loquatrooster

[beautyofaphrodite]

My Personal “Pillars of Hellenic Polytheism”

You may have seen or heard of the “7 Pillars of Hellenism”. The creator of these pillars, Timothy Jay Alexander, is known to be extremely homophobic and bigoted, and therefore these pillars aren’t seen in a positive light by many Hellenic Polytheists, including myself.

That being said, personally, I like to have sort of guidelines to follow, and Alexander isn’t the only one to have created “moral pillars”. So I took inspiration from multiple sources, including @/hyakinthou-naos in one of their recent posts, to make my own pillars. These are things that are important to me, personally, and they may differ from yours if you have some. I chose to have 5 pillars as it is a number associated with Lady Aphrodite, and the pillars will be listed in alphabetical order.

Hekousios- Ε´κουσίος

ἑκούσιος translates to “free will” or “voluntary”. To me, this means to do things at your own pace, and to always have worship be a personal choice, not something put on someone.

Kharis - Χάρις

Kharis can be translated to “grace, kindness, goodwill, elegance, favour, joy, charity, beauty”, “reciprocity”, “grace, favor, goodwill”, or a reciprocal relationship with the Gods. To me, this means to not ask for things without offering something in return, to not take advantage of gifts from the Gods.

Periergia - Περιέργεια

Periergia translates to curiosity and is often associated with devotion to researching something. For me, this means to always be curious, open to new ideas, and never stop learning new things. It also means to never claim that I know everything, and be willing to research things I don’t know much about.

Symmakhia - Σύμμαχία

Symmakhia translates to “allyship”. It also happens to be an epithet of Lady Aphrodite! It is usually used in the context of military and war, but here, I am using this word in the context of allyship and support towards marginalized groups. Allyship is active, and so to me, this pillar means to show active support to those that are a part of marginalized or minority communities.

Xenia - Ξενία

Xenia is the concept of guest-friendship or hospitality. For me, this means kindness and hospitality towards those from all walks of life and lived experiences, as long as it is safe to do so.

[3d-wifey]

NSFT Alphabet: MK1 Johnny Cage Edition

A/N: Wrote this to hold you Johnny girls (gender neutral) over until I finish that smut 😙 Plus, I find writing these Alphabets for a character in preparation to write full-fledged smut for them is very helpful in capturing accurate characterization. It's almost like a writing exercise. I've written three different ones so far and I tried to keep them in character, if that makes sense. Like, I tried putting their personality and language in it. Okay, enjoy.

A = Aftercare (What they’re like after sex)

Talking. So much talking. But, honestly, did you expect anything else? As he’s pulling out, as he’s carrying you to the shower, as you’re washing his hair. And when it inevitably leads to shower sex, he’s talking then too. You’ll never meet a man who loves the sound of his own voice more than Johnny Cage.

B = Body Part (Their favorite body part of theirs and also their partners)

Uh, how ‘bout the artillery canons strapped to his arms? C’mon, I mean, who wouldn’t want a ticket to the gun show? 

Face. Is saying your face too cliche? Hear him out! You want specifics? He can do specifics! He likes the dimples that pop in your cheeks when he finally gets you to laugh at one of his jokes, the little crease you get between your eyebrows when he’s pissed you off, the adorable way your nose scrunches up when he does that one thing with his tongue that drives you crazy. See? Specifics!

C = Cum (Anything to do with cum, basically)

Pull out game…very weak. Embarrassingly weak, actually. He swears he’s never had this problem before. His ability to pull out in the nick of time has always been something he’s prided himself on. However, he vastly underestimated just how good you’d feel. He’s clean, you’re clean, and, hey! You both prefer the feeling of hitting it raw, the way nature intended it. However, your pussy’s like wet kryptonite. And he’s only a man. A very awesome man, but a man nonetheless. So birth control it is! Or, if you’re turned off by all the side effects, he can be talked into a vasectomy. It’s either that or give up the sweet, sweet embrace of your walls when he’s balls deep. 

On second thought, that vasectomy sounds pretty tempting. It is reversible, right?

D = Dirty Secret (Pretty self-explanatory, a dirty secret of theirs)

Johnny would leak his own sex tape. Plain and simple. He’d leak it from a burner account and watch the chaos ensue. There’s no shame in his game. Hey, it’s ranked the Number 1 Celebrity sex tape for a reason.

E = Experience (How experienced are they? Do they know what they’re doing?)

Is this even a question? Actors, singers, models, directors, producers. He’s THE Johnny Cage, Hollywood royalty. He’s fucked actual royalty. You’re in good hands—as long as he cares about you. If you’re a random hookup, then he’s not really working for your pleasure here. You’ll definitely cum, but it’s mainly a pit stop on his way to the finish line. 

F = Favorite Position (This goes without saying)

Reverse cowgirl. Johnny’s an ass man, through and through. He loves fucking up into you and watching your ass ripple with both of your movements. And he loves holding onto you. Big hands grabbing your waist, hips, thighs, and especially your ass. He also loves seeing you both in action. So reverse cowgirl + some artfully placed full-length mirrors = Him wrapping his arms around your stomach, rubbing at your clit, and forcing you to watch yourself as you desperately grind against him, AKA Heaven. 

G = Goofy (Are they more serious in the moment? Are they humorous? etc.)

Oh, c’mon. It isn’t like him to be serious in any situation. He’s gotta slip a joke in every now and then. Get it? Slip a joke in?

H = Hair (How well-groomed are they? Does the carpet match the drapes? etc.)

Wax on, wax off, baby. Smoother than a seal. Or, uh, some other sexy, hairless animal. You mourn when he waxes his happy trail. 

I = Intimacy (How are they during the moment? The romantic aspect.)

You’ll be surprised by how charming he can be. It’s not all jokes and great orgasms. It’s also loving touches, reverent compliments, and amazing orgasms.

J = Jack off (Masturbation Headcanon)

He’s got a healthy libido and a pretty stacked schedule, so sometimes a quick introduction between his hand and mini Johnny can’t be helped. But he’s also got a smoking hot girlfriend (you), so jerking off by himself is a rare occurrence. 

K = Kink (One or more of their kinks)

Exhibitionism. What can he say? He’s a performer at heart and he loves an audience. But nothing crazy, just your average celebrity having sex on a yacht that’s in full view of the paparazzi. Or the occasional jerking off with you telling him how fast or slow to go. Oh, and you can’t forget about the sex tapes. Man, with the amount of videos he has of the two of you going at it, he could start an archive. You two have definitely ended up on the cover of TMZ and the front page of Twitter.

Voyeurism. But only for you. He’s enthralled by anything you do, including how many of your much smaller fingers will you stuff inside yourself to replicate the feeling of him stretching you wide. It usually leads to you begging for him to touch you, something else he’s in love with. Nothing wrong with a little hands-on audience participation.

Dirty talk. Normally, dirty talk is kind of basic to any old romp in the hay, but Johnny, being Johnny, puts his own Cage flair on it. Those corny oneliners somehow translate to the perfect thing to say to get you hot. He’s like Shakespear, if Shakespear was good-looking and not a virgin. You know what they say: everything sounds better when you’re horny. Who says that? Uh…

Fighting/Sparing which always leads to blood play. Winning a match gets Johnny’s blood pumping. The adrenaline of escaping death and the crowd hyping him up. And the crux of it all is you who happens to get especially wet when he comes to you covered in blood, grinning with a glint in his eyes that’s poorly hidden behind his blood-speckled sunglasses (a glint that many may describe as mania). And it certainly goes the other way. Watching you kick ass makes him harder than a diamond. Sparing together is a no-brainer that leads to fucking on his gym floor, or, honestly, wherever you two fall. Lui Kang must regret making you two his champions in this timeline with how often he’s walked in on you two. Offering to let him join probably doesn’t soften the blow, but, hey, it’s only polite.

L = Location (Favorite places to do the do)

In his mansion. In one of his lavish beds, or pressed up against the wall-length windows. In his Bentley or in the back of his limo. He’s a big fan of fingering you under the table at an award show and then fucking you in a bathroom at said award show when he should definitely be on stage presenting. For whatever reason, walking the red carpet always gets him worked up. And going to the club together always ends with you riding him in the VIP section.

M = Motivation (What turns them on, gets them going)

Such a complex question for a man with complex taste. I’m joking, Johnny is so easy. It’s actually ridiculous how easily you turn him on. Laugh at his joke, hard. Complement his acting or fighting, hard. Running your fingers through his hair/scratching his scalp, hard. Feel him up/tease him in any context, hard. You’re covered in blood after a win, hard, hard, rock hard.

“Are you King Midas? Cuz you make me hard with just one touch.”

“That one was actually kinda clever.” 

N = No (Something they wouldn’t do, turn offs)

Nothing too gross. He’s all for sloppy, messy sex, but he has to draw the line somewhere. There’s nasty 👁🫦👁 and there’s n a s t y 👁👄👁. 

He likes to tease/do the opposite of what you say, but if you’re not 100% on board with what he’s doing, then he’s stopping it then and there. Remember: there’s nothing sexier than explicit consent!

O = Oral (preference in giving or receiving, skill, etc.)

Preferred to receive before he started dating you, and only ever had the urge to go down on someone if he had been drinking before. After you started dating, he definitely loved it whenever you gave him head, but he didn’t realize how much pleasure he could get from giving you pleasure. 

He loves sloppy head, giving and receiving, so if you weren’t wet before, you definitely will be after he gets his mouth on you. 

P = Pace (Are they fast and rough? Slow and sensual? etc.)

Depends on when and where you’re doing it. And if you two are “allowed” to be doing it in said place.

Q = Quickie (Their opinions on quickies, how often, etc.)

Big fan of the guy who came up with the idea of quickies, enough said. 

R = Risk (Are they game to experiment? Do they take risks? etc.)

C’mon. He’s the leading source of your sex tapes getting leaked. I mean, how do you think the paps keep finding you in compromising positions? A little tip-off to them while you take his tip, ha!

S = Stamina (How many rounds can they go for? How long do they last?)

It’s like he runs off horsepower, good God. If you’re trying to go until he’s tired out, it’s gonna be a couple of rounds until then.

T = Toys (Do they own toys? Do they use them? On a partner or themselves?)

He’s a fan of dildos. Specifically, watching you fuck yourself with one. “Go ahead, baby. Show me how bad you want me.” And show him, you do. God, you know how to put on a show. But you shouldn’t have to settle for some random dildo. You’re with the Cage man, and he would get a mold of his dick made for you. And they say he’s not romantic. 

Strap-on. That’s it. And he takes it well ;).

Remote-controlled vibrators, for you and him. Hell, let’s make a game out of it. See who can last the longest in public, there are no losers! 

U = Unfair (How much they like to tease)

His version of teasing is doing the opposite of what you said to do. You want him to speed up? He’s slowing down and making sure you feel every inch inside you. Oh, keep his hands above his head? You gonna make him? He’s a total brat, but you knew what you were getting yourself into when you agreed to date him.

V = Volume (How loud they are, what sounds they make, etc.)

Heh, yeahhh. He’s real loud. Moans, groans, screams, whimpers. You name it, he’s doing it. It’s the performer in him. And because he knows you like how he sounds.

W = Wild Card (A random headcanon for the character)

Tattoos? Sexy as hell. If you were to ever get his name tattooed on you (preferably a tramp stamp), then you might as well start planning what flowers you want in your bouquet. I could see him getting your name tattooed on him too. Probably on his pelvis, in the middle of his v-line. In case anyone ever needs a reminder of who his dick belongs to.  

Type of guy to dedicate a Mortal Kombat match to you, and then lose. Ah, I’m joking. He’d beat his opponent’s ass all because you promised him victory sex if he won and he doesn’t take victory sex lightly.

X = X-ray (Let’s see what’s going on under those clothes)

He’s got an 8.5–8.9 inch hog, shower not a grower. Little Johnny isn’t so little. There’s a reason he’s alright with doing full-frontal nudity if the scene calls for it. They’ve had to CG out his bulge in post-production in every Ninja Mime movie. It’s not his fault spandex happens to be the clingiest material known to man.

Y = Yearning (How high is their sex drive?)

Higher than Mount Fuji. He’s a stallion in his prime with a gorgeous girlfriend. His spare time is filled with filling you. And you both tend to feed off of each other, so all it takes is for one of you to be the tiniest bit turned on, and then, boom! You’re both desperately grinding against each other in a supply closet. Ain’t that just the way?

Z = Zzz (How quickly they fall asleep afterward)

Depends. He’s kind of like a dog that needs to tire himself out before he can sleep. 

Click for a Johnny Cage-shaped surprise👀👀

[vrystalius]

pt.2 // NSFW Alphabet — Muzan Kibutsuji

Part two of the NSFW Alphabet, all about the demon king.

Pairing: Muzan x afab!reader

Here is part one.

O = Oral (preference in giving or receiving)

Receiving

The only time Muzan openly moans to show his satisfaction is when you suck him off. He loves it. The wetness, warmth, tightness and your gaging while you try and take him all in one go is entertaining to him. Seeing your teary eyes and pretty lips all stretched out makes him want to grab a fistful of your hair and pull you even more onto his length, wanting to see just how much can you can take of him down your throat. The imagine alone makes his thighs shiver and tremble.

Giving

It’s his favourite meal and favourite way to please you, even if he is quite the selfish lover. Sometimes he’ll intentionally be slow and teasing to make your hip buckle against him. Muzan needs to see how much you want it, how much you want him. He can control the length and width of his tongue at free will and be rest assured that you two will try every tongue-combination on earth to find out how to make you cum the hardest and quickest.

P = Pace (Is he fast and rough? Slow and sensual?)

On most nights, Muzan is rough and fast, overwhelming you with the pace, his hips snapping against yours faster than you can process. But sometimes, when he is in a sappy mood, he likes to be more cuddly. Especially when apart from you for a period of time (two days max), that’s where he wants to be a little cuddlier. Emphasis on little. He’s bury his face in your neck or trail kisses and bites all down your body while he grinds his hips against yours in a calmer rhythm, before lifting his head and analysing your expression. Then, he’d lift his torso to hover over you while beginning to get faster and much, much harder.

Sometimes, Muzan even growls. That’s only happens if you get lucky and he lost in the sauce, literally.

Q = Quickie (his opinions on quickies)

They’re convenient and as the name states, quick. It’s fast and convenient relief from any stress or anger he has been holding, and besides, he can spend more time admiring you like that. It’s hot to see Muzan unravel before you for just a moment, how he was struggling with opening his shirt that he just resolves to ripping it open, or how messy his hair feels when you run your fingers through it and how flustered he gets after finishing. He’d turn his back and you and pull his pants properly back up, slipping his belt back in and scowling at the missing buttons in his expensive vest. It’s also kind of funny seeing Muzan become a little awkward and not knowing what to do with you now. Normally, you’d be laying in bed and maybe cuddling or talk about whatever, but he can’t really do that now, can he?

“Th-Thank you. I’ll be seeing you later in my chambers, I assume.”

R = Risk (Is he game to experiment?)

Depends on what you mean with risk. Muzan does not want to risk being seen by any other demon, god forbid upper moons. If you suggest testing out different things to use in the bedroom, like toys, restrains, kinks or whatnot, he might be down for it. It depends how submissive you want him to be during those try-outs. He might secretly want to be submissive, but not openly just yet. He’s embarrassed of wanting that.

S = Stamina (how many rounds can he go for? how long does he last?)

Muzan can last forever and how many rounds you want him to. He’ll adapt to your stamina and how much of him you can handle at once, but sometimes he’ll convince you to go for a couple more rounds— your all-time record of rounds was 8. He regards it as improvement from the 2 rounds before, but he wants to increase that number by a little…

T = Toys (does he own toys? does he use them?)

No, no toys. He wants you to get pleasure through him— Muzan gets moody when he catches you masturbate. How dare you not come to him when you’re in the mood?

U = Unfair (how much does he tease?)

If he weren’t the king of demons, Muzan is the king of teasing, both physically and mentally. He withholds himself until you beg for him to finally take you. Once he does, it won’t be like you wanted it though. His hips would rest against yours, waiting for you to whimper and stutter that you want him to move. Muzan likes to be overwhelmingly fast afterwards, asking you if you like it how to scream his name. His shit-eating grin makes your thighs shiver even harder while his fingers keep teasing his clit, flicking and chuckling at your reactions.

“What do you want me to do, hm? Faster? Come on, hun. Spell it out for me.”

V = Volume (how loud is he, what sounds does he make)

Muzan growls, hums and grunts, but not very loudly. He’ll show how much he enjoys by blushing and his hands desperately clinging into you while his brows furrow together. He’s trying very hard not to become undone right in front of you, keeping up the facade of a cool and collected even while pounding himself into you. One time, you felt his chest vibrate against yours in a purring manner. You never asked him about that, fearing that he might get pissy about being exposed like that.

W = Wild card (a random headcanon for him)

Muzan possesses five brains and likes to store photographic-memories inside them (although certain memories about a certain someone would rather be forgotten), and those memories include you. He likes to remember every single detail about when you two have sex, every area he touched before, every single facial expression you blessed his eyes with before, what makes you moan the loudest, the list goes on… Those memories and sights serve him well during solo-sessions, but he appreciates them the most when you are with him. That way he can create more pictures to remember, but also use past memories to recreate the old sights for future use.

X = X-ray (let’s see what’s going on under those clothes…)

You can’t really describe it— he can change it at will. The only thing that stays consistent is the pale colour and his pride for it.

Y = Yearning (how high is his sex drive?)

His sex drive isn’t particularly high, he adapts to your needs. Or that’s what Muzan has been telling himself— He’s fairly needy and expects you to meet them. He’d cuddle up behind you while you are busy, pressing his whole body up against you and letting his hands roam shamelessly while mumbling into your ear why he wants you right now and how much he wants to feel you around him. He’ll talk dirty and tease you with his hands until you either shoo him away or give in.

“Whatever do you mean by that? I am not too much. Be grateful that I love you or else I would’ve slice your head off.”

Z = Zzz (how quickly he falls asleep afterwards)

He doesn’t need sleep and therefore likes to stay awake to watch over you. Muzan’s fingers would gently run through your messed up hair, gently massaging your scalp while holding you close against his body while you sleep. A small smile would rest on his face while seeing you so vulnerable. You’re like a bunny walking into the jaws of a wolf— so naive you are. That’s what’s so enticing about you, isn’t it? His fingers would slowly move from your hair to the warm skin of your shoulders, his sharp nails almost breaking your delicate skin. During those moments he truly realises how much he fell for you.

🎃

My Tamagotchi just arrived!! It’s the hashira version, meaning my Tsugoku is going to evolve into one of the hashira depending on how I care for it. I’m so excited for it! Also, tomorrow is the start of my trick or treat event. Please send in some requests for it if you like!

Anways, make sure to EAT, SLEEP and DRINK enough!!

Take care of yourselves <3

Here’s my event masterlist 🎃

[totalbrainr0t777]

Tenya Iida SFW alphabet

༺♡༻AUTHORS / NOTE : I just wanted to start a new series, and alphabets are simple and I love doing them, requests are open!༺♡༻

A = Affection (How affectionate are they? How do they show affection?)

Tenya is in affectionate guy, in the comfort of your own home. PDA is a soft no, as much as he loves you, he'd rather show his affections at home, where he knows no one is watching. It makes him anxious letting his guard down in public.

♡.･✩°｡⋆

B = Best friend (What would they be like as a best friend? How would the friendship start?)

Iida was originally afraid to talk to you because he found you so out of his league he had no point in trying. When he did finally talk to you, he was the most attentive and responsible friend you could've asked for. He made an effort to include you, he made sure you got to your room safe, he made sure you were okay. Tenya was your biggest cheerleader

♡.･✩°｡⋆

C = Cuddles (Do they like to cuddle? How would they cuddle?)

Cuddles are Tenya's guilty pleasure. He won't admit it because he feels it makes him childish and makes him feel small (that's one of his biggest worries, not being strong enough for you). His dream afternoon is you and him, limbs tangled on the couch, and watching a movie. He could care less about the movie, he just wants to watch your face light up with intrigue at the movie, maybe hug you a little tighter when it gets scarier.

♡.･✩°｡⋆

D = Domestic (Do they want to settle down? How are they at cooking and cleaning?)

Iida isn't the best cook, but he could clean for the olympics. Seriously, that guy is meticulous. Every book on his book shelf is categorised by its dewey number as per the dewey decimal system. Everything in the common room is organised time and time again (Until kirishima and kaminari are in the room). Settling down with you is something constantly on his mind, as he knows you're the love of his life.

♡.･✩°｡⋆

E = Ending (If they had to break up with their partner, how would they do it?)

A calm, respectful conversation. Quiet and without any fuss, like Iida himself. He's never liked making a fuss, why would this be any difference? Breaking up with him would kill him inside but he knows sometimes it's just for the best.

♡.･✩°｡⋆

F = Fiance(e) (How do they feel about commitment? How quick would they want to get married?)

Commitment has always been an issue for Tenya in a relationship context, he constantly thinks he's going to get hurt. People also aren't his thing, he prefers to be dominant and lead but that isn't how a relationship works, so he is thrown out of his comfort zone. Still, he would want marriage relatively quickly, within a couple years. Marriage is something he knows he's wanted since he met you but wouldn't know how to communicate it.

♡.･✩°｡⋆

G = Gentle (How gentle are they, both physically and emotionally?)

Iida comes across as blunt, however as you get to know him, you realise he genuinely can't help it. He, physically, is the most gentle there is, you're treated like glass that could break in a second. He tries desperately not to hurt your feelings, or to upset you in any way really.

♡.･✩°｡⋆

H = Hugs (Do they like hugs? How often do they do it? What are their hugs like?)

As stated in the cuddles section, he loves hugs, in private. He likes to hug you tight, so he can protect you, he doesn't hug you too often though.

♡.･✩°｡⋆

I = I love you (How fast do they say the L-word?)

The L word isn't used lightly in the Iida household, and tenya has always had to work for his I love yous. Luckily for you, you gave him the safe space for him to admit how he feels about you.

♡.･✩°｡⋆

J = Jealousy (How jealous do they get? What do they do when they’re jealous?)

Tenya is very territorial, that applies to you too. He loves you with all his heart and getting you stolen away isn't an option, he will do anything to make sure that doesn't happen. In public, you're glued to his side, everyone knows you and him are together.

♡.･✩°｡⋆

K = Kisses (What are their kisses like? Where do they like to kiss you? Where do they like to be kissed?)

Iida is a tender and gentle kisser, but his kisses are still passionate. He loves kissing your lips but kissing your forehead is one of his favourite things to do. He loves how your face lights up when he does it too. Being an old fashioned guy, he likes kisses on the lips but his heart pounds like crazy when you kiss his neck, or even his cheek.

♡.･✩°｡⋆

L = Little ones (How are they around children?)

Tenya isn't good around children, they're out of his control so they make him feel weird. He would love to have children but currently, he wouldn't be ready at all

♡.･✩°｡⋆

M = Morning (How are mornings spent with them?)

Mornings are spent with him cuddling you in bed as long as possible, then making you cereal. Or anything you want really, he'll find out how to make it perfectly, he loves to just get up and do things but lazing in bed with you is just as good in his eyes

♡.･✩°｡⋆

N = Night (How are nights spent with them?)

Nights are spent with him worrying about making sure he has everything for the start of the next day. School day or not. Afterwards though, he gets in bed (at 9, 9.30 on weekends) and falls asleep with you curled up in his arms.

♡.･✩°｡⋆

O = Open (When would they start revealing things about themselves? Do they say everything all at once or wait a while to reveal things slowly?)

Tenya isn't a very open person, talking about himself is hard because the few things he values most are mainly educational and he doesn't want to bother you with that, but over time he'll cave and tell you things personally about him.

♡.･✩°｡⋆

P = Patience (How easily angered are they?)

He can have a lot of patience in the right situation but a lot of little things can really get him all worked up and overstimulate him. He'd never raise his voice at you, or get annoyed at you, unless he needed to.

♡.･✩°｡⋆

Q = Quizzes (How much would they remember about you? Do they remember every little detail you mention in passing, or do they kind of forget everything?)

He has a notebook dedicated to just you. Things you like, things you don't, things you want to do, he doesn't care. Tenya just wants to make sure he treats you like royalty, like you deserve. He constantly spoils you.

♡.･✩°｡⋆

R = Remember (What is their favorite moment in your relationship?)

The first time you made him cry. Not because he was sad, but because your love overwhelmed him. You were in his room, talking, and you just told him how much you love him. And he burst into tears. But you cradled him in your arms, until you both fell asleep.

♡.･✩°｡⋆

S = Security (How protective are they? How would they protect you? How would they like to be protected?)

He would do anything in his power to protect you, to make you feel safe, no matter what. Whether it's something as small as walking to your dorm room or something as big and being your bodyguard, he wouldn't care regardless, he just wants you to be safe. He doesn't believe you should protect him, because he's the protector.

♡.･✩°｡⋆

T = Try (How much effort would they put into dates, anniversaries, gifts, everyday tasks?)

He makes you feel worshipped, like a deity on special occasions, anniversaries, etc. Even in everyday, he treats you like the only person on earth. Gifts have to be sentimental and expensive for them to be acceptable for you.

♡.･✩°｡⋆

U = Ugly (What would be some bad habits of theirs?)

How little he regards his own safety when it comes to you. It really upsets you how much he disregards himself for you. He doesn't see an issue with it because he sees himself as a provider, but it constantly gets on your nerves.

♡.･✩°｡⋆

V = Vanity (How concerned are they with their looks?)

His looks don't matter to him at all. Soul and mind counts miles more to Iida.

♡.･✩°｡⋆

W = Whole (Would they feel incomplete without you?)

Without you, he feels bare. You make everything better for him, even something as mundane as class, he just needs you there.

♡.･✩°｡⋆

X = Xtra (A random headcanon for them.)

Tenya has a stuffed animal (a bunny) he got from Tensei when he was born and he keeps it hidden but he trusts you enough for you to see it.

♡.･✩°｡⋆

Y = Yuck (What are some things they wouldn’t like, either in general or in a partner?)

Trying to make him jealous. It just makes him think that you don't feel loved, it's his biggest pet hate in the whole world. He feels he loves you enough, to try and make him jealous just feels like a slap in the face.

♡.･✩°｡⋆

Z = Zzz (What is a sleep habits of theirs?)

Tenya hugs anything in immediate vicinity to him, pillows, blankets, you. He can't help it, he just doesn't feel comfy without something to hug.

♡.･✩°｡⋆

[pyfilove]

⊹⊱《 Headcanons: Edward Nashton 》⊰⊹ NSFW

Note: Riddler is missing from these headcanons for the reason that these headcanons are related to my future fanfictions where Edward's alterego does not feature. Also in the future there will be a separate collection of headcanons for Riddler.

Note 2: I don't know English well and I use a translator, so sometimes the text may not be written correctly

Warning: Smoking; alcohol; mention of suicide and thoughts of self-harm; binding; strangulation; humiliation; dominance/submission; obscene language; oral sex; masturbation; candles; hickeys; bites; licking; mentions genitals; teasing; big age difference (Y/N is 25 years old and I think she already has the right to decide whether she should date a man older than her or not); ass spanking (guys, I don't know what to call it correctly XD).

Word count: 1694

— Smoking. Edward started smoking to have a reason to talk with his colleagues. He saw them going out together to chat during their smoking break, so he tried it, but it didn't work. He got the addiction, but he didn’t get the company of his colleagues and friends.

— Favorite cigarettes. Smokes stereotypically “feminine” cigarettes. He likes the taste of such cigarettes because they are not as bitter as regular ones, and he also likes their shape.

— He’s trying to quit smoking. Before Y/N appeared, he tried to quit smoking, which in principle worked well for him, but after the girl’s arrival and the fact that she smokes, he had to resume his addiction so that he would have reasons to talk to her during a session of getting nicotine into his lungs.

—  Doesn't drink alcohol. He is afraid that with such thoughts in his head he will drink himself to death and die a miserable death.

— He doesn’t know how to cook. He will be able to prepare something for himself, give it as a gift, or cook it, but not prepare any complex dishes. It seems he simply doesn’t have the motivation to cook, and he also has other “important things” to do with cooking.

— The apartment is always a wild mess. In his words, this is a creative order, because he knows where everything is and it doesn’t bother him. But he puts important things in alphabetical order. After Y/N moved, she had to establish this order only in her room.

— He only washes dishes on weekends. After work, he didn't really want to do the dishes, and in principle he lived alone. Of course, after Y/N moved, he had to start washing dishes, even though he considered it a waste of his time.

— Doesn't like rats. He is good with animals, but after his trauma with rats he seems to dislike them. He doesn't harm the rat in any way, he's just trying to avoid them. (His words in the comic also push me to this idea)

—  He fucking loves dogs. Because of loneliness, he would like to get a dog that would love him as he is. But due to the landlord, lack of time and lack of finances to provide for the dog, he prefers to just be touched by videos with dogs.

— Has terrible eyesight. Without glasses it's like having no hands. Astigmatism has haunted him since childhood. The first time Y/N heard these words from him, she didn't believe it. But he had to show articles on Google about this disease until she was convinced of it.

— Glasses. He hates being touched, touched, or even having his hands next to his glasses. He also doesn’t like it when Y/N takes them off. After all, he feels uncomfortable without them and he feels completely naked in front of her, and also because he can’t fucking see. He allows him to take off his glasses on “holidays” so that she can enjoy his face without glasses.

— Neat appearance. Since the orphanage, he has been haunted by the neatness that was instilled in him, even though this is not the most pleasant place in the world. He takes a shower every day, irons his shirt every day, and even the smell is pleasant. The hairstyle is also neat, even if it is a little overgrown. But damn, it suits him.

— Has a large number of shower gels. There was a shortage of soap in the orphanage, and these were bars of soap, but not liquid soap. So every time in a new family, he spent the maximum on gels, shampoos and conditioners. And how they smelled to him! As an adult, he has a lot of shower gels with different scents, but prefers to spend them wisely.

— Thoughts of self-harm. He didn’t want to commit suicide, but he had thoughts of harm while being angry at himself.

— Strange. The inability to communicate with people makes him shy, and in the eyes of people, strange and incomprehensible. For the first 1-2 months, Y/N couldn't understand Edward. It seemed to her that he did not like her, until after one conversation with a cigarette in his hands, he admitted that he simply did not know which way to approach and what to say.

NSFW:

— Glasses. Sometimes he deliberately tilts his head so that his glasses slide down his nose and adjust them gracefully back. This gives Y/N goosebumps. Sometimes she looks displeased from under her glasses when a girl has done something wrong, which also causes excitement throughout her body.

— Smoking. Wow, there’s so much to do with smoking, wow. He knows about Y/N’s little fetish for smoking, so he often smokes not near an open window, but in the apartment, even unceremoniously entering a girl’s room with a cigarette in his hands and always knowing what kind of cigarette he has.her there will be a reaction.

— Rules and agreements. As adults and normal people, they had several dialogues about what they like and what they don't. What to do and what not to do. They undoubtedly have safe words and stop actions. No one forces anyone and they try to monitor the emotional and physical state of their partner during sex.

— Licking. Loves to lick the hell out of her partner's body. More than kissing and biting. I also noticed that Y/N twitches more during this process than during kissing and biting.

— Hickeys and bites. Incredibly loves to leave marks on the hips, waist and shoulders. And also the next day after marking her body, she likes to check for bruises and teeth marks. He also loves it when Y//N also bites him and leaves hickeys. Looking at himself in the mirror, he runs his hands over them and smiles, feeling the warmth in his chest from the fact that he is no longer alone and he is also loved and adored.

— Candles. Uses special candles that are sold in sex shops. He likes to dribble molten wax onto her body and then massage Y/N gently. During this procedure, the girl falls asleep, which sometimes upsets him. At this time, he wipes the remaining oil from the girl’s back with a towel and lays her down to sleep, and then goes to the bathroom to calm down my excitement.

— Oral sex. Loves Y/N's wet cracks. He loves to be between her legs, and also loves when she squeezes him between her legs. Her eyes roll back every time she grabs his hair and presses him against her wet pussy. If he were paid a buck every time he wanted to give Y/N oral pleasure, then he would probably become a billionaire.

— Oral sex 2. The first time a girl gave him a blowjob, he was in 7th heaven. Not because he had wanted it for a long time, but because he didn’t feel so disgusting and ugly. Every time Y/N herself climbs under his feet and rubs face against his penis through the fabric of his pants, he feels so desired and loved that he sometimes cries during the process.

— Masturbation. Loves to jerk off Y/N, sometimes he teases during this process. She loves it so much when she begs and whines for him to fuck her while he plays with her wet folds with his fingers.

— Nickname. Due to their slightly large age gap of 10 years (Y/N 25, a Edward in mine headcanon 35.) he likes it when she calls him daddy. He also loves it when she calls him sir and master, when Edward dominates. And he also loves it when she calls him honey, dog and favorite when the girl dominates. He also prefers to call her baby and his toy. During submission he calls her mistress.

— Dominance and submission. He loves to be in all roles, although he likes to dominate more. But he also loves it when Y/N takes the initiative, it feeds his ego. But also after dominating him, he sometimes feels empty, which is why the girl happily calms him down.

— Spanking. Sometimes he likes to punish her like this for some little pranks, first tying her hands well. He does this carefully at first, and then stops when she begins to tremble in his arms.

— Humiliation. Does not like to use humiliation during the process. After all, how can you insult a person you value and love? But despite this, during wild excitement and when he is already fucking Y/N hard, he can use dirty words and dirty sentences. At such a moment, he calls her a slut, a dirty bitch, a dirty whore who fucks with garbage and TD. He prefers that Y/N sometimes humiliates him too, at this moment he feels so insignificant that he wants to cry, and his penis begins to harden even more and twitches a little from excitement. After the end of the process, he begins to cry in the arms of Y/N, who calms him down

— Strangulation. WELL... IN ORDER... I AM A HORRIBLE PERSON. After long conversations on this topic, they came to the conclusion that the two of them liked it. Edward loves to squeeze Y/N's throat because she gets pleasure from it. And Edward himself enjoys being strangled with his own tie. At this moment, he feels like a dog on a leash, that he only has to gladly obey the owner’s instructions.

— Bondage. Shibari is one of his hobbies after he started dating Y/N. He likes how the ropes hug her body, how lewdly she lies in his hands and how she trustingly lies while he ties knots. Also prefers the classic way of tying a girl's hands. I also don’t mind being tied up, completely surrendering to Y/N’s control. Definitely likes to use his tie to tie Y/N's hands. He ties it tightly, securing it well, and ties a bow to make it seem like Y/N is his gift. Looking into your eyes and seeing primal adoration and admiration there drives him crazy every time.

[benkyoutobentou]

How to study languages without studying

Whether you're just starting out and have had bad experiences with textbook learning in the past or are getting burnt out from prepping for the next proficiency test, it's never a bad idea to put the textbooks away for a time and just enjoy your target language. If you're new to the world of immersion, here are a few ways to get you started.

Follow along with the lyrics of a song. Spotify's not-so-new-anymore lyrics feature is great for this, especially since it has timed lyrics, but it doesn't have every song.

Expert mode: Write out the lyrics and underline/highlight/make note of all the words and grammar structures you don't know. Learn these unknowns until you can understand the whole song!

Extra challenge: Translate a song from your target language. I usually tend to stay away from translations in my study, but for those of you who aspire to be translators (or already are!), the poetic nature of song lyrics can be a fun challenge.

Watch a show or movie. Netflix has now introduced a feature where you can sort by language! If there's nothing made in your language that you're interested in, it also gives the option to sort by shows and movies that have the audio or subtitles available. Internet Archive also tends to have lots of foreign films that I'm looking for.

Easy mode: Watch with English or your native language subtitles. When doing this, try to still listen to what's being said and pick up on words and phrases that you know, or match new words with their translation in the subtitles. Note: reading one language and listening to another is a skill in and of itself! Don't be discouraged if you can't do both at the same time yet, you're brain is still making the connections in intonation and cadence of the language.

Hard mode: Watch with captions in your target language. This helps you connect listening and reading, especially in languages where the spelling isn't exactly phonetic, or it uses a different alphabet than what you're used to.

Expert mode: No captions or subtitles! But who knows, maybe you're better at listening comprehension than I am. Make sure you're getting comprehensible input here; some shows and movies are much harder than others. But above all else, watch what keeps your interest. A movie where you can catch half the dialogue but is super engaging is better for you than an "easy" movie that you're going to spend your time ignoring.

Polyglot mode?: Watch something in your target language with subtitles in a different target language. This adds just one too many layers of obfuscation for me, but if you're into the challenge, more power to you.

Watch YouTube. You can change your language preference on YouTube, and with that, the Explore section will give you recommendations in your target language. Going into the trending tab with your target language can give you a good idea about what people are interested in in the countries where your target language is spoken.

Read something. It can be a book, it can be a comic. There are plenty of webcomics out there in a number of languages! There's also probably an English language listicle with recommendations of easier to understand webcomics for learners, too.

If you're just getting started in immersion, you can choose whether you focus on intensive reading or extensive reading (this actually goes for all kinds of immersion, but is easiest to control with reading since it happens at your own pace). Intensive reading is reading with the goal of understanding everything 100%. If you don't understand a word, or a grammar point, or the reading of a character, look it up. Extensive reading is reading just to get the gist of things. Look up words and grammar points only if they stop you from understanding the general meaning of the sentence or section. And of course, the more you immerse, the less you'll have to look things up, but remember that difficulty varies between materials, even within books of the same age range, genre, and medium.

A small digression: If you decide that you never want to open a textbook on your language learning journey, more power to you! It can be done and I know people who have gotten to proficient levels of their target language without textbooks. If you want this to be you, extensive immersion is your best friend. You also might want to get comfortable with the flashcard program anki, because, if this is your goal, all those unknown grammar points and words will probably end up there. But at the end of the day, language learning is an intensely personal journey, and what works for others won't necessarily work for you. Finding what works for you is just part of learning a language.

Play a game. Lots of games are region locked (hint: Pokemon Sun/Moon isn't! If you start a new game, you can choose which language you want to play it in), but there are plenty of free online games still lurking in the corners of the internet. With a bit of googling, you can probably find something in your target language. Just the other day, I went out to find one of those hidden item games in Japanese and ended up finding an entire site dedicated to user made browser games.

If you're learning Japanese or Korean, picrew might be fun to look through as well. I noticed that plenty of picrews have basic anatomy vocabulary. I'm not super familiar with picrew myself, but the ones I've seen tend to be in Korean and Japanese

And lastly, don't fully give up on textbooks before trying them out. Don't be discouraged if textbooks truly aren't your thing, but studying a language on your own time can feel much different than studying for school. Don't put too much pressure on yourself and just have fun with your language. Additionally, if you'd rather learn in a video format, many languages have full courses uploaded to YouTube for you to try. Finding these can be difficult for some languages though, so don't hesitate to reach out to other learners and see what they recommend!

Got your materials ready? Great! Now go forth and immerse!

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Big Tech’s “attention rents”

Tomorrow (Nov 4), I'm keynoting the Hackaday Supercon in Pasadena, CA.

The thing is, any feed or search result is "algorithmic." "Just show me the things posted by people I follow in reverse-chronological order" is an algorithm. "Just show me products that have this SKU" is an algorithm. "Alphabetical sort" is an algorithm. "Random sort" is an algorithm.

Any process that involves more information than you can take in at a glance or digest in a moment needs some kind of sense-making. It needs to be put in some kind of order. There's always gonna be an algorithm.

But that's not what we mean by "the algorithm" (TM). When we talk about "the algorithm," we mean a system for ordering information that uses complex criteria that are not precisely known to us, and than can't be easily divined through an examination of the ordering.

There's an idea that a "good" algorithm is one that does not seek to deceive or harm us. When you search for a specific part number, you want exact matches for that search at the top of the results. It's fine if those results include third-party parts that are compatible with the part you're searching for, so long as they're clearly labeled. There's room for argument about how to order those results – do highly rated third-party parts go above the OEM part? How should the algorithm trade off price and quality?

It's hard to come up with an objective standard to resolve these fine-grained differences, but search technologists have tried. Think of Google: they have a patent on "long clicks." A "long click" is when you search for something and then don't search for it again for quite some time, the implication being that you've found what you were looking for. Google Search ads operate a "pay per click" model, and there's an argument that this aligns Google's ad division's interests with search quality: if the ad division only gets paid when you click a link, they will militate for placing ads that users want to click on.

Platforms are inextricably bound up in this algorithmic information sorting business. Platforms have emerged as the endemic form of internet-based business, which is ironic, because a platform is just an intermediary – a company that connects different groups to each other. The internet's great promise was "disintermediation" – getting rid of intermediaries. We did that, and then we got a whole bunch of new intermediaries.

Usually, those groups can be sorted into two buckets: "business customers" (drivers, merchants, advertisers, publishers, creative workers, etc) and "end users" (riders, shoppers, consumers, audiences, etc). Platforms also sometimes connect end users to each other: think of dating sites, or interest-based forums on Reddit. Either way, a platform's job is to make these connections, and that means platforms are always in the algorithm business.

Whether that's matching a driver and a rider, or an advertiser and a consumer, or a reader and a mix of content from social feeds they're subscribed to and other sources of information on the service, the platform has to make a call as to what you're going to see or do.

These choices are enormously consequential. In the theory of Surveillance Capitalism, these choices take on an almost supernatural quality, where "Big Data" can be used to guess your response to all the different ways of pitching an idea or product to you, in order to select the optimal pitch that bypasses your critical faculties and actually controls your actions, robbing you of "the right to a future tense."

I don't think much of this hypothesis. Every claim to mind control – from Rasputin to MK Ultra to neurolinguistic programming to pick-up artists – has turned out to be bullshit. Besides, you don't need to believe in mind control to explain the ways that algorithms shape our beliefs and actions. When a single company dominates the information landscape – say, when Google controls 90% of your searches – then Google's sorting can deprive you of access to information without you knowing it.

If every "locksmith" listed on Google Maps is a fake referral business, you might conclude that there are no more reputable storefront locksmiths in existence. What's more, this belief is a form of self-fulfilling prophecy: if Google Maps never shows anyone a real locksmith, all the real locksmiths will eventually go bust.

If you never see a social media update from a news source you follow, you might forget that the source exists, or assume they've gone under. If you see a flood of viral videos of smash-and-grab shoplifter gangs and never see a news story about wage theft, you might assume that the former is common and the latter is rare (in reality, shoplifting hasn't risen appreciably, while wage-theft is off the charts).

In the theory of Surveillance Capitalism, the algorithm was invented to make advertisers richer, and then went on to pervert the news (by incentivizing "clickbait") and finally destroyed our politics when its persuasive powers were hijacked by Steve Bannon, Cambridge Analytica, and QAnon grifters to turn millions of vulnerable people into swivel-eyed loons, racists and conspiratorialists.

As I've written, I think this theory gives the ad-tech sector both too much and too little credit, and draws an artificial line between ad-tech and other platform businesses that obscures the connection between all forms of platform decay, from Uber to HBO to Google Search to Twitter to Apple and beyond:

https://pluralistic.net/HowToDestroySurveillanceCapitalism

As a counter to Surveillance Capitalism, I've proposed a theory of platform decay called enshittification, which identifies how the market power of monopoly platforms, combined with the flexibility of digital tools, combined with regulatory capture, allows platforms to abuse both business-customers and end-users, by depriving them of alternatives, then "twiddling" the knobs that determine the rules of the platform without fearing sanction under privacy, labor or consumer protection law, and finally, blocking digital self-help measures like ad-blockers, alternative clients, scrapers, reverse engineering, jailbreaking, and other tech guerrilla warfare tactics:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/21/potemkin-ai/#hey-guys

One important distinction between Surveillance Capitalism and enshittification is that enshittification posits that the platform is bad for everyone. Surveillance Capitalism starts from the assumption that surveillance advertising is devastatingly effective (which explains how your racist Facebook uncles got turned into Jan 6 QAnons), and concludes that advertisers must be well-served by the surveillance system.

But advertisers – and other business customers – are very poorly served by platforms. Procter and Gamble reduced its annual surveillance advertising budget from $100m//year to $0/year and saw a 0% reduction in sales. The supposed laser-focused targeting and superhuman message refinement just don't work very well – first, because the tech companies are run by bullshitters whose marketing copy is nonsense, and second because these companies are monopolies who can abuse their customers without losing money.

The point of enshittification is to lock end-users to the platform, then use those locked-in users as bait for business customers, who will also become locked to the platform. Once everyone is holding everyone else hostage, the platform uses the flexibility of digital services to play a variety of algorithmic games to shift value from everyone to the business's shareholders. This flexibility is supercharged by the failure of regulators to enforce privacy, labor and consumer protection standards against the companies, and by these companies' ability to insist that regulators punish end-users, competitors, tinkerers and other third parties to mod, reverse, hack or jailbreak their products and services to block their abuse.

Enshittification needs The Algorithm. When Uber wants to steal from its drivers, it can just do an old-fashioned wage theft, but eventually it will face the music for that kind of scam:

https://apnews.com/article/uber-lyft-new-york-city-wage-theft-9ae3f629cf32d3f2fb6c39b8ffcc6cc6

The best way to steal from drivers is with algorithmic wage discrimination. That's when Uber offers occassional, selective drivers higher rates than it gives to drivers who are fully locked to its platform and take every ride the app offers. The less selective a driver becomes, the lower the premium the app offers goes, but if a driver starts refusing rides, the wage offer climbs again. This isn't the mind-control of Surveillance Capitalism, it's just fraud, shaving fractional pennies off your paycheck in the hopes that you won't notice. The goal is to get drivers to abandon the other side-hustles that allow them to be so choosy about when they drive Uber, and then, once the driver is fully committed, to crank the wage-dial down to the lowest possible setting:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/12/algorithmic-wage-discrimination/#fishers-of-men

This is the same game that Facebook played with publishers on the way to its enshittification: when Facebook began aggressively courting publishers, any short snippet republished from the publisher's website to a Facebook feed was likely to be recommended to large numbers of readers. Facebook offered publishers a vast traffic funnel that drove millions of readers to their sites.

But as publishers became more dependent on that traffic, Facebook's algorithm started downranking short excerpts in favor of medium-length ones, building slowly to fulltext Facebook posts that were fully substitutive for the publisher's own web offerings. Like Uber's wage algorithm, Facebook's recommendation engine played its targets like fish on a line.

When publishers responded to declining reach for short excerpts by stepping back from Facebook, Facebook goosed the traffic for their existing posts, sending fresh floods of readers to the publisher's site. When the publisher returned to Facebook, the algorithm once again set to coaxing the publishers into posting ever-larger fractions of their work to Facebook, until, finally, the publisher was totally locked into Facebook. Facebook then started charging publishers for "boosting" – not just to be included in algorithmic recommendations, but to reach their own subscribers.

Enshittification is modern, high-tech enabled, monopolistic form of rent seeking. Rent-seeking is a subtle and important idea from economics, one that is increasingly relevant to our modern economy. For economists, a "rent" is income you get from owning a "factor of production" – something that someone else needs to make or do something.

Rents are not "profits." Profit is income you get from making or doing something. Rent is income you get from owning something needed to make a profit. People who earn their income from rents are called rentiers. If you make your income from profits, you're a "capitalist."

Capitalists and rentiers are in irreconcilable combat with each other. A capitalist wants access to their factors of production at the lowest possible price, whereas rentiers want those prices to be as high as possible. A phone manufacturer wants to be able to make phones as cheaply as possible, while a patent-troll wants to own a patent that the phone manufacturer needs to license in order to make phones. The manufacturer is a capitalism, the troll is a rentier.

The troll might even decide that the best strategy for maximizing their rents is to exclusively license their patents to a single manufacturer and try to eliminate all other phones from the market. This will allow the chosen manufacturer to charge more and also allow the troll to get higher rents. Every capitalist except the chosen manufacturer loses. So do people who want to buy phones. Eventually, even the chosen manufacturer will lose, because the rentier can demand an ever-greater share of their profits in rent.

Digital technology enables all kinds of rent extraction. The more digitized an industry is, the more rent-seeking it becomes. Think of cars, which harvest your data, block third-party repair and parts, and force you to buy everything from acceleration to seat-heaters as a monthly subscription:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/24/rent-to-pwn/#kitt-is-a-demon

The cloud is especially prone to rent-seeking, as Yanis Varoufakis writes in his new book, Technofeudalism, where he explains how "cloudalists" have found ways to lock all kinds of productive enterprise into using cloud-based resources from which ever-increasing rents can be extracted:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/28/cloudalists/#cloud-capital

The endless malleability of digitization makes for endless variety in rent-seeking, and cataloging all the different forms of digital rent-extraction is a major project in this Age of Enshittification. "Algorithmic Attention Rents: A theory of digital platform market power," a new UCL Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose paper by Tim O'Reilly, Ilan Strauss and Mariana Mazzucato, pins down one of these forms:

https://www.ucl.ac.uk/bartlett/public-purpose/publications/2023/nov/algorithmic-attention-rents-theory-digital-platform-market-power

The "attention rents" referenced in the paper's title are bait-and-switch scams in which a platform deliberately enshittifies its recommendations, search results or feeds to show you things that are not the thing you asked to see, expect to see, or want to see. They don't do this out of sadism! The point is to extract rent – from you (wasted time, suboptimal outcomes) and from business customers (extracting rents for "boosting," jumbling good results in among scammy or low-quality results).

The authors cite several examples of these attention rents. Much of the paper is given over to Amazon's so-called "advertising" product, a $31b/year program that charges sellers to have their products placed above the items that Amazon's own search engine predicts you will want to buy:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/11/28/enshittification/#relentless-payola

This is a form of gladiatorial combat that pits sellers against each other, forcing them to surrender an ever-larger share of their profits in rent to Amazon for pride of place. Amazon uses a variety of deceptive labels ("Highly Rated – Sponsored") to get you to click on these products, but most of all, they rely two factors. First, Amazon has a long history of surfacing good results in response to queries, which makes buying whatever's at the top of a list a good bet. Second, there's just so many possible results that it takes a lot of work to sift through the probably-adequate stuff at the top of the listings and get to the actually-good stuff down below.

Amazon spent decades subsidizing its sellers' goods – an illegal practice known as "predatory pricing" that enforcers have increasingly turned a blind eye to since the Reagan administration. This has left it with few competitors:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/05/19/fake-it-till-you-make-it/#millennial-lifestyle-subsidy

The lack of competing retail outlets lets Amazon impose other rent-seeking conditions on its sellers. For example, Amazon has a "most favored nation" requirement that forces companies that raise their prices on Amazon to raise their prices everywhere else, which makes everything you buy more expensive, whether that's a Walmart, Target, a mom-and-pop store, or direct from the manufacturer:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/25/greedflation/#commissar-bezos

But everyone loses in this "two-sided market." Amazon used "junk ads" to juice its ad-revenue: these are ads that are objectively bad matches for your search, like showing you a Seattle Seahawks jersey in response to a search for LA Lakers merch:

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-11-02/amazon-boosted-junk-ads-hid-messages-with-signal-ftc-says

The more of these junk ads Amazon showed, the more revenue it got from sellers – and the more the person selling a Lakers jersey had to pay to show up at the top of your search, and the more they had to charge you to cover those ad expenses, and the more they had to charge for it everywhere else, too.

The authors describe this process as a transformation between "attention rents" (misdirecting your attention) to "pecuniary rents" (making money). That's important: despite decades of rhetoric about the "attention economy," attention isn't money. As I wrote in my enshittification essay:

You can't use attention as a medium of exchange. You can't use it as a store of value. You can't use it as a unit of account. Attention is like cryptocurrency: a worthless token that is only valuable to the extent that you can trick or coerce someone into parting with "fiat" currency in exchange for it. You have to "monetize" it – that is, you have to exchange the fake money for real money.

The authors come up with some clever techniques for quantifying the ways that this scam harms users. For example, they count the number of places that an advertised product rises in search results, relative to where it would show up in an "organic" search. These quantifications are instructive, but they're also a kind of subtweet at the judiciary.

In 2018, SCOTUS's ruling in American Express v Ohio changed antitrust law for two-sided markets by insisting that so long as one side of a two-sided market was better off as the result of anticompetitive actions, there was no antitrust violation:

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3346776

For platforms, that means that it's OK to screw over sellers, advertisers, performers and other business customers, so long as the end-users are better off: "Go ahead, cheat the Uber drivers, so long as you split the booty with Uber riders."

But in the absence of competition, regulation or self-help measures, platforms cheat everyone – that's the point of enshittification. The attention rents that Amazon's payola scheme extract from shoppers translate into higher prices, worse goods, and lower profits for platform sellers. In other words, Amazon's conduct is so sleazy that it even threads the infinitesimal needle that the Supremes created in American Express.

Here's another algorithmic pecuniary rent: Amazon figured out which of its major rivals used an automated price-matching algorithm, and then cataloged which products they had in common with those sellers. Then, under a program called Project Nessie, Amazon jacked up the prices of those products, knowing that as soon as they raised the prices on Amazon, the prices would go up everywhere else, so Amazon wouldn't lose customers to cheaper alternatives. That scam made Amazon at least a billion dollars:

https://gizmodo.com/ftc-alleges-amazon-used-price-gouging-algorithm-1850986303

This is a great example of how enshittification – rent-seeking on digital platforms – is different from analog rent-seeking. The speed and flexibility with which Amazon and its rivals altered their prices requires digitization. Digitization also let Amazon crank the price-gouging dial to zero whenever they worried that regulators were investigating the program.

So what do we do about it? After years of being made to look like fumblers and clowns by Big Tech, regulators and enforcers – and even lawmakers – have decided to get serious.

The neoliberal narrative of government helplessness and incompetence would have you believe that this will go nowhere. Governments aren't as powerful as giant corporations, and regulators aren't as smart as the supergeniuses of Big Tech. They don't stand a chance.

But that's a counsel of despair and a cheap trick. Weaker US governments have taken on stronger oligarchies and won – think of the defeat of JD Rockefeller and the breakup of Standard Oil in 1911. The people who pulled that off weren't wizards. They were just determined public servants, with political will behind them. There is a growing, forceful public will to end the rein of Big Tech, and there are some determined public servants surfing that will.

In this paper, the authors try to give those enforcers ammo to bring to court and to the public. For example, Amazon claims that its algorithm surfaces the products that make the public happy, without the need for competitive pressure to keep it sharp. But as the paper points out, the only successful new rival ecommerce platform – Tiktok – has found an audience for an entirely new category of goods: dupes, "lower-cost products that have the same or better features than higher cost branded products."

The authors also identify "dark patterns" that platforms use to trick users into consuming feeds that have a higher volume of things that the company profits from, and a lower volume of things that users want to see. For example, platforms routinely switch users from a "following" feed – consisting of things posted by people the user asked to hear from – with an algorithmic "For You" feed, filled with the things the company's shareholders wish the users had asked to see.

Calling this a "dark pattern" reveals just how hollow and self-aggrandizing that term is. "Dark pattern" usually means "fraud." If I ask to see posts from people I like, and you show me posts from people who'll pay you for my attention instead, that's not a sophisticated sleight of hand – it's just a scam. It's the social media equivalent of the eBay seller who sends you an iPhone box with a bunch of gravel inside it instead of an iPhone. Tech bros came up with "dark pattern" as a way of flattering themselves by draping themselves in the mantle of dopamine-hacking wizards, rather than unimaginative con-artists who use a computer to rip people off.

These For You algorithmic feeds aren't just a way to increase the load of sponsored posts in a feed – they're also part of the multi-sided ripoff of enshittified platforms. A For You feed allows platforms to trick publishers and performers into thinking that they are "good at the platform," which both convinces to optimize their production for that platform, and also turns them into Judas Goats who conspicuously brag about how great the platform is for people like them, which brings their peers in, too.

In Veena Dubal's essential paper on algorithmic wage discrimination, she describes how Uber drivers whom the algorithm has favored with (temporary) high per-ride rates brag on driver forums about their skill with the app, bringing in other drivers who blame their lower wages on their failure to "use the app right":

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4331080

As I wrote in my enshittification essay:

If you go down to the midway at your county fair, you'll spot some poor sucker walking around all day with a giant teddy bear that they won by throwing three balls in a peach basket.

The peach-basket is a rigged game. The carny can use a hidden switch to force the balls to bounce out of the basket. No one wins a giant teddy bear unless the carny wants them to win it. Why did the carny let the sucker win the giant teddy bear? So that he'd carry it around all day, convincing other suckers to put down five bucks for their chance to win one:

https://boingboing.net/2006/08/27/rigged-carny-game.html

The carny allocated a giant teddy bear to that poor sucker the way that platforms allocate surpluses to key performers – as a convincer in a "Big Store" con, a way to rope in other suckers who'll make content for the platform, anchoring themselves and their audiences to it.

Platform can't run the giant teddy-bear con unless there's a For You feed. Some platforms – like Tiktok – tempt users into a For You feed by making it as useful as possible, then salting it with doses of enshittification:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/emilybaker-white/2023/01/20/tiktoks-secret-heating-button-can-make-anyone-go-viral/

Other platforms use the (ugh) "dark pattern" of simply flipping your preference from a "following" feed to a "For You" feed. Either way, the platform can't let anyone keep the giant teddy-bear. Once you've tempted, say, sports bros into piling into the platform with the promise of millions of free eyeballs, you need to withdraw the algorithm's favor for their content so you can give it to, say, astrologers. Of course, the more locked-in the users are, the more shit you can pile into that feed without worrying about them going elsewhere, and the more giant teddy-bears you can give away to more business users so you can lock them in and start extracting rent.

For regulators, the possibility of a "good" algorithmic feed presents a serious challenge: when a feed is bad, how can a regulator tell if its low quality is due to the platform's incompetence at blocking spammers or guessing what users want, or whether it's because the platform is extracting rents?

The paper includes a suite of recommendations, including one that I really liked:

Regulators, working with cooperative industry players, would define reportable metrics based on those that are actually used by the platforms themselves to manage search, social media, e-commerce, and other algorithmic relevancy and recommendation engines.

In other words: find out how the companies themselves measure their performance. Find out what KPIs executives have to hit in order to earn their annual bonuses and use those to figure out what the company's performance is – ad load, ratio of organic clicks to ad clicks, average click-through on the first organic result, etc.

They also recommend some hard rules, like reserving a portion of the top of the screen for "organic" search results, and requiring exact matches to show up as the top result.

I've proposed something similar, applicable across multiple kinds of digital businesses: an end-to-end principle for online services. The end-to-end principle is as old as the internet, and it decrees that the role of an intermediary should be to deliver data from willing senders to willing receivers as quickly and reliably as possible. When we apply this principle to your ISP, we call it Net Neutrality. For services, E2E would mean that if I subscribed to your feed, the service would have a duty to deliver it to me. If I hoisted your email out of my spam folder, none of your future emails should land there. If I search for your product and there's an exact match, that should be the top result:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/04/platforms-decay-lets-put-users-first

One interesting wrinkle to framing platform degradation as a failure to connect willing senders and receivers is that it places a whole host of conduct within the regulatory remit of the FTC. Section 5 of the FTC Act contains a broad prohibition against "unfair and deceptive" practices:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/10/the-courage-to-govern/#whos-in-charge

That means that the FTC doesn't need any further authorization from Congress to enforce an end to end rule: they can simply propose and pass that rule, on the grounds that telling someone that you'll show them the feeds that they ask for and then not doing so is "unfair and deceptive."

Some of the other proposals in the paper also fit neatly into Section 5 powers, like a "sticky" feed preference. If I tell a service to show me a feed of the people I follow and they switch it to a For You feed, that's plainly unfair and deceptive.

All of this raises the question of what a post-Big-Tech feed would look like. In "How To Break Up Amazon" for The Sling, Peter Carstensen and Darren Bush sketch out some visions for this:

https://www.thesling.org/how-to-break-up-amazon/

They imagine a "condo" model for Amazon, where the sellers collectively own the Amazon storefront, a model similar to capacity rights on natural gas pipelines, or to patent pools. They see two different ways that search-result order could be determined in such a system:

"specific premium placement could go to those vendors that value the placement the most [with revenue] shared among the owners of the condo"

or

"leave it to owners themselves to create joint ventures to promote products"

Note that both of these proposals are compatible with an end-to-end rule and the other regulatory proposals in the paper. Indeed, all these policies are easier to enforce against weaker companies that can't afford to maintain the pretense that they are headquartered in some distant regulatory haven, or pay massive salaries to ex-regulators to work the refs on their behalf:

https://www.thesling.org/in-public-discourse-and-congress-revolvers-defend-amazons-monopoly/

The re-emergence of intermediaries on the internet after its initial rush of disintermediation tells us something important about how we relate to one another. Some authors might be up for directly selling books to their audiences, and some drivers might be up for creating their own taxi service, and some merchants might want to run their own storefronts, but there's plenty of people with something they want to offer us who don't have the will or skill to do it all. Not everyone wants to be a sysadmin, a security auditor, a payment processor, a software engineer, a CFO, a tax-preparer and everything else that goes into running a business. Some people just want to sell you a book. Or find a date. Or teach an online class.

Intermediation isn't intrinsically wicked. Intermediaries fall into pits of enshitffication and other forms of rent-seeking when they aren't disciplined by competitors, by regulators, or by their own users' ability to block their bad conduct (with ad-blockers, say, or other self-help measures). We need intermediaries, and intermediaries don't have to turn into rent-seeking feudal warlords. That only happens if we let it happen.

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

https://pluralistic.net/2023/11/03/subprime-attention-rent-crisis/#euthanize-rentiers

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

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

[medra-gonbites]

Baldur's Gate 3 Companion Head Canon Party Edition

Tav is throwing a party for their birthday. The playlist is ready, the neighbors are warned and the balloons are blown.

Here is what the companions (and three surprise party crashers) would bring to that little soirée.

Laezel | A strange liquor nobody has heard of

Impossible to know what it is, the label is written in a different alphabet. It has a crazy high alcohol percentage. Never mind it tastes like diesel: it's strong and if you want to get drunk it will get you there. Also it was crazy cheap so she bought 5 bottles (which she'll be the one drinking).

Gale | Some fancy ass bourbon

Nobody will drink it, because it is not that kind of night, Gale! He spends 19 minutes explaining to Tav why this vintage is special and what kind of smoky and woody hints they should get from the taste as well as an extensive story about where it was brewed (some place in the Highlands with blind dwarven monks no doubt).

Shadowheart | Wine 

It is a lower to mid quality bottle but she actually spends all evening drinking cocktails mostly composed of juice and vodka: she likes wine but it stains her teeth and gives her a headache, plus she really likes bright colors in her drinks. If there is Passoa and orange juice and the weather is nice she will be giving it a go. 

Wyll | Tequila

Alongside lemons and salt. The group complains because it’s just not something that gets drinken casually. However, they all end up taking shots around 3am and pass out and/or barf. Wyll is the only one who does not have a hangover the next day because he drinks water in between shots. Will make the cocktails if he is being asked nicely (he brought his shaker as well).

Karlach | Beer

She either comes with two 64-beer crates, one on each shoulder, or a keg (with a funnel and a pipe). She drinks most of these together with Wyll and burps loudly before shouting 'better in than out' and belly laugh herself to cramps. If the beers are canned, she will crush them on her forehead once they are downed. Ultimate beer pong winner.

Astarion | Shows up empty-handed

He feigns he didn't know or that he ran out of time to get something but he'll promise to bring something the next time (which is a lie as he already promised last time at Karlach’s costume party). He will leave with Gale’s expensive bourbon though and gift it to one his teacher from law school (in order to bribe them, of course).

Halsin |Juices

Not these industrial juice boxes mind you, but some organic 100% fruit, no added sugar juice from the bio coop. Or better yet he makes the juices himself - If the time of year is right he will make punch or sangria himself (and be careful it’s sweet but it is treacherous).

Minthara | Cocaïne

Nobody wants to do any. Frankly, Minthara did not read the audience  well. Astarion is willing but feels the vibe and decides not to (he takes her dealer's number for later though)). She ends up doing a line alone in the kitchen. At the height of the night when she's loaded and drunk she makes out with Gale or bullies him (or both).

Jaheira | Soda and ice

To be fair, all kinds of soda, and not just the generic crap either, the good brands. Bubbles no bubbles, fruity, bitter, sweet, you name it. She does not drink as she is the designated driver for her and Minsc (no way they're sleeping over with these kids) so she spends her night sipping on some ginger ale.

Minsc | Goblets

A lot of them. While it was disappointing at first it turns out to be a super sharp idea. Either to drink from or play beer pong they came in extremely handy. Halsin will pout and comment on the sustainability issue. Minsc drinks water but takes a new cup everytime he gets another drink (partly because he is proud of his goblet idea, partly to antagonize Halsin).

Durge | Flour

They are Tav's neighbour and they were invited out of politeness and actually showed up. They come with flour because “hey, remember when I borrowed some, years ago, there, I’m bringing it back like I said I would. We are even now”. They have the best jokes but they will try and start a fight over the playlist (they have issues with music it seems).

Here are a couple of party crashers who were not invited but came anyways.

Barcus | Airfryer and Snacks

He shows up very early to Tav's surprise. He was not exactly invited but thought he was due to Tav mentioning the party to him at work. Upon seeing him Tav is actually happy though and his glad he popped by. He brought his airfryer and some fried goods and that's just awesome.

Volo | His guitar

He was not invited and knew it but he shows up anyway. He will complain about the music the whole time while drinking wine and take his guitar to try and play wonderwall for everyone, even though nobody asked. Lae’zel will lock him on the balcony at some point during the night.

Gortash | Cheap Vodka

He was also not invited. He was told explicitly he was not but what can you do.... His shirt is way too open on his chest, he wears way too much cologne and his pockets are full of condoms. He tries to get into Shadowheart’s pants all night, refilling her glass constantly but he’ll end up at Durge's place next door.

[libbytwq]

SMGL:E Log #24

Do you ever look at something so mundane and boring, but looking at it jumpstarts a memory you didn’t even know you had?

I knew I had gaps in my memories when I first showed up in the Mushroom Kingdom, but I didn’t know it was this bad...

Little unusual things have been making me remember something, but in chunks. The most I remember are the feelings I have on that subject. Not the subject specifically, though. Feelings and other things that are corresponding to it.

Thing is, my feelings keep appearing when I think of specific letters. How stupid is that? Why do I feel strange emotions toward letters of the alphabet???

...Here, explaining each one might help me get my thoughts in order.

The letter “L”. I think of me, obviously. SMGL:E. ...SMGL. ...There’s a word there somewhere, I know it. The L stands for something... whatever it is, I have no clue.

The letter “K”. This one feels immensely important, for some reason. I think of the color pink. The shape of a four pointed diamond. The number two. I think of dolphins, too? And I think very... positively about the letter K. Like... an unbreakable bond. Really strange... maybe its a sign that Karen and I are meant to be? Hehehe... I dunno. Probably not. When I look at Karen I think of a different vibe. The letter K is a more... platonic love. Familial, maybe? The feeling one might get from loving a sibling. Very positive. Why? No clue.

The letter “J”. I feel a strong connection to this one, too. I think of teal, the number one, and spades – y'know, the shape. The one you might find in a deck of cards. I also think of rats. Why rats? So random... I’ll be honest, whenever I look at SMG3, I think of these things, too. These “J” feelings are awfully similar. As in, the chaos and ridiculousness. However, I think much more positively towards “J” than I do SMG3. Strange.

The letter “M”. Another strong connection. Clubs, like another symbol in cards... blue... lions... four... I get reminded of SMG4 sometimes, too. Not even just the color, and the number... the attitude. The responsibility, and the silliness. However, “M” I like more. I feel like this “M” would keep me safe.

...I keep wanting to put "J" and "M" together. They mix together quite nicely. Like they were made for each other. I'm not sure why, but it makes so much sense.

“N”. This has such a strong connection too, in more ways than one... almost like I’m made from it, and made for it. Reds and oranges... wolves... five... a strange beauty. An emotional connection like one I might feel for Karen, but a spiritual connection like the one I feel when I think about Princess Peach. But even with how much I feel bitter about Peach, my feelings toward this “N”... it’s nice. Pleasant. Affectionate...

“I”. Black, and gray, and white... three... I feel like it melds with me perfectly, yet terrible to allow to meld with me... ...No. I don’t like thinking too hard about “I”. Every time I do, I feel weird. Some type of anger. Bitterness. But at the same time... some type of love. But I don’t want to think about it too hard. I don’t want to keep thinking about it.

...I think I’m done writing for today.

[fatuismooches]

hai smooches.. i cant stop overbrainrotting over two dotty segments lately ..segment who feels the failure pf not being able to cure fragile! reader..and the stern and stoic segment, the one who u wrote as number 4 in ur fic i think?, i cant stop thinking about them 😞

i feel like the failure segment enjoys when u go to his office and sit on the table and he places his hands where ur trapped between them, and he just,, stares at reader.. i feel like a lot of segments do this especially the okder ones but i feel like they do it to fluster reader and flirt w them but not this segment..he just wants to look at u nd only u, then as he keeps lookingn at fragile!reader they place their hands on his cheeks and he flinches bc he was zoning out while admiring them but then his eyes just soften.. hes so precious..

im not sure how segment 4 would interact w fragile!reader but i know reader gets away w a lot of things others would NEVER humor the thiught of doing becayse he just loves u sm do u think hes also a sucker for their attention and affectionate touches?

i was NOT jesting when i said ive been overbraknrotting. my skulls empty by now trying to think of more thoughts abt them.. will u, O’ great ol smooches, spare more brainrots about them pretty pleasw 🤲

(x) AWW I LOVE THIS ANON... You're making me brainrot heavily about those segments as well! Ahh the segment of Dottore feeling an overwhelming sense of failure always makes me... sigh. (If i get more brainrots about this one, I'll probably give him a name haha.) And we can call 04 Delta! (Greek alphabet and all.) (This got WAY longer than I anticipated. Oopsies.)

The segment that feels like he failed you is obviously very attention-starved - at this stage of Dottore's life he neglected to care about anything besides you and his other Fatui duties. Constantly pushing himself inhumanely to obtain even the slightest bit of progress for you. But always ending up with nothing to show. So seeing you awake is very... mhm, I'm not sure the best word but, it's... a lot. As much as he desires your attention (just as every other segment does) he tends to keep his distance since he's not sure to act around you. Dottore himself represses the feeling that he's failing you so he's very much more outward about being all over you, but this segment is entirely open about it and he doesn't know how to act. He looks on from afar and bears witness to your happiness instead. His greatest goal at that stage in his life finally accomplished. (But of course you're not gonna leave this poor bb alone. He gets all the kisses.)

Pretty much no one visits this segment's office, except for the occasional segment and all. He works with no other Fatuis, no, purely by himself because of his very closed-off attitude. Which is why of course when you barge into his office he's naturally caught off guard. He's like... very quiet, uncharacteristically so because like, all the segments would love to talk your ear off but not this one. Either he's quiet or grouchy and snappy to others (not you.) He just watches you as you walk around his lab, responses to your questions rather shortly. It's not that he wants to ignore you this is just... very new for him, considering how long he had to deal with you being motionless.

Until you finally have enough and just plop yourself on his desk, preventing him from doing his work. AHHH the part where you're trapped and he stares at you.... giggles insanely he so does!. Also, you are so right. The other segments do that 100% to tease you, they wanna just kiss you all over and bite and lick while you squirm and blush under them! But this segment, he wants to take in every detail about you. He wants to see how lively you are now, examine every single thing that's different from when you were asleep for so painfully long. He wants to feel how warm you are, how you respond to his movements this time. He wants to hear you simply reassure him that he did everything he could and you're thankful.

Teehee Delta... honestly I wasn't even paying much mind when I dubbed him as the serious segment but!! We're rolling with it! He's one of the segments that literally never smiles. But unlike the others who don't smile either, he's just eternally serious... like at least the Akademiya segment is grumpy and all. You're honestly kind of scared at first because at least the smiles of the others make you feel better... but obviously he is a sucker for your attention hehe, no segment can ever deny this!

You LOVE cracking bad jokes with this segment to see his reaction 😭😭 (there is none besides him staring holes into you) As you said, you can do a lot of silly things and he would just scoff and gently reprimand you, you'll wrap your arms around his head and squish it while lathering him with kisses and he'll just sigh... (the blush is very very faint.) You know that pose where people put their hand against their forehead and lean back in distress? You love doing that with Delta. It's very funny, dramatically falling back into his chest only to be met with 😐

Still, despite his stern and rough tendencies, like all the segments, he's cautious of your health, and will be blunter than others about you pushing yourself or trying to hide your pain. When it comes to your health he tolerates nothing, if it could potentially hurt you. While you're appreciative, you wish he could calm down about that a bit...

[arshipweek]

AR Ship Week - Scorpia Backstory in the Book and the TV Show

This is the last weekly post in the lead up to Alex Rider Ship Week. Only one week left!

This week we have a guest post by @icebluecyanide​ about the differences between Scorpia in the book and TV canons.

Scorpia Backstory in the Book and the TV Show

After two seasons of ominous statements and mystery, series three of the TV show finally dove deeper into the criminal organisation known as Scorpia, and the way their history intertwines with Alex’s. But what is their backstory, and how does it differ from what we see in the books? 

In this meta, I will be diving into some of the changes in how Scorpia is presented in the book (Scorpia) and the TV show. Since this is a rather broad topic, and could potentially lead to me listing every single difference from the book, I will focus specifically on the Scorpia backstory and on the structure of Scorpia as an organisation.

I’ve used book quotes throughout this meta, including page numbers. The page numbers refer to the 2014 Walker Books (UK) edition.

Scorpia 

Let’s start this off by taking a look at how Scorpia is described in both the book and the show. I’ll first give an overview of Scorpia in the book, then move on to the TV show and do a comparison.

Scorpia in the book

Scorpia was all over the world. It had brought down two governments and arranged for a third to be unfairly elected. It had destroyed dozens of businesses, corrupted politicians and civil servants, engineered several major ecological disasters, and killed anyone who got in its way. It was now responsible for a tenth of the world’s terrorism, which it undertook on a contract basis. Scorpia liked to think of itself as the IBM of crime - but in fact, compared to Scorpia, IBM was strictly small-time. (Scorpia, p. 39)

In the book, Scorpia is a criminal organisation that has its roots in the early 1980s, during the last decade of the Cold War. As we learn in Scorpia (2004), it was founded by people who were involved in the Cold War as spies or assassins or secret police for various governments, and who realised that as the Cold War came to an end, they would be able to make more money going into business for themselves.

It was a fanciful name, they all knew it, invented by someone who had probably read too much James Bond. (Scorpia, p. 38)

The name of Scorpia is taken from their four fields of operation: Sabotage, Corruption, Intelligence and Asassination. They will take on any client that is willing to pay them, and don’t care about who gets caught in the crossfire. They’re a powerful organisation, and as Julia Rothman mentions, sometimes even the intelligence agencies make use of their services for jobs that cannot be traced back to them. They operate very much as a business, and they don’t make things personal, but they also are ruthless in getting even and don’t make hollow threats. Scorpia don’t forgive and they don’t forget.

Scorpia is led by an executive board consisting of the original founders. Of the original twelve, only nine remain at the time of the book, including Julia Rothman (the only woman on the board) and Max Grendel (the oldest executive). The executives on the board are equal partners, but for each project one of them is assigned as the leader, in alphabetical order. (It’s unclear how this works for The Australian, who in some editions doesn’t have a name.)

At the time of the book, the project that Scorpia is focused on is Invisible Sword, and the executive in command is Julia Rothman. There is a client, who is offering a great deal of money for Scorpia to break the special relationship between the UK and the US, and most of the Scorpia board seem unconcerned about the principal target of the weapon being children. The only exception to this is Max Grendel, who is old and has grandchildren of the same age, who has enjoyed getting rich working for Scorpia over the years, but who now wants to retire and not be a part of the new project. Sadly, his retirement gift is a suitcase full of deadly scorpions, so his retirement is rather brief.

Scorpia are an international company, with offices and people all over the world. However, Alex first runs into them in Venice, where Mrs Rothman has a large mansion on the grand canal that is referred to as the Widow’s Palace. On the island of Malagosto, near Venice, Scorpia also has a school where they have a training and testing facility for their assassins. This is where John Rider and Yassen Gregorovich were tested and trained, and it’s where Alex also takes part in lessons. 

Scorpia in the show

Blunt: At that time, we already knew that SCORPIA were the single most dangerous emergent threat since the Cold War. (3x07)

At first glance, the Scorpia we meet in the TV show appears to be from a canon divergent AU where the organisation was all but destroyed around the time when Alex was just a baby. This is a fascinating change, and also makes intuitive sense, as of course the third series of the show came out twenty years after Scorpia (2004) did. From the start, we get hints that Scorpia in the show is different from the one in the books. 

We first learn of the name Scorpia at the end of s1, as Mrs Jones and the rest of the Department realise that Yassen Gregorovich was behind Ian’s death, and that he is still alive. Going by the descriptions we are given, Scorpia was as powerful in the past as they were when Alex met them in the book:

Smithers: I know the file, of course. At one point, they were responsible for a tenth of the world’s terrorism. 

Crawley: And political assassinations, personal vendettas. All available to the highest bidder, without remorse or compunction. (1x08)

In 2006, Scorpia was taken down by the Department, in a well-coordinated operation based on the info John Rider was able to gather. Alan Blunt was in command as all over the world, the bases and known locations of Scorpia were raided. In the chaos, some members of Scorpia went missing and managed to escape, such as Julia Rothman and Yassen Gregorovich, but when they failed to resurface in the five years that followed, their files were closed and they were assumed to be dead.

After this, Scorpia seem to have retreated to the shadows, and operated almost entirely in secret. While they no longer have the same presence in the world, they still have both funds and technology to continue their work. They have no problem spending several millions to fake the payment for the assassination of the US president in season 2 at Yassen’s request, and they have a system set in place with a phone line that can be reached only with a specifically assigned code, or else the number will be disconnected, as we see when the Department pretend to call as Martin Wilby to determine who he got his orders from. In the first two seasons, Scorpia took jobs such as helping with Dr Greif’s plan at Point Blanc, and Damian Cray’s Eagle Strike plan, and they still appear as ruthless as in the book, not caring about the deaths those plans would cause.

At first, we mostly encounter Scorpia in the scenes with the Department, where Scorpia (through Yassen) have turned Martin Wilby to pass on information about the Department and got him to lure Ian Rider to his death at Yassen’s hand. Interestingly, Ian appears to be the only person still looking for Scorpia:

Crawley: I don’t think they ever went away. I think they just got better at hiding. And we were so confident we’d finished them. Only Ian was still looking, of course. (1x08)

Ian seems to have been aware of Yassen’s survival, and presumably who he works for (“Oh Martin, you have no idea who you’re working for.” - 1x01), but none of the rest of the Department have any idea until Alex mentions having seen Yassen at Point Blanc:

Blunt: Scorpia.Mrs Jones: It explains everything. The sophistication, the global reach, and Wilby. Given our history, of course they would target us.Crawley: But we finished them.Blunt: Well, clearly not. (1x08)

In season three, we see Alex (together with Tom and Kyra) actively looking for Scorpia by visiting old locations mentioned in the files on Smither’s phone (that Kyra stole). These include Berlin and Venice, where presumably Julia Rothman had her Palace like in the book. They end up finding Julia in Malta, where she is from. This is a change from the books, where she is Welsh. We meet Nile, her apparent second-in-command, and Max Grendel, who apparently also survived the takedown.

As Alex is pulled into Scorpia, we also learn that they are planning an operation called Invisible Sword. Unlike in the book, this is not a job they took on for a client, but something Julia Rothman came up with personally. As the season goes on, we discover that while she explained it as a way to demonstrate Scorpia’s power and boost their reputation, the real objective was to take revenge against the Department for the blow they dealt Scorpia seventeen years ago.

Scorpia Leadership

Let’s narrow in further for a moment on the question of who is in charge in Scorpia. There do appear to be some changes in the leadership of Scorpia in the TV show, and part of these can be explained by the canon divergence, while others suggest that perhaps this has always been a different Scorpia. Firstly, it’s good to note that instead of talking about an executive board, the leadership are referred to as council members:

Nile: I wondered if perhaps one of the other council members decided to push their luck. (3x01) 

In general, the show appears to have less of a ‘business’ vibe compared to the book. It may be that this is a change that only came with the new Scorpia, but this may also always have been different in this universe. Similarly, we hear that Julia Rothman was elected as leader, which suggests that also the way of picking a leader isn’t the rotated schedule from the books. It appears that Julia Rothman has been elected after the failed jobs with Dr Greif and Damian Cray, in an attempt to bring Scorpia back to prominence.

Razim: We elected you because you promised to restore our influence globally. And so far, we have seen nothing. (3x01)

Speaking of Razim, we get another change from the book. The name Razim is a reference to one of the new board members brought on in Scorpia Rising in the books, and he wasn’t present in the original Scorpia book. It makes sense that with most of the organisation taken down years ago, they will have filled their ranks with new members. However, there is some suggestion that perhaps Razim was actually part of Scorpia leadership before Julia:

Julia: Razim’s always resented me. He thinks when Nicolai died, inherited my place at the table. (3x01)

Julia Rothman

Max: And besides, we both know you earned your place. (3x01)

It appears that unlike in the books, Julia Rothman was not a founding member of Scorpia in the show. This also matches up with what we learn about her from the Department file on her, where it states she ‘possesses broad knowledge of Scorpia Operational Structure and is being groomed for command’. She was most likely part of the inner circle through her husband Nicolai, given the comment about inheriting her place.

Nicolai Rothman/Mrs Rothman’s husband definitely appears to have been alive and married to her for longer in the TV show than in the book, although in both she is eventually known as the Widow.:

Mrs Rothman’s multimillionaire husband had fallen to his death from a seventeenth-storey window. It had happened just two days after their marriage. (Scorpia, p. 45)

Also an amusing detail is that in the book Nicolai Rothman is a multimillionaire, while in the TV show he’s referred to as a billionaire. Julia Rothman is canonically richer in the TV show!

Malagosto

Let’s take a moment also to look at the differences in how Malagosto is portrayed in the two canons. In both the show and the book, Malagosto is a training facility for Scorpia operatives, but that appears to be where the similarities end. The location is different in the two canons, with it being on an island near Venice in the book, and on Malta in the show. Specifically, we discover that there is a Scorpia base located underground in an old Cold War listening post on Malta. It might be that the original location had to be abandoned after Scorpia was raided, but the fact that The Department show no recognition to the name later suggests that they have never heard of it before. Definitely, the base in Malta was not known before. 

This raises some questions about whether John Rider actually trained at Malagosto in the show as he did in the book. We do have the following quote from Julia Rothman, which if taken literally suggests that he was on Malta with Alex:

Julia: Twenty years ago, your father stood where you are now. Ready to join Scorpia. (3x04)

However, if John trained at Malagosto, it is strange that this location wasn’t known to the Department or raided in the operation to take down Scorpia. So perhaps the quote should be taken metaphorically, with Alex being about to join Scorpia as his dad was, and perhaps John never trained with Scorpia. After all, in the book, he was likely only tested rather than trained, so he may have been tested elsewhere and simply put to work.

THE STUDENTS

Another difference related to Malagosto concerns the students or recruits who are present when Alex is there. In the book, d’Arc (the principal or headmaster of the school) mentions that there are usually around ten to fifteen students. Most of them appear to be people who were either part of the intelligence world or soldiers who have defected:

Alex knew all of them by now. There was Klaus, a German mercenary who had trained with the Taliban in Afghanistan. Walker, who had spent five years with the CIA in Washington before deciding he could earn more working for the other side. (Scorpia, p. 174)

They are people similar to John Rider, who already have had training of some sort that makes them suitable for Scorpia. In this sense, the school is firstly a testing facility, where Scorpia checks if people have the right skills to become part of Scorpia. Alex himself is an exception due to his age, but as d’Arc and Mrs Rothman discuss, he already has experience from both his missions and his uncle’s and MI6’s training. The other students are all older, but treat Alex surprisingly well and are friendly to him.

In the show, the recruits are all orphans and likely closer in age to Alex himself. There is no indication that Alex himself is an outlier in terms of his age. The other recruits also don’t appear to have had prior training if we take Alyona and Oleg as examples. They seem to have been children without families, either taken from orphanages or similar. Some, like Oleg, may have shown a propensity for violence which drew Scorpia’s interest, but they were not the trained soldiers or intelligence agents we see in the books.

This change could perhaps have been a result of Scorpia needing to operate from the shadows. While in the books they could recruit rather blatantly and without worrying about being noticed, they have tried to keep a low profile in the show. Perhaps they have shifted to training teenagers into operatives instead, as they have ‘No baggage, no background. It helps.’ (3x04).

It’s also noteworthy that there are only four other students aside from Alex present at Malagosto. Again, this is easily explained by Scorpia having shrunk in size and operating in more secrecy, and no doubt it made it easier for them to make the commitment of training teenagers. Sadly for Alex, they are not as nice as in the book, and he gets beaten up for being seen as weak on his first day there.

THE BUILDINGS

Another change seems to be in the buildings themselves. As mentioned, Malagosto in the show is located in an old listening post dating back to the Cold War, and that’s reflected in the lack of natural light and the bare, metallic and industrial vibes of the interior. The listening post also appears to be on a remote part of the island, but all that’s visible on the surface is a few abandoned buildings, and Scorpia seem to keep their presence low-key. 

In the book, we see the same outside appearance of abandoned buildings, as Scorpia has retrofitted an old monastery for their needs. The appearance is deceptive, however, as the insides have been modernised and Alex’s own room is much more luxurious than the one he gets in the show:

They left the main building and walked over to the nearest apartment block that Alex had seen from the boat. Again, the building looked dilapidated from the outside but it was elegant and modern inside. Jet showed Alex to an air-conditioned room on the second floor. It was on two levels, with a king-sized bed overlooking a large living space with sofas and a desk. There were french windows with a balcony and a sea view. (Scorpia, p. 164)

Alex was left alone. He sat down on one of the sofas, noticing that the room had a fridge, a television and even a PlayStation 2 - presumably put in for his benefit. (Scorpia, p. 165)

The other buildings are similarly updated, and students can train outside as the island is sheltered by trees and away from the mainland. It makes sense that in the show this is less of an option, because Scorpia are much more motivated to keep their presence hidden from the authorities. In the book, they have a legal reason to be there, as they bought the island on a lease from the Italian government, but in a world where Scorpia is assumed to be destroyed, they would need to be more careful. This explains why we only see the students go outside once for training, and that was during a night incursion exercise.

THE TEACHERS

Malagosto is a training facility, and a training facility needs instructors. This plays a larger role in the book, where we are introduced to several of the teachers at Malagosto in Alex’s time there. There is Gordon Ross, the technical specialist who teaches about weapons and explosives, Professor Yermalov, who teaches martial arts and practical skills, and Ejijit “Jet” Binnag, who teaches Botany (focused on poisonous plants). There are classrooms and textbooks and lessons as if it were a real school, but also more practical lessons such as diving and gun practice.

In the show, it’s a bit unclear who normally teaches at Malagosto. We only see two people acting as instructor – Nile and Yassen – and Yassen appears to have been assigned to Alex as a tutor rather than having general teaching duties. Nile appears to take on the role of instructor, but we also see him running around taking care of things for Julia Rothman outside, so he can’t be a full-time teacher. Perhaps we simply don’t see other instructors (much like how we don’t see the catering at Malagosto), or the training is handled more informally, with students working on their skill individually as we saw Syl doing in her first appearance.

One other thing related to the teaching at Malagosto is that in the book, John Rider is mentioned to have been an instructor there. During this time, he was also in charge of Yassen’s training for a while. This isn’t mentioned in the show, and while we get Alex asking if John trained with Yassen, we never get an answer. As Malagosto wasn’t known to the Department, as mentioned before, John was probably not a teacher in this universe.

Since we already touched on him briefly, let now take a look at John Rider and his mission to dive deeper into some of the changes.

John’s mission

Blunt: The intelligence John gathered during that time enabled us to strike at the very heart of Scorpia. Within months, we’d dismantled their entire operation. (3x07)

Based on what we are told, John’s mission is largely the same in both the book and the series. We learn that John was a decorated soldier who was in the Parachute Regiment and had seen combat before (in Afghanistan and Iraq in the show, Northern Ireland, Gambia, and the Falklands in the book). But everything seemed to go wrong for him when he killed a man in a bar fight, and was sentenced for manslaughter. 

He goes to jail for two years in the show, while in the book Mrs Rothman claims he was there for less than one, and there is some ambiguity about whether he went to jail at all:

“Everything Julia Rothman thought she knew about your father was a lie.” Mrs Jones sighed. “It’s true that he had been in the army, that he had a distinguished career with the Parachute Regiment and that he was decorated for his part in the Falklands War. But the rest of it — the fight with the taxi driver, the prison sentence and all that — we made up. It’s called deep cover, Alex. We wanted John Rider to be recruited by Scorpia. He was the bait and they took him.” (Scorpia, p. 347)

Scorpia took the bait, and John was recruited by Scorpia. In the show, we learn that John spent three years embedded in Scorpia, learning names and details about the organisation, including their long term goals and ambitions. In the book, the timeline is fuzzier, but we know he spent several months in the field as an assassin before working as an instructor at Malagosto. We are simply told that he ‘had told [MI6] as much as [they] needed to know about Scorpia’ (Scorpia, p. 348).

The reasons for breaking off the mission were similar then in both the show and the book. The risks were increasing, John had discovered most of what he set out to discover, and Helen was pregnant with Alex and John wanted to be with his family. In the book, we also specifically learn that there was a risk due to Julia Rothman, who had fallen in love with him. 

This is a point where the canons seem to deviate slightly, because the show is more explicit about John being asked to get close to Julia Rothman. The file on the Widow (Julia Rothman’s codename) mentions that a Department operative Hunter (John Rider) was assigned to develop a relationship. Julia Rothman herself told Alex that his dad was a ‘very close friend’ of hers, and showed him what are clearly love letters describing John’s feelings for her (3x03). 

Now, some of this is also in the book. Julia Rothman tells Alex she was very attracted to his father, and that he was a handsome man. And one of the letters from the show is taken straight from the book: 

My dearest Julia, A dreary time without you. Can’t wait to be at the Widow’s Palace with you again. John R. (Scorpia, p. 151)

Interestingly, we do see that Julia apparently went by her code name despite the fact that she and John became close enough over the years that she passed him information about Scorpia. John himself was known as Hunter to the Department rather than this being his Scorpia code name like in the book (although the code name isn’t mentioned in Scorpia itself). He signs the letter with his initials JR in the show, and she clearly knew him as John Rider.

It’s well possible given the way Julia Rothman doesn’t mention Alex’s mother in her initial story to Alex about John, that she was not aware at the time that he was married or that John was already with Helen. In the book, she specifically mentions that while she was attracted to him, he was married to Alex’s mother, suggesting that they never acted on the attraction.

The story of John’s capture is roughly the same, there is a trap set for him (on Malta in the book), and he is captured. A few weeks later, Scorpia kidnap a senior British civil servant (or his son, in the book) and MI6/The Department make them an offer to return John Rider to them in an exchange. This takes place on Albert Bridge in the book, while in the show it’s on another bridge somewhere. John’s death is faked, and the idea is that he will be given a new identity along with Helen and Alex so they can live quietly and without Scorpia knowing he was actually a spy.

This is the point where we get the biggest divergence in the backstory, as in the show the information gathered by John’s mission is enough to take down most of Scorpia. The operation is largely orchestrated by Alan Blunt, which is part of why Julia Rothman’s plot in the show is also aimed at him:

Mrs Jones: I’ve been looking at how we brought down SCORPIA 17 years ago. Really was an astonishing operation. Dozens of agents. Coordinates across three continents. Forty-seven key figures, dead or arrested. The entire SCORPIA hierarchy decimated overnight. You waged a private war against Scorpia, made it your mission. (3x06)

It’s not specified whether the take down of Scorpia happened before or after John and Helen’s plane was blown up by a bomb. Blunt tells Alex that ‘within months’ they were able to dismantle Scorpia’s entire operation, while Julia Rothman took six months to track John down. It seems more likely that Scorpia was taken down first, as this would give the Department an extra reason not to suspect Julia Rothman as being behind the bomb on the plane. Blunt’s reaction to Alex’s suggestion that it was Julia Rothman suggests that they didn’t have a clear suspect for all those years, which makes sense if Scorpia were believed to be defeated and not heard from again (aside from the bombing of the plane itself). WIth Scorpia gone, it also makes sense that perhaps someone became too careless in hiding the fact that John Rider is alive, as there would have been less reason to worry. 

In the book, we are first told merely that there was a bomb on the plane, which exploded and killed John and Helen and the pilots instantly. Mrs Jones and Alan Blunt seem to have no doubt about it being Julia Rothman, who had discovered the truth, although they are not clear on how she learned about it. MI6 learned valuable information about Scorpia through John’s time as an undercover spy, but they either don’t know enough to take Scorpia down for good or they don’t act on their information. 

In a way, the book takes a more cynical approach to the relationship between Scorpia and MI6. Scorpia are too large to take down completely, and any half-hearted effort to destroy them will lead Scorpia to seek revenge. And if you can’t beat them… As Julia Rothman herself points out, the secret services may nominally oppose Scorpia, but they are not above making use of their services:

The secret services can’t do anything about us. We’re too big and they’ve left it too late. Anyway, occasionally some of them make use of us. They pay us to do their dirty work for them. We’ve learnt to live side by side! (Scorpia, p. 132) 

Wrapping it all up

So what does it all add up to? As we’ve seen, the show’s portrayal of Scorpia shows an organisation that was nearly brought down seventeen years ago, and that has been operating in secrecy ever since. This single divergence explains most of the differences that we see in the present day structure of Scorpia, from younger recruits to the new leadership. However, we also saw that some aspects have always been different in this universe. The code names for both Julia Rothman and John, as well as the fact that John never mentioned Malagosto show that the backstory in the show was different even before Scorpia was taken down.

In the end, Scorpia is a different organisation in the book and the show, but in many ways it is also still the same. They are a group of people who are ruthless in their pursuit of power and money, who have no compunction about killing and even enjoy it. Scorpia may have been brought to the brink of destruction in the show, but even while hidden from the world, they have been able to keep up their activity for seventeen years. 

Until they encountered Alex Rider, that is… :) 

[jadienjaystoriesandart]

Grian walked with Scar down the hallway, though their rooms were close by it still was a bit of a walk due to how big these apartments were. Especially the more luxury ones. Grian was still processing how large the place was, having sat in a bathroom taking in the sheer amount of space he had. Going from a tiny college dorm to basically 3x the size was a bit jarring. Oddly Bdubs did let her take her time, if only to avoid a sensory meltdown of a watcher.

Grian had slowly gotten used to the large space, and got familiar with it. At Cub's suggestions he took too personalizing the place to make it feel like home. Cub said that making a new space homey would help him with the overwhelmed feeling of it. By filling it with stuff it would make it feel less big. And oddly enough that worked. Grian was also thinking about getting a cat, something he always wanted. Once the NHO finally gave him the stuff from his college dorm back, it was nice to put the funny red sheets on the bed with the mismatched Minecraft pillow case and the plaid blanket he got a thrift store. One day while personalizing the place Scar came over and said Grian was going to see his and Cub's apartment.

"Are you sure about this Scar?" Grian asked as they walked, the only sound was their shoes on the carpet.

"Absolutely! Cub is super excited to show off our treasures to you!" Scar said very eager as he had a bounce in his step. "We got all sorts of things to show off from our days as Convex."

Grian gave a look as she felt nervous. "Scar are some of these objects going to cause anything to burn, melt, cause a rash, or break me in any way, shape, or form?" she asked, learning to cover all her bases with Scar or Cub. They liked to play mind games and riddles, or round about questions.

Gapping looking mock offended, Scar placed a hand on his chest. "Why Grian! Why would you ever think we'd intentionally put you in dan-" he cut off by the hard look. "Well, we always make sure your safe, have we ever put you in a stupidly dangerous situation before?"

"Do you want that alphabetically or chronologically? Because I can think of three just from last week." Grian deadpanned as Scar made small pouting sounds.

"Look we won't let anything hurt you, promise on my wings!" Scar said cheerful as ever, as Grian sighed heavily. By now they were in front of the door as Scar punched in the code number and the door opened. NHO believed that keys were impractical and easy to lose.. So hence remembering a code to get into your home. He's more shocked he hasn't broken it yet.

The smell in the apartment was the first thing she noticed. Sweet, like sugar cookies or cake. Not over powering, but noticeable. The next was the sheer amount of shelves with trinkets, and pictures of Cub and Scar in different places.

Grian looked around noticing they were fond of the colors blue and some whites with a few blacks or dark browns to compliment it. It oddly wasn't harsh on the eyes, sure it was bright but not like the stark white walls of the NHO labs. This felt functional and warm.

Taking off her shoes, she sat down on the soft couch as Scar called to Cub that she was here. Through the smell of the sweetness, Grian could making out food from the kitchen. She didn't think either of them could cook, but it oddly smelled good.

As Scar went to get his partner, hanging up his coat on the rack, Grian took in the place. There was these pictures of Scar and Cub doing funny poses at historical places, most of them Scar or Cub was breaking something in them. He also saw a few objects next to them, this large crystal near a picture of them holding a man by his shirt collar over a pool of water that had the crystals in it. A picture of them near the pyramids, with Scar having tripped in the background into sand, next to it was some gold mask.

She also saw some black rocks near with many holes in it, which she could say were meteorites of sorts. "I like to collect anything space related." she turned to see Cub grinning at her from the doorway. "Anyway, welcome to our home currently." he shrugged, as if to say this was a temporary place.

"It's rather full of things." Grian said passivley, not in a bad way, but an observation.

"Ofcourse! Cub and I love to show all our things. Oh! Cub we should show her the skull room!" Scar looked excited. "We like to collect skulls of people we killed and decorate them, i love that one we did by dipping it in gold!"

Grian stared at Scar then looked at Cub, he just laughed, "Later Scar, lunch is almost done." he teased his partner. "Hope you like meat, mostly steak cubes in a thick soup."

"I didn't know you cooked." Grian commented, Cub just shrugged and said nothing. She didn't expect him to, he liked to let gestures speak louder than words, and didn't think cooking was a big deal to explain it.

A meow broke the silence as a cat jumped onto Grian's lap purring. She was white and grey marking, nuzzling up to him. "Awe!" Grian cooed petting the soft fur, "Arent' you an adorable fur ball?" she smiled when the cat licked her nose.

"That's Jellie!" Scar said, "My cat, and she's a purr-fect kitty!" he said as Grian was petting Jellie with a bright smile on his face. Scar was also smiling at how Jellie loved their new partner instantly.

After that was Cub letting the food simmer and telling Grian about the objects in the room and where they got them. Jellie making herself comfortable on his lap. And Scar telling the shenanigans the got into to get these objects and the missions. How Doc, Beef, Etho, and Bdubs all get annoyed they take 'souvenirs'.

'I mean really, you give a man a chance to see something he's never seen before, and tell him NOT to take anything?" Scar waved his hand dismissively.

Grian was laughing by now, "Scar these might be historical objects worth thousands!" he managed between laughs. "Governments don't like when you just take them."

"Then they should put up a sign!" Scar defended to her.

"They do!" Grian laughed out as Scar pouted next to Cub mumbling something about they shouldn't tempt a vex with a shiny object.

Showing her the amazing view they had, and trying not to laugh at how her legs shook. And she shakily said it was pretty. Who knew Grian was afraid of heights? Gently leading him away from the window.

The beef cube stew was amazing when she got to try it, savory and tender. Near melting in her mouth, and Cu assured her it was beef. "We'd never make you eat a person Grian, that's cruel and your our friend!" he said firmly, it was the first time Grian had heard him sound so serious.

The way he said it though... Grian felt a strange sense of warmth by how firmly he said she was their friend. Truth be told she didn't have many friends in college too focused on passing classes. Yet sitting here with Scar saying they needed to bring Grian on a mission to see some landmark, and Cub readily agreeing some exposure to breaking the law in minor ways would be a good way to get her into being a hitman.... Grian found herself smiling softly to herself.

It was late as Scar had fallen asleep watching movies with them, Disney movies and getting Grian to sing some songs off key with him. Cub was getting Scar to bed when Grian was getting her shoes. "Thanks for having me over Cub." he said softly. "I enjoyed it."

"You're welcome any time here Grian, I'll text you the pass code." Cub said with a shrug on his shoulders. The smile on his face didn't seem as sinister as the ones he gives to Doc or Bdubs, no teeth. Must be a vex thing.

Cub walked with Grian back to her apartment, "Today felt oddly normal, if you don't count the weird objects you two have." she joked as Cub looked at her. "Huh... guess i never knew I was misisng some sense of normalcy in this mess."

Oddly he thinks she didn't mean to say that last part outloud. Yet as she bids him goodnight, and heads inside her home, Cub narrowed his eyes down the hall. Well, if Grian hanging with them made her feel better, he'd be sure she knew she was always welcome...

Holding back a scowl, Cub left to go bother the NHO by creating some digital problems. Maybe he could trick them into letting them take Grian out of the HQ for a few days? Yeah, he was sure she'd love that! With a smile and a nod, Cub went off to do what he did best, cause problems.

-

@tibby-art

@tibbycaps

I keep making edits because I wrote this half asleep. 😂

[lulu24784]

🖸 ──» south park nsfw alphabet :

kenny mccormick minors dni

warnings: sexual content, swearing

All characters are 18+.

A = Aftercare (what they’re like after sex)

He’s attentive and sweet. Will gently clean you up and bring you water if you need it. Loves to just lay in bed afterwards and have pillow talk while cuddling you and caressing your hair. 

B = Body part (their favorite body part of theirs and also their partner’s)

Kenny loves boobs. (Wow who woulda guessed?) He’s always loved boobs. How they look, how they feel under his hands, the noises you make when he sucks on them. He literally dreams of boobs. He’s fond of his eyes. They’re really the only thing he doesn’t cover up when he’s wearing his parka. He doesn’t like them in a… Vain way I guess? More like, he’s grateful that his eyes allow him to see the world and the beautiful things in it. They allow him to see what an out-of-breath mess you are underneath him and he fucking loves it.

C = Cum (anything to do with cum, basically)

Depending on how pent up he is, he might cum pretty quickly once things get going. Thankfully his refractory period isn’t too long and he’s usually ready to go again after 10 or so minutes. He definitely prefers to cum inside if you’ll let him, but if not he’s just as happy to cum on your thighs or tits. He’s surprisingly not a big fan of facials.. 

D = Dirty secret (pretty self explanatory, a dirty secret of theirs)

There isn’t much! Kenny is very much an open book and he enjoys talking about sex and his sexual experiences. Dude even gives porn recommendations to his friends. 

E = Experience (how experienced are they? do they know what they’re doing?)

He’s quite experienced. He’s hooked up with a number of people so he definitely knows what he’s doing now. If you’re nervous he’ll take good care of you <3

F = Favorite position (this goes without saying)

Cowgirl for sure. He loves most sex positions but cowgirl is his absolute favourite. He loves watching you grind on him and seeing your tits bounce. He is in HEAVEN. You make the cutest expressions when you start getting tired and he can’t help but grab your hips and fuck himself up into you.

G = Goofy (are they more serious in the moment? are they humorous? etc.)

Kenny is pretty goofy. He likes to keep things light-hearted and comfortable for you! He likes sex to be fun.

H = Hair (how well groomed are they? does the carpet match the drapes? etc.)

He trims every once and awhile, but it’s usually not something he’s concerned about. He did go in and get waxed one time and he HATED it. The pain was not worth it lmao

I = Intimacy (how are they during the moment? the romantic aspect)

Kenny is a goddamn sweetie pie. During your first time together he was so incredibly gentle and sweet, holding your hand and caressing your cheek. If it’s a date night, he’ll light candles or play music. During previous hookups with other people, he didn’t care too much, mostly just wanting to get off and leave.. But with you.. He wants to impress you and show how much he loves you.

J = Jack off (masturbation headcanon)

Kenny masturbates A LOT. LIKE A LOT A LOT. Mans is insatiable, especially after meeting you. Depending on his mood and if he has plans or not, he’ll sometimes spend an entire day just edging himself. 

K = Kink (one or more of their kinks)

Kenny is into quite a few different kinks. He enjoys being praised and occasionally degraded. He likes to have sneaky, hidden public sex. He enjoys posting nudes of himself online and gets off from the thrill of it. He’s probably a little bit of an exhibitionist.. 

L = Location (favorite places to do the do)

In nature. He likes going out to the woods, finding a secluded area for you to both just indulge in each other. It’s not the most comfortable, but it’s a lot of fun. Second to that would be your place, either on the bed or the couch. He doesn’t like having sex at his place as he doesn’t want to potentially expose his little sister to anything.

M = Motivation (what turns them on, gets them going)

Literally anything. A stiff breeze could make him hard lmfao. Of course though, cleavage or nipples poking through your shirt gets him going pretty fast. 

N = No (something they wouldn’t do, turn offs)

Anything to do with pain or anything kind of dangerous, like choking. He used to be into choking, but accidentally dying during sex is such a massive turn off lmao. He dislikes pain because he constantly deals with it, and he just wants to have some fun during sex.

O = Oral (preference in giving or receiving, skill, etc.)

Definitely a preference for receiving, who doesn’t like blowjobs?! But he’s not a selfish lover so of course he’s going to readily return the favour. He’s fairly experienced as well and won’t let up until you’re cumming on his tongue. 

P = Pace (are they fast and rough? slow and sensual? etc.)

It really depends. Hookups, he’s fast and rough. With you? He could be slow and sensual one night, wanting to cherish you and make love.. Another night he could be fast and rough.. Especially if you’ve been teasing him. Kenny is a man of variety lol

Q = Quickie (their opinions on quickies, how often, etc.)

LOVES EM. Not as much as having regular sex.. But damn, the man will never say no to a quickie. This might be his dirty secret.. But he loves having quickies when he’s supposed to be doing patrol work as Mysterion, as long as everyone is safe first, of course.

R = Risk (are they game to experiment? do they take risks? etc.)

He’s risky. He loves the thrill of potentially being caught and gets off to it quite frequently. He’s pretty good at keeping it under wraps though since he has yet to actually be caught doing anything.

S = Stamina (how many rounds can they go for? how long do they last?)

Kenny tries his absolute hardest to last as long as he can. If he gets too worked up he doesn’t last very long, but he makes up for it by paying special attention to you while he waits to go again. He’ll try and go as many times as you want, even if he’s dead tired.

T = Toys (do they own toys? do they use them? on a partner or themselves?)

Kenny only owns a cheap fleshlight that he probably bought(stole) from Spencer’s. He wants to get more toys to experiment with and use on you though.

U = Unfair (how much they like to tease)

He can be a little bit of a tease! He likes to flirt and make you blush but he gives in a little too easily.

V = Volume (how loud they are, what sounds they make, etc.)

Kenny is very vocal. He loves leaning down to moan and whine in your ear while he fucks you. Sometimes he’ll talk dirty but it depends on what kind of mood he’s in.. You can also expect lots of praise.

W = Wild card (a random headcanon for the character)

It took him a while to finally have sex with you. He had never really fallen in love this hard before so he wanted to be absolutely sure of his feelings before taking you to bed. With his reputation he also didn’t want you to think he only liked you for sex.

X = X-ray (let’s see what’s going on under those clothes)

He’s pretty average, 6 inches, cut. He’s got a lot of scars on his body from near-death accidents. He’s also got a little beauty mark on his v-line.

Y = Yearning (how high is their sex drive?)

It’s high! Insanely high! He’s always horny and raring to go.

Z = Zzz (how quickly they fall asleep afterwards)

If you make him go round after round, he’ll definitely just pass out after cleaning up. Typically, he’ll cuddle you and wait for you to fall asleep in his arms before he lets himself sleep.

[animeyanderelover]

Hello, I see your ask box open! Can I ask for the Yandere Alphabet for Pairo (from HunterxHunter), Natsume Soseki, Fukuzawa Yukichi, Mori Ogai (from Bungo Strays Dog), Eto Yoshimura and Nagachika Hideyoshi (from Tokyo Ghoul)?

I forgot to remind you of this so forgive me but I only accept 4 letters and 4 characters for my Yandere Alphabet. I already asked you regarding the letters but I forgot to add the characters so I just chose from here...

@naeho @flaming-vulpix @shumidehiro @leveyani @izanami78

Tw:Yandere themes, unhealthy mindset, unhealthy relationship, possessive behavior, obsession, isolation, manipulation, gaslighting, sadism, torture

Yandere Alphabet

Hideyoshi Nagachika

Earnest-How intense and dangerous are they really?

🟡​Hide is a rather carefree and jolly individual and not only for show. From the cast of Tokyo Ghoul he's probably one of the most harmless as he has neither some deep trauma nor is he really possessive, sadistic or manipulative. What would be the scariest thing about him is probably his determination. If Hide sets his mind to something you better bet your arse that he'll do everything to reach the goal in his mind. The relationship he desires is from the point that he realizes his obsession his one and only desire and he'll do everything to eventually achieve this. What's also remarkable to note is that Hideyoshi is in for the long game if needed. Underneath that outgoing personality is a very smart observer and thinker which might make it easy for you to overlook that Hide is more of a meticulous planner that he may let on.

Ideals-What do they have in mind for the future?

🟡​Even with his long-term plans always in the back of his mind, Hide is more of a simple guy when it comes to the wishes for the future. He just wants to be happy with his darling and be with them until death tears the both of you apart. He doesn't put a lot of emphasis on marriage until the both of you are in your late twenties because he doesn't cave in easily to social pressure. If he can just see you laughing and smiling for the rest of your lives and know that he's the reason behind your happiness, he wouldn't ask for more. That is his goal from the very beginning and what is admirable is that it always stays his goal even with everything that happens to him throughout the years.

Mask-Do they change their behavior after falling in love with their darling? Do they act differently around them than around other people?

🟡​He's not changing his attitude around you as soon as he comes to realize his own feelings. He's always been a ball of sunshine around you. What does change though is the frequency he ends up seeing you afterwards. He suddenly starts popping up around you a lot more than what you'd consider coincidence and he does so because he is aware of his own feelings now. Yet the happy grin he always offers you and he encourages you a lot. At the same time he becomes more observant though as he has a bit of an obsessive streak going on. He's going to get your phone number now and you better answer his calls and messages within a certain amount of times or he'll get worried. Hideyoshi takes the behavior he shows everyone but increases it overall when he's now around you.

🟡As already mentioned, Hide shows every person he meets the same carefree and happy attitude. So there isn't a very gravid difference in how he acts around others and how he acts around his darling. It's just that around his darling he's just a tad bit more of all the things he usually is already. Just a bit more happier around you. Just a bit more prone to worry for you than for others. Hideyoshi is awfully social so perhaps it's good that he is so open, eager and funny when he interacts with others and takes you out on dates.​ As his crush obsession you get the special treatment from him obviously. The thing is that it doesn't look that strange to others because his tendencies are just very subtle in comparison to his friend.

Voice-If their darling asks them for something, would they give it to them? How much do they do in general for them?

🟡​Short answer would be yes. I see Hideyoshi as the guy who would in general do a lot for his darling. This includes spoiling them too because he has a case of lovesick infatuation at times. The poor guy has troubles saying no to his darling because puppy eyes and a bit of begging normally always manage to crack his weak determination to not give in to you so easily. Perhaps he has never really planned on ever denying you too much anyways. He's even putting in a lot of effort which brings us back to his previously mentioned determination. You want something? He'll make sure to get it for you and if he has to run through all of Tokyo to get you what you want. Just reward him with a smile and a kiss and all of it will be worth it.

🟡​Honestly, Hideyoshi does a lot for his darling. Not only will he always do his best to get his hands on whatever they ask him to fetch for them, he also does a lot of other things. He's probably the guy who buys you once a week a bouquet of flowers and lots of other small stuff like keychains and snacks but he also is the one who plans a lot of dates. He's just bubbling over with cool ideas he wants the both of you to try. From a very unique café in this area of Tokyo to a special restaurant on the other side of Tokyo to visiting Tokyo Tower together, to what else he can find. You get the idea that he just loves going outside with his s/o a lot and do funny and cool activities with them. He's working hard to be able to afford all of the needed money to visit each and every place he has in mind too, all in hopes of giving you a good time and something to remember fondly later on.

Eto Yoshimura

Earnest-How intense and dangerous are they really?

🟩Eto is an 11 out of 10 if I'd have to give her a scale. Eto's darling is screwed because she's without a doubt one of the worst Yandere one could have. She's terribly sadistic, will definitely indulge in you every once in a while by biting you and taking bits of flesh from you and her sharp intuitions makes it very easy to torment you mentally and physically and she enjoys every second of it. Differently from people like Tsukiyama she never goes through an emotional change either as you're always perceived as a precious toy and plaything for her and she'll never stop seeing you as anything else. Eto has a hobby of playing mind games with you too which means that on certain days she might be a lot more nicer to you to lull you into a false sense of security only to crush you and torture you within the next minute. It messes with your mentality and she enjoys seeing you walking on eggshells around her, always paranoid when she'll snap again. Your fear is adorable~

Ideals-What do they have in mind for the future?

​🟩​You can't expect anything much from her as the future she envisions is pretty much everything she's doing with you already. You're an object and a possession so you'll be kept until she's either tired of you or you die. Honestly, Eto expects to grow tired of you but even after you've been severely broken by her games and torture, she still kind of wants to keep you around. It's utterly fascinating to her to feel that deeply for someone but she's keeping you all the more for that. She'll never let you go, she'll never let you die on her either. Your life is hers so she decides everything that's happening to you. Even when it's time for you to die and considering her twisted attachment, she doesn't plan to let you slip through her fingers anytime soon.

Mask-Do they change their behavior after falling in love with their darling? Do they act differently around them than around other people?

🟩​I'd say the shift in personalities would be the most jarring if you're human and knew her in her human identity as Sen Takatsuki. As Sen she's clumsy and her mind is all over the place which makes her seem as a really forgetful individual. She'd use that to her advantage though, luring you to her under the mask of being a playful although ditzy person only to pull the rug from under your feet as soon as she has you where she wants to have you. Because that's when she exposes her true colours to you and she has to say, the look of shock, fear and betrayal doesn't disappoint her in the slightest bit. That makes it all the more interesting to watch your reactions when she suddenly switches back to acting like Sen around you, to crush your hope and your willpower like this over and over again.

🟩​Under her human disguise she treats everyone the same who is unaware of her true identity. Even then her interest in you would spike though and she'd approach you with an almost cat-like curiosity. Behind the scenes she would already make sure to have other ghouls who she has manipulated to do her bidding follow you around and stalk you so that she can run into you more. Maybe the only advantage you have over other humans and even ghouls is that she would never mercilessly slaughter you. On the other hand, you're subjected to never-ending torture so perhaps you still have it worse. You're always going to be the one person she'd never get rid off as every other person is always someone she can and will slaughter if they would prove to be more useful dead than alive. That's a curse more than a blessing though as you're forever subjected to her twisted affection.

Voice-If their darling asks them for something, would they give it to them? How much do they do in general for them?

🟩Perhaps if you really beg for it, but even then there's no guarantee for her to do such a nice thing for you. You see, whilst you knew her as Sen small presents to court you weren't even that uncommon but it wasn't down out of chivalrous motives or even to fully capture your heart but merely to play with you to get you more comfortable around her. As Eto it isn't very likely for her to listen much to you at all. She does enjoy seeing you miserable and in agony so sometimes she might promise to consider a plead from you if you groval at her feet and beg enough. If you manage to amuse her enough, she might fulfill you a small request or two but it comes with the price of throwing away your pride and honor. Well, what can she say? Seeing you all pathetic and humiliated is such a cute sight to behold.​

🟩​To ensure that she can always enjoy seeing you put on such a miserable show of sobs and pleads in front of her, Eto can be exceptionally cruel. Normally you get the bare minimum to survive somewhat but it's never really enough to make you happy. Even bare necessities like water, food and even hygiene are kept low that it is never enough to fulfill you. If you want more, you always have to ask her for permission. Sometimes she's even cruel enough to deny you even that entirely unless you do exactly as she says. She's always exploring and using you for her own fun and your own thoughts and feelings are rarely considered.

Fukuzawa Yukichi

Earnest-How intense and dangerous are they really?

⚪​I'd say that his darling is on a safer side because Fukuzawa actually acts like his age. He's fairly calm and composed and rarely someone who would let feelings interfere with his judgement. You're lucky to get a lucid man who is capable of feeling ashamed of his feelings. That aside though, the most problems this man will give you are all connected to his very protective tendencies. He's probably just a tiny bit paranoid because he's the president of the Armed Detective Agency but he won't interfere too much with your personal life unless something happens. The problem comes when something happens though because you'll quickly discover that he's not taking any risks when it comes to your safety. Suddenly the composed and calm man has this almost oppressing aura that makes him intimidating and leaves no room for arguments. Whilst I wouldn't label him as someone who would abuse his power, it's also worth mentioning that he can twist and bend the law a bit when he would deem it as necessary.

Ideals-What do they have in mind for the future?

⚪​He has a very classic idea of the future when it comes to his s/o. A marriage is 100% included in there, a really traditional one at that. He'd wait a few years before proposing though in order to work as much initial arguments out as possible in order to settle down peacefully with his darling later on. He wouldn't wait as long as Kunikida would though because I do think he might feel a bit pressured since he's already in his forties and not the youngest anymore. Otherwise he wouldn't have too many demands for the future, he just wants to protect and cherish his darling as much as he can. He's satisfied with the simple things in life with his s/o.

Mask-Do they change their behavior after falling in love with their darling? Do they act differently around them than around other people?

⚪He's trying to hide his feelings after he has realized his obsession with you. The reason for that is his inevitable feeling of shame and guilt so he tries to treat you like he treats his co-workers. With respect and patience but his normally so impeccable composure just crumbles around you slowly but surely. His eyes always peek over to you when you're close to him, if you touch him in any way he tenses up ever so slightly and in the worst case you elicit the hint of a pink blush out of him. Ultimately he's trying but failing to hide his growing feelings for you. Eventually you find Fukuzawa actually being the one who goes out of his way to engage in interactions with you as he suddenly seems to want to socialize with you a lot more than what you would have expected from a normally more reserved man as him.

​⚪The president of the Agency tries to keep it as subtle as possible but there's no denying it. If anyone would just observe him closely, they'd notice the differences before he decides to come as clean with his feelings as he is. One thing is the already mentioned awkwardness around you. He becomes more hyper-aware around you and more mindful of his words and actions, careful to keep his dignity intact in front of you. He doesn't want to embarrass himself even the slightest in front of you. Fukuzawa has also a staring problem around you and he doesn't even notice that until someone points it out to him. It isn't to the point where it's creepy but it's enough to be noticable for his subordinates. I do think in your presence he's trying to not come over as too stern and strict which is why people like Ranpo and Dazai often end up keeping you around if they want the president to not scold them in any way or form.

Voice-If their darling asks them for something, would they give it to them? How much do they do in general for them?

​⚪I'd say that it depends on what you ask him. Whilst Fukuzawa is someone who will always listen to what his darling has to say and listen to their opinions unless he's really on the brink of an emotional breakdown, he isn't someone who coddles and spoils his s/o actively. He sees a relationship as something where both parts give and take equally in their own ways to show that they appreciate each other. Considering that your comfort is really important to him, especially if you'd ask him for something because otherwise you'd be uncomfortable would he be very quick to try to soothe your unease. Small favors such as buying groceries or fixing something that has broken are also always things you can ask him to do and be sure that he will do it for you within the same day.

⚪Fukuzawa always makes sure to do enough for you to let you know that he cherishes you and loves you. It isn't to the point where it would overwhelm you or where he would carelessly buy everything for you but it is enough to let you know everyday that he adores you. Yukichi just cares a lot for your safety and your comfort, especially since he is aware of the risks that you're in due to being his significant other. A lot of people hold a grudge against the ADA and would want to see their downfall and you'd be the easiest target for them since you're his lover, especially if you possess no special gift. He might also have days where he is very busy in the Agency when something is going on. He doesn't spend much time with you during such times and tries to make it up to you afterwards. He feels a bit guilty for ignoring you for a bit even when he knows that you're not angry with him. You know how hard he works for the safety of the city after all.

Mori Ougai

​​Earnest-How intense and dangerous are they really?

🍷​I'd wager that you would not want to end up as Mori's darling. Looking on how he's an experienced and cruel mafioso who just happens to be the boss too, any chance of escaping are very little. Mori has connections and subordinates all over the city and isn't afraid to break the rules and the law if he needs to do so which implies that he might just wreck a bit of havoc if you should ever do something as stupid as trying to escape or hide from him. The possibilites don't even end there which is even more terrifying because just like Fyodor, Mori isn't worried about personally messing with your life so that you have no choice but to rely on him if you don't want to learn how to survive on the streets. Considering that he can act very sappy around his darling, you sometimes forget who you have in front of you and whilst Mori is a fan of a bit of spunk in his darling, if you underestimate him and act up a bit too much, you'll be very quickly reminded just how dangerous this man really is.

Ideals-What do they have in mind for the future?

🍷Oh~He just wants to keep you for the rest of his life with him. After all the mafioso adores you in a very twisted and sick way​ and could never imagine not having you always right by his side. And that is really all that he desires for the future. To always have his sweet and gorgeous doll by his side so he can coddle, spoil and dote on them all he wants. He doesn't need your consent for any of that and to your great annoyance you discover that he actually adores it when you act a bit more spicy. He enjoys if you have a bit of fire inside of you. He can act uncannily excited around you when he demands you to put on the pretty clothes he bought for you or simply has you on his laps and dotes on you. It's so creepy when he acts like this.

Mask-Do they change their behavior after falling in love with their darling? Do they act differently around them than around other people?

🍷​If you meet him anywhere in public, it's very likely that you'll let yourself get fooled by his clumsy and worried exterior just like Atsushi. Who can blame you though, Mori is good in making himself appear like a goofy and sappy man when he's not currently acting as the boss of the Port Mafia. Yet even whilst he keeps you from being warily around him in his disguise, the difference in his behavior is still fairly obvious. Suddenly he is so clingy when he's with you and tries to delay your departure from him and Elise as much as possible, insisting that you accept the presents he buys you and begging you try on the clothes he bought you and wear them the next time you two meet. Even after the truth has been revealed, will he not stop acting like a clingy and sappy fool when with you. Now it's turned up to the point where it unsettles you and now you also know better than take him for a bit of a goofy idiot. You've seen what evilness hides under that pout.

🍷​It's pretty obvious but you get the Elise treatment from him but just a bit more intense than that. Around everyone else who knows him Mori is always in his role as the boss of the Port Mafia but only around Elise and you, especially around you, does he relapse. As soon as you're around, he can never fully resist to falter and keep his hands to himself. He always wants to touch you in some way when you're around and always has to dote on you somehow when you're with him. It's not something Mori seems to be able to stop himself from doing so even under the eyes of other members of the Port Mafia will he act like a sappy idiot which probably disturbs some whilst it annoys others. He never loses his face though because everyone knows just what he's capable of.

Voice-If their darling asks them for something, would they give it to them? How much do they do in general for them?

🍷​Just ask him for something and Mori will give you anything. He's showering you with everything one could ask for and even more. He's undeniably down bad for his darling and if they pout and beg a bit he literally can't stop himself. If you're acting all cute and mad when you want something, he's always cooing over you and your cuteness. It's a bit embarrassing and I'm sure Kouyou has scolded him quite a bit for his weak will when it comes to you. Sometimes Mori is being a bit mean though and denies you something you want on purpose for the sole reason for seeing you acting a bit mad and throwing a small tantrum. It's just adorable to watch you being upset and angry but don't worry, he'll stop teasing you soon and make it up to you. You can get anything from food to jewels to clothes from him as long as you know how to make his heart melt. Just don't expect him to ever give you your freedom back.

🍷​You know what? You don't even have to ask him really for any material stuff because most of the time, if not even all of the time, Mori does this on his own free will. He buys you everyday something and most of the time those gifts of his are cute clothes with all sorts of ribbons and adornments on them. Your life is basically that of a human-sized doll as you often feel like he's playing dollhouse with you and Elise and he loves every second of it. When it comes to the question of Mori doing much for you, in a way he does much for you if you let his excessive spoiling count. Unfortunately he does this without you even wanting it as he ultimately just does it for his own pleasure.

[eternityservedcold]

an extremely thorough list of content warnings for jojos bizarre adventure

because the old one was made by a deleted blog so it isnt easily accessible any more (and i dont think it was good enough to begin with)

btw if you say anything to the effect of "why do people like jojo when it has x" or "you guys really excuse y?" on this post im just gonna block you. people who get angry about me saying to skip parts/episodes will also get blocked.

feel free to reply/send an ask with anything i missed, preferably with a chapter or episode number. parts 7 and 8 wont be on here in full until i finish reading them but feel free to send me cws for them and ill add them. also the warnings are just in the order they appear, and more specifically when they appear in the anime, so as to not have weird "x is more important than y" nonsense

general warnings

these are things that…. basically if youre triggered by these i think you should just sit this out tbh. its an amazing series but its not worth repeatedly triggering yourself. this ones just ordered alphabetically bc its throughout (read: in at least 3 parts)

blood, violence, body horror, gore, and death -amputation -animal abuse and death (especially of dogs) -decapitation -eye, nail, and mouth horror -impalement -parental and sibling death -police brutality -suicide and self harm

child abuse -child abandonment -corporal punishment -leering shots of minors bodies -pedophilia (still gets a warning every time) -physical abuse

christian themes and symbolism

drug use -alcohol -tobacco -underage drug use -unspecified white powder

fire and explosions

gambling

misogyny, both in-universe and on the part of the author

racism (gets specific warnings every time)

sexual misconduct -catcalling -rape (still gets a warning every time) -sexual assault -sexual harassment

unsanitary -eating/drinking gross things —being forced to eat/drink gross things -pee -poop -snot -vomit

vehicle accidents -car accidents -plane crashes

part 1: phantom blood

(manga only) ritual sacrifice

restricted eating

non-consensual kissing

(manga only) a dog is shown on fire

poisoning

chinese ethnic stereotypes

a baby gets eaten

part 2: battle tendency

okay im gonna rip the bandaid off now. there are nazis in this one, and its significantly worse than youd expect just reading that. im gonna quote the old list here: "there are so many nazis in this part and they’re not condemned like at all tbh". i would almost say its glorified, one of the main allies is a nazi and another main ally directly praises a different nazi. in the manga, hitler and swastikas are explicitly shown as well as nazis being called by name, but in the anime, they are removed and simply called german soldiers.

almost nothing from this part comes back in the future and what does come back is explained as it comes up or is understandable from context. so please. if you need to skip this part, just do it. i even understand if you skip the whole series because of this.

its possible some may find the mesoamerican aesthetic of the villains in this part to be insensitive or offensive. im mexican and i personally dont, but i could see why someone would

racism toward: -black people -mexican people —slavery and degradation of mexican women is explicitly shown -japanese people

hostage situation

kidnapping

human experimentation

ritual sacrifice

"man in a dress" gag and subsequent transmisogyny

unintentional incest. there are only two scenes of this, which are: -a character spying on someone (later revealed to be their mother) in the bath -going through said mothers belongings and talking about her panties

animal cannibalism

part 3: stardust crusaders

since fights in this part are much more self-contained than the other parts, its possible to skip some of these if youre triggered by them. those will be marked with chapter and episode numbers

a woman gets spontaneously undressed in the middle of a fight (only her bra shows but it happens against her will)

jotaro, a 17 year old, kisses an adult woman to save her from possession. i wouldnt really say this is pedophilia and it lasts for 1 panel/less than 10 seconds but i found it uncomfortable

while incapacitated from sickness, holly will randomly be shown naked with weird leering camera angles. this happens many more times in the anime than the manga

pedophilia (depicted as a bad thing and the victim is saved before anything happens) (skip chapters 17-19/episode 7)

native american stereotypes (skip chapters 20-22/episode 8)

"person gets replaced" trope (skip chapters 23-6/episode 9; chapters 76-79/episode 27)

infection

suffocation

drowning

"child acting like a pervert" trope (skip chapters 92-96/episodes 32-33) -in the same episodes, the child spends the entire fight naked which might be uncomfortable for some

stardust crusaders ova

this gets its own subsection due to being so different that i was having to say "this doesnt apply to the ova" for a lot of the warnings. unlike the main sdc section, since this ova is extremely pared down, there wont be skippable warnings. also note that this is in "manga order", so its 2000 ova then 1993 ova

the english voice actor for avdol (a black/egyptian character) is a white guy doing a vaguely "ethnic" accent

the non-consensual kissing thing above, here its with a girl jotaros age though

infection

suffocation

ritual sacrifice (used as the intro animation for the 1993 portion)

drowning

part 4: diamond is unbreakable

rape, pedophilia, and kidnapping mentions

physical abuse

electrocution

blackmail

yandere trope -emotional abuse -isolation -stalking -kidnapping

restricted eating

skin picking

(anime only) jumpscare

invasion of privacy (skip this part if this bothers you because one of the main allies power is just, doing this, and its constant)

"child acting like a pervert" trope

bodysnatching/"person gets replaced" trope

theres an uncomfortable scene where a child gets attacked in the bath (non-sexually). both the child and the attacker are naked for the duration of the scene

part 5: vento aureo/golden wind

gang violence/the mafia (main crux of the plot)

bullying

(anime only) racism toward japanese people

reckless driving

torture

rape (not shown just heavily implied)

terminal illness/infection/disease

(anime only) pedophilia

forced childbirth (its like, magical childbirth and the mother doesnt register it)

possibly offensive depiction of systems (systems, feel free to correct me on this)

medical malpractice

a guy gets swapped into a girls body and gropes it

part 6: stone ocean

(anime only) heavy use of chromatic aberration, which may be eye straining for some

this part is really horny, comparatively speaking. this isnt really a bad thing but depending on your level of comfort with that you may want to skip

(manga only) misgendering a trans man

hallucinations

memory loss

abuse of religious authority

(manga only, only in some translations) homophobic slur

grooming

gang violence

"disposable sex worker" trope

creepy stalker-ish behavior (the person who does it becomes a main ally & never stops or eases up)

cult

drowning

electrocution

unintentional incest

the kkk (in the anime its a generic racist mob) -lynching

part 7: steel ball run

possibly offensive depiction of native americans (feel free to correct me if youre native)

a 14 year old girl: -is a child bride and im pretty sure this isnt condemned at all -gets hit on by adults -experiences a rape attempt? -gets pregnant?

the entire plot is about curing a disability

medical malpractice

capital punishment

(only in some translations) r slur variant

homophobic slur

attempted pedophilia/rape?

"bisexual sex pest" trope (grown woman making advances toward a minor/trying to rape her)?

part 8: jojolion

ableism?

rape?

part 9: the jojolands

"unsettling gender reveal" trope

pedophilia

[absolutebl]

BL Streaming - Which Service is Worth Your Money?

I’m bored and I have a little extra time this morning so it’s time for ABL to play with the spreadsheet of doom. 

Occasionally I get the question: 

If I were to subscribe to only one platform for BL which should I pick? 

This post is dated May 2023. 

First things first. I am going to be (somewhat) objective about this and not judge on quality of content. Because if KinnPorsche is all you love in life, obvs you need iQIYI, but if you are a HIStory franchise stan, than it’s all about Viki. Those are your life choices, I’m just here to play numbers games, okay? 

Secondly, some shows air on multiple platforms, particularly Viki & Gaga, but sometimes it’s Gaga & YouTube, occasionally it’s even iQIYI + others. This has only started happening in the last few years. Bed Friend was on 3 different platforms (GaGa, iQIYI, YT) - even though it was originally announced for Viki! I honestly don’t know how to track this, so I tend to log the spreadsheet with my preferred watching platform for that language, this will throw the numbers off for those platforms. 

Since I join everything my platform preference choice is based on:  

the quality of the subs/captions   

the quality of the user experience  

My subs experience tends to be: 

YT = best for Thai

Viki = best for Korean and sometimes Japanese, okay for Thai

Gaga = best for Chinese and sometimes Japanese but very weak Thai subs

My user interface preference is: 

YT, Viki, Gaga in that order then everyone else with iQIYI at the bottom. This is because I watch on mobile devices. 

ASplay, WeTV, former Line, Amarin TV, Netflix and the other smaller suppliers (and apps) will all be grouped together for this assessment. Since they have so few offerings, by default I would not recommend subbing those platforms unless you are a hard stan of all BL with disposable income. 

Super bad BLs that I watched back in the day on grey sites or YT (pre 2020 crack down) because there were no other options and I am a completest are still listed as grey. I would never suggest anyone watch these shows anyway, so I don’t care if they have now shown up on legitimate sites. If they are somewhere, it’s likely Gaga. Which means Gaga’s percentage of the market share is probably UNDER reported by my numbers. 

Movies and cinema-only releases that never got international distribution fall into the “grey” category. If I got it off an indie subber, since that too is technically illegal, it falls into the grey category as well. 

Final note: This is from a USA based IP, I don’t use a VPN, so platforms assessments are from that perspective. 

Spring 2023, current state of the spreadsheet. AKA 

Our BL Data Set 

Total # of BLs = 564

# of BLs ongoing (so finished runtime is best guess) = 18 

Just Answer the Damn Question 

Round Number of Actual BLs - % of market share

YouTube = 218 - 38.6%

Gaga = 148 - 26.2% 

Viki = 77 - 13.7% 

Grey = 53 - 9.4% 

BLs I’ve never been able to find on any platform (including grey): 36 - 6.4% 

iQIYI = 14 - 2.5% 

Other platforms = 12 - 2.2% 

Margin of error: +- 1% (look I’m just not driven to be that accurate here)

Subscription Platforms Breakdown  - % of market share

Eliminating YouTube, Grey, and missing BLs. Viki is included because I do not know which of theirs are behind the paywall and which are not. 

Total subscribe-only BLs: 257 

Gaga = 59%

Viki = 30%

iQIYI = 6%

Sml sites/apps = 5%

(rounded) 

Okay but how about actual runtime? 

Gaga = 360 hrs - 44% 

Viki = 311 hrs - 38% 

iQIYI = 98 hrs - 12% 

Sml sites = 50 hrs - 6%

Anyway you cut it... on pure BL standards...

GAGAOOLALA WINS 

Other consideration? In most places Gaga is ALSO the cheapest per month option. 

Final Thoughts

YouTube (America’s Alphabet) 

YT has the most pieces of content and longest overall runtime because of all the Thai stuff. ALSO bootlegs show up there, especially the early Chinese and Japanese stuff. They will often get taken down and you have to hunt for it again. YT takedowns come in waves, every 6 months or so.

However, GMMTV, some Star Hunter, some Studio Wabi Sabi, all the Vietnamese & Pinoy stuff (until now), and a few choice bits of Strongberry are YT content.

YT’s app is the best UX of a poor set (for me), but the web based YT at Premium level doesn’t work with Firefox. I use YT for work A LOT, so the fee for Premium ($13.99) and lack of ads + downloads (travel) is worth it for me, but I think it probubly isn’t if you’re on a budget. 

GaGaOOLaLa (Taiwan’s Portico Media) 

Of the pay to play platforms, GaGa dominates with the most BLs by all metrics. If you’re intersted in darker BL, GL and other queer content, very high heat, the history of the genre, or Japanese stuff - most of that is on GaGa. Also all of Strongberry and some of the newer queerer series (like My Ride).  

At $6.99 a month it’s ALSO one of the cheapest options. 

Gaga is based out of Taiwan, the only Asian country with marriage equality (as of 2022) AND it specializes in exclusively queer content so they need our support. If you can afford them, you should support them. GaGa is the only platform that will always have more BL, guaranteed (so long as Taiwan is autonomous). Ironically, you can follow their YT channel for previews and teasers to their latest series, short content, and acquisitions. 

Their app isn’t great, but their web-based interface is fine. That said: there’s no categories (way to organize), and the way they roll out new episodes is unintuitive. Their mobile app ALWAYS pauses not mater what you actually want it to do and the lack of the quick skip ahead is frustrating. 

Viki (Japan’s Rakutan)

Viki specializes in longer series, mostly Thai, Taiwanese, and a few of the Chinese bromances. It also now has a lot of KBLs. But in general only more recent stuff (2018 is as far back as they go).

At $4.99-$11.99 depending, it’s low to average cost. I’m not sure which one (if any) you actually need for BL. Most of my favorite new shows tend to air on Viki, and I like Rakutan as a parent company, so I don’t mind supporting them. 

They happen to have 5 of my top ten BLs, which is A LOT (since I hand out 10/10 so rarely). So for me they host the objective best BL content. 

They have the second best app (after YT, it’s kinda a combo of YT + Netflix) but the lack of a speed-up option is frustrating for many. Also the desktop version is super buggy. But they DO have categories you can name and control, which I love.

Other Platforms 

iQIYI - is Mainland China based (hello Baidu, you ugly fucker), so the platform getting/pimping BL for an international audience only is… how do I put this?… oh yeah: shitty. I will often rename it Icky, for this reason. It clearly wants to break the market, but… do we want it in the market at all? How long will they host BLs? When will they be shut down and censored? I would say it’s only worth it if you really also like Chinese dramas. And even so, Viki also has A LOT of those. Unfortunately for us, Wabi Sabi seems to have cut a distribution deal with Icky. And, of course, there is the KinnPorsche situation (so ironic that Icky hosts the highest heat). The interface is a nightmare. They have the WORST app, even when you pay, it serves ads, some of which alpha crash the platform. 

Netflix - here in the states it almost never has new BL content. Sometimes some old stuff. They tested the waters with SOTUS and Love Sick. I have a feeling they aren’t particularly intersted in this market. So if BL is what you watch, don’t bother. At last check they still had Gameboys and Your Name Engraved Herein and Wish You. 

WeTV - acts like LineTV used to, has Manner of Death and We Best Love and a few of the more obscure Thai pulps. But probably not worth it for anyone but a completest. 

Grey - Unknown or No Distributor 

Indie subbers: there’s some BLs that you can watch by supporting indie subbers who supply private links to their personal versions. This is not legal, but it is a slightly nicer way to get stuff you can’t find anywhere else. I’ve done this for some Thai and Japanese stuff.

I find the leads for these sources here on Tumblr. If someone is giffing and talking about a show and I don’t know how they are getting hold of it, I simply ask.

DramaCool (USA) & Dailymotion (France) & Bilibili (China) and others - AKA the grey space. You SHOULD feel guilty using these sites, you’re stealing, but it’s where many of us go for BL we can’t find anywhere else (in defiance of what few morals we have left). These are BLs that originally sold to very odd platforms or never got international distribution. Unfortunately, some of my favorites are in this category like Great Men Academy or Seven Days. It’s a nightmare. The ads are terrible and the virus/bug risk is high. They get taken down all the time. Or the leads are faked. I use an old computer to access and suggest you take all necessary precautions yourself.

P’ABL SOAP BOX TIME

Look I work tangential to the entertainment industry, so if you thought I wasn’t going to learn you a little on this subject, you got another think coming. 

HERE’S THE THING: 

You watch a show on one of the grey platforms, ESPECIALLY if it actually has distribution on Gaga or Viki - you better review that shit. You spread the word and advocate for that content here, on MDL, on social media, with fan art, I don’t care. You steal it, you find a way to pay back in your time and/or creativity. 

I get it if you’re poor, but don’t be a goddamn scab. Find a way to reward content creators with non-monetary support. If you had the time to watch the thing you stole, you have time to pay it forward in some substantial way. Do this even if you didn’t steal it but got it for free. Do this if you read fanfic. Do this with articles, blogs, books. Do this with podcasts. 

It isn’t hard to be a decent human and support creators. Don’t you dare just TAKE. If you’re that kind of person stop reading this blog immediately. I don’t want anything to do with you and you don’t deserve my words or my spreadsheet of Doom. 

/rant 

MORE ON THIS TOPIC WITH FOLLOW UP QUESTIONS

Original post on this subject that I adapted for this post. 

(source)