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o-craven-canto · 2 months ago

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Filters in the way of technologically advanced life in the universe and how likely I think they are

1. Abiogenesis (4.4-3-8 billion years ago): Total mystery. The fact that it happened so quickly on Earth (possibly as soon as there was abundant liquid water) is a tiny bit of evidence for it being easy. Amino acids and polycyclic hydrocarbons are very common in space, but nucleotides aren't, and all hypothetic models I've seen require very specific conditions and a precise sequence of steps. (It would be funny if the dozen different mechanisms proposed for abiogenesis were all happening independently somewhere.)

2. Oxygenic photosynthesis (3.5 billion years ago) (to fuel abundant biomass, and provide oxygen or some other oxidizer for fast metabolism): Not so sure. Photosynthesis is just good business sense -- sunlight is right there -- and appeared several times among bacteria. But the specific type of ultra-energetic photosynthesis that cracks water and releases oxygen appeared only once, in Cyanobacteria. That required merging two different photosynthetic apparati in a rather complex way; and all later adoptions of oxygenic photosynthesis involved incorporating Cyanobacteria by endosymbiosis. For all that it's so useful, I don't know if I'd expect to see it on every living planet.

3. Eukaryotic cell (2.4 billion years ago?): Probably the narrowest bottleneck on the list. Segregated mitochondria with their own genes and a nucleus protecting the main genome are extremely useful both for energy production (decentralized control to maximize production without overloading) and for genetic storage (less DNA damage due to reactive metabolic waste). But there's a chicken-and-egg problem in which incorporating mitochondria to make energy requires an adjustable cytoskeleton, but that consumes so much energy it would require mitochondria already in place. Current models have found solutions that involve a very specific series of events. Or maybe not? Metabolic symbiosis, per se, is common, and there may have been other ways to gene-energy segregation. Besides, after the origin of eukaryotes, endosymbiosis occurred at least nine more times, and even some bacteria can incorporate smaller cells.

4. Sexual reproduction (by 1.2 billion years ago): Without meiotic sex (combining mutations from different lineages, decoupling useful traits from harmful ones, translating a gene in multiple way), the evolution of complex beings is going to be painfully slow. Bacteria already swap genes to an extent, and sexual recombination is bundled in with the origin of eukaryotes so I probably shouldn't count it separately (meiosis is just as energy-intensive as any other use of the cytoskeleton). Once you have recombination, life cycles with spores or gametes and sex differentiation probably follow almost inevitably.

5. Multicellularity (800 million years ago?): Quite common, actually. Happens all the time among eukaryotes, and once in a very limited form even among bacteria. Now we'd want complex organized bodies with geometry-defining genes, but even that happened thrice: in plants, fungi, and animals. As far as I know, various groups of yeasts are the only regressions to unicellularity.

6. Brains and sense organs (600 million years ago): Nerve cells arose either once or twice, depending on whether Ctenophora (comb-jellies) and Eumetazoa (all other animals except sponges) form a single clade or not. Some form of cellular sensing and communication is universal in life, though, so a tissue specialized for signal transmission is probably near inevitable once you have multicellular organisms whose lifestyle depends on moving and interacting with the environment. Sense organs that work at a distance are also needed, but image-forming eyes evolved in six phyla, so no danger there (and there's so many other potential forms of communication!). Just to be safe, you'll also want muscles and maybe mineralized skeletons on the list, but I don't think either is particularly problematic. An articulated skeleton is probably better than a rigid shell, but we still have multiple examples of that (polyplacophorans, brittle stars, arthropods, vertebrates).

7. Life on land (400 million years ago): (Adding this because air has a lot more oxygen to fuel brains than water (the most intelligent aquatic beings are air-breathers), and technology in water has the issue of fire.) You're going to need a waterproof integument, some kind of rigid support system, and kidneys to regulate water balance. Plenty of animal lineages moved on land: vertebrates, insects, millipedes, spiders, scorpions, multiple types of crabs, snails, earthworms, etc. Note that most of those are arthropods: this step seems to favor exoskeletons, which help a great deal in retaining water. Of course this depends on plants getting on land first, which on Earth happened only once, and required the invention of spores and cuticles. (Actually there are polar environments where all photosynthesis occurs in water, but they are recently settled and hardly the most productive.)

8. Human-like intelligence (a few million years ago?): There seems to a be a general trend in which the max intelligence attainable by animals on Earth has increased over time. There's quite a lot of animals today that approach or rival apes in intelligence: elephants, toothed cetaceans, various carnivorans, corvids, parrots, octopodes, and there's even intriguing data about jumping spiders. Birds seem to have developed neocortex-like brain structures independently. Of course humans got much farther, but the fact that even other human species are gone suggests that a planet is not big enough for more than one sophont, so the uniqueness of humans might not necessarily imply low probability. (We seem to exist about halfway through the habitability span of Earth land, FWIW.) The evolution of sociality should probably be lumped here: we'll want a species that can teach skills to its offspring and cooperate on tasks. But sociality is also a common and useful adaptation: many species on our list (octopodes are a glaring exception) are intensely social and care for their offspring. I mentioned above that the land-step favors exoskeletal beings, which in turns favors small size; but the size ranges of large land arthropods and very intelligent birds overlap, so that's not disqualifying.

9. Agriculture and urban civilization (11,000 years ago): Agriculture arrived quite late in the history of our species, but when it arrived -- i.e. at the end of the Wurm glaciation -- it arrived independently in four to eight different places around the world, in different biogeographic realms and climates, so I must assume that at least some climate regimes are great for it (glacial cycles are a minority of Earth's history; but did agriculture need to come after glaciations? Maybe a shock of seasonality did the trick). And once you have agriculture, complex urbanized societies follow most of the time, just a few millennia later. Even writing arose at least three times (Near East, China, and Mexico), and then spread quickly.

10. Scientific method and industrialization (300 years ago): We're getting too far from my expertise here, but whatever. The Eurasian Axial Age suggests that all civilizations with a certain degree of wealth, literacy, and interconnection will spawn a variety of philosophies. Philosophical schools that focus on material causes and effects like the Ionians or Charvaka have appeared sometimes, but often didn't win over more supernaturalist schools. Perhaps in pre-industrial times pure materialism isn't as useful! You may need to thread a needle between interconnected enough to exchange and combine ideas, and also decentralized enough that the intellectual elite can't quash heterodoxy. As for industrialization, that too happened only once, though that's another case in which the first achiever would snuff out any other. I hear Song China is a popular contender for alternative Industrial Revolutions (with coal-powered steelworks!); Imperial Rome and the Abbasid Caliphate are less convincing ones. For whatever reason, it didn't take until 18th century Britain.

11. Not dying randomly along the way: Mass extinctions killing off a majority of species happened over and over -- the Permian Great Dying, the Chicxulub impact, the early Oxygen Crisis -- but life has always rebounded fairly quickly and effectively. It's hard enough to sterilize an agar plate, let alone a planet. Disasters on this scale are also unlikely to happen in the lifespan of planet-bound civilizations, unless of course the civilizations are causing them. A civilization might still face catastrophic climate change, mega-pandemics, and nuclear war, not to mention lesser setbacks like culture-wide stagnation or collapse, and I couldn't begin to estimate how common, or ruinous, they would actually be.

****

I have no idea how common the origin of life is, but the vast majority of planets with life will only have bacterial mats and stromatolites. Of the tiny sliver that evolved complex cells, a good chunk will have their equivalents of plants and animals, most of which may have intelligent life at least on primate- or cetacean-level at some later point. At any given time, a tiny fraction of those will have agricultural civilizations, at an even tinier fraction of that will have post-industrial science and technology. Let's say maybe 1 planet with industrial technology out of 100 with agriculture, 100,000 with hominid-level intelligence, 10 million with animal-like organisms, 100 millions with complex cells, and 10 billions with life at all?

#speculative biology #xenobiology #evolution #history #longpost

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radkindoffeminist · 4 months ago

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The arguments used to dismiss single sex spaces are fucking idiotic at best and misogynistic at worst. I just saw a video where someone was arguing that because women are made uncomfortable by men (obviously emphasising cis men) that all spaces should be sex segregated and then said that it made no sense for you to share your own house with a man! And don’t even get me started on the people who say that the toilet in your own home is gender neutral so get over it.

Are you that fucking stupid? Do you really have to act like you’re that ignorant to use those arguments to dismiss women’s discomfort in sharing private spaces with males?

Bathrooms and changing rooms are private spaces which have a lot less monitoring than more public spaces. Let’s also not forget that man men put hidden cameras in these spaces to record women in private moments. Women are more at risk in these spaces because of that. 90% of sexual assaults in changing rooms take place in gender neutral changing rooms so even if we just ignore women’s comfort for one second (because who cares about that, right?), we have evidence to show that women’s safety is more at risk.

But that somehow doesn’t matter? Or we shouldn’t care about it? Just make all spaces gender neutral and tell women to simply get over themselves because that’s the progressive thing to do!

This is one of the many reasons that I hate the fake progressives. They see something they believe is outdated and/or supported by conservatives and stand against it, assuming that it must be outdated and wrong. There’s no understanding of why it’s there, no consideration of if it’s still needed, no critical thinking skills involved in this decision, and then when you call them out on the fact that they’re being misogynistic because they’re dismissing women’s experiences they either turn it back on you or call you transphobic.

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serpentface · 9 days ago

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Janeys about to win his first ever duel to the death, mostly by virtue of being a less shitty swordsman than his opponent.

DUELING IN IMPERIAL WARDIN

Dueling is partially legal in Imperial Wardin, with official duels overseen and regulated by authority figures, and unoffical duels regulated largely by social contract. This form of combat allows disputes, accusations, acts of vengeance, and slights of honor to be settled outside of court or pure interpersonal violence. Ritualized aspects of the practice act as a sort of self-regulation, allowing scores to be settled while dissuading the developments of outright feuds.

No one is materially compelled to accept a challenge to a duel, but refusing can be a tricky maneuver. In many cases, this will be taken as cowardice and a stain on the challenged party's honor and masculinity, and may add significant fuel to the challenger's accusations. The circumstances where it is socially 'safe' to refuse are when the challenger is VASTLY physically outmatched, or is of markedly lower status or otherwise seen as a social inferior (being lower class, a eunuch/woman/akoshos, an infamously dishonored party, a sex worker, etc), though even this can be risky depending on the circumstances.

Women and akoshos cannot be challenged in duels, nor can they Legally be challengers (with a very specific exception for Odonii priestesses, who have men's legal rights), though they can indirectly do so via a male relation acting as their proxy in combat. The alternative is not Entirely unheard of, but very rare, and rarer still that a male opponent will accept. The concept is, however, a motif in heroic folktales wherein a young woman disguises herself as a man and enters into a duel to avenge the murder of her brother or another family member. In most variants, this is cast as a heroic as an act of extreme familial piety, with her masculinization being an entirely temporary means of doing so (which is immediately abandoned post-duel).

Once the challenge is accepted, both parties will negotiate terms through a proxy (by convention, this is a blood relative or other legal kin). This decides the time and location of the match, as well as its stakes. The majority of duels are Not to the death, rather to a lesser end- first blood, incapacitation, submission, etc. In fully legal duels, this agreement is submitted to a local authority and its terms become legally enforceable. Even in 'off the books' duels, the terms will generally be enforced by overwhelming social contract. There is effectively no backing out once the formal agreements have been made. One party not showing up at the agreed time and place effectively concedes a victorious social high ground to their opponent, but without the matter being 'settled' (encouraging further escalation).

Legally, duels must either be fought on private property or outside of city limits (as wearing a weapon in any of the capital cities is illegal for most civilians). You can find semi-legal underground dueling sites in most of the cities, though this tends to be associated with the petty, dirty squabblings of commoners and most nobility will opt to fight in the countryside.

Duels are typically overseen by a neutral third party, with legal duels being specifically officiated by a socially protected individual (usually a priest) who directs the ritual elements of the proceedings and observes and records its outcome. The arena is measured out in a circle approximately twelve paces wide, and marked with stakes and a binding of sanctified amenchil rope wound left to right. This form of binding is broadly used in cultural practice to delineate and spiritually protect sacred spaces (wound right to left in these contexts). Its reversed use in duels provides a regulatory psychological function- the arena becomes a segregated liminal space, and the rest of the world is symbolically bound with a protective barrier, keeping the violence of the dispute confined to this space and time.

Additionally, both combatants (and their familial proxies) swear a binding oath (before a holy relic in priest-officiated duels) - swearing to obey pre-negotiated terms and rules, and declaring that the victor shall be recognized as the righteous party and that the outcome of the duel wholly resolves the dispute. Being bound to such an oath might not settle things on an emotional level, but HEAVILY disincentivizes a duel starting or worsening family feuds- even in fatal duels, the defeated party's family has no justification to demand a blood price or avenge their slain kin, or otherwise commit direct reprisals over the dispute (and would be breaking a solemn oath before God, which will have consequences).

Both parties prepare themselves to fight. Exact traditions vary across the region, but duels are near-ubiquitously fought unarmored with a single blade (sometimes, but not always, replaced by staffs or blunted swords for non-fatal fights). In the south of the region (as depicted here), it's traditional to fight topless with one's cloak clasped around their hips and hair bound into a topknot (the gull feather here is not a dueling norm, but it's lucky).

Both combatants enter the ring and stand at opposing sides, and the dual begins at the overseer's signal. The challenging party is not permitted to make the first attack, and instead must dodge or block their opponent's first swing before they can begin to retaliate. The duel will then proceed to its pre-negotiated ending.

There are additional compacts that direct the fighting. Fleeing from the arena is an automatic loss (and an EXTREME stain on one's honor and masculinity). If the combat spills out past the boundaries, it must be halted and the arena entirely moved and re-bound before restarting. Surrender is possible even in fatal fights, and it is generally taboo to kill an opponent who has verbally declared defeat (as they have lost the duel in doing so, and the matter is thus settled- proceeding further is murder). These rules will be enforced by the authority in legally overseen fights, and are largely (though not universally) enforced by social convention in illegal duels.

Upon resolution, the winner extracts a verbal affirmation of their victory from the loser (if they survived), or from the loser's familial proxy (if they didn't). In some traditions, they are specifically permitted to cut the loser's hair (which is a humiliating and somewhat emasculating act, only adolescent boys (and mourners) wear their hair short in most of the Wardi cultural sphere). A winner who feels the loser fought/died valiantly or is otherwise highly respectable may abstain, as a means of protecting their opponent's dignity. The resolution of the fight ostensibly concludes the dispute, with the winning party justified as righteous in their cause, and gaining social capital and Masc Points in their victory.

#Janeys is actually Not inept at combat. He's notably skilled with the spear and shield. Like nothing crazy but he's highly proficient #His swordsmanship however is nothing to write home about. Not like The Worst but his form is shit and he's lucky to be alive.#(He got into this over accusations of his children's illegitimacy from a close confidant of his recently dead father)

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wmarximoff · 2 years ago

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𝐤𝐧𝐮𝐜𝐤𝐥𝐞 𝐯𝐞𝐥𝐯𝐞𝐭 | 𝐰. 𝐦𝐚𝐱𝐢𝐦𝐨𝐟𝐟

summary: to get what she wants Wanda will do anything - including hurting you.

warnings (18+): smut, strap-on sex (r receiving), non-con, a bit of dacryphilia, breeding kink, loss of virginity, forced pregnancy, toxic relationship, manipulation, heavy angst. MINORS DNI.

pairing: Wanda x fem!reader

word count: 3k

masterlist|

(please, don't flag the work)

༺ᱬ༻

At dawn, gray and foggy, the bitter winter temperature would arduously exceed the limitations of common sense degrees demarcated by popular thermometers.

The vehement peak of the serene dawn, as placid and peaceful as it ever was to be, had been swallowed up by a broad blanket of white, chaste snow; blizzard which had interspersed, crossing from north to south along the entire longitudinal extent of the ten thousand hectares located near the tiny town of Westview, New Jersey. You weren't born in there and, in fact, you barely knew that place at all.

The whiteness of sprays of snow in flakes of polished ice continued to crumble through the openings of the dense clouds, and a pale veil of frost took more and more possession of the tiles above the roofs and the tops of the enormities of the hills around the town, inferring a white and crystalline color.

You retained your own private assumptions about the phenomenon, however, and attributed it to increasingly distressing global warming (come on now Tony Stark, you could very well reverse global warming if you really wanted to!). But maybe you still held such a mundane concern at your core just to keep a sober dose of normality within you, and not give in to the long chants of long lonely days, as maddening as they could be.

The days that had passed gradually slipped one over the other, consubstantiating, consolidating into a single amalgam, and you no longer knew what to do to ward off the acute boredom that was consuming your nerves little by little like an autoimmune disease – there was no book to read or movie to watch that would wriggle your soul out of the lonely corners of a world you'd been segregated into, walls slowly closing in around you one by one. You were alone. Utterly alone.

Through the dim glass of the wide window of your solitary room, you gazed, with your gaze watered by the apathy that is intrinsically sprinkled in your irises and sluggish limbs and heavy in your joints like lead, the occluded sky of dawn – the few gloomy trees raised in the neighborhood surroundings like fortresses of dark, thick foliage, swaying on their own axes as the constant wind dictated outside their painted plaster walls.

With a sliver of fresh skin on your right temple pressed against the cloudy glass, so cold to the touch, your dead eyes followed the willow tree of snow outside as if it were natural, as if it was common to snow at that time of year and as if she wasn't using the situation to her whim, wherever she was at that moment, as much as she was everywhere at the same time.

Right, screw global warming. You were living like a little snowman cloistered inside your own particular snow globe – free from your point of view, but trapped inside the dome.

The truth was that Westview was a huge board full of pieces all situated in their proper squares, the vast majority composed of pawns as maneuverable and disposable as they could be, endlessly, always ready to be used and discarded and then replaced – and you were the queen of them, the most important piece to be cherished, but like everyone else, at your core, you would be just another component part of the grand scheme that Wanda Maximoff ruled with an iron fist. One wrong step and you were out, checkmate.

In a time that then sounded remote, an echo of a dream derived from a memory already forgotten, perhaps seven or eight months ago (you only calculated the passage of time by the gradual expansion of your belly, which then encompassed a larger roundness than a basketball), you were free. You were young and you were free and the world was a little less terrible than it could be.

But Wanda had kidnapped so much of you, in fact, disfigured you into a bizarre parody, a grim reflection of who you once were – but of your own free will you gladdened to the end in an elan worthy of praise, in the greatest pose of a soldier who is willing to kill and die for the glory of your people, despite the notion that you were fighting a vain, lost battle.

At the end of the day you were still her possession to be used and abused however Wanda saw fit. She saw everything, and everything she controlled.

You were nothing but a poor college student, still so full of spirit, and your captor was an esoteric entity versed in superhuman capabilities, the wielder of celestial powers who, according to herself, was also a multidimensional traveler – whatever meaning it held, or at least what she meant by such an eccentric statement as that.

All you knew was the things she could do and undo with a simple, banal hand movement, and how it affected you.

The fact was that you were alone, isolated, confined to an unknown town where escape was infeasible and outside contact was nothing short of scarce, subject to the pleasures, daydreams, paranoia and whims of a woman deeply troubled by her own inner demons, that you supposedly hated, but couldn't get away from even if you wanted to. Not when she was growing on you like a parasite, literally and figuratively speaking.

It was clear as the snow outside – conceiving Wanda's offspring in your womb (albeit at odds with your own individual desires at first, but attempts to shed such a burden proved, at first, flatly flawed and highly unnerving to Wanda's exhausted mind, who wasn't used to being a very reasonable person), whom she held so dear, there would be no way to nurture a flame of hatred for that woman that would not be extinguished quickly; no matter how little you knew about her for as long as your pregnancy lasted, Wanda's humanity, so disparate from the morbid cruelty at the bottom of those abyssal green irises, resided in the bosom of motherhood for which she cherished so much.

In the intimate caresses exchanged between her gentle blackened fingertips and your swollen belly, there was a kind of love so subtle and genuine that it almost erased from your memory the fact that you didn't want to be there in the first place. Her contact with that embryo was covered by a lapse of vulnerability, and that's why that witch once proved to have been as human as you were.

At a certain point, goodness was already given for those intentions, when there was not a shadow in her very existence. Deep down you just knew she was good. But it was no use if kindness was eclipsed by a haze of cruelty.

The faint gleam of her smile was enchanting, and the jadish irises were drowned in waves of tears that pooled behind long, thick dark lashes, right at the waterline of the one who so affectionately gazed at your belly by her rotten right fingers. At some point, you knew, you just knew that Wanda had given as much love to the world as she had to the unwanted child in your womb. You wondered what it was that had stolen Wanda's innocence so voraciously that, in the end, she ended up stealing yours too.

“Twins,” in one night she came, and Wanda had smiled at the utterance of her own words, never breaking her gaze from the skin stretched just below your navel, “My boys.”

Her touch felt cold, plastered like a corpse's hand. Everything about Wanda was somewhat cadaverous, reminiscent of the dead – although a veil of purity always overshadowed her dying features (for that witch was indeed beautiful), the dark, sharp circles under her eyes and the deep fleshed cheeks made her a spectral creature, unreal, with the waxy pale skin that so accentuated those emerald eyes that squandered a nuance of intense feeling.

You were never quite sure how to pinpoint what was going on inside her mind, although she always expressed that there was something there to look for.

“How,” you muttered with your eyes focused on anything but her, your shirt pulled up to expose your swollen stomach, not a smile found on your lips' commission to reflect that woman's.

The situation in which everything of the last few months had culminated in your stomach was in knots – the idea that it was done, and now you had nowhere to run from her.

“How can you be so sure, Wanda? Twin boys... that's a pretty... specific guess, I think. It could just be a boy, it could be a girl,” in the room lit by the orange flames of a fireplace that turned Wanda's hair as red as blood, you blinked, “It could be anything.”

“I just know,” lisped the woman who owned the long auburn locks that fell below her breasts, sketching a ghost of a vaguely nostalgic smile on her well-shaped lips, like someone wistfully remembering something that is gone and will never come back.

“I… just know it's them. My… our boys.”

There was a brief pause interspersed by the crackling fire in the dry wood, a breath held within bristling lungs.

“Thank you, Y/n.”

Your eyes finally turned to Wanda, who was crouched in front of you. She looked at you in gleaming green like she did the first time she made you bleed, when she emptied herself inside you, condemning you to that sick moment of intimacy with her.

“I know you don't understand this right now, not this version of you at least, but,” her jaw moved slightly, speaking at length in her speech, as if she were speaking like a child, seeking to express clarity. As if she had to plan her words carefully.

“I love you, детка . Everything I've done so far is because I love you, Y/n. You and our boys, our family. Everything I did was for you. I hope one day you can understand that and forgive me for what I did.”

Your eyes stung and sickly bile rose to the surface of your tongue at that controversial statement of hers. She knew it was wrong, she was fully aware of it. You could never imagine that whatever resulted from that one-sided relationship between the two of you could fall under the nominations commonly associated with the definition of “a family” .

You already had a family to call your own and belong to, a father and mother and siblings too, and from them you were usurped by her. That couldn't be a family, not that relationship structure, not you and her. Not when you weren't even twenty and barely even aware of what, say, Wanda's last name would be.

That night you cried yourself to sleep. And, like every night before that, Wanda listened until you fell into the softness of your own sleep clouded by layers of thick, salty tears.

But the warm, abstruse sweetness behind Wanda's hideous facade made her as seductive as the apple would have been to Eve, and the fragility that rarely saw the light of day made her seem so small compared to the times you feared for your life as she chained her hands behind your back and sternly brought her hips to meet yours over and over again.

You've also heard her cry before going to sleep. It just so happens that she was the one making you suffer, while you just had to put up with her external suffering.

Wanda was a complex puzzle to understand, so fluctuating, fascinating and unpleasant at the same time, like a new flavor to try, bad at first, but then becoming dangerously charming to the palate. And you didn't know whether you wanted to put those pieces together into one uniform image, or throw them in the trash and close the lid.

In fact, if traced back to the beginnings of your gloomy model of relationship (at least in the most primitive sense of the word, summarized only to the exchange of physical touches between two controversial animals, to, moreover, the imposition of physical contact from one part to the other), it was as if Wanda saw what she solemnly did to you as an artifice, a mechanism, a forced method to an end you never chose to have. It was as if she was just performing a necessary sacrifice that justified the means she chose to use.

She apologized again and again because that inside of you stung and hurt when she ripped something inside you, and she worked hard to make you like it too, even though you barely knew her at the time, and in fact just waking up from the stillness of your sleep to the uncomfortable feeling of a foreign body on top of you, with your legs spread wide and streams of fresh crimson blood dishonoring the sheets down your thighs, ripping you in half like no one before her had ever done.

“Shh, it's okay Y/n, it's okay. It's okay, you’re okay детка.”

She lisped that night with the palm of her right hand screwed to your lips, stuffing your protests behind your teeth (scorched-tipped fingers sweeping strands of your hair behind the shell of your ear, Wanda in a red tiara looking like would cry as much as you already did). The first time you saw her, that strange woman invading your room and also you, she seemed as uncomfortable with what she was doing as you felt with her tucked inside your innocence.

“I know it hurts, baby, I know, I…” Green eyes then pulled away from your face contorted in sharp pain, as if, for half a second, she couldn't even look at you in that state. As if, in your room, she would burst into tears with you.

“I'm very sorry. I'm really, really sorry детка , but I have to do this. It’ll pass, alright? Will pass. It’ll fit, we'll make it fit, okay? Just take a deep breath. This will be quick, I promise. I,” Wanda choked on her own words, “I'm so sorry, Y/n.”

And it went on for quite a few sluggish minutes – the headboard hitting the wall rhythmically, hard and slow behind your head, your white cotton underwear crumpled and discarded at the foot of your bed, your eyes focused on how much the sharp points of that scarlet tiara that seemed to protrude from the top of her skull resembled two demonic horns as they rose and fell in the dark of your room, above you.

When your conscience woke up, the very next morning and in a room you were not at all familiar with, the wet pain between your legs was the final sentence given that you were already her property. And you tried to run away, wander the streets of Westview, cry out for help from your new assigned neighbors, but they were smiling like machines, nothing was wrong. Nothing was ever wrong.

And the visits continued, scheduled for sunset; the fall of the veil of night was the apogee of your fate – in that house with dismal walls, dark shadows lightened by the tongues of fire that burned in the hearth, Wanda came in the form of that crimson specter to do what she had to do. And time had washed the regrets from her soul, when did the pleasures of the flesh begin to burn hotter on her skin.

“Dерьмо,” Wanda anathematized one night in a sigh under her breath, moaning in a thick accent in the roof of her mouth as she stood behind you, blackened fingers digging deep into the skin of your hips as hers pierced into yours.

“Dе��ка, you feel so good, s-so good, Y/n...” she gasped, your white-knuckled fingers screwed to the sheets moving beneath you both, “Fuck, I missed you so bad...”

“I-it hurts,” you squealed beneath her, your right cheek rubbing against your pillowcase, your teeth clenched, your jaw set, “W-Wanda, Wanda wait– go slow, you're– you're hurting me, Wanda, please slow down–”

“I'm going to come,” she suddenly announced, indifferent to your protests, “Fuck, I'm going to come inside you, Y/n.”

The cognition of such a sentence haunted the nerves of your spine. At that point, you already had basic knowledge accumulated about her – she was called Wanda Maximoff, she was from another universe and, as a factor of greater relevance to emphasize, she was capable of performing and handling magic, something that for you, until that moment at the time, was nothing more than a fictitious topic. And, if she was qualified to run an entire city on her own, she might well be able to turn something as frivolous as coming inside you with a fake phallus into a permanent action and one fraught with the most undesirable consequences.

“No-!” you immediately chafed then, trying to crawl your body away from hers on the bed sheets, “Wanda, don't– don't do that– Wanda–!”

But with a pull and a jerk she held you steady, your hips up, ribbons of scarlet energy restraining your wrists bound to the bed, just to the side of both your temples. And the notion that you couldn't even move caused warm tears to pool in the waterline of your eyes, clouding your view of the raised wall to the left of the double bed located in the heart of that partially lit room by the dull bulb of a bedside lamp.

“Hold still, детка, I-I'm almost,” she growled, her hips hammering against yours in essentially violent movements, “Almost there–!”

“No, pull out,” you whimpered, “Wanda, pull out, don't do that, don't do that, Wanda– Wanda, please–!”

“I need to do this Y/n, I fucking need to–!”

“Wanda, please–!”

She didn't pull out. She never pulled out – the point was not to pull out, it was that she emptied herself inside you, painted your insides with that magical secretion that only a few weeks later proved to be appropriate for the purpose Wanda had in mind. And she didn't touch you anymore, not that way, when her goal was achieved – with the plan completed, all she had to do was wait for your organism to do what it had to do. And so the months passed, snow fell on that simulated dome. Her visits weren't as frequent anymore.

“Why me?” you asked her once, as she stroked your belly through your thick crimson wool sweater.

Crouched down in front of the couch, Wanda raised her eyes to you like she always did when she was trying to communicate with the child she had shoved inside you.

“Because I love you,” was her answer, of course. A wave of ominous disgust twisted your insides at that oblivious response, as if Wanda were genuinely alienated from the reality of where she was your captor and aggressor.

“You barely know me, Wanda,” you spat, “And I barely know you. This isn't love, you're using me like a fucking incubator. You’re sick and you fucking know it.”

She lowered her head in front of your prickly speech, a lock of reddish hair piercing an emerald iris of hers, while Wanda's left fingers, dark as pitch, kept stroking your belly through a layer of clothing. She compressed her lips into a long line, and you held your breath. From your point of view, Wanda, stripped of that crimson armor she always wore and then tucked into casual clothes, sweatpants and a sweater as thick as your own, looked small and confused like a child, a little girl.

“You used to know me,” she muttered quietly, “Where I come from, you used to know me. We were married. We had our boys. You... for as long as it took in Westview after I had you back again, you were my world after I lost everything.”

You blinked once.

“Westview?”

She looked at you again.

“Yes, Y/n. Westview. They took you from me, more than once. But the second time they took our boys too. So I,” there was a pause in her speech, “I had to look for you in another reality. In a reality where nothing could ever get out of my control again.”

And for half a second you looked back at her.

“Wanda,” the palm of your right hand slowly snuggled against her left cheek, which approached your touch in an almost pathetic neediness, when was it that you looked into her eyes, “You’ll never have control over me, no matter how hard you try.”

She closed her eyes as a tear trickled down her cheek.

“I know.”

When the twins were born, you didn't want to hold them. And, begrudgingly, Wanda understood. She understood that she could never have you, not after what she had done to you, but to her consolation at least there were those boys left for her.

And she had been benevolent in letting you go, as if she had released a bird from its caged captivity, erasing from your memory any and all discernment of what your relationship had been like for ten months or so, abstracting from the confines of your mind the idea of how much she had harmed you by excluding herself from your memory. You went back to your old life, and she started a new one.

Time has come and gone. You had no sense of the past, and no one in your social circle even seemed to notice your absence for nearly a full year – it was like a dream, a memory, a lie. A kind of collective amnesia. You moved out of your parents' home after graduation and obtained a steady job in your field of work. And, after a while, you decided that it might be good to share your life with a second person – soon enough, a relationship blossomed between you and a dark-haired woman you met during a snowy winter day in a coffee shop.

Your girlfriend was a few years older than you and a single mom, but it turns out you got along great with her kids, and she was the best partner anyone could ask for. And when, on a warm summer day in the city park, Wanda offered you a strawberry ice cream cone right after presenting Billy and Tommy with their respective favorite flavors each, you genuinely smiled at her.

“Thanks, baby,” and then, you kissed her on the cheek. Billy asked Tommy to play tag, and the older twin accepted.

Wanda smiled at you. She smiled at you as if she didn't know how much she had already hurt you. “You’re welcome, детка.”

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hyperlexichypatia · 9 days ago

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can you elaborate on why you don't think nursing homes should exist? I'm genuinely curious, not trying to engage in bad faith, but i do feel like many elders do need a level of medical care that can't be provided well in a home environment, and benefit socially from being surrounded by their peers. is it more a matter of eliminating the huge staff-"client"(-billpayer, generally a younger relative) power differentials and potential for abuse that exists there, the way nursing homes tend to be relatively isolated from the surrounding community & many restrict certain freedoms, or is there something else more inherent to the structure (i.e., incapable of being reformed or mitigated) that I'm missing? i guess i'm wondering how different a more just model for elder care would look from nursing homes

Yeah, it's everything you said -- nursing homes inherently restrict their residents' freedoms (how many would pass the burrito test?), don't see the residents as the decision-making clients, infantilize and segregate their residents, etc.

As for socializing with their peers, if older disabled people lived among the general population, they could still socialize with other older disabled people if they wanted to, and also with younger people, abled people, and others. "This population that has been systemically excluded from society should live among themselves in a congregate setting so they can socialize" isn't a particularly good argument for nursing homes; it's an argument against the ageist/ableist segregation that exists in the rest of society.

Could nursing homes be reformed/mitigated? I mean, I'm a strong harm reductionist; I believe every harmful institution should be reformed and mitigated as much as possible. That might mean more freedom for residents, more privacy for residents, more transportation to and from other places in the community. But if a nursing home were "reformed" to the point that it was no longer harmful -- if it no longer exerted coercive control over its residents, if its residents had the same freedom and privacy and autonomy and freedom of movement as anyone in the outside world -- it would functionally cease to be a "nursing home" and would just be... well, an apartment building. Or, if it's an apartment building specifically for older disabled people, without the coercive control, a "retirement community" (although sometimes coercive-control nursing homes are also called "retirement communities" so who knows?).

Home and community based services for disabled people, if properly funded, can replicate most of the assistance a nursing home provides -- now, I do say most, but people who need multiple-times-a-day medical care from a medical provider might choose a living situation that involves specific proximity to medical care. That doesn't mean a nursing home; it might mean, for example, an apartment building near a hospital that caters to people undergoing regular treatment. But it's important that many nursing home residents don't need daily medical care from medical providers. They they need accessible assistance with activities of daily living, which can easily be made accessible outside a medicalized setting, and, in particular, without the coercive control of a nursing home.

Or, short version (sorry, I have a fever) -- the problem with nursing homes is the coercive control. Fund home and community based services. Hire CNAs and install accessible features in the homes of disabled people who need them with the money governments and families can save by abolishing nursing homes. Not everyone in a nursing home is there because they need medical treatment, but even for those who do, there are ways to situate housing and medical needs in proximity to each other that don't involve residents being forcibly drugged or given a bedtime or needing permission to have sex. Let Grandpa fuck (if he wants to).

#home and community based services #asks #send asks #anti institution #anti nursing home #bodily autonomy

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djuvlipen · 4 months ago

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Of course media representation is important, especially for children who grow up and always see their people depicted as thieves, criminals, spirits with a special bond with the devil itself, be it on TV, in movies, in cartoons, in books, etc etc. Of course it is important to give acting opportunities to aspiring Romani actors.

But media representation isn't the main purveyor of anti-Romani violence in the world. 80% of Romani people in Europe live below the poverty rate. Romani women are disproportionately impacted by the sex trade. In many places in Europe (both Eastern and Western), Romani people are still segregated in neighbourhoods and at school, our access to healthcare is poorer and our life expectancy is 15 years shorter than the European average. Every month or so, we have to hear about anti-Romani protests held by Neo-Nazis in Europe, about a Romani person killed by the police, or about pogroms carried against Romani people.

So while it is good to talk about media representation, it becomes a problem - a big problem - when it receives much more attention and engagement than actual acts of brutality against Romani people. I have seen hundreds of posts on here and on Twitter, I have seen leftist influencers talk about it on Tiktok, but where was this energy last week when a romani man was murdered in france? when romani children were stripped away from their parents in leeds? when is that energy every other day of the year when Romani people (and women in particular) have to face poverty, homelessness and segregation, are at risk of human trafficking, get discriminated against in the workplace?

While it is good to advocate for better Romani representation now and then, media representation won't fix any of these issues. You can't place that much hope into TV shows and movies. Media and culture aren't powerful enough to get rid of social/economic oppression. Quite the contrary; it is the economical and social marginalization of Romani people that leads to racism in media and culture. And at the end of the day, it feels very callous and disheartening to see so many people care more about fictional Romani people than they do actual, breathing Romani people. If you actually want to support Romani people's rights, then you should redirect all of that energy into supporting causes that actually address the root of Romani people's oppression:

reparation and acknowledgement of the Holocaust and Romani slavery,

boosting conversations about segregation,

holding the police accountable when they kill a Romani person,

abolishing the sex trade,

supporting Romani women's reproductive rights (compensation for forced sterilization + better access to abortion facilities)

supporting homeless people's and migrant people's human rights

#roma #romani #dr doom #mcu #robert downey jr #elizabeth olsen #wanda maximoff

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mybuckynotyours · 2 years ago

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Printesa Mea

Pairing: sugardaddy!Bucky x fem!Reader

Warnings: 18+ only. Reader is in her early twenties and Bucky is in his mid 40s. Mentions of sex, oral sex, mutual pinning, cockwarming if you squint your eyes hard enough.

Word Count: 1.9k

Summary & A/N: I suck at summaries but this is fluffy, cute but also naughty-ish! It's the Christmas season and I've been finally inspired! I'm having a huge daddy kink at the moment too. If this will be received well, I might write more about these two! I have a few more ideas up in my sleeve. Thank you so much for reading! Do not forget to comment and reblog :) <3

You were nearing the end of this semester and that only meant one thing. Christmas was fast approaching. This semester was always the one you dreaded and wanted it to end as quickly as possible. You were a Christmas lover through and through. By mid-October you would be thinking of all the Christmas lights and all the food you’ll get to enjoy with your friends. Your friends would laugh at you during the yearly Halloween party and tell you to slow down. You would just happily grin and shrug it off.

But this year was a little different that usual. This year were with someone, well, not exactly. You weren’t exactly dating him. It was more of an arrangement really that started just before you had gone back to university.

It was truly random how the two of you met. You weren’t really looking for a sugar daddy but it seems that your deepest, dirtiest wish came true without even working for it.

You two met on a Sunday morning when you were on your latte run, about to head home to kickstart your day for the usual meal preps and reading.

Your eyes met and you smiled at each other politely. For some reason, probably how the universe wanted to really bring the two of you closer together, you couldn’t keep your eyes off each other. You looked away as you stood next to each other waiting for your coffee orders and laughed lightly.

He was the first to speak as he reached out to take his coffee cup and with a deep voice, thanked the barista. Hearing him speak sent shivers down your spine and the effect is still there to this day. He speaks so calmly yet stern when he needs to be. You were on your knees for him in no time.

But before, going into that, you two got to know each other. He shamelessly asked you before he headed out of the coffee shop and you immediately accepted his invitation. And as they say, the rest was history.

You had told yourself that this was only an arrangement. You had to segregate your feelings. In no way you could ever possibly end up falling for him. He was your sugar daddy and only that. No matter how good it felt when he ate you out all night long just to draw out his name from your whimpering lips. No matter how great it felt to spend a night in watching a movie together and eat together. And especially, no matter how incredible it felt to get all dolled up to some event he would make you attend with him, just to be on his arm, twirling you around on the dance floor, having your princess moment. He truly did treat you like a princess. Indeed, he liked to call you one too.

“Printesa mea.” His warm velvety voice hovering over your skin. He would then place soft gentle kisses on your shoulder blade and then another on your neck.

His beard would tickle you, causing you to giggle like a little girl. “People are watching.”

“Don’t care.” He would shrug you off, then kiss your warm cheek.

Then you would bid your adieu to the party guests and head to his mansion where he would fuck you till the sun would rise. He was insatiable – the way his body moved, like a god really, a tight grip on your hips as his cock would stretch you out. And my goodness he was big. You could feel all of him as your walls would clench around his length, hissing at that first stretch.

He’d always look at you with a tinge of concern at first, breathlessly asking for your approval and for your wellbeing. As soon as you would smile up to him and give him a sign to continue, he would transform into a beast – thrusting in to you to the hilt, groaning and panting in the crook of your neck as he would come inside you. Fuck, that warmth was everything – both your fluids as you’d come together at times, the product of your pleasures to one another. You enjoyed it trickling down your thighs. It was satisfying on so many levels.

Back to the present moment, you had to press your legs together and stop yourself from thinking of all your debaucheries with Bucky.

He was paying your school debts and in return you got to enjoy all that. But that was it. You couldn’t let your mind wander as if you were a girl in love.

“It’s probably the holidays that’s making me feel like this.” You mumbled to yourself.

But really, you knew yourself better. After the million Christmas movies you’d watch every year, your one true wish was to meet the same guy all the women in the movies met. No matter how much you laughed at these cheesy movies, you loved it and you’d wish for one day to live that impossible fairy tale. Nothing was as in the movies and you knew that but damn, Bucky was something else. It was like, he did come straight out that kind of movie and with Christmas coming you, you couldn’t help but wonder whether you’ll have that happily ever after with Bucky.

You two did establish what you both wanted from this arrangement. He was looking for someone like you and well, despite you not exactly looking for someone like him, you really needed the help financially. Bucky was perfect to provide just that. A bit of sex would not hurt right? We’re two consenting adults! That’s what the two of you had agreed upon over a cheese platter and the best wine you had ever tasted. Bucky had a thing for the finer things in life. He certainly maintained high standards and quality. His demeanour oozed with those qualities. Always dressed up in a three piece suit, looking sharp and refined, he was someone you actually started to admire. You only wished you were as confident as he were. He knew that about you as he always tested and pushed your limits which resulted in you becoming much more comfortable in your own skin and you started doing things that you didn’t think you’d actually ever start doing. Bucky was not only an incredible lover but also an incredible mentor.

As your infatuating thoughts ran on, Bucky walked into the cafeteria you were in. It took you by surprise as you spotted him heading your way. You weren’t meant to see each other, not at least till he would call you. You wanted to throw yourself at him, just wrap yourself into his black coat and never leave him. Oh that would be wonderful…if only.

“Printesa mea! How great seeing you here today!” His face broke into a wide smile at you as he extended his arms to wrap them around you.

His musky, strong smell filled up your nostrils and made you tremble with need already. You loved to smell his cologne and you loved having it on you.

He chuckled as he realised that you were sniffing. “Awh, missing too much.”

You rolled your eyes at his cheekiness and withdrew away from his embrace – it was painful but you had to anyway.

“What are you doing here? I wanted to call you later to ask you something. Glad I can do it in person now.” He sat down across you and took your hands into his, his thumb brushing your knuckles gently.

“Oh?” You giggled softly then composed yourself with a sigh. “Well, I’m trying to finish off this last assignment before the holiday season comes up. It’s my favourite month and I want to enjoy it as much as I can with few uni distractions. Thankfully classes are ending soon as well.”

“A Christmas lover, I see…well, I’ve figured I guess.” He squeezed your hand as he chuckled once again.

“How on earth would you know that about me?” You laughed in disbelief with him.

“I just do. And it suits you really. I love the way your eyes light up when you’re excited about something. Your positive energy and your Christmas energy just go hand in hand, I guess? If this makes sense.” He squinted his eyes with a shrug.

“Alright, yeah, I guess I can take that.” You chuckled once again, not forgetting the way he spoke about you in a certain way. He clearly notices you.

“Anyway, I know that this might be farfetched or something but I was wondering whether you wanted to spend Christmas together? I mean, I know you’ve got your friends but you never really spoke about your family and I would understand if you’d want to go visit them...but I don’t know and well…”

…well what?” You teased slightly but your heart was ready to jump out of your sweater, your palms were sweating and Bucky realised that too as he looked down at your hands.

“I mean, I know that this is not…you know, us, conventional and all that but I don’t really have anyone…I…you know, I’m only seeing you so I just thought we could be together you know? For the holidays? I’ll give you more money and I’ll take you Christmas shopping too.”

You had never seen Bucky the way he were right now in front of you. He was rambling, fidgeting his long legs and you were certain that he was looking past you as he was speaking. He was avoiding eye contact with you because he was feeling uncomfortable. What was he truly trying to say? Why the sudden change in appearance?

“Um, okay. I would like that Buck.” You wanted to scream from the top of your lungs. Aside from the fact that Bucky was feeling uncomfortable or nervous or whatever you were happily screaming inside. This was turning into a reality – you were having your chick flick, Christmas movie moment. You were getting to spend Christmas with the man that you were yearning for. The man that made you feel so many things all at once.

“Really?” His nervous look turned into relief as he leaned back in his seat as if he finally got something out of his chest.

“But why were you rambling about it? I mean, you know I have no issues at all with wanting to spend time with you, even during Christmas. My family is complicated and one day I will tell you all about it. Otherwise, I’m happy to be with you, you know…” You trailed off, now the one feeling somewhat nervous but also proud of yourself for being direct. Bucky was really rubbing off on you.

“I know, I’m sorry. I do not know what came over me.” He shook his head as a light laugh passed from his lips. “You’re a beautiful woman, printesa mea, and I didn’t think you’d want to spend the festive season with an old man like me.” He said running his fingers through his cottonlike dark hair.

His words took you by surprise, but you wanted to hide it and for some reason you were feeling cheeky quite quickly as you came up with quite the comeback, “Daddy, I promise you that I’m really going to enjoy myself with you.”

You couldn’t wait to jump onto his lap and have your way with him. Maybe he could fuck you with your Santa hat on or with your merry Christmas dress on…you’ll have to get it for him for sure. Oh…all the fun that you two will be having is going to be endless.

#sebastian stan #sebastian stan fan fiction #sebastian stan fan fic #bucky barnes #bucky barnes x reader #bucky barnes x you #sugardaddy!bucky

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redlittlefoxari · 11 months ago

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Astarion Epilogue An Adventure in Making Life: Chapter Ten: Little White Dress

Relationship: Astarion X Tav

Warnings: NSFW 18+, smut, blood, violence, sex, blood drinking, pregnancy.

Summary: All hell breaks lose as Tav and Astarion share with the rest of the party that you are expecting.

~~~~This Chapter contains Smut~~~~

Master List

People who wished to be tagged: @ofmyth-andmagicart @lunaredgrave @littlekidsteve @omnia--mea-mecum-porto @ayselluna @myreadingmanga123 @kismet-of-the-divine @nicalysm @justlilpeaches21

If you want to be tagged in future updates, send me a message.

Twelve weeks pregnant

“I knew it! I knew something was up with the two of you!” Shadowheart was practically out of her seat as she spoke. “I just didn’t know it was his. I thought the two of you just got a segregate or something.”

“We're going to be an aunt and Uncle Wyll, isn’t it amazing!” Karlach released the hold she had on herself and let her excitement spring free. Shaking Wyll like he was a rag doll.

“Yes, that is amazing, Karlach dear, but could you stop shaking me? I fear I’m going to be sick.” At his words, Karlach stopped shaking him, and he placed one hand on the table and one on his stomach to try and stop the room from spinning.

“That…That’s amazing, you two.” Gale looked positively shocked. “I just have a few questions, if you don’t mind.” The others nodded in unison.

After what seemed like hours of being questioned by your friends, the food was finally served. Gale had spared no expense for the meal, crafting each dish so that everyone had what they wanted and what they would enjoy the most. You sliced into a relatively rare steak and watched as the red blood covered your plate, causing you to salivate. Your pregnancy cravings had two settings, sweet and bloody; there was no in-between.

When you took a rather large bite, Gale started to ask more questions. He was always searching for knowledge, and the topic of vampire children was something that was yet to be covered majorly. It felt like he was entirely too interested and asking far too many questions so he could publish a book on the topic and be credited as the one who found out how it was done.

“Tell me again, how exactly did you manage this astounding feat?” Gale had a large glass of red wine beside him and began slicing into his own dinner that you had no doubt paired nicely with his steak.

“When a mommy and a daddy love each other very much, they…” Astarion spoke for you while your mouth was full of meat and blood.

“Asatrion, I know how sex works. What I want to know is how her fey blood allowed your seed to impregnate her.” Gale looked at Astarion, not too pleased to be getting a talking to about the birds and the bees.

“We don’t know, maybe since he’s also technically still a high elf, my ovaries allowed it.” You said after you swallowed your mouth full of steak. “What we do know is I’m pregnant, it's his, and I’m a walking miracle.”

“I can see why you kept this a secret. There’s no telling what would happen if people found out what you were carrying.”Glae took a small bite of his food.

“What do you mean?” You placed your knife and fork on your plate.

“I only mean that vampires aren’t people's cup of tea usually. And there's a reason why there is not a lot of knowledge about half vampire half humanoid children….” Gale hesitated, not wanting to go on.

“And why is that?” Astarion stared at Gale, a challenge in them.

“They’re hailed as being unholy abominations and killed…” Gale looked down at his plate, not wanting to meet yours or Astarion’s eyes.

“We won’t let that happen! Aunty K and Uncle Wyll will not let that happen.” Karlach slammed her fist on the table.

“No, we will not.” Wyll echoed his wife's sentiment. “We will just have to keep the fact that they are Half-vampires a secret. How is it that people normally find out the parentage?”

“Other vampires, usually it’s almost as if they can smell it.” They all looked at Astarion.

“We can. There’s a particular odor that goes with the undead. I hide mine because I can’t stand the smell.” Astarion looked at you, noting the color that had drained from your face. “We can do the same for our child, dear.”

You reached for Astarion’s hand under the table, and he did the same. This opened up a whole new fear. Maybe if you moved out of the city, that would lessen your chances of being discovered. Though, as far as you knew, the last vampire to grace the city was Cazador, and since then, it had just been Astarion these last fifty years. He never mentioned smelling another vampire.

“There hasn’t been another vampire in Baldur’s gate since Cazador… right?” You looked at Astarion.

“No, I don’t know why usually there is always a vampire lord in a large city. Maybe they are afraid after what happened to the last one.” You saw his eyes glaze over, going a thousand realms away, and squeezed slightly. He returned the squeeze, gently glancing at you sideways and sending you a small smile.

“What about the rest of the population?” Shadowheart spoke up. “Are they going to be a threat?”

“Astarion walks around, and normal people can’t tell he’s a vampire… Well, unless they look at his teeth.” Gale said as he tilted his head.

Astarion flashed him his best shit-eating grin.”It took you all days before you realized, and it was only because this one woke up and caught me.” He gestured towards you.

“Then we should be fine. They probably won’t have long fangs like Astarion, and we’ll teach them not to go around biting people unless they deserve it.” You picked up your glass of blood and blueberry juice and took a long swallow. The blood and juice mixture coating your tongue and filled your belly.

“I should have known you weren’t drinking wine this whole time.” Shadowheart picked up her own glass. “I can smell the blood from here.”

“Yeah, all the signs were there, but at the time, none of you knew Astarion had it in him to knock me up.” You smiled at Astarion as he glared at you.

“I was always more than capable. I just didn’t know I could, and if I did, I would have been trying a lot harder to do so all these years.” He pulled your hand to his lips and kissed the ring that he had placed on your finger earlier that day.

You felt your face grow hot as you thought about all the ways he would prove that to be true. Every night, a different position, and every night, you would scream his name in ecstasy. Astarion could sense your arousal and mouthed one word in response. Later.

“You two are disgusting.” Shadowheart took a long drink of her wine.

“And you’re just jealous you don’t have someone to make love to.” Astarion’s eyes didn’t break from yours. “This child will be loved and protected. I can promise you that no one will harm them or you for as long as I still draw breath.”

“Fuck.” You cursed as his decoration of love and devotion to you and your child only stoked the fire growing in you more.

The others looked away, looking as if they wanted to be anywhere but where they were now.

“If the two of you are going to…. I gave you a private room for a reason… Please use it.” Gale pushed his plate away.

“Oh, we’ve already broken in the room, Gale.” Astarion stood up slowly. “One thing you can write about if you are going to publish a book about vampire humanoid babies is that the hormones the mate gives off are simply irresistible.”

“Don’t call me your mate; that's creepy and weird.” You stood along with him. “We’re not animals.”

“No but we Certainly act like we are in heat.”

Astarion extended his hand to you, and taking it, he led you towards the stairs. You twisted your fingers in with his, creating a weave that even Mystra couldn’t untangle. The hormones racing through you felt as if someone had placed a lust curse on you. Every inch of you buzzed with the need to have Astarion touch you, taste you and have him fill you.

“See you all in the morning. Don’t wait up.” Astarion said as he moved up the stairs towards your room.

You and Astarion made your way toward the room that neither one of you would be leaving the rest of the night. Reaching the stairs, you slowly made your accent, the wetness between your legs growing slicker as you thought about everything you wanted him to do to you. Astarion looked at you sidelong, and you saw that he was doing the same. You peered down to see his length straining against his pants.

“Don’t you wish you could not wear pants to Astarion?” You turned your focus back to traversing the stairs, your legs growing weak from your thoughts.

“I’m not sure the others would have liked me coming down for dinner in nothing but what the gods gave me.” He said as you made it to the top of the stairs just down the hall from your room.

“Probably not.” You turned the corner, now entirely out of sight from the others. “But maybe n…”

You were cut off as Astarion pinned you against the wall, his body flush against yours. his erection pushing into you. You moaned as his lips collided with yours, and his tongue entered your mouth. doing a full sweep of the area before pulling out and biting your lower lip. He let go and looked at you hungrily.

“Gods, you smell delicious, my love.” His teeth moved down to your neck but paused just short of taking a bite. “And you tasted divine earlier.”

You could feel his fangs on your neck just above your skin, primed and ready to sink in if only you asked. You turned your head to the side to give him a better angle. He still hesitated. His hot breath came out in short bursts on your neck, and you could sense his animalistic need to feed.

“Is it because you bit me earlier? Is that why you won’t bite me now.” You pulled back, no longer feeling his teeth or breath on your neck. Placing your hand on the side of his face, you forced him to look at you. His eyes were dilated. “What if I feed from you first?”

“That would work.” He turned his neck towards you, giving you the left side of his neck. The one you bit a few weeks prior.

“Not out here.” You grabbed his hand once again and led him to your room, shutting the door behind you and locking it.

Astarion stood in the middle of the room, looking at you in anticipation. You stared back at him, not knowing what to do. The last time, it was rough and full of need. This time, you wanted it to be a little different.

You pulled off your dress, exposing your body to him, not breaking eye contact, but for the split moment, the gown went over your eyes. Astarion drank you in, looking up and down as he took in your naked form. He moved to touch you, and you put your hand up.

“You too, Astarion. Get naked.”

Astarion gave you a cheeky smile as he pulled off his doublet, then his shirt, boots, and then his pants, making sure that they would be last. His length sprang free, and you felt yourself grow even hotter as you drank in his form. He did an added spin for good measure, letting you see all of him.

“If our child has half of both our good looks, then they’re going to have an easy life.”Astarion’s fingers shook as he spoke. He longed to touch you but waited for you all the same.

“Sit down on the bed, Astarion.” He did as you asked.

You walked over and sat on his lap, your button sitting between his legs so that both your legs were hanging over his right leg. You kissed just under his left jawline, and you felt his length stiffen more as it sat against your leg. You trailed light kisses down to his neck just by his jugular, paying extra attention to that area.

“Are you teasing me, or have you lost your nerve to bite me?” Astarion sounded out of breath.

“Patients Astarion.” You placed your teeth on his skin like had done to you earlier when he was fighting his instincts to bite you. “Good things come to those who wait.”

At that, you sunk your teeth in, breaking the skin and feeling his hot blood enter your mouth. He flung his head back and moaned as your tongue probed and sucked the holes you made in his skin. You sucked until you couldn’t taste his blood anymore on your tongue, pulling away from his skin with a pop.

Astarion moved his head to look at you. This was only the second time you had bitten him, and from the look on his face, it would not be the last. He grabbed and twisted you so that you now laid on the bed with your legs between his and them hanging slightly off the bed. He placed a hard, needy kiss against your lips and slid his tongue into your mouth once more.

“The taste of me on your tongue is something I want to taste every day, my love.” He broke the kiss. “And it’s time I returned the favor.

He moved to your neck, wasting no time as he sunk his fangs into your skin. You gasped, Since being pregnant, this is one thing that you missed the most. The feeling of his fangs in you as he sucked blood from your veins was simply erotic, and you could see why there were so many erotic novels about vampires.

You reached your hand down to find his hard length, taking it in your hand and pumping it slowly. Astarion moaned into your neck as he sucked more of your blood out and into him. You wrapped your legs around his waist and used your hand to place him at your entrance. Arching your hips slightly, he slid into you, and Astarion gasped, pulling away from your neck.

“Don’t stop.” You said as you angled your neck to give him a better angle. “Feed and Fuck Astarion.”

“Gods, I love you.”

Astarion’s fangs sunk back into your neck and, as he did, started a slow, lazy thrust of his hips in and out of you. The feeling of his fangs in you, taking your blood, and the feeling of his length taking his pleasure sent you close to the edge. You moaned his name as his slow, lazy thrusts turned into harder, needier thrusts.

He pulled his fangs from your neck, not waiting to drink too much, just taking as much as you took from him. Astarion hooked his hands under your knees, allowing you to rest them as he thrusted into you harder. Pulling almost entirely out before slamming back into you. You moved your hand to your now swollen and sensitive clit, rubbing circles and allowing your climax to grow faster.

You looked at the holes you made in his neck and thought about the hole in yours that would match the thought pushing you over the edge of your climax. As you moaned, his name Astarion soon followed after the mix of you tightening around him and his name on your lips being too much for him to contain himself. You felt him fill you fully as he still thrusted his length inside you, milking his own orgasm to completion.

“We should definitely get into the practice of trying to make children,” Astarion said as he leaned down to kiss you. “I have never seen you so aroused.”

He placed a hard kiss on your lips. “I agree; how many do you want? three ? four?Though it took us fifty years to conceive this one.”

This child was a miracle in itself; truth be told, you weren’t sure Astarion and yourself could handle more than one child. Let alone this one.

“True.“ He was grinning ear to ear. “But we can sure try.”

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