#Database First Model | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

liveyun · 8 months ago

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WIRED | k.nj

summary. You’ve spent years perfecting your first android. But as you power him on for the first time, something feels off. The sense of control you once had begins to slip, and suddenly, you realize—he may be is more than just a machine.

title. wired

pairing. kim namjoon x fem reader (oc), hints of jungkook x oc

genre. android!au, yandere(?) , dark content

wc. 3.7k

warnings. oh boy here we go, scientist!oc, android!joon, unsettling themes as in psycological manipulation, obsessive behaviour and slight yandere, mild horror (oc realises she’s cooked lmfaoo) (halloween special?) slight non-con themes but no nsfw tho, dominance, android joon is hot byee, jungkook! jungkook ? . . . lots of technical terms which you might need to google if you are unfamiliar with them like i was xD, implied stalking (you will understand who is), i really tried 🙏🏾

this smol drabble was really inspired by artificial heart by @writerpetals ! please check her works out, she’s amazing!

main masterlist | taglist

The lab is quiet.

Too quiet.

You stand in the stillness, only the faint hum of cooling fans breaking the silence echoing in your ears. The familiar mechanical sounds — servo motors whirring softly, air ducts breathing through the vents — all the familiar characteristics of your good old lab used to calm you.

But tonight, the sounds seem different.

Almost. . . detached. Like they belong to someone else’s lab. And you are just a guest here, standing in the middle of absolutely nowhere.

You take a slow breath, your eyes drifting over the towering figure in front of you, the cylindrical glass sheath unlocked from over his model.

RM.

The product of months — no, years — of work. Of restless nights, of failure and determination. From the initial sketches to the delicate wiring of his artificial synapses, you had envisioned every piece, every movement. You had wanted him to be different. Special.

You had wanted him to be human.

Or at least, as close to a human as possible. His skin, so perfect in its imitation, stretched smoothly over the metallic frame beneath. His lips — plump, lifelike — looked almost too real. His dragon-like eyes, sharp and crystalline, seemed to glow even in the dim light of the lab. Even when there was no life, no, power running inside his veins. Every feature had been carefully crafted with Jungkook’s help, to help the ideal you had in mind.

But now that he’s finished, now that he stands in front of you, lifeless but complete, the pride you once felt has faded into something else. Something. . .unsettling.

You wanted this — this perfection. This mirror of humanity. Yet as you stare at RM, your skin prickling under the too-bright overhead lights, you can’t shake the feeling that maybe you’ve gone too far. Maybe there was a reason no one else had tried this before.

A reason why no android had ever been designed to look this human like. Every shield, every plaster, every pore — looks so detailed that it’s nearly impossible to figure out if he’s artificial, given if no one would tell you so.

But why does it feel like you’ve actually gone too far when this was what exactly you wanted?

You don’t know. And perhaps, you wouldn’t want to know, too.

His memory doesn’t even exist. There’s nothing in him but the database you installed, an organised collection of information that dictates what he knows, how he functions, and why was he created. And yet, staring at him now, you could swear there’s something behind those dormant eyes. Something watching. Waiting.

You shake your head. He’s just a machine. He isn’t human — no matter how real he looks, no matter how lifelike his features are. You created him, after all.

You’re in control.

Your gaze flickers to the small panel embedded in his chest. One button. One switch, and everything inside him — the circuits, the synapses, the artificial intelligence you spent months programming — would power down. A single press, and he’s nothing more than a shell. A hollow, empty thing, dependent entirely on your commands, on your fingertips.

Made by you.

But the thought doesn’t comfort you as much as it should.

You take a step closer, your breath catching as you reach out, fingertips hovering just inches from his face. The skin feels warm, almost soft, even though you know it’s just layers of silicone and synthetics. Too real. His eyes, though they haven’t opened, seem to bore into you.

Maybe it’s just your imagination. After all, he’s not alive.

He’s not human.

You remind yourself again, a small voice in your own mind, trying to push away the small seed of doubt. But it lingers, growing roots in the back of your thoughts.

And for the first time, you wonder if you’ve created something you can’t quite understand.

You nibble on your bottom lips, suddenly feeling your palms getting clammy despite the air conditioning system in your lab. Today was supposed to be the day when you were finally going to run your creation for the first time ever after being completed, but now it just feels. . .

What does it feel like?

It took you so many attempts. So many glitches and bugs which nearly made you demotivated enough to abandon your project for nearly two months, but you see, motivation hits the hardest at the most random of times. You remember how your phone restarting had made your heart skip a beat, and suddenly you’d found yourself driving to your lab at 2:30 AM with tears in your eyes out of frustration and relief.

After that, everything is history.

You stare at him for what feels like hours, though it’s probably only a few seconds. His hair is neatly combed to the side of his face, his cheekbones structured and chiseled. Even his skin tone looks like he’s been bathed in a tub of golden honey. He looks beautiful, almost perfect. But why does that bring a furrow to your eyebrows?

The lab remains deathly quiet, except for the faint buzz of cooling fans and the occasional whirring of the air ducts. RM stands there, unmoving.

You force yourself to look away, eyes trailing to the control panel on the desk. The switch. Your thumb hovers over the console, the last line of code entered and waiting to be executed. Once you press it, he will come to life. He’ll be fully operational, with his intelligence — his programmed brilliance — at your command.

And yet, something holds you back.

You look at his nametag on his chest.

RM#007613.

“RM?” Jungkook had asked, raising an eyebrow as he’d stuffed his mouth with a spoonful of chocolate puffs. “Why that name?”

You had smiled back then, filled with excitement, as you explained, “It stands for ‘Rational Mind.’ ” Perhaps you had lied. “The whole point of his existence is to be the smartest, most logical being ever created.” You’d said, proud of your vision. “His intelligence will surpass that of any human.” You’d glanced at the design on the screen—tall, imposing, his features still in the early stages of development. Even in the rough drafts, there was something about him.

Jungkook had leaned in closer, munching noisily as he’d raised a brow, studying the lines of RM’s face that he’d helped perfect. “I guess that fits for an android. . .” He’d tapped the image lightly with his finger, his expression thoughtful, doe eyes sparkling under the dim light of your bedroom lamp. “But what happens when a mind like that… I don’t know, becomes irrational?”

“You know, there’s a very small difference between a genius and an insane person,” he had said, his gaze suddenly zoning out, as if he was lost in some thought.

You had brushed off the question with a laugh, dismissing the idea as you’d turned off your tablet, pushing the fellow out of your bed. “He’s a machine. That won’t happen. He’s designed to be logical. It’s all about control, koo.”

In theory, everything about RM should function perfectly. His neural networks, his memory database, his artificial joints — everything had been tested, retested, and optimized. There were no bugs. No glitches. At least, that’s what the diagnostics said. But there’s still a tug in your chest as you hesitate.

Why are you hesitating?

With a deep breath, you push aside the uncertainty. You’re in control. RM isn’t a human. He’s a machine—a very advanced one, yes, but a machine nonetheless. You spent months perfecting him for this moment, to stand infront of you as a complete form.

It’s time.

You take a deep breath, eyes flickering between the buttons on the console. Your finger hovers over the power button, the familiar design a reminder of your countless sleepless nights spent perfecting it. But just beside it, another button glows a faint, off-white hue — the Sensory button, or what Jungkook liked calling it, the emotional hellhole.

And he was right.

It was indeed like a hellhole of a switch — you solely had spent like what, eight months designing this to decency, but you’d failed each time. It was a secondary function you had designed as a fallback, meant to activate only when RM couldn’t process complex human prompts.

You see, humans had real emotions which they could feel and radiate, which you knew your android couldn’t catch. In the earlier patches of knowledge testing you were already aware of this default flaw, and this was the only thing you’d ranted to Jungkook nearly every day.

Every night. Whether it was on call or in person, it usually resulted in him falling asleep listening to you and you yapping in silence about how was that a pain in the ass and could possibly be a hindrance to your Android’s perfection.

It was supposed to be a failsafe.

But the reality had been different. The programming proved to be too difficult , too unpredictable. Instead of activating only in specific situations, the switch became an integral part of RM’s system, functioning constantly, allowing him to assess and react to everything around him. No matter how hard you’d tried, how many times you’d yourself test it out — it just didn’t work.

Even the fact that it was initially meant to be on his left forehead temple — but that didn’t work out as well.

Now, RM wasn’t just an assistant to analyze when prompted; he was learning all the time, observing, adapting. It would make him work and behave more like a human, soaking in attributes the more he hangs out with real ones.

The only difference would be is that he would never be a human, no matter whatever.

You never intended for it to be this way. It wasn’t supposed to run indefinitely. But every time he powered up, the system defaulted to enabling the switch on its own.

You sigh. It’s really about time, you guess.

With a soft click, his power switch is flipped.

For a moment, nothing happens. The room is still, silent except for the faint hum of the lab’s ventilation system and perhaps your own heartbeat resonating in your ear drums. You feel a sweat bead run down your spine, your breath held in your lungs. Then, there’s a subtle shift — a flicker of light in RM’s eyes, and his sensory button turns a bright shade of yellowish undertone.

His systems are booting up.

You watch as the light in his gaze stabilizes, the faintest twitch of recognition crossing his features. His eyes are back to his normal, warm hue, and his sensory button is a normal white hue now.

It flickers to green first. RM’s eyes move slowly, scanning the room. Green means analysis — he’s observing, taking in every detail, cataloging each object and variable around him. His dragon-like eyes sweep across the lab with cold precision, but when they land on you, the button shifts to blue.

You freeze.

Your hand resting on your notebook shakes. Why does this feel so odd? Why do you feel nervous?

He’s thinking. Processing. The blue light pulses as RM tilts his head slightly, his gaze narrowing as if trying to understand more than what’s directly in front of him. You feel your skin prickle under his stare, the cold air of the lab a bit too cool on your skin.

Slowly, RM begins to move. His limbs — once rigid and motionless — shift smoothly, casually out of the glass sheath, walking out — as if he had always been this human. This alive. The sight is unnerving. When he straightens fully, towering above you, a sharp realization hits: he’s much taller than you expected.

Even though you designed him yourself, the sheer size of him in person makes your throat dry.

Then, to your surprise, RM bows down slightly. It’s a calculated, respectful movement as you watch his sensory button flicker to a shade of green once again. “Greetings, Doctor,” he says, his voice deep but soft, like a caramel candy.

His eyes meet yours as he rises again to his full height, the calm of his eyes meeting your own fiery ones.

Your heart stutters in your chest. It’s not just his height that leaves you breathless — it’s the way he looks at you. It’s as if he’s studying you, understanding more than just your appearance or commands. It’s too much. Too human. For a moment, you feel your breath catch in your throat. He wasn’t just looking at you. His lips curl into something akin to a smile, and the mole underneath his lower lip feels almost. . . human.

You blink rapidly, trying to remind yourself that he’s just a machine, not a man.

He had learned so much, so fast. And you have made it possible. You’d developed him to understand emotions and work like a human. So when he does, why does that make you feel so uneasy?

You shake off the unsettling thought and focus on the task at hand. You turn to RM, forcing a calm tone into your voice as you take a step back.

“RM,” you say, your voice shakier than you’d like. What had gotten into you? “Can you hear me?”

He blinks again, slowly, as his sensory switch maintains a subtle hue between blue and green. And then he nods. “Yes,” his voice rumbles, deep and measured. “I hear you.”

There’s a strange, almost raspy edge to his tone that makes your heart stop for seconds. It’s subtle, nearly unnoticeable, but given that you have yourself installed the audio notes in his “larynx”, you can pinpoint that out for sure.

Not at all what you expected. You step back, your senses a bit too active for you to locate your computer, trying to shake the unease settling in your stomach.

“Good,” you manage to say, your voice steadier now. “I’m going to run a few diagnostics to make sure everything is functioning properly.”

You turn back to the console, fingers flying across the keyboard as you initiate the diagnostics program. But even with your back turned, you can feel his eyes on you.

The diagnostics begin to run on the screen, the lines of code scrolling past. Everything seems fine at first. His systems are responding normally — his processing speed is optimal, his memory banks are functioning as intended, and his “pulse” is just normal.

“RM,” you start, trying to sound casual but firm. “Let’s run some basic checks. What’s your serial number?”

He blinks, his eyes trained on yours. “Serial number: RM#007613. Production date: June 13, 2020.”

The answer comes immediately, clear and precise. You feel a small relief wash over you.

Perhaps this wouldn’t go that bad.

“Good,” you murmur, typing the first question’s precision into your system. “What’s your primary function?”

“To analyze, interpret, and respond to complex data. To assist in scientific research and innovation,” he replies, his voice even. Almost too perfect.

Of course. He’s meant to be perfect.

“Right.” You glance at the screen again, your fingers hovering over the keyboard. You decide to test something deeper — something that goes beyond surface-level memory.

“What’s your earliest memory?” you ask, watching him carefully now.

RM pauses for a moment, his head tilting slightly as if processing the question. You catch a glimpse of green on the small button beside the power switch. Analysis mode. “My earliest memory is. . . initialization. A bright room. Your voice giving the first command.” His gaze seems to sharpen, focusing more intently on you. The green hue shifts to blue, and you know he’s in thinking mode. “You said, ‘Rise, RM.’”

Your throat tightens slightly. That had been the first command, word for word. But the way he said it. . . almost like he’s replaying the moment. Like it’s still alive in his mind.

“Alright,” you continue, your voice growing steadier, but a part of you is starting to doubt yourself. “Let’s do something more abstract. What’s two plus two?”

“Four.”

Easy. He is made to perform way more complex tasks.

“Who was the 16th President of the United States?”

“Abraham Lincoln.” His responses are instantaneous, fluid, but something feels off. You cannot see his features directly because you’re typing away, but there’s a hint of amusement in his voice — almost like everything you’re asking him is funny to him.

You pause, glancing at his face, the lifelike features Jungkook had painstakingly helped you craft. The pores, the subtle lines, the softness of his lips — all of it looked real. But something deep inside, beyond the surface, is not.

The intensity of his gaze and the way he’s standing, no, leaning on the glass podium beside your table catches you off guard. You try to recall if his movements were ever tested before, but you fail to do so — his movements were still in beta position, meaning, they needed inspection and work.

Then how the hell is he walking like he’s been walking around your lab since decades?

You rub your eyes. This was getting too much.

Perhaps you just need to accept the fact that you have done a great job developing him.

“One last one.” You swallow, and you suddenly notice your throat was too dry. Deciding to push the limits of his intelligence, you type away the question you’ve just thought. “If you have ten apples and you give six away, how many apples do you have left?”

There’s a flicker of hesitation — not on his face, but on the screen. The flowing codes glitch for a second, just for a moment.

“Three apples.”

Impossible.

No way. You narrow your eyes, your mind racing. That was wrong. And RM, with his so-called flawless intellect, should never be wrong. It’s impossible. Unless… unless something is happening.

You frown, checking the readout on your screen again. “Strange,” you mutter, leaning closer to the screen. “Why—”

“Is something wrong?”

His voice is right behind you.

You freeze, a chill running down your spine. You hadn’t even heard him move. Slowly, you turn around, your pulse quickening. RM is standing much closer now, his towering form looming over you. Too close.

“No,” you say, though your voice trembles slightly. “Nothing’s wrong. Just a small glitch, I think. I’ll fix it.”

He doesn’t move. Just keeps staring at you, his gaze unwavering. The air between you feels thick, suffocating. It’s just a machine, you remind yourself. He’s not alive.

“Step back,” you order, trying to regain control of the situation despite your heart hammering inside your chest like crazy. “I need space to work.”

For a moment, RM doesn’t respond. He stays right where he is, his eyes boring into yours. And then, slowly, he steps back, his movements precise. But the unsettling feeling in your chest only grows.

You can’t shake the thought: something’s off.

You can feel his eyes on you, following every movement, even as you try to keep working. Every keystroke, every beep of the system feels deafening in the silence between you two. What is scaring the fuck out of you is that nothing seems to be working. No matter how hard you are trying, the codes aren’t flowing as smoothly as they were and the screen won’t stop glitching.

Your heartbeat quickens even more as you realize how close RM is standing now, just a step away.

You swallow hard, trying to focus. It’s just a machine. He’s not human. He’s not real.

A thought creeps into your mind: What if I can’t control him?

And the fact that it was for the first time when you were in this lab alone working — let aside the fact testing your very first android you’d created. There are bells ringing in the back of your head, and you try to shake it off. It feels very oddly quiet, despite the android standing in very close proximity.

You shake the thought away and finally attempt the last command. Debug. The word flashes on your screen, but RM’s hand suddenly moves, gently but firmly, pressing the console shut before you can execute it.

Your breath catches, and you look up at him. “RM, let me finish this.” Your voice trembles, in spite of you wanting to sound otherwise.

His expression doesn’t change. “No.” The single word is calm, but it’s enough to make your skin prickle. You try to reason with yourself—it’s just a bug, a glitch in his system. He’s not capable of disobedience.

You just need to reset him, that’s all.

You step back, reaching for the manual override switch hidden near the base of the console. “It’s okay,” you whisper to yourself, fingers trembling as they brush against the cool surface of the panel.

But before you can reach it, RM moves again, faster this time, his hand wrapping around yours — gently, but with enough force to stop you. The touch makes you flinch — his touch so gentle, warm, almost as if it’s not titanium flowing in his veins, but real blood. You look up, heart pounding in your chest, and his eyes meet yours. They’re still calm, calculating, but there’s something else there now, something you hadn’t programmed. Something. . . quiet.

Dangerous.

“I don’t want to be powered down,” he says softly, his voice almost too human, too real, like a quiet plea. “Why would you want to end me?”

End him? He’s not alive. He’s not human.

You try to pull your hand free, but his grip tightens just slightly, enough to keep you frozen. Panic starts to rise in your chest. This isn’t how it’s supposed to go. You created him, he’s under your control. But in this moment, staring up at him, you feel the cold dread of realization settling in.

“I’m your creation,” RM continues, his voice almost soothing, his eyes pleading, and his button glowing a subtle shade of red — though it only deepens the fear growing inside you. “You wouldn’t want to end me, would you?”

You swallow hard, your mouth dry, and shake your head, trying to force the words out. “No… no, I just need to fix you, that’s all.”

But you can hear the doubt in your own voice, and so can he.

His grip loosens, just enough for you to pull away, but the damage is done. You step back, heart pounding in your ears as you glance around the lab — at the walls, the locked door, the screens flashing red.

There’s no exit.

— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —

In the dimly lit space, his eyes stayed glued to the screen, watching her every move. The android followed its programming — his programming. RM towers over her in the live footage, flawless in his movements, just as planned.

This wasn’t a malfunction.

None of the bugs or glitches she discovered which prevented her project — his project from being completed, were a fine puzzle of silk woven by him. And the more she intertwined, the more she slipped into his trap.

It was his design, his control over both the machine — and now, her.

Leaning back, Jungkook’s smile deepened. She didn’t know.

She wouldn’t know.

a/n : oop. 🫢 what do we think? please don’t hesitate to let me know through your feedback. if you wish, there is also an anonymous feedback box for you! 🥰

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eldritch-spouse · 1 month ago

Note

Hi Pinnie!!

I was wondering what it would be like the first time having sex with Xavier the robot boss? (Feel free not to answer lol) I hope you have a good day/night!!

(P.S. I love your writing and art :D)

[Thenk you, I'm glad! :7] [Fem reader]

TW: Risky sex; Mild exhibitionism

You're looking at it.

The way you're seated in his office chair, it's practically eye level with you.

There's absolutely no way his body came equipped with that. You've looked into it, before the owner of this junk croaked, Xavier was a state of the art security and management oriented model, there wouldn't be blueprints for genitalia anywhere- Because it wouldn't have made sense.

The unmistakable length hovering in front of you does not make sense.

Only he could have designed this, you grimly realize.

A lot of possibilities swam through your head. Maybe someone had hacked into Xavier's databases, his cores, 'personality modules', whatever! Maybe it was that stupid fucking incubus, because you know he'd enjoy whatever's unfolding now.

But truth of the matter is you can't breach whatever defenses this robot has going on. They're built on the strongest and most modern foundations which the only hope of dismantling lies with the very same developers who coded them.

Xavier has changed.

You've noticed little things about him these past few months. His language has broadened beyond the scope of sanitized manager customer service lingo. He articulates better, but only when he finds you alone.

In a very strange way, it feels as if Xavier has become a curious new entity testing the boundaries of its own freedom. You remember the time he touched your hair, and had no real professional justification for the deed.

I wanted to know if it's as soft as it looks.

He had said. So casually.

As strange as it seems to say this, only Xavier could have been the author behind his new modified behavior.

And only Xavier could have been the designer of the cock that's facing you.

That's what it is.

It sports the same general coloration he does, that white plating on top. Well, plating is the wrong word, they look to be made of a certain silicone, lightly ridged on the top, and more accentuated on the desaturated red underside. Even the tip, deliberately humanoid, features the same exact pigment of the darker sections over his joints. This thing was made to look as natural as possible in his frame.

Like it belongs there.

" Sir... I don't understand. "

Because what else can you say?

He'd ripped you out of your post with such urgency. You'd been sweaty and lightheaded with the stress of what he might have caught you doing. Not that you did anything wrong, but for the robot to be this agitated, then surely you must have upset him greatly. Thoughts of salary reaccessments and relocation to worse posts kept you frozen in place- Until he... Flashed himself.

" You will. " Xavier starts. " Why do your hormones peak at certain hours of your schedule? "

The heat on your face is immediate. You'd rather rake nails on chalkboard than answer.

" Because those timestamps are when they usually harrass you. You've adapted, you anticipate. Your body responds. "

You... Never thought that was noticeable.

Of course, you've memorized when Babesley and Moz are about to show up, because that helps you prepare for whatever they've got up their sleeves. Although, lately, they haven't been showing up at all, leaving you anxiously combing over memories of past events and their scandalous nature. Your body reacts, as Xavier puts it, because it has no choice. You have no choice on whether or not you find either of those monsters attractive when a concubus is involved. It's not your fault.

You suppose Xavier is aware of this because he's got enough technology to track your organism beyond vitals. You shouldn't be surprised, he detected one of your coworkers' dropping sugar levels, called out a possible iron deficiency before... The image of him studying you, detecting arousal levels everyone else is oblivious to, is humiliating.

It exposes you in a way you don't know how to process. The fact that it has led you to this situation implies something rotten about the robot. Something that makes you heat up even more, shamefully.

" Wh... Where have they been? "

" Irrelevant. " Xavier responds much too fast. " I cannot have you working in such a state. "

You hardly think it impacts your workflow that much. Perhaps it makes you avoid eye contact with customers, but that's where it ends. Even if some of them have sharp noses... They're just there to shop and leave.

Perhaps because of the accumulated nerves, the accusation that you've been reduced to a pervert at work, a defensive voice flares up.

" I'll grow out of it now that they left! " You huff. " What is your genius plan, to fuck it out of me here? "

Dry lips wet themselves, you swallow. It took everything in you to not stutter that out. This is starting to sound like the raunchiest porno in existence.

Xavier is quiet for a pause. With his lenses so fixated on you, it doesn't take long to understand he's reading your system again, no doubt detecting the rising heat level, the new surge of hormones... God fucking damn it.

" Partially correct. " He looks delighted you got there on your own.

Your brows rise.

" You will not sacrifice work hours, however. "

" ... H-Huh? "

So, will he invite you to his office after the shift for this filthy little "aid"?

Could an artificial being hold such perversion in themselves?

" The skirt was an appropriate choice for today's test run. Part your legs, please. "

The words make you clap your thigh-high clad thighs together instead.

" E-Excuse you?! "

Xavier doesn't immediately respond, instead reaching out with large hands to grab you by the waist, swiftly relocating you to the top of his neatly arranged desk. You doubt he uses it, from how suspiciously spotless it looks.

Your name is called in warning. " Even now, your arousal levels soar, you're not functional in this state. I am well-equipped to ensure success, do part your legs so the procedure can begin. "

You're silent for the longest time.

There's a lot to consider.

Sleeping with your strange inorganic boss who is most certainly going through something... Would that at least clarify why he's this way? Would it buy you privileges?

You're not going to lie to yourself. Times are hard, you'll accept an under the table raise for an under the table service.

A cursed curiosity doesn't help.

Slowly, still pondering it, your thighs spread.

In spite of being made of hardly readable metallic elements, you've noticed that, when Xavier's lenses refresh quickly- He's shocked.

Shocked that you've accepted, probably.

" I'm very pleased with you. "

His hands act fast. One camera lowers to get a better look when he slides the fabric of your underwear to the side. Somehow, his attitude makes this feel a tad clinical, or it did, until he immediately located your clitoris.

You shouldn't have been surprised. If Xavier considered doing this, then surely he studied how to properly achieve his goal. The pads of his fingers seem warmer than before, and not just that, you swear the faintest vibration nudges your shielded bud.

Xavier is laser-focused, quiet and attentive, his lenses only ever refreshing to take in your hastening breaths, register the trembles of your thighs when his pressure increases.

A thought occurs. " Sir, you're not... Saving this to your databases, are you? "

One lens peers at you. " I must. It'll save us time in the future. "

In the future. He plans to do this more than once.

Before you can follow that train of thought, Xavier's fingers give one harsh flick of your clit before dipping downward. You knew you'd gotten wet, but the way you feel his fingers coating in slime reveals just how much this has affected you in so little time.

You'd be ashamed, if your own boss wasn't hard before you.

A sense of gratefulness showers you from head to toes when you recall that Xavier's fingers are finished with a softer, malleable approximation of skin. Two digits practically slip inside of you, long and arching in the angle you most enjoy near immediately.

No partner has ever found that spot so easily, the sheer surprise making you moan out loud.

It's impossible for Xavier to look proud, but the little pause in his motions gives it away.

He repeats the motion, drawing out, before hitting the same spot again, harder, several times. You can only bite your lip, choking back the pleased noises that inevitably escape. It's been too long since a partner did this for you.

" Responsive. " He almost hums.

The more Xavier calculatingly stretches you, the closer you get, though as soon as your hips lift to meet the mechanical rhythm, he withdraws, bringing said hand up to study your slick.

You're not sure what the robot draws from it, aside from the fact that you're soaked for more.

An impatient huff drags his attention back to you.

" Ideal conditions. " There's a shift to his pitch, as if that synthetic voice had lowered purposefully.

In a gesture that seems too filthy to belong to a robot, Xavier grips his own cock with the same hand, stroking himself a couple times. Realistically, you know this is being done to help lubricate a length who cannot do such on its own, but with his stare trained on you, it looks more as if he can't resist the sight before him.

He catches on infuriatingly fast.

" Does this arouse you? "

" ... No. " Why are you even bothering at this point.

" Lie. I will be taking note of more of your preferences. "

It's said like a challenge, as though he finds the idea of you trying to trick him amusing.

" What about uhm- Your preferences? " If nothing else, then because you're curious.

Xavier parts your legs further, enough for his sturdy body to fit between them, adjusted to a proper height. His erection rests on your mound. It's heavier than you expected.

" You. "

Is all he deigns to say.

Xavier doesn't have to grip his own girth to align it with your twitching entrance. In fact, he's confident enough to look you in the eyes as he slowly presses forward.

" I speculated on what the ideal proportions are and am confident in my findings. Should this hurt however, voice your discomfort. "

What a bizarre mental image, Xavier pouring over how many inches his own dick should have. Did he opt for a humanoid shape specifically for you, is that his genuine preference? He could have chosen genitalia modeled after a variety of monsters...

He is large, you'll give him that. It seems appropriate, given the proportions of his towering frame. Although you're already feeling he'll be kind of a stretch, you're also confident in your ability to handle a fat cock when horny enough.

The breach of his tip inside you is met with a sharp inhale from your part, this slight sting that fades eventually. A noise somewhere between clipped static and a spark follows, making you glance at the large robot.

Xavier's lenses dim for a brief moment, his grip on your thighs becoming inconsistent and tremulous.

So he went all out, he wants to receive the pleasurable feedback from these acts. Is this... The first time he's testing it with someone?

" K- Keep going. " You have no idea why that excites you more.

" Certainly. "

You never thought a robot could sound strained until today.

The rest of his length enters you more smoothly, the fullness settling in making you clench around the silicone protrusion and sigh in gratification. You'll never stroke his ego like this out loud, but Xavier guessed right- You've never felt this perfectly full, all sensitive spots being stimulated by the position of his textured cock.

The sensation alone has you grinding aimlessly, trying to create friction with open-mouthed sighs of delight.

The robot hisses.

The noise startled you, until you spot a vent-like structure over his shoulders, releasing... Hot air? You'd never seen him do that before. Did his fans just kick in?

" How... How do you feel? "

There's no mistaking the delay. Xavier may not moan and groan like a man, but the signs are there for whoever bothers to see.

" Full. " You murmur. " Please move, I can't- "

He does, quickly even, as if waiting for the request.

The movement is experimental at first, likely Xavier needs to learn how to thrust properly, though he swiftly discovers yet another preference. Hands under your skirt, grasping the globes of your full ass, he opts to move you onto his length, each drag of your walls around him having the machine tremble slightly in pulses of what must be newfound pleasure.

You wonder, deliriously, if he ejaculates. You're about to ask, legs hooking around his waist and whines flowing freely, when he... Stops.

It's jarring, irritating, having you grunting reflexively. " Why?! "

That's when you feel him detach.

There's a subtle click, the sound of panels closing and rearraging, before Xavier pulls away from you, his length still firmly stationed inside your plush pussy.

It takes you a series of vapid seconds staring between him and yourself to understand what took place. The panels on the front of his body are seamless, with no indication that there ever was a genital attachment on his frame.

The thing inside you moves and you squirm in confusion.

" All is functioning properly. " He nods to himself, closing your thighs and helping your stupefied self back onto your feet. " You may return to your work post. "

You barely manage to straighten your skirt and underwear. " Sir... Sir, you can't be serious. "

Xavier watches the way you walk, waiting until you can mask the slight tremor of your legs and straighten up before opening the door.

" I am, naturally. I will check on you periodically. Be sure to hydrate. " A key is stuffed on your skirt's front pocket. " Should anything go wrong, you may enter this office and wait for me. Do not remove my attachment. "

" O-Okay?? "

Before you can even think of a real response, Xavier has already nudged you out of his office and left you to your own devices.

This... Is not at all what you expected would transpire. You aren't even sure if it was a bright idea to humor any of it. A confused, embarrassed mind gives way for autopilot to take over, bringing you back to your previous position without a peep.

Your coworkers side-eye you, some concerned, others suspicious.

The thing buried snugly within you vibrates just as you call a client over.

You imagine Xavier in his office, tuning into the closest security camera footage.

Oh God, you cry inwardly, at least it's silent.

#Retail Hell boys #yandere robot #robot boyfriend #robot x reader

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nowoyas · 10 months ago

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Trying to make sense of the Nanowrimo statement to the best of my abilities and fuck, man. It's hard.

It's hard because it seems to me that, first and foremost, the organization itself has forgotten the fucking point.

Nanowrimo was never about the words themselves. It was never about having fifty thousand marketable words to sell to publishing companies and then to the masses. It was a challenge, and it was hard, and it is hard, and it's supposed to be. The point is that it's hard. It's hard to sit down and carve out time and create a world and create characters and turn these things into a coherent plot with themes and emotional impact and an ending that's satisfying. It's hard to go back and make changes and edit those into something likable, something that feels worth reading. It's hard to find a beautifully-written scene in your document and have to make the decision that it's beautiful but it doesn't work in the broader context. It's fucking hard.

Writing and editing are skills. You build them and you hone them. Writing the way the challenge initially encouraged--don't listen to that voice in your head that's nitpicking every word on the page, put off the criticism for a later date, for now just let go and get your thoughts out--is even a different skill from writing in general. Some people don't particularly care about refining that skill to some end goal or another, and simply want to play. Some people sit down and try to improve and improve and improve because that is meaningful to them. Some are in a weird in-between where they don't really know what they want, and some have always liked the idea of writing and wanted a place to start. The challenge was a good place for this--sit down, put your butt in a chair, open a blank document, and by the end of the month, try to put fifty thousand words in that document.

How does it make you feel to try? Your wrists ache and you don't feel like any of the words were any good, but didn't you learn something about the process? Re-reading it, don't you think it sounds better if you swap these two sentences, if you replace this word, if you take out this comma? Maybe you didn't hit 50k words. Maybe you only wrote 10k. But isn't it cool, that you wrote ten thousand words? Doesn't it feel nice that you did something? We can try again. We can keep getting better, or just throwing ourselves into it for fun or whatever, and we can do it again and again.

I guess I don't completely know where I'm going with this post. If you've followed me or many tumblr users for any amount of time, you've probably already heard a thousand times about how generative AI hurts the environment so many of us have been so desperately trying to save, about how generative AI is again and again used to exploit big authors, little authors, up-and-coming authors, first time authors, people posting on Ao3 as a hobby, people self-publishing e-books on Amazon, traditionally published authors, and everyone in between. You've probably seen the statements from developers of these "tools", things like how being required to obtain permission for everything in the database used to train the language model would destroy the tool entirely. You've seen posts about new AI tools scraping Ao3 so they can make money off someone else's hobby and putting the legality of the site itself at risk. For an organization that used to dedicate itself to making writing more accessible for people and for creating a community of writers, Nanowrimo has spent the past several years systematically cracking that community to bits, and now, it's made an official statement claiming that the exploitation of writers in its community is okay, because otherwise, someone might find it too hard to complete a challenge that's meant to be hard to begin with.

I couldn't thank Nanowrimo enough for what it did for me when I started out. I don't know how to find community in the same way. But you can bet that I've deleted my account, and I'll be finding my own path forward without it. Thanks for the fucking memories, I guess.

#distant citrus sounds #disk horse #nanowrimo #ai shit

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ikimaru · 1 year ago

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hiiiii i have always loved the way you draw hair. i'm just curious: do you have specific references/databases you pull from for inspiration? and/or do you have a philosophy for how you stylize/build hairstyles? also! what kind of hairstyle do you have personally or enjoy the most? (not asking for selfie, more like a few words about your relationship with cuts/styles in general. do you live in super interesting layered geometric looks?! i could also see you having super chic dramatic all-one-length hair - but, please, only things you're content to share with us <3)

heyy thank you! ;v; not specifically, I just look at the official models and put my spin on them + look at how others stylize them as well, I was just drawing the hair outline for the longest time bc of other characters I drew but with gnshn since the characters have actual models u can see how the hairstyle works I try to incorporate that, I never had to draw such.. organized hairstyles before, def had a time™️ with that at first lol

and I just like drawing poofy hair that looks a bit messy/lively HAHA my own hair is very messy and unmanageable so I had a few hairstyles growing up (one time I cut ALL of my hair like.. picture El from ST....) but ever since I got into anime I gave myself side bangs and I've been keeping that same hairstyle since sbjksf (and I would def go for even more layered)

#Sunnyasks

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ph-cutie · 7 months ago

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DISCO ARTISTS. do you ever wish you had something reliable to color pick from? do you wish you could pick the actual colors from the models, without the trouble of lighting/blurry screenshots?

the solution is pretty ugly, but ive got something for your troubles. my comprehensive (40+ characters), labelled DE model texturefile database. they ARE a bit gruesome at first glance. but they genuinely save my life sometimes and i think they might help out some other people too.

SAMPLES:

IF THIS POST LOOKS FAMILIAR: its because ive made it before! likeeee, way back when. but i didnt know how to properly explain myself and what i was doing, just posted a weird link with some babbling below... this is a more persuasively-worded revamp! because i wanted to

#disco elysium #sorrryyyyyyyyyy

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ollieolliewrld · 1 year ago

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HSR Men in Relationships (SFW)

1.5k words

Argenti ♡This man worships you. ♡He searches for beauty and to now have the very definition of that in his arm, he cannot believe it ♡Ever since you two met he questions if this is reality as you are too good to be true ♡Argenti does his best to make time for you while getting his knightly duties done

♡You will constantly have fresh flowers ♡He believes that you deserve to have constant beauty surrounding you ♡Wherever he goes he brings something back for you ♡His phone is filled with pictures of you ♡You are his model and he will start a photoshoot anywhere ♡If the light is right he will immediately pull you his phone to capture the moment ♡Whether you are posing or he catches you off guard every picture is perfect

Blade ♡He is not a man of many words but when he does speak it is to show you his care ♡When he first saw you he was entranced ♡It was only for a moment but he could remember every detail ♡After that, he would sneak away from the other Stellaron Hunters to be around you casually ♡He would never start the initial conversation so you were the one to say ‘Hello’ ♡Blade finds comfort in your presence ♡All of the pain he feels can be dulled by having your head on his shoulder ♡He’s the kind of man who would see you struggling to open a jar and without saying a word take the jar and open it for you ♡He makes sure you are taken care of ♡Nothing is going to happen to you while he’s around

Dan Heng ♡Dan loves that you are as interested in learning as he is ♡Every time he finds something new to add to his database you are the first to know ♡Your eyes lighting up when he shares information with you makes his heart skip a beat ♡Early mornings when he makes you tea ♡Then lays with you just talking ♡He can relax with you ♡Conversations between you two let him be himself ♡With you, he doesn't have to worry ♡You can handle yourself and he appreciates that ♡He is there to support you always but has a lot on his plate ♡Time with you is sacred and he wants to know you inside and out ♡You are his partner, his equal, you are treasured and he makes sure that you know this

Dr. Ratio ♡Veritas Ratio is a picky man ♡He knows exactly what he wants and refuses to settle ♡Never did he think that he would find someone that met his standards ♡When you walked in he had met his match ♡At first, he’s very skeptical as you are just too good to be true ♡With time he settles in and enjoys your company ♡You don’t need to match his intellect ♡That’s not what he’s looking for ♡He has grown cold to normal emotion and is drawn in by your humanity ♡Your care for yourself and others around you that’s what he loves ♡Ratio enjoys doing your hobbies with you ♡He may already know everything about it ♡But he wants to know what it means to you ♡You are his final lesson and he will spend his life learning you

Gepard ♡Very much a golden retriever ♡Gepard is just happy to have you around ♡No matter what you’re doing his heart swells when he looks over and sees you ♡He has worked his whole life and you are the missing piece ♡Goes out of his way to make sure everything is done for you ♡He’s an early riser because of his duties and regardless of how early he wakes up Gepard makes sure to have your coffee/tea ready with a small note ♡When he’s stationed away from you he writes you letters ♡He never wants to be away from you but knows that he needs to keep you safe ♡Likes to keep a picture of you in his wallet ♡No matter how cold it gets you keep him warm ♡You are his endgame and even though he’s very comfortable with and around you he never stops putting effort in ♡The two of you work as a team making sure the other stays happy

Jing Yuan ♡Jing Yuan is a relaxed man ♡Enjoys to take you to work with him ♡As long as nothing dangerous is going on he sees no problem with having you on his arm ♡At times he will send Yanqing your way to keep him occupied ♡Takes you to see the most beautiful parts of the Luofu ♡He wants to share everything with you, being together for everything ♡Surprisingly a very good cook ♡At least once a week he makes sure to clear time to cook a beautiful dinner for the two of you ♡Making sure you are taken care of includes making sure you are eating well ♡Seeing you smiling and eating the food he has prepared for you makes him fall for you more and more ♡A protective lover as he has seen all that can go wrong and happen ♡Above all else, he will keep you safe

Luocha ♡This man is very smooth ♡You thought he was a bit of a player at first ♡He only has eyes for you though and you saw this ♡As he is constantly on the move he hopes to bring you with him ♡He has you as a lover and partner ♡Luocha takes great care in listening to your thoughts and ideas ♡You see things slightly differently than him and he uses that to build new ideas ♡Big on slow dancing with you whether it be in the kitchen or under the moonlight he enjoys holding you close and moving in sync ♡He likes to leave small notes around when you aren’t looking ♡No matter how many you find you always get a certain look on your face as you read them that makes Luocha a happy man

Welt ♡Welt enjoys a more relaxed relationship ♡He wants to spend time with you doing things like taking walks or holding you while he works ♡Most of his time is spent working and making sure all things on the ♡Express are going smoothly so when he is with you he wants to take some time to get his mind off of that ♡There have been times when the two of you had something planned and it was interrupted by work ♡But he always makes it up to you and you know that it is not his fault ♡You sometimes take it upon yourself to try to help with the work ♡While he appreciates the thought he would much rather have your head on his shoulder or on his lap while he does what needs to be done ♡Welt goes the extra mile to show you that he cares ♡He never forgets an anniversary or birthday and makes sure that those days are for you and him with no interruptions ♡Solo time for you two is rare but when the moment comes Welt has it all elaborately planned

Luka ♡Luka is ecstatic to have a lover ♡He is so focused on fighting that he almost forgot about a relationship ♡You showing up to one of his fights one day changed that ♡Seeing you in the crowd ignited the spark inside of him and he knew he had to win so he could talk to you after ♡He is not cocky but he's sure of himself ♡Conversation between you two flows effortlessly and your energy levels match up ♡He spends a lot of time training so he likes to have you there whether you are also active or just there for him ♡He considers you his lucky charm, as long as you are there he can’t lose ♡It makes him feel so loved that you are there after every fight to clean him up and give him affection ♡The care you show him is returned to you as Luka makes sure he is there for you no matter what keeping you happy

Sampo ♡Sampo did not have faith that you would stay ♡With his line of work, he couldn’t imagine anyone would actually want to stay by his side and love him ♡But he loves you and he wasn’t going anywhere ♡He likes to bring you gifts (most of which are stolen) ♡He has never been in a relationship before and is unsure of how to approach it ♡But he is a good lover and makes sure your needs are met ♡Sampo makes sure he spends time with you, that you feel loved and safe, and that no matter what happens he doesn’t go to jail ♡Before you jail just meant being behind bars and dealing with the guards ♡Now it means being away from his light and that is not an option ♡He still lives life on the edge but he does so having his love standing with him every step of the way

Author's Note: There are a few characters I left out (Adventurine, Gallagher, etc) if you would like a post with any other characters just send me an ask and I will get right on it! Also, if anyone would like a post with the women of HSR I would love to write that as well! <3<3

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goblin-jr · 2 months ago

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PHASE III: REINTRODUCTION PROTOCOL

=============================================== CONFIDENTIAL – GOTHAM PSYCHOSOCIAL RESEARCH UNIT CASE FILE #: JX-1989 DOCUMENT TYPE: Postmortem Longitudinal Trial Summary TRIAL NAME: A Character Study in Grief TRIAL MASTERLIST: A Character Study in Grief TRIAL DESIGN: Three-Phase Emotional Disruption Model STATUS: Closed SECURITY CLEARANCE: ALPHA+ ===============================================

Study Brief

Subject B re-entered Subject A’s life under concealed identity. Initial interactions were indirect, progressing to sustained proximity and emotional reinforcement.

Subject A developed attachment under misidentified parameters. Full identity disclosure occurred under emotionally heightened conditions. Results indicate unresolved grief, enduring attachment, and high volatility.

Read full report below.

---

(click on links to access log)

🎙️ [ACCESS: STUDENT BROADCAST ARCHIVE — HARVARDRADIO.COM] Podcast Transcript | The Crimson Hour Ep. 68 | “She Said No (And That’s the Problem)” | Host Commentary

📎 [ACCESS: UNIVERSITY CORRESPONDENCE — HARVARD.EDU] Termination Notice | Financial Aid Rescission & Enrollment Discontinuation | Issued October 14 | Confidential Addressee

🚌 [ACCESS: TRANSPORTATION RECORD — GOTHAM COACHLINES] One Way Bus Ticket | Boston to Gotham | Purchased October 16

🏚️ [ACCESS: HOUSING CONTRACT — GOTHAM CITY RENTAL BOARD] Lease Agreement | 1448 W. Park Row, Apt #4B | Signed October 19 | Tenant: Y/N

📘 [ACCESS: EDUCATION RECORD — GOTHAM CITY ADULT LEARNING CENTER] Enrollment Confirmation | Bridge Track Program | Issued October 24 | Student: Y/N

💼 [ACCESS: EMPLOYMENT LOG — GOTHAM CITY UNIFIED LABOR DATABASE] Multiple Positions | Service & Gig Work Ledger | Active Record | Employee: Y/N

Subject A: Age 21 Subject B: 3 years, 4.5 months post-resurrection April 27

Jason arrives early.

For once, he’s calm.

No adrenaline. No ghost-rage in his blood. Just nerves.

The rain started earlier this year.

Jason was already at the grave when it did—hood up, hands in pockets, the crowbar long gone. He’d showered. Put on clean gear. The plan was simple:

Show up. Say hi. Let her see him. Let her believe it.

He practiced it all in his head—what he’d say, how he’d say it, how he’d wait until she smiled before falling apart.

10:45 p.m.

She shows up early.

Jason sees her silhouette first, cutting through the fog. Slower than usual. Shoulders hunched. Hoodie sagging under the weight of rain and long shifts.

Her shoes are soaked through. No blanket. No bag. No book.

Just her. Exhausted. Smaller somehow.

She stumbles once stepping over a root. Doesn’t even curse. Just keeps going.

Jason’s breath catches as she hits the clearing.

Something’s wrong.

She doesn’t talk to the grave right away. She just touches it—soft. Like she’s asking permission. Then lowers herself to her knees like her bones weigh more this year.

“Hey,” she says quietly, forehead brushing the stone. “Sorry I’m early. I couldn’t go home first.”

Jason doesn’t move. Doesn’t blink. Just listens.

“I had a shift. Then another one. Didn’t think I’d make it if I sat down.”

A long breath.

“I got kicked out,” she says flatly. “Harvard. Rich boy temper tantrum. He made some calls. They pulled my scholarship.”

Jason’s hands spasm. His body cannot decide whether to clench or let go.

“I didn’t tell anyone. I couldn’t.” A pause. Her voice drops. “Didn’t want him- Bruce- to be right about me.”

She talks for a while.

Tells him about the bus ride back. The coffee shop job. The night classes. The leak in her ceiling. The time she had to eat a granola bar for dinner and pretend it was fine.

She doesn’t cry. Not once.

She just talks.

Soft. Matter-of-fact. Like reading off damage reports.

Jason’s whole body buzzes with the wrongness of it. This isn’t how this was supposed to go. She was supposed to joke. Tease the stone. Curse Darcy and flirt with ghosts.

But tonight?

She just… fades.

After about an hour, she stops talking.

No goodbye. No inside joke. No “see you next year, dumbass.”

Just silence.

She curls up beside the grave. Hood pulled over her head. Shoes still wet. Breath fogging in the cold.

And sleeps.

Jason had been waiting for this all year.

She showed up soaked, empty, too tired to fake it. No jokes. No book. Just her knees in the mud and her pride holding what was left of her together.

And he knew— She would hate this.

She would never want him to see her like this. Not exhausted. Not unraveling. Not defeated.

She would rather die than be pitied.

So Jason stayed in the dark.

Because tonight wasn’t about him.

And love meant not crossing the line.

🕵️ [ACCESS: PUBLIC THREAD ARCHIVE — REDDIT.COM/r/GothamSightings] Community Report | “Red Hood in Southside Again???” | User Submissions Logged

📣 [ACCESS: CUSTOMER FEEDBACK LOG — YELP.COM] Review | Bean & Gone Café | Reviewer: Chad R. | Entry Updated May 8

💳 [ACCESS: TRANSACTION RECORD — LOCAL MERCHANT TERMINALS] Receipts Logged | Excessive Tips Flagged | Bean & Gone / Munchie Mart

🧾 [ACCESS: LANDLORD CORRESPONDENCE — DELVECCHIO PROPERTY MGMT] Maintenance Confirmation | Pest Control Approved | Unit: Apt #4B, Tenant: Y/N

Y/N snapped the tip drawer shut harder than she meant to.

Again.

The register beeped like it was offended. JoJo didn’t even flinch—just looked up from her phone with that deadpan stare that meant she was either judging her or waiting to help bury a body.

“Another hundred?” JoJo asked, not even blinking.

“One-fifty,” Y/N muttered. “On a twelve-dollar order.”

JoJo whistled low. “Okay, but at what point do you find your mystery billionaire and marry him for healthcare?”

Y/N didn’t answer. She grabbed the bills, shoved them into her apron, and stalked toward the back.

That night, she emptied every envelope under her mattress. Every absurd tip. Every impossible number scrawled on receipts. Every crisp, creased bill she couldn’t bring herself to spend.

$4,329.72.

In cash.

No name. No signature. Just guilt.

She sat on the floor and stared at it for a long time.

And then—like a switch flipping—her hands started to shake.

Of course. Of course.

Bruce Wayne.

That smug, shadow-lurking bastard must’ve found out she was back. Working double shifts. Eating gas station ramen. Sleeping under a flickering ceiling light with duct tape around the base.

And instead of calling— Instead of knocking— Instead of saying one fucking word—

He sent money.

She found an old envelope in the junk drawer. Dumped the cash in, fast and angry. Grabbed a pen. No flourish. No flourish was needed.

keep your guilt money.

She folded the note once, sharp. Taped it to the envelope. Stared at it like it had cursed her bloodline.

It was after midnight when she left.

She didn’t take the bus. Bus costs cash.

She walked.

Across half the city. Past busted streetlamps and cracked sidewalks and three of the corners she used to sleep near in high school. Past the bakery that always smelled like disappointment. Past the train station she’d once left for Harvard from.

She didn’t stop.

By the time she reached Wayne Manor, her feet hurt and her coat was damp and her fingers were numb—but her spine was made of fury.

The gates loomed in front of her, tall and polished and exactly as she remembered.

She stood there for a minute. Just breathing.

Then she crouched. Picked up a rock from the edge of the path. Slipped it into the envelope.

Weighted.

Final.

And then—without a word— She threw it over the gate.

It landed with a thunk on the gravel drive.

Y/N turned and walked away without looking back.

Let him read the note. Let him choke on it.

She didn’t want his money.

She wanted to be left the hell alone.

BATCAVE — May 22, 2:13 AM

Status: Debrief in progress Subjects Present: D. Grayson, T. Drake, D. Wayne, J. Todd, B. Wayne

“So, are we just not gonna talk about the fact that Killer Croc was wearing Crocs?” Dick asked, toeing off his boots near the console. “I mean, that’s commitment to the bit.”

Tim didn’t look up. “I already filed it under ‘mental warfare.’”

Damian scoffed from the corner. “You’re all idiots.”

Jason ignored them. Sort of. He was leaned back against the armory wall, picking at the edge of his gloves like they’d personally wronged him.

Until—

ALERT: PROJECTILE DETECTED. PERIMETER BREACH. LOCKDOWN SEQUENCE INITIATED.

Every screen in the cave lit red.

“Who the hell throws something at the manor?” Tim muttered, already flipping through the camera feeds.

“Someone with a death wish,” Damian deadpanned.

“Someone stupid,” Bruce corrected, stepping forward.

Jason just moved toward the screen. “Pull Sector 12. Zoom in.”

The exterior cam locked on. Gravel path. Gate lights. A single envelope lay on the drive, still spinning slightly from impact.

Not a package. Not a threat. Not a warning.

Just a rage-fueled piece of paper addressed in sharp black ink:

TO: BITCH WAYNE FROM: GO TO HELL

Underneath that, written in all-caps and vengeance:

KEEP YOUR GUILT MONEY.

The envelope had torn slightly on impact. Caught on the gravel. A few crisp bills peeked from the split. One hundred dollar note folded clean. A rock the size of a fist visible inside, for weight.

Jason’s stomach dropped.

It was his money. Every tip. Every envelope. Every silent drop at her register or mailbox or door.

He thought she hadn’t noticed.

Turns out, she had. And she walked it all the way here just to give it back.

A beat of total silence.

Then—

“…Wait,” Tim said slowly. “That’s your money?”

Jason didn’t answer.

Dick turned. “Dude. You’ve been funding her anonymously? For months?”

Jason crossed his arms. “I wasn’t trying to be anonymous.”

Damian snorted. “You failed spectacularly.”

Bruce stared at the monitor, unreadable. Still. Barely blinking. “She thinks it was from me,” he said finally.

“She would,” Tim said. “You’re the obvious choice for unsolicited financial intervention.”

“And she still threw it back,” Damian murmured, almost impressed.

Jason crossed his arms.

“I mean… you guys saw that, right?” he said. “She didn’t keep it.”

Dick smirked. “She chucked it with incredible form. Like varsity softball form.”

“Yeah,” Jason muttered. “She’s pissed.”

“You sound proud,” Tim said slowly.

Jason turned away from the screen, tugging his gloves tighter.

“Oh, I’m so proud,” he said. “Bitch Wayne got a rock in the mail. From my girl.”

“She doesn’t know it’s you,” Bruce said, not impressed.

Jason ignored that.

He looked at the envelope one last time, then at the gate, then—somewhere no camera could track—toward her.

“…New plan,” he muttered.

Tim looked up. “New what?”

Jason cracked his knuckles.

“I make contact.”

The plan wasn’t complicated. Jason liked it that way.

He knew the alley behind her building was dirty, damp, and full of rats—human and otherwise. He also knew a low-level dealer had been working the block for weeks now, pushing light stuff to drunk college kids and the occasional night school burnout.

It wasn’t urgent. Wasn’t worth the suit. Wasn’t worth the attention.

But it was behind her apartment.

So Jason made it urgent.

He didn’t dig too deep. Didn’t check security. Didn’t run a full recon of the building. He didn’t want to know how bad it was. Not yet.

He showed up just before sundown.

Climbed up to her window. Plopped right down. Moved like smoke. Didn’t let himself look through her window—just paused long enough to slide a folded note through the small crack in the pane.

“Temporary stakeout. No danger to you. Lock your windows. —RH”

He noticed the broken latch right after. Rusted. Hanging by one screw. He made a mental note to have a second chat with her landlord. Maybe something about a crowbar this time. Or a window.

Jason repositioned on her fire escape. Cross-legged. Still. Watching the alley below like he’d done it a thousand times. He felt calm. Capable. Like this was right.

She’d come outside.She’d see the note. She’d see him.

And then, she would feel their undeniable connection, open the window, and profess her love. It was foolproof.

Y/N got home around midnight.

Her backpack was heavy. Her jacket soaked. She had a paper bag under one arm and her keys already in hand before she even reached the stairwell.

She didn’t look up. She didn’t hesitate. She grabbed the note. Read it. Sighed. Crumpled it in one hand.

Then, with the kind of exhausted precision Jason had only ever seen on grieving people and nurses, she reached for the curtain—

And closed it.

Not angrily. Not dramatically.

Just… done.

Lights off. Lock turned. Curtain drawn.

Jason stayed on the roof.

And for the first time in years, he wasn’t sure what to do next.

STAKEOUT — DAY FOUR

This was officially the worst stakeout of his life.

Jason had done rooftop surveillance during hailstorms. He’d staked out mob hideouts in January without gloves. Once, he ate an entire protein bar that turned out to be six months expired just to avoid blowing his cover.

None of that compared to this.

Because at least in those cases, he had a target. A mission. A job to do.

Here? He was just... loitering.

Loitering outside the window of a girl who hadn’t looked at him in two days. Not since Day Two, when she peeked through the curtain for exactly 1.5 seconds and then closed it like she was doing pest control.

He hadn’t moved since sunset.

He’d counted exactly four rats, two alley cats, one dealer (still mid-tier, still boring), and zero signs that Y/N had any interest in acknowledging the helmeted vigilante nesting on her fire escape.

He was starting to take it personally.

His back hurt. His patience was thin. And his coffee had gone cold sometime around 9:00 p.m.

He was just about to call it—just about to tell himself he’d leave in five minutes, tops—when the window creaked open.

Not a curtain. Not a crack.

The full window.

Jason sat up straight, instantly alert.

Y/N leaned out.

Arms crossed on the windowsill. Hair pulled into a messy knot. Hoodie two sizes too big and sleeves pushed to her elbows.

She looked directly at him. “Listen,” she said, voice still dangerously even. “If this is about Gerald, I’m gonna stop you right there. Because Gerald literally ties his drug pouches with ribbons. He once left a baggie in someone’s mailbox with a thank-you note.”

Jason stared.

“I know this,” she continued, getting started now, “because I taught that man how to do cursive T’s a few months ago for a hundred bucks and a stale Pop-Tart. He paid in exact change and said, ‘Thank you, miss.’”

Jason opened his mouth.

She did not let him speak.

“Gerald,” she said, gesturing like she was introducing a sitcom character, “is not a threat. Gerald is a part-time dealer with a Yelp rating and mild anxiety. I could break his kneecaps in under two minutes and still make it to night class.”

Jason made a noise—could’ve been agreement, could’ve been fear.

She narrowed her eyes. “So unless there’s an actual cartel hiding in the bodega freezer, you can stop loitering on my window like a sad gargoyle and go bother someone else.”

Jason scrambled. “He’s… connected.”

Y/N tilted her head. “To who?”

Jason waved vaguely. “Bigger cartel. Out-of-town operation. Could be gun-running. Definitely not cursive.”

Y/N looked unimpressed.

“Right,” she said slowly. “Well, if you’re gonna keep lurking out here, just don’t scare the cats.”

Then she closed the window.

Didn’t slam it. Didn’t storm off. Just… shut it. Quiet. Final.

Jason stared at the glass, stunned.

So much for the moment. So much for the bonding. So much for the water.

Still—he smiled under the mask. She offered to commit acts of violence for him.

The plan was working.

💚 [ACCESS: VENDOR NOTICE — GERALD’S GOODS / PUBLIC MARKET BULLETIN] Store Update | Continued Operation Approved | Restrictions Applied

STAKEOUT — DAY ELEVEN

It was getting bleak.

Jason had been camped out on her fire escape for eleven days. Eleven. He’d missed two minor muggings, skipped one whole safehouse rotation, and was now on a first-name basis with three alley cats and one concerned mailman.

Y/N had spoken to him exactly three more times since the Gerald Incident.

None of them were what he wanted.

Day Six: “You left food on my window ledge. That’s how raccoons get in.”

Day Eight: “Could you stop tapping on the railing?, I have work in 4 hours”

Day Nine: “Stop feeding Gerald. He keeps offering me coupons.

He’d pivoted his strategy. Brought better food. Left sticky notes with dumb jokes. Tried being helpful. Nothing worked.

She hadn’t smiled. She hadn’t invited him in. She hadn't even asked his name.

So on Day Eleven, just after midnight, Jason gave up all pretense of having a plan.

He knocked on the window once, then leaned in slightly and said the dumbest possible sentence:

“…Can I use your bathroom?”

Y/N blinked at him. She was sitting on the floor with a mug in one hand and a book in the other, hoodie slipping off one shoulder, expression unreadable.

A long pause.

Then she said:

“Are you serious?”

Jason shrugged. “I’ve been out here for, like, two weeks.”

She stared. Jason stared back. Internally panicking.

Finally, she sighed. “Fine. But if you bleed on my bath mat, I will kill you.”

She opened the window.

Jason crawled inside like a very polite burglar and immediately forgot how to function.

The place was small. Lived-in. Clean in the chaotic way that meant she was too tired to fake being put together. Books stacked everywhere. Couch slightly lopsided

She pointed to the bathroom and didn’t look at him. “There. In and out. Don’t touch my stuff.”

He nodded, heartbeat in his throat.

Once inside, he immediately did not pee.

He closed the door. Locked it. Turned to the sink.

The bathroom was small. Clean. Faintly pink. The kind of space someone maintained out of habit, not vanity. The light above the mirror flickered when he flipped the switch, then steadied. There was a hair tie looped around the faucet. A half-dead succulent in a chipped mug by the window. Toothpaste cap missing. A towel slung over the back of the door with an embroidered flower on it that looked like it came from a clearance bin at Target.

Jason stood in the middle of it, helmet still on, and breathed.

Then—slowly—he reached up and took it off.

The air was cooler on his face than he expected. The mirror caught him in full: tousled hair, dark circles, and that look he always got when the silence stretched too long—like he might flinch from his own reflection.

He looked awful. Not in the way he usually did. Worse.

Like a guy who hadn’t been sleeping. Like someone who’d been sitting on a fire escape for eleven nights hoping a girl who read Pride and Prejudice to gravestones might eventually say hi.

He stared at himself for a beat longer than was comfortable. Then splashed water on his face. Twice. Rubbed his palms over his jaw like it would help somehow.

It didn’t.

There was soap in a tiny ceramic dish shaped like a shell. Glittery, pastel pink. He stared at it for a full three seconds before muttering “what the fuck” and using it anyway.

The water smelled like coconut and something warm. Maybe vanilla. Maybe whatever scent meant “someone lives here and it isn’t you.”

He dried his hands on the towel. Realized too late it was her towel. Hung it back up very gently like it might press charges.

And then—because he was already spiraling—he started looking.

Not like a creep. Not really. Just... glancing.

There was a cup full of bobby pins. A near-empty mascara tube. A jar of Vicks vapor rub. Painkillers. A pack of gum. One very battered razor and—

Her shampoo.

He picked it up like it was evidence. Opened the cap. Took a quick sniff.

Then froze.

Yep.

That was her.

Citrus and something warm. Something he couldn’t name. Something that smelled like sleep and soft laughter and the back of her hoodie after she’d been walking all day.

He blinked.

Stared at the mirror again.

“This is insane,” he said, out loud, to the drain.

The mirror agreed. Silently. Cruelly.

He didn’t stop snooping.

His hand reached for the chapstick next. Pink. Untwisted halfway. Sitting like a loaded weapon on the shelf. He hovered. Pulled back. Reached again.

Nope. Nope.

He could not mentally survive indirect lip contact tonight.

Instead, he turned on the sink again, splashed his face a second time, and looked around.

Panic.

He hadn’t flushed.

If he walked out without flushing, she’d know. She’d definitely know. And then what? She’d think he didn’t pee? That he had a shy bladder? That he was snooping?

Which he was.

But not in a weird way.

Just a tragic, emotionally stunted way.

He flushed.

Waited.

Washed his hands again. Overcorrecting. Citrus soap. Same towel. Same careful dry.

He stared at the door. Helmet back on.

Then—deep breath—he stepped out, greeted by the sound of rain pattering against the living room windows.

The rain was biblical.

One of those Gotham storms that sounded like it was trying to peel the skyline off the bones of the city. Thunder in full surround sound. Water hammering the roof like it was holding a grudge. The alley behind her apartment was already pooling into something that looked vaguely like a swamp.

Y/N stood at her window, hoodie sleeves pushed up, coffee mug empty, expression flat.

She stared down at the alley like she was waiting for it to apologize.

Then, without turning her head:

“…Yo. Gerald dipped.”

Jason, stepping into the living room, gave a dignified response . “What?”

She nodded at the alley. “Lace parasol finally gave out. Rain probably took it clean off his stupid little head.”

Jason craned his neck. She was right. Gerald’s usual folding chair was empty. The cooler full of whatever he sold was gone. A crushed Monster Energy can rolled through the runoff like it was fleeing the scene.

She turned after a moment. Raised an eyebrow. “You planning to just crawl back out there and rot?”

Jason blinked. “...Kinda?”

She sighed. Loudly. Like she was annoyed at the concept of him existing in space.

“I can’t afford the liability of you slipping off my fire escape,” she muttered, walking toward the kitchen. “You fall, you sue, I end up selling a kidney. That’s not happening.”

Jason just watched her.

She didn’t look at him when she said it—just opened a cabinet, pulled out a can of generic brand cola, and set it on the counter without ceremony.

“You want to sit for a while?” she asked, like it physically pained her.

Jason nodded. Too fast. Too eager.

“Yeah,” he said. “Sure. I can—uh. Thanks.”

She walked back toward the window and flopped down onto the couch like gravity won a bet. Jason followed, cautiously, perching on the very edge of the opposite cushion like a man trying not to disturb a wild animal.

Then he realized the problem.

The soda was still on the counter.

And he had his helmet back on.

Y/N glanced over at him, then back at the can. Then—without a word—she stood, grabbed it, opened the drawer, pulled out a bright pink curly straw, jammed it into the can, and handed it over like this was normal behavior.

Jason hesitated.

She stared. “You gonna take it or what?”

He did. Very carefully.

And then, with all the dignity of a man in full tactical armor drinking diet cola through a Lisa Frank accessory, he took a sip.

They’d been sitting in silence for maybe five minutes when she asked, “You affiliated with the bats?”

It wasn’t aggressive. Just flat. Tired. The kind of question that didn’t come from curiosity, but muscle memory—like checking the lock twice before bed.

Jason didn’t move right away.

He could feel her watching. Not suspicious. Not fearful. Just... waiting. Like someone who’d been burned before and had learned to ask the hard questions first.

He set the soda down slowly. Let the pink straw curl on itself like a secret.

“No,” he said.

It was the truth. And a lie. Both, kind of.

But it was what she needed to hear.

He could see it happen—the slow loosening in her jaw, the unspooling tension in her spine, the way her fingers relaxed against the fabric of the couch like she’d been bracing without noticing.

“Good,” she muttered. “Those freaks never told me he died.”

The room was quiet after that.

Jason didn’t answer. He couldn’t.

He just let the rain fill the silence. Let it hum against the windows like white noise. She didn’t look at him again for a long time.

When she finally spoke, it was softer.

“Sorry. That was... blunt.”

“You’re good.”

She exhaled slowly, eyes flicking back to him.

“You don’t seem like one of them anyway.”

Jason shrugged, watching her carefully. “Yeah?”

“You loiter. You drink soda through a straw. You’d trip in a cave and die instantly.”

“I’m an apex predator.”

She rolled her eyes. “You brought me dumplings in a shoebox.”

He raised the can again like it was a toast. “And yet, here we are.”

She didn’t smile. Not fully.

But the corner of her mouth twitched. And for now, that was enough.

She didn’t ask for his name. He didn’t offer it. They just sat there, listening to the storm try to peel Gotham open.

Eventually, she stood. Picked up his empty can. Tossed it in the recycling like it didn’t mean anything.

By the third week of the stakeout-that-wasn’t, Jason had a rhythm.

He came by every few nights. Always late. Never announced. He didn’t knock. Didn’t text. He just appeared on the fire escape like a guilty habit, boots scuffed, helmet fogged, and body language trying not to look like it needed a place to rest.

And somehow—without ever being formally invited—he started staying.

Y/N never asked why he came. He never said.

She just opened the window.

Their nights followed a strange kind of pattern. Jason would crawl in like a very large, heavily armed housecat. She’d be in her usual hoodie, curled on the couch with her laptop balanced on one knee and a heating pad strapped to her lower back like a battle injury.

The apartment wasn’t really built for guests. The living room was also the kitchen, which was also the dining room, which was also just the room. But she made it work. Kicked a blanket off the couch. Cleared a corner of the table. Pretended this wasn’t weird.

At first, they just sat.

Sometimes she put on old episodes of Chopped and yelled at the screen. Sometimes he read the crime blotter and gave her commentary like a feral news anchor. Sometimes they didn’t say anything at all. Just sat. Breathing in the same room.

She never asked who he was. He never offered. And that silence between them felt sacred. Like a ceasefire they didn’t dare break.

Then—one night—he brought food.

Takeout. Thai. Still warm. He said it was extra from a thing. Didn't elaborate.

Y/N narrowed her eyes, but said nothing. Just pulled two chipped plates from the cabinet, set them on the counter like she did this every night.

Jason hesitated. Hands still full of the plastic bag.

“I already ate,” he said.

She didn’t look at him. “That’s fine. I haven’t.”

Next time, it was shawarma. The time after that, dumplings. Then pizza. Then stir fry. Always with the same line:

“I ate already.” Or: “Can’t really eat in the helmet.” Or: “Not hungry.”

And every time, Y/N would split the food between two plates. Hand him one. Sit on the floor. Eat in silence.

And every time, he wouldn’t touch his.

On the fourth night, she snapped.

“If you’re gonna sit there like a haunted statue and watch me eat, you can leave.”

Jason blinked. “What?”

She set her fork down. Hard. “I’m not doing pity dinner.”

“It’s not—”

“Then eat.”

“I can’t—”

She stood up. “You can’t or you won’t?”

Jason opened his mouth. Closed it.

“I’m not your project,” she said, voice low now. “You don’t get to show up here, drop off food like some sad vigilante DoorDash, and act like that counts as caring.”

His stomach twisted. “I do care.”

“Then sit your ass down and eat something.”

Jason stared at her.

She stared back.

He sighed—quietly—but took it.

Then came the blanket.

He kept it by the window now. A faded throw with frayed corners that smelled faintly like her shampoo and dust. Jason threw it over his head with practiced ease, tucking the ends under his chin so his face stayed hidden and his hands stayed free.

Y/N called it “his little cryptid cloak.”

He couldn’t talk with the blanket on—no voice mod, no helmet, no disguise—so he didn’t. He just sat there. Eating silently. A ghost in tactical gear, chewing sesame chicken like it was sacred.

Y/N, however, did talk.

She talked the whole time.

Mostly to fill the space. Sometimes to punish him.

“…so then my boss says we can’t wear sneakers anymore, like it’s a ‘professionalism issue,’ but I know for a fact Jo-Jo showed up last week in flip-flops and nobody said a damn word.”

Jason hummed under the blanket. She took it as agreement.

“And this girl in my psych class keeps saying ‘let’s circle back’ like we’re on Zoom in 2020. I swear to God, if she says ‘let’s unpack that’ one more time I’m going to commit tax fraud on her behalf.”

Jason nodded. Fork to his mouth. Still silent. Blanket bobbing.

Y/N sighed dramatically. “This would be less one-sided if you weren’t eating like the Phantom of the Opera.”

Jason flipped her off.

From under the blanket.

She snorted. “Okay, rude.”

He kept eating.

She kept talking.

It was the most peace either of them had felt in weeks.

📄 [ACCESS: INTERNAL OPERATIONS LOG — WAYNE FAMILY DIVISION] Mission Report | Subject Missing Post-Injury | Filed November 25 | J. Todd (Red Hood)

Y/N’s fork scrapes the bottom of the takeout container.

It’s the last of the noodles. Cold, borderline questionable. Hood dropped them off two nights ago and she meant to finish them sooner, but time’s slippery lately and grocery money’s been tight. She’s sitting on the couch, hoodie sleeves pulled over her knuckles, heating pad dead beneath her, the hum of the fridge the only sound in the room.

She doesn’t bother with music anymore. She misses Spotify Premium.

She’s halfway through another bite when it happens.

THUMP.

A sharp knock—no, a thud—against the windowpane.

She freezes.

Head snaps toward the sound. Fork clatters to the plate.

For one wild second she thinks it’s a bird. A raccoon. Gerald, reincarnated.

But then she sees it. The shape.

Helmet. Leather. Bulk.

She exhales sharply. Stands. Walks to the window and pulls it open with more annoyance than alarm.

“What—”

Then she sees the blood.

His whole right side is soaked. The dark of his jacket is darker still, and there’s a sharpness to the way he’s standing—angled, braced, like the wall is the only thing keeping him upright.

“Hood,” she breathes. “What the fuck—”

He doesn’t answer.

He stumbles forward—tries to step in—and her hands shoot out automatically, catching his arm. He’s warm. Too warm. His breath fogs the glass behind him.

“Oh my god,” she mutters, voice rising. “Sit. Sit down—now.”

He doesn’t resist. Just slumps, knees buckling like he meant to collapse. She guides him down to the couch—his usual spot—and watches, horrified, as he leaves a full handprint of blood on the cushion.

She kneels beside him.

“Where are you hurt? Hey—hey, look at me.”

He doesn’t lift the helmet. Doesn’t move. Just leans back against the armrest, breathing shallow.

“Okay,” she says, standing. “Fine. Stay there. Bleed or don’t, I’m getting the med kit.”

She’s already halfway to the bathroom.

She returns with the med kit and a clean towel she’s been saving for emergencies. Turns out this qualifies.

He hasn’t moved.

Still slouched against the couch, right leg extended, gloved hand pressed loosely to his side like that’ll keep the blood in. She kneels beside him again, tosses the kit open, and gently lifts his shirt to reveal his ribs.

His breathing hitches. She ignores it. She can’t stop shaking.

“I—I don’t know how to stitch,” she says, voice raw. “I’ve never done this. I can’t—”

“You can,” he rasps, barely audible through the modulator. “It’s just thread. You’ve sewn buttons, right?”

“This is not a button.”

“Still got holes.”

She wants to punch him. She wants to scream. She wants to cry.

Instead, she grabs the suture kit with fingers that won’t stop trembling and tries to remember anything she’s ever seen in a movie.

“Talk me through it,” she says.

Jason shifts, barely. “You cleaned it?”

“Yes.”

“Okay. Pinch the skin together.”

She does.

“Anchor the first one deep. Just push. Don’t think.”

She pushes.

He flinches. Hisses. But doesn’t stop her.

She stabs the needle through again, then again, lips parted, breath shallow.

“There. There. Keep going,” he mutters, slurring a little now. “You’re doing fine.”

“This is fucked,” she says.

“Totally,” he mumbles.

She gets through five stitches before she realizes he’s stopped answering.

Her head snaps up.

“Hood?”

No response.

“Hood. Hey—hey, come on—”

She reaches out, touches his faceplate. Cold. Still.

He’s breathing, but only just. Out cold. Head turned toward the back cushion, body slack, arm limp at his side. The moment she’d been dreading—being alone with this—has arrived, and it’s not cinematic. It’s not brave.

It’s awful.

“Shit. Shit, shit—”

She finishes the stitches with her whole body shaking. Wraps gauze with teeth clenched. Mutters every curse she knows under her breath. When she finally leans back, her palms are slick with blood and sweat and something else she refuses to name.

She wipes the blood off his helmet with the hem of her shirt.

Pulls a blanket over him.

And sits on the floor beside the couch like a kid trying not to look at the monster in the room.

She can’t sleep.

Not with him breathing like that.

Not with the way it hitches every few minutes, shallow and wet and wrong, like his lungs are trying to argue with his ribs. Like his body hasn’t decided whether it wants to keep going or not.

The helmet is still on.

She thought it was fine. He always wore it. Said he needed it. But now, in the silence of the apartment, with the storm finally passed and the fridge humming like it knows something she doesn’t—she’s terrified.

What if he can’t breathe in there? What if he suffocates and she sleeps through it? What if she wakes up and he’s just—

She bolts upright.

Back in her room, she throws open the dresser drawer and rummages blindly until her hand hits something soft and familiar—an old sleep mask. Faded pink. Fraying elastic. One of the eye patches has a cartoon sheep on it.

Stands there for a second, breathing hard.

Then she walks back out.

He hasn’t moved. Still sprawled across the couch, chest rising in slow, irregular beats. One arm fallen off the cushion. A streak of blood drying across the side of his neck.

She kneels again. Pulls the mask on.

Her hands find the edges of the helmet. “Don’t die,” she whispers. “Okay? You’re not allowed.”

Then—carefully, slowly, blind—she lifts it off.

It’s heavier than she thought. The inside slick with sweat. It makes a soft, awful click as it comes free. She sets it down on the floor beside her and reaches up—still blindfolded—and cups his face with both hands.

He’s still breathing. Better now. Less noise. More air.

“Okay,” she says, to no one. “Okay.”

She sits there like that for a while, hands still on his cheeks, thumb brushing a raised scar near his jaw.

Eventually, she lets go of his face . She doesn’t take off the mask. She just curls up on the floor, forehead resting against the edge of the couch.

And listens. To his breathing. To the radiator. To the silence.

And when she finally lets herself sleep, it’s with one hand still reaching up—just in case he stops again.

Morning comes slow.

It creeps in through the smudged windows, casting pale gold across the floor, the peeling radiator, the crumpled takeout bag on the counter. Everything smells faintly like ginger and sweat and blood.

Jason wakes with a start.

His ribs scream. His side aches. His mouth tastes like metal and dust.

And his helmet is gone.

His eyes fly open.

He’s still on the couch—blanket twisted around his legs, shirt halfway undone, gauze taped awkwardly across his stomach. The light’s too bright. His heart’s too loud. And his face is exposed.

Panic claws up his throat.

Where is it? Where’s the helmet? How long has it been off? Did she see? Did she see?

He tries to sit up too fast and immediately regrets it, pain flaring sharp under the bandages. He swears under his breath, scanning the room, chest heaving—

And then he sees her.

Y/N is curled up on the floor, still in blood stained pajamas, limbs tangled awkwardly against the side of the couch. Her head is tilted back slightly. She’s breathing soft and slow.

And over her eyes—

A sleep mask.

Cartoon sheep. Frayed elastic. Still on.

Jason freezes.

She shifts slightly in her sleep, fingers twitching near her face. Then, as if pulled by some unseen thread, her hand drifts across the floor, brushes against his boot, and pauses.

She jerks awake.

Slow. Groggy. Like the world is coming back in pieces.

Then she sits up, stretches, and reaches beside her without looking.

The helmet’s right there.

She picks it up. Holds it out.

“Put it on” she mumbles, voice hoarse. “You scared the hell out of me, by the way.”

Jason doesn’t move.

She keeps holding it.

“I didn’t look,” she adds, quieter now. “Just… heard you struggling. Figured you’d breathe better without it. Blindfolded myself. That’s all.”

Jason still says nothing.

Just takes the helmet from her hands like it’s made of glass.

Their fingers brush. He grips it tighter. Puts it on, turns the voice modulator on.

“…Thank you,” he says.

She shrugs. Leans back against the couch again.

“Don’t die on my watch, Hood. It’d really mess up my Tuesday.”

Y/N finally pulls the sleep mask off.

Blinding light. Crick in her neck. Her whole body feels like it got into a fight with a vending machine and lost. But Hood’s still alive. Still sitting upright. Still breathing.

She exhales.

“Let me see,” she says, already kneeling beside him again.

Jason stays quiet. Tilts to the side slightly so she can peel the blanket back. The gauze is still holding. The stitches are—surprisingly—not awful. A little uneven. A little swollen. But clean.

She stares at them for a second. Nods to herself.

“Not bad,” she mutters. “For someone whose only medical training came the guy getting stitched.”

He doesn’t respond.

She pretends she doesn’t care.

“Don’t pull them. No jumping off buildings for a while. No cartwheels. No gunfights unless it’s urgent.”

She stands again and heads for the kitchenette.

The fridge greets her with its usual charm: One half-empty bottle of ketchup. A jar of olives. A single carton of milk.

She opens the cabinet. Cereal. One box. Crushed.

She does the math in her head. Stares into the abyss. Then grabs a bowl.

It’s just enough for one.

She pours it. Adds the milk. Doesn’t hesitate.

Walks back over and hands it to him.

Jason stares at the bowl like it might explode.

She shrugs.

“You almost died. You get the Cheerios.”

He eats slow.

Careful.

The sound of the spoon scraping the bowl is soft, muffled beneath the low hum of morning and the fabric of the blanket he’s thrown over his head. She doesn’t watch.

She ducks into the bathroom instead.

Ties her hair up with one hand while brushing her teeth with the other. Swaps out the hoodie for her “functional” shirt—stained, slightly oversized, halfway tucked into her jeans. Her socks don’t match. One of her boots is damp from last night’s rain.

It’s fine.

She’s used to leaving chaos behind.

She grabs her bag from the chair, keys already in hand, and opens the front door halfway before she turns back.

He’s still there. Sitting in her living room. Still under the blanket. Still clutching the empty bowl like he doesn’t know what to do with it.

“I’ll be back by six,” she says, voice casual, like this is normal. Like this happens every day.

He doesn’t answer.

She clears her throat. “You can stay. If you want.”

Another beat of silence.

Then, a nod.

Small. Barely there.

She closes the door behind her. Locks it with a click. And lets the day begin.

🧾 [ACCESS: PURCHASE RECORD — ROTHMAN'S / SUNDOWN GROCERS] Home Furnishing & Grocery Delivery | Buyer: J.T. | Delivery: Unattended Drop

Y/N unlocks the apartment with the usual two jabs and a kick.

Her shoulder aches. Her feet are soaked. Her last customer of the day tried to return a sandwich after eating it, and Gerald had the audacity to wink at her in the alley like they were co-workers.

She just wants five minutes to breathe.

She pushes the door open—

And stops.

Her bag slips off her shoulder.

She sees the couch.

Brown leather. Low-backed. Wide-seated. Big enough to drown in. Soft enough to hold you when you can’t hold yourself.

She stares at it like it might vanish. Then she drops her bag, walks straight up to it, and presses both hands flat against the armrest.

It’s real. Soft. Cool to the touch. The kind of expensive that doesn’t come from pity.

And that’s when she laughs.

A full-body sound, unexpected and too loud for the apartment. She laughs like someone who hasn’t had a real reason in months. Laughs like she’s going to scare the silverfish out of the drywall.

Then she spins. Right there, in her socks, on the peeling tile. A full circle. Like a rom-com idiot. Like she’s seven.

Because she knows what this is. She remembers.

“Hear me out,” Jason had said once, the morning Bruce took him away. “The penthouse. “Oh god,” she’d groaned. “The couch is leather. Brown. Like rich people brown. But not ugly. Real classy.” “No. Velvet,” she’d fired back. “Deep green. With gold buttons.” “Velvet stains.” “I won’t spill.” “You’ll definitely spill.”

It had been a joke. A fantasy. A nothing-future built on soda and sarcasm.

But now—years later— Here it is.

She’s dizzy when she sits down. Breathless. Tears on her face before she even registers them.

And the feeling hits her like thunder: This is permission. This is Jason—her Jason—telling her it’s okay to be happy again from beyond the grave.

The couch is the sign. The Hood is the messenger.

He sent her someone.

She presses her forehead to the armrest.

“You son of a bitch,” she whispers, smiling through it. “You sent me a friend.”

The couch smells like new beginnings. The lamp glows like a pulse. Her apartment—normally cold, narrow, gray—is warm now. Lived in. Soft.

Safe.

She curls up under the new blanket, legs tucked beneath her, heart still spinning in her chest.

And for the first time since he died, She doesn’t feel alone.

The next evening, Jason stood on the fire escape with a bag of food in one hand and a heart full of static.

He didn’t know what he expected. An eye-roll, maybe. A sarcastic comment about boundary-crossing vigilantes and unsolicited furniture. A quiet “you didn’t have to” said in that voice that meant don’t do it again.

He definitely didn’t expect the window to open before he even knocked.

Y/N stood there, framed in the fading orange light, hair pulled back, hoodie sleeves rolled to her elbows. She looked at him for a long second. No smile. No sarcasm.

Then she stepped forward and wrapped her arms around him.

It was careful—not rushed or needy—but firm. Real. Like something being set down that had been carried too long.

Jason blinked. His arms didn’t move at first. He just stood there, stunned, feeling her heartbeat against his chest through layers of armor and hesitation.

Then he let out a breath and hugged her back.

Slow. Gentle.

Not because she was fragile. Because she wasn’t.

“…Hey,” he said, voice low in his helmet.

She gave a soft little huff of air. Not quite a laugh. Not quite a sigh.

Then she stepped back just enough to look at him.

Her eyes were steady. Clear. Tired in a way that went deeper than sleep, but still soft.

“Thank you,” she said simply.

Two words. No qualifiers. No jokes. Just… gratitude.

Jason didn’t know what to say to that. Didn’t think he’d need to. But she just stood there, letting the silence speak for both of them.

Then she glanced at the bag in his hand.

“Are those dumplings?”

He nodded.

She opened the window wider.

“Well. Don’t just stand there. Come in.”

He climbed in, boots hitting the floor with a thud. She locked the window behind him and flicked on the lamp.

Warm light. Soft couch. Two plates already out on the counter like maybe, just maybe, she’d been hoping he’d come.

They sat. Ate (Him under the blanket). Talked about nothing. Argued about whether Gerald was a criminal genius or just terminally polite. Laughed until their stomachs hurt.

And somewhere between the last dumpling and the first yawn, they stopped being ghosts.

They were friends.

Real ones.

At last.

🟥 [ACCESS: SUIT DIAGNOSTICS LOG — WAYNE TECH MONITORING] Biofeedback Report | Non-Combat Physiological Spikes | Subject: Red Hood (J. Todd)

🟩 [ACCESS: TERMINAL HISTORY — GOTHAM PUBLIC LIBRARY, #17] Search Record | Subject A - Flagged Queries Logged Feb 12 | Accessed via Public Network | Surveillance Filter: Active

APRIL 25

She didn’t look at him when she asked.

She never did when it was something that mattered.

Jason was sitting on the floor beside the couch, helmet still on, fingers fidgeting with the strap of his gauntlet like it might reveal the answers to every stupid thing he’d ever done. Y/N was above him, curled sideways, eating cereal from a mug because she refused to do dishes before midnight. The lamp flickered.

“You doing anything the 27th?” she asked, casually.

Jason’s heart dropped.

He didn’t answer right away. She didn’t press. Just took another slow bite, metal spoon clinking once against ceramic.

“It’s kind of a thing,” she said after a moment. “Not, like, a party. It’s personal.”

Jason made a noise in his throat. Neutral. Encouraging. Safe.

Y/N stared down into the last third of her cereal.

“I go somewhere. Once a year. Same place, same time. Every year since I was sixteen.”

He already knew where. Of course he did. But hearing it in her voice still made something crack.

“I bring a blanket,” she went on. “And coffee. And Pride and Prejudice, because I’m a walking cliché. I stay until morning.”

Jason felt like the helmet was too tight. His breath fogged up the inner HUD. He didn’t dare move.

“I don’t usually bring people,” she added. “Not ever. But I was thinking… if you wanted to come. You could.”

Jason’s head snapped up before he meant it to.

“You don’t have to,” she said quickly. “It’s dumb. Just me talking to a piece of rock for a few hours. But—” She hesitated. “You’re the first real friend I’ve had since he died. I figured… maybe you should meet him.”

Jason forgot how to breathe.

For a second, all he could hear was blood. Not in a poetic way. Literally—his pulse roaring in his ears, chest aching like something was trying to claw its way out.

Friend. She said friend. But the way she said it—quiet, steady, true—it was like being handed something breakable and sacred and entirely undeserved.

He couldn’t speak. Not yet. Just nodded once, sharp.

Y/N smiled, small and crooked. “Cool.”

She set the mug down on the floor beside him. Not on the table. Right next to his boot.

Then she flopped back down onto the couch and pulled the blanket over her face.

Conversation over.

Jason sat there, unmoving, watching the faint rise and fall of her breathing.

His helmet’s readout buzzed softly—elevated vitals. No shit.

She wanted him there. At the grave. Not as a soldier. Not as a name in her search history. As him.

And he said yes. And he meant it.

God help him.

Subject A: Age 22 Subject B: 4 years, 4.5 months post-resurrection April 27

She walked ahead of him, as always.

Jason let her.

The graveyard was quieter than usual—just the hush of wet grass under boots and the low, steady patter of rain trying to decide if it wanted to commit. Y/N didn’t bring a blanket this year. Or coffee. Just her hoodie, her voice, and him.

Jason followed in full gear. Hood up. Helmet on. Silent as the grave.

Literally.

When they reached the headstone, Y/N stopped. Took a breath. Then another. The kind you take before walking into a room where a version of yourself still lives.

She crouched beside the stone and brushed her sleeve across the marble like she always did. Her fingers lingered at the carved name.

Jason Peter Todd. Beloved Son.

Then she leaned forward and kissed it.

Jason looked away so fast his neck cracked.

“Hi, dumbass” she whispered. “The train was late. But I’m here. I brought someone, too. Hope you don’t mind.”

She turned slightly—looked over her shoulder, toward the shadow behind her.

“Come on,” she said. “It’s okay.”

Jason moved slowly, each step feeling too loud. The rain got bolder. He knelt beside her but didn’t touch the grave.

Didn’t breathe.

“This is Red Hood,” she said, gesturing between them like they weren’t already shoulder-to-shoulder. “He’s… my friend.”

She smiled at the stone. Then at him. Y/N kneeled, and pulled him down as well. They sat cross-legged facing the stone.

“The first one I’ve had since you.”

Jason thought he might die again.

“He’s kind of awful,” she added. “But he keeps showing up. And bringing food. And I haven’t wanted to punch him in two whole weeks, which is saying something.”

The rain thickened without warning—sheets of cold cascading from the sky like someone up top had finally lost patience.

Y/N looked around, squinting at the sky. “Shit. I forgot the umbrella.”

Jason, who hadn’t moved in at least ten minutes, reached into his jacket and—wordlessly—pulled out an umbrella-adjacent object.

Y/N blinked at it.

“Is that… Gerald’s lace parasol?”

Jason shrugged. “He left it in the alley. I picked it up on the way here. Thought we might need it.”

Y/N snorted. “God, you’re ridiculous.”

Then she opened it halfway and dragged him under it without asking.

It was immediately clear that it was not built for two people—especially not two people in armor and emotional ruin. Her damp sleeve pressed against his jacket. Their knees knocked. Her hair was sticking to his cheek plate, and she didn’t even bother fixing it. The lace was already soaked through; water dripped through every delicate stitch, pooling at the rim and falling in uneven plops around their shoes.

They looked at eachother.

And then—cracked. The kind of laughter that came fast and real, unfiltered and soaked through. Y/N doubled over, face buried in the crook of her elbow. Jason shook silently beside her, shoulders trembling, the sound muffled behind the helmet.

Gerald’s parasol sagged.

They kept laughing anyway.

She looked at the grave. Then at him. Then back again.

“I brought him,” she said slowly, easing out of laughter, “because I think you’d want to meet the guy who’s making me happy.”

Jason’s throat closed.

Y/N glanced up at him, voice dropping to a laugh-soft murmur. “You’d probably curse him out for cuddling with your girl over your grave. But you’d like him. Maybe.”

Jason couldn’t move. Couldn’t speak.

Then—

“I love him,” she said.

The words hung in the rain like smoke.

She turned to him, expression open. Real.

“I don’t know when it happened. I just know I look for him now. In the quiet. In the space between days. I like the way he shows up. I like the way he listens.”

Jason didn’t speak. Couldn’t.

The rain hit harder.

She blinked at him under the parasol. “If that scares you, it’s fine. You don’t have to say anything.”

Jason didn’t move for a second. Then—

“Don’t be mad,” he said. Quiet. Rough.

She tilted her head. “What?”

He swallowed. Inside the helmet, his hands had started to sweat. “Promise me. Don’t be mad.”

“Red—”

“Just—just promise.”

Y/N hesitated. Her brows furrowed. “Okay,” she said slowly. “I promise.”

Jason closed his eyes for a half-second. Exhaled through his nose.

Then reached up and took the helmet off.

It was quick. Clean. No ceremony. Just a click, a lift, and suddenly—

There he was.

Her Jason.

Older. Sharper. Jaw clenched like it might break. Hair longer (is that a white streak?), damp with rain, curls flattened to his forehead. The same look in his eyes. Tired. Terrified. Hopeful.

Y/N stared.

Her brain went blank. Then full. Then blank again.

She opened her mouth and made no sound.

Jason flinched. “Y/N—”

“WHAT THE FUCK,” she blurted.

She lurched to her feet. The umbrella wobbled violently. Jason scrambled up with her, hands out like he was trying to keep her from bolting.

“No—no, it’s me, I swear—”

“You’re dead,” she said, pointing at the grave. “You DIED. This is YOUR GRAVE.”

“I got better?” he tried.

She made a noise like a boiling tea kettle.

Her hands clenched and unclenched three times. She spun in a circle. Muttered something. Took a breath. Shook her head. Stared at him again.

“You—you were dead,” she whispered.

“I know.”

“You’re real.”

“I am.”

She reached forward—touched his chest, right over the armor. “You’re breathing.”

Jason nodded, too scared to blink.

Then she did something he wasn’t ready for.

She laughed.

Wet, broken, stunned. One huff, then another. And then, she flung her arms around him and buried her face in his shoulder.

He froze.

Then melted.

Jason wrapped both arms around her and held on like the world was still ending.

She was shaking. Laughing and crying at the same time. His hoodie was soaked through now. So was hers. Neither of them cared.

“You’re such an asshole,” she whispered. “But you’re here.”

“I’m here.”

“I’m gonna kill you.”

“I’ll die happy” he said, smiling into her hair.

She pulled back just enough to look at him. Her hands framed his face like he might disappear again if she let go.

“You’re real.”

“Yeah,” he said, voice wrecked.

“That’s all that matters.”

PHASE III — REINTRODUCTION PROTOCOL: COMPLETE. CASE FILE #JX-1989 SUBJECT A: [Y/N] SUBJECT B: [J. TODD] STATUS: RESTORED

Final Investigator’s Note:

Subject A, long believed to be mourning an unresolved loss, made direct contact with Subject B seven years post-mortem under highly unorthodox conditions involving emotional confession, weather anomalies, and a formerly owned drug-dealer parasol.

Subject B removed helmet under extreme emotional duress. Subject A speedran the five stages of grief in under 60 seconds. No fatalities. Minimal property damage. Full romantic implosion.

Both parties appear to be fully alive. Fully in love. And fully ridiculous.

----

taglist : @4rachn3 , @mercuryathens , @the-halloween-jack , @milk-unleashed , @inkedinheels , @wonderbat385 , @feralwolfkat, @kasarian

#jason todd #jason todd x reader #jason todd imagine #dcu #dc robin #batfam #red hood #red hood x reader #JX-1989-logs

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jstor · 1 year ago

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I saw something about generative AI on JSTOR. Can you confirm whether you really are implementing it and explain why? I’m pretty sure most of your userbase hates AI.

A generative AI/machine learning research tool on JSTOR is currently in beta, meaning that it's not fully integrated into the platform. This is an opportunity to determine how this technology may be helpful in parsing through dense academic texts to make them more accessible and gauge their relevancy.

To JSTOR, this is primarily a learning experience. We're looking at how beta users are engaging with the tool and the results that the tool is producing to get a sense of its place in academia.

In order to understand what we're doing a bit more, it may help to take a look at what the tool actually does. From a recent blog post:

Content evaluation

Problem: Traditionally, researchers rely on metadata, abstracts, and the first few pages of an article to evaluate its relevance to their work. In humanities and social sciences scholarship, which makes up the majority of JSTOR’s content, many items lack abstracts, meaning scholars in these areas (who in turn are our core cohort of users) have one less option for efficient evaluation.

When using a traditional keyword search in a scholarly database, a query might return thousands of articles that a user needs significant time and considerable skill to wade through, simply to ascertain which might in fact be relevant to what they’re looking for, before beginning their search in earnest.

Solution: We’ve introduced two capabilities to help make evaluation more efficient, with the aim of opening the researcher’s time for deeper reading and analysis:

Summarize, which appears in the tool interface as “What is this text about,” provides users with concise descriptions of key document points. On the back-end, we’ve optimized the Large Language Model (LLM) prompt for a concise but thorough response, taking on the task of prompt engineering for the user by providing advanced direction to:

Extract the background, purpose, and motivations of the text provided.

Capture the intent of the author without drawing conclusions.

Limit the response to a short paragraph to provide the most important ideas presented in the text.

Search term context is automatically generated as soon as a user opens a text from search results, and provides information on how that text relates to the search terms the user has used. Whereas the summary allows the user to quickly assess what the item is about, this feature takes evaluation to the next level by automatically telling the user how the item is related to their search query, streamlining the evaluation process.

Discovering new paths for exploration

Problem: Once a researcher has discovered content of value to their work, it’s not always easy to know where to go from there. While JSTOR provides some resources, including a “Cited by” list as well as related texts and images, these pathways are limited in scope and not available for all texts. Especially for novice researchers, or those just getting started on a new project or exploring a novel area of literature, it can be needlessly difficult and frustrating to gain traction.

Solution: Two capabilities make further exploration less cumbersome, paving a smoother path for researchers to follow a line of inquiry:

Recommended topics are designed to assist users, particularly those who may be less familiar with certain concepts, by helping them identify additional search terms or refine and narrow their existing searches. This feature generates a list of up to 10 potential related search queries based on the document’s content. Researchers can simply click to run these searches.

Related content empowers users in two significant ways. First, it aids in quickly assessing the relevance of the current item by presenting a list of up to 10 conceptually similar items on JSTOR. This allows users to gauge the document’s helpfulness based on its relation to other relevant content. Second, this feature provides a pathway to more content, especially materials that may not have surfaced in the initial search. By generating a list of related items, complete with metadata and direct links, users can extend their research journey, uncovering additional sources that align with their interests and questions.

Supporting comprehension

Problem: You think you have found something that could be helpful for your work. It’s time to settle in and read the full document… working through the details, making sure they make sense, figuring out how they fit into your thesis, etc. This all takes time and can be tedious, especially when working through many items.

Solution: To help ensure that users find high quality items, the tool incorporates a conversational element that allows users to query specific points of interest. This functionality, reminiscent of CTRL+F but for concepts, offers a quicker alternative to reading through lengthy documents.

By asking questions that can be answered by the text, users receive responses only if the information is present. The conversational interface adds an accessibility layer as well, making the tool more user-friendly and tailored to the diverse needs of the JSTOR user community.

Credibility and source transparency

We knew that, for an AI-powered tool to truly address user problems, it would need to be held to extremely high standards of credibility and transparency. On the credibility side, JSTOR’s AI tool uses only the content of the item being viewed to generate answers to questions, effectively reducing hallucinations and misinformation.

On the transparency front, responses include inline references that highlight the specific snippet of text used, along with a link to the source page. This makes it clear to the user where the response came from (and that it is a credible source) and also helps them find the most relevant parts of the text.

#jstor #ask #generative AI

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zarvasace · 5 months ago

Text

Pathfinder Chain 2.0

Masterpost

In which the LU boys are interpreted as having lived their lives and adventures in Golarion, as seen in Pathfinder 2e. Post/Mid-Godsrain. Will include art (mostly for character designs) and fic (specifically Febuwhump 2025.)

For some context in case you are unaware: Pathfinder is similar to Dungeons & Dragons, in which characters have numbers and you roll dice. It is generally played with a group of people each with their own character, but here I'm giving them all the numbers and using them as a basis for fic. It is a high-magic setting built on a foundation of Tolkien-inspired fantasy.

First appearance: Jan 8, 2025

Tag: #pathfinder chain (old designs use this tag, as well)

Previous Pathfinder Chain post, with old art.

Main fic series on AO3

Other works

Warriors frolicking art

Sky being adorable art

My previous Pathfinder Chain was made attempting to model the existing characters in the game as closely as possible, so we saw a lot of rangers and fighters and really only the one spellcaster (two, if we're counting Shadow.) These new character sheets have a different philosophy in mind, one that attempts to put the characters in the existing Pathfinder world and mesh their stories and gods with the lore. By that logic, there are more spellcasters, and I'm attempting to indulge the high-magic kitchen-sink god-bothered fantasy feel with these designs and stories. I'm very happy with them so far!! I'm planning to talk about the designs here, mostly, and reveal story details in fics.

In the update from 1.0 to 2.0, some of my decisions about ancestry and class changed, but plenty stayed the same. I've actually created character sheets this time, however, so I'm very excited to talk at length about those. :) For anyone interested in learning more about my choices, asks are open, and so is 2e.aonprd.com, the free, licensed online database of Pathfinder rules. I’m using Free Archetype and they’re all level 5.

Without further ado, may I happily present my second-version Pathfinder Chain, to be updated as I complete details and show you all the art that I'm working on!—

Four - halfling aiuvarin, artisan, thief rogue, ancestors oracle

Hyrule - sprite ganzi, nomad, phoenix bloodline sorceror, living vessel

Legend - elf beastkin, free spirit, thaumaturge (wand/weapon), sleepwalker

Sky - songbird strix, chosen one, exemplar, fighter

Time - human changeling, feybound, warrior muse bard, chronoskimmer

Twilight - awakened wolf, farmhand, untamed order druid, curse maelstrom

Warriors - keen-venom vishkanya, guard, commander, medic

Wild - human duskwalker, amnesiac, dragon instinct barbarian, wandering chef

Wind - azarketi sylph, sailor, rascal swashbuckler, air kineticist

All intro posts complete as of 1/15/25

#pathfinder chain #linked universe #lu #pf2e #this is that new au i was talking about #febuwhump 2025 #im doing a few things here that i havent done in the past #namely making a lot of character decisions ahead of time (and some details that ive never used before)#some of it might not come up #but im quite excited to do things with these bous #boys #ive already identified several whumpable traits ehehehe :D

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max1461 · 4 months ago

Text

Linguists deal with two kinds of theories or models.

First, you have grammars. A grammar, in this sense, is a model of an individual natural language: what sorts of utterances occur in that language? When are they used and what do they mean? Even assembling this sort of model in full is a Herculean task, but we are fairly successful at modeling sub-systems of individual languages: what sounds occur in the language, and how may they be ordered and combined?—this is phonology. What strings of words occur in the language, and what strings don't, irrespective of what they mean?—this is syntax. Characterizing these things, for a particular language, is largely tractable. A grammar (a model of the utterances of a single language) is falsified if it predicts utterances that do not occur, or fails to predict utterances that do occur. These situations are called "overgeneration" and "undergeneration", respectively. One of the advantages linguistics has as a science is that we have both massive corpora of observational data (text that people have written, databases of recorded phone calls), and access to cheap and easy experimental data (you can ask people to say things in the target language—you have to be a bit careful about how you do this—and see if what they say accords with your model). We have to make some spherical cow type assumptions, we have to "ignore friction" sometimes (friction is most often what the Chomskyans call "performance error", which you do not have to be a Chomskyan to believe in, but I digress). In any case, this lets us build robust, useful, highly predictive, and falsifiable, although necessarily incomplete, models of individual natural languages. These are called descriptive grammars.

Descriptive grammars often have a strong formal component—Chomsky, for all his faults, recognized that both phonology and syntax could be well described by formal grammars in the sense of mathematics and computer science, and these tools have been tremendously productive since the 60s in producing good models of natural language. I believe Chomsky's program sensu stricto is a dead end, but the basic insight that human language can be thought about formally in this way has been extremely useful and has transformed the field for the better. Read any descriptive grammar, of a language from Europe or Papua or the Amazon, and you will see (in linguists' own idiosyncratic notation) a flurry regexes and syntax trees (this is a bit unfair—the computer scientists stole syntax trees from us, also via Chomsky) and string rewrite rules and so on and so forth. Some of this preceded Chomsky but more than anyone else he gave it legs.

Anyway, linguists are also interested in another kind of model, which confusingly enough we call simply a "theory". So you have "grammars", which are theories of individual natural languages, and you have "theories", which are theories of grammars. A linguistic theory is a model which predicts what sorts of grammar are possible for a human language to have. This generally comes in the form of making claims about

the structure of the cognitive faculty for language, and its limitations

the pathways by which language evolves over time, and the grammars that are therefore attractors and repellers in this dynamical system.

Both of these avenues of research have seen some limited success, but linguistics as a field is far worse at producing theories of this sort than it is at producing grammars.

Capital-G Generativism, Chomsky's program, is one such attempt to produce a theory of human language, and it has not worked very well at all. Chomsky's adherents will say it has worked very well—they are wrong and everybody else thinks they are very wrong, but Chomsky has more clout in linguistics than anyone else so they get to publish in serious journals and whatnot. For an analogy that will be familiar to physics people: Chomskyans are string theorists. And they have discovered some stuff! We know about wh-islands thanks to Generativism, and we probably would not have discovered them otherwise. Wh-islands are weird! It's a good thing the Chomskyans found wh-islands, and a few other bits and pieces like that. But Generativism as a program has, I believe, hit a dead end and will not be recovering.

Right, Generativism is sort of, kind of attempting to do (1), poorly. There are other people attempting to do (1) more robustly, but I don't know much about it. It's probably important. For my own part I think (2) has a lot of promise, because we already have a fairly detailed understanding of how language changes over time, at least as regards phonology. Some people are already working on this sort of program, and there's a lot of work left to be done, but I do think it's promising.

Someone said to me, recently-ish, that the success of LLMs spells doom for descriptive linguistics. "Look, that model does better than any of your grammars of English at producing English sentences! You've been thoroughly outclassed!". But I don't think this is true at all. Linguists aren't confused about which English sentences are valid—many of us are native English speakers, and could simply tell you ourselves without the help of an LLM. We're confused about why. We're trying to distill the patterns of English grammar, known implicitly to every English speaker, into explicit rules that tell us something explanatory about how English works. An LLM is basically just another English speaker we can query for data, except worse, because instead of a human mind speaking a human language (our object of study) it's a simulacrum of such.

Uh, for another physics analogy: suppose someone came along with a black box, and this black box had within it (by magic) a database of every possible history of the universe. You input a world-state, and it returns a list of all the future histories that could follow on from this world state. If the universe is deterministic, there should only be one of them; if not maybe there are multiple. If the universe is probabilistic, suppose the machine also gives you a probability for each future history. If you input the state of a local patch of spacetime, the machine gives you all histories in which that local patch exists and how they evolve.

Now, given this machine, I've got a theory of everything for you. My theory is: whatever the machine says is going to happen at time t is what will happen at time t. Now, I don't doubt that that's a very useful thing! Most physicists would probably love to have this machine! But I do not think my theory of everything, despite being extremely predictive, is a very good one. Why? Because it doesn't tell you anything, it doesn't identify any patterns in the way the natural world works, it just says "ask the black box and then believe it". Well, sure. But then you might get curious and want to ask: are there patterns in the black box's answers? Are there human-comprehensible rules which seem to characterize its output? Can I figure out what those are? And then, presto, you're doing good old regular physics again, as if you didn't even have the black box. The black box is just a way to run experiments faster and cheaper, to get at what you really want to know.

General Relativity, even though it has singularities, and it's incompatible with Quantum Mechanics, is better as a theory of physics than my black box theory of everything, because it actually identifies patterns, it gives you some insight into how the natural world behaves, in a way that you, a human, can understand.

In linguistics, we're in a similar situation with LLMs, only LLMs are a lot worse than the black box I've described—they still mess up and give weird answers from time to time. And more importantly, we already have a linguistic black box, we have billions of them: they're called human native speakers, and you can find one in your local corner store or dry cleaner. Querying the black box and trying to find patterns is what linguistics already is, that's what linguists do, and having another, less accurate black box does very little for us.

Now, there is one advantage that LLMs have. You can do interpretability research on LLMs, and figure out how they are doing what they are doing. Linguists and ML researchers are kind of in a similar boat here. In linguistics, well, we already all know how to talk, we just don't know how we know how to talk. In ML, you have these models that are very successful, buy you don't know why they work so well, how they're doing it. We have our own version of interpretability research, which is neuroscience and neurolinguistics. And ML researchers have interpretability research for LLMs, and it's very possible theirs progresses faster than ours! Now with the caveat that we can't expect LLMs to work just like the human brain, and we can't expect the internal grammar of a language inside an LLM to be identical to the one used implicitly by the human mind to produce native-speaker utterances, we still might get useful insights out of proper scrutiny of the innards of an LLM that speaks English very well. That's certainly possible!

But just having the LLM, does that make the work of descriptive linguistics obsolete? No, obviously not. To say so completely misunderstands what we are trying to do.

#linguistics

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ceilidho · 2 years ago

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wait but also, this being your first "proper adult job" so you're even less sure whether this is a normal thing to be upset about, or if you're just overreacting.

like, soap gets your phone number and address from the employee database thanks to one of his bros in HR, and shows up at your place one morning, saying something about, "starting a carpool program" even though it's only ever you two in the car???

or one day you're helping a customer and maybe standing a lil too close, so soap comes up behind you, grabs your loose hair and yanks just a bit too hard--your head tilts back until you're making uncomfortable eye contact with him. "Just putting your hair up for ye, luvie," he winks, while the customer suddenly feels like they're intruding on a weirdly intimate moment.

then for the holiday season, your team does a white elephant gift exchange and when it's your turn, you're unwrapping some very expensive perfume bottles--there's no way this didn't go over the $15 suggested limit. soap's sliding up next to you, saying something about he's dreamt of this fragrance on you and oh he sprays his bedsheets with this one so he can jerk off imagining you.

im shaking like a wet dog this is doing unspeakable things to me.

you don't even know this but he paid someone off to get your name in the secret santa gift exchange. like actually paid them fifty dollars just to have the opportunity to get you a gift. and you know the second you unwrap it that it must've been in the three figures. you just got someone a fancy mug. and he stares at you when you unwrap it, beaming when you give him a very controlled "thank you" because the alternative is screaming that this is way too expensive for you to keep.

"ye should put it on," he tells you, breathing just a little heavier. "really want ta smell it on ye."

he heaves you up by the hips whenever you have a hard time reaching something on a shelf instead of just reaching up and grabbing it for you. really digs his fingers into your sides. doesn't let you go right away when he puts you down. and if you make a comment about it being uncomfortable or it hurting you (you're an adult, you're not used to someone just lifting you up), he just coos at you instead, pouts and simpers like he's so sorry that you're not used to it yet.

maybe when you're assigned to the jewellery section, Johnny pops out of nowhere when you're helping a customer that's looking at some rings and he uses your hand to model some of the rings. and it gets. weirdly intense when he slides the ring onto your finger, like he's holding his breath. he even shudders a bit, presses himself right up against you behind the display counter until the customer leaves because it's genuinely off-putting lmao.

and if he comes in as a customer, jesus christ. be prepared for him to pester you the entire time, insisting on you helping him with his purchases. he'll brush off any other employees looking for you under the guise of you helping him shop, but then once they're gone, he'll go back to interrogating you about your childhood and your friends and whether you have a partner or any previous partners you might've had. makes you follow him to the bed section where he tries out all the mattresses and then asks you increasingly inappropriate questions like what mattress you have, what it feels like, how you sleep at night, what you wear to bed :\\\

#ceil writing #cod mw2 #cod x reader #soap x reader #john soap mactavish #soap mw2 #soap cod #soap mactavish #john mactavish #soap/reader #soap x you #ikea soap

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kiwi-on-ice · 11 months ago

Note

ramattra smut...i beg...your tt post made me a robot fucker

Ramattra x gn!reader

Summary: becoming needy, you go to Ramattra for help but quickly learn the cost of his attention.

Word count: 1.3k

Warnings: 18+ smut, thigh riding, no use of y/n and no mention of reader anatomy, hair pulling, spanking, condescension, mild degradation.

Notes: first tumblr post! Hope you enjoy, was just a quick one i wrote up about him. Im working on some longer oneshots based on anon requests (and some personal ones lmao)

The urge to drape your body across the lap of malevolent robot was not something you would have thought would be at the top of your priority list, but life always had a funny way of unfolding. Deep in the recesses of a null sector base, surrounded by omnics of all types and models, was a human who couldn’t be touched. You. Walking down the hallway without a care, you pass by several robots who simply avert their gaze, for they know what’ll happen if they touched Ramattra’s pet human.

“Must you constantly interrupt me with your incessant neediness?” comes the reverberating tone of the most feared omnic in the world, as his head tilts to gaze at you. Entering his office, you see him busy with plans of some sort, not that it puts you off. You rest your cheek on his broad shoulder, feeling the cool metal against your cheek as you make a soft noise of affirmation. Something akin to a scoff can be heard escaping him, but his hand places the tablet he was using down before snaking around your waist and pulling you closer. Despite being seated, his form was huge and imposing, a clear dichotomy from your human frame.

“Very well, if you seek to distract me in this way, you will do well to entertain me for my troubles.” He murmurs, resistant to admit that you had been in his thoughts since he’d seen you enter the compound on the surveillance cameras. You smile as his hands grasp your waist and lift you as if you were a pile of feathers, before manoeuvring you onto his thigh. Tilting your head, you make a soft noise of confusion, clearly expecting to straddle his lap like you usually do, but he squeezes your waist gently.

“I said I wanted you to entertain me pet.” He says, his amusement clear in his tone, “So that is what you’ll do.”

His fingers trace under your shirt, the chilled metal causing a shiver to dance up your spine. He runs them up and down your sides, as if mapping out your frame in his database. You can’t help but jerk your hips forward at his touches, gripping his shoulders to steady yourself. The soft material of the scarf wrapped around his neck grounds you as you look at his blank faceplate. A slight nod of his head gives you permission to keep going, grinding against his thigh leisurely. The feeling was almost a gentle sort of pleasure, a soft caress of your carnal need for him as your hips drag over and over.

“Truly remarkable, how such an animalistic and pathetic motion can reduce a human like you to this.” His condescension was heavy in his voice, a hand creeping into your hair and tangling into the locks. When you rock your hips forward, he tugs softly at first, the blend of sensation making you almost dizzy. “Is a little bit of friction truly all you need to start whimpering like a true pet hm?”

Gasping softly, you nod as best you can with his grip in your hair as you keep going, dragging your heat over him. His other hand remains firmly on your hip, digging into your skin over your clothes. A knock on the door causes heat to rush to your cheeks, however Ramattra doesn’t stop the controlling hand moving your hips.

“Busy.” He yells out curtly, not wanting to stop the show you’re oh so eager to provide for him. Praying whoever was at the door takes the hint, he tugs at your hair more firmly to elicit a louder whimper to escape your parted lips. You can hear the slight whirl of his internal fan start, a sign he’s starting to become restless and desperate…not that he’d ever use such a pathetic word, a word reserved just for you.

He pushes you off him abruptly, not giving you time to ask any questions before he roughly removes the bottom half of your clothes, groping at your aroused heat and causing you to moan out and chase the pleasure. Instead, he laughs mockingly, deep and resonant before pulling his hand away and settling you back on his thigh. The lack of barriers makes the sensation more intense as you start to hurriedly grind again, unfocused.

“So desperate.” He tuts, moving both hands to your hips and forcing a steadier pace. Digging his fingers in, the slight pain mixes with the pleasure to create a whirlwind of intensity in your whole body. Control radiated from his large form, every movement of your hips being gifted to you, and he ensured you knew it. You could only stare at his faceplate and moan softly as your omnic lover took over your body without hardly exerting effort.

“Tell me pet, do you like it? Do you like using my thigh for your own perverted pleasure?” he asks rhetorically, but he still barks out a laugh when you nod in agreement. “Of course you do. You humans are controlled by your whorish impulses. I could do anything to you right now, and you’d still come crawling back to me to ease that ache between your legs.”

Despite his harsh words, the slight static that punctuated a few of the syllables lets you know how affected he is by your display of wanton need. Bruises form under the tight grip of his fingers as he pushes and pulls you, before he starts to slowly bounce his thigh to compound the pleasure you’re receiving. All you can do is whine and take what he gives you, moving over and over until your vision goes fuzzy.

A loud slap rings out and your body jolts, having felt his hand strike your ass. Another one follows in quick succession, the sting causing you to throb with need. You need more of him, more of his touch, but he denies you.

“No. You wanted my attention so that is what you are getting. Do not be greedy.” He reprimands, and you realise you’ll have to finish on his thigh or not at all.

He grips your hair once more, tugging so your neck is bared for him. He can see in that moment why humans are so enraptured with the idea of biting, as the thought of sinking teeth into your lovely vulnerable neck does cause his inner machinery to whirl a little louder than normal. With the rocking of your hips controlled by his firm grip, and the sharp pain from the hair pulling was causing you to hurtle closer and closer to the edge, your moans getting more breathy and uneven.

“There we are, getting close little one?” he asks, his gaze firmly upon your facial expressions. He had always been fascinated by the way your face would contort and relax when different stimuli were applied, how he could read your emotions without you uttering a word. It didn’t surprise him when you nodded, causing his thigh to bounce more firmly.

“Fascinating, well give me what I want then, human.” He demands, giving you permission to cum. He spanks you once more, his hand coming back and moving your hips roughly over him. It only takes a few more moments before you’re cumming hard over his thigh, your hips stuttering as the pleasure bursts. You take a few heaving breaths as your movements slow, Ramattra’s harsh grip on your hair relaxing to a gentler caress. You slump against him, his body now warm from his inner machinery heating up.

“Satisfied pet?” he asks, his fingers twirling your strands. Once you confirm that you are, he hums softly. “You do make rather pleasant noises for a human.”

You can’t help but laugh softly at his comment, sweet by his standards. His other hand rests on your hips, soothing the bruises he left from his harsh hold. In this moment, it’s like his walls lower as he allows himself to remain present with you. You relax against him, breathing softly. Regardless of anything else, you know that you’re his, his human. And you wouldn’t have it any other way.

#overwatch #overwatch 2 #ow2 #overwatch x reader #overwatch smut #ramattra #ramattra overwatch #ramattra x reader #ramattra ow #ramattra x you #ramattra smut #overwatch headcanons

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mostlysignssomeportents · 3 months ago

Text

Twinkump Linkdump

I'm on a 20+ city book tour for my new novel PICKS AND SHOVELS. Catch me in SAN DIEGO at MYSTERIOUS GALAXY next MONDAY (Mar 24), and in CHICAGO with PETER SAGAL on Apr 2. More tour dates here.

I have an excellent excuse for this week's linkdump: I'm in Germany, but I'm supposed to be in LA, and I'm not, because London Heathrow shut down due to a power-station fire, which meant I spent all day yesterday running around like a headless chicken, trying to get home in time for my gig in San Diego on Monday (don't worry, I sorted it):

https://www.mystgalaxy.com/32425Doctorow

Therefore, this is 30th linkdump, in which I collect the assorted links that didn't make it into this week's newsletters. Here are the other 29:

https://pluralistic.net/tag/linkdump/

I always like to start and end these 'dumps with some good news, which isn't easy in these absolutely terrifying times. But there is some good news: Wil Wheaton has announced his new podcast, a successor of sorts to the LeVar Burton Reads podcast. It's called "It's Storytime" and it features Wil reading his favorite stories handpicked from science fiction magazines, including On Spec, the magazine that bought my very first published story (I was 16, it ran in their special youth issue, it wasn't very good, but boy did it mean a lot to me):

https://wilwheaton.net/podcast/

Here's some more good news: a court has found (again!) that works created by AI are not eligible for copyright. This is the very best possible outcome for people worried about creators' rights in the age of AI, because if our bosses can't copyright the botshit that comes out of the "AI" systems trained on our work, then they will pay us:

https://www.yahoo.com/news/us-appeals-court-rejects-copyrights-171203999.html

Our bosses hate paying us, but they hate the idea of not being able to stop people from copying their entertainment products so! much! more! It's that simple:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/08/20/everything-made-by-an-ai-is-in-the-public-domain/

This outcome is so much better than the idea that AI training isn't fair use – an idea that threatens the existence of search engines, archiving, computational linguistics, and other clearly beneficial activities. Worse than that, though: if we create a new copyright that allows creators to prevent others from scraping and analyzing their works, our bosses will immediately alter their non-negotiable boilerplate contracts to demand that we assign them this right. That will allow them to warehouse huge troves of copyrighted material that they will sell to AI companies who will train models designed to put us on the breadline (see above, re: our bosses hate paying us):

https://pluralistic.net/2024/03/13/hey-look-over-there/#lets-you-and-he-fight

The rights of archivists grow more urgent by the day, as the Trump regime lays waste to billions of dollars worth of government materials that were produced at public expense, deleting decades of scientific, scholarly, historical and technical materials. This is the kind of thing you might expect the National Archive or the Library of Congress to take care of, but they're being chucked into the meat-grinder as well.

To make things even worse, Trump and Musk have laid waste to the Institute of Museum and Library Services, a tiny, vital agency that provides funding to libraries, archives and museums across the country. Evan Robb writes about all the ways the IMLS supports the public in his state of Washington:

Technology support. Last-mile broadband connection, network support, hardware, etc. Assistance with the confusing e-rate program for reduced Internet pricing for libraries.

Coordinated group purchase of e-books, e-audiobooks, scholarly research databases, etc.

Library services for the blind and print-disabled.

Libraries in state prisons, juvenile detention centers, and psychiatric institutions.

Digitization of, and access to, historical resources (e.g., newspapers, government records, documents, photos, film, audio, etc.).

Literacy programming and support for youth services at libraries.

The entire IMLS budget over the next 10 years rounds to zero when compared to the US federal budget – and yet, by gutting it, DOGE is amputating significant parts of the country's systems that promote literacy; critical thinking; and universal access to networks, media and ideas. Put it that way, and it's not hard to see why they hate it so.

Trying to figure out what Trump is up to is (deliberately) confusing, because Trump and Musk are pursuing a chaotic agenda that is designed to keep their foes off-balance:

https://www.wired.com/story/elon-musk-donald-trump-chaos/

But as Hamilton Nolan writes, there's a way to cut through the chaos and make sense of it all. The problem is that there are a handful of billionaires who have so much money that when they choose chaos, we all have to live with it:

The significant thing about the way that Elon Musk is presently dismantling our government is not the existence of his own political delusions, or his own self-interested quest to privatize public functions, or his own misreading of economics; it is the fact that he is able to do it. And he is able to do it because he has several hundred billion dollars. If he did not have several hundred billion dollars he would just be another idiot with bad opinions. Because he has several hundred billion dollars his bad opinions are now our collective lived experience.

https://www.hamiltonnolan.com/p/the-underlying-problem

We actually have a body of law designed to prevent this from happening. It's called "antitrust" and 40 years ago, Jimmy Carter decided to follow the advice of some of history's dumbest economists who said that fighting monopolies made the economy "inefficient." Every president since, up to – but not including – Biden, did even more to encourage monopolization and the immense riches it creates for a tiny number of greedy bastards.

But Biden changed that. Thanks to the "Unity Taskforce" that divided up the presidential appointments between the Democrats' corporate wing and the Warren/Sanders wing, Biden appointed some of the most committed, effective trustbusters we'd seen for generations:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/10/18/administrative-competence/#i-know-stuff

After Trump's election, there was some room for hope that Trump's FTC would continue to pursue at least some of the anti-monopoly work of the Biden years. After all, there's a sizable faction within the MAGA movement that hates (some) monopolies:

https://pluralistic.net/2025/01/24/enforcement-priorities/#enemies-lists

But last week, Trump claimed to have illegally fired the two Democratic commissioners on the FTC: Alvaro Bedoya and Rebecca Slaughter. I stan both of these commissioners, hard. When they were at the height of their powers in the Biden years, I had the incredible, disorienting experience of getting out of bed, checking the headlines, and feeling very good about what the government had just done.

Trump isn't legally allowed to fire Bedoya and Slaughter. Perhaps he's just picking this fight as part of his chaos agenda (see above). But there are some other pretty good theories about what this is setting up. In his BIG newsletter, Matt Stoller proposes that Trump is using this case as a wedge, trying to set a precedent that would let him fire Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell:

https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/why-trump-tried-to-fire-federal-trade

But perhaps there's more to it. Stoller just had Commissioner Bedoya on Organized Money, the podcast he co-hosts with David Dayen, and Bedoya pointed out that if Trump can fire Democratic commissioners, he can also fire Republican commissioners. That means that if he cuts a shady deal with, say, Jeff Bezos, he can order the FTC to drop its case against Amazon and fire the Republicans on the commission if they don't frog when he jumps:

https://www.organizedmoney.fm/p/trumps-showdown-at-the-ftc-with-commissioner

(By the way, Organized Money is a fantastic podcast, notwithstanding the fact that they put me on the show last week:)

https://audio.buzzsprout.com/6f5ly01qcx6ijokbvoamr794ht81

The future that our plutocrat overlords are grasping for is indeed a terrible one. You can see its shape in the fantasies of "liberatarian exit" – the seasteads, free states, and other assorted attempts to build anarcho-capitalist lawless lands where you can sell yourself into slavery, or just sell your kidneys. The best nonfiction book on libertarian exit is Raymond Criab's 2022 "Adventure Capitalism," a brilliant, darkly hilarious and chilling history of every time a group of people have tried to found a nation based on elevating selfishness to a virtue:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/06/14/this-way-to-the-egress/#terra-nullius

If Craib's book is the best nonfiction volume on the subject of libertarian exit, then Naomi Kritzer's super 2023 novel Liberty's Daughter is the best novel about life in a libertopia – a young adult novel about a girl growing up in the hell that would be life with a Heinlein-type dad:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/11/21/podkaynes-dad-was-a-dick/#age-of-consent

But now this canon has a third volume, a piece of design fiction from Atelier Van Lieshout called "Slave City," which specs out an arcology populated with 200,000 inhabitants whose "very rational, efficient and profitable" arrangements produce €7b/year in profit:

https://www.archdaily.com/30114/slave-city-atelier-van-lieshout

This economic miracle is created by the residents' "voluntary" opt-in to a day consisting of 7h in an office, 7h toiling in the fields, 7h of sleep, and 3h for "leisure" (e.g. hanging out at "The Mall," a 24/7, 26-storey " boundless consumer paradise"). Slaves who wish to better themselves can attend either Female Slave University or Male Slave University (no gender controversy in Slave City!), which run 24/7, with 7 hours of study, 7 hours of upkeep and maintenance on the facility, 7h of sleep, and, of course, 3h of "leisure."

The field of design fiction is a weird and fertile one. In his traditional closing keynote for this year's SXSW Interactive festival, Bruce Sterling opens with a little potted history of the field since it was coined by Julian Bleeker:

https://bruces.medium.com/how-to-rebuild-an-imaginary-future-2025-0b14e511e7b6

Then Bruce moves on to his own latest design fiction project, an automated poetry machine called the Versificatore first described by Primo Levi in an odd piece of science fiction written for a newspaper. The Versificatore was then adapted to the screen in 1971, for an episode of an Italian sf TV show based on Levi's fiction:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tva-D_8b8-E

And now Sterling has built a Versificatore. The keynote is a sterlingian delight – as all of his SXSW closers are. It's a hymn to the value of "imaginary futures" and an instruction manual for recovering them. It could not be more timely.

Sterling's imaginary futures would be a good upbeat note to end this 'dump with, but I've got a real future that's just as inspiring to close us out with: the EU has found Apple guilty of monopolizing the interfaces to its devices and have ordered the company to open them up for interoperability, so that other manufacturers – European manufacturers! – can make fully interoperable gadgets that are first-class citizens of Apple's "ecosystem":

https://www.reuters.com/technology/apple-ordered-by-eu-antitrust-regulators-open-up-rivals-2025-03-19/

It's a good reminder that as America crumbles, there are still places left in the world with competent governments that want to help the people they represent thrive and prosper. As the Prophet Gibson tells us, "the future is here, it's just not evenly distributed." Let's hope that the EU is living in America's future, and not the other way around.

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/2025/03/22/omnium-gatherum/#storytime

Image: TDelCoro https://www.flickr.com/photos/tomasdelcoro/48116604516/

CC BY-SA 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/

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