#Proof of Concept Services

[webdevelopments-ava]

Essential Keys for a Successful Proof of Concept Evaluation

Gain insight into mastering proof of concept assessments through our insightful manual. Unveil critical elements for POC prosperity!

[sabelacarsonsblog]

Proof of Concept Programming: What It Is, Why It Matters, and How to Do It

Uncover the capabilities of Proof of Concept programming in our guide. Explore its significance, its role in driving innovation, and obtain practical insights.

[poolvision]

https://thepoolvision.com/mvp/

Mastering Project Management with MVP: Building Successful Software

In the fast-paced world of software development, where innovation drives success, the concept of the Minimum Viable Product (MVP) has emerged as a game-changer. MVP project management has revolutionized how startups and entrepreneurs approach software development, allowing them to validate ideas, minimize risks, and maximize outcomes.

We'll delve into the depths of MVP software development, exploring its lifecycle, methodologies, benefits, and real-world success stories.

[ai-factory]

AI Factory: Pioneering Innovation with Advanced AI Solutions

In today’s rapidly evolving digital landscape, businesses face unprecedented challenges and opportunities. Artificial Intelligence (AI) has emerged as a transformative force, enabling organizations to optimize operations, enhance decision-making, and deliver exceptional customer experiences. Enter the AI Factory—a revolutionary platform designed to empower businesses with scalable AI solutions tailored to their unique needs.

What is AI Factory?

The AI Factory is a cutting-edge platform that brings together advanced AI capabilities to streamline the development, deployment, and management of AI solutions. It serves as a comprehensive hub for:

AI Use Case Development

Proof of Concept (POC) Implementation

AI Solution Deployment

Lifecycle Management of AI Models

Explore more about the transformative potential of AI Factory on UnifyCloud’s AI Factory platform.

Why Businesses Need an AI Factory

The AI Factory addresses several critical pain points for organizations:

Scalability: Develop and deploy AI solutions that grow with your business.

Customization: Tailor AI models to address industry-specific challenges.

Efficiency: Automate workflows and reduce operational inefficiencies.

Cost Optimization: Manage resources effectively with tools like CloudAtlas AI Cost Optimize.

Industry-Specific Applications

Healthcare

The healthcare sector is witnessing a paradigm shift with AI-driven innovations:

Medical Imaging: Deploy AI POCs to analyze radiology images and identify anomalies with precision.

Patient Care: Leverage AI for personalized treatment plans and efficient hospital management systems.

Predictive Analytics: Harness AI to predict disease outbreaks and optimize resource allocation.

Learn more about how AI is revolutionizing healthcare on UnifyCloud’s AI solutions page.

Retail

Retail businesses can enhance customer experiences and streamline operations through AI:

Personalized Shopping: Use AI to analyze customer behavior and provide tailored recommendations.

Demand Forecasting: Implement AI POCs to predict market trends and adjust inventory levels accordingly.

Sentiment Analysis: Employ AI-driven tools to gauge customer feedback and improve service quality.

Explore how AI empowers retail on CloudAtlas AI Factory.

Finance

AI is transforming the financial services industry with:

Fraud Detection: Develop AI POCs to identify and prevent fraudulent activities in real-time.

Credit Risk Management: Utilize AI to assess creditworthiness and minimize risks.

Banking Automation: Enhance operational efficiency with generative AI for routine tasks.

Discover UnifyCloud’s innovative AI Guardian tool for compliance and security at CloudAtlas AI Guardian.

Manufacturing

The manufacturing industry benefits from AI in numerous ways:

Predictive Maintenance: Avoid equipment downtime with AI-driven insights.

Supply Chain Optimization: Streamline logistics and reduce costs with AI-powered analytics.

Product Design: Utilize generative AI to create innovative product designs.

For more insights, visit UnifyCloud’s CloudAtlas AI platform.

Construction

AI is making significant inroads in the construction industry:

Project Management: Implement AI POCs to manage timelines and resources effectively.

Safety Monitoring: Use AI to ensure worker safety and compliance with regulations.

Smart Infrastructure: Plan and execute intelligent infrastructure projects with AI insights.

Energy

The energy sector can achieve sustainability goals with AI:

Renewable Energy Forecasting: Predict energy generation patterns to optimize usage.

Smart Grid Management: Enhance energy distribution with AI-driven analytics.

Sustainable Planning: Leverage generative AI for eco-friendly energy solutions.

Visit UnifyCloud’s CloudAtlas AI Factory to explore sustainable AI innovations.

Solution-Specific Capabilities

AI Development and Deployment

Model Training: Build and train robust AI models tailored to specific business needs.

Lifecycle Management: Manage AI models from development to deployment.

Generative AI Solutions: Create innovative content and workflows with advanced generative AI tools.

Learn how CloudAtlas AI simplifies AI development and deployment.

Data Analytics

Big Data Insights: Analyze vast datasets for actionable insights.

Predictive Analytics: Forecast trends and make data-driven decisions.

Visualization: Use generative AI for intuitive and impactful data visualizations.

Automation

Business Process Automation: Streamline operations with AI-powered automation tools.

Robotic Process Automation (RPA): Implement AI POCs for efficient task automation.

Workflow Optimization: Enhance productivity with intelligent automation solutions.

Sustainability and Customer Experience

Environmental Impact Assessments: Use AI to evaluate and minimize ecological footprints.

Personalized User Experiences: Leverage generative AI for tailored customer interactions.

Sentiment Analysis: Gauge customer feedback to refine services.

Why Choose UnifyCloud’s AI Factory

UnifyCloud’s AI Factory offers:

Comprehensive Solutions: From AI development to deployment, all under one roof.

Proven Expertise: Decades of experience in delivering AI-driven business innovations.

Customizable Tools: Tailored solutions to meet unique industry demands.

Cost Efficiency: Optimize your investments with AI Cost Optimize tools.

Discover the future of AI with UnifyCloud’s CloudAtlas AI Factory.

Conclusion

The AI Factory is more than a platform; it’s a gateway to innovation and growth. By integrating AI into your business, you can unlock new opportunities, drive efficiency, and stay ahead in a competitive market. With UnifyCloud’s comprehensive suite of AI solutions, the journey from concept to execution becomes seamless. Explore the limitless possibilities of AI with UnifyCloud’s AI Factory today.

Learn More About AI Factory from Azure Marketplace – AI Factory | AI Cost Optimize | AI Guardian

[shysuccubusstuff]

Incubus! Caleb

Content: Incubus! Caleb + Modern! Caleb + Non proof-reader; Mention of previous love relationships (cheating involved) + Cunnilingus + Size difference + breeding kink + Multiple orgasms + Squirting + Service dom + Overstimulation + Rut

Note: Based on the gorgeous fanart of @bxngxsart thank you for this! Can't believe I had to restart this cause I didn't like it... I've been thinking about returning with succubus! reader... BUT WITH CALEB. You don't know how much I love the succubus/incubus concept with some instant loss... ദ്ദി(≧ڡ≦*) Sorry if it's messy or not really enjoyable!

Caleb and you had been going out for quite some time, with him suddenly confessing you soon after his return to university soon after he had dealt with whatever he had going on. He had planned everything, from your favourite food to the different gifts you had been sending to him as you used his contact number as a kind of notes app. Just how had he been able to get that limited edition plushie?! So you accepted without thinking twice, the two of you had known each other since you were children, with him always taking care of you since your parents had to spend most of their time abroad.

Your time dating had been almost like a fairy tale, with Caleb constantly showering you with gifts or his delicious food made with pure love... How could you even imagine that he was hiding something like that?

That night, you had decided to be the one to give him a surprise, surely he wouldn't expect his precious girlfriend to pop in front of his house, with both your hands carrying two bags filled with different snacks, with your backpack hanging from one of your shoulders as you planned on making a small slumber party just for the two of you. Caleb took a while to respond to the door, almost making you worry as you had to knock over five times for him to finally respond. "Who's there?" Caleb's voice was much deeper than usual, almost as if he had just woken up from a deep sleep, which surprised you, as Caleb had never been much of a sleeper, but oh, maybe his day at uni had been more tiring than usual? "Caleb? It's me! I decided to visit you so we could spend some time together?" As soon as you finished your sentence, you heard the rapid movement of Caleb around the house, his heavy steps being heard as you could barely make out a few of the excuses he had tried to come up with. But instead of facing the gorgeous face of your boyfriend, you were encountered with a small gap on the door, his eye barely showing as he smiled at you.

"Hey pipsqueak! Didn't expect you here, I...uh... caught a cold so I think it would be best if we saw each other some other day... Tomorrow? We can meet tomorrow if you want." You tried to hide your clear disappointment as you tried to stay calm, surely Caleb wasn't... There was no way, right? Before you were able to think about a clever excuse, you had already opened the door wide open, squeezing into the gap between the door and Caleb's body and rushing towards his bedroom... Surely he wasn't doing that, right?!... Nothing could have prepared you for the surprise.

Caleb's room was a complete mess, with his bed being completely disheveled, with all the clothes you had left in his house around it, almost as if he had made some kind of... nest? Caleb came running behind you, quickly catching up to you, but not soon enough for him to forbid you from looking at the state of his room. "I... I can explain." Caleb looked to the floor ashamed, almost as if he was a cute puppy trying to make the owner forgive him. But as soon as you turned around, you saw him. Caleb was slightly... different from usual. His hair was a bit longer, now reaching below his ears, his eyes were slightly pink, mixing with his usual eye colour. then his whole body... His hands had a strange purple hue, and as you took a closer look at his body, you noticed the many different tattoos that were glistening under the pale moonlight, more importantly, there was a quite big tattoo that was glowing... almost as if it was trying to lure you in. "Just...? Caleb?" Caleb's eyes were starting to water, hands trembling as he tried his best to hide the dark horns that were popping out from his head. "Please don't look at me... you weren't supposed to find out about... about this." Caleb's lip began to shake, and despite the sudden surprise, you rushed to him, caressing his face between your hands and hugging him in a thight embrace.

"Caleb, that's not it! I... I wasn't scared of you! Actually, I mean, not like I expected... this. But... you know, I already talked about my... past partners so I kind of... overreacted, I'm sorry..." You slowly got away from him, already feeling how your face was starting to turn a bright red, gosh you had acted way out of line, and you knew that, but the way he had reacted reminded you a bit too much of the others... Even to the point of ignoring the many changes on the body of your sweet boyfriend. "So... uhm... were you like trying a costume? I mean! Don't get me wrong, I would love you even if you had like-- uh... If you had swallowed that purple gum in the film we watched last week! I just didn't expect the bold... colour, so to say." Caleb lifted his gaze, his expression had now changed into a completely confused look, almost as if he was expecting you to scream and get away running from him. "Wha...what's the matter? It's not like I have something against purple, or anything" Before you could say anything else, Caleb wrapped his arms around you locking you in a tight embrace that left you almost breathless, aparently, he had been quite scared of your reaction about his... new style? "Hey, it's ok, it's not like I would break up with you just because of this change in style, I would love you even if you were, I don't know, a worm?" You smiled at your own joke, simply corresponding to his embrace. But as time went on, you noticed something was... wrong? Since your bodies were completely pressed against the other, you had started to notice something, uhm, growing. Caleb's face was buried in the crook of your neck, letting him take a deep breath of your sweet scent, his head starting to spin as he kept pressing his nose against your neck. "Uhm... Caleb? Are you...?" You pressed your hands on his bare chest, slowly pulling away from him, suddenly taking a better look at his gaze. In contrast with his previous look, his pupils were now heart-shaped, with his irises glowing under the dim lighting that entered through the window.

"Sorry... I've been trying so hard to hide it from you... I just get so... needy every time I see you... But, since you told me that, does that mean I'm able to take as much as I need?..." Caleb smiled, lifting his head up, his eyes now piercing your face.

"I... I mean, sure? We can do whatever you want, what did you have in mind---?" Caleb suddenly grabbed you, using a single arm to lift you up from the ground and carefully letting you on the mattress, getting on top of you and starting to kiss you all over, his rough hands getting rid of the clothes you were wearing, throwing them to the ground together with the rest of your clothes. "Caleb? What's going on?" You tried to stop him for a second, confused due to the sudden change on Caleb's behaviour, but you were silenced with a kiss, Caleb's tongue suddenly entering your mouth, interlocking it with yours as his hands started to massage your chest, twisting your nipples and pinching them as he kept fucking your mouth with his tongue, lewd moans leaving your mouth as you tried to eve understand what was even going on. "Caleb... Just... Just a second, my head is getting a bit hot..." Caleb looked at you with hunger, his pupils becoming bigger as he forced himself to remain calm. "I need you... just let me pleasure you, please... I'm so hungry..." Caleb suddenly got down from you, grabbing your thighs and setting himself between them, his breath hitting your entrance before his tongue started to play with your clit, carefully tracing it with the tip of his tongue before he started to suck on it, making you fist the sheets, biting the side of your hand as you tried to stop those obscene sounds from spilling out. Caleb seemed annoyed by this, using one of his hands to move your hand away from your mouth, suddenly increasing the strenght of his suction, making you arch your back as he kept focusing on your sensitive clit, slowly moving his tongue until he reached your entrance, teasing it with his tip before introducing his tongue inside you, swapping his tongue for his fingers, making you cum all over his mouth as his fingertips kept teasing your puffed clit. "Caleb! Just a second-- It's just too much!" You pressed your hands against his soft hair, grabbing his horns as an attempt to try and create some distance between his mouth and your poor cunt, but of course it was to no avail, with Caleb simply choosing to press you against the bed by keeping his arms over your thigs, forcing you to keep your legs where they were even as you kept begging him for a rest, forcing one orgasm after the other without any kind of mercy.

By the time Caleb finally let you rest, you had soaked his bed completely, a wet patch under you, breath completely unsteady, which forced you to take heavy puffs of air through your mouth, fat tears running down your cheeks from the overstimulation. Your hands were still holding on to his horns, legs trembling as Caleb got away from you, smiling happily at the gorgeous art work he had turned your poor pussy in. You could feel yourself already drifting off, suddenly being moved by Caleb, who had suddenly gotten on top of you, fangs shimmering in the dark as he was unable to keep his smirk from appearing. "Don't fall asleep now, I haven't even been able to make you feel good!" You locked eyes with him, your fuzzy mind starting to panic, just what did he even mean by that? Not making you feel good? Your poor legs were unable to stop shaking, and you had drenched the whole damn sheets, just what was he even saying?

You tried to get him to rest, pressing your hands against his chest and trying to push him against you, which was completely useless, of course, only making Caleb feel even hornier as he saw your tiny hands in contrast with his huge body. "No need to rest, let me take care of everything." Caleb finally got rid of his pants, swiftly removing his button, and pushing you to the mattress, then removing his trousers together with his underwear, his huge erection suddenly appearing in front of your face, tip a flushed red colour with a few beads of precum falling down his shaft. "Open wide, honey, it's time for me to feed you." You simply opened your mouth, feeling Caleb's cock entering your mouth, stretching it as you felt the tip of his cock hit against the back of your throat, making it difficult to breath as he finally got his whole dick inside your oral cavity. "So good baby... use your tongue..." You tried your best to use your tongue, wrapping it around his shaft and sucking on it as he had done with your clit, with Caleb's hands carefully petting your hair as he kept letting lewd moans leave his lips. "You're doing so well... Just a bit longer" Caleb's big hands kept holding your head, covering both of your ears, thus making the obscene wet noises reverberate into your head, which mixed with his whispered praises was more than enough to get you to submit completely. "Just a bit more... make sure to swallow it completely, let's not waste anything." You nodded silently, your gaze fixated on how Caleb's chest kept puffing up and down each time he forced his whole length inside you, causing you to barely breath, eyes rolling backwards each time he spent just enough time with the tip of his cock fully inside your mouth as he smiled at you, cock twitching as he suddenly released inside your mouth, thick ropes of cum falling down your throat as you tried your best to swallow it completely. "Such a good girl for me... Now it's time for the dessert, right?" Caleb glared at your puffy lips and glossy eyes, gosh, he was thankful for all the restraint he had practised since he had started to fall in love with you, always forcing himself to keep his erection as concealed as possible each time you even hugged him.

Without giving you any more time to rest, Caleb suddenly grabbed your legs, pushing them backwards just close enough for your feet to be close to your head. "Let's see... I'm sure my cum will be active by now." You looked at him confused, just what did he mean? Well, no need to wonder much about it, a strange mark appearing into your tummy as soon as Caleb's hand brushed against your lower stomach, the mark soon started to turn into a shade of purple, a stange glow starting to appear after a few seconds went by. Was it you or was the temperature in the room getting even hotter? In fact... you could almost feel your mind become fuzzy, your lower half starting to become even wetter, Caleb's expression changing into an amused one as he used the tip of his cock to test it. "Oh~... It seems someone is eager for me to enter... Trying to get me to knock your brains out? Make you even prettier with my cock pumping you full, now, now, let me stretch you...." Caleb pressed the head of his dick against your entrance, teasing it a bit my rubbing it up and down, his tip coating your clit with the mixture between his cum and your saliva, the wet sound making you feel even more embarrased. "Ca...Caleb... my head feels a bit weird... my... my tummy is really warm..." Caleb kissed your lips, making you open your mouth and fucking your mouth with his tongue as his dick gently entered you, stopping every few seconds to let you get accustomed, eyes fixed into your face in case any sign of pain showed up. "So good for me... such a good stretch... does it feel good, honey?" You immediately nodded, kissing his lips with hunger and now being the one to take control, sucking on his tongue as Caleb finally bottomed out. "Are you ok?" Caleb hands let go your legs for a second, both hands stroking your cheeks with extreme softness, almost as if he was scared of breaking you. "Caleb~... more, just... my... my thing feels as if it's melting..." Caleb looked at you with a mixture of pleasure and trouble, feeling a bit bad for the way his bodily fluid had caused you to become so... needy. Before Caleb was able to do anything, you wrapped your arms around his neck, now completely focused on making him fuck you senseless one way or another. "Come on~... Just do it, I'm ready~..." You smiled at him, using your arms to press his chest against yours, then using your legs to bind him, using your heels to push him even closer towards you. Caleb's expressions suddenly shifted, with his marks all over his arms suddenly starting to glow. "Don't rile me up..." Caleb suddenly put his hands on your hips, suddenly lifting you up and letting you lay on his lap as he changed your position. "Just remember you were the one who wanted me to do it." Caleb arms suddenly wrapped around you, using his strength to lift you up, then suddenly making you fuck yourself on his cock, tip suddenly hitting your g-spot and making your eyes roll back, lips completely parted as those naughty sounds kept escaping you, with Caleb's thrusts only becoming faster and deeper each time you moaned against his ears. "Wait Caleb, too much, too much! I can feel it here~..." Caleb's eyes drifted down, now realising the slightly noticeable bump that kept moving up and down each time he made you take his entire member, cooing at you each time your moans turned into soft whimpers from the overstimulation between his hard cock, your chest rubbing against his and your clit being played on by Caleb from time to time. "Just a bit more... please? For me." You gradually nodded, tears starting to go down your cheeks as you felt your poor cunt twitching around him, surely a bit more would help you, right?...

You had completely lost just how much time had passed, with Caleb still hammering your insides with the same strength he had applied since the beginning, your body once again being completely pressed against the mattress as he kept pressing his hips against your entrance, cunt completely soaked between your body fluids and the great amount of cum that leaked each time he entered his cock once more. "Wait, wait! Too much, please~... Just wait a second, I can feel the mark burning up!" You could barely feel your poor cunt, face completely red with puffy lips from all the tears that had fallen from your eyes due to the overwhelming pleasure. Still, Caleb ignored your poor complains, letting your eyes roll back into your skull each time he hit that soft spot, even paying no mind to the many nail marks and scratches you had left all over his chest and back from each time you had creamed around his cock, only making him force his whole length inside you with even more eagerness. "So good... you're sucking me in, honey... Surely you don't want me to actually pull out, right? I was so eager to get your pretty pussy to become all leaky and twitching from me..." Caleb made a small pout, almost as if he was waiting for you to take the bait once again. "Just a bit more, and I'll let you go, yeah? I just gotta make sure this sticks..." Caleb's hand pressed against the strange mark, now looking more like a small tattoo than whatever he had done to you. "You like it? This is proof of our bond... Gotta make sure no other man tries to get to you." Caleb's hips kept moving, now setting an almost painfully slow rhythm, leaving a few kisses around your sweaty body as a way to keep you grounded. "You did amazing pips, such a good job for me... let me take care of everything." All you could feel was Caleb's hands softly rubbing your tummy, then feeling him lifting your whole body up and taking you to what seemed to be a warm bath.

Note: Always make sure to know when the rut of your incubus boyfriends is in!

[koiiiji]

author’s note ; im not really into that omegaverse stuff, and don’t know much about it, but dynamics of big lonely wolf seongji yook x mischievous fox reader living in my head for awhile now 👉🏻��🏻

tw ; fantasy au, omegaverse (?), suggestive +18 content, nsfw, seongji being service dom, MINORS, AGELESS BLOGS DNI, dom/sub dynamics, whatever else i forget to add

❁ seongji found you in the forests on his mountain. you were hissing and sizzling on him, not letting him get closer to you, when seongji just tried to safe your leg from trap, that definitely was set by people of village to catch him - a monster who terrorized their village (only in their honest opinion)

❁ and honestly, he felt terrible for you, you got in trap that was set for him, and was way too big for you - huge, sharp teeth of the trap bit deep into the skin and meat on your ankle, hampering your movements. also, as seongji noticed, you definitely was close to his species, it was obvious because of your big ears, annoyed fluffy tail, small claws and fangs. he never saw any fox hybrids in this area, so you probably was so lonely all this time, just like him… and you were so cute, hissing at him, trying to play it cool. it was obvious that you were scared, this is a natural reaction to a larger predator. each time seongji tried to get closer to you, you pressed your cute red ears to your head, your fluffy tail started twitching in annoyance! and yet, you were so… small, seongji just knew you didn’t had enough food last few months…

❁ when he finally got you out of the trap - you just passed out when his huge palm tried to cover your eyes, that’s how exhausted and hungry you were - so he brought you to his cave.

❁ days passed as you warmed up to him, opened up to him, became more natural around him, your true self came out - you truly were live proof of why fox hybrids deserve their name of weasels and dodgers. you always clinging to him with your cocky little jokes, having no concept of what personal space is in your pretty little head, your small fangs lightly biting his cheeks or ears, or even his biceps when seongji tries to stop your little games, holding your annoying loud head between the elbow bend and biceps, just to finally had his afternoon nap after another successful hunt.

❁ even though he was enthusiastic when he found you, seongji really wanted to help, and he actually saved you. but when you refused to leave his cave - not like he kicked you out, despite his perpetually grumbling, he liked that you were sneaking around his house here and there - sometimes he was wondering for what sins did you fall on his head… but generally he is happy that he have a company now, at least it’s not so lonely anymore on his mountain.

❁ and everything was wonderful until… your little game with him didn’t start… to feel different. seongji could say that something in him changed too. now you became more clingy and generally more close to him, always nuzzling your cheek under his chin, right above his adam's apple, where was his sensitive spot. each time you pass by him and your tail not so accidentally touched his nose or neck he was rolling his eyes in in ecstasy, immediately turning his head in your direction and sniffing at the strip of sweet smell that was trailing behind you, giving out only a low, rumbling, quiet growl somewhere inside his throat. another problem was that you were very hot. no, not in the sense that seongji thought you were sexy, (that's exactly what he thought), but literally. it was very pleasant to touch you, you were so warm, even hot, and the blood raging in your body gave your cheeks such a sweet blush. it was cute. and he couldn’t help himself really, it was hard, each time leaving his house for hunt, only to get in another fight with any other male that showed up on his territory, or getting a little bit carried away and bringing home more food then needed. Seongji didn't understand why he had become so worked up. now all he can think about is to fight, and somehow his usual instincts were deep down now they’re came back, more feral, wild, bestial. he could sense your presence, your warmth kilometers away, he could sense you.

❁ on the other hand Seongji noticed changes in you as well. yes, you were clingy before, but now it doubled and seemed that you became more vocal… always mumbling, almost purring each time you managed to touch him. and oh, how sensitive you became. each time you start your games again, seongji needed 3 minutes before you whimper from his teeth on your ear, because in your opinion he bit your ear too hard, when in fact he didn’t even put any force on it. Seongji would rather sink through the ground than admit that in fact he likes your games, and what an offended grimace you make when you try to take offense at him, but always coming back.

❁ one day, after another hunt, Seongji returned home, only to be greeted by silence and it was unusual, because you always met him with open arms. making his way deeper into his house, he called you a couple of times, but when he didn't get an answer, he started to worry. he always wondered if other hybrids could sense you miles away as he did? what if his guesses were true, and someone else felt your scent? what if- he had no opportunity to finish his thought when someone abruptly knocked him down and knocked him to the floor. Seongji was caught off guard and now his opponent had an advantage over him from above. just second after, your scent hit his nose, and your hot breath burned his neck, until he felt your body almost on fire.

❁ you looked down at him, pinning him to the floor with your hands on his broad chest and shifting your hips on his abdomen. your cloudy gaze didn’t leave his face, your cheeks were flushed, and tears almost came to your eyes when you whined on top of him "Seongji…. please help me...it's... it's so hot there.... and it hurts…" to say that Seongji was shocked and confused at the same time was to say nothing. he was bursting with overflowing feelings and thoughts. he lived most of his life completely alone, and had no idea what partner actually means. and as he got older, he didn't have a chance to get close to anyone, but he would be lying if he said he hadn't touched himself. just like he’d be lying if he said he’d never fantasized about the two of you. when you moved into the house, he had some sweet thoughts, but Seongji always blushed and waved them away, convincing himself that you were just friends.

❁ and after each thought how he would bend you over nearest surface and pull your tail up after you annoyed him a little too much, he convinced himself that you were just friends. after each wet dream, when he woke up in the middle of the night because of the too realistic images in dreams, where the two of you are gently clinging and nuzzling to each other, the bodies move in unison, and you literally drown in each other, when you reach your peaks, he still convinced himself that you were just friends and he shouldn’t think about you like that.

❁ but when both of you started to change in your behavior, Seongji couldn't stop himself. every day his head was full of sinful thoughts, and your behavior didn't help in any way. and that's what your general silence led to - whining, you pinned him to the floor, desperately fidgeting and looking for more friction, in an attempt to calm the heat below. gently intercepting your hands, Seongji looked into your eyes a little tensely, as if asking if he could sit down. at the same time, he raised himself on his elbows, and sat down uncertainly, now holding you on his lap, slowly releasing your hands. his tail wagged a little and his ears flattened against his head as he bent lower, slowly touching your lips, exploring and tasting you. you deepened the kiss in your impatience, and knocked him to the ground again, biting his lips with your little fangs and digging your claws into his shoulders. in response, he let out a low throaty growl, making you guiltily put your ears to your head and apologetically look into his eyes. sitting down again, he pressed you closer so that you could feel his stone boner through your clothes, and without giving you a chance to squirm and enjoy the friction, Seongji grabbed you by the hips, carrying you to his room.

❁ later that evening he discovered how much your lower back can arch when his hands are on your sides and he's hammering into you from behind. Seongji found out what a sweet voice you can have when he fucked you standing up, so you had to rise on your toes, so he could hit into that sensitive spot inside you. that night, he also zeroed in that your soft, hot walls squeeze him harder if his big palm presses on your tummy, just below the navel. Seongji also liked the feeling when he folded you almost in half, when he held both your legs on his shoulders, denting you into the mattress. but most of all, he remembers the moment when your throbbing walls squeezed him for the last time, when you both lay on your side, hugging each other, and then he could swear that in the dark of the night he could see the little hearts in the depths of your eyes when he came after you, filling you deeply and abundantly, so you almost drooled.

[evenyvn]

Opposite in Harmony

idol!reader x idol!wooyoung

summary : wooyoung revealed the true secret behind your cold demeanor to his and your fans.

cw : they/them gn reader, sfw, second person POV with usage of "y/n", reader is an idol, reader is portrayed as "cold" and "intimidating" person, and wooyoung is a tease.

masterlist

You never sought attention. In an industry where charisma and fan service were everything, you stood out in a completely different way.

Your quiet, reserved nature only added to your aura of mystery. Fans were drawn to you—even if some found you a little intimidating.

Among your group members, you were known for your no-nonsense attitude. You weren’t cold, exactly, but you never indulged in unnecessary banter or over-the-top gestures. While your bandmates thrived on hugs, playful teasing, and exaggerated displays of affection, you preferred your own space.

Naturally, comments about your demeanor often circulated online. Some are But you have long ignoring those comments and speculation about you.

username_01

"Why is Y/N always avoiding skinship?"

username_02

"They never smile in pictures unless it’s for a concept. Are they even close with their members?"

username_03

"Y/N’s so scary, but somehow that makes them even more attractive."

But then there was Wooyoung.

Loud, flirty, and effortlessly charming, he is the type of person who could light up a room just by stepping into it. Known for his playful antics and overwhelming affection, he was the complete opposite of you in every way.

So when news broke that the two of you were dating, naturally—the internet exploded.

username_01

"HOW did Wooyoung manage to date Y/N?!"

username_02

"Y/N looks like they’d murder someone for breathing too close, but they’re dating Wooyoung??"

username_03

"I need to know the story behind this relationship."

The contrast was too obvious. Wooyoung, the affectionate troublemaker, dating Y/N, the idol who avoided skinship and rarely showed emotions? It didn’t make sense.

Or so people thought.

Because what the internet didn’t see—what only those close to you knew—was that you weren’t as cold as they assumed.

It started on an ordinary evening. Wooyoung was live, chatting with ATINYs, answering questions, and joking around like he always did.

At some point, he started scrolling through the comments, reading them out loud. Then, he spotted one.

"Wooyoung-ah, how did you even end up dating Y/N? You two are total opposites!"

He grinned. "Oh, we’re talking about Y/N again, huh?" He tapped his chin, pretending to think. "You guys really don’t get it, do you?"

The chat flooded with variations of "NO, WE DON’T. EXPLAIN."

Wooyoung chuckled, shifting on the couch. "Okay, listen. I know Y/N looks serious and scary, but if you knew them off-camera, you’d understand." He leaned forward as if revealing a top-secret fact.

"Y/N is actually really cute."

The chat exploded.

username_01

"LIES. WE NEED PROOF."

username_02

"Wooyoung, blink twice if you’re being forced to say this."

username_03

"Not you trying to rewrite Y/N’s entire reputation."

He laughed. "I’m serious! They act all tough in front of the cameras, but when it’s just the two of us? They’re soft. Like, ridiculously soft."

He grinned mischievously. "They get shy so easily, and when they like something, they do this tiny little nod, like a kid. And don’t even get me started on skinship."

The disbelief in the comments only fueled him. "You guys think they hate being touched, right? But when we’re alone? They’re the clingiest person ever. Always holding onto my sleeve, hugging me out of nowhere, hiding their face in my shoulder when they’re embarrassed. It’s adorable."

Fans were not prepared for this revelation. The internet was already struggling to process the idea of Wooyoung and you as a couple. But this? This changed everything.

You weren’t cold. You weren’t distant. You were just private. And the fact that Wooyoung got to see a side of you no one else did? It made fans melt.

The next morning, you were blissfully unaware of the chaos—until one of your members walked into the practice room, grinning as they held up their phone.

"Hey, cutie," they teased. "Did you see Wooyoung’s live last night?"

You froze. "What?"

They laughed and played the clip. As Wooyoung’s voice filled the room, casually exposing all your secrets, your face burned.

"Oh my god." You buried your face in your hands. "I’m going to kill him."

The other members weren’t helping. One patted your shoulder in mock sympathy, though their smirk ruined the effect. "Nope. The internet is losing its mind over how soft you apparently are."

Another chimed in, "So when do we get to see this side of you? Or is it exclusive to Wooyoung?"

You groaned. "I swear, I’m so going to kill him."

But despite your embarrassment, there was a small almost unnoticeable smile on your lips. Because even though Wooyoung had just exposed you to millions of fans, you couldn’t really be mad.

After all, he wasn’t wrong. And you adored him too much.

Later that night, after a long day you finally saw Wooyoung. With arms crossed, you narrowed your eyes as he flopped onto the couch beside you.

"You just had to say all that in front of millions of people, huh?" Wooyoung blinked innocently. "Say what?"

"You know what."

His lips curled into a smirk as he scooted closer, an arm sneaking around your waist. "What? That you’re actually the cutest person ever? That when we’re alone, you—"

"Shut up." You clamped a hand over his mouth, but he only laughed—before playfully licking your palm.

"Gross!" You recoiled in disgust, wiping your hand on his sleeve, while he cackled like it was the funniest thing in the world. Before you could retaliate, he pulled you into a hug, burying his face in the crook of your neck.

"I was just telling the truth," he murmured. "And now the whole world knows how lucky I am."

Your heart stuttered, but you refused to let him win. "You are unbelievable."

"And you," Wooyoung said, grinning as he tucked a strand of hair behind your ear, "are adorable."

You sighed, finally giving in. There was no winning against Jung Wooyoung.

And honestly? You didn’t really mind.

devider by @/aquazero | likes and reblogs are very appreciated, thank you for reading ♡

[bitchesgetriches]

In honor of NATIONAL LIBRARY WEEK we've got a new post!

Our libraries have been under attack for years now. Book bans and outright censorship are one thing, but extremists are also attempting to restrict library access for marginalized people; fire highly trained and educated librarians and replace them with untrained ideologues; privatize libraries to turn them into for-profit businesses; and close some libraries altogether, effectively killing community access to all the great services I talked about above.

And with the killdozer that is Project 2025 rampaging through our federal government, things are likely only going to get worse. We know from history that the people trying to ban books and censor diverse viewpoints are never the good guys. So I will just call these most recent attacks on our library system exactly what they are: an attack on our democracy itself.

Megan Phelps Roper, a former member of the Westboro Baptist Church, actually credits trips to her local library with getting her out of the viciously bigoted cult. The resources and librarians she encountered there helped release her from the hateful indoctrination she’d been fed since birth. And if that ain’t proof of concept, I don’t know what is!

The Library Is a Magical Place and You Should Fucking Go There

Video Version 🍋 Audio Version 🍋 Text Version

[madwomansapologist]

shadowheart kinks/turn-ons | shadowheart x tav

a deep dive into what the mean gothic cleric think it's hot. yes, the brain rot is that serious.

cw: if you kink shame me i will get horny just to spite you. do i even need to say this is not for minors? if you can't understand that adults can like whatever they want to without it meaning shit about their morals then you're not welcome here.

an: so since y'all are whores that ate my gale kinks/turn-ons as if it was your last meal, there's more. granting y'all a choice: karlach or wyll next? say "thank you, mama".

NIPPLE CLAMPS

You can you see the visions, can't you? God itself told me so. The bush near my bedroom window is still burning.

Imagine it with me. Shadowheart going on with her day as one would, doing tasks around the farm and taking care of the house, and no one that looked at her would ever suspect she's wearing this.

She still wears a tiara. A different one, depicting a full moon instead of an eclipse, but still held around her head by a chain that also keeps her braids tied tighly. When the moment calls for it, she expends its use to lower on her body.

Sometimes it's about the pain. Sometimes it's about how sensitive this area of her body is, and how easily any sort of stimulation will turn into a craving.

BONDAGE

First things first: Shadowheart is a pillow princess. She earned the title. If you want a service top then Gale is your boy (so smooth, wasn't I?). Futhermore: she will be mean about it. It's written on the World Constitution: hot women can do anything they want. I don't make the rules.

Shadowheart knows she looks amazing. She prefers to be tied with black ropes. The rolls of her pale skin compared to the dark color makes it even more pleasent. She wants it to mark her skin. Shadowheart wants proof of how real everything was.

And she'll put on a show.

The pain and discomfort can be soothing. To feel helplessness, but knowing that a word from her would stop you. The immobility is a huge point for her: to not be able to move makes it easier for her mind to focus on only the pleasure.

Long sessions are a must. She wants you to take your time, get her skin ready with lotion, knot the ropes without rushing. It's occasional, but not on a daily or even weekly basis. It's a moment for you both to forget about the rest of the world. Why do it faster?

(see @/knottydevil)

Have you noticed I'm using catholic guilty logic with Shadowheart?

HUMILIATION KINK

When something about Shadowheart wasn't about shame? Teachings of loss make it clear: to pursue something, to desire something, is to be dirty. For years Shadowheart was taught to let go, embrace loss, not seek comfort or pleasure in others.

Some old habits are hard to forget.

It's different when you're the one acting on those thoughts. She's calling the shots. One word from her and you would never do that again. And still, she allows you to. Not because she feels forced to, because someone told her it was the right thing to do: but because it brings her pleasure.

Put her on a leash. Have her kneeling down, using her back as a support for your feet. Feed her. Tell her to try harder when she's already doing the best to please you. Spit on her face.

Show her that you want her so much nothing Shadowheart could ever do would make you turn your back on her. Show her time after time that you want her so fucking much dignity isn't even a concept in your head anymore. She could be on her lower, and you would still somwhow find a way to kiss her feet.

Use her shame to show her you feel none. Make her feel wanted.

CURE WOUNDS

She can be greedy, but never selfish. She cares so much about you, about your comfort and health. If you're careless or clumsy, Shadowheart will fear having a heart attack out of pure worry.

It started just as her way to make sure you weren't being negligent about your wounds. She would explore your body, handing glowing as her magic worked on you, searching for even the tiniest of scratchs.

It quickly turned into one of her favorite types of foreplay. Her hands wandering, you pretending to need her help lower, just a bit lower, Shadowheart biting your skin just to lick it clean.

Who's to say goth girls can't be playful too?

if you enjoyed, please reblog! i promise it makes a difference ♡

general taglist: @lovelyy-moonlight

baldur's gate 3 taglist: @citrusbunnies

@ madwomansapologist.tumblr.

[bodyncoherence]

it seems to me that there are currently 4 main concept stories being told in parallel in psychiatry, and that a lot of the controversies within psychiatry (among psychiatrists and among the psychiatrised or potentially psychiatrised) are about contesting the boundaries of each. of course the claim is that everything is equally 'bio-psycho-social' but we know that is not really so. these 4 in my view being these:

1) 'biological illness' explanations for 'classic psychiatric illnesses' like schizophrenia, schizoaffective, bipolar disorder, as well as some kinds of severe, psychotic, 'innate', 'unipolar depressions. the idea here is that it is no one's fault, that perfectly well-adjusted people who had no adverse experiences whatsoever and have made no mistakes of living at all can develop these, though environment and certain choices can make it more likely, but environment then always is just the trigger, never the actual cause, the actual cause being genetics that just happened to be. lots of psychiatrists feel a special interest in these and a special claim to these. often, it is bemoaned that psychiatry has come to involve itself into myriad 'life problems' of the 'worried well' and should refocus itself on the actually sick, them being this group.

the necessity to fight an illness that will get worse the longer it remains 'untreated' (=unmedicated) is named to justify coerced medication and psychiatric violence, the idea being that the longer an episode (esp. first episode) remains unmedicated, the worse the 'outcome'. the treatment of these 'illnesses' is medication foremost, as well as other biological treatments like electroconvulsions and psychosurgery, as well as 'containment' of the person until these treatments show effect. anything else, no matter the good talk had on their importance, is fundamentally secondary. i.e. it would be good if every psychotic had psychotherapy and myriad other forms of help as well, but if the resources aren't there, well then. but it would be considered a litigable medical mistake to not give medication, forcefully if need be.

this type of coercion is actually not specific to psychiatry, in emergency or intensive medicine, people who are 'agitated' because of delirium, or are incapable of consenting because of unconsciousness, get full treatment, except if they gave prior healthcare directives (very common in my country) to the contrary. i.e. someone plucking at their i.v. lines and struggling against their bed while septic and delirious will get sedated or maybe even restrained or maybe even put into narcosis until i.e. their antibiotics took effect. psychiatry maps on to this, claims the same logic.

2) 'neurodevelopmental' / 'neurodivergence' explanations for autism, adhd, dyslexia, and sometimes other concepts i.e. 'psychopaths', increasingly ocd. the idea here is that some people's brains are 'wired differently' causing fundamentally different ways of experiencing the world. these disorders should therefore have been present since childhood (since birth in fact), which also explains why adult diagnosis necessitates 'childhood proofs'. the dopamine system is often cited here. also executive functions and their biological variants. here, too, it is 'nobody's fault', specifically not the parents. the disablement that results from these differences is often explained at least partially through societal explanations. ("back when hardly anyone read and wrote this disorder didn't exist" "if children and people didn't have to sit still and work at a desk for long stretches of times this wouldn't be such a problem" etc). evolutionary psych is also beloved here, as in the idea that being 'wired differently' thus confers both advantages and disadvantages for the individual as well as for our species. lip service is often paid here to neurodiversity advocacy, or that language is used, specifically for autism and adhd.

frequently i witness an attempt to have it both ways in term of pathologisation: these are real disorders, it is insisted, that in case of adhd at least, can be helped efficiently, thus 'stigma must be reduced'. but also, a lot of psychiatrists bemoan that 'everybody nowadays wants to have adhd or autism', bemoan the influx of people searching to professionally validate their self-diagnosis. the assumption here is that people labelled so or trying to claim these labels are not really sick, that back in the old days in fact nobody would have made such a fuss and neither should those afflicted. often the assumptions is that people who actually have problems of personality, or 'psychological problems' are seeking 'neurodivergence' as excuse, or because they fail to reflect on their actual problems. some psychiatrists will see adhd and autism everywhere and some will see it hardly anywhere.

in the meanwhile, the 'neurodevelopmentally born-wired different' group also includes intellectually disabled people and the kind of autists who are deemed mentally incapable of inhabiting a fully human social role and so are controlled, coerced, institutionalised, etc. unlike the 'psychiatric illness' group these are considered 'disabled' foremost, not to be cured and treated, but managed, (preferably by a non-psychiatry profession). of course, there's overlaps to the first group, i.e. 'neurodevelopmental' paradigm for schizophrenia and the management of schizophrenics that are 'chronic' and 'severe'.

3) 'trauma'. some disorders are defined through trauma, obviously PTSD, and some are historically strongly linked to trauma theory and research, i.e. DID or 'structural dissociation'. some psychiatric concepts frequently discussed in the context of trauma include borderline personality disorder and personality disorders generally, depression, 'addiction', but also actually psychosis and psychotic disorders.

the situation here, it seems to me, is that trauma hypotheses are always highly contested (see: the insistence that DID specifically is iatrogenic, a discourse that isn't had to this extent about other psychiatric diagnoses; the widespread upset over trauma being 'a fad'; the view that ptsd specifically is socially and historically constructed as more mainstream than extending this to all psychiatric categories; the way there's so much literature on trauma theories of psychosis but they have hardly any impact on how psychotics are treated in psychiatry currently) but they do have their fans.

these trauma-affine psychiatrists are more likely to see themselves as activists for the traumatised. they might protest certain psychiatric practices, insist that psychiatry should be more 'trauma informed'. they might question medication use. they will cast a wider net and understand many, but never all, psychiatrised troubles under the concept trauma. these psychiatrists for instance might be willing to understand psychosis and schizophrenia as structural dissociation or trauma based (though whether they actually work with people so psychiatrised that are actually 'difficult' is another question), and they will probably talk of the impact of trauma on depression, addiction, eating disorders, maybe also the disorganisation that gets labeled adhd, and so on.

but there's still trauma and non-trauma, and a lot of the literature then is about how to define the boundaries of trauma. there's DID and there's pseudo-DID. there's complex ptsd and there's 'merely' borderline pd which might or might not be trauma-based but is also kind of innate. lots of trauma fans are willing to imagine pathologised villains who hurt their traumatised patients (the narcissist, the psychopath, etc). psychosis can be trauma-based but certainly not always (?). lots of trauma fans also assume there's a kind of being mentally ill that puts someone beyond the scope of trauma therapy. there's also, as with autism & adhd & co, much bemoaning of the inflationary use of 'trauma' and a struggle with the cultural allure of trauma. the allure of course being that it's a professional and thus powerful validation that you have been harmed and wronged, a validation of injustice suffered.

as in psychiatry generally, there is much interest in biological validation. the idea is that trauma memories are neurobiologically 'different' from other memories. that trauma causes provable neurological disruption. cue beautiful fmri pictures of amygdalae and hipoccampi and bessel can der kolk's everything.

because trauma explanations are alluring but limited (not everything is trauma, not everyone is truly traumatised, or if we 'all' face trauma only some face severe trauma that affected them in ways that matter, some people are survivors-victims and others are not, it matters if you actually experienced certain things or didn't, trauma therapy for you but not you) the psychiatrised onlookers often develop a complicated, sometimes jealous, relationship to this concept, both those that have been granted or are able to personally access a 'trauma-explanation' and those that are being excluded from it.

4) 'psychology' / 'neurosis' / 'problems of living'. the idea here is that the mentally ill person is a primarily 'normal' person who developed a problem, because they struggled psychologically with the demands put on them, or with life.

often the idea is that a disorder starts with a few bad habits or bad decisions but then develops a dynamic of its own, eventually causing illness and disability. 'addiction', for instance. but also eating disorders that might start with mere 'dieting' and 'problematic beliefs' and then develop a dynamic of their own. anxiety and panic disorders that get 'reinforced' by 'avoidance'. personality disorders are also understood like this, though the problem is considered particularly insidious: not just some aspects of how you live, but fundamentally how you are as person. 'depression' here is seen as a human and natural reaction to certain circumstances that then gets entertained by social retreat, avoidance, unhelpful thoughts, etc. there's usually both psychodynamic and some behavioralist explanations for the underlying psychology, increasingly these ideas get somewhat combined anyhow. there's an interest for systemic and societal explanations. 'attachment' is also big here. in consequence, psychotherapy is seen as fundamentally important to treating these disorders. medication 'can help' and should be offered since it's 'readily available' while psychotherapy often isn't, but it's a fact that is bemoaned.

while acknowledging the overlaps, there's a desire to separate this group from the trauma group, in that adversity is not = trauma, or in that relatively 'normal' problems can cause much psychological disturbance as well, if a person fails to handle them well. trauma theorists specifically often on the one hand insist to not overlook trauma, on the other hand 'defend' trauma from 'inflationary use', and push back against the merely psychological problems/neurosis/problems of living group trying to 'overidentify' with trauma. the issue then is not 'trauma' but, say, entitlement, pride, avoidance, unrealistic expectations, failures to deal with normal life events, etc. sympathy is to be found for the factors that influence your troubles (societal expectations here, parental expectations there, inborn personality traits, etc) but you're no one's victim but your own.

all this not to imply that biological explanations are less beloved here; they are: evolutionary psych is big here as well, as well as physiological/biological explanations for what keeps happening, or what locks people in their 'bad habits'. (sympathic/parasympathic activation, dopamine again, etc). all schools of psychology are increasingly interested in connecting and validating their ideas with biological findings. ('neuropsychotherapy' 'the neuroscience of psychoanalysis', etc). there is also much interest for 'genetic vulnerabilities'. maybe some people are genetically more likely to become alcoholics. maybe some people are genetically more vulnerable to become anorexics, in fact, maybe only a specific type of person can become anorexic, and maybe anorexics once were important for species survival (evo psych again), but maybe also not.

but unlike 'neurodivergence' and unlike 'actual severe mental illness' the idea is that we are all vulnerable to this. not all of us are autistic, yes it's a spectrum bu either you have a brain like this or you don't. not all of us are bipolar, this is a serious serious mental illness. but anyone can get depressed, or anxious, or develop a drug habit of eating disorder, or grow to have a disordered personality.

therefore, while people labelled so can become extremely extremely disabled (i.e. a 'hypochondric' or an 'agoraphobic' that are near fully incapacitated by their troubles, i.e. anorexics or addicts dying) there are quite a lot of psychiatrists that will maintain these are troubles that are not 'genuinely' psychiatric; troubles that could be better solved by religion, or morality, or a psychologist maybe.

in terms of actual material effects on life, this is an extremely heterogenous group (as are all these groups btw), that includes lots of well-behaved, productive workers that are distressed as well as lots of extremely disabled, disruptive, troublesome people, therefore the divide made between the 'serious mentally ill' and the 'problems of living' can be confusing.

but even towards the most troublesome and disruptive, that is, the ones that have cops called on them, that are hospitalised in a flurry of violence, that must be managed and contained (i.e. some addicts, some anorexics, some borderlines, etc) the assumption remains that their problems are mainly 'problems of living' and resentment towards this group specifically that isn't 'genuinely sick' but mostly 'misbehaving' is common among psychiatrists.

i think all of us are at least vaguely aware of these differing stories and interact with them, or are briefly offered them, potentially all of them, at different times, by different psychiatrists, or by fellow psychiatrised and 'self-help'', and quite a lot of struggle can be found in grappling with these and the question of how to fit oneself and one's experiences into all this.

[taldigi]

I uh went back to that dadske post and was going add a few more tags for flavor or context but I wrote toooo much so I'll just post as a text post instead. Yes, this is my hyperfixation and yes!! I do want to make my blorbo sad and miserable as all hell but I also need him to be loved relentlessly and made whole by his friends.

anyway Yuuko got her hair from her mother- and Yosk lets his hair return back to black because the wife hated him dying it. you can only handle so many years of being addressed as a disappointment before latching onto the fist person to express otherwise. (3 for 3! Get Saki'd, idiot!) then working too hard to do ANYTHING please that person (even though they might not really be the best person and are using you)

Go on boy, ditch your weird friends and your hobbies and things that make you happy and settle for the stable but soulless option of being a manager at a job you hate! (I am a firm believer in a "Manager of Junes Yosuke NOT good enrichment" after all.) Cause all thats embarrassing. dont you want me to be proud of you? The only person who's ever loooved you for you? (which is fundamentally untrue but when has depression or manipulation ever been rational?)

n/e/way one nasty divorce later and he's moving back to inaba for the cheaper rent for a place a that can actually fit him and a kid- and to be closer to his parents- hoping that maybe they would able to help out with the kid. Besides, he has an assured position at the Inaba junes. (the prodigal prince returns... return of the king... of junes)

BUT Surprise his friends are still there and Yu is too!! and yeah they're mad cause he basically evaporated but guess what? Yoosk isn't Yoosk anymore cause he's been drained of all his Yosuke colors.

"I spent years in a bad relationship and all I got was this lousy t-shirt... and a bad haircut and the total eclipse of my personality by the creature who steals my face when I perform customer service!”

I need Chie to try and fall into her usual banter and be met with... that and for her to grab Yu by the shoulders and shake him “Hes BROKEN FIXITFIXITFIXIT" and Yu having no direct answer because how can he help someone who's totally closed off?

Well, he can start through small things and reminders and food and Yuuko, which is proof that he's still there somewhere? After all, she's named after him.

I also need.... not JUST souyo but also the whole IT. Teddie and his niece bonding, Yosuke crying in some kind of relief and/or happiness when Kanji helps him dye his hair back again, Naoto helping him keep custody (so hard for a guy!!!) and Chie finally getting her usual banter back (thank god!) only for Yuuko to step up and kick Chie and forcing Yoosk to admit that what he and Chie have isn't antagonism (via explaining it to her)

Rise: *gentle gasp when she sees Yuuko* Tiny Yosuke. Yukiko, slamming her hand on the table and wheezing loudly: YOU'RE RIGHT.. SHE IS A TINY YOSUKE!!!!!!!!!!!!! and then they gift her strawberry hairpins which she loves and it embarrasses him because oh god thats right-

Yu having to confront Yuuko's energy and be like "aw shit Nanako was easy in comparison" and Yosuke looking him dead in the eyes "I'm giving everything in order for her not to turn out like Nanako" which sounds bad at first (cause it's foot in mouth disease Yosuke still) but...

"What happened to 'partner', Yosuke?" "I don't think I deserve that, after disappearing and everything, huh?" & then Yu being too damn happy and giddy when it finally slips out.

anyway, I apologize for nothing. ur the one who read thru the Indulgent asf au/story concept. throws self out window and books it down the street.

[moonsceptre]

Alchemy & Dreams in Beetlejuice Part 2

As mentioned in the last post, red represents Lydia: the material realm & sulphur. The item which falls next to Astrid's cracked photograph is a molecular structure with a red atom and a green atom. It's already common knowledge that Betelgeuse is green-coded, but I have further proof to support the atom theory.

Alchemists viewed the human body (microcosm) as a reflection of the universe (macrocosm). This suggested that atoms could give insights about human nature. Within this context, consider Rosenkreutz illustration of the Chymical Wedding, where the married couple are holding onto the structure. They're supposed to represent two atoms of the same trigonal planar molecule, because they are of the same element, thus sharing a chemical bond.

Alchemy consists of a mix of chemistry, philosophy, semiotics, and metaphysics, with much of the symbolism used to convey alchemical themes in Beetlejuice.

Before I come back to this, let's talk about...

Otho

Throughout the first movie, Otho is typically associated with black and red. He's often wearing black with either a red tie, red buttons, or red shoes (which mysteriously disappear in a couple scenes only to be replaced by different colour shoes).

Red shoes have long been used in media to represent a metaphorical journey (The Red Shoes (1948), Kiki's Delivery Service (1989), and Hans Christian Andersen's The Red Shoes are a few examples). Need I remind you of one of Tim Burton's favourite movies, The Wizard of Oz?

Otho is the only character other than Lydia who piques interest in the dead. Despite his willingness to exploit them, he is ready to believe in their existence and study the handbook. These visual cues are conveying the character's motives.

Part of the alchemical process are the stages "Rubedo" and "Nigredo". Rubedo is Latin for "redness", the stage of understanding where two opposites have joined and created harmony. Nigredo is Latin for "blackness", the stage of putrefaction or decomposition, thus symbolising the dead. In layman's terms, red and black represent the character's willingness to connect with the dead. The only other character really associated with black and red is Lydia, and that speaks for itself.

Otho is a character who inspired the creation of Rory in the second movie. Within Lydia's psyche, Rory has been manifested from guilt. In the first film, Lydia is almost complicit in helping Otho to exorcise the Maitlands after he makes it clear that he wants to capitalise on the dead. In the second film, Lydia is under Rory's management to capitalise on the dead, and she is trying to make peace with that guilt by trying to help people through exorcisms.

Guilt in dreams is often seen as a manifestation of the unconscious mind's attempt to communicate unresolved internal conflicts. This is where the shadow becomes a central concept in Jungian psychology, referring to the parts of the Self that the conscious mind rejects or ignores. Lydia rejects the traits that Otho and Rory embody, and that is why her reconciliation with Astrid is a manifestation of her own forgiveness.

More on The Chemical Wedding

We talked about the purpose of the Chemical Wedding before, but why is it so relevant to the plot of Beetlejuice? Other than the fact Betelgeuse has fallen in love with Lydia, there is an allegorical reason for why the wedding must take place between these two, and no one else but these two.

A Chemical Wedding is the marriage between the sun and the moon. In alchemical texts they are often depicted as the white queen and the red king, though this has nothing to do with literal gender roles, for we see Lydia herself portrayed as the red king in her parallel with Astrid. It is related to the Anima (the female self) and the Animus (the male self). This is also the marriage between mercury and sulfur, spirit and matter, the dead and the living.

One of the most famous works on the subject of a Chemical Wedding is a Rosicrucian allegory published in 1616 by Christian Rosenkreutz. It describes a mystical journey where the main character must attend a wedding at a mysterious castle. The journey is a symbol of the alchemical process, while the wedding itself represents the final transformative stage.

The story is filled with strange and dreamlike imagery, with many claiming it as a source of German dark romanticism.

Rosenkreuz's allegory actually represents inner transformation of the individual, with marriage being used as a metaphor, insofar as the masculine and feminine halves must be merged together in matrimony to achieve completion within oneself.

"Death and the Maiden" trope is a motif that depicts a woman being taken by Death, as he desires to marry her. It is dire for death to marry his living bride, for he wishes to venture the living world and the underworld with her.

Betelgeuse is the perfect complementary opposite to Lydia, each crafted to embody the other's symbolic missing half. Betelgeuse is the animus; he's loud, provocative, and dead; Lydia is the anima; she's quiet, thoughtful, and alive. The contrast is straightforward and uncomplicated. You could easily spend hours analysing their differences, and you'd still be right—because they are deliberately written as foils to one another.

Looking back at how Otho/Rory represents the shadow of Lydia, we should take into account who guided her through this dream sequence. Our psyche creates these thought-images in our unconscious minds as a means to roleplay scenarios where we have internal conflict. It gives us a chance to psychoanalyse ourselves and try to understand the core of our trauma.

Betelgeuse, within Lydia's dream, is acting as a guide (remember his guide outfit in the first film?). He's constantly appearing to her, influencing her and urging her to face her fears. While he's causing chaos in the way he knows best, he's also showing Lydia the bare truth, and this is especially apparent when it comes to Rory: he tells Lydia she's an enabling codependent and forces Rory to tell the truth about his intentions. Betelgeuse is what Jung would refer to as the Trickster archetype. The Trickster is often seen as a figure that disrupts the status quo and challenges the Ego through chaotic and karmic actions, serving as a profound guide in the process of one's personal development. Think of "Jester's privilege", or The Fool in tarot.

In mythological symbolism, there comes the legend of a scorpion that stung Orion to death (the giant red star "Betelgeuse" sits on Orion's belt). The scorpion was delivered as to snub Orion's pride and teach him a lesson by way of death, because the scorpion is a symbol of death and rebirth. This is the Trickster archetype again, teaching a lesson in a very karmic way. Betelgeuse does the same throughout both movies. Otho, the Deetz, and the Deans are all punished by him in the first film for acting as antagonists against the ghosts of Winter River. Despite this, he also acts as an antagonist himself by punishing the Maitlands, two loving parental figures for Lydia, for getting in the way of his plan to marry her.

"They therefore represent a supreme pair of opposites, not hopelessly divided by logical contradiction but, because of the mutual attraction between them, giving promise of union and actually making it possible. The coniunctio oppositorum engaged the speculations of the alchemists in the form of the ‘Chymical Wedding," — Carl Jung, Psychology & Alchemy

In alchemical tradition, Saturn is associated with the metal lead, which symbolises the starting point of the alchemical work—the Nigredo phase. Alchemy is mostly known as the quest to turn lead into gold, but the allegorical meaning is to refine the Self. Saturn is equated with Cronos in mythology, the father of time, who was portrayed as an old man with a scythe/sickle, similar to the grim reaper, who is associated with the end of one's time. Betelgeuse has time-warping powers and wears time-keeping devices on his wrist, all a microcosm for how we measure eternity.

The whole Alchemical Opus works through THREE stages:

Nigredo (Black Stage): Betelgeuse represents lead and Saturn. Putrefaction.

Albedo (White Stage): Before Lydia summons Betelgeuse and agrees to the marriage, he is wearing a black and white suit. White is added to the mix. Purification.

Rubedo (Red Stage): Lydia is manifested a red wedding dress to finish the ceremony. They completed the alchemical process. Lead is turned into Gold.

In the movie's original wedding scene, found here, at 9:11 on the clock the afterlife creature who marries Lydia and Betelgeuse dissipates into fire, and then the scene ends. 911 in numerology is the number of completion, and is used in occultism to symbolise new beginnings and rebirth.

For this reason, it has been theorised that the wedding vows went through, and the Chemical Wedding was completed.

[evidence-based-activism]

You might want to see this https://www.tumblr.com/theonlykeyismine/754151626251616256/cheshireinthemiddle-theonlykeyismine?source=share The back and forth are kind of long, so I understand if you don't want to respond or give any opinion on it, I just think you might be interested!

Hi! It was interesting, thank you! But, you're right that it's very long, so I'm going to go ahead and respond here and tag the participants.

So, @cheshireinthemiddle you are incorrect and I have (literally) hundreds of sources saying so. Read below for details.

@theonlykeyismine I hope you don't mind me jumping into this conversation! (You conceded to a couple (widely disseminated) inaccuracies that I thought you may be interested in having the proof to refute!) Otherwise your responses were great!

---

Domestic Abuse

The first and third section on (sourced) this post explains men are the primary abusers (and not women) in in domestic relationships. It also explains why some "research" appears to suggest the opposite. (The broad strokes summary is the the measurement being used to show "equality" in abuse rates -- the CTS -- is deeply flawed.) Finally, it explains how there is absolutely no evidence that men under-report abuse more than women or that crimes by women get taken less seriously.

The CDC data specifically: (1) You are attempting to draw prevalence estimates from the 12-month rates instead of the life time rates. This is a problem because the 12-month rates are significantly less stable; that is, they vary significantly more from year-to-year than the lifetime rates and are therefore not useful for this purpose. (2) The CDC data on intimate partner violence is -- unfortunately -- based on the same flawed measure as I mentioned above.

To illustrate, their "2016/2017 Report on Intimate Partner Violence" report [1] shows women are:

1.5 times as likely to have experienced IPV "with impact"

3 times more likely have been "fearful" and 4.3 times as likely to have been "concerned for their safety"

2.6 times as likely to have been sexually assaulted by their partner (and between ~3-21 times as likely to have been raped, depending on your definition and how you deal with the CDC's limited reporting categories)

4 times as likely to have been "choked", 3.5 times as likely to have been "slammed against something", and 3 times as likely to have been "beaten"

3.4 times as likely to have received a serious physical injury, 2.5 times as likely to report a moderate physical injury, and 2.5 times as likely report "mental or emotional harm"

3.2 times as likely to have needed medical care

4-10 times as likely to have "needed help" from a various victim services

I highlight all of this to exemplify (one of the reasons) why the CTS is not a good measure for domestic abuse. Despite supposedly showing "equality" in abuse rates, closer evaluation shows that women are experiencing significantly more harm than men.

Beyond that substantial research has shown that women's violence is primarily responsive (this includes self-defense and preventative violence). In most cases with a police response, women who are the "suspect" in an initial incident will later be determined to be the primary victim, whereas men who are the "victim" in an initial incident will later be determined to be the primary aggressor/abuser. [2-4] (This is result of a concept called DARVO - Deny, Attack, Reverse Victim and Offender.)

I discuss in this post how almost all male perpetrators of intimate partner homicide (IPH) murdered their female partner as an act of extreme abuse; whereas most female perpetrators of IPH were acting in self defense. To highlight this consider the fact that, following the introduction of no-fault divorce female perpetrated IPH has declined by 60%; this decline was not matched by male perpetrators. This suggests that men are murdering their female partners out of desire to control them, whereas women kill their male partners to escape them (and take other avenues to escape whenever they can).

Also note here, that women are substantially more likely have needed help from a victim service (including abuse shelters). Given that women have a much higher demand for these services, it makes sense that there are substantially more shelters for women.

An additional (extremely important) point is that women are not responsible for fixing men's problems. Women created domestic abuse shelters -- as a grassroots movement, with substantial legal and institutional opposition, without government funding -- for female victims of violence. Men can make their own resources. (And despite all this, many women's shelter do actually serve men as well, some are "gender neutral", some direct them towards another resources (another shelter) that can help, or even by using funds to place them in a motel/hotel. Not to mention that several male-only domestic violence shelters have been opened by women.)

---

Child Abuse

The same sourced post as before explains how women do not abuse children more than men. This is a widely spread MRA myth, and completely false.

The study linked, ("Filicide: a comparative study of maternal versus paternal child homicide") ... is not attempting to determine prevalence rates. It doesn't support the assertion that women kill children more at all. (Even if it somehow were establishing a prevalence rate ... the number of male and female killers would be roughly equal according to the study. And so once you adjust for "time spent" with the children, men would be vastly more likely to commit child homicide. But, again, it's not actually attempting to establish a prevalence rate.)

This report by the UN [5] highlights many important points:

When the perpetrator of child homicide is a parent, men and women are make up a roughly equivalent proportion of offenders.

The above is despite the fact that women spend significantly (over double, depending on the location and activities measured) more time with children. If adjusted for exposure rate, women would be significantly less likely to kill a child in their care.

However, when the perpetrator is not a parent (~40% of the time) the vast majority of perpetrators was male.

Overall, this means men make up significantly more child homicide perpetrators than women. And this difference is even more substantial once adjusted for time spent with the child.

Not to mention: "The fatal abuse of children mostly involves male perpetrators." (This is the type of child homicide you are likely thinking of. Other categories include things like homicide as a result of severe mental health issues (like postpartum psychosis) and child abandonment/neonaticide (a type of homicide that is specifically addressed via expanded abortion access, anonymous birthing laws, safe haven laws, etc. rather than the standard abuse prevention approaches).)

---

Sexual Assault

This post talks about the CDC's reasons for separating out different categories of rape and legal definitions; it also enumerates how, no matter how you define rape, vastly more women than men have been raped.

This post is a recent intriguing study about how "men underestimate and women overestimate their own sexual violence".

Notably, the social advances that have made rape definitions gender neutral/added additional crimes to the legal code that expanded the types of punishable sexual assaults were made by feminists.

---

Other

Public Perception: This post discusses how social media views on female/male victims and female/male perpetrators are broadly the same (in terms of positive/negative views), with some specific differences in how these views are expressed. It also links to two posts that discuss how, when asked directly, community samples express broad support for both male and female victims (and condemnation for both male and female perpetrators).

Patriarchy: Here's a post describing some central aspects of the patriarchy in today's (high income) countries.

Racism: Here's a post describing why your "men = black people" comparison is not only factually incorrect/inconsistent but rooted in racism.

---

The rest of the claims made by the MRA in that post are un-sourced (and several were strikingly outlandish). To the MRA, if you've read this far, if you engage with this post, I will expect actual engagement with sources.

References below the cut:

Leemis R.W., Friar N., Khatiwada S., Chen M.S., Kresnow M., Smith S.G., Caslin, S., & Basile, K.C. (2022).The National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey: 2016/2017 Report on Intimate Partner Violence.Atlanta, GA: National Center for Injury Prevention and Control, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Henning, K., Renauer, B., & Holdford, R. (2006). Victim or Offender? Heterogeneity Among Women Arrested for Intimate Partner Violence. Journal of Family Violence, 21(6), 351–368. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10896-006-9032-4

Bair-Merritt, M. H., Crowne, S. S., Thompson, D. A., Sibinga, E., Trent, M., & Campbell, J. (2010). Why do women use intimate partner violence? A systematic review of women’s motivations. Trauma, Violence & Abuse, 11(4), 178–189. https://doi.org/10.1177/1524838010379003

Hamberger, L. K., & Larsen, S. E. (2015). Men’s and Women’s Experience of Intimate Partner Violence: A Review of Ten Years of Comparative Studies in Clinical Samples; Part I. Journal of Family Violence, 30(6), 699–717. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10896-015-9732-8

UNODC, Global Study on Homicide 2019 (Vienna, 2019)

[this-game-has-themes]

MISERY LOVES COMPANY: chapter 7

as the sword of damocles hangs over abe's head, howler comes to the conclusion that this mud can't be fixed. but, she knows something else that can calm him down.

chapter cw for: some molluck-based sexual harrassment, mildly sexual content

[first]|[prev]

-

Abe winced from the heels digging into his back; unable to shift his position and make his predicament any more comfortable. The only reprieve that being made to heel in front of Molluck gave him was that his head was underneath the thick cloud of smoke that settled in the room, contributed to by Molluck’s chain smoking.

The Glukkon had been too busy to pay attention to him today, burning through his cigars on back to back conference calls with investors. Abe tried to tune out the one-sided business jargon, and attempt to dissociate from this boring, uncomfortable ordeal. If he wasn’t being used today, then why the hell was he even here?

He could have at least let him keep his clothes on. But he supposed there was another layer of humiliation and domineering to be had in having a nude, prone Mudokon act as a living footstool. Every once in a while Molluck would kick him, or gore him in the ribs with his heel, just to elicit a pained response from his victim. He did that whenever he was frustrated, which was often.

There would be no payoff or reward for being toyed with like this, such was the case with every moment Abe was forced to personally service the Glukkon. According to Molluck, the ordeal was the reward - the respite from working in the hot, rotting pit of the factory floor below them. The privilege to be in a Glukkon’s grand office, where the air was clean and comfortable, and the noise of the machinery was blotted out. The luxury of kneeling on the expensive, plush carpet, which felt more comfortable than Abe’s own mattress against his bare legs. And of course, there was the attention from the boss himself. Attention without affection, or pleasure. Attention Abe was made to thank Molluck for, after every new mark he placed on him.

In the back of his mind, Abe knew this was wrong, that this wasn’t fair - but was it really wrong when it was the way things have always been? And if things have always been like this, was it really in his place to protest? There was no changing this. This was his place in the world: here. The floor. Bare, bent over. Shoes worth more than his life tenfold resting heavily between his shoulder blades.

‘The chosen people’. What a ridiculous concept. ‘They were afraid of us’. Afraid of what? What was there for a man like Mullock to fear in the ragged, overworked masses of his workforce?

‘He is just a man’, but to a lowly thing like Abe he may as well have been a god.

‘Men can be killed’.

Where was her proof of that?

Abe sighed in relief when Molluck removed his shoes from his back, if only for a moment to reach a floor pedal that would switch his telephone to the next line. Dull placations for one investor turned into curt, irritated barks at another flawlessly. Abe had pieced together context from what he overheard: the paramite shortage was leading to concerns about another ‘meech situation’, so Molluck was trying to pitch a new product for their interest. Whatever it was, it seemed pretty hush-hush; Molluck practically talked in code, his voice dripping with innuendo whenever he described whatever frozen treat that he had in development.

Though his back was turned, there were times when Abe could swear Molluck was staring at him the entire time he went on about new ways to peddle meat. There was a low note of hunger in the Glukkon’s voice, not dissimilar from when he would hiss carnal orders to his subordinate.

Abe had become accustomed to the Glukkon’s comparisons of him to the very kind of food RuptureFarms sold. He barely batted an eye towards Molluck’s dark, perverse sense of humor these days, now that the shock of his treatment had worn off and he settled into dull, grim acceptance of his role as the ‘favorite’. To be referred to like meat was probably the closest thing to a compliment he was going to get.

Molluck ended his call in a more irritated mood than before, and took it out on Abe by digging his heel into the Mudokon’s spine. Pain lanced through the prone man, causing him to freeze up in agony. Abe clutched handfuls of carpet fibers, and tried to stay quiet. The low chuckle from behind him at least told him he was serving his purpose.

Entertainment.

A shoe nudged Abe harshly in the shoulder. “Geddup.”

Abe rose to his feet with a click of his stiff knees. He turned to his boss, careful to not give into the impulse to cover himself with his hands. He hadn’t given a thought to nudity before all this; now he was hyper-aware of every bone and sinew that stuck out under his dry, dull skin. Mostly because that was where Molluck’s eyes went, gaze trailing a familiar pattern down the front of the man before him. His collarbone, his ribs, the jutting points of his hips. Whatever Molluck saw in him was something Abe didn’t see. It probably wasn’t even his body. It was probably just the concept of him - the subservient, the downtrodden, the most pathetic out of an army of already pitiful scrub stock.

Or maybe it was something else. Something deeper. The ‘chosen people’, reduced to this, utterly cowed, now a victim humiliated before those who once had reason to fear them.

As Molluck ordered him to open up the front of his suit, Abe thought longingly of the moon.

-

As had become a new routine, Howler gave her roommate a desperate look as she tapped her lips. Abe sighed, tired of having the same answer for her question every time.

“...Not today, Howler.”

She looked a little crushed every time, and that made him feel worse than if she actually got mad at him. He already told her up front that there wasn’t any chance he could steal anything from Molluck’s office - even if he had the opportunity to swipe that pin, he was also often naked, and he was not taking Howler’s suggestions on where to hide it.

Abe flopped onto his uncomfortable bed, still in his work clothes. The factory was sweltering today, and the provided uniforms weren’t breathable in the least, but he found himself grateful that he at least got to wear them here. Howler was more than likely already naked under her bedsheets, her own modesty decidedly more lax around the scrub she trusted to not overstep her boundaries.

Already settled in the cot across from him, Howler clicked her tongue to get his attention. With an unreadable expression she made a lewd gesture; miming giving a handjob to someone else. Abe scoffed softly, and corrected her by miming fellatio. The muted woman gave him a grim nod of understanding.

“He was so pissed off today, I’m just glad it wasn’t anything more than that.” Abe rubbed where his jaw was still sore. He could wash his mouth out as many times as he liked, but he could still feel it.

Howler opened her personal drawer, and rooted around in her hoarded ‘gifts’ until she could slide a half-finished roll of mints across the chest of drawers. Abe, despite himself, despite everything, laughed. Something about the casual, almost pragmatic way she approached their similar situations brought some sense of levity. It was grounding, almost.

There was simply no way he could tell anyone else, but he could tell her. Cautiously, at first; uncertain how to describe such things when sexuality as a whole was still practically alien to him. She listened to him, and not because she couldn’t talk back. She actually listened, and that wasn’t something he thought he was ever going to get, anywhere. 

In the back of Abe’s mind, he still darkly wondered what she was getting out of this. Whether this kindness, this connection was simply a means to an end for her. She just wanted her voice back, and out of all the scrubs in this pit it was Abe that regularly visited the room her voice box switch was kept in… to see the Glukkon that hoarded it.

With the idea of stealing it remaining impossible to the downtrodden scrub, Abe just wondered how long Howler was going to keep up pretending to be nice to him.

The heat of the factory didn’t abate even as night fell, so Abe was forced to shed his work clothes if he wanted even a sliver of comfort. He shivered from the air hitting his bare skin upon pulling off his undershirt; the feeling of exposure taking him briefly back to the office. That sickly feeling of vulnerability, the feeling of Molluck’s leering, seeming to strip away more than just his clothes. He stopped midway, his arms still tangled up in his shirt. His thoughts felt distant; removed from his mind and his body, which remained still as he lost himself in that proverbial fog.

The mostly inside-out shirt being pulled from his forearms snapped Abe back into reality. Howler finished undressing him, pulling down his overalls to his ankles, leaving him in his boxers much like she was. Abe still felt distant as she guided him to lay down in his cot. He was there, yes, but he couldn’t move beyond what Howler urged him to do. He complied limply, and when his back hit the mattress the weight of his own flesh and bone pinned him to it.

When he could focus his vision again, Abe saw the grim concern on Howler’s face. The idea of worrying her snapped a little more of him back into his body, enough to place a paw on her wrist.

“I’m fine,” he mumbled, less as a reassurance and more a bid for her to stop. She gave him a skeptical frown. His paw enclosed hers; calloused and riddled with scars from working so close to bladed machinery his whole life. Hers was softer, unblemished, not allowed to become hard and wiry and dry like the rest of the scrub. In time, maybe he would see her paws would become as gnarled as his, if she survived. If they both survived.

Abe didn’t expect Howler to squeeze his knuckles back, when he tried to pull away and found her resisting. It wasn’t forceful, but it was unfamiliar. Everything she did was unfamiliar, but with her the foreign physical contact didn’t feel coerced, nor violating. It felt like something he simply didn’t know how to ask for, or could possibly know he wanted.

He still couldn’t discern if he wanted this, or if he wanted her, or anything. All he could really articulate within himself was that he wanted to feel safe, and she was, in what ways she could, conveying that to him.

It was so… nice. But as with all nice things Abe knew it would be temporary, and his ruminating thoughts dwelled on just how long this comfort would last. How long she would put up with him. One of these days, he was going to come back to their pod to find her side cleaned out, stripped bare of any proof she even existed. And he was going to have to get up the next morning, and start his shift like any other day.

Why did it all feel so finite? It felt like there was a clock counting down, and he started hearing its ticking the moment he saw a glimpse of the night sky and its reality.

Abe swallowed to wet a dry, scratchy throat. Words escaped from behind his stitches before he could acknowledge he was saying them. “I should have never shown you that skylight, now it’s all I can think about.”

Howler cocked her head curiously. Her unoccupied paw reached up to brush her thumb against his face, and the scrub shied away from the contact. He tried to look at anything but her.

“I wish I never saw that… whatever it is… on the moon. I wish you never told me about it. I don’t… I don’t want to escape, or anything like that. Ther- there’s nothing out there. Right?”

Just mentioning it made his pulse quicken, that spike of anxiety rising all over again. That fear, directionless but all-consuming, like a prey drive overloaded around constant predation. At least, it had to be fear, because that was the closest feeling Abe could compare it to. Anticipation, anxiousness, dread. Feeling like his life was on the line, like he was going to die.

“I’m supposed to be here. RuptureFarms is my home. There’s nothing out there, so it wouldn’t be worth it to leave. So why can’t I stop thinking about it?”

If there was anyone who would have this answer, it would have been her. It had to be her. Abe looked desperately into Howler’s eyes to see no warmth or reassurance, just distant pain. Her expression twisted with grief, and for a moment she looked towards her notepad left on the table. She hesitated, and thought better of it with a frustrated huff. Whatever she could say was either too complicated, or too hurtful to write.

She instead opted to lay down on the unoccupied sliver of cot beside him. She pulled him close, and Abe felt as limp as a carcass as he let her. The warmth of her bodyheat broke through the dissociative numbness that still entrapped him, and he found himself curling into the comfort she offered.

It wasn’t an answer, but maybe he wasn’t ready to hear one. Maybe he didn’t really want to hear an answer, because either option he could think of felt equally paralyzing. He shouldn’t leave, because here in this factory was where he was born to be. But he should leave, because out there was where he was meant to be.

Abe didn’t know what was out there that could possibly be for him. But here, he could think of at least a few things. Howler, for better or worse, was here. That was something. 

As stuffy as the fetid factory air was, they were both at once overheated and clammy. Mostly bare, their skin slightly sticky in the oily way the Mudokon body attempted to keep from drying out in these conditions. Wherever Abe’s body wasn’t in contact with Howler’s grew cold, and what parts that did were sweating. The heat of their chests together wasn’t entirely unpleasant, but the awareness of their near-nakedness stirred the complicated cocktail of shame and embarrassment Abe always felt when he acknowledged Howler’s body.

He wasn’t afraid to touch her, but he felt guilty at the thought of it. Everyone else wanted her: her body, her role and purpose as a ‘queen’. The novelty of her womanhood, an abstract concept that the rest of the scrubs had only a vague notion of. Abe didn’t react towards her like the others, and though he was used to feeling like the odd mud out, this particular difference made him feel wrong.

Well, there were a lot of things making him feel ‘wrong’, lately. This was just one factor, but at least it distracted him from the existential dread he shouldered as of late.

Abe laid still, but awake. He watched under heavy-lidded eyes as Howler relaxed, and settled into a position comfortable enough to fall asleep. It was odd that she didn’t return to her own bed, but her roommate didn’t mind, as he took up so little of his own cot anyways. They were already in such close quarters, the closing of that physical gap didn’t feel as jarring as he thought it would. Not that he was thinking of that before.

Maybe he was thinking of it a little.

It actually felt better than he imagined.

-

Abe wasn’t the worst person to wake up next to. But Howler still felt a pang of disappointment in herself when she awoke, bare to the world, with an equally undressed scrub clinging to her. It took her a moment to remember the hours prior. The circumstances that led to this weren’t so bad, so she could use that as an excuse to linger there.

Howler laid there with an arm around the poor, miserable mud. Guilt coiled within her as she remembered his hushed, wavering confessions. She had cursed him with the same misery she had to live with, and he didn’t even have a life before his servitude. No tribe, no family, no promise of some role or destiny to speak of. Nothing to miss, nothing to ache for.

And yet, she saw within his eyes herself. Her in her own lowest point of despair, the one that she passed years ago. The realization, the grieving, and later the acceptance of her fate. The cage she had been forced into had become her life, but she would cling to the fact that it was not her world. Abe, born into that cage, had been raised to see it as his - but now he couldn’t, not anymore.

Howler had seen stronger, tougher correctives than her break under the realization that they would never be ‘saved’. A scrub would have no concept of a savior, so they were spared, in a sense, of that pain. At least, that had been what Howler was taught of their kind. A mud whose entire world was the factory they were born into would want for nothing but the factory, as long as they never saw what lay beyond.

Abe would bear that burden of knowing there was something beyond, alongside her. And it was entirely her fault.

Unable to apologize with words, Howler hoped that her comfort would at least suffice. It seemed to be helping, from the blue mud’s blissful expression as he slept against her chest. With any other Mudokon it would have looked deliberately provocative, with his face buried between her rows of breasts; but, knowing Abe, he probably genuinely didn’t know what he was nuzzling against.

Howler could deal with that freakout later. Right now, it was so… nice, to feel so at ease around a man. To let herself relax, without risking her security. To simply not have to be in control of the moment, and not fear that control passing to someone else. Abe would probably agree.

It would be a few hours still before the day officially began, and Howler intended to doze off again in this state of bliss she found herself in. Instead, Abe stirred against her. The tattooed mud froze.

For a moment, Abe sunk deeper into the crevice her cleavage made, before he came to his senses enough to abruptly pull back. His eyes widened in dawning horror, like he had been using a bee’s nest as a pillow this entire time. He flinched when he heard Howler scoff, and immediately tried to shy away with some mumbled apology.

Before he could roll over to face away from her, Howler tugged on his feathers. He faced her with a profoundly guilty look that made her pause, which she questioned with a one-shouldered shrug.

Abe’s blush looked purplish under his depressive blue. “Sorry, I just… Sorry.” The fact that she wasn’t making a move to cover herself had him pointedly looking away.

Howler put a hand on his shoulder, and got him to look at her. She took his hand, and held it in a reassuring way, trying as clearly as she could to convey that it was okay. This was okay, he was okay. As annoying as his skittishness was, Howler remembered when she was just as bad.

Slowly, deliberately, she brought his hand just short of her topmost breasts, hovering it over her exposed skin. Her tattooed brows raised with an inquisitive look. Abe struggled to parse what she was trying to say, but what he was starting to understand was making him sweat.

“I’m, I,” Abe swallowed, and licked his stitches along with his dry lips, “I don’t… I don’t know. If I want to.”

He practically let out a sigh of relief when she unhanded him. Howler reached over the dresser and grabbed her notepad.

‘Do u want to no?’

Abe gawked at the question she showed him, and for a moment it looked like he was about to answer with a second, even more distressed ‘I don’t know’. But he stopped himself, this time, and answered instead in the most uncertain tone,

“I think so?”

[tanoraqui]

Dungeon Meshi Liveblog: I should make a fucking...(food) web of connected concepts with panels that connect them...

I love how Kabru is just part of this friend group, now. He invited himself and no one's questioning it. Laios invited him to lunch later, and that counts.

.

I love how everyone is varying levels of "oh fuck" until we get to The Current Party, where it's:

Senshi: thinking intently, a little grimly, about how he could butcher and cook this

Marcille: a dash of 'oh fuck', but also sad, in the way of watching a friend slide down a slippery slope

Chilchuck: incredible dad energy on this line, honestly.

.

don't you give my son orders, you piece of shit. you aren't worthy of being lord of anything. you protect nothing, wish to help no one, except your own desires. (The Demon never should've been alive at all. It's not suited to it.)

.

This is gonna look sooo cool animated in color.

.

I might actually be more offended by the demon wearing Kensuke like normal than by the whole wearing of Laios's body? It's so symbolic.

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I want to know how the ancients achieved that - binding the demon such that, while underground, it could only warp reality in service to a living being's desires. Though really, that seems to be how it's always operated - the only desire it ever expressed for itself was to eat the desires of others. Otherwise, it's only shown fulfilling wishes, before it's locked in the dungeon as well as after.

But I wonder if having a physical form gives it the ability to want more? Does it hunger and third and want to rest, now? DOes it really feel a yearning not just for the completion of its plan, but for the open sky and sight of the world which it hasn't seen in so long?

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Needless to say, we love a visual parallel.

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yep, this sure is the Eating Each Other Cyclically chapter! (This is the Eating Each Other Cyclically story, actually. It's called the ecosystem!)

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oh I hate this actually. It's scary in a real way. I do not like being forced to acknowledge that Chilchuck is much, much smaller, weaker and more fragile than Laios. I do not like seeing him curled up and helpless and unable to ever reconnect with his family.

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Freak cubed! Actually, how many times has it gone back and forth, now...?

the lion swallowed all of them

Laios ate hte lion in order to swap bodies (ish)

honestly I feel like the demon being counts as eating him in turn. Making Laios's body part of itself, you know? That's eating.

(monster!)Laios ate demon(!Laios)

demon(!Laios) is now eating (monster!)Laios

...so, Freak^5

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The parallel to Marcille snapping at Laios to drop the plant seeds in Chapter 2... Love how every now and then people resort to yelling at this man like he's a dog. Truly, he is a beagle of all time (eats Things) ('Things' is an unlimited category of which the details are best left unknown)

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THIS IS IT, BITCHES! THESIS TIME!! I'M GONNA USE "IF AND ONLY IF LIKE IT'S A GODDAMN MATHEMATICAL PROOF, BECAUSE THAT'S HOW THIS HAS BEEN PRESENTED THROUGHOUT!

LIVING IFF EATING IFF HUNGERING IFF WANTING.

TO DO ONE IS TO DO THEM ALL, FOR EVERY ENTITY IN EXISTENCE: EVERY RACE, EVERY CREATURE.

LIVING AND DYING, EATING AND KILLING AND BEING KILLED AND BEING EATEN, ARE ALL SIDES OF THE SAME COIN. YOU WILL DO BOTH.

IT'S CALLED THE ECOSYSTEM.

And it applies to social structures as well as biomes btw.

YOU WILL ALWAYS EAT, AND THEN YOU WILL ALWAYS HUNGER FOR THE NEXT MEAL. BECAUSE YOU ARE STILL ALIVE.

Which is why hunger(/living) is poisonous to this infinite being, btw: the cycle is infinite, sure, but specifically because any single creature within the cycle is finite. To exist as part of the cycle, the world, breaks the infinite being, even as the infinite being inevitably destroys the world.)

But most of all:

EATING (IFF BEING EATEN IFF LIVING IFF WANTING) IFF UNDERSTANDING IFF BEING CONNECTED/BEING PART OF

THE FUNDAMENTAL [DESIRE/HUNGER/LIFE EXPERIENCE/CONNECTION/SHARED UNDERSTANDING] OF BEING ALIVE IN THIS WORLD IS [EATING/LIVING/DYING/KILLING/WANTING/HUNGERING/BEING CONNECTED/UNDERSTANDING OTHERS/BEING UNDERSTOOD/WANTING TO BE UNDERSTOOD/WANTING TO UNDERSTAND/WANTING TO BE CONNECTED]

...WHICH DOES ALSO INCLUDE (MONSTERFUCKER) VORE

(This is the fucking...Theseus wrestling the Minotaur statue...of this world... People are going to make this statue of King Laios Eating the Demon... It's going to be in museums...and in the palace... The true curse here is that Marcille is going to have to see versions of this motif for her entire excruciatingly long life...)