#De-identification examples | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

peskellence · 9 months ago

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Pairing: RK900/Gavin Reed

Tags: Post Pacifist Ending, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, Slow Burn, Eventual Smut, Angst, Hurt/ Comfort

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Summary: In the aftermath of Detroit's android revolution, Nines grapples with the complexities of his newfound deviancy. As he seeks to establish his place in a newly transformed society, his resolve is put to the ultimate test when he is paired with Detective Gavin Reed-a notoriously volatile human with a well-established hatred for androids-to investigate a series of murders.

While initial impressions of his partner seem to suggest his reputation is well-deserved, the more time Nines spends with him, the more he is forced to challenge his judgments. As they form an unexpected bond, the RK900 is also pushed to examine truths about himself he would much rather seek to forget. (A Retelling of 'More Than Our Parts' from the POV of Nines.)

Warnings: Graphic Violence, Depression/Self Destructive Behaviour, Eventual Smut

Word Count: 6.2K

Tag List: @sweeteatercat @wedonthaveawhile @gho-stychan @tentoriumcerebelli @negative-citadel @faxaway @moriahadi424 @unicorn4genocide @cptjh-arts

Detective Reed's apartment was almost indistinguishable from his dismal preconstructions.

Initially, they struggled to even enter the home, with the man using his entire body weight to force the door open. While he slipped through the narrow gap with relative ease, Nines had much greater difficulty. His broad shoulders collided with the frame multiple times, as the bunched runner at his feet hindered his progress significantly.

Emerging inside, the reason for their difficulty soon became apparent. The android had always failed to understand how humans could endure such unfavourable conditions. They derived no pleasure from it, yet this discomfort often stemmed from their own complacency.

It was one of the worst examples he'd seen. Already tiny, the space was dwarfed by a staggering expanse of debris and clutter. It proved as hazardous as it was disorganised, with tight tangles of electrical cords snaking across the floor. They were partially concealed beneath a layer of brown paper and packing peanuts, ready to trip anyone who crossed their path.

"Don't mind the mess," Reed said flippantly, turning towards a nearby coat rack. It was layered high with a dense pillow of clothes. He paused to assess—as if considering how to expand the load without causing a collapse. "I just moved in a few months ago. Haven't finished unpacking."

'Mess' proved a gross understatement. It didn't begin to cover the profound level of squalor the man was inhabiting.

Despite this, he carried with him no discernable shame. If anything, he seemed proud of it—canvassing his surroundings with a contented sigh as he slipped an arm free from his jacket.

Nines struggled to maintain mental clarity in response to the confounding behaviour before reminding himself of his objectives. Studying the home in greater detail would be beneficial. Combing through the chaos in order to find personal items that could provide deeper insights into Reed's psyche.

In spite of any lingering aversion, Nines widened the scope of his optical units and determinedly proceeded. Considering the limited space in the apartment, his partner's use of it was far from optimal. The majority of his sparse shelving was cluttered with unnecessary memorabilia: cheap trinkets from tourist attractions, as well as numerous framed photographs.

The pictures were old, featuring the face of a much younger Reed—and a man Nines did not recognise. His facial identification software proceeded to resolve this, confirming the identity of the stranger:

> CHRISTOPHER JAMES REED

> BORN: 1ST DECEMBER 1972

> STATUS: DECEASED.

Nines failed to understand why his partner didn't discard some of his less essential possessions, given the skyline of unopened boxes towering behind them.

"I would think that a few months would have been sufficient time to unpack. I wager the delay has more to do with a lack of space."

"Yeah, well, there's that—" Any previous calculations were abandoned as Reed callously tossed his outwear at the stacked pile. "I'm still working out the logistics."

Nines considered sharing the findings of his spatial mapping, noting to Reed that there were few logistics to be calculated. However, he quickly determined the advice would be wasted, a reality the man would likely reject.

Instead, he mirrored his actions, shedding the outer layer of his Cyberlife uniform and folding it neatly in preparation for storage. It was a gesture he hoped would be received positively, demonstrating a willingness to adhere to the human's domestic customs.

The action certainly inspired a response, although not one Nines had anticipated.

With the jacket held in his grasp, he detected an elevation in Reed's core body temperature. This wasn't unusual, given the recent shift in climate. What proved peculiar, however, was an accompanying spike in heart rate and respiratory patterns.

Glancing over his shoulder, he sought to investigate further. His target didn't notice the shift, attention otherwise preoccupied by the definition of Nines' central chassis.

The detective's gaze followed a path down his undershirt, starting at the shoulder blades and continuing until it settled on the convex mould of the android's posterior.

Rising temperature intensified—a heat which pooled in his cheeks—as his expression flitted between alarm and intrigue. He was a man at war with himself, wishing to avert his eyes but unable to pull away.

It seemed the frustration Reed felt for him stemmed from more than just contempt. Sights lingered to the point of shameless transparency, and Nines couldn't help but draw amusement from it.

Despite all claims of 'advanced cognition', the humans around him proved remarkably driven by their base urges. Reed was no exception, as lust breached walls of prejudice with shameful ease.

Turning back towards the hangers, Nines feigned obliviousness to the ogling. Positioning his coat with much greater finesse than his partner, he stored a record of the behaviour for future reference.

As he removed his shoes, placing them neatly on the stand, a flicker of light caught his eye. It was reflected from a framed poster hanging askew on the peeling surface of the adjacent wall. Depicted was a young woman lying in bed, the covers clutched tightly to her chin as wide, fearful eyes reflected the gleam of five drawn razors. They hovered in perfect alignment above her face, threatening to swipe.

A subsequent analysis was triggered as his systems sought to identify the origin of the image:

> SOURCE IDENTIFIED

> CLASSIFICATION: RECREATION OF PROMOTIONAL POSTER ASSOCIATED WITH CINEMATIC PRODUCTION

> TITLE: 'A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET'

> RELEASE YEAR: 1984

> DIRECTOR: WES CRAVEN

The image was shouldered by several of its ilk, each depicting iconic figures or scenes from their respective franchises.

"You're a fan of horror films," Nines mused, closing the diagnostic branches. "Specifically, titles from the late twentieth century."

Reed was snapped back to reality, eyes freed from their magnetic hold on the RK900's backside. He looked up, visibly flustered, as if he'd been caught in a compromising position.

Nines maintained his facade of obliviousness. Hands folded neatly behind his back, he emphasised his 'curiosity' with a subtle cranial tilt.

"...Dad loved his horror," the man ultimately replied, stiff posture relaxing as he glanced up at the posters. "Got me into it young. I'd watched most of the Nightmare movies before I started junior high."

The longer he stared, the more his features softened—until a gentle smile spread across his lips. It was unlike any expression Nines had seen him wear. Absent of his usual bravado or smugness, it revealed a genuine vulnerability.

"That hardly seems like appropriate viewing material for such a young child. Was your father aware that most of these films possess an R rating?"

Reed tensed again, sharpness returning to his eyes as they fixed on Nines with a resentful glare.

"It didn't do me any harm; just meant I didn't grow up to be a total pussy."

His retort was hissed through clenched teeth as though causing him physical pain. The assessment had clearly touched a nerve. One that remained profoundly sensitive—despite all the time elapsed.

Recognising his mistake, the android sought to mitigate the damage, swiftly recalibrating his approach.

> RECALIBRATION SUCCESSFUL.

> CONVERSATIONAL ROUTE DETERMINED.

The solution came fast, much to his annoyance. It was as though RK800 was speaking to him directly, guiding his actions through their temporal channel.

> EXECUTING RECOMMENDED APPROACH.

Reed's uncouth remark posed an immediate hurdle. Nines held his tongue, silencing the sharp retorts that crowded his thoughts. Instead, he grasped for geniality—maintaining a performative interest in the decor:

"Do you have a favourite film?" Nines asked before observing his partner closely—gauging subtle cues in his body language, keen to assess the effectiveness of their ongoing engagement.

> TARGET ESTABLISHED — 'DETECTIVE GAVIN REED'

> TRACKING RESPIRATORY AND CARDIOVASCULAR FEEDBACK...

> ASSESSING MUSCULAR TENSION, PUPILLARY DILATION, AND FACIAL MICROEXPRESSIONS…

Reed gawked at his partner, blinking slowly as though seeking to determine if he had heard correctly. Then his jaw tightened reflexively, like an innate biological refusal to lower his defences.

"Why do you care?"

> WARNING.

> MUSCULAR TENSION: ELEVATED

> MICROEXPRESSION(S) IDENTIFIED: DISTRUST, DOUBT.

Reed had already detected his insincerity, a disheartening realisation for the RK900.

There was a period of despondent introspection, during which his partner appeared goaded to press on—solidifying their shift in dynamic, with Nines the one under scrutiny.

"You don't actually care, do you?"

In the wake of his failure, Nines almost wished that RK800 were guiding his communications. He was forced to manage the fallout whilst making a note to pursue further training in the art of social coercion.

"...I do not," he conceded, determining honesty to be the best option in mitigating the consequences of his deceit. "I believe I am trying to engage in what humans refer to as 'small talk'"

"Well, you're shit at it."

The insult came fast and biting—without a hint of hesitation. Nines resented how quickly the human cut him down, undermining any hope for an affable dialogue.

He tried to ignore it, but the words refused to abandon him. Charging through his mind in niggling currents, relentlessly persistent.

Nines stepped forward, and Reed instantly regretted the openness of his ridicule. Self-congratulatory titters were stifled as he glanced up at the opposing figure now looming over him.

"Through no fault of my own," Nines said sternly. "CyberLife did not provide me with an advanced social protocol. When taking part in a conversation, I learn from experience. Meaning I am only ever as adept as the partner I am engaging with."

The implications were not lost on Reed, who scowled in response. Fists tightened at his sides, although the combative gesture was undermined by a series of fraught twitches.

Corrective measures were made to hide them, and with a steeling breath, he straightened his back—lengthening his posture as much as possible.

The difference in their statures remained staggering, and Nines was forced to suppress a chuckle, understanding just how deeply this must have bothered his partner.

A ruthless assault on his already fragile masculinity.

> ACCESSING FILE — 'DETECTIVE GAVIN REED'

> UPDATE IN PROGRESS…

"Fuck you."

While disappointed the man couldn't think of a more meaningful insult, the android was far from surprised. His optic units were rolled in a tight flourish before he took a step back. The leg was swung with laborious slowness as though teasing the possibility of aborting the action.

"Aside from showing me your lovely home, what exactly are we doing here, Detective?"

"Stick it up your ass."

A far more riveting response. Nines was unable to show appreciation for the vivid picture created as Reed pivoted sharply on his heel.

Back turned to the android, he began pacing the room in disordered patterns, muttering nonsensically under his breath. " Where the hell … she's probably hiding because she's scared of you, tin-can."

Amusement dissipated, giving way to confusion. "...She?"

Reed ignored him, refusing to provide any clarification. Instead, he cupped his hands around his mouth and called across the room, interspersing his words with clicks of his tongue.

"Tiff, I'm home."

He was greeted with silence. After waiting a moment, Reed moved further into his home, heavy footfalls scattering litter as he charged toward an open doorway. Peering around the threshold, he swung his neck back and forth in a steady motion.

"Tiffany!" he called again, this time with increased insistence. "Come here, girl—"

His calls remained unanswered, and it appeared that Reed was losing patience with the absent individual. He retreated back into the living room, punctuating his failure with a dejected curse.

Nines found the situation odd—inconsistent with the personal data he had collected on his partner. Establishing a link with the DPD staff database, he searched for any updates or revisions that might clarify the disconnect:

> ACCESSING EXTERNAL FILE 'det_gavin_reed_3345'

> SEEKING MATCHES — SEARCH CRITERIA 'TIFFANY.'

As he awaited the results, Nines scanned Reed's possessions again. This time, he focused on anything that seemed out of place: clothes ill-fitted to his body type or hygiene products that he certainly wasn't using on himself…

> NO MATCHES FOUND.

Then he noticed it: the large structure positioned beside the television. It was made of carpeted plywood, platforms spiralling around a column of thick, corded rope. The arrangement came complete with cartoonish animal prints adorning each side.

> PRODUCT: LAYERED CAT TOWER — GREY — 6 FT (#CH-2984)

> DISTRIBUTOR: CLAW HAVEN PET GOODS LTD.

> RETAIL PRICE: $199.99 (46% ABOVE MARKET AVERAGE)

> DIMENSIONS: 6 ft (H) x 2.5 ft (W) x 2 ft (D)

This finding effectively resolved any logical inconsistencies. He hummed in understanding before disregarding his previous hypothesis.

"Tiffany is your pet."

"No shit." Reed, who had dropped to his knees at some point during his search, moved to stand back up. A felt mouse impeded his efforts, the tail catching under his foot until it was brushed aside with a firm kick. "Have you not seen the cat hairs all over my clothes? So much for being a super detective."

"I was aware you have a cat; I thought for a moment that you might be cohabiting—although a review of your personnel file suggested this was unlikely."

The assessment struck another blow at the man's already bruised confidence. He pulled back, posture restored to its usual hunched slump. Nines might have called it wariness had it not been for the palpable aggression still radiating from him.

"Oh yeah? And why is it so fuckin' unlikely?"

"Because your files indicate that you are recently single. Not to mention, the name 'Tiffany' would suggest a female-presenting individual, which would be inconsistent with your established orientation."

The human faltered, jaw flapping open and shut without any identifiable purpose. As he spoke, he did so in fragments, struggling to form a sentence. "That is—you—that is none of your business—"

"I wouldn't have thought you'd take issue with me stating the obvious. You answered 'Homosexual' quite openly in the most recent police census."

Reed responded to the information as though it were an insult—nose wrinkled contemptuously, and he took a margined step forward, seemingly ready to strike back.

The additional hostility proved puzzling, given the android had done nothing but state an objective fact. Perhaps he had missed some subtle nuance, a tone or gesture that would have warned of the growing aversion…

Still, now that a dialogue was open, it seemed a shame to waste the opportunity. If not to foster their 'connection', then to assess how pressing further might influence Reed's emotional state.

Inspiration struck, and boldness manifested in a mischievous smirk which tugged at his lips.

"Not to mention…" Nines began, deliberately slowing his words, drawing them out with a husky lilt. "When in the proximity of conventionally attractive males, your physical responses are consistent with sexual arousal."

The reaction of his partner escalated. He abandoned any advance, recoiling as if struck. Tension gripped his body; the muscles in his neck pulled taut, bulging through flushed skin.

However, beyond this surface pressure, there lingered hints of receptiveness. The marginal dilation of pupils and the nervous bobbing of his throat…

"...Why did I let you into my apartment?" he snapped, pulling himself forcefully from the grip of salacious temptation. "Go wait in the rain. I'm done with you."

"I am afraid I cannot do that," the android deadpanned. "If I leave this building, I cannot ensure that you will return to the station, and I require your assistance in reviewing our case."

"Well, shut up then. Stop being an asshole for five minutes and shut your damn mouth."

Nines had no intention of obliging, curious to see how far he could press the teasing. To observe how fast his partner might fold, omitting his principles in favour of carnal appetite…

Then, there was a sudden shift from across the apartment, and the experiment was forgotten. The RK900 perked up, his auditory processors adjusting as he attempted to identify the source. His partner had heard it as well, as after another sound—more like a wail—a spark of familiarity passed his gaze.

"There she is. Probably stuck in the bath."

Rounding his worn leather couch, Reed approached a sealed door flanked by two stacked bookshelves. He reached for the handle before freezing mid-motion, casting a contemptuous glance across his shoulder.

"You wait here."

"I can assure you that isn't necessary." Nines smoothly countered. "I am quite comfortable in the presence of felines."

It was a guarantee that felt justified.

While the recent changes to his residence meant he had not yet acquired pets, it hadn't stopped him from building a rapport with the local strays—a group of felines who would routinely visit him, drawn by the promise of food.

Lately, their visits had started to linger, with them trusting the android to attend to more intimate care requirements. Grooming and shows of affection—honours that did not extend to other residents in the building.

"It isn't about you being comfortable, genius. It's about her not freaking the fuck out."

The comment stirred a slight ripple in his confidence. While drawing an undeniable enjoyment in testing the limits of his partner's tolerance, the RK900 had no intention of extending this treatment to his pet.

"I take it she is not particularly friendly?"

As if in response, the distressed cries grew louder from behind the door. The scratching of tiny claws followed as if the animal was trying to dig free from its confines.

Reed's jaw clenched, and his grip tightened firmly around the handle." "No, she isn't."

Hesitancy quickly deserted Nines. It seemed clear that his partner—in all his abrasiveness and impatience—was far from the soothing presence the pet required. He felt a strong urge to observe—prepared to intervene if more effective methods were required to ease distress.

With a twist of the handle, the door swung open with a soft creak. Nines moved in step with his partner, earning a small grunt of dismay. Reed seemed aware of the android's determination to assist, regardless of invitation, and had begrudgingly resigned to it.

"Just keep your distance," he murmured gruffly, pinching the bridge of his nose, "and don't make any sudden movements. Got it?"

Already lacklustre hygiene standards deteriorated significantly upon entering the bathroom.

There were thick layers of grime caked on all visible surfaces, suggesting the space hadn't been cleaned in a significant amount of time. Were Nines to speculate how long, he would say the event likely preceded the human's tenancy.

The smell was repulsive, wafting around them in pungent coils. Organic matter clogging the drainage system accounted for most of it, concentrated with the greatest intensity in the open plug of the bathtub.

It was a detail the android soon overlooked in favour of the set of vibrant green eyes peering at him from across the rim.

They were framed by a canvas of inky black fur, save for bands of white that spanned the creature's chin and nose. Her jaw widened, eclipsing the eyes as she revealed rows of sharp teeth.

Nines was completely enchanted, unable to look away as his partner reached across and deftly scooped her up.

"Come on, wide load. You could get yourself out; you don't need to be airlifted."

Reed skillfully adjusted his hold, allowing the feline to blanket herself on his forearm. As he brushed his dominant hand across the top of her head, she responded with a series of throaty rumbles, nudging into the presses and arching back to reveal her stomach.

It was then that Nines noticed the large protrusion.

It seemed disproportionate to the feline's size and raised concerns that it might have resulted from inappropriate feeding. Frowning, he fired a biophysical analysis—examining for any health concerns and ready to scold Reed for any transgressions.

He received a concise overview of Tiffany, including her age and relevant weight and fitness metrics. Nothing proved especially concerning; however, he did encounter an unexpected detail:

> VITAL SIGNS DETECTED — MULTIPLE.

> GESTATIONAL STAGE: THIRD TRIMESTER.

The system prompt lingered on his HUD as he quietly absorbed the information.

"... She's pregnant," he eventually said, closing the diagnostic channel. "Were you aware?"

Reed, who had appeared to revel in the distraction from their close proximity, was rudely reminded of his existence. He grimaced before seeking to return to his previous tranquillity.

Forcefully sidling past the android, he clipped his shoulder in an effort to make for the exit. "I'm aware; must've been a stray. Getting his dick wet is about to cost me a fortune in vet bills."

Nines was tempted to inform his partner of how easily this situation could've been avoided had he done his due diligence getting the feline spayed. Instead, he lingered on the broader implications of the statement, hit with a wave of excitement mingled with trepidation.

"Do you intend on keeping the babies?"

"Hell no, I can barely afford to keep this one."

Nines felt reassured by this. While the upcoming birth was pleasant news, the idea of more animals being subjected to the current unsavoury living conditions was deeply alarming.

That said, Tiffany appeared to be coping well, given the circumstances. She was healthy and proved visibly content in Detective Reed's company—an extremely novel achievement that few could claim.

Nines followed the man out of his bathroom and into the neighbouring kitchen. Despite his earlier insistence that his pet could move, Tiffany remained cradled in his arms for the entirety of the short journey.

Rocked by the steady vibrations of footsteps, she nestled peacefully into the groove between her owner's chest and neck. Whiskers brushed against coarse stubble, causing Reed to flinch before he firmly corrected his posture—a silent pledge not to disturb her.

Unfortunately, he was unable to maintain this vow. As they reached their destination, he was forced to shift her aside in order to access a nearby pantry.

It did not escape the android's attention that the majority of shelves were barren, save for the central reservation, stacked to the brim with pet goods. Reed leafed through the glossy food pouches, browsing the selection until he settled on a product ambitiously advertised as 'Premium Chicken Breast in Rich Gravy.'

He pinched the pouch between his fingers and flipped it onto the counter, the contents displacing with a wet splat. "Mystery meat giblets with jelly and eyelids—bon appétit."

Despite the disparaging claim, it transpired that the heading on the packet was fairly accurate. This was determined by an internal scan of the foil, with a subsequent cross-reference of the barcode suggesting the brand was far from economical.

It seemed Reed had a habit of excessive spending as it pertained to his pet. Interesting, given his purported financial struggles and the absence of his own basic provisions.

"My scanners indicate that the meat is poultry, with some additional supplements and flavour enhancers—the balance of proteins and vitamins should provide more than adequate nutrition."

"Heh, is that so?"

Beyond the attempted nonchalance, Reed seemed genuinely pleased with the information. After preparing Tiffany's meal and setting it on a nearby mat, he stopped momentarily to card his fingers affectionately through the back of her coat.

"Good to know that what I'm feeding her isn't total shit. She seems to like it, anyway—that's all that matters."

The human stayed that way for some time. Looking down at his pet, smiling fondly, before moving to discard the pouch in an overflowing waste receptacle.

As Nines watched, persistent notifications flooded his HUD. At first, they focused on the litter cascading to the floor, displaced by a heavy hand. Then, attention shifted to his partner's current behaviour—elements misaligned with his interpersonal records.

> ANOMALIES DETECTED.

> ACTION REQUIRED.

"I would surmise that she eats better than you," he continued, attempting to move past the disruption. "Her vitals are all normal, and her physical appearance suggests optimal health. You are taking excellent care of her."

> SUGGESTED ACTION: CHANGES REQUIRED TO CHARACTER FILE — 'DETECTIVE GAVIN REED'

Resigned to the fact that the prompts would persist until acknowledged, the android complied and opened the file. A descending procession of text followed, pushing past the alerts as it readied itself for review:

> DETECTIVE REED LIKES DOGS.

Irritated that such an inconsequential point would cause such a pronounced disturbance, Nines revised it nonetheless—inputting an elaboration before realising its redundancy and scrapping both in favour of a unified statement.

> DETECTIVE REED LIKES DOGS.

> DETECTIVE REED LIKES CATS.

> DETECTIVE REED LIKES ANIMALS.

With the profile updated, Nines hoped to secure some form of cognitive release—the freedom to observe Tiffany without interruptions, sharing vicariously in her contentment. No such luxury came, as the charge of data soldiered on:

> REED SHOWS COMMITMENT TO THE CARE AND WELL-BEING OF HIS PET.

> BEHAVIOUR COMES AT THE DETRIMENT OF HIS OWN PERSONAL WELL-BEING.

Nines attempted to exit the file but found himself unable to do so, no matter how many commands were sent to his processor. It remained locked in his consciousness, a branch of cognition demanding expansion:

> DETECTIVE REED DEMONSTRATES SELFLESSNESS.

This proved a step too far for the RK900. It was a notion that verged into the obscene and one he refused to dignify, rejecting the addition as soon as it appeared. This did little to assist, as in the wake of the dismissal, his cognition looped back to the start of the strain. Seemingly just to mock him.

> DETECTIVE REED LIKES ANIMALS.

> COMMON GROUND ESTABLISHED.

His partner, unaware of the pronounced conflict Nines was experiencing, emitted a terse snort.

"Since when are you capable of giving compliments?"

The noise broke his focus, granting the android an opportunity to escape the state of mental paralysis. He looked up at Reed, noting that he had pulled away from his pet in favour of leaning against the countertop. His hands gripped the stained granite, unperturbed by the smear of grease now coating his palms, as he awaited a response.

"It was not intended as a compliment," Nines quickly clarified. "I was simply making an observation—"

Then he stopped himself, the rationalisation trailing off, unfinished. It occurred to him that adopting the man's skewed narrative might simplify matters. Feeding into whatever conclusions Reed wished to draw whilst shamelessly reaping the benefits.

"Feel free to interpret it as one, though, should you wish."

Much to his vexation, the detective remained unconvinced—despite the performance being shaped by this narrative. His eyes narrowed into slits, the corners of his mouth twitching as if considering something. Whatever fleeting thought had passed was quickly discarded with a sharp click of his tongue.

"Let me guess, Connor taught you to say that? Don't pull that fake compassion bullshit on me. It won't work."

Nothing else was said on the matter as Tiffany interrupted them. Beckoning her owner's hand with an insistent mewl, unenthused by its sudden absence.

Reed rolled his eyes, but the gesture was clearly performative as he dutifully resumed his duties. This time, crouching down to reduce the proximity between himself and the animal.

"Jeez, you're a needy bitch..." He cradled the back of her skull, targeting the junction between her ears with gentle presses. "There, head scratches—you happy now?"

Nines grimaced as sticky residue transferred onto the feline, matting her fur. It seemed he was the only one concerned by this, as Tiffany responded gleefully. Rumbled purrs reverberated in the back of her throat, and she rolled into her owner's touch, seeking further contact.

It was an action that Reed had undoubtedly performed countless times and one that also struck Nines with a sense of familiarity.

He wondered how the glossy coat might feel between his own fingertips. How the sensory input would differ from that of his dishevelled, street-bound companions…

His body ached with the need to satiate this curiosity, compelling him to mirror Reed's actions. His knees bent slowly, bringing him to the floor with precise movements. Each motion was carefully calculated to ensure he wouldn't startle the animal.

Despite his caution, Reed responded as though he had brandished a lethal weapon at her. His body tensed as he protectively manoeuvred himself between them.

"Hey, watch it— I'm not kidding around, Nines. She hates everyone. Get any closer, and you'll be android sashimi."

There was little credible threat in the warning. The RK900 was able to withstand military-grade ballistics and was entirely incapable of feeling pain. The worst outcome of an attack from a domestic cat would be the inconvenience of minor cosmetic damage.

Nonetheless, he halted. While his partner's claims could not be verified, he was reluctant to participate in any behaviours that may cause Tiffany undue stress. It seemed best to allow the pet to approach, assessing for herself that he posed no threat.

With a swift calibration of his physical routing, Nines stood up, briskly smoothing out the creases that had formed in his uniform. "Very well."

"...Well…shit." The human whistled low, brows raised, and lips quirked in exaggerated appreciation. "You actually listened to what I said. Full of surprises today, aren't ya?"

Beneath the surface of smug teasing, there appeared to be a hint of sincerity. The man was angled towards him, his posture open and gaze locked forward.

It spat in the face of apathy, as no measure of this behaviour could be determined false. Evidently, there was a part of the human that sought to mirror Nines' current goals—extending his own understanding of his partner.

This curiosity served as the final piece in a rapidly assembling picture he'd created of Reed. It extended past the bounds predicted, and the RK900 sought to expand the scope further with another testing push.

"I could say the same thing about you, Detective."

The coy smirk vanished instantly. His face shifted, features pinching in a bewildered crease. As though seeking to determine the veering turn their conversation was now taking. "...What do you mean by that?"

Reed could have easily ignored the android, attempting to steer off course, but he didn't. There was a part of him, however dormant, that had hoped for this development.

To Nines, it seemed an opportune time to facilitate these wishes. While he lacked the skills required to promote any long-term benefits, he hoped the fleeting psychological release would prove a useful means to an end.

"In the time we have been working together, I have observed certain patterns in your behaviour…" Nines began, tone neutral—but stern enough to probe a response. "While you present yourself as hostile and uncooperative, this seems inconsistent with your underlying motivations."

"Where the hell are you going with this?"

"There must have been a reason you joined the police force. A cynic might suggest a desire for power, but I believe the reality is more compassionate."

Hands folded behind his back, the RK900 honed his gaze with ruthless focus. It was a calculated divergence from the approach of his predecessor, as it had become clear that Reed did not appreciate RK800's signature sympathies.

The gentle intricacies were wasted on him—in favour of a disproportionate value placed on something less nuanced. An instinctive need to engage in conflict to the point he revelled in it.

"You desire to protect those you deem vulnerable. In turn, this makes you feel more assured—powerful."

The words struck their mark flawlessly as Reed bristled in response. He then rose from his crouched position, meeting the challenge head-on." Are you fucking psychoanalysing me?"

Nines knew he couldn't back down—to show any form of weakness or hesitancy. In sticking firm to the current trajectory, he assuredly charged on:

"Whilst preoccupied with archaic views on strength and masculinity, you are a deeply sensitive person. Perhaps wounded from some unresolved trauma. This results in a great deal of insecurity for you."

"You are, aren't you?" Reed attempted to match the assurance, but his underlying resolve proved woefully unequipped to meet these demands.

Cracks had already formed, buckling under increased pressure as his defiant posture began to stoop. Arms wrapped around his chest, a habitual motion he seemed to perform whenever he felt vulnerable.

"Look, I've been real nice to you today, tin-can. Taken you out to lunch, put up with your shit, but this is where I draw the line—"

"I wouldn't call it psychoanalysis. I am simply assessing your physical response to specific statements and stimuli."

With Reed cornered, Nines determined it was time to deliver the final blow. Striking with precision, driving deep into the swell of his concealed chest.

His blade came laced with a subtle mockery, ensuring the words left a sting.

"Your insecurity is unwarranted, at least concerning this aspect of yourself. While you are brash and uncouth, and your work ethic severely lacking, I hesitate to admit that you possess qualities some might consider…endearing."

His pitch shifted towards the end of the sentence, utilising a snippet of the voice sample he had collected from Officer Chen.

Recognition sparked in his partner's eyes, mingled with a building frustration, as he realised he'd been defeated. A tense silence settled between them, leaving Nines in brief anticipation for how his partner may take the loss.

Then, the human responded—jaw clenched with such pronounced tension that he seemed in danger of shattering his teeth. "You ever going to get tired of playing games with me? I bet you think this is funny , don't you?"

The RK900 pondered on this, fully absorbing the man's expression before performing a reading to assess his own response. While there were myriad uncertainties in his capacity to feel—complexities he was still navigating—in this instance, the answer proved straightforward.

"Perhaps."

The confirmation did little to clear the dense fog of contempt that had descended across his partner's gaze. Still, the transparency sought to inspire some secondary sentiment. Glowing embers of curiosity, not yet extinguished, cast a small glow of light through the mist.

Then Reed shook his head as though attempting to rattle the undesired thoughts from his skull. His subsequent address was stiff and insistent, tension betraying an enduring struggle as he brusquely changed the subject.

"You know what? Break time's over; let's talk about work." The man secured a worn plastic chair from a nearby table, flopping into it clumsily. "So—what do we know about our killer so far?"

More than happy to reroute the dialogue to something more substantial, the RK900 complied with the deflection—as entertaining as the teasing had been.

Accessing his temporal link to the DPD directory, he swiftly located the relevant case files. Once prompted, the assigned photos and text revealed themselves, circling around the perimeter of the kitchen. The ordered formation stood in stark contrast with the pronounced clutter it overlaid.

"There have been no eyewitnesses who have come forward for either murder. Aside from what we have ascertained regarding their clothing—namely, that they were wearing a black polyester jacket at the time they murdered the MJ100—we have little to go on in terms of a physical profile."

"That's just peachy, Nines," came a sardonic reply. Reed reclined further in his seat, threatening to tip off it, "but I asked what we did know. Your signals jammed or something?"

Truthfully, there had been a delay in analytical cognition. This was not a consequence of signal disruption, however, but something more tangible.

Tiffany had abandoned her meal in favour of sniffing curiously at his feet. Nines waited to see if she would act in hostility—the veritable flaying Reed had warned of—but no such advent occurred. Instead, she continued to circle his ankles, the relaxed positioning of her back and ears suggesting no aggression.

Reed pulled forward, his chair following the motion with a disconcerting squeak. He observed his pet with stunned bewilderment as if she'd ascended onto her hind legs and begun walking upright.

"... Well, I'll be damned," he eventually said, shaking his head in disbelief.

Nines barely heard him, as all his energy was now focused on keeping the discussion on track. Disregarding the drive to abandon work in favour of scooping Tiffany into his arms, rewarding her geniality with well-deserved praise.

"In regards to the first case, a contact number for Thod Graws has been found in the HR400's diary—

We have been able to trace the number, as well as the SIM card, to its last known location. An outgoing call was made to the victim from a Cedars Motel approximately 12 hours before the murder. No doubt, to arrange a booking for the victim's services."

Gavin pursed his lips at the deduction before humming in muted agreement. "Might be worth asking Reception if they saw anything suspicious…"

He then paused, catching a glimpse of something over the android's shoulder. His attention diverted fully as his lips pulled into a tight frown. "Will have to wait until tomorrow, though. You were right; we've gone well over an hour. Fowler is going to fucking lynch me."

"For what it is worth, I haven't found this experience completely abhorrent." Nines had also looked away, his attention shifting to the purring bundle of fur still rubbing against his legs. "I have enjoyed meeting Tiffany."

"You weren't kidding about being 'comfortable with felines'—I wouldn't have pegged you for an animal lover."

"My interactions with animals have been limited. However, I find that their company is often more pleasant than humans."

Reed looked back at him, his nose wrinkled, bunching the span of his nasal scarring. Then, he started to chuckle, a noise which quickly escalated into a rich laugh.

For a moment, it was as though all contentions between them had been forgotten—something that could have easily been mistaken for camaraderie if viewed from an outside perspective.

"Yeah, well, I guess we can agree on that one."

A prompt flashed on his HUD once again, this time received with significantly more positivity by the android. Releasing that infiltration had been successful, with his partner now open to the possibility of congruity existing between them:

> COMMON GROUND ESTABLISHED.

#ignore that the chapter numbers are now a bit weird #it is the consequence of my own timeline fuckery #dbh #detroit become human #reed900 #dbh nines #dbh gavin #dbh rk900 #dbh fanfiction #dbh fanfic #gavin reed x rk900

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allthebrazilianpolitics · 1 month ago

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Paradise Is Here: A Review of “Renoir” at MASP

In the early 1860s, when Édouard Manet produced two of his best-known and most acclaimed works, “Olympia” (1863) and “Luncheon on the Grass” (1863), Renoir, nine years younger, was still studying painting under the guidance of Charles Gleyre, while aspiring to a place at the prestigious École des Beaux-Arts in Paris. He studied alongside Alfred Sisley, Frédéric Bazille and others who were far more fortunate or came from more privileged social backgrounds compared to his own—he was the son of a shoemaker grandfather, a tailor father and a seamstress mother. His identification with both the art and the persona of Manet was immediate; Renoir saw in him the example of a painter grounded in the long tradition of art as well as a modern artist attentive to contemporary life, to the most ordinary things around him—and who achieved fame and fortune through this. Indeed, “Luncheon on the Grass” paid homage to Giorgione’s “Pastoral Concert” (Louvre), while “Olympia” followed the model of Titian’s “Venus of Urbino” (Uffizi Gallery, Florence).

Manet’s art thus represented the stability—both artistic and financial—so desired by the young Renoir, whose works from that same period began to show the influence of the more mature and already established painter. Paintings such as “Mother Anthony’s Tavern” (1866), “A Couple (Les Fiancés)” (1868) and “A Nymph by a Stream” (1869-1870) attest to this. In 1882, when Manet received the Légion d’Honneur (already suffering from advanced syphilis), Renoir, who despised official titles and honors, did not forget to congratulate him: “When I return to the capital, I will greet you as the painter you are, loved by all and officially recognized… You are the cheerful fighter, who bears no hatred toward anyone… and I admire you for that happiness even in times of injustice.”

Renoir came to see Manet as his principal artistic mentor, and Manet considered Renoir his direct successor, helping him however he could. Their friendship endured until the end of their lives; Manet died first, in 1883, and Renoir, out of gratitude, continued to care for his brother, Eugène Manet, his sister-in-law (also an artist) Berthe Morisot, and their daughter, Julie Manet. Like Manet, many other friends—painters and art lovers—tried to secure commissions for Renoir to help him get by (he often barely had money to eat), and although he preferred painting scenes from everyday life (like Manet) in the genre of genre painting—which was much harder to sell—he eventually specialized in portraiture. From 1864 and for the next twenty years, portrait painting predominated in his work. Through it, Renoir developed a way of modulating the subject (the character of the sitter) with the luminous atmosphere around them, capable of adding radiance and warmth to the model—a gift from the artist to the sitter, and a means of securing future commissions.

#brazil #art #history #museums #Pierre Auguste Renoir #arts #image description in alt #mod nise da silveira

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yamayuandadu · 10 months ago

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was mithra/mithras worshipped in mesopotamia like was his worship introduced into this area during the achaemenid and later periods? what about cities near mesopotamia like Palmyra and dura europos? also was he syncrestised With any local gods? maybe shamash

I’m sorry but due to space constraints and lack of sufficient familiarity with (or deeper interest in) most Roman mystery cults I can’t help much with the dissemination of Mithras and Mithraism on the eastern periphery. There is no evidence of his cult being present in Palmyra (Javier Teixidor, The pantheon of Palmyra, p. 106) but on the other hand it was definitely present in Dura Europos (the mithraeum discovered there is notable enough to have its own wiki page, apparently); I’m not really aware of any attestations from even further east. According to Encyclopedia Iranica, “though represented virtually everywhere in the Roman empire, it was much stronger in the Latin speaking West than in the (predominantly) Greek-speaking East”. As for Mithra proper: the oldest datable attestation of him - or a derivative, at least, since we are dealing with a highly divergent oddity with a plural name, it seems - is technically at least Mesopotamia-adjacent.

The treaty between Suppiluliuma of the Hittite Empire and Šattiwaza of Mittani (c. 1330 BCE) lists “the Mitra-gods (d.MEŠMitraššil; the determinative signifies plurality), the Varuna-gods, Indra, the Nasatya-gods” (translation courtesy of Gary Beckman, Hittite Diplomatic Texts, p. 43) among deities invoked as witnesses on the Mittani side. As stressed most recently by Eva von Dassow in Mittani and Its Empire (published in The Oxford History of the Ancient Near East), their position is not prominent, and they do not appear anywhere else. People who try to make this attestation into a big deal are basically automatically untrustworthy. The Mitanni rulers, regardless of their origin, were culturally Hurrianized to such a degree the presence of some derivative of Mithra in a single treaty is borderline irrelevant - and it might not even be strictly speaking Mithra, but rather generic “treaty gods” (hence the plural). I’m not really aware of any Achaemenid, Arsacid or Sasanian efforts to introduce the strictly Zoroastrian version of Mithra to Mesopotamia.

Whether it’s possible to speak of any connection between Mithra and Shamash is a complex matter so that’s addressed under the cut. The material from Hatra pertains to that so it’s covered there too.

To begin with, I’m not aware of any clear case of identification between Mithra and Shamash. It’s a suggestion which sometimes pops up in scholarship, but without any conclusive evidence, as far as I am aware. It’s not entirely implausible, though.

Typically the comparisons depend on sharing both judiciary and solar roles, but it needs to be stressed here that Mithra didn’t really have strong solar associations until relatively late. This aspect of his character is absent from the Avesta, and according to his article in Encyclopedia Iranica there’s no clear evidence for him having a solar role predating Strabo’s account of Persian beliefs. Therefore, it probably only developed at some point in the Achaemenid period.

One relatively recent example of seeking possible connections between Mithra and Shamash I’ve stumbled upon is the article Mesopotamian Influence on Persian Sky-watching and Calendar. Part I. Mithra, Shamash and Solar Festivals by Krzysztof Jakubiak and Arkadiusz Sołtysiak (accessible via De Gruyter). Some quite bold claims are made there, with the supposed influence going all the way back to the Bronze Age. However, the authors provide basically no archeological evidence for early Iranian-Mesopotamian contact (they also don’t address the fact early Iranians would very obviously encounter Elamites first when moving westwards); and some of their sources indicate that a thorough survey of literature wasn’t made (in many cases outdated generalist publications are the only sources consulted). I’m reluctant to recommend it as a point of reference for this reason. It seems much more sound to seek possible influence in the Achaemenid period or beyond. However, matters are complicated by the fact that Mithra is essentially absent from some of the earliest available sources like the Persepolis fortification archives, and largely just appears in theophoric names before the reign of Artaxerxes II.

Margaret Cool Root suggests in Defining the Divine in Achaemenid Persian Kingship (published in Every Inch a King – Comparative Studies on Kings and Kingship in the Ancient and Medieval Worlds, accessible via Brill) that there is already evidence for Persians being familiar with the iconography of Shamash and his association with royal power and legitimacy during the reign of Darius I. However, she doesn’t propose any connection with Mithra, only with the semi-divine king and Ahura Mazda, and relies just on motifs in monumental art. More sound evidence is available from the early centuries CE. Michael Shenkar (Intangible Spirits and Graven Images, p. 102) notes a figure on the relief from Tang-e Sarvak might be either Mithra depicted in a similar manner to Shamash or just outright Shamash. He also proposes that an unusual depiction of the Kushan emperor Vima Kadphises rising from between mountains with rays/flames emanating from his shoulders is patterned on Shamash’s iconography (Royal regalia and 'Divine Kingship' in the pre-Islamic Central Asia, p. 58) and that Iranian and adjacent groups might have associated the images of Shamash rising from between mountains with the customary description of Mithra as responsible for surveying the world from atop Mount Harā. He points out Shamash was still depicted this way in the second century CE, as indicated by works of art from Hatra. I personally found these arguments convincing at least in terms of iconography. The situation in Hatra is somewhat unique, and requires some additional explanations, though.

A good recent outline can be found in Aleksandra Kubiak-Schneider’s Hatra of Shamash. How to assign the city under the divine power? (there is a small mistake on p. 799 though - referring to Ereshkigal as a sister of Shamash is a questionable syllogism at best, and even her sibling credentials wrt Inanna are questionable as recently stressed by Alhena Gadotti). She argues the city god, Maran/Maren, was essentially a derivative of Shamash - or Shamash under an Aramaic title, something like “our lord”. Some of his local features are unique - for example, his symbol was an eagle, but Shamash was never associated with this bird elsewhere in earlier periods (it was mostly Zababa’s thing). Kuciak-Schneider suggests this might be an evolution of depicting him symbolically as a winged solar disk (p. 798). A slightly different view can be found in an earlier publication. Ted Kaizer in his 2000 overview article Some remarks about the religious life of Hatra states that it cannot be determined with certainty if the Shamash worshiped in Hatra was derived from the Mesopotamian god, or instead from the Arabic sun goddess (p. 234). He also the local pantheon combined “Mesopotamian, Arab, Syrian and Graeco-Roman elements” (p. 230) - but not Iranian. This obviously requires partial revision, since Lucinda Dirven in her fantastic My Lord with his Dogs. Continuity and Change in the Cult of Nergal in Parthian Mesopotamia does demonstrate at least a degree of Iranian influence on the worship of Nergal in Hatra. However, all I dug up in the case of Mithra is a handful of Iranian theophoric names listed by Enrico Marcato in Personal Names in the Aramaic Inscriptions of Hatra: Daosha-Mithra (“Mithra is my friend”), Mithra, Mithra-bandag (“servant of Mithra”) and Mithra-dāta (“given by Mithra”). It doesn’t seem these have any deeper implications than that there were some people with an Iranian background in Hatra, though. Marcato states that the presence of an actual cult of Mithra in Hatra is implausible (p. 167) and has been already disproven in the 1970s by Han J. W. Drijvers in the article Mithra at Hatra? Some remarks on the problem of the Irano- Mesopotamian syncretism, which I tragically failed to find online. For what it’s worth, he also notes some of the same theophoric names occur in material from Palmyra as well.

#mesopotamian miscellanea #iranian miscellanea

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smilepilled · 4 months ago

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hello. here you'll be seeing some serious warnings about this account; please see this as something adjancent, but separate / different from a DNI-BYI list. i will use this post to personally keep track of things i am supportive of and against.

IN FAVOR OF

authentic self identification — goodfaith; clashing labels, contradictory labels, xenogenders, neopronouns, titles, using labels that confuse people, microlabels, mashup labels like sleepy lesbian/grouchy bisexual/whimsical gay etc, neopronouns/xenopronouns, and the like

humane paraphile recovery for those with dangerous paralhilias. i dont think killing people will help

contact for safe paras (innanimate objects for example); or other contact that involves CONSENT & SAFETY for the people involved (fiction, roleplay, etc.).

being part of multiple different subcultures (gyaru, goth, mandrake, punk, etc)

the re-estructurization of the medical field through infiltration > filtration > perfection, instead of demolishing and destroying it. some people depend on it

giving black people their autonomy and respecting them for creating so much of the culture in the world. respecting aspects of black culture without co-opting it (AAVE is a common example, but many others are out there)

telling cops and feds to suck on it crazy style

intersex people being de-pathologized and the inclusive definition of intersex; perisex people having to shut up and listen

the FULL de-association of sex and gender— or at the very least, people coming to a understanding that sex is not the only thing that affects gender-based treatment and experiences.

riots and violent protests (with focus on unionizing and fellowship. dont post it online, dont answer questions, stay safe)

coping with fiction in private without exposing it to potential triggerees or minors / creating online spaces for such without advertising it for minors to be included in it. MINORS DON'T BELONG WITH NSFW

nuance & working with what one realistically has in order to achieve peace within one's own life & circumstances

AGAINST THE FOLLOWING

policing identities — e.g.: safequeers/ "anti goodfaith", a hefty amount of queer exclusivity discourse [save for cultural exclusivities and such], gender-sex association/trans-centric bioessentialism, etc.

the (mis)use of AFAB & AMAB as "female" and "male" in any sense at all, because these terms are rooted in intersex genital mutilation and bioessentialism from doctors — please use these terms instead: ONE (link), TWO (link).

radicalized "liberalism" — e.g.: radicalized feminism, trans exclusionist "queer liberation", intersexist "trans liberation", sex-gender villification ("all men are evil", "boys will be boys", "women are all fake", etc.), idolatry of "leftist" political figures, etc.)

syscourse & fakeclaiming — anti endo rethoric namely; i am against the blind usage of the DSM to bind people's health issues or other similar experiences due to how the psych sector is still MAJORLY tainted by eugenics and sexism. forcing people to remember trauma is dangerous and you should care less about this. i have OSDD{1A} and it does not concern me if someone uses this or that term for what they have going on. endogenic is a community label, not a medical term!

the idea that feminism inherently excludes masculine people, men, people with male/masculine genders, wolffipathian individuals or anyone who isn't an "adult human female". feminism is inherently intersectional, feminism is for everyone.

any sort of bioessentialism; eugenics, ableism/sanism, intersexism, "all males are evil" rad BS, and the like.

the separation of the queer community & intra communities (the "LGB" without the T groups, lesbian separatism/gold star lesbianism/similar lesbexclus movements, intersex de-queering, trans sex-essentialism, and many more similar cases)

praising politicians and treating them as saviours — none of these crusty elderly folk will ever give a decent damn about us. they use us for political gain and power

the focus on attacking perpetrators/abusers instead of shoeing support and care for a victim. i don't trust anyone who immediately reacts to a person being a victim by wanting to hurt their abuser INSTEAD OF SUPPORTING THE VICTIM.

the public and untagged/unfiltered posting of taboo/"dead dove" fiction that may very well cause harm to folks nearby — e.g.: consensual abuse or taboo roleplay posts with no filterable tags or warnings, being a public 100% open account while posting such things, not being responsible about the content you consume/reshare/create, etc.

the glorification & normalization of contact/acting on paraphilias that involve non-consenting parties (animals, children, corpses, etc.); exclusively where harm is done to real beings, alive or not, intelligent or not, human or not.

most of any ship related discourse. i dont care about your headcanon about any character or pairing, keep ot to yourself. i dont care if you ship those characters. some of you lack in common sense and literacy

puritism culture — e.g.: "sexuality is bad", anti-kink rethoric in queer spaces, demonizing taboo fantasies, prioritizing fictional characters' comforts over real life people, etc.

anti-recovery ideals — radiqueer/xenosatanist ideLs, pro-c for harmful or dangerous paras, the promotion of any self harm, encouraging delusions AND/OR forcefully reality checking delusions, ed/sh online spaces, "one size fits all" 'recovery'... and the like.

the idea that people's brains are different with basis on their sex, gender, race, religion, culture or the like — these ideas are rooted in inhumane sciences/eugenics, [inter]sexism, mysogyny, racism, and a lot more putrid things that are similar.

communists that overly focus on theology and philosophy instead of immediate action for the sake of community and union (+ USSR bootlickers/communist party ball-fondlers. these are politicians. they did not love or care about ANY minority)

flag discourse — toothpaste flag, aroace "pisspool" flag, and similar; this does not apply to genuine criticism against flags such as the misogynistic racist's stolen lipstick flag OR the racist person's bigender flag

thank you for reading. i only really care about topics that truly cause harm, so please dont worry about anything else unlisted — but if you do worry outaide of your control, feel free to send me a DM or an ask about it, and i'll answer you privately if possible. good day to you ♥︎

#【 WARNINGS 】#buhgposting #buhggytalk #𓏵⠀unsorted trinkets⠀♡

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03josten · 2 years ago

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Some of my favourite terminology for sex, sexuality, and gender that have mostly fell out of use:

Sapphist: Similar to the term Sapphic which is still in use, derived from the woman loving Greek poet Sappho. The -ist has implications of doing rather than being. A Sapphist is a woman who has romantic and sexual relationships with other women. It was commonly used in the 19th and early 20th century, eventually replaced by lesbian in common usage. Some famous historical figures who used this term include Vita Sackville-West, who also used the terms lesbian and homosexual.

Mukhannathun: Translates roughly to "effeminate ones" or "ones who resemble women", typically refers to a feminine male, an intersex person, or one whose sex is indistinct. Modern scholars place the term Mukhannath in correlation with trans feminine. Mukhannathun traditionally took on the social roles of women in Saudi Arabia and feature in Ḥadīth Islamic literature. They were often musicians and entertainers, Abū ʿAbd al-Munʿim ʿĪsā ibn ʿAbd Allāh al-Dhāʾib (or Tuwais) being perhaps the first famous Mukhannath musician. I could not find any depictions of Mukannathun.

Invert: Sexology in the early 20th century believed that same sex desire and cross gender identification were natural in some people. It was coined in German by Karl Friedrich Otto Westphal (1833-1890) and translated across Europe and eventually into English as sexual inversion by John Addington Symonds Jr. (1840-1893) in 1883. Inverts were people whose natural sex instinct (heterosexual, cisgender) were "inverted", causing a natural desire for the same sex or to live as the other sex. It was thought that most inverts desired a relationship with a "normal" member of their own sex, for example a masculine presenting woman would desire a feminine presenting "normal" woman, a feminine presenting man would desire a masculine or "normal" man. While most sexologists thought sexual inversion was natural, they worried about corruption of "normal" people by inverts. The writer 'John' Radclyffe Hall (1880-1943) identified as an invert and explored the life of inverts in her 1928 novel The Well of Loneliness.

Uranism: A Uranian was a man who was romantically or sexually interested in other men. One of the earliest records of the term comes from Friedrich Schiller's 'Sixth Letter' in the Aesthetic Education of Man in 1795. It is derived from the ancient Greek goddess Aphrodite Urania, a manifestation of Aphrodite who was free of physical desire and instead was attracted by mind and soul. Ancient Greek literature was very important in the early formations of queer identity and self-recognition. Oscar Wilde (1854-1900) was known to use the term Uranian.

Tribadism: Derived from the Greek "tribas" which means "to rub", tribadism denotes both a sexual position (now known as tribbing or scissoring) and a woman who seeks to sexual dominate and/or penetrate another woman. This term could also be used to describe an intersex person who lives as female and is the penetrating partner during sex with women. It became the most common word to describe any kind of sexual intimacy between women in English literature from the 16th to 19th centuries. Marie Antoinette, queen of France from 1773 to 1792 was "defamed" in many anti-monarchist newspapers as being a tribade.

Eonism: Eonism was coined by English sexologist Havelock Ellis (1859-1939) to describe cross gender identification and presentation. "Eon" after the French diplomat Charlotte-Geneviève-Louise-Augusta-Andréa-Timothéa d'Éon de Beaumont, who was assigned male at birth but lived as a woman from 1777 until her death in 1810. Eonism was later replaced by transvestism in popular usage in the early to mid 20th century, coined by Magnus Hirschfeld (1868-1935) in 1910.

Eunuch: the term Eunuch has many connotations but the one common factor that almost all definitions share is that a eunuch is an intentionally castrated male. Eunuchs can also be uncastrated, but put into the social role as eunuch due to their 1) feminine presentation 2) inability to procreate 3) attraction to men. Eunuchs were not seen as men in most cultures, they were specifically chosen and castrated in order to fill a specific, separate social role from men and women. It was sometimes punitive, for example under Assyrian law men who were caught in sexual acts with other men were castrated. Eunuchs often had positions in royal households in the Ancient Middle East, their sexlessness was seen to enhance their loyalty to the crown as they were less likely to be distracted by sex or marriage, and it also allowed for jobs to be given on merit, and not inherited since Eunuchs could not reproduce. In Ancient Greece certain sects of male priests were eunuchs. China had Eunuchs who were fully castrated (penis and testicles) and high ranking in imperial service. In Vietnam, many eunuchs were self castrated in order to gain employment in the royal households.

Homophile: coined in 1924 by Karl-Günther Heimsoth (1899-1933) in his dissertation Hetero- und Homophilie. The term was in common use in the 50s and 60s in gay activism groups. It was an alternative to homosexual coined in 1868 by Károly Mária Kertbeny (1824-1882) which was thought to have pathological and sexual implications, whereas homophile prioritised love and appreciation over the sex act or pathology. It is still in use in some parts of northern Europe. The Homophile Action League was founded by lesbian couple Ada Bello (1933-2023) and Carole Friedmann (1944-?) in Pennsylvania, U.S.A. in 1968, a year before the Stonewall Riots.

#lgbt history #queer theory #gay #lesbian #transgender #bisexual #intersex #wlw

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bodybeyondstories · 2 years ago

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Just ignore it - 3

David realizes he may have overestimated his ability to handle the newly adopted deity in his head. In trying to figure out how to direct an unlimited supply of body transforming chaos magic, he discovers the power of words, leading to some interesting developments at the bar and in Lee's lab.

1 | 2 (Previous) | 4 (Next)

MaleTF // Ass Expansion // Dick Growth // Growth // Suggestion // nsfw

5688 words

---

A Tuesday night during Winter Break was not the liveliest time at our usual haunt, the Cockatrice, but Lee and I weren’t complaining. We could gossip and scheme in peace in our back corner booth, a spot we so consistently occupied that the bartender, Jaime, jokes that our butt prints are permanently in the seats–which, in light of recent events, is probably true. As Lee had pointed out to my chagrin, the hemispheres of my ass had successfully carved out a noticeable dip in the cushion that would set a normal man off balance. Yet another reason the back corner booth was consistently ours to occupy. With the semester having ended and most of our colleagues having fled town as soon as grades were submitted, it was especially sparse, except of course, for the new regular to our little booth chats, Blake.

I had given just the essential details to the class about the extra dimensional reality warper that was seemingly auditing for most of the term, winning their silence with automatic As, no term paper, and any reference or letter of rec for any reason. I made myself available as a resident expert if they wanted to learn more about this exciting new research opportunity tied to my being through the astral realm. And of course, if they needed guidance on any unintended side effects, from wardrobe malfunctions to unwanted attention. Noah, for one, had developed a similar level of insatiability as my own and was tearing through every available hung top in the city, but had also developed a knack for coming across progressively bigger and bigger dicks; a pattern that was verging on unrealistic. I made a note to investigate further, but encouraged him to just slow down before we had an epidemic of dicks just as unwieldy as my superhung fuckbuddy sitting across from me.

The rest of the semester was relatively uneventful after I explained the situation. I decided I might as well use it as a teaching tool, one of the more extreme examples of what one might encounter in this line of work. I didn’t name Logan, though, for the risk of him drawing the ire of his colleagues. However, after some initial discomfort and surprising ambivalence, they were mostly okay with the changes, even appreciative, though they may not admit it directly. But golden boy park ranger Blake was especially enthusiastic, not to mention deeply interested in all these magical happenings. To the point where his own disproportionately meaty butt was leaving its own comical imprint in the booth next to my own.

Blake became a fixture of our weeknight scene, eager for the latest updates from Lee’s lab, which had begun to research the power of my new mental roommate. Trying to understand the unfathomable deity living in my head was slow going, but I had figured out that while they don’t have a name for themself, or really a concept of naming that makes sense to us, they deigned to experiment with some sort of grammar of identification, a small part of which is interpretable in our dimension as Synt. Blake was usually in the field during the day, so would join us after hours to get caught up, even going so far as to jot down notes and ask questions we hadn’t even thought of. He was a de facto research assistant, and at the very least this whole ordeal had gotten someone actually interested in our little corner of the world. Apparently, he’d also been chatting with Logan about some mystical archival work (I really should pay more attention to what Logan actually does). But this evening he was getting excited about his own neck of woods (pun intended) with something brewing in a local forest reserve.

“It’s one of the old ones that got absorbed into the current system when they modernized it,” said Blake, leaning forward slightly with an air of playful conspiracy, his dense biceps straining against the cuffs of his sleeves. “Not entirely public property, but not really owned by anyone anymore either. We basically have de facto jurisdiction,” a phrase he pronounced with uncertainty, “over the Marshlands.”

I wasn’t familiar with this place–admittedly I didn’t get out enough–but I dissociated as a vague image popped up on my mental map of the region, carrying a resonance that felt like a string being plucked. As I sat with this, I was aware that Blake and Lee were carrying on a conversation without me but sound and light went slightly opaque as I tried to focus on this image of…a forest clearing? And some figures that looked suspiciously like–

“Palmer!” I was brought fully back to reality by a forceful slap on the shoulder from our park ranger friend sitting next to me. Blake quickly had an apologetic look on his face that said he hadn’t quite figured out his own strength.

“Oh, sorry,” I said. “Zoned out. What’d I miss? The forest?”

“Nah, we moved on to the BBL allegations,” said Lee, with a smirk.

“I’m just sayin’ my leg days are legendary these days,” said Blake, hands splayed in mock humility. “I don’t blame ‘em for thinking something’s up. You know it’s real because I keep maxing out machines at the gym and having to scrounge up more and more plates. It’s starting to draw attention,” he chuckled.

“There’s still a lot we don’t know about the changes that Synt caused,” I offered, mentally putting on my researcher hat.

“Is still causing,” interjected Lee.

“Yes, still,” I said, suddenly feeling very self conscious. When I invited Synt to give Logan a break and join forces with me, I may have overestimated my ability to keep them reined in, and it was becoming a full time project just to keep their power from leaking out into this world at a reasonable trickle. Most of the time, I could relieve little bits of pressure here and there, resulting in acquaintances and strangers getting a little boost in passing; something to fill their pants a little more that they wouldn’t complain about. This got tricky when it comes to people I was not only intimate with, but vulnerable with. Hence why Lee’s lithe, muscular form not only filled the other side of the booth but looked downright ethereal. And yet another reason Blake enjoyed spending happy hours parked right next to me. He was, after all, enthusiastic about the situation.

“Not that I’m complaining,” said Blake. He leaned towards me slightly with a smile that was verging from friendly to flirtatious. “I look better than I ever have. Better than I thought was even possible, all thanks to our mutual friend.” He gave me (and Synt) a wink, allowing his ripped forearm to brush lightly against mine before pulling back at the static shock that visibly–and possibly audibly–jumped the centimeter between us.

“I’ll take that as a ‘no problem’,” he said, getting up and turning to the bar. “Y’all want anything?”

“I’m already at my limit,” I said, “but thanks.”

“Two-drink Tuesday,” added Lee, holding up his index and middle finger, as if that wasn’t something he had just made up. Nevertheless, I appreciated the support. Getting shlammered is no longer an option when you have immediate access to an unbelievable reservoir of chaos magic. Something Lee was constantly reminded of by the trouser snake bulging down the length of his left pant leg.

What didn’t help the situation was that Blake was really taking his time in getting to the bar, swishing his hips back and forth as he moseyed over to Jaime. The park ranger uniforms are a flattering, relaxed fit, but Blake was bursting out of his. The khakis were stretched tight across his bubble butt and quads and the button up couldn’t be buttoned all the way against the mass of his pecs and shoulders. He was a wall of dense muscle, body so sculpted from the realm of fantasy that it was almost a crime for him to even try to wear clothes in the first pl–

I knew what he was doing. He, obviously, knew what he was doing. And most importantly, the reality-altering minor god that had tied themself to me knew full well what he was doing.

We can’t keep doing this, I said to my mental roommate. He’s getting hooked.

Hooked? came a voice like tectonic plates sliding against each other.

Like, he’s enjoying these changes too much. He keeps trying to grow more and more, I worry he might go too far.

Too far? It had become clear that they had no conceptualization of what this meant, but they were starting to figure out what one might call moderation. I felt a small nudge of encouragement as if right behind my shoulder blades, but a small nudge from Synt was like a cruise ship lightly tapping against a wooden pier.

Okay, but just a little, I thought. It’s about finesse, just like we practiced.

Synt was a powerhouse to say the least, and I wasn’t so much tapping into their reservoir of chaos magic as I was slightly loosening a small pressure valve. My fingertips sparked lightly as I felt the peculiar taste of raw possibility in my mouth, like a battery on the back of my tongue that crackled down around my vocal chords. I was focusing on Blakes’s broad shoulders and muscular backside at the bar. His overdeveloped glutes defied gravity, perched like two globes above his hamstrings.

“Those could really do some damage,” I muttered under my breath. I imagined him at the gym, maxing out the machines as a warmup, having to stack weight after weight just to get a good pump. The blood rushing to his strained muscles as they repaired themselves supernaturally fast, swelling against the overstressed fabric until it couldn’t take anymore. At the bar, Blake was adjusting his waistband surreptitiously, his massive butt seeming to grow in real time to match my slapped together tipsy fantasy until finally his work pants began to give way, splitting open in a few spots to hint at a pair of bright green bikini briefs fighting for its life over his round cheeks. Much to his chagrin–but eventually to his delight–whoever he was chatting it up with failed to take notice of his sudden growth. His hand had left Blake’s hip to adjust his own crotch, which was displaying a surprising, and apparently uncomfortable, bulge.

I maybe shouldn't have done this two drinks in. I was going for more juicy pump and less wardrobe malfunction. And I didn’t even predict the spillover effect in this new beau who just happened to be in the right place at the right time. Maybe I wasn’t being focused enough, maybe it was some sort of daisy chain from their erotic connection, maybe Blake was figuring out how to re-route the chaos magic with which I had touched him. But as he apparently took notice, he played it off, turning his fat ass to squish against the bar as he faced out, glancing my way with an appreciative wink.

“He can’t keep getting away with this,” said Lee, an amused tone entering his voice. Lee had caught on to Blake’s little trick early on and found it more funny than concerning. “He pulled a fast one on you again!” he laughed.

“He’s kind of doing me a favor,” I reasoned. At least I had a willing participant to let some of the pressure off while honing this new ability. “But he could just ask me directly.”

“Well where’s the fun in that?” asked Lee, his eyes dreamily following Blake’s ass as his new friend let him into the cool winter evening, presumably to explore their respective new assets at one of their places. His eyes flicked back to me as he danced across the word fun, and I tried to evade losing myself in the chocolate brown depths of his irises, captivated by a gaze that had become hypnotic. I didn’t get very far as I began to trace the curvature of his plump lips, the rightmost third of the bottom one lost behind a row of playfully biting teeth.

This was a game we had begun to play and one I would inevitably lose. He knew what he was doing. He knew I knew that he knew what he was doing. It hadn’t taken me long to realize that a side effect of the changes in Lee was that he was beginning to have a draw on people that was hard to resist. It hadn’t taken Lee long to realize that whenever I released Synt’s erotic power into the world, I needed to in turn release my own. Hot and bothered would be an understatement, the recent double whammy in tandem with the pheromones coming from my friend across the booth were sending me into overdrive. And judging by the way Lee kept shifting in his seat, he was in a similar state of excitement.

Apparently Two-drink Tuesday also gets its name from the fact that we can’t make it to a third round without fucking each other’s brains out. Soon enough, I’m plopping my fat ass onto a table in a half forgotten supply closet that makes for a decent hookup space if you’re cool enough with Jaime. It was one of the plastic folding ones that are always already old and whose supports were groaning under my weight. The ambient light from the bar that made it down the hallway framed Lee’s expansive form as he lumbered in behind me, round shoulders rising just past the level of the door frame as he ducked in. God he was massive. As he pushed the door closed behind him, sliding us into complete darkness, I could still feel his outline moving toward me, as if he produced his own luminescence just outside of the visible spectrum.

The bass of his voice filled the room as he chuckled, coming in for a deep kiss and sliding his fingers under the waistband of my leggings as our tongues danced. He was hungry. He pushed me back onto the table as he pulled my thighs toward him. The radiant heat coming off of his crotch became all the more enticing in the chill of the back room, tingles of pleasure echoing from my hole in anticipation. I arched my back as his fingers from one hand traced along my spine, the other tenderly beginning to peel the waistband of my leggings down the curves of my hips. His hands, at this point, were the size of dinner plates but moved with surprising grace. I could feel him resisting the urge to tear the fabric clean off as he struggled to get it over my colossal cakes and tree trunk thighs. A performance of agonizing slowness that had become part of our usual foreplay.

With my hole finally exposed, he slid in one finger, then two, opting for nimbleness and dexterity in light of the brute force that I knew was coming. He worked with a light touch, loosening me up as he undid his pants and slowly slid them off, bending slightly to finagle his prodigious cock free. I regretted not having hit the lights. The slow reveal of his member was a sight to behold, even in the weak fluorescence of the store room. With a grunt, I heard his pants fall to the floor, followed by a thwack against the underside of the cheap plastic table. I briefly fantasized about Lee’s gargantuan cock lifting the entire table with me on it, entertaining the notion that I really could make that happen if I wanted to.

Don’t you? Came a deep rumble from my psyche, the familiar crescendo of energy as Synt’s attention was piqued.

Don’t you start, I warned, still thinking of Blake and his now very well endowed friend. Finesse, subtlety, I added, knowing full well Synt cared nothing for the concept.

But didn’t I? In the haze of lust, I couldn’t shake the hypothetical of Lee with a truly impossible monster cock, and a corresponding body that shattered doorways rather than ducking through them. Was it Synt’s idea or my own? Was there a difference?

I was brought back to the present by a sudden absence. My hole ached with need as Lee’s meaty fingers were withdrawn, moving to caress my torso as he maneuvered his unwieldy dick into place, stroking up and down he pumped out a steady stream of slick precum. He was already starting to moan softly as he slowly worked inch after inch after inch of his schlong inside of me. Ever the scientist, he had last measured his growth at 15.25 inches, but personal experience told me it had definitely grown a little more since then. He settled into a steady pace, holding my body gingerly with his strong arms, leaning in periodically to nuzzle against my lips.

“Is that good?” he asked.

“Harder,” I muttered, the pleasure from his cock stretching my walls only leading to a deeper and deeper need.

“Like this?” he said, picking up the pace, letting more of his strength come through as he thrust into me.

“Harder,” I breathed, feeling the familiar taste of power, the crackle across my throat.

“Mmhm,” said Lee, audibly putting in some effort as he pounded into me, his gigantic hands digging into the globes of my ass cheeks, giving them a hard slap periodically.

“Harder,” I grunted, feeling some sort of release as I had the acute image of Lee’s pelvis corded with muscle, his hips and glutes flexing with vascularity as he pumped with inhuman power.

He made a sound that was some cross between confusion and pleasure, losing control as he jackhammered into me with animalistic lust. He dug his hands in under my thighs and lifted me up bodily, impaling me on his dick as his hips went into overdrive. He roared as both of us reached climax, shooting ropes of cum as his hips continued to buck involuntarily. After the last shudders of orgasmic release, he slowly came back to his senses, pulling his softening dick out of my hole.

“Was that…you?” he asked, his hands exploring a slightly more developed muscularity than what had been the reality earlier that night.

“...I think so.”

—

I found myself in Lee’s lab early the next morning reflecting on what exactly had developed last night. Of course I was used to dipping into Synt’s power to change people, but this was different. More direct in a way I couldn’t put my finger on.

Lee was bouncing around with some extra pep in his step, his usual lumbering movements now imbued with much more grace and poise. One would find it hard to believe that just 12 hours previous he was rearranging my guts with wild abandon. His bubble butt filled out his form fitting khakis, glute and hip muscles becoming all the more apparent every time he squatted down to look at something more closely with his co-PI, Armand. At 5’6”, Armand was almost two feet shorter than the literal giant with whom he ran the paranormal research lab in the basement of the Center. I sat patiently, coffee in hand, watching them navigate the space and prep things for that morning’s procedures.

Lee and Armand had taken it upon themselves to help me study how Synt’s power worked and what kinds of research implications it might have. Lee was wildly enthusiastic about the possibilities presented by the deity in my head whose capabilities were seemingly only limited by the imagination of the host. Armand, if a little annoyed by being there earlier than the start of their usual workday, was more interested in how this development, if presented the right way, could secure some more reliable long-term research funding for the entire institute.

After all, the lab could use a makeover. It was kind of a drab, slapdash mix of alchemical and traditional scientific instruments, slowly cluttering into a maze of in-progress and semi-forgotten projects and experiments. One wall was an entire blackboard covered in a collage of equations, mathematical proofs, ancient grammars, bits of poetry, and a running list of takeout places that after many late night deliveries knew Lee and Armand by name. It at least drew the eye away from the rest of the color scheme, which consisted of specific shades of blue and sherbet-beige that one might see at a hospital or some sort of mystical DMV. But it was Lee’s high voltage magic lab. A cleanroom as he calls it.

I was crammed into an office chair at the center of a circle whose circumference featured sigils across multiple human and inhuman languages, each one glowing and fading lightly in slow sequence. I know a protective ward when I see one, and this formed an invisible, magically impermeable sphere. I sat in the middle of the snow globe, wondering what might get knocked loose were someone to come along and shake it, as Lee and Armand set about their final preparatory tasks. Lee was adjusting the angles of what looked like modified environmental sensors, following the wires back to his desktop to check that they were working. A cluster of wires ran not along the floor, but up to the ceiling and above the circle, dropping down and hooking into a brain scan helmet that sat lightly on my head. Armand was fiddling with what was certainly a decades-old fax machine, outputting a slow but continuous stream of paper while chittering softly to itself and occasionally jotting down little dots and symbols. According to Armand, it’s a device that “picks up magical grammars in ambient space and translates them into textual data for further analysis,” but I still think it just looks like a fax machine. He was not amused by this.

Our routine many mornings was me in the evil snow globe, relaying messages between Lee, Armand, and Synt as they tried to experiment with ways to activate, measure, or at least gather data on the texture of Synt’s magic. Bursts of erotic, body morphing energy were beyond impressive, but wildly unpredictable, and the research team wanted to start small and controlled. We had made little to no progress. It’s not exactly a thing that I can just turn on and off and Synt doesn’t particularly care or even see the point of all this. These little science experiments are a blip on their radar and we probably seem like anxious primates hitting things with sticks. Which to a certain extent is true.

This morning was no different than the others. After enough failed attempts and false positives, Lee sighed, shaking his head at the monitor perched on his modified standing desk.

“I need some caffeine,” he yawned, loping off toward the exit and, I assumed, the coffee shop on the ground floor upstairs.

I was left with Armand, standing hands on hips, staring intently at his fax machine as if, with enough silent pleading, it may just start speaking English. It continued its indecipherable chittering, spitting out snippets of static on the page.

“Did you get a fax?” I asked. “From the cosmos?” widening my eyes for emphasis.

“It’s not–we’re getting basically background radiation and ambient noise. Nothing that really tells us anything,” he said, turning to glance at Lee’s computer. Armand awkwardly adjusted his lab partner’s standing desk, waiting impatiently for it to lower to his height. Eventually, he relented and grabbed a step stool just so he could read the data, shooting me an annoyed glance at having to have an audience for what seemed like a daily ordeal between them.

“So you didn’t feel anything this whole session? No surges of otherworldly power?” he asked.

“I felt hungry,” I responded. “Haven’t heard much from Synt.”

“But Lee said yesterday evening you did it without even trying,” said Armand, scratching the scruff on his chin in thought.

My heart skipped a beat as I imagined Lee informing Armand about how he got his new power thrust pelvis as if it were anecdotal data, before I realized, “Oh, you mean Blake!”

“Yeah, that was his name. The park ranger guy. He’s been emailing me about some abandoned site out in the forest, I need to look into it. But you changed him just by what? Thinking about it?”

“Thinking isn’t really an apt descriptor of what Synt does,” I thought out loud. Armand had settled into a flat footed squat in front of the cosmic fax machine, on the edge of the ring of sigils. He was staring not quite at me, but at the space around me, as if Synt might materialize from my aura. “Sometimes it feels like the way their mind works is itself a sort of manipulation of space and time. Maybe the way all of our minds work, when you think about it.” The fax sputtered something out, but I couldn’t tell if it was in agreement or dissension. Armand’s eyes glanced at the printout then back at me.

“But you channeled that manipulation deliberately, right? Not just specifically to Blake, but specifically to his glutes.”

“Not just that, but yeah. I sort of focused the energy and…released.”

“And what did that feel like?”

“Like…singing?” The familiar feeling danced around my vocal chords. Synt perked up in anticipation.

“Singing. Ok.” Armand began to bounce slightly in his deep squat, which I’d come to realize meant he was on to something. As he mulled over this new bit of information, his eyes traced one of the sigils on the floor. Mine, however, were locked on to the bulge made more prominent by his stance. I could always tell Armand was packing something, and under ‘normal’ circumstances his bulge would be the focus of anyone’s attention, but it was an afterthought with Lee carrying around an unmistakable pipe in his pants.

“Have you done any work on metaphysical harmonics?” he asked.

“I’ve taught the basics, but it’s not something I deal with a lot in my research,” I said. “Bouncing different planes and dimensions off of each other by fiddling with the right frequencies and resonances, that sort of thing.”

“I’ll have to dust it off, but I think we do have the equipment for it,” said Armand. “Maybe instead of brute force reality shifting, Synt is actually doing something much more subtle and graceful, like moving through the pages of a higher dimensional flipbook. Which would explain why Lee, for one, is so good at carrying such big…changes.”

I don’t know why I said what I said next. I had that taste of possibility on my tongue and you know who was pushing at the back of my consciousness, dangling a small invitation to play with the warp of the universe, compelling me to blurt out “Yeah, but I’m pretty sure you’ve got him beat.” With a wink no less.

A few things happened. One, I did manage to catch the feeling of that spark of power in my throat being released in a very specific direction, straight to the crotch which I had been trying to not look at in my early morning haze. Two, the fax machine printed out what looked like a poem of some mix of text, symbols, and glyphs before proceeding to rewind the spool of paper on its own and carry on printing blanks like nothing happened.

And three, while Armand was watching his precious sensor apparatus misbehave yet again, the bulge in his slacks began to bulge even more. Like, really bulge, unspooling down his leg. To the naked eye, it looked like he was somehow oblivious to the fact that his dick was expanding in real time to over twice the amount of space it had just been taking up in his chinos, the mushroom head becoming distinct against the fabric and his balls alone putting catastrophic pressure on the stitching along the seam. Except, if one would look closer–though that would be rude–they might notice the seam continuously adjusting on its own.

I watched his package inflate as he seemingly didn’t register the changes at all. But through the other sight of Synt’s perspective, it was as if the area around his crotch, and to a lesser extent the area around his body was pixelating, shifting, and falling back into place piece by piece over and over again, resulting in a visibly larger and larger bulge until…what?

You’ve got him beat, said Synt, quoting my earlier comment with what felt like a sly smile. I had been through enough by now to know that the next move was not to investigate the prodigious member in front of me but instead reflect on the timeline–New? Altered? Unclear–that I now found myself in.

“I guess you’re right,” said Armand, “but Lee still wears it better.”

I guess I had gotten relatively used to it because we were co-workers, but Armand has by far one of the biggest dicks I’ve ever seen. Not that I had ever actually seen it, but the bulge snaking down his leg was obscene on his small frame. Even with what I assume were tailored pants, it was unavoidable and unwieldy, drawing stares and even comments in public, much to introverted Armand’s annoyance. I kind of felt bad for the guy. Rumor has it that when fully erect it’s a whopping 16 inches, somehow just slightly bigger than Lee’s schlong, which though impossible to miss, still blended in better on a frame that was two feet taller.

If what Armand had surmised was true, and Synt had let their hands play across a multidimensional keyboard, then we had been moving through proximal dimensions in which Armand wasn’t actually growing, but simply had a bigger and bigger dick for whatever reason, following the path of least resistance until he arrived at a size that beat Lee’s, and my offhand comment proved true. I loosely wondered when Noah would get his hands on him, if he hadn’t already.

Armand rose out of his squat to head to the board and add the metaphysical harmonics angle to the parking lot of working hypotheses. His gait was wider and a little awkward, but he wasn’t adjusting to his new size so much as he had already been used to it for years. Had I progressed to what Synt had been doing in my class this past semester? Moving beyond brute force changes and reworking the time stream itself? What else had I inadvertently changed about Armand’s life? What other elements of his social, romantic, or work lives had been altered in unpredictable ways by his inexplicably massive cock?

I needed more caffeine. As Lee came strolling back into the lab, I rushed past him, bounding up the side stairwell to the ground floor and the conveniently placed coffee shop. This wasn’t the most high traffic part of campus, so even during the morning rush, the baristas were bleary eyed and underwhelmed, snapping awake as I lumbered up to the counter.

“Oh, hi, what can I, uh, get started for you?” asked a barista across the counter who was not one of the usuals, made obvious by the fact that he clearly did not expect to be staring up at a man in leggings and a plaid skirt who loomed a full head taller than him.

“Just a dirty chai, and can you throw in an extra espresso shot…Jamal?” I asked, leaning awkwardly to read his nametag.

“Gotcha!”

I still felt disoriented, standing in a sleepy coffee shop having just manipulated space and time through the power of horniness. We may have finally cracked the code for at least a piece of the mechanism of what Logan had been doing originally on accident. The implications were staggering for our understandings of physics, metaphysics, reality itself. I had no idea how far the possibilities went and it sent a chill down to spine to think of what could happen on accident, let alone on purpose, but to be honest I felt powerful. And incredibly horny.

The familiar aftershock of arousal finally hit me, a deep, tingly, insatiable hunger that I quickly realized I would need to find some way to take care of this morning. Lee was right downstairs and this wouldn’t be the first time we fucked in some back corner of the basement. I wondered if Armand might want to prove the rumors true and hit a spot even his lab partner couldn’t reach. I shivered at the thought of almost a foot and a half of rock hard cock jutting off his slim, twinkish body, a completely absurd image of it bobbed in the air as he walked towards me.

“Um, excuse me?” Jamal, with an intonation that implied that hadn’t been the first time he’d tried to get my attention in the past 30 seconds, and he didn’t much care but a line was starting to form. “Can I get a name for that?”

“Oh! Um, sorry. David,” I said. “The only giant in the coffee shop. Can’t miss me,” I added with an awkward laugh.

He chuckled. “You’d be surprised. There was just a guy in here who had to be like seven and a half feet, I don’t even know. Like freak show tall,” eyes widened and hands splayed out.

“Not nearly as tall as you, right?” I responded without missing a beat. “You’ve got what, a foot and a half on him?”

In my defense I was horny. And in an experimental mood. And a little annoyed at the quip about my friend. And in retrospect, starting to get drunk on power.

But Synt got the message loud and clear, and I watched the fabric of spacetime pixelating and refocusing around Jamal as I craned my neck up and up and up to his wire rimmed glasses catching the reflection of mid morning light.

A blush across his cheeks. “Yeah, I guess so,” he muttered, with a slight smile and a roll of his eyes. “That chai will be right up.”

#male tf #ass growth #butt growth #dick growth #growth #Just Ignore It

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arkipelagic · 7 months ago

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Captives could almost never record a desire to return to their life before captivity, and most appear in the archive solely as names in notarial records, property in wills, or criminals in court cases.

Despite these limitations, there are some examples of diasporic activity among the first Asians in the Americas. The clearest cases often correspond to specific trades and geographies in which larger ethnolinguistic concentrations could be found, especially within the jurisdictions of today's Mexican states of Guerrero, Michoacán, Colima, and Jalisco. For example, when Domingo de Villalobos, a Kapampangan Philippine trader of Michoacán, fell sick, he stayed in the home of another Kapampangan man named Alonso Gutiérrez, his friend and business associate. As a gesture of thanks, Villalobos gave a petticoat from the Philippine region of Pampanga to Gutiérrez's Indigenous wife, doña Mariana. It was an object of both material and sentimental value to both Villalobos and Gutiérrez from a homeland neither would see again. Before he succumbed to disease in 1618, Villalobos willed his possessions to his mother, Monica Binangan, who still lived in the Philippines, and he made Gutiérrez his executor. Based on the importance of his friendship with a fellow Kapampangan man in Mexico and the enduring connections to his home and mother, Villalobos's experience was diasporic.

Outside of a few cases of intra-ethnic solidarity like this, the broader question of communal identity is more difficult to answer. Although social historians of Mexico for a long time assumed that the "chinos" of Mexico were either only Chinese (an erroneous translation of "chino" in the colonial Mexican context) or Indigenous people of the Philippines (a misleading assumption), we now know that people categorized as "chino/a" were very diverse in terms of ethnicity, language, and social condition. This variation means that there was little intrinsic to this population that made it a coherent community. Instead, both the extreme difficulties of the Pacific crossing and colonial racial classification schemes generated new commonalities and social intersections where none or few had existed previously. Many people met in the commercial entrepôt of Manila and remembered the names of the ships that had borne them across the Pacific, as well as the people they had known on board.

After their arrival in Acapulco, most Asian subjects received the designation "chino/a." Though Spaniards on the Iberian Peninsula and in the Philippines clearly and consistently used the word to mean Chinese from China, in Mexico the label could apply to anyone perceived as originating from the lands across the Pacific - that is, coastal Asia. This linguistic invention was a uniquely Mexican orientalism that subsumed a population of enormous diversity into a new social identification system with adverse legal implications. It was the first time in the history of the Americas that Asian peoples were categorically racialized as belonging to a single group. Like the all-encompassing "indio/a" label that applied to Indigenous subjects of the crown from the Americas to Asia, becoming "chino/a" - the process that I term chino-genesis - similarly "speaks to the lack of Spanish interest in distinguishing the ethnic diversity of subject peoples."

Excerpt from The First Asians in the Americas: A Transpacific History (2024) by Diego Javier Luis

#mexico #mexican history #latin america #latin american history #spanish colonialism #colonialism #asian history #x

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zee-nan · 6 months ago

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Forensic Science - History and Evolution

Forensic Science, in other words criminalistics or criminology, involves the implementation of scientific techniques and protocols that assists in decision making in the field of criminal and civil law. This broad field of study involves different scientific practices such as the analysis of DNA, fingerprints, blood stain patterns, firearms, ballistics, toxicology, etc. Throughout the investigation, scientists gather, examine, and analyze the different evidences that has been provided to them. Some scientists prefer to travel to the crime scene for a better perspective and to collect the evidences by themselves, while others take up the role in the laboratory for a better analysis and research on the evidences provided to them by some other individual. Apart from being experts in the laboratories, forensic scientists also act as expert witnesses in the court of law working for either the prosecution or the defense.

The main essence of forensics lies in the investigation of crime and crime scene. Although, have we ever thought about the history of forensic science? Its origin? When were the techniques first came into use? OR, who were the first personnel to excel in this field of study? We have…. right? Presenting a brief history of forensic science.

The history of forensic science needs exploration as this topic itself was not discussed as much in the earlier times as it is now. The word forensics has originated from the Latin word “forensis” which means forum. Forensics is usually used in collaboration with a field of authority that is associated with the legal system. In a nutshell, forensic science is the application of scientific methods and techniques to matters under investigation by a court of law.

In ancient period, the style of death was naturally assumed by the condition and the site of death of the victim or the dead body. Let us say, a man had been found in a water body. It was usually assumed to have been drowned, while a man lying in a bloodied condition along the road side was assumed to have fallen and perhaps be dragged by a horse. Suspicion toward the motive of murder and the statement of the layman against a possible murder outweighed all other facts and when all else failed, heinous torture was done to get possession of a proper confession.

However, the exact origin of forensic science is still undetermined. Majority of the experts have concluded presumptively, the origin was in China in the 6th century, or maybe earlier. The belief of this conclusive statement is based on one of the earliest known mentions of the concept, found in a book titled “Ming Yuen Shih Lu”.

During the 7th century, fingerprints were put to use as a method of identification. According to the studies, a vendor was able to recognize a specific customer who was indebted to him by apprehending his fingerprints on a bill. A judge in that case, was convinced of the prints as inarguable authentication, and set an example of forensic science in action. In the year1659, the word “forensic” found its way in the Merriam- Webster Dictionary.

After publishing Traite de Poisons int the year 1813, Professor Mathew Orfila, a specialist in medicinal chemistry, was renowned as the Father of Toxicology. He is the first, who’s known to use a microscope for the assessment of blood and semen stains. Moreover, two Italian surgeons, named Fortunato Fidelis and Paolo Zcchia, laid the foundation for modern pathology. They were successful in doing so by studying the changes in the body’s structure because of sickness. The applicability of forensic science increased with the emergence of the 17th century along with other scientific developments.

In 1880, fingerprint analysis was used to link incidents to suspects, that marked a step forward in the evolution of forensic science. Henry Faulds and William James Herschel proposed a ground breaking theory on the uniqueness of fingerprints, which made fingerprint analysis possible. This study attracted huge support from worldwide experts, and it was ultimately recognized as the crucial evidence during court proceedings. During the crime scene investigations, Francis Galton and Edward Henry, put into practice, the technique proposed by Herschel. Sir Francis Galton first invented the technique to classify fingerprints.

The inspection of evidence from firearms such as guns, which is used in crime scene investigation is known as forensic ballistics. When a bullet is fired from a gun, microscopic markings of gunpowder are left on the bullet as well as the case of the cartridge. The markings of the gunpowder left on the bullet, act as aggravated fingerprints. Henry Goddard of Scotland Yard in 1835 was the first person who used the ballistic analysis to link a bullet ta murder weapon.

The field of study that deals with how chemicals, substances and situation can harm living organisms specifically humans and animals is regarded as Toxicology. It revolves around studying the symptoms, detection and treatment of a human/animal body which is exposed to rigorous poisoning. In 1838, a Scottish chemist named James Marsh successfully applied the techniques of toxicology. Later on, this method was proven effective during the investigation of a murder case.

The development of newer forensic procedures for evaluating evidence exploded in the early 20th century. As a result, law enforcement authorities realized the need for specialized forensic investigator teams to gather and analyze evidences. Edmond Locard, “Sherlock Holmes of France” was a renowned forensic scientist of the 19th century. Locard is considered as the innovator in this field of research and had made significant influence in the development of criminalistics (along with the partnership of Joseph Bell and Archibald Reiss). Locard’s Exchange Theory, a basic principle he developed, is crucial for today’s law enforcement. In his theory, Locard stated that “when a person comes in contact with an object or another person, a cross-transfer of physical material can occur”. The world’s first forensic laboratory in Lyon, France established in 1910, had Edmond Locard as its director. His writings include no reference of “exchange principle”. However, he did say, “It’s impossible for a criminal to act without leaving signs of his or her presence, especially given the severity of the crime”. The term “PRINCIPLE OF EXCHANGE” first appears in 1940 in the book named Police and Crime Detection, and it was developed from His observations. Furthermore, there have also been many innovations during this period in some specific areas. For example, Karl Landsteiner was awarded the Noble Prize for his work on blood groups in 1930, as he was the first to divide human blood groups into four different categories. The study of blood further helped investigators in proceeding with their analysis of the crime scene. Scientists at the Aerospace Corporation in California in the 1970s, developed a scanning electron microscope method for the easy detection of gunshot residues. Other tests to check saliva, sperm, urine and sweat were developed in the mid-1990s.

The growth of forensic science has been aided by increased computational capacities. Photographs which are of high resolution and are essential for the proceedings of a murder case can now be saved and processed more easily due to increased computational and storage capacities. Criminology mostly works with the idea that resolves around the moto - “every case is different”. This idea generates a primitive conflict between researches focused on generalizable theories and professional crime reconstruction practices. On that account, it is essential to get hold of a long-term perspective while considering the probable opportunities and recommendable future directions in the field of forensics.

While, it can be seen that the application of physical, natural, and social disciplines to legal issues is referred to as forensic science and the history of this field is very old. The first application of this field goes back to the history of ancient Rome, Greece and Egypt. The previously applied basics of criminology have not changed over the years and while it can answer how of a crime being committed, it can never solve the why. Analyzing a crime scene includes the intervention of human factors as well as scientific methods and procedures to get to the root of the incident that has occurred. While the evidence has the voice of their own, human intervention translates those evidence in the court of law ensuring justice is always served.

#forensics #crime #writing

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fmluder24 · 2 months ago

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Foundlings (2/3)

“Sir,” announced Agent Mulder in Skinner’s office. “We have been approached with evidence regarding an alarming spike in disappearances among the homeless population in the DC area.”

“And why is it that you two should investigate these disappearances? Isn’t that a matter for local authorities?”

“Well that’s the thing, sir,” chimed in Agent Scully. “The local authorities are not pursuing the matter; they are claiming that they do not have the sufficient resources to dedicate to the issue.”

“Be that as it may, what makes this a potential X file? Are you going to convince me that these people were all abducted by aliens?”

Mulder scoffed. “Hardly. We have a theory.”

“You have a theory, Mulder,” protested Scully. “He has a theory. Sir, this is entirely his conjecture and I don’t support his conclusions whatsoever!”

“How else do you explain the evidence, Scully?”

“You don’t have any evidence. You have two photos,” she objected.

“Theodore O’Tool age 65. Black male. Birthmark in the shape of Spain over his left eyebrow. Missing 3 days ago according to the people one tent over under the overpass where he lived. 2 days ago. Black male baby with the identical birthmark is found surrendered in a safe haven baby box in a firehouse. No note. No identification whatsoever.”

Skinner sighed and looked at Agent Scully. She mouthed an “I know” in exasperation.

“This isn’t the only example.” Agent Mulder was up and pacing now. “Every single reported missing person from the homeless encampments over the last few weeks correlates directly with the appearance of a anonymously surrendered unidentified baby that bears a striking resemblance to the disappeared individual.”

“Are you insinuating that someone is zapping homeless people in D.C. with a de-aging ray or something like that? To what end?” asked Skinner.

“How the heck should I know? That’s what Scully and I need to investigate.”

“This is a stretch. Even for you two,” Skinner said.

Agent Scully’s face fell. “For us two? This is all him!”

She lowered her voice and leaned in as though Agent Mulder wouldn’t be able to hear her talking to Skinner that way.

“Sir, aliens or not, something is happening to human beings that no other department in the country is taking the time to look into. Give us two days. Let him get it out of his system and maybe if we poke around enough we might find what is actually happening. People are going missing and an abnormal number of babies are being surrendered. Something is happening. Even if it’s almost certainly not a de-aging ray.”

Agent Mulder looked wounded by Agent Scully’s lack of faith in his theory.

“Alright. I want an update in two days and we may need to pass whatever you do manage to find on to a department with better staffing. Understood?”

…

“Agent Mulder, do you mean to tell me you actually got shot by the de-aging ray or whatever the hell?”

“I was wight. You and Thcully both didn’t believe me. You two think I’m thpooky! I want an apology!”

Skinner sighed. “I apologize. It makes no sense but something happened to de-age you. So I guess you were right. The important thing now is that we fix this.”

Agent Mulder looked at Agent Scully in self-righteous silence.

“Mulder, she can’t apologize right now. I’m sure if she could she would. Will you accept an apology from me on her behalf?”

Agent Mulder considered this before nodding.

“Now will you please tell me what happened?”

Agent Mulder hopped off the chair and began to pace, as was his wont. Agent Mulder filled him in, talking a mile a minute while Agent Scully sat silently, focusing her big blue eyes on him as he paced. Aside from Agent Mulder’s new found speech impediment (he managed Rs about half the time and Ss were out of the question) and the fact that Skinner had to keep Agent Scully from eating a thumb tack off the floor at one point, this was more or less what a typical department meeting was like for them.

When Mulder finally stopped to catch his breath, Skinner tried to cut to the chase and summarize

“You followed an unmarked van to an abandoned warehouse after watching the van’s suspicious activity near a homeless encampment. You watched two figures leave the van, but it was dark so you couldn’t make much out. You followed the figures inside the warehouse, there was an altercation, and you came to as a four year old outside of a fire station, with Scully as an infant next to you.”

“Bathically.”

Mulder’s small stomach gave a loud growl that Skinner could hear from halfway across the room. As though she was picking up on his hunger, Agent Scully started to grunt in annoyance.

“Did either of you eat today?”

Mulder shook his head.

“Well… I guess it’s up to me to feed you, isn’t it?” he asked hesitantly.

Mulder nodded.

“Good thinking on baby food for her. I should have something in the freezer for you to eat. I don’t… I’m not much of a chef.”

Skinner walked past the dining room table and started to dig around in his freezer for something that wasn’t too freezer burned. Agent Scully began to fuss more urgently and he stepped back into the living room. Agent Mulder knelt in front of the baby and began to make funny faces again. She cooed and clapped her hands.

“I’ve got her, thir.”

Once a big brother, always a big brother, Skinner supposed.

After a few more moments, he found a package of miraculously unexpired chicken nuggets and popped them into the microwave. He let them cool a little before taking them into the dining room. Scully helped Mulder climb up on to the chair to eat. Then he opened one of jars of baby food and sat on the ground next to Scully .

“It’s that carrot?” asked Mulder.

Skinner looked at the label on the jar, holding it out a bit so he could read it.

“Yes, Agent Mulder. It’s carrots.”

Agent Mulder shook his head in exasperation as though Skinner were an absolute nincompoop.

“Thcully hateth carrot.”

Skinner took the tiniest scoop of carrot purée onto the end of a spoon and put it in gently in Agent Scully’s mouth. She let out the most ungodly scream and turned the color of her hair, announcing to the world the terrible crime that had been visited upon her person and spatting the offending carrot onto her shirt. Skinnier was taken aback at the sheer volume such a tiny girl could generate.

“Told you,” chided Mulder around a mouthful of nuggets. Skinner sighed and fished in the stack of baby food for something more to Scully’s taste.

“Is she okay with sweet potatoes?” he asked Mulder, who nodded.

After Scully was done eating, he swiped one of Mulder’s nuggets and started trying to concoct a plan. First order of business was finding this bunker and getting the aliens or whoever or whatever force it was that had de-aged his agents and get them to undo it.

“Do you remember where you two went? Maybe if we retrace your steps we can find the aliens and get them to change you back.”

Mulder’s little shoulders slumped. “The problem ith I can’t remembuh. You know the book with the mouthe and the flowuhs?”

“The mouth?”

“The mouthe! With the tail! Who is thmart.”

“The smart mouse? Flowers for Algernon?”

“Yeah. I’m like that. I’m tho confuthed and everything ith hawd. Maybe I can draw you where we went.”

Skinner got a pen and a piece of paper from his desk drawer and set them down in front of Mulder, who began to clumsily draw the landmarks he remembered from the drive. Skinner sat on the ground again next to Agent Scully, who seemed rather content as far as he could tell. After a few minutes however, Mulder threw the pen across the room and tossed himself on the ground in despair, howling.

“Agent Mulder! It’s going to be alright, but you have to stay calm.”

Mulder howled louder, beating his arms and legs against the ground. Agent Scully seemed to find Agent Mulder’s meltdown distressing. Soon her tiny wails joined his, tears streaming down her face. Her cries in turn seemed to stress him out even more. They were both caught in this feedback loop fed by all the noise the other one was making.

“Okay, okay. You’re alright. You’re both going to be okay.”

He awkwardly picked up Agent Scully, rocking her. Agent Mulder sat up and started flailing, clawing at his tie, yanking it this way and that.

“Agent Mulder, you’re going to choke yourself.”

He sat Agent Scully on the couch and reached for Agent Mulder’s shoulders to still him.

“Let me do it so you don’t hurt yourself.”

Agent Mulder nodded, snot, tears, and spit flowing out of his small face. Skinner undid the tie and tossed it onto the couch.

“I hate wearing a tie!” yelled Agent Mulder.

“It’s going to be alright, Agent Mulder. Why don’t you lay down on the couch and I’ll take a look at your drawings to figure out where you two may have gone. Maybe you just need a nap. Kids need naps, right?” he asked Mulder, who seemed even as a little boy to be better at the taking-care-of-kids stuff than Skinner was.

Agent Mulder nodded, rubbing his eyes and catching his breath. Luckily as he calmed, Agent Scully did as well.

He started to arrange the couch cushions for Agent Mulder’s nap while Agent Mulder started to drift off on the floor. Skinner realized Agent Scully was gnawing on Agent Mulder’s tie.

“Agent Scully! Give me that!”

He took the tie from her and she shrieked. Agent Mulder stirred at the noise.

“Okay okay, you can have the tie,” he said, putting it back in her chubby hands. She laughed and brought it back to her mouth.

He picked up Mulder, laying him on the couch and spreading his own blazer over him, snot and tears be damned. He picked up Agent Scully, deciding to rock her while he looked at Mulder’s drawings. He was pretty sure rocking would keep her calm and allow him to focus and Mulder to sleep. He got a few steps away from the couch and she shrieked again flailing wildly. Mulder’s eyes fluttered open at the sound. He walked back towards the couch and she calmed. He tried that a few more times before he realized Agent Scully’s chief concern (aside from chewing on the tie) was staying in close proximity to Agent Mulder.

“Very well.”

He tucked Agent Scully in next to Agent Mulder, who was now fast asleep and sucking on his thumb. She laughed contentedly and resumed chewing on the tie. Skinner rolled his eyes at the two of them and went to examine Mulder’s drawings.

The sooner they figured this out, the better. There were hygienic matters small children needed assistance with that he did not want to have to attend to on behalf of either agent. At least he had Scully’s mother’s number in her file as Agent Scully’s emergency contact. He thought to himself that he may have to draft the poor woman sooner or later.

Agent Mulder’s drawings were surprisingly helpful, as it turned out. He recognized a few signs from his own drives around D.C.. He figured he could at least narrow things down to a neighborhood or two. Once he heard Mulder start to stir, he went and splashed water on his face. Then he knelt by the couch and touched Mulder on the shoulder.

He jerked awake, startling Agent Scully, who also stirred, but didn’t cry.

“Here’s the plan Mulder. I think I figured out what neighborhood the warehouse must have been in. You’re going to sit up front, on top of a phone book or two, and give me the best directions you can and it doesn’t matter how much we make mistakes. We will find the bunker eventually. You just have to do your best to help me and stay calm, got it? You’re the only person who can help so you have to stay calm.”

“Yeth, thir. I’ll do my best. For Thcully.”

…

They’d been at it for about an hour— Skinner at the wheel, Mulder on a stack of phonebooks in the front seat and Scully asleep in the backseat— when Mulder exclaimed in triumph.

“There!”

“You’re sure?”

“Yeth. The thide door!”

They parked and he wondered what to do. He probably shouldn’t leave the agents in the car. If a patrol car or well-meaning citizen found two abandoned children… well he probably wouldn’t be able to walk away with them a second time in the same day. And if they were surrendered to foster care, especially if they were separated, they’d be really shit out of luck in terms of changing Mulder and Scully back into adults. But on the other hand, he had no idea what might be awaiting them in the warehouse. He reasoned that it was best to keep them as close as possible, even though that brought its own dangers.

“Are you ready, Agent Mulder?”

“Yeth.”

He took Scully out of her carseat while Mulder clambered out of the car on his own. He motioned for Mulder to walk next to him. As they neared the warehouse door, he took out his gun.

#txf fic

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dailyanarchistposts · 1 year ago

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J.3.1 What are affinity groups?

Affinity groups are the basic organisation which anarchists create to spread the anarchist idea. The term “affinity group” comes from the Spanish F.A.I. (Iberian Anarchist Federation) and refers to the organisational form devised in their struggles for freedom (from “grupo de afinidad”). At its most basic, it is a (usually small) group of anarchists who work together to spread their ideas to the wider public, using propaganda, initiating or working with campaigns and spreading their ideas within popular organisations (such as unions) and communities. It aims not to be a “leadership” but to give a lead, to act as a catalyst within popular movements. Unsurprisingly it reflects basic anarchist ideas:

“Autonomous, communal and directly democratic, the group combines revolutionary theory with revolutionary lifestyle in its everyday behaviour. It creates a free space in which revolutionaries can remake themselves individually, and also as social beings.” [Murray Bookchin, Post-Scarcity Anarchism, p. 144]

The reason for this is simple, for a “movement that sought to promote a liberatory revolution had to develop liberatory and revolutionary forms. This meant … that it had to mirror the free society it was trying to achieve, not the repressive one it was trying to overthrow. If a movement sought to achieve a world united by solidarity and mutual aid, it had to be guided by these precepts; if it sought to achieve a decentralised, stateless, non-authoritarian society, it had to be structured in accordance with these goals.” [Bookchin, The Spanish Anarchists, p. 180]

The aim of an anarchist organisation is to promote a sense of community, of confidence in ones own abilities, to enable all to be involved in the identification, initiation and management of group needs, decisions and activities. They must ensure that individuals are in a position (both physically, as part of a group, and mentally, as an individual) to manage their own lives and take direct action in the pursuit of individual and communal needs and desires. Anarchist organisation is about empowering all, to develop “integral” or whole individuals and a community that encourages individuality (not abstract “individualism”) and solidarity. It is about collective decision making from the bottom up, that empowers those at the “base” of the structure and only delegates the work of co-ordinating and implementing the members decisions (and not the power of making decisions for people). In this way the initiative and power of the few (government) is replaced by the initiative and empowerment of all (anarchy). Affinity groups exist to achieve these aims and are structured to encourage them.

The local affinity group is the means by which anarchists co-ordinate their activities in a community, workplace, social movement and so on. Within these groups, anarchists discuss their ideas, politics and hopes, what they plan to do, organise propaganda work, discuss how they are going to work within wider organisations like unions, how their strategies fit into their long term plans and goals and so on. It is the basic way that anarchists work out their ideas, pull their resources and get their message across to others. There can be affinity groups for different interests and activities (for example a workplace affinity group, a community affinity group, an anarcha-feminist affinity group, etc., could all exist within the same area, with overlapping members). Moreover, as well as these more “political” activities, the “affinity group” also stresses the “importance of education and the need to live by Anarchist precepts — the need … to create a counter-society that could provide the space for people to begin to remake themselves.” [Bookchin, Op. Cit., p. 180] In other words, “affinity groups” aim to be the “living germs” of the new society in all aspects, not purely in a structurally way.

So affinity groups are self-managed, autonomous groupings of anarchists who unite and work on specific activities and interests. This means that ”[i]n an anarchist organisation the individual members can express any opinion and use any tactic which is not in contradiction with accepted principles and which does not harm the activities of others.” [Errico Malatesta, The Anarchist Revolution, p. 102] Such groups are a key way for anarchists to co-ordinate their activity and spread their message of individual freedom and voluntary co-operation. However, the description of what an “affinity group” is does not explain why anarchists organise in that way. Essentially, these affinity groups are the means by which anarchists actually intervene in social movements and struggles in order to win people to the anarchist idea and so help transform them from struggles against injustice into struggles for a free society. We will discuss the role these groups play in anarchist theory in section J.3.6.

These basic affinity groups are not seen as being enough in themselves. Most anarchists see the need for local groups to work together with others in a confederation. Such co-operation aims to pull resources and expand the options for the individuals and groups who are part of the federation. As with the basic affinity group, the anarchist federation is a self-managed organisation:

“Full autonomy, full independence and therefore full responsibility of individuals and groups; free accord between those who believe it is useful to unite in co-operating for a common aim; moral duty to see through commitments undertaken and to do nothing that would contradict the accepted programme. It is on these bases that the practical structures, and the right tools to give life to the organisation should be built and designed. Then the groups, the federations of groups, the federations of federations, the meetings, the congresses, the correspondence committees and so forth. But all this must be done freely, in such a way that the thought and initiative of individuals is not obstructed, and with the sole view of giving greater effect to efforts which, in isolation, would be either impossible or ineffective.” [Malatesta, Op. Cit., p. 101]

To aid in this process of propaganda, agitation, political discussion and development, anarchists organise federations of affinity groups. These take three main forms,

“synthesis” federations (see section J.3.2), “Platformist” federations (see section J.3.3 while section J.3.4 has criticism of this tendency) and “class struggle” groups (see section J.3.5). All the various types of federation are based on groups of anarchists organising themselves in a libertarian fashion. This is because anarchists try to live by the values of the future to the extent that this is possible under capitalism and try to develop organisations based upon mutual aid, in which control would be exercised from below upward, not downward from above. We must also note here that these types of federation are not mutually exclusive. Synthesis type federations often have “class struggle” and “Platformist” groups within them (although, as will become clear, Platformist federations do not have synthesis groups within them) and most countries have different federations representing the different perspectives within the movement. Moreover, it should also be noted that no federation will be a totally “pure” expression of each tendency. “Synthesis” groups merge into “class struggle” ones, Platformist groups do not subscribe totally to the Platform and so on. We isolate each tendency to show its essential features. In real life few, if any, federations will exactly fit the types we highlight. It would be more precise to speak of organisations which are descended from a given tendency, for example the French Anarchist Federation is mostly influenced by the synthesis tradition but it is not, strictly speaking, 100% synthesis. Lastly, we must also note that the term “class struggle” anarchist group in no way implies that “synthesis” and “Platformist” groups do not support the class struggle or take part in it, they most definitely do — it is simply a technical term to differentiate between types of organisation!

It must be stressed anarchists do not reduce the complex issue of political organisation and ideas into one organisation but instead recognise that different threads within anarchism will express themselves in different political organisations (and even within the same organisation). A diversity of anarchist groups and federations is a good sign and expresses the diversity of political and individual thought to be expected in a movement aiming for a society based upon freedom. All we aim to do is to paint a broad picture of the similarities and differences between the various perspectives on organising in the movement and indicate the role these federations play in libertarian theory, namely of an aid in the struggle, not a new leadership seeking power.

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