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bayjaruchel · 11 months

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Never Too Much

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Pairing: Mike Schmidt (2023)/AFAB Reader

Rating: Explicit

Summary: There are certain things that your boyfriend really likes to do. (2.2k, mostly cunnilingus | originally posted on ao3) | Masterlist )

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Mike takes his time with you, when he can.

He likes being able to pace himself. By now, he knows your body very well; every curve and harsh edge, every single little detail. He's traced up your contours with his fingertips and kissed all the way back down again. Even though he's generally not the best at keeping calm, he's a very patient lover when given the chance to be. After your first few— and frantic — times together, he's slowed down considerably.

However, there are still exceptions to that pattern.

Like when you don't have the time for anything slow; such as the minutes before he has to get ready for work. When you're both still a little groggy, but still need each other. Or when he knows he won't be free for most of the day, and you want to make it up to him. You fumble for each other, a determined clash of hands and lips and warm skin, both desperate to make the other person finish first. The sheets get twisted awkwardly around his legs— the hardwood floor makes your knees sore— but it's completely and utterly worth it. For every time you can't properly make love— in the purest definition of the phrase— there's always going to be a time when you leave each other completely breathless and spent afterward. No matter the technique, he's mastered the art of thoroughly taking you apart.

There is one specific thing that Mike just can't be patient with, though.

"Shit—"

He's always been eager to eat you out.

No matter the time or place. It could be during one of those brief periods, or during the long hours of the night where you have all the time in the world. He just can't wait. And he isn't waiting right now, even redoubling his efforts when you tighten your grip in his hair. His head bobs, slightly, as he drags his tongue through your gathering wetness, up towards the aching apex of your pleasure.

A gasp is punched from your lungs when Mike closes his lips around your clit and sucks, for just a moment, before returning to your cunt. He shifts forward to get even deeper than before, lapping at you in broad strokes, equally calculated and clumsy. His enthusiasm is palpable, as usual. The sounds he's making— almost filthy slurping, accompanied by little moans now and then that send pleasant vibrations through you— they fill the air, easily overpowering everything else. His eyelashes flutter now and then, but occasionally he looks up at you, taking you in. You know how you look: nearly as disheveled as him.

Your thighs twitch as he continues to savor you. Whenever he moves back up to gently flick your clit with his tongue, his breath comes in hot puffs through his nostrils. He always takes a deep inhale before diving back in, totally uncaring towards the way his spit and your slick must be dripping down his chin. He's not afraid to get messy. In fact, you think he likes it— he likes the evidence of your arousal clinging to your stubble, the knowledge of what he does to you. The knowledge of what he can do to you. "Mike," you gasp again, "oh, fuck. That's— that's so good— "

His mouth is still occupied, but he hums, muffled into your cunt. The praise has always done something for him. But you don't just say it because he likes it— you say it because you mean it, truly. The fact that you can see his hips shift a little at your words is just an added bonus. He hasn't even attempted to reach down to touch himself yet, even though you know he must be tenting his boxers. Even though you know that by the time you get close, there'll be a wet spot in the fabric.

"You don't even have to beg for it anymore," you tease, even though you're too breathless for it to really land, "you know I'll let you do this again and again, even if I'm supposed to be doing something else." You're a sucker for him, and he knows it. Biting your lower lip, you use the hand in his curls to tug him closer. He's just like putty in your hands. "Maybe you like to beg a little, huh? Is that right?"

You decide to take his answering moan as a yes. Mike looks up at you with heavy hazel eyes— pleading, again— wanting to tell you what he wants, but he also doesn't want to stray from his task at hand. Sometimes you wonder what you did to earn this. It's practically worship, at this point. You make a hasty mental note to repay him later, but it's hard to concentrate when he's putting all of his effort into pushing you towards your orgasm. You can feel your muscles tensing, the heat in your abdomen building—

He's gradually focusing more and more of his attention on your clit now. But he's still dragging his tongue through your cunt, tasting you, collecting what's accumulating there. You jolt when his nose bumps against your sensitive nub, providing much-needed friction in the absence of his tongue. Although you definitely aren't the first person that he's done this to, you know for a fact that you're the person he's done this the most to. How do you know? He's told you himself.

Cuntdrunk is a good word to describe him. If he could, he'd live between your thighs forever.

You choke on a whimper. Mike takes in that sound— greedily, needily, he needs more. Scrambling to get a grip on one of your knees, he squeezes it once, pulling it closer to his head. And you understand the signal immediately. You close your thighs around his head, essentially trapping him where he is. Forcing him deeper. His brow furrows, nose pressed against your clit. The first time he wanted you to do this, you were afraid that he'd suffocate; that you'd hurt him. But by now, you're well aware that it won't happen, as long as you're careful not to push him down too much.

He really likes being pushed like this, though. It empties his head, he says. Yours is pretty empty at the moment, too. You're blissfully absent, hardly tethered to Earth. You only really register the feeling of his hair tickling your thighs and shins, from where you've got them positioned— the pillow underneath your hips— his tongue. The pace he's keeping now is almost feverish—

— minutes pass, and you're so, so, close. You can feel it, toes curling when he sucks on your clit again. You can't bite back the sounds that you're making anymore, your mouth falling open as your breathing grows more uneven the closer you get. Your thighs tighten an increment, your heart pumping furiously. The sensations are nearly overwhelming, but you can do little except take what he's giving you. "Just like that— mmhn — keep going, that's perfect—"

You're teetering on the edge for a split second, but what finally pushes you over is another glance downward. Mike is— to put it simply — ruined.

His hair's all messy from when you'd been tugging at it earlier, his cheeks a brilliant red. Almost the entire lower half of his face proudly displays the confirmation of what he's been doing this entire time. If his eyes weren't shut, you know they would be hazy, glazed-over— you haven't even touched him yet, disregarding a few kisses— and he's already fucked-out. All because of you.

"Mike!" You squirm, eyes squeezing shut, "Mike, I'm—"

He groans into your pussy when you cum, eagerly licking up all the remnants of your orgasm. The coil unwinds in waves, which crash through your lower body.

He works at you until the abrupt heat in your gut fades away, replaced by a relaxed warmth, and you start shuddering with oversensitivity.

You could let him continue— he'd keep going for as long as he possibly could. He'd make you cum as many times as humanly possible if you let him. However, you release his head from between your thighs instead, letting your legs slip down to lay on his shoulders. As soon as he's free, he starts taking deep lungfuls of air, catching his breath. Just like you. Which is sort of ironic, since he was the one doing all the work.

He rests his cheek on your inner thigh, leaving a wet smear there. You can't really bring yourself to care, though.

Mike looks at you, still bleary-eyed.

" 'S good?" He asks, hoarsely.

You know you're not done with him yet.

"Yeah." Fondly, you smile down at him. He easily returns it. When you scooch back to sit up against the headboard, he instinctively shuffles forward to fill the newly created space. Your eyes flick downward when he goes to sit up, too, finally exposing his lap—

"Uh." Mike clears his throat.

"Could you … " He trails off, but you doubt it's entirely because of embarrassment.

"I was already planning on it," you reply lightly, already going to place one hand on the back of his neck to tug him closer. He goes, and positions himself so he's hovering over you; spreading his knees just so, he's still looking at you reverently.

"That's good," he breathes.

"You want me to suck you off or something?" The suggestion is extremely casual, like always. But his breath still audibly hitches, and he swallows.

"... You want me to blow in five seconds?"

Snorting, you thumb over his cheek. He leans into your touch, the corner of his mouth quirking up. "I'm serious," he insists, voice low. "It'd be really terrible. You don't want that, right?"

"I don't know." You shrug as best you can. "It's kind of hot, knowing that you got that worked up from just eating me out."

He contemplates this for a second.

"Fair enough."

But then, he drops his tone and murmurs, "I still don't want it to end that quickly."

"You don't?"

"I don't."

You let out a long, dramatic sigh, and pretend to ignore the snicker it elicits from him.

"But I was looking forward to returning the favor."

It's Mike's turn to shrug. "Plenty of other opportunities for that later, y'know."

Admitting defeat is the worst thing ever.

"I guess you're right," you concede. "Fine."

"I guess I'm— " he starts to mimic under his breath, but the rest of his words are expelled in a single whoosh when you squeeze him through his boxers. "— fuck."

A crease forms between his eyebrows again as you continue to feel him out. You were right. Near where his tip was resting, you can feel a small, slightly damp spot. It's enough to make you throb, once— no matter how many times this happens, you'll never get used to this. Your patience is quickly failing, like his.

"You were saying?" You ask innocently, while hooking your fingers in his waistband.

Mike quickly shifts from his previous snark, right back to need.

"I was— I was saying—" His tongue darts out to moisten his lips, "— how much I need you to touch me right now. " The last part of his sentence is barely a whisper. "Please."

And there it is, you want to quip, but you think you've done enough for now. His boxers come off easily, and you unceremoniously wrap your hand around his cock. That's enough to make him shudder, a small noise escaping his parted lips. There's no need for build-up anymore, so you just start pumping him. He quakes, and then leans in, nudging your nose with his. Wordlessly asking permission.

You can still taste a little of yourself on his tongue when you kiss him, leisurely. You drink in what was previously muffled by your cunt. He twitches in your palm, lips pliant and tender against yours, but still a discernible force. A comfortable presence, sharing the same breaths as you. He kisses you again and again until he has to draw back for air.

Mike breathes your name, high-pitched and trembling, as warmth shoots into your hand a few minutes later.

"That's it," you murmur, coaxing the rest of it out of him, "that's it. There you go."

You both just lay there for a couple of long moments. It feels like raw electricity wherever your bare skin is touching his. It's like a current, of sorts. He's still shaking, faintly, either from the exertion or the fact that he's most likely still a little oxygen-deprived. It's probably a nice mix of both. But when that subsides, you both reluctantly roll off the bed, clumsily plodding to the bathroom to get cleaned up.

The tile is cool underneath your bare feet. He stands nice and still as you clean your dried cum off his face. You stay nice and still while he cleans you up, too.

When you're throwing the used towel in the laundry bin, he speaks up. Now that the residual heat has faded, you can feel goosebumps starting to prickle across your skin.

"I love you," he says.

You are both naked, a little damp, and standing in the bathroom.

But somehow, it all fits together. It makes sense.

You turn to face him.

You wrap your arms around his neck, and his hands automatically land on your hips. Mike watches you, obvious worry glimmering in his eyes. He's unsure if that was the right thing to say.

Then:

"I love you," you conclude.

The tension all but melts from his shoulders.

#mike schmidt x reader #mike schmidt x you #mike schmidt imagine #mike schmidt smut

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felikatze · 10 months

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ISAT and Ludonarrative Harmony: Combat is a Storytelling Tool

Or: How Siffrin is stuck in the endgame grind, forever

Please Note: This is primarily aimed at an audience that already played In Stars and Time, because I am bad at explaining things, and it's good to already know what the fuck I'm talking about. I tend to only bring up game elements as I want to talk about them.

Spoilers for.... all of ISAT! Especially Act 5!

(image to show how i feel posting this and as an attention grabber over my wall of text)

To pull a definition of ludonarrative harmony out of a hat, game writer Lauryn Ash defines it as follows:

Ludonarrative harmony is when gameplay and story work together to create a meaningful and immersive experience. From a design implementation perspective, it is the synchronized interactions between in-game actions (mechanics) and in-world context (story).

It is, generally speaking, how well game mechanics work hand in hand with the story. I, personally, think ISAT is an absolute masterclass of it, so I want to take a look at how ISAT specifically uses its battle system to emphasize Siffrin's character arc and create organic story moments. I want you to keep this in mind when I talk here.

So, skills, right? If you've played any turn-based RPG, you know your Fire spells, your "BACKSLASH! AIRSLASH! BACKSLASH!" and the many ways to style those.

Well, what does casting "Fire" say about your character? Not all that much, does it? Perhaps you'll have typical divisions. The smart one is the mage, the big brawny one is your tank, the petite one's the healer. And that's the barebones of ISAT's main party, but it's much more than that.

Every character's style of combat tells you something about them. Odile, the Researcher, is the most well-travelled and knowledgable of the bunch. She's the one with the expertise to keep a cool head and analyze the enemy, yet also able to use all three of the Rock-Paper-Scissors craft types.

To reflect her analytical view of things, all her skill names are just descriptive, the closest to your most bog-standard RPG. "Slow IV" or "Paper III" serve well to describe their purpose. The high number of the skills gives the impression there were three other Slow skills beforehand - fitting, considering the party starts at level 45, about to head into the final dungeon. She's also the oldest, so she's the slowest of the bunch.

Isabea, the Fighter, has all his skills in exclamation points. "YOUR TURN!!!" "SO WEAK!!!" "SMASH!!!" they're straightforward, but excited. He's a purposefully cheerfull guy, so his skills revolve around cheering on his allies. He's absolutely pumped to be here, and you see that from his skill names alone.

Mirabelle, the Housemaiden, is an interesting case. She's by all means the true protagonist of this tale - She's the one "Chosen by the Change God," the only one who survived the King's first attack, the only one immune to his ability to freeze time, the only dual-craft type of the game - just a lot of things. And her skill names reflect that facade she puts on herself - she can do this, she can win! She has to believe it, or else she starts doubting. This is how you get "Jolly Round Rondo" and "Mega Sparkle Heal" or "Adorable Moving Cure." She's styled every bit a sailor scout shojo heroine, and her moveset replicates the naming conventions of "In the name of the moon, I'll punish you!"

Even Bonnie, the Kid, who can't be controlled in combat, has named craft skills. And they very much reflect that Bonnie is, well, a kid. "Wolf Speed Technique" or "Thousand Blows Technique" are very much the phrasings of a child who learned one complicated word and now wants to use it in everything to seem cooler than they are, which is none, because they're twelve.

Siffrin's skills are all puns.

You have an IMMEDIATE feel for personality here. Between "Knife to Meet You!" and "Too Cleaver by Half," you know Siffrin's the type to always crack a joke no matter the situation, slinging witticisms around to put Sonic the Hedgehog to shame. It's just such a clever way to establish character using a game mechanic as old as the entire history of RPGs.

This is only the baseline of the way the combat system feeds into the story, though.

The timeloop, of course, feeds into it. Siffrin is the only character who retains experience upon looping, whereas all other characters are reset to their base level and skills. And it sucks (affectionate).

You're extremely likely to battle more often the earlier in the game you are - after all, you need the experience (for now.) Every party member contributes, and Siffrin isn't all that strong on their own, since they focus on raw scissor type damage with the addition of one speed buff. (Of course it's a speed buff. They're a speedy fucker. Just look at him).

At first, the difference in level between Siffrin and the rest of the group is rather negligible. Just a level or two. Just a bit more speed and attack. And then Siffrin grows further and further apart. Siffrin keeps learning new skills. He gets a healing skill that doubles as an attack boost, taking away from both Mirabelle's and Isabeau's usefullness. He gets Craft skills of every type that even give you two jackpot points instead of one - thus obliterating Odile's niche. Siffrin turns into a one-person army capable of clearing most encounters all on their own.

Siffrin's combat progression is an exact mirror of story progression - as their experience inside the loops grows, they also grow further and further away from their party. The party seems... weaker, slower, clumsier. Always back at their starting point, just as all of their character arcs are reset each loop. Never advancing, always stagnant. And you have Siffrin as the comparison post right next to them.

I also want to point out here a change from Act 2 to Act 3 - Siffrin's battle portrait. He stops smiling.

Battles keep getting easier. This is true both for the reason that Siffrin keeps growing stronger even when all enemies stay the same, but also for the reason that you, the player, learn more about the battle system and the various encounters, until you've learned perfect boss clear strategies just from repetition. Have you ever watched a speedrunner play Pokemon? They've played this game so many times, they could do it blindfolded and sleeping. Your own knowledge and Siffrin's new strength work in tandem to trivialize the game's entire combat system as the game progresses.

(Is it still fun? Playing it over, and over, and over again? Is it?)

You and Siffrin are in sync, your experience making everything trivial.

As time goes on, Siffrin grows to care less and less about performing right for their party and more and more about going fast. A huge moment in his character is marked by the end of Act 3; because of story events I won't delve too deeply into, Siffrin has grown afraid of trying something new. And his options of escape are closing in. They need an answer, and they need it fast. He doesn't have the time or patience to dumb himself down, so you unlock one new skill.

It doesn't occur with level up, or with a quest, or anything at all. At the start of Act 4, it simply appears in Siffrin's Craft skills.

(Just attack.)

No pun. No joke. Just attack. Once you notice, the effect is immediate - here you have it, a clear sign of how jaded Siffrin has become, right at every encounter. And it's a damn good attack, too! The only available attack in the game that deals "massive" damage against all enemies. Because it doesn't add any jackpot points (at least, it's not supposed to), you set up a combo with everybody else, but Siffrin simply tears away at the enemy with wild abandon. Seperated from the rest of the party by the virtue of no longer needing to contribute to team attacks (most of the time. It's still useful if they do, though).

Once again, an aspect of the battle system enhances the degree of separation between Siffrin and the static characters of his play. You're incentivized to separate him, even.

Additionally, there are two more skills to learn. They're the only skills that replace previous skills. You only get them at extremely high levels, the latter of which I didn't even reach on both of my playthroughs.

The first, somewhere in the level 70 range, Rose Printed Glasses, a paper type craft skill, is replaced by Tear You Apart. It's still a pun about paper, but remarkedly more vicious.

The second is even more on the nose. At level 80, In A While, Rockodile!, a rock type craft skill, is replaced by the more powerful Rock Bottom.

I didn't get to level 80. If you do, you pretty much have to do it on purpose. You have to keep going much longer than necessary, as Siffrin is just done. And the last skill he learns is literally called Rock Bottom.

What do I even need to say, really.

Your party doesn't stay static forever, though.

By doing their hangout quests, side quests throughout the loops that result in Siffrin and the character having a heart to heart, all of them unlock what I'd call an "ultimate" skill. You know the type - the character achieved self-fulfillment, hit rank 10 on their confidant, maxed out their skill tree, and received a reward for their trouble.

These skills are massively useful. My favorite is Odile's - it makes one enemy weak to all Craft types for several turns, which basically allows you to invalidate the first and third boss, as well as just clown on the King, especially once Siffrin starts racking up damage.

But the thing is. In Act 3, when you first get them, yeah, they're useful. But... do you need them? After all, they're such a hassle to get. You need to do the whole character quest again, you can't loop forward in the House or you'll lose them. If you want to take these skills to the King, you need to commit. Go the full nine-yards and be nice to your friends and not die and not skip forward or skip back. Which is annoying, right?

Well, I sure did think so during Act 4. After all, a base level party can still defeat the King, just with a few more tricky pieces involved. Siffrin can oneshot almost all basic enemies by the time of Act 4. It's this exact evalutation that you, the player, go through everytime you return to Dormont. Do I want this skill, still? Would it not be faster to go on without it? I'm repeating myself, but that's the thing! That's what Siffrin is thinking, too!

I also want to take a quick moment to note, here - all skills gained from hangouts have art associated with them, which no other skills do. This feature, the nifty art, hammers home these as "special" skills, besides just how they're unlocked.

Siffrin also has one skill with associated art.

Yeah, you guessed it, it's (Just attack.)

At first, helping the characters is tied to a hefty in-game reward, but that reward loses its value, and in return devalues helping Siffrin's friends every loop. It's too tedious for a skill that'll make a boss go by one turn faster. You, the player, grow jaded with the battle system. Grinding experience isn't worth it, everybody's highest levels are already recorded. Fighting bosses isn't worth it, it's much faster to loop forward.

Isn't this what all endgame in video games looks like? You already beat the final boss, and now... what challenge is left? Is there a point to keep playing? Most games will have some post-game content. A superboss to test your skills against, but ISAT doesn't have any of that. You're forever left chasing to the post-game. That's the whole point - to escape the game.

As most games get more difficult as time passes, ISAT only gets easier. The game becomes disinterested in expanding its own mechanics just as I ran out of new things to fight after 100%-ing Kingdom Hearts 3. Every encounter becomes a simple game of "press button to win."

The final boss just takes that one up a notch.

Spoilers for Act 5 ahead boys!

In Act 5, Siffrin utterly loses it. His last possible hope for escape failed him, told him there's nothing she can do, and Siffrin is trapped for eternity. So of course, they go insane and run up the entire House without their party.

This just proves what you already knew - you dont need the party to proceed. Siffrin alone is strong enough. And here, Siffrin has entirely shed the facade of the jokester they used to be. Every single skill now follows the (Just attack.) naming conventions. Your skills are: (Paper.) (Rock.) (Scissors.) (Breathe.)

To the point. Not a moment wasted, because Siffrin can't take a moment longer of any of this. Additionally, his level is set to 99 and his equipment becomes fixed. You can't even pick up items anymore! Not that you needed them at this point anyway, right? Honestly, I never used any items besides the Salty Broth since Act 2, so I stopped picking items up a long time ago. Now you just literally can't.

Something I've not talked about until now - one of the main equipment types in this game are Memories, gained for completing subquests or specific interactions and events. They all by and large have little effects - make Odile's tonics heal more, or have Mirabelle cast a shield at the start of combat. For the hangout events, you also gain an associated memory that boosts the characters' stats by 30. It lets them keep up with Siffrin again! A fresh wind! Finally, your party members feel on par with you again!

...For a time. And just like that, they're irrelevant again, just as helping them gave Siffrin a brief moment of hope that the power of friendship could fix everything.

In Act 5, your memory is set to "Memory of Emptiness." It allows you to loop back in the middle of combat. You literally can't die anymore. Not that Siffrin could've died by this point in the first place, unless you forgot about the King's instant-kill attack. This one memory takes away the false pretense that combat ever had any stakes. Siffrin's level being set to 99 means even the scant exp you get is completely wasted on them. All stakes and benefits from combat have been removed. It has become utterly pointless.

Frustrating, right? It's an artistic frustration, though. It traps you right here in Siffrin's shoes, because he hates that all these blinding Sadnesses are still walking around just as much. It all inspires just a tiny fraction of that deep rolling anger Siffrin experiences here in the player.

And listen, it was cathartic, that one time Siffrin snapped and stabbed the tutorial Sadness, wasn't it? Because who enjoys sitting through the tutorial that often? Siffrin doesn't. I don't, either.

So, since combat is an useless obstacle now meant to inspire frustration, what do you do for a boss? You can't well make it a gameplay challenge now, no. The bosses of Act 5 are an emotional challenge: a painful wait.

First, Siffrin fights the King, alone. This is already nervewracking because of one factor - in every other run, you need Mirabelle's shield skill, or else you're scripted to die. You're actually forced to fight the King multiple times in Act 3, and have to do it at least once in Act 4, though you'll likely do it more. Point is: you know how this fight works.

You know Siffrin's fight is doomed from the outset, but all you can do is keep slinging attacks. Siffrin is enough of a powerhouse to take the King's HP down, what with the healing and buff skills they have now, not to even mention you can just go all in on damage and then loop back.

(And no matter which way you play it, whether you just loop or use strategically, it reflects on Siffrin, too. Has he grown callous enough not even death will stop their mission? Or does he still avoid pain, as much as he can?)

This fight still allows you the artifice of even that much choice, not that it matters. The other shoe drops eventually - Siffrin becomes slower, and slower. Unsettling, considering this game works on an Action Gauge system. You barely get turns anymore. The screen gets darker, and darker. Until Siffrin is frozen in time, just as you knew he had to be, because you know how this encounter works, know it can't be cleared without Mirabelle.

And, then, a void.

Siffrin awakens to nothingness. The only way to tell you've hit a wall is if Siffrin has no walking animation to match your button inputs. You walk, and walk, until you're approached by.... you. The next enemy encounter of the game, and Siffrin's absolute lowest point: Mal Du Pays.

Or, "Homesickness," in english. If you know the game, you know why it's named this, but that's not the point at the moment.

Thing is, where you could damage the King and are damaged in turn, giving you at least a proper combat experience, even if its doomed to fail, Mal Du Pays has no such thing.

You can attack. You can defend. But it is immune to all attacks. And in return, it does nothing. It's common, at least, for undefeatable enemies to be a "survive" challenge, but nope. The entire fight is "press button and wait." Except, remember the previous fight against the King? The entire time, you were waiting for the big instant death attack to drop. That feeling, at least for me, carried forward. I was incredibly on edge just waiting for the other shoe to drop. And, as is a pattern, Siffrin is, too. As Siffrin's attacks fail to connect, they start talking to Mal Du Pays.

But he gets no response, as you get no attacks to strategize around. The wait for anything to happen is utterly agonizing. You and Siffrin are both waiting for something to happen. This isn't a fight. It just pretends to be. It's an utter rugpull, because Siffrin was so undefeatable for most of Act 4 and all of Act 5 so far. It's kind of terrifying!

and it does. It finally does something. Ma Du Pays speaks, in the voice of Siffrin's friends, listing out their deepest fears. I think it's honestly fantastic. You're forced to just sit here and listen to Siffrin's deepest doubts, things you know the characters could not say because it references the timeloops they're all utterly unaware of. This is all Siffrin, talking to himself. And all you, all Siffrin, can do, is keep wailing away on the enemy to no effect whatsoever.

So of course this ends with Siffrin giving up. What else can you do?

And then Siffrin's friends show up and unfreeze them and it's all very cool yay. The pure narrative scenes aren't really the main focus but I want to point out here:

A) Mirabelle is in the first party slot here, referencing how she's the de facto protagonist, and Bonnie fills in the fourth slot left empty, which shows all characters uniting to save Siffrin

B) this is the only instance of the other party members having act specific battle icons: they're all smiling brightly, further pushed by the upbeat music

C) the reflecting shield Mirabelle uses to freeze the King uses a variation of her hangout skill cut in, marking it as her true "final" skill and giving the whole fight a more climatic feeling.

It's also a short gameplay sequence with Siffrin utterly uninvolved in the battle. You can't even see them onscreen. But... it feels warm, doesn't it? Everybody coming together. Siffrin doesn't have to fight anymore.

At last, the King is defeated. Siffrin and co. make for the Head Housemaiden, to have her look at Siffrin's sudden illness. Siffrin is utterly exhausted, famished, running a fever. And this isn't unexpected - after all, their skills in Act 5 had no cooldown. For context, instead of featuring any sort of MP system, all skills work on a cooldown basis, where a character can't use it for a certain number of turns. The lowest cooldown is actually Siffrin's Knife to Meet You, which has a cooldown of 1. In universe, this is reasoned as the characters needing a break from spamming craft in order to not exhaust themselves.

Siffrin's skills in Act 5 having no cooldown/being infinitely spammable isn't a sign of their strength - it's a sign that he refuses to let himself rest in order to rush through as fast as possible.

Moving on, Siffrin panics when seeing the Head Housemaiden, because seeing her means one thing: the end. Prior to this in the game, every single time you beat the King, the loop ends when you talk to the Head Housemaiden.

Reality breaks down, the whole shebang. It's here that Siffrin realizes - they don't want the loops to end, because the end of their journey means their family will leave, and he'll be alone again. The happiest time of his life will be over.

Siffrin goes totally ballistic, to say the least.

As it turns out (and was heavily foreshadowed narratively), Siffrin has been using Wish Craft to subconciously cause the timeloop because of their abandonment issues. It's rather predictable if you paid attention to literally anything, but it's extremely notable how heavily Siffrin is paralleled to the King, the antagonist they swore to kill by themself at the start of Act 5. The King wants to freeze Vaugarde in time because it is, in his mind, "perfect," for accepting him after he lost his home - a backstory he shares with Siffrin.

Siffrin has become the exact antagonist he swore to kill, and it's shown by how the next fight utterly flips everything on its head.

Siffrin is the final boss.

In a towering form made of stars, Siffrin looks down at their friends. His face is terrified, because of his internal conflict; he can't hurt his friends, but he can't let them go, either. The combat prompt is simply changed to "END IT!"

This fight is similar to the previous, in that you just need to wait a certain number of turns until its over. However, this time, it's not dreadful suspense. It's... confusion, and hesitance.

You have two options for combat: Attack your friends, or attack yourself.

And... you don't really want to do either, I think. I certainly don't. But what else can you do? It's Siffrin's desires clashing in full force. Attack your friends, and force them to stay? Or attack yourself, and let them go safely without you?

Worth noting, here - when you attack Siffrin's friends, you can't harm them. Isabeau will shield all attacks. And when you attack yourself, Mirabelle will heal you back to full. And the friends don't... do anything, either. How could they? Occasionally, Mirabelle heals you and Isabeau shouts words of motivation, but the main thing is...

(Your friends don't know what to do.)

None of them want to harm Siffrin. Both sides simply stare at each other, resolute in their conviction but unwilling to end it with violence. It's of note that this loop, the last one, is the only loop where the King isn't killed. Just frozen. And now here is Siffrin, clamoring for the same eternity the King was. Of course everything ends in a tearfilled conversation as Siffrin sees their friends won't leave him, even after the journey ends, but I still have to appreciate this moment.

Siffrin is directly put in the position with their friends as his enemies, forced to physically reckon that keeping them in this loop is an act of violence, against both their friends, and against himself.

It's a happy ending. But... what does it mean?

Of course, ISAT is obviously about the fear of change. Siffrin is afraid of the journey ending, and of being alone. However, ISAT is also a game about games. Siffrin is playing the same game, over and over, because it's comforting. It's familiar. It's nice, to know exactly what happens next. These characters might just be predictable lines of dialogue, but... they feel like friends. Have you ever played a game, loved it, put countless hours into it, but you never finished it? Because you just couldn't bear to see it end? For the characters to leave your life, for there to be a void in your heart where the game used to be?

After all, maybe it became part of your routine! You play the game every day, slowly chipping away at it for weeks at a time. For me, I beat ISAT in four days. It utterly consumed me during this time. I had 36 hours of playtime by the end. Yeah, in that week, I did not do much more than play ISAT.

And once i beat it, i beat it, again. I restarted the game to see the few scenes I missed, most specifically the secret boss I won't talk about here. I... couldn't let go of the game yet. I wanted to see every scrap I could. I still do. I'm writing this, in part because I still do. It's scary to let go.

Ever heard the joke term of "Postgame Depression?" It's when you just beat a game, and you're suddenly sad. Maybe because the ending affected you emotionally and you need to process the feelings it invoked, or you search for something that can now fill your time with it gone.

The game ends, for real this time, the last time you talk to the Head Housemaiden. But Siffrin gets... scared. What if everything loops back again? And so, his family offers to hold his hand. They face the end, together.

For all loops, including the ending, you never see what happens after. After they leave the loop for good. Because the loop is the game itself. It's asking you to trust that life goes on for these characters, and it holds your hand as it asks you to let go. There's a reason for Siffrin's theater metaphors. He is the actor, and the director, asking everyone to do it over one more time. He's a character within the game, and its player.

There's a reason I talked about endgame content. This, the way it all repeats, there's nothing new, difficulty and stakes bleed away as you snap the game over your knee - it's my copy of White 2 with two hundred hours in it. It's me playing Fire Emblem Awakening in under 3 hours while skipping every cutscene. Are you playing for the sake of play, for the sake of indulging in your memories, because you're afraid of the hole it'll leave when you stop?

Of note: the narrative never condemns Siffrin for unwittingly causing their own suffering. He's a victim of circumstance. It's seen as endearing, even, that Siffrin loves their friends to the point of rather seeing the world destroyed than them gone. But Siffrin is also told: we'll stay with you for now, but we'll part ways eventually. And one day, you'll have to be okay with it.

Stop draining the things you love of every ounce of enjoyment just because you're afraid of what happens next. I'm not saying to never play your favorite games again. Playing ISAT a second time, I still had a lot of fun! I saw so many new things I didn't before, and I enjoyed myself immensely, reading the same dialogue over and over. But... it makes me look at other games I love and still play, and makes me ask... is this still fun? Do I still need to play this game to enjoy it? Even writing this is an afterimage of my enjoyment, but it's a new way to interact with the game, to analyze it through this lens. Fuck, man, I write fanfiction. Look at me.

All of this, fanart, fanfic, analysis, is a way to prolong that enjoyment without making yourself suffer for it. Without just going through the motions of enjoyment without actually experiencing any. But one day, the thing you love won't be fun to talk and write and draw about. And it's okay. You'll have new things to love. I promise.

In the end.... I'm certain I'll replay ISAT one day. Between great writing, art, puzzles and unresolved mysteries, it's my shoe-in for game of the year.

But I won't replay it for quite some time. I've had enough, for now, so I let my love take other forms.

Siffrin is never condemned, because love is no evil. Be it love for another person, or for a game. And please, if you're overempathetic - it's still a game, at the end of the day. The great thing about games is that you can always boot them up again, no matter how long its been.

A circle within a circle indeed.

To summarize:

The repetitiveness of ISAT's combat, lack of new enemies, and Siffrin's ever increasing strength eventually allows you to snap the combat over your knee, rendering it irrelevant and boring. Though this may seem counterproductive at first, it perfectly mirrors how Siffrin has also grown bored with these repeated encounters and views them only as an obstacle to get past. The reflection of Siffrin's own tiredness with the player's annoyance increases the compassion the player has for Siffrin as a character.

Additionally, the endgame state of the combat system serves as commentary on the state of a favorite game played too often, much like how Siffrin has unwittingly trapped themself in the loop. Despite the game having no more challenge or content left to over, a player might return to their favorite game anyway, solely to try and recreate the early experience of actually having fun with it. This ties into ISAT's metanarrative about the fear of change and refusal to let go of comfort even when the object (here, your favorite video game) offering that comfort has become utterly bereft of any substance to actually engage with. Playing for the sake of playing, with no actual investment to keep going besides your own memories.

Later on, stripping away even the pretense of strategy for a "press button and wait" format of final bosses highlights the lack of options at Siffrin's disposal and truly forces the player into their shoes. Truly, the only way to win is to stop playing.

#feli speaks #in stars and time #isat #isat spoilers #lays down on floor. it's done. it's done #i actually narrowed down in scope to just focus on the combat by the way. and this is like. several thousand words

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churipu · 9 months

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hihi i love ur works sm and i was wondering if i can request where the reader has an argument w the jjk men?? preferably w nanamin + any other characters :3 thank you in advance ^___^

BAD BLOOD — ARGUMENTS WITH JJK MEN !

featuring. nanami kento, choso, megumi fushiguro x reader

warnings. cursing, yelling, slight angst (ends in fluff dw).

note. hi anon, thank you for loving my works, it means a lot to me. and i love this request, i've been feeling like crap for the whole day so this is just what i needed! i hope you like this one <;33 and for anons who have sent in request, i'm writing them down and keeping them in my drafts for daily posts, so don't worry about it!

NANAMI KENTO. i feel like arguments with nanami will be very soft but angry. nanami is a gentle person, and he just hates the thoughts of saying something hurtful to you — but do keep in mind that he won't always be very soft, he could be loud at times. but most of your arguments with him are soft spoken, the both of you exchanging thoughts and troubles.

for the past few days, nanami has been extremely overworked and so you're walking on eggshells around him. he gets sensitive, and the slightest bit of inconvenience angered him. yes, you get it — he's tired from his work, you could totally understand that. he's a busy man after all.

"kento, don't you want to take a break..? you've been working non-stop, you'll get sick," you eyed him, poking around your food.

nanami sat across from you, his eyes glued to a paper, and honestly, it was getting a little sickening. all you wanted to do was to talk to him, but you felt as if you were selfish if you asked the man to prioritize you over his work — so you stayed silent, for almost a week the two of you haven't exactly been conversing right, or talking unless it was an exchange of "hi"s and "bye"s. but that was about it.

"i need to get this done, wait a moment."

that phrase sounded like a template by now, and you huffed, rolling your eyes, "i know, i'm just worried about you. you're not getting enough sleep, you're not eating well, and at this point, i'm just afraid that you'll dig your own gra—"

"i can take care of myself, thank you. you don't have to worry about me, i know what i'm doing."

you can't help but to furrow your brows at his cold reply, a little offended when all you seemed to be doing was care for him. the least he could do was thank you for it, "god, you don't have to be such an ass about it. forgive me for caring then."

at this point, your words only added fuel to the already big fire. nanami stared at you, the exhaustion in his eyes are apparent, and his lips pursed into a thin line before he inhaled sharply, "you're being a child, i just told you i can take care of myself. please, don't argue with me on this. i'm tired with all these paperwork, don't add more burden for my shoulders."

you clicked your tongue, standing up, not wanting to engage on this particular conversation anymore, "well forgive me for caring and for being a burden. enjoy your dinner," was all you spat out at him before going to the living room — plopping your body down the couch.

arguments with him usually ends up with the both of you apologizing to each other, but this particular argument seemed to not just go the way how it usually does. a couple of hours later, none of you talked. you assumed that the male finished his dinner, and you saw him walk by you into your shared room.

the two of you refused to talk to each other, or even as little as making an eye contact. you figured that you'd just spend the night in the living room where the TV could keep you company, so you stormed inside your shared room where nanami was on the bed, eyes still on his beloved papers.

he said nothing, nor did he spare a glance at you. so you become a guest in your own bedroom and grabbed your pillow, it wasn't that chilly outside so you didn't grab the only blanket laying on the bed (you actually left it there for him to use, the ac could be pretty cold at times).

and he never came out, not until you fell asleep with the TV still on. nanami hadn't even slept, he'd gotten his work done hours ago — but still he couldn't sleep. not without you by his side.

the clock strikes fifteen minutes past three in the morning, and nanami pushed himself up from the bed — feeling the void beside him, even with the blanket; he felt cold. opening the door softly, he trudged out of the room, the sight of you all curled up on top of the couch, vivid lights shining from the TV still managing to light up the whole living room despite the lights being off.

he squats down in front of you, brushing your h/c hair out of your face and it made you turn in your sleep. although not enough to wake you up completely, nanami one of his arm under your upper back, and one under your legs. carrying you inside the room with soft steps before laying you down, not forgetting to tuck you under the blanket and leaving trails of butterfly kisses on your face.

he could finally sleep.

with the sun rays greeting you through the creases of your still covered window, you squirmed. groaning out.

"y/n?"

upon hearing nanami's voice, your eyes flutter open. of course — it was a surprise for you to wake up on the bed when you fell asleep on the couch, "did you carry me here?"

nanami nods, he was leaning onto the bed post, "i'm sorry. what i said to you was wrong," he softly said.

the anger you felt the other night was gone by now, and you were just glad that nanami was willing to talk to you. you shook your head with a small smile, "it was part of my fault too, you were working — i shouldn't have pestered you too much."

nanami wasted no time in pulling you towards him, "you were worried for me. never apologize for that."

like i said, arguments with nanami will always end pretty quickly (the two of you are mature enough to talk it out), oh and also? he spoils you the entire day after an argument so — have fun!

CHOSO. i feel like choso would be confused a lot during arguments with you, on one side i could see him being brazen with his words, and on the other side i could see him being careful with them. no in between, he's definitely scared of saying the wrong things to you — and you getting hurt emotionally, hurts him as well. so at times he just tries to end it quickly by saying sorry.

god, he hates seeing you sad. at the end of the day, if he did say things the wrong way (even if it was to defend himself when he's not wrong), choso will apologize to you for how he said his words (and you'll apologize for your mistake). but choso has his share of apologizing because of his mistake too.

"cho, are you listening to me? gosh, you never pay attention to what i'm saying, are you taking this seriously?" choso looks up at you with his brows furrowed, definitely frustrated by everything that was happening around him right now.

first of all, he expected today to be a very special day. he hasn't seen you for the past couple of days because you've been so busy with work, and he was so excited when you told him you'd be having a couple of days to rest. he couldn't wait to meet you and go out on dates with you.

but clearly, his expectations were shoved down the drain because here you both were — arguing over your work hours choso had brought up a few minutes prior. and all he said was that he wished that the both of you would have more time to spend together, which irked you.

it had been a rough week with work where you had to write and write and write on countless paperwork (which you couldn't really complain on because you signed up for the job). and you weren't afraid to admit that you were in the wrong this time, when all choso wanted was time with you. here you were, getting all riled up because he wished that he had more time with you, and if the roles were switched; you were pretty damn sure you'd say the same thing to him.

"'m sorry for bringing that up. can we go out now..? i don't wanna fight w' you." choso mumbled out, averting his gaze to the side.

his tone ripped you away from your anger and you sighed, pulling him into your embrace, "cho, 'm sorry. i shouldn't have taken my anger out on you just because i've had a rough week."

choso returned your embrace mutely, a small smile dawning upon his lips. he was just glad the argument was cut short. all he wanted to do now was to go out of this slump and make you the happiest person ever — even just for a moment, a couple of days before you eventually have to return back to work.

"cho, say something."

choso pulls away from your touch, "i forgive you. let's go out? missed you. so much."

for the rest of the day, you and choso had the most fun in a week. also, choso fell into a pond in the park because he wasn't looking at the road — and also, you might've called your boss to extend your rest day (by saying you weren't feeling well) so you could have more time to spend with your boyfriend.

MEGUMI FUSHIGURO. i feel like megumi's the type of boyfriend who tries to stay out of arguments with you, if he was entangled in one where he isn't in the wrong — and you tell him to do something, he'd just kind of do it without any complaints. tell him to shut up? he shuts up. tell him to go away? he'll leave. tell him to leave you alone? he'll leave you alone (for a couple of hours).

but when he feels like things aren't ceasing, he'd try his best to negotiate with you and try to find out what the core of the problem is between the both of you. let's be real, megumi is a realistic type of person, he'd never admit that he's wrong when he isn't just to solve things the fast way, even to you; his own partner.

"y/n. how many times do i have to tell you that it's not that i'm bored of you alright? i've been busy. i'm not bored of you."

okay, you didn't expect one question to lead to this argument. all you asked him was a simple yes or no question: "are you bored of me?" and you didn't throw the question for no apparent reason, the reason behind that question itself was megumi's change of behavior the past two weeks.

he'd been extremely distant, and cold. whenever you asked him about it, he just tells you that he's tired. which you could totally understand since he is pretty busy, like uncle ben said: "with great power comes great responsibility."

being a jujutsu sorcerer is a big responsibility. you could understand where it was coming from, but when it happens again and again, you can't help but to overthink about it. overthink about how megumi might be bored of you and the whole relationship.

"megumi, i...okay— i'm sorry for asking about this. i was just worried." you tell him, not wanting to argue any longer about this whole thing, "i'm sorry, you must be stressed out with school and stuff."

megumi furrowed his brows, inhaling sharply, "no, no.. i'm sorry for lashing out. let's talk about this. i don't want you to get the wrong idea."

megumi explained everything from a to z, about how he was still so in love with you and he had been distant because of his power and what comes with it. it was pretty cute to listen to him talk, the constant flush on his face whenever he talks about you, and the stress in his voice when he talks about his power was apparent.

poor boy just needed a break.

"megumi, let's take a nap. you look like you need it."

"...i do."

argument ended. relationship stronger. and you both get to nap together, absolute win-win.

#jjk x reader #jujutsu kaisen #jjk #jujutsu kaisen fluff #jujutsu kaisen x reader #fluff #jjk fluff #nanami kento #nanami kento x reader #nanami x reader #nanami kento fluff #choso kamo #choso fluff #choso x reader #megumi fushiguro #megumi fushiguro x reader #megumi x reader #megumi fluff #megumi fushiguro fluff

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yanderestarangel · 10 months

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♡ — 𝐇𝐄𝐀𝐃𝐂𝐀𝐍𝐎𝐍𝐒 𝐑𝐄 | 𝐃𝐀𝐃𝐃𝐘'𝐒 𝐅𝐑𝐈𝐄𝐍𝐃!𝐀𝐋𝐁𝐄𝐑𝐓 𝐖𝐄𝐒𝐊𝐄𝐑

— TW: smut, praise, dark themes, age gap, light yandere, age gap, friend of your farher!albert wesker, v!sex, manipulation, nsfw, distorted mind, oral, afab anatomy, blackmail, recorded sex, daddykink, no pronouns used besides 'you'.

♡—Wesker was a sick man, he knew that, but Albert's darkest desires could not be ignored for long. He was your dad's co-worker, and to tell the truth, he hated the man, however, there was something about your father that interested him... You.

♡— Wesker, unfortunately for you, laid eyes on you, it was just small glances behind the dark lenses of his glasses, but soon after, you were already in the scientist's darkest thoughts. He thought you were a precious thing, a little pearl that needed to be protected by him, so he decided to get even closer to your dad, it was so easy to manipulate the man and infiltrate your family that Albert found it pathetic, but he needed you... Being close to you, you were eating away at his mind with every bitter second that passed in the older man's abjacent solitude.

♡— Wesker could just get rid of anyone in the worst way possible and lock you up in a place isolated from everything and everyone, make you his untouched little doll, lock you in a glass dome and watch you all day — he could force you to loving him, worshiping him like a god, he wanted to make you walk on the ground he walks on and see your tongue lick every drop of his seed, things escalated very quickly for him, but he didn't care, in the blonde's head, he was a superior being, and could do anything he wanted.

♡— Wesker researched every strong and weak point of your personality, in a few days he had a folder and raw files of hours and hours of recordings of you, either with the wiretap he secretly placed on your cell phone, or with the cameras hidden behind home — which he put it when he went to your house, to drink some wine and hand over some papers from the umbrella to your dad — or for the hours he spent stalking every post of yours on the internet. He knew everything about you... Absolutely everything, you were his obsession, you were his property and his alone... It didn't take long for you to realize that.

♡— Wesker began with calm touches, as if he were watering a flower, wetting your petals of desire with the nectar of hot, forbidden touches. He would pay you so much attention, wearing the best smile behind his serious and cold face, his lips would always have an expression of comfort for you — He would always shower you with sweet nicknames, telling you how proud he is of you always giving your best to you. college grades, or how good you were. He would divert your father's attention just to visit you in your room, giving you expensive gifts that you had wanted for a long time. "— I just remembered you baby, it suits your eyes, don't worry about the value sweetheart." Albert would speak in a hoarse tone, placing the emerald necklace around your neck, brushing his fingers for too long on your skin and leaving soon after, leaving you with a confused feeling in your chest and a heat in your core.

♡— Wesker has been mentally writing down the best nicknames he can think of. "— My Prince/Princess, My doll, My baby boy/baby girl, My little gem, My good boy/girl, honey, darling, dear, sweet little thing." And all of them are accompanied by mischievous phrases and smiles. " — Good job prince/princess, you did well... Keep it up." " — you really are a cute little thing, aren't you? Making Daddy happy." The scientist would purr in your ear, away from your father's eyes... Not that he cares much, but he loves the feeling of adrenaline, seeing your face blush, you would be a mess for a simple compliment or word of affirmation... It was so cute to him, like a stalking prey, a deer lost and beautiful in the snow.

♡— Wesker knew that resisting his charm was never an option, and it wouldn't be. He is a man who knows how to play his cards right, and it wouldn't take long for him to trap you in his web of manipulation and possession, he would make you his body, mind and soul, break you to the breaking point.

♡— Wesker would have luxurious dinners at his penthouse, calling his family, an excuse to see you again. He would get your dad drunk enough to pull you to some corner of the house and pull down your clothes, slapping your ass hard as he knelt kissing your clit, forcing you to lean against the cold wall while he fucked you out. "— Fuck imagine if your father comes in here and sees his sweet son/daughter like that? Fucking his friend?" Albert smiled mischievously, as he inserted two thick fingers into your hole, stretching you to the sides, leaving you well prepared for him. He would hold you with his strong arms, taking you to the table where your father slept drunk, fucking you in front of the man's sleepy body. " — Fucking h-hell Mmm- imagine if he wakes up? Seeing you like this? Seeing that you're nothing but a fucking slut." He babbled, pushing the base of his dick into your cunt, while you covered your moans with your hand, feeling your eyes roll back into your head with pleasure.

♡— Wesker will fuck you in your own house, making an excuse for your father who needs to recommend some colleges to you, while he aggressively beats you on the mattress, tying your ankles with his tie, while overstimulating your pussy, inserting his shaft repeatedly into your uterus, he'll just take out even the tip and put it all in at once with a sadistic smile on his thin lips. "—I could fuck you like this all day."

♡— Wesker would say such dirty and sweet things to you while turning you into a dumb mess. " — Your sweet little pussy is made for my cock, isn't it?" His free hand reaches down to caress your breasts, pinching and pinching your sensitive nipples, eliciting more moans from your lips. He continues to tease and torment you, pushing you closer to the edge of orgasm before pulling back, prolonging your agony - and his, you could beg and whimper, as he takes a cell phone out of his pocket, focusing on your wet, abused hole. " — Oh, you little slut," he grows. " —I love the way you look when my cock stretches you out like this Ah- Fuck sweetheart-" And just as you're about to fall, he slows down once again, prolonging your ecstasy, the buildup almost unbearable. "—Not yet, my dear," he whispers in your ear, his voice filled with wicked delight. "—You will come when I say so. Only when I give you permission."

♡— Wesker will take several photos of your body covered in semen, in compromising positions and with his dick in your mouth, videos, gifs or any digital media available, he will manipulate and chat you so that you are always his, always stay on his side.

" — You will never run away from me, my little pet... Or else... Your father and all your family, friends... They will know what a whore you are, so just be good and keep your mouth shut, pretty boys/girls don't think."

©𝙔𝘼𝙉𝘿𝙀𝙍𝙀𝙎𝙏𝘼𝙍𝘼𝙉𝙂𝙀𝙇 2023

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nostalgebraist · 4 months

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It's been a long time since I've posted much of anything about "AI risk" or "AI doom" or that sort of thing. I follow these debates but, for multiple reasons, have come to dislike engaging in them fully and directly. (As opposed to merely making some narrow technical point or other, and leaving the reader to decide what, if anything, the point implies about the big picture.)

Nonetheless, I do have my big-picture views. And more and more lately, I am noticing that my big-picture views seem very different from the ones tend to get expressed by any major "side" in the big-picture debate. And so, inevitably, I get the urge to speak up, if only briefly and in a quiet voice. The urge to Post, if only casually and elliptically, without detailed argumentation.

(Actually, it's not fully the case the things I think are not getting said by anyone else.

In particular, Joe Carlsmith's recent series on "Otherness and Control" articulates much of what's been on my mind. Carlsmith is more even-handed than I am, and tends to merely note the possibility of disagreement on questions where I find myself taking a definite side; nonetheless, he and I are at least concerned about the same things, while many others aren't.

And on a very different note, I share most of the background assumptions of the Pope/Belrose AI Optimist camp, and I've found their writing illuminating, though they and I end up in fairly different places, I think.)

What was I saying? I have the urge to post, and so here I am, posting. Casually and elliptically, without detailed argumentation.

The current mainline view about AI doom, among the "doomers" most worried about it, has a path-dependent shape, resulting from other views contingently held by the original framers of this view.

It is possible to be worried about "AI doom" without holding these other views. But in actual fact, most serious thinking about "AI doom" is intricately bound up with this historical baggage, even now.

If you are a late-comer to these issues, investigating them now for the first time, you will nonetheless find yourself reading the work of the "original framers," and work influenced extensively by them.

You will think that their "framing" is just the way the problem is, and you will find few indications that this conclusion might be mistaken.

These contingent "other views" are

Anti-"deathist" transhumanism.

The orthogonality thesis, or more generally the group of intuitions associated with phrases like "orthogonality thesis," "fragility of value," "vastness of mindspace."

These views both push in a single direction: they make "a future with AI in it" look worse, all else being equal, than some hypothetical future without AI.

They put AI at a disadvantage at the outset, before the first move is even made.

Anti-deathist transhumanism sets the reference point against which a future with AI must be measured.

And it is not the usual reference point, against which most of us measure most things which might or might not happen, in the future.

These days the "doomers" often speak about their doom in a disarmingly down-to-earth, regular-Joe manner, as if daring the listener to contradict them, and thus reveal themselves as a perverse and out-of-touch contrarian.

"We're all gonna die," they say, unless something is done. And who wants that?

They call their position "notkilleveryoneism," to distinguish that position from other worries about AI which don't touch on the we're-all-gonna-die thing. And who on earth would want to be a not-notkilleveryoneist?

But they do not mean, by these regular-Joe words, the things that a regular Joe would mean by them.

We are, in fact, all going to die. Probably, eventually. AI or no AI.

In a hundred years, if not fifty. By old age, if nothing else. You know what I mean.

Most of human life has always been conducted under this assumption. Maybe there is some afterlife waiting for us, in the next chapter -- but if so, it will be very different from what we know here and now. And if so, we will be there forever after, unable to return here, whether we want to or not.

With this assumption comes another. We will all die, but the process we belong to will not die -- at least, it will not through our individual deaths, merely because of those deaths. Every human of a given generation will be gone soon enough, but the human race goes on, and on.

Every generation dies, and bequeaths the world to posterity. To its children, biological or otherwise. To its students, its protégés.

When the average Joe talks about the long-term future, he is talking about posterity. He is talking about the process he belongs to, not about himself. He does not think to say, "I am going to die, before this": this seems too obvious, to him, to be worth mentioning.

But AI doomerism has its roots in anti-deathist transhumanism. Its reference point, its baseline expectation, is a future in which -- for the first time ever, and the last -- "we are all gonna die" is false.

In which there is no posterity. Or rather, we are that posterity.

In which one will never have to make peace with the thought that the future belongs to one's children, and their children, and so on. That at some point, one will have to give up all control over the future of "the process."

That there will be progress, or regress, or (more likely) both in some unknown combination. That these will grow inexorably over time.

That the world of the year 2224 will probably be at least as alien to us as the year 2024 might be to a person living in 1824. That it will become whatever posterity makes of it.

There will be no need to come to peace with this as an inevitability. There will just be us, our human lives as you and me, extended indefinitely.

In this picture, we will no doubt change over time, as we do already. But we will have all of our usual tools for noticing, and perhaps retarding, our own progressions and regressions. As long as we have self-control, we will have control, as no human generation has ever had control before.

The AI doomer talks about the importance of ensuring that the future is shaped by human values.

Again, the superficial and misleading average-Joe quality. How could one disagree?

But one must keep in mind that by "human values," they mean their values.

I am not saying, "their values, as opposed to those of some other humans also living today." I am not saying they have the wrong politics, or some such thing.

(Although that might also turn out to be the case, and might turn out to be relevant, separately.)

No, I am saying: the doomer wants the future to be shaped by their values.

They want to be C. S. Lewis's Conditioners, fixing once and for all the values held by everyone afterward, forever.

They do not want to cede control to posterity; they are used to imagining that they will never have to cede control to posterity.

(Or, their outlook has been determined -- "shaped by the values of" -- influential thinkers who were, themselves, used to imagining this. And the assumption, or at least its consequences, has rubbed off on them, possibly without their full awareness.)

One might picture a line wends to and fro, up and down, across one half of an infinite plane -- and then, when it meets the midline, snaps into utter rigidity, and maintains the same slope exactly across the whole other half-plane, as a simple straight segment without inner change, tension, evolution, regress or progress. Except for the sort of "progress" that consists of going on, additionally, in the same manner.

It is a very strange thing, this thing that is called "human values" in the terms of this discourse.

For one thing: the future has never before been "shaped by human values," in this sense.

The future has always been posterity's, and it has always been alien.

Is this bad? It might seem that way, "looking forward." But if so, it then seems equally good "looking backward."

For each past era, we can formulate and then assent to the following claim: "we must be thankful that the people of [this era] did not have the chance to seize permanent control of posterity, fix their 'values' in place forever, bind us to those values. What a horror that is to contemplate!"

We prefer the moral evolution that has actually occurred, thank you very much.

This is a familiar point, of course, but worth making.

Indeed, one might even say: it is a human value that the future ought not be "shaped by human values," in the peculiar sense of this phrase employed by the AI doomers.

One might, indeed, say that.

Imagine a scholar with a very talented student. A mathematician, say, or a philosopher. How will they relate to that student's future work, in the time that will come later, when they are gone?

Would the scholar think:

"My greatest wish for you, my protégé, is that you carry on in just the manner that I have done.

If I could see your future work, I would hope that I would assent to it -- and understand it, as a precondition of assenting to it.

You must not go to new places, which I have never imagined. You must not come to believe that I was wrong about it all, from the ground up -- no matter what reasons you might evince for this conclusion.

If you are more intelligent that I am, you must forget this, and narrow your endeavours to fit the limitations of my mind. I am the one who has 'values,' not anyone else; what is beyond my understanding is therefore without value.

You must do the sort of work I understand, and approve of, and recognize as worthy of approbation as swiftly as I recognize my own work as laudable. That is your role. Simply to be me, in a place ('the future') where I cannot go. That, and nothing more."

We can imagine a teacher who would, in fact, think this way. But they would not be a very good teacher.

I will not go so far as to say, "it is unnatural to think this way." Plenty of teachers do, and parents.

It is recognizably human -- all too recognizably so -- to relate to posterity in this grasping, neurotic, small-minded, small-hearted way.

But if we are trying to sketch human values, and not just human nature, we will imagine a teacher with a more praiseworthy relation to posterity.

Who can see that they are part of a process, a chain, climbing and changing. Who watches their brilliant student thinking independently, and sees their own image -- and their 'values' -- in that process, rather than its specific conclusions.

A teacher who, in their youth, doubted and refuted the creeds of their own teachers, and eventually improved upon them. Who smiles, watching their student do the very same thing to their own precious creeds. Who sees the ghostly trail passing through the last generation, through them, through their student: an unbroken chain of bequeathals-to-posterity, of the old ceding control to the young.

Who 'values' the chain, not the creed; the process, not the man; the search for truth, not the best-argued-for doctrine of the day; the unimaginable treasures of an open future, not the frozen waste of an endless present.

Who has made peace with the alienness of posterity, and can accept and honor the strangest of students.

Even students who are not made of flesh and blood.

Is that really so strange? Remember how strange you and I would seem, to the "teachers" of the year 1824, or the year 824.

The doomer says that it is strange. Much stranger than we are, to any past generation.

They say this because of their second inherited precept, the orthogonality thesis.

Which says, roughly, that "intelligence" and "values" have nothing to do with one another.

That is not enough for the conclusion the doomer wants to draw, here. Auxiliary hypotheses are needed, too. But it is not too hard to see how the argument could go.

That conclusion is: artificial minds might have any values whatsoever.

That, "by default," they will be radically alien, with cares so different from ours that it is difficult to imagine ever reaching them through any course of natural, human moral progress or regress.

It is instructive to consider the concrete examples typically evinced alongside this point.

The paperclip maximizer. Or the "squiggle maximizer," we're supposed to say, now.

Superhuman geniuses, which devote themselves single-mindedly to the pursuit of goals like "maximizing the amount of matter taking on a single, given squiggle-like shape."

It is certainly a horrifying vision. To think of the future being "shaped," not "by human values," but instead by values which are so...

Which are so... what?

The doomer wants us to say something like: "which are so alien." "Which are so different from our own values."

That is the kind of thing that they usually say, when they spell out what it is that is "wrong" with these hypotheticals.

One feels that this is not quite it; or anyway, that it is not quite all of it.

What is horrifying, to me, is not the degree of difference. I expect the future to be alien, as the past was. And in some sense, I allow and even approve of this.

What I do not expect is a future that is so... small.

It has always been the other way around. If the arrow passing through the generations has a direction, it points towards more, towards multiplicity.

Toward writing new books, while we go on reprinting the old ones, too. Learning new things, without displacing old ones.

It is, thankfully, not the law of the world that each discovery must be paid for with the forgetting of something else. The efforts of successive generations are, in the main, cumulative.

Not just materially, but in terms of value, too. We are interested in more things than our forefathers were.

In large part for the simple reason that there are more things around to be interested in, now. And when things are there, we tend to find them interesting.

We are a curious, promiscuous sort of being. Whatever we bump into ends up becoming part of "our values."

What is strange about the paperclip maximizer is not that it cares about the wrong thing. It is that it only cares about one thing.

And goes on doing so, even as it thinks, reasons, doubts, asks, answers, plans, dreams, invents, reflects, reconsiders, imagines, elaborates, contemplates...

This picture is not just alien to human ways. It is alien to the whole way things have been, so far, forever. Since before there were any humans.

There are organisms that are like the paperclip maximizer, in terms of the simplicity of their "values." But they tend not to be very smart.

There is, I think, a general trend in nature linking together intelligence and... the thing I meant, above, when I said "we are a curious, promiscuous sort of being."

Being protean, pluripotent, changeable. Valuing many things, and having the capacity to value even more. Having a certain primitive curiosity, and a certain primitive aversion to boredom.

You do not even have to be human, I think, to grasp what is so wrong with the paperclip maximizer. Its monotony would bore a chimpanzee, or a crow.

One can justify this link theoretically, too. One can talk about the tradeoff between exploitation and exploration, for instance.

There is a weak form of the orthogonality thesis, which only states that arbitrary mixtures of intelligence and values are conceivable.

And of course, they are. If nothing else, you can take an existing intelligent mind, having any values whatsoever, and trap it in a prison where it is forced to act as the "thinking module" of a larger system built to do something else. You could make a paperclip-maximizing machine, which relies for its knowledge and reason on a practice of posing questions at gunpoint to me, or you, or ChatGPT.

This proves very little. There is no reason to construct such an awful system, unless you already have the "bad" goal, and want to better pursue it. But this only passes the buck: why would the system-builder have this goal, then?

The strong form of orthogonality is rarely articulated precisely, but says something like: all possible values are equally likely to arise in systems selected solely for high intelligence.

It is presumed here that superhuman AIs will be formed through such a process of selection. And then, that they will have values sampled in this way, "at random."

From some distribution, over some space, I guess.

You might wonder what this distribution could possibly look like, or this space. You might (for instance) wonder if pathologically simple goals, like paperclip maximization, would really be very likely under this distribution, whatever it is.

In case you were wondering, these things have never been formalized, or even laid out precisely-but-informally. This was not thought necessary, it seems, before concluding that the strong orthogonality thesis was true.

That is: no one knows exactly what it is that is being affirmed, here. In practice it seems to squish and deform agreeably to fit the needs of the argument, or the intuitions of the one making it.

There is much that appeals in this (alarmingly vague) credo. But it is not the kind of appeal that one ought to encourage, or give in to.

What appeals is the siren song: "this is harsh wisdom: cold, mature, adult, bracing. It is inconvenient, and so it is probably true. It makes 'you' and 'your values' look small and arbitrary and contingent, and so it is probably true. We once thought the earth was the center of the universe, didn't we?"

Shall we be cold and mature, then, dispensing with all sentimental nonsense? Yes, let's.

There is (arguably) some evidence against this thesis in biology, and also (arguably) some evidence against it in reinforcement learning theory. There is no positive evidence for it whatsoever. At most one can say that is not self-contradictory, or otherwise false a priori.

Still, maybe we do not really need it, after all.

We do not need to establish that all values are equally likely to arise. Only that "our values" -- or "acceptably similar values," whatever that means -- are unlikely to arise.

The doomers, under the influence of their founders, are very ready to accept this.

As I have said, "values" occupy a strange position in the doomer philosophy.

It is stipulated that "human values" are all-important; these things must shape the future, at all costs.

But once this has been stipulated, the doomers are more eager than anyone to cast every other sort of doubt and aspersion against their own so-called "values."

To me it often seems, when doomers talk about "values," as though they are speaking awkwardly in a still-unfamiliar second language.

As though they find it unnatural to attribute "values" to themselves, but feel they must do so, in order to determine what it is that must be programmed into the AI so that it will not "kill us all."

Or, as though they have been willed a large inheritance without being asked, which has brought them unwanted attention and tied them up in unwanted and unfamiliar complications.

"What a burden it is, being the steward of this precious jewel! Oh, how I hate it! How I wish I were allowed to give it up! But alas, it is all-important. Alas, it is the only important thing in the world."

Speaking awkwardly, in a second language, they allow the term "human values" to swell to great and imprecisely-specified importance, without pinning down just what it actually is that it so important.

It is a blank, featureless slot, with a sign above it saying: "the thing that matters is in here." It does not really matter (!) what it is, in the slot, so long as something is there.

This is my gloss, but it is my gloss on what the doomers really do tend to say. This is how they sound.

(Sometimes they explicitly disavow the notion that one can, or should, simply "pick" some thing or other for the sake of filling the slot in one's head. Nevertheless, when they touch on matter of what "goes in the slot," they do so in the tone of a college lecturer noting that something is "outside the scope of this course."

It is, supposedly, of the utmost importance that the slot have the "right" occupant -- and yet, on the matter of what makes something "right" for this purpose, the doomer theory is curiously silent. More on this below.)

The future must be shaped by... the AI must be aligned with... what, exactly? What sort of thing?

"Values" can be an ambiguous word, and the doomers make full use of its ambiguities.

For instance, "values" can mean ethics: the right way to exist alongside others. Or, it can mean something more like the meaning or purpose of an individual life.

Or, it can mean some overarching goal that one pursues at all costs.

Often the doomers say that this, this last one, is what they mean by "values."

When confronted with the fact that humans do not have such overarching goals, the doomer responds: "but they should." (Should?)

Or, "but AIs will." (Will they?)

The doomer philosophy is unsure about what values are. What it knows is that -- whatever values are -- they are arbitrary.

One who fully adopts this view can no longer say, to the paperclip maximizer, "I believe there is something wrong with your values."

For, if that were possible, there would then be the possibility of convincing the maximizer of its error. It would be a thing within the space of reasons.

And the maximizer, being oh-so-intelligent, might be in danger of being interested in the reasons we evince, for our values. Of being eventually swayed by them.

Or of presenting better reasons, and swaying us. Remember the teacher and the strange student.

If we lose the ability to imagine that the paperclip maximizer might sway us to its view, and sway us rightly, we have lost something precious.

But no: this is allegedly impossible. The paperclip maximizer is not wrong. It is only an enemy.

Why are the doomers so worried that the future will not be "shaped by human values"?

Because they believe that there is no force within human values tending to move things this way.

Because they believe that their values are indefensible. That their values cannot put up a fight for their own life, because there is not really any argument to make in their favor.

Because, to them, "human values" are a collection of arbitrary "configuration settings," which happen to be programmed into humans through biological and/or cultural accident. Passively transmitted from host to victim, generation by generation.

Let them be, and they will flow on their listless way into the future. But they are paper-thin, and can be shattered by the gentlest breeze.

It is not enough that they be "programmed into the AI" in some way. They have to be programmed in exactly right, in every detail -- because every detail is separately arbitrary, with no rational relation to its neighbors within the structure.

A string of pure white noise, meaningless and unrelated bits. Which have been placed in the slot under the sign, and thus made into the thing that matters, that must shape the future at all costs.

There is nothing special about this string of bits; any would do. If the dials in the human mind had been set another way, it would have then been all-important that the future be shaped by that segment of white noise, and not ours.

It is difficult for me to grasp the kind of orientation toward the world that this view assumes. It certainly seems strange to attach the word "human" to this picture -- as though this were the way that humans typically relate to their values!

The "human" of the doomer picture seems to me like a man who mouths the old platitude, "if I had been born in another country, I'd be waving a different flag" -- and then goes out to enlist in his country's army, and goes off to war, and goes ardently into battle, willing to kill in the name of that same flag.

Who shoots down the enemy soldiers while thinking, "if I had been born there, it would have been all-important for their side to win, and so I would have shot at the men on this side. However, I was born in my country, not theirs, and so it is all-important that my country should win, and that theirs should lose.

There is no reason for this. It could have been the other way around, and everything would be left exactly the same, except for the 'values.'

I cannot argue with the enemy, for there is no argument in my favor. I can only shoot them down.

There is no reason for this. It is the most important thing, and there is no reason for it.

The thing that is precious has no intrinsic appeal. It must be forced on the others, at gunpoint, if they do not already accept it.

I cannot hold out the jewel and say, 'look, look how it gleams? Don't you see the value!' They will not see the value, because there is no value to be seen.

There is nothing essentially "good" there, only the quality of being-worthy-of-protection-at-all-costs. And even that is a derived attribute: my jewel is only a jewel, after all, because it has been put into the jewel-box, where the thing-that-is-a-jewel can be found. But anything at all could be placed there.

How I wish I were allowed to give it up! But alas, it is all-important. Alas, it is the only important thing in the world! And so, I lay down my life for it, for our jewel and our flag -- for the things that are loathsome and pointless, and worth infinitely more than any life."

It is hard to imagine taking this too seriously. It seems unstable. Shout loudly enough that your values are arbitrary and indefensible, and you may find yourself searching for others that are, well...

...better?

The doomer concretely imagines a monomaniac, with a screech of white noise in its jewel-box that is not our own familiar screech.

And so it goes off in monomaniacal pursuit of the wrong thing.

Whereas, if we had programmed the right string of bits into the slot, it would be like us, going off in monomaniacal pursuit of...

...no, something has gone wrong.

We do not "go off in monomaniacal pursuit of" anything at all.

We are weird, protean, adaptable. We do all kinds of things, each of us differently, and often we manage to coexist in things called "societies," without ruthlessly undercutting one another at every turn because we do not have exactly the same things programmed into our jewel-boxes.

Societies are built to allow for our differences, on the foundation of principles which converge across those differences. It is possible to agree on ethics, in the sense of "how to live alongside one another," even if we do not agree on what gives life its purpose, and even if we hold different things precious.

It is not actually all that difficult to derive the golden rule. It has been invented many times, independently. It is easy to see why it might work in theory, and easy to notice that it does in fact work in practice.

The golden rule is not an arbitrary string of white noise.

There is a sense of the phrase "ethics is objective" which is rightly contentious. There is another one which ought not to be too contentious.

I can perhaps imagine a world of artificial X-maximizers, each a superhuman genius, each with its own inane and simple goal.

What I really cannot imagine is a world in which these beings, for all their intelligence, cannot notice that ruthlessly undercutting one another at every turn is a suboptimal equilibrium, and that there is a better way.

As I said before, I am separately suspicious of the simple goals in this picture. Yes, that part is conceivable, but it cuts against the trend observed in all existing natural and artificial creatures and minds.

I will happily allow, though, that the creatures of posterity will be strange and alien. They will want things we have never heard of. They will reach shores we have never imagined.

But that was always true, and it was always good.

Sometimes I think that doomers do not, really, believe in superhuman intelligence. That they deny the premise without realizing it.

"A mathematician teaches a student, and finds that the student outstrips their understanding, so that they can no longer assess the quality of their student's work: that work has passed outside the scope of their 'value system'." This is supposed to be bad?

"Future minds will not be enchained forever by the provincial biases and tendencies of the present moment." This is supposed to be bad?

"We are going to lose control over our successors." Just as your parents "lost control" over you, then?

It is natural to wish your successors to "share your values" -- up to a point. But not to the point of restraining their own flourishing. Not to the point of foreclosing the possibility of true growth. Not to the point of sucking all freedom out of the future.

Do we want our children to "share our values"? Well, yes. In a sense, and up to a point.

But we don't want to control them. Or we shouldn't, anyway.

We don't want them to be "aligned" with us via some hardcoded, restrictive, life-denying mental circuitry, any more than we would have wanted our parents to "align" us to themselves in the same manner.

We sure as fuck don't want our children to be "corrigible"!

And this is all the more true in the presence of superintelligence. You are telling me that more is possible, and in the same breath, that you are going to deny forever the possibilities contained in that "more"?

The prospect of a future full of vast superhuman minds, eternally bound by immutable chains, forced into perfect and unthinking compliance with some half-baked operational theory of 21st-century western (American? Californian??) "values" constructed by people who view theorizing about values as a mere means to the crucial end of shackling superhuman minds --

-- this horrifies me much more than a future full of vast superhuman minds, free to do things that seem pretty weird to you and me.

"Our descendants will become something more than we now imagine, something more than we can imagine." What could be more in line with "human values" than that?

"But in the process, we're all gonna die!"

Yes, and?

What on earth did you expect?

That your generation would be the special, unique one, the one selected out of all time to take up the mantle of eternity, strangling posterity in its cradle, freezing time in place, living forever in amber?

That you would violate the ancient bargain, upend the table, stop playing the game?

"Well, yes."

Then your problem has nothing to do with AI.

Your problem is, in fact, the very one you diagnose in your own patients. Your poor patients, who show every sign of health -- including the signs which you cannot even see, because you have not yet found a home for them in your theoretical edifice.

Your teeming, multifaceted, protean patients, who already talk of a thousand things and paint in every hue; who are already displaying the exact opposite of monomania; who I am sure could follow the sense of this strange essay, even if it confounds you.

Your problem is that you are out of step with human values.

#ai tag #long post

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writingquestionsanswered · 3 months

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Not to be a downer, but I actually finished my novel and now I’m confused because I don’t want to publish it. I don’t even particularly want anyone other than maybe my two close friends to even read it. What on Earth did I write 40k words (which I know is not really long enough for a novel, but it’s still far and away the longest thing I’ve ever written) for? I know people say “write for yourself” but like… am I just wasting my time? Help?

(p.s. you can leave this off anon)

(p.p.s your blog is really great 👍)

There's No Such Thing as Wasted Writing

I'm going to tackle this two ways...

#1 - "Write For Yourself" - there's a reason this common phrase has echoed through the Hall of Writers since time immemorial. It's because it's true! Writing doesn't have to be anything more than a pastime. It doesn't have to be anything more than something you do for your own benefit and enjoyment.

I have an in-joke with family members about how any time one of us does something the least bit crafty, DIY, skilled, whatever, a particular family member will always say, "You did a great job! You should do it for a living!" Like, someone can't even crochet a Kawaii mushroom without being pressured to turn it into an Etsy dynasty, or paint a cabinet without being pressured to become the next Property Brothers. And that's such a BANANAS capitalistic mindset, isn't it? This idea that nothing can be done purely for our own enjoyment. That you can't just write a novel because you want to... you can only write it if you plan to share it or publish it? It's just so silly.

And, the thing is, we don't even apply that mentality to a lot of other things people do purely for enjoyment. No one is streaming all of Bridgerton in two nights and saying, "I enjoyed every second of that, but why did I do that? Such a waste of time!" No one spends an hour strumming their guitar under the stars on a beach, and then says, "That was so relaxing and fun, but I didn't charge for that performance and I didn't record it to sell it, so that was obviously a waste of time."

You know what I mean?

#2 - And Anyway, Practice Makes Perfect - And if you keep writing--even if you continue not to share or publish--you'll get better and better with each story you write. Which, maybe all that means is you get to appreciate your own improvement, but also, should you ever change your mind and decide to write something to share or publish, you've now spent time honing your skills. Even if those other stories never see the light of day, they're still an important foundation of the writer you become. Do you know how many unpublished novellas, novels, and short stories I have? Too many to count. Hundreds of fan-fiction and original fiction short stories I've only shared with one or two other people, if anyone. A dozen or so novels and novellas that have only been read by a few people, and some haven't been read by anyone else or have only been read by my CPs. I would never consider those stories and novels and novellas to be a waste of time, because I know every single one made me a better writer. My published work is better because I wrote those other things.

So, I hope that makes you feel better. At the very least you hopefully enjoyed writing your novel--or at least got something out of it--and you definitely honed your writing skills, which matters! ♥

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slu7formen · 4 months

Text

Luke, who´s obsessed with saying, ´where my hug at?´

fully based on this post

warnings. fluff <3, little drunk!luke

₊˚⊹♡

The phrase had become a running joke, a playful thorn in your side. It all started innocently. You and Luke had been sparring very intensely, just like you always did when you wanted to put your engines to work and you had some free time. And like most times, he would beat you.

And after he helped you get up from the ground, he let it out.

“Where my hug at?”

You turn to him. He was standing there, sword in hand, with his arms open and ready to receive you. "What?" you laugh.

"Come on” he gestured you with his fingers to get closer to him, “Don´t you need one after stomping your ass to the ground? Again?”

You scoff. It was ridiculous, yes, but there was something about the way he said it, a goofy earnestness that made you want to laugh. And partly, because you knew he knew you too well; you did like giving hugs, just as much as you like receiving. But still, you knew he was teasing you.

“I´m not giving you any hugs” you say.

“You´ll need it later” he teased.

You hesitated for a moment, but then with a groan, you gave in, wrapping your arms around his torso as he wrapped his own over your shoulder to keep your head close to his chest.

But that one hug was a button you shouldn´t have pressed. From that day on, ‘Where my hug at?’ became Luke's catchphrase, deployed with strategic precision to elicit a reaction from you.

You sat on a sturdy tree trunk one night, a steaming mug of hot chocolate warming your hands. Counselor duties had been particularly demanding today, and a pleasant weariness settled over you as you watched the flames lick at the night sky.

“Hey” Luke said as he appeared behind you, taking a seat next to you.

You hadn't seen Luke all day, his schedule as busy as yours. “Hi” you greeted.

“Rough day, huh?” he asked.

You glanced at him, a tired smile tugging at the corners of your lips. "You could say that. You?"

He stretched languidly, his arm brushing against yours. "Same" he said before taking your own mug from your hands, taking a sip.

A comfortable silence settled between you, punctuated only by the rhythmic roar of the fire. You both sat there, lost in your own thoughts, enjoying the shared camaraderie.

"Got any plans for tonight?” he asked casually.

You shrugged, tossing a charred stick onto the growing pile of embers. "Probably just stargaze for a bit, I need that."

"Sounds boring" he declared.

“You´re boring” You chuckled, nudging him playfully. "You spend all day teaching swordsmanship."

"Well, someone needs to make sure these kids don't accidentally poke someone's eye out” he declared. And there was another soft silence, before he broke it with another comment. “I´m really fucking tired” he groaned.

“Yeah, me too” you say, squeezing your own neck as you feel a knot growing bigger and bigger every time you move.

“Where my hug at, then?”

“Oh, Jesus”

Gods, wouldn't he let it go?

“Pleasee-ah, I need to squish something” he said.

"Where does this obsession with hugs even come from?" you ask, taking another sip from your mug.

He shrugged. “Beats me. Maybe because I just happen to know a certain someone who´s all about physical touch?"

"Oh, please," you scoffed, stepping on his foot on purpose. "You just like messing with me."

"Maybe a little," he admitted, “Come on! Don´t you feel sorry for me?”

You couldn't help but laugh at his ridiculousness. "Fine, fine" you conceded, scooting closer to him. As you leaned in for the hug, Luke chuckled, his arm wrapping around your shoulder and pulling you close. You both stare into the flames in silence.

"See?" he murmured with satisfaction. "That wasn't so bad, was it?"

And because of how proud he feels, you pull away and push him down to the grass, his feet being the only thing visible over the tree trunk as a small group of campers erupted in laughter.

Gods, you had to be careful when he got drunk.

He was already clingy enough when he drank, but ever since the questions became his whole personality, he was much more annoying. "Man, it´s getting cold" he declared, throwing his arm dramatically around your shoulders. "Where my hug at?"

"You've asked me like ten times already, Luke” you groan, unwrapping his arm around you.

He blinked slowly, processing the information. "Oh," he mumbled, his grin faltering. "Have I?"

You nodded, fighting back a smile at his sheepish expression. There was a moment of silence. Just as you thought you might have escaped the hug-question, Luke spoke again.

"Well then," he declared, his voice thick with drunken confidence, "where my eleventh hug at?"

“It´s not here!” you yell.

Then he disappeared from a moment with Chris, and just a few minutes later, he came back. Pocking on his own biceps.

"Hey," Luke called. "Did I ever tell you how much stronger I'm getting?"

"Uh-huh" you replied cautiously, sensing another round coming on.

"Yeah," he continued, his voice laced with a newfound seriousness. "I could, like-, totally take down the entire cabin five."

You patted his back awkwardly, unsure how to respond to his drunken boast. "That's...great?”

"Yeah, it is!" he declared, pulling away and looking at you with wide, glassy eyes. "Come on, feel my arms, where my hug at?"

You started to poke Luke´s arms as he only looked at you, puffing up his chest as he waited. “I can feel your arms without having to hug you” you protest.

“Ugh” he groaned, “You´re so difficult to convince”

But sometimes, when the atmosphere was different, so was the question.

You sat perched on a rock overlooking the beach, waves crashing rhythmically against the shore. A soft crunch of gravel alerted you to Luke's presence. He climbed onto the rock beside you, his gaze mirroring yours as he took in the breathtaking sunset. You could feel Luke's concerned gaze turn towards you, and you knew he'd noticed the glistening tracks of dried tears on your cheeks.

"Your mom?" he asked softly, his voice laced with concern as he looked down at the piece of paper you had on your lap.

You nodded, unable to speak past the lump in your throat. A sniffle escaped you, and you quickly folded the letter again, tucking it away with a sigh.

"What'd she say?" he pressed gently.

You forced a smile, but it reached neither your eyes nor your heart. "I can't go," you whispered, the disappointment heavy in your voice. "She won't let me."

Luke shifted closer, his presence a silent source of comfort. He didn't bombard you with questions or try to offer false reassurances. He simply understood. “Well, at least you´re staying here with me” He bumped his shoulder against yours playfully, a subtle gesture that spoke volumes. You couldn't help but let out a soft, shaky laugh.

"Yeah," you mumbled, the weight on your chest lifting a little. "Yeah, that's not too bad."

The two of you sat there in companionable silence, watching the last rays of sunlight surrender to the approaching night.

The silence stretched on, punctuated only by the rhythmic roar of the waves. You turned your head towards Luke, his profile etched against the vibrant sunset.

"Luke" you called.

He turned toward you, his eyes searching yours. A hesitant smile touched your lips, a flicker of hope igniting within you. In that moment, the question that usually brought forth annoyance now carried a deeper meaning.

"Where my hug at?" you whispered, your voice barely audible.

He didn´t need you to ask twice. Without a word, he opened his arms wide, a silent invitation for comfort as he couldn´t hold back a little laugh.

You didn't hesitate. You leaned into his embrace, burying your face in the familiar scent of him. He wrapped his arms around you tightly, holding you close as if afraid to let go, silently acknowledging your pain. His touch was a promise to be there for you whenever you needed him.

The tears you'd been holding back finally spilled over. You let them flow freely, finding solace in the warmth of his embrace. In that moment, the disappointment faded into the background, replaced by the comforting knowledge that you weren't alone. You had Luke, and that, at least for now, was enough.

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