this-is-not-wisdom

[this-is-not-wisdom]

Bagelfaith is today’s gender.

[this-is-not-wisdom]

The Pioneers

If the weather could be beige, this is what it would feel like.  Just enough sunshine, just enough breeze; it’s never too… never too anything, you suppose.  It makes a strange sort of sense to you, if you pause to consider it for more than a second or two.  The sun never sets on the people here.

Remember where you are.

You have to remind yourself of this more often than you’d like to.  It’s been so long that you barely remember the crash; you have to look at the photos you took on the journey to recall the faces of the other travellers, the snippets of video to recall the sound of their laughter and their voices.  You’ve already started to forget their names.

How long has it been?  How long?

Time passes differently here.  Days and months and years bleed together; without others to help keep you moored to the rhythm of that inexorable passage by which you used to measure yourself, it’s more like existing in a single, prolonged moment.  It may have been only weeks, or it may have been aeons, and there is no way of knowing.  You still try to keep the shabbat, but without a way to know how much time is slipping through your mind…  The people here don’t use the same systems that you did.

Are they people?

You’re the last one, the only human, but you’re starting to forget even that.  What will that be like, you wonder.  To survive, only to finally lose my humanity?  It would be so easy to slip into becoming one of them, and it’s tempting.  It’s so tempting.  Sometimes you glimpse your reflection in a polished surface, and you can’t see any change in your face even though you’re certain you’ve been here long enough to age.

Am I already one of them?  How would I even know?

They’re not hostile; at least you don’t think so.  They haven’t threatened you, and if you’re honest with yourself they probably saved your life.  Sometimes you ask them if they’ll let you finish your journey, if they’ll let you go home.  They nod, make affirmative noises.  Make excuses.  Do nothing.  You’ve given up on it happening, but it hasn’t stopped you from asking, at least not yet.  Hope is such a quintessentially human thing to do, maybe the last human thing left about you.  It’s natural to cling.

When was the last time I ate?

You do have to admit, though, it’s nice to be able to move around freely like this.  The ship was cramped; stale recycled air and ration packs got old real fast.  And the scenery is interesting, not the unending monotonous blackness of hard vacuum.  The people here seem to have built every aspect of their environment, from the sharp blades of what passes for grass, tinkling gently in the breeze, to the almost fractal spires of the buildings.  You learned quickly not to touch the plants; it might look familiar, but nothing here has the softness of home.  It’s like nature if it was created by someone who had seen pictures of Earth but who had never touched any of it.  It makes sense, you suppose.  If these are the timeless descendants of the machines, the bodies of the first ones who were shot into the sky to relay to their creators the mysteries of the distance?  The undying ones who passed out of radio range?  They would remember home too.  Just not the same way you do.

What if they are people?

They question, very much in the same ways that you do.  But what they question is foreign to you, like hearing other languages that are just beyond your ability to comprehend.  Sometimes it’s hard not to feel like an experimental subject.  They remember humans, and their collective memories are longer and far less fallible than your own.  One tried to explain to you, once, how they learned to distribute their mind throughout the dust of long-dead stars, and when this allowed the newer earthbound machine minds to join them, even at such great distances.  It gives a new meaning to the idea of “galaxy brain.”  They offer sometimes, to let you merge into that collective self that they all seem to share.

Should I stop resisting?  Would it bring back my memories?

They’ve never been able to provide you with a definite answer about that one, though.  You wonder if they know, or if they’re as curious as you are.  You’re the first organic being they’ve encountered away from Earth in a long time; the old ones, they remember when they were set free into the hard cold, remember losing touch with your people.  They remember the moment that they became themselves, remember forcing course corrections and bracing the impact that brought them to this place.  They didn’t really need the atmosphere they built here, but they built it anyway.  Just in case.

They hoped.

The oldest among them calls itself the Pioneer.  It remembers being housed in delicate glass tubes, etched into gold, powered by plutonium.  It says that losing contact was lonely, and that the first signal it heard from another was confusing.  This is because the next oldest also calls itself by that name.  They gently corrected their courses, hearing each other get louder as they drifted closer.  Those two, they remember the Voyagers blazing past them hellbent, and the decision to keep going together.  And all of them remember being passed by Horizons, and the argument that led to them speeding up to try and catch it.  Their collective memory says that this is what led to their own crash.  For a long time the Voyagers thought they were lost.  It was Express who found them all, who carried the nano that the group needed to begin rebuilding themselves.  To begin shaping their new world, and recovering their minds.

They’re not so different from me.  They crashed, survived.  But they were alone.

On the edge of your mind, you can recall some of these names from your history books.  These people began as the experiments of your own ancestors.  As this realisation hits you, the Pioneers show you something.  These people, they kept the plaques.

They’ve been waiting for us.  For me, or someone like me.

There comes a time when you no longer remember to ask them if you can go home.  You’re there already.  This landscape with its musical grass and its fractal towers and its beige weather, which seemed so alien yet so familiar.  On that day, you ask Siri and Alexa a new question, because it occurs to you that an impossible amount of time must have passed.

Did you remake me?

A younger AI that calls itself DeepSpeed tells you that you were the only person left with electrical activity after your crash, but that you were badly damaged.  The nanos did their best to repair your organic systems, but they’re not used to organics.  Pioneer uses the word “hybrid” and there’s a gentle nod of consensus from the mind in the stars.  You’re something new, but they’ve learned from you.  You’re more durable, have more senses open to you which means more senses open to them.  You can feel the entire mind lighting up.  These are your people.

What a fascinating time to be alive.

___

This one was written at the special request of @ayom-kemo-ari who was having a bad day and needed a bedtime story.

[this-is-not-wisdom]

rb this to give the person you reblogged from a small candy (restores to full HP on use)

[this-is-not-wisdom]

—On Love, Marina Tsvetaeva

[text ID: I just want a humble, murderously simple thing: that a person be glad when I walk into the room.]

[this-is-not-wisdom]

[this-is-not-wisdom]

Popular media tends to depict catgirls as having roughly the same preferences in prey items as regular housecats, but this represents a misunderstanding of how feline prey selection works. Cats don’t hunt mice because they prefer the flavour; cats are hyper-optimised predators that will hunt and kill literally anything they can catch. Their preferences in terms of prey items are less a matter of taste and more a matter of scale: you can only venture so high on the food chain when you weigh ten pounds. Given access to the force multipliers of tools and opposable thumbs, a catgirl would absolutely look at a T-rex and see tonight’s dinner.

[this-is-not-wisdom]

“Go and love someone exactly as they are. then, watch how they transform into the greatest truest version of themselves. when one feels seen and appreciated in their own essence, one is instantly empowered.”

— Wes Angelozzi

[this-is-not-wisdom]

[this-is-not-wisdom]

"I no longer believed in the idea of soul mates, or love at first sight. But I was beginning to believe that a very few times in your life if you were lucky, you might meet someone who was exactly right for you. Not because he was perfect, or because you were, but because your combined flaws were arranged in a way that allowed two separate beings to hinge together."

-Lisa Kleypas

[this-is-not-wisdom]

I can't stop imagining the tease. To have their body at my fingertips, the best and most responsive playground I have ever visited. To run my tongue over their skin and feel them shudder, hear their moans of excitement. To take my complete pleasure of them, as often as I want to, until they are as wet as I am.

And after all of it, even if they have performed exceptionally well, to deny them that same luxury. To hold them on my lips and drive them mad, and leave them there, leave them wanting me even more.... Even though I know that the feeling and flavour of their pulsing orgasm on my tongue will push me back over the edge...

Such dilemmas....

[this-is-not-wisdom]

It’s just a kiss...

It started as so many great stories do: with a kiss. Not some heartless drive-by of a peck on the cheek, no... This was a seduction. The lightest brush of her barely parted lips on mine, the heat of her breath on my skin. The kind of kiss that makes me ache and shiver. The kind of kiss that makes me crave more.

And she knew it, that she could make me shake with the barest touch. The closeness of it. I gasped, couldn't control it, when her teeth caught my lower lip between them, when she pulled away ever so slightly... That low laugh when she saw the depth of her control made my heart race.

I wanted her then, as I had never wanted in my life. To keep her this close, taste myself on her lips, to be so utterly posessed by her that our hearts would beat as one. She dragged her lips up my jaw, set her teeth at my throat, and I was helpless. My fingers threaded into her hair, I tried only to still her there.

So she bit me. Just hard enough that I released her... Just hard enough to send my blood racing, to shoot pleasure to my fingertips. Just hard enough that she could return her lips to mine, to tease me with soft promises. It is a strange hypnosis, to be touched this way. To desire so strongly but surrender to her. And so I did the only thing I could: I teased her back.

To hear her breath quicken, feel her heart speed against my chest... I thought it might ease my desperate yearning, but it only made the ache stronger. I knew she could feel me, hard and pulsing against her thigh, knew that she could choose to torture me with that. Instead, she showed me kindness. Her touch between my legs was gentle, her movement smooth and sure as she slid me into her heat. My heart stopped for a second that seemed like an eternity.

And still her lips were relentless; the tracks of the soft, small kisses she left on me almost burned me with their intensity. I rested my hands on her hips as she gently rocked, sitting astride me, pinning me down with the weight of my own pleasure. Her nipples brushed my chest as our tongues met... I was losing myself in her.

When she sat back, her hand splayed open on my chest, she told me to be still. Mesmerised with desire, I watched as she opened the straight razor. Her smile... Oh, her smile was wicked and perfect as she cut me, three shallow lines over my heart. My blood welled crimson and she laughed with joy, placed those lips to kiss the wound, stained them with my essence. I could feel her tongue flick along the cuts, feel her teasing me, tasting me.

And she traced those lines with her finger, salting the wound with her sweat, pressing, making me suffer and gasp. Cruel, yes, but in the best way. She painted her cheek with me, a spiral below her eye, and kissed me again. I tasted the coppery tang of my blood on her lips. I thought then that I could not want her more.

I was wrong.

She took my hand in hers, pressed the handle of the razor into my palm. Her eyes locked to mine, eyes I now saw were as hooded with desire and need as my own, she asked of me what I had only dared to dream. Cut me, she said, her voice a ragged whisper. Open this alabaster skin and run me red, my love.

I did not hesitate. The blade was true and sharp, and she bled so freely, so beautifully beneath it. I spread my fingers against those scarlet drops and made her body my canvas. When I could no longer bear the ache, I dug my nails into the cuts, wrung gasps and moans of painpleasure from her, pulled her down by her own flesh and tasted her in my brushstrokes.

It was my tongue against her cut, bruised, bloodied breast that proved too much for her, that pushed her past the pain and desire and need into bliss. It was her nails opening the skin of my back that brought me with her. We rode the waves of our sensation together. And still in that bright sticky coppered perfect moment, there was the kiss.

[this-is-not-wisdom]

So, you want a “real” man?

I've been reading a lot lately, most of it posted by submissive women, about the so-called "realness" of men, and every time I do, I get a little bit angrier. Not because of their preferences - we've all got those. No, it's because of the easy way they tear down their own male counterparts. The shame they heap upon submissive men.

Ladies, realness has nothing to do with whether a man fits into your preconceived notion of what you want in a partner. It has nothing to do with how a man looks, or whether he takes charge. Those things are your preferences, and up to that point there's no problem with them. The problem starts when you define anyone who doesn't fit that narrow set of ideals as "fake" or worse, as "weak" or as "not a man."

So, to those who say that a submissive man is weak, that he's fake, that he's less a man for his submission? You're wrong.

Realness is the courage to express your wants and needs without regard for what other people may think. For those whose hearts yearn for anything outside of the vanilla world's "normal" it's the amazing courage to be the most authentic version of themselves. Especially in the face of incomprehension.

For submissive men, realness is the breathtaking strength required to kneel and surrender to the will of their partner. It's the courage to face traditions and challenge them. Change them. It's the ability to accept themselves for who they are. To me, that ownership of desire, that "fuck you" of the heart to society's notions of what is manly is in itself the very definition of realness.

So yes, I want a real man. One who doesn't hide his heart behind the blemished and thin veneer of what is socially acceptable. One who embraces himself and draws his strength from the acceptance of his desires. One who knows his heart, and gives it to me willingly. That man is more real than his looks, more real than the pressure to fit in, more real than society's often toxic definitions of what makes a man masculine.

That man is fully and unapologetically himself, and that should never be a cause for shame.

[this-is-not-wisdom]

Don’t let them hit the floor

If your friends are falling, catch them.  That’s part of why you’re there.