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mostlysignssomeportents · 3 months ago

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Conspiratorialism as a material phenomenon

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

I think it behooves us to be a little skeptical of stories about AI driving people to believe wrong things and commit ugly actions. Not that I like the AI slop that is filling up our social media, but when we look at the ways that AI is harming us, slop is pretty low on the list.

The real AI harms come from the actual things that AI companies sell AI to do. There's the AI gun-detector gadgets that the credulous Mayor Eric Adams put in NYC subways, which led to 2,749 invasive searches and turned up zero guns:

https://www.cbsnews.com/newyork/news/nycs-subway-weapons-detector-pilot-program-ends/

Any time AI is used to predict crime – predictive policing, bail determinations, Child Protective Services red flags – they magnify the biases already present in these systems, and, even worse, they give this bias the veneer of scientific neutrality. This process is called "empiricism-washing," and you know you're experiencing it when you hear some variation on "it's just math, math can't be racist":

https://pluralistic.net/2020/06/23/cryptocidal-maniacs/#phrenology

When AI is used to replace customer service representatives, it systematically defrauds customers, while providing an "accountability sink" that allows the company to disclaim responsibility for the thefts:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/23/maximal-plausibility/#reverse-centaurs

When AI is used to perform high-velocity "decision support" that is supposed to inform a "human in the loop," it quickly overwhelms its human overseer, who takes on the role of "moral crumple zone," pressing the "OK" button as fast as they can. This is bad enough when the sacrificial victim is a human overseeing, say, proctoring software that accuses remote students of cheating on their tests:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/02/16/unauthorized-paper/#cheating-anticheat

But it's potentially lethal when the AI is a transcription engine that doctors have to use to feed notes to a data-hungry electronic health record system that is optimized to commit health insurance fraud by seeking out pretenses to "upcode" a patient's treatment. Those AIs are prone to inventing things the doctor never said, inserting them into the record that the doctor is supposed to review, but remember, the only reason the AI is there at all is that the doctor is being asked to do so much paperwork that they don't have time to treat their patients:

https://apnews.com/article/ai-artificial-intelligence-health-business-90020cdf5fa16c79ca2e5b6c4c9bbb14

My point is that "worrying about AI" is a zero-sum game. When we train our fire on the stuff that isn't important to the AI stock swindlers' business-plans (like creating AI slop), we should remember that the AI companies could halt all of that activity and not lose a dime in revenue. By contrast, when we focus on AI applications that do the most direct harm – policing, health, security, customer service – we also focus on the AI applications that make the most money and drive the most investment.

AI hasn't attracted hundreds of billions in investment capital because investors love AI slop. All the money pouring into the system – from investors, from customers, from easily gulled big-city mayors – is chasing things that AI is objectively very bad at and those things also cause much more harm than AI slop. If you want to be a good AI critic, you should devote the majority of your focus to these applications. Sure, they're not as visually arresting, but discrediting them is financially arresting, and that's what really matters.

All that said: AI slop is real, there is a lot of it, and just because it doesn't warrant priority over the stuff AI companies actually sell, it still has cultural significance and is worth considering.

AI slop has turned Facebook into an anaerobic lagoon of botshit, just the laziest, grossest engagement bait, much of it the product of rise-and-grind spammers who avidly consume get rich quick "courses" and then churn out a torrent of "shrimp Jesus" and fake chainsaw sculptures:

https://www.404media.co/email/1cdf7620-2e2f-4450-9cd9-e041f4f0c27f/

For poor engagement farmers in the global south chasing the fractional pennies that Facebook shells out for successful clickbait, the actual content of the slop is beside the point. These spammers aren't necessarily tuned into the psyche of the wealthy-world Facebook users who represent Meta's top monetization subjects. They're just trying everything and doubling down on anything that moves the needle, A/B splitting their way into weird, hyper-optimized, grotesque crap:

https://www.404media.co/facebook-is-being-overrun-with-stolen-ai-generated-images-that-people-think-are-real/

In other words, Facebook's AI spammers are laying out a banquet of arbitrary possibilities, like the letters on a Ouija board, and the Facebook users' clicks and engagement are a collective ideomotor response, moving the algorithm's planchette to the options that tug hardest at our collective delights (or, more often, disgusts).

So, rather than thinking of AI spammers as creating the ideological and aesthetic trends that drive millions of confused Facebook users into condemning, praising, and arguing about surreal botshit, it's more true to say that spammers are discovering these trends within their subjects' collective yearnings and terrors, and then refining them by exploring endlessly ramified variations in search of unsuspected niches.

(If you know anything about AI, this may remind you of something: a Generative Adversarial Network, in which one bot creates variations on a theme, and another bot ranks how closely the variations approach some ideal. In this case, the spammers are the generators and the Facebook users they evince reactions from are the discriminators)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generative_adversarial_network

I got to thinking about this today while reading User Mag, Taylor Lorenz's superb newsletter, and her reporting on a new AI slop trend, "My neighbor’s ridiculous reason for egging my car":

https://www.usermag.co/p/my-neighbors-ridiculous-reason-for

The "egging my car" slop consists of endless variations on a story in which the poster (generally a figure of sympathy, canonically a single mother of newborn twins) complains that her awful neighbor threw dozens of eggs at her car to punish her for parking in a way that blocked his elaborate Hallowe'en display. The text is accompanied by an AI-generated image showing a modest family car that has been absolutely plastered with broken eggs, dozens upon dozens of them.

According to Lorenz, variations on this slop are topping very large Facebook discussion forums totalling millions of users, like "Movie Character…,USA Story, Volleyball Women, Top Trends, Love Style, and God Bless." These posts link to SEO sites laden with programmatic advertising.

The funnel goes:

i. Create outrage and hence broad reach;

ii, A small percentage of those who see the post will click through to the SEO site;

iii. A small fraction of those users will click a low-quality ad;

iv. The ad will pay homeopathic sub-pennies to the spammer.

The revenue per user on this kind of scam is next to nothing, so it only works if it can get very broad reach, which is why the spam is so designed for engagement maximization. The more discussion a post generates, the more users Facebook recommends it to.

These are very effective engagement bait. Almost all AI slop gets some free engagement in the form of arguments between users who don't know they're commenting an AI scam and people hectoring them for falling for the scam. This is like the free square in the middle of a bingo card.

Beyond that, there's multivalent outrage: some users are furious about food wastage; others about the poor, victimized "mother" (some users are furious about both). Not only do users get to voice their fury at both of these imaginary sins, they can also argue with one another about whether, say, food wastage even matters when compared to the petty-minded aggression of the "perpetrator." These discussions also offer lots of opportunity for violent fantasies about the bad guy getting a comeuppance, offers to travel to the imaginary AI-generated suburb to dole out a beating, etc. All in all, the spammers behind this tedious fiction have really figured out how to rope in all kinds of users' attention.

Of course, the spammers don't get much from this. There isn't such a thing as an "attention economy." You can't use attention as a unit of account, a medium of exchange or a store of value. Attention – like everything else that you can't build an economy upon, such as cryptocurrency – must be converted to money before it has economic significance. Hence that tooth-achingly trite high-tech neologism, "monetization."

The monetization of attention is very poor, but AI is heavily subsidized or even free (for now), so the largest venture capital and private equity funds in the world are spending billions in public pension money and rich peoples' savings into CO2 plumes, GPUs, and botshit so that a bunch of hustle-culture weirdos in the Pacific Rim can make a few dollars by tricking people into clicking through engagement bait slop – twice.

The slop isn't the point of this, but the slop does have the useful function of making the collective ideomotor response visible and thus providing a peek into our hopes and fears. What does the "egging my car" slop say about the things that we're thinking about?

Lorenz cites Jamie Cohen, a media scholar at CUNY Queens, who points out that subtext of this slop is "fear and distrust in people about their neighbors." Cohen predicts that "the next trend, is going to be stranger and more violent.”

This feels right to me. The corollary of mistrusting your neighbors, of course, is trusting only yourself and your family. Or, as Margaret Thatcher liked to say, "There is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women and there are families."

We are living in the tail end of a 40 year experiment in structuring our world as though "there is no such thing as society." We've gutted our welfare net, shut down or privatized public services, all but abolished solidaristic institutions like unions.

This isn't mere aesthetics: an atomized society is far more hospitable to extreme wealth inequality than one in which we are all in it together. When your power comes from being a "wise consumer" who "votes with your wallet," then all you can do about the climate emergency is buy a different kind of car – you can't build the public transit system that will make cars obsolete.

When you "vote with your wallet" all you can do about animal cruelty and habitat loss is eat less meat. When you "vote with your wallet" all you can do about high drug prices is "shop around for a bargain." When you vote with your wallet, all you can do when your bank forecloses on your home is "choose your next lender more carefully."

Most importantly, when you vote with your wallet, you cast a ballot in an election that the people with the thickest wallets always win. No wonder those people have spent so long teaching us that we can't trust our neighbors, that there is no such thing as society, that we can't have nice things. That there is no alternative.

The commercial surveillance industry really wants you to believe that they're good at convincing people of things, because that's a good way to sell advertising. But claims of mind-control are pretty goddamned improbable – everyone who ever claimed to have managed the trick was lying, from Rasputin to MK-ULTRA:

https://pluralistic.net/HowToDestroySurveillanceCapitalism

Rather than seeing these platforms as convincing people of things, we should understand them as discovering and reinforcing the ideology that people have been driven to by material conditions. Platforms like Facebook show us to one another, let us form groups that can imperfectly fill in for the solidarity we're desperate for after 40 years of "no such thing as society."

The most interesting thing about "egging my car" slop is that it reveals that so many of us are convinced of two contradictory things: first, that everyone else is a monster who will turn on you for the pettiest of reasons; and second, that we're all the kind of people who would stick up for the victims of those monsters.

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

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

https://pluralistic.net/2024/10/29/hobbesian-slop/#cui-bono

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

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

#pluralistic #taylor lorenz #conspiratorialism #conspiracy fantasy #mind control #a paradise built in hell #solnit #ai slop #ai #disinformation #materialism #doppelganger #naomi klein

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multiplicationdivision · 1 month ago

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Beach Body

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The beach was a perfection like nothing the town of Rusty Coast had seen in the last recorded memory. Gone today were the rocky waves lapping amidst thick fog and heavy crashing of the winter fishing season. The air from miles out was still and comfortably warm from the coming summer, a fact that would’ve made it feel lonely if not for the steady rhythmic pound of waves accompanied by the rise and fall of cackling gulls and the occasional sneeze of a seal somewhere in the distance. Somehow in this cove the frigid pacific water was warm, the curls of seafoam lapping up the beach onto their feet before sinking back in with the countless bubbles of hidden sand crabs.

Rhett could already feel himself baking in this sun, although that was no indication of the sun today. Being a Irish man in California was just a fact of burning sometimes, not that getting pink in just a couple of minutes was ever fun. Worse when your company seemed to only relax in this secluded place’s warmth, his two housemates relaxed as they moved set up their towels and awkwardly drag their single board onto the sand.

Evan was the darkest one out of all of them, although a few quarters of non-stop accounting classes certainly pulled as much color out of him as possible. Same with Oliver, who’d once discovered this beach ages ago when he’d had the time to surf.

Now they were a house graduated, each of their degrees piled on their kitchen table and only the evidence of the work it took to get them being the scrawniness of their muscles and the near complete translucence of Rhett himself. It had felt like years before physical activity was even an idea in their heads, but it was felt now.

“You struggling Oliver?” Rhett called out to the guy clearly coming apart at the task of pulling the massive surfboard across the rocky tidepools. Even the crabs seemed slightly worried for the guy, having the mind to leave a large berth for his flailing. It was odd to imagine Oliver used to surf on that board nearly everyday and Rhett and Evan couldn’t help thinking that it was slightly pathetic. It was paired with their affection at the “please ignore me” look on the guy’s sweaty face, although sharing a bed with the guy would likely ensure it.

“Fucking idiot” Evan sighed in the direction of the ever-stubborn Oliver, as he sat down, shrugging off his shirt and kicking off the converse that had already gotten heavy with sand. His body wasn’t much to look at these days to a passerby, but Rhett was a long-practiced connoisseur in enjoying what others were too shallow to appreciate. He let himself lean back into the guy, against the familiar warmth of the guy’s chest and the slight unpleasantness of the man’s chronically cold hands.

Evan was ever his particular brand of affectionate as he whined in displeasure “Dude your damn Nikes are getting sand on my towel”, his tone already betraying that he was saying it more for himself than Rhett. Rhett wasn’t in the habit of undressing himself these days and teasing Evan was as fun as it always was, although the idea of exposing more of himself to the sun than necessary was an equal component. Instead, he just grabbed a handful of sand and released it onto Evan’s head, watching the man sputter in annoyance.

“Evan, I think you have some sand on your face” Oliver said casually at the amusingly enraged man and the self-satisfied smirk of Rhett. The surfboard sat just a couple feet from the tidepools, Oliver having stealthily abandoned the task to the small company of crabs now crowding his old board. They guy was soaked with sweat and probably a tumble in the same tidepool, judging by the sandy mud on his shorts and a lost sandal.

Not that he would need the cheap cloth sandal being carried off by a crab in the distance.

They weren’t a foolish group having come here expecting to surf as they were. Hell they weren’t even dressed for it, Rhett in his jean shorts and the others in old basketball shorts. Not that they’d be dressed in much soon anyways, judging by the impatience tenting Oliver’s shorts, matching Evan’s own defiantly pressing against Rhett’s hand even as Evan tried unsuccessfully to douse Rhett in sand himself.

“Weathers so perfect boys that we could just spend today without any of that extra business” Rhett said jokingly, although he didn’t stop Evan from hooking his thumb under his shirt and wrestling it off of him just like they had so many nights this week.

Oliver enjoyed the sight and stretched, slipping his own athletic shirt off with a groan. His own little play on Evan’s weak mind judging by Evan seeming to slip at the distraction at the sight.

They’d gotten so far from the awkward pairing of roommates they’d been at the start of their college careers. Evan a supposed straight guy, Rhett a closeted bisexual and Oliver a nervous gay man. They’d been roomed together in a dorm their first year, some fluke leaving them three guys with a single bed. A month of two of them sleeping on the bed and then Oliver and Rhett had begun to share on their nights. A month after that and somehow Evan found himself tangled in their little pile, his sleeping bag rolled up into the corner.

Class was just too much to not have good sleep to stave off the exhaustion. That had been a good excuse before administration caught up to the fluke and got them a new bunk. At the time they hadn’t even really discussed it before the bunk was just another shelf, full of papers and junk.

Evan was no longer a self-described straight man, although one has to abandon the title when they start feeling FOMO after catching their bedmates sucking each other’s dicks after a cancelled class. Especially so after the six or seven-hundreth time of giving and receiving the act himself.

So they’d stuck together through all of college’s trials and tribulations. Found themselves a big enough flat with a single bedroom, each of them feeling some sense of their internalized homophobia act up even in the apathetic face of a apartment manager who couldn’t give a shit about what three college kids got up to in their spare time. Their separate closets seemed to merge after some time, initially just with the excuse of all the wasted space. Not that Rhett ever really cared about their collective image as platonic housemates, but it had taken the other two sometime to stop fixating on whose hoodie was who’s. You gloss over the lube visible under the bed enough times to your basketball friends and suddenly it seems like a wasted effort to care if your mixed up the underwear. Hell, they were even close enough in sizes that they could just wear whatever, although Oliver had become the defacto buyer. He’d bought every bit of clothing that now was now in a growing sandy pile beside him.

A anxious glance by Evan to their surroundings and the three’s jean shorts and black pair of boxers were tossed into that pile, leaving Rhett a self-satisfied hard naked man, the pair of Oliver’s Nike blazers he’d been wearing scattered around them.

“Completely private beach Evan” Oliver comforted, slipping his own shorts off and having no boxers to remove, the man never bothering to wear any when it was just them. A particularly unfortunate habit when he was packing so much, his oversized cock having been a particular distraction when they’d gotten Chipotle on the way. It wasn’t big enough to escape his shorts, but it had been enough for eyes to keep glancing the way of the thing’s attempted to escape the torn up synthetic fabric.

“Sorry I’m not an exhibitionist like you fucking perverts” Evan said as he awkwardly tried to sightlessly pull off his own shorts, struggling to do so under the weight of Rhett and the overwhelming draw of Oliver’s cock, now standing like a flag pole. It was especially ironic of a statement given he’d been the one to suggest this entire thing. What they were doing could’ve been done in the privacy of their own home, could’ve been done with no risk of someone witnessing it.

They’d done it like that so many time before, letting the process be done with closed blinds and locked doors.

Oliver had looked so empty as he’d looked at his surfboard this past three months though and Rhett had been especially pissy so many times in public when Evan had brushed off contact. Oliver couldn’t care less with how Evan acted beyond their bedroom but Rhett was right. Doing what they were doing on a private beach wasn’t much of a advancement in Evan’s fight against toxic masculinity, but the effort was enough to bring Rhett’s frustration back into his shit-eating grin that always marked him when he was at his happiest and horniest. Certainly helped get Oliver back into fighting order as well, the guy clearly very turned on himself, but more so looking at the surfboard more often than not, eyes glazed over with what was definitely the three’s evening after this.

Truth be told, Evan was a fucking pervert himself, so as much as he wanted to make his boys happy, he was also kind of turned on by the being out in the open on the beach thing. Rhett could see through him just like always, nudging him to look at his own sizable cock before giving it a single stroke before happily watching the static reach Evan’s brain.

“Our guy’s got his mind already so far in the gutter huh” the ginger man said at Oliver with a exasperated expression. Oliver just laughed, as if his shorts didn’t lay beside him wet with pre-cum.

“Getting ahead of ourselves isn’t he” Oliver said, bending down over them, cock nearing the positoon where it could easily slid into either Rhett or Evan if he wanted to. Both would be very receptive to the idea.

That wasn’t what was happening though.

“Just fucking get on with it Oliver.” Evan snapped, fighting every urge he had to wrestle the two others into the ground and fuck them himself, lest he physically explode. “Do you have the trunks or not”

Oliver’s practiced seductive face cracked before he rolled his eyes, accompanied by Rhett’s vocal disappointment at not continuing to mentally screw with the man he still held down under his own weight. Oliver was always the reasonable one of the three, but not enough to ever stop joining Rhett’s campaign at teasing their partner

“Fine, fine, yeah” Oliver said as he got back up, wandering over to the pile of clothes to fish into his short’s pockets. “You better have prepared them right”, he said, pulling out the fabric within them as Evan almost re-activated his mini rage at the idea of having not done their preparations right.

Four years in the running and he’d gotten fucking good at the spell.

The fabric wasn’t anything special. Just a pair of trunks, blue and white and much larger than their size 34 waists. A pair of swim trunks made for a man triple their size. The only hint of something peculiar about them being the mess of symbols stitched into the waistband.

The first year it had been a messy affair, borne of an accident with a strange grouping of strange people and acquisition of a relic of a necklace, with symbols embossed into its chain. The second year and a bad experience had been one they’d recreated when curiosity overtook locking that necklace in a lead box in their kitchen. The third year and Evan had a ge course of old witchcraft to get him through the process of amateurly experimenting with the situation, trial and error leaving him something like an expert in the only supernatural thing they’d ever witnessed. Year four and each of them had studied those symbols long and hard, seen every way their group shifted and changed the outcome.

Back at home a small collection of boxer briefs had the symbols stitched into it. It had taken an embarrassingly long time for them to figure out sizing up them to avoid going through a pair every time, but practice makes perfect. They’d had a while to figure out what fit them best after their little rituals, evident by the backpack in the jeep full of an outfit that would most definitely fit them when the day was done.

Evan looked at the never worn swim trunks shed a cloud of sand before watching Oliver ball up the fabric and throw it at the two, Rhett lazily catching it. The Irish man lifted the waistband up, making a show of inspecting the symbology before Evan snatched it from his loose grip.

Just a swipe of the runes by it creator and the stitching began to heat, a shine of blue tracing the threads. It left a pressure to the air, particles of blue lifting off as energy subtly wafted from the spell.

Evan could tell when Rhett was excited by the way he stopped a limp mass weighing him down. There was something in the energy that was intoxicating to the guy, although he’d always been proven to be susceptible to the sway of the supernatural. The guy had been the one who’d almost been snatched by the strange folk they’d stolen the necklace from, almost making Evan speculate if there was something magic too loved about the guy. The symbols were something reminiscent of Gaelic, so maybe this was all down to fairies.

Or maybe it was just because Rhett never hid how much he loved this shit. It bled into each of them as they could almost feel his movements echo into their own. Rhett’s hand coming up to held hold the trunks and move them past their feet, helping focus Evan’s motion as every touch of the symbols on their skin felt like pure twistings of nervous system madness, feeling their cells open up with every reprogramming of the runes into their bodies.

Oliver watched with rapt interest, hand on his cock as he watched the points at which the two’s feet stuck together, the skin already latching on and binding the feet into the same motions. Evan’s heel sinking into Rhett’s, the two tones of skin initially meeting like oil and water before blending into a gradient. Evan’s melanin leaking into the joining points and travelling outwards in all directions.

They managed to remember to move the trunks up further, even as the feeling of nerves joining brought their brains to jelly. They’d done this ritual so many times, yet Rhett’s skull still swum as he felt 20 toes move instead of his typical 10. It was worse when he could feel the sensation of sinking twice over, feeling the feet begin to sinking further into their counterpart. It was impossible to describe, the paradoxical feeling of one’s body in itself.

The runes dragged against their legs and they were magnetized between the two men. Calves gluing to each other as their feet further merged, the feeling of their feet feeling the insides of their counterparts like they were a skinsuit ready to be filled. The toes aligning, yet not having enough space to fit within each other and instead forcing the mass to expand outwards with no where else to go.

It left a pair of men joined at a pair of large feet, their calves merging as their tibias converged, muscles physically joining and building upon each other.

Oliver found himself unconsciously stroking his dick, only coming to from his studying of the way the legs converged by the look of Evan, having forgone the effort of continuing pulling up the trunks longside Rhett, the two having failed to will past the need of their body to release the pressure building up. The magic’s effects clashed with neurons, inevitably ending in the body concluding a massive pent up amount of arousal, always leading to the brain to forget the task at hand and begin furiously attempting to cum in anyway possible.

Not that cumming could help when the magic’s effects on cells made a refractory period non-existent. It was an effect that continue on post transformation, a reason they could never really do school work alongside maintaining the spell.

The two failed in their willpower and gave way to attempting to the impossible, Rhett hungrily grabbing his cock and pumping it as Evan failed to reach his own with Rhett on top of him, yet still connecting through his fading brainpower that a suitable hole was perfectly aligned with his cock.

Before the two could get two carried away, Oliver leaned over them and grabbed the trunks with a tight grip before pulling them up, feeling the runic power hot on his skin.

It was too much too soon for his boys, but that was always inescapable. The very fact that it had to be done is what left Oliver enjoy it so much, seeing the symbols leave after images of energy as they slid up. Watching Evan and Rhett’s eyes roll back as their thighs and waist burrowed together.

It was one thing to feel one’s leg hair scratch against the nerves of another’s skin, but it was mind melting to feel a cock sink far further than it should’ve into the body. Just one thrust and Evan’s cock sunk like it was moving through wet clay, dragging against Rhett’s entire prostate in a long torturous moment. It was headed for Rhett’s cock, destined to fill the thing in a way that its nerves wouldn’t be able to define.

Oliver watched the two be unable to fully commit to the motion before he knew it was his right to join, just when the two felt they’d reached the climax, Evan’s cock still not aligned to shove into Rhett’s. Oliver would help, but his route was going to be selfish.

It was often easier to fit their cocks together by size, like a matryoshka doll. Evan’s cock into Rhett’s bigger one, Rhett’s into Oliver’s monster. Well fitting sleeves, nestled within each other.

Fuck if that wasn’t boring though.

Oliver lifted up his transcending partners abdomens enough to shove his his feet under them through the waist band that was already tight around their conjoined waist. He’d always had the best strength of mind out of the three, but even he bulked underneath the weight of the runes nuclear energy deciding that it would be easier if his legs just slide directly into his partner’s, like he was sliding into a particularly awkward pair of pants. He steadied himself by tightly gripping Evan’s shoulders as he pushed himself in, feeling hugged from all sides as the mass of the conjoined body pressed in from all sides.

He powered through, feeling his feet finally squeeze past the ankles and wriggling his toes into their proper position just as the bones of his partners invaded and fused into his body, dissolving his flesh into its own and reconnecting his brain to the feeling of the combined mass, warm sunlight on legs that were now a perfect blend of their skin tones, Oliver’s ankle tattoo bloom up into the skin as if it had always belonged there.

When his waist finally locked into place he could feel his cock slide against Evan’s, the sensation bringing enough clarity to the guy’s mind to begin to object to what was going to surely burn out his mind. It was an entirely to simple of a motion for Oliver to twist his barely merged waist to slot into Evan’s cock before pressing into Rhett’s, holding up as he strained his neck over the two as he listened to them moan, almost in complete unison.

Rhett’s cock and Evan’s beneath it stretched as Oliver shoved his massive cock into them, forcing their skin to expand to his length, feeling his testicles join Evans before fusing with Rhett’s, leaving a sensation of overstuffing before an almost blue ball sensation of the balls combining took over.

One of them cursed and then the puzzle pieces connected, nerves finally aligning as Oliver and Evan’s cocks dissolved and then reformed Rhett’s cock into a combination of the three, a olive erection framed by dark auburn pubes. It was long enough for both Rhett and Evan to immediately take to it, their brains finally having a outlet for their raging desires as Oliver continued to fight falling into the hormones filling them all. 3 times of the testosterone pulsing upwards alongside the multiplicatively nerve dense cock sending waves of euphoria up them.

Rhett and Evan gave a final pump of their cock before their right hands stuck together, palms fusing to leave a many fingered hand that was soon pouring in a tide of semen that seemed to endlessly flow, most assuredly ruining their towel.

With no where else for the symbols to touch, the energy would always pour up into the body, allowing a respite in the overpowering sensation.

Rhett could feel his mind come back to him as he lifted up his fused right hand to his face, watching the cum drip off as his number of fingers decreased as the copies fused together. He could feel Evan help him control it, both of their brains moving it together. They’d been a chaotic tumble of limbs the first time this had happened, the necklace having been tried on by Rhett one fateful day leaving Oliver to discover the chaos made up of the Irish man and Evan.

They were pretty sure that necklace had been intended as a curse, but now they fused harmoniously, the nerves entangling and their brains having gotten used to moving as a group. It let them do such impressive things as move their legs together halfway through the ritual, or wipe off their massive hand of an absurd amount of cum.

The energy amassed in their cores and they let themselves press into each other, Rhett and Evan sinking into Evan’s chest. They could feel their ribs slot into each other and the spines line up before slowly fusing like they were being zipped up. Their hearts layered upon each other, not bothering to fuse as they settled into always pumping away impossibly from within each other. It would be the final evidence of them being separate people, feeling the slight asynchrony of the three’s hearts on each other.

Evan and Rhett lifted up their combined hand to feel it pump as their body reshuffled, the heads coming to comfortably line up instead of being lined up back to front.

“God I never want this to end” Evan choked out through their fusing lungs, feeling the quick pump of their separate hearts against each other. It left their cock harder than ever, already rearing to go, but Oliver was able to stop his endlessly horny partners with a simple slipping of his hand into their large shared arm. It was simply a glove and so much easier than the legs, feeling the knuckles crush together and the joints melt together. It was awfully trippy feeling his much smaller left hand in comparison to the much larger right, the sheer difference in muscular power astronomical.

They always ended up practically superhuman and it was only so long before that feeling of pure power was enough for them to forgo separation altogether. Oliver hoped today was the day that happened, with all their obligation and responsibilities behind them.

He wrapped his left arm around Rhett and Evans and before long they were a single indistinct mass, bundles of arms beneath a singular skin that fluidly aligned, the muscle and bone weaving together into a suitable match for the right. Both arms melding further until the shoulders finally completed merging, leaving the three with the unified need to stretch, feeling the back crack as tension released up the spines.

They were now one three headed body sitting on the sand as the waves crashed in the back. They hadn’t even needed the stimulation to let loose into the swim trunks, another massive volume of cum dripping out. Rhett gasped for them all before they stilled, heads beside one another with Evan in the center, Rhett taking the left and Oliver on the right.

They’d stayed at this stage before, letting the magic settle down before removing the fabric containing the symbols. It was a quite enjoyable thing, to be so fucking massive yet still completely themselves. Half of the reason why they could work so perfectly to stand up and stretch as they were now was built on winter and spring break experimenting with every way they could be multi-headed. They’d alternate who was in what position, testing which person had dominance over the limbs (the answer being random every time). Now Evan seemed to be the lead as he reached into their trunks to provoke yet another burst of cum that would leave all three dizzy, half falling over back onto the sand.

“We’ve gotta go further” Rhett said, holding onto the ball of energy in their chest. It was a reminder more so than a demand, all three having wanted for this final step for a year of class.

It wasn’t a privilege when they were still pretending to be three separate people. When they explained themselves as a throuple to hosts of acquaintances, the words ringing false every time.

They found themselves in sophomore year in each other. Experimentation had led to a point so far that to come back had felt laughable at the time. How they’d separated that first completion had been a miracle and every division felt worse and worse with every repetition. They couldn’t do a thing like this during their school years because there was always a risk they couldn’t differentiate back into three people enough to return. It got harder every time.

Even now they felt the absences in their minds. Memories they recalled remembering but that had returned to the rightful skull upon separation. Rhett’s forced enrollment in baseball as a teenager that only was looked on with fondness by how Evan’s and Oliver’s neurons fawned over how adorable he’d been. His own guilt towards never being enough for his distant father flung to the dark recesses of his brain as the memories of Oliver and Evan’s sweet upbringings gave him a childhood he could enjoy. Oliver’s endless tainting anxiety banished by the ever-present encompassing of others into his most private closed off spaces, handing off old traumas to be soothed by brain tissue that wasn’t trained to fixate on it all. Instead, Evan’s self-confidence overlaid it alongside what felt like the man’s overpowering appreciation for all things Rhett and Oliver, enjoying every tiny quirk and flawed complication to the two, which wouldn’t disappear but be revealed as a treasured peculiarity that had never actually been as awful as they’d thought. Evan himself could feel the shame he’d always kept dull under Rhett and Oliver’s life and then suddenly they’d be complete. Free.

It was hard to pretend to be anything but incomplete after that, so when their massive hands began crush their heads together, none of them could tell who was ordering it.

One would expect the sound of melons cracking or gore. Something about the head just made one expect it to burst, especially now when the pressure built but didn’t seem to relieve. But then the ball of energy moved up their spines and the runes flared.

Any physical sensation was overpowered the moment their brains connected. The feeling of their spines and necks pushing into each other or the sensation of their heads forcing together, rendering their jaws inoperational and their breathing stilted.

Evan felt like he was a river between two oceans, but that wasn’t right. A river flows from one to another, yet lives flowed between him and into him. He remembered so much.

He remembered painting, months upon months of painting. Sketching and ripping and sculpting as every form of his artistic expression fell upon the idea of a third. Life drawings of men and woman all left purposefully without, sections of their body removed with the only evidence in the silhouettes of the heads, faces, arms, fingers and feet they once had. Abstract art his professors had complimented him for time and time again, although he failed to communicate that they were still incomplete. He simply didn’t have the parts of him who were so good at detailing those missing pieces at the moment.

The information tilted into the man with red hair and he felt his emotions come back to him. He hadn’t felt this way in a year, every bit of feeling back where it belonged. He knew he should’ve always felt this way and that when he hadn’t he’d been numb. Not depressed, but not all there. The part of him that hadn’t been the red-haired man at the time was left with too much feeling, overcoming him in every way. Had that part been the angry and desperate part he thought he’d been? It was a ridiculous thought now that he remembered how it was ridiculous. He remembered having felt so much and having loved himself for that exact reason. He remembered missing the clarity of feeling that way and he was relieved that he could feel it again.

Oliver was the last to remember that he wasn’t Oliver any more. Was white light the thousand of hues contained within its wavelength or was it in the end its own energy. The answer is that there was never any actual color, it was an illusion. Oliver had been Oliver up until he remembered that Oliver was an illusion. A vague identity formed up by interests, hopes and dreams that had always hoped to be shared. To connect and to be validated in every way. Laid out and dissected on a platter for the ways that its purposes were true. To form even grander arguments to the validity of its existence and being based on a mountain of new evidence. The man that was Oliver understood.

He wasn’t Oliver, nor Evan, nor Rhett. They were him, but the opposite wasn’t true. They were pieces of this man the moment they first come together and to be anything close to independent people after that was an act. It was feeling like he did now that was why he could only be himself when he had the long time it took to tear himself into pieces.

His face swam and he knew the hue it would return to, the dark auburn he could see looking down at his pubes. He could feel the roughness of his facial hair, back to having the potential of being thick as evident by the stubble across his face. He’d let it grow out one summer, now remembering how handsome he’d felt as the memories condensed. It was another reason he couldn’t imagine doing this again, feeling his life as himself scatter amongst his pieces. The three would remember bits and parts of a better existence, but the information was too divided to ever be enough.

He stroked his cock under his swim trunks and remembered just why he wasn’t overcome with masturbation all this time, all his willpower now firmly in place. It would feel better anyways with other partners now that he couldn’t possibly feel jealous of himself with other people. That was simply a ridiculous concept he realized for the 3rd time again.

He felt normal which was always a trip because his components thought he felt strong. In actuality they were just so frail that to be him felt like being a god. Being whole was a hell of a drug, but he certainly looked like a fair bit like a god now. Muscles back to a fairly sufficient degree, although he’d certainly need to work on them again. Growing incredibly scrawny in three bodies could only contribute so much muscle to the whole again, but he’d always been quick at gaining muscle.

The surf was loud and his surfboard was floating in a tidepool a bit away, the oncoming tide causing it to rock back and forth. He remembered being so pitifully cute struggling with it watching from third person and his hearts pumped in asynchrony, the only argument against him having always been just himself. The contradiction felt good oddly enough and he felt turned on by the thought of himself. It was pretty offputting being a narcissist in such a way, but jacking off in a mirror was a activity he had done too much to care about. He had a great excuse for studying his body for all the ways he was handsome and maybe he talked to himself far too much, but how couldn’t he. He’d been formed by a love for himself and who was he to deny himself that.

He flexed, feeling his body move like it should, all ducks in a row. The runes against his skin settled and just a little motion on the purposefully loose knot holding the embroidery together was enough to tighten it the symbols into meaningless nothings. His hands came back sticky of course, but it wasn’t anything the surf could fix.

The waves were perfect for a man like him, the perfect height and the perfect rhythm. They fell in gigantic spiral that he would paint later now that he could remember just how mathematically the angles combined and the paint could set. Now he would grab his surfboard easily underhand and dive into the waves, remembering just how much the feeling was incredible. He stay here till the sun set before likely airdrying (considering he’d completely ruined the towels), towing his surfboard to his jeep and pulling out the backpack full of clothes that he’d worn last summer. He’d go home and meet the eyes of the still apathetic apartment manager who’d grown used to seeing him replace the three boys she was equally apathetic to.

He'd never been able to be permanently himself and there was a league of challenges to get there. For one, a new closet fitting the style his components had grown for him over the past year. For two, a solution to combining the legal and emotional connections of three men together, although he was smart enough to probably achieve it all with magic. He’d worried about it when he hadn’t had all the pieces to know it was probably pretty simple.

He would enjoy his day here and go home to sleep back in the same singular bed. He’d wake up the next day and he’d continue waking up the next day forever as himself. It was how he was supposed to be.

Just Everett

#merging #male shapeshift #male body merging #my writing #male tf #male transformation #personality merge #new person #body merge #male merge #muscle tf #muscle transformation #personality change

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k20spock · 1 month ago

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The Slay the Princess Voices as Birds

I'm not much of a voices guy but I do love biology and assigning animals to characters, so I am assigning all of the voices a bird species and explaining why I picked it. enjoy

Voice of the Hero: House sparrow

[ID: A photo of a male house sparrow perching. End ID.]

Hero is the one I struggled with the most and this bird is actually crowdsourced! It does fit though I think. Sparrows are associated with commonness and familiarity, fitting for a voice who’s always by your side. Some more modern interpretations of sparrow symbolism paint them as hardworking and honest too. I think an everyday bird/voice doing his best is perfect for Hero.

Voice of the Cheated: Seagull (No specific species in mind, but definitely a more urban species like a European herring gull)

[ID: A photo of a European herring gull with its beak open. End ID.]

Seagulls are very cheated birds. They’re considered pests for doing what they have to do to survive with their habitat severely altered by human activity and just happened to adapt better than a lot of other animals. I will forever defend seagulls. They’re also very loud, shrill, persistent birds, qualities I associate with Cheated.

Voice of the Stubborn: Cassowary

[ID: A photo of a Southern cassowary. End ID.]

Cassowaries are widely considered the most dangerous bird and while technically that’s not true (there are more recorded ostrich attacks), the reputation is not undeserved. They’re big, powerful, and can be vicious fighters capable of disembowelment and throat-slitting with their massive claws. Their name in the Biak language literally just means bird strong.

Voice of the Cold: Northern shrike

[ID: A northern shrike perching on a branch with a dead mouse. End ID.]

By now I’m pretty sure everyone knows about shrikes but if you don’t, let me explain why I picked them for Cold with an alternate name for Northern shrikes: winter butcherbirds. Yeah shrikes are little songbirds known for impaling their prey on sticks as a convenient storage system. I picked Northern shrikes specifically because of that very Cold name, winter butcherbird, and the fact that they breed in the cold reaches of Siberia, Canada, and Alaska.

Voice of the Smitten: Albatross (again, not necessarily a specific species but if I had to pick I’d go with one of the two royal albatrosses for the name)

[ID: A photo of a Northern royal albatross in the water. End ID.]

Ok there’s so so many birds associated with romance so there’s just a plethora of things you could go with for Smitten but I went with an albatross for a few reasons. They’re known for mating for life, having elaborate courtship dances, and being extremely dedicated to their partners. Very much romance birds. They’re also birds that inhabit isolated areas, and are very naive to potential threats because they don’t live in places with natural predators. This made them easy targets for hunters and their feathers were used in garments, which makes me think of Smitten’s line about making a shawl from his feathers. The thing that really sealed the deal though is there’s also some really interesting symbolism associated with them. In literature, they’ve been used as a metaphor for a burden difficult to escape from with the phrase ‘an albatross around your neck’. This just fits so well with Happily Ever After I had to pick albatrosses.

Voice of the Skeptic: Great gray owl

[ID: A photo of a great gray owl on a branch, looking down at the viewer. End ID.]

Owls are associated with wisdom and knowledge, Skeptic is the voice who is the most determined to reason and puzzle his way out of this situation, owls aren’t actually any more intelligent than the average bird, Skeptic’s rigid thinking often prevents him from understanding their situation in a way other voices can. Besides, owls are just a bit spooky and associated with death, something I think fits with Skeptic’s gruff noir detective vibe. I’m not too picky on the exact type of owl, I just picked a great gray because I think they just look like they have Skeptic vibes. I could also easily be convinced of a little owl though, the species associated with Athena that really kickstarted owls’ association with wisdom in Europe and is also associated with death through popular legend saying its calls heralded the death of Julius Caesar. I can also understand why people would go with a crow, but I wanted to go with something different and I feel like the Narrator’s taken it already.

Voice of the Paranoid: Cockatiel

[ID: A photo of an alert wild cockatiel with a raised crest. End ID.]

This pick is one I can see people disagreeing with so let me just explain myself: cockatiels are parrots, yes, birds that don’t really fit with Paranoid’s vibe (and I gave a different parrot to another character already and I’m trying to have some variety here). However, cockatiels in my personal experience are very nervous, neurotic birds with very distinct fear responses. Namely, hissing and raising their crest. I also think it’s fun having Paranoid be a bird often kept as a pet (like what Nightmare’s planning to do!) and having him be a bird capable of mimicking speech. Perfect for repeating a mantra over and over!

Voice of the Hunted: Common pheasant

[ID: A photo of a male common pheasant. End ID.]

Pheasants are simply the birds I associate most with being hunted. They’re one of the oldest and most popular game birds in the world and their anti-predation strategies just boil down to fleeing.

Voice of the Opportunist: Common cuckoo

[ID: A photo of a common cuckoo perching on a branch. End ID.]

I am firmly against ascribing human moral values onto animal behavior, and this includes cuckoos. But like… they’re opportunists. Common cuckoos are obligate brood parasites, which means they lay their eggs in the nest of another bird, often laying eggs designed to look similar to the eggs of the host species. Once they hatch, cuckoo chicks will attempt to eliminate other eggs or hatchlings from the nest to get all the food and attention of the parents to themself. Their deception even continues to adulthood, adult cuckoos mimic the predatory sparrow hawks to ensure they aren’t attacked. Like come on. What else could Opportunist possibly be.

Voice of the Broken: Chicken

[ID: A photo of a chicken. End ID.]

I’ve got a few things in mind with this one. Firstly is that many chickens are raised for meat (which is not an inherently bad thing provided they’re treated ethically), and I think it suits Broken to be a bit of a “doomed” bird. But secondly is that chickens play a religious role in many cultures. In particular, they were a big part of Ancient Roman beliefs and practices. There was an entire chicken-based form of divination. The only other bird I can think of with as much association with religion are doves and they’re much more widely associated with peace and love which, respectfully, isn’t really Broken’s vibe, so chicken it is.

Voice of the Contrarian: Kea

[ID: A photo of a kea walking. End ID.]

The other parrot I mentioned earlier. Kea are parrots native to New Zealand known for their intelligence and love of fucking with people. They’re nicknamed “clown of the mountains” and will investigate and tear up anything which includes cars. They’ll tear up cars. For funsies. If you gave a kea a knife, I’m 100% sure it would throw it out a window.

And that's all of em! Maybe someday I'll draw designs based on these.

#slay the princess

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jadafitch · 2 months ago

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Pond Island Light, Kennebec River, Phippsburg, Maine. Until 1937, Pond Island hosted a colony of terns, but the growing gull population forced them to clear out. In 1960, when the light became automated, all the buildings, except the tower were removed. In '73 Care of the island was transferred from the Coast Guard to Fish and Wildlife to be re-established as a tern colony. Thanks to the help of National Audubon, tern decoys and calls were deployed, gull nests removed, and finally in '99 the first common tern chick in over 60 years hatched. Then in 2003, Pond Island recorded its first successful breeding pair of endangered roseate terns.

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slippinmickeys · 23 hours ago

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Funfetti

Love this series

Quonochontaug family vacation and finding a puppy

The call of a gull, the low rumble of surf, the screen door whacking into weathered shaker siding. It felt like 1973 all over again. If he looked in the loft, Mulder was half-convinced he’d find Samantha up there, twirling her braid in her fingers and reading Charlotte Sometimes.

“William!” Scully hollered from the deck, hand hovering over her brow to block the glare. “You need sunscreen!”

From closer to the roar of the waves, Mulder heard their son shout something back, and Scully wandered back into the cottage, a sour look on her face.

Mulder sidled up to her and pulled her in for a low body hug, leaning forward to collect a kiss.

“He’ll be fine for a little while without it,” he said.

“He has my complexion,” she replied. “He won’t.”

“Let him get a few ya-yas out first,” Mulder said. “He’s excited. That’ll dim. He’ll be complaining that he’s bored in less than an hour.”

“He’ll be red as a lobster in less than an hour.”

“Then he’ll have something else to complain about,” he murmured into her lips, collecting another kiss and lingering for a moment before Scully pushed him off of her.

“Go,” she said, shooing him away. “We have a lot to unpack.”

A week in Quonochontaug with a newly minted ten year old, the start of summer break. Scully actually agreed to five days off the clock, a record as far as Mulder knew, though he’d have to clamshell her laptop onto her fingers a few times to get her off her email. Then he’d have to hide her charging cord.

They’d broken the drive in two, the meaty chunk having been the day before with an overnight in New York City–William’s first time. A long day in the car capped off with an early dinner at the Palm and the Lion King on Broadway. Mulder had shown William how to tie a Windsor knot, and when he thought back to the moment, his throat closed up a little.

“I’ll get the groceries from the car,” he volunteered and ducked out the back door to the car port which was surrounded by overgrown hydrangea and woodsy, unproductive lilac. Out on the road behind the house, the mailbox listed tiredly, the faded stickers with the family name missing the R.

It had been years since he’d been here, not since William was little. He paid a local vacation home management company to turn on the water and drive by every few weeks. There were still sheets to pull off of furniture and it needed a serious airing out. There were shadows lurking in corners. And memories. And a bullet hole in the old wood paneling.

A scattering of small stones pulled away Mulder’s attention and Will came bounding up to him from around the side of the house.

“Dad!” he said, out of breath. “Look what I found!”

The boy held up the carapace of a small horseshoe crab, his face full of wonder and delight.

“Nice,” Mulder said. “Though don’t bring it in the house, it’ll stink the place up.”

“More than it already smells?” William joked and tossed the dead creature into the bushes. The house had a closed up redolence of mildew and stale air.

“You have no idea.” Mulder popped the trunk of their car and pulled out a couple of fully loaded grocery bags, handing them over to his son. “Take these and put them in the kitchen, would you? And then I want you to go around and open all the windows. We’ll get this place aired out.”

William reached forward and took the bags without complaint. “Can I sleep in the loft?”

Mulder thought of his sister, of over-warm July nights bunked up with her because she was afraid of the sound of fireworks.

“Sure, bud,” he said, his voice a little quiet.

***

Scully at the sink, a billowing plume of steam over the carmine cap of her hair as she dumped a pot of spaghetti into a colander. Beyond her, in the kitchen window, sat a dusty bowl full of sea glass. Mementos were hiding in every corner of the house.

“Should we eat outside?” Scully asked.

Mulder had tongs in one hand and an ancient ratty oven mitt in the other, pulling a cookie sheet of garlic bread out of the tired old oven. The smell that wafted up and over him was heavenly.

“I didn’t get a chance to clean the bird shit off the picnic table yet,” he frowned.

“Inside it is,” Scully said, upending the dripping colander into a bubbling pot of marinara. “Will!” She called out. “I need you to set the table!”

Mulder ended up helping, the muscle memory of childhood reminding him what cabinet plates were in, which drawer held the serving spoons. The ice tray wasn’t frozen yet, so they sipped tepid water out of olive green glasses, and Mulder opened a bottle of Chianti, fortifying himself with its acidic dryness, warmth spreading through his stomach.

Around a mouthful of spaghetti, Will piped up hopefully. “Can we go kayaking tomorrow?”

“Sure,” Mulder said airly. They’d have to rent some. Maybe an ocean kayak they could keep for the week.

“It might rain,” Scully cautioned.

The light went out of Will’s eyes.

“We’ll go rent one anyway,” Mulder said, giving Scully a look. She apologized with her eyes. “Even if it rains,” Mulder went on, looking at the boy. “That way you can go as soon as the weather clears.”

William perked up at this, and took a massive bite of garlic bread.

“Slow down, William,” Scully said, then turned to Mulder. “Do they rent them at Quonnie Pond? I can’t remember.”

Mulder shook his head. “There’s a place in Charlestown that delivers. I’ll call first thing in the morning.”

***

With the sunrise came the rain.

Will stood in front of the sliding door morosely, complaining of boredom.

Scully was curled up on the couch with a paperback and Mulder was so shocked by the sight that he was suddenly and quite determinedly of a mind not to let anything mess it up. Particularly tween ennui.

“Grab your coat,” he said to his son.

“What for?”

“We’re going into town. You and me.”

Will looked at him suspiciously.

“What for?”

“I don’t know,” Mulder said, pulling on his own rain slicker and tossing his son’s to him. “Shopping. A tee shirt to prove you were on vacation. Ice cream. I don’t know. Maybe we’ll buy fudge. Come on.”

Scully gave them a Toodleloo wave without looking up from her book.

As he and Will climbed into the car, he noticed the gutters were full and overflowing next to the house. He’d have to find a ladder and some work gloves.

The idea of a second house, of a summer home, seemed romantic from the outside, but the logistics of owning two homes–even if his father’s estate paid the taxes on this one–were a colossal headache. And they rarely visited. But he couldn’t bring himself to give it up. It was a place that his sister had been happy.

“Dad?” William said, his voice tinged in concern.

Mulder gave him a reassuring smile and cranked the engine.

***

They were running out of shops and the rain was coming down harder, a gloomy June mist that brought with it a particular chill. Mulder had just bought a whale-shaped wooden cribbage board that William was less than enthusiastic about learning how to use. He dropped his change in a ceramic March of Dimes receptacle when the shopgirl gave him a friendly smile.

“That’ll come in handy,” she said kindly. “There’s a chance it’ll rain all week.”

Out of the corner of his eye Mulder watched William wilt.

The girl noticed. “Or not!” She backtracked as Mulder took his son by the shoulder and led him out of the shop. “Twenty percent chance of sun tomorrow!”

Will flipped up his hood as they stepped onto the sidewalk.

“Couldn’t we just play Uno?” he said glumly.

“You’ll get sick of Uno,” Mulder told him. “And your mother tends to get persnickety about Mattel’s rule that you can’t play a Draw Two on a Draw Two.”

“It’s a dumb rule.”

“I agree.”

They were crossing an alleyway on their way back to the car when William pulled up short and turned to peer into the murk.

Mulder stopped a step and a half later and turned curiously to his son.

“Everything all right?”

The boy didn’t answer.

“Will?”

William glanced briefly at his father and then back down the alley.

“Greyskull,” the boy said, distracted.

Mulder instinctively reached to his hip for his weapon, but his belt loop was empty—he’d left his sidearm in a lockbox at the house. He wrapped the plastic bag tightly around his recent purchase and slid it into his back pocket.

“What is it?” he asked, placing a protective hand on William’s shoulder.

“I don’t know,” the boy said. “There’s something down there.”

“Something dangerous?” If there were, he thought, Scully would kill him.

“I don’t think so,” William said, then took a hesitant step into the alley.

Mulder, not knowing the right course of action, decided to let the boy follow his instincts.

After a few timid steps, Will began walking with more confidence, eventually stopping in front of a large black dumpster. Mulder waited warily at his elbow.

“There’s something in there,” his son finally said, looking up at Mulder for guidance.

After years on the job, Mulder’s first instinct was ‘dead body,’ followed by several other morbid guesses, each one more distasteful than the last. Without his son staring at him with baleful, please-fix-it eyes, he might otherwise have walked away and let someone else handle it.

Mulder sighed and hesitantly lifted the lid, peering reluctantly into the fusty gloaming. A moment later, something in the darkness moved and Mulder jumped back, the dumpster lid slamming closed with a crack.

William’s eyes went round as saucers. “What? What is it?!”

When nothing happened, Mulder, chagrined and more than a little embarrassed, licked his lips and stepped forward again.

“I don’t…” he started. “I don’t know.”

He girded himself, and lifted the lid again. This time he noticed—on top of several slimy black garbage bags and days worth of unidentified refuse—a damp cardboard box slumped against the dumpster’s nearest wall. And inside the box, movement.

Mulder swiped a hand forward trying to hook a finger on the edge of the box to pull it closer, but couldn’t quite get a purchase on it. He sighed, stepping away from the dumpster, his hand still holding up the lid.

His eyes swept their surroundings.

“Hey Will,” he said. “Grab me that plastic milk crate over there,” he pointed. “I need something to stand on.”

Will skipped over eagerly and came back with the crate, happy to have a job.

Mulder set the crate upside down in front of the dumpster and scrambled on top of it.

Movement again from the box, this time accompanied by a low, animal sound.

Christ, if this was some batshit rabid raccoon, Scully would have his hide. Nevertheless, the added height made it far easier to reach into the mephitic brume of the dumpster, and he was able to grab a corner of the box and heft it up and over the side, depositing it onto the wet asphalt at Will’s feet.

As he stepped down off of the crate, the boy was already bent over the box, peering inside. Before Mulder could bark some kind of parental warning, William was looking back up at him, his face showing a mix of surprise and delight.

Mulder leaned over for a look himself.

Inside the disintegrating box sat a curled-up shivering mass of damp off-white fur. Sorrowful eyes looked up at him, pleading and miserable.

A puppy. Some kind of lab mix by the look of it.

William reached into the box and the creature wriggled under his hand, its tail beginning to thump wetly against the cardboard.

“Can we keep him?” Will asked with a kind of dulled hysteria to his voice, and Mulder instantly knew he had just unwittingly come upon one of life’s great reckonings.

“No,” he said levelly, putting his hands on his hips and staring down at the conundrum in front of him.

The puppy, after a couple of gentle pets from William, was already up on its back legs, its sharp little puppy-claws rapidly rendering the side of the box that contained it into pulp in its reckless enthusiasm to connect with its savior. The boy picked up the wriggling mass and instantly got a face full of enthusiastic kisses.

Will turned a dolorous eye toward his father.

“We can’t leave him here, Dad.”

Mulder looked around helplessly, his options quickly winnowing down into his only real choice.

He sighed again, looking down at boy and puppy.

“Shit,” he muttered into the fetid air.

***

“Absolutely not!” said Scully somewhat shrilly when William walked into the door carrying the dog. They were not twenty feet into the house.

William threw a look at his father. They had talked about this in the car, betting what Dana Scully’s reaction would be.

“Your mom is going to kill us,” Mulder had said.

“No,” William rebutted from the backseat, the puppy on his lap. “She’s going to kill you.”

If Scully’s eyes were any indication, the boy had been right.

“Mom!” William pleaded.

“Scully,” Mulder hoped to at least be able to explain the situation before his wife lost her shit completely.

“Mulder, what the hell-”

Mulder turned to Will, who seemed reluctant to put the dog down, lest his mother march over and fling the poor animal into the wilds.

“Why don’t you take him outside, Will. See if he’ll do his business.”

If the dog peed on the floor, or god forbid, took a dump, the level of escalation Scully would take the situation was heretofore untested, as far as Mulder was concerned. And he’d seen her stand up to Congress.

The second William was out the door, Scully whirled on him.

“Mulder-”

He held up a hand. “Scully.”

“Mulder!”

“Dana!” she barked sharply.

At that, she pulled up short and closed her mouth.

“Firstly, he already knows we’re not keeping it,” Mulder said, watching as her shoulders lowered from up around her ears.

Mulder exhaled so he could speak more calmly.

“We found him in a dumpster,” he said, trying to drum up some sympathy for the poor creature. “Someone had thrown him out like trash.”

Scully’s eyes softened. “Why did you bring him here, though? Will’s going to get attached, Mulder. It’s going to be Mr. Bubbles all over again.”

Mulder thought briefly of their week as goldfish owners.

“We would have gone right to the shelter, but it’s Sunday. It’s closed. We’ll take him over in the morning.”

Scully sighed. Lowered herself onto the couch. “What were you guys doing in a dumpster?”

“We weren’t,” Mulder said. “We were only walking by the alley.”

“Did you hear it or something?”

Mulder shook his head, moved to sit next to her. “Greyskull,” he said.

Scully turned to look at him.

“He knew something was wrong. Could sense it somehow,” Mulder went on.

Scully looked a little dazed. Mulder knew what she was thinking. William was a kind, empathetic kid. If he could sense the suffering of animals, people, bad situations, the world was going to be a very hard place for him to navigate. To live in.

“I’m going to make some calls,” Mulder said. “Loop the Gunmen in, too. See if we can find someone to help him learn how to…I don’t know. Shield himself, somehow.”

Scully nodded, leaned back on the couch. “One day at a time,” she said, repeating a necessary family mantra.

Mulder thumped back into the cushions, himself. “Yes.”

“We can’t let him give the dog a name, Mulder,” Scully said after a minute. “Remember when he named those two lobsters we brought home for a Valentine’s Day dinner?”

“Horace and Petey.”

“He cried for an hour and swore off shellfish.”

Mulder remembered. “More Horace and Petey for us,” he said. “They were delicious.”

Just then, the door burst in on a gust of cool air. William trundled in happily, the dog at his heels.

“He pooped and peed!” he reported happily.

“Nice work, pup,” Mulder said, smiling.

“Oh,” said William, reaching down to scratch the puppy behind an ear. “His name is Krypto.”

Mulder could feel Scully’s gaze boring into the side of his head.

***

The rain hadn’t stopped all day, and by evening, it had gotten downright chilly.

Mulder threw another log on the fire, hoping the flue wasn’t blocked by leaves or a bird’s nest. Next to the fireplace, leaning against the couch, Scully sat on the floor, Krypto curled up against her leg, his little block of a head resting on her thigh. She was staring into the flames, absently running her fingers through the soft fur of the puppy’s ear.

Near the door were plastic bags of various dog accoutrements; a small bag of puppy chow, a leash and a collar with the tags still on. Just in case.

William had begged to let the dog sleep with him that night, but Scully had put a stop to the thought immediately, telling William that the dog was likely to need to get up and be let outside in the night and that she would oversee the process. He needed his sleep if he was going to kayak the next day. The boy didn’t like it, but he saw the sense in doing exactly as his mother said in their current situation. He’d gone to bed without a complaint or a plea for ten more minutes.

Mulder poked at the fire until it was burning to his satisfaction, and, confident the chimney was drawing properly, he lowered himself to Scully’s other side, draping an arm around her shoulders.

“What time does the shelter open?” Scully asked, leaning her head back to rest against Mulder’s arm.

“Nine, I think.”

“Hmm.”

Next to her, the puppy woke, stretched his legs out and yawned with a soft doggy sound. His sleepy eyes rove up until they connected with Scully’s, and his tail began to thump softly into the floor.

“Another man unable to resist the exquisite Scully charm,” Mulder commented softly.

Scully huffed a soft laugh and ran her hand over the length of the puppy, earning her a more vigorously wagging tail.

“Krypto,” she said, shaking her head.

The puppy wiggled more firmly into her side.

“Superboy,” sighed Mulder.

Scully reached over with her other hand and squeezed his leg.

“We talked about getting him a dog, don’t you remember?” Mulder asked.

“When he was begging for a sibling,” Scully clarified. “And six years old.”

“Your argument was that he wasn't old enough for the responsibility.”

Scully rolled her head to look at him.

“I’m not advocating anything here, Scully,” he said. “I’m just saying.”

Scully was silent for several minutes, and the dog eventually sat up. One second of eye contact with the woman before him and he climbed into her lap and licked her face twice.

Scully reached forward, held the puppy’s face in two hands, gazing into his sweet brown eyes.

“We’re not going to the shelter in the morning, are we?” Mulder asked softly.

His wife sighed, still holding the dog’s downy white head.

“God damn it,” she said.

#the x-files #fanfic #my fic #msr #prompt #funfetti

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shadowwolfsage · 5 months ago

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How rough was it for Nora to adjust not being on the same team as Ren?

Ren: (sitting in the library, enjoying the peace) I wonder how Jaune is handling Nora's, Nora-ness?

Nora: (rushing up to him) RENNY! Guess what?

Ren: (releases a small sigh before giving Nora his gull attention) what's happened?

Nora: So Jaune-Jaune was doing a project for Mr. Ooobleck.

In the distance: DOCTOR!

Nora: And it turns out I'm part bear faunus! Isn't that amazing?!

Ren: oh that. I already figured.

Nora: wait what? How?

Ren: (counting on his fingers) you have an almost instinctive hunger for honey, and salmon. You have the typical biting habits of faunus descendants. You sleep insanely deeply during the winter to the point its almost worrying. Aaand, its part of your medical records which I, as your pseudo-brother, and the responsible one between us, always handled.

Nora: D'awww. Party pooper

Ren: So how has your team been treating you?

Nora: OMG they're the best! Jaune likes to listen to my stories, Yang is an amazing workout buddy, and Ruby is always down to go on little adventures. Plus we all get to cuddle at night like one big sleepover. Why?

Ren: (resisting the urge to test howmany bullets it'd take to break Jaune's aura after remembering all the bite marks he saw on him earlier) No reason, just worried since this is our first time being apart like this.

Nora: (blissfully unaware) thanks for always looking out for me, Renny

#jaune arc #rwby #yang xiao long #ruby rose #nora's arc #nora valkyrie #team rayn #lie ren #rwby lie ren

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lonelywretchjervistetch · 6 months ago

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The State Birds Initiative: Delaware (#1)

Welcome to the first official poll of the State Birds Initiative! Now, before the poll, one thing real quick. My suggestion is that you read the post below before voting in the poll below. That's especially important if you're lacking any context about the birds being presented as the new (or old) State Bird of the First State, Delaware. This is to be fully informed as to why these are being presented, and to make your choices appropriately. Lastly, some of these birds, you will notice, go against some of the rules listed in the introduction post. All is explained after the jump where the explanations are, I promise you that. But with that...OK! Here's the poll!

More details after the jump!

Welcome to Delaware, the First State!

Admitted into the Union in 1787 as the first state of this country, Delaware is the nation's second smallest, giving it the additional nickname "the Small Wonder"! Its capital is Dover, its most populous city if Wilmington (pictured above), and it's best known for its proximity to the Delaware River and the Delaware Bay, which it's actually named after. This does mean that Delaware Bay, for various reasons, will be one of the most important features of this post, since the wildlife that gathers around it is pretty ubiquitous in the state.

But OK, enough grade-school reporting of basic state statistics. What's Joe Biden's home state actually like, from the view of the citizens? On reddit, a user named hajisaurus said that Delaware is like a small town, but as an entire state. Compact, but eventful and familiar. Another user, raycooke, referred to it as the US condensed into miniature, with business in the north, beaches in the south and east, and farms in the middle. But the general vibe, it seems, is "familiar". Not overly friendly, but definitely close enough to be familiar. Also...the Bobbie.

God, that's a good looking sandwich. Invented in Delaware? Hell yeah. Anyway, off of turkey and onto birds. Personally, what all this says to me is that the chosen State Bird should be an easy-to-find sight, found throughout most of the state, and familiar to Delawareans in general. Something common but uniquely Delawarean would be great. In terms of habitat, water-bound seems appropriate, especially looking at beaches and estuaries. Again, the entire eastern border of the state touches the Delaware River or Bay, meaning water is somewhat important to the state (as is seafood).

Now, those Delawareans amongst us may have different opinions of what makes Delaware Delaware, and what represents its people most accurately. Which...yeah, I'm not from there, and I've only been there twice, and that's because I drove through it. Maybe went to one rest stop near Dover. And for the record, SOLID-ass rest stops in Delaware along the highway, just saying. Great job there, Delaware. But, yeah, PLEASE tell me if there's something else to take into account. And that goes for ALL of the states in this series, by the way. I can't claim to be an expert in any way here, so please call me on my bullshit if you feel that you have to. But, with that said, let's talk about what I do know: birds.

Red Knot (Calidris canutus)

For many of you, especially the bird-inclined amongst us, this was always going to be the obvious answer to this question. The Red Knot is an iconic Delaware bird for birdwatchers, as they're attracted to the state in MASSIVE numbers during migratory seasons. It's one of the most important and famous migrations in the country, and the flocks of Red Knots and other shorebirds are the main attraction. Why? Easy answer: the Atlantic Horseshoe Crab (Limulus polyphemus).

Delaware Bay is the site of the horseshoe crab's largest migration in the USA. This isn't the only place in the country they're found, but it's DEFINITELY the largest population of the species by a SIGHT. And speaking of iconic species, the horseshoe crab certainly fits the bill as a charismatic species of conservation concern. Which is why it may be curious that I'm highlighting the Red Knot, since they, y'know...EAT horseshoe crab eggs, alongside other birds in the great Atlantic seaboard migration. But that's actually why horseshoe crabs are so important.

Red Knots, amongst other shorebirds, depend on the horsehoe crabs for food, as these stopovers in Delaware Bay allow them to continue with their journey. Without the horseshoe crabs of Delaware, their life wouldn't be possible, and certainly not in the massive numbers found during migration. Understand, this is a threatened species, especially in the United States, that gathers in Delaware Bay in the thousands, with 2022 numbers being about 39,800 in a population. That's HUGE. The Red Knot is a symbol of this ecological boom, and both species should be celebrated. That's the reason the Red Knot is often given as the answer to this question of State Bird of Delaware, including by the Lab of Ornithology's article posted last year. Plus, it's got an iconic appearance, it's easy to find, and it tells a great story (which also includes a migratory distance of ~9,000 miles, which is crazy). Perfect, right?

...It doesn't breed in Delaware. It actually doesn't even breed in the United States. No, the Red Knot breeds in Nunavut and Greenland, above the limits of the Arctic Circle. I meant it when I said the Red Knot used Delaware as a stopover site. As such, it's an event when they arrive in Delaware twice a year...but they do leave. Pretty quickly, even. So, sure, the Red Knot is a great candidate for a number of reasons, but...is it OK if it doesn't actually breed in the state? I'd argue for it, since Delaware is is highest abundance of the species during migration in the country, and it's iconic in that way in particular. But I'll leave that as a question for you all to decide.

Let's go on to the next one, shall we?

Ring-billed Gull (Larus delawarensis)

OK, this one might be cheating a bit, since the bird in question is found basically...well, everywhere. It's definitely not native to Delaware alone, and doesn't even breed there. So why even include this bird in the running? Easy answer: it's in the name. It's the only bird species in the world with the state of Delaware in its scientific name. However, this is also cheating, since the name actually refers to the Delaware River, not the state itself. That's because the bird was first described and discovered along the river, which flows from New York, through New Jersey and Pennsylvania, until ending in Delaware and the Delaware Bay. And yeah...technically that was in New Jersey. BUT STILL! Only bird with Delaware in the name, just sayin'. And after all, if the Red Knot can be considered despite not breeding in the state, then...what about the Ring-billed Gull? Or...maybe I'll save this one for New Jersey.

American Kestrel (Falco sparverius)

OK, this one I'm actually a bit enthusiastic about, partially because I love raptors, and I especially love this raptor. The American Kestrel is a small falcon, and is in fact the smallest falcon (and raptor) in North America. About the size of a mourning dove, they're pint-sized predators, specializing on insects, rodents, lizards, and the occasional sparrow or songbird. They're also versatile, living all over the USA in various habitats. And that, of course, includes Delaware. This is a breeding species in the state, so it already has that above the other two previously discussed! And to top it all off...it's literally a small wonder. Come on, man! This is perfect! A scrappy falcon that's literally red, white, and grayish-blue!

But, OK, if it's common all over, why specifically Delaware? Because it's actually threatened in Delaware, fun fact. This is prominent enough to have inspired the Brandywine Zoo to work with the American Kestrel Partnership (part of The Peregrine Fund, who we'll discuss again on another day or five), and start the Delaware Kestrel Partnership, which monitors kestrel populations in the state. The species' population has decreased by 88% in Delaware and surrounding states in the last 50 years, which is...dramatic. It's a species that desperately needs saving and attention, and work in Delaware can be applied in the kestrel's entire range. Look, I beg you to check this out, because it's a fascinating set of projects. And honestly, this alone would have me include the American Kestrel on this list. Plus...that would also make this the first raptor to become a state bird.

Yeah. Take a look. NO raptors amongst the State Birds. Insane.

Great Blue Heron (Ardea herodias)

Now, this one seems out of nowhere, but hear me out. For whatever reason, the Great Blue Heron (Ardea herodias) seems to be completely ignored as a state bird across the entire country, despite it being one of the MOST iconic birds in the United States. I mean, come on, almost all of us have seen a GBH at some point in our lives, especially if we live near water. But why suggest it for Delaware specifically, then? Well, the herons breed in Delaware, so that's checked off. They're found in the state year-round, making them easy to access and identify with. They're definitely iconic in appearance. They highlight the marshlands and wetlands of Delaware as an important ecosystem of concern. And...uh...

Look, I'll be straight with you. "Blue Heron" is the closest I could get to...another set of words associated with Delaware and birds. Because honestly, it's genuinely somewhat difficult to separate Delaware from those two words, and this would be a fairly minor change that would allow the use of that term with little fuss! And honestly, the Great Blue Heron isn't the worst choice in the world for Delaware, even if it admittedly barely breeds in the state compared to others. And...like...oh, goddammit, fine, let's get this over with.

Delaware Blue Hen (Gallus domesticus)

Delaware. Look at me. Why...in the blue HELL...did you choose a goddamn chicken as your state bird? I mean, for God's sake, it's not a wild bird, and even if it is a breed developed in the state, IT IS A CHICKEN! What possible reason could there be to choose this bird over all the other possible birds? And look, I like chickens as much as the next guy. Used to raise and keep them as a kid, so I do love them, but this just feels wrong. But OK, let's make the argument for them by looking at Delaware's original argument.

So, from basic cursory research, the Delaware Blue Hen dates back to the Revolutionary War. Apparently, one of the regiments of the American army raised fighting game chickens that were so well-known, the regiment itself became known as the "Blue Hens". It's also possible that the leader of this regiment, Jonathan Caldwell, had a special blue hen that had blue offspring, and the men in the regiment also took to calling themselves "Sons of the Blue Hen." Which means...shit. That means the Blue Hen actually has cultural relevancy specific to the state of Delaware. Damn, that's actually a good argument for their assignment. But with that said...there actually is a problem here.

The Delaware Blue Hen doesn't technically exist.

Yeah, this isn't actually a recognized breed of chicken, despite the INSANE amount of devotion Delawareans have for it. I mean, military regiments, sports teams, even the unofficial nickname for the state is named after the Blue Hen, and it's technically not a real chicken breed. Instead, they're actually American Game hens that are crossed with Andalusian Blue hens to get that iconic coloration, but they're not actually an isolated breed.

So...what does this mean? Because this is genuinely a problem, right? Delaware's state bird doesn't actually exist, AND it's a chicken. Well...I have a proposition for you, Delaware. Because I do recognize the fact that the Blue Hen seems to mean a lot to you, both now and historically. So, if that's the case, we need to recontextualize this guy in a couple of ways. So, here's my proposition...

Make the Delaware Blue Hen the State Game Bird.

Haven't brought this up yet, but some states have what's called a "state game bird" alongside the actual state bird. Game birds, by the classical and nonscientific definition, are members of the Galliformes and Anseriformes that are associated with hunting and food. And technically...the chicken counts. Yeah, Delaware easily could ratify the Delaware Blue Hen into service as the State Game Bird, which makes even more sense when you consider its role AS A SPORTS MASCOT! See what I mean? But that's not the end of it.

You'll also have to find some way to get the hen recognized as an independent breed. I have NO idea what the process is for that (I guess this is the pathway to do it?), but it's probably gonna take a bunch of breeders and number of years to turn this into a defined breed. Hell, as it stands, not every chicken hatched to a Blue Hen is even blue. So, hey, get on it, Delawarean chicken breeders! Make you state proud!

And that's the information on the candidates for the Delaware State Bird! Will the Delaware maintain its place? Will the Red Knot take it, despite the controversy surrounding the choice? Will my bullshit proposal for the Great Blue Heron actually resonate with some people? Up to Tumblr!

As for the next state, it's time to hop next door to Pennsylvania, and to a State Bird that also technically doesn't exist...for a somewhat different reason. And yes, for the record, I know the below GIF is technically the wrong species, BUT MY CHOICES IN GIFS ARE FEW

See you soon, and happy birding!

Introduction to the State Birds Initiative

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