#together we could achieve world domination

[dawn-and-ti-says-stuff]

HELP??

GUYS I THINK THIS KID AT MY SCHOOL ACTUALLY BLEW UP A TOILET LIKE NOT IN A HYPOTHETICAL WAY LIKE ACTUALLY WITH A REAL EXPLOSIVE DEVICE LIKE. ALL I HEARD WAS JUST *BOOM* AND NOW THERES WATER EVERYWHERE AND WE ARE ALL BEING EVACUATED THERES PEOPLE RUNNING TO AND FROM THE BATHROOM HE LOOKED PREPARED TOO LIKE BRO HAD A GAS MASK AND EVERYTHING -Dawn*

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Surveillance pricing

THIS WEEKEND (June 7–9), I'm in AMHERST, NEW YORK to keynote the 25th Annual Media Ecology Association Convention and accept the Neil Postman Award for Career Achievement in Public Intellectual Activity.

Correction, 7 June 2024: The initial version of this article erroneously described Jeffrey Roper as the founder of ATPCO. He benefited from ATPCO, but did not co-found it. The initial version of this article called ATPCO "an illegal airline price-fixing service"; while ATPCO provides information that the airlines use to set prices, it does not set prices itself, and while the DOJ investigated the company, they did not pursue a judgment declaring the service to be illegal. I regret the error.

Noted anti-capitalist agitator Adam Smith had it right: "People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices."

Despite being a raving commie loon, Smith's observation was so undeniably true that regulators, policymakers, and economists couldn't help but acknowledge that it was true. The trustbusting era was defined by this idea: if we let the number of companies in a sector get too small, or if we let one or a few companies get too big, they'll eventually start to rig prices.

What's more, once an industry contracts corporate gigantism, it will become too big to jail, able to outspend and overpower the regulators charged with reining in its cheating. Anyone who believes Smith's self-evident maxim had to accept its conclusion: that companies had to be kept smaller than the state that regulated them. This wasn't about "punishing bigness" – it was the necessary precondition for a functioning market economy.

We kept companies small for the same reason that we limited the height of skyscrapers: not because we opposed height, or failed to appreciate the value of a really good penthouse view – rather, to keep the building from falling over and wrecking all the adjacent buildings and the lives of the people inside them.

Starting in the neoliberal era – Carter, then Reagan – we changed our tune. We liked big business. A business that got big was doing something right. It was perverse to shut down our best companies. Instead, we'd simply ban big companies from rigging prices. This was called the "consumer welfare" theory of antitrust. It was a total failure.

40 years later, nearly every industry is dominated by a handful of companies, and these companies price-gouge us with abandon. Worse, they use their gigantic ripoff winnings to fill war-chests that fund the corruption of democracy, capturing regulators so that they can rip us off even more, while ignoring labor, privacy and environmental law and ducking taxes.

It turns out that keeping gigantic, opaque, complex corporations honest is really hard. They have so many ways to shuffle money around that it's nearly impossible to figure out what they're doing. Digitalization makes things a million times worse, because computers allow businesses to alter their processes so they operate differently for every customer, and even for every interaction.

This is Dieselgate times a billion: VW rigged its cars to detect when they were undergoing emissions testing and switch to a less polluting, more compliant mode. But when they were on the open road, they spewed lethal quantities of toxic gas, killing people by the thousands. Computers don't make corporate leaders more evil, but they let evil corporate leaders execute far more complex and nefarious plans. Digitalization is a corporate moral hazard, making it just too easy and tempting to rig the game.

That's why Toyota, the largest car-maker in the world, just did Dieselgate again, more than a decade later. Digitalization is a temptation no giant company can resist:

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c1wwj1p2wdyo

For forty years, pro-monopoly cheerleaders insisted that we could allow companies to grow to unimaginable scale and still prevent cheating. They passed rules banning companies from explicitly forming agreements to rig prices. About ten seconds later, new middlemen popped up offering "information brokerages" that helped companies rig prices without talking to one another.

Take Agri Stats: the country's hyperconcentrated meatpacking industry pays Agri Stats to "consult on prices." They provide Agri Stats with a list of their prices, and then Agri Stats suggests changes based on its analysis. What does that analysis consist of? Comparing the company's prices to its competitors, who are also Agri Stats customers:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/10/04/dont-let-your-meat-loaf/#meaty-beaty-big-and-bouncy

In other words, Agri Stats finds the highest price for each product in the sector, then "advises" all the companies with lower prices to raise their prices to the "competitive" level, creating a one-way ratchet that sends the price of food higher and higher.

More and more sectors have an Agri Stats, and digitalization has made this price-gouging system faster, more efficient, and accessible to sectors with less concentration. Landlords, for example, have tapped into Realpage, a "data broker" that the same thing to your rent that Agri Stats does to meat prices. Realpage requires the landlords who sign up for its service to accept its "recommendations" on minimum rents, ensuring that prices only go up:

https://popular.info/p/feds-raid-corporate-landlord-escalating

Writing for The American Prospect, Luke Goldstein lays out the many ways in which these digital intermediaries have supercharged the business of price-rigging:

https://prospect.org/economy/2024-06-05-three-algorithms-in-a-room/

Goldstein identifies a kind of patient zero for this ripoff epidemic: Jeffrey Roper, a former Alaska Air exec who benefited from a service that helps airlines set prices. ATPCO was investigated by the DOJ in the 1990s, but the enforcers lost their nerve and settled with the company, which agreed to apply some ornamental fig-leafs to its collusion-machine. Even those cosmetic changes were seemingly a bridge too far Roper, who left the US.

But he came back to serve as Realpage's "principal scientist" – the architect of a nationwide scheme to make rental housing vastly more expensive. For Roper, the barrier to low rents was empathy: landlords felt stirrings of shame when they made shelter unaffordable to working people. Roper called these people "idiots" who sentimentality "costs the whole system."

Sticking a rent-gouging computer between landlords and the people whose lives they ruin is a classic "accountability sink," as described in Dan Davies' new book "The Unaccountability Machine: Why Big Systems Make Terrible Decisions – and How The World Lost its Mind":

https://profilebooks.com/work/the-unaccountability-machine/

It's a form of "empiricism washing": if computers are working in the abstract realm of pure numbers, they're just moving the objective facts of the quantitative realm into the squishy, imperfect qualitative world. Davies' interview on Trashfuture is excellent:

https://trashfuturepodcast.podbean.com/e/fire-sale-at-the-accountability-store-feat-dan-davies/

To rig prices, an industry has to solve three problems: the problem of coming to an agreement to fix prices (economists call this "the collective action problem"); the problem of coming up with a price; and the problem of actually changing prices from moment to moment. This is the ripoff triangle, and like a triangle, it has many stable configurations.

The more concentrated an industry is, the easier it is to decide to rig prices. But if the industry has the benefit of digitalization, it can swap the flexibility and speed of computers for the low collective action costs from concentration. For example, grocers that switch to e-ink shelf tags can make instantaneous price-changes, meaning that every price change is less consequential – if sales fall off after a price-hike, the company can lower them again at the press of a button. That means they can collude less explicitly but still raise prices:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/03/26/glitchbread/#electronic-shelf-tags

My name for this digital flexibility is "twiddling." Businesses with digital back-ends can alter their "business logic" from second to second, and present different prices, payouts, rankings and other key parts of the deal to every supplier or customer they interact with:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/02/19/twiddler/

Not only does twiddling make it easier to rip off suppliers, workers and customers, it also makes these crimes harder to detect. Twiddling made Dieselgate possible, and it also underpinned "Greyball," Uber's secret strategy of refusing to send cars to pick up transportation regulators who would then be able to see firsthand how many laws the company was violating:

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/03/technology/uber-greyball-program-evade-authorities.html

Twiddling is so easy that it has brought price-fixing to smaller companies and less concentrated sectors, though the biggest companies still commit crimes on a scale that put these bit-players to shame. In The Prospect, David Dayen investigates the "personalized pricing" ripoff that has turned every transaction into a potential crime-scene:

https://prospect.org/economy/2024-06-04-one-person-one-price/

"Personalized pricing" is the idea that everything you buy should be priced based on analysis of commercial surveillance data that predicts the maximum amount you are willing to pay.

Proponents of this idea – like Harvard's Pricing Lab with its "Billion Prices Project" – insist that this isn't a way to rip you off. Instead, it lets companies lower prices for people who have less ability to pay:

https://thebillionpricesproject.com/

This kind of weaponized credulity is totally on-brand for the pro-monopoly revolution. It's the same wishful thinking that led regulators to encourage monopolies while insisting that it would be possible to prevent "bad" monopolies from raising prices. And, as with monopolies, "personalized pricing" leads to an overall increase in prices. In econspeak, it is a "transfer of wealth from consumer to the seller."

"Personalized pricing" is one of those cuddly euphemisms that should make the hair on the back of your neck stand up. A more apt name for this practice is surveillance pricing, because the "personalization" depends on the vast underground empire of nonconsensual data-harvesting, a gnarly hairball of ad-tech companies, data-brokers, and digital devices with built-in surveillance, from smart speakers to cars:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/03/12/market-failure/#car-wars

Much of this surveillance would be impractical, because no one wants their car, printer, speaker, watch, phone, or insulin-pump to spy on them. The flexibility of digital computers means that users always have the technical ability to change how these gadgets work, so they no longer spy on their users. But an explosion of IP law has made this kind of modification illegal:

https://locusmag.com/2020/09/cory-doctorow-ip/

This is why apps are ground zero for surveillance pricing. The web is an open platform, and web-browsers are legal to modify. The majority of web users have installed ad-blockers that interfere with the surveillance that makes surveillance pricing possible:

https://doc.searls.com/2023/11/11/how-is-the-worlds-biggest-boycott-doing/

But apps are a closed platform, and reverse-engineering and modifying an app is a literal felony – several felonies, in fact. An app is just a web-page skinned with enough IP to make it a felony to modify it to protect your consumer, privacy or labor rights:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/05/07/treacherous-computing/#rewilding-the-internet

(Google is leading a charge to turn the web into the kind of enshittifier's paradise that apps represent, blocking the use of privacy plugins and proposing changes to browser architecture that would allow them to felonize modifying a browser without permission:)

https://pluralistic.net/2023/08/02/self-incrimination/#wei-bai-bai

Apps are a twiddler's playground. Not only can they "customize" every interaction you have with them, but they can block you (or researchers seeking to help you) from recording and analyzing the app's activities. Worse: digital transactions are intimate, contained to the palm of your hand. The grocer whose e-ink shelf-tags flicker and reprice their offerings every few seconds can be collectively observed by people who are in the same place and can start a conversation about, say, whether to come back that night a throw a brick through the store's window to express their displeasure. A digital transaction is a lonely thing, atomized and intrinsically shielded from a public response.

That shielding is hugely important. The public hates surveillance pricing. Time and again, through all of American history, there have been massive and consequential revolts against the idea that every price should be different for every buyer. The Interstate Commerce Commission was founded after Grangers rose up against the rail companies' use of "personalized pricing" to gouge farmers.

Companies know this, which is why surveillance pricing happens in secret. Over and over, every day, you are being gouged through surveillance pricing. The sellers you interact with won't tell you about it, so to root out this practice, we have to look at the B2B sales-pitches from the companies that sell twiddling tools.

One of these companies is Plexure, partly owned by McDonald's, which provides the surveillance-pricing back-ends for McD's, Ikea, 7-Eleven, White Castle and others – basically, any time a company gives you a hard-sell to order via its apps rather than its storefronts or its website, you should assume you're getting twiddled, hard.

These companies use the enshittification playbook to trap you into using their apps. First, they offer discounts to customers who order through their apps – then, once the customers are fully committed to shopping via app, they introduce surveillance pricing and start to jack up the prices.

For example, Plexure boasts that it can predict what day a given customer is getting paid on and use that information to raise prices on all the goods the customer shops for on that day, on the assumption that you're willing to pay more when you've got a healthy bank balance.

The surveillance pricing industry represents another reason for everything you use to spy on you – any data your "smart" TV or Nest thermostat or Ring doorbell can steal from you can be readily monetized – just sell it to a surveillance pricing company, which will use it to figure out how to charge you more for everything you buy, from rent to Happy Meals.

But the vast market for surveillance data is also a potential weakness for the industry. Put frankly: the commercial surveillance industry has a lot of enemies. The only thing it has going for it is that so many of these enemies don't know that what's they're really upset about is surveillance.

Some people are upset because they think Facebook made Grampy into a Qanon. Others, because they think Insta gave their kid anorexia. Some think Tiktok is brainwashing millennials into quoting Osama bin Laden. Some are upset because the cops use Google location data to round up Black Lives Matter protesters, or Jan 6 insurrectionists. Some are angry about deepfake porn. Some are angry because Black people are targeted with ads for overpriced loans or colleges:

https://www.theregister.com/2024/06/04/meta_ad_algorithm_discrimination/

And some people are angry because surveillance feeds surveillance pricing. The thing is, whatever else all these people are angry about, they're all angry about surveillance. Are you angry that ad-tech is stealing a 51% share of news revenue? You're actually angry about surveillance. Are you angry that "AI" is being used to automatically reject resumes on racial, age or gender grounds? You're actually angry about surveillance.

There's a very useful analogy here to the history of the ecology movement. As James Boyle has long said, before the term "ecology" came along, there were people who cared about a lot of issues that seemed unconnected. You care about owls, I care about the ozone layer. What's the connection between charismatic nocturnal avians and the gaseous composition of the upper atmosphere? The term ecology took a thousand issues and welded them together into one movement.

That's what's on the horizon for privacy. The US hasn't had a new federal consumer privacy law since 1988, when Congress acted to ban video-store clerks from telling the newspapers what VHS cassettes you were renting:

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

We are desperately overdue for a new consumer privacy law, but every time this comes up, the pro-surveillance coalition defeats the effort. but as people who care about conspiratorialism, kids' mental health, spying by foreign adversaries, phishing and fraud, and surveillance pricing all come together, they will be an unbeatable coalition:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/12/06/privacy-first/#but-not-just-privacy

Meanwhile, the US government is actually starting to take on these ripoff artists. The FTC is working to shut down data-brokers:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/08/16/the-second-best-time-is-now/#the-point-of-a-system-is-what-it-does

The FBI is raiding landlords to build a case against Frontpage and other rent price-fixers:

https://popular.info/p/feds-raid-corporate-landlord-escalating

Agri Stats is facing a DoJ lawsuit:

https://www.nationalhogfarmer.com/market-news/agri-stats-loses-motions-to-transfer-dismiss-in-doj-antitrust-case

Not every federal agency has gotten the message, though. Trump's Fed Chairman, Jerome Powell – whom Biden kept on the job – has been hiking interest rates in a bid to reduce our purchasing power by making millions of Americans poorer and/or unemployed. He's doing this to fight inflation, on the theory that inflation is being cause by us being too well-off, and therefore trying to buy more goods than are for sale.

But of course, interest rates are inflationary: when interest rates go up, it gets more expensive to pay your credit card bills, lease your car, and pay a mortgage. And where we see the price of goods shooting up, there's abundant evidence that this is the result of greedflation – companies jacking up their prices and blaming inflation. Interest rate hawks say that greedflation is impossible: if one company raises its prices, its competitors will swoop in and steal their customers with lower prices.

Maybe they would do that – if they didn't have a toolbox full of algorithmic twiddling options and a deep trove of surveillance data that let them all raise prices together:

https://prospect.org/blogs-and-newsletters/tap/2024-06-05-time-for-fed-to-meet-ftc/

Someone needs to read some Adam Smith to Chairman Powell: "People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices."

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

https://pluralistic.net/2024/06/05/your-price-named/#privacy-first-again

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

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

[leclucklerc]

Hard Carry CL16 - 00.

Pairing: Charles Leclerc x driver!reader

Summary: When you're talking about one of the greats in Formula One, y/n is up there.

Word Count: 1.3K

Masterlist Next

Drive to Survive, Season 1 Episode 3

It's all about Porsche

"There's just something about Porsche that attracts you."

The scene cuts into Porsche's jet black F1 car zooming pass the screen in a top speed. The sound of the loud roar from the engine, as well as the checkered flag that was being waved as the car glide through the finish line is a sight to behold.

"Their team is new in Formula one," said Will Buxton as he leaned back on his seat. The pitch black backdrop is almost poetic considering which team they're discussing right now. "They debuted in 2012, and never looked back ever since."

At this, the scene cuts into a compilation of Formula one announcer announcing many of Porsche's achievements. From the constructor championships, to the world driver championships. An intimidating music can be heard playing in the background before it switches back into the interviewer room. Though, this time, it's not Will Buxton who sat there.

A man with greying hair and pitch black shirt could be seen. There's a small logo of Porsche on his breast pocket. Besides that, the shirt is void from any decoration. Just like how the man expression is void from any emotions.

"Hello," started the man, eyes zeroing straight towards the camera. "I'm Herman Muller, the team principal for the Porsche Royale Formula 1 team."

The scene changed into Porsche's Formula One garage. The pitch black theme with golden accent could be seen everywhere as the mechanics and engineers huddled along the car that they had created for the past year.

"We are a German based team," said Herman as many compilations appeared on the scene. Many of those, are the team celebrating their wins. "A fairly new player in the game, but a tough one, certainly." His English is loaded with German accent, though it only made him seems a bit intimidating.

Constructor championship.

Driver championship.

Many trophies could be seen lining the wall of their factory back in Leipzig. Pictures of their Formula One cars too could be seen littered around the wall.

"When Porsche came, it brought a lot of excitement," said Will as he gripped his hands together. There's excitement evident on his eyes as he began the tale. "There are a lot of buzz here and there about the team. After all, it was the first time FIA had decided to expand the sport." As he said this, clips of articles and old interviews from back in 2012 can be seen playing.

The decision that FIA made to add one more team in the sport after decades. It's for the fans, they had said. To add more excitement and enjoyment for the sport.

"I think our team motto is the reason why we can become like this," said Herman as the camera switched back to him. "Complete domination."

Sounds of machine whirring could be heard as a clip from recent grand prix could be seen. It's a fight between Porsche and Red Bull. A fight, that the pitch black car wins easily.

"Porsche managed to become one of F1 top team during their debut year, and they only ever skyrocketed ever since then," continue Will, he sounds every bit amazed at that. "Every year, without fail, they will always become a favorite to win the championship."

"It's a rocket ship," said Herman as the scene changed towards mechanics and engineers did their adjustment towards their car in the garage. There's a serious air around them as they continue their job. "I like to think that we're building a rocket ship, and not cars."

A compilation of the pitch black car zooming in front of the camera could be seen.

"Besides the complete monstrosity that they call car," said Will, eyes full of amusement. "Their driver lineup is, is simply incredible."

Two people could be seen walking through the grid in a dramatic slow motion. Only their bottom half could be seen, both wearing dark colored pants and sneakers. 

"We have the most amazing driver lineup in the grid," mused out Herman as the scene changed back to him, letting out a small laugh. His previous lack of emotions has changed as a clear mirth could be seen shining through hid eyes. "A really unique one."

Well, unique is an understatement.

Will laughed, head nodding. "Their number one driver is probably the favorite driver is most definitely the favorite driver on the track-"

The scene changed into many race compilations, as a pitch black car with the number 1 could be seen overtaking Ferrari's familiar deep red car as well as Mercedes's during their highest height. Checkered flag could be seen waving around as the car zoomed past it, as it was announced as the winner of the race.

"And the favorite off the track."

Kring! Kring!

At the familiar sound of a bicycle bell, many turned their gazes towards the source of it. Almost immediately, their faces broke into smile as they laid their eyes on the person riding the vehicle. The camera is positioned at the back, showcasing long hair with dark Porsche hat on top of it.

As she made her way, many people greeted the woman in a friendly greetings. Some drivers like Daniel Ricciardo or Lewis Hamilton too could be seen waving or trying to make small talk with the rider of the bicycle. With those small interactions, it's clear that she's a popular face here in the grid.

The scene changed towards the interview room where a woman could be seen sitting on the chair. She looks oddly comfortable. As if there's no whole production crew staring at her just beyond the camera.

"Can I start?" she asked, voice soft. Long hair styled perfectly and bright eyes could be seen staring straight towards the camera.

"Yes, yes, start when you feel ready," voiced out the producer.

Said woman laughed, eyes crinkling and cheek rosy. "Well, hello, everyone, Netflix, and new Formula One fans, hopefully," grinned the woman as a round of small laughter rang through the room. Pearly white teeth could be seen under the painted lips. "I'm y/n l/n and I drive for Porsche Formula One team."

"Please say the full team name," said the producer.

Y/n blinked, before the grin on her face widened. "Ah, I completely forgot what it is. Better call Herman, no?"

After that introduction, a camera that was being placed on top of Porsche's garage as the car did a pitstop could be seen showcasing the Drive to Survive opening. 

The scene cuts back towards the dark colored interview room. The name y/n l/n now could be seen besides the female as the title as Porsche's driver could be seen underneath it. Besides that, another addition also can be seen.

Three times world champion.

It's a title that many would salivate at the mere thought of. The very dream of every driver that ever graced Formula One.

Various news outlet appeared at this. News anchor announcing y/n's debut back in 2012. Of her, being the first female formula one driver in decades. Of her, as the youngest person to actually managed to snagged one of the most coveted seats in motorsport. Of her, breaking many unseen boundaries and limitations that the sport had put.

A photo of her on the cover of Times Magazine could be seen. Posing comfortably in front of her Formula One car as she holds her helmet.

"Y/n is probably the biggest star that F1 has ever produced," said Will as the screen shows Y/n's instagram page with a whooping 50 million followers. And counting. "She's completely charismatic woman-"

A scene where y/n is mingling with people in the paddock was seen. Laughters could be heard as a response to whatever she said. They seems magically charmed and completely fixated on the woman.

"- a fashion icon-"

Y/n now can be seen in Paris Fashion Week, sitting front row with various celebrities near her.

"- life of the party -"

A ecstatic y/n could be seen spraying champagne to other fellow drivers. The atmosphere is light and full of teasing and banters.

"- And of course, a damn good driver."

The scene changed into a dramatic turn that the woman made in one of the corners. The screeching sound of tires meeting gravel could be heard as she propelled into full speed, easily overtaking cars that stood in front of her. A scene where she was crowned as that year world champion also can be seen as she celebrated with the team.

It changed back to the interview room, where the woman could be seen completely relaxed as she smiled. 

"Do you think you're a good driver?" asked the producer.

Y/n tilted her head before various clips appeared.

"AND Y/N L/N IS THIS YEAR WORLD CHAMPIOOON-!" She could be seen spraying champagne.

"TWO YEARS IN A ROW! Y/N L/N IS A WORLD CHAMPIOON-!" A clip of her spraying champagne once again was shown.

"AND YET, SHE MANAGED TO TAKE BACK HER CROWN AS A WORLD CHAMPION!" And another clip of her spraying champagne towards other fellow drivers could be seen.

The loud scene full of euphoria and loud yells are cut as y/n appeared back in the interview room, a small smile on her face. The sudden change into a tense silence is a bit shocking.

"Well," she started, laughing. "I guess I'm a pretty good driver?" y/n stopped a bit. "Can definitely become an Uber as a side hustle."

[natalchartnurtures]

PAC: Mitski, what about me is eternal like the.. moon?

I had so much fun doing this

~~~~~~~~~~~

Pile 1:

'Cause my love is mine, all mine I love mine, mine, mine Nothing in the world belongs to me But my love is mine, all mine, all mine

I'm sitting right in front of your cards in utter awe. I got goosebumps when I laid eyes on your cards, pile 1. Let me begin by saying this: you've seen some DARK and truly terrible times, haven't ya? Even as I say this, it feels like an understatement. There have been times when you were stripped down to bare bones, and you had to "grow back the rest of you." I apologize for the gruesome metaphor (but hey, I'm just the messenger; this ain't really coming from me :p). Maybe you've had to encounter times when you felt painfully lonely, stuck in your head and in your general life too, like your spirit was beaten down. Or maybe it felt as if the universe snatched away something you thought was incredibly precious? But I hear that it wasn't what you thought it was; that's why it had to go. You probably didn't see it that way at all, and THAT'S ALRIGHT because we don't have Spirit's perspective, now do we? I see that you really struggled to put yourself together after that somewhat 'impossible-seeming' loss. It seemed like it came outta left field.

BUT GUESS THE FUCK WHAT. You, my friend, took this PAIN and these fucked up times and turned it into a damn palace of gold. You read that right. What's eternal about you? Your alchemy. Your fire. Your willpower. Your ability to take life by the balls. Your refusal to let it beat you to dust. Your refusal to be small. Literal goosebumps, you feeling it yet? It's your connection to God/Source/Universe. Your faith. Your mastery of your mind, babe. Yeah. You've somehow mastered your mind in this process of putting yourself back together. Acknowledge that ish! 'Cause you really did do that.

Nothing can ever get you to stop dreaming, and much less trying to stop you from achieving them, love. You're a powerhouse of energy, and God bless anybody who ever underestimates that (you included side-eyeing you right now). Not you getting low key called out, haha.

Don't get me wrong, though; being a powerhouse of energy doesn't necessarily mean being in everybody's face trying to assert your dominance, y'know? It can look like silent crying in the middle of the night and waking up the next day determined to overcome the thing that made you cry the day before.

Your light is what's eternal about you. It never goes off. Like ever. Your dedication to learning and growing through whatever, and I mean WHATEVER, life throws your way is what will never die, sweetie. It's like a part of your essence at this point. I hope you're proud of that and know that it's what will bring you to your success in life, whatever that looks like for each one of you beautiful ass people reading this :)

Haha, that's so cute; I just heard Spirit go "you're going places, sweetheart" ><

And with that, let's end your FABULOUS, goosebumps-inducing (btw, I don't say that about just ANYTHING), and awe-inspiring reading here.

Thank you, pile 1, for sharing your energy with me today. I love you guys so, so much and… not gonna lie, I'm low key honored to have been in your presence today. Haha, see ya!

~~~~~~~~~~~

Pile 2:

My baby, here on earth Showed me what my heart was worth So, when it comes to be my turn Could you shine it down here for her?

My god, why is there so much happening as I tap into your energy, pile 2? And I mean it in a nice way, though. I heard T Swift's song "The Last Great American Dynasty" as I was shuffling for you, and I heard Spirit go, "she's sweet and salty," lol. We'll see how all that plays into the reading eventually.

The first thing I noticed was your incredible balance within your mind and heart. It's shocking. Maybe you've been working on getting these aspects of yours to agree with one another and balance each other out, or it's simply your personality, but… pile 2, this beautiful mind-heart balance is what's eternal about you, love. Your peace. Your calm. The childlike innocence of your heart blending seamlessly with your mind's unending curiosity for life. Your emotional intelligence. The way you flow… like water, I heard. Wow! I find that so amazing, ugh, like can we be friends, pile 2? T-T, 'cause I definitely need some of that in my life right now, not gonna lie, haha.

There's that AND then there's a whole other dimension to you where you give 'life of the party' vibes as well. OH, so maybe that's why I heard Spirit say "sweet and salty," like two very different things but produce a wonderful taste together. Complex. Addicting. You make people want to come back for more, pile 2. Mmmmmm! Love that!

You have this laid-back vibe to you as well that a lot of people in your life appreciate. I see that your ability to lighten anybody's day is what's eternal about you awwww. I heard "she's the sunshine of my life." UGH, this is too wholesome for my heart; please save me. You seem to really perk up people's day/week or just life in general. You give, like, Saggi vibes, bro. It doesn't matter if you have that in your chart, but it's just your soul. The eternal aspect of you feels bright, expansive, loving, and so vibrant in energy, my god. You've also got strong feminine energy too… you must be really good at attracting 'cause you're strong in your feminine energy AND you're chill and detached from it at the same time. Effortless manifester, master manifester are some words that come to mind as I describe this.

Your divinity is what's eternal about you. Your 'witchy vibes.' Your embodiment of your highest truth. Your commitment to maintaining this divine connection in your day-to-day. Bro, what's eternal about you is that you can turn any old mundane task/thing into something fun and magical and full of meaning and symbolism. You live life deep, and even though there aren't a whole lotta people who can join you there, you wouldn't have it any other way. It's your raw authenticity, babe. Circling back to "The Last Great American Dynasty" song, maybe you're like Rebekah that T Swift sings about, "the most shameless woman this town has ever seen." People tend to call raw, authentic women shameless, but you couldn't care less. You will forever do what you like 'cause you're a free-spirited divine mystic in the body of a teeny lil human. Love it.

That's all I have for you, pile 2. Thank you for spending time with me! I love you so much <3

~~~~~~~~~~~

Pile 3:

Moon, tell me if I could Send up my heart to you? So, when I die, which I must do Could it shine down here with you?

Ah, my divine activators. What's eternal about you? Your intensity. BS detection might as well be your middle name. Sherlock Holmes who? 'Cause you're the new detective in town, baby, sniffing out illusions, falsities, fake people, LIES, victim mentality. None of that runs free with you around, I'll tell you that. It's your capacity to hold divine truth, lovingly, which is INCREDIBLY hard, btw. You can't stand half-assed people and people who seem to not have their "heads screwed on straight." Lmao, what kinda people are you surrounded by, pile 3? Ooh, I heard that you're divinely planted where you are so you can activate a lot of people into awakening to their true selves, but it looks like nobody wants to actually awaken. Lmao.

-Side note: My heart goes out to you if you've been surrounded by really difficult and chaotic energies that bring you down a lot. That SUCKS so hard, bro. Been there myself too lately, and it's not a fun merry-go-round to co-exist with. Just keep being your amazing cool-ass self, ok? Things will work out eventually. You already intuitively feel that things will get better, so trust that feeling!-

If I could describe your energy, I would use the Phoenix rising from the ashes symbolism to do so. Ohhhhh, as I told you that, I saw a vision of T Swift's music video of "Look What You Made Me Do," where she comes out of the grave and sings, "Honey, I rose up from the dead, I do it all the time." I'm a fan, pile 3. Omg. That's some badass ballsy energy, and I'm so here for it right now. You're the epitome of what psychological death and rebirth looks like. You're the textbook definition. And THAT'S what's eternal about you. No matter where you are or what you end up doing in life, you'll always be able to "rise up from the dead" and do it iconically too. Haha, I literally heard that. Lmao. This ability of yours is an extension of the greater aspect of you - your higher self. Whoa… I just heard you've had this ability for lifetimes and you will take it strongly with you to the next ones as well. Powerful. It's etched in your soul, pile 3. You know what you want and how to get it, even if not immediately; you always do eventually. It's the security you possess within yourself that's eternal, love. Nothing can really shake you at this point. Lmao. You've got a strong-ass foundation.

-Side note: I'm really seeing a healed and fully realized root chakra for you. If you haven't gotten there yet, you're well on your way! Good job! Root chakra work is the most brutal, btw, so… you really have my respect. Haha, moving on-

You have warrior energy present quietly in your personality as well. You give spiritual warrior vibes. You don't prefer to live in it 24/7; it's simply something you tap into when a situation calls for it. Otherwise, I see you being quite heart-centered, full of love, looking at the world with rose-colored glasses. Your inner child is what's eternal about you. Your divine sensitivity and your capacity to hold your emotions without judgment and live big from a place of heart. You embody the energy of water in my eyes, tbh. Life-giving but also destructive if need be, and there's absolutely nothing weak about water. Phew. You are eternal as the oceans are.

Ahhh, pile 3, that was sooo much fun! Thanks for stopping by, and I love you soooo much!

~~~~~~~~~~~

[vrystalius]

Hey Miss Vry.

I saw your asks were open for demons and after reading the others I'm curious, could you do a "The demon that..." for Muzan; kind of the demon that I would trade my humanity for? (yes I occasionally simp for this Dominant man :"> and I'm blushing to hell for asking :P) Just a thought.

Hope you are doing great :)

The demon that I would trade my humanity for

(Muzan x sick!reader)

You have been sick since birth. You cannot walk, nor can you crawl, damned to lay in bed all day and to rot in your own misery. The only nice thing about your day is when it’s over. That way, the sun disappears behind the tall mountains and stops mocking you for not being able to feel the touch of its rays on your fragile skin.

“I see myself in you.”

That’s what the demon across you said after visiting you for the fifth time. This handsome man wanted to devour you the first time he broke into your estate, but was amused by the lack of fear or even a reaction from you. You lived your whole life in pain or misery, it’s no different if it ends in misery as well. You don’t care anymore.

Muzan Kibutsuji is the name of the demon, you learned. He’s often talking about how humans are pathetic creatures and deserve nothing but death, while his cold fingers and sharp nails brush your hair in an oddly comforting touch. He would talk about his search for the blue spider lily, the only thing that keeps him from taking over all of Japan and the world. The only thing that will keep him from becoming a god and rule over everything.

You were entertained by his speeches and were intrigued by this self-proclaimed demon king. You always heard about his achievements as a demon, how he established a ranking system and how every demon serves him. But you never found out or how he became like this.

“I was like you. A sick, frail human. The doctors said I will never reach any age after 25. I was supposed to die as painfully as I lived.”

You’re surprised to hear what he once was, and what he is now. Someone as sick as you became such a handsome, powerful creature?

Muzan almost pities you. You’re in the exact situation he was in all these thousands of years ago, just that he had no demonic lover that would take care for him. You don’t even know how truly infatuated he is by your fragile being.

One day, he decided to give you an offer you couldn’t possibly refuse.

“I could turn you into a demon, just like me. We would to rule over my lowly demons and destroy the Ubuyashiki family line. We could conquer the sun, together.”

Muzan would offer turn you into a human in exchange for a simple kiss. But as he leaned in, he scraped his fangs across the inside of his lips, drawing blood. The feeling of your lips against his felt like heaven, or how he imagined it would feel to walk under the sun without scorching up.

His blood mixed with your saliva. Suddenly, your whole body felt like it was on fire. Your body twitched and contorted, and you soon fell limp against Muzan.

“Now you and I are bound together, my dearest. Forever.”

💠

I feel so honoured to be called Miss. It makes me blush xD But anyways, thank you so much for requesting! I hope you liked this and this suits your tastes. Muzan is one of my favourite characters in kny, besides Sanemi, Genya, Yorichii & Michikatsu and Douma. Yes, I have a lot of faves…

Make sure to EAT, SLEEP and DRINK enough

Take care of yourselves!

The demon that… (masterlist)

[travelingmaster-inspirations]

Although my Husband an I are talented hypnotist in our own right, I've always been more of the submissive type so except for the few times I hypnotize him to help him relax after a long day, I'm happy to concede to be his loving submissive wife.

We've explored a lot and obviously, he's used his talents on me to help me achieve my goals as his devoted sub, but he never pushed me as far as I know he fantasized he could...

So for our anniversary last year, I decided to get him a pet.

The world is full of curious and naive people so I wasn't surprised when my online line hypnosis hunt for the perfect candidate generated a few results. Seducing the bi-curious was easy, but using her boundless curiosity to introduce her to hypnosis was even easier. After a few online sessions, I had gain enough control over her mind to convince her to meet me in person so I could truly spend some quality time with her body.

Our time together was so powerfully arousing for her that she couldn't resist the compulsion to come see me again and again, not realizing that every time she did, her mind sank deeper and deeper into my control.

By the time I offered her to my husband a few months later, her mind had surrendered to me so completely that she didn't even hesitate when I commanded her to fuck my husband. She took it in stride like the good girl she was and opened her lovely legs to the man she had, up until that point, never met.

The dynamic with her was pure selfish domination and I made sure she was eager for it. In a matter of days, he took over her hypnosis session and wasted no time building on the foundations I had laid down. In her glazed mindless eyes, he quickly became more than a dominating lover, he became her Master.

Her Owner...

Since then, my Husband has been able to truly fulfill his long held fantasy of re-shaping a person's mind so completely that her old self could barely be found. Through repeated brainwashing and conditioning, he restricted her ability to think so thoroughly that unless we actively order her to do things, she has a hard time thinking of things she could be doing. It's an added chore for us to be sure, but it's what allowed her to truly embraced that she was his pet and sexual toy.

As for me, I haven't been idle and I've made sure to properly train her to do all the things I am less comfortable doing with my husband. It wasn't my goal when I got her for him, but since she's proved to be so eager and open to our control, I didn't see any reason not to turn her into a truly free use slave...

[eatmangoesnekkid]

Heartbreak is a natural human response to being hurt in your heart by a person, a system, or an experience. In other words, being in the experience of heartbreak, whether conscious or unconscious, is not "wrong" or "bad." But what's interesting is that heartbreak is not discussed enough in traditional healing spaces yet it is one of the greatest blockages that inhibit the flow of love and moving beyond a survival state. Healing the unresolved heartbreak lingering in your aura/electromagnetic field can be achieved when you spend some quality time in celibacy loving on yourself and preparing your body for intimacy with a new lover (lots of slow baths, slowing down, time in nature, grounding, journaling, cooking your own food, and the like) so that you when you start to date again, you lead with more self-love and self-worth, and not with heartbreak, fear, insecurity, or repression. You must have compassionate time with yourself to dearmour your heart from living through a deep state of trauma which is what heartbreak is. We don't realize that heartbreak is a healthy trauma response to experiencing emotional, physical or spiritual pain but the trauma of it that has to be unwind and released or it can easily impact our breast tissues over time. The heart and the breasts sit closely together for many incredible nourishing reasons. However, what happens to the heart naturally has impact on the breasts. It is also important to note that heartbreak could have happened recently in this lifetime or past ones from your mother line where the unconscious heartbreak you emanate is a kind of karma to be dissolved and released. Lightheartedness then becomes one of your most dominant frequencies that can speed up "time" into a quantum leap. Most people have no idea the level of pyschic trauma, wounding, war, and fear (and love) I was born into and grew up in because I do not walk around in the world with an aura of heartbreak or in patterns of self-loathing, self-doubt, or self-hate. Healing the scar tissue of my heartbreak allowed me to see that my body and life held real value. We were always designed to be Gods, you see. To get our hearts broken and still live and thrive in our beautiful breasts and magical pussies. To fuck the dumb ass narcissist we should have never called back and allow that moment of bad sex to refine our character. To experience a smorgasbord of hardships and still come fully alive in our bodies and in this life. We are here to be Divine creators, you see. We get to make mistakes, take u-turns, and experience the magic, beauty, and harmony in figuring it all out. -India Ame'ye, Author

[antiquitiesandlabyrinths]

Hapshepsut?

Oh, you guys are funny. I make a note in my post about the oddity of people coming into my inbox with a single word prompt and that I have no idea how to respond except with a handful of information about the prompt, and now it's a real thing? That's just what I'm supposed to do?

Well, I might as well do so.

The modern legacy of Hatshepsut is dominated entirely by her womanhood. It completely disregards all of her accomplishments as a great and wealthy Pharaoh presiding over a time of great prosperity for Egypt, and it also overlooks the political and cultural climate of the time, which is as confusing as it is complicated.

This is much longer than my previous go about Ramses I, so I'm putting it under a read more.

Hatshepsut's Beginnings

When the layman thinks of Hatshepsut, they will think that she is the first female ruler of Egypt. This is their first mistake. There were many regents of Egypt; mothers who ruled on behalf of their young sons, who were not yet old enough to fully claim the throne. Beyond that there was also the female King Sobekneferu (12th Dynasty), as well as two Queens very early on in Egyptian history who might've been Pharaohs in their own right; Neithhotep (Early 1st Dynasty) and Merneith (1st Dynasty), both named for the warrior Goddess Neith, who held considerable importance in early Egyptian history. Both of these Queens have inscriptions and monuments attesting to their rule, but due to a lack of complete concrete evidence, it is difficult to now say whether they were regents or Pharaohs. Sobekneferu, from the 12th dynasty, was the first woman to take on the full royal titulary, assuming the position and title of Pharaoh completely. While her existence and rule is fully affirmed, there is little evidence left in the way of her accomplishments, as she ruled as the last Pharaoh of the 12th dynasty.

Khnumetamun Hatshepsut herself was born in 1507 BC to the Pharaoh Thutmose I and his Great Royal Wife, Ahmose. Her name, meaning 'Foremost of the Noble Women' was suiting to her––later in life she would be married to another one of her father's sons, Thutmose II, who was birthed of a secondary wife named Mutnofret. She was married before the age of 20 and assumed the highest standing title a woman could gain at the time; the God's Wife of Amun, giving her more power than even a Queen could achieve. To understand the importance of Hatshepsut even at this time, we must understand what it was to be the God's Wife of Amun. And remember, all this power and prestige is before she ever even became regent to her husband's son.

The God's Wife of Amun was a position held in Thebes, modern-day Luxor, and called Waset in ancient times. The title originates from the Middle Kingdom, and at that time, it was merely an honorific title for a noble woman who assisted the High Priest of Amun at Karnak Temple in his duties. By the New Kingdom, which was Hatshepsut's time, the God's Wife of Amun was powerful enough to influence policy and held considerable power and prestige, the peak of which was reached in the 3rd Intermediate Period, when a God's Wife of Amun ruled over Upper Egypt. The typical duties of a God's Wife of Amun were that of a high priest, and she would essentially be the female counterpart of the high priest of Amun, and took on many of his responsibilities alongside him. But the rewards for it were also plenty: "tax-exempt land, housing, food, clothing, gold, silver, and copper, male and female servants, wigs, ointment, cosmetics, livestock, and oil." (God's Wife of Amun, World History Encyclopedia, Joshua J. Mark) She would preside over the festivals of Amun and would be considered His consort, making her a divine being.

So this was Hatshepsut's position which was gifted upon her around the same time she was married to her half-brother, Thutmose II. Together they had a daughter whose name is Neferu-Ra, but this was their only child. The only viable heir to the throne after Thutmose II would have to be a son, which only came about through Thutmose II's lesser wife, Isis, who birthed Thutmose III. But Thutmose II, Hatshepsut's husband, died relatively soon after Thutmose III came to be, and so Thutmose III, the young son, could not fully be given the throne. Instead, Hatshepsut was made regent, and assumed all duties of state and Pharaoh while Thutmose III was growing up.

Proclaiming Herself Pharaoh

It was in the 7th year of her regency that the well-known history occurred. Hatshepsut crowned herself sole Pharaoh of Egypt. She assumed all royal titularies, titles, and names befitting a Pharaoh, but inscribed all of these using feminine forms. She passed down her title of God's Wife of Amun to her daughter, Neferu-Ra, and had her married to Thutmose III, likely in an attempt to consolidate power, and began to carve images of herself as a male Pharaoh.

I have commented on Hatshepsut before because some people like to claim that Hatshepsut is the world's first transgender person. This is incorrect. If she had wanted to represent as male, she would've gone about it differently, and to begin with, she would've changed her name. As I stated earlier, her name means "Foremost of the Noble Women"; this is a female name, and it would've been obvious to any Egyptian of the time that this was a woman. Instead, her representation as a male was to ensure the people knew she was not a Queen, but a full-fledged Pharaoh. And as I mentioned just previously, all her names and titles used feminine grammatical forms.

She is a complicated character, and one that will likely never be fully understood. But one certain thing about Hatshepsut was that she was smart. By marrying her daughter to the 'King' Thutmose III, she created a safety net for herself; if she was removed from the throne and Thutmose III was crowned, then she would still hold considerable power as the mother-in-law of the Pharaoh. She further legitimized her rule as Pharaoh by proclaiming that she was not just Amun's ritual wife, but His daughter, as well.

In the carvings and paintings in Hatshepsut's mortuary temple at Deir el-Bahari, Hatshepsut tells the story of how Amun appeared to her mother, Ahmose, in the form of Thutmose I, her father.

"He [Amun] in the incarnation of the Majesty of her husband, the King of Upper and Lower Egypt, [Thutmose I] found her sleeping in the beauty of her palace. She awoke at the divine fragrance and turned towards his Majesty. He went to her immediately, he was aroused by her he imposed his desire upon her. He allowed her to see him in his form of a god and she rejoiced at the sight of his beauty after he had come before her. His love passed into her body. The palace was flooded with divine fragrance." (van de Mieroop, 173)

This interaction made Hatshepsut a demi-God. But this was also not enough; she made claims that Thutmose I, her father, made her a co-ruler with him.

"Then his majesty said to them: "This daughter of mine, Khnumetamun Hatshepsut—may she live!—I have appointed as my successor upon my throne... she shall direct the people in every sphere of the palace; it is she indeed who shall lead you. Obey her words, unite yourselves at her command."" (Seawright, Caroline (6 November 2000). "Hatshepsut: Female Pharaoh of Egypt")

She claimed that Amun had sent an oracle foretelling of her rise to power.

"Welcome my sweet daughter, my favorite, the King of Upper and Lower Egypt, Maatkare, Hatshepsut. Thou art the Pharaoh, taking possession of the Two Lands." (Breasted, James Henry (1906). Ockerbloom, John Mark (ed.). Ancient Records of Egypt: Historical Documents from the Earliest Times to the Persian Conquest)

She also represented herself as the direct successor of the Pharaoh Ahmose I, who started the 18th Dynasty.

That last bit may seem unimportant if you do not know the history behind Ahmose I. Ahmose I came about during the 2nd Intermediate Period, a time in which Egypt was split into three sections. Lower Egypt, the delta, which is to the north, was ruled by foreigners––the Hyksos, who were much despised by the native Egyptians, who ruled only a section of Egypt from Thebes. Then far the south, the Nubians ruled their own section of Egypt. What's important here, however, is the Hyksos rule. The Hyksos were commonly referred to as the Asiatics, and likely originated from the Levant, referring to themselves with Western Semitic names. They were seen as cruel and oppressive rulers, and while this was likely far from the truth, when we concern ourselves with the cultural standpoint of 18th Dynasty Egyptians, we only need to understand their viewpoint and opinion of the Hyksos. Ahmose I, ruler of Thebes, successfully drove out the hated Hyksos from Egypt, and reinstated Theban rule over the delta in Lower Egypt. These actions made him a much-beloved figure in the eyes of the ancient Egyptians, and this is why Hatshepsut proclaiming herself as a direct successor of Ahmose I was a smart move––she correlated herself with freedom from oppression and a somewhat legendary figure, who had ruled over Egypt some 80 years previous to her.

Actions As Pharaoh

Consolidating her rule, gaining power, and ensuring that power would stay were not the only things she accomplished, even if that is what most people recognize her for. She also completed a staggering amount of construction projects for temples, protected the borders of Egypt, led military expeditions into Syria and Nubia, and a rich trading expedition to the mythical land of Punt, which is presumed to be somewhere in modern-day Somalia. She was in control of a massive amount of wealth, without which it would not have been possible to assume so many building projects.

"Hatshepsut was able to exploit the wealth of Egypt's natural resources, as well as those of Nubia. Gold flowed in from the eastern deserts and the south: the precious stone quarries were in operation, Bebel el-Silsila began to be worked in earnest for sandstone, cedar was imported from the Levant, and ebony came from Africa." (Betsy M. Bryan, Shaw, 229-231)

Inscriptions at her mortuary temple in Deir el-Bahari go into detail about her expedition to Punt, as well, describing an immense amount of wealth.

"The loading of the ships very heavily with marvels of the country of Punt; all goodly fragant woods of God's Land, heaps of myrrh-resin, with fresh myrrh trees, with ebony and pure ivory, with green gold of Emu, with cinnamon wood, Khesyt wood, with Ihmut-incense, sonter-incense, eye cosmetic, with apes, monkeys, dogs, and with skins of the southern panther. Never was brought the like of this for any king who has been since the beginning." (Lewis, 116)

Her temple was such an immense work of art that it is considered by many to be one of the finest temples in Egypt, whose craftsmanship exceeded any Pharaoh before her and was only ever matched by Ramses the Great (Ramses II). She built throughout the country to such an extent that there are very few museums who concern themself with Egyptian history who do not have a piece of Hatshepsut's work. She added tremendously to the complex of Karnak at Thebes for the glory of Amun, and erected two giant obelisks there, alongside many other obelisks raised in other parts of the country. The Karnak complex is made up of three different precincts; the precinct of Amun, the precinct of Montu, and the precinct of Mut. The precinct of Mut had been ravaged during the Hyksos rule, and so Hatshepsut rebuilt and restored Mut's great temple in Thebes, once again honoring the Gods with her wealth.

Overall, she was an immensely successful Pharaoh. She added to the great temples of Egypt and built new temples, simultaneously giving honor to the Gods and employing the people. In these temples she performed rituals and rites traditionally reserved for the Pharaoh, which further confirmed her power and status reigning as a male Pharaoh. She led conquesting military campaigns into Syria and Nubia, protected the borders of Egypt from foreigners, conducted highly successful and bountiful trades with the people of Punt, who were highly rich in gold, and built one of the most beautiful and iconic mortuary temples known today, influencing the location of the future Valley of the Kings.

Death of Hatshepsut

Hatshepsut's death is unfortunately not well understood. Her body was moved several times due to complications with lineage, burial, and the right to the throne. There is a mummy that is proposed to be Hatshepsut. This mummy has a missing tooth in her jaw, and Egyptologists are in possession of one of Hatshepsut's teeth, found in one of her canopic jars. The empty space and the tooth fit perfectly together, so it is proposed that this mummy is Hatshepsut. However, later on, the tooth was identified to be a molar from the lower jaw, whereas the missing tooth from the mummy is in the upper jaw. There is a lot more to this than I am writing about; this is the simplified version because there's a lot of scientific know-how one needs to fully understand the complications of trying to identify a nameless and displaced mummy.

If this mummy is Hatshepsut, then Hatshepsut died from bone cancer. Queens in the family of Hatshepsut are known to have had genetic skin irritation, and the lotions used by the Pharaoh were a carcinogenic, benzopyrene skin lotion, meaning that over time, as Hatshepsut attempted to soothe her irritated skin, she would've been giving herself cancer. Alongside that, she also had bad teeth, which is why one tooth is gone from her jaw––it was removed, and later caused an abscess, which may have also contributed to her death.

Removal from History

Eventually, as we all know, Hatshepsut was stricken from the record. Her names were carved out, smoothed over, or replaced with the names of her step-son, Thutmose III, who took over as Pharaoh when Hatshepsut passed into the west. Many images and statues of her were dismantled, destroyed and buried, and there was an attempt to wall up her monument at Karnak. The majority of this historical re-writing took place at the end of Thutmose III's reign, when he was co-reigning with his son, Amenhotep II.

It is not entirely clear why this was done, but there are several theories, and I find it likely that they were all true in some way, and all contributed to the defacing of Hatshepsut's legacy. For one, rule of Egypt is a traditionally male role, as is shown in the first king Osiris and His wife, Isis, who were mythologically the first to rule over Egypt. Egypt was very dependent on the idea of Ma'at, which represents truth, justice, and most importantly, balance. Having a female Pharaoh was an upset of the balance and an upset of tradition, so it might've been seen as prudent to erase Hatshepsut's memory of female rule. Another factor is that the reusing of monuments was a common and popular practice of Pharaohs; they would take the already-built monuments of previous Pharaohs and inscribe their own names in them, claiming they were built by them. This saved money and resources. The last factor that I would consider a prime reason would be Thutmose III's son, Amenhotep II.

Amenhotep II had a very shaky claim to the throne. He was not the son of the Great Royal Wife; instead, he was the son of a lesser wife, Merytre-Hatshepsut. Amenhotep II was also not the eldest son. The eldest son of Thutmose III was born of the Great Royal Wife Satiah, and his name was Amenemhat. But both Satiah and Amenemhat died, and so Amenhotep II was who Thutmose III resorted to when it came to passing on the throne. Amenhotep II, who was insecure in his claims to the throne, usurped many of the accomplishments, deeds, and monuments of Hatshepsut. He neglected to record the names of his Queens, and he eliminated the giving of power to women, erasing the titles of the Gods Wife of Amun, and other such positions which had the chance to give any power to women. In my opinion, truly an unpleasant man. But fortunately these titles were restored by his son Thutmose IV, and we are not here to talk about Amenhotep II.

Overview

Hatshepsut was a great Pharaoh who accomplished great things and presided over an incredibly prosperous time in Egyptian history. This is likely why her name was stricken from the record and the name of Sobekneferu, the previous Queen-Pharaoh, was not. Sobekneferu presided over a time of chaos, so it was not important to remove her, as her rule could stand as an example as to why it was against Ma'at for a female to rule as Pharaoh. But Hatshepsut was extremely successful, and for that, she was removed. She built great monuments, added to the prosperity and health of the people, honored the Gods, and was one of the most powerful Pharaohs in Egyptian history. We will likely never know why she did all of this; why she was dissatisfied with her position as the God's Wife of Amun, why she proclaimed herself Pharaoh over her husband's son. But nothing bad seemed to ever come from her reign, and she is now remembered as one of the most iconic figures in ancient Egyptian history.

[planetofsnarfs]

Following are remarks Friday of the foreign minister of Poland, Radek Sikorski, at the United Nations Security Council.

* * *

I’m amazed at the tone and the content of the presentation by the Russian ambassador.

And I thought I could be useful by correcting the record. Ambassador Nebenzya has called Kyiv a client of the West. Actually, Kyiv is fighting to be independent of anybody.

He calls them a criminal Kyiv regime. In fact, Ukraine has a democratically elected government.

He calls them Nazis. Well, the president is Jewish, the defense minister is Muslim, and they have no political prisoners.

He said that Ukraine was wallowing in corruption. Well, Alexei Navalny documented how honest and full of probity his own country is.

He blamed the war on U.S. neo-colonialism. In fact, Russia was trying to exterminate Ukraine in the 19th century, again under Bolsheviks, and now it is the third attempt.

He said we are prisoners of Russophobia. “Phobia” means irrational fear. Yet, we are being threatened almost every day by the former president of Russia and Putin’s propagandists with nuclear annihilation. I put it to you that it is not irrational — when Russia threatens us, we trust them.

He said that we are denying Russia’s security interests. Not true. We only started rearming ourselves when Russia started invading her neighbors.

He even said that Poland attacked Russia during World War II. What is he talking about? It was the Soviet Union that attacked Poland together with Nazi Germany on the 17th of September 1939. They even held a joint victory parade on the 27th of September.

He says that Russia has always only beaten back aggression. Well, what were then Russian troops doing at the gates of Warsaw in August 1920? They were on a topographic excursion? The truth is that for every time Russia was invaded, she has invaded ten times.

He says that it is a perfidious proxy war by the West. My advice is – don’t fall into the Western trap. Withdraw your troops to international borders and avoid this Western plot.

He also says that there was an illegal coup in Kyiv in 2014. I was there. There was no coup. President Yanukovych murdered a hundred of his compatriots and was removed from office by a democratically elected Ukrainian parliament, including by his own party, the Party of Regions.

And finally he is saying that we the West are somehow trying to persuade that Russia can never be beaten. Well, Russia did not win the Crimean War, it didn’t win the Russo-Japanese war, it didn’t win World War I, it didn’t win the battle of Warsaw, it didn’t win in Afghanistan, and it didn’t win the Cold War.

But there’s good news. After each failure there were reforms.

Such demagoguery is unworthy of a member on a permanent basis of the Security Council. But what the ambassador has achieved is to remind us why we resisted Soviet domination and what Ukraine is resisting now.

They failed to subjugate us then. They’ll fail to subjugate Ukraine and us now.

[wheregoodthingsthrive]

🪻🩵💫

Kids of the smartest woman on earth and her malewife alien.

I am. Very passionate about the Vegebul kids. Trunks got shelved and GT was a train wreck and Bulla deserves better. I hope Super will do more with her (probbaly not but let me dream).

I think Bulla is entitled and egotistical, much like her father who definitely treats her as though she’s the most important thing in the world. She’s the princess of all Saiyans- duh. But she is still steadfast, kind, and witty. She’s born with a natural tail but can’t achieve Super Saiyan to save her life. Her best friend is Pan and she also deserves to fight. I refuse to believe Bulla could get away with never learning to fight under her father’s roof. Her fighting style is acrobatic, more on the defense than hard-hitting, having to adapt because SSJ1 is kinda beyond her for reasons she can’t really grasp.

Trunks is the opposite but still very similar. Cocky but socially awkward, very powerful but doubts himself a lot. He’s a very protective older brother, especially when he and Bulla can start training together. He was born with no tail yet his ascension abilities are top notch, obviously as per canon. With Bulla, he’s the most elder brother person ever. All of the bullying and teasing and knocking stuff over in her room for no reason but he equally spoils her and definitely thinks she’s his better half.

And hear me out— we should be grateful Vegeta’s more. Dominant. Characteristics didn’t win on the punnet square but. Trunks is a spitting image of Vegeta (same nose, eyes, strong brow, heart shaped but sharp face) with a build like Bulma (taller, broad shouldered, lean). Meanwhile Bulla is a good mix in the face of her parents (Bulma’s eyes but Vegeta’s irises, Vegeta’s nose and height, Bulma’s lips and jaw) but she’s on the shorter side. Both have widows peaks reminiscent of Vegeta’s though… just not as. Yeah. Five head.

But they have Bulma’s laugh, Briefs hair color, elegance, and her smarts. :3

[katsona-the-katsequel]

Background Events: Persona Experimentation

Unethical experimentation on Persona Users has been happening since the beginning. But how has it evolved until now?

Warning: Some speculation will be involved.

TW: Human Experimentation

The Beginning

We don't have an exact date for when experiments related to Personas and the Collective Unconscious began. Phil and Nyarly's bet had been going for some time by the time IF took place. However, if we had to place a true beginning to the experiments, we would have to go with Stephen and the Demon Summoning Program. Along with Kyouji Kuzunoha, he's the only SMT character who's also canon to Persona. Makes sense, considering his weird transcendent nature. The tale may vary between franchises, but the Persona version goes like this:

By unknown means, Stephen managed to create the Terminal System to travel through computer networks. Since he's in a wheelchair in IF, then this Stephen also managed to connect to the Expanse (located in the Collective Unconscious) with the Terminal System. Since he didn't have a way to communicate with the demon who crossed and no Persona to defend himself, Stephen was was attacked and subsequentaly crippled. All of this had to have happened before 1996 for the timeline to make sense (Side Note: This also tells a lot about Stephen, since the incident had the perfect conditions for an Awakening).

The incident led Stephen to create the Demon Summoning Program, probably for personal use, since there was no upcoming war to prepare to (that Stephen could have known of). For some unknown reason, Stephen chose to upload the only copies of the program in the computers of Karukozaka High School. Was he an alumni? Did Stephen realize teens had more probability of connecting with the Expanse? Were Karu High's computers just that good? Who knows. Only Hazama and Tamaki took the program serious enough to use it, even if it was against each other. But that's a story for another time.

Like St. Hermelin would in a few months, Karu High briefly made the news before the entire incident was forgotten. That is highly suspicious on itself. My assumption is that there truly were some experimentation going on before this, amd they made sure to silence the press and make sure the students didn't snitch. Since Tamaki managed to hide among the student population as another victim (probably with Stephen's help), they never questioned her on her abilities nor disappeared her.

But who are they? Well...

SEBEC

The first formal organization seeking to gain a foothold in the Collective Unconscious was the Japanese branch of SEBEC, leadered by Takahisa Kandori. Their story goes like this:

When Kandori took over as head branch of SEBEC, they began to undertake the creation of a device capable of transporting matter from one place to another. Kind of like a portal. This had the main objective of helping to lower freight costs of imports and exports. Maybe even erasing them entirely. Key contributors were Setsuko Sonomura (an engineering specialist) and Dr. Nicholai (a scientist). Kandori kept the project so under wraps that those involved basically lived in the installations. Together they created the Dimension Variable Accelerator System, or DEVA System. However, they also pulled a Backrooms and accidentally connected to the Collective Unconscious.

It is probably at this point that Kandori awoke to his Persona, which was hijacked by the real Nyarlathotep. And thus, Kandori became a puppet in The Great Bet while believing he was achieving world domination or something like that. "But, Kati," I can hear you saying, "all of that was about the Collective Unconscious. Aside from Kandori, there were no Persona Users working with SEBEC".

Oh? OH? So quickly you forget about him?

Takeda. The man, the myth, the barely remembered NPC. All we know about him is that he is Kandori's right-hand man, the head of security at SEBEC and a Persona User. We don't even know what his Persona is, only that its couldn't handle the combined forces of the St. Hermelin students. His existence does imply something deeper: SEBEC is already employing Persona Users to their cause. They probably didn't know much about the phenomena (understandable, since they had just finished the DEVA System) and didn't have a definitive way of figuring out who could be a User and who couldn't. For all they knew this could be random. And so, a not-so-stellar security guard rose to become the second-hand man of the main antagonist. Just because he had the same power as him.

As we know, Kandori and SEBEC failed. But what was the fate of the staff that worked on the DEVA System? What about the little knowledge of the Collective Unconscious they had?

New World Order

Due to Nyarly's meddling, the NWO was founded in 1979 after they found Kiyotada Sumaru's head. They might have had supernatural advice from an ancient head and the backup of one of the most powerful beings in the Persona Universe, but no real Persona Users. Not one of those people had their shit together. The closest thing they had was Chizuru Ishigami, who was a sorcerer (most probable given true power by the Rumor Curse). When the time was right, we can assume Nyarly guided them to the remnants of Kandori's fuck up. The NWO revived Kandori and began their recruitment of the now-lost scientists and inventors. The NWO gave more freedom to their researchers than SEBEC did, which eventually led to the beginning of true human experimentation.

We don't see the worst of it unless you play Tatsuya's Scenario, where the hints they leave us are enough to call for a second Doctors' Trial.

Yikes. And this was only one known experiment.

Like SEBEC before them, the NWO also fell. But they weren't the only ones running supernatural and unethical experiments in 1999.

Kirijo Group

With the creation of the Dark Hour, demons shadows weren't only a danger of the Collective Unconscious anymore, at least, as far as the Kirijo Group knew. Now those in the know had to watch themselves every night to avoid being attacked by them. They couldn't always rely on the perfected version of the Anti-Shadow Suppression Weapons. That must have been the moment when they began to hear rumors of supernatural events in Sumaru City, which led them to the crumbling NWO.

As it turns out, the entire Death Incident a couple of months ago left a huge vacancy for their supernatural research division. And these guys seem like they have fresh ideas that might just solve their self-created problem! A secret scramble must have taken place where the Nanjo and Kirijo Groups tried to covet all the info and personnel that had anything to do with the NWO. Those who weren't important enough to know the truth behind Kiyotada Sumaru's head and their self-proclaimed high-class greatness could have become the precursors of the Conspiracy.

And so, the Kirijo Group now had better scientists, inventors and researchers than before, and more willing to dab on unethical territory. With the need for defense, the former NWO scientists must have suggested they try to create their own Persona Users, like the ones who kept barging into their labs back in Sumaru. Thing is, no one there knew how a Persona User came to be. They did seem to have the power to control a shadow to do their bidding... maybe all they had to do was link (whatever that meant) a human with a shadow. The survivors of these experiments would become bodyguards for the Kirijo Group's excursions to Tartarus. No one would last long, though.

Skip a couple of years and the unexpected happened:

A natural Persona Awakening.

Note was taken of the factors that had to do with the event: the User was a child and she had been in a highly stressful situation. This is how the Kirijo Group rounded up the 100 children they would experiment on to create Artificial Persona Users. All of them dying except for three: Takaya Sakaki, Jin Shirato and Chidori Yoshino (and Sho Minazuki). This violation to the Nuremberg Code probably fell to the side when Mitsuru found and recruited two natural Persona Users on her own. Nothing like flushing dozens of children's lives down the toilet.

We must remember that the Kirijo Group didn't know everything about Personas, and so believed that the stressful situation with a dash of fear of death was necessary every time the User wanted fo summon their Persona. And so Evokers were created. Better not think of the trial and error that led to those inventions. Nor the one that helped create Persona Suppressants.

Who cares if three failed lab rats ran away? Now the Kirijo Group had true Persona Users with them.

A lot happened after that, but that is a story for another day. What about the hypothetical precursors to the Conspiracy formed from the high-profile members of the NWO? The ones that fell through the cracks during the power vacuum?

The Antisocial Force

For once, this wasn't Nyarly's fault. The basic rich bitches would have remained basic rich bitches if it wasn't for Yaldabaoth. The creation of the Shadow Operatives and the less restrictive hold on Kirijo Group employees probably made all that Persona and Collective Unconscious experimentation more of an open secret in the science community. And like hypnosis, this is one secret that most didn't believe until they witnessed it themselves. Not all were skepticals, and those interested were recruited by Masayoshi Shido for the creation of the Antisocial Force.

They would be the new oppressive entity in this area, suppressing information and giving stitches to snitches. This wouldn't stop "Cognitice Psience" from becoming an increasingly popular field. Who knows what kind of experiments happened in and out of the Antisocial Force. They couldn't have been the only ones.

If there is one thing the new Kirijo Group managed to contain, was the knowledge of the creation of Persona Users. The Antisocial Force didn't even have the research from the original NWO scientists that would help them create Artificial Users. Yaldy had to put an already-Awakened Goro Akechi in Shido's path for them to have a User. And even with an actual User, they couldn't replicate the circumstances that could have helped create more. I doubt Akechi was very helpful with that, though. Can't have any potential substitutes for his job.

Nah, the Antisocial Force's forte would never be Persona Users, but rather humanity's cognition.

So, what was the order of events?

Stephen created the Terminal System and began working on the Demon Summoning Program.

SEBEC began working on the DEVA System.

Stephen completed the Demon Summoning Program.

SEBEC finished the DEVA System and, after Kandori's Awakening, began to recruit Persona Users (at least one other than Kandori).

After SEBEC's fall, the New World Order recruited the staff that worked in the DEVA System.

The NWO began to experiment with demons and humans.

The Kirijo Group hired all the scientists and inventors from the NWO.

The Kirijo Group began to create Artificial Persona Users.

After Mitsuru's Awakening, the Kirijo Group focused on children experimentation.

The Antisocial Force began to recruit experts in cognitive psience for personal experiments.

[cameronspecial]

Before The Last Petal Falls (Part 2)

Pairing: Rafe Cameron x Reader

Warnings: N/A

Pronouns: She/Her

Word Count: 2.5K

Summary: It's always a funny thing to be invited to your ex-boyfriend's engagement party. It's an even funnier thing when it seems all his family members have something to say to you.

Masterlist

“How about Lace Place?” Lacey asks, flashing her hands in an ark to imitate the arch of the sign she is imagining. Y/N gives her a funny look at the words, “Babe, that sounds like you sell drugs. If you name your restaurant that, you’ll be attracting the wrong type of clientele. Although, if a stoner accidentally walks in, maybe you’ll get some business from the munchies.” Lacey cringes at the realization and nods. “Hey, you think I could sell some cookies at your bookstore? Maybe, it can help drum up some business,” Lacey suggests. 

“I don’t see why it would be an issue. Let me just read up on the regulations on it just in case we need a special license or something, but it’s such a cute idea. I can get one of those rollie carts and call it the Cookie Cart. Ooh, maybe I can give a free bookmark with each purchase of a cookie.”

“That’s a great idea. Then I could offer the same thing when someone buys a certain thing at the restaurant. Like, get a ten percent coupon for the bookstore. How do you feel about being a dinner special?” 

“Ahh, I love this idea. We are just two business girlies supporting each other. Soon, well, be girl bosses dominating the world.”

“Uhh, excuse me. Last time I checked, you were already a girl boss, who dominates the world. I mean In The Shadows has been in The New York Times Best Sellers for fifty-two weeks, now. You went on an international book tour for your debut book and you are writing the much-anticipated sequel as we speak. You made it, girl.”

“Okay, okay. Don’t discount your achievements though. You literally worked at a Michelin-star restaurant and graduated top of your class at Le Cordon Bleu in Paris. Now, you are opening your own restaurant at twenty-three.” 

The girls laugh at the little spiel they went on about being proud of their achievement and return to the paperwork they were going through for each of their respective businesses. In the five years since graduating high school, Y/N graduated from Oxford at twenty-one, but not before signing a deal with a major publisher for her book. A year later, her book is on the best sellers list and she is whisked away all over the world to promote it. She does recognize that her success may in part have to do with her mother and considered writing under a pseudonym, but decides against it when she realizes it wouldn’t really do anything. Using a fake name would mean she wouldn’t be able to make an in-person appearance out of concern for being recognized. It’s not exactly like her face has been hidden from her mother’s social media page. She really wants to have those moments to connect physically with her fans.

 On the other hand, Lacey had gone to culinary school at Le Cordon Bleu, and then quickly got a job at the Michelin-star restaurant. She decided to quit her job there so that she could open up her own restaurant. 

——

Y/N has no clue where she is going. Mason had just told her to get dressed nicely and to get in the car. She couldn’t get a question out, so she followed his instructions and got changed. She put on tan-coloured pants and a light pink balloon-sleeved satin blouse. She wore a black belt with a gold buckle and golden jewellery to pull the outfit together. Y/N sulked as she walked to Mason’s car. Her pestering as to where they were going went unanswered. When she sees where he stops the car, she wants to literally jump out of the car and run home. “Why did you bring me here, Mace?”

“It’s their engagement party today. I wasn’t planning on bringing you, but Blythe called and she literally begged me to bring you today. She knows how much you meant to Rafe and wants to get to know you more. She hopes, maybe even, that you guys can make up.” 

Y/N gives Mason a questioning look, “She wants her fiancé to get along again with his ex-girlfriend?” Mason nods and gently moves to bring his sister inside. “Blythe is a sweet girl and she really loves Rafe. She feels secu-.” Realizing that what he was about to say may have made his sister feel bad, he quickly switches to a different path. “Blythe is really friendly. She makes it her mission to help mend broken relationships. Rafe told me that she got two girls who were best friends when they were younger to make up after they got into a two-year fight over a boy. Can you just go in? You don’t have to talk to anyone and I literally brought you a book.” Y/N isn’t too excited about going to her ex-boyfriend’s engagement party, but she does as her brother asks. 

The twins enter Tannyhill together and are immediately given each a hug from the excited bride-to-be. “Ahh, and in comes the best man. You are only a tiny bit late, Mace. Y/N, I’m so glad you decided to come. I just know you and Rafe will make up in a jiffy.” Y/N gives an awkward smile, “Yeah, I totally chose to be here voluntarily.” Mason discretely elbows his sister in the stomach with a smile on his face. Play nice, the action signified. Blythe doesn’t seem to sense the sarcasm in Y/N’s words and turns towards Mason. “We are going to take the wedding party pictures now. Come on,” Blythe orders, taking Mason’s hand and dragging him away. “Rafe, say hello to Y/N.”

Y/N hadn’t noticed that Rafe had been standing at the main entrance too. Blythe has a way of holding everyone’s attention in a room. He had been standing there quietly observing the greetings. He quickly murmurs a hello then goes off after Blythe before Y/N can return it. She isn’t sure what to do and seeing as the only people she knows at the party are groomsmen, she goes upstairs to read on the balcony. She knows she probably shouldn’t be up there, but the balcony was guest free and she really didn’t want to explain who she was to anyone else. 

The broken silence from the front yard causes her to look up from the book. She silently watches as it appears the party is being moved outside. Rafe’s arm is wrapped around Blythe’s waist as she makes a speech thanking everyone for being there. Once she is done talking, Rafe follows her around whilst she talks from guest to guest. Rafe and the older lady listen to something Blythe says and they both laugh their heads off. This is why Y/N had to break up with Rafe. She could never be the social butterfly that matched his need to be around people. She could never fake pleasant conversations with people she doesn’t know. She would never want any of the traditional things associated with a wedding. And Rafe deserves all of that. Watching Blythe be all of those things for him cements the idea into Y/N’s mind that she did the right thing for him. He was able to move on and thrive with someone much more like him. With someone who didn’t hold him back. 

“Why does it not surprise me that you are up here?” A voice breaks the silence. Y/N turns to see a much older Wheezie at the door of the balcony. “OMG, Wheez. Look how big you’ve gotten. You are such a dignified young woman. Are you driving yet?” Wheezie moves herself to go sit beside Y/N, “Thank you, but I only seem to have gotten bigger because you haven’t seen me in five years. And I am driving. Rafe and Sarah are too scared to be in a car with me though. Blythe lets me drive her but I think only because she wants brownie points with me.”

“It’s still nice of her though. Do you like her?”

“Yeah, but you would let me drive you because you believe in my driving. Not because you want me to like you. You bribed me with cookies for that. She does it because she wants me to like her. She’s nice, though. But you know, she doesn’t make Rafe’s eyes twinkle as much as you do.”

“Louisa, you can’t keep comparing me to her. She’s the one marrying your brother.”

“And you are the one who still has a tighter hold on his heart even if he won’t admit it. You know I’m still angry at you for breaking up with him in the first place. But I missed you too much to be mad at you right now.”

“You gotta stop saying that. And I know you are mad. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have iced you guys out like that. I’m back now though and you can tell me all about your high school experience.”

“Yeah, yeah. We can talk about that later. Right now, I want you to sign my book.”

“You read my book?”

“Of course I did. You tell the best stories. You know Damian is an interesting character.” 

“He is, isn’t he? Don’t you just love a good demon love interest?”

“Yeah, that’s totally why I find him interesting…” 

Y/N doesn’t comment on Wheezie’s crypticness and follows the girl to her bedroom where the book sits. She signs the book and is dragged back downstairs to the party by the younger girl. Wheezie promises to come back and darts off to who knows where. Y/N is left alone in the kitchen she once used to make dessert cookies for her first date with Rafe. She resorts back to reading her book on the kitchen island. The sound of someone entering the kitchen causes her to look up from her book. Rafe is at the entryway staring at her with a scowl. “Where did you run off to, Y/L/N?”  

“I was upstairs on the balcony, reading.”

“You know, typically guests aren’t allowed upstairs during a party.”

“Wheezie didn’t seem to have a problem with it.”

“Yeah, well, she worships the ground you walk on so she isn’t exactly a non-biased host.” 

They stare each other down for a few seconds in silence before Y/N decides to break it. 

“You told me you wanted to get married at twenty-five.”

“And you told me that you wanted to be with me forever. I guess we are both pretty good at changing our life plan without telling the other.” 

“Haha, such a good retort. You really thought that would hurt me, Rafe?” Her words are only half true. The reminder of the choice she made stings a lot if she were to be honest, but she wasn’t about to admit that. Rafe just shakes his head and pushes past her to get to the fridge. He gets a drink out of it, “Whatever, I don’t have time to deal with this.” On his way out of the kitchen, he accidentally brushes her arm with his elbow and the scent of sea breeze and pool overwhelms her. The fact that he still smells the same after all these years causes her breath to hitch and tears to start to swell in her eyes. Rafe wants to pretend like he doesn’t see it. He wants to pretend like he doesn’t care, so he does. Now, she is left alone in the kitchen, wondering where the hell Wheezie went. 

Y/N goes in search of the younger girl, but it seems to be like playing a game of Where’s Waldo with the amount of other people in the house. Somehow, Y/N always seems to find herself in the same room as Rafe and it doesn’t go unnoticed by her that every time he spots her, he moves to another room. He’s avoiding her and she obviously understands why he would. Eventually, she gives up on finding Wheezie, but she soon regrets staying in the now-empty backyard. Because Ward Cameron is quick to make his presence known to the girl. “I didn’t think I’d be seeing you here.” Y/N looks at Ward with critical eyes, it’s not every day she sees the human embodiment of her insecurities in person. Her hands go to hold her locket and plays with it between her fingers. 

“I’m not here out of my free will. The bride wanted me here and what the bride wants, she gets.”

“Ahh, yes. Blythe,” Ward begins, they both look at Rafe and Blythe through the window. “Isn’t she a much better fit for him? She went to UNC with him. She moved to the OBX for him. Look at everything she sacrificed for him.” Y/N watches as Blythe and Rafe interact with the guests of the party. She can’t listen to Ward’s insistent belittling of her, so she does what Rafe would argue she does best and runs away from Tannyhill. She runs as fast as she can back home without a care for her tired limbs. Once safely in the sanctuary of her room, she slams her back against her door and starts crying. She doesn’t know why she is; she’s over Rafe. She let him go, but something about Ward poking holes at all of her insecurities brought back some complicated feelings she always seems to want to repress. 

——

Rafe had seen Ward talking to Y/N through the glass and he watched confused as she ran off after something his father said. He had no idea what Ward said but he was sure as hell going to find out. The engagement party has finally come to an end. Rose and Blythe went out to do some wedding shopping, while Sarah and Wheezie went to go do sister things, leaving Rafe the perfect opportunity to interrogate Ward. “What did you say to my ex-girlfriend?” Ward turns toward his son in his desk chair, “Nothing she hasn’t already heard before. What does it matter? As far as I know, you didn’t want anything to do with her.” Rafe shakes his head at his dad’s callousness. “Really, Dad? Even after we’ve been broken up for five years, you still find a way to torment her,” Rafe argues. 

Ward gives a questioning tilt of his head towards his father, “She broke up with you. How could you still care for you?” “She may have made the decision to break up with me and I will always be angry at her for that. But I’m not oblivious enough to think you were a harmless observer in Y/N and mine’s relationship,” Rafe begins. “I know you probably said some things to her that set our break up into motion. I want to make something clear, Dad. Even if we are broken up, I don’t want you to get your claws into Y/N’s head ever again. She doesn’t deserve it no matter how much she hurt me.” Rafe finishes his threat and gets up from the chair he sits upon. He storms out of Ward’s office without another word. 

Taglist: @sublimepenguinpeach-blog @gillybear17 @f4ll-for-you @winterrrnight @maggiecc

[wetcatspellcaster]

Hi miss Wetcat!

How do you picture Astarion's and Rose's relationship if Astarion's dream came true and he turned Rose into a vampire?

Hello, Ser Chunkymonkey,

it is.... bad.

In a more serious answer, I do see a glimmer of a better timeline in there. Rosalie is very lonely (lol see previous ask) and so having the excuse to remove her choice and morals from the equation entirely might in some ways be freeing. She could indulge in just being loved and looked after, etc., without moral complicity in the wider picture being an issue.

But in truth, that relies on the Ascendent never wanting anything more once he has her, and my characterisation of him doesn't accommodate that reading [for REDACTED reasons that will become clear in due course. For now, you simply hear 'Satisfied' from Hamilton playing in the far distance].

Once he has Rosalie, what does he want next? It's probably not another lover... is it the evil world domination plan? A smaller version of it, where they take over the Gate? Does he just want to be allowed to start killing people? Does he simply want her to be happier, so he wants to start turning her friends into spawn too, so she's not so lonely all the time? Whatever he desires next, requires Rosalie to compromise herself further, in a slow and steady descent into something increasingly unpleasant.

If what the Ascendent is trying to preserve is Rosalie 'as is' (or as she is in his mind, a paragon of virtue, etc.) then it is always going to end badly. In my version of this story, he doesn't want a 'we make each other worse' arc, necessarily (I think he'd take pride in it, if he made her worse it would be a victory, but then he'd just have a 'worse' version of her... so um... that doesn't go well for them either). He wants the moral compass and the perfect angel to redeem him, while making her like him so they're both suffering through the same experience together and he's no longer alone in it. What he wants is simply unfeasible and impossible for Rose to achieve.

As such, I do think that the Ascendency and Consort timeline ends in complete and utter tragedy. Either Rosalie kills herself, kills him, kills them both...

idk, maybe there's a fun sapphic reading in there where her and Hemlock conspire together to overthrow the Ascendent somehow. They might be clever enough to achieve that together. But there's no version of events where Ascended!Astarion gets what he wants, and then never tries to push his luck a second, third, fourth, fifth time...

[eorzeashan]

How to Talk Jadus Down:

It's come to my attention that some people haven't achieved this ending or have found difficulty in getting the desired outcome without a video (which can be a pain) so I made it into a transcript with every choice needed to get there! Spoilers below. This is NOT a full dialogue transcript, only the prompts by Jadus with the dialogue option you need to select.

SCRIPT

Jadus: Accept the gift of your life, agent… and we will discuss terror, the Empire and the Sith. CHOICE: Let’s do that. Jadus: I required a weapon that the Dark Council would overlook. The terrorists became my unknowing servants and carried out my plan.  CHOICE: The Dark Council? Jadus: After the Dominator, I came here, bringing with me those passengers worthy of elevation. I maneuvered my pieces into place. CHOICE: How did you survive? Watcher 2: I can’t call for reinforcements as long as that jamming field is active. But he’ll annihilate anything less than an army.  CHOICE: Continue, my lord. Jadus: All this while, the Eradicators were growing. Now they are ready, and my victory is close at hand.  CHOICE: Your victory? Jadus: Then I will return to the Council and lead the Empire into a new age– an epoch of terror.  CHOICE: You’re forgetting the Emperor. Jadus: But without both halves of the Eradicator codes, my weapons cannot be targeted; they will merely cause chaos. CHOICE: Your plan requires more. Jadus: Enter your codes into the ship so the Eradicators can target my enemies. You will be rewarded. You will be my herald.  CHOICE: Rewarded, hm? Jadus: Imagine a world where you could act with true authority, and fear controls the populace. Together, we can create a stronger Empire.  CHOICE: Let me consider it.  Jadus: I can be merciful. Take the time to consider your choice. Then we can begin the true work.  CHOICE: But if I die, you get nothing.  Jadus: A bold sentiment–but not a wise one. With your death, neither of us achieves our desire… and only I will be in a position to form a new plan.  CHOICE: I know something you don’t.  Jadus: You are in my sanctuary, and my power is infinite. CHOICE: My allies are listening.  Jadus: Their lives are forfeit. CHOICE: Not if they flee.  Jadus: I will still prevail. CHOICE: Everyone will be your enemy. Jadus: You think my foes are capable of doing me harm? That I am so vulnerable? CHOICE: This is your one weak point. Jadus: (Turns red) CHOICE: I’m certain. (LIGHT ALIGNMENT)

[backjustforberena]

I know it sounds crazy, but Eleanor O'Hara and Coop would have made a great couple. During the pregnancy, they grew really close, and if Eve hadn’t left, I believe they would have eventually gotten together.

YOU MEAN THESE TWO CUTIES?

I think it's definitely an angle that could have been explored. I quite liked them as platonic misfits, and when they sort of complimented each other with various levels of maturity (aka his being low, hers being high) but also that they had a lot of kindness in common, and he was definitely special to her during her pregnancy. It's sad that was never followed up on in O'Hara's last episode (did they share a scene...?). But I think the writers easily could have made it romantic if that was an angle they wanted to do.

At the end of the day, from my perspective, the character development they both needed was that O'Hara needed boundaries and her priorities changing, in order to break away from Jackie and her cycle - something that was quickly done for her exit by having Arthur just become her absolute world. Arthur becomes MORE than Jackie and therefore O'Hara is irrevocably changed.

Also, she likely needed to start relying on others and realise that even if she can do it all on her own, she doesn't have to, but she can also put herself first and put herself selfishly on her friends, with the assurance they would catch her. There were inklings of that: of extending herself beyond Jackie, but it wasn't complete and, at the end of the day, that was the relationship.

And Coop needed to, frankly, grow up. Perhaps that could have been achieved by having him involved with O'Hara but I think it was more capably done by his relationship with Carrie Roman because he was just on a higher level than her and needed to adjust his behaviour in that situation so that she could also grow as a person and a doctor.

O'Hara would likely been the dominant one (in most respects she's more senior or mature both as a person and professionally) and Coop would get over-attached and fall back into infantile ways. His excitement in helping her is a childish excitement. In the end, the best thing both of them did was move away from it all and grow that way.

But, again, I'm saying all of this, it could have happened. Easily. REALLY easily. Goodness knows Eve and Peter had great on-screen presence together and had really solid characters in order to then add on that relationship and figure that out. Maybe they were building to it, maybe not. We shall never know.

It's funny - usually I think about a Season 5 AU where Eleanor stays and I only consider her relationship with Jackie. How that would break down and get twisted now that there was a baby in the mix. I hadn't actually thought about Coop and O'Hara specifically.

[joaofelixsgf]

Rough Gavi smut? 🤍

QUE TE PEDI//

18+ smut, rough, blowjob, angst.

3:00 am, crying. Pouring rain and my eyes had been burning from the amount of tears. I hesitate but I grab my phone and go to Pablo’s contact before pressing the call button. My heart stops but it’s soothed by the sound of the call not picked up, the thumping stops but starts up again when I press voice mail.

“Yo sé que, con mucho esfuerzo voy a poder conseguir todo eso que te conté que quería para mí,Esos sueños tan lindos que tenìamos Espero, pues, que si escuchas esto, tengas presente que desde lo más profundo de mi corazón siempre vas a estar en mis oraciones”(I know that, with a lot of effort, I will be able to achieve all that I told you that I wanted for myself, those beautiful dreams that we had. I hope, then, that if you listen to this, keep in mind that from the depths of my heart you will always be In my prayers)”

I press send and put my hands into a fist, the thumping end and the rain calms down.

2 years, 5 days, and 8 months.

Not together, without each others touch and each other’s presence. Pedri was hosting a party and I was hesitant to go, a fear that Pablo would be there, I had no idea why I had been avoiding him, but I think it’s because of that voice mail I had sent him, he had definitely heard it.

We never dated, and that day that he found out I liked him, he completely ghosted me, I didn’t want to see Pablo because I felt embarrassed.

Those two years I had found my way into many footballers DMs. I was a famous model of course, I could bag any man at this point, but I wanted Pablo, did he want me though?.

“Your gonna be fine” Angie adjusts my makeup a little bit “go find another man!” We both laugh and go our separate ways, i try to act tough around her but she knows I’m just lying she can see it, like how her eyes soften when I smile, she feels bad for me, but todays the day I’ll proof her wrong, I’ll show her I’m over Pablo.

Since me and Pablo stopped being friends, well since he dropped me. I hadn’t been wearing such short skimpy dresses, but that day I felt changed. I hear some flashing cameras but I immediately hide in the crowd of people making sure I don’t get squished. A few minutes in I began feeling two arms on my body, sort of a loose grab, it felt uncomfortable, I didn’t push him off thinking I’d show my dominance by doing so.

Sensual music begins playing and he slowly makes his way up to my neck to press a kiss but I’m stunned and immediately push him to see hector with his stupid smirk my ex he snickers and I can somehow hear, he had cheated on me twice and left my heart broken “what’s goin on ma? Not gonna continue grinding on your ex?” He says pulling me in whispering in my ear with his annoying hot breath.

I didn’t know what to do. I was frozen. “Don’t touch her??” Pablo smacks hector. I had became unfrozen due to the act but soon frozen again when I saw the familiar face, my heart dropped and I was back to not over Pablo, my world stops and I can only hear a faded argument in the background.

“Are you okay?” Pablo asks. My face begins to tear up and i push him out of the way running outside, “fuck this can’t be happening” I knew he would be at the same party but not right infront of me!!!. I kneel down to open my bag to try and find my phone but soon realize I had left it in inside Pedri’s room, I groan a small fuck and bite my lip out of the old self harm instincts.

“Que haces aquí?(what are you doing here”), I feel my heart beating and my face becoming red “gavi” I whisper and i hear a small confused yes “why’d you ghost me?” I say biting my lip once again holding back tears not like there already wasn’t any streaming down my eyes at the moment.

He dosent answer he only walks up behind me to pick me up “Estas bien?(are you okay?”) “answer my question gavi” I say pulling my hand away from his grip. His face softens just like how my friends face does, he won’t be honest. “I- just” he doesn’t finish his sentence he only mutters a small fuck and kisses my lips.

It was a stupid awkward kiss, eyes open. I gasp but I can’t anymore, I sense approval and push my lips back onto his, the kisses speed turning faster and his hands snaking around my waist. We pull away gasping for air, we don’t say anything to each other he pulls my hand and we make it upstairs, “Pedri doesn’t mind us using the guest room” he says out of breath.

The room is soon filled with loud moans, there’s party music booming making it practically soundproof, he’s hungry, he rips my short red dress off and begins to kiss my neck, in between kisses he lets out breathy sentences “you don’t know how much I fucking missed you baby” I let out a small moan signaling him to continue, “use me baby”, we continue “I’m sorry” he mutters against my neck.

I began to pull on his hair as he goes downer, “fuck!” I moan, his tongue swirling my clit, he speaks in between licks. “I never wanted to leave you, it was that bitch Katherine, I was blinded in to doing the right thing instead of doing what I actually wanted” my moaning is my forgiveness.

Finally. I cum all over his face, him licking my insides for extra credit, sweaty, I pull up to stare at him “i forgive you baby just please fuck me first” i mutter into his ear hungrily and he turns(tosses) me around, ass front, he smacks it and pulls his dick out “moan as loud as you can baby” he prepares his dick before shoving himself inside “fuck!!” I let out a loud moan, his hands snake around my waist as a strap.

His arms push in and out, it practically being a workout, his dick is shoving in and out of you, “I can’t believe you made me wait this long” you say in a weak voice “your so stupid you know Pablo” you speak once again knowing how it drove him crazy when you degraded him, despite him being the one pounding into you. He was completely pussy drunk.

Your about to speak when you accidentally spill cum everywhere earning a sound visible smirk come from Pablo’s mouth, “I need you to shut your mouth or else I’m gonna have to punish you”.

“I don’t think I’d mind it sir” you mutter when you had already turned around knowing what was going through Pablo’s mind, you could tell when he was going to cum his tip would become a unbelievable shade of red and his dick would be pulsating, his pants were already off and you were on your knees, bruised already.

“Fuck” he groans when you begin to lick his already fucked up dick, his dick was ready to cum the moment your lips were applied on there, he moans loud as your entire mouth wraps around his veins “puta mia” he says pushing your head down with his hands, finally, he cums inside of your mouth letting out breathy moans “fuck,fuck,fuck”.

“We really need to talk Pablo” you say covering your sweaty body.