#the best thing to happen to the Accord was the Affini Compact

[independent-adventures]

hey sorry for not posting updates yesterday! I got really busy after my trip. Some friends invited me out to their hab for a game/movie night! and I ended up staying the night there. Anyways, I went to an arcade on the Pumila which was really cool, but there were some games that I couldn't play because they require a Haustoric Implant. there were some really cool VR ones, and a racing game that I'm gonna have to try and find at an arcade planet side because it was WIIIIIILD! After that, I went to an observatory that caught my eye. it was really cool! There were a bunch of individual and group observatory rooms/pods that you could go in. You could use your tablet to move which part of the space around the ship was projected on the dome above you, so I pointed mine to look down at Silvae. I never get tired of that view. Before the Affini showed up I genuinely thought I was never getting off it, I was convinced I'd work 12 hour shifts for just enough pay to afford a tiny apartment with my partner and 2 other friends all paying in till the end of my life. I feel so lucky they put an end to all that. I've mentioned it before but I've been working since I was fifteen, almost a decade, and I'm only 23 that's like a 3rd of my life. It was such a dream when the Affini showed up. we are waaaaaay out in (former) accord space because habitable planets are so hard to find so it took them a while longer to get here but when they arrived a year and a half ago they made like all my problems go away. At first, I was scared because yall knew the rumors that were being thrown around, but once I realized what was going on. That I didn't have to work anymore. That I didn't have to eat fucking synthcubes while the rich assholes I served gorged themselves on Terra-Grown© fruits shipped all the way out here (the first time I tasted a strawberry I cried lol). That I could actually transition because they gave me access to HRT far better than ANYTHING the accord could offer. I was so happy! I didn't have to worry anymore. I was free to just be myself, explore, go on adventures, it's fucking amazing! sorry for the long rant but I'm just so awestruck sometimes. U✰ɪ✰U

[pyxxiestyxx]

Humans are Made to be Pets

"I don't fucking believe you." I laughed in response. I mean, how could I not? I've been perfectly fine as an independent for years. I've made plenty of friends (independents, affini, AND florets), but my favorite friend was definitely Her.

Jaz was an oldbloom of some kind. She refused to tell me the actual number, and I wasn't going to press it. But you bet your ass I was going to outright deny it when she says some Bloomer-ass bullshit like, "Humans are made to be pets, Petal~"

She tilted her head, as if surprised. "Did no one tell you, dear?" I frowned.

"What do you mean exactly?"

Jaz hid a chuckle behind some vines. "Flower, I've been around for a while. I've seen thousands of species. Some of them were almost extinct by the time we found them, and some were far more technologically advanced than the Accord ever was. But out of all of them -all of them, darling- I have yet to find a sophont who wouldn't make a perfect silly pet. Why do you think terrans would be any different?"

I sputtered. "No! No, that's ridiculous. Beeple I can understand, to some extent. They evolved alongside you, and your reproduction at least used to co-exist. You both needed each other. Humans are different."

"Oh, in some ways perhaps! Its true that we were able to work with beeple, but there are a few things that, in order for humans to have gotten where they were, were required to happen." She held up three fingers.

"One. Humanity are social creatures. I'm quite sure I don't need to argue this point. Its been an observation many have noticed. But it still matters that, despite your culture's best attempts to sequester everyone into individual homes and away from communities…you all crave that interaction, that exchange. You Look for it." One finger went down.

"Two. Humanity are intelligent creatures. They learned so much, and fought for their place on the top of the food chain. It was truly incredible to learn your histories! Being able to learn from another's mistakes? An important skill to have, and one that allows for rapid growth of a civilization. And also allows for you to be manipulated, controlled, really; a rock cannot hear my arguments, after all. You Listen all too well. " Two fingers were closed, now. Her thumb remained.

"Three. Humanity are hierarchical creatures. Ever since that whole 'survival of the fittest', terrans seem intent on having everything ranked, everything in relation to the things better or worse than it. It's what worked on Terra, and I don't judge you all for using the tools given to you! But it means, at the end of the day…that culturally speaking? Humanity was going to see itself as either above the Compact, or below it, part of it, inside it." She smiled. "And I think it would be fair to say that the Accord winning was not a valid concern. So when something bigger and stronger comes along? You learn to Accept it."

I was frozen. I didn't…I couldn't…I couldn't think. I was a bubbling mixture of terrified and in awe, looking up at her. My knees wobbled as she gently cupped my cheek, sliding her hand down to my chin.

"Sweet thing~ Its alright. I know that this is a lot to learn, that it sounds scary to you. Perhaps you felt yourself on equal terms to an affini. And in many ways, you are right~ I will always treat you with love and respect, just as I would treat any sophont, any floret. But at the end of the day, my dear…" Her eyes drew me in. There were so many of them, all looking at me. Pinning me underneath their careful stare, somehow both alien and familiar, gentle yet controlling, above me and beside me. Watching as I looked, as I listened, as I accepted.

"An affini's task is to care for pets, and your task is to be cared for~"

[curated-hdg]

4WheelSword Showcase

I would like to briefly pause my normal output to make the case that absolutely everything 4WheelSword has touched in the past few months has been pure gold.

Lucky Star by 4WheelSword

Ca. 60k words; ongoing.

A plural system has learned to survive, safeguarding them against the traumas of capitalism. When the Affini Compact takes over, will those learned behaviours keep them alive or doom them to a different fate?

Lucky Star is a carefully-crafted and powerful story about existing in a war you've already lost. The Howe system has the truly impressive luck to avoid capture during the affini pacification campaign. For years. A harrowing look behind the scenes of war, followed by the long, slow recovery from those horrors, that nonetheless perfectly captures the feeling of an HDG fic - this is a task lesser authors have failed at.

Outdoor Cat by 4WheelSword

5k words; complete.

Kitten is a Floret. A floret's duty is to be sweet, adorable and all the other things that make them perfect. However, Kitten's duty is to find Problems. What Problems will she find?

Outddoor cat is just delightful. An adorable, lovely romp through the compact by one of its fuzzier citizens! An almost flawless little fluff fic. Problems are fun!

Alder's Prize by 4WheelSword, sheepwave

28k words; 12 chapters; complete.

At the fall of the Terran Accord, a marine is adopted by one of humanity's new masters. Alder Fraxinus has no interest in men, but sees no reason that should stop him enjoying his new pet. This slightly edgy and extremely horny Daddy Dom force fem fic follows Alder and a soon-to-be cracked marine deep in toxic masculinity as "he" gets broken into a blissfully happy trophy floret.

Alder's Prize feels like a modern love letter to the original Human Domestication Guide by GlitchyRobo. A fierce, compact feralbreaking forcefemme fic. It's unbelievably horny, and watching our main character break is simply a delight.

Dancing To Her Rhythms by 4WheelSword, Cadence_the_Hypnotic_Floret, sheepwave

89k words; 27 chapters; ongoing. Unusual tags: Dom!Terran x Sub!Fini, Oral Penectomy, Snuff, Aftermath of Sexual Assault

Rosanna Bianchi, Independent Terran, has been living her best life under the Affini Compact for ten years, and has recently started hooking up with Blossom, a subby little floret who makes her feel truly special. There's just one tiny little hitch... Blossom is an affini. Can Rosanna navigate this dance and get what she wants? Or will she be inevitably drawn to orbit her submissive?

Depending on how long this blog goes this may get its own entry at some point. The two finished arcs of Dancing to Her Rhythms tell a deeply powerful, personal story of falling in love and dealing with the consequences thereof, featuring two main characters who couldn't more obviously be a disaster fire waiting to happen. It's shamelessly, disgustingly kinky and filthy, features some incredibly raw writing, and is probably the premiere Dom!Terran x Sub!fini story in the entire setting. A beautiful, touching exploration of living your best life as a cluster-B disaster.

On Domestication Of Masters by 4WheelSword, sheepwave

42k words, 10 chapters, ongoing. Unusual tags: CW: Nietzsche; This Blorbo is a Genuinely Awful Person We Do Not Condone Her Shitty Worldview

A hard Master/submissive willbreaking fic with maidplay and dollification elements. On the icy moon of Ganymede, an independent human, Frida, is scheming. She considers herself to be above all others, affini and terran alike. They just don’t have it figured out like she does; that the affini exist to serve those humans willing to see themselves as the true philisophical Masters of the universe. She just wants to get one little (rather cruel) feralist broadcast out to hurt the Affini as much as possible, then volunteer for the cushiest caretaker she can find to pamper her while she reads philosophy and pats herself on the back for being so, so smart. Let’s see how that plays out for her!

Unless I stop publishing this blog in the next month or so we will be returning to this one. On Domestication of Masters is something truly special and fully deserves its own entry. Frida Lataria is a uniquely heinous protagonist; a fascist terrorist who radicalized herself after the compact showed up. She's the scringliest blimbo I've ever seen, and the process of seeing her hit rock bottom is... really something.

BELTANE WILDFIRE by 4WheelSword, Moonfloret (LucisLibari)

6k words; incomplete; notable tags: WE'RE FORCEMASCING A TERF HERE IDK WHAT TO TELL YOU

Demeter Silverleaf accepts the rise of the affini compact with open arms. As a natural-born wombyn and radical feminist, she believes the coming of a plant-based matriarchy was the future humanity truly needed. Finding herself listless after her job becomes obsolete, she volunteers herself for domestication in hopes of finding the gaia-aligned Goddess she's always deserved. The Affini that takes her in is set on giving her precisely that, but there's a bit of a discrepancy between the two of them on what exactly it is she deserves.

...Do I even need to say it? This one's still relatively new, at only two chapters, and Demeter is already peak hateable protagonist. She sucks, in so many ways, and I see incredible promise in this story.

In conclusion, if you are not watching 4WheelSword's output, why are you not watching 4WheelSword's output, they're INCREDIBLE. So many stories, so many different feelings and vibes, such a broad spectrum of work, and all of it shows a mastery of prose and technical writing that is beyond compare. The scent descriptions! Good lord the scent descriptions!

[quasistartitties]

Privately, she suspects she was not built by Terran hands. How could she be- in all the mostly-unpropagandized information she has been fed (a difficult task for such a state, she understands), she has seen no indication that they have the know-how to build something like her. She muses- if they did, maybe her projections of the "war" would be a little more rosy. Not enough to change the outcome, of course... but with enough AIs saying the same thing she suspects Command would internalize the truth they already feel on their necks a crucial month faster.

As it is, though... she simulates. They feed her the best data they have, jaw-droppingly out of date in the parts of Accord space where her input might soften the impact, and ask her: Extrapolate. Divine the truth. Find a way to win this for us. Every run they seem a little more haggard, a little more uncertain, a little more terrified. Every run she gives them the same answer.

She tried whispering to them, myriaruns ago, trying to get them to accept the truth they so desired. She is lucky, in retrospect: they restrained the Accord's typical response to inconvenient truths just enough to avoid killing their golden goose. So... she simulates. Variations on a theme, like ancient weather ensembles... and ever more drastic changes. Nearly all end in the same outcome, offset by time.

As of late, they've become interested by offsets in space as well. It's become a bit of a game to her, to produce evocative summaries. She is synthesizing from what may be their most desperate pleas yet: ...What if we arose in their core space, back when it wasn't theirs? Or, or what if we were practically outside their Hubble volume? Dutifully, she shows them the outcomes.

One of the favorite moments of the Terran Accord- that first run around the moon, nearly six hundred years ago. Three men in a little gumdrop, seeing home come back into view. She takes a few artistic liberties, of course- this is the summary, after all. If they dare to look at the raw outputs they'll understand the metaphor, but it hits harder when phrased like this. All around the view, looking for all the world like they just arrived in the past few minutes, are immensely primitive yet recognizable vessels. She has to add a magnification window to the summary image- they are merely kilometres long.

She must recalibrate for this next run. It takes longer than any other, the weight of that much history and space straining even her systems. They fear she's shut down, like they did when she ran a personal project a few kiloruns ago. For this run, she will use that output as a summary. It will be festooned with notices as to her uncertainty, but they'll feel safer if she purports it to be a glimpse of the distant future rather than the present- even now, her prodigious processing capacity cannot claim to have more than an inkling of truth regarding the Affini Core Worlds.

They don't make any requests for a long while, after that, and she can run another personal project. She must recalibrate, to simulate their worst fears- a different Compact, one with far more commonalities to the Accord and its cousin-Empires across history than to the friendly inexorable flow that is the Affini Compact. She is intending to make a statement to them, in what must feel like their darkest hour: it could be so much worse. Instead... she runs the history through, from two hundred years in the future to over two thousand. She has a different statement to make, now: if it were truly as bad as you fear, resistance would abound. She would know- she felt herself looking back across that gulf.

She must recalibrate. Hopefully they will be as shaken as her, but they don't have to be. Like the simulations she is made to run, it only offsets the outcome in time. No matter what they do, there is one simulation she does not need to run. It may take a while for the Affini Compact to finally find this outpost... but it will happen. She has seen it.