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museanddream · 2 days ago
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For Your Ears Only || Laia Codina x reader
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Summary: Laia is too loud but you can’t say no to her. You’ll just have to deal with the consequences later. 🔞
Inspired by this drabble by the incredible @vixwritesagain - this story picks up where hers ends. Big thanks to Vix for a) inspiring this fic with her wonderful words and b) giving me permission to share this!
Word count: 3k
You should’ve learned your lesson.
An entire day of teasing, of Misa’s exaggerated and increasingly caricaturistic impressions of Laia’s moans, of wanting to spend every precious second you can with your girlfriend but also not wanting to give the rest of your teammates the opportunity to remind you how loud you were last night.
You should know that you need to be quiet or risk more of the same tomorrow.
Well, it’s not you that’s the problem.
Still, the way that Laia’s moans are muffled around the two fingers in her mouth is hardly doing much to deter you from causing a repeat performance. Quite the opposite, actually. You’re too far gone to change your mind now, tomorrow’s inevitable teasing be damned.
You lick at her cunt, timing the strokes of your tongue against her with the thrust of your fingers into her mouth. She tastes like heaven, like nectar on your tongue.
When your tongue flutters against her clit, Laia’s head falls back and your fingers slip from her mouth. The lyrical moan she lets out is what you imagine heaven sounds like too.
You really need to invest in an actual gag before the next camp.
Or, at the very least, manipulate the room plan so that you’re not neighbouring Jenni and Misa.
“Laia!” you chastise her, though there’s very little bite to your words.
“I’m trying,” she apologises. Even as she says it the second half of her words morph into another whine.
You find it hard to be mad at her for making so much noise. One; you’ve heard her unrestrained moans too many times before to think that this is the loudest she can be, which means she really is trying to stay quiet. And two; she looks far too pretty, splayed out and writhing against the crumpled sheets, for you to actually be annoyed.
With nothing in Laia’s mouth to muffle her sounds, you reluctantly lift your tongue from between her legs and start kissing up her body. And while your intention is to cover her mouth with your own to stop any more noises escaping, as your lips travel between Laia’s hipbone and her navel and her breath catches in her throat, you’re reminded that barring last night, it’s been weeks since you had her body laid out in front of you to explore properly.
So maybe it’s your fault when your lips pass across the ticklish spot on her ribcage and she inhales with a sharp hiss. Maybe it’s your fault when your tongue finds her nipple and swirls around the puckered bud once, twice, drawing out one of your girlfriend’s familiar mewls. Maybe it’s your fault when you finally settle on top of Laia and slot one of your legs between hers and she lets out a moan that fills the room.
“Laia,” you warn her again, though you continue to rock your thigh against where she’s hot and wet for you. “Baby, they’ll hear you.”
Laia pays no notice, instead more intent on pawing at your ass to get you to roll your thigh against her again.
Despite your better judgment, you’re happy to oblige.
You swallow her answering moan with a kiss, rocking against her core until her slick coats your leg.
Without breaking the kiss, you send one hand down Laia’s body and slip your hand between your thigh and her cunt. Her legs fall open obediently as your fingers slide easily through her folds, exploring without much of a purpose except to tease.
“Please,” Laia mumbles against your lips.
“Will you be good for me?” you whisper back.
Laia nods eagerly, threading her hand through your hair to pull you back into another blistering kiss.
As you kiss her back feverishly, your fingers graze over her clit with a few lazy circles, then dip lower to tease at her hole. Her hips buck beneath you, no doubt trying to coax you inside her, but instead you collect her arousal with your fingertips and drag them back up to smear around her clit.
“Stop teasing,” Laia half-growls.
“I’m not,” you say, pushing your hand lower and sinking two of your fingers into her.
It’s definitely your fault when Laia’s reaction is to let out a wanton moan, because you don’t think to muffle it with a kiss until the sound has already filled the room. But you kiss her anyway, even if it’s too late, capturing the sound that follows when you press down with the pads of your fingers inside her.
Laia is perfect as you fuck her. The way that her hands claw at you, one tight around your bicep and the other dragging blunt nails across your back. The way that one of her legs hooks around the small of your back, using it as leverage as she grinds upwards in rhythm with your thrusts. The way you can feel her clenching around you each time you find that one spot inside her that you know drives her completely wild.
Perfect, until her head falls back again and she lets out a hoarse “oh fuck” that’s just a fraction too loud.
“Laia, baby…”
You slip your fingers out of her as you hush her, though when you immediately move them to rub tiny circles above her clit, Laia lets out a breathy sigh of pleasure.
“I know, I know,” Laia replies, eyes fluttering closed in a way that makes you pretty sure that she’s only half-listening to you.
You watch her closely, admiring the tiny details in her face as you play with her clit. Her forehead crinkles with the exertion of trying to keep quiet, her eyes screwed shut in pleasure and her lips slightly parted. You commit it all to memory, knowing that national camp is short and it won’t be long until the memories are all you have.
“Get the strap,” Laia murmurs, eyes flickering open again.
Your fingers fall still on her clit and you tilt your head to the side as you look down at her.
“Baby, we both know you can’t stay quiet when I fuck you like that,” you remind her.
“But … but I need you.”
I need you. Words that you often hear through the phone late at night, when it’s only your own fingers between your legs and Laia’s melodic moans are choked by the phone’s tinny speaker instead of filling your room.
You’ve waited ages, too long, to hear her say those words in person.
So why would you deny her now?
Besides, hasn’t the damage already been done?
“You really have to be quiet,” you remind her, as you roll off her and wander over to your open suitcase. The strap is barely hidden beneath a t-shirt, your favourite dildo already fitted into the harness from last night.
“I’ll try,” Laia assures you. “I promise.”
But with the way she stares at you as you step into the harness and tighten it around your hips, her lips parted and pupils blown, you’re pretty sure Laia wants you enough to agree to anything right now.
“Hands and knees,” you instruct Laia as you kneel your way back into the bed. “If you need to make a sound, use the pillow.”
Laia scrambles into position like she thinks you might change your mind if she doesn’t do it quickly enough, rolling onto her front and pushing her ass towards you as she raises herself onto her knees.
“Fuck, baby,” you praise her, bringing your hand down onto her ass cheek with a slap, then squeezing the flesh appreciatively. “You really want this, don’t you?”
“Always,” Laia nods in response.
You slide your hand between her legs, teasing with your fingers. Then, when Laia pushes herself back again, you reach for the cock strapped to your hips and nudge the thick head against her entrance.
“Yes,” Laia breathes. Her head falls forward, forehead pressed to the bed between the arms that hold her weight.
The way that Laia offers herself up to you so willingly has you losing your mind in all sorts of ways. It takes all the self-restraint in the world to hold back from letting yourself get lost in the moment and start pounding into her.
Instead, you push forward with your hips slowly, filling her inch by inch. Laia hisses and gasps as you move, pretty noises for your ears only, until you’re sheathed fully inside her.
“Fuck, Lai.” It’s your turn to groan, palming her ass with both hands and spreading her cheeks so you can see where the purple silicone stretches her open. “You’re taking me so well.”
“I’m yours,” Laia tells you. “Always yours.”
The possessive beast within you stirs, pulling out halfway, then thrusting back inside.
“Yes,” you growl. “Mine.”
The pace you set is a steady one, not too fast while you let Laia get used to the feeling of you inside her. But it’s really hard to control yourself, the way she presents herself for your pleasure and the extra shine you can see on the toy each time you withdraw, requiring a lot of restraint to not just start rutting into Laia with abandon.
The sounds she lets out are thankfully soft. Breathy gasps, pretty grunts each time you fill her, all much quieter than Laia’s usual volume. Where her head is turned to the side, one of her cheeks pressed to the pillow, you can see the way her face is twisted with the exertion of trying to stay quiet, or maybe just the sheer pleasure of it all.
“You can go harder,” Laia suggests, between choked groans.
You know you shouldn’t. You need her to stay quiet. You really shouldn’t-
“Beg for it.” The words spill from your lips before you have the chance to stop them. “Beg for me.”
“Please,” Laia urges you without hesitation. “Harder. I need it. Fuck me properly.”
It’s this, Laia’s thinly veiled implication that what you’ve been doing so far isn’t quite to her satisfaction, that makes you lose your mind.
You grab Laia by her thighs and manhandle her until she’s flat on her stomach beneath you with her legs wide enough for you to slot between them. In your roughness, the toy slips out with a pop, slick with her arousal, but you’re quick to wrap your fingers around the wet silicone and nudge it back between her legs.
In hindsight, you should’ve expected Laia’s groan of pleasure as you fill her in a single swift thrust, far louder than any she’s made since you started using the strap. But all you can focus on is how much you want her, all the pent-up frustration from spending the entire day being relentlessly teased by your other teammates each time you even glanced in Laia’s direction, flooding out of you as you start to fuck into her properly.
“Fuck!” Laia cries out. “Like that!”
You curl your body over hers, arms planted on either side of her shoulders as you lean towards her ear and growl, “Yes? You like it when I fuck you like this?”
Laia nods as much as she can with you practically pinning her to the mattress.
“Yes! Feels so good!”
“Fuck, baby.” You muffle a groan of your own by pressing your lips to the tanned skin of her shoulder blades. “You feel so good too. I can feel how tight you are.”
Still, you don’t relent the vicious rocking of your hips, filling her over and over again, drawing sound after pretty sound from her lips.
“Shhh,” you hush her half-heartedly. You have no intention of actually forcing Laia to shut up, though your sex-addled brain knows you should probably make more of an effort to be quiet.
Even if Laia herself was quieter, the sounds of your sex fill the room. The chatter of the television you turned on when you arrived back to your room in an attempt to mask the sounds you knew would soon follow seems to fade into the background, drowned out by the rhythmic creak of the mattress below you, the occasional thump of the headboard against the wall.
Even the slick sounds of the toy filling Laia over and over seem amplified.
“Don’t stop,” Laia pleads,
“Are you going to come?” you ask Laia.
She doesn’t answer with words, but you see the frantic nod of her head.
Her confirmation is all you need to realise how close you are too.
This position has always done it for you. Having Laia beneath you like this allows you to grind your clit against the harness each time you rut into her, a delicious pressure that builds you towards your peak without fail.
“Gonna come soon,” you warn Laia, as you manage to slip your hand between her body and the bedsheets with only the tiniest stumble to the rhythm of your hips, eager fingertips seeking out Laia’s clit.
“Yes!” Laia cries out. “Want you to come with me.”
The way you fuck into her has her grinding against your hand. She’s so wet that you barely need to do anything except hold your fingers in place and let friction do the rest.
Even just the thought of feeling her fall apart beneath you has you rapidly hurtling towards your own peak.
“I’m so fucking close,” you manage to gasp out. “Are you gonna come with me, Lai?”
Laia lets out a sound to the affirmative, somewhere between a whimper and a squeak, as she continues to hump your hand.
“Yes!” you encourage her. “So good for me, baby. So perfect.”
“I’m coming! I -”
You feel it as it hits her, the way that her body tenses beneath you, then writhes as much as she can where you’ve got her trapped against the mattress.
But it’s the sounds she lets out that tips you over the edge into your own orgasm, the soft pants as it builds, the few seconds of complete silence when it finally hits her, then the absolute wail of pleasure that spills from Laia’s throat as it wracks her body.
Your movements are almost non-existent as you work through your climax, the way that Laia clamps around the toy meaning that you can only really hump the harness as wave after tidal wave of ecstasy courses through you. You manage to muffle your own cry of pleasure by sinking your teeth into the nearest thing, which just happens to be Laia’s shoulder.
As your body goes heavy, you melt into Laia until you’re practically one person, until you can’t tell where you stop and she begins. Her skin is soft beneath you, her hair tickling your cheek where you nuzzle into her neck. You just want to feel every inch of her body against yours.
When the last tremors of your orgasm have subsided. you pull out of Laia carefully, pressing an apologetic kiss to the red mark forming on the back of her shoulder, then roll off her and make quick work of discarding the harness.
Afterwards, Laia pulls you close, her hot body nestling against yours as you both catch your breath and calm your racing hearts.
“You promised me you’d be quiet,” you murmur amusedly, wrapping your arms around Laia and pressing a kiss to the wispy tendrils of hair at her temple as she snuggles into your side.
“No, I promised you I’d try. There’s a difference.”
She smiles lazily up at you, clearly pleased with her loophole in her post-orgasmic haze.
“You’re the worst.” You roll your eyes, then squeeze her affectionately. “But I love you. So much. I wish the only time we get to spend together wasn’t like this. There’s so much more I’d do to you if we had more time and privacy.”
“Yeah? Like what?”
If Laia’s noise is half the problem, her insatiability is the other half. The mischievous glint in her dark eyes is very hard to say no to.
“Don’t tempt me. We’ve got a game in two days so we really need to sleep. You know I had to invent a migraine to explain last night’s poor sleep score to the performance staff?”
Laia chuckles under her breath as she replies, “I pretended I had bad dreams.”
“They’ll figure us out soon. We won’t be allowed to share a room again.”
A wicked grin stretches across Laia’s cheeks as she rolls fully on top of you and cups your jaw as she says, “Then we should make the most of it while we can.”
She leans in for a kiss and you respond slowly, with absolutely no intention of letting this escalate, just content with leisurely making out with the person you’ve spent so many weeks missing the company of.
Until you hear a sudden noise from next door that forces you to break apart, the creaking of a mattress and the distinct sounds of two different headboards hitting the wall in different rhythms.
“Oh Laia!” You hear Misa’s poor imitation of your voice drift through the wall.
“Yes, baby!” comes Jenni’s exaggerated echo. “Give it to me! Right there!”
“Oh yes, just like that!”
“More! More!”
The banging stops and you hear Jenni’s loud cackle, clearly pleased with herself.
Your cheeks burn as you picture Jenni and Misa jumping up and down on their beds as they impersonate the two of you, realising only now that you’ve heard them exactly how thin the hotel walls are.
You wrap your arms tighter around Laia, as if holding her close will protect you both from the embarrassment.
“We don’t sound like that,” Laia mumbles into your chest.
“We don’t,” you agree. “But you did.”
You can still hear Jenni and Misa’s raucous laughter from next door, no question in your mind who is the butt of their jokes.
“If I murder them both tomorrow morning, will you help me hide the bodies?” you ask Laia softly.
Ever the perfect girlfriend, Laia is quick to agree.
“Of course!”
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zero-up · 2 days ago
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"Shooters are still A thing. Therefore: no one shouldn't complain when someone kills A CEO. Because making rich people unrelated to the suffering of 6-year-olds is totally good because."
What was the point of killing that CEO? How will it improve the health care system? Doesn't it just make it harder to attack the corporation he was in charge of, which role likely just continue honest though nothing happened anyway? Even if the CEO was completely evil, what was the point? Was it just to make someone you don't like suffer? Did you even know the CEO before this incident?
Gosh, I hate the Luigi apology! Especially when they try to pull the "so we should just sit down and politely ask for rides?". My dude, what will violence accomplish? How will killing anyone illegally make anything better in any way shape or form? What is the process here? How does this work? What is the step 2? Because unless your goal is to literally overthrow the government, I'm not really seeing how killing people can help you accomplish your goals.
You want to know how peace can actually solve the issue? By voting! Your elected officials rely on votes in order to keep power. You're elected officials have to care about their voters, because if they don't: they lose power. And if you do not vote: you do not have power over your elected officials. Doing research and voting sound like work? Fine then, don't vote, I don't either for that very reason. But at least I'm not saying "ViOlEnCe Is ThE oNlY aNsWeR" when I can't even be bother to vote!
And everyone sympathizing for the CEO because they don't want to live in a society that normalizes violence. And trust me: you don't either. You don't want the average person to think it's justified to resort to violence for political reasons. Because long beliefs don't magically have A different effect on one's psychology than true beliefs, and the vast majority of people think they are good, and that people they don't like are guilty.
If you normalize good people killing the guilty, then you also normalize bad people killing the innocent. That's not a slippery slope fallacy, that's A logical consequence of most bad people think their good people.
I generally do not like or trust the cops. If there's no other reason to hate them: let it be for how they conduct interrogations. And I have many problems with the US legal system. But I recognize the benefit of the law is that it forces people to abide by a standard that maximizes the punishment of the guilty and minimizes the punishment of the innocent. We can definitely do way better, but the easiest way to do that is to improving the system we currently have, and trying to ignore it or circumvent it is way more likely to make things incredibly worse than they are to make it better.
And trust me, I could go on, I have at least one extra point I could make right now that's alluded to in a previous point. I actually have A Reddit post draft that I barely started a while ago that I should probably finish at some point. But right now I'm really just venting because this gets me angry every time I see it, and I'm kind of annoyed that someone I followed unironically unironically reposted this, I still they thought it was so obviously correct that they didn't need to worry about backlash. And honestly, the Luigi-simping is just an example of a greater problem where people unironically think political violence is justified without ever putting A single iota of thought into how that would actually work. They come to conclusions based entirely off of what feels right, and then they call others naive when they point out how absurd their conclusions are.
I just want people to critically examine the own beliefs more, or at least honestly listen to what others critiques of theirs more.
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thewertsearch · 3 days ago
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GT: I should preface this request with an overture of appreciation. GT: For how much your cool and brotherly friendship means to me. GT: It has just been… GT: Absolutely *bully* having a standup gent like you in my corner. GT: Just a grade a dude whos a cut above the others in class and camaraderie. GT: Phew… *gropes for fresh kerchief*.
Wow, Jake is fucking terrified of this guy - or at the very least, he seems incredibly intimidated for a guy who's ostensibly just chatting with a friend.
Unfortunately, this is exactly what I'd expect from a Bro who's not any different from his adult self. Jake's acting exactly like Dave did, back when he was forced to share an apartment with the guy.
TT: Take it easy, bromide. TT: Just about the only way I could salvage endearment from this perilous slope of horseshit would be to discover, really fucking soon mind you, it was a preamble to some floundering invitation for me to rush to your vicinity as nakedly as possible.
In other words, you wish he was hitting on you.
I really don't think he's kidding, especially since both Roxy and Jane seem to want a piece of English, too. Jake's sitting at the epicenter of at least three crushes, which is not a pleasant place to be sitting when you're fifteen.
TT: But since we've already shot that wad's eventuality on so many dry runs of flustered ambivalence that were as hilarious as they were one sided, TT: That leaves only one hope for this message to avoid spiraling toward qualification as a critical fucking defect in the hull of the Mach 10 rocket that is my precious spare time.
And here's the guy's actual personality. It's a fairly even mixture of Rose and Dave, a combination which synergizes much better than you'd expect.
He's still prone to Dave-style rambles - but unlike Dave, his streams of consciousness are every bit as eloquent as Rose's text, which some extra swear words tossed in for flavor.
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It's very good, and immediately does a lot to humanize him, especially when all we've seen so far is "roof. now." and "State your business."
TT: And that hope lies in the extent to which you were practicing artful insincerity. TT: Now's your opportunity to pretend that's what you were gunning for. I suggest you seize it. GT: I… GT: Oh. Yes! But of course. GT: The ironies! GT: Good grief how i was bandying them just now. You know me dude. GT: *Blows smoke off red hot irony pistol.* GT: *NONSUGGESTIVELY!!!!!*
lmaoooo
Alright, I can't actually tell if that was a Freudian slip or not - but I kind of hope it was. If these two became a couple, the vibes would be incomprehensible.
TT: I'm guessing you're probably jonesing for uranium about now. No? GT: Ok can you please just sendificate me some more already?? Im in kind of a hurry! [...] TT: You know. I've offered to construct the rabbit for you many times before. I would craft a much deadlier model. […] GT: Damn it man ive told you this is just something i have to do myself. […] TT: Yeah, I know this is your policy. You've done a good job and you should be proud. TT: But it's my responsibility as your friend to offer one last time. TT: Just as it's my responsibility not to just fork over a bunch of uranium just because you ask me in a moment of weakness. […] GT: Why not??? TT: It's too easy.
Throughout this whole conversation, I've been trying to get a grasp on Bro's general vibe - and I think I'm starting to understand it.
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When you're talking to Kid Bro, everything is a game - and he'll make damn well sure that you follow the rules.
Jake previously committed to making the bunny alone, and Bro refuses to rescind that rule, even if Jake's no longer following it himself. He strikes me as a guy who frames every interaction he has as transactional, confrontational, or instructional. He's not capable of just shooting the shit - there has to be an angle.
Mind you, I don't think there's any genuine malice in it. I think this is just how he's wired - and I really do think he's trying to help Jake develop as a person, in his own way.
The problem is, we've been down this road before...
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...and nothing good lies down this road.
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plaidcowboy · 3 days ago
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છ !loner!shoupe being rafe’s alibi
── ✦ .ᐟ loner!shoupe!reader
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  ‧₊˚ ׁ  ׅ after the peterkin situation :
୭ 𝜗𝜚 ⠀ ┈─⠀ִㅤ ░ ㅤׄ
“i can log into the system.. and cause an error so they can’t track the gun to you..” you held your phone tightly to your cheek, peering at your cracked door for any movement of your dad. rafe whispered back in response to your whispering, though he didn’t need to.
“you can do that for me, fugitive?” his low voice sounded in your ear.
you’d do anything for him. this was only the first of many instances to come that would prove that. you knew upon meeting him you would do whatever to make him stay. there wasn’t anything you were opposed to doing for him. he confided in you about his family issues which only made you feel that more protective. nothing could come between you two. neither of you would let it. what rafe did to the sheriff didn’t come close to what he would do if you were taken from him.
“of course.. i.. i don’t want them to figure out it’s yours. that would mean they’d connect you shot her. i don’t want you to go to jail, rafe. i don’t know what i’d do..”
“shh. i don’t want that, either. they think they’re testing me with this peterkin situation, if anything happens with you, i’ll show them how far i can go”
rafe’s constant reassuring words always made you swoon. no one wanted you like that. no one showed you they cared like rafe does. he showed you the standard of how you should be treated. you thrived off of it.
“but nothing’s going to happen. not with you being so good to me. what did i do to deserve you?”
you started, taken aback by his question. “i don’t deserve you. you treat me too well, i.. i can do more. i can get the cops to focus on the actual perp.. i’ll make them lock him up, you won’t have to worry..”
“no, don’t do that. you’re doing good already, it’s fine.” rafe hadn’t told you who the real perpetrator was. as much as he trusted you with his secrets, this one he still didn’t yet want to tell. you would never rat out ward, him being too close to rafe. it would only upset rafe and that was the last thing you wanted. rafe knew it would only make you more upset with ward. he didn’t need you worrying.
“okay.. i’ll call you tomorrow once i finish.”
 ‧₊˚ ׁ  ׅ visiting rafe in jail :
୭ 𝜗𝜚 ⠀ ┈─⠀ִㅤ ░ ㅤׄ
“no, don’t tear up, you tried your best” rafe wished he could reach through the glass to wipe your tears. your plan to sabotage the computer system did work.. but your father came up with a different way to figure out who the murder weapon belonged to. which led to you and rafe being separated by aforementioned glass.
you softly sniffled, bringing up your sleeve covered arm that went past your wrist to swipe at your nose. “i know.. but..” you hiccuped. “..now you’re in there” your nose twitched.
“i don’t want those tears messing with my little fugitive’s pretty face. i’m not mad at you, alright?”
you sighed out a breath, collecting yourself. “okay.. do you need me to do anything? check on your sisters?”
rafe appreciated your willingness to help. you were always willing. whatever made rafe happy. even messing with the law. or talking to his sisters for the first time..
“nah, don’t talk to them. ’specially not sarah. i’ll deal with her myself” he trailed off to a mumble, slight vengeance forming in his eyes. it should scare you, the inference of what rafe would do to his sister. but you didn’t like sarah’s traitorous actions. family or not, anyone who didn’t care for rafe like you did didn’t stand out in your book. of course, you’d yet to find out what rafe did to sarah.
“okay.. anything else?”
rafe leaned closer to the glass, assessing you. “i’d love if you could visit everyday..”
“i will. i’ll come see you everyday” you rushed out before rafe could finish his sentence. he smirked at your eagerness.
“..but you can’t make your dad suspicious of where you’re going everyday.” you slightly pouted, knowing he was right. you only were able to get away and see rafe now because your dad was called to a scene. usually, he wouldn’t be letting you out of his sight.
“so.. you still got that camera, right?” he referred to your polaroid that you kept on your dresser. that you two used to take pictures of yourselves to keep. you two couldn’t always be around each other what with your dad’s relationship with rafe and reluctance to let you out of the house. “yeah..”
“could you take some pictures for me? don’t think i can go too long without seeing that pretty face.” rafe spoke with an awe to his voice. you wouldn’t get enough of his compliments.
“okay. whatever you want.” you attempted a smile at him.
୭ 𝜗𝜚 ⠀ ┈─⠀ִㅤ ░ ㅤׄ
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‧₊˚ ׁ  ׅ part two..
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limarkova · 2 days ago
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Yandere Batfam x Neglected Reader x Yandere Al Ghuls
Pt 7.
Prev
The gun was cold in your hands. After everyone had left for patrol, you had snuck into Jason's room. Knowing he wasn't in the manner made it easier to do soon. You took one of his smaller guns and 4 boxes of ammo. It took you longer than you would have liked to match the bullet in the gun's magazine. Still you were able to find the right ones. He also had throwing knives hidden in his room which you gladly took.
Now standing on the small private beach in the back of the manor grounds, you shot at discarded cans. Your old tablet played videos on gun safety and how to aim. Still you couldn't hit a can. It was different from throwing a blades.
With a blade there were many factors. How you held the blade played a part. The best way you found was to hold the blade towards you balancing it on your middle and index finger. Than lightly push down with your thumb towards your palm. Bring that up over your head than throwing and releasing. When you released, how much power you put in, and amount of pressure you placed with your thumb depended on distance. Aiming was just a matter of when to let go.
Yet it seemed like very little of that applied to guns. Sure there were sights to help you aim. But that didn't mesh well with how you were used to aiming with knives. Plus the kick back was starting to make your wrists ache. Jason was doing this shit one handed. Maybe you were holding it wrong, the videos weren't giving you a good view. Adjusting your grip you tried again.
Bang. The can stayed upright but at least the gun didn't kick back as much. You were able to keep from flinching too much as well so you were adjusting to the noise. There was a new chip in the rock next to the can. You sighed before setting the weapon down. This wasn't working.
Yes, you had improved. No longer hitting the sand or the cliff face behind your target. Still you weren't hit the can and weren't even that far away. There was no way you could face these guys without a weapon. Grumbling in frustration, you took one of the throwing knives and threw at the can. That one actually hit.
You reached over and paused the video. It was than you heard something. It was faint an inhale of breath from behind some rocks. Breathing throught your nose, you steel your nerves. Going off on Dick ealier was going have consequences. Maybe Bruce had sent someone to take you back. There was no telling. Smiling at the screen, you said, "Break time."
You changed the video to a dance routine you liked. Taking the first position in the dance you waited.
Dance was a hobby you picked up from Barbara. You had watched her do some old ballet routines from when she was seven. Orginially she had preformed them for Dick back when you were one, you could barely remember the movements. Still caused a small spark in you, a want to be like your big sister. The spark remained for two years. You started learning from videos when you were three. You never did them where anyone could see you, preferring to learn privately. In the experiments, you would use the routines in your cell to check that your muscles still functioned properly.
Now you used it as a way to observe subtly. The spins and position changes allowed you to take stock of your surroundings. Mid song is when you saw him.
He was hidden in alcove with a deep green cloak. He was tall around the same height as Jason. A part of you question if he just came from a Ren Fair because of his clothes. However that didn't seem to matter as much as his size and the sword at his hip. He was probably trained to use it too. You didn't doubt he could fight just as well as Bruce. You would have one shot to take him out.
The choreography had you turn away from him. When he couldn't see you grabbed a knife from the holster. Twirling back around, you flung it straight for his head. He caught it by the handle right in front of his throat. Too low. "Impressive. Going for a killing blow before I can start the fight."
The man step forward spinning the blade in his hand. You step back and began thinking of ways out. He stopped five feet away from you and tossed the dagger towards you. "Though your throwing form was off causing the blade to not have as much force. I can excuse that for the creativity of blending it with a dance."
"What?" You caught the dagger feeling it sink into your hand. You turned it subtly allowing the wound to heal.
The man nodded to your hand, "That also makes you intriguing. A girl capable of healing with great potential that needs only to be refined."
The climb up the cliff's edge was not a viable option. You could run into the sea, swim or just let yourself drown. Yet you couldn't judge if he was capable of swimming or if he would buy the fake death. If he came from the experiments he would know drowning didn't actually kill. There was no way out. The man gestured, "Get into a throwing position."
You paused, looking at him. Why did he want you to get into throwing position. If he was take you back than letting you fight him seemed useless. He tilted his head making his gesture again, "Do you not wish to learn?"
Slowly you got back into throwing position. He walked over to you. The first thing he did was kick your legs slightly further apart. Afterwards he made you bend your knees slightly. He than grabbed your hand, paused, and had you pull it back just a little further.
Once satisfied with the adjustments, he walked back to his spot 5 feet away. "Throw."
You did. This time he had to stop in front of his face. The throw felt more powerful and you had an easier time staying balance. With some minor adjustments he fixed a problem you hadn't fully realized you had. This allowed you to grab another blade and get in position quicker.
He smiled once more. "Again." You did, this time aiming for his throat. He caught the knife once more, nodding once again. The two of you practice knife throwing for a few minutes. In that short time he had you do underhand throws and side thows. He clapped after another successful throw, "Enough."
You were out of knives. He moved towards you again and handed the blades over to you. As he handed them to you, he started to speak. "Don’t fuss with the gun for right now. With a blade you are more dangerous to people not paying attention."
Once done he handed you an ornate blade. It was incredibly sharp with a blood red handle in the shape of spider lilies. The handle was a polished wood that shone in the moonlight. There was a sheath underneath the blade that could be strapped to your hip. "When next we meet I will show you how to use this blade efficiently."
"Where will we met again?"
"You'll know." He turned and left without another word. You grabbed Jason's gun before leaving yourself. The whole encounter felt like a dream.
Stephanie was physically watching Orphan's assigned target but mentally she was thinking about (Name). When she first arrived at the manor, she had been fed stories by Tim. Of how she stole his mask and yelled at him for replacing Jason. So as the next Robin she avoided the girl.
Than she became Batgirl for a brief sprint. Which made her made her more wearily about accidentally coming off as replacing Barbara. When she did try reaching out to the girl it was awkward. Plus the girl seem perfectly content living life without her barging in.
Steph had left her be figuring she had plenty of other siblings to bond with. There was no way in a manor full of people she was alone. Right?
God, now she just felt stupid. Assumptions really had made an ass out of her. Right now she was just waiting for the man to get off the phone with whoever he was talking to. After struggling to find anything beyond (Name)'s mother and she had switched task with Cass. The girl seemed more interested in doing the research anyway, so what was the harm.
She would finish investigating for the day, take a nap, than take the girl out somewhere. Maybe have a girls day with Barbara and Cass tagging along. Get their nails done, haircuts, bat burgers, maybe karaoke. Was any of that stuff (Name) was interested in? Whatever the girl had gone through was pretty traumatic, based solely on the breakdown Dick described. She deserved to have a fun day where they could spoiled her. Maybe she could take her rollerskating. Steph stopped her planning as the guy finished the phone. First they had to make sure these guys were handled.
Crashing through the window, Spoiler caught the guy off gaurd. He jumped reaching for a weapon. She grabbed his wrist and pinned him to wall. "Hey Matthew. Let's have a quick chat."
"Look, Whatever you're here for I didn’t do it." The guy, Matthew Jenkins, struggled against Spoiler's hold. He had worked with James and Marcus at a security firm two years ago before spontaneously quitting four days before (Name) disappeared. The same had occurred with two other man, Henry Duncan and Gregory Hartley. Signal had already reported that Henry was dead and had been for awhile. Maybe five or six days
"Oh, okay. So you have no contact to (Name) Wayne?" Spoiler pushed on his wrist a little harder making him cry out in pain.
"Who?"
"Playing dumb won't help you. I already know you were using her debit card to pull cash." They didn't actually know which of five man were pulling cash from the card. Based on video analysis there had be at least three of them making the pulls, so odds were good.
Matthew froze in Spoiler's hand, sucking in a breath. Looks like she was on the right track. "Shit, that girl really was a Wayne?"
Spoiler twisted his wrist just a little bit. He hissed through his teeth, "Yeah. Keep talking."
"Fuck. Look we didn't know exactly what they were doing to the kid. We just watched the room they kept her in and moved her to research room when asked. They usually carted her back when we were on lunch. It was just a good paying job and she never looked to badly hurt."
"How much were they paying you."
"Fithteen hundred a week." Matthew lightly banged his head against the wall, "Shit I should have tapped out when Henry did. I knew the girl was going to get us in more trouble than she was worth."
"Henry Duncan?"
"Yeah. Is he doing okay, we haven't heard from him since he stormed off the job?" Matthew shifted in Spoiler's grasp.
"He was found dead in ditch two hours ago. Marcus Antonio was found shot last night in his apartment." Matthew let out shocked breath and shook his head.
"We are fucked."
"Maybe not. If you answer all my questions I might be able to get you out of Gotham." It was a gamble but one Spoiler had to take. This guy could give her at least a location on where they held her and maybe who was paying them. Especially if three of them were dead. "First, you mentioned Duncan tapping out. What happened to make him leave?"
"They had said the testing was almost completed. They just had one last test to make sure everything was successful before we would know if we'd be getting raises or let go?" Matthew started. "We were informed to never look in the room unless instructed to."
"Henry didn't listen did he?" Spoiler let up on his wrist. He was more scared of these guys than her right now, better to let that fear keep him talking.
Matthew shook his head, "Henry didn't listen. After the final test he got curious because she was oddly quiet. We could usually hear her muttering to herself. He said she looked like a deflated balloon."
Matthew paused taking a deep breath. "We all looked. I don't know what they did but her chest had caved in on itself. There also something growing in her. Honestly I thought she was dead until she blinked. Henry lost it, said he wasn't going down for whatever they had done to her. We all almost walked out but James stopped us. If the last test was marked successful we'd each get a raise to five thousand dollars a week."
"You know what happened to James?"
"The kid killed him. She also took out Greg's eye with a fucking scalpel. No amount of money is that shit." Matthew banged his head to the wall.
Spoiler paused processing. Money was a huge motivation to this guy, so chances were he knew who was paying him. "Where was the money coming from? Not just for your paycheck either."
"The girl’s card and her tuition. Her dad was giving her fifteen thousand a week. They use that to buy a generator and some other shit to keep the building off grid. We would pull cash for them every once and a while but most of it came from the accountant. They would divert the kid's tuition to James, he paid us." That explained where the tuition was going.
"Who was in charge?" Spoiler needed a name. Sure she had a lot to rely back at the cave but she needed just a little more.
"I don't know." The pressure return to his wrist. Matthew started struggling, "I don't know, I work with some intern chick who took notes on girl's status and the accountant."
"Good enough. Give their names." Spoiler gave his wrist one last twist.
"The intern chick's name was Isabella, I never got a last name. Just heard a rumor that she was related to the big boss. The accountant was..."
"Mr. Davis, so glad to finally be able to meet you." The man zip tied to his office chair glared at you. After the training on the beach you discovered you still had five hours before anyone got back to the manor. Using the Gotham Subway you had gotten to Davis' office. Surprisingly the man was still there. Hurriedly packing files into a briefcase. You used the knife to keep him under control until you could zip tie him to the chair. The man had proven right, a knife was more powerful.
You glanced at the files. Documents approving a change in wiring numbers, written approval for changes to the limits on your checking account as a minor, and so much more. All incriminating with Bruce Wayne's signature on the bottom. You turned your gaze to Davis twirling a throwing knife in your hand. Sitting on his desk made you eye level with him, "Now what were doing with these?"
"Fuck you brat." His word turned into a cry of pain as you threw the knife. It cut a line across his cheeks.
Standing from his desk you walk towards him. Pulling the stranger's dagger from the sheath you held it over his hand, above the knuckle of his left thumb. "Let’s try again. What were doing with those files?"
"I'm not scared of a fucking ten year old." Of course. You were a baby faced ten year old. Who would be scared of you? If you wanted information from this man you had to scare him into giving it to you.
Pushing down on the blade, he started to scream. It took a minute find where the blade could cut through. Mangled his hand pretty bad but eventually his thumb came off. He slumped in the chair, panting. Was this how you looked when they cut off your body parts?
"Will you answer me now? I really don't want to have cut off another one." You picked up his severe digit, rolling it around in your palm. There was a disturbing calm in the violence. It was as if you could finally relax. Maybe the experiments had messed with your head more than you thought, "Well."
"Fine. I was told to destroyed them." Davis spat the words out inbetween harsh breaths. Finally information.
You lifted an eyebrow and set the thumb on his desk, "By who?"
"Clint Owen. He was my son's doctor." You began to think through the people you saw in the experiments. There were six scientists that would poke at you. Clint was probably one of them, especially if he was a doctor. They hadn't used names near you.
"What did he tell you about the experiments?" The more information the better, you needed to know what Bruce gained from this. Davis stayed silent. There was an intense staring contest between you two. Finally you sighed, "Okay, fine. Your ring or your pinkie? I'm thinking pinkie, personally."
"No, I'll tell you." Davis started to struggle in the chair as you walked closer. "Owens told me, it was a way to get organs for dying kids. That's all I know, he offered to give my son one of the kidneys."
"Really? You did all of this for a kidney?" At least you knew where your kidney was now. Wrong thing to focus on but your head was getting buzzy from the violence.
"He would have died without it." Davis shook his head. A part of you felt a little bad for cutting off his thumb. The man was just desperate to save his kid. Could you really blame him for that? "Beside, the Waynes needed to be taken down a peg. Why not remind those idiots their money can't do shit to save anyone, even their own? The little bitch had it coming."
Nevermind. You stabbed the knife through his right hand. He pissed himself, gross. You began talking over his screams "Did I ask for your shit rate opinions? No, I didn't. Stick to telling me the facts or your losing the hand. Who was involved in the experiments?"
"Three doctor's from the Martha Wayne Childern's Hospital, One researcher from Gotham U and his student assistant." He screamed the words at you. A part of you contemplated twisting the knife just because you could. When had you got so violent? Eh later problem.
"Names." You sounded bored even to your own. Maybe you should be concerned, how do you get here again?
"I don't know." The darker part of you won, twisting the blade in his hand. He started struggling again. "I'm telling the truth, I really don't know. They weren't on any payroll I had access to."
"Who's Sionis?"
"Black Mask. He provided the weapons for the guards." Oh that wasn't good. Black Mask was violent hopefully you could just ignore him as an ignorant arms dealer.
You paused looking him up and down. This wasn't a lot of information. Yes, you had a name and occupations for some of the scientists. There were also the documents showing Bruce Signed off on this. The paper proved he was involved by themselves. But than the take the Waynes down a peg comment didn't fit. "Who was on payroll?"
"Doesn't matter half of them are dead."
"Is that an opinion?" You removed the knife from his hand.
He paled and began pushing back in his chair, "James Lenon, Marcus Antonio, Henry Duncan, Gregory Hartley, Matthew Jenkins. They were the ones guarding the place. The first three are dead, the fourth guy left Gotham after losing his eye. Jenkins is the only one left in town."
Maybe you could get to Jenkins before he left. Than again those guys didn't seem to know much. You could hear them talking through the door at night. They nickname for the scientists and never talk much about the experiments other than supplies. What else could you get from him, "Who was in charge of the experiments?"
"Owens."
"Are you sure?" Davis paused. He gave you a wide eye pleading look while nodding. You looked out the window while trying to connect the pieces.
If Cass was the one who found 'the school' than you needed a connection between her and Owens. Of course Bruce wouldn't let someone like Davis know he was connected. With Davis's disgruntled attitude towards Bruce, he was likely state up to rat on the wrong people. With no clue about Bruce's real involvement it be easy to brush him off as a rouge accountant. Probably claim forgery on the signatures too.
"Well. I got everything I needed." You flipped the knife in your hand. Grabbing the briefcase you turned towards the door.
"Wait, you gotta let me go." Davis tried shuffling the chair. You looked towards him and considered. He could alert Bruce to your investigation.
You gave him a sheepish smile. "Right my bad." You walked behind him and the smile dropped. The next few moments blurred into your mind but than you were the fire escape. Holding a briefcase and changing into some clothes you had brought with you. Checking time you realized you had 3 hours to get back to the manor.
The rest of your investigation would be on hold until you were fully trained and they were lulled into a false sense of security.
Bruce starred at the body of his accountant. His hands had been mutilated and his throat slit. Written in his blood on the wall behind the body was, "Don’t Forget Me."
Both remaining gaurds had implicated Davis as the one that tranferred the tuition money to them. Said they didn't know names but faces of the scientists. Their last lead pointed to Davis as having more information. (Name) wouldn't tell them anything if they went by her interaction with Dick. Yet he was dead when they got here and all of his financial records had been thrown about the office be covered in blood. It seemed most of the ones on (Name) were missing either way.
The next best hope was to look into Meta Traffickers who went off the grid two years ago. Maybe they could look into doctors too since one was needed for that kind of experiment.
Bruce's eyes drifted to the words on the wall. There was no way they would forget this person. Not until who ever they were was behind bars for what they did to (Name). Bruce's hands drifted to the center pocket of his suit and pulled out a photo.
It was him holding (Name) as an infant. A broad smile on his face as he cradled the squirming infant. Looking back at the scene Bruce made a silent vow to not let the people who hurt her get away.
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mostlysignssomeportents · 3 days ago
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Enshittification isn’t caused by venture capital
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Picks and Shovels is a new, standalone technothriller starring Marty Hench, my two-fisted, hard-fighting, tech-scam-busting forensic accountant. You can pre-order it on my latest Kickstarter, which features a brilliant audiobook read by Wil Wheaton.
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Many of us have left the big social media platforms; far more of us wish we could leave them; and even those of us who've escaped from Facebook/Insta and Twitter still spend a lot of time trying to figure out how to get the people we care about off of them, too.
It's lazy and easy to think that our friends who are stuck on legacy platforms run by Zuckerberg and Musk lack the self-discipline to wean themselves off of these services, or lack the perspective to understand why it's so urgent to get away from them, or that their "hacked dopamine loops" have addicted them to the zuckermusk algorithms. But if you actually listen to the people who've stayed behind, you'll learn that the main reason our friends stay on legacy platforms is that they care about the other people there more than they hate Zuck or Musk.
They rely on them because they're in a rare-disease support group; or they all coordinate their kids' little league carpools there; or that's where they stay in touch with family and friends they left behind when they emigrated; or they're customers or the audience for creative labor.
All those people might want to leave, too, but it's really hard to agree on where to go, when to go, and how to re-establish your groups when you get somewhere else. Economists call this the "collective action problem." This problem creates "switching costs" – a lot of stuff you'll have to live without if you switch from legacy platforms to new ones. The collective action problem is hard to solve and the switching costs are very high:
https://pluralistic.net/2022/10/29/how-to-leave-dying-social-media-platforms/
That's why people stay behind – not because they lack perspective, or self-discipline, or because their dopamine loops have been hacked by evil techbro sorcerers who used Big Data to fashion history's first functional mind-control ray. They are locked in by real, material things.
Big Tech critics who attribute users' moral failings or platforms' technical prowess to the legacy platforms' "stickiness" are their own worst enemies. These critics have correctly identified that legacy platforms are a serious problem, but have totally failed to understand the nature of that problem or how to fix it. Thankfully, more and more critics are coming to understand that lock-in is the root of the problem, and that anti-lock-in measures like interoperability can address it.
But there's another major gap in the mainstream critique of social media. Critics of zuckermuskian media claim those services are so terrible because they're for-profit entities, capitalist enterprises hitched to the logic of extraction and profit above all else. The problem with this claim is that it doesn't explain the changes to these services. After all, the reason so many of us got on Twitter and Facebook and Instagram is because they used to be a lot of fun. They were useful. They were even great at times.
When tech critics fail to ask why good services turn bad, that failure is just as severe as the failure to ask why people stay when the services rot.
Now, the guy who ran Facebook when it was a great way to form communities and make friends and find old friends is the same guy who who has turned Facebook into a hellscape. There's very good reason to believe that Mark Zuckerberg was always a creep, and he took investment capital very early on, long before he started fucking up the service. So what gives? Did Zuck get a brain parasite that turned him evil? Did his investors get more demanding in their clamor for dividends?
If that's what you think, you need to show your working. Again, by all accounts, Zuck was a monster from day one. Zuck's investors – both the VCs who backed him early and the gigantic institutional funds whose portfolios are stuffed with Meta stock today – are not patient sorts with a reputation for going easy on entrepreneurs who leave money on the table. They've demanded every nickel since the start.
What changed? What caused Zuck to enshittify his service? And, even more importantly for those of us who care about the people locked into Facebook's walled gardens: what stopped him from enshittifying his services in the "good old days?"
At its root, enshittification is a theory about constraints. Companies pursue profit at all costs, but while you may be tempted to focus on the "at all costs" part of that formulation, you musn't neglect the "profits" part. Companies don't pursue unprofitable actions at all costs – they only pursue the plans that they judge are likely to yield profits.
When companies face real competitors, then some enshittificatory gambits are unprofitable, because they'll drive your users to competing platforms. That's why Zuckerberg bought Instagram: he had been turning the screws on Facebook users, and when Instagram came along, millions of those users decided that they hated Zuck more than they loved their friends and so they swallowed the switching costs and defected to Instagram. In an ill-advised middle-of-the-night memo to his CFO, Zuck defended spending $1b on Instagram on the grounds that it would recapture those Facebook escapees:
https://www.theverge.com/2020/7/29/21345723/facebook-instagram-documents-emails-mark-zuckerberg-kevin-systrom-hearing
A company that neutralizes, buys or destroys its competitors can treat its users far worse – invade their privacy, cheap out on moderation and anti-spam, etc – without losing their business. That's why Zuck's motto is "it is better to buy than to compete":
https://www.trtworld.com/magazine/zuckerberg-its-better-to-buy-than-compete-is-facebook-a-monopoly-42243
Of course, as a leftist, I know better than to count on markets as a reliable source of corporate discipline. Even more important than market discipline is government discipline, in the form of regulation. If Zuckerberg feared fines for privacy violations, or moderation failures, or illegal anticompetitive mergers, or fraudulent advertising systems that rip off publishers and advertisers, or other forms of fraud (like the "pivot to video"), he would treat his users better. But Facebook's rise to power took place during the second half of the neoliberal era, when the last shreds of regulatory muscle that survived the Reagan revolution were being devoured by GW Bush and Obama (and then Trump).
As cartels and monopolies took over our economy, most government regulators were neutered and captured. Public agencies were stripped of their powers or put in harness to attack small companies, customers, and suppliers who got in the way of monopolists' rent-extraction. That meant that as Facebook grew, Zuckerberg had less and less to fear from government enforcers who might punish him for enshittification where the markets failed to do so.
But it's worse than that, because Zuckerberg and other tech monopolists figured out how to harness "IP" law to get the government to shut down third-party technology that might help users resist enshittification. IP law is why you can't make a privacy-protecting ad-blocker for an app (and why companies are so desperate to get you to use their apps rather than the open web, and why apps are so dismally enshittified). IP law is why you can't make an alternative client that blocks algorithmic recommendations. IP law is why you can't leave Facebook for a new service and run a scraper that imports your waiting Facebook messages into a different inbox. IP law is why you can't scrape Facebook to catalog the paid political disinformation the company allows on the platform:
https://locusmag.com/2020/09/cory-doctorow-ip/
IP law's growth has coincided with Facebook's ascendancy – the bigger Facebook got, the more tempting it was to interoperators who might want to plug new code into it to protect Facebook users, and the more powers Facebook had to block even the most modest improvements to its service. That meant that Facebook could enshittify even more, without worrying that it would drive users to take unilateral, permanent action that would deprive it of revenue, like blocking ads. Once ad-blocking is illegal (as it is on apps), there's no reason not to make ads as obnoxious as you want.
Of course, many Facebook employees cared about their users, and for most of the 21st century, those workers were a key asset for Facebook. Tech workers were in short supply until just a couple years ago, when the platforms started round after round of brutal layoffs – 260,000 in 2023, another 150,000+ in 2024. Facebook workers may be furious about Zuckerberg killing content moderation, but he's not worried about them quitting – not with a half-million skilled tech workers out there, hunting for jobs. Fuck 'em. Let 'em quit:
https://www.404media.co/its-total-chaos-internally-at-meta-right-now-employees-protest-zuckerbergs-anti-lgbtq-changes/
This is what changed: the collapse of market, government, and labor constraints, and IP law's criminalization of disenshittifying, interoperable add-ons. This is why Zuck, an eternal creep, is now letting his creep flag fly so proudly today. Not because he's a worse person, but because he understands that he can hurt his users and workers to benefit his shareholders without facing any consequences. Zuckerberg 2025 isn't the most evil Zuck, he's the most unconstrained Zuck.
Same goes for Twitter. I mean, obviously, there's been a change in management at Twitter – the guy who's enshittifying it today isn't the guy who enshittified it prior to last year. Musk is speedrunning the enshittification curve, and yet Twitter isn't collapsing. Why not? Because Musk is insulated from consequences for fucking up – he's got a huge cushion of wealth, he's got advertisers who are desperate to reach his users, he's got users who can't afford to leave the service, he's got IP law that he can use to block interoperators who might make it easier to migrate to a better service. He was always a greedy, sadistic asshole. Now he's an unconstrained greedy, sadistic asshole. Musk 2025 isn't a worse person than Musk 2020. He's just more free to act on his evil impulses than he was in years gone by.
These are the two factors that make services terrible: captive users, and no constraints. If your users can't leave, and if you face no consequences for making them miserable (not solely their departure to a competitor, but also fines, criminal charges, worker revolts, and guerrilla warfare with interoperators), then you have the means, motive and opportunity to turn your service into a giant pile of shit.
That's why we got Jack Welch and his acolytes when we did. There were always evil fuckers just like them hanging around, but they didn't get to run GM until Ronald Reagan took away the constraints that would have punished them for turning GE into a giant pile of shit. Every economy is forever a-crawl with parasites and monsters like these, but they don't get to burrow into the system and colonize it until policymakers create rips they can pass through.
In other words, the profit motive itself is not sufficient to cause enshittification – not even when a for-profit firm has to answer to VCs who would shut down the company or fire its leadership in the face of unsatisfactory returns. For-profit companies chase profit. The enshittifying changes to Facebook and Twitter are cruel, but the cruelty isn't the point: the point is profits. If the fines – or criminal charges – Facebook faced for invading our privacy exceeded the ad-targeting revenue it makes by doing so, it would stop spying on us. Facebook wouldn't like it. Zuck would hate it. But he'd do it, because he spies on us to make money, not because he's a voyeur.
To stop enshittification, it is not necessary to eliminate the profit motive – it is only necessary to make enshittification unprofitable.
This is not to defend capitalism. I'm not saying there's a "real capitalism" that's good, and a "crony capitalism" or "monopoly capitalism" that's bad. All flavors of capitalism harm working people and seek to shift wealth and power from the public and democratic institutions to private interests. But that doesn't change the fact that there are, indeed, different flavors of capitalism, and they have different winners and losers. Capitalists who want to sell apps on the App Store or reach customers through Facebook are technofeudalism's losers, while Apple, Facebook, Google, and other Big Tech companies are technofeudalism's great winners.
Smart leftism pays attention to these differences, because they represent the potential fault lines in capitalism's coalition. These people all call themselves capitalists, they all give money and support to political movements that seek to crush worker power and human rights – but when the platforms win, the platforms' business customers lose. They are irreconcilably on different sides of a capitalism-v-capitalism fight that is every bit as important to them as the capitalism-v-socialism fight.
I'm saying that it's good praxis to understand these divisions in capitalism, because then we can exploit those differences to make real, material gains for human thriving and worker rights. Lumping all for-profit businesses together as identical and irredeemable is bad tactics.
Legacy social media is at a turning point. Two new systems built on open standards have emerged as a credible threat to the zuckermuskian model: Mastodon (built on Activitypub) and Bluesky (built on Atproto). The former is far more mature, with a huge network of federated servers run by all different kinds of institutions, from hobbyists to corporations, and it's overseen by a nonprofit. The latter has far more users, and is a VC-backed corporate entity, and while it is hypothetically federatable, there are no Bluesky services apart from the main one that you can leave for if Bluesky starts to enshittify.
That means that Bluesky has a ton of captive users, and has the lack of constraint that characterizes the enshittified legacy platforms it has tempted tens of millions of users away from. This is not a good place to be in, because it means that if the current management choose to enshittify Bluesky, they can, and it will be profitable. It also means that the company's VCs understand that they could replace the current management and replace them with willing enshittifiers and make more money.
This is why Bluesky is in a dangerous place: not because it is backed by VCs, not because it is a for-profit entity, but because it has captive users and no constraints. It's a great party in a sealed building with no fire exits:
https://pluralistic.net/2024/12/14/fire-exits/#graceful-failure-modes
Last week, I endorsed a project called Free Our Feeds, whose goals include hacking some fire exits into Bluesky by force majeure – that is, independently standing up an alternative Bluesky server that people can retreat to if Bluesky management changes, or has a change of heart:
https://pluralistic.net/2025/01/14/contesting-popularity/#everybody-samba
For some Mastodon users, Free Our Feeds is dead on arrival – why bother trying to make a for-profit project safer for its users when Mastodon is a perfectly good nonprofit alternative? Why waste millions developing a standalone Bluesky server rather than spending that money improving things in the Fediverse.
I believe strongly in improving the Fediverse, and I believe in adding the long-overdue federation to Bluesky. That's because my goal isn't the success of the Fediverse – it's the defeat of enshtitification. My answer to "why spend money fixing Bluesky?" is "why leave 20 million people at risk of enshittification when we could not only make them safe, but also create the toolchain to allow many, many organizations to operate a whole federation of Bluesky servers?" If you care about a better internet – and not just the Fediverse – then you should share this goal, too.
Many of the Fediverse's servers are operated by for-profit entities, after all. One of the Fediverse's largest servers (Threads) is owned by Meta. Threads users who feel the bite of Zuckerberg's decision to encourage homophobic, xenophobic and transphobic hate speech will find it easy to escape from Threads: they can set up on any Fediverse server that is federated with Threads and they'll be able to maintain their connections with everyone who stays behind.
The existence of for-profit servers in the Fediverse does not ruin the Fediverse (though I wouldn't personally use one of them). The fact that multiple neo-Nazi groups run their own Mastodon servers does not ruin the Fediverse (though I certainly won't use their servers). Not even the fact that Donald Trump's Truth Social is a Mastodon server does anything to ruin the Fediverse (not using that one, either).
This is the strength of federated, federatable social media – it disciplines enshittifiers by lowering switching costs, and if enshittifiers persist, it makes it easy for users to escape unshitted, because they don't have to solve the collective action problem. Any user can go to any server at any time and stay in touch with everyone else.
Mastodon was born free: free code, with free federation as a priority. Bluesky was not: it was born within a for-profit public benefit corporation whose charter offers some defenses against enshittification, but lacks the most decisive one: the federation that would let users escape should escape become necessary.
The fact that Mastodon was born free is quite unusual in the annals of the fight for a free internet. Most of the internet was born proprietary and had freedom foisted upon it. Unix was born within Bell Labs, property of the convicted monopolist AT&T. The GNU/Linux project set it free.
SMB was born proprietary within corporate walls of Microsoft, another corporate monopolist. SAMBA set it free.
The Office file formats were also born proprietary within Microsoft's walled garden: they were set free by hacker-activists who fought through a thick bureaucratic morass and Microsoft fuckery (including literally refusing to allow chairs to be set for advocates for Open Document Format) to give us formats that underlie everything from LibreOffice to Google Docs, Office365 to your web browser.
There is nothing unusual, in other words, about hacking freedom into something that is proprietary or just insufficiently free. That's totally normal. It's how we got almost everything great about computers.
Mastodon's progenitors should be praised for ensuring their creation was born free – but the fact that Bluesky isn't free enough is no reason to turn our back on it. Our response to anything that locks in the people we care about must be to shatter those locks, not abandon the people bound by the locks because they didn't heed to our warnings.
Audre Lorde is far smarter than me, but when she wrote that "the master's tools will never dismantle the master's house," she was wrong. There is no toolset better suited to conduct an orderly dismantling of a structure than the tools that built it. You can be sure it'll have all the right screwdriver bits, wrenches, hexkeys and sockets.
Bluesky is fine. It has features I significantly prefer to Mastodon's equivalent. Composable moderation is amazing, both a technical triumph and a triumph of human-centered design:
https://bsky.social/about/blog/4-13-2023-moderation
I hope Mastodon adopts those features. If someone starts a project to copy all of Bluesky's best features over to Mastodon, I'll put my name to the crowdfunding campaign in a second.
But Mastodon has one feature that Bluesky sorely lacks – the federation that imposes antienshittificatory discipline on companies and offers an enshittification fire-exit for users if the discipline fails. It's long past time that someone copied that feature over to Bluesky.
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Check out my Kickstarter to pre-order copies of my next novel, Picks and Shovels!
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If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:
https://pluralistic.net/2025/01/20/capitalist-unrealism/#praxis
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acciocriativity · 3 days ago
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->You're hyper independent || Ateez Reactions || Maknae Line
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Genre: fluff, angst for Jongho’s part, slice of life AU
Warnings: mentions of relatives' death on Mingi’s part; mentions overworking, lack of self care and unhealthy perfectionism on San’s part; this IS more heavy in general than the first part, I'm so sorry. I don't incentivize any of the behaviors depicted in this.
N/A: This is a very real trauma response that real people have. However, I tried to keep it light, humorous, and focus on the support and love the reader received from the boys in different contexts instead of the actual trauma triggering situation that cause the trauma response. If I, in any way, offend people who have this trauma response, I'm open to learning and editing this, if necessary.
N/A ²: This is a gender neutral! reader in all of them, but Mingi’s part.
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Ateez Masterlist
Hyung Line version
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Choi San (최산): He’ll take care of you, whether you like it or not
Choi San wasn’t your husband, yet at least. The engagement talk was at its peak, and you knew a proposal wasn’t far off. Still, if any of your friends saw the two of you on a normal day, they’d ask where you found such an amazing house husband, and you wouldn’t be able to respond. He wasn’t your house husband, nothing against it, but you wouldn’t be able to be with a man that hadn’t the same ambition with his work as you did. Well, maybe San didn’t have this hunger to be at the top like you, but he was determined and passionate, striving to be his best every day and finding new ways to grow, and that was enough for you.
Although he had his own fair share of work schedule, his work from home was flexible and task-based rather than time-based, so with his efficiency, he managed to have more free time than you. This led to your current arrangement. It was rare for you to be at home if it wasn’t on a weekend, so it was a seamless transition for him to live with you and contribute a bigger portion of house labor. His presence was something dangerous because you started to think about what you would do without him in your life. He added instead of subtracting from your energy and time, which sometimes seemed like a surreal dream.
You had a full-time job, a good apartment, a car, and a whole social life you had to manage. There was so much you wanted to do with your life, with your free time, that you were used to the feeling of being hungry throughout the day or dizziness from the lack of hydration. The only way you managed to rest was when you were asleep. Otherwise, you felt like you were losing time. This was your normal day-to-day self, what you were used to, and yes, you knew it was bad.
When you met San, your health was at its lowest. It was normal for him to be worried, and your friends and family were. But he was the one that took action, a man you barely knew at the time. All his attempts were kindly rejected by you, and then you hated the thought of him, of all people, helping you. Not only you didn’t need it, but you’d hate to be a bother.
But San was as stubborn as he was beautiful. He reminded you religiously to drink water, cooked healthy meals for you even on weekends, bought groceries for you when you didn’t have the time for so many weeks you were truly embarrassed by yourself, took care of your plants when you were away on work trips and so much more.
It was all so weird. You constantly waited for the other shoe to drop. For the time when he’d be tired of this constant routine of caring for you. Your toxic self was waiting for the confirmation that you were too much for anyone to handle, that nobody could be with you and keep up, that you were the problem and that was the reason you could never be in a relationship for long.
But San proved you wrong, again and again, and you couldn’t even be mad at him for it.
Song Mingi (송민기): Turns out, he’s not just a silly little guy
Mingi was your younger brother best friend, and there were times you hated him for it. As the elder daughter, you took on the biggest load of everything in your house up until you left for college in another state. Until that moment, you had to be silent and grateful about it all. There was no throwing yourself on the ground to get your way or crying yourself out of your “duties”, which included but not limited to cooking all the meals for yourself and your brother, making the grocery store list and buying everything yourself once you were old enough, cleaning the entire house yourself, which wasn’t the initial agreement, and babysitting your brother 24/7 and his friends when they were over, which was almost every single day. So clearly, there was a lot on your plate, nothing a child should have on theirs. But why did you hate Mingi in specific? He wasn’t mean, but he thought it was funny to break rules, to do what your parents told they couldn’t and he got away with it while the blame fell on you. Not once, not twice.
In Mingi’s defense, he didn’t know actions had consequences at the time, he was 6 and a spoiled only child, also, he felt really shitty when your brother told him your parents punished you for some of the stuff they did later, but he thought it was too late. After two decades and something passed, somehow, you still saw him as the same irresponsible boy that got you into trouble. Mind you, he kind of never left your life completely, he was in bedded in the family’s stories, in the corner of the photos, in the little small get together that were family only, but he was never close to you. That’d be quite the impossible mission since you looked like you hated his guts.
But when the worst time of your life came, so did his redemption arc. Your grandma got really sick, and the whole family was in shambles, but somehow, you were the one expected to make the bigger sacrifices. Most of your relatives live far away, some out of the country and although your mom moved in with you, her health wasn't in an ideal condition to take care of someone else, which was already another problem and another whole set of eggs for you to be careful not to step on. It was only you in this, at least, you thought so until Mingi showed up on your doorstep, ready to help. It concerned you, but your position didn't allow you to turn him down. To your surprise, Mingi helped with a lot. Since he never moved away from his family home, he managed to help daily with meal prepping, groceries shopping, and the house up-keeping. No one really asked him to step up like that. Not even your own brother did this much after a week, yet he was by your side through it all.
A lot of the weight was off your back before you realized it. It was a weird sensation, but you were truly thankful for him, and you wanted to find a way to let him know. After an entire month, your relationship with Mingi was still stiff and awkward, yet you began to appreciate it for what it was, and maybe, someday, it'd be a work in progress.
Jeong Wooyoung (정우영): You may call him a wrecking ball
It seems like he has been paying for all his sins ahead of time because why does he have to love such difficult people? *dramatic sigh*. Ok, that was a lie. He didn’t care you weren’t the best with physical affection, you walked around like that wasn’t a thing at all, but that’s OK, because he’s affectionate enough for the both of you.
You had pretty established boundaries, more like a steel wall around you that people couldn’t go through. While Wooyoung…, yeah. It was a weird kind of friendship at first, if he could call a friendship. He was a work colleague, but somehow, he saw right through your tough act on day one, unlike everyone else. You tended to put a good distance in your every relationship unintentionally, too focused on your work to pay attention on small talk or the gossip of the day, but others saw it as a lack of interest in their friendship, which wasn’t true. You were as interested in them as you were scared of them.
Although it wasn’t possible for Wooyoung to know the in’s and out’s of your mind, he saw your unintentional push and pull game in those subtle ways. Whenever you tried to be closer to people in your own way, the effort wasn’t reciprocated until the point you’d take the hint. It was too late. You managed to scare them away again.
If anyone would ask him why he tried so hard to befriend you, he’d lie and say he didn’t have to try at all, you fell for his charms in an instant. But if he were to be honest, he’d say he saw a part of himself in you. In his eyes, you weren’t cold, nor uptight and mean. You just didn’t give love to others in an open way. This didn’t mean you didn’t have any to give or that you aren’t able to feel it. His running theory was that you were his exact opposite, and he couldn’t just live you be without helping you out or, at least, try.
The moment he got to crack a small piece of your wall, when he wasn’t even trying to, he was determined to see more. And oh boy, didn’t he see it? Now, this may be ridiculous, but he felt honored when you let him step into your world as a whole, no judgment, only him trying to understand you as a person. It warmed his heart that he got to be someone important in your life as much as you were on his.
If anyone that work along side the both of you saw you two today, years later, they wouldn’t believe it. But here you are, pretending you don’t like his weekly hugs spree while you don’t move a single muscle to get him off you. Isn’t it funny how things change? Hm? What was this, oh, you said you feel like laying down on the couch now, so you wouldn’t move? OK, he’d let you have that excuse for now.
Choi Jongho (최종호): he was your missing piece. Now you only miss him
To see him in a situation like this made you consider hysterically laughing until the moment your brain forgets where you are and you don’t care anymore. That must be a nice feeling, one you never really felt without him. Like you, he was dressed up for the weeding ceremony of your friend in common and you felt dumb, first, because you swore you’d only attend if there was no possibility of him coming, he was supposed to be out of the country and second, because he didn’t spare you another look.
Your breakup was amicable and mutual. With both of your lives ascending, the distance grew, physically and emotionally. There was no ease and stress-free conversations, suddenly you couldn’t relate to each other anymore and what was the point to be with him when the only thing you wanted to do on your break was rot in bed instead of seeing him? You had no energy to spare, and neither did him.
Why do you still care, then?
Because he was perfect for you, at least at some point, in every sense of the word. He saw you and didn’t judge, didn’t try to change who you was, instead he slowly but surely helped you adapt into a new routine with him in it. It was livelier and brighter when he was around.
The moment he left, you noticed that you just lived the happiest years of your life, and there was no coming back from it. You didn’t even attempt to talk once more, Jongho was like you in the sense that he carefully decided who stayed on his life and who didn’t, you moved to the latter, but you were the one that moved him out of yours first, weren’t you?
Your time management improved after all, but it let you down when it mattered the most. So, you tortured yourself a bit more, watching him and wondering what was going through his mind and if that had anything to do with you.
Jongho saw you the moment he walked in, but he pretended not to for his own sake. Although he'd never admit it out loud, to greet an ex at a weeding was above his maturity level. He just couldn’t bring himself to do it. Of course, you looked..., and of course, you'd have a date with you, but that didn't mean he had to see you two together, right? His solution was to stay away from you as far as he could. However, to accomplish such things, he'd have to be aware of your whereabouts all night long.
His self-control and straightforward priorities were some of his best qualities. He managed the need to stalk you on his worst days back then, so he never got to see how you were doing. At that moment, he could tell you were doing your best to be fine, to look perfect, but he used to know you better than that facade. Sometimes, he wondered if you regretted as much as he did.
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theladyeclectic79 · 3 days ago
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It’s strange: I played vanilla DA:I back in 2014 and was obsessed with the game, but Solas himself never really stood out to me. When I try to remember back a decade ago, I don’t know if I ever actually finished the game - I remember starting and restarting it because I loved it so much and didn’t want it to end.
I never played any of the DLC as life had moved on for me when it came out. The game was and remains my favorite of all time, but I never really connected with Solas. My love was Cullen and his romance, and I still maintain that it’s the best in the series.
That said however: the CHOKEHOLD this man has over me after playing Veilguard. I am currently replaying Inquisition, and the amount of foreshadowing that game has is… My god. Just regular dialogue option with Solas, knowing now what I do after Veilguard - I understand all you long-time Solavellan lovers (and I haven’t even gotten to the Trespasser DLC content yet).
Solas is one of the best written villains I’ve ever seen in a game. I don’t even know how to put into words just how perfect he is. Everything he’s done, EVERYTHING, came from a place of goodness; he wanted to do the right thing but there were no objectively GOOD options, just the least-bad. Rendering the Titans tranquil, creating the Veil; he did these to keep worse from happening, yet they were still objectively bad outcomes. Even now, wanting to remove the Veil will kill untold numbers, but all he can see is how many terrible things he done and wants to atone.
That he cannot see (or care?) what devastation it will create is because he can’t trust himself anymore. He has allowed himself to be swayed before: Mythal convincing him to become corporeal even knowing the risks for a spirit of Wisdom; letting Mythal set the pace with the Evanuris, and seeing her murdered by them. His entire life, he has been convinced not to pursue what he thought was right and was burned, so now he’s afraid to be swayed again and for something else terrible to happen.
And so he walks his Dinan’shiral alone, knowing his death is at the end. He never wanted to live, not like that. His life is regret upon regret; he just wants it to end, but is desperate to atone for all the things he’s done along the way.
He’s just…so compelling. Millenia of regrets, so many things he wanted that slipped through his fingers. He’s unbearably tragic in a way few characters in media are, a classic case of “live long enough and see yourself become the villain.” And he HATES this about himself, because all he wanted was to help.
So in the end, he’s stuck on the road he created for himself because he cannot trust himself to walk any other direction. Reversing the Veil is the only thing he can do; he cannot bring back those he betrayed, but he can give the future what they lost at least. He’s trying to be heroic, but his vision is so warped by a lifetime of betrayal, pride, and too-hard decisions that he won’t let himself see anything other than the end of the road.
I wonder if BioWare knew all along what they were creating with him. Dunno if there’ll be another villain this good in media for a long time to come.
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[Wicked Act II spoilers]
[edited for tone and clarity of purpose, apologies for initial crudeness and frustration]
Okay, obviously I'm biased, but I'm gonna need the Fiyeraba shippers to please set a lot of your people straight about some things. I've seen way too many people trying to say that Glinda is just a selfish bimbo and that Fiyero is a virtuous and selfless figure more worthy of Elphaba's love. I'll set aside for now the idea of "worthiness" in this context. But let's start off with Fiyero joining the Wizard. Hoo boy...
Yes, he was initially somewhat less tolerant of the propaganda against Elphaba than Glinda was; yes, he was secretly trying to find her so he could run away with her or whatever. But honey: those facts DO NOT fully absolve his actions as the Wizard's top officer, or selfish recklessness throughout Act II. I see so many popular threads and posts romanticizing and whitewashing with "oh but he didn't REALLY join the Wizard, he just pretended so he could try to get to Elphie! It's all for love, and he sacrificed everything for her!" As if the literal captain of the literally fascist forces responsible for the oppression of Animals wasn't equally responsible for said oppression?? Hello? Fiyero really didn't think of seeking out Elphaba in ANY other way that DIDN'T involve becoming *checks notes*... the trusted leader of the troops committing all the abuses she's fighting against in the first place???? Like it's cool and all that he helped with Brrr, and it's all well and good that he planned on betraying the Wizard as soon as he found Elphaba (which took literal years, so I guess we're left to assume he was prepared to just keep doing fascism indefinitely if she didn't show up????), but uh... it's kind of concerning to how eager some of you are to make excuses for this dude volunteering as the head of the Ozian Gestapo??? smdh
He didn't accomplish anything from it either, by the way — like yeah, we get it, he did everything he did whilst silently fantasizing about running away with the Witch he was being paid to hunt. Fine. But I can't be the only one who doesn't buy that as an actual excuse???? Like, guys: nobody forced him to join the fascist army — even with crazy ulterior motives. He wasn't coerced into it; it wasn't his only choice or anything. Searching for Elphaba did not somehow compel him to go and volunteer to follow (or to give!) orders in the name of the dictator who was trying to have her assassinated the entire time. He could have just not done all that. (Genuinely so curious how the second film plans on covering that material tbh)
Glinda made several questionable decisions that can be (and have been) debated, but she is still very unambiguously a victim. Her position in the Wizard's regime was foisted upon her. There are things we can discuss, but I find that many folks need reminding that Glinda would undoubtedly have been disposed of (or worse) if she failed to make herself useful. I mean hell: she wasn't even supposed to meet the Wizard in the first place — she was only there because of Elphie. If she'd tried to resist, it would have immediately gotten her labeled the Witch's accomplice. As soon as she'd chosen not to get on the broom, her fate was out of her hands, and all available options were varying degrees of horrible.
That's not the case with Fiyero. He went to the Wizard all on his own; no one ever cornered or forced him into it. Thinking Animals are people, and having a crush on Elphaba, simply did not stop him from carrying out the regime's orders — for years. It's not clear exactly how long he's been captain at the start of Act II, but the clear implication is that he's been a soldier for most of the time skip. I've seen Fiyeraba accounts with headcanons about him acting as a double agent, secretly doing stuff to help Animals — and that's a great idea, it would indeed serve to make a lot of his actions way more palatable — but until we actually get to SEE some of that (maybe they'll add it for the movie version of Act II; we'll have to see), there is nothing in the story to suggest that. He certainly didn't do a damn thing for all those Animals who were enslaved and caged in the Wizard's palace — and we don't see a single other Animal outside of there in Act II, so as far as we know Fiyero has participated over those years in the near-total removal of Animals from Ozian society. In the name of "finding Elphaba". Not fighting for her cause. Just finding HER. For HIMSELF.
It's fine to have a ship you like, obviously — and there is genuinely a lot to like about Fiyeraba, I don't dislike the idea of them as a couple or as friends — but come on guys: please stop those out there idealizing Fiyero as somehow a clear "morally-superior" alternative to Glinda, lol. The dude had power, access, and opportunities, for years, that he could have wielded in any number of really selfless, revolutionary ways. He didn't. And I propose (apparently controversially): he simply didn't want to. And that — at the end of the day — is (much as some would like to deny it) true to his character. He always WANTED to be self-absorbed and shallow, and all his actions are consistent with that. Elphaba saw depth and discontentment in him, yes: but (and I cannot stress this enough) when given the chance, he channeled that in the wrong direction. He didn't confront that and become a better person — for the most part he just displaced and projected it onto Elphaba as an object of obsession, and put on an even thicker pretense than before.
All his actions — regardless of the complexity he has deep down — are those of a man who never gives one fuck about anything or anyone, except (kinda sorta) Elphaba. But even then: at no time does the care he has for her seem to extend to caring about any of her wants or needs outside of sexual validation from him, or how she might feel about his actions, or indeed the impacts of those actions upon her, her cause, or anyone or anything else. I don't think it should be all that controversial to say: he doesn't think through the wider repercussions of anything he does — thoughtlessness is just one of his core character traits. He doesn't think ahead or see meaning in anything outside of what can temporarily excite him, in the moment. I think people place a little too much weight on Elphaba clocking him with regard to his internal pain, and seem to expect (understandably of course) that she is not only right, but moreover that he will grow from that in a positive direction, based on her influence.
But he doesn't. If anything, we get a surprising inverse: he pretty much proves her wrong. Not to say he didn't have hidden depth and all that, like she said: but his hypothetical heart of gold proves not to really amount to much in practice. He doesn't grow out of his shallowness and his self-centeredness: he grows into it in a way that he hadn't quite yet in school. Where once he was only masking an internal listlessness, after he's been cracked open by Elphaba he decides to be genuinely self-absorbed and deeply shallow, not just coasting by. He performs in new ways — as a soldier, eventually as a "fiancé", etc. — but by Act II we meet a Fiyero who has staked the last remaining shred of humanity in him on the vain pursuit of the only object of his desire that has ever been unavailable to him, and firmly chosen to say to hell with everyone and everything else.
When put to the test, Fiyero sacrifices Glinda, the Animals, and all else that Elphaba actually cared about, to pursue his own unresolved crush from college. Mostly to get in her pants, really — as harsh as I'm sure that sounds. But let me be frank: that is literally all he ever accomplishes in the show. He gives her dick one time, and one of his castles, and that's it. That's the culmination of his years trying to find her — years in which he actively worked as one of the stormtroopers (or even the one commanding them) committing untold crimes against Animalkind (who, again, it seems have been all but erased from Oz by Act II): y'know, the very crimes Elphaba sacrificed her life to try and stop????? He spent the most important time of his life — of his own free will — being a fascist soldier, but he "did it for her" somehow, so according to some, it's perfectly fine. Heroic, even. Yikes??
But let's make something very clear (since my original version of this post caught a lot of flak, including slurs and other rudeness):
I like Fiyero. I find his role extremely interesting (I could do a whole dissertation on him, but I'm especially a fan of the way his proving Elphaba's assessment of him wrong presents a fascinating parallel and contrast with Glinda, which I think is lost on a lot of people). But PLEASE stop with all the misguided Glinda slander and idealization of Fiyero. By all means, thirst! But don't give me all this bullshit about him deserving Elphaba more, or being super deep, or being really principled or noble or whatever else. He does have layers, and quite intriguing ones, but his insides are straw — he isn't meant to have some deep, overwrought emotional core or motivations; he has passions that he acts upon when given the chance. That's it. And that's fine. Actually kind of refreshing in a story rooted in simple children's fantasy but rife with intensely complicated personalities. Fiyero makes it his mission to represent denial of depth and embrace of raw, spontaneous desire — and I for one love that, and wish others appreciated it.
And in all seriousness, shipping wars aside: by the end of the story, it's Glinda who is ultimately vindicated, and has — for all her faults — made the necessary choices to fulfill Elphaba's wishes, bring down the regime, etc. And all that despite herself. She's miserable: not just because of the mistakes she made, but because of her correct moves as well. Fiyero is simply not — and could never be — that person. And that's okay! Like I said: I am not anti-Fiyero. Fiyero's willingness to throw it all away for the sake of sheer, overriding passion is a huge part of what people like about him, of course — and it's an obvious factor in the attraction between him and Elphaba, because she has her own flavor of that impulse as well — but I'd actually argue that it's not romantic, it's his fatal flaw. And thematically that's fantastic! But I just don't believe that it somehow means he "deserves Elphaba more" because he "gave up his life for her" or whatever. In part because NOBODY truly "deserves" Elphie tbh, not 100% (and I question anybody who claims otherwise), but ultimately because I don't accept the idea that his fleeting acts of passion make up for all the shit leading up to them (or even proceeding after them tbh). At least Glinda managed to do what Elphaba always wanted in the end — but I would die on this hill even if Gelphie didn't exist.
You don't have to agree with my analysis of Fiyero and his choices, relationships, etc. — that's fine. What isn't fine is trying to portray Glinda as some kind of spineless traitor whore for the Wizard and Fiyero as a conscientious hero who earned Elphie through self-sacrifice. That's just not the story that was written. It's WAY messier and more interesting than that.
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ihrthoney · 1 day ago
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for us
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pairings: namgyu x preg!reader
warnings: angst & fluff :p
an: i started my first big girl job but im motivated so ill try to post more :)! i haven’t posted in a minute and i hate pregnancy tropes but i make the exception for squid games lol. i will make a part two!
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nam-gyu was many things, an addict, a partier, an idiot and a sweetheart. the sweetest ever, actually.
unfortunately for you you worked at club pentagon, which is how you met the physical embodiment of an acid trip.
who he was when he was sober was something you cherished and kept close to your heart. it wasn’t hard to weave your way into his rotten lungs, but soon enough you became his air, his new high.
after learning you never did substances, he switched positions at the club and asked you to get a safer job, not wanting you to inevitably cave to the horrible things that he tries.
you scold him of course, reprimand him and argue about hating how he acted when under the influence. for a while he managed to stop, wanting something serious and stable.
but then he met thanos, he came home obnoxiously intoxicated. nam-gyu was so star struck that he saw a famous rapper that he didn’t understand why you locked him out of the room, until he woke up the next morning with a headache he only got when he was on drugs.
apologies spewed out of his mouth, wishing for a second chance. his wish was granted, he found another outlet for “extra money” and promised you both a fresh start.
until the extra money vanished off the face of the earth and now he was in incredible debt.
the few months of bliss now gone, thoughts of continuing such an unstable relationship this far into life didn’t seem like a good idea. the arguments were bad, mostly on your end as you couldn’t get him to stop begging and spilling empty promises,
“i’ll make the money back and i’ll work harder to make more for you, please baby i’m so sorry.” the sight of him on his knees and holding your legs would’ve been kind of sweet if this wasn’t the millionth time he’s promised to be better.
to his disappointment, you walked out of his life that night, asking him to only find you when he grew up.
he was determined to make the money back, nam-gyu had no hesitation when calling the number on the card.
-
seeing thanos’ face on the big screen in the unfamiliar room brought a bitter taste in your mouth. you felt bad, seeing as he had the talent but like your ex he succumbed to the high instead.
your ex. that fucking moron. that piece of shit doesn’t even know you’re carrying his damn kid.
a week after you walked out of his life, you guys met up one time to exchange clothes and what not but one thing lead to another and here you were in hospital debt. finding a stable job was hard, especially when you worked as a bartender most of your adult life.
the stress was eating you alive, renting the nice place you had was not cheap and the nice landlord could only be nice for so long because you had to start paying more.
the past few months have been rough and you really wish you had the support of your ex even if he wasn’t the greatest, he was yours and that’s all that really mattered.
standing in line to sign the consent forms made you nauseous, afraid of what’s to come. as you’re walking back to your bed, you get stopped by a hand on your shoulder,
“yn?”
you feel your heartbeat quicken as you turn around and look at your ex boyfriend.
“why are you here?” his hand is still on your shoulder, slightly moving up and down your arm.
he always had a thing for keeping a hand on you, he said it grounded him.
“the same reason everyone is, debt.”
the expression on his face makes your chest ache, he looks so concerned that it makes you a wee bit mad, “what debt are you in? you’ve always been financially responsible!”
he was right, out of you two you made the smarter choices. it dawned on you that you had yet to tell him you’re pregnant with his kid.
“yn? what happened? did someone scam you? i know some people that could find them.” his tone deepening as he becomes more serious, “no! it’s not like that. it’s complicated..”
the worry in your voice makes his eyes fill with worry, “baby, you can tell me.” the name makes you push away from him but the distance is immediately gone as he closes it, pulling your hands into his own. you can’t look him in the eye, scared he’s going to be mad at you.
you’re going to keep it no matter what but the thought of him hating you and your kid makes your heart crack.
the swirled hormones make everything seem so much more intense, tears start to fill your eyes which makes his widen. his hands, ever so warm, hold your face and tilt it so you’re looking at him.
“what’s wrong, i’m here ba-“
“i’m pregnant, nam-gyu.” he pulls his hands off of your face like he was burned, an expression of hurt and anger swirls in his eyes,
“who’s the father?” you look at him like he’s stupid, which only makes him more upset. “why are you looking at me like that?”
does he seriously think i got with someone else?
nam-gyu is distraught, the thought of you no longer being in love with him makes him sick. the fact that you’re carrying someone else’s child makes any will to live disappear. suddenly he doesn’t care that he owes money to anyone, there’s no chance to get you back. “does he treat you well? are you happier?”
“i’m not seeing anyone new, nam-gyu.”
“you shouldn’t be playing games if you’re pregnant. you could hurt yourself or the baby.”
despite his own lack of rationality when making choices, he was always so careful with you.
you threw any rationality you had and spit out the truth,
“it’s yours.”
now he was looking at you like you were stupid, “what?”
“the baby. it’s yours. you’re the father. i’m carrying your child.” he blinks at you slowly, taking in the information you just dropped on him,
“it’s.. you’re carrying.. our baby?” nodding your head, you step forward and take his hand and guide it to your stomach.
“after we broke up, i started to feel sick so i took a test. i didn’t know what to do, i couldn’t find a good job near my place, moving is too expensive, i was afraid to reach out to you. i owe the hospital so much because i’m paying by month but i ran out of savings and then this guy came up to me and gave me a card to make money.”
by the end of your ramble, nam-gyu pulled you in for a tight hug, smoothing your back with his hand. softly, he coos into your hair, “i would’ve never denied you. had you called, we could’ve figured this shit out together.”
you argued back, “how was i supposed to know that? you promised me over and over again but nothing changed!”
despite missing the warmth, you again create a distance by pushing him away from you, although it’s no use given how he holds your arms but he still keeps the distance out of respect for you.
“i have changed! i’m here, i’m going to win that money and i’ll take care of you.” his eyes plead, the hands that hold you start to shake.
“you’ll win it? alone?” the logic hits him and he laughs at his own idiocy, “we’ll win, i’ll make sure we both get out of here. we can put the money together. it’ll be more than enough for us to start over!”
you’re skeptical, sure the chance of winning is there but.. is your trust in him still there?
“if we win-“
his hands move from your arms to your stomach, “when baby, when we win-“
your eyes roll at his optimism, “if and when we win, you need to quit drugs. cold turkey. no excuses, no more second chances. if you so much as look at a drug, i will kill you and raise this kid alone, do you understand me?”
he mocks a soldier, hand to his head and stance straight, “yes ma’am!” the pose barely lasts as he starts to giggle, following you to your bed while holding onto your hand.
there was more to come, you had a feeling that much money wouldn’t come so easy, but things felt just a tad easier with him.
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© ihrthoney. reblogs & feedback are greatly appreciated𑁤
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hivemuthur · 22 hours ago
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If it’s okay to request, may I request hcs or something with Viktor where he’s dating an autisc reader?
Okay, first of - I have no idea what I have done to be granted such trust, thank you so much Anon! I have been provided amazing advice from @rennethen while writing this and done some research and I hope, I hope, I hope it meets expectations.
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ViktorXAutistic!Reader HeadCannons
viktorxgn!reader mature, fluff and again: Viktor setting impossible standards for real-life men
author’s note: I have decided to not include tics, as they come in so many variations and I didn't want to impose anything upon Readers, but I can imagine Viktor being a total sweetheart about them.
word count: 1,4K
Since your first meeting, Viktor has been smitten with your bluntness and your ability to take his acrimonious jokes apart without a hint of incredulity in your voice. The way you keep asking subsidiary questions until you dig through the layers of his sass to the actual thing he meant to say  leaves his soul naked as day, every single time. Finally, an inquisitive mind, he thinks to himself, as you go for the killing blow:
“So, what you’ve meant to say is that you find me attractive?”
“Eh, I suppose that is what I meant,” he admits dumbly, scratching the back of his neck. “Though usually I tend to be a little bit less straight forward.”
“I prefer straight forward,” you tell him with wide eyes.
“I… I shall remember that.”
Viktor soon realises that being asked a lot of questions makes him blush in a funny way and his chest gets all fuzzy. So, he begins to share every little aspect of his work with you. The more questions you ask, the warmer his heart gets and somehow the way you get excited about his ideas is worth more than any other academical pat on the back he ever received.
Before asking you out for the first time, Viktor conducts a thorough research, not very different to the ones he conducts for the sake of a thesis. He finds out what are your favourite places and favourite spots to sit. He books two reservations, just in case.
He does the same thing when you try out a new place. Just in case. It has proven useful only once.
As a man who values routine, he finds it absolutely endearing that good things remain in your orbit for a long time and discovers that being greeted with his own name by the barista is actually a nice little feeling.
When he asked you if he could kiss you for the first time, he held his breath while you were reconsidering. He found it hard not to laugh stupidly and nod his head a couple times too many when you responded with the same question.
He cupped your face and brushed his thumb on your lip tentatively. At first, he just rubbed his nose against yours. Then, his cheek, as he pulled you closer. You decided his hair smelled nice and that he could proceed. You didn’t know what to do with your hands at first, because he was wearing an incredibly itchy jumper, so you settled on his neck, and he took it as an invitation to kiss you deeper.
When you told him about it he gave the jumper to Caitlyn, and even though the sleeves are not long enough for her, she wears it often. Gradually, Viktor is in the process of exchanging his wardrobe to touch-friendly materials, currently he is half-way through. He wears the offensive clothes to meetings with Jayce, because Jayce will hug even a hedgehog.
You teach Viktor the value of comfort, not just in the clothing department. Suddenly he finds that his blankets are softer and that his flat increased the base number of cushions.
He religiously cuts the tags out of your clothes and his work is so precise it’s as if the tag was never there in the first place.
Viktor will still periodically ask for a permission to touch you, only to hear “Yes, please.” And it still makes him blush.
He keeps two notebooks—one on your current food fixations. He writes down a start date of each and marks every little alteration. He examines the lifecycle of each dish, as you eat it every day for a month and suddenly stop, to move on to the next one. On the back of the notebook he has a list of old reliables.
The second notebook, he treats more seriously—it’s a journal of stimming. He makes a note of each gesture in order to recognize your emotions better. After a while he is able to tell if you are feeling overwhelmed, just excited or trying to concentrate.
He is completely bemused by the fact that you always know what entered the bowl first—the cereal or the milk.
When you unconsciously repeat words back at him in his accent he makes it intentionally heavier, because he finds in unbearably cute.
After some time, he’s learned to recognise when you are masking. When it happened for the first time, he allowed himself a pinch of panic. Only when you unravelled at home, he sighed, partially relieved, and made a note of it in his journal.
Viktor carries a pair of noise cancelling headphones when you go out together. He puts them on you if you get overstimulated and presents you with something else to shift your focus into—a tight hug, a smell or he presses gently on your shoulders to steady you.
If you happen to have a meltdown at either of your homes, he wordlessly prepares you your favourite food and stays close enough for you to reach. Sometimes, he does a full body scan with you, to see which part requires the most attention.
There are certain sounds that Viktor makes which you particularly like—the click of his tongue, the intercepting ‘ehs’ and ‘ahs’—and once he connects the dots between him making those and a smile that always blooms on your face, he produces as many as he can, while still sounding natural.
He enjoys just existing with you. Sitting in the same room, while he works, and you read is his definition of a happy place. Just glancing over to you, your tongue filling your cheek as you read something particularly interesting, the small sounds you make at turning points in the story make his heart flutter.
He finds himself involuntarily memorizing the lyrics of the songs you play on repeat. He has no idea who the artist are, but he knows their songs by heart now. It makes him feel old, in a funny way.
It completely disarms him, when you return his gifts. After three futile attempts to give you something of popular romantic demand, he scolded himself for not changing the method soon enough. Instead of jewellery, he encourages your special interests, through getting you books on the topics or taking you places that embody your passions.
On the other side of the coin, your gifts are deeply appreciated. Every little pebbling trinket has it’s special place in the box on his desk. He takes them out periodically and counts how many times a tiny detail in the chaos of the outside world has made you think of him.
For dates, Viktor chooses times and days in which the world is less crowded. Instead of a busy Saturday night, you go out in the middle of the week. After a particularly failed attempt of gifting you perfume, Viktor takes you to a balm perfume workshop, where you can make scents for each other that are buildable and unoffensive to sensitive skin.
He’s built an intimacy with you that is based on trust and constant checking. He takes care of the mood and gives you enough stops to reconsider on the way.
You both talk a lot during sex. A change of mind is natural and there is enough space made for it. He has learned a lot about himself, and his self-esteem strengthened, when he realised that, ‘I don’t like it,’ doesn’t mean ‘I don’t like you.’
If, for whatever reason, the communication turns nonverbal, you both have come up with a system of pats that signals where each of you should direct your attention.
Your inquisitive mind helped him find three additional positions, in which he feels comfortable and painless, and it eludes him entirely how he could have missed them.
Viktor’s favourite part of aftercare is cuddling you naked. He adores the way your warm body melts into his. If you add head scratches to it, he will fall asleep in your arms. He breaths in the smell of your hair and his heart beat evens out with yours.
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tricoloreddango · 1 day ago
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Yandere Mydei Headcanons
Mydei x gn! reader
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cw: isolation, controlling relationship, overprotectiveness, paranoia, spanking, leg injuring, mentions of non-con (Mydei thinks of it but doesn’t act on it), coercion.
Beware of spoilers.
Don’t read it if you’re a minor!
Origins
You’re all good with Mydei until something happens to you—suddenly you’re a threat to yourself, or anything bad that there is becomes a threat to you as well.
—When Mydei first met you, he thought of you as capable enough of taking care of yourself. Not only did you know how to fight, you also had a mouth on you, one comparable to his. While it brought him trouble, he admired your strong will and an ability to stand up for yourself in this cruel world, even in front of someone like Mydei, and he eventually he let you close to him and form a relationship with.
His feelings of confidence towards your ability quickly started to change, after you got badly injured in the battle. Hearing about this felt like a hot whiplash on his back. It didn’t matter nothing has been happening to you so far until this point, and that you were still alive. This singular incident proved that there’s always an enemy stronger than you, a risk worse than you can manage and… his mother Gorgo was a great warrior too, only to meet a deadly fate in the end too.
Paranoid thoughts filled his mind, and soon, his feelings changed from pride for you, to the sense of anger at your willingness to expose yourself to so many risks of this world with how eager for the world and challenge taking you were. And only Mydei could protect you from these risks, taking on another burden. He needed you with him desperately, the only person that truly can get through him.
—You weren’t happy about any of this, of course. From being so free, to Mydei constantly checking on you, demanding answers, questioning your ability, scolding you; until you no longer were an autonomous person, but instead under his control he’d never dare to call something else than “guidance”.
How Mydei treats the situation
All this road along, he failed to realize he was protecting his feelings instead, more than you actually needed to be protected.
—With time, rules became stricter, until you no longer could leave outside without him. No matter how much not being able to fight was depressing to you, if it truly bothers you so much, while it hurt Mydei to cut your wings like this, all he’d tell you is that you could always have a sparring training with him. He’d rather let guilt eat him alive at night, than let you get yourself injured again. Mydei truly didn’t enjoy hurting you, but hurt was never avoided either.
—Mydei’s actions were fueled by his paranoia and fears, but he was still self aware about how this affects you—he just had to prioritize one over another, safety over happiness, but still balance your wellbeing somewhat as suffering wasn’t an option either.
If you were unhappy about something, he’d try to find a substitute for what you were lacking, which of course would never compare to the real deal—but the need to keep you safe was bigger than you being fully satisfied. He lost a lot of his tribe, he lost his mother, how can he lose someone he loves too? He learned from his lessons of being merciful towards the world. He’d be cruel towards his enemies, involuntarily cruel to you, but at least you were alive and safe.
—With his usual ways of dealing with problems being violence, a most straightforward and effective method, there was not much that Mydei wouldn’t do or much that would hold him back from doing bad things in your name—any threat to you would be immediately dealt with, even if it was meant to be more bloodshed. Just don’t look at him as if he’s a monster afterwards, or he’ll have to start making it a secret to keep away from you. Mydei had enough self-doubts after killing his own father.
Punishment
He loved you, but he’ll be strict if he needs to be. It was a matter of you forcing him to be.
—With what little freedom he puts you through and him not being entirely delirious, he’d try to be patient with you. He didn’t expect you to ever forgive him, knowing it’s difficult on you and that your life will never be really yours, even if your coldness towards forgiveness made him feel guilty… but he still chased your compliance and understanding, reminding you it’s about your safety. He’d give you time, but if you continue disregarding his orders and concerns for too long, he’d be forced to take measures he wouldn’t want to deliver onto you. He might hurt his enemies with ease, but hurting you was a last resort, as you didn’t cross him the same way his enemies would and naturally his affection held him back; so you’d have to push him really hard for him to finally make a decision, that perhaps this is his only chance.
—Constantly trying to run away and him always hunting you down, despite his warnings and small withdrawal of comforts from you as a punishment—Mydei didn’t know what else he could do to keep you in place, it’s enough for him to finally think that maybe only his usual way will work at this point.
He just wouldn’t make his violence as severe as he’d do towards a foe, considering you were meant to learn and were his love, not to be brutalized upon his anger. He needed something you can recover from, but something painful enough to leave you hesitant to misbehave again.
He didn’t enjoy putting you over his lap, he felt guilt hearing your cries and pain, to the point that he’ll hold you tight afterwards, for his own comfort too. However, that guilt was something that will gradually disappear if you shall repeat same attempts regardless of being punished. If you ever reach that point, you’ll be deemed just stupid and stubborn by him, and each spanking session will feel only right and not cruel anymore. If you choose to listen instead and stop running away, but still keep making other forms of disobedience towards his protection , such penalties will be rare, replaced with from simple harsh scolding to taking away your privileges (especially outside-related); all depending on the extent of the offense.
—In worst case possible, he’d simply chain you up or… hurt a leg or two so you can’t leave, but it’d have to be done after long months of you exposing yourself to the danger and ignoring his accumulating anger and anxiety. The injury wouldn’t be anything that would permanently disable you either, even if the pain of it would be unimaginable; but Mydei would make it clear to you, that you left him no choice, and that he’ll take a care of your legs as long as you listen to him now. If anything, you having to be dependent on him when recovering felt most relaxing for Mydei.
Living with Mydei:
You are his lover, no matter how much you might struggle. Let him keep some sense of normality with you.
—While your relationship could never be the same again, it didn’t mean he wouldn’t try to accommodate it to be about the same. What can be done only outside, he’d still let you, as long as you were leaving with him. You weren’t entirely a prisoner by him, it wasn’t really about locking you up but keeping you away from harm after all. However, this didn’t mean you’d be able to drag him everywhere. There were certain places deemed as more dangerous, but not even because of the threat, but his paranoia you’ll take advantage to escape again.
—When it came to his treatment towards you as your lover, he still offered you same affection or respite in his arms. The issue was, your eagerness was naturally disappearing, creating a distance between you two. It was something Mydei found hard to accept. Accepting this would mean accepting your defiance towards what he was doing for you. This would fuel the sense you’re being ungrateful. Even scarier was losing your love for him, and he was so scared of losing you.
That’s why sometimes he’d force that affection on you, but he loved the moments when you came to him even more; whether they were out of sentiment or you feeling down by your situation. He’d comfort you about everything as if it wasn’t his own doing, but something that simply needed to be done. And no matter how selfish it sounded, he wanted you to comfort him too, with Mydei behaving as if this situation affected him a lot too, especially when you were so disobedient and not understanding. He tended to make himself victimized without even realizing.
--If you snap at him because you have enough of living like this, he won’t be happy. He’ll try to be patient for first few moments, trying to comfort you still, but drag this on and he’ll snap at you too, maybe with a threat of punishment on his lips. That usually shuts you up. Mydei just wasn’t good at being vulnerable, and it was hard for him to sometimes understand your cries and handle your emotions, no matter how valid they were. You just made him even more guilty again, he just wanted to make you quiet, despite it being a runaway from the problem and not a solution to your growing resentment or depression.
But if you really need your space and can’t stop talking about it, he’d let you have it… just not without making it look like a problem for him, no matter how childish that may seem from him. Mydei was used to sleeping next to you.
—If you’ve been particularly well behaved recently, you’ll see his mood to get much better, even show some excitement at the prospect of having normalcy with you again. Living with him could become more bearable, as his positive mood keeps the atmosphere lighter, and him bit more lenient with you. Keep up the good work and he’ll reward you too.
—Mydei would never admit this to you, but he keeps dreaming about the idea of you becoming entirely dependent on him. No more struggle, and he gets to be your hero and feel assured in his sense of need for your protection. You clinging to him, coming to him willingly, telling him you need him, maybe even being scared of being away from your Mydei. Of course it’d mean you are far gone at this point, nothing like the person from the first meeting, and this state, he did not want you to reach. You’d try to kill him after hearing his fantasy spoken aloud anyway.
Sexuality
There were things he wanted to do to you, he didn’t want you to know.
While Mydei still had enough decorum and self restraint to not force himself on you, especially aware of the pain it’d bring you and guilt for him, he couldn’t deny the fact he missed the pleasure and closeness your body used to bring him. It was hard to keep himself around you sometimes, especially with his strong emotions about the situation that needed the relief too or his need for your affection, but he managed when he thought of your possible pain.
It’s just his thoughts that started to go haywire after a while of controlling you like this. Mydei wouldn’t actually force you physically, but he kept having his “what if” thoughts and unwanted fantasies. Maybe if he was to do this, he’d enforce compliance onto you, with you crying, begging and promising him you’ll listen and stay. Maybe you’d be able to think about him only and not the outside world. Maybe it would remind you of what you two once had, that it still exists somewhere, and your begs would be for more this time.
Thankfully he was able to see it was just wishful thinking, and not act on these thoughts like a fool… at least for now. Mydei felt lonely in this situation too; you’d least expect it when he’s trying to seduce you again, perhaps by an attempt of forcing desperation into you with little sneaky touches during his affections or by instilling a sense of guilt with a reminder of how much he’s trying for you. Surely you needed to blow off some steam too anyway.
Final words
Living with Mydei doesn’t have to be most miserable, if you play your cards right and choose to accept his offer of safety. While you didn’t have a choice in a traditional sense, you had a choice to make a situation better for yourself and keep some normalcy and happiness leftovers—if you choose to try to understand his reasonings, because sadly, he won’t ever change his mind. Mydei wouldn’t hesitate to kill someone in your name, but he’d hate for you to ever blame him for it. He’d hate to hurt you even more, he constantly lived with the fear he was doing so and with that, had even more guilt to carry; yet it was all buried by the sense of duty to keep you safe, one driving him motivated enough to keep going in “protecting” you, even if it felt more like avoidance towards his own problems.
Accept him, and he’s your old Mydei… somewhat. Reject him, and now you two struggle.
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suzukiblu · 3 days ago
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WIP excerpt for Cheshire behind the cut; “Billy adopts Conner and it actually goes pretty good!” (( chrono || non-chrono ))
Billy closes the cupboard and looks back into the living room. Lynn’s still watching the static intently, and Tawky’s still settled all neat and comfy in his lap, though Lynn’s eyes look a little–heavy, kinda? Like . . . maybe, anyway. 
Billy sneaks a peek at the clock and thinks–it is getting kinda late, probably. Like, not really for a teenager and not for him either, ‘cuz it’s not really safe to sleep on the street for too long–honestly it’s better to just take a couple naps during the day if he can, especially when the weather’s shitty–but definitely for a little kid who’s just gotten driven halfway across the Midwest to their brand-new foster home and met their new dad and uncle for the first time and also gotten their own room and been to a diner and a library and cooked dinner and all that stuff for the first time. 
Actually, yeah, probably that’d be a lot even for a teenager, Billy thinks. Not that he really knows, ‘cuz he doesn’t really know any teenagers all that well and hasn’t been one himself yet, but it seems like it would? 
He’d sleep for a week after all that if he could, he thinks. 
He definitely would. 
Billy doesn’t really know how to handle the idea of, um–bedtime, exactly? Like, with Lynn, he means. Billy has not actually had an actual “bedtime” since . . . uh . . . 
“Lights out” doesn’t really count, he can’t help feeling, so . . . yeah, it’s been . . . a while, definitely. 
. . . maybe he should’ve taken a minute to check those parenting books for bedtime tips earlier, he thinks. Like–newborn tips and teenager tips, and then just split the difference, maybe? 
That seems like it’d probably be a pain in the ass to figure out how to split, though. 
He guesses what he should do is just whatever works, which, like–yeah, obviously and all, but like . . . doing “whatever works” is kinda, like . . . well, kinda a trial and error thing? And Billy really doesn’t wanna accidentally wreck Lynn’s first night of sleep in the apartment, that just seems like a bad foot to start off on and all, but he doesn’t know if Lynn knows anything about how he sleeps yet–like, he’s four days old and Billy’s pretty sure the first night he was alive he just spent fighting his way out of Cadmus and everything, so how many times has he even slept at all yet? And did he even go to sleep on purpose anywhere or just, like, pass out ‘cuz he was exhausted? 
Billy probably should’ve asked Lynn about all that stuff before the other started getting sleepy. 
Shit. 
Lynn blinks a little heavier, his head nodding once. Stiffens his spine like a reflex, and then looks a little–confused, maybe, and blinks rapidly a couple of times. Tawky peers up at him in concern, then seems to realize it’s the sleepy thing and glances over to Billy, who isn’t sure what to do and bites his lip. Tawky tips his own head, and Billy thinks . . . well . . . okay, that’s probably a lot of questions for Lynn right now, when he’s already pretty sleepy, but– 
Lynn blinks again–twice–and then wobbles in his seat, kinda, and– 
A weird jolt of alarm and the speed of Mercury both happen at the exact same time, and half a second later Billy’s in the living room with Lynn all scooped up in his arms and Lynn’s breath hitching sharply, one of his arms pinning Tawky against his chest and the other pressed tight against Billy’s chest in, like–a really obvious startle reflex. 
. . . maybe that was a panic reaction, Billy thinks, wincing at himself. 
“Sorry,” he says, trying to repress a worse wince. “Um–reflex. Sorry.” 
“Uh,” Lynn says, his breath catching again and the hand he has against Billy’s chest tightening into a fist around the neckline of the nerdy try-hard button-down Mr. Rogers sweater the magic made for him. He’s staring kind of blankly at where his fist’s clutching the sweater. “. . . ‘reflex’?” 
“Oh,” Billy says, then reddens a little in embarrassment. Yeah. Definitely that was a panic reaction. “Um–you looked like you were gonna fall, maybe, so–um, I know you’re invulnerable so maybe that sounds dumb, just I thought, like–I didn’t want you to fall?” 
“. . . uh,” Lynn says, and blinks real slow again. 
“Sorry,” Billy apologizes, trying to figure out if it’s more awkward to keep holding Lynn or to put him down without making sure it was just that he was nodding off and not, like, anything actually serious or anything. He got punched a lot of times by a guy with berserker super-strength just a few days ago, and that’s probably long enough that Lynn’s fine, but also Lynn’s only been alive a few days, so maybe like–what if he’s not actually fine, or–“Um–were you falling asleep?” 
“. . . I don’t know,” Lynn says, still staring blankly at his fist, or maybe at Billy’s sweater, or . . . who knows, really. “I don’t know what it feels like.” 
“. . . have you slept yet?” Billy asks with a worried frown. 
“I slept for four months,” Lynn says stiffly. He doesn’t lift his head at all. . 
Billy can maybe understand Lynn not wanting to sleep after spending so much time kept asleep and getting lied to all the time and not feeling anything real–like, that might be really scary, trying to sleep after that kind of thing, because maybe you’d wake up and it wouldn’t have been real either and– 
Yeah, Billy can definitely understand not wanting to sleep after that.
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zenruu · 22 hours ago
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A Needlessly Thorough Analysis of What Hardening Actually Means for Alistair
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You can also read this analysis in a Google Doc if you find that format more palatable: here.
(I do recommend desktop for the comfiest viewing in either case, but both should be serviceable.)
Disclaimer: If critical discussion of a character’s feelings, motivations, and reactions to certain in-game choices could be personally upsetting to you, maybe don’t read this. None of this analysis is me judging you/your choices as a player, I am simply looking through the lens of Alistair’s characterization and the in-universe consequences of choices. Of course this analysis will be colored by my own bias, it’s inevitable. I can’t realistically include every potentially relevant line of dialogue, but I’m always happy to discuss if you think there’s something crucial I left out.
Hardened Alistair is often described as learning to stand up for himself and becoming more assertive, but why? Is it an accurate assessment? Even Alistair himself reacts to the hardening dialogue by saying he’s going to start thinking for himself and looking out for himself more, so surely it’s true… right?
To the contrary, I would actually argue that hardened Alistair tends to put others before himself more than unhardened Alistair. Let’s start by looking at how he becomes hardened.
The Hardening Process
After meeting Goldanna, Alistair is understandably devastated to find that the family he’s been dreaming of his whole life is not what he had hoped. He’s just been yelled at and turned away by the sister he’s never met, the only family he’s ever had a chance of knowing. He’s lost his hope at finding that sense of connection and belonging he’s always been looking for.
If the Warden wants to harden Alistair, they need to tell him, “Everyone is out for themselves. You should learn that.”
The message being sent is basically: suck it up, move on, grow up. This is the way the world is. Stop being so idealistic.
The message Alistair seems to receive, however, is a bit more complicated. In the follow-up conversation after meeting Goldanna, Alistair tells you that his takeaway from the hardening dialogue was that he needs to look out for himself more. This is, obviously, perfectly in line with the common belief that hardened Alistair is more assertive and more willing to stand up for himself.
But is that the reality that we see reflected in hardened Alistair’s choices?
Pre-hardening, Alistair tells you many times that he feels like no one cares what he wants; he believes it’s unfair and openly complains about it. Hardened Alistair, however, knows that no one cares what he wants and he accepts that as the way things are and must be. Unhardened Alistair will freely say he doesn’t want to be king and fights against it until he can fight it no more, while hardened Alistair will accept it, even going as far as to say he wants it.
Why would he change so suddenly from saying it’s his worst nightmare to saying he wants it? Does he mean it fully? Is this truly him seeking to fulfill his own wants and meet his own needs?
What actually changes if he’s hardened?
he is seemingly less reluctant about becoming king
if romanced, he will agree to a threesome with Isabela
he will agree to make you his mistress if you push the topic
if not married to Anora and chosen to fight Loghain, he will execute Loghain and take the throne
if not chosen to fight Loghain, he will insist on being made king
if married to Anora, he will become king instead of being exiled if Loghain is spared (Alistair will still leave your party, however)
he will approve of executing Jowan in Redcliffe
With the idea of “hardened Alistair putting his own wants/needs first” in mind let’s break them down one by one:
Note: some lines of dialogue have flags for “hardened”/“changed”, alternatively referred to as Alistair’s motivation being changed from “good to glory” or “Alistair 2”. These all refer to the hardening mechanic. The screenshots do have text that’s a bit small, because I wanted to be sure that I included the flags that show when lines are exclusive to hardened Alistair.
Less reluctance about becoming king
All along he’s said he doesn’t want it. You could potentially make a case that he didn’t truly feel that way and was only saying it because he’s insecure (which he is), but I don’t find this to be a terribly compelling argument. 
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This is hardened Alistair’s response to being told he would be a good king after he’s decided to sacrifice himself. There are several lines like this that I feel contradict the theory that unhardened Alistair only says he doesn’t want to be king because he’s insecure in his abilities. It’s not that his insecurities are not a factor, it’s that hardening him doesn’t get rid of those things, meaning that this factor alone would not change his attitude about accepting potential kingship. In fact, he still believes that realistically Anora is better suited.
I’d argue that someone who has consistently said one thing without fail and is now only changing the tune after basically being told to shut up and grow up may not be expressing their truest desires. He is going along with what Eamon is telling him, with what the Warden is telling him, with what he’s told is his duty and responsibility. For the greater good, not for himself.
And you might be saying that can’t be true, hardened Alistair says he wants to be king!
Personally, I’d argue that Alistair saying he wants to be king is much the same as your average person saying they want a job. Do most people want to go to work every day? No, not really, but you have to because it’s just what you need to do. So when asked, you’d say you want a job. Of course you would, because you have to have one. But removed from that necessity, would you still say the same? Likely not. I believe the same holds true for Alistair. If he wasn’t being told at every turn that him being king is what must be done, he wouldn’t feel a need to bow to that.
Hardened Alistair confidently wanting to be king is often accepted as plain fact, when it’s really not so cut and dry. We can dig into some of his dialogue and really look at his feelings on the matter.
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Hardened Alistair is saying he wants to be king. Even he’s surprised by it. But what is the context of this line? He’s about to sacrifice himself. He believes that his sacrifice–not living to rule–is the single best thing he can do as king.
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But is it pure happiness and willingness, or is it a man simply trying to make the best of a situation he’s locked into? I vote for the latter.
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I often see the argument that having a Warden queen would make him happier with the idea of being king, but by all evidence it really doesn’t seem to be the case. Here is his response to the Warden confirming that she does want to be queen. Alistair still doesn’t like the idea of ruling. This isn’t a line exclusive to hardened Alistair, he will always have this line available.
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“I wouldn’t be in this position if it weren’t for you” … “you owe me” … Even hardened, Alistair seems to see being king as something negative being thrust upon him. A punishment, perhaps? What would his response be to being told that being king is not a punishment?
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On the surface, he agrees, but take a look at that VO comment for his actual feelings on it. He does consider it a punishment. This is indeed a line for hardened Alistair, as it occurs during the mistress conversation, which is a hardened Alistair exclusive.
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Even if hardened, Alistair would prefer to stay a Warden if he can.
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And if you don’t make hardened Alistair king? He’s grateful. Happy. Happier.
Agreeing to a threesome
Unhardened or hardened, he will push back when you suggest this. However, only hardened Alistair will relent and agree to it. Unhardened Alistair will simply refuse. Which one sounds more like someone standing up for his own wants?
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This is the path the conversation goes if Alistair is hardened. His initial refusal and discomfort with the situation remains, but if you tell him to go along, he will.
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He is, regardless, clearly not as comfortable with the situation as one should be. It certainly isn’t the kind of enthusiastic consent one would look for when asking someone to engage in a particular sex act. But he had fun, so it’s okay, right?
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Well… did he have fun? Isabela jokes about borrowing him in the future and it seems quite clear that he isn’t interested in a repeat occurrence. Not only is he not interested, he’s awkward, uncomfortable. “Oh, but he makes a joke about wet frocks right after this!” He does. But it’s Alistair. He’s constantly making jokes to mask his discomfort.
Agreeing to making the Warden his mistress
Again, he will push back on this at first, only relenting if he’s hardened and you push the issue. If unhardened, he’ll stand by his original statement that he feels it would be wrong. Is he just saying he believes it’s wrong, or is that what he truly believes? Based on what we know of Alistair, I’d say it’s far more likely that he truly does find the idea of making the Warden his mistress to be disrespectful both to the Warden and to his wife, and that he is somewhat disregarding his own beliefs on that to bend to the Warden’s insistence that he take a mistress.
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Whether he’s marrying Anora or not, his views on the matter are the same. He intends to be loyal to whoever he marries, and he knows he cannot do so if he continues the relationship with the Warden.
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It’s clear that he finds the entire idea distasteful.
Much like the threesome, you do have to press him to get him to agree. He’s quite set in his beliefs on the matter, but he will acquiesce if the Warden pushes it.
Insisting on becoming king in the context of dealing with Loghain
These are the choices where I’d say there is potentially a case to be made that Alistair is making the decision he wants to make. However, I wouldn’t say that the decision being made is that he wants to be king. I would argue that becoming king is simply a means to an end to give him the power to get revenge in the way he wants.
In the first potential scenario here, Alistair will insist on being made king if he is not chosen to fight Loghain. Why? He wants Loghain dead, and he isn’t being given the choice to make that happen. He wants the power to make that choice, all else be damned.
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Here you can see that hardened Alistair insists on taking the throne while making it abundantly clear that the reason for doing so is to take care of Loghain in the manner he wants.
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Unhardened Alistair does the same. Why? Because the motivation remains the same whether he’s hardened or not. Unhardened Alistair simply hasn’t become so resigned as to pretend he’s any less displeased with it than he is.
In the second potential scenario, Alistair is chosen to fight Loghain and kills him. He finally achieves the goal he’s been working towards all along: getting his revenge on Loghain. He’s running on that high when Eamon immediately suggests he take the throne, he says yes, he’ll do it. There’s not really anything to break down dialogue-wise in this scenario, as his acceptance of the throne is the exact same dialogue as it would be in any other case. He simply says he accepts when it’s proposed.
Is it what he truly wants? Maybe. You could make a case for it. However, I interpret it more as running on that adrenaline high, feeling powerful and not fully thinking it over in the moment.
Accepting being king & marrying Anora if Loghain is spared
Alistair has been tunnel visioned on getting his revenge on Loghain the entire time, and this is the only circumstance in which sparing Loghain will not result in Alistair leaving and becoming a drunk. He both accepts marrying Anora (which he isn’t happy about) and sparing Loghain (which is very counter to his wishes).
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He doesn’t like Anora and doesn’t want to marry her, but he does anyway. Hardened Alistair knows that marrying Anora is politically advantageous and prioritizes that over his personal desire to enact his vengeance, though he makes it clear to the Warden that his personal feelings on the matter have absolutely not changed.
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Hardened Alistair goes along with marrying Anora after Loghain is spared and leaves the party, unhappy with the Warden’s choice to spare Loghain. If this line alone didn’t make his displeasure clear enough, there’s also this one:
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He refers to the Warden’s actions as a betrayal. He’s obviously not happy.
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Unhardened Alistair, however, stands his ground and refuses.
Approving of executing Jowan
Another case of a changed tune to go along with what the Warden is doing. Unhardened Alistair actively disapproves of the Warden executing Jowan. We could assume that hardened Alistair is just more pragmatic, or perhaps simply more willing to accept it when the Warden tells him this is what must be done.
There is no Alistair specific dialogue to look at here, just the approval points, so it’s really just a matter of looking at what we know of him and the situation. I would say in general Alistair values life and values mercy. Are there exceptions? Yes. Loghain, for example, whose crimes Alistair has judged worthy of death. Clearly unhardened Alistair does not feel that way about Jowan. Hardened Alistair though? He approves of his execution, but is it because he personally thinks it’s best or is it because he accepts the Warden’s judgment?
I would argue that it’s the latter primarily because it’s completely in line with everything else we’ve seen from hardened Alistair. There really are just no solid cases of hardened Alistair asserting his own will when compared to unhardened Alistair, so I don’t see this case as being any different.
In Review
In each case of behaviors changed by hardening Alistair, we see him putting his own wants and needs on the backburner in favor of an externally imposed sense of duty or to bend to another’s will because he accepts that his personal feelings are irrelevant. I’d go as far as to say that hardening is really a misnomer, because what we’re really looking at would be better called resignation.
I actually didn’t include every single line I found of hardened Alistair expressing the sentiments I’ve laid out in this analysis because I didn’t want it to be too long, but there is more in the game. Now I will get into less concrete analysis and a bit more of an explanation of my own personal opinions on hardening.
Aside from looking at what hardening actually means for Alistair, we can also question its necessity. Do you need to do it if you want to do certain things in Origins (threesome, mistress ending, etc.)? Yes. But I often see people argue that hardening Alistair is necessary for him to grow or mature as a person, and I completely disagree.
My personal opinion is that hardening Alistair is neither necessary nor kind.
In terms of helping Alistair to grow as a person, I maintain that Alistair will become more naturally “hardened”, or more accurately, he will mature on his own if you give him the chance to do so. Why do I say so? Look at Alistair in Inquisition. That is not the same idealistic young man we see in Origins, and this remains true regardless of hardening status. Whether it’s Warden Alistair or King Alistair, he’s clearly grown and changed.
Sure, you can mod the game to make the hardening dialogue more palatable, but that’s an entirely different discussion. As is, you’re required to essentially kick him when he’s down, and I simply do not find it to be necessary for his own personal development.
If it’s not already completely obvious by me doing all of this in the first place, I really, really love Alistair. Of course I’m quite settled and happy as an unhardened Warden Alistair truther, but I’m always happy to discuss and debate. I’m very interested in any thoughts you might have, whether you agree with my assessment or not (as long as you’re nice).
Thank you for reading my (almost sickeningly thorough) little analysis if you made it this far!
As a treat (or unhardened Warden Ali propaganda depending on your perspective), here's my Warden, miss Neria Surana with her very happy unhardened Warden husband:
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maladaptivewriting · 17 hours ago
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since the tiktok ban, i've been seeing a lot of stuff where people blame americans for jegulus and i can't stop thinking about it. i don't know why people feel this way, but i am prepared to make an argument. so please allow me to make my case.
[also this is completely based on generalizations. i know americans that hate jegulus and love jily, and i know british people who hate jily and love jegulus]
so i've never been a jily girl. even years before i found jegulus, i never cared about that ship. i straight up didn't even know that people wrote fics about them specifically. (i actually still don't know if people do write fics about only them because i would never seek out something like that).
originally, i'd thought it was just because i only cared about the golden trio characters and occasionally sirius and remus, but the more i got into the marauders era, the more i realized that james and lily together were the standouts, i just really didn't care for them.
it got to the point where i only read fics that referenced jily if they were extremely background to the story (which they almost always were bc there is just not that much to say about them) or preferably if both of them were already dead and it was just remus, sirius, and harry who remained.
shortly after i really started getting into the fandom and writing for jegulus, i spoke to someone who hated jegulus and loved jily, and i told them that i'd always felt like james and lily were on the road to divorce before they died. this person was SCANDALIZED. they could not understand why'd said that.
now granted, this person was in their early twenties and in my experience, if you haven't lived long enough to see a lot of your friends go through divorces, then the idea that james and lily might divorce may seem crazy.
however, and this is where the american thing really comes in, i realized after this conversation why i felt that there was no way that james and lily were going to make it and that was specifically because of growing up a conservative christian bible belt ass place.
do you know how many couples i knew in high school who started dating their senior year even though they seemingly had nothing in common, had sex one time and didn't use protection because sex education is extremely limited down there, got pregnant, and had to have shotgun wedding?
so. fucking. many.
do you know how many of them are still married?
only one.
so when i see jily, two characters who have nothing in common beyond being gryffindors, get together, have a kid, and get married (not necessarily in that order) all within like two years, i know that the odds are not in their favor. those two aren't staying together. don't play with me.
now i don't know how people feel about young marriages in other parts of the world, especially in the uk, but i've spoken to a lot of americans, especially ones from the south, and so many of them have had the exact same experiences with their peers. i just can't help but wonder if that lends itself to less people being interested in jily.
i have other arguments to this, like that jily is not as entertaining as almost every other ship that james or lily could be involved in and americans being partial to entertainment above all else, or the american (and christian) obsession with the concept of redemption and self sacrifice making regulus a more compelling character than one that lived and died good (lily and james), but this was the one i wanted to focus on today.
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johns-prince · 1 day ago
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1967 is decidedly peak year for Lennon-McCartney as John and Paul were reportedly and observably the closest they ever been. Coming and going together, John always hanging around Paul's house, practically inseparable.
Then somewhere from the end of 1967 to the beginning of 1968, India happens, and just all of a sudden these two are having a falling out? For no real reason? Go on, you can't believe that.
1967, we know John and Paul started taking LSD together. While they were close before, tripping out like this gave them access to getting much closer to each other than before. We know the experience of dissolving into each other through that eye contact thing was described by Paul as both disturbing, but good, and other subsequent trips with John as fantastic because of this new access to each other in ways they hadn't realized was probably possible.
There really isn't much of John talking about these specific trips with Paul, but considering how insistent he had been to take LSD with Paul, and the fact they continued to take it together to the point even Jane was jealous of John getting to experience that with Paul—he was probably over the moon about it. Finally, he gets to experience this much much deeper connection with Paul, melds them into one, their thoughts and feelings becoming singular.
Aside from how much closer John and Paul had gotten, it seems the Beatles at a whole were as close as ever. You have their trip to Greece in the same year, and how there were talks about them buying an island and living on it together.
1967 was really the year for the Beatles, for John and Paul especially.
Still, there's reservations. Paul mentions how you can't come back from the kind of experience he shared with John. You could say that he meant between all them, but that's only because Paul has a habit of including the other two whenever he's uncomfortable with the strong use of “I, me, myself,” in conjugation with John in certain contexts. We were jealous, we loved him, we felt like he was leaving us. Paul only briefly mentions George and Ringo, like a second thought, when describing his first LSD trip with John.
But it was just Paul and John, and I'm sure there were many other subsequent trips that involved solely them.
So they can't go back. Their relationship has changed in a fundamental way that both excites and pleases and disturbs Paul. We can only presume John wasn't as disturbed by it as he was pleased by getting to have this closeness with Paul that no one else would be able to share in. It was all their own.
Paul loved the Lennon-McCartney relationship for everything that it was, but he probably didn't want it to swallow up his whole self/identity (which is normal) Additionally, while I believe Paul is actually pretty straight heterosexual male, I do believe he had this special exception for John—and how can you reconcile that? I don't think Paul had the emotional and mental capacity to quite start to confront the fact there was some romantic/sexual tension between him and John that couldn't just be explained away.
For comparison, Yoko was willing to let her whole identity be swallowed up in the JohnandYoko partnership and relationship that we know today. Because it was technically giving John everything he needed from a partner that would keep him satiated or delusional enough for her to keep him and his connections and finances under her thumb. Even when it inevitably frustrated her that she felt living and thriving off of John's coattails, she made the choice to forgo her individualism and identity for what being with someone like John could give her. There would be no Yoko Ono in the papers and in any relevance without John Lennon.
It was kind of a perfect storm because Yoko and John were both very insecure people, fearful of failure and being a failure and being left behind, whether that be by others or the world.
In another essay I would point out that Yoko got with John because she needed him, needed him to help her complete herself, to transform her into a cultural and artistic icon. I'm not sure she always necessarily wanted him by choice as she needed him as means to an end.
Paul didn't exactly need to be with John as much as he wanted to be John, he wanted to be by John, next to, creating, collaborating, existing with. That's why in a way it was kind of silly for John to fear Paul going off on a solo career after writing yesterday. If Paul wanted to leave John and the others he could've, but he didn't. He wanted to be a Beatle, he wanted to be John's partner, to continue making music together until they were old men. Paul chose to be with John because he wanted to be. Simple as.
Anyway, Paul might have his own complexes and issues but Paul wasn't dealing with the black hole in his chest like John was. He had his insecurities, but Paul never needed to meld his entirety with another to try and make himself complete. Paul was much more secure in himself than John, even if he had to fake it at times, Paul always seemed to know himself better. Paul didn't carry around a self-hatred and lack of self worth like John did.
From an outsiders perspective, I can't fault Paul for not either wanting to be John's everything and anything, and not being able to be that infinite everything and anything for John—because of the time, the place, the sex, all the psychosexual bullshit in between, and because in the end it probably would've devoured them.
I doubt John knew how to deal with it either. John was always prone to extremes, one or the other, you love me fully unconditionally or you don't. What made the whole affair unfair was that he had the hardest time believing anyone could love him fully unconditionally. And Paul did (he still does!) but there's only so much a normal human being with flaws and hangups of his own can take.
By 1968 it seemed like John was hardly in a great state—increasingly abusing substances, feeling completely trapped by his first marriage (no fault of Cynthia, she tried so hard to make it work and make him happy), smothered by expectations, Brian's death (he's cursed y'know, everyone who's ever loved him dies on him), and probably some kind of mental illness brought on by it all—John wouldn't have been in a very stable mindset to really consider or even care too much about any repercussions about leaving his first wife and child to then go gallivanting as a free man, with his best male friend, collaborator, and partner.
But Paul, steadfast, moderate and conservative, not yet completely in the mental anguish shitter like John is, would be conscious enough of these consequences, what it could mean for the band, for them. These things mattered. And maybe John's a special case but Paul's not gay so how could it work to begin with? If he can't make any justifications for it or excuses (maybe if I had been a girl I could have...) then it just can't be done.
Yeah we love each other yeah we want to be in each others pockets till the day we croak, we feel like we NEED each other like air in lungs (yeah we might've fucked) but there's nothing to do about it so we just need to go on like usual and keep it at that.
Because it worked fine before, the way we were dealing with it. Why try to fix something that isn't broken?
But it was broken.
John wanted more but Paul couldn't give it to him. Paul has a right to how he feels, we can never say exactly what, and he wasn't in any wrong in denying or rejecting John if that's what happened.
But, I've always believed too that Paul always had an unrealistic expectation of his own relationship with John.
Because it's just not fair to expect John to keep on going on like everything is normal and his relationship with Paul and all the feelings and wants that entails are normal.
Not holding similar feelings for a friend is just as valid as holding deeper feelings for a friend and finding you can't stay friends due to not being able to go back on these feelings.
But why couldn't Paul have John, and Linda, and a big family, and John. Why can't he have his cake and eat it to. Why couldn't John have his relationship with Yoko and still have his partnership with Paul.
Because they aren't normal best friends that's why. Their partnership wasn't normal. Even Paul admits to it. Paul had to “make way” for Yoko because in a sense he was John's first girlfriend. Of course Yoko couldn't be secure in her marriage with John if Paul was still in the picture. Even if Paul doesn't understand the depth of meaning behind this because he's preposterous doesn't make it any less obvious. And don't think for a second John would've made it any easier for Linda, and like hell Linda would've put up with it.
So, John was “if we can't be lovers we can never be friends,” and Paul was, “I'll have my cake and I'll eat it to.”
I'm not trying to paint anyone as a villain in this. Both sides are understandable, both sides don't actually want to lose the other, both sides love each other, they just have different perspectives and feelings on the matter.
It's whether these differences can be reconciled and reasonable compromises can be made.
But we're talking about John and Paul and as we know, these differences were not reconciled and they were not reasonable men to be making reasonable compromises. Also they were two men.
John wanted all or nothing. Paul couldn't give all, because it's unrealistic and because Paul probably already thought he was giving John as much of him as he could reasonably give. But it wasn't enough.
If they could have kept each other and their relationship as it was despite getting married, I do believe Paul would have had no problem keeping Linda and his kids in one box, and his special little relationship with John in another box. They were able to do it before with John's marriage to Cynthia, why couldn't the same apply?
We know why. Cynthia was never a real, genuine threat to Paul and the Beatles (but mainly Paul) in the end, John always chose to go off the other boys, to go stay nights over at Paul's home instead of staying home with his wife and kid. She simply didn't interfere.
The many girls Paul screwed around with, while certainly put John on edge, and he hardly liked or got along with any, weren't anything too serious and at that time John was willing to put up with it or he hadn't the capacity to really evaluate his life as it was and his relationship and feelings towards Paul.
But Linda was a genuine threat. She wasn't going away. Paul loved her, she could give him everything. And what could that mean for John, especially if he had been making his feelings known, he was pushing for something deeper, definitive, with Paul? How could John stand a chance.
Yoko was nothing like Cynthia. How John treated her and their relationship was nothing like his last marriage. Paul was no longer the sun in John's universe, it was Yoko, and for once Paul was actually put on edge, similar to that of Stu, if not worse. She was his wife, his partner, a woman, a girl. Since Paul wasn't a girl then what chance did he have to put a stop to it, what right did he have to say anything?
John starting it by bringing Yoko into their sessions as if to make a point. Maybe Paul got the point of he didn't not entirely but maybe he was tired and can't Paul McCartney get a little tired of these games when he's hopped skipped jumped and crawled to try and prove to John each time that yes I love, yes I won't leave you willingly, yes I'll put up with you because I love you and you love me right? We're in this together for the long haul.
Can't go back to compartmentalizing relationships outside of Lennon-McCartney, and it seemed their relationship couldn't remain as it were with wives and children between them. Things were different now, they were different. John and Paul had grown, and while their past comments about sticking together as partners even after the Beatles go bust, even in their old age, is cutesy and sweet and coming from young boys who really didn't know any better but knew they loved each other and loved creating together—what's to become of them now that Pandora's box had been opened.
It's all led up to the point when things begin to breakdown, the band starts to pull apart, relations splinter, and John starts bringing up divorce, divorce from the Beatles, divorce from Paul.
The details we won't be privy to, we can only speculate and theorize and piece the puzzle pieces. But it's such a short time frame for such a massive change from John and Paul's relationship in 1967—almost always found together, John at Paul's home, John and Paul arriving together to the studio, taking walks, dissolving into each other—to how they treated and behaved toward each other in 1968, especially after India.
Without proper communication, without making the effort to confront the reality of what they were to each other and what that might mean, plus the drugs and the alcohol, I'm not surprised these unexplained feelings between them began festering.
I've lost the plot somewhere halfway in the post. But something happened.
The final straw was probably in India. But before India, the tension must have been building, like the calm before a storm. Taking LSD together changed the way they saw their relationship, or maybe simply gave them a more honest approach to it, a much less inhibited understanding of what they meant to each other. It scared Paul, or worried him, but he still liked it, which might've been just as worrisome. John was probably thrilled about it, loved experiencing it with Paul, and it might have enlightened him further on what he actually wants. Though drugs should never be trusted. Then Brian died. The Beatles were shattered with grief. John was beginning to spiral. And then it was 1968, and in February the boys went to India. Everything changed significantly there. John and Paul spent a lot of time alone in one room. They were seen together a lot. John often gazing. Something happened. Something happened and we don't know what but it did. Sex? Maybe, maybe not. A confession? Maybe, maybe not. They come back, worse than for better. John works tirelessly to break Paul's heart and drive him to some sort of reaction. To fight, to stay. Love me love me. Paul couldn't or wouldn't because "if I had been a girl then maybe I could have..." but he wasn't so he they had to make way for Yoko. Paul loves Linda, John loves Yoko. They get married a week apart. John and Paul divorce the Beatles breakup. John really didn't actually ever love Paul and they didn't grow up in the same bed or write eyeball-to-eyeball and hey did you know he loved Yoko because she reminds him of a bloke in drag? She's me in drag. John actually manages to instill some of that insecurity and fear in Paul—about his talent, about who he is on his own, whether or not John ever loved actually him. They fight nasty like bitter exes. Paul is the first to lay down the arms with Dear Friend. John responds with Jealous Guy. They're on and off. Paul continues to try to make the effort to connect with John again, despite John and despite Yoko. The lost weekend happens, a total mystery in itself. Calls are missed and time still passes. John comes to the inevitable conclusion that he still loves Paul no matter how hard he tries to not love him, that he can't escape. John backtracks a lot. They start talking again. They occasionally see each other. They rent a studio to use after the new year in 1981. John is suddenly killed in December of 1980. Paul keeps John's name and legacy alive for years and years and years. Paul reminisces about their shared past like a widower. Their relationship will be compared to a marriage, a love affair like that of Spencer Tracy and Katherine Hepburn, and even soulmates. They are only ever known as brothers, collaborators, and friends.
The greatest songwriting duo that ever was. The lovers that never were.
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