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mitigatedchaos · 6 months ago

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The Floating Causation of Vulgar Anti-Racism

Post for August 12, 2024 ~7,400 words, 36 minutes

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The late 20th century and the early 21st century were an excellent time for 'catch-up' development in under-developed countries. For example, the GDP per capita of the People's Republic of China rose from $312 in 1980, to $12,720 in 2022, more than a 40x increase. This is despite the People's Republic being nominally communist, 92% Han Chinese, and one of the largest potential geopolitical rivals to the United States. This is not a one-off – exports from the Socialist Republic of Vietnam to the United States rose from $50 million in 1994 to $114 billion in 2023.

While the ideologically liberal government of the United States did invade Iraq and Afghanistan, and placed strict limits on Iran, in practical terms, the United States was willing to direct hundreds of billions of dollars of demand, for everything from disposable gloves to rice cookers, to countries that were neither majority white nor, officially, capitalist, which allowed these countries to build up their industrial base.

Inside the United States, as of the early 2020s, Americans of Indian descent, Americans of Asian descent, and a number of other non-white groups are outperforming the median household income of white Americans. It's not uncommon to see an Indian-American as the CEO of a major US corporation, such as Microsoft's Satya Nadella, Google's Sundar Pichai, or IBM's Arvind Krishna. And while Americans of Nigerian descent aren't earning quite as much money as Sundar Pichai, they are doing better than the U.S. national average. [1]

The American economy is willing to award non-white Americans and non-white immigrants with average pay higher than that the average pay for white Americans, and American society is willing to award members of these same groups with highly prestigious positions – Google is one of the most famous American companies, and to be its CEO is highly prestigious indeed.

Why is it that vulgar anti-racists aren't content to leave well enough alone on negative racial messaging, and take advantage of this opportunity to focus on personal development, ingroup development, and national development? Why is it that they have a strange totalitarian bent, such as Ibram Kendi proposing to give veto power over all government policy to a body of unappointed race experts, which would de facto end democracy?

Last month, @max1461 wrote a post, attempting to find a balanced compromise between the social justice movement and its critics in the discourses on racism over the past 10 years. Perhaps this was intended to close the books and allow the participants to move to a saner footing going forward. Subsequently, Max flagged the post as unrebloggable in order to prevent it from being beat up like a piñata. Near the end of the initial chain, Max wrote:

I can’t stress enough that, for all the excesses of DEI seminars and modern anti-racist academia and whatnot, for however unhelpful or even regressive these things may often be, what they exist in response to is fundamentally a horror of an entirely different and incomparable scale; something unspeakably evil and destructive. And, after 200 years of such an evil world order, which only really began to melt in 1945, I think it would be incredibly naive to believe that all the wounds are now healed.

It would seem that for the most part, the wounds that Japan suffered from America in World War II have already healed. The country already went through reindustrialization, followed by a boom period (which startled Westerners), and then a subsequent crash and the 'lost decade' of the 1990s. The Japanese have a favorable view of the United States, as perhaps they should – Japan has prospered in the Post-WW2 international order, in which they can simply purchase whatever materials they need on global markets with no need to invade or occupy anyone.

Yet for others, the past lingers on.

Ibram Kendi is one of the most famous contemporary self-identified anti-racists, a New York Times bestselling author (his most famous book was titled "How to Be an Anti-Racist") who was not only platformed by major corporations such as Microsoft (in 2020, an advertisement on the login screen of Windows 10 computers linked to a search for "anti-racism books," with his at the top), but even received funding for his own anti-racism center (now under attack for its ineffectiveness).

At one time, Ibram Kendi thought that white people were aliens. A roommate talked him out of it, asking how it was that white people could have children with everyone else if that were the case. To his credit, Kendi did change his mind.

...but how could anyone have come up with Kendi's conclusion in the first place?

In school in the United States, children are taught that the Spanish conquered the Aztecs. It is true that Spanish military forces brought about the downfall of the Aztec Empire, but often people forget the details of what they learned in school, and often what they learn in school is itself a simplified story, designed to be told to children. Encyclopedia Britannica's summary of the Battle of Tenochtitlan largely agrees with the gist of Wikipedia's more detailed article on the Fall of Tenochtitlan, which is littered with instances of "[citation needed]."

Wikipedia, however, provides more numbers. In particular, Wikipedia's version provides one of the Internet's favorite parts of wiki battle articles, a listing of the balance of opposed forces (with citations):

There is a racist narrative of the conquest of the Americas in which the brave Spanish explorers overcame the savage, human-sacrificing hordes of the Aztecs. There is an inverted, anti-racist narrative of the conquest of the Americas in which the powerful, cruel Spanish showed up to oppress the weak, innocent Aztecs.

And then there is a third narrative - a narrative that politics happened. A number of tributary states had grievances with the Aztecs, and the small number of Spanish probably didn't seem like enough to conquer the whole territory from the perspective of the tributaries, but did seem powerful enough to rally around to fight the Aztecs and win.

Nobody comes out looking good in this third narrative. The Spanish brought about a brutal war with tens of thousands of casualties, and devastating disease followed their arrival. The Aztecs and tributaries combined failed to overcome a foreign invasion due to (relative to the foreigners being from another continent) local infighting. The Aztecs were awful enough that a number of tributaries sided with an army of foreigners against them.

Now, suppose that we delete the 200,000 native allies from the balance of forces above, but still record a victory for the Spanish. The effect of the native allies remains, but the cause of that effect disappears. This creates an effect without a cause – unattributed causation, which is disconnected from what came before, or what we might call, "floating causation."

Some might call overcoming a force of 80,000 with only 1,000 or so men a miracle. For those not so inclined, the 'floating' causation gets attributed to the Spanish soldiers – their equipment, their valor, their tactics, and their discipline. Each of a thousand Spanish infantrymen is now somehow worth 200 native warriors.

In this cartoon version of history, the Spanish are an unstoppable psychic warrior race. Their steadfast will in the face of danger and their unit cohesion are quite nearly inhuman, and their technological advantage is overwhelming. The natives have not merely made a political miscalculation similar to others of the pre-modern era, such as the decisions of states facing Genghis Khan, but are buffoons to the slaughter, incapable of putting up any real defense.

In this cartoon, the Spanish can go anywhere. They can do anything. And because of this, they are the only people with agency in the whole world.

They sound... like aliens.

Trying to rebalance this cartoon only leads to greater absurdities, such as the idea that only Europeans ever meaningfully engaged in conquest (contradicted by Genghis Khan), or that industrial technology and its resulting pollution are "European" in nature (China has been quite aggressive about industrializing), or that only "European" countries waged modern and industrialized wars of conquest (the Empire of Japan used guns, bombs, and tanks as part of its project to create the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere).

All three of the above counter-examples are from Asia, which is usually conspicuously absent from self-identified anti-racist thinking, but none of them are obscure.

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It is my belief that floating causation is a source of distortions across the ideological spectrum.

Ideology is not independent from human beings. Manifestos, one might say, do not print themselves. From the other direction, it is not a piece of paper which murders somebody – it is a human being who pulls the trigger.

There is ideology, which is a system of related rules and beliefs, and there are adherents who adopt ideology, spread beliefs, and put ideological rules into practice.

An ideology can contain taboos which prohibit noticing or explaining the true cause of some outcome, separating the cause from its effect. Practitioners can then attribute that effect to a preferred ideological construct instead, making it seem much more powerful, and often dangerous, than it really is.

The Elephants

Imagine (as this example is entirely made-up) that there is some village in which elephants are considered sacred, but the elephants in the area have a habit of trampling crops in the night. To avoid loss of face, the damage to crops is attributed to "bandits" by an initial group of elders. The young children who do not know better are then taught this explanation. Later, after the death of the elders, the initial truth is lost. Anyone claiming to have seen elephants trampling the fields is denounced as choosing the vile bandits over the virtuous elephants. An outsider who did not realize what was happening might be quite impressed to hear that a bandit in the region ruined a dozen fields in a single night, and assume that the bandit has tremendous physical stamina.

But floating causation is not necessarily the result of an ideological taboo. Someone may be ignorant about the cause of an effect, unable to understand the process by which an effect came about, have powerful emotions about the topic which they are unwilling to confront or may not even be aware of, or may simply have poor judgment. An adherent may be drawn to an ideology for these reasons.

Continuing with our example, a fresh-off-the-boat colonial administrator arriving at the village might be unaware that elephants exist, or trample crops, and conclude that there were ongoing feuds driven by animosity among the villagers, with bandits as the cover-story. Alternatively, the new colonial administrator might love the elephants and hate the villagers, and be unwilling to consider the possibility that the elephants are trampling the crops, including cooking up rather elaborate rationalizations.

Ideology

Issues with not understanding a process are more likely to come up with things like economics – occasionally a worker will post a video to social media complaining that he is not paid the full value of the items he sells or creates, ignoring all the money that went into the construction of the facility, the work from other workers putting together the input materials, and so on.

Liberals in the late 00s and early 2010s had an interest in memetics, which concerns the replication and spread of ideas. (This field is where the term "Internet meme" comes from.) Then, as now, they had a tendency to treat people as too similar to each other, and some of them leaned towards the idea that any person could hold any ideology. Ideologies do (in my judgment) influence behavior – there are far fewer monarchists around these days, and far fewer monarchs with real power, for example – but how a set of beliefs is expressed depend on the emotions, motives, and temperament of the person who holds those beliefs.

So do people choose ideologies, or do ideologies choose people?

One way to view this matter is as a cycle. Someone's social environment is partly a matter of choice, and partly a matter of circumstance. The ideologies that show up in someone's environment are generally going to be ones that spread (as ideologies that don't attract new adherents will die out), but which ideology someone actually chooses and how they practice it will be influenced by what type of person they are.

Another way to view this matter is that emotions, motives, temperament, and beliefs are all things that make certain actions or thoughts either easier (and cheaper) or more difficult (and more expensive). A drug addict who believes in hard work and free market capitalism, but finds himself stealing to feed his habit, may find that the influence of his beliefs is not enough to overcome his addiction. (He is likely to feel miserable.) However, when a religious person is choosing what time of day, or day of the week, to worship, the explicit belief of their religion is likely to have a great deal of influence.

Yet another way to view this matter is to treat things like social relations, ideology, and temperament as interacting layers, and then propose that politics spans multiple layers.

Human Talent

I don't believe that all human beings are equally talented, and I don't believe that they all have identical temperaments. Therefore, one of my beliefs is what might be called the "human capital theory of movements." Ideologies consist of networks of related beliefs which can be used to interpret the world, to guide behavior, or to create arguments. But ideologies do not create beliefs or arguments themselves. Humans do.

When a movement has a lot of talented, virtuous people working for it, these people can create new arguments in order to win debates, and change parts of the ideology, the network of beliefs, to adapt the network to changes in conditions. Without talented people, the ideology of a movement will drift farther from environmental conditions, causing its responses to become more misaligned with conditions on the ground.

Talented people are also needed for the implementation of an ideology. An ideological book is just an inert text. No matter how complex it may be, it is fundamentally limited in its complexity. Applying that text in the environment, bridging the gap between what the text says and what that means in the reality of a specific situation, requires both intelligence and good judgment. Not every person is equally talented, and not every person is equally informed. If someone more talented and with better judgment is around, they can read the situation and come up with some simpler rules or orders for others to follow.

The less talented the adherents of a movement are, the lower the ability of the movement to adapt to conditions over both the short-term and the long-term.

A shift in the distribution of talent can precede other forms of political change. Ideologues may smile as the most disagreeable members are driven out of their movement, but at the same time, the lack of criticism will reduce the movement's ability to respond to change.

There are trade-offs. The use of floating causation may make an ideology less aligned with reality, but it may also be useful for the movement to stoke the emotions of their followers in order to drive action. (This emotional motivation bit is why every election in the United States is "the most important in your lifetime.")

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Beliefs are not intelligence. Nonetheless, a person with a belief may act as though they are smarter (or even wiser) than they actually are. This is just the nature of knowledge (as cached intelligence, wisdom, and observation).

I developed the talent theory in the prior section by observing opposition to racism in the United States prior to 2014. In the United States between 2000 and 2014, there was substantial support for individualist "colorblindness," while at the same time, there was immense social pressure against overt white racial organizing.

Racial organizing takes time and effort. Because white Americans were not subject to racial discrimination, they could simply go out into the market and earn what their work was worth. For talented white Americans, the gains from white racial organizing would be marginal, so the penalties could easily overcome those gains. The less talented would have the most to gain due to the ability to reduce the amount of economic competition they would be up against, but they were also less able to organize. [2]

There was somewhere famous for white racial organizing in the US during this era: prisons.

Racial prison gangs have been particularly noted in the California prison system. Prison gangs offer inmates a credible threat of retaliation if the inmate is harmed, so every inmate has an incentive to join one, and the bigger the gang the better that threat of retaliation is, so every gang has an incentive to recruit. If you're a gang member and a new guy comes in and starts causing trouble, and you don't want to escalate (and thus risk extra charges for your guys or reduced privileges), what are you to do? You would prefer to negotiate with someone that has leverage on him. Race is very visible, even if inmates move around between prisons, so if all inmates get sorted into gangs by race, then someone is responsible for this guy, and by talking to the right people, you can make sure he knows it. (If the troublemaker still doesn't respond, and his own gang cut him loose, then you can punish him without fear of retaliation from other inmates.)

Different incentives produce different results.

Four Options

Glenn Loury is a black man, and an economist at Brown University. He views himself as an American and therefore an inheritor of human rights philosophy of the American founders and their English forebears. He has his own show on YouTube in which he regularly discusses matters with John McWhorter, another black man, who is a linguistics professor at Columbia University. (John strikes me as more liberal, and I heard that he was frightened of Donald Trump, a sentiment shared by many white American culturally liberal Democrats.) Both of these men are quite smart, and if you watch the show, you'll see them easily consider arguments from various perspectives and toss hypotheticals back and forth.

Neither of these men are vulgar anti-racists.

Roland Fryer is a black man, and is an economist at Harvard (although he was suspended for 2 years) who I have discussed previously. He thinks like an economist, and has conducted studies such as paying children to read books. In previous appearances, it seemed that he believes that education gaps can be closed through extremely rigorous selection of teachers and other methods.

Mr. Fryer does not appear to be a vulgar anti-racist.

These men are all relatively prominent voices. If you go looking for the sort of content they produce, they aren't that hard to find. And they're all smart. They might have disagreements with each other and with some of my readers, but smart people can disagree.

However, during the 2014-2022 era, when it was decided to push a black academic to prominence, political forces settled on Ibram Kendi instead. There must have been dozens of other candidates.

When I think about why that happened, I suspect that the answer is that while the first three men care about the interests of black Americans, all three of them are willing to say, "No." Although I doubt they would phrase it in exactly these terms, I suspect that all three understand human rights as rooted in high-order consequences, limits on information, and human bias.

If you proposed to John McWhorter that we should give veto power to a committee of unelected race experts, he would immediately recognize the problem with just that.

Why Vulgar Anti-Racism?

With all of that said, I believe we can think about vulgar anti-racism by means of comparison.

a. Economics

Loury and Fryer are both economists. They know about gains from trade, prices as a distributed form of economic planning, property rights as enabling investment, specialization of labor, economies of scale, and dozens of other things. They understand where wealth comes from.

The typical vulgar anti-racist that you will encounter on an Internet discussion board has little knowledge of economics, and tends to think of total production as fixed. From their perspective, if someone has more resources than another person, it has nothing to do with production, and is purely the result of hoarding.

The typical vulgar anti-racist also doesn't think in terms of entropy, the tendency of things to break down over time. They tend not to discount temporally-distant advantages. (If a well was built 400 years ago, they treat that advantage as retained today.) They tend to think of capital as fixed and not as something that is constantly being rebuilt and adjusted. They don't understand that the ability to create new capital is generally more important than the initial capital in the long-run.

Thinking about production is probably why we see Fryer focused on educational gains. His theory is likely that if the children have a good base of education, they'll be able to produce more, avoid losses, overcome entropy, and net accumulate wealth. If they don't have a good base of education, then they'll be less productive, and entropy will eat a higher percentage of their earnings, leading to reduced wealth.

If someone doesn't know economics, then the wealth of developed countries is "unexplained," and so are the motives of many people within developed countries.

b. History

I don't know about Fryer specifically, but Loury and McWhorter seem to have a good grasp of history.

A solid understanding of history leads to seeing actions as emerging from their historical contexts. This places a limit on the range of expected behavior.

For example, for most of history up until about the 1900s, the child mortality rate was about 50%. That example is relevant for feminism, as under such brutal conditions, we would expect any society that didn't push for women to have at least 4 children to die out. Gender-based oppression didn't occur for no reason, or because of pure male greed, but was influenced by material circumstances.

If we run this understanding backwards, it follows that 1700s or earlier gender norms would be unlikely to return without 1700s or earlier child mortality rates.

Likewise, some basic historical knowledge would reveal that wars of conquest have happened pretty much everywhere, so it's quite unlikely that Europeans are uniquely conquerors. You end up having to declare everything from feuding Chinese kingdoms, to the Māori, to chimpanzees, be "European" in order to fit the model.

The typical vulgar anti-racist's position is, implicitly, "Everyone lived together in peace and harmony, until one day, for no reason at all, the Europeans became possessed by the spirit of greed, and attacked."

If someone somehow doesn't know that war existed outside of Europe prior to 1492, then the wars of colonialism are "unexplained," and so are the motives of the people who fought them.

When vulgar anti-racists do research history, they generally focus on collecting racial grievances in order to build up a case that the group they favor are poor, oppressed, not responsible for anything bad their group has ever done, and are owed indefinite benefits for incalculable harms. They don't proceed from the idea of, "How does this work?" They don't, say, look at the tremendous economic success of South Korea, and ask, "Based on how South Korea obtained their wealth, how can our group achieve such riches?" (They don't even look at South Korea's birthrate and ask how they can avoid such a fate!)

Even before World War 2, Japan did look afar to ask how they could become rich. That kind of mentality is part of how they were able to become a developed country (who could threaten other people with tanks) in the first place.

Looking to Asia is useful for people making comparisons to figure out how things work, but is not useful for collecting racial grievances in order to build up racial claims to make demands. That's why vulgar anti-racists often don't know basic facts about Asian history, like that state testing to determine government positions was practiced in ancient China. [3]

c. Racial Attachment

Even during the individualist colorblindness of 2000-2014, there were still white Americans with some talent engaged in racial organizing. In general, these were people to whom race was very important, and thus who were out-of-step with the mainstream of white America.

It's my opinion that there is a natural range of tribalism among human beings. Sometimes, the rival tribe on the other side of the mountain just want to trade. Other times, they really are out to kill you. The trait doesn't disappear, because wars still happen, and even if they didn't happen, someone could just reinvent war and start it all back up again.

In my view, this tribalism trait isn't attached to race specifically. It can attach to religion. It can attach to sex. Some of the rhetoric from radical feminists sounds the same as rhetoric from hardcore ethnic nationalists – or at least it would, if we treated men as an ethnicity. In our modern environment in which race is highly legible due to intercontinental travel, for a lot of people, it gets attached to race.

Rather than assigning people a single number on a scale from "moral" to "immoral," it's probably better to think of people as having virtues and vices, strengths and weaknesses.

Some level of racial attachment itself is not inherently evil. Based on his research topics, for example, Roland Fryer seems interested in bringing about the success of people with a similar background to himself. His virtue (his interest in truth) and his strength (his intelligence) convert that attachment into something that's beneficial to society.

High levels of racial attachment fly much closer to the wire. A highly racially attached individual might do good work in other domains, but there's a risk that they'll end up routing too much of their sense of self-worth through their race, and become obsessed with guarding their race's self-perceived reputation. For such a person, any information deemed unflattering to the group may be interpreted as an attack on himself (or herself).

The Mayo Clinic (a network of hospitals in the United States) describes narcissism as:

Narcissistic personality disorder is a mental health condition in which people have an unreasonably high sense of their own importance. They need and seek too much attention and want people to admire them. People with this disorder may lack the ability to understand or care about the feelings of others. But behind this mask of extreme confidence, they are not sure of their self-worth and are easily upset by the slightest criticism.

A number of users on Twitter (now known as X.com) began using the term "ethnic narcissism" to describe this sort of disordered thinking when done on behalf of a racial or ethnic group rather than oneself specifically.

2019 and 2020 were banner years for platforming this sort of behavior, with the nation's leading newspaper arguing, in its own words, that we should make the suffering of a particular racial group the core narrative of American history, that everyone should define their identities around:

The 1619 Project is a major initiative from The New York Times observing the 400th anniversary of the beginning of American slavery. It aims to reframe the country’s history, understanding 1619 as our true founding, and placing the consequences of slavery and the contributions of black Americans at the very center of our national narrative.

Obsession with self-perceived ethnic reputation is part of what leads to the "rebalancing the cartoon" behavior I discussed earlier:

How does someone end up so ignorant that they don't know that Genghis Khan existed? By being the kind of person that doesn't want to know that Genghis Khan existed. They don't look it up. If you tell them, they either forget or they take a conflict theorist approach and think that it's some sort of trick.

Unfortunately, while a fairly accurate description of the behavior at issue, the term "ethnic narcissism" can also be used as an attack by ethnic narcissists themselves, as well as people engaged in ethnic conflict. This makes it of limited utility in practice.

The Mysterious Anglo

Option #1: In general, the right wing would consider the vulgar anti-racists to be liars working to selfishly advance their own personal interests and those of their preferred groups. Left-wingers would tend to take a negative view of this, as they believe that right-wingers are unjustly dismissive in order to 'protect the unearned and unquestioned advantages of the privileged.'

In this version, vulgar anti-racists won't drop the issue and hit the GDP gym because they're bullies who think the particular groups they dislike are easy targets. The appropriate response is to become a harder target by systematically defunding any institution that supports them, putting them on the same footing as conventional racial supremacists in the US.

I tend to agree that many of the vulgar anti-racists are just being selfish. There is a question of just how consciously aware of it they are, however.

Option #2: A left-wing view would be that the vulgar anti-racists are "good people, just a bit misguided." Right-wingers tend to take a negative view of this, because if a right-winger published a book titled "Black Fragility" that was as circular in its reasoning as the "White Fragility" of Robin DiAngelo appeared to be, he would be hounded as a racist.

In this version, vulgar anti-racists just need patient guidance to put their empathy back on the right track.

I tend to believe that a good chunk of the vulgar anti-racists are just low-tier progressives who get their opinions socially. If the social consensus changes among progressives, they'll forget ever fretting about "microaggressions." Arguing with them individually mostly won't work, though, because it doesn't override their social consensus, and it won't make them think harder about the issues.

Many left-wingers would disagree with me on this assessment.

Option #3: A more centrist view would be that vulgar anti-racists are a mix of people with excessively high racial attachment, enthusiastic people who are underinformed, and people who serve their niche of the information and political economy, and that this isn't that different from the lower quality wings of other left and right political movements (look how bad "degrowth" is, for example), except that race feels much more core to people's identities (it's certainly not easy to change one's race), so it evokes more powerful emotions. A centrist would likely say that there are more academically and philosophically serious opponents of racism out there, but because the things they say are more serious, they're less controversial, so they get less coverage. ("You wouldn't expect a textbook in the Sunday paper.")

A person with this perspective would say that the appropriate course of action is mostly just to wait for it to blow over.

I would disagree. If vulgar anti-racism is taught in schools for a generation, it would create an expectation that racial blame is the default course of action. This would create a situation which is much more favorable for racial conflict, so it should be shut down now to prevent that from happening.

However, I feel that this does not adequately explain the totalitarian bent. What about other values society might have? What about trade-offs? [4] I would like to throw a fourth possibility into the ring.

Option #4: Life inside the vulgar anti-racist worldview is anxiety-inducing and subtly terrifying.

I don't fully endorse this view, because I think that vulgar anti-racism is a coalition of multiple groups (see the previous three options).

However, while I learned from school that racism and ethnic conflict are extremely dangerous in general (e.g. they can boil over and result in mass murder), the susceptibility of vulgar anti-racists to, "It's impossible to be racist to white people," which is very obviously racist, strongly implies that what they learned was, "Jews good; Germans bad" – basically just a list of which groups are acceptable, and which groups aren't. [5]

I reverse-engineered a sophisticated moral worldview, and when I was young, I assumed that everyone else had done so, too. And for a little while, society approximated that view closely enough for that misconception to kind-of work.

I think that a significant number of people in the vulgar anti-racist coalition don't understand white people.

In terms of anxiety, a number of them seem to think that Europeans and their descendants think about race as much as the vulgar anti-racists do – that they are silently passing judgment, or saying nasty things when others are not listening.

I've been around middle-class and above white Americans my entire life. I've seen some kids make stupid racist jokes, and I can imagine bullying targeting race if it looks like an axis of vulnerability, but in general, among themselves, they don't talk about race much at all.

A skeptic reading this may say that that's just anecdotal. However, according to surveys, "white conservatives" have about the same "racial/ethnic" "ingroup favorability" as either "hispanic moderates" or "asians." "White liberals" were the only group on the chart to have a "pro-outgroup bias."

If we interpret these ingroup favorability measures as racism (which is a stretch, because a favorability measure is not itself a discriminatory policy), then white conservatives have a "normal" (as in typical of most groups) amount of racism. White liberals (probably in the sense that the label "liberal" is used for the entire left in the US) are the only ones who loop around into what might be called "anti-racism." (Razib Khan has his doubts about the stability of this arrangement of anti-racism as opposed to non-racism.)

A vulgar anti-racist doesn't know this, and doesn't want to know this.

Now, for the "subtly terrifying" part. If someone accepts, for instance, that the British were sincere in sending warships to intercept slave traders, then there are all sorts of explanations that they can come up with for that behavior, such as it being a natural result of industrialization, or maybe a result of rising literacy, or motivated by Christianity in combination with previous political developments in England, and so on.

From Wikipedia, here's a map of the British Empire, a map of the Spanish Empire, and a map of the Portuguese Empire. While from the perspective of Europeans at the time, the European states were in competition with each other, if taken together as a group, they were closer to achieving true world conquest than anyone else in history. (Sure, the Mongol Empire was huge, but they didn't make it over to the Americas.)

If someone believes that the Europeans turned off the slave trade for some sincere or enduring reason, then the 1700s are unlikely to come back. If someone believes that the Europeans turned off the 1700s for no reason, or for a secret reason, then one day, they could just... turn the 1700s back on.

And maybe that thought isn't entirely conscious. Maybe it just sits quietly, at the back of the mind.

And they get stuck, much like people who are still focused on "overpopulation" as birthrates plummet in industrialized countries throughout the world.

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Whether they consciously intend to or not, vulgar anti-racists leverage social taboos to make it difficult to argue for one group's innocence without making another, generally more vulnerable, group, look worse. People don't want to be mean and say mean things about a vulnerable group. Vulgar anti-racists exploit this. (This kind of behavior is immoral, but I'm not sure how much vulgar anti-racists consciously understand that.)

Online Tactics

I've developed tactics to argue with them in online space, but I haven't tried them out in in-person institutional spaces where they have institutional influence (power).

In general, you cannot argue with vulgar anti-racists grievance-for-grievance. Building up an ammunition depot of racial or ethnic grievances on behalf of "overperforming" groups won't work – vulgar anti-racists will dismiss you as irrationally motivated by racial hatred and dismiss your entire collection, and normal people will also think it's weird (even though they still don't think many racial or ethnic minorities collecting grievances is weird). [6]

A better approach is to pick one or two grievances to shut down the idea that the group you're defending are "invulnerable." Morally, you shouldn't have to point to, say, children or minors being mass victimized, because it should be obvious that people of any race can be victimized. But that's just the world we live in.

Collect examples of institutional policy, such as by governments, corporations, or universities, that is racially discriminatory against the group you're defending, in order to show that the intent of vulgar anti-racists is racial discrimination. Use center-left, mainstream sources to prevent dismissals. The goal is not to show major harms; most Democrats who are not social justice critical will initially attempt to deny that racial discrimination is a goal of vulgar anti-racism.

(If necessary, it can be emphasized that not wanting to be racially discriminated against is a normal thing to want.)

Vulgar anti-racists will try to shut you down by reciting their list of grievances. Memorizing racial grievances is something that they are strong at. Redirect the conversation to where they are weak: demand that they show whatever policy it is that they want will actually improve things and permanently close racial outcome gaps.

If you find someone who has memorized a list of successful academic or nutrition interventions, you've likely found a philosophical liberal. In my experience, almost no vulgar anti-racist has any even modestly-successful intervention memorized. If they propose an intervention, demand evidence that it will work.

It's possible that they could propose something scientific, but science is undergoing a replication crisis, and 'race scholars' have come under fire for scientific misconduct. If a vulgar anti-racist does come up with something, the next step is to get a binding commitment to close the racial claims against their target group.

If their political leaders will not agree, in writing, with binding mechanisms (and punishments with teeth if they don't follow through), to close out the racial claims against their target groups, conditional on some social intervention going into effect, then they don't believe that the intervention will work.

A working intervention is win-win. Outcomes improve, and the odds of conflict (over this particular issue) decrease.

IRL Tactics

X user CantonaCorona must live somewhere very different from me, because I never hear vulgar anti-racism from people in real life. His advice?

100%. I can’t even tell you the number of times I’ve been in a friendly/polite mutual friend gathering, and someone who knows 10% of the room will add “gawd, white people, gross” etc.

The issue is they are also the person lacking social skills to see the room gets uncomfortable

In 2023ish I started responding by asking them very honest seeming questions and leading them into saying really crazy stuff.

Takes a lot of finesse to not sound like a schizo, but if you can pretend to be genuinely curious it works wonders and someone else will call them out

It does, indeed, take a lot of finesse, even online. Because vulgar anti-racists are exploiting taboos, they have a huge terrain advantage in most encounters due to normal people not wanting to touch reputationally-damaging information. Successfully navigating the situation without sounding "schizo," and without sounding cruel, is difficult.

The advantage of the tactics discussed above are that you don't have to attack the reputation of the vulnerable group that vulgar anti-racists are using to justify their own bad behavior. It isn't surprising that, like a successful hostage rescue, it requires being more careful than the hostage-takers.

"Corrective" racial discrimination that does not permanently close racial outcome gaps is not actually a correction, it's just extra harm for no reason, and the motives of people who support it are suspect.

Demobilization

While the online tactics I've discussed above are reasonably effective for an online debate or argument format (and vulgar anti-racists are increasingly retreating to protected contexts where they don't have to engage in open debate), the long-term goal needs to be demobilization. Ethnic conflict interferes with stability and good government.

There are some supporters that don't recognize the logical errors in their positioning, but they can sense, "Wait, this guy isn't like the others," and flee rather than risk being split off from the social approval of their group.

I propose the fear theory for the potential to develop new angles. If the real motivation is fear, then addressing most of the intermediate arguments won't work, as the intermediate arguments are just products of the fear.

Reportedly, black musician Daryl Davis demobilized many Klansmen just by befriending them. [7] I suspect that most vulgar anti-racists already know a number of white people personally, so that tactic probably won't work here.

I have not conducted field experiments (either online or offline) on using the fear theory during encounters, so I can't provide solid information on its tactical use, yet.

-★★★-

[1] Stylistically, I have chosen to capitalize nationality while not capitalizing racial groups. On a quick reading, the tables provided by Wikipedia don't appear to disaggregate between first-generation immigrants, who have foreign nationality of origin and American citizenship, and second-generation immigrants who only have American nationality. All three CEOs listed were born in India.

[2] The ability to buy off competing talent is one of the reasons for the endurance of capitalism. Capitalist systems tend to be extremely productive. They can offer wages from increased productivity that are higher than the wages that other systems offer from rents.

[3] This is one of the reasons I got into writing about politics. It became common to find people whose professed opinions implied they'd never even heard of Genghis Khan, and at that point, I figured the bar was set pretty low.

[4] Positions on migration appear related, but I'll touch on that in another essay.

[5] One reason it wasn't obvious that people were just making an acceptable targets list at the time was that quite a few people from all over the world have a tendency to get wacky about Jewish people specifically, so putting antisemitism off-limits looked like it was backed by more sophisticated reasoning than it actually was. Obviously, people shouldn't hate Jewish people. The problem with the acceptable targets list approach is that it's fragile – since the list is based on social approval rather than deeper philosophical principles, it can end up being "readjusted" later.

[6] I also suspect that continuing to constantly expose yourself to the worst behavior of other groups may be corrosive. Watching a video where a man is shot on some other street, in some other city, may give you a jolt of adrenaline while you sit helplessly in your chair. Reading about atrocities may make you feel helpless and doomed.

[7] This behavior is morally praiseworthy, not morally obligatory.

#politics #criticism of social justice #idpol #epistemic blues #sj critical #flagpost

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jibberjibbsart · 21 days ago

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Can you tell more about Viktor from your AU? How he ended up in the Academy and such? If you thought about it though 👀

UGH THIS AU IS AMAZING, can i sketch something related to it??? 👀 if you don't mind that is!!!

I need to sit down and make a fully fleshed-out timeline- BUT here are my initial thoughts on how DnD Viktor gets into the academy.

After his mother passed, Viktor had to fend for himself but being a casteless male drow in the heart of Menzoberranzan didn't give him many opportunities. He turned to the travelers and adventurers visiting the city and offered to fix their wagons/armor/weapons for food. Then once he gained a decent reputation, he was able to acquire enough money and supplies to leave Menzoberranzan. He didn't have a goal in mind, just the surface. Once he arrived in Neverwinter he learned about the college's artificer course. With no disposable income for tuition or a uniform, Viktor decided to sneak into the library and teach himself... that was until he wandered past a class that had a very compelling presentation about alchemy. He was drawn in by the incredibly animated student sharing his research (Of course it was Jayce's presentation). After sneaking into that class, he would sit in the very back of lecture halls, slouched over his seat with his hood drawn to make himself as small and unnoticeable as possible. Until he just HAD to correct a professor (they were so blatantly WRONG) and suddenly all eyes were on him. The professor was LIVID and had Viktor apprehended for impersonating a student and for trespassing. The professor was going to have him thrown in prison, but luckily Heimerdinger intervened. He questioned Viktor's motives and satisfied with Viktor's answer, offered him a scholarship and a job as his assistant. Viktor was shocked and unsure, but Heimerdinger insisted, saying it would be a shame to lock up such an eager mind ready to learn.

Pretty similar to the Arcane Canon, but with some dnd/jayvik flair. I adore the "paths crossed before they even met" trope, and Jayce being the reason Viktor starts sneaking into lectures is so special to me. Once Viktor learns who Jayce is, he intentionally causes scenarios where they would bump into one another. (Being the Dean's assistant gave him access to other student's schedules) He tried to convince himself it was because he wanted to work with Jayce, and NOT because he thought the human was cute hehe.

ALSO FEEL FREE TO DRAW STUFF INSPIRED BY THIS AU I WOULD LOVE TO SEE IT!!!!!!! <3333

#I would love to see your dnd arcane stuff #i'm planning on another comic as we speak

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somepsychopomp · 1 year ago

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Vampire!Simon AU

I'm not going to call this a Part 1 to an overarching fic or anything. This is more like a rough proof of concept to see if I'm really willing to devote more time to this AU over my toxic yuri butchblegum/Star!Marcy AU. (Bc i wanna write both but I have to start managing my time better)

Basically:

Simon found Marcy but got turned into a vampire before he went fully mad

Marcy is still the Star

Simon has been forced to act as the Vampire King's advisor for 1000 years

he finds and wants to save baby Finn

Word count: ~1700

+++

The Vampire King seldom hunted his own meals anymore. True, when he was a thousand years younger, he adored the hunt. He savored the screams and the pleading. Listening for the rush of spilled blood and the dwindling voices. But he was a true king now, he had a castle and a legion at his disposal. His ward. And nowadays, he quite enjoyed his food being delivered fresh at his feet.

Perhaps it was because he could no longer enjoy the hunt with his court. Over the years, he lost his jester, his advisors. All of his inner circle save for his dearest Star.

And his Temperance.

As he heard the lesser vampire drones come in with that night’s catch, his daughter drifted in from one of the many tunnels overhead his throne. Her fangs glinted in the low light.

“I wonder what’s for dinner.”

“I told them to bring you some women,” the King said. He knew his daughter was partial to the company and blood of females.

The Star giggled in delight as the drones came in, pairs of them carrying their captured prey and dropping them before their masters.

Three men, two women. A fine enough meal.

The Vampire King rose from his throne, stretching his maw wide to flex his jaw. The humans shook and cried in their fears. Some prayed, some closed their eyes. It made no difference in the end. They’d been exhausted or injured from the hunt and knew their fates were sealed.

Then the most foul sound imaginable cut through the air.

The King hissed, eyes narrowing. It seemed he was mistaken. There was a small lump on the ground among the humans, a dirtied blanket writhing in a slow, grotesque fashion. His attention shifted to the dozen or so minions who brought him dinner.

“I told you you could eat those little things out there, but you can’t bring them in here! It’s already making such a ruckus.”

The drones quaked as much as the food, shivering as they hovered above the humans and pleaded for forgiveness. The King had half a mind to slay a few to set an example, but his shoulders stiffened at the sound of incoming footsteps.

His feline ears flattened against his skull as he let out a sharp growl.

“Dad?” Star asked.

“Quickly, baby girl,” he said, pointing at the lump on the floor, “Eat that wretched thing, he’s coming!”

She understood without another word. The Star dashed for the humans, scattering them and making them scream. But they were not her targets yet. Instead, she grabbed the baby and peeled the blanket back, fangs bared.

Too late.

The King turned to spot Temperance appear at the base of the steps to his left. He seemed out of breath, clutching the entryway as he adjusted his glasses. Damn it all, he had heard the cries from a distance and came running.

“Star!” he said.

Her shoulders slumped as she retracted her fangs. “Temperance. Come on, let me have this one. It’s giving Dad a headache.”

Temperance approached The Star, smoothing over his pure white hair as he examined the bundle in her arms. She allowed him, as the King knew she would.

Temperance took the infant from her and cradled it in his arms. He already had that look on his face, that expression of pure pity. He always had such a soft spot for human children.

It was a blessing long ago, that compassion. It was what saved The Star from an early grave. But there was no place for it here, now. And they all knew it.

Temperance looked to the King, lips parted.

He held up a hand and his sole surviving advisor fell quiet. The baby still bellowed. The Vampire King pinched the bridge of his nose and sighed. He didn’t want to argue like the last time. Temperance was mostly a man of reason, so he tried to appeal to that part of him.

“It won’t survive long, you know this,” he said quietly. As great and terrible as he was, it gave the King no pleasure to see the pinched expression on his advisor’s face.

“They’ll fare better this time.” Temperance said. “I’ve learned from my past mistakes.”

That didn’t say much. Disease, malnutrition, and the stray, hungry minion had ended each and every one of Temperance’s past wards. They just didn’t have the protection that the king, the most absolute authority, had given to his own daughter, though Temperance was loath to admit this.

The King regarded his advisor. “How long has it been since your last pet?”

Temperance said, averting his gaze, “About a hundred years.”

He was jostling the little thing now. Rocking it. At least it was growing a little more silent.

And wasn’t that the thing about Temperance?

His endless patience, his endless devotion?

The Vampire King had praised it so highly in the past.

“Dad,” The Star said. She drifted over to him and put her hand on his shoulder, “Let him try again.”

He scoffed, surprising even himself. “You of all people want a human infant in the hive?”

She grimaced. “Not really. But it’d mean a lot to him.”

“Please,” Temperance said. He was holding that little thing so close to his chest, his heart. As if he were already fond of it. He asked, “Haven’t I served you well all these years?”

The King sighed. Temperance was a good caretaker. He taught The Star to read and write, and helped take care of her for the past thousand years.

It was true that while Temperance has always been painfully sentimental, he had been good to them.

“Very well,” the Vampire King said. He pointed at Temperance. “Keep the child. But I don’t want to hear it cry.”

Relief flooded Temperance’s face, making him seem much younger than he was. He exhaled softly and bowed.

“Thank you, my lord.”

“However,” the King said.

In half a second, he’d crossed the gap between himself and Temperance. His advisor hardly flinched.

The Vampire King said, “I am not scared of some little blood bag. But humans are savage things. It’ll grow up to be a nuisance without proper discipline. And the moment it so much as threatens The Star,” he took Temperance’s chin in his clawed hand and forced him to meet his King’s eye, “the moment it ever threatens you, I will rip its throat out. Do you understand, Temperance?”

“Yes, I do,” Temperance said, a resigned look in his eyes. “Thank you.”

He began to leave, that child almost quiet now.

“You won’t stay for dinner?” Star asked.

He paused at the bottom of the steps and smiled over his shoulder. “I’m not really hungry.”

Typical. He never ate from live meals, only the bottled stuff. Well, not that it mattered much to the King. More for him and his baby girl.

+++

Temperance fled up the stairs before he could hear the crush of bones and the ripping sound of flesh being cleaved. After a millennium, it still made him sick.

The baby in his arms began to warble a fresh bout of cries.

“No, no. Hush, now,” Temperance whispered. He knew what he needed to do.

He stopped by his library only briefly, just to pick up a tattered red scarf from a box beneath his desk. Away from the eyes of the vampire drones and the rest of the court, he sated his hunger by sucking the red from the fabric.

A small hand pawed at the air before landing on the now-white scarf, bunching it up in one little fist.

“Oh, you want it?” Temperance asked. He let the baby hold it as he continued on his way. His wing of the vampiric castle consisted of a sprawling, multistory library, his private baths, his bedchambers, and one small adjoining room that hadn’t been used in a hundred years.

But everything was as he left it. The minions kept it clean of dust for him as per his request, but they didn’t move or touch anything.

Temperance sat in the rocking chair by the crib, undoing the baby’s dirtied blanket to reveal the little body within.

“Oh!”

The baby’s face was ruddy from his bout of crying. But he was chubby and healthy. No motley coloring to the skin, no signs of injury or infection. What was even more fascinating, however, was his white hat. Despite the lack of distinct eyes or a nose, the little ears were emblematic of an animal. Perhaps a dog or a bear.

It’d been a while since he’d seen a human with an animal hat, he thought this tradition died out a century or two ago. Many vampires nowadays, even the most simple-minded and animalistic ones, knew how to circumvent an animal hat. Temperance took off the baby’s hat and turned it inside out.

And yes, there on the inner brim was a handsewn name.

“Finn,” he said aloud. “Is that you, baby Finn?”

He smiled, replacing the child’s hat and watching his curious eyes wander the room.

Then it dawned upon him. He felt a terrible weight upon his chest, a crippling guilt.

“Oh… you poor thing.”

If Finn had a name sewn into his hat, it must have meant he came from someone who remembered the old ways of humans. Someone still in tune with human culture.

His culture. Temperance’s chest ached.

None of the adults that were brought in with the child tried to fight for him. Perhaps he didn’t belong to any of them, that he was taken from his true parents. If they were even alive, that was.

“I’m sorry,” Temperance said, “I’m so sorry.”

He wrapped Finn in the white scarf and held him close.

“Listen to me, Finn.” he said gently, “I’m going to take good care of you, I promise.”

Finn cooed and popped his lips. Simon laughed softly despite himself. He knew he was weak in comparison to the other vampiric royals. But he was even more so when it came to children.

“My name is Temperance, but you can call me Simon.”

#fionna and cake #fionna and cake spoilers #simon petrikov #the vampire king #marceline #vampire AU #toxic marcy AU #finally simon gets to be a daddy #its what he deserves!!!!#also i know the vampires in AT can float #but simon will always prefer walking #it reminds him of how he used to be human

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phoenixyfriend · 10 months ago

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Ko-fi prompt from @kayasurin:

Please lay out, in the most simple, basic terms, what progressive taxes (I think that's the name for them) are and how they work so I can eventually win an argument, thanks!

Personally, I still think this cartoon at @thenib explains marginal taxes better than anything else I've seen.

This is the wikipedia image for progressive tax rates, comparing taxation in 1970 in three countries (UK, US, France) to the same countries in 2005. (article)

The above illustrates how, ideally, people will be paying a greater amount of their wealth to the state if they have more wealth than a person should have. The actual details of it are a bit more complicated, since it deals with wealth percentiles instead of straight income amounts, so we'll move on.

Let's imagine that the margin is $50k/year, because that is the livable wage pre-tax for wherever we set this. Under the $50k, you pay 20%. Anything past that $50, you pay 70%.

If you make $25k/year, you pay 20% on it, and that's the end of it.

If you make $50k/year, you pay 20% on it, and that's the end of it.

If you make $150k/year, then you pay 20% on the first $50k, and then 70% on the remaining $100k.

If you make a a million, you still only pay 20% on the first $50k, but then 70% on the remaining $950k.

On a moral level, the idea here is that everyone should pay taxes, but nobody should face an undue burden. If you make at least $50k, then you are left with at least $40k after taxes, no matter how much more you make, which should be enough to live off of without trouble. If you make more after that, good for you! You have to pay a higher tax on that portion, but not on the previous $50k, so you will still have that livable wage of $40k post-tax. In the context of our setting, any money you make that is more than $50k is, in theory, a surplus. Not just disposable income, but extra-disposable income, the kind where a person asks "okay, you are making so much money that a lot of your surplus must be coming from someone else not getting paid enough, so let's just get that from you now to make up for the difference."

Buuuuuut there's still a difference between someone who makes $55k, someone who makes $250k, and someone who makes a million a year.

So the above explanation does greatly oversimplify. Part of progressive tax rates is that it's not just "people under this high wage get this tax rate, and everyone above it gets this other tax rate." It's not just the two categories, but a set of steps.

Let's look at this chart from Wiztax.

If this chart stresses you out to look at, don't worry. I'll explain.

(I believe 11k is approximately where the official poverty line sits in NYC right now, and 44,725 is about a living wage for someone with roommates and no kids.)

If you take a look at the second line, $11k-44,725, it tells you that the amount you pay is $1,100 plus 12% of the amount over. That $1,100 is the 10% of under 11k from the first line, and then you pay 12% of the rest.

Next line down, $44,726-95,375 looks wild in comparison. Your flat base for everything 44,725 and under is $5,147! Which is...

1,100 + 0.12*(44,725-11,000)

You pay the tax rate for that specific margin all the way up. You pay 10% for the first 11k, 12% on the next 33,725, 22% of the next 50,650, and so on.

It's chunks, and steps, because our tax code does (sometimes, if we're lucky) understand that all this exists on a spectrum. You do not get taxed out of your nose if you make one cent above that $44,725. You just get taxed a bit higher for the next 50k.

Here is a truly horrible little illustration of how it works, if that's easier:

#id in alt text #id in alt #economics #marginal tax rates #ko fi prompts #capitalism #phoenix talks #ko fi #taxes #taxation #marginal tax

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biowaredisasterbisexual · 2 months ago

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So, I mentioned here that I had many more thoughts on the Tevinter Imperium’s military and its pay, which ties a lot into my thoughts on the Soporati class. And someone was brave enough to encourage me to keep going. (And my beta is going Through it right now, so I really ought to stop dumping more one-shots in her inbox like a child collecting cool rocks.)

Oooh, my friends, I am unleashed. 🤣

So, first things first, Tevinter, in the world of DA, is very clearly patterned on the Roman Empire. It’s not one for one, of course, “inspired by” and “the same as” are two very different things. Nonetheless, there is a lot of real world Roman Empire influence in the game’s conceptions of game world Tevinter. So many of my thoughts, here, are influenced by the realities of life for soldiers in the armies of the Roman Empire (and the Republic, as DA takes from that time period too, just less so).

We learn throughout the games that Tevinter is structured into roughly five classes (but arguably six, there’s some questions there that the other post digs into). Three citizen classes: Altus, Laetan, and Soporati. Two non-citizen classes: Liberati and slaves. The Altus and the Laetans are mage citizen classes, the Soporati the non-mage citizens of the Imperium and by far the most numerous citizen class. The Liberati (freed slaves) and slaves aren’t (full) citizens of the Imperium, even though they’re ruled by it.

By virtue of being part of the Altus and Laetan classes, mage citizens have educational and professional opportunities that many Soporati lack. Indeed, based on what we can glean in-world, the Soporati largely are a poor class other than a fortunate few who manage to scrape up and/or inherit money through one of two ways. One, the merchant class. Most Soporati merchants are also not well-off in Tevinter. But a limited few are.

And then there’s the Imperial legions.

The way the Imperial legions are talked about in the games, they seem to be one of the few options for achieving financial stability and security for Soporati in Tevinter. Note: This is not the case for the Liberati or the slaves, as they are not citizens and thus not allowed to join the Legion.*

And broadly that may be true. If we take as a given - and this is admittedly a big ask - pay and military structure work similarly in the Tevinter legions as it did in the Roman ones, a standard, enlisted legionnaire would receive: (1) room, (2) board, (3) salary, and (4) retirement (and potentially also bonuses). The salary for the average legionnaire is likely very small. Less than most jobs likely pay. An average legionnaire probably has a lower salary than Tarquin or Rana Savas. HOWEVER, since the Legion is providing housing and food during service, legionnaires have guaranteed disposable income in a way that most Soporati don’t appear to. Higher ranking members of the legions, officers, would receive 2x-10x the salary, depending on the specific rank. At the end of it all, they’d receive a retirement (in Rome this was property and/or 10+ years salary).

In exchange for those financial benefits (again, taking similarity to the Roman legions as a given, which is a big assumption), legionnaires: serve a fixed term (it was around 20 years during the Roman Empire, but that isn’t my headcanon for Tevinter); cannot marry during their term; cannot own property during their term; are subject to brutal discipline; and have a very high death rate during their term. Like 50% or more high. Even for officers. These restrictions mean that their wealth can’t be passed on as easily (remember, no marriage), isn’t as stable (no property), and isn’t guaranteed (no retirement if you die or are dishonorably discharged, and pay can be suspended as discipline). They may not be able to inherit, depending on if one headcanons Roman inheretence laws as also being mimicked in-game by Tevinter.

Add to that that many Soporati members of the legions are likely not used to managing much money (making them, however accidentally, more prone to mismanaging it) and are sending money home to parents/siblings/loved ones. On average, most legionnaires likely have very little actual wealth. They just have free housing and food. They’ve essentially given themselves, at great personal risk, to the Imperium to fight on behalf of a country they have very little say in the governance of because it’s a better shot than being potentially homeless or forced to sell themselves into slavery.

This is quite possibly - though again, I’m relying on at least one major assumption here - the existence that is sold as one of the only paths to stability and security for the Soporati class. Which I feel like says a lot about how little the rest have.

* Tevinter may have forces akin to the Roman auxiliaries (how non-citizens could serve in a military capacity in the Roman Empire) that include the Liberati or slaves (and we know from in-universe sources they do get used as mercenaries, bodyguards, or spies), but that’s never made clear.

#datv #dav #dragon age #tevinter imperium #musings on thedas #musings on the Tevinter imperium #da meta

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gofancyninjaworld · 4 months ago

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Hello!!

I would like to ask. What do you think of the negative reviews regarding the current direction of the OPM manga?

I have seen a lot of negative opinions that OPM is going to failure because of Murata (and even ONE), because the Blast Vs Void fight has been uncertain for a long time since the manga break, and then we were introduced to the neo heroes arc. That many have found it boring since the story of the ninja village was interrupted, and that the last chapters have been very short and it feels that the work progresses very slowly. In addition, OPM has had constant redraws and the last arc of MA and cosmic garou was somewhat controversial for its resolution, added to the redraws.

In addition to this, I see that people support that the work completely forgets about Saitama, pointing out that the main character is not forgotten since he practically does not appear (beyond the covers). Finally, I have also seen that some people point out that ONE has decreased the quality of the work because of being involved in other manga. And that OPM has lost quality completely.

I would like to hear other opinions, because I feel that they are somewhat exaggerated. But honestly I have been frustrated not to see Blast and Void fight, and I feel that many people waiting for this fight makes them lose interest in Neo-Heroes because they feel like they introduced this reunion at a bad time. I feel that Murata and One are overlapping these WC arcs, and developed in parallel. But that's my speculation....

Lol. I laugh now because the reality of watching OPM being made is a bit like the pitch experiment. It flows but not a timescale that makes sense to sit and watch it.

I started following the manga in 2016, right at the tail end of the time when Murata would only get a storyboard every 2-3 months, and would often post only a handful of pages of redrawn stuff. Then it went to every 2-3 weeks with month-long pauses but at least new story, 15-20 pages. Then it started to be 30+ pages at a time, every 3-4 weeks. Then it started to be 30-ish pages at a time, every other week. ONE has managed to deliver storyboards consistently enough that there's a whole generation of people who joined in the last 3-4 years who have no damn idea it was ever any different.

This is far from the first time that many updates have gone into making a single chapter: Saitama vs. Genos, the Giant Meteor, all the chapters of the Alien invasion, King, to just name a few, advanced a few pages at a time over many weeks. This is not the first time that Saitama has been gone from the story for months: when it's compiled, he's away from the story for only a few chapters but it sure doesn't look that way following chapter-to-chapter.

And as for redraws, BITCH, YOU'RE TALKING ABOUT THE STORY WHERE THE FIRST CHAPTER WAS REDRAWN FIVE TIMES! If that doesn't tell you everything you need to know, I don't know what does. I used to tell people regularly that if you don't want uncertainty, buy the volumes or wait for the anime. That's when you'll see the story as it was intended to be seen. Want immediacy? Then you have to make peace with the fact that this work does change regularly.

As for whether it has lost quality... make your mind up for yourself! 'Quality' is a meaningless term without a set of criteria. A good quality F1 racecar is a poor quality 18-wheeler -- and vice versa. So what quality are you referring to? Sure, I've heard some people grumble about having fewer panels they can hang up on the wall as decontextualised art pieces but they're losing the point of the panels as being moments in a sequential story. There's people who are annoyed at it not being the webcomic with nicer art, to which I say, 'DUH!' The manga has only one job, and it's the only quality criterion on which I judge it: does it delight me? Its only job is to entertain... hopefully enough to induce you to part with some disposable income.

If you're not entertained, give yourself permission to drop it. Life is short and excellent works are many: don't hang onto something that doesn't bring joy to your life. The OPM manga delights me. If that changes, I will drop it.

Hope that answers your questions.

#asks #answers #OPM #yeah make up your mind #you are not 'some people'#you're you: if it works for you who cares what others think?#ah well you asked me my opinion and I'm afraid you got it

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rosepetalsinwinter · 2 years ago

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Meant to Be — Bucky Barnes (7)

Chapter 7 — Mr. And Mrs. Barnes

Pairing: mafia!bucky x innocent!reader

Word count: 7,856

Summary: There is more than meets the eye, and Bucky is suspicious. What is everyone hiding?

Warnings: language, sexual innuendos, brief nudity? (blink and you'll miss it)

Note: Sorry, it's been a while. Enjoy!

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Chapter 6 — Chapter 7

"Today I know that such memories are the key not to the past, but to the future."

— Corrie Ten Boom

May 4th, 2018

He never understood what triggered it, but he found himself reliving it at odd times. The figure always sneaked up on Bucky in his dreams with an eerie silence, draped in shades of gray and brown.

"You really don't remember me?" the figure would taunt.

Bucky's responding grin was almost derogatory. "I'm sorry, am I supposed to?" He dismissed the flicker of familiarity attempting to crawl up his spine.

"You've changed."

He chuckled, deciding to humour the person. "Have I now?"

"You used to keep your promises."

"Did I?" Bucky slowly loosened the restraints behind his back, reaching for the concealed metal in his waistband. "You hit my head pretty hard earlier. I don't remember much."

"At least you kept your stupid sense of humour."

Bucky scoffed, spitting out the blood that pooled in his mouth from his bleeding nose. "You think you know me?"

"I do."

He shook his head. "You don't," he retorted. "You don't know me." The click of the safety turning off made them both pause. "And you never will." Years of training propelled him into action. The figure collapsed on the floor before the gunshot could reverberate through the room.

He stood tall over the lifeless form. "I always keep my promises."

May 4th, 2018

Bucky was beyond pissed. So far, his entire day had passed attending to one matter or another, making call after call instead of getting to know his wife. Not that she was in a state to talk.

Hmm, his little wife had been unconscious for nearly eighteen hours since she fainted in church. Bucky would have been seriously concerned if it weren't for the French maid and her reassurances. Fran—was that her name?—had informed him that the girl hadn't slept properly in over a week. Stress, she claimed, though Bucky suspected a deeper meaning behind the word. The way the maid narrowed her green eyes and tilted her reddish-blonde head hinted at something more.

The mobster took large swigs of Scotch straight from the decanter. Earlier, when the flight attendant came by to pour him a glass, Bucky had unleashed his rage, barking at him to leave the whole thing and disappear. He was in no mood for small talk.

A pounding headache throbbed in Bucky's temples. The entire day had been a whirlwind of problems. First, waking up to discover Phil Coulson dead. Dealing with Rollins' men—though that was stress relieving, at least.

Then, being brutally attacked outside the church, resulting in the need to dispose of the body in the East River, where the strong currents would erase any traces of foul play.

And let's not forget the spectacle that was his wedding. Fuck. The fucking wedding. And the shitshow that followed after. Bucky had so many questions. So many things he needed to address.

He hadn't been married a day, and already his wife was causing him problems. Bucky was exhausted, drowsy, and to make matters worse, he was overwhelmingly aroused.

With a scowl, Bucky downed the last of his Scotch, then glanced at his watch to see if he had enough time to address his growing... predicament.

He didn't.

They would reach Constanţa in half an hour, the estate in one. Bucky couldn't wait. Suddenly, his phone lit up with an incoming call, causing him to huff before ending it. Not even a minute passed before Danial Burgundy's caller ID appeared again. God, the man was persistent. After ignoring twelve calls, he still tested Bucky's patience.

"What do you want, you sick fuck?" Bucky answered impulsively.

The man on the other end sounded amused. "Hello to you too, James."

"Cut the bullshit, Danial. I'm in no mood for small talk." Danial was the last person Bucky wanted to talk to, especially after their conversation in New York. The older man was lucky he was Bucky's father-in-law now, or he'd already be six feet under.

"Right. Straight down to business then," Danial sighed. "I want to speak to my daughter."

Bucky scoffed dismissively. "No ace."

Annoyance tinged Danial's response. "Don't tell me—"

"She's taking a nap," Bucky interrupted. "She can't talk right now."

"I don't fucking believe you, James."

"I don't care." Bucky didn't give a damn about what Danial thought of him.

"Listen, asshole," Danial began losing his temper, "I know you've always been a good-for-nothing motherfucker, but—"

"Is that why you gave her to me?" Bucky taunted, a sardonic grin on his face. "Is that why you gave me everything?" That seemed to silence Danial, at least for the moment.

"Because I'm a good-for-nothing motherfucker?" Bucky chuckled, acknowledging a minor defeat. "I'll admit, you caught me off guard before with the stipulation you threw in my face, but don't think you have the upper hand here." Adrenaline coursed through Bucky's body as he further provoked Danial. "I got what I wanted. I didn't even have to work for it. You handed it to me on a silver platter." He prepared himself for the final blow. "In fact, I've already begun fulfilling that condition of yours." Bucky clicked his tongue. "No complaints so far. She's amazing."

"You bastard!" Danial exploded.

Yes, Bucky was being vulgar. Danial had forced his hand to leave for their honeymoon two days earlier, and Bucky didn't appreciate it.

He hushed Danial. "You'll wake her up. I tired her out. She needs all the rest she can get."

And there it was, the silent row of defeat. Danial sighed, audibly distressed. "She's still my daughter," the coward insisted.

"No, she's not," Bucky retorted, not to mock but to state a fact. He shrugged nonchalantly. "She's not yours. Not anymore. She's mine. She became mine the second I signed your papers."

"You Barnes' have always been greedy," Danial sneered. "Wanting what's not yours. Not giving a shit who gets hurt in the process. Fucking murderers."

"And you Burgundys have always been manipulative bastards," Bucky spat. "Pulling underhanded shit. Whoring out your women for a quick buck."

"You little—"

"Then that's exactly how I'll treat her. Like a slut, a fucking whore."

Danial's breath hitched on the other end of the line.

Bingo.

"No! Wait, no! Barnes, don't you fucking dare! Don't you dare fucking touch her—"

"Leave me the fuck alone."

Bucky ended the call.

The moon hung low in the sky, making way for the impending sunrise in a couple of hours. Bucky tossed his phone onto the seat opposite him and turned his attention to the porthole, gazing out at the soft glow beginning to fill the horizon.

They should be flying over Pitești by now, en route to Constanța. It felt good to be back home. Bucky stretched his arms above his head, contemplating Danial's reaction. If he didn't know any better, he might have mistaken Danial's tone for genuine concern about his daughter. Fortunately, Bucky knew better. With most of Danial's cards laid out on the table, Bucky would respond accordingly, starting with his bride.

Suddenly, the cabin door opened, causing Bucky to whip his head around, prepared to unleash his anger on the intruder. It was his bride, leaning against the entrance of the small bedroom at the back.

She still wore her wedding dress, barefoot and breathing heavily, cheeks flushed and hair rumpled. Her gaze wandered around the cabin in a daze, clutching the door frame in a white fist when the plane encountered slight turbulence.

"You're awake," Bucky broke the silence.

Her eyes scanned the surroundings as she took in their location. "Where am I?" she croaked.

Bucky frowned, realizing she must be thirsty. "Sit," he commanded instead of answering. His wife blinked owlishly, staring at him as if he had grown another head. A faint smile threatened to emerge. "Don't make me drag you here," he muttered. "Because I will."

His wife snapped to attention, unsteadily walking across the aisle, leaning against the empty seats for support. The image stirred something pleasurable in Bucky's mind. She halted across from him, hesitating to sit when she noticed his phone perched precariously on the edge of the armrest.

When Bucky reached over to retrieve the device, he let his arm brush against her leg. It was a gentle graze against the white lace that, nonetheless, left her flustered. Bucky smirked, savouring the sound of his wife's hitched breath.

The girl slowly lowered herself onto the brown leather, almost robotic in her movements. Her back remained rigid, and she wouldn't look at him. Why wouldn't she look at him? Bucky didn't like that. The table separating them was the only thing preventing him from reaching over and forcing her eyes to meet his.

Bucky pressed the overhead call button, his gaze fixed on the girl. He noticed black smudged under her eyes and lipstick smeared around her mouth. How many hours had it been since the ceremony? Too many and not enough. Her features appeared more striking in the natural light than in the harsh illumination of the church.

And there, when her eyes flicked up ever so slightly at the sound of the call button, Bucky recognized that same dead look from before, the one she had when he leaned in for a kiss that never happened because she fainted. It was more subtle, tamped down, but still present, difficult to ignore and even harder to comprehend.

Bucky summoned the flustered flight attendant and ordered food, water, and another Scotch. He may not have been hungry, but he assumed she was.

"Drink," Bucky pushed the glass of water toward her. She was playing with her fingers, gaze fixed on her lap.

"Where am I?" she breathed.

Bucky frowned when she didn't immediately comply. "Drink," he demanded with more force, pushing the water closer. He watched as she brought the glass to her lips with trembling hands and took a small sip.

"Where—"

"More," he interrupted with dissatisfaction. She was an impatient one.

Bucky thought he heard her huff in annoyance but disregarded it as she began to take hesitant sips that soon turned into large gulps, causing water to trickle down the sides of her mouth.

The glass was empty within seconds.

"We're in Constanța," Bucky answered her earlier question.

She looked up at him in surprise, eyes wide and lips parted. Bucky was hit with a sudden urge to kiss her.

"Excuse me?"

"Constanța, Romania," Bucky clarified. "I have a family house in Mamaia. We'll be landing in ten minutes."

Bucky leaned back in his seat and sipped his Scotch, raising an eyebrow at the girl's obvious shock. The slight burn of alcohol felt pleasant, immediately relaxing him.

She glanced around the cabin, blinking owlishly. She seemed flustered. "I don't have—" She took a deep breath. "Why are we in Romania?"

Bucky couldn't help but smile. "Why do you think? What do newlyweds usually do after getting married?"

He waited for the realization to dawn on her, watching as she trembled and shied away. Bucky wondered how experienced she was if a simple innuendo left her so flustered. He couldn't wait to find out.

She still wouldn't look at him.

"Where's my father?" the girl asked, her question directed at the floor.

It appeared the Burgundy princess was close to her last remaining parent. "Danial?" Bucky sneered, unable to suppress his annoyed scoff. "In New York, where he belongs."

She seemed taken aback. Her lips parted, and she straightened her posture in attention.

Bucky narrowed his eyes suspiciously. "Why?"

Flustered, she started to answer but then froze, her eyes wide with an emotion he couldn't quite discern. She shook her head furiously. "Nothing."

Bucky's suspicion grew tenfold. He was ready to interrogate her, but she interrupted him.

"And my friend?" she asked desperately. "Where is she?"

"Hmm," Bucky mused. "The blonde with the big mouth?" He missed the expression on her face as he finished the rest of his drink. "Dove, was it?"

"N-no," the girl denied. "She's French."

It took a second for Bucky to recall, and once he did, he couldn't help but smile.

"The French maid? She stayed with you after the ceremony. I talked to her about—"

"Well, is she here?" the girl cut him off.

Bucky met her eyes, and the second he did, she averted her gaze. Acting on instinct, he reached out and grabbed her chin, forcing her to look at him. "You interrupted me."

He watched as her breath quickened and her irises dilated. Bucky waited for a verbal response, but she remained frozen, struck dumb by his intimidating presence. "You're lucky you're cute," Bucky said, finally releasing her.

She seemed to deflate the second he retreated from her personal space and mirrored his relaxed posture, melting into her seat as if suddenly drained.

"Eat," Bucky ordered, pouring a finger's worth of Scotch into his glass and pushing it toward her.

An indescribable tension filled the air, an unspoken awkwardness. Which was to be expected, Bucky supposed, since this was their formal introduction. The girl shook her head. "I'm not hungry," she whispered.

Bucky downed the rest of his Scotch, keeping his gaze fixed on her. Her discomfort in his presence was palpable, incredibly aware of him with how she uncomfortably squirmed in her seat.

"Eat," he repeated, the finality in his voice leaving no room for argument. The girl obediently picked up the fork, ready to dig into the food. The meal consisted of a variety of fresh fruits, sweet and savoury pastries, and various breakfast proteins. She nibbled on a melon, taking such small bites that Bucky became frustrated.

The pilot's voice came through the overhead speakers, announcing their impending arrival, and the flight attendants prepared for landing.

"Shall I pack this to go, Mr. Barnes?" the female attendant asked, gesturing toward the untouched breakfast.

Bucky nodded. "Has the car arrived?"

"Of course, Mr. Barnes. Also, the police commissioner is waiting for you on the tarmac, per your request."

Bucky hummed. "Good." He retrieved his wallet and handed a few hundreds to the male attendant, who was closer. "For both of your discretion," he explained, referring to his previous phone calls.

"Thank you!" The attendant quickly pocketed the money, and the area was swiftly cleaned. The table between Bucky and the girl was folded and moved out of the way.

"Mrs. Barnes?" the female attendant called. "Mrs. Barnes, please fasten your seatbelt."

Bucky watched as the girl stared blankly at the attendant. "What?"

"We are preparing to land," the attendant explained, struggling to hide her bewilderment.

After a few more uncomfortable moments, Bucky leaned forward and fastened her seatbelt himself, ensuring it was secure. She tensed under his touch, but he ignored it, both amused and annoyed by her reaction to him.

He would need to rectify that later. There was no sound reason for a woman to be so cold toward a man. But for now... They needed to discuss more pressing matters, starting with why she...

Vaguely, Bucky recalled a drunken whisper from his father regarding the Burgundys. Something he had said after one too many drinks. "Their manipulations killed your grandfather."

Bucky hadn't comprehended it at the time, but perhaps he did now. He remembered his conversation with Danial. Surely, any offspring of Danial's would be just as cunning and manipulative as him.

Bucky would uncover the truth if it was the last thing he did.

May 4th, 2018

The car ride from the airport was filled with silence. The girl had lost her appetite but was picking at her food at the behest of her husband, who was engrossed on his phone. She took small, reluctant bites of the fruit, struggling to keep it down.

Husband. The word brought a welling of tears to her eyes. She fought to hold them back as she felt his penetrating gaze upon her. Was this how prey felt just before they were pounced upon by their predators?

James was a prevalent man, it seemed, if the Romanian Chief Commissioner himself came to the runway to greet the newlywed couple on their recent nuptials. The commissioner discreetly pledged his unwavering loyalty to them, and they exchanged handshakes.

"If you need anything," James assured him, "don't hesitate to reach out. You have my number."

They were on their way to James' villa, situated on the outskirts of the city and nestled in a little strip of private land. It was a secluded house meant to provide the newlyweds with privacy during their honeymoon. James had explained this to her before diving straight into his work.

Honeymoon. The girl felt a bout of fear wash over her at the thought. The last thing she wanted was to be alone with a murderer.

Oh God! Would she have to...? Bile rose in her throat. Fleur had warned her that the first time could be painful if both partners weren't ready. She vividly remembered the almost-kiss with Nathan two weeks ago—the anticipation, the push and pull. The immense relief when their moment was interrupted.

No, she wasn't ready at all.

Horror struck her. If Nathan, the university's golden boy, could stoop so low as to drug her, what would James be capable of? James, with his imposing stature and intimidating presence, his unconventional upbringing and violent tendencies. He was involved with the mafia! And now she belonged to him, bound by the laws of God and man.

He would force himself on her and take what he wanted. After the events of the past week, She wouldn't have the strength to fight him. She would lie there, helpless, as another piece of her soul withered away. At this rate, she wasn't sure how much more she had left to lose.

Bile rose even higher, but she forced it back down. Through the tinted window of the Escalade, the Romanian landscape flashed by, though she could not find solace in its fleeting beauty. The unfinished food sat neglected as they finally arrived at their destination.

The house was beautiful. Its dark exterior was adorned with soft lights hanging from nearby trees, creating a mesmerizing canopy that resembled a starry sky. Nestled behind trees and overlooking a meticulously landscaped garden, the two-story Spanish-style building exuded charm and elegance.

It seemed like a place she could one day call home... but she hated it.

The car faltered to a stop on the smooth cobblestone driveway, and the girl was so enraptured by the view that she didn't see James at her side until he opened her door and extended his hand.

She hesitated. Of course, she hesitated. Her father had sold her to this man as part of his despicable retirement plan. A man responsible for her mother's death. Perhaps he would be the one to eventually kill her as well. She didn't want to touch the hands that would bring about her demise, nor did she wish to meet the eyes that would watch the light in her own slowly fade.

Fear took over, and she let him help her out of the car. Clutching her skirt in her free hand, she took cautious steps, mindful not to trip over the fabric that now grazed the pavement without the support of her tall heels. It was then she realized she was still barefoot.

James barely acknowledged her, offering only a quick nod. His grip on her wrist remained firm and unyielding as he guided her pliant form around. They passed stone figurines portraying scantily clad fairies, a white deer with golden antlers, and fire-breathing dragons. They crossed over a small bridge above a flowing stream, with a seating area to their right and a vibrant array of flowers that tied the scene together.

A sudden wave of sadness washed over her as they reached the threshold. Like countless other girls, she had dreamed of her perfect wedding. She envisioned her lover cradling her in his arms, gazing at her adoringly, whispering sweet nothings in her ear as he carried her into their new home. Never did she imagine being dragged by her arm, trailing behind a husband she did not love, and into a house she never wanted to call home.

James released his grip on her wrist as they entered the foyer, and the girl exhaled a breath she hadn't realized she was holding. And if his touch provided even an inkling of comfort in this strange and unfamiliar place? Well, it was promptly ignored.

A few servants had gathered at the entrance to welcome the young couple. A frail older woman dressed in splashes of red and white stepped forward. "Ai venit devreme," she grumbled, her shoulders stiff and an ugly frown etched on her face.

"Scuze," James replied.

"Cum a fost zborul?"

"Lung."

"Trebuie să fii obosit."

"Nu prea."

The woman's eyes flicked toward the girl. "Ea trebuie să fie obosită."

James and the woman studied the girl until she warmed with shame, realizing they were talking about her.

"Poate," James grumbled, and they looked away.

The older woman suddenly embraced James, running her arms down his back. "Bine ați venit acasă, domnule Barnes!"

The girl was surprised to see a smile on James' face. The sight made her pause, and she tilted her head in contemplation. In her dreams, the monsters that appeared as smokeless fire, mocking her pain and suffering, never smiled. Yet here was one of those monsters standing before her in the form of a husband, smiling, laughing, displaying emotions she did not believe him capable of.

"Bunică!" James kissed the older woman's hand before gently touching it to his forehead as a sign of respect. Ah! So she was his grandmother. The girl understood that much Romanian. "Mi-a fost dor de tine!"

Their attention was solely on each other, and as if compelled, the girl found herself stumbling backward, one step at a time. It was an instinctive reaction to the turmoil festering in her gut, threatening to drown and suffocate her.

"She's not wearing shoes," a voice with a thick accent remarked.

The girl froze in place. James' grandmother looked at her pointedly, with a kind of resentment the girl couldn't comprehend.

James gestured toward the girl's stiff figure. "Bunică, this is—"

"I know who she is," Bunică snapped. "I can smell a Burgundy from a kilometre away."

"Bunică," James warned in a low tone.

"I want to know why she isn't wearing shoes."

The girl consciously flexed her toes, trying to hide them beneath her dress. Her feet were dirty and sore from walking across the tarmac and then from the car.

Bunică circled the girl, closely scrutinizing her. "Well? Can you speak, girl? Or are you going to stare at me dumbly all day?" For a slighter woman, she was very assertive.

"Bunică," James warned once again.

"I just want to know if Danial gave you a mute bride. I wouldn't put it past him."

"She can speak," James snapped. "Say something."

The girl raised one arm in an awkward wave. "Salut." Shame filled her immediately after having obeyed him.

Bunică narrowed her eyes. "You speak the language?"

The girl vigorously shook her head.

Bunică turned to James for confirmation. "She doesn't," James replied with a roll of his eyes.

"Nu mă face cu ochii aia mari! How can I know if she isn't just as manipulative as her grandma—?"

"Bunică," James interrupted. "Why don't we talk in the study?"

The girl trembled from the number of accusations and verbal abuse hurled at her. She didn't know what she had done to deserve such treatment, but it obviously had something to do with her father.

Bunică gave the girl one last piercing look before abruptly walking away. Her eyes stung at the harsh treatment she was receiving from this stranger. If the grandmother was like that, how unpleasant would James be? She didn't want to find out.

James strode toward her, firmly gripping her arms. "Yelena will show you to my room. Get comfortable and wait for me there." He paused as if considering his words carefully. "Don't leave."

From one prison to another. Perhaps it wasn't such a drastic change from New York. He shoved her into someone else's arms without waiting for a response and hurriedly strode away to catch up to his Bunică.

Yelena was a sturdy young woman with broad shoulders and a slender waist. A dirty blonde braid rested atop her heart-shaped face, with round eyes and pink lips adding to her appealing features. "This way," she said in a thick, palatal Russian accent.

The girl followed Yelena further into the house and up the stairs. The Spanish-style villa boasted ample natural light with contrasting dark accents. Climbing the stairs, they reached a small hallway that led to a pair of doors.

"The master suite," Yelena announced, pushing open the double doors with a flourish and guiding the girl inside. Coming to a stop in the middle of the spacious room, the girl took in the striking contrast of grays, blacks, and earth tones that adorned the bedroom. Floor-length mirrors adorned one wall parallel to the bed, and a set of French doors leading to a small balcony graced the far side of the room. Cool air swept in from the open door, causing the girl to shiver as her heated skin lowered in temperature.

"Your luggage has already been brought up, and a warm bath has been drawn," Yelena informed her, closing the balcony doors when a strong gust of wind carried in some leaves.

The girl nodded but gave no reply, locking herself in the bathroom. It was spacious, surpassing the size of her room back in Vancouver. It exuded luxury, resembling something out of Architectural. Marble floors, wooden accents, twin vanities facing each other, a rain shower at one end, and a window overlooking the black sea at the other. And in the middle of it all, made prominent by the red rose petals scattered around, was an oval bathtub brimming with steaming water.

The girl approached the tub, hoping to relax her weary muscles and wash away the stress of the past few weeks, when something caught her eye. Folded neatly on a stool next to the tub were two engraved robes, a flash of gold against matte black. One bore the inscription "Mr. Barnes." She held her breath. While the other said, "Mrs. Barnes." She felt a sudden confusion, momentarily forgetting how to breathe—was it inhale, exhale, inhale, or the other way around?

She gave a frustrated cry and began tugging at her dress, the only barrier preventing her from resurfacing. From breaking through the layers of hurt and deceit, to feeling the fresh air on her skin, in her lungs. She kicked harder—clawed savagely, but her legs felt lifeless—her fingers weak, and try as she might, she couldn't swim to the surface—couldn't breathe.

The dress clung to her like a second skin, too tight in some places and loose in others. She reached for the zipper at the back but couldn't find it—couldn't break free of her cage. Another cry of frustration escaped her as she dropped to her knees in defeat.

And most curious, her hand snagged on something as she ran it through her hair. She painfully untangled her fingers, revealing the culprit—a ring, forcibly placed upon her by him. It was heavy, and big, and so beautiful ugly. She tugged at it, desperate to remove it from her body and cast it far away. That is what kept her here, anchoring her feet, clipping her wings, depriving her of oxygen.

This—his—ring.

Dipping her fingers into the soapy water, she watched as the diamond disappeared behind a floating petal. Yet, the ring remained stubborn, as if sewn onto her skin, fused with her very being.

Her right hand slipped, causing pain to bloom across her palm. The stupid ring had cut her! She huffed indignantly. How dare—how—why? Her lips curled, quivered, and a whimper escaped her. Then another, and another.

Pain seemed to follow the girl, clinging to her every step. Now, she finally let it wash over her. Pietro's duplicity paled in comparison to the betrayal of her best friend. Her friend who spoke too much and too fast, who pretended to care about her. Her sheepish smile at the ceremony was seared onto the girl's mind. And to think she had been involved in the entire scheme, conspiring with Pietro and her own father.

Was nothing real?

Pain! The girl recalled the last conversation she had with her mother. They talked about school and her mother's garden. Her mother had soothed her after another nightmare, as only mothers knew how. It had been nice. She had been happy.

Until she wasn't, and it wasn't. Now her mother was dead; her father had lied about it. And the girl found herself married to her mother's murderer.

Blood spread through the soapy water, turning it pink. And she finally allowed herself to cry, releasing the pent-up emotions that had thus far consumed her.

He didn't expect the first sob, nor the second or third. When Bucky heard the fourth sob echo through the room, he reached two conclusions. Firstly, he realized he needed to soundproof the bathroom and possibly the bedroom as well. He could hear every hitch in the girl's breath, every pained cry, and every sob she attempted to suppress.

Secondly, Bucky concluded that he must have overlooked a crucial detail in his extensive research regarding the girl, and something was clearly amiss. A lingering suspicion had plagued him since the morning of the wedding. Everything felt off.

Bucky recalled his conversation with Danial after the disastrous ceremony. When his father-in-law threw papers at Bucky's face and made him sign on the dotted line. Bastard.

Another sob caused Bucky to flinch, and he sank onto his bed, loosening his bow tie. Perhaps little Burgundy was unaware of her father's deceitfulness.

He remembered what his bunică had said. "How can I know if she isn't just as manipulative as her grandma?"

Or perhaps the girl was as cunning as described. Bucky knew his family had a history with the Burgundys, but he was unsure to what extent. He was gaining a lot from the marriage—power, money, land—what was she getting, apart from his last name? One thing was certain: the girl was keeping secrets from him. She had refused to see him before their wedding, and now she refused to say more than two words.

An evocative wail drew Bucky's attention back to the present. His feet carried him toward the bathroom, but he hesitated to knock. Bucky doubted the girl wanted his comfort, not that he knew how to provide any if she did.

Bucky Barnes knew women like the back of his hand—their bodies, that is; understanding the female brain was a whole different matter. Bucky knew the basics. He knew that "I'm fine" meant "I'm not fine." And "I don't mind" meant they definitely minded.

There wasn't much else Bucky felt confident about when it came to understanding female behaviour unless it concerned sex. Sex, he knew. It was easy and instinctual.

Boy meets girl. Attraction. Mind-blowing orgasm. Boom, it was as simple as that.

He had heard that honeymoons were filled with sex, sex, and even more sex. Where one's carnal desires came to life. It was supposed to be romantic, sensual, and sexy.

Bucky had spent the past month or so fantasizing about all the sexy things he would do to his wife. Nothing about her crying in the bathroom was sexy.

"Fuck." Bucky quickly changed out of his uncomfortable clothes and into a loose pair of black sweats. He neatly folded his wedding attire and placed it in the dresser, intending to have it dry-cleaned later.

Bucky plopped down on his bed. "Motherfucker," he whispered in disdain. He was not supposed to lie there, staring at the ceiling, trying to block out the girl's cries. He was supposed to be fucking her hard and fast, using her to release the stress of the past few weeks out of his system. Her tears were supposed to be tears of pleasure, not pain. His groans were supposed to be of satisfaction, not annoyance.

God, he was exhausted. Now that his body knew he wouldn't be getting lucky tonight, the weight of the entire week's stress settled heavily on his shoulders, making him feel foggy and worn out.

Bucky must have dozed off because the house was eerily quiet when he opened his eyes, and almost an hour had passed.

He stretched his lithe body with a yawn and forced himself up. He wouldn't let the girl rot away in the bathroom all day. They needed to talk, she needed to eat, and then Bucky planned to take her sightseeing in the city.

The bathroom was locked as he went to open it, and there was silence on the other end. Bucky called out his wife's name and knocked on the dark wood. "I know you're in there," he said, exasperation creeping into his voice. When he received no answer, his jaw clenched in frustration. "Come out, I need to talk to you."

There was some rustling on the other side, yet the door remained closed. "If you don't open this door in the next five seconds, I'm breaking it!" Bucky warned. He was not against property damage if it meant she would come out.

It took longer than five seconds, but the door eventually opened, revealing the girl in her wedding dress, still as beautiful as the night before.

Bucky cursed under his breath, momentarily distracted by her appearance. His mind worked a lot slower when she was wearing white. He let his gaze roam over her body. Her hair was a dishevelled mess, with pins sticking out every which way, and mascara streaked in lines down her face. It was unmistakable that she had been crying.

"What's wrong?" he found himself asking, concern evident in his voice.

The girl shook her head dismissively, avoiding eye contact.

"I could hear you," Bucky pointed out. He couldn't have ignored her cries if he tried. She was that loud. Her head bowed lower in what he suspected was shame. "Is it your father?" Bucky ventured. "Do you miss him?"

She remained quiet for a while, frustrating him further. Eventually, she spoke in a voice so low he wouldn't have heard it if he were not waiting for her reply. "My mother."

Of course. Bucky immediately realized his mistake. How could he have forgotten about her mother?

He apologized, "I'm sorry. Any idea who did it?"

His wife slowly lifted her head, eyes wide with alarm.

Bucky narrowed his eyes, trying to gauge her reaction. "I heard it was an inside job. You really don't have any suspects?"

She slowly shook her head. "No," she whispered.

Bucky nodded, as if satisfied. In reality, his sharp mind was assessing her sincerity.

His attention shifted, noticing that her neckline had plunged significantly. It caused his heart rate to increase with excitement, his body coming alive from her proximity. He could see more of her skin than before, not that he minded in the slightest. God, she was sweet. Then a sudden thought struck him—she was still in her wedding dress.

"You haven't changed?" he asked in a husky voice.

Her response was hesitant and quiet. "No, I—I couldn't reach the back."

Cute. Bucky moved aside, gesturing for her to leave the bathroom, smiling when she accidentally brushed against his chest. He closed the door behind him and approached his little wife who stood near the edge of the bed with her back turned.

Slipping behind her, Bucky pressed his body flush against hers, feeling her stiffen. "Relax," he whispered, lowering his head to meet her height. He gently tucked a straight strand of hair behind her ear. "Let me help you."

She didn't object as Bucky ran his hand over the back of her bodice, searching for a zipper or clasp to aid in removing her dress. Instead, he discovered an intricately woven corset, revealing glimpses of smooth skin from between the silk ribbons.

After a few attempts, Bucky managed to undo the bow at the small of her back, and the dress unravelled before his eyes. His wife inhaled in surprise, using her hands to cover the rest of her modesty.

Bucky removed the remaining lace, discarding it somewhere behind him. He noticed red marks on her skin where the corset had been digging in, and he couldn't resist running his fingers over the slight indents. God, her skin felt burning hot against his. It made his heart beat in his ears—made sweat line his neck.

Reaching around, Bucky grasped his wife's chin, tilting it toward him. The sight made him lick his lips in anticipation. Her eyes were darkened with lust, her mouth slightly parted, and her chest rose and fell with each breath.

Sweet, so sweet. And so close he could just reach over and claim her mouth for his own. They were so close he could almost taste the dried tears on her face. Bucky felt an overwhelming desire to touch her, to feel if she were as soft and sweet all over.

His hand tightened on her chin while his other arm slid around her waist, pulling her closer until their noses touched. He was ready to lose himself in her scent, but just like earlier at the wedding, his wife's eyes rolled back, and she collapsed against him.

"Fuck," Bucky muttered, holding his half-conscious wife in his arms. She was not fully unconscious and was mumbling incoherently, blinking her eyes, trying to regain control of her body. "What the fuck?"

Was this a regular occurrence? Bucky hoped not. His line of work was not for the faint-hearted. Hell, she was a Burgundy! Her father, Danial, was ruthless and unapologetic when it came to his empire, so it made no sense for his daughter to be so fragile under minor stress.

Unless she's faking it.

But the longer Bucky stood there, cradling his wife, the more absurd the thought seemed. She looked too sweet and innocent to be as cunning and deceitful as her father.

"God damn it!" Bucky carried her to the bed and laid her down on the sheets. Her eyes were droopy, but she was fighting to stay awake. "Hey," Bucky lightly smacked her face. "You're fine. Open your eyes." She slowly regained composure, blinking and looking around the room as if seeing it for the first time.

"Fuck." Bucky ran a hand through his hair in frustration. All he wanted was a conversation, a simple conversation with regular-sized sentences and no fainting spells. Was that too much to ask for? He didn't think so.

He blindly grabbed a shirt from his closet and handed it to his wife. "Put this on. We need to talk." He made sure to leave no room for argument. Leaning against the wall, Bucky crossed his arms over his chest and waited for his wife to dress.

"Well?" Bucky questioned when she looked at him blankly. "Get a move on. I don't have all day." He chuckled when the girl gasped in surprise. She could think whatever she wanted, but he wasn't going to let anything else delay their conversation. "I'm not moving until that dress is off," he warned.

She swallowed audibly before slipping her head through the neck hole and pulling the fabric over her dress. Bucky observed as she fixed the sleeves and neckline, making final adjustments and letting the dress fall to her waist. Hmm, it was a sneaky move, but Bucky decided to let it slide.

"Go on," he encouraged.

His wife remained seated on the bed, lifting her hips to remove the dress from her legs. It fell to the ground in a heap, and for a moment, Bucky was met with the sexiest thighs he had ever seen. He thought he saw a flash of white lace, but it was quickly covered. His wife pulled his red henley down, attempting to hide her skin, which made him frown.

What had Steve said about him getting some? Yeah. Right. That didn't seem to be happening anytime soon. Didn't mean he couldn't look.

Bucky hummed, breaking the silence. "You faint often?"

His wife appeared taken aback. "N-no, not really."

"Not really," Bucky echoed sarcastically. "Right, we need to talk about that. What happened yesterday?"

"I don't know," she replied, fidgeting with her thumbs, a clear sign of nervousness.

Raising a patronizing brow, Bucky remarked, "Come on, you can do better than that." The girl remained tight-lipped. "Were you drunk?"

She vehemently shook her head, denying it.

"I could smell it on your breath," he accused, recalling the moment before their failed kiss when he leaned in and caught a whiff of alcohol. There was no mistaking it.

"I had some Champagne, but I wasn't drunk," she insisted with desperation.

"Well, someone saw you finish an entire bottle," Bucky pointed out, caught between his wife's words and Dot's account. "Honestly, you don't strike me as someone who can handle her alcohol."

"It was nerves," she finally admitted, avoiding eye contact by focusing on the ground, the window, or the rings adorning his fingers.

"Nerves?" Bucky raised an eyebrow, feigning innocence.

"I got nervous because I've never done this before," she explained.

Bucky understood her perfectly well, but he couldn't resist playing with her. He faked a frown. "I'm not sure I understand."

"You know," she shrugged, silently urging him to fill in the blanks. Bucky took pleasure in making her say the words. "What newlyweds normally do after getting married."

"You mean fuck?" Bucky chuckled, enjoying her reaction. "Somehow, I doubt that."

"Doubt what?"

"Doubt you've never been screwed," his words hit the mark.

The girl's eyes snapped toward him. "I haven't."

Bucky felt a surge of excitement at her false confession. "I wouldn't lie if I were you."

"I'm not lying," she insisted.

Bucky uncrossed his arms and stood tall. "So you're telling me you've never had a boyfriend before?"

Something resembling shame flitted across her face. She hesitated to answer, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear. "Yes."

Bucky didn't buy it, not for a second, especially after what he discovered the day before. He swallowed his harsh words and retorted with a snide remark. "Never had a boyfriend, huh? Interesting."

"I'm still young," she argued.

Bucky raised an eyebrow at her argument. "Still young, huh? Well, sweetheart, age doesn't determine romantic experiences, but hey, who am I to question your luck with Cupid?" He couldn't help but add a touch of sarcasm to his voice.

The girl's face flushed with a mixture of embarrassment and frustration. "It's the truth," she insisted, her voice tinged with defiance.

Bucky leaned in closer, a smug smile playing on his lips. "Sure, sure. I guess it's just a rare case of a twenty-two-year-old with zero love history. Must be some kind of record."

The girl clenched her fists, clearly affected by his remark. "It's not as uncommon as you think," she retorted.

Bucky grinned mischievously. "Oh, I'm sure it's a regular occurrence," he replied sarcastically, enjoying their banter. "Cupid must have taken an extended vacation when it came to your life."

She shot him a piercing look. "Well, maybe I've been waiting for someone worthy."

Bucky chuckled, a hint of skepticism in his voice. "Someone worthy? Well, here I am, sweetheart," Bucky spread his arms in an elaborate display, "ready and willing."

With that final snide remark, Bucky settled back into his previous position, eager to see her reaction. The tension in the room lingered as they locked eyes, both unwilling to back down.

"You have some nerve," the girl huffed in irritation.

Bucky's smirk widened, thoroughly enjoying their verbal sparring. "You have no idea, sweetheart," he replied, his voice laced with amusement. "Nerve is practically a requirement in my line of work."

The girl's cheeks flushed with a mix of anger and embarrassment. She clenched her jaw, determined not to let his taunts get the better of her. "Just don't expect me to swoon over your nerves," she retorted, her voice laced with a hint of sarcasm.

Bucky chuckled, the sound deep and resonant. "Oh, sweetheart, I wouldn't dare," he said, inching closer. Somehow she seemed even smaller when he towered over her. "But it seems like you're pretty daring for the both of us." He grabbed her chin and narrowed his eyes, dropping all pretense of humour for a moment. "Don't forget though, this marriage won't be built on swooning or romance. It's a partnership, an arrangement. And you'll find that I bring much more to the table than fucking nerves."

The girl flinched at his harsh words, pursing her lips. Angry tears gathered in her eyes, but she didn't let them fall. "And what is that exactly?" she spat. "Because so far, you've been a beast."

For the first time that day, Bucky felt a genuine flash of rage rise within him. He stepped back and released her chin, clenching his fists at his sides and away from her. What had he done to warrant being called a beast? He was trying his best to make sure she was comfortable, but it seemed the Burgundy princess had higher standards.

He breathed through his nose, plastering a mocking smile onto his face. He could tell the second the girl realized the weight of what she said because she was suddenly back to her quiet self.

"Power, protection, and a life you couldn't even fathom," he responded with intensity. "I may not look like your typical knight in shining armour, but I can guarantee this much—no one will ever dare to mess with you as long as you're mine. You have my name now. There's nothing you could possibly want that I couldn't give you."

Bucky paused and took another step back so the girl didn't have to strain her neck as much to look at him. He wanted her full attention on him as he delivered his last blow. "What will you bring to the fucking table?"

The girl's expression softened slightly, her defiance giving way to a flicker of uncertainty. She seemed to be grappling with conflicting emotions, the weight of their unusual situation bearing down on her.

Her eyes went vacant for a moment as if she wasn't in the room anymore. "I'll give you an heir," she whispered.

"What?"

She shook her head, seemingly returning to the room. "I'll give you a son. An heir."

Bucky cocked an eyebrow, clearly unimpressed. "Well, that's a given."

He watched with mild pleasure as she deflated in front of him, defeated. Bucky turned to leave.

"I don't understand you." Her voice was the softest it had been.

"You don't know me," Bucky retorted, slowly warming up to her fluctuating tone. "And I don't know you." He glanced at his watch. "Be ready in five. I'm taking you out for lunch."

Note: Thoughts?

Ao3│Wattpad│Ko-fi

Main Masterlist│Series Masterlist│Series Playlist

Chapter 6 — Chapter 7

Comments and reblogs are greatly appreciated!! 💜💜

@bbgem329 @broco8 @calwitch @candybabysworld @chwlogy @darlingsuna @emmabarnes @hallecarey1 @la--figue @last-sheep @littlewhiterose @lostyx @marvelatthetwilight @matchat3a @moonlightreader649 @nefri-black @ng4b20 @nothingbettertosay81 @pineprincess @prettywhenicry4 @ria132love @sebastianstansqueen @sergntbarnes @speedysimp @star017 @thegirlnextdoorssister @tinkerbelle67 @umadirectioner @valkyrie418 @vayollie @veroxbarnes @vollzeitliebe @writing-for-marvel

#bucky barnes x reader #bucky barnes series #bucky barnes imagine #bucky barnes fanfiction #bucky barnes au #mafia!bucky #mafia!bucky x reader #mafia!bucky x innocent!reader #mafia au #marvel #meant to be series #mywriting #forced marriage #arranged marriage

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nyx-knacks-writes · 2 months ago

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Snippets in the Life of Alec Hardy (1/?)

What it says on the tin. I'm giving him a little bit of a backstory. Dunno what I'll do once I hit the canon timeline. Uhhh... Hope you enjoy.

Trigger warning for child abuse and referenced death.

Alec stared glassy-eyed into traffic, feeling the soft caress of blustering wind flying past his cheeks, smooth as silk and cool as a river in spring. Just warm enough to be comfortable, but just cool enough to make him grateful for the jacket he'd hastily tugged on before fleeing from the house.

He could still feel it. The bite of the belt buckle against his back, turning it red for the day. By tomorrow, he was sure it would be a sickly belladonna purple. With every throb of the brutalized skin, his father's voice rang out in his head, slinging a different insult every time.

You'll never amount to anything.

You're too soft.

You're a disappointment.

Well, if Alec was a disappointment, it was only because his father had made him that way. What did he think he would get from raising a child with belts and switches? A football star? Not likely.

It had only gotten worse when his mother had died. He’d spent so many nights tucked away in bed, listening to the sounds of angry shouting, stomping feet, and glass shattering against the wall. She’d never told him what was going on, preferring to believe he slept through the nightly terror, but in truth . . . Well, even if he really had been able to sleep through it all, the bruises would have given it away. Contrary to what she seemed to believe, a few layers of concealer didn’t do shit. Especially with rough, scabbed-over cuts and eyes swollen shut. After she’d gotten sick, after she’d finally passed on, Alec had thought it was over. But it wasn’t. Of course it wasn’t. That wasn’t what happened when an abuser lost their victim. They just found another one.

And so, Hardy Sr. had turned to his son with an all-seeing eye. Any minor infraction could end in a beating. Late for school, late to come home, behind on chores or down on grades, anything could invoke a cruel punishment. Even when Alec had gotten a job, it hadn’t afforded him much freedom. Instead, it provided Hardy Sr. with what he saw as a new source of disposable income. Beer bottles in greater quantities began to litter the house, and the whole place reeked of alcohol as a result.

The cloud that had been blocking the sun floated away, allowing golden sunlight to spill out over Alec's back, gently warming the raw, red skin through the black nylon of his jacket and breaking him from his thoughts as a result. He glanced upward, checking the bus schedule nailed to the telephone pole beside him. Any minute now.

Reaching under the hem of his jacket, Alec dug into the back pocket of his jeans, seeking out his wallet. All he needed was a pound. For now, anyway. He'd need more later on. However, that wasn't meant to be dwelled on. Right now, what was important was that he got onto the bus. There'd be time to worry about money later.

As he dug the thing out, the big red and white behemoth pulled up alongside him and opened its doors, whooshing as it knelt down to let him step aboard.

“You gettin’ on or what, kid?” the driver asked, likely irritated that Alec hadn't properly signaled for him to stop the bus.

“Yeah, I'm gettin’ on. Fare's a pound, right?”

“Right.”

“Great.”

Alec reached out to grab at the handrail, wincing slightly at the resulting pull on the skin of his back. However, the bus driver seemed not to notice, and if he did, he apparently didn't care enough to ask. Alec finally fished a one-pound note from his wallet and fed it into the receptacle as the driver sped off again with a mighty lurch. Time to find a seat.

The bottom layer of the bus was packed, with hardly a seat to be found. Good. Alec didn't want a seat on the bottom. No sense in it. He was going all the way to the end of the route, as far away as possible from that wretched, dilapidated little house on the outskirts of Blackburn. Maybe he’d go all the way to England, just to spite his father. Yes, that was exactly what he’d do. Go all the way to England, find a place to live, and stay there, in that country that his father so hated for no apparent reason other than that it existed. Alec made his way up the stairs to the second layer of the bus, tucking himself into a back corner and leaning his head against the cool glass of the window.

Goodbye, Blackburn. Goodbye, Scotland. It hasn’t been fun.

As he watched out the window, the bus trundled away, gaining speed as it left the little town behind.

#alec hardy #broadchurch #broadchurch fandom #broadchurch fanfiction #david tennant #no beta we fail like alec's heart #but like... not yet #he's just a kid in this one no heart problems quite yet

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gavingwhiz · 2 years ago

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Team Fortress 2 Has a Bigot Problem

For those who aren't aware: the phenomenal, industry-changing shooter Team Fortress 2 is still alive and well as a free-to-play game. Unfortunately, the community in Quick Play matchmaking can be horrendously toxic. This is, in large part, a side effect of the game being free and wholly unmoderated. Valve both does not moderate the game in any meaningful way and refuses to implement even basic automated moderation on Steam profiles. Emboldened by this, bigots get weird with it in their newfound confidence they can rock an antisemetic username, transphobic profile picture, and straight up chant slurs in text chat with impunity. To (slightly) counter this, I have started a trans-haven Team Fortress 2 server. It's based out of Chicago, so all my Midwest queers will have decent connection and the coastal elite gays will be fine.

This whole venture was inspired by the YouTuber Uncle Dane, who through a little passion and disposable income created a network of high-quality servers. Shoutout to Dane for creating a corner of TF2 that doesn't let hatred slide. The gameplay ethos might be a bit sweaty for my casual tastes, but I respect the hell out of the moderation and commitment. Queertopia is in no way officially associated with Uncletopia, but the name is fitting, I argue. An oasis of queer love and fun in a desert of 13 year olds spouting right-wing conspiracy theories they half-remember their father ranting about. If you're ever in the community browser in TF2 and want to give the server a bookmark, the IP is 91.242.214.78:19001 The end-goal for this server is to build a community strong enough to necessitate more servers in more locations. I've spent the last few months fostering a Discord community of LGBTQ+ TF2 players and if there's one thing I can be sure of: it's that the TF2 community is full of queers. Hopefully Queertopia can become a fun hangout spot where people can play, have fun, and rest easy knowing if someone tries to spout grim statistics or debate womanhood, they won't last long enough to hear the drum roll of the vote-kick being called.

#team fortress 2 #tf2 #trans gamer #lgbt server #queer server #uncletopia #uncle dane #lgbt streamer

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netscapenavigator-official · 5 days ago

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Absolutely devastating news: My Cloud Blue Apple Watch Sport Loop Band is starting to get kinda gross. It's honestly holding up better than most light-colored bands, but I need to wash it. I'm going to try to put it through the laundry next time by zipping it up in one of my jogger pockets, but if that doesn't work, I think I'm gonna have to stop wearing it.

That's not the problem. The main problem is that... my beloved Black Unity Knitted Solo Loop Band doesn't fit anymore. I can't buy another one because they're like $100, and I don't have that kinda disposable income rn. Apparently with the increased chassis height and decreased thickness of the Apple Watch Series 10, my old Size 6 Solo Loop doesn't fit properly anymore. It used to be snug on my Series 4, but now I can't even push the crown button without pushing the entire watch halfway down my arm. I'm so sad.

Anyway, if the Cloud Blue Sport Loop doesn't come out of the laundry looking clean, then I'm gonna have to wear a different band. My go-to was the Black Unity Knitted Solo band, but that plan is now out the window. So now you all need to give me advice on which band I should wear (if my Cloud Blue Sport Loop doesn't get cleaned well enough).

↓ Images and Pros & Cons Below the Read More ↓

(PRODUCT)RED Silicone Sport Buckle

Pros

Nice Shade of Red

Durable & Stain Resistant

Cons

Very NOT Breathable

Limited Adjustability

Not Comfy to Wear While Typing or Sleeping

Silver Stainless Steel Milanese Loop

Pros

Very Pretty

Magnetic Latch (Cool!)

Magnetic Latch (Unlimited Adjustability)

Cons

Kinda Sharp and Scratchy (Ouch)

Chain Mail Mesh Rips Arm Hairs Out (Ouch)

I have major concerns about wearing this while asleep.

2019 Pride Sport Loop

Pros

Super Soft & Comfy!

Universal Adjustability

Won't Stain That Easily (because of colors)

Ooh Pretty Rainbow!!

Cons

The Band is Damaged and I Don't Want to Break It

It Might Now Survive If I End Up Having to Wash It Again

Wtf Did Apple make 62.5% of this band's colors warm-toned. This is pride-adjacent, but it's SO red.

2020 Pride Silicone Sport Buckle

Pros

Durable and Stain Resistant

Ooh Pretty Rainbow!

The OG Rainbow (Apple Didn't Fuck it Up For Once)

Cool Story (Each Stripe is Made of an Old Recycled Band)

Cons

Very NOT Breathable

Limited Adjustability

Not Comfy to Wear While Typing or Sleeping

2023 Pride Silicone Sport Buckle

Pros

Durable and Stain Resistant

Cool Polished Buckle Button with Engraving

Subtle "IYKYK" Pride Vibes

Cons

Maybe a Little TOO Subtle Pride Vibes

"Sprinkles" Look Cheap and Haphazardly Placed IRL

Plain White Band, For the Most Part

Very NOT Breathable

Limited Adjustability

Not Comfy to Wear While Typing or Sleeping

#poll #polls #opinion poll #help poll #advice poll #apple #apple watch #apple watch bands #choices #help me choose

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faithforgottens · 2 years ago

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𝒅𝒓𝒂𝒘𝒊𝒏𝒈 𝒉𝒆𝒂𝒓𝒕𝒔 𝒊𝒏 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒃𝒚𝒍𝒊𝒏𝒆.

from the writer’s desk: i’d tell you i started this a year ago after deciding i needed closure on post - crying on newport beach about how i’m incapable of being loved but that would mean me unloading all over the dash, and nobody needs that. i’m just a girl, out here projecting like tomorrow’s not coming, and thought i’d share. please know that i love carol, i just had to pick a character that i didn’t have strong emotional attachment to in order to play my villain. motivation to continue this would be much appreciated, thnx. summary: you’ve been stuck in carol’s web for nearly four months now, and you need a distraction before you go postal and commit a capital crime or worse, tell her you love her. fortunately for you, natasha’s willing to offer her services. contains: college!natasha x female reader —— warnings include toxic relationship dynamics that involve infidelity, gaslighting and cheating, marijuana use, alcohol consumption, nsfw content [ fingering, dirty talk ]. → inbox status: OPEN don’t repost my works anywhere.

INCOMING MESSAGE FROM — SATAN 💬 am i gonna see you tonight?

INCOMING MESSAGE FROM — SATAN 💬 :(

INCOMING MESSAGE FROM — SATAN 💬 hellllllooooooooooo??

INCOMING MESSAGE FROM — SATAN 💬 I WANNA SEE U I MISS UR PRETTY FACE

INCOMING MESSAGE FROM — SATAN 💬 pls come tonight. it would mean everything to me

You’ve never claimed to be smart.

In fact, you’re pretty sure you have to fall on the opposite end of that spectrum in order to bother showing your face tonight at the behest of Carol fuckin’ Danvers. Satan. It’s the work of the goddamn devil pulling you from the clutches of your apartment’s comfortable silence where you’d be much better off riding through the nuanced gut-punching waves of disappointing Carol guilt instead of the hell storm that is being played once again by Carol guilt. You even put on eyeliner for such an occasion, because if you’re going to get fucked over (either physically, emotionally, or both), you might as well look good doing it.

Her name’s still lighting up your phone as the Uber drops you off at the curb, boasting a flood of pictures on Snapchat that illuminate the awaiting scene inside of the frat house through blurry streaks of glass bottles and marijuana smoke and the pale expanse of her neck where a glint of her gold necklace flashes is promised to you to do as you wish, leaving behind bruises or lip prints. It’s an enticing picture painted for you. If you didn’t know any better, you’d think maybe tonight will be the night she tells you she’s free from the clutches of Maria, her perfectly sane girlfriend that you’ve only ever known through Carol’s jilted lens, and that she’ll even let you climb her like a tree in front of her friends.

Lucky you.

Except you do know better. In the pit of your stomach, you know the reality is that you are in closer proximity than Maria, which therefore makes you the most convenient piece of ass at Carol’s disposal, that Carol believes — and is likely right about how — you’re still wound tight enough around her finger to make you drop to your knees like a good little girl, blinded by her golden halo of hair and the whiskey-soaked taste of her lips and ready to excuse her shit treatment of you. That even feeling like you have her for the beat of a butterfly’s wings is worth your sanity. And despite it all, it isn’t enough to keep you away. It’s not enough to exile the parts of a masochistic heart beating in your chest that somehow loves her, even if the only part of you she loves is your willingness to show up for her.

Carol’s fraternity is co-ed, which means that between all of the brothers, their social circle extends to the farthest corners of the university — they consume a fair bit of your own, considering you have at least two classes a semester with Bucky, sit with them at Wanda’s softball games (mostly so you can talk shit about your high school ex that made the team), and rent study rooms at least once a month with Thor, Bruce, and Val to spiral into late night insanity while you all contemplate the meaning of life and attempt to memorize vocabulary words. You slip in through the door, bass thudding into your molars and the heavy blanket of smoke and sweat covers your bare shoulders as you weave your way through the house.

“Look who finally showed up!” Behind the counter in the kitchen is Sam Wilson, running position as makeshift bartender. You detour long enough for a vodka and Diet Coke, stopping next to the barstool that Bucky’s perched on. He tucks you underneath his arm for a side hug, other hand tipping his own solo cup back as he tries to drain the last bit of liquor down his throat.

They’re good friends to you. It’s why you hate doing this dance with Satan — because at some point, you feel that there’s going to be a tectonic shift between the two of you that dredges up a rift in the concrete and you don’t know who will be left on your side. You don’t know who you’ll be able to look in the eye and lie to about Carol, who would pick you over her. You don’t even know if any of them would believe you or would write you off as crazy as you’ve been writing yourself off as of late.

You tell yourself that you’re trying, goddammit, to shove that piece of yourself back into a locked drawer and enjoy the company of your friends.

“Anybody seen Danvers?” you pitch as nonchalantly as you know how, planting your elbows down onto the granite of the counter while you watch Sam mix your drink. He goes heavy on the vodka, which you quietly appreciate.

Bucky snorts. “Yeah, we’ve seen her alright.”

“She’s in the dining room trying to rally everyone into a round of strip beer pong,” Sam explains. “Last we saw, she got her shirt stuck in the chandelier.”

“The face of class, this fraternity,” you tease as Sam hands you your drink. He can’t help but laugh, a jovial, guttural noise that makes you smile, even though your stomach is currently in your throat.

You bid them farewell and snake through the living room, trying to avoid the furniture or the bodies of other people and almost always fail in avoiding both at the same time as you carve out a path to the dining room. It’s densely packed, which forebodes the game of beer pong that the boys mentioned. You try not to cut your elbows into the bones and flesh of others to make your way through, but your adrenaline is humming at the thought of seeing Carol, the thought of her body glowing in the house lights and the cut of her physique out on display for anyone, including you, to openly ogle without abandon.

“Goddamn, Danvers!” someone yells mirthfully. “Keep it in your pants!”

Whistling down to one thought, one track, your mind lasers in and you’re positive that the sharp point of your elbow nails T’Challa directly in the ribs as you finally make it to the inner lip of the circle around the dining room table. It’s desperate. You know it’s desperate. You'll care about it later, you’re sure, but for now, all that’s on your mind is her.

“For the love of fuck, I—” Someone stumbles back into you, dark hair in frizzy waves and the bill of their baseball cap nearly jabbing straight into your nose. Wanda Maximoff spins around, her eyes lightening up at the sight of you as she grabs onto your wrist to stable herself. “Oh! Hey, babe,” she says with a smile. “Didn’t know you were coming.”

“Me either,” you tell her, trying not to be blatant as you scan for Carol. “Carol didn’t tell me until last minute.”

“Boo,” Wanda pouts, before turning to yell over her shoulder, “Danvers! Fuck you!”

“Get in line!” Carol calls back, and your head locks in on where her voice comes from. Your stomach plunges into free fall when you see her: as promised, she’s standing around in her sports bra and jeans, white teeth glinting and blonde hair curling around onto her tanned shoulders, biceps on display and her arms snaked around — her.

Maria Hill, in the flesh, pressed against Carol’s side and her chin balanced on Carol’s shoulder as Carol makes a shot one-handed that successfully lands in a cup on the opposite end of the table. Carol cheers victoriously, and Maria kisses her cheek, and you notice that Carol’s hand on Maria’s side drifts down towards her ass.

All of Carol’s messages swim inside your mind, the ones where she assures you that it’s all real, that she and Hill are done, that Hill’s holding her back, that she’s felt things for you since the moment she laid eyes on you and just knew; the ones where she paints a beautiful picture of a future with you, the same picture she’s just doused in cheap spirits and ruined for the dozenth time. Your drink suddenly tastes like arsenic, heavy and uneven in your stomach, the room shrinking and heat crawling up your neck in an uncomfortable panic. You are going to be sick.

Wanda’s voice comes through in the midst of the ringing in your ears. Fuck you, Danvers.

It takes you a moment to realize that Wanda’s voice isn’t just a reverberation inside your mind, but is right in your ear. “Hey!” She calls your name again, and you finally snap your attention back to her. She scans over your face for a moment, eyebrows folding in the center of her brow. “You alright? Where’d you just go?”

The shock is fresh on your face, salt water from the crashing wave that’s irritating your eyes — you refuse to let yourself cry, here in front of everyone, because all that’s going to do is open the door to a conversation you don’t want to have, incite a fight with Carol that you’ll surely lose, leave you feeling even lower than you do at the moment. You shake your head, trying to shake whatever emotions that aren’t nonchalant off of your face. “Noth—nowhere,” you stammer, voice an octave higher than usual. Wanda’s perplexity only deepens. “More crowded than I thought. Got beer-splashed.”

Wanda breaks into a smile, seemingly buying your excuse. “C’mon, what’d you expect?” she ribs. It’s a loaded question, and if Wanda wasn’t Wanda, you’re sure it’d be enough to light your rapidly shorting fuse. The thin strain in your falsified smile must give something away, because she softens the slightest bit and wraps her arm around yours. “Let’s go downstairs. I’ll kick your ass sideways in pool.”

You appreciatively take Wanda’s out, allowing her to guide you away from the Carol show and the crowd of people you have steeled yourself in order to not cry in front of and head with her towards the basement, which the frat has renovated into a lounge space with a giant television, sectional that is infamous for its hosting of The Threesome, and the pool table. It hasn’t garnered quite the same audience that the beer pong game has, but less people means you feel slightly less suffocated. Carol’s still got her foot on your throat, but down here, it’s easier to maneuver and act as though you haven’t just had yourself made a fool in front of everyone without them knowing.

Relieved for the little things, like elbow room, you sit down on the arm of the sectional and take a long drink from your cup — if you’re going to survive the rest of the night without your tail tucking between your legs (and you’re determined to further your self-sabotage by going the extra mile to ensure Carol knows she fucked up, even though it’s likely she doesn’t care) you’ll have to be drunker than this. Wanda adjusts her hat on her head and picks up a pool cue, glancing back over her shoulder at you. “Want someone to show you how it’s done?” she teases.

You lift your cup in acknowledgment, smile shedding off of your lips. “Go for it.”

As Wanda weasels her way into the current game of pool, you do a quick intake of who all’s downstairs. There’s a few of the brothers, a few of the brother’s dates, people that are otherwise background characters designed to make campus seem at capacity but not so many people that no one would notice if you threw up in the corner or worse, started crying. You purse your lips around the rim of your solo cup, scanning the company around the pool table. Wanda sidles up next to another one of her brothers, poking her with the pool cue. “Nat!” Wanda whines. “Give me room.”

Natasha Romanoff shuffles out of the way with the roll of her eyes. “Poke me with the stick again and it’s gonna go somewhere less than ideal.”

Wanda flicks her middle finger upright before hunching around the shape of the pool cue. “You don’t scare me, Natty.”

“Your funeral.”

Your eyes follow Natasha out of the way, and she feels their weight because the next thing you know, you’re off the cliffs and deep somewhere inside the greenery of her eyes. They’re pretty eyes, you idly note, and you find yourself mulling over Natasha Romanoff, as a person, as a concept, as Natasha. She’s the oldest of the girls in the fraternity, a senior to your junior, and she’s been around for so long that it’s hard to remember a time when she wasn’t there. It’s hard to imagine a room without her in it, a constant fixture on the mantel that you don’t even bother acknowledging it anymore.

She cocks an eyebrow at you after what’s sure to be a long moment of staring, and Wanda, who is unfortunately more observant than you’d like to believe, begins laughing. “Am I interrupting this little staring contest?”

Natasha smirks. “I could win a staring contest and kick your ass at the same time, Maximoff.”

“Show off,” Wanda grumbles as she passes the pool cue over to Natasha. She then looks at you, and whatever grumpiness dissipates, her shit-eating grin returning. “Now, you on the other hand,” she preludes with a gesture towards you. “There’s no way.”

You drain the rest of your drink and discard the cup off to the side. "You talk a lot, Wan,” you inform her as you walk up to the side of the pool table. Wanda just grins as you turn to Natasha, gesturing for the pool cue. “Let me have a go.”

Natasha acquiesces and passes you the pool cue, giving you the space you need coupled with a low nod of encouragement. There are a few clusters of balls around the table and you’re trying to eye up a shot that’ll give you not only a handful of points, but will get Wanda off your back — even if you are grateful for the timing of her diversions.

Unfortunately, it’s not enough; you can still hear the laughter and music through the walls from upstairs, a raucous noise that scatters your train of thought. Is it Carol? What’s she doing? What’s she whispering into Hill’s ear? Does she know you’re even here? Does she care?

Probably not.

You take the shot without thinking, balls ricocheting off the sides of the pool table. Wanda barks out a laugh. “Really? That’s the best you’ve got?”

“Just getting warmed up,” you say stiffly, handing the pool cue off.

Wanda’s face is alight with amusement, nodding slowly as she moves around the pool table for her next shot. “Okay.”

You’re too far in your head, and you know it. You’re content to linger on the outskirts of the game while everyone else that Wanda goes about recruiting takes their turn. It’s a few minutes or an hour before the cue ends up back in your hand, like a rickety sort of clockwork that is unexpected but also entirely predictable. You assess the situation and find a decent enough angle now that the game has progressed, significantly so.

You bend over slightly, eyes fixed on a blue ten that’s not too far from the cue. Before you can make the shot, you hear someone behind you muttering. “Do it like this.”

When you glance over your shoulder, it’s Natasha, only a few inches from where you stand, hands hesitating before she reaches out. “Back up,” she guides, her hands stationing on your hips and forcing you to take a half-shuffle of a step backwards. “And lift your elbow like this.” You’re clay and she shapes you how she wishes, her touch feather light. “Okay. Now try.”

You do exactly as she says, pool cue shooting from your hand and colliding with the cue ball. The ten you’ve had your eyes on sails into the pocket without any interference.

“Nice shot, sweetheart,” Natasha says, her voice ghosting along the back of your spine. As you straighten up, you glance behind you, noticing the faint grin along the curve of her lips.

“Well that wasn’t sexual at all,” Wanda comments with a low whistle as the pool cue returns to her grip. “Do losers get laid still? I wouldn’t know.” With a toothy flash of a grin, she draws the cue back and makes another shot — you’re not entirely focused on her efforts, thanks to the gravity of Natasha’s sights still pressing deep into your skin.

Wanda talks a big enough game that she recruits nearly everyone standing around the pool shot to give it a go, which provides a window of opportunity for Natasha to brush a hand along your shoulder and steal you away. “Up for a smoke?” she asks, and you nod. You allow her to lead the way out through the basement’s French doors, slipping outside into the backyard where the sky is dotted with stars, the air smells only the slightest bit cleaner, and the music is nothing but a dull pulse from inside the house.

Natasha steers you away from the patio where other fraternity brothers and their guests are sitting around, enjoying their drinks and laughing amongst their idle, stoned conversations around the fire pit. You follow her into the grass, trailing around the side of the house until the two of you don’t have any other company aside from each other and Thor’s knockout rose bushes that he takes great pride in.

She leans up against the wall, hands fishing in the pocket of her jacket for her lighter. For someone who’s devoted the rest of their evening to shooting metaphorical (or even literal) middle fingers in Carol’s direction, you’re still too far on edge to be nonchalant about any of it. The quiet is all consuming, maddening inside of your buzzing mind. Natasha produces a joint, embers burning on the end as she lights it and brings it up to her lips. You’re left to watch as she takes a long, casual drag, a cloud of smoke billowing from her lips on the exhale. Her wrist then extends, offering the joint up; if there is such a thing as too eager, you’d be the poster child for it, the way you pluck it from her fingers and take a hit.

“Something on your mind?” she asks, her voice a low drag of gravel against the muted bass thud inside of the house. You open an eye and glance over at her, her green eyes burning holes through you as she watches.

“Eh,” you mutter half-heartedly with a shrug. “Not worth it.”

You pass the joint back to her after you take one more drag, your eyes fixed on the steady stream of smoke that you forcibly control the exit from your mouth. It’s nice to have control over something, you think, even if it is, to some degree, just seeing how long you can hold your breath.

“Seems like you could use a distraction,” Natasha comments, fingers idly rolling the joint between her fingers as smoke still curls from the tip.

You laugh, a low and guttural noise that’s passive at best. “Yeah, probably.”

Natasha turns so her entire body is facing you, and it doesn’t register, the way that she’s looking at you, until you feel her brush your hair off of your face. Your eyes fully open, somewhat surprised by the action, watching her carefully. Natasha’s a lot of things, but gentle isn’t one you’d readily associate with her. It’s almost like she’s handling you like glass, waiting for the right moment to shatter you. It’s a hiccup in your chest, a strange feeling washing over your body.

“Let me distract you, then.” She says it simply, like it’s the most logical conclusion to arrive at.

“Nat, what...”

“C’mere.” One of her hands encircles your wrist, guiding you closer. You follow wordlessly in her guidance, unsure of what she’s doing or what’s to come. She takes another hit of the joint, her eyes glowing the same way the end of the joint does, a low burning fire that seems to grow hotter the longer your eyes are connected.

The hand holding your wrist slides up your body until she’s cupping your jaw, her thumb darting across the expanse of your face to swipe across your lips in a prompt to open them. She lowers the joint, bringing her face inches away from your own as her mouth forms a perfect circle and releases smoke. You’ve shotgunned weed before, but never at such a close proximity. Natasha breathes out and you breathe in, eyes fluttering shut at the intimacy of the moment.

“Gonna let me distract you some more?” she whispers, and you barely register yourself nodding before her lips capture your own. Her mouth is plush and soft but nothing about her is gentle anymore — this is where she forces a spiderwebbing crack across your surface, the deft way in which she manipulates your lips to do exactly as she’d like, her tongue skating across the skin and opening your mouth to allow her access. You can’t help but to sigh into the kiss. She is exactly what she claims she is: a distraction, a welcome reprieve, and the golden halo around Carol’s head seems fuzzy and jilted now.

Natasha kisses you like she’s trying to set you on fire; at some point she has absconded the joint and ground out its remnants into the mulch, both her hands cupping your face as she boxes you in with her legs and adjusts the two of you so your back is now flush against the wall. “How’s this?” she murmurs against your ear, lips starting a descent down your neck that is feather light and the gentle scrape of her teeth.

“Very... very distracting,” you stammer out, fingers curling into fiery red hair.

“Good,” Natasha hums, her mouth vibrating over a particularly sensitive spot on your collarbone that causes your grip in her hair to tighten. “Pretty girl like you shouldn’t be so far in your head.”

You nod, thankful for the reward of her body pressing against yours.

“What d’you say?” Her voice ghosts over your skin, and for a moment, you’re not sure what it is she’s asking. It takes a moment, the weed and the liquor clouding your mind, but the dig of Natasha’s blunt fingernails into your hips and the graze of her teeth along your skin serves as motivation. “Huh? What d’you say, princess?”

“Thank you,” you gasp, the feeling of her mouth tightening around your skin wet and hot sending a glimmer of electricity down your spinal cord. Natasha chuckles, a dark and melodic noise that buzzes through your body.

“You’re welcome,” she croons. “’S that all you needed? Or do you need more?”

More. It’s the knee jerk response you have, the way your world has narrowed down to just her and the scent of her heady perfume and each individual curve of muscle is now flush against you. Your eyes open only to see Natasha grinning like she’s the fuckin’ devil.

Maybe you were misplaced somehow.

Natasha’s hands drag over your sides, up and down roughly as she kisses you and forces your legs farther apart so she’s able to snake one of her thighs in between them. She rucks your top up on the edges, fingers brushing over your skin in a delightful contrast to the cool evening air. Natasha is hot, her touch burning and singeing the skin wherever it moves. She’s painting you out of ashes and making you into something beautiful, something uniquely her own. Her hands slip underneath your shirt and you feel one hand trail upwards, fingers wrapping around your breast before squeezing. It elicits another tiny moan from you, which Natasha swallows down with a kiss. “Shh,” she hisses against your lips. “Be quiet.”

You arch into her touch as her fingers slip beneath the cup of your bra and pinch your nipple tight, another squeak of pleasure groaned into her mouth. It only encourages her further, the other hand of hers moving in the opposite direction. “Want me to touch you?” she whispers in your ear while you press your mouth into her shoulder, breath warm against your ear and her teeth just barely missing your earlobe. “Bet you’re not distracted now; only thing you and that pussy are thinking about is me, huh?”

“Fuck, Nat,” you mumble into her skin.

“Yeah you are,” she replies with a shit eating grin, your head tilting back until it roughly meets the back of the wall as her hand goes up your skirt.

You’d been meticulous prior to coming over, thinking on whatever lone star trailing in the sky that you’d be seducing Carol tonight; you’d purposefully worn your skimpiest pair of underwear just to show her what she could have if she was with you. It’s only when you see the look on Natasha’s face, the way her pupils dilate and her jaw slackens the slightest bit as her fingers skim in between the folds of your thigh and vulva and feels lace that you feel something resembling satisfaction. “You came ready for a distraction, princess,” she grumbles, moving your underwear to the side and swiping her fingers through what is now sheer want dripping from you. “Fuck, you’re wet.”

“N... Nat,” you whine, squirming around in the pursuit of pressure. “Touch me.”

She places the tip of her finger at your entrance, just barely teasing it in. “Ask nicely, honey.”

The words spill from your lips without thought. “Please, Nat, please touch me, fuck m—” She cuts you off as she slips her finger inside of you and you all but rocket up the side of the wall at the feeling. Her free hand, still underneath your shirt, wrestles out from beneath the fabric and is slapped over your mouth to muffle whatever noise you make.

“Thought I told you to be quiet,” she says between her gritted teeth. “Here.” She presses her index and middle fingers against your lips and you acquiesce, opening them wide enough to allow them to slip in. “Suck.”

You do as you’re told, happy to oblige as she begins to finger you. There’s nothing soft or sweet about the way she fucks you; she adds another finger and finds a steady rhythm, curling each time she’s knuckle deep inside of you just so she can be rewarded with you humming around the fingers in your mouth. It amuses her to some extent, the way her eyes have darkened and her mouth is slightly agape. She knows exactly what she’s doing, and considering how tight you are wound, you’re not going to last long.

"Clench around me, pretty girl,” she hisses amongst the other litany of dirty things she’s whispering in your ear. “Such a sweet pussy, does whatever I ask it to; what if I want this pussy all to myself? You gonna let me have it?”

You nod, Natasha withdrawing her fingers from your mouth before she hauls you in for the filthiest kiss of your life. “Fuck,” you whimper against her lips. “Yours, Nat, your pussy.”

“Yeah, I know. This is my pussy now, all tight and hot and wet and desperate just for me. This was what you needed, wasn’t it? Needed me to fuck you silly until you forget how to put one foot in front of the other.”

“Please, Nat, gonna...”

“What?” she teases, her thumb flicking across your clit and you know that she’s doomed you, mind and body barreling down a track that there is no return from. “What, baby? Use your words.”

“Gonna come,” you manage to get out, and she fucking laughs.

“‘S right,” she agrees. “Gonna make this little pussy come all over my fingers, since I’m the only one who can. That right?” You nod; her fingers tighten in your hair and pull your head back so your neck is exposed for her. “C’mon, baby, wanna see you make a mess on my hand. Come for me like a good little slut. You know you want to.” You do, you do, and everything is bordering on the edge of too much the way Natasha is sucking your neck and rubbing tight circles on your clit. “Show me who’s pussy this is. Come.”

Another few thrusts and flicks of your clit and you are gone, Natasha bringing her mouth back to yours to swallow the keens and cries of you hitting your climax. The brick wall underneath you scratches at your shirt but it is a heavenly feeling, losing control underneath Natasha. She just smiles when she pulls away and you slump into her, perfectly sated.

“That was hot,” she says with a wicked grin, pulling her fingers out of you. She doesn’t break eye contact as she brings them up to her lips, sucking your taste off of them. Her eyes alight with pleasure, a contented hum reverberating from her vocal cords. “Thanks, pretty girl.”

Beat that, Danvers.

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