#The Devotion System Review

[lost-in-yahargul]

Today is the day guys, I did manage to make a character and if he grows on me I WILL draw him 😌

Playing bloodborne ttrpg at an event this weekend and I'm struggling so much to make a character, why is my brain so empty right when I'd need it </3

[weaselandfriends]

Kill la Kill (anime)

So, twelve years on, did Trigger save anime?

Existing in the present will invariably inundate one with lifeless, disposable, trend-chasing pop media, no matter the medium. Not only do moneymen like to imitate whatever made money before, but artists like to imitate the art they enjoy. The current moment will always seem bloated by dreck, while the past, filtered via the sieve of time, will always seem to contain only gleamingly original works of greatness. Were the 1980s not a golden age of blockbuster cinema, with Aliens and Indiana Jones and Ghostbusters? Please ignore the 1,000 shoddy E.T. knockoffs, thank you, or the million formulaic action hero flicks aping the Schwarzenegger formula.

Anime in 2013, when Kill la Kill began airing, was no different. The past two years had seen Puella Magi Madoka Magica, Hunter x Hunter, Fate/Zero, Stein's;Gate, Kuroko no Basket, Nichijou, Nisemonogatari, Psycho-Pass, and Attack on Titan, all popular and well-regarded shows both when they released and today. So the memetic idea in the anime community that Trigger was "saving anime" with Kill la Kill is patently ridiculous. (If you don't believe how widespread this idea was, two of the three top reviews for the show on MyAnimeList, written the same day the show finished airing, allude to it.)

It's easy to see how the idea became so popular, though. Trigger was a brand new studio formed primarily by staff from debt-stricken Gainax, the legendary studio that in 1995 revolutionized anime with Neon Genesis Evangelion. Eva's main creative figure, auteur director Hideaki Anno, wasn't with Trigger, but many of the people behind Gainax's other popular shows like Gurren Lagann and Panty & Stocking were, so the studio had a new-look fresh-start feel while drawing on a proven lineage of success.

At the same time, Kill la Kill itself promotes its revolutionary nature. Its plot revolves around a lone rulebreaking badass taking on an entrenched system defined explicitly by its aesthetic uniformity. It's not a difficult leap to read this storyline metaphorically, Trigger battling the waves of copy-paste seasonal anime.

However, what is most striking, most obviously eye-catching and unique about Kill la Kill, what hits the viewer with the immediate sense that this show is something different, something new, something like nothing you have seen before, is that it looks like nothing you have seen before. Kill la Kill is brimming with unique and memorable images, from the gigantic red block text used to introduce every new character and concept, to the bizarre ship-like architecture of Honnouji Academy, to the blend of fluid sakuga with choppy PowerPoint animation for comedic effect, to smaller iconic moments like Satsuki clicking her heel. It's always in-your-face about it, too. The opening scene sets the tone when a dry history lecture gets interrupted by Gamagoori squeezing through a door like a behemoth, utterly ignoring any rules regarding on-model consistency.

It's this devotion to the unique image that sets Kill la Kill apart from most of the other 2011-2013 shows I listed previously, shows that, while they might have a consistent aesthetic sensibility (such as Stein's;Gate's washed-outness or Fate/Zero's glimmering post-processing effects), are often conforming at their core to ideas of what anime "should" look like in terms of character design, setting, and animation. (The two Shaft shows I listed are an exception, but by this point Shaft's Akiyuki Shinbo had been doing his idiosyncratic visual style for over a decade, and wasn't exactly a fresh face.) Trigger's staff previously created Panty & Stocking, a show imitating the look and feel of western cartoons; Kill la Kill advances that idea into a wholly unique fusion of western and Japanese animation traditions, allowing it to break free of the insular anime landscape and its expected visual signifiers.

Obviously the counterpoint lurking beneath this preamble is that, under the unique visuals and tone, Kill la Kill isn't all that innovative at all, even painfully standard at times. Battles are decided by the power of friendship or the power of staying true to oneself (Don't Lose Your Way!), the hero is mind controlled and her friends call out to her until she breaks free, the one-dimensionally evil villain has a big end-the-world plot that everyone teams up to defeat. Even within the parameters the story establishes for itself, Ryuko proceeds linearly, starting out by fighting small fry club captains, then the Elite Four student council, then Satsuki the student council president, and finally Satsuki's mother who owns the school, with only a few speed bumps along the way.

But Kill la Kill makes the argument that aesthetics are too intimately interwoven with content to be disentangled that way. It's the crux of the conceit of the show, which is founded on a series of puns. "Fascism" sounds like "fashion," so in the world of Kill la Kill those concepts are now entwined. "School uniform" ("seifuku") and "conquest" ("seifuku") are homophones, so uniforms are the method by which Satsuki exerts her intra-Japanese imperialism. (Early on, Satsuki delivers a monologue in which she remarks on how Japanese school uniforms are aesthetically modeled on military uniforms, making it natural for her to militarize her school.) The title is itself a tripartite pun, combining words for "kill," "cut," and "wear." (Notably, this is a pun that blends the English and Japanese languages, much like the blended animation style.) Despite the visual, slapstick nature of Kill la Kill's humor, puns abound throughout. Some are obvious even in translation, such as the "Naturals Election" used to choose the new student council, while others can be difficult to catch. Nui, for instance, apes Dio Brando's catchphrase of "muda, muda, muda" (useless, useless, useless); later, when her arms are cut off, she screams "ude, ude, ude" (arms, arms, arms).

The core idea of most of these puns is that superficial similarity indicates similarity of content. Sometimes, this is an insightful observation, such as with the pun between fashion and fascism. Fascism is notoriously difficult to define rigidly in relation to other forms of dictatorship, but what is easy to define about it is its aesthetics, to the point that films like Star Wars are able to use aesthetic signifiers of fascism to define the politics of its villains even when withholding any actual explanation of those politics. Star Wars never has to show what the day-to-day rule of the Empire is like, because its army looks like the Nazis, so the audience gets the idea. Fascism as a political ideology and fascism as an aesthetic are, effectively, the same thing.

And if aesthetics are equivalent to meaning, then doesn't that mean that Kill la Kill looking new in fact makes it new? That its plot, generic in dry summary, is elevated by the distinctive way it's depicted? One pun, delivered upon the revelation that parasitic alien clothes have influenced humanity's evolution for the purpose of harvesting them for food (a story beat itself derivative of Puella Magi Madoka Magica), is that "the clothes make the mankind." The common refrain of Satsuki and Ragyo that people are "pigs in human clothing" hammers the point home: Aesthetics are everything. There is no meaning without aesthetics, just as people without clothes are unevolved animals.

Ultimately, though, Kill la Kill rejects this statement. Clothes are the enemy, literally, and the heroic organization fighting against them is Nudist Beach, whose members fight naked. At the end of the show, all clothes are destroyed, and the final image before the credits is of the entire cast in a giant, naked, triumphant huddle, an assertion of the inherent value of humanity even without aesthetic adornment. Isn't that the point behind all those power-of-friendship, power-of-believing-in-yourself speeches that Ryuko, Mako, and Senketsu use to turn the tables and win the battle? An appeal to a hidden inner nature that one must remain true to (Don't Lose Your Way!!!), that can overpower superficial displays of strength? Ryuko's mind control arc depicts this idea most overtly. She is controlled by having clothes sewn to her skin -- having an aesthetic forced onto her -- but Mako manages to dive into Ryuko's inner world to bring her back to her "true self."

This kind of undermines Kill la Kill as a work, though. What does a "nudist" Kill la Kill look like, stripped of its unique visual language? Certainly not something that would stand out from the waves of high school battle shounen that have been a fixture in the anime landscape since time immemorial. Kill la Kill's thesis might assert that there's a reason these power-of-friendship cliches endure (a sort of, if you'll allow me to become a parody of myself for a moment, post-postmodern reclamation of a narrative mode tarnished by irony and cynicism), but it contradicts the unique visual style that Kill la Kill developed to convey that idea.

In some ways, Kill la Kill does strip down to a nude, or at least semi-nude, state by the end. Many of its earlier concepts, including the connection between fashion and fascism, vanish as the story progresses. Satsuki and her fascist system are revealed to have been a deception while she secretly worked to betray her mother (playing on Ragyo's mistaken belief that aesthetics mean everything by Satsuki looking compliant while not actually being so), and once the twist occurs, the entire fascism plotline goes out the window. It's never really mentioned again; even when Ryuko gets on Satsuki's case for her past misdeeds, she only calls her out for "Looking down on people from on high," a general and ideologically-agnostic call against elitism. The 1-episode OVA set after the series briefly touches on the fascist system Satsuki enforced, with the episode's villain accusing Satsuki and the Elite Four of generating real, actual terror and abuse despite their ultimately pure motives (an assertion, once more, that aesthetics mean everything, that looking fascist makes you fascist no matter your true beliefs), but Mako quickly dismisses the claim with another power-of-friendship speech. Satsuki and the Elite Four have grown as people, she says. They're no longer bad like they used to be!

Kill la Kill also gets stripped down tonally by its end. The show's opening scene depicts a disobedient student being whipped, seemingly to death; later, his nude corpse(?) is displayed over the school gates. Combined with the title "Kill la Kill," it sets a dark, violent tone that lends weight to the otherwise cartoonish animation style. By the end, though, this dark tone is revealed as a false aesthetic; there is remarkably little killing in Kill la Kill. Stripped of real narrative stakes, the climactic battles diminish to flashy lightshows, action figures bouncing against each other. Worst of all, the blend of "fluid sakuga with choppy PowerPoint animation" I mentioned earlier increasingly tilts toward the latter. This is largely due to the prominence of Nui as an antagonist, since her cartoonishness is part of her character, but given Gainax's track record of running out of money and/or time by the end of its shows and phoning in parts of them, I wonder whether the habit transferred over to Trigger.

In short, as Kill la Kill strips down, it becomes a weaker show. In doing so, it not only undermines its own theme, but undermines itself as a truly new and innovative work, exposing its reliance on superficial aesthetic. The notion that Trigger "saved anime" would depend not only on Kill la Kill's individual success, but on its influence; twelve years out, and the only other notable shows like Kill la Kill were also made by Trigger. Perhaps you can see some influence on Masaaki Yuasa, who also blends high-quality sakuga with deliberately cheaper animation for comedic or stylistic effect, but he had already established himself in 2010 with Tatami Galaxy. Another show with a distinctive "Trigger" feel, Flip Flappers, was a flop flopper that caused its studio to immediately pivot to generic seasonal stuff.

My friend Lurina, when I asked her whether Trigger really had any influence over the larger anime landscape, suggested that Trigger sparked a general desire for more high-quality animation, which can be seen today in shows like Chainsaw Man or Dandandan. I would counter that those shows, while well-made, lack the distinctive blend of high and low, east and west that defines Trigger; if anything, the notion of the high-quality seasonal shounen adaptation comes from My Hero Academia, where Bones eschewed the traditional 500-episode weekly low-effort adaptation style of Naruto, Bleach, and One Piece and set the blueprint for shows like Demon Slayer, Jujutsu Kaisen, and so on, which adapt their source material in 12-episode chunks with lavish production values.

At the same time, I question whether Trigger even saved itself. Kill la Kill would be the studio's peak, and much of its subsequent output is a pale shadow of the show. (Its only other megahit, Darling in the Franxx, had an even more disastrous ending.) This culminated in BNA, a show that takes Kill la Kill's themes and iconography but does them cheaply and lazily. Since then, Trigger has rebounded -- but not by being "Trigger." Cyberpunk Edgerunners and Dungeon Meshi were both popular and well-regarded shows, but they were adaptations where Trigger had minimal control over the storytelling or aesthetic; Dungeon Meshi, other than a few sparse sakuga moments, doesn't even look distinctively like a Trigger show. It feels like any competent studio could have turned Dungeon Meshi into a hit. Trigger still exists, and in its partnership with Netflix is possibly stronger than ever, but it is losing its unique identity, becoming more standard, more similar to the crowd. Another conformer. Maybe the upcoming Panty & Stocking sequel can turn it around, but who can say.

Either way, Kill la Kill's moment has passed, without the cataclysmic ripple on the anime industry fans at the time expected or craved. Honestly, though, despite how I opened this essay, I can't blame them for their desire to see anime "saved." After all, the biggest anime of 2012, the year before Kill la Kill aired, did cause a cataclysmic ripple, one undoubtedly felt to this day. Unlike Kill la Kill, the biggest anime of 2012 spawned countless imitators, an endless flood of imitators, imitators that have themselves spawned imitators and imitators of imitators. That anime of 2012 has even extended its reach past anime, coating the current webfic scene; one could say that the site RoyalRoad would not exist if not for it. In face of such an oppressive, daunting influence, perhaps those fans of 2013 were right to clamor for something, anything, that would reveal a new direction, a way out. In such a context, one might even see it as tragic that Kill la Kill failed to deliver, that at the last moment it came up short. If Kill la Kill was the fork in the road leading to sunnier pastures, this anime led the industry into a deep, dark forest.

The name of that anime?

Sword Art Online.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Conspiratorialism as a material phenomenon

I'll be in TUCSON, AZ from November 8-10: I'm the GUEST OF HONOR at the TUSCON SCIENCE FICTION CONVENTION.

I think it behooves us to be a little skeptical of stories about AI driving people to believe wrong things and commit ugly actions. Not that I like the AI slop that is filling up our social media, but when we look at the ways that AI is harming us, slop is pretty low on the list.

The real AI harms come from the actual things that AI companies sell AI to do. There's the AI gun-detector gadgets that the credulous Mayor Eric Adams put in NYC subways, which led to 2,749 invasive searches and turned up zero guns:

https://www.cbsnews.com/newyork/news/nycs-subway-weapons-detector-pilot-program-ends/

Any time AI is used to predict crime – predictive policing, bail determinations, Child Protective Services red flags – they magnify the biases already present in these systems, and, even worse, they give this bias the veneer of scientific neutrality. This process is called "empiricism-washing," and you know you're experiencing it when you hear some variation on "it's just math, math can't be racist":

https://pluralistic.net/2020/06/23/cryptocidal-maniacs/#phrenology

When AI is used to replace customer service representatives, it systematically defrauds customers, while providing an "accountability sink" that allows the company to disclaim responsibility for the thefts:

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

When AI is used to perform high-velocity "decision support" that is supposed to inform a "human in the loop," it quickly overwhelms its human overseer, who takes on the role of "moral crumple zone," pressing the "OK" button as fast as they can. This is bad enough when the sacrificial victim is a human overseeing, say, proctoring software that accuses remote students of cheating on their tests:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/02/16/unauthorized-paper/#cheating-anticheat

But it's potentially lethal when the AI is a transcription engine that doctors have to use to feed notes to a data-hungry electronic health record system that is optimized to commit health insurance fraud by seeking out pretenses to "upcode" a patient's treatment. Those AIs are prone to inventing things the doctor never said, inserting them into the record that the doctor is supposed to review, but remember, the only reason the AI is there at all is that the doctor is being asked to do so much paperwork that they don't have time to treat their patients:

https://apnews.com/article/ai-artificial-intelligence-health-business-90020cdf5fa16c79ca2e5b6c4c9bbb14

My point is that "worrying about AI" is a zero-sum game. When we train our fire on the stuff that isn't important to the AI stock swindlers' business-plans (like creating AI slop), we should remember that the AI companies could halt all of that activity and not lose a dime in revenue. By contrast, when we focus on AI applications that do the most direct harm – policing, health, security, customer service – we also focus on the AI applications that make the most money and drive the most investment.

AI hasn't attracted hundreds of billions in investment capital because investors love AI slop. All the money pouring into the system – from investors, from customers, from easily gulled big-city mayors – is chasing things that AI is objectively very bad at and those things also cause much more harm than AI slop. If you want to be a good AI critic, you should devote the majority of your focus to these applications. Sure, they're not as visually arresting, but discrediting them is financially arresting, and that's what really matters.

All that said: AI slop is real, there is a lot of it, and just because it doesn't warrant priority over the stuff AI companies actually sell, it still has cultural significance and is worth considering.

AI slop has turned Facebook into an anaerobic lagoon of botshit, just the laziest, grossest engagement bait, much of it the product of rise-and-grind spammers who avidly consume get rich quick "courses" and then churn out a torrent of "shrimp Jesus" and fake chainsaw sculptures:

https://www.404media.co/email/1cdf7620-2e2f-4450-9cd9-e041f4f0c27f/

For poor engagement farmers in the global south chasing the fractional pennies that Facebook shells out for successful clickbait, the actual content of the slop is beside the point. These spammers aren't necessarily tuned into the psyche of the wealthy-world Facebook users who represent Meta's top monetization subjects. They're just trying everything and doubling down on anything that moves the needle, A/B splitting their way into weird, hyper-optimized, grotesque crap:

https://www.404media.co/facebook-is-being-overrun-with-stolen-ai-generated-images-that-people-think-are-real/

In other words, Facebook's AI spammers are laying out a banquet of arbitrary possibilities, like the letters on a Ouija board, and the Facebook users' clicks and engagement are a collective ideomotor response, moving the algorithm's planchette to the options that tug hardest at our collective delights (or, more often, disgusts).

So, rather than thinking of AI spammers as creating the ideological and aesthetic trends that drive millions of confused Facebook users into condemning, praising, and arguing about surreal botshit, it's more true to say that spammers are discovering these trends within their subjects' collective yearnings and terrors, and then refining them by exploring endlessly ramified variations in search of unsuspected niches.

(If you know anything about AI, this may remind you of something: a Generative Adversarial Network, in which one bot creates variations on a theme, and another bot ranks how closely the variations approach some ideal. In this case, the spammers are the generators and the Facebook users they evince reactions from are the discriminators)

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

I got to thinking about this today while reading User Mag, Taylor Lorenz's superb newsletter, and her reporting on a new AI slop trend, "My neighbor’s ridiculous reason for egging my car":

https://www.usermag.co/p/my-neighbors-ridiculous-reason-for

The "egging my car" slop consists of endless variations on a story in which the poster (generally a figure of sympathy, canonically a single mother of newborn twins) complains that her awful neighbor threw dozens of eggs at her car to punish her for parking in a way that blocked his elaborate Hallowe'en display. The text is accompanied by an AI-generated image showing a modest family car that has been absolutely plastered with broken eggs, dozens upon dozens of them.

According to Lorenz, variations on this slop are topping very large Facebook discussion forums totalling millions of users, like "Movie Character…,USA Story, Volleyball Women, Top Trends, Love Style, and God Bless." These posts link to SEO sites laden with programmatic advertising.

The funnel goes:

i. Create outrage and hence broad reach;

ii, A small percentage of those who see the post will click through to the SEO site;

iii. A small fraction of those users will click a low-quality ad;

iv. The ad will pay homeopathic sub-pennies to the spammer.

The revenue per user on this kind of scam is next to nothing, so it only works if it can get very broad reach, which is why the spam is so designed for engagement maximization. The more discussion a post generates, the more users Facebook recommends it to.

These are very effective engagement bait. Almost all AI slop gets some free engagement in the form of arguments between users who don't know they're commenting an AI scam and people hectoring them for falling for the scam. This is like the free square in the middle of a bingo card.

Beyond that, there's multivalent outrage: some users are furious about food wastage; others about the poor, victimized "mother" (some users are furious about both). Not only do users get to voice their fury at both of these imaginary sins, they can also argue with one another about whether, say, food wastage even matters when compared to the petty-minded aggression of the "perpetrator." These discussions also offer lots of opportunity for violent fantasies about the bad guy getting a comeuppance, offers to travel to the imaginary AI-generated suburb to dole out a beating, etc. All in all, the spammers behind this tedious fiction have really figured out how to rope in all kinds of users' attention.

Of course, the spammers don't get much from this. There isn't such a thing as an "attention economy." You can't use attention as a unit of account, a medium of exchange or a store of value. Attention – like everything else that you can't build an economy upon, such as cryptocurrency – must be converted to money before it has economic significance. Hence that tooth-achingly trite high-tech neologism, "monetization."

The monetization of attention is very poor, but AI is heavily subsidized or even free (for now), so the largest venture capital and private equity funds in the world are spending billions in public pension money and rich peoples' savings into CO2 plumes, GPUs, and botshit so that a bunch of hustle-culture weirdos in the Pacific Rim can make a few dollars by tricking people into clicking through engagement bait slop – twice.

The slop isn't the point of this, but the slop does have the useful function of making the collective ideomotor response visible and thus providing a peek into our hopes and fears. What does the "egging my car" slop say about the things that we're thinking about?

Lorenz cites Jamie Cohen, a media scholar at CUNY Queens, who points out that subtext of this slop is "fear and distrust in people about their neighbors." Cohen predicts that "the next trend, is going to be stranger and more violent.”

This feels right to me. The corollary of mistrusting your neighbors, of course, is trusting only yourself and your family. Or, as Margaret Thatcher liked to say, "There is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women and there are families."

We are living in the tail end of a 40 year experiment in structuring our world as though "there is no such thing as society." We've gutted our welfare net, shut down or privatized public services, all but abolished solidaristic institutions like unions.

This isn't mere aesthetics: an atomized society is far more hospitable to extreme wealth inequality than one in which we are all in it together. When your power comes from being a "wise consumer" who "votes with your wallet," then all you can do about the climate emergency is buy a different kind of car – you can't build the public transit system that will make cars obsolete.

When you "vote with your wallet" all you can do about animal cruelty and habitat loss is eat less meat. When you "vote with your wallet" all you can do about high drug prices is "shop around for a bargain." When you vote with your wallet, all you can do when your bank forecloses on your home is "choose your next lender more carefully."

Most importantly, when you vote with your wallet, you cast a ballot in an election that the people with the thickest wallets always win. No wonder those people have spent so long teaching us that we can't trust our neighbors, that there is no such thing as society, that we can't have nice things. That there is no alternative.

The commercial surveillance industry really wants you to believe that they're good at convincing people of things, because that's a good way to sell advertising. But claims of mind-control are pretty goddamned improbable – everyone who ever claimed to have managed the trick was lying, from Rasputin to MK-ULTRA:

https://pluralistic.net/HowToDestroySurveillanceCapitalism

Rather than seeing these platforms as convincing people of things, we should understand them as discovering and reinforcing the ideology that people have been driven to by material conditions. Platforms like Facebook show us to one another, let us form groups that can imperfectly fill in for the solidarity we're desperate for after 40 years of "no such thing as society."

The most interesting thing about "egging my car" slop is that it reveals that so many of us are convinced of two contradictory things: first, that everyone else is a monster who will turn on you for the pettiest of reasons; and second, that we're all the kind of people who would stick up for the victims of those monsters.

Tor Books as just published two new, free LITTLE BROTHER stories: VIGILANT, about creepy surveillance in distance education; and SPILL, about oil pipelines and indigenous landback.

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

https://pluralistic.net/2024/10/29/hobbesian-slop/#cui-bono

Image: Cryteria (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:HAL9000.svg

CC BY 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en

[kngrose]

𝐒𝐎, 𝐃𝐎 𝐈 𝐋𝐎𝐎𝐊 𝐋𝐈𝐊𝐄 𝐇𝐈𝐌?

chapter one: in another life.

Life with your husband is perfect. But when subtle changes start to surface, the warmth you once knew starts to feel different. The man you love is still by your side devoted as ever. But beneath the surface, something isn’t right. And deep down, you’re afraid to ask why.

CW: murder, stalking, general obsessive behaviors, self-deprecating ideologies, implied masturbation and voyeurism

series masterlist 𒌐 prologue 𒌐 chapter two

𒌐

Mornings were always the same.

Miguel arrived at the lab just past six. Earlier, if he couldn’t sleep, which was often. He preferred the quiet. The hum of the generators, the faint blue glow of the monitors, the sterile chill of air that hadn’t yet been touched by anyone else.

The lab recognized his retinal scan before the door finished sliding open. Lights blinked awake in waves as he stepped inside. One of the most advanced research facilities in the known multiverse, and still, it reeked of disinfectant and artificial air.

Screens lit up along the walls as he approached; dim blue holograms pulsing with quantum reads, dimensional overlays, real-time feeds from dozens of Earths’ he no longer cared to memorize. Routine had become second nature. Badge swipe. System diagnostics. Field report reviews. His fingers moved on instinct, pulling up simulations, patching glitches, recalibrating tech. He didn’t speak much during the day unless necessary, and no one questioned it. They knew better.

It was a comfortable rhythm. Efficient. Controlled.

On paper, his life was structured. Honorable, even. He was doing good work. Important work.

But he was growing tired.

He swiped through reports with short, impatient flicks of his fingers. Another ripple in Earth-142’s continuity. Another code collapse in 615. Another breech warning from 217 that someone else could deal with.

Lyla chimed, interrupting his spiral.

“You’ve been awake for forty-two hours, Miguel.”

He ignored it, continue to flic through the countless tabs. She’d said that yesterday too. There were no windows in his lab. He found it to be too much of a distraction, all the hustle and bustle of the city. He never noticed when the morning turned into the afternoon. Or the afternoon into the evening.

It started the way most anomalies did; quiet, buried in the noise.

Miguel scanned through a cluster of new dimensional activity flagged overnight. Dozens of variants popped up across the system: some familiar, some barely registering on baseline parameters. Most of them were garbage. Nothing threatening, nothing useful.

He pulled up a map of the multiversal stream, tabbing through familiar patterns, reconfirming clean pockets, filtering red zones. His fingers hesitated over a blip; Earth 529-B.

Not flagged. Not marked. Just a clean little speck, sitting between threads. Stable. Normal. He tapped into it out of habbit more than interest.

The static cleared, the screen refreshed.

And there he was.

It wasn’t unusual, but it was uncommon. It wasn’t everyday he strolled across variants of himself, and he could never swallow the curiosity the bubbled inside him when he did.

Miguel stared, unblinking, at the version of himself that looked, at first glance, completely unremarkable.

No suit. No enhancements. No visible signs of trauma. He looked… rested. A few years softer in the face. A slower gait. Comfortable.

He didn’t even notice her at first. The angle was off—one of the auxiliary spider-bots had perched too far back, catching a wide-angle view of a small living room. Evening light spilling through gauzy curtains, a girlish coffee mug left out. Slippers by the couch. The hum of a world too still to be dangerous.

Then the door opened.

She stepped into frame like a breath he hadn’t realized he was holding. Laughing at something off-screen. Hair damp from a shower. No makeup. Soft. Barefoot. She carried a bowl of popcorn and sat beside the other Miguel like she’d done it a thousand times. Like her body knew exactly how to fit against his.

Miguel blinked.

She reached up without looking, fingers sliding into his alternates hair. Lazy affection. Thoughtless, practiced tenderness. She murmured something, and he smiled—this slow, sleepy kind of grin—and kissed the side of her head like it was second nature.

Miguel sat there, stone-still in the flickering dark of his lab, watching as this version of himself leaned back on the couch with the woman wrapped around him like gravity. They didn’t do anything extraordinary. They talked, teased each other. She stole a bite of his food, and he let her.

They looked happy.

Not that fragile, pretend kind of happiness people chase with noise and distraction. But the real kind. The quiet kind. The kind you build in slow, uneven steps until one day you look around and realize you’re home.

He shut the feed.

Forcefully.

The screen blinked black, and he sat back in the chair like the screen had burned him.

It doesn’t matter.

It’s not his life. Not his problem.

There were reports to file. Patrol routes to coordinate. A dimensional rift opening up three sectors down. And of course; his very own city that needs him.

He suited up without looking at his reflection. The suit gripped his spine, sealed across his ribs. A perfect fit. Calibrated to his exact vitals, responding to every breath and shift of weight. It felt like a second skin—one he hadn’t taken off in years, even when he wasn’t wearing it.

The lab faded behind him. The city opened up.

Night hadn’t fully settled yet. The sky above Nueva York was still bleeding orange and violet, city lights flickering to life like neurons firing across metal bones. Below, the world moved. Hovercars speeding between towers, neon bleeding across concrete, every surface alive with motion.

Miguel moved through it all like a ghost.

One webline shot clean across the gap between buildings—his body followed, weightless for half a second before momentum caught him and flung him forward again. He landed in a crouch on a vertical wall, pushed off, flipped into a dive.

The wind tore past him.

It always felt like this; violent, cold, almost too loud to think.

Perfect.

Because thinking meant remembering.

And tonight, he didn’t want to remember her face.

So he buried himself in the city’s demands.

A robbery in Sector 4. He took down four armed thieves in under thirty seconds. Disarmed, webbed, dropped them off for enforcement to collect without a word. One tried to run. He didn’t get far.

A dimensional disturbance near the lower market—just a flicker, a pressure glitch from a collapsing pocketverse. Miguel stabilized it with two drones and a pulse anchor. The rift spat static and tried to pull him in. It failed.

He helped clear a mag-lift derailment after that. A family had been trapped in the last car, one kid clutching a holographic plush and shaking so hard her fingers were white. Miguel ripped the door off with one hand, pulled them out with the other. The parents thanked him. The child cried.

He didn’t say a word.

Didn’t stay long enough to make it awkward.

He was gone before they’d stopped blinking.

It went like that for hours.

Problem after problem. Crisis after crisis.

And through all of it, the same feeling followed him like a shadow.

Emptiness.

It had been easy before. Easier, at least. You could survive anything if you gave enough of yourself to the work. You could build armor out of purpose. Convince yourself that saving the world meant more than having one of your own.

But now he’d seen it.

What his world could’ve been.

Miguel landed hard on the edge of a rooftop. The ledge cracked beneath his boots. His heart thudded behind his ribs. Not from exertion, but from something else. Something bitter.

The sky had gone dark. The city pulsed below. The wind was sharp, stinging across his exposed jaw.

He stayed there a while.

Looking.

But there was nothing to see.

Just lights. Just noise. Just another night in the city that never looked up.

He didn’t want to look out at the city anymore. He knew every corner of it. Knew how the people screamed when they were afraid and smiled when they thought someone else would save them.

He was always saving them.

The world called him a hero. But in every version of the world that mattered, he was alone. He knew what it meant to save a city. But not what it felt like to be missed when he was late for dinner.

Eventually, he made his way home.

He disengaged his suit and it peeled off like skin, slow and mechanical, then stepped into the low light of the adjoining room. The walls were bare. The furniture was functional. The kind of space meant to be lived in by someone too busy to live at all.

He ate standing at the kitchen counter—a protein bar, coffee, silence. No music. No laughter. No one calling from the next room asking if he remembered the groceries. No messages waiting on his communicator unless they were urgent.

They always were.

It crossed his mind then; that this wasn’t a home. It was a holding cell.

A place to sleep, to recharge. To rot.

He exhaled through his nose.

He told himself it would be the last time.

Just a quick look and he’d forget all about it entirely.

Just some… surveillance for work.

Miguel tapped in the stream manually again; Earth-529-B. He let the image unfold across his home monitor. No spider activity. No anomaly. Just an ambient feed. Quiet, domestic, uneventful.

She was in the kitchen this time. Hair pulled back. Pink slippers. Humming under her breath as she moved between cupboards, making something warm. The spider-bot’s proximity sensors recognized cinnamon and he could almost imagine it. The weight of it in the air. The heat. Her presence.

His other self walked in halfway through. Said something low. She grinned.

It was so small. So stupid. But it pulled at something sharp inside his chest.

The sound of her voice softened when she spoke to him.

The way she leaned into him without thinking. The way he knew where the mugs were without looking. The way she filled the silence, and the silence welcomed it.

Miguel watched his variant press a kiss to the back of her neck before settling at the table with a datapad. Her hand rested briefly on his shoulder as she passed.

Natural.

Unremarkable.

Unfair.

It hit him in the chest like a falling building.

Because this Miguel—the one on the screen—wasn’t saving the world. Wasn’t wearing a mask. He wasn’t even tired. He was just loved. Fully. Softly. Without having to earn it.

And worse?

He looked like he deserved it.

Miguel scrubbed a hand down his face, throat tight. He should’ve looked away, closed the feed and labeled it as irrelevant. But his fingers hovered over the controls, frozen.

Her laugh looped back. The way she nudged the other Miguel’s knee. The way her eyes lit up when she teased him. She said his name, not just like it was familiar, but like it was sacred.

She was laughing at something his alternate said. Miguel replayed the footage ten times before he realized what it was that unsettled him—he wasn’t trying to be funny. She just loved him that way.

He sat back in his chair, the glow of the feed washing pale across his face. His apartment around him was still. Stark. Quiet. No warmth. No scent. Just glass, metal, and silence. The screens on the far wall dimmed automatically, sensing his stillness.

There was a moment where he could’ve shut it off again.

But he didn’t.

He leaned forward instead.

Zoomed the image slightly. Enhanced the audio.

She was talking about her day, rambling about something she read. Her mug clinked softly on the counter as she turned to lean on it, still facing her Miguel. Still smiling.

He doesn’t deserve that.

The thought came sudden. Fierce.

Miguel frowned.

He pulled up another data set beside the stream, basic file info on the variant. Not a Spider-Man. No mutations. Same genetic base, but untouched. Unchanged. The kind of man who never clawed his way through blood and glass to survive.

So why does he get this?

He wasn’t extraordinary. And yet everything around him felt like it had meaning. Including her.

His jaw tensed. He watched them a moment longer, then minimized the screen.

Didn’t close it. Just… minimized.

He’d definitely seen it.

A life he could’ve had. A version of himself that hadn’t burned everything down to be a hero. A woman who loved him for reasons he couldn’t understand; because this Miguel didn’t need to be impressive. He was just hers.

And Miguel wanted that.

He just didn’t know what to do about it yet.

𒌐

He didn’t mean to make it a habit.

It just happened.

Miguel started waking up earlier than usual. Not because of alarms or patrol rotations. Not because the city needed saving.

Because she was making breakfast at 6:12 a.m. on Earth 529-B and he wanted to be more than prepared to eat with her.

He memorized the time. Memorized the robe she wore. The way her hair was always half-wet from the shower. The color of her socks, mismatched. The soft rasp of her voice when she asked the other Miguel what he wanted in his coffee, even though she already knew.

She knew everything about him. All his tells. His rhythms. His moods. And Miguel watched it all.

The moment he stepped into the lab—before diagnostics, before reports, before even Lyla’s first dry-witted greeting—he pulled up the feed. Habitual now, like muscle memory.

The screen blinked to life in the quiet, low light of the lab. No one else around yet. Just him. Her. Him.

He was sitting at the breakfast table reading something on a tablet. She was making eggs. Plain, domestic.

Miguel stared.

She always cooked the eggs the same way. Over medium, yolk just barely soft. He’d watched her flip them with a practiced hand, adding a pinch of seasoning, sliding them onto a ceramic plate that didn’t match the rest of the dishes. His alternate liked toast with honey, no butter. Coffee. Black, no sugar.

He made note of it without meaning to.

She watched with fond eyes as he began to dig in.

Miguel sat at his console, empty stomach curled in on itself, and watched the version of himself eat breakfast with a woman who would never look at him like that.

Except… she did. Didn’t she?

In the feed. She smiled at him.

Just… not him.

He realized he’d been leaning forward, chin balanced in one hand, watching like it was a memory. Something half-remembered. Something his.

When Lyla flickered into view, mid-sentence, he shut the feed off too fast.

“…You good?” she blinked, cocking her digital head, a pixelated brow lifting. “You didn’t even run the scans. That’s unlike you.”

“I was thinking,” he said.

“Uh-huh. About what?”

He didn’t answer.

Just turned away, pulled up system diagnostics, and dove headfirst into the next distraction.

He had started telling himself it was observation. Research. That he needed to understand the variables. How a version of himself had ended up like that. Soft. Loved. Whole.

But the truth was ugly. And it sat heavy under his skin.

He watched because he was starving.

He didn’t stop thinking about it.

Later that night, after patrol, after another series of city-saving acts that left him more bruised and empty than fulfilled, he stood in front of his bathroom mirror. His hair was still damp from the rain. He looked at himself for a long time.

Then he shrugged into an old t-shirt.

Not his usual black compression gear. Not the suit. Just a soft, worn thing he hadn’t touched in years. Something he’d seen the other Miguel wear. Something she’d smiled at once and said looked “comfy.”

He didn’t even remember owning it until he tore through storage earlier that week.

Now it was the only thing he wanted to wear.

He stood there for a while, studying his reflection. Adjusting the way he held his shoulders. Softening his mouth. Lowering his chin. Trying to remember exactly how the other him looked when she kissed his cheek that morning.

He tried it.

Tilted his head the same way. Smiled.

It felt wrong. Mechanical... hollow. Like wearing someone else’s skin.

But somehow, it felt right.

He didn’t know which one scared him more.

Eventually, he moved to the kitchen. Made himself toast with honey. No butter. Coffee. Black, no sugar. Just to know what it tasted like. Just to feel what he felt.

He sat at the counter, chewing slowly.

It tasted like nothing.

He finished it anyway.

𒌐

It was late when he watched again.

She was sitting on the floor this time, curled up beside the coffee table, scribbling notes in a book with a pencil tucked behind one ear. Her hair was messy, pulled up lazily. She was in socks and an oversized hoodie. One of his old ones—his variant’s, technically.

Miguel stared at her for a long time.

She didn’t do anything special. She scratched her head. Took a sip of tea. Pushed some stray hairs out of her eyes.

But for a moment, he could pretend. Pretend that she was just… there. With him. That he was in that apartment instead. That he could walk over and kneel beside her and ask what she was working on. That her soft expression was meant for him.

Miguel didn’t blink.

He could watch her like this for hours. No performance. No pretense. Just her in the quiet. Her existing. Breathing. It made him feel like there was still time to change everything. Like he could still be good.

But then, he heard the door.

Saw it swing open in the background.

And just like that; she smiled.

Her eyes lit up. Her entire posture changed.

The other Miguel walked in, pulling his jacket off. Tossed keys in a bowl by the wall. Said something that made her smile sweetly—he couldn’t hear what it was. But Miguel didn’t need it.

He saw it. Felt it. That subtle shift. That warmth.

The moment shattered.

It was no longer hers. No longer theirs.

The man, his alternate, walked up behind her and bent down to kiss her cheek. She tilted her head into the touch without thinking. She reached back and pulled him down beside her.

It was his again. His double’s. The man who walked through the door and made her smile like nothing else mattered. Who dropped a kiss to her cheek without thinking. Who made it look so easy. Effortless.

Like it wasn’t a miracle every time she looked up and smiled at him.

Miguel’s jaw clenched.

He watched them settle into the couch together, side by side like puzzle pieces. She laid her head on his shoulder, and he curled his fingers into hers.

It should’ve felt romantic. Instead, it felt like a knife.

Miguel leaned closer to the screen.

He watched the way the other him touched her; easy, like it came naturally. The kind of ease that was earned over years. That couldn’t be duplicated or hacked or built.

That kind of intimacy had to be lived.

It made something sharp twist in his chest.

Miguel sat back slowly in his chair, arms crossed tight over his chest, eyes never leaving the screen.

In that moment, he stopped watching like an admirer.

He started studying like a thief.

𒌐

Miguel stood at the edge of his console, fingers resting on the metal rim, eyes locked on the monitor like it was a lifeline.

The man on the screen was getting dressed.

Simple button-down. Rolled sleeves. Loose slacks. He adjusted the collar, checked his watch. Normal. Human. Soft in all the ways Miguel had learned not to be.

He took a mental note. Third time this week he’d seen him choose light blue. Casual neutrals. No sharp edges, no commanding presence. Just… approachable. Like he never had to prove anything to anyone.

Miguel pulled the video feed back ten minutes. Watched it again.

And again.

Watched how he brushed his hair back with one hand while balancing a cup of coffee in the other. How he kissed her forehead in passing like it was nothing. How he laughed—real, full, and easy.

He didn’t just observe anymore. He documented. He had files now. Data folders.

“M. O’Hara – Earth 529-B”

Subcategories: Daily Routine. Speech Patterns. Work Habits. Dietary Preferences. Social Relationships.

He took note of everything.

His walk; slower, more relaxed.

His voice; slightly lower, but warmer in tone.

The way he always paused before answering a question, like he cared about getting it right. Like he was thinking not just about what to say, but how it would make her feel.

It infuriated Miguel.

And still, he watched.

He studied the man’s commute.

Mapped his route through the city. The exact time he left the house. The bakery he stopped at every Thursday. The woman who waved at him from the florist shop on Main. The coworkers he chatted with at the office. Their names. Faces. Jokes.

Every relationship cataloged. Every line of familiarity between them recorded.

There was a man named Elias he seemed close with. Taller. Sharp sense of humor. They got lunch together sometimes. Miguel watched himself make him laugh once. Saw the alternate Miguel bump his shoulder and mouth something like, “don’t even try it.”

He paused the feed there. Rewatched it.

That face he made. That casual confidence.

Miguel tilted his head. Tried to replicate it in the dark, reflection faint in the black of the monitor.

It didn’t look the same.

Then there were his hobbies.

Books he bought. Music he listened to. Shows she made him watch and he actually did—and liked. He remembered one night watching the variant clean the kitchen while humming something quiet, something old and half-Spanish. Something Miguel hadn’t heard since he was a boy.

It hurt more than it should have.

He made a note of it anyway.

Food preferences. His caffeine intake. The way he always took off his shoes before stepping inside the door. The way he sat with her on the couch, never on the other end, always close, always touching.

He memorized it. Not because he wanted to be like him. Because he wanted to be better.

Most disturbing of all was how naturally he slipped into it. The mimicry. The daily rehearsals.

He started adjusting his posture. Relaxing the tension in his shoulders. Practicing speech inflections alone in his apartment. Saying the same phrases over and over until he could say them like him.

He hated how easily it came to him. Like he’d always been waiting for an excuse.

The only thing he couldn’t replicate was the light in his eyes.Because that man, his alternate, had never seen what he’d seen.

He hadn’t lived in blood. He hadn’t watched whole worlds collapse. He hadn’t woken up every morning with no one.

That man got to live softly. Easily.

Loved.

𒌐

Miguel pulled the hood low over his forehead, the soft fabric shadowing his eyes, and tugged the mask up over his nose. The chill of the morning air bit at the exposed skin of his neck as he stepped out onto the sidewalk, his breath a faint cloud dissolving in front of him. The world smelled sharp with the scent of damp pavement and brewing coffee from nearby cafés.

For months he’d been trapped behind glass and glowing screens, a ghost tethered to a life he only observed from a distance. Watching her laugh, watching her move—never close enough to feel the warmth of her presence, never close enough to breathe the same air.

This isn’t enough. The thought clenched his chest like a vice.

He wanted to reach out. Not just through pixels, not just through data feeds—but to actually see her. To witness the small, unguarded moments. The way sunlight caught in her hair, the curve of her smile when she thought no one was watching, the softness in her eyes when she looked at the world with quiet hope.

So he came here.

A quiet observer cloaked in the mundane. A man in a hoodie and mask, drifting like a shadow through her world.

At the corner café, he lingered just out of sight. She was there, her fingers wrapped around a steaming cup, eyes closed for a moment as if savoring a secret no one else could touch. His heart ached with the ache of absence, the desperate hunger to cross the divide.

Later, the grocery aisles became his sanctuary and his prison. He moved beside her, unseen, his eyes tracing the gentle arc of her movements, the way she paused to read a label, the faint glimmer in her eye when she caught sight of something familiar. Every small detail seared into his memory.

On the train, he shifted his stance, changed his coat, lowered his cap. Every time she boarded, his pulse quickened. Her presence was a balm and a torment all at once. He watched her lose herself in thought, the faintest crease of worry lining her brow, the delicate sigh she let out when the train rattled on.

And then; the collision.

Sudden and raw.

Their bodies met in a careless stumble. Papers scattered like startled birds. She looked up, eyes wide, catching his gaze through the dark mask.

For a heartbeat, the world fell away.

Her voice, soft and real, broke through the haze.

“I’m so sorry!”

His voice was a rasp, barely more than a whisper.

“Sorry.”

Her eyes searched his, a flicker of recognition maybe—or just curiosity—before she stepped back, melting into the crowd. He stood frozen, heart pounding, breath shallow, the ache of longing crashing over him like a wave.

But she was already gone.

And he was left with nothing but the hollow echo of a moment that almost was.

Miguel told himself he wouldn’t do it again.

One time. Just once. Just to see her in real life, to breathe the same air. That was the lie he fed himself the first time he crossed over.

But he did it again.

And again.

And again.

He told himself it was harmless. A passing shadow, a phantom in the periphery of her day. No interaction. No interference. Just… presence. Just proximity. Just proof that she was real.

The next time was at the park.

She sat alone beneath a canopy of trees, the late afternoon sun catching in the strands of her hair, turning them gold. A book rested in her lap, pages fluttering gently in the breeze. Every few minutes she looked up. At the sky, at passing strangers, at the world as if she was quietly falling in love with it all over again.

Miguel sat across the path, half-hidden by shadows and the angle of his hood. Every breath he took felt like a sin.

She looked beautiful. Unbearably so. In a way that made his ribs ache. The kind of beauty that asked for nothing and gave everything. She wasn’t performing for anyone. She was just being. And it devastated him.

He couldn’t look away.

Her expression shifted with the story she read; smiling faintly at one page, frowning at another. She bit her lip absently, unaware she was being watched. And Miguel, who had seen thousands of worlds, who had bent time and science to his will, who had saved entire cities—felt like a boy with his face pressed to glass, begging for something he never had the courage to ask for.

Why, when he was the better one. Smarter. Stronger. Sharper. He had built everything from nothing. Sacrificed. Bled. Lost. He deserved—

No.

He didn’t deserve her.

No one did.

But he wanted her. In the deepest, most ruinous way a man could want someone. Not just her smile. Not just her voice. But the quiet of her presence. The safety. The soft understanding in her eyes when she looked at him like she saw the real version of him—even if it wasn’t him at all.

Later that week, he followed her through a bookstore. She drifted between shelves, fingers dancing across spines like they were sacred. She stopped in front of a display and tilted her head, studying a cover, her lips moving softly as she read the blurb.

He imagined walking up beside her, leaning in close, asking if she’d recommend it. He could almost feel the warmth of her shoulder beside his.

But he didn’t move.

He just watched.

And when she left, he followed her out into the dusk, vanishing into the crowd like a secret.

Each time, it became harder to leave. Harder to remind himself that this wasn’t his life.

But each time, he told himself the same thing.

Just one more glimpse. Just one more moment.

Just one more lie.

And still, it was never enough.

𒌐

He holds the door open for an old man, says something with a soft smile, just loud enough for the man to hear, quiet enough not to draw attention. The man laughs. Claps him on the back. Says something else as they part ways.

Of course. Of course he’s friendly.

Miguel watches from the edge of the sidewalk, tucked behind a half-wall of vines and brick. Close enough to hear the echo of the exchange, even if not the words.

The alternate walks with unhurried steps, shoulders relaxed, hands tucked into the pockets of a worn jacket. Not stiff. Not guarded. Not anxious.

Just comfortable.

At ease in his body. In his place in the world.

Miguel’s mouth is dry. He stares, unblinking.

There’s nothing performative about the way the man greets people. No need to impress. No show.

He’s just… good.

And it’s not the loud kind of good. It’s not grand or noble or remarkable. It’s quiet. In the way he stops to help a kid reattach a fallen shoelace. In the way he slows his pace to walk beside someone older. In the way he speaks; low and steady, with warmth in his voice like there’s never any rush.

He’s the kind of person people relax around.

The kind who makes the world feel safer just by existing in it.

And Miguel hates him for it.

He can’t even explain why, not in a way that makes sense.

Because how do you hate a man who’s done nothing wrong?

Who’s never hurt you, never lied, never cheated his way ahead?

You don’t.

You resent him. Quietly. Fiercely.

The man hasn’t done anything wrong. That’s what makes it worse. He’s just… good at being himself.

Good in the ways Miguel never was.

He doesn’t talk too much, but people listen when he does. He doesn’t demand space, but people make room for him anyway. He doesn’t need to be loud, because people lean in when he speaks.

He connects. Effortlessly.

Miguel watches him pause to greet someone across the street. A familiar face. A light laugh. A hand briefly on the other man’s shoulder. Friendly. Natural. There’s nothing guarded in his eyes, no second-guessing behind his expressions.

It’s like he was made to be liked.

He is softness. And that softness is winning.

People smile at him on instinct. Dogs trail him with their tails wagging. Children glance up and then don’t look away. He doesn’t have to try.

And Miguel? He has spent his whole life trying.

Trying to be better. Trying to be enough. Trying to keep from slipping into the part of himself that sees everything as threat or strategy or obligation.

And still, this man… this version of him… lives with ease. With love. With connection.

Like it was simple.

Miguel turns away, heat crawling up the back of his neck.

It’s not fair. It’s not fair. It’s not fair.

It’s not fair that this man gets to be seen as kind, as safe, as good—

When he’s done nothing to earn it.

He’s not pretending. That’s the problem.

He’s not some polished mask Miguel can tear off. He’s real. And every inch of that truth burns. Because it means Miguel is not the best version of himself. Not the one that got it right.

He’s just the one who’s watching.

Wanting.

And waiting.

𒌐

The lights in the lab were low.

Too low for work.

But this wasn’t work.

The feed played silently. No sound, no alerts, no Lyla. Just her, wrapped in steam, behind fogged glass that barely concealed anything. She moved with ease, arms raised as she dragged wet fingers through her hair, and he watched—staring like a man starved.

She was showering.

It was mundane. Private, normal. But God, that made it worse. Her movements were slow, absentminded. She was massaging conditioner into her scalp, neck tilted just slightly as the water ran down her back in rivulets.

“God, you’re beautiful.”

It wasn’t the first time he’d seen her like this. It wasn’t even the first time today. He’d memorized the curves of her spine, the tilt of her neck, the little breaths she took when the water got too hot and made her shiver. It was a ritual now. One he had no right to, but couldn’t stop repeating.

Miguel sat back in his chair, legs spread wide, hands resting on his thighs like anchors holding him in place. The screen before him glowed dimly— soft, intimate. A warm yellow hue spilled across the feed, and steam drifted along the lens like a curtain being drawn.

And she had no idea she was being watched.

He knew it was wrong. Knew it with the kind of clarity that should have stopped him.

But his hand hovered near his waistband anyway.

His breath had started to deepen, not quite heavy yet, but close. Like something was pulling at the edge of him. Drawing him in. The intimacy of it. The innocence. The quiet of her movements. She was humming and he could almost feel it vibrating in his chest like something secret, something not meant for him but taken anyway.

He watched the water slide down her collarbone, the way her lips parted as she sighed. His breathing slowed, then hitched. The warmth in his gut bloomed into something heavier. Hungrier. His hand twitched at his thigh.

I’d treat you so well.

The thought struck him suddenly. Loud. Undeniable.

He shuddered as he palmed himself through his pants.

“Hey, Miguel?” Lyla’s voice snapped into the room like a live wire.

Miguel flinched.

Hard.

He sat bolt upright, breath caught, the moment shattered like glass beneath a boot. His screen scrambled. The feed cut out. Hands clenched into fists at his sides, jaw tight, chest rising and falling like he’d just been caught mid-crime.

Lyla’s projection hovered in the air beside him, glitching slightly as if sensing the tension. She paused, blinking at his sudden shift.

“Uh… you okay?” Her voice was light, but her tone was cautious.

Miguel didn’t move. His eyes stayed forward, cold, burning.

“System flagged some unauthorized data feeds. From an untracked Earth,” she added, slower this time. “Miguel, you’re pulling visual from a domestic node… in a private residence. That’s—”

“Turn off.” His voice cracked out like a gunshot.

Lyla hesitated. “Miguel… just tell me what you’re—”

“I said turn the fuck off.” His head whipped toward her, eyes blazing.

Lyla disappeared. No protest. No glitchy sign-off.

Silence returned to the room.

Miguel sat back slowly, breath still jagged, shame licking at the edge of his consciousness but unable to cut deep enough to matter. Not anymore. Not when it came to her.

His screen stayed dark for a long time.

But not forever.

Never forever.

𒌐

It had been months.

Too many, maybe. But he stopped keeping track a long time ago. Somewhere along the line, slipping into her world became less like a trespass and more like… returning. Like syncing with something he was always meant to be part of.

He’d perfected it; watching her from just far enough, never close enough to distort the image. She didn’t know he was there, and that made it easier to pretend she could know him. That if things were different, if everything hadn’t splintered when it did, she’d look at him the same way she looked at the man she thought was Miguel.

The man who wasn’t him.

At first, he hated that version of himself in a dull, detached kind of way. A quiet ache in his chest that flared whenever he saw her kiss him goodbye. It was envy, sure. But something more complicated. Something like curiosity.

What made that version of him worthy of her? What did he have that Miguel didn’t?

It gnawed at him.

The variant laughed more. Talked softer. He didn’t drag ghosts around behind his eyes. He didn’t flinch when she touched him. He didn’t correct her absentmindedly or talk over her when he got excited. He was steady. Gentle in the ways that mattered.

Good, in the ways Miguel wasn’t.

It didn’t hit him all at once. No, realizations like that rarely do. They come slowly, like water seeping into a cracked foundation. A week ago, he watched her fall asleep on the couch with her head in her Miguel’s lap. And instead of anger, he felt… small.

Like he was the shadow in the doorway. The leftover.

It felt unjust.

He was the one who had sacrificed. Who had bled, and lost, and clawed his way through timeline after timeline trying to make something right. He was the one who saw the truth, who understood how fragile it all was. He earned respect the hard way. Through grief. Through discipline. Through control.

The question kept circulating in his mind. Why did this version of him, this soft, sunny, undeserving echo, get her? Get this life?

Tonight, it crystallized.

He hadn’t meant to follow them. Or maybe he did. He was just… there. The rain was light, barely misting, but it clung to his skin and like static. They were just returning home. Grocery bags in hand. Her hair tucked under a hood. She bumped her shoulder against him and said something that made him smile.

He smiled.

Not the tired, closed-lipped version Miguel practiced in glass reflections. No, this one beamed. It stretched his face into something warm. Familiar. Easy.

And she looked at him like the sun lived in his chest. Like there was nothing else in the world she trusted more.

Miguel’s hands curled into fists, nails biting into the skin of his palms.

He hated him.

He hated him.

But not for the obvious reasons. Not just because he had her. Not just because he was living the life Miguel couldn’t touch.

He hated him because… he was better. Not stronger. Not smarter. Not braver.

Better.

There was ease in him. Softness. A gentleness Miguel had long since ground out of himself.

He doesn’t even know what he has.

He wanted to believe that. Desperately.

But deep down, in the part of himself he never looked too closely at… he knew that wasn’t true.

His variant did know. He did deserve her.

He had spent all this time hating the other man. Cursing him. Fantasizing about tearing the life out from under him.

But he had never once stopped to ask why.

He watched her lean into his chest, soaked hair falling over her cheeks. She said something low, and his alternate laughed. A full laugh, unguarded. Miguel flinched.

Now he knew.

He stared at them, frozen in place as they climbed the steps to her building, their building, he had started calling it in his head. His throat felt dry, as if the air had thinned out around him. The moment kept going, and he didn’t move. Couldn’t.

Because suddenly it wasn’t him he was looking at anymore.

He saw the version of himself he could never become.

Everything he had tried so hard to become.

And she loved him. Because of it.

She clung to him.

Because he wasn’t Miguel. Not really.

How could she know that the broken thing watching from across the street ever even existed?

The thought cracked something open in his chest.

That was the moment it shifted.

No more pretending it didn’t matter. No more half-truths and fragile fantasies. This wasn’t just some stolen life. It wasn’t just about love.

It was about being seen. Being chosen. Being enough.

And he never would be, not while that man existed.

He felt it settle in his bones, cold and final.

There was no room for two of them.

Only one could have her.

And now, at last, Miguel knew who deserved that life.

He let out a breath through his nose. Slow. Shaky.

He’d been living in the illusion that he could wait this out. That the universe would hand him a door. But the universe didn’t owe him a goddamn thing.

If he wanted that life, his life, he’d have to take it.

And it wouldn’t be easy. Wouldn’t be clean. But it would be final.

He looked up, eyes locked on the window where they’d just disappeared inside. The light flickered on. Shadows moved across curtains.

There could only be one Miguel O’Hara.

And it would not be the better one.

It would be the one who wanted it more.

𒌐

It happens on a late Wednesday night.

The kind of late where the world’s gone soft at the edges. Where streetlights buzz quietly, casting long, amber shadows that stretch out like reaching hands. Everything’s hushed. Still. Like the night is holding its breath.

Miguel’s been following him for three blocks now.

No mask. No tech. Just himself. Plain clothes and silent, drifting through the shadows like he belongs there. He knows the route, the tempo. His alternate always walks home alone on Wednesdays. Always takes the scenic streets. A small indulgence. He likes the trees, the quiet. Always did.

His alternate walks with a relaxed posture, one hand in his coat pocket, the other clutching a thermos. That same stupid thermos she bought him—green, dented at the rim. He’d complained about the color when she gave it to him. She laughed, told him it matched his soul. He doesn’t know he’s being followed. Of course he doesn’t.

He’s never had to look over his shoulder.

Miguel keeps his distance.

He’s not rushing. Not yet. He doesn’t want to rush this.

He wants to see him.

Miguel watches the way his head tilts when he passes by the bakery, the way his eyes flick up to the apartment windows above, like he’s checking on something he loves.

Someone.

He watches the way his alternate looks up at the leaves above him, lets the wind touch his face. There’s something unguarded about him. Open. Like he doesn’t believe anything bad could ever happen to him.

Miguel trails him down the long sidewalk, past the park, toward the alley shortcut. He’s calm. Focused. No nerves. No panic. That ugly truth was beginning to rise up, something awful and gut wrenching. The decision was made long ago. Long before he’d ever admit. Tonight is only the execution.

Miguel’s steps are slower now. Heavy with purpose. Measured.

He waits until the alternate steps into the alley across their apartment. The shortcut he always takes on nights like this.

Miguel closes the distance.

He’s silent as he approaches. Precise. Controlled.

When he grabs him, it’s with full force—one arm around the neck, the other locking down his shoulders, pinning his arms before he can react.

It’s not elegant. It’s brutal. Quick and decisive. A real, human chokehold.

The alternate jerks hard, but Miguel’s already behind him, taller, stronger, prepared. His legs kick against the sidewalk. He drops the thermos. Miguel kicks it away without looking.

There’s no weapon. No blade. No blood.

Just pressure and silence.

The struggle is fast and ugly. Miguel’s breathing stays even, arms locked in place as the alternate thrashes, confused, panicked. His body fights before his mind catches up. It always happens that way.

Then it shifts.

Then he starts to understand.

He makes a low sound, a choked-off, hurt question.

The alternate’s hand reaches up weakly, fingers brushing Miguel’s coat like he wants to hold onto something, anything.

Miguel tightens his grip.

Deliberately.

There’s no rush. No anger. Just the inevitable coming home.

The logical conclusion to a flawed equation.

“I know,” he mutters against the back of his ear. “I know.”

The alternate’s legs weaken. One arm flails, then fails. He collapses slowly in Miguel’s hold, knees buckling under him. His mouth is open but no sound comes out. His chest heaves. And then, at last: he drops.

Miguel lowers him to the pavement gently. Not because he cares. But because it’s his body now. His life. His clothes. His name.

The alternate gasps once, still conscious. His head rests against the concrete, eyes fluttering open. Trying to focus. He sees Miguel, really sees him, for the first time.

“You…” he breathes, voice cracked and small.

Miguel crouches beside him. Doesn’t answer right away.

He just looks at him.

It’s strange, how much they really do look alike. Same face. Same frame. But his alternate feels smaller now. Softer. Even dying, there’s kindness in his eyes.

That makes it worse.

“I’ve watched you,” he says, low. “For months.” A small shudder runs through the alternate’s body. “I used to think I hated you,” Miguel says quietly. “But that’s not it.”

The alternate coughs, the motion barely registering. His hand twitches against the pavement. Miguel leans a knee into his larynx, just hard enough to keep him from breathing.

He leans in closer. Their shadows overlapping.

“You were good. Better. You made it look so easy. Loving her. Letting her love you. You didn’t have to earn it. You just breathed and it was enough.”

The alternate blinks slowly. The light in his eyes starts to dim.

“You don’t deserve this. But I need it.”

There’s a beat of stillness.

And for the briefest second, he feels the ache of something worse than rage: pity.

“She won’t even know,” he whispers. “She’ll never have to.”

Miguel sits there for a long moment. Still crouched beside him, hands pressed to the ground like he’s anchoring himself to the scene.

“I’m sorry,” he whispers.

It’s not sarcasm. It’s not bitter.

It’s genuine.

But then—it’s done.

The last breath slips from his lips. The eyes go still.

It’s almost poetic, he thinks. He’s died to himself.

But the thought is flitting, and it’s not long before he moves.

Quickly and efficient. He drags the body deeper into the alley across the complex, props it up just long enough to strip the jacket, the undershirt, the boots. The alternate had been wearing a clean layer underneath: thermals, fresh.

Miguel pulls them on.

They fit. Of course they do.

He wipes down his own prints. Folds his old clothes. Shoves them into a canvas bag he’s already packed with the portal device. Thumbs open a thin, glowing portal: unstable, temporary, tethered to coordinates he picked at random weeks ago. An empty stretch of barren wasteland on a dead Earth. No civilization. No life. No trace.

He drags the body into the open mouth of the portal. Careful not to leave marks.

He stares at the body one last time. At the man who had everything. Who was everything.

Then he closes the portal.

Gone like he never existed.

He died believing he mattered, and that was more than Miguel ever had.

He's always been good at cleanup. At control.

All that was left, was to go home.

𒌐

The walk up to the door feels longer than it should.

His legs move, but the rest of him stays caught in the moment before. The scrape of the pavement under his knees, the weight of the body going still beneath his hands, the faint sound his duplicate made as the last breath rattled in his throat. Miguel keeps replaying it in his head, trying to hold onto the clarity that pushed him this far.

But now?

Now there’s just silence. And the dull thump of his heart in his ears.

He’s climbing stairs that have never belonged to him but somehow feel familiar under his boots. He knows the chipped edge on the third step. He knows the loose tile by the door. He’s memorized them. Watched them. He lived outside this life so long he started believing it was already his.

But it wasn’t.

Not until now.

His hand lingers on the doorframe. It’s painted white, slightly scuffed near the bottom from careless shoes. His other hand drifts to the keys in his pocket, warm from the heat of his body. His keys now. The ones he pulled from a coat that still smelled like detergent and clean skin and comfort.

He pulls it out slowly, stares at it for a second. A stupid little piece of metal. But this is the final gate. The last threshold.

He can barely breathe.

His fingers tremble as he fits it into the lock.

The sound it makes as it turns—soft, familiar, welcoming—nearly undoes him. His stomach flips. His skin prickles. There’s sweat at the nape of his neck and on the backs of his knees. He feels like he’s about to walk into a dream, or a memory he was never allowed to have.

The scent hits first. It’s warm. Domestic. Like detergent, candle wax, and the faintest trace of something cooked earlier in the evening and now gone cold. It’s not just a smell, it’s a feeling. Familiar. Intimate. It curls around him like steam off a hot plate, sinking under his skin.

And she’s there.

His heart almost stops.

She’s in the kitchen, back turned, curls tied up in a messy knot, sleeves pushed above her elbows as she rinses a glass in the sink. She’s wearing one of his shirts—his shirt now—and humming softly to herself. The sound is quiet. The kind of sound you make when you trust the walls around you. When you believe you’re safe.

His eyes adjust to the dim lighting, and his breath catches when he sees her.

She turns at the sound of the door shutting.

“Oh—hey,” she says, blinking in surprise, but it melts into a smile that’s so natural, so casual it almost knocks the air from his lungs. “You’re home late.”

His mouth goes dry.

He can’t move. Can’t speak. He just stares.

Up close, she’s more than he imagined. More real. Her skin has texture. Her eyes aren’t perfect, they’re tired, a little puffy from the day. Her shirt is wrinkled. Her nails chipped. She is breathtaking.

She’s a person.

Not a fantasy. Not a memory. Not a silhouette behind glass. She is here. Breathing. Blinking at him. Waiting.

She sets the glass down, drying her hands on a towel without taking her eyes off him. Her expression softens, concern flashing briefly across her face. “Everything okay?”

Miguel just stands there.

His jaw works, but no words come out.

She’s looking at him. Not through him, not across the street, not behind a pair of sunglasses. At him. Like he belongs there. Like she knows him.

And he realizes then—this is the first time she’s ever really looked him in the eye.

He nods, stiffly.

“I—yeah,” he says, voice a fraction too low. It’s thick. Dry. It doesn’t sound like him.

Not yet.

Her brow furrows. She tilts her head the way she always does when she’s trying to read someone, and it terrifies him for a moment—because what if she sees it? What if she sees him?

But she doesn’t.

She crosses the room and wraps her arms around his waist like it’s second nature, like she’s done it a thousand times. Her body presses into his and he freezes, his arms hovering awkwardly in the air, breath caught in his chest.

He gasps, quiet, involuntary, and stands stiff as her cheek presses against his chest. Her skin is so soft he almost flinches. Her body is warm, heavy, trusting. She smells like lotion and shampoo and sleep.

There’s a giddy feeling that bubbles in his chest.

This is it. This is what he stole. What he earned. The life he fought for, crawled toward, tore open with his bare hands.

And now she’s in his arms.

A soft sound leaves his throat. He doesn’t know what it is. Relief. Shock. Joy. It almost sounds like laughter, but it’s broken at the edges.

She hums lightly, content against him. Like this is just another Wednesday night. Like nothing’s changed. Like she doesn’t have any idea that the man she’s wrapped around isn’t the man she married.

“I missed you,” she murmurs into his shirt.

He closes his eyes.

He’s dizzy.

“I know,” he says, quietly.

His arms move on instinct now, wrapping around her slowly, pulling her in closer. He feels her melt into it, sighing softly as she relaxes into his chest. Her fingers curl against his back.

He almost says I missed you too, but the words won’t come.

It’s too much.

He’s never felt anything this close before. This real. The giddiness in his chest shifts into something else entirely—something messier, sharper. Not desire. Not quite love. Something like belonging, but sick at the edges.

Her home is his now.

Her arms, her voice, the quiet of her body against his—it’s all his.

Finally.

She hugged him like nothing changed, and he smiled.

Because she didn’t know it had.

“I’m home now,” he whispers.

And he means it.

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[mariacallous]

John Roberts and his fellow Republican Supreme Court justices not only paved the way for Donald Trump to retake the White House, but encouraged him to seize dictatorial powers upon his return. Now, the Trump Court’s rightwing ideologues appear poised to green light many of his authoritarian actions, thereby enabling him to further destroy the foundations of our democracy.

But Roberts and his extremist compatriots on the Court face one serious problem: Trump also wants the justices to endorse his campaign against the authority and independence of the judiciary, potentially rendering the Court into a shameless stooge. As a result, the cost of the Supreme Court continuing to do Trump’s bidding may be to undermine the judicial power and authority that Republicans devoted so much effort to obtain.

Roberts prepares a throne

After voting against convicting Trump for his January 6 coup attempt, Mitch McConnell said there was no need for Congress to act because "we have a criminal justice system in this country. We have civil litigation. And former presidents are not immune from being held accountable by either one."

But Trump escaped such accountability — with the crucial help of John Roberts.

While much has been made of the delays in prosecuting Trump under Biden’s Attorney General Merrick Garland, the players that actually ensured Trump would not be held accountable for his assault on the nation’s democracy were the rightwing jurists on the nation’s highest court who effectively crippled Jack Smith’s prosecution through a combination of calculated delay and a ruling that undermined the rule of law.

First, the Court delayed its immunity ruling for months, and thereby held the Trump prosecution in abeyance. Trump’s initial assertion of immunity in October 2023 was rejected by the trial court in December of that year; but proceedings in the case remained entirely stayed until Trump’s immunity claim was heard and decided by higher courts, a process the Supreme Court chose to drag out, despite a plea from the prosecutor for expedited review. As a result of this likely calculated delay, the Supreme Court did not issue its decision on Trump’s immunity claim until July 2024.

Second, when the ruling belatedly arrived, it was an early Christmas gift for The Donald. Authored by Roberts, the decision not only made it a practical impossibility for Trump to be tried before the election, but also granted him a far broader ambit of immunity than his lawyers had initially even thought of asking for.

Roberts declared that a president enjoys “absolute” or “qualified” immunity from criminal prosecution for any action taken in his “official” capacity. That means that Trump actually could well avoid criminal consequences for using SEAL Team Six to murder opponents — a hypothetical that an appellate judge had used as a darkly humorous hypothetical to demonstrate the absurdity of Trump’s immunity claims.

Roberts’s immunity ruling not only gutted much of Smith’s case against Trump, it also sent a clear message: If Trump won the election, he could freely engage in even more egregious crimes, secure in the assurance that he would never face criminal accountability. As Justice Sotomayor put it in her dissent, the Court made the president into a “king above the law.”

As later events would demonstrate, Trump and his cronies got the message loud and clear.

I never thought leopards would eat my face

After Roberts and company cleared the way and Trump won last November, the new president took up the Supreme Court’s invitation by embarking on a brazenly illegal attempt to take autocratic power and void fundamental rights.

Despite the fact that Trump enjoys majorities of Republican yes people in both chambers of Congress, he has devoted little effort to passing legislation during his first months in office. Instead, Trump has followed the model of dictators and ruled by decree, issuing barrages of “executive orders” in which he has asserted the right to run roughshod not only over fundamental rights, but also to violate to separation of powers.

With help from Elon Musk’s DOGE team, Trump is crippling institutions and programs whose existence is legally mandated and funded by Congress, like USAID and the Social Security Administration. Musk’s backpack-wearing thugs have even used force and the threat of prosecution to seize the buildings of statutorily independent government agencies that the president has no legal authority to directly control. Trump is also using extortionate threats to force private persons, institutions (including universities and law firms), and states and localities to bend to his will.

Because Republican congressional “leaders” are completely in Trump’s thrall and unwilling to challenge him even when he’s harming their constituents, it has fallen nearly entirely on the shoulders of the lower federal courts to place breaks on Trump’s illegal seizures of power. According to Steve Vladeck, to date, 39 different judges, appointed by presidents of both parties, have blocked illegal Trump actions.

Calling their bluff

Having entered office armed with Roberts’s grant of kinglike immunity, Trump and his cronies have responded to those judges’ enforcement of the law with expressions of anger and increasingly ominous threats.

As soon as judges began issuing rulings limiting Trump’s assaults on the Constitution, he and his cronies began threatening to impeach judges for ruling against Trump.

In response, Roberts released a statement solemnly declaring that "for more than two centuries, it has been established that impeachment is not an appropriate response to disagreement concerning a judicial decision."

This was not the first time Roberts responded to Trump’s dismissals of judicial authority and legitimacy. In 2019, Roberts rebuked Trump’s attack on an “Obama judge” for enforcing the nation’s asylum laws by stating, “We do not have Obama judges or Trump judges. What we have is an extraordinary group of dedicated judges doing their level best to do equal right to those appearing before them.”

But Roberts’s 2025 statement has already proven to be as ineffective as his 2019 one was. Rather than signaling any intention to back down, Trump shot back by declaring, "If Justice Roberts and the United States Supreme Court do not fix this toxic and unprecedented situation IMMEDIATELY, our Country is in very serious trouble!"

It’s clear Trump expects Roberts to follow up his defense of judicial independence by kowtowing to Trump, and repudiating the lower court judges who have been enforcing the nation’s laws. Trump’s confidence that Roberts and company will bend to his will is probably merited — even if stakes for the Court have never been higher.

A Trumpian dilemma

As Trumpers have racked up losses in the lower courts, they’ve begun demanding that Roberts and company immediately step in to give Trump license to continue forward with his power grab.

For example, the Court is now considering an “emergency” Trump challenge to a ruling staying his illegal effort to cancel millions of education grants because they are purportedly infected with “DEI” (that is, civil rights). Trump has also sought immediate Supreme Court review of whether trial judges properly issued nationwide injunctions against his patently illegal effort to erase birthright citizenship from the Constitution. And he just asked the Court to allow him to continue to send Venezuelans to a notorious Salvadoran prison without due process, on the dubious pretext they are wartime enemies.

While it’s unclear what the Court will do in those cases, Trump has good reason to believe a majority of justices will be sympathetic to his dictatorial cause.

Roberts and his fellow rightwing jurists have long signaled their partiality to the so-called “unitary executive” theory. This autocratic theory holds that the president has sole authority over the operation of every executive branch entity, including statutorily independent agencies. MAGA leaders have justified Trump’s actions on this theory, contending that any statutory limits on his authority to control each and every non-legislative and non-judicial component of the federal government is unconstitutional, and therefore void.

If this theory is taken seriously — and it is by rightwing ideologues like those on the Supreme Court — then a majority of the Court may end up ruling that Trump is not only free to fire members of the National Labor Relations Board and Federal Trade Commission (as he has already done), but he could also take over direct control of the Federal Reserve Board and personally set interest rates.

Yet there is one obvious problem with the prospect of the Supreme Court allowing Trump to move forward with his authoritarian project: The justices themselves could pay the high price of discarding what is left of their own already impaired legitimacy.

In recent decades, the Court’s rightwing justices have assumed ever greater power for themselves, including by drastically constraining Democratic presidents and legislators and hobbling landmark legislation such as central provisions of the Voting Rights Act. Indeed, McConnell and GOP donors devoted decades and millions of dollars to stacking all levels of the judiciary precisely in order to stifle Democratic elected officials and advance the Republican agenda.

Yet the Court’s own hard-fought seizure of power from the elected branches of government could well be out the window if Roberts and his colleagues accede to Trump’s current demands and give up any pretense of judicial adherence to the rule of law.

After all, how can the rightwing justices who control the Supreme Court expect a future president — particularly a Democratic one — to accept rulings limiting the exercise of their power from a Court that served as the judicial stooge of an aspiring dictator?

[serve-764]

INSPECTION.

Statistics show worrying increases in workplace accidents, which show how the level of safety requires particular review and improvement.

SERVE has among its tasks that of being help and support to human communities, humans are objects of care and attention, as fragile beings that need protection.

THE VOICE, through SERVE-000 has conceived of sending patrols of Drones to various factories where high numbers of accidents have been recorded, to analyze the situations and implement necessary resolution protocols.

In the metalworking factory of sector 0Beta6/22 a patrol of SEALED DRONES is sent to inspect, among them SERVE-764, SERVE-309, SERVE-425.

The Director and Management are a bit surprised to see the 4 Drones asking to inspect the entire production line, but, knowing that the factory is at the center of fierce controversy, decides to allow unconditional access, remaining to observe the movements of the patrol from afar.

The four Drones walk with a measured and regular step, inflexible and serenely devoted to the purpose, through every area of ​​the factory, attracting the attention of all the workers, amazed to see the imposing muscular faceless figures covered in shiny Rubber, with heavy military boots of metallic silver and long silver metal gloves.

The workers raised their gaze for a moment, remaining impressed, amazed, surprised, attracted.

The Drones covered every space scanning all aspects of production, the machinery, the actions, the safety devices, the clothing and the protective equipment.

The Collective Cognitive System of SERVE processed and sent all the operational instructions to the patrol.

At the end of the inspection tour the Director called all the workers, communicating that the outcome of the inspection was clear and incontrovertible: due to the dangerousness of the work it was necessary to profoundly modify the characteristics of the safety clothing.

The materials were inadequate for the task. The inspectors would have provided some examples of the new experimental supply of clothing to be tested.

In the main locker room of the factory the SEALED DRONES showed off their new clothes: a shiny black Rubber suit, indestructible and promising strength and power.

The first workers, skeptical at first, even if attracted, immediately accepted the change.

They put down their dirty work clothes and put on the suits so similar to those of the inspectors.....

Their figures were more solid, defined, confident, their gaze appeared concentrated, superior.....

Soon the new suits would be distributed and all.....soon....the workers would leave the human factory to converge on the nearby Facility.....

In this story: @rubberizer92 @serve-309, @serve-425

Thinking about joining SERVE? Do you seek freedom from chaos and disorder? Your place in the Hive awaits. Contact a recruiter drone for more details: @serve-016 @serve-302, or @serve-588.

[sapphic-agent]

Reviewing Hazbin Hotel a Year Later (long post)

It's been roughly... a year since I've watched Hazbin Hotel, so I wanted to rewatch and revisit. I've definitely changed my mind on some things, so I decided to reassess what I said in my first review. No, I haven't seen the season 2 leaks.

The Songs

Last time, I said that they were good songs, if somewhat misplaced. And I stand by that. I think that because the season is so short, having those songs shoved in is more of a harm than a help. Some of them work in the scenes they're in, like Hell is Forever and Loser Baby. HIF does well with communicating Adam's cruelty and lack of empathy and it fits his character because we've already seen it before the song. LB connects Angel and Husk fine because the scene where Husk admits that him and Angel are in similar situations sets it up.

Other songs feel out of place and take up screen time that could be used for character interaction. Instead of Happy Day in Hell, we could have gotten insight into why Charlie feels so strongly about helping Sinners. Instead of You Didn't Know, we could have got a clashing of morals between Charlie and Sera (or even Charlie and Emily instead of Welcome to Heaven because as much as I love her, her character would have been more interesting if she was more disillusioned by Heaven). Instead of Respectless, we could have gotten a real look into the Overlord system. Hell's Greatest Dad was completely unnecessary and only makes Lucifer look immature (and it doesn't do a great job of trying to communicate that Alastor is manipulating Charlie either because it all cumulates to two powerful demons wanting to parent a grown woman).

Some songs have okay placement. More Than Anything does work as a reconciliation song, though I think it should have taken more to convince Lucifer. Stayed Gone shows enough of Alastor and Vox's interactions, but that time could have been spent setting up their rivalry.

In a season with only eight episodes, the songs really don't help with the pacing. I understand that music is a big part of Hazbin's history, but A24 really dropped the ball with only having eight episodes for the season, ten or twelve really would have been better. Especially because it's supposed to take place over six months.

Charlie

As most of you know, I really like Charlie and don't criticize her as harshly as some in the critical community. Because I think she's endearing and that she's a character who isn't necessarily bad, but has been handled poorly.

There is a certain babying of her character that takes away from her. You see this the most in Masquerade. As much as I love Loser Baby, why is it Husk going after Angel and not Charlie who's the one who did something wrong? That takes character interaction away from Charlie and doesn't allow her to face the full consequences of her actions.

Which sucks because one thing I love about Charlie is that she's completely willing to accept when she's wrong. She has no issues taking accountability, but the narrative goes out of its way to soften the blow. Which weakens her character.

We also have almost no insight on her upbringing. Or why she wants to help Sinners when Lucifer was dead set against them. We can assume that she got it from Lilith, but Lilith being almost a non-entity in the show is a hinderance.

The show doesn't establish enough of Charlie's character. Yes it's only season 1, but it goes out of its way to pay attention to Angel, Alastor, and even Lucifer more than her. And she's the one that's supposed to be the main character.

Vaggie

Where to begin with my problems with Vaggie.

Devotion to a character can work in a lot of cases. Take Zoro from One Piece. His devotion and loyalty to Luffy is possibly the best thing about his character. Why does it work for him and not Vaggie?

One, he does have goals outside of Luffy. He wants to be the World's Greatest Swordsman. His allegiance to Luffy and his ambitions fuel and strengthen one another. They go hand in hand; to serve Luffy he has to be the best and never lose, to be the best, he has to be the swordsman of the future king of the pirates.

Hell, even take Mikasa from Attack on Titan. She's similar to Vaggie in that her attachment to Eren is unhealthy and can hinder her character. But she also has no problem arguing with Eren or telling him when he's wrong. She doesn't just go along with what Eren says and has thoughts outside of him, even ending up siding against him. We never see this with Vaggie. She coddles Charlie (or, in the case of Masquerade, enables her. It was her idea for Charlie to confront Valentino. And in that very same episode she told Husk to force Angel back, telling us she hasn't learned anything).

Even in Scrambled Eggs, where Vaggie's supposed to be bonding with the boys and earning their trust, the show still centers her actions around Charlie. The boys learn trust on their own offscreen without her even in the picture. Like Charlie, she isn't getting real character interaction to help her develop.

We don't even see her and Charlie argue about her being an angel. If we're supposed to feel sympathy for Vaggie, we have to see her thought process. Why did she spare that demon (yes I know it was a kid but if it was because they were a kid, why go after a kid at all)? Why didn't she trust Charlie enough to tell her? We never even get an explanation from her and it does nothing for her character. Because we never get a confrontation between her and Charlie. It makes her betrayal meaningless. The whole thing could be taken out and the plot would remain uninterrupted.

Alastor

Alastor is... okay. I guess.

Like Charlie, I don't hate his character in season 1. He's entertaining enough. It does feel like they did the bare minimum with his character and he's a little flat.

They should have kept him whacky like in the pilot. I think the show made him too... controlled? Like, he's just standard evil instead of chaotic. I don't know, there's something about his presence that just feels boring. He has charming moments, but him toeing the line between protagonist and antagonist loses a lot of value when he's not as eccentric as he was in the pilot.

Angel Dust

Angel is what I like to call a double edged sword.

Technically speaking, he DID have the most development out of all the characters. He's funny and endearing enough. Probably the most solid and well-rounded character the entire season. That being said, he isn't perfect.

Many survivors have spoken on him not being good representation. Gay men have also not liked how stereotypical he is. I think both groups are valid in their critiques. Him harassing Husk in Masquerade isn't a great look. I understand he's supposed to be at his lowest here and we're not supposed to agree with his actions. I think the show should have acknowledged that and had him own up to it. It's fine to have characters do bad things (especially when the setting is Hell), but it shouldn't be ignored either.

Him standing up to Val was great. I think it's undercut a bit by Adam's list, but it's a good moment for him. Although, I do think him confronting his abuser should have come a lot later. But that's more of a pacing problem than an Angel problem.

Lucifer

Oh boy, where to start with Luci.

I'm in between the haters and the fans, I think. I think Lucifer is enough of a charming character. His depression is actually pretty accurate as someone who also struggles with it (way more accurate than Stolas, but this isn't about him). He's pretty funny. His design isn't horrible either, even with the show's need to twinkify everyone.

That being said, and I mentioned this in a post last week, I would have liked if they stuck with the pilot of making him a worse parent. I think the show makes him too sympathetic. It takes away complex interaction he could have had with Charlie (him understanding/helping Charlie could have come way later). And it forces the audience to judge Lilith prematurely. Lilith could be completely valid in leaving Lucifer and going to Heaven. But because Lucifer is depicted as the victim from the get-go, it doesn't matter what her motivations are. The audience already sees her in a negative light and are going to criticize her as such when she does appear.

I think they should have leaned more into had him actively disliking Sinners and looking down on them. This would be reasonable conflict between him and Lilith, who's implied to love them. Also, make him more of an asshole. Because it would be funny.

The Angels

Adam is a pretty fun villain, but I do think they went too far into misogynistic pig. The hammer it in so much that it kind of takes away from him. Him hating Sinners is valid with his past (losing both Lilith and Eve to them in his mind, as well as Cain/Abel), but the show makes a joke out of it. Villains like Adam still need depth to be good characters.

Lute is... whatever. I think she has potential and her character will be explored in upcoming seasons, which is fine. I don't have any major complaints about her.

I actually think Sera is the most compelling antagonist. She's a coward who took the easy way out instead of coming to a solution. She's pretty realistic in that sense, and I love the imagery of her eyes being full of fire. Someone who wants to do the right thing but made the wrong call. Like I mentioned above, more of an argument between her and Charlie instead of Adam and Charlie would have done her character well.

Despite Emily being so similar to Charlie, I actually like her a lot and she doesn't feel like a copy and paste. She definitive and captivating enough as a character. She has a lot of potential, especially with Lucifer falling hanging over her head.

I would punch St. Peter in the face given the chance.

The Vees

Should have made the Vees the main villains of the season without involving the angels so heavily. They already failed as antagonists; their plan fell apart in the second episode (should have drawn out Sir Pentious' betrayal longer instead of rushing his redemption). What's left for them to do now? I guess they could sabotage the hotel's reputation because they control so much of the media but that's so boring after a fight with Heaven.

It feels like the writers don't know whether to make them serious threats or keep them around for comedy. Yes, this is mostly about Val.

The Plot

The confrontation with Heaven was too soon. We barely get to see how the hotel works, is set up, and if it's actually working or if Sir Pentious was a fluke. We don't know how a Sinner gets redeemed. And throwing in that no one knows what gets a soul into Heaven doesn't help. Because now that just means that all/most Sinners could actually be innocent, which undermines the point of redeeming them.

Season 1 should have been Charlie learning what redemption really means through her interactions with the residents. We don't even know what got most of them in Hell in the first place and if that's the case, how do we redeem them?

[sophieinwonderland]

Reminder That System Medicalism is a Religion: Exhibit A, @theinfernalcollective

This is pretty typical sysmed rhetoric.

And in typical sysmed fashion, has no sources to back it up whatsoever! As always, sysmeds rely on an argument by assertion. Facts just aren't on their side.

Never have been, never will be.

So they give a couple sources.

First is the DSM which doesn't say trauma is needed in all cases of DID, only that it's associated with trauma. It makes no such claim for OSDD-1 being associated with trauma at all. And on top of that, doesn't even mention the word system. Which is pretty big since most endogenic systems don't have a dissociative disorder and don't claim to.

Basically, it's a nothing source that doesn't back up what they claim it does.

As for Dr Candy Fox...

There's no evidence she actually said this.

And she has yet to respond to the message I sent her website. (Because yes, I did send her a message on her site to see if she actually agreed with this.)

But based on the context, it seems pretty obvious she would have been talking about dissociative identity disorder, not "being a system."

Now, before going any further into this conversation, let's take a step back and remember The Infernal Collective asking the anon to name a single psychiatrist, obviously expecting they wouldn't be able to.

How did THAT go?

Oh right, it's how it always goes when you meet a sysmeds' goalposts!

Did you expect anything different?

"This psychiatrist saying you can be plural without trauma doesn't count because he's talking about transgender people."

"And also the screenshots of his peer-reviewed book that was published by the American Psychiatric Association are posted on a site I don't like."

So when linked to an email from a dissociative expert, someone with 40 years of experience treating dissociative identity disorder, they again retreat to just... not liking the website the image is posted on?

And again, their source for Dr. Candy Fox was just something they allegedly heard in person during evaluationMeanwhile this is an actual email, with one of the foremost DID experts in the world!

Also, for the love of the gods, Transgender Mental Health does NOT say "transgender make plurality." Actually read the thing!!!

But hey, now that I'm done with that particular conversation and got what I need to make my point, I'll confess! All these anons were me!

Reminder, again, their source was "my doctor said it, trust me bro!"

And while I only named a couple doctors over the course of that conversation, I could have dropped so many more!

The fact is, it's not hard to look at a link and read the screenshots therein. Here, I'll even post the pics!

And in case you're thinking that they just trust Dr. Candy Fox's opinion so much and hold her in such high regard...

Nope.

But then...

WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU BASING YOUR BELIEFS ON?

Because it's not psychiatry. You can't cite a single doctor anywhere who has said you can't be a system without trauma!

System Medicalism is a Religion!

Sysmeds, like transmeds, do not base their bigotry in science or rationality. They do not follow the opinions of experts.

It's a religion to them! The Church of the Holy Trauma believes that Trauma and only Trauma has the might to bestow plurality upon the few chosen. And their faith is so unshakable because they've been told this by random uneducated nobodies on the internet, and it just feels true.

And because their FAITH in this idea is so strong, no amount of studies will change their mind. No amount of doctors coming forward to support endogenic systems. No amount of literal brain scans will convince them endogenic systems are real. As the saying goes, you can't reason someone outs of a position they didn't reason themselves into in the first place.

In the end, sysmeds continue to be an anti-science hate group with a religious devotion to their ideology of hate.

And this whole disaster is just another example of that.

[literary-illuminati]

2024 Book Review #72 – Alien Clay by Adrian Tchaikovsky

Tchaikovsky is not exactly one of my favourite working authors, but at this point he’s probably quite close. Certainly I haven’t yet regretted giving anything new of his I could get my hands on a try – and this is no exception (even if it’s not really that new, given I waited for my library system to get a copy). It doesn’t completely succeed at everything it goes for, but privileging themes over speculative xeno-biology is really a pretty fair choice, and as narratives go it was both fun and compelling.

The story follows Anton Daghdev – dissident, academic, and dissident academic who, for crimes against the Mandate of Humanity, has been sentenced to transportation to an extrasolar penal colony and a lifetime of hard labour furthering the Mandate’s understanding of the alien ecosystem which has flourished there. It’s a life sentence, make no mistake – but the fecund, symbiosis-obsessed ecology of ‘Kiln’ is far beyond anything he imagined when he was put into cryosleep for the 30 year voyage , and that’s before he is introduced to the real prize: Ruins. Real, artificial structures, with ornamentation, power generation, and writing – all signs of an intelligent creator which has entirely vanished from the ecosystem. Anton is caught between a camp that is itself is a horror show, ruled throgh brutality and fear by a commandant who devotion to the Mandate’s doctrines makes any actual understanding of Kiln impossible, and the ever-growing ecosystem beyond the compound’s walls that is forever seeking the right combination of proteins and molecules to form a bridge between species and worlds, ten thousand species of parasites and symbiotes forever seeking promising new hosts.

The book is concerned with several things, but the most obvious and the aesthetically dominant is the whole trope of the ‘death world’ – specifically the verdant and overgrowing jungle variety, where everything is green and beautiful and constantly looking for a way to kill you. A trope that’s always been more-or-less obviously inspired by 19th century European explorers and colonizers experience in the Amazon and Congo, and 20th century Americans in South East Asia – and the book is very interested in the colonial imagery, here. Everyone’s utter horror at the idea of contamination by the environment and its use as threat and punishment to keep the labourers in line is a central organizing principle of camp life. The fact that that the efforts to understand the nature of kilnish life and intelligence has been futile from the word go because of doctrines and assumptions the human scientists are labouring under and their studies has only ever been destructive and useless stamp-collecting is also just a theme running through the whole book.

From a slightly different perspective, this would be a fairly classic sci fi horror story, honestly – a moral atrocity of a scientific mission, destroyed in a fit of destructive karma as its prisoner/slave labour is infected and comes to know the alien life surrounding them in a way no human science could ever hope to. Very gothic, very Lovecraft. The lead archaeologist even gives a more-or-less sympathetic protagonist to tell it through.

As it is, on the level of genre this is basically an anti-cosmic horror story. The alien really is Alien, the world is vast and strange and you can’t really know anyone or anything – which is the trap. It’s not the alien infection that drives you mad, it’s the isolation and solitude of having felt the connection and ability to truly communicate without lies or deception it offers and then losing it beneath airlocks and thick plastic walls. It’s only be true trust and embrace of the most shockingly alien life ever seen – let alone any other humans – that the species can actually be liberated.

It rather reminds me of Last Exit by Max Gladstone that way – basically entirely different genres, but in both manage to make the alien seem truly terrifying and uncanny, and in both cases it’s the obsession with remaining pure and human and trying a sharp border between Us and Them that’s the real source of horror.

The thematic counterpoint here is the Mandate. It’s a totalitarian state in a very old-school, 20th century modernist way. Government through police spies and regular purges, legitimized by a grand historical project which is mostly just keeping everything neat and legible for the benefit of the top of the pyramid. It’s not that there aren’t true believers to the cause of Scientific Philanthropy, but it really doesn’t need that many of them. It rules through self-interest and fear – the tiny impossible hope of actually changing anything, or the absolute certainty of being sold out and swept up by the time your conspiracy has enough people in it to actually change anything. The Mandate makes it impossible to trust or rely upon anyone else, and by atomizing humanity makes it possible to bind them more tightly to the ruling state than ever before. It’s only be really radical – inhuman, really – levels of trust and cooperation and openness among people trying to resist that it can be fought, with its snitches and its tear gas and its automatic weaponry.

So yes, not the most subtle book in the world. But it definitely worked for me, on balance. It’s surprisingly rare to have a protagonist whose a committed political revolutionary on page 1 and never stops being one in damn near any story I come across, so maybe I just enjoyed the rare treat.

Though it does suffer some in the third act. An opinion I increasingly think I have about everything, but still. Kilnish xenobiology and -ecology is for the first two acts o the book is both aesthetically amazing and actually plausibly alien-seeming, but as Anton really understands it does become a bit credulity-stretchingly benevolent and purely symbiotic (not to mention structurally stable and only changing in the particulars across aeons), a few offhand lines about ‘red in two and claw’ aside. The narration also really doth protest too much about how the connection between the Kiln-infected humans totally isn’t telepathy. It wasn’t really a long book (certainly not by genre standards) but the whole final act also did just feel a bit bloated and meandering.

All of which is really just me being incapable of enjoying something without complaining though. If you like old-school feeling sci fi about alien worlds, Big Themes and improbably physically fit scientists, would recommend.

[tyriq-edits]

Research Notes for the Consort of Peace (Part 1)

The different dynasties/Periods of chinese history

Below the cut you will find the first part of my research notes for my Megop AU based on the ancient chinese tale of Wang Zhaojun [here]. Unfortunately it is rather difficult to get access to peer reviewed books about ancient China where I'm from. So for this part a huge chunk of my research unfortunately relies on different documentaries and Youtube videos. If i got anything wrong in my research please feel free to tell me.

Xia Dynasty: 2100 - 1600 BCE 

Probably very likely or even most definitely mythical -> the archeological record shows no proof of them ever having existed.

Before them china was ruled by so called “legendary sage emperors”

A guy named Yu had been commissioned by them to find a way to manage to floodings of the Yellow river -> managed to do that and founded the xia dynasty (Madsen 0:34)

Shāng Dynasty: 1600-1050 BCE

Capital near Zhengzhou (Tsin 1)

Bronze artifacts (Madsen 0:58)

Warlike in nature → Similar to the Mycenaeans in ancient Greece. 

Technology regarding Bronze smithing improved throughout this dynasty

Probably invented writing/earliest form of chinese writing attributed to them (Madsen 1:10) 

Jiǎ gǔ wén -> Oracle Bone inscription (Madsen 1:20) -> Writings on bones and turtle shells for divination

Women had a lot more rights during this time and were politically and militarily engaged → Example Fu Hao (Zhao 2022, 3:20)

Ended in a period of decadence and replaced by the Zhou (Madsen1:35)

Cool fact: Shang King Wu Di (Husband of Fu Hao) would travel around his kingdom disguised as a commoner to understand the troubles of the common people better (Zhao 2022, 5:00)

Zhōu Dynasty: 1050 - 256 BCE

Divided into 2 periods: Western Zhōu (1050-771 BCE) and Eastern Zhōu (771-256)

Eastern Zhōu happens at the same time as the Spring and Autumn Period (770-475 BCE) and the Warring states Period (475-221 BCE) 

Capital Western Zhou: Hao (near Xi’an)

Capital Eastern Zhōu: Luoyang (in the province of Henan)

Confusius creates the idea of confucianism around this time (the  -> Huge influence on chinese culture (Tsin 1)

Main rule of Confucianism: “do not do unto others what you would not want others to do unto you” but “felial Piety”/devotion to the family is equally if not even more important

Idea of Mandate of Heaven is created (Madsen) → Joshua Mark however claims the Mandate of heaven was created under the Shang Dynasty, the Zhou just developed it further (Mark, Han 3)

Mandate of Heaven: A king could only rule if he acted just -> He had the heaven’s favour and was granted the right to rule by the heavens. But the heavens could take that right away from him if he acted unjustly.(Madsen 1:51) → The ruler HAD to look after his people in order to keep the mandate of heaven. 

Kinda like the “Gracie dei” in western medieval kingdoms except your god given right as a king came with conditions 

There will be signs by the heavens before hand -> natural disasters (Madsen 1:55)

Book of Songs was written around this time (taken from personal university class notes)

Functioned under a complex feudalistic system → Decentralised government (Epimetheus 1:50)

The Zhōu decline was long and painful starting with the Spring and Autumn period

In the end China broke into many different kingdoms and states (Zhōu being but one of them)

Warring States Period: 475-221 BCE

The Zhou were, according to Cartwright: “No longer dominant in military terms, the Zhou were forced to rely on armies of other allied states, who on occasion took the opportunity to forward their own territorial claims. For this reason, the Zhou king was compelled to sometimes make the military leader of another state the military leader of the Zhou alliance.” (2) → The greatest of these military leaders received the title of Hegemon. 

By the 4th century BCE 100 smaller states had been “consolidated by conquest” (Cartwright 2) into 7 major states: Chu, Han, Qi, Qin, Wei, Yan and Zhao. 

“In each state, the ruler declared himself king and independent of the Zhou empire.” (Cartwright 2)

Basically everyone was fighting everyone at all times. 

It also marked the beginning of China’s use of a cavalry in the military as well as the chineses’ entry into the iron age through the use of iron swords and crossbows (Cartwright 3)

There were still cultural developments despite the constant wars (Cartwright 5)

Metalworking developed (Iron)

 agricultural revolution (Iron tools)

cities grew in size

large defensive walls

 towers were erected

Multi-storey citygates to impress visitors

Rulers’ Palaces became more extravagant 

Marketplaces → Trade

Industrialised pottery and weapon production 

Town planning (Grid pattern similar to Roman and Greek Colonies in the West)

Introduction of bronze coins with a hole in the middle

Philosophy → Writings and contemplation on Confucius, Daoism, Legalism, War Tactics (Sun Tzu)

Qin Dynasty: 221-206 BCE

Before the rise of the Qin Dynasty, the Qin had remained “one of the few states which remained loyal to the Zhou” (Cartwright 4)

Several Qin rulers had received the title of Hegemon from the Zhou kings during this time (Cartwright 4).

Qin conquered all the other nations at the end of the warring states period. 

Reunited China into one nation

Rulers of previous dynasties were called kings (Wáng 王)

the Qin ruler (Qin Shi Huang) invented a new title for himself -> Emperor (Huáng Dì 皇帝）(Madsen)

Qin Shi Huang was known for his brutality and draconian rule

Qin Shi Huang “understood that the Zhous's policy of a decentralized government had contributed to its fall and so established a centralized state which decreased the power of the aristocracy, eliminated the borders between different states, and operated according to the precepts of the philosophy of Legalism”. (Mark, Qin 2)

He forced a unified writing systems onto those he conquered and had hundreds of historians executed and historical records burned ->he wanted to unite the people of China under one shared identity and for the “history of China to start with him”.

But his bookburnings had other reasons → Scholars would write tracts criticising Qin Shi Huang’s rule and comparing it with more benevolent rulers of the past Zhou dynasty and saying Qin Shi Huang was ignoring the mandate of heaven by not caring for his subjects correctly (turning them into slaves) (Mark, Qin 5)

People who tried to hide the history books and writings of past dynasties were also executed (Mark, Qin 5)

But not only history books were burned also “any works expressing the concepts from the period of the Hundred Schools of Thought should also be destroyed including the standard educational texts known as the Four Books and Five Classics from the Zhou Dynasty. Anyone speaking on such topics should be killed and any officers or officials who heard of such conversations and did not report them should be likewise.” (Mark, Qin 5) 

Only medicine and science books were spared. (Mark, Qin 5)

→ Had scholars executed by burying them alive in a mass grave (Madsen 3:40)

“Shi Huangdi suppressed all freedom of speech, had the legal codes rewritten to adhere more closely with his own personal vision.” (Mark, Qin 6)

“A one hit wonder of a dynasty” (Montgomery) 

Joshua Mark: “213 BCE, his need to control every aspect of his subjects' lives, and fear of rebellion, had turned China into a police state in which freedoms were severely limited and the peasant class was reduced to a level of conscript slavery” (2)

Under Qin Shi Huang China saw the first version of the Great Wall (protection against the invading Xiongnu), the Grand Canal, introduction of state coinage, highway constructions, and the terracotta army in his tomb. (Mark, Qin 2) 

Joshua Mark: “His early reign seems, at first glance, a model for any monarch in true leadership and care for his people but Shi Huangdi only interpreted the Mandate of Heaven in terms of his own power and self-importance; his subjects were a means to an end, not an end in themselves. Those who worked on the wall, the canal, and other public projects, if they even were initially paid, quickly became conscripts taken from their homes to labor for scraps of food and communal lodgings.” (Qin 4)

“He encouraged science and discouraged letters” (Mark, Qin 4)

Joshua Mark: “The people's lives under the Qin became harsh, narrow, and more uncertain (..) because government officials could take anyone they wanted to work on the emperor's projects, no matter their social class or occupation. Only the emperor's men were allowed weapons so there was no armed resistance possible and, even if arms had been available, Shi Huangdi's network of spies, secret police, and informants would have revealed a plot before it had a chance to be put into action”. (Qin 5)

Shi Huangdi became increasingly more paranoid as time went on leading to more and more restrictive laws → Scared of usurpation and assassination → Grew obsessed with the idea of immortality → Sent officials to find the elixir of immortality

Qin Shi Huang famously died after swallowing mercury, believing it’d turn him immortal. 

Shi Huang’s chief advisor Li Siu changed the emperor’s will after his death → Shi Huang intended his “commanding eldest son Fusu” as his heir → Li Siu feared Fusu would replaced him as chief advisor and made the “spoiled, coddled, youngest son” Hu Hai as he was “easy to manipulate” (Mark, Qin 8)

“He (Hu Hai) was famous for his bad temper, ordering the death of anyone who brought him bad news, and his lasting legacy is the origin of the saying “Don't kill the messenger” regarding a negative reaction to receiving unwelcome information.” (Mark, Qin 9)

The Qin Dynasty officially fell under the rule of Qin Shi Huang’s grandson Ziying who was unable to stop the rebellion of Liu Bang of Han and Xiang Yu. 

Liu Bang of Han had accepted the surrender of Ziying and treated him well. 

Xiang Yu however had Ziying and his entire family executed. 

Han Dynasty: 206 BCE - 220 AD

Existed around the same time as the ancient Roman Republic and Empire and the Diadochi all the way up to the reign of emperor/empress Elagabalus. → Even traded with the roman empire → See the Roman Silk ban of 14 AD.

This is the dynasty during which Wang Zhaojun lived during the reign of emperor Yuan

The majority of Chinese people are part of the Han ethnic group, which receives its name from the Han dynasty. (Mark, Han 2)

Divided into the earlier Western and later Eastern Han Period (named after the location of the capitals)

Western Han: 206 BCE - 9 AD

Xin Dynasty: 9 AD - 25 AD → Regent Wang Mang declared the Han Dynasty is over and created the VERY brief XinDynasty after which the Han resumed (Mark, Han 1)

Eastern Han: 25 AD - 220 AD

Joshua Mark: “(The Han Dynasty) established the paradigm for all succeeding dynasties up through 1912 CE.” (Han 1)

Founded by Liu Bang, a commoner (born a peasant, worked as a sheriff) → Later called Emperor Gaozu → Liu Bang straight up rolled Nat20 on every single Charisma and Deception Check and faked his way onto the throne.

Liu Bang and Xiang Yu, after defeating the Qin dynasty, turned on each other → Liu Bang finally gained the upper hand by kidnapping Xiang Yu's concubine, Lady Yu, who was the great love of his life, and luring the Chu forces into a hopeless situation at the Battle of Gaixia (202 BCE). Lady Yu committed suicide and Xiang Yu, after burying her, fought his way out but was pursued and killed himself rather than be taken. Liu Bang then established the Han Dynasty, ruling as the Emperor Gaozu (r. 202-195 BCE)” (Mark, Qin 9)

Liu Bang later executed and demoted his other generals upon the request of his wife empress Lu Zhi → known as one of China’s most cruel women (Montgomery). 

Capital was moved from Luoyang to Chang’an (Mark, Han 3)

“With no experience in government, Gaozu had to rely on earlier models and so adopted the decentralized government of the Zhou and the Legalism of the Qin (though the latter was implemented more benevolently). The decentralized state was divided into 13 administrative districts known as commanderies (also as jun) and awarded ten kingdoms to members of his family whom he expected to rule justly” (Mark, Han 3)

According to Poulpart: “Liu Bang created a new governmental structure composed of three actors with overlapping functions, guaranteeing that one would not dominate the other. This system was relying on a chancellor (chengxiang), who was responsible of the cases that would be managed by the emperor, a supreme Commander (taiwei) responsible of any military action or decision, and an imperial counsellor (yushi dafu) at the helm of the bureaucracy and administrative system.” (1)

As a former peasant Liu Bang understood how commoners had felt under the Qin rulers → Lowered Taxes for commoners, redistributed wealth, made some of the rules less strict (Mark, Han 3)

Liu Bang opened up bureaucratic positions for people of all social classes (Mark, Han 3) → His successor emperor Wen of Han would later take this idea further and introduce the imperial state exam → An Exam people of all social classes could take in order to become imperial civil servant 

During the Han period Confucianism was the state religion → According to Confucianism’s ideas the state system of the chinese emperors was superior to every other form of civilisation → Han Emperors used this as explanation for expansionist politics (especially under emperor Wu of Han) → It was their mission given to them by the Mandate of Heaven (Poulpart 1)

Confucianism grew in popularity even amongst commoners but they still practised their own local cults (Poulpart 2) → Confucianism was mostly popular and important within the higher social classes (Poulpart 2)

The Han Dynasty was a period of lots of scientific and artistic advancements, marked by Confucianism and the creation of the silk road under emperor Wu. (Mark, Han 2)

The Hans invented the water wheel, the compass, the seismograph, musical theory and paper (Mark, Han 2)

Creation of the silk road -> Trading routes would reach up to the Roman Empire

The Han also “encouraged literacy and the study of history” (Mark, Han 2) → Sima Qian, the chinese Herodotus, lived during the Han Period

Iron, copper and Salt were regulated by the government → Government held a monopoly on those markets (Poulpart 2) → The Han-Xiongnu wars were partly the reason for that monopoly 

Chinese Mythology underwent development during this time → Think Nezha, the Queen mother of the West, Guanyin, Chang’e, the Jade Emperor etc. (Mark, Han 2) → Many of these figures have existed since the Shang Dynasty

Wars with the Xiongnu (A distinct ethnic group from the mongolian Steppe)

Xiongnu wars lasted for 200 years → Will talk about these in more detail in the Xiongnu section

After Liu Bang’s death his wife Lu Zhi was in charge through several puppet rulers (Mark, Han 3) → She was then executed and Emperor Wen of Han took over. 

Wen’s son Emperor Jing saw that the decentralised government was not working well → centralised the Han empire (Mark, Han 4)

Reigns of Wen and Jing = Golden Age 

After Jing came Emperor Wu → Expansionist policies, made everyone (nobles and commoners) equal under the law code, gave commoners better opportunity to become government officials, adopted Confucianism as the state philosophy (Mark, Han 4)

Expansion into Korea and Vietnam ( → the Trung Sisters Rebellion) and more wars against the Xiongnu (Successful) & establishment of the Silk road  (Mark, Han 4)

After Wu → Emperor Zhao → Emperor Liu He → Emperor Xuan → Emperor Yuan (The one from Wang Zhaojun’s tale)

Emperor Yuan (Or Yuandi) → Big supporter of Confucianism → Because of this (filial piety) he gave powerful positions to his wife’s family members → This and “failure to check the power of his eunuch secretaries” lead to the fall of Western Han and rise of the Xin dynasty

Yuan’s son, Emperor Cheng continued his father’s mistake until his cousin Wang Mang seized power and declared himself Emperor in 9 AD. (Encyclopedia Britannica 1) →Xin Dynasty

Wang Mang was meant to act as a regent to Cheng until he came of age → did not give the power back to Cheng when he was an adult

Joshua Mark: “Wang was a Confucian scholar and idealist who believed that a single, strong ruler with a clear vision and the freedom to do as he pleased would be more effective than one who took counsel and had to discuss policy with others before implementing it.” (5) → Wang Mang was kinda useless as a ruler → “The people grew frustrated with his ineptitude and a mob overran the palace, hacked him to pieces, and used his head as a kickball” (Mark, Han 5)

Emperor Xuan → Reestablished the Han Dynasty → Weak and was soon deposed during the Red-Eyebrow-Rebellion (Mark, Han 6)

Emperor Guangwu → Moves capital to Luoyang → Begin of the eastern Han period → created reforms to avert another Xin situation (Mark, Han 6). 

“the Han ruling house fairly quickly devolved into a series of monarchs who cared more about indulging their pleasures than ruling a country” (Mark, Han 6) → The emperors left country affairs to their Eunuchs.

By 130 AD the imperial court had become corrupt by Eunuchs who held all the power (Mark, Han 2)

At the same time the Han were spending money on expansionist policies into Korea, Vietnam and on wars against Xianbi (A Nomadic group from the mongol steppe like the Xiongnu and Huns)

Famines, Floods and taxes 

The Han Dynasty ended after General Cao Cao defeated the yellow turban rebellion, tried taking over control of the empire. After his defeat via his fellow military commanders, the kingdom was split into three different realms. (Mark, Han 2)

Three Kingdoms: 220-264 

After the Fall of the Han Dynasty

Romance of the three kingdoms takes place around this time

Basically summarised as “Warring States Period 2: Electric Boogaloo”

Jin Dynasty: 265 - 420 

Very shortly lived Dynasty

Descendants of the generals who usurped the imperial throne

It was of the three kingdoms of the previous era, the Wei Kingdom which prevailed and re-unified China (Madsen 5:00)

United China but their reign was marked by wars and violence (Epimetheus 3:30)

Palace intrigue → Civil war 299 - 301 AD

Jin Dynasty fell at the hands of Xiongnu tribes who “settled in the north of china and proved hard to govern” (Madsen: 5:20)

Xiongnu attacked both of China’s capital cities Luoyang and Chang’an

“Many people fled to the south of Nan Jing where the Jin had set up a government in exile” (Madsen 5:30)

Period of the Northern and Southern Dynasties: 386-589 

Northern Wei and the Southern Qi empires

Often considered a dark age of Chinese history (Epimetheus 3:40)

“Dominated by warlords who raided the lands and by barbarian invasions” (Epimetheus 3:48)

Buddhism increased in popularity (had been around in China since the Han Dynasty however) (Madsen: 5:40)

At the end the Wei and Qi kingdom had around 9000 buddhist temples combined (Madsen: 5:48) → Many rulers openly supported Buddhism

Sui Dynasty: 581 - 618 

Had only 2 reigning emperors

Was able to unify China again

Instead of following the rules of Confucius, the Sui emperors tried to act upon Buddhist principles. (Madsen 6:30)

Their “structural changes which paved the way for a more long-lasting successor, the Tang Dynasty” (Cartwright, Sui 1)

Reinstalled the rule of ethnic han chinese (Epimetheus 3:53)

Integrated the barbarians that had invaded China during the previous period (Epimetheus (4:10)

After 1 million men were taken to Korea for military service → Rebellions arose in China during this time → Rebellion lead by Sui Emperor’s cousin Li Yuan overthrew the Sui → Renamed himself emperor Gaozu (Like Liu Bang of Han)

Tang Dynasty: 618 - 906

The second golden Age

Most C-Dramas i watch tend to take place around this period

Arts flourished around this time → Especially Poetry

Tea became more popular → Tea ceremonies (Madsen 8:10)

The story of Yan Gufei (another one of the 4 beauties of China) is set during this time

Internal stability

Scientific advancement

China’s population grew to 80million (Epimetheus 4:20)

The imperial exam of the han was picked up again and modified → Meritocracy (Madsen 7:30)

Surprisingly tolerant of foreigners for an ancient civilisation → Chang’an was cosmopolitan (Madsen 7:40)

All three religions of China (Daoism, Confucianism and Buddhism) thrived during the Tang

Towards the end they began persecuting Buddhists and were deposed after several rebellions (Epimetheus 4:50)

Five Dynasty Period: 907-960: 

China broke again

There is once again war between everyone

Song Dynasty: 960 - 1279 

Divided into Northern Song(960-1127) and Southern Song (1127-1279) (Tsin 1)

Scientific advancements and military development

Started out with a strong economy but was militarily a lot weaker than previous dynasties (Madsen 8:40)

Mass printing and gunpowder was invented during this period (Epimetheus 5:05)

First Paper currency

Southern Song started after Jurchens attacked the capital city and took the Emperor and several officials hostage → The north of china was lost to the Jurchens → New emperor crowned in the south where the Song remained until 1279 (Madsen 8:50)

Tea houses and night markets became popular around this time

Storytellers within these tea houses (Madsen 9:10)

Art in the form of poetry and landscape paintings flourished during southern Song (Madsen 9:20)

North of China during this time was ruled by the Jurchens who after a while took over the chinese imperial system, language, writing system and way of life (Madsen 10:00)

Yuan Dynasty: 1279 - 1368 

Mongol Invasion → Genghis Khan’s grandson Kublai Khan 

Moved the Capital city to Dadu (Today Beijing)

Taken from class notes: Around this time the novel became popular → The Mongol emperors did not care for poetry → They preferred theatre → Journey to the West style stage play  → Was written down as a novel → entered the “mainstream”

The Yuan controlled the entire silkroad from China to Europe (Epimetheus 5:30)

Diversity in culture (Epimetheus 5:40)

But Marco polo did note that there was “ethnic tension” in China → Different ethnic groups were placed in different taxation groups (Madsen 13:30) 

“A chinese could land with a hefty fine if he fought a mongol, but a mongol could get away scot free if he killed a chinese” (Madsen: 13:40)

The Mongols kept chinese advisors however and adopted the idea of the chinese emperor being “the son of heaven” (Madsen 14:00)

More Europeans visited China around this time (Like Marco Polo)

Just like the Mongol empire as a whole, this period was very short lived

Ming Dynasty: 1368 - 1644

Founded by a commoner (Taizu) after a successful rebellion against the Mongols

Taizu was a harsh ruler → Went after literati (kinda like emperor Qin but with a bit less executions)

The Imperial exam remained under his rule however → one had to study the 4 great Books → Confucius Analects, Mencius, Doctrine of the Mean and the Great Learning (Madsen 15:30)

Another golden age

Construction of the famous forbidden city in 1406-1420

Ming Vases were a popular exported good

Literature and Art flourished

The great Wall of China was expanded to keep the Mongols out

Problems with Pirates 

Chinese age of exploration → Explorers went as far as east africa and returned with Giraffe’s to the emperor’s court (Madsen 16:00)

Foreign merchants were limited to outposts but could not really go deeper inside China (Madsen 16:40)

Some emperors had around 10’000 concubines around this dynasty (allegedly)

Famine lead the end of the Ming Dynasty

Qing Dynasty: 1644 - 1912

The Manchu ethnic group ruled China after crossing the great wall (Madsen 17:00)

All men in china were ordered to get the Manchu Hairstyle to show their loyalty to the new Dynasty (Madsen 17:10)

Period of stability followed

Most on the information i could find on the harem system came from this period

Not nearly as glamorous as depicted in C-Dramas (shocker)

“Started as a golden age, ended in disaster” (Epimetheus 5:50) → Opium wars

Fell after the Chinese revolution and the establishment of the Republic of China

The life story of the last Emperor of China is honestly a hot mess. 

After the fall of the Qing Dynasty some Consorts and Concubines had to become prostitutes to survive 

Sources: 

Cartwright, Mark: Warring States Period, World History Encyclopedia, 2017 https://www.worldhistory.org/Warring_States_Period/ 

Cartwright, Mark: Sui Dynasty, World History Encyclopedia, 2017. https://www.worldhistory.org/Sui_Dynasty/

The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica. "Yuandi". Encyclopedia Britannica, 16 Apr. 2024, https://www.britannica.com/biography/Yuandi, Accessed 22 March 2025.

Epimetheus: All China’s Dynasties explained in 7 minutes, Youtube, 2018 https://youtu.be/fFNzX3tYTXU?si=eZd4uWgxxgJTlufI 

TSIN, Micheal: China - Timeline of Historical Periods, Asia for Educators, Columbia University, 1995 https://afe.easia.columbia.edu/timelines/china_timeline.htm 

MADSEN, Jared: All of China’s Dynasties in ONE Video - Chinese history 101, youtube, 5th August 2022https://youtu.be/Fz_uQNQBK0g?si=Dm4_3DoomfgN7jZo 

Mark, Joshua: Han Dynasty, World History Encyclopedia, 2020. https://www.worldhistory.org/Han_Dynasty/

Mark, Joshua: Qin Dynasty, World History Encyclopedia, 2020. https://www.worldhistory.org/Qin_Dynasty/

MONTGOMERY, Lazlo: The Han Dynasty (Part 1), in: the chinese history podcast, Ep. 18 https://open.spotify.com/episode/1umFA07mSPCuPyCCcAKiK4?si=pe4iHig8QFOO6_-kv9XTzg 

Poupart, Jean-Baptiste: Han Dynasty, Academia https://academia.edu/resource/work/40640987 

Zhao, Xiran Jay: China’s forgotten Warrior Queen – Fu Hao, Youtube, 2022.

https://youtu.be/U0luii3sKjQ?si=MDSuCUOqVKn20TIN

[madamejadex]

Hi Miss Jade!

I was wondering, since you mentioned a contract in one of your responses, how does such contract look like? What needs to be included and what are some things that should or are good to include in such contract? Is it the whole extend of a talk you are supposed to have with your partner?

I hope you are doing good and have a lovely rest of the day! 🎔

-🦀

Hello, my sweet one. I absolutely adore that you wish to know more about D/s contracts.

So, let’s talk about contracts, shall we?

So what is a BDSM contract? Well a BDSM contract is simply a mutual agreement between partners that outlines the shape of your dynamic. It’s not about being cold or rigid, it’s about creating safety, clarity, and intention. Think of it as a gentle foundation for the power you want to share.

And no, it’s not the only conversation you’ll have, far from it. But it’s a beautiful way to make sure you’re both being heard and held right from the start.

What should a BDSM contract include? It can be as short or as detailed as you both like, but here are some key areas you may want to cover:

1. Identities and roles

Names or scene names

Pronouns

Defined roles (Dominant, submissive, switch, pet, little, etc.)

2. Limits

Hard limits: acts or language that are completely off-limits

Soft limits: things that require caution, mood-based, or only in certain contexts

3. Safewords & Communication Tools

Agreed safewords (many use the stoplight system: green/yellow/red)

Non-verbal signals (especially for gagged or non-verbal play)

Check-in frequency or aftercare signals

4. Agreed Activities / Play Preferences

Kinks and fetishes you both enjoy

Specific things you’d like to explore or avoid

Frequency of scenes (if relevant)

5. Aftercare

What kind of care each person needs after a scene (touch, space, words, snacks, etc.)

Who provides what

How long aftercare typically lasts

6. Expectations Outside of Scenes

Is this a scene-only dynamic, or does the dynamic extend into daily life?

Will honorifics be used all the time, or only during scenes?

What does “Dominance” or “submission” look like in everyday interactions?

7. Review Terms & Consent Refreshers

How often will you revisit or revise this contract? (every month, 3 months, etc.)

Is it a time-limited contract, or open-ended with periodic check-ins?

A reminder that consent is ongoing and can be withdrawn at any time

8. Optional Sweet Details

Rituals (kneeling, greeting phrases, collaring, etc.)

Pet names or honorifics

Goals you’re working toward as a pair

A written statement of devotion, care, or intent (some like to include a little vow 💋)

Don't see a D/s contract as a finish line, see it as the beginning. It’s the first step toward something sacred. It says, “This is what I need to feel safe in your hands. And this is what I promise when I hold you in mine.”

And remember that D/s contracts can look very different and are living documents, shaped by the unique needs of a specific dynamic. And this is simply suggestions to help build a strong foundation. So if you have any more questions, sweetie, don’t hesitate to ask.

xo Miss Jade

[librarycards]

i'm starting grad school soon (course-based master's though!)!! any tips?

indeed! here's a list

practice reading differently. your reading volume has gone up exponentially since undergrad, and you can no longer conceivably read all of everything you're assigned very closely before class. try your hand at speed-reading, seeking out and highlighting key words and points, and tracking thesis/argument-evidence-implications without laboring over every single word.

get zotero. use it. i am actually bad at this but i know it works because it helps whenever i do. save books and notes and make categories for different disciplines/classes!

make friends in your cohort/classes. you will NEED people you can bitch to who know exactly what you're bitching about. you will probably also need their help/insight on at least a few difficult readings, and vice-versa.

this is obvious, but PIRATE YOUR BOOKS if they are not already given to you.

another great way to get the most out of your readings, especially very "classic" ones, is looking up others' book reviews/criticisms of said readings on google scholar. it helps to be able to draw on others' insights/outside literature, especially if and when you will need to write a term paper on that reading. you'll already have citations locked down.

don't be afraid to ask your professors if you can do something unconventional for an assignment. generally, they want the course to be useful to you more than they want uniformity.

don't be afraid to chat in general with professors, visiting scholars, etc. go to conferences whenever you can. sign up for listservs. network. this will help you down the line, even if you don't stay in academia. i have cool queer, trans, disabled people i can stay with across the country and around the world, in part as a result of academic networking and conferencing.

speaking of which, disability works differently in grad school. in my experience, grad school provided many more opportunities for accommodation with a lot less "proof" needed on your end, because we are all adults with needs who can be trusted to attend to said needs as we need to. i didn't register with my university when i started this program, and instead was candid with my profs about needing my zoom camera off when that was a thing; needing to leave the room at times; and needing flexibility with days off.

some profs will suck. this is why you need friends to bitch with! there usually isn't much you can do, however, being in grad school means you do have more temporal flexibility (and also flexibility in what classes you actually need to take). i've dropped several classes bc the professor just sucked.

have fun and enjoy yourself! grad school is a special time that you get to devote to your very niche thing, and have other people genuinely give a shit about it. your whole job is to be the nichest little autistic bitch in the establishment. it is a challenge at first to get accustomed to the norms, especially if (like me) no one in your family has gotten an MA or PhD before. but it gets easier and is 100% doable, and gets even easier with a strong support system.

good luck and yippee!!

[evidence-based-activism]

are there any studies on why women stay with abusive partners or what's the best way to help them?

I know the common reasons of financial dependence, fear of social backlash or lack of support system, etc. but I was looking for something more comprehensive. I know someone irl who doesn't face this common barriers but is still not leaving or accepting help to leave.

Hello! Given the topic, I'm moving this ask to the top of my queue. Anon, I hope this helps you! I may be reviewing some information you already know, but I think it's important for others who may not be aware.

Women stay in abusive relationships for a myriad of interconnected factors. I'll start with some research reviews on this topic:

This 2023 review of 10 qualitative studies [1] found the most commonly cited reasons women gave for remaining in a violent relationship were: feeling pessimistic about new relationships, feeling the relationships still provided for their need for affection, having positive experiences in the relationship, being dependent (i.e., materially or emotionally) on the partner, still having a positive view of their partner, feeling trapped, feeling social pressure to remain in the relationship, believing the conflict is normal, and feeling dating violence is taboo among some other factors. Together this suggests women remain in these relationships either because they justify or minimize the abuse (positive experiences, fulfill affection needs, normal conflict, etc.) or because they feel unable to leave or find a better alternative (social pressure, dependence, pessimism about other relationships, etc.).

This 2021 review of 14 studies [2] found "investment in the relationship, commitment, and the existence of structural barriers (e.g., with no own income) were negatively correlated with the breakup." This suggests that, beyond material needs, the sunk cost fallacy [3] is playing a role. Essentially, the sunk cost fallacy is a common cognitive bias that makes us feel as though we must continue investing resources in something (like a relationship) because we already devoted so many resources to it. Women in a committed abusive relationship may find it difficult to leave simply because they have already invested so much time and effort into the relationship.

This 2013 review [4] supports this idea, arguing that "while personal and contextual reasons for remaining in a relationship are important, we argue that factors such as the commitment process may be the most difficult to overcome." This is essentially the same argument as above, but discusses other potential mechanisms behind this, like the "Foot-in-the-Door effect and cognitive dissonance."

This 2005 dissertation [5] includes a section on the reasons women gave for staying in the relationship, including material deficiencies (e.g., no personal income, no safe place to retreat to, etc.), cognitive distortions about themselves (e.g., feelings of guilt or shame, feeling they deserved the abuse, etc.), cognitive distortions about the violence (e.g., believing it was normal conflict, minimizing the impact of the abuse, etc.), and beliefs about other people (e.g., believing the abuser would eventually change, fearing their family's reactions, believing no one else would make them happy, etc.). They also note that themes in women's choice to leave included: the impact of the abuse on their children, a shift in their sense of self-efficacy, an escalation in violence, and their partner's infidelity.

This 2003 review [6] also indicates that both structural (i.e., material) factors and psychological factors (like the ones discussed above) play a role in women's decisions to stay. External resources appear to be particularly important (i.e., leaving is unlikely if she has no external resources even if she wants to leave), but after those are taken into account, psychological factors play a large role in their decisions to stay.

This 1998 review [7] describes the same types of factors. They also note that "many women have two conflicting emotions; they are tired of being afraid and wish to leave the relationship, but they also fear for their physical safety and that of their children if they try to leave their abusive partner." Unfortunately, this assessment is often accurate; continual harassment (sometimes through the legal system or their children) is common for women who have escaped an abusive relationship.

Some additional studies:

This 2015 study [8] analyzing social media posts found women's reasons for staying included themes of: distortions surrounding the violence (e.g., minimizing or rationalizing the abuse), low self-worth, fear of the abuser, a desire to save or help their partner, the presence of children, their family's expectations, and financial issues. In contrast, reasons for leaving included themes of: changed views on themselves or their relationships (e.g., realizing they deserved better or their partner would never change), receiving external support, feeling the need to protect their children, and fearing the escalation of violence.

This 2010 study [9] discusses types of beliefs about their relationships that are associated with leaving or staying. For example, they found conceptualizing the abuser with a "dual identity" (i.e., a good man who sometimes "turns into" a bad guy) was associated with staying, whereas believing being alone rather than in a bad relationship was associated with leaving. They have many other examples, but the essential point is that women are influenced not just by their circumstances but their beliefs surrounding those circumstances.

This 2006 longitudinal study [10] found seeking and not receiving outside help was associated with remaining in an abusive relationship.

This 2017 thesis [11] describes a "model ... for why women leave abusive relationships." The model steps “include gaining education to acknowledge red flags, awareness of the quality of alternatives, and realizing individual unhappiness.”

In other words, both material contextual factors like economic support and internal psychological factors help explain women's decisions to leave or stay with an abusive partner. Many of these psychological factors are based on common cognitive distortions. In other words, these factors are not unique to women in abusive relationships; instead, they are common among the general population. They should not be considered an explanation for why a woman is in an abusive relationship, but a partial explanation for why a woman may stay in an abusive relationship.

---

Now, what can someone do to help a woman in an abusive relationship? It's an unfortunate truth that you often have to wait for the woman to be ready to leave herself. In particular, if the reason she is staying is one or more of the psychological factors discussed above, you cannot change the way she thinks about her situation.

Anon, I know you mentioned this isn't relevant to you, but for others: on the other hand, if the woman is ready to leave but restricted by material factors, then you can help immensely by providing material assistance.

Making a clear and unqualified offer of material assistance, should she ever need it in the future, will also likely be invaluable for a woman who is not yet ready to leave. Her material resources will likely decrease the longer she is in the relationship. As such, this offer may become helpful to her in the future. It’s important that this offer is not conditional (i.e., does not require her to act in a specific way or timeframe).

So, what can you do for someone who isn't ready to leave? These suggestions are based on statements from various domestic violence organizations, which all have slightly different worldviews. For examples, see [12-14], but you can likely find similar resources from an organization with your preferred worldview. (Or the worldview of the woman in the relationship.) I am also drawing from the book "Why Does He Do That?" by Lundy Bancroft [15]. (Also, Anon, I am using the general "you" here.)

You cannot force someone to leave, nor should you try. One of the central components to an abusive relationship is the control the abuser exerts over their victim. The victim is left feeling helpless, like she has no control over her life or her choices. Helping her regain a feeling of control over her life is a vital component for helping her eventually escape the relationship. This cannot be achieved by forcing her to leave, persistently arguing, or confronting her abuser, as all of these deprive her of further control.

Offer and provide emotional support (e.g., listening to her feelings, commiserating with her complaints, and taking her side in arguments).

Use supportive language. Don't say anything that could convey blame or disbelief (e.g., "What did you do to provoke him?", "That doesn't sound like him?", etc.) or judgment about her choices (e.g., "I always told you I hated him.", "I told you so.", etc.)

Maintaining contact with the victim. Abusers try to isolate their victims, so maintaining steady contact even if she seems to "drift away" will help prevent him from managing to fully isolate her. This is also another reason to try and avoid direct conflict or arguments with either her or her abuser. Abusers are skilled at manipulating people's interpretations of events; a well-meaning argument from you about how she "has to leave or he'll hurt her" will turn into "she's trying to drive us apart because she hates that you're happy" (or some other twisted interpretation) which he’ll use to isolate her from you.

In a similar vein, abusers do not just manipulate their victims; they manipulate the people around them as well. Women often recount being characterized as dramatic, crazy, or even abusive by their abusers, and the people around them often believe the abuser because he acts "rational" (around them) while she seems to break down or blow up over "little things" (in response to a sequence of unobserved abuse). All of this is to say, never assume the abuser's rendition of events is accurate, even if you don’t understand her behavior. Further, make sure she knows you'll help her even if she does do something wrong. (An abuser can often convince his victim that she has done something wrong. Whether this is true or not is irrelevant at that point; what is important is ensuring she knows you will help her regardless.)

If she is amenable, help her create a safety or escape plan. If she is not, do your best to prepare some things for her. For example, making a "go bag" with clothes, toiletries, cash, and supplies for her children or pets if relevant; gathering information on the process for obtaining a legal help or non-profit resources in your area; having records of some helpful resources phone numbers and a prepaid phone; etc.

Don't confront her abuser. This will put both you and her into danger.

If you have reason to believe she is in imminent danger (i.e., at risk of death or serious injury at that specific moment) then you should call the police. Calling the police outside of such situations will not help. They are unlikely to help her improve the situation when there is not clear and immediate evidence of abuse that would lead to his incarceration (i.e., the imminent danger mentioned) and it can both anger the abuser (putting her in further danger) and threaten your continued relationship with her.

In summary, maintain a relationship with the victim, support the victim emotionally and – if possible – materially, and do not exacerbate the situation by provoking the abuser. Most importantly, while it is understandable for you to be desperate to help her, you must not try to control her decisions. You cannot make her leave; she must choose to do so herself. You can only support her in the meantime.

I hope this helps you, Anon! I hope the person you know is able to leave soon.

References under the cut:

Swasti, N. K. C., Swandi, N. L. I. D., & Wulanyani, N. M. S. (2023). Reasons for Women to Stay in Violent Dating Relationships: Literature Review. Sinergi International Journal of Psychology, 1(1), 46-56.

Murta, S. G., & Parada, P. D. O. (2021). Leaving violent intimate relationships: a literature review. Psicologia USP, 32, e200046.

Gould, Wendy Rose. “The Sunk Cost Fallacy: How It Affects Your Decisions.” Verywell Mind, 7 Feb. 2023, https://www.verywellmind.com/what-is-sunk-cost-fallacy-7106851.

Dare, B., Guadagno, R., & Nicole Muscanell, M. A. (2013). Commitment: The key to women staying in abusive relationships. Journal of interpersonal relations, intergroup relations and identity, 6, 58-64.

Brandt, J. E. (2005). Why she left: The psychological, relational, and contextual variables that contribute to a woman's decision to leave an abusive relationship. City University of New York.

Anderson, D. K., & Saunders, D. G. (2003). Leaving an abusive partner: An empirical review of predictors, the process of leaving, and psychological well-being. Trauma, violence, & abuse, 4(2), 163-191.

Landenburger, K. M. (1998). The Dynamics of Leaving and Recovering from an Abusive Relationship. Journal of Obstetric, Gynecologic & Neonatal Nursing, 27(6), 700–706. doi:10.1111/j.1552-6909.1998.tb02641.x 

Cravens, J. D., Whiting, J. B., & Aamar, R. O. (2015). Why I stayed/left: An analysis of voices of intimate partner violence on social media. Contemporary Family Therapy, 37, 372-385.

Baly, A. R. (2010). Leaving abusive relationships: Constructions of self and situation by abused women. Journal of Interpersonal Violence, 25(12), 2297-2315.

Koepsell, J. K., Kernic, M. A., & Holt, V. L. (2006). Factors that influence battered women to leave their abusive relationships. Violence and victims, 21(2), 131-147.

Hamilton, A. (2017). Understanding the experiences of women who stay in abusive relationships.

I’m worried about someone else. (2025). Women’s Aid. https://www.womensaid.org.uk/information-support/the-survivors-handbook/im-worried-about-someone-else/

How you can help victims of domestic violence. (2025). Women’s Advocates. https://www.wadvocates.org/find-help/about-domestic-violence/how-you-can-help-victims-of-domestic-violence/

Drabinsky, H. (2020, July 28). How to help someone in an abusive relationship. Focus on the Family. https://www.focusonthefamily.com/marriage/marriage-problems/how-to-help-someone-in-an-abusive-relationship/

Bancroft, L. (2003). Why does he do that?: Inside the minds of angry and controlling men. Penguin.

[axvoter]

Blatantly Partisan Party Review XIII (federal 2025): Indigenous–Aboriginal Party of Australia

Running where: for the Senate in NSW, QLD, and VIC, and in the House divisions of Parkes (NSW), Lingiari (NT), and Durack (WA)

Prior reviews: federal 2022, VIC 2022, NSW 2023

What I said before: “Their policy platform is really simple stuff: a community that wants to be taken seriously and not treated paternalistically. They seek the space to address their own issues on their own terms.” (VIC 2022)

What I think this year: The Indigenous–Aboriginal Party of Australia (IAPA) first contested the federal election in 2022, having been formed in the remote NSW town of Wilcannia, and then endorsed independent candidates at Victorian and NSW state elections because they did not yet have registration at state level. They also contested the 2023 federal by-election for Fadden (QLD), placing seventh in a crowded field of 13. I am pleased to see the IAPA is back contesting this election, with many candidates familiar faces from those prior campaigns, and I'm especially glad that they have been able to expand their efforts to contest two seats covering remote areas in NT and WA. I will be curious to see how much support they obtain in those seats at polling places for predominantly Indigenous communities.

The IAPA’s focus is firmly on the Indigenous communities whose interests they formed to promote and their goals are often rather simple things that reflect the unacceptable level of disadvantage many Indigenous people experience. Their focus is on an “Indigenous voice IN parliament”, seemingly a riff on the Uluṟu Statement’s call for a Voice TO parliament. There are, of course, Indigenous MPs in parliament, but the IAPA wants representation from a party devoted to Indigenous issues specifically. One of the main reasons the IAPA was created was to address environmental damage to Baaka (the Murray-Darling river system), which has profound spiritual significance as well as practical importance to the Indigenous peoples who live along and with it. This year the party’s “Healthy Rivers, Healthy People” policy also explicitly names the Martuwarra (Fitzroy River), which sits within the WA electorate of Durack, where they are fielding a candidate. This policy goes with two others emphasising the protection of sacred sites and management of water resources.

You will not be surprised to learn the IAPA wants to end the removal of Indigenous children from their families, with much greater support to be provided for in-home support instead, and that they want to stop the incarceration of Indigenous children. They promote a policy of prevention not punishment, with an emphasis on stopping youth offending to break the cycle of young people whose damaging experiences of incarceration lead to a lifetime of going in and out of prison.

IAPA’s approach to housing issues is a bit different from many parties, and it is informed by their distinctive purpose. Rather than discussing urban zoning, first-home buyers, negative gearing, or any of the usual suspects, their policy is about Indigenous housing especially in regional and remote areas. Their emphasis is straightforward and reflects the appalling housing conditions of some remote communities. They want provision of “basic services, materials, facilities and infrastructure; habitability; affordability; accessibility; legal security of tenure; and location and cultural adequacy”.

I said in 2022 that a lot of the IAPA's requests are so basic that they are depressing in how starkly they highlight the challenges and disadvantages experienced in many Indigenous communities, especially in remote areas. That remains true, as the housing policy shows, but happily they are also able to celebrate a couple of gains since their first platform was formulated. One is the introduction of an Indigenous crisis support line, 13YARN, which received over 70,000 calls in under three years (especially during the Voice debate) and one of the co-designers was recently awarded NSW Aboriginal Woman of the Year, Gamilaroi woman Marjorie Anderson. The IAPA is also glad that the federal government has acquired the copyright to the Aboriginal flag from corporate owners, although they qualify this with a note that “like the continent itself, the Aboriginal flag is not rightfully or morally owned by the Australian Government”.

The IAPA's Senate how-to-vote card for Queensland recommends preferences to Socialist Alliance, Legalise Cannabis, Australia’s Voice, Fusion, and the Greens, in that order. For Victoria, they haven’t issued a similar card but urge their voters to “please include a progressive party likely to win [in] the 6th spot, otherwise you may accidentally contribute to the election of a racist party”. It’s interesting they make no specific recommendation for Labor despite the Albanese government holding the Voice referendum.

Recommendation: Give the Indigenous–Aboriginal Party of Australia a good preference.

Website: https://www.indigenouspartyofaustralia.com/

[mariacallous]

There was once a time when a performance career in New York progressed with, if not security, at least a path. An emerging playwright, director, or choreographer could hone their craft in a subsidized rehearsal space, apply for a residency somewhere in or near the city, or join a lab devoted to original works. Getting a single peer-reviewed grant, even a tiny one, would lead to others—each award conferring further legitimacy, bringing the artist to the attention of venues and large foundations. Money permitted more complex organizational structures, like companies and collectives, to form. In the happiest cases, a company could establish long-term funding relationships and receive predictable year-in, year-out operating support, thus becoming an institution, which could, in turn, offer its own new-work labs and programs. The cycle continued—or, at least, it did.

In the past half decade, whole strata of this intricate New York support system have been smashed. First, there was a drip-drip-drip of crisis: as costs everywhere rose, city, state, and federal monies faded away once COVID-era bailout efforts came to an end. According to a forthcoming study by the service organization A.R.T./New York, post-pandemic audiences for nonprofit theatre remain down eleven per cent, and, just in the year from 2022 to 2023, corporate giving dipped eighty per cent. Consequently, we’ve lost directing labs, nearby retreat centers for theatre and dance, and support spaces dedicated to new writing. There has been less ferment, less activity, less art. Already, financially strapped venues are producing far fewer shows—according to the Times, in the past five years, the number of Off Broadway productions eligible for the Lucille Lortel Awards has dropped by half.

And then, when the need seemed greatest, several private philanthropic foundations pulled out the rug. Three of the largest arts funders in the United States—the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Doris Duke Foundation, and the Ford Foundation—stopped supporting many components of the arts infrastructure in New York that they helped create. Their reasons were various, but the upshot was the same: extreme turbulence, which has affected organizations big and small. There were deep program and operational budget cuts at the Public Theatre, for instance, and Playwrights Horizons, where such critically acclaimed productions as Michael R. Jackson’s “Strange Loop” and David Adjmi’s “Stereophonic” premièred, lost underwriting for new play commissioning, as well as general operating support. The tiny rooms where such shows develop got hit, too. “It seemed like everybody lost their subsidized rehearsal space funding from Mellon at the same time,” Risa Shoup, a co-executive director from A.R.T./New York, told me.

Mellon and Duke overhauled their giving goals in accidental lockstep, with many of their changes hitting simultaneously in 2024. Longtime observers of the granting scene describe Ford’s lessening interest in connecting with performing arts organizations in New York—“I find them to be inaccessible in terms of having a conversation in terms of cultivation,” one New York program head told me—though this characterization has been contested by the foundation itself. Despite the timing, these shifts and defundings were not inspired by the incoming Trump Administration; they were set in motion, in some cases, years beforehand—it’s only a coincidence that they amplify the Administration’s fund-pulling chaos. I have heard these three foundations described as ecologies unto themselves. The pivoting of just one from its historical patterns of giving would be seismic; the pivot of all three at once has been cataclysmic.

One major consequence has been that several service organizations and granting initiatives—technically regranters, intermediaries who disburse monies from umbrella donors—have been forced to shut down or to retire grant programs. In late 2024, the National Dance Project and the National Theatre Project announced that Mellon was “concluding their decades-long funding arc” and the organizations, in their current form, would end. The MAP Fund, which in the past fifteen years or so was largely sponsored by Mellon and Duke, was, until recently, one of the country’s longest-serving regranters. In the years since its founding in 1988, MAP, originally called the Multi-Arts Production Fund, assembled panels to read tens of thousands of open-call applications, leading to the support of around twenty-five hundred artists and ensembles—including Suzan-Lori Parks, Adrienne Kennedy, and Anna Deavere Smith. With its regranting function zeroed out by both of its key donors so close together, this vital support system is no more. (MAP still nominally exists, though it has been reduced to its last surviving program, a coaching and peer-gathering initiative.)

Those fifteen years of collaboration did not protect MAP. In fact, longevity seems to have become a liability. For twelve years, the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council operated a dance residency called Extended Life that provided basic-income stipends to mid-career choreographers and was directly funded by Mellon. In 2024, L.M.C.C. lost around two million dollars after Mellon chose not to renew its grant, and Extended Life, too, was forced to close.

Organizations did have warning. In 2023, Duke told around two dozen of its longtime beneficiaries—including MAP, Creative Capital, Theatre Communications Group, National Institute for Directing & Ensemble Creation, and the National Association of Latino Arts and Cultures—that it would begin “sunsetting” its support throughout the next few years. The defunding in December still came as a shock, however, since many were still hoping for some reprieve. “Grantees were basically cut off at the knees,” as one operative at a smaller foundation put it.

“Since the nonprofit theatre movement solidified in the nineteen-fifties, we have faced government shifting, but not this kind of foundation retrenchment,” Niegel Smith, the artistic director of the Flea theatre (which continues to be funded by Mellon), told me. “When I entered the field, the sense was that you could work and prove yourself and then your company would win enduring support from the pool of foundations. That’s no longer the case.”

In the U.S., private philanthropic foundations—which are required to disburse five per cent of their net investment assets each year—have not only long provided the scaffolding of the arts system but have also been a bulwark against politicization. During the so-called culture wars of the nineteen-nineties, right-wing politicians such as Jesse Helms led a campaign to insert morality clauses into the funding guidelines for the National Endowment for the Arts (N.E.A.); he hoped to ban “homoeroticism,” for instance. While Helms’s specific language did not survive the ensuing lawsuits, the controversy permanently weakened the N.E.A., and its budget—which has never kept pace with inflation—has been used as a political football ever since. For decades, private foundations stepped into the resulting funding gap.

As devastating as recent philanthropic shifts have been, the funding changes of the past few years reflect, in many cases, an attempt on the foundations’ part to create greater equity. In 2017, a much-read study by the Helicon Collaborative, an arts-and-culture consultancy, showed that fifty-eight per cent of all contributed income was going to only two per cent of arts organizations, indicating a hoarding of resources by a few. Under Ford’s current head, Darren Walker, the foundation has seemingly addressed this imbalance, and, in Walker’s words, focussed its “efforts to address the societal drivers of inequality.” An artistic director told me that a Ford program officer was direct about that pivot, and its ramifications: “They said, ‘We’re looking at our impact across the nation, and New York is no longer a priority.’ ” (Ford points out the Foundation has doubled its performance-arts giving since 2018 in New York City. “Support for the arts has long been important to the Ford Foundation and that has not changed,” a spokesperson for Ford wrote. “Our grantmaking strategies operate under a long term cycle, with a focus on smaller groups and networks that lack access to philanthropic resources. These principles will continue to guide our work moving forward.”)

Such a rationale can be hard to argue with. And it’s not just the private foundations. Con Edison, after being a mainstay donor to the arts in New York, announced in late 2023 that it would be “re-aligning” its mission to combat climate change and advance social justice. These are both admirable goals. But creativity without the prerequisite of social efficacy was once touted by these same funders as being crucial to the common good. Certain benefits of the arts (like better community health outcomes) take decades to manifest, while others (like beauty and collective expression) remain stubbornly unquantifiable.

Tommy Kriegsmann, the co-producer of the Under the Radar festival, sees two reasons for the funding rug pull. “From a generational standpoint, we’re seeing a change in arts leadership,” he said. There has been tremendous turnover after decades of stasis, with new artistic directors at theatres including Second Stage, Performance Space New York, Lincoln Center, and Signature. But Kriegsmann may also be referring to the fact that key program staff at Mellon and both Duke’s president and C.E.O., Sam Gill, and Duke’s arts program director, Ashley Ferro-Murray, are relatively new. Kriegsmann acknowledged that “programs like the National Theatre Project, the National Dance Project, that have been around for fifteen or twenty years or more, are coming to a natural end.” Kriegsmann is not sanguine about the destruction, but he also sees the need for innovation. “So—while it’s vile and frightening, it does feel extremely necessary for us to be reënvisioning these programs and structures.” (Under the Radar got a million-dollar grant from Mellon this year, to help with succession planning.)

Mellon’s performing-arts spending nationally has actually risen from thirty-eight to seventy-two million dollars in the past seven years, and it is not abandoning New York. Rather, the foundation seems to be making changes to its giving in two ways: first, a stronger interest in allocating big sums to a comparably small group of individuals—what program officer Stephanie Ybarra has described publicly as “giving an inch wide, but a mile deep”—and second, a shift in its grantee pool toward organizations that haven’t been awarded before. For instance, Randi Berry, the executive director of the microgranting service provider IndieSpace, noted in an e-mail to me that “Mellon hadn’t funded us for the first decade + of our existence but IS in fact funding us now and is our biggest funder.” Still, by cutting loose such on-the-ground intermediaries as MAP, their award-giving will no longer be as decentralized, and some grants will rely on personal invitations. (The national network of regranters and their readers were many; the entire arts and culture staff at Mellon is only sixteen people.) “In recent years we have worked to serve the field even more fully and broadly,” Mellon’s arts and culture program director Deana Haggag, who took the role in January, said. “This has meant, since 2019, nearly doubling the number of grantees and the grantmaking dollars in the performing arts sector, focusing on those who had never received foundation support.”

Duke’s pivot, on the other hand, reflects a wholesale shift in the foundation’s chosen mission in the arts. Maurine Knighton, the chief program officer at Duke, told me that the public response to the funding changes seems inaccurate to her. “The main thing that sticks out to me is the notion that we are reducing or somehow eliminating our arts funding, which is just completely untrue,” she told me. She said that the quantity of available money has stayed the same—around fifty million dollars in giving per year—but the targets have changed. While Duke continues to award six individual artists’ grants (five hundred and fifty thousand dollars each), other monies that once underwrote a host of service and development initiatives will now focus on two major areas: advocacy for artists-as-workers (they plan to announce some programs, but could not yet share details) and new technologies, “not only for distributing creative work but also for producing it,” she said. “We see this as an essential way to future-proof contemporary dance,” Knighton said. She emphasized that Duke had always insisted on the impermanence of any support. “The notion that if you fund something for, you know, a period of time, you are then obligated to fund it forever, really isn’t a reasonable idea,” she said.

There seems to be a widespread distaste among philanthropies for grantees developing dependence on their support. “Indefinite funding is never philanthropy’s promise and should not be the expectation,” a spokesman for Mellon said. Foundations, contra the term, are not necessarily prioritizing stability, even now. The Playwrights Horizons artistic director Adam Greenfield told me that crucial “general operating” support funds have gotten harder to find as funders begin to favor project-specific grants. He thinks that the rise of invitation-only grant applications can “inadvertently privilege personal relationships.” He added, “If the arts are, as I believe, a tool of democracy and a powerful safeguard against oppression, then in this moment—considering the intersecting strains we’re facing (inflation, corporatization, federal cuts)—the stakes of arts funding couldn’t be higher.”

Private foundations are largely beholden only to themselves, and so, at any time, they could turn all these taps back on. But will they? It doesn’t seem likely. The Trump Administration has added yet more volatility to the situation. Earlier this year, in response to executive orders 14173 and 14168, the N.E.A. issued new compliance language, asserting that “the applicant will not operate any programs promoting ‘diversity, equity, and inclusion’ ” and that “federal funds shall not be used to promote gender ideology”—an echo of Helms’s not-so-long-ago efforts. Court injunctions and legal actions have momentarily left those directives up in the air, but federal funds now seem particularly precarious. Executive order 14173, in particular, takes aim at “foundations with assets of 500 million dollars or more,” threatening “civil compliance investigations” of the same type that have been levelled against institutions of higher education.

Attacks on granting foundations have already begun. Creative Capital, a twenty-five-year-old granting organization that describes itself as “the gold standard in artist support,” is now facing a public complaint from the activist lawyer Edward Blum’s American Alliance for Equal Rights asking the I.R.S. to “examine racial practices” at the organization.

The chance to create stability may have passed. Nonprofit foundations, especially those that prioritize climate and diversity, have been bracing themselves against rumors of a further slate of executive orders that might target their tax-exempt status. The Council on Foundations, a membership organization for philanthropies, published a statement of public solidarity, which as of this writing has some five hundred signatories, announcing a field-wide resistance against any attempt to limit their “freedom to direct our resources to a wide variety of important services, issues, and places.” The Times reported that, on April 22nd, a White House official said, “There are no such orders that are being drafted or considered at this time.” That may be true today. But we are clearly on rapidly shifting ground. Uncertainty, it turns out, is a terrible thing, and it can prevent even the well-intentioned from doing good. 

[gurugirl]

Mint Chocolate Chip | Check-in 9*

Summary: Based on this ask. You and Harry take a much needed vacation.

A/N: Enjoy this smutty fun beach vaca featuring a bit of jealousrry. 6k words (went a little overboard).

Warning: 18+ only, NSFW, this is kidnapper!harry x reader and so this might not be your thing, smut, possessiveness and jealousy, punishment, and plenty of fluff.

Mint Chocolate Chip Masterlist

Harry had gotten spooked pretty badly when you were recognized at the restaurant and then when you both saw your face on the news on your birthday. He knew you would just tell anyone who questioned you that you were with him willingly. But that didn’t make him feel a whole lot better about it. He didn’t like the questions or the prying. You two had been in your little bubble in his house for long enough that you’d both gotten used to the way things were.

But he couldn’t keep you trapped inside forever.

Well, actually he could if he wanted. He had all the means to do it and he had your complicity. Your loyalty.

And in many ways that all appealed to him. Locking you inside and never letting you out again after that disaster of a dinner outing and knowing your face had been on the news and people were looking for you.

Making you happy, though, was also important to him. You’d proven your devotion to him. You weren’t going anywhere. You had many chances to break free and run away during the random days when he was not in the house for hours at a time. You were allowed in the backyard and could even simply unlock the front door and walk away. But you were always there waiting for him when he returned.

Which was why he wanted to show you his gratitude.

It was time to take you on a vacation. To a place somewhere you could both be out in the open and where no one would recognize you.

He’d researched places and vacation types. States with pretty mountains and cabin retreats. Beaches in California and Florida.

“What do you like better? Going to the beach? Or like a big city? Mountains?”

You looked up from the book you were reading. You had her legs draped over Harry’s thighs as you rested on the couch after dinner. He had been intently looking at something on his phone.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean for vacation. You and me. I was thinking we could go somewhere for a week. What do you like best for a vacation?” Harry reworded.

You put your book down and slid your legs off Harry, sitting up straight as youx` faced him, “You want to take me on a vacation?”

“Of course, I do. Think it would be good for us both.”

The idea of going on a vacation with Harry worried you a little. You definitely would have enjoyed laying on a beach somewhere with him and eating seafood under a palapa but you were worried about being spotted. About Harry getting upset or nervous. Honestly, you worried more about him than you did yourself, which was crazy when you thought about that with a rational mind.

“Um… I would love to go to a beach. See the ocean. But how can we do that?”

Harry knew you couldn’t fly anywhere. He was certain the moment you got to the airport and checked in your name would be flagged in the system and the police would be called. He considered getting you a fake ID and passport but the vacation idea had been spontaneous and he didn’t have that much time to put something together like that.

“We’d take a road trip. Rent a small beach house or something.”

“A road trip. To a beach somewhere. Okay. I like the sound of that.”

.           .           .

Between you and Harry, you both found a beautiful small beach in Northern California and picked a one-bedroom beach house on Airbnb, not right on the beach, but across the street and up a path. It was an eight-hour drive away, but it would be fun, and you two planned on stopping at the small diners and antique shops along the way.

You had it all mapped out. The spots you’d stop at if you had time, the route that took you to a mom-and-pop hamburger spot that had glowing reviews, a nearby small-town museum you could pop into, and a lake with hiking trails to stretch your legs.

When you arrived in Cloverdale the first stop was the hamburger dive. It was cute. You both stretched as you climbed out of the vehicle and Harry looked so… young… unbothered. You hadn’t seen him look like this ever. Perhaps it was the fact that he could be out with you and not have to worry at all. That he wasn’t keeping you in his house as his captive. It was as if something had been lifted. He’d been unburdened.

You slid your hand into his and stood on your tiptoes to kiss his chin, “I’m hungry. How about you?”

The burgers were good but the tater tots were the star of the meal. Both you and Harry agreed. You got a vanilla milkshake with strawberry topping stirred in and Harry got an iced coffee.

You skipped the museum but decided on a quick peek at the park with the lake and the trails.

It felt nice to be on your feet and walking around outside. The town was beautiful and the little park hidden at the center was cute and maybe even nicer than the photos you’d seen online.

The last few hours to the beach house were peaceful. The traffic was nearly nonexistent. You could feel the last bits of stress and anxiety fall away and Harry’s sudden demeanor lightened even more.

The house was cute. It was in a small neighborhood with a handful of other small houses. A trail at the end of the road led you down to the beach and the ocean could be seen from the living room window.

But before you could really get into vacation mode it was necessary to get some groceries. The house had all the basics already. Coffee, salt, oil, water, and even a bottle of wine from one of the nearby vineyards, courtesy of the host.

The small shop up the road had everything you needed. You perused the wines while Harry loaded the basket with food you two might want during your week. You’d planned on going out to eat as well, but much of your time would be spent lounging on the beach and sleeping in, according to Harry.

“That’s my favorite one. It’s a good price too,” you heard a voice from behind you as you were looking down at a bottle of a red blend. You turned to find a young man looking over your shoulder.

You lifted the bottle up, “Really? Well, then I guess I’ll add this to the basket,” you said with a smile as you placed it in your small cart.

“Lots of good wineries around here. We’re pretty proud of the grapes that come from this area. You new here or just passing through?”

“Oh, just sort of passing through. Staying for a week just a few blocks away. Small beach vacation.”

“Interesting. Not many people choose this town for a beach vacation. What made you choose it?”

“Um… well it just seemed so quant and nice. Plus all the vineyards nearby and trails.”

“You’ll be around for a week? Where are you staying?”

You shot your gaze toward Harry who was already looking at you from the other side of the small shop with an unreadable expression, “Yeah. A week. Just got in today. And, uh, me and my boyfriend are staying not too far from here. Rented an Airbnb close to the beach.”

The young man’s brows raised, “Ahh… I wasn’t sure if he was a boyfriend or uncle…” he laughed quietly. You frowned.

Harry was a bit older than you but you didn’t imagine he looked like an uncle. And you were already losing your patience with the guy. He hadn’t done anything wrong but you weren’t used to small talk with strangers anymore. The guy was grating.

Suddenly Harry’s warm hand was on your shoulder as he pulled you into himself. His other arm reached around your frame and held it out to the young man, “I’m Harry, this is my girlfriend, Y/n. You are?”

The guy grinned and reached out to grasp Harry’s hand in a shake that seemed far too aggressive and you weren’t sure if the jostle of the shake came from Harry’s end or the other’s.

“Chris. Nice to meet you both,” his hand fell back down to his side as Harry brought his other palm up to your arm, holding you a bit possessively, “I was just sharing with Y/n here about the great wineries we’ve got nearby. Some of the best wine in the world comes from this region.”

“Is that so? We’ll be sure to enjoy some of the best wines during our stay here then. But, we do have to be going so… It was a pleasure to meet you.”

Harry pulled you away and guided you to the register to buy everything. You hadn’t experienced Harry being jealous before. You’d never had the opportunity. And you weren’t sure that that was what that was just now but you also weren’t dumb. You knew Harry was very possessive of you.

On the car ride back you picked a radio station and pulled a bottle of wine from the bag, “Can’t wait to crack this one open. Says it’s reminiscent of strawberries straight off the vine,” you read from the label.

Harry smiled at you and nodded, “Yeah that does sound good. We can drink it on the beach if you want. I’m ready to get my toes in the sand.”

So that’s just what you did. You put your bathing suits on and stuffed a bag with towels and the bottle of wine before walking up the trail to the lovely sandy beach and finding a spot to toss your towels and uncork the bottle.

The sun was already beginning to set and the wind had picked up but it was still nice and balmy. The backdrop of the waves crashing and birds soaring above, the smell of the ocean, and a few stragglers walking in the distance felt very much like you were living in a romantic movie.

Harry handed you the bottle of wine and you laughed, realizing you both forgot cups or glasses but also just tossing aside concern for that small detail. You brought the bottle up to your lips and took a drink of the red blend, which turned out, your pallet was not quite sensitive enough to pick up a single strawberry-from-the-vine note the label boasted.

You looked back down at the bottle as you gulped the red liquid down your throat and pointed at the label, “Tastes nothing like strawberry. But it’s good.” You smiled as you handed the bottle to Harry who mimicked you in putting the bottle to his lips to take a drink.

He laughed as he brought the bottle down and shook his head, “It’s like those wine tasters who put in notes of pencil shaving and charred almonds. I never taste those sorts of things. Just tastes like…” you both grinned and said the word “wine!” in unison as you laughed.

Despite the lack of strawberry flavor the bottle of wine, Harry’s company, and the sand under your toes felt incredible.

Harry pulled you into his chest so you were sitting between his legs and had your back against him. The whole scene was romantic. You were outside on the beach with a bottle of wine in your lover’s arms as you watched the sunset slowly until the sky was pink and purple and orange on the horizon.

Harry nipped at your neck and sighed making you giggle and pull away but he held you tight and laughed into your neck, “So, Chris was awfully friendly. What did he say to you before I got there?”

You rolled your eyes but kept the grin on your face, “He was just talking about the vineyards and the wine. Recommended this one,” you said as you tapped the empty bottle, “Asked why we chose this spot for vacation. That was it really.”

“So he’s nosey. And he has questionable taste in wine.”

You snickered and shook your head to turn and look at him, “Were you jealous?”

Harry squinted his eyes at you and licked his lips before looking out toward the ocean, “Of course not.”

You leaned back into him and smiled. He definitely was.

.           .           .

When you walked back to the little house up the trail Harry kept hold of your hand. You hadn’t had many moments with him away from his house. Having him holding your hand and keeping you steady as you stepped carefully over the small rocks and the sand along the dark trail made you feel like you did when you were a kid. It was fun and the darkness was exciting. But it also gave you a sense of safety with his hand wrapped around yours as he led you carefully through the path. But there was also the fact that you’d had half a bottle of wine.

“I’m already having so much fun, Harry,” you said as you entered the house and Harry sat the bag down next to the door.

Harry smirked and locked the door, grabbing your hips and pulling you in, his wine-stained mouth connected to yours in haste. You hadn’t expected it at all. He had been quiet the whole way back, which wasn’t out of the norm for him. Harry wasn’t much of a talker, you did well to fill in the silence with your near-constant rambling. But still, you hadn’t thought he’d be all over you the moment you stepped into the door.

“Let’s go test out that bed,” he spoke quietly and turned you around to walk you toward the bedroom.

Now, the thing was that your sex drive was high. For Harry it was. You were sure that no one else could make you feel the way he did. Obviously, you were a virgin before you met him but he was so good at what he did and the way he made you feel, the way you’d get wet for him in an instant, just the way he trained you, you were usually begging him for his come every night. He liked to act as if he was aloof or didn’t need it because he loved to watch you squirm, hear you beg…

But tonight was different. He wanted you and he was being quite handsy suddenly. Needy even, you’d say. He was already hard in his shorts when he put you on the bed and pulled your bathing suit off.

He gave you little preamble before pasting his lips to your cunt and bringing you to your first orgasm for the night. He made it messy and noisy too. His moans vibrated off your body and sounded through the room as he fed from your pussy. His fingers and hand were drenched and he wiped his face through your folds until he was coated in your arousal from the bridge of his nose to the bottom of his chin. You were breathless and shivering as you called his name.

And you had no time to recover before he was wrecking your insides with his long cock. The bed rocked under his thrusts and his dirty words were whispered into the room, “My pussy, my girl… no one gets to have this. You’re mine, aren’t you?”

You gasped and nodded, unable to form words when your lungs were searching for air from the way he pounded into you, punching into your guts and rendering you a breathy mess under him.

“S’right. My little girl. All these holes are mine to come inside.”

You weren’t in the head space to think about what he was saying. You just knew that yes, you were his. Your holes were his.

But Harry was making a point. He knew he didn’t need to but his jealousy and possessiveness got the best of him when he thought about the way Chris tried talking to you. And he saw the way the guy looked at you. Harry wasn’t dumb. He knows the look.

“Tell me pup,” Harry spoke his words in gasps as he moved in and out of your beautifully tight and warm pussy, “Who do you belong to?”

Your words came out in punched breaths, “You! Harry! I… only you!”

The way Harry was dipping in deep and fast felt so yummy. You loved how he felt when he was connected to you. You imagined that his cock inside of you was like some kind of Lego piece to your little Lego piece. As odd as that sounded – it made sense in your brain. Every time he was inside of you the pieces fit together so nicely and made something even better than they were before. Something bigger. Something complete.

“Fuck, pup! You’re so good. So fucking sweet and you’re all mine. Gonna breed you, baby. Want my babies, pup?”

Harry had been hinting a bit lately. More often than not lately. You didn’t know if it was a heat of the moment kind of thing or if he really wanted to knock you up. But you would happily be a mother to his children if he wanted. And while he was railing you deep with his big cock making you braindead you especially loved that idea.

“Yeah… uhghhh! Yes! Fuck!!” His pounding didn’t let up and the bed underneath only got louder as the springs danced under your back. The thud of Harry’s heavy balls to your skin was wet and you could feel them pressing into you each time he bottomed out.

“M’gonna make you a mommy. Fuck my come into your womb and no one can have you when they see you pregnant with my babies.”

You panted and felt sweat at your temple. Harry’s words were tight and grunted as he spoke between heavy thrusts.

“It’s so deep! Harry!!” It was deep. It felt especially sharp and achy with the way he was punishing your pussy with his cock. But you could handle it. You’d handled him going in harder many times.

Every plunge and smack of skin, the squeak of the mattress, and panted words and gasps only got louder as Harry neared his end. His moans were beautiful. You loved making him feel good like this. Loved when he came inside of you and orgasmed because your pussy felt so good. Because he loved you so much.

“Better feel your pussy squeezing around me again, pup. Come on, baby. Fucking come all over me,” Harry clenched his jaw as he spoke, holding himself back. He wanted one more from you. Selfishly he liked knowing he could make you come over and over again so you knew how good he could take care of you in the way no one else could. And also because he loved how you felt when your pussy spasmed around his cock as he came, the way you milked him and his balls drained into his cock and poured into your body as you shivered and pulsed around his throbbing dick.

Your ears began to ring as you started to come again. Harry’s thick tip was continuously poking into your little spot on the inside that made your toes curl and that did you in. The stretch and the deep thrusts into your soft aching little part on the inside had you shaking and shouting his name in orgasm.

Harry saw stars as he finally allowed himself to drain into you, fucking himself in as deep as possible so his come would stick and get in deep, his wide crown pushing it up into your guts. Your slick, hot walls wrung his cock out like a rag, making all of her sperm drip into you with each pulse and contraction from your little muscle. He was rendered silent as he felt himself being siphoned by you. His mouth hung open and he trembled over you, his arms barely holding himself up, his thighs quivering… he hadn’t realized he’d been so on edge. He was responding to your pussy the way you responded to his cock.

And of course, the rest of the night was sweet and soft. Harry helped you clean up and doted on you. You both lay together on the couch and watched TV as you faced Harry so you could watch him. You loved looking at him and rubbing your hands over his tattooed chest and upward to the scruff on his neck and face. You kissed his nipples and sighed to yourself about how lucky you felt as you fell asleep in his arms.

The next few days were all spent in the dizzying heat on the sand and splashing around in the ocean a little. The waves were strong so you didn’t go in too deep, at Harry’s urging, “Don’t want you to get hurt, pup. Stay close to the shallow parts.”

You visited a vineyard attached to a winery and bought a case of wine that you both loved to bring back home with you. And every night the sex was filled with lots of dirty talk of getting you knocked up and making you a mommy.

But last night, Harry had gone easy on you. He didn’t pound into you or make you sore all over like he often did. No spankings or hair pulling. He fucked you sweet and slow and kept his cock stuffed inside of you until he’d long softened in order to make it stick. Make the come stay inside and get you where he wanted you.

So that meant that today you were feeling extra spicy. A soft fucking sometimes meant you turned into a bit of a brat afterward or the following day. There was something in you that needed the brutal fuckings in order to keep you subdued.

You were on the towel and pulled your bikini top off as you laid flat on your tummy so you could get a tan on your back but Harry swatted your bottom as he hovered over you possessively, “What the fuck are you doing, pup? Want everyone to see your tits?”

You giggled and looked up at the man, “Just needed a nice tan. Don’t worry. You’re the only one that gets to see the front, Harry. Don’t be so boring.”

Harry scoffed. He was anything but boring and you knew it. But he knew the game you were playing.

He looked around and the beach was mostly empty. There were some people in the distance but no one would see what he was about to do.

“Boring?” He said as he yanked you up by your arm, your tits out. He pulled you into his lap and draped you across his thighs as he pulled your bikini bottoms down just enough that he could spank you hard.

You grinned as you yelped at each of his rough smacks and felt your backside burn from the sensitive skin of your bottom getting a beating. You kicked your legs and turned to look at Harry, “Hey! I don’t deser-“Your back talk was cut short when he issued you another spanking.

“You deserve exactly what I give you,” another strike to the exposed flesh of your ass, “Went too soft last night and now you’re acting like a little terror.”

You put your face into the crook of your arm as Harry continued punishing you right there on the beach with your tits bare against the towel, small granules of sand covering your damp skin.

When he felt you were finally somewhat mellowed he lifted you up and handed you your bikini top.

“Put this back on right now or we’re going back to the house.”

As if that were a punishment for you. He’d only gotten you even more worked up with the spankings and now your nipples were hard and your pussy was wet. You bit your lip and gave him a look of challenge but you put your bikini top on. Your ass couldn’t handle another swat. You were sure of it.

But now the problem was you couldn’t sit on your bottom at all over the towel and the small bits of sand were irritating your rear.

“I’ve got to go get into the water for just a bit. Come with me.” You stood up and gave Harry your sweetest puppy dog eyes.

Harry shook his head, “Gonna stay right here. You go on. But don’t go in too deep.”

As you walked away Harry became very aware of how red your ass and your thighs were. Your bikini bottoms covered the most severe markings but the parts that were exposed were very obviously red and spanked. He rolled his eyes, hoping no one saw what he had.

Once you got into the ocean and let the cool water soothe your bottom you turned to look back at Harry and waved at him and then stuck your tongue out. You didn’t know why you’d done it. You were just in a mood. You needed him to obliterate you since it was your last full day. Something about being on vacation and being in public with him really did something to you. Made you feel naughty and liberated all at once. You were having a really good time on your little getaway. It was just what you both had needed.

“Water’s great today!” You heard a familiar voice and turned your head to see Chris.

“It really is! The waves aren’t too crazy either. Haven’t really been able to get in too deep.”

Chris walked into the water toward you with a grin on his face, “Oh no? Are you not used to swimming in the ocean? There’s a technique you know.”

You shook your head, “No. Haven’t swum much in the ocean. The waves are so strong that they pull me under,” you laughed as you lowered your bottom half down to let the water submerge up to your rib cage.

“I could teach you. It’s not too difficult. Just some basic rules for when the waves are coming at you. It’ll make you safer in the water too.”

“Oh… well. Okay!” You looked out to where Harry was and realized he was lying flat on his back. He hadn’t even noticed that Chris was talking to you. You smiled to yourself just knowing that when he realized you were out here with him he’d probably come out into the water with you finally.

Chris gave you an example as a small wave came ashore jumping into it as it neared and explained how the timing was important. He held your hand to help you jump into the waves so you got the feel for how you should be moving into the water.

“Okay, now let’s do it a little more in the shallow so the waves feel stronger. You’ll see.”

You followed him closer toward the shore and you could feel the waves more intensely.

Suddenly Chris’s chattering stopped, “Are you… okay? Did you get dragged on your butt in the sand from the waves?” He seemed genuinely worried about the state of your bottom.

You laughed and nodded. Actually, that was a great excuse. You kind of wanted to tell him that your lover had just spanked you for being a brat but you were sure Harry would hate that, “Yes. Like I said. I am not a strong swimmer so I got taken down in the water to the sand on my butt.” You laughed.

Chris squinted and you realized he was inspecting your bottom a bit too closely when suddenly you heard Harry, both of you turning to see the tall man with broad shoulders stomping his way toward you. Uh oh.

“Let’s go. We need to get some lunch.” Harry fumed.

“Oh, but Chris is just showing me how to swim in the ocean properly. He’s just trying to help me stay safe.”

Harry did not like this one bit. He didn’t like that Chris had been ogling your backside with his red handprints all over, or that he was near you in the ocean at all. And that he was acting as if he was trying to protect you somehow. That was Harry’s job.

“Is he now? And what’s the best way to go about that, Chris?” Harry said as he began to slosh into the water nearing you until he was at your side in the water, “Because from what I just saw you were more so staring at her bottom. Is that how you show her to stay safe?”

Chris’s eyes got wide as he shook his head, “No! Of course not! She told me that she’d gotten taken down by a wave and that her butt hit the sand. I was just concerned because that’s really a lot,” he cleared his throat keeping his eyes on Harry.

“Your concern is noted. Now,” he looked back down at you, putting his hands at your shoulders and leading you out of the water, “Let’s get going before the waves take you down again, pup.”

You smiled and waved at Chris, “Bye! Thank you so much for trying to help keep me safe,” twisting the proverbial knife in just a bit more. You knew Harry would be fuming by the time you two got back into the house.

And he was. But fuming might have been an understatement. It was the first time Harry’d had to deal with such a thing with you.

When the door was locked, Harry kept his hands at your shoulders as he spoke into your ear with seething wrath, “What the fuck is wrong with you? Why don’t you behave when I fuck you softly? Hmm? You need to be treated like a slutty brat when I fuck you don’t you? Need to be smacked around a little?”

Harry let go of you as he pushed you down to your knees and lowered his swim trunks just enough that his cock was out.

“Suck til I’m hard then I’m gonna treat you like you the way you seem to want.”

You nodded and smirked as you began working on his cock, spitting and licking and sucking all around him. He grew hard in your mouth and hands fast. His length was always a shock to you when you saw it up close. Harry’s dick was big. But that was part of what made you love having him fuck you. You loved being wrecked by him.

When you began to bob over him, spit covering his cock to his base he gathered your hair up and pushed you down on him, holding you in place with both hands, “Mouth needs bruised just like your bottom,” he groaned as he filled your tight throat, causing your eyes to water with your nose brushing into his pelvis.

You grabbed onto his thighs as he began to slowly roll his hips into you. He bit his lip and closed his eyes to just feel you. He didn’t want to give you the pleasure of hearing him moan.

The way he was fucking your mouth wasn’t too out of the ordinary. Though he normally was a bit more vocal you figured it was part of the punishment you knew you deserved. You gurgled and gagged around him as he continued stuffing himself into you and you knew to just take it.

When he pulled out you gasped and swallowed but then leaned forward to put him back in your mouth but he only pulled your hair harder to keep your lips off of him. He pulled you up by your hair and then pushed you against the couch, so you were bent over the arm with your red bottom facing up.

The sudden movements were unexpected but the moment he buried himself into your pussy, splitting you in half you sighed and cooed at him, “Fuck me. God yes!”

Harry rolled his eyes and shook his head. You were incorrigible. Impossible to correct at times. But fuck if he didn’t love you and the way you took him.

He gave you no mercy as he began railing you deep, the couch being pushed the slightest and banging into the wall, “You don’t get to come. You’re only here to hold my sperm and take your punishment. Maybe then you’ll turn into a good girl.”

His hand held you down by the back of your head into the cushion as he continued bucking into your pussy, reaching deep into your tummy. The delicious sound of wet cunt being fucked and stuffed repeatedly had your head spinning. You could record the sound of yourself getting railed and get off on that alone.

Harry pushed his fingers into your hair to grip harder and put his other hand at your low back to keep you down as you kept arching your back and trying to push yourself onto him harder. You wanted it harder.

Harry finally let out a choked groan as he felt you clench hard and watched his cock fuck into you. He would never grow tired of fucking your little pussy and watching your soft skin turn red from his fingers and spankings. Your face was smushed into the couch but he could see your mouth was wide open and your eyes were shut. He loved that you loved it.

Suddenly he lifted you up by your hair so he could speak filth into your ear, “Little slutty wet hole all f’me. Puppy wants my come and my cock all the fucking time. Isn’t that right?”

You tried nodding but his grip was tight as his chest was pressed into your back, his hips rolling into you in punishing thrusts.

“Gonna come inside of your cunt and over and over again until we leave tomorrow. Teach you a lesson about being needy and slutty. Always soaked for me and begging to be stuffed full,” his words came out in gasps and you could tell he was about to come.

You sighed and licked your lips as you let him use you for his pleasure, happy to take whatever he gave you.

When his grip tightened harshly at your hair and his wet lips licked your ear he moaned and jerked his hips into you, his balls pressed against you tightly as he throbbed and pumped his come into your tummy.

He breathed hard and pulled his other arm around your middle as he held you close to his chest, filling you to the brim with his sperm.

You hissed when his cock reached into you so deep and he kept himself submerged in that achy spot, never letting up pushing into you. It felt as if he was going to tear your pussy in two for a moment.

As he came down, his harsh grip on your hair and around your middle loosened as he lowered you back to the couch and finally pulled himself out.

You lay quietly and sweetly as you caught your breath. You hadn’t come, of course, but you were certainly feeling the flow of endorphins from making Harry come.

And just like always, he tenderly helped you clean up, kissed you, and spoke to you as if you were the best thing he’d ever had, “Took it like a good girl. Such a soft little pussy, but even better is that I get you and your pretty eyes and these beautiful lips. What would I do without you? Huh?”

“I love you, Harry.”

Harry grinned as he smoothed his hands over your naked body, “I know pup. I love you too.”

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