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capslocked · 1 year ago

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DIPLOMACY

male reader x kim minju

7k words

For those not paying attention - of which there seems to be an increasing number - it’s not that she doesn’t have the pedigree. But just shy of getting into that storied history or into the nitty-gritty of her curriculum vitae, the only thing that really matters is:

"This all seems a little beneath me."

It’s another day of this. Of you, of her, of trying to gather the mien of someone who isn’t utterly disarmed by Minju’s usual, beautiful, challenging self. Which, let’s be honest, is always an uphill battle.

Minju nearly pouts, flipping through a copy of the dossier idly from the other side of the desk in a gesture that reads both bored and dismissive and every little thing it needs to annoy you.

"Look," you offer up, graciously diplomatic all things considered, "it's about finding the right springboard, to something else more… substantial."

"Or to something else, you know, beneath me." Her red lips turn down ever so slightly. She doesn't seem so interested in playing ball on this one. And, for you, amounts to something of a huge problem.

See, Minju doesn't quite understand how the working world really, actually works. That the carrot that's dangled in front of her is your carrot just as much as it is hers - that you stand to lose out just as badly. That it's both of your asses on the line if things fall apart and Minju's shortsighted insistence to only work those certain roles befitting a name like hers puts that all at risk.

"Maybe you can tell me something,” you start, coming across more curt than you possibly intended - but not by much, “how many of your former cohorts have had their career aspirations line up with reality, Miss Kim?"

“I’m picky, not naive,” she sighs, not missing a beat, and you watch her dark hair cascade gently down her shoulder when she reaches a hand back to unfix her loose ponytail from its hair clip.

“You might see how I can get the two confused.”

“Then spare me the lecture,” says Minju.

Though she says nothing else, an unspoken you already get paid too much for that hangs in the air.

The tricky part is that no matter what else Minju does, her contract has some non-negotiable clauses to them that no talent has before, or will likely get afterwards. Things that cannot be broken. Like the requirement of her making x number of media appearances, and she gets to approve all of them.

Or that her agent's take home comes from a fixed fifteen percent of her gross earnings, with further incentives when her roles hit specific milestones. But with her refusing projects like the ones in the dossier before you, it leaves you in the unenviable position of losing out on your guaranteed fixed income or trying to convince your diva talent to do what it is she ought to be doing.

The truth is that there’s quite a long list of things no one has had the guts to say ‘no’ to yet.

And, well, it's rather simple and obvious when you look at her:

Minju is that particular blend of A-lister gorgeous. The special look that’s all kinds of mesmerizing and magnetizing, in full bloom - that makes you feel like you're suffocating in beauty. Like if she said come here, you would go; the type where a single look is all it takes and then - just like that - she's got your number forever.

Because everything about her is tailored - from her clothes to her perfect porcelain features. And they made her that way for a purpose: to sell records. (Which, that's exactly what they did.) You can hardly blame the people in power over there, wanting what's best, in a position where everyone would kill for a taste, or even just a glimmer of possibility.

"I don't suppose the part of the governor’s neglected wife is capturing your imagination.” You push the dossier closer, and she doesn’t so much as look at it. “It’s this year’s big budget political thriller, a shoo-in for awards.”

“You mean the one who ends up in a lot of very steamy shots on the apartment’s rooftop pool. Maybe I’m mistaken, but you can’t really unshow your tits.”

"This isn't about being above, Miss Kim, it's about being well regarded; it’s about proving you’re easy to work with,” you argue. “We could-"

"Find a better use of my time?" she cuts in, closing the dossier shut. There's a long moment in which she's looking you over, her gaze sizing up every little inch.

"Your big break won't happen just because you ask for it." You grimace a bit, hating to tell it like it is, but not really wanting to just coddle her either. "But listen - we work together, one project at a time - we can build up to it."

Minju crosses her arms with a loud hmph. "And what are you going to do if I decide not to accept these projects?"

There’s enough edge in her voice that it gives you pause.

"If," she says again pointedly, a teasing little grin tugging at her lips.

So - actually, another thing: when you start digging into the details, there’s more problems than just what can be seen at the surface. Which perhaps it’s too reductive, but essentially everything between you and the talent sitting on the other side of your desk is not quite so straightforward. It was never about Minju doing the best she could for either of your careers; it was about Minju making sure her needs were taken care of, no matter what.

Months ago, thanks in part to the way Minju filled out this tiny black excuse of a cocktail dress, and as a compromise of sorts, there’s an uncharacteristic mistake you ended up making. Or two or maybe a couple.

Because there’d been the perfect backdrop - an end of year party, beautiful dresses and suits, lots and lots of champagne, the kind of jovial mood that inspired one drink too many - and then you and her, taking off down one of the hallways, towards the exit.

Of course, you ended up exactly where neither of you should have ever been - where the snow was falling gracefully and melting into the pavement, behind a private accessway at the back of the venue, somewhere dark and dingy and dripping with a smell reminiscent of garbage; somewhere your hands had gripped firm fistfuls of Minju’s waist before you shoved her up against the back of the building.

In short:

You remember how she gasped when her palms hit the brickwork, how you figured you may as well give her everything she wants.

(So what, it was one time, you hear yourself explaining, mildly repentant, and to say that it’s complicated the matter is a massive fucking understatement.)

In the interest of full disclosure, you tell her, “what exactly did you have in mind?”

"That maybe," she hums, tongue flicking out over her lips before she purses them thoughtfully. "You should persuade me a little better."

"And let’s suppose, I don’t do any of that," you persist.

"It'd be a shame, wouldn't it, having such a promising future cut short so early? If word got out. From such a respectable agency too, of all places. Couldn't live with yourself," Minju remarks, leaning forward on her elbows until her eyes are level with your own. “Come to think of it, it’s the kind of thing that could totally, like, end your career.”

But as she sits there, arching that perfect brow again, you don't feel so good about the whole thing. You take another look at her - which, your mistakes start there, if nowhere else - at the girl that is somehow not the airheaded starlet she’s supposed to be. No, she’s calculating. A rarity, though you do know the type: here’s a girl who just happened to take her brains for granted in the years she was pampered by the industry - the same one that fattened on her only to later spit her out. And that thought, the look of cold intellect in her eyes and the slight upward curl at the corner of her mouth, has you frozen just a bit stiff.

She takes a key card from her clutch, and throws it onto the desk in front of you.

“Minju,” you caution, and there’s a taste of danger on each syllable of her name - more of a warning for yourself than you can conceive of it ever being for her.

"I'm only suggesting" - she’s watching you nearly fucking choke, amused - "what's best."

And when the lines get muddied between the two of you, that's exactly the issue. What's best. As though this was always Minju's aim. Maybe you've read it wrong, maybe you've gotten too lost in your own delusions, maybe - maybe, it doesn’t matter -

"For work," she adds, at which point her knee bumps yours playfully beneath the desk, leaving the suggestion open, and the implication unmistakable. "Whatever's required."

Here, you should definitely tell Minju no. Say no. Say: you're a professional, and getting involved with her, romantically, officially, personally - whatever - would lead to nothing but disaster. That’d be the responsible thing probably. It’d be generous to say you end up getting even halfway there:

"There's rules against this, you know."

Minju tips her head. “Why ever would there be rules in place against doing your job?”

She thinks that if she feigns being clueless, you'll bite, which -

“Against me folding you over this desk and fucking you until your forget your name.”

"My apologies," she practically coos, knowing that she’s not only made progress, but that she’s wrapping you around her finger. She is a bright girl after all. “You might see how I can get the two confused.”

At that, you figure, the only real move, to be perfectly blunt, is to play Minju at her own game -

To convince her to bend, just a little. To persuade her. So you lean closer, you start to promise, with your face just next to hers:

"You want me to show you how I might handle an uncooperative talent? Would that do it for you, huh?"

And now if that isn’t enough to earn you a whole look, one that’s equally a challenge and a triumph; you watch as she bites the inside of her cheek, not that she can help the smirk creeping across her pretty mouth, a grin full of want and need and all those dangerous, thrilling thoughts that're probably too predictable given your unique sliver of history you’ve already carved out.

She arches that perfect brow of hers once more, toying with the corner of her lip between her teeth.

You navigate around your desk to hand her your pen, with instructions that are perfectly clear: "then for once in your life, be useful, and sign on the fucking dotted line."

And her whole act falls apart just like that.

She’s humming almost pleasantly to herself as you settle in flush behind her, sinking into you just a little when your hand arrives at her waist, another carding through her hair. “Here,” you point out, watching her name materialize in ink on the document - pressing your lips to the nape of her neck each time she finishes penning out an exaggerated curl of a u.

“And here.”

“And here."

She signs again - and again - and that merits a reward; she’s good when she wants to be. Persuasive when she needs to be.

You can hear her murmur your name when your mouth slips just beneath her jaw, when you mark your next path across the bare skin of her shoulder and when she gets started on the last page of the documents, it happens just like this -

The pen drops from her fingers at some point, tumbling onto the desktop with a clack that might as well be a round leaving the chamber of a starting pistol. The office door isn't even locked and you have half a mind to check on the blinds, but the idea of some desperate executive running face first into this scene - where you’re smoothing your hands down the fabric of Minju’s top, down the rise of her jeans, fiddling slowly with the button at her waist - it holds an unfortunate sort of appeal; those blinds, they're mostly closed anyway. And at this hour of the afternoon, well - maybe it’s a little more clear why Minju asked to reschedule this meeting in the first place.

At first, it’s just a few of your fingers dipping under the waistband of her pants, following the curve of her hip, her thigh, then inward, and when you reach down to find her already burning up in anticipation, she inhales sharp, a noise that makes you groan in turn, low, right into the hollow behind her ear. Minju, to her credit, is absolutely willing, so very helpful and - as you pinch the soft, tender skin at her hip, she's saying something but you haven't quite paid it a moment's mind.

Her head turns, eyes looking up at you ever-so-slightly-more-vulnerable than their usual mischief and calculation, and there’s a hint of a demand dancing on her tongue, ready and waiting; she moves her leg upwards just a few inches, settling to rest her knee on top of the tabletop, a calculated little pose, angling her hips so you can sink your hand lower, closer, press your fingers into the lace over her hot cunt even deeper.

Here you figure you're probably ruining the fabric, drenching it in her own slick as you work two, then three fingertips in tight circles. You’ll ruin it, and you’ll ruin more - ruin everything and take what you're owed. As her breath hitches again, in some way that makes your senses come to life: you can feel her skin become taut and tense, gooseflesh rising when your hand untangles from her hair and slides up under her shirt, can hear the steady rush of blood in your ears, her pulse quickening, the heart in her chest beating rapid -

(She can pretend all she wants that this was an attempt at extortion. She can pretend she’s not an easy read; that she doesn’t like being easy for you, when she’s hot and whimpering and aching so wet, creaming on your fingers when you haven’t even gotten her pants off.)

- as if every part of her wasn't made for this, as you lay out your first real proposal:

“Do you remember what I asked you? The first time, right after you signed on, when you were so good for me up against the bricks in the alley?”

Minju chokes out an affirmative when you toy with her pussy where she’s craving the shape of anything, but, boy, are the rough pads of your fingers more than up to the task.

"I remember you almost couldn't answer, you didn't dare want to admit that it's what you needed - isn't that right?"

She moans with a voice thick as honey when a couple more fingers brush up against her wet lips and fuck, she does look breathtakingly good; she's exquisite, she's irresistible - the image of a living wet dream.

"Say it, baby," you croon, her voice beginning to melt a bit at the edges, her own heat burning her resolve up from the bottom up as you tug sharply at a string on her lace.

Minju sighs. Arches into your touch.

Because you’re settling into this torturous pattern, where you draw inwards, closer, so close to the little bundle of nerves, her cunt flexing and rippling hungrily when your fingers flick once or twice around it, only for her to wince just slightly as your fingers trace down towards her entrance to start all over again -

Minju steels herself, drawing in a heavy breath past her teeth. “You asked how rough you could be.”

There's something so painfully wicked, how her voice falters there - but then your own voice is rasping right back in a similar caliber of depravity.

“Hm. That’s pretty close to how I remember it.” After all, you are always taking care of Minju - her concerns, her contracts, her needs. So if she was interested, why the fuck would you hold back on providing exactly what she wants. “But help me out, what did you tell me?”

Another twist - another catch. Another push - another pull. She's going to break so sweetly if you're patient - and, ahh, patience - she's shuddering underneath your touch, squirming against you so nicely that you've already gotten away with a bit too much, this much, these fingers and you and Minju's breathy gasps.

"M-that you could be. That you could-" she stutters, all as you feel her folds start to swell, then quiver, as your thumb drags painfully over her clit again -

And in that moment Minju starts to consider if this were a good idea or not, but her back is already arching against your chest. She's gripping your arm to get you right where she wants you, and the reality of this hits her - a rush of cold clarity through her head just as everything else threatens to spiral into something else, something frantic, something hot and animal and making the muscles at her core begin to clench up.

But you just ease out of her completely, a whine coming out from the back of Minju's throat - her thighs parting further in desperation.

And oh, the disappointment, the sound, it’s incredible - a high pitch - almost a sob -

You slide your other hand in her hair to make sure she's got an earful of your words:

"What was it you said, hm?" you whisper, nipping at the skin on her neck, the side of her jaw - she's shuddering with it when your mouth lingers so close -

“As rough as you fucking want.”

God, the little things that her voice does to you. “Exactly, sweetheart.”

And how's that boundary supposed to hold up and remain uncrossed then, really, if you just give her whatever the fuck she asks for - especially if you have your mouth working it's way around her pulse-point, toying with her as she starts to tense and soften all at once.

In fact, Minju can only stutter out an okay or two as you grind forward, the hard suggestion of your cock nestling up against her rear, just shy of the perfect spot between her legs, and even with still a few layers of clothes between you, the feeling - fuck, the friction, the sight - it’s enough to get you grinning.

Enough to form this near-half-coherent thought: that it’s what's always had you on edge with this girl. She is absolutely every bit your type. Everything about her, right down to the way that she was put together.

All her hard edges and soft curves that should've never really been yours to covet and now, somehow, have become exactly that. Oh, she's the kind of temptation that's better suited for the life of glitz and glamor and the time it requires for indulging in it. You never thought that you would actually ever get here, even as the years have begun to stack up and time starts to grind everything in the back of your head and turn it all over into something like resentment.

If only Minju weren't so good at making you a sucker for those pouty lips and big doe eyes.

Particularly when she's turned around - face to face now - she's the epitome of gorgeous, equal parts aphrodite and adonis; a fucking knockout, her body sculpted and lithe and athletic. Those lines curving out and away like they might tell time, like her thighs could count the minutes and seconds until she's straddling you in your lap with her ankles locked in at the small of your back and you're rutting up into her without reservation, without doubt.

(So what, really, is your goddamned excuse? Your pride? The nature of the beast in you that demands that you must have some degree of control over yourself? The power that your position, here, now, provides? But you can hardly be blamed, even when it's wrong and filthy and so fucking good.)

"You’re stalling." Minju’s leaning back against the desk, tilting her chin up, blinking lazily, and there’s a bit of bite in her voice again.

It takes a minute for it to dawn on you that it must be intentional, trying to get a further rise out of you, the same way your hands have risen up to trace the dips and elevations of her spine, her every vertebra, your fingertips mapping the hollows and rounds of her back. To learn the geography of her shoulders and where, and when, and how to get her breath catching in her lungs, each labored intake of air a little harsher, hastier, hotter than the last.

"You know," you start, spreading your palm across a soft plane of denim, fingers pulling onto the cheek of her ass, dragging her even tighter against you, "I always figured your reputation was a little overdramatized. Most everyone's bound to have a story or two."

She laughs, full of mirth. When the mood strikes, she's the picture of perfection, and she knows it. "Well? Were you disappointed?"

As she coils an arm around your waist to slide your shirt free from the confines of your pants, and as a deft hand slips its way in, you stop asking yourself about right or wrong, good or bad, or about the kisses that land playfully at the corner of your mouth - until you hold her tight and seize her lips, hard, like you mean it - it isn't long before she's fumbling and scrambling with the zipper at your waist.

"That depends," you’re pulling yourself away long enough to say.

"I think I know the answer."

And by the way she shivers a little when you shove up the bottom of her top, the way she's melting into your mouth and demanding more and more and more, Minju does. You think she probably has since the first night that your threads got all tangled up. Especially when she slides off her top - her bra - her jeans - leaving them in a pile that lasts barely a second where it started once you sweep everything off of your desk in one broad, efficient gesture -

There's a thud when a pair of binders and a couple of books hit the floor. Someone exclaiming in recognition, the muffled noise drifting through the office door, and, oh, this would probably be the best moment to remember how painfully thin the walls are; you consider whether to walk over and lock the office door, and when Minju’s fingers run up your sides, you decide you won’t.

Too little too late, you figure.

And before you can take a second to give it the more congruent thought it deserves, Minju opens her mouth: "which, in your professional opinion," a hum and a slur as her nails find their way to your collar, "is well, that the thing I should take," she gets out, unbuttoning you at the cuffs, loosening the last of your shirt, "really," her hands palming over the fabric on either side of the lapels, working their way downwards, "how - how do you think this goes?"

“Oh, Minju.” She’s all but begging you to fuck her and still has the wherewithal to be asking for terms.

Like her fingers aren’t completely down your pants, locking around your hard cock - pumping you with soft, lazy strokes - not too different from how you have her chewing on her lip every time your fingers circle over the entrance to her cunt, tenting the last of her lace all slow and careful.

It’s driving her crazy. She just bites into the edge of her thumb in response.

"Fine. Alright. Let me explain it clearly." You dip a finger into her cunt; the whimper is short-lived when she tightens around you and it hits home, the pressure so delicious that she can barely stutter to keep up.

“A negotiation, of sorts-”

“Yeah, sure, we can call it that.”

The mental picture you have of your length outlined against Minju's tiny fist - as she works it into her hand, steady - it's all almost more than you can possibly bear: the way her long legs stretch out so pretty in front of you, the way her wrist twists with each pass and every bump at the veins of her forearm that is such a damn perfect shade of porcelain white in the dim glow of the desk lamp.

This girl with her pert pink mouth and those lips, the ones that aren't quite touching yours but rather smirking the whole time. (If only you were to make her scream loud enough, because you know she could be so much prettier.)

The thought flits through your brain, unbidden and treacherous -

"Think, fuck - think of this, as a one-way track into your career. Think of me, a guiding hand - if you want to. The key to all this," you continue, spacing the words carefully so you don't falter under the pace Minju is picking up, "is that you're going to need to be compliant. Easy."

"Mm. And in exchange?" she bites, choking down an embarrassing moan.

"Here's the basics." And there, there's no fucking reason for you not to dip the tips of your fingers right on downwards, tap into her soft heat until her hips are arching away from the flat of the desk, searching for more. “Whenever you need me to take care of you, I’m there, however you need it: on my fingers, my tongue, my cock - I’ll make you fucking cum over and over.”

"That sounds," she gasps, losing track of the end of her sentence, rolling herself along the pads of your fingers, taking them deeper into her, "very-very-oh fuck-”

Her grip around your cock releases, arms throwing themselves around your shoulders, holding on tight as she starts to trust you implicitly - to give her exactly what she wants, what she needs - and give herself over to you, to your fingers, circling and circling and circling.

“See, tomorrow,” you start, “there’s an audition,” and when you pull your finger out of her cunt, Minju lets out this sound that’s between a whimper and a whine. Her pretty mouth has dropped open, like she's all out of words, lost somewhere, chasing this. Getting dire.

“It’s this teen soap; they need someone young, someone pretty, do you think you can do that for me?”

She doesn’t answer so much as grab and tug and pull you even closer as the heel of your hand pushes and presses over her clit, just about enough force behind it that, eventually, you begin to feel a certain rigidity through her limbs, how the lines of her face and her faultless features grow more and more focused, fixed and concentrated; her voice reduced to the high-pitched huffs and half-formed syllables of pure and utter desperation.

I can, I can - she’s murmuring - please, yes, I will - putting herself right into your capable hands.

When you feel Minju tightening, flexing around nothing, then seizing and shivering, her pussy throbbing hot and wet and clenching around your finger as it again works deeper inside her, an anguished groan finds its way out from her throat.

And from yours, well -

"Show up," you command, giving her another knuckle, curling it just right - watching as her expression contorts and twists up for all her worth. "Make a good impression. Don't make me fucking beg. Show up, Unreserved. Understood?"

And if her body wasn't making her pleas utterly transparent, she's screaming in agreement. It takes you barely a couple seconds, working up inside her cunt until she's all full-body, fully, blissfully spent. She starts to nod, needy, eyes screwing shut.

“And let’s say, something else pops up. A little racy, a little more gravure, just the right amount scandalous, I need you to keep an open mind.”

When it sinks in what you've said, Minju gives this wail, low and perfect - her cunt throbbing over the pulse at your palm - inches away from cumming and shaking and creaming on your hand. You could ask for anything, you think, and she’d give it to you -

“My PR team,” she gasps out, the consonants of her words fraying at the seams, “it’s up to my PR team.”

“Minju,” you say, priming a loaded question and a half. “Do you trust me?”

She nods, expression readable and open like a book. It starts to set in just about then, how you’re going to fucking ruin this girl.

Your breath runs hot, right against her temple, and you whisper the slightest affirmation, “good girl, I’ll take care of it.”

Because to be fair, you’ve not made it this long in your career without learning how to pull a string - how you might pull up on the sensitive skin straddling Minju’s clit and get her reeling; her pussy flutters in the tight, wet heat, muscles clamping, demanding as you work yourself in deeper and then, when the timing's right, pull out to slide a second finger past the slip of lace she has covering her cunt.

She's this tight, dripping, overwhelming fit - even more than you have yet to discover, to tease and then take, the heel of your wrist landing on her clit in a heavy pattern, circles - circles - circles -

- so you figure: fuck the PR team.

If only they knew how well and thorough you were going to fuck the rules right out of Minju.

That you were going to remind her who's the one in the driver’s seat of her life, of her career, that you would make sure she stays in her lane - the proper lane - that this, you think to yourself, might become a recurring sort of negotiation, the kind she's so shockingly eager to accept.

You'd be doing her a favor, fucking a couple good lines into her head, into her skin, into her cunt.

And soon, before long -

She's gritting her teeth around the shape of your name and giving one last heave against the hard wood of the desk underneath her. It's almost beautiful to watch how Minju crumbles into herself; the way she grinds back onto the digits in her cunt. How you’re dragging her underwear down her thigh, pulling your cock into your fist and twisting her leg around your waist until finally, you press yourself right up against the heat radiating from her cunt.

“I’m going to take good care of you, Minju, don’t worry, I’ll fuck this pussy of yours just right. I'm going to make you shake and cum all over me.”

“Please.” Fuck, she looks at you sincerely - no games, no bullshit - pupils so very blown out with want, with need. You watch her adorable mouth uptick into this faint lazy smile as she tilts her head into your collarbone, lips parting slightly to remind you: “as rough as you fucking want-”

And you sink right in.

It’s all skin-on-skin as Minju practically collapses in your arms; pushing deep past her soaking entrance - your hips slotting together just so, cock engulfed by her tight heat. Minju fucking wails when you drag back from her cunt, slow - so, so agonizingly slow.

You let her recover just a bit, watching her breathing quicken and shallow.

And the word on her lips becomes something reverent, the most indecent prayer, pleading please, please, please let me have it, please fuck me with your cock-

You brace yourself, thrusting back in, and she doesn't wince this time, holding fast to you like you aren’t the one fucking her open and taking her apart.

“God, I - look, this perfect little fucking cunt, look at how you’re stretching around me, Minju,” you’re telling her - promising her really - all of which doesn't count for shit when, once, and then again, and a couple more times after that, your hips meet hers and she starts to break just so slightly around you. “I can’t believe - it’s like you were fucking made for my cock, baby, you’re taking me so fucking well.”

"Now, show me why - why the fuck everyone wants you - wants you to be their-" she's trying, in a fashion all to her credit and her fault. She should probably care more about that raw, unhinged noise you’re making right into the crook of her neck when you bury yourself deeper into her pussy. But in the next moment, with another wild crash of your hips, the tables start to turn.

Slowly at first, and then all at once.

Because the sound you’re ripping from her chest when you start fucking her - truly fucking her - becomes far, far filthier than anything you've ever heard a girl like her make. All of it coaxed out from you working the edge of her pussy open, stretching her, hitting each and every sensitive spot inside her.

Minju tips her head back to stare at the popcorn ceiling and fluorescent lights, brow creasing in the middle, mouth gaping open. You find you might have missed something, when she moves to hold you down, hold you in place with an insistent leg, the back of her heel digging into your ass. As though there were somewhere you might possibly want to go.

It all comes down to something she's murmuring, quietly, harboring this smug lilt like you aren’t fucking her raw and senseless: how maybe the key to unlocking the rest of her potential isn’t all that dissimilar, not as off-brand as you may have been initially worried about. And the notion that both of you might actually be profiting off of this - how it shouldn’t sound as incredible as it does - is doing absolutely fucking nothing to slow the brutal pace you fall into.

"Fuck, just like that," and she's smiling, grinning really, nails biting into your nape - your name and curses and a fuck you or two falling out of her mouth as you pound each short breath right out of her chest.

"The only talent I'm gonna need to show," she manages, dizzy, and with one arm hooking around your waist, she pulls the two of you close, right up against each other. The sound your skin makes, clapping against hers - her cunt tight, pulsing, quivering around you - "is my, my, my-"

Your thumb should have never left her clit, you realize, pressing down on where your cock is disappearing between her legs, pushing up against that bundle of nerves that can get her screaming. That’s how you’ll punctuate your end of the bargain, how you’ll make her cum and cum and cum -

"-talent for being such a-"

There's something ungovernable in you, something fumbling, as you find yourself drawn to her lips like a magnet - claiming them in a kiss that has you both growling with all the intensity you can muster, groaning as her jaw goes slack, surrendering to the fucking. To this hard, solid snap of your hips, a raw fuck forward that pushes Minju against the edge of the tabletop.

It doesn’t matter what she had wanted to say, though it must be evident how easy she can wind you up, and you do your best not to be too gentle. Pushing into her so rough that her breasts, oh-so-delicate, bounce up and down along her chest, nipples tight and rosy, begging to be tasted and played with.

You’re pressing your mouth on hers hard, fucking her harder - fingers digging into the flesh around her thighs and leaving marks and memories, all these reminders you’ll be sure to come back to.

But the fact is that this is your girl in so many ways: needy and a dream in all her curves, and how her waist rocks back, her body fitting so perfectly against yours - you're hooked on all of it. On her - she is temptation made real, in blood and bone and soft, supple skin, so exquisitely touchable, just like the sound that she makes, high and tittering when your thumb starts to work her clit over; each swirl and figure eight sending a jolt through her nerves and straight back into your own spine. It's difficult - hard to focus, you find - when all her exposed skin has these drops of sweat standing in saltwater relief, how it rolls down the plane of her chest and disappears where her waist flares wide.

Minju turns her cheek, mouthing falling open, and asks with a certain helpless pleading, “yes, can you-”

she sighs,

“right there,”

she hiccups,

“please, again,”

she begs,

“again, harder, i’m so close-”

Not before long, the desk is scraping loudly across the carpet, moving right into the next office over, all from where you have your hand trapping her voice back in her throat, palm over where she’s practically sobbing for you to let her cum.

From where you’ve got her locked in tight, lifting her up into your arms, into some perverse, unspoken promise to carry her the rest of the way. To do with her whatever you want.

"I'm going to show you," you're gritting out, "exactly how a professional handles their star, the girl at the center of it all, their top draw - and it's so easy, isn't it? This is - fuck, sweetheart - you're nothing more than a - just a desperate little cockslut who's aching to cum, and it's good - oh so, fucking-"

When that next shiver courses down the length of her perfect form, it's entirely because of you, when her legs are still locked and clamped over you like this, as she sputters and babbles, totally cock-addled and barely managing a coherent thought. “Please, sir, please, fuck-”

And then a keening, sounding low, lost.

“Sir. Please, sir, please just - I just wanna-" Her lips are shaping all these words that never quite materialize - because her cunt is slick, the whole of it hotter and softer than anything else in this goddamn room. Maybe anything else in this whole building. Or in the entire world. It makes her whimper and ache, her voice rising and rising, belting out, need it, need it, please let me cum -

Which -

Minju, oh god, Minju cums, and you are fucked sideways to hell and beyond when her whole body convulses, shakes, every single part of her contracting, contracting - all at once - the way her hands claw desperately onto the blades of your shoulders as the room gets taken up with the scent of her; the sounds she's making are fucked and filthy. She starts to become undone as you double your pace, aiming true - thrusting, pounding, nailing Minju right into the finish.

“Minju, sweetheart, I’m going to cum in you,” you tell her, and it’s not even a question, or a concern. You’re dictating, not negotiating when you say it to her again, when you tell her you’re going to fill her perfect pussy so full with your cum, she'll be hung up on it for weeks.

One long, stretched out moan is all it could ever take; a split second, where everything runs blindingly hot, and you bury yourself as deep into her pussy as you possibly can.

Cumming so much, spilling out deep inside - this heavy flood of cum that pools warmly at the back of her cunt and fills every corner of Minju - she whines and sobs and tells you it's too much, please, all this hot and thick white cum pumping right into her -

As you throb into her, she's having a hard time saying anything beyond your name, actually, because if anyone can, if anyone would, if Minju can trust anyone and anything in this world more, it would be you.

Her chest shudders and shudders, and she kisses you in a vain effort to quiet her own body, to quiet yours. She has all this faith she's pouring right down your throat as you rock the last of your orgasm into her twitching heat, spilling and spilling and spilling, not caring about the wetness leaking onto the carpet. Not bothering to mask the obscene slickness, how everything gets completely fucking sopping between the two of you.

When she's practically drooling over you, eyelids growing heavy and fluttering, Minju sags heavily into the bend of your arms. In that shallow heaving and gasping for air that bathes the both of you - blissed the hell out, a lazy tangle of limbs - and without warning she turns to speak into your neck, her breath cooling, like a whisper of a dream:

“Okay, and already… I guess this isn’t entirely-”

“Completely terrible,” you offer after you swallow the dryness in your mouth.

Minju smiles into your shoulder. “And sir, in the spirit of honesty and transparency, I think I - I think I really did want - this - you - the entire thing…”

You stop her there, right in the middle of that particular train wreck. A drop in your voice, and the message is clear, when your mouth works its way to hers.

(No more of her talking like that.

Besides, she looks even better on your lips like this, and fuck, doesn’t Minju taste like you will have to remember, like a little bit like desperation, but only in the way that it has you both completely hopeless, hanging on to every whimper as your cock slides lazily about her well-fucked pussy, a bit deeper, a bit further.)

Like there is something far beyond professionalism guiding the hand with which you hold her hip and let her ass spill through the gaps of your fingers.

It’s all mixed up, how in this exact moment you figure this is a terrible, terrible idea, the worst kind of agreement, this pact - because no one could look at you, could look at either of you and have any doubts in mind now. But you can see it, how you’ll both wear this little agreement like the most beautiful stain in your histories. Even though it might, conceivably, cost one or both of you dearly at some point in time.

And yet, still.

"Will you - can I - can you..."

She's clinging onto you with all her remaining energy, like she wants to see it through.

But her eyes - the poor thing - her expression is melting into this haze, her face contorted in something like pain and something else entirely: a different kind of satisfied glimmer. It's almost unreadable how that sharp mouth softens at the edges as her cunt gives this small flutter over the head of your cock, as you pump her so full, threatening to overflow.

And in your ear, you catch this little whisper. It says, “please, let me show you,” she's practically purring, “let me, let me - I'm gonna clean you up now, lick my cum right off you.”

It's true. Minju can act and perform and pose and make faces, for a shit ton of people - but she’ll play-act any facade you might ask her to, and she'll do it for you - because, this time around, all you ask her is this:

To be yours.

To be a good girl for you, an obedient little thing, in your private audience, away from the cameras and the lights, away from everyone.

When her knees hit the carpet, she is perfectly between your legs, palms on your hips and fingers splaying out against you.

And when she tries her damnedest like this, no one should bother ever pretending to think differently - least of all, you - and certainly, not while your cock is hardening again in the wet heat of her mouth, under the curl of her tongue, the gentle touches of her fingers -

How can anyone ever bring themselves to tell her that she isn't completely, indisputably the greatest.

(The very, fucking best.

And in every other way: the woman of your dreams. A woman, you realize, you ought to endeavor to keep, in all manners, and forever.

Minju, who could probably do anything, and you, who just might be able to give it to her.)

#minju smut #izone smut #kpop smut #male reader #kpop fanfic #male reader smut #izone minju smut

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fallingsatellive · 1 month ago

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Hi this is a positivity post regarding alterhuman diet dysphoria versus actual biology

(unless you already know these things)

To herbivore nonhumans who don't want to/can't do a vegan or vegetarian diet but feel dysphoric about being able to digest meat:

Herbivorous animals are not unable to digest meat.

Animal matter is actually easier for a body to process than plant matter, and herbivorous species need very complex digestive systems in order to support their lifestyles. This is why cows have four stomachs; why horses practically go into critical system failure if they get even a little bit sick. Animals that live mostly by grazing actually still do need nutrients that carnivores and omnivores get through their natural diets, which is why farming supply stores sell salt licks for animals. In the wild herbivores will quite often find ways to sneak some meat into their diets by eating bugs or small vertebrates, if you didn't already know about the fun fact of deer eating baby birds. "Obligate herbivore" meaning an animal that can ONLY physically digest plants is not a real ecological term the way "obligate carnivore" meaning animal that can ONLY physically digest meat is, though you might see it in other usages (i.e., referring to an animal that relies on a plant-based diet for all of its nutrients).

If a wild deer was given access to human society, they would probably not opt for veganism for connection with their true species; they would more likely appreciate having a way to get sodium so easily. This isn't to shame anyone who does choose a vegan/vegetarian diet for species euphoria reasons, but more to reassure folks who can't, you aren't less of an herbivore.

To carnivore nonhumans who feel dysphoric that their body can't digest raw meat like wild carnivores can:

It can!

The reason you don't want to be eating raw meat like a wolf or stoat or monitor lizard is because you will get sick or you will contract a parasite, which might sound like just a different reason to feel disconnected from your species, but here's the main two things:

1. The actuality is that wild wolves and stoats and monitor lizards DO get sick and contract parasites. This is often how wolves and stoats and monitor lizards die in the wild and why ones in captivity, being fed parasite-free meat and having illnesses treated, live longer. There are raw meats you can eat safely, you just have to know where they're sourced from and that they're guaranteed not to have risks! That's why sushi is a thing, and why people say you can technically eat raw cut (not ground) beef but not pork or chicken. Cooked meat is also often tastier and easier for the body to process (cit.: Grug et al. 780,000 BCE) so that's why humans have loved their medium-well steak since they came up with it. And 2. wild predators are "able to eat raw meat" mostly because they killed it, so it's fresh and hasn't been sitting around able to pick up bacteria, the way raw meat you get at a grocery store would have. This is why a lot of prey animals have a "play dead" defense mechanism: most predators do not want to eat something that's already dead, because it might get them sick.

If a wild owl was given access to human society, they would probably not desire only the rawest of meats for connection with their true species; they would more likely appreciate having access to food that had all the pathogens cleaned and/or scorched out of it.

#alterhuman #nonhuman #therian #holothere

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ot3 · 2 years ago

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What Is ORV?

The number one question I get asked on this blog, now answered better than ever. Today I am going to formally introduce you to Omniscient Reader's Viewpoint

To start off this recommendation: ORV might very well be my favorite thing I've read. Ever. If I could only reread one thing for the rest of my life it'd be this webnovel.

My elevator pitch is this: something with the cosmic-scale goofy video game nonsense and intricate setting comparable to Homestuck in its prime, paired with the deft emotional poignancy and emotionally-driven fights of Mob Psycho 100, topped off with the sort of compassionate and heartwrenching metanarrative of Undertale.

ORV is a love letter to it's own readers. ORV revels in the joy of losing yourself in fiction, even when it's the kind of fiction that tends to be considered lowbrow or worthless. It's something that dances the delicate line between recognizing the difficult nature of using media as escapism without condemning it. I've rarely seen anything else that accomplishes everything it sets out to do in its narrative with such remarkable precision. Frankly if you're reading a tumblr media recommendation post in 2023, I can almost guarantee ORV has the kind of meat you're looking for in a narrative, whatever that may be.

The story follow the antics of protagonist Kim Dokja, a 28 year old office worker on an expiring contract, whose only real joy in life is reading his favorite massively long and massively boring webnovel. One day, the novel’s events - worldwide deathmatches aired for the entertainment of mysterious higher beings called ‘constellations’ - begin playing out in reality in a sort of reverse-isekai. Kim Dokja, the only longterm reader of this webnovel, finds himself uniquely poised to succeed based on the advantages given to him by his knowledge of future events, but the webnovel’s actual protagonist, Yoo Jonghyuk, is a violent monster who will stop at absolutely nothing to complete his goals, no matter the cost to anyone else. Kim Dokja finds himself in a delicate dance of guiding the events of the story to play out more favorably than the version he read while trying to avoid being massacred in the fallout, all while trying to see it through to the story’s end.

Below the cut I'll go into a more in-depth (but non-spoilery) explanation of what exactly makes ORV so unique and worthwhile, and what you're in for if you choose to read it.

Clocking in at 550 chapters, and over 1.3 million words in English, ORV may seem incredibly daunting to dip your toes into, but I assure you it's worth every moment. I would read 1.3 million more words if they had them for me. Here are some things about ORV I consider to be selling points, not necessarily in any particular order:

The tone. Its funny, for starters. It is extremely funny, which is very high up on my media priority list. In ORV, there will be incredibly grim things that make you laugh, and incredibly cringe and silly anime bullshit that will hurt you as heavily as any other media you’ve seen. I always love this kind of tonal whiplash when it's well executed, and ORV probably executes it better than anything else I've seen to date.

It’s got fun and fascinating worldbuilding mechanics. the core concept being ‘reality now operates on the rules of a shitty novel’ means that the worldbuilding doesn’t have to function logically, it functions thematically. It’s explicitly stated in ORV canon that some of the internal rules governing this new reality are objectively really stupid and illogical, but they just have to roll with it because that’s what was in the book, and i think it’s a really enjoyable way to do it. This may at first sound like a copout to excuse bad worldbuilding, but I promise it isn’t. The worldbuilding is actually incredibly deeply thought out, but it doesn’t exist for the sake of rational function, it exists for the sake of furthering orv’s thematic arcs. The rules by which this universe operate do a magnificent job of strengthening the core concepts the authors are exploring.

It plays with the trappings of isekai/litrpg in a really thoughtful way. These are genres I'm not super familiar with, so I can't comment on this point too heavily, but with my limited knowledge ORV feels a lot less of a deconstruction of it's genre and more of a celebration/interrogation of it. Despite that, it's still accessible to readers such as myself who are not super familiar with these genre conventions.

It deals with morality in a really wonderful and nuanced way. there are almost no characters in ORV’s extremely large cast who are just explicitly morally condemnable, and almost every conflict allows you to understand exactly why the antagonists believe they’re in the right by opposing the actions of our protagonists. The central conflicts are never pure right and pure wrong; they’re always about contrasting goals, conflicting worldviews, and different priorities between ends and means. this makes the conflicts all feel so much more dynamic and engaging than those where the only stakes are physical harm.

The characters interpersonal relationships are some of the most interesting I've ever seen. ORV is very slow burn and it takes a long time for a lot of these to come out of the woodwork, by design, but by god once they do they fucking hit. Similar to the plot conflicts, the interpersonal conflicts also almost never occur where there’s one side clearly in the wrong. The characters are almost all genuinely attempting to do their best by each other, and the tension comes from the ways in which human communication is fundamentally imperfect and part of our feelings and intentions get lost in translation. it’s very heartwrenching and heartwarming to see unfold, in equal measure.

Following from that, it’s a narrative that really meaningfully prioritizes non-romantic relationships over romantic ones as the central focus. Orv is about love, but not about romance. Obviously there’s shipbait and the ot3 is real and good and my friend but if you’re looking for deep complex platonic, (found or otherwise) familial, and antagonistic relationships that never get ruined with forced romantic arcs, we got em baby!

The pacing is unlike anything i’ve ever seen before. from a purely technical standpoint, it is genuinely a fascinating case study in how to execute a narrative that is almost constantly escalating without exception. there is very little downtime or breathing room in orv, which is insane for something that clocks in at over a million words, and somehow, it still works. i’ve never felt more like a frog in a pot of slowly boiling water than i did when i was reading orv and i can’t believe they pulled it off. it’s so interesting to read something like that.

It is a tragedy without resorting to cynicism and a very adult narrative that’s really steeped in childlike wonder. I’m a big fan of cartoons made for children. Cartoons made for children are some of my favorite things to watch, but of course children’s media will always be simplified and not very relatable to an adult audience. ORV is very much a serious and heavy adult narrative, and a deeply tragic one at that, but it never delves into torture porn. It’s a very compassionate piece of media overall, that holds a lot of reverence and sympathy for the ‘naive’ optimism of children that gets stripped down over time. if you, like me, feel more like a grown up child than an adult some days, I think it’ll hit for you.

It is extremely cathartic and meaningful. I am not exaggerating at all when I say that reading it gave me the closest thing I have ever felt to any sort of spiritual breakthrough. It helped unfuck my head a ton during some very grim times and i think the perspective it offers on the value of human life and our relationship to storytelling is a really really good one.

And if my word isn't enough, here's some reviews from satisfied customers. With that, I'll leave the rest to you, and hope you one day reach the end of the story.

#media recs #orv

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devsgames · 6 months ago

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"Is Tumblr Blaze Worth It For Promoting My Indie Game?" - a Postmortem

Lately I've been thinking about marketing and promotion of my games and wanting to explore new avenues. Tumblr Blaze was one of those things I wanted to dip my toes into a bit to understand how it works and if it has potential for advertising my sort of stuff. Like as not, there's no point in making games if nobody actually plays them after all!

Conversely I have also heard bad things about Tumblr Blaze; that it's not very targeted, the reach is fairly limited, and people on this site generally hate anything that is Blazed to them.

I wanted to test all these waters a bit to see if it's something worth investing in, and share what I found for my own benefit and the benefit of others. Finding various info on topics like this for indie dev can be a pain, so why not share my findings?

The Plan and Goal

While Centauri Dark is still in development and is the thing I actually want to advertise more of right now, Bombing!! 2 is already out and is much more marketable with some cool art made by community members. I think as a first impression it tends to show well, so I decided to make my test post with that to get exposure to it and see how it goes.

My goal was mostly to see what a Blaze post does for advertising a launched indie game and how much "eyes on" it actually gets in terms of actual engagement.

Posting

From the outset I knew I wanted to make a post that 1) wasn't annoying to people just looking at the webbed site 2) featured a call to action of some kind I could measure 3) wouldn't break the bank.

Here's what I came up with:

The intention was to flash some cool looking art to grab their attention, explain what they're looking at, and then link the game a couple of times while mentioning "Buy or Wishlist" for good measure as a call to action.

Since Bombing!! 2 is such an art-forward game, I found the coolest art pieces made by community members that felt the most "Tumblr" to match the audience, and would also show off the range of art you could make in the game. I also wanted to make it personal, like me writing a message to whoever would read it instead of something that sounded like a standard ad. Generally I think it was a fairly reasonable little post that catches some interest and doesn't overstay too much of a welcome. What I think also helps is it's explicitly a "hey this might interest you" sort of framing (as opposed to a more "why am I even seeing this" sort of post you tend to get from Blaze sometimes).

I also think it's worth emphasizing that writing a posted explicitly intending to be Blazed was a much stronger approach than just Blazing some random post I had made for my own followers months ago, because I could align it to my promotional goals. It also assumed that random people on the Internet would be the ones seeing my post, and not the followers and friends who already know me and my work.

Blazing

As I looked into Blaze early on there was actually a few key things I wasn't fully aware of about the system.

It guarantees a minimum amount of views

It guarantees it will be Blazed for a minimum of 24 hours no matter how many views

You pay a single base rate for the whole campaign (great compared to some ads which tend to price based on views/engagement).

You can define an audience explicitly (some info that was floating around lead me to believe this wasn't the case).

Campaigns come in a few amounts:

I paid for the 2nd tier; $17 USD for a campaign, which amounts to $25 CDN. I wanted to go a little more into it than the lowest tier offered, since I figured the lowest wouldn't give me as much data as I would've liked and I wanted to know what to reasonably expect should I decide to do it again in the future.

Since Bombing!! 2 sells for ~$20USD I also figure if the Blaze campaign prompts at least two people to buy the game then the Blaze would have paid for itself.

Blaze lets you use tags to define which audiences you want to reach. Unfortunately it doesn't let you view that data after you've applied it, but the tags I chose were generally anyone who spoke English and has an interest in Digital Artist or Video Game circles.

The campaign ran for 24 Hours, starting yesterday and ending today.

The Results

I definitely noticed a sharp uptick in engagement during the campaign! It hit the target audience of ~7k around one hour into the campaign, after which point I noticed engagement take a sharp decline.

Here's the Blaze campaign analytics provided by Tumblr (which was also very helpful to have):

So it seems ~12.5k views from Blaze, ~370 likes, ~80 reblogs, 5 shares elsewhere. The post itself has ~520 notes, so I assume there's some reblogging and liking happening from beyond the Blaze campaign that isn't pictured here. The good thing is that despite having reached its 7k target after only 1 hour, it continued to circulate and be Blazed until 24 hours later. Eventually the post made it to ~12k views overall, which was nearly double the amount promised by the campaign - I attribute this mostly to a strong post/target audience/subject matter and I'm sure it's not standard.

Here's the general velocity of engagement around when the post was Blazed:

It jumped much more than I honestly expected, but you can tell Blaze seemed to put it in front of people's faces more than my regular posts do. You can see it drops off sharply as I hit the quoted amount as well, back down to the normal amount of engagement I get on Tumblr.

But this stuff isn't really what I was looking for; I was looking for sales and keeping an eye on 'conversions' - or how many users followed my call to action because of the post. Likes and stuff are fine and cool, but how many people bought or wishlisted the game on Steam as a result of seeing the post on Tumblr?

Tumblr and Blaze obviously have no way of telling me this, so I'm looking to Steam to show me changes there.

Here's what Steam shows me happened to the Bombing!! 2 views yesterday:

That's not nothing! This shows the last month's worth of traffic to the Bombing!! 2 page, and that number was at least double yesterday as it was regularly. It's very cool to know a number of people did actually click through to the game page in order to view the game from the Blaze post.

But the real REAL question is how many bought or wishlisted the game because of this post?

I'll start with Sales, on a graph of 1 month of data:

Flat line :( Which is fine though, as the game wasn't on Sale and was just reaching people for the first time. I didn't honestly expect any immediate sales from this, and was more focused on other engagement anyways. Honestly I would be surprised if someone saw the game on a Blaze post and bought it immediately. I mean it's good but it's probably not THAT good!

Now to Wishlists, which can be a good indicator of who might likely buy your game in the future. Basically if someone has added a game to their wishlist, there's reason to believe they might buy it in the future, which is good for your game.

Here's the Wishlists for Bombing!! 2 from the last month:

That's 23 Wishlists in one day! That's roughly ~18 Wishlists more than an average day!

It's hard to know if some of these are because of the post or just a statistical fluke. However, when compared to previous trends on the game page that's quite a noticeable difference. It means even if no one bought it now, they were interested enough to add it to their shortlist. Looking at it another way, if two people who Wishlisted decided to buy the game in the future the campaign will have paid for itself.

Conclusions

I think like any advertising if you go into it with a plan in mind and try to build something around a specific action, Blaze seems pretty worth it to me especially if I just want to get eyes on something. On top of the obvious data telling me people were interested in the game, there was a few folks who just plain complemented the game or acknowledged it 'was the first Blaze post they were actually interested in', which felt worth it in it's own qualitative sort of way. It's also worth noting my game sells for $20USD, so the margins are large enough that making it back isn't too challenging.

I think having an idea of the message I wanted to send really helped, and I'm sure I'd happily do this again with a larger audience and another plan (and probably will do it for when Centauri Dark releases).

#gamedev #game dev #game development #indie games #indie game #gamedevelopment #indiegames #indiedev #indie dev #bombinggame #blog #blaze #tumblr blaze #game design #thoughts

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rhysdarbinizedarby · 1 year ago

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Our Flag Means Death season 2 shot a crucial scene in the Avatar 2 tank

A behind-the-scenes look at how Taika Waititi and Rhys Darby shot their big merman moment

[Warning: The below contains MAJOR spoilers for Our Flag Means Death, Season 2, Episodes 3]

Season 2 of David Jenkins’ pirate comedy-romance-drama Our Flag Means Death has finally premiered on Max, with an opening three-episode arc that’s guaranteed to get the series’ fandom buzzing. The third episode in particular ends with a sequence that feels like it was intentionally crafted to inspire the crowds of fan artists who have turned the series into an obsession. Polygon talked to the series’ VFX supervisor, David Van Dyke, about what went into shooting that sequence — and how James Cameron’s Avatar: The Way of Water helped out.

At the end of episode 3, Ed “Blackbeard” Teach (Taika Waititi) is in limbo after being assaulted and nearly killed by his crew. There, he meets his former captain Benjamin Hornigold (another of the series’ historical pirate characters, played by Mark Mitchinson), who tries to help him through his emotional crisis over being abandoned by Stede Bonnet (Rhys Darby). Except Hornigold mostly helps by pointing out Blackbeard’s failings, then tying a stone to his waist and throwing him off a cliff into the sea — where he sees a vision of Stede as a fish-tailed merman, coming to save him.

“Just so you know, Rhys and Taika did very well underwater,” Van Dyke told Polygon about shooting the scene. “Rhys is not an Olympic synchronized swimmer, but he’s a strong swimmer. They were both very comfortable underwater. They both did a really good job of being mermen.”

Van Dyke says he was originally asked whether he could do the scene with CG versions of the two men, for safety reasons. He explained that it was possible, “but that’ll cost millions and millions of dollars, and we don’t really have that.”

Instead, he ended up shooting the scene practically. Season 1 of Our Flag Means Death was shot on a soundstage in Los Angeles, but for season 2, production moved to New Zealand. That gave Van Dyke a lot of advantages in terms of shooting natural backdrops to use on the production’s giant virtual environment screen, and in using experienced crews from past special-effects-heavy productions, from Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings movies to James Cameron’s Avatar movies.

“There were definitely a few pieces that were serendipitously to our advantage,” Van Dyke says. “New Zealand was where they shot a lot of Avatar stuff, and there just so happens to be an enormous tank on the lot. There are a bunch of Avatar crew who are SCUBA certified, because they’ve been shooting in that tank forever. This was not something we had to figure out — we didn’t have to send a bunch of grips and lighting technicians off to SCUBA school. So they were there, they had really amazing underwater photography teams, and obviously a really good stunt team that was able to train up Taika and Rhys to make sure the scene was working.”

Van Dyke points to New Zealand’s thriving mermaid freediving community as a boon when it came to designing Darby’s merman outfit. “There are a lot of incredible mer-tails out there,” he said. “We were able to take those, and [costume designer Gypsy Taylor] and her team brought them together to make these beautiful physical pieces, so Rhys was able to actually sell it and do the performance underwater.”

For Van Dyke, the sequence really started with the cliff-jump sequence, which actually used considerably more CG than the underwater shots. “That cliff sequence was a great culmination of effects, merging physical photography and our LED wall, because you can’t really put those two guys on a thousand-foot cliff,” he said. “The insurance alone would be out of control. Also, we’re not really in the business of having people fall to their deaths.”

The cliff sequence began with sequences shot off New Zealand’s Bethells Beach, using drones to capture images looking inward from the ocean and photogrammetry of a specific ledge for production designer Ra Vincent and the art department to reproduce in the studio.

“The wide shots use production plates of those cliffs, and the tighter shots use photography we shot specifically to build out the stitching of the cliff sequence,” Van Dyke said. “Hornigold and Blackbeard are standing on a cliff set. We tied in drone plates of the actual cliffs so we can see the ocean and really set up how terrifying [the drop would be]. Then he falls into the ocean, falls into our tank.”

Once Waititi was in the tank, the next step was the shot where the stone tied to a rope around his waist pulls him deep underwater. That part of the scene required more conventional, practical production trickery than the rest of the sequence.

“The tank is massive, but it’s not 300 feet deep. It’s pretty darn big, but it’s never big enough, as they say,” Van Dyke says. “So when Taika is being tugged by the rock, we actually shot that sideways. By turning the camera sideways, you get more length to the shot. The problem is the bubbles — they should be streaming off him and then rising to the surface, but if you’re going sideways, they’re going to come off him and then go up, perpendicular to him. So we took over with CG to make sure our bubbles were traveling toward where the surface was supposed to be.”

The CG in the underwater sequence was mostly used to hide the lighting and rigging necessary to shoot it, Van Dyke says. “Anytime you’re shooting anything underwater, there’s gonna be a lot of gear. There’s no way you can get around that. So we’re making sure we have [convincing deep-sea] lighting and the bubbles. And then there’s his performance — that’s a real performance.”

For Van Dyke, the real complication was the costuming and makeup for both Darby and Waititi. “Taika’s wig — I was amazed that thing stayed on so long. It’s a long shoot. He was shooting all day, all weekend. But things stayed on. It’s a heavy weight. And Rhys is really working underwater, so his tail has to be working, so it all feels seamless.”

The shot in the underwater sequence that seems most likely to be a CG creation has both men just floating deep in the sea, facing each other above a seemingly endless abyss. Again, Van Dyke says, he used very little CG for that shot, and it was mostly to hide the tank walls.

“In that case, we were not shooting sideways,” he said. “It’s essentially a locked shot. It was about getting them at the right depth underwater, and making sure the shafts of light above them were working properly. We don’t have to track as much, we don’t have all these moving elements, we don’t have to worry about where the bubbles are going. That one was really just about cleaning up the tank, doctoring out the sides of the shot, where we can see the water receding into blackness, then giving the base of the tank true depth, so it really feels like they’re suspended a hundred feet below the surface.

“Obviously, a fair amount of CGI and visual effects had to go into it. But at the same time, it was a moment where we really needed to let the story take over, and have the visual effects just get out of the way, man.”

The first three episodes of Our Flag Means Death season 2 are now streaming on Max.

Source: Polygon

#rhys darby #taika waititi #behind the scenes #ofmd #our flag means death #ofmd s2 spoilers #ofmd bts

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chrolloluvr · 9 months ago

Note

May I request Mammon angst HCs please? Like the reader is possibly breaking up with him or something? (i love your HCs for mammon<3)

Mammon Breaking Up Hcs

note: Thank you i'm so glad you like them pookie!! also yes i love this idea ❤️❤️

warnings: Cursing, creepy behavior, unbalanced power dynamic, killing. Not proofread!

Female!Reader, (no specific gender, so can be GenderNeutral!Reader)

It would be best to tell him over text, since he is guaranteed to throw a toddler like temper tantrum if you ever told him in person.

So you text him over text, what happens? He 100% thinks you're joking at first. He thinks you aren't being serious at all, and that wow babe, you might even be a bigger clown than I am.

But when he realized that you were being serious, he gets angry. How dare you? Why would you ever break up with him? He is the king of greed, he has trillions of dollars in the bank, so why don't you want to stay by his side? Did he do something? Did he hurt you? What happened? Baby, we can sort this out-

In a way, still doesn't think you are being serious, which is what he tries to tell himself. So he will let you leave, and will act like he doesn't need you.

Another author said this already, but he will 100% go through the stages of grief, (he will never go through acceptance, because in his mind, you will always come crawling back to him.)

He will be in denial for a very long time. Let's say you move out, and even start residing in another ring. He will send you texts. All. The. Time.

Your phone will mods likely have 103 Missed Calls, 986 Messages, and 37 Voicemails. He is crazy, and especially crazy for you. So when you don't respond to him, he does not understand why. He likes to think that you were just going on vacation for a while. He genuinely thinks you two are still together.

Anger- Once he sees that you have indeed moved on, and that he is no longer living in fantasy land, he gets extremely angry. His general mood spikes, he lashes out (wayyy more than he used to), and a-lot of his servants are scared to talk to him. Will absolutely keep bombarding you with texts every day. He will even get his servants to start texting you on his 100's of extra HellPhones.

Mamm 🕸️💚 11:34

Come hone ygu little cungt

Mamm 🕸️💚 11:35

ANSWERF ME.

Mamm 🕸️💚 11:35

Do ygu knoe how easily i can replaece yu

Mamm🕸️💚 11:36

Fine go shack uo with sorm dirty hoboes you little slut

Mamm 🕸️💚 11:36

I dont kneed u and youir mediocar holes

So yeah... thats just one example. He has so many spelling mistakes because he is typing so fast, and practically brekaing his phone from how angry he is.

But in reality he does need you. You are. the one thing that keeps him running. However he will never, over his dead body, ever admit that.

Bargaining- He will send things to your... new home... in gift baskets. Fizzarolli plushies, flowers, tickets to his live events, expensive jewelry, the list goes on. It gets to a point where (if you live in an apartment complex) People start stealing his gifts and start putting them up online to sell. (And they go for 10s of thousands of dollars.)

He send these to you so that you can hopefully come crawling back into his life, so that he can control you again.

At this point, you have most likely made it public about your distance between you and the sin. Your relationship was extremely public, and known by everybody.

He refuses to speak publicly, because he wants people to think he still controls you. And when i say your relationship was big, it was definitely the most talked about relationship in all of Hell. People will go nuts about you two breaking up. Another author said this as well, but people will go crazy with the comments.

"L Mammon fumbled so bad its actually wild."

"Bros got plenty other options 💀"

"Why tf would she/they break up w/ HIM???🤰"

"Now that hes single I call dibs 🙌"

You try your best to ignore the comments, but eventually you cant, its not just online, but in real life you feel cornered as well. You might even start to reconsider your departure with him. Which is exactly where he wants you.

Depression- He spirals into somewhat of an insecure man. He strives to be better. He ups his game for his big pageants, soon to be bigger, just to impress you.

He maaaay or may not have killed people in your favor. This is known, obviously, but his obsession along with his newfound insecurity has left him no choice but to show that if you dont want to come home, he will show you its safer than anywhere else.

Overall, if you do end up coming back to him, he is overjoyed with happiness, and will take extra precautions to ensure you wont ever walk out on him and his warm embrace again.

However if you end up never wanting anything to do with him, he will be devastated, but he will force himself to get over it. He is Mammon, he truly does not need you. In reality, you were somebody he felt an unexplainable feeling to protect. He absolutely can live without you, but for some reason, he feels like he cant. If somebody were to ever bring you up, he would lash out, and make his anger everybody's problem. He may get over you after a while, but he will never fully accept the fact that you left him.

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starcurtain · 10 months ago

Text

The Kinda Unhinged Ratiorine Fic I Want to Read

In an (admittedly very contrived) AU situation, Dr. Ratio finds out he's about to be cut out of his (mostly estranged) family's inheritance forever because of his complete lack of interest in continuing the family line. Which, all factors considered, does make perfectly logical sense. Investment of capital should go to the branch of the lineage most likely to benefit from it, and Cousin Tiberius has five sons and daughters already. Let the house and the trust fund go to them.

But the library.

There's absolutely no way Veritas could bear to be permanently parted from the staggering assemblage of paper volumes under his collected family's auspices. Not only would being separated from tomes so full of memories be heart-wrenching, but think of the devastating blow to his research! There are records in those archives that no other mortal eyes have ever gazed upon!

So there's only one solution for it: He needs to pass on his family name, immediately.

(Andddd the rest is under a read more because what is brevity?)

Problem 1: Veritas Ratio is very gay.

Problem 2: Statistically, single men have the lowest chance of being selected for adoption placement, and this Child Welfare Agent is looking at his alabaster head very, very strangely.

Think, Ratio, think. What is the most efficient way to solve such a tedious quandary?

The obvious first step is to increase his likelihood of being selected by the adoption agency, and the quickest way to do that is... Eureka! How elegant a design! He just needs to enter into a (temporary) committed and stable partnership to demonstrate a degree of domestic dedication and home-building prowess!

Problem 3: ...Where in the universe is he going to find a stable and committed man willing to marry him?

Ratio does not exactly possess the world's most endearing personality. He might... never have had any form of romantic relationship lasting past a one-night stand even, because it turns out most people don't like being scored a 2/10 on their technique during intercourse.

So he's probably not going to find a stable and committed man.

But... He might at least find someone willing--for the right price.

Enter Aventurine (stage left). He's as expensive as they come, the greatest reward saved for the highest bidder, but despite his festering ambitions, he's still trapped as nothing more than a high-class escort, owned by a company the IPC has on the books as selling everything but what they actually trade in: Avgin slaves.

Sigonians... The reputation--and sleazy men's curiosity--precedes him, and though he only has to get on his knees for the truly bold nowadays, he hasn't yet been able to make the ultimate gamble, pull the last string needed to finally gain his freedom: the freedom to live his life as he pleases--and to enact every ounce of vengeance he's been storing for decades like cards up his sleeves.

Until now.

Until an absolute madman shows up at the underground headquarters waving around an offer that no average person would possibly make: He wants to buy Aventurine and wed him.

(Because marrying a Sigonian thrall is a safe and sane thing that safe and sane people do.)

The offer is far too good to be trusted: A real marriage certificate but a perfectly fake marriage, a no-fault divorce once an adoption is finalized, and a guaranteed sponsor for his citizenship documents. A year or two of fake homemaking, this Veritas Ratio claims, and then Aventurine can walk away a completely free man, no strings--no chains--attached.

Well, Aventurine of the Myriad Stratagems has always held one skill dearer to his heart than any other: a crystal clear knowledge of when to fold--and when to go all in.

(...Problem 4: Amber Lord help him, Aventurine's new husband is the most irritating man in the entire universe.)

Alas, if only that was their biggest problem. Somewhere between learning to navigate the citizenship process, the adoption process, a truly unacceptable level of systemic racism, and also, increasingly, each other, Ratio and Aventurine discover that the circumstances of their lives might be far more entangled than they ever could have imagined from the beginning, and the same shadowy parties that profited off Aventurine's existence might have a vested interest in parting Ratio from valuable research secrets--permanently.

While struggling to maintain a charming and loving facade and struggling not to kill each other behind the scenes, Aventurine and Ratio also end up having to out-roll and out-plan a particularly dangerous enemy; something they can really only do together.

Or, tl;dr: Dr. Ratio chooses the most efficient but most unhinged method of finding a husband that intelligence could possibly contrive, only to determine that marrying a guy whose track record for unexplained deaths matches his track record for card counting really is the encyclopedic opposite of "committed and stable." Ridiculously enough, the trouble they get into is almost entirely Ratio's fault, the only one who is remotely convincing in front of the Child Welfare Agency is Aventurine, and sometimes it turns out the guy you married for the library ends up being the guy you married for life.

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canmom · 1 year ago

Text

Hypothetical Decentralised Social Media Protocol Stack

if we were to dream up the Next Social Media from first principles we face three problems. one is scaling hosting, the second is discovery/aggregation, the third is moderation.

hosting

hosting for millions of users is very very expensive. you have to have a network of datacentres around the world and mechanisms to sync the data between them. you probably use something like AWS, and they will charge you an eye-watering amount of money for it. since it's so expensive, there's no way to break even except by either charging users to access your service (which people generally hate to do) or selling ads, the ability to intrude on their attention to the highest bidder (which people also hate, and go out of their way to filter out). unless you have a lot of money to burn, this is a major barrier.

the traditional internet hosts everything on different servers, and you use addresses that point you to that server. the problem with this is that it responds poorly to sudden spikes in attention. if you self-host your blog, you can get DDOSed entirely by accident. you can use a service like cloudflare to protect you but that's $$$. you can host a blog on a service like wordpress, or a static site on a service like Github Pages or Neocities, often for free, but that broadly limits interaction to people leaving comments on your blog and doesn't have the off-the-cuff passing-thought sort of interaction that social media does.

the middle ground is forums, which used to be the primary form of social interaction before social media eclipsed them, typically running on one or a few servers with a database + frontend. these are viable enough, often they can be run with fairly minimal ads or by user subscriptions (the SomethingAwful model), but they can't scale indefinitely, and each one is a separate bubble. mastodon is a semi-return to this model, with the addition of a means to use your account on one bubble to interact with another ('federation').

the issue with everything so far is that it's an all-eggs-in-one-basket approach. you depend on the forum, instance, or service paying its bills to stay up. if it goes down, it's just gone. and database-backend models often interact poorly with the internet archive's scraping, so huge chunks won't be preserved.

scaling hosting could theoretically be solved by a model like torrents or IPFS, in which every user becomes a 'server' for all the posts they download, and you look up files using hashes of the content. if a post gets popular, it also gets better seeded! an issue with that design is archival: there is no guarantee that stuff will stay on the network, so if nobody is downloading a post, it is likely to get flushed out by newer stuff. it's like link rot, but it happens automatically.

IPFS solves this by 'pinning': you order an IPFS node (e.g. your server) not to flush a certain file so it will always be available from at least one source. they've sadly mixed this up in cryptocurrency, with 'pinning services' which will take payment in crypto to pin your data. my distaste for a technology designed around red queen races aside, I don't know how pinning costs compare to regular hosting costs.

theoretically you could build a social network on a backbone of content-based addressing. it would come with some drawbacks (posts would be immutable, unless you use some indirection to a traditional address-based hosting) but i think you could make it work (a mix of location-based addressing for low-bandwidth stuff like text, and content-based addressing for inline media). in fact, IPFS has the ability to mix in a bit of address-based lookup into its content-based approach, used for hosting blogs and the like.

as for videos - well, BitTorrent is great for distributing video files. though I don't know how well that scales to something like Youtube. you'd need a lot of hard drive space to handle the amount of Youtube that people typically watch and continue seeding it.

aggregation/discovery

the next problem is aggregation/discovery. social media sites approach this problem in various ways. early social media sites like LiveJournal had a somewhat newsgroup-like approach, you'd join a 'community' and people would post stuff to that community. this got replaced by the subscription model of sites like Twitter and Tumblr, where every user is simultaneously an author and a curator, and you subscribe to someone to see what posts they want to share.

this in turn got replaced by neural network-driven algorithms which attempt to guess what you'll want to see and show you stuff that's popular with whatever it thinks your demographic is. that's gotta go, or at least not be an intrinsic part of the social network anymore.

it would be easy enough to replicate the 'subscribe to see someone's recommended stuff' model, you just need a protocol for pointing people at stuff. (getting analytics such as like/reblog counts would be more difficult!) it would probably look similar to RSS feeds: you upload a list of suitably formatted data, and programs which speak that protocol can download it.

the problem of discovery - ways to find strangers who are interested in the same stuff you are - is more tricky. if we're trying to design this as a fully decentralised, censorship-resistant network, we face the spam problem. any means you use to broadcast 'hi, i exist and i like to talk about this thing, come interact with me' can be subverted by spammers. either you restrict yourself entirely to spreading across a network of curated recommendations, or you have to have moderation.

moderation

moderation is one of the hardest problems of social networks as they currently exist. it's both a problem of spam (the posts that users want to see getting swamped by porn bots or whatever) and legality (they're obliged to remove child porn, beheading videos and the like). the usual solution is a combination of AI shit - does the robot think this looks like a naked person - and outsourcing it to poorly paid workers in (typically) African countries, whose job is to look at reports of the most traumatic shit humans can come up with all day and confirm whether it's bad or not.

for our purposes, the hypothetical decentralised network is a protocol to help computers find stuff, not a platform. we can't control how people use it, and if we're not hosting any of the bad shit, it's not on us. but spam moderation is a problem any time that people can insert content you did not request into your feed.

possibly this is where you could have something like Mastodon instances, with their own moderation rules, but crucially, which don't host the content they aggregate. so instead of having 'an account on an instance', you have a stable address on the network, and you submit it to various directories so people can find you. by keeping each one limited in scale, it makes moderation more feasible. this is basically Reddit's model: you have topic-based hubs which people can subscribe to, and submit stuff to.

the other moderation issue is that there is no mechanism in this design to protect from mass harassment. if someone put you on the K*w*f*rms List of Degenerate Trannies To Suicidebait, there'd be fuck all you can do except refuse to receive contact from strangers. though... that's kind of already true of the internet as it stands. nobody has solved this problem.

to sum up

primarily static sites 'hosted' partly or fully on IPFS and BitTorrent

a protocol for sharing content you want to promote, similar to RSS, that you can aggregate into a 'feed'

directories you can submit posts to which handle their own moderation

no ads, nobody makes money off this

honestly, the biggest problem with all this is mostly just... getting it going in the first place. because let's be real, who but tech nerds is going to use a system that requires you to understand fuckin IPFS? until it's already up and running, this idea's got about as much hope as getting people to sign each others' GPG keys. it would have to have the sharp edges sanded down, so it's as easy to get on the Hypothetical Decentralised Social Network Protocol Stack as it is to register an account on tumblr.

but running over it like this... I don't think it's actually impossible in principle. a lot of the technical hurdles have already been solved. and that's what I want the Next Place to look like.

#i'm gonna hurry up and get my website on ipfs i think #tumblr

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xhanisai · 5 months ago

Note

Uhh marichat where Chat gets Mari away from an akuma and she accidentally forgets she’s not wearing the mask when she talks to him.

~(x)~

He didn't even take the time to breathe and before he knew it, Chat Noir pounced on Marinette's frozen form and rolled them away in the nick of time. The nasty Akuma's razor-sharp claws swiped the area she was at momentarily ago at lightning speed and had the hero not been quick enough, well...

In his arms, he'd be holding Marinette "I'm-In-So-Much-Du-FUCKING-PAIN" Cheng instead and it would have been a severely gruesome sight. Thank the kwamis from all around the world that some good luck shined on him for once (but most importantly, thank the lucky charm bracelet Marinette gave him a long while back which he wore religiously every day as a civilian).

The Akuma's warning growls and oncoming form were enough to snap the feline out of his thoughts and by instinct, he picked Marinette up bridal style and sprinted away as fast as possible. Though, the Akuma let out one last roar of anger which Chat Noir managed to hear even after putting a few good hundreds of metres between them.

"I WILL GET MY REVENGE ON YOU MARINETTE DUPAIN-CHENG! YOU WILL NEVER INSULT MY BRILLIANT FOOD EVER AGAIN YOU BRAT!"

Wide-eyed, Chat Noir directed his greens towards his huffing good friend, the girl rolling her eyes at the Akuma's words and looking very annoyed rather than scared for her life. As if the whole thing was just an inconvenience and the Akuma's claws weren't literally millimetres away from turning her into a sheesh kebab.

"Marinette? Est-ce vrais?" He asked as he continued to leap from rooftop to rooftop, noting in the back of his head that the Akuma was now busy arguing with le Papillon in their head a good distance away. They were safe for now.

"He was selling mouldy fruit tarts! And the sandwiches tasted like they were made ten thousand years ago!" She folded her arms and huffed childishly again when he set her down on her feet, his hands on his hips and a brow raised attractively under the mask. "I told him this politely and tried my best to not make a fuss. But no! He started yelling at me and got all the customers' attention!" Her blue eyes then turned beady with its glare. "Then that stupid man tried to insult Maman and Papa, saying how can a stupid kid like me with parents like them know any better? So I said his food sucked and that even a five-year-old could do a way better job! Hmmph!"

Ahh. No wonder he got akumatised and had a vendetta against the pouting girl. Chat Noir could only smile at her endearingly, always admiring the way Marinette could get so fired up and passionate on behalf of other people. It's one of the many, many things about her that made his heart flutter and try his best to match her energy when he can. It's just a shame that instead of getting a chance to de-escalate the argument, le Papillon reared his ugly head and took advantage of the fuming man's emotions.

"Well. It looks like he's itching to dice you up and put you on a tart. You should hide before the Akuma--"

"COME OUT, COME OUT WHEREVER YOU ARE, DUPAIN-CHENG!!!!"

Just as Chat Noir was about to scoop her back in his arms and dart away, Marinette did a complete one-eighty and took on a strong stance. Fists curled by her sides, eyes now narrowed with determination and she stared down at the Akuma who was still quite a distance away from them; his giant but clumsy form still looking for her with a nasty scowl on his face.

"Chat Noir. Get to the rooftop on the Akuma's left and have your catacylsme ready. I'll summon a lucky charm once I'm behind him. I guarantee that the butterfly is in his apron so hopefully I'll get a pair of scissors or something." She was completely blind to the way Chat Noir gawked behind her, his jaw comically dropping to the floor and his eyes bulging out of their sockets.

He couldn't even utter a word.

"Let's go!" She ordered and just as she ran and reached the end of the rooftop they were perched on, her hand automatically went to the side of her hip.

When she didn't feel her yoyo anywhere on her and realised that she was still decked up in her civilian attire, it was as if a bucket of icy cold water mercilessly poured on her head. In pure Marinette style, her face contorted into one that screamed 'I FUCKED UP' and slowly, she faced her Chaton who was still gaping at her.

"...I can explain." She rasped weakly. Instead of laughing it all off and pretending nothing happened like he should've (that stupid cat!), Chat Noir got down to one knee instead, pulled off his ring, revealing himself to be none other than Adrien Agreste and spoke.

"Marry me. Now. Please."

Of course, Marinette screamed like a dying monkey.

~(x)~

HOPE YOU ENJOYED!

#my asks #my writing #miraculous ladybug #miraculous ladybug and chat noir #marichat #marinette dupain cheng #chat noir #adrien agreste #ladybug #ml fanfiction #ml fanfics #this was really fun to write

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ryan-sometimes · 7 months ago

Note

hi! you're the only biochemist i know so i have to ask this

my aunt recently got really into this holistic-sounding thing called healing immunity by transfer factors, tied to a very fishy company, 4life. in my understanding, they're preying on the lack of scientific proof that something /doesnt/ work to convince people that it /does/, based on reports of 'clients' that miraculously healed from various conditions from minor allergies to literally cancer, as well as preventing/curing >autism< 💀 problem is, she totally believes this bulshit and is giving them tons of money and trying to get the whole family to try it too

as a biochemist, I was wondering if you ever stumbled across transfer factors, know about any recent research on this field, or know the scientific explanation for why this is a load of baloney

thank you!

I’m familiar with transfer factors. A transfer factor is a chemical compound (often a protein) that is taken from an organism after it develops immunity against a disease. It’s part of immune cell signaling- it’s how your immune cells talk to each other.

But that’s the issue with pseudoscience. Oftentimes, they take something that has a small fraction of truth to it and then completely invent the rest.

Here’s the rest: transfer factors are often incredibly specific. So specific, in fact, that just two strains of the exact same bacteria could lead to two completely different factors being generated in response to them. Also, two different people infected by the exact same illness could generate different antibodies/transfer factors in response. Your immune system is as unique as your fingerprints.

Even if you took the antibodies/transfer factors from one person immune to a disease and injected them into someone currently afflicted by the disease, there’s no guarantee that it’ll make them immune as well. Cell signaling compounds are essentially words in the language your body uses to communicate with itself- and who knows if other people’s cells speak the same language?

For all you know, that transfer factor is telling your body something it might misunderstand completely. What if it “mishears” what that factor is trying to say? You could trigger an unwanted immune response! And that could potentially be even worse than just developing immunity naturally through exposure.

The field of transfer factors is still rudimentary- all of the real (actually scientific) research on injecting people with transfer factors to boost immunity is still very much in its experimental phase. Any company alleging to sell transfer factors to boost immunity is scamming you. Not even real medical companies are doing that yet, and if they could, they would. You know how money hungry pharmaceutical companies are.

Here’s one thing that’s certain: transfer factors cannot cure non immunity/infection related issues. Autism isn’t caused by a pathogen, how can your body develop an immune response to it when there’s nothing to fight? And regarding cancer, there’s already an existing field to treat cancer using your immune system: it’s called immunotherapy. And that will be given to you by a doctor, not some random company trying to sell glorified supplements. And for allergies? Get some antihistamines and an EpiPen.

The best way to boost your immune system is already available: vaccines. Vaccines prompt your body to make ITS OWN transfer factors and antibodies, which guarantees your cells will understand what those factors mean. And the transfer factors your body makes for itself will always be safer and more effective.

Real science beats pseudoscience.

#I love it when you guys ask me scientific questions please ask me more of them #long post #biochemistry #pseudoscience #science #biology

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shankss-magnificent-ass · 2 years ago

Text

Imagine the beast pirates learning you are a criminal mastermind

Kaido: *going over a cargo manifest* we will sell these in Port Chugal, prepare them for shipment.

King: Port Chugal won't buy pirate goods anymore, the world government found out they've been trading with us, so they replaced the king there.

Kaido: That's the third distribution market I've had to change in the last month. First the Bourgeois Kingdom, then Ballywood, and now Port Chugal. How are they finding my warehouses?

Queen: we don't know at the moment, but we're working on it

You: *King's assistant* I would like to point out something that all three have in common.

King: Silence.

Kaido: let em talk, I want to hear what they have to say.

You: they were all common stops on Captain Rondow's transport route, who was captured almost three months ago by the world government.

Kaido: You think the poor bastard broke under torture?

You: It appears so, and from the other reports we're getting I'm guessing they have figured out how you conduct your exportation operation. *Hands King the reports*

King: *Skims them* we spent years building this system.

You: which means building another will be faster this time. I'm guessing how they're locating our goods is by the fact that while it's labeled under a company that doesn't have any paperwork officially filed in countries we claim it's from.

Kaido: what are we supposed to do, get a business permit?

You: yes, but actually no. Now any new businesses from any nations in your territory will come under scrutiny by the world government. So I think we should find any failing, but long-established companies, and bail them out in exchange for slipping our illicit cargo into their product distribution.

King: that... might actually work, but there's no way we can guarantee their loyalty.

You: that's why you give them a small percentage of the profits and gather blackmail material. Most rich people are sick fucks will have skeletons in their closet, you just have to look for it.

Kaido: I'll entrust the task to you, and in the meantime we'll have Yamato fill in for you with King.

King: what! No! Your son is... not great at paperwork.

Kaido: Sorry bud, but I'd like to see what they can do on their own, so I'm setting them loose.

Returns from setting up the new network seven months later

Kaido: I just got the finance report for the last quarter

You: *literally just got off the boat* Sir?

King: Your network is more efficient than what we had set up.

Kaido: you're getting promoted, so you can manage it from here.

You: But I was really looking forward to working with King again.

Kaido: then you'll work under him not me.

You: I'm keeping my desk in your office.

King: For someone who ruthlessly castrated a man to get him to do what they wanted, you are very clingy and sentimental.

You: I was well within my rights to revoke that man's dick privilege, you had no idea how man people he's assaulted. I did that town a fucking favor by pickling that man's junk

Kaido: you pickled it!

You: Yes I did, how else, so you think I got an entire town to look the other way about our ships coming into the harbor?

Kaido: I never would have thought of that... You know when I met you I never would have guessed you'd be an asset to my operations. You seemed too soft and naive, too kind.

You: *shrugs* Well thank you for thinking I'm kind, but I just so happen to hate you less than the world government, and you have more money than the revolutionary army. And Lin Lin and her family freaks me out.

King: don't forget Akagami and Whitebeard won't hire you since you've worked with us.

You: *clicks your tongue* and I regret it every day.

Coming Soon

#one piece #one piece x reader #one piece imagine #one piece scenario #beast pirates #animal kingdom pirates #kaido #kaidou #king the conflagration #king the conflagration x reader #king the wildfire x reader #from the depths of the dragons hoard #tma original #4/2/23 #no beta we die like men

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sufferu · 2 months ago

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It's always bugged me because yeah yeah Subaru and Flugel have some sort of connection sure but like there's just so many ways to do it without some boring and thematically disaonant au/timeloop sort of thing?

Reincarnation is literally and explicitly a thing, we have multiple characters who are already the reincarnation or spiritual successor to some big name important figure from the past and Subaru being another one of them but also refusing to let it define him and making his own path better fits with who he is and the story itself.

Reminds me on how way back before we really had anything about him beyond some suspicious similarities between Kararagi and Kansai that people thought that Hoshin had to have been some sort of AU Subaru as well.

I'd rather believe Flugel is an AU Kenichi or Subaru's maternal grandpa or whatever than Flugel is literally just Subaru and this is all just some greater part and plot of a ginormous timeloop.

I had never heard it before but I'm actually super into the idea of Al as Subaru's displaced younger older brother? Especially since we're now at Al's arc and everything.

Yeah imma be honest I hate basically all Subaru == Flugel theories, and all Subaru == Aldebaran theories, too (though really those are one and the same, because Aldebaran == Flugel seems pretty much canon at this point lmao: there are too many signs, and also they act so similar to one another that it really doesn’t feel like nearly as much of a stretch to say that they’re the same guy as it is to say that Subaru is either one of them). This includes timeloops, reincarnations, etc.: it’s just — “Oops, all Subaru” isn’t an ending that I am very partial to, and if that’s where this is going then Tappei is gonna have to sell it HARD in order to get me on board.

But my favorite theory is ABSOLUTELY the Younger/Older Brother Aldebaran theory.

Evidence:

Subaru is explicitly referred to by Kenichi as his “eldest son” in every translation of the First Trial, despite the fact that he doesn’t have any siblings. (Honestly even if this DOESN’T end up being canon I’m gonna go the rest of my life headcanoning that Naoko was pregnant when Subaru got Isekai’d just because of that line alone)

Subaru has gone out of his way to mention that he is afraid that his parents had more kids when he got spirited away, which sure smells like foreshadowing to me

In a side story, Aldebaran is mentioned to have had many of the same insecurities regarding his family members as Subaru. These family members are not named. (In the shadow of his perpetually missing older brother, perhaps?)

Garfiel talks about Al and Subaru smelling similar in the same volume where similar scents indicate a familial resemblance between him and his mom

The Pleiades Constellation references seven sisters, bringing the idea of siblings right front and center

In astronomy, Aldebaran is the Following Star, specifically following Subaru

Aldebaran has been literally calling Subaru “bro” every time he shows up, which is currently just a speech quirk but has the potential to get recharacterized HARD

Pros:

Keeps Subaru and Al connected without making them the Same Guy

Brings the focus of the story right back to the character-centric drama of the Natsuki Family and how Subaru left them behind, which I can basically guarantee has to come up again at some point anyway

All of Subaru and Aldebaran’s scenes become so much funnier if it’s revealed that they are actually siblings

We can get Subaru and Aldebaran fighting with one another over who gets to be the older brother

So many Cain Instinct memes

Cons:

Please. It would be so, SO good.

#natsuki aldebaran theory #aldebaran #natsuki subaru #my inbox

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kanmom51 · 1 year ago

Text

JM's Production diary Documentary

And Live 23 October 2023

So, I don't know how to do this.

Write about JM's documentary separate from his live.

Write about the two without being all over the place.

Because not too much happened, and yet so much did.

So, where do I start? How do I get through this?

At this point I have so many ideas running through my head for posts, so much so that I'm not sure just yet how this post will work out, given that everything intertwines.

I still have JM's previous live to work on as well. Yeah, kind of overwhelmed at the moment.

I guess I will just get on with it, but I do think that more than likely there will be things I will either save for another post or two or three, or forget something (that I can guarantee) or just post on repeat, cause some things we just cannot get enough of.

Let's talk about the documentary a bit.

We got to see the process of JM creating his songs. How they would start with the idea, the narrative. Then the melody, instruments and the vocals and then the actual lyrics.

JM's musicality, his talent, his creativity all showcased.

We also got to see just how nice Pdogg is. How much he loves JM, how respectful he is to him, not to mention how talented he is himself. As a matter of fact, the whole team that worked with JM were super nice and talented and they just all seemed to be having a good time, even while working to the bone.

Oh, and how none of them actually knew English, lmao.

In the documentary we were shown how JM and Pdogg chose the quote from the movie to use in the song. Only that it wasn't the one they actually used in the song itself. And that is because, as JM revealed to us in the live, they picked it without knowing what the characters were talking about, picking a convo between the characters that sounded nice to them at the time, something that would suit the song. All while the two characters were actually talking about a visa, lol. And JM, well, he found that super funny (which truthfully, it really is), so he repeated it a couple of times.

We also saw RM in the documentary sitting down with them talking about writing lyrics. Only for JM to share with us that:

Which JM found to be very funny. I guess now it is, but back then... not sure he shared that same sentiment, lol.

He kept on laughing about him being an idea bank, lol. It's ok to acknowledge your genius, man!!!

Hobi and then Jin show up in the comments while JM is watching the documentary. And I was surprised at that point, given that I really did think JM wouldn't be doing this live, that it would have been pre-recorded. But it wasn't, and thank god for that, cause we all know what happened later on. Less than 1.30 minutes out of an almost 2 hour live, but gosh, what a 1.30 minutes they were, lol.

Anyways, Hobi shows up and JM goes all shy and even stops playing the documentary telling him to leave, that he won't continue playing until he does.

Guess who won that fight, lol. Hobi, of course. JM gives in and continues, once in a while saying they will go away at 9 pm (Jin came in to say that there is some kind of something military related, lol).

Letter

Yes, let's actually start with the name of the song.

Cause for some reason, although they all talk about the song using the word pyeonji (Letter), all while the translation is Dear.Army. Like what the actual fuck? Why would they do that?

Well, we kind of know, don't we?

Someone (cough Hybe cough) is working super hard to cement the song is for the fans.

Please tell me, if this was a song completely meant for the fans, why this incessant need of the company to sell this to us? Why change the name of it in the fucking documentary, while JM and the others are literally saying the word "letter" translating it to "Dear.Army"? There is only one answer I can think of here. And you know exactly what that answer is.

I'm not going to go back to all the reasoning as to why this is way more than a song for fans, I feel like we've discussed this ad nauseam. I will only say that NOTHING we saw in the documentary contradicts what we think about Letter.

You can see, throughout the process how emotionally tasking the song is for JM. And yes, a song for ARMY could be emotional, I mean both JM and JK have immense love for ARMY, and we've seen JK burst into tears talking to army or about army, JM getting very emotional himself. But this, this was more. There are moments there when you can see the anxiety just bursting out of JM.

This song was just MORE.

Especially when you take everything you see in the documentary, JM's state of mind, his words, his behaviour, and add it all up with the lyrics, even more so the missing lyrics. Would be hard to explain how "dongsaeng" fits into "this is a song for army"... Add it to the hidden track. But not only it being a hidden track, it's a hidden track only on the physical CD. Not the digital CD. So, no streaming. A track for Army, for his fans, that not all of his fans get to hear freely? A track for Army that, hmm... maybe wasn't supposed to even be in the album?

We got more than 2 seconds of JK. That's worth a mention too, no?

When I saw this I was: fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck.

Cause, no way under the sun, yes, pun intended, that this was about ARMY.

Army was NEVER REFERENCED AS THE SUN BY ANY OF THEM.

NEVER.

You know who was?

The level of emotion we see from the two of them throughout the process... this was so personal.

I rewatched it again today before writing these lines. It's JK's body language, it's JM's body language, it's JM going in to cup JK's face when telling him he wrote a fan song, and JK's reaction.

Dare I remind you that "Still with you" was classified by JK as a "fan song". Dare I remind you what our sentiments about that song are? Yeah, a fans song.

And I will remind you, not that you need the reminder, who happened to state for all of us to see that he was JM's fan. Happening to do so during JM's promotions of Face and before JM's Face Live, which I do not think was a coincidence AT ALL.

They are just precious. What else can I say?

There is this as well.

Also, I don't think I'm the only one seeing this. JK at the end going in for a hug, but JM, reaches out for a hand shake and a bow.

He bows.

Twice.

Now, the not going in for a hug could be one of two with JM. The first could be that it was too emotionally charged and that hug, in front of the cameras, will just be too hard. Too hard not to show the emotions. Too hard to break off.

Or, the second could be that by doing this, bowing the way he did do JK, he was showing us, the spectators, just how profoundly thankful he was for JK, and for his participating in the song.

Now that I think of it there could be a third reason. Which would be the combination of the two.

You know what I also noticed there?

That JK didn't bow back.

So, that's more or less what happened with them in the documentary. Not too much talking, when there is it's subdued, understandably so, given this is all done in front of the cameras. But, there is an undertone of emotions there.

Oh, and did I mention we see JM wearing the very important, at the time, necklace throughout the documentary? On that day of recording as well.

And happy little coincidence them wearing the black and white bucket hats? Lol.

Ok then. By now we all know that JK joined the live. And he does it exactly when they started letter. Quelle surprise. Quelle coincidence. Or was it?

Observations:

JK is too skinny. JM thought so too all while grabbing his tiddy.

JK is really tired. Said he was practicing. Eyes red. He needs to eat and sleep.

JM was genuinely surprised by JK's appearance. Th way he lights up, he was surprised and giddy and excited, his whole body movement, practically dancing in his seat with glee.

JK walks in holding his right hand in place. At first I thought maybe it was injured or hurt or unable to move, a cramp maybe, like the ones JM suffers from at times. But later on it looked like there was nothing wrong with his arm. So was that his way of holding himself back? Restraining himself? Containing himself?

JM signals for JK to talk into his mic,

Pulls the mic up forward away from his chest, and as JK comes closer he lets it go and leans back for JK to move in.

And JK, well why? The mic is right there. Why does he lean in lower? To say hello to Army? Talking to JM's what? Not the mic, that's for sure...

There did not seem to be a chair there next to JM when the live started, and when JK was leaving JM had him take a chair with him. So, as JK came into frame were the staff assuming he's going to be joining JM for the rest of the live? Also making sure to hand him a mic?

And then, JM asks JK "why did you lose so much weight?", all while reaching out his arm, and JK moves forward towards him, and you can see JK's eyes moving down to JM's arm all while JM just goes for JK's chest. Just going straight for the grab.

And JK, he loses it for just a second.

Sniff, gulp, giggle...

And we are back.

JK laughingly tells us he just practiced. But kind of still dumbfounded I guess.

And then I think JM came to as well (you know, awakening from the aftershock of his own actions, lol) and tells JK "time to go", or more so "get the fuck out of here as fast as you can and take that chair with you while you're at it, cause if you don't leave now I'm going to jump your bones right here right now".

Ok, so maybe he didn't say those words exactly, but that was the sentiment, lol.

JM apologises. Thrice.

For sending JK on his way.

And we get the hug. One of those Jikook in front of the camera hugs.

And again JM rushes JK to leave, smacking his butt while he's at it.

JK grabs the chair, tells JM to enjoy watching with Army and tells us he loves us on the way out. And JM sitting there watching JK, giggling, smile plastered on his face, waving by. But that isn't the end of it.

Because as JK leaves JM follows him with his gaze, until he waves him goodbye and only then gets back to the documentary.

And this is when we lost JM for a few minutes there during that part of the documentary, and even more so when JK was on screen singing or during their interactions.

And we also got this reaction to their hug.

What was going through your mind at that moment JM?

After JK leaves there is not too much left until the end of the documentary. And then we have a JM giggles attack. And the man is telling us he's laughing about balloon placements, but seriously, do we really think that's it?

And yes, JM was as always his own shy self while going it alone, and yes, he was finding it hard where to go with the live once the video was over, but this was just more than just plain embarrassment or shyness.

Could there have been someone there waiting for him? Someone that has that kind of effect on JM perhaps?

I don't think JK was there the whole time. He really did leave when JM was waving him goodbye (if he hadn't have left JM wouldn't have been able to get back to the documentary the way he did). But possibly, very possibly, lover boy went to shower and came back in time for JM's ending.

JM tells us during that giggle attack that he will post a pic of the funny balloons only to later post a pic of 19 balloons, the ones in the front shaped like an S. And why do I feel like that was JK's doing? The S shaped balloons...

Clearly the balloons were not placed that way at first.

Someone did this. Question is which one of them. The S, the 19, not a coincidence.

I guess that's it for this post.

Like I mentioned, I know I probably forgot stuff, and there will probably several posts to follow.

But I just needed to get this one out there for you guys. And I guess we'll add on as we go (especially seeing that I've reached my image limit here, as usual).

To sum this up.

WOW!!!

#Jimin #JM #JM's Production diary #JM's documentary #Jikook #kookmin #Minkook #Jungkook #JK #Jikook Letter

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