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#but all these years took a tool on them
margaretkart · 10 months
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I find it so interesting that the fall of Troy is not the climax of the Iliad. We are so used to watching movies were the fall of a city is the big climax but it's not, we learn about it as a narrative.
The climax is Achilles's fight with Hector, the final showdown of an epic 10 year war is a battle of two men different but it's has it's own reasons. Complex characters fighting for what they believe for, center of a conflict non of them wanted in the first place, yet they had the weigh and responsibility of it.
All the tension, the anger, the fear, the losses of the war are built up for this moment so when it's done you feel all these emotions dry out, like there's nothing left to fight for.
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the higher-ups (and Yaga) immediately trying to leverage Gojo & Ieri's absence to put Yuuta on the roster??? God that's such a stark moment. Thank god Nanami and Gojo saw through that one immediately, because Yuuta wants to justify his own survival so badly he would've fallen straight into it.
That whole scene, with Yuuta immediately jumping on the opportunity to help people even though something is Extremely Wrong with him and he's on the brink of physical collapse--this boy is selfless to the point of self destruction and I am chewing the drywall about it. I love him so much.
If only he was able to summon his newly found homicidal rage in defense of himself, the higher-ups would no longer be a problem. Alas, this boy is Extremely Unwell.
(Sea Glass Gardens is absolutely incredible and i am obsessed with it in a way that is totally and 100% normal. I'm so normal about it, trust me <3 )
The thing about Yuuta is that he really is prime to be taken advantage of right now and the higher ups know it. They had him try to kill himself for them--they know that there's a window of opportunity that they can use to get him under their thumb and avoid The Problem of Gojo, which is, namely, having a human weapon who you cannot fully control. Gojo nailed it from the beginning: they want a magic gatling gun with no personality or free will. They learned their lesson with Gojo and are trying to rob Yuuta of his agency before he learns how to protect himself.
And Yaga's part in that scene really was meant to kind of emphasize how, even with the best intention's, he just doesn't work to protect the kids. Like. everything he said was technically true, and he meant it with the best of intentions. He's the guy who has to think of everyone's needs. he has to manage this crisis. he's got a lot of people hurt badly who just came out of a war, and a lot of people going into fights with some very aggravated curses spawning without sufficient manpower to address the danger and no healer to save them if they cut it a little too close. He didn't have the intention of manipulating or sacrificing Yuuta, but he was aware that it would come to his detriment and risk.
The issue is the higher ups. They don't give a shit about the people in their workforce. They should be the ones doing whatever it takes to solve this crisis and save their people--and if that means giving up on their machinations? They should have already done it. It's their responsibility.
They just don't care. They want Okkotsu Yuuta under their thumb, and their society hemorrhaging is treated like an opportunity, not a dire problem to be solved. They don't care if half a dozen of their own people need to die to do it. Hell, it's better if they do die--they can put it straight on Okkotsu for not being willing to sacrifice himself, when they should have been making whatever promises they had to in order to make this work.
Gojo's done this before, is the thing. He was Yuuta, a long time ago. Nanami was right there watching it happen. They both know what the higher ups do: They let society get to a crisis level and put all the responsibility on you to save it. they let you maneuver yourself into a vulnerable position as a result, and then they use it as leverage to put their goddamn boot on your neck.
The thing is that Gojo adopting megumi all those years ago really did put them into a crisis state. the zenin pitched the mother of all bitch fits trying to secure his unconditional return, and they were a huge percentage of jujutsu society's labor force and resource pools. instead of the higher ups managing the problem at all, they took advantage of the situation and shoved more and more of its weight and responsibility onto gojo, until he was dropping off his own kid at his abusers' compound thinking it was the only compromise that could resolve things. megumi paid the price for gojo not calling bullshit, and right now, with him in a hospital bed? gojo's less willing to repeat mistakes than ever.
he knows that they're going to use the safety and suffering of everyone else as the leverage against him, and he knows that as terrible as it is, he cannot blink first. He's played this game before, and he knows that the only way to get the higher ups to back off on something like this is to dig in your heels.
I think what happened to Megumi all those years ago and how bad it got before they put a stop to it is something that haunts all three of them. When they first started raising him, they were very young, and they were very broken, and they loved him very, very much. He was their little boy, and he was never the same after the Zenin. They were supposed to protect him, and they didn't, and not a single one of them has forgiven themselves for that.
Megumi was sort of sacrificed for the greater good when he was a kid. None of them thought that that was what they were doing when it happened, but that's what happened. His happiness, safety, and wellbeing were sacrificed to pacify the Zenin and make it easier on everyone else.
Megumi and Tsumiki had to become their non-negotiables after. They had to become the things they refused to compromise on. The Zenin would take miles and miles if you gave them a millimeter, let alone an inch.
Gojo didn't think he was compromising them when he left them on their own to deal with Geto's war. They were disgustingly self-sufficient kids. They had been alone for longer stretches of time when they were practically toddlers--they should have been fine on their own for a couple of weeks.
But they were still his kids, and he still left them alone for everyone else's sake, and now his kid is blind and half dead in a hospital bed. It's like being punched in the face by old mistakes.
So they're off the roster completely, all of them. And they're not compromising an inch on what their focus is, and they're not letting anything happen to any of the other kids in their care.
It's terrible that their coworkers are suffering, but it wouldn't be happening if the Zenin hadn't fucked with Gojo Satoru's kid, of all the goddamn people. It wouldn't be happening if the higher ups would actually do their job and start managing shit.
And if they use Yuuta as an anxiety riddled bandaid on the bullet hole in their society? Then they'd be sacrificing him the way they sacrificed Megumi all those years ago. And they have never been less willing to do that.
I'm so so glad you like the story! Thank you for talking with me!
#i think gojo has such a big emphasis on giving kids the tools to protect themselves because no one ever did that for him or geto#geto snapped under the pressure and was lost to gojo forever#Gojo repeatedly focuses on giving the kids the tools to enjoy their childhood without being hurt#like with yuuji--he doesn't want him to sacrifice his youth and happiness with the others#so he focuses on giving him the strength to protect himself when gojo isn't there#in my mind that's also why gojo was always trying to feed yuuji the fingers#like when i first started the series it seemed kind of weird to me because gojo very obviously didn't want yuuji dead#until i realized that yuuji canonically had a good chance at suppressing sukuna even at 20 fingers as long as he had them spaced out#if yuuji had sukunas power level and had gotten it in increments eventually the higher ups couldnt touch him and hed still be under control#honestly none of the adults are doing well right now#a little under a decade ago the issue with the zenin came to a head and megumi ended up being very small and very hurt in a hospital bed#and they promised him that it would never happen again#now he looks very small and very hurt and he's in a hospital bed and the zenin put him there#as much as he's an angry teenager who hates displays affection he really is their little boy and they adore him#nanami was the one who took him from the zenin the final time all those years ago and he personally promised megumi that he would never eve#go back to that place. he feels like a complete failure right now.#gojo always blamed himself for not digging in his heels and refusing the custody compromise and now he's FURIOUS that this happened under#his nose a second time. i think gojos really interesting in the hero role because he's canonically low empathy and struggles with homicidal#impulses and let me tell you he thought about just killing all the zenin back then and he's REALLY thinking about it right now. there's one#fucking way of making sure this never happens again.#shoko generally feels like shit because this is supposed to be the one thing she can do to help and she /can't/ do it right now to help#megumi. also she privately thinks she had the most opportunity to realize how bad it was with the zenin back then and /didn't/.#she was going through a lot of her own issues back then and the zenin had some kind of believable excuses for why megumi was always banged#up. like. he was already getting into fights at school. its not like the zenin had issues procreating. they said he was picking fights#with other kids and that's where he got hurt. they actually blamed maki more than once. and some bruises here and there is expected for a#kid in combat training even at what was meant to be a very preliminary level. he was supposed to be in like. kiddie karate classes and they#didn't realize the zenin were training him like a fucking marine. it was SO obvious in hindsight and that tortures them.#protecting yuuta right now kind of feels like a chance to get it right the first time and all of them need that now that they feel like the#fucked it up with megumi a second time#sea glass gardens
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andromeda3116 · 1 year
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it makes me feel something raw and aching when i see the monuments left behind by ancient cultures, the pillars and the carvings and the steps rising to the sky and the temples and the pictograms, like for thousands and thousands of years humans have stood in awe of the universe and poured their energy into building places to worship the gods they imagined made all of this, the way their wonder and their belief have lasted well beyond even their culture's lifetimes
for us to still see these places and feel the memory of their hands and their heartbeats carved into the stone, for us to know, thousands of years later, that they were there and they were amazed at what they saw
idk, in this sanitized world saturated with advertisements and cold steel and corporations squeezing the life out of the planet for another quick buck, it's gut-wrenching to look at the stones of gobekli tepi and feel shadows of the awe we once beheld the world with
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kaiiscottage · 28 days
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ε a bit late but happy birthday Mafuyu :]!! ♡ з
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paddington-two · 1 year
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vulnerable moment here but 2022 was basically one long depressive episode for me, so the fact that I've consistently written more in the last few days than I did over a few months is SUCH a good feeling
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kaijutegu · 3 months
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Alligator Body Language and You, or: How To Know When An Alligator On Social Media is Being Stressed for Views
Alligators are wild animals. Despite the idiotic claims of animal abusers like Jay Brewer, they cannot be domesticated, which means they are always going to react on the same natural instincts they've had for millions of years. Habituated, yes. Tamed, yes. Trained, definitely. Crocodilians can form bonds with people- they're social and quite intelligent. They can solve problems, use tools, and they're actually quite playful. Alligators are also really good at communicating how they're feeling, but to somebody who doesn't spend much time around them, their body language can be a bit mystifying. And it doesn't help when social media influencers are saying shit like this:
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That is not what a happy gator looks like.
That's a terrified, furious gator who isn't attacking because the ogre handling her has her in a chokehold. She's doing everything she can to express her displeasure, and he's lying about it because he knows his audience doesn't even know how to think critically about what he's doing. He knows that because his audience doesn't know anything about these animals, he can get away with it. This I think is why I hate him so much- he deliberately miseducates his audience. He knows what he's doing is factually inaccurate, he just doesn't care because attention means more to him than anything else in the world.
Let's change that! Here are two really important lessons for understanding alligator body language on social media.
Lesson 1: Alligators Don't Smile (in fact, most animals don't)
So what's going on in this video? Jay Brewer is aggressively choking his white alligator Coconut while scrubbing algae off of her with a toothbrush. And make no mistake, he is digging into the creature's throat while she is visibly distressed. He claims she's happy- but she's not. He is willfully misrepresenting what this animal is feeling. That's a problem, because people... well, we actually kind of suck at reading other species' body language. The reason for this is that we tend to overlay our own responses on their physical cues, and that's a problem. For example, let's look at an animal with a really similar face to ours, the chimpanzee. Check out Ama's toothy grin!
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Wait, no. That's not a happy smile. That's a threat display. When a chimpanzee "smiles," it's either terrified and doing a fear grimace, or it's showing you its teeth because it intends on using them in your face.
How about a dog? Look at my smiling, happy puppy!
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Oh wait no, this is a picture of Ryder when he was super overwhelmed by noise and people during a holiday party. He'd hopped up in my sister's lap to get away from stuff that was happening on the floor and was panting quite heavily. See the tension in the corners of his mouth and his eyes? A lot of the time when a dog "smiles," the smile isn't happy. It's stress! Why Animals Do The Thing has a nice writeup about that, but the point is, our body language is not the same as other species. And for reptiles, body language is wildly different.
For instance, look at these two alligators. Pretty cute, right? Look at 'em, they're posing for a Christmas card or something! How do you think they're feeling?
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Well, I'll tell you how the normal one is feeling. He's annoyed! Why is he annoyed? Because the albino just rolled up, pushed another gator off the platform, and is trying to push this guy, too. I know this because I actually saw it happen. It was pretty funny, not gonna lie. He's not gaping all the way, but he was hissing- you can actually see him getting annoyed in the sequence I took right before this shot. Look at him in this first shot here- he's just relaxing, and you can see he isn't gaping even a little bit.
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By the end, he's expressing displeasure, but not enough to actually do anything about it. He's annoyed, but he's comfy and that's where one of the best basking areas is, so he'll put up with it.
Reptiles open their mouths wide for a lot of reasons, but never because they are actively enjoying a sensation. Unless they're eating. No reptile smiles- they can't. They don't even have moveable lips. If a reptile is gaping, it's doing so because:
It is doing a threat display.
It is making certain vocalizations, all of which are threats. Alligators are one of the rare reptiles that do regularly vocalize, but most of their calls aren't made with a wide open mouth.
It is about to bite something delicious or somebody stupid. Check out this video- virtually all of the gaping here is anticipatory because these trained gators know darn well that the bowl is full of delicious snacks. (I have some issues with Florida's Wildest, but the man knows how to train a gator AND he is honest about explaining what they're doing and why, and all of his animals are healthy and well-cared for, and he doesn't put the public or his staff at risk- just himself.)
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It's too hot and it has opened its mouth to vent some of that heat and thermoregulate. This is the main reason why alligators will often have their mouths part of the way open, but sometimes they'll open all the way for thermoregulation. This is what a thermoregulatory gape looks like- usually it's not all the way open, kinda more like < rather than V, but you can't say that 100% of the time. Additionally, a thermoregulatory gape... typically happens when it's hot out. If they're inside, maybe they've been under their basking light for too long. Heat's the dominant factor, is what I'm getting at.
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There is another reason that a captive crocodilian might be gaping, and that's because it's doing so on command. Some places have their gators trained to gape on cue, like St. Augustine Alligator Farm and other good zoos. They have the animals do this in presentations that are genuinely educational. They ask the animals to open their mouths so that they can show off their teeth and demonstrate how their tongues seal off the back of their mouth. They'll also do it as part of routine healthcare, because looking at their teeth is important.
In this case, the animals aren't gaping because they're stressed, they're gaping because they know they're gonna get a piece of chicken or fish if they do it. And what's more, they're doing it on cue. They have a specific command or signal that tells them to open wide. It's not an instinctive response to a situation. It's trained. If the animal provides the behavior after a cue, the situation is much less likely to be negatively impactful.
It's also important to remember that there's a difference between a partially open mouth and a gape! As discussed above, alligators will often have their mouths a little bit open just to maintain temperature homeostasis. It helps them stay comfy, temperature-wise. These guys are all doing thermoregulatory open-mouthed behavior- that slight open and relaxed body posture is a dead giveaway. (That and it's the hottest spot in the enclosure.)
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Lesson 2: A Happy Gator Is A Chill Gator
So if alligators don't smile or have facial expressions other than the :V that typically signifies distress, how else can you tell how they're feeling? One way is stillness. See, alligators subscribe to the philosophy of if it sucks... hit da bricks.
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Basically, if they hate it, they'll leave. Unless, y'know, somebody has their meaty claws digging into their throat or is otherwise restraining them. (Restraint isn't always bad, btw. Sometimes the animal is going through a medical thing or needs to be restrained for their safety- which a responsible educator will explain.)
Let's look at a very similar scenario, in which a captive alligator is getting his back scrubbed.
As you can see, it's quite different. First, he's not being restrained at all. Second, look at how relaxed he is! He's just chilling there vibing! He could simply get up and leave if he wanted to, because he's not being held. Towards the end of the video, as he lifts his head, you can see that his respiratory rate is very even as his throat flutters a bit. I'm not sure what this facility is, so I can't comment on care/general ethics, but like. In this specific case, this is an alligator enjoying being scrubbed! And you can tell because he's not doing anything. A happy gator is content to be doing what they're doing.
Why Should I Listen To You?
Now, you should ask yourself, why should you listen to me? Why should you trust me, who does not own an alligator, versus Jay Brewer, who owns several?
Well, first off, there's no profit for me in telling you that what you're seeing on social media is in fact not what you're being told you're seeing. I'm not getting paid to do this. That's the thing with people who make social media content. The big names aren't doing it just for fun. They're doing it for money. Whether that's profit through partnerships or sponsorships, or getting more people to visit their facilities, or ad revenue, you can't ignore the factor of money. And this is NOT a bad thing, because it allows educators to do what they're passionate about! People deserve to be paid for the work that they do!
But the problem starts when you chase the algorithm instead of actually educating. A "smiling" alligator gets the views, and if people don't know enough to know better, it keeps getting the views. People love unconventional animal stories and they want those animals to be happy- but the inability to even know where to start with critically evaluating these posts really hinders the ability to spread real information. Like, this post will probably get a couple hundred notes, but that video of Coconut being scrubbed had almost 400,000 likes when I took that screenshot. Think about how many eyeballs that's reached by now. What I'm saying here is that it's just... really important to think critically about who you're getting your information from. What do dissenters say in the comments? What do other professionals say? You won't find a single herpetologist that has anything good to say about Prehistoric Pets, I can tell you that right now.
Another reason you can trust me is that my sources are not "just trust me bro," or "years of experience pretending my pet shop where animals come to die is a real zoo." Instead, here are my primary sources for my information on alligator behavior:
Dragon Songs: Love and Adventure among Crocodiles, Alligators, and Other Dinosaur Relations- Vladimir Dinets
The Secret Social Lives of Reptiles- J. Sean Doody, Vladimir Dinets, Gordon M. Burghardt
Social Behavior Deficiencies in Captive American Alligators (Alligator mississippiensis)- Z Walsh, H Olson, M Clendening, A Rycyk
Social Displays of the American Alligator (Alligator mississippiensis)- Kent Vliet
Social Signals and Behaviors of Adult Alligators and Crocodiles- Leslie Garrick, Jeffery Lang
Never smile at a crocodile: Gaping behaviour in the Nile crocodile at Ndumo Game Reserve, South Africa- Cormac Price, Mohamed Ezat, Céline Hanzen, Colleen Downs (this one's Nile crocs, not American alligators, but it's really useful for modeling an understanding of gape behaviors and proximity)
Thermoregulatory Behavior of Captive American Alligators (Alligator mississippiensis)- Cheryl S. Asa, Gary D. London, Ronald R. Goellner, Norman Haskell, Glenn Roberts, Crispen Wilson
Unprovoked Mouth Gaping Behavior in Extant Crocodylia- Noah J. Carl, Heather A. Stewart, Jenny S. Paul
Thank you for reading! Here's a very happy wild alligator from Sanibel for your trouble.
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ketchuppee · 5 months
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During the 2008 recession, my aunt lost her job. Her, her partner, and my three cousins moved across the country to stay with us while they got back on their feet. My house turned from a family of four to a family of nine overnight, complete with three dogs and five cats between us.
It took a few years for them to get a place of their own, but after a few rentals and apartments, they now own a split level ranch in a town nearby. I’ve lost track of how many coworkers and friends have stayed with them when they were in a tight spot. A mother and son getting out of an abusive relationship, a divorcee trying to stay local for his kids while they work out a custody agreement, you name it. My aunt and uncle knew first hand what that kindness meant, and always find space for someone who needed it, the way my parents had for them.
That same aunt and uncle visited me in [redacted] city last year. They are prolific drinkers, so we spent most of the day bar hopping. As we wandered the city, any time we passed a homeless person, my uncle would pull out a fresh cigarette and ask them if they had a light. Regardless of if they had a lighter on hand or not, he offered them a few bucks in exchange, which he explained to me after was because he felt it would be easier for them to accept in exchange for a service, no matter how small.
I work for a company that produces a lot of fabric waste. Every few weeks, I bring two big black trash bags full of discarded material over to a woman who works down the hall. She distributes them to local churches, quilting clubs, and teachers who can use them for crafts. She’s currently in the process of working with our building to set up a recycling program for the smaller pieces of fabric that are harder to find use for.
One of my best friends gives monthly donations to four or five local organizations. She’s fortunate enough to have a tech job that gives her a good salary, and she knows that a recurring donation is more valuable to a non-profit because they can rely on that money month after month, and can plan ways to stretch that dollar for maximum impact. One of those organizations is a native plant trust, and once she’s out of her apartment complex and in a home with a yard, she has plans to convert it into a haven of local flora.
My partner works for a company that is working to help regulate crypto and hold the current bad actors in the space accountable for their actions. We unfortunately live in a time where technology develops far too fast for bureaucracy to keep up with, but just because people use a technology for ill gain doesn’t mean the technology itself is bad. The blockchain is something that she finds fascinating and powerful, and she is using her degree and her expertise to turn it into a tool for good.
I knew someone who always had a bag of treats in their purse, on the odd chance they came across a stray cat or dog, they had something to offer them.
I follow artists who post about every local election they know of, because they know their platform gives them more reach than the average person, and that they can leverage that platform to encourage people to vote in elections that get less attention, but in many ways have more impact on the direction our country is going to go.
All of this to say, there’s more than one way to do good in the world. Social media leads us to believe that the loudest, the most vocal, the most prolific poster is the most virtuous, but they are only a piece of the puzzle. (And if virtue for virtues sake is your end goal, you’ve already lost, but that’s a different post). Community is built of people leveraging their privileges to help those without them. We need people doing all of those things and more, because no individual can or should do all of it. You would be stretched too thin, your efforts valiant, but less effective in your ambition.
None of this is to encourage inaction. Identify your unique strengths, skills, and privileges, and put them to use. Determine what causes are important to you, and commit to doing what you can to help them. Collective action is how change is made, but don’t forget that we need diversity in actions taken.
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reasonsforhope · 3 months
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Ancient redwoods recover from fire by sprouting 1000-year-old buds
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Article | Paywall free
When lightning ignited fires around California’s Big Basin Redwoods State Park north of Santa Cruz in August 2020, the blaze spread quickly. Redwoods naturally resist burning, but this time flames shot through the canopies of 100-meter-tall trees, incinerating the needles. “It was shocking,” says Drew Peltier, a tree ecophysiologist at Northern Arizona University. “It really seemed like most of the trees were going to die.”
Yet many of them lived. In a paper published yesterday in Nature Plants, Peltier and his colleagues help explain why: The charred survivors, despite being defoliated [aka losing all their needles], mobilized long-held energy reserves—sugars that had been made from sunlight decades earlier—and poured them into buds that had been lying dormant under the bark for centuries.
“This is one of those papers that challenges our previous knowledge on tree growth,” says Adrian Rocha, an ecosystem ecologist at the University of Notre Dame. “It is amazing to learn that carbon taken up decades ago can be used to sustain its growth into the future.” The findings suggest redwoods have the tools to cope with catastrophic fires driven by climate change, Rocha says. Still, it’s unclear whether the trees could withstand the regular infernos that might occur under a warmer climate regime.
Mild fires strike coastal redwood forests about every decade. The giant trees resist burning thanks to the bark, up to about 30 centimeters thick at the base, which contains tannic acids that retard flames. Their branches and needles are normally beyond the reach of flames that consume vegetation on the ground. But the fire in 2020 was so intense that even the uppermost branches of many trees burned and their ability to photosynthesize went up in smoke along with their pine needles.
Trees photosynthesize to create sugars and other carbohydrates, which provide the energy they need to grow and repair tissue. Trees do store some of this energy, which they can call on during a drought or after a fire. Still, scientists weren’t sure these reserves would prove enough for the burned trees of Big Basin.
Visiting the forest a few months after the fire, Peltier and his colleagues found fresh growth emerging from blackened trunks. They knew that shorter lived trees can store sugars for several years. Because redwoods can live for more than 2000 years, the researchers wondered whether the trees were drawing on much older energy reserves to grow the sprouts.
Average age is only part of the story. The mix of carbohydrates also contained some carbon that was much older. The way trees store their sugar is like refueling a car, Peltier says. Most of the gasoline was added recently, but the tank never runs completely dry and so a few molecules from the very first fill-up remain. Based on the age and mass of the trees and their normal rate of photosynthesis, Peltier calculated that the redwoods were calling on carbohydrates photosynthesized nearly 6 decades ago—several hundred kilograms’ worth—to help the sprouts grow. “They allow these trees to be really fire-resilient because they have this big pool of old reserves to draw on,” Peltier says.
It's not just the energy reserves that are old. The sprouts were emerging from buds that began forming centuries ago. Redwoods and other tree species create budlike tissue that remains under the bark. Scientists can trace the paths of these buds, like a worm burrowing outward. In samples taken from a large redwood that had fallen after the fire, Peltier and colleagues found that many of the buds, some of which had sprouted, extended back as much as 1000 years. “That was really surprising for me,” Peltier says. “As far as I know, these are the oldest ones that have been documented.”
... “The fact that the reserves used are so old indicates that they took a long time to build up,” says Susan Trumbore, a radiocarbon expert at the Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry. “Redwoods are majestic organisms. One cannot help rooting for those resprouts to keep them alive in decades to come.”
-via Science, December 1, 2023
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Google’s enshittification memos
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[Note, 9 October 2023: Google disputes the veracity of this claim, but has declined to provide the exhibits and testimony to support its claims. Read more about this here.]
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When I think about how the old, good internet turned into the enshitternet, I imagine a series of small compromises, each seemingly reasonable at the time, each contributing to a cultural norm of making good things worse, and worse, and worse.
Think about Unity President Marc Whitten's nonpology for his company's disastrous rug-pull, in which they declared that everyone who had paid good money to use their tool to make a game would have to keep paying, every time someone downloaded that game:
The most fundamental thing that we’re trying to do is we’re building a sustainable business for Unity. And for us, that means that we do need to have a model that includes some sort of balancing change, including shared success.
https://www.wired.com/story/unity-walks-back-policies-lost-trust/
"Shared success" is code for, "If you use our tool to make money, we should make money too." This is bullshit. It's like saying, "We just want to find a way to share the success of the painters who use our brushes, so every time you sell a painting, we want to tax that sale." Or "Every time you sell a house, the company that made the hammer gets to wet its beak."
And note that they're not talking about shared risk here – no one at Unity is saying, "If you try to make a game with our tools and you lose a million bucks, we're on the hook for ten percent of your losses." This isn't partnership, it's extortion.
How did a company like Unity – which became a market leader by making a tool that understood the needs of game developers and filled them – turn into a protection racket? One bad decision at a time. One rationalization and then another. Slowly, and then all at once.
When I think about this enshittification curve, I often think of Google, a company that had its users' backs for years, which created a genuinely innovative search engine that worked so well it seemed like *magic, a company whose employees often had their pick of jobs, but chose the "don't be evil" gig because that mattered to them.
People make fun of that "don't be evil" motto, but if your key employees took the gig because they didn't want to be evil, and then you ask them to be evil, they might just quit. Hell, they might make a stink on the way out the door, too:
https://theintercept.com/2018/09/13/google-china-search-engine-employee-resigns/
Google is a company whose founders started out by publishing a scientific paper describing their search methodology, in which they said, "Oh, and by the way, ads will inevitably turn your search engine into a pile of shit, so we're gonna stay the fuck away from them":
http://infolab.stanford.edu/pub/papers/google.pdf
Those same founders retained a controlling interest in the company after it went IPO, explaining to investors that they were going to run the business without having their elbows jostled by shortsighted Wall Street assholes, so they could keep it from turning into a pile of shit:
https://abc.xyz/investor/founders-letters/ipo-letter/
And yet, it's turned into a pile of shit. Google search is so bad you might as well ask Jeeves. The company's big plan to fix it? Replace links to webpages with florid paragraphs of chatbot nonsense filled with a supremely confident lies:
https://pluralistic.net/2023/05/14/googles-ai-hype-circle/
How did the company get this bad? In part, this is the "curse of bigness." The company can't grow by attracting new users. When you have 90%+ of the market, there are no new customers to sign up. Hypothetically, they could grow by going into new lines of business, but Google is incapable of making a successful product in-house and also kills most of the products it buys from other, more innovative companies:
https://killedbygoogle.com/
Theoretically, the company could pursue new lines of business in-house, and indeed, the current leaders of companies like Amazon, Microsoft and Apple are all execs who figured out how to get the whole company to do something new, and were elevated to the CEO's office, making each one a billionaire and sealing their place in history.
It is for this very reason that any exec at a large firm who tries to make a business-wide improvement gets immediately and repeatedly knifed by all their colleagues, who correctly reason that if someone else becomes CEO, then they won't become CEO. Machiavelli was an optimist:
https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/28/microincentives-and-enshittification/
With no growth from new customers, and no growth from new businesses, "growth" has to come from squeezing workers (say, laying off 12,000 engineers after a stock buyback that would have paid their salaries for the next 27 years), or business customers (say, by colluding with Facebook to rig the ad market with the Jedi Blue conspiracy), or end-users.
Now, in theory, we might never know exactly what led to the enshittification of Google. In theory, all of compromises, debates and plots could be lost to history. But tech is not an oral culture, it's a written one, and techies write everything down and nothing is ever truly deleted.
Time and again, Big Tech tells on itself. Think of FTX's main conspirators all hanging out in a group chat called "Wirefraud." Amazon naming its program targeting weak, small publishers the "Gazelle Project" ("approach these small publishers the way a cheetah would pursue a sickly gazelle”). Amazon documenting the fact that users were unknowingly signing up for Prime and getting pissed; then figuring out how to reduce accidental signups, then deciding not to do it because it liked the money too much. Think of Zuck emailing his CFO in the middle of the night to defend his outsized offer to buy Instagram on the basis that users like Insta better and Facebook couldn't compete with them on quality.
It's like every Big Tech schemer has a folder on their desktop called "Mens Rea" filled with files like "Copy_of_Premeditated_Murder.docx":
https://doctorow.medium.com/big-tech-cant-stop-telling-on-itself-f7f0eb6d215a?sk=351f8a54ab8e02d7340620e5eec5024d
Right now, Google's on trial for its sins against antitrust law. It's a hard case to make. To secure a win, the prosecutors at the DoJ Antitrust Division are going to have to prove what was going on in Google execs' minds when the took the actions that led to the company's dominance. They're going to have to show that the company deliberately undertook to harm its users and customers.
Of course, it helps that Google put it all in writing.
Last week, there was a huge kerfuffile over the DoJ's practice of posting its exhibits from the trial to a website each night. This is a totally normal thing to do – a practice that dates back to the Microsoft antitrust trial. But Google pitched a tantrum over this and said that the docs the DoJ were posting would be turned into "clickbait." Which is another way of saying, "the public would find these documents very interesting, and they would be damning to us and our case":
https://www.bigtechontrial.com/p/secrecy-is-systemic
After initially deferring to Google, Judge Amit Mehta finally gave the Justice Department the greenlight to post the document. It's up. It's wild:
https://www.justice.gov/d9/2023-09/416692.pdf
The document is described as "notes for a course on communication" that Google VP for Finance Michael Roszak prepared. Roszak says he can't remember whether he ever gave the presentation, but insists that the remit for the course required him to tell students "things I didn't believe," and that's why the document is "full of hyperbole and exaggeration."
OK.
But here's what the document says: "search advertising is one of the world's greatest business models ever created…illicit businesses (cigarettes or drugs) could rival these economics…[W]e can mostly ignore the demand side…(users and queries) and only focus on the supply side of advertisers, ad formats and sales."
It goes on to say that this might be changing, and proposes a way to balance the interests of the search and ads teams, which are at odds, with search worrying that ads are pushing them to produce "unnatural search experiences to chase revenue."
"Unnatural search experiences to chase revenue" is a thinly veiled euphemism for the prophetic warnings in that 1998 Pagerank paper: "The goals of the advertising business model do not always correspond to providing quality search to users." Or, more plainly, "ads will turn our search engine into a pile of shit."
And, as Roszak writes, Google is "able to ignore one of the fundamental laws of economics…supply and demand." That is, the company has become so dominant and cemented its position so thoroughly as the default search engine across every platforms and system that even if it makes its search terrible to goose revenues, users won't leave. As Lily Tomlin put it on SNL: "We don't have to care, we're the phone company."
In the enshittification cycle, companies first lure in users with surpluses – like providing the best search results rather than the most profitable ones – with an eye to locking them in. In Google's case, that lock-in has multiple facets, but the big one is spending billions of dollars – enough to buy a whole Twitter, every single year – to be the default search everywhere.
Google doesn't buy its way to dominance because it has the very best search results and it wants to shield you from inferior competitors. The economically rational case for buying default position is that preventing competition is more profitable than succeeding by outperforming competitors. The best reason to buy the default everywhere is that it lets you lower quality without losing business. You can "ignore the demand side, and only focus on advertisers."
For a lot of people, the analysis stops here. "If you're not paying for the product, you're the product." Google locks in users and sells them to advertisers, who are their co-conspirators in a scheme to screw the rest of us.
But that's not right. For one thing, paying for a product doesn't mean you won't be the product. Apple charges a thousand bucks for an iPhone and then nonconsensually spies on every iOS user in order to target ads to them (and lies about it):
https://pluralistic.net/2022/11/14/luxury-surveillance/#liar-liar
John Deere charges six figures for its tractors, then runs a grift that blocks farmers from fixing their own machines, and then uses their control over repair to silence farmers who complain about it:
https://pluralistic.net/2022/05/31/dealers-choice/#be-a-shame-if-something-were-to-happen-to-it
Fair treatment from a corporation isn't a loyalty program that you earn by through sufficient spending. Companies that can sell you out, will sell you out, and then cry victim, insisting that they were only doing their fiduciary duty for their sacred shareholders. Companies are disciplined by fear of competition, regulation or – in the case of tech platforms – customers seizing the means of computation and installing ad-blockers, alternative clients, multiprotocol readers, etc:
https://doctorow.medium.com/an-audacious-plan-to-halt-the-internets-enshittification-and-throw-it-into-reverse-3cc01e7e4604?sk=85b3f5f7d051804521c3411711f0b554
Which is where the next stage of enshittification comes in: when the platform withdraws the surplus it had allocated to lure in – and then lock in – business customers (like advertisers) and reallocate it to the platform's shareholders.
For Google, there are several rackets that let it screw over advertisers as well as searchers (the advertisers are paying for the product, and they're also the product). Some of those rackets are well-known, like Jedi Blue, the market-rigging conspiracy that Google and Facebook colluded on:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jedi_Blue
But thanks to the antitrust trial, we're learning about more of these. Megan Gray – ex-FTC, ex-DuckDuckGo – was in the courtroom last week when evidence was presented on Google execs' panic over a decline in "ad generating searches" and the sleazy gimmick they came up with to address it: manipulating the "semantic matching" on user queries:
https://www.wired.com/story/google-antitrust-lawsuit-search-results/
When you send a query to Google, it expands that query with terms that are similar – for example, if you search on "Weds" it might also search for "Wednesday." In the slides shown in the Google trial, we learned about another kind of semantic matching that Google performed, this one intended to turn your search results into "a twisted shopping mall you can’t escape."
Here's how that worked: when you ran a query like "children's clothing," Google secretly appended the brand name of a kids' clothing manufacturer to the query. This, in turn, triggered a ton of ads – because rival brands will have bought ads against their competitors' name (like Pepsi buying ads that are shown over queries for Coke).
Here we see surpluses being taken away from both end-users and business customers – that is, searchers and advertisers. For searchers, it doesn't matter how much you refine your query, you're still going to get crummy search results because there's an unkillable, hidden search term stuck to your query, like a piece of shit that Google keeps sticking to the sole of your shoe.
But for advertisers, this is also a scam. They're paying to be matched to users who search on a brand name, and you didn't search on that brand name. It's especially bad for the company whose name has been appended to your search, because Google has a protection racket where the company that matches your search has to pay extra in order to show up overtop of rivals who are worse matches. Both the matching company and those rivals have given Google a credit-card that Google gets to bill every time a user searches on the company's name, and Google is just running fraudulent charges through those cards.
And, of course, Google put this in writing. I mean, of course they did. As we learned from the documentary The Incredibles, supervillains can't stop themselves from monologuing, and in big, sprawling monopolists, these monologues have to transmitted electronically – and often indelibly – to far-flung co-cabalists.
As Gray points out, this is an incredibly blunt enshittification technique: "it hadn’t even occurred to me that Google just flat out deletes queries and replaces them with ones that monetize better." We don't know how long Google did this for or how frequently this bait-and-switch was deployed.
But if this is a blunt way of Google smashing its fist down on the scales that balance search quality against ad revenues, there's plenty of subtler ways the company could sneak a thumb on there. A Google exec at the trial rhapsodized about his company's "contract with the user" to deliver an "honest results policy," but given how bad Google search is these days, we're left to either believe he's lying or that Google sucks at search.
The paper trail offers a tantalizing look at how a company went from doing something that was so good it felt like a magic trick to being "able to ignore one of the fundamental laws of economics…supply and demand," able to "ignore the demand side…(users and queries) and only focus on the supply side of advertisers."
What's more, this is a system where everyone loses (except for Google): this isn't a grift run by Google and advertisers on users – it's a grift Google runs on everyone.
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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/2023/10/03/not-feeling-lucky/#fundamental-laws-of-economics
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My next novel is The Lost Cause, a hopeful novel of the climate emergency. Amazon won't sell the audiobook, so I made my own and I'm pre-selling it on Kickstarter!
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thatrandomblogsays · 4 months
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Me: *reading a post that makes the joke “Peeta dropped the baby bomb, Gale drops bombs on babies”* haha good one
Also me: you’re missing the point! You’re missing the point! YOURE MISSING THE POINT! He grew up starving. His best friend almost died of hunger. Most of his people live in poverty. He watched children die in a bloodbath every year for the capital’s entertainment. The girl he loved went into the games. Was tortured by the capitol. His district was bombed out of existence. Nearly everyone he knew was killed. Their only crime was being fed up of being hungry and oppressed and sharing the same district as Katniss. All those innocent people. Murdered. He had to take refuge in a district that was bombed out of existence and forced to live underground. Of course he joined the war effort. Of course he designed unethical bombs and battle tactics. He wanted revenge. He wanted the capitol to have a taste of their own medicine. He wanted the rebellion to succeed. And tell me you could live through what he did, and that no part of you would be screaming for Justice and vengeance. Gale is you. You are Gale. He represents a part of feelings and actions that reside within us, even if you don’t act on it.
“But he killed prim!” Exactly! Gale loved prim. She was a second family to her. He looked after Katniss’ family. He saved them from the district 12 bombings. He loved her. He never would’ve put her in danger. He never would’ve put in order for a bombing if it would kill Prim. But coin would. And did. She took what was meant to be a tool of Gale’s righteous revenge for all the suffering he and his people suffered through, only for someone in power to take it and use it to kill someone he loved.
There’s some many lessons to take. We can’t control the things we create. War spares no one. Even justifiable rage and actions can end up rebounding and hurting those you love instead of your targets.
“He drops bombs on babies” is too simplistic of a takeaway and does a disservice to the story and Gale.
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ozzgin · 2 months
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Yandere! Yakuza x Reader (V)
In a rather unlucky turn of events, you find yourself kidnapped for being in the wrong place during a gang war. Worry not, your yakuza boyfriend is at your service. Yet another bloody reason not to mess with him.
Content: female reader, organized crime, violence, gore, obsessive behavior
[Part 1] [Part 2] [Part 3] [Part 4] [Part 5]
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"Damn it!"
The scarred man throws another tile into the pile, clicking his tongue.
"I gotta say, you're pretty good for a foreigner." A second man with an eyepatch remarks, carefully inspecting his set before retrieving a tile of his own. "Pung."
You take another greedy sip of the cheap sake and slam the little cup back on the table.
"Kind of inevitable to learn mahjong when your only friends in this country are yakuza." You look up towards your captor with a frown. "You guys ever heard of board games or something?"
"Try to explain new rules to this dumbass!" A third man angrily pours himself another glass, pointing towards the first. "Fuck, I could iron clothes on that smooth brain of yours!"
"Fuck off, you're not any better." The scarred man continues his turn with furrowed brows. 
"If I were you I'd keep quiet about being pals with the yakuza. They'll question you, too, after the office guy. Don't make it worse." The man wearing an eyepatch mentions in a lowered voice. The table suddenly goes quiet.
"When is he coming out?" You ask hesitantly, bile pooling in your mouth. You already suspect the answer.
"He's not. Bodies are discarded through the back entrance." He pats the ash off and takes another drag off his cigarette. 
You swallow. 
Being involved with the Triad was not part of your new year resolutions, yet here you are about to be interrogated by the local Chinese syndicate. At least the lackeys have taken pity on you, a poor civilian caught in the middle of their rivalry. Hence the fake sense of normalcy as you chitchat at the mahjong table with a cup of sake to ease your wrecked nerves. 
"I'm guessing they won't be as friendly back there." You nod towards the door, where they took your work superior several hours ago. 
"No." 
That's all you get and you can only smile bitterly. Huh. You wonder if this is how Daitou's victims feel, helplessly waiting for whatever is brought upon them. Having to watch him unwrap his tool belt, stuffed with rusty old tools littered in blotches of dried up blood. Pondering his questions while he eyes the row delectably, hovering his hand over the potential ways to loosen up your tongue.
Would they torture you, too? Hopefully not. It should be rather obvious you're just a mere civilian. Then again, if your work superior mentioned anything about you being Daitou's girlfriend...He's never told you anything downright incriminating, but it'll be hard to convince these fellows that you truly are clueless.
Maybe they'll let you go if you offer your finger as a token of peace. Your forehead wrinkles at the thought. Isn't it more of a Japanese custom anyways? And if they say yes, then what? Do they provide you with the required utensils or are you expected to improvise on the spot?
You remember one of Daitou's seniors describing the process in great detail during the Christmas party. You had asked him about it, purely out of curiosity, and he certainly delivered almost more than your stomach was able to handle (Daitou scolded him later for telling you too much). You take the tatami mat and preferably wrap it in cloth, to soak up the blood. Any sharp blade will do, but traditionally you'd be offered a proper tantō that can easily slice through the bone. Obviously you want to cut as little as possible, so you still have some functionality remaining. Right above the joint. You must put all of your body weight into the thrust, otherwise the cut won't be clean and it turns into a mess. 
Hell. You wipe the cold beads of sweat that have formed on your face. You can barely chop an onion. Maybe one of the gangsters has enough experience and goodwill to offer to do it for you. Then you only have to clench your teeth and prepare for the blow. It can't be that bad. Surely the shock will be too great, and your brain won't even register it. Before you know it, they'll dip your hand in ice and rush you to someone fit to perform the aftercare. Yeah. That should to the trick. 
"Hey, foreigner. It's your turn."
"Leave her be, can't you see she's pale?"
You glance up and notice the men looking at you expectantly. They've already showed you plenty of kindness from the moment they shoved you in that black van with the rest of the office workers. Perhaps you can rely on them one final time. You suddenly bow, head pressing against the table. They're somewhat startled by your gesture. 
"I'm deeply sorry to ask, but might any of you be knowledgeable in blades?"
"H-huh? What for?"
You ceremoniously slam your hand onto the table, rattling the mahjong tiles. You struggle to let the words out, but try to maintain a straight face, picturing Shozo Hirono's cool attitude when he performed the deed himself in Battles without Honor and Humanity. 
"Would your Boss be satisfied with a yubitsume? I cannot offer anything else of use."
You feel a harsh hand smack against the back of your neck and you cough, taken out of your focus.
"Dumbass! What the hell are you talking about? Why would our Boss need the finger of a civilian, and a woman on top of that? 笨人!" The man with an eyepatch is red and flustered as he scolds you. The other two are holding back their snickers, amused by the scene.
"Let her! I have a knife on me right now." The scarred man comments with a grin. "Whaddaya say, kid? Or have you changed your mind already?"
"A man never goes back on his word." You bark and straighten your back, crossing your arms imposingly. 
The eyepatch man smacks you again and the other two begin clapping, terribly entertained by your tomfoolery. 
The spectacle doesn't last long. Within seconds, you jump out of your seat at the sound of rapid gunshots and scattered, erratic shouts.
Daitou bows before his Seniors and mumbles a polite, monotonous greeting. It's highly unusual to have the Lieutenants gathered at the office like this. Kazuya is fidgeting in his seat, Boss is away on a trip. What else could require everyone's immediate attendance? He makes his way to the blonde man and drops himself on the sofa, awaiting the details. 
"Wakasugi has been taken."
A chaotic murmur ensues. 
"He's been making offers for a building in a neutral area. That's where the Chinese sell their drugs and they claim it to be their turf. I hear some of our newbies got caught dealing that shit as well. Boss has been at their throats for some time now and this is their way to say fuck you."
Ah. More gang rivalry drama. Daitou presses his lips together, trying his best to hold back a yawn threatening to escape his mouth. Hopefully they'll leave him out of it, he has a date planned with you and he'd rather not show up reeking of rotten flesh. 
If you get kidnapped, think of yourself as already dead. The Yakuza doesn't negotiate. They just get their revenge tenfold. Unless it's someone important, like the Boss himself, the honorable way is to die without betraying your Family. 
"Just put a few bullets in them. Should teach them a lesson." He says while stretching. 
"Yeah, we're sending Oota and his men to deal with it. Just be on the lookout." One of the Seniors responds. 
"Still, the fucking guts on them. To show up at the office, right before our eyes-" Another man cries out, frustration in his voice.
"What did you say?" 
Kazuya flinches. He knows where this is going and he glares at the outraged yakuza, trying to silence him. Sadly he doesn't take the hint.
"Right? They just waltzed in, shot some of our guys and took Wakasugi and whoever was nearby. Heh, what are they gonna do with a bunch of office assistants? Extra weight to carry to the dump."
"Enough!" Kazuya's exasperated yell causes everyone to quiet down.
There are several confused looks being exchanged before everyone's eyes eventually rest on Daitou, now staring ahead motionless. Didn't his girlfriend work at that office? The Senior giving out the initial order has realized the mistake. He quickly clears his throat and is about to speak, but Daitou abruptly stands up and heads for the door.
"Oi! I said we're leaving it to Oota. This isn't your job." 
He tries to repeat his words with confidence, but his voice falters towards the end when faced with Daitou's massive frame. Particularly the barrel that's now pressing into his forehead.
"Mind your fucking business or I'll kill you right here." Daitou threatens.
"D-don't think Boss will help you out of this one, brat. If you go, you're disobeying your Senior."
The tall yakuza smirks mockingly. 
"See if you can run for Boss with your skull split open, bitch."
Kazuya slaps the gun aside and steps between the men.
"Just let him go. I'll take responsibility." He pleads, his friend already slamming the door behind him. 
Once the aggressor has left, everyone exhales discreetly in relief.
"He'll get us in trouble with the cops." The Senior retorts to the blonde in a berating tone.
"What else do you suggest? You know there's no way around it if he's pissed."
No one replies to what seems to be an universally agreed upon truth.
He blows out the smoke and crushes the cigarette under his foot. Fuck. He needs to calm down. They most likely haven't killed you, but if they laid a single hand on you...He's blacking out again. Whatever blinding rage possessed him back in his youth, when his Boss got wounded, would now pale in comparison. His ears are ringing and his vision is foggy. He can't even recall how he made it to their building. Or how he got past the guards. Although that one's easy to figure out, judging from their twisted throats. 
He checks his rounds one final time and kicks the heavy metal door open. Only about a dozen of them, but no sign of you yet. Should take a minute. It is time for him to pay his respects. 
"What the fuck was that?" the scarred man swiftly takes out his weapon and knocks the stool over with his foot.
If it is who you think it is...Your face twists in fear.
"Listen, you've been nice to me so I don't want to see you dead. Could you...could you leave, please? It might be someone I know and I promise you there's no point in fighting back."
The noticeable quiver in your speech might lead one to believe you're awaiting your executioner, not your savior and boyfriend. But you've seen Daitou angry and the ordeal flooded the very marrow of your bones with terror. Naturally he could never be upset at his darling for any reason, ever. Whoever poses a threat to you, however, can't say the same thing. You remember trying to pull him back from a random drunk that had groped you during an outing, and he tightly gripped your jaw with a bloodied hand and nearly ordered you in a ragged growl: "Hey. I said I'll be done in a moment. Be a good girl and close your eyes." 
Thus, from experience, you know he'd never listen to your pleas. Maybe if he was lucid enough, but not in this manic state. The man wearing an eyepatch scans your expression attentively. Your worry is genuine and the other room is gradually becoming quieter, but not in a way that'd inspire him confidence. He certainly doesn't feel like dying today and there's nothing honorable about throwing yourself into a senseless battle. He nods at the other two men and he asks you one last time if you'll be fine by yourself, to which you shake your head vehemently. Please go away already. 
The final obstacle crumbles under Daitou's weight and you fiddle with your glass, alone, at the mahjong table. He seems to be taken aback and once he confirms you're not in any pain or discomfort, his demeanor switches within an instant. 
"Where's everyone?"
"They ran away."
"Just like that? And left you here?" He stares at you, baffled.
"Maybe there's some still in the back. These ones left because I asked them to."
He approaches you, still bewildered and confused. He looks like a lost dog.
"What? They were nice to me and I didn't want you to kill them. You never listen when I tell you to stop." You huff, pouting and folding your arms.
"Sorry. I got a little bit anxious." He kneels before you and extends a hand apologetically. "Friends again?"
"Wash your hands at least, I don't want to know what organ remains you have stuck through your fingers."
He chuckles and wipes the palm against his shirt. You follow his movements and notice the bullet wounds near the ribcage. This madman. You speedily bend to his level and remove his jacket to inspect the injuries.
"Christ. Take off your shirt and let's at least stop the bleeding before we leave. How the hell can you still stand with all these holes in you?"
Daitou unbuttons his shirt obediently and you try to wrap it around his abdomen. You notice the thick, wide scar crossing his stomach, presently smeared with blood. Either his or someone else's. 
"Now that I think about it, how did you get this scar? From a gang fight as well?"
"Oh no, I got this in prison. I was supposed to serve many more years, but one of the Seniors rang and said Boss needs me for something. They were in talks with the police chief to maybe bribe my way out. 
But I felt terrible knowing that Boss would be wasting money on my mistakes. At the time the place was overcrowded, so I figured they'd let me out for medical emergencies. So I cut my stomach open and they counted it as a suicide attempt." He responds with a proud grin. 
You grimace a little at the mental image. 
The cloth has been tightly, albeit clumsily secured around his gashes and you both get up. It occurs to you that throughout this mess you haven't feared for your life once. It feels like Daitou is always there to get you out of trouble. Despite his unorthodox methods.
You gaze up at him and notice the prosthetic eye has rolled inwards, so you adjust it slightly with your finger. He follows your romantic gesture with a quick peck on the lips. 
"You'll get yourself killed one day." You whine, tired.
"And leave you alone? Never. You're stuck with me for life."
He flashes you a wide smile and pats your head.
"Can we still go on that date?" The yakuza suddenly remembers, guiding you as you zigzag your way among fresh corpses.
So he hasn't forgotten. A faint blush dusts your cheeks.
"Sure, but I'd like to have a bath first."
"Then let's have one together." He suggests cheerfully, completely unbothered by whatever just happened.  
Tags: @yandere-city2 @lokiofasgard12 @zeniiis @lucienbarkbark @channelinglament @your-next-daydream @bath1lda @murder-hobo @zanzie
(hopefully I didn't forget anyone)
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barefoothighlander · 9 months
Text
never going back again - 03
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summary: ghost finds himself at the wrong safe house, injured and unable to call for backup
simon ‘ghost’ riley x innocent fem!reader
warnings: mdni (18+), mention of nudity, mention of food, simons a flirt
prev part masterlist next part
a/n: haven’t proofread this yet, sorry for any grammatical errors
It’s a loud banging that wakes you, echoing through the walls of the small cottage, shifting frames on the wall as it continues.
In a sleepy daze you remember how Simon had mentioned he was going to fix the shower, something about mould and needing to redo the tile, what you didn’t recall was him saying he’d start work promptly at 7am, effectively disrupting your peaceful slumber.
You trudge your way out of the bedroom, wrapping the blanket around your form for some warmth as you stand in the doorway to the bathroom, heavy eyes watching him.
It takes him no time at all to acknowledge your presence, probably due to whatever training he’d acquired over the years, he could notice a mosquito shift from 10 feet away, such keen eyes.
He turns to you, his dark clothes sprinkled with powdered remnants of tile, “Did I wake you?”
You smile weakly, “You know there’s no rush, can always start these things, I dunno, in the afternoon”
“Woke up early, wanted to get a head start”
“Head start, sure, yeah” You dig your palms into your eyes, trying to rub the sleep from them, he drops his tools, moving closer to you and gently wrapping his fingers around your wrists, tugging them from your face.
“How’d you sleep love?”
“You mean before you shook my entire house at the crack of dawn? Very well, you’re quite comfortable”
“Am I?”
You smile, shifting your arms to wrap around him, letting the blanket draped on you fall to the floor, he snakes a hand behind your head, tugging it against his chest as he lifts his mask slightly, planting a kiss on the crown of your head.
“How long is this gonna take?”
“Shouldn’t be more than two days”
“You understand this is my only washroom”
“I know”
“And I use it”
“Mhm”
“Please don’t destroy it”
“Wouldn’t dream of it”
You peak your head around him, getting a full glance at the room, it’s a complete mess, tools and dust everywhere, fallen tiles scattering the floor.
“Oh my god”
He pulls back, following your line of sight, “It’s not that bad”
“Not that bad, Simon, be serious”
“You still have the bathtub”
You huff, your forehead falling into his chest, “Just, promise me you know what you’re doing”
He scrunches his face under his mask, “I know what I’m doing” Running his hands up your arms, lying.
“Okay, I’m trusting you”
“Go get some tea love, I’ll take a break soon”
You lift your head from him, gazing up at his masked face before turning around, picking up your fallen blanket and making your way to the kitchen, jolting at the sudden clanging from a wall away and silently praying he wouldn’t destroy your entire washroom.
It’s takes him a few hours before the banging stops, your hearing feeling like it was permanently damaged from the consistent noise as Simon emerges, completely covered in dust.
You bite back the smile that pulls on your lips as you watch him saunter in, reaching for a mug and pouring himself a cup of tea before dramatically huffing a breath while he sits down.
“Done yet?”
He chuckles lightly, shaking his head, “Done taking the old tile down”
“Seems like it took all your energy old man”
“Old man?”
You laugh lightly into your tea,
“Believe me love, I’ve got energy to spare” He smirks under his mask as you choke into your tea, drops of the liquid spurting from the mug as your cheeks flush.
You clear your throat, tilting your head lightly “Wanna use some of it to help me in the garden?”
“Give me five minutes”
You smile, standing from your chair and walking beside him, placing a hand to his shoulder and dragging it along the skin as you walk away.
It takes him more than 5 minutes to meet you, more interested in watching you move around the land whilst sipping his tea, the privacy granting him the opportunity to drink properly without the hindrance of his mask, he made a mental note to buy you proper tea considering the stuff you had tasted like wet dirt to him.
By the time he found you in the garden he had changed his clothes, opting for a more comfortable t-shirt and jeans, the man looked damn good, his arms flexing under the thin cloth that allowed you perfect sight of the ink on his arm.
“Must be hot with that mask on all the time”
“M’not gonna take it off” He groans, standing behind you to wrap his arms around your waist, he leans in to your ear “Yet”
You bite you lower lip as the thoughts flash through your mind, really you didn’t mean the words in a teasing way, more of an observation but now all you could think about was what he looked like. You knew his eyes were dark and his lips were full and pink, that his jaw was muscular and stubbled, from the few angles he granted you, you could tell he had scars on his face, specifically one that spanned his chin going down and another that cut through his left eyebrow.
It was enough, the small glimpses of him, the mystery intriguing but now there was a desire to know him under the mask, how he looked alongside who he was.
“Okay” You break yourself from your thought,la, pulling his arms from you and turning around, “I need you to help me plant these”
“Yes ma’am”
You hand him a small shovel, kneeling in the dirt, “So dig a small hole here, and then just put the pods in and cover them”
“Seems simple enough”
“So you won’t mess up?”
“I didn’t say that”
You smile, “Just do your best, need these to eat”
You watch him struggle to choose spots to dig, clearly overthinking his moves as he twists his body, reaching across the beds.
You shake your head, patting down the dirt in front of you at you settle one of the plants, untangling the vines and sitting back, wiping your hand across your forehead.
“Just plant it Si”
He whips his head to you, his eyes glued to your face in a panicked manner, it makes you uneasy,
“You okay?”
You slowly reach a hand down to rest on top of his, watching his reaction,
“Yeah fine” He shakes his head, “No one’s called me that in a long time, took me by surprise”
“Oh, m’sorry it just slipped out”
“No, I like it, sounds nice coming from you”
“Oh” You turn your gaze down, how did he always manage to make you so nervous, his hand meets your jaw, moving your gaze up to him as he holds you, his other thumb moving to swipe across your forehead.
“Got somethin”
He shows his palm, a smear of dirt on it as you realize, using your own hand to wipe it, you glance down at your body, stains of grass and soil covering you as you laugh.
“You’re filthy”
“You’re no better” You joke, gesturing to the clumps of spilt soil on his lap,
“Could probably use a shower”
“You think you’re so funny”
“Sometimes yeah”
You huff, grabbing a small handful of soil and tossing it at him, he closes his eyes for a moment, “Seriously”
You can’t fight the laughter that erupts from you, the dirt sticking to his sweat covered skin as he looks at you.
You yelp as he pounced on you, throwing your body back into the dirt as he hovers over your frame, his fingers tickling at your sides as you writhe under him.
“Say you’re sorry”
“Will not” You manage through laughs
His fingers poke at your skin, smearing the dirt from his arms onto your clothes in the process,
“Please, can’t breath”
He leans back with a smile, watching your heavy breaths raise your chest as your arms fall to the ground.
“Apologize”
“I’m-“
You’re sentence is cut short as you hear a car pull up, it’s door slamming shut, Simon jumps from you in full fight mode, extending an arm back to keep you guarded as a man exits the vehicle.
You squint your eyes at him, pushing Simons arm down gently as you recognize the person.
“William?”
“Hey doll”
Simon looks between you and the man, a sudden fire burning under his skin at the pet name, he stands back slightly as you approach him.
“What are you doing here?”
“Who’s this?”
You glance at Simon, giving him a small smile before turning back, “A friend”
The term feels like a punch to his chest.
“Pleasure” William extends a hand to Simon who neglects to shake it, eyeing the smaller man’s frame before turning back to you.
“What do you want”
“Came to drop something off, or someone rather”
He walks toward the car, opening the back door quickly as you watch a furry mass sprint toward you, gasping as you kneel down to meet it.
He licks your face as you scrunch it, running your hands over his fur, laughing as he prances around you before he catches Simons scent.
Simon watches the animal intently, studying it’s moves, as it approaches him quickly, jumping to his chest, licking his arms.
“He missed you, and I’m moving”
You tilt your head to him, “Moving?”
“Going to Spain, my mums sick”
“Will I’m so sorry”
“S’alright, just figured Riley needed a better place to stay”
“Yeah of course, thank you”
“We’ll I’ll get out of your hair, seems your busy, it was nice meeting you Simon”
Ghost is at a loss for words, he simply nods toward the man, his gaze focused on Riley.
“Seems he likes you”
“Where’d you get this dog” His tone is serious
“We adopted him when Will and I were together, he’s a retired-“
“Spec ops dog”
“Yeah? How’d you know”
“This is my dog”
“Simon what are you talking about?”
“I work in the military, that’s my job”
“And Riley was yours?”
“For a few years yeah, last they told me he’d retired in the states”
“They didn’t let you keep him?”
“Not protocol, I’m not home much”
“Home” The word triggers something in your mind, he’s not home, this isn’t his house, you’d been so caught up in being around him you’d completely forgot that he has a life outside yours.
Simons eyes crinkle as he plays with the dog, rough housing with him as they roll in the dirt, “We should get inside, looks like rain”
“Be in, in a minute love”
You walk slowly toward the house, resting your back against the front door and shutting your eyes, why hadn’t you thought about him leaving, there were people relying on him, it’s not like he could stay forever.
Even with the anxiety in your chest, your heart swells at the sight of Simon playing with Riley, even in the short time you’d known him, you’d never seen him this comfortable, he was so happy.
You glance at your arms, caked in dirt and sweat, deciding you needed to wash off. Stumbling over the mess of the washroom to turn on the bath, closing your eyes as you sink into the warm water.
Losing track of time in the water you notice your skin had grown wrinkled, scrubbing off the last bits of dirt and stepping out, wrapping a towel around your body and carefully navigating around the room.
Apparently during your alone time, Simon and Riley had moved their fun into the house, moving around the rooms together as they settled in.
You open the door, bumping directly into Simons chest, your nerves jumping as you collide. In a panic your towel falls,
“Sorry I didn’t see you” He struggles to get the last words out, his eyes roaming your naked form as you quickly move to cover yourself,
“Oh my god!” You reach for your towel but Riley runs over, grabbing it with his teeth and running away, “Riley! No, not a toy!”
Your cheeks flush with heat as you glance up, Simons eyes glued to you, your own eyes blown wide as you scurry away, slamming your bedroom door shut.
“Hey, wait” He follows you, leaning against your door as you drop your head to your hands on the other side.
“Please, go away”
“C’mon, it wasn’t that bad”
“You saw my whole body”
“Lucky me”
“Simon” You laugh,
“It was bound to happen at some point”
“Well these are awful circumstances”
He moves the door open slightly, his eyes on your face as you hide behind the wood, face flush, he smiles, reaching to lift his mask slightly as he leans in, capturing your lips in a kiss.
“You’re so beautiful”
You take a deep breath, smiling against his lips before shoving him back and closing the door. He sits down, back resting against the door as you shuffle around in your room, quickly throwing on clothes.
“I’m serious, the most perfect girl i’ve ever seen, honestly just can’t believe it took this long for you to get naked”
You open the door quickly, his body falling backwards onto the ground, wincing lightly as he laughs, his eyes opening to see you standing above him.
“You’re very cocky, has anyone ever told you that?”
“Actually yeah”
Shaking your head you step over him, making your way to the kitchen, Riley following closely behind you.
Simon appears in the door frame, watching you pull food from the fridge, tossing items into pots and onto the cutting board.
“You hungry?” Twisting your head over your shoulder,
“Starved”
He rests an arm above his head against the frame, watching you cook, his hand extended down to pet Riley, this was perfect, the life he never knew he wanted, he had you and his dog and goliath his own little family.
He gives you some space to work, settling on the couch while Riley rests at his feet, seemingly tired out from the day. He reaches for the small tray of electronics on the table, toying with his comms for a moment before piecing it together finally, clipping in the missing cord.
There’s a massive weight on his shoulders, he knows what he has to do, he has a team waiting on him, a family, less conventional yes, but a family none the less, the team were his brothers, he had to get in contact.
He grabs his comm, tucking it to his ear before moving into the bedroom, closing the door so you couldn’t hear.
“Bravo Delta, this is Ghost”
He waits a few minutes before repeating himself, double checking his channel, those few minutes make his heart sink lower, either no one was there and his team had forgotten him, or his comms really were destroyed, and he could stay with you.
“Ghost?”
“Captain, good to hear your voice”
“Christ Son, we thought you’d died”
“Not yet Sir, just a little misplaced”
“Send your coordinates, we’ll get you evac”
“Negative Sir, I’ve got hostiles in the city near”
“Can you get out? We need you on base”
“How much time can you give me?”
He hears Price take a deep breath, murmuring to someone else in the room, “Three days Simon, then I’m sending everyone I have to get you”
“Copy, see you in three days”
“Be careful”
The line goes dead, Simons worries surfacing, he had three days, he didn’t want to face the idea of leaving you let alone how you’d react when he told you, he’d finally gotten his family, he wouldn’t give it up this easy.
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tag list: @pepsicolacoochie @coolbanana44 @konigsblog @lialacleaf @mli345 @gghoulzz @fuckface-6996
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just-jordie-things · 9 months
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I know he's not your favorite but consider... #73 with Itadori... short reader has a crush on him but is too afraid to confess bc she knows he likes tall girls lol I think this could be super cute
kiss prompt 73: height difference kisses where one person has to bend down and the other is on their tippy toes
a/n: first time writing for itadori !!! ___
if you had to think about it, you'd had a crush on itadori yuuji since the day you met him.
after getting a call from megumi where he'd begrudgingly asked for your help tracking down a cursed tool that some spooky-loving school club had snatched before he could, you hadn't expected things to take the turn they did.
as soon as you'd run into the pink haired boy, it was like a daze took hold of you. megumi honestly could have believe you'd been poisoned with how you stammered over your words and moved awkwardly. he'd never seen you so out of it when exorcizing curses. you were sloppy, defensive maneuvers delayed, offensive maneuvers... megumi would have gotten the job done better when he was ten, so, let's just leave it at that.
but nothing would have stopped itadori from eating that finger, and, well, we all know what happens from there.
you were surprised with how quickly he adapted to an entire world he'd never known the existence of. he was an avid learner, eager to train, eager to educate himself. he was always asking you questions that megumi found silly having grown up in jujutsu society, but you'd been happy to talk to him for hours about the ins and outs of it all. that was how your friendship began to blossom, you supposed.
it was easy to crush on yuuji. he was kind, handsome, silly, and had a warm energy about him that just drew you to him like a moth to a flame. even with your harbored feelings for him, being around him was easy, and comfortable. you'd only known him a few months, but the way he treated you made you feel like you'd been close friends for years.
however, due to how close you'd gotten, you were well aware that you were not his type. he'd joked a few times about how he liked tall girls like jennifer lawrence, and you didn't exactly meet that standard.
after he'd casually let that information slip, you found yourself comparing the height difference between you two more often. it was no shock that he was taller than you, you could remember the first time you'd met him you'd tilted your head back to stare up at him- your eyes had been blown wide like a deer caught in the headlights of an oncoming vehicle. he'd just leapt through a window like it was nothing and fought alongside you like his entire reality hadn't just flipped upside down- but now that he'd made his ideal type clear, you'd frown when it would dawn on you that you were barely even an average height.
you'd stand up a little straighter when you were standing before him, but even still you'd tilt your chin so you could look at him properly. he'd noticed the sour expression on you a few times, but you always brushed it off as something else. it felt sort of childish to tell him that you were upset for not being taller.
it's one afternoon that you're out shopping with the other first years that you finally tell him the truth. not that you'd planned to, of course, you were ready to take this secret to the grave.
but you're wandering around with yuuji, half avoiding nobara who was on a rampage and throwing armfuls of clothes at megumi, and half looking at the display of silly hats. some of them were cute, but most of them were pokemon themed, or beanies with funny saying.
yuuji had excitedly picked up a fluffy pikachu hat, complete with the tall ears, and fluffy yellow flaps that hung down your face, ending in paw shaped pockets that you could stick your hands into. he was grinning as he turned to you to tug the hat over your head. you had half a mind to scold him for ruining what was a good hair day, but you keep it to yourself. he looked too happy to have you model the accessory for him.
and you'd thought it was cute, at first. then you take note of how he has to stoop over to reach your level in order to properly adjust the dorky hat, and you're made aware again of how short you are in comparison to him. of how small in general you are compared to him. his tall stature complete with broad shoulders and biceps that were starting to display how hard he'd been training himself- as appealing as he was to look at, you're frowning due to your own self pity.
and when he's done playing with the droopy ears on top of your head and sees the look on your face, he's frowning, too.
"what's wrong?" he asks, quietly, worriedly, like a good friend. "you don't hate pikachu, do you?"
it makes you laugh, even just a little bit, and yuuji gives you a small smile in relief that his joke worked to ease your sad expression, even just a little bit.
"no, it's not pikachu," you huff, pulling the hat off your head and placing it carefully back on the mannequin. "i'm just short"
his brow furrows, assuming at first that he'd heard you wrong, but when you don't say anything else and give him an awkward shrug, he realizes you're serious.
"so?" he asks, chuckling to himself. "what's so bad about that?"
you avoid his gaze while you pretend to take interest in the other hats on the wall, despite you not being a hat person, which he knows.
"it's pretty dumb" you say, running your fingers over a fluffy sylveon cap that was similar to the pikachu one.
"try me" yuuji smiles at you, leaning into the display to catch your attention again. his smile reaches his eyes, and he seems to genuinely hopeful to ease your foolish concern, that you find yourself giving in.
"promise not to laugh at me?" you mutter.
he raises a hand to his chest, drawing an x over his heart before raising his palms towards you in silent promise. you crack a smile at how serious he's taking this.
you take a deep breath before confessing the thought that's been plaguing your mind for the last few weeks.
"i know you like tall girls," you say, staring straight ahead at the sylveon hat like it had been the object of your desire for our entire life. "and i know i'm not even close to being called tall,"
yuuji blinks a few times, his brows raising as he processes this information.
you were upset because you didn't consider yourself his type? did he understand that right? so this was because... you wanted to be his type?
"well, maybe a fifth grader would think i'm tall," you began to mumble to yourself. "but that doesn't really make me feel better-"
"you think you wouldn't be my type because you're so short?" he cuts off your rambling, and she turns to him with a bewildered expression.
"well you don't have to put it like that," you mumble with a furrowed brow. "kinda makes me feel worse-"
"(y/n), i promised i wouldn't laugh," he cuts you off again, stepping forward to wrap his hands around your shoulders. "but that's the dumbest thing i've ever heard!"
you frown up at him, not comforted at all at his attempts to make you feel better.
"you're really bad at this" you tell him, and he begins to break his promise as a few giggles escape through his toothy grin.
"are you kidding?" he teases. "you're the cutest person i've ever met!" he reaches his hands up to your face, squeezing your cheeks together playfully. "i don't want you to be any taller, i like you just the way you are!"
your face begins to heat up under his touch, and with his hold on you, you have no choice but to stare back at him, only making your blush burn hotter.
"you are my type, even as a tiny lil' tater tot," he says, and despite his laughter, you can tell he's being completely genuine. you can see it in the shine in his eyes as he stares at you. "that doesn't matter. what matters if you're a really awesome fucking person, and a badass"
the knot between your brows begins to relax and your lips curl into a smile at his sweet words.
"you're not just saying that?" you ask quietly, just to be sure he wasn't spewing out bullshit just to make you feel better.
yuuji laughs at you, the corners of his eyes crinkling from pure joy. he doesn't respond, but he doesn't need to say anything else.
instead he leans over you, bending almost dramatically to reach your short stature in order to press his lips against yours. it's a short kiss, but it's sweet, gentle, warm- all things yuuji.
when he pulls away, before he can stand back up properly, you're shooting up to the tips of your toes, your hands flying towards his shoulders for balance as you return his kiss. it's fast, eager, curious- all things you. he can't help but smile against your lips as he drops a hand from your face so he can wrap his arm around your waist, keeping you close.
you both distantly hear a harumph! from a passerby in the shop, having forgotten you were still in public. you pull away with sheepish smiles and pink cheeks.
"you are short though" he tells you point blank.
"i know, yuuji" you huff.
"but i like it" he says proudly, and you turn away so he won't see how your blush is spreading down your neck.
you still notice the significant difference in your height often, but it's mostly due to yuuji pointing it out every time he bends over to kiss you from there on out.
___
a/n: i love him sm it's criminal that i haven't written for him :'( xoxo ~ jordie
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thagomizersshow · 7 months
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Apes are a kind of monkey, and that's ok
This is a pet peeve of mine in sci comm ESPECIALLY because many well respected scientific institutions are insistent about apes and monkeys being separate things, despite how it's been established for nearly a century that apes are just a specific kind of monkey.
Nearly every zoo I've visited that houses apes has a sign somewhere like the one below that explains the supposed distinction between the two groups, focusing on anatomy instead of phylogeny.
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(Every time I see a graphic like this I age ten years) Movies even do this, especially when they want to sound credible. Take this scene from Rise of the Planet of the Apes:
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This guy Franklin is presented as the authority on apes in this scene, and he treats James Franco calling a chimpanzee a monkey like it's insulting.
But when you actually look at a primate family tree, you can see that apes are on the same branch as Old World monkeys, while New World monkeys branched off much earlier.
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(I'm assuming bushbabies are included as "lorises" here?)
To put it simply, that means you and I are more closely related to a baboon than a baboon is to a capuchin.
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Either the definition of monkey includes apes OR we can keep using an anatomical definition and Barbary macaques get to be an ape because they're tailless.
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"I've got no tails on me!"
SO
Why did all this happen? Why did we start insisting apes are monkeys, especially considering the two words were pretty much interchangeable for centuries? Well I've got one word for ya...
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This the attitude that puts humans on a pedestal over other life on Earth. That there are intrinsically important features of humanity, and other living things are simply stepping stones in that direction.
At the dawn of evolutionary study, anthropocentrism was enforced by using a model called evolutionary grades. And boy howdy do I hate evolutionary grades.
Basically, a grade is a way of defining a group of animals by using anatomical "complexity". It's the idea that evolution has milestones of importance that, once reached, makes an organism into a new kind of thing. You can almost think of it like evolutionary levels. An animal "levels up" once it gains a certain trait deemed "complex".
You can probably see the issue here; that complexity is an ephemeral idea defined through subjectivity, rather than based off anything truly observable. What makes walking on 2 legs more complex than walking on four? How are tails less complex than no tails? "Complexity" in this context is unmeasurable, therefore it is unscientific. That's why evolutionary grades suck and I never want to look at one.
For primates, this meant once some of them lost their tails, grew bigger brains, and started brachiating instead of leaping, they simply "leveled up" and became apes. Despite the early recognition that apes were simply a branch of the Old World monkey family tree (1785!), the idea of grades took precedent over the phylogenetic link.
In the early years of primatology, humans were even seen as a grade "above" apes, related but separated by our upright stance and supposed far greater intelligence (this was before other apes were recognized tool users).
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It wasn't until the goddamn 1970s that it was recognized all great apes should be included in the clade Hominidae alongside humanity. This was a major shift in thinking, and required not just science, but the public, to recognize just how close we are to other living species. It seems like this change has, thankfully, happened and most institutions and science respecting folks have accepted this fact. Those who don't accept it tend to have a lot more issues with science than only accepting humans as apes.
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And now, we come to the current problem. Why is there a persistent idea that monkeys and apes are separate?
I want to make it clear I don't believe there was a conscious movement at play here. I think there's a lot of things going on, but there isn't some anti-monkey lobby that is hiding the truth. I think the problem is more complicated and deals with how human brains and human culture often struggle to do too many changes at once.
Now, I haven't seen any studies on this topic, so everything I say going forward is based on my own experience of how people react to learning apes (and therefore, humans) are monkeys.
First off, there is a lot of mental rearranging you have to do to accept humans as monkeys. First you, gotta accept humans as apes, then you have to stop thinking in grades and look at the family tree. Then you have to accept that apes are on the Old World monkey branch, separate from the New World monkeys.
That's a lot of steps, and I've seen science-minded zoo educators struggle with that much mental rearranging. And even while they accept this to an extent, they often find it even harder to communicate these ideas to the public.
I think this is a big reason why zoos and museums often push this idea the hardest. Convincing the public humans are apes is already a challenge, teaching them that all apes are monkeys at the same time might seem impossible.
I believe the other big reason people cling to the "apes-aren't-monkeys" idea is that it still allows for that extra bit of comforting anthropocentrism. Think of it this way; anthropocentrism puts humans on a pedestal. When you learn that humans are apes, you can either remove the pedestal and place humans with other animals, OR, you can place the apes up on the pedestal with humanity. For those that have an anthropocentric worldview, it can actually be easier to "uplift" the apes than ditch the pedestal.
Too make things worse, monkeys are such a symbol of a "primitive" animal nature that many can't accept raising them to the "level" of humanity, but removing the pedestal altogether is equally painful. So they hold tight to an outdated idea despite all the evidence. This is why there's often offense taken when an ape is called a monkey. It's tantamount to someone calling you a monkey, and that's too much of a challenge to anthropocentrism.
Personally, I think recognizing myself as a monkey is wonderful. Non-ape monkeys are as "complex" as any ape. They make tools, they have dynamic social groups, they're adapted to a wide range of environments, AND they have the best hair of all primates.
I think we should be honored to be considered one of them.
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valeskafics · 4 months
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"It's The Things We Love Most That Destroy Us" - Aemond Targaryen x Niece!Reader (Hunger Games AU)
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Summary: When Aemond learns that you are the tribute for District 1, he volunteers for District 2, wanting nothing more than to get revenge for that night when you took his eye.
TW: canon typical incest, extremely dubious consent, dark/possessive/yandere behavior, profanity, innuendo, she/her pronouns, afab reader, knifeplay, primal play (it aint play tho, brotha aint playin), murder, blood, violence, fingering, orgasm denial, p in v sex, creampie
Word Count: 5,090 words
Rating: 18+, MDNI
Disclaimer: I do not own any of the House of The Dragon/Fire & Blood characters nor do I claim to own them. I do not own any of the images used nor do I claim to own them.
Comments, likes, and reblogs are never required but are immensely appreciated 🩷
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Growing up as a member of the Velaryon family means that you have wanted for absolutely nothing. You have led a charmed life in District One, being the daughter of one of its two surviving victors, Rhaenyra Targaryen. She has raised you and your brothers as careers, ensuring that should you be reaped, you have all the tools necessary to survive the Hunger Games and come home to them in one piece. Your father, Laenor Velaryon, was a resident of the Capitol, but due to the rumors surrounding you, Jace, Luke, and Joffrey’s parentage, you weren’t granted the same immunity from the reaping as other children of Capitol residents.
You don’t mind it though. Ever since you were a little girl, your mother called you her fierce she-dragon. You trained harder than any of your brothers, becoming a force to be reckoned with. Your speed, strength, and agility surpass that of most your age, and your aim with a bow is nearly unparalleled. You know you could easily win the games if you’re reaped, though the idea of hurting someone, killing someone doesn’t exactly appeal to you. Especially after what happened all those years ago, which you still regret to this day.
Sometimes you see him in your dreams, Aemond. Standing there, holding his eye and screaming in pain. You didn’t mean to do it. You saw Jace, on the ground and unconscious, and you panicked. When Aemond advanced on you, you thought you were fighting for your life. You held your knife out in front of you and slashed blindly, not realizing how that one little action would alter the course of your young uncle’s life forever.
Of your life forever.
You never saw him again after that. His mother and yours made sure of that. You left the Capitol to return to District 1 and Aemond to District 2. You carried that guilt with you for years, never having been able to apologize. You heard that he lost his eye and was fitted with a prosthetic soon after returning home. Countless times, you imagined writing him a letter, picking up the phone and calling, but you didn’t. You were unable to face him. Your mother constantly assured you that you did nothing wrong, but you know that it’s her who is, in fact, wrong. You took Aemond’s eye. How can that not be wrong?
The day of the reaping, you stand shoulder to shoulder with the other girls from District 1. There’s a tension in the air, and since this is the last time you’ll be eligible for the games, you find yourself considering volunteering if your name isn’t called. If maybe that would make your mother prouder of you. But you don’t need to do a thing, you realize, when it is indeed your name that is called in the reaping. Before you can even begin to process that you have been selected for the Hunger Games, the male tribute’s name is announced.
“Lucerys Velaryon.’
Your eyes go wide in horror, your head whipping around to look at the boys’ side. Your eyes meet Luke’s and you see how terrified your little brother looks. You immediately begin to think of how you can best protect him in the games, how you know you’re going to sacrifice your life for his, your dreams of glory disappearing in the blink of an eye. That is, until Jace volunteers in his stead. He squeezes Luke’s shoulder, giving him a grim smile before looking over at you.
Jace. You came into this world together, and it would seem the gods want you to leave it together too.
In the Justice Building, as you wait to board the train to the Capitol along with your mother, you say goodbye to Luke and Joff. Luke’s eyes are rimmed red with tears while Joff is too little to fully understand what is happening. You pull them both into a tight hug, Jace wrapping his arms around all three of you. Your entire body trembles with emotion as Luke and Joff are escorted out of the room, and you and Jace to the train.
The two hour ride to the Capitol is spent in uncomfortable silence. You keep your hand firmly entwined with Jace’s, your mother gazing at the two of you, realizing that when she returns to District 1, it will be without one of her twins. She does her best to keep things professional, but you see it in her eyes.
She’s terrified.
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The reapings take place successively, with the tributes from District 1 being announced and District 2’s reaping then taking place, and so on. Aemond’s lips curl into a sneer the moment he hears your name, brows raising when he hears Jace’s following it. And so, when Arryk Cargyll’s name is called in the reaping, he doesn’t hesitate before volunteering. His fellow tribute is Maris Baratheon. He thinks to himself that she’ll make a decent ally before he inevitably decides to get rid of her. But for now, he plays nice, flashing her a charming smile as they’re led to the Justice Building.
Aemond’s mother cries hysterically as she says goodbye to her sweet boy, her precious son. Helaena bites back her tears, pressing a kiss to Aemond’s forehead, while Aegon just stares at the whole scene with a frown on his face. He knows that Aemond only volunteered because of you. He just hopes his brother’s thirst for vengeance doesn’t consume him. Aemond gives him a quick hug, and then one to Daeron before he leaves for the Capitol with his grandfather, District 2’s only surviving champion Otto Hightower, and Maris.
He’s buzzing with excitement the entire train ride. He wonders what you look like now. Well, he wonders what you’ll look like on your knees, begging him for mercy in the arena. To think there was a time when he loved you. His first crush. It was stupid and pathetic. It made him weak. He refuses to allow that to happen ever again.
Upon arriving in the Capitol, he realizes he won’t be seeing you until tomorrow. He spends all night thinking to himself what he’s going to say to you when he sees you, rehearsing his words. He sends Maris away when she suggests they calm each other down, find comfort in each other, a cold edge to his voice as he declares he has no taste for that kind of depravity. He doesn’t care about anything except you right now. About you and Jace. He’s going to kill Jace in front of you, he decides, and then? He’s going to kill you.
But, when he sees you riding in on your chariot, your head held high, your hand clasped in your brother’s, words escape him. He lets out a sharp breath, his fists clenched, his teeth gritted, as he sees how beautiful you’ve become. You are everything he imagined and more. He feels his nails biting into his palms as he stares at you, watching you smile and wave to the citizens of the Capitol, every bit your mother’s daughter. And though you exude confidence, he can see the fear behind your eyes, the slight tremble of your lip. Though years have passed and he might not know you as well as he once did, Aemond’s sure of two things.
The first?
He’s going to do everything in his power to ensure that you belong to him by the end of the games.
The second?
You’re terrified.
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You and Jace have just made an alliance with Cregan Stark from District 12 and Jeyne Arryn from District 8 when you lock eyes with Aemond. You freeze in place as he walks over to you, his movements those of a graceful and lethal apex predator. Your blood runs cold as he gets closer and closer before stopping in front of you. He removes his eyepatch, revealing to you the elaborate sapphire prosthetic he had put in place of a glass eye. It’s unnerving, staring at it, but you swallow thickly and greet him. 
“Aemond.”
He leans in close - too close - crowding your space as he whispers his childhood nickname for you, “Zaldrītsos.” (little dragon)
You hate the chill that goes through you at the sound of his voice, instead deciding to question, “Were you reaped or did you volunteer? I wasn’t paying attention during the recap.”
That’s a lie, he muses. You absolutely were paying attention. He stares at your lips, thinking of how badly he wants to taste them, to crush you to his chest and feel your body against his. To make you beg for mercy.
Aemond’s face hovers over yours, his breath tickling your lips as he questions darkly, “Does it matter?”
“Just trying to be polite,” you mumble, “I… They didn’t exempt you? For your eye?”
“No. And to answer your question, I volunteered.”
He takes pleasure in your discomfort, the scent of your coconut shampoo wafting through the air, fire burning in his eyes as he thinks about how many ways he could make you his in this stupid little training facility. Jace wouldn’t be able to stop him. He would have to sit there and watch as his precious sister was claimed by a real dragon.
“So why did you volunteer?”
“Because you were reaped,” Aemond’s stare is unnerving, but it becomes even more so when he smalls, leaning in even closer to you, “To finally pay you back for what you did to me. To hurt you.”
Your eyes go wide as you reply, “Aemond, we were kids. It was an accident-”
If his smile was unnerving before, now it’s downright terrifying. The heat from his body almost overwhelms you. He reaches out and rests his hand on your cheek, feeling your skin, so pretty and soft just for him. He loves the way you flinch at his touch.
“My sweet little niece. You almost sound sorry for maiming me.”
“I am sorry,” you insist frantically, “I didn’t mean for it to happen, please, Aemond, I’m sorry!”
He shakes his head, glancing around to make sure no one is paying any attention before replying, his voice cold, “It’s too late for that now. The minute we get into the arena, you’re mine, zaldrītsos. All mine.”
With that, Aemond grabs you by the back of the neck, pulling you into a savage, violent kiss, attacking your lips with his own. You struggle against him, shoving at his chest with all your might, but you might as well be hitting a wall. He finally releases you when he needs air, and you hate the way your blood rushes to your face as he stares at you like some sort of hungry beast. He walks away, back to Maris and the other careers he’s made an alliance with - Qyle Martell and Asha Dayne from District 3 along with Cerelle Lannister and Jaime Reyne from District 4. The six of them standing together are formidable, but you know that you and Jace have all the skills they do.
If they’re going to kill you, you’re going to make damn sure they have to earn that privilege.
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Aemond isn’t surprised when you receive an 11 during your private session with the Gamemakers. He gets an 11 too, and he knows how distraught you probably are at poor Jace getting an 8.
“It seems like you’ll have to come to your twin’s rescue once again,” Aemond comments dryly, “Maris got a 10.”
You give him a sharp look, “I don’t care. She has other disadvantages.”
“Such as?”
“She’s insane.”
He lets out a short laugh at your words, eyeing you up and down, “You’re just the same as I remember you. Bold and wild. Beautiful.”
You let out a sharp exhale as you feel his hand brushing against yours, refusing to speak. You wait for Jace to exit the training room and immediately move to his side to comfort him after his less than ideal scoring. Aemond listens in as you assure him that he’s going to shine in the interview. He’s always had a gift for speaking, for being likable. Aemond frowns at your words, realizing the interview is going to be his weak spot. But no matter, his training score will certainly make up for it.
The sponsors will be besides themselves trying to get resources to a Targaryen to curry favor with his family. He has nothing to worry about.
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Standing on your platform, waiting for the games to begin, you can feel your heart in your throat, your back soaked with sweat despite not having had to run yet. Everything is heightened. Your platform is between Jace and Aemond. You can feel Aemond’s eye on you, intense, scrutinizing, wondering what your first move will be. You’re still weighing your options as the one minute countdown begins, whether to make a break for the Cornucopia or not. Part of you thinks that you should, if only to show off your skills for the sponsors. The other part of you, the more cautious part, thinks that entering the bloodbath will just give Aemond a better chance of finishing you off.
You feel Jace take your hand, giving you that reassuring smile he used to when you were kids and you needed his support. The realization that one or both of you aren’t going to make it out of this hits you, making your stomach turn.
“I love you,” Jace says, squeezing your hand, “No matter what happens in the arena, you’re my sister.”
“And you’re my brother. Do what you have to do to survive,” you say quietly, squeezing his hand back.
Neither of you say a word about how sweaty your palms are, how your hands are trembling as the countdown hits thirty seconds. Your heart pounds in your chest as the time for the start of the games gets closer and closer. You realize that, even though Aemond is a career like you, he has disadvantages you can use in your favor. His depth perception is likely off, and he’s vulnerable on his left side. You file those mental notes away to use later as the countdown nears its end.
10… 9… 8… 7… 6….
You see Cregan glancing longingly at your brother, and Jace back at him. You’ve suspected something between them for a day or two now, after how close they got during training. The games aren’t a place to fall in love, and yet, you can’t help but feel happy that Jace has gotten to experience that, if only just to lose it.
5… 4… 3… 2… 1…
You’re launched into the arena and you make a split second decision to run for the bow and arrow that you see. You can hear the slaughter going on around you, and the moment you see Kermit Tully coming toward you, you take aim and fire, your arrow hitting him in the throat. You quickly dispatch Mason Tyrell as well before darting off into the forest, feeling confident in your decision.
Aemond stands over the bodies of Myra Reed and Dalton Greyjoy, blood covering his face as he sheathes his dagger, a sword on his back. He sees the direction you’ve run off in and takes off after you, not wanting to lose sight as he follows your trail, every bit a hunter in pursuit of its prey.
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By the time the sun begins to set, judging by how many times you’ve heard the sound of the cannon, there are less than ten of you left. All you can do is hope that Jace and Cregan are two of those. You get closer and closer to the cave, knowing Aemond must be out there somewhere, looking for you. The thought makes your blood run cold. Just as you’re about to start climbing up to the cave, you hear a branch snap behind you. Cerelle Lannister lunges at you, every bit the lioness she fancies herself to be, clawing at your face as she draws her dagger. You use your hips to roll over on top of her, using her moment of surprise to snatch the dagger from her hands and stab her in the side of the head. You watch as the life fades from her eyes before standing up, wiping some dirt from your face.
Aemond watches the entire scene with a smirk on his face. That determined expression on your face, the pride in your stance as you tower above her fallen form. There’s a fierce, almost feral side to you, one that he didn’t anticipate. And it makes him more determined than ever to catch you and make you his. He gives chase as you begin running again, gaining on you with every step. The thrill of the hunt, the anticipation of catching you, all of it makes his heart race, his cock achingly hard in his pants.
You hear Aemond’s footsteps behind you. You know he’s getting close. Too close. What is it that he wants? Revenge for his eye? No, it feels like it’s more than that. So you keep running, though exhaustion is starting to set in the lower the sun sets in the sky. Every step feels like a herculean effort, your breathing growing heavy with exertion. And just as you’re about to begin your climb, he grabs you by the shoulders, spinning you around to face him.
“Did you really think you could get away from me?”
Aemond shoves you up against a tree, holding you in place by pressing his body against yours, holding his knife to your throat. You thrash against him, opening your mouth to scream for Jace or Cregan, or anyone really. But, before you can get the words out, he covers your mouth with his hand, his forehead leaning against yours. You gaze up at him, the fear in your eyes entirely intoxicating to him. He runs his nose along your cheek, inhaling the scent of your skin before uncovering your mouth, readying himself to kiss you again.
That’s when he hears Jace, calling out to you, along with Cregan and Jeyne. Aemond pauses, lips twisted into a smile as he leans in to whisper in your ear.
“I’ll be seeing you tonight.”
You watch with confusion as he walks away from you. He had every opportunity to kill you. But he didn’t. He didn’t blind you, even, something you were certain he would try to do. What exactly is it that he wants from you? You climb up the wall to the cave, embracing your brother tightly when you see him. Other than looking a bit battered and bruised, Jace and your allies seem alright. You all take a seat beside the fire they have lit, watching as the names and faces of those who died today illuminate the sky.
Asha Dayne, District 3. Killed by Jacaerys Velaryon at the Cornucopia.
Mason Tyrell, District 5. Killed by you at the Cornucopia.
Kermit Tully District 9. Killed by you at the Cornucopia.
Yara Blacktyde, District 10. Killed by Aemond Targaryen at the Cornucopia.
Yorick Giantsbane, District 6. Killed by Cregan Stark at the Cornucopia.
Emma Craster, District 6. Killed by Jeyne Arryn at the Cornucopia.
Myra Reed, District 11. Killed by Aemond Targaryen at the Cornucopia.
Willem Royce, District 8. Killed by Cerelle Lannister at the Cornucopia.
Aela Maegyr, District 7. Killed By Collio Neharis at the Cornucopia.
Collio Neharis, District 7. Killed by Aela Maegyr at the Cornucopia.
Howland Fenn, District 11. Killed by Dalton Greyjoy at the Cornucopia.
Myranda Bolton, District 12. Killed by Cregan Stark with a sword.
Qyle Martell, District 3. Killed by Jacaerys Velaryon with a rock.
Cerelle Lannister, District 4. Killed by you with her own knife.
That leaves ten people alive, yourself, Jace, Aemond, Cregan, and Jeyne included. Doing the mental math, you realize Maris Baratheon from 2, Jamie Reyne from 4, Marissa Hightower from 5, Alysanne Blackwood from 9, and Dalton Greyjoy from 10 are the others left. Alysanne and Marissa don’t pose any threat, from what you recall. The ones you have to look out for are Maris, Jamie, Dalton, and of course, Aemond. You’re hoping that now that it’s down to less than half of you, the other careers start picking each other off.
Jace walks over to you, wrapping an arm around your shoulder, “You okay?”
“Not really,” you lean your head against him, “Aemond had the chance to kill me. And he didn’t.”
Jace’s jaw sets, “I won’t let him hurt you. I promise. You’re the one who’s going home.”
You shake your head vehemently, “No. It has to be you. Jace, you’re the eldest-”
He pokes your nose, smiling at you, “Only by a few minutes. You’re going home. End of discussion.” Jace reaches into his pocket and pulls out the poisonous berries you’ve been avoiding all day, “It’ll be painless. For me and Cregan both.”
You watch as the two exchange a smile from across the fire and your heart aches for them. You offer to take the first watch, allowing the two of them a little time together. It’s the least that you can do.
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Hours go by and you remain awake and alert, listening for even the slightest of sounds. The moon is full as a package lands beside you. An energy bar, for the favorite to win the games. You tear it open, devouring the snack, giving Aemond the split moment he needs to catch you by surprise. He walks toward the entrance of the cave gracefully, his footsteps nearly silent. You wipe your mouth after you finish eating and meet his gaze, standing up.
“Why didn’t you kill me earlier?”
His reply comes in an eerily calm voice, “Because I want you.” Aemond is standing in front of you know, his face a hair’s breadth from yours. He gives you a cruel smile, one that shakes you to the core, “Are you afraid of me?”
“Yes,” you admit without hesitation, “I am.”
Aemond feels like he’s won a small victory over you in that moment. He wants to touch you, to hold you, to take you, and in doing so, take his revenge. He grabs you by the jaw, pulling you close to him, his chest flush up against yours. You gaze up at him with wide eyes. Your lips look so soft and full under the moon’s pale glow, and you seem so vulnerable before him. You gasp as he pulls his knife from his belt, holding it against you.
“You took my eye,” he says, the tip of his blade tracing your cheekbone. Aemond revels in the way you shiver, the way you try to meet his gaze without fear though you’re so clearly terrified, “Now I’m going to take something from you.”
Your voice comes out far meeker than you intended as you question, “What?”
You may be a career, but everything your mother taught you and Jace about the games, everything you thought you knew goes flying out the window as Aemond’s lips pull back into a sneer. He presses his lips to the shell of your ear, his blade now pressed to your neck as the cannon goes off once more, signaling the fall of one of your fellow tributes. You wonder who it is, but the thought flies out of your head as Aemond speaks once more.
His voice is a low growl that sends a shiver up your spine at the one little word he utters.
“Everything.”
The canon goes off once more. Only eight left now. Aemond leans into you, his eye closing, the sapphire gleaming under the light of the moon. You duck under his arm and break into a sprint, heading back into the forest, deciding to take your chances rather than stick around and wait for him to finish you off. Aemond chuckles to himself. This just makes it more fun for him. He’ll go after you, he’ll catch you, and he’ll take what he wants from you.
You want to run? He’ll chase you until you have no choice but to surrender to him completely.
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When he finds you, Maris has her hands around your throat, poised for the kill. She gives Aemond a smirk, feeling proud of having you at her mercy, thinking that he’ll be proud of her too. But he fixes her with a sharp glare.
“No. She’s mine.”
He looks over at you, seeing you pinned and about to die. At one point, that’s all he would have wanted, but now…
Maris ignores him, grabbing her knife and moving to strike, but Aemond’s anger flares. He grabs her wrist, twisting it behind her back painfully, repeating the word “no” as if telling a small child off. She struggles against him and so, he grabs her by the throat now, squeezing viciously.
“This should fucking teach you to listen.”
She falls to the ground in a crumpled heap as the cannon goes off once more. Then another three times.
Only four left now.
You scramble backward as you stare at Maris’ corpse, laying at your feet. Aemond won’t allow that, however. He crawls on top of you, pinning you in place. You move to claw at his face, but he just pins your wrists over your head.
“Let me take from you what I am owed.”
“It was an accident,” you try to protest, “We were just kids, Aemond, please!”
“This isn’t about that anymore,” he whispers, his breath warm against your lips, “Now it’s about me wanting what’s rightfully mine. You were cruel to me then. Now it’s my turn to be cruel to you.” Aemond pauses for a moment, using his knife to brush your hair out of your eyes, “I loved you. I loved you so fucking much. And you… You hurt me. You never loved me. It’s true, what they say. It’s the things we love most that destroy us.” He watches the way your lower lip trembles, tracing your lips with his blade as he whispers, “Your lips are trembling. Are you scared?” He presses his lips to your ear, “You should be.”
Aemond kisses you, intense, passionate, hungry. He devours you in the kiss, his mouth moving against yours, his free hand that doesn’t hold his knife moving along the curves of your body. He wraps his arm around you, feeling you squirm in his grip, which only serves to make him want you all the more. You can feel his cock, hard against your thigh as he grinds his body against you. And in spite of your every instinct telling you to fight, you’re frozen in place.
Because, despite all that has happened, everything he has done, you love him. And you know that his words are all too true. That he’s going to destroy you. That he’s going to ruin you. His hands move into your hair, tugging at it harshly, eliciting a soft moan from your lips as the cannon goes off once more, then twice.
Jace and Cregan, you realize. Star-crossed lovers. You’re surprised when Aemond pulls back for a moment to gaze upon you, some unknown emotion in his eye.
“I’m sorry. About Jacaerys.”
You nod silently, wiping the tears you realize are falling from your eyes. You don’t know why he’s sympathizing with you. And frankly, neither does he.
It’s only the two of you left now. Aemond leans in again, capturing your lips with his. And you keep trying to struggle with everything you have. He knows you want this whether you admit it or not. He can feel it. He rids himself of his clothes, his alabaster skin almost ethereal in the moonlight. You stare up at him, gasping as he uses his knife to slice open your own clothes. You turn your face in shame as he moves his fingers to your pussy, feeling how wet you are. You hear him let out a dark little chuckle as he begins pumping his fingers in and out of you at a steady pace. You can feel him brushing up against your sweet spot with every move. Aemond lets out a quiet groan as you squeeze around him, making it almost impossible for him to move his fingers.
“So tight,” he murmurs, “You’ll feel so perfect around my cock, won’t you? I’ll have you moaning and screaming my name.”
“No,” you say weakly, though you know he’s right, “I won’t.”
“Liar.” 
And just as you’re about to reach your peak, he moves his hand away from you, robbing you of your climax. You stare up at him shocked, watching the wicked grin that curls at the corner of his lips.
“Only good girls get to come. And lying isn’t very nice, zaldrītsos, is it?”
You scowl, glaring up at him. Aemond lets out a laugh as you move to flip the two of you over, pinning him to the ground, baring your teeth at him with a snarl. You lower yourself onto him, throwing your head back with a moan as you begin riding him, feeling him fill you up perfectly with every bounce of your hips. Aemond knew it. You want him. You love him as he loves you. He watches as you move up and down on his cock and sits up to kiss you, your arms wrapping around him, fingers threading in his hair. The kiss is desperate, it’s angry, it’s the culmination of years of longing and hatred. Your walls flutter around him as he continues the kiss.
“Are you going to kill me?” Aemond asks between kisses.
“I should.”
“So should I,” he lets out a low groan as he gets closer to his peak, “But I can’t.”
“Neither can I,” you admit, “I… I love you.”
“I love you too,” he buries his face in your hair as he reaches his peak, spilling himself inside you, your own end following soon after. You collapse against him, relaxing in his embrace, watching as he grabs some berries on the ground nearby. You stare at him and he stares at you, the moment heavy and filled with emotion. Aemond hands you a berry, taking your hand in his.
“Together?”
You nod, “Together.”
But before you can do what the two of you have decided, you hear a voice over the loudspeaker of the arena, “STOP!”
Perhaps it is true that it’s the things we love most that destroy us.
But today, it seems that love might just have saved you.
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hotchsstuff · 5 months
Note
Reader is having cramps and James and Colin are screaming so rafe told them to keep quite after few minutes later Colin brought his doctor set and try to fake heal the reader smt like that
BTW love your fics
you let out a painful moan as you try to find a more comfortable position. rafe's hand is on your stomach, rubbing circles on your naked skin.
"i hate this." you whisper, sounds muffled by the blanket that covered you up till your eyes.
thump.
"i'm sorry, sweet girl. i wish i could do something." rafe looked at you with sympathy as he broke a piece of the chocolate bar and fed you.
thump. and more yelling.
"more, please." you opened your mouth waiting for another bite, making rafe snort. he quite liked when you were needy.
"this is mine!" you heard your boys fighting in the playroom.
"i saw it first!" there was a loud clatter followed by more screams.
"james and colin cameron!" rafe whisper-yelled enough to make himself heard and a few second later the twins stood in front of you, looking guilty.
rafe had already advised them to behave well and let you rest but of course they were as stubborn as their dad.
"what did i say?" his voice didn't allow any talk back. "don't you see that mummy is sick? now apologize."
colin was the first one to run to you, james following him right after. you reassured them that you were fine and let them back to the playroom.
"you know, there was no need to be so stern." you pecked your husband's lips, making him sigh.
"i wish they took more from you than me." he half laughed, running a hair through his hair. james was as rebellious as his father and that didn't help at all. meanwhile colin was a rather calm boy but he liked copying his brother's attitude.
"mommy." you heard a small whisper and raised yourself up from the couch to get a better view.
your heart melted. james was carrying the doctor toy set you got him for christmas and colin was wearing the nurse uniform.
"me and jamie will make you feel all better!" colin said, showing you his tools and fixing the glasses that were falling off his nose.
"oh really? will you do that for mommy?" you asked them with a smile. you felt so lucky and all the discomfort seemed to vanish.
"yeah, mommy." james nodded as a matter of fact "daddy, move. you're taking up all the space."
when he saw that rafe didn't get up, he pushed him up with all the strength a four year old could have.
"hey!" rafe exclaimed, incredulous. but his complaints were completely ignored by his sons.
"shh, dad! you're being loud!"
-
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1K notes · View notes