#tests are being conducted
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theimpossibledemon · 1 month ago
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WIP Wednesday
many thanks to @leithillustration @thewholelemon @monbons for the tags this week! i forgot how much snowbaz stuff there was to look forward to this time of year i'm so excited seeing all of your WIPs!
i have been carrying my laptop from room to room with me all week hoping it would trick me in to writing but my brain was being very resistant. I did start doing some clean up though on my last slam on the keys session and it's starting to look more like actual words again. also though i've now developed this intense fear that because i've consumed so much snowbaz content i'm going to accidentally steal lines from fics i've read and not even know it. (am i crazy or does anyone else worry about this?)
paranoia aside, i present to you some classic Simon having super straight thoughts about Baz:
There’s sirens going off somewhere in the back of my mind telling me I need to step back and stop invading Baz’s personal space, but with each second that ticks by, I find myself caring less and less. Baz’s fancy shirt feels soft under my fingers and I wonder what it’s made of. Do people really have shirts made of silk?
a hearty high-five (but one where we're both wearing those little hands on our fingers and the little hands high-five) to you all
@brilla-brilla-estrellita @mooncello @cutestkilla @letraspal
@ic3-que3n @theearlgreymage @alexalexinii @iamamythologicalcreature @raenestee
@shrekgogurt @youarenevertooold @facewithoutheart @you-remind-me-of-the-babe
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tanadrin · 6 months ago
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This is a cool result: current oral PrEP requires a daily pill, but a trial of a twice-yearly injection of lenacapavir has proven so effective that the trial being conducted was ended early to give all participants the drug. Not only do twice-yearly injections avoid the problem of having to remember to take a pill every day, they also may have less stigma, which has been a problem for PrEP in the past.
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anyonghalimaw · 6 months ago
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i rlly do not think white global northerners understand how fucking bad the anti sinovac psyop was in context of the philippines and other targeted countries being from the global south, with a history of economic and military intervention and destabilization by the usa specifically.
i live in the philippines and sinovac was the only available vaccine for MONTHS of the pandemic. people were fucking dying and we had no pfizer, no j&j, no astrazeneca, no moderna. sinovac was the ONLY vaccine supply we had. and the supply wasnt even enough for even my small city. we do not have the infrastructure to manufacture our own vaccines and tests. we were entirely reliant on imports from other countries who Did have the capacity to manufacture such things
i got up early for several days straight to go to a pop up walk in vaccination site (were talking there by 7:30am) set up in a fucking public basketball court because it was the only way to get vaccinated, and 3 times i had to go back empty handed so to speak after exposing myself to this massive opportunity for transmission because they fucking ran out of shots and prioritized the elderly and disabled and i didnt have my legal pwd (person with disability) card yet. i had to go to a different barangay (local unit of government) to get my shot MONTHS LATER and only got mine because one of my family was in the local govt and reserved some shots for us.
many filipinos use facebook which is where some of the psyop was conducted because you can use it for free on your phone and it is often where news is disseminated. i know we have that joke about People Believing Anything They See On Facebook but i cannot stress enough that people here get local news from fb the same way you (used to) get news from twitter about shit like localized emergencies and whatnot.
because we are third world, you know that the state of our education system is nothing compared to the states. media and news literacy here is dangerously low and the population is sensitive to mis/disinformation, as can be seen during the 2022 presidential elections where the usa Also interfered lol. i cannot stress enough how much of the population was susceptible to this psyop, especially those in poverty who couldnt afford proper education. hell, even educated people fell for this shit. do you think jhunjhun who didnt finish grade 6 would be able to identify disguised foreign intervention that was in his own language?
we were already recovering from public scrutiny of a different vaccine, a dengue vaccine, which lowered public trust in inoculation. and then the usa goes and does THIS??? i cannot emphasize enough that they are directly responsible for the tens and thousands of unvaccinated covid deaths. they are responsible for my friends having to bury their unvaxxed parents and grandparents at the age of 19. they are responsible for mass death and disability.
but were just a country in the periphery. so who cares about us? our lives are worthless to the usa, which is why they admitted that they did this when they would otherwise "never" to their own population. third worlders arent real people to your government. we are merely statistics and a petri dish for experimentation. so who cares if we die? the real important thing isnt our lives, its that the usa has more control over us than china.
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kaurwreck · 9 months ago
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I think you're right that it's significant, and I think Mori is clever to recognize that Akutagawa is a rook.
Like a rook, Akutagawa is powerful, but generally contained and often undercut by his predictability. However, because he's keenly aware of his own constraints, and because others often aren't (especially regarding variables they've internalized as known), he's able to play into and against his own predictability to paradoxically surprise them.
He moves within the confines of his rigidity to shape outcomes, sometimes more effectively than his more dynamic opponents and peers. Rooks do that too, if you let them.
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Me, knowing nothing about chess, probably overthinking the significance of referencing akutagawa in this scene, but is going to look it up later anyways
#i have very specific chess feelings and thoughts re: rooks (which is what that piece is)#because in elementary school i was in a program for intellectually gifted students - by which i do NOT mean an honors program#i mean i displayed several specific neuro characteristics and struggled in a classroom environment such that i was referred for screening#the results of the screening flagged me for several additional tests and my results on those tests then prompted a comprehensive assessment#which was conducted by a licensed examiner who additionally administered another test chosen specifically based on my prior data#the report from which triggered a review of all of the above data by a panel of specialists who determined that I was wired so atypically#that I required specifically designed support services to avoid an adverse impact my access to education#ie I was not considered academically gifted which is what people are usually thinking of when they talk about giftedness (esp on tumblr)#i prefaced with all of that to counter misconceptions and emphasize that i was not in a program for smart and highly successful students#i was in a program for students with distinct cognitive processing needs that could not be met without specialized intervention#but inanely and entirely b/c of misconceptions the administrators at my school forcibly registered us in an annual chess tournament#which they wouldn't let us opt out of b/c there was a funding incentive for the school if we advanced far enough#ironically chess is a bad fit for this type of giftedness b/c it's rote + relies on bounded conventions instead of creative problem solving#but anyway i did not want to fucking play chess especially not competitively - it's boring and gets redundant#so i intentionally threw all of my games to remove myself from the tournament early#except my fellow indentured chess competitors noticed i was doing that and they were also bored and didn't care for the tournament#and so several of them made a game out of forcibly advancing me as far as they could by outmaneuvering my attempts to lose#horrifically they managed to corner me into winning enough that i was in serious danger of advancing#and so i started AGGRESSIVELY practicing chess in my spare time to learn how to shape the board and get confident in my ability to do so#i played against computers and then strangers online for hours a day and i studied checkmate patterns and how to subvert + reconfigure them#all so i could play well enough to ensure i'd lose even when being actively sabotaged#it worked - i narrowly escaped advancing that year and I don't think they were able to lose to me again after that#they kept trying - even playing me outside of tournaments to try and figure out how i was consistently losing#it's b/c i layered multiple strategies that involved breaking select conventions + manipulating their focus and psychology#BUT the fulcrum of my approach relied heavily on my rooks and select pawns as my most valuable pieces#i got very good at using rooks to shape the board without placing them in a position to be captured until i wanted them to be#once i had a few pawns close to promotion i would shift my rooks into bait b/c once one was taken i could just promote a pawn into a rook#and because absent a potential stalemate people almost always promote pawns into queens#my opponent would forget my additional rooks and would make choices based on the implicit assumptions that my deputized pawns were queens#rooks are treasures
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rockingbytheseaside · 6 months ago
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Hi! I wanted to say I absolutely adore your art and headcannons! I wanted to ask if you would be interested in making a headcannon for our lovely harbingers where there is someone trying to sabotage their relationship with the reader like for example the person is saying that the reader is cheating or is saying mean things about the harbingers and that they have ,,proof" it is if course a lie. Don't force yourself to do anything you don't want to tho!
(Absolutely genius idea! Sorry to keep you waiting! I’m a slow writer…)
✦ When others try to sabotage your relationship with them
Pierro, Capitano, Dottore, Scaramouche, Pantalone, Childe
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(tw: general mentions of violence and blood. sfw) 
Being intimate with a powerful Fatui Harbinger provides the illusory dream of having riches, power, and status. Some watch you with hushed murmurs as you accompany your beloved with linked arms, looking all elegant beside him. Perhaps some people cannot comprehend how such a ruthless Fatuus can even court someone like you. Others simply cannot comprehend that status and money is not a key factor in your relationship.
✧ To crossfire with Pierro is to go against every single Fatui Harbinger. The Director is known far and wide as a man of cold words and power beyond the seven nations. All valuable intel and actions are reported to him first and foremost, as even the top Harbingers bow before him. You, on the other hand, were not meant to bow before him. The Jester shall never let you lower your head, because it is he who shall stoop to worship you. 
However recently, a certain rumor reached his ears. His spies related to him info that certain Fatui soldiers, some lowly commoners at the bottom of the ranks, are spreading uncouth jabs about you and Pierro. Intel states that these fools think you infiltrated the Fatui and The Director’s inner circle by some intimate provocation and seduction; that you’re in it for the money and status.
Pierro’s gloved hands gripped the papers. Nevertheless, his expression is placid as always. 
Thus, the culprit now sat in Pierro’s office, trembling as the room oozed with murderous silence. The Jester never raised his voice, nor did he question the man who “joked” about you. The fellow kept spitting apologies, begging for mercy. He knew it was futile to lie or waste the Director's patience.
And the Jester? It took everything in his power not to get his gloved hands bloodied. To hear someone accuse you - his most cherished, as a shallow harlot? Consequences shall be faced. Calming his boiling turmoil, Pierro continued to conduct himself professionally:
He made sure the man and his entire generation met their oblivion. 
With the recruitment of his best spies, he ascertained that the culprit’s disappearance was not felt by a single soul, his entire family gone, and all traces of spread rumors eradicated. Above all, it was orchestrated so that you would remain unaware that anyone dared to tarnish your reputation.
You carried on with your life, blissfully unaware and undisturbed. Even now, you came in knocking on his office, asking: “Long day at work, honey? I can bring you some tea or coffee if you want.”
The Jester's smile returned, throwing away some crumbled documents into the trash can - “A tea break would be excellent, my divine.”
If it’s blood that needs to be spilled to protect you and his private affairs, then Pierro won’t think twice. 
✧ For Il Capitano, the way of the blade speaks more for its wielder than words. If you wish to prove your stance, you better be prepared to face the First Fatui Harbinger, as his might will test you in a relentless duel of strength. So what do you think happened when Capitano overheard someone calling you “weak”? That his beloved does not deserve an ounce of his attention, because you are a meek being compared to the Harbinger? 
His hand instantly found its place on the hilt of his claymore. He left no room for negotiation or doubt. He marched straight towards the culprit, unsheathed his weapon, and pointed the sharp point of his blade straight at the person.
“If you are so confident to spit such insolence about them, then you must be equally confident with your strength. Let your blade speak.”
The poor fool tried to defend himself with excuses. But his mocking meant nothing to the Captain’s weapon. Before you know it, there is an ongoing duel initiated by Il Capitano. The witnesses know that whoever is on the receiving end of his wrath has no chance of surviving. Not when a single swing of his weapon causes craters on the ground.
The man was about to collapse, accepting his violent demise. But just as Capitano was about to unleash his final lesson, your voice rang out amongst the crowd.
“Hey! Cease this commotion at once!” - you stepped up, your expression stern as you stood in front of your beloved. In a rare moment of vulnerability, the Captain’s already stoic body language shifted. His claymore was sheathed back to its place.
“My beloved, you shouldn’t have seen this…”
“And yet I did. It would’ve reached my ears anyway. What did I say about temperamental duels, Capitano? Morons are not worth it.” 
“He called you weak. I cannot allow it.”
For a minute, Capitano kept his head hung low in reverence. You stood with your arms on your hips, scolding him. Was it not for your intervention, that person who vocally mocked you would’ve been lying dead now. Instead, you spared the offender, and the man was allowed to flee in humiliation. 
The conflict was eradicated, and Capitano's imposing demeanor showed he didn't regret his actions. Considering how even Capitano bowed to your words, the accuser realized - you are not weak. Because if there was one person who made the First Harbinger go motionless then it was you. 
✧ Today was a good day for Il Dottore, but you weren't sure why. He was a tad clingy, his steps laced with a sense of giddiness. Giving you extra squeezes while hugging, smothering you with longer kisses on the cheek. Even as you sat idly in his lab, you watched him as he worked on some paperwork with a grin.
Thus you questioned him, lazily strolling around his lab and observing the countless tools or vials. But he waved off his excitement, tapping his pencil over some papers - “Nothing of major importance, but I did have something interesting happen recently.”
You raised an eyebrow, beckoning him to continue.
“An idiot made a pathetic attempt at spreading rumors about us.” - You stopped in your tracks, going still as you held some miscellaneous container with what seemed to be tissue samples. The Harbinger continued: “Some fool spoke behind your back; stating that anyone who is close with a heretical scholar is bound to be equally insane. They thought that if their words didn't reach you, then it's of no consequence.”
Your expression fell somber with each word Dottore spoke. He said it with such profound avidity, that his voice demonstrated threatening intent behind them. So he continued. “But you know me, dear. Nothing goes past me. Vile nicknames are nothing new to me. My work is not for the faint of heart, and those pesky cretins enjoy concealing their fear with profane titles. And they can call me whatever they want. However, I won't allow them to call you names. Not because of my work.”
You averted your gaze sadly onto the samples of veins and organs in vials. You pretended to inspect them, but your sorrow was more prominent. You suspected Dottore already did something, hence his unusual giddiness today. Thus, you inquired in a soft whisper - “So… what did you do?”
“I handled it, naturally.”
“...You did? What happened? To the person who said such things, I mean.”
“What happened? Dear, you're holding them in your hands right now.” - Il Dottore beamed, pointing at the vials of organs you held. 
✧ Today, Scaramouche was eerily silent. You were accompanying him during one of his work expeditions, aiding him with certain formalities regarding his Fatui subordinates. The 6th had soldiers working under him, and although he did not care for their training, he did not tolerate any incompetent weaklings.
Therefore, you decided to lend a hand. You helped conduct a training program for his underlings, making sure all standards were met. It’s not the first time you did so, since The Puppeteer often placed you as the second in command whenever he was absent. And the Fatui soldiers did not conceal their thrill - it’s like you were their favorite substitute teacher who was more cheerful and forgiving than their superior.
Either way, Scaramouche saw that the mission was going smoothly. But soon, lightning would strike. A certain Fatuus, an agent in training, was getting too charmful with you. It was during the usual training assigned by you, and this person was focusing more on his conversation with you than his training:
Telling you how you are a remarkably skilled person. How it’s a marvel to see someone so delightful as you working alongside the Balladeer. How you shouldn’t waste your time with someone as aggravating as Lord Harbinger Scaramouche. He’s even leaning closer towards you.
You smiled uncomfortably, your attempts at polite disagreement did not work with this agent. Yet now you felt the static in the air, and that’s when you realized - Your beloved heard all of it.
On this usual, unassuming morning, Scaramouche walked silently and struck a man with lightning. All eyes turned towards the commotion as you stood behind the Harbinger. His fists were clenched, sparks of electro crackling from them.
He may have been silent the whole day, but don’t mistake his silence for impassivity.
“Next time, know your place,” - he seethed, standing over the person who endeavored to sweet talk you. He permitted his subordinates too much leeway, now they dare charm you with empty flirts. Scaramouche would’ve stomped that man’s head if he wanted, but he wouldn’t create such a grotesque scene in your presence. Instead, he turned away, held your hand, and pulled you away.
He gave you a day off, his mind already conjuring plans to deal with his underlings later. At least he scoffed out an apology. Not for what he did; he does not lament that. Just a small ‘sorry’ for giving you a quick fright. The lightning strike was very loud, after all. 
✧ Pantalone often gets invited to luxurious meetings or extravagant galas. Any party that is attended by the richest man in Teyvat is a guarantee to make high-society elites turn heads. However, considering your prolonged relationship with your darling Pantalone, you know he secretly despises these social gatherings. Therefore, he takes you with him. Dressed in your finest, Pantalone proudly shows you off to the pompous aristocrats.
People would watch enviously, thinking to themselves: The Regrator’s sweetheart, spoiled by his riches. Your attire is as glorious as his expensive suit. His arm is tenderly linked with yours, always offering you his hand like a true gentleman whenever you two walk. Even as he conversed with various business partners, he always had to make sure his hand was around your waist or your hand.
This dotting behavior made certain ladies of Snezhnaya jealous. They could see you were not a noble-born, nor were you used to the attention during such gatherings. You just timidly accompanied him, and Pantalone kept rambling about you and your benign achievements. Childish, really. You’re probably someone who just ran after and clung to the Harbinger until he relented to keep you. Therefore, a group of ladies initiated the conversation: 
“It’s a pleasure to meet a man such as yourself, Lord Harbinger.” and “Why, a man of your status is probably seeking some interesting company. Oh? You are with someone? My, my, I did not notice them.” or “Surely you desire connections worthy of your status, sir.”
Pantalone had mastered the art of courteous smiling, yet even his act was about to crack. He noticed the way these ladies tried to stand too close to him, pretend you were not in the picture, or even passively mock you. Their insolence stenches, and noticing your silent discomfort caused his heart to sting. But he had a plan.
“Why yes, you are right,” - Pantalone smiled with his charming looks “I do value my time, and it’s important to not waste it on shallow conversationalists. Oh, but it’s such a shame that the people in front of us are just that. Isn’t that right, sweetheart?”
Pantalone turned to you, his arms encircling your waist while speaking such backhanded comments with triumphant smiles. The ladies’ smiles fell instantly, and you tried everything to avert your gaze. “Um, Pantalone? Maybe we shouldn’t-”
“Shouldn’t bore ourselves with such lowly individuals? Hmm, I agree. There isn’t much to do here anyway, only the greedy will seek something in this superficial gathering. Oh well, let’s go so I can take you to dance, dear.” - Pantalone concluded in his usual enamoring tone “Ladies, if you would excuse yourself.”
In this world, the 9th of the Fatui Harbinger doesn’t excuse himself - others do. Therefore, he took you away, scoffing and checking up on you with hushed whispers. Pantalone was offended. Why do they assume it was you who desperately sought out the rich Harbinger? Little do they know it was Pantalone who used to run and seek your attention just to be yours. Honestly, they’re discrediting his neediness for you. 
✧ Should anyone meddle with Tartaglia’s personal life, they are picking up a brawl. Someone dares to flirt with you? His fists are ready. Someone said something unwelcoming about you? Anything in the vicinity can be used as a weapon. Someone endangers his relationship? Their life is now in danger.
Of course, you’re the one who consistently yanked him out of these fights. Usually, it’s nothing serious, as when you scold your boyfriend for such reckless behavior it ends with his heartfelt words and apologetic chuckles. He finds solace in embracing you from behind, gently enfolding his arms around your shoulders, reassuring himself that all is well.
However, Tartagia is still a Harbinger. Away from home, he’d personally search for intel on the culprit who dares to offend your relationship. Names, records, locations, anything to keep tabs on those who think they can drag his family into bloodshedding matters. Tracking is of no issue, after all, when he was still a young rookie, training as a Fatui agent was just the first step.
Once he determines the offender, he’ll pay a discreet visit to them. And this time, without you dragging him away from fights, there is no place for mercy or jests.
At night, Childe returned home, cheerful as the sight of you getting ready for bed welcomes him. Yet in the dim lights, you’d gasp and approach him with concern, catching traces of smeared blood on his face or hands.
Ajax would just smile; he didn’t need to explain. Instead, he would quietly approach you from behind and envelop his arms around your shoulders in quiet stillness.
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so in an attempt to actually use positive thinking, anytime i fuck up and my brain reacts as if ive cause a minor apocalyptic event, i compare my fuck up to the 4 minute fuck up committed by the crew of the uss william d porter.
and only today, as i was having to explain what happened to my mom when i was explaining the whole comparison thing, did i realise that most people dont know about it and ive decided that needs to change because its objectively hilarious.
...which is a weird thing to say about an event that occured on a warship in 1943, specifically november 14th.
see the uss william d porter was a fletcher-class destroyer but you dont need to know what that means, just that she had guns that went bang bang and that she was escorting another ship, the uss iowa, to cairo.
while they were on their way there, they performed some gun trials like testing the anti-aircraft guns or the torpedos. and while they were running a torpedo drill, the crew of the porter managed to fire a live torpedo straight at the iowa which you know, in terms of a list of things to do while escorting a ship, shooting a torpedo at them is not on that list.
especially if the president of the united states is on board.
yeah so fdr was on board and the gun trials were actually his idea, and part of the trials was that they were conducted under radio silence.
and that means the crew of the porter couldnt just call the iowa to be like "move out the way, we accidentally shot a torpedo at you."
but they did have signal lamps and you know, the signalman on board was trained to signal this exact kind of message.
...and uh never mind, the signalman did manage to successfully tell the iowa that a torpedo was coming toward them but wasnt as successful when it came to the direction the torpedo was coming from.
not all hope is lost though because the signalman could still use the signal lamp to correct his previous mistake and-, never mind, he announced that the porter was reversing, which she wasnt.
yeah so at catastrophic mistake number 3, they broke radio silence to warn the iowa and she managed to turn out of the way just in time which meant no one got hurt. and even though the inquiry into the incident led to chief torpedoman (fantastic job title btw) lawton dawson being sentences to hard labour, fdr intervened and waved away his sentence, saying it was all an accident.
but yeah, so thats my new measure for "how much did i really fuck up?" and when i compared accidentally picking up a pencil case without a tag on it in wilko, turns out it was a very minor fuck-up. yes, the cashier had to ask another worker to grab a duplicate so they could scan the barcode, but i didnt nearly kill the president during wartime via accidental friendly fire
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ceilidho · 2 months ago
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'still wakes the deep' au
prompt: You're an environmental scientist conducting research on an off-shore oil rig with only a few days left before you're slated to leave. The eldritch creature they accidentally awaken throws a wrench in the works. First Meeting masterlist
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Choppy waters like Neptune’s eye meet your gaze when you look back at where you came from, the land on the other side but a beige striation on the horizon. 
“Afraid of heights, doctor?” your escort asks, his amusement borderline distasteful. It must stroke their ego to watch newcomers come aboard and flounder, gawking at the swells and waves crashing against the oil rig, each wave so cataclysmic that it’s a wonder the structure stays upright. A wonder of engineering, that is. 
The rig manager stands closer to the railing, staring without fear out into the ocean surrounding you. His sea legs are likelier studier than the ones that wash up ashore every fourteen days when he’s due for his OSHA mandated break. His knees don’t even buckle at the sight of the barnacles clinging nerve-wrackingly high up on the rig legs. Far too high up for comfort. 
“No, sir,” you reply, shaking your head. “Just water.”
He barks a laugh at that. “Plenny o’ that around here. Wouldn’y go leaning my head over the rail then, if I was you.”
You take another look down, balking at the frothy white streaking the latticework barrier around the jacket legs. No worries there; there isn’t a chance in hell you’ll be going anywhere near the rails. You’re too high up to know for sure, but you wonder if there are sharks plumbing the depths beneath the rig, excited by the noise and activity on board. 
You’d be shark chum if you went overboard. Beyond that, you’d be fish food; no sympathy from the sea to be found this far from land. 
“Where should I set up?” you ask instead. 
Sensing your eagerness to get started—and to get away from the edge of the rig—he gestures for you to follow him and sets off towards the door closest to you, leading you into the interior of the rig. “This way, doc—got a room already set up for ye. Cozier in there than out here.”
The first few days aren’t so bad after that. You spend the first day getting unpacked, your suitcase already waiting for you in your quarters, which doubles as your office, and then turn in early after prepping for the next day. 
As anticipated, you spend the next day hunched over the toilet bowl, stomach roiling from spending too long staring at the turbulent waters below. You’ve done this before but it never gets any easier. Despite your chosen field of research, you’re suited for dry land, not the sea. It’s the price you have to pay though. 
No coffee that first morning. Just tea to help settle your stomach. And it does for a bit—lets you get through your first day worth of tests without you upchucking while collecting water samples from the discharge point. You’ll save your indoor work for the days when the crests of the waves are high enough to spray the working deck. By dinner, your stomach is a little more settled, but still you elect to eat in your quarters instead of with the workers in the mess. 
You haven’t been on the rig long enough to have made any enemies, nor do you think that’s something that’ll happen during your brief time on board, but you definitely haven’t made any friends. It comes with the territory. The men that work on these rigs out in the middle of the ocean—even the ones on land, for that matter—tend to view your kind with distrust at the very least, if not outright hostility. 
It’s hard to blame them. The purpose of your visit isn’t to shower them with praises. You’re stationed on the rig for the next few days to collect data and samples to assess the environmental impact of the rig’s operations. It puts you somewhat at odds with them, the outcome of your work being potentially to the detriment of theirs. 
Some whisper the word like blasphemy. Government worker. They say it like you’re the Baba Yaga or a witch living in a cottage at the edge of the village, like uttering the word too loudly will summon you. There’s too much work to do around the rig for them to cluck their tongues like gossipy hens, but the men find time for it anyway. You’d roll your eyes if you were any greener. 
The truth is though, you’re used to it, and at this point in your career, you don’t have it in you to act like it’s such a shock that they wouldn’t give you the red carpet treatment. All you need is a hot cup of coffee, an office (or even just a desk) to write your reports, and some space to conduct your research without being badgered with questions.
Most of the men tend to blur together, a medley of fluorescent yellow hard hats and navy coveralls, respirators strung around their necks and goggles covering their eyes. It’s easy enough to mistake them for one another. 
Only one of them has managed to catch your eye so far, though you can’t say it’s for a particularly good reason. Of the lot of them, he’s the loudest. Which is saying something, considering that the crew tend to speak in shouts and hollers to make up for the crashing waves beneath them and the howling winds above them. He’s also among the tallest, broad shouldered and muscled—a former first responder or military, if you had to guess, though you keep your assumptions to yourself. 
You know better than to ask questions around him because you’ve learned in the short time that you’ve spent on the rig not to give him—Soap, they call him, or MacTavish when the rig manager is particularly pissed off—even an inch. 
It’s another crew member that gives you that heads up. “Din’y pay him any mind.”
“Who?” you ask, looking up from your work.
The crew member nods to the man posted on the other side of the main deck. “Soap. Bit of a showboat, that one. Always stirrin’ up the boys, gettin’ ‘em all riled up. Din’y let him distract ye too much.”
“Oh. Thanks.” You look back down at the data sheets in front of you. “I’m not worried though. He hasn’t been too much trouble.”
Famous last words. 
He isn’t too much trouble until he suddenly is; until he’s suddenly everywhere, always in your way somehow. Not so much underfoot as just always around the corner waiting with his stupid smug smirk that you’ve grown to despise and half-lidded electric blue eyes roving up and down the length of you. Aggravating you at every turn. 
Your first meeting is an accident. At least, it seems that way, and likely is—he seems too blunt for coincidences or chance meetings, happy to tell you to your face that he manipulated the situation in order to get you on your own. 
You’re wandering down one of the many circulatory hallways and slightly lost when a door suddenly opens, blocking your way. A jumpsuit-clad man twice your size walks out, his hair just brushing the top of the doorframe. Though you recognize him instantly, you’d never gotten close enough for the details to cement in your mental image of him. Up close, you get a better look.
The faint lines around his eyes and mouth betray either his age or the life he’s lived. Weathered; bronzed from days at a time spent under the sun. You’d noticed the mohawk earlier, but staring at the side of his head now, you can see the faint puckering of a healed wound splintering out from his temple into his hairline. Though the sides of his head are freshly shorn, the scar looks old—maybe a year, maybe more. 
When he notices that he’s not alone in the hall, his head turns in your direction and he stops, one foot still in the other room. Two thick brows go up at the sight of you standing there with your tablet clutched to your chest. 
“Hullo gorgeous,” Soap purrs, pupils suddenly pinpricks and your stomach drops. 
Because of course he would. You’d long figured he might be an arrogant piece of work from what little you’ve observed of him from across the rig, but you should’ve known he’d also be a flirt. He’s too good-looking not to be one. Tall and broad, with biceps the size of your head. You’re sure he rolls his shirt sleeves up just to feel them strain against the muscles of his arms. You certainly can’t help the way your eyes are drawn there. 
“Ah ken who ye are,” he says, taking a step towards you until the tips of his boots nearly touch yours. The door is still wide open behind him, swinging slowly towards the wall behind it. Soap towers over you easily, tipping his head to stare down at you. Your lips press into a tight line when his eyes drop to your chest, staring at the outline of your tits through your cardigan. 
“Okay,” you say through stiff lips.
“Yer that lass from the government. Ah thought ye'd be auld,” he jokes, shit-eating grin on his face. 
You nearly groan. It’s too early for this shit and you’re too tired from being up all night working on your report on the rig’s discharge water quality. 
“Well, I’m not,” you reply woodenly instead, altogether unimpressed with him. 
For as fit as he is, you’re not here to flirt or hookup, and you’re good at separating work and your personal life. If anyone manages to get under your skin enough to tempt you, it won’t be the man undressing you with his eyes while covered in a thin layer of grime and sweat. 
“Nae, yer no’,” he agrees, voice a low burr. His eyes flick up to meet yours. “I’m John, by the way.”
“I know.”
“…It’s polite tae give yer name when someone introduces thersel's tae ye.”
“I’d rather you just call me doctor.”
“Doctor, eh?” Soap purrs, running his tongue over his bottom lip. “Dae ye dae house calls, doc? Hae been feelin’ a wee bit feverish lately.”
You can’t help the way your cheeks heat at his comment. “Not that kind of doctor. Do you mind getting out of the way?”
“Jesus, I din’y ken ye’d be so fuckin’ prickly. Thought ye government workers were cheery a' the time.”
“Not when we have work to do,” you bite out, decidedly uncomfortable with his shameless perusal and eager just to get on with your day. “Can you move please? I have somewhere to be.”
All that does is force him to take another step closer, toe-to-toe with you now. You should’ve known he’d take that as an invitation. He reeks of grease and brine, the smell pungent and clinging to his skin and clothes. Almost like he sleeps and works in the same pair of coveralls instead of bringing his dirty clothes down to the laundry facility like everyone else at the end of the week. 
You tell yourself to stop staring at where his coveralls open to a sweat-slicked chest, dark hair poking up over the neckline, but your eyes don’t comply. A small cross dangles from a chain around his neck, nestled in the hair just above his pecs. 
“Good Catholic lass, are ye?” Soap asks, noticing the focal point of your gaze.
You scrunch up your nose at that. “No. I didn’t—it’s none of your business anyway.”
The stutter is where his eyes light up, a little gleam in the blue that lets you know you’ve caught his interest. Like seeing a storm well off in the distance and bracing for it anyway, knowing that you’re in its path no matter what you do. 
“A’right, doc, Ah'll leave ye tae it. Gotta get back myself anyway,” he says, rolling his shoulders back and standing up taller, and it’s only in that moment that you realize how low his neck had been bent in order to get closer to you. “Wait. I can’y let ye go lookin’ like that.”
You’re about to ask him what he means when he suddenly grabs you by the front of your cardigan and pulls you towards him, getting the grease on his hands all over the fabric. Your eyes nearly bug out of your skull as he pops the topmost button into its corresponding hole, the only one you’d left purposefully loose. 
The only reason you don’t snap at him to take his hands off you is because your tongue is a knot in your throat. 
“There we go,” Soap coos when the button is in, looking down at his handiwork all over the front of your shirt. “Lookin’ like part o’ the crew already.”
Your heart pounds in your chest long after he lets you go. When he steps to the side, the door flush with the wall by now, you dart around him, walking away as fast as your legs can carry you without sprinting. You ignore the way he belts out a laugh at your swift departure. Ignore the way your stomach cramps at the sound as well. 
He might end up being more trouble than you thought.
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obsessivevoidkitten · 4 months ago
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Male Triceratops Hybrid Alpha Yandere x Gender Neutral Capybara Hybrid Omega Reader
CW: Noncon, painful to pleasureable sex, mild violence (not towards reader), time travel, sexism, breeding, impregnation, pheromones, a/b/o, musk, scent marking, scent kink, sucking on dem big man titters, biting, bite marking, claiming, exceptionally huge dick, reader inflated with copious cum, knotting
Word Count: 1.9k
(Sometimes I get stuck on WIPs and have to do something new to write again. I wrote this in two days. Hope y'all like it! Please feed me with comments ❤️)
You were an omega demi-human. Part capybara, though the only evidence of this was your soft ears. More importantly, you were a quantum physicist. Currently, you were studying and recreating what you thought to be a time travel device. Your thoughts and theories had been dismissed entirely by your peers. It didn't help at all that you were an omega. Omegas working in academia were almost universally harassed, derided, and treated with condescension. As if their omega brains couldn't work at the same level as betas and alphas.
But even if it wasn't some type of device for traveling through time it was certainly alien to the time period from which it originated. It was made of advanced alloys and components that had been flattened, buried, and heavily corroded over time. The rock in which it was embedded in was older than any ancient society.
You had been working on manufacturing a functional copy of the artifact for years. Shmoozing up eccentric rich fucks, getting help from the exceedingly few colleagues who would help you in any way, slowly analyzing every detail and carefully bringing it all together. And at long last it was complete. The zenith of your career was at hand. And after some cautious testing that you conducted privately, it was ready to show to others.
You managed to get a spot at a small conference, though you had lied about the subject on which you would be speaking, and by the time it was your turn most of the audience had left. Not many academics cared what an omega had to say. Let alone one with a reputation for being a crackpot. But there were still enough of your fellow scientists and this would all be on video.
Instead of introducing the topic of your presentation, which would be a surefire way to lose what people were still watching, you opted for wheeling out your machine onto the stage and stepping in. With a deep breath, you booted it up and the entire contraption disappeared with a flash.
When you exited the machine there was an immediate problem. You stepped out of the machine into a forest with giant trees and flowers. You had only intended to go back a minute to when your presentation started but had made an error. You turned around to step back in but something pulled you backwards by your rear. You fell back and saw before you a humongous man charging at your time machine. He wore only a ragged fur loincloth and swung a massive club. He looked human except for his size, thick tail, scaled arms, and three horns on his head. One large horn from each temple and a small one extending from my nose.
You looked on in horror as he swung a mighty club down upon your only way back to your own time, repeatedly smashing it down until it resembled the exact shape of the artifact that had been excavated in your time. The relic that you had fashioned your own machine after. That wasn't what your attention was on, however. You were much more focused on getting away from the raging beast of a man who could flatten metal so easily.
Though with his task of destroying the frightening affront to nature that had appeared from nowhere now complete, he turned his attention to you. He shouted at you in a language you didn't understand, though his intent was clear. He had a massive erection sticking out from his loincloth and aggressively sniffing at your neck after picking you up with unexpected care.
With exertion of great willpower, the trike-man managed to not breed you silly right there in the forest. Your pheromones were driving him nearly feral. Modern-day omega pheromones were many times more potent than any prehistoric omega. They had evolved through millennia to pique the interest of choosy alphas despite the steep competition, an evolutionary arms race to try to snag an alpha.
That wasn't the only appealing trait. You were exotic, had cute little furry ears on your head, and you were so small, couldn't fight back and act all defiant like the omegas from his time.
You did struggle though. You had seen his arousal and could still smell it. Almost anything would be better than being violated in such a manner by such a hulking brute. He chuckled at your struggles, they were successful only in tiring you out. On the long way to his lair, between your squirming, kicking, and punching, you had gathered that his name was Orryg. At least you thought it was. He did not speak English, but he gestured at himself and seemed to be trying to give you his name.
He found your struggles kinda cute, mistaking them for an eagerness to escape his grasp and get on with taking his cock already. Omegas were so silly.
"Don't worry. Going to breed you plenty. Better in a secluded place."
You had no idea what he said, but his voice was deep and sounded angry so you could only assume it was something in annoyance at your struggles so you went limp. The giant man could snap you like a twig if he wanted to, best not to make him too upset. And honestly, even if you did escape, where the fuck would you go? What if Orryg wasn't the worst thing prowling about in the time period?
The walk went on for a while, with Orryg giving you an occasional lick or mumbling out some words you didn't have any hope of understanding. After a fair amount of time, Orryg stopped to sniff the air. Suddenly there was a roar from behind.
Orryg turned the two of you around just in time for him to take his club and smack it into a man who was every bit as huge as he was. Swatting him away easily despite being similar in size and build.
This one had sharp teeth and clawed fingers. He spat blood and growled. Orryg regarded him with a scowl.
"Udvik! You know this is trike territory!!"
"Omega smells good, not claimed yet. Thought I'd try..."
"Go before I smash you! This is MINE!"
Udvik spat again and hobbled off. But your suspicions had been confirmed, there were definitely things other than Orryg to be worried about in this time period. You were pretty shaken up seeing a half-dino man jumping at you and watching your captor fight him off. With those teeth it had clearly been no herbivore, it probably would have slaughtered you. Your fear must have been evident in your scent because Orryg held you tighter and nuzzled you.
"That battle got my blood flowing, really need to fuck you. Sorry if it scared you, I'll breed you all better. Almost home."
You continued to have zero idea what the hell he was saying. But you figured with the nuzzling it was something comforting. Though your ability to figure anything out was pretty absent by this point. Your brain was soup. All the anxiety and adrenaline and alpha pheromones had finally gotten to you. You looked at the ground in a stupor as he continued to carry you over his shoulder.
The next thing you were consciously aware of was him entering the cave with you and placing his club at the entrance. He laid down on a slab of stone covered in thick layers of soft furs and placed you on top of his muscled body. Before you had any chance to react he began administering attention to your sensitive neck. You squirmed involuntarily, writhing in pleasure on top of him from the neck stimulation alone.
If that wasn't enough, you were practically drowning in his musk. You had been since you entered his dwelling, the cave was saturated in it, but now he was forcing your head under his arm and making you drink it all in. Smearing your face with it and marking you with his smell. Slick was leaking out of your needy hole and pooling on his abs.
"I knew this would make you feel better."
The trance you were in was only partially broken once you felt the blunt head of his much too-large member press against your hole.
"W-wait! I don-"
But he had no idea what you were saying, and even if he did he knew you'd love his dick so much that you wouldn't protest for long. At this point, you were going to be his... no matter what.
You yelped in pain as he pressed into you, spreading you like none of your toys ever had. He swallowed your shout by pressing his mouth into yours, trying to distract you from the pain with a sloppy kiss before attending to your neck again. Despite every instinct telling him to just ram in and ravage you he restrained himself knowing that doing otherwise could seriously injure you.
"Ah!"
Even with his care it still hurt as he slowly eased his prick all the way into you, he rubbed the outline of his cock through your tummy. Lucky for you omegas were extremely stretchy and pliant.
Orryg slowly thrust back and forth inside you as he hungrily took in your scent. As more precum dribbled into you and mixed with your slick you took him easier and the pain slowly began to ebb away and was eventually replaced almost entirely by pleasure. You moaned softly into his chest as you bit at his pec and sucked his nipple while he kept digging his cock into you.
Your whole body shook and spasmed for a solid minute as you came more intensely than you ever had before. Orryg grunted as the feeling of your body convulsing around him brought him nearly to his climax. The trike man upped the pace just a bit, his heavy balls smacking into you before he started knotting inside you and pumping you full of his virile spunk. One small mercy was that his knot was only a bit thicker than the rest of his cock, not over two times as wide like a modern alpha.
The volume of semen was such that it made you look heavy with child, which you certainly would be after lovemaking like this.
Now that you had been well and truly fucked there was only one thing left for your brand new "husband" to do to really seal the deal. He, with great caution, buried his fangs into your neck to mark you permanently as his to everyone who might see you. Which would be more than you might expect. This was Orryg's outpost, he stayed there while on patrol, but he usually lived with his herd.
It would be a hard adjustment for you to make. You would constantly be under Orryg's watchful gaze or the guard of his tribemates when he went to go hunt or if he went to do things too dangerous for you to be with him. You'd never be alone. Even in the safety of the herd, Orryg would obsessively treat you like something fragile. You would have to adjust your diet to what they ate, mostly fruit and vegetables though they ate meat too, though nothing was familiar to you. You would have to slowly learn their language so you could eventually communicate with the new society that "adopted" you.
But it was okay if it took you a while to get settled, you had all the time in the world.
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reasonsforhope · 5 months ago
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"A large clinical trial in South Africa and Uganda has shown that a twice-yearly injection of a new pre-exposure prophylaxis drug gives young women total protection from HIV infection.
The trial tested whether the six-month injection of lenacapavir would provide better protection against HIV infection than two other drugs, both daily pills. All three medications are pre-exposure prophylaxis (or PrEP) drugs.
Physician-scientist Linda-Gail Bekker, principal investigator for the South African part of the study, tells Nadine Dreyer what makes this breakthough so significant and what to expect next.
Tell us about the trial and what it set out to achieve
The Purpose 1 trial with 5,000 participants took place at three sites in Uganda and 25 sites in South Africa to test the efficacy of lenacapavir and two other drugs.
Lenacapavir (Len LA) is a fusion capside inhibitor. It interferes with the HIV capsid, a protein shell that protects HIV’s genetic material and enzymes needed for replication. It is administered just under the skin, once every six months.
The randomised controlled trial, sponsored by the drug developers Gilead Sciences, tested several things.
The first was whether a six-monthly injection of lenacapavir was safe and would provide better protection against HIV infection as PrEP for women between the ages of 16 and 25 years than Truvada F/TDF, a daily PrEP pill in wide use that has been available for more than a decade.
Secondly, the trial also tested whether Descovy F/TAF, a newer daily pill, was as effective as F/TDF...
The trial had three arms. Young women were randomly assigned to one of the arms in a 2:2:1 ratio (Len LA: F/TAF oral: F/TDF oral) in a double blinded fashion. This means neither the participants nor the researchers knew which treatment participants were receiving until the clinical trial was over.
In eastern and southern Africa, young women are the population who bear the brunt of new HIV infections. They also find a daily PrEP regimen challenging to maintain, for a number of social and structural reasons.
During the randomised phase of the trial none of the 2,134 women who received lenacapavir contracted HIV. There was 100 percent efficiency.
By comparison, 16 of the 1,068 women (or 1.5%) who took Truvada (F/TDF) and 39 of 2,136 (1.8%) who received Descovy (F/TAF) contracted the HIV virus...
What is the significance of these trials?
This breakthrough gives great hope that we have a proven, highly effective prevention tool to protect people from HIV.
There were 1.3 million new HIV infections globally in the past year. Although that’s fewer than the 2 million infections seen in 2010, it is clear that at this rate we are not going to meet the HIV new infection target that UNAIDS set for 2025 (fewer than 500,000 globally) or potentially even the goal to end Aids by 2030...
For young people, the daily decision to take a pill or use a condom or take a pill at the time of sexual intercourse can be very challenging.
HIV scientists and activists hope that young people may find that having to make this “prevention decision” only twice a year may reduce unpredictability and barriers.
For a young woman who struggles to get to an appointment at a clinic in a town or who can’t keep pills without facing stigma or violence, an injection just twice a year is the option that could keep her free of HIV.
What happens now?
The plan is that the Purpose 1 trial will go on but now in an “open label” phase. This means that study participants will be “unblinded”: they will be told whether they have been in the “injectable” or oral TDF or oral TAF groups.
They will be offered the choice of PrEP they would prefer as the trial continues.
A sister trial is also under way: Purpose 2 is being conducted in a number of regions including some sites in Africa among cisgender men, and transgender and nonbinary people who have sex with men.
It’s important to conduct trials among different groups because we have seen differences in effectiveness. Whether the sex is anal or vaginal is important and may have an impact on effectiveness.
How long until the drug is rolled out?
We have read in a Gilead Sciences press statement that within the next couple of months [from July 2024] the company will submit the dossier with all the results to a number of country regulators, particularly the Ugandan and South African regulators.
The World Health Organization will also review the data and may issue recommendations.
We hope then that this new drug will be adopted into WHO and country guidelines.
We also hope we may begin to see the drug being tested in more studies to understand better how to incorporate it into real world settings.
Price is a critical factor to ensure access and distribution in the public sector where it is badly needed.
Gilead Sciences has said it will offer licences to companies that make generic drugs, which is another critical way to get prices down.
In an ideal world, governments will be able to purchase this affordably and it will be offered to all who want it and need protection against HIV."
-via The Conversation, July 3, 2024
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toxycodone · 7 months ago
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Laios x Beastkin!Reader
an. Senshi, Chilchuck, and Marcille x Reader are mentioned quiiiite a bit in here. Izutsumi x reader is more sparse. split between furry/scaly/feathery beastkin after the more general ones in the beginning. SORRY if the formatting is weird I got "text limited" a lot on this lmfao
this is a lot so. <3 show sum luv
general sfw
when you two first meet...bro is ELATED. He knows Izutsumi, which is fine, but you're an entirely different one. Who also doesn't seem to be super against him getting to know them
He asks SO many questions. What are you mixed with? Are you naturally born or artificial? What's it like having wings? A tail?
He's testing out all your features. He loves them so much.
When there's downtime, he likes to conduct "research". This goes for analyzing your features and making notes, comparing them to his books and other notes, and even more intricate tests like reaction time and stuff.
He'll hold a candle/torch by your face and test your pupil dilation. It's oddly intimate because he's just staring you down and its like. okay. are we gonna kiss orrrr
Loves. Loves. Loves just WATCHING you. Seeing the way you pounce on little bugs for fun or get spooked by certain noises. He just smiles and is all amused.
You'll catch him doodling you pretty often. He makes notes like "y/n caught a treasure bug today. They seem pretty skilled at hunting. Failed to kill it for some reason...just played with it until it scurried off." The doodles are like...surprisingly pretty decent. The monster portions of you are the best looking and most detailed. But it's so cool to see just how much he pays attention to you and your idiosyncrasies.
Your interactions with Izutsumi also interest him. Do you guys get along? Are you prey to her? Or is she to you? If you and Izu are talking or around each other he's watching like a hawk out of pure curiosity.
However...there's a particular page in his journal where he's providing feedback on how he would make you "better" aka cooler. It's basically just his own ramblings. No Laios, an extra set of eyes and the ability to breath fire and ice and everything in between is not. better. you're just salivating over the idea of your monster OC
If you bring this up to him he actually agrees. After a lot of note taking and observation he's really fascinated just on how well suited your entire existence is to...surviving. He has a lot of theories he'd love to share about you.
But he has e x t e n s i v e notes on your body. It's something that fr makes you blush because, why is he theorizing about the base of your tail and how it connects to your spine? and the number of nipples you have? wait...how is his guess right...?
But Laios is so useful. You might as well call him your owner. You don't have to lift a finger when it comes to taking care of yourself. (He misses his dogs so you fill in.)
He takes care of your skin/fur/scales/feathers, cuts your claws, helps you file down your hooves or horns. He's very into taking care of you if you'll let him. (Marcille also hops in on this since its her love language LOL. When she's not busy with Izutsumi she helps when she can.)
If you are like...afraid of water or don't enjoy bathing. You are like the party's pet. They're debating on how to get you clean before Chilchuck is like "if you don't take a bath I am going to kill you and throw you in there myself." Laios then goes all puppy dog eyed bc he thinks Chil is being to hard on you and then he sighs and is like "fine. I'll buy you a treat when we get back to the surface."
Marcille/Laios are really good when it comes to bath time. They aren't weird about it (Laios is checking you out but. In a curious type of way. Marcille is giving him side eye if hes getting too...Laiosy. But he respects your boundaries. Just imagine Laios happily scrubbing you while humming a tune awe.)
And when it comes to sleeping arrangements...you can alternate between anyone in the party. But Laios and Chilchuck are your best bets. Marcille is an excellent sleeping partner if the dreams don't bother you, shes soo happy to have you sleep with her and she's soft and smells nice.
Laios happily lets you sleep with him. He's actually not super cuddly (unless you are he'll reciprocate). But he is very much like, giving you a ton of space. If you fall asleep before him he just relents and sleeps as comfortably as he can around you lol. Literally just like any other pet owner.
Chilchuck....sleeping with him is difficult bc Izutsumi will fight you on it, but she relents if you can fit in without much issue (bonus points if you're warm) so. You guys can both overheat this poor man. Izu may even start cuddling with you more. She finds a lot of comfort in having another beastkin in the party even though she won't say it.
And speaking of Chilchuck...you're likely a bit more cooperative than Izutsumi, so he gets your help when it comes to checking for traps and finding treasure. With your elite hearing and other abilities, he's actually really pleasantly surprised how useful you are. (If you were a half-foot he'd definitely want you in his guild). He gives you pets and treats when the others aren't really paying attention (He doesn't want them to see him doting on you is all LOL).
Okay. So. Your diet. This is an anime about eating so. Let's get down to it.
Whether you're a herbivore, carnivore, or omnivore--Laios is ENSURING your needs are taken care of in the party. It is of upmost importance to him.
He takes notes and asks about how certain foods make you feel. Are you more energized? Less energized? Stomach hurting? Pooping well? (Will ask this with upmost sincerity, he wants to make sure the butter/milk/etc used in their cooking isn't interfering with your tummy. Whether you want to answer this is up to you lol).
Laios and Senshi happily adjust things to your needs. Laios will spend time foraging with you, Senshi will find certain monsters with more nutrients that meet your needs. Senshi is also like, really knowledgeable about nutrients, so sometimes in your food he may grind up shells or bones to meet calcium needs and such. When he cooks he'll give you bones or soften them up in water so you can eat the marrow. :-)
Senshi...is the coolest though. He also lets you perch on him (like Izutsumi) and since he's lived in the dungeon for so long, he knows a lot about monsters firsthand. If it applies, he'll give you tips about yourself or some monsters you should prey on. Senshi and you go on little foraging trips too. He'll have you sniff things out in return for extra food during dinner.
Laios likes to see you hunt prey and eat it raw, though. Everyone else would rather not and it makes them sick but he thinks it is SO cool. He honestly wishes he could do that. He takes hunting lessons from you and will give you tips on being stealthier and such.
Your teeth really fascinate him. He likes testing your bite strength on different types of material (Like wood, stone, bones, etc.). He'll stick his fingers in your mouth and admire them if youd let him. He gives you so much praise in general its so cute.
AND. PETTING YOU. He is so tactile if you let him (i mean look how much he tries and fails to pet izutsumi). When you give him the all clear he is like. jumping for joy. he LOVES to pet you and praise you. He absentmindedly pets you when hes sitting down or standing by you. And when you nuzzle into his touch his heart SOARS. You can see on his face he's blushing and has that like. excited wiggly smile <3
I think when he's just sitting around he just messes with your tail. He likes it.
Lay down beside him and he will happily pet you and be like "do you like this? Is this a good spot?" Present. Your belly to him. and he is over the moon. He pets you wildly and is like "Who's a good boy/girl/monster?" He is so unashamed about doing this too. Chilchuck would put a stop to it if you didn't like it so much.
If you give him kisses or tongue bath's he's eating that shit up (i mean. look at those extra comics w him and dogs he lets dogs just kiss all over his face omfg). He isn't a huge fan of getting his hair wet (sensory issue) but when it's your drool...he can't help but be excited. Laios is all like "they're grooming me?? this means they like me, right??? Can I officially say I befriended a monster???"
It's proof that you care for him and view him as apart of your pack...he is just over the moon at this.
I will say...Laios is way too "has no backbone with you" for a while. You're chewing shoes? You can't help it! Stealing snacks? It's instinctual! Playing too rough with Izutsumi? C'mon guys...
But when he notices his party actually getting upset. You will be surprised how he can put his foot down. Not even max puppy eyes work on him. He will leash and muzzle you if needed.
But you can always get away with messing with his stuff. He thinks its fun to chase you around when you got his shirt in his maw. Then he happily wears the torn up gear and Marcille is like "let me sew it..."
For Scaly Beastkin:
He's so helpful when it comes to shedding season. Laios finds nice rocks all the time and helps scrape off any patches that are drying and crusting and hes not even phased and doesn't think its gross at all. He would keep some skin to test its resilience if you let him.
And going with that, when you need to shed and soak he would help you find a place and will happily assist with the shedding. He's so excited to be there honestly. But he feels bad you are uncomfortable so he lets you cuddle up under the water with him while you wait for your shed to soften up <3
Laios runs his fingers over your scales absentmindedly...just loves feeling how smooth they are, especially after he spent so much time helping them maintain that pristine smoothness.
He gets Marcille's help to make a moisturizing ointment to put on you every now and then so you don't get to dried out in the dungeon!! Marcille starts to fret about that too. You're just kinda chillin and she'll reach over and put ointment on your hands/cheeks/tail. Just areas you may be susceptible to drying out.
Also...he lets you use him as a heating rock. Sunshine is really limited in the dungeon, so...when you need a warm up he's there and waiting and extremely excited to warm you up with a hug.
For Furry Beastkin:
Brushes you. He'd do this EVERY evening (and morning) if you let him. He takes notes, too. Do you have an undercoat? Or is it just one? What does this mean about what environment you originated from?
He probably tries to use your shed fur to embellish his own clothes or put in his pillow/blankets. Reduce, Reuse, Recycle I guess?
And to add to that...remember how Marcille made a cute little cat head from Izutsumi's fur? He does that too. He and Marcille make cute little shapes outta your shed and giggle together about it.
If you get fleas...he is the party member you should tell. He'll help you get rid of them and won't rat you out to the other members LOL. He'd probably blame himself if it spread and the rest of the party is like "you expect us to beleive. you got fleas. Laios you would be excited if you got them."
For Feathered Beastkin:
Preening....<3. When you have pin feathers he is so sweet and gentle. gently picks them out. It kinda tickles bc he's just gliding his fingers over your wings. You'll catch him sighing in content and burying his face in the softness. It's so sweet.
He collects your feathers and shows them off to Marcille (who also really likes them.) Your down is SO useful too. The party has the softest blankets and pillows thanks to you. When you're molting everyone is calling dibs on the feathers to stuff in their bedding.
Laios examines your wingspan and is really interested on stuff like weather you can fly or not. If you can, he's in awe. He wants to see it. Maybe even fly with you if he can. Its always been a dream of his to do that.
nsfw
tw (for nsfw). monsterfucking? if that counts. mentions of vent/cloaca/knot
This man. It is so easy to tell overtime just how fucking horny he gets over monster stuff. He is addicted to just how much you differ from him. Your scales, fur, feathers, wings, etc....he thinks they're all extremely sexy.
He just loves the primal aspect of it? Like you act on instinct. Do what makes you happy. Like of course you have human reasoning and such but STILL. You're so non human and otherworldly it makes his stomach knot up and his dick hard as a rock. He wants to know EVERYTHING about you.
If you have a heat/rut cycle...he is. fucking. begging you come to him for help. jfc you don't even have to let him stick his dick in you. He just slowly probes your hole with his fingers and legit GASPS when he feels it clench around him. Not only is he learning so much about you and monster anatomy but hes also having his monster fucking dreams come true.
I mean it is a given with Laios but his fucking face is always in your hole. He loves eating pussy/ass so fucking much. And having your dick, clit, or knot down his throat drives him wild. He eats your slick and cum like he's starving. He's so sloppy with it too--there's spit and slick and cum all over his face and he's just slurping it all up like its his last meal.
He definitely "examines" you. He'll stick his fingers in you and stretch out your hole just to get a better look at what's inside. (imagine his thumbs sliding in and prying you open.) The muscles pulsating and the color and the smell...god he's drooling. You feel all vulnerable and exposed but he's just constantly praising how amazing your body and its functions are.
He busts so quick with a beastkin it....wow. Like. You are seriously all he has ever dreamed of and shit. I can't imagine he'd be able to contain himself. He cums and just still wants more, he fucks you through the overstimulation until he cries
Oh he wants to know whats in your pants so bad its ridiculous. Like. I cannot explain just how much he is vibrating with excitement
If you have a cloaca...he's very gentle with your hole at first. You explain to him what to look for, what feels good. He'll gently explore with his fingers until he finds the right hole and then he's going at it. He's shoving his tongue in there happily too. He knows what a cloaca is. He knows it's a singular vent for waste and sexual functions. Doesn't matter. His tongue is going in there. Laios is beyond excited to taste everything and see what makes you squirm.
If you have a knot...it's a given he wants you to knot him. It takes him a few tries (he can't take your knot at first because he's too tight) but when he finally is able to its like. euphoric for him. He loves feeling your warm cum in his ass and your desperate pants against his throat as your overstimulated self gets adjusted to being stuck to him. Gods.
Plus...I've discussed this on my blog in more detail but with a beastkin reader he's definitely into
You biting/scratching him up. He lovvveess being marked. Use him as a chew toy PLEASE
Predator/Prey rp: He's a trained hunter but he wouldn't mind being hunted...He loves how strong you are and how you can turn the tables on him if you wanted.
Just?? You being feral?? He likes it when you act more like your monster side and just treat him like a toy.
Breeding Kink: Even if you aren't able to get pregnant or breed (either due to sex or incompatible genetics due to being part monster), he's still really into it. You can fill him up vice versa...He loves the feeling of having you last inside him and he loves knowing you're still filled up from him. Plus, it adds to the more animalistic part of sex which is what he likes
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swagging-back-to · 2 years ago
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also the people who keep telling me to go to collge are miserably obnoxious. according to my GED tests im already college level in every single subject. in reading and science i had the highest score possible. everything else was one point below the maximum score. going to college is a waste of my time, literally.
#this isnt a brag post this is a rant post#why the fuck would i torture myself with college when im already comparable to a college graduate#i dont need a stupid piece of paper#like seriously even in math im comparable to college students. i got 5 less than the maximum score in math. my absolute weakest subjuct#is 5 points below maximum scores. I LITERALLY DO NOT NEED COLLEGE. the people who work there and conduct the tests#DID go to college and they all told me they scored considerably less than me. a few of them said they barely scored passing scores.#So the people who graduate could possibly and are literally worse off than i am.#why. why would i waste 4+ years of my life and potentially hundres of thousands of dollars and make myself miserably#miserable****#just shut up#every single time you fuckers tell me to go to college i am more and more convinced it's a waste of my time#and no i dont need to have a specific occupation title in mind for me to be successful. it's called being flexible#if i dont take up the jobs available i will starve. taking whatever job i can is better than waiting around for the world to give you every#thing on a silver platter. like seriously shut up you sound so entilted and ignorant to the realities of REALITY.#my entire fucking life it has been nothfing but people hounding me over college. LITERALLY since i was 5 fucking years old.#they had us write college essays for scholarships in second grade.#every field trip was to a college. we went to easily every single college in the state at least once.#every single fucking time i hated it more and more and i wanted to go less and less.#it enrages me. it makes me shake with hatred. it is such a fucking scam and yet everyone does free fucking advertising for it#why the FUCK do you give a SINGLE SHIT about what i choose to do or not to do in terms of collge. why the FUCK do you assume#that college is feasible for everyone in any way. (finacially emotionally physically etc etc) just fuck off serious fucking ly#rant#college is a scam#anti college
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hellofears · 7 months ago
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wasn't me no one in this home of mine voted for anything of the sort and most likely anyone I know didn't either. I forget how many ppl live in the uk sometimes peace and love to the william wanters well and truly
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#HONESTLY. not suprised though british mothers in their late 30s-40s i see you grandmas i see u the gay men peeping ur head out the corner#i see the princess fantasy it is not without its flowers i see it all and i meet u with acceptance#hes not ugly tho i'm the type where i don't think anyone really is or i haven't had that sort of reaction to anyone so idk though#also tbh idk how many ppl are actually taking those tests.. unless harry styles was on there because the fans the stans will get their favs#the acalades the little titles if they can with speed could be best juggler best dog shit picker upper best at climbing shit they love it#they love it all. their twitter handles at the top that shit gets cropped in obis paint on their iphone and put on twt like a proud parent#(i get it in that sense though its steering off the william topic matter)#with their kids art. was 1ce real in2 kpop and i got out to my benefit lot of shit long story i'm glad i'm in a better place now#since i got into in in probs objectively my darkest or some of my darkest not that u cant like kpop or talk about it or be in that scape#in a way thats positive or like healthy with me it was just not healthy unfortunately. my relationship is better with it now and i still#interact with content personally and more casually. i-#still have alot of love and appreciation for what ppl meant to me even if its different now i still have so much love for shit. just not so#deeply in the environment yk that round and round#standom as previous.. no doubt at the time i was thirsty for distraction i cudnt handle myself or my life basically my#life feeling like a fuckn tornado that was pissing on me so i probably no matter what were going to find vices but i have no doubt about th#talents and passion and artistry over there. all the racism and colourism n shit that just felt constant had a part#my conduction#what i surrounded me with my landscape because its a lot of inter like personal connections and heavy online bonding n just mess where its#like my fckn life force just i was screaming from the inwards outwards and still deaf to it. for me it was a host it turns out 2 be for man#cant track my gradual change really other than a year or maybe between 2 years we grow still thbink about stuff i hate myself for doing#the change happened gradually and naturally i feel though it all had dramatics its hard to track#there was shit before that when i was even younger and oh hellscape i fear it was bumpy i'm not gonna say it got better with age or smth#cause i dont believe thats true atleast not entirely i hate all of it i some of the connections i made are so key in my growth and i have s#nice wonderful like irrefutable memories i hope ppl r doing well so bad so bad some i even want to talk to again but i know for me i cant#give in 2 that pull and the day if i reconnect i will and hopefully there'll be wonderful ppl to reconnect with in that case to meet me#its all ever changing if i think differently in the future i do i just hope that will be me coming to understand myself and development#being hyper critical of myself tho i talk about me like i jumped through hoops to do detestable shit so its a balancing game and im wonky#its the fans the stans or its the royal family entourage they are vivid in my head or the ppl who came across it and decided to just add-#their 2 sence or saw it and were like hehe this is so unserious im going to be mischevious or take the piss lol#all of which get their acknowledgement its all fun and games truly those who take it serious will and shall however
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mostlysignssomeportents · 24 days ago
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“That Makes Me Smart”
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If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:
https://pluralistic.net/2024/12/04/its-not-a-lie/#its-a-premature-truth
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The Biden administration disappointed, frustrated and enraged in so many ways, including abetting a genocide – but one consistent bright spot over the past four years was the unseen-for-generations frontal assault on corporate power and corporate corruption.
The three words that define this battle above all others are "unfair and deceptive" – words that appear in Section 5 of the Federal Trade Commission Act and other legislation modeled on it, like USC40 Section 41712(a), which gives the Department of Transportation the power to ban "unfair and deceptive" practices as well:
https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/10/the-courage-to-govern/#whos-in-charge
When Congress created an agency to punish "unfair and deceptive" conduct, they were saying to the American people, "You have a right not to be cheated." While this may sound obvious, it's hardly how the world works.
To get a sense of how many ripoffs are part of our daily lives, let's take a little tour of the ways that the FTC and other agencies have used the "unfair and deceptive" standard to defend you over the past four years. Take Amazon Prime: Amazon executives emailed one another, openly admitting that in their user tests, the public was consistently fooled by Amazon's "get free shipping with Prime" dialog boxes, thinking they were signing up for free shipping and not understanding that they were actually signing up to send the company $140/year. They had tested other versions of the signup workflow that users were able to correctly interpret, but they decided to go with the confusing version because it made them more money:
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2024/05/amazon-execs-may-be-personally-liable-for-tricking-users-into-prime-sign-ups/
Getting you signed up for Prime isn't just a matter of taking $140 out of your pocket once – because while Amazon has produced a greased slide that whisks you into a recurring Prime subscription, the process for canceling that recurring payment is more like a greased pole you must climb to escape the Prime pit. This is typical of many services, where signing up happens in a couple clicks, but canceling is a Kafkaesque nightmare. The FTC decided that this was an "unfair and deceptive" business practice and used its authority to create a "Click to Cancel" rule that says businesses have to make it as easy to cancel a recurring payment as it was to sign up for it:
https://www.theregister.com/2023/07/12/ftc_cancel_subscriptions/
Once businesses have you locked in, they also spy on you, ingesting masses of commercial surveillance data that you "consented" to by buying a car, or clicking to a website, or installing an app, or just physically existing in space. They use this to implement "surveillance pricing," raising prices based on their estimation of your desperation. Uber got caught doing this a decade ago, raising the price of taxi rides for users whose batteries were about to die, but these days, everyone's in on the game. For example, McDonald's has invested in a company that spies on your finances to determine when your payday is, and then raises the price of your usual breakfast sandwich by a dollar the day you get paid:
https://pluralistic.net/2024/06/05/your-price-named/#privacy-first-again
Everything about this is "unfair and deceptive" – from switching prices the second you click into the store to the sham of consent that consists of, say, picking up your tickets to a show and being ordered to download an app that comes with 20,000 words of terms and conditions that allows the company that sends you a QR code to spy on you for the rest of your life in any way they can and sell the data to anyone who'll buy it.
As bad as it is to be trapped in an abusive relationship as a shopper, it's a million times worse to be trapped as a worker. One in 18 American workers is under a noncompete "agreement" that makes it illegal for you to change jobs and work for someone else in the same industry. The vast majority of these workers are in low-waged food-service jobs. The primary use of the American noncompete is to stop the cashier at Wendy's from getting an extra $0.25/hour by taking a job at McDonald's.
Noncompetes are shrouded in a fog of easily dispelled bossly bullshit: claims that noncompetes raise wages (empirically, this is untrue), or that they enable "IP"-intensive industries to grow by protecting their trade secrets. This claim is such bullshit: you can tell by the fact that noncompetes are banned under California's state constitution and yet the most IP-intensive industries have attracted hundreds of billions – if not trillions – in investment capital even though none of their workforce can be bound under a noncompete. The FTC's order banning noncompetes for every worker in America simply brings the labor regime that created Silicon Valley and Hollywood to the rest of the country:
https://pluralistic.net/2023/10/26/hit-with-a-brick/#graceful-failure
Noncompetes aren't the only "unfair and deceptive" practice used against American workers. The past decade has seen the rise of private equity consolidation in several low-waged industries, like pet grooming. The new owners of every pet grooming salon within 20 miles of your house haven't just slashed workers' wages, they've also cooked up a scheme that lets them charge workers thousands of dollars if they quit these shitty jobs. This scheme is called a "training repayment agreement provision" (TRAP!): workers who are TRAPped at Petsmart are made to work doing menial jobs like sweeping up the floor for three to four weeks. Petsmart calls this "training," and values it at $5,500. If you quit your pet grooming job in the next two years, you legally owe PetSmart $5,500 to "repay" them for the training:
https://pluralistic.net/2022/08/04/its-a-trap/#a-little-on-the-nose
Workers are also subjected to "unfair and deceptive" bossware: "AI" tools sold to bosses that claim they can sort good workers from bad, but actually serve as random-number generators that penalize workers in arbitrary, life-destroying ways:
https://pluralistic.net/2024/11/26/hawtch-hawtch/#you-treasure-what-you-measure
Some of the most "unfair and deceptive" conduct we endure happens in shadowy corners of industry, where obscure middlemen help consolidated industries raise prices and pick your pocket. All the meat you buy in the grocery store comes from a cartel of processing and packing companies that all subscribe to the same "price consulting" services that tells them how to coordinate across-the-board price rises (tell me again how greedflation isn't a thing?):
https://pluralistic.net/2023/10/04/dont-let-your-meat-loaf/#meaty-beaty-big-and-bouncy
It's not just food, it's all of Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs. Take shelter: the highly consolidated landlord industry uses apps like Realpage to coordinate rental price hikes, turning the housing crisis into a housing emergency:
https://pluralistic.net/2024/07/24/gouging-the-all-seeing-eye/#i-spy
And of course, health is the most "unfair and deceptive" industry of all. Useless middlemen like "Pharmacy Benefit Managers" ("a spreadsheet with political power" -Matt Stoller) coordinate massive price-hikes in the drugs you need to stay alive, which is why Americans pay substantially more for medicine than anyone else in the world, even as the US government spends more than any other to fund pharma research, using public money:
https://pluralistic.net/2024/09/23/shield-of-boringness/#some-men-rob-you-with-a-fountain-pen
It's not just drugs: every piece of equipment – think hospital beds and nuclear medicine machines – as well as all the consumables – from bandages to saline – at your local hospital runs through a cartel of "Group Purchasing Organizations" that do for hospital equipment what PBMs do for medicine:
https://pluralistic.net/2021/09/27/lethal-dysfunction/#luxury-bones
For the past four years, we've lived in an America where a substantial portion of the administrative state went to war every day to stamp out unfair and deceptive practices. It's still happening: yesterday, the CFPB (which Musk has vowed to shut down) proposed a new rule that would ban the entire data brokerage industry, who nonconsensually harvest information about every American, and package it up into categories like "teenagers from red states seeking abortions" and "military service personnel with gambling habits" and "seniors with dementia" and sell this to marketers, stalkers, foreign governments and anyone else with a credit-card:
https://www.consumerfinance.gov/about-us/newsroom/cfpb-proposes-rule-to-stop-data-brokers-from-selling-sensitive-personal-data-to-scammers-stalkers-and-spies/
And on the same day, the FTC banned the location brokers who spy on your every movement and sell your past and present location, again, to marketers, stalkers, foreign governments and anyone with a credit card:
https://www.404media.co/ftc-bans-location-data-company-that-powers-the-surveillance-ecosystem/
These are tantalizing previews of a better life for every American, one in which the rule is, "play fair." That's not the world that Trump and his allies want to build. Their motto isn't "cheaters never prosper" – it's "caveat emptor," let the buyer beware.
Remember the 2016 debate where Clinton accused Trump of cheating on his taxes and he admitted to it, saying "That makes me smart?" Trumpism is the movement of "that makes me smart" life, where if you get scammed, that's your own damned fault. Sorry, loser, you lost.
Nowhere do you see this more than in cryptocurrencyland, so it's not a coincidence that tens – perhaps hundreds – in dark crypto money was flushed into the election, first to overpower Democratic primaries and kick out Dem legislators who'd used their power to fight the "unfair and deceptive" crowd:
https://www.politico.com/newsletters/california-playbook-pm/2024/02/13/crypto-comes-for-katie-porter-00141261
And then to fight Dems across the board (even the Dems whose primary victories were funded by dark crypto money) and elect the GOP as the party of "caveat emptor"/"that makes me smart":
https://www.coindesk.com/news-analysis/2024/12/02/crypto-cash-fueled-53-members-of-the-next-u-s-congress
Crypto epitomizes the caveat emptor economy. By design, fraudulent crypto transactions can't be reversed. If you get suckered, that's canonically a you problem. And boy oh boy, do crypto users get suckered (including and especially those who buy Trump's shitcoins):
https://www.web3isgoinggreat.com/
And for crypto users who get ripped off because they've parked their "money" in an online wallet, there's no sympathy, just "not your keys, not your coins":
https://www.ledger.com/academy/not-your-keys-not-your-coins-why-it-matters
A cornerstone of the "unfair and deceptive" world is that only suckers – that is, outsiders, marks and little people – have to endure consequences when they get rooked. When insiders get ripped off, all principle is jettisoned. So it's not surprising that when crypto insiders got taken for millions the first time they created a DAO, they tore up all the rules of the crypto world and gave themselves the mulligan that none of the rest of us are entitled to in cryptoland:
https://blog.ethereum.org/2016/07/20/hard-fork-completed
Where you find crypto, you find Elon Musk, the guy who epitomizes caveat emptor thinking. This is a guy who has lied to drivers to get them to buy Teslas by promising "full self driving in one year," every year, since 2015:
https://www.consumerreports.org/cars/autonomous-driving/timeline-of-tesla-self-driving-aspirations-a9686689375/
Musk told investors that he had a "prototype" autonomous robot that could replace their workers, then demoed a guy in a robot suit, pretending to be a robot:
https://gizmodo.com/elon-musk-unveils-his-funniest-vaporware-yet-1847523016
Then Musk did it again, two years later, demoing a remote-control robot while lying and claiming that it was autonomous:
https://techcrunch.com/2024/10/14/tesla-optimus-bots-were-controlled-by-humans-during-the-we-robot-event
This is entirely typical of the AI sector, in which "AIs" are revealed, over and over, to be low-waged workers pretending to be robots, so much so that Indian tech industry insiders joke that "AI" stands for "Absent Indians":
https://pluralistic.net/2024/01/29/pay-no-attention/#to-the-little-man-behind-the-curtain
Musk's view is that he's not a liar, merely a teller of premature truths. Autonomous cars and robots are just around the corner (just like the chatbots that can do your job, and not merely convince your boss to fire you while failing to do your job). He's not tricking you, he's just faking it until he makes it. It's not a scam, it's inspirational. Of course, if he's wrong and you are scammed, well, that's a you problem. Caveat emptor. That makes him smart.
Musk does this all the time. Take the Twitter blue tick, originally conceived of as a way to keep Twitter users from being scammed ("unfair and deceptive") by con artists pretending to be famous people. Musk's inaugural act at Twitter was to take away blue ticks from verified users and sell them to anyone who'd pay $8/month. Almost no one coughed up for this – the main exception being scammers, who used their purchased, unverified blue ticks to steal from Twitter users ("that makes me smart").
As Twitter hemorrhaged advertising revenue and Musk became increasingly desperate to materialize an army of $8/month paid subscribers, he pulled another scam: he nonconsensually applied blue ticks to prominent accounts, in a bid to trick normies into thinking that widely read people valued blue ticks so much they were paying for them out of their own pockets:
https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-65365366
If you were tricked into buying a blue tick on this pretense, well, caveat emptor. Besides, it's not a lie, it's a premature truth. Someday all those widely read users with nonconsensual blue ticks will surely value them so highly that they do start to pay for them. And if they don't? Well, Musk got your $8: "that makes me smart."
Scammers will always tell you that they're not lying to you, merely telling premature truths. Sam Bankman-Fried's defenders will tell you that he didn't actually steal all those billions. He gambled them on a bet that (sorta-kinda) paid off. Eventually, he was able to make all his victims (sorta-kinda) whole, so it's not even a theft:
https://www.cnn.com/2024/05/08/business/ftx-bankruptcy-plan-repay-creditors/index.html
Likewise, Tether, a "stablecoin" that was unable to pass an audit for many years as it issued unbacked, unregulated securities while lying and saying that for every dollar they minted, they had a dollar in reserves. Tether now (maybe) has reserves to equal its outstanding coins, so obviously all those years where they made false claims, they weren't lying, merely telling a premature truth:
https://creators.spotify.com/pod/show/cryptocriticscorner/episodes/Tether-wins–Skeptics-lose-the-end-of-an-era-e2rhf5e
If Tether had failed a margin call during those years and you'd lost everything, well, caveat emptor. The Tether insiders were always insulated from that risk, and that's all that matters: "that makes me smart."
When I think about the next four years, this is how I frame it: the victory of "that makes me smart" over "fairness and truth."
For years, progressives have pointed out the right's hypocrisy, despite that fact that Americans have been conditioned to be so cynical that even the rankest hypocrisy doesn't register. But "caveat emptor?" That isn't just someone else's bad belief or low ethics: it's the way that your life is materially, significantly worsened. The Biden administration – divided between corporate Dems and the Warren/Sanders wing that went to war on "unfair and deceptive" – was ashamed and nearly silent on its groundbreaking work fighting for fairness and honesty. That was a titanic mistake.
Americans may not care about hypocrisy, but they really care about being stolen from. No one wants to be a sucker.
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beauty-funny-trippy · 2 months ago
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Reasons why we know there's something wrong with Grandpa:
• believes immigrants are eating their neighbors pets because he heard someone say it on TV (without any evidence) • thinks injecting disinfectant into our veins might be a good idea. (It's definitely not, don't try it.) • claims America's F35 fighter jet is completely invisible, even if you're right next to it (like Wonder Woman's plane)
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• praises white supremacists and KKK members who were chanting antisemitic hate speech, calling them "very fine people" • focuses on imaginary issues like preventing children from changing gender while at school, but ignores real problems like school shootings • thought it was a good idea to give away our desperately needed Covid test machines to our adversary ("Grandpa, what have you done?" — he can't be left alone for a minute) • decided to believe Putin's lies, but dismiss findings from America's intelligence agencies • claims America had airplanes during the Revolutionary War
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• believes in the Nazi ideology that immigrants are "poisoning the blood of our country," and says some migrants are actually subhuman "animals" • insisted that the U.S. would have fewer coronavirus cases if it conducted less testing (yes, a U.S. president in charge of controlling the crisis, actually said something this inept, repeatedly) • due to his incompetence and lies during the Covid crisis, the U.S. had one of the highest rates of Covid deaths in the world • thinks windmills cause cancer and kill whales • speaks endlessly about his concerns re: dying by electrocution from a boat battery or being eaten by a shark
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• thinks he's above the law and, as president, should be able to commit as many crimes as he wants • is a billionaire who whines about how badly he's been treated, then he's chauffeured to his private jet • likes to discuss Arnold Palmer's penis • after NINE years of repeatedly promising to unveil his Healthcare Plan "very soon," he admits he still has no real plan —only "concepts of a plan" • has a bizarre attraction to the fictional cannibal and serial killer, Hannibal Lector (why? no one knows —and everyone's afraid to ask)
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• advocates dangerous plots, like using the military against Americans who disagree with him, or using the DOJ to arrest them, or just telling people to "beat the crap out of them" and he'll pay their legal fees • thinks having a national day of violence is a good idea (we should never have let Grandpa watch "The Purge") • wants to be the "law and order president," yet this 34 time convicted felon incites people to riot and to commit criminal acts of violence • unable to take the loss of an election like a man, he had a temper tantrum like a toddler, that culminated in a treasonous insurrection
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⠀This guy is so delusional, he claims he's a genius because he often speaks incoherently in something he calls "the Weave." Here are two examples: • "How disgusted were all when we see all of us are when we see three days ago when we viewed their parade." Asheboro, NC, 8/21/24 • When asked, "What specific legislation will you commit to, to make child care affordable?" He responded, “Well, I would do that, and we’re sitting down, you know; I was, somebody, we had Senator Marco Rubio and my daughter, Ivanka, who was so impactful on that issue. ...But I think when you talk about the kind of numbers that I’m talking about that because the childcare is childcare, couldn’t, you know, there’s something you have to have it, in this country you have to have it.” New York, NY, 9/5/24 ⠀If this was anybody else's Grandpa, the family would be having discussions about who's going to go with Grandpa to the doctor to find out what's wrong with him, and who's going to be in charge of finding him a nice convalescent home to live in. ⠀My suggestion is that it might be a good idea to elect a president who has no cognitive impairment and can tell the difference between reality and delusions. Personally, I think that's a rather important quality in a president.
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luveline · 7 months ago
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Jade omg i love coworker james so much!! I was hoping i could request them taking the elevator up to their office together and it breaking down and them being stuck together!! Super cliche but i think it could be really cute and fun and that you’d write it so well!
You decide today is the day you stop pretending to forget something in your car. James has been nice lately. He does still hide your mug everyday, and he acts like an idiot at your desks. Just yesterday he made a parachute for one of his little figurines and made it land in your lunch. But he keeps saving you when you’re in trouble, and he might think he has to do it but it’s not true. 
If something goes wrong, James is the one who helps you out. Maybe it’s proximity, but maybe he’s just not the jerk you pegged him to be. 
So you’re being brave. You get out of your car, to James’ surprise, and you give him a teeny tiny smile. “Morning,” you say, making your way to the office steps, and following closely behind him. 
“Morning,” he says, looking back. He holds open the door for you without further comment. 
You walk in through the building’s lobby and past the main receptionist to the twin elevators. There’s a downstairs to the building, the lab, where the company conducts their water safety testing, and an upstairs where you and James and your colleagues work. He hits the elevator button on the right, you both wait for it to come down. 
“Did you see about that movie?” you ask. 
“I did!” He laughs at himself generously. “You’ll have to be more specific, I’m afraid.” 
“Crazy, if you gave me like, two more seconds before you interrupted, I would’ve specified.” You catch yourself scowling and soften your expression. “You know, the movie you told me about with the aliens that can hear you from ten miles away.” 
“Oh. What was I supposed to see about it?” 
You should’ve waited in the car. The elevator descends and the doors open. James waits for you to go in first before he follows, and you let him click your floor number as you lean against the mirror. 
You elect to wait in silence as the elevator chugs up, and up, and.
It stops short with a horrible sharp sound you’ve never heard it make. 
James looks at you, then the control panel. The doors don’t open. “That’s fucked,” he says hotly. 
“We stopped too early, right?” 
“No, no way.” He clicks the open door button, waiting approximately half a second before he starts to spam it. 
“Wait, what if you mess it up?” 
“Mess it up? It’s stuck.” 
You glare at him. “It’s not stuck.” 
“It’s stuck.” James slams his hand into the emergency button and waits with a frown for it to ring. “Hello?” he asks. 
“James, it’s still ringing.” 
“I’m glad this is funny to you,” he says. 
You hide your smile. You’d been unnerved by the sound, sure, but the elevator isn’t creaking or whining, it’s just stopped. There’s an inkling of worry growing in your chest. You’re perhaps a smidge too tired to panic. It’s barely 8AM. 
And James’ reaction is wildly comical. He glares at the control panel and rings the emergency button again, and again. Nobody answers. After a few long seconds of this, the control panel goes dark, backlit numbers fading. 
The overhead light blinks out. 
It’s quite dark without it. 
“What the fuck?” James asks. Surprisingly, he sounds less panicked than before. “The electrics gone. A power cut?” 
“It’s really dark,” you say unhelpfully. 
“If only I had one of my darling Smiskis to light up the lift.” James takes his phone from his pocket and turns on the torch, your eyes aching but then thankful for the added illumination. You can see his face again, the tug of a brow too handsome to be meant for grumpiness, and the confused pout of his lips. He has a lovely face, with sweet eyes, dark brown hair framing it, and the aura around him when he’s smiling is lovely too.  He’s a little less lovely when he frowns, but not by much. “I’m gonna shout,” he warns you. 
You and James spend that first half an hour believing the lift to be a short problem. Then another half an hour on the phone to Remus and then your boss, who assures you both that the maintenance team will fix it within the hour. “Within the hour?” James says to you where you’ve sat cross-legged on the floor. “Within the hour? How long do they think we’ve been in here?” 
“Maybe we can call the fire brigade to come and save us?” you suggest quietly. You and James are in very close quarters. His shouting has hurt your head. 
“They might have to. Why does nobody know what’s wrong with the lift? Are they really that complicated?”
James sits down beside you dejectedly. The lift is snug, but there’s room for him to sit further away that he doesn’t use. 
“You okay?” you ask. 
“Fine.” 
You open your bag in your lap and unveil your thermos. It comes with a cup as the lip. “Do you want some hot chocolate?” 
James tips his head back against the wall. “Yes,” he says, “okay. You never finished telling me about the alien movie anyways. What’s the news?” 
You smother a smile. “I’m not telling you. You should’ve listened to me the first time.” 
For some reason, you don’t argue once in the two hours you spend stuck. Not after the initial bickering. You drink your hot chocolate and you end up sitting together watching the trailer for the movie on your phone, and neither of you move away after. That is, until the elevator flicks back on and the doors are being pried open —you spring apart, caught red handed enjoying each other's company. 
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justasecretflower · 20 days ago
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There's a she-wolf in the closet! / Homicipher men ft. A Kitsune! reader!
Now Playing: she wolf
0:01 ❍─────── 4:28 ↻ ⊲ Ⅱ ⊳ ↺ Volume: ▁▂▃▄▅▆▇ 100%
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Synopsis- you are a kitsune that ended up in the homcipher world, how do the homcipher men react to you? (pre relationship + est relationship)
Incl- Mr. Crawling, Mr. Scarletta, Mr. Silver, Mr. Chopped, Mr. Hood, Mr. Gap.
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🖤Mr. Crawling
🖤oh how fast he fell in love with you was absolutely insane.
🖤whenever he follows you around he mumbles “pretty, pretty”
🖤he’s attached at your hip, whenever you stop for just a second he immediately sits still and looks up at you with a huge grin while he tries to grab onto you gently. He likes holding you, is all.
🖤do kitsunes purr? Because if you did. The only thing he likes to do all day is just sit with you, pet you and relish in all your purrs. He loves them sm
🖤has Mrs. Bride make you pretty outfits that meet your general aesthetic.
🖤when I tell you he falls more in love with you every time he see you get aggressive oh my goodness…
🖤he likes giving you pats! “Mr. Crawling what are you doing” “pat pat pat”
🖤he likes to feel how soft your tail and ears are all the time.
🖤show him your magic! And your fox form! He is interested in all the stuff that you can do
🖤if you ever leave him alone for a long period of time, like in the ending when you go back home without mr. Crawling, he’ll sit down and cradle himself. Pretending like he’s holding you
🖤he likes you hair, especially if it’s an unusual color. He’s not used to seeing many colors where he lives, so the contrast makes him go wild and want to play with it all the time. If it’s not, he still likes how soft it is like your tail and ears.
❤️Mr. Scarletta
❤️you being so beautiful, so mystical and majestic makes him impossibly more overprotective
❤️he wants to keep you all to himself. It’s only him that can look at you, feel your soft tail and ears, brush your hair out gently, admire your pretty form and magic.
❤️he knows that you are restless though and don’t let him keep you away from everything like that, so he obeys, naturally.
❤️whenever you’re out though, he has eyes on you, if not he’s following you with his umbrella up over the two of you.
❤️he admires your fox form, likes to see you all cuddled up to him like in that form.
❤️he hates when the other monsters eyes linger for a long time on you, especially mr. Crawling or mr. Silver.
❤️he knows mr. Silver would love to tie you up and research all of your unusual quirks, meanwhile Mr. Crawling is just obsessed with how pretty you look and has an infectious smile on his face whenever you see him.
❤️he pouts like a baby in the corner whenever you let anyone else touch your kimono, your hair, ears, or tail.
❤️when he gets you all to himself, he likes seeing all your powers and what you can do, he also likes to hear you purr if you can, like mr. Crawling.
🩶Mr. Silver
🩶he’s so fascinated with you.
🩶he likes to conduct experiments on you, but has you set up a safe word for when it hurts you or when he goes to far.
🩶he likes to test your limits on your powers, and see how fast, or how powerful your fox form is.
🩶he also wants to see how you being a Kitsune might affect your offspring.
🩶of course, the question if he can even reproduce is something that plagued him since he read about human pregnancies, but after meeting you it seemed to make him think more what you guys would make if you had a child
🩶a kitsune ghost mix? Would they still be a kitsune or a half kitsune?
🩶he likes to see how petting your ears or tail makes you react.
🩶if he goes possibly to far on a strength durability test for your powers and accidentally tires you out he’ll stop experimenting for a couple of days, secretly, because he’s guilty, but he tells you it’s so he can get accurate data when you’re in your strongest state.
🩶makes you use your powers on him to see how strong you are
🩶he likes how strong you are.
🩶he doesn’t even like physical affection, but he loves touching your fur while in fox form, or cuddling with you and touching your ears.
🩶if you tell him to stop the experiments and just be your partner, he will, and he’ll feel a little guilty you thought he only saw you as a test subject.
🩶after that day, he’ll praise you a lot. “So pretty” “so strong.” “My fox.”
🧡Mr. Chopped
🧡oh wow he just loves you.
🧡first time he ever saw you he squealed and yelled “pretty! Pretty!”
🧡he begs all the time for you to put his face next to your tail or ears for him to nuzzle against it. He’s never felt anything so soft!
🧡”soft so soft so pretty!”
🧡he gets jealous if the other monsters look for too long. He’s super insecure he doesn’t have a body to hold you in front of them
🧡”look away. Not yours.”
🧡he has to get serious with mr. Silver when telling him not to experiment on you, he makes it clear he doesn’t want you to be a little test subject.
🧡he loves your company sm. He just likes sitting and admiring you with the softest eyes with stars in them.
🧡you can tell he’s in love just by the way his eyes light up
🧡he finds your powers a little scary, but attractive.
🧡while in your fox form your about his size. So you can look him in the eyes without picking him up, and he enjoys that.
🧡he likes if you have powers that just are cool little colourful lights, or you can make a harmless explosion of light. He yells “again! Again!”
🤎Mr. Hood
🤎when he first met you he immediately got intrigued but knew that the other monsters would also be, and tried shielding you from them.
🤎when he saw you use your powers against mr. Scarletta he literally flushed so hard. You being so powerful made him immediately crush on you.
🤎he could just sit and watch you forever. You can’t tell how soft he’s looking at you, but you can when he tilts his head a little and and uses a dark, void black smoky hand to direct your eyes to where his would be.
🤎he also has Mrs. Bride get you pretty kimonos and dresses, he enjoys seeing you do little fashion shows.
🤎he learns how to say “beautiful” in English and sometimes you catch him looking at you for a long time, just to hear a echoey voice say “beautiful..”
🤎he enjoys tying your kimonos
🤎sometimes he’ll pick up little gems or hair accessories that fell down from the mortal world to put in your hair.
🤎he doesn’t get jealous when other monsters look at you, he gets scared. He knows how truly powerful some of these monsters are and knows how fascinated mr. Silver is with you, and how obsessed mr. Scarletta is.
🤎he isn’t confrontational by any means, so he just reminds you he’s there for you while you handle it.
🤎because he knows with your strength you 100% can handle that on your own.
🤎if he heard you purr ever, he did it on accident. Like touching your ears while you were asleep in his arms to get a strand of hair off of your ear, and a tiny purr comes out.
🤎he was shocked for a bit, then hesitantly pulls his hand back and strokes your ears and hair.
🤍Mr. Gap (I dunno much about him but somebody told me I should add Mr. Gap)
🤍he’s obsessed with you, he asks to eat you all the time (lovingly)
🤍he calls you “little fox” you have no other name to him.
🤍he gets extremely jealous and tells the other monsters to get their eyes and hands away from his little fox.
🤍likes seeing you beat up monsters with your powers. Will laugh in the gaps while you beat up a monster.
🤍finds it extremely attractive.
🤍despite what other people might think, I believe he’s very intelligent and is aware of your fox form, your powers, and the folklore behind your type.
🤍in folklore, it states kitsunes are afraid of dogs, so sometimes he makes low growling noises in gaps to scare you 🙏💀
🤍when you kiss, he bites your lip so hard you bleed and then licks it, since he loves the taste of your powerful kitsune blood.
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Homicipher reqs are open🤍
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