“Our glorious, ineffable leader,” Vorinclex snarled.

It’s good he speaks like that all the time, Glissa thought. Otherwise his scorn for Norn would be a more open secret.

“Our flawless mother.”

Jin-Gitaxias was harder to read. Glissa wished dearly to know what he actually thought of their self-proclaimed ‘mother.’

V orinclex spat into the pool. “ Your flattery would be wasted even if she was here to hear it .” He tilted his head, appraising Jin. “Shall we begin, or would you like to waste more time with words?”

Jin held up a closed hand, then raised a single index finger.

“I will insist on taking my observations first,” he said. “If you can contain yourself that long.”

“Please.” Vorinclex spread his arms wide, and his shadow fell on Jin’s toadies as well as the praetor himself. “Observe. I know you can’t wait to see what a real phyrexian looks like.”

“It is not eagerness, simply concern is that your own clumsy analyses will damage my instruments before I can take your measure.”

Vorinclex huffed, and lowered his arms to his sides while Jin turned to his attendants, who were busy pouring steaming liquid into a basin. Jin dipped his fingers into the stuff.

Sterilizing, Glissa realized. The acidic smell was powerful, even at a distance . Since the Swarm and the Engine had begun making joint use of it, each had introduced elements to the odor of the place, and while the acidic curdle of the Progress Engine's experiment pits did permeate the place, it usually melded queerly well with the more vital, vibrant scents of the Hunter's Maze, making a smell that was inoffensive to a hunter's nose, and even invigorating, at its best.

“So much ceremony,” Vorinclex observed. “I could inspect you twice over in the time it takes to complete your pageantry.”

“At least one of us needs to approach this exchange seriously.” Jin raised his hands from the bowl and began cleaning them on his apron, wiping each digit with a slow meticulousness that seemed maliciously deliberate. He looked to Vorinclex, still squatting on his haunches. “Will you lie supine for me?”

“Guess.”

“Hm.” Jin snapped, and his transcriptors snapped to attention. “Prepare to take notes.”

They chattered in affirmation.

Jin’s hands, those massive, long-fingered things that made Glissa think of blightwidows, began probing at Vorinclex’s shoulders, tracing along the massive spiked plates that protected his upper body. The light scrape of chrome on bone-steel rang like a chime through the cavern.

“Grand,” Jin remarked. “Such ostentatious plumage is likely effective in scaring off other simple beasts, I presume. I doubt our synthesis has much need for...bony shoulders.”

“Still,” he added, “It has a certain animal charm. It suits you.”

"When you find yourselves in the wilderness of a new plane, with nothing but your test-tubes and little needles to defend yourselves against the incomple at , you'll feel different."

Jin made a dismissive *click*-ing sound. "I have faced the strongest among the incompleat and triumphed." his hands trailed down from Vorinclex's bone-spurs and dragged way across his collar and breast. another crisp metallic note sheared the air. "This robust musculature, on the other hand…" His fingers splayed over the chest, probing at intervals with prods that brought soft huffs to Vorinclex’s breath. Jin’s other hand began taking measurements of Vorinclex’s arms, working its way from shoulder to arm to wrist to-

-Vorinclex seized Jin’s fingers, and lifted the arm above his head with a casual tug.

“A practical demonstration,” he growled, cutting Jin off. “Strength like this emerges through the struggle of life against life and death. Something that doesn’t happen in your test tubes and operating tables.”

“Untrue at its premise,” Jin replied, mildly. “In any case, the structure of your muscles can be examined, and reproduced by construction or artificial growth.”

Vorinclex cocked his head by the slightest degree. “I’ll believe it when I see it. How will you learn the structure of my flesh?”

“Our oil and research have yielded have many ways to examine what lies within. Lenses that can see past base matter. Magical tracers injected into the body and tracked with external scanners. However-”

Jin’s finger thinned, a subtle and silent shifting of the metal in his digit that Glissa might have missed if not for her eyes, compleat with a hunter’s acuity.

“I prefer to look for myself.”

Glissa tensed. Jin meant to cut Vorinclex open. She would allow it, of course, so far as Vorinclex was prepared to allow it, but would be ready to spring to his side should the need arise.

Jin, however, simply stood, half hanging by his wrist, looking at Vorinclex with his sharpened digit raised.

“Well?” Vorinclex sounded vexed by the pause. “Will you or won’t you?”

“We civilized people call this ‘waiting for permission,’ Jin said, enunciating the last three words with an insufferable deliberation.

Vorinclex barked a laugh, and released Jin’s hand. “When does the great butcher prawn wait for any thing’s permission? What sort of Phyrexian waits and does not just take what it intends?”

Jin ‘tsk’-ed through grit teeth. “Discourse between praetors should have more weight and social depth than the intercourse of beasts.”

“What do you know about the intercourse of beasts?” Vorinclex shifted, closing the distance between them. “Fine. This is permission to take whatever measures and make whatever cuts you need to slake your idiot thirst.”

“Whatever measures? I will remember that.”

Jin’s blade sank into Vorinclex’ upper arm with a disquieting ease. The muscle there was dense, as Glissa knew from hunting and scrapping with her companion. If the lack of resistance gave Vorinclex any pause, he showed no sign.

Nor did he look bored. He was watching Jin intently as he drew the blade down and lay open the topmost layer of Vorinclex’ skin and steel-twined muscle.

“The musculature...” Jin pulled aside Vorinclex’s hide and sliced deeper into the limb. Red and green and black dribbled in oily clumps from the cut. “...Impressively dense, as expected. Supply. Pliable. The proteins comprising the circulatory system...”

He trailed off, muttering and slicing. His unsharpened fingers working aside the fibers inside Vorinclex. Every few seconds he pulled a needle of silver from his knuckles and sank it into the flesh, marking a spot in the meat. Vorinclex’s gaze followed Jin as he moved down the arm, exhaling to punctuate each piece of Jin that was slipped into him.

"You've let the growth of your organics guide the development of your mechanical components," Jin observed. "A common thread in the Swarm specimens I've explored."

"They work in harmony," Vorinclex replied, as if explaining nursing to a newborn. "These components want to work as one, so there is no need to meddle in the finer details. A creature need only to act, and the instincts of the oil will guide the organic and its modifications to the best natural conclusion."

Jin scoffed. "Without adequate guiding intelligence...without intent, you are wasting time and resources with an uncoordinated approach."

"Oil is intelligence. Where you see only a vector, there is a guiding natural brilliance already present in the oil that outstrips the capacity of any sapient mind. Even yours, prawn. You say I waste resources? I say you waste time trying to bend the direction of an already perfect path to compleation."

“That’s as good as an admission of complacency,” Jin replied.

“It’s efficient use of our energies.” Vorinclex reached down and tapped one of the needles thrust through his upper arm. “unlike this.”

Jin only scowled at that.

After the arm came an incision along the back, then a cut along Vorinclex’ backmost thigh, down to the knee. The muscle within was vivid red and a maroon cocktail of oil flowed down the limb to the ground, where it soaked into the floor and trailed off into the pool behind him.

With every prod and pin from Jin, more of these fluids leaked down Vorinclex’s body in minute rivulets.

Still, Vorinclex stood as high on his haunches as he had at the outset.

“Another beast might have fallen from being cut open in this way,” Jin remarked.

“A lesser beast,” Vorinclex replied.

M ore cutting. More needles. Jin chattered away all the while as he cut deeper and deeper, until his probing found Vorinclex’s internal organs.

“Some actual efficiencies,” Jin murmured, shifting aside steel-mesh sacks and crocus-flesh enhancements, “And more than a few vanity organs that I presume let you play at being king of the beasts.”

“Not a king, just an aspiring apex.”

Jin fell silent after a period of further muttering and poking. His fingers ran the length of Vorinclex’s splayed-open leg, flank, and arm, tracing the patterns of muscle fiber within.

After a minute of this silence, Vorinclex stirred.

“Is something displeasing you, prawn?”

“The lack of something has me...intrigued.” Jin ran his sterilized digits through the fibers of Vorinclex’ arms. “It is known you boast a prodigious healing capacity, and yet I see nothing at work-”

“Watch your fingers,” Vorinclex said, interrupting.

The meat of his arm began joining with a sudden, soft, squirming, sucking noise so low and quick it barely registered to even Glissa’s ears. Jin withdrew his hands, but the closing muscles bunched around the longest of his fingers, and the digit came away trailing a gobbet of Vorinclex’s flesh.

Jin held up the stringy chunk of shuddering meat, turning it over in his fingers.

“A healing that must be triggered consciously. Interesting.”

“A healing that can be subdued intentionally,” Vorinclex cut in, as the rest of the cuts began sealing all along his body. “Aren’t scientists not supposed to jump to conclusions?”

J in ignored the question. “I will take this as a sample.” He held his hand out, and one of the transcriptors scuttled forward, producing a jar with a black seal about its lid. Jin popped the seal off and dropped the meat into the jar. H is minion shuffled back away, nearly tripping as Vorinclex growled at it, spattering the ground with spittle.

Having deposited most of the flesh. Jin wiped the rest from his fingers into a smaller tube, and examined it by the light; a series of metal tunnels reflected the false sunlight of the hunter’s maze down into the caverns; more than generous to see by.

Satisfied by what he observed, Jin tucked the test tube away in a slot in his flank. He spread the remaining smear of oily tissue onto Vorinclex’s arm, along the line of the now-healed cut. His other hand hovered above the healed-over incision on the leg.

“My pins are still inside your-”

“They are mine now. Carry on your examinations.”

“In that case-”

With a deft movement – a pull at the leg and push to the chest so subtle Glissa barely registered either, Jin unbalanced Vorinclex and flipped him into the pool. Vorinclex was too large to submerge fully in the fluid, and he displaced enough of the humming green stuff that Jin’s transcriptors were obliged to shuffle hastily backwards from the splash. Vorinclex let out an angry yelp, but Jin strode into the pool in two smooth steps and, straddling Vorinclex’s waist, grabbed his head in one massive hand. Jin continued vocalizing his examination as if nothing at all had happened.

“These teeth,” Jin murmured, his voice dropping in volume as he leaned in close to examine Vorinclex’ mouth. “Ingenious in form for affecting lethal lacerations in prey, though they are not especially well-rooted. Prone to falling out in the process of your...consumptions, I’d hypothesize.”

“Teeth break,” Vorinclex growled back. “Better to get good use out of them a few times and have a robust body to push new ones into place.”

“Wasteful.” Jin loomed closer. Vorinclex would have a front-row view of the blue praetor’s pristine, regular rows of chrome teeth. “Better something that lasts.”

“How long would it take you to replace those trinkets in your mouth if I savaged you right now? I can push out new teeth in seconds. I don’t need to go crawling back to a lab to replace my fierce parts.”

“You’d break your teeth a dozen times on mine before you even scratched my mouth.” Jin moved his face bare centimeters from Vorinclex’s, as if he meant to test his hypothesis on the other praetor there and then. “So savage away. But not until I’m finished with you.”

Jin’s fingers ran leisurely down Vorinclex’s side, fingers curving around from chest to back, probing his musculature and carapace with minute twitches, before coming to a rest on hips, where groin met thighs.

“Powerful legs. Claws and teeth that could render steel to fragments. You have excelled in your advancements toward animal perfection.” Jin dragged two fingers back up along Vorinclex's flank, the chrome making a surprisingly soft sound as the tips trailed over the metal-shod bone and exposed muscle.

Vorinclex snorted. His voice spoke dismissal of Jin’s comment, but he seemed, to Glissa’s eye, to almost preen at the comment, like a wolf showing off its coat.

“I am testament to the Swarm’s success. We have taken life that once barely subsisted and hobbled along among tangles of rust and created an ecosystem of thriving, ever-improving predators.”

Jin grunted at this newest failure to provoke Vorinclex. It was such an annoyed, base sound that Glissa had to suppress a giggle.

“Regardless of this...low success,” he said after a pause, “I hypothesize there might still be shortcomings in your Swarm.” Jin’s left hand snaked under Vorinclex’s gut, while his right slithered down Vorinclex’s thigh.

“And I would hypothesize those weaknesses might be reflected in your own...form.”

“You’ve seen me inside and out. Look as long as you like, you’ll find nothing resembling weakness.”

“We will see.”

Jin continued to inspect Vorinclex’ chest and neck. He kept up a constant monologue of numbers and measurements, his transcriptors at rapt attention. Neither had materials for writing. Sound recording devices built into their skulls, Glissa mused.

“You will be the first to attempt traversal across planes,” Jin commented after a while. “Our research to date suggests this will be a catastrophically traumatizing experience for your body.”

“I look forward to new hunting grounds.”

“There will be immense pain and an almost complete immolation of your form.”

“Is that all?” Vorinclex affected a yawn. “Good to know. I’ll bring my rubbers.”

Jin grumbled again. “It is regrettable Vrig failed to divine the secrets of Memnarch’s soul-traps...we might have achieved Phyrexia’s interplanar ends without such needless agony.”

Glissa stifled another giggle. It could not have been plainer Jin was hoping the comment would lead for a chance to expand on his tedious science.

“Research and development? Limited?” Vorinclex’s feigned shock was somehow more and not less pointed when growled. “Imagine my surprise.”

“It takes astoundingly little imagination to imagine you surprised,” Jin’s fingers darted suddenly to Vorinclex’s thigh, forefinger and thumb pressing into the veins below the hips.

Vorinclex grunted once. A soft bark that indeed betrayed surprise.

Glissa tensed, again.

“Curious.” Jin’s fingers had paused along the inside of Vorinclex’s thigh. “I would have suspected this organ here might be rendered obsolete by a...properly evolved creature.”

Vorinclex did not squirm. He was too proud, to perfect for such a thing. But he did shift noticeably under Jin’s observation

“Such a novel shape the tissues have taken.” Jin’s hand shifted under space where Vorinclex’ hind legs met. “The Grand Evolution is abundant with its own surprises. This feels like...an advancement of the Crocus blooms, yes? Grafted onto...no...grown from your body?”

Vorinclex did not shy away from Jin’s gaze.

“Some creatures among the swarm yet benefit from physiological stimulation to encourage breeding.”

“It yields rapid generations and equally explosive improvements in biology,” he added, sounding as defensive as an apex predator of Phyrexia could.

“The father of machines disdained such methods of reproduction,” Jin mused aloud. “Much of old Phyrexia did, at least on the nine spheres.” His hand had disappeared up to his first elbow, and it did not escape Glissa’s notice that the fingers on his right hand were running through the fur on Vorinclex’s back, caressing the spine. “‘Grow’ is our watchword. Not ‘breed.’”

“The father of machines failed,” Vorinclex spat. “And perhaps he disdained procreation because he was too preoccupied with writing into the scriptures his own sad failures to acquire the mate he desired.”

“And who have you been mating with?” Jin inquired. “Beasts? Elves? Wurms? I would have guessed you and yours were too busy trying to eat each other and preening your muscles and metal at one another to find time to breed.”

“I will take a sample,” he added, gripping tight onto Vorinclex’ fur.

“Don’t waste breath talking about what you will do. Do it.”

“Mm.” Jin withdrew his hand from the spine with a jerk and a sound like a canvas torn in two, pulling out a clump of spined hairs from Vorinclex’ back.

Vorinclex tensed and growled.

Jin’s other hand came away from between thighs, and Vorinclex jerked this time. Jin held between thumb and forefinger a strip of tissue.

“I presume your healing is as robust in your crocus organs as it is in your muscle?”

Vorinclex rose up, though not to his full height, dripping pool-fluid. “Prodigiously robust. You can inspect closer, if you dare place your head where your hand was bold enough to wander.”

“Regardless,” Jin replied, clinically smug, returning his hand to Vorinclex’ leg. “That the most advanced among the Swarm...the apex of phyrexian evolution, even, would possess such an organ...” He trailed off, and made a series of soft clicking “tsk”s. “I would think that you might think it...weakness.”

Vorinclex lunged toward the edge of the pool. Jin, not expecting the move, was thrown forward and landed in as semi-sprawled position in the shallows. Glissa suppressed a laugh to see the praetor so prone, his little skirt and apron askew about his legs.

“You are losing focus, prawn.” Vorinclex's voice was dangerously low as he prowled forward to loom over Jin. “I am ready to take my turn.”

“Impatient,” Jin clicked. He pulled back the skirt, perhaps to keep it from getting wetter, though it was thoroughly soaked from what Glissa could see. The fluid of the pool also, had shifted in color, while they stood in it, from an acid green to something more like the blue-green light when Lyese and the Eye of Doom both broke the horizon together.

“Worried that I’ll break you?”

Jin hummed, a raspy vocalization of frustration . “Not at all. My concern is that your clumsy pawing will not yield the data your swarm need s to adequately better itself.”

“Never mind my paws, Jin. I have my other ways of taking your measure,” Vorinclex rumbled. His maw thrust forward, to within inches of Jin’s neck. From her place, Glissa could hear his breath. See it steam along the metal of Jin’s jaw.

“A predator can probe by scent and taste alone.”

“Bestial senses,” Jin scoffed. “Your means of analysis are as crude as those you use to advance your evolution.”

Vorinclex responded by placing his forelimb across Jin’s shoulder, pushing him down into the shallows of the pool, and sniffing further down the other praetor’s neck, approaching his shoulder.

“Hm.”

He stopped there, inspecting the metal of Jin’s collar in a slow circuit. Jin seemed unsure what to do with his head as Vorinclex probed, and opted to remain still. Vorinclex moved almost painfully slowly, and Glissa could not help but wonder what was driving this uncharacteristic display of patience.

V orinclex’s breath continues to fog on Jin’s chrome surface as he moved, leaving a misty, matte trail on the shining body that faded quietly as he wandered across Jin’s form .

Jin kept silent for several more minutes as Vorinclex probed further down, inspecting chest and shoulders. Every few seconds he would adjust his fore-paws, never pressing down on one stretch of Jin’s body for too long, but never taking off enough weight to allow him to rise, either.

“How are you recording this?”

Jin’s voice was strained, the already metallic voice reverberating as if spoken through a funnel of steel. Almost as like he’d run a long distance.

Vorinclex paused at the question. He was just then running the edge of his snout along Jin’s elbow, and he made a slow, deliberate trail of Jin’s head as he re-positioned himself to look Jin in whatever portion of his face would best correspond to eyes.

“Recording?”

“Yes.”

“I will remember, of course,” Vorinclex placed a broad paw over Jin’s midsection. Maroon-muscled digits closed around Jin’s silvery, snake-like spine. “An apex’s eyes miss nothing. An apex savors every meal it takes the measure of.”

“You intend to eat me, Vorinclex?”

“If I ate you, Jin-Gitaxias….REALLY ate you, I would not get to see the despair in you when the Grand Evolution crushes your Synthesis, and all the other fool dogmas of Phyrexia under its heel. When all is one with our mighty Swarm, when all are free of sapience and weakness...perhaps on that day I will eat you. But no sooner.”

“But since you brought it up...” Another paw closed around Jin’s corded spine, though Vorinclex kept his weight on his hind legs so his weight did not crush the other. “I can’t think of a better use for you than nutrition to fuel the Great Evolution.”

“Can’t think, that is one among many defects,” Jin rasped. “No imagination. No critical thought. Nothing beyond instinct. Fitting traits for a king of beasts.”

“Your opinion,” Vorinclex growled, shifting forward so his shadow fell of Jin. “Me, I like my current position.”

“You don’t dispute it?”

“I wouldn’t want to waste your time debating with a mere beast.” Vorinclex’ jaw shifted into something only a few would recognize as a smile. “This spine of yours...” He pressed forward slowly, and Jin sank further into the pool, a glowing mix of oil and other fluids washing over him. “Strong. Stronger than it looks. I’ve torn apart wurms with less durability.”

“The result of rigorous research and development,” Jin said, the pride tangible enough that Glissa could detect it even in his metallic monotone. “Not the sort of strength one could just evolve through blind-”

“And yet,” Vorinclex continued, pressing down further. “Even with such a strong support, I suspect there’s no real backbone beneath it. That must be why your posture is so slovenly.”

“Ah-” Jin started to say something, but whatever it was caught in his throat, and instead a low, tinny buzzing noise came from his chest. his fingers found the hollows in Vorinclex’s forearms. The same forearms that held him in the pool. His fingers wove their way into the space, gripping onto the other praetor’s limbs.

“Ah, it looks like I’ve found something.” Vorinclex, if it was even possible, leaned in closer, bearing down on Jin. “This can’t be where air flows through, so I can only assume I’ve hit a nerve.”

“How-ah!” Jin cut off again into more buzzing.

"I'm gleaning more than you know." Vorinclex' hands were almost entirely submerged in the pool, but it was clear from the movement of his arms that he was probing the length of Jin's spine. "I'm intrigued by how you've arranged your nerves to run the length of this tube-body of yours. Incredible use of space, but not without its tender spots…As for your form..you could have a raptor’s grace, if only your limbs were not so inefficient in proportion to-"

Jin’s hand jolted up Vorinclex’s arm, and pressed at a spot just below his jaw, where head met body. Vorinclex’ weight shifted suddenly to one side, and Jin used the momentum to roll the both of them sideways, splashing through the pool, which hummed with tripled vigor.

Jin rolled atop Vorinclex, and for a split second Glissa’s leg’s fell into a crouch in preparation to strike his head from his body-

But Vorinclex, using the sheer advantage of his weight, carried the roll another turn, and pinned Jin beneath him, once again half-submerging his chrome form in the fluid.

They remained that way for long seconds, Jin humming hoarsely, and Vorinclex’s arms tremoring.

“Very clever, little prawn,” Vorinclex said, finally. “All that time spent studying was not entirely wasted.”

“Your evolution has granted you some low advantages,” Jin conceded in his tinny rasp. “I am beginning to re-evaluate my chances of thriving in your death-trap of a home.”

The pool fluid around Jin was slowly turning a more metallic sheen, a mixture of blue, purple, and black metallic. Where it dispersed into the blue-green, it became more muted, but seemed to churn with a thick urgency

"Of course you would not survive in the Maze. Your form has been molded to fit into your filthy operating theatres."

“So I should simply remain in my labs in perpetuity?”

"I didn't say that. You and your meat-molders are more than welcome among the Swarm. I'm intrigued to see how perfect your form could be if you let the oils of the Maze shape you into a true predator."

"You said I would not survive."

"Because you would never embrace it. It isn't in your nature. If you could come down from your chrome pedestal, and hunt and adapt like any other beast, you could be something tremendous."

“You underestimate me.”

“That was never a problem. That you overestimate yourself is.”

“I am capable of cooperation and collaboration, it is others who are too insular or insecure to take full advantage.”

“I’m taking full advantage now, or didn’t you notice?”

“You have lingered unusually long on my spine.” Jin shifted his grip on Vorinclex’s left arm, his fingers moving closer to the shoulder. “It is an unparalleled example of compleation, but I wonder how useful the time you are spending on it is now.”

“Lower then.” Vorinclex shifted his grip, and his attentions, to where Jin’s skirt began. If you insist.”

“‘What is planted below will determine what flourishes above.’”

Vorinclex paused, one of his fore-paws beginning to pull back apron and skirt. “Poetry?” He asked, scorn clear in his growl.

“One of Sheoldred’s prophecies,” Jin replied. He kept a grip on the nearest of Jin’s paw’s. “One I have been pondering at length when my schedule allows. Her counsel and her company have been more useful than seeking cooperation from you or the furnace-rat.”

“Sheoldred.” Vorinclex spat the name as if it had been a bone lodged in his throat. “A waste of your time. If there’s one thing more useless than your science it’s prophecy and soothsaying. The only reality you should care about is the reality of flesh and fangs.”

“They have proven exceptionally useful, her prophecies,” Jin replied, almost sing-song through the grate of his voice. “She has been my most fruitful partner outside the Engine.”

Vorinclex grunted, and leaned further into Jin. The chrome praetor sank another few inches into the pool.

Jin's own arm shifted as Vorinclex's did, his fingers still clinging to the hollows in the other praetor’s arms.

Vorinclex seized Jin’s shoulder in his maw and, with a quick thrust of his head, tossed him further into the pool. Before Jin could even conceive of rising up, Vorinclex was looming over him again, this time with a massive limb planted to either side of the chrome Praetor’s head.

“Enough talk. I’m not done knowing you.”

Keeping his left paw planted, Vorinclex cradled Jin’s head in his right. The muscle of his arm began to distend and lengthen. Moments later, branches of flesh were snaking under and across Jin-Gitaxias. Vorinclex’s lower arms began to distend as well, and resumed the probing at Jin’s legs.

An exasperated sigh escaped Jin as the upper-arm tendrils splayed his arms out, binding his limbs to the ground and tethering b etween his long fingers.

“Silence is a waste. I have plenty of additional data I might gather from observing your clumsy pawing.”

“Speak to your toadies if you wish. I don’t mind your noise.”

V orinclex pulled back Jin’s skirt in one swift motion, and a rip cut through the humming as his skirt tore along one side, revealing sleek legs of chrome.

“The leader of the Swarm is notably and conspicuously preoccupied with my lower anatomy,” Jin said, conspicuously loudly. Louder at least than his trascriptors would have needed him to speak to hear. “His probing, already indelicate, becomes borderline frenetic as his bestial sensory organs take account of the perfection of my form.”

The distended muscles around Jin’s upper body tightened audibly. He did not abate in his monologue, but the fluid around him grew more intense with it’s churning, and deepened in its dark-metallic tint.

“-seems completely capable of processing auditory information, even when preoccupied with pursuits of base interest-”

Vorinclex bared his maw, and something not dissimilar to his distended arm-muscle snaked out. It was not a tongue exactly, as sapient creatures of flesh might understand it, but a sensory organ modeled after crocus organisms Glissa had perfected with compleat frogmites.

Just now, this organ took the measure of Jin’s legs, probing the knit of cable and struts that joined below the waist, extending into chrome-capped knees.

“-searching perhaps for an equivalent anatomy to his own, not appreciating that, unlike the cumbersome designs of the Swarm, creatures of the Progress Engine make use of modular bodily components that may be included or exempted from certain activities based on their applicability to the situation at-”

The tendrils about Jin’s chest began to writhe, and pulled his arms from a T-formation to up above his head, dragging him further up along the bank.

“-ah-”

Vorinclex’s secondary arms moved up again to Jin’s core, leaving the explorations below to the tongue. His palms rested along the segmented coil enveloping Jin’s spine.

“-feeling to measure the reactions of my nervous system to his probing and brutalization. A simplistic approach, but showing more attention to detail than one might expect from-”

Jin’s ankles and feet received more lingering examination. Vorinclex tested the durability of each digit with his snout, pushing them to the extent of their flexibility. The construction of Jin’s heel seemed of particular interest.

“-most likely having discovered yet another anatomical superiority his own faction lacks in-”

Two tendrils wound a spiral around Jin’s neck.

“-a curious maneuver. What sort of response he hopes to elicit is a mystery, as even he must know respiration in a specimen as advance as myself is-”

Jin cut off suddenly as both tendrils slithered into his mouth and down his throat, writhing all along their length as they went.

Vorinclex gave no outward sign he was conscious of what his arms were doing. Glissa had no doubt he was enjoying the opportunity deeply regardless.

The opportunity, and the rasping, muffled sound of Jin attempting to continue his monologue.

Vorinclex brought one of his smaller arms up to the side of his head and tapped around where his sheltered ears lay. He favored Jin with a shrug.

Jin’s muffled attempts ceased suddenly, and a rattling vibration started up in his chest.

“His tactile limbs navigate the obstacles of my internal organs with unexpected efficacy. A lifetime meandering through the unorganized hazards of the Tangle and the Hunter’s Maze have helped develop a low cunning useful for-”

A voicebox somewhere on his body, built into the chest, maybe. Glissa smirked from the shadows. Leave it to Jin-gitaxias to build in redundant systems to make sure no one could ever shut him up.

Vorinclex’s maw had returned to Jin’s midsection as his tendrils lifted Jin’s arcing spine out of the fluid. His tongue traced over each coil of the segmented spinal spikes that fanned out around Jin’s back.

“-that he can carry out so many parallel probings of my form is astounding, especially given the thoroughness. It is of course a shadow of the theoretical network efficiency our faction has already accomplished with the vedalken mindmeld, but nevertheless-”

Vorinclex released his grip on Jin’s spine, but his body remained bent over the surface of the pool, as if straining of its own volition.

“-able to contort my body from within using his tendrils-”

That he can keep rambling on with several tons of muscle and steel shoved down your gullet is incredible enough, Glissa mused.

“-tendrils prove resilient to the acids of my stomach and the abrasive metal components of my internal-”

Tiny offshoots of Vorinclex’s arms, thin fibers of metal and crocus-perfected flesh, w o rked like roots into the crevices of Jin’s upper body. The fluid all around them was properly churning now with the combined effects of their movement and the essences leaking from both of them into the pool.

“-provided his brain is capable of such memorization, the beast should have explored enough of my innards to form a rudimentary map of my major external organs.”

“A fair exchange of information.”

Glissa almost started at Vorinclex’s voice. He’d been silent for nearly a half-hour.

Jin shuddered and tsk-ed. “This is...not equitable...I did not explore you nearly as deeply with my dissections-”

“I can feel your pin-probes working their slow way through me, collecting information,” Jin cut in. “Spare me.” He moved his face closer to Jin’s. “What is your conclusion on my own research technique, hm?”

Jin turned his head. “You were studying my actions. My reactions. Taking note of how I grapple with you, and my stimulus response to your aggression.”

“Obviously. This is how a predator learns.”

“Learning...what use is learning to you?”

“Everything learns.”

“Your evolution is a mindless charade. You mean to tell me you have a use for the scientific process?”

“You misunderstand the Grand Evolution, and you do degrade it by comparing it to evolution writ large. Even at it’s basest, evolution is not a process of becoming the biggest, the strongest, or the most fang-filled-”

“As if any of those things are prized or rare in our Phyrexia,” Jin observed.

Vorinclex made a rasping sound that Glissa knew to be a chuckle. “Evolution simply rewards whatever creature can rut and breed best. What makes a new generation that survives to do the same in perpetuity wins.

“Our Grand Evolution is more than just evolution as the flesh knows it. We see a process failing, we see a useless limb or vestigial encumbrance, and we remove it there and then. A jaw formation fails to aid a predator in its hunting? The jaw must go. A venom fails to kill outright from a single bite? The glands that produce it must be replaced. A creature like you-”

Vorinclex leaned into Jin, his voiced dropped to a strained snarl. "You are s quandered potential. You've coated yourself in such potent metals. Hacked yourself and your septic underlings into such ingenious shapes. But now you languish in front of vats and corpses, those clever bodies untempered and untested against real strength."

J in barely stirred at the commentary. “Your approach is both more scientific and more reckless than I thought. No concern for long-term consequences. Short-sighted and slapdash modifications.”

Vorinclex pulled his head back. “You got me talking again, silver-prawn. You’re such a fool I forget how clever you can be.”

“More flattery than I anticipated.” Jin raised a hand and brushed the side of Vorinclex’s jaw. Vorinclex leaned into the gesture, almost imperceptibly.

“Interesting.” Jin’s hand came away, and he inspected something along the back of his thumb. “Heightened levels of adrenaline, even compared to your baseline.” He wiped the thumb on Jin’s forearm. “I will take samples for my research.”

“Don’t let me stop you.”

Jin half-rose to a seated position, long strands of Vorinclex' arms still draped around his shoulders. He looked to Glissa like one of the vedalken draped in their bulky suits.

With the same hand he’d caressed with, Jin flexed, and the middle finger elongated, thinner than the scalpel-finger had been, until it was needle-fine. One of the transcriptors waded into the shallow of the pool, and affixed a clear container to the back of Jin’s hand.

Vorinclex carried on tasting the air about Jin’s neck and face all the while, arm draped round the other praetor’s back.

As the Transcriptor waded out again, Jin slid the needle into Vorinclex’s collar with a smooth deliberation. A snake slipping into a burrow. Vorinclex showed no overt sign of feeling it, though he kept steady, even as his probing increased in intensity about Jin’s chest. If Jin's instruments were as fine-tuned as he claimed, they were sure to have picked up on the rumble within Vorinclex' chest, mixing with the sounds of the fluids in the pools.

The glass vial on Jin’s hand began to fill.

“Under the fallen father, Phyrexia developed many variations of oil, as you well know.” Jin leaned forward into Vorinclex’s shoulder. “Substances found in the artifacts of planes explored during our many years of exploration, powdered powerstone, the fluids of the many lesser creatures whose bodies we mastered...we produced glands to resist acid and fire, to fuel sleepless hulks and unailable plague vectors.”

A fluid, clear and green-tinted, and laced with golden filament, filled the glass. More still poured into the container at a thick flow.

“The oil is an art we have all benefited from and contributed to. Even you beasts of the swarm.”

“I’ve touched the inside of you, prawn. Your oils are not more impressive than mine, just different.”

“Did you enjoy their taste, Vorinclex?”

Vorinclex laughed – a thundering rumble from his gut.

“I should be asking if you are enjoying the taste of me right now.”

“Ah, yes, I forgot you were in there.”

Jin bit down, hard, severing the tendrils Jin had shoved down his throat.

“Ah-”

Vorinclex pulled his hands up, tearing the thinner cords of sinew and steel. His fore-arms re-formed in full with a sharp, violent sucking sound, and he pounded back down into the pool, dousing them both.

Jin, for his part, vibrated with a grinding noise from inside his chest. His needle had snapped off in Vorinclex’s neck.

“Now that is what I would call fair exchange.”

Vorinclex spat into the water, and stalked back up out the side of the pool, shaking out his coat as he went, splattering the walls and floors with the fluid of their exchange. Jin clambered back up the bank of the pool, reclining with an arm balanced on his knee.

“You’ve ruined my skirt.”

“I’m sure you’ll find a nicer one somewhere.” Vorinclex stretched out his forelimbs. “Was that useful for you, prawn?”

“It was not entirely unproductive,” Jin replied. His transcriptors approached him from behind, still muttering away.

“I could learn even more if we had our entire network of caverns and pools at our disposal.” Vorinclex’s claws flexed. “If you were willing to let me hunt you through the space, I could glean multitudes about how you tick...if such a thing interested you…?”

“Guess.”

“Hmph.”

“A moment.” Jin turned to his transcriptors and, with a single deft swipe of his hand, separated their domed heads from their bodies.

The heads never hit the ground; Jin plucked them out of the air with his other hand, and tucked them into a compartment at his waist. The bodies slumped in place, sagging but standing upright.

Vorinclex sniffed. “Failed in their recording?”

“Succeeded, which is why I will be taking their knowledge into myself. It is an unnecessary risk to have such valuable data wandering around inside beings so susceptible to bribery or abduction. Here-” Jin waved a hand over the bodies, and began collecting the jars and other vials they had assembled. “A gift – you may eat those. I have no more use for their ambulatory parts. These were grown from samples of myself; they can be your consolation prize, since you cannot have me.”

“A waste of resources.” Vorinclex looked down on the bodies with disdain. “Phyrexia is still a closed system until Norn can break through to new hunting grounds. Can’t your research make use of them?”

Jin looked up at Vorinclex, but did not answer right away. He continued to collect the samples the transcriptors had gathered.

“Most likely,” He said at last. “It was only a goodwill gesture.”

“I eat only what is worth being eaten. Those septic corpses are worth nothing.”

“Hm.”

“The exploration of your form is goodwill enough,” Vorinclex rumbled.

“I will offer something else then.” Jin made a strange gesture; a movement of the hand from chest to side. “We are, despite valid criticisms, among the pinnacles of our factions. Your crocus creations-”

“Glissa’s Crocuses. They are the fruit of her labours.”

Jin clicked irritably. “The crocuses are, despite their crudeness, well suited to aiding the sort of newt and germ generation the progress engine has perfected. We might then make children from our respective materials-”

“Yours and mine?”

Jin paused, but Vorinclex pressed on.

“You and me, specifically?”

“It is a proposal with immense promise.”

Vorinclex tilted his head. “I would be...curious to see what comes of it.”

Jin leaned forward, and Glissa imagined for a moment she saw his jaw clench into a smile. “An understandable position. We have this space here, and Norn will approve of anything that could add such potent forces to Phyrexia. If you would only-”

“I won’t,” Vorinclex cut in, with a sudden, unmistakable edge.

“...why?”

“What does it matter ‘why’? I said no.”

Jin hummed in exasperation. “We have already seen great leaps and bounds in our respective factions’ grand designs. Why not join our own materials to see what can be made anew for Phyrexia? Urabrask and Sheoldred have their own project underway, and even the tangle has a fine specimen resulting from your proximity to the Furnace.”

“Norn will have no children of mine.”

"The swarm is already committed to her expansion. To our expansion. What does it matter whether they are of your direct lineage?"

"There is no singular "Swarm" to be committed. Glissa and I don't limit where our hunters range, and I won't deny them whatever killing grounds the Orthodoxy open for Phyrexia. They're free to join Norn's conquests whatever way they please.”

Jin hummed with irritation. “If they are free, then...I ask again, why not-”

“If a phyrexian I spawn chooses, they may follow Norn. If a predator can make itself mightier on the flesh of the planes she wishes to open up, I welcome the chance. If the creatures our factions collaborate on here are meant for her schemes, so be it. What I will not do is personally sire for the sole end of adding to her legions. I won't give my own brood to be her tools. She has you for that, prawn."

Silence. Jin turned away, and busied himself with extracting the vials and other samples from the bodies of his transcriptors, tucking them into a bag at his waist, and several slots along his back.

“It’s a wasted opportunity,” he said at last, not looking up. “This space has already proven useful to our efforts beyond measure. I foresee much great progress being made here.”

“That’s why we were here to-” Vorinclex’s gaze swept the cavern. “Yes. That’s why we agreed to this.”

“I am trying to discover the way forward for all Phyrexia. Not just for Norn’s benefit.”

“Then you should look up from your dissection tables, Jin, and see the world Norn is making with clear eyes, and how you contribute to it.”

“As you do.”

“I know what I am contributing to, and how I am contributing.”

Jin hummed. “I am not ignorant.”

“You don’t have to be ignorant to fool yourself.”

Jin hissed at that, so low it was almost lost in the humming of the cavern, but still he hissed. He turned away from Vorinclex.

From the transcriptor’s bodies, Jin extracted two more vials – long, empty lubes of glass. He waded out into the pool, and knelt.

The fluid was much changed by their activities. From acid-green to blue-green, to something that seemed to Glissa’s eye like colored quicksilver, shimmering form purple to blue to green to black to purple again. It sang a markedly more complex tune now than the humming of the fluid in the other pools.

Slowly, Jin tipped the vials into the fluid and filled them up, stopping each with a plug of gummy black material.

“I will test incubating my next batch of larvae in the fluid from this pool,” Jin said, tucking the vials into compartments in his breast. “It has absorbed some of my own essence, which should at least...counterbalance any defects you might introduce.”

“I’m sure the notion does not make you uncomfortable,” Jin added, somehow baring even more of his teeth than usual. “I do not fear to create life for Norn’s Phyrexia.”

Vorinclex said nothing, but regarded Jin for a few seconds longer.

Then, still without a word, he lowered his maw into the fluid of the breeding pool, and began to drink.

And drink.

Jin just stared. Glissa realized her own breath had caught in her chest.

And still, Vorinclex drank deeply of the stuff, and the humming of the fluid shifted, chords of sound rippling through the cavern as he sucked the glowing stuff up into his maw.

When he at last lifted his head, minutes later, the gaze of every other person in the chamber followed the movement.

He merely licked his chops, and stretched out his shoulders with what Glissa knew to be intentional effect.

“Meager,” Vorinclex noted at last. “But, if I cannot eat you, that’s the next best thing. Maybe you managed to leak a useful mineral or two into the pool.”

Then, with a deliberate grace, he looped out of the pool, leaving Jin to watch him go in silence. Iridescent, humming fluid dripped from his sides onto the spongy metal floor, which soaked the liquid up with a greedy haste.

Glissa smiled at Vorinclex as he rejoined her, then back at Jin, shooting the latter praetor a tight smirk and sneer.

Your scientist has been pleasantly rattled.

Vorinclex grunted.

He’s not mine. And now I’m liable to be sick.

Glissa snorted a laugh.

They began their climb back to the Maze. As the breeding pools disappeared behind them, Glissa patted at Vorinclex’s flank, where Jin had cut into him and delved inside. He rumbled his appreciation, but when she went to wipe the fluid from his jaw, he pulled away.

She let him be. There was much work being done, and yet to be done still. This diversion had certainly been trying enough on its own.

As the light of the Hunter’s Maze began to fill the tunnel, Vorinclex’ tongue slipped out the corner of his mouth.

Almost absently, he began to lick traces of fluid from his chops.

"Keen Sense and Curiosity” is unofficial Fan Content permitted under the Fan Content Policy. Not approved/endorsed by Wizards. Portions of the materials used are property of Wizards of the Coast. ©Wizards of the Coast LLC.

[givemearmstopraywith]

i've spent most of my weekend reading survivor testimony from auschwitz for a research project and i think what im getting is that people have a very very difficult time grasping to the depth of depravity that went on during the holocaust, myself included, because most of what is included in the historical record is too disturbing to portray in media and just "inconsequential" to be taught your average history course (unless you're specifically learning about the holocaust in depth no class is going to talk about the state of the latrines in auschwitz, the fact that it smelled constantly of burnt bones, or exactly what sort of food people had access to). and i think this has led to a real anesthetizing, even sanitizing, of genocide and atrocity in general. it is enabling both reactionary jokesters who make gas chamber jokes and also literal holocaust denial. it is also enables denial of genocide in general, and people who can joke about world war three when there are millions of lives at stake.

israel has played a huge, frankly pivotal, role in sanitizing the holocaust at the expense of survivors and their children. israel has reframed the holocaust as a political and economic tool that can be use to bludgeon colonizer agendas into global consciousness at the expense of humanizing victims. a vast majority of israeli leaders had no direct connection to the holocaust. they did not survive a genocide: they lived in another country. golda meir was american. netanyahu is american. david ben-gurion was happily creating murderous colonizer policies in palestine during the war. it is the sanitization of the holocaust by israel (as well as countries like the us that were absolutely complicit in allowing the holocaust to go on as long as it did) that has led to people being unable to grasp the severity of what's happening in palestine too. and zionists wonder why so many holocaust survivors and their descendents support a free palestine.

[satureja13]

There she is. Albaleyh's ship. Great A'Tuin II And while poor Ji Ho explores how intergalactic travel sickness feels with his new - so much more intense - feelings, the others are in utter awe. Even Vlad turned away from Ji Ho for a second to look at her. Jack: "Wow." Vlad, who reads a lot: "She really looks a bit like a turtle." Jeb is a bit worried: "And she is huge! Look at the X-Wing in comparison! Are you sure we can handle her, Rubyn?" Rubyn: "You prepared thoroughly. Take your time to get used to her. It'll be just awesome once you'd adjusted and she moves, you'll see." They are still talking about the ship, aren't they? Sai can't wait for the huge ship to finally move!

Rubyn docked the Falcon and the Boys went aboard. They just stepped into the ginormous cargo bay when poor Ji Ho collapsed. So sudden that Vlad, who was just a step behind his Bonded, failed to catch his fall: "Gods, Ji Ho!"

Usual plan was to take a short round to explore the ship so Rubyn could show the Boys the main attractions of Great A'Tuin II before she has to leave...

Rubyn: "Vlad, take Ji Ho across the bay. This is where you'll find your quarters. Stay with him and let him rest. The others can show you around later, hm?" Ji Ho scrambled up. No way he is keeping Vlad from taking a look at the first spaceship he's ever been on! (Minus the Millenium Falcon that had brought them here ^^') Ji Ho: "I'm fine!" But even if Vlad wouldn't sense through their Bond how awful Ji Ho felt - he could see how pale he was. And the cold sweat on his forehead. Rubyn, as the highest-ranking officer on board: "This is an order." And so they left. Ji Ho only reluctantly. He felt even more awful now...

And the first thing Ji Ho explored on the first* spaceship he's ever been on, was the talking toilet 'Potty Mouth 2.0'... Potty Mouth 2.0: 'You must feel awful. Don't worry. I'm happy to clean up, sanitize and spray the scent of the wild flowers of Vergon 6 after you left. I hope you'll have a quick recovery.' Ji Ho: "Eh - why, thank you..."

Before Ji Ho could slip into their bed, Vlad had to help him to get rid of his sweaty uniform and wash up. Well, that was not what Ji Ho was wishing for yesterday when he wanted Vlad to be with him under the shower... No one wants his loved one to see him like this...

Ah finally, the bed! Ji Ho could barely keep his eyes open: "I'm fine now. Quick, go and join the others for the tour." Vlad: "I'm not going to leave you alone. We are going to explore everything together. Once you feel better." Vlad is still talking about the tour, is he?

Vlad feels Ji Ho's inner turmoil through their Bond and he knows exactly what Ji Ho was thinking. He's worrying he's going to ruin this whole journey for Vlad. Whenever they'll have to use the shuttle to explore strange new worlds; to seek out new life and new civilizations - make small steps for a Boy but giant leaps for mankind - he's going to be sick. And Vlad would want to care for him. And miss it. But Vlad doesn't care - he only cares for Ji Ho. Vlad reassured him and Ji Ho felt his sincerity: "This is a slow ship and we have a long way to go. Means, we have a lot of time until we reach our first destination. I'll talk to Jeb and Kiyoshi and we'll figure out a cure. Don't worry." 'Don't worry'. That's what Potty Mouth 2.0 said too... Ji Ho closed his eyes. Too exhausted to argue. Since they all didn't sleep last night to prepare for the tests, Ji Ho is so, so tired. Soon he fell into a deep sleep. And Vlad stayed by his side. It will help Ji Ho to recover faster when his Bonded is close to him.

The first - and most important - halt on the tour are the transporter chambers. Rubyn: "Don't you ever go near them - let alone enter. This is where the crew vanished in - and what eventually lead to B.D's imprisonment. I tried to turn them off but somehow they're still malfunctioning..." Saiwa gulped: "Understood." First thing under his command will be to block the entries to these horror chambers ö.Ö' No member of his crew is going to vanish here under his watch!

And when they turned around, they saw where B.D's kids must have had their playground... Rubyn let out a short sob: "Albaleyh couldn't bare to come back after B.D had been arrested. I hope you don't mind she didn't clear the kids' stuff away."

Saiwa, determined: "We are going to do everything in our powers to bring him back to his family!" The others nodded grimly. This is so sad.

They continued their tour. Rubyn - now full of pride: "And this is the bridge - connected with the engine room!" Jack: "Whoa!" Oh, Jack can't wait to show Vlad around. This is going to be so awesome!

And there is Moogie's, the bar!

'Starlight, star bright, falling star that I'm seein' tonight

Time is rollin' on and I, I'm the one who's wrong I'm the one should be movin' on, oh babe A heart can only stand so much It needs to touch someone, someone

So, it's up to you, do you love me too? I get so confused when you throw excuses my way, oh baby I need your love to hang on Please tell me that love ain't gone forever

Where is my rainbow, where is my sunny day? (There's a star for everyone who's lost) Where is the fantasy, who took the dream away? (There's a star for everyone) Where is my star, who took the dream away?'

There's a Star for Everyone - Aretha Franklin This song would have totally fit to be on one of the 'Awesome Mix' tapes from the Guardians of the Galaxy movies :3

Outtakes Vlad, who startled Ji Ho when he started to wash him: "Forgive me."

Ji Ho: "It just was a bit unexpected ö.Ö' "

Ji Ho: "Em - keep ...keep going?" Vlad: "Sure?" Ji Ho: "Yes." Vlad: "O - Ok..." Now that was what Ji Ho was wishing for yesterday!

From the Beginning 🔱 Underwater Love 🔱 Latest

Current Chapter: starts ▶️ here Last Chapter: 'Here comes the Sun' from the beginning ▶️ here

📚 Previous Chapters: Chapters: 1-6 ~ 7-12 ~ 13-16 ~ 23-29

[republicsecurity]

Standard Chastity/Underwear/Diaper Component of the Armor Suit

The Standard Chastity/Underwear/Diaper Component is an integral part of the advanced full-body armor suit worn by Cadets, Conscripts, Reservists and Intendurds in the Security Forces, Lifeguards, Paramedic Corps and Nursing Corps and training academies. This component is designed to ensure hygiene, control, and comfort for the wearer, whether used in conjunction with the full armor suit or as a standalone piece of equipment.

Design and Features

Material: Constructed from high-density, hypoallergenic synthetic fabrics, the component provides durability, flexibility, and breathability. The inner lining is coated with an antimicrobial layer to prevent infections and maintain cleanliness over extended periods.

Two-Chamber Design: The component features a specialized two-chamber design. One chamber securely encases the penis, while the other accommodates the scrotum, ensuring both are protected and kept in an optimal environment. This design helps in preventing chafing and maintaining hygiene, even during extended periods of use.

Chastity Mechanism: The chastity feature includes a secure, ergonomic cage designed to prevent unauthorized sexual activity. Made from lightweight, medical-grade polymers, it ensures comfort while maintaining strict control. The cage can be adjusted to fit various sizes and shapes, ensuring a snug but non-restrictive fit.

Waste Management: Integrated into the design is an advanced waste management system. This includes absorbent layers capable of handling urine and fecal matter, which are quickly wicked away to prevent discomfort and skin irritation. The component can be easily cleaned and sanitized, whether worn as part of the armor or independently.

Compatibility: The component seamlessly integrates with the full-body armor suit. Connection points allow for the automated removal and disposal of waste, managed by the suit’s internal systems. When worn independently, it functions efficiently, ensuring the wearer remains hygienic and comfortable.

Security and Monitoring: Equipped with biometric sensors, the component monitors the wearer’s physiological state, transmitting data to the suit’s central processing unit or an external monitoring system. This includes tracking hydration levels, waste excretion, arousal and other vital signs to ensure optimal health and performance.

Comfort and Fit: Designed for extended wear, the component features adjustable straps and a contoured design to prevent chafing and discomfort. The fit can be customized to each wearer, ensuring it remains secure without impeding movement or flexibility.

Usage and Maintenance

Usage: The Standard Chastity/Underwear/Diaper Component is designed for continuous use up to 7 days, with a standard operational period of 5 days. This duration ensures that cadets remain in peak condition during extended training exercises or deployments, without the need for frequent removal or maintenance.

Maintenance: Regular cleaning and sanitization are required to maintain its functionality and hygiene standards. The component can be detached from the suit and cleaned using standard military-grade cleaning agents. Replacement parts and servicing are available through authorized personnel and facilities.

The Standard Chastity/Underwear/Diaper Component exemplifies the blend of technological innovation and practical application, ensuring cadets maintain hygiene and comfort during their rigorous training and operational duties.

[loolilyumm]

I CARE SO MUCH ABOUT YOUR CAP 3 PLEASE MORE IF YOU WOULDNT MIND???

JUMPING UP AND DOWN IM SO GLAD YOU ASKED I WILL SO HAPPILY YAP ABOUT HIM

THIS IS AGENT THREE! Most of the people in the NSS call him “Three” or “Captain,” but his real name is Reese.

(SIDE NOTE- I really have to do proper character sheets for them. Please stay tuned for that!!)

He was 15 when he was hired by Cuttlefish and 17 during the events of octo expansion. Now he is a mature 20 year old inkling. So so mature.

He mains the E-liter and typically uses chargers or shooters.

Despite his “cool guy” persona, agent 8 brings out a different side of him… the loser baby side…!!! In Splatoon 2 When the two of them fell underground, Reese was actually the one to find 8, and he had to rescue her from sanitization chambers (you know, the octoling selection screen at the beginning of octo expansion?) but couldn’t save her in time to restore her memory. But she was (relatively) okay! And since then he’s been really protective of her. 8 was registered as a test subject and Reese had to stay behind and watch as she went through rigorous testing.

At that point Reese was really descending into a dark place after realizing that he wasn’t really the big hero he thought that he was. But 8 helped him through it and they formed a really close bond deep in the underground. (Cuttlefish was also there third wheeling. LOL) Reese started to feel flustered and shy around her. He’d never felt that way before, and definitely didn’t expect it. And it CONFUSED HIM!! He was like wtf? Why is this happening to meeee waahwaahhhhh ueueueuee

And then y’know……the rest is history! The blender incident happened and it was the scariest moment of his life. Reese was about to lose the only two people he had ever cared about. He has a tendency to throw himself recklessly into dangerous situations, so he just THREW himself at the blender and well. It worked! In my version, he never got knocked out, and he travelled upwards with 8 and cuttlefish until about the 4th phase. Then he and cuttlefish got separated from 8 and attacked by Tartar - that’s how he was brainwashed.

The battle between agent 3 and agent 8 was BRUTAL. Reese harbors extreme amounts of guilt for what went down - he blames himself a lot and thinks he should have been stronger. 8 got really hurt but she managed to save him and THEN save the whole world. #girlboss! Period.

The two of them are working through the events of octo expansion together! If you want me to yap about 8 too I will gladly do that. (Also maybe I should write a fanfic about it. I am cringe but I am free.)

Cut to 3 years into the future - During splatoon 3, Reese becomes captain of the NSS. He doesn’t think he deserves the title but is honored to accept it.

The new agent 3 that they recruited reminds Reese a lot of himself. Her name is Margot. She’s the quiet kid that he used to be. He sort of takes her under his wing and teaches her how to defend herself and her comrades. She is like a younger sister to him. They bicker and bond just like siblings. I LOVE THEM.

I actually haven’t really thought through what happens during the events of splatoon 3. I’m running with the idea that agent 4 and agent 8 go missing during the events of side order. (I know it’s all virtual but like I might add other things to it IDK IDK) I don’t really know yet. But Reese is a good captain and he can find them ☺️☺️

BUT YEA. AFTER ALL THT IS SAID AND DONE - they’re the NSS! And they are all besties.

Thank u for coming to my ted talk.

[lena-in-a-red-dress]

Dracula AU, Pt 3

Lena's anxiety lessens only slightly when Kara assures her that no one was hurt. When Kara lifts her hand to unlock the cell, Lena halts.

"Don't." Bitterness grinds like glass in her throat. "We don't know it won't happen again."

Tears of helplessness glitter in Lena's eyes. It's been weeks of this, each day eroding her sense of reality. And now she's imprisoned, trapped in a cell with none of the contact that had served to ground her even slightly.

"I don't know what to do," Lena confesses, her voice cracking helplessly. Her tears spill onto her cheeks. "Kara..."

"We'll figure it out," Kara vows. "We always do."

And this time, they have to.

----

Trapped in her cell, there's little for Lena to do but sleep. After weeks of torment, she's exhausted, and with nothing to keep her busy she slips into uneasy sleep. But this time, she dreams.

She treads through thick mist, heavy and cloying in her throat. It disorients her, so much so that it takes her several moments to realize what she's looking at when the mist parts to reveal a dark, unfamiliar chamber.

It's several moments later that she realizes her body is not her own. Her limbs feel heavy, her motions clunky as she turns to survey the space around her. When she sees a crumpled heap of a body, clearly dead, in a shadowy corner, she knows exactly what's happening.

The mind sharing goes both ways.

"I'm in the sewer," she says aloud, recognizing the echo of flowing water bouncing against the stone walls. Her words hiss behind unfamiliar teeth and lips. She can only hope that the words travel across the link to her own body, that Kara will not only hear her, but remember.

She narrates all that she sees. A dilapidated crate to one side, with an ancient book sitting atop it with tattered pages in plain view. She doesn't recognize the language printed on them, but the letters are reminiscent of the cyrillic alphabet.

When she exhausts what's in the chamber, she ventures into the narrow passageway beyond. She needs to know where she is, but the cramped corridor gives her nothing but the stench of sewage. She wanders aimlessly, uncertain of how far she travels. She speaks her path-- a left here, a right there... until she hears the scuff of a footstep not her own.

She freezes, then ducks out of sight as a sanitation worker turns a corner at the far end of the tunnel. Lena swallows when the scent of his sweat tingles in her nose, his pulse thumping in her ears. Hunger tears at her throat, and she digs clawed fingers into the concrete wall she hides behind her, to fight the ravenous urge to feed.

No. Not just feed.

Hunt.

The man moves on quickly, unaware of her presence. Only when his scent is once again replaced by sewage does Lena release the wall, and turn the corner once more. If a worker is here, there must be a point of entry nearby.

She traces the man's path to a ladder, haloed by sunlight cascading through the open manhole above. The light sears her vision, causing her to recoil. But she grits her teeth-- her fangs-- and pushes through the pain to take one step, then another towards the light.

Hope sparks in Lena's mind-- beyond learning where she might be, perhaps, just maybe, she could kill this monstrous body altogether. She might perish in the light along with it, but Lena can't bring herself to care. It's time to end this.

Almost as soon as the thought forms in her mind, another presence uncurls in her consciousness. The monster slowly wakes, a vague identity that sharpens with every step she takes. Soon, it begins to struggle for control, slowing her progress to a shuffle then a halt. Pain lances through Lena's mind as the monster's mind rails against hers.

It would be so easy to let go-- she WANTS to relinquish control, to return to the familiarity of her own body. But she fights. For every last inch, she clings to control, desperate to gain something, anything, to aid them.

Pressure builds in Lena's chest, shortening her breath. She's not going to make it to the ladder, let alone the daylight above. But just as her consciousness snaps away, she catches sight of a small placard riveted to the wall of the tunnel.

"Hayward!" she shouts, just as feels her consciousness snap away. In a blink, she's back in the Tower, safe in her cell. Chest heaving, she scrambles to her feet. "Hayward Street! Kara--!"

She whirls around, eyes wide as they meet Kara's.

Kara lifts one hand, waggling the small voice recorder held in her fingers. Kara did hear-- and reacted just the way Lena had hoped.

A grin spreads across Kara's features.

"We've got him."