#web based result

[weekdaysend]

My SentOpLita 1AM relationship chart I did not think I'd be psycho-analyzing this dynamic as much as I thought I would..

[nyoomerr]

is duckduckgo's main search any good? i've been using startpage for a while but since it's just filtered google it's started to get the same ai listicles clogging up search results

eh, five years ago i probably would have preferred google's results, but at this point we're stuck with grading search engines based on "what's the least shitty" instead of "what is actually decent."

i don't see the AI garbage that google pushes on me, the higher standard for privacy is appreciated, and supposedly if you don't have an adblocker then you'll see less ads, too.

also, this is a purely personal anecdote, but it seems like duckduckgo prefers to serve smaller websites and avoids some social media as first page results. i.e. whenever i search related to programming, google will often give me reddit pages in the first page while duckduckgo will prefer to give me some random devblog i haven't heard of. this could be either a good thing or a bad thing depending on your preferences, i suppose, but it's pretty easily solvable by specifying a domain when searching if you have something specific in mind.

i do specifically go to google for any sort of image search, though.

[strxnged]

i doubt i'm on the spectrum but since i'm in an abnormal psyc class i've been watching videos on the history of diagnoses and different theories and i stumbled across "monotropism" and then did a random questionnaire for it and was scored higher than 57% of autistic people

[holydramon]

so many people have talked about this but I hate how google gives websites with clearly ai generated results made just to get as many clicks as possible. like look up anything and within the top of the search results you’ll get some website that’s one of those things. and yeah sometimes the info is still correct, but a lot of the times it’s not and the computer is just making shit up. i shouldn’t have to put Reddit or Quora on the end of things just to find something written by actual people.

[neverlandnightingale]

Hey do y'all remember several years ago when we were all freaking out about net neutrality being overturned? Well despite net neutrality's win in 2024, a federal court just overturned it.

For those who aren't aware, net neutrality is the simple principle that companies like Verizon and Comcast should treat all web traffic equally – not pick and choose based on who is willing to pay more or who they like best. Big Tech companies obviously don’t like that – which is why they spent millions lobbying against it over the years.

Now, these megacorporations will be able to seize control back over our Internet. The likely result? Throttled access to streaming services, monopolistic pricing that cuts out competition, and a slower, walled off, and less free Internet for all of us.

And unfortunately, rulings like this will only get more common now that the Supreme Court has overturned the “Chevron deference” – giving judges, rather than qualified public servants, a blank check to toss out protections like net neutrality, environmental safeguards, or food safety standards.

When Trump’s FCC repealed net neutrality back in 2017, they gave big corporations total control over our Internet – putting free and open access at risk.

Internet providers responded by exploiting their newfound power to speed up certain websites, and slow down – or even block – others. They failed to provide crucial Internet infrastructure in rural areas, low-income communities, and communities of color. They even slashed firefighters’ Internet access during severe wildfires.

But over 126,000 people spoke out and we were able to reinstate net neutrality – until now.

The time has come again to take action: please sign this petition from Common Cause so we can reinstate net neutrality.

[hbmmaster]

it might be interesting to make a poll asking which browser people prefer

[emiliaoleary]

Hooking rugs that look like dogs

Here's how I do it:

The process I use is called rug hooking (not latch hook or punch needle or tufting, though it is the forerunner of the latter two techniques). Rugs are hooked by pulling loops of fabric strips or yarn through the holes of a base fabric with a coarse open weave, like burlap, or linen, or rug warp. The loops are pulled through the fabric with a squat-handled hook whose business end is shaped like a crochet hook.  There are no knots and the loops aren't sewed down in any way.  The whole thing stays put just by the tension of all those loops packed together in the weave of the foundation fabric.

This isn't a true detailed tutorial but a walk-through of my particular process. The same information is on my web page, emilyoleary.com .

I hook with yarn, rather than with cut strips of wool fabric, which is what many rug hookers use.  I can get a looser, more organic distribution of loops with yarn than I could with wool strips, which are hooked in neat lines. 

Mostly I use wool yarn. In terms of yarn weight, I can use DK, worsted, or Aran.  If I'm using thicker yarn, I leave more holes un-hooked; if I'm using finer yarn, I hook more densely or double up lengths of it.  I particularly like using single ply yarns (like Brown Sheep Lamb's Pride or Malabrigo Worsted).  I don't keep count, but I think I usually use around two dozen types and colors of yarn per dog.  

This is my yarn wall in my apartment. Mostly brown and gray yarn!

I start from a small drawing in my sketchbook, then I head to FedEx office to use a copy machine, blowing up the drawing repeatedly and experimenting with how big the dog rug should be. 

After transferring the image onto my linen, I immediately go over it with Sharpie, because the Saral is really difficult to see and really easy to rub off.

The rug is held taut by a PVC quilting frame that I set on my lap.

I push my hook down through the fabric with my right hand and my left hand stays below the fabric and guides the yarn while I pull it up and through with the hook. Not every hole in the fabric is hooked. Hooking every hole would make the rug too dense. I do hook pretty densely, though-- If you pick up one of my rugs you’ll see they have a slight curl to them, which is because they’re hooked pretty tight. I'm using all different weights and types of yarn, so it's a challenge to keep the overall tension even.

I hook my loops at varying heights to create a very low relief. Sometimes I trim the loops to make them fluffier or wispier or to shape a particular part. I look at a reference photo while I work and pull out and redo sections a lot.

My q-snap frame can accommodate the growing dog rug. I have extenders to make it bigger and I can clamp around my hooking.

The back of a rug looks like lines of little stitches. The lines are little worm trails snaking around because lines of hooking are not supposed to cross over each other. It's important to start a new length of yarn rather than cross over a stitch you already made! I read this when I first started and took it to heart. It makes it much easier to undo and redo hooking if you have to (and I redo sections A Lot). It also keeps the back from getting too bulky and resulting in uneven wear on the back of a functional rug that gets floor use.

When I’m done hooking everything I turn the rug over and brush watered-down Sobo glue on the edges of the dog, making sure to get one or two of the outermost lines of hooking. I do a couple coats of this thinned out glue. I'm careful not to use so much that it seeps to the front of the rug. When the glue is dry I cut the rug out, but I don't cut so close that the loops don't have any linen to keep them in.

​ It generally takes me at least several months to finish one dog rug. My hooking frame and yarn bag are very portable (though bulky) so I can hook out and about at coffee shops or the library or a brewery if there's enough space and light.

Hooking in the wild makes me an ambassador for making things in general and rug hooking in particular. I answer people's questions and always emphasize how relatively easy it is to get started hooking. Sometimes I get anxious that other people will hook rugs that look like mine but better, but I think that working in a traditional medium means you should share your knowledge for the good of the craft.

[orteil42]

hey! if you've been following me for my game dev stuff here's an end-of-year summary

i would've liked to release a lot more things this year but between me moving and other life events i've been a little tight on focus and that's before accounting me being just very slow as a person!

nevertheless, here's what's been accomplished this year:

Cookie Clicker android update - this one was a LONG time coming and is the main reason i'm not writing this year off as unproductive. i've put a lot of care and time into it and i can say i'm proud of that release. some of it will help improve Cookie Clicker on web and Steam in future updates, ie. full offline idling and UI rework. a second, sizeable mobile update is planned at some point later to add sugar lumps, minigames etc

substantial headway on Cookie Clicker's dungeon minigame! it's been a lot of gameplay + layout tests, some resulting in design dead-ends ie. this whole "making the world map in Blender" notion i had. it's regardless seen the most progress it's had in a long time; i'm hoping next year will have me keeping my ambitions in check and keeping it simple enough for a proper beta release. sorry i couldn't make it happen this year again!…

various prototypes that started off as minor side-projects for a laugh or as code warmups but turned out oddly solid? i'd really like to keep pursuing some of these next year to the point where i can start showing off screens and playable alphas. said prototypes include an embeddable music composer/player, a painterly mini-photoshop and some kind of Pokemon-lite with level editor, all browser-based

a good amount of other behind-the-scenes Cookie Clicker-related stuff i'm hoping i get to disclose next year

2025 will see me starting fresh in a new town and hopefully with a steadier outlook on the way i get things done. i've started a good amount of new stuff this year that i'd like to finish in the next one. i'm writing this when i should be packing to visit my family for christmas i'll be right back

[faultfalha]

A new resource has been released that enables the comparison of microbial 16S rRNA and shotgun metagenomics data. The resource is a web-based tool that allows users to upload and compare two datasets, and to visualize the results as a heat map. The tool is designed to help researchers identify microorganisms that are present in different samples.

[webbasedresult]

HSC Result 2023 on the Education Board Result

To access the HSC Result 2023 on the Education Board Result website:

On November 30th, 2023, visit the official Intermediate and Secondary Education Boards Bangladesh website.

Navigate to the HSC Result section and choose the Dhaka Education Board.

Enter your exam roll number, registration number, and exam year.

Submit the details to view your HSC Result and marksheet.

Double-check for accuracy. This simple process allows easy access to the detailed Dhaka Education Board HSC Result 2023.

[reasonsforhope]

Given the misinformation that's been going around and will be going around, thought this might be helpful to some people

For a lot of reasons, I'm very good at this/at searching, to the point where I have worked as a professional fact-checker for two different publishers. So, here goes:

My Article Fact-Checking Protocol

Thorough Version

Read the full article. Keep an eye out for emotionally loaded words, and all-or-nothing language

Keep an eye out or anything that sounds too good to be true, and in contrast, anything that sounds so awful it must be true

Run the website/source through the amazing Media Bias/Fact Check. They'll tell you about a publication's bias and history of accuracy

Go to the website's home page and read through the headlines. Look at what topics they cover/prioritize, sensationalist headlines, and whether they're framing anything in a way that feels odd/off to you

Do a search related to the topic. This can be keywords, a question, or even just copy-paste the article title (Recommended: use DuckDuckGo so the results don't change based on what Google thinks they can sell you)

If multiple highly credible sources that say the same thing pop up, and there's no major societal biases that might affect the coverage of the topic in those sources (e.g. anything related to the Israel-Palestine conflict/Palestinian genocide, no matter which side), then I'm done!

If there are major societal biases, or I can't get a consensus of sufficiently credible sources, then I do some combination of:

(1) search the topic again + the words "controversy" and/or "fake"

(2) search the opposite of the topic, or do some sort of other filtered search

(3) look up a sufficiently credible news outlet with the opposite point of view of my source, and see what they have to say

(4) if it's a big enough topic, start by looking up 2 of the top national papers and 1 major paper for your region (I usually do the ones in the US, because that's where I am In the US: the LA Times, the Washington Post, and the NY Times)

Adjust "news" to "relevant type of source, e.g. tech, environmental" as relevant for all of the above options

If no red flags come up, and it's a topic I understand enough to smell huge bullshit,

Then I'm usually done!

If there are red flags, or I actually need a certain amount of detail/understanding, then it gets more complicated, but that would be a whole other thing to break down and such

or

tl;dr

Quick Version

Read the full article. Keep an eye out for emotionally loaded words, and all-or-nothing language

Keep an eye out or anything that sounds too good to be true, and in contrast, anything that sounds so awful it must be true.

If I don't know the website:

Run the website/source through the amazing Media Bias/Fact Check. They'll tell you about a publication's bias and history of accuracy

If I trust the source, but something else pinged my radar:

Do a quick web search to verify anything that sounds suspicious or too good/bad to be true (Recommended: use DuckDuckGo)

[ao3topshipsbracket]

Top Femslash Ships Bracket: Seeding

As promised, we're back with a new bracket! However, we're doing things a little differently this time. Rather than taking the data for seeding directly from a ranked list, we want you guys to be a part of the seeding process!

> Here is the Femslash Bracket Seeding Survey! <

This survey contains a list of over 100 ships, pulled from centreoftheselights's AO3 ship stats for 2023 and 2024, and Tumblr's year in review, as well as a few submissions that are not on either list but are considered iconic or historically important. It asks two questions: which ships have you heard of, and which ships do you view positively? The final seeding for the bracket will be based on a ratio of these numbers, from which we will rank the top 96!

A few notes regarding this survey:

Please answer as honestly as you can! Yes, that does mean going through a long list of ships twice in order to check all the relevant boxes, but such is the price we pay for accurate data.

Please only submit the survey once! While we normally delight in voter fraud, artificially boosting your favorite ship in this survey will only skew the results with no benefit; in fact, it could potentially hurt your chances in the actual bracket!

Do, however, feel free to reblog this post so we get a larger sample size.

The form does require that you be logged into a Google account; however, we are not collecting email addresses, and responses will be fully anonymous.

As always, this poll is a celebration of fandom and fandom history; we're aware that there are certain issues with many of the listed pairings and sources, but they are a part of that history. Please do not take this as an endorsement, and refrain from harassment.

We will be collecting responses until December 22, at 11:59 pm EST.

Take the survey here!

And, if you'd like to review the ships before you click through, here's the full list below the cut (listed alphabetically by source)

The 100 - Clarke Griffin/Lexa

Adventure Time - Princess Bubblegum/Marceline

Aespa (Band) - Kim Minjeong | Winter/Yu Jimin | Karina

Agatha All Along (TV) - Agatha Harkness/Rio Vidal

Agent Carter (TV) - Peggy Carter/Angie Martinelli

Agents of SHIELD (TV) - Jemma Simmons/Skye | Daisy Johnson

The Amazing Digital Circus - Pomni/Ragatha

Amphibia - Anne Boonchuy/Sasha Waybright

Amphibia - Anne Boonchuy/Marcy Wu

Arcane: League of Legends - Caitlyn/Vi

Attack on Titan - Mikasa Ackerman/Annie Leonhart

Attack on Titan - Krista Lenz | Historia Reiss/Ymir

Avatar: The Last Airbender - Azula/Ty Lee

Avatar: Legend of Korra - Korra/Asami Sato

Buffy the Vampire Slayer - Faith Lehane/Buffy Summers

Buffy the Vampire Slayer - Tara Maclay/Willow Rosenberg

Carmilla (Web Series) - Laura Hollis/Carmilla Kearnstein

Carol (2015) - Carol Aird/Therese Belivet

Criminal Minds - Jennifer "JJ" Jareau/Emily Prentiss

Critical Role - Beauregard Lionett/Yasha

Critical Role - Laudna/Imogen Temult

DC's Legends of Tomorrow - Sara Lance/Ava Sharpe

DC Universe - Pamela Isley | Poison Ivy/Harleen Quinzel | Harley Quinn

The Devil Wears Prada - Miranda Priestly/Andrea Sachs

Doctor Who - Thirteenth Doctor/Yasmin Khan

Dungeon Meshi - Marcille Donato/Falin Touden

Frozen - Anna/Elsa

Game of Thrones - Sansa Stark/Margaery Tyrell

Genshin Impact - Beidou/Ningguang

Genshin Impact - Raiden Ei | Baal/Yae Miko

Ghostbusters (2016) - Erin Gilbert/Jillian Holtzmann

Glee - Rachel Berry/Quinn Fabray

Glee - Santana Lopez/Brittany S. Pierce

Grey's Anatomy - Meredith Grey/Addison Montgomery

Haikyuu!! - Shimizu Kiyoko/Yachi Hitoka

Harry Potter - Hermione Granger/Pansy Parkinson

Harry Potter - Luna Lovegood/Ginny Weasley

The Haunting of Bly Manor (TV) - Dani Clayton/Jamie Taylor

Hawkeye (TV 2021) - Yelena Belova/Kate Bishop

Hazbin Hotel - Charlie Magne | Morningstar/Vaggie

Holby City - Serena Campbell/Bernie Wolfe

Homestuck - Rose Lalonde/Kanaya Maryam

Homestuck - Terezi Pyrope/Vriska Serket

House of the Dragon (TV) - Alicent Hightower/Rhaenyra Targaryen

Jujutsu Kaisen - Kugisaki Nobara/Zenin Maki

Killing Eve - Eve Polastri/Villanelle

The Last of Us - Dina/Ellie

Legacies (TV 2018) - Hope Mikaelson/Josie Saltzman

Legacies (TV 2018) - Penelope Park/Josie Saltzman

Life is Strange - Rachel Amber/Chloe Price

Life is Strange - Maxine "Max" Caufield/Chloe Price

LIttle Witch Academia - Diana Cavendish/Atsuko "Akko" Kagari

The Locked Tomb - Gideon Nav/Harrowhark Nonagesimus

Marvel Cinematic Universe - Maria Hill/Natasha Romanov

Marvel Cinematic Universe - Wanda Maximoff/Natasha Romanov

Mass Effect Trilogy - Female Shepard/Liara T'Soni

Merlin (TV) - Gwen/Morgana

Miraculous Ladybug - Juleka Couffaine/Rose Lavillant

Motherland: Fort Salem (TV) - Raelle Collar/Scylla Ramshorn

My Hero Academia - Jirou Kyouka/Yaoyorozu Momo

My Hero Academia - Toga Himiko/Uraraka Ochako

Naruto - Haruno Sakura/Yamanaka Ino

NCIS: Hawai'i - Lucy Tara/Kate Whistler

The Old Guard (Movie 2020) - Andy | Andromache of Scythia/Quynh | Noriko

Once Upon a Time - Evil Queen | Regina Mills/Emma Swan

Orphan Black - Delphine Cormier/Cosima Niehaus

Overwatch - Fareeha "Pharah" Amari/Angela "Mercy" Ziegler

Overwatch - Lena "Tracer" Oxton/Widowmaker | Amelie Lacroix

The Owl House - Amity Blight/Luz Noceda

Person of Interest - Root | Samantha Groves/Sameen Shaw

Pitch Perfect (Movies) - Chloe Beale/Beca Mitchell

Pokemon - Hanako | Delia Ketchum/Musashi | Jessie

Power Rangers (2017) - Kimberly Hart/Trini

Project SEKAI - Akiyama Mizuki/Shinonome Ena

Project SEKAI - Azusawa Kohane/Shiraishi An

Puella Magi Madoka Magica - Akemi Homura/Kaname Madoka

Revolutionary Girl Utena - Himemiya Anthy/Tenjou Utena

Riverdale (TV 2017) - Cheryl Blossom/Toni Topaz

Rizzoli & Isles - Maura Isles/Jane Rizzoli

RWBY - Blake Belladonna/Yang Xiao Long

RWBY - Ruby Rose/Weiss Schnee

Sailor Moon - Kaiou Michiru | Sailor Neptune/Tenoh Haruka | Sailor Uranus

Shadowhunters (TV) - Clary Fray/Isabelle Lightwood

She-Ra and the Princesses of Power - Adora/Catra

Splatoon (Video Games) - Marina/Pearl

Star Trek: Voyager - Kathryn Janeway/Seven of Nine

Station 19 - Maya Bishop/Carina DeLuca

Steven Universe - Lapis Lazuli/Peridot

Steven Universe - Ruby/Sapphire

Stranger Things - Robin Buckley/Nancy Wheeler

Stranger Things - Eleven | Jane Hopper/Maxine "Max" Mayfield

Supergirl - Alex Danvers/Maggie Sawyer

Supergirl - Kara Danvers/Lena Luthor

Teen Wolf - Allison Argent/Lydia Martin

Undertale - Alphys/Undyne

Warehouse 13 - Myka Bering/Helena "H.G." Wells

Warrior Nun - Sister Beatrice/Ava Silva

Wednesday (2022) - Wednesday Addams/Enid Sinclair

Wicked - Schwartz/Holzman - Elphaba Thropp/Galinda Upland

The Wilds (TV 2020) - Shelby Goodkind/Toni Shalifoe

Women's Association Football | Soccer RPF - Tobin Heath/Christen Press

Wynonna Earp - Waverly Earp/Nicole Haught

Xena: Warrior Princess - Gabrielle/Xena

[cameforstuff]

Hate Mail

Stan had gotten used to reading and replying to piles of mail in a day, slowed by carefully deciphering the messy crayon so he could give the best response. It would usually take him several minutes to think of the perfect doodle to slip in with it. Sometimes he would scrap it several times before he was happy with the result.

His last letter was from a little girl from California asking if it could rain soda she poured it into the ocean. He’d written a polite answer explaining that it would be bad for the sea animals, and a simple experiment she could do with evaporation instead. After a bit of thought he drew Dr. Pine sitting a a table chatting with a sea turtle in purple crayon at the bottom. He was almost glad he had not improved his drawing skills since he was twelve. 

The next letter shocked him a bit. He almost set it aside when he saw it, thinking a bill had been slipped with the fan letters. Yet there on the front, in almost obnoxious cursive, was the typical address to Dr. Pine. There was no return address.

Another odd thing about the letter was just how carefully it had been put together. The wording straight and the envelope closed seemingly perfectly. Yet the bottom corner was scrunched like the writer had been holding it like their life depended on it. Stan opened the letter, to his surprise there was two. 

The first was like any letter from a kid, slightly messy handwriting gushing about their favorite part of the last episode. The ‘Tate Mcgucket’ seemed to really enjoy them discussing the lake’s food web and listed a few of his favorite fish. 

The second letter however was not as kind. It listed 12 inaccuracies in the episode. Each going in lengthy detail. He could only skim it as the text shrunk to save room. The explanations were familiar in a way. Kind of like how he tried to explain things, but laced with passive aggressive remarks. Hate mail was a thing he had gotten from angsty teenagers and upset parents on occasion, but this letter felt different. It was addressed by a ‘Mr. Mystery PhD, A real one unlike yours.’ He stared at the letter for several minutes unsure of what to do with it. 

He moved back to the first letter, replying to it like any other. Drawing a Dr. Pine riding a large bass. He quickly popped open a book for references, this kid seemed like the type to appreciate the effort. Then he looked back at the other letter. A bit of annoyance now when he remembered the letter had no return address. He pinned both to a the corkboard above his desk and moved on to replying to other letters.

He decided he was going to get his reply to Tate, not only because he was determined to reply to every letter, but also to spite this ‘Mr Mystery.’ He may be right that Stan is not a real doctor, but he was a man to stubborn for his own good

______

And thus a saga of mail exchanges begins. Where? Uh I lost it in shipping, you know how mail goes.

Forgot to link the post that this is based on.

[ms-demeanor]

Hey friend! So while I'm incredibly skeptical, I'm not strictly against alternative medicine, like you are. I saw you mention reiki, and thought you might geek out on this article like I did:

https://web.archive.org/web/20200308195914/https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2020/04/reiki-cant-possibly-work-so-why-does-it/606808/

It's called "Reiki Can't Possibly Work. So Why Does It?" and I highly encourage reading the whole thing. It first of all thoroughly debunks a lot of the claims reiki practitioners make but it also details all of the studies that have proven its effectiveness and provides what I find a pretty compelling explanation: that much of modern western medicine is stressful and traumatizing. Of course laying in a quiet room with the lights dimmed while a kind person sits with you and wishes for you to be well is effective. It reduces stress and all of the negative biological processes it triggers, which promotes healing.

The article mentions that for years we didn't understand the mechanism by which acetaminophen worked - we just knew it did. I knew a man who was really into "chakra therapy" in the 90s where he had a set of colored sunglasses that, supposedly, would rebalance one's out-of-whack chakras through light therapy. He found that attending to his throat chakra, yellow, helped him sleep better. Years later, formal studies found that yellow lenses filter blue light and can help regulate circadian rhythms.

When I was really little, my uncle sold magnet therapy products (which claimed to promote circulation?? I think??). I had a huge meltdown at a family reunion and no one could get me to calm down. My uncle put a blanket full of magnets on top of me, and I immediately relaxed. Imagine my surprise hearing that story for the first time as an adult who now uses a weighted blanket for stress.

I agree that people need to be really careful about these practices, about getting scammed, and especially about herbal supplements that can have dangerous interactions. I also think there's an extent to which you can analyze the risks and benefits and say, "Okay, I have no idea why this works but it does and there's no major downsides."

Hey so I get a bit heated in this response but I want you to know that I approached this ask in good faith because I know you and I know that we have a lot of the same values and interests and this touched a nerve that was not at all your fault and once I get past the direct response to the article I think I come off a little less. Um. Like the aggression there is not directed at you, it's directed at the article and at one person mentioned in the article specifically who is part of why my reaction to the article is so not good. But I promise after the last bullet point I come off as less reactive, I think. (I'm also publishing this publicly because I think it may be helpful for people to see how CAM stuff often gets away with a veneer of skepticism-that-isn't-actually-skepticism - the article claims to be skeptical but then makes a ton of assumptions and cites some truly mind-bogglingly bad sources that a lot of people won't recognize as bad if they don't have a hair trigger trained by far too much time on the bad CAM parts of the internet).

I've actually read that article a few time times, and would like to do a quick rundown on why I find it unconvincing:

She doesn't cite any decent studies on reiki; one that she does cite is just a self-reported questionnaire response from 23 people in 2002.

While we don't know the exact mechanism of action for acetaminophen, we do know that it does work - it measurably reduces fever and in double blinded RCTs produces reproduceable results in reducing certain kinds of pain. The Science Based Medicine authors cited in the article who called for an end to studies on reiki did so both because there is no plausible mechanism of action for reiki (specifically as energy work, not as 'being in a room with a patient person who listens to you') and because there is no good evidence that it works. (And they wrote a follow-up to the Atlantic article; I like SBM but it's quite sneery, as are most of their write-ups of reiki). When Kisner asks "why should this be different?" when comparing reiki and acetaminophen, the answer is: because there is not only no plausible way that reiki *could* work, there is not any good evidence we have that it works better than placebo.

"Various non-Western practices have become popular complements to conventional medicine in the past few decades, chief among them yoga, meditation, and acupuncture, all of which have been the subject of rigorous scientific studies that have established and explained their effectiveness." This one sentence needs probably twenty or so links in response, suffice it to say that western medicine has emphatically not established and explained the effectiveness of AT LEAST acupuncture and the casually credulous way Kisner accepts that acupuncture is effective (effective FOR WHAT?) throws some serious doubt on her ability to assess these kinds of things.

The title of the article is "Reiki can't possibly work, so why does it?" and that's probably the Atlantic's fault more than Jordan Kisner's fault, but she doesn't ever demonstrate that it works. She says she got a buzzy feeling after her training, she says that patients at the VA were asking for reiki as treatment for pain and sleep disorders, she says that people remembered "healing touches" from parents and loved ones and that the same mechanism might be what makes reiki 'work.' She says that reiki "has been shown by various studies that pass evidentiary muster to help patients in a variety of ways when used as a complementary practice" and the two studies that she includes that weren't just a questionnaire were 1) a non-blinded study of heart rate variability post heart attack where the reiki arm involved continuous interaction with a trained nurse and the other two arms involved resting quietly or classical music (so relaxation as a result of additional focused attention by attentive medical professionals could account for this? Why was the control for this study not having a med student sit and hold the patient's hand?) and 2) a study of patients who sought out reiki who were surveyed after treatment and noted improvement on one of twenty mental or physical markers (this study is like, GOLD for an example of a bad study; no control, self-selected participants who believe in the efficacy of the intervention, exceptionally broad criteria for a positive result - I find it really really really challenging to grant any credence to someone who confidently cited this as an example of reiki "working")

Near the end of the article she says "At the same time, this recalled the most cutting-edge, Harvard-stamped science I’d read in my research: Ted Kaptchuk’s finding that the placebo effect is a real, measurable, biological healing response to “an act of caring.” - if she read any of Ted Kaptchuk's research she didn't link to it; what she did link to was a 2018 New York Times profile of him and Kathryn Hall, researchers at Harvard's Placebo Studies and the Therapeutic Encounter program. Being any flavor of journalist and citing Ted Kaptchuk as your source for cutting-edge, institutionally-backed science is disqualifying.

I now need to do some yelling about Ted Kaptchuk.

For clarity: I have as much medical training as Kathryn Hall and Ted Kaptchuk, which is to say: None.

Hall is a microbiologist with a PhD in Public Health, so she at least a background in science. Kaptchuk is an acupuncturist with a BA in East Asian studies and a doctorate in Chinese medicine - notably NOT a medical degree; he was forced to stop calling himself a doctor and had papers retracted after enough people questioned whether the school he claimed he attended even existed and the documents he presented to claim that he was an "OMD" were conclusively translated and did not have any indication that the granted a medical degree of any kind - Science Based Medicine was involved in investigating this because they've been comprehensively anti-quack forever and Ted Kaptchuk has been a quack forever (after recieving confirmation from the government of Macau that Kaptchuk's alma mater was not a medical degree granting institution SBM STILL gave him the benefit of the doubt and had people translate his documentation for final confirmation).

He is also an author on of one of my most beloathed ever studies, which showed that sham acupuncture, placebo, and albuterol all produced the same effect on patient-reported well-being, coming to the conclusion that patient reports can be unreliable and that "placebo effects can be clinically meaningful and can rival the effects of active medication in patients with asthma." That fucking line, that stupid goddamned line, gets cited in every piece of woo bullshit about how acupuncture or chiropractic or some scam-ass diet all work, I've run into this study while looking through at least twenty bibliographies and it is one of the biggest, reddest flags that whoever is writing the paper you're reading is full up on some bullshit. Because, see, the paper found that "placebo effects can be clinically meaningful and can rival the effects of active medication in patients with asthma" in terms of *patient-reported* markers, but the fucking study found that only albuterol produced an actual effect in lung function. Here's the sentence BEFORE the one that gets cited all the time: "Although albuterol, but not the two placebo interventions, improved FEV1 [forced expiratory volume in one second - the measure for lung function used in the study and used to diagnose asthma] in these patients with asthma, albuterol provided no incremental benefit with respect to the self-reported outcomes." It doesn't matter if the patient *feels* better if they can't actually breathe! It doesn't fucking matter - feeling better but still having poor breathing leaves you more vulnerable to dying of a fucking asthma attack! I hate this goddamned study so fucking much and it's used all the time to claim that placebo can be just as effective as medicine for making people FEEL better but, like, they're still sick even if they feel better! I HAVE HAD PEOPLE CITE THIS STUPID FUCKING STUDY TO ME AS EVIDENCE THAT I DON'T CARE ENOUGH ABOUT TREATING MY FUCKING ASTHMA BECAUSE I DON'T GET ACUPUNCTURE TO TREAT MY FUCKING ASTHMA. If sham acupuncture makes you feel better when you've got the flu but doesn't lower your fever or make you less contagious, you shouldn't act like you don't have a fever or aren't contagious this study makes me INSANE.

Okay done yelling.

I think this look at placebo in the midst of her article about reiki is really interesting because it's very common for CAM practitioners to claim that it's as effective as placebo - which just means that it's not effective. This is a great explanation from The Skeptic on why placebo isn't and can't be what Kaptchuk, Hall, and the like claim. It's also interesting to me that Kisner didn't choose to link to a 2011 New Yorker profile of Kaptchuk that is somewhat less rosy about his placebo studies and includes this absolutely crushing statement: "the placebo effect doesn’t appear to work with Alzheimer’s patients. Trivers suggests that this is because most people who have Alzheimer’s disease are unable to anticipate the future and are therefore unable to prepare for it."

But to the actual point of the ask: I honestly think it's fascinating how much CAM success probably rides on "well did you listen to the patient and pay attention to what was wrong with them and sympathize with them and help them lay out plan that made them feel like they had some agency in this exceptionally frustrating situation (chronic illness, newly diagnosed issue, totally undiagnosed issue) that they're dealing with?"

I know part of why people with chronic illnesses turn to CAM is because they're ignored and dismissed by allopathic practitioners who are largely looking for horses, not zebras - this is one of the reasons that I'm really big on reminding people that (at least in the US) DOs are fully licensed physicians who use a holistic and patient-centered approach so if you are someone with a chronic illness who has had trouble getting diagnosed or had trouble getting doctors to believe you, swapping your MD for a DO as a primary care physician might be really, really helpful to you.

But the flip side of that is that is that I worry deeply about the question of where harm starts; the example with your uncle is really great because you do have a solid instance of something working but for totally the wrong reason (pressure being the mechanism that actually helped, versus magnets being the reason given by the person who did the treatment). Some of this stuff has very little likelihood of causing direct harm, but has the distinct possibility of having indirect harms, which people in the anti-CAM space generally divide into two categories, treatment delay and unnecessary costs (opportunity costs, monetary costs, wasted effort, etc.)

I'm going to step outside of your specific example and look at magnet therapy generally, which really is a spectacular thing to focus on because it honestly doesn't have any direct harms; nobody is allergic to magnets, the kinds of magnets used aren't strong enough to interfere with medical devices, it's even safer than the whole "well herbalism is sometimes just a cup of tea" thing because there are "safe" teas that can do real harm to large populations! But simply being around magnets is not going to hurt anyone (unless they're swallowed; nobody swallow magnets please).

One of the things that I think goes under-discussed when talking about placebo and CAM is that the people trying the alternative solutions desperately WANT the alternative medicine to work (I suspect that this is why the self-selected study of reiki patients has such a significant finding). They are pulling for it; they may be looking at it as a last resort, or they may be hoping that it will work to avoid a treatment that is more frightening, expensive, or inaccessible. I think this actually contributes a lot to the delay of care that we see with CAM.

The absolute worst case harm I can imagine from magnetic therapy is delaying treatment. Let's suppose we've got a diabetic patient with gradually increasing peripheral neuropathy; they have reacted poorly to gabapentin in the past and are looking for something more natural, and they hear from their chiropractor that magnet therapy can be used to treat neuropathy. They buy some compression socks with "magnetic and earthing properties" and sleep in the socks. Whether through the compression controlling some edema or through the simple desire for the socks to work, they feel some relief from the nerve pain they were experiencing and decide that this is a success. The socks work! They continue wearing the socks with occasional pain, but less than before. However, because they are focused on the lack of pain, they don't notice that it's accompanied by increasing numbness. The numbness significantly increases their risk of injury to their feet, which significantly increases their risk of amputation.

It probably sounds like catastrophizing to say "using magnets could lead to amputation" but honestly I don't think it's that far out of the realm of possibility (every time I post on this topic I get flooded with the saddest stories in the world about people whose loved ones died because of delayed treatment for cancer or heart disease).

The second category of harm is cost, which is honestly pretty minimal with magnet therapy, as long as you aren't spending $1049 on a magnetic mat

or paying a chiropractor to give you magnetic treatments. For some other medically harmless treatments like reiki, cost is the thing that I worry about - while I was looking up information related to the article I found that people are charging anywhere from $60 to $225 a session, and selling multi-session packages for thousands of dollars - and if someone thinks that something works, even if it only works by being in a soothing space where someone cares about you - they'll pay for it.

I'm aware that all of this is also extra complicated because of the cost and lack of access to allopathic medicine - a chiropractor broke my spine because I could pay her $60 per appointment but I couldn't pay $125 to see an MD when I didn't have insurance. People who are sick are going to look for treatment; people who have been denied treatment or dismissed by doctors are going to look for alternative treatments.

But man, I really wish I'd spent that sixty bucks on half of a doctor's appointment because the chiropractor didn't know about the benign tumor that I had that weakened the structure of that particular bone when she did her adjustment; it also didn't make the pain go away, it made a different pain start and get worse because it turns out I was having debilitating muscle spasms that then had a bone injury added in on top.

(Chiropractic, for the record, goes with chelation therapy and many many many many cases of herbalism where it's NOT just cost or delay; people claim these treatments are harmless and they are not. They can do tremendous harm).

But yeah I'm not going to deny at all that all of this would be a hell of a lot better if people (especially marginalized people) didn't have to jump through hoops to prove to a doctor that something is wrong with them, and didn't have to do so in an appointment that attempts to cram whole person care down into fifteen minutes, and didn't have the possibility of bankrupting you. Interacting with allopathic medicine is a nightmare and I totally understand why people want to look outside of it for treatment.

I've just heard too many horror stories and seen too much predatory CAM to cut much of it any slack.

At the end of the SBM response to the Atlantic article, the author (I can't remember if it's Gorski or Novella) makes the point that reiki is a spiritual practice, and that we've known for a long time that spiritual practices can improve a person's well-being in a number of ways; they can reduce anxiety, they can provide community, they can give people a space to feel and express emotions that they certainly aren't going to be able to process in a doctor's office. Spiritual practices can be wonderful, and we know there are a lot of people who they can help. But they aren't medicine, and attempting to replace medicine with them (which I don't think that most reiki practitioners are trying to do, to be fair, but which Ted Kaptchuk DEFINITELY is in trying to 'harness the power of placebo') is a disservice to people who need an inhaler instead of acupuncture.

Also, and I know this was not your point but I have to bring it up because people ask about it whenever discussions of placebo come up:

The placebo effect is not treatment. The placebo effect, whether achieved through deception or when someone says loud and clear "this is a sugar pill" does not improve an illness, but it may improve how a patient *feels* about an illness. In some cases, this may as well be the same thing - if you're dealing with muscle pain because you're stressed and no matter what you do it doesn't go away because your shoulders are always up around your ears and you're grinding your teeth and you're sleeping poorly, then literally just talking to someone who is in an office and says "this is a sugar pill, go ahead and take it" may make your muscle pain feel better, but it isn't going to reduce your stress and it isn't going to last, and if your muscle pain is because you're feeling angina as a result of a partially blocked artery then it SURE AS FUCK is not going to make you better and may mask symptoms that were a warning sign of a much more serious problem. People who are sick deserve actual treatment, and placebo is not treatment, which is part of why Ted Kaptchuk makes me want to tear my hair out.

[austinbutlerslovers]

Devotion

Label 18+

Summary Your Na-Baron Feyd Rautha becomes dangerously obsessed with you, consumed by a need to have you entirely to himself—until a fateful event forces him to choose between his desire for you and his legacy.

Part 1 🔗Obsession for the wedding

🚨Depraved Smut🚨 Feyd feral • obsessive • constant claiming • Feyd impatient • oral on fem • nipple play • clit play •words of devotion • body praise • sex on a ceremonial table • sex after a battle • rough sex • missionary • girl on top • breeding kink • lactation kink • thigh rutting • Feyd jealous • multiple orgasms • creampies 🔗 Masterlist

📖 Proofreaders @purejasmine @magicovento @psycheetamore ✨Inspired and dedicated to @lokisnapemalfoy 🗳️ Based on Unanimous 🔗 Poll Decision 🏆

🏆 1st Devotion 2nd Daddy’s Doll 3rd Love/Hate 4th Wild Hearts. *Special thanks for voting 😍 & enjoy the upcoming fics!🤩 🗳️

Devotion

The Harkonnens were never content to leave their future to chance. For centuries, their breeding practices had been as meticulous and calculated as their rise to power.

The Baron himself was the architect of these plans, ensuring that the Harkonnen bloodline remained as ruthless and potent as the poisons they used to eliminate their enemies.

The philosophy was simple: strength and ambition above all else, ruthlessness and cunning embedded in every generation.

When Feyd Rautha was born, he was hailed as the progeny of this breeding program,a perfect specimen of Harkonnen genetics.

His childhood was molded not by love but by calculated cruelty, ensuring he would grow into the precise tool the bloodline needed.

His beauty, his intelligence, and his lethal instincts were all results of an unforgiving strategy to create an heir who could dominate not only Giedi Prime, but the galaxy itself.

But the Harkonnen obsession with breeding didn’t end with Feyd. The Baron viewed every union as a transaction, every offspring as a pawn to be used in his intricate web of power.

Alliances were forged through bloodlines, with matches calculated for maximum political and genetic advantage.

You would be the first female to bear a Harkonnen heir, and were scrutinized for your lineage, physical strength, and intelligence.

The Baron had manipulated your ruling planet to approve the match, believing it would ensure a viable heir and secure his nephew’s position.

The union was never about love or even desire; it was about creating the perfect Harkonnen progeny, an heir born of cruelty, strength, and unyielding ambition.

It was a calculated transaction, a means to secure the future of House Harkonnen in the brutal game of power and dominance.

But the Baron, in all his scheming, underestimated one thing.

He didn’t know you.

You were no pawn in their dark schemes—every move you made, every choice you accepted, was driven by one singular desire:

You wanted Feyd-Rautha

From the moment you first laid eyes on him, you were bound to him.

When the Harkonnens arrived on your homeworld, flanked by imposing guards and the ever-watchful Baron to negotiate with your father, the bargain was sealed before the terms were even spoken

The Harkonnen presence was suffocating, their power overwhelming, but it was Feyd who drew your attention.

There was something in his dark intensity, the sharpness of his gaze, and the lethal grace of his movements that captivated you completely.

You saw the danger in him, the cruelty, but it only deepened your fascination.

As the negotiations wore on, you realized you were not being forced into the agreement—you were entering it willingly.

You were lured by the darkness that surrounded Feyd, and you knew you would surrender everything to be his.

After the grim Harkonnen wedding traditions of Blood Binding, the Trail of Chains, and the Bending of the Will—you belonged to him completely.

From your wedding night until the first light of dawn, you gave yourselves to each other, surrendering in ways neither of you had anticipated, driven by pure unspoken obsession.

Though he once seemed so incapable of love, over time the calculating and cruel Feyd Rautha began to surrender himself to you, piece by reluctant piece.

The Na-Baron of House Harkonnen, underwent a remarkable transformation since you became his Baroness.

The arrogant grin that once promised manipulation and danger now softens every time he looks at you, a rare tenderness breaking through his hardened exterior.

Instead of being bound by silent obedience to duty, you find yourselves infatuated with each other—an obsession that neither of you can resist nor wants to control.

Now, as you sit before the Baron in a meeting about your recent union, you are both restless beneath the oppressive weight of politics.

Seated across the long obsidian table, you and Feyd exchange stolen glances, the heat between you simmering just beneath the surface.

The sharp planes of his face are illuminated by the cold artificial lighting, his lips forming a signature smirk every time your eyes meet his.

Beneath his polished veneer of diplomacy, something far deeper stirs in Feyd as his gaze roams over you possessively, making it clear what he wants.

His jaw clenches in a way that makes your pulse quicken.

You know that look.

It’s the silent promise of what’s to come.

You try to focus on the Baron’s voice droning on about the future of House Harkonnen, but the weight of Feyd’s stare burns into you, his fingers drumming impatiently against the table.

By the time the meeting ends, the tension between you is unbearable.

No sooner than the words have left the Baron’s lips concluding the meeting than Feyd is on his feet, striding purposefully toward you.

His hand finds your wrist, his grip firm and commanding as he leads you through the fortress corridors with swift, measured steps.

His silence is more telling than any words as your heart pounds in anticipation.

He shoves open a heavy steel door to a separate hall, dragging you inside before kicking it shut behind him.

The echo reverberates through the chamber, and before you can catch your breath, Feyd’s mouth is on yours.

The air is cold, but you barely feel it as he presses you against the ceremonial table in the room’s center, the harsh edges digging into your thighs.

“I could not wait,” he rasps, his lips claiming yours in a demanding kiss, the force of it nearly bruising.

You whimper into his mouth as his hands slide up your thighs, pushing the fabric of your gown higher in a frantic search for skin.

When his fingers graze your bare flesh, a low groan fills his chest.

“You’ve worn nothing to keep me from you,” he rasps, his voice thick with need as his fingertips trace along your wetness.

You gaze into his blue eyes—sharp and vivid, unmatched by anything on Giedi Prime’s dark expanse, “Nothing could keep me from you,” you whisper pulling him into another searing kiss.

His hands grip your hips as he hoists you onto the table with effortless strength, your body yielding as he steps between your legs.

His kiss turns messy, his lips parting against yours as his tongue slides in, devouring you in ways that make your heart race.

You clutch at his shoulders, your fingers trailing into the intricate design of his pendant as his movements become methodical undoing his fastener, driven by a hunger neither of you can suppress.

“I will claim every part of you,” he rasps, savoring the evidence of your desire as his hands slide to your hips, fingers pressing hard into the soft flesh.

With a possessive grip, he thrusts in sharply, a desperate plunge that fills you with a raw, searing heat that borders on pain.

His length forces its way deep inside your body as you give in to the relentless sensation.

His hand grasps the back of your neck as he penetrates you fully, your breath catching as a satisfied moan escapes your lips.

His blue eyes meet yours, and for a fleeting moment, all of his arrogance and cruelty falls away.

His lips part, as his pupils dilate, and his face softens in a rare moment of unguarded bliss.

The way he looks at you in that instant, like you are the only thing in the universe steals your breath away.

“You are mine,” he whispers reverently, his lips pressing against yours as he slowly begins thrusting his cock deep inside.

You moan as he takes what’s his, reaching for his face, cupping his sharp jawline as he leans into your touch, his lips claiming yours in a rough, desperate kiss.

The stone walls of the fortress echo with your moans and the sharp, guttural sounds Feyd makes as he takes you.

It is his domain, his right, yet in moments when his passion subsides, when he cradles your face with a gentleness that no one else will ever see, when he brushes his lips across yours in reverence whispering your name like a vow, the cruel and calculating Na-Baron is nowhere to be found as he becomes entirely yours.

No place within the Harkonnen fortress or even the cold steel corridors of his warships remain untouched by the echoes of your passion.

As newlyweds, the intimacy between you is endless, and insatiable, a hunger that neither of you can resist.

The tension that once simmered beneath the surface gives way to an all-consuming need, and with every stolen kiss every hidden moment of intimacy, Feyd becomes more entwined with you—so deeply, so thoroughly, that he begins to lose himself.

His hunger for you becomes an obsession, a need that overrides his cunning nature, making him reckless, distracted.

And then, one night, something in him shifts entirely.

Feyd had been gone for weeks, sent on a brutal campaign to crush a lingering rebellion on the outskirts of Arrakis. The mission was relentless, hunting down insurgents through the planet’s caverns.

He relished the slaughter, the thrill of the fight, but something clawed at him beneath the surface. No matter how many bodies fell at his feet, no matter how much blood stained his blade, his thoughts always drifted back to you.

You, soft and waiting in his chambers, you untouched by any one but him. The thought of you is the only thing that soothed the rage simmering beneath his skin, the only thing that made the relentless crusade tolerable.

And now, as he strides through the fortress halls returned from his mission his mind is on one singular focus.

You.

His boots echo against the polished stone floors, his presence commanding as guards and servants alike step out of his way without a word.

His face is hard, his muscles tense with an impatience that only grows stronger the closer he gets to his quarters.

He doesn’t knock. He never does, the door opens with a forceful shove, and there you are waiting for him just as he had envisioned.

You stand in the dim glow of his chamber, draped in a delicate silk robe that clings to your form, tied loosely down the front in anticipation of him undoing it.

When word had reached you of his return aboard his Ravager, you immediately prepared yourself to see him, and now, as he stands before you, the intensity of him sets your heart ablaze.

He is clad in the stark, angular lines of his Harkonnen Warlord uniform, black as the void and edged with argent, the fabric clinging to his broad shoulders and tapering down to his lean waist.

The harshness of the attire only sharpens his beauty—his full lips parting as he takes you in, his blue eyes piercing like the ice of some distant planet with a heat that defies their cool hue.

He is the epitome of command and power, the sculpt of his face so handsome it feels like he is a blade honed to perfection.

Your smile is soft and welcoming, a quiet glow of happiness at seeing him again. But the glint in his sharp blue eyes tells you he’s missed you far more than you’ve missed him.

“You have returned,” you breathe, but you barely get the words out before he’s on you, his hands gripping your waist and pulling you flush against his battle-hardened body.

His lips crash into yours with a desperate hunger, devouring you with a need that is raw and filled with longing.

Before you can react, he lifts you effortlessly in his arms as he carries you to the bed, laying you down with determination.

He only takes a moment to look at you, his gaze dark, reverent, his chest rising and falling in heavy anticipation.

“I have craved you” he whispers, his voice a hushed confession as his fingers pull at the lace of your gown, his mouth claiming yours again with a fierce hunger.

He kisses a trail down your neck, his lips hot and wet as he sucks heavily to leave marks for himself.

You gasp as his hands slide down your waist, fingers digging in possessively as he lowers himself, his mouth following the same path.

“I must savor you,” he whispers, his voice rough and low as his hands tear your gown free, exposing you to him.

And then, with effortless strength, he lifts your legs over his shoulders, holding your thighs on him as his breath fans over your skin.

The first flick of his tongue has you arching against him, your fingers grasping the silk sheets beneath you, reaching for anything, to ground yourself.

The pleasure is sharp, intoxicating, and as he delves deeper, his grip tightens on your thighs, holding you still as he works you open with unrelenting precision.

You moan as his tongue flicks against your clit before dragging down, slipping between your folds, tasting every inch of you with torturous intent.

Your body shudders, the sharp gasps spilling from your lips turning into a desperate moans as his tongue moves faster, stroking, coaxing, driving you higher.

Your hips push instinctively against his face until his hands tighten, pressing you firmly onto the bed and he holds you still as he devours you with ravenous sweeps of his tongue.

Your body writhes beneath him, your nails dragging against the sheets as your moans rise higher, desperate, uncontrollable.

He groans against you, his voice rough as his mouth seals over you, sucking hard before his tongue flicks in with relentless strokes, sending surges of pleasure racing though your core.

Your thighs tremble, threatening to close around his head, but he only buries his face deeper his tongue plunging in with unrelenting force.

Your back arch off the bed the tension coiling impossibly tighter inside you.

“Feyd—” you plead in a desperate breathless cry, placing your hands on his head as your body tightens, every muscle locking up as the pleasure peaks.

Your release crashes through you like a tidal force and Feyd groans into you, drinking it, lapping it up with a feral intensity that leaves you shaking in his grasp.

You lay panting beneath him as he rises above you, his lips glistening with your pleasure.

Without a word, he strips off his surcoat, the glow of the chamber’s dim lighting casting shadows over the definition of his pale muscles, every ridge and line carved to perfection.

His chiseled chest rises and falls with heavy breaths, his hunger for you burning in his eyes as he moves over you.

“How long have you endured since I have bound you to me?” he asks, his voice low and rough like gravel, a glint of possession flickering in his gaze as his fingers trace your skin.

“An..eternity,” you reply with soft breaths, your words sparking a fire in him that nearly destroys his composure, his breath catching as his control frays.

You crave him like this—feral, unhinged, completely yours.

He climbs on top of you, his weight pressing you down, his skin hot against yours. His hands pin your wrists as he gazes down at you, his eyes filled with dangerous devotion.

“I can not escape you,” he confesses as he lowers his mouth to the curve of your breast. “Not for an instant have you left my mind,” he whispers, his lips brushing over your nipple before gently sucking it into his mouth.

His teeth tense with a punishing force, needing to make you feel what he feels. Then as you whimper his tongue soothes, licking gently, as if to atone for his obsession.

His hands slide down your arms around your breasts, kneading and squeezing as he claims them possessively.

Then his thumbs flick over your nipples, before his mouth follows, hot and relentless, his tongue licking heavily as he savors what he wants.

Your fingers trail over his broad shoulders, pulling him closer, needing him just as much as he needs you, and he groans in response, pressing himself harder against you.

“You have missed me,” he whispers, his voice rough with certainty.

His hips shift as he lines himself up, and your eyes drop between your bodies, taking in the sight of his cock, thick and rigid, heavy with an aching need for you.

Your fingers slide down his chest, grazing over the defined ridges of his abs before wrapping around the base of his cock.

His breath catches, a low groan escaping his throat as you stroke him slowly, feeling the heat and weight of him in your hand.

“I have missed you,” you whisper in return, your voice filled with longing, your eyes locking onto his.

There’s no patience in him now, only the need to claim you, the need you to remind you that you are his.

His lips seize your mouth in a kiss that steals your breath as he nudges your legs apart, settling between them, his cock pressing against you.

He drags the head along your slick center, collecting your wetness with each slow, measured stroke, making you arch into him, making your body beg for more.

Then he thrusts his thick cock inside, drawing soft whimpers from you as your nails drag down his back, your pleading eyes locked on to his feeling him stake his claim.

Your slick walls tighten around him as he pushes in deeper, a rush of pleasure flooding your core as you surrender to the overwhelming sensation.

His thrusts are slow, methodical, but with each roll of his hips, his need sharpens. His hand slides up to grip your jaw, forcing your gaze to stay on his as he drives into you with a primal urge to breed.

It feels impossible that he can go any harder, but he does, each thrust sending waves of pleasure through you that leave you trembling.

“I want you swollen with what is mine,” he rasps, his thrusts growing more intense, his need for you all consuming.

His pace quickens, his hips snapping as he angles deeper, making you shudder and gasp clinging to him harder.

He groans your name, low and wrecked, lost in a pleasure that no one else has ever made him feel, and the sound of his voice, the raw, helpless way he gives himself to you makes you come undone.

Broken moans spill from your lips as he thrusts into you, relentlessly, ravenously, feeling you orgasm against him, each movement dragging more pleasure from you as you lie beneath him.

His grip slides to your hips, his muscles flexing with every thrust, groaning as he feels the depths of you that only he can claim.

His eyes, dark and fevered, lock onto yours- his pleasure raw and unrestrained, his body moving with one sole purpose.

He doesn’t stop, he doesn’t slow and his thrusts become desperate, punishing, consuming, as if the idea of stopping is unthinkable.

“Feyd,” you gasp, wrapping your legs around him, pulling him deeper, your voice a tether in his chaos. “Give yourself to me.”

He tilts his head back as your words reach him and a groan of surrender tears from his throat. His rhythm falters under the weight of your command, and he thrusts once, twice more, before he spills into you, the heat of his seed flooding through your core.

The sight of his face and the way his mouth parts as his eyes darken with ecstasy, fills you with a devotion that leaves you entirely his.

He slowly collapses onto you, his body heavy and warm, his breath coming in ragged pants against your skin.

His lips find your chest, pressing soft, dazed kisses between your breasts as he basks in the aftermath.

“You have ruined me,” he murmurs, his voice drowsy as his fingers trace lazy circles over your skin.

“You are not ruined,” you reply, trailing your fingers over his neck. “You are mine.”

He hums softly at that, his lips curving into a rare smile as he leans up to kiss you again, slower this time, tender in a way that feels almost out of place for a Harkonnen.

In these moments, Feyd Rautha, the cruel and calculating Na Baron becomes something else entirely.

He becomes yours.

As he drifts to sleep in your arms, you know that you have satisfied him in every way imaginable, leaving him soft, surrendered, and completely undone by the force of your love.

It comes as no surprise when the proclamation is made that you are bearing the seed of House Harkonnen.

The fortress hums with whispers of your impending role, the air thick with the weight of expectation and legacy.

The Harkonnen bloodline, ruthless and unyielding, will continue through you, and the realization settles over you that you have fulfilled your role to Feyd in every way.

You are beyond obsessed with him, though you try to hide it. The thought of him fills your mind, even when he is not near, and as your pregnancy progresses, his attachment to you deepens in ways that even he cannot even fully understand.

You carry the life you created together, a new chapter in the blood-soaked lineage of the Harkonnens, and as your body becomes heavier with the weight of your unborn child, you become Feyds object of fascination.

His gaze lingers every time you are near, a curiosity so raw it seems to surprise even him. Every swell, every change in your form draws him closer, as though the transformation within you stirs something deep and primal in himself.

In the final days of your pregnancy, a ceremony takes place deep within the fortress.

It is held in a grand shrine carved from obsidian, lined with cruel, jagged relics of past conquests.

Shadows dance along the towering walls, cast by the flickering glow of fire pits filled with thick incense that clings sweetly to your lungs with every breath.

The air is heavy, suffocating, charged with an ancient energy that feels both sacred and oppressive.

The only two males present in the vast, echoing chamber are the Baron and Feyd.

You are dressed in a black opulent gown lined with dark obsidian crystals, your entire body veiled save for your lower face and hands.

This is a sacred time in your pregnancy, mere days from birth. The fabric clings to your form, accentuating the curve of your swollen belly, a visible testament to the life growing inside you.

A heavy Harkonnen pendant rests at your throat, a symbolic marker of your new role within the dynasty.

Carefully, you are knelt upon a cold white stone slab as trembling female attendants gather around you.

Their heads remain bowed in submission, their hands shaking as they place a modesty cloth over your legs and slowly lift your robe to reveal only your bare belly, round and full with the future of the Harkonnen line.

They work in fearful silence, their ink-darkened fingers tracing ancient markings of fertility across your skin, binding you to the legacy you carry.

At the head of the room, the Baron lounges forward in his oversized throne, his grotesque form draped in layers of dark, rich fabric that do little to conceal his bloated mass. His beady eyes glisten with an unsettling mix of greed and cunning as he surveys your womb for the first time.

“My dearest nephew,” he rasps, his voice thick with satisfaction, “she bears the fruit of our dominion… the future of House Harkonnen.”

Feyd’s piercing gaze never strays from you, fixed on the swell of your body that carries his heir.

There is something raw in his eyes, an infatuation bordering on obsession, a hunger so possessive it sends a shiver down your spine.

His fingers twitch at his sides, aching to touch you, to claim you, even here, even now, in front of them all.

The Harkonnen Shaman enters the chamber and steps forward, cloaked in dark robes adorned with symbols of death and rebirth. His voice is low and resonant, each word deliberate, steeped in ancient authority.

“You now bear the fruit of life,” he chants, his withered hand hovering over your belly, as if feeling the of the life within. “And it is life’s blood that shall nourish it.”

A ceremonial basin rests ominously on the altar beside you, filled with a viscous substance, and your heartbeat quickens as the Shaman gestures toward it.

Feyd steps forward, his breath heavy, the tension in his body coiled tight with unspoken obligation.

Without hesitation, he lowers his fingers into the liquid, the thick red substance clinging to them as he lifts his hand.

His dark eyes meet yours, and without breaking contact, he brings his fingers to your womb.

“Seal our future,” he says, hushed and commanding, laced with something deeper—something desperate. “Deliver our heir,” he whispers.

Your skin prickles with anticipation and fear, but beneath it all, a dark thrill stirs within you.

The weight of Feyd’s gaze, the feel of his touch, it’s intoxicating, binding you to him in ways you could never comprehend.

Feyd watches intently, his blue eyes dark with fascination as he draws the ancient marking of his bloodline over your womb, staining your skin as the Shaman watches approvingly.

Whispers ripple through the chamber as the Baron’s grin widens in grotesque delight.

Feyd works methodically, each stroke pressing the significance of this moment deeper into your soul.

When the markings are complete, the Shaman raises his arms, his voice rising as it echoes through the vast chamber. “The oath has been written. The heir will be strategic and cunning and will bring forth powerful alliances to House Harkonnen.”

The Baron lets out a thrilled laugh, his thick hands clapping together in arrogant satisfaction, his eyes darting between you and Feyd.

“Strategic and cunning indeed,” he praises, his voice laced with dark approval and greed.

Feyd says nothing, but his eyes remain locked on you, unreadable yet intense, the weight of his gaze speaking far more than words ever could.

The ceremony is strange and overwhelming, yet beneath it all, something within you shifts irrevocably.

You are no longer just a vessel, you are part of something far greater, something ancient and unstoppable.

You belong to Feyd, to the future you now carry, and to the darkness that binds you both.

Late at night after the ceremony, under the pale light of Giedi Prime’s twin moons, you rest in your chamber, the heavy silence pressing in around you.

The bed beneath you is vast, adorned with dark silks, the headboard emblazoned with the sigil of House Harkonnen, yet it feels empty, foreign, without Feyd’s warmth beside you.

For the first time, you have been sent to separate sleeping quarters, a symbolic tradition meant to mark the transition from union to lineage.

Unable to sleep, you open your eyes to see Feyd standing in the doorway bathed in the cold glow of the twin moons filtering through the towering windows.

His tall form remains still as he leans one shoulder against the doorway, watching you rest, his expression unreadable, his dark eyes fixed solely on you.

With the birth only days away, he is forbidden from seeing you, a decree meant to protect your fragility in these final moments.

But as his eyes search yours with longing, you see he can not bear it.

In an unmistakable act of defiance he approaches you slowly, as if he is afraid to disturb the quiet sanctity of the moment.

His hands, used as instruments of destruction, are gentle as they trace the swell of your belly.

“I never dreamed this,” he rasps, his voice carrying an unfamiliar vulnerability. “That I could create something… pure.”

He lowers himself to you, his movements almost worshipful as his hands splay protectively over your womb.

“I crave what your body has become,” he whispers, his voice thick with awe and desire as his fingers trace reverently over your curves in worship of them.

“Every change of your form is so perfect,” he praises, his lips meeting the sensitive skin of your neck as his hand moves lower, caressing the swell of your womb.

“Your nuturing body… your sustenance…” he rasps, his fingers tracing the soft fullness of your breast.

He trails his lips lower, pressing slow, open-mouthed kisses down your collarbone until he reaches the peak of your breast.

His mouth hovers just above your nipple,his breath fanning over the sensitive skin as his dark eyes flick up to meet yours.

He hesitates, waiting, testing, then with a quiet groan of surrender, he seals his lips around it.

A quiet moan falls from your lips as his tongue rolls against your nipple, coaxing, teasing.

His first pull is firm yet careful, his mouth working gently, as though he fears you will break the fragile connection.

A tingling warmth blooms at the peak of your breast, spreading through your chest, as if something deep within you responds to him, awakening, yielding.

It’s primal, instinctive, as though your body knows what he wants before your mind fully registers it.

The tenderness of his mouth trying to pull milk leaves you vulnerable. What he is doing feels forbidden, yet the sight of him, his lashes fluttering as he tries to drink from you, makes it impossible to stop him.

Your nipple hardens under the stimulation, the sensation growing sharper, hotter, your breast swelling with heat as he sucks deeper.

A soft gasp escapes you as he switches to the other, his mouth latching with purpose, his breaths warm against your skin.

He groans with frustration low in his throat, his fingers squeezing the soft swell of your other breast as if urging your body to give him what he craves.

And then you see it—a slow droplet of milk rolling from your nipple.

His hum of satisfaction vibrates against your chest, deep and resounding as the first taste of your sweet milk warmly coats his tongue.

His fingers tighten possessively around your breast as a shudder runs through him, feeling something primal overtaking his restraint.

The intimacy of it is overwhelming, the way his mouth works on you, his soft whimpers of his pleasure, the desperate way he drinks from you—it all becomes too much.

His suckling grows stronger, more intense, his grip tightening on your breast as he holds it drinking deeply, greedily, craving this more than he would ever admit.

His tongue laps at your nipple between deep hungry pulls, his fingers rolling over the other, coaxing more milk to leak from you to feed his growing need.

You softly stroke his face and he whines, rutting his hips against you, his arousal evident and throbbing with need. His hand reaches between you unclasping his faster to free cock and he firmly thrusts it between your slick thighs.

You softly whimper as he uses you, the slippery heat of his cock making your thighs press together. He clings to you as though tethered thrusting harder between your thighs, the slick sounds of his movements filling the quiet chamber

His hand slips between your bodies once again, this time his fingers push into your throbbing core, stroking you, coaxing more from you as your loud moans fuel his growing need.

He draws from you forcefully, the unrelenting pull of his mouth making your nipple ache as he thrusts between your thighs, his husky moans drowsy with satisfaction from both pleasures

His fingers work inside of you, deeper, firmer curling just right until you can’t hold back and a sharp cry spills from your lips as you orgasm from his intensity.

He groans against you feeling your release, his hips rutting harder and deeper until his release comes sudden and forceful, his cock twitching as it spills in thick, hot streams between your thighs

The warmth of his seed leaks slowly down your skin, as he becomes weaker, softer, drinking from you until there is nothing left, until he is too spent to take more.

As his body grows heavier beside you, his breaths shallow and his fingers slip from you, his lips barely touching your nipple as exhaustion overtakes him.

He hums as you stroke his chin, his eyes half-lidded as his lips curve into a lazy, milk-drunk smile, utterly satisfied, utterly spent.

As he looks at you his gaze lingers with something unspoken, something softer than words, as if in this moment he needs nothing but you.

As he drifts into sleep in your arms you watch him rest peacefully, his features serene in a way you’ve never known.

Each night Feyd visits you this way, and each night, his hunger seems to grow, his need for you deepening, as though he is becoming dependent on the very act

As he lies milk-drunk in your arms, you caress his temple, finally summoning the strength to confide what you’ve withheld from him for so long, your voice trembling with quiet unease.

“I fear the medical facilities here on Giedi Prime… and the Harkonnen rituals after a female gives birth,” you confess, your words faltering as you dare to resist a Harkonnen rite for the first time. “…The bloodletting of the mother to bind her strength to the child—it terrifies me,” you admit.

Feyd listens intently, not once dismissing your fears of his customs.

“I will not let them touch you,” he says, his voice resolute, low and heavy from his indulgence, carrying no trace of resistance.

The very next day he hires a skilled doula from a distant planet, sparing no expense to ensure you are comfortable.

When the night finally arrives, Feyd paces outside of the chamber like a caged beast, his brute strength shattered by the sound of your laboring cries.

Yet, when your daughter, Lily, is finally born in the intimate warmth of the birthing chamber, Feyd is the first to hold her.

His expression melts into something unrecognizable as he looks at her with pure, unrestrained joy.

His fierce hardened exterior crumbles as he stares down at the tiny life in his arms, his breath catching in his throat.

In that moment, nothing else exists. Not war, not bloodlines, not duty only her.

In the days that follow, Feyd’s initial joy slowly and unexpectedly, turns to bitterness.

Whenever he sees you nursing Lily his jaw tightens and his gaze darkens —yet he says nothing, only brooding in a corner, if not storming from the room entirely.

You can feel the weight of his longing, the frustration he refuses to voice.

Then one night, after the baby has fallen asleep, he lays in bed with you, his body tense beside yours before hesitantly confessing his desire.

“I envy her,” he admits, almost shamefully, as he trail his fingertips over your breast. “You give her something I can no longer have.”

You smile softly, caressing his cheek, “You have me“ you say soothing him but the longing in his eyes does not fade.

His hand moves lower, cupping your breast, his fingers pressing in, squeezing just enough to make his own torment worse.

His jaw clenches, his breathing uneven as he watches with dark satisfaction seeing your milk begin to soak through the fabric of your gown.

He pulls down the delicate material, baring your breast fully to his sight, your breath catching as his expression shifts, his blue eyes darkening with something deep and primal.

He squeezes until you are leaking down his hand and deep and a broken groan falls from his lips as his head dips lower, his breath hot against your skin.

“There is enough for me,” he whispers, his voice almost reverent, and before you can even think to stop him—his mouth latches onto you.

His lips seal over your nipple, his tongue rolling softly as he begins to nurse, his hand squeezing over your breast, coaxing more for him to take.

His lashes flutter in bliss, his face softened in quiet ecstasy as he drinks from you, his low hums of satisfaction vibrating against your skin as he becomes completely lost in his indulgence.

Lily’s soft cry breaks the quiet, and Feyd pulls back, his guilt shadowing his features.

He climbs out of bed and lifts her from her cradle, holding her close as if to atone for his selfishness.

“She needs you more,” he says softly, his voice breaking as he places her in your arms.

He watches her latch as he sits beside you, his gaze fixed on the tiny life between you.

As Lily struggles to nurse, he reaches out, brushing his knuckles gently against her soft cheek, encouraging her to drink.

And when she begins to suckle greedily he smiles —a true, unguarded smile that you’ve never seen before.

Over time, his love for Lily grows to match his love for you. Gone is the spoiled Na-Baron who once demanded you all to himself. Instead, Feyd becomes a doting father, personally feeding Lily as she transitions to solid food.

Each meal is a ritual, he speaks to her softly, telling her stories of bravery and caution, instilling in her the strength to carve her own path.

And every time you watch him hold your daughter, his once-imposing figure now gentle and protective, you’re reminded of how love has transformed the cruel heir into a man capable of profound devotion.

The day Lily reaches one year of age a Harkonnen ceremony marks the occasion.

You attend with Feyd to introduce her to the gathered nobles and warriors of Giedi Prime.

The ritual is dark, grand, and imposing, like everything else on this world.

The hall looms massive, lined with banners of House Harkonnen and the nobles stand in disciplined silence as Feyd carries Lily forward.

She is dressed in black and crimson, the insignia of his house emblazoned on her tiny chest.

A shaman anoints her forehead, intoning ancient words of devotion, binding her to a legacy of war and conquest. Then, with reverence, Feyd places her into the waiting arms of her grandfather, the Baron.

For the first time, the ever-calculating, grotesque Baron does not sneer or grin in mockery.

His pale blue eyes soften, overtaken by an expression no one has ever witnessed.

As he drapes the obsidian necklace around her tiny neck, she blinks up at him, wide-eyed and impossibly small in his massive arms.

Something shifts in him—unvoiced, un-calculated.

He cradles her delicate form as if she’s far too precious for a world that knows only cruelty.

In a voice quieter and raspier than usual, he vows to her, “My little Harkonnen Heiress, I will mold you to twist rulers like reeds in your grasp and we will shatter any who defy our dominion.” He grins with his ruthless satisfaction.

Then the Baron turns, proudly presenting Lily for all to see. The nobles and warriors salute in unison, the sound echoing through the chamber, cementing her place in the Harkonnen bloodline.

Through it all, you stand with Feyd, observing the ceremony with fulfillment as his fingers trace secretly down your palm, a hidden caress amid the solemnity.

“She is perfect,” he praises, his voice low, meant only for you and as his gaze lingers on yours, his sharp blue eyes glint with a ferocity that transcends the moment.

You know that look —and as his fingers tighten around your hand, you can sense the promise of his deepening desire—the unspoken vow of what’s to come

After the ceremony, you and Feyd place Lily to rest in her chamber as she sleeps from the momentous occasion.

Her crib gleams of dark obsidian, its edges carved with angular Harkonnen runes, a stark cradle of power softened by a black silk lining.

Lily lies within, her tiny form serene, skin flushed with the faintest of rose, her lashes fluttering against her cheeks as she breathes softly.

Feyd brushes his fingers gently across her cheek, ensuring she is peaceful taking one last look before walking the distance to your quarters, both of you still dressed in immaculate garments.

Feyd wears a sleek, black surcoat edged with crimson, the Harkonnen insignia stark against his chest, while you don a flowing gown of midnight silk, its hem embroidered with silver threads that shimmer like stars against Giedi Prime’s gloom, the cut accentuating your form with regal grace.

Once the doors shut, sealing you in silence, Feyds hand cradles your face with a gentleness that defies his strength. “You have undone me,” he says, his voice low and enamored, his blue eyes soft with awe.

His lips press reverently against yours, each kiss burning with quiet fervor, his breath grazing you like an unspoken vow.

He pulls back, his sharp blue eyes blazing with devotion as he lowers to his knees before you, his powerful frame, perfected by years of combat and conquest, submitting willfully to yours.

“Give me another,” he rasps, his voice rough with worship, his hands trailing up your hips.

“Let me feel you bloom with my seed again,” he rasps, placing his hand on your womb in a fervent plea to your dominion over him.

You smile, trailing your fingertips affectionately over his head before you slip from his grasp, leaving him kneeling.

You walk across the room, your robe trailing behind you like a lure he can’t resist, its silk whispering against the stone floor.

His sharp blue eyes follow your every move, glinting with a knowing, unreadable hunger.

“You crave another legacy to bind us deeper in this world of shadows,” you tease, eyes locking with his as he stands, his gaze drawn to you like a blade to its mark.

You lay back on the sheets, arms spread wide with a smile of invitation. “Come then,” you order, and he hesitates for only a second before disrobing.

His surcoat falls away, revealing his pale, muscular form, his broad shoulders sculpted by battle, abs ridged with power, and lean hips framing his thick, pink tipped cock, rigid and heavy with need against his pale skin.

He approaches with purpose, his hands brushing lightly over your feet, fingers tracing the delicate curve of your arch before pressing a kiss to your ankle in reverence.

“You need yet another heir to solidify your empire?” you challenge, your voice a silk caress, your gaze steady as he pauses at your words.

He climbs over you, fingers sliding and lifting your gown, kissing along your thighs with worshipful hunger before pressing his lips to your womb, lingering as if willing his seed to take root.

“You are my empire,” he rasps, his voice low and fervent, before his kisses trail upward over the fabric of your gown, pausing between your breasts, his hands parting your thighs with reverent care.

“I would conquer worlds to see you carry my blood again,” Feyd breathes, his voice husky with adoration, his warm breath fanning your skin.

His words blaze through you, sparking a fever pitch of desire, your pulse hammering as his fingers slip beneath your gown, hooking the delicate silk at your hips leaving nothing between you.

“Take me,” you whisper, urgency threading your soft command, your impatience mirroring in his own as he tears your gown apart, the midnight silk shredding under his strength.

The sight of torn fabric and the raw power in his hands sends a jolt of arousal surging through your core and his lips find yours, desperate and devouring.

His tongue brushes yours as pants and moans spill between you, the kiss deepening into a frantic need for each other.

His hands roam over your hips, your waist, your breasts, savoring curve with possessive hunger until he suddenly pulls you on top him.

His hands guide yours, placing them on either side of his head as he looks up at you, his eyes darkening with pure, unfiltered lust as he takes in the sight of you above him.

“You hold my fate,” he confesses, his hands sliding up your sides, his eyes trailing down to where your bodies will meet. “I will forge dynasties if you grant me more,” he vows, his hands gliding up your thighs and pulling you down onto him, his cock nudging hard against your slick entrance before pushing through.

You softly gasp as he fills you deep, the heat of him radiating your core, the hard length throbbing as he lowers you until the base of him settles against you.

His breath falters as your walls clench him tight, and he surrenders, his hands clutching your hips with worshipful desperation as he watches you take him.

Each slow grind on his thick cock draws sounds of satisfaction from him as his gaze fixes on where you claim him.

His hands trail up your body caressing your sides guiding you until they cup your breasts, your skin warm and flushed to his touch.

He pulls you to him with a possessive longing, guiding your breast to his mouth, his breath teasing your nipple before his lips seal around it.

A soft moan spills from your lips as his tongue flicks around it, his mouth pulling with an unrelenting need amplifying the pulsing heat of his cock inside you.

The sensation drives your hips to move faster, and he switches to the other his mouth hot and insistent, sucking stronger, harder, as you feel his moans vibrate against your skin.

“Feyd,” you whimper, your voice shaking as his lips remain latched and his hips begin surging up to meet yours in deep, unforgiving thrusts.

The sounds of your broken moans and his feral grunts mingle as he pulls off your nipple with a wet pop, leaving you gasping.

His breath is ragged as he groans, his hands seizing your hips to drive you harder onto his cock.

Your moans are unhinged desperate cries as your climax slams into you, your body quivering violently in his grasp. Your walls tighten, pulsing around him, as the pleasure overtakes you completely.

Feyd pants as he watches you, his hands gripping your hips firmly, keeping you grinding on him, dragging out your release until you can do nothing but shake and sob above him.

Then with one fluid shift, he guides you beneath him never breaking the connection, his hands hooking behind your thighs, lifting them high as he lays on top of you.

His chest presses yours as his thrusts become demanding, his hips slamming against you with ruthless intensity, the slick, wet smacks of your bodies filling the chamber, raw and unrestrained.

His face is a haze of need and lust as his cock throbs inside, swelling with each punishing stroke until his rhythm falters. A deep moan escapes him as his climax hits and his body seizes with ecstasy.

He thrusts harder, his hips jerking as thick, hot streams of his seed flood you into you and your walls milk him instinctively.

The overstimulation wrecks him as he rides out the aftershocks, his desperate grunts fading into soft, ragged breaths, until he is spent and collapses against you his chest heaving with exhaustion.

Your fingers graze his shoulders in a soothing caress as he presses drowsy kisses over your heart in quiet devotion.

“You have given me everything,” he whispers, his voice thick with reverence as he lifts to look at you, his blue eyes sharp and endless with desire.

An endearing blacked-out grin forms on his lips as your thumb brushes his chin affectionately.

“Because you are mine,” you confirm, smiling in return as you trace the sharp edge of his jaw with possessiveness.

“Forever,” he rasps, his eyes heavy with surrender, his voice fading as the vow settles between you.

On the cold, brutal world of Giedi Prime, a love you never thought possible formed in the shadows of House Harkonnen, yet remains completely untouched by its cruelty.

The ruthless and ambitious Na-Baron, who once sought only power and conquest, now finds strength in his lineage and as your womb swells with his second unborn heir, Feyds obsession deepens—his sharp blue eyes tracing your rounded form with a reverence bordering on worship.

The halls of the Harkonnen stronghold, once filled with whispers of betrayal and fear, now echo with Lily’s laughter.

He adores her—she is the only one who can make the Baron soften, the only one Feyd kneels for without question. And you, the anchor that keeps him steady, the only person he will ever truly belong to.

To the outside world, he remains a formidable force, a warrior, a ruler, a Baron who commands both fear and respect. But in the privacy of your chambers, he is simply yours.

He worships you with the same intensity he once reserved for battle, his hunger for you never waning, his devotion growing fiercer with time.

Feyd-Rautha, the once cold and callous Harkonnen, now lives for his legacy, and the woman who holds his heart forever.

END ⚔️

🔗Masterlist

🏷️ Always Tag Me @purejasmine @burnthheparaphilia @butdaddyilovehim99 @austinbutlerfly @mrs-hardy-hunnam-butler-pascal @lindszeppelin @abswifey @aust-een @umika @feralgodmothers @megangovier @magicovento @obsessedvibee @austiebuttbutt @faegoddessog @dunevitani @unicoo @thejoywillburnoutthepain @jessica987 @slowsweetlove @hardcoredisneynerd @finley-08 @thegabbyh @thefallofthedamned @buckysteveloki-me @bucking-mustangs-with-wings @shegatsby @darlingisntit @lovereadingfanfic @denised916 @shockercoco @minispice-1 @i5uckersblog @ughdontbeboring @meetmeatyourworst @avidreader73 @xxmandaveexx @mamawiggers1980 @12joeywheelerfangirl @imjustheretoreadsmuthaha @gravesdiggergirl @nostalgichoya @stars-remain2 @skulliecadaver-blog @jjubilee-fluff

⚔️ Feyd Tag List

@dunevitani @rougegenshin @maloribarnes1999 @moony-artemis @xxxstormyninixxx @prettypinkblogger @aoi-targaryen @austinswhitewolf @mimsie95 @the-wanderer-2022 @jakesullyissopookie @francis-writes @shiranai-atsune @berlinalv @everyonelovesavalet @dacreshoney @caroline334 @sophroniaclark @emeraldsgirl @cooliosthings

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Even if you think AI search could be good, it won’t be good

TONIGHT (May 15), I'm in NORTH HOLLYWOOD for a screening of STEPHANIE KELTON'S FINDING THE MONEY; FRIDAY (May 17), I'm at the INTERNET ARCHIVE in SAN FRANCISCO to keynote the 10th anniversary of the AUTHORS ALLIANCE.

The big news in search this week is that Google is continuing its transition to "AI search" – instead of typing in search terms and getting links to websites, you'll ask Google a question and an AI will compose an answer based on things it finds on the web:

https://blog.google/products/search/generative-ai-google-search-may-2024/

Google bills this as "let Google do the googling for you." Rather than searching the web yourself, you'll delegate this task to Google. Hidden in this pitch is a tacit admission that Google is no longer a convenient or reliable way to retrieve information, drowning as it is in AI-generated spam, poorly labeled ads, and SEO garbage:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/05/03/keyword-swarming/#site-reputation-abuse

Googling used to be easy: type in a query, get back a screen of highly relevant results. Today, clicking the top links will take you to sites that paid for placement at the top of the screen (rather than the sites that best match your query). Clicking further down will get you scams, AI slop, or bulk-produced SEO nonsense.

AI-powered search promises to fix this, not by making Google search results better, but by having a bot sort through the search results and discard the nonsense that Google will continue to serve up, and summarize the high quality results.

Now, there are plenty of obvious objections to this plan. For starters, why wouldn't Google just make its search results better? Rather than building a LLM for the sole purpose of sorting through the garbage Google is either paid or tricked into serving up, why not just stop serving up garbage? We know that's possible, because other search engines serve really good results by paying for access to Google's back-end and then filtering the results:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/04/teach-me-how-to-shruggie/#kagi

Another obvious objection: why would anyone write the web if the only purpose for doing so is to feed a bot that will summarize what you've written without sending anyone to your webpage? Whether you're a commercial publisher hoping to make money from advertising or subscriptions, or – like me – an open access publisher hoping to change people's minds, why would you invite Google to summarize your work without ever showing it to internet users? Nevermind how unfair that is, think about how implausible it is: if this is the way Google will work in the future, why wouldn't every publisher just block Google's crawler?

A third obvious objection: AI is bad. Not morally bad (though maybe morally bad, too!), but technically bad. It "hallucinates" nonsense answers, including dangerous nonsense. It's a supremely confident liar that can get you killed:

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/sep/01/mushroom-pickers-urged-to-avoid-foraging-books-on-amazon-that-appear-to-be-written-by-ai

The promises of AI are grossly oversold, including the promises Google makes, like its claim that its AI had discovered millions of useful new materials. In reality, the number of useful new materials Deepmind had discovered was zero:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/23/maximal-plausibility/#reverse-centaurs

This is true of all of AI's most impressive demos. Often, "AI" turns out to be low-waged human workers in a distant call-center pretending to be robots:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/01/31/neural-interface-beta-tester/#tailfins

Sometimes, the AI robot dancing on stage turns out to literally be just a person in a robot suit pretending to be a robot:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/01/29/pay-no-attention/#to-the-little-man-behind-the-curtain

The AI video demos that represent "an existential threat to Hollywood filmmaking" turn out to be so cumbersome as to be practically useless (and vastly inferior to existing production techniques):

https://www.wheresyoured.at/expectations-versus-reality/

But let's take Google at its word. Let's stipulate that:

a) It can't fix search, only add a slop-filtering AI layer on top of it; and

b) The rest of the world will continue to let Google index its pages even if they derive no benefit from doing so; and

c) Google will shortly fix its AI, and all the lies about AI capabilities will be revealed to be premature truths that are finally realized.

AI search is still a bad idea. Because beyond all the obvious reasons that AI search is a terrible idea, there's a subtle – and incurable – defect in this plan: AI search – even excellent AI search – makes it far too easy for Google to cheat us, and Google can't stop cheating us.

Remember: enshittification isn't the result of worse people running tech companies today than in the years when tech services were good and useful. Rather, enshittification is rooted in the collapse of constraints that used to prevent those same people from making their services worse in service to increasing their profit margins:

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

These companies always had the capacity to siphon value away from business customers (like publishers) and end-users (like searchers). That comes with the territory: digital businesses can alter their "business logic" from instant to instant, and for each user, allowing them to change payouts, prices and ranking. I call this "twiddling": turning the knobs on the system's back-end to make sure the house always wins:

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

What changed wasn't the character of the leaders of these businesses, nor their capacity to cheat us. What changed was the consequences for cheating. When the tech companies merged to monopoly, they ceased to fear losing your business to a competitor.

Google's 90% search market share was attained by bribing everyone who operates a service or platform where you might encounter a search box to connect that box to Google. Spending tens of billions of dollars every year to make sure no one ever encounters a non-Google search is a cheaper way to retain your business than making sure Google is the very best search engine:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/02/21/im-feeling-unlucky/#not-up-to-the-task

Competition was once a threat to Google; for years, its mantra was "competition is a click away." Today, competition is all but nonexistent.

Then the surveillance business consolidated into a small number of firms. Two companies dominate the commercial surveillance industry: Google and Meta, and they collude to rig the market:

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

That consolidation inevitably leads to regulatory capture: shorn of competitive pressure, the companies that dominate the sector can converge on a single message to policymakers and use their monopoly profits to turn that message into policy:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/06/05/regulatory-capture/

This is why Google doesn't have to worry about privacy laws. They've successfully prevented the passage of a US federal consumer privacy law. The last time the US passed a federal consumer privacy law was in 1988. It's a law that bans video store clerks from telling the newspapers which VHS cassettes you rented:

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

In Europe, Google's vast profits lets it fly an Irish flag of convenience, thus taking advantage of Ireland's tolerance for tax evasion and violations of European privacy law:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/05/15/finnegans-snooze/#dirty-old-town

Google doesn't fear competition, it doesn't fear regulation, and it also doesn't fear rival technologies. Google and its fellow Big Tech cartel members have expanded IP law to allow it to prevent third parties from reverse-engineer, hacking, or scraping its services. Google doesn't have to worry about ad-blocking, tracker blocking, or scrapers that filter out Google's lucrative, low-quality results:

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

Google doesn't fear competition, it doesn't fear regulation, it doesn't fear rival technology and it doesn't fear its workers. Google's workforce once enjoyed enormous sway over the company's direction, thanks to their scarcity and market power. But Google has outgrown its dependence on its workers, and lays them off in vast numbers, even as it increases its profits and pisses away tens of billions on stock buybacks:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/11/25/moral-injury/#enshittification

Google is fearless. It doesn't fear losing your business, or being punished by regulators, or being mired in guerrilla warfare with rival engineers. It certainly doesn't fear its workers.

Making search worse is good for Google. Reducing search quality increases the number of queries, and thus ads, that each user must make to find their answers:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/24/naming-names/#prabhakar-raghavan

If Google can make things worse for searchers without losing their business, it can make more money for itself. Without the discipline of markets, regulators, tech or workers, it has no impediment to transferring value from searchers and publishers to itself.

Which brings me back to AI search. When Google substitutes its own summaries for links to pages, it creates innumerable opportunities to charge publishers for preferential placement in those summaries.

This is true of any algorithmic feed: while such feeds are important – even vital – for making sense of huge amounts of information, they can also be used to play a high-speed shell-game that makes suckers out of the rest of us:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/05/11/for-you/#the-algorithm-tm

When you trust someone to summarize the truth for you, you become terribly vulnerable to their self-serving lies. In an ideal world, these intermediaries would be "fiduciaries," with a solemn (and legally binding) duty to put your interests ahead of their own:

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

But Google is clear that its first duty is to its shareholders: not to publishers, not to searchers, not to "partners" or employees.

AI search makes cheating so easy, and Google cheats so much. Indeed, the defects in AI give Google a readymade excuse for any apparent self-dealing: "we didn't tell you a lie because someone paid us to (for example, to recommend a product, or a hotel room, or a political point of view). Sure, they did pay us, but that was just an AI 'hallucination.'"

The existence of well-known AI hallucinations creates a zone of plausible deniability for even more enshittification of Google search. As Madeleine Clare Elish writes, AI serves as a "moral crumple zone":

https://estsjournal.org/index.php/ests/article/view/260

That's why, even if you're willing to believe that Google could make a great AI-based search, we can nevertheless be certain that they won't.

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

https://pluralistic.net/2024/05/15/they-trust-me-dumb-fucks/#ai-search

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