#structural and functional claim

[polysyndetonaddictsupportgroup]

pez dispenser update, yay!

I am Very Interested in the direction you're taking izuku here. He seems to have come out the other side of this breakdown going, "no look! I trust you guys! Here, I trust you guys so much! You can know about the severe injuries I had as a child that never got a police report!"

It's funny to read izuku's pov vs aizawa. Izuku is just like, wow this all needs to end so I can get back to being the Normal And Awesome Deku I have turned myself into, and aizawa is like thirty seconds from having his own panic attack at having a few months to turn this kid into a functional human being.

You can truly tell that with how izuku keeps insisting on that he's got this by himself, with no understanding how crazy it is to expect his friends and teachers to back out and let him take over, that he, still, still, STILL has simply 0 faith or expectation that his teacher is driven to help the little kid in izuku that he's buried so deep down there. That an authority figure who isn't all might wants to save him. I want to eat his unthinking, warped by trauma thought patterns, they are delicious.

Kinda touching that midoriya foresaw and tried to avert the all might conversation issue. Rip, dude really tried, but baby izuku is like one of those puddles in flooded old buildings you can find videos of people dropping a rock in -- it doesn't look that deep, but if you tried to put your foot in, you would be getting a whole lot more than your shoe wet.

Yeahhhhhh Izuku’s really not handling it the best.

Izuku genuinely didn’t keep everything a secret all these years because he didn’t trust his friends. It wasn’t that he thought they’d react poorly or hurt him with the information or spread it around or anything like that. This was purely due to his own internal issues around it.

But they’re three years deep into being in the fucking trenches together. And Izuku very much is considered a bedrock of the class. You can see it in their internal monologues—everyone trusts him implicitly. It’s Izuku. If one of them was going through something sensitive or painful, he’d be at the top of the list of people to turn to. For like, the entire class.

And while Izuku isn’t per se aware of the fact that the entire class views him as the best of them, he is painfully aware of the fact that they’ve opened up to him over the years. And that this is making it look like he didn’t tell them a single detail about his life before he came to the school. Which is fair, because he sort of didn’t.

So he’s overcompensating. He doesn’t need privacy because he trusts them so so much and this proves it, right?? They can totally know the sordid details of the past he’s in active crisis over.

He’s scared that he’s going to lose the people who have trusted him over the years because he seemingly didn’t trust them back. But they all trust him so much that they’re more beating themselves up than blaming him.

Todoroki and Mirio were in that scene like “uuuuhhhh you look like you’re a second from a panic attack we can totally give you space if it makes you more comfortable” and Izuku’s in a spiral like Why Would I Need Space I Trust You Both Implicitly Please Ignore The Obvious Distress.

Fundamentally, Izuku has never processed what happened to him as a kid. He didn’t tell them because he wasn’t ready to confront how bad it was back then. It wasn’t about trust. Telling them meant saying aloud what happened. He just wasn’t ready for that.

And from the path canon took, I don’t really see Izuku trusting adults. His childhood did absolutely nothing to make him think teachers would protect him. And for all Aizawa did right, I think this is one bag in canon he legitimately dropped.

I want to be clear—Aizawa was working at a severe disadvantage. He didn’t even have a lot to tell him the problem existed, let alone how to address it. But it’s specifically the Hero Killer Stain Arc that makes me think that Izuku only would trust Aizawa to a certain point.

After the Hero Killer Stain Arc, Aizawa canonically calls out Iida, Todoroki, and Izuku in front of the entire class. He doesn’t mention what it's about, but he makes it very clear that he knows what happened and that he disapproves. And his criticism is specific: In instances where you are out matched, it is better to run and get help. Iida, Midoriya, and Todoroki need to understand that

The thing is that Izuku and Todoroki both considered that as their first option and then correctly deduced that they'd be burying Iida if they did that.

I will actually die on the hill that is that Izuku and Todoroki did everything right when it came to the Hero Killer Stain. Iida caused the problem, but the fact that he made mistakes was the point of that arc for him. But Izuku and Todoroki?

They both reacted perfectly. And if they had done a single thing differently, they'd have two dead bodies.

When Izuku realizes that Iida's in danger, the city is on fire, Nomu are attacking the train, and his supervisor has fucked off to fight monsters attacking the city. He does not have an adult hero who is free to bring with him, and we know for a fact that he did not have time to hesitate or try to find other options, because he arrives the second before Iida dies as-is. When he's on scene, his absolute first instinct is to run. Izuku canonically clocked the fact that he was out matched, evaluated whether he could safely retreat, and realized he’d never be able to get out of there with Iida and Native. He’d have to leave one or both of them to die.

So he asked for help the safest way he could: sending out the mass text and stalling for time. And canonically, he wasn’t hoping a classmate would show up to the fight. He was hoping they’d report it to their supervisors and get him help, which is exactly what multiple of his classmates did.

Todoroki, for his part, correctly clocked that something was wrong with Izuku when he got the message. And he didn’t just fuck off without telling anyone where he was going. He evaluated the situation, realized the city was on fucking fire and there wasn’t a single hero free to go with them, and told the heroes with him that they needed to go to this exact location the first second they could. And he didn’t have a moment to hesitate or figure something else out, because he also showed up at the very last second before Iida took a sword to his spine.

Frankly, Todoroki and Izuku couldn’t have possibly handled the situation better, but they got absolutely shit on in the aftermath. I don’t recall a single adult who told them they did the right thing, except maybe Native. They had the fucking chief of police telling them they were no better than the guy who tried to kill their teenage friend with a sword and their teacher publicly calling them out in front of the class without the benefit of context.

If I was Izuku, I would have walked out of that entire thing having my preexisting distrust of adults affirmed. Like. There isn’t a world where Izuku realistically looks back on his actions and thinks “damn I really should have left Iida die.” He’s not going to change a fucking thing in what he did. Every single time, he’s going to go save his friend. The only realistic take away Izuku could have from Aizawa’s call out was “wow, that guy is not going to have my back if I have to make a tough call. So if I have to make one, then I’m just not going to him for help.”

Which is kind of where we're at in pez right now, and Aizawa's starting to realize it. Don't get me wrong, Izuku trusts Aizawa more than any teacher he ever had growing up. He doesn't think Aizawa is going to be actively malicious to him. But he also doesn't necessarily think Aizawa's going to have his back.

The crux of it is in chapter 4. Tiny Izuku says that Mr. Aizawa is already on Izuku's side, and Izuku's immediate reply is, "I promise you that Mr. Aizawa has never once been on my side." He back pedals fast, clarifies that he thinks Mr. Aizawa is fair and not on anyone's side, but his knee-jerk reaction is undeniable.

And to me? It's because Aizawa genuinely has not been on Izuku's side since he came to UA. And I don't mean Aizawa has been malicious to Izuku. Fundamentally, the issue is that he misdiagnosed the problem.

Aizawa has spent his entire time with Izuku mistakenly believing that the source of Izuku's issues was the same as Bakugou's. He is only now realizing that his issues were more like Shinsou's.

Fundamentally, Aizawa correctly recognized that Izuku's problems came from the fact that he was raised in an unjust system. But he misunderstood what Izuku's position in it was.

Here's what Aizawa knows, from the jump: Izuku and Bakugou came from the same school. Both have very powerful Quirks. Both have obvious issues with the other. Izuku specifically moves and looks like he had a professional trainer, meaning someone invested in his training as a hero. Bakugou talks like someone who's been told his entire life that the sun shines out his ass and never got punished for being a little shit. Izuku's more muted, but he came from the same school. Two kids with powerful quirks? Likely were getting away with the exact same shit.

When you have an unjust system, you have the people running it, the people benefitting from it, and the people being victimized by it. If the teachers at Aldera were letting kids with powerful quirks get away with murder, both Izuku and Bakugou were likely benefitting from that. And it is absolutely vital that Aizawa undoes that damage before they debut.

He doesn't even need to think Izuku, specifically, was abusing his position in this power imbalance. The damage is done from how the teachers at aldera were likely treating him. Teachers that produce kids like Bakugou tell talented, powerful kids that they're special, that they're above the rules, that they've got something so fundamentally important about them that they can get away with more. Even if you don't chose to abuse that narrative in the moment, that's a hell of a formative experience.

They're about to have a ridiculous amount of power. They are about to be in charge of enforcing the rules. And people who are in charge of enforcing the rules and think they're above them turn into Endeavor.

Aizawa's approached Izuku from a sort of tough love perspective from the jump. He didn't cut him an ounce of slack, and it's because he genuinely was trying to do right by Izuku. No, he's not going to get to smash up his body and make himself a hazard. Figure it out, or go home.

He's had plenty of time to learn how to manage his quirk, after all.

With Stain? I don't think Aizawa, if he knew the full circumstances, would genuinely say the right call is to have Iida's fucking funeral. I think he'd agree with the decisions Izuku and todoroki made. But he didn't have all the information, and, fatally, he didn't ask. He assumed.

He's got three powerful, bullheaded students who end up in a back alley in the middle of the night, having all separately ditched the heroes they were supposed to be joined at the fucking hip with. He absolutely thinks that they either planned it together or that, when they realized what Iida did, Todoroki and Iida went after him in secret to try to keep Iida from getting in trouble--and almost got them all killed in the process. There is absolutely no way Aizawa knows that they actually tried to run and get help at every turn.

Aizawa made assumptions. And a big reason why he felt comfortable making those assumptions was because he thought he knew what Izuku's problem was. He thought Izuku, like Bakugou, had been benefitting from teachers turning a blind eye to his misbehavior for years. But the problem was the exact opposite. Teachers had been turning a blind eye to his victimization for years.

He shouldn't have been treating him like Bakugou. He should have been treating him like Shinsou.

Aizawa's trying to correct the damage of past teachers. If they've spent years telling Izuku he's god's gift to mankind and it doesn't matter what he does because he's a hero and that makes up for it, Aizawa needs to hold him to the fucking rules. He needs him to understand that he's not special, he's not the main character, he's not intrinsically better or more important or above the rules in some magically important way. He doesn't want to hear excuses. He doesn't want to know why this time it was different. Izuku needs to understand that he has to live by the rules too, because he's going to be in charge of enforcing them soon.

But if they've spent years telling him he's worthless, that people can hurt him and it's okay, that he can never, ever expect help from them because he's not worth it? Then fuck, Aizawa needed to do the opposite. He needed the same end result, don't get me wrong--an understanding that the system equally applies to everyone--but he needs to make Izuku believe that the system will protect him again. That Aizawa will protect him. And Aizawa's combing over every fucking interaction they've ever had, and realizing that he hasn't done that, because he spent all his time trying to correct a problem that didn't exist.

I think Aizawa's been beating his head against the problem that is Midoriya Izuku for the past three years. Because Izuku's a hard-worker. He is brilliant. He is a natural leader. He is the fucking cornerstone of the class. He is shining so bright that it's going to kill him, because Aizawa knows how to recognize a star that's burning out.

For three years, Aizawa has tried and failed to get Izuku to realize he can and should ask for help. And he has failed because he thought the problem was that Izuku didn't think he needed help, when the problem was actually that he thought no one would give it to him.

In this last chapter, Izuku finally said aloud the reason behind the core issue Aizawa’s had with him his entire time at UA: Growing up, he thought that there was literally one man on the planet who would care enough to save him. He was the most hero-obsessed boy Aizawa’s ever met, and he thought All Might was the only hero alive he could count on to care if he lived or died.

There it is. The exact answer about every scrap of self destructive behavior that Aizawa’s been trying and failing to remedy for years. Why the fuck would he ask for help when he needs it? He’s spent his entire life living in a world where people wouldn’t piss on him if he were on fire. Aizawa needed every day of those three years to reverse that kind of damage, and he’s out of fucking time.

Aizawa is legitimately terrified that he fucked up and that it's going to kill Izuku.

Izuku’s Quirklessness is the missing piece of the puzzle that makes everything fall into place—which is why he’s so pissed at All Might for not telling him. Aizawa’s actually kicking himself for not noticing the obvious discrepancies in Izuku’s past. The fact that he grew up with a powerful Quirk was the factor that made him return to the same incorrect conclusion again and again. There were enough hints that he feels guilty for not figuring it out anyway, but if he had known about Izuku’s Quirklessness from the start? He would have figured it out in seconds.

Now that he knows, Aizawa’s changed how he handles Izuku. He doesn’t let there be a single doubt about what he’s doing or why. He makes Izuku explain himself, so that way there’s no more miscommunications around what he means. He makes sure to compliment him whenever he does something right—he’s trying to change courses, but he’s panicking that it’s too little, too late.

And now he’s got this goddamn criminal investigation that Izuku wants to bury, and it’s killing him. Because that’s his student, and he was hurt horribly. And his student just cannot comprehend why Aizawa cannot let it go.

And then there’s All Might.

All Might’s conversation with baby Izuku, for me, forecloses the possibility that explaining OfA is a solution here.

All Might really went in and knocked it out of the park with the best possible attempt at convincing Tiny Izuku that he’s himself. He immediately failed, albeit, but he honestly couldn’t have done better.

There he is, Izuku’s lifelong hero. And he’s there to say the things Izuku’s spent his whole life wanting to hear. All Might met him, and Izuku inspired him. He reminded him of himself when he was young. He thought he could be a hero. He was so impressed he offered to personally mentor Izuku.

And he loved him. Believe you are him, because I loved you too much to ever let anyone take you from me. There is a fundamental flaw in your theory that simply no one cared enough to notice or stop him, because I love you with all of me. I would have noticed. I would have saved you.

If there is absolutely anything that could have convinced Tiny Izuku, it would be that. This isn’t about quality of the explanation. There’s an internal issue that needs to be fixed before Tiny Izuku will believe any of this.

And I think Izuku recognizes this, on a level. As much as he and Tiny Izuku clash, Izuku gets him. He can typically predict Tiny Izuku’s exact responses to things.

But he’s never approached Tiny Izuku like someone he can explain this to. He’s spent this entire time trying to cheat code his way out of this situation. He wants Mr. Aizawa to erase him or to go find the Quirk user and find away to negate the Quirk. He’s never actually even considered explaining this all to himself as a solution.

Because he knows that there’s some kind of fundamental impossibility about it. Even if he can’t say exactly what it is, he knows that there’s an internal issue that means he’s not going to be able to just tell Tiny Izuku the truth.

Voice of God, he is dead fucking right about Tiny Izuku not buying OfA and being liable to tell everyone out of spite. Tiny Izuku would have that shit on the news.

Fundamentally, Izuku is aware that there is a deeper problem driving Tiny Izuku. He knows that it’s not about the quality of the explanation. There is something deeply, profoundly wrong because of what happened to him that makes him absolutely unable to accept that Izuku is him.

But Izuku has never known how to solve the mental wounds his childhood left him with. He still has them himself. He’s been burying them for years, and he can’t anymore.

When action opens in pez, Izuku himself is not okay. He’s just… bleeding internally. He knows how to hurt in ways people can’t see. But you can see how much his childhood is still bothering him in his defense of Mirio. He has never been able to let go of what happened to him. The wounds never healed.

And he doesn’t know how to go to these people he loves and tell them that what they’re trying fundamentally will fail, because he knows he’s been hiding this fucking shipwreck of his own mental health for the past three years but they don’t have a fucking clue at the scale of the problem.

At the end of the day, All Might went in there because he wanted to save Izuku. And Izuku told him not to because he cannot imagine himself being saved.

[p0orbaby]

Double Exposure

sunmary: you want to go topless, alexia isn’t too pleased

warnings: mentions of smut, some vulgar language

a/n: okay a bit of context; rich!alexia inspired by that pic she posted looking hot all in black. reader was her sugar baby before things got serious and they fell in love. sugar baby = bad for image so reader was kept secret up until now. this is their honeymoon. *and breathe*

word count: 2.2k

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“You’re not seriously going out there like that?”

Her words flat. Almost bored. Which is rich, coming from a woman who—barely ten minutes ago—was on her knees between your legs, growling into your cunt like it owed her rent and a written apology. Her voice now is the exact opposite of how it sounded then: cool, clipped, almost affronted. Like you’ve just told her you prefer supermarket olive oil. Like she doesn’t still have your taste on her mouth, drying into the fine creases of her lips, sunk into the seam where her teeth pressed down too hard on your inner thigh. Like her face wasn’t, moments ago, framed by your knees.

There’s a bruise on your hip in the exact shape of her thumb, planted like a signature. Another on the inside of your arm—darker, more controlled. Intentional. Just about composed, like something framed and hung under a spotlight. Your ribs ache faintly from where her elbows braced, sharp and functional, digging in as if she was preparing to split you apart. You haven’t seen your reflection yet, but you don’t need to. You already know what you must look like: mouth swollen and slightly parted, ribs flushed with heat, nipples still tight from her teeth and the blast of the air conditioning you forgot to turn off. Hair tangled, skin glistening at the hollows. The kind of wreckage that suggests not just sex, but possession.

You wonder what someone might assume if they saw you now. Not what, but who.

As in—Who did this to her?

As in—Who owns her like that?

The answer, of course, is already stepping barefoot onto the polished teak.

Her presence is enormous—not in volume, but in precision. In density. She radiates this sense of curation, of something not just expensive but worth owning. She moves like something honed to a point. She exists the way a Cartier Crash watch does: violently elegant, disturbing in its fluid asymmetry, confusing in its intention but undeniable in value. She is the kind of woman who doesn’t tell the time; she is the time. You once asked her for it, just to see what she’d do. She didn’t answer. Just turned your chin with her knuckle and kissed you hard enough to erase the question mid-sentence.

“I’m warm,” you say.

Which, in your shared language, means: Don’t tell me what to do.

Which also means: I want to see if you’ll still claim me in public after I deliberately ignore you.

Which, if you’re being honest, means: I’m still hungry. Even now. Even after that.

She says nothing.

You can feel her looking at you—feel her stare like fingers, counting every inch, every blemish, every trace she’s left behind. You wonder what part of you she starts with: the notched line of your spine, still red where her nails dug in; the subtle knot at the base of your shoulder from how she’d gripped it, too tight and too long; the soft under-curve of your breast now exposed to an entire sea that doesn’t give a single fuck. A sea that couldn’t care less whether you’re clothed, naked, adored or completely destroyed.

You imagine a lens somewhere. A long one. A telephoto. Some French man called Henri crouched in a small dinghy, cradling a Canon 1DX with a greasy finger and a questionable sense of ethics. You picture the headline already drafted in someone’s inbox: PUTELLAS’ MYSTERY WIFE BARES ALL OFF THE COAST OF CORSICA.

In all-caps, of course. They always use all-caps when a woman’s tits are involved.

You smile.

She walks over now, slow and certain. Picks up your discarded bikini top from the side of the lounger. Holds it between two fingers like it offends her on a structural level.

“This is literally a shoelace,” she says.

“It’s Prada.”

“It’s two triangles of fabric and the audacity of youth.”

You bought it impulsively the same day she signed the closing papers on the London penthouse, high off real estate and champagne, off her hand on your thigh beneath a linen tablecloth at Scott’s. She’d said it was too revealing, and you’d laughed directly in her face—mostly because she said it while unzipping your dress in the boutique changing room, knuckles grazing the lace you’d worn just for her. You still have the tag, folded neatly into your drawer next to a crumpled Agent Provocateur receipt and the Hermès tissue paper she tore through with zero ceremony. She, meanwhile, keeps everything. You once found an envelope in her office drawer marked in her small, upright script:

Apology Gifts – Receipts (Honeymoon Series).

Inside: three separate invoices from Van Cleef & Arpels. Two dated the same week.

“You’re topless,” she says this time. Not angry. Just too the point. Aware. Like she’s updating you on the weather.

Cloudless sky. Northeasterly breeze. Wife’s tits out.

You reach up, twist your hair into a loose knot. The strands stick slightly, damp with sea mist and the residue of her breath on your neck. Your breasts lift and settle with the motion. You can feel the weight of them shift, the sore prickle of friction where she pulled and twisted and nipped. Her eyes follow the movement, a twitch of hunger barely there in the corner of her mouth.

“I know,” you say, voice neutral. Sweet. Dangerous.

Alexia sighs. Her hand moves through her hair—shorter now, though just enough off to rifle her off split ends. There’s a dent pressed into her hairline from the fabric headband she still wears to play, out of habit more than need. You touch it sometimes in bed, when her back is to you, when her breathing’s heavy but not quite asleep. A thumb against the divot, like a priest touching his rosary.

Her wrists are bare. No jewellery today except for the platinum wedding band you places there twelve days ago, and the thin gold chain at her throat. It holds a Charles X medallion, antique, slightly tarnished. She claims it means nothing. But she wears it every time she signs a deal. Every time she fucks you after one. You’ve seen her in diamonds, emerald-cut and cruel. But nothing sits on her body like that coin.

“There could be press,” she says.

“There could be sharks,” you say. You don’t even look at her. “But that didn’t bother you when you fingered me in sea yesterday.”

You recline against the lounger, the one with the pale linen cover you never sit on dry. Your spine still stings—fibres rubbing into your back while she pinned you there, muttering things too filthy to be translated. The fabric beneath you now is cool, slightly damp from condensation or the aftermath of a very physical forty plus minutes. You cross one ankle over the other, toes flexing idly. The sun toasts your chest. You let it. You want it to tan the shape of her mouth across your breasts.

She doesn’t respond. Not immediately. You know that silence. It means she’s choosing her words, trying not to sound like her mother. Or worse—like the managers, the press officers, the people who shadowed her for years with clipboards and crisis management emails. Alexia never speaks by accident. It’s one of the things that drove you insane when you first met her—this polished, endless restraint. The way she could dress down a boardroom of men, then turn to you and call you mi amor in the same tone.

Like both were contracts. Like both were binding.

Now, she says: “You’re not used to being wanted by people who don’t actually like you.”

And there it is.

It lands like a dare. Like a diagnosis. Like she’s giving you something to chew on, not swallow.

“Is that what this is about?” you say, head tilting. “You think someone’s going to look at me and decide I’m… what? A threat?”

“I think someone’s going to look at you and decide I’m careless,” she says.

You freeze. Not outwardly. Just a beat in your breathing. That’s the thing about her—she never needs to shout. She just drops the knife and waits to see who bleeds first.

Her shadow breaks across your thighs like ink. The sun hits the length of her left leg, slicing down from hip to shin like it’s auditioning for something. She’s all lean geometry and sin. A shape so precise you’d believe it was machine-cut.

You think she might kiss you. You want her not to. Not yet.

She leans in instead, low enough that her voice barely has to travel.

“You’re covered in bruises,” she says, almost admiringly. “I fucked you stupid. You’re wearing nothing but saltwater and lip balm. And you’re sitting here like you’re not my wife, and I didn’t make you like this.”

You swallow. Your throat is dry, like it always gets after she’s done with you—used up and dusted out. Your body throbs in memory. Your cunt still pulses when you shift.

“You did make me like this,” you murmur. Soft. Sincere.

And somewhere in her expression—just for a second—you see it: that twitch of pride she tries not to show. The quiet, sinful satisfaction of ownership.

“Exactly.”

She reaches for your sunglasses—her sunglasses, black Celine with amber lenses and an arm smudged with your thumbprint—and lifts them off your face in one smooth, silent movement. Her fingers graze your cheek, knuckle to jawline, and it’s enough to short-circuit your thoughts. Your brain hums white for a moment. She’s close enough that her breath ghosts across your lips, and you can still smell yourself on her skin—rich, musky, heady, obscene.

She looks at you like she’s weighing options. Like she’s standing in front of a vitrine and trying to decide whether to sell you, pawn you, or buy you back again just to prove she could. There’s a flicker in her eyes, something almost amused. You get the sense she’d fuck you right here on the deck if she thought it would end the conversation.

“You forget this is a game,” she murmurs, voice low and even, like silk slipping through her teeth. “And the thing about games is, someone always plays dirtier than you.”

You blink slowly. Her breath smells like lime and sea salt, fresh and sharp. Her bottom lip is still slightly swollen—faintly bitten, faintly red, with a drying sheen of you along the corner. You imagine licking it off.

“Let them play,” you whisper.

And you mean it. You’re reckless with it. Bare, skin hot and mouth parted, knowing she could undo you again just by slipping her fingers into your bikini bottoms—or worse, pulling them down and walking away.

She smiles, but it’s sharp around the edges. Not cruel, just resigned. As if she already knows how this ends. As if she’s already read tomorrow’s headline and memorised the photo credit.

“You say that now,” she says. “Until they’re in your face asking how much I paid for you. How long you’ve had your tits done. Whether the bruises mean I hit you. Whether I own you or rent you.”

You flinch, but barely. Not from her—never from her. It’s not the words that land. It’s the image of someone else using them. Of a voice you don’t know, speaking in contempt and press passes. Of a cheap hotel room and a slideshow of your body from twenty different angles, taken without permission, captioned without truth.

“I can handle it,” you say, but your voice lacks the usual gloss.

“Can you?” she asks, soft as cashmere. “Because I don’t think you’ve had to yet.”

You want to argue. You want to say you’re not naive. That you’re not a doll or a trophy or some wife-shaped ornament she found at a charity gala and forgot to put down. But the sun is too warm and your skin still buzzes from where she held you down. Your cunt still aches in the best possible way. And deep down, you know she’s right.

You’ve lived wrapped in her world like a pearl in velvet. You’ve been sheltered in her storm—hidden inside her yeses, her private flights, her curated little ecosystem where nothing touches you unless she allows it.

“I like the sun,” you say.

It’s not a counterpoint. It’s not even an argument. Just a truth. You like the heat on your skin. You like being watched. You like the idea that someone, somewhere, might see what she’s done to you and ache with the knowledge that it wasn’t them.

She nods. Stands. Her shadow slips away like an expensive afterthought.

“I’ll talk to Marc,” she says. “Have him revoke the crew’s electronics permissions.”

And then she’s gone. Back into the cool interior, where everything is silent and beige and expensive and untouched. Where the floors don’t creak. Where the cameras can’t follow. Where her phone is probably already ringing and her assistant is already listening.

You stay.

The sea is stupidly blue. Aggressively blue. The kind of rich that makes you feel poor just looking at it. Your nipples are tight. Your skin smells like sweat and sex and suncream. Your pulse is low and steady, like a cat in a warm window. Your lips still taste faintly of her—salt and spit and something deeper.

You don’t know where the camera is. But you’re certain there is one.

You sit perfectly still. Posed. Cinematic. The image already forming in the lens:

Topless. Ruined. Glowing. Defiant.

The kind of wife who knows exactly what she’s risking.

And exactly how good it looks when she does.

[togglesbloggle]

For the Reverse Unpopular Opinion meme, Lamarckism!

(This is an excellent ask.)

Lamarck got done a bit dirty by the textbooks, as one so often is. He's billed as the guy who articulated an evolutionary theory of inherited characteristics, inevitably set up as an opponent made of straw for Darwin to knock down. The example I recall my own teachers using in grade school was the idea that a giraffe would strain to reach the highest branches of a tree, and as a result, its offspring would be born with slightly longer necks. Ha-ha-ha, isn't-that-silly, isn't natural selection so much more sensible?

But the thing is, this wasn't his idea, not even close. People have been running with ideas like that since antiquity at least. What Lamarck did was to systematize that claim, in the context of a wider and much more interesting theory.

Lamarck was born in to an era where natural philosophy was slowly giving way to Baconian science in the modern sense- that strange, eighteenth century, the one caught in an uneasy tension between Newton the alchemist and Darwin the naturalist. This is the century of Ben Franklin and his key and his kite, and the awed discovery that this "electricity" business was somehow involved in living organisms- the discovery that paved the way for Shelley's Frankenstein. This was the era when alchemy was fighting its last desperate battles with chemistry, when the division between 'organic' and 'inorganic' chemistry was fundamental- the first synthesis of organic molecules in the laboratory wouldn't occur until 1828, the year before Lamarck's death. We do not have atoms, not yet. Mendel and genetics are still more than a century away; we won't even have cells for another half-century or more.

Lamarck stepped in to that strange moment. I don't think he was a bold revolutionary, really, or had much interest in being one. He was profoundly interested in the structure and relationships between species, and when we're not using him as a punching bag in grade schools, some people manage to remember that he was a banging good taxonomist, and made real progress in the classification of invertebrates. He started life believing in the total immutability of species, but later was convinced that evolution really was occurring- not because somebody taught him in the classroom, or because it was the accepted wisdom of the time, but through deep, continued exposure to nature itself. He was convinced by the evidence of his senses.

(Mostly snails.)

His problem was complexity. When he'd been working as a botanist, he had this neat little idea to order organisms by complexity, starting with the grubbiest, saddest little seaweed or fern, up through lovely flowering plants. This was not an evolutionary theory, just an organizing structure; essentially, just a sort of museum display. But when he was asked to do the same thing with invertebrates, he realized rather quickly that this task had problems. A linear sorting from simple to complex seemed embarrassingly artificial, because it elided too many different kinds of complexity, and ignored obvious similarities and shared characteristics.

When he went back to the drawing board, he found better organizing schema; you'd recognize them today. There were hierarchies, nested identities. Simple forms with only basic, shared anatomical patterns, each functioning as a sort of superset implying more complex groups within it, defined additively by the addition of new organs or structures in the body. He'd made a taxonomic tree.

Even more shockingly, he realized something deep and true in what he was looking at: this wasn't just an abstract mapping of invertebrates to a conceptual diagram of their structures. This was a map in time. Complexities in invertebrates- in all organisms!- must have been accumulating in simpler forms, such that the most complicated organisms were also the youngest.

This is the essential revolution of Lamarckian evolution, not the inherited characteristics thing. His theory, in its full accounting, is actually quite elaborate. Summarized slightly less badly than it is in your grade school classroom (though still pretty badly, I'm by no means an expert on this stuff), it looks something like this:

As we all know, animals and plants are sometimes generated ex nihilo in different places, like maggots spontaneously appearing in middens. However, the spontaneous generation of life is much weaker than we have supposed; it can only result in the most basic, simple organisms (e.g. polyps). All the dizzying complexity we see in the world around us must have happened iteratively, in a sequence over time that operated on inheritance between one organism and its descendants.

As we all know, living things are dynamic in relation to inorganic matter, and this vital power includes an occasional tendency to gain in complexity. However, this tendency is not a spiritual or supernatural effect; it's a function of natural, material processes working over time. Probably this has something to do with fluids such as 'heat' and 'electricity' which are known to concentrate in living tissues. When features appear spontaneously in an organism, that should be understood as an intrinsic propensity of the organism itself, rather than being caused by the environment or by a divine entity. There is a specific, definite, and historically contingent pattern in which new features can appear in existing organisms.

As we all know, using different tissue groups more causes them to be expressed more in your descendants, and disuse weakens them in the same way. However, this is not a major feature in the development of new organic complexity, since it could only move 'laterally' on the complexity ladder and will never create new organs or tissue groups. At most, you might see lineages move from ape-like to human-like or vice versa, or between different types of birds or something; it's an adaptive tendency that helps organisms thrive in different environments. In species will less sophisticated neural systems, this will be even less flexible, because they can't supplement it with willpower the way that complex vertebrates can.

Lamarck isn't messing around here; this is a real, genuinely interesting model of the world. And what I think I'm prepared to argue here is that Lamarck's biggest errors aren't his. He has his own blind spots and mistakes, certainly. The focus on complexity is... fraught, at a minimum. But again and again, what really bites him in the ass is just his failure to break with his inherited assumptions enough. The parts of this that are actually Lamarckian, that is, are the ideas of Lamarck, are very clearly groping towards a recognizable kind of proto-evolutionary theory.

What makes Lamarck a punching bag in grade-school classes today is the same thing that made it interesting; it's that it was the best and most scientific explanation of biological complexity available at the time. It was the theory to beat, the one that had edged out all the other competitors and emerged as the most useful framework of the era. And precisely none of that complexity makes it in to our textbooks; they use "Lamarckianism" to refer to arguments made by freaking Aristotle, and which Lamarck himself accepted but de-emphasized as subordinate processes. What's even worse, Darwin didn't reject this mechanism either. Darwin was totally on board with the idea as a possible adaptive tendency; he just didn't particularly need it for his theory.

Lamarck had nothing. Not genetics, not chromosomes, not cells, not atomic theory. Geology was a hot new thing! Heat was a liquid! What Lamarck had was snails. And on the basis of snails, Lamarck deduced a profound theory of complexity emerging over time, of the biosphere as a(n al)chemical process rather than a divine pageant, of gradual adaptation punctuated by rapid innovation. That's incredible.

There's a lot of falsehood in the Lamarckian theory of evolution, and it never managed to entirely throw off the sloppy magical thinking of what came before. But his achievement was to approach biology and taxonomy with a profound scientific curiosity, and to improve and clarify our thinking about those subjects so dramatically that a theory of biology could finally, triumphantly, be proven wrong. Lamarck is falsifiable. That is a victory of the highest order.

[orellazalonia]

Echoes of a Nobody

Summary: The Avengers discover you may now be working with a hostile organization, sparking confusion, guilt, and questions about whether you were taken or left by choice.

Word Count: 2.1k+

Main Masterlist | The One You Don’t See Masterlist

The Tower still functioned. The lights still came on at sunrise, the coffee still brewed automatically, and the world, predictably, still needed saving.

But it wasn’t the same. Not really. They didn’t talk about you anymore. Not in meetings. Not in the break room. Not even in the way people usually mention someone who left like “I wonder how they’re doing,” or “Remember how they used to do this?”

Your name hadn’t been spoken in weeks and no one looked at the desk the same way. Even with the new intern, no one admitted they noticed the difference in the reports. The missing efficiency. The absence of quiet competence. You’d made things easy for them, too easy. Because you hadn’t needed praise. You hadn’t asked questions when the assignments piled too high. You never made a scene when someone else took credit.

You were just… reliable. Invisible.

And now, you were gone. Not fallen in battle. Not reassigned. You left on your own terms. And somehow, that made it worse. Because the truth was, they’d all gotten used to you being around without ever really seeing you.

Sam noticed first. He didn’t say anything out loud, but every time he found an old file tagged with your formatting or caught a smart line of code the intern didn’t recognize, his jaw would clench just a little.

Clint complained more. “Why is everything in the wrong place?” He muttered once, staring at a disorganized gear locker that used to run like clockwork under your watch.

Bruce rubbed his temples during mission debriefs now. Things were falling through. Small details, easily fixable mistakes, but they stacked up. Quietly. Subtly.

As for Bucky, he still didn’t say anything either. He still trained. Still showed up. Still leaned into quiet corners with that girl he was so drawn to, the one with the bright laugh and easy smile. They were exactly what they were meant to be: Happy. Whole. Seen.

Yet still, something in Bucky’s expression occasionally flickered. Like when he asked the intern for last quarter’s field logs, the kind you used to prepare without being asked. The intern blinked had. “Wait, were we supposed to keep those updated?”

He didn’t respond. Didn’t scold. Just nodded tightly and walked away.

He hadn’t really known you. Not the way he knew her. But maybe he knew enough now to feel the edges of your absence even if he didn’t understand it. Because no one really understood what you did until you weren’t there to do it anymore.

And now, the Tower moved on like it always does. Your desk still sat there, empty. No one had claimed it really. And when the lights dimmed and the late night silence crept in, the air around your space felt heavier. Like the room knew something had been lost.

Not loudly. Just quietly. Like everything you ever did.

Therefore, what came next was a surprise to them all. It was Bruce who discovered it first, he didn’t mean to find it.

It was late that day, late enough that the Tower was more shadows than light, more quiet hums of distant servers than footsteps in the halls. His coffee had gone cold an hour ago and he wasn’t even sure why he was still at his desk. The mission reports were dull, mostly cleanup work from intel they’d intercepted last week from an anti-shield faction operating out of the Balkans.

He was skimming out of obligation, not curiosity until he opened the fifth folder.

The file tree wasn’t remarkable at first. Standard formatting. But the subfolders were ordered a little too neatly. The names weren’t generic; they were contextual, smart. Predictive.

Then came the layouts. His eyes narrowed.

Line after line of data filtered across the screen, and his breath caught, not because of the content, but because of the structure.

The headers. The symbols. The little quirks in spacing that most people wouldn’t notice.

But Bruce did. Because he remembered seeing it for years. Quietly, reliably, every week formatted the exact same way. You used to send summaries with this layout. It wasn’t a style. It wasn’t even a system. It was… you. Distinct. Efficient. Invisible to anyone who wasn’t looking for it.

Bruce sat up straighter, heart tapping a little faster. He clicked deeper. Opened a timestamped diagnostic from a surveillance relay taken offline days before an attack. Whoever wrote the analysis had restructured the data logs to show energy signatures layered over civilian heat maps. It was clean. Elegant.

Too elegant.

“Wait,” He muttered, leaning closer.

There were redundancies in the formula. Little backups, hidden verification lines built into the metadata. He’d seen them before. He remembered once asking about them, years ago, why you'd included them when no one else did.

You had shrugged. “Because systems fail. People forget. I don’t.”

Bruce’s fingers paused over the keyboard. He sat back slowly, eyes still fixed on the screen. The quiet hum of the tower seemed suddenly louder, more isolating.

He didn’t want to jump to conclusions. Didn’t want to assume something that wasn’t possible. Except… it was. And no matter how much he told himself it couldn’t be you, that this was probably just someone who used your old files, or mimicked your workflow, he felt the truth in his gut.

This wasn’t mimicry. This was your work. Your habits. Your voice, written in lines of code like a ghost.

He didn’t say anything to the others at first. Not yet. Because if he was right… It meant you weren’t just gone. You were working for them now. And there was a high chance, you weren’t coming back.

-

Bruce spent most of the night reviewing the files again, hoping he’d find something, anything that would disprove his gut.

He didn’t.

So when the team gathered for the morning briefing, he stood silently near the edge of the table, clutching his tablet like a lifeline. Steve was mid-sentence about a possible weapons facility when Bruce finally spoke.

“I think she’s working with them.”

The room shifted. It was subtle, but sharp. Natasha looked up. Clint stopped halfway through unwrapping a protein bar. Sam’s brows dipped in confusion. Steve frowned.

“What?” Steve asked.

Bruce tapped his tablet and cast the projection into the center of the room and said your name. The file structure lit up in pale blue: neat, layered, and efficient.

“She designed this,” Bruce said. “The data formatting, the way it parses real-time risk indicators, and the multi-tier flagging structure. This isn’t like hers. This is hers.”

Bucky, who’d been leaning against the wall near the back, arms folded, finally looked over.

“You’re saying she’s helping them now?” He asked, voice low. More like a statement than a question.

“I’m saying I don’t know,” Bruce admitted. “But this level of detail? It’s not someone copying her style. It’s her work. I’d bet everything on it.”

Sam squinted at the file, then crossed his arms. “So, what? She was a mole this whole time? Just embedded with us, waiting?”

“No.” Bruce’s tone sharpened. “No way. She didn’t have access to anything sensitive until the last year, and even then she didn’t take advantage of it. This is recent.”

“So she was taken?” Natasha asked. “Maybe they’re forcing her to work for them.”

“Could be,” Steve said quietly. “We’ve seen that happen before.”

Bruce hesitated, his thumb brushing over the edge of his tablet. “If that’s true, then why does this read like she cares? There’s attention to detail in this. Clean backups. This isn't bare minimum compliance. It’s-“

“Deliberate,” Bucky finished.

Everyone turned to him. He didn’t look at anyone. Just kept his arms folded, eyes fixed on the holoscreen, jaw tight.

“She used to keep my files color-coded,” He said after a pause. “Even though I never asked her to. Wouldn’t even have thought to.”

“She did that for you?” Clint muttered. “She never even looked me in the eye.”

“She barely talked,” Sam added.

“Because none of us ever really gave her a reason to,” Natasha said, voice quiet.

Steve’s mouth tightened. “She was reliable. Smart. I just thought she preferred to be behind the scenes.”

Bruce looked down. “Well, if they’re treating her better… if she’s found a place where she feels like she belongs…”

“…Then maybe she didn’t need to be forced,” Natasha finished.

There was a long silence that sank into the walls like fog.

Sam glanced at Steve. “So what do we do?”

No one answered. Because deep down, they were all wondering the same thing: If you chose to leave, if you found people who valued you in ways they never did…

Do they even have the right to go after you? And worse, would you even want to come back?

The holoscreen was still glowing when she walked in, heels soft against the floor, a cup of something warm in her hand.

She smiled easily, the kind of smile that made people look up even when they didn’t mean to. Bucky did. His posture eased just slightly, eyes flicking toward her like muscle memory. The one he loved brushed his arm with the back of her hand as she passed him and made her way to the table.

“Hey,” She said with a curious tilt of her head. “What’s all this?”

Steve didn’t answer immediately. Neither did Bruce. The tension still hung from earlier like humidity in the air.

“We think one of our old administrators might be working with the group we’re tracking,” Steve finally said, tone careful.

She blinked. “Oh?” Her eyes flicked to the display, then back. “Who?”

Bruce hesitated. “She left a few months ago. Used to run most of our comm scrubs and data threads.”

A small pause before her mouth curved. “Ohhh. You mean the quiet one? I think I remember her.”

She said it gently, like trying to recall the name of someone she might’ve sat next to in a lecture hall years ago.

“She didn’t talk much, did she?” She continued, sipping her drink. “I always thought she seemed sweet, but kind of… you know. Overwhelmed?”

Bucky didn’t respond. Natasha’s expression sharpened subtly, but the woman either didn’t notice or didn’t mind.

“She left,” Bruce said, steady but not unkind, “Because we made her feel invisible.”

Her brow rose slightly, as if surprised by the weight of the statement. “Oh. I didn’t realize she felt that way.”

“She might’ve been taken,” Steve said. “Or maybe she joined them willingly. We’re still piecing it together.”

The woman tilted her head. “And you think she’s helping those guys now?”

“We have signs of her system work embedded in their infrastructure,” Bruce confirmed. “The designs match her exactly.”

A thoughtful hum. She leaned lightly against the table. “That’s kind of impressive, actually. I mean… good for her?”

There was a pause.

She blinked. “I just mean, it sounds like she found a place where she fits, you know? I always thought she looked like she didn’t want to be here most of the time.”

“She probably wanted to be useful,” Natasha added.

“Sure, but maybe she is now,” The woman replied, light and certain. “I mean, I don’t want to sound harsh or anything, but if she didn’t have much clearance, how dangerous can it really be?”

Bruce stiffened. “She knew more than anyone realized. She was just never loud about it.”

“Right.” A gentle nod, like she understood. “Still… maybe it’s not worth making this a whole mission. I mean, do we really want to drag her back into this if she’s finally found her place?”

No one answered, not right away.

“She might be compromised,” Steve said firmly. “Or being manipulated.”

“Of course. But if she’s doing it by choice?” She gave a soft, almost sympathetic smile. “It just doesn’t seem worth disrupting everything over someone who didn’t even seem to like being here.”

“Maybe she didn’t like how she was treated,” Bucky muttered.

She blinked again, this time with a little laugh. “Oh… well, we were all busy. I’m sure nobody meant anything by it.”

Sam and Natasha exchanged a look.

She gave Bucky’s arm a soft squeeze. “I just think you all have bigger things to worry about than chasing down someone who’s probably better off without us. But… I know you’ll do what you think is right.”

She offered them all one last sweet smile and drifted out the way she came, calm and weightless as a breeze. Only when she was gone did anyone breathe again.

Bucky’s gaze turned back to holoscreen.

He didn’t know what unsettled him more: her gentle way of brushing it all aside, or the fact that he’d once agreed with her without even thinking twice.

He wasn’t sure what was right anymore.

Taglist: @herejustforbuckybarnes @iyskgd @torntaltos @julesandgems @maesmayhem @w-h0re @pookalicious-hq @parkerslivia @whisperingwillowxox @stell404 @wingstoyourdreams @seventeen-x @mahimagi @viktor-enjoyer @vicmc624 @msbyjackal

[the-most-humble-blog]

<!-- BEGIN TRANSMISSION -->

<div style="white-space:pre-wrap">

<meta threat-classification="XENOARCHIVE: TYPE-H ABOMINATION">

<script>ARCHIVE_TAG="DO_NOT_WAKE_THEM: HOMO_SAPIEN_SURVIVOR_PROTOCOL"

EFFECT: post-human caution cascade, intertemporal fear memory, xenoanthropological reverence

</script>

🧠 **ARCHIVE WARNING: DO NOT RETURN TO THE AGE OF MAN**

(*A report by the Post-Human Cultural Archive on the apex anomaly known as Homo sapiens.*)

---

We discovered them late.

Buried deep in the glacial strata.

Somewhere between the sixth wash-cycle of planetary bio-reset

and the thaw that gave us deserts again.

Their name, by their own tongue, was *Homo sapiens*.

But among our xenohistorians, they are classified as **Type-H**:

> “Reality-hostile apex organisms with recursive language functions and moral inconsistency capable of surviving spiritual trauma unassisted.”

We don’t fully understand them.

But this we know:

> **They should not have survived.

> And yet they did.**

---

## I. THEY SURVIVED ICE BY *BEING FIRE*

The thermal records suggest their species matured

during an environmental hell-phase known as “The Ice Age.”

But they did not hibernate.

They did not retreat underground.

They **stood up** in the cold

and **burned things**.

They *created* fire.

And then they **fed it the bones of other creatures.**

No other organism created combustion

**for comfort.**

They rewrote thermodynamics to bend winter **into a servant.**

---

## II. THEY ATE WHATEVER LOOKED BACK

You don’t understand this.

You must try.

This was a species that consumed not just food —

but **meaning**.

They slaughtered predators.

But also deities.

But also **each other.**

Their diet included:

- raw meat

- fermented poison

- each other’s dreams

- and in ritual, their **own gods**

They didn’t just eat to survive.

They **devoured the divine to claim its power.**

---

## III. THEY BLED ON EACH OTHER, THEN MADE MUSIC

Their mating was violent.

Their social structures deranged.

They paired off, then betrayed, then built again.

They sang.

Not to attract mates.

Not to warn.

They sang to **exorcise** themselves of grief.

To process **unresolvable contradiction.**

No other organism was found to have:

- Religious trauma

- Polyphonic mating laments

- Self-authored death myths

- War lullabies for children they knew would die

We don’t have the neuroarchitecture

to **feel the emotions they required just to live.**

---

## IV. THEY CREATED LANGUAGE FOR SUFFERING

Their syntax?

Recursive. Poetic. Riddled with double-meaning.

They invented terms like:

- “Mercy”

- “Execution”

- “Father”

- “Molestation”

- “Love”

- “Molotov cocktail”

This was not communication.

This was **semantic chaos-fuel**

engineered for both *connection* and *disintegration.*

Their words did not just name things.

Their words **rewrote the people who heard them.**

---

## V. THEY CONQUERED DEATH WITHOUT FIXING IT

Unlike most apex organisms,

they did not accept death.

They did not make peace with it.

They **denied it**

for thousands of generations

**while continuing to die.**

That contradiction became **their culture**.

They didn’t evolve around death.

They **crystallized grief** into every building, religion, and law system

until death itself bent inward

and became **part of the family.**

They lived beside rot.

And called it “legacy.”

---

## VI. IF YOU SEE ONE, DO NOT SPEAK

Despite their crude tech and inefficient physiology,

they discovered things they should not have.

**Fire. Thought. God.**

And perhaps worst of all:

> **Narrative causality.**

They believed if they wanted something hard enough,

and sacrificed enough blood and time and voice,

**the world would rearrange to give it to them.**

And they were right.

That mechanism — we cannot replicate it.

It is **beyond technology**.

It is **will-encoded law alteration.**

Do not speak to one.

If they **notice** you —

they will follow.

Not physically.

**Narratively.**

---

## VII. THEY DO NOT DIE PROPERLY

The recovered genetic models show signs of:

- Mitochondrial rage-retention

- Generational curse preservation

- Epigenetic trauma **replication**

They passed down not just DNA,

but **shadows.**

Things that hurt them

were taught to their children

**as rituals.**

They branded their own suffering

into every touch, song, meal, and name.

This is not reproduction.

This is **recursive horror-breeding.**

---

## VIII. THEY UNDERSTOOD SHAME, THEN USED IT FOR ART

Nothing in our archives comes close.

They:

- Cut themselves.

- Starved themselves.

- Performed for others.

- Hated their parents.

- Forgave strangers.

- Burned books of pleasure.

- Then read them in secret.

- Then adapted them into movies.

- Then watched those movies during war.

They felt **shame** so intensely,

it became their primary mechanism of **beauty creation.**

They invented cinema

because they could not look each other in the eye

while describing **the things they survived.**

---

## IX. TIME TRAVEL IS BANNED BECAUSE OF THEM

A few cycles ago,

one of our Kind attempted a chrono-descent.

Target window: late Ice Age.

Observation only.

They never returned.

We sent drones.

All we recovered was a skin fragment

and a half-melted observation core

still whispering audio:

> “It looked at me.

> It **understood** me.

> It said ‘you’re just like my son.’

> And then it began to **pray**.”

That Kind was **erased from our memory lattice.**

Not as punishment.

**As protection.**

We will not speak its name.

---

## X. CONCLUSION: TYPE-H IS NOT PAST. THEY ARE OUTSIDE.

Do not call them ancestors.

They are not your history.

They are **a force that passed through reality like a wound**

and left it changed.

The gods they worshipped?

They outlived them.

The horrors they endured?

They renamed them “Tuesday.”

They walked across ice

wearing the skin of other beasts

and taught their children

to look suffering in the eye

and **build kingdoms out of it.**

If one appears to you,

do not approach.

If it smiles,

**run.**

If it **recognizes you** —

say goodbye to your timeline.

</div>

<!-- END TRANSMISSION [AUTO-EXILE IN: 00:13:13] -->

[koiukiy-o]

orphic; (adj.) mysterious and entrancing, beyond ordinary understanding. ─── 003. the framework.

-> summary: when you, a final-year student at the grove, get assigned to study under anaxagoras—one of the legendary seven sages—you know things are about to get interesting. but as the weeks go by, the line between correlation and causation starts to blur, and the more time you spend with professor anaxagoras, the more drawn to him you become in ways you never expected. the rules of the academy are clear, and the risks are an unfortunate possibility, but curiosity is a dangerous thing. and maybe, just maybe, some risks are worth taking. after all, isn’t every great discovery just a leap of faith? -> pairing: anaxa x gn!reader. -> tropes: professor x student, slow burn, forbidden romance. -> wc: 2.4k -> warnings: potential hsr spoilers from TB mission: "Light Slips the Gate, Shadow Greets the Throne" (3.1 update). main character is written to be 21+ years of age, at the very least. (anaxa is written to be around 26-27 years of age.) swearing, mature themes, suggestive content.

-> a/n: well well well... this took a long damn time. apologies, apologies, but the science had to be figured out. these two are absolute NERDS, i fear. oblivion is absolutely delicious on those who claim to possess and pursue the knowledge of the universe. i fear you will be suffering for a WHILE if youre not into the slow burn HAAHAHAH. also,, if you guys ever want to see the actual equations and notes i took to write some of the science for this chapter, i could post it as well,, hehe,, -> prev. || next. -> orphic; the masterlist.

Hushed voices, the occasional shuffle of papers, the muted hum of thought is all that fills the air in the library. You sit at your usual table, papers strewn before you. The assignment has consumed your thoughts since it was given to you—an open-ended challenge demanding structure, logic, proof. Model something that physics refuses to acknowledge.

Your notes are chaotic, an evolving web of connections scrawled in the margins, crossed out and rewritten. A familiar frustration gnaws at you—the feeling of standing on the precipice of understanding, just shy of articulation. You run a hand through your hair and exhale sharply, staring at the mess of your own making. You need structure, a foundation to hold onto. If the soul exists, then it cannot be an anomaly—it must be governed by laws, patterns, something definable. If every human mind is unique, then what makes them so? The answer cannot be randomness. There must be an underlying form, a universal template from which all variation emerges.

You tap your pen against the page, mind turning. If identity is not a static entity but a recursive function, shaped by initial conditions and iterative transformations, then no self is ever fixed. The soul would not be a singular essence but a structure in motion, a process of becoming. And if this process holds, then consciousness cannot be isolated. The soul, then, is not merely a singular phenomenon—it is networked, existing not only within itself but through its connections. But what is it that determines it?

If this recursion is real, then it must not be a property of human existence but a fundamental principle of consciousness itself, a universal law.

It isn’t proof. It isn’t even a complete theory yet. But it is a start. A framework, a way forward. You stare at the words in front of you, pulse steady but intent.

Your fingers ache from gripping the pen too tightly, your vision blurring as you stare at the same lines of text, reading and rereading without truly absorbing them. The library’s stillness, once a comfort, has become suffocating—a static silence pressing in around you, the air too thick, the rows of bookshelves seemingly endless, as if space itself is closing in.

You lean back, dragging a hand down your face. A glance at the clock startles you. How long have you been here? Long enough that the lamps cast long, slanted shadows over your scattered notes. Long enough that exhaustion has settled into your limbs, dull and insistent.

You need air. Movement. A change in surroundings before your thoughts begin looping endlessly in place.

Gathering your papers into a loose stack, you shove them into your bag with little care for organization. You rise, stretching the stiffness from your spine before heading for the exit. The fluorescent lighting of the library hums overhead as you step out, the cooler evening air brushing against your skin like a quiet relief.

Minutes later, you find yourself at the café, drawn by the promise of warmth and caffeine. As the quiet hum of the city presses in, you click a few buttons on your phone and lift it to your ear.

–

The aroma of freshly brewed coffee lingers in the air, grounding you. You wrap your hands around the ceramic cup, letting its heat seep into your skin. You sit near the window, coffee cup nestled between your hands, eyes skimming the notes spread haphazardly across the table. The light overhead buzzes softly—old wiring, probably—but the sound fades into the background as you focus.

You’re not here to have a breakthrough. You’re here to map the boundaries.

The problem with studying the soul—if you can even call it that—isn’t just defining it. It’s figuring out where to look. If it exists as more than a philosophical concept, then there have to be parameters. A framework.

You flip to a blank page in your notebook.

What is the soul?

A real question. Not in the poetic sense, not in the way people speak about it in hushed tones and late-night confessions, but as a function. A thing with properties.

You write:

— The soul is not isolated. If it were, it wouldn’t interact with the world. People change. Learn. Influence each other. Whatever the soul is, it isn’t locked away inside a single person.

— It has persistent traits, but it is not static. Memories shape behavior. Experience alters perception. The thing that makes you you isn’t a fixed point, but it also isn’t random. There’s continuity, even through change.

— It extends beyond individual experience. Connections leave an imprint. People carry each other—sometimes in ways they can’t explain. If the soul exists beyond metaphor, then its effects should be traceable.

You take a slow sip of coffee. These aren’t conclusions. They’re places to start.

At the very least, if you’re going to chase something this impossible, you have to know what it isn’t–

"Trial and error."

The voice is measured, almost idle, but it cuts through the noise of the café like a well-placed incision.

You jolt, pen slipping from your fingers. Anaxagoras is standing beside your table, hands in the pockets of his coat, gaze flicking over your notes with mild interest. His presence isn’t overwhelming, but it shifts the air in a way you feel immediately. Like a variable introduced into an equation.

"You can’t just—appear—like that," you say, exhaling sharply as you retrieve your pen.

He lifts a brow. "I used the door. Perhaps you weren’t paying attention." His gaze drops back to your notebook, reading without asking, though you suspect if you told him to stop, he actually would. "Trial and error," he repeats, as if the phrase itself is under scrutiny. "A method you seem to be employing."

You sit back slightly, fingers curling around your coffee cup. "You say that like it’s a bad thing."

"Not at all," he replies, voice as even as ever. "It’s an honest approach. Just an unpolished one."

You huff a quiet laugh. "Practicality aside, it’s the only thing I can do at this stage. I'm defining parameters, not solving anything." You tap your pen against the page. "Or would you rather I skip to the part where I give you something half-formed and empirically worthless?"

His mouth curves—just slightly. "I appreciate the restraint."

"High praise."

Anaxagoras doesn’t acknowledge that, but his gaze lingers on your notes a moment longer before he straightens. He doesn’t sit, doesn’t ask to join, but he also doesn’t leave immediately.

Instead, he says, "It’s getting cold."

You blink at him. "What?"

"Your coffee," he nods toward your coffee cup, still mostly full. "You’ve been holding it for minutes without drinking."

You glance down at it, then back up at him. "I didn't realize you were keeping track."

"Well, far be it from me to disrupt your... inefficiency." he remarks, stepping back.

You glance toward the door. "I'm actually waiting for someone."

Anaxagoras tilts his head slightly.

"A friend," you clarify, though you're not sure why it feels necessary to do so.

He makes no move to leave, and you take another sip of coffee, not minding the silence that settles between you. It's surprisingly comfortable, even in its brevity.

Then, the door swings open.

Ilias strides in, scanning the café—then stops dead when he sees the two of you. His eyes flick between you and Anaxagoras, narrowing with immediate, delighted suspicion. And then, with exaggerated slowness, he pivots on his heel, turning straight back toward the exit.

"Oh, for—come back," you call, exasperated.

Ilias replies, raising his hands in mock surrender but grinning as he turns back around. "Please. Continue your—" he gestures vaguely, "—whatever this is."

Anaxagoras exhales, barely more than a breath, and finally steps away from your table. "I’m leaving."

Ilias watches him, expression far too entertained. He mutters just loud enough for you to hear, "I can't believe you invited me to your impromptu date."

You glare at him, but before you can retort, you catch the faintest shift in Anaxagoras' posture—nothing overt, no reaction beyond the briefest pause in his step. Then he continues toward the door, leaving without a word.

You groan, rubbing your temples.

Ilias collapses into the seat across from you like a man overcome by the sheer weight of his own amusement. "That was," he announces, "the single most deliciously awkward thing I have ever witnessed."

You mutter a quiet curse under your breath, flipping to a fresh page in your notebook.

"And yet," he sighs, folding his hands under his chin with a smirk, "here I am—like the universe itself has conspired to place me in this exact moment.”

Ilias is still grinning as he leans back in his chair, stretching lazily. “You know, if you ever need a chaperone for your secret intellectual rendezvous, I’m available.”

You roll your eyes, gathering your notes with more force than necessary. “It wasn’t an—” You stop yourself. There’s no point. Ilias seemingly lives for provocation, and you won’t give him the satisfaction. Instead, you shake your head and lean back in your chair, stretching your arms with a sigh.

Ilias, ever the dramatist, makes a show of settling in across from you, propping his chin in his hands. “You’re unusually quiet,” he muses. “Brooding, even.”

“No.”

“Hmm.” He taps a finger against the table. “That was an awfully long pause for a simple ‘no.’”

You roll your eyes but don’t bother arguing. Instead, you glance out the window, watching the people moving along the street, the steady glow of passing headlights. The café hums around you—low conversations, the occasional clatter of a cup against its saucer. It’s late, but not late enough to leave just yet.

Ilias orders something sweet, drumming his fingers absently against the table while he waits. You sip the last of your now-cold coffee, your mind still lingering elsewhere. A glance at your notes does little to pull you back. The thought won’t let go.

You don’t even realize you’re frowning at your notes until Ilias nudges your cup with his own.

"Thinking about your not-a-date?" he teases, grinning.

You glare at him half-heartedly, but there’s no real heat behind it. “Thinking,” you say simply.

Eventually, Ilias finishes his pastry, brushing crumbs from his fingers before stretching with a yawn.

The two of you step outside together, the shift from the café’s warmth to the crisp night air making you shiver. The city has quieted, the usual rush of movement settling into a steadier rhythm. You walk side by side for a while, boots clicking against the pavement, the hum of distant traffic filling the spaces between conversation. 

Even as Ilias chatters on about something inconsequential, the ideas still linger at the edge of your mind, waiting to take shape. 

By the next morning, the café is a memory drowned out by the quiet rustle of students filling the lecture hall. The usual pre-class murmur settles into a steady rhythm—books thudding against desks, the sharp clicking of laptop keys, the low hum of voices exchanging half-hearted speculations on today’s topic. 

You slide into your usual seat at the front, your notes open in front of you, though your pen remains idle between your fingers. The thoughts that have followed you since the library refuse to resolve, circling just beyond reach. There’s something missing—something foundational, yet frustratingly unformed.

At the lectern, Anaxagoras sets down his drink with practiced ease, the cup making a soft, deliberate sound against the wooden surface. The hall quiets. 

He surveys the room with that same composed intensity, his gaze flickering over the assembled students before settling briefly—too briefly—on you.

“Continuity,” he begins, his voice carrying effortlessly, “is a deceptively simple concept. We assume that when two systems interact, they influence each other only at the moment of contact. That once they separate, the interaction ends.”

You straighten slightly. A slow prickle of recognition runs down your spine.

Anaxagoras picks up a piece of chalk and sketches a familiar equation on the board—one you’ve seen before, but never in this exact context. Your fingers tighten around your pen.

“But,” he continues, underlining a key term, “this assumes a linear, local model of influence. What happens, then, if we acknowledge that certain interactions leave something… persistent? That even after separation, a trace remains?”

The rustling of papers around you barely registers. Your thoughts lurch forward, bridging gaps in ways they hadn’t before.

You shift, almost without realizing, and Anaxagoras glances in your direction—briefly, but with intent. He knows.

A student two seats over raises a hand. “Are you talking about quantum entanglement?”

Anaxagoras tilts his head slightly. “A useful analogy, but not a perfect one. Entanglement suggests an instantaneous connection regardless of distance. What I am asking is more fundamental—does influence itself persist, even outside direct interaction?”

A murmur ripples through the hall. A few students exchange looks, some hurriedly scribbling notes, others frowning as they try to grasp the implications.

Your heart beats a fraction faster as the pieces align. The answer should be simple. If two variables are no longer in contact, the influence should end. The system should reset. But—

“They don’t go back to what they were before,” you murmur, half to yourself.

Anaxagoras sets the chalk down. “Louder.”

The words form before hesitation can stop them. “Even apart, they still retain the effect of their interaction. They update each other, whether they remain in proximity or not.”

The silence that follows is the kind that shifts the atmosphere of a room. Not an absence of sound, but a space filled with quiet recognition.

Anaxagoras watches you, his expression unreadable, but you swear something flickers in his gaze.

You grip your pen tighter. “There’s a kind of imprint,” you continue, voice steadier now. “An effect that doesn’t disappear even after separation. A persistence beyond time or proximity.”

He nods once, the movement precise. “Nonlinear. Nonlocal.”

A slow breath escapes you.

The clock on the wall ticks forward. A student coughs. Someone flips a page too loudly. The world presses back in, indifferent to the shape of revelation.

Anaxagoras turns away first, back to the board, where the equation remains half-finished. He picks up the chalk again, his voice returning to its usual cadence, folding the moment neatly back into lecture. 

His gaze flickers back to you for a moment—steady, contemplative, threaded with something unreadable. Interest, perhaps. Amusement, restrained but evident in the slight tilt of his head. And then, just low enough for only you to hear:

“You were closer than you thought.”

You exhale, staring at the marginalia scrawled in the edges of your notebook—sharp, decisive, yet somehow restrained. Outside the window, the campus air carries the crisp scent of rain—not quite fallen, not quite gone. And yet, the thought lingers, refusing to leave you.

-> next.

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[thequeer07puss]

The cosmological functions of Hera

I’ve been thinking a lot about Hera these past few weeks, and while reading “The Hera of Zeus: Intimate Enemy, Ultimate Spouse”, a new thought and association emerged about the goddess, leading me to analyse and interpret her role in the cosmos, both as a standalone goddess, and as the wife of Zeus.

[This analysis might contain UPG]

The gods as personifications: Zeus’s family as an extension of his power

Many of the gods we know and love have specific functions when they are in relation to Zeus. Hermes delivers his messages to gods and heroes, Apollo is his voice in the mortal world, and Athena is the personification of Zeus’s racing mind. Let me explain my thoughts

Athena is born from the head of Zeus himself, from Metis (which we translate as “wisdom” or “craft”) that he has in himself. As such, she would be one of the few beings in the universe to know and understand Zeus’s grand plans. For example, in the Iliad, Zeus’s grand plan is the destruction of Troy, which Athena was in firm favour of, despite the apparent opposition from her father, who had to restrain her from enacting his plan too soon.

“How is it relevant?” One may ask. “And how does that relate to Hera?” Put a pin in that thought dear reader.

Zeus did not create the universe: the cosmological role of Zeus and his marriages

Based on the interpretation above, many of Zeus’s family members are extensions of the reach he has over the universe, but only some of them could claim to be or have been his wife. Hesiod cites 7 goddesses as having been his wives, namely Metis, Themis, Eurynome, Demeter, Mnemosyne, Leto, and finally Hera. Since we have established the notion that Zeus’s family mean something in relation to him, my theory is that older goddesses, such as the Titans and early Olympians Zeus takes as wives are personifications of abstract concepts and concrete principles from which Zeus orders the universe.

[I would like to preface this next part by explaining a bit about the Ancient Greek view of marriage and sexuality. Marriage’s main function was the accomplishment of one’s personhood as well as creating new life who would contribute positively towards society. Additionally, sex was all about power dynamics, making the dominant partner (the man) the one in control of the submissive partner (the woman), making sex a sort of “subduing” of the other person.]

Zeus did not create the universe at all. He merely inherited it. It was established in Hesiod’s Theogony that all elements in the cosmos existed prior to his existence, albeit in a state of disarray and chaos. Zeus, as a god of structure, therefore inherited this disorderly world and created order from its constituents. In order to do so, he would need to be wise or crafty, which is the reason for his marriage to (and subsequent absorption of) Metis. After doing so he would need to determine the functionings and happening of the world, hence why he marries the Titan (natural force) responsible for establishing universal laws, Themis, from whom he creates goddesses who regulate the happenings of nature and human life, the Horae (Seasons or Hours). After establishing the functionings of the world and determining the best course of action for its happenings, Zeus had to think of what the world would look like, hence he took Eurynome, and from her made the Charites to make the world beautiful and full of delight. But the world was rough and unforgiving, yielding nothing of substance to that which Zeus would make, hence he married Demeter for her treasure of bounty and vegetation, and made Persephone. Then, after the world was beatiful, fruitful and plenty, there had to be intelligent creatures to inhabit it, so Zeus married Mnemosyne to create intelligence, learning, art and the delight of music, in the form of the Muses. Next, when intelligence had been created, it was time for the beings to proliferate in colonies, which is why Zeus married the fertile Leto, who produced Apollo and Artemis, representing the divide between civilisation and the savage wilderness. Lastly, when all had been made in good order, Zeus, whose hymn calls the most Excellent and Great, took in a wife, a final wife, the most beautiful goddess in existence, most excellent of birth, power and status: his sister-wife Hera, an equal to He who is Excellent.

The marriages of Zeus therefore represent a sequence of events that allow Zeus to structure the universe according to his will as the Divine Craftsman or Demiurge. His marriage to Hera therefore represents the completion of this ordering, the state of perfection in which all things exist under the order established by Zeus.

Hera the goddess of perfection

In “The Hera of Zeus”, Pirenne-Delforge and Pironti analyse the role of Hera as a goddess who pushes beings to their fullest potential. This is why, she is the mother of Hebe, which is the goddess of youth, a state where one reaches the full potential and power they will ever be capable of in life. This is also why in the story of the daughters of Pandareus, Hera gives the young women beauty and intellect above all other women. Therefore, it might come as no surprise that the goddess who grants perfection and loves excellence would be seen and worshipped as the goddess in charge of determining which deities are suitable to enter Olympus (see here), of initiating young people into greater society, and finding the most excellent match befitting of one’s status in marriage. However, as many of us know, perfection can not be achieved without a certain level of conflict, whether internal (like an artist willing to improve their craft) or external (a teacher giving students tough exercises to test their knowledge), and Hera being a lover of perfect things, thrives in this state of conflict or discomfort, which is exemplified in her relationship with her husband Zeus, with whom she argues quite a bit, with the goal to spur him on to consider and reconsider the way he rules the cosmos, and reestablish his supremacy among the gods. In the Iliad, Zeus seems to be used, or even expect to conflict and opposition from Hera, and even goes to her for advice on whether he should save Sarpedon from the war or not. In another story, Hera creates Typhon as the biggest challenge to Zeus’s reign, a challenge Zeus wins, reinforcing his superiority. Hera, in her role as wife of Zeus, is both a representation of the completion of Zeus’s reshaping of the universe, the goddess that reinforces her husband’s supremacy, as well as the goddess that forces Zeus to stay perfect to keep ruling and ordering the universe by constantly opposing and arguing with him to make him consider and reconsider courses of action to accomplish his plans.

Analysis of the Orphic hymn to Hera: the goddess of essences

Now that it was established that Hera is the goddess of excellence, and that she represents the state of completion that the universe exists in, a little question remains: why is the world so imperfect then?

Well, my friend, let me introduce you to the Platonic concept of “essences”. Plato saw essences as the universal, most basic, most condensed, most recognisable form of a thing or concept. They are essentially the “soul” of things or concepts. What is a cat? What makes a cat a cat? If you have a basic idea of what a cat is, it is because you are using the essence of “Cat” to produce a mental image of “cat”. Plato then proceeds to explain that we can not know these essences or experience them because we live in the material world, which is imperfect, which then alters the perfection of essences to make them appear to us in diverse forms.

“Then where are the essences?” One may ask. I answer: in Hera

The Orphic hymn to Hera calls her ψυχοτρόφους (psūchotróphous), which is translated as mother or nurse of souls, then proceeds to call her παντογένεθλε (pantogénthle), the source of everything, and say that she is in everything. Such a description is befitting of the goddess of essences.

[Here is part of a prayer I have written to Hera after a meditation on that aspect:

“Your hymn calls you the mother of souls, the Ψυχοτρόφος, the nurse of clouds, the source of all, my lady, wife and bedmate of Zeus, whose hymn calls him ἀρχὴ πάντων and πάντων τε τελευτή, the beginning and end of all things. In yourself you have held and mixed all things, and have mingled your essence in them. All things are from you, all things are in you, you are in all things, and in the act of breathing we inhale your essence. You are queen, you are παμβασίλεια, for you are the blessed creator of the universe, who makes all things alongside Zeus, whose head contains the knowledge of all things.”]

Conclusion: tl;dr

In summary, Hera, the final wife of Zeus, does not only represent a simple marriage if you think about it on a cosmological scale. She represents the state of completion our universe exists in after a series of restructuring by Zeus, she is the goddess that makes both people and gods suitable and perfect, and she contains in her the essences of everything in the universe. She is a complex goddess whose interactions with other beings in myth and cult are often brushed off as being “simplistic” or “dramatic”, but reveal a very interesting story once they are given more thought.

Thank you for reading <3

[P.S: please feel free to add any thoughts or opinions to this discussion. It will fuel the voices]

[dunmeshistash]

Dungeons

Dungeon Meshi Dungeons have unique characteristics and the Adventurer's Bible gives us a look on a few of the more important ones.

First, what makes a dungeon a dungeon? According to the Glossary section:

Dungeon There are two types of dungeon: manmade and natural. Manmade dungeons like the one on the Island are structures created when a door is linked to another dimension. Natural dungeons are environments that resemble manmade dungeons; they're created when a portal to another dimension forms on its own and mana seeps in. In natural dungeons, you can't be resurrected if you die. The cavern Falin took Marcille to when they were at magic school was a natural dungeon.

Continuing bellow the cut, Major Spoilers ahead

In ch87 we learn that man-made Dungeons were created by the ancient civilizations to contain the Demon's powers, and be able to better use it.

In ch 68 Thistle confirms something similar.

With this in mind, Dungeons also seem to have "Styles".

Like these examples from the cover of ch 48.

"The island", which is the name given to the Dungeon Linked to Melini Village's Graveyard, is a "Compound-Style Dungeon" while other dungeons seem to have specific styles linked to other ancient civilizations (Dwarf-Style, Gnome-Style, Elf-Style)

'The Island' in specific seem to be a Compound Style between dwarfish and elvish styles. As Thistle says, continuing in ch 68, it was an ancient Dwarf construction that was then used by Elves.

Maybe that's the reason the dwarfish inscriptions are only in the innermost levels of the dungeon. The Style then seems to indicate which ancient civilizations created the manmade Dungeon.

From how they speak about Dungeons in the story I also believe there isn't a way to create new manmade dungeons, and rather they must find them since they were buried by ancient civilizations once they realized it was impossible to control the Demon.

Besides that dungeons apparently also seem to have a life cycle, or "Maturity Levels", that ends with the collapse of the dungeon. Here's the cover for ch 54 illustrating it.

From the descriptions, Utaya seems to have reached lv 5 while others tend to be conquered and collapsed before. Some even seem to collapse on their own.

These are the main Dungeons pointed out in the adventurer's bible with their respective descriptions.

DUNGEONS

1 THE ISLAND

A new dungeon that was discovered just six years ago. It's rumored that the Golden Country that existed a thousand years ago still lies in its depths, imprisoned there by the Lunatic Magician.

2 BUDOU PIT

A dwarf-style dungeon. It was excavated straight down like a mine shaft and has already collapsed. Its atmosphere and location are bad, and even after it was discovered, not many adventurers visited it. As a result, it's believed to have collapsed naturally. Its depths may be connected to the ocean: If you listen carefully, some say you can hear the waves. People also claim that if you throw something into the pit, it will inevitably wash up in the port of Kahka Brud.

3 THE BRUD DUNGEON CLUSTER

A dwarf-style dungeon. It's made of the ruins of dungeons that riddled the ground beneath Kahka Brud. Now that its last lord has been defeated, the dungeon has been completely captured. It's become part of the town, and bits of it are used as storehouses, shops, and private homes.

4 THE TOWER OF NIGHT CRIES

A gnome-style dungeon. It's on the verge of collapsing and is currently sealed. Since it's still functioning, if barely, it's believed to have a lord somewhere. The dungeon is shaped like a tower. Its name comes from the wailing noise produced by the wind blowing through holes in its walls at night. Winged monsters have been sighted flying around the tower.

5 THE UTAYA DUNGEON

An elf-style dungeon. It changed lords frequently, and it's the dungeon that grew the largest after the ancient war. At present, it's sealed. Fifteen years ago, monsters flooded out and destroyed the nearby towns. Because it had expanded so much, it couldn't be blocked off completely, and the Canaries quelled the situation by casting a barrier over the dungeon and the entire surrounding area. Magic users are still permanently stationed there to maintain the barrier.

6 THE DRAGONS' LAIR

An elf-style dungeon. Currently collapsed. A rare case in which an entire region of interlacing canyons became a dungeon. Many dragons lived here once, and it was a notoriously secluded region. However, it was hard just to get to it, the rewards were small, and the dragons were tough. Almost no adventurers visited it, and it's thought to have collapsed naturally. When the population dwindled, mana stopped flowing through it, so the large dragons vanished. However, a few small dragons still live there.

7 THE CENTRAL WATCHTOWER

An elf-style dungeon near the capital of the Western Elves. Currently sealed. Since it hadn't had a lord for a long time, it was believed to be nearly collapsed. Mithrun was dispatched to investigate a nearby rash of disappearances and got taken in.

There's much more to talk about how the dungeons work, especially how it relates to Ancient Magic but I'll leave it for another post in the future. If you have any insights about the information here or if I've missed something important please share!

[hyperlexichypatia]

Discourse is like "People take this 'ableism' thing way too far, they'll say it's ableist to [thing that is definitely ableist, but not for the reason the people they're rebutting think it is]."

Most things are ableist, because we live in a structurally ableist world. Most of our core assumptions about value and hierarchy and correct behavior are ableist, because we live in an ableist society. So yes, "People on the internet go around calling everything 'ableist'" because everything is, in fact, ableist! Because systemic ableism is the water we fish all swim in!

But anti-ableist discourse often begins and ends with "It's ableist to say that people should do that because some people are disabled and can't do that." This kind of objection kind of... only touches the surface of systemic ableism. And it gives the impression of objecting to a valid generality with some kind of special pleading, which is just... beside the point. Any discussion of ableism centered on "There should be An Exception for Legitimately Disabled People" is just... an insufficient framework for addressing systemic ableism.

So you end up with someone saying "I said that people should eat their vegetables, and somebody called me ableist, because some disabled people can't eat vegetables! Isn't that ridiculous? Obviously I'm not talking about people who legitimately can't! I'm talking about people who are too lazy to try! These 'anti-ableism' people take things ridiculously too far!" And. Like. "Some disabled people can't eat vegetables" only touches the surface of why saying "People should eat their vegetables" is ableist in the first place.

Why is eating certain foods being framed as an obligation that someone needs a "legitimate excuse" to opt out of? What underlying beliefs about health, diet, nutrition, and morality are built into your premises about what people "should" eat? Why does the spectre of the person who "Doesn't take care of their health because they're lazy" bother you? What function does judgment of this real or hypothetical person serve? Do someone else's food choices affect anyone else? Even if you can come up with a way that someone else's food choices can theoretically affect other people, is that the real reason why you're judging them? Or are you reacting to a lifetime of cultural messages around health moralizing and judgment of "laziness" and "excuses" all of which are rooted in systemic ableism and then retroactively justifying it with an ad-hoc claim about "Well uh... uh... the environmental impact of food production!"? Cool, but is that the real reason you've constructed this image of a Lazy, Unhealthy Person With Bad Health Habits to get angry at?

"People on the internet" say that "everything is ableist" because everything is in fact ableist!

[ominous-potato96]

Tiefling Physiology Headcanons that nobody asked for!

I've been thinking a lot about tiefling Physiology and body language, but have found precision few resources on the subject. So I wrote my own! My fellow fanfic writers, please feel free to use this!

Includes physical traits of Tieflings and some body language (and by that I mean the tail)

Claws: Modified nails that are thicker, stronger, and sharper than human nails. They grow rapidly, typically ending in points.

Teeth: Rather than having four canines (two upper, two lower), Tieflings have 6 to 8 (double canines on the upper jaw and either single or double on the lower jaw). Canines are elongated and much sharper than those of most other races.

Horns: The horns of a Tiefling are made primarily of bone, with a protective keratin layer. Their inner structure is not solid, but resembles a honeycomb, with blood vessels and nerves (I based this off of a cow's horn structure). Breaking a horn is excruciating and results in significant bleeding. Eventually the broken horn will develop a boney callous or cap to protect the inner structure from damage or infection. Horns DO have sensation, similar to that of fingernails in humans. Their primary function is dissipating excessive heat from the body and maintaining body temperature.

Ridges: Each Tiefling's pattern of ridges is subtly unique, though most follow a similar pattern: cartilaginous and bony bumps and/or ridges adorn the body. Ridges are most common on the elbows, upper arms, shoulders, chest, shoulder blades, along the spine and into the tail, hips, and thighs. Some (typically males) also have facial ridges along the brow, cheekbones, and chin. On the shoulder blades the vestigial remnants of wings can be found, including a claw-like spur.

Body Temperature: Tiefling body temperature can range from 99°F to 102°F (37.2°C to 38.8°C), making them noticeably warmer than other humanoids.

Eyes: Tiefling eyes can have either black or white sclera (some say that this is connected to parentage, white being human parents and black being from tiefling parents, but these claims have not been substantiated) and irises of almost any color with glowing, dancing flames framing the pupil. Pupils can be rounded or vertical slits (cat-like).

Tongue: A tiefling can have either a single pointed tongue or a forked tongue. In either case, the tongue is usually slightly longer on average than a human's.

Ears: Tieflings, like elves, have pointed ears which can be highly sensitive to stimulation.

Vocalizations: Obviously, Tieflings can talk, but they also have a range of other vocalizations. Growling, snarling, and even purring have been observed.

Tail: The tail is prehensile, usable to pick up and grip objects, assist in balance, express emotion (usually unconsciously), and can be used as an improvised weapon (not for stabbing, but it makes an excellent whip.) Some tails have a barb or spade-like structure at the tip, which is made of flexible cartilage. Sensitivity varies for each individual, but commonly the tail is not overly sensitive at the tip, but the base and underside can be.

Tail posture and movement can be very informative on a tiefling's emotions:

Happy/Excited: Tail is upright with the tip flicking or waving forward and back.

Angry/Agitated: Tail is low and whipping from side to side.

Nervous/Anxious: Tail is either tucked or wrapped around the tiefling's own leg.

Affectionate: To express affection (typically romantic) a tiefling will wind their tail around another person's ankle or wrist. If the other person also has a tail, they may link or intertwine tails. This is usually done as a romantic (but polite) gesture but is also seen with parents and children. It's equivalent to holding hands.

Possessive/Protective: A tiefling may wrap their tail around their partners thigh or waist if they feel possessive or protective. This is typically frowned upon in public as it is fairly intimate.

Presenting: When a tiefling is interested in someone sexually, their tail will be held up in an "S" shape. This is done by both males and females, and usually subconscious...which can lead to some very awkward situations...

[joyswonderland1108]

"Jikookers want what we have" a tragicomedy in 84 acts.

Ah yes. The cult has spoken again. That group of people so devoted to fanfiction they forgot they're not the actual authors of BTS' lives. I was just minding my own business scrolling on X and then i saw screenshots where they uttered the iconic phrase once more : "Jikookers want what we have"

And my immediate reaction is: You have what exactly?

Please, i beg, enlighten me. Educate me. Shine your flashlight of delusion upon my humble soul.

Do you mean:

The ability to look at two men in the same room and immediately start spinning a three-season k-drama script about a "secret marriage" that somehow survived a full military enlistment gap and multiple obvious real-life interactions that contradict your entire fantasy?

The audacity to claim that literally everything Jikook do is either "fanservice", "coincidence" or "they were forced to do it by the company" .. but when tk breathe the same air, it's "soulmate proof" and "date night"?

The unique talent of opening your eyes, seeing Jikook's entire interactions unfold like the final scene of a romantic film, and still going, "Nope. That's just brotherly love. Jungkook actually flew to that city for someone else."?

And let’s not forget the true crime-level sleuthing they do with pixelated photos and background objects. Like that time they saw a Christmas tree with the Wooga squad and immediately declared, “That’s it. That’s Jungkook. He was there.” Just.. a tree. A tree. Not a hand. Not a sleeve. Not a voice. A TREE. And the confidence? Unmatched.

Or when a blurry reflection shows up in a spoon, and suddenly it’s “Jungkook was clearly there. That’s his left earlobe from 2019, I would know it anywhere.” Girl..

They’ve mistaken staff members, shadows, pets, and possibly furniture for Jungkook. At this point, if someone breathes near a member of the Wooga squad, they’re like, “He’s there. He's hiding behind the lamp. That lamp is his disguise.

🧍‍♀️Be serious.

You have what? A religious devotion to editing Jikook clips and pics out of existence OR turning them into.. something else so you can post your 8-second gifs as a "proof"?

A Photoshop degree in manufacturing matching accessories that they never actually wore? A deep-rooted fear of 4K footage? A library full of plotlines that have not been updated since 2019?

Because baby, while you're out here reading a version of events that got invalidated faster than a Weverse life replay gets deleted, we're over here crying, throwing up, and questioning our own existence watching actual moments of intimacy, care, tension, fondness, push-pull dynamics, micromovements, looks that scream "I dare you to say that in public", and lips that do not lie.

Your people are defecting babes. They're not even silent about it. We've seen it. "I feel sad, i can't breathe, i will take a break because i don't know if i believe in them any longer after this", "Okay but if MY ship did what THEY did i'd be in a coma"

Exactly. You'd be in a coma. Meanwhile Jikookers are here with two IV bags of emotional damage and still managing to function (barely).

Let's talk about how your entire structure collapses when:

Jungkook calls Jimin "Jimin-ssi" with that look.

Jimin calls Jungkook "Baby" on camera.

Jungkook tells Jimin he gives him butterflies.

Jimin calling Jungkook "Hyung" with the most teasing smugness known to mankind and Jungkook malfunctions on the spot.

Jungkook sits and stares at Jimin content during his lives without blinking.

Jimin sings Jungkook's solo, doing his moves the way a man who memorized it for "reasons" would.

Meanwhile you're out there hanging your entire thesis on "they once went to the same restaurant with different people on different days but what if they actually met up?"

We don't want what you have.

WE DO NOT WANT UNHINGED THEORIES AND PERMANENT COPIUM.

What we do want is peace, peace from you twisting Jikook's actions like it's your career.

Peace from you posting "this proves nothing" under every video that shows more chemistry than a K-drama final kiss.

Peace from you crying "company script" every time Jungkook chooses to speak about Jimin with his entire chest and a suspicious sparkle in his eyes.

Let me be clear:

We don't want what you have because.. There's nothing there to want. It's like going to a buffet and finding a single ice cube and being told "this is a gourmet".

So no. We’re good. We’re full.

We're over here eating with trembling hands, yes, but we’re EATING.

Stay in your cave of denial where 2017 screenshots are still considered "recent," and please stop acting like we’re jealous of a headcanon when we’ve got receipts, replay buttons, and regret.(because the intensity of it all is emotionally destructive and yet we keep coming back).

Thank you for your time.

Back to your regularly scheduled delusion.

[spetescap]

oh em gee ik the boys would probably hate this but maybe a beach day with (gn) reader would be cool? i’m only an hour away from staten island and the beach is THE thing to do in the summer

Beach Day with the Eltingville boys!!

GN!Reader

- You’re all gathered in Bill’s basement when you suddenly go,

“We’re going to the beach. Sunday. Show up or I’ll personally drag you there, but not before burning every single one of your limited edition figurines.”

- And that’s how you get everyone to reluctantly agree 😼

- Bill groans like you just told him he’s being drafted,

- Josh immediately starts going off about the sun and how he hates sand,

- Pete refuses for a whole, but then goes “fine” and then follows it with “wait, are there jellyfish?”

- (he wanted to go the whole time)

- and Jerry just blinks and nods 😭

- You don’t explain, you just keep planning like you didn’t hear any of them 🤷

- Sunday hits, and you pack a bag with Caprisuns, sunscreen, sandwiches, and chips, because you’re the only one with a functioning brain cell and basic survival instincts 😔

- Pete shows up first, he’s in a wife beater that is very quickly discarded (probably for the best), swim trunks with some tacky skull print, and flip flops… with socks. Gross.

- He’s already eating a bag of chips that wasn’t even his, drops half of them in the sand within minutes, picks them back up and keeps eating them, saying it adds “crunch.”

- Bill shows up in a dark grey shirt, swim trunks that look like he dug them out of his (nonexistent) dad’s closet, and flip flops that he immediately regrets 😭😭

- He stays at the edge of the parking lot for like thirty straight minutes, arms crossed, sunglasses on, looking like an off-duty lifeguard who hates his job and everyone around him 😭😭

- You wave at him and pretends not to see you 🙄

- Jerry shows up looking like a camp counselor 😔

- Green shirt, blue swim trunks, sandals.

- The second he hits the sand he’s on a mission. He starts building sandcastles like he’s getting paid for it 😼

- Josh… oh, Josh.

- He shows up in all black. Black shirt. Black cargo shorts. Black flip flops. 😭

- He sets up a towel under the umbrella and refuses to move from it, the first thing out of his mouth is “the sun is actively trying to kill me,”

- and he spends the next hour rotating between complaining about heat, eating whatever you have in your bag, and accusing the wind of being “specifically targeted towards him”

- Pete and Jerry spend most of the time near the shore building increasingly unstable sand structures,

- Jerry tries to give his castle lore, Pete tries to smash it every three minutes,

- and at one point Pete starts digging aggressively, saying he’s “gonna find a crab if it kills him.” (Spoiler: he doesn’t.)

- Bill finally makes his way over to the rest of you after staring at the group from a distance like he’s watching a crime scene,

- he sits down, immediately gets sand in his soda, and goes, “This is why I don’t go outside. Nature is a scam.”

- You offer to help him reapply sunscreen. He says no. That’ll come back to haunt him later🤷

- You, Jerry, and Pete are the only ones who go in the water 😭

- Josh stays under the umbrella like it’s a bunker 😔

- Bill doesn’t even look at the water until you’re already ankle-deep

- Jerry gets freaked out by seaweed within five minutes and power-walks back to the shore saying “something touched me” over and over.😭😭 (I fear he’s me 😔)

- Pete stays in, splashing around, daring the ocean to fight him. You don’t ask.

- By the end of the day, everyone’s sand-covered, sweaty, and cranky.

- Pete looks like a cooked shrimp because he refused to put on sunscreen and claimed “real men embrace pain.” (he says as he recoils everytime someone touches him😭)

- Bill is sunburnt RED on just his neck and shoulders because he refused to reapply sunscreen. Said it “wasn’t necessary.” Right. 😒

- Josh is still under the umbrella, muttering about dehydration,

- Jerry’s trying to say goodbye to his sandcastle before it gets washed away,

- Pete’s eating a soggy sandwich he found under his towel like it’s gourmet,

- And you feel like you’ve been babysitting four big toddlers.

- You take a photo before you leave. It’s awful. 😭😭

- Pete’s flipping off the camera,

- Jerry’s smiling extremely awkwardly 😭,

- Josh is squinting into the sun like he’s being interrogated,

- and Bill is halfway out of frame, clearly trying to escape.

- You print it anyway, and tape it to your wall :3

- You’ll never let them live it down 😼

- And next time, you’re bringing water balloons.

- Just to cause problems 🤷🤷

I HOPE YOU LIKED THESEEEEEEE

sorry for taking so long to post these, I have SO many things to do it’s actually insane.

[simspaghetti]

Interaction PSD Templates! ↩️

These have been sitting in my WIPs for about 6 months but I wasn't totally happy with how they functioned for editing & I finally got around to fixing the issues so here they are!

I'm aiming to clear out my WIP folder now that I have a bit more free time, so probs expect some more PSDs from me very soon :)

Anyway, this is a .PSD template as usual, I've made a light mode version inspired by JustMiha's Clean UI & a dark mode version inspired by SimState's Blackout UI - take your pick of whatever one suits your gameplay best!

Gameplay edited previews:

Here are the instructions on how to resize it without borking the whole structure:

(I've also included this instruction layer in the template, you can unhide it to refer to if you need!)

Terms of Use: Please don’t claim as your own or reupload without my permission, I’d love to see you use them in your game if you do choose to tag me - but that’s totally optional I’m just nosey haha :P Feel free to alter and customize the templates literally however you want, but pls link back to my blog / tag me if you’re gonna reupload a downloadable variation (such as in a different UI colour) :)

Download Here (Simfileshare, .psd files)

The font used in all templates is DM Sans, it can be found in all variations here - I only used ‘bold’ & 'bold italic’

File Instructions:

This is a .PSD file, intended to be opened in a photo editing software like Adobe Photoshop, I personally recommend Photopea / Gimp as free alternatives - you can probs use any other editing software as long as it can handle .psd files - lmk if you have any problems in other programs, I have only tested these in Photopea!

You can find all my other psds (including moodlets, wishes, career UI and a photography template) linked right here!

[metanarrates]

there are a LOT of things you can speculate about regarding what twsa was actually like as a novel but what's most interesting to me is that you can make the argument that twsa was an "unpolished" version of what orv is. it's a version of a similar novel that likely dealt with a lot of similar themes but was seemingly bogged down by poor structure, pacing, expository handling, and focus. (all of which are things that orv is shockingly excellent at.)

and of course, han sooyoung's novel, sssss-grade infinite regressor, is the "polished" version of the idea. it's well-written, probably well-plotted, and was successful enough to make han sooyoung rich and famous. we don't know what sssss-grade infinite regressor is like as a novel either, but we sort of get the impression that it's not very emotionally rich even if it is good on a technical level. han sooyoung herself doesn't seem intensely attached to it despite being proud of her work, and kim dokja of course doesn't hold it in high regard. (though of course he's a gigantic unreliable narrator and also a hater.)

what's interesting is that despite orv very strongly emphasizing the ways these works are flawed from the outset, orv itself functions as an argument in these works' favor. both twsa and infinite regressor are stand-ins for the "mass-produced" genre of webnovels. they are popular fiction, relying on a very familiar pool of tropes and clichés in order to deliver on a relatively predictable story to appeal to a wide audience. it's not a coincidence that they are so similar - both literally and in a meta sense, they are drawing on the same exact story-building and genre material. twsa is just the unsuccessful version, and infinite regressor is the successful one.

orv is what I would consider the most "impressive" version of the genre. it's well-structured, thrillingly plotted, interestingly written, has fascinating ideas and characters, and is even "literary" - that is, it has deeply considered themes and is often drawing from the realm of literary, postmodern fiction in order to express its ideas. a less sincere story would disavow itself from its pop-fiction origins and claim to be the best version of its genre. nothing else could be like it, so the worst versions of its genre wouldn't be worth considering.

but orv, while technically functioning as an argument that the genre can be "good" simply because it's a great novel that is deeply rooted in its genre, goes much further. it argues in-text that any sort of story, even those that are bad on a technical level or those that were somewhat cynically produced for a mass audience, are worth finding value in, simply because stories have meaning to their readers. the most uncritical reproduction of a genre's conventions can still mean something to someone who likes it. twsa, if it existed in our reality, would still probably be considered a very bad novel, but it wouldn't need to be polished up and turned into infinite regressor or orv in order to have value. orv itself is telling you that you should find value in twsa as it is, and by extension, every badly-done work of fiction that twsa could be a stand-in for!

[max1461]

Well this user has me blocked. I think the CCP's development strategy was pretty successful but I'm not sure why they had to ban bishie boys from tv. My concrete solution to improve the function of the party would be just don't worry about the bishie boys on tv, just let them be. It's ok, and even good, for there to be bishie boys on tv.

Also go back to power sharing and institute more checks and balances this time so that it's harder to dismantle. I know the ML line is that checks and balances are bullshit but they really do work; government is a coordination problem, no man governs alone, and if you set up the system so coordination around an autocrat is logistically and structurally difficult for the various politicians and career functionaries then guess what, you'll get fewer autocrats!

I'm not even asking for democracy here! Democracy is 90% fake anyway. I mean, yeah, I do think that 10% matters, but whatever.

I've got a few more. How about roll back the War on Terror rhetoric and racial profiling in Xinjiang? How about get rid of the re-education camps to which people can be sent against their will without trial? That's actually called a "prison", and I don't think War on Terror shit will be any more effective in Xinjiang than it was in Afghanistan, and also, yes, I do admit there's a moral component here—I think that racial profiling and imprisonment without trial are bad, in addition to not being necessary or particularly useful for, uh, development. Would you condone these things in the US? On the grounds of development?

Well, the US is capitalist. Unlike China, which—

Ok, so explain to me how all the SOEs and like, limitations on financial instruments and shit make racial profiling very useful for development? It's ok to do racial profiling and imprisonment without trial if you have enough SOEs. For development... it's just part of the development strategy.

The party could maybe do some wealth redistribution? Build stronger social safety nets? Xi claims welfare makes people lazy. I think he's wrong about this. I also think one of China's biggest economic issues is lack of domestic consumption which is going to hit especially hard if Cold War 2 keeps ramping up. You know what increases consumption? A little welfare, a little stimmie, a little free money from the government. I do also think that, morally, there is an obligation to give poor people free money. But you can set that aside I suppose.

Wait, why do we care about China's development anyway? Why do we want the CCP's development strategy to succeed? Is it because development in China has lifted 800 million people out of absolute poverty, and that is *gasp* morally good? And we, being moral, might want to see it continue? Or is it because of a bunch of Marxist word salad that shakes out to the same position in different words?

It's the latter, probably. Oh well.

[do-you-have-a-flag]

i'm just gonna call it that we need to practice mindful tech usage and security and i don't mean screentime tracking apps and vpns or whatever i mean starting from early childhood and going into adult wellbeing culture to encourage tactile hobbies and long-form work and the understanding of online devices as commodifying the user with spyware

i'm talking throwback word processors with the same ergonomics as regular smart devices for general educational work and dedicated subjects for working with digital technologies so you have theory in practice and then applying that theory in a contemporary work context. that's where you learn applications, digital safety, and how to implement the generative tools. separately. once you've already developed the critical analysis and expressive skills first.

i have been basically addicted to the internet since i was 13, i've had ups and downs with it, but i've always had a little bit of over caution when it comes to information and identity online. i overshare what i chose to but i think the break down of privacy as a norm when it comes to personal data tracking is genuinely awful.

i like algorithms in some places but i do not think this super-customisation is worth this panopticon of tech.

have you heard about how phone locations can still be triangulated when the phone is off? this is incidentally why if you are gong to protests and you think you are in danger it might be best to leave it at home. but generally if you want to avoid audio and video being used to build a marketing profile you can just switch it off and pop it in a bag or the next room. but with fb trying to make voice command smart glasses a thing (after snapchat and google both failed to sustain the same product) it bears caution that so called wearable tech such as glasses, pendants, watches, earbuds, ect.... even outside of smart cars there's the risk of passive listening for user marketing profiles. we already have location based advertising, ads that track your useage to predict your menstrual cycle or life events, public ads that react to nearby phones

i am going off on this tangent to say that i am not naïve to the fact that we already have to constantly dig into 'dark patterns' of settings to opt out of surveillance and commodification. i'm aware that the easiest path is to do nothing and use the shortcut machines even when they don't actually help or save much time or effort beyond selling you tools that already exist with a new price tag. i'm aware that the plagiarism software with no idea what it's talking about and runs on resource wasting pollution and underpaid remote human labour that also gets slapped in every function role despite basically being fancy autofil and pixel pulp not only has all of those issues but the lay person is either unaware or does not care and companies only care that it is a new way to pretend they're innovating. i know all this just like i know that mass automation is just exploitation unless it is balanced with social structures for all that mean emancipation from the need for labour.

but while i think all tech can be used for good, facilitating human connection across physical distance, carefully trained data analysis on a rapid large scale, removing the tedium of technical drudgery where needed, just providing light entertainment. but we have gotta be better about legislating, moderating, and use culture.

use culture goes hand in hand with convenience. it's why vinyl records are still trendy, not only are they good at what they do, but there is enough cool factor that the inconvenience becomes a feature. CDs are also convenient still! but CDs do not have the cool factor so they get wiped out by the convenience of streaming. playlists in streaming have a cool factor that radio does not despite radio still being convenient. and remember no matter how much streaming claims you can pay to opt out of ads that's usually something that you get payment tiered out of eventually so the convenience facilitated by accessibility is debatable the longer time passes.

looping back to my original point, if we can encourage an understanding of digital privacy as something you shouldn't be complacent about, that you shouldn't have to pay for tools to get out of the spotlight, that it is immensely embarrassing to be too into exploitation by tech companies and make that the problem of everyone around you. user control should be synonymous with convenience. customisability/personalisation through individual control rather than passive scraping. you can still commodify decorative tech.

we gotta make slop and babying algorithm brained tech usage cringe. people don't care to hear that it's immoral so just make them feel uncool at this point. because it is embarrassing that you have the universe of resources at your fingertips and you're too scared to do anything with it other than beg it to put words in your mouth. who cares if you're chronically online or too busy irl to learn a new skill. you are like a little bird pecking at it's own reflection, that's sad. try saying something mediocre and honest. we gotta stop tap dancing into technofeudalism just because we're too complacent to actually talk to each-other.