#the more i learn about the history of life. the more alien it seems to me

[bumblingbabooshka]

Icheb, Naomi, Miral and T'Meni

[opens-up-4-nobody]

...

[in1-nutshell]

I know your on a break from requests but I don’t want to forget this one, so I’m just gonna leave it here till your back to taking requests ☺️

The butts and cons reacting to An adult buddy who is an archeologist and actively studies and learns the cybertronian language and history. A buddy who is in charge of a team that travels around the world too study history. And she has studied the cybertronian language so much that she can read and write it, she can sort of speak it aswell.

I can’t stop thinking about this, especially because I love the idea of a certain archivist (Optimus) and archeologist/historian buddy having little knowledge sharing conversations…..possibly romance 😏

But you do you boo

Tried going for a pre romantic vibe for this one. Optimus deserves a friend to just be himself around. Introvert to introvert levels of friendship. Lets see how Buddy navigates their friendship with Prime.

Hope you enjoy!

Human Buddy the archivist and who studies Cybertronian culture with Optimus Prime

SFW, slight romantic, platonic, Human reader

Buddy was an archivist that worked alongside Agent Fowler. They met while they worked as a former spy for the government that retired that life to pursue their passion.

They met the bots with him.

“Autobots. I’d like you to meet a friend of mine that will be working with you. This is former agent Buddy.”--Fowler

“Why bring us a former agent, Agent fowler?”--Ratchet

“Because ratchet, they are in charge of learning about your culture and in charge of helping you all learn about Earth’s culture.”--Fowler

“…Are they okay?”—Bulkhead

Buddy staring intently at Optimus’s frame.

“What do you—Buddy, Buddy no—”--Fowler

Buddy locking eyes with Optimus.

Optimus locking optics on Buddy.

Both-- Introvert radar on: Potential Friend spotted.

“Well good luck with that. See you all in 5.”--Fowler

“Wait what do you mean? Agent? Agent!”--Ratchet

It was Budy’s job to get to know the giant aliens more. They would be lying if they said they didn’t enjoy learning about the bots culture. They had gotten to know the members of the misfit team through the years. Sure, it did lead to some misadventures along the way, especially when the kids came along…

“Beeep? (Buddy, can I ask you a question?)”—Bumblebee

“Sure Bee! What’s your question?”—Buddy

“Beeep bep bop? (What does ‘babygirl’ mean? I heard Miko saying that to Jack.)--Bumblebee

“… Where’s Miko?”—Buddy

Despite this, they especially hit it off with Optimus.

Buddy seemed to have awaken Orion Pax from time to time with their thirst for knowledge.

Prime and Buddy by the screens looking at Iacon records.

“By the Primes…”--Ratchet

“What is it?”--Arcee

“I think I know why Agent Fowler said, ‘good luck’.”--Ratchet

“Why? They seem to be fine? What harm is that?”—Arcee

“Do you think it’s in section 3ab part 4 sub article 15?”—Buddy

“No, maybe in section 3.4 ab part 5 sub article 16?”—Optimus

“Oh, true maybe its—“--Buddy

“There’s two of them now.”--Ratchet

The Prime is more than happy to share his planet’s culture alongside the rest of the team. But those moments are usually reserved for the two of them.

It was their thing.

Soon enough the kids and June came into the picture.

Buddy wasn’t going to lie and say it was easy to explain their job to them. But the sight on their faces when they would go in depth about a certain topic was priceless. It was always nice to have someone interested in this line of work.

“You know you can ask Bulkhead about this stuff, right?”--Buddy

“That’s right you can ask me about stuff.”--Bulkhead

“Yeah but some of the stuff you weren’t there and Buddy is pretty much a walking wiki page on Cybertronian history.”--Miko

“I’m not sure whether to take that as a compliment or not? But thank?”--Buddy

“If you want history why don’t you ask Ratchet or Prime?”--Bulkhead

“I want a quick story not a university lecture.”--Miko

Now, did all this knowledge make them a bit bias about the war.

Yes, yes it did.

But Buddy wasn’t blind in the way stories go.

They secretly want the Cons input on the war and their beliefs. They have lost count of the number of times they have stood up for the bots against other humans.

The worst one came from June after she tried to take the kids away from the base and blaming the bots for letting them get hurt on their watch.

“June stop that right now!”--Buddy

“Why! They let the kids get hurt on their watch!”--June

“I understand your concern but let them off the hook a little okay!? They don’t have optics in the back of their helms you know!”--Buddy

“They still—”--June

“We are at war June! Whether you want to open your eyes to it or not! People are going to get hurt. No one can promise a safe return… no one can. So, for the love of Primus, June, shut it.”--Buddy

Optimus never saw the fury in Buddy’s eyes than in that moment. Nonetheless he is a bit grateful for them standing up while he tries to take that blame. The team does let Buddy know they appreciate them.

Buddy did get kidnapped one day by Megatron himself.

By the time the planned hostage negotiations were going to happen, Megatron had gotten a hit of nostalgia. It came in the form of his tiny hostage.

“So, you’re Megatron?”--Buddy

“Yes, I am. Now—”--Megatron

“Oh finally! You have no idea how long I’ve actually wanted to meet you.”--Buddy

“…What—”--Megatron

“I have so many questions to ask you and your cause.”--Buddy

“You want to know about the Decepticon cause?--Megatron

“Yes! I mean, I know pretty much what the autoboots have had to say, I want to know the war from your causes point of view. For example, how did it start? From what I heard, you wanted to bring a new change for your fellow Cybretronian were things were going to be better for everyone. And, not to embarrass you or anything, but I quoted some of your earlier works—”--Buddy

Megatron now looking at a smaller Orion Pax talking about his works.

“… Pax.”--Megatron

“I—what?”--Buddy

“You’re designation now is Pax.”--Megatron

“Oh I guess—”--Buddy

“Come with me Pax, I have plenty of Decepticon data pads that you can look over.”--Megatron

“Okay!”--Buddy

Megatron couldn’t bring himself to destroy the fleshy. They were an organic replica of how Orion Pax was before the war. Dare he say it, but he missed the smaller bot he once knew and grew to call brother. He can’t do it.

“Lord Megatron, may I be so bold—”--Starscream

“You may not.”--Megatron

“—as to ask you why the organic is doing with that data pad?”--Starscream

“They wanted to learn more about our cause, isn’t that right Pax?”--Megatron

“I finished with this one, may I have another one?”--Buddy

“Of course, Soundwave.”--Megatron

Soundwave passes another data pad to ‘Pax’.

“Thank you!”--Buddy

“…Did you name the organic Pax?”—Starscream

“Is that a problem Starscream?”—Megatron

“Of course not—“—Starscream

“Then silence. Come now Pax.”--Megatron

“All right then. Bye Soundwave! By Starscream!”—Buddy

“…What in the Pits…”—Starsceam

Megatron didn’t want to seem like a weakling to his army, so he decided to do the hostage video but as soon as he got what he came for, to split with Pax.

Optimus was furious to hear about Megatron’s negotiations and that he had Buddy. Everyone was angry and ready to get Buddy back. Prime is considering the possibility of cutting off more than Megatron’s arm this time around.

Everyone goes to the location where Megatron said the negotiations would be held.

Its to everyone surprise to see Buddy come out of the ground bridge with a little bit of scratches here and there.

“Buddy!”--Everyone

“Hey! How’s everyone?”--Buddy

“How did you escape?”--Ratchet

“Oh, I didn’t.”--Buddy

“You did not?”--Optimus

“No, actually I managed to strike a deal with ol’ Megs. I get to go back to you on the condition that I return to the Nemesis every month or so. And before you say anything, no details from either side.”--Buddy

“Well, we’re just happy your back.”--Bulkhead

Later…

“Hey Optimus.”--Buddy

“Yes?”--Optimus

“I didn’t know that Megatron had a soft spot for nerdy archivists.”--Buddy

“… Apparently he does.”--Optimus

“What are you guys talking about?”--Miko

“Lecture work.”--Buddy

[literary-illuminati]

2024 Book Review #6 – Exordia by Seth Dickinson

This is a book I have been looking forward to for quite literally years, from someone who is easily one of my favourite working authors. I also read the short story the book was expanded out from before I even knew it was going to be a book, and so went in spoiled on the broad strokes of what turned out to be the climax of the whole thing. All to say my opinion on this is unlikely to match that of the typical reader, I guess.

Anyway, Exordia is a glorious spectacular mess that has no right to cohere anywhere near as well as it does. It’s target audience is small, but I’m certainly somewhere in it. Please ignore all the marketing it’s so bad you have to wonder if someone at Tor just has it out for the author.

Exordia is a, well, a profoundly difficult book to give any sort of plot summary for. The first act involves Anna, a 30-something survivor of the Anfal Genocide now living a rather unimpressive life in New York City, until one day in the early 2010s she sees an alien eating the turtles in Central Park. Then there’s a cat-and-mouse hunt between terrifying alien snake-centaurs for the future of free will in the galaxy, and the plot jumping to kurdistan, and six more POV characters from as many different nations, and nuclear weapons, and oh so many people dying messily. The first act is an oddly domestic and endearing piece of table setting, the second is (to borrow the idiom of the book’s own marketing) Tom Clancy meets Jeff Vandermeer or Roadside Picnic, and the third is basically impossible to describe without a multipage synopsis, but mostly concerned with ethical dilemmas and moral injuries. It’s to the book’s credit that it never bats an eye at shifting focus and scale, but it does make coming to grips with it difficult.

This is, as they say, a thematically dense book, but it’s especially interested in the fallout of imperialism. The Obama-era ‘don’t do stupid shit’ precise and sterile form of it in particular – the book’s a period piece for a reason, after all. The ethics of complicity – of being offered the choice of murdering and betraying those around you or having an alien power with vastly superior destructive powers inflict an order of magnitude more misery to you, them, and everyone in the same general vicinity to punish you for the inconvenience – is one that gets a lot of wordcount. It is not an accident that the man most willing and able to collaborate with the overwhelming powerful alien empire in hopes of bargaining some future for humanity is the National Security Council ghoul who came out of organizing surveillance information for the drone wars. It’s also not a coincidence that the main (if only by a hair) protagonist is someone with a lot of bitter memories over how the US encouraged Iraq’s kurdish population to rebel in the ‘90s and then just washed their hands and let them be massacred (the book couldn’t actually ship with a historical primer on modern kurdish history, so it’s woven into the story in chunks with varying amount of grace. But it is in fact pretty thematically key here).

Speaking of complicity, the book’s other overriding preoccupation in (in the broadest sense) Trolley Problems. Is it better to directly kill a small number of people or, through your inaction, allow a larger number to die? Does it matter is the small number is your countrymen and the larger foreigners, or vice versa? What about humans and aliens? Does it matter whether the choice is submitting to subjugation or killing innocents as a means to resist it? What about letting people around you die to learn the fundamental truth of the cosmos? Does the calculus change when you learn that immortal souls (and hell) are real? This is the bone the story is really built around chewing on.

All that probably makes the text seem incredibly didactic, or at least like a philosophical dialogue disguised as a novel. Which really isn’t the case! The book definitely has opinions, but none of the characters are clear author-avatars, and all perspectives are given enough time and weight to come across as seriously considered and not just as cardboard cutouts to jeer at. Okay, with the exception of one of the two aliens who you get the very strong sense is hamming it up as a cartoon villain just for the of it (he spends much of the book speaking entirely in all caps). There definitely are a couple points where it feels like the books turning and lecturing directly at the reader, but they’re both few and fairly short.

The characters themselves are interesting. They’re all very flawed, but more than that they’re all very...embodied, I guess? Distracted with how hot someone is, concerned with what they ate that morning or the smell of something disgusting, still not over an ex from years ago. Several of them are also sincerely religious in a way that’s very true to life to actual people but you rarely see in books. The result is that basically comes as being far more like actual humans than I’m at all used to in most fiction (of course, a lot of those very human qualities get annoying or eye-roll inducing fairly quickly. But hey, that’s life). Though that’s all mostly the case at the start of the book – the fact that the main cast are slowly turning into caricatures of themselves as they’re exposed to the alien soul manipulation technology is actually a major plot point, which I’m like fifty/fifty on being commentary on what happens to the image and legacy of people as they’re caught up in grand narratives versus just being extended setup for a joke about male leads in technothrillers being fanfic shipbait.

Part of the characters seeming very human is that some (though by no means all) of the POVs are just incredibly funny, in that objectively fucked up and tasteless way that people get when coping with overwhelming shock or trauma. It’s specifically because the jokes are so in-your-face awful that they fit, I think? It manages to avoid the usual bathetic trap a lot of works mixing in humour with drama fall into, anyway.

Speaking of alien soul manipulation technology – okay, you know how above I said that the points where the book directly lectured the reader were few and far between. This is true for lectures about politics or morality. All the freed up space in this 530 page tome is instead used for technobabble about theoretical math. Also cellular biology, cryptography, entropics, the organization of the American security state, how black holes work, and a few dozen other things. This book was edited for accuracy by either a doctoral student from every physical science and an award winning mathematician, or else just by one spectacularly confident bullshitter with several hundred hours on wikipedia. Probably both, really. I did very much enjoy this book, but that is absolutely predicated on the fact that when I knew when to let my eyes glaze over and start skimming past the proper nouns.

The book has a fairly complete narrative arc in its own right, but the ending also screams out for a sequel, and quite a lot of the weight and meaning of the book’s climax does depend on followthrough and resolution in some future sequel. Problematically, the end of the book also includes a massive increase in scale, and any sequel would require a whole new setting and most of a new cast of characters, so I’m mildly worried how long it will be before we get it (if ever).

The book is also just very...I’m not sure flabby is the right word, but it is doing many many different things, and I found some of them far more interesting than others. I’m not sure whether Dickinson just isn’t great at extended action scenes or if I am just universally bored by drawn out Tom Clancy fantasies, but either way there were several dozen pages too many of them. The extended cultural digressions about the upbringing and backstories of each of the seven POVs were meanwhile very interesting! (Mostly, I got bored of the whole Erik-Clayton-Rosamaria love triangle Madonna complex thing about a tenth of the way into the book but it just kept going.) It did however leave the book very full of extended tangents and digressions, even beyond what the technobabble did. Anna herself, ostensibly the main protagonist, is both utterly thematically loadbearing but very often feels entirely vestigial to the actual, like, plot, brought along for the ride because she’s an alien terrorist’s favourite of our whole species of incest-monkeys. The end result is, if not necessarily unfocused, then at least incredibly messy, flitting back and forth across a dozen topics that on occasion mostly just seem unified by having caught the author’s interest as they wrote.

It’s interesting to compare the book to Anna Saves It All, the short story it was based on – quite a lot changed! But that’s beyond the scope of this already overlong review. So I guess I’ll just say make sure to read the book first, if you’re going to.

[batmanisagatewaydrug]

Hello sex witch! I hope i am not disrespectful or annoying in sending this ask. Im a mid 20s straight dude who has never had any sexual experience, and i know people constantly say that it doesnt define me, that i shouldnt base my self worth on that, but the fact is it is incredibly alienating to be an adult who simply does not participate in what for most people seems to be a normal part of adult life. I want to have sexual experiences, but at this point im afraid i am like… too broken to start? Like who would want to initiate a sexual experience with someone like me yknow? I guess im asking for advice in how to overcome this kind of thing and begin having a sex life. Even if you can’t provide much advice, I’m hoping that if you post this, maybe other people in my situation will feel a little less alone. Love and light to you <3

hi anon,

this isn't disrespectful or rude at all, and I'm glad you're willing to reach out for advice about this! I often worry that I'm missing the 20-something straight dude demographic, but I'm glad to know some of y'all are out there, because you deserve compassionate conversations about sex as much as everyone else does :)

I'm gonna say this right up front: you're not broken. nobody is! whenever you find yourself worrying that there's something about you that would make any potential partner go running, I want you to imagine the situation were reversed. if a woman you were attracted to told you something about herself that was the same thing you're ashamed of in yourself, would you stop being attracted to her?

in this case, would it be a dealbreaker for you that someone else hadn't had any previous sexual partners? would you think they were broken and unfuckable, or would you see that as just one aspect of a person who's much more than their sexual history?

if you wouldn't feel negatively about a partner having that trait then I'm sorry, you're not allowed to hate it in yourself! them's the rules!

listen: very rarely does a person pick a sexual partner because of their extensive sexual resume. people connect over shared interests, over similar senses of humor and values, over bonds that can be formed in a second if the vibes are right. most people won't care how many other partners you've had; they'll care if you seem interesting and dynamic and worth getting to know more in a carnal manner.

listen: ultimately, you have very little control over whether or not you have sex. it's largely a matter of luck and coincidence unless you feel like paying someone to have sex with you, which is a fine thing to do - sex workers need to make rent, after all. but what you can control is how you show up in the world, how you express yourself, and how you interact with others. cultivate yourself. dedicate time to your interests, take loving care of yourself, learn to do things that make you happy without shame, practice being a good friend and conversational partner, take risks that let you have fun outside your comfort zone.

in short, focus on the areas of your life that you can control rather than dwelling on the ones dictated so heavily by chance. the best case scenario is that you become the sexiest, most interesting person alive; the worst case scenario is that you enjoy life more fully whether you have a partner or not.

also, hey: for what it's worth, studies pretty consistently find that most people tend to WILDLY overestimate the amount of sex that other people are having while considering themselves below average. the truth is that you're unlikely to be nearly as much of an outlier as you worry that you are.

[rjalker]

A thing I keep noticing in stories about slavery that have been written by white people is that it can never just be "regular" oppression and slavery.

It always has to have some magical or scifi-tech componant to it that makes it work.

The Jaffa in Stargate are only enslaved because they're dependant upon the Goa'uld larva. As though it's impossible to oppress people without literally making them chemically dependant upon you.

Constructs (aka, anthroids) in The Murderbot Diaries are only enslaved because they have brain chips that will fry them if they disobey an order. As though it's impossible to force people to do things they don't want to unless you can literally kill them instantly if they don't.

These kinds of authors don't seem to fundamentally grasp that slavery is a real thing that happens in real life. Without any impossible outside help that only exists in fantasy or scifi. Real people are enslaved and they don't need to have killer brain chips in their heads to do it. They don't need to be surgically altered to rely on their slavers for their health.

It's the same with people who only write abusive relationships if there's some literal actual magical thing keeping the victim from leaving. As though real abusive tactics just don't exist.

It's just really fucking aggravating. I know I've seen tons more examples of this but I can't remember what they were from.

It's like these people just refuse to accept that real oppression exists without the aid of magical brain chips or parasitic aliens. You don't need to be able to literally fry someone's brain if they think bad thoughts about you if you physically or psychologically beat them down and enact real fucking control over their life.

I don't know. This kind of trope just seems like it's diminishing the affect of real slavery and abuse because it's pretty explicitly saying that "if XYZ magical control thing didn't exist, these people wouldn't be oppressed because they'd fight back".

As though real oppressed people don't fight back. As though the whole problem of being oppressed isn't that you lose every time because you lack the power that the people who oppress you use to keep you down.

I feel like it's because A)These people don't want to actually admit how horrible real life slavery and abuse is. B)they see themselves as the main character of the universe, so they think that if they were the one being enslaved, they'd instantly succeed at fighting back and winning, because they either can't, or refuse to aknowledge that when faced with systemic oppression, they'd be just as helpless as every other victim in history. They want to see themselves as all-powerful even in imaginary situations where they face oppression they've never actually dealt with, so they have to add some magical Impossible Barrier over top of the actual oppression to make it justified for why they haven't won already.

They think that if the roles were reversed and white people were systemically oppressed, they'd be the main character who magically leads the uprising with has no casualties. They think they'd magically never get hurt or watch their family or friends get hurt or be traumatized or actually opressed in any way.

It's definitely a form of victim blaming. It's definitely making light of real slavery and abuse. It's very fucking infuriating to have to keep reading in pretty much any scifi or fantasy series that deals with slavery that's written by white people.

so. Writing tip. How about learn how actual systemic oppression works instead of assuming the only way to enslave people is by literally being able to fry their brain?

Like. It's saying "these people have literal murder chips in their heads to enslave them, what's your excuse for not freeing yourself?"

[leohtttbriar]

I think Michael like for all that she is she is definitely an anthropologist like I think she takes a very great cultural lense before a scientific

you know, i think you are absolutely right! thank you so much for bringing this up! i wasn't even thinking about her academic specialties when i wrote this post. her first question being about "praying" could very easily just have been the way she was trained to meet alien peoples where they are first before obnoxiously being like "what is that, tho"

and, to your point about the cultural v scientific lens:

for better or worse, i'd say star trek collapses the boundaries between a lot of academic disciplines. "hard" v "soft" science doesn't seem to be a distinction in the star trek speculative world, where linguistics and anthropology are as much about physics and biology and no one is going to pretend like learning languages is a different kind of Study to learning chemistry. this sometimes does not work, imo, because sometimes the writing will accidentally slip into an unexamined essentialism with the alien cultures, which renders the whole of the allegory sort of silly and potentially all kinds of offensive. but it sometimes does work.

discovery, from what i remember of the first two seasons (i'm only just now starting the third, bc i lost my cbs account between 2 and 3, alas! etc), seems more able than other series to collapse the distance between disciplines and walk the line between what is cultural and what is material culture informed by biology. like saru constantly talks of his alien species and how their history of being hunted on his planet manifests in a perpetual anxiety and tamed-curiosity for him but also lends a level of care and sensitivity that he excels in---all of which fleshes out the character while giving him the awareness and consciousness to know why he may be acting a certain way compared to others and why he shouldn't ever be demeaned for it and where his body and his body's millions-of-years-old natural history can be challenged with that consciousness and how his consciousness can be valued precisely for its origins.

the klingons and vulcans, while not as sophisticated as the character saru, also seem to be largely cultural products that are informed by their specific biology. michael, somewhat caught between the cultural product and her own biological reality, can affect vulcan mannerisms and is very often portayed as thinking like a vulcan, while remaining very recognizable to us. her phrasing and her pattern of speech, while not monotone, are normally utterances that move from established fact to logical conclusion. I have nowhere to go back to...the only thing I can do right now is trust something, she says, upon being thrust nine-hundred years in the future. it's the statement of a stoic philosopher (probably one of the "vulcan" influences). she is concerned with what is material and what is real and what is real to others.

which is why i really like what you pointed out about her anthropology expertise--culture is real and often naturalized to those who live in it. michael is definitely someone, what with her studies and how she was raised, who is intimately aware of how the alien can be made familiar, how bodies can't be denied but you can learn to know them, how consciousness is strange and existence-in-causal-time stranger, and how people (all creatures included) are never all one thing or another.

obviously there's no perfect speculative fiction creating speculative cultures. the hurdles of making a sell-able show and the ingrained biases and limitations of the writers are not insignificant. but the storytelling here is engaging with conceits concerning the preciousness of life and the immutability of that preciousness--even if you don't understand it.

(also i just love michael burnham with all my heart. don't think it was a coincidence she was named after the angel who carries a sword.)

[awkwardgtace]

Mikhail's Realization

Hey Hey finally finished this. Brain tried to do like a million ideas in one for this, but I did it. We're back with Mikhail and Ian in the alien sizeshifters AU

Mikhail has learned lots about humans and asks Ian to attend an event that would have a crowd. Unfortunately he gets more than he bargained for.

Mikhail's Realization

Mikhail thought he’d grown to have a semblance of understanding for humans. Not all of them, but at least ones from Ian’s region. He knew they used a type of currency to access goods and services. He managed to acquire an amount Ian claimed “would leave him set for life”. That terminology wasn’t entirely clear, but Mikhail assumed it meant he didn’t need to acquire more.

He understood from traveling to the settlement with Ian in the past that humans were slow, and at least Ian seemed to have less stamina. Mikhail made a form of transport mimicking what human media showed as “cool”. A motorized bicycle which he added an automatic balance and an automatic pilot to.

All of that made him confident when he stood outside of Ian’s door after he learned of an event occurring in the nearby settlement. It would be his first chance to observe humans gathered together. Of course he felt best if Ian accompanied him. The times he’d been around humans gave him a need to retreat. His brother helped relieve that. 

Although there were issues around Ian at times as well. It was often a struggle to match Ian’s size. His control was to a level even others of his own kind found it off putting, yet around Ian…

Mikhail forced his thoughts to the back of his mind and knocked. A period of crashes sounded before the door slid open. Ian appeared with his chest heaving. Mikhail felt his antennae twist in concern, but chose to ignore it. He did not want to become what media called a “worrywart”. A common issue when their species’ ups and downs were so different.

“Hey,” Ian leaned against the doorframe. “What’s up?” 

“I have learned of a ‘festival’ in the nearby settlement. I thought it would be good to attend. We could also test the transportation properly.”

Moments of silence settled between them. Ian’s expression changed more than once. Mikhail couldn’t put emotions to each look, some gave him worry. The way Ian’s pupils constricted as he thought sent a strangely familiar surge of energy urging Mikhail to grow down his back. He’d only felt this energy once on his own planet, but it was common among humans. He found it incredibly strange. His brother’s sigh brought back his focus.

“The crowd shouldn’t be bad if we go now, I’ll be ready in a few minutes,” Ian grinned. His eyes moved again, the pupils constricted. Another familiar surge through Mikhail’s body.

“I will wait near the entrance once I have applied my human disguise.”

The door slid closed as Mikhail walked away. Slowly he let himself start to grow. The process itself always soothed his anxieties and cleared his mind. The bones in his body unfolded as his skin stretched. He let himself grow as fast as he could once he’d left the smaller portion of his ship. Quick steps brought him to his disguise applicator. He stepped inside and applied the settings Ian had suggested to make him look ‘more normal’. Subtle shifts to make his human face less symmetrical. The reason why still eluded him.

The process happened too fast for him to truly experience it. One moment he was his maximum height, the next he was barely taller than Ian. His antennae twitched uncomfortably under his hair. They were locked down with a substance that was partly used to mold into human ears. That part still made him curious how humans managed. If they couldn’t move their ears to hear dangers, how had they avoided them?

Mikhail made a mental note to research human history at a later point.

He stepped out into the open. He attempted to preoccupy his mind with other thoughts. As he took in his ship from his current position, he once more considered Ian’s fear of his size. If he had felt trapped with a being so much larger, one he didn’t understand, he knew his own heart would slow to a steady rhythm. Even more so if he had the stories humans told. 

That reminded him of something else he’d found strange. Based on what he had understood, they had similar diets. Plant based and the meat off trees. Strange that they had a fear of a similar looking being eating them. Although the pred-

“Mik,” Ian’s voice nearly made his antennae rip free of his disguise. He attributed the silence of Ian’s approach to the difference in their senses. Humans’ had much more sensitive ones. “So what did you make for transport anyway? A flying saucer?” 

“I don’t know what that is so I do not believe so,” Mikhail answered. Ian shifted slightly, a smile on his face.

“Guess that would be too on the nose. So is it a car?”

“No.” Mikhail mimicked an expression of confusion he’d seen. 

“Right, that makes sense…”

 “I printed what my research calls a ‘motorcycle’. It was similar to vehicles I’ve used on my own planet. I added an automatic balance feature and an automatic pilot. It seemed to be the safest option for us to use around the local flora.” 

Mikhail walked towards the entrance of the ship and stopped in front of the motorcycle. Turning back, Ian's eyes were wide. For a moment Mikhail could barely keep himself from growing. Something about the look Ian had sent more energy surging through him. Pupils small, eyes almost hungry. It wasn’t… it wasn’t what he expected from the human he’d already grown close to. As Ian approached he fought to ignore the push of instincts.

“This is… wow. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised, but how does it even work? Not gas right?”

“Gas?” Mikhail tilted his head. Ian didn’t respond, running his hands over the vehicle instead. “It uses an electric battery that charges with proximity to the ship. My intention was for you to ‘drive’ as it were. I would sit behind you. In theory I should be able to grow fast enough to protect us both from injury if there is an issue.”

“An electric bike… makes sense. Maybe I can get him to leave it when…” The words were soft. Ian trailed off at the end. Something he had been doing a lot. Something he’d ask after this excursion, preferably when he managed to match Ian’s height directly. Likely his larger size outside of his disguise kept Ian from divulging his worries. The softness was lost as Ian looked back at him. “Wait, don’t you have to open the door before we leave? I thought you had to be-” Ian motioned towards the ceiling with his hands-” to open the ship.”

“There are proper interfaces to open the ship all along the wall. I thought I had explained that. Regardless-” Mikhail tapped the screen near the handles of the vehicle, the ship’s door opened in response- “I have added something akin to a ‘garage opener’ to this vehicle.”

Ian’s mouth hung open for a few seconds. Mikhail felt his antennae tugging to twist and untwist themselves. A worry this was too far. Instead, Ian climbed on the motorcycle. After a heavy pause, he laughed. Mikhail used that as a sign he should take his own seat. Worry made him pause when Ian tensed, but the relaxing of his brother’s shoulders pushed the worry to the back of his mind. 

“So, uh, how do we drive this thing?” Ian asked. 

Mikhail leaned forward and tapped the center a few times. An autopilot was enabled. He grabbed the handles and the vehicle roared to life. “It will start once hands are placed on the handles. An autopilot will drive to destinations. I have set it to go towards the settlement.”

“Make sure you call it a city or town when we’re there. Although I guess it doesn’t matter since no one else will know what you’re saying.” 

—----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Reaching the settlement was uneventful. Ian grabbed the handles at one point, but did not fight the autopilot. They left the vehicle at the edge of things Ian called barricades. Together they entered the blocked off location. Mikhail felt his heart slow to a steadier rhythm as they reached the event. Ian stated the crowd would be small, but there were dozens of humans around them. His own species rarely gathered in groups so large; it posed too great a danger. Screams and laughter reached his ears. The high pitch of them could not be comfortable for humans.

“Is this-”

“This is almost exactly how I remember it. The crowd is still small too,” Ian cut him off. Ian’s eyes were nearly shining, the black pupil a small dot amid the brown. Another surge shot through Mikhail. Looking around at the humans only made the surge increase in intensity. This feeling they caused would need to be resolved before visiting what Ian would call a ‘large crowd’.

“I see,” Mikhail tried to hide his discomfort. Ian’s head moved on a swivel, clearly enraptured by the scene around them. He grabbed Mikhail’s hand and brought him deeper into the crowd. The contact with his brother helped to calm the energy pushing him to grow.

“Let’s take a look at the games, it’s early enough that good prizes should still be around!”

Mikhail’s antennae twitched in agreement. He was dragged towards a “game” that required a feat of strength to knock blocks down. His own attempt failed, missing the blocks by a larger margin than he expected. The precision of Ian and the other humans was impressive. He would need to look into what allowed it, perhaps their eyes.

Next Ian brought him to something that used a ‘water gun’ and required it to be aimed at a target. The loud music and bells at someone’s success made it hard for Mikhail to focus. His heart steadied at the thought of humans noticing his struggles. Luckily, they were too focused on the target. Another thing that seemed dangerous. Wouldn’t predators be able to catch them if they were only focused on something in one spot ahead of them?

The loud music and a cheer from beside him moved that thought to the back of his mind. Ian managed to win, achieving ownership of a soft doll of a native creature. He’d ask about it once there was less noise. He wasn’t confident humans with their sensitive hearing would be able to focus easily on discussion.

A long period of time passed with them traveling from vendor to vendor. More games of dexterity and strength. Eventually Ian mumbled something about “bad advertising” when they approached a stall. The ‘prizes’ looked to be stuffed toys, much like the others. This time they all wore shirts that had some form of writing on them and were colored white with black spots. At least to him that was the coloring, he still hadn’t confirmed if humans saw the same shades. He doubted it after Ian had won three stuffed toys of the same variety and color.

“Well boys, gonna try your luck? Place a bet on any number. If you win you get a cow with a coupon for some  hotdogs,” the vendor said. Mikhail narrowed his eyes at the terms. He couldn’t remember ‘cow’ or ‘hotdog’ from his research. Once they left he’d need to ask about it.

“Sure why not?” Ian said. The vendor held something out, Ian swiped a plastic card, the object he swiped against began dispensing small circular plastic objects. Plastic still interested him on a structural level. His kind didn’t have anything similar. He let his mind wander while Ian ‘bet on numbers’.

The vendor spun a wheel that had a strange arrow flicking across a circle of numbers. The silent movement was entrancing. All too soon it stopped with bells ringing again. Mikhail tilted his head, the vendor had a clear distaste towards the alert. 

“Well looks like we have a winner,” the vendor’s tonal indication was more annoyed than joyous. Mikhail looked at Ian who had a smirk on his face before looking at where the numbers to bet were. Each and every one had a circular plastic object on them. “You get the big prize, a stuffed cow and a ten percent off coupon at the hotdog cart… enjoy.”

“Oh, we will,” Ian sounded confident. He took the ‘cow’ along with a slip of paper. When their eyes met, Ian rushed to look away. Mikhail merely tilted his head, once more confused at the action. Ian grabbed his arm and pulled him along. It was the first time Mikhail felt shock at the strength behind the action. He’d thought Ian was weaker…

Ian led them to a quiet part of the event. He sat on some available public seating, and Mikhail mimicked his actions. They sat in silence for a period of time. Mikhail used it to observe the other humans. Throughout the time at the event he’d noticed a number of odd looks sent towards the two of them. At least once he caught some mumbled words, but all he could understand was Ian’s name. Excluding that, this event appeared to be something to relax and bring the community together. It wasn’t quite what he expected. His own kind celebrated indoors primarily out of safety.

“Sorry, Mik,” Ian said. Mikhail looked at him, the human wasn’t meeting his eyes. Hands playing with the ‘cow’. “You wanted to come here, but I wound up dragging you all over instead.”

“I do not quite understand, ” Mikhail said. He tilted his head. The easiest manner to denote confusion. Something most species understood. One he recognized among humans immediately. Ian looked up at him, eyes shining. A feeling in them he couldn’t easily describe. “This is how to experience the ‘festival’, correct?”

“You’re not just trying to make me feel better right?” Mikhail tilted his head to the other side and Ian laughed. “Guess I shouldn’t expect you to do that… or to know what’s happening when you keep calling it a festival. That’s good though… I’m glad I didn’t ruin your day.” Silence settled between them. Humans around them laughed and screamed in joy. Ian sat staring out for a few more moments. “My parents took me here every year when I was a kid… back when my dad was alive, before my mom married my step dad. It was fun, we couldn’t win any of the prizes. She tried for hours to win that stupid betting game, if she… if she’d spent all the money on one round she would have won…”

Mikhail didn’t have any reference for response. Ian’s tone and facial expression denoted sadness. He’d seen things in media suggesting physical affection would be best, but his brother did not appear to enjoy frequent physical touch. His own instincts were to grow in order to offer a safe place for the one in pain. Instead he waited in silence.

“It wasn’t long before my dad died…” Ian leaned against him. It was unexpected, but he moved to wrap an arm around him. Mimicking what humans were shown to appreciate… Finding his own comfort rising from the proximity. It made the looks sent their way, the need to grow in size, fall away. Time passed, humans came and went, prizes won. Eventually Ian sat up straight, Mikhail removed his arm. “I’ll… go get a hotdog. Can you eat human food?”

“The structures I’ve analyzed should be fine. What is this ‘hotdog’ made of?” Mikhail once again tilted his head. 

“This,” Ian held up the ‘cow’, “except the real animal. Not a stuffed toy. This place is known for all beef hotdogs.”

Mikhail’s antennae nearly pulled free from the disguise. It took all his strength to speak, “I do not think it would be safe…”

“I’ll be right back then.”

Ian walked off. Mikhail’s heart began to beat at a slow steady rhythm. His body froze despite the moderate climate. Humans ate fauna of the planet. He had never realized that. His studies in the media had left a number of words he could not parse. He hadn’t found any that depicted the origin of food.

Although Ian’s build and weaker stamina indicated a similar status to his own kind. His inexperience among properly intelligent species had caused this misunderstanding. The training he’d received had accounted for these situations. He’d broken protocol by revealing himself to Ian. By disabling safety mechanisms for himself in favor of the human.

When they first met Ian had broken his skin with his nails. At the time he’d assumed it was a panic response, retractable sharp appendages for defense. Perhaps… perhaps it was something for hunting. Something for breaking the skin on a living creature designated as a meal. For attacking prey… Prey like Mikhail and his entire species.

“Mik?” Ian’s muffled voice shocked him. His heartbeat slowed once more, growing terrifyingly steady. A beat too steady. Thump, thump, thump. It echoed through his body. He looked up to find Ian with what had to be a hotdog in his mouth. “I got lemonade, is that safe for you?”

He couldn’t answer. Mikhail blindly took the offered cup. The liquid inside reflected a dull yellow.  He could only hope that he’d be able to remain calm until returning to his ship. Once there he’d add his own precautions to handle Ian’s predatory instincts. He would be safe…

“Mik?” 

“Your friend ok buddy? He looks out of it?” Another human said. Mikhail slowly managed to look at the new one. It didn’t stop him from seeing Ian bite the meal, the prey, easily. “He looks kind of pale. You get sick on one of the rides? That lemonade may help ya feel a bit better.”

The new human reached for him. He panicked, drinking the lemonade to hopefully make them stop. He had belief, perhaps more of a hope, that Ian was safe. Other humans could potentially see through his disguise. Use their better senses to learn that he was prey. Prey which this crowd could turn around and hunt. The knowledge this was a small gathering made his mind run wild. Human claws could break his skin at his full size, if enough decided to attack his size wouldn’t be enough to prevail…

“Mik… are you ok? Was that safe?” Ian’s words were the only ones his mind would process. The other human continued to talk. The hand came closer, Ian intervened. Would Ian be able to protect him? Would his smallest size be seen as easy prey by his human brother? Could they share a familial bond when he was prey and the other wasn’t?

The humans in front of him were talking. Ian and the other one. His antennae ached as they tried to pull close and twist together. The colors dulled, the voices were lost. His body began to ache. He hunched over covering his middle with his arms. More human words tried to break into his panicked mind. A hand touched him, he flinched. When he managed to look up, he met Ian.

“Mik, come on,” his words barely made it through. The human he had assumed was weak easily pulled him up to stand. Ian took most of his weight and started to return to their vehicle. 

Mikhail blinked.

They were near vendors they’d visited.

Blinked again.

At the exit. Ian wasn’t carrying the multiple prizes. Mikhail would try to fabricate them at home…

Another blink.

Near the vehicle. 

Another blink. 

Standing beside it.

 Another blink. 

Ian was saying something. He couldn’t make out the words. His translator wasn’t working. Or it was and his own mind was failing. His heart’s steady beat only added to his panic and fear.

Another blink.

“-seat-” A word broke through. The seat… Ian wanted him on the seat. Mikhail did his best to move. More pain wracked his body. Strength that hadn’t been obvious was used to aid him. He managed to take a seat. Barely holding himself up before Ian took a seat in front of him. He was quickly pulled forward, his weight mostly supported by Ian. “Just hold on, I’ll get you back.”

Another blink. 

Wind in his face. Ian was talking. Flora blurred around them. 

Another blink.

The body beneath him felt smaller. The pain ebbed.

“Mik,” Ian’s voice was easier to understand. “Try to hold on at this size at least, I don’t wanna get crushed.”

Mikhail focused. It was hard to focus. He had never had such an immediate response to something before. Perhaps it was the smaller size. He had to be smaller.

Another blink.

Ian was bigger than normal. Not by much. Panic gripped his mind. Words slipped out, “Not safe…”

“What’s not safe, Mik?” Tone indicated panic. He couldn’t imagine why. “Doesn’t matter, you can get bigger if it helps, just don’t go too far past what you were at. I can take it.”

Mikhail groaned. His body reacted to the words even if his mind couldn’t. He grew slightly. Enough that he could hide Ian by hunching over the right way. The threat currently helping him didn’t seem to mind. It wouldn’t mind because the threat was Ian, a being he shared a familial bond with. At least temporarily.

“We’ll be there soon. Just hold on… You can’t leave me yet…”

Mikhail wanted to know what those words meant. He wouldn’t be leaving. Another blink.

And another.

And one that lasted longer.

Then the ship was in sight. Ian was saying something. He couldn’t make his mind understand. The words were translated. He knew that. The robotic voice in his mind promised him nothing was wrong. His body grew a bit once more. Ian grunted. There were no complaints. The pain ebbed again. His mind cleared a little. Not enough.

A blink. They were in the ship. A blink. Ian was talking. Words… Asking for medical equipment. Medical equipment was…

“End of size hall,” was all he could manage. 

“Size hall? My size hall? Gimme something Mik.”

Mikhail managed to nod. Silent affirmation. Ian understood. The vehicle… they were still on the vehicle. In the ship. Driving. Down the hall. His body ached. His heart’s steady beat seemed to grow louder. His antennae were wrapped tightly and painfully at the back of his head… His disguise was broken then. 

“Hold on, this is gonna be a rough stop.” Ian’s words only made the steady beat grow louder. Steadier. Almost painful. It made him worried. Would this human drink be enough to kill him? It shouldn’t be… his full size could handle a toxin in that amount. Ian nearby would be dangerous to grow. Although a predator would be fine. Was Ian truly a predator? Were humans?

His moment of doubt fell away as Ian’s hand locked on his arm. Sharp nails pricked his skin. His blood seeped out. Slow, but steady. Steady as his heart was beating. His panic returned. A predator was with him while he was in danger. A predator that the ship was not prepared to defend him against. Then he blinked.

“So, we’re gonna tuck and roll. I don't know how to stop this thing.” Mikhail didn’t know what that meant, but it didn’t matter. Ian pushed them both off the vehicle. It had been slow enough to avoid injury, perhaps some light skin discoloration. When they stopped moving Ian forced him onto his back. He looked down with shimmering eyes. “Mik, how can I use this stuff here to help. What do I do?”

Mikhail didn’t have an answer. There wasn’t a clear cause to the issue. The lemonade could have had additives he didn’t know about… It could have been fauna. His kind could only eat the flora on his planet. He was still setting up the spot on the ship for Ian’s food needs long term, this information could cause issues. His mind wouldn’t focus, he was exhausted.

“Wait, you talked when you got bigger. If you grow, would that help? Will it fix you? At least until you’re able to make some antidote yourself.” Mikhail couldn’t bring himself to respond. “Mik please, I’m not ready for you to be gone. Not yet, please.”

Mikhail closed his eyes. That didn’t sound quite right. Not about just this, just death. He managed to nod.

“Ok, ok grow. I’ll stay here with you. Just whatever will fix this.” Mikhail listened. A tiny part of him was worried how Ian would react to seeing the disguise torn apart. The panicked part of him didn’t care. He grew. “I’m sorry Mik, this is all my fault. I’m so sorry.”

Mikhail felt more aware as his body grew. The threat Ian and other humans posed felt far away. It was something to discuss later. He carefully brought a hand close to Ian, to his brother. He wrapped his fingers around the body that was much sturdier than he realized. Then slowly tilted it so Ian was left on his palm. 

He brought the hand close to his face, allowing himself to grow faster. The way his bones unfolded and his skin stretched helped mask the pain. Once at his full size he stared at Ian. His arm was still bleeding, it would take hours to heal. It wasn’t deadly. His body had pains all over, but it wasn’t as intense. The panic ebbed as he faced his crying brother. This human was safe. As long as they were on equal footing there would be no issues.

After this debacle, Mikhail would add precautions on the ship. More ways to get around if he needed them. Add some safety measures if Ian appeared to enter a need to hunt. It would make it much easier to avoid the threat of being toyed with due to instincts. A memory tried to surface, but his mind was too unsteady to parse it.

As his mind succumbed to a level of exhaustion he’d never felt before, he heard Ian calling his name. The only being in the universe he’d met that used a shortened form…

—-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Mikhail first became aware of the empty feeling in his hand. Ian had left, probably the best option. He could work on the precautionary measures. As he opened his eyes, a dark shadow left him partly blinded. He carefully pushed himself out of it, worried that something had fallen. His body froze, a high pitched whine escaped his chest.

The shadow cast over him was Ian. Big enough Mikhail could fit in Ian’s hand. Ian twitched in his sleep and Mikhail’s heart slowed. His own kind had never felt dangerous with this kind of difference in size. The whine in his chest rose even higher. It wasn’t until the skin covering Ian’s eyes began to move that Mikhail considered his whine might be heard.

One eye opened, he could feel as the massive predator’s gaze passed him by. It forced a memory to the front of his mind, the same one his exhausted mind couldn’t understand. A younger and more adventurous version of himself leaving town when his size had changed. Just before new guardians arrived. Two predators that circled him until someone arrived. Those eyes with a portion like Ian’s that would screw and unscrew. Wax and wane. Focus on the prey.

“Mik…?” Ian’s voice was low. Mikhail tried not to panic as the other eye opened. If he avoided sudden movements then Ian wouldn’t feel instincts to hunt kick in. He’d be fine. They’d discuss it later… This time once Mikhail was ready. “Am I still asleep?”

Ian moved, his shadow grew. Mikhail found himself stumbling back. He barely managed to keep his movements slow. Ian didn’t appear to mind Mikhail’s nerves. It wouldn’t be unreasonable for a predator to enjoy teasing prey. He’d seen it in the field studies he completed before leaving his home.

Once Ian sat up straight, he rubbed his eyes. Mikhail took the chance to try to back away more, but he must have made noise. Ian stopped and stared at him after a single step. Hands shot toward him. An action that he was used to. That was common. Yet it still made him flinch, which made the steady thump in his chest grow worse. His body felt heavy when the hands stopped just shy of him.

“Mik…?” Ian’s voice was softer than before. “I’m sorry, I didn’t know the lemonade would do this to you…”

Mikhail tried to think. If he could talk then this would be better. They’d come to an understanding… He hoped.

“How…” Ian’s voice cracked. Water rolled down his face. “How can I help?”

Ian’s hands moved again. Mikhail slid further back, the translator fell off as he moved. This was the problem with the ones that changed size with him, they weren’t as likely to stay attached. His antennae twisted painfully behind his head. He could already feel the knot they’d formed in his sleep.

“Mik…” 

Mikhail could feel the moment the gaze turned from him. It focused on the translator sitting in front of him. Ian squinted his eyes, a heavy breath left him. Mikhail shivered as it passed him. 

“You are safe. I will not hurt you.”

Ian… Ian spoke Mikhail’s language. It wasn’t the same as when Mikhail attempted human English. A perfect mimicry. So perfect Mikhail would believe Ian was another researcher who’d arrived at the wrong planet. That kicked Mikhail’s mind into gear. Everything he’d read about the predator’s on his own planet left those with mimicry at this level the most deadly.

“Th-there’s no problem.” Mikhail would explain and things would be fine. That was how it worked in theory. There was no reason Ian would cave to instincts over rationale at this moment. Mikhail just had to stay confident. Confident and move slowly. “It appears my body has taken to this size after processing the drink. I did not intend to cause trouble. I had misunderstood the gathering. A chance to display hunting skills was not something I should have been present for. I will be fine, you should return… to…”

Mikhail trailed off as Ian’s head tilted. It caused his shadow to move, the dull light of the room made it hard to meet Ian’s eyes. He waited, afraid of what his words might cause. Ian’s hands moved again. One dropped to the human’s side, but the other moved closer and closer. Mikhail couldn’t stop himself from flinching. He closed his eyes expecting that movement to trigger human hunt instincts.

He waited. And waited. And waited. Eventually, Mikhail risked opening his eyes. Ian’s fingers were close, holding the translator between two human claws. He looked up to find  Ian’s head tilted to one side. His eyes wide with the black portion almost enough to eclipse the brown color. The fingers came closer, Mikhail reached up. He grabbed the translator, careful to avoid the sharp edges of the claws. Almost reluctantly he stuck the base to his neck and the speaker to the end of his antennae. The reluctance fell away as the fingers were pulled back.

“...I’m sorry Mik,” Ian’s voice was soft. Softer than before. “I don’t… I don’t know what you’re talking about. It was just supposed to be for fun. You said most foods were fine, I thought organic lemonade counted. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry… I.. How can we fix what it did? Once you’re back to normal I’ll leave. I'm so sorry.”

Mikhail braced himself before speaking. As terrifying as he found Ian, he didn’t want his human brother to leave. His fear would subside much like Ian’s. “There will be no problem. Once I have regained enough energy I will be fine and add protection for myself against your hunting instincts. We will need to add something to the ship for once my work on this planet is done so that your instincts-”

Mikhail was cut off as Ian’s hands surrounded him. His heart slowed to a point that even Ian’s better senses wouldn’t be sure it wasn’t stopped. A relatively normal response to a predator that was too big to escape. Mikhail logically knew that he should be safe. Ian had experienced being held, which was the easiest way to teach the others of his own species how to handle each other. That logic wasn’t winning.

“Wait, you want me to go with you after you finish here?” Ian’s voice was loud, Mikhail’s tangled antennae ached as they attempted to stay frozen. Digits with sharp claws rested all around him. Some touched his skin. “Mik… oh fuck Mik? Mik please answer. Did I hurt you?”

All his instincts won. Mikhail stayed silent and frozen as Ian’s predatory eyes stared at his tiny form. There were times he felt positive his heart would stop beating entirely. The eyes above him started to shine, quickly followed by drops of water. Ian was crying again. The human began to shake as he climbed to his feet.

“No, no, no,” Ian whispered. Mikhail could feel the pain in those words. At the same time his body felt cold. His mind wouldn’t work, his body couldn’t move. Mikhail’s instincts won over his rational thinking. Which left the idea of Ian’s instincts winning at the forefront of his frazzled thoughts.

He was pressed against Ian’s chest. The rapid heartbeat of the human only left more fear in his body. Even at this size Ian’s steps were shockingly silent. Mikhail faced inner turmoil as Ian moved. The part of him that trusted his human brother wanted to feel at ease. He knew he’d be trapped at this size, he’d have grown already if it was possible. Yet the knowledge that Ian could view him as prey… could kill him, continued to be the louder part of him.

“Shit, shit,” Ian mumbled to himself. Mikhail felt guilty at being the cause. He heard a loud bang that crushed the guilt quickly. “Open already damn it!”

The sound of a door sliding open created more fear. He had no idea what a human might do with potentially dead prey. His antennae felt as though they’d fall off with how rigid they were. Keeping still was somehow more painful than when they continued moving after becoming knotted. Although the knot they were in now would be difficult to free them from.

“This stupid computer has to tell me something,” Ian’s voice was loud now. Mikhail didn’t realize a human could be quite so loud. The digits curled in and pressed against him. The claws were against his skin. A minor increase in pressure and they’d break his skin. He wouldn’t survive his skin breaking at this scale… Not if humans reacted to the blood as predators on his own planet did.

The hand holding him moved. The speed left him dazed as Ian’s hand landed flat on the desk. He hadn’t even noticed the human sitting down. From his position he stared into the room he hadn’t entered since Ian’s panic. Slowly his mind began to process what he saw.

The crashes from before the festival finally made sense. Machines from the ship were scattered all over, inner workings exposed. Squinting slightly he could see that each machine had a book in his own language resting atop them. The oddity itself allowed his nerves to ease. 

“Come on, come on,” Ian’s voice brought Mikhail back to his situation. Doing what he could to avoid moving, he focused back on his brother’s face. “What do I do? Would cpr work? I don’t even know what the proper beat for his heart is. Does he breathe? Gimme something you stupid computer!”

Ian growled. The growl snapped Mikhail out of his frozen state enough to flinch ever so slightly. That tiny flinch was enough for Ian to notice. The human’s eyes locked on his form again. 

“Mik?” Ian whispered. The hand Mikhail was on moved. A whine escaped him causing the hand to freeze immediately. “Mik… are you ok?”

Mikhail couldn’t bring himself to answer.

“What happened? Did-did I do something?”

Mikhail wanted to explain, but his instincts had already taken back over. They only grew stronger as Ian loomed over him. A perfect chance to see teeth different from his own. Ones he thought were the same. Sharp points that would tear flesh. His own looked sharp, but wouldn’t break skin. Not even the biggest of his species would be capable of a feat like that. Their teeth were too flat.

A strong gust of wind pulled Mikhail’s hair forward. Something he should be used to, but knowing it was a predator made it terrifying. Ian’s breath. Pushed back again as he breathed out.

“Mikhail, how can I help? I’ll leave after I promise. Just tell me how to help.”

A whine Mikhail knew he’d only made once in the past escaped his chest. After he was saved from predators, after he was blamed for being young enough to be foolish. He didn’t want that pain again. He was saved back then, someone willing to take his care on full time despite his constant size changing. Ian was ready to leave, even used his full name.

“Mik,” Mikhail managed to get a single word out. Ian’s eyes changed. Wide look and miniscule pupils. “You always say Mik…”

“I…” Ian’s mouth hung open. Fear surged in Mikhail’s body. Pain reached every part of his being, a desperate need to grow. “Yeah I do… What… what happened?”

Mikhail struggled, speaking to a predator while this vulnerable felt foolish. Instincts pushed for him to run or stay silent. Surprise creeped into Ian’s expression and the hand he was on was moved again. It tilted and he slid off onto a soft surface. Far too quickly Ian’s face appeared in front of him. Others of his kind never felt this quick… or deadly.

“This is probably better right?” Ian sounded nervous. “I mean I grabbed you and I hate that so you probably hate it too. Sorry, I just got excited. I thought… I kept thinking you were going to just be gone once your whole research and approach humans thing was done.”

“That has never been my intention,” Mikhail said. It was easier to speak while free from Ian’s hands. “Although we will need to designate a way to deal with…”

“Deal with what?”

Mikhail was actually hopeful he was wrong. That perhaps he misunderstood what Ian meant. Perhaps the ‘real thing’ wasn’t an animal, but the source of the toy. With that hope he managed to face the eyes that seemed to follow every one of his movements. Ian stood, looming perhaps by mistake. Mikhail gathered all of his courage, his antennae hurt as they quivered. “To deal with the fact that you, or rather humans, are… predators.”

Ian stepped back, the distance allowed Mikhail’s heart to reach a somewhat normal pace once more. Ian’s eyes were locked on him, but they didn’t look like a predator’s this time. They looked hurt. Scared even. Ian turned away, pulling out the human device he called a phone. After a few seconds his brother let out a deep sigh.

“I just wanted to fact check my memories first sorry,” Ian mumbled. “Humans are considered apex predators so…” Another sigh, another step away from Mikhail. “So I guess yeah we are predators, but we’re also omnivores. Plants and animals, lots of things work as food for us. Is it… are the animals dangerous to you?”

Mikhail waited for the fear to overcome him again. For his body to freeze and heart to slow enough he wasn’t sure he still lived. Instead he felt calmed by the answer. The knowledge he was correct somehow brought him peace. Of course Ian’s reaction to step away was helping as well. He took this chance to attempt an increase in his size.

He focused on forcing his bones to unfold. His skin to stretch. Yet nothing changed. He remained palm sized. Mikhail’s antennae tugged to separate, this time painfully enough he winced. He felt before he saw Ian’s step closer. The shudder as he lunged to reach him. A human looming over him…

“Mik,” Ian whispered, Mikhail watched his brother’s eyes squint. “Your antennae are tangled. Can I try to help?”

Mikhail didn’t move. Didn’t have words to say. The fear that overtook him at the festival reappeared from the shadow cast over him. Numbly he nodded, too fearful of what a refusal could cause. Fingers with claws that easily broke his skin came close. He prepared for the worst, the inevitable pain and suffering of those claws breaking his skin.

Mikhail wanted to shut his eyes, but forced himself to stare at his brother’s face. To see what would happen if a human smelled his blood while he was vulnerable. Focus on the ways he could use this new perspective. Try to forget the danger he was in, the danger he knew he should try to escape. If only he’d left any of the precautions for his kind on in the ship, rather than turn them off to prevent issues for Ian.

“Hold still, let me know if it hurts,” Ian said. 

The breath that washed over him made following instructions easy. Mikhail felt as the massive digits made contact with his antennae. Waited for the pain. And waited. And waited. And waited. Instead of pain he felt relief as the knot his antennae had become disappeared. The warmth beneath the strange leathery skin proceeded to soothe the aches their reactions caused.

Silence settled between them. One that was almost comfortable as Ian worked. Mikhail’s focus on the human face above him remained steady. The entire time he saw the black parts of Ian’s eyes as pinpricks. He even noticed a subtle shaking of the brown orb that sat within the white part of the eye. It was strange. Yet once again all of this managed to fill him with a sense of calm.

“That should do it,” Ian smiled. Mikhail found himself mimicking the expression. Relieved the knot had been handled and without a drop of his blood spilt. Yet that left many questions to answer. Questions that he had to pose before anything else happened.

“My species would be akin to prey,” Mikhail blurted it out. At the same time his antennae tried to twist back together, but pressure kept them apart. Ian’s eyes changed focus to his face now. Mikhail’s heart slowed to a rhythmic beat. “We… we are prey on our planet. I believe we would be prey here. We will need to account for your instincts moving for-”

“Wait, is that what made you act weird? My instincts?” Mikhail nodded. “Mik, humans aren’t driven like that. Sure I’ll look at a sound or follow a quick movement, but I’m not gonna- I don’t even know what you think I’m gonna do.”

“I do not understand…” 

Mikhail searched his memory on every species his kind had met and studied. Every single one had followed some level of instinct. His own grew in response to potential dangers, it was almost unheard of for someone to have control like himself. An avian species that had, more than once, carried off a member of his kind and nearly killed them. An aquatic species that, during feeding times, would chase anything small enough to be prey. Another that would change its colors to hide itself from predators or in reaction to perceived danger. Every recorded species had some instinct that they couldn’t physically ignore. At least not without something to purposely make it possible. Could humans truly be different?

“I mean, we have instincts sure. None of them are to go chasing something small. It’s more likely we’re going to slap at something we don’t expect touching us, or try to grab something we see moving when it shouldn’t and nothing we know of matches it. Well I guess the second one is kind of hunting, but still. Humans don’t do that, we probably evolved out of that cause of all the other animals that act that way.”

“There are more predators than humans?”

“Yeah, humans are special cause of communities and tool building… I think. I’ll admit I never paid much attention in those classes, but I mean a bear would still kill me. Technically a cow could too.”

The knowledge he’d gained had only made his fear worse. Part of the idea was for his kind and humans to freely travel to each other's planets. Many precautions were in place on each his kind currently visited. How could humans be safe? Perhaps marking humans as too dangerous would be the correct option, but that would mean Ian wouldn’t be able to leave with him. The mere idea of that caused a whine to escape his chest again.

“Mik,” Ian had crouched again. They were as close to eye to eye as possible. “Humans are weird. I don’t really get what you expect out of me or humans in general, but we’re brothers right? I’m not gonna hurt you or let anyone hurt you. Especially another human.”

Mikhail stared at Ian for a long time. He considered the words he’d been told. This planet posed a threat that he needed to study. Ian posed threats he couldn’t imagine. Yet the same claws that pierced his skin easily had managed to untangle his antennae without a scratch. Mikhail’s physical reaction to his fear had already dulled near Ian. It was something to study later, when both of them were comfortable.

“I think I will need to do more research on humans and the other creatures of this planet when I am capable of growing,” Mikhail said. Ian’s eyes widened.

“Right… so what now? Do you want me to take you somewhere? I can leave too. I mean I’ve been freaking you out right?” Ian offered. The offer sounded appealing at first, but the consideration of other predators, not just humans, managing to find him gave Mikhail pause. Plus the proximity of his brother had stayed calming even after hearing the truth of his worries.

“I… would prefer to stay near you if that is alright.”

“Sure, like this or something else?”

“I am… unsure when I will begin to grow again, perhaps not on the desk.”

“Right, right”

Ian’s hand landed palm up in front of him. Mikhail felt the steady beat of his heart as he walked towards it. Clawed digits curled up as he sat in the center. Ian pulled his hand up, slower than Mikhail expected after the prior experiences. Panic did explain those actions. Ian moved stiffly across the room and set his hand down on the bed. Mikhail climbed off, unsure what was coming next.

“This should work,” Ian said. He sat down on the floor in front of the bed leaving Mikhail on the currently massive surface. “This way I can wake you up if you start to get bigger and no worries I might hurt you right?”

“Yes… yes this should be fine.” Mikhail’s antennae stood up straight, a rare emotion had reached him. A mixture of happiness, calm, and the feeling of safety. “Thank you, Ian.”

“No problem, just get some rest and we can figure out the whole predator prey thing you started to worry about.”

Mikhail quickly made himself comfortable. He made sure his eyes faced Ian. Where he could see the massive predator that chose to protect a prey rather than toy with or hurt it. He truly hoped humans were different from the other species. With that thought Mikhail closed his eyes and allowed the fear fueled energy to disperse where he could sleep.

—-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Ian waited until he felt sure Mik was asleep to move. He turned to look at Mik, still small enough to fit in his palm. He’d never thought something like a food chain could cause so much trouble. He had to find a way to help fix this, he didn’t want to lose another family. 

He slid away from the bed to grab a tablet with a network connection he bought after Mik gave him some money. He moved back silently and waited to see if Mik stirred. Once convinced it was fine, he got comfortable and started to look up some self defense classes. Those would at least be a start.

[allbuthuman]

On Dazai's possible diagnoses

As a psych postgrad with an interest in psychopathology who's been rotating him in my brain for over a year, I thought I should put my two cents out there. This is probably gonna be long, so buckle up.

So, let's start with what he doesn't have: Borderline Personality Disorder

If it's a headcanon then by all means go ahead, but I really don't see Dazai having the disorder based on canon info. Because this is a take I see often, I will go through all the symptoms one by one and explain why I disagree.

A BPD diagnosis requires 5 of the following:

1. Frantic efforts to avoid real or imagined abandonment

I don't wanna get too much into attachment patterns, but Borderline fear of abandonment is largely preoccupied in nature, while Dazai is extremely avoidant. There is a difference between efforts to avoid abandonment and resignation to loneliness. Dazai experiences the second - he does say that everything he holds dear will be lost, but that's something he has accepted. He does nothing to change it. He is resigned. No such effort is being made on his part.

2. A pattern of unstable and intense interpersonal relationships, characterised by alternating between extremes of idealisation and devaluation

I can see why someone would think such instability would be true for Dazai, but that's only on a surface level. If we think about it, his relationships with the people who actually matter to him have been surprisingly stable. My main examples are Oda, Chuuya, Atsushi, and Kunikida. While of course all of them grow and change, the dynamics that were set up when he met each of them have not changed much. Each dynamic is very different, but none of them has has any intense, abrupt shifts. Sure, his relationships can be intense, but that's mostly because of either a) the intensity of the people involved and the circumstances around them (Do you expect two very different and very traumatised teenagers to not fight?) or b) Dazai's persona. You can't take, for example, his fights with Kunikida as an example of instability, because, firstly, it's only ever been like that, and, more importantly, Dazai is fully capable of acting differently, which wouldn't be the case if this were a symptom.

About the second part, Dazai is not once seen alternating between idealisation and devaluation of the same person. What he thinks of those around him seems to be based on characteristics they actually have, interpreted of course by a person like Dazai, who is, like everyone, biased due to his own history and trauma. He's a person and he has opinions on people. Never has he completely idealised or devalued someone, let alone both for the same person, beyond that. The only time we, in the present timeline, see him let his emotions affect how he treats someone is when he first meets Ango again, and what we see is an appropriate reaction from someone who has been hurt. Hell, if anything, he should learn to do that more.

3) Unstable self-image

We literally have no idea. There is minimal information on how Dazai thinks of himself. The only times that I can think of where he actually gave a glimpse into it was when he called himself "a man hated by righteousness" and, less directly, when he told Atsushi that pitying himself would make his life a nightmare, which could have contained some projection. His alienation and struggles with humanity seem to be unchanging, even when he's receiving proof of the opposite, such as experiencing a connection to someone, to the point where he seems to be apprehensive even of change that could come naturally, such as growing close to the other ADA members.

4) Impulsivity in at least two potentially harmful ways (spending, sexual activity, substance use, binge eating, etc.)

He does have this. We don't know his other habits, but he's extremely careless when it comes to his own safety, and it's clear that he abuses alcohol.

5) Recurrent suicidal threats or attempts or self-mutilation. 

He also has this one, although differential diagnosis for BPD would require certainty that it exists beyond the limits of the Major Depressive Disorder that he does have.

6) Unstable mood/affect

That is clearly his persona. In fact, the unmasked Dazai seems flatter in affect than the average person, even though we very rarely see him. I could use Oda's descriptions of him as an example, since he's the one who perceived him the most. He's described Dazai's face as lifeless-looking, unmoving, his eyes like wounds. His "natural" state is empty, hollow. It's quite the opposite of someone who's dysregulated and overflowing with emotion, and it's quite clear that many of the reactions that he does display are dramatised and exaggerated on purpose, and often don't correspond to his true emotion at the time at all, if such a thing is present in the first place. You can't count an act as a symptom. His emotions are controlled to the extreme, even in situations where being emotional would be expected.

7) Chronic feelings of emptiness

He has this. Again, we don't know if we can differentiate it from the depressive emptiness, but it's there.

8) Difficulty controlling anger

We've barely seen him angry, let alone uncontrollably so. He's exploded in anger exactly once, in side B of The Day I Picked Up Dazai, when he rampantly attacked someone because Oda was in danger - as a teenager who was seeing the one person he cared about get hurt. Again, he controls his emotions very well almost at all times.

9) Transient, stress-related paranoid ideation or dissociative symptoms.

We have no info on paranoid symptoms on his part. Dissociative symptoms are likely there in his struggle with humanity, but they seem to be present consistently throughout his life and not specifically stress-related.

To sum up: he has 3 out of 9 symptoms, two of which can also be explained by depression. In fact, he is in many ways the opposite of a borderline individual - too controlled, too avoidant, too disengaged from emotion. The only relationship patterns of his that might look BPD-adjacent are almost always part of his persona.

For something more plausible, which I also ultimately don't think he has, or at least we don't have enough info: Antisocial Personality Disorder

I'm not gonna go through all the symptoms again, but mafia Dazai demonstrated many of them. However, there are two reasons I don't think he could be given that diagnosis either.

1) We see him behaving in ways that might meet the symptoms only between the ages of 15 and 18. ASPD can't be diagnosed before the age of 18. Dazai as an adult doesn't show nearly as many of those symptoms, and it's not possible to diagnose an adult based on how he behaved as a teenager. That's neither accurate nor fair. The same is true for symptoms of Schizoid Personality Disorder, some of which teenage Dazai also had.

2) An ASPD diagnosis currently requires a diagnosis of conduct disorder before the age of 15. There is no info on Dazai as a child, and we have no idea how he behaved.

(bonus 3): Some symptoms, such as illegal behaviour, are hard to be applied to Dazai's case, because of the extreme circumstances he was in. He was in the mafia, being encouraged to kill people. Of course he broke the law.)

Now, for the things he actually has or might have:

Major Depressive Disorder, of course. This is already long, and I don't think I even need to elaborate. He has almost all the symptoms of chronic depression.

Possibly, Depersonalisation/Derealisation Disorder

Depersonalization/derealization disorder involves a persistent or recurring feeling of being detached from one's body or mental processes, like an outside observer of one's life (depersonalization), and/or a feeling of being detached from one's surroundings (derealization). (x)

It seems to me that his feelings of being inhuman would be quite likely to classify as depersonalisation. Again, we have no idea how Dazai experiences this from a first-person perspective. Everything he actually says is indirect, like calling this world a dream (even though that was at least partly acting), and often in connection to the real-life author and his words. However, it's clear that something is there that doesn't allow him to see himself as a person, and it has affected him significantly.

It's not certain, of course, that he would have this diagnosis. I just thought I should mention it as a possibility, because I haven't see anyone mention it in relation to him.

Even more possibly, Complex PTSD

I won't go through each symptom here either, but one of the core characteristics of C-PTSD is a deep feeling of alienation or shame, of something being fundamentally wrong with you in such a way that puts you apart from other people. Sufferers often feel like they're completely disconnected from others, permanently damaged or worthless, and experience a chronic sense of hopelessness. It is more likely to be caused by long-term traumatic circumstances rather than a singular traumatic event or situation.

Dazai was, for all we know, already very unwell by the age of 14, and was then taken in by Mori, who took his pre-existing feelings of alienation and weaponised them, in order to make him into the "demon prodigy". It's safe to assume that such feelings already existed, and were only maximised during his mafia years, where he was expected and even encouraged to tap into the things that made him different from others.

At the same time, he had no guidance on how to navigate his human emotions and needs and turmoil at any point, which must have only led to a further disconnect from them, therefore cutting his routes for connecting with others further and further.

You may also be more likely to develop C-PTSD if:

you experienced trauma at a young age you were harmed by someone close to you who you trusted you were unable to escape the trauma (x)

While we don't know what happened in his pre-mafia past, all of this apply to his time in the mafia.

I will once again put the disclaimer that none of us knows how Dazai really experiences these things from his POV. He's an extremely opaque character, and most analysis of him is bound to contain a degree of assumption and guesses. However, there are some things that are more plausible than others based on his actions and reactions, and I think these three options, either separately or in combination, make the most sense to me. I would gladly elaborate further and discuss any part of this, including, of course, disagreements, as long as they're informed.

[angelisgonnastartchangingurls]

alice on a wednesday

annie found alice to be impossibly glamorous. she was a woman in her mid-forties. an artist of some note (annie had googled) and a professor at a local university. she had a personality that was somehow both bubbly and cool. she had very good posture and was an engaged conversationalist. she often asked annie about herself as often as she talked about herself, and annie, bamboozled by her bright eyes and alien beauty, shared too much.

"how are you? how's ryan?" alice asked inquiring after annie's boyfriend.

"he's okay, i think?" annie said. "he seems really distracted with work lately."

"a.k.a. you're not fucking," alice said.

annie chuckled and tried to regain some professional composure. "it's okay. it's fine."

"annie, honestly, it's not," alice said. "you're a woman in your prime and he should be getting you off a few times a day, lest you seek pleasure elsewhere."

"i wouldn't do that," annie said.

"i would," alice said. "and i would not feel guilty."

annie had not been surprised to learn that alice had never managed to make a long term relationship work. but romance never much concerned her. alice's worries and annoyances fell into two categories:

her mother, a wild russian immigrant who was perpetually causing trouble and

her own neurological health

alice was a brain cancer survivor, and told annie when they met that in a sort of spiritual, kooky way, she believed maintenance of her mental health was key to staying in remission. annie said that medically, she couldn't really agree, but liked the notion of it.

a side effect of alice's brain surgery was that she'd lost the ability to raise the volume of her voice -- she spoke at just above a whisper. she mitigated this condition by using a wireless lapel microphone and a little box-sized amplifier she kept in her purse and set on the table in front of annie during their sessions. it lent her voice a lightly robotic quality that annie found oddly soothing.

she asked alice if she'd ever been unfaithful in a way that had hurt anyone.

"i don't think i hurt them in a way that was unfair," alice said. "sooner or later, the people who stay in my life as friends or fuck buddies or what have you learn to travel at my speed. and why shouldn't they? it's a fun speed."

"but early on, some hearts get a little bruised and beaten."

"yes," she admitted. "when i was 17 years old, i slept with my boyfriend's older sister, and i remember he was pretty mad about that," she said. "he beat the shit out of her."

"oh, fuck," annie said. she didn't swear around most of her patients but alice never clocked it.

"yeah, i got violent with him after that, clawed him up," she said, laughing. "i still keep in touch with the sister. they made up, it's all okay."

"i mean, is it?" annie asked.

"who knows," she said. "you have a brother, right?"

"yes," annie said, impressed at alice's recall.

"robbie," alice said. "i assume you have never competed with robbie over a woman."

annie laughed. "no. i mean, that must be very rare. unless you have more histories with siblings?"

alice grinned her catlike grin. "not negative stuff no, but I have in fact had sex with two sets of twins. two women, two men."

"yikes," annie said. "i mean, not to sound judge-y. i can't imagine having sex in front of robbie."

alice laughed. "i'm basically an only child, so i don't know. i think it's different with twins. they're copies of each other. and the women, like it or not but we live in a society that sexualizes female twins so by the time i met them they had a lot of experience with each other."

"huh," annie said.

"it's initially sort of gross but when you get down to it, i don't know," alice smiled. "kinda hot."

"what did you mean when you say you're basically an only child?"

"i never told you about amanda?"

"no," annie said, fairly confident. sometimes she forgot things her patients talked about, but not alice.

"when i was 15, my aunt killed herself," alice said.

"oh god," i said. "your mom's side?"

"no, my dad's sister-in-law," she said. "his brother's wife. and you know, that was crazy, so my uncle and his daughter who was 17, they came to live with us for a year. they moved from israel."

"that must have been a series of shocks for them," annie observed.

"yeah, i mean, my cousin amanda just did coke and fucked guys in my room, but it did feel like having a sister for a while."

"in your room?"

"yeah in my room, in my bed. i used to find like, thongs and condoms in my bed."

"i don't know what it's like to have a sister, either," annie said. "but i don't think it's like that."

annie went to ryan's apartment after work. he talked to her in an almost uninterrupted stream for an hour about things going on at work until, her relentless ability to pay attention nearly failing her, she stood in his kitchen and pulled her skirt and panties off. he stopped talking and stared at her exposed bush. "hey," he said.

"hey," annie said. "fuck me."

"ok," he said.

he took her over the sink, roughly, like animals, his fingers on her clit, his lips on her neck. he was a little soft at first, like he'd forgotten how to get hard in the two weeks or so since they'd last had a vanilla, post-date screw. but all annie had to do was get a little vocal. "i'm so fucking wet," she told him, and felt him stiffen right up.

they came at the same time, annie's contracting pussy pushing his cum out around the base of his shaft. she felt it between her thighs and heard it hitting the tile floor. as she pulled away and turned to kiss him she touched herself and brought her fingers to her lips. his eyes lit up. she had him back, at least for a while.

she spent the rest of the evening in a blouse and panties, sharing a joint with ryan, watching TV with him, and then mounting him again on his couch. she didn't take her panties off this time, just pulled them aside. sometimes uncomfortable, but very effective when one wanted to feel particularly slutty. she put her tits in his mouth, bounced to orgasm on his cock, and then sat on his thighs and stroked his cum out onto her bush. cleaning herself up in the bathroom she laughed imagining telling alice about it. she was sure she'd approve.

[goth-boots]

👹 Baki Headcanons 👹

Fear me for I have dedicated my life to writing silly, goofy Baki headcanons and scenarios >:D

Dealing with depression my way 💪🏽 (but if we are to talk seriously, please, go get yourself a therapist, they know how to help)

P.S. Btw I'm not that good at prepositions ;-;

So, uh, enjoy these headcanons o' mine. Write in the comments who you'd like to see in part 2. Hope you like it :3❤️

School Subjects (part 1)

Baki

- He doesn't care about most of the classes;

- Most of the time he daydreams or sleeps;

- But when it gets to astronomy he seems interested;

- "Are there any aliens? Are they stronger than us? 🤔";

- Now Kozue, Retsu and others know a lot about planets, black holes and theories about Moon being an artificial satellite and other galaxies where nonhuman civilizations live;

- Watched dozens of sci-fi movies about different creatures and other worlds;

- Almost decided to go to a space station, but Kozue somehow stopped him;

- "You know, that'd be awesome to meet an alien";

- Please, don't tell him about Area 51.

Kaoru

- Have you seen him near school?

- Overall he has good grades even though he rarely goes to school;

- Nobody would ever give him C or B! (for their safety and in general Kaoru is pretty smart so there's no need to give him low marks);

- But he has an interest in history, especially in Sengoku period;

- "These weapons look weird... I wonder if it was hard to break them";

- Sometimes outsmarts his teachers by pointing out at their mistakes;

- May bring his favourite books with him, so the time will pass faster;

- "School is disappointing. Interesting, how Baki is doing? 🧐";

- Can stand up in the middle of a class and leave because.. he can?

Jack

- Didn't pay attention in classes;

- Instead always studied at home;

- And had excellent grades 😳;

- "When is the break? I'm already hungry.";

- Didn't like every subject equally, except for math, biology and health & physical education (those 3 were "fine");

- Some biology topics like anatomy interested him;

- PE was a mandatory for him (sometimes he liked it, sometimes he didn't);

- Always had pills in his backpack;

- Was bullied, but tried not to pay attention to it;

- "Uhuh, so that's on what I was missing.. Well, now let's go to the gym to try it out, I guess?";

- Was annoyed by those who tried to protect him from bullies;

- Graduated, but wanted to drop out.

Retsu

- Probably didn't attend a public school;

- Temple was his everything;

- Surprisingly was and still is good at calligraphy;

- "This stroke looks off..... RRRAAGH!!";

- Suffered every time when he needed to concentrate on something;

- Tried to be more patient. Failed multiple times;

- Enjoyed cooking, and now knows how to make almost every traditional Chinese dish 😋;

- When Baki asked him to look at his physics homework, Retsu kind of malfunctioned;

- "Uhuh, so this is it. Right. But what about this part... 等等，我不應該懂這種程度的日文.";

- But he's always willing to learn something new!

Doyle

- Studied really hard, but after some time got disappointed with teachers and the whole educational system;

- Was actually liked by teachers and had a couple of acquaintances among classmates;

- Favourite subjects were science, biology, and design & technology;

- "What do you think.. Can I get CIPA? ... Nah, wishful thinking";

- Planned to install blades in his joints from school;

- In general he's a smart cookie;

- Was never bullied, but ignored;

- "I need to learn chemistry.. What type of metal is incompatible with human body? 🧐";

- Dropped out.

[halfbakedspuds]

Alright, I see other writing blogs doing this, so here's my writeblr intro. Still needs some work but this'll do for now.

Hi! I'm Logan (Yes, like Wolverine), I'm 18 years old, use He/him pronouns, and I'm from South Africa. My main interests are writing, philosophy, history, binge-reading entire series' at a time and any kind of experimental artistic media. All my characters' sexualities and gender identities are up for interpretation unless explicitly stated.

Despite being an English language writer, English is not actually my first language and thus I do still have my fair share of braindead moments in it. If you notice that I used a word wrong, or if my grammar or a phrase seems little bit off, don't hesitate to let me know.

Below are my current WIP's:

Children of the Stars

Perspective: third person limitted.

Genre: Science fiction political drama and mystery.

Tropes: Slowburn lovers, enemies to friends to lovers (more like mutual annoyances to friends to lovers), a stranger in a stranger land, found family.

Status: Currently being worked on.

First chapter

Lyanni has been condemned and incarcerated, charged with witchcraft under the paranoid reign of her home kingdom. Under the laws of her people, she is offered up to their patron Angel as a gift of thanks for ending a long and bloody war, and to her horror: he accepts.

Soon, however, she learns the shocking truth of the universe. Her people's angels are members of an Alien organisation in service to the Empire of Earth, charged with working from the shadows to foster the upliftment of her people in order to free up the human garrison for the front lines of a star-spanning war, and the same is happening on a thousand other worlds.

This Angel, however- who calls himself Adrian- is about as happy about their new living arrangement as she is, which is to say not at all.

When a ship carrying an experimental superweapon crashes on her world, the two must begrudgingly work together in a desperate race against time to find it, while also holding back the tide of forces that threaten to plunge her world into armageddon.

The Tempest prince

Children of the Wolves

Perspective: First person limitted

Genre: Sci-fi political drama and heist story with some pulp western and cyberpunk elements.

Tropes: found family, heists, honour among thieves, glorious bastards, a lot of gay, high-tech Low-lifes, class divide, redemption arc.

Status: Scheduled to be written sometime after Children of the Stars.

Four years after Children of the Stars, Adrian Castellan returns to Callisto to make amends with his family and tie up the final loose ends of his early life.

Accompanied by Lyanni Sverik and Wilhelm Freedman, he links up with his siblings: Isabelle and Marcus Castellan, and while the trio catch up and scheme to finally exact vengeance for the deaths of their mother and friends at the hands of a rival clan's lord, Lyanni learns the story of why Adrian left his homeworld in the first place.

Seven years before Adrian became an IUC praetor, he was a member of the Volnur, a gang of six young but promising Callistoan gunslingers who acted as the enforcers of clan Castellan.

After a slightly botched trade negotiation with a rival clan forces them to scatter and regroup at home base, Adrian bumps into a mysterious offworlder running from both civil security and the Solar homeguard themselves, and offers to bring him to his clan's holdings for safety.

With supplies running low and the botching of the deal that was meant to save them, the six gunslingers and their new offworlder tagalong begin plotting to rob a Civil Security supply train.

Yet other forces move in the shadows, snapping at their people and waiting for their eventual fall, and with a young Adrian's ambition growing constantly, fostered by his mother's guidance as the Lady of clan Castellan, he will eventually come to match wits with some of the most powerful people not only on Callisto, but throughout the entirety of the Jupiter Prefecture, he will come to question who can be trusted, and whether his own well-founded ambition has given way to a fatal hubris.

Perspective: multiple pov first person.

Genre: YA contemporary fantasy with some elements of eldritch horror.

Tropes: Stranger in a strange land, finding identity, causality loop, found family (to an extent), recruiting teenagers with an attitude.

Status: On the back-burner til I gain a little more experience with certain writing skills that'll be necessary to write a 21 book series.

"Congratulations. You are now dead"

Those were the last words he heard before his normal life came to an end.

It was just a another day in February, the scorching, vampiric heat of the sun beating down on the brothers as they slogged through just another school day. At least it was just another day, at least until they stumbled into another dimension and accidentally brought something back with them.

From then on, Jason and Alex Haliday found themselves caught up in a hidden world, one where Jaegers -a race of magic-capable supersoldiers- contain and hunt that which shouldn't be; where ancient gods and forgotten horrors seep through every crack and crevice right under humanity's collective nose. When the brothers show abilities that no-one -Human or Jaeger- ever have, they are offered a job.

Of course, the pair first need to survive two years of training. Noone wants to send a pair of untrained teens into the longest battle of human history, after all. But between a school rivalry, a bloodsport tournament, and a looming ancient threat, it quickly becomes apparent that even while surrounded the extraordinary, their lives still refuse to fall within the established 'normal'.

When their home is attacked: their mother put into a coma and Alex kidnapped, Jason- accompanied by his new Demihuman friend Helga Ravenscar- goes on a manhunt to find his brother against the express orders of some of the most powerful people in the hunter cities. The pair must balance hiding such a dangerous endeavour with excelling in the taxing student life of a mage and a medical officer in training, while eldritch forces plot and scheme in the backdrop.

Echoes of Shadows

Perspective: multiple pov third person limitted.

Genre: Gritty Fantasy-noir detective story.

Tropes: Five man band, (Dunno what to call this but it's like the world is halfway through a transition that'll change every aspect of daily life. Will edit once I've figured it out)

Status: Scheduled to be the next project I finish. Probably.

First chapter

The city goes by many names: Novya Koroleva, Zuidpunkt, De Gat, but the local Ost-Rietlanders simply call it The Pit: the city that'll swallow you whole and spit out whatever bones may remain, a nature that has been exasperbated by the recent surge in mages, splitting the population almost evenly between regular people and the magic capable.

To Johan Suiderkloof and Anastasia Retvenko, the city offered a new start, free of the horrors of their pasts, and among it's verminous populace, they have carved out work for themselves as a private detective agency.

It's a stable job, with many opportunities to find work in the Sodom. By day: the pair investigate cartels, murders, infidelity, all the worst that society has to offer.

But late at night, when Zuurveldt, Ost-Rietland and the rest of the continent of Sumer sleep soundly, they stalk the shadows for leads, tracking down the fanatic followers of dark gods and puttinh an end to their machinations.

When mysterious murders with occult symbolism surrounding them begin to crop up throughout the city and surrounding countryside, the pair find their lot unceremoniously cast in with complete strangers, caught in the powerplay of cults and dead gods as they try to untangle a growing conspiracy that threatens their world as they know it.

The lonely god

Perspective: First person.

Genre: Science fiction.

Status: In the process of being finished up.

The lonely god is a short story I wrote more than a year ago (Originally titled "The last human) and am currently in the process of remastering. I'll be posting it here when I'm done with it.

Some sixteen millenia in the future, humanity finds itself forceably coalesced into a single, immortal being. This individual, born of a trillion infighting souls, is the last human, a species made into a god, and 'The lonely god' follows their story til the end of the universe and beyond as they seek out revenge for what was done to their people while slowly learning to let go of hate.

What does it mean to be alive when you'll outlive even the sand beneath your feet? How do you cherish or love when everything vanishes in but a blink of the eye? How can the product of trillions ever be an individual?

And when the score has been settled; When every trail has been blazed, and all knowledge learnt; When all that is left is to watch as the stars slowly whimper away: how will you find meaning?

[royalsweetteaa]

Different paces

Pairing: Dark!Steve Rogers x reader

18+ ONLY | MINORS DNI

WARNING - the following story contains: non-con, explicit smut, dark themes, overprotective/obsessive/delusional behavior on Steve’s part, kidnapping, captivity, angst, breeding kink, misogyny, mild violence, mentions of eating issues & depression.

Summary: You are Steve’s first close friend in the modern world outside of the avengers and his hero work. You take notice that Steve is overly protective of you, and it affects your daily life. Steve isn’t pleased when you insist he stops looking after you as much as he does.

Steve panted lightly as he stepped the last flight of stairs up to your apartment. He had just come back from a mission with his new acquaintance, Natasha Romanoff. Recently he has been teamed up with her to do missions as it was necessary for Steve to have a companion who had experience within SHIELD’s new line of work.

He found her to be overly skilled on the field of the new world compared to him, and he was to learn much from her to up his game on missions. But after those rough missions, he was back to explore the daily life of being a 21st century citizen of America. And there was no better way to explore it than being with you, the woman who he considered to be his first modern friend.

He met you at the art museum where he came with the intention of learning about modern art from the course of the decades he has been gone. He was almost appalled by the simplification art has succumbed to become, but he found it fascinating nonetheless. That was when he met you, a guide of the art museum. He found you to be endearing as you explained to what looked like a group of college students about the history and meaning behind each artifact. As he listened in, a new perspective behind the artworks was given to him, and he found himself being appreciative of the art than he was when he first saw them.

He decided you seemed kind enough to interact with, and he wasn’t met with disappointment. In fact, him making the first move of reaching out to you is something he considers one of his best decisions of his life. He could tell you didn’t know who he was, and yet you gave him the time to show around the museum and further explain in detail behind whatever art piece interested him.

This blossomed into a beautiful friendship, and even when you learned who the guy behind the glasses and cap was, your nature didn’t change. When he wasn’t doing heroic work, he would often come to pay you a visit or meet you at a place where you could teach him more about the world’s progressiveness.

“Thanks for inviting me, Y/N. You’ve done a nice job decorating your new apartment, I must say.” Steve complimented.

“Oh, thank you! Yeah, I put a lot of effort into this place before I settled. I wanted to feel like I was coming into a home, y’know?” You said, and showcased the plants and the paintings on the wall. “You may sit down, Steve. I’ll bring in some cookies and tea.”

Steve politely thanked you and sat down on a chair. He leaned his head up to relax his neck and inhaled a deep breath. The smell of freshly baked goodies filled his nostrils and he sighed in delight. He could get used to coming to your place after a mission, being greeted by you at the door while something was being made in the kitchen for the two of you to eat.

He thought it was a pity you weren’t his wife, but then again, it was never too late.

“So, how was your day? Didn’t have any trouble at the museum, did you?” Steve asked, raising his voice high enough for you to hear from the other room.

“Nah, it was boring. Not many visitors this time, but it’s expected on summer days when everyone would rather go to the beach. I don’t blame them. Besides, I think people subconsciously try to avoid being inside during the day after that alien invasion that happened in New York a month ago.” There was a slight pause as you turned off the oven and took out the cookies. “Gosh, it still feels strange to say that. A few months ago I wouldn’t have believed myself if my present self told the things I have experienced. Who would have thought Captain America would end up being one of my best friends after coming back from being in ice for 7 decades and later fighting aliens, alongside and against gods? Nothing surprises me anymore.”

“Now you know how I feel.” Steve cackled.

You came back with a platter of cookies and tea, and placed it neatly on the table. Steve thanked you once again, before taking a cookie for a taste.

“So, how was the mission? Must have been more exciting than my day I would assume.” You said, following it with a giggle.

“Not this time. We were talking to some analysts about how we could with more preparation assemble the team when a new ‘Avenger threat’ is on the rise, and how we can better organize ourselves to prevent less damage impact the cities and dangoured habitats. Of course, when it comes for the unexpected, it’s hard to plan things accordingly, but there are definitely methods one can follow suit.” Steve explained.

“That’s definitely worthwhile to consider. I can imagine preparations for the unthinkable is widely focused on after what happened. Makes me wonder what could possibly be the next big thing.” You pondered, and sipped some tea.

Steve left it with silence as thoughts of worry clouded his mind. He had thought about how you could easily be impacted by whatever huge thing was on its way to make trouble on earth. You were lucky when it happened last time, but what about in the future? It made him so uneasy to think of it.

“Y/N…have you still considered about that thing we fought over once? You know, the thing about moving to a more secure place? I have this bad feeling something’s coming real soon and I really don’t want to risk something happening to you…”

“Do you have confirmation about an upcoming threat or is it just a feeling?” You asked for more clarity.

Steve bit his lip before he looked up at you, not having the heart to lie to your face but tempted. “Not confirmation per day but….” You dipped your head with a sigh, thinking ‘here we go again’.

“Steve…we’ve had this conversation before. I’m not moving to some vacant compound because there might be a risk of this side of town having an attack by God knows what. A meteor could strike any moment and no compound could protect me from that.” You argued, hoping that would be the end of the conversation.

But Steve was too stubborn to leave it at that. He had a face expressing clear bitterness. It made you internally sigh of what was to come.

The last time you had this talk - which was days after the alien invasion, Steve was almost hysterical about the whole thing. You had given in on staying at one of the secret safety compounds of SHIELD for a week, and this was when Steve first brought up about his concern which came out very over-protective and demanding for your taste.

It wasn’t like he could stop you from returning for work, especially since your district hadn’t been affected in the slightest. Then you decided to move to an apartment which was by one mile closer to downtown New York compared to your previous apartment. You only knew this piece of information because Steve had measured it, and he had protested about you doing anything other than moving closer. Still, you persuaded him into calming down and he eventually let go of the topic, and you hadn’t talked about it since then, - until now.

You really couldn’t blame him though. He had seen and fought things which threatened human society as we know it, and you had learned of the loss of his best friend during the Second World War. You had figured as much that you meant a lot to Steve, because all of his friends from the 40s were either in their late 90s or had passed away. This made you assume you were one of few - or perhaps his only friend from present time. You figured he had trauma that stemmed from this, and so you felt nothing but bad for him.

But even though he had your sympathy, it couldn’t excuse his way of pressuring you of removing yourself from your daily life. It just couldn’t work as simple as moving to a smaller town, earning less and loosing a job you quite frankly liked. Therefore, you were sure not to withdraw from your standpoint.

“Well sometimes even the smallest measures of ensuring your safety can make a difference, Y/N. I’m telling you - living this close to downtown New York isn’t safe. You should live on the outskirts where I know you will be safe. Where if an attack was to happen, it wouldn’t be as hard for me to find you.”

Again you dismissed him. “Steve, stop it. I have a job, friends and family in this area. I’m not going to leave it all behind because of your fears. We just need to hope for the best that we are safe from any kind of disaster.”

“Y/N, you should listen to me. You shouldn’t be here. You should be somewhere no harm can come your way. Wether it’s another town or safer house, I really think it would be best if-!”

“I’m actually being serious, Steve.” You deadpanned. “Drop it. Now. I don’t want to hear this anymore and the door is right by the corner so if you feel like arguing, you might as well leave.” You walked back to the kitchen to put what you used to bake in the dishwasher.

“Hey, don’t have that tone with me. I’m only trying to protect you, Y/N. Why can’t you understand I’m trying to look after you? We literally had an alien attack and a supposed ‘god of mischief’ attack the whole city! You could have gotten killed!” He said while he stood up to follow.

Steve’s outburst pushed your limits and you just about had enough of this. “Well, you know what? I’d rather die living with friends and family than living in imprisonment! Life is unfair and if I die during a zombie apocalypse or whatever crazy stuff, then so be it! Honestly Steve - I don’t even recognize you as the sweet guy I met a few months ago! I understand your concern but this is borderline obsessive-!” You were cut off when Steve’s strong arms pushed you against the wall, with the other moving to your neck.

Steve’s teeth gritted and he saw red. You whimpered as his hand tightened around your neck, squeezing to test the limits of gripping so tightly around it. “You better watch your mouth, doll. It’s obvious you don’t value your life as much as I do, and that is deeply concerning. If you don’t want to take my advice anymore, I’ll simply have to force my hand.”

You held on to his arms and tried to claw him away but he wouldn’t budge. “S-Steve…let go-!”

“No. That’s exactly what I’m not going to do, Y/N. You really can be so ungrateful, you know that? One of many things women can be criticized for in this day of age when offered protection.” He spat.

“I’m going to take you to a place where no one will find nor harm you. I adore you too much to let you die in vain. I could never forgive myself if something were to happen to you…” he rambled the same thing for what seemed like forever. His grip started to loosen up when his face came closer to yours.

Tears spilled down your eyes. Steve had tricked you with his nice demeanor, and was now threatening to hold you in his imprisonment. You cursed yourself for never seeing beyond his facade. Now you were helpless against the strong super soldier who you once called a friend.

“You’re crazy….I’ll never forgive you for this..” you whispered, still digging your fingernails into his arms but it was no use. The stealth suit draped his arms with rich material, making your nails barely dig into his skin.

“Maybe I am crazy. But I can’t help myself anymore. I can’t loose you like I lost everyone else.” He stated.

It confirmed what you had thought all along, though you never knew those fears would turn him like this.

“I’m taking you home, sweetheart.”

He put his mouth on yours, devouring you out of breath. You whimpered into his mouth, your vision getting blurred from the new tears.

You tried to kick him off, but his body was too firmly pressed against your body, you couldn’t make a single move. Your arms were held to the side by Steve’s strong arms, making it impossible for you to claw away from his face.

You squirmed when he carried you around his shoulder, and you finally had your arms free to hit his back.

“Let me go! I don’t want this, Steve! Please, don’t do this!” You begged, but your pleas went deaf to Steve’s ears.

“Don’t worry, Y/N. Everything will be fine now. Just relax…”

You heard him rummaging through his pocket, and before you could look over your shoulder, you felt a sting in your neck. Darkness overtook you before your eyes, and you were out before you knew it.

2 years. 6 months. 8 days.

That was how long ago you were taken from your home and into a secure located cabin, not having any contact with family and friends, and having all data of your existence removed.

You often wondered how they felt. How your family were dealing with the fact that you were once a part of their life but not for the rest anymore. Steve had made sure of it that there were no traces of you with the help of Tony Stark and his techy ways of manipulating registered data. From your hospital and health records, your birth certificate - every trace was removed. It was as if Steve had planned on doing this all along with how prepared he was to move you to this place. There was nothing left of you outside of this cabin, and it isolated you in a way you never knew was possible.

Steve had been on missions a lot, keeping you alone in the huge cabin in the middle of nowhere. He had never told you where you were located, leaving you to imagine all the places you could be based on the crowded trees the cabin slotted itself in the middle of.

When you were alone, you had little to do in the big space. Steve had given you all kinds of things to keep you entertained, but you didn’t have the will to entertain yourself.

There was a small gym he had set up just for you to train if you wanted. He had given you art supplies, which was the only thing you found joy in keeping yourself occupied with. Otherwise, there was no reason for you to live anymore other than staying alive. Though at certain times, you couldn’t help but feel death was the only way left to freedom.

Suddenly, the main entrance door opened with following marching steps who you recognized as none other than his.

“Sweetheart, I’m home. I bought you new acrylic painting and canvases! You made such pretty paintings last time and I want to have more at my office. Reminds me of how much I love you, doll.” You heard Steve chirping as he came closer to where you were.

He had the tendency of rambling about things, not bothering to assure you were actually listening. That tendency had occurred with time when you stopped talking to him. Stopped responding and fighting him.

There was a time where whenever Steve opened the front door that was otherwise locked with the highest security, you would jump him and try to get out. You fought him with all your strength, hitting him until you were drained of energy. Of course, the hits didn’t affect the super soldier in the slightest. He would let you hit him until you gave up, and would then carry you to your room and teach you a lesson. Humiliating and inappropriate lessons.

You had once broken the glass table when Steve was trying to have a regular conversation about his day. You were so angry at him for ignoring your misery, and so you would vandalize the house and scream at him to let you go.

He had expressed disappointment for such behavior, and had you over his knee where he spanked you in a total of 40 times. You could barely stand up with how sore your ass got, and you would lay down for days to heal from that session.

You hadn’t put up any fights since then, leaving you being a soulless person with no will to live.

He came over with bags of supplies to the living room where you laid on the couch. He kept on talking about his latest mission, not sparing a glance as he put all the stuff at the corner of the room.

“-It’s insane how SHIELD has developed the latest technology, I think even you would be impressed if you saw -…..Y/N?“ he stopped when his eyes finally gazed at your form.

You hadn’t eaten a lot nor drunk anything for a few days. You were pale from the lack of energy you have consumed, and it had resulted in you staying on the same spot for a long period of time. You were also noticeably skinnier, which in no way looked healthy.

Steve immediately rushed over to you in worry, seeing that while you were alive, you weren’t doing well. “Y/N, we’ve been over this before, you need to eat regularly. You can’t starve yourself to death.”

As he rushed over to the kitchen to grab some food and water, you mumbled “maybe that’s the idea”. He heard it of course, with his super soldier hearing. When he returned to you, he gave a look of disappointment.

“It’s about time you get it together. I know you have been experiencing certain mood swings in the course of staying here but this is not healthy nor acceptable.”

“Neither is it to keep me here forever!” You snapped. “I haven’t been outside for fresh air in almost three damn years, Steve! I’m going to die miserable either way!”

Steve sighed and held the cup of water to your face. “Drink.”

You leaned your head to the side, not wanting to face him at all.

“Y/N. I’m serious. Drink the water and eat some fruit.” Steve said with a warning tone.

You knew that tone too well to know if you didn’t listen there would be unwanted consequences.

Steve held your jaw and tilted it towards him again, and helped you consume the cold beverage.

“There you go….now eat some apple and grapes. It’s good for you.”

You took a few pieces and ate it carefully. Steve smiled gleefully at your cooperation and stroked your shoulder with care.

“I think it’s time we think about having children, Y/N.”

You abruptly choked on a piece of apple, making you cough hard. You stood up from the couch as the coughing didn’t seem to tone down while laying, and Steve did nothing but chuckle as he hit your back a couple of times.

“Easy now, I wasn’t suggesting on making one right now. I’m just talking about the foreseeable future. I think it would be good for you to become a mother. For you to have a proper purpose. I understand it has been hard being here all alone for so long, and I think maybe having a kid or two would help you feel less lonely.” He said ever so lightheartedly. “Plus, my dream has always been to come home to a wife and children. My dream is only halfway complete.”

You gave him a confused glare. “Steve, we aren’t even married…how does saying ‘halfway through’ even make sense-!”

“Because you don’t exist otherwise. What difference does it make if I say we’re husband and wife?”

Your blood turned cold by his harsh words despite the lack of rude demeanor. The fact that he wasn’t denying his doings and talking about it in a casual manner always made you stiffen with fear.

“I’m not ready for kids, and it would be selfish to have kids just for the sake of not feeling lonely. Do you want to have kids and have them locked up in here as well? For them to not learn what the real world is like? How do you think that will work?” You said with challenge in your voice.

Steve frowned at your questions. It was as if you had burst his bubble of a romanticized reality where he and you could be happy, but you made it clear it wouldn’t work with his overprotective mindset.

“You’re looking way too deep into this. It’ll work. You’ll be fine raising the kids here while I do missions, and I’ll take some time off to spend time with all of you. It’s going to be just fine-!”

“No it’s not going to be just fine, Steve.” You interrupted him once again. You knew he hated when you did but you had just about enough of his foolery. “You’re naive and we’re not having kids.” You said finally and stood up to leave the area.

He crossed his arms around his shoulders and followed you with his eyes as you were on your way to the next room. But like any other disagreement, Steve was just too stubborn to leave it at that.

“Well, you know what happens when you don’t listen to me, doll. I’ll simply have to force my hand.” He murmured, more to himself.

You heard him come right behind you and pull you by the waist. He dragged you to the bedroom, and you regained will to fight by hitting him with closed fists on his chest, despite knowing it’ll do nothing. You wanted him to know you still resented him.

Steve threw you onto the bed and towered you before you could move away.

“Let’s practice making babies, sweetheart. I need to remind you how important you are to me. How your existence alone provides the opportunity of us becoming a loving family.”

You shook your head and decided to correct him. “It’s an opportunity for you, not us. There is no ‘us’ anymore. Hasn’t been for three years ever since you betrayed me, Steve…” you said quietly.

You knew this was happening no matter what you did, and so you tried to make yourself go numb while Steve did his work of preparing you for the deed.

You have had sex with Steve a few times - enough times to know it’s best to be done with it. The less you protest, the quicker it ends, you concluded.

He unbuttoned your silky shirt and gave wet kisses along your jaw, slowly moving down to your chest while he squeezed your breasts smoothly.

“You’re wrong. You always are. You only make yourself miserable. I thought you would eventually see how good we can be together when away from this terrible world. But maybe having kids will make you see it. We will hope it does.”

He undid his pants, straddling you with his thighs while he undid his body armor.

“I’ve missed you, love. I always look forward coming home knowing no harm has come to you….you have no idea how much hell I have witnessed, and each time there’s a woman there - harmed and helpless, I think of you. I think of what could have happened to you if you were still out there. There’s too many bad people out there. Too many who could hurt my girl…I can’t let that happen. I just can’t.”

“Steve…just, don’t talk..” you bluntly demanded.

By now, he had removed your sweatpants and was in the process of removing your panties, hooking it with his index finger as he slid them down from your bare legs.

“Oh, so my girl likes to talk back when I’m telling something personal…well okay then, if you want to make love right now, we’ll skip right to it.” He spread your legs apart and aimed his cock at your cunt.

He pushed in with less caution than any previous time he has taken you. Instead of waiting for you to adjust, he started to thrust in medium tempo - not too slow but not too fast. It hurt a little regardless, because his size was abnormally large compared to the regular size.

“Hngh, Steve…” You moaned with curled toes. It was hard to hate the sex with him. Because you were alone and frustrated all the time, sex was the best relief with the closure and the pleasure that came with it.

It wasn’t always like that. Steve used to be somewhat bad at sex, but had recently upped his game in terms of technique and focusing on how to make you feel good. He had a way of making your brain completely numb of thoughts, and send you in a temporary escape from reality.

“I know, baby doll. Feels good having my cock inside your baby pussy, doesn’t it? You’re tiny cunt’s squeezing my cock so well, sweetheart.” He groaned.

He wiggled his hips to seep in further, and his cock did a repeating pace of fucking into your cervix. You moaned with whines almost pathetically and let him take you the way he wanted to.

“M’gonna cum inside and breed you, baby doll. Mmmh, you’re going to look so sexy with a round belly and swelled breasts, my love…fuck, I can’t wait.”

He gave you a few kisses as his cock did its work of pleasuring your cunt. He put his thumb on your clit, making you whimper with stimulation.

You clenched around him hard with purpose of driving him to his peak. That always seemed to work.

“Doll - fuck! Ahh, M’gonna cum…” he announces. “Ohh, just a little more…m’bout to make you a mama….”

He thrusted in with less gap, making his fat cock constantly make room in your pussy. Your fingernails were clawing against Steve’s back as you approached your orgasm of the night. Your back ached against him as you came with a howl, and Steve made sure to muffle them with his lips. His hips rolled a couple of times more before he came as well, filling up your cunt with his spend.

His balls were pulsating as cum was being injected into you, filling you to the brim. You were held in place until his balls was emptied. He breathed through his nose harshly as he pulled out, making his seed unleash from your pussy. Cum trickled down and made a mess on the bed, but none of you cared to take care of it right now.

“Mmmm you did so well, baby doll. I’m sure this will take...” he whispered to you while caressing your bare stomach.

He pulled the blanket over you and wrapped his arms around your waist protectively, already being sent to sleep. He murmured an ‘I love you’ into the shell of your ear. You didn’t return it.

Streams of tears had already set through your face as you were hopelessly thinking of how after all these years, this was the beginning of a bound misery for life. One you would have to share with your kids.

Note from author: yeahh this turned out so depressing but I felt like going for an angsty direction with little hope for the reader.

(Poor thing ;-;)

Anyway if you have made it this far; thank you for reading! Hearts & reblogs are appreciated!

[yuri-official]

give me a pitch for korekiibo!!! i wanna hear! :)

OKAY SO

Korekiyo's whole deal is being obsessed with the beauty of humanity, right? Studying how different people behave under different circumstances, sort of observing from the outside. Despite the love xe feels for humanity, there's this sort of alienation. Xe ends up watching everyone else from the edge of the room during class events, xyr this kind of tall, dark, unnerving presence with greasy hair and a mostly obscured face and unconventional interests. In a lot of xyr interactions with the rest of the V3 cast, xyr classmates seem really uncomfortable or even actively distrusting of xem.

And Kiibo's matches up really well with Korekiyo's, their through line is how disconnected they feel from humanity despite being like. The ultimate reflection of everything humankind is. Kibo aspires to be more human, and feels outright offended when their classmates insinuate that they're less than human, or that their life doesn't have the same value as any other person's. They feel like they need to be useful or provide something of value to their friends in order to deserve a place in their circle

(side note I am Not going to use he/him for either of these characters ever. transfem Kiibo + nonbinary Korekiyo supremacy. these are mostly the versions of them i’ve made up in my head anyways so who cares that's all shipping is anyways)

Korekiyo would be the perfect person to affirm Kiibo's value as a person and humanity imo, while Kiibo is a good in-point for Korekiyo to start socializing with more of their friends. I won't take this as an opportunity to shill for my Korekiibo fanfiction, but I have a whole speech from Kiyo written out talking about how Kiibo is the culmination of humanity's desire to share the experience of sentience etc etc

Robotlover Korekiyo Shinguji, you can pry this headcanon from my cold dead hands. What's more human than something created by humanity the way they were created in the image of 'god'? etc

It's really cute!! Korekiyo Does Not Shut Up but thankfully Kiibo loves listening, and there's a lot of substance in what xe says. Even if it rambles for an hour on end, there's information to be gained there, and that applies especially to Kiibo. I think xe would be really interested in the ways Kiibo tries to be more than just the ‘Ultimate Robot’, how they strive to be as close to humankind as they can despite being a robot.

I think Kiibo and Korekiyo would find comfort in each other's shared distance from their peers, too. Korekiyo clearly has a very non-traditional or even distorted view of intimacy and relationships, and likely an extreme discomfort with feeling like xyr out of control. Xe likes to be the person who has information and knowledge to give in xyr relationships, kind of taking up the role of teacher in most conversations in canon.

Kiibo is sort of new to the whole idea of interpersonal relationships, but still goes out of their way to seek out that king of intimacy, as shown in their free time and love suite events. They seem like the type to be eager to learn, which fits perfectly with Korekiyo's affinity for teaching. I can imagine them cuddling while Korekiyo infodumps for hours on end about the entire history of fortune telling or something lol

And now: Things I Just Think Are Really Cute About Their Dynamic

- Consider that Kiibo could probably pick up Kiyo and have xem perched on their shoulder like a weird bird if their strength limiters were turned off. That beast probably weighs about as much of a stack of paper cups wearing a military uniform, xe’ll blow away like a napkin if you roll down the windows of a car on the highway

- Korekiyo is Wife Guy: Evil Edition in my mind. Xyr the type to send xyr partner flowers and the first unlucky person to upset that partner a pipe bomb. Kiibo finds this very reassuring but is working on helping xem find ways of expressing affection that aren’t also felonies

- Korekiyo says things like ‘I think if I were to eat you you would taste like strawberry shortcake’ and Kiibo is just. Okay ❤️ Yay ❤️ All of xyr compliments are incredibly unnerving but Kiibo finds them endearing anyways

- The visual contrast between the two is just. Augh. Tall and flowy and gorgeous and a little terrifying and 5’3 robot with spiky white hair and chunky armour and shounen protagonist demeanour. They are so Connecticut Clark and Malfina to me

- Korekiyo is a BDSM aficionado and Kiibo does not know what sex is

- THIS IMAGE. KIIBO IS THE ONLY PERSON IN THE GAME THAT KOREKIYO CALLS ‘MY DEAR’. I AM INSANE ABOUT THIS

i have. more

so much more

Thank you for coming to my ted talk

[siryouarebeingmocked]

Someone recently claimed that the new Davies era of doctor who has no more wokism* than the show used to.

Now, maybe I've just changed in the past few decades, but from what I've heard of the 60th anniversary specials it does seem a tad more concentrated. Cherry-picking SPOILERS, sweeties.

- Donna got married offscreen. To what I can only assume is the last black cab driver in London.

- Her kid is trans. Specifically, non-binary, female presenting, says the wiki.** - In the next episode, we learn the Doctor is gay/bi when he thinks Sir Isaac Newton is hot. I'd smugly say this bit has no real relevance, but...the actual scene does carry the episode theme of accidentally changing reality. It's just the queer bit that seems tacked on. Though it does carry forward themes from 10s era. - Sir Zack himself is played by a half-Indian actor. It's not exactly hard to tell. I'm assuming they're running on Bridgerton logic. https://twitter.com/frozenaesthetic/status/1731332492282429950 - This episode is basically just Donna and the Doc exploring a weird location, and running into monsters, who happen to look like them. It would be a bottle episode, except for the large vfx budget. And yet ol' Rusty somehow managed to awkwardly wedge in an  progressive issue. - In the next episode, the villain explains how he's just exploiting the divisions that already exist in human society, including cancel culture. - no wait he's got a point. Jpg - This is ironic, given that Davies and/or his broadcasting house masters are pretty blatantly on the team that a) coined the word,  b) cancels people the most often, and c) defends the idea of Internet lynch mobs*** (***as long as they're left wing. If not, they're *ist "trolls", even if they're just complaining about the latest sacred cow.) Maybe the Davies was criticizing his own team. * Because the Toymaker was kind of racist back in the day (white dude dressed like a stereotypical Chinese dude), Davies made the new version a bit racist "as a callback to his original, problematic depiction back in 1966." - TVtropes, ref. DW Unleashed. On the other hand, the Toymaker also mocks and dresses as several other cultural archetypes. All the ones I've seen were white European ones. He just does this to everyone, apparently. - Toymaker also weaponizes the Spice Girls hit "Spice Up Your Life". No, I will not explain. Though I will note that a line about the "Yellow man in Timbuktu" was apparently drowned out in the episode. Probably for being a tad spicy. - One new UNIT character is a lady in a wheelchair. When the new Tardis - no, I will not explain - has a wheelchair ramp, she happily points it out. Which makes me wonder why the blue box would be so limited, considering it often deals with alien species. - Also, the same actress played a disabled Companion in the Big Finish audio dramas. I'm not sure why it was considered essential to do so in an entirely audio format, but there have been controversies over this sort of thing before (EG Artie on Glee, various racial voice acting controversies). - At this point, casting Ncuti Gatwa as 15 doesn't even register. Not really a blip on my radar. Black Doc? Whatevs. His sonic screwdriver has Rwandan words on it? So? I go to church with lots of Africans. Heck, I'm a black immigrant to ol' Blighty myself, just from the other side of the pond. Ncuti is, chronologically speaking, more British than I am. - Though given that he's Rwandan-Scottish, there may be some debate on the "British" part. - Wikipedia says the actor is pretty left-wing, but the actor seems good so far, so I'm willing to give him a sha-

Oh, come ON!

Maybe the original person speaking was comparing it to the Chibnall “history has always been a whitewash” era, which had a character who was a paper thin Trump satire. A tad ironic, when the whole point of bringing Davies, Tennant, and Tate back is to play on nostalgia.

*Tangent: that word was apparently voted  the most annoying words in English. Which is kind of hilarious if you know that it was originally created to self-describe certain progressives. And the "you can't even define that word!" meme was almost certainly ripped off from the right wing "what is a woman?" Meme. ** This is apparently because she's part Time Lord, through Donna. It seems a tad interesting to me that a few works featuring non binary characters happen to make them enby due to some sort of supernatural (Omniscient Reader) or sci-fi (SW Squadrons) influence which the vast majority of IRL enbies don't have. ...As far as I know.

[ineed-to-sleep]

2, 6, and 26 for the tav ask game

26 answered here!

6. What is your tav's favourite childhood memory?

A lot of her time spent in West Harbor among her friends has provided her with good memories, but her favorite is actually something she experienced in the swamp. Though she's been through a lot more danger and stress traversing that area, there was no feeling quite as good as the first time she managed to get inside an Illefarn ruin, successfully slipping by unnoticed by the giant frogs and beetles that made the place their home.

The ruins were unlike anything she'd ever seen before. The halls were large and drafts of wind whistled and echoed through them, tall pillars held up the broken ceiling and she saw flights of stairs that seemed to stretch endlessly beyond her vision. The walls were cold to the touch, but she touched them nonetheless, trying to trace the swirling patterns that decorated them with her fingers. The entire place looked alien to her, a complete departure from the modest wooden houses of West Harbor that she was familiar with.

There was also something unusual that filled the air, something that raised the hairs on her arms and sent a chill down her spine. It should've been terrifying, but instead, the feeling brought her a strange comfort. She felt as if the ruins themselves were taking her hand and pulling her in. She roamed from room to room, finding old tomes with little marks and dots of ink she couldn't read, broken objects with intricate but faded designs, statues of people that looked like elves but... not quite. She lost track of time in her exploration, excited for what she could discover next, moving deeper inside the ruins almost as if carried by a gentle current.

She doesn't remember how she did it, it just happened as she kept walking and the light around her kept dimming, but she heard what sounded like faint whispers from the darker corners of the hall and suddenly, in a burst of shivers, she was surprised by a flickering ball of light emerging out of her fingers. It stood beside her and became her companion for a while, following her as it slowly waned out over the hours, serving as a great assistant to make her way out of the ruins before it fully faded away.

She never forgot that moment, and even though the light disappeared, she learned to cast it again later on, along with many more lights to keep it company.

2. What relationship did your tav have with their family/guardian(s) growing up? Has that changed with age?

To put it simply, it hasn't changed and it's likely that it never will- for better or for worse.

She was raised by her uncle, with no other family alive besides him, something that was way more important to her than it was to him. To her, he was the most important person in the world, but to him, she was a responsibility he didn't want and a sour reminder of his own failings.

I go into it more under the cut as this is uh. A loaded question jfjckfk

Her parents were both dead by the time she came out of the womb- her father was a Neverwinter city guard, killed on the job, and her mother a seldarine drow that didn't survive the childbirth process. Her uncle had painful history with the couple, having been her mother's previous lover, and after a falling out, being left for his own brother. He never lived that down, and though he was always the outwardly stoic type, the bitterness never left his tongue whenever he was forced to talk to his brother.

But it's not like he ever told Nawen about any of that.

He took the baby back to Merdelain, to the small village of West Harbor, where he'd spent most of his life and hunting career. He was reclusive, quiet, distant. When he was in the house, it barely felt like he was really there, the occasional floorboard creek or sound of sizzling fire in the kitchen being the only alarms to announce his presence. It took her a while to learn how to properly talk, and most of the practice wasn't done at home, you can be sure of that. He tried his very best to maintain his life exactly as it was before she came into it, providing her with the bare minimum to keep his guilt at bay while spending most of the time away from her sight. All she learned about her parents came from old letters in the attic- a chest hidden away in the wall, behind the cobwebs and earthy smell of dust that covered long untouched memories. She found things she could only assume- or hope- were her mother's, along with the letters half eaten by termites. Once she learned how to read, she pieced together the story of a wealthy woman from the big city in love with a mysterious man living alone in the swamp. That was all she knew of her mother, besides a fantastical image she built of her in her head to fill in the blanks.

Her uncle never found out about her ventures in the attic- or if he did, he didn't care enough to scold her about it. She grew up learning from the villagers, learning from the swamp, from ruins and old books, from everything else but him, and wishing he'd sometimes sit at the table with her and have more to say than one-word answers. That he'd look at her and not just at the bowl of food in front of him. But he was never one to give her what she wanted.

As a teenager, she walked out of the swamp with a troupe of other misfits and troublemakers she called friends, and never looked back.

After getting roped into something that would lead to the worst years of her life, she decided to send a letter to him. She was now in Athkatla, tucked away in her bunk bed in one of the Shadow Thieves' headquarters, her eyes red and puffy from crying, and she wrote him a letter telling him how *good* her life was. That she was doing incredible, she was going to get rich, and she would never have to live in a backwards swamp, covered in mud like him. And no thanks to him, of course, because he was never there for her anyway, because he was a failure and nobody wanted to be around him and that's why he was alone now. It was bitter, malicious, she wanted to hurt him and twist the knife. She wanted him to feel the way she felt.

He answered with the most predictable, yet disappointing answer. He briefly told her he was glad she was doing well, and that he was doing fine. Nothing much besides that. It was barely an answer, she was surprised he even bothered to write the words down.

About a decade later, at what she would see as the lowest point of her life, she started writing another letter. This time, she apologized. She said she was angry and bitter, that she wasn't thinking straight and didn't really mean what she said. It was a really nice letter, especially for her, and she even politely asked how he was doing and about the state of the Mere and the village. But she never sent it. She reread it later and scoffed, thinking herself pathetic, that even after all these years she was still a naive little girl desperate for her uncle's attention. She burned it and put the idea out of her mind.

Her relationship with him has always been distant, she can't see it realistically being any other way, if she could even consider that they have a relationship at all now. And she's not sure if she would like to have one. Maybe some things are better left in the past.