#and of course it doesn't let you advance without agreeing

[nell0-0]

Um, what the heck is this??? I just wanted to read my silly fanfic, my gosh

Please tell me I ain't the only one concerned about this

[nanamisgirly]

you're bit too possessive toward your nerdྀི

the moment you spot them through the glass wall of the library study room, something primal inside you snaps.

your nerd. your sweet, tall, stuttering nerd.

and some other girl leaning all over him. all giggles and twirls of her stupid hair, looking up at him like he hung the stars. you can practically see the way her fingers brush “innocently” against his forearm. and gojo—this sweet, beautiful idiot gojo. he's just smiling, shyly pushing his glasses up the bridge of his nose, completely, utterly oblivious of the advances the girl is making.

you see red. not the cute, flirty kind of jealous. no. 

you see murder.

by the time you stomp into the study room, he lights up the second he sees you—like a golden retriever seeing its favorite person. “babyy!” he blurts, half-standing so fast he nearly knocks over the chair. his knees bang the table. his pen scatter. he's flushed pink already, hands fidgeting with the hem of his stupid neat sweater, beaming at you like you're the sun itself.

meanwhile, the girl beside him falters, confused as hell when you swoop in, grab a fistful of his collar and yank him down into a messy kiss—a possessive and mean one, kissing him like you're marking him, like you're making a fucking declaration.

gojo gasps against your mouth, stunned, but immediately melts, tilting his head to give you more. he kisses back with desperate little noises, afraid if he doesn't, you'll change your mind and leave. when you pull back, he's breathless, blinking at you all dazed and drunk, glasses slipping halway down his nose. “i missed you…” he whispers.

you don't answer him, to focusing on the other girl. staring straight at her awkward form peeking up her books, face pale. you tilt your head and smile—sharp, unfriendly, a predator showing teeth. she scurries away without a word.

gojo blinks between you and the empty chair, confusion pinching his brows. “she…left? we didn't end the explanations—”

you grab his jaw in one hand, squeezing his cheeks until his lips squish pouty. “you,” you hiss, leaning so close your breath fans his pink ears, “are so fucking stupid, satoru.” his wide, panicked eyes blink down at you. “i-i am?” he stutters, looking on the verge of tears just because you're mad at him. “i-i didn't even—i mean…i was j-just doing the private lesson…i-i told you about it!” he babbles, desperate. not understanding a thing.

you shake his head a little by the jaw, making his glasses slip down worse. “yeah, yeah. i agreed on a private lesson." you snarl, voice dripping poison-sweet. "not private fucking sex.” you yank his wrist, dragging him out of the little study room, ignoring the curious heads turning to you. 

satoru stumbles after you, tripping over his own feet—over himself just to keep up. “y-you're mad,” he whines, almost breathless, cheeks burning red. “w-what did i…i didn't—”

his voice gets smaller when you spin around, shoving him back hard against the nearest wall. his back thuds against the cold surface, and he freezes up, chest heaving. “you really don't get it, huh?” 

that dumb, pretty face of his—lips pink from your previous kiss and from him nervously chewing them, his glasses crooked, his hair all messed up—god, you could eat him alive. “you let that clingy bitch touch you like that?” you spit. “smile at her like that? let her giggle and bat her lashes like you didn't already have someone who should be the only thing you look at??”

satoru is practically vibrating in place, like a kicked puppy. his Adam's apple bobs hard when he swallows. “i-i didn't notice!” he chokes out. “i swear, angel, i didn't! i-i didn't even l-look at her. .” your nails scrape up his chest through his hoodie, making him whimper. “you're mine, aren't you, 'toru?” he nods so fast you think he might give himself whiplash. “y-yes!! yours! of c-course, only yours!”

your hand snakes lower, palming the half-chub tenting his sweats. poor thing :( so quick to get hard just from yelling at him. “you're lucky you're cute,” you snap, but your heart is hammering at how real the panic was in his voice. 

you squeeze him through the fabric. his hips jolt into your hand with a pathetic little gasp. you watch his pretty white lashes flutter, poor boy was genuinely confused why you're so pissed—poor sweet nerd who only ever wanted you :((

you click your tongue. “my pretty nerd,” you mock sweetly, squeezing his cock harder through his pants, making his knees buckle. “getting hard just ‘cause i’m scolding you? bet you'd cum just from me slapping your face.” 

“i-i could! i would, i-if that's what y-you—ah!—want,” his mouth works uselessly searching for words, his brain short-circuiting because your hand's still lazily stroking him through his sweats. you lean up, biting his jaw hard enough to make him whines. 

"you’re gonna make it up to me," you murmur against his skin, voice syrupy sweet. "gonna let me use you however I want. gonna be a good boy for me, huh, satoru?" he was towering over you but he was so, so submissive.

he nods so fast again his glasses damn near fall off. "a-anything," he breathes. "please. please let me—lemme be good—i'll be so good, promise!"

[cruel-as-sin]

how long before you let me go? | logan howlett

↳ summary: riling up logan doesn't go quite how you planned...

word count: 1.3k

song: supermassive black hole | muse

pairings: bodyguard 70s!logan x rich kid fem!reader

content warnings: 18+ content (MDNI), smut, porn light plot, rough sex, overstimulation, mean!logan, hair pulling, mentions of bite marks and hickeys, spanking (so hard it leaves handprints), whiny!reader, unprotected p in v (practice safe sex everyone!), multiple orgasms, reader flirts with someone else to piss off logan (don't worry about me doing this again...), no use of y/n, pre-established safe word, doggy style, logan puts reader in a headlock, light choking accompanying said headlock, some degradation, pet names for reader (sweetheart, brat, slut), reader is a crying whiny mess and logan loves it, logan has insane stamina (lmk if i missed anything!)

↳ a/n: cas finally posting something!!! (and everyone cheered!) this has been in my drafts for SOOO long and i'm so glad i finally finished it even if it’s shorter than i wanted it to be, logan is sooooooooo hot omfgggg... might turn this into a series bc i feel like this song fits them SO incredibly well

✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:*

The problem, if you could call it that, with having sex with Logan is that he Just. Keeps. Going.

Being a celebrities daughter has its perks. A rich lifestyle, for one. Lots of attention, and of course, a bodyguard with muscles that make you drool and a stern voice that leaves you dripping in… other areas.

You two have been having casual sex for about a month and a half now. He’s always been relentless, but usually takes pity on you enough to let up before he’s tired out. And, of course, you have a safeword if you ever need it. Just in case.

You knew he could keep going far longer than the average man, something about his biology letting him fill you up over and over. You didn’t question it- his business was his own, and you certainly weren’t complaining.

Now, though? You might start to complain.

✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:*

To back up a little: maybe this was your fault. Okay, it was definitely your fault, but really, could anyone blame you?

It had all started a few days ago, the last time you’d been having sex. His head was buried between your legs, his beard scratching your thighs as his tongue lapped at your clit in a way that had you seeing stars. You were whining his name, about to reach your peak, when suddenly he pulled away, shoving your bedsheets over you and kicking your clothes away as he took a step back.

You’re not sure how he knew- he must have super-hearing or something- but thank god for it, because if he’d noticed only a few seconds later, you two would’ve been interrupted by your father’s knock on the door.

It was a good thing, of course, that he stopped that night, his sharp senses and quick thinking meaning that you could just tell your father that you were changing and Logan was in the bathroom, and even if he had tried to come in, Logan had hidden the evidence well.

Even if it meant you’d spent the rest of that night pent up beyond relief, you were grateful.

Except for the fact that, and this is where the problem starts to come in, Logan had been very clear about one rule when you started sleeping with him: no touching yourself, not without his permission.

And not only does he reject your advances in the following days, claiming it’s too risky now that you almost got the two of you caught (so what if you’d insisted on sneaking away to your room with hardly any time to spare? It’s not like he didn’t agree to join you), he also tells you you’re not allowed to touch yourself, despite the way you beg and plead and give him those puppy dog eyes that you were formerly convinced worked like a magic trick every time.

So… you took matters into your own hands.

I mean, he said you couldn’t touch yourself, right? He never specified that you couldn’t have someone else do it for you.

The way you saw it, flirting with that politician’s son at a party was a win-win. Either you got some probably mediocre sex, but an orgasm was an orgasm (and the possibility of future blackmail was an added bonus), or you pissed Logan off enough that he’d come fuck you, or at least let you do it yourself.

You had been dead wrong.

Well, not entirely. Logan is fucking you. Just not quite the way you hoped.

You’re face down ass up on the bed, your face shoved into the pillows by a firm grip while his other hand digs into your hips hard enough to leave bruises. Your body aches, already littered with bite marks and handprints, and your cunt is sore. He’s given you nothing, the closest thing to foreplay you got being the hickeys claiming you and the spanking you’d been given before he’d all but thrown you onto the sheets and torn off his clothes.

Maybe that was the point when you should have caught on to what was about to happen, but you were a little too desperate to care. Now you suffer the consequences.

He pounds into you relentlessly, never giving you a break, never giving you a chance to breathe. You’ve lost count of how many orgasms he’s pulled from you with his dick alone- four, maybe? And while he’s already cum once, he seems nowhere near done.

You fight to get out his name through the broken moans leaving your lips, eventually managing a strained, “Logan.”

Instead of responding with some sort of mocking tone or insult, he ignores you. Jesus, he’s mad.

“Logan,” you try again, whining his name as he hits that sweet spot deep inside of you.

“What?” He snaps, the way he smushes your head further into the pillow indicating that he doesn’t really want the answer.

When he keeps hitting that spot, your attempts at getting him to stop turn to muffled sobs as you cum once again, clenching around him.

“Yeah, that’s what I fuckin’ thought.” He grumbles, groaning softly at the way your pussy tightens around his length. He grips you a little harder, his thrusts becoming erratic as he spills into you for the second time. Within moments, he’s hard again- really, how does he do that?- and you’re back to being used like a stress toy.

It's mind-numbing, a mix of pleasure and pain that has you reeling from every thrust. He keeps angling himself to hit you in the spot he knows makes you cum every single time without fail, and you curse yourself for letting him get to know your body so well as he pulls another orgasm out of you, his name falling from your lips.

When he’s cum a third time and continues to ignore your pleas, you try to squirm away from him. But your body is exhausted, and even at your full strength you’d be no match for him.

"Uh-uh." He grabs you by the hair and pulls your head back, his other hand keeping a firm grip on your hips so he can keep plowing into you. "You wanted this, you fuckin' brat. You're not goin' anywhere."

"Logan." You plead, tears starting to stream down your face. It's too much, he's everywhere, and you feel like his cock might actually fucking kills you. What a way to die.

"Nah, don't give me that shit." He yanks on your hair, and you cry out in pain. "You started this, sweetheart. You're the one who couldn't go a few goddamn days without my fuckin' attention. Be grateful you got it."

"But-"

The hand that's gripping your hips comes down on your ass, hard, the already sensitive skin stinging even more from the blow. "No buts. You get what you get, you hear me?"

When you don't answer, he spanks you again. More tears well up in your eyes, your protests reduced to incoherent babbling as his cock continues to assault you mercilessly.

"I could've tied you down, made you watch me touch myself. Or edged you until you were beggin' me for forgiveness. Maybe made you hump my boot like the slut you are." He growls, delivering another harsh smack to your ass. "I gave you what you fuckin' wanted. Deal with it."

As shameful as it is to admit, the idea of what else he could have done to you and the angry tone he speaks in is the thing that sends you tumbling over the edge once again.

He barks out a laugh, smacking your ass a few more times just to hear the way you cry for him.

"Please- Logan, I'm sorry-"

He releases your hair, and for one stupid, fleeting second you think he might be finished with you.

Instead he wraps his arm around you, pulling you into a headlock, holding you up effortlessly, his bicep flexing against your throat as he thrusts into you with a renewed vigor.

"Shut up." He snarls in your ear, letting the hand that was grabbing your hips snake down to your clit.

If you'd been overwhelmed with the pleasure before, you were fucking dying now. Drowning in it, suddenly thrown over the edge again by those perfect little circles. His grip is tight, the lack of oxygen making your head fuzzy, and you barely register the way you're drooling onto his muscles.

"That's better." He adjusts his grip to give you a little more room to breathe, letting your cries of pleasure ring throughout the room as they begin to turn to pleas for mercy once more.

"Lo-"

He doesn't let you get a word out, spanking you as he buries himself deep inside, his seed spilling into you, filling you up even more thoroughly. His bicep flexes against you, once again adjusting to choke you just a little less.

"Better get comfy, sweetheart." You can hear the sharp grin in his voice as he begins to move again, fingers returning to the sweet torture he's inflicting upon your clit. "We're gonna be here all night."

tags: @flowersforbucky @thinkinonsense @gewrgia-black @wlwloverwrites @buckybarneswife125 @sweetverine @dilfverines @wchswift @namikyento @lokirogersgirl @nymphoniah @logansdoe @robo-writing @atleastpleasetelephone @r0ttedcherubim @logaenhowlett @th3mrskory @pidgeypidge-pidge @lostinlovingrevery @rosenclaws @cenviswasteland @lubdubology @trr3rr @sacredsorceress @howlettsangel @dixie-isnt-cool @blythesarchives @loganismybodyguard

(this is the taglist for my logan howlett one-shots. if anyone would like to be added to or removed from this taglist, or would specifically prefer to only be tagged for f!, m!, or gn! reader, please let me know!)

[kittyfrisk9]

IdeaDpxDc—There are better ways to meet someone.

Note: Sorry, I don't know English, so please use a translator. I apologize if you don't get the idea.

Dead On Main. Soul mates.

---

"Exactly... what does this ring do?" The shining ring was still attached to his finger. This wouldn't worry him if it weren't for the fact that, with each passing minute, the ring emitted more light, and that can't be good.

The cult leader refused to speak. He wouldn't even look at him, seeming particularly attentive to the material the floor was made of. Very funny that now he was scared of him when, an hour ago, he was giving a very cliché speech about how humanity was doomed because it would summon the evil of evils.

It wasn't very smart of him to perform his summoning precisely in Gotham City, home of the Dark Knight.

Red Hood was getting impatient. He placed the hand without the ring on his weapon; if words didn't work, a real threat to his life would. And this didn't really break Bruce's 'no killing' rule because the gun was only loaded with rubber bullets. However, just as he was about to advance and shoot the guy, he saw Batman grab the leader's tunic collar and lift him up.

The man, of course, screamed in fear. "Speak, what does that ring do?" No jokes. Batman's voice was deeper than usual, showing that he was upset, no, rather angry.

Or worried, but Jason could never consider that possibility. For the moment, he was only surprised, although it didn't show through his helmet.

"I-I don't know," the leader replied. Poor guy, he seemed about to cry. Batman, not content, tightened his grip even more; he wasn't willing to tolerate a lie this time.

Red Robin raised an eyebrow. "You managed to gather a bunch of magical artifacts for your summoning and you don't know what they do?"

The man looked away. "No..." The rest of the cult members also looked away. Very brave and stupid of them to all agree to lie to the bats. Jason himself wanted to mock them, but the ring kept shining. He couldn't mock when the ring kept shining and he didn't know what it meant.

From the communications, Robin could be heard. "Tt, this wouldn't be happening if Hood hadn't put on the ring." Jason suppressed a growl.

"Kid, I didn't put on the ring. This thing stuck to me the moment I touched it." It was true. In the middle of the operation to stop the ritual, Jason had pulled the ring, which at that moment was a kind of necklace by the chain that ran through it, from a member who was wearing it. The ring in his hand began to glow and suddenly teleported to his ring finger, then stopped shining. It was when everything calmed down that the ring began to release a different, but constant light.

Approximately ten minutes have passed since then, he thought as he looked at the ring, ignoring all the magical stuff; it was actually a very simple ring. Suddenly, the ring began to blink.

Oh, no. That couldn't be good.

Batman, fed up with the leader's silence and his followers, threw the man meters ahead. "Oracle, call Zatanna now, we need more information about the ring," he ordered as he approached the man who was in pain from the fall. The guy, terrified by the violent aura of the Dark Knight, tried to retreat.

Finally, Nightwing stepped between the man and the brutal beating he would receive if he didn't speak.

"It's okay, B, calm down." With his hand on his father's shoulder, Dick tried to ease the atmosphere. "I understand your concern. We are all worried about what the ring might do to Hood. But we can't let fear and anger control us. Hood is important to all of us. He is our brother, your son. We can't lose our cool now. Let's call Wonder Woman. If no one wants to talk, she can help us with the lasso of truth."

Total silence. Jason didn't know what to say; he didn't think his family would react like this over a blinking ring. That is... he doesn't know. Suddenly, the ring's light began to blink faster.

Batman, after Nightwing's words and seeing the change in the ring, understood that he couldn't waste time with someone who wouldn't talk. "You're right, thank you Nightwing." Looking at the others, he said: "We need to act quickly, we don't know the effects the ring might have on Hood. We need to take him to the cave for a thorough analysis, no discussions." The last part he said looking at Jason. "Until then, don't try to take it off or use it."

Jason scoffed, as if he would.

"Oracle, you heard, call Diana. Red Robin and I will take care of the rest of the cult. Nightwing, take Red Hood to the cave." Batman began giving orders as he reached the leader and began dragging him towards the rest of his cult. The leader, in a failed attempt, tried to resist. "Agent A, please prepare a stretcher. Understood?"

Everyone nodded.

On the other hand, the touching speech and the strange family moment of the bats seemed to soften the heart of a girl from the cult, who in a whisper said: "The ring, nothing will happen to him." Although she spoke quietly, everyone present heard her.

The leader, panicking that the information would be revealed, exclaimed: "Catrina, shut up!" However, he was struck by Batman, who was already fed up with the guy.

"What do you have to say about the ring?" he asked.

The woman hesitated to speak. "We thought of using the ring to subdue the king of the dead and make him listen to our orders..." She paused, not knowing how to continue. "There is a real legend about the ring. A long time ago, a witch wanted to know who her soulmate was, so she created the ring. This allows one to be guided to their soulmate through the red thread. I think everyone already knows what the red thread is." Nervous, she looked around. Only Nightwing nodded, and that was enough for her to continue telling. "Well, the witch's red thread connected with a prince. Unfortunately for everyone, the prince was not happy that his soulmate was a witch. So he had her killed." The girl looked at her hands; that part of the story was sad. "The witch was angry, but still wanted her soulmate to accept her, so she rewrote the ring's original purpose. It was no longer something that united you with your soulmate, but now it was something that allowed you to subdue your soulmate... uh, this." She pointed to a book that was lying in a corner. "With another spell, in fact, it can be used to subdue anyone, even a king of the dead."

With the whole story already told, Red Robin asked: "So, what is the ring doing to Red Hood?"

"It's tracking his soulmate. I... didn't get to put the other spell on it. I could only activate the ring's primary function. Your brother will be fine."

That definitely changes things. Jason swore he could hear his heart beating. A soulmate, wow. He admits he's read many romance novels and maybe once dreamed of it, but for it to actually happen, wow.

Suddenly, the ring stopped blinking. Five seconds later, everyone saw a red thread shoot out from the ring's gem. It quickly moved in one direction, went through the wall, and kept going. The process was like a fishing rod when it catches a fish.

"Does this mean it already found its soulmate?" Red Robin asked. Astonished by the red thread, he tried to touch it but his hand went through it; apparently, the thread was intangible to anyone else.

"Yes," the cultist also seemed astonished.

Jason felt a look on him, turned, it was his brother. Oh no, not that look, he knew that smile; Dick would tease him so much in the coming days. For his part, Batman sighed in relief. Well, it wasn't such an extreme danger, but it was still dangerous. "Agent A, cancel the stretcher." He never imagined this would mean a soulmate case. "Oracle, don't cancel the call to Zatanna or Wonder Woman, we need to verify the information. We'll stay here until the police arrive."

How nice it would be if everything ended like that, right? With Dick joking with Jason, Tim analyzing the thread, Barbara laughing at the turn of events, Bruce relieved and Damian surprised. However, one must remember the story.

The witch changed the ring's original purpose. Unexpectedly, the thread began to retract, as if it had caught something. It did so so quickly that Jason grabbed his hand in pain. It was then that everyone had a bad feeling. The wall the thread had previously passed through suddenly exploded, the noise and dust alerting everyone, especially when once the chaos disappeared, something horrific could be seen.

An arm. A fucking arm. Apparently freshly torn from its owner. Oh, no. What did it do to his soulmate?

...

Somewhere else in the world, somewhere in the United States, Danny gasped in pain. What the hell? What was that? Ancients! Where is his arm?

---

Note: Sorry, I don't know English, so please use a translator. I apologize if you don't get the idea.

Edited on 06/21/2024 - Note two: Thanks to redflagshipwriter, who continued this idea below. And to Sakuravalelp who made me laugh with the complement.

[deikshen]

The Omega Shen Yuan who reached his 35s single and without future views of a couple, accepting that promise he made with his (not) best friend Shang Qinghua that if they reach 35 years old single, and are still friends, they will have a baby together.

Shang Qinghua is an Alpha, and okay, he's not too good a match for Shen Yuan, but from the years he's known him, he thinks he can be a good father. And although they could spend money on assisted fertilization, it's a tedious process so, err, they do it traditionally.

They wait for Shen Yuan to come into heat, Shen Yuan goes off his birth control weeks in advance, things happen. The less said about it the better. It's for the greater good or something. Shen Yuan only hopes that one heat will be enough, because genuinely repeating it is not in his most enthusiastic plans (although he appreciates the company and comfort of his best friend).

And about two weeks later, Shen Yuan meets Luo Binghe.

Luo Binghe is absolutely great, of course. He works in a small restaurant and his dishes are delicious. Shen Yuan and he become fast friends; Shen Yuan has a delicate palate, Luo Binghe's cooking is exquisite, and his company is pleasant. He's funny in a dark sort of way, strong, beautiful as a young model, with a strange amount of hobbies like martial arts, collecting jewelry that he doesn't wear... Luo Binghe is wealthy but doesn't spend on nonsense, which makes Shen Yuan theorizes that he was not always someone well-positioned in society. He finds himself going to his restaurant almost every day even though he could order delivery just for Luo Binghe's company.

And Luo Binghe starts flirting with him.

It's... At first, it's strange. Shen Yuan doesn't want to believe it. Shang Qinghua URGES him to open his eyes because FUCK THAT PRETTY BOY IS FLIRTING WITH YOU. Shen Yuan tries to flirt awkwardly, according to himself it doesn't go well, but Luo Binghe seems to fall quickly. They go on a date that ends with a sweet first kiss.

So, they're on their third date going to a movie theater, when Shen Yuan smells popcorn and nausea hits him so suddenly that he barely makes it to the bathroom.

As he finishes disposing of his lunch in the wc, with teary eyes and Luo Binghe rubbing his back, he suddenly thinks: it's been almost two months already. Oh fuck.

The date is cancelled, Luo Binghe accompanies him to his apartment and they say goodbye. Luo Binghe promises to come back as soon as Shen Yuan calls him, giving him privacy with a worried expression. Shen Yuan just stammers having eaten something bad and lets Luo Binghe leave with his heart in his mouth.

He then calls Shang Qinghua at least thirty times and places orders at a pharmacy for five different pregnancy tests. The tests arrive before Shang Qinghua. When Shang Qinghua arrives, upset and worried but with a fresh scent of an omega that Shen Yuan does not know, all five tests come positive.

... They have no idea what they're going to do with it.

Two months ago, they literally... weren't dating. They had nothing but an agreement to start a family if the opportunity came. So as not to lose the experience for the sake of time. Because they both wanted. Now, Shen Yuan thinks he might really be falling in love with Luo Binghe... And Shang Qinghua literally just dumped an omega in his bed!! What the hell are they going to do now!?

Shen Yuan wants that baby. No matter what, he wants this family. So, they decide: they will go on a double date with their current partners, and explain the situation to them. They can agree whether to leave or stay.

... Shen Yuan doesn't expect Luo Binghe and Mobei Jun to meet each other. He also doesn't expect the omega Mobei Jun to be the tallest man he's ever seen. He doesn't expect them both to look a little upset, but to decide to support their partners in that. The road to fatherhood. God, they must be so screwed.

They make a good deal: for the baby's first years they will practically share a house, Shen Yuan can afford to rent or buy something bigger. So, the baby will grow up with his parents together to help and educate them. From the third, fourth year, they will be able to move and will share equal custody, and both of them will be able to see the baby at any time, it's not like they were divorced with a legal agreement or something. Not a bad plan.

Shen Yuan wants to consider himself mature about this. He's going to be a father, he's having a baby, he has to take control of the matter.

Now, he has no idea how he is going to position Luo Binghe (and Mobei Jun) in his life, because it seems that Luo Binghe is planning to stay so much that he is already planning the decoration of the baby's room... with Mobei Jun who insists that the color blue is unisex if you don't give a fuck.

Ah. Well, he has a pack, of sorts. His baby, him, his boyfriend, his baby's father, his baby's father's boyfriend. All families come in different shapes and sizes, don't they?

[hyperlexichypatia]

One time, when I was younger, I had an unpleasant encounter with an (apparently neurotypical) older man who wouldn't take "no" for an answer.

Now, I was fine. But I was scared.

Not so much because I was afraid the man would come after me -- although given the statistics around violence against women who refuse men's advances, that would be an entirely reasonable fear -- but because I was afraid that someone would find out what had happened.

Because, you see, if someone found out that I had been assaulted, I would be a Vulnerable Young Girl.

And the thing about being a Vulnerable Young Girl is that it doesn't matter if you said "yes" or "no."

It's not necessarily that people would have sided with my assailant -- this is a different flavor of rape culture. Most people would have agreed that what my assailant did was wrong. But they would have considered it equally wrong -- maybe more wrong -- if he were my chosen, consensual boyfriend I actively wanted to be with.

Because his crime was not disregarding my "no" and violating my bodily autonomy. His crime was Taking Advantage of a Vulnerable Young Girl. Preying on a Vulnerable Young Girl. Corrupting a Vulnerable Young Girl.

If you're a Vulnerable Young Girl, you don't have the right to say "yes," which means you don't really meaningfully have the right to say "no" either. You need to be Protected, and, of course, you don't have the right to say "no" to that, either.

And, look, once again, I was fine. I'm making the specific assault sound worse than it was. That's not the point. I wouldn't mention it at all, except that The Discourse is such that if you don't disclose a relevant personal experience, you're assumed to Not Care About Real People. But I am not alone in this.

I've heard multiple instances of the specific scenario "I was assaulted in college but I didn't report it because my parents would have made me leave school." Or "I was date raped and didn't report it because then my family would have never let me go out again." Or "I'm a psychiatric survivor and if I reported being assaulted I'd be put back into treatment."

These are real things I've heard or read assault victims say.

Framing assault victims as Vulnerable Young Girls actively discourages victims from reporting assaults.

Yet the people who use this framing seem to think it's somehow necessary to get assaults taken seriously, even though it does the opposite.

Feminists largely understand this when it's in the context of purity culture. When people say, "In purity culture, it doesn't matter if you say 'yes' or 'no,' sexual assault and consensual sex are considered equally bad, and that underlying premise minimizes the actual wrongdoing of sexual assault, discourages assault victims from reporting their assaults, and allows assailants to get away with their crimes," this is understood as a problem.

But the Vulnerable Young Girls framing comes from self-identified feminists. Who think they're helping. In the name of feminism and justice. They don't understand why being framed as a Vulnerable Young Girl would make a woman reluctant to come forward, because the coercive control she would be subjected to "isn't punishment". They're seemingly baffled by why young and/or disabled women don't want to be framed as Vulnerable Young Girls, even if they've been assaulted. Especially if they've been assaulted. Why are you so offended when we say that your wishes for your own body don't matter?

And... why? Why is this framing necessary? What is the purpose? What is the benefit?

If you hear about someone committing sexual assault against a young and/or disabled woman -- without her consent, against her will, disregarding her "no" -- what, exactly, are you trying to accomplish by jumping in and saying "Even if she said yes, that's still predatory! He's still Taking Advantage of a Vulnerable Young Girl!"?

What is the purpose of saying that?

If a young and/or disabled woman chooses a sexual and/or romantic relationship that you think is "bad for her," and you proclaim "Just because she agreed to it doesn't make it okay! It's still wrong!" -- well, I vehemently disagree with you, but at least you're responding to the actual situation that exists.

But if you hear about an assault, against the victim's will, without her consent, and feel the need to denounce the counterfactual scenario in which it was a consensual encounter... what are you even trying to accomplish? Is the sole purpose just to convey to the victims (and any other assault survivors and/or young and/or disabled women in the vicinity) "I need to make it unambiguously clear that my objection to this assault has nothing to do with the violation of your bodily autonomy. I actively do not care about that."?

[penkura]

I'm late! But in honour of spooky season what would some of the One Piece guys reactions be to y/n dressing up as them for Halloween? 🎃

Aww this is such a cute idea! I didn't have anything planned for today since I had to work, but I got some ideas for a few OP guys! 👀

Sanji would be so flattered! He might be confused when you ask him, weeks in advance, to borrow a shirt and cigarette, worried he's rubbing off on you but he still agrees. You don't tell him anything when he tries to ask, so he eventually forgets about it for the time being. Then you run into the kitchen on Halloween with such a bright grin he just can't believe it. Your hair over one eye, cigarette in your mouth, and his blue dress shirt with your own dress pants, Sanji just thinks you look so wonderful! He's impressed you kept it a secret and pulled it off so well, can't help himself and he hugs you so tight, kissing your face and telling you how great you look!

Law would be so confused, his previous hat is missing without a sign of where it could be, and when he asks you, the only other person who goes into his closet, you claim you know nothing. Of course he doesn't believe you, especially when be notices his yellow hoodie is gone too, it's your favorite to wear so he knows something is up, but no one else seems to know anything. When Halloween comes around and you surprise Law by running into his room, dressed in the hoodie and hat, with permanent marker tattoos on your hands as you yell "Room", Law just stares at you for several moments as you smile at him. After a bit, he finally starts laughing, something you rarely hear, and it makes your smile widen, knowing you've gotten your beloved boyfriend to laugh at you. It wasn't really your intention, but when he presses a kiss to your forehead, telling you that you look great, you don't think there could've been any better reaction.

Zoro would absolutely laugh at you at first. You know better than to sneak any of his items, so you secretly buy anything that matches as you can on whatever islands you stop at, keeping it all hidden away in your dresser. Once the day arrives and you show off your costume to him, Zoro just starts laughing to the point it embarrasses you, you think he's being mean and doesn't get it, you're doing ti be cause you like him and thought it'd be fun to match for the day. You got a white shirt and dark pants, three fake swords and earrings to match, you thought he'd appreciate it and think you looked cute. Before you're able to run off and cry to Nami or Robin about how your plan failed, Zoro pulls you into a hug and makes a comment about how a cute pirate hunter found him, he might be willing to get caught just cause it's you.

Shachi would just absolutely adore seeing you dressed like him! Granted yes, if you're a Heart Pirate too, you already wear the requires boiler suit, but if you're not, the second he sees you wearing it with his old hat on top of your head and matching sunglasses, he's a happy, giggly mess who can't stop showing you off to everyone you come across! Shachi won't able to stop hugging you, giving you little kisses on your cheeks and nose, you just look too cute to him, no matter how simple your costume might be.

Penguin might laugh like Zoro, but not because he thinks it's funny, because he's just as flattered as Sanji! You're just wearing his old hat, but it fits and looks so cute on you that he's showing you off just as much as Shachi would! He might even start calling you his 'mini Penguin' since you two are matching for the day now. He'll most likely let you keep his old hat to wear whenever you want after Halloween, but for the day, he'll keep you close and share whatever candy is around the Polar Tang with you.

[metalomagnetic]

I've been thinking about the dynamic between Severus and Voldemort for a few days now. Severus is definitely a necessary asset to Voldemort, along with the common themes in their past. (a pure-blood witch who goes against her family to be with her muggle husband. daddy issues. Being poor and to be left aside. a half-blood student in Slytherin etc.) He teaches only him to fly, and agrees to spare Lily for him. Considering that the Death Eaters, other than Lucius, are not very tolerant of Severus, Severus' rise to the inner circle is quite a story. In DH, we see someone who can discuss strategy with Voldemort, make suggestions. Almost an advisor. A fondness for the dark arts. Sending Severus as a spy for a wizard like Dumbledore shows that he trusts his skills, even if not his. It's too risky to do just a "test run". How do you read their relationship? What do you think about shipping these two characters?

There are connections between Voldemort-Snape-Harry (half-bloods raised by muggles who mistreated them, finding a home at Hogwarts). I am sure you found the theory where Dumbledore is the Master of Death, and Voldemort, Snape, and Harry are the three brothers from the Deathly Hollows (wand brother being Voldemort, cruel and obsessed with power; stone brother being Snape, unable to let go of his dead loved one (Lily) and ultimately dying for her; Harry being the cloak brother, wisely just wanting peace and meeting death like an old friend when his time comes).

However, having some things in common doesn't make people alike. Voldemort was sent to Slytherin as a muggleborn, not half-blood, since he had no idea he was a half-blood. Voldemort had no parents (unlike Snape. we know Snape's dad was an abusive dick, but one can imagine at least his mother gave him some level of affection, love, and at least taught him about magic, Hogwarts, in advance). Voldemort got to Hogwarts with zero prior knowledge of anything, and all he learned of magic, he stumbled about it on his own. Voldemort has no ties to the wizarding word, no family to speak of.

Snape was not in the inner circle in the first war. He was far too young for that; I think Snape entered Voldemort's radar when Snape brought him the prophecy- that was the thing that elevated him in his eyes, and possible made Voldemort grant him a 'boon' -sparing Lily. Only he did not spare Lily. If he wanted to spare her, if he gave a single fuck, he would have just stunned her instead of asking her to step aside, and when she refused, he was like ok, death it is, as if he couldn't have easily kept his promise to Snape.

Voldemort did not send Snape to spy for him. When he died, Dumbledore was the one to take Snape to Hogwarts, under his wing.

When Voldemort returned in first year, he found Snape working for Dumbledore at Hogwarts and obviously did not trust him, since he never asked for Snape's help with the stone. Same thing happened in book 4, where neither Voldemort nor Barty Jr trusted Snape with their plan to lure Harry away from Hogwarts.

Once Voldemort gained a body and questioned Snape on his loyalties, and Snape lied enough to convince him, then Voldemort made use of an already built in spy, so to speak.

Voldemort did not trust Snape in book 5 to tell him about his plan in luring Harry into the Ministry, either- he only trusted Bella, Lucius and the Lestrange brothers with that mission.

Voldemort did not trust Snape enough to tell him he is sending Death Eaters to Hogwarts in book 6. He preferred using Draco for that, and when Draco managed to find a way to sneak the Death Eaters in, Voldemort sent his squad without even alerting Snape on the matter.

Voldemort finally started trusting Snape only once Snape 'proved' himself by killing Dumbledore. That is the moment when Snape is welcomed into the inner circle, not before. And, of course, it makes sense: Dumbledore is not only Voldemort's greatest enemy, but he was also a wizard of great caliber- the fact that Snape managed to kill him raised Snape very high in Voldemort's eyes, because even he couldn't kill Albus. (ofc, V doesn't know Albus wanted Snape to kill him. In fact, that's why Albus wanted Snape to kill him, so Snape could finally gain Voldemort's trust).

So after that, Voldemort puts trust in Snape, but never as much as he once had for Lucius and Bella, who were handed Horcruxes to keep and protect.

Furthermore, it's clear Severus does not want the Carrows at Hogwarts, that he did not pick them to be there, yet they were forced on Snape, anyway, which does imply Voldemort still wanted to have other Death Eater eyes at Hogwarts, not just Snape alone.

We don't know if Voldemort only ever taught Snape how to fly, either.

Voldemort, contrary to fandom opinions, sometimes listens to advice from his Death Eaters, not just Snape'. Rookwood advised him about the prophecy and how to handle it, and Bella advised him to use Sirius and Kreacher to lure Harry to the Ministry.

Snape is like everyone else surrounding Voldemort- pawns in his game. He kills his followers/sends them to their deaths without a second worth of hesitation. Even when he believes Snape is so useful, and he thinks Snape has done SO much for him, he still kills Snape (in his eyes his Hyper Loyal Death Eater) to gain ownership of the wand. Not only that, but he kills him cruelly, with the snake, doesn't even bother to award him a clean death by AK.

The only Death Eater Voldemort seems to treasure (to the extent he is capable) is Bellatrix, going by the fact that he saves her from the Ministry Battle, allows himself be seen by Aurors just to grab her on his way out, and the fact that he seems Big Mad when she dies.

As from Snape's POV, I think, initially, as a young boy, he worshiped V. He wanted to join so badly, all his mates wanted to join, and he was so eager to bring Voldemort the prophecy when he heard it. I am sure he adored Voldemort (like most Death Eaters probably did). Of course, once Voldemort killed Lily as a direct result of Snape's actions, it was game over. All that adoration turned to hate, and Snape can hold a grudge like no other. Not only that, but after V died, Snape matured, grew up, and found a way better mentor in Dumbledore.

All that above is canon analysis. Now, we move on to better, more enjoyable and fun things:

For fandom purpose, and for our fics, I think, with the usual tweaking necessary for Voldemort when needing to pair him off with anyone ( because, let's be honest, a totally in character Voldemort from the books cannot be shipped with anyone outside of Bellatrix, and even that is a bit of a stretch), Snape/V make for a great pair! You can give Voldemort a tiny bit of humanity that he lacks in the books, and if he has that humanity, then Snape would be a prime candidate to receive attention, or even affection, from V.

You can go for a somewhat 'healthy' relationship, either an AU, or a canon divergence after the first war, where V and Severus can have something close to nice. Keeping Voldemort's canon personality (but giving him some humanity that he severely lacks as a two dimensional villain), it actually goes well with Severus'. They're both intellectuals, they both like inventing magic/spells/potions, they're both sarcastic and grumpy and they both hate kids 😂.

You can also go for a less than healthy dynamic, taking into account the huge power imbalance any possible partner (outside of Dumbledore) would have with Voldemort. We can have a manipulative V using Snape, not just in the canonical way he used his Death Eaters, but in this case sexually. We can make Snape's canonical desire to join V as a young man, and add some romantic/sexual desire aspect to it.

Or, of course, Voldemort/Snape can easily veer into 'dead dove' territory, which can also be very interesting to explore, depending on one's taste.

I like any ship as long as there's some effort put into characterisation. Certainly, V/Severus have a lot of potential! For me, personally, it would depend how Snape is written- I am VERY particular about how Snape is depicted in fics.

Sirius, Albus and Snape are all favourites of mine from the books. They are complex characters, and I need them to remain complex in order to enjoy them in a romance (or even gen fic).

As I always say, any ships can work, and I am not opposed to any pairing on principle. I've read, wrote and enjoyed far more outlandish ships than Voldemort/Snape, really.

[beautifuldisaster88]

Pairing: Boyfriend!Rafe Kook!Girlfriend

Summary: Rafe has been in a relationship with his best friend, Topper's, younger sister for four years. When Rafe reluctantly decides to agree to letting his girlfriend go to a party with Topper, without Rafe, he makes Topper swear to not let her out of her sight. When Topper doesn't follow through with the promise, Rafe receives a call that he never wanted to receive.

Warnings: mentions of drugs and alcohol, mentions of almost rape, slight mention of violence. I think that's about it. Reader is female, but no mention of Y/N or readers name just the pet names Rafe calls her.

A/N: This is not proofread, so I apologize in advance for any mistakes. I wrote this in like 15 minutes, after it randomly came to me... Like half my writing 😂 there's no smut in this. FYI, for this little piece, Rafe is 21 and reader is 18.

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Rafe angrily slammed open the door and came barging in, veins popping out and huffing. Topper opened his mouth to say something but was quickly cut off by Rafe putting his hand up.

"Don't." Rafe seethed, shaking his finger in Topper's face. His jaw clenched and his usual piercing blue eyes were full of rage. "Just tell me where the fuck my girlfriend is!"

"In her bedroom with Sarah. Look man, I fucked up and I'm sorry. I let her out of my sight for like 20 maybe 30 minutes." Topper began, his words only adding fire to Rafe's already burning rage. His mind kept playing back to the phone conversation he'd had earlier with his girlfriend. A call that will forever haunt his mind.

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~Hours Earlier~

Rafe was relaxing on the couch, watching some movie that his girlfriend had been going on about for weeks. Of course, Rafe being Rafe, he just rolled his eyes saying how you couldn't pay him to watch another fucking chick flick. Yet, here he was, home alone, snuggling with his girlfriend's favorite soft and fuzzy black blanket that had little cherries printed on it, loving how it smelled just like his girlfriend.

He'd never admit it, but he was really into the movie, finding himself getting invested in the relationships and friendships and all the drama. The sound of his phone vibrating beside him made Rafe side eye the phone, his brows furrowed together when he saw his girlfriend's face on the screen and her nickname 'Bunny❤️‍🔥'. It's not that he wasn't happy to see her calling because he was.

The problem was, his girlfriend was supposed to be out having fun with her older brother, Topper, who also happened to be Rafe's best friend. Rafe had business to take care of and wouldn't have been able to make it to the party until late, which is why Topper swore he'd keep an eye on her. Rafe told his girlfriend to call him if there was any trouble, and made Topper to promise to bring her back to Tannyhill after the party. Seeing her name on his phone instantly had Rafe regretting to ever agree to let his girlfriend go to a party without him.

"Is everything okay, bunny?" Rafe asked, trying to hide the concern in his voice. His knuckles were already turning white from gripping the side of the couch.

"R-Rafey.." His girlfriend slurred her words on the other end of the phone, sounding completely out of it. "I don't feel good... Make it stop spinning.. c-can't find you.. Rafey..."

"Baby? What did you take and where the hell is Topper!?" Rafe flew up off the couch, pacing back and forth as he ran his hand over his buzz cut out of habit. He was already seeing red, his girl was in trouble and he wasn't there to protect her. Damnit, why the fuck did he agree to letting her go without him!? This is why he doesn't let her go to parties without him. People are fucking irresponsible enough and when you add drugs and alcohol, they become fucking idiots.

"Topper... Dunno... h-he went upstairs with Sarah.. so sleepy, Rafey... J-just gonna take a nap." His girlfriend's words were even more slurred, causing Rafe to panic.

He was out the door in a flash, running to his truck. After jerking the door open and hopping inside, he fumbled trying to get the key in the ignition. "Fuck!" He yelled, hitting the steering wheel before trying again. The engine roared to life and Rafe took off like a bat out of hell, connecting his phone to the Bluetooth.

"Listen to me, baby. I need you to stay awake, yeah. I'm coming for you, just focus on my voice, okay, bunny? I ne-"

Rafe was cut off by the sound of a male's voice and he knew damn well it wasn't Topper's.

"Well, well, well. What do we have here? Damn, you are really fucked up ain't ya, darlin'. Don't worry I'mma take real good care of you, baby." The male said, making Rafe's blood run cold and then begin to boil. He yelled his girlfriend's name over and over, but got no response. All he heard were her weak calls and begging the guy to get his hands off of her, before the call ended.

"Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!" Rafe screamed, pounding his fists against the steering wheel.

He had to get to his girlfriend immediately. Shit, he forgot where Topper said the party was at. This could not be happening. Not his girlfriend, anyone but his bunny.

Just as Rafe was about to call Topper, his best friends name popped up on the screen in the middle console of Rafe's truck. Rafe immediately answered it, yelling at Topper.

"You fucking swore you wouldn't let her out of your fucking sight, Top! What the fuck is wrong with you!? Where the fuck are you guys!? I just received the worst fucking call of my life! My girlfriend, your fucking sister, Topper is completely out of it and who the fuck knows what someone slipped her! Wanna hear the worst fucking part!? Some asshole thinks he can take advantage of MY girlfriend! I swear I'm going to fucking kill him!"

"Rafe, look I know, I fucked up and I feel awful. Trust me, man. I've got her, she's with me and Sarah and I'm taking her home. I walked in just in time, that asshole didn't touch her. I-I can't believe I let my baby sister almost get..." Topper couldn't even finish his sentence, feeling the bile threaten to come up.

"I'll deal with you tomorrow. Right now, I need to make sure my girl is okay. I'm on my way to your place." Rafe ended the call, driving as fast as he could towards the Thornton residence.

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Rafe took one big step, putting his face in Topper's. "I don't want to hear your fucking excuses! The one fucking time I trust you to keep her safe when I'm not there, and this shit happens! You're lucky I don't fucking kill you, Top. Like I said, I'll deal with you tomorrow. My girl needs me, not you or my fucking sister."

Rafe pushed past Topper, purposely slamming into his shoulder as he ran up the stairs. Opening his girlfriend's bedroom door, he immediately glared at Sarah, clenching his jaw and balling up his fist. "Out." Was all he said, earning a few sorry's from his sister, which made him scoff.

As soon as Sarah left, Rafe locked the bedroom door behind her. His heart wrenched at the sight of his beautiful angel, seeing her smeared mascara from crying. He immediately walked over to the bed and climbed in beside her, wrapping his arms around his girlfriend and pulling her against his chest.

"I'm so sorry that I wasn't there to protect you, bunny. I promise, this shit will never happen again. Tonight was the first and last time you go to a party without me. I've never been as scared as I was tonight. The thought of you being hurt, and another man putting his grimy hands and shit on you... Fuck, I'm never going to forgive myself. I'm sorry, baby. I love you, you know that right?"

She shifted in his arms, turning to face Rafe. Taking one of her small hands, she placed it on the side of his face, her bloodshot eyes staring into Rafe's ocean blue eyes. A soft smile formed on her perfect plump lips. "Hey, look at me." She spoke softly and Rafe looked into her eyes, leaning into her soft and warm touch. "Don't you dare blame yourself. None of this is your fault. Someone must have slipped something into my drink, but Topper found me in time and forced me to throw up. Rafe, I would never blame you. I know that you love me, and I love you. Don't worry, I never want to go anywhere without you again."

Rafe chuckled, feeling a bit more relieved. He placed a kiss on her forehead, then both her cheeks, the tip of her nose, and finally her lips. It was crazy, how his whole world fit perfectly in his arms. Sure, he had everything and lived in a mansion, but if you asked Rafe Cameron where home was to him, he'd answer with the same answer he'd given the last four years... his girlfriend. All the money, the power, everything that Rafe had, none of it meant anything, not if he didn't have her by his side. She was without a doubt, the calm to his storm, a true angel. She was his, and he would always protect her at all costs.

It goes without saying that as soon as Rafe found out who the guy was that tried to take advantage of his girlfriend, went 'missing' two weeks later. Nobody messes with his girl and gets away with it.

[spookysshadow]

Going off of that super successful, breadwinner Izuna and his career academic husband/house husband Tobirama - but set in founders era.

Like: The village gets built without Izuna being killed in battle (hooray!) - don't ask me how - it shall simply be. They agree for the sake of a more permanent peace that they should throw a marriage treaty in there - just in case.

Madara sees no point, but Izuna operates on the "I must have Tobirama within my filed of vision at ALL TIMES to avoid catastrophe" and so he volunteers to wife up Tobirama. They make a contract with the following details:

Tobirama will be allowed to keep up his training, but will be barred from missions until the Uchiha are more comfortable with it;

Consequentially he can also train the younger Uchiha within the presence of a senior member of the Clan (other shinobi or an elder);

He is to prioritize maintaining the household, mainly including but not limited to: caring for Izuna's ward, one Kagami Uchiha (let's just say, since Izuna's the one with the wife/projected to have a wife, he was given guardianship over wee Kagami instead of his brother), dealing with the household finances, and tending the garden/koi pond. They have a maid/chef, etc for other typical household things and would have had a gardener, but Izuna figured Senju = Nature people, sure why not;

He is allowed to do research and even have a lab instead the house/next to the house - but his research should prioritize his husband's clan first, then the village;

He has to bottom, unless his husband states otherwise

Hashirama takes one look at the agreement and is ready to throw hands. How dare they cage his baby brother? How dare they!

Meanwhile Tobirama, who is running on two hours of sleep, his sister-in-law's breakfast blend tea and a prototype ration bar he made that tastes like shit, skims through the contract ONCE and signs it.

Hashirama is freaking out because: OTOUTO, PLEASE YOU MUSTN'T - and Tobirama is like: Bitch stfu this sounds like a vacation. You mean to tell me I get to relax near fishes, get my back blown out, be a sensei and do as much research as I want?? Sign me UP!

Seriously, Tobirama can't remember the last time he has had this much free time. Of course, after some sleep and a proper meal he realizes maaaaaybe he should have read the terms and conditions a little more closely, but overall none of it sounds bad. He's mostly worried about Izuna's attitude, but even that doesn't really put a damper on his day.

Izuna and Madara, of course, are genuinely surprised the Senju agreed to fast to the contract, but hey they won't complain.

Fast forward in a few years and Izuna is the primary breadwinner, working at the Hokage Tower, taking missions, even being a Sensei to the Academy at some point. Meanwhile Tobirama is at home, tending to their koi pond (yes, Izuna they all do have their own names and yes, he will address them as such), training Kagami, working on medical advancements for his new clan's eye issues and some jutsus he never thought he'd ever get the chance to, giving his husband massages when he returns home from working so looong at the office all day, occasionally (all the time, really) enticing him into bed so he can help relax even more.

(It's been years, Izuna's asked him if he wishes to return to shinobi work or work more hands-on in the Hokage Tower instead of looking over Izuna's documents and nitpicking. But he always knows the answer is no - if anything he only asks because his brother and his brother-in-law urge him to. After all, he's never seen Tobirama this relaxed until after they got married -- he remembers feeling smug in the beginning, in thinking he'd effectively clipped his enemies wings by chaining him to the Uchiha. Instead Tobirama floated into his house with a calm and relief that Izuna initially was annoyed about - after all he was trying to piss off the Senju - Hashirama understood the assignment, why was his Senju always doing the opposite?

And then he realized how nice it was to have Tobirama waiting at home for him, with Kagami in tow. How happy it made him when his husband would tell him about what they train the young Uchiha's, later on some other students, in and what they got into. It was especially fun knowing that Tobirama had no issues with the dynamics of their sex life and if Izuna wanted to change it up, he was always willing to try something once - with notes -- and sure working in the Hokage Tower was brutal and they could have most definitely used Tobirama's help (sentiments whined by his brother and brother-in-law) but coming home to a relaxed, content husband who was willing to help him with the Village anyway and then cuddle with him when he got a stress headache? 20x better. )

aaaand that's all I got folks

[dnickels]

I don't think Gibson gets enough credit for how skillfully he extricated himself from the sodomy allegations. Long post to follow ->

The evangelical mindset is "we are constantly under siege from both invisible powers and our fellow man (and even one's own thoughts), every waking moment is nonstop spiritual battle" so Gibson framing himself as too weak to refuse advances (without spiritual backing, naturally) is a brilliant play for Irving's own anxieties while also putting him in the position to be the shepherd rescuing one of his flock. A direct appeal to the Victorian bourgeois savior narrative, expertly played. He's given Irving a script so familiar and one he's so eager to act out he doesn't for a second question its veracity.

And now we depart to the realm of pure speculation (oh boy my favorite) but I always wonder what exactly Gibson told him, and how much it actually corresponds to what we hear Irving scold Hickey for. I wonder if something got lost in translation (Irving heard what he wanted to hear which is not quite the same as what's actually being said). I think Gibson is perfectly capable of shopping Hickey to save his own skin no question, but that scenario doesn't quite jive with how surprised/concerned he is that Hickey and Irving apparently had a chat about the situation. Surely Gibson didn't think he could say "I was coerced" without some kind of follow-up? It could be a feint, he's just acting to try and keep Hickey from holding a grudge (I think Gibson knows with brutal clarity that you do not want to be on Hickey's shitlist) but his reaction reads to me like he's seeing his fib start to spiral out of control. Of course, one of the grand themes in Terror is people not being as smart as they think they are (or, more charitably, that even well-conceived plans often shipwreck on the shoals of human unpredictability) so it could just be an example of a reasonable plan blowing up on contact with an unreasonable person, as individuals are a universe unto themselves and truly unknowable to each other. Or maybe he really didn't think Irving would do anything, because he asked him to keep it quiet? Maybe that's how it usually goes, everyone agrees to keep it quiet-- sobering thought.

Still, it intrigues me to think about Irving as the wildcard in Gibson's plan, not Hickey-- bringing baggage to it that Gibson didn't include in his calculations. I wonder if Gibson heard the lecture, how many of his own words would he recognize? I can see the shape of a communications breakdown, where a tactful "the temptation was overwhelming, I couldn't resist him" becomes "he used overpowering force" or "I didn't come forward because I was afraid" becomes "he threatened me into silence". Not unreasonable assumptions for Irving to make, honestly, I just think its interesting to play with the idea that they are assumptions and not part of Gibson's ass-saving explanation. Just no accounting for what happens in the pressure-cooker of the evangelical brain!

Obviously the darker read here is that Irving can't understand a messy gay situationship despite spending years at sea is because he is homophobic (while desperately refusing/denying/fighting his own desires) or was himself party to coercion, either towards himself or someone else.

I just think its interesting to think of how it might have played out if Gibson and Hickey been surprised by say, Hodgson instead-- who might have given them a stern "I don't want to catch you two not at work again" but otherwise let the matter slide, or Little, who I can see loading them down with donkeywork but refraining from escalating because doing so means talking to Crozier and Oh God, Please No.

I keep coming back to the question of whether or not Gibson was ready/intending to burn Hickey as badly as his lie makes it seem. While I think he's perfectly capable of it, but it seems like such a risky move when his confession (owning what Irving has no real proof of, I'm more familiar with the early 19th century legal situation on land but the standard of proof for sodomy specifically was actually pretty high) could just as easily backfire on him rather than exonerating them both. We only have Gibson's word that he acted for their mutual benefit, and even if he's telling the truth it seems like stepping on a landmine: no one seems to think Hickey would hang on his accusation, so he's going to still be around after a potential flogging and presumably pissed off. Obviously its a bad situation all around but I am so curious about his own risk/reward accounting. For me, I really enjoy imaging him trying to play master manipulator to Jirv who is absolutley not a player and mostly lets Jesus call the shots. Very funny to me to be so ambitious and skillful and willing to play the Great Game but it all comes to nothing due to human folly. Thesis moment.

[onskepa]

Hi, could I get a fic where the Sully kids + Spider learn through Norm what a wedding is so they organize one for Jake and Neytiri? Thanks in advance.

Ask and you shall recieve! This is such a cuuuuuuuuuuute idea~!! Hope you and everyone likes it! Enjoy~!!

P.S: Cover was done by none other than @jakexneytiri check her page out! Thank you darling for giving me permission to use your art!

---------------------

A wedding? A wedding!!!

Tuk sighs dreamily as she twirls and admires a flower kiri picked for her. Admiring the pretty color as how the sunlight reflects it. It somehow reminds her of her parents' love story, how they met and how they mated. In na’vi standards, it was not ideal but to tuk, it was perfect. Forbidden love? How tragic and romantic! 

Of course she has seen a few small handful of na’vi courting, and heard stories of her friends' parents' romantic paths. Yet she cannot help but wonder, do humans court the way na’vi do? Or is it different? Only one way to find out!

“Tuk, for the last time, I may be human, but that doesnt mean I know every human custom” spider patiently explains to a happy little tuk. Her tail sways in hopes she can  gather as much information as possible. Even with spider’s lack of knowledge, she doesn't give up! 

“What about uncle norm? He is from Earth, maybe he knows” tuk suggests. 

Spider nods in wonder, slightly agreeing. But then he turns back to her, “why are you interested in human customs all of a sudden?” he asks. Tuk isn't one to search for anything human related, she is fine with what little she is exposed to.  

With a happy smile, all too pleased to be asked that question. 

“I know all about na’vi courting, but I wanna know about human courting! Mom and dad didn't do either, so I wanna know!” 

Shrugging, spider seems to see her point of view. 

“Alright, lets go ask uncle norm” 

“I'm busy” Norman says without looking at the kids. They give him an unimpressed look. 

“Reading star wars comics for the millionth time doesnt count uncle norm” lo’ak says deadpanned. Norman stayed silent for a few seconds before putting his comic away. 

“What did spider or tuk eat this time?” he asks with a tired sigh. Both spider and tuk gave him a rather offended/surprised expression. 

“WOW, you really take us for a couple of skxawngs?” spider asks, putting his hands on his hips. 

“Sharing jake’s single braincell, yes” 

“Whatever, we didn't eat anything mysterious, yet, but, tuk wanted to ask you something and now we all wanna know” spider defends while slightly pushing tuk forward. 

Having norm’s full attention, tuk finally asks “How do humans court each other?” 

norm ‘s shoulders deflated a bit, “of all people to ask, you had to choose the most single, and lonely human” 

“Wedding? And the females wear white while the males wear black?” tuk asks as she sees some wedding photos lended by scientists who were married. Norm nods, “thats right. Of course not all weddings are like that, it is traditional but many choose other colors for their weddings” he adds. 

Tuk looks at the various photos of brides, many in odd looking clothing. But all were so beautiful. Different long dresses, each unique to their own. Various flowers tuk has never seen before, and the grooms were also handsome. Wearing similar outfits but also in different styles. The more tuk learned about the concept of weddings, the more she began to form an idea. 

“So, man and woman plan a wedding, woman finds a pretty dress to wear, walks down the tiny path to meet her mate, they kiss and marry right?” she reviews, norm nods again. Sensing something is up. 

“Yes….” 

“What are you thinking about tuktuk?” Kiri asks. 

A mischievous little grin forms on tuk’s face. Her eyes sparkling with a devious glow. The expression reminds norm of the Grinch when he has a grand scheme.

Taking the day easy, jake and neytiri hold hands happily as they make their way to the village. They had a rare free day to themselves. No duties to attend to, no training, no meetings, no chasing their kids from death related troubles. None. They were free to do as they like. 

And what they wanted to do for now was stroll in the village, perhaps collect a bit of fruit. Maybe later hunt for a delicious dinner neytiri has in mind. So many possibilities. 

But….

“Woa, is it just me or are the people acting strange?” Jake asks, He and neytiri notice the odd behavior of the people. Many give them happy smiles, way too excited greetings, some even offer special gifts! 

“Is there something we missed?” Jake wonders. Neytiri tries to remember but nothing seems to remind her. 

As they walk further, there was a huddle of na’vi, all their eyes and ears facing the same direction. Jake and neytiri make their way through, and see someone giving them instructions….

“And look for white flowers! Anything will do, oh and those beads will do so nicely! Yes yes, and take the woven clothes over there! That path must be super pretty!” 

It was tuk. 

And she was giving directions to everyone like a tiny, cute boss. 

“Tuk?” Neytiri calls out in confusion. 

Her little one heard her, smiling, tuk makes her way to her parents with a happy squeal.

“Hey babygirl, what's going on?” Jake asks as he picks her up in his arms. Tuk just giggles and snuggles up to him. 

“Planning your wedding! Duh!” she responds as if that was the most obvious thing. 

“Wedding? What?” There were a lot of things going through his mind. 

Neytiri was just as confused. 

“What is a wedding?” she asks. But before tuk can happily answer, the rest of their children returns. With arms full of things. 

“Ok tuk, took us forever but we got what you needed” lo’ak said with a tired sigh. He, neteyam, kiri and spider were holding flowers, beads, baskets full of white colored cloths, and black paint. 

“Kids, what is going on?” Jake asks, more eager to know the answer. Because nothing is making any sense to him. 

“Tuk wants to make a special wedding for you guys” kiri replies as she shows tuk her findings, who nods in approval. 

“What is a wedding??” Neytiri asks a bit loudly. 

Tuk clears her voice, “a wedding is a special mating ceremony for humans. They decorate everything so pretty in white! The female wears a special gown called a wedding dress, and she walks down a flower covered path to meet her mate at the end. Where someone who holds spiritual power blesses them, the mates speak their vows and promises and kiss! Uncle norm showed me!” 

The little smiled so proudly of this knowledge being shared. 

Jake inwardly groans. Damn norm. 

“Tuk, sweetie, is that why are you doing this?” he asks another question. Tuk just rapidly nods. 

“A wedding….” Neytiri repeats, still trying to wrap her head around the idea. 

The sully family returned to their home in need of a family meeting. 

“Why…?” she asks. 

Tuk plays with her fingers, feeling more nervous by the second. 

“Well…..you and daddy tell your love story all the time. How you guys met and stuff. But you never really did any courting like everyone else. Grandma says that courting is very important, to see if the relationship is possible. I thought a wedding would be nice for you two….cause you never courted…” she explained her reason. 

Neteyam was sitting behind her, rubbing her back to sooth her. 

There were many things to go over of what she said. Jake brings tuk over to his lap, releasing a deep sigh. 

“Am I in trouble” Tuk asks worriedly. Both of her parents shake their heads. 

“No baby girl, but you can't do things like this without telling us. Or even asking, how are you sure we wanted this?” Jake pointed out as gently as he could. 

Neytiri turns her head towards her oldest four, “and all of you for not stopping her”. 

“We also thought it was a good idea…” neteyam answers while scratching the back of his head. 

“When uncle norm taught us how humans courted, tuk wasn't the only one to like the idea. And it is true what she says mom. You two never really had the chance to do it right. Why not now?” Kiri tries with calmness in her voice. Knowing her mother is very short tempered when it comes to anything human related. 

Neytiri and jake look at each other, a special communication between them. 

“You did take me straight to the tree after my trials were finished….” jake reasoned. Neytiri rolls her eyes but fondly remembers that night. Yes, she did, she was not going to let him slip away now could she? 

And there really was no room for courting since the war started literally the next day.

Going over her options, Neytiri turns to tuk and jake. 

“How does human courting work…?” 

Whatever pace the people were working at, doubled. By either prayers, or some miracle of Eywa, neytiri accepted to wed in the human custom. Tuk wasted no time and needed back up from the help of uncle norm. Who became her second in command in all of the organization. 

Her siblings become her little servants, repeating her orders to the people. 

And someone had a big role to play. 

“Come ma’ite, we must get you fitted” mo’at say with a bright smile on her face. Gently she tugs neytiri to her hut, kiri and other fellow na’vi woman takes her away. 

“Fitted for what?” neytiri asks, feeling a bit excited for whatever is to come. 

“For your wedding dress mom” kiri replies. Closing the flaps of the hut, the ladies began to work their magic. 

While on the other side, jake was being taken to a different hut, being led by his three sons. 

“Seriously?” jake says while raising an eyebrow. 

“Tuk’s orders” lo’ak grins a bit smugly. 

A few handful of Jake's friends entered the hut with him, with preparations of getting him ready. 

“Oh, and dont forget to write your vows!” spider reminds as he snaps fingers in remembering what tuk told him. 

“My vows?” 

“This is going to take awhile” 

“Oh yeah, its all coming together” tuk says, pride grows in her little heart as the wedding decorations and the set up is nearly completed. 

Norm was beside her, whistling impressed. “Gotta hand it to you tuk, you do know how to design” he compliments. This makes little tuk humph with glee. 

They were at the spirit tree, white veils, flowers, the Atokrinia’s floating around elegantly. Her image displayed ever so perfectly. 

“Ok, it's all set tuk!” lo’ak says as he with kiri, spider and neteyam arrive. 

“Good! So we are good to go!” 

“Almost” kiri teases. 

“We just need one more thing” neteyam smiles, but tuk was panicking a little. 

“Did we forget something? It's the bells, isn't it? Dang it I should have-” she was interrupted mid sentence when she felt something land on her head. 

Looking at what it was, it was a flower crown. 

“A wedding isn't complete without a flower girl” spider says. Gasping in happiness and surprised, tuk shouts in great joy. 

“Come on, we still got time!” the three siblings drag tuk away to have her be the prettiest flower girl pandora has ever seen!

The flutes began to play, releasing harmonic sounds as the notes echoed to the people’s ears. Ninat taking the lead of the melodious choir, her voice and the others balance with the instruments. In tune to perfection. 

The Atokirina floating all around, giving the path a heavenly glow. 

The people sat anxiously, all in rows as they respectfully cleared one long path. 

A path the tuk carefully walks through as she delicately lays flower petals. A flower crown on her head, wearing the cutest light pink loin cloth and pearl like bead top. Tuk truly looked like a flower girl. Behind her was the bride. Her beautiful mother, The one where all eyes go to see. 

Neytiri walks gracefully on the path her daughter leads. Wearing an all white outfit, her loincloth, her top, her head piece, and the veil she wears. All white. Her hair braided loosely behind, flowers decorated on her hair as well. Neytiri never felt more beautiful than she did at this moment. With a bouquet of flowers she holds tightly, her eyes search for her mate. The love of her life, Jake. 

At the alter, at the root base of the spirit tree was Jake. In all of his might glower, wearing a black loin cloth as his warrior armor at the waist, his hair braided in the similar fashion he wore during the war. Feather and bead amended to the braids, and small black paint to enhance his handsomeness. Jake looked so good it made neytiri want to run towards his arms. 

As they reached the altar, tuk took her place beside kiri who was wearing a style similar to tuk. Neteyam, spider and lo’ak beside their father as they admire their mother. 

Jake offers his hand to which neytiri happily accepts. Removing the veil to reveal her beautiful face, jake could help but mutter “beautiful” in awe. Together they both turn to face mo’at who smiles with heavenly joy. 

“Welcome everyone. Today, we gather in great celebration to bring these two wonderful people into union. Through trials and tribulations, these two souls have been challenged time and time again. But their love has pulled them through. Proving to us all that love truly conquers all. That being with your true one, anything can be accomplished” 

mo’at gestures to Neytiri and Jake that it was time to say their vows. 

But as they speak, tuk listened as best as she could. Hearing her parents story over and over never waivered with time. If anything it only sounded better each time. And hearing their vows right before her big eyes, it was adding a whole new perspective. 

Yes, tuk is a sucker for romantic things. Even if her siblings tease her, tuk won't stop. And seeing this made her love romance even more. 

“And by the great blessing of our great mother Eywa, I can now happily announce, Jake and neytiri as husband and wife! You may now-” 

Neytiri didnt let her mother finish as she dragged Jake down to kiss him like her life depended on it. Jake happily reciprocates. 

The na’vi cheered in celebration. Applause, screeches, everything was heard. 

Tuk sighs dreamily as she sees her parents kiss. 

“I can't wait to get married” 

Kiri: “never” 

Spider: "nope"

Lo’ak: “not gonna happen” 

Neteyam: “over my dead body”

Okie so this kinda became a tuk main story but I like it how it turned out. What do you guys think? Until next time! See ya!

[tj-dragonblade]

[FIC] Past the Wit of Man (or, Bottom's Dream)

Fandom: The Sandman Pairing: Dreamling Rated: M Word Count: 3657 Tags: comedy, attempted comedy, comedy devolving into feels, identity reveal, sex worker Hob Gadling, advancing my Men In Lingerie agenda, long-haired Hob Gadling agenda, stretching timelines like taffy, Desire and Dream get along AU, but Desire is not actively in this, Dead Boy Detectives comic spoilers mentioned, miscommunication, Dream of the Endless finally uses his words, happy ending

Notes: Kudos props and huge thanks to everyone in the Mr Sadman discord who creatively interpreted a snippet I posted of something else and launched the whole idea of Hob working for a supernatural escort service; this would not exist without y'all and your beautiful brainstorming. ❤️

This fills the August monthly @dreamlingbingo prompt Identity Reveal, replacing square A2 (creature: Veela) on my bingo card

Summary: Hob is nicely settled in a new career and a new identity and does not expect to see his Stranger until 2089. The universe, apparently, has other ideas.

On AO3

~ "Your client is Dream of the Endless. He is extremely ancient and extremely powerful, an underpinning concept of the universe. Absolutely terrible about loosening up and letting himself relax."

"Don't think I'd be much good at relaxing if I was an underpinning concept of the universe either," Hob jokes, opening the profile that the Agency rep has just airdropped to his phone and thumbing through it.

The rep, a foppish vampire with curly white hair and impeccable fashion sense, arches one elegant eyebrow at him. "Apparently his most recent girlfriend dumped him quite harshly and his sibling has arranged this booking on his behalf; he's—and I am quoting here—'absolutely incompetent at managing his own happiness'."

"He knows he's been booked though, right? I'm not gonna catch the fallout because no one told him what kind of appointment this is?" It's only happened once, a prank played on a shy ace nixie by her well-meaning but ill-informed friends; all the same, Hob does not care to repeat the experience—particularly with someone potentially more dangerous.

"He is very much aware and in agreement, yes. We promised him our top companion." The rep dimples at Hob, a smile of saccharine sincerity that shows only the barest hint of fang. "And that's you, sweet Nick."

"And that's me," Hob agrees matter-of-factly, frowning at his phone, then turning it to show his guest. "No photo?"

The rep glances at the screen and makes a commiserative noise. "Oh, yes. Unfortunate, that. Cameras have a very hard time with this fellow, something to do with his general relationship to reality." His tone takes on a simpering air of great melodrama. "We were forced to use an artist's rendition instead! Tragic, really; it doesn't do him justice."

"Huh," Hob says, turning his phone back and studying the cartoony hand-drawn image. Guy looks like he's got some sort of steampunk insect for a head, dark and bolt-laden and bug-eyed, with a trunk that's strongly reminiscent of a disembodied spine. "Dream of the Endless, you said? Looks more like a bloody nightmare."

The rep gives an exaggerated roll of his shoulders, as if shrugging off his delivery duty now that it's done, and turns to leave. "Well whatever the case, an Endless is far above the average client, darling. Give him your best."

"'Course." Hob grins. "That's why you brought the assignment to me, after all."

"Just so." The Agency rep gives a lazy wave in parting and Hob closes the door, still scrolling through the profile as he makes his way to the kitchen.

"Dozens of titles and names", he murmurs, glancing through the list of them. "King of Dreams and Nightmares, alright. Contains the entire collective unconscious of every living being in. Every…universe…?" He shakes his head. "Has never taken a vacation ever. Bested Lucifer Morningstar and oversaw the reassignment of Hell—okay, wow. Billions of years old." He whistles, a long sound of awed disbelief. "Maybe I throw in a free massage for this guy; sounds like he could use it."

He shakes his head again, pockets his phone, carries on with getting breakfast together.

Bug-headed workaholic foundational concept of the universe. Won't be the weirdest client he's ever serviced.

~

It's been ten years since his stranger showed up late for their meeting and smiled so openly and named him friend. That had been their longest meeting yet, lasting all afternoon and on into the evening and it wasn't until the Inn had started closing up for the night that they wound down. His stranger had spoken briefly of the missed appointment in 1989, making clear that something at least mildly traumatic had kept him away and also that he did not wish to elaborate, and Hob had let it go. There was so much to tell of his own century past, his friend remarking with interest on a great many of his stories, and it was enough. His stranger, his friend, had come back, and they'd had a lovely long meeting. Perhaps in 2089 he would be comfortable sharing more of his own story, but even if not, Hob didn't mind. He was confident once more in the friendship he'd declared back in 1889 and willing to coax it out bit by bit, meeting by meeting. He had all the time in the world, after all.

Within a year of that meeting he'd wrapped up his teaching career, arranged for ownership of the New Inn to transfer to a 'relative' in the States who'd keep it running the next few decades, and started searching for a new career for his next identity.

He stumbled quite by accident into the broader supernatural world after being stalked by two dead teenagers helping that de Rais creep who wanted to steal his immortality. It all turned out fine in the end but opened Hob's eyes to exactly how much the supernatural had integrated into the modern world around him. And once old Hettie clued him in to the existence of a certain Service Agency catering to supernatural clients, his next career path was all but decided. What was he going to do, not seize the opportunity for fantastical sexual exploration when presented with it? Life was for living! Werewolves, vampires, sirens and fae and merfolk, the occasional ghost and even an extra-terrestrial or two; scales, feathers, tentacles, knots—Hob's shown them all a good time and earned a stellar reputation among the Agency's clientele. He doesn't plan to do it forever, but he enjoys exploring new avenues and stretching his limits and 'Nick Bottom' is the perfect persona to let him do so.

And now sweet high-priced in-demand Nick has been booked to rebound-fuck an uptight concept in humanoid form who looks like something straight out of a nightmare.

Hob can't wait to completely take this guy apart one orgasm at a time until he's a boneless puddle of satiation and send him home afterwards a brand new man.

Concept. Entity. Whatever.

~

The booking is scheduled for the following day and when the time comes, Hob is fresh and clean and set up in the Agency's most lavish suite. He's let his hair grow the last few years, sports a proper Hozier-like mane at this point, is wearing it down for this appointment. His beard is several weeks old, trimmed to artfully-scruffy perfection and well-groomed. He's lounging on the bed in a short open silk robe and a pair of lace panties that hug his hips and leave most of both arse cheeks exposed, a popular outfit in his repertoire sure to please the classiest of clients with the most discerning taste. Both pieces are a matching vibrant cobalt blue that complements his skin tone beautifully. He's wondering what fucking a concept is like, idly massaging his dick now and then to keep it primed, when finally there's a peculiar displacement of air and then a figure in dark robes with a weird spine-trunked bug-eyed head is standing in the middle of the suite. He's taller than Hob and inhumanly rail-thin; the robes plunge deep from the neckline, displaying milk-white skin without a hint of chest hair and clavicles that beg to be nibbled on. He's in profile, angled slightly away, and Hob has the distinct sense that this is a deliberate pose meant to make an impression, to instill awe and possibly fear in him.

So Dream of the Endless has a flair for drama, got it.

"Hello," Hob greets in his best breathless-and-sultry tone, rising from the bed to approach his client. He layers in a suitable amount of awe, pitching his voice toward 'smitten' with a subtle ring of sincerity to support it. "Oh, wow. You must be Dream of the Endless; I'm so delighted to get to meet you! I'll be taking care of you today; you can call me Nick."

The guy, the concept, Dream of the Endless, he goes stock-still as Hob speaks, and it's like the air in the room pauses with him. He turns, slowly, until Hob is face to face with his…oh, possibly that's a mask, then; the bug-eyed lenses are somewhat translucent in the light though Hob still can't see beneath them.

"There has been some mistake." The voice is deep and distorted through the helmet-mask, bone-rattling in an almost-pleasant way and, somehow, somewhat…familiar? "I was meant to be meeting with 'Nick Bottom'." The quotes around the name are audible.

"That's me!" Hob says, raking a hand back through his hair and shaking it to settle around his shoulders attractively, flashing his most charming smile. "At your service, love, whatever you need. I'm here to make sure you have a very good time, and—"

"Hob Gadling."

That draws him up short. He's currently Robyn Gadrin for tax-paying purposes in the outside world, but the Agency wouldn't give out his current identity let alone his true name, so how—

Hob's brain is babbling insistently about the note of familiarity in that voice and he finally lights on why as Dream of the Endless reaches up to remove his helmet.

Hob finds himself staring at the slightly-more-than-human-but-still-very-familiar face of his Stranger, his centennial touchstone, his friend.

Everything about his reality tips a little bit sideways, dominoes crashing one after the other in his brain until all that's left is that awful ringing alarm tone that features in emergency broadcast alerts on American telly.

Between them, the silence stretches awkwardly, until finally Hob breaks it, the first thing that comes to his tongue spilling out while his poor brain is still rebooting.

"Six-hundred some-odd bloody years, and this is how I learn your name?!"

~

It is five minutes later. Hob is sitting on the side of the plush bed in his short silk robe and lace panties, clutching a bottled water and seriously considering availing himself of the bar in the next room because his emotions are all over the place. His Stranger—Dream of the Endless, apparently—is seated next to him. His eyes are not the blue that Hob is used to, are fully black with actual stars winking in and out of them; it's gorgeous but uncanny. He's currently not looking at Hob, has got the weird bug-spine helmet gripped tightly in both hands. Which are still so pretty, Hob can't help noticing, his fingers longer and more spindly than normal, splayed wide around the curve of the helm, nails painted black. Or maybe not painted, maybe they just are black.

Pretty, regardless.

Not a helpful thought at this juncture.

It's not like he'd thought his Stranger was actually human, obviously, and okay yes the possibility of meeting up with him via this particular career choice had crossed his mind once or twice, might've featured in a private fantasy or two; but also he'd never seriously imagined it because it felt so entirely implausible that his prim and lofty Stranger would ever engage in something so mundane. So casual.

Apparently, Hob was wrong about that.

He's not sure how to feel about it, either.

The smooth inhumanly-pale chest on display in the plunging vee of those artfully-draped robes is also not helping anything.

His Stranger—Dream— moves slightly, glances at him with those starry eyes, flexes those pretty fingers on the helmet. "I will. Arrange. For another. To take your place, Hob, you need not—"

"Now hold on a minute," Hob interrupts, sudden direction presenting itself for his floundering emotions to flow. "What do you mean, 'arrange for another'? What's wrong with me?"

Dream, his name is Dream of the Endless, Dream looks perplexed. "Our. History—"

"Oh yes, our illustrious storied history wherein we have met all of seven times before now and, may I remind you, you took offense to my suggestion that we might be friends until you'd had time to digest it properly, yes."

"Eight."

"Eight?"

"I visited your dream, before undertaking a daunting journey from my realm to another. We shared wine. You gave a most thoughtful toast."

"I. Okay." He remembers that dream, yes; he remembers the wine that followed him out of it, and now with the knowledge that his Stranger is apparently King of all dreams and nightmares suddenly it all makes brand new sense. But he will process that later. "Eight. Still not a factor in my ability to do my job."

Mostly. It is his Stranger, after all, and it's not like he hasn't ever wanted—

"Sex would be. Awkward," Dream insists, and Hob loses it, never mind he'd half-thought the same thing until a second ago; Dream saying it makes him refute the assertion with everything he's got.

"You dare," he says, setting aside his water.

Dream boggles at him, cosmic eyes wide, mouth slightly parted.

"You. DARE. To disdain my professional services just because we know each other?!"

"Hob— "

"No. No, your booking was very clear that you were to have the very best, and that. Is. Me. So you will not be re-booking with another companion on the grounds that our acquaintance makes it 'awkward'; if you mean to partake of the services you've hired you will partake of them with me."

"My sibling."

"What."

"My sibling hired your services. Did they know—" He's half talking to himself and Hob sighs, forcefully pulling the conversation back on track.

"Yes, right; your sibling booked you and here you are. Did you want to get laid today?"

"You need not be so crude about it."

"Forgive me. Of course. Did you come here hoping to have a sensual skillful sexual experience with a stranger intent on your pleasure with no judgments or expectations placed upon you in return?" He makes a valiant effort to rein in his sarcasm. "Because I can still provide that. Minus the bit where we're not strangers."

Dream looks positively miserable, a sodden wet cat of a man in sex-appeal robes hunched on the edge of the decadently-plush bed, and there is certainly an understandable element of embarrassment to the situation but Dream is taking it so seriously. Hob is not surprised, exactly, but christ—he's more than willing to follow through never mind any feelings he may or may not want to admit to, and Dream is the one who'd agreed to the booking in the first place. You'd think he could handle this hiccup with a little more grace.

"It was my intent to. Do, as you say," Dream says at last, and Hob sighs.

"Is that still what you want, then? I promise I'll take good care of you." He's actually really warming up to the idea, not that he was cold to it to begin with. It's his Stranger after all. He's been willing to say yes for centuries. "They really did book you the best, and I would love to show you how well-earned my reputation is—"

"Hob—" Dream sounds pained, gives an artfully-dramatic shake of his head. "My wants are. Manageable. If no one else is available. I cannot simply engage with you so frivolously—"

Hob leaps up from the bed, stalks a frustrated few steps away and whirls back, spreads his arms. "Am I not appealing to you, Dream of the Endless?" He tosses his head, shakes his hair back, gestures at the blue silk and lace that he knows looks absolutely spectacular on him. "Would you like me to change clothes? I have a dozen more ensembles I'd be happy to put on if you'd rather peel me out of one of those. Would the Prince of Stories prefer roleplay? Golden-age pirate, biker bad boy, Mr. Darcy or Elizabeth, cowboy, librarian, Starfleet officer—I'll dress however you like." He's fired up, he's…it feels like anger but it's more like alarm; he is absolutely not about to let a colleague fuck HIS Stranger if Dream's looking to unwind. Not with all the thoughts he's entertained the last couple centuries, not when Dream is looking so entirely miserable about the whole experience. Hob wiggles his bare toes in the plush carpet, forcing a deep breath; he is jealous and possessive and protective all at once and has no idea how to safely navigate this storm to get Dream what he wants without pissing him off.

"Your…clothing becomes you greatly, Hob." He's sneaking a glance as he says it, like he's not allowed to look but can't help it. "Your clothing is not at issue."

"Then what is?" Hob rakes a hand back through his hair, frustration fizzling, careening toward concern. "If you're truly that put off by me, I'll let it go. But you're here, for sex, which you did say you wanted; this is my job and I'm good at it and you clearly need—" Someone to take care of you, he'd nearly said, and while Dream has been giving him so much leeway in this conversation he thinks that might be one straw too much for this particular camel's back.

Nice to know he appreciates Hob's hairy chest and his dick in blue lace, though.

Dream levels him with a look that almost puts him right back to 1889, and Hob has half a second to start panicking before Dream closes his eyes, draws himself up, sets his bloody weird helmet on the bedside table with a soft leathery clunk. When he opens his eyes again, they are resolute, resigned, the eyes of a man headed for the gallows despite the stars winking hopelessly in their depths.

"I do not wish to be intimate with you. When you view it as simply a job. I. Would like—but not. If it is a transaction. If I am merely a client."

Oh. Oh.

Oh shit, really?

Impossible.

Really?

"You want. You want it to mean something?" Hob is embarassed at how small his voice comes out.

Dream closes his eyes, something like shame written all over his beautiful otherworldly-pale face. "I had thought. At our fifth meeting. That perhaps there was the possibility of. Attraction, between us." He opens his night-sky eyes again, meets Hob's resolutely. "Had we not been interrupted…" He shakes his head. "I pondered the idea until next we met, anticipating the possibility of. Seeing, where we might have come to. But you named what was between us friendship, you named me lonely; I perceived your words as mockery and acted accordingly. I spent the next century with a surplus of time to wander my own thoughts. They turned to you, Hob Gadling, with regularity. As I expressed when last we met, I regret leaving our previous meeting so abruptly, so harshly. Your friendship is of great value to me. I am content to let it remain friendship, in the interest of keeping it. But I am unwilling to engage with you, who named me 'friend', as I would a lover when I have yet to fully bury the wish. That you might have been my lover in truth."

Hob is desperately trying to keep from bluescreening again and while he's focused on that, his mouth runs along without him. "You never even gave me a name, but you wanted us to be lovers?"

"I am. Aware, of how foolish my wishes—"

"No, oh no. Dream. Love." He absolutely cannot let him think that. "All you ever had to do was ask."

Dream looks at him, starry eyes full of misery with the faintest spark of hope underneath, glimmering with unshed tears. "I. Could not—"

"That was then. Water under the bridge. What about now."

Dream shivers, his more-than-human face wary and pleading and resigned all at once and the last of the fight drains out of Hob. He approaches gently, until he is directly in front of Dream on the edge of the bed again; he half straddles Dream's lap with one foot still on the floor and a bare knee sunk on the mattress beside him, threads both hands into Dream's hair behind his lovely ears, tips his pale face up.

"Ask me now. Please."

Dream's hand settles above his bent knee, a gentle, tentative touch; his eyelashes flutter, and the sound that leaves him steals Hob's breath. That hand travels softly around to grip the back of Hob's thigh, slides hesitantly higher, and then it's Hob making the helpless noise as Dream's fingertips card beautifully through his leg hair, run up beneath the short robe. Dream's spindly black-nailed hand caresses up over his exposed arse cheek, squeezes, and all the while Dream's beguiling uncanny eyes are fixed on him, wet and wondering, full of blossoming hope.

"Hob Gadling." His voice is hushed, almost reverent. "I should like to have you, as my lover. If you are amenable." His face is tipped up, so close between Hob's hands, and Hob.

Hob's shaking. He's actually trembling, pent up, a little scared; daring, as he leans down and his hair falls around them both, hoping—

He brushes his lips to Dream's.

He kisses his Stranger, his friend, his touchstone.

And Dream of the Endless, who is all of those things, kisses him back.

It's nothing like he might have imagined, and ten times as wonderful, and over before he realizes he's ended it.

"Do you mean it." His voice is breathless, the words spoken directly against Dream's mouth. It's a stupid question, in light of the entire conversation gone before and the hand still on his arse, but he can't help asking. This entire turn of events is just too good to be true.

"Yes."

But true it is, apparently, and Hob's heart soars.

"Then. Dream of the Endless. My Stranger. My friend." He presses soft kisses to those plush pink lips between each moniker, dizzy that he's allowed. "Let me add another title to the list, darling. Take me to bed; the suite is ours 'til tomorrow. Let me learn how you would have me. Let me show you how I would treat you. And let me, at long last, name you mine."

= Started: 8/21/24 Drafted: 8/27/24 Posted: 8/30/24

If you're looking for a spicier take on this concept, @delta-pavonis has you covered: Dossier 54392 - please, give it a read, it's delicious.

(and here, have a post-script-y epilogue-exchange of sorts that did not quite fit:)

= "You chose to name yourself Nick Bottom?"

"What better name for a callboy to the supernatural than the bloke who got unwittingly embroiled in a fae lovers' spat and ultimately survived the entire encounter unscathed? Feels pretty relevant to me. Empowering, a bit?"

"Nick Bottom was less 'empowered' than simply lucky, perhaps."

"Perhaps. I'll not turn my nose up at good luck, either. But a name like Bottom in this business is also too good a pun to pass up, and I figure old Shaxberd would approve."

"I believe he would, indeed."

"The irony being that fully half of my clients want me to top them, heh."

"I do not wish to speak of your clients while you are in bed with me."

"Got better uses for my mouth, have you?"

"Other sounds I would prefer to hear from it, yes."

"Fair enough. Why don't you tell me what you want, Mr. Sandman, and see if I can make your dreams come true."

"Must you be so cliché?"

"You love my clich—mmph—"

"Stop. Talking."

"Yes love."

(Dream will tell him about commissioning A Midsummer Night's Dream at some other time 💖)

= Nick Bottom's lines from A Midsummer Night's Dream that lent themselves to the title: I have had a dream, past the wit of man to say what dream it was and also The eye of man hath not heard, the ear of man hath not seen, man's hand is not able to taste, his tongue to conceive, nor his heart to report, what my dream was. I will get Peter Quince to write a ballad of this dream: it shall be called Bottom's Dream

[vicvulpes]

hiii guyyss hiii tumblr dbd fandom

I came from twitter and wanna try using tumblr

a couple of days ago I came to dm of my fandom bestie @adskayapanda with a discussion about painland hanahaki au

then I decided that I wanted to describe it in more detail and post it on twitter AND THEN all this shit happened there that made our beautiful jayden revri deactivate his twitter account and want to stop all interaction with the fandom altogether

so I don't want to post this on twitter yet

hope you like it, have a nice read🤍

✨SO PAINLAND HANAHAKI AU✨

it's a dubious idea I agree BUT PLS HEAR ME OUT

I know it's weird considering that the main point of hanahaki au is that the living characters ARE DYING OF NOT MUTUAL LOVE AND HERE OUR TWO JERKS ARE ALREADY DEAD BUT

let's imagine that in the afterlife this works in a special way: for example flowers in the lungs feel about the the same as cat scratches or iron

and in particularly advanced cases of illness instead of death the ghost may simply disappear forever

btw it's worth noting that cases of illness are rare even in the world of the living, not to mention the dead but we all know how "lucky" edwin is for all kinds of suffering

soo just imagine after confessing in hell charles begins to notice how edwin is increasingly abruptly going somewhere perhaps not turning pale like alives but e.g. sometimes becomes slightly transparent and in principle begins to avoid his company

and then he abruptly begins to find scraps of bright red poppies in the office (neatly collected in a bouquet or bag) and thinks that these are gifts from edwin's new admirers or new attributes for spells (if we are talking about bags with petals you never know what they can be useful for charles is not so well versed)

but one day edwin doesn't have time to escape and charles accidentally finds him in another attack

charles did not really believe that people could have hanahaki at all - there were legends about it and nothing more but for ghosts hanahaki does not make sense at all!! they are ALREADY dead! - charles thinks trying to calm down and watching edwin vomit bright red petals

he doesn't recognize these flowers at first..

but when almost a whole flower bursts out of edwin's throat the realization suddenly comes along with a sudden flashback from childhood - charles often ran away from home at an early age when his father raged too much just to the nearest poppy field - and then brought small bouquets from it for his mother

charles's heart sank with realization

it hurts him to look at edwin in such a state and realize that it is entirely his fault that he did not reciprocate such a wonderful man as payne but it hurts even more to think that he will somehow misunderstand his feelings and break edwin's heart

and therefore after charles took care of edwin during the attack it was tacitly decided not to discuss it as always

(but edwin of course has already studied everything about hanahaki and knows what it leads to, but he tries (unsuccessfully) to calm himself with thoughts that, at least, this is not hell and that he did everything that depended on him - confessed his feelings)

and as a result, it turns out that boys "live", solve cases, and charles literally watches edwin fade away - his body is becoming more transparent, more and more often he turns into a ball shape in order to imbue himself with at least some energy and delay the moment of the inevitable even a little bit, but this is not enough for a long time

and edwin despite feeling as bad as possible tries to hold on as best he can and gets so many cases that there is not thes lightest extra second to think about his tragic situation

and charles understands the horror of the situation (and finally realizes his feelings) when e.g. edwin suffering from a particularly severe attack goes without warning for a week's treatment to some hermit sorcerer in his wilds for a rare ritual that promises to at least alleviate the symptoms of hanahaki and prolong the existence of a ghost and at most to completely cure it

and charles thinks that he is gone forever (cause just the day before while investigating another case leafing through the book "magical diseases" he came across a chapter about hanahaki among ghosts where some main points were highlighted in blue pencil and edwin's hand as well as repeated handwritten notes - edwin obviously studied for a long time and tried to do everything possible to improve his well-being. and in the end of page the inevitable scary result DEATH is emphasized and at the bottom there is a footnote that death for a ghost is a conditional removal from the universe he generally will cease to exist)

and this is the very moment when charles realizes everything - that he simply cannot exist without his edwin and that the feelings in his heart are not just friendly

at first when charles doesn't find edwin he thinks that he just left on business as often happens

then when he conditionally doesn't return in the evening charles begins to worry

BUT WHEN EDWIN HAS BEEN GONE FOR 2-3 DAYS CHARLES STARTS PANICING AND LITERALLY GOES CRAZY

he can't find peace worries panics tries to do something find edwin convinces himself that everything is fine AND THEN CATCHES HIMSELF THINKING THAT EDWIN MAY NEVER COME BACK (AND ALL BECAUSE CHARLES DID NOT RECIPROCATE IN TIME AND NOW IT'S TOO LATE!!) AND HE'S HAVING A TERRIBLE TANTRUM

and when edwin arrives a week later CHARLES IS ALREADY ON THE VERGE OF MADNESS AND AFTER HE SEES EDWIN HE CAN'T DECIDE WHAT HE WANTS MORE - TO KISS HIM RIGHT HERE AND RIGHT NOW WITH NO WORDS OR KILL HIM A SECOND TIME HIMSELF

(after all he doesn't do any of this just hugs and sobs on his shoulder choking in tears wailing how he was afraid that edwin had disappeared forever)

then charles sits edwin down on the couch and interrogates WHAT ACTUALLY THE FUCK WHY THERE WERE NO WARNINGS OR NO NEWS FROM HIM

and edwin rather casually replies that he felt unwell and went to be treated by some sorcerer who promised to rid him of hanahaki (here he adds that his stupid feelings initially interfere with both of them and charles's heart feels like it's splitting)

(wow edwin looks noticeably better, - thinks charles)

and then charles's already nonexistent heart suddenly sinks into his heels - it seems to him, judging by how well edwin looks and holds himself that he succeeded

which means only one thing - he managed to stop loving charles - just at the moment when charles finally so acutely realized that he loves him back, that's so unfair!

having received this realization charles abruptly gathers up wipes his tears pulls away slaps edwin on the shoulder congratulates him on his recovery and begins to leave

and then edwin who bitterly thinks that charles is making such a mockery of him breaks through: tears flow like a stream his voice breaks and trembles and in his eyes there is a mixture of doom fear resentment impotence and PAIN

with tears in his eyes, he explains that even the promised "wonderful" weekly ritual of that sorcerer could not rid him of these painful damn feelings that spoiled everything from the very beginning and no matter how he tried to get rid of them nothing works

charles turns around in shock and sees how because of all these painful emotions edwin twists another attack of hanahaki

bright red poppy petals fly to the floor again

charles hesitates for just a second and then instantly flies up to edwin falls on his knees in front of him gently grabs edwin's face with both hands forcing him to look into his eyes and in an incredulous whisper clarifies: "so you still love me?"

edwin's eyes start running again counting every red petal on the floor just to avoid meeting the deep brown eyes looking at him such hopefully

charles has enough barely audible "sorry" to immediately start covering edwin's entire surprised face with happy little kisses saying between them how much he loves edwin what a fool he was how scared he was that he might lose edwin forever how he wouldn't let go anymore and a bunch of other sugary nonsense

from that very moment on bright red poppies began to appear in their office only in beautiful carved vases reminding of something personally important for these two dead idiots..

thanks for reading!!🤍

and one more: english is not my native language so I'm so sorry if smth is written incorrectly

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Solar is a market for (financial) lemons

There are only four more days left in my Kickstarter for the audiobook of The Bezzle, the sequel to Red Team Blues, narrated by @wilwheaton! You can pre-order the audiobook and ebook, DRM free, as well as the hardcover, signed or unsigned. There's also bundles with Red Team Blues in ebook, audio or paperback.

Rooftop solar is the future, but it's also a scam. It didn't have to be, but America decided that the best way to roll out distributed, resilient, clean and renewable energy was to let Wall Street run the show. They turned it into a scam, and now it's in terrible trouble. which means we are in terrible trouble.

There's a (superficial) good case for turning markets loose on the problem of financing the rollout of an entirely new kind of energy provision across a large and heterogeneous nation. As capitalism's champions (and apologists) have observed since the days of Adam Smith and David Ricardo, markets harness together the work of thousands or even millions of strangers in pursuit of a common goal, without all those people having to agree on a single approach or plan of action. Merely dangle the incentive of profit before the market's teeming participants and they will align themselves towards it, like iron filings all snapping into formation towards a magnet.

But markets have a problem: they are prone to "reward hacking." This is a term from AI research: tell your AI that you want it to do something, and it will find the fastest and most efficient way of doing it, even if that method is one that actually destroys the reason you were pursuing the goal in the first place.

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/security/engineering/failure-modes-in-machine-learning

For example: if you use an AI to come up with a Roomba that doesn't bang into furniture, you might tell that Roomba to avoid collisions. However, the Roomba is only designed to register collisions with its front-facing sensor. Turn the Roomba loose and it will quickly hit on the tactic of racing around the room in reverse, banging into all your furniture repeatedly, while never registering a single collision:

https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2021/04/when-ais-start-hacking.html

This is sometimes called the "alignment problem." High-speed, probabilistic systems that can't be fully predicted in advance can very quickly run off the rails. It's an idea that pre-dates AI, of course – think of the Sorcerer's Apprentice. But AI produces these perverse outcomes at scale…and so does capitalism.

Many sf writers have observed the odd phenomenon of corporate AI executives spinning bad sci-fi scenarios about their AIs inadvertently destroying the human race by spinning off in some kind of paperclip-maximizing reward-hack that reduces the whole planet to grey goo in order to make more paperclips. This idea is very implausible (to say the least), but the fact that so many corporate leaders are obsessed with autonomous systems reward-hacking their way into catastrophe tells us something about corporate executives, even if it has no predictive value for understanding the future of technology.

Both Ted Chiang and Charlie Stross have theorized that the source of these anxieties isn't AI – it's corporations. Corporations are these equilibrium-seeking complex machines that can't be programmed, only prompted. CEOs know that they don't actually run their companies, and it haunts them, because while they can decompose a company into all its constituent elements – capital, labor, procedures – they can't get this model-train set to go around the loop:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/03/09/autocomplete-worshippers/#the-real-ai-was-the-corporations-that-we-fought-along-the-way

Stross calls corporations "Slow AI," a pernicious artificial life-form that acts like a pedantic genie, always on the hunt for ways to destroy you while still strictly following your directions. Markets are an extremely reliable way to find the most awful alignment problems – but by the time they've surfaced them, they've also destroyed the thing you were hoping to improve with your market mechanism.

Which brings me back to solar, as practiced in America. In a long Time feature, Alana Semuels describes the waves of bankruptcies, revealed frauds, and even confiscation of homeowners' houses arising from a decade of financialized solar:

https://time.com/6565415/rooftop-solar-industry-collapse/

The problem starts with a pretty common finance puzzle: solar pays off big over its lifespan, saving the homeowner money and insulating them from price-shocks, emergency power outages, and other horrors. But solar requires a large upfront investment, which many homeowners can't afford to make. To resolve this, the finance industry extends credit to homeowners (lets them borrow money) and gets paid back out of the savings the homeowner realizes over the years to come.

But of course, this requires a lot of capital, and homeowners still might not see the wisdom of paying even some of the price of solar and taking on debt for a benefit they won't even realize until the whole debt is paid off. So the government moved in to tinker with the markets, injecting prompts into the slow AIs to see if it could coax the system into producing a faster solar rollout – say, one that didn't have to rely on waves of deadly power-outages during storms, heatwaves, fires, etc, to convince homeowners to get on board because they'd have experienced the pain of sitting through those disasters in the dark.

The government created subsidies – tax credits, direct cash, and mixes thereof – in the expectation that Wall Street would see all these credits and subsidies that everyday people were entitled to and go on the hunt for them. And they did! Armies of fast-talking sales-reps fanned out across America, ringing dooorbells and sticking fliers in mailboxes, and lying like hell about how your new solar roof was gonna work out for you.

These hustlers tricked old and vulnerable people into signing up for arrangements that saw them saddled with ballooning debt payments (after a honeymoon period at a super-low teaser rate), backstopped by liens on their houses, which meant that missing a payment could mean losing your home. They underprovisioned the solar that they installed, leaving homeowners with sky-high electrical bills on top of those debt payments.

If this sounds familiar, it's because it shares a lot of DNA with the subprime housing bubble, where fast-talking salesmen conned vulnerable people into taking out predatory mortgages with sky-high rates that kicked in after a honeymoon period, promising buyers that the rising value of housing would offset any losses from that high rate.

These fraudsters knew they were acquiring toxic assets, but it didn't matter, because they were bundling up those assets into "collateralized debt obligations" – exotic black-box "derivatives" that could be sold onto pension funds, retail investors, and other suckers.

This is likewise true of solar, where the tax-credits, subsidies and other income streams that these new solar installations offgassed were captured and turned into bonds that were sold into the financial markets, producing an insatiable demand for more rooftop solar installations, and that meant lots more fraud.

Which brings us to today, where homeowners across America are waking up to discover that their power bills have gone up thanks to their solar arrays, even as the giant, financialized solar firms that supplied them are teetering on the edge of bankruptcy, thanks to waves of defaults. Meanwhile, all those bonds that were created from solar installations are ticking timebombs, sitting on institutions' balance-sheets, waiting to go blooie once the defaults cross some unpredictable threshold.

Markets are very efficient at mobilizing capital for growth opportunities. America has a lot of rooftop solar. But 70% of that solar isn't owned by the homeowner – it's owned by a solar company, which is to say, "a finance company that happens to sell solar":

https://www.utilitydive.com/news/solarcity-maintains-34-residential-solar-market-share-in-1h-2015/406552/

And markets are very efficient at reward hacking. The point of any market is to multiply capital. If the only way to multiply the capital is through building solar, then you get solar. But the finance sector specializes in making the capital multiply as much as possible while doing as little as possible on the solar front. Huge chunks of those federal subsidies were gobbled up by junk-fees and other financial tricks – sometimes more than 100%.

The solar companies would be in even worse trouble, but they also tricked all their victims into signing binding arbitration waivers that deny them the power to sue and force them to have their grievances heard by fake judges who are paid by the solar companies to decide whether the solar companies have done anything wrong. You will not be surprised to learn that the arbitrators are reluctant to find against their paymasters.

I had a sense that all this was going on even before I read Semuels' excellent article. We bought a solar installation from Treeium, a highly rated, giant Southern California solar installer. We got an incredibly hard sell from them to get our solar "for free" – that is, through these financial arrangements – but I'd just sold a book and I had cash on hand and I was adamant that we were just going to pay upfront. As soon as that was clear, Treeium's ardor palpably cooled. We ended up with a grossly defective, unsafe and underpowered solar installation that has cost more than $10,000 to bring into a functional state (using another vendor). I briefly considered suing Treeium (I had insisted on striking the binding arbitration waiver from the contract) but in the end, I decided life was too short.

The thing is, solar is amazing. We love running our house on sunshine. But markets have proven – again and again – to be an unreliable and even dangerous way to improve Americans' homes and make them more resilient. After all, Americans' homes are the largest asset they are apt to own, which makes them irresistible targets for scammers:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/06/06/the-rents-too-damned-high/

That's why the subprime scammers targets Americans' homes in the 2000s, and it's why the house-stealing fraudsters who blanket the country in "We Buy Ugly Homes" are targeting them now. Same reason Willie Sutton robbed banks: "That's where the money is":

https://pluralistic.net/2023/05/11/ugly-houses-ugly-truth/

America can and should electrify and solarize. There are serious logistical challenges related to sourcing the underlying materials and deploying the labor, but those challenges are grossly overrated by people who assume the only way we can approach them is though markets, those monkey's paw curses that always find a way to snatch profitable defeat from the jaws of useful victory.

To get a sense of how the engineering challenges of electrification could be met, read McArthur fellow Saul Griffith's excellent popular engineering text Electrify:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/12/09/practical-visionary/#popular-engineering

And to really understand the transformative power of solar, don't miss Deb Chachra's How Infrastructure Works, where you'll learn that we could give every person on Earth the energy budget of a Canadian (like an American, but colder) by capturing just 0.4% of the solar rays that reach Earth's surface:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/10/17/care-work/#charismatic-megaprojects

But we won't get there with markets. All markets will do is create incentives to cheat. Think of the market for "carbon offsets," which were supposed to substitute markets for direct regulation, and which produced a fraud-riddled market for lemons that sells indulgences to our worst polluters, who go on destroying our planet and our future:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/04/14/for-sale-green-indulgences/#killer-analogy

We can address the climate emergency, but not by prompting the slow AI and hoping it doesn't figure out a way to reward-hack its way to giant profits while doing nothing. Founder and chairman of Goodleap, Hayes Barnard, is one of the 400 richest people in the world – a fortune built on scammers who tricked old people into signing away their homes for nonfunctional solar):

https://www.forbes.com/profile/hayes-barnard/?sh=40d596362b28

If governments are willing to spend billions incentivizing rooftop solar, they can simply spend billions installing rooftop solar – no Slow AI required.

Berliners: Otherland has added a second date (Jan 28 - TOMORROW!) for my book-talk after the first one sold out - book now!

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

https://pluralistic.net/2024/01/27/here-comes-the-sun-king/#sign-here

Back the Kickstarter for the audiobook of The Bezzle here!

Image:

Future Atlas/www.futureatlas.com/blog (modified)

https://www.flickr.com/photos/87913776@N00/3996366952

--

CC BY 2.0

https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/

J Doll (modified)

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Blue_Sky_%28140451293%29.jpeg

CC BY 3.0

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

[derww]

Three small oneshots written on keys from people. First, @mapicccc and TA going groccery shopping, second, @happy-mountain-goats and Subz fixing his wings (apologize in advance for the errors/inaccuracies in the anatomical details), third, @nivalulu and 4C doing small differences.

***

– No, – Zam says sterntly, suddenly perhaps even to himself, as he throws a frozen pizza out of the cart. Mapicc rolls his eyes like he's dealing with a small child.

– Okay, genius. Then you choose. Just hurry up, we've been here for half an hour already.

– No problem, – Zam goes to the shelves and – as if completely at random – pulls out a package of frozen vegetable yakisoba.

– Absolutely not, – Mapicc snaps, – there's not even meat in there! I'm going to starve!

– There was no meat on the pizza either, – Zam retorts, waving the box.

– There was pepperoni in there! – Mapicc crosses his arms over his chest, determined to stand his ground. – It counts!

– It's not, – Zam continues to bicker, but he is stopped by a package of mac&cheese hitting him in the temple. He catches it, rubbing the bruised spot with his other hand and swearing under his breath, and then throws it back. Spoke catches it and mockingly puts it into the cart. He is sitting in the place where small children were usually put – with his height, his feet almost touch the floor – and is clearly laughing at their silly squabbles.

– You don't have to eat the same thing, you assholes, – Spoke chuckles, – it doesn't matter – in short, just throw anything, otherwise, we'll be yelling here until closing time. By the way, where is Ro? Terry! – He waves his hand aggressively, and Terry, who is a few meters away from them collecting an obscene number of pastry bags, turns around and bows his head in a silent question, – Terry, find Ro, we've lost him again!

– I think we all know where Ro is right now, – Terry replies with a giggle, dropping everything into their shared cart, – but I can go and take him, of course, – he yawns, – we can't send Mapicc or Zam to this. Zam will get lost, Mapicc will crash into a shelf.

– I'm not that hopeless! I'll find a way back! – Zam objects, but Terry shakes his head and slowly disappears around the corner.

– At least pretend you have something in your brain, – Mapicc mutters irritably, randomly throwing several more random boxes and freezer bags into the cart and pushing it forward in the direction Terry has gone.

– Who would say that! – Zam is indignant, catching up with him, – It was a terrible idea, next time I'm going alone.

– If you go alone, you'll only bring juice, a pack of chocolate croissants, and a half–eaten chipotle burrito!

– Last time you brought sriracha and 32 sausages! Who eats this for a week in a row!

– Relax, – Spoke drawled, – let's not argue about little things.-

Mapicc stops, and Spoke, too lanky for his position, almost falls out.

– You weren't given the right to vote, – he says, – you brought five original monsters last time we've asked you to buy shit. What is there to eat, the jar itself?

– Great breakfast! – Spoke answers calmly, giving Mapicc a thumbs–up and kicking him in the knee, – I don't know what you don't like about it... – he hurriedly turns around and, noticing something, starts shouting, - hey, Ro! - at first it looks like he's trying to distract their attention, but in the distance there really is a familiar figure looming. Ro holds a half-filled shopping basket in his hand. To his left is Terry, who has clearly regretted agreeing to go with them a hundred times.

– Hello, people, – once at an acceptable distance, Ro waves at them, – are you still arguing? Who should I calm down? Has anything been trashed yet?

When Ro gets even with them, Zam immediately reaches in with his hands into the shopping basket.

– Well, I can understand that, – he picks up tomatoes and sweet peppers without any pretense, – at least someone in this circus thought of bringing some vegetables... Also no questions, – a bag of spinach, celery, bananas, – let's say fine, but you'll be the only one eating it, – edamame, some hummus, – why the fuck do you need so much turmeric? – Ro shrugs his shoulders, and Zam rolls his eyes, but approves. – Is there at least someone in our house who drinks it? – a liter of soy milk, – I'll confiscate it, if you decide to get drunk, suffer for yourself, I have to put up with you all anyway, – he takes off a box of alka-seltzer, to which Ro squints suspiciously, and Mapicc says something remotely obscene... – my God, why do you need twenty-one ounces of olives? – Zam looks dumbfounded, first at the cans, then at Ro. Ro spreads his hands.

– He likes olives and eats them, – Mapicc calmly informs and shrugs his shoulders, – it's not for you to object. It's strange that you didn't know.

– It's all bullshit! – Zam objects, - he'd rather pour them down someone's neck than actually eat them!

– I'll go buy some bread and eggs, – Terry informs them meekly, but his words are drowned out by the hubbub of an argument starting again.

***

Okay, the problem is, his wings have been on the verge of breaking for a fucking eternity, but it's not like he could just take them off. Frankly, he had no idea how to solve the tangle of lost magic without ripping off his own spine. When he was sculpting the spell, he was sculpting hard and forever, and you couldn't fly on a Lifesteal anyway... before.

And, okay, the bases of his wings were in a mess, too, of course, but oh, well, not that he could do anything about it. The last time he checked, there wasn't any major damage, so it wasn't important anyway. To his personal surprise, his hind wings in general were not seriously injured in any way, only worn and torn at a couple of edges.

Do I really have to deal with this, he asks himself. It wasn't that important. They still will last a decent amount of time. And even if he falls in the middle of the flight, it's not a big problem. At last... He rolls his eyes and sighs. Friend agrees with him, humming approvingly. Well, or so it seems to him.

First, he has to make all the tools, because of course he doesn't have the right ones – he wanders in circles through the chaos of his base from side to side and over and over and over until he has everything he needs – or a replacement that will do. A brush has to be made very soft and delicate, small and fluffy, and then his hand cramps for half a day from small work, all sharp corners are cut off from the planed stick, leaving a smooth but thin tip, and the formula for the adhesive material is based on water and made as non-toxic as possible... At least he thinks it came out non-toxic... Well, if it didn't work out, then he'll realize the mistake when he can't fly. Or get a couple of chemical burns. Or get poisoned and die. What a cool perspective to have!

At least there is a directional lamp of the right brightness, and that's how he unfolds everything, in the middle of the corridor, holding onto the part of the hind wings that he can reach: first, he cleans off all the dust and dirt with a brush with unbearable care, first wet, and then dry. Some of the debris refuses to move away, and in the middle of the process he has to build forceps and, swearing under his breath, wield them as well. His hands can't reach everything, but something is better than nothing, and the elytras obviously turn out to be much easier to clean – denser and clearer, they soon turn out to be in an acceptable form. He refuses to reach the inside.

It's even more difficult with glue: apply it to the gap with slow movements – hey, and why did he kill the ancient god at all, if even his wings are tearing – and, having fixed it in the right position, leave it alone. There don't seem to be any symptoms of toxic shock. For now.

He's already putting everything together to put it in a corner and not see it for another hundred years when he hears a block breaking – almost a knock on the door when you live in an underground base without a normal entrance. Well, or breaking in with a chainsaw, if it's an enemy. With the garbage in his arms, he turns around only to see Red. Both of his hands are busy, so he just nods.

– Hi, dear friend. – Red drawls. – And what are you doing here?

He shrugs his shoulders disinterestedly.

– I was fixing the wings. They've been worn out all this time.

– So you can take them off? – Red wonders, – then why do you go everywhere with them?

Subz rolls his eyes.

– No, I can't, – he says, bored. – I fixed the part that I can reach.

– Well, – Red says dramatically, – it's a matter of your safety, Subz! You clearly need the help of a friend who will do you a favor in this difficult and painstaking task!

He makes a face and sighs.

– Yes, yes, of course, my friend Reddoons, – he mutters and resigns himself to the fate.

***

4C is familiar to people here as someone who is simple... exists. He doesn't hold grudges, doesn't maintain bad relationships, goes about his business, and lets the others do the same, and tunnel rats smile when they see him and pass him candies in gratitude to the founding captain. People don't attack him in battles, they don't bother him with arguments, they don't see any threat or danger in him, and he takes full advantage of it. He appears here and there, invisible in his routes, never having anything planned, and people shrug their shoulders and perceive him a little better than the moving element of the interior.

Sometimes it seems to him that he really is some kind of ghost: he cleans the bedroom and hall of the FOCUS base, not forgetting to change the linen and put fresh flowers in the vases, he takes care of the trees at the spawn and decorates the buildings for the holidays, he puts an elytra in the Spacewaffles chest and leaves three copper swords with colored handles in the chest in the tunnels, he waters the valley of daisies and wipes discs lying there from the dust.

He feeds pandas with bamboo and cats with raw tuna, he cleans empty houses and lights candles in churches, and he repairs doors and greases bolts. He lures wardens away from busy places and leaves them in ravines and gorges. He collects items from the corpses and leaves them in chests.

He builds a house at Zaun: he has to choose a simpler design, but it's still nice. Maybe one day I'll really be able to live here, he thinks with warm sadness, leaving only a crafting table inside. On the sign at the entrance, he writes: Home.

In 4C, there is no desire to be a good person, both for himself and for others, he is an invisible man, devoted to the grave, a worthy tunnel rat and keeper of secrets, someone who has laid down his life to avoid conflicts with people, not someone with at least some good or heartfelt motives, but something motivates him to continue. Sometimes he plants a new daisy, and it fills the void in him, sapling by sapling.