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mostlysignssomeportents · 6 months ago

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Enshittification isn’t caused by venture capital

Picks and Shovels is a new, standalone technothriller starring Marty Hench, my two-fisted, hard-fighting, tech-scam-busting forensic accountant. You can pre-order it on my latest Kickstarter, which features a brilliant audiobook read by Wil Wheaton.

Many of us have left the big social media platforms; far more of us wish we could leave them; and even those of us who've escaped from Facebook/Insta and Twitter still spend a lot of time trying to figure out how to get the people we care about off of them, too.

It's lazy and easy to think that our friends who are stuck on legacy platforms run by Zuckerberg and Musk lack the self-discipline to wean themselves off of these services, or lack the perspective to understand why it's so urgent to get away from them, or that their "hacked dopamine loops" have addicted them to the zuckermusk algorithms. But if you actually listen to the people who've stayed behind, you'll learn that the main reason our friends stay on legacy platforms is that they care about the other people there more than they hate Zuck or Musk.

They rely on them because they're in a rare-disease support group; or they all coordinate their kids' little league carpools there; or that's where they stay in touch with family and friends they left behind when they emigrated; or they're customers or the audience for creative labor.

All those people might want to leave, too, but it's really hard to agree on where to go, when to go, and how to re-establish your groups when you get somewhere else. Economists call this the "collective action problem." This problem creates "switching costs" – a lot of stuff you'll have to live without if you switch from legacy platforms to new ones. The collective action problem is hard to solve and the switching costs are very high:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/10/29/how-to-leave-dying-social-media-platforms/

That's why people stay behind – not because they lack perspective, or self-discipline, or because their dopamine loops have been hacked by evil techbro sorcerers who used Big Data to fashion history's first functional mind-control ray. They are locked in by real, material things.

Big Tech critics who attribute users' moral failings or platforms' technical prowess to the legacy platforms' "stickiness" are their own worst enemies. These critics have correctly identified that legacy platforms are a serious problem, but have totally failed to understand the nature of that problem or how to fix it. Thankfully, more and more critics are coming to understand that lock-in is the root of the problem, and that anti-lock-in measures like interoperability can address it.

But there's another major gap in the mainstream critique of social media. Critics of zuckermuskian media claim those services are so terrible because they're for-profit entities, capitalist enterprises hitched to the logic of extraction and profit above all else. The problem with this claim is that it doesn't explain the changes to these services. After all, the reason so many of us got on Twitter and Facebook and Instagram is because they used to be a lot of fun. They were useful. They were even great at times.

When tech critics fail to ask why good services turn bad, that failure is just as severe as the failure to ask why people stay when the services rot.

Now, the guy who ran Facebook when it was a great way to form communities and make friends and find old friends is the same guy who who has turned Facebook into a hellscape. There's very good reason to believe that Mark Zuckerberg was always a creep, and he took investment capital very early on, long before he started fucking up the service. So what gives? Did Zuck get a brain parasite that turned him evil? Did his investors get more demanding in their clamor for dividends?

If that's what you think, you need to show your working. Again, by all accounts, Zuck was a monster from day one. Zuck's investors – both the VCs who backed him early and the gigantic institutional funds whose portfolios are stuffed with Meta stock today – are not patient sorts with a reputation for going easy on entrepreneurs who leave money on the table. They've demanded every nickel since the start.

What changed? What caused Zuck to enshittify his service? And, even more importantly for those of us who care about the people locked into Facebook's walled gardens: what stopped him from enshittifying his services in the "good old days?"

At its root, enshittification is a theory about constraints. Companies pursue profit at all costs, but while you may be tempted to focus on the "at all costs" part of that formulation, you musn't neglect the "profits" part. Companies don't pursue unprofitable actions at all costs – they only pursue the plans that they judge are likely to yield profits.

When companies face real competitors, then some enshittificatory gambits are unprofitable, because they'll drive your users to competing platforms. That's why Zuckerberg bought Instagram: he had been turning the screws on Facebook users, and when Instagram came along, millions of those users decided that they hated Zuck more than they loved their friends and so they swallowed the switching costs and defected to Instagram. In an ill-advised middle-of-the-night memo to his CFO, Zuck defended spending $1b on Instagram on the grounds that it would recapture those Facebook escapees:

https://www.theverge.com/2020/7/29/21345723/facebook-instagram-documents-emails-mark-zuckerberg-kevin-systrom-hearing

A company that neutralizes, buys or destroys its competitors can treat its users far worse – invade their privacy, cheap out on moderation and anti-spam, etc – without losing their business. That's why Zuck's motto is "it is better to buy than to compete":

https://www.trtworld.com/magazine/zuckerberg-its-better-to-buy-than-compete-is-facebook-a-monopoly-42243

Of course, as a leftist, I know better than to count on markets as a reliable source of corporate discipline. Even more important than market discipline is government discipline, in the form of regulation. If Zuckerberg feared fines for privacy violations, or moderation failures, or illegal anticompetitive mergers, or fraudulent advertising systems that rip off publishers and advertisers, or other forms of fraud (like the "pivot to video"), he would treat his users better. But Facebook's rise to power took place during the second half of the neoliberal era, when the last shreds of regulatory muscle that survived the Reagan revolution were being devoured by GW Bush and Obama (and then Trump).

As cartels and monopolies took over our economy, most government regulators were neutered and captured. Public agencies were stripped of their powers or put in harness to attack small companies, customers, and suppliers who got in the way of monopolists' rent-extraction. That meant that as Facebook grew, Zuckerberg had less and less to fear from government enforcers who might punish him for enshittification where the markets failed to do so.

But it's worse than that, because Zuckerberg and other tech monopolists figured out how to harness "IP" law to get the government to shut down third-party technology that might help users resist enshittification. IP law is why you can't make a privacy-protecting ad-blocker for an app (and why companies are so desperate to get you to use their apps rather than the open web, and why apps are so dismally enshittified). IP law is why you can't make an alternative client that blocks algorithmic recommendations. IP law is why you can't leave Facebook for a new service and run a scraper that imports your waiting Facebook messages into a different inbox. IP law is why you can't scrape Facebook to catalog the paid political disinformation the company allows on the platform:

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

IP law's growth has coincided with Facebook's ascendancy – the bigger Facebook got, the more tempting it was to interoperators who might want to plug new code into it to protect Facebook users, and the more powers Facebook had to block even the most modest improvements to its service. That meant that Facebook could enshittify even more, without worrying that it would drive users to take unilateral, permanent action that would deprive it of revenue, like blocking ads. Once ad-blocking is illegal (as it is on apps), there's no reason not to make ads as obnoxious as you want.

Of course, many Facebook employees cared about their users, and for most of the 21st century, those workers were a key asset for Facebook. Tech workers were in short supply until just a couple years ago, when the platforms started round after round of brutal layoffs – 260,000 in 2023, another 150,000+ in 2024. Facebook workers may be furious about Zuckerberg killing content moderation, but he's not worried about them quitting – not with a half-million skilled tech workers out there, hunting for jobs. Fuck 'em. Let 'em quit:

https://www.404media.co/its-total-chaos-internally-at-meta-right-now-employees-protest-zuckerbergs-anti-lgbtq-changes/

This is what changed: the collapse of market, government, and labor constraints, and IP law's criminalization of disenshittifying, interoperable add-ons. This is why Zuck, an eternal creep, is now letting his creep flag fly so proudly today. Not because he's a worse person, but because he understands that he can hurt his users and workers to benefit his shareholders without facing any consequences. Zuckerberg 2025 isn't the most evil Zuck, he's the most unconstrained Zuck.

Same goes for Twitter. I mean, obviously, there's been a change in management at Twitter – the guy who's enshittifying it today isn't the guy who enshittified it prior to last year. Musk is speedrunning the enshittification curve, and yet Twitter isn't collapsing. Why not? Because Musk is insulated from consequences for fucking up – he's got a huge cushion of wealth, he's got advertisers who are desperate to reach his users, he's got users who can't afford to leave the service, he's got IP law that he can use to block interoperators who might make it easier to migrate to a better service. He was always a greedy, sadistic asshole. Now he's an unconstrained greedy, sadistic asshole. Musk 2025 isn't a worse person than Musk 2020. He's just more free to act on his evil impulses than he was in years gone by.

These are the two factors that make services terrible: captive users, and no constraints. If your users can't leave, and if you face no consequences for making them miserable (not solely their departure to a competitor, but also fines, criminal charges, worker revolts, and guerrilla warfare with interoperators), then you have the means, motive and opportunity to turn your service into a giant pile of shit.

That's why we got Jack Welch and his acolytes when we did. There were always evil fuckers just like them hanging around, but they didn't get to run GM until Ronald Reagan took away the constraints that would have punished them for turning GE into a giant pile of shit. Every economy is forever a-crawl with parasites and monsters like these, but they don't get to burrow into the system and colonize it until policymakers create rips they can pass through.

In other words, the profit motive itself is not sufficient to cause enshittification – not even when a for-profit firm has to answer to VCs who would shut down the company or fire its leadership in the face of unsatisfactory returns. For-profit companies chase profit. The enshittifying changes to Facebook and Twitter are cruel, but the cruelty isn't the point: the point is profits. If the fines – or criminal charges – Facebook faced for invading our privacy exceeded the ad-targeting revenue it makes by doing so, it would stop spying on us. Facebook wouldn't like it. Zuck would hate it. But he'd do it, because he spies on us to make money, not because he's a voyeur.

To stop enshittification, it is not necessary to eliminate the profit motive – it is only necessary to make enshittification unprofitable.

This is not to defend capitalism. I'm not saying there's a "real capitalism" that's good, and a "crony capitalism" or "monopoly capitalism" that's bad. All flavors of capitalism harm working people and seek to shift wealth and power from the public and democratic institutions to private interests. But that doesn't change the fact that there are, indeed, different flavors of capitalism, and they have different winners and losers. Capitalists who want to sell apps on the App Store or reach customers through Facebook are technofeudalism's losers, while Apple, Facebook, Google, and other Big Tech companies are technofeudalism's great winners.

Smart leftism pays attention to these differences, because they represent the potential fault lines in capitalism's coalition. These people all call themselves capitalists, they all give money and support to political movements that seek to crush worker power and human rights – but when the platforms win, the platforms' business customers lose. They are irreconcilably on different sides of a capitalism-v-capitalism fight that is every bit as important to them as the capitalism-v-socialism fight.

I'm saying that it's good praxis to understand these divisions in capitalism, because then we can exploit those differences to make real, material gains for human thriving and worker rights. Lumping all for-profit businesses together as identical and irredeemable is bad tactics.

Legacy social media is at a turning point. Two new systems built on open standards have emerged as a credible threat to the zuckermuskian model: Mastodon (built on Activitypub) and Bluesky (built on Atproto). The former is far more mature, with a huge network of federated servers run by all different kinds of institutions, from hobbyists to corporations, and it's overseen by a nonprofit. The latter has far more users, and is a VC-backed corporate entity, and while it is hypothetically federatable, there are no Bluesky services apart from the main one that you can leave for if Bluesky starts to enshittify.

That means that Bluesky has a ton of captive users, and has the lack of constraint that characterizes the enshittified legacy platforms it has tempted tens of millions of users away from. This is not a good place to be in, because it means that if the current management choose to enshittify Bluesky, they can, and it will be profitable. It also means that the company's VCs understand that they could replace the current management and replace them with willing enshittifiers and make more money.

This is why Bluesky is in a dangerous place: not because it is backed by VCs, not because it is a for-profit entity, but because it has captive users and no constraints. It's a great party in a sealed building with no fire exits:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/12/14/fire-exits/#graceful-failure-modes

Last week, I endorsed a project called Free Our Feeds, whose goals include hacking some fire exits into Bluesky by force majeure – that is, independently standing up an alternative Bluesky server that people can retreat to if Bluesky management changes, or has a change of heart:

https://pluralistic.net/2025/01/14/contesting-popularity/#everybody-samba

For some Mastodon users, Free Our Feeds is dead on arrival – why bother trying to make a for-profit project safer for its users when Mastodon is a perfectly good nonprofit alternative? Why waste millions developing a standalone Bluesky server rather than spending that money improving things in the Fediverse.

I believe strongly in improving the Fediverse, and I believe in adding the long-overdue federation to Bluesky. That's because my goal isn't the success of the Fediverse – it's the defeat of enshtitification. My answer to "why spend money fixing Bluesky?" is "why leave 20 million people at risk of enshittification when we could not only make them safe, but also create the toolchain to allow many, many organizations to operate a whole federation of Bluesky servers?" If you care about a better internet – and not just the Fediverse – then you should share this goal, too.

Many of the Fediverse's servers are operated by for-profit entities, after all. One of the Fediverse's largest servers (Threads) is owned by Meta. Threads users who feel the bite of Zuckerberg's decision to encourage homophobic, xenophobic and transphobic hate speech will find it easy to escape from Threads: they can set up on any Fediverse server that is federated with Threads and they'll be able to maintain their connections with everyone who stays behind.

The existence of for-profit servers in the Fediverse does not ruin the Fediverse (though I wouldn't personally use one of them). The fact that multiple neo-Nazi groups run their own Mastodon servers does not ruin the Fediverse (though I certainly won't use their servers). Not even the fact that Donald Trump's Truth Social is a Mastodon server does anything to ruin the Fediverse (not using that one, either).

This is the strength of federated, federatable social media – it disciplines enshittifiers by lowering switching costs, and if enshittifiers persist, it makes it easy for users to escape unshitted, because they don't have to solve the collective action problem. Any user can go to any server at any time and stay in touch with everyone else.

Mastodon was born free: free code, with free federation as a priority. Bluesky was not: it was born within a for-profit public benefit corporation whose charter offers some defenses against enshittification, but lacks the most decisive one: the federation that would let users escape should escape become necessary.

The fact that Mastodon was born free is quite unusual in the annals of the fight for a free internet. Most of the internet was born proprietary and had freedom foisted upon it. Unix was born within Bell Labs, property of the convicted monopolist AT&T. The GNU/Linux project set it free.

SMB was born proprietary within corporate walls of Microsoft, another corporate monopolist. SAMBA set it free.

The Office file formats were also born proprietary within Microsoft's walled garden: they were set free by hacker-activists who fought through a thick bureaucratic morass and Microsoft fuckery (including literally refusing to allow chairs to be set for advocates for Open Document Format) to give us formats that underlie everything from LibreOffice to Google Docs, Office365 to your web browser.

There is nothing unusual, in other words, about hacking freedom into something that is proprietary or just insufficiently free. That's totally normal. It's how we got almost everything great about computers.

Mastodon's progenitors should be praised for ensuring their creation was born free – but the fact that Bluesky isn't free enough is no reason to turn our back on it. Our response to anything that locks in the people we care about must be to shatter those locks, not abandon the people bound by the locks because they didn't heed to our warnings.

Audre Lorde is far smarter than me, but when she wrote that "the master's tools will never dismantle the master's house," she was wrong. There is no toolset better suited to conduct an orderly dismantling of a structure than the tools that built it. You can be sure it'll have all the right screwdriver bits, wrenches, hexkeys and sockets.

Bluesky is fine. It has features I significantly prefer to Mastodon's equivalent. Composable moderation is amazing, both a technical triumph and a triumph of human-centered design:

https://bsky.social/about/blog/4-13-2023-moderation

I hope Mastodon adopts those features. If someone starts a project to copy all of Bluesky's best features over to Mastodon, I'll put my name to the crowdfunding campaign in a second.

But Mastodon has one feature that Bluesky sorely lacks – the federation that imposes antienshittificatory discipline on companies and offers an enshittification fire-exit for users if the discipline fails. It's long past time that someone copied that feature over to Bluesky.

Check out my Kickstarter to pre-order copies of my next novel, Picks and Shovels!

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

https://pluralistic.net/2025/01/20/capitalist-unrealism/#praxis

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crsssie · 8 months ago

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foresight, for life

word count: 6.5k || banner art by chicll on bluesky (her prometheus art >>)

warnings: nsfw, smut (but like, one scene)

summary: the future means nothing to the titan of foresight

The future means little to nothing to the god of foresight.

Everything is known, including the nymph who has stumbled upon the gates of Olympus, eyes locked on his as he stares down.

"Nymph."

"...oh gods..." You mumble. "This was not what I saw."

He raises a hand as Aetos flies towards you, ready to end you once and for all, but you dodge, crying as you do.

"Oceanid! Not a god!"

He stares down at you as he holds a hand out back for Aetos, staring down at you as you stand there. Small. You're much smaller than he is, that's a given considering he's a titan, and when he stares at you, there are hundreds of futures that could spawn. However, the most obvious of which is the one in which you die to Aetos. You are in no shape to be dodging a second attack from an animal so fast, and he ponders if it would bring any entertainment if you were to simply pass. It would be a waste, considering that one vision goes as far as picking you up on a chariot. How strange.

"I am not... a god." You mumble. "I have been told... or seen that you simply harbor ill intent to gods and not the others."

He lets you breathe, letting Aetos soar up to scout the area, and you fiddle with your fingers behind your back, watching as the titan stares at you.

"You are lost."

"Most certainly so."

"You knew how to get here."

"Apparently."

Scary. The hand burnt from the fire for humans and the red eyes of a titan are daunting, and you are in no position to be able to beg for mercy. You are not the human he cherishes, and you are not a god that could hold their ground. The wound on his stomach is wrapped in bandage and red with tears, and for a moment you wonder if you could be able to heal him with the final bit of spring water you've managed to haul with you despite your limited foresight dragging you all the way up Olympus. It seemed to be useless against the titan himself, though. Always intriguing to see how it all seems to freeze at the sight of the man himself.

"You are a nymph."

"Minor goddess of foresight, but it matters not since I am not worshipped and neither am I treated as one." You blink. "My foresight is nothing compared to yours, Lord Prometheus."

"Then why lie upon meeting me?"

"You know, lord."

"I wish to hear it from your mouth. I know of what you could say, not what you will."

"I did not wish to die. The eagle scares me. I am in no condition to be fighting. I am on the final bits of spring water."

"You may heal me. Or, try. There are plenty chances that you would fail."

"I am aware." You pause. It isn't surprising he knew that you had entertained the thought. "But my foresight is useless when it comes to you, lord."

"Make haste."

"You trust that I will not harm you?"

"In the few in which you do, you fail."

"Ah." You fumble with the sac, and you blink up at him. "It would be best to, um, sit or lay down, my lord."

He sits as you instruct, and you whisper a quiet affirmation as you reach to unwrap the bandage, hands gentle on his skin as you let the water pour into the wound and watch as it reforms. There is a quick glow of blue and then his skin is fixed, and you stare at the scar that is leftover, but not the wound that is long gone. You close the rest of the water and reach for the bandages once more, wrapping them carefully as Prometheus stares. Delicate fingers on his stomach as you're practically shaking.

You do not wound him in any possible future.

"Is there anything beyond the gate?"

"There is not. It is simply the void for the time being." He stares. "The princess is fighting below."

"Shall she win?"

"The future lays yes."

"I see." You mumble.

You take two steps back as the Titan gets back up, staring down at you as he blinks.

"Speak. Of your reward you wish to hold."

"I have none. You must know so, my lord."

"You scale the mountain of the gods for no reason?"

"I had simply the foresight that I must be here. Seeing as I have healed you, I believe once I return back down, I will know what is next."

He stares at you as something shifts in the air, Aetos back as it tells Prometheus of what has happened, and you stare at the eagle.

"How incredible." You mumble.

"The gods were not expecting that I would befriend it."

"Yes, but it is pretty." You whisper. "The gold of the stars."

The eagle rattles its feathers as you hum.

"Well, I shall be off—"

"There is no future in which you survive the descent." Prometheus stares at you, and you blink back at him.

The titan is lying to you. That much you know simply because in a glimpse as you had seen while you were making your way up, you had spotted the very edge of Greece and the ocean where your sisters rested when you head down, but you do not pry. You are certain that he knows you know. You wonder what has caused an interest in you from the Titan, but you wonder if you are too terrified to find out. In the future you had seen, you survived, but you had also returned up the mountain with a new flask of spring water. You wonder if you only survive if you return.

"And if I return?"

"Then you survive in most cases."

"I see." You pause.

You spot a short-haired goddess with a transparent forearm, and you pass her briefly as you rush onto the eagle, and she approaches you after defeating him to ask if you are being held hostage.

"I shall... return." You mumble. "I assure you, Lord Prometheus. I am not running away. The future in which I see requires me to return in order to progress. I am, unfortunately, important as of right now."

"Make haste."

"Understood."

The futures in which you had fought back disappear from the possibilities, and he watches the princess fight. Up, die, down, live.

Up.

Down.

Death.

Return.

He knows where she resides, and perhaps it is an act of mercy or the sheer fact that in every future possible he does not touch upon the crossroads. Where the missing children of Nyx reside. The fates are in the hands of Chronos and so he, yet it seems that both he and the other daughter acknowledge that there will be change as long as the princess prevails. Change that could not be seen with the prince.

Change that can be seen with the addition of you.

You had been visible in only one possible future — the one in which you had managed to make it up the mountain prior to the princess, and somehow it had occurred. It knocked out plenty of futures with such a simple change. It was so simple, yet he would not have been able to do it. Everything moves with precision, and when you make it back up, dangled by the claws of Aetos and dropped unceremoniously into Prometheus' arms, a squeak past your lips as you scrambled out of his arms out of a fear.

You fear that he will be angered.

He lets you misunderstand. There is only one future for you.

There are multiple for him.

It is a constant shattering of the self. Prometheus understands it. It has seeped far into his bones and become a part of him. He is no longer bothered by it. He has learned to coexist with the world and its possibilities. Yet, yet it is refreshing to see a linear foresight in the form of you. A nymph who was worshipped as a god, who received snippets of the future in the form of strange flashes according to his foresight. A nymph who carried her spring water around and heals titans who were violently opposed to the gods. There is no good nor bad to you — only a future in which you can see. You continue linearly to the future that you are certain of.

He is above you to some extent, he thinks.

It's why you hide above the pillars of the chamber, peering down at the princess fight Prometheus, her moves readable to you, and you well aware of when he would win and when he would lose. It's why you let water dribble out of your flask into your palm before she arrives at certain times, fingers gentle on his skin as he stares down at you.

But he prefers the silence of not needing to fight anyone and sitting with you on the pillar to watch over the destruction of Olympus to everything else. In the quiet moments where you do not have foresight, and he simply ignores everything that he knows. The knowledge of the universe is the burden that a titan must carry. It is a burden that even you carry, even if your options are limited. There is little to be picky about. It seems you understand that just as well as he does. It is intriguing that you only know the sure future.

Foresight of all, or foresight of one.

"My foresight is nowhere near as strong as yours." You scratch your cheek, water on your fingers as Prometheus leans back against a pillar, letting your fingers smooth over his wounds. Gods and titans seldom need healing, but it felt nice to feel the coolness of water on his skin that would not burn off immediately from the flame in his right. You are also gentle, skin less jagged and gentle against his, hands unscarred and clean of all traces of labor or hardship. He doubts it is because you lack it — he knows it is not because you lack it. It is simply because the water on your hands has made it so that no jagged skin on your body would go unforgiven.

But it is not that he is enamored with you. It is not that he finds you intriguing. It is not that there was a singular moment in the future where he pictured the two of you in a chariot. No. It was not all of that. It was the sheer simplicity that despite the possibility that you could have attacked or reported, you did not. Instead, you had used the last of your water, fingers smooth against his stomach as you had healed the hole in his abdomen — restoring his stomach. You are no god. You a a simple nymph with a strange ability to see snippets of your future. He wonders if you had seen the same chariot.

You do not show it — he knows it. You have not seen that future quiet yet.

In the case that Chronos were to win, then you would be a nice trophy of war.

Though, you might go with him willingly without breaking or coercion.

But, in the linear future you see, there is no victory for his side.

"The princess is too strong." You simplify it.

He knows. He knows that is the future you see. The future you see tends to run more finite than the infinte that he sees. There is a certain sense of truth or reality that only exists in your future. The one that you see. Prometheus does not understand why he seems so fixated on knowing how you know, but he doesn't speak. He mentions not even a word to the others. Chronos needs not to know that Prometheus is hiding a nymph at the tip of Olympus, or that the future is grim for the both of them.

No.

You will continue to tell him the outcomes of his battle, and he will continue to fall for the reality in your words. There will be a cycle that continues until the princess can figure something out, he supposes.

He catches your thoughts occasionally — in the strange futures where you give into impulse and touch his hair, or in the strange futures where you grab the hand with fire, but you never act upon anything. You stay distant so that he does not feel uncomfortable. Everything you do in the present is done out of a worry that he will see a future in which the majority of possibilities end with his hand around your throat and you pass. However, it comes as not much of a surprise that you do eventually succumb to such urges.

"May I touch your hair, Lord Prometheus?"

"Be gentle." He leans his head down to you, and you reach to pinch it between your fingers, lashes fluttering as you stare in awe. Almost as though you had never had to press your fingers through his hair to heal the wounds on his skull. Yet, he stares through your soul as you still, eyes continuing to stare as you try your best to ignore the way he's staring at your skin. You're good at ignoring things. In most of the universes where you survive, you ignore the implications of taking care of him, playing innocent whenever the princess comes. As though the pouch of liquid were for yourself and not the titan.

"In case the flames injure me." you tell the princess.

But the truth is, you do not care for too much. The same way that Prometheus is at the gates of Olympus because it greatly increases the chances of the princess' victory, you sit perched up top to heal him again and again because it greatly increases the chances that he will survive if it ever comes to it. In the singular future you see in spots, Prometheus has to survive. You make that much obvious in the way you tend to him while the princess runs again and again. There is no point in fighting her way to the top when she has discovered the way to seal time for good.

It gives you a little downtime with Prometheus.

"My lord. Did you join the fight for the sake of the humans?"

"There is no future in which the humans will be happy under the rule of the gods."

"But they do not survive if the titan takes over."

"So you are aware."

You sit cross-legged across from him, blinking at him slowly as you tilt your head.

"You are here for the princess, then."

"Was."

"And what now?"

He stares at you, glow of fire too much for you as you look away to Aetos.

"I ought to keep you as a war trophy."

"That would be amusing." You rummage through your pouch, huffing when there is none else but water. "Why me, my lord? Not the eagle?"

"Aetos has become a friend."

"And I have not?"

"Not yet."

"I see."

The princess stops by on occasion in between her fights with Time to talk to you after defeating Prometheus. You hand her materials that she might need for the way down, and she offers you a bottle of nectar that you take with a light laugh in your voice. She is sweet. You admit that much. Even in the flash of the future that you see briefly when your fingers brush hers as you talk, she is wonderfully charming all the same. So, you tell her that there is really no reason for her to be gifting you nectar like this.

"I aid the titan, princess."

"Not Time. The titan who has reason to be angered." She reasons, looking behind you as Prometheus manifests.

"I see." You blink. "Let me offer you something in exchange."

You hand her a flask of spring water, waving as she rushes off now that Prometheus had returned.

"You aid us both."

"Just as you do."

Your fingers smooth over his skin like a ritual, wounds cleared and skin restored, his eyes digging into the color of your cheeks, hand gentle as he reaches to hold it, earning him widened eyes from you. You could not turn down his advances even if you had begged him. There is too much of a difference in status, and you are no foolish nymph. You let him brush his thumb over your cheek, blinking at him gently as he stares. He could snap you if he really wanted to. There is the looming threat that he could wrap his hands around your neck, squeeze, and you would pop. Yet, you can not do anything if he bores of you.

You still do not understand why he had decided to keep you alive.

A gloved hand and fire.

His palm squeezes against your cheek, and you blink owlishly at the texture of the glove.

"You can not say no."

"I dare not to." You fiddle with your fingers, staring at him through your lashes as he hums. "Forget you nymphs can die."

"We are immortal, not indestructible." You close your eyes, leaning into his touch.

He stares and stares, eventually drawing his hand from your face, your eyes fluttering open as he hums.

"You died in one future."

"I did not die in mine."

How reassuring.

The next time the princess brings Prometheus to ruin, you ask her if she has pomegranates. She offers you one of power, and you turn it down. The fruit, not the pom, and she tells you no. You offer her a handful of seeds and request that she bring only one to you her next trip upwards. A full fruit, unbruised if possible. Not that it makes much of a difference. You simply craved the fruit since you were up here anyway. Too scared to leave the titan — you tell her.

When she leaves, Prometheus returns, and you are back to your ritual.

Cold hands, warm skin. You let him wrap his fingers around your wrist this time — you don't move as he does. You blink at him owlishly, his palm warm on your wrist, your skin heating up at his touch. It's a strange sense of domesticity — no. It's just simple warmth. It had been a while since there had been any warmth at all. The land had frozen over ever since the House of Hades fell to Time. The winter is cold. It is comforting to feel the warmth of fire again after such a climb. You only hope the princess will hand you a pomegranate her next time up.

Your wrist warms from his touch, and you watch as he squeezes, hold firm as you blink slowly at him.

"It does not wound you."

"No." You blink. "It surprises me."

He squeezes harder, and you blink. Stare. You articulate your fingers, blinking at him slowly as he loosens his hold, letting you slip your wrist from his grasp, hand stuck in his as he squeezes. He stares. He knows it all, and you only know one future. It matters not. You do not know your future of him or with him, but he knows. He knows the future with you. You have to learn to trust that he will not harm you. Learn to understand that it is fine if you do not know what comes next. He will, and somehow, he will guide you.

You do not have the foresight for the Titan of Foresight.

Yet, you catch snippets of a possible separate future when you ask for things. Futures where you did not ask. There is a sense of amusement from the titan somehow when you don't. He stares at you, eyes semi-hard but still peering, cock of a brow upwards as you blink owlishly at him.

"If I may."

"If you may what?"

You dig your nails into your palms before releasing, breathing as you ask.

It is always a yes. You've pressed your hands up his arms, given them a squeeze, and he has run his palm up your bicep and rested his forehead against yours. His hair that tickles your forehead, and your skin that is cool against his. You wonder if he understands that the intimacy sends jolts down your spine, your heart racing in your chest when he touches you. He might. He might do it to get a reaction out of you. You would not know if he does.

You stare into the red of his, blinking slowly as his thumb brushes over your pulse point, pressing down as your heart races in your ears.

"You are embarrassed."

"It goes without saying." You mumble, cheeks warm.

"The heart races."

"Yes."

"For what reason."

"You know, my lord."

"I must hear it from your lips."

Your voice loses itself in your throat, and he hums, lips in the ghost of a smile as you purse your own and close your eyes. Too much. Too honest. Your heart threatens to break out of your chest and end your immortality right there, and you blink slowly when you finally do open your eyes, the titan still staring.

You would not dare to confess that you like him. It would be inappropriate for a mere nymph to do so.

"Will you say it?"

"I can not, my lord."

"Then learn to accept it." He presses his palm to your cheek, thumb brushing your bottom lip as he leans in.

Aetos screeches above the two of you.

You bounce off immediately, back upon the pillar, heart racing as you hold it, hiding your face in your hands with a battering heart as you feel Prometheus' gaze linger on your hiding self. The red of his eyes dig into the flushing of yours, and you peek through your fingers when you hear the arrival of the princess, staring down. He would win this fight, unfortunately. She is wounded quite harshly from Strife, and it would be hard for her to survive without the revivals she leaned upon in order to defeat the titan.

Your words hold true, especially when you watch the princess cling onto her final moments, the bong of doom shaking over her head as she yells for a quick pause, holding out a pomegranate before she returns.

"For... the nymph."

Prometheus takes the pomegranate from her hand, and you hop down as you hold your hands out for the fruit.

"I refuse to participate." He stares.

"Alright."

You reach to peel the pomegranate, surprised when Prometheus does it instead, fingers digging into the fruit as he cracks it open for you, offering you the fruit as his hands stain red. You thank him, fingers brushing his as you take the fruit, red seeping onto your own to match his as you squeeze it for the juice, seed pressed to your nails as you stain. The red becomes so much more apparent with the nails and fingertips, humming to yourself quietly as you peel out the seeds, fingers gentle as you offer them to the titan. Instead, he slides them past your lips, staring as your lips part to take his offering, your fingers tugging at Prometheus' belt to have him bend down.

"I must heal you." You whisper.

"Offering me the spoils of effort." He mumbles. "How strange of you."

You blink, brushing his bottom lip with your thumb when he lowers, and you have him sit once more. Rest up. You tell him, water cold in your hands as he stares at the glow of blue. A strange dynamic the two of you have evolved into, he thinks. You're so breakable like this, nimble and pliant, skin softer under his palm as he grabs you. You're incredibly easy to break. But it's not that it matters. He can not break you. You do not need to be broke. You would listen to him if he asked out of fear. Fear or affection, he wonders.

What is the future that is visible in your eyes? You do not know your future with him.

He knows that you do not. Each step you take has a million other possibilities. You obey his word because of the hierarchy. He digs his fingers into your skin, skin soft and arm small. It matters not this or that. It matters only that it seems you only seem to care about him. You fear things that you do not speak upon, and you learn to accept his motions. His hands are gentle when he holds you, and he tells you when the princess or Aetos is to arrive to avoid scaring you. You're jumpy when he's affectionate with you.

Like a fawn caught in the wild.

In a way, you learn to accept his affection, still insisting on occasion that he would bore of you and that you should not reciprocate — you dare not to. Heavens knows how many lovers he has had or how the gods do not devote themselves to someone or something. You worry of trivial things. He does not see a future in which you will not be by his side. Regardless of what form of companionship you take, you are there in every future.

You are shyer with your affections, offering fruit to him when the princess defeats him and brings you items from her garden. You offer her seeds in return. requesting that she bring only one or two items from the seeds you've given her. You do not know how many times it has been since you've been handed grapes to enjoy. If she notices that you take care of the titan, she does not mention it. You would prefer that she just ask you upright, but you find it endearing that she lingers past the gate and peeks at the two of you as Prometheus sits down for you to fix him up.

She's quite cute — that goddess.

Prometheus whispers for you to rid of her, but you do not listen, hand smoothing up his abdomen and over the clots of gold that have formed. The intimacy tears at your skin, raking down your back in ripples as you whisper to end it all, begging him quietly to simply let the goddess pass. It would not hurt. Unless it would hurt his pride. She is visibly a sensible person. It would not hurt to let her go once or twice considering that Chronos could not know.

He tells you not to worry about it.

"When it all ends, I will return to my punishment."

"I expect it to be different this time." You whisper, fingers smoothing against his face as he sits you in his lap.

"My punishment? The chances are minuscule, nymph." He closes his eyes, melting into your touch as you hum.

"My foresight says change."

"Then your foresight we will depend on." He closes his eyes, letting your fingers scratch at his scalp, your skin cool against his as he rests his forehead on yours. "Do not break, dear nymph."

"I will not under your care, my lord." You mumble.

"Am I still all that is to you?"

You jump in your skin when the sound of the princess approaching breaks through the silence.

"You did not warn me." You frown.

"Prefer to see you squirm."

You stay seated on the top of the pillar as you blink slowly, hiding your face from the embarrassment, praying that it will pass.

When the princess wins, she leaves you with the message that Chronos is to fall soon after a while.

"I am in the process of sealing him away for good."

"I see." You whisper back as she hands you a handful of figs.

"More than one?"

"I believe you share these with the titan."

You laugh, cheeks warm as you send her off, sound of Prometheus' return behind you as you turn around to make the offering, handful of figs in your hand as he stares down.

"Feed me, dear nymph."

You take one from your palm, pressing it to his lips as he eats it, and you press one to Aetos' beak as it squacks at you. Then, you press one to your own, biting down as the meat of the fruit rips in your mouth, sweet against your tongue as Prometheus stares, wounds fresh on his skin, gold staining his body as you place the figs in your pouch.

"Chronos shall be falling."

"I am aware." He closes his eyes as you run your thumb under his eyes.

"Will you let the princess go next time if she succeeds?"

"If she succeeds."

"I'm sure she will."

"Not certain?"

"She has that kind of charm." You hum. "May I?"

"And what would that be?"

"I dare not to ask outright."

"Then kiss me, dear nymph." He leans down, lips brushing yours gently.

You kiss him, lips hesitant as yours brush his once more, shaking slightly as his hands find your face, palms rough against your cheek as you close your eyes and lean in, head tilted back slightly as he leans over you, body swallowing yours as his lips swallow yours, and you shake gently. His hands steady themselves on your cheek, and eventually your mind spins with the lack of air — there is no lack of air for a nymph, but your chest burns and your head spins, heat pooling in your lungs as you whimper for air, whimpering into his lips as he makes not a sound.

You gasp, pulling back as he chases, one hand sliding down to wrap around your neck delicately, fingers hot against your throat as you swallow, muscles flexing under his palm as his lips find yours again. He's parched, you think. Hasn't had a sip of water since his chaining in the sea, and saltwater is no good to drink. He tastes like the heat of the fire you had observed when curious, peering quietly at the flame that he had been chained over. It burns and scorches your throat but your head boils beautifully at the feeling of his lips on yours, sparks sparkling down your spine, your eyes closing once more. Death is frozen in time — it no longer matters. You can not pass.

When Prometheus finally lets go of you, the warning sound of the princess' footsteps light against the marble stairs and vision of the future in his eye as he tucks you behind him gently, eyes meeting the princess as he lets Aetos land on his hand. The princess locks eyes with you as you offer a shy smile.

"Time has been weakened."

"I lack one final item."

"Then fetch it. Do not disappoint, agent of change." Prometheus stares, watching as the princess rushes past the three of you.

"You let her go." You whisper.

"You should have known."

"I do not know your future, my lord."

"Then of yours?"

"That, I know."

Prometheus tells you that he is to fight the princess one final time when she returns after defeating time.

You understand it as well, circles drawn in his palm as he sits down, free hand resting on your thigh with an occasional squeeze, gentle smile on your lips as you trace the lines and scars, humming quietly. The flame in his hand is warm against your fingertips, and he controls the fire as to not burn you — but you like it. He knows you do. He knows you flush not from embarrassment but from affection. That much is apparent. If anything, you appreciate the warmth that his body brings to yours.

"The princess returns in a while." You mumble, flushed as he pulls you closer, forehead pressed to yours as his lips part, skin of your neck pinched between his canines, hard enough to draw gold. You whimper from the tearing of skin, squirming in his grasp as he bites harder, Aetos soaring off to aid Chronos' troops as Prometheus traps you in his arms, tongue out as he laps at the dribbling blood. You hold back sound, neck craned to the side as your lashes flutter.

"My lord."

"It does not hurt, does it?"

"No, but it is a strange sensation." You whisper, heat melting down your spine and pooling between your legs, and Prometheus bites.

It's hard to not bite when you look and sound so sickeningly sweet, hands flying to your face that he has to pry away with his much larger ones, panic rising up your throat when he towers over you, and he thinks that perhaps you should not be taken on the marble at the end of the rebellion, but foresight be dammed. His mind is overdriven with the sound slipping past your lips, your bottom lip quivering as he lifts both your legs lifted up as he measures out himself, hips flush against yours as you gasp and cry about it not fitting.

"My lord—"

"Prometheus." He pinches at the skin of your collarbone, and you scramble to ground yourself, fingers pressing into the marble until the blood drains and it is the same shade of white, eyes wide as you shake your head.

"L-lord Prometheus. It won't—"

"You are immortal, dear nymph."

"I am immortal, not indestructible." You whimper as he nudges himself against you, thumb finding your pebble of nerves, brushing gently as you flutter around nothing.

"You crave it."

"I fear it."

"It coexists." He presses a hand to your chest, and you inhale. "Breathe for me, dear nymph."

You exhale, drawing a breath in when he pushes past your entrance and into you, your throat suddenly full and lashes wet at the sudden intrusion. He reaches down to wipe at your tears, forehead pressed to yours as he syncs your breathing with his, deep breaths past his lips as you follow, sheen on your body glistening as the moon hangs in the sky. His free thumb wipes at the tears, and you paw at his chest, nails dug into your palms to not tear the wound on his chest, and he brushes your bottom lip.

"It won't hurt, dear nymph."

"Does not—" You furrow your brows, closing your eyes. "change that I wish not to hurt you."

"It takes more than a nymph to tear a titan." He reaches for your hands, unclenching them as he has you press them to his chest. "Worry not."

"Can't see your future." You whimper, voice broken as you breathe. "Don't know if—"

"Then trust that I do." His thumb at your clit gives it a gentle nudge, and he holds back a groan at the way you flutter around him. "Dear nymph."

"You can—" you swallow, panting, sweat trickling down your forehead as you exhale. "move, dear... Prometheus."

"I will not hurt you."

"I trust that."

You're sickeningly sweet under him. He moves slowly at first, trying to keep you comfortable, foresight in hot flashes before his eyes, stilling when he needs to, moving when it seems you are comfortable again. Eventually your heavy breathing turns into jagged syllables of what resembles his name, and his mind stills with the way his hips drive into yours, and your nails dig at his forearms, still too scared to rip his chest, and he grunts when you do spill over the edge and cry his name with beads in your eyes and a vice between your legs. He follows shortly after, and he rakes his mind for a future in which perhaps he could fit all of himself in you, but when you reach for his neck, he pushes it back.

"Well done, dear nymph."

Your eyes close from exhaustion.

You stay that way. Your mind turns off and you are not awake when Chronos is sealed. You are, however, aware of it all, flashes of the future in your mind as you see a chariot of gold, startling you awake. You stay in the embrace of Prometheus, rubbing your eyes tiredly as the future is revealed to you sweetly. You lean on his chest and close your eyes once more, matching your breathing to his as he rubs at your forearm.

"The princess is coming."

"Yes."

"And Time has been sealed."

"Correct."

"And you are to be punished once more."

"It is inevitable."

You laugh a little when you remember what Prometheus' punishment ends up being.

"You are aware?"

"We will be alright."

There is a sense of urgency this time, Prometheus thinks. He is not so much of a coward as to run off since Chronos himself has been defeated, but he worries of what will happen to you if you were to be captured. Too many possibilities, and you refuse to share the one that has been revealed to you. Yet, he is no match for the princess, defeated once more as you watch his body disappear. He must be back to nursing, but his body returns immediately, unable to access the rest that Chronos had once provided him. The titan is defeated, and he is next.

"You must not trap him, princess." You land on the ground of the chamber, hands gentle as you take hers and stare at the coughing titan. "I shall take him to my spring if I must. He must not go back."

"Nymph, you must not be—"

"I shall steal him if that is what it takes." You whisper. "His wrath has been justified. It always has been. Both of us are aware of such a small fact."

"Then the olympians. It does not justify what he has done to the gods."

"The gods are simply prideful. After all, did he not purposefully weaken himself for your sake these fights? He had been punished for offering fire to the humans." You offer. "I am not saying that he must get away free of all punishment. I simply ask that you are to request for a simpler punishment. Perhaps something less gruesome than what was previously sent for him."

"And what do you propose?"

You whisper into the princess' ear, but you know Prometheus knows what you have said.

"How does that sound?" You look up at the titan as he stands up, Aetos back on his hand.

"What a hit to my pride."

You grin, lips curling upwards as you laugh.

"Will the gods know?"

"Not with the fates back where they belong."

"Very well." The princess nods. "Do invite me, yes?"

"Of course." You hum, cheeks warm as she's gone from the door.

"It will occur?"

"My foresight says yes."

Prometheus learns to trust you.