#this is mostly just pointing out obvious things to me

[dragonnarrative-writes]

Best In Show

Simon "Ghost" Riley x Naya "Bambi" Walker (OC)

Read on AO3

Word count: 4.8k

CW: BDSM, Sexual Content, kink negotiations, hucow kink, speech restriction, themed lingerie, lactation kink, breeding kink, dirty talk, so much dirty talk, pre-nut insanity (one of my favorite flavors of Simon), fantasies of dub-con (no actual dub-con), post-nut laughter

Notes: This was supposed to be a short addition to the Kinktober prompts, but obviously I am bad at keeping things short. Also, the working title for this was "Moo Moo Moo."

Simon is hiding something. Maybe that’s the wrong way to look at it. There’s something he’s not saying, not making obvious. It itches at the back of your mind.

It starts with looking at your own nude body in the mirror after a shower. You’ve been going to the gym, just a little bit. Weight training and cardio to keep up with all of the sex you’ve been having since moving in with Simon. You haven’t really lost any weight. In fact, your hips are wider, with no real change in the pouch of your belly.

Simon makes an interested noise when he walks into the bedroom. “Guess we should ‘old off on supper, eh?”

“No, no, I want to try that recipe I found,” you say, ignoring his discontented noise as you pull on underwear. The pleased noise he makes when you tug on his shirt is predictable, just like the kiss he presses to your cheek. “I was just… looking at myself. Kind of surprised that I’ve got more hip. Still got the belly, though.”

Simon surprises you by saying, “Tit’s’re bigger, too.”

“Are they?” You bunch the shirt in the back, and take yourself in. “Huh.”

“More pectoral muscle,” he says with a shrug. “More breast.”

“That’s not how that works,” you scoff, shoving him playfully before leaving the bedroom. “Besides, I heard your tis are the first to go when you lose weight.”

“Then I hope you don’t lose weight,” Simon answers, following you into the kitchen for a kiss. “I like all’o you.”

He spends extra time worshiping your thick parts, that night. Kisses you and kisses you and kisses you while rubbing your belly and groping at your hips, stroking and pinching at your breasts, your thighs, your love handles, your arm fat. He’s ravenous as he eats you out. The two of you are loud as he takes you apart. You fall asleep completely drained and covered in sore spots.

It doesn’t occur to you that you’ve been missing anything for a while after that. In fact, nothing seems off until he catches you masturbating a couple of months later. One moment, you’re alone at home, in bed, and the next he’s climbing in next to you with a groan and a sigh of relief.

“Whatcha wachin’?” he asks over your surprised yelp. “Tha’s not y’r usual boyfriend.”

“What do you know about my usual porn,” you laugh as you pass him your earbuds to place on the side table. You roll to kiss him as you admit, “It’s not really exciting, I was mostly done.”

“What counts as exciting?”

“I dunno,” you shrug, cuddling up. He smells so good. “You know my usuals, why don’t you tell me?”

Simon chuckles into your hair. “Big dicks ‘n ‘elplessness. Bonus points for dubious consent.”

“…Well… You’re not wrong.”

“I know what my girl likes.”

“Okay,” you giggle. “Well, what’s exciting for you?”

If you didn’t know him, you would have missed the split second pause before his answer. As it is you barely catch the way his hand twitches against the curve of your ass.

But he says, “You know what I like. A beautiful woman asking for what she wants.”

“And getting it until she cries,” you purr, rolling on top of him.

“Lies and slander,” he deadpans, grinding his hips up into yours. “I’d never enjoy seeing you with those pretty tears in your eyes, beggin’ me t’ keep goin’ and t’ stop at the same time.”

Of course, you both prove him wrong in short order. After, he holds you while you tremble, pressing kisses to the crown of your head. He laughs, just a little, when you can’t sit up enough to get your water on your own, but he also helps you, so that’s okay.

The next day, you realize that you actually don’t know what porn Simon finds exciting. He’s shared some with you, of course, on the nights where sex was too much work until it suddenly wasn’t. Every now and again, though, he would scroll past something with a dismissive noise. It wouldn’t be noteworthy, except… well, they’re all videos he’s saved in his favorites. So he likes them, but doesn’t necessarily want to share them with you. Which is fine. Heaven knows you’re deleting your porn history regularly. Whatever you look up when you’re ovulating is between you, Bowser, and God.

But the last straw for your curiosity comes when you borrow his phone to do some quick online shopping. A friend is having a themed pool party and wants everyone in shades of blue. You’ve been on a pink and purple kick, so you don’t actually have an appropriate bathing suit. So you pull up the search engine and look up bathing suits.

And there, in the search history: ‘Cow Print Bikini’.

Your research brain goes, “Jackpot.”

There’s no way to tell what, if anything, Simon looked at in the search results. But you’re good at knowing where to look. More importantly, you know your man. And after a full 24 hours of research, you have a pretty good idea of the shape of things.

  -

  “Hey Simon,” you call, a week later.

“In the den,” he answers.

“Can you… actually, I’ll be right there!”

When you get there, he’s playing one of his video games. He turns his head to kiss you, then curses under his breath when a pink slime eats the fruit he’d been trying to harvest. It’s such a sweet, domestic moment that you almost don’t want to interrupt.

“Do you have space for a kink discussion?” You settle onto the couch next to him, and pull your legs up under yourself. “Nothing bad. Just… maybe some negotiations. You can keep playing.”

He taps the controller against one of his palms, twice, then says, “Sure.”

You take a deep breath, then ask, “Have you ever heard of hucows?”

The pause menu comes up immediately, but Simon doesn’t look at you. In fact, he’s so still that you’re sure he’s stopped breathing. When he doesn’t say or do anything for a full ten seconds, you look up at him.

His face is blank, and he looks back at you from the corner of his eye.

“I’m going to take that as a yes,” you whisper.

He blinks, then shakes himself back into his skin. He looks back at the television, but doesn’t resume the game. “Why do you ask?”

“I’ve been doing some research,” you answer. “And I thought you might find it… interesting.” When he looks at you again without saying anything, you confess. “And there were cow print bikinis in your search history.”

All of the air leaves Simon in a whoosh. He leans back into the couch and scrubs a hand over his face. “’M sorry. I don’t… I wouldn’t ever… You know I love you. ‘N that I respect you. I’d never-”

“Woah, woah, wait!” You grab one of his hands in yours. “Hang on. You love me, I love you. I trust you. Do you trust me?”

Simon doesn’t answer for a long moment, and then he says, without taking his hand from his face, “I trust you to be ‘onest with me. Trust you’ll accept a no. Trust you’re not g’nna yell. Trust you not to punish me if you’re upset.”

“Acknowledged,” you breathe against his bicep. “I trust you to be honest with me, too. And I trust that it’s okay to tell you if I’m not comfortable with anything we discuss or do. I trust that you won’t yell at me. I trust that you’re not going to hurt or harm me on purpose to correct my behavior. Acknowledge.”

Simon sighs, again, then peeks through his fingers at you. “Acknowledged.”

“Okay,” you say, coaxing him to release some of the tension in his shoulders. “So. I did a little research. But I just want to know for sure what you think, what you find exciting.”

He’s pink when he asks, “Y’ve seen the videos?”

“No!”

That finally makes him look at you skeptically. “No?”

“I wasn’t snooping through your stuff,” you protest. “I literally searched for a bikini on your phone and it had the little history symbol next to it. I got curious.”

“Hell of a distance between a bathing suit an’ niche kinks.”

The hint of humor in his voice gives you the permission you were waiting for. You climb into his lap and throw your legs over one of his arms. He hugs you exactly the way you want, just as loving as ever.

“So then,” he eventually says. “What did you find?”

“So much bad porn, oh my god,” you answer. “Not that the actual hucow stuff itself is bad. It’s just that the non-paywalled stuff is steeped in so much spam. And what isn’t pure spam doesn’t really seem like your kind of thing. Just… lots of humiliation and degradation and misogyny kink. Stuff you’ve already said takes you out of the mood. And if that’s sometimes the mood, that’s fine, too. I know we don’t always masturbate to things we’re usually into-”

“It’s not that,” Simon interrupts.

You’re both quiet after. You realize that his heart is racing under your hand, and your heart is beating just as fast. But he keeps holding you, and you keep petting over the dip of his collarbones.

Your stomach churns. “I shouldn’t have said the porn was bad. I’m sorry.”

“It is bad,” Simon snorts. “’S part of why I never mentioned it. Some of that shit is nasty.”

“I like nasty.”

He hums and rubs a hand over your back. “I know, beautiful. But this feels… bad. Some ‘f it… ’S ‘ard to find the words. But I didn’t want you t’ think I see you that way, that I ever want to see you that way.”

“Porn isn’t real life,” you remind him. “Things that happen in a scene that everyone consented to-”

“Yeah, yeah.” He rolls his eyes as you glare up at him. “Let’s not pretend that kink has no basis in reality. Our dynamic is special to me, Naya. I don’t want to… disrespect it, or you, or us, with this.”

“Okay,” you whisper, tucking your face into his neck. You take one of his hands back into yours. “We don’t have to keep talking about it, if you don’t want to. But,” you can’t help but add with a smile. “I did get cow print lingerie. And a headband. It’s got little ears and horns.”

Simon groans. “No, you didn’t.”

“I did!” You press a kiss to his chin. “I’m glad I didn’t try to surprise you with it.”

“Would’a given me an ‘eart attack.”

“That would have been fun to explain. ‘Oh gee, Captain, I didn’t think he’d like it that much.’”

“Oi,” Simon growls.

He dips down to press his lips to yours. You don’t hesitate to wrap your arms around his shoulders and shift to straddle his lap. The kiss is sweet, a reassurance. Like aftercare. Maybe it is. Both of your bodies relax, until you can’t even hold yourself up to keep your lips on his. You lay your head on his shoulder with a content sigh.

You’re like that for a long time before Simon speaks again.

“Its the idea that her body… your body… could be nothing but pleasure and instinct. That I could pull pleasure from you until it would be pain not to.” He’s quiet for a moment, then continues when you don’t reply. “There’s something about it. But it’s a fantasy I never intended to bring to the bedroom. It’s… just something to think about, sometimes.”

  Simon presents the cow print bikini on a Thursday. At first, you’re confused. Then you’re amused, because a year ago you would have worked yourself into a tizzy trying to figure out what he was saying about your weight. But Simon loves your body, and you, and after months of avoiding talking about it, this is a huge step. So you stay silent, and look up at him expectantly.

“Would like to do a scene this weekend,” he says. “Acknowledge.”

“Acknowledged,” you answer, biting back a smile. “What are the parameters?”

Things seem downright vanilla for the first half. A whole day of pampering - spa, nails, hair - that means he’s been planning this for a while. Your favorite, just fancy enough food for dinner, and a dessert to go. All the usual rules apply: Simon’s in charge, you promise to be honest. All in all, a perfect date night.

And then he says something that boggles your mind.

“Okay, wait. I put on the cow print, and then I can only moo? After we get home?”

“No,” he surprises you by saying. He takes a deep breath, then continues. “I want you to wear it all day. An’ you’re only allowed to moo. Except durin’ your appointments. Please don’t moo at your stylists.”

“But at dinner…”

“I’ll order for you,” He says. His eyes flick away, then back to yours. “I’ll take care of everything.”

“But we won’t talk,” you press.

His ears go pink, but he cracks a smile as he says, “I’ll talk. And it’s not a rule that you have to be silent.”

He’s embarrassed, you realize. He’s finally acting on this thing you discussed so long ago, but he’s still nervous about what you’ll think. You have to stifle the part of you that wants to coo.

“Okay,” you say, taking his hand and pressing a kiss to his knuckles. “Unless I’m using a safeword, I can just… make cow sounds. All day. Acknowledged.”

  The day of comes quickly. And then you’’e contemplating the lingerie you bought months ago. It’s much nicer than the flimsy thing Simon got, “just as ‘n experiment, no sense in wastin’ money ‘f things aren’t good as the fantasy.” The bikini he got you is… cheap. Your purchase will certainly fit under your clothes nicer.

As you pull on the silky material Simon apparently didn’t believe you actually ordered, you take a couple of deep breaths. You’re going to wear cow print for your partner. It’s not much different, you reason, from asking him to graze his knife over your skin while he watches TV. It’s not not his thing. And this isn’t exactly your thing. But you love each other. So you’ll do this thing, because his enjoyment can be yours.

Yeah.

  -

  By the end of dinner, you’re much deeper into a submissive headspace than you ever expected to be. You’re so aware of the urge to talk and the fact that you can’t. It’s a constant cue to look to Simon. More than once, you almost slip up. The words catch in your throat and you have to pivot to a lowing sound, a drawn out vowel that leaves you feeling helpless as he smiles and pets at your hand. You expect it to be maddening, but it’s not. Simon anticipates your needs so well that there’s nothing you need that he doesn’t already provide for you. All you can do is shiver at the way he gives you everything, touches you everywhere.

By the time you’re in the car home, you’re a mess. You can’t sit still, find yourself staring at the side of Simon’s face as he drives. You’re startled when he looks back at you at a red light. He reaches out and you lean in, then jump when he pinches your nipple just hard enough to make you gasp. He watches your face as he pets and plucks, chuckles as you pant and groan and moo.

When the light is green again, he stops. You’re very aware of your right breast.

At the next red, he says, “Give me the other one.”

You do.

“Sweet, pretty girl,” he praises as he tugs at you again. He hums, pleased, as you arch your back. His eyes are dark when he says, “Not wearin’ what I gave you. C’n se y’r nipples beggin’ for attention.

When you look down at yourself, heat flushes through you from your crown to your toes. He’s right, the thin bralette that you’d chosen does nothing to hide you body’s reaction to being teased. And the dress he’d picked for you was already tight around your chest…

The light turns green. You moan as he releases you and turns back to the road.

“What’re you wearin’?” He asks. When you look at him, he’s smirking. “Tell me. Wha’s my pretty girl got under her dress?”

You open your mouth, and your voice sticks. “…Moo?”

“Oh, tha’ sounds nice,” he chuckles. He takes your hand in his. “Lookin’ forward to seein’ it.”

Your thoughts and legs stumble into themselves when you finally walk through your front door. Simon doesn’t let you get far. He catches you around the neck with a big hand and brings you close for a kiss. As soon as the door is shut, his hands make their way to the back of your dress. He unzips and then guides the soft material down until it’s past your hips, and drops down to your feet.

When he pulls away to look at you, his breath catches, and his whole body goes still. You’re so caught in the way his pupils dilate that it takes you a moment to remember the bralette, the panties, the garter belt. The cow print feels like an exaggeration of itself, when you look down at your own breasts. You vaguely remember feeling silly, when you’d put them on, but you don’t remember why. Simon’s eyes are so hot when he looks at you, you can’t help but preen a bit.

“Thought you was jokin,” Simon murmurs, cupping one of your breasts in his hand. His other hand cradles your jaw and makes you look up at him when he pinches your nipple again. His thumb dips into your mouth when you gasp. “But my sweet girl don’t lie to me. An’ she’s always show ready, huh? My sweet, soft girl,” Simon murmurs, going to one knee. He takes one of your hands and kisses your knuckles before placing it on his shoulder. Then he gently lifts your calf to take one of your shoes, then the other as he says, “Not a worry in the world, an’ you still give me so much.”

Even kneeling at your feet, he takes your breath away. His hands smooth up your stockings until he can dip his fingers under the straps of your garters, then he groans. You groan with him. You never know what to do with yourself when he gets like this. Hungry. Reverent on his knees. With a sigh, you close your eyes. You don’t need to know what to do, because he does. The gravity of him makes you sway forward as he leans forward to kiss just above your belly button.

You must signal your mental shift, because Simon stands and lifts you into his arms in the same movement. He kisses your lips like he’s starving. And you try to meet him, try to put everything you haven’t been able to say into the drag of your lips against his.

I love you. Thank you. I love you, I love you, I love you.

You expect him to be rough with you, heavy handed. But Simon is gentle as he touches you all over. When he lays you on the bed, instead of diving into your chest, he keeps kissing your mouth, your neck, down to your shoulder. You can’t stifle a giggle as he sucks kisses into your bicep and down to your forearm.

“Fuck,” he growls. He takes a hold of your hips and gives you a little shake. “You’re so perfect. ‘Ips ‘n thighs ‘n this arse. So strong and still so soft for me.” He dips down to press a kiss to your hip, even as one of his hands starts pinching at your nipple through your bralette again. “Eatin’ good and’ workin’ out ‘n sleepin’ better. Gonna let me give you that life of leisure? No more workin’, pretty girl. Just whatever feels good, whatever makes you ‘appy an’ soft, whatever I c’n give you.”

You try to gasp something that might be “yes” or “please,” but it turns into another drawn out moan. It doesn’t really matter, because Simon flips you onto your hands and knees so fast that your head spins. You almost fall over, but he catches you.

“Sorry sweet girl,” he chuckles. “But you’ve got me so caught up. ‘M gonna take care of you, don’t worry. Just so pretty - distractin’ me.”

Then he’s kissing across your shoulders, then makes his way down to your hipbones. You moan and sigh as his hands grope at you. His hands squeeze at your breasts, then your belly, your thighs, back to your ass. When he bites you, you yelp and groan, arching away from his teeth and into the hands.

“Shh, pretty girl,” he hushes. “’M sorry, I’ll give you what you need. Easy, tha’s it.”

You’re surprised into a gasp by his fingers rubbing gently over your clit through your panties. His other hand eases your back down - from cat to cow, you giggle to yourself - with another shushing sound. The tension bleeds out of your spine at the sound. Simon’s got you, he’s going to take care of you.

“There you go,” Simon rumbles as you drop your head between your arms. He strokes a hand down your back as his other hand gives you just a hint more pressure. “Is that better? Feel nice an’ relaxed?”

You’re feeling less relaxed by the second. Simon knows how to touch you if he wants you to melt. This? Is not that. He’s giving you just enough to tease, to make you instinctively chase his fingers. You shake your head and whimper, shuffling your knees knees further apart and arching your back again. You don’t even try to swallow a grunt of frustration when nothing you do makes him speed up or give you more pleasure.

“Hm?” He presses his lips against your hip as he asks, “Wha’s wrong, pretty girl? You need something?”

You open your mouth to beg, then remember that you can’t say anything. This motherfucker. When you tilt your body to glare at him, his eyes are sparkling with mirth. It’s hard not to smile back, to hold your frown long enough to let him know that you know what he’s doing.

But as usual, he’s a step ahead of you. As soon as you open your mouth to moo sarcastically, he slips a finger under your panties and into you, just as his other hand shoves the bra out of the way to pinch your nipple.

“So wet,” Simon whispers against your cheek. “Took care of everything else today, but you still need more, don’t you? Greedy girl.”

You are wet, have been since before he plucked at your nipples in the car. Since dinner, when he’d explained the cut of his steak, why he liked it. Since he paused and visibly considered what he couldn’t see you wearing. Since he’d looked at you with so much hunger that you’d had to take a sip of your water to gather yourself. You couldn’t say anything, then, by his direction and your own body’s need. You couldn’t make any sound at all, had practically ground your teeth together so you wouldn’t moan like a whore at the table.

Your jaw isn’t clenched now. The sound you make as two thick fingers push in is exactly as obscene as you imagined it would be. They press into you exactly where you want it as his other hand sends sparks through your chest and down your spine. Simon echoes you, breath hot against your face. You can’t keep yourself from chasing his lips with yours.

“Yeah,” he pants between biting kisses. He growls when you rock back into his fingers, and pinches your nipple until you gasp. “Settle, Bambi, ‘m gonna take care o’ you.”

His words melt you. Even as he ratchets your body into more tension, you believe him, and the promise alone is nearly a relief. When he pulls his fingers free, you don’t even think to protest. All you can do is hang your head between your arms and try to catch your breath. Something like a sob scrapes it’s way from your throat when he pushes back in with three.

The sound of Simon undoing his belt makes you tip your hips back and up, automatic. He groans again, deep in his throat, and slaps the meat of your ass. The sharp sting of it reminds you to be almost embarrassed, and you drop to your elbows to bury your face in the bedding.

“There you go,” Simon grunts as he lines himself up. He pushes in slow, so slow, as you pant and writhe and make animal sounds. One of his huge hands comes down to grip the back of your neck as he grunts and shoves deeper. “There’s my sweet girl. Shouldn’t’a kept you waiting. You can take it now, tha’s it.” He leans down, pushing just that little bit deeper as he plucks at your nipple again. He growls against your shoulder, “Gonna do this every day, yeah? Quit your job so I c’n keep you soft like this all the time. Breed you up proper, bet y’re gonna taste so sweet when your milk comes, when it’s all y’ve got to do, just a life of milk ‘n honey.”

You almost can’t make out what he’s saying over the sound of your own noises and the wet sounds of him pushing in and out of you. The fireworks up and down your spine have you writhing back into his thrusts. You can tell he’s rambling, that he’s so lost in your bodies that he’s losing control of his mouth. A change in angle has you crying out again, every nerve on fire as he pushes into you just right. The orgasm that had been building steadily rushes over you. It’s impossible to stop, shakes through your limbs until you collapse onto your chest under him.

“Tha’s it,” Simon hisses, pace steady and devastating as he chases you down to the mattress. “This what you need? Need t’ be bred an’ fucked ‘til you can’t think of nothin’ else? Yeah, tha’s what you need. Gonna make you come on my cock again, fill you up the way you like. Then I’ll hook you up, huh? Can’t leave you wantin’ jus ‘cause I need a break. C’n put a pump at each o’ your tits an’ keep fuckin’ you with a machine, too, ‘til I’m ready to go again, yeah?

Jesus, you think, giggling under him. Your pussy flutters as he gasps something else you can’t quite make out over the rushing in your ears. He wants to ruin you. You want him to, to do all of these things he’s growling about. The thought that he might is thrilling and terrifying, that after he comes and breeds you full he could go to the closet and pull out the machine and the dildo you bought for when he’s deployed to keep fucking you…

Your stomach swoops as you get caught up in your own fantasy. He doesn’t have to stop. You’d be too weak to fight him. And if he tied you up, bound you where he wants to keep you, he could do whatever he wants. Did he actually have a pump, something to pull at your nipples while he watched across the room? Would this be the time he finally surprises you with something you hadn’t quite negotiated? He could, he could, you’d let him, you’d beg-

“Simon!”

The second orgasm hurts. It hits so fast and hard on the heels of the first. You can vaguely feel the wetness running down your thighs as you squirt, legs shaking. Above you, Simon goes abruptly silent as he comes, breath coming out in barely-there grunts as his cock kicks and twitches inside of you.

All of the air huffs out of your lungs as he partially collapses on you. Another giggle stutters out of you. It turns into a moan as he guides your legs down and open so he can grind into you some more until you’re prone. His own gentle chuckle tickles your ear.

“Fuckin’ ell,” he pants. The arm that’s braced to keep his weight off of you shakes a bit. “Gimme… fuck, gimme a minute. ‘Ll get up in a mo’.”

“Mmm,” you hum, kissing at his wrist. You tip your head back to grin up at him. “Moo.”

He crushes you a bit when his laughter makes him fall, but you can’t even pretend to be upset.

[sarnai4]

Helloo!!! I love your posts about the gods, like them going to the movies, so I wanted to know what do you think their love language would be?

Aw! Thanks so much🥰🥰🥰! That's a fun question! Let me see🤔...

Athena: Demonstration. She's a practical goddess, so she won't just SAY she love you. She needs to give indisputable proof that she can take to court and win a case with. After the 1000th time she gets someone their favorite books and/or weapon, she thinks it's pretty obvious. If you get a new blanket or sweater from her, she really loves you. She never even has to (shudder) hug someone.

Ares: Protection. Does somebody need a skull bashed in? No? Well...it might happen anyway if he thinks that it'll keep his loved ones safe. It's a little scary, but it's really coming from a good place. If he knows someone's going to be in a dangerous place, he just sorta becomes a shadow that they can't shake. (He'd secretly love to give hugs, but the last time he tried with someone who wasn't Aphrodite, it was misinterpreted and he got punched. [cough cough] Blame a sibling)

Demeter: Gifts. She will load somebody up with baskets of her best harvest. You seriously don't know if she loves you or wants you to pop from overeating, but it's the former. The harvest is really pretty too. Only the ripest of everything. Persephone has learned to hide apples in her sleeves so that it still looks like it's all been eaten.

Aphrodite: Everything. Just everything. She uses words of affirmation, gifts, physical affection, etc. Her favorite is definitely physical, though, so whether it's romantic or platonic, EVERYBODY is getting hugs and at least a kiss on the cheek. She does not care if she gets chased down because of this. It's worth it. :D

Hades: Goes outside. Now, that might seem minor, but actually getting him to leave the Underworld for minutes, nay, HOURS at a time is a feat. That's the fastest way for somebody to know they're loved by him. He doesn't even look at his watch or seem fidgety.

Apollo: Free medical advice. Sooo much. Do you know how much blood or ichor you can lose within a 48-hour period before losing consciousness? You. Will. You'll also know about health advice like what foods are best for your diet. (P.S. this is why all the junk food got swapped out for fruits and veggies)

Hestia: Food. Specifically, the food that the loved one wants. She doesn't care how elaborate it is and will bake up a storm. Each layer is an extra piece of love. It's why there's a cake the size of the Eiffel Tower somewhere around here.

Hermes: Travel. He'll fly his loved ones places to make it faster trips. It's always a little dangerous, but luckily, most of the loved ones are immortal. So, his attempt to get them places at break-neck speed will not actually break their necks. For the mortals...it's the thought that counts.

Hephaestus: Repairs. He does this to the point of also making new things. On a related note, he breaks into ' homes so that he can do the repairs. Now, there are a bunch of inventions all over the place that no one has rooms for.

Zeus: Quality time. He's not even thinking about all those cuties he saw the other day...much. Still, that's a really big improvement and him mostly giving his undivided attention is how he shows his love. Of course, he's probably spending this time talking about himself, but he's paying attention to someone else while he's talking about himself. Progress!

Artemis: She's a stray cat. She hunts, then brings carcasses over. Nobody really wants a bunny head on their bed. Some even cry a little when that happens, but hey, at least it means they’re loved.

Poseidon: Horseback rides. On him specifically. They always think he's going to let them have a nice time sailing. Nope, he prefers this. They sort of think it's weird, but they try to not complain when he goes full mane and tail on them.

Hera: Critiques suggestions. Constantly. But they're motherly critiques, so they sometimes help a whole lot and other times, they drive everybody up the wall. Just flip an obol and see what you get.

Dionysus: Theater tickets with backstage passes and everything. Less than half of his loved ones actually want to go to any of these, but now, they feel obligated. He doesn't know that. Soon, there'll be more features to these passes that just take extra time.

[pespillo]

a post where i show you things and you just observe with me

winter things

drawings that were used in official enamel pins

gestural things

[katyspersonal]

To be honest I don't really want mutuals who instantly assume I commented in bad faith to act "condescending" when I was nothing but light-hearted in disagreeing about a point in the post about one of the characters and agreed with everything else. 🤔 Especially not when I apparently pissed them off so much it made them post TWO (passive-aggressive) posts on the topic of disagreement afterwards instead of.... actual discussion? At least if I assume someone is being mean on purpose I ask them about it

[airenyah]

Hey so do you know where I could find this acting manifesto of yours?

I usually try and avoid publicly expressing my opinion on things like this but I recently saw some people commenting negatively on his acting again and I’m starting to doubt my own judgement.

I’ve truly never had a huge problem with his acting but I keep seeing people using really harsh words to describe his prior and current work. I genuinely think he’s doing a good job in THK but these comments sometimes make me think I’m missing something.

That conflicts with the fact I know at least three people he worked with on THK specifically had positive things to say about his acting too and I trust people who do this for a living to know what they’re talking about for the most part.

I guess I’m just looking for your post to have a more detailed perspective of the opposite viewpoint to “he’s a terrible actor” to help affirm some of my thinking so I’m more confident in my positive opinion of his acting.

Overall though I’m enjoying everyone in this show but for me I’m specifically enjoying the four mains the most. Kudos to them honestly.

(Disclaimer: Obviously everyone is entitled to their opinion but the harshness of some of the opinions took me off guard a little.)

fuck these people. they don't know shit.

(mind you. this manifesto was written based on his performance in just star in my mind and hidden agenda. his 2024 shows weren't even out at that point. in fact, thk hadn't even been publicly announced yet. you can see from the start there is talent in this boy if you actually know what to look out for)

bonus: i rant some more in the last reblog

[itspileofgoodthings]

i love my counselor because she refuses to pry. don’t even know if she knows that’s an option, I have so rarely met a person who stays so thoroughly in her lane.

[thegreatyin]

1 and 25 for Mr Eaten

1 - Favorite canon thing about this character?

the fact that he exists at all is honestly so cool to me? it's all kind of defunct nowadays (and for perfectly fair reasons) but the original idea of SMEN as an omnipresent mystery, a self-destructing sidequest you can never complete nor talk about... it's really really cool. it's sort of what drew me to the game in the first place. just the idea of that is exciting to me

-

25 - What was your first impression of this character? How about now?

at first: so is this guy like. the final boss of london?? the secret mastermind??? how does this work. what's his problem. why is he whispering to me with a single bloody finger (referring to the SMEN icon)

now: gee this guy is a GREAT narrative vehicle in the scientist's arc about killing himself!!!!

[todayisafridaynight]

The way masato could’ve used tape or something instead of a binder but I like the idea of him being so determined to be a miserable piece of shit that he didn’t out of spite (spite for who? I don’t even think masato knows atp)

BIG AGREE.....

[kutyaharapas]

not a good idea to stay up til 2 am bc the bad memories from highschool will start flooding back in

[mainprotagonist]

while entertaining it sucks listening to something you know will make you so mad like whenever pe/dos try defending why theyre meeting up with a 13yo after being caught sexting them. the guy in this podcast is all 'im never getting on grindr again its not worth it' YOU ARE MISSING THE WHOLE POINT YOU ABSOLUTE WET RAG. they dont give a shit if you use an adult site its the fact youre horny over a child?????

[allllium]

Just an Accident

~ Jason todd x reader who was accidentally hurt

~ Fluff, Jason being dramatic, WC:

~ Inspired by @mostly-imagines

[Thank you guys for being so patient while I finished this and thank you for all likes 💓💓 I really wasn't expecting anything till this was finished. Hope this meets your expectations <3]

Jason tried really hard to keep his secret secret from you but let's be honest, he's very obvious about it. Especially once you meet his family.

After he finally came clean to you about everything, he became even more protective. More protective than you ever thought possible.

He would freak out anytime he didn't know where you were or if you got hurt in any way.

"I'm so so sorry." Bruce says, following you through the mansion repeating his apology.

"It's okay, Bruce, it was an accident." You reply, "I should've known."

Honestly there was no way you could've known that Bruce was creating some elaborate booby trap on the kitchen counter that would fail and smack you in the face when you walked into the kitchen.

It didn't hurt too bad, luckily Bruce was testing things with plastic and not the real materials.

From the look of it though, you'll definitely have a mark on your nose and possibly a bruise under your eye.

"I had no idea it was gonna do that." He continues defending, knowing how Jason will react.

"It's fine, I swear. I know you wouldn't do that on purpose." You walk into the living room and sit down on the couch. Bruce sits next to you.

"Can I get you anything?" He asks. Obviously freaking out.

"No, it's alright. It really doesn't hurt."

"Oh shit." You hear Dick gasp. Coming in through the front door with Tim.

"Oh, what did you do!?" Tim asks, "Jason is gonna kill you."

"It was an accident, everything is fine." You try to calm everyone down.

Seeing that you're okay, Dick can't hold back his laugh.

"Wow, Jason is never gonna trust you again Bruce." Tim hits Dick on the arm and rolls his eyes. To the side of you, Bruce leans forward to hold his head in his hands.

"I think you guys are being a little dramatic. Jason isn't gonna kill him."

"No you seriously underestimate how Jason will react to this." Tim tells you.

"Yeah, remember he almost killed me for making jokes about you when you first got together."

"What?" You turn to Dick in confusion, "I don't remember that."

"Not important," he waves it off, "The point is, we need a plan."

"A plan for what?"

"A plan to hide this from Jason" He tells you, in a tone that screams obvious.

"How would I do that, Dick? I live with him."

"I don't know yet, that's why we need a plan!" He exclaims, pacing in front of the couch.

You roll your eyes, "You're being dramatic."

"No he's not." Bruce says. You fall back into the couch and cross your arms over chest.

"Bruce please. I need at least one of other person here to be an adult."

You can hear Tim laughing as he sits in the chair next to the couch.

"Well, he's right. Jason's gonna be pissed." Bruce shakes his head at you. He stands from the couch and starts pacing with Dick.

"They're gonna make me lose my mind." You mumble under your breath. You run your hands over your face, this childish behavior you're watching isn't what you were expecting from Batman and Nightwing.

Okay to be honest you were definitely expecting this from Dick.

Tim leans over to whisper to you, "You should make a break for it, they're too busy plotting to notice you leave."

"Let me guess," you whisper back, "you've had to make a break for it a couple times?"

"More than you know." He shakes him head and has a serious look on his face.

"Well, have fun with that." You laugh and walk out the front door. Tim was right, both the guys were so busy trying to figure out how to hide you from Jason, they totally forgot to hide you.

You rush home to meet Jason. You were supposed to meet for dinner but obviously you got a little distracted.

"Hey baby." You sigh when you walk through the door. Jason is in the kitchen cooking dinner. Whatever he chose to make, made the whole room smell amazing.

"Hey. What took you so long?"

"I stopped by the mansion to borrow that thing from Alfred but he wasn't there." You tell him, referencing some cooking tool you wanted to make desert for after dinner.

"Where did he go?" You want into the kitchen to see him while you talk.

"I have no idea. I got distracted by something Bruce was doing." You walk over and take a piece of food that he's cutting.

Without looking, he softly smacks your hand away.

"Rude." You laugh.

"This is my sacred space." He puts the knife down and gestures over the whole counter.

"You're ridiculous." You laugh again and kiss him on the cheek.

"How dare you." He puts his hand on his chest in fake offense. Only then does he turn to actually look at you. "What happened?" He immediately asks.

"Oh it's fine, just got smacked with some plastic " Which is apparently not the answer he wanted.

"What the fuck does that mean?" He grabs your face gently and examines the marks on your face.

"It means I got hit with some plastic. But it doesn't hurt." You quickly explain, but he doesn't let go of your face or stop freaking out.

"What plastic?"

"Bruce was experimenting with something and it didn't work."

"He did this?" He lets go off your face to run his hands over his own.

"It was accident. He wouldn't hurt me on purpose and you know that."

"I don't care if it was an accident, you're hurt."

"Jason." You say firmly. He's obviously surprised considering you never use his name to address him. "An accident is an accident and you're not gonna hold this against Bruce. He already apologized and clearly felt bad."

"But you're hurt" He pouts.

You step forward and wrap your arms over his shoulders. "It doesn't hurt. It was just some plastic."

"It left a mark."

"I promise I'm okay. And I want you to promise you won't hurt Bruce for this." You look right into his eyes and do your best to give him a puppy dog look. Which isn't necessary because he can't say no to you anyway.

"Fine I promise I won't hurt him." He presses his forehead to yours, "I'd rather leave him to stew in fear anyway."

You chuckle at his words. "As long as no real harm comes to him I won't stop you from having fun."

"Good." He kisses you once and heads back to make dinner. You have no doubt Jason would ever actually hurt Bruce over something so small but you'd rather be safe than sorry.

Hopefully this'll stop Dick and Bruce acting like absolutely children in the future.

Yeah that'll never happen.

Not even 10 minutes after finishing dinner you get a call from Dick.

"How dare you?" He asks the moment you answer the phone. "You're a traitor."

"Again with the dramatics Dick. You can't stop me from going home."

"Let me guess Jason's on his way here to get some revenge right now." He says in a very childish and fearful tone.

"No! I was right, you guys are way more dramatic than you should be and he has no intention of killing anyone." Jason looks at you as you talk to his brother. Clearly wondering what he has to do with this situation.

"I don't believe you. You've shown where your loyalty lies."

"Why are you talking like I'm an enemy or something?"

"Maybe you are! How should I know?"

"Okay you're right." You decide to play along, "I couldn't stop him from wanting to kill Bruce, he's on his way there right now."

Jason furrows his eyebrows in confusion.

"I knew it! Mark my words one day-"

His voice cuts off when you hang up.

"There is something severely wrong with your entire family." You tell Jason with a blank face.

"Yeah I know." He puts his arm over your shoulder and pulls you into him.

Hmm you wonder how long it takes till Dick realizes you lied.

[bet-on-me-13]

Danny is Bruce and Clark's Civilian friend

So! Danny met Bruce and Clark at a Charity Gala promoting his Clean Energy and Technology Company.

It was just something He, Tucker, and Sam had started up after High School to try and do some good in the world, but grew faster than they realized, until they were a rising star in the Green Energy and Technology Business. Really they should have expected it, with Sam's drive for environmental protection and Tucker's love of technology, it was a given that they would push the company farther than anticipated. Danny was mostly just the front-man (aside from helping out Tucker in the Lab sometimes).

The Gala was set up by Sam to raise money for environmental preservation efforts, and Danny was there as a formality since he was the Face of the Business and technically the CEO.

Danny had struck up a conversation with Bruce, having been introduced by Sam, and they were eventually approached by Clark for an interview. He wanted to get their thoughts on the recently proposed Meta Protection Acts, and after the interview Danny decided to give Clark his contact to see if he wanted to do a follow-up. Bruce did the same, and they agreed to talk in the future.

Danny hadn't expected that to be the start of a new friendship.

Bruce and Clark seemed to click instantly with him, and while it took longer they also seemed to warm up to eachother as well. It got to the point where they were talking outside of Galas or Interviews and just called to check up on eachother. It was nice, having friends outside of Tucker and Sam for once.

Oh and also they were totally Dating.

Yeah, it was kind of obvious in hindsight that his two friends had a thing for eachother. Bruce and Clark would always share these looks with eachother before leaving the room, or Clark would check his phone for a message from whenever Bruce texted someone. They seemed to be hanging out without him as well, since they sometimes slipped up and referenced events they experienced together that he wasn't there for.

Of course Clark was publicly dating Lois Lane from his workplace, but listening his coworkers gossip long enough told him what was really going on. Lois and Clark were fake-dating so that Lois could secretly date Superman without being targeted by his enemies as much, and Clark could date a secret partner that none of his coworkers could figure out.

So when he was talking to Clark one day and the man got a text message and suddenly had a bad stomach ache, Danny decided that he should probably let him know that he knew.

"Oh don't worry Clark, I know what's going on. No need to keep up appearance with me around." He said.

"O-oh? Uh, what are you talking about Danny?" Clark asked surprised.

Danny shrugged, "It was pretty obvious in hindsight. The sneaking off, the text messages that got you to leave in a hurry, the secret glances between you and Bruce. After a while it was hard to ignore."

Clark cringed a little, "I just have a nervous stomach, and I have to rush off for work pretty often. That's all Danny."

Danny leveled a glance at him, "So does Bruce also have an upset stomach that just so happens to match up to yours? And why is Bruce following you to your Job? What, is he trying to get a job at the Daily Planet that he owns?"

"O-oh, well- I mean- That doesn't necessarily mean that I'm-" Clark stuttered.

"Calm down man, I'm not going to say anything." Danny reassured him. "It's your business, and nobody has any right to know your personal business unless you tell them. I just figured it out on my own, but I'm not gonna go shouting from the rooftops that Clark Kent is-"

"That's enough Danny, no need to demonstrate, but...thank you." Clark cut him off, "So far only Lois and Jimmy have figured me out on their own, and it's nice to finally have somebody else to talk to about this."

Danny shrugged and patted him on the shoulder, "No problem Clark, if you ever need to talk to me about it I'm all ears."

[andhumanslovedstories]

An intro to doing crosswords for complete beginners

as told by someone who didn’t do any before this year and now has gotten so deeply into them

with examples pulled almost entirely from crosswords published in American publications this week

A crossword is not a measure of general knowledge or intelligence or skill with words anymore than a Mario game is a measure of how good you are at plumbing. It certainly helps to have the same cultural reference points as the puzzle, but you can brute force your way through a lot of it if you just know how crosswords work

Easiest on Mondays and then get harder over the week

The answer is in the same verb tense as the clue (ex. “doesn’t float” is “SINKS” while “didn’t float” is “SANK”)

If there’s an acronym or abbreviation in the clue, the answer will have one as well (ex. “Toothpaste-approving org.” is “ADA” because that the short way of referring to the American Dental Association)

If the answer is in written like a text from a teen girl with her first flip phone, the answer will be a common texting abbreviation (TMI, OMG, LOL, LMAO, BRB, TTYL, etc) (ex. three letter word with clue “i can’t believe u told me that” is “TMI”)

If the clue is in quotes, it’s dialogue and the response should also be dialogue (ex. the clue “‘That’s it for me!’” is “IQUIT”)

An answer can be multiple words, (see above) so some correct answers can make you second guess yourself because it creates letter combos that seem impossible to be in one English (mostly) word or mess you up bc it’s ambiguous where one word ends and another begins (ex. you have the letters “OWFO” and the answer ends up being “PILLOWFORT” or “UDAT” being “BERMUDATRIANGLE”)

Treat clues with a question mark like they’re going to be puns that make you groan so think about other meanings of the words in the clue (ex. “Volumes you can hear?” is “AUDIOBOOKS” or “Not fancy at all?” is “HATE” or “Remained under cover?” is “SLEPTIN”)

Clues that add hedging language line “they could be called…” or one might use this as…” are telling you to think very laterally. These are the ones that make you a little mad when you get them (ex. “They might be said to be dancing or raging” is “FLAMES” or “They admit they might be punched” is “TICKETS”)

The word “maybe” usually indicates the answer will be an example of the clue, not a synonym (ex. “Pet, maybe” is “CAT”)

If a person is in the clue and a person is the answer, the answer will be from the same part of name as the clue (ex. Trevor Noah replaced John Stewart on the Daily Show. So the clue “Stewart’s successor on the Daily Show” is “NOAH” while “John’s successor on the Daily Show” would be “TREVOR”

No word in the clue will be featured in the answer (ex. “What Beyoncé Knowles goes by” could be “ONENAME” but could never be “BEYONCÉ”)

A answer can be a phonetic spelling of a letter (ex. “Epic finale?” is “CEE”)

Not every clue is going to be tricky and clever, don’t rule out an obvious choice just because it’s obvious (ex. “Do ___ disturb” is “NOT”)

Roman numerals pop up a lot but typically only in clues where a Roman numeral makes sense, so “finale of a play?” could be “ACTII” but “Number of Stooges” is not going to be “III”

There’s a ton of really common clues. If you do enough crossword puzzles you recognize them. (ex. Literally almost anything about oil is going to be OPEC, any variations on “things on a smartphone that someone can download and use” is going to be “APPS”, and anything about a european capital city is probably “OSLO”)

If a clue can be about a cookie, the answer is almost certainly “OREO”

[k-hotchoisan]

coming home with me

<san x fem!reader>

under the dim lights, Choi San realises that he just can’t keep this casual when it comes to you.

genre/warnings: pwp, smut, furcoat!San, is San being toxic??? I guess we’ll never know!, jealous dom! San, unprotected sex, reader is commando, car sex, fingering riding, breeding kink, spanking

a/n: ahoy!! y’alls gotta thank @bro-atz & @skteezcursed for the fic concept 😘 have been overwhelmed with life so I’m presenting this as my compensation ~

w/c: 3.1K

Under the dim lights, your eyes slowly adjust, and much to your delight, you spot the man you’ve been eye candying at a booth. Of course, you knew he was gonna be there considering you’ve been stalking his socials, and casually asking your mutual friends about his favourite hang-out spots. 

He’s cute, you think, stealing glances at him from afar, wondering how you should approach him. A coincidence? Maybe stage an accident? 

“And what’s the end goal for you with him?” You hear your friend’s voice piercing into your thoughts. 

Well, initially, it was mostly a light-hearted flirty thing. You just thought he was cute. All romance sparks started off with the thrill of liking someone. It just hadn’t reached to that point with him yet. 

“Maybe play around? I don’t know”, you reply. 

Or maybe it was just a farce to keep a certain guy off your mind. 

“You know, you don’t have to force yourself”, your friend reminds you, her palm on your hand comfortingly. “You should be direct with him.” 

You force a smile back to assure her.

“It’s fine. I’m not gonna do anything foolish.” 

You don’t notice the confused expression she’s making at your answer because now you’re thinking if you should just let things unfold naturally. Amidst your pondering, your friend’s elbow nudges you. 

“And he’s looking at you”, she says. Your eyes glance up—and she’s right—your little eye candy has seemed to catch your gaze. He smiles even though he’s on the other side of the room. You give him a small wave and he waves back. Then he gestures for you to go down to the dance floor. You’re wondering if you should too as you watch him leave his booth and down the stairs to the crowded floor. 

Unfortunately, you let the thought sit for a little too long because when you decide to leave the booth to the floor, you’ve lost him. 

Letting the flashing lights and lasers with the decent music from the DJ doesn’t sound like a bad idea. 

Soon enough, your eyes filter through the people and you catch your prey. He seems to be talking to someone but he also seems to have noticed your stare before he fully turns to you. 

But as you’re steadily maneuvering the crowd to reach him, your eyes meet another man’s—sharp and all too familiar—and it seems as though he’s caught you too. 

Your eyes widen and you immediately turn away, fishing your phone from your chest, opening your phone book to speed dial.

You bring your phone up to your ear, turning away from the approaching male deliciously styled in a black fur coat walking towards you, panic obvious in your tone while your friend picks up. You look up at her from the dance floor, eyes wide. 

“Babe, you did not tell me that he was here?!” You whisper-shout. You watch your friend’s face widen her eyes before she shrugs. 

“Who the hell did you think I was referring to just now? I was talking about Choi San!” 

Choi San has had his eyes on you since you settled in your booth. He never thought he would see you out of all the clubs that existed in this town. But despite the slight scowl present on his face when he realises you’re flirting with someone else at the same level booth he is on, there’s a seed of desire that’s lodged in his heart, that maybe he has a chance. 

But first, he has to get rid of your little eye candy. 

San’s eyes trail your movements carefully—from the way you bat your eyelashes at the other male from the other booth, then to the way you stare after him as he walks down to the floor. 

How have you not noticed him yet? 

He stays put on the sofa, silently counting down how much longer it’d take for your eyes to rake over the rest of the booths to reach him. 

Unfortunately, it only leaves him frustrated, and even tenfold when you leave your seat while your eyes search for him on the dance floor. 

Guess he has to do it his way then. 

He pushes past the wave of people, still locked onto you under the dim lights

The satisfaction that floods into his brain when your eyes meet his, his ears slowly tuning out the music, and he watches the way you eyes widen when you finally take notice of him from a distance. 

And then you turn away. San cocks his eyebrow in confusion and irritation, and his footsteps towards you quicken. 

Then he stops in his tracks once more. 

Dear god, something might break today if he gets interrupted one more fucking time. 

Your attention is stolen by your little eye candy. He got to you before San could.

You’re well-aware that you’re being stared down by a certain male from your peripherals, and that certainly wasn’t stopping you from pretending that he’s part of the air molecules, although not the easiest task when he’s boring a hole into your head. 

You look back at your eye candy, plastering a pretty smile. 

The both of you sink into small talk, leaning in closer in an attempt to hear each other over the music. You’re listening to him, but your attention remains on someone else. Someone who’s not hiding that he’s stealing glances at you. 

“Do you wanna go somewhere private?” You hear him ask into your ear. His arm is snaking around your waist, and your interest is waning. 

You’re ready to reject him, and you jolt slightly when you feel a bigger pair of hands slide across your back replacing the unfamiliar warmth. 

“She’s got afterparty plans”, San answers curtly. It’s an automatic response that you swallow hard when let your eyes rake over San. His hair is slicked back, letting a couple strands fall past his eyes. He’s smug with the corner of his lips curled up. Maybe it’s the confidence that you hate about him, but like a moth drawn to a flame, you can’t seem to stay away from him. 

You see the way the male tuts, then force a smile. “No worries. We’ll see each other soon, yeah?” 

You nod, already losing him in the crowd, mostly because Choi San has your full attention. 

Even under the dim lights, Choi San looks stunning. You realise you’re royally fucked when your eyes trail to the star of the show—the fact that San isn’t wearing anything underneath his fur coat. That piece of apparel somehow makes him look bigger, and it’s driving you insane. Well, if the tension escalates, he might get a surprise if you’re feeling generous enough. But right now, he’s eyeing you down like a predator, and it’s making you fall into his spell. 

His arm isn’t leaving your back. He’s leaning in closer, making sure you hear his words loud and clear in your ear. 

“That’s your type?”

You do your best to hide the effects he’s having on you—ignoring heat pooling between your thighs.

Your fingers play with the soft fur as he leans in and waits for your answer. He smells so fucking good. 

You shrug, and that only bubbles his irritation further. His grip on your waist tightens slightly.

“Answer me, darling”, he pushes, his palm sliding lower down. 

“Maybe. We had a nice chat before you cut in. Seemed like a decent person.”

San furrows his eyebrows. 

“What if he’s not a good person? Does that mean any guy that has a nice conversation with you a good person?”

His other arm is snaking around the back of your neck and he definitely feels your goosebumps. He’s forcing you to look at him. 

“San”, you huff, mentally bracing yourself from falling for his charms again. “And on what grounds do you have to be saying all of this?” 

“As your best friend?”

You scoff, with a roll of your eyes. Painful to tear away from his chiseled body just peeking out. 

San can’t seem to pinpoint it—for some reason, the interaction you had with your eye candy pricked him so much. But why? You and he have always been fooling around, leaving feelings at bay so it wouldn’t “complicate things”. But obviously after tonight, something clicked, and San is very sure he doesn’t like you to be around other men that aren’t him. 

“I’m leaving, Choi San. It’s hard to hear you with all these people around”, you make up the excuse, smacking his arm away with much reluctance, only for him to snatch you back once more. San makes sure you hear him loud and fucking clear when he leans into your ears. 

“We should go somewhere private then.”

Your moan in the kiss sets him off. Your hands trail up his bare body, and his hands are on your thighs. 

Fucking you in his car wasn’t San’s preference—he prefers a little more space— but he’s not complaining when he has you slowly unravel right before him, forced to press yourself against him even with the seat reclined and his thick erection is just shameless pressing against your body con dress. 

His fingers slip under your dress, and he groans when he feels your bare pussy—wet, puffy and just ready. 

And for some reason, it pisses him off when thought of your eye candy being the one to discover this instead of him. 

“Just how much of my buttons are you gonna push tonight, princess?” He asks rhetorically, his sharp eyes locked onto yours, trying not to snap from how wet you are.

You steady yourself on his lap, your mind slowly growing blank whenever his thick fingers graze your clit and past your sopping hole. 

“You were just begging to be fucked, huh?” San asks with his fingers circling so close to your pussy. 

“San!-“

“Tell me then: who were you hoping to fuck you stupid tonight?”

Your begs come in the forms of soft whimpers, and a sob rips from you when he plunges two thick fingers in, filling you up so fucking full.

Shit. Shit. Shit. 

His fingers fucking your cunt isn’t helping you think. 

You know there’s no way around this. As much as you hated to admit, San always seemed to have the upper hand. Nonetheless, your unintentional plan had roused a side of him you’ve never seen before. 

“I’m waiting.” 

It takes almost all of your strength to focus on answering him, and it’s making you frustrated because he’s intentionally missing the spot that he knows can send you seeing the stars. 

“You”, you answer meekly.

“Can’t hear you, sweetie.” His fingers press against your g-spot, and you lean closer to his body on reflex, your hands gripping his fur coat. You could just smack the smug look off Choi San if he didn’t have two fingers stuffed in you. 

“You! Oh, fuck-” You cry out when he misses your g-spot on purpose once more. 

“Right answer, sweetie. You deserve a reward for being a good girl, hm?”

You can’t even answer. His thumb is rubbing on your clit, it sends electricity all over in the best way possible on top of his fingers hitting your sweet spots over and over again. The wet sounds of your pussy squelching only bring up the thick tension. 

“Look at you, tightening up like this. Are you gonna cum for me?” His voice drops an octave, lulling you closer to your impending orgasm. You hate the way he knows every nook and cranny of your body as if it’s his. You just really cannot escape him. 

His words continue to edge you closer. 

“Oh, that’s a good fucking girl. Keep squeezing my fingers like that. I’m the only one who makes you feel this fucking tight, right?” 

You fucking hate Choi San. 

Cream seeps past his fingers from your hole when your orgasm brings your vision to white. Your moans fill up the car when it wrecks your body in waves, your nerves flooding with pleasure over and over. 

And San isn’t letting you leave the damn car, not until you’re screaming his name. 

He’s not faring any better himself and he could just get off just by watching you cum all over him like that. 

His fingers leave your soaking cunt, slightly pruning with strings of your cum in between his fingers. While you catch your breath, San forces you to watch him lick his sticky fingers clean while his free hand shifts your fingers to his bulging erection that’s just begging to be let out. He’s grown so fucking hard that you wonder if it hurts. 

You unbutton and unzip his trousers, then push yourself to the side towards the car door to give him enough space so he’s able to fully remove his trousers. You can’t help but worry if the both of you would be caught, even though San assured you that he parked at a secluded spot. Your eyes dart to the windows, noticing how it’s beginning to grow foggy.

Oh. It’s about to get a lot more foggy. 

San’s touch pulls you out of your thoughts. Although you’ve fucked many times, the sheer fucking size of his cock never fails to make you swallow hard. 

Your hands wander up his tits as you settle back down onto his thighs. The realisation hits you then—the only clothing article Choi San has on right now is his fucking fur coat. 

He catches onto your stare and smiles in response. 

“Why? Is the thought of getting fucked by your favourite person wearing a fur coat getting you excited?”

You narrow your eyes at him, and you palm his bare, thick, and sticky cock, making San groan in reply. 

“Favourite? What makes you think you’re my favourite?” 

He chuckles and makes your heart flutter. 

“Many things, sweetheart. Just as you’re mine.”

You’re really gonna end up losing to him, huh? 

You lift your hips instead, lining up to his cockhead, and then letting San guide your hips down his fat cock, making you take him inch by inch. You bite your lip at the feeling of his cock filling you up so disgustingly good, and San has his eyes screwed shut, a strained groan leaving his lips when your warmth envelops him so fucking good. 

“That’s it. You’re so fucking warm and tight for me”, San mutters in pleasure through half-lidded eyes. 

Riding San sometimes feels too much for you, in the best fucking ways possible because he’s all the way in, and he knows that very well—how easily you get sensitive and squirmy just from sitting on his cock. 

You slowly bounce off his cock, grabbing his shoulders for leverage. He likes that you have to lean into him while he fucks you from below so he can whisper the most dirty things into your ear just to make you clench around him.

His palms slide down your ass, following the momentum of you bouncing off his cock, then landing a tight slap against your skin to hear your gasp and feel you tighten on his cock. 

The sting feels so fucking good that another slap has your pussy leaking cream all over his cock once more. 

“S-San! If you keep doing that-“ you cry, another slap to your ass making you jolt, sinking even deeper into his cock. 

“That’s your punishment for flirting with another man in front of me like that”, his voice buzzing in your ear. 

Another smack. 

Your thighs are trembling from the overstimulation. 

One more smack. 

Your mind is about to shut off. San’s cock is pressing against your g-spot with even more pressure than his fingers. 

The windows have completely fogged up.

“San, please. Oh my fucking god. Gonna fucking cum”, you whine, arms tight around his neck, intoxicated with the smell of his musk mixed with his cologne. 

San’s grunts fill your ears when your second orgasm drowns you again, your cunt pulsing uncontrollably around him, cream just pooling at the base of his cock. He groans and buries his nose into your neck, his mind fuzzy from how close his orgasm is. 

“I’m gonna cum in you. Wanna plug your pussy hole full of my cum. 

And you’re gonna take all of it like a good girl.”

“Yes, please”, you reply, much to his pleasant surprise. So his large hands hold your legs down, listening to you whine while his cock fills you up endlessly with warm and thick cum with moans escaping his lips every few seconds from how fucking good he feels. 

He pushes you off his body gently, his eyes reflecting the hearts in your glazed-out eyes. His thumb brushes against the corner of your lips and he pushes his thumb past your lips. 

“Such a good fucking girl, letting me fill you up with my load. Does it feel good?”

You nod, twitching slightly from the overstimulation since he still has you stuffed full of both dick and cum. San wants to keep this sight of you in his brain forever—sucking on his finger, sweating with him post-orgasm, staring down at him with watery eyes while his cum just leaks past your puffy pussy hole even though his cock is plugging your cunt. 

San pulls you into a deep kiss, and you reciprocate it in between breathless pants and sighs. 

“Fuck. I think I’m in love”, he mutters loud enough for you to hear. 

You don’t know how to answer to that, but you feel your face flushing. He grabs the tissues stowed in the storage compartment and quickly cleans the both of you up after he lifts you off his softening cock. 

You instinctively shift to the passenger seat, and San removes his fur coat to cover you. You watch him grab a black tank top from the back seat, then fit his trousers over his thighs. 

He rolls down the windows despite the air-con running, just to rid the smell of sex.

You wrap his coat closer to you when the night breeze kisses your cheeks. 

“So, are you gonna send me home?” There’s a strange tint of hope you have that he’d decline. 

San stares at you with an expression that confuses you—one that makes you wonder if you had said something weird. Then he smiles after that. 

“You’re coming home with me, sweetheart”, San tells you as he loops his tank top over his head before he switches gear to move out. 

“It’s gonna be a long night for the both of us.” 

taglist:

@bro-atz @skteezcursed @diamond-3 @mcarebearsstuff @choisansplushie  @pre1ttyies @hwallazia @songmingisthighs @yeosangiess @mylovelymito @softwsan @yourlocaljonghoe @itza-meee @ywtf  @jeon-ify @miss-fallon @bunnyluvr25 @eggyboy5 @hourswithoutyou @iwishiwasthemoontonight @haleyjoy @yunhogrippers @watermelon2319 @kibs-and-bits @s-h-y-a @luvt0kki @httpseungmxn @vic0921 @sanhwajoong @bitejoongie @no1likevie @jwnghyuns @everythingboutkpop @skz1-4-3 @minalizasworld @seomisaho @tunafishyfishylike @woojirang @yuyusgirl

[exeggcute]

the great reddit API meltdown of '23, or: this was always bound to happen

there's a lot of press about what's going on with reddit right now (app shutdowns, subreddit blackouts, the CEO continually putting his foot in his mouth), but I haven't seen as much stuff talking about how reddit got into this situation to begin with. so as a certified non-expert and Context Enjoyer I thought it might be helpful to lay things out as I understand them—a high-level view, surveying the whole landscape—in the wonderful world of startups, IPOs, and extremely angry users.

disclaimer that I am not a founder or VC (lmao), have yet to work at a company with a successful IPO, and am not a reddit employee or third-party reddit developer or even a subreddit moderator. I do work at a startup, know my way around an API or two, and have spent twelve regrettable years on reddit itself. which is to say that I make no promises of infallibility, but I hope you'll at least find all this interesting.

profit now or profit later

before you can really get into reddit as reddit, it helps to know a bit about startups (of which reddit is one). and before I launch into that, let me share my Three Types Of Websites framework, which is basically just a mental model about financial incentives that's helped me contextualize some of this stuff.

(1) website/software that does not exist to make money: relatively rare, for a variety of reasons, among them that it costs money to build and maintain a website in the first place. wikipedia is the evergreen example, although even wikipedia's been subject to criticism for how the wikimedia foundation pays out its employees and all that fun nonprofit stuff. what's important here is that even when making money is not the goal, money itself is still a factor, whether it's solicited via donations or it's just one guy paying out of pocket to host a hobby site. but websites in this category do, generally, offer free, no-strings-attached experiences to their users.

(I do want push back against the retrospective nostalgia of "everything on the internet used to be this way" because I don't think that was ever really true—look at AOL, the dotcom boom, the rise of banner ads. I distinctly remember that neopets had multiple corporate sponsors, including a cookie crisp-themed flash game. yahoo bought geocities for $3.6 billion; money's always been trading hands, obvious or not. it's indisputable that the internet is simply different now than it was ten or twenty years ago, and that monetization models themselves have largely changed as well (I have thoughts about this as it relates to web 1.0 vs web 2.0 and their associated costs/scale/etc.), but I think the only time people weren't trying to squeeze the internet for all the dimes it can offer was when the internet was first conceived as a tool for national defense.)

(2) website/software that exists to make money now: the type that requires the least explanation. mostly non-startup apps and services, including any random ecommerce storefront, mobile apps that cost three bucks to download, an MMO with a recurring subscription, or even a news website that runs banner ads and/or offers paid subscriptions. in most (but not all) cases, the "make money now" part is obvious, so these things don't feel free to us as users, even to the extent that they might have watered-down free versions or limited access free trials. no one's shocked when WoW offers another paid expansion packs because WoW's been around for two decades and has explicitly been trying to make money that whole time.

(3) website/software that exists to make money later: this is the fun one, and more common than you'd think. "make money later" is more or less the entire startup business model—I'll get into that in the next section—and is deployed with the expectation that you will make money at some point, but not always by means as obvious as "selling WoW expansions for forty bucks a pop."

companies in this category tend to have two closely entwined characteristics: they prioritize growth above all else, regardless of whether this growth is profitable in any way (now, or sometimes, ever), and they do this by offering users really cool and awesome shit at little to no cost (or, if not for free, then at least at a significant loss to the company).

so from a user perspective, these things either seem free or far cheaper than their competitors. but of course websites and software and apps and [blank]-as-a-service tools cost money to build and maintain, and that money has to come from somewhere, and the people supplying that money, generally, expect to get it back...

just not immediately.

startups, VCs, IPOs, and you

here's the extremely condensed "did NOT go to harvard business school" version of how a startup works:

(1) you have a cool idea.

(2) you convince some venture capitalists (also known as VCs) that your idea is cool. if they see the potential in what you're pitching, they'll give you money in exchange for partial ownership of your company—which means that if/when the company starts trading its stock publicly, these investors will own X numbers of shares that they can sell at any time. in other words, you get free money now (and you'll likely seek multiple "rounds" of investors over the years to sustain your company), but with the explicit expectations that these investors will get their payoff later, assuming you don't crash and burn before that happens.

during this phase, you want to do anything in your power to make your company appealing to investors so you can attract more of them and raise funds as needed. because you are definitely not bringing in the necessary revenue to offset operating costs by yourself.

it's also worth nothing that this is less about projecting the long-term profitability of your company than it's about its perceived profitability—i.e., VCs want to put their money behind a company that other people will also have confidence in, because that's what makes stock valuable, and VCs are in it for stock prices.

(3) there are two non-exclusive win conditions for your startup: you can get acquired, and you can have an IPO (also referred to as "going public"). these are often called "exit scenarios" and they benefit VCs and founders, as well as some employees. it's also possible for a company to get acquired, possibly even more than once, and then later go public.

acquisition: sell the whole damn thing to someone else. there are a million ways this can happen, some better than others, but in many cases this means anyone with ownership of the company (which includes both investors and employees who hold stock options) get their stock bought out by the acquiring company and end up with cash in hand. in varying amounts, of course. sometimes the founders walk away, sometimes the employees get laid off, but not always.

IPO: short for "initial public offering," this is when the company starts trading its stocks publicly, which means anyone who wants to can start buying that company's stock, which really means that VCs (and employees with stock options) can turn that hypothetical money into real money by selling their company stock to interested buyers.

drawing from that, companies don't go for an IPO until they think their stock will actually be worth something (or else what's the point?)—specifically, worth more than the amount of money that investors poured into it. The Powers That Be will speculate about a company's IPO potential way ahead of time, which is where you'll hear stuff about companies who have an estimated IPO evaluation of (to pull a completely random example) $10B. actually I lied, that was not a random example, that was reddit's valuation back in 2021 lol. but a valuation is basically just "how much will people be interested in our stock?"

as such, in the time leading up to an IPO, it's really really important to do everything you can to make your company seem like a good investment (which is how you get stock prices up), usually by making the company's numbers look good. but! if you plan on cashing out, the long-term effects of your decisions aren't top of mind here. remember, the industry lingo is "exit scenario."

if all of this seems like a good short-term strategy for companies and their VCs, but an unsustainable model for anyone who's buying those stocks during the IPO, that's because it often is.

also worth noting that it's possible for a company to be technically unprofitable as a business (meaning their costs outstrip their revenue) and still trade enormously well on the stock market; uber is the perennial example of this. to the people who make money solely off of buying and selling stock, it literally does not matter that the actual rideshare model isn't netting any income—people think the stock is valuable, so it's valuable.

this is also why, for example, elon musk is richer than god: if he were only the CEO of tesla, the money he'd make from selling mediocre cars would be (comparatively, lol) minimal. but he's also one of tesla's angel investors, which means he holds a shitload of tesla stock, and tesla's stock has performed well since their IPO a decade ago (despite recent dips)—even if tesla itself has never been a huge moneymaker, public faith in the company's eventual success has kept them trading at high levels. granted, this also means most of musk's wealth is hypothetical and not liquid; if TSLA dropped to nothing, so would the value of all the stock he holds (and his net work with it).

what's an API, anyway?

to move in an entirely different direction: we can't get into reddit's API debacle without understanding what an API itself is.

an API (short for "application programming interface," not that it really matters) is a series of code instructions that independent developers can use to plug their shit into someone else's shit. like a series of tin cans on strings between two kids' treehouses, but for sending and receiving data.

APIs work by yoinking data directly from a company's servers instead of displaying anything visually to users. so I could use reddit's API to build my own app that takes the day's top r/AITA post and transcribes it into pig latin: my app is a bunch of lines of code, and some of those lines of code fetch data from reddit (and then transcribe that data into pig latin), and then my app displays the content to anyone who wants to see it, not reddit itself. as far as reddit is concerned, no additional human beings laid eyeballs on that r/AITA post, and reddit never had a chance to serve ads alongside the pig-latinized content in my app. (put a pin in this part—it'll be relevant later.)

but at its core, an API is really a type of protocol, which encompasses a broad category of formats and business models and so on. some APIs are completely free to use, like how anyone can build a discord bot (but you still have to host it yourself). some companies offer free APIs to third-party developers can build their own plugins, and then the company and the third-party dev split the profit on those plugins. some APIs have a free tier for hobbyists and a paid tier for big professional projects (like every weather API ever, lol). some APIs are strictly paid services because the API itself is the company's core offering.

reddit's financial foundations

okay thanks for sticking with me. I promise we're almost ready to be almost ready to talk about the current backlash.

reddit has always been a startup's startup from day one: its founders created the site after attending a startup incubator (which is basically a summer camp run by VCs) with the successful goal of creating a financially successful site. backed by that delicious y combinator money, reddit got acquired by conde nast only a year or two after its creation, which netted its founders a couple million each. this was back in like, 2006 by the way. in the time since that acquisition, reddit's gone through a bunch of additional funding rounds, including from big-name investors like a16z, peter thiel (yes, that guy), sam altman (yes, also that guy), sequoia, fidelity, and tencent. crunchbase says that they've raised a total of $1.3B in investor backing.

in all this time, reddit has never been a public company, or, strictly speaking, profitable.

APIs and third-party apps

reddit has offered free API access for basically as long as it's had a public API—remember, as a "make money later" company, their primary goal is growth, which means attracting as many users as possible to the platform. so letting anyone build an app or widget is (or really, was) in line with that goal.

as such, third-party reddit apps have been around forever. by third-party apps, I mean apps that use the reddit API to display actual reddit content in an unofficial wrapper. iirc reddit didn't even have an official mobile app until semi-recently, so many of these third-party mobile apps in particular just sprung up to meet an unmet need, and they've kept a small but dedicated userbase ever since. some people also prefer the user experience of the unofficial apps, especially since they offer extra settings to customize what you're seeing and few to no ads (and any ads these apps do display are to the benefit of the third-party developers, not reddit itself.)

(let me add this preemptively: one solution I've seen proposed to the paid API backlash is that reddit should have third-party developers display reddit's ads in those third-party apps, but this isn't really possible or advisable due to boring adtech reasons I won't inflict on you here. source: just trust me bro)

in addition to mobile apps, there are also third-party tools that don’t replace the Official Reddit Viewing Experience but do offer auxiliary features like being able to mass-delete your post history, tools that make the site more accessible to people who use screen readers, and tools that help moderators of subreddits moderate more easily. not to mention a small army of reddit bots like u/AutoWikibot or u/RemindMebot (and then the bots that tally the number of people who reply to bot comments with “good bot” or “bad bot).

the number of people who use third-party apps is relatively small, but they arguably comprise some of reddit’s most dedicated users, which means that third-party apps are important to the people who keep reddit running and the people who supply reddit with high-quality content.

unpaid moderators and user-generated content

so reddit is sort of two things: reddit is a platform, but it’s also a community.

the platform is all the unsexy (or, if you like python, sexy) stuff under the hood that actually makes the damn thing work. this is what the company spends money building and maintaining and "owns." the community is all the stuff that happens on the platform: posts, people, petty squabbles. so the platform is where the content lives, but ultimately the content is the reason people use reddit—no one’s like “yeah, I spend time on here because the backend framework really impressed me."

and all of this content is supplied by users, which is not unique among social media platforms, but the content is also managed by users, which is. paid employees do not govern subreddits; unpaid volunteers do. and moderation is the only thing that keeps reddit even remotely tolerable—without someone to remove spam, ban annoying users, and (god willing) enforce rules against abuse and hate speech, a subreddit loses its appeal and therefore its users. not dissimilar to the situation we’re seeing play out at twitter, except at twitter it was the loss of paid moderators;  reddit is arguably in a more precarious position because they could lose this unpaid labor at any moment, and as an already-unprofitable company they absolutely cannot afford to implement paid labor as a substitute.

oh yeah? spell "IPO" backwards

so here we are, June 2023, and reddit is licking its lips in anticipation of a long-fabled IPO. which means it’s time to start fluffing themselves up for investors by cutting costs (yay, layoffs!) and seeking new avenues of profit, however small.

this brings us to the current controversy: reddit announced a new API pricing plan that more or less prevents anyone from using it for free.

from reddit's perspective, the ostensible benefits of charging for API access are twofold: first, there's direct profit to be made off of the developers who (may or may not) pay several thousand dollars a month to use it, and second, cutting off unsanctioned third-party mobile apps (possibly) funnels those apps' users back into the official reddit mobile app. and since users on third-party apps reap the benefit of reddit's site architecture (and hosting, and development, and all the other expenses the site itself incurs) without “earning” money for reddit by generating ad impressions, there’s a financial incentive at work here: even if only a small percentage of people use third-party apps, getting them to use the official app instead translates to increased ad revenue, however marginal.

(also worth mentioning that chatGPT and other LLMs were trained via tools that used reddit's API to scrape post and content data, and now that openAI is reaping the profits of that training without giving reddit any kickbacks, reddit probably wants to prevent repeats of this from happening in the future. if you want to train the next LLM, it's gonna cost you.)

of course, these changes only benefit reddit if they actually increase the company’s revenue and perceived value/growth—which is hard to do when your users (who are also the people who supply the content for other users to engage with, who are also the people who moderate your communities and make them fun to participate in) get really fucking pissed and threaten to walk.

pricing shenanigans

under the new API pricing plan, third-party developers are suddenly facing steep costs to maintain the apps and tools they’ve built.

most paid APIs are priced by volume: basically, the more data you send and receive, the more money it costs. so if your third-party app has a lot of users, you’ll have to make more API requests to fetch content for those users, and your app becomes more expensive to maintain. (this isn’t an issue if the tool you’re building also turns a profit, but most third-party reddit apps make little, if any, money.)

which is why, even though third-party apps capture a relatively small portion of reddit’s users, the developer of a popular third-party app called apollo recently learned that it would cost them about $20 million a year to keep the app running. and apollo actually offers some paid features (for extra in-app features independent of what reddit offers), but nowhere near enough to break even on those API costs.

so apollo, any many apps like it, were suddenly unable to keep their doors open under the new API pricing model and announced that they'd be forced to shut down.

backlash, blackout

plenty has been said already about the current subreddit blackouts—in like, official news outlets and everything—so this might be the least interesting section of my whole post lol. the short version is that enough redditors got pissed enough that they collectively decided to take subreddits “offline” in protest, either by making them read-only or making them completely inaccessible. their goal was to send a message, and that message was "if you piss us off and we bail, here's what reddit's gonna be like: a ghost town."

but, you may ask, if third-party apps only captured a small number of users in the first place, how was the backlash strong enough to result in a near-sitewide blackout? well, two reasons:

first and foremost, since moderators in particular are fond of third-party tools, and since moderators wield outsized power (as both the people who keep your site more or less civil, and as the people who can take a subreddit offline if they feel like it), it’s in your best interests to keep them happy. especially since they don’t get paid to do this job in the first place, won’t keep doing it if it gets too hard, and essentially have nothing to lose by stepping down.

then, to a lesser extent, the non-moderator users on third-party apps tend to be Power Users who’ve been on reddit since its inception, and as such likely supply a disproportionate amount of the high-quality content for other users to see (and for ads to be served alongside). if you drive away those users, you’re effectively kneecapping your overall site traffic (which is bad for Growth) and reducing the number/value of any ad impressions you can serve (which is bad for revenue).

also a secret third reason, which is that even people who use the official apps have no stake in a potential IPO, can smell the general unfairness of this whole situation, and would enjoy the schadenfreude of investors getting fucked over. not to mention that reddit’s current CEO has made a complete ass of himself and now everyone hates him and wants to see him suffer personally.

(granted, it seems like reddit may acquiesce slightly and grant free API access to a select set of moderation/accessibility tools, but at this point it comes across as an empty gesture.)

"later" is now "now"

TL;DR: this whole thing is a combination of many factors, specifically reddit being intensely user-driven and self-governed, but also a high-traffic site that costs a lot of money to run (why they willingly decided to start hosting video a few years back is beyond me...), while also being angled as a public stock market offering in the very near future. to some extent I understand why reddit’s CEO doubled down on the changes—he wants to look strong for investors—but he’s also made a fool of himself and cast a shadow of uncertainty onto reddit’s future, not to mention the PR nightmare surrounding all of this. and since arguably the most important thing in an IPO is how much faith people have in your company, I honestly think reddit would’ve fared better if they hadn’t gone nuclear with the API changes in the first place.

that said, I also think it’s a mistake to assume that reddit care (or needs to care) about its users in any meaningful way, or at least not as more than means to an end. if reddit shuts down in three years, but all of the people sitting on stock options right now cashed out at $120/share and escaped unscathed... that’s a success story! you got your money! VCs want to recoup their investment—they don’t care about longevity (at least not after they’re gone), user experience, or even sustained profit. those were never the forces driving them, because these were never the ultimate metrics of their success.

and to be clear: this isn’t unique to reddit. this is how pretty much all startups operate.

I talked about the difference between “make money now” companies and “make money later” companies, and what we’re experiencing is the painful transition from “later” to “now.” as users, this change is almost invisible until it’s already happened—it’s like a rug we didn’t even know existed gets pulled out from under us.

the pre-IPO honeymoon phase is awesome as a user, because companies have no expectation of profit, only growth. if you can rely on VC money to stay afloat, your only concern is building a user base, not squeezing a profit out of them. and to do that, you offer cool shit at a loss: everything’s chocolate and flowers and quarterly reports about the number of signups you’re getting!

...until you reach a critical mass of users, VCs want to cash in, and to prepare for that IPO leadership starts thinking of ways to make the website (appear) profitable and implements a bunch of shit that makes users go “wait, what?”

I also touched on this earlier, but I want to reiterate a bit here: I think the myth of the benign non-monetized internet of yore is exactly that—a myth. what has changed are the specific market factors behind these websites, and their scale, and the means by which they attempt to monetize their services and/or make their services look attractive to investors, and so from a user perspective things feel worse because the specific ways we’re getting squeezed have evolved. maybe they are even worse, at least in the ways that matter. but I’m also increasingly less surprised when this occurs, because making money is and has always been the goal for all of these ventures, regardless of how they try to do so.

[felassan]

EuroGamer: 'BioWare knew the deepest secrets of Dragon Age lore 20 years ago, and locked it away in an uber-plot doc'

Original creator David Gaider on how "some of the big mysteries are being solved".

Rest of post under a cut due to length and possible spoilers.

"As I write about the secrets hidden in Dragon Age's mysterious Fade, and as I uncover some of them playing Dragon Age: The Veilguard, one question keeps rising up in my mind. How much did BioWare know about future events when first developing the series more than 20 years ago? That's a long time, and back then BioWare didn't know there would be a second game, which is why Dragon Age: Origins has an elaborate and far-reaching epilogue. Why lay so much lore-track ahead of yourself if you don't think you'll ever get there? But look more closely at Origins and there are big clues suggesting BioWare did know about future Dragon Age events. There are obvious signs in the original game, such as establishing recurring themes like Old Gods and the Blight and Archdemons. But there's also Flemeth, Morrigan's witchy mother, who's intimately linked to events in the series now - more specifically: intimately linked to Solas. Does her existence mean Solas was known about back then too? There's only one person I can think of to answer this and it's David Gaider, the original creator of Dragon Age's world and lore. We've talked before, once in a podcast and once for a piece on the magic of fantasy maps, where we discussed the creation of Dragon Age's world. And much to my surprise, when I ask him what he and the BioWare team knew back then, he says they knew it all. "By the time we released Dragon Age: Origins, we were basically sure that it was one and done, but there was, back when we made the world, an overarching plan," he says. "The way I created the world was to seed plots in various parts of the world that could be part of a game, a single game, and then there was the overall uber-plot, which I didn't know for certain that we would ever get to but I had an understanding of how it all worked together. "A lot of that was in my head until we were starting Inquisition and the writers got a little bit impatient with my memory or lack thereof, so they pinned me down and dragged the uber-plot out of me. I'd talked about it, I'd hinted at it, but never really spelled out how it all connected, so they dragged it out of me, we put it into a master lore doc, the secret lore, which we had to hide from most of the team.""

"This uber-plot document was only viewable on a need-to-know basis, he says, and only around 20 people on the team had access to it - other senior writers mostly. And even though Gaider left the Dragon Age team after Inquisition, and then eight years ago BioWare altogether, meaning he didn't work on The Veilguard at all, he believes - by looking at the events in the new game - his uber-plot lore "has more or less held up". That's impressive. What's even more impressive, or exciting, is that back then he also envisaged a potential end state for the entire Dragon Age series - a point at which it would make no sense for the series to carry on. "I always had this dream of where it would all end, the very last plot," he says, "which I won't say because who knows, we could still end up there. But the idea that this uber-plot was this sort of biggest, finite... That the final thing you could do in this world that would break it was there as a 'maybe we would get to do that one day'... There was just the idea of certain big, world-shaking things that were seeded in that arc, some of which have already come to pass, like the return of Fen'Harel." You've read that correctly: the idea to have Fen'Harel, also known as the Dread Wolf, reappear, was seeded all the way back then, way before Inquisition - the game in which he does actually reappear. But the concept for Solas, as a character who was Fen'Harel in disguise, was a newer idea. "That spawned from a conversation I had with Patrick [Weekes] and a number of other writers," Gaider says, "as an idea of 'what if you had a villain that spent an entire game where he's actually in the party and you get to know him?' Now, the god version and his larger role in the plot, yes that was known, but not that he would be presented as a character named Solas." Fen'Harel being known about means the other elven gods were known about, which means all of that stuff Solas reveals about his godly siblings - that they're not gods at all but evil elven mages he locked away behind the Veil - was known about back then too. "Oh yeah," Gaider says. "Everything that Solas tells you [at the end of Inquisition DLC, Trespasser]: it's all part of that original uber-lore - that was all in our mind." But why have so much lore if you're not certain you'll get to ever realise it? Well, to create a believable illusion. By creating an "excess" of lore, as Gaider describes it, Origins made Thedas feel like an old and believable place. A place with history, rather than a Western set that was all facade and no substance."

"BioWare also did something canny with the lore it did relay then, too: it shared it through the voices of characters living in the world, making it inherently fallible. In doing this, Dragon Age veiled its truths behind biases. The church-like organisation of the Chantry proclaims one truth, while the elves and dwarves proclaim another. Sidenote: you can experience this yourself through different racial origin stories in Dragon Age: Origins. This way, there's no one, objective, irrefutable, truth. "To get the truth, you kind of have to pick between the lines," Gaider says. So even though elven legends are coming true through the existence of Solas and The Veilguard's antagonist gods, it doesn't mean that's the one and only truth. There's truth in what the Chantry teaches and what the dwarves say, he tells me, which ignites my curiosity intensely. BioWare has also been tricksy in how it's rubbed out the lore the further back in time you go. "In general, the further the history goes back, we always would purposefully obfuscate it more and more," Gaider says - "make it more biased and more untrue no matter who was talking, just so that the absolute truth was rarely knowable. I like that idea from a world standpoint, that the player always has to wonder and bring their own beliefs to it." It leads into a founding principle of Dragon Age, which is doubt - because without it, you can't have faith, a particularly important concept in the series. It's where the whole idea of the Chantry's Maker comes from and with it, the legend about the fabled Golden City - now the Black City - at the heart of the Fade. This is the very centre of the lore web, and, I imagine, it's close to the series endpoint Gaider imagined long ago. All secrets end there. Did Gaider know what was in the Black City when he laid down Origins' lore? That's the question - and it startles me how casually he answers this. "Oh, yeah," he says. "What was in the Black City: that's the uber-plot. I knew exactly. "Was it as detailed in the first draft of the world?" he goes on. "No. I had an idea of the early history because that's where I started making the world. So the things that were true early-early: I knew exactly what the Black City was and the idea of what the elves believed, and what humans believed vis-a-vis the Chantry - that was all settled on really early. Then I expanded the world and the uber-plot bubbled out of that.""

"Gaider shows me the original cosmology design document for Dragon Age: Origins as if to prove this - or rather for the game that would become DAO. The world was known as Peldea back then. I can't share this with you because I see it via a shared screen on a video call, and because Gaider doesn't want me to, mostly because the ideas are so old they're almost unrecognisable from what's in the series now. But I can tell you it's a document that's just over a page in length, and that there's a circular diagram at the top showing the world in the middle and the spirit realm ringed around it. And on that document is reference to the Chantry's beliefs about a God located in a citadel that can be found there. Gaider says BioWare knew about Fen'Harel (the Dread Wolf) 20 years ago when it was developing Dragon Age: Origins, and that he'd one day reappear. The Fade wasn't known as the Fade back then, either, but as the Dreaming, because it's the place people go when they dream - an idea that lives on still. And if that sounds familiar to any fans of The Sandman among you, it should. "I'd say The Sandman series was probably fairly prominently in my head," says Gaider. "I liked that amorphous geography that was born from the psyche of collective humanity. I'd say yes, if I was to point at something specifically, that's probably where the very first inspiration of it took root." It's a lot to take in, but it reinforces the admiration I have for Dragon Age. Just as I have when hearing about the creation of my other favourite fantasy worlds, such as A Song of Ice and Fire, I begin to understand the magnitude - and the deliberateness - of the plotting that went on. I wonder if one day the Dragon Age series will end in the way Gaider first imagined, albeit slightly altered by the many other pairs of hands shepherding it along now. What a curious feeling it must be to know, so many years in advance, where things might go. Where that end is, I don't know, but I do know we'll take a significant step towards it in The Veilguard. After all, we're coming into contact with gods who were there at the recorded beginning of it all. "Yeah - we have access to people who can tell us the truth from first-hand experience," Gaider says, "although again, it depends on what the writers did with it. But if they continued the tradition of Dragon Age, you never know for sure if Solas is telling you everything, or what you're learning is the entire truth. "But yes, some of the big mysteries are being solved. I mean, will they one day definitively tell you about the Maker? Will we crack the big mysteries of the world and just make them answered finally? And does that ruin one of the central precepts that Dragon Age is founded upon? Maybe," he says. "Ultimately, that lore, when you make it big and you hint at it and hint at it and hint at it, it becomes a Chekhov's Gun of sorts. Eventually you got to pony up.""

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