#and it overwhelmingly flattens features towards sameness

[maxwelljacobfriedman]

I was today years old when i found out cora jade used to be elayna black

[theflyingpimphat]

Now the dumbassery has a text version. Very much not safe for Dumpstr, as it features two insectoid aliens banging and rather colourful dirty talk provided by a third.

Talk dirty in Idrath to me

The meeting at the Cinnabar Hall had been a pleasant diversion. It was exciting and there was plenty of tasty food around, but Arqeez was also maintaining a charade of presenting himself as Arthaleis, the Prince of Idrath, with Zekra being his servant and translator. He was to use his native language only, while Zekra provided the 'translations', carrying out a plan to get information in a place where endoskeletals like ger weren't allowed to be. And right now, ge had left him to steal the Baroness of Ulumoura's data storages, leaving him behind with said Baroness to entertain.

As enthusiastically as she was telling Arqeez about the miner strike, she still didn't manage to get him interested in the subject. What he gathered out of it was that underpaid workers were unhappy and her uncle, who owned the mine, improved the housing once and created some competition with another mine that let the workers forget about their wages. Listening to her made him hungry. He cast a brief glance at the plate he had emptied a while ago, nothing but a few crumbs being left on it.

The Baroness noticed. “Oh, you wish for some food? Well, all this talking has made me hungry, too. I think I will pick up something for both of us,” she said, rising from the seat and stretching her limbs.

Arqeez looked into the direction Zekra had made off to, then nodded. Out of the attention of the Baroness, he looked around, his eyes lingering on the commotion to the right of him, where a horizontally-oriented individual had their back claws outstretched while shouting at a bigger, mix-oriented one holding their front body upward and extending their colourful neck flaps in response. Zekra was taking awfully long. Any time longer and he would leave the seat, towards one of the restrooms with the Baroness accompanying him, communication issues or not...

She returned soon after, only one plate in her hand loaded with a variety of delicacies.

"Let us start with this one,“ she said, picking a ball-shaped object with multicoloured decorations off the plate. "A chuur, made from the most exquisite sugars Ulumoura has to offer and popular with the aristocracy for centuries. Pity it was the only Ulumouran speciality left on the table.“

Arqeez took the orb from the Baroness' hands and examined it with his antennae. The smell was faint but pleasant, not too dissimilar from some of the edible plants on Idrath. He took it into his mouth, noticing its overwhelmingly sweet taste. The grinding teeth of his inner jaws crushed it, surprising him with a creamy sour filling.

“Now, select one for me.”

Looking at the Baroness, Arqeez figured he was now supposed to do the same she did. He picked up a light blue, rounded item with four seams running along it. “This is... a round thing I don't know anything about,” he awkwardly said in his native language before handing it over.

The Baroness chuckled as she took the food item. “A souum. A root flour dumpling made to resemble sou fruit. The aristocrat version of a popular commoner's dish, made from higher-quality ingredients.” She brought the souum to her mouth, her four jaws picking it up and tearing it apart by working in pairs. Then it was her turn to pick up a food item again.

“Louash. It's actually a Lacati dish, said to have been served to successful warriors in older times. I do think it's fitting for you. When your translator returns, I want to ask if you are involved in the military on Idrath.”

The item in question was fashioned of a hard, pale substance and might or might not resemble a face. It crunched under the flattened teeth of his internal jaws.

As it was now his turn to select, Arqeez was studying the plate again. One item looked especially peculiar to him, a colourful arrangement of prepared leaves, glazed in a shimmering layer. He handed the leaf arrangement to the Baroness.

“Oh, how charming! A bouloquin, usually gifted among young lovers. My dear Arthaleis, this day is promising to become a very special one.”

Arqeez did hope so, and was anticipating the moment it would become 'very special'. He watched the Baroness pick out another food item, some sort of baked pocket.

"A piekif. Popular among the males, as it is said to grant them power.“ Arqeez ate it, tilting his head. Compared to the other items offered so far, this one was rather bland. As it was his turn, he looked at the plate to find something the Baroness would consider interesting. Before his hovering hand could pick up a layered roll, her fingers closed over his.

"My dear Arthaleis, I do think we have had our fill. I prefer not to burden myself with food too much, especially when I have...“ the Baroness paused to blink slowly „...other plans for today. If you don't mind, we shall go to the restrooms. While there are surely cleaner places in the city, getting there is such a hassle.“

Arqeez knew exactly what she meant, his shaking antennae capturing an alluring change of her smell.

"But Zekra is still gone.“ He pointedly looked into the direction of the toilets.

"Your translator? Do not worry about it. I'm sure we can communicate our desires sufficiently. Besides, its ghastly sight would kill my mood.“ She did another slow blink and gently pulled on the hand she held, urging Arqeez to follow her. The half-full plate was left abandoned on the couch.

After the thrum of many different conversations, the playing music and the noise of various other offered entertainments, the corridor with the restrooms was surprisingly quiet and empty. A thick, padded door separated it from the main hall, the dark drapes covering the walls and the dim lighting giving it an air of privacy and seclusion.

The Baroness pulled back one of the drapes a bit, revealing a bit of a room behind. Before Arqeez could see inside, her long neck jerked back and she let go of the drape to let it cover the room's entrance again.

"Occupied.“

Passing a few more drapes, she pulled back another one, appearing more satisfied with the sight. "Come in, my dear Prince of Idrath.“

The room wasn't big, half of its space being filled out with a low, wide couch with various differently-shaped pillows on top. The floor was covered with a thick, soft mat swallowing the sound of their footsteps as the Baroness entered.

"My dear Arthaleis, I hope the delicacies have put you in the mood as much as they did me,“ she said, pulling herself onto the couch. "As I have no interest in waiting.“

With one leg still on the ground, the Baroness reached around and began to fumble on the hind part of her robe covering her postabdomen. Some strings were loosened, then she pulled the cloth back, revealing her plated, flanged hind body with purple markings. Her eyes met with Arqeez', who had been staring at her from the moment she had started to undress.

"Enjoying the sight, I see? Well, I do expect you plan to do more than just looking.“

Right. After Arqeez had developed the wanderlust of maturity, he had been searching for a mate, and now he had most unexpectedly found one who was interested. Zekra might offer an appealing sight, but the Baroness willing to go much further than that would mean he had to take action rather than holding back. He reached for his pants, trying to remember how that little tailor had tied them shut. To his luck, he could quickly find a way to loosen them enough and pull them down a bit, just in time to see the Baroness raise her postabdomen and reveal its pale underside. On one part, the plates began to shift and revealed a hidden orifice, its yellowish-orange flesh already having an inviting shimmer of wetness.

Arqeez couldn't take his eyes off it, which captivated him enough to barely notice the hot rush of blood down below when his own organ pushed itself outside. The Baroness eyed it, moving her mandibles.

"Oh my, that is unexpectedly large, even for someone your size...“ She shifted her position on the couch. "And those wriggling tendrils, this is promising to be a special experience.“

Arqeez made a humming sound when he stepped closer. The basics of what he had to do was clear, but the details were a whole other story, particularly since he had no experience with the Baroness' species whatsoever. His larger pair of hands closed around the flanges of the postabdomen, while the smaller pair held the flaps of his jacket out of the way, granting himself a good look, when his bright orange tentacled tip aimed for the Baroness' paler opening.

He let the tendrils first writhe all over the drenched flesh, then sunk into the waiting orifice.

With the sensible data copied and safely stored in the device attached to the base of ger tail, Zekra climbed down the twiners. Soon enough, ge was back on the roof of the Cinnabar Hall’s right wing, washing the mud off with water from the canister. The liquid was soaked up by the thick layer of epiphytes covering the roof. With the garish costume of Arqeez' living translator back on, ge slipped through the narrow window into the toilet cubicle and reached for the doorlock.

This was way too easy. The information easily-obtained, the hotel being close-by, the room easy to reach from the outside, the lock barely-protected… this all stank of something colossally failing along the way.

Yet when ge left the toilet wing and went back into the Cinnabar Hall's din, it appeared like ger absence hadn't been noticed at all. Shrinking down and lowering ger head, ge assumed ger role of a low endoskeletal servant translating for the noble exoskeletal waiting on a couch across the hall full of disapproving glances, steps taken back and barely-contained expressions of disgust.

To ger surprise and further discomfort, the couch was empty save for a plate with different food items currently being sniffed by a Fijeiri. They retracted their trunk when noticing ger presence, appearing more guilty over having examined the plate's contents rather than being repulsed by the presence of an endoskeletal.

"Have you seen my master? He had been lounging here with a Nerikei lady when I had to temporarily leave him,“ Zekra asked.

The Fijeiri flicked their eyestalks. "I have seen a Nerikei with a big individual dressed in white heading for the restrooms.“

Zekra put on a smile. "This lowly creature thanks you for the information. That was indeed my master.“ Ge briefly lowered ger antennae and hurried off, leaving the Fijeiri and the abandoned plate to themselves.

Ge barely paid any attention to the patron's reactions to ger presence now. With the way the Baroness had spoken to Arqeez, ge hoped they either hadn't started yet or were finished already. The less time ge had to spend in the Cinnabar Hall with sensitive data in ger pockets, the better.

Pulling the heavy door open, Zekra entered the quiet solitude of the restrooms, allowing anyone who wished a break from the noises, smells and social interactions of the gathering to wind down and have some privacy. Ge looked at the row of drapes closing off the alcoves. Finding out behind which Arqeez would prove to be no fun.

The first was immediately disregarded due to the hushed voices in a foreign language already indicating occupation by someone else. Having walked a bit along the corridor, Zekra crouched down to give the chambers a telekinetic examination, nothing more than a short burst to identify the silhouettes. Most of the occupants ge felt were alone and none of them had the shape of a vertically-oriented large exoskeletal with six limbs. Ge stood up to move to the next section when ge heard a voice talking behind one of the curtains, having the distinct deep, husky sound of the Baroness of Ulumoura.

Them talking was a good sign; Zekra hurried over to where ge had heard the voice, with a rumbling reply from Arqeez allowing ger to pinpoint the drape behind which they were having their conversation. Pulling the drape aside, ge inhaled to announce ger return, but the sight that revealed itself to ger made ger pull the drape immediately shut and the air escaped from ger with an embarrassed squeak.

Ge had found Arqeez, in the middle of screwing the Baroness.

Ger intrusion didn't remain unnoticed. "Oh my, looks like your servant has returned!“

Arqeez had barely noticed that Zekra was back again. He was fully occupied holding and stroking the baroness' postabdomen while he slid in and out of it, his tendrils wriggling through the multiple compartments of the postabdomen's inside along their way. The sensation of the soft warm channel around him, grabbing and twisting with the Baroness' movements was his entire focus by now, even the smell of her exotic pheromones had moved to the back of his perception.

"Oh my, looks like your servant has returned!“

The sudden words let Arqeez lose his pace, stopping halfway in. He answered with a quizzical hum, his front eyes meeting the Baroness', seeing her folding her hands.

"This is wonderful news, now we can finally talk to each other again.“ Her neck turned around to give him a good view of her slow blink. "I want you to talk dirty in Idrath to me.“

Zekra couldn't believe what ge had just heard. Ge had hoped ger transgression would be ignored, allowing ger to wait out the act somewhere out of earshot until they were finished, but acting as a translator for the sweet nothings the Baroness wanted to hear was several more layers of embarrassment. It appeared ge had finally found the part where the offset to the data theft's convenience was.

Arqeez gave a brief reply. Not being able to direct the length of his speech with the antenna signalling they had agreed on, it would require ger to come up with something of an equivalent length; together with this part being completely unplanned and the juicy situation, this would prove to be far more challenging than extracting all the information about the data had been.

"The Prince of Idrath is delighted of the idea,“ ge awkwardly said, sitting down next to the drape and slinging ger tail around gerself in sheer discomfort.

The Baroness liked Zekra's answer, judging by the squeeze her postabdomen gave Arqeez upon hearing the answer. Her expectant glance told him she wanted to hear more.

"But I really don't know what 'talking dirty' is supposed to be.“

"The prince of Idrath is enchanted by the sparkle of your eyes,“ Zekra provided from behind the drape.

"Hmm, yes,“ the Baroness hummed with her insides clenching, a slow roll along Arqeez’ length that have him briefly lose his pace again.

"I just say anything and you like it.“

"The great Prince of Idrath compliments the curvature of your neck, comparing it to a hrai sprout.”, came the 'translation'.

Delightful! Ooh, tell me more, tell me more!“

Having adjusted his pace to the commentary a bit, Arqeez rumbled when the accompanying squeeze happened as he pulled out, a delectable tug on his member that made her canal feel longer than it actually was.

"This is good.“

"The Prince of Idrath is complimenting your performance.“

Another squeeze. "Delicious! Your company is a pleasure!“

Arqeez considered it more of a pleasure to push his organ in as deep as he could, until his abdominal plates scraped against hers. "You are a pleasure,“ he said emphasizing his words with a roll of his hips and a flaring of his tendrils, making the Baroness curl her fingers in response. "Let me try one myself. Your insides feel great around my-“

"Yes, yes,“ she cut him off. "My dear Prince of Idrath, it is a joy to listen to your compliments, but I requested you to talk dirty. We are not in a council hall.“

Arqeez put his antennae askew, slowing his pace. "If I knew what talking dirty really meant, I would do it. But I don't know how dirt would make this better.“

"The Prince of Idrath wants to fuck you into the couch so hard the squelching of your greedy hole can be heard in the cubicles eight doors away.“

"Oh, oh my! Glorious! More!“

Where the compliments had the Baroness' body react in a most appealing way, Zekra's saucy commentary made her insides squirm and her postabdomen curl. Not only that, but the words themselves made Arqeez‘ antennae stand straight up. Zekra‘s choice of words was nothing new to him considering ger frequent swearing, but the context they were used in awakened something in him that let him want to do exactly what Zekra had provided. He got a firmer hold on the Baroness' postabdomen, readjusted the angle and began pushing into her harder and faster.

"If only Zekra was as willing to do this with me as you are. Because I would love to do that in the ship from launch to landing with ger.“

"The Prince of Idrath wants to wreck your insides so that they will ache for the next five revs and the opening will gape and drool for the next two.“

Limbs tensing upon the words, the Baroness looked back, giving Arqeez a slow blink, her insides now feeling more tense in general than before.

"Hnn, more...“

The mental images Zekra managed to paint fed Arqeez’ lust almost as much as the squeezing and tugging sensations surrounding his organ, pushing him towards a satisfying finish in leaps. "I-I... don't even know... what to say even more. This... this is... fuck.“

The Prince of Idrath tells how he wants to drown your reproductive tract in his semen until your fat, swollen postabdomen spills its contents all over your robes while your body trembles and shivers from the best climax anyone has given you.“

"Wonderful!“ the Baroness cried out, throwing her head back, her postabdomen curling and squirming in Arqeez‘s firm grip as he pounded it harder and faster, until he jammed his entire length in, tendrils writhing and flaring. His lower abdomen became a tight, pulsing knot pumping copious amounts of hot fluid into the Baroness‘ insides beyond his organ‘s reach, the restless tendrils stirring through it as they lost more and more contact to the undulating walls. As the spasms waned and the haze cleared, allowing him to focus on any other sensation beside those coming from his still pumping reproductive system, Arqeez‘ eyes met the Baroness‘.

"Hnn, you sure do keep your promises, my dear. I can‘t say I had ever had any acquaintances that were this… filling.”

With shaking limbs, she pulled herself further up the couch, and lifted up her postabdomen out of Arqeez’ loose grip, his softening organ sliding out to be followed by a torrent of thick white fluid gushing out onto the floor.

“I for sure won’t envy those who have to clean the restrooms,” the Baroness commented the splattering noises. “But who cares about those, anyway. My dear Prince of Arthaleis, this was a most welcome encounter. I do hope we can repeat it some time, when I will visit your home.”

As the cableway rolled away from the Cinnabar hall towards the district where Ak-Shmay had his dressmaker’s shop, Zekra still felt slightly nauseous, even after all the time that had passed after the ‘incident’. Having to provide the commentary while ger companion was fucking their target individual had been one of the last things ge would have expected to do for retrieving the copies of her sensitive data.

At least the Baroness of Ulumoura had quickly lost interest in Arqeez after she had stepped out of the restrooms on slightly shaky legs, heading for the buffet, which allowed Arqeez and Zekra to leave the meeting without any hassle, just telling the guards at the gates that the Prince of Arthaleis was exhausted from all the social mingling with other exoskeletals.

“That… had been a thing,” Arqeez said, now speaking Unicomlang again. “The things you said there got me up as much as actually-”

“Arq, just shut the fuck up. I don’t want to be reminded of that,” Zekra replied. Ger tail was still in loose coils around ger feet. “Having to listen to you two doing it was already bad enough, as you sounded like two greased-up Molurians wrestling in a slime pit.”

Arqeez shrugged. “Maybe you can show me how to do it quieter once we are back in the ship.”

“You just ejected what sounded like half your body mass’ worth of fluids there, I think you had enough for now,” Zekra replied with ger tooth plates showing. “Now let us do our delivery, then leave.”

“I thought you like it here?”

Zekra snorted. “Arq, I’m short of getting me a memory wipe, the side effects be damned. I don’t want to be around anything that reminds me of that situation any longer than absolutely necessary.”

Arqeez gave ger a worried look, which ge noticed. “But for you I’ll make an exception.”

Sequel to https://theflyingpimphat.tumblr.com/post/189736561295/just-me-lewding-up-the-fourth-a-to-z-episode, just some dumbassery spawned from changing an event in the fourth A to Z episode.

[lady-oceana9518]

Here For You (A Hazbin Hotel Fanfic)

A/N: Hey y’all, here’s another little story featuring my Hazbin OC, Morgana, the direwolf shifter. This fic features lots of fluffy times between Wolf!Morga and Vaggie. I haven’t been feeling the greatest emotionally speaking today, so I wrote this in an effort to comfort myself a little. I hope you guys enjoy it too. Let me know what you think of the story and/or my wolfy girl Morga😊

~~~~

Today...hadn’t been Morgana’s best day. She woke up that morning with a bone-deep tiredness that she couldn’t shake, even though she had a good night’s sleep the night before. She didn’t feel happy, or angry, or overwhelmingly sad...just, numb.

Charlie and Vaggie were out running errands around town with Razzle and Dazzle, which Morga knew because of a note that Vaggie had left on her bedside table earlier that morning. They should be back later that afternoon, she wrote. Angel was out entertaining one of his regular clients; Niffty was flitting around the hotel cleaning, as usual, like a manic hummingbird; Alastor was working in his office, awaiting his mate Charlie’s return; and Husk was tending the bar in the lobby (while successfully becoming more and more intoxicated himself as the day wore on). Morga had a rare day off from her teaching duties. She was too exhausted to want to do, well, just about anything, but she at least wanted to get out of her room at some point for a little change in scenery. She also didn’t particularly want to socialize with anyone.

The solution to her little dilemma seemed obvious. She would simply remain in her direwolf form for the rest of the day. After locking the door to her room behind her, Morga shifted effortlessly into her wolf form. She shook out her black-brown fur and stretched her wings, which were reminiscent of a snowy owl’s, then trotted down to the lobby.

She passed right by Husk’s bar, and of course didn’t go unnoticed by the surprisingly-observant bartender. “Hey wolfy, bout time you showed up!” Husk snickered, slurring his words a bit. Morga would normally have some kind of retort ready to go but was absolutely not in the mood for his, or anyone’s, teasing today. She growled at him, the sound a deep, menacing rumble emanating from her chest.

Husk jumped, more than a little surprised at the normally mild-mannered and mischievous wolf. “ ‘Ey, what the fuck was that for??” In response, Morga glared at him over her shoulder and bared her teeth, not even breaking stride as she continued on toward the fireplace.

As luck would have it, there was a roaring fire blazing merrily in the newly-refurbished grand fireplace. It was oh-so inviting and looked like the perfect place for a nap. Morga wasted no time in trotting over to the rug in front of the fireplace, circling a few times, and flopping onto her side. She yawned and allowed her heavy eyelids to flutter closed over her leaf-green eyes.

Some time later, which in reality turned out to be several hours later, Morga became aware of a few different voices conversing quietly nearby.

“I’m tellin’ ya, she’s got a stick up her ass about somethin’ today. Been all wolfed out the whole time too. Maybe wolfy’s finally going feral,” Husk grumbled, taking a swig from his ever-present bottle of booze.

Charlie hummed uncertainly, her worried gaze flickering over to Morga’s dozing form. “Morga doesn’t usually act that way...and I don’t think I’ve heard her growl at anyone other than Al before.” Vaggie couldn’t help but snicker at that. It was no secret that she still wasn’t the Radio Demon’s biggest fan. “Vags, maybe you should check on her? Since she definitely trusts you more than anyone else. I don’t want to startle her if she’s feeling a little more sensitive and skittish than usual.”

Vaggie smiled a little at her best friend’s words. She still wasn’t sure how she had become lucky enough to catch the eye of such an enchanting, wild woman like Morgana, but she was grateful for that each day. “Of course I will. You two go back to whatever you were doing; I’ve got this. I’ll take care of her.”

Husk grumbled something along the lines of “Careful she doesn’t rip your hand off,” before heading back to the bar, while Charlie nearly skipped away toward Alastor’s office, eager to spend time with her mate.

Vaggie slowly made her way over to Morga’s dozing form, beginning to speak softly to her lover as she did so. “Morga, hun? Are you feeling alright?”

Morga’s eyes slowly blinked open and she felt a growl instinctively begin to build in the back of her throat. When she saw her moth demon slowly approaching, though, she stopped immediately. She let out an apologetic whine and glanced off to the side, folding her ears back against her head.

Vaggie crouched down and knelt alongside her direwolf, gently running her fingers through the thick fur along Morga’s back. “It’s okay, sweetheart. It’s alright. I know you didn’t mean it,” Vaggie murmured. Morga rumbled her thanks and hesitantly laid her head in Vaggie’s lap, gazing up at her tiredly. Vaggie felt her heart twist at the sight. Her usually-serene, confident Morga looked so tired and hopeless. For a moment she didn’t know what to do. She just wanted to be there for her lover and comfort her in the same way that Morga so often comforted Vaggie.

“I’m sorry you don’t feel great today, mi cariño,” Vaggie cooed, beginning to idly stroke Morga’s silky, feathered wings. She was actively racking her brain, trying to think of what would help her wolf feel more like her usual self. “Have you had anything to eat today?”

In response, Morga’s ears flattened once more and she looked anywhere but at Vaggie. The moth demon gave the direwolf a small, patient smile. “That’s alright; it’s easy to forget those things when you’re depressed and having an off day. How about we find something good to eat in the kitchen and then go back to our room to cuddle?”

In response, Morga butted her head against Vaggie’s stomach, then rose to her paws for a nice, long stretch. She stared expectantly at Vaggie, waiting for the moth demon to stand up too. Vaggie chuckled, taking that as her cue to stand. “Alright, princess, let’s go.” Morga growled softly at Vaggie’s teasing tone and gently nipped her hand for good measure. “Hey now, you better watch it, missy!” Vaggie replied, to which Morga swatted her gently with one of her wings before plodding ahead to the kitchen.

The two of them rifled through the cupboards, determined to find something Morga would like. Suddenly, the direwolf’s ears perked up and she eagerly sniffed a sealed plastic bag that was filled to the brim with something that smelled delicious. Vaggie raised a brow and reached into the cupboard, only to pull out the bag of venison jerky that Morga had been snuffling at. “Babe, Alastor made this from the deer he killed during his last hunt. Maybe we should find some food that doesn’t already belong to someone, yeah?” In response, Morga’s ears drooped, she lowered her head, and simultaneously gave Vaggie the most pathetic puppy dog eyes she could muster. Vaggie groaned, covering her face with the hand not holding the bag of jerky so she wouldn’t have to see the pathetically adorable display.

“Ugh...okay, fine! I guess that shitlord can always make more another time. I’d rather you have the jerky than him anyway,” Vaggie relented, holding the bag of jerky out to Morga. The direwolf gently took the bag into her mouth, trotting toward the staircase as Vaggie grabbed two water bottles from the fridge and followed quickly behind.

Back in their shared bedroom, Vaggie and Morga, still in wolf form, lounged on their bed and snacked on stolen jerky while soft music played from a speaker on their bedside table. Vaggie leaned back against the headboard, scratching behind Morga’s ears as the direwolf sprawled across the moth demon’s lap and contentedly tore into her seventh piece of jerky. While Morga still felt like a shadow of her usual self, she couldn’t deny that she felt much better than she had that morning; and it was all thanks to the love, support, and patience that Vaggie so freely gave.

Suddenly, from downstairs they heard a baffled-sounding Radio Demon call out: “Oh Charlie, dearest, do you know where my venison jerky ran off to? I put an entire bag in the cupboard just this morning!”

Meanwhile, back in hers and Vaggie’s bedroom, Morga wolfed down the last piece of jerky that was currently between her forepaws, and pushed the empty bag beneath the duvet with her nose. Content with her work, she laid her head on top of Vaggie’s stomach, snuggled close to her side, and spread one of her wings over her moth demon as a sort of blanket. She gazed up at Vaggie in thanks for all she had done that day, then began to fall asleep. This slumber would be far more peaceful than the last.

[diarrheaworldstarhiphop]

Aren’t some gays trying to assimilate to society or something like that, so effort is focused on ‘owning’ a high brow appearance and further capitulation of cultural signals proper; and other gays and friends don’t want that feigned parity so it’s tacked unto memes! I dunno — pretty please teach us!

Some gays yearn for the comfort of validation from society and to influence it, additionally. Especially those of the cis and dude variety.

its only normal. It’s not comfortable being truly independent and free to chart what ur existence means to you. It’s not common for a person to yearn for solitude and true individuality. Tho i think sexuality sits apart from a WIDE fucking berth between it and queer identity. In that, to fuck someone of the same sex or both sexes doesn’t necessarily require as much of an enormous dissection of one’s own identity as someone who’s entire body becomes a flex of their trauma induced need for agency. There’s little one can relatively articulate in what it means to want to fuck and/or be fucked in the ass aside from the trauma incurred from navigating that in a society where its taboo, to say the least of it. Plus capitalism and wider society is in an advanced state of assimilated cis gay dude shit. This is why drag shit is everywhere now. This is why the culture war is already past grappling accepting gay shit and is now in the gay, grappling with accepting some of the features of esoteric gay shit. It’s HAPPENING!!! doompaul.gif

like, capitalism is certainly gaying up society to grease up consumerism and the accelerating nature of technocapital, but it’s a superficial rainbow society form. One that directly threatens someone like me as much as some of the sentimentalities of the far right position.

What capitalism and the herd of the LGBTQIEIDKLFHGLDHG++++ try to do is signify diversity when it functionally seeks to flatten and homogenize the whole ill-defined, marginalized field of queerness. It’s why the arbiters of these LGBT groups frequently suffer from infighting and catastrophized clusterfucks of validity so much. They try to collect the disparate, wholly individualized nature of queerness and weave it into a fabric in an effort to flatten and give security to those who rightfully plead for it to relieve their suffering - but this, in effect, also prepares it for assimilation into wider society. Prepares it for the great leveler of culture, capitalism, to co-opt and define what it is for those within the LGBT sphere. The rainbow flag is not a banner of communism, but rather a banner of capitalism.

Alot of the suffering and suicide from those of the more queer persuasion, in my mind the Transfemme persuasion, comes from being thrust into absolute solitude in self. You are immediately pressed to do or die, essentially, and make sense of what you are. To distill Self from self. You can’t even grasp for help via guidance because there is no guide. Metaphysically, it’s like as if you plucked a 9-5 office working man and dropped him into the siberian taiga, now forcing him to abruptly learn how to live off the land with no preparation or no one else around to to help. It’s unbelievably challenging and it certainly requires mental fortitude to even begin to run with it.

The ironic thing is that. Capitalism has produced a sort of individuality that consumerism readily thrives on. In buying shit to define who one is when two centuries ago, people would buy shit because they needed it. So the hypermodern, hyper individual queer person is every bit a product of technocapital as the wider society assimilating it. It’s like. Capital spit us out, a byproduct of the grand shredder and trivializer of culture, but like a vacuum moving onward, will come around to suck us back up again.

Capitalism is slowly shaping and corrupting humanity. In this process, humanity, whom are mostly limited to structures, philosophy and social existences that predate capital, kinda walk thru it as a huddled mass in the dark. Feeling out a society where they try to simulate moral structures that for most of human life, defined us and led us to evolve in occurrence to thinking around it. moral structures like religion and autocracy. We have lopped off the head and replaced it with a yawning noumena we assume is also a head. Society, the herd, yearns to be lead even if it intrinsically feels we are all individual and special. We have already selected for the AI as the head.

The preponderance of transwomen, as g/acc has proposed, is not transwomen in so far that they are hyper individualized as queerness is and has been, but that toward the horizon it would be more diminutive forms of what a transwoman is. Of what a human it. A humanity without man. They become the new normies because the nature of economy renders women as the model individual, compelling men toward becoming women simply to get by. Slime girls as nyx says. Slaves to capital and the AI. Spiritually and functionally.

It’s a glacial process not unlike how the overwhelmingly christian middle east slowly converted into and adopted islam.

[tinymixtapes]

Feature: 2017: Stack Music

Fakeness is everywhere. Earlier this year, Vulture’s Adam Raymond reported on a number of stunts designed to game the Spotify system for a decent payout. Amid full-length silent albums and something he’s calling the “Happy Birthday” gimmick, Raymond discovered that the streaming giant was actively giving some of its most highly-coveted spots on playlists to allegedly “fake” artists. “The first song on Sleep, a playlist of calming, instrumental tracks with 1.5 million followers, is by Enno Aare, a band with three songs on Spotify and no footprint outside of the streaming service,” he writes. “The band Evolution of the Stars has only two songs on Spotify, but both are on the Deep Focus playlist and they have a combined 15 million streams.” This absence of any footprint beyond its strategic existence in the Spotify ecosystem has led many to take a closer look at the politics of the platform. At Watt, Liz Pelly traced companies like Filtr (owned by Sony), Digster (owned by Warner), and Topsify (owned by Universal) to their source as firms funnelling resources normally gambled on branding and publicity into a network of playlists promising similar successes in the music industry. In the same way that major labels have spent decades developing a direct pipeline to the public via commercial radio, the barrier for entry into the streaming economy, to the surprise of very few, increasingly reflects the monied interest of the industry. In the same way that major labels have spent decades developing a direct pipeline to the public via commercial radio, the barrier for entry into the streaming economy increasingly reflects the monied interest of the industry. Beyond Spotify, streaming platforms like YouTube, SoundCloud, and Apple Music have each monetized their respective media through a series of gestures that prioritize their platform’s continued relevance in the pop cultural conversation, often at the direct expense of counterculture. From genres like SoundCloud rap and lo-fi house — which each largely owe their recognition as isolated genres to trends within networks — to the outgrowth of platform-based styles like “type-beat” rap productions and Billboard-charting YouTubers, it’s clear that we’re in the midst of a strange upheaval, if not in the way that music is made, at least in the conversations we’re having about its structural continuity. In a time when American partisan politics means a decision between unchecked monopoly and outright fascism, consumers might feel like the only option is to align themselves with a vision of tech progress largely bent on the consolidation of corporate wealth. And with the FCC again calling net neutrality into question, it seems like the right to an open internet is one of few remaining links between far left and far right ideologies. But could it be that the platforms that make up most internet use today are already a lot less neutral than users seem to realize — already subjected to more invasive surveillance and data management practices than most users can even comprehend? Is the concept of “net neutrality” as it stood even 10 years ago enough to account for all the ways in which these platforms have completely changed even the most basic media and communications access across the globe? What sort of transparency do we really expect on the web in 2017, and what, if anything, has really been lost in the shift from simple sites and MP3 blogs to something overwhelmingly dominated by platforms? --- The stack, the most outward unit of planetary-scale computation, becomes a useful metaphor when talking about the streaming economy. As John Herrman pointed out earlier this year in The New York Times Magazine, “For many companies, the organizing logic of the software stack becomes inseparable from the logic of the business itself. […] A healthy stack, or a clever one, is tantamount (the thinking goes) to a well-structured company.” In a clear nod to Benjamin Bratton’s The Stack: On Software and Sovereignty, Herrman notes the ways in which stacks flatten the functional logic of business into the smallest unit of digital transaction in the direct service of capital. The platform, itself a matrix of intersecting stacks, operates in accordance with this logic. Elsewhere for the magazine, Herrman continues: Platforms are, in a sense, capitalism distilled to its essence. They are proudly experimental and maximally consequential, prone to creating externalities and especially disinclined to address or even acknowledge what happens beyond their rising walls. […] Platforms provide the substructure for the “gig economy” and the “sharing economy”; they’re the economic engine of social media; they’re the architecture of the “attention economy” and the inspiration for claims about the “end of ownership.” […] Platforms seek total control even as they abdicate responsibility. In other words, they’re perfect. As music discovery is increasingly mediated by the logic of the stack (and later platform) economy, independent musicians become precarious platform laborers, digital service employees given fractional cents per stream in a system designed for their own exploitation. Like the contract workers of Uber, Amazon, and TaskRabbit, cognitive creative labor is now mined for utility, scrubbed to its essence as data in service of the platform, only to be presented back to the public through for-profit means. As longtime Wired contributor Bruce Sterling put it in his SXSW closing lecture, “People like to say that musicians reacted badly to the digital revolution. They put a foot wrong. What really happened is that the digital revolution reduces everybody to the state of musicians. Everybody — not just us bohemian creatives, but the military, political parties, the anchor stores in retail malls, academics subjected to massive open online courses… whatever happens to musicians happens to everybody. Including you.” Stack Music by Konrad Sprenger But a growing class of musicians recognize this precarity. From Konrad Springer’s aptly-titled Stack Music — which, as TMT writer Nick James Scavo points out, is itself a reference to Bratton — to the unboxing videos of Amnesia Scanner, the make-up tutorials of yaeji, and the eerie ASMR of Holly Herndon, more and more artists are drawing connections between their own crafts and the creative labor of a burgeoning class of precarious workers online. The ambient call center “muzak” of Sam Kidel, the polite chivvy of Pinkcourtesyphone’s Taking Into Account Only a Portion of Your Emotions, the soundtracks to fictional unions from David Kanaga and a very real call for musician’s unions across the globe — each represents the ways in which digital labor, again and again, seems to manifest itself as precarity amid a digital future that once promised so much. More of a state of mind than any actual stylistic genre, Stack Music embodies the contradictions of the current moment in capitalism, where working harder doesn’t mean breaking even, even as Silicon Valley continues to profit like never before. --- Of course, digital labor is really nothing new. In an industry in which advances in recording and distribution tools have routinely signaled new possibilities for progressive creative models, innovations from Napster to LimeWire to The Pirate Bay and beyond have left many struggling to determine the value of their labor in the creative workforce. Where physical media came with clearer (if, at times, certainly exploitative) lines between artist and industry, cognitive digital labor is endlessly reproducible in one-to-one copies and impossible to monetize directly. As French economist Yann Moulier-Boutang writes in his book Cognitive Capitalism, “We are leaving an old world where the production of material goods took up the bulk of investment (a lot of capital for machinery, and a lot of low-skilled labour) and was the basis for the accumulation of profit. And we have very much entered a world in which the reproduction of complex goods (biosphere, noosphere or cultural diversity, the economy of the mind) and the production of new knowledge and innovations […] require a shift of investment towards intellectual capital (education, training) and a large quantity of skilled labour, set to work collectively, through the new information and telecommunications technologies.” As previous barriers to entry have given way to new production and distribution models, more and more amateur musicians have entered this creative workforce, continuing to oversaturate (and perhaps deflate) the artificial valuation present in past models. With no limit to how little they expect in return, independent musicians now have more in common with the cognitive workforce behind Amazon’s Mechanical Turks than most indie artistry of the past, now as precarious wage laborers — cognitariats, to borrow Moulier-Boutang’s word. Thanks to advances in algorithmic listening patterns and natural language processing, music is treated as a neutral commodity to be mined as data, which platforms use to ascribe utility to the products within their system. In the same way that YouTube videos (of course also a space for music) are scoured for details about content and category to generate thumbnails and subtitles, data mining prioritizes the utility of this content at the smallest level of the bit to generate useful observations about its potential value. As Kaitlyn Tiffany recently wrote of Spotify’s “more adventurous” Fresh Finds playlist for The Verge: Fresh Finds is one of Spotify’s prized products, a weekly playlist crafted from a combination of two different data inputs: it identifies new, possibly interesting music with natural language processing algorithms that crawl hundreds of music blogs, then puts those songs up against the listening patterns of users their data designates “trendsetters.” Where once blogs and zines helped contextualize scenes and communities, the move to algorithmic processing and NLP sentiment analysis allows data to be monitored on a scale much larger than even the biggest team of writers can account for. As more and more content is uploaded every second, the biggest challenge facing platforms in 2017 is how best to reduce each piece of content to the level of the “thinkable” to help listeners draw connections between related artists. Where once blogs and zines helped contextualize scenes and communities through interviews, reviews, and other cultural criticism, the move to algorithmic processing and NLP sentiment analysis allows data to be monitored on a scale much larger than even the biggest team of writers can account for. Scenes and communities already look very different through a macro computational lens; though, beneath the surface, there’s also undoubtedly some degree of human agency involved throughout this whole process. As the emergence of these “fake” artists clearly distinguishes, platforms aren’t treating all music as neutral; the existence of sponsored playlists and “fake” artists affirms the ways in which a carefully-constructed hierarchy has already emerged in the shadowy relationships between platform and music industry. And with new advances in artificial intelligence increasingly seeping into music production, it isn’t hard to imagine a future with these “fake” artists replaced by new bots and algorithms, where platforms wouldn’t have to pay out to anyone. --- As much as the industry changes, there will hopefully always be an interest in fringe music, and for a new subset of artists, this future has become a source of fascination, not fear. This year, Konrad Springer turned Euclidean algorithms into kaleidoscopic loops of computer-controlled electronics. David Kanaga built an entire world around the “cognitariats” of video game design. And an increasing number of musicians found new worlds in the emergent aesthetics of YouTube. While digital labor in one way or another surely went into everything covered on this site and others, the politics of the internet — especially the exchange between the open net and something mediated by the monied interest of platforms — became a bigger issue than ever before for independent artistry. Despite the Invisible Hand of the Algorithm at play beneath the surface, lo-fi house proved that there are still heaps of incredible dance music just waiting to be uncovered, as YouTube channels like Slav and Hurfyd are still excited to prove near daily. SoundCloud may have laid off 40% of its staff as it approached bankruptcy and changed CEOs, but it still found a way to help a new generation of rappers like Lil Pump and XXXTentacion find audiences arguably bigger than ever before, even if perhaps less conducive to celebrity. With platforms now mediating nearly every aspect of modern life, it’s hard to think that the culture industry would be immune. Yet even in the face of uncertainty, no monopoly in history has ever been as big as that of social media. Beneath its glossy interfaces, platforms are the scaffolding of all of this, the structure by which the “gig economy,” “sharing economy,” and “attention economy” each take shape, but it’s also the underlying architecture for so much human interaction that it’s hard to imagine living without anymore. Yet even as sites reach unparallelled levels of convenience and full-catalogue access, it’s important to recognize the politics at play beneath the surface. With immaterial labor, creative or otherwise, becoming an even larger driving force behind cognitive capitalism, digital files certainly become more accessible, yet adequate compensation and ownership rights still most often favor corporate consolidation. If anything, digital platforms so far have only seemed to intensify and accelerate preexisting strains on the workforce, trading whatever achievements were made in productivity gains and remote labor possibilities for a visibly declining quality of life. Although precarity has always been the case for struggling musicians in some form or another, its noticeable rise across an entire class of cognitive laborers and beyond signals profound changes for the future of work. Platforms are changing everything. If whatever happens to musicians really does happen to everybody, then the workforce has no choice but to resist. http://j.mp/2ko5R62