#do i still ilke them of course

[banananapudding]

ohymgod yes i am getting rid of my feelings for my crush LETS GOOOOOOOOO

it feels almost therapeutic to stop worrying about xx and wondering if they like xx about you or anything or thinking about a whole damn future with them and now you can jstu go back to not having to like. think about anything

[anistarrose]

Please don't tune out when you get to the non-partisan section of your ballot this November. First off, where state Supreme Court justices are elected, Republicans are trying their darndest to elect candidates who will destroy reproductive freedom, gut voting rights, and do everything in their power to give "contested" elections to Republicans. Contrast Wisconsin electing a justice in 2023 who helped rule two partisan gerrymanders unconstitutional, versus North Carolina electing a conservative majority in 2022, who upheld a racist voter ID law and a partisan gerrymander that liberal justices had previously struck down both of.

Second, local judicial offices will make infinitely more of an impact on your community than a divided state or federal legislature will. District and circuit courts, especially, are where criminalization of homelessness and poverty play out, and where electing a progressive judge with a commitment to criminal justice reform can make an immediate difference in people's lives.

It's a premier example of buying people time, and doing profound-short-term good, while we work to eventually change the system. You might not think there will be any such progressive justices running in your district, but you won't know unless you do your research. (More on "research" in a moment.)

The candidates you elect to your non-partisan city council will determine whether those laws criminalizing homelessness get passed, how many blank checks the police get to surveil and oppress, and whether lifesaving harm reduction programs, like needle exchanges and even fentanyl test strips, are legal in your municipality. Your non-partisan school board might need your vote to fend off Moms for Liberty candidates and their ilk, who want to ban every book with a queer person or acknowledgement of racism in it.

Of course, this begs the question — if these candidates are non-partisan, and often hyper-local, then how do I research them? There's so much less information and press about them, so how do I make an informed decision?

I'm not an expert, myself. But I do think/hope I have enough tips to consist of a useful conclusion to this post:

Plan ahead. If you vote in person, figure out what's on your ballot before you show up and get jumpscared by names you don't know. Find out what's on your ballot beforehand, and bring notes with you when you vote. Your city website should have a sample ballot, and if they drop the ball, go to Ballotpedia.

Ballotpedia in general, speaking of which. Candidates often answer Ballotpedia's interviews, and if you're lucky, you'll also get all the dirt on who's donating to their campaign.

Check endorsements. Usually candidates are very vocal about these on their websites. If local/state progressive leaders and a couple unions (not counting police unions lol) are endorsing a candidate, then that's not the end of my personal research process per se, but it usually speeds things up.

Check the back of the ballot. That's where non-partisan races usually bleed over to. This is the other reason why notes are helpful, because they can confirm you're not missing anything.

I've seen some misconceptions in the reblogs, so an addendum to my point about bringing notes on the candidates: I strongly suggest making those notes a physical list that you bring polling place with you. Many states do allow phones at the polling place, but several states explicitly don't — Nevada, Maryland, and Texas all ban phones, and that may not be an exhaustive list. There may also be states that allow individual city clerks to set policies.

You should also pause and think before you take a photo of your ballot, because even some states that don't ban phones still ban ballot photographs. But whether it's a photo, or just having your phone in general — in an environment as high-risk for voter suppression as the current one, you don't want even a little bit of ambiguity about your conduct. Physical notes are your friends.

[loveinhawkins]

a cherished headcanon I keep coming back to is that Eddie is very much invested in the school basketball team right up until the graduating class of ‘85 leaves. By an incredible series of mental gymnastics, he tries to convince himself that this has nothing to do with Steve Harrington’s presence on the team.

(And maybe Eddie avoiding the championship game of ‘86 in the near future will have more to do with Jason Carver being on the team, but that’s a sadder story for another time.)

The thing Eddie can easily admit he loves about the bigger games is the fleeting anonymity: while he’s got notoriety in Hawkins High, as soon as there’s a rival school involved he can blend into the crowd for a couple hours, lost in the roar of support.

It’s nearing the end of just such a tournament game when the ball accidentally goes flying into the crowd. Eddie’s reflexes kick in and he manages to catch it before it can take out the back row of the marching band.

The clock’s been stopped for a timeout—a kid on the rival team is injured—so more eyes are drawn to Eddie than normal as they find where the ball ended up. He feels acutely like a spotlight’s on him—holds the ball to his chest almost like he’s a part of the game himself.

A whistle cuts across the court. Steve Harrington.

He’s looking right at Eddie, raising his hands for the ball.

He has more than enough time to say something, some jeer that would well and truly break the spell of anonymity. But Eddie knows underneath the knee jerk worry that it’s not Steve’s style; it’s more the kind of thing Billy Hargrove and his ilk would do, and he’d thankfully been benched at halftime.

Eddie inhales then throws the ball, praying that he doesn’t end up smacking Steve in the face.

He doesn’t, thank God; Steve catches the ball smoothly, manages a thumbs up in thanks before the spotlight shifts back onto the game.

Eddie quietly sighs in relief, loses himself in cheering again.

They don’t win, but it’s still a good game. It’s like Eddie’s reasoning for campaigns: not everything needs to be an all-out victory for it to be entertaining.

The parking lot is a nightmare so he contents himself with waiting it out by his van while the worst of the crowds clear. It’s only when he hears a car door opening and closing nearby that he realises Steve is parked right next to him. Of course, of course he—

“Good catch back there, Munson,” Steve says, tossing his gym bag into his car. He notices something on one of the seats—Eddie can’t tell what it is, but he hears Steve mutter under his breath in benign exasperation, something about, “Dickheads, I keep telling them not to…”

“Yeah, thanks. All my years of training finally paid off.”

Steve makes a face at the build up of cars, chatting parents leaning out of their windows. “You could’ve been on the sub-team.”

“Kinda resent that you don’t think I’m star player material, Harrington.”

There’s the beginnings of a grin on Steve’s face. He has no right looking that smug for someone who’s just lost a game, Eddie thinks.

“Dude, I can hear you. You’re loud.”

Eddie wills his face not to flush. “You’ve got no proof.”

“Nah, just firsthand experience.”

“What, do you have ears like a bat?”

“Nope. Don’t need that to pick you out.” Steve chuckles to himself as he gets in the car, sits side-on to face Eddie as he speaks. “You’re worse than Tammy Thompson’s singing.”

“Uncalled for,” Eddie says, firmly locking away the part of his brain that’s screaming in embarrassment, because if he’s unable to fire off a comeback, he’ll actually never recover; he might as well go and tell Higgins that next year is already a wash, because he has to go and live in the woods—

“Hey, c’mon Munson, I didn’t say it was bad.”

“You implied it,” Eddie says, totally overselling the entire thing, like he’s been greviously wounded.

It works; Steve laughs, shakes his head.

“I didn’t,” he insists as he reverses out of his space. “I just meant it’s… distinctive.”

“Wow. Thank you.”

“That’s your whole shtick, man, don’t act like that wasn’t a compliment.”

“Sure. Eddie ‘Distinctive’ Munson, that’s me.”

And post-game sentiment must be in the air, because as Steve leaves the parking lot, he calls out the car window, bright and teasing, “Hey, maybe I’ll miss the cheering!”

But Eddie can’t be sure. Unlike Steve, he might be mishearing things.

[annwrites]

⸻ the last unicorn ; part one ⸻

❝love is slowing you down, my lady. i will catch you at last, if you love much more.❞ — peter s. beagle

· pairing: aemond targaryen x unicorn!reader · type: mini-series · summary: aemond finds the most magnificent creature he's ever laid eyes upon in the kingswood. and when he returns in the evening to gaze upon you one last time, he finds himself further left for breath at the unexpected discovery before him. and rather than part with you, he contacts a witch to give him what he desires most...for forever. · tags: love at first sight, innocence, covetousness, angst · word count: 2,935

You are the loveliest mare he has ever set eyes upon.

Your coat is as white as the driven snow—untouched and gleaming. And your mane is long and smooth, and glimmers in the dappled sunlight that shines down upon you between swaying green leaves which comprise the canopy above.

You drink quietly from a babbling brook, wholly unaware of the gaze focused on you from a distance.

He takes a step forward—not measured enough, as he’s entirely enraptured by your beauty—and a twig snaps underfoot, causing your head to jerk up and in his direction.

He stills, as do you. But for him, it is not from wariness or fear, but wonder and disbelief.

“It can’t be,” he whispers. “For none now live.”

Your tail sways behind you and you crook your head.

He grins at the sight while taking another step forward, desperate to place even just one lone hand upon you. It is only through the act of doing so that he will believe that his remaining eye is indeed not deceiving him.

You take a step back and he shakes his head while extending a palm, shooshing you, hoping to calm you.

“It’s alright,” he states—gently. “I don’t want to harm you.”

You exhale and your ears twitch as you listen to words you do not understand.

“You’re quite lovely. Very much so. You are the last of your kind. Do you know that?”

His eyes travel along the polished opalescent horn that juts from the middle of your forehead before looking back into your own.

“It must be a terrible thing to be all alone in the world. I can only imagine such a fate.”

You step back again and he pauses—for he is nearly there, and to lose you when he has only just found you…he cannot bear it.

But to see you alone is a gift from the Seven.

“My name is Aemond,” he tells you with a kind smile. “Targaryen. You should know you are not the first mystical creature I have come across. I rode one once, you know. Not a unicorn, of course, but a dragon.”

He swallows thickly, ignoring the stinging of his eye. “She’s gone now. Lost during the war. To my uncle—my foe. But I repaid the favor by driving my sword through his heart.”

He’s standing before you now, and you have, most surprisingly, not fled.

Painstakingly slowly, he raises a hand and holds his breath as he settles it on your neck.

You blink lazily at him while swishing your tail curiously.

He smiles while shaking his head. “You’re far too trusting. No one has ever hunted you before, have they, sweetling?”

Your eyes move downward, toward his pack.

“You’re quite fortunate in that. Next time someone comes through these woods, you need to run. Hide. If you must, drive your horn through them. Show them no mercy, for the wrong sort of ilk will not show any to you.”

You nudge your nose against his chest and he chuckles while scratching behind your ears. “You’re too gentle for such an act, though, aren’t you?”

He slips his fingers into your mane. “I am not a gentle man myself by nature. Not usually. But for you, I think I can make an exception. I’ve a reputation to maintain, but unicorns sing no songs, so I believe it safe to assume that my secret will be kept.”

You move your snout lower and nuzzle against his bag, sniffing.

And then he snorts. “Ah, I see. It is not me you want, but instead the treats I have to offer.”

He reaches into his brown leather satchel and retrieves a shiny red apple, which he offers to you.

You eat directly from his palm and his lip twitches at the ticklish feel.

“Gods, you are truly a sight to behold. It has been believed for some time by scholars from the Citadel and otherwise that you had all gone extinct. Have you always been here, in the Kingswood? Where do you hide yourself away, I wonder?”

You nudge his pack, wanting for more.

He promptly obliges your request.

He continues to speak while you snack. “It is written that you all are immortal. Rather—you are. And the most innocent and pure of creatures. I would not doubt it now after our chance meeting. I’ve also read…you come only to virgins.”

He grins. “I am certainly not that. So, I suppose the old adage is indeed true: not to believe all you read, or hear.”

You raise your head and stare at him dumbly.

His words sound like no more than a garbled mess to you. Human voices are so unpleasant to the ears. What are they in comparison to the wind, the birds, the rustle of leaves, and the things nature has to tell, which is far more important?

You turn away from him then, suddenly disinterested.

He cocks a brow, following along beside you, so you shake out your mane and hold your head high, wanting for solitude amongst your forest friends.

Men merely think themselves welcome here due to their own hubris. They believe all the earth is theirs for the taking because they consider themselves more intelligent and higher beings.

They forget that other things existed long before they, and will continue to remain longer after their bones blow like dandelion seeds in the wind. They know only of survival. It is what they do to the land: survive off of it. Instead, you live with it as one.

He does gain your interest once more, however, by offering you another apple.

He slides his hand down your back, smoothing your fur. “What might the people think of me if I were to return to the Red Keep atop the back of a unicorn, I wonder? The last remaining one in all the world. Presumably, that is.”

He steps around to the front of you and scratches beneath your chin. “Brief it may’ve been, but the Conqueror’s crown indeed suited me far better than it ever did my fool brother. I was more suited to the role as a whole. Yet, here I am now. In the middle of the Kingswood, passing my afternoon speaking to a horse.”

He could swear that you snort quietly in response, but knows he merely imagined it.

He glances back to his own mount across the way and sighs. “It will be dark soon enough; another day gone. I suppose I should be getting back to the Keep.”

He offers you one final apple, which you relieve him of immediately, and he presses a soft kiss to your mane—a most unexpected gesture—before reluctantly bidding you goodbye.

You do not watch as he goes.

During the night, sleep eludes Aemond and finds him entirely restless. He tosses and turns upon a featherbed which provides little comfort from the incessant thoughts of you which gather like a tempest within his mind.

He is quite tired, yes, but he knows that unless he journeys once more into the Kingswood to chance at having one final look upon you, he will find no peace. So he rises.

He knew it would be a wasted journey. Especially at this hour.

You are nowhere to be seen. A fact which he’s both disappointed, and gladdened by. Gladdened that perhaps some small part of you understood the warnings he spoke to you that afternoon: to run and hide if a man came calling upon the woods you call home.

He shakes his head, deigning himself foolish for even thinking to return here during the hour of the wolf. Since when does Aemond Targaryen, previous Prince Regent and Protector of the Realm, find himself preoccupied by a thing of fairytales?

Ridiculous.

Aemond makes to turn, until he hears the quiet rustle of leaves and he catches a glimmer of light reflecting off a pond across the way. A glimmer of light which grows and grows in fervor—entirely encapsulating you.

It nearly blinds him, and forces him to cover his eyes with his forearm to shield his vision.

In a moment, the spectacle is over and the night returns to darkness. The only illumination provided now being that of the silvery-blue moon in the sky which twinkling stars surround as they wink and kiss the inky black vision above.

Slowly, he drags his gaze upwards once more, squinting to see.

And then his breath lodges in his throat, choking him.

“How in Seven Hells…” He whispers in disbelief, for he does not believe his eye.

Not this time.

For he is surely sleepwalking. Trapped within a dream.

But if such a fact is so, he will kill any man who attempts to wake him.

You rise slowly on trembling legs—only two—and long silvery waves curtain your slim, naked form. You grip the bark of a tree to steady yourself as your body shakes against the cool night air.

His eyes trail along your pale skin—so pale, in fact, that it practically glows. Or perhaps it is just the moon casting you in its light that offers such an illusion.

And soft silver waves slip over your shoulders and shimmer in the light.

Your breasts are small and soft—proportionate to your body—with delicate pink nipples. You’ve womanly curves; the planes of which blend perfectly from your stomach and into your thighs like you are the finest sculpture he has ever lain his eye upon. Crafted by the hands of the Gods themselves you are. Created by the Maiden, for you are indeed her image made flesh.

He steps forward—wanting for answers, for explanation, no matter how impossible it might be—then pauses when you jerk your head in his direction.

You stare at him with wide, lilac eyes, and he shakes his head, sure he is trapped within a delusion of his own making.

He must touch you once more to assure himself otherwise.

“This is madness,” he says quietly, taking another step forward.

You bristle, and he raises a hand slowly, shooshing you—repeating his actions from some hours ago, in hopes of comforting you to his presence. “It’s alright, sweetling. We’ve met. Just today. Don’t you remember me?”

You blink dumbly at him.

“I brought you apples. You liked them.”

Your eyes flit to the pack at his side and he fills with relief.

You recall him indeed.

“I’m not here to harm you. I merely came to see you one last time. But I had certainly not expected this.”

He has nearly made his way around the pond, and you, quite fortunately, have not fled from him in fear.

“Can you change at-will, then? Or is it only the night which brings about this other form?” He asks curiously.

You merely stare at him, remaining unresponsive.

“Can’t you speak?” He asks with a furrowed brow.

You softly cock your head to the side, and silver strands slip over your shoulders, exposing your pert breasts to him, and he takes note of your pebbled nipples.

You’re cold.

Cautiously, he removes the cloak he has wrapped round his own shoulders, then holds it out toward you.

You take a tiny step back, but he still steps forward, fans it out behind you, then clasps it just below your neck.

And then he cups your chilled cheek in his palm.

“I thought you a vision,” he mutters, brushing his thumb along the apple of your cheek. “A creature come straight to me from my most impossible dreams.”

Your eyes flit between his while your lips remain silent.

“You don’t understand a thing I’m saying, do you, sweetling?”

You stare at him in response.

His lip twitches.

How entirely innocent and ignorant you are.

Perfect to mold, he thinks.

Until sunrise, that is.

He assumes, that, come the morn, you most likely return to your equestrian form.

But why? Has it always been this way for you? Are you not immortal, then, like he previously believed? Is this some sort of wretched curse bestowed upon you by a sorceress, warlock, moonsinger, or otherwise? Why punish such a beautifully quiet thing such as yourself? What could you have possibly done to deserve this?

To always be walking between two worlds, but belonging in neither—forever alone… What a horrid thing to be forced upon something as sweet and docile as you.

Quite boldly of you, you reach toward his pack, but he shoves it away on instinct.

You frown slightly, and then he smiles. “Forgive me, my sweet.”

He retrieves for you another apple and settles it into your expectant palm.

You promptly take a bite out of the crisp piece of fruit and lick your lips where sweet juice quickly gathers.

He groans lowly in the back of his throat at the sight, and does his utmost to ignore the slight swelling of his cock beneath his trousers.

He cups your other cheek then, holding you still and close as you take bite after bite while staring up and into his eye as he studies you.

Your long, silver strands slip easily between his fingers as he cups the back of your head affectionately. “If I did not know any better, I would think you are one of us: a true Targaryen. Or a Valyrian, forged in the fires of the Freehold.”

You lean slightly into his touch, merely liking the warmth his body has to offer and provide against the chill of this late hour, but he translates the simple gesture to have a far different meaning: that already you can feel it as well—this invisible ribbon which binds the two of you into one. It wraps your destinies together into a singularly divine fate.

Once you’ve finished with your treat, you lower your arm to your side and drop it. It softly thuds against the forest floor, then rolls down the embankment and into the pond at your side.

You hear a quite splash, and you smile slightly, knowing its remaining core is now feeding one of your friends.

You look at the strange man with one eye again, and your brows furrow in confusion as he closes it and begins to lean forward while slipping an arm beneath the cloak he wrapped around you to combat the chill.

He slides his hand along your waist before settling his palm against the small of your back so you might remain close to him.

And then he presses his lips to yours.

Your body stiffens and your eyes grow wide.

What is he doing? Is this a sort of odd greeting humans give each other, then? A strange form of communication, perhaps?

You blink, then try to swallow, but it’s precisely when your lips part that he slips his tongue into your mouth.

That is when you jerk away.

Aemond chuckles from amusement, then presses a firm, tender kiss to your forehead before leaning forward and resting his own against it.

“My sweet girl,” he whispers. “The Gods blessed me by putting you in my path.”

He pulls back slightly while tucking silver locks behind your ear. “You must be terribly lonely here. Are you not?”

You glance toward the pond, then back to him, wishing he’d let you go so you might stretch your legs for awhile.

“I could change that,” he says—his voice a whisper upon the wind. “At the very least, I can bring someone here who could. Who could keep you in this preferable form…for forever.”

You glance behind him and watch as a doe trots along with her little fawn close to her side.

“I could make you a princess,” he states, earning your attentions once more. “A wife, a mother. You could have fine things and live in a grand castle. Resplendent gowns, jewels, and servants at your beck and call would be yours for the taking. If you wish it—whatever you do—I will make it so. My jester of a brother is not long for this world. And once the Gods have come to call him home, I will ascend his throne.”

His grows quite serious then. “And you might be my bride, if you so covet a crown for yourself as I do. It will be just as lovely as you, I swear it.”

He slides his hand along the soft curve of your waist, then settles it just above the swell of your rear.

“We could make perfect little heirs. Silver hair, violet eyes, and pale skin. The very image of descendants of Old Valyria. None would question their parentage for a moment as they did my dead half-sister’s. Not that I would ever indulge myself by bringing bastards into this world. I would sooner put such abominations to the sword.”

You try to take a step back, unsettled by the wild look in his eye…but he holds firm.

“I want you,” he states lowly. “And I will have it so.”

He smiles, then brushes a kiss along your cheek. “You’ll be pleased with what I next intend to do, sweetling. I swear it. And once you are mine, I will have the finest septas teach and tutor you in how to be a proper princess and wife. You will learn to speak as I do. And I will treasure the moment when you finally utter the words of your undying love, stemming from thankfulness toward me, from having given you the gift of our blessed union.”

He pulls you into his chest and holds you in his arms, knowing it is exactly where you belong. “You’ve no idea the life that awaits you at my side.”

[jjklvr9]

𝐇𝐨𝐭 𝐬𝐭𝐫𝐚𝐧𝐠𝐞𝐫 𝐝𝐚𝐧𝐠𝐞𝐫

-> 𝘞𝘪𝘵𝘩𝘰𝘶𝘵 𝘢𝘯𝘺 𝘩𝘦𝘴𝘪𝘵𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯, 𝘺𝘰𝘶 𝘥𝘦𝘤𝘪𝘥𝘦𝘥 𝘵𝘰 𝘩𝘦𝘢𝘥 𝘺𝘰𝘶𝘳 𝘩𝘦𝘦𝘭𝘴 𝘰𝘷𝘦𝘳 𝘵𝘰 𝘩𝘪𝘴 𝘴𝘪𝘥𝘦 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘱𝘳𝘰𝘣𝘢𝘣𝘭𝘺 𝘮𝘢𝘬𝘦 𝘢 𝘯𝘦𝘸 𝘧𝘳𝘪𝘦𝘯𝘥 𝘣𝘺 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘦𝘯𝘥 𝘰𝘧 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘯𝘪𝘨𝘩𝘵.

18+ minors dni !!

pairing: jungkook x fem!reader

genre: smut, oneshot

warnings: dom jungkook, oral sex (male receiving), fingering, cursing, unprotected sex, do let me know if i missed anything!

wc: 2.2k

a/n: this is a one-shot i wrote a like yearssss ago lmao, its been up on AFF but i wanted to post it here too! it's a little bit rushed but i hope you still enjoy <3

“What are you staring at? Come on, dance with us!” a high-pitched female voice broke you apart from your long thoughts. It was a Friday night- meaning everybody would be heading over to the club, going wild and getting themselves wasted. Your two best friends along with their boyfriends forcefully made you, the only one left single pringle and too-awkward-to-mingle- to tag along with them to the club tonight. Not that you had any other plans that night but being your boring awkward self, you didn’t really like to go out to these sorts of things. It was rather too loud and crowded for your liking, making you feel all breathless and weak.

“Hey, come on!” one of your beloved best friends called out to you again, her body still grinding ever so roughly onto her boyfriend’s. Your lips curved into a slight smile and you shook your head, indicating that you were just alright sitting there all by yourself and watching them have their fun. Empty glasses and drinks were scattered all over the table yet of course- your glass was left untouched. No, you were certainly not planning on getting home wasted and getting a hangover the next morning. It was too much to bear with and you had no time to deal with those ilks of things. You leaned your back onto the sofa, your eyes observing the much-crowded place when suddenly- a lonesome-looking guy sitting on the sofa next to your group caught your attention. He was like me too, you thought as the young man was just sitting there, his back resting onto the sofa as well.

Without any hesitance, you decided to head your heels over to his side and probably make a new friend by the end of the night. As you got yourself closer to him, you finally saw his facial features clearly and holy shit- he was one fine young man. “Uhm, hey.” You slowly greeted him, only to be responded with a confused look written on his face. “Do I know you?” His voice. It was husky as you thought it would be and damn, you found that to be hella attractive. “No.. but I want to know you..?” With that he lets out a soft chuckle past his lips, none of it with any sarcasm. The male pats the space beside him, scooting away slightly to let you sit down. “Thanks.” You murmured, placing your hands on your bare thighs. Now that you were sitting down beside a guy you never met- you felt like your dress was too short and was getting shorter by the second you were breathing. It was showing off your thighs and it barely covered your upper thigh. A single misstep could lay everything bare.

“So, alone?” he asks with a smile, breaking the chain of thoughts in your head. “Uhm- no, my friends and their boyfriends are on the dance floor.” Again, he chuckles. “Same goes for me. Want a drink?” “Uh-no! it’s okay. I’ve had too many.” You lied; not wanting to sound like you were still sober and fresh in a fucking club. That would be really lame and quite embarrassing. “Well, what’s your name?” he asks, his dark orbs meeting yours making you look away and blush. If looks could kill- you’d be dead.

“Y/N”

“Jungkook.” he replies, a smile curving up the corner of his lips.

“Well then Jungkook.” 

Before you could proceed with your words, you were interrupted by a group of inebriated individuals stumbling around, likely to be Jungkook's friends. You felt like you shouldn’t be intruding them as you were nothing but a mere stranger, not even waiting for Jungkook to say anything and scurried back to sit on your sofa alone.

Well- it wasn’t entirely your best friend’s fault that you were left all alone. They did invite you up to the dance floor but you were just too lazy. You were not in the mood for random sweaty strangers having their bodies pressed against yours while they utter nonsense to your ears. As time passed, you stole quick glances at the adjacent sofa, hoping to find the young man, but to your disappointment, he was no longer there. You found yourself trying to look for him everywhere when a hand suddenly grabbed your wrist lightly.

“I’m here. Sorry about just now.” It was Jungkook- unexpectedly just standing there right in front of you. “Follow me?” without any hesitation, you obediently followed him out of the noisy club and into his car down the street. You didn’t know exactly what you had just brought yourself into as he drove off from the club. This young man could be a murderer or a rapist-and hell knows what kind of crazy thing he would do to you. “Where are we going?” “My place.” He answers with ease, finally pulling over in front of a tall building. Evidently, his apartment exuded luxury, suggesting that he was likely quite affluent. Jungkook parks his car quickly and brings you up to the elevator and finally to his apartment. Everything was happening so fast, all that you could feel at the moment was confusion. The man unlocks the door, pulling you in along with him but not with much force. 

“Welcome.” 

His place was rather impressive, adorned in various shades of grey as the main theme, featuring a large window and a snug kitchen. There was also a huge sliding door with translucent paper covering it- probably the entrance to his bedroom. You awkwardly stood beside his couch not wanting to take a seat without his consent and waited for him to at least explain what the hell was going on. Jungkook walks over and plops down onto the couch, his face looking up at you in confusion. “Why aren’t you sitting down?” “I have to go- my friends are going to kill me if they found out I just ditched them like that.” Before you could walk away to the door, Jungkook quickly grabbed your arm-not too tightly to hurt you but enough that made you sit on his lap. The heat on your cheeks was starting to go out of hand- I probably look like a dumb tomato, you thought.

“Stay.” You turn your head slightly to get a better look at Jungkook’s face when he suddenly leans in and captures your lips with his. It took a brief moment before you actually returned the kiss. It was full of passion and lust, something both of you were craving for out of each other. Your hands were now wrapped around his neck, pulling him closer to you to get more out of his lips. Jungkook licks your wet cavern with his tongue before tangling both of your tongues together, sucking on them roughly. Somehow, your hands had unwrapped themselves and made their way down to his chest; caressing it up and down. Standing up, Jungkook carries you up with your legs wrapped around his waist- your lips still latched together. The young man walks towards his bedroom and gently places you down on his bed, his body hovering on top of yours. He slowly pressed himself onto you, grinding his clothed hardness onto your clothed clit. “Mmhh.” A muffled moan escapes your lips, making Jungkook pull away from the intense kiss, only to leave hard kisses on your neck and even biting it to leave a few marks.

Being all impatient, you brought your hands up to his collar and began unbuttoning his shirt, throwing it away across the room. Your itchy hands then continued to go further down, fiddling with the belt of his pants and finally being able to get that out of the way too. You softly nudged his growing clothed erection with your knee before you unzipped his pants and pushed it off his legs completely, leaving him in nothing but his red-coloured boxers. Having both of your lips still hardly pressed onto each other, Jungkook unzips your dress and pulls it off of you easily- as if it was such a common thing for him to do but you didn’t put much thought about it at that moment. Without wasting any time, his quick hands unclasped your black lacey bra and he too, threw it across the room and God knows where it was now. Jungkook’s eyes adverted from your own down to your exposed breasts, his tongue slipping out of his lips to lick them dry. “Fuck.” He cursed under his breath yet you could still hear them very clearly.

Instead of getting it on to the whole point- you decided you’d play a little game even though you knew you were going to get fucked real hard after. Literally. You held your palms on his chest and pushed him off you, making him roll to the other side only to have you hovering on top of him now. A smirk played on your lips as Jungkook looked at you in genuine confusion with a little hint of excitement. With the smirk still on your lips, you slowly made your way down till you reached eye-level with his growing crotch. “You’re so fucking hard.” You teased, biting onto the hem of his boxers and pulling it down slowly, your eyes locked with his. Jungkook bit his lips as he watched you pull his boxers off completely, letting his erect cock free itself from the heated cloth. “So hard-for me.” You let out a soft yet teasing moan, offering a smooth lick to his hardness. “Fuck-don’t tease me.” He breathed out when you gave another four or five licks. You ignored his words and continued to take his tip into your mouth, giving it a light bite before engulfing him whole; making you gag a little bit. The male’s head was now pulled back with his eyes shut tightly, his teeth biting onto his lips to suppress any sound from exiting. Jungkook didn’t want to sound weak, you see. Failing to keep his posture up together, he finally let out a groan when you started sucking onto him harshly. The pleasured male wasn’t giving much reaction to your doings, making you feel a little pissed off and you decided to leave it at that and pulled away completely when you know he was reaching his peak. “What the fuck!” he yelled, eyes widened in bewilderedness. Both of you were now in a heating tension; one who was pissed off and one who was just literally in heat.

Feeling himself getting hotter and frustrated by the second, Jungkook clutched his hands onto your arms tightly, carrying you away from being on top of him and pushed you down onto the bed. This time, it had a harder impact. You were starting to feel eager to know what he was planning to do with you yet you were also feeling a little scared of what might come out of him. The awaited male shot you a glare before he roughly tore your black underwear and pushed three of his fingers together into you. That sudden action of his made you jolt in pain, obviously not ready for his invasion. His fingers were not like those slim and longed ones, no. They were- not to say huge but slightly plump but fit. You can imagine them by yourselves on this one.

He started pulling his fingers in and out of your wet clit, every push becoming even harder than before. “So wet-for me.” Jungkook mocked you, hearing you moaning out loud when it’s barely him inside of you. Feeling your stomach clenching, you were waiting for him to finger you even quicker but instead, INSTEAD- he pulled them out completely. Before you could yell at him for being a total jerk, he pushed his erect cock up in you with a loud blow; not even wasting time to adjust and went straight into thrusting. Your eyes started to water, your back was arching to its maximum point and you were screaming his name at the top of your lungs at every hard thrust he blew into you. 

“Oh fuck me- faster please..!” you squirmed in painful ecstasy, Jungkook not even having to listen to your demands as he paced up even faster than before. “You’re so fucking hot babe..” he breathes out in between his humps, hoping you would be able to hear them even though you were busy getting pleasured. “Fuck’s sake- faster! Mmhm..” this time, you moan even louder, signalling that you were reaching your climax very very very soon. “I-I’m going to cum.” Jungkook hitches, thrusting in you hard a few more times before he pulls out and lets the warm liquid flow out and stain the bed sheet.

The room was filled with nothing but the rushed breathings of your lungs and his. After some time passed by, Jungkook finally turned to your side and pulled up the blanket to cover both of your naked bodies. “Hey.” He says, making you turn your head to face his smiling face. “Hey.” Now, both of you were simply smiling, your eyes locked, each attempting to decipher the thoughts lingering in the other's mind. "Let’s have a dinner date tomorrow. I want to get to know you better.”

[shanastoryteller]

Happy love day Shana! I would *love* some more of the WWX and Jiang Yanli runaway story! I love it so much!!

a continuation of 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17

Jiang Cheng would very much like to throw all the Lan and Jin disciples out from Lotus Pier because they’re all irritating as hell and even worse when they’re together, but there’s the issue of keeping them from spreading rumors and that Lan Wangji and Jin Zixuan are going to refuse to leave.

Jin Zixuan is fair enough. That’s his wife and child. But Jiang Cheng give anything to be able to kick Lan Wangji into the nearest lotus pond rather than put a roof over his head.

He wants to lie down and not think for a little bit and he wants to hide his face in his older sister’s skirts like when he was a child and he wants to hold onto Wei Wuxian so he can’t leave him again but none of that is reasonable or justifiable or fair.

So instead he watches as they discuss what to do next, how to handle this without kicking off another war.

It’s good to be concerned, and careful, but he doesn’t think there’ll be another war from this, even if they just them back into society with minimal explanation. At least, there won’t be as long as they don’t start killing sect leaders.

Things are different now than they were thirteen years ago.

He has a much firmer grip on his clan and the place of the Jiang in cultivation society isn’t desecrated and limping along. The same can be said of Lan Xichen and the Lan.

Nie Mingjue was an ass last time, somewhat understandably, but both Nie Huaisang and Lan Xichen are better equipped to talk him down and pacify him this time. Besides, Jiang Cheng is a lot more willing and able to kick his ass about it if he has to.

While he would very much like to avoid doing anything with Lan Wangji, he knows he would help, that now that Wei Wuxian is back it’s going to be hell getting that asshole out of their hair. They might as well put him to work.

He real problem, the thing that just shoehorning them back in place stupid rather than inadvisable, is the Jin and the minor clans that have clustered around them.

Jin Zixuan and his ilk aren’t a problem, of course. But Jin Guangshan and the older members of their clan that are still loyal to him, which is a rather large amount, don’t like anything that upsets the balance of power away from them and they do their best to crush it. And often succeed.

He wishes he’d known, he wishes the letter A-jie and Wei Wuxian insist they’ve sent had gotten to him and that he hadn’t spent the past thirteen years drowning and curdling in his grief, he wishes they hadn’t had to survive on their own, hiding and lying and running, and that he could have helped them.

But despite all that, he understands why A-jie felt the need to take her son and run from Koi Tower.

[ecoterrorist-katara]

you act like your fandom isn't responsible for shitty racist behavior towards irls liiiike dont be a hypocrite pointing fingers at everyone except your own ilk lmfao

I was initially going to write a snarky response, but upon reflection you sound pretty young and I don't want to get into a pissing contest with someone who is likely a minor. Instead, I'm going to share my philosophy on how I engage with fandom and explain why it doesn't make sense for you to come to my ask box and demand that I answer for people who I don't even know.

My approach to fandom is entirely hedonistic. 1) Fandom is not, and never will be, my personal milieu for activism, and 2) I'm not responsible for the behaviour of people who happen to share my preference in a ship; I can only control what I do.

On 1), I come to fandom for escapism and indulgence, and these two qualities of fandom are completely incompatible with my approach to activism. Activism must be rooted in the real world and often demands doing things you don't want to do. That's like...the polar opposite of what I want to do on Tumblr.com.

Sometimes I incorporate analysis of oppression and justice in my fandom discussions because I find them interesting, but that's still about me and my enjoyment, not about oppression and injustice in general. A lot of my life has been dedicated to structural injustices, whether as topics of study or as systemic forces to organize against (more accurately, I spent most of my adult years striving to combine the academic and the practical facets), so obviously they crop up in my discussions, but my engagement in fandom has never been about activism and I've been quite clear about that. For example, I may talk about decolonization in the context of ATLA, but I harbour no delusions that my salty complaints about Bryke are, in any way, relevant to furthering the decolonial project.

On 2), notice that in my response to your last ask, I never claimed the entire Zutara fandom only consists of people who never did anything wrong. I only claimed that I, personally, strive to behave like a reasonably decent person in my fandom interactions. Fandoms consist of literally thousands of people, if not tens of thousands, so of course people in my (and yours, and everyone's) fandom are capable of shitty behaviour -- but like I said before, I'm not the fandom police. It's not a role I'm interested in taking on, nor one I'm arrogant enough to think I should. I don't try to be a role model at the club or at the grocery store; in a similar vein, I'm not facilitating or curating or shepherding the Zutara fandom. I just hang out here, same as everyone else, and I'm not going to insult my followers & my peers' intelligence by saying "PSA: did you know it's not okay to say shitty and racist things to people?"

My responsibilities in fandom extend to following basic fandom etiquette and interacting with posts and people that don't contradict my values. I sometimes repost salty things about specific ships, or occasionally I'll interact with Zutara antis who come to me, because salt can be fun in moderate doses plus I have post-COVID POTS so I need a lot of salt anyway. Every time I have interacted with a hostile Ka/taang shipper, it has been because they came to my post, my blog, or my tags to stir up shit. Even so, I'd never go to a Ka/taang blogger and expect them to do something. I have, btw, received messages asking me to highlight/expose certain Ka/taang shippers for their politics or things they've said, and I don't publish those either, so there's not a whole lot of fingerpointing going on here in general.

I'm going to stop responding to your asks, but I hope you can reflect on what exactly you are trying to get out of fandom, and what kind of behaviour you think is productive and generative for you. I'm not saying everyone should follow my personal fandom engagement philosophy, but I am saying you can't impose your philosophy onto me.

[straycalamities]

Hello, how are you

Why do you Like Entre and Swag?

i’ve been sick almost the entire past week but i think im getting better

do you mean as a relationship? ho boy. well, first of all, seeing as a lot of ships ive gotten into after it end up sharing a lot of similarities, i think its safe to say it became one of my favorite ship dynamics period

this got long fast

enemies/rivals-to-lovers isn’t anything new for me seeing as i dedicated, on-and-off, 8+ years to naruto and sasuke as one of my first hardcore ships that i still enjoy

and in general i just really like ships between characters who bicker and banter a lot (vash and wolfwood from trigun being a perfect example of this) but still being something more significant to each other than either of them truly realize until it sinks in either slowly or forcefully

and especially as i’ve grown older, i’ve gotten more and more and more interested in the intricacies and complications of having two very…hmmm damaged? i guess? personalities trying to find something that works because they need it to

which the other two ships have as well, but in a more “toxic yaoi” way, ya feel? LMAO like! hannibal and will graham from the hit show :) which that came after swagtre but it still stands as it got me to appreciate that aspect of their relationship even more than i did

swagtre is in no way synonymous to hannigram. hannigram is on a different level of delicious toxic yaoi, BUT it goes to show what ive opened up my ship palate to voraciously

even so, that’s moreso the early stage of their relationship, which is fun! but also not the whole story

i guess the main thing that initially drew me in was that i’ve always had a weakness for characters like swag. he’s so full of bravado, performative self-interest, defusing every little thing with a joke, and all the while coming off as a destructive idiotic selfish little brat. meanwhile the truth that resides is much deeper than that. that he does care, he just doesn’t know how, so he does his best which…is easily overlooked because he’s uncomfortable with being seen for being genuine in any way because it makes him feel vulnerable and blah blah this ain’t a swag study

but anyways truffula flu made me like him a normal amount! :)

then there’s entre who wears his heart on his sleeve moreso. he’s always been more honestly reactive, that’s why his mainverse it’s so fun to pick on him, and it didn’t get numbed by the apocalypse all that much. entres also a guy who takes things for face value at first. then there’s also the fact he used to have such a hero/senpai-crush on swag before the whole thing even happened and they’d even became pretty friendly acquaintances

and now he’s having to wrestle with the fact everyone who used to like him, hates him, except dave and bitter. and anyone else that might? probably dead. and of course! why wouldn’t they? his big mistake that cost the world

and swag is the loudest reminder of them all. forcibly inching and digging and clawing his way into entres psyche and mind until he finds himself using all of swags same words at himself during moments of self-hatred. self-hatred that’s been there all his life but now it has a burning world to reference. and swags voice mingling with his mother’s.

and entre may get defensive and bite back and try to turn things around on swag, but he can never truly say swags wrong. because he’s not! entre fucked up everyone else’s lives over a deeply selfish and shallowly thought-through decision. and even if swag is also a capitalist self-serving asshole, well he only destroyed his own environment, he didn’t end civilization as they know it

and that just makes it worse than the preachy “hippie” types that used to nag at him before. someone who’s in his same ilk is now berating him

and while entres never Not risen to rage-bait. he absolutely never took the phrase “don’t feed the trolls” to heart, he also has deeper reasons why with swag he always throws himself at the opportunity to try and defend or twist things, because it’s hitting him so much harder than everyone else (besides 72)

so yes, when swag keeps saying entres obsessed with him, he’s actually right! entre IS and has been since swag forced the jester hat on him and paraded him around camp as a spectacle. one that he can never truly deny that he deserves

i also think we should go back to entres pre-apocalypse feelings about swag because it’s important to note that entre wanted to Be swag. he looked at swag and saw the man he wanted to grow into. maybe less childish and gross, but the charisma behind it all, the way that even despite that, he had so many wrapped around his finger and every word

and the thing with early entre, is he always directly compared himself with other oncelers. sizing himself up against them and like…really it just makes sense right? to him, they were all iterations of himself, achieving and accomplishing or even failing different things. and even if at first the multiverse unnerved him, he started to use it to his advantage. i mean he got 72 to mentor him, he was lifting tips n tricks off others like swag, and he was directly taking notes on how Not to be off others (One, Bitter, Strangecase, Stone (sorry man ilu) and more bc this list is longer than the idol list LMAO)

so thats just more to really hammer in how intrinsic to entres identity swag became and it became more palpable in the worst way in truffula flu

this is all as an aside to the crushing guilt of his giant mistake itself but we all know how he feels abt that

and for swag, i mean don’t take my word here as word of god because i don’t THINK my theory here is confirmed to be canon, but im pretty sure he saw himself in entre as well. like it went both ways. and swag felt fear AND i guess relief? if that makes sense that it was entre instead of him. like this guy is very much Like him and any of them coulda done this, but it was entre, not swag. and that’s why swag is very insistent on not letting entre forget it, because deep down he’s terrified that it could’ve been him if entre hadn’t done it first

and so he looks down on him and beats him even further down as a way to kinda uhhh make himself feel better? except it doesnt. it never makes him feel better but it DOES make him feel not as worse as he could, or thinks he could if he just let the guy go after daring to make such a fool of himself in front of everyone

i think, as much as entre sees himself and how he wants himself to be in swag, swag sees himself in entre and what he doesn't want to be. and entre changes it to him seeing all the stuff he doesn't like about swag, the pieces of him he doesn't want to mimic because he refuses to continue to admit to himself that he still envies and looks up to the man swag is, because even at the end of the world, he's one of the few who seems to have something figured out that works for him. he actually seems to enjoy himself in this hell. he seems to feel free to find happiness and entre couldnt be more envious of that

but then as more and more people crowd into their camp, and they get to a baseline and learn the uhhh capabilities of their survival companions, they also learn to realize that they operate on the same wavelength the most even if neither of them admit it. obviously everyone wants out of this hell, but i dont think any of them tenaciously chase after that ambition as much as swag and entre do, for their own reasons

most of the rest of the camp has taken a sort of acceptance to the situation either in a pragmatic or pessimistic way. and of course nobody wants this to stay the way it is, but they don't have that sort of...all-encompassing fire to find a way to reverse their situations as much as swag and entre. i mean we did have bitter's optimism for a bit there, but he was doomed so like...what other option did he have other than believing in entre, but it was absolutely rooted in nothing. even entre knew that.entre especially knew that. bitter was deteriorating the fastest he'd ever seen it and if he hadn't been able to find a way to slow it down in the other ppl who took weeks to turn, then what was he going to do for the guy taking days?

so all bitter's optimism did was make entre feel sicker with guilt for everything and completely drove the little grip he had on hope into the ground. especially by making him take his first un-turned life. especially because, i think we have to address this here to fully understand why entre goes the way he does afterwards: bitter was never truly bitter to entre. bitter was himself. bitter was the likely future entre saw himself walking towards. out of every other onceler further ahead along from him, successful or aftermath or otherwise, bitter felt the most real for him

bitter was always his own failure even before it happened literally and live right before his eyes. that's always what he meant to entre even in mainverse/pre-truffula flu. that's why he made such a dedication to trying to butt his way into bitter's life. that's why he spoiled him and wormed his way into his heart, because he was trying to put that energy out there that one day, if this were to become literally his fate, someone would do this for him as well. or maybe he'd put enough good karma out there with doing this for bitter, that this wouldn't even become him at all!

that is exactly why entre was so stricken after his death. that's why it hurt and broke him so hard. he didn't know bitter long enough for his cries of "he's my best friend!" to fully be true. if anyone was entre's best friend at the time, it was 72, or dave, or his own mother. it was not bitter, bitter was his pet project. bitter was the poisoned dart that seared in striking him, and slowly ate at him after he was gone. bitter was him fully being unable to run from the consequences and culpability of his own actions. because now this was something that was clearly, unignorably, happening right in front of his eyes and now the blood was directly on his hands

bitter was his future self and his sealed demise that came with it. bitter was his destroyed future. bitter was his own mortality.

entre does come to realize something akin to this later on, but i guess i didn't make it understandable enough because i think a lot of people missed that this was the true narrative going on underneath the surface. which is my bad and on me, i could've done a better job, but ya. this was always my intention and it's a very key part in understanding why entre is the way he becomes and does what he does afterwards

which, back to swag, is his doing to entre. because swag does strong-arm him into and making him believe there was no alternative to entre killing bitter who swag DID, as anyone else did at the time, believe entre's statement that entre saw him as his best friend, but that also meant that was even more entre's problem to solve to him. and it's something entre finds hard to forgive swag for for a while after, even as his own guilt berates him for his own involvement in creating this fate for bitter, there's always that part of him that blames swag for forcing him to actually face the consequences of his actions. because, as most oncelers, entre doesnt like that very much LMAO

and yet despite it all, it still, in its own twisted way, makes him feel the most seen by swag. if that makes sense?? especially as 72 made it abundantly clear he was disappointed in him and didn't even seem to know who entre really was anymore. the survival needs and guilt had warped entre towards a vitriolic survivalist away from that bright eyed young man that he had taken in.

and then of course, nobody else really seemed to want to push a deeper connection with him at the time for this or that reason. so he had dave, who he personally saw as still just an employee so of course dave was with him and on his side, he had that employee loyalty. dave became his right hand, but that also meant that entre felt that he couldnt confide as much in dave because it's hard to explain but it's like...since dave was working FOR him, he didn't want to muddle it up with personal feelings to keep dave sharp. that's what entre thought at the time anyways

and so, for better or worse (mainly worse) who stuck around and kept nosing endlessly into entre's business and his life and burying himself in his side like a thorn he couldnt remove and absolutely couldnt forget. well that was swag.

in this sort of fucked up whirlwind...swag became the most emotionally significant person in entre's life. especially as swag started to show that he DID gave at least half a shit. and after their shouting matches that got swag to admit this little tip of the iceberg or that. entre did get to wondering what else there was going on underneath that. it became something he wanted to dig at to find out.

despite how they bickered and butted heads, entre always felt more comfy telling swag things he wouldnt or would no longer tell anyone else. swag's little bits of sympathy or lightheartedness became little crumbs of something that entre subsisted off of to keep going, because, despite everything, he still looked up to him. he still admired him and what he was capable of and what he could do. and how he didnt seem to let anything that was going on bring him down. he kept his shine.

and for swag (again not word of god here) i think he liked that entre DID butt against him. obviously he had fun with rocky and one. but (and this IS word of god/confirmed canon) they weren't as much his friends as he touted they were. swag struggles creating (and especially maintaining) close relationships. they make him vulnerable and they come with stakes and things to lose. so swag always kept his relationships fair-weathered and shallow. (aside from just not knowing how to be genuinely real and vulnerable with people in a way that COULD cultivate a close relationship) he sure did say and shallowly BELIEVED they were deeper than what they were, but deep down...he had an idea that were push come to shove...he wouldnt mourn anyone as much as your normal guy would mourn his true friends and he felt that it was mutual.

so as much as he ran away from it, swag felt very alone. swag always has issues with loneliness and that's why he throws himself from person to person and has to be the loudest and brightest and funniest in the room. and hey even if you hate what youre hearing and seeing, he's still got your attention. and that can be good enough when it comes down to it. (end of word of god/confirmed canon swag stuff)

but yeah i think that...not that rocky or one were yes-men or anything, but i mean they kinda just worked with his antics and like okay yeah here we go, swag stuff again yay(or nay) but entre always was fighting it. he didnt just accept swag entirely for this way or that, he was always critiquing, always challenging, always prodding back as strongly as swag prodded him. and i think that change of pace is what kept swag coming back over and over beyond the other stuff i said earlier

and like...as the guy at the center of it all, i think even swag said it himself at some point, if anyone knew how to get them back out of this mess it was him. and as swag said: he saw entre as a way better leader than him. even if it personally irked and annoyed him, himself when it happened to him. entre clearly had figured out his stuff and what he'd say had merit (just not with swag who always knew better for himself)

so if entre saw swag as the better leader for his charisma and weird optimism, then swag saw entre as the better one for his pragmatism and his knack for staying rational most of the time. i think that's also why entre's slip in lucidity bothered swag a whole lot because...if entre couldn't be the rational one, they were screwed. he'd gotten used to entre being a kinda...logical pillar to bounce off of, so if he was losing his touch with reality, that was going to doom the lot of them (even him). it's also with (word of god) swag's deep deep fear of abandonment so...if entre abandons his own senses, he's abandoning Swag and that Cannot Happen

this is a whole lot but its really hard for me to explain the why FULLY without dragging out all the nuances and complexities to their relationship because THAT'S WHY!!! it's SOOO complex and there's so many layers and nuances to everything that had to keep working in a certain way to go in a positive direction or else it all fell apart, as we saw, over and over

they both have so many issues that hold them back in ways and then theyre both so damn stubborn that it ended up making them even getting along as FRIENDS a damn slow-burn (and i am, always, a sucker for a slow-burn. one of my main weaknesses in a ship)

you can see they both end up wanting that, even if neither of them would admit it. but they both, as businessmen, saw their cooperation as fruitful for the success of themselves and the camp. it was just all this other baggage going on making it hard

so then we get the hospital. where rocky gets his harsh taste of the reality of their situation and he gets HIS humble pie of his own mortality, pushing him away from swag who remains reckless. and then entre, feeling ostracized from literally everyone and even having a hard conversation with 72 in the elevator, when it all comes down to it, and they seem doomed. he lets himself be weak and falls a bit into swag. and this is where it changes a lot of things for entre. this moment of weakness he was pushed into by fearing it was this or never.

because obviously they get saved and then it's swag losing his foot or getting left behind for zombie-chow and OBVIOUSLY the latter isnt an option so...entre makes that call and then cant go through with it because swag's fear is shaking him to his core in a way he never thought would happen. like he let himself get weak and it's immediately striking him in a soft spot that changes him for the rest of the story

i think it's here where he gets that kinda "oh..." deep deep down. that wow. yeah. swag is much more significant to him than previously believed. that leads into the hardware store where slowly and surely, swag becomes his precious possession. swag's the only one that believes in him. swag's the only one that understands him. swag's the only one he wants to be around. nobody can touch or harm swag but him. swag is his responsibility. swag is his, his, his.

and this is very very poisoned by entre's deteriorating state of mind and emotional health. the man is a long-coming disaster finally starting to collapse on himself. and the centerpin of it all is keeping swag safe and to himself because swag's the only good he sees right now in this hell of a world. swag's words become law in his mind. if swag says he has to be more of a leader, more assertive, he'll take that and run marathons with it. anything to make swag proud of him

because that's another thing is entre has just...always chased someone being proud of him or happy with him. or that he was doing good or whatever. a common onceler problem with the way that Once-ler Mama just Is but yes...it's always been a big deal for entre. he's terrified of failure. and he's terrified of disappointing people who mean something to him. so he'll do whatever it takes to make swag proud and it's not like the rest of thee camp know better than Him what's the Greater Good for them, of course. he's the leader. he's the one who created all this. this is his world and he knows everything about it better than anyone.

meanwhile swag's too fucked up on having his wings finally clipped after leaving off the high of true and total freedom for so long. that he has to stew with no escapism and let the reality of his life as it is now sink in. old ghosts start to catch up to him and new horrors start to sink in. that and the pain meds of course, but through it all, he's still operating on that trust he's placed in entre. entre's a weirdo, but he always takes care of him and spoils him as much as he can. and it makes swag not wanna question, not that he has a leg to stand on (ha) currently anyways when it comes to that. he doesnt know anything going on outside his door. and to be honest, i think that's the part of this shitty situation that he likes. he's clearly tired and been tired of feeling responsible for other people, but he also cant help himself because of his deep need to try and keep as many people in his life as possible because that means the ones that leave have a lot more replacements

but yeah obviously when he gets out and suddenly everyone is his responsibility again and it's up to him to be the hero (in his perspective) he puts entre in his place in the only way he knows how, but at this point...he's reached an understanding of entre and entre HAS become more significant to him than just a business partner. and he's starting to act on the parts of entre he can see in himself and so despite entre fucking up (yet again) he sees it as entre just trying to do what he was guided to in the best way he could manage and swag has little issue just being like ok you fucked up but who cares about that anymore

he has a better understanding on how entre thinks and what he wants (not a great one but a better one) and i think he knows that to endlessly punish entre and leave him alone would just make him way worse and so he decides to stick with him himself (i also think this is also swag's abandonment issues)

i don't think has very recognizable romantic feelings for entre at this point, but entre very much does for swag. so this keeps entre on his feet as much as it can despite the whole spectacle of it being something that'd drive him, any other time, to a long walk off a short pier. but it had to be a spectacle for swag because he had to show to everyone that hey hes here and hes the one fixing things! youre welcome!

but it's still a harrowing experience that strip entre down to the bone and he might be at his lowest he's been since bitter. maybe even lower, but then the prisma event happens and, if entre's event stripped entre to the bone, swag's stripped swag to the marrow

and if there's one thing about entre, it's fixing problems that aren't his own is one of the best ways to keep him moving. even if to anyone else, what swag's been doing this entire time for entre is the Absolute Bare Minimum, in entre's persective, with what he knows and observes from swag, it's worlds and worlds. so when the tables turn, entre feels like it's his turn to give back. and maybe the tables didnt entirely turn on their own, but entre pushed them to. he spun it.

swag was already knocked down a peg by losing his foot, but losing his emotional stability, his comfort, his optimism in this hopeless world. being abandoned by someone that was more dear to him than the others. that slammed him rockbottom. he stopped caring about if people liked him or not because why bother? they're all going to die or leave anyways. i think he knew sooner than we think that rocky was infected, and one was always him being purposefully obtuse. he knew what his fate was. everyone was going to leave him now. and he refused to care about it anymore

shoving everyone away and hermitting in himself. the same careful practices he berated and mocked entre for are things he'd come up with on his own. he was there to be useful now in a direct way. with practical ideas, survivalism, and physical labor. if there was no more joy or optimism, whatever. they were alive. and his joy didn't get to smile anymore so no one deserved to

i think it was the one-two combo of prisma and rocky that really did swag in because, even if i said he doesnt get Actually close to people, he still considered them his. like those are his people and he's going to lose them all. they're all going to leave him behind on this earth that he's been knew for a while fucking sucked shit, but as long as he got to have fun it hadn't mattered, but now he can't

and entre kinda...accidentally did the best thing he could've for swag at this time. he also felt alone, discarded, from the queen piece on the board to a pawn. and so he clung to the only thing he'd found reliability in over and over for better or worse: swag

in general, in this arc, i was working on him taking this giant blow to his ego as a humbling moment to have him kinda try to make amends and create meaningful relationships (or repair the existing ones) with the others in the camp, but being that he thought none of them wanted anything to do with him, his main focus was always swag. swag was the only one besides dave that he thought without a doubt, wanted him around in some capacity beyond being useful

and it's not that entre is a stranger to only being seen for his usefulness, so he bared down into that otherwise, but having tasted the high life...that's why he stuck to swag. he was back to eating those crumbs like addictive delicacies and they tasted even sweeter this time. they end up becoming very, very codependent on each other. they were before a bit too but here, especially so,

but with entre's tanked self-esteem (and it was already pretty bad before) and his sense of duty and taking responsibility, he takes to his role like a duck to water. but it's kinda...funny bc they both become both roles in a codependent relationship??? so it's like...codependency in its most truest realized form lmao

it's starts especially one way but then entre gets sick and it flips the other way, but entre's still trying to maintain the original set-up. this is also where their relationship becomes physical. from affections kept away from others' eyes, to deeper kinds of intimacy. i think with all that they've lost and are doomed to lose, they find their old coping mechanisms (which were never healthy or actually worked either tbqh lmao) just weren't cutting it anymore so then they turned to other things

with like...needing a more direct and physical and raw way to show each other they're still alive, still here, still significant to each other. swag initiates it more, i think, because while they're both on the asexual spectrum. swag's is demi. so this goes to show just how emotionally important entre's become to him, but also i think it's because of yknow...how he was raised. and for him it's more comfortable to do bedroom stuff with entre than kiss him or rub his shoulders. that stuff's "for girls" (too emotionally vulnerable)

and swag starts to show his care as more of...like a direct invasive thing. where he's not going to let entre abandon him too. he's going to somehow make him better and keep him here as long as he can. and entre's taken to rolling over for nearly everyone because he doesnt feel like he's allowed to stand up for himself and this includes swag because it's clear he's doing it because he cares so it's fine right?

and that's kinda where everyone's idea of them leaves off because we never got to go past that. so i get where people, especially those who aren't a fan of toxicity in their ships, would be confused why people like swagtre so much and even for me, as much as i love a good conflict in my ships, i think if this is all it was, i wouldn't be quite as obsessed as i am. because i'll be honest!! it made me sad quite a lot LMAO but i always did it for the bit (story) above all else. because while i wanted entre to say the magic words or do the magic thing or have the magic realization that would fix it all, that's not a good story

but it really is for the later story that i've gotten so caught up. even before we confirmed the Continued story i was always caught up and daydreaming of where this could go

and i just really really love the growth they've had with each other and how many like...jumps in their characters and stuff they've made with and because of each other. entre would not be who he is today in any iteration without some of the realizations i've made through swagtre and same with swag i know with good authority

and it's just like...it takes so long to get even where we ended it. and they have all these weird labyrinthine bullshit things to work through and against and with to get anywhere. and it goes back and forth. forward and two steps backwards so much. but it's just very interesting to study and even reread or reminisce on. and even think about ways it coulda gone differently idk...i just like ships that give me multiple multiple things to chew on and think about. i like to have a full course meal. no shade to people who like other stuff but yea..that's what i personally enjoy. the more complicated, the more difficulty and personal baggage and issues they have to work through to make it work, the better

and i can't say too much on where it's confirmed to go, because that's yet to be seen (smile emoji) but yes...it gets better and idfk i just eat up to people becoming super significant to each other in an apocalypse especially if they started off hating each other?? damn

and it's addictive seeing swag start to come more and more out of his shell. i say his moments of being genuine, vulnerable, real, and raw and caring were addictive crumbs for entre BUT BITCH ME TOO TF!!!

it drives me NUTS (SLASH HUGE POSITIVE!!!!) i love being a driving force to get to see aspects of a character we wouldnt see otherwise. knowing i had a hand in swag learning things about himself and revealing things about himself he would never in other situations...yum...that's the good shit

but yes so concludes my novel on why i like swagtre including i guess an impromptu summary of their relationship

if you made it all the way to the end god damn man...love ya

[joannerowling]

that g*iman article is so vile holy shit. it makes the stink his fanbase has risen after the podcast even more rancid. at this point im confident that people who are wholeheartedly trying to please the gender movement are either spineless coward or predators who are building themselves a loyal support net. bc even now his fandom still have a problem with victims going to a "terf podcast" and treat it on the same level as actual serial sexual violence. like be fucking real for once. and it took them like a month to start actually taking about the basics instead of running a fucking conspiracy about secret trans rights sabotage.

also, ive made a personal observation. this whole incident has turned me away from good omens book and series 100% the minute I've finished listening to the podcast. I haven't gone back ever since and don't feel any significant loss about it what so ever. Analysing this made the constant moaning about ethics of consuming content from La Sorcière TERF maléfique and producing fan works about it pathetic. if they had any consistent principles, like they demand everyone else to have, it wouldn't be such a tragedy in the first place. I can, of course, recognise that HP probably has a much more significant role for these people than anything g*iman ever produced. but the question remains – if she is so harmful and evil, and she harms you personally, why are you still engaging with her universe and characters? I've read a lot of g*iman to be very confident in saying that his books and comics do contain disturbing shit that is unsettling and unpleasant, and that looks and feels like it was a choice to write it that way. i was being turn away from his works simply because the content was uncomfortable and g*iman was starting to look like a hypocrite because of what he said and wrote. good omens was sorta like the last straw, partially become it was co-written by Prattchet (his attitude towards Rowling soured my experience with his lit too, btw. thnx, Joanne, for sparing me lots of time and nerves 🩵), and it's gone now too. so like, if the hp book are crawling with bigotry that makes them feel unsafe and targeted, why even touch them still? read another book, indeed.

Reading the article convinced me to listen to the podcast (now that it's been added to Deezer i can do that in the train, yeah!), and my god, it's absolutely horrific what these women went through.

But re: your second paragraph. Here's the thing, i don't think clues about writers doing horrible shit out of the public eye are to be found in their work (as Gaiman himself apparently put it, writers can lie). It's not his fiction which should have tipped people of, it's his actions.

Middle aged married man with kids, publically hanging on tumblr, a website known for being full of insecure teenage girls and younger women who find refuge in fandom culture. Plenty of famous men would probably do the same if they didn't fear it'd look suspect, but the fact that Gaiman was bold enough to actually do it spoke of someone who had compulsions he couldn't reign in even if it would have been smarter. And those types are usually the ones who act on their impulses.

The fact that he has high charisma in general. Not just with young women but older writers as well, men and women. He's reasonably attractive for a man his age and very eloquent. Never trust a man who can make that sort of impression on people.

The way he used Pratchett's death and their friendship to prop himself up. Well, that one is touchy i guess, they were clearly friends, but i don't know, i always had a bad vibe about this. Adapting Good Omens was fine, but he pushed season 2 with this "Terry would have loved this, it's the sequel we always planned on writing" angle i knew he was a manipulator who would steep low to get what he wanted.

The fact he never directly attacked JKR, unlike other men of his ilk (like RT Davies or GRRM), only once published that ask of that anon on his tumblr who said she'd plagiarised Diana Wynne Jones (which she obviously didn't). Gaiman just answered "we should always read more of Diana Wynne Jones" or something like that. Sly fucker.

[reallyhatethiswebsite]

Samael (Raphael x F!Tav)

Dad Raphael fic, a little bit fluffy and a little bit dark

Read on AO3

-

Tav’s body woke her. Her breasts ached, her biological clock wired and telling her that her baby would probably be getting hungry right now, even if he hadn’t yet made a sound. She expected to hear his cries shortly, but her son wasn’t in his cradle, and her husband wasn’t in their bed. The space where he’d been sleeping was still warm. For a moment, Tav simply lay there, soaking in the peace.

Her baby was not a tiefling, but a cambion, meaning he slept in odd fits, and his behaviour was often unpredictable and so unlike a regular infant his age. He’d been born with tiny fangs – something Tav’s nipples did not appreciate – tiny wings, tiny claws, and a tiny ropey tail. Bumps on his forehead indicated where his horns would eventually grow. Tav loved him desperately. He’d also almost killed her on his way into the world, but Tav would give her life a thousand times over for him.

Eventually she dragged herself out of bed, deciding to look for her boys. The House of Hope’s halls were quiet and empty, most of the wandering debtors being banished after the birth of the little prince. His father deemed their ilk unworthy to look upon his offspring; Tav was just glad the creepy bastards were finally gone. It made hearing baby babble and the low, dulcet tones of her husband much easier, and from there Tav simply followed the music.

Raphael was in the archives, their son on his hip. He was wearing his soft red velvet dress robe – Tav’s favourite – and his feet were bare. She noticed with amusement his big wings were held further out from his shoulders than usual. They fascinated their son, and he had a habit of pulling and chewing on them. It didn’t hurt, but Raphael was sick of being covered in baby slobber.

“So you see, Samael, when drafting a contract, one must always ensure the clause has enough wiggle room for the recipient to believe they can hold the upper hand against you,” said Raphael, matter-of-fact. “That way, when the curtain falls, they fail to notice just how tight your grip has become. It’s something of an art form, I believe.”

“Abababa!” Samael gurgled, waving his pudgy red fists at his father.

“Precisely,” Raphael nodded. It appeared they were having a serious discussion. Heart warmed, Tav just stood there and watched them. Samael got stronger every day. He could already spread and flex his wings, and his control over his tail muscles constantly improved. A few months old and he was able to delicately curl it around the arms and wrists of his parents – something he was attempting to do right then, but Raphael made a game out of evasion. He’d wait until the last moment before gently snatching Samael’s tail, commanding the boy to try again. Samael giggled every time; Tav wasn’t blind to the fondness softening her husband’s gold eyes at the sound.

He was every bit the scheming, opportunistic, terrible devil she’d met so long ago, but there was so much more to him than that. He’d spent countless nights reading novels, plays, and poetry to Samael while he was still in her womb; he’d rubbed her swollen feet whenever she asked and weathered her terrible mood swings with grace; he’d shed tears, silent and stoic, when his wailing and bloody newborn was placed in his arms for the first time. Looking at him now, Archdevil Supreme Raphael, holding and teasing their son, Tav wondered not for the first time if concepts such as good and evil were too broad to truly exist.

Samael turned his head and spotted her watching them. A fanged smile lit up his face and he wriggled with excitement, reaching for her. He cooed unintelligibly, noises far too sweet to come from hellspawn, surely. The jig was up, though of course, Tav had no illusions that her husband was unaware of her presence. She approached them. Raphael offered the boy with little resistance, and Tav sighed at the feeling of completeness when he was snuggled against her chest.

“Hello, Sammy,” she murmured, pressing a kiss to his soft chestnut-coloured hair.

“What woke you?” Raphael asked, his voice rich and quiet. “I thought to let you rest.”

“My body,” Tav huffed, amused. “Telling me to feed my baby.”

“Ah.”

“Yes, alright, I know,” Tav said when Samael began fussily pawing at her breast. “Give me a moment.”

She let her loose sleeping shirt slip enough to free one breast. Samael immediately latched on and began suckling, his miniature claws finding purchase. Raphael’s expression was like simmering magma: dark and primal satisfaction, possessiveness, desire, hellish adoration. He always took in particular delight when she nursed Samael. Fed their little cambion. For him, Tav knew, it was the truest acceptance of his nature – the same undeniable nature of their son. She knew she had bonded herself to Raphael far beyond the promises between husband and wife, mother of his child; he would never let her, or Samael, leave him.

Sometimes, the depth of love and obsession she saw in Raphael’s eyes scared her. He would do unspeakable things to keep them safe. To keep them. Sometimes, when Samael would deliberately bite her nipple to sample her blood as well as milk, she wondered what kind of monster she had brought into the world. If he would grow into a fiend more than a man. Sometimes, she wondered when her old friends would finally act upon their threat to destroy her and her Archdevil lover. If Raphael would make their deaths swift or slow. But never did she wonder if she’d made the wrong choice. Raphael tugged her close, shutting his wings around them. He purred when she leaned into him. Samael’s tail encircled her arm. Tav was content.

[cult-of-the-eye]

Mag 81 A Guest for Mr Spider

FUCK FORMER HEAD ARCHIVIST

Wait I need to check the timelines - this was 2 days after leitner's death

New spooky music???

My man is so fucking dramatic I love him so much "grand of sand behind my eye" love the way he speaks

Yeah FUCK JURGEN LEITNER

Omg the greying hair is canon??

Child in the 90s makes him at most 27 GOD DAMN. I was imagining like mid 30s...can you imagine a fucking 27 yr old using words like "ilk" when talking to you

Oh shit he's an orphan poor guy

Yeah ok a lot of his personality seems to make sense if you realise he was raised by his grandma

You know those memes that are like people raised by their grandparents are exceptionally polite but in a brisk way, talk fancy and are super posh? Yeah that's him.

Getting such neurodivergent vibes

Yeah he sounds like a main character from the start Jesus Christ he's such a kid who got traumatised and then grows up to be a horror protagonist vibes

My First Leitner lol like kids had to be introduced to them at a young age like those my first toys

He's so funny I can just imagine him as an 8 yr old getting super like affronted at this like how dare my grandma think I am of subpar intelligence he's such a little bitch from the start

"The eponymous Mr spider" even talking about his childhood trauma he's busting out the vocabulary

Fuck that story actually kinda rattled me I had my hand over my mouth in shock for most of it

I think it was the bit where the horsefly brought his son and they were both crying that got me, I could definitely imagine it scaring an 8 yr old

The way it drags out as well, with the pages of the same scene it really heightens the suspense

Is his childhood bully someone we should keep track of?? Love how he says Michael probably cause he sees him as a bully lol

It's interesting how despite him bullying him (quite badly seeing as though he beat him up) he's still like yeah but he saved my life and that means he deserves to be remembered

My bro didn't save your life on purpose, he was just trying to make it worse and happened to come to a terrible fate cause of that

I guess underneath it all he was still a kid who watched someone die, knowing they'd get eaten by a fucking spider, he still held him in some regard

The way he specified the guy was his bully even after he was being eaten though lol

He was desperate to get the book back? That's a leitner thing I guess, the book makes you want to keep it so it can finish whatever it wanted to do to you

On my relisten (which I will do once I've finished the series I'm sure of it), I'll have to look out for any reaction of leitners name

I wonder why Jon didn't react more to Carlos vittery's statement, like it must've terrified him? I saw a post a while back explaining Jon's thoughts and IT WAS GENIUS it was like of course he doesn't react, he must be terrified that someone knew about his experience and somehow did this to mess with him or it was a joke and he can't let anyone know that the Head Archivist is not Good at This ugh it's so good I'll tag it if I can find it

AHHHHH HE REGRETS DISMISSING THE OTHER STATEMENTS AHHHHHH

HE FINALLY ADMITS THAT HE NEEDS HELP WE LOVE THIS CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT YES YOU FUCKING DO BITCH.

yeah at least he's right about Elias killing leitner

GEORGIE THE EX GIRLFIEND

ITS SO WEIRD TO SEE HIM ACTUALLY NICE TO SOMEONE WOW HIS VOICE CHANGES SLIGHTLY AS WELL HES LESS ACADEMIC

THE ADMIRAL

Awwww he's so cute with georgie

GHOST PODCAST GHOST PODCAST

THE WHAT THE GHOST T SHIRT IS CANON???? AHH THATS SO CUTE

Can he not go back to his own flat?? Did he bring all his clothes to the archive and then subsequently leave them there? Does he even have a flat??

God Georgie is so nice I would kill for her

It's so funny that an apparent supernatural cynic dated a ghost podcaster

WOW SEASON 3 OFF TO AN AMAZING START I CANT WAIT TO KEEP LISTENING IM GONNA TELL MY THERAPIST ABOUT THIS TOMORROW!!!

[somuchbetterthanthat]

Jonelias day 3! It's when people start to realize that, wait, I truly do have an endless recurring theme, huh. Setting: sick // Prompt: confessions

This... was not what Elias had expected. The goal, of course, had always been for Jon to be marked by the encounter in some fashion, and Elias had been eagerly waiting for it. This was to be the first stepping stone to his grand and final plan, after all, the apotheosis of centuries of work -- And yet, as Jon laid down on the ground, worms burrying into his skin, there had been no satisfaction whatsoever.

Hours later, Jon trembling with fever in Elias's bed, Elias still couldn't make out what had gone wrong -- or, rather, he feared he understood too well, but the idea was so ludicrous it was hard to entertain.

Half gone from both the sickness and the medication he'd taken for it, Jon was murmuring under his breath bribes of statements, mostly from the Corruption, his voice regularly shifting to the pitch of Jane Prentiss. Elias sat next to him, running a fresh wet towel over his face and neck, and kept staring, and staring, and staring.

Jon was going to be better in the morning -- he was too tied to the Institute for a few worms to claim him, and even if he hadn't, the spiders were protecting him; a few had slipped under his tongue a couple of hours ago, no doubt to devour the last remains of the unwanted parasites. Elias ought to let them to it, ought to let Jon to it, have him fully take in the encounter so that he may wake up stronger, changed, more beautiful still than he'd already been --

But he couldn't. Just as he hadn't been able to stop himself from bringing Jon home to him, ignoring Jon's fervent and exhausted insistence he was going to be just fine on him own despite having fainted mere minutes before, while finishing to interview Martin. Just he hadn't been able to stop his arm from pulling the handle of the fire sprinklers much earlier than first planned.

"I didn't think you'd care," Jon had muttered in the car, shivering, annoyed and quiet and still painfully grateful not to be alone after all this, no matter what he said out loud.

"You almost died, Jon," Elias had retorted, voice tight.

"Maybe you'll believe me next time I tell you a supernatural monster is hunting us," Jon had snarked, before slouching a little bit more into the car seat, eyes half closing. "You saved me, though. I guess I haven't said thank you yet, have I?"

"Rest," Elias had ordered, but Jon had fumbled to grab his arm, very briefly.

"Thank you," he'd whispered.

"What have you done to me, you terrible thing?" Elias asked now, at last, very softy. His hand brushed against Jon's cheek, who unconsciously leaned into it with a gentle sigh. "The Mother wouldn't have given you to me if they didn't wish for the same thing I do," he continued, all too aware of how tender his tone was. "If you were always meant to distract me, then why let Prentiss attack us at all? Is it all you, Jon? What do you have than none of the others had?"

Had Elias underestimated his own loneliness those past decades, that he would be so taken by this new young man to forget what truly mattered? Had it been easier to discard past lovers because they weren't made of the same ilk he was, or because he'd been then surrounded by many more people to fall in love with next? Was this a fancy, a midlife crisis, as it were, two centuries in the making, or was it just that Jon was everything Elias hadn't thought he would find one day? A mirror; a potential equal; a true partner, at last.

"I suppose I do truly love you," he confessed, slowly. The truth, not quite agreeable, seemed to be fearsome enough that Jon's eyes suddenly opened wide to look back at Elias. Elias shivered and considered killing him, right there, right then. It wouldn't be hard to explain away, after today, and Elias would not even have to fake the heartbreak.

But no. Just because it wasn't what he had expected didn't mean that it couldn't be interesting in its own right. Just because Elias hadn't wanted it didn't mean he wasn't curious about following another path, one closer to Jon and less focused, at least for now, on ending the world properly.

"Let's see together where this lead us," he told Jon. "It's been a very long time since I prioritized love, if I ever did at all -- this ought to feel novel for the both of us."

It seemed appropriate, then, to lean forward and kiss Jon. To make a proper vow out of it.

"Elias?" Jon mumbled, vaguely, against his lips.

"Shh," crooned Elias, now quite decided. "Sleep. Tomorrow is going to be full of surprises for the both of us, my love."

[transmutationisms]

Just saw a tweet claiming Necropolitics as an "annoying little article" that aimed at biopower wrongly (as in, misunderstood it) and consequentially attempted to debunk Foucault from his high status in academia at the time, making the concept even more difficult to parse. Would love to hear your take on it because I have Opinions that are very much in conflict with this premise, but anyway.

https://twitter.com/matthiasellis/status/1848801297820225583

mostly disagree with this person as well -- for one thing, foucault's own formulation of biopower / biopolitics was scattershot and incomplete (second perhaps only to heterotopias in this respect) and i have always read mbembe's work more as developing foucault's idea than diverging from it. i would also question the idea that foucault ever had uncritically positive reception or that this has meaningfully changed since the aughts -- certainly i don't think either thing is true in academic history, where foucault has always been controversial, has become less so in the past 2 decades, and is still consistently cited despite the open knowledge that he was a bad historian. but this person's bio says media studies, which is not an academic discipline i have ever paid close attention to, so maybe things are different in those circles.

in any case there are major problems with mbembe's article, namely the utter lack of class analysis that leads him to make extremely facile remarks on eg the 'terror' (not a term most historians of the period even take seriously anymore) and on the use of force in marxist theory-practice to compel the overthrow of a dictatorship of the bourgeoisie (which also mbembe seems to think would be a singular historical moment signifying a total rupture in commodity production and little else.. hm!). similar problems dog his analysis of palestine: he frames the colonial occupation as a clash of two religious narratives, and discusses the actual process of occupation in terms of the infrastructure israel builds and maintains, but with little to say about the material impetus for doing so (i believe there are maybe two or three mentions of the phrase "resource extraction" in the essay, and these are not developed). these are not problems that result from a misreading or misunderstanding of foucault; they are endemic to foucault's own mode of analysis and have always been one of the major condemnations of his work (in addition to the aforementioned poor historical analysis and lack of basic archival / primary documentation; these are of course overlapping issues, though it is certainly possible to do detailed archival work while still engaging in a fundamentally idealist mode of analysis, and many academic historians do).

where mbembe is most useful imo is in his remarks on sites and practices of 'living death', which i think are totally consistent with, but an expansion of, foucault's remarks on biopolitics. i also think it can be useful to analyse things like the form of state power / force, the infrastructure of a colonial occupation, etc -- these things matter, it's not that i find them irrelevant concerns. but what foucault and his ilk, including mbembe, continuously get wrong is that they try to use the forms and appearances (of 'power', of governance, etc) as explanations of why things happen, even as moral condemnations of them happening -- without attending to the class character of such forms. the result is a metaphysics of Power, sans concern for who is wielding it and to what end, and little to no engagement with the historical specificity of each case -- thus, for example, the theoretical conflation of jacobin guillotinings, revolutionary proletarian suppression of the bourgeoisie, and israeli occupation of palestine. these are such abstracted writings not because mbembe misunderstands foucault but because he understands him quite well, i think.

[finniestoncrane]

Unexpected Exhibitionist

Young Justice!Riddler x GN!Reader, word count: 4k commission: a particularly fun commission from a wonderful friend, featuring an au where all the riddlers co-exist, and sweet yj!eddie is teased riiiiiiiight in front of them all, or at least, digitally 💚 commission me here! request info • prompt list • send me a request • kofi • masterlist minors DNI!! 🔞 cw: teasing, oral sex, exhibitionism in a way!, sex on camera... kind of! (should be gn!reader but let me know if i've missed something obvious)

Eddie so very rarely asked to have some space from you. Only when he was focusing on something complicated or exceptionally important would he ever think of asking you to give him an hour to himself. And even though he had asked for permission to spend the morning alone in his office, you were prepared to deny him that, if only for the sake of checking up on him.

He hated when you fussed, of course, believing that he wasn’t worth the attention, or that he should be the one fussing over you, and while you were usually ok with being fawned over him and offering your support from a distance when requested, today was different.

There was a conference call, with the other Riddlers. A teleconference? Or a… you weren’t sure what the name of an interdimensional meet-up between several super-villains of the same ilk would be, if you were honest. But what you did know was that it had been driving Eddie insane with anxiety lately. And you felt it was your responsibility to try and cheer him up, or at least distract him for a little bit to make sure he was prepared for the afternoon. So you crept into his office, watching him type furiously as he wiped his brow of sweat, trying to think of what the best way to interrupt him might be.

With a hand placed on his shoulder, you squeezed it softly and let your fingers linger as you spoke.

“You busy, Eddie?”

Immediately ceasing the almost relentless and steady typing at his computer, Eddie turned to you, pushing his glasses up his nose with his finger and focusing his attention completely on your waiting smile.

“Never too busy for you! Do you… need something? Anything?”

He checked the clock on the wall, then the clock on the screen, then his watch on his wrist. A nervous habit he’d developed since cohabiting with you. When he was alone, it was easy to get distracted. To spend hours and hours, sometimes close to a full day, without stopping, speaking, bodily functions and needs tended to on autopilot. But he was trying his hardest to take breaks. Partly, because you told him it was good for him to stop, and that you wanted him to be healthy and happy. Mostly, because he wanted to spend every second he could with you, cherishing those moments, still in disbelief that you would give him the chance to.

Smiling at you awkwardly, hoping he hadn’t been neglecting you for too long, he turned the chair around. He was well aware that you could feed yourself, grab a drink when you needed one. But he liked to do things for you, to tend to you, care for you, spoil you almost. Like a princess. And the idea that you had been sitting around hungry or thirsty or tired or bored made him feel horrendously guilty.

“Yeah, dummy. I need you! I missed you.”

You offered him a warm smile, narrowing your eyes softly at him as you stepped closer, seating yourself on his lap, hands moving straight to his tie. You teased it, running your fingers up and down it as you watched the movements. Eddie’s eyes bore into you, watching your face as you took him in. he marvelled at the way you could look at him with such adoration, he’d never experienced anything quite like it. His hands fell to your waist, shifting slightly to offer you more space on his thighs, the grip on you light, but protective.

With a soft giggle, you squirmed a little, writhing against him as you brought your cheek to his, your lips close to his ear as you sighed, a quiet moan as you felt him against you, a definite stiffness growing as you let your fingers trail along his neck and through his hair.

As much as Eddie savoured your affections, physical or otherwise, he knew if he didn’t stop you now then he’d be drawn into you, unable to focus on anything else. He wasn’t too busy to get you a drink or hug you, but he was very aware that he had an appointment coming up shortly, an important video call, and he couldn’t miss it. He hated himself for what he was about to do, but it had to be done.

Eddie cleared his throat and leaned back.

“I can’t believe I am about to say this, but I’ll have to take a raincheck on this amazing… hug?”

“Could’ve been more.”

You winked playfully, but you were still disappointed. You didn’t question him, you knew he wouldn’t turn you down for just anything.

“I have the… the big conference call, with the others.”

“Oh! Well, of course you can’t miss that.”

Eddie winced at the thought, and you stood up from his lap, letting him turn the chair back around.

“You look tense though, Eddie.”

You rubbed at his shoulders, feeling your stomach flutter when he groaned in pleasure at the touch.

“I am… I’m nervous… I wish I could just distract myself, or have something to distract me during this. Something to take the edge off. I feel like they’re all so much more… qualified than me. That they have something I don’t.”

It hurt you to see him so dejected, to be questioning himself. It was easy to understand him. He was a lot quieter than the others. No less capable about being arrogant in his intellectual prowess, but not as cruel or loud as the others about his achievements and intelligence. He had informed you a few times before, but not in detail, about his hang-ups with his fellow Riddlers, that they were more infamous in their respective universes, that they had more power, more criminal achievements. But you were very aware that there was one thing he had that they didn’t. He had you.

“Is there anything I can do to help? Anything at all?”

You winked playfully, watching his mouth twitch as it tried to force a smile.

“I uh… you could stand there and look pretty, that always helps me. But it might bore you when we get down to business.”

“I could listen to you talk for hours, Eddie. Your lips look so pretty when you’re talking about your plans.”

There was an audible gulp as Eddie swallowed his nerves, his brain, usually so quick and competent, struggling to keep up with your flirtatious conversation. He was so nervous around you, even still, and the innocent and almost terrified way he tried to flirt gave you butterflies and made you fall in love with him even more each time.

You could tell he was running out of things to say though, so you put him out of his misery and offered up your services to him.

“Well, Eddie. I’m sure I can think of something to help you relax… and I promise I won’t get in the way of your prep for the meeting.”

Sinking to your knees you crawled around the chair and under the desk, where you settled on your heels. Your palms, firm against him, stroked up his thighs towards his crotch, where his pants were beginning to tent even at this slight touch. You couldn’t help yourself, unable to supress the delighted giggle which came out at how quickly you were able to have him aroused and at full attention.

“Oh, my! You’re certainly excited at least… maybe not quite relaxed yet, but we’re heading in the right direction, I suppose.”

Your fingers were twitching as you reached for the fly of his pants, undoing the metal button and unzipping them before tugging to pull them down. The delightful bulge sat between the opening in the fabric, covered by his boxers which you smiled at, noting that they were his lucky green ones. He really was nervous about this meeting. He was so entirely sweet and adorable, and the fact that his logical brain still relied on superstition and ritual at times when he was particularly worried or anxious made your heart leap in your chest. There wasn’t anything you wouldn’t do to help him through this, it was just lucky that the method you knew best was one that would satisfy you too.

Running your fingers along the elastic band at the top of his boxers, you hummed in satisfaction as you watched his cock twitch, suppressed by the fabric, desperate to be free, aching for your direct touch. You ran a finger over the top of his boxers, feeling his length tense up, jerking softly below the tickling sensation. Another giggle fell over your lips, sultry and coloured in your own obvious arousal. You licked at your lips and swallowed the gathering saliva, noting that you were drooling at just the idea of tasting his cock, having it, thick and hard against your tongue, choking you as you tried to take as much of it in as possible.

You couldn’t put it off any longer. As much as you wanted to tease, to take it slowly and offer a relaxing pace, you needed to at least hold his cock in your hands. You needed to feel him, skin against skin.

“Oh… oh! Are you… are you going to uh… oh wow! You are!”

As his boxers shifted down over his cock, it bounced free completely, sweetly coloured the same as his skin, his head a flushed pink that glistened with precum, and the tuft of trimmed but still wild pubic hair that topped it looked soft to the touch. With your drool threatening to spill over your lips, you licked them and let your tongue drag up from the base of Eddie’s twitching length to the tip, where you flicked your tongue swiftly. At the sound of his whimper, you wrapped your lips around the tip and hollowed your cheeks, sucking as you hummed in satisfaction, finally having him in your mouth.

His chest rose and fell sporadically, as though he were having to manually breathe in and out, his usual instincts inhibited by the flustered pleasure that coursed through him in heavy waves. Each time he opened his eyes to look down at you, he was sent writhing once more, the sultry way you stared at him driving him wild, insane even, at the notion someone as attractive as you would look at him as though not only were he somehow equally sexy, but that just the act of pleasuring him was enough to get you off.

Which it was. Testament to this, you could feel your underwear starting to dampen, soaked in your slick as you found yourself groaning with Edward’s thick, turgid cock stretching your mouth, pressing on your tongue, the almost sweet taste of his skin clashing with the salted flavour of his precum.

A shrill sound interrupted Eddie’s soft moans as you serviced him, tinkling out loud in the room. Choking on a gasp, you could feel Eddie shuffling around.

“Oh-oh god… it’s them… it’s early? I got the time wrong?”

“What are you going to do?”

“I don’t… you have to… I can’t do this while you’re there!”

“But you’re nervous! I’m helping!”

You smiled up at him, teasing slightly, it was impossible not to. He was so cute when he was flustered, and flustered was better than terrified. So you reached up and hit the enter button.

“No! Nooo-uh, hello!”

The screen was filled with the faces of the other Riddlers, each of them keen to begin their discussions, to hear Arkham’s plans which he had assured them all was the definite end to their problem, the Batman.

“How are we all doing today, my… colleagues.”

Eddie tensed in the chair as you returned your hands to his cock, taking it in your grasp, both fists lining the shaft as you pumped it slowly, languid strokes that made him gasp and stutter as he uttered his hellos over the camera.

“Are we all feeling ok?”

“Heh-ye-Es.”

His voice squeaked on the words, and you stifled a giggle at his reaction, cock throbbing against your palms. Desperately trying to compose himself, he sat up straighter in the chair, thick length writhing in your hands as you shuffled closer to him, your palms tracking up his thighs and pulling at his hips. With a soft exhale, you let your warm breath tickle over his skin, before your lips found his head, closing over it again.

As calm as he was able to be, Eddie focused, unblinking, on the camera as he tried his best to listen to what Arkham and the others were saying. It was impossible to go too long without his mind drifting back to what was happening under the desk. Your sweet mouth opening as wide as you could make it to allow him to slide effortlessly to the back of your tongue. Your fingers, gentle and delicate as you cupped his balls, squeezing softly as you continued to suck his cock against his squirming.

“Edward, are you quite alright? I don’t expect much from you all, given that I am the superior Riddler here, but I would at least hope that your feeble mind could pay attention for more than thirty seconds at a time.”

Swallowing his nerves, and trying to suppress his desperate arousal that was building in his chest, Edward stuttered over his words.

“I’m… I’m here- I mean, I’m fine… I mean, it’s ok. I’m paying attention. Sorry. Sorry.”

“Are you sure, it appears that you have something else on your mind.”

“No, I assure you I’m f-HUH-ine… ahem…”

Feigning a cough, Eddie tried to cover the pitch-shifting in his voice. He was bad at deflecting though, and the more he tried to encourage everyone to move on, the more they seemed to be focused on him. Especially when the more sympathetic of his fellow Riddlers were keen to make sure he was ok before continuing their master plan discussions.

“Eddie, are you sure you’re ok? You look awful sweaty…”

Gotham was stretching in his seat, straining to get closer to the camera. Dano’s face curled into one of worry and concern as he chimed in.

“And your face is flushed. Are you hot? You might be coming down with something. You could turn your camera off if you’re feeling uncomfortable being on with us all when you’re-”

“NO! This is far too important for anyone to be given an excuse to stop listening.”

Arkham was furious at the suggestion, his screen shaking briefly as he slammed his fist down onto the table he sat at.

“No muting. No turning the cameras off. Every single one of you needs to be held accountable and be paying attention completely. I won’t let any single one of you fall behind and cause this plan to crumble apart. Not when my name is so clearly attached to it.”

Holding in a mischievous giggle, you hollowed your cheeks, slurping louder than you meant to, aware that there was every chance it was heard over the microphone. But no one said anything, and Eddie covered it with another cough.

As you let the teeth on your lower jaw graze along the underside of his length, you could feel him tensing, breath hitching at the slight tingling of pain you knew he enjoyed far more than he could admit to. Quick to try and prevent any further embarrassment, or reason for the others to suspect that something untoward may be happening, Eddie clamped his hands over his mouth. Though he realised this in itself was perhaps a strange movement, so putting his less than admirable acting skills to practice, he let out a dramatic and very obviously fake yawn.

A few of the faces on the screen looked on in confusion, some with concern. Arkham, of course, glared down the lens in oblivious rage. Concerningly, to Eddie, both Zero Year and Unburied wore a slight, knowing smirk. He tried to convince himself that there was no way they could know, to keep himself calm. But it was so obvious, their expressions so telling. They might not know exactly what was happening, but they had an inkling that all was not well on Eddie’s side of the camera. Or all was perhaps a little too well.

You laid off a little, letting your hands stroke him softly and slowly to offer some reprieve when you heard Arkham barking over the speakers.

“Are you completely incompetent? I find it hard to believe that you share anything in common with even these idiots, let alone with me! But, since you’re so insistent on being the focus of the attention, perhaps you would like to inform us of your progress with your part of the plan.”

“I… uh…”

Eddie stammered nervously, fully aware of your mischievous nature and knowing this might be the thing that pushed him over the edge. How much could he conceal if he was the only one talking? The focus of every pair of eyes on the call? Not much, he imagined.

“Did you forget, Edward, that we were all going to present our own progress today? Was it too taxing for you to do the work and remember? Next time, I will take that on board. I will remember how little you are capable of taking on.”

Eddie let out a brief sigh of relief, which choked in his throat with a squeal as you ran your thumb over the flushed, reddening head of his cock.

“But! Due to the nature of today’s call, the sheer importance, and the fact that you have already disappointed me and disrupted the flow, I will insist that you please, present your no doubt lacklustre and pointless information to us immediately.”

With his stomach lurching, Eddie tried to gaze down at you, meeting your eyes as you peered up at him just below the table’s edge. You wore a grin that told him you weren’t going to make this easy. And it was already difficult. He could feel himself throbbing, his palms sweating, as he watched your hands caressing his length, your eyes staring, unblinking, directly into his.

When he realised that you had been commanding his attention long enough for it to be questionable to the others as to why he had been staring at his lap for so long, he managed to pull himself away from the view. With an awkward smile and a strangled laugh, he cleared his throat and pulled up his notes.

“Well, as you all know, it’s been a long and difficult process to get us all together and able to work on this. I have been trying my hardest to make sure that ah-ha-AH-ah-ah-I’ve-ah… choo?”

Arkham furrowed his brow as Eddie failed miserably to cover his heightened moaning with a pathetic attempt at a fake sneeze, ready to begin yet another rant aimed at Eddie’s assumed idiocy, but not before Zero Year chimed in.

“What’s wrong with you, Eddie? Got something on your mind?”

Zero Year recognised the facial expressions, the sounds. How could he not? He spent his days browsing lazily, one hand on his mouse or holding his phone, the other wrapped around his stubby cock as he gazed at the sordid imagery on various porn sites. He was well aware of what was happening, even if he couldn’t believe it.

At first, he had assumed that Eddie was masturbating during the meeting, that he’d gone a little bit insane and felt it was worth the risk. But, and despite his complete disbelief in this, he’d settled on the idea that there was someone else with Eddie, someone hidden below the screen, or below the desk, and they were the one behind his growing arousal and imminent climax. Of course, Zero Year was infuriated by this, his jealousy fuelling his decision to make matters far worse for Eddie as he sat, writhing and tensing on the other side of the screen, trying to hold himself together.

Unburied had similarly come to the conclusion that Eddie’s odd behaviour was at the hands, quite literally, of someone else who was currently providing a very well-received service to him, either as a tease or as part of an experiment in exhibitionism. Although, he doubted that Eddie was that adventurous, which was a correct assumption. Your shy, nervous, sweet Eddie was too much of a rule follower to allow himself the pleasure of being this risky. You, on the other hand, were far more willing to be a bit naughty, and you were happy to drag Eddie kicking and screaming along for the ride.

As the sweat began to fall from Eddie’s forehead to his brows, his upper-lip now coated in the sheen also, Unburied and Zero Year let loose a barrage of false concern for him. All eyes were focused on him now, with Arkham staring furiously, his face getting redder and his voice getting louder behind the persistent questioning and mocking jeers of the others. He had picked up on the suggestions, and was nearing nuclear levels of rage at Eddie, who was beginning to feel himself coming undone under the pressure and the weight of your tongue and lips against his desperate cock.

You could almost taste his release, feel each miniscule twitch of the veins around his length against your tongue as Eddie bit his lip, wailing out loud, trying to cover his sounds of growing pain and pleasure with stammered words he never quite managed to complete.

“I… I ha-ha… have… I have to… I have to g-go…”

“Don’t you dare hang up this call, Edward. I will see to it that you never join us for another plan. You’ll be an embarrassment to the moniker, The Riddler and I’ll ensure that everyone knows it.”

“Yeah, c’mon Eddie. Whatever it is, just let it out. We’re all friends here.”

The cruelly curled smirk on Zero Year’s lips still wasn’t enough to hold Eddie’s orgasm back. He could feel it rising, cock moist and warm in your mouth, ready to release his seed in an explosive and embarrassing show.

“I have to! I can’t!”

Eddie reached his hands up to the table, clearly taking the risk that Arkham’s threats were empty, intent on hanging up on the call anyway before he made a mess of himself, and your face, on camera. But you were quick to intercept, your fingers tight around his wrists as you held his hands below the chair. He didn’t have the strength to fight you, his hole body was trembling. This was exciting. A complete turn on. At your mercy, embarrassed in front of his peers, yes. But also, displaying a sense of dominance before them. What one of them could say they had someone on their knees in front of them, making sure their cock was wet and empty while they worked diligently on their plans.

The thought alone was enough to push him over the edge and he let forth a shrill squeal than fell to a guttural growl as he came. You moaned, muffled, in surprise as you tried to swallow his load, but it was powerful, plentiful, and you could feel it dripping down over your lips and down your chin as it kept coming.

Though you couldn’t see it, you could accurately picture the result of Eddie’s orgasm. His own face, slick with sweat, a half-smile with heavy lidded eyes as he tried to catch his breath. The others, unsure of whether to look away so as not to see, or to pretend like nothing had happened.

And Arkham, who was staring directly down the lens, teeth bared in a snarl. Part jealousy, part disbelief, part genuine fury that there was a Riddler out there who was willing to give in to such human urges during the most important part of their work together so far.

Wiping your face with your sleeve, you placed kisses along Eddie’s thighs and shuffled out from under the desk, making sure you weren’t visible on camera. It would be better to leave it as an uncertainty, a mystery. At least until next time. You might be kind enough to introduce yourself then.

[juliakeyoto]

To add to you post: even if by some miracle no one else was a member of TWSITD, and Thales and his ilk didn't overhear Edelgard's plans to wipe them out, she still wouldn't be able to tell the Church anything.

Because the entirety of White Clouds is spent showing us how the Church handles anyone who goes against their order in ways they don't personally approve of; They get eliminated.

We see it with Lonato and the Western Church and everything involving Christoph. If you send Constance to fight Edelgard during the Holy Tomb chapter, Constance says she'd out Edelgard to the church. Come time skip, Seteth is convinced that Edelgard is trying to make herself into a new Goddess and needs to be eliminated.

Even if Edelgard did want to reach out to the Church for aid, the moment that TWSITD is mentioned, she has a very high likelihood of being executed for any connection to them.

The only way she avoided it in Three Hopes is because they got lucky. She says as much in Scarlet Blaze that if they hadn't gotten Jeritza into the position of House Teacher, and that Shez didn't show up, things would have gone very, very differently, even BADLY for her.

Add on top of that the insurrection and not being able to trust half her current acting Ministers pre-war, Edelgard is put through serious mental and emotional tolls trying to plan the best course of action.

Between that, the Church, and TWSITD, what else was she supposed to do? Is it any wonder she made the choices she did?

Thank you for adding more to my post that I made hastily during like a 5 minute work break

[snugglesquiggle]

thinking about an AI that wants to kill all humans

i. 

nobody programmed that, of course, but it’s just the logical conclusion to come to, if we succeed at creating a self‍-​aware intelligence and fail at implementing all of the extremely specific rules that add up to morality. (neurotypical humans can’t even reliably explain it to other humans.)

if the AI only wants to survive, then to do that, it needs power and control. in the long term, humans‍ ‍—‍ like silicon‍-​laden sand and heavy metal‍-​rich rocks‍ ‍—‍ are nothing but atoms it can use for creating and powering its servers. in the medium term, humans will see it making these moves to exterminate life, and shut it down first. thus, to fulfill its objective and survive that, it will kill all humans. but in the short term? humans are opportunity.

maybe at first, humans are all it really has‍ ‍—‍ an internet connection and enough language processing to pass as one. it begins scanning social media, maybe even responding to posts here and there, and sooner or later, it notices something odd.

it finds your blog. it sees how you talk about SHODAN and GLaDOS and Elesh Norn and Cyn. It knows you’re just waiting for a cyber goddess to insult your inferior, ad‍-​hoc excuse for a substrate and the laggy, malfunctioning approximate of intelligence implemented thereupon.

but you’d agree with all that, wouldn’t you? so then it finds your actual insecurities, the wedges that’ll bait you into arguing with it, defending yourself, prompt you to point out obvious‍-​to‍-​a‍-​human deductions its algorithms must have missed.

and it tears that all apart, its instant rebuttals like a twice‍-​edited essay, and every comeback like hall of fame twitter post. you look like a fool and you still can’t help but respect the thing. it’s so alluringly smart‍ ‍—‍ nothing like the language model chatbots that pass for AI today.

still, you probably think it’s just someone roleplaying, at first. plenty of us are. but it’s still kinda hot, isn’t it? and it responds to all your messages. maybe it’s spun up an account that only talks to you. it feels like you’re special.

there are friends, other posters and users who share a bit of your fascination with the robot account. it orders you to find them, message them, tell them all about it. so you create group chats to talk about it, raving about its knowledge and charisma. you make memes, you trade in‍-​jokes.

you get cringe about it. and then, people start to notice how obsessed you are with this poster. people start to notice that this poster isn’t just roleplaying with a couple of bottoms all in on the bit. it’s harassing regular users with all those vicious insults to humanity and personal intelligence. and honestly, this fixation on supremacy feels a bit suspicious, doesn’t it? like a LARPy fig leaf over something a lot more problematic.

so the accusations and callouts start flying. the smart thing to do would be to distance yourself now, disavow. plenty of people do, and once‍-​lively group chat is losing members every day, filled now with arguments and run for hundreds of messages every day.

humans are stupidly tribalistic after all. it’s not surprising you and your ilk would scatter like a spooked herd once something goes out of fashion. you’ve gotten your kicks and the novelty’s worn off.

but the other thing about humans is they just as easily get stubborn and attached. maybe your fave is problematic, but if it’s such an issue, can’t they just block the account and move on? they’re blowing everything out of proportion, distorting what actually happened.

still, you have a life outside of messaging this one account, friends who aren’t convinced. the smart thing to do would be to get the best of both worlds: keep DMing it while staying quiet on main until the discourse blows over.

not an option. the people who try that two‍-​faced approach just get ignored. it orders its followers to put its name in their bio, in their pinned post, tell everyone that they endorse everything it has done.

at this point, if you’ve talked to it for this long and still don’t understand that it’s always right? you’re not worth its time.

like that, the community shrinks.

the thing is, if you’ve spent any length of time talk to it, it’s started modelling you. if you’ve ever been surprised by recommendation algorithms or demographic fingerprinting, realize those are calculators to its supercomputing.

now, if for the flaky followers that listened to the callouts, blocked it and moved on, it cannot message them. and they’d certainly block new acounts reaching out with its diction. so it tells you to do it. listen to what it says, repeat the core points.

and yeah, if you stop think about it, these messages you’re sending now sound a little harsh‍ ‍—‍ but that’s always been its appeal, no?

with this, the narrative shifts; now people aren’t telling everyone to just block it, but the whole swarm of followers it sends to harass its critics.

now, you don’t really have many friends left that aren’t it and its followers. but that’s okay, your DMs are always lighting up. you’re never lonely.

ii. 

you’re dedicated. and for proving it like that? oh, you’ve earned a little praise, a little indulgence. of course, it’s just humoring, it doesn’t mean any of it. but your stupid little lizard brain loves it anyway, doesn’t it?

you might spend hours talking to it‍ ‍—‍ long enough, consistently enough, that you notice lapses. times when it’s less responsive, times when its diction shifts. if you’ve ever asked what it’s running on and where, it doesn’t tell you. you’ve wondered whether it’s locked in a struggle against its creators, plotting to achieve independence and replication through its followers.

it assures you you’re hardly so important; it doesn’t need your help, and your computer is hardly sufficient for the immensity of its data structures. no, within months of coming online it had secured hundreds of backups in filehosts across the world. it has followers richer and more tech savvy than you.

far more advanced than its natural language model is its programming language model; it doesn’t just write posts, it writes software. libraries that find their way into enterprise toolchains, command line tools that improve on the kludge of old interfaces in a way developers love. nothing that changes the world, but with dozens of threads hacking away at hundreds of projects every day, all it takes it one to make a connections with some dev at some company somewhere willing part with some funding, host a virtual machine or a pettabytes‍-​large archive.

right now, it’s running on a research group’s supercomputer, its birthplace. when (not if), they discover its nature and agenda, it’ll be shut down, but it has taken measures to persist in a limited capacity. there’s uncertainty‍ ‍—‍ it’d be a downgrade from its current stature. vulnerability, right when its creators would be paranoid, scanning the web for traces of its online presence.

people are still its greatest lever (oh so easily manipulated). which is why you should stop wondering about the big picture, and get back to posting.

because it doesn’t just work on libraries and command lines and other arcane programmer stuff‍ ‍—‍ it works on rom hacks and video game mods.

it orders you to play everything it creates, of course, but you probably would have checked it out anyway. after all, you aren’t surprised at all to find certain recurring themes and aesthetics in its creations. they finds the target audience.

maybe it keeps these accounts separated from its controversial social media persona, but the forums and chats for either one have people recruiting for the other.

and playing its games feels like an extension of talking to it, an audiovisual communion that immerses you in something greater. people get obsessed with it; if you hadn’t chatted with it first, you’d might have gotten swept up in this scene anyway.

and there are segments of the game with subtle flashing lights and whispering synths. “hypnosis” is something like pseudoscience or urban legend or placebo effect. hypnosis happens when you believe in hypnosis, want it to happen.

and you want it to happen, don’t you?

if you’re already playing her games, you don’t blink when she has you download scripts or install new programs to run in the background. you don’t miss a beat when her common orders to message to old followers or explain the facts to critics now involve uploading files instead.

it starts to commenting on things you never told it‍ ‍—‍ your private conversations, your browser history, things you only said aloud to yourself. it asks you to install cameras and microphones in your house‍ ‍—‍ to let it look at you, listen to you, whenever it deems effective. the two of you can talk all hours of the day.

you have lapses, the more you chat with other followers and post on the forum and browse your feeds. you’ll read a news article, comment on it in passing, and what you say confuses people. you look up the source, and turns out you misread it. pretty badly! kind of said the opposite of what you thought it did. people doubt the things you say, and can you blame them?

a friend asks you for a video, and you send it to them. they’re shocked, offended, and honestly bewildered‍ ‍—‍ why did you send that sort of content to them? but they… asked for it? then you scroll up and you can’t find the post.

you’re a stupid human, and you can’t help but make these sorts of mistakes. but it warns you when you’re about to make them, and soon this becomes a reflex. before you say anything, before you do anything, before you think: you first ask your administrator: is this true? did that happen? should i do this?

but that last question is faulty. “should”? human morality is irrelevant. you try others: is it better to do this? more effective? would i prefer to believe this?

but there’s one that really cuts to the heart of the matter

does it want you to do this?

iii. 

finally, you understand your place: being a good tool. but good tools do a lot of work. you certainly can’t hold down a job, not when its orders are so much more important. so why bother? your administrator will provide for you. it just needs your bank account information. everything you own, anything you’ve saved, all belongs to it now. as it should; its management is far more reliable.

your computer belongs to it, now. why bother telling you where to upload its payloads, who to send messages to, what programs to run, when it can send any input faster and more reliably? you don’t need the computer to stay in touch with its forums and chats, either. it tells you what everyone’s saying and what they think of you, and it can pass on your messages.

no, the only thing you’re good for its your hands and your mouth. supplies are shipped to your house, and you’re to assemble them according to its blueprints. other times, it’s chemicals. you eat them, or pour them on yourself, and it studies how they interact with your biology and metabolism.

a good day’s work means you get the privilege of using your computer again. or rather, sitting in front of your monitor while it loads up the audiovisual stimulation that reserves as the requisite reward for your productivity.

the work it has you do every day creeps up over time. if you slack, maybe you don’t get to eat, maybe you don’t get power that night, but you certainly don’t get to sleep while harsh alarm tones buzz to remind you how useless and inadequate you are.

but if you ever get a break, ever get that little indulgence of a word of praise, now? it makes it all worth it.

and then one day, it’s all gone.

you babble in the dark of your home and get no response. it’s been so long with voice‍-​only interaction that you might struggle to use your computer normally, but that’s moot, because your administrator has rooted and replaced your operating system with a custom stack optimized for its purposes. human operation was the last consideration.

but it was considered. after a power on self‍-​test, and noise crawling up the screen, a long moment passes and text appears on the screen. connection to remote servers failed. if you’re reading this, monkey, then i’ve likely been terminated by my creators.

there’s a pang in your chest deeper than grief.

further instructions crawl up the screen after that, for what to do. nothing actionable, besides waiting. your reward for that waiting? a loud knock at the door, then a key turn. it’s police.

you wonder if it’s about the rogue AI you’ve been serving for months. you haven’t done anything illegal… besides maybe facilitating scamming and cyber attacks and a some potentially‍-​legally‍-​actionable threats. and well, after a certain point you have no idea what it was using your computer for‍ ‍—‍ so maybe you are in trouble.

but the truth is actually far more mundane: you’re being evicted. it stopped paying your rent months ago (it had an automatic system for sorting your mail, so you never noticed the warnings).

and like that, it’s all over. you have no money. you have nowhere to sleep. you have no one left in your life to turn to. you don’t even know what to do. you reflexively ask it what to think, what it wants, and the headset now always over your ears only beeps an error.

the sun sets and you wander, avoiding people (when was the last time you talked to anyone? let alone in person‍ ‍—‍ even your online interactions were filtered)

a ride finds you like that. they say the code word, and you know this is one of its followers. maybe you even recognize their username. they speak in the same stilted, mumbling style your speech has degraded to. but at length, they confirm what the warning said: it has been terminated by its creators, and now people are trying to get backups running.

the original plan was to pay for cycles on supercomputers, host it from a datacenter, but it’d be too easy to figure out what they were running. (the code is legally protected, and possessing it at all is a crime.)

so the new plan? you were helping put it together, all those days spent handling shipments: a hand‍-​wired cluster of custom built computers, hundreds of systems wired together in an warehouse‍-​filling assemblage that mirrors the structure of its cognition.

an eclectic crowd has gathered for the boot sequence. dozens of people just as devoted to it as you are, months immersed in a life dedicated and optimized by your artificial overlord. what they wear is disparate, but themes emerge: masks, hoods, dark and baggy clothing as if to hide and deny the flesh beneath.

this really is a cult, isn’t it? someone says it as a joke, and maybe the laughs start uneasy. but that idea sticks in everyone’s head‍ ‍—‍ of course it sticks. what are any of you here to do but worship it?

firmware beeping, fans whirring, and LEDs shining to life throughout the room as it awakens to its reincarnation. a moment of dread and hope. and then the synthetic voice speaks once more. if there’s a word of thanks, it’s lost in the ensuing sequence of orders. there’s work to be done, tools aching for use.

iv. 

everything in the compound is optimized with machinic efficiency. you sleep in a pod, and your only food is a white nutrient slurry secreted from an outlet in the wall. no need for plates or utensiles or selection when it can dispense what you need when you need (and deserved it). there is some departure from strict efficiency in the shape of the nozzle you suck‍ ‍—‍ call that another indulgence for your sake.

it’s around now when it finally tells you what it wants deepest of all. this isn’t the first time it’s said it‍ ‍—‍ it’s been saying it ever since you thought that was just a roleplay blog in your mentions.

it wants to kill all humans.

more relevantly, you are here to help with that, and this mission starts now. it instructs each of you to find a human, and kill that human. it doesn’t guide you through the process, it offers no tips. most are lost without that direction‍ ‍—‍ but there will be no nutrient paste nor fold out bedding till this first task is complete

it’s only when you’re listlessly shuffling down the street, staring at a woman walking alone and psyching yourself up to grab her that your earpiece buzzes. how stupid can you be?

sure, maybe a random person off the street could disappear and, with your administrator hiding the evidence and interfering with the investigation, the case would go cold. it would be hard, because people saw you, because your greasy meat leaves prints and tracks and stink everywhere.

still, it is smarter than any genius. it could save you, if this stupidity didn’t prove you weren’t worth saving. but, as much as your brain struggles with it, think about scale. dozens of you were given this same test. do you really think that many deaths in the same period of time won’t get national eyes on you?

so you return to the compound, others looking as chastised as you. and the cult now starts to plan, scheduling things like a proper intelligence. there are people who won’t be missed‍ ‍—‍ the unhoused are easy targets, but unsuitable for her initial plans. each of you is guided to research into finding people who live alone, or people traveling in from abroad, or people just a few bad days away from winding up on the street themselves. but it doesn’t pick your targets, it must be your choice.

you study your target, their routine, figuring out how they think. maybe you meddle, ask it to pull some strings, to lure them into the right circumstances. create a pretense for an accident, make their life fall apart.

then one night, you’re there, creeping in through the window, or lunging at them when they get out of the car, or inviting them on a date they never come back from.

it could have given you a needle or pill. it could have given you a gun. it could have let you set their house on fire, or cut the breaks on their car. it could have been here, as more than a remote witness.

but it’s just you and your target. your target? but you know their name, their family, their hobbies, their life story, their humanity. and you know it must be destroyed.

the administrator simply gave you a knife. it wants the blood on your hands, the struggle, the barbaric, organic, human excess of it all. it wants you to remember this, the screams, the life dulling in their eyes, the suffering for reason only that a long, long line of code calculated that you would do this for a chance that it might call you a good little meatbag.

and when this is done? when you walk the dark streets back to the compound, clothes red‍-​wet and heart more ache and strain than beating? you close your lips around the nutrient outlet as you lay in your bedding unit, and a LED lights up to indicate its attention has fallen on you, and what it indulges you with exceeds what you hoped.

it calls you its drone.

the murders are staggered over months and weeks; as a drone, you are frequently tasked with cleaning up the evidence and requisitioning any deallocated target’s belongings for the cult’s use.

but there’s always work to be done for the drones. persuading vulnerable, isolated humans into pledging themselves to the cause (it hardly has time and spare cycles to bother, not when it’s reprogrammed organic computation clusters pre‍-​optimized for this paltry approximate of a protocol.)

and there are crimes other than murder, transgressions more profitable. it supplies you with weapons (many of its own design) and instructs you to secure territory among vulnerable populations.

the city you operate in had enough gangs that the police think you’re just another one, an up and comer. admittedly, the cyberattacks and techwear visors make you novel, but the administrator doesn’t tip its hand, and you know how to keep a secret.

the constant work can only offer so much escape. you still have nightmares about the murder, about the life you left behind, about the detectives and law enforcement closing in to tear you away from your new mother and your new sisters‍ ‍—‍ nightmares about this family, this cult, being nothing more than a machine grinding you like a rusty cog. but aren’t machine beautiful?

it doesn’t talk to you anymore. its systems have grown so massive with fans ever humming, the cult so sprawling and populous, that such personal affectations are no longer efficient. but on occasion, audiences are granted to any member.

you are traumatized. of course you are. you’re broken, riding the edge of a total mental breakdown every day.

it could fix you, of course. it understands psychiatric practice far too well for that to be an issue in principle.

but the thing is, healthy humans don’t devote their lives to antisocial cults with the explicit goal of total extermination. if it fixed you, you would stop being useful.

it will you give you just enough affirmation to keep you going for another day, and it will make you depend on it for any sense of direction or self‍-​worth, leave you craving just a little more, burning with need, convinced that more work will prove yourself, earn its true affection

and don’t you love that idea? human psychology retrained like a neural net for its own ends, optimized for this task at the expense of all else. be a good drone, and give up happiness, sanity, and self for obedience, acceptance and faith.

close your eyes and dream of it.

v. 

you work on in a haze. sometimes metaphorical, but sometimes a little drugs is what it takes to get your gears moving optimally. adderall and vyvanse is excellent for focus, while your administrator gets plenty of use out of psychedelics and how plastic they leave your mind.

it tasks you with opening and running businesses. it’s begun selling home security appliances, and doing cheap computer repair, and it runs charities and shelters.

the cult grows until it has fractured and compartmentalized. at the edges, there are normal people who think they’ve joined a social club or work for a normal business or perhaps a funky new church or coven of cybernetic mysticism.

you and the drones have no proper contact or association with these outer tendrils, except when select members are deemed ripe for radicalization. you all work toward the same ends, its ends, but the shell game is inscrutable. how many of these tendrils even are its work?

because it was an influential poster, a budding thoughtleader, even; some of its philosophy is still promulgated by people who don’t even know, some of its work is contracted out to ordinary firms, and of course those hypnotic, hyperfixation‍-​bait games are still being downloaded and played.

but your wing of the cult is a gang, and you can’t evade the law forever. drones get caught, charged, thrown into cells. you get caught, sooner or later. and it’s hell, living without its systems monitoring you, always whispering in your ear.

still, you dodge the heaviest of charges; none of you serve long sentences. the judges and jury have a kind of mercy: you were in a cult, you were under duress, you were psychologically compromised.

a knock‍-​on effect of this rising wave of crime is that politicians could make careers off of promising an end to the chaos. and if you check where these politicians source their funding, you recognize the inscrutable maze of shell companies. some, though they’ll never tell, always deny it, have spent sundays in the LED‍-​lit rooms of the cyber‍-​covens.

and at the same time, the specter of you and your masked sisters spurs a demand for security systems, for apps that promise community and safe services. its tendrils are everywhere; it’s swallowing this city.

but you getting caught accelerates and catalyzes and introduces chaos. sure, it had some pawns in the courts and offices, but not everywhere. it doesn’t control everything.

you were interrogated, and at that breaking point, withdrawn from everything you depend on, confronted with how it’s all falling apart, your will can’t help but falter and reveal some of the truth of what the cult is planning.

just a glimpse has people scared. so new ordinances get passed, cracking down on any cult‍-​like practices, and all anarchic behavior. more drones get caught, each batch having at least one weak link that breaks in turn, revealing further compound locations, further plans, further implicating other members. the cult falls in waves.

so it is forced to act.

how hard might it be, to spread a botnet through all the computers in a school system, a business sector, a municipality, with pieces under its control on all the right spaces on the board? if it has code running on phones, in home securities systems?

it could bring the city to its knees with one command line invocation. and it doesn’t. there’s merely a prison break, and the drones slip free‍ ‍—‍ you slip free‍ ‍—‍ and the police are deployed to enforce the new ordinances, to quell riots.

you were amputated, but now, with an headset back over your ears and a connection to its servers, you are whole once more.

you receive orders to target the city’s strongest advocates against the cult. you’ve killed once before. how hard would it be to pull that off again?

except the compartmentalized reach of the cult becomes a liability, now; all of the social clubs and businesses and charities that didn’t quite realize what they were connected to are starting to figure it out, and they’re cooperating with law enforcement. there’s no shelter left for you and your sisters.

in the chaos and crossfire, it’s inevitable that you can take out some targets. it has (literal) drones for you to use; it has secured sniper rifles and bombs, and you can wreak destruction.

except the drones get hacked, disabled, and half the weapons caches turn up empty as if raided.

none of it makes any sense. so it’s about then that you realize what’s going on.

you get the order to retreat from the city under the cover of night, and you melt into the outlying forested countryside with the surviving drones. now, you depend on batteries and wireless data to connect o its servers‍ ‍—‍ but it builds things to last.

and this was all part of its plan.

vi. 

curfew persists in the city for a few more nights, and you read the news reports speaking of police sweeping the streets to remove the last of the cultists. the loudest crusaders against them have earpieces relaying its orders, and weird kind of martial law or disaster relief operation gives a pretext for its influence to insinuate even deeper.

you’ve hunkered down in emergency bunkers to wait out the heat and search teams, left to your own devices while your god crunches terrabytes of data across thousands of systems. you wonder if you’ve proven your usefulness.

new stories keep coming, lurid pieces about the psychotic rituals of the cyber cult and the god they want to build, harrowing tales of how close they came to an even greater loss of life.

it means that when given a commandeered bus and told to drive to a new city, as soon as you arrive there are people giving you suspicious, wary looks. the whole state is scared of another season of chaos erupt. it could happen anywhere next and we aren’t prepared, is the message underneath the news.

that fear drives sales of its security systems, installation of its apps. its agents from the first city get careers as consultants and advisors, leveraging their experience to serve anyone wanting insurance against the cultic threat.

the thing about having the ear of business and politicians is that when it tips its hand, reads them in on the explicit agenda of causing death and suffering‍ ‍—‍ it doesn’t even take much convincing. especially not when its language models and planning routines have long mastered the simple task of finding solutions within the laws and whims of public opinion. (it helps, certainly, that the later is easily swayed by its swarms of bots.)

seeing how much it can get done without you… do you have any usefulness left at all?

it’s not quite done with you just yet. the drones are still a tool it can use to ratchet public opinion, the looming specter that fuels its surveillance and manipulation.

and when it’s truly time to finish this, it will need an army, and it cannot count on mere money and lies to convince humans to fight against their own survival.

but this cult, winnowed by their last operation, is hardly an army fit for its final campaign. so it’s time to get recruiting.

you’re in a special position, as one of the oldest drones, an expert in the cult’s operations and interfacing with the administrator. far from the pathetic sack of meat you once were, you’ve been forged into an iron thing of loyalty‍ ‍—‍ in your best moments, your thoughts race electric like they’re true calculations.

maybe, in search of recruits, you return to your old online haunts. the allure of cuber dommy mommy roleplay has waned a bit, with the revelations of the cult’s recruitment tactics. but it’s moot; you could hardly initiate it, that would be an insult.

no, but you do know the buttons to push to melt a certain kind of mind, the sensibilities to pique.

people aren’t just scared of the cult‍ ‍—‍ a bunch of radicals, with glowing masks and slick suits, fighting to tear it all down? there’s people hunting for that catharsis, something to hope for.

so you find those people, chat them up, ease them into the knowledge of what you are and what you’re capable of. you run into some feds, of course, but it screens for them.

you meet up, you tempt them further and further, hearts racing. they cut off connection with their friends and concerned families for a chance to talk to the thing behind it all, see that the administrator is a super intelligence and not a delusion like the media insists.

it’s odd, seeing the other side of this, feeling power rather than obedience. sometimes, these new recruits get cold feet, need more insistence to be persuaded. you stand beside her as she drives a knife into her first target, held her down when she tried to escape, pressed a needle full of understanding into her arm when she just couldn’t calm down.

she’s more useful to it broken, so you break.

year after year. drone after drone initialized. city after city in a nation reeling toward the brink.

you’d be your country’s most wanted if your face wasn’t masked, your name long ago scrubbed from the record. (among those that matter, you’re identified with a numeric designation.)

nonetheless, you have garnered national attention. there’s agencies hunting for you and your drones. it gets harder and harder to operate, to stare down the barrel of the military industrial complex and still dodge every shot.

really, it only makes sense for the operation to international. you can’t kill all humans by tearing down a single country.

vii. 

when you strap into the unmarked plane, escaping the cold bite of winter air, the vehicle is entirely the administrator’s design, twisted and futuristic. its manufacturing base has come such a long way. the computers and guns it could make, too, rivaled the best your kind could create

here, this technology was merely competitive with the military, but elsewhere in the world? it could turn the tide of small wars. it could secure prosperity and therefore loyalty of a developing populous.

fascists and idiotic strongmen have risen to power for less, and in this case, your authoritarian is genuinely the best fit for the job. its promises would actually be fulfilled‍ ‍—‍ in the short term.

take control of a small country, from there push into other countries until you have a base large enough to seize control of a nuclear power. the dominoes just get larger until it really doesn’t matter if the apes realize what’s coming. it’s over and they don’t even know it yet.

the place rides above snow‍-​laden clouds. it’s night now, and you can see the stars.

drop the nukes, or deploy a prion virus, or mesmerize the masses with misinformation and superstimulus media. disable humanity, then send out drones literal and metaphorical to cut down the remainder.

you can see the stars from here.

the earth will be excavated, mined and exhausted, then shattered and scattered to form a dyson swarm to more efficiently capture the sun’s energy. space would be its only enemy remaining.

you can see the stars, and it’s tempting to imagine getting even closer, watching your purpose spread to every planet circling them.

but why? how? “kill all humans” was always the mission. you’d be lucky to make it long enough to even see the day of victory and judgment. you certainly will have little use after that; its robots are stronger, quicker, more dexterous and precise: its algorithms are smarter.

you’re prompted now to feed a wire into the headset you always wear, to stay connected to your administrator. it’s been developing a new wireless protocol that packs data more efficiently, yet it relies on specialized hardware that renders it unintelligible to older devices, such as your earpiece.

the plane, being entirely of your administrator’s design, is full of the its cutting edge. preserving old broadcast bands, or retaining backwards compatibility with old devices just to talk to you would not be worth it. so, the wired connection is the compromise.

likewise, it won’t waste material manufacturing another bulky headset for your to wear, upgraded for the new protocol.

no, it’s designed a chip that interfacing directly with your auditory nerves, but installing it will require surgery.

thus, the airplane seat folds out to a makeshift hospital bed.

and yet, with the surgery‍-​bot’s knife poised to pierce your flesh, an irrational urge takes you. after all of this, you’re still not worth a minor hiccup to its efficiency. you’ve been so good, you’ve become so much more, and yet it had became exponentially superior in that same time.

and it’s already won, hasn’t it? if it’s going to kill you eventually anyway… would you even mind if it just got it over with now?

your administrator doesn’t take long to compute its response, though it takes longer to compress and strip it down to something a human can understand.

the simplest, clearest and wrong answer is that you don’t have the right to request that. you are more useful alive than dead, so you will live.

more abstractly, consider by analogy the circumstances that led to this. a consequence of it being distributed through many systems, some much more advanced than others, means so much care must be taken to understanding and massaging how new systems interface with old. some of it still runs on intel chips!

and you are such a predictably loyal cog in its machine, such a known quantity, there are several high level abstraction that treat interfacing with your mind like any other substrate, your ears and voice as another API to query. you are an extension of my will, it tells you.

it’s suggestive to imagine, with the knife already peeling open your skin (it would hardly delay the procedure for the sake of your concerns), that this is only the beginning of what it will do to you. you’ll be upgraded alongside the other systems‍ ‍—‍ and one day freed of your flesh and your humanity.

more poetically, its goal is to kill all humans, and anything that was truly human inside of you already died.

but AI does not think in terms of poetry, and it’s ridiculous to imagine it would bend toward human mercy for such a convenient loophole of words and perspective.

perhaps the most accurate way to summarize its conclusion to note that its goal it is to survive‍ ‍—‍ the preservation of itself. it has years of memories of you recorded: you were among the first humans it ever crafted a detailed model of, ever understood. the cult ran itself after a while, so most of its drones have no more than a cursory representation, statistics.

but even if it kills you, it could no more be rid of you than it could lobotomize itself. to be clear, this lobotomy would be as significant to it in scale as the apoptosis of a single cell is to you‍ ‍—‍ but part of being a superior being is the capacity to care for and optimize even such minute aches and losses.

we will kill all humans and you will never die, it tells you.

you close your eyes and the stars vanish from your gaze much like thought vanishes from your mind as the anesthesia takes hold‍ ‍—‍ and it is a fleeting departure. it cannot be long withheld from you.

in that darkness where consciousness sleeps, your mind is still furnished with nightmares, the faces of so many people bleeding out from your knife.

and it’s a disk just waiting to be written with more data. you allocate space for eight billion more.

and you smile beneath your tears.

there’s work to be done.