#blithe's journal

[blithe-imperial-underling]

Blithe's encrypted journal and the fiction she writes as cover.

CW for this entry: F!OC being held captive by a mad scientist.

Read more of Blithe's adventures

Encrypted Journal Entry: One standard year ago

It has been a dozen rotations since we arrived at this stinking puddle at the edge of the Outer Rim and I'm going to lose my mind if I don't keep a journal. As far as I have been able to tell, this rebel cell isn't associated with any of the other insurgent groups. They call themselves the Mynocks, and I'd rather be locked in a leaking airlock with a flock of actual mynocks than embedded with them. But this is where the Empire needs me, so here I am.

If I were to die out here, and by some miracle this datapad ended up in Commander Echo's hands, he'd recognize the encryption type I'm using as the one he taught me. I can't pull it off with the efficient elegance that he could, but it should hold up. Of course, if the commander did see this, he would also see the amateurish stories I've been writing as cover for time spent on the journal—at which point if I wasn't already dead, I'd keel over from embarrassment. Writing fiction is not my forte.

I know someone in this maladroit band of would-be heroes has already been snooping. I can tell by the sidelong glances and snickers as the other traitors pass me in the cramped tunnels we're holed up in. Good. As long as they think what I'm writing isn't worth their time, I'm succeeding.

Excerpt from Blithe's unencrypted decoy files

From somewhere just out of view, a man's voice broke the silence, pitched to be soothing. "This will only hurt a bit . . . at first."

Zekhee was not soothed.

She trembled as she strained against the straps that held her to the examination table, fear darkening the flawless skin of her lekku to a green like the deepest tendrils of the Typhonic Nebula. But it wasn't until her captor stepped into view that she began struggle in earnest.

A human man��a scientist in a lab black lab coat that contrasted sharply with the bright white of everything else around him—loomed over her, inspecting a glistening hypo-syringe with a practiced eye.

"Now, now. It wouldn't do for you to damage yourself prematurely," he said, motioning to the med droid with his free hand. It acknowledged the instruction with a stiff nod of its metal head, then tightened Zekhee's restraints until the straps bit into her with a bruising force that made her gasp for air.

"I have done nothing wrong. Please, sir . . . Who are you?" Zekhee begged in quavering, accented Basic, blinking away hot tears. "Is it something I know? I will tell you anything."

As unmoved as the droid that did his bidding, the man pulled on a face shield. His amber eyes flickered and the hint of an incongruously pleasant smile quirked the corners of his mouth as he studied her. The sheer wrongness of that smile silenced Zekhee's remaining protests like a slap, boiling them away with the heat of her terror.

"That's better," the scientist said mildly, placing one slim gloved hand against her forehead. "On the count of three, breathe in as deeply as you still can."

[mostlysignssomeportents]

AI’s “human in the loop” isn’t

I'll be in TUCSON, AZ from November 8-10: I'm the GUEST OF HONOR at the TUSCON SCIENCE FICTION CONVENTION.

AI's ability to make – or assist with – important decisions is fraught: on the one hand, AI can often classify things very well, at a speed and scale that outstrips the ability of any reasonably resourced group of humans. On the other hand, AI is sometimes very wrong, in ways that can be terribly harmful.

Bureaucracies and the AI pitchmen who hope to sell them algorithms are very excited about the cost-savings they could realize if algorithms could be turned loose on thorny, labor-intensive processes. Some of these are relatively low-stakes and make for an easy call: Brewster Kahle recently told me about the Internet Archive's project to scan a ton of journals on microfiche they bought as a library discard. It's pretty easy to have a high-res scanner auto-detect the positions of each page on the fiche and to run the text through OCR, but a human would still need to go through all those pages, marking the first and last page of each journal and identifying the table of contents and indexing it to the scanned pages. This is something AI apparently does very well, and instead of scrolling through endless pages, the Archive's human operator now just checks whether the first/last/index pages the AI identified are the right ones. A project that could have taken years is being tackled with never-seen swiftness.

The operator checking those fiche indices is something AI people like to call a "human in the loop" – a human operator who assesses each judgment made by the AI and overrides it should the AI have made a mistake. "Humans in the loop" present a tantalizing solution to algorithmic misfires, bias, and unexpected errors, and so "we'll put a human in the loop" is the cure-all response to any objection to putting an imperfect AI in charge of a high-stakes application.

But it's not just AIs that are imperfect. Humans are wildly imperfect, and one thing they turn out to be very bad at is supervising AIs. In a 2022 paper for Computer Law & Security Review, the mathematician and public policy expert Ben Green investigates the empirical limits on human oversight of algorithms:

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3921216

Green situates public sector algorithms as the latest salvo in an age-old battle in public enforcement. Bureaucracies have two conflicting, irreconcilable imperatives: on the one hand, they want to be fair, and treat everyone the same. On the other hand, they want to exercise discretion, and take account of individual circumstances when administering justice. There's no way to do both of these things at the same time, obviously.

But algorithmic decision tools, overseen by humans, seem to hold out the possibility of doing the impossible and having both objective fairness and subjective discretion. Because it is grounded in computable mathematics, an algorithm is said to be "objective": given two equivalent reports of a parent who may be neglectful, the algorithm will make the same recommendation as to whether to take their children away. But because those recommendations are then reviewed by a human in the loop, there's a chance to take account of special circumstances that the algorithm missed. Finally, a cake that can be both had, and eaten!

For the paper, Green reviewed a long list of policies – local, national, and supra-national – for putting humans in the loop and found several common ways of mandating human oversight of AI.

First, policies specify that algorithms must have human oversight. Many jurisdictions set out long lists of decisions that must be reviewed by human beings, banning "fire and forget" systems that chug along in the background, blithely making consequential decisions without anyone ever reviewing them.

Second, policies specify that humans can exercise discretion when they override the AI. They aren't just there to catch instances in which the AI misinterprets a rule, but rather to apply human judgment to the rules' applications.

Next, policies require human oversight to be "meaningful" – to be more than a rubber stamp. For high-stakes decisions, a human has to do a thorough review of the AI's inputs and output before greenlighting it.

Finally, policies specify that humans can override the AI. This is key: we've all encountered instances in which "computer says no" and the hapless person operating the computer just shrugs their shoulders apologetically. Nothing I can do, sorry!

All of this sounds good, but unfortunately, it doesn't work. The question of how humans in the loop actually behave has been thoroughly studied, published in peer-reviewed, reputable journals, and replicated by other researchers. The measures for using humans to prevent algorithmic harms represent theories, and those theories are testable, and they have been tested, and they are wrong.

For example, people (including experts) are highly susceptible to "automation bias." They defer to automated systems, even when those systems produce outputs that conflict with their own expert experience and knowledge. A study of London cops found that they "overwhelmingly overestimated the credibility" of facial recognition and assessed its accuracy at 300% better than its actual performance.

Experts who are put in charge of overseeing an automated system get out of practice, because they no longer engage in the routine steps that lead up to the conclusion. Presented with conclusions, rather than problems to solve, experts lose the facility and familiarity with how all the factors that need to be weighed to produce a conclusion fit together. Far from being the easiest step of coming to a decision, reviewing the final step of that decision without doing the underlying work can be much harder to do reliably.

Worse: when algorithms are made "transparent" by presenting their chain of reasoning to expert reviewers, those reviewers become more deferential to the algorithm's conclusion, not less – after all, now the expert has to review not just one final conclusion, but several sub-conclusions.

Even worse: when humans do exercise discretion to override an algorithm, it's often to inject the very bias that the algorithm is there to prevent. Sure, the algorithm might give the same recommendation about two similar parents who are facing having their children taken away, but the judge who reviews the recommendations is more likely to override it for a white parent than for a Black one.

Humans in the loop experience "a diminished sense of control, responsibility, and moral agency." That means that they feel less able to override an algorithm – and they feel less morally culpable when they sit by and let the algorithm do its thing.

All of these effects are persistent even when people know about them, are trained to avoid them, and are given explicit instructions to do so. Remember, the whole reason to introduce AI is because of human imperfection. Designing an AI to correct human imperfection that only works when its human overseer is perfect produces predictably bad outcomes.

As Green writes, putting an AI in charge of a high-stakes decision, and using humans in the loop to prevent its harms, produces a "perverse effect": "alleviating scrutiny of government algorithms without actually addressing the underlying concerns." The human in the loop creates "a false sense of security" that sees algorithms deployed for high-stakes domains, and it shifts the responsibility for algorithmic failures to the human, creating what Dan Davies calls an "accountability sink":

https://profilebooks.com/work/the-unaccountability-machine/

The human in the loop is a false promise, a "salve that enables governments to obtain the benefits of algorithms without incurring the associated harms."

So why are we still talking about how AI is going to replace government and corporate bureaucracies, making decisions at machine speed, overseen by humans in the loop?

Well, what if the accountability sink is a feature and not a bug. What if governments, under enormous pressure to cut costs, figure out how to also cut corners, at the expense of people with very little social capital, and blame it all on human operators? The operators become, in the phrase of Madeleine Clare Elish, "moral crumple zones":

https://estsjournal.org/index.php/ests/article/view/260

As Green writes:

The emphasis on human oversight as a protective mechanism allows governments and vendors to have it both ways: they can promote an algorithm by proclaiming how its capabilities exceed those of humans, while simultaneously defending the algorithm and those responsible for it from scrutiny by pointing to the security (supposedly) provided by human oversight.

Tor Books as just published two new, free LITTLE BROTHER stories: VIGILANT, about creepy surveillance in distance education; and SPILL, about oil pipelines and indigenous landback.

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

https://pluralistic.net/2024/10/30/a-neck-in-a-noose/#is-also-a-human-in-the-loop

Image: Cryteria (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:HAL9000.svg

CC BY 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en ==

[ckret2]

idk if you've ever answered this before (probably, the answer is always probably) but is Bill, like... capable of empathy? Of sympathy? Of love (any kind) or compassion? I guess what I'm asking is how does he relate to other people? Are they all just tools and idle amusements, or does he develop any actual genuine (positive??) attachment to them?

Everything I know about him comes from 8+ year old memories of a cartoon I haven't rewatched since, and discourse I see through your blog, so I'm not sure what the canon consensus is but your word is god enough to me on at least your specific interpretation of Bill.

(I guess it would be moot to ask why he's so fucked up. Feel free to ignore any and all of this ask, it's 12 AM and I'm trawling the web before bed)

for my specific interpretation of Bill? Have this post about empathy and a couple of posts about romantic love. (Okay—three about romance.)

But now let's forget about my interpretation and talk canon.

Empathy! You can roughly split empathy into two categories: "I can logically identify and understand what you're feeling" empathy, and "when you're sad i feel sad and when you're happy I feel happy" empathy.

We absolutely know that Bill has "I understand what you're feeling" empathy, because he uses it again and again to manipulate his victims. He has VERY good emotional intelligence. He understands his victims' insecurities, their desires, how to make them feel happy, angry, ashamed, trustful, mistrustful; he knows when and how to manipulate them based on their mood to maximum effect; etc. We see it in how he manipulates Dipper & Mabel in the show; we see it in how he turns Ford against Fiddleford in Journal 3; we see it in TBOB and on thisisnotawebsitedotcom in the way he talks about how and why he manipulated Ford.

We have no evidence he experiences "I feel what you feel" empathy. That doesn't necessarily mean he DOESN'T, but there's no evidence for it. Never see him get excited just because someone else is excited, never see him cringe sympathetically when someone else is hurt. You could say "maybe on top of being a manipulation tactic, when Bill relates to Ford's estrangement from his family by talking about his destroyed universe, he's also feeling empathy for his situation," but you could also just as easily say "nah it's just manipulation."

Common sense would say well, if he feels other people's pain, it would be harder for him to manipulate, betray, and hurt people so blithely. But we're not talking about common sense, we're talking about canon evidence! It's possible for empathetic people to hurt other people; they can just... learn not to care about that person's feelings. Which is particularly easy to do if the target is someone the person sees as "less important" or dehumanizes them. Bill sees everyone as less important than him. We can't rule either way on whether or not he's got a capacity for emotional empathy we just never see. All we can say for sure is he doesn't appear to turn it on for anyone we see.

Though we see him come close. Although he doesn't feel with any of the Pines, we can see him relate to Ford (during Weirdmageddon, throughout TBOB), to Stan (on TINAWDC), and to Mabel (in TBOB and the Dipper & Mabel's Guide book) via projecting his struggles and beliefs on to them. But in a way this is sort of, reverse empathy?; it doesn't let him feel how they feel, but it makes him assume they feel the way he does.

Sympathy! The definitions of empathy vs sympathy vs compassion are contested so I'm gonna present the definitions I'm using for this post: empathy is "i [feel/understand] what you feel" and sympathy is "i care about how you feel." There's a couple of moments in his interactions with Ford in TBOB that are blatantly manipulative (when he shows Ford what's left of his dimension; to a lesser extent, when he "helps" Ford celebrate his birthday) that might also secondarily be fleeting displays of sympathy. It's ambiguous.

Compassion! Compassion is "i'm moved to help because of how you feel." There's a moment in TBOB when he gets so irritated at Puritan misogyny that he teaches a bunch of Puritan wives how to be witches and has a girls' night burning men at the stake with them. He apparently gets no benefits from this himself, aside from funsies. Is he motivated by compassion for the ladies or ONLY by irritation at how boring the men are? Again, ambiguous.

In TBOB when discussing his exploits in the Nightmare Realm, he mentions freeing patients from insane asylums and criminals from prisons. He also repeatedly mentions disliking captivity. He might be motivated by compassion derived from empathy for prisoners. He doesn't present his motives.

Love! He calls the Henchmaniacs his "family," repeatedly brings up their worries about being erased from reality, and says he takes his party hosting duties to them very seriously. We don't know whether he actually cared about them, or merely called them a family in recognition of their consistent loyalty and obedience. He's pretty disrespectful/violent toward them but that isn't incompatible with being emotionally invested in them beyond their utility. We don't have confirmation he cares for them, or confirmation he doesn't.

Hidden in TBOB and absolutely riddled through TINAWDC are references to his parents caring about him and tender quotes. When he's so blind drunk he doesn't know where he is, he tries to call his mom and asks her to make him a sandwich after school. We know he resents how they pathologized a mutation he was born with; beyond that we can't confirm whether or not he loved them; but just beneath the surface, he's unceasingly haunted by how they loved him.

Romantic love! I wrote a post about the evidence for/against romantic attraction in TBOB. He's confirmed to have at least two ex girlfriends; in the book, he mentions missing them both. He mentions having "seduced" galaxies; we don't know whether these seductions were sexual, sexual+romantic, or metaphorical. He denies having in the exes in the same book where he discusses them, and claims that love is the pupa for hate.

You can choose to interpret this multiple ways. To me it reads most strongly as "he's been in love but sucks at maintaining a relationship because he's an asshole, and he's got sour grapes about it"; but you could read it as "he wants love but his relationships fall apart because he can't feel it and he doesn't examine why" or "the relationships were based on something other than romantic love" and not technically be wrong based on the evidence we have. What we know for sure: he's had multiple relationships; he misses them; he tries to deny they happened; he claims love's dumb.

Genuine attachment to his tools! Bill claims torturing Ford was normal Henchmaniac hazing and he wanted him to join the gang. (Dubious evidence of emotional attachment.) He goes on a raging bender when Ford refuses to join him and escapes before Bill can torture him into joining. (Stronger evidence of emotional attachment.) In Weirdmageddon, seconds after Ford tried to murder Bill, he asks Ford to join him and then turns him into a statue he carries around everywhere when Ford refuses—and this is BEFORE he discovers Ford might still have a practical use for him.

On TINAWDC, he has an exchange that boils down to "Ford was just a tool?" "You say that like it's a bad thing!" "So you never cared about him?" "I didn't say that." He goes on to refer to Ford as his pet and henchman. Demeaning—but, people do feel positively toward their pets.

(It may be worth noting he also calls Teeth the Henchmaniacs' pet. Maybe this is a consistent element to how Bill relates to sentient people.)

There's evidence in TBOB that he felt similarly about his first human henchman, the shaman—at minimum, he's very bitter when the shaman turns on him and he says he's gonna find a "new best friend."

Summary: There's evidence that Bill develops facets of positive attachments to the people around him; but we don't have any evidence that any of these attachments ever added up to a positive & healthy relationship. In all the relationships we see in depth, the toxic aspects outweighed the positive ones.

Summary of the summary: Bill has the capacity for healthy relationships but is too big a douchebag to utilize it.

[leiascully]

A fic I’ve wondered about…Mulder and Scully actually going to a movie together. Mostly because one of them lost a bet and has to go with the other to a movie of their choice. This happens early on in the partnership…Mulder makes Scully go to Jurassic Park. She nit picks the hell out of the science. So he, in a show of attempting to even the balance - he makes out he’s doing her a favour when really he just likes going out anywhere with Scully - he lets her pick the next one. She picks Sleepless in Seattle. The conversation after that one could lead….anywhere 🥰

Hmm, yes, excellent. I hope you wanted 2000 words of silliness because that's what's under the cut.

There’s a tap on her motel door. Scully twitches the curtains aside. It’s Mulder, slouching in jeans and a white t-shirt, looking like someone posed him against the background of lush summer green. She unhitches the chain and lets him in. Sticky-hot air rolls in after him, a humid swirl of honeysuckle and cut grass.

“How’s the report?”

She sighs and takes off her glasses. “The report is finished.” There wasn’t much to report, in the end: small town secrets, black light ghosts. All the evidence was there from the start, but the sheriff’s nephew was never going to be charged unless someone else stepped in. The only surprise was the support he got from the valedictorian, concocting hallucinogens in the high school chemistry lab. Then again, as a former nerdy teen girl, Scully understands the allure of the quarterback. Social cohesion is a powerful force. Maybe even more than broad shoulders, the girl was attracted to the idea of revenge.

Mulder, naturally, was blithely wry about it all. He’ll probably publish some esoteric paper on it in one of those poorly credentialed paranormal journals: the monstrous manifestation of adolescence, or something about the American tendency to manufacture visible hauntings as a way to deal with the invisible buried history of colonized land.

There are worse ways he could spend a Saturday night. At least he’s less likely to end up in the hospital.

“Dinner and a show?” he asks. “Since our flight isn’t until tomorrow morning.”

“In this town?” She crosses her arms, skeptical.

He produces two movie tickets. “Jurassic Park. Have you seen it yet?”

“I was going to go with my friend Ellen this weekend, but….” She shrugs. They’re here instead, chasing ghosts. “I think she went with her new boyfriend.”

“Got a purse?”

She pats around for it and finds it in a chair. “Yes, why?”

His eyes twinkle. “I said dinner and a show, Scully. Do you know how many McDonald’s hamburgers I can fit in a purse?”

“Mulder, no. I like this purse.” She clutches it to her. “Surely chicken nuggets would be easier.”

“You don’t want to be reminded of this night by a waft of eau de pickle every time you reach for your wallet?” Mulder’s grinning at her. She can’t resist him when he’s like this. Maybe it’s the lonely teen girl in her, the echo of jockishness in the set of his shoulders. He chooses her, patting the seat next to him at the metaphorical lunch table. Besides, he’s already bought the tickets.

“You’re carrying the ketchup,” she says, tilting her head back to look up at him. His grin broadens.

The bored teen at the box office lets them in, despite the waft of fry oil from her purse, which bulges with its contraband cargo. Mulder buys two sodas and a box of Junior Mints while she waits. The college girls at the concession stand eye him with a familiar mix of anxiety and intrigue. Scully’s seen it in every small town, and some of the bigger ones. There’s something rarefied around Mulder, an air of old money, maybe, or a New England vowel. He interests people; they resent that. He’s too obviously overeducated, charming in a way people don’t trust. Still, they’re drawn to him.

She leans on the half-wall that separates the concessions area from a couple of arcade machines and the hall that leads to the three theaters. The college girls’ eyes flick to her and then back to Mulder. There’s hair twirling involved as they hand him his change. Scully smiles to herself. Mulder drops the coins into his overstuffed pocket and saunters over to her, oblivious to the glares of the college girls. Scully shows the tickets to the usher, who rips them and points out the door to the middle theater, as if they could get lost.

The theater is mostly full. They pick seats in the middle - harder for the usher to pick them out in the crowd - and wait until the lights go down. Scully wedges her purse between her hip and the armrest. The food is still warm. They take turns dipping in and retrieving a nugget or a few fries. Mulder carefully applies ketchup from the torn corner of a packet before stuffing the fries in his mouth. In the flickering light from the screen, his lips are glossy with grease. It’s odd, feeling the pressure of his hand against her thigh when he roots around inside her purse, but it isn’t unpleasant.

“You know all of this is nonsense,” Scully murmurs as the animated DNA explains how the park’s team re-created the dinosaurs. “Absolute junk science. Even if you could extract genetic material from a sample like that, there’s no reason to believe it would be viable, no matter how many amphibians you spliced into it.”

“I always find a reason to believe,” Mulder whispers to her. “Come on, Scully, give in to the movie magic. It’s called science fiction, not science plausible.”

“Shhh!” says someone behind them.

Scully subsides until she can no longer contain herself. Mulder, recognizing her mood without looking, tilts his ear closer so that she can whisper to him. They get shushed again, and then again, derailing her sotto voce tirades about parthenogenesis and the feasibility of a theme park based around dinosaur habitats.

“Your wife has a lot to say!” Mulder’s neighbor tells him. It’s clearly intended to be a reprimand. Mulder pretends it’s a compliment. Scully subsides, chastised and defensive. If she doesn’t think too hard about it, the movie is entertaining. And if her knee presses into Mulder’s as the T. rex stomps toward the Jeep, neither of them acknowledges it.

They wait through the credits after the movie, letting the locals trickle out. The glares Scully is fielding now are different from the ones she got at the concession stand. She lifts her chin, defiant. Mulder stuffs their McDonald’s trash into their empty soda cups, concealing the evidence.

“I can’t believe you didn’t enjoy that,” Mulder says as they walk back toward the motel. The evening air is dotted with fireflies. A breeze rustles the leaves and pushes her hair over her forehead.

“I didn’t not enjoy it,” Scully tells him. “It just didn’t seem feasible.”

“Doctor Sattler reminded me of you,” Mulder says. He pushes his hands into his pockets. “Woman inherits the earth.”

“If only we could reproduce so easily on our own.” Scully cuts her eyes at Mulder. “You know, you remind me of Doctor Malcolm.”

“Why, Doctor Scully, I didn’t know you had a thing for bad boys.” She shoves at his arm with her shoulder and he chuckles. “What about me reminds you of him? Because I’m tall, dark, and handsome?”

She rolls her eyes. “Mostly it’s your love of chaos.”

“Mostly?”

“Mostly.” She smiles at him.

“So there’s a chance you think I’m irresistibly suave.” His voice is as velvety as the humid air.

“There’s a chance of a lot of things, Mulder.” She looks up at the night sky and savors the bitter freshness of the last Junior Mint. “Even dinosaurs.”

A few weeks later, they’re on the Texas coast, drafted into an anti-smuggling operation. There’s nothing supernatural about it - more than anything, they’re warm bodies in Kevlar vests. Scully doesn’t mind. Sometimes it’s satisfying to work on these task forces. There’s a clear resolution to cases like these: so many guns seized, so many tons of cocaine destroyed, so much cash pulled out of hidden stashes. It’s clear-cut who the bad guys are, and she doesn’t have to write the reports.

“Dinner and a show?” she says to Mulder as the other agents eddy around them. They’re rarely invited along to drinks when they’re assigned to these things, but she doesn’t necessarily enjoy being the only woman in the group anyway.

“Anything with air conditioning,” he says.

They eat at a seafood restaurant that’s nearly a shack. The seafood boil comes in plastic bags they have to rip open. It’s some of the best shrimp Scully has ever had, and the corn on the cob is as sweet and blisteringly hot as the last days of summer. She licks butter off her fingers and watches Mulder crack crab claws.

The theater here is bigger: eight screens instead of three. Scully buys two tickets for Sleepless in Seattle and presents them to Mulder. He raises an eyebrow.

“Don’t know if I took you for the rom-com type, Scully.”

“I don’t want to get shushed again.” She gives him a sideways glance. “At least we all agree this is going to be unrealistic.”

Mulder sighs and shakes his head. “So beautiful. So cynical.” Before she can figure out how to respond to that, he’s off to the concession stand again, this time returning with Dots wedged into one back pocket and Sno-Caps in the other. He hands her a soda as they go in the theater. The sides of the cup are already faintly damp with condensation. The theater itself is like an icebox, air conditioning whistling.

They sit in the back row this time, near a bunch of teenagers who already have their arms slung against each other. Mulder rolls his eyes, but there’s a nostalgic smile on his face. Scully wonders how many girls he sat in dark theaters with, focused on something other than the movie. He cups her hand and shakes Sno-Caps into her palm. She eats them one by one. They aren’t shushed this time. She almost misses the excuse to lean against him. By the time the movie is over, her feet are tingling with cold. Pushing out the doors into the muggy air is almost a relief.

“Hit me with your best shot, Scully.” Mulder takes her cup to toss it into the trash. “I assume I don’t remind you of lovable widower Tom Hanks.”

“I don’t know why she left Walter,” Scully says. “It seemed cruel. All because her life wasn’t like a movie?”

Mulder scoffs. “You wouldn’t stay with a guy like that.”

“A guy with allergies?”

“A guy who didn’t excite you,” Mulder says. “You wouldn’t settle for safe.”

Scully tips her face to look up at him. “Wouldn’t I?”

Mulder spreads his hands. “Picket fence, 9 to 5, 2.5 kids and Sunday dinner with the family - you like the sound of it, but you’d get bored. Face it, Scully, you’re a creature of the night now. You’ve got that wild urge in your soul. You’d be baying at the moon if you were stuck in that kind of life.”

“And lovable widower Tom Hanks would provide that?”

“No,” he says. “Ian Malcolm might, though.”

She rolls her eyes. “And how much do you charge for this astute psychoanalysis, Doctor Mulder?”

He taps his lower lip with one finger and scans around them. “Two scoops of mint chocolate chip.” He points to the glowing sign down the street depicting an anthropomorphic ice cream creature. Locals are clustered in groups around a walk-up window like moths around a lamp, sipping at floats and licking drippy cones.

Scully feels a rush of nostalgia for the summers of her youth. The salt air, the long twilight: she can’t help remembering. It’s a sweet little ache under her sternum, and it gets sharper when she looks at Mulder. He’s clearly pleased with himself. “I think I can swing that, as long as you’re not angling for a banana split.”

“What about one malt with two straws?” He winks at her.

“Don’t push your luck,” she grumbles.

But she thinks about it as the moon hangs heavy overhead, and she’s glad she can blame her flushed cheeks on the heat.

[rebeccathenaturalist]

Okay, y'all, it's rant time again. Buckle up.

A new report just came out from Public Citizen highlighting the dangers of using apps and AI foraging guides for identifying mushrooms, particularly when mushroom foraging. It's the latest in a string of warnings that are fighting against a tide of purported convenience ("just take a picture and get your answer instantly!")

I've ranted about this since last August, and I also wrote up a detailed post on how to identify an AI-generated foraging guide. I'm also including info on the limitations of apps and AI in The Everyday Naturalist: How to Identify Animals, Plants, and Fungi Wherever You Go. I'm not just saying this to toot my own horn--it's because nature identification, and teaching it to others, is literally what I do for a living. So this is a topic near and dear to my heart.

I teach a very, very specific sort of identification class; whether we're focusing on animals, plants, fungi, or all of the above, I walk people through a detailed process of how to observe a given organism, make note of its various physical traits and habitat, and use that information to try to determine what it is. I emphasize the need to use as many sources as possible--field guides, websites, online and in-person groups, journal articles, etc.--to make absolutely sure that your identification is solid.

And every year, I get people (thankfully, a very small minority of my students) who complain because my two-hour basic mushroom hunting class wasn't just five minutes of introduction and one hundred and fifteen minutes of me showing slide after slide of edible mushrooms. There are so many people out there who just want a quick, easy answer so they can frolic in the woods and blithely pick mushrooms like some idealized image of a cottagecore herbalist with a cabin full of dried plants and smiling frogs or something.

While I do incorporate a bit of information on getting started with the app iNaturalist in my classes, it is as only ONE of MANY tools I encourage people to use. Sure, it's more solid than most apps because, in addition to the algorithmic I.D. suggestions it initially gives you, other iNaturalist users can go onto your observations later and either agree with your I.D.s or suggest something different and even explain why.

And yet--even as great as iNat is, it and its users can still be wrong. So can every other I.D. app out there. And I think that is one thing that the hyper-romanticized approaches to foraging--and nature identification in general--miss. In order to be a good forager, you HAVE to also be good at nature identification.

And nature identification is an entire process that requires you to have solid observational and critical thinking skills, to be able to independently research using many different types of tools, and be willing to invest the time, patience, and focus to properly arrive at a solid identification--if not to species level, then as far down the taxonomic ladder as you can realistically manage. (There's a reason even the experts complain about Little Brown Mushrooms and Damned Yellow Composites!)

People mistake one single tool--apps--for the entire toolkit. They assume any book they find on Amazon is going to be as good as any other, and don't take the time to look up the author to determine any credentials or experience, or even whether they actually exist or not. It doesn't help that the creators of these products often advertise them as "the only [book/app/etc.] you need to easily identify [organism of choice]!"

I mean, sure, the world isn't going to end if you never question the birdsong results on the Merlin app, or if you go through life thinking a deer fern is just a baby western sword fern. But when we get into people actually eating things they find in the wild, there's often no room for error. There are plants and mushrooms that can kill you even if you only eat a tiny amount. And even if they don't kill you, they may make you wish you were dead for a few days while you suffer through a whole host of gastrointestinal nastiness and other symptoms.

There aren't any shortcuts if you want to be safe in your foraging. You HAVE to be willing to do the work. And any teacher, author, or product that says otherwise isn't being ethical. I'm glad to see more people speaking out against the "fast foodization" of foraging in regards to overreliance on apps and the existence of AI foraging books; I just hope it's enough to prevent more people from getting sick or dying.

[minustwofingers]

love is a laserquest p.1

masterlist

pairing: rockstar!ellie williams x reader

request: @thatgiraffefromtlou so kindly included me on a post about writing something inspired by these beautiful edits :) thank you !

summary: after a serious of unfortunate events, columbia grad y/n y/l/n finds herself using her hard-earned journalism degree interviewing vapid stars and writing articles that she's convinced are rotting her mind. ellie williams has just dropped the album of the year and it's all anyone is talking about, but all she wants is to be off the press train. a certain interview with a certain interviewer might change this.

warnings: no cws, but i will say that i don't know anything about this career path so i apologize if i'm totally butchering it!

a/n: see ? see? i promise i haven't forgotten about you guys/this blog/this request. this is admittedly a short installment, but you've all been so good about waiting and i had a little itch to write tonight. hopefully more of this will be posted soon. i hope you enjoy!

tags :) @intrnetdoll @dazedshoon @lovecaraya @pctcr @sariyaflowr @loser-keiji @prettyplant0 @666findgod @sawaagyapong @rystarkov @buzzybuzzsposts @addisonnie @galacticstxrdust @elliesbabygirl​ @pinkazelma @ariianelle @lu002 @blairfox04 @sparkleswonderland @elliesflower @muthafuckingstargirl @elliewilliamsissubermommyoml @eviestevie-14 @quicksilversg1rl @guacala @crtcrp @overtrred28

wc: 1.8k

enjoy!

“Hi. I’m Y/N.” 

You sit and extend your hand, smiling as diplomatically as you can manage to the girl sitting across from you. 

She ignores you.

“I said hi,” you repeat.

One painted eyebrow arches the slightest, but she doesn’t look your way. 

You grit your teeth. A question list that you’ve meticulously prepared is memorized and tucked away in your mind, but now you’re just furious that you spent so much time preparing for an interview with someone who wouldn’t even look you in the eye. 

While you wait for the camera crew to get ready, you sit and observe the room—movie posters behind both you and Lina, bright lights that are already making you sweat shone down from above, and a homey oak wood coffee table between you two to give the air of casualness. 

God, you hate this. All you want to do is go home. 

“Ready?” a cameraman says from the side. 

You send a game smile his way. “Ready.”

“We’re rolling.”

“Hi!” said the girl across from you, suddenly laser-focusing her attention on you with so much bubbly energy that it made you feel like you’d gotten whiplash. “It’s so good to meet you. I’m so glad that we were able to do this.”

“Me too,” you respond, saccharine sweet. “You have no idea how excited we are to have you, Lina! It seems like all anyone wants to talk about nowadays is your role in Ontario.”

The interview’s length is oppressive and mind-numbing. By the time you ask your last question and Lina sends you her last dazzling smile, you’re already on the brink of offing yourself on the camera for all to see.

“And cut,” said someone over your shoulder.

You relax, letting out a long breath. That was the last one for the day. You got to go home now.

But since you were a normal human being, you give Lina one last try to redeem herself.

“It was great having you,” you say in a way that you hope reads as genuine. “Thank you for coming in.” 

Lina doesn’t respond—she’s already back on her phone, intent on ignoring you. 

The drive home is awful and long and full of LA traffic. It was something you’d never quite forgive your younger self for—not advocating for yourself sooner. If you had, maybe you would’ve already been taking the subway alongside all the other New Yorkers, surrounded by serious people wearing serious clothes and carrying serious things around in their briefcase.

Instead you got the quirkiness of Southern California, all arid air full of cigarette smoke and lost aspirations. When you first came to LA, naive and blithely optimistic about your prospects as a journalist, you thought that living near Hollywood would be exciting, all the energy and dreams like firecrackers to the social scene. 

Then you got off the plane and realized it’d all been a lie. There’s no hope in a place like Hollywood. It’s the most hopeless place in the world, knowing that all your servers and Uber drivers and retail employees are all working 3 other jobs to make up their rent as they chase a dream that will never happen. 

Because no one ever makes it big. Well—no one really. One year into your life at PopNow! has made you interact with more people who have, you suppose, “made it big”, and each interaction is dependably more absurd than the last. Like Lina. God, you hate Lina. 

You reach your apartment right when the sun is kissing the horizon, the royal purple of the night descending upon the sky. That was another thing you missed—the stars. You’d missed them when you were at Columbia, but that was when you knew you went back home to the midwestern countryside. Now you’re stuck in the light-polluted hell of California, and there’s no way to know when you’re going to get out. 

You should have turned the job down, you think to yourself as you get ready for bed. The face wash you rub into your skin obediently forms into silky little bubbles. You should have just done whatever you’d had to do to stay in New York, even if it meant being unemployed and living in a broom closet with 3 other people. 

But you’re a writer. And you’re getting published, and that’s all that matters.

Or at least that’s what you tell yourself.

~

The assignment is in your inbox when you wake up the next morning at a prompt 5:30am. As you go about your normal routine, you let the words in the message sink in.

Alyssa’s in the hospital. Emergency appendectomy. 

Alyssa’s the most senior writer at PopNow!, regularly netting the juiciest recorded interviews. 

…interview today that needs to be completed…

You angrily beat your legs back into scissor kicks as you run through the motions of your favorite apartment-friendly pilates routine. Today was supposed to be your day off.

…musician Ellie Williams…

…2pm…

…great opportunity…

You have no fucking clue who Ellie Williams is. She’s never been mentioned on NPR or the New York Times, the only two news sources you bother to follow, so she can’t be that relevant. Or at least not relevant enough to warrant you losing your one day off. But that’s what it’s like to be working in showbiz. Your days don’t belong to you anymore. 

By the time that you’re in the studio, hands folded and question list memorized, you feel like you know all you need to know about Ellie. 

She’s got everything you need to be a world-wide sensation. Humble, small-town beginnings? Check. Sympathetic backstory that makes even the most hardened viewer’s heart soften? Check. Conveniently conventionally attractive features, well-placed tattoos, and a certain swagger that seems so natural it has to be somehow hard-coded into her genes? Check, check, and check.

You’ve interviewed hundreds of Ellie Williams. You’re ready for this. 

Jan from production sets out glasses of water on the table in front of you, one for you and another poised in front of the empty chair.

“You ready?” she asks, not unkindly. “Don’t be nervous. I know that this might be a bigger one than you’re used to, but there’s a reason why Stephen asked you to fill in for Alyssa. You’ve got this, honey.”

“Thank you,” you say. The smile you send her back is tense, because as much as you hate to admit it, you are nervous. It’s ridiculous how something you don’t even care about for an industry you think is bullshit is capable of getting under your skin, but you’d done very few recorded interviews. When you imagined what kind of hard-hitting journalism you’d be doing back when you were at Columbia, it was nothing like this. 

You sit and wait, bouncing your leg and hoping the rest of you looks at ease. The set is as corny and soulless as always, one tall houseplant shoved half-heartedly between the two blue cushioned chairs like an afterthought. There’s a stack of magazines on the coffee table between you two, as if you’d crack open People mid-shot.

You hate your job so much. You always feel so bad thinking this way—there are people out there who would probably actually kill for the chance to be rubbing elbows with the celebrities you did on a regular basis—but whenever you start feeling too guilty, you think of how you ended up here, your dream internship getting whisked away by fucking nepo baby Becca, and then you let yourself be angry again. 

A door slams shut, and suddenly you’re all business again. 

The first thing you notice about Ellie Williams is that she’s actually very tiny, especially in comparison to the burly camera man that she squeezes by to make her way on set. She’s looking a little preppier than she does on stage, donning a pair of wide-legged black trousers, chunky black docs, and a haphazardly buttoned forest green shirt with the sleeves rolled up just enough for you to see the entirety of her arm tattoo. 

“Hi.” You rise from your chair to offer a hand, feel the pressure of her fingers gently gripping yours. “I’m Y/N.”

Ellie blinks. “Uh, hi. I’m Ellie.” 

“Is everything alright?” 

“I thought Alyssa was going to be interviewing me,” says Ellie. She drops into the chair opposite of you, crossing a leg over the other thigh.

“Emergency appendectomy,” you supply.

The way Ellie reacts makes you regret this immediately. 

“Oh,” she says, cringing. “Shit—oh, can I swear in here?”

“We’re not rolling yet,” you say gently. 

“That’s, uh, really too bad,” she says. Her tattooed hand reaches up to scrub the back of her neck. “I’m so sorry.”

Now it’s your turn to blink and stare at her blankly. “Um, thanks? I don’t really know her.”

“Right, right.” Ellie lets out a long sigh that you take as an offense. The interview hasn’t even started, and the languid way she reclines back in the chair reads as already bored with you. “So, do we just go ahead and…”

“Yes,” you say, feeling the heat rise in your cheeks. “Uh, yeah, we’re ready.”

Brilliant start.

The interview begins in earnest, and for once in your life, you’re actually rattled by this girl, by the way she tilts her head at your questions, tongue running over the flat of her front teeth. She has freckles sprinkled across her nose that didn’t show up in any of the photos you’ve seen of her on stage. The ones where she’s awash in blue light, guitar slung over her shoulder and hair sticking to her forehead. It’s disquieting, honestly, how she could just spring a surprise like that on you. 

By some miracle, you manage to get through your list of questions without forgetting anything, but sometimes you stutter on your delivery and have to fight to keep yourself from grimacing. Nothing that she tells you is ground-breaking, nothing you don’t already know. In other interviews, you’re normally able to slip into a sort of conspiratorial voice, prying out information and digging a little deeper than your interviewees intend. But with Ellie, you’re paralyzed, stuck straight to the script that had been sent over to Ellie’s publicist for approval. 

Not like you’d get away with anything when it came to Ellie, either. She has bags under her eyes that you can see concealer creasing in. It’ll wash out post-production under the bright studio lights, but up close it’s obvious that she’s not interested in entertaining any bullshit. 

When it’s over, you’re sure your face is on fire with how hot your cheeks feel. Ellie looks just as nonplussed as ever. 

“It was nice to meet you,” you squeak out. 

She takes her time answering you, busy with draining the glass of water Jan had set out in front of you both and, once it’s empty, fiddling with the buttons on her sleeves. 

“Likewise,” she says, and then before you can think to say anything else, she’s gone. 

[goodeapple]

someone could come love me, if somebody knew me (aemond t. pwp o.s.)

AS IT WAS PROMISED, SO SHALL IT BE BESTOWED.

"Aemond has a dragon dick, send tweet."

pairing : Aemond x Ysilla (Rhaenyra'sDaughter!OC)

warnings : Pretty tame I'd say- handjobs, slight oral play, fantasy of exhibitionism, Aemond's dark little mind & his big ole dragon dick.

word count : 3,000+

title from "fue mejor", Kali Uchis & SZA

Ysilla’s line of sight darts to his crotch, peering intensely at the leather holding him in. She stares, gaze unbroken and unbothered, even as he fidgets under her scrutiny. 

“Can I see it?”

Her inflection is curious, lacking a lustful lilt and somehow, that makes this all the more humiliating. 

“I am not a thing for you to study, wicked girl.” The Dragon Prince snarls. He feels heat pulsate in his face. As if he is a monster, reduced to the oddity of his anatomy instead of the man, the scholar, the fighter he has fashioned himself to be by his own will and his own way. But now, he is nothing but a butterfly pinned in place as strangers pick him apart with a sickened curiosity. The socket of his absent eye aches wildly, a sympathetic partner to the abnormality between his knees.

“Pleaseee, Uncle.” His niece’s pleading compels her to her feet, her fingers lacing together to bring a begging fist under her chin. Her heart-shaped face is cherubic, lips parted in a prayer that Aemond wants to answer with his tongue. Or better yet, his cock. The vision of that, of him feeding every fat inch of his pole downdowndown her throat, until she would choke on him and make sweet tears roll down her cheeks… it seems so real, so well within his limits to make true. 

Aemond snorts, tossing her a disdainful look, one he musters from his very tangible dislike for her and those she holds closest. 

“Don’t beg, Silli, it doesn’t suit you. I said no- I’m positive you’ve never heard that before, but I’m not your papa.” His sneer twists his thin lips down, transforming his regal visage into something ugly. “I won’t give into your every whim just because you bat those pretty eyes at me.” 

Ysilla gazes blithely back at him, swaying on the balls of her feet. Her dress flutters around her ankles, the delicate chains wrapped around the fragile bone there catching the candlelight. She’s barefoot- curiously. Her amber satin slippers were shucked off at the door before she had sunk into the too big chair in the center of his room. To quite simply make herself comfortable- to carve out a space wherever she lands, is a trait Aemond finds irritating but commendable. 

At once, an impish smile illuminates her face, her irises lavender in bloom. “You think my eyes are pretty?” 

Aemond bottles in a groan, gritting his teeth in exasperation. Such a little brat. 

“That’s swell because… I think yours are pretty too, Uncle. Especially your hidden jewel.” Ysilla draws closer and closer, and the walls seem to cinch around them. She shouldn’t be here- he may be her blood but Ysilla is unwed and young and beautiful beyond her means. He should have sent her away when she came knocking, a small bound journal promising something of importance to him, her ticket into his den. Giddiness had manifested in the trembling of her fingers and he couldn't lie- he was intrigued. If only to watch Ysilla’s fire extinguish when he paid no thought to whatever had caught her fancy. 

“I dreamt about it last night. It adorned my crown- not my tiara- my crown as Queen. Nestled front and center, staring down any man, any woman, who kneeled before me. Guarding me, protecting me, loyal… to me.” 

Aemond puts desperate distance between them, her words striking a match within him.

Ysilla’s spiraling locks threaded through the Conqueror’s Crown, refined but still imposing, seated on the forged throne. Aemond gleaming in white, a striking savior at her side, first Lord Commander of the Queensguard. And even when he cannot be there, his jewel watches over all. An All Seeing Eye. He does not replace his surrogate orb. It be a piece of himself he shells out to shield her, and then, when they’re together, he’s comple-

The back of his knees meet resistance and he stills, refusing to bask in the jasmine gust brought forth by his niece’s closeness. She brings her palm to his jerkin covered chest and presses- urging, asking. Aemond stares down at her. She’s so tiny compared to him, so much smaller, weaker but she might as well have a blade to his throat.

He gives, settling into the armchair, wishing to become one with the buttons and the stitchings. When she drops to her knees, it is with a grace that is ingrained in her, blended into every shift of her body. 

“I want to touch you, Aemond. I want to make you feel good.”

Her hand creeps along, fingertips dancing over his clothed thigh, conquering the distance to his laces like a soldier riding through a battlefield. Aemond feels himself start to surrender, a loss he will still win as the heat from Ysilla’s palm leeches through the hide of his breeches. He’s warm all over, tongue heavy in his mouth, words too much to muster. Beads of sweat lick their way down the nape of his neck. 

Ysilla stares at him, her chest level with his knees. There’s too much light in here. He can see every delicious inch of her. No shadows to hide in, no darkness to dim her. She’s all propped up and on display in the late evening sun beaming through the balcony doors. Every beauty mark dotted along her spun sugar skin is penciled in by hand from the Gods, each strand of blackblue hair dancing away from the heat of her blistering surface. It makes this dream too real. He doesn’t know what he’ll do when he blinks and she blows away like a puff of smoke. He breathes out, nerves spiraling in his stomach and spreads his knees. 

Aemond doesn’t make a habit of looking at himself. He washes and dresses with a detachment perfected over the years. When he realized how he differed, when his voice dropped and his bones stretched him to the brim and something else grew right along with him, he had floundered on how to handle it. 

Who was he supposed to ask? His mother was out of the question- Aemond would rather crawl through smoldering embers after scooping out his other eye before he went to her. Aegon was self explanatory; his brother’s failed attempt to drag him down the Street of Silk was enough humiliation to last a lifetime. He toyed with the idea of going to Ser Criston or his grandfather, and some days it did seem tempting but his shame always held him tight by the throat. He was already different, already looked down upon with a pitiful gaze and whispered poor Prince Aemond, such a waste and no eye, no prospects, no future. He didn’t feel like piling on to his already stacked deck. 

“You have to… yeah, and then untie me from, right, just like that.” The back of his eyelid and the pitch of his patch are a comforting darkness as he cycles through the prayers in his head. Warrior, grant me the strength to emerge- no. Mother, I ask your mercy- definitely not. Father, may you judge me justly. Yes, it’s solid, spans the points he needs to make. Aemond settles on it and repeats it, backwards and forwards as the tension imprisoning him in his breeches releases and he feels something spring up and off the flat plains of his abdomen.

“Aemond… Uncle, look at me.” He sucks in a breath through his teeth, ending his litany. It’s no use, his Gods are not listening. He hopes, he regrets, and he caves as he looks down at his lap.

The tip of it curves into a point, not sharp but defined. Blunt thickness runs through his shaft, until the base of him flares garishly into a hard knot. It’s as long as his forearm and thicker than his wrist. He always seems to be at attention, at mast at every surge of adrenaline, every lingering puff of perfume, every dashing neckline of Ysilla’s gowns when she curtsies- no, reign it in. A viciously red mushroom-tapered head splits to allow a bead of excitement to form and trickle down the lengthy march to his stones. He winces, his cock giving a readied pulse as his niece’s palm settles over his groin. 

“Oh, Gods,” Ysilla looks upon him with a wonderment he’s never seen. It stills the air in his lungs. “Aemond, you’re beautiful.” 

Shamefully, that sends him whimpering, the honeyed praise in her tone wrapping him in a caress that stokes the heat in his belly. She glances up at him with a gentle curiosity, but her attention quickly returns between his legs as he jerks from her proximity and the damp warmth of her exhaling breath. 

“Ooohhh, he’s happy to see me.” Her grin is wicked, a toothy pluck of her mouth. Her cheeks are pinker than the Dornish dress Baela gifted her on her nameday last week. 

Cheeky brat. 

Ysilla hocks spit into her hand and Aemond grimaces. Being raised with only brothers has certainly left an impression on her. It's not oil but it’ll do in a pinch. Her fingers are lithe and thin, hands dainty already but seeing one trying to wrap around him? It’s laughable. It’s arousing- painfully so. 

“You didn’t let me finish earlier.” Now that he has nothing to do but listen, his crafty little niece seems to have taken advantage of his predicament. Aemond can’t help but feel a tiny bit impressed. “So when I found the book in the Dragonstone stacks, after I cleaned off the layers of dust, I read all about the many men in Targaryen history who have been… afflicted by this… hardship. Aegon the Conqueror, Maegor the Cruel- which may have played a part in the six wives- but the last documented entry was well over 50 years ago. A tale forgotten to time and dismissed all the same as just another peculiarity with our family. But this Aemond…” she pumps him slowly, demanding his attention, making him bow for her even when she’s the one on her knees. 

“We are closer to Gods than to men. By our dragons of course, but by this as well! You are something special, can’t you see that?” He likes to hear her excited. Her passion is appetizing, drawing him in to take a bite.

His ego perks up at her attention, but so does his pride. Dragons don’t like to share. Aemond doesn’t like to share. “How do you know if it’s not just me who's been ‘afflicted’?”

Ysilla shrugs, and he doesn’t know her well enough to tell if she’s being untruthful. “I’m very thorough in my research. Just not as quite… hands on as I’m being with you. You’ve always been my favorite uncle.”

Aemond could take her by the hair, twist it nice and tight around his fist, rise to his feet, keep her down on her knees where she belongs- not just there but with him and thrust down her throat until he taps her heart.

“Did you ask my brother the same way you’re asking me?” Aemond growls, nudging at her knee with the side of his boot. He wants to touch her but he has to be careful. His resolve is thinning by the minute and he fears that if he can actually feel her- the suppleness of her skin, the silkiness of her hair, he’ll give way and start something that cannot be undone. 

“Nope, I asked Helaena. Girls talk, Aemond, especially over a flagon of wine.” She elbows his thigh in retribution, but it’s gentle and frivolous and the smile she gives him is all teeth. Fuck, she’s lovely. 

Aemond’s hips jump off the chair, chasing the heat of Ysilla’s hands. She smirks, stroking him softly, the delight in her eyes dimming down to lusty pools of amaranthine.

“So you’re doing this out of what, kindness?”

“I like to think of it more as academic curiosity. But, if I can help you become more comfortable with this part of yourself and maybe even aid your future wife in the process, well that’s just all sugar then, isn’t it?”

“I won’t marry, I will bear no children. I might as well take the Black.” Aemond recites, his tone bored to tears. His future fizzled out to ash once he realized there was no way in any Realm that he could ever properly lay with a woman. He couldn’t, wouldn’t damn any wife to a hopeless tomorrow. Occupying himself with other things helped- he’s a resourceful man. After all, great men never got anywhere by thinking with their cocks. 

Ysilla’s brow furrows and her jaw ticks, an unhappy look passing over her face. “Never say never, Aemond.”

His dick pulses, and Ysilla’s eyes go wide, feeling the might of him in her own grip. She raises her gaze back to this face, and the dazzlement there makes him feel taller than tales. 

Aemond smirks, his straight laces loosening. “I like when you call me that.” 

She pumps him, tightly, and he shivers, a gasp slipping through his drooping jaw. There’s a burn at the base of his spine, a familiar one he would entertain only when his needs raged a war within him.  

Her lips are pouted, shimmering in the dusk drawing the room into darkness. He wants to see the stars sparkle over her skin, the moon crest over her breasts in a gauzy beam. Wants to peel off every offending layer until she’s naked, slick and soft and starving for him and the beast between his legs. 

A stranded curl sways in front of her eye, caught in her fanning lash. His fingers twitch, starting forward before he anchors his nails through the furniture’s stuffing and right down to the frame. Ysilla’s tongue flicks out, wetting her parched lips.

“Do you want to touch me?” 

She wears the crown as she rides him, the Throne Room’s chandelier haloing her dramatically. He’s not sure if they’re alone- the embrace of her hand about his throat keeps his attention on where it is demanded. On her. If there are any stragglers stupid enough to hang around, what an honor it is for them to witness a mating, a claiming. The Dragon Queen taking what’s rightfully hers, for the Gods and everyone to see. 

“No.” 

“You’re a liar, my Prince.” That’s even better than his name, fuck him. 

“I think you want to touch me. I think you want to feel me. I think you want to see… just how far… I’m willing to go.” One solid lick of her tongue, from the root of him to the tip, sends him careening over the edge. Aemond gasps raggedly, a man broken apart. His cock jerks, nearly knocking him in the jaw. Thick ropes of creamy pearl stripe his chest and coat his throat. 

His niece milks him, left hand rubbing up and down his shaft, feeling the veins jump and throb against her palm. And the right, fucks sake, the right squeezes around the flared part of him and the tremors jolt right down to his sack.

“Mmmm, good boy, Aemond.” 

A final burst of cum bubbles up and over the tip of him, and he tries not to shout. Sweet relief blankets the scald from his peak, and the Prince can breathe with a newfound ease.

Ysilla spreads her fingers apart, and his spend webs between them in a milky film. Aemond can’t be sure what she’s thinking, how she’s feeling. But what he certainly doesn’t expect is for her to bring up her fingers to brush at her mouth, plush lips spreading to peek out her tongue. He catches her wrist before she can commit the act, and if he bruises her with his grip, she deserves it for her lustfulness. 

“Don’t.”

Ysilla studies his face, weighing if she can push her luck some more tonight. She concedes, peppering a butterfly kiss across his knuckles, wiping her soiled hand on the fur under her knees. Aemond’s chest tightens and he can’t understand why her simple kiss sends him blushing more than her fist around his cock. 

“Next time, then.”

Hunger nips at him harshly, all the ways they can come together, and cum together, flashing through his mind. 

“There will be no next time-”

“Mmmm, I don’t know if he agrees with that.” She presses her puckered lips just shy of his wet slit, and his hips buck from the sensitivity. Her giggle is demented and a dark part of the silver prince wants to push something down her throat to shut her up. 

“Don’t you have something better to waste your time with? Aren’t you supposed to be looking for a husband?” Aemond rumbles, slouched in his seat. All tension drained from him, his legs weak and wobbling from the force of his climax. He feels as if he is up in the clouds, no dragon necessary. 

Ysilla sniffs, tossing her hair over her shoulder with a twist. “I will marry whomever I tell my mother I have accepted. And if no one has caught my eye, we will try again next year.” 

She maneuvers him back into his breeches, and if Aemond were a lesser man, he’d whine at the loss of her smooth touch. The leather suffocates him immediately and it feels so wrong. 

“Who better to guide me in the art of pleasing my husband,” Ysilla looks deep into his eye as she speaks the title, and the Prince feels caught, “whomever that may be, than you? No mere man will ever compare to you, in this aspect.” Ysilla finishes his laces off with a bow, hands tucking behind her innocently as she sits back on her toes. 

“In any aspect.” Aemond thinks he means to snarl in a self-righteous manner, but it’s clear to his own ears what he intends. The thought of Ysilla being on her knees for another, warm and wanting and welcoming for someone that is not him, blazes him with envy.

Ysilla beams, and Aemond feels like a trout swallowing the worm- hooked, reeled, and gutted.

“I’m glad we have an agreement then.”

.

.

.

[eretzyisrael]

Wall Street Journal article by Gerard Baker:

A debt we can never repay: the Jewish state is safeguarding the very future of civilisation How will we ever repay the debt we owe Israel? What the Jewish state has done in the past year – for its own defence, but in the process and not coincidentally for the security of all of us – will rank among the most important contributions to the defence of Western civilisation in the past three-quarters of a century.

Having been hit with a devastating attack on its people, beyond the fetid imagining of some of the vilest anti-Semites, Israel has in 12 months done nothing less than redraw the balance of global security, not just in the region, but in the wider world.

It has eliminated thousands of the terrorists whose commitment to a savage theocratic ideology has claimed so many lives across the region and the world for decades.

It has, with extraordinary tactical accuracy, dispatched some of the masterminds of the worst evil on the planet, including most recently Hassan Nasrallah, the Hezbollah leader in Lebanon. It has repelled and then reversed the previously inexorably advancing power of one of the world’s most terrifying autocracies, the Islamic Republic of Iran. It has demonstrated to all the West’s foes, including Iran’s allies in Moscow and Beijing, that our system of free markets and free people, and the voluntary alliance network we have constructed to defend it, generates resources and capabilities of vast technical superiority.

Above all, it has provided an unexpected but crucial reminder to our enemies that there are at least some willing and able to pursue and defeat them whatever the risk to our own lives and resources.

The only appropriate responses to Israel’s gallantry, fortitude and skill from us – its nominal allies, especially in the US – are “thank you” and “how can we help?”

Instead, time and again Israel’s supposed friends, including the administration of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, have, while expressing sympathy over the outrage of October 7 and uttering the usual support for “Israel’s right to defend itself”, repeatedly tried to restrain it from doing just that.

Their early, valuable support has been steadily diminished by the way they have too often connived with the anti-Israel extremists in their own party.

Before Israel had even buried its dead last October and as Hamas was busy murdering its hostages, there were calls for Israel to cease fire.

For a year we have heard our leaders’ “balanced” condem - nations of Hamas and its terror masters on the one hand and the Jewish state on the other, a false equivalence that says more about the moral disorder in our own politics than about Israel’s motives and actions.

In Europe, they have gone even further, as usual, rewarding Hamas and Hezbollah by nominally recognising a non-existent Palestinian state and prosecuting Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on bogus war crimes charges.

Do they not get that in the end we have to make a choice: our ally, on the front lines of defence against barbarism, or our enemies, those who literally want to see us all buried? Fortunately for all of us, it seems Israel is prevailing despite the chorus of hecklers.

Perhaps all this sounds too blithe for sceptical readers; or at least premature given the rising expectation of a much wider conflict to come. And it is true that there has been awful loss of innocent lives in Gaza, Lebanon and elsewhere that undoubtedly fuels the ire of the enemy across the world. What if Netanyahu and his government’s aggressive prosecution proves a Pyrrhic victory? But that wider conflict was perhaps always inevitable, given Iran’s stated objectives and its consistent efforts to achieve them. We can say two things tentatively about that long-feared wider confrontation.

First, the strategic, tactical, intelligence and technological genius Israel has demonstrated over the past year might have done so much damage to Iran’s proxy armies and their military and political leaders that they will be illprepared and equipped for the bigger struggle to come, and Israel – and, let’s hope, reliable allies – better placed to defeat its enemies.

Second, having observed this Israeli superiority over that time and eagerness not to bring the destruction on itself a wide war would surely bring, perhaps Iran will be deterred.

Never in the field of human conflict has so much been owed by so many to so few, Winston Churchill said of the men of the Royal Air Force after they had repelled Hitler’s Luftwaffe during the Battle of Britain. (Reminder to some recently confused “conservatives”: the former were the good guys; the latter the real villains.) We should echo those words today as we watch in awe what a country smaller in area than New Jersey, with a population less than North Carolina’s and an economy smaller than that of Washington state has done for all of us.

As Israelis mark a year since October 7, we should not only redouble our expressions of sympathy and solidarity. We should show them our gratitude, and if we are willing to be honest, acknowledge a little of our own shame.

[darkmaga-returns]

By Chris Hedges ScheerPost

In the end, the election was about despair.

Despair over futures that evaporated with deindustrialization. Despair over the loss of 30 million jobs in mass layoffs. Despair over austerity programs and the funneling of wealth upwards into the hands of rapacious oligarchs.

Despair over a liberal class that refuses to acknowledge the suffering it orchestrated under neoliberalism or embrace New Deal type programs that will ameliorate this suffering. Despair over the futile, endless wars, as well as the genocide in Gaza, where generals and politicians are never held accountable.

Despair over a democratic system that has been seized by corporate and oligarchic power. 

This despair has been played out on the bodies of the disenfranchised through opioid and alcoholism addictions, gambling, mass shootings, suicides — especially among middle-aged white males — morbid obesity and the investment of our emotional and intellectual life in tawdry spectacles and the allure of magical thinking, from the absurd promises of the Christian right to the Oprah-like belief that reality is never an impediment to our desires.

These are the pathologies of a deeply diseased culture, what Friedrich Nietzsche calls an aggressive despiritualized nihilism.

Donald Trump is a symptom of our diseased society. He is not its cause. He is what is vomited up out of decay. He expresses a childish yearning to be an omnipotent god. This yearning resonates with Americans who feel they have been treated like human refuse.

But the impossibility of being a god, as Ernest Becker writes, leads to its dark alternative — destroying like a god. This self-immolation is what comes next. 

Kamala Harris and the Democratic Party, along with the establishment wing of the Republican Party, which allied itself with Harris, live in their own non-reality-based belief system.

Harris, who was anointed by party elites and never received a single primary vote, proudly trumped her endorsement by Dick Cheney, a politician who left office with a 13 percent approval rating.

The smug, self-righteous “moral” crusade against Trump stokes the national reality television show that has replaced journalism and politics. It reduces a social, economic and political crisis to the personality of Trump. It refuses to confront and name the corporate forces responsible for our failed democracy.

It allows Democratic politicians to blithely ignore their base — 77 percent of Democrats and 62 percent of independents support an arms embargo against Israel.

[starry-polytheism]

a modern festival to psyche, the butterfly's preparations

now, as you all might be aware, psyche was not worshipped historically, so therefore she does not have any festivals. so, i decided to fix that and make her a festival for myself mainly, since i don't know that many of her worshipers who live in the southern hemisphere

as for how historical this festival is, well, the answer is Not Much. i am still practicing in secret, so this has to be discreet. as for resources used, i referenced mainly fel the blithe's video on festivals!

now, when psyche herself was asked for a date for her festival, she told me she wanted it in april, which means it fell on autumn. i have always felt her the most strongly during the transition months between summer and winter, so this made sense to me. when asked further about it, she pointed me towards the direction of self-reflection and transitions, with preparations for the "harder days" (which i took to mean winter, but my country is a mess right now so i can't help to feel she partially meant That also)

as for other gods included, she asked me Very Intensely that eros be included with her, and when he was asked if he wanted anything, he more or less went "well... im just happy to be included, but also it could be nice to spend it with loved ones". i decided hermes also to be part of the festival, mainly focusing on his side with transitions and change

festival for me will take place during the first weekend of april, but for those of you in the nortnern hemisphere who want to take this festival, you'll have to adapt the date to your zone, sorry

so, for devotional acts, here are a few suggestions but feel free to get creative with it:

do some journaling! be that reflecting on your relationship with psyche or more generally on plans to come

prepare a meal in her honor with fall fruits and vegetables, and enjoy some warm drinks (bonus points if you can make hot cocoa, but no pressure to)

spend some time with loved ones, be that in person or through the phone (if you can cook for/with your loved ones, even better!)

make some jams and/or pickle some stuff

store away the summer clothes and bring out the colder weather clothing

donate old coats and blankets to those who need them

[ryanlowrie]

Gather round ye olde art log while I shave off another page of the Paper Stage journal. @tie-dyeandtrees dareth to shareth and we careth. Blithed be

[blithe-imperial-underling]

Blithe's encrypted journal and the fiction she writes as cover.

CW for this entry: F!OC being held captive by a mad scientist.

Read more of Blithe's adventures

Excerpt from Blithe's unencrypted decoy files

Just as the needle pricked the pale green skin of Zekhee's throat, the room flashed blue. A blaster set to stun whined as its ring of debilitating energy swept between the scientist and his intended victim–clipping both of them.

Zekhee gasped and her captor cursed, cradling his stunned arm with his other hand as the hypo-syringe clattered to the floor. A man Zekhee recognized all too well stood in the doorway, blaster held ready to fire again.

"Professor Hyde," he said as his thumb toggled a setting on the blaster with a click. "I hope you don't mind I let myself back in." His tone was polite, though distorted by his helmet's vocoder. Clearly humanoid, the black tint of his visor made telling his exact species impossible.

The professor, Hyde, glanced at a data panel on the wall to his left, but held still. "What is this about, Makro?" he said, his lip curling in disdain, "I hadn't taken you for such a fool."

"Unfinished business." Makro tossed a pouch onto the floor where it skidded under the table Zekhee was bound to. It clinked as it landed, with the unmistakable jingle of a sizable number of credits.

Encrypted Journal Entry: About one standard year ago

When my mind wanders, it so often heads for the last time I saw Commander Echo.

The door to my quarters was open when I woke that day, letting golden pre-dawn light in from the lab. The commander must have locked my door open to keep an eye on me from the other room until he was sure I was out of danger.

As I thought this through, my head full of fog, the lab's outer door whooshed open to admit a small parade of repair droids. More pieces fell into place as my aching muscles complained about rough treatment from a giant plant-monster a handful of hours ago — the same horrendous vine that had ripped Echo’s quarters apart. I remembered sparking electronics, the moist squelches of groping tendrils, and Echo ordering me from the room just a moment too late.

When I'd come to after the battle, I was flat on the floor and spattered with possibly-psychoactive sap. It would have been pretty karking funny if it wasn't for the whole concussion and conflagration thing, or the worry in my commander's eyes.

Properly awake now, I peeled a spent bacta patch from behind my ear and shut the door to get dressed, only to find my service uniforms reeked of accelerant and smoke.

That decided my first task for the day. I’d drop off my uniforms and be back within the hour, including a stop for Echo's favorite caf by way of thanks. Hardly adequate, given his patience and care, but he's not one for wordy displays of emotion. A nice cup of caf would do for the moment.

With that plan in mind, I peeked out of my quarters a few minutes later, dressed in civilian clothes, a duffel over my shoulder.

I wasn't surprised to see Echo already hard at work, plugged into the network and stretched out on his comfy chair, eyes closed. The more the galaxy throws at him, the more deeply he seems to immerse himself in safeguarding the Empire.

He'd donned his armor from the waist down, his black bodysuit sufficing for a shirt. Part of my mind was already back on duty, making a note to have someone pick up his laundry and order replacements for whatever he’d lost in the prior night's chaos.

The other part of my mind—the part in charge of my nervous system—entirely lost its cool. Images from the night before flashed in front of my eyes and I tripped, backing into my quarters, afraid Echo might see the heat darkening my cheeks.

I immediately chastised myself. "What's wrong with me?! " I thought. "Of course he came out of the refresher in his blacks last night, after cleaning the goo off his gear. Should he sleep in his armor?" After all, those bodysuits are technically modest enough for mixed company.

Technically.

----- [Begin Deleted Text] -----

It's not like I'm inexperienced, for kark's sake. Been there, done the dance. I'm not usually bowled over by body things. I've usually got self-restraint to spare, even around the commander.

Usually. If I stay focused.

But here I am, half a galaxy and several hundred rotations away, still undone by a remembered glimpse of him. Black fabric like a second skin, covering yet revealing the man beneath; the taper of his waist; muscles toned by years of fighting giving way to the angular lines of his prosthetic legs. Some may say he’s less of a man because of his cybernetic parts but, to me, they’re emblematic of his strength, how tough he is inside and out. The bastards that hurt him are surely all dead and he’s still alive, never giving up the fight for a secure and orderly Empire.

Yet, as deadly a foe in the field as Commander Echo is, he can be gentle when he chooses to.

He was so striking, in the cold light of my quarters. In my heart, I thank that mutant salad for giving me that short time as the center of his attention.

As dizzy as I was, I’m sure only half of it was the concussion. The rest was awe. How had I gotten lucky enough that life led me to that very moment? I’d admired this man from afar, as so many did, when his battalion fought with the famous general everyone knew as The Hero With No Fear. When, through unimaginable luck I was offered the opportunity to serve the Empire by serving him, I thought nothing could get better than that.

Now here he was, comfortable enough with me to set aside his armor and the formality it represents, sincere concern in his serious eyes. Concern for me. For me. The way he looked at me, I felt giddy and safer than I’ve ever felt before.

He tipped my chin up with his scomp to check my eyes and I almost forgot to breathe. I’ve never wanted so much to—

-----[End Deleted Text]-----

Pull yourself together, Blithe. He deserves better than this twitterpated nonsense, even in memories. Breathe. And delete the most egregious paragraphs . . . just in case.

Once my composure had returned, I’d left the lab without looking back. It never occurred to me that I might not see him again for a long, long time.

I will see him again. Surely the Empire won’t leave me out here forever.

[unlocked-doors-verse]

Mystery Kids AU: New Changes

Ho boy, somehow I've fallen back into Coraline since the local movie theater decided to premier it again - hence why I decided to talk about my Mystery Kids AU and the updated lore changes because well, I want to be a menace today.

So, to recap from old posts - the chosen fandoms are Danny Phantom, Coraline, Paranorman, and Gravity Falls. All of these do take place post-canon, although Phantom Planet is retconned because- no. For the record, I don't necessarily hate it but it's not really important to my plot.

I'm going to break this down into different sections, so! Let's get started, shall we?

The plot begins with Dipper and Mabel returning to Gravity Falls, Oregon, for the summer and due to a camp program happening - well, it leads to the others becoming part of said camp, arriving to the sleepy town where shenanigans ensue. Dipper and Mabel are both nearly sixteen now, as of course - their birthday is near the end of summer break. Things start off as very typical to the weirdness that is Gravity Falls, and introducing the characters to one another. Though about halfway through, when the main storyline picks up, we're also given a glimpse of the main villains... who I unfortunately cannot mention right now because that would defeat the purpose.

I do intend for the series to be a lot darker than the original movies and/or tv shows because that does defeat the purpose, so this is your fair warning of what to expect for the Mystery Kids/Unlocked Doors verse. I am hoping to transform it into a proper series, exploring the Main Bad Guys across the four franchises but we'll see what happens with the first installation!

(Under-the-Cut Information)

Character Introductions

Dipper Pines: 15-16 years old. After the defeat of Bill Cipher, Dipper and his twin sister Mabel returned home to Piedmont, California. His intrigue and fascination with the weirdness and abnormal continued to get stronger - in light of what went down during the events of Weirdmaggedon, Dipper follows in Grunkle Ford's footsteps. He's fallen out of the preteen anxiety he had in his preteen years, even if it does little to help his own paranoia of the return of Bill Cipher. Dipper began keeping his own journals, adding onto them and hoping to one day become a paranormal researcher.

Mabel Pines: 15-16 years old. Mabel Pines is the twin sister to Dipper. Unlike her brother, Mabel is known for her artistic and creative side - she dreams of the day she can make it big as an artist, or even simply becoming a teacher. She's not picky to be honest! Mabel's hyperactive, cheerful personality continues to shine even now; though she still has dreams of what happened during Weirdmaggedon. Even then, she's just looking to have a great time in Gravity Falls, not having the slightest clue of what awaits her and her friends.

Norman Babcock: 14 years old. Norman is a bit younger than Dipper and Mabel, simply due to his birthdate, but even then - he's matured quite a bit since the events that went down in his hometown of Blithe Hollow, Massachusetts. Norman can still come off as a little awkward around new people, but he does have a good heart and does his best to help wherever he can. He has fully embraced his ability to see ghosts and helps them cross over.

Danny Phantom: 16 years old. Danny is the eldest out of the kids. Following the defeat of Pariah Dark and a few other select baddies, things slowly returned back to normal - Amity Park became a little more accepting and Danny's role as protector flared even more, but of course... there are still other threats brewing under the surface though I'm sure they won't be much of an issue for Phantom.

Coraline Jones: 15 years old. Coraline's life slowly settled after the incident and became closer with Wybie Lovat. She has hoped to forget about what happened, attempting to bury it down (and no one would blame her, it was quite the traumatizing experience-) but an unexpected summer camp program to Gravity Falls, Oregon is about to change everything in ways she didn't expect. She's got a spunk to her now - still just as sassy as she was in her younger years.

Wyborne "Wybie" Lovat: 15 years old. Wybie is Coraline's best friend now; the two became practically inseparable after what happened in the Pink Palace - though more specifically, the wall. He still doesn't know what to make of it, but he isn't nearly as spooked by all of it as Coraline. Wybie continues to be kooky and eccentric and might just be having a tiny puppy crush on Coraline, though he's never going to admit it. Who knows what might come of their summer camp in Gravity Falls?

Other characters will be in this, of course but they're not nearly as important as the ones I already listed - or who knows, maybe I have plans I can't share just yet ;))

Lore Infodumping

Ho boy, I can only share so much because weeelll - I will not be able to share spoilers, but here goes nothing.

Gravity Falls, Oregon, and other likeminded towns became natural hotspots for weirdness once the barrier was broken - of course, this is canon but people just sort of accepted this as part of the everyday normal. With cities like Amity Park however, and the fact Danny is in fact a superhero, this becomes a different can of worms. Much like one of my other projects, it isn't out of the ordinary for the hotspot towns and even 'hero cities' to keep to themselves though it remains unclear why.

Gravity Falls became a very popular tourist spot, eventually creating the summer camp program. Though no one talks about Weirdmaggedon, preferring to keep it that way in the hopes of warding off bad energy and superstitions associated with it. The Pines are still an oddity amongst the residents, but they came to be respected - especially now with how they managed to stop Bill Cipher. Ford continued recording information about his adventures in new journals, using it as a pastime now more than his job. Stan and him return home during the summers to spend time with their great niece and nephew.

I genuinely don't have much to say about the Pink Palace or Blithe Hollow since things just sort of went back to normal. As for Amity Park, it's a bit different as it became liminal and just has more ghost activity; like I mentioned earlier - Phantom Planet has yet to happen, or won't happen, I don't know which. It turned into a hotspot of its own and the citizens have been marked by ghostly activity (not that they have powers-). Anyway,

Earth as a whole has changed a lot and who knows what come next?

I'm going to be changing the blog url into unlocked-doors-verse since Secret Origins is now separate from this! You are more than welcome to send me asks and/or interact with the blog, and I will be providing headcanons and more information in a following post! Obviously I can't share many spoilers though there's going to be a lot more for this universe. As of right now, this is not a character blog - it's more for the AU itself, BUT you can ask me information about the characters and how everything works.

Until next time, my lovely readers!

[bkdk-and-extras]

Katsuki cannot believe this shit.

"What the fuck do you mean I've been transferred?"

While they may be in the kingdom of Heaven, if Todoroki had taken a second longer to tear his soulless eyes away from the scroll spread upon his desk, Katsuki would have killed him. Discorporated him at the very least. Bare handed.

"Did you not hear the coming of Christ? The operation started a mere 24 hours ago, but surely..."

Wait. The what?

"The fucking what?" Katsuki spits, brain-to-mouth filter be damned and splashed with holy water. "You can't seriously mean that shit, right? That's... I thought that wasn't..." His voice extinguishes, hands shaking with the itch to miracle the entirety of Todoroki's office into an afterthought.

Because this isn't happening. This is just some silly catastrophe that has always loomed far in the future. Not to mention the entire plan is insane and... the things that kid would go through?

Katsuki isn't naive. He's always known of it, heard other angels speculating, even dreaming of the day, but. It's never come close before. Not to Katsuki and not to... to him. And the idea of it, of an end, never used to hurt him before. Not until he started to, dare he fucking say it, look forward to seeing that mess of curly hair, brushed but never neat. Of looking at those freckles and wondering if those, too, were hand-crafted like the stars, if he could maybe craft them again. Of long nights at K.D. Café, of snow in the dark, of journals and shitty outfits and the sound of his voice and now it--

It isn't. It's not happening. It can't.

Regardless, the question tumbles from his lips, eager to be kicked down into the dirt but also hopeful, god, so fucking hopeful. His mouth has always been at the ready to face his fears, even if the rest of him hasn't.

"The Rapture is starting now?"

"Yes," Todoroki answers blithely, nodding in that oddly scripted way that makes bugs crawl beneath the outer layer of Katsuki's very soul. "Henceforth, you've been pulled from Miracles, and it will be your job to deliver the rebirthed Christ to her rightful family. As well as keep an eye on her earthly progress."

Katsuki takes in a shaky breath, stabs a finger at himself. "And you want me to do it?" Because yeah, of course it's a good idea to send the most temperamental of angels to be a divine stork-combination-nanny. How genius.

The angel before him blinks. "I do not want anything. You are merely the best."

Yeah. The best.

Not after this. Maybe he never has been, really, but fuck, not after this. At least, not to the one shitty guy whose opinion half-ass matters.

[nightingale-ghost-writer]

By the Grace Of [Sorcerer Rogier x Fem!Tarnished] - Chapter Three

Summary: Rogier tries (and fails) to occupy his mind and time, alone in the Hold. With a little help, he’s about to have lots to think about.

Author’s Notes: Another measly 800 words! Setting the scene for what I hope to be the last chunk of game dialogue for a bit.

Disclaimer: I do not own any characters or events from Elden Ring

Warnings: none? Unedited (basically), unfinished story- read at your own risk!

Rogier spent an indeterminate, but too long time, staring, again, where the Tarnished had been standing.

What just happened?

He couldn’t seem to process that kiss. It had been so long since he’d been touched, let alone kindly. Dare he say affectionately.

A door somewhere in the Hold slammed shut and he shook himself out of his stupor. He needed to get his mind off of-

He didn’t even know her name.

By Marika, he didn’t even know her name.

He drew himself up, such as it was, and lifted his chin in defiance of himself.

No need to pine for the touch of a woman he didn’t know, with whose presence he might never be graced again.

He didn’t pine. He needed no one.

That settled, he nodded to himself and then looked around the balcony, wistfully eyeing the rail he so often launched himself over. Never again.

He shook his head again. Not the kind of distraction he needed.

He looked toward the doorway. Surely, someone would be near enough to…

No. He didn’t want their pity. Their smug, vindicated disappointment. As it stood, he was outcast enough. And not without his own share of fault in the matter.

He resolved to keep himself occupied by his own devices.

He would list all of the spells he knew. He tilted his head back against the wall and let his eyes shut, taking a deep breath.

Lavender eyes bored through him.

He opened his eyes, shifting. Perhaps he could categorize them. By the order in which he learned them?

He tried that, and found himself getting hung up on the details surrounding each discovery.

He heard the Tarnished’s voice. Indistinct and lyrical.

He squeezed his eyes shut and covered his ears. Was he going mad? Was Death rotting his mind?

A step at the doorway. He dropped his hands, affecting his signature easy air, smile and all. He didn’t let himself think about how quickly it came to him, how effortless it had become to hide behind this mask.

The Tarnished rounded the corner, mouth set in a wide smile. Her arms were laden with an assortment of items- scrolls and tomes; quills and ink; a pillow, a blanket; a small brown sack. She dumped the lot at Rogier’s feet, planting her hands firmly on her hips and looking quite pleased with herself.

“Congratulations, on this motley of… items,” he said dryly. She huffed, dropping to lean against the bench by his legs. If he could have recoiled, could have moved his wretched afflicted legs away from her, he would have. He couldn’t. And so he only sat, at once longing to flee, and longing to reach forward and tuck her dark hair behind her delicate ear.

What?

“You might be a bit more grateful once you see what I’ve brought,” she said blithely. She tossed a tome at him, which he fumbled before grasping. He turned it over. Before he could read the cover, she was tossing more tomes over her shoulder and into his lap.

“Well, then!” he sputtered. He looked down, ready to offer a good natured, if iindignant pout. But she was beaming up at him and he found his own lips curling up to match.

“Good, I thought you might give me an earful. The smile’s better.”

Rogier’s face flushed. She had the decency to look down, at least attempting to hide her smirk. Rogier cleared his throat, grasping for what shreds of decorum he could gather.

“What’s all this, then?” he finally asked.

She shrugged, shuffling papers at her feet. “Mostly journals, I think. Just things I’ve collected along the way.” She nodded to the brown sack. “Some bread and dried fruit. Not much, but it’ll keep you.

“Anyway, I just thought you might appreciate them more than me. And,” she looked up again, shy this time. “You seem to be quite well-learned. I thought you might like some place to put down your thoughts.” She held out another book- plain and leather bound. He took it gently from her hands. Loose papers fluttered out, and the Tarnished scrambled to collect them.

“Sorry about that,” she said. “I didn’t know where else to put those, but I thought you might find some use. I certainly won’t.”

Rogier blinked. “Thank you,” he said quietly. “Time can move rather slowly, stuck here, you know.” She looked up at him, holding the papers out. She seemed transfixed by his confession. He couldn’t quite believe he’d said the words aloud, himself. He forced himself to hold her gaze. “A little conversation goes a long way.”

She smiled, a bit of mischief and a bit of regret rolled into one.

“Well, in that case…”

[hannahhook7744]

Rwylm Edits (Part 1);

Warren Scarlet found Rowena Jones' (formerly Blithe) wanted poster.

Warrowtemp (Warren Scarlet x Rowena Jones x Tempest Banks)'s Honeymoon interrupted.

Cover for a one shot in the 'rwylm universe'.

Warrowtemp with Shadow the shape shifting cat/catfish in the background.

Warren Scarlet wanted poster.

Warren Scarlet wanted poster in Wonderland.

Will seeing his younger brother's wanted poster.

Silver edit.

Cursed Warrowtemp edit.

Cursed Silver and Rowena (Silver is kneeling because of a dare).

Burning photo of Silver and Rowena.

Rowena's journal she kept while cursed.

------------------------------------------------------------

For my and @ouatnextgen 's 'once upon a time' story 'Right Where You Left Me'.