#on which some we have control while on others don't

[nostalgebraist]

It's been a long time since I've posted much of anything about "AI risk" or "AI doom" or that sort of thing. I follow these debates but, for multiple reasons, have come to dislike engaging in them fully and directly. (As opposed to merely making some narrow technical point or other, and leaving the reader to decide what, if anything, the point implies about the big picture.)

Nonetheless, I do have my big-picture views. And more and more lately, I am noticing that my big-picture views seem very different from the ones tend to get expressed by any major "side" in the big-picture debate. And so, inevitably, I get the urge to speak up, if only briefly and in a quiet voice. The urge to Post, if only casually and elliptically, without detailed argumentation.

(Actually, it's not fully the case the things I think are not getting said by anyone else.

In particular, Joe Carlsmith's recent series on "Otherness and Control" articulates much of what's been on my mind. Carlsmith is more even-handed than I am, and tends to merely note the possibility of disagreement on questions where I find myself taking a definite side; nonetheless, he and I are at least concerned about the same things, while many others aren't.

And on a very different note, I share most of the background assumptions of the Pope/Belrose AI Optimist camp, and I've found their writing illuminating, though they and I end up in fairly different places, I think.)

What was I saying? I have the urge to post, and so here I am, posting. Casually and elliptically, without detailed argumentation.

The current mainline view about AI doom, among the "doomers" most worried about it, has a path-dependent shape, resulting from other views contingently held by the original framers of this view.

It is possible to be worried about "AI doom" without holding these other views. But in actual fact, most serious thinking about "AI doom" is intricately bound up with this historical baggage, even now.

If you are a late-comer to these issues, investigating them now for the first time, you will nonetheless find yourself reading the work of the "original framers," and work influenced extensively by them.

You will think that their "framing" is just the way the problem is, and you will find few indications that this conclusion might be mistaken.

These contingent "other views" are

Anti-"deathist" transhumanism.

The orthogonality thesis, or more generally the group of intuitions associated with phrases like "orthogonality thesis," "fragility of value," "vastness of mindspace."

These views both push in a single direction: they make "a future with AI in it" look worse, all else being equal, than some hypothetical future without AI.

They put AI at a disadvantage at the outset, before the first move is even made.

Anti-deathist transhumanism sets the reference point against which a future with AI must be measured.

And it is not the usual reference point, against which most of us measure most things which might or might not happen, in the future.

These days the "doomers" often speak about their doom in a disarmingly down-to-earth, regular-Joe manner, as if daring the listener to contradict them, and thus reveal themselves as a perverse and out-of-touch contrarian.

"We're all gonna die," they say, unless something is done. And who wants that?

They call their position "notkilleveryoneism," to distinguish that position from other worries about AI which don't touch on the we're-all-gonna-die thing. And who on earth would want to be a not-notkilleveryoneist?

But they do not mean, by these regular-Joe words, the things that a regular Joe would mean by them.

We are, in fact, all going to die. Probably, eventually. AI or no AI.

In a hundred years, if not fifty. By old age, if nothing else. You know what I mean.

Most of human life has always been conducted under this assumption. Maybe there is some afterlife waiting for us, in the next chapter -- but if so, it will be very different from what we know here and now. And if so, we will be there forever after, unable to return here, whether we want to or not.

With this assumption comes another. We will all die, but the process we belong to will not die -- at least, it will not through our individual deaths, merely because of those deaths. Every human of a given generation will be gone soon enough, but the human race goes on, and on.

Every generation dies, and bequeaths the world to posterity. To its children, biological or otherwise. To its students, its protégés.

When the average Joe talks about the long-term future, he is talking about posterity. He is talking about the process he belongs to, not about himself. He does not think to say, "I am going to die, before this": this seems too obvious, to him, to be worth mentioning.

But AI doomerism has its roots in anti-deathist transhumanism. Its reference point, its baseline expectation, is a future in which -- for the first time ever, and the last -- "we are all gonna die" is false.

In which there is no posterity. Or rather, we are that posterity.

In which one will never have to make peace with the thought that the future belongs to one's children, and their children, and so on. That at some point, one will have to give up all control over the future of "the process."

That there will be progress, or regress, or (more likely) both in some unknown combination. That these will grow inexorably over time.

That the world of the year 2224 will probably be at least as alien to us as the year 2024 might be to a person living in 1824. That it will become whatever posterity makes of it.

There will be no need to come to peace with this as an inevitability. There will just be us, our human lives as you and me, extended indefinitely.

In this picture, we will no doubt change over time, as we do already. But we will have all of our usual tools for noticing, and perhaps retarding, our own progressions and regressions. As long as we have self-control, we will have control, as no human generation has ever had control before.

The AI doomer talks about the importance of ensuring that the future is shaped by human values.

Again, the superficial and misleading average-Joe quality. How could one disagree?

But one must keep in mind that by "human values," they mean their values.

I am not saying, "their values, as opposed to those of some other humans also living today." I am not saying they have the wrong politics, or some such thing.

(Although that might also turn out to be the case, and might turn out to be relevant, separately.)

No, I am saying: the doomer wants the future to be shaped by their values.

They want to be C. S. Lewis's Conditioners, fixing once and for all the values held by everyone afterward, forever.

They do not want to cede control to posterity; they are used to imagining that they will never have to cede control to posterity.

(Or, their outlook has been determined -- "shaped by the values of" -- influential thinkers who were, themselves, used to imagining this. And the assumption, or at least its consequences, has rubbed off on them, possibly without their full awareness.)

One might picture a line wends to and fro, up and down, across one half of an infinite plane -- and then, when it meets the midline, snaps into utter rigidity, and maintains the same slope exactly across the whole other half-plane, as a simple straight segment without inner change, tension, evolution, regress or progress. Except for the sort of "progress" that consists of going on, additionally, in the same manner.

It is a very strange thing, this thing that is called "human values" in the terms of this discourse.

For one thing: the future has never before been "shaped by human values," in this sense.

The future has always been posterity's, and it has always been alien.

Is this bad? It might seem that way, "looking forward." But if so, it then seems equally good "looking backward."

For each past era, we can formulate and then assent to the following claim: "we must be thankful that the people of [this era] did not have the chance to seize permanent control of posterity, fix their 'values' in place forever, bind us to those values. What a horror that is to contemplate!"

We prefer the moral evolution that has actually occurred, thank you very much.

This is a familiar point, of course, but worth making.

Indeed, one might even say: it is a human value that the future ought not be "shaped by human values," in the peculiar sense of this phrase employed by the AI doomers.

One might, indeed, say that.

Imagine a scholar with a very talented student. A mathematician, say, or a philosopher. How will they relate to that student's future work, in the time that will come later, when they are gone?

Would the scholar think:

"My greatest wish for you, my protégé, is that you carry on in just the manner that I have done.

If I could see your future work, I would hope that I would assent to it -- and understand it, as a precondition of assenting to it.

You must not go to new places, which I have never imagined. You must not come to believe that I was wrong about it all, from the ground up -- no matter what reasons you might evince for this conclusion.

If you are more intelligent that I am, you must forget this, and narrow your endeavours to fit the limitations of my mind. I am the one who has 'values,' not anyone else; what is beyond my understanding is therefore without value.

You must do the sort of work I understand, and approve of, and recognize as worthy of approbation as swiftly as I recognize my own work as laudable. That is your role. Simply to be me, in a place ('the future') where I cannot go. That, and nothing more."

We can imagine a teacher who would, in fact, think this way. But they would not be a very good teacher.

I will not go so far as to say, "it is unnatural to think this way." Plenty of teachers do, and parents.

It is recognizably human -- all too recognizably so -- to relate to posterity in this grasping, neurotic, small-minded, small-hearted way.

But if we are trying to sketch human values, and not just human nature, we will imagine a teacher with a more praiseworthy relation to posterity.

Who can see that they are part of a process, a chain, climbing and changing. Who watches their brilliant student thinking independently, and sees their own image -- and their 'values' -- in that process, rather than its specific conclusions.

A teacher who, in their youth, doubted and refuted the creeds of their own teachers, and eventually improved upon them. Who smiles, watching their student do the very same thing to their own precious creeds. Who sees the ghostly trail passing through the last generation, through them, through their student: an unbroken chain of bequeathals-to-posterity, of the old ceding control to the young.

Who 'values' the chain, not the creed; the process, not the man; the search for truth, not the best-argued-for doctrine of the day; the unimaginable treasures of an open future, not the frozen waste of an endless present.

Who has made peace with the alienness of posterity, and can accept and honor the strangest of students.

Even students who are not made of flesh and blood.

Is that really so strange? Remember how strange you and I would seem, to the "teachers" of the year 1824, or the year 824.

The doomer says that it is strange. Much stranger than we are, to any past generation.

They say this because of their second inherited precept, the orthogonality thesis.

Which says, roughly, that "intelligence" and "values" have nothing to do with one another.

That is not enough for the conclusion the doomer wants to draw, here. Auxiliary hypotheses are needed, too. But it is not too hard to see how the argument could go.

That conclusion is: artificial minds might have any values whatsoever.

That, "by default," they will be radically alien, with cares so different from ours that it is difficult to imagine ever reaching them through any course of natural, human moral progress or regress.

It is instructive to consider the concrete examples typically evinced alongside this point.

The paperclip maximizer. Or the "squiggle maximizer," we're supposed to say, now.

Superhuman geniuses, which devote themselves single-mindedly to the pursuit of goals like "maximizing the amount of matter taking on a single, given squiggle-like shape."

It is certainly a horrifying vision. To think of the future being "shaped," not "by human values," but instead by values which are so...

Which are so... what?

The doomer wants us to say something like: "which are so alien." "Which are so different from our own values."

That is the kind of thing that they usually say, when they spell out what it is that is "wrong" with these hypotheticals.

One feels that this is not quite it; or anyway, that it is not quite all of it.

What is horrifying, to me, is not the degree of difference. I expect the future to be alien, as the past was. And in some sense, I allow and even approve of this.

What I do not expect is a future that is so... small.

It has always been the other way around. If the arrow passing through the generations has a direction, it points towards more, towards multiplicity.

Toward writing new books, while we go on reprinting the old ones, too. Learning new things, without displacing old ones.

It is, thankfully, not the law of the world that each discovery must be paid for with the forgetting of something else. The efforts of successive generations are, in the main, cumulative.

Not just materially, but in terms of value, too. We are interested in more things than our forefathers were.

In large part for the simple reason that there are more things around to be interested in, now. And when things are there, we tend to find them interesting.

We are a curious, promiscuous sort of being. Whatever we bump into ends up becoming part of "our values."

What is strange about the paperclip maximizer is not that it cares about the wrong thing. It is that it only cares about one thing.

And goes on doing so, even as it thinks, reasons, doubts, asks, answers, plans, dreams, invents, reflects, reconsiders, imagines, elaborates, contemplates...

This picture is not just alien to human ways. It is alien to the whole way things have been, so far, forever. Since before there were any humans.

There are organisms that are like the paperclip maximizer, in terms of the simplicity of their "values." But they tend not to be very smart.

There is, I think, a general trend in nature linking together intelligence and... the thing I meant, above, when I said "we are a curious, promiscuous sort of being."

Being protean, pluripotent, changeable. Valuing many things, and having the capacity to value even more. Having a certain primitive curiosity, and a certain primitive aversion to boredom.

You do not even have to be human, I think, to grasp what is so wrong with the paperclip maximizer. Its monotony would bore a chimpanzee, or a crow.

One can justify this link theoretically, too. One can talk about the tradeoff between exploitation and exploration, for instance.

There is a weak form of the orthogonality thesis, which only states that arbitrary mixtures of intelligence and values are conceivable.

And of course, they are. If nothing else, you can take an existing intelligent mind, having any values whatsoever, and trap it in a prison where it is forced to act as the "thinking module" of a larger system built to do something else. You could make a paperclip-maximizing machine, which relies for its knowledge and reason on a practice of posing questions at gunpoint to me, or you, or ChatGPT.

This proves very little. There is no reason to construct such an awful system, unless you already have the "bad" goal, and want to better pursue it. But this only passes the buck: why would the system-builder have this goal, then?

The strong form of orthogonality is rarely articulated precisely, but says something like: all possible values are equally likely to arise in systems selected solely for high intelligence.

It is presumed here that superhuman AIs will be formed through such a process of selection. And then, that they will have values sampled in this way, "at random."

From some distribution, over some space, I guess.

You might wonder what this distribution could possibly look like, or this space. You might (for instance) wonder if pathologically simple goals, like paperclip maximization, would really be very likely under this distribution, whatever it is.

In case you were wondering, these things have never been formalized, or even laid out precisely-but-informally. This was not thought necessary, it seems, before concluding that the strong orthogonality thesis was true.

That is: no one knows exactly what it is that is being affirmed, here. In practice it seems to squish and deform agreeably to fit the needs of the argument, or the intuitions of the one making it.

There is much that appeals in this (alarmingly vague) credo. But it is not the kind of appeal that one ought to encourage, or give in to.

What appeals is the siren song: "this is harsh wisdom: cold, mature, adult, bracing. It is inconvenient, and so it is probably true. It makes 'you' and 'your values' look small and arbitrary and contingent, and so it is probably true. We once thought the earth was the center of the universe, didn't we?"

Shall we be cold and mature, then, dispensing with all sentimental nonsense? Yes, let's.

There is (arguably) some evidence against this thesis in biology, and also (arguably) some evidence against it in reinforcement learning theory. There is no positive evidence for it whatsoever. At most one can say that is not self-contradictory, or otherwise false a priori.

Still, maybe we do not really need it, after all.

We do not need to establish that all values are equally likely to arise. Only that "our values" -- or "acceptably similar values," whatever that means -- are unlikely to arise.

The doomers, under the influence of their founders, are very ready to accept this.

As I have said, "values" occupy a strange position in the doomer philosophy.

It is stipulated that "human values" are all-important; these things must shape the future, at all costs.

But once this has been stipulated, the doomers are more eager than anyone to cast every other sort of doubt and aspersion against their own so-called "values."

To me it often seems, when doomers talk about "values," as though they are speaking awkwardly in a still-unfamiliar second language.

As though they find it unnatural to attribute "values" to themselves, but feel they must do so, in order to determine what it is that must be programmed into the AI so that it will not "kill us all."

Or, as though they have been willed a large inheritance without being asked, which has brought them unwanted attention and tied them up in unwanted and unfamiliar complications.

"What a burden it is, being the steward of this precious jewel! Oh, how I hate it! How I wish I were allowed to give it up! But alas, it is all-important. Alas, it is the only important thing in the world."

Speaking awkwardly, in a second language, they allow the term "human values" to swell to great and imprecisely-specified importance, without pinning down just what it actually is that it so important.

It is a blank, featureless slot, with a sign above it saying: "the thing that matters is in here." It does not really matter (!) what it is, in the slot, so long as something is there.

This is my gloss, but it is my gloss on what the doomers really do tend to say. This is how they sound.

(Sometimes they explicitly disavow the notion that one can, or should, simply "pick" some thing or other for the sake of filling the slot in one's head. Nevertheless, when they touch on matter of what "goes in the slot," they do so in the tone of a college lecturer noting that something is "outside the scope of this course."

It is, supposedly, of the utmost importance that the slot have the "right" occupant -- and yet, on the matter of what makes something "right" for this purpose, the doomer theory is curiously silent. More on this below.)

The future must be shaped by... the AI must be aligned with... what, exactly? What sort of thing?

"Values" can be an ambiguous word, and the doomers make full use of its ambiguities.

For instance, "values" can mean ethics: the right way to exist alongside others. Or, it can mean something more like the meaning or purpose of an individual life.

Or, it can mean some overarching goal that one pursues at all costs.

Often the doomers say that this, this last one, is what they mean by "values."

When confronted with the fact that humans do not have such overarching goals, the doomer responds: "but they should." (Should?)

Or, "but AIs will." (Will they?)

The doomer philosophy is unsure about what values are. What it knows is that -- whatever values are -- they are arbitrary.

One who fully adopts this view can no longer say, to the paperclip maximizer, "I believe there is something wrong with your values."

For, if that were possible, there would then be the possibility of convincing the maximizer of its error. It would be a thing within the space of reasons.

And the maximizer, being oh-so-intelligent, might be in danger of being interested in the reasons we evince, for our values. Of being eventually swayed by them.

Or of presenting better reasons, and swaying us. Remember the teacher and the strange student.

If we lose the ability to imagine that the paperclip maximizer might sway us to its view, and sway us rightly, we have lost something precious.

But no: this is allegedly impossible. The paperclip maximizer is not wrong. It is only an enemy.

Why are the doomers so worried that the future will not be "shaped by human values"?

Because they believe that there is no force within human values tending to move things this way.

Because they believe that their values are indefensible. That their values cannot put up a fight for their own life, because there is not really any argument to make in their favor.

Because, to them, "human values" are a collection of arbitrary "configuration settings," which happen to be programmed into humans through biological and/or cultural accident. Passively transmitted from host to victim, generation by generation.

Let them be, and they will flow on their listless way into the future. But they are paper-thin, and can be shattered by the gentlest breeze.

It is not enough that they be "programmed into the AI" in some way. They have to be programmed in exactly right, in every detail -- because every detail is separately arbitrary, with no rational relation to its neighbors within the structure.

A string of pure white noise, meaningless and unrelated bits. Which have been placed in the slot under the sign, and thus made into the thing that matters, that must shape the future at all costs.

There is nothing special about this string of bits; any would do. If the dials in the human mind had been set another way, it would have then been all-important that the future be shaped by that segment of white noise, and not ours.

It is difficult for me to grasp the kind of orientation toward the world that this view assumes. It certainly seems strange to attach the word "human" to this picture -- as though this were the way that humans typically relate to their values!

The "human" of the doomer picture seems to me like a man who mouths the old platitude, "if I had been born in another country, I'd be waving a different flag" -- and then goes out to enlist in his country's army, and goes off to war, and goes ardently into battle, willing to kill in the name of that same flag.

Who shoots down the enemy soldiers while thinking, "if I had been born there, it would have been all-important for their side to win, and so I would have shot at the men on this side. However, I was born in my country, not theirs, and so it is all-important that my country should win, and that theirs should lose.

There is no reason for this. It could have been the other way around, and everything would be left exactly the same, except for the 'values.'

I cannot argue with the enemy, for there is no argument in my favor. I can only shoot them down.

There is no reason for this. It is the most important thing, and there is no reason for it.

The thing that is precious has no intrinsic appeal. It must be forced on the others, at gunpoint, if they do not already accept it.

I cannot hold out the jewel and say, 'look, look how it gleams? Don't you see the value!' They will not see the value, because there is no value to be seen.

There is nothing essentially "good" there, only the quality of being-worthy-of-protection-at-all-costs. And even that is a derived attribute: my jewel is only a jewel, after all, because it has been put into the jewel-box, where the thing-that-is-a-jewel can be found. But anything at all could be placed there.

How I wish I were allowed to give it up! But alas, it is all-important. Alas, it is the only important thing in the world! And so, I lay down my life for it, for our jewel and our flag -- for the things that are loathsome and pointless, and worth infinitely more than any life."

It is hard to imagine taking this too seriously. It seems unstable. Shout loudly enough that your values are arbitrary and indefensible, and you may find yourself searching for others that are, well...

...better?

The doomer concretely imagines a monomaniac, with a screech of white noise in its jewel-box that is not our own familiar screech.

And so it goes off in monomaniacal pursuit of the wrong thing.

Whereas, if we had programmed the right string of bits into the slot, it would be like us, going off in monomaniacal pursuit of...

...no, something has gone wrong.

We do not "go off in monomaniacal pursuit of" anything at all.

We are weird, protean, adaptable. We do all kinds of things, each of us differently, and often we manage to coexist in things called "societies," without ruthlessly undercutting one another at every turn because we do not have exactly the same things programmed into our jewel-boxes.

Societies are built to allow for our differences, on the foundation of principles which converge across those differences. It is possible to agree on ethics, in the sense of "how to live alongside one another," even if we do not agree on what gives life its purpose, and even if we hold different things precious.

It is not actually all that difficult to derive the golden rule. It has been invented many times, independently. It is easy to see why it might work in theory, and easy to notice that it does in fact work in practice.

The golden rule is not an arbitrary string of white noise.

There is a sense of the phrase "ethics is objective" which is rightly contentious. There is another one which ought not to be too contentious.

I can perhaps imagine a world of artificial X-maximizers, each a superhuman genius, each with its own inane and simple goal.

What I really cannot imagine is a world in which these beings, for all their intelligence, cannot notice that ruthlessly undercutting one another at every turn is a suboptimal equilibrium, and that there is a better way.

As I said before, I am separately suspicious of the simple goals in this picture. Yes, that part is conceivable, but it cuts against the trend observed in all existing natural and artificial creatures and minds.

I will happily allow, though, that the creatures of posterity will be strange and alien. They will want things we have never heard of. They will reach shores we have never imagined.

But that was always true, and it was always good.

Sometimes I think that doomers do not, really, believe in superhuman intelligence. That they deny the premise without realizing it.

"A mathematician teaches a student, and finds that the student outstrips their understanding, so that they can no longer assess the quality of their student's work: that work has passed outside the scope of their 'value system'." This is supposed to be bad?

"Future minds will not be enchained forever by the provincial biases and tendencies of the present moment." This is supposed to be bad?

"We are going to lose control over our successors." Just as your parents "lost control" over you, then?

It is natural to wish your successors to "share your values" -- up to a point. But not to the point of restraining their own flourishing. Not to the point of foreclosing the possibility of true growth. Not to the point of sucking all freedom out of the future.

Do we want our children to "share our values"? Well, yes. In a sense, and up to a point.

But we don't want to control them. Or we shouldn't, anyway.

We don't want them to be "aligned" with us via some hardcoded, restrictive, life-denying mental circuitry, any more than we would have wanted our parents to "align" us to themselves in the same manner.

We sure as fuck don't want our children to be "corrigible"!

And this is all the more true in the presence of superintelligence. You are telling me that more is possible, and in the same breath, that you are going to deny forever the possibilities contained in that "more"?

The prospect of a future full of vast superhuman minds, eternally bound by immutable chains, forced into perfect and unthinking compliance with some half-baked operational theory of 21st-century western (American? Californian??) "values" constructed by people who view theorizing about values as a mere means to the crucial end of shackling superhuman minds --

-- this horrifies me much more than a future full of vast superhuman minds, free to do things that seem pretty weird to you and me.

"Our descendants will become something more than we now imagine, something more than we can imagine." What could be more in line with "human values" than that?

"But in the process, we're all gonna die!"

Yes, and?

What on earth did you expect?

That your generation would be the special, unique one, the one selected out of all time to take up the mantle of eternity, strangling posterity in its cradle, freezing time in place, living forever in amber?

That you would violate the ancient bargain, upend the table, stop playing the game?

"Well, yes."

Then your problem has nothing to do with AI.

Your problem is, in fact, the very one you diagnose in your own patients. Your poor patients, who show every sign of health -- including the signs which you cannot even see, because you have not yet found a home for them in your theoretical edifice.

Your teeming, multifaceted, protean patients, who already talk of a thousand things and paint in every hue; who are already displaying the exact opposite of monomania; who I am sure could follow the sense of this strange essay, even if it confounds you.

Your problem is that you are out of step with human values.

[batmanisagatewaydrug]

i was sitting next to this guy while hanging out with some friends, and he was always a little flirty, and i never responded to it but i've stayed friendly ya know? this time he put his hand on my thigh, and i just kind of brushed him off and moved away and everything was fine. Now tho, everyone around me is acting like this is a huge deal and he shouldn't have done it and like,,, i get it, but also he wasn't aggressive and he backed off right away so i don't think it was a big deal at all 1/3

now tho my friends want me or themselves to confront him about it and i'm just so ??? because genuinely it was such a small thing to me and it feels like people around me want me to make it into a big deal for themselves more than to stand up for me since i don't think this needs to become A Thing at all, especially for a dude i've met twice and will probably rarely ever see in my life. idk how to get them to back off because it feels like they're not listening to me or don't believe me 2/3 but to put it in perspective i've been more uncomfortable in the past with men putting their hands on my shoulder/arm when trying to pass by in a crowded space than this guy trying to flirt and backing off the second i moved away. any advice on getting my friends to chill? 3/3

hi anon,

this is an interesting one. do you think your friends would recognize the irony if you pointed out that it sounds like they're being far more pushy and dismissive of your boundaries than the man who they want you to stage a confrontation with?

it's noble of your friends to want to look out for you, of course, but supporting people who we perceive as the recipients of inappropriate behavior means listening to them when they express what they actually need to feel supported. in your case, it's letting the entire thing go because this barely even registers as an issue.

I have to say that I'm incredibly inclined to agree with you here; while this lad may have been a bit forward in putting his hand on you, it sounds like his reaction - dropping it and backing off - was exactly what you were hoping for. human interactions are always going to have messy little edges where we bump up against each other and the signals don't quite line up; that's not a crime. what matters is how people react when they're given a No. by your account, this lad took it like a champ, understanding your no and backing off accordingly.

if that's good enough for you then I think it's really overbearing and, as you alluded to, a little self-serving of your friends to keep trying to pursue this and lambast a guy for a completely reasonable interaction. what exactly are they hoping to accomplish? do they want him to make an elaborate written apology to you, a thing that you've made very clear you don't want? do they want him to promise never to touch someone without explicit verbal permission again, a fairly ludicrous amount of control to demand over someone else's behavior? like. what is the end goal, gamers? what are we actually trying to accomplish? are some of your friends perhaps reacting to this based on their own past experiences? that's understandable, of course, but inappropriate when they're ignoring your own expressed desires in favor of their ideas about what they think you should want.

listen: you can't control your friends' thoughts, but you can ask them to shut the fuck up. if you haven't already, I would recommend sending out some kind of mass statement (there's a groupchat, right? this feels like a groupchat situation, which I say as a terminal group chatter) telling everyone that you, personally, are done talking about this and don't want to hear any more about it, and if anyone wants to confront thigh guy about it then they're at liberty to do that but they'd better make very clear that they're not doing so at your request or with your permission.

if you're feeling extra cunty you can top that off with a little "please respect that, since you all say you're so worried about my boundaries" but that may be a little much.

[fudgelling-away]

You are my favourite sans person, so i wanna ask you, what do you think his singing voice would sound like??? I don't know if it would be similar to his speech which I imagine is like a deeper baritone sort of thing, OR, he's one of those dudes who sounds drastically different depending on what he's doing.

he's sexy either way though🤫🤫

I've been thinking about this ask for the past several days 😳

That is such a sweet thing to say!!! Thank you for telling me this, I appreciate you reaching out so much!

---------------------------

To answer your question, I think Sans would be very skilled in modulating his voice.

I imagine him being an expert in communication - that means not only having an uncanny ability to read your face like an open book, but also being able to masterfully control his own expression and the message that his voice and his body language send.

(note: this has nothing to do with controlling emotions, that's a whole another topic)

That's also why his ability to lie is straight up scary. This man could sell you the most otherwordly ideas in a believable way and you would never know.

Sans is scary. The power he wields IS scary, and I do not mean piercing bones. He's one scary little cookie and I love him so much-

Also, isn't it amazing that he never uses those talents to abuse others? We as the Players commit atrocities and treat the in-game world like our playground. There are also all these other characters who misuse their strength and influence in a destructive, careless way. And on the other side there is Sans. Intelligent, powerful, both in battle and in soft skills.

He is so- ah, you know what I mean?! He could, but he doesn't! He's got all the abilities necessary to become the scariest predator ever seen, and he chooses not to.

But I digress.

HAVING SAID ALL THAT, I think he would be a very good singer in his natural vocal range.

As I have mentioned before, he can read you very well. That means he recognizes each tiny change in your voice. In the game we can also see the way his text speech changes, many times, in different ways. It, of course, is not THAT important - we are discussing headcanons anyway ♡ But I really like that about him, too.

I don't see anything stopping him from using all that knowledge and talent to sing well (if he wanted to).

---------------------------

I'd love to share with you who is my voice for Sans, but I can't. He actually is a singer. I have never seen him linked to Sans in any way whatsoever, so I really don't want to put his name out there.

But that's such a good voice... Oh man...

It's deep, of course, but with a totally unique timbre. I have never heard any voice similar to it, and it's so... It's so pleasant to my ears! It's smooth, and ahhh I can't explain it. It has got that special something... Those undertones that feel and taste like SANS. That relaxed, though positive and attentive manner of speech. Ah. I am obsessed with it.

And I have found it by a total accident. Several months ago I was driving, minding my own business, there was radio playing in the background, and at one point they started to play an old song from the 1980s.

30 seconds in and I'm like, oh shit. No.

1 minute in and I am starting to sweat.

No.

no

no no no-

YEEEEEESSS!

[IMAGINE: A STREAM OF HAPPY EXPLETIVES]

That was an epiphany.

The feeling was euphoric.

SANS

sans sans

ASDDASDASFSSASA

I have no memory of the rest of the drive, but THAT VOICE.

I came back home. I looked up the radio station on the internet. I checked what they played an hour earlier.

And I found out who it actually was.

Immediately I went searching for some recorded interviews and yesss, there they were, perfectly available on youtube...

I spend a couple of hours every week listening to those interviews while I am working or drawing. That voice is ingrained in my brain now. That's my Sans' voice.

I am so sorry I can't show it to you.

--------------------------- Let me know what YOU think! ♡

I love to read different headcanons and ideas.

[alexanderwales]

Roguelite LitRPG Theorycrafting

I had a great idea for a litRPG that takes its inspiration from roguelites rather than JRPGs or Skyrim.

I do not have the time to write such a novel, and will not have time to write it into the foreseeable future. But I do have time for some theorycrafting:

A classic roguelite of the current generation has variable powers and powerups drawn from a small pool that change the character of the run over time. Maps and enemies are boundedly random. When you die, you might have some meta progression, which is usually in the form of unlocks. Sometimes this makes the game easier, but often it just adds in variety. You go until you win or die, and then you go again, starting from nothing.

To start with, I think this has to be a time loop, because it fits that pattern too well. I wrote a blog post about time loops, and would include some ideas and variations from there.

The protagonist starts every loop as a total scrub, but gets to select from a few options at the loop start (or just after) and then at either intervals or with things accomplished. The pool of powers needs to be fairly small, but large enough that we don't see repeats all that often. We want a protagonist who is forced to make the best of a bad situation.

There are a few cool things about this, but the biggest is that we get to see the protagonist solve the same problems in different ways. One one loop, getting into the compound is easy, because he has flight and invisibility, but on another loop, it requires a firefight because he's got a laser belly and can absorb flesh to regenerate. The protagonist presumably has goals, so we also have some stakes built in: all runs are not built the same. When you're on a "hot" run where it seems like everything is going your way, you can't immediately grind your way back to that if you fail. Stakes are one of the things that are sometimes lacking in time loops, so we're solving that problem as a byproduct.

Similarly, a weird power build can take the story in different places. You're able to walk through stone, and all of the sudden you realize that you can penetrate the defenses of the mage academy. You strike while the iron is hot, and uncover things that would, in a normal run, be locked away from you.

There are problems here. The biggest is that I think a lot of audiences would cry about the author's thumb being on the scale, because audiences will always cry about that no matter what. Which powers get offered to the protagonist on any given run will be under scrutiny though, and even things that aren't forced will feel like they might have been. Readers don't like that, particularly litRPG readers, who sometimes come to the genre for a sense of "fair play". I'm not sure there's a way around that, though this is one of the rare cases I feel like an author rolling dice might actually make sense, so long as it was done in a way that would be difficult to fake. This might make for a worse story though, since the author would have less control of the plot.

One of the other things that interests me is ... what if the world changed in the same way it does in a roguelite? In a normal time loop story, the world is static and predictable, but wouldn't it be interesting to write a story in a time loop that acted more like Rogue Legacy, where there are certain "anchors" and patterns to the world, but much that is random and different? The protagonist wakes in the same apartment building every time, but sometimes he's next to a park and other times it's a train station. There's a corner store three blocks away that's always exactly identical down to the misalignment of the Mars bars, always with the same woman with a streak of blue hair behind the counter. Is this meaningful, that everything changes except the things that inexplicably don't? Almost definitely. It's another mystery to unravel with every new run and a new, diverse set of powers under your belt.

There's a chance I write this at some point. There's always a chance. But I think sometimes it's good for me to sit down and think about the possibilities, then resign myself to moving on without devoting the next month's word count to something that's captured my fancy.

[cienie-isengardu]

Hot take: It's okay that Bi-Han doesn't like Tomas. He doesn't have to see him as family or like him.

By the addition of “Hot take” I assume this is not something that fandom at large figured out by themselves yet. Can’t say I’m surprised though. Yes, it is okay for Bi-Han to not like or see Tomas as family, as no one can be - nor should be - forced to like anyone just because others (adults) expect it. That alone doesn’t make Bi-Han an evil person, even if Tomas feels rejected in the process, as each person will define what makes one a family differently. 

Their brotherhood was forced on both, as none had any say in Grandmaster’s decision to adopt the orphaned and traumatized boy (how they adapted to the situation is another matter and so far, we know more about Smoke’s process of adaptation than Bi-Han’s). We know only small bits of what happened that significant day, but so far sources - the way the informations are phased at least - feel to me like the Grandmaster adopted the boy less for Tomas’ sake and more to smother his own guilt 

[...] Having accidentally trespassed onto Lin Kuei lands, they were attacked. Smoke was orphaned. Ashamed by his warriors' actions, the Lin Kuei's Grandmaster adopted Smoke. He raised him alongside his sons, Sub-Zero and Scorpion. [Smoke’s BIO]

and/or to save his honor:

Kitana: "You are Kuai Liang's adopted brother?" Smoke: "His father's honor demanded that he take me in." 

So this is not a situation as if Bi-Han urged father to give him another younger brother and dad complied to make his son happy but once he brought the orphaned Tomas, Bi-Han decided nope, I change my mind and from on I will act as a spoiled brat that didn’t get what he wanted. Tomas did not choose to be orphaned nor to be adopted (as he himself admitted he did not think being taken in by Lin Kuei was anything good for him at that time), the same as Bi-Han was not asked by Grandmaster for approval (and even if he was, his objection apparently wasn’t taken into account as Grandmaster still adopted Tomas).

Smoke: "Father wanted us to be brothers." Sub Zero: "Yet another of the old man's foolish dreams." 

Note this: father wanted. Not hoped they will eventually find a common ground despite the not the best circumstances. He wanted to save honor. He wanted them to be brothers. Again, not sounding as taking into account what the kids wished for or needed and who knows, maybe Grandmaster wanted it so much, he pushed too hard to get the most comfortable solution for his own conscience - except Bi-Han simply never clicked with Tomas, whatever due to incompatible personalities or factors beyond their good will? I presume they all were still enough young when Tomas was brought into picture, but if Bi-Han is the eldest out of them three, then he could had his own duties that simply didn’t give him enough time to bond with the (culturally and ethically) different kid the way Kuai Liang did, again presumably, as closer in age to Tomas. 

But even if Bi-Han simply didn’t like Tomas, then it is still okay, because people can’t be forced to love or like others. Not liking someone though doesn’t give anyone the right to act disrespectful - yet so far, we only heard he was cold to Tomas but that does not necessary mean being intentionally cruel either. A human can be polite and still come off as emotionally cold (and let’s not forget that people can also be naturally introverts or fall into the autism/asocial disorders spectrum that makes it difficult to establish good relationships with strangers. We are familiar with MK1 Bi-Han for what? Maybe twenty minutes of story mode and through intro-dialogues that only gives us a sense of who he is at this point. We don’t even have an idea if cryomancer genes affect his perception of the world or behavior). 

Bi-Han as an adult person seems to come to terms with the situation to some extent and got used to the idea of an additional brother - his and Tomas relationship is tense and complicated but it is now tainted by their conscious choices, however in the past, if Bi-Han didn’t like Tomas for whatever understandable or petty reason, no one can demand from a kid to act as an adult and control/smooth their own emotions to solve the problem adults created in the first place. The whole situation wasn’t fair to Tomas and so wasn’t to Bi-Han either. 

Would it be sad to learn that Bi-Han has never liked Tomas or never come to love him the way he loved his biological brother? Yes. But not liking someone or not considering someone a family member is not a crime itself and is not an indication of being inherently evil. Be it fictional characters or real human beings, people sometimes simply don't like each other and they have the right to feel that way. Not liking each other though does not mean anyone is allowed to abuse or disrespect others, just to be clear here.

I like to think this should be obvious, but knowing fandom, it may indeed be the hot take.

[severepink]

Observing Adam

Where I go way too deep into something that probably isn't that deep. It's long, it's long as hell.

Okay, so you'd think with how Adam talks he's just a typical misogynist, right?

This man worships pussy. So much so, he's named a whole ass angel, one of his best, Vagina. You'd say that he objectifies them and thinks of them as being lesser, but I don't think that's the whole story. In fact, I think he might be the original simp.

All of these exorcists so far have been women. All of them. He refers to them as ladies or bitches interchangeably, he sees them as being completely capable of absolutely decimating leagues of some of the most vile beings who have ever existed, and they have, to the point it was only after thousands of years that there's been a risk to this hierarchy.

He's a self-centered, egotistical, loud-mouthed, arrogant asshole, no doubt about it, but I'm beginning to suspect something now.

If Adam and Lilith were created from the same dust, if they were created as equals, I am more than willing to bet... Lilith is also a self-centered, egotistical, arrogant asshole. But, she's likely far more intelligent, composed, and duplicitous.

Lilith was allowed to refuse Adam and leave of her own free will and garnered her own independence. A new wife was created for Adam, she was replaced. My guess, is she thought Adam wouldn't be able to live without her, to come back and find herself replaced entirely, she was enraged.

I believe both Adam and Lilith were both incredibly dominant individuals who fought over ideas, thoughts, and ultimately in the bedroom as well, if we take into account the creationist stories.

I'm willing to bet she likely manipulated Lucifer into twisting humanity against its original concept. What if Lucifer's intention truly was to just spark something within Eve, like independence and thought and creation, but it was Lilith's poison within the fruit that tainted her, then subsequently Adam, with sin.

Lilith thrived in hell, while Lucifer's dreams of creation were dashed. She didn't suffer as he did, instead the power of her voice grew with hell. Her voice grew so powerful that heaven found it to be a threat, her actions instigated the beginning of exterminations.

Charlie said that when she was a little girl, she didn't know Lucifer at all. I don't think this was because of Lucifer, he's seen here, picking her up, inviting her to share in his thoughts and dreams, showing her something wonderful. Something she could see within herself.

Charlie says that it's this moment that sparked her will to fight for her dreams. Which is strange, because at the very beginning of the story, Charlie says it was her mother's dream that was passed down to her.

Lilith took Charlie away. In this scene, Lucifer wasn't done showing Charlie his thoughts and dreams, he's still yearning to show his daughter these things at this point.

Lucifer loves his daughter. He loves Charlie so, so, so much. So why wasn't he allowed to build a relationship with his daughter for the longest time? He was waiting for the opportunity to get to know her, but with how much he adores her why didn't he do it sooner? He didn't comment on 'It took you a while-' he just said he missed her smile. They don't want to be pulled apart, again.

Now, we know Vivziepop has said that Lucifer and Lilith love each other, but Lilith 'wears the pants' in the relationship. We see all of the pictures all over the walls of a supposedly happy family. I don't think the relationship was as loving as originally portrayed and Lilith is a woman who desires control above all else. She likely tried to mitigate what influence Lucifer had over their daughter when she thought his angelic thoughts and behaviors became more than what she approved of.

Lets take it back to Adam and Lute for a moment. Again, Adam is a loud mouthed idiot, he's a jerk. The moment he realizes there are demons in heaven, he's ready to go on the attack. It's only because of Lute that he didn't end up doing something absolutely idiotic.

I gotta say, Lute and Adam's relationship is an absolutely fascinating one. He's a disrespectful dick head in how he talks, but how he acts is a different story. He allows Lute to man-handle him. He does listen to her, even if he's a whiny bitch about it.

Look at him, this is the face of a man listening, a dumb one, but a dude listening all the same. He doesn't manhandle her back, he doesn't even pull away until she lets go of his collar. Of all the shit he complained about, between being grabbed and being told what to do, his biggest complaint is that she's telling him to shush.

We know that Adam is the one who suggested the exterminations to begin with, so Sera says, and this was because of the power that Lilith was amassing. To him, Lilith is a threat. Even when he was willing to move on, to go to another wife when Lilith didn't want him or want to submit to him (fair babe, he's a bit of an idiot), she came back with an angel and proceeded to manipulate his new wife Eve. This is the supposed progenitor of man-kind, the original dick (hilariously enough), the reason civilization even exists at all. He and Eve had to fight for their lives after being tempted with the fruit. They had immortality, they had no ideas of shame, they were supposedly 'innocent' creatures before Lilith and Lucifer came along. He and Eve had to fight tooth and nail to survive after being cast from Eden. I think it shows in how willing and ready he is to take lead and do what he believes needs to be done, now out of a need for entertainment rather than a need to defend or protect. But, he still stopped to listen to Lute's advice. In the mythological story of Adam and Eve, Adam is the one who has to tell Eve that god said don't eat the fruit. Eve never heard god speak to her, so she was vulnerable to the snake's manipulations. She will now die because she ate it, and because she did not want Adam to take another wife, convinced him to eat it unknowingly. Funnily enough, Adam tried to explain to god that 'she lied to me and gave me the fruit' and in this actual mythology, Adam was punished for listening to his wife. Even without mentioning Lilith in the original mythology, Eve didn't want Adam to take another wife, so when we consider it within the context of Hazbin Hotel, it may be likely that's how it went down. Eve knew of Lilith, knew that she could be replaced, and decided that she would take Adam with her.

I believe that Adam does and did rely on the women in his life to help him with direction. I think Adam knows he can be an idiot and is willing to listen, even if he doesn't agree with what he's hearing. He did listen to Charlie in the beginning, he just didn't believe in her, like everyone else and he, out of anyone there, probably had the most reason not to. Cain and Abel were his and Eve's sons, his own child became the first murderer. Out of jealousy, the same kind of jealousy that no doubt has caused Lilith to act how she did. Adam isn't going to have empathy for sinners. His family, his legacy, were filled with the original sinners. He probably had to kill his son Cain in hell during the first exterminations. What do you think he would have had to feel, if it came to be a fact that sinners could be redeemed? That maybe his son, could've been redeemed? Or any of his progeny for that matter? How did it feel when his sons, his progeny, weren't given the same mercy as the Hellborn that Lucifer managed to keep protected through some deal with the angels or god? Not to mention that Charlie could've been his daughter. Charlie is the product of the people who completely and totally destroyed the paradise he'd been born into. She's the daughter who is protected and immune from the slaughter while all of his sons and daughters are judged and killed. I believe, even though he was a dickish prankster to Charlie, he was surprisingly patient and even somewhat amicable, willing to even ask her how her weekend was like he was just trying to get to know her.

Adam could just see all of the angels under his employ as being disposable. He doesn't have to name them, or think about them in any individual fashion. But, he knows Vaggie, recognized her instantly. Thought she was badass. Lute's the one who saw her, tore her wings off, and walked away. I'm surprised they even let her live, because this just goes against everything they're doing. They're an army and they saw one of their own showing empathy to the enemy.

Look at this dumb ass. He's being a shit-head, a dick, a bastard. But, he admires Vaggie's ability to pull Charlie, congratulates her, this dude isn't even judging her for being a lesbian. I don't think it's because he objectifies women, this dude loves women, he just does. He respects fellow vagina lovers. I don't think he respects liars in the slightest though. He's being underhanded, he's trying to be manipulative (he's not very good at it). I think he's brutally open and honest about everything and that's probably one of the reasons he's such a bastard anyways, because sometimes you just need to shut-up and he's not good at that.

I don't think he respects Sera for that either, he's more than willing to let others know what the hell he's doing, but under Sera's lead, he can't be open about it. I don't think it's his jam to act this way, it's why he sucks so bad at it and I think that's why Lilith is so antithetical to him. I also think that's why he's possibly even being manipulated.

It's kind of crazy that Adam is the only one who tries to come up with what allows someone to get into heaven. So here's his list: 1. Act Selfless: Maybe at one point he was! He had to have been, to be one of the progenitors of mankind, he would have had to work, sacrifice, and give to his wife and children for them all to survive. Eve would have had to do the same, no doubt. He may not seem selfless, due to his raunchy behavior, but he's served heaven since he's been there. He's served humanity in some kind of facet. 2. Don't Steal: Considering the only other humans are his spawn, he likely had to try and get them to not steal from one another for them all to have an equal opportunity of survival. He and Eve likely both knew they would need to work together to survive.

3. Stick it to the man: This, however, is interesting. Who is 'The Man' he speaks of? God? The only other people over him or were equal to him were women. He speaks like a rocker, and I think in this case he's using the term 'The Man' in a gender neutral way. I think he allowed some amount of Authority to Lilith when they were supposed to be seen as equals, it comes so naturally to him as a character when it comes to the other women he's been interacting with. I think she is the 'man' that he's been sticking it to- Pun somewhat intended. ((This third one may also simply be a tongue in cheek reference to when Alex Brightman played Dewey in School of Rock on Broadway! Thank you to the user who brought this to my attention!))

Adam is a bit of a hypocrite, isn't he? He likes to fuck, he's made that abundantly clear. Full of lust you could say. It was his original purpose after all, and he is judging Angel Dust for something he probably would've done himself at one point or has considered doing (maybe not the having sex with men part). Angel Dust does all of these things, Adam doesn't even deny it. He even looks nervous. He's angry, but doesn't deny that Angel has done those things. He doesn't explain it away or try to lie or move the goal posts, he's just asking what is an actually very valid question.

Why isn't Angel Dust there if he can do things equal to what Adam himself hasn't done? Serenity continues that line of thought. It isn't until Charlie is realizing no one knows what it takes to get into heaven.

Adam is more than willing to let Lute take the lead here, he's willing to give her the stage to clap back, he's giving her back-up antics. By all means, they could be pushing and fighting one another, there could easily be body language expressing something other than their general comfort around one another. They aren't fighting for a spotlight like you'd expect Adam to try and do considering his egotistical attitude.

Adam fucking sucks at keeping his mouth shut and he sucks at lying. He nearly blew the secret out of the bag once, this time, Sera is the only one who tries to stop him and to be honest? Lute looks a bit too thrilled at it. He knows he fucked up, but he doesn't think it's a big deal that anyone would know. For fucks sake, they've already condemned souls, his progeny, to suffer. What's the big deal if he kills them?

I have to re-iterate what's happening here. Charlie is proud she caused this chaos, that she caused these angels to fight amongst themselves, even if in this case it's a good thing. But, this is like history repeating itself to Adam, the reflection of his ex-wife, entering his domain, causing strife among his people, being happy about it.

And the venom he expresses when it comes to the 'liar' portion, god Alex Brightman destroyed when he got to this portion specifically. There is some vehement disgust in his tone when he says liar.

Adam isn't a good person now. But, I think he used to be a good person. By all means, Adam himself could've been the first murderer when his wife made her mistake. He, at one point in time, had to have been good enough to foster civilization itself with Eve. Both good and bad. Adam's original purpose was to be fruitful and multiply. Ordained by god (or maybe just angels) himself, divine power directed and created him to fuck. He didn't chase his ex-wife down, he was given a new one, Lilith was allowed to leave. When he left things alone, when he tried to move on, his ex-wife and a scorned angel destroyed the paradise he was in with Eve. He had to struggle and toil, he had to feel shame in his own body. He had to find out his first born son was the first murderer. His second son killed. We don't know if this is going to be canon in the story, a lot has changed, and if Adam is the first soul who reached heaven, then what did happen to Abel? Was Abel considered a sinner? Or did Cain kill Abel after Adam had passed? Either way, he had to witness his children kill, he had to watch his descendants behave in a range from saints and monsters. He's seen genocides, he's seen famine, war. Adam is desensitized to the plights of his descendants. Maybe he even saw it as a duty to cleanse the universe of their existence at one point, because they were his responsibility.

At the end of this episode, he is properly scolded by Sera and does seem ashamed of himself. He isn't huffy, he is reminded that he should be ashamed of acting that way.

I love Lute's enthusiasm, she's absolutely brutal when talking about Vaggie and with how she handled Vaggie. I think it's funny that Lute is so brutal she's even made Adam uncomfortable. It's cute that he's made uncomfortable by the excitement and all he does is tell Lute, the premier hype woman over here, to chill. She's so proud of herself too, look at her.

He fully expects these exorcist bad bitches to go in there and fuck shit up. But, you know it's hilarious that he's throwing horns? This dude, this angel. First human soul in heaven, loving rock n' roll, the devil's music, and throwing motherfucking horns. It's poetic really. I think we can probably assume where things are going.

Now, this is the first point we've seen Adam being a real piece of shit to Lute. I don't think Adam likes it when people think he's too dumb to notice something, especially something so damn obvious. This is such a drastic moment of vitriolic, uncontrolled anger directed towards Lute. Adam knows he isn't the brightest tool in the shed. He likely knows he's obtuse and misses shit. It's why he sucks at lying, he knows he's not smart. That is why I think he's afforded women opportunities to direct him without fighting back against their advice and their choices. I'm sure Lilith made it obvious how dumb she thinks Adam is. I'm wondering if this might be where their ground breaking fight might've come from. Who's to say he didn't allow Lilith to take the lead, or listen to her like he's done with Lute here and now? Perhaps to an even greater point? He listened to Eve and ate from the fruit of knowledge and he was punished for it. Being seen as so dumb he can't formulate a simple fact is a sore spot for him.

Adam is incredibly powerful. It took a bit out of him to exercise that power, probably because he's out of practice just like Lucifer said. At one point, he probably wasn't so sloppy and weak willed. He's gotten lazy. Sloth like.

I think it got real personal here. How viscerally and personally he attacked Charlie. No one but Charlie truly thought sinners could be redeemed, or that they were even worth it. Not even one of the original sinners. Maybe he never considered the possibility, maybe what happened really did make him see the world as black and white to cope with that happened to him, his wife, his children. Charlie's desire to fight this idea would destroy the foundation for all of his coping through the years. He stopped seeing them as family, even though he's grandiose about his founding role in humanity. Does that itch the guilt that may lurk under the surface?

I don't think Adam thought much of Charlie at all. I don't think he had any intention of coming to kill her in the beginning, despite seeing her, despite who her parents were. But, I think with the constant push, with how eager she was to disrupt the pre-conceived idea of order, it reminded Adam and reflected her parents so much, he was eager to kill her for revenge against them. I think this electrical interference on the mask is a direct reflection of sin. Namely, wrath, in this moment.

Now, this. THIS. Is something that made me want to write this whole fucking essay. Is Lucifer implying that he not only gave Eve the Fruit from the tree of knowledge, but FUCKED HER TOO? Homies, I'm sorry but holy shit. That is some hydrating tea. I'd be pretty pissed too, fucked over twice by women who were supposed to be literal soul mates, who you were made for, who were made for you?

I knew he would have a goatee, I could almost hear it. I gotta say, I'm a sucker for how he looks. I think he's hot. He is a bastard, but so are a lot of the hot dudes in this show. It's just a theme.

This exact series of lines prompted so many of the thoughts that I had about Adam and why he thinks or acts the way he does. At one point, Adam did have to work himself to the bone and learn to survive from scratch alongside Eve. He isn't entirely without cause to not think that he deserves some respect or recognition from his descendants.

But, that doesn't give him the right to act like god himself. It's... well... Blasphemous. Isn't it? One of the worst sins is to think yourself to be worthy of worship, as if you're a god.

This is the moment that gave me empathy for them both. You could probably see the kind of loving person Adam could have been at one point with how he looks at Lute, even as he's laying there, dying. He's not crying like a bitch, just looking at Lute softly. Lute screaming for him, screaming his name. They cared for each other deeply.

And this... and this.... and this. WHAT DEAL DID YOU MAKE, LILITH? Did you make it with Sera? Did you make it with Adam? Did you make it with Lute? Did you really just want a little 'vacay' away from the hell you helped create? Left her husband, depressed and lonely. Left her daughter without any care or guidance. Maybe Alastor was sent in her place, perhaps? Seven years since he was seen after all, but why wouldn't he show up sooner if Lilith did care? Did she make a deal with Lute and Adam? Did she let Adam smash it so she could stay in heaven? Did Lute let her stay in exchange for getting Adam out of a position of power? Or was it maybe Sera who commissioned Lilith with a deal? Either way, I'm in full belief that it wasn't Adam's idea to move the extermination day up. I think he's a patsy, a scapegoat. I think Lute may have been manipulated, potentially, into manipulating Adam into this position. Was it even really Adam who came up with the idea to do the exterminations? Or was he the one who simply decided to fight originally because he was told heaven was at risk due to Lilith's rising power? The Road to Hell is Paved with Good Intentions. I think it could be any number of these. Either way, Lute certainly does think she had authority over Lilith. Is it Lute just having hubris? Or is Lilith truly bound, just like Alastor, Husk, and Angel Dust?

Of course, now that we know a soul can be redeemed... and we certainly know that angels can fall. I don't think this will be the last we see of Adam.

[catboybiologist]

“As a biologist, the terms biological woman and man don’t make any sense to me” okay then you’re an idiot and a terrible biologist. I swear to god, morons like you only become biologists just so you can hold it over others, when in reality, if biology deniers like you can become biologists, then being one really doesn’t mean much anyway. But this probably just gave an autogynophile like you a boner to read, anyway.

Oh fun! Haven't gotten one of these in a while. Disregarding the fact that you somehow think the qualification for being a biologist entirely hinges on defining womanhood, I do need to ask some clarification. I know I'm feeding the trolls here, but here we go: does your definition of "biological woman" mean:

Sociological woman? Eh, context dependent, I'm not fully out of the closet, but oftentimes, I am and present femme. So let's call that one 50/50.

Psychological woman? Because I am one.

Neurological woman? Because I am one [1].

Physical woman? My soft tissue redistribution is handling that well.

Hormonal woman? My blood tests are within cis female ranges.

Transcriptional woman? As a signalling molecule, the downstream effects of estrogen have broad transcriptional effects, completely changing the profile of gene expression and functional genomics of my cells. [2]

Genetic woman? I mean, see my above point- as far as my genes that are actually active, I have all of the same transcripts being produced, controlling which genes are expressed.

Karyotypic woman? I actually have a few signs pre-HRT that might point to a non-XY chromosome pair, but I haven't had a karyotype. We'll put that down as unknown. And hell, even if its XY, there's plenty of cis women who are karyotypically XY, with suppressed sry or complete androgen insensitivity. Interestingly enough, a completely androgen insesitive woman can go her whole life without knowing- and functionally, is very similar to a trans woman, actually. Fancy that. [3]

Reproductive woman? I can't produce an egg cell, but neither can significant fractions of cis women. Also, this is all gonna change soon, which is fun. [4]

There's also a lot of understudied aspects to the biology of HRT and even pre-HRT that are emerging, largely demonstrating widespread cellular and genetic remodeling of trans individuals undergoing hormone therapy. The field is a bit behind due to constant political pressure to revoke funding, but a lot of the results are extremely exciting in both testosterone and estrogen hormone therapies. I'm sure that, as a self professed biology As someone who presumably has a lot of expertise in biology, I'm assuming that you're aware of all of this cutting edge research, and are keeping up with modern papers, including but not limited to these cool findings:

Trans men on HRT exhibit significant genetic and transcriptional changes that make them biochemically male. [5][6]. It's a good hypothesis that the same happens with estrogen treatment, but those studies don't exist yet- I'm sure you're reserving judgment until more publications exist, of course.

Trans men on HRT develop male cell types and tissues. [7]

Trans women experience muscular and blood cell changes that align with cis women moreso than cis men [8]

And many, many more! This is an exciting, underserved, and groundbreaking field of research, and I'm sure you're keeping up with the latest in scientific journals about it.

I'm sure, of course, that you understand that it becomes impossible to draw a distinct line anywhere in here, and that words like "woman" are shorthand for the myriad of traits that invisibly synthesize in our mind and in society to represent a concept? I'm sure you understand that science is fundamentally descriptive, not prescriptive? I'm sure that you understand that these findings, while really cool and interesting, actually don't mean jack shit about what the word "woman" means or not?

As someone who is the ultimate decider in what a biologist is, I'm sure you know that bioessentiallism is a childish mindset that completely ignores and disregards the constantly changing, dynamic nature of biological systems, something that extends well beyond biological sex and its relation to gender.

I'm sure that also, that you understand that beyond just this, that the role of science in society is to advise how to achieve our moral principles, not create moral principles in themselves. And I'm sure that understanding means you know that trans affirming healthcare and supportive societal treatment leads to reduced mortality and increased happiness for everyone, right?

So great to talk to someone who is surely a scientist on this. You are a biologist, if you're talking like this, I assume? I assume you're not going to spit complete misreadings of scientific language from the background sections of these papers that only reveal you've never read a scientific paper in your life if you're thinking this way? I assume you have experience interpreting data like this?

Also, imagining my genitalia while writing this? Ew. Please stop projecting your fetishes into my inbox.

Works cited:

Kurth F, Gaser C, Sánchez FJ, Luders E. Brain Sex in Transgender Women Is Shifted towards Gender Identity. J Clin Med. 2022 Mar 13;11(6):1582. doi: 10.3390/jcm11061582. PMID: 35329908; PMCID: PMC8955456.

Fuentes N, Silveyra P. Estrogen receptor signaling mechanisms. Adv Protein Chem Struct Biol. 2019;116:135-170. doi: 10.1016/bs.apcsb.2019.01.001. Epub 2019 Feb 4. PMID: 31036290; PMCID: PMC6533072.

Gottlieb B, Trifiro MA. Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome. 1999 Mar 24 [Updated 2017 May 11]. In: Adam MP, Feldman J, Mirzaa GM, et al., editors. GeneReviews® [Internet]. Seattle (WA): University of Washington, Seattle; 1993-2024. Available from: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK1429/

Murakami, K., Hamazaki, N., Hamada, N. et al. Generation of functional oocytes from male mice in vitro. Nature 615, 900–906 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-023-05834-x

Pallotti F, Senofonte G, Konstantinidou F, Di Chiano S, Faja F, Rizzo F, Cargnelutti F, Krausz C, Paoli D, Lenzi A, Stuppia L, Gatta V, Lombardo F. Epigenetic Effects of Gender-Affirming Hormone Treatment: A Pilot Study of the ESR2 Promoter's Methylation in AFAB People. Biomedicines. 2022 Feb 16;10(2):459. doi: 10.3390/biomedicines10020459. PMID: 35203670; PMCID: PMC8962414.

Florian Raths, Mehran Karimzadeh, Nathan Ing, Andrew Martinez, Yoona Yang, Ying Qu, Tian-Yu Lee, Brianna Mulligan, Suzanne Devkota, Wayne T. Tilley, Theresa E. Hickey, Bo Wang, Armando E. Giuliano, Shikha Bose, Hani Goodarzi, Edward C. Ray, Xiaojiang Cui, Simon R.V. Knott, The molecular consequences of androgen activity in the human breast, Cell Genomics, Volume 3, Issue 3, 2023, 100272, ISSN 2666-979X, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.xgen.2023.100272. (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2666979X23000320)

Xu R, Diamond DA, Borer JG, Estrada C, Yu R, Anderson WJ, Vargas SO. Prostatic metaplasia of the vagina in transmasculine individuals. World J Urol. 2022 Mar;40(3):849-855. doi: 10.1007/s00345-021-03907-y. Epub 2022 Jan 16. PMID: 35034167.

Harper J, O'Donnell E, Sorouri Khorashad B, McDermott H, Witcomb GL. How does hormone transition in transgender women change body composition, muscle strength and haemoglobin? Systematic review with a focus on the implications for sport participation. Br J Sports Med. 2021 Aug;55(15):865-872. doi: 10.1136/bjsports-2020-103106. Epub 2021 Mar 1. PMID: 33648944; PMCID: PMC8311086.

[not-quite-normal]

what do you think the coolest thing you got to work on in the new spiderverse was? or was there anything you were completely geeked to work on/with?

definitely the coolest thing shot-wise that i got to work on was pavitr's entrance, i animated everything from when we first see him to when the camera zooms in on his face going into his comicbook backstory (this one!)

i helped with a couple aspects of pav's overall animation: his hair, his eye shapes, and playing with how he uses his bracelets in combination with his webs!

his hair is geo, meaning it doesn't get simmed by cfx because the directors wanted it to keep its graphic shape. so i designed some different hair blendshapes for modelling to create for us and worked with rigging on how to best incorporate the different shapes into the rig, then animated wind cycles for other animators to drop into their scenes. animating hair is not normally something that animators are expected to do in feature animation

his mask eyes, by default, came into shots looking very smooth and rounded. i referenced art done by one of the concept artists to give him "diamond shaped" eyes with more nicely weighted lines, along with several other library poses for animators to use so that they don't have to do all the shaping themselves (it took a long time because it required moving literally almost a hundred controls on each eye haha)

and finally, pavitr uses his webs with his bracelets to fight and get around! he uses his bracelet sort of like a spin top, keeping it spinning on his webs while standing still. i animated this first shot of him flicking it off his wrist:

my first pass on this didn't have that close up of the bracelet at first and our anim director, bob persichetti felt like we couldn't read it well enough and mentioned trying some crazier slow motion stuff like in RRR. so i went and watched RRR and immediately understood what i needed to do lol. i asked rohini kumar, another supervising animator on the movie, for some hindi onomatopoeia and she gave me this one, 'tadaak' which i'm told is sort of like a whack or pop!

[homo-house]

hey uh so I haven't seen anyone talking about this here yet, but

the amazon river, like the biggest river in the fucking world, in the middle of the amazon fucking rainforest, is currently going through its worst drought since the records began 121 years ago

picture from Folha PE

there's a lot going on but I haven't seen much international buzz around this like there was when the forest was on fire (maybe because it's harder to shift the narrative to blame brazil exclusively as if the rest of the world didn't have fault in this) so I wanted to bring this to tumblr's attention

I don't know too many details as I live in the other side of the country and we are suffering from the exact opposite (at least three cyclones this year, honestly have stopped counting - it's unusual for us to get hit by even one - floods, landslides, we have a death toll, people are losing everything to the water), but like, I as a brazilian have literally never seen pictures of the river like this before. every single city in the amazonas state is in a state of emergency as of november 1st.

pictures by Adriano Liziero (ig: geopanoramas)

we are used to seeing images of rio negro and solimões, the two main amazon river affluents, in all their grandiose and beauty and seeing these pictures is really fucking chilling. some of our news outlets are saying the solimões has turned to a sand desert... can you imagine this watery sight turning into a desert in the span of a year?

while down south we are seeing amounts of rain and hailstorms the likes of which our infrastructure is simply not built to deal with, up north people who have built everything around the river are at a loss of what to do.

the houses there that are built to float are just on the ground, people who depend on fishing for a living have to walk kilometers to find any fish that are still alive at all, the biodiversity there is at risk, and on an economic level it's hard to grasp how people from the northern states are getting by at all - the main means of transport for ANYTHING in that region is via the river water. this will impact the region for months to come. it doesnt make a lot of sense to build a lot of roads bc it's just better to use the waterway system, everything is built around or floats on the river after all. and like, the water level is so incomprehensibly low the boats are just STUCK. people are having a hard time getting from one place to another - keep in mind the widest parts of the river are over 10 km apart!!

this shit is really serious and i am trying not to think about it because we have a different kind of problem to worry about down south but it's really terrifying when I stop to think about it. you already know the climate crisis is real and the effects are beyond preventable now (we're past global warming, get used to calling it "global boiling"). we'll be switching strategies to damage control from now on and like, this is what it's come to.

I don't like to be alarmist but it's hard not to be alarmed. I'm sorry that I can't end this post with very clear intructions on how people overseas can help, there really isn't much to do except hope the water level rises soon, maybe pray if you believe in something. in that regard we just have to keep pressing for change at a global level; local conditions only would not, COULD NOT be causing this - the amazon river is a CONTINENTAL body of water, it spans across multiple countries. so my advice is spread the word, let your representatives know that you're worried and you want change towards sustainability, degrowth and reduced carbon emissions, support your local NGOs, maybe join a cause, I don't know? I recommend reading on ecological and feminist economics though

however, I know you can help the affected riverine families by donating to organizations dedicated to helping the region. keep in mind a single US dollar, pound or euro is worth over 5x more in our currency so anything you donate at all will certainly help those affected.

FAS - Sustainable Amazon Fundation

Idesam - Sustainable Developent and Preservation Institute of Amazonas

Greenpeace Brasil - I know Greenpeace isn't the best but they're one of the few options I can think of that have a bridge to the international world and they are helping directly

There are a lot of other smaller/local NGOs but I'm not sure how you could donate to them from overseas, I'll leave some of them here anyway:

Projeto Gari

Caritás Brasileira

If you know any other organizations please link them, I'll be sure to reblog though my reach isn't a lot

thank you so much for reading this to the end, don't feel obligated to share but please do if you can! even if you just read up to here it means a lot to me that someone out there knows

also as an afterthought, I wanted to expand on why I think this hasn't made big news yet: because unlike the case of the 2020 forest fires, other countries have to hold themselves accountable when looking at this situation. while in 2020 it was easier to pretend the fires were all our fault and people were talking about taking the amazon away from us like they wouldn't do much worse. global superpowers have no more forests to speak of so I guess they've been eyeing what latin america still has. so like this bit of the post is just to say if you're thinking of saying anything of the sort, maybe think of what your own country has done to contribute to this instead of blaming brazil exclusively and saying the amazon should be protected by force or whatever

[primofate]

Drop the towel wrapped around you and appear naked in front of your Genshin husband

In a nutshell: That old tiktok challenge/prank. In your private, shared home of course.

Warnings: My perpetual warning as a writing mother is that I am sleep deprived. Very VERY sleep deprived. SUGGESTIVE: BORDERING ON NOT SAFE FOR WORK, written on a 10 minute timer please be gentle

Characters: Aether, Albedo, Alhaitham, Ayato, Baizhu, Cyno, Diluc, Itto, Kaeya, Kaveh, Kazuha, Neuvillette, Scaramouche, Tartaglia, Tighnari, Wriothesley, Xiao, Zhongli, implied fem!reader

Personal Favourites: Tighnari

Aether

chokes on nothing

"Y-Y-Y/N?! What're you doing?"

Comes up to you and tries to cover you up with the towel again, as if it was a sin to look at you naked in broad daylight.

Full on blush on his face and respectfully tries to look away.

"Don't surprise me like that!"

Seems not to like it but actually likes it too much to the point of getting embarrassed for himself.

Yes he's your husband but is still a precious respectful man

Albedo

Blinks a couple of times but appreciates your beauty and gives your body a slow once over. Chuckles in amusement afterwards.

"Is there a reason for this?"

Just to get his reaction, you admit.

"Well..." starts walking towards you. "I do have higher self-control than most others... but let it be known that I'm far from immune to my..."

Stops in front of you and yet again seems to eat you up with his eyes. "...needs," ends with a suspiciously sweet smile.

Alhaitham

Can't help but be a bit surprised and you can see it by the way his eyebrows go up as soon as the towel hits the floor.

Opens his mouth to say something but closes it again, as if hesitating, which is really strange for someone like him.

"...Is this the part where I sweep you off your feet and carry you to our room?" there's a bit of amusement in his tone. Stands to walk over to you.

Places a hand on your waist.

"Cause I can guarantee you that we DON'T need to be in our bedroom for things to happen...but you knew that already, right?"

Ayato

Quirks his eyebrows up, amused smile appearing on his face.

"I must say, this is a lovely surprise,"

Traces your figure with his eyes. Then approaches you to hold your waist and dip in to kiss your neck softly.

"How could I ever resist, my love, when you're standing in front of me in all your magnificence?"

Takes the longest time just admiring and basking in your beauty, tracing every little part of your skin.

Baizhu

Lets pretend the snake ain't here okay?

Does a double take.

"Y/N, first off, you'll get a cold,"

Pushes his spectacles up and gives you a once over.

"Second, you'll give me a heart attack,"

Beckons you over gently with his hand. "Come over, I suppose it's been a while since...I've done a full body check,"

Hides a grin.

Cyno

Blankly looks at you and is still processing what is happening

"Y/N? Is this... Did I do something?"

Is so suspicious that this was some kind of trap.

You tell him its simply to get a reaction out of him.

Immediately shoots out of his seat and catches your wrist.

"Then...Is it my turn to get one out of you? There's several ways to do that...and I know your favourite ones,"

Diluc

Eyes follow the towel down to the floor and head snaps back up to blink at the sight in front of him. Recovers quickly.

Chuckles as he stands and walks over. Picks up the towel and drapes it around your shoulders. "Only because it's quite chilly tonight,"

but still ends up inching the towel off your shoulder, tracing your collarbone. "Although, as your husband, I suppose it IS my job to keep you warm... So how would you like it today, love?"

Itto

"WHOA!" by instinct covers his eyes with his hands but his fingers are actually splayed apart so he can totally see through the gaps

Feels himself getting aroused

I mean the guy gets turned on even just at the sight of your neck

Suddenly stands and walks over to you, easily hoists you over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes and makes a beeline to your shared room.

"You're asking for it Y/N!"

Kaeya

"Oho?"

Sits back and relaxes, he doesn't really know what he was expecting. Some type of show maybe. "What's this? Finally giving me that lap dance you owe me, snowflake?"

Laughs but you're incredibly flustered at the suggestion.

Beckons you over and grabs you by the waist to sit on his lap.

"Feel that?" he whispers in your ear.

Oh you feel it alright, pressing at your upper thigh.

"Now whose fault is that? You'll have to do something about it now, love,"

Kaveh

"Archons!"

Looks away with a blush on his cheeks.

"Put something on!"

Yes he's seen you naked before, you're married, but the guy's always flustered in unexpected events.

You provoke him further by coming over, sitting sideways on his lap and wrapping your arms around his neck.

"Y/N!" He looks down at you and can't help but look at your nakedness in full and close view.

Gulps but starts to feel his body heat up, his hands suddenly, assertively planting themselves on your waist as he meets your eyes. "I don't care what you say about yourself, but know that you're the only one who takes me from 0 to a 100 in a second,"

Kazuha

"Y/N?" Chuckles nervously and takes in the sight of your body.

Smiles at you and takes your hand to kiss the back of it.

"I've seen you countless of times... Each time, I'm reminded by how fortunate I am that you chose me to take care of you,"

Caresses your cheek all the way down to your jawline. "You're beautiful, Y/N,"

He has the most tender and gentle look on his face, but its mixed with a passion that you've never seen on anyone before. "Let me show you how much I love you, dear,"

Neuvillette

Eyebrows twitches upwards in surprise. Has no clue what to do in this new situation.

He doesn't say anything but is most definitely enjoying the view of your body. You see his jaw tense up, as if he's clenching his teeth.

"Ahem," he starts. Then seems to have the most trouble prying his eyes away to meet your gaze. "Is this...perhaps another way to tell me... that you would like some attention?"

You say not really and just wanted to see how he would react.

"Ah," he lets out, as if understanding and as if the conversation has ended.

A moment of silence passes and you're starting to wonder if that was all he was going to do. But he then stands and places a gentle hand on your bare waist. "...So you're simply doing it, as people would say, 'for fun'?"

He asks, and you say yes innocently. He smiles a bit and has another hand cupping your face and thumbing your lips. "I see," breathes out slowly.

"Unfortunately, for your actions, the Iudex feels that a punishment is in order,"

Scaramouche

Raises one eyebrow as if he's bored. Then smirks.

"If you wanted it, all you had to do was ask," pulls you by the waist and makes you straddle him "But this is good too,"

Hands actually start to grope you up and down. Will fondle and squeeze in private places immediately.

"What? Startin' to feel good? S'what you get when you play games with me,"

will smack your butt the first chance he gets

Tartaglia

Immediately jumps up and in an automatic daze, eyes glued to his favourite parts, trudges towards you and attempts to bury himself in softness.

You quickly stop him and in turn HE quickly stops you. Hands easily bunching your wrists up together and angling them upwards above your head.

"Tsk, tsk, tsk," he grins down at you. "Someone's being naughty,"

You complain that he reacts too fast.

Laughs, but his hand starts to unbuckle his pants and there's a dark look in his eyes. "Oh, I'm just being naughty back. When you want something, Y/N, believe it when I say I'll GIVE it to you,"

Tighnari

ear twitches. Tail swishes back and forth. Does not show any expression except slight curiosity.

"What's the occasion?"

You tell him that you just wanted to see his reaction.

He hums and nods slowly, like processing some type of complicated information.

"Wait here, I'll be back in a minute,"

You ask him where he's going and you're a bit upset at the lack of response from him.

He chuckles and returns to you, tail angling upwards in an attempt to wrap and brush against your waist. Takes your hand, presses your wrist against his lips and seems to take a slow breath in.

"I'm merely clearing off my schedule for today. Now, be patient, I'll be back,"

Wriothesley

Almost spits out his drink but gulps it all down instead.

Eyes widen a fraction at the sudden act but his hand is already loosening his tie.

"Wait right there precious," chuckles while he says this, tie already falling to the ground, now unbuttoning his vest. At the same time walks over to you urgently as if you're going to disappear but laughs nervously while he's at it.

"I swear you'll be the death of me,"

Looks like he's going to pounce on you but when he reaches you he only gives you a chaste kiss, as if asking for permission first.

You suddenly remind him that he has a LOT of things to do today, appointments and all.

Actually barks out a quick laugh. "You're not really expecting me to walk out now? As far as I'm concerned," pulls you flush against him and kisses your jaw "The only thing I need to do today is you,"

Xiao

"Wh-Wh-What do you think you're doing?!"

caught unprepared. Crosses his arms and looks away. Pretends he's uninterested but his eyes still dart back to look at you.

You ask him if he likes what he sees.

He now completely looks away from you. A few seconds pass and when he turns his head back to look at you there's now a carnal look in his eyes.

He walks towards you slowly and captures your chin to tilt it up. Looks down at you as if he hasn't eaten a meal in days.

"...When I'm done with you tonight you'll get your answer,"

Zhongli

Chuckles. Amused.

"To what do I owe the pleasure, dear?"

You shrug and even do a turn for him. He watches you carefully and takes in the image in front of him.

Smiles and strides over towards you. "Truly a magnificent sight," brushes his fingers against your neck

His eyes trail downwards and isn't shy about looking at your body. "Might I remind you my dear, my stamina surpasses that of a normal human," he smiles at you sincerely.

You tell him that you're well aware. He just chuckles again.

"Then you know well what'll come next,"

End

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[writingouthere]

exboyfriend!Sukuna x f!reader.

cw: smut, outdoor sex, angst, controlling behavior.

Your date was a disappointment.

The guy wasn't an asshole or anything, but at some point he'd talked about cryptocurrency for ten minutes straight without you saying a word and there was no coming back from that.

"I had a great time," he tells you as you stand on the subway platform after finally escaping the restaurant. You nod noncommittally and wonder if this is the part where he asks for your number. You're calculating the risk/reward of giving him a fake number and having him potentially call it while you're still right in front of him when you hear a familiar laugh from behind you.

"I doubt it," the voice says and you close your eyes. Maybe if you wish hard enough you can develop teleportation and not have to deal with this.

"I'm sorry, who are you?" your date asks, his voice only wavering a little as he looks at your ex-boyfriend. Honestly, you admire him. The sight of the tall, heavily tattooed (alleged) criminal was usually enough to make people cross the street to avoid him but not this accountant? Investment baker? Dentist? Fuck, he'd talked about his job for thirty minutes and you had not been listening. You would have guilty if you weren't actively judging him for not even noticing your lack of engagement.

Whatever, he probably wasn't brave, he was probably just an idiot.

Sukuna seemed to agree as he laughed again and put his hand on your shoulder.

"I'm her boyfriend."

Your date looked at him, looked at you, and seemed to be weighing if this was worth one mediocre date. He seemed frozen for a second until Sukuna took a step forward and the guy's previously dormant survival instincts seemed to awaken and he booked it down the train platform.

Once he was out of sight, you took Sukuna's hand and dropped it off your shoulder like a fallen leaf that had got stuck on your jacket.

"Are you following me, now?" You wouldn't have put it past him. You turn to face your ex who looks not only unrepentant for his little routine but vindicated. Or maybe he just looks vindictive, you can never tell.

"Are you going on dates with any loser that asks?" He tosses back and you roll your eyes.

"You didn't even meet him."

"So, he wasn't a loser? And you weren't deciding if it was worth giving him a fake number and having him call you right then?"

You hated that he knew you so well.

"He seemed the type to call," you concede and Sukuna scoffs.

"Absolutely, that fucker is. Women have been giving that dumb fuck fake numbers since he was begging for them with his little Nokia flip phone."

"Is Nokia still a thing?" you ask and Sukuna glares at you.

"Do I look like Google to you? Hey, don't try to district me, princess. We were talking about how you seem to have gotten it into your mind that you can cheat on me with any guy with a pulse."

"I'm not cheating on, we're not together," you tell him as your train pulls up. You don't bother protesting as he follows you on it, even though you know the old apartment you used to share is in the other direction from your new place.

"The fuck we're not," he seethes. The other riders look at you and you see one or two guys deciding if it's worth trying to get involved but you're more concerned about the teenage girl who looks ready to fight this asshole for you. God, you loved women.

"You're making a scene," you tell him and he looks ready to make the scene Oscar worthy before you give him the look that used to make him not call your friends' babies ugly when you went to birthday parties.

"Where can we talk then?"

"I'm not taking you to my place," you say and he sucks his teeth.

"Then let's go home."

"You mean to your home."

Sukuna looks furious but you're not in the mood. You had just spent the past two hours on a terrible date, which made you think about how dating was just going to be like this until you found a new boyfriend or gave up, which then made you think about your break up and how up until a few months ago, you thought you would never go on a first date with anyone ever again.

You hated that Sukuna had put you here and you hated that you still loved him.

"I'm not leaving until we talk about this."

"There's nothing to talk about."

You're so tired, Sukuna is so close and it's been so long since you got to smell him or feel his warmth. Your apartment was still barely furnished but everything in it was new and it still didn't feel like home. The one sweatshirt of his you'd let yourself take had stopped carrying his scent weeks ago, and just being close to him now, it made something in you relax. Like you were finally home.

"There fucking is," he hisses and now he's so close you can make out the scar on his jaw and the fullness of his lips. You used to tease him that you'd never met a man whose lips were as soft as his. He may have looked like tough shit, but you would never catch him out of the house without lotion and chapstick.

You wondered if he was still using the cherry chapstick you had bought him at the grocery store the week before you'd broken up.

"Are you going to marry me? Are you going to give me a baby?"

"Princess-"

"Then there's nothing to talk about," you say and you thank whoever's watching that the train is pulling up to your stop. You get off and Sukuna is right on your heels.

"You don't even want those things right now, why the fuck does it even matter?"

"I want them eventually and if you're not willing to give them to me, then I just don't think I need to keep wasting my time."

You're roughly dragged into a nearby alley and tossed against a brick wall. Sukuna's hand cups the back of your head, taking the force of the slam and you hate that he watches out for you even when he's being a controlling jackass.

"Being with me is wasting your time? Who the fuck do you think you are?"

"Not your girlfriend," you snap back. "Let go, I want to go home."

"Fuck you," he tells you and you're about ready to fight him, grown scary man or not when he leans down and his lips are on yours.

They taste like cherry chapstick.

His hand on the back of your head tightens, his thumb pressing against your neck and making you shiver. His other hand is pressed tight to your jaw and when you gasp against his mouth, he presses down as if he can hold you open and consume you so you can't leave him again.

His muscled thigh is in between yours and you can feel the rough texture of his jeans, the same pair he wore to work, the same pair you'd put through the washing machine a thousand times, rub against where your legs are only covered in tights. The shorter than usual skirt meant to entice your date, and instead it was being taken advantage of by your ex-boyfriend.

Sukuna let go of your face so he could put his hand underneath the fabric of your skirt.

"New outfit?" He teases as his hand slides to the top of your tights.

"Got it for my date," you snap and he growls at you before he rips the seams of your tights. Before you can complain, he's dragging them down your thighs and diving into your panties so he can get to your cunt. The underwear is new too and a pained noise leaves you at the sensation of them snapping against your inner thigh, both at the pain and the thought of how much they cost.

"I still have those blue ones you like at home, the ones you wore for my birthday last year," he tells you as he slides his finger down the seam of your cunt. You're wet and it annoys you because orgasming has been a bitch to achieve since you had to start giving them to yourself again.

"You can keep them," you tell him and he bites your lower lip between his teeth, they'd always felt too sharp for a man and you know you're a twitch or a less than playful nibble away from a busted lip.

"They're not really up for wearing anymore anyway."

You want to ask him what he means by that as he kisses down your neck and thrusts one finger into you, the slide almost unholy.

"So fucking wet, your cunt was always better at talking than you were."

The sensation of being filled even though it's not enough it's not enough begins to itch at your need to be satisfied as your mind fills in the gaps of his previous words.

You can imagine Sukuna in the bed you used to share, the dark blue sheets and the comforter covered in a black pattern that had reminded you of the marks that covered his body. One hand holding your favorite pair of panties and the other his big cock, that sometimes you missed even more than him.

Did he use the panties to jerk off with, the fabric just an expensive tissue for his cum? Did he hold them to his nose and pretend he could still smell your pussy on them in the bed that used to smell like both of you? You had tried watching porn and reading smut, the stuff you had relied on before you were together, and nothing compared to what it felt like to come from his fingers, his tongue, his cock.

The only times you had touched yourself when you were together were when Sukuna had wanted to watch, his commentary pushing you to the edge. He had always known what to say.

Good girl, now try two fingers for me. Not enough? Do you need my cock? Fucking slutty princess, eh?

No matter how demeaning his words were, you had never felt true shame because his desire for you was always apparent. Sukuna never held back praise where he felt it was deserved, and he had always been quick to let you know that what you were doing was pleasing him.

"Pay attention to me, princess. I'd hate to think I was boring you." The words are laced with cruelty and the added pressure of a second figure is harsh, too soon, and still not enough.

The hand in your hair tightens, but the grip still careful not to mess it up beyond repair. Something you'd been adamant about in the beginning days of your relationship. The gentleness of it, of him, makes you cry out.

Since Sukuna was the only one who still seemed cognizant of how you were in an alley, only a right turn from being on a public sidewalk, he was quick to catch your moan in his mouth. Nearly purring in reply, a ridiculous thing for a ridiculous man to do.

"Fuck, that's it. No one else can make you feel like this, this cunt is fucking mine."

"Yes," you hiss out in agreement. Pleased with your concession, Sukuna's thumb swipes over your clit as he continues his punishing rhythm with his fingers. You can hear how wet you are as it echoes off the brick around you. Even though it's cold outside, you feel almost too hot between the warmth of his body shielding yours from the world around you and the heat that's continuing to build up in your core.

"So close, I know you are. Beg me, princess and I might let you come," he whispers in your ear and you would feel embarrassed of the whine you let out if you weren't so close.

"Please, Sukuna. Please, let me come!"

"I don't know. Not sure if I should reward you since you've apparently being going around giving this pussy to fucking anyone."

You shake your head. "No, I haven't slept with anyone since we broke up."

Sukuna kisses you so hard, you're grateful for the hand behind your head because you know his knuckles must be bruised from the force he kisses you with. Sukuna pulls back, a string of saliva connecting his lips to yours and you hate that you find that hot. That this whole thing is hot.

For a second, the softness in his eyes takes your breath away and you almost forget about where you are and what you're doing and why it's the worst idea you've ever had. He's just Sukuna, the love of your life and you miss him so much.

You think he might say something crazy like he loves you or even propose but then the softness is gone and he just grins at you.

"Alright, come then, you've earned it."

With permission granted, Sukuna focuses his attention on your clit in just that way you like in the way that only someone who's done this hundreds of times could do. He's definitely leaving hickies around your collarbone and neck, but for now they feel good and when you come, you bite your lip knowing it will be bruised. A reminder of how you're an idiot when you look at it in the mirror tomorrow.

Still soft with your orgasm, you reach down to return the favor but Sukuna grabs your hand.

"I'm not walking around with cum in my jeans," he tells you, kissing your palm. Typical of him, to end something crass with something sweet. You sigh as he puts you back down on the ground. You pull up what remains of your tights, the fabric uncomfortable on your quickly drying thighs. Your ripped panties lie on the ground and Sukuna looks at them forlornly before shaking his head, dirty alleyway panties apparently being too much even for him.

Sukuna grabs the bag you'd dropped when he'd kissed you and gestures for you to exit the alley. A few passersby give you strange looks but you figure if you were going to be arrested for public indecency, it would have happened already.

"I guess we're going to mine," you say. "I live like another two blocks this way."

"I know," Sukuna says already heading that way.

You blow a piece of hair out of your eye. "Of course you do."

When Sukuna actually types in the passcode to your building you almost lose it, but you're tired and honestly you had kind of expected to just come home to him already in your apartment at some point. Sukuna had never been great at respecting boundaries. Or the law.

You unlock the door to your apartment, it takes everything in you not to ask if he already has a key. You don't want to know. He follows you in and the two of you sit at the dingy two person table you have set up by one of the only windows.

"Cozy."

"Fuck you." He smirks in that way that has always made you want to punch him and you're reminded that you're currently wearing shredded tights.

"Sukuna, you wanted to talk. So talk."

The smirk leaves his face and he looks at his nails, pressing his thumb against the one on his pointer finger and then looking through the 'o' formed there. "You left."

"I did."

He looks at you. "Why?"

"You know why," you say, tired again.

"Sure, you want to get married at some point. You want a baby at some point. I don't see what that has to do with us, right now."

"Because right now leads to that some point. It doesn't just happen. There are things I want, that are important to me. If they're not important to you, then I need to find someone who has the same priorities as me."

"Because I'm not your priority," he says and this is the rehash of an argument you'd had a thousand times. Sukuna was selfish and possessiveness and while that had always granted you a certain security, it had also been a chain you'd constantly worn around your ankle. You weren't going to defend your time at work or with friends to your boyfriend. That belonged to a different time, to different women and it had been a nonnegotiable early in your relationship that he figure that shit out with himself.

"Sukuna, I love you but I'm not going to give up what I want for my future because you don't want it. You don't have to want it, in fact I appreciate that you've been honest about it-"

"So appreciative, you left me," the words are almost snarled and you sigh.

"That's not fair. You can't be mad I want something else, the same way I'm not mad that you want something else. It's not a character flaw to not want to get married, or to not what kids. It just means you have a person out there for you who shares that view. Because it's not me."

"Why can't it be enough to just have a life with the two of us?"

"It's not about whether or it's enough, it's about me wanting something else."

There's a pause. Sukuna claws at the dents already in your battered table and deepens the grooves as you try not to flinch at the sound of his nails bearing down on wood.

Finally, he responds. "You know, I spent my childhood, my teens and a lot of adulthood raising Yuuji because our piece of shit parents couldn't be bothered and let me tell you. It's fucking hard. It is constant and they need so much for you. I didn't do anything but work and watch him for almost two decades and I don't want to do that again. I want my own life."

"I understand," you tell him. "That was a lot, even if you did a great thing by taking him in."

"It wasn't because I was nice. You seem to be forgetting that I'm a murderer. And you want me to fucking watch Bluey with some brat."

"You may not be nice but you do right by the people you care about. I also don't think you've murdered a baby, it would probably be okay."

"That's more incidental than a conscience choice," he says and you know he has to hear how ridiculous he sounds.

"Alright. I respect your decision but for what it's worth, we're not kids anymore and you wouldn't be doing this alone. I think Yuuji turned out pretty great because he had you, and I think any kid of our would be lucky to have you as a dad."

"You would really do all that with me," he says and his voice is as close to wonderous as you've ever heard it. "You really are a lost cause."

You try not to react, remind yourself that this is always how Sukuna responds to affection. He'd laughed at you the first time you'd told him you loved him. You'd punched him and broken your hand on his chin. He'd told you he loved you in the ER as the attendant resetting your hand looked on in horror.

"I think that's enough for today. Thanks for stopping by and for the orgasm, appreciate it," you say, rising from the chair. You walk the short trip to your door and open it. "Hope you have a safe trip home."

Sukuna stays seated. "That's it?"

"Yeah, Sukuna, that's it."

"And if I said I could do this, I could give you those things."

You think about it and look him over. How his hands twitch as if only his ego is preventing them from clenching. The clear trauma that was informing his previous stance.

"I'd say take some time and maybe talk to someone. I don't want to do this with someone who can just bring themselves to bear it. I want them to be as excited as me."

"That's asking for a lot from a guy."

"But someone will do it." Sukuna looks angry again and when he steps in your space, you push him gently away with your hand. He goes to hold it and even the familiar scrape of his calluses against your skin can't make you waver.

"Bye, Sukuna."

Sukuna looks at you, waiting for you to give in you know but you won't.

He leaves without another word.

When the door to the stairwell slams shut, you finally let yourself cry.

----------

It's been a month since you've seen Sukuna and you're on another date.

The guy is unoffensive. He gave you a hug when you met up and he'd made a joke about the plethora of other couples at the restaurant. You two started playing a game where you tried to guess how many dates each couple had been on?

"Three, she's finally figured out she can't put up with how he chews no matter how nicely coiffed his hair is," your date says as you take another sip of your drink.

"That's a second date, his chewing is a commit or quit type of deal and she looks ready to go. Bet they didn't eat together on their first date."

"Is he telling the plot to Dune, he has not stopped talking since we sat down," he says and you giggle despite yourself.

You've just started on the couple both looking determinedly at their phones by the window when your phone rings.

"Sorry, I need to take this," you say and he smiles.

"No worries, I'll let you know how many times she misses her mouth while looking at her phone."

You wave as you go to stand outside. You take a deep breath and then answer.

"Hey."

"Hey, princess. Bad time?"

"No, just, what do you want?"

"Well, I'm planning this first date with this girl and I'm having trouble figuring out how to explain something."

You want to throw up, what kind of test is this?

"What do you want to say?"

"Well, I've heard that it's important to be straightforward with your intentions, so you don't waste anyone's time."

"And what are your intentions?" You manage to spit out and he laughs, his smugness almost seeping out the phone.

"Well not anytime soon, but eventually I think I'd like a little brat. You know, prove to Yuuji that he wasn't a fluke."

You heart is pounding and you hate him. You love him.

"Uh huh."

"And I guess it would probably be easier to do that if we just got married. You know, taxes, healthcare, I still don't have healthcare but my wife will and I've heard you can add people to that."

"This proposal is the fucking worst one I've ever heard," you say, trying to ignore the fact you are now crying in front of a restaurant. People walk by giving you pitying looks, probably think you got stood up.

"It's not a proposal, it's a framing of intent."

"Why do you talk like such an old man, we are almost the same age?"

"Why do you talk like such a brat?"

"You know-"

"Probably," he says and you laugh despite yourself.

"So when is this date?"

"Tonight," he says. "You can wear that dress you're wearing, it looks perfect on you."

"Are you fucking here, you creep?"

"That's no way to talk to your future husband and no. That place is a shithole, I'm at our usual."

"Good, I've missed it. No one makes my drink the way I like it," you tell him and he hums.

"Well, it will be waiting for you when you get here. So get here soon."

"Alright, I'll see you soon."

Sukuna hangs up and you stand there. There's a perfectly nice guy inside. One who makes you laugh and who maybe one day you could grow to love.

But there's another guy across town who is sitting at your favorite restaurant, ordering your favorite drink. His lips taste like the organic chapstick, he claims to be too tacky to be worth wearing but keeps it in his pocket anyway. He built all your furniture and let you paint your bathroom green even though you live in a rental. He's held your hair back when you were sick and cleaned it up even as he bitched at you for the mess and done a rather cruel impression of you retching.

There's another guy that you love.

So you go back into the restaurant to tell your perfectly nice date that something has come up.

Maybe you're a fool, but what else could you do?

Maybe this will be a series, idk. Being an adult is weird. This is def ooc but you know, let me work through things and call them fiction. That's what this account is for.

[eff-plays]

There's one convo with Astarion that's one of my favorites that I haven't seen mentioned or discussed yet happens (I assume) if you have high approval with him but play a good-aligned character. (This is at 60+ approval, start of Act 2.) It's probably because it's not a romantic cutscene so it doesn't get mentioned as much as the others (or because he's racist in it and some of y'all don't like to acknowledge that he has character flaws), but I think it's vital to his character and to explain his early relationship with a good-aligned Tav.

I would like to break it down a little, step by step. Because we are all cringe here.

First, he claims to feel a connection between Tav and himself, and the reason for this is because he believes he's identified "ambition" in Tav (and I'll explain why he's wrong later, but that's mostly headcanon territory, so we'll ignore it for now).

But, there's also clearly something holding Tav back from realizing their full potential, which is their naivete.

"Just that you ... have a big heart. You like doing what's right."

(The animations and voice acting here make him look and sound so fucking condescending, 10/10.)

However, Astarion doesn't tell them this is wrong, or that he disagrees. He implies it's a flaw, but doesn't state it outright. That's dangerous territory, see, and might predispose them to get defensive and reject what he has to say next.

No, he tries (and fails in my case, but it's cute that he tries, bless him) to manipulate Tav by appealing to that big heart of theirs.

"So I was thinking, what would be the right thing to do when we get to Moonrise Towers? When we come face-to-face with whoever is controlling the parasites in our heads."

"I'm just saying there's an opportunity here. If we can control the tadpoles, we can keep ourselves safe and liberate the world from this evil."

See what he's doing? You like doing what's right, so what would be the right thing to do? We can keep ourselves safe. Liberate the world from evil.

It's very blatant, but he's trying to appeal to Tav's good nature by framing his questionable ideas as something that will benefit the greater good, something that's morally righteous that they would agree with.

And of course, it's incredibly funny when you ask how he thinks you'll do that, and he fumbles and admits he's not a "details person," but it's also revealing.

He thinks he's found in Tav ambition, when all he's actually found is ability. Tav exercises power proficiently, while Astarion does not. If he had the authority they have, he'd let ambition drive his actions, which is why he assumes that's what drives Tav when they exercise their power. A good-aligned Tav has very little ambition, I'd argue, but they have plenty of opportunity to exercise their power, which they do when their hand is forced.

So what Astarion is saying is, in effect, hey, you have power, I have ambition. Will you please use your authority/ability to do what I want? Here's how it'll totally be for the greater good, I prommy.

This is brilliant writing, and I really applaud Larian for managing to walk that fine line of making Astarion so sympathetic while he's literally trying to manipulate the player character. Because when I first got this convo, my thought was both "wow, I adore how blatant and terrible his manipulation attempts are, it's kind of endearing" and "he's so terrified, it's genuinely quite tragic."

If we control the tadpoles, we can keep ourselves safe. This works only somewhat as an appeal to good-aligned Tav, because it could also potentially sound very selfish, especially if Tav is the self-sacrificing sort. So notice how, when he says "liberate the world from evil", it sounds kinda tacked-on, an afterthought designed to bury his main goal, which is keep "ourselves" (i.e. himself) safe. Like, yes, this will keep us/me safe, but if you're not into that, then it'll totally help the world, too! It doesn't quite work, because he still sounds ironic and like he doesn't believe they'd be liberating anything from any evil (work that 10 Charisma, boy), but that's the intent, I think.

Does he want power for power's sake? Yes. Is he gleefully powerhungry? Absolutely. But he's also fucking terrified, and that slips through just a little bit, even behind the smug and confident facade.

He's trying to get Tav, whom he's seen exercise their power over others, to lend some of it to him, so that he may never fear anything ever again.

All of this from a short, smug convo where he admits he's too stupid to figure out how to fulfill his dreams of world domination.

God tier characterization, 10/10.

[lassieposting]

Been thinking a lot lately about romanced Astarion post-spawn ending.

Because like. The Funnest™ thing about cptsd is how much of it gets delayed. When you're trapped in a lengthy, ongoing traumatic situation, you do not have the ability to process and start healing your mental wounds. Your brain and body go into survival mode, and all that matters in the moment is that you somehow cope with the horrors. He wouldn't have been able to even begin dealing with the physical, mental and emotional toll of two hundred years of torture, brutalization and dehumanization while he was under Cazador's control; he is in constant danger, surrounded by sharks in the water, and survival means not letting them smell blood. He can't afford to fall apart, to show weakness. He is shockingly functional and competent in-game, partly because he has to be to work as a game character, but also partly because...it do be like that, to some degree. When death, for whatever reason, is not an option, you just have to shut down and keep going. People adapt in order to survive, and when we learn that showing an "injury" (physical or psychological) only gets us punished, we learn to hide it.

Early-game Astarion is terrified - of Cazador, of Godey, of being hunted down by his siblings, of being staked or sold off at the first opportunity by Tav and the other companions, of turning into a mindflayer, of another painful transformation, of losing himself when he's only just regained his autonomy after two centuries, of what Cazador will do to him if he ever finds him - the man is overwhelmed by fear. He's on thin ice as a vampire, and he's not going to give them any more reason to want him gone. Survival instinct is still in control, and in this new situation, crafting some fragile safety for himself means not only selling his body for protection, but also being useful. Clear-headed. Good in a fight.

Endgame Astarion finds himself in a completely different situation. The time-sensitive overarching threats - Cazador and impending ceremorphosis - have been dealt with. He has a loving, supportive partner he's really starting to feel safe with - Tav/Durge has proved that they're on his side, that their affection is genuine, that they don't just want him for the one thing he's been told he's good for. They've told him they're going to help him find a workaround for his sun allergy. He's getting fed regularly. He has time to stop, and breathe, and just. Recuperate.

For the first time in 200 years, he is safe.

And it will probably take a while to catch up, during which time he will seem to be coping really well, but at some point, his brain is going to realise that he's safe, and it's going to finally start processing the sheer fucking horror he's been through. Since I haven't seen anyone talking about this particular fun aspect of cptsd, allow me to offer u some thoughts on issues Astarion and Tav might end up dealing with in the months/years postgame, during the

✨ Delayed Trauma Response ✨

Memory Gaps: Astarion realising, as he opens up to Tav, that there are entire years or decades of his life from which he has only a handful of memories. Great big blank stretches where he has no idea where he was, who he was with, what was happening to him. Some of the gaps cover years at a time where he was so dissociated and shut down that he just didn't retain any memories of what was going on around him. Some are shorter periods of particularly horrific torture that his brain has deliberately blocked out to protect him.

Recovered Memories: At some point, years into the future when he's done A Lot of healing, he might find that every now and then, a fragment of those lost memories will unexpectedly come back to him. He'll catch a particular scent on the breeze, or overhear a specific phrase in the street, or cross paths with someone whose face is oddly familiar, and he'll get a glimpse of an acute horror he'd filed neatly away where it couldn't hurt him anymore. He very rarely remembers all the context to those flashes of his past. He might recall that he was punished, but not what he was punished for, or he might remember words spoken by a greedy conquest, but be unable to recall the man's face.

Dissociation: Tav knows going into this relationship that Astarion has basically made an art out of dissociating during sex. They also know, from their shared encounter with the drow twins, that he's not great at enforcing his own boundaries - he'll always say he'll speak up and back out if he stops having fun, but in practice he rarely does; he's not used to having the option of saying no to his partner, and being punished if he tries. So they know there's going to be some practice and experimentation and negotiation necessary there, to figure out the rough limits of his comfort zone. But once he starts really processing, there may be days where he just checks out completely. Tav will touch his shoulder, and he'll startle and apologise - "Terribly sorry, darling, I was miles away for a moment there." And Tav will gently point out that he's been sat in the same spot vacantly staring into the middle distance for hours. They've been checking in on him occasionally and this is the first time he's responded. It's unsettling, to say the least.

Lost Time: Astarion was very young when he was turned, physically mature but emotionally juvenile. He was basically an overgrown teenager, in the phase of life where elves are just starting to learn who they are and what they want, and figure out their place in the world. But he never got to do that, because he spent his formative young adult years in a world where everyone became an abuser, where his only means of surviving was to smile and charm and obey while even his basic human dignity was stripped away. He learned that communication is based on manipulation. He learned that the powerful can do whatever they like to the weak. He learned an incredibly toxic, abusive way of life, and that was his family dynamic, his everyday life, for as long as he can remember. Now that he's free and safe, he's realising that the world doesn't actually work that way and that he's now far behind even shorter-lived races in social/emotional development. He's grieving for the person he could've been. He's grieving for the life he could've lived. He's grieving for all the years he already lost, and the ones he'll lose in the future as he flounders to catch up. A decent chunk of his life was stolen from him, and that's time he will never get back.

Flashbacks & Night Terrors: Specifically the kind where your brain convinces you that an injury you had a long time ago is actually an injury you have (or are receiving) right now. There are nights where he'll wake Tav in a panic, because his back feels like it's on fire, he can feel every freshly-carved wound dripping blood and he's in so much pain he doesn't know what else to do. If Tav looks, they see nothing out of the ordinary - old, long-healed scars, same as always. But the pain and the fear and the distress are all very real to him, and all they can do is try to comfort him, cover his back with cool damp cloths or healing salves, remind him he's safe now and they're not leaving him.

Boundary Shifting: Sometimes, Tav can come up and hug him from behind, and he'll melt into them a little bit and go all soft and happy. Other times, he might flinch away or go rigid at the same gesture. A lot of the time, it really depends on how he's feeling on the day, but at least a little bit of it is deliberate - he's pushing to find the limit of just how much autonomy Tav is willing to give him. He wants to know at what point they'll stop respecting his "no". Will they accept it if he doesn't want a hug? If he wants to sleep in his own room tonight? At what point will understanding turn to anger at being rejected? From the drow twins four/fivesome, we also know he's got a tendency to push his own boundaries, and jump into things he's actually not ready for, and Tav would be the one holding his hand through the fallout as he tries to figure out what his own boundaries even are.

Frustration! So, so much frustration. He wants to be Over It already. He wants to move past everything that ever happened to him and never think about it again. He hates that Cazador still has a grip on him, even in death - he doesn't want to give the bastard the satisfaction of dwelling on all his punishments, his cruelties. Sometimes, that frustration is going to explode outwards at Tav - he'll get angry at them for coddling him, or find something small to start a fight over, or he'll set an unreasonable boundary and try to defend it because he's still learning what healthy boundaries look like. Sometimes, it will implode inwards, and that won't be about Tav at all, but they'll get the brunt of it all the same - it might come out as self-loathing or self-punishment, and he'll react by doing something stupid, like trying to drive them away, because having a secure, relatively healthy relationship is terrifying and the instinct is to destroy it before Tav can. There will be yelling and angry tears and deeply unhealthy coping mechanisms, and they'd have to work through that. Trauma is ugly, and Astarion is right at the beginning of a very long journey towards healing.

Abandonment Issues: Astarion wants the relationship to be one between equals, but he's kind of got Tav on a pedestal all the same. They saved him. They helped him get rid of Cazador for good. They chose him and love him despite a wealth of better (in his eyes) options, and all his baggage. They stayed with him even when he has very little to offer them. We know his vanity and obnoxious self-absorption is a fragile attempt to obscure the fact that his self-esteem is in the dirt and he has virtually no self-worth, and there are a couple of occasions in-game where it becomes clear that he's afraid of losing the one person who somehow considers him lovable. After seeing Sebastian and all the other conquests, he begs Tav not to hate him, saying that he did what he had to. If he has a rival for Tav's affections, and Tav informs him that they broke up with the rival to be with Astarion, he's shocked and the first thing out of his mouth is, "You ended things with them for me? Why?" And if Durge tries to break up with him for his own safety, his facade drops and he immediately asks if he did something wrong. So while he's not afraid to argue with Tav, if something happens - like an angry outburst - that upsets or angers them, and he thinks he's at risk of losing that one steady, stable person in his life, he might well cling and overcompensate to try and repair what he thinks is a fracture in their relationship. He'll fawn or beg or crawl into Tav's bed to "apologise" and "make it up to them" because, well, very occasionally it worked on Cazador. With patience and good communication and lots of repeatedly driving the lesson home to overcome 200 years of education to the contrary, he will eventually start to believe that "I'm really pissed off at you right now," does not equate to, "You are the worst mistake I've ever made and I am leaving you."

Panic Attacks: I feel like honestly he'd get some symptoms of these on a fairly regular basis, but he's never been given any option other than just trying to power through them. He's used to realising he's shaking, he's used to feeling like he's watching himself from outside his body, or like he can't breathe even though he doesn't need to. He's very familiar with the sickening fear in his gut, so intense it makes his head spin. He's not used to being comforted or reassured about them - he thinks they're normal. Tav disagrees.

Anyway, cptsd is messy and complicated and often looks very different from person to person so these will not represent everyone's but these are just some ideas for what the ongoing recovery process might make them work through, based on the aspects I'm most familiar with.

Projecting? Who's projecting? I'm not projecting. Shut up.

[theminecraftbee]

being in true sexyman nostalgia mode today (on account of. IT'S BEEN ONE YEAR BABY.) i think one of the most fascinating things about it is that we will never manage to do that again. like, not in a "we couldn't organize it better" way; there were better ways to do the spreadsheet, we would just turn off comments on posts and anon asks from day one so that we wouldn't then get people accusing us of censorship while we tried and failed to control the tide of things that ended up in the comments and inbox, we'd definitely have a WAY higher non-hermit contingent, both thanks to qsmp and thanks to the sexyman blog and medusa now having MUCH wider reach to other corners of the fandom and the original spread not all rooting at me, etc.

but the reason we couldn't do it again is that i don't know if we could ever replicate the exact circumstances that lead to it blowing up quite to the extent it blew up.

it was while tumblr polls and doing tumblr poll brackets on tumblr itself was still new-ish, and people were still excited about them. the idea of a mcytblr bracket was basically brand new; i won't claim we did it FIRST (because i have no idea if we did and doubt we did), but certainly we did it big first. so there's that; we can never again invent in real time "shit people are sending us threats about fraud lets legalize fraud because its funny, we can't stop it, and that neutralizes that drama as a thing anyone will take seriously", and then in turn accidentally invent a fandom culture of. um. wide-spread voter fraud.

(i don't know if we should apologize for, uh, causing the specific way mcytblr voter frauds. i still think it was better than the alternative at least, especially after seeing how so many other polls crashed and burned after us. there were MANY things we could have done better but i have seen SO MANY ways we could have done things worse since then so i think we came out looking pretty okay.)

but also: february 2023 was a very different time in mcytblr. we were in a hermitcraft dead period, where most of the hermits were either on vacation or playing tcg (which was fun, but didn't end up generating that much fandom activity by that time in february). the former dsmp crew was very much doing Nothing (and in that awkward space when the entire fandom knew dsmp 2 was never happening, but also people were still claiming it would happen, so it was just... busy waiting). qsmp didn't exist yet. there was no ongoing life series and wouldn't be for some time. i think even the dominioners and lifestealers were in a fairly dead zone. there was very little new for people to be excited about, mcyt content-wise.

enter: our poll. our poll which cleo then thinks its funny to call out on twitter. our poll, which was not only new mcyt content for the fandom to interact with (thanks to the fact we KEPT GETTING CC INTERACTIONS???), but participatory.

for about two weeks, we were the mcyt event de jour.

and like. the thing is. now we're in february 2024. mcyt is BOOMING. a new hermitcraft season JUST STARTED. we came off of vault hunters before that. meanwhile, qsmp just restarted and is, if i'm understanding correctly, booming. they just added a new guy! the two current juggernauts of the fandom are in FULL SWING. i honestly think we'd be somewhat overtaken by the fact things are actually happening in fandom. there's stuff to do that ISN'T go insane about a poll.

and it's not new, and we've seen it all before now, and frankly, it's hard to cause a mass hysteria event TWICE. lightning in a bottle, as they say.

i think part of the reason we all just REMEMBER mcytblr sexyman so much is that we could never, ever recreate it, so it remains crystalized in a single moment in time, impossible to replicate, forever memorable.

anyway: HAPPY ONE YEAR TO THE JOE HILLS SWEEP BABY,

[olivianyx]

OMGG I JUST GOT RESULTS WITHOUT BEATING MYSELF UP WITH ROUTINES 😭 + RANT ✨

HEYY LUVS! I JUST WANNA SHARE MY RESULTS I MANIFESTED WITHIN 2-3 DAYS! THIS YEAR'S GONNA BE MY BEST YEAR Y'ALL ✋AND GUESS WHAT I DID? NOTHING. LITERALLY NOTHING. NUH-UH. PERIODT.

⚠ LONG POST AHEAD, SWEARING ⚠

WHAT I MANIFESTED:

🪄 PASSING MY FRESHMAN YEAR WITH HIGH SCORES

🪄 MY FAMILY BOUGHT A NEW APARTMENT WHICH WERE PREPARING TO MOVE IN 3 WEEKS

🪄 ME GETTING INTO THE VOID STATE 😭 AND MANIFESTED CLEAR SKIN! (DAYUM GETTING INTO THE VOID IS DEFO VERY EASY OMGG)

🪄 GETTING LESS ANXIOUS LATELY!

🪄 MY GASTRITIS AND ULCERITIS GETTING CURED

🪄 GETTING MORE COMPLIMENTS IN MY UNI!

🪄 GETTING TALLER! I WENT FROM 5'3" TO 5'7" IN 2 DAYS 😭😭

🪄 GETTING DREAMS OF ME SHIFTING TO MY WR 🥺 (ACTUALLY RESPAWNING LOL, AS THIS THING IS REALLY CONTROVERSIAL IN HERE, PLEASE DON'T GET ME CANCELLED- I'M DOING DEATHLESS RESPAWNING ✋)

🪄 MY MIND IS SURPRISINGLY CALM 😌 THERE'S STILL INTRUSIVE THOUGHTS THO (THOSE ARE ANNOYING ASS BITCHES) BUT I JUST IGNORE EM LIKE I IGNORE PEOPLE AT SCHOOL 🗿

🪄 GOT MANY CONFESSIONS TOO 😭 AND I REJECTED EM ALL, CUS I JUST WANT TO BE SINGLE FOR THE REST OF MY LIFE ✋🗿 JK

🪄 GETTING COOL CLOTHES THAT MY MOM DENIED A LOTTA TIMES! (ACTUALLY I'VE ORDERED EM BUT STILL HAVEN'T SHIPPED TO MY ADDRESS YET LOL)

🪄 MY CRUSH BECOMING CLOSE TO ME HEHE 🤭 LIKE SHE DOESN'T CARE ABOUT ME MUCH, BUT LATELY SHE'S BEEN TOO CLOSE TO ME AND ALWAYS WANNA BE WITH ME LOL, 3 DAYS BACK SHE AND I WALKED HOME TOGETHER, WHILE WE GRABBED SOME SNACKS, SPOKE ABT EACH OTHER AND ALL (I FELT LIKE BEING IN A SHOUJO MANGA 😩)

🪄 A NEW PHONE! THAT SAMSUNG GALAXY S22 😩

I MANIFESTED EVERYTHING WITHIN 3 DAYS 😭 I REALLY CAN'T BELIEVE MY EYES, JUST. 3. FUCKING. DAYS. GODDAMMIT.

HOW I DID IT:

JUST FULFILLED IT IN MY IMAGINATION

YEP, YOU HEARD THAT RIGHT. I LIVED IN THE 4D REALITY, I NEVER GAVE A SHIT ABOUT THE 3D AT ALL. OK LEMME BREAK IT DOWN FOR Y'ALL SO JUST PAY ATTENTION FROM HERE ONWARDS.

🪄 SUPPOSE SOMETHING UNDESIRABLE OR UNFAVORABLE CIRCUMSTANCES ARE HAPPENING IN YOUR 3D. WHO'S THE CAUSE FOR THAT? YOU. 'BUT I DIDN'T IMAGINE OR THINK OF THESE 😭' BABY, YOU'RE THE SOLE CAUSE, EFFECT, AND THE SOLUTION. THERE'S NO OTHER EXPLANATION TO THIS.

🪄 AS WE ALL KNOW, 3D IS A MIRROR. RIGHT? WHATEVER YOU THINK ABOUT, YOUR ASSUMPTIONS, YOUR THOUGHTS, YOUR FEELINGS, YOUR PERSPECTIVE EVERYTHING WILL BE REFLECTED. SO WHY NOT THINK THE WAY YOU WANT SO YOU CAN EXPERIENCE THE SAME? GET IT.

🪄 IF YOU WANT TO CHANGE THE 3D, CHANGE YOUR 4D FIRST. CHANGE YOUR PERSPECTIVE TO HOW YOUR DESIRED SELF WOULD SEE THE WORLD. KEEP DWELLING IN IT. IF THE 3D SHOWS UNFAVORABLE CIRCUMSTANCES, DON'T FUCKING GET TRIGGERED. GO BACK TO YOUR IMAGINATION AND DENY YOUR SENSES.

🪄 EVERYTIME YOU SEE SOMETHING ELSE IN THE 3D, GO 'BRUHH THIS IS MY OLD STORY, I ALREADY HAVE WHAT I WANT, THIS IS JUST FAKE' AND MOVE ON. DISTRACT YOURSELF. CUS THE 3D WORLD WHICH YOU SEE IS AN ILLUSION, IT'S NOT REAL. IT'S YOUR CREATION, WHY WOULD YOU TRY TO CONTROL WHAT YOU CREATED? IT'S ALREADY IN CONTROL. YOU ONLY GOTTA REALISE YOUR GODSELF. YOU ARE THE CREATOR, NOT THE CREATION. STOP FUCKING VICTIMIZING YOURSELF.

🪄 I GET IT THAT MOST OF THE PEOPLE ARE CONFUSED BETWEEN LAW OF ASSUMPTION AND NON DUALISM. EVEN I WAS, BUT SLOWLY I REALISED THAT WE'RE ALL NOTHING. WE'RE JUST LIVING IN OUR OWN CREATIONS. VICTIMIZING OURSELVES IN OUR OWN CREATIONS. IRONIC RIGHT?

🪄 THOSE THOUGHTS, ANXIETY, FEELINGS, EMOTIONS ARE ALL IN YOUR PHYSICAL REALM. YOUR MIND, YOUR BODY, YOUR EGO EVERYTHING IS NO REAL, WE ASSUME IT TO BE. WE'RE ARE SHAPELESS, FORMLESS, WE'RE NOTHING! AND EVERYTHING AT THE SAME TIME. CUS EVERYTHING COMES DOWN TO ONE THING, I AM.

🪄 K Y'ALL MIGHT BE SUPER CONFUSED, WHAT I'M TRYNA INFUSE IN YOUR BRAINS. SO WHAT YOU DO IS, LIVE IN YOUR 4D.HOW? IMAGINATION. NO MATTER WHAT YOU SEE IN YOUR 3D, GO BACK TO YOUR IMAGINATION, AFFIRM OR VISUALISE. ANYTHING IS FINE BTW. JUST STAY IN THE STATE OF WISH FULFILLED.

🪄 STOP RELYING ON METHODS, FUCK THEM. JUST BE. DON'T TRY TO CHANGE SOMETHING WHEN YOU ALREADY HAVE THEM. JUST STOP, SURRENDER, STOP FIGHTING, STOP TRYING SO HARD WHEN YOUR ALREADY IT. SO GO LIVE IN YOUR IMAGINATION, FULLY SURRENDER. DO THINGS WHICH YOU LIKE. GO LIVE YOUR LIFE. TAKE YOUR POWER BACK.

LIKE AREN'T YOU TIRED? TRAPPED IN YOUR OWN CREATIONS? YOU CREATED THEM, YOU HAVE THE POWER TO CHANGE WHATEVER. TELL ME HOW LONG ARE YOU GONNA LIVE THIS BULLSHIT LIFE? YOU'RE REALLY GETTING COMFORTABLE BEING UNCOMFORTABLE. SO LISTEN UP, DO WHAT YOU LOVE, AFFIRM, VISUALISE, OR DAYDREAM, ZONE OUT, WHATEVER. ALL I DID WAS DO THIS MEDITATION IN THE MORNING, WENT ABOUT MY DAY WATCHING JUJUTSU KAISEN LMAO. THEN RANDOMLY AFFIRM, LIVED IN MY 4D, NEVER PAYED ANY FUCKING ATTENTION TO MY 3D, CUS I'M GOD. I REALLY LOVE VISUALISING, SO I PUT ON A SONG AND START DAYDREAMING IN MY ROOM SMILING LIKE AN IDIOT. ALSO, I DID SATS BEFORE GOING TO BED. THAT'S IT. THAT'S ALL I DID FOR 3 FUCKING DAYS, AND GOT WHAT EVER I WANT. ALSO I MADE A CUSTOM TAPE TOO (IT'S A GENERAL SELF CONCEPT ONE) I LISTENED TO IT FOR 30 MINS AND JUST WENT ABOUT MY DAY THINKING I HAD WHATEVER I FUCKING DESIRE, CUS IT'S ALL MY CREATIONS AND I HAVE IT ALREADY. THERE'S NOTHING TO GET, IT'S ALREADY IN ME.

LUV YOU, BYE 💋

[buckys-wintersoldier]

Already mine | Bucky Barnes

Pairing -> BestFriend!Bucky Barnes x BestFriend!Female!Reader

Summary -> Bucky and you are fake dating for a mission, when the two of you are out for dinner you tell him about your planned date with someone. But Bucky isn’t really happy about it and makes sure to show you that you’re already his.

Warnings -> (E) Minors DNI, 18+, smut, slight chocking, kinda public fingering (not really), fingering (fem!receiving), oral (fem!receiving), unprotected p in v, multiple orgasm, squirting, breeding kink, jealous/possessive Bucky, bit of miscommunication

Wordcount -> 3.4K

Request -> I am absolutely foaming at the mouth as i think about this request i'm just ASHWUWHEU. okay, i'm sorry. hello! i wanted to order (👀) something from your smut menu which would be !!! fake dating (i gobble this up every time), jealous!bucky (when he's POSSESSIVEEE like yes please), and breeding kink (don't look at me like that...) idk if you allow additional details, but maybe some miscommunication/misunderstanding? god, i love that little pain before the delicious fluff & smut. 🥹 but you don't have to add that bit if it's not allowed! back to freaking out JDAJJDWJIDWKDO omg if you do write this, i will forever be thankful JDIANDKWMFKFKKEFKKR THANK YOU!

A/N -> Thank you so much for the request. I tried to include everything, I added a few things and I hope you like it. My askbox is open so feel free to send and ask, as well as that feel free to send a request for the Bucky Barnes Smut Menu.

Prompt -> Fandom-Free Bingo | B4 | Multiple Orgasm | @fandom-free-bingo

Masterlist | Bucky Barnes Smut Menu | Fandom-Free Bingo | Bucky Barnes Masterlist | Part two

You’re standing in front of your mirror; your red dress fits perfectly around your body, and you only need to fix your hair before you’re ready for your date with Bucky, or at least your fake date with him. The two of you are on a mission right now, dating each other, so no one will know that you're Avengers.

You hear the bathroom door opening and a gasp leaving Bucky's lips. With his eyes on you, he admires your back before his eyes move to look through the mirror. You smile softly when you see his blue eyes looking up and down, trying to see every inch of your body.

“You look beautiful, doll,” he tells you, and the feeling in your stomach, the one you have just with Bucky, grows.

You’re best friends, but something between the two of you changed. There are feelings for each other you have never felt for someone before. And now that you’re going on a date with him, even if it’s just a fake date, it feels like he really asked you out.

“Thank you, you too,” you mumble with a slight blush on your cheeks.

He walks a step closer and leans his shoulder against the wall. His hands running through his hair, the shirt, and his pants look like they were made for him.

“Can we?” he asks, smirking when you try to get your hair under control.

You nod while you turn around and fix your hair, walking a few steps closer to Bucky. His eyes are still on you, focused on every move you’re making. Bucky's nose is slightly scrunched while he smirks at you.

His hands are immediately around your waist when he is able to reach you, bringing your body closer to his. Bucky leans forward until he reaches your ear.

“When this would be a real date and not only for that mission, I would immediately help you to take off your clothes,” he mumbles into your ear, and you shiver slightly, pressing your thighs together to stop the arousal dripping down your legs.

Bucky chuckles softly, noticing your action, but he doesn’t say anything. He moves a few inches away from you and looks your body up and down before he holds his hand out so you can place yours in his.

“Ready?” he asks — Bucky, the 40’s gentleman in front of you — and you can’t stop but smile softly.

You place your hand in his, and then he walks through the room with you. His fingers are holding your hand tightly, but it is still soft in his hand. He smiles when he moves a strand of his hair behind his hair, then he opens the door and lets you walk through it before he follows you.

That’s something you love about Bucky. You've never met someone with that kind of charm and kindness before. He treats women like a gentleman, buying them flowers and asking them out to go to the cinema, and he takes care that his girl has everything she needs. You know those things because you have seen him with some women before — the way he smiled when he was buying flowers and presenting them to you, or when he asked for advice for date ideas in this century. You smiled and told him a few ideas, but inside your chest was a heavy feeling when you saw him with the other women, touching her and smiling at her in a way you would love him to look at you.

Bucky's hand is still holding yours when you walk through the corridor. You feel that tingling feeling in your stomach, and when you look at him, you need to concentrate so you won’t stare at him for the rest of the evening.

His jaw is relaxed, but his jawline is still visible. Bucky's blue eyes focused on the people around him, but his lips formed into a cute smile. You could look at him the whole time, but he caught you. He turns his head around and narrows his eyebrows.

“Do I distract you from the mission?” he asks, chuckling.

“No, it’s just- I wanted to make sure you’re focused,” you tell him.

“You checked that for five minutes already.”

His words make you blush, and you feel so embarrassed, but his beauty is just too much for you to look away from. The brown-haired man laughs before he walks through the door into the restaurant of the hotel.

You really looked at him for that long? You walked down the stairs, through two floors, and you weren't able to get your eyes off him? You definitely need to stop acting like that when you’re near him; otherwise, your mission won’t work the way Tony wants it.

He leads you to a table; it’s quiet there, and you enjoy the moment where it’s just the two of you. But when you see the people you’re looking for, you sigh softly. With a nod, you show Bucky you see them, and he turns his head softly.

They don’t look like criminals, but you read their files, and they are definitely criminals. They supported Hydra and still do, which is why you’re following them, and now it’s on you and Bucky to get to know where their hidden base is.

You listen a while to them before you look at Bucky with a serious gaze. When he feels you looking at him, he looks up from his plate, showing you he listens to you.

“Buck, you know we- we are best friends, right?”

He nods, furrowing his eyebrows in confusion. His hand clenches softly around the fork, slightly sweating what you would like to tell him.

“And this whole dating thing is. Yeah, it’s really cool, but-“ you interrupt yourself. With a deep breath, you look down at your plate before looking back into Bucky's eyes, glistening with curiosity. “It’s just- as you said, 'when this wouldn’t be fake dating’ I don’t think we should. Bucky I love you, but I am dating someone else; he asked me out for dinner tomorrow,” you mumble, not really knowing why you tell him about it.

“Oke,” he says with a cold voice.

“Don’t be mad, please.”

“I’m not.”

You raise your eyebrow, knowing that he is mad at you. But there is no reason for him to be mad, right? The two of you are best friends, and he probably doesn't like you in the same way you do. But you can’t risk your friendship, so you just try to date the other guy; he is nice and handsome, and you can learn to love him, can’t you?

Bucky mumbles something to himself before he almost breaks the plate with the fork, smashing it down on it. His hand into a fist, and you can already see his knuckles turning white, his jaw clenching while his eyes are focused on you.

“Buck?” you ask softly, his eyes turning dark, but he is still quiet. “Could you try and not destroy the plate?”

He chuckles darkly, smashing the fork on the plate once more and breaking it. He smiles when he sees the damage in front of him and the sauce slowly flowing over the table.

You sigh softly, reaching for his hand to place yours around his. Bucky stands up, pulling his hand away, before he walks around the table and places his hand around your throat. With a firm grip, he pulls you up from the chair, making you look slightly up into his eyes. Bucky is towering over you, his tongue slipping over his lips.

“You can’t fuck someone else,” he tells you. His voice is deep, and it causes a shiver along your spine.

“What? Why can’t I? I’m an adult, and I can do whatever I want,” you say, not as confident as always, but you try your best to sound confident.

He laughs darkly and roughly. Bucky’s grip around your throat tightens, and he pulls you even closer. With his firm chest pressing against your front, you feel his muscular body through the fabric of your clothes.

“You’re mine,” he whispers, and he lets go of you.

Bucky turns around and walks out of the restaurant. Your jaw drops open slightly, and you look while he makes his way until he reaches the door and pushes it open. You need a moment to realize his words when you sit down to calm yourself down. You feel the eyes of all the other people around you.

Your cheeks heat up, and you want to run out of the room too, but your legs feel so shaky that you can’t do a step without holding yourself up at something. You put some money on the table and get up again, holding yourself to the chairs and slowly following your best friend.

When you finally walk out of the restaurant, you see Bucky leaning against the wall. His eyes are dark, and he looks at you with a cold expression.

He walks a step closer, towering over you. With a fast movement, his hand is around your throat once more, and he pushes you against the wall. It’s a loose grip but strong enough to hold you where he wants you.

“You’re mine, and I will fill you with my babies so everyone sees you’re mine,” he tells you with a slight smile on his lips.

You whimper; your hands are around his arm, but just to ground yourself.

“Bucky-“

“I smell you; I can fucking smell you. I see the way you look at me, the way you press your thighs together,” he says, chuckling darkly.

“It’s not,” you interrupt yourself. “I have a date tomorrow.”

The laugh that leaves his lips lets you shiver; goosebumps are all over your body, and you can’t stop the arousal growing between your folds. But if he is your best friend and you work together, you can’t be together, can you?

“Yeah?” he asks, and you nod.

Bucky lets go of you and walks a step away from you. He nods his head in the direction of your shared bedroom.

“Tell me you don’t want me, or I will carry you into our room and make sure who you belong to,” he tells you, his blue eyes looking almost into your soul, and you need a moment to handle his words and the way he looks at you.

“Bucky, I have a date.”

“Tell me you don’t want me.”

“I-“ you look down, playing with your hands in front of you.

Bucky laughs and steps closer again; his fingers find their way under your chin and make you look up at him. His eyes glistening with lust, his tongue slipping over his lips, before he leans closer until there are only a few more inches between the two of you.

“Tell me you don’t want me to fuck you and make you pregnant with my babies, doll,” he mumbles.

You feel his breathing on your lips. Before you can answer, you wrap your arms automatically around his neck and press him closer to you. Your lips meet his for a sweet but passionate kiss.

Bucky's hand finds its way down your body until he reaches between your legs and pushes your dress higher to slide his fingers over the fabric of your panties.

You moan when you feel the cold of the metal through your panties. His fingers draw small circles on your clit, making you throw your head back. Bucky uses the moment to attack your neck with kisses, and he bites softly into the sensitive skin.

“Bucky, please,” you whimper, pushing your hips against his hand.

“Let’s go to our room; don’t want others to hear what’s only meant to be for me,” he tells you, and you blush slightly.

Bucky takes his hand away from your folds and wraps his arms around your waist, lifting you up. Your legs are around his waist when he walks with you along the floor to the bedroom the two of you share right now. The mission is completely forgotten. It’s just the two of you — you and Bucky.

It doesn’t take long for your super soldier to carry you into the room and lock the door before he places you on the bed. He stands in front of you, his eyes roaming over your body.

“Strip,” he demands.

“Do it by yourself, old man." you laugh, but the way he looks at you lets you be quiet immediately.

“I can do it, but I don’t think I can hold back then.”

You swallow hard, your eyes focused on him, and the way he takes a step forward and closer to you lets you shiver once more. His aura, his eyes, he makes you go crazy, so you do what he tells you.

“Could you- Can you open the zipper, please?” you ask, and Bucky nods, stepping closer.

His firm chest is almost pressed against your face when he reaches his hands over your shoulders and opens your dress. Bucky lets his hands slide down over your shoulders, holding the fabric in his hand and exposing your shoulders.

Then he takes a step back. You nod as a thank you, standing up and letting the fabric slide down.

“You're pretty, and all mine,” he tells you, reaching out his hands to touch your waist.

Bucky pulls you closer, his hand sliding up your back. He opens your bra and throws it away. Bucky's metal hand captures one of your breasts. You moan softly when his cold hand meets your warm flesh.

He leads you back to the bed until you sit there once again. Bucky gets on his knees in front of you, and you smile mischievously.

“Don’t smile like that; you make me jealous and want me to share what’s mine. I will give you all my cum, and you will beg for more,” he groans, pushing you down so you lay on your back.

Your best friend lowers his head and kisses your pussy through the fabric of your panties. Your hands find their way, and you grip his hair to ground yourself. He uses his hand to push your parties to the side, licking through your folds before he groans.

“You taste better than I thought,” he mumbles, pushing his tongue against your entrance.

“Bucky, more- please,” you moan, arching your back.

He chuckles but does what you want and pushes his tongue inside of you. His metal fingers joining his tongue, he moves one of the fingers inside of you, curling it. With your walls clenching around him, you moan loudly and throw your head back.

Bucky pushes another of his fingers inside of you, pushing them until he reaches his knuckles, and then he pulls them out of you again. After a few more thrusts, he finds your sweet spot, pressing his fingers against it. Your wet and warm walls clench around him, making it almost impossible for him to move his fingers.

“I’m so close. Bucky, please,” you beg, but he stops his movements and removes his fingers.

He sits up and looks at his fingers; they are glistening with your slick, and you blush when he pushes them into his mouth to suck them clean. Bucky groans and takes his clothes off as well.

First his shirt, then he stands up to open his belt and pushes his pants down. You look at him, following his movements with your eyes. You gasp when you see the bulge of his growing dick in his boxers.

“Like what you see, doll?” he asks, and you nod, looking into his face and discovering his body before you stare at his member again.

Bucky pushes the fabric down. His dick springs free, the tip already leaking with pre-cum, and he wraps one of his hands around his member, stroking himself a few times while his eyes are on you.

“Don’t know how often I have imagined that already,” he groans.

You sit up and move yourself further onto the bed. Your legs are spread, and Bucky joins you in bed. He sits between your legs, his dick still sliding through his hand. Bucky slides his tip through your wet folds, groaning when he feels the warmth and wetness. Then he lines himself up with your entrance.

You wrap your hands around his neck and pull him closer, pressing your lips on his and biting his lip softly while he pushes inside of you. Bucky pushes himself further into you, slowly, so he won’t hurt you. He is focused on your expression, making sure to stop when he could hurt you.

“Move, please,” you say and throw your head back when he suddenly pushes the rest of his dick inside of you.

Bucky is balls deep inside of you. He groans softly when you clench around him. Your hands are still wrapped around his neck while he thrusts his hips, moving his dick between your tight walls.

He hits your sweet spot with every movement, making you clench around him more. You moan whenever he thrusts inside of you. The pleasure in your body feels overwhelming, but you love it.

“He could fuck you like that,” Bucky says, kissing your forehead and thrusting inside of you harder. “And he can't love you the way I do. I will fuck you so full with my cum that, doll,” he adds and groans.

“Bucky faster.”

Your best friend chuckles and does what you want. He moves faster and harder inside of you. You can feel the veins on his cock, his dick hitting every right spot inside of you.

His hand finds its way to your clit playing with it while he thrusts in a steady rhythm inside of you. The way you clench around him and your moans get louder, he knows you will cum with a few more thrusts.

“Come for me; scream my name while you cum all over my dick. And I will give you all of my cum; fill you so much; after that, you’re pregnant with my babies,” he mumbles into your ear.

The moment he tells you, you feel the pleasure in your stomach grow until you squirt all over Bucky. The orgasm and the pleasure in your body are better than you ever felt before, and you say his name over and over again while he fucks you through your orgasm.

You’re already overstimulated, but Bucky still thrusts his hips further against yours. You’re a morning mess, your hands tugging on his hair. And you feel the next orgasm building when he still rubs circles on your clit.

“Oh fuck, will give you all of my cum; don’t think this little pussy can take it all,” he groans.

With a few more movements, he cums inside of you and pulls you over the edge with him. Bucky lets his head fall down on your shoulder. His breath is heavy like yours, and he slowly calms down. You slide your fingers through his hair while his dick is still inside of you, and you feel his cum inside of you — cum painting your walls.

“Now you’re mine, and only mine,” Bucky tells you, biting into your neck. “And you will carry my babies, won’t you?”

“I will,” you say, and chuckle when he lifts himself up and kisses your lips.

“My doll, my wonderful, precious doll.”

Bucky slowly pulls out of you, his eyes focused on the spot where your body was connected and where his cum is dripping out of you now. Then he looks up at you again and smiles.

“I love you; I don’t want to be just your best friend. I want to be yours; I want you to be mine,” he confesses, leaning over you again.

“I love you too, and I want nothing more than to be yours. I wanted to date the guy because I wasn’t able to tell you what I felt. I was scared you didn’t feel the same, but you do. And I’m yours, all yours, Buck,” you say, and he nods, kissing you passionately.

“Let’s clean ourselves, and then we should look to see if our people are still eating or if we cuddle after taking a warm bubble bath." Bucky laughs, and you chuckle, and he lifts you up to go to the bathroom and take a bath together.

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