#this whole story in a nutshell

[vampireharpy]

c'mon lucy that's the opposite of a problem, isn't it?

[creatively-cosmic]

missing numbers lore

[skyloftian-nutcase]

Would it be possible to have some more healthcare Legend backstory 🫠🙃 only if you have the time and feel like writing about Legend. He lives in my soul rent free so I’m always searching for Legend content and your blog is the best place to get it :D thank you for everything you give us; it genuinely makes Tumblr worth having :3

I honestly have been trying to come up with a snippet for poor little Legend and then I ran into this and it was just too perfect for him, so I hope you enjoy a video instead. XD XD

[eff-plays]

Ok so I watched the interview with Stephen Rooney, Astarion's writer, and here are some highlights. (I'm an aspiring writer and current game design student who wants to write for games so I'm sorry if some of these insights aren't as interesting to you as they are to me <3)

He calls Astarion his "horrible little vampire boy"

He loves seeing the fandom around Astarion<3

He did write other characters in the game, but mostly NPCs surrounding Astarion or his storyline, so it mostly revolved around Astarion

Astarion is not as connected to other companions/Origins as, for example, Lae'zel and Shadowheart, or Wyll and Karlach are to each other, but he is still reactive to their stories, even if it's just to stand off to the side and laugh when something terrible happens

He had a clear sense of where Astarion's story would start and end, but it got "muddy in the middle", but those are also moments where the best ideas come from

They write from the general idea that every character has one "good" and one "evil" ending, in order to give the player choice. RIP Ascendant apologists :(

According to Stephen, two of the most important aspects of Astarion's character (to keep consistent when bringing him to Idle Champions, at least) is that he enjoys violence, but is also fun about it

"He has a certain appreciation for violence, I guess? A bit of a murdery streak. [...] He's a vampire, he's all about blood, and he's all about, kind of, those darker sides of humanity. [..] But at the same time, he is ... He is really fun, he's really fun to write, he's really fun to have in your party, and it's very important for me that that is also represented."

"He's gonna stab you, but will have a smile on his face as he does it? I mean, I dunno. That's kind of him in a nutshell."

Larian would not have allowed for Astarion to be a typical brooding Dracula type, and there were scenes that were shot down for not being original enough

The main thing about Astarion was trying to get a "sense of fun." It would be easy to write a character that was very unlikable, and they absolutely did not want to do that

Rooney says Astarion is consistently terrible throughout the game and awful in a whole lot of ways, but he also needed to be charming enough that you could tolerate his presence and wanted him around

Rooney also had a lot of input on Astarion's stats (meaning the 10 Charisma is probalby 100% intentional)

He also had input on how certain lines should be delivered, even though the writers didn't directly work with voice actors

The way Astarion moves and poses is "all Neil"

Apparently, Neil Newbon worked on the character for years and Rooney did not speak to him once, though his voice work did influence how Astarion's lines were written and it became a "feedback loop" (Possible context for "ONLY SLIGHTLY, NEIL")

There were no points where a line delivery drastically changed Astarion's writing; rather it was a constant, slow evolution

However, there was one very spoilery moment where Neil gave such emotion to some "basic" lines that it fundamentally changed the scene (WHAT IS IT OMG)

It's difficult to balance approval, as you don't want to straight up write a monster. Every character needs to have some humanity in them. So if it comes to leaving the party, it needed to be the result of something central to said character. They wanted to be mindful of situations that would cause actual rifts between characters. (I assume this is why most generic disapprovals/approvals are +/- 1 or 2, while character-related ones give +/-5 or more)

However, as they don't write straight up horrible people/monsters, it doesn't come up as often as one might think.

The interviewer makes a point about how characters like Astarion and Lae'zel are good examples of how to play "evil" characters, as they are maybe not the best people but are still eager and willing to stick around the other party members

They worked to make sure the characters would work as a group, no matter the configuration of the group. The characters needed to be on the same path, even if they don't always agree or walk that path the same way.

Stephen Rooney is very proud of the "climactic" scene of Astarion's story. (AS HE SHOULD BE.) He even had to step away from the computer and have an emotional moment. Me too, man.

He's also "extremely pleased" that there's a point where you can punch Astarion in the face. "Actually, that one might be my favorite part" A MAN OF THE PEOPLE!!

Stephen Rooney's tip on what specific thing you should try out with Astarion: When he's trying to get a "sneaky nibble" at night, you should "probably" let him bite you. Way ahead of you there, sir.

No discussion about Astarion's romance unfortunately, but that's that!

[nya-vivi]

On retrospective, when hoyoverse named the Sumeru chapter: 'Truth Amongst the Pages of Purana', they really meant it uh?

[emphistic]

Hiii I wanted to say I love yours works and was wondering how sukuna would react to yuuji wanting us to be his valentines 💓💓💓

Yuuji knows what chocolates you do and do not like. . . Actually, he didn’t. Sukuna did, however. And — being the awesomest brother he was — told Yuuji, albeit not for free. The boy had to earn it (Sukuna’s words) by mopping the floors of the apartment. Why did Sukuna choose such an odd way of payment? Who knows. And then, of course, Sukuna had to accompany Yuuji to the store in order to purchase said chocolates.

Yuuji isn’t sure what flowers you do and do not like. But he didn’t care; he thought all flowers were beautiful no matter what color, shape, size, and that each flower was pretty and unique in its own way. That’s what he repeated to himself in his head as he picked flowers straight from the dirt in the gardens outside your apartment complex.

Yuuji sees you wear some colors more than others. So he assumes you like those best. That’s what he thinks to himself as he colors in a card for you using those exact colors with his crayons. And though they weren’t a carbon copy — since he was working with very limited resources — his brain didn’t notice. And neither did you, when you received the card.

Yuuji loves you, a lot. He loves you a lot. Yuuji loved how caring you were when he got a boo-boo. Yuuji loved how good your cooking tasted compared to everyone else's. Yuuji loved how you would sing him to sleep — he, like his brother, thought your voice was amazingly lovely. Yuuji loved how funny you were, the jokes you would tell to cheer him up, and they worked. They always worked. Yuuji loved how soft your hands were when brushing through his unruly pink locks, much like his brother. Yuuji loved how you showered him with your undivided attention.

Yuuji was a smart kid . . . sometimes. He saw the way his brother changed when you started coming over to the apartment more and more often. Even when he was very little, he noticed. He noticed that after you permanently moved into the apartment, Sukuna was softer towards him. Sukuna smiled more. Sukuna laughed more. Sukuna loved more.

And so, Yuuji loved you a lot. Because, most importantly, he loved how you changed Sukuna — for the better.

Unfortunately, and like most kids, one thing he didn’t love was . . . school.

School, a center for learning to some and a prison to most. But if he didn’t go to school, how would he learn what Valentine’s Day was? How would he know that Valentine’s Day was a holiday to celebrate love, friendship, and admiration, for those you call special? He wouldn’t. Yeah, in a nutshell, long story short, however you want to call it, Yuuji wouldn’t know. He wouldn’t know what Valentine’s Day was. But, without you, he wouldn’t even know what love was — save for his brother, [occasionally], of course.

And what did Sukuna do? — Since he loved Yuuji so much? He fixed the little kiddo a tie and suit, of course! Yuuji looked utterly dashing wearing Sukuna’s suit; the pants were dragging a bazillion feet behind the boy and the tie was completely off-centered. (Were you expecting a suit tailored and sized for a little boy? LOL.) Maybe Sukuna did that on purpose. Maybe not. Sukuna did happen to snap a picture, though. Oh, he was so going to use this as blackmail once Yuuji grew older.

Yuuji thought he had finally obtained the confidence and big muscles of a man when he grew the courage to sit you down on the couch so he could “talk” to you. But as soon as he saw you looking attentively at him with the most gorgeous eyes he had ever seen in his whole four years on this planet, he nearly experienced heart palpitations right then and there.

Coming to the rescue, Sukuna came over and patted his younger brother on the back. Nodding at him in reassurance.

You had to admit, Yuuji looked absolutely adorable whilst he stuttered over big, complicated words not fit for a mere child, but when he finally got it, he shoved the chocolates, flowers, and card into your hands.

“And—and, I wan’ to ask you to be my va . . . wen . . . tine. . . Vawentine!” It took him a few tries to remember the “correct” pronunciation and to sound out the word syllable by syllable, but what mattered most was that he got it — in the end.

Yuuji raised his arms into the air, for some odd reason, like a person cheering or celebrating. Speaking of which — in this case, he would be celebrating his finally having gotten the hang of saying the word ‘valentine’. But he just looked so precious that you couldn’t even find the heart to tease him about it. Not even a little bit.

And if you were paying a little more attention to your surroundings, you would see that Sukuna was in the corner of the room, slowly and silently moving his lips as in a way to help Yuuji sound out the tough word.

“Thank you, Yuuji! — For all the gifts.” You scooped him up into your arms, peppering kisses all over his face. “I love you so, so much! Of course I’ll be your valentine. You are just too cute, aren’t ya?” You pinched his chubby cheek, eliciting a squeal from the boy. “Such an adorable little baby. I just want to put you in my pocket and take you everywhere with me.”

Yuuji nodded fervently, although he didn’t understand a thing you had just said.

All the while, Sukuna crossed his arms over his chest, huffing, before facing away from you two.

“Aww, are you mad that you're not my baby?” You turned your attention towards your boyfriend — who continued sulking — and so did his little brother, still snuggled in your arms.

“What the fu—what the heck? No.”

“That you’re not my honey bun?”

“Stop.”

“That you’re not my sweetie poo?”

“Oh my God.”

“That you’re not my—”

He cut you off, turning around and swiftly slapping a hand over your mouth so fast you didn’t even see it coming. But, what you were able to do was: lick a stripe up his hand covering your mouth.

“Eugh! You just always have to ruin my day, don’t you?” Sukuna grimaced, pulling back and wiping his wet hand on his hoodie. You let out a cheeky laugh in reply.

“I think that someone . . . is a little jealous. Don’t you agree, Yuuji?”

He nodded. “Mhm!”

“I am not jealous, matter of fact. You all are just stupid.”

“Stupid?” You raised a brow, wanting to see where Sukuna was going with this.

“Yeah. Valentine’s Day is for couples. Couples. Not friends. Not . . . not anyone else. So, Yuuji can’t be your valentine.” He smirked at the now frowning boy in your arms. “Sucks to suck.”

“We are a couple. A couple of fwends.” Yuuji nodded profusely.

“Doesn’t count.”

“Yuh huh!”

“Nuh uh.” Sukuna stuck out his tongue jokingly at his younger brother.

“My teacher told me that—that Valentine’s Day is for friends, too. She said it is also a day for fwendship.”

“Well, your teacher is stupid.”

Yuuji clawed at your arms, trying to escape in order to jump out at his brother. He was mad. Big mad.

“Yuuji, no. No fighting.”

“That’s right. Listen to your friend, Yuuji. Listen to your friend, who’s not your valentine.”

At this, Yuuji flew out of your arms and lunged at his brother, tackling him onto his back on the couch.

-

Moving on, it’s safe to say that the next day at school, Yuuji told all of his classmates that his valentine was an angel.

Taglist: @beyond-your-stars @sad-darksoul @mochimoee @r0ckst4rjk @lillycore @deepchromatose @yinyinyinyinyinyin @fivehoneyharg @desihopelessromantic @taiyakii @hannas16 @acroso @msvalsius @call-memissbrightside

[boyfiejay]

I love my girlfriend

PAIRING : Enhypen hyung line x female Youtuber! Reader

GENRE : fluff, bullet point

Warning : curse words, me rizzing up the reader😔

Word Count : 0.9k overall

Author's Note : this was long overdue☝🏻

Heeseung ☆

you're one of those underrated artists, that are underrated due to one sole reason

it's better to gatekeep a talented artist

yk the way some fans get sad that their favourites are now on everyone's fyp

yeah your fandom in a nutshell

they also thirst over you non stop

I mean you are stunning, gorgeous, beautiful, enchanting

just date me pookie

you used to be a youtuber before the music career fyi

imagine your fans' dilemma (dimension?) when you say out of nowhere that you have a bf

‘guys, my boyfriend sent me this :D’

and it's a silly picture of two cats or smtg

like your fans are fighting a fucking war on twt

and you are like cuddling with hee, listening to unreleased songs

you have no clue of what's going on

meanwhile heeseung…

he's ready to fight the war

posts a picture of you kissing his cheek on your insta story

he makes sure that only 1/4th of his face is visible

to keep his identity anonymous yk

…

your fans find his acc in 15 mins

he panics definitely 😭

tells you his innuendo after you wake up

and you're just like

‘yeah ok, sure’

WHY ARE YOU SO CHILL??

your boyfriend is getting deep fried on twt and you're like ‘el oh el’

dw your fans mean no harm

after a while they're like

‘they're cute tgt ig 😒’

Jay ☆

you're like a cooking channel

STAY W ME IK IT SOUNDS BASIC

you're like a blogger who blew up one day

because you're just soso pretty😻

alright anyways, your channel is focused around learning to cook

it's so chaotic sometimes

bcz you don't know shit about cooking

sorry if you do, let's pretend you don't >.<!!

you have almost killed yourself a dozen times

at some point people are like

‘??? how is she alive’

all thanks to your almost professional chef boyfriend

but no one has to know that ;)

anyways on like a milestone or something, you decide to cook blindfolded

bae you can barely cook with eyes open

your followers are concerned bro

like their blood pressure is rising by the minute

and like a holy light in the midst of the darkness

Jay stepped in, to save you from killing yourself fr this time

Your fans are seriously jumping around, squealing bcz he's just so soft and gentle to you :(((

but then they snap out and pretend to be angry

and you're like ‘meet my boyfie :3’

jk your fans love you two

like almost obsessed

also they're always sliding in Jay's dms

like I get it mans fine af but he's also taken

and also absolutely whipped for you 🤭

it's your world and we're just living in it…

Jake ☆

you are a gamer/streamer

your whole fan base is delusional

like so delusional, there are like hundreds and thousands of accounts claiming to be your bf/gf

but the iconic one ‘ynsboyfie’ is everywhere

like that acc is the most iconic thing in your lore

they are always there, no news of yours goes past them

always donating in your streams

and one day…

you forget to log in your priv acc

so your official acc has the comment

‘babe, you're so sweet ☹️🩷’

replying to ‘YNSBOYFIE’

???

oh your fans are livid

jokingly ofc

or maybe not

everyone on twt is like

‘who is this bitch???’

everyone hoping for his downfall

then you drop his pic

THE SWITCH UP IS INSANE

‘oh, oh, he's fiiine😏’

like I can't blame them, that's jake

but still they're supposed to be your fans

fucking snitches

my bae, pookum shmookum I would never

your fans love him

but also bully him calling him a lewser

hes so down bad he had a fan page for you

i dont blame him, i too would fangirl over you 😼

Sunghoon ☆

you're like a fitness channel

like those ones that have insane challenges

and your famous in people who have no interest in working out too

your face reveal went so viral, almost every single person knew your face

also your workouts (even tho deadly) always work so fast

people are in love with your figure and just you in general

you also upload mini vlogs once in a while

in these vlogs people noticed someone always being around you and in the back of the frame

at first they were like

‘obsessed fan😨’

but then they saw you laughing along with him in another clip

from the small clips, people couldn't see his face (bcz it's blurred) but omg the figure

the biceps, the buff and tall guy immediately steals everyone hearts

it's obvious from the clips that you're close with him

so naturally you are asked who he is and you just laugh

???

people are losing their minds woman

and you're just like ‘hehe’

they continue seeing him in your vlogs and in one clip you could see him putting his hands on your waist while you squat

you have no reaction to that

but twt…

he's getting dragged even though half of the people have no clue what's going on

you decide to take matter in your hands

and post this

with the caption ‘he's my boyfriend everyone :3’

the internet breaks

Sunghoon doesn't do his face reveal for a long time js bcz he doesn't feel like it yk

but when he does

good lord…

your fans love him

they also love how he glares at people who look at you the wrong way

you never notice that for some reason

[randomshyperson]

I Put A Spell on You - Wanda Maximoff Kinktober #03

Summary: After a tense week and a training session, Wanda finally had enough of your attitude.

Warnings: (+18), heavy smut with power dynamics,  brat tamer!Wanda and sub!Reader, edging, orgasm denial, slapping, a lot of teasing, blindfold and magical restrictions, enchanted strap, kind of rough,  implied enemies to lovers, some cursing | Words: 3.559k

A/N-> This is almost late. I totally forgot I had to post the stories.

General Masterlist | Kinktober Collection | AO3 | Wattpad

-&-

It was Natasha's idea, or at least it was a Black Widow kind of thing.

Most of what Wanda knew about it came from Steve's official report on the training, and the rest of the story came from Sam gossiping around the tower.

But in a nutshell: You had your vision temporarily impaired on the last mission, you were knocked out by it and it almost fucked everything up. Wanda would have thought that this was all it took to diminish your ego a bit, but instead, you and Nat had a weird widow's agreement about eliminating weaknesses or whatever, and this was adapted to your training.

The whole story was the reason you were training with a blindfold on. 

And don't let Natasha hear this, but you were an impressive fighter, even more than the older widow. Somehow you were more agile and stronger than Nat, and it was the kind of thing that made Clint remark worriedly about how much harder your widow training could have been and secretly made Wanda's heart beat faster.

But back to the point: Wanda shared very few training shifts with you. Steve and Nat found peaceful interaction between team members advantageous, so as you didn't get on so well, she had fewer training sessions in your company.

Well, that changed because you seemed determined to prove that you could block blows without seeing them.

"Wow, you're still here." It came out more ironic than she wanted, but Wanda was actually almost impressed. It had been nearly a month since the whole thing had started, and this training was coming after a particularly exhausting mission. She was just going for a quick session - so that the muscles wouldn't lose habit as Steve liked to say - when she found you in the empty tower gym. 

The eyes covered by a black cloth were an almost comical sight, or at least, Wanda assumed that finding it funny was what she was feeling, every time she saw your serious and concentrated form, sweating in the gym.

"Good evening, Wanda." You greeted her without looking at her, your head down. You were listening to her movement she assumed. 

Wanda muttered the greeting back, busy leaving her belongings on the bench and looking for a treadmill. But you cleared your throat. "Don't you want a real challenge?"

She chuckled, rolling her eyes. "Oh, and that would be you, of course."

You smile, your hands behind your body. Wanda thinks she likes the blindfold, it allows her to stare you brazenly, without you even knowing.

"I'm a legendary fighter, yes."

She has to laugh at how naturally you say that. She takes a quick look at the treadmill, and well, smashing your ass really does sound more interesting.

"Okay, real challenge, show me what you've got."

Wanda positions herself on the opposite side of the mat from you, and clears her throat when you remain static.

" Won't you take your shoes off?"

She grimaces softly. Yeah, your hearing was starting to impress. Sighing begrudgingly, she uses magic to make the shoes come off and float away, and before she even has a chance to speak, you do.

"No magic tricks." It sounds like a serious warning, rather than a request, and Wanda doesn't miss a chance to torment you.

"Oh, is that too much for a legendary fighter?" She mocks, but all she gets back is an easy chuckle that she isn't able to reciprocate because you adjust your training gloves and the movement is distracting enough.

After a moment, you get into position. "I'm ready."

"At last." She scoffs, stepping forward. 

Ultimately, she's impressed. And she almost begins to believe that maybe the cloth is fake - there's no chance that you can dodge absolutely all the blows she's so exhaustively learned with such ease. 

It doesn't take long for Wanda to start getting impatient, and for you to start smiling at her, in that smug way that makes her skin itch.

She makes a mistake, and it's enough for you to knock her to the ground.

"Again." You say, standing next to her, equally out of breath but without a scratch. Wanda huffs.

"How the fuck are you doing this?" She asks, getting to her feet with a magical push. You swallow dry, taking a step back, very alert.

"Practice, of course." You mutter. "Are you ready to continue?"

But Wanda narrows her eyes, her head tilting slightly at your sudden alertness. She decides to test a theory, and red sparks appear in the air near your head.

The leap you make in the other direction makes her giggle playfully. 

"Something wrong, darling?"

You grumble, raising a hand in warning, irritably hitting exactly the right spot to point it at her. "Stop this. I told you, no magic."

But Wanda is tired, and she's feeling naughty tonight. Something about your vulnerability makes her body heat up.

She chuckles darkly, taking steps away that only make you swallow dry. "Someone's scared." She sighs, and the sparks appear again. You gasp, clearly anxious and not knowing where to strike.

It's Wanda's fault, there are too many of those and magic is much harder to defend against.

She chuckles at your state, and you snap back almost immediately."That's not funny, Maximoff." 

A magical tug pushes under your knee, behind your elbows, near your foot. Everything makes you jump with fright and sends Wanda into a fit of giggles.

"You're not so cocky when you're scared."

In a desperate attempt, you try to attack the magic, which only disappears into thin air against your skin. Wanda just stands back, watching the scene with amusement.

With an impatient grunt, you raise a finger at her. "Stop this shit, I'm warning you-"

"Don't be rude, darling. I like you best when you're polite." Wanda interrupts, and your exclamation of indignation turns into a grunt of pain when a magical tug forces you to your knees on the mat.

"What the hell?" You gasp, raising your hand to remove the blindfold. 

But the sensation that follows is like ropes grabbing your wrists and pinning your fists behind your back. Your heart is racing at the same moment. "Wanda, what the actual fuck you're doing?"

Although you can't see her, you hear her very well. Her slow steps towards you, until she makes you jump gently when she touches your cheek. You swallow dry. "Stop this bullshit, Wanda, I'm serious."

She pushes her tongue into the roof of her mouth, a clicking sound that makes you swallow dry again. Her fingers caress your cheek, and the lack of visibility makes everything all too vivid.

"You have a very dirty mouth, kotenok (kitten)." She retorts in a tone that makes you shudder from head to toe. With a dry throat, you look up, even though you can't actually see her.

It must be a good thing for your sanity, though. God knows what you would have done if you could have seen the way Wanda's eyes darkened with hunger when she saw you on your knees, looking up at her.

Licking your lips, you say calmly: "Be very careful with your next action, Wanda. It will be definitive for our future interactions."

She bites back a smile, and her hand leaves your cheek for your hair, the motion in the strands at the nape of your neck drawing a stubborn sigh from your lips.

"See, it's much better when you're polite." She says softly, letting her fingers slide between the strands, stroking your hair gently. "That's how it goes. You behave nicely, and you're rewarded. Behave badly, and well..."

To illustrate, she moves her free fingers. You hear the magic before you feel it - right under your blouse, like a rough tug on your left nipple that makes you grunt in pain.

"Fuck, you little shit-" But swearing at her makes it worse. The sensation is repeated on the other nipple, not real enough to hurt the flesh, but enough to cause pain. And in the current scenario, on your knees and blindfolded, just the right amount for a wave of pleasure to wet your panties. 

It takes you by surprise, so much so that instead of grunting in pain, you practically moan. And that makes Wanda smile, especially as she can see the blush rising on your face.

"You need to improve that attitude." She starts again, adjusting the grip on your hair to force your face in her direction again. You bite the inside of your cheek hard, certain that this time, you would have whimpered. "You've been acting like this for too long, you've gotten comfortable in your naughtiness. I can fix that."

"Wanda..."

"Shush, darling, now you don't talk. You listen. Isn't that what you were hoping to train yourself to do?" She teases, and the grip loosens. You don't have to obey, but you're desperate to do so.

With a lump in your throat, you nod and remain silent. And the next second, when the sound of a zipper fills the room, you grow restless and alert.

You're ready to question when Wanda sighs.

"Shit, honey, that's been working for me too." She panted and you were dying to understand what the hell she was talking about when, along with her shortened breaths, you heard a sound that shook your body to its core. 

Was it really possible that Wanda Maximoff was fingering herself right in front of you?

"W-wanda-"

The slap isn't magical - nor is it weak. Your cheek burns, but Wanda grabs your face anyway.

"I told you to be quiet." She grunts, and in a way, the affected voice is confirmation enough of your suspicions. You can feel your underwear starting to feel uncomfortable with the dampness gathering. "You've talked a lot of shit since I joined the team, now you listen, you brat."

Not only do you hear it, but as the movements continue, you can smell it. Her sweet, intoxicating essence is enough to make you moan for the first time in the night.

Wanda let that one slide, because the sound is too good to punish you for it.

And because you've held still long enough for her fingers not to be enough anymore, she's decided that you deserve a reward.

"Open your mouth, darling, I've got a little treat for you." She sighs, and you obey almost immediately, even though your face is burning.

Wanda removes her fingers from inside herself, sighing softly as she does so. Unhurried, she presses them against your tongue and has to bite down hard on her own when you buckle forward, sucking on her fingers with enthusiasm.

"Look at you, who knew you were such an eager little thing?" She taunts, although the sensation of your tongue on her fingers is almost making her lose her train of thought. She can only imagine how deliciously warm you must feel elsewhere.

You just keep moaning, sucking all her wet pleasure from her fingerprints, and Wanda has to reach down and grab your hair once more to regain some of her sense of grounding.

Her voice is hoarse when she speaks again, but you don't seem to mind. "Did you like your treat, darling?"

You open your mouth to reply but hesitate before doing so. And Wanda smiles proudly when she realizes. "Oh, dear, you can speak if it's to answer my questions. Tell me how much you appreciated your treat."

Swallowing dryly, you lower your head. "I loved it, Wanda. And I would love to taste it from the source."

She bites back a giggle, using one hand to lift your chin. "You didn't even thank me."

"Th-"

The magic squeeze comes directly to your clit now. You let out a little yelp, but Wanda's hand doesn't let you lower your head. 

"I didn't tell you to thank me. Rather, I was reprimanding you because good manners don't come to you naturally." She clarifies, and with tears of pain and pleasure in your covered eyes, you nod in understanding. Wanda sighs. "I'm going to make a good girl out of you, even if I have to keep you on edge all night for it."

The whimper that escapes your throat is humiliating, Wanda loves the sound. 

The next sensation on your skin is that of a chain, wrapping itself around your neck. 

"We need to continue this in a more private place, darling. Where no one will interrupt us." Wanda guides, and the chain gives a gentle tug, the hint caught just in time by you, who are on your feet almost immediately. Wanda bites back a smile. "Fuck, I could get used to this."

She manages to lead you quietly and obediently through the empty corridors, but your anxiety overcomes you at the door to her room.

You stop walking, gulping. Wanda smiles because you're waiting for permission to ask a question, even when you're dying to have it answered.

"It's my room." She clarifies, but you shake your head, signaling that it wasn't your doubt. She shouldn't be impressed that you've already become able to memorize the sound of the way to the rooms, but she is. Smiling, Wanda brings a hand up to your face again. "What do you wish to ask, darling?"

You sigh at the permission granted. "Are you... are you sure? About this..." Wanda is taken aback. Your hands are still bound, you're still blindfolded, at her mercy, and yet you're worried about how sure and comfortable she is. You take a deep breath as if trying to find the right words. "This is important, Wanda. We can't go back to how things were before if I come in. And if you're not sure, send me away, and I swear we won't talk about this again and-"

Wanda moves in, it's quick and less hungry than she thought your first kiss would be, considering recent events and frankly, the way she's been craving you.

Your lips are soft and kind of addictive. Your mouth kisses her with real confidence as if you've done it a dozen times, and Wanda has no idea how often you've done it in your dreams. 

But reality is superior to any of those.

You grunt against her mouth, impatiently, and Wanda knows it's because of your trapped hands. But all she can do is smile mischievously, using hers to pull you by the shirt into the room.

The door is magically closed behind the two of you.

You're not surprised to be put on your knees again - even if a moan of protest escapes you. Wanda smiled, feeling a wave of excitement at your vulnerable anxiety, your eyes blindfolded and your head moving gently as if you expected to hear what she was up to.

Wanda bit her lip, working on her own clothes without magic, so that you could hear the motions. It brought a shiver to watch you squirm gently, swallowing dry as if you could picture her naked. And your pleading sigh, practically meowing her name, made Wanda lose her mind.

Now wearing only her underwear, she grabbed your face again and kissed you with everything she had - teeth and tongue - and swallowed every throaty moan until she needed to breathe again. When she pulled away, a line of saliva connected your lips.

"We need a system, darling..." She murmured, her fingers working to open the belt loop of your sweatpants. "You know the color one? Green for go, and red for stop?"

"Y-yes, Wanda, please, just keep going-" She interrupted with a kiss mixed with a giggle at your desperate response, the hands that had opened your pants helping you to the bed, laying you down. The magical chains had adapted, and your hands were attached to the headboard now, holding you open for Wanda. Your arousal grew so intense that Wanda could see your muscles twitching.

She sighed contentedly as she sat on your hips, watching your curious and expectant movements. Magic did the work of removing your pants, but Wanda was taking her time teasing your skin under your blouse, having the best time in the world watching you squirm and gasp.

"Tell me what you want." 

You swallowed dryly, forcing your voice out: "Anything you want to give me."

Wanda bit back a giggle, her fingers tracing your torso. "Good answer, darling." She sighs, and in one tug, rips off your shirt. The remaining pieces are swept away as you try to keep your breathing under control. Wanda adjusts herself and sits on your stomach, her wetness and warmth against your skin making you wince. "I have an idea, you let me use you and I might consider letting you touch me, what do you think?"

"Fuck." You moan, and Wanda can't let that one slide, though the slap on your cheek is light, and much more of a teasing warning than a punishment. It makes you throb inside.

"Language." She warns, and you sigh.

"I'm sorry."

Wanda strokes the soft red on your cheek, leaning in in a way that makes her wetness slide down your abdomen. The involuntary contraction of your muscles draws a gasp from both of you.

"Behave yourself." She warns, and it seems to be as much about the language as your slight movements, and although you nod, you repeat the gesture. Wanda gasps and grips your cheeks tightly. But you force your body upwards, and her grip loosens as she begins to grind against your stomach, giving in to the sensation. 

It brings some kind of pride to know that she's just as affected by this as you are, but even as she's drenching your skin with her hot pleasure, Wanda lowers herself to wrap her hands around your throat and as she uses your tense abdomen to reach her own orgasm, her grip warns you who's in charge. She doesn't take long to come - all the teasing outside has gotten under her skin - and it's the hottest thing that's ever occurred to you, even if you can't see it.

"Fuck, fuck, fuck." She gasps through the last waves of her orgasm, her hips thrusting hard into you, who pants beneath her. Her juices run down your belly and you squirm impatiently.

"Please, Wanda. Let me touch you." You beg breathlessly, but she kisses you hungrily, her hands going down to your waist. At first, you think she's going to give you what you want, but Wanda gropes you in an unusual way, and you hear her magic before you feel a new volume between your legs. It takes you by surprise, the enchanted item and your tense body makes Wanda break the kiss.

With her forehead pressed against yours, she asks: "Red or green, darling?" As if to encourage an answer, Wanda grabs the conjured fake cock in her hand. It's really enchanted because you feel everything and the pleasure of the moment's stimulation brings a gasp. You move your hips, in the same direction as her without realizing what you're doing, and Wanda giggles. "I still need words."

"Fuck, green, yes." You moan and Wanda gives you a warning bite on the lips for cursing, but your head is spinning with pleasure from the movements that continue between the two of you.

Toys are nothing new - but a magic strap-on that you can feel as an extension of you certainly is. And Wanda seems willing to drive you to the brink of insanity when she simply adjusts the toy at her entrance and sinks in all at once.

You whimper, almost coming at once. She rocks gently against your lap without caring.

It's hard to breathe, especially when Wanda picks up speed and practically jumps on your cock, her warm walls clenching around you, trying to stop you from pulling out. Everything is too hot and just when you're ready to come, Wanda grabs your throat.

"Hold it." It's an order, almost impossible to obey when she rides your lap with such determination. You choke, struggling against the chains, the hot knot in your belly begging to break.

You almost sob. "I-I can't... please-"

She lets out a wicked giggle and doesn't stop moving. "Don't worry, babe, you're not coming. No matter how much you want to."

Wanda moans, and suddenly her movements stop. She groans heavily, gets impossibly tight and you think you're going to come, but something holds you back. Almost like a force of strength, and when Wanda falls limp against you, and her body continues to tremble from the intensity of the orgasm in contrast to yours, burning with more frustration, you understand what she's done.

"Wanda, what the fuck?" you gasped in a mixture of disbelief and irritation. And instead of losing her temper, she giggles mischievously at you.

"That's why you don't deserve to cum, baby. You're a foul-mouthed brat." She bites your jaw as she sits up, and you gasp, feeling her clench around you. "You're not coming until you improve this attitude."

She thrusts into you as a warning and although you feel as if you could come, your body simply won't obey. Because of the blindfold, you can't see her red irises either. 

"You're so mean, Wanda." You groan, sighing at the sensation of her pulling out. 

"Oh, darling, we have barely started."

[sicklyseraphnsuch]

Simon really doesn't question Betty, and you know, that's not a bad thing. Betty is a woman who knows her own mind. Simon's not about to mansplain Betty's desires to Betty.

And it really is quite clear that he follows her lead throughout their whole relationship.

(Note: I wrote this at 3am so unsure how much sense this makes)

In this scene, when he compliments Betty for figuring out the petroglyphs (petrigrofs lol) on the vase, he laughs and makes a throwaway comment about Betty coming with him on the next trip. I do believe it's a throwaway because he just throws it out there.

But Betty snaps onto that opportunity like a fish catching bait. Or maybe a cat pouncing on a mouse. She didn't have to say that she's missing a whole other trip for his, but she does and also follows up with the conclusion that yes. She will go with him.

There's an awkward, "Oookay..." from Simon that belies a hesitancy. But Betty seems intent on taking the inch she was given and making it a mile. Who is Simon to question this grown woman's decisions?

This follows through with Betty making the move to take their relationship to the next level.

Simon was complacent. That's the story of Simon's life. He was complacent and content to keep their relationship professional. Betty makes the leap. That's the story of their romance. Betty makes the leap and confesses to Simon.

And in his confession to her, Simon simply echoes her words right back.

And why not? Why not say the thing that she explicitly wants from him? Why not follow the instructions? Why take a risk and say things differently than what has explicitly been laid out for him?

But that's also Simon's flaw in a nutshell. For a smart guy, he's absolute Shit at picking up what Betty puts down. Even when it's staring him straight in the face.

And Betty herself is terrified of being frank about her feelings for him. Look at the way she confesses to him. She leaves a letter in a book that he might check out soon (maybe in a week, maybe in a month, maybe in a year, who knows?). It was rather roundabout, wasn't it? "I drop my love letter in a book so maybe you will find it"?

To be fair, she is afraid of coming off as too strong. Her rambling about her trip before accepting Simon's offer lends to the idea of someone thinking through her thoughts out loud, but also emphasizing in a roundabout way how much she really Really likes him. Simon does not pick up her attraction to him.

He calls her "library girl" because she is a veritable stranger, why would he reciprocate her attraction right off the bat? Cautious, careful Simon yielding to love at first sight? It's not his style. But Betty does half the work of falling in love with him prior to meeting him. All Simon needs to do is notice.

Simon disappoints her on two occassions. He calls her "indispensable", despite the now clear chemistry between them. He didn't ask her out in the following two weeks, and in his words kept things "professional" despite her Very obvious infatuation with him and what she dearly wants from him. ("And I love you love you love you love you, is it obvious to everyone else?")

And then that SCENE.

He's done it! He used her words! (Because clearly his first approach to lecture her didn't communicate his feelings - Simon, you donk)

And look at her face, she is so ready to be kissed! But Simon tucks her hair behind her ear and lets go. Betty leans in but... again, she stops herself from coming on too strong.

Because she takes the lead. She always takes the lead, and Simon is happy to follow her! But Betty is not a bastion of confidence. Again, we go back to my earlier point: Betty did half the hard work of falling in love with Simon before she met him.

This leads to two things - she can't be secure in the knowledge that Simon loves her as equally because she already loved him before they met and what if she's just imagining things because she's biased and wants her to love him? Likewise, she is intent on proving to Simon that she is lovable to him and he just follows along, without ever getting the chance to show how much he loves her.

He is complacent to be loved and to follow her lead on how to love. He doesn't act without her letter. He uses her words to confess.

Because Betty did half the work of falling for Simon when Simon wasn't around, how could he know the depth of her feelings? How can he be confident that she wouldn't leave the moment he mucks it up when he doesn't really know why she sticks around in the first place? Why wouldn't he beg for her to love him when he went crown crazy?

Why wouldn't he spend the last few seconds of a precious spell to forgive her for leaving him because why wouldn't she leave?

Here's my theory, what Simon sees is not Betty's conviction in her love for him - Simon sees a woman who knows her mind and changes priorities with alacrity. She had a research trip that she's willing to dump in a second? Well, research trips are important but hey, maybe that means her priorities are not cemented. She could love this now and choose to love another thing later.

It's like two ships passing each other through the night. Betty and Simon are terrible at being confident and secure in their love for one another to the point that they drive themselves crazy over it. Betty has something to prove. Simon is waiting for her to leave.

Why wouldn't he question her lack of pursuits? Betty knows herself. She'll go when she pleases, wouldn't she? Why wouldn't she?

The end result: Betty keeps taking the lead and Simon keeps following her, but a partnership is supposed to be on equal footing. They're supposed to travel together. And because Simon lacks the initiative or the assertiveness to balance out the relarionship, Betty is left to run wild with her insecurities, which in turn prevents her from pursuing her passions as all her drive fixates on securing Simon.

"Where will I go without you?"

"I'll never know."

[drchucktingle]

Mr Chuck, wizard of gay romance, I consult ye. Without knowing a damn thing about the plot of the book I'm writing other than it is gay and has themes of hunger, consumption, joy in spite of suffering, and the fleeting nature of life, how should my story end?

well to create we need to consume, this is how we produce energy and multiply and build. since beginning of time from frothing volcanos to tiny microbes CREATION and CONSUMPTION are linked. in addition an act of creation is an act of love, it is filling the empty void with SOMETHING and that is as powerful and important as it gets

i think what confuses MANY buckaroos is they get caught up by the consumption part. they see this equation i have laid out and say 'well if consuming leads to creation and creation is to point then we must consume everything as a moral imperative.' i mean HECK that is capitalism in a dang nutshell right there. if you trot this path it says the bigger fish should eat the little one, and that war and power are sort of innate. you see a lot of goofball conservative philosophers with melted brains stop here and set up shop to peddle their sad wares

THE PROBLEM IS consuming everything that you can DOES NOT ACTUALLY LEAD TO MORE CREATION IN PRACTICE. maybe sometimes in the very short term, but at the end of the dang trot it leads to destruction on a massive scale. if the biggest fish eats ALL the little fish then it is not just the little fish who dies it is BOTH of them. if you seek power through TAKING AND CONSUMING all that you can you will do more harm than good. you may puff up your chest for a little while but eventually you will go beyond your means and crumble.

consuming yields the best results when you do it in sustainable way, when you share with your neighbor, when you build a community. this is because LOVE is the best fuel and love thrives when buds work together to create a greater whole than themselves. even if you use example of TAKING through violence, ten little cave buckaroos as a team will always take down one big cave buckaroo. COMMUNITY PROVES LOVE. TEAMWORK PROVES LOVE. CONNECTION PROVES LOVE.

fortunately, as much as scoundrels want to convince us that fighting and violence and TAKING is the best way to grow as a dang species, it is not. humans thrived not because of some primal hierarchy (as goofball conservatives say) but because we started villages and societies and systems of working together. the buds who put their chips behind the BIGGEST FISH are only seeing one part of the picture. YES sometimes in the animal kingdom the biggest beast will win the fight, but that is why THEY ARE BEASTS AND WE ARE PEOPLE. we evolved to greater heights as we grew bigger brains for sharing and empathy and love and complexity. WE STARTED COMMUNITIES, BECAUSE WITHIN COMMUNITY CREATION AND LOVE THRIVE. THE 'REAL' BIGGEST FISH IS KINDNESS.

so hunger and consuming are ACTUALLY an important part of creation. they are part of bringing joy to this timeline, so long as you are not endlessly hungry even after you are full, and so long as you are not consuming what could be better shared with a bud.

hope that helps with your story buckaroo

[ariossarts]

Man, I'm so tired of seeing the Sexuality discourse under the BG3 or Astarion tags. The amount of people posting that it's "Irritating" or "Disgusting" to see him with a female partner is rediculous, and straight up bi/pan-phobic.

It doesn't matter if Astarion has had more male partners in the past, and it doesn't matter if he's more flamboyant than the other male companions/characters. That does not make a person 'gay-coded.' To say he is strictly gay is to erase his canonical sexuality.

Astarion is Pansexual, as said by his writer and Niel, the actor that portrayed him. Pansexuality by definition, "Pansexuality is sexual, romantic, or emotional attraction towards people of all genders, or regardless of their sex or gender identity. Pansexual people might refer to themselves as gender-blind, asserting that gender and sex are not determining factors in their romantic or sexual attraction to others."

As a Pansexual person, it's been great representation to see that all of the companions are Bi/Pan, because not often is that given to us in media. I am in a "Hetero" relationship, but that does not erase the fact I am a proud Queer person, and it doesn't negate my same-sex relationships in the past. That doesn't remove my sexuality in anyway -- I am who I am.

Astarion isn't Gay. Astarion isn't Hetero. Astarion is Astarion, he likes what he likes, and people need to stop erasing his sexuality and/or trauma to fit what they want him to be.

Do some research on Pansexuality and Bisexuality, and stop the discourse of erasing Bi/Pan people from our communities. We are unapologetically ourselves, and if Astarion existed for #realzies, he would be to. Astarion has no limits to who he falls for, because that's the beauty of Pansexuality. Pans people fall in love with who you are at your core, not what's between your legs, and that to me is Astarions whole story in a nutshell. You saved him, you helped him, you made him realize he was worth more than his body.

In the great words of the Pale Elf himself; "Oh Come off. You're Wonderful. I don't care what you look like. What you cannot do, is make my decisions for me. I've had more than enough of that in my life"

Sincerely, a Pans Astarion enjoyer.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

The health industry’s invisible hand is a fist

On June 21, I'm doing an ONLINE READING for the LOCUS AWARDS at 16hPT. On June 22, I'll be in OAKLAND, CA for a panel and a keynote at the LOCUS AWARDS.

The US has the rich world's most expensive health care system, and that system delivers the worst health outcomes of any country in the rich world. Also, the US is unique in relying on market forces as the primary regulator of its health care system. All of these facts are related!

Capitalism's most dogmatic zealots have a mystical belief in the power of markets to "efficiently allocate" goods and services. For them, the process by which goods and services are offered and purchased performs a kind of vast, distributed computation that "discovers the price" of everything. Our decisions to accept or refuse prices are the data that feeds this distributed computer, and the signals these decisions send about our desires triggers investment decisions by sellers, which guides the whole system to "equilibrium" in which we are all better off.

There's some truth to this: when demand for something exceeds the supply, prices tend to go up. These higher prices tempt new sellers into the market, until demand is met and prices fall and production is stabilized at the level that meets demand.

But this elegant, self-regulating system rarely survives contact with reality. It's the kind of simplified model that works when we're hypothesizing about perfectly spherical cows of uniform density on a frictionless surface, but ceases to be useful when it encounters a messy world of imperfect rationality, imperfect information, monopolization, regulatory capture, and other unavoidable properties of reality.

For members of the "efficient market" cult, reality's stubborn refusal to behave the way it does in their thought experiments is a personal affront. Panged by cognitive dissonance, the cult members insist that any market failures in the real world are illusions caused by not doing capitalism hard enough. When deregulation and markets fail, the answer is always more deregulation and more markets.

That's the story of the American health industry in a nutshell. Rather than accepting that people won't shop for the best emergency room while unconscious in an ambulance, or that the "clearing price" of "not dying of cancer" is "infinity," the cult insists that America's worst-in-class, most expensive health system just needs more capitalism to turn it into a world leader.

In the 1980s, Reagan's court sorcerers decreed that they could fix health care with something called "Prospective Payment Systems," which would pay hospitals a lump sum for treating conditions, rather than reimbursing them for each procedure, using competition and profit motives to drive "efficiency." The hospital system responded by "upcoding' patients: if you showed up with a broken leg and a history of coronary disease, they would code you as a heart patient and someone who needed a cast. They'd collect both lump sums, slap a cast on you, and wheel you out the door:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4195137/

As Robert Kuttner writes for The American Prospect, this kind of abuse was predictable from the outset, especially since Health and Human Services is starved of budget for auditors and can only hand out "slaps on the wrist" when they catch a hospital ripping off the system:

https://prospect.org/economy/2024-06-13-fantasyland-general/

Upcoding isn't limited to Medicare fraud, either. Hospitals and insurers are locked in a death-battle over payments, and hospitals' favorite scam is sending everyone to the ER, even when they don't have emergencies (some hospitals literally lock all the doors except for the ER entrance). That way, a normal, uncomplicated childbirth can be transformed into a "Level 5" emergency treatment (the highest severity of emergency) and generate a surprise bill of over $2,700:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/10/27/crossing-a-line/#zero-fucks-given

The US health industry is bad enough to generate a constant degree of political will for change, but the industry (and its captured politicians and regulators) is also canny enough to dream up an endless procession of useless gimmicks designed to temporarily bleed off the pressure for change. In 2018, HHS passed a rule requiring hospitals to publish their prices.

Hospitals responded to this with a shrewd gambit: they simply ignored the rule. So in 2021, HHS made another rule, creating penalties for ignoring the first rule:

https://www.cms.gov/priorities/key-initiatives/hospital-price-transparency/hospitals

The theory here was that publishing prices would create "market discipline." Again, this isn't wholly nonsensical. To the extent that patients have nonurgent conditions and the free time to shop around, being able to access prices will help them. Indeed, if the prices are in a standards-defined, machine-readable form, patients and their advocates could automatically import them, create price-comparison sites, leaderboards, etc. None of this addresses the core problem that health-care is a) a human right and b) not a discretionary expense, but it could help at the margins.

But there's another wrinkle here. The same people who claim that prices can solve all of our problems also insist that monopolies are impossible. They've presided over a decades-long assault on antitrust law that has seen hospitals, pharma companies, insurers, and a menagerie of obscure middlemen merge into gigantic companies that are too big to fail and too big to jail. When a single hospital system is responsible for the majority of care in a city or even a county, how much punishment can regulators realistically subject it to?

Not much, as it turns out. Kuttner describes how Mass Gen Brigham cornered the market on health-care in Boston, allowing it to flout the rules on pricing. In addition to standard tricks – like charging self-pay patients vastly more than insured payments (because individuals don't have the bargaining power of insurers), Mass Gen Brigham's price data is a sick joke.

See for yourself! The portal will send you giant, unstructured, ZIPped text files filled with cryptic garbage like:

ADJUSTABLE C TAPER NECK PLUS|1|UNITED HEALTHCARE [1016]|HB CH UNITED HMO / PPO / INDEMNITY [34]|UNITED HEALTHCARE HMO [101604]|75|Inv Loc: 1004203; from OR location 1004203|52.02|Inpatient PAF; 69.36% Billed|75|Inv Loc: 1004203; from OR location 1004203|56.87|Outpatient PAF; 75.83% Billed

https://www.massgeneralbrigham.org/en/patient-care/patient-visitor-information/billing/cms-required-hospital-charge-data

These files have tens of thousands of rows. As a patient, you are meant to parse through these in order to decide whether you're getting ripped off on that HIP STEM 16X203MM SIZE 4 FEMORAL PRESS FIT NEUTRAL REVISION TITANIUM you're in the market for (as it happens, I have two of these in my body).

Kuttner describes the surreal lengths he had to go through to prevent his mother from getting ripped off by Mass Gen through an upcoding hustle. By coding her as "admitted for observation," Mass Gen was able to turn her into an outpatient, with a 20% co-pay (this is down to a GW Bush policy that punishes hospitals that charge Medicare for inpatient care when they could be treated as outpatients – hospitals reflexively game the system to make every patient an outpatient, even if they have overnight hospital stays).

Kuttner's an expert on this: he was national policy correspondent for the New England Journal of Medicine and covers the health beat for the Prospect. Even so, it took him ten hours of phone calls to two doctors' offices and Blue Cross to resolve the discrepancy. The average person is not qualified to do this – indeed, the average person won't even know they've been upcoded.

Needless to say that people in other countries – countries where health care is cheaper and the outcomes are better – are baffled by this. Canadians, Britons, Australians, Germans, Finns, etc do not have to price-shop for their care. They don't have to hawkishly monitor their admission paperwork for sneaky upcodes. They don't have to spend ten hours on the phone arguing about esoteric billing practices.

In a rational world, we'd compare the American system to the rest of the world and say, "Well, they've figured it out, we should do what they're doing." But in good old U-S-A! U-S-A! U-S-A!, the answer to this is more prices, more commercialization, more market forces. Just rub some capitalism on it!

That's where companies like Multiplan come in: this is a middleman that serves other middlemen. Multiplan negotiates prices on behalf of insurers, and splits the difference between the list price and the negotiated price with them:

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/07/us/health-insurance-medical-bills.html

But – as the Arm and a Leg podcast points out – this provides the perverse incentive for Multiplan to drive list prices up. If the list price quintuples, and then Multiplan drives it back down to, say, double the old price, they collect more money. Meanwhile, your insurer sticks you with the bill, over and above your deductible and co-pay:

https://armandalegshow.com/episode/multiplan/

The Multiplan layer doesn't just allow insurers to rip you off (though boy does it allow insurers to rip you off), it also makes it literally impossible to know what the price is going to be before you get your procedure. As with any proposition bet, the added complexity is there to make it impossible for you to calculate the odds and figure out if you're getting robbed:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/05/04/house-always-wins/#are-you-on-drugs

Multiplan is the purest expression of market dynamics brainworms I've yet encountered: solving the inefficiencies created by the complexity of a system with too many middlemen by adding another middle-man who is even more complex.

No matter what the problem is with America's health industry, the answer is always the same: more markets! Are older voters getting pissed off at politicians for slashing Medicare? No problem: just create Medicare Advantage, where old people can surrender their right to government care and place themselves in the loving hands of a giant corporation that makes more money by denying them care.

The US health industry is a perfect parable about the dangers of trusting shareholder accountable markets to do the work of democratically accountable governments. Shareholders love monopolies, so they drove monopolization throughout the health supply chain. As David Dayen writes in his 2020 book Monopolized the pharma industry monopolized first, and put the screws to hospitals:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/01/29/fractal-bullshit/#dayenu

Hospitals formed regional monopolies to counter the seller power of consolidated Big Pharma. That's Mass Gen's story: tapping the capital markets to buy other hospitals in the region until it became too big to fail and too big to jail (and too big to care). Consolidated hospitals, in turn, put the screws to insurers, so they also consolidated, fighting Big Hospital's pricing power.

Monopoly at any point in a supply chain leads to monopoly throughout the supply chain. But patients can't consolidate (that's what governments are for – representing the diffuse interests of people). Neither can health workers (that's what unions are for). So the system screwed everyone: patients paid more for worse care. Health workers put in longer hours under worse conditions and got paid less.

Kuttner describes how his eye doctor races from patient to patient "as if he was on roller skates." When Kuttner wrote him a letter questioning the quality of care, the eye doctor answered that he understood that he was giving his patients short shrift, but explained that he had to, because his pay was half what he needed, relegating him to a small apartment and an old car. The hospital – which skims the payments he gets for care – sets his caseload, and he can't turn down patients.

The answers to this are obvious: get markets out of health care. Unionize health workers. Give regulators the budgets and power to hold health corporations to account.

But for market cultists, all of that can't work. Instead, we have to create more esoteric middlemen like "pharmacy benefit managers" and Multiplan. We need more prices to shovel into the market computer's data-hopper. If we just capitalism hard enough, surely the system will finally work…someday.

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/2024/06/13/a-punch-in-the-guts/#hayek-pilled

[terramythos]

the ffxiv 8-man raid series stories in a nutshell

Coils of Bahamut: hey remember that fucked up dragon that was in the moon. yeah :) also alisaie is here and an actual character now

Alexander: did you know machines can be primals too. Also do you like time travel

Omega: remember that giant unknowably powerful and intelligent robot AI we set free and it seemed like a good idea at the time? It really was not a good idea. Also did you know the dragons are space aliens and their home planet was destroyed. By robots, yeah

Eden: so you know the whole trope about true love persisting through death and like continually finding each other in every lifetime? What if you found someone you liked way way more and decided to abandon your evil Ascian destiny and boyfriend for her instead. Also go do the shadowbringers role quests it will add some context to this

Pandaemonium: the origin of monsters and bad parenting or something. Lahabrea (yeah the guy the pope killed in heavensward, keep up) WILL show you his sex tape btw

Arcadion: professional wresting is awesome IF you aren't using superpower mcguffins that make you terminally ill. Acts 2 and 3 pending

Disclaimer I haven't done some of these in a few years now lmao

[warningsine]

Living online means never quite understanding what’s happening to you at a given moment. Why these search results? Why this product recommendation? There is a feeling—often warranted, sometimes conspiracy-minded—that we are constantly manipulated by platforms and websites.

So-called dark patterns, deceptive bits of web design that can trick people into certain choices online, make it harder to unsubscribe from a scammy or unwanted newsletter; they nudge us into purchases. Algorithms optimized for engagement shape what we see on social media and can goad us into participation by showing us things that are likely to provoke strong emotional responses. But although we know that all of this is happening in aggregate, it’s hard to know specifically how large technology companies exert their influence over our lives.

This week, Wired published a story by the former FTC attorney Megan Gray that illustrates the dynamic in a nutshell. The op-ed argued that Google alters user searches to include more lucrative keywords. For example, Google is said to surreptitiously replace a query for “children’s clothing” with “NIKOLAI-brand kidswear” on the back end in order to direct users to lucrative shopping links on the results page. It’s an alarming allegation, and Ned Adriance, a spokesperson for Google, told me that it’s “flat-out false.” Gray, who is also a former vice president of the Google Search competitor DuckDuckGo, had seemingly misinterpreted a chart that was briefly presented during the company’s ongoing U.S. et al v. Google trial, in which the company is defending itself against charges that it violated federal antitrust law. (That chart, according to Adriance, represents a “phrase match” feature that the company uses for its ads product; “Google does not delete queries and replace them with ones that monetize better as the opinion piece suggests, and the organic results you see in Search are not affected by our ads systems,” he said.)

Gray told me, “I stand by my larger point—the Google Search team and Google ad team worked together to secretly boost commercial queries, which triggered more ads and thus revenue. Google isn’t contesting this, as far as I know.” In a statement, Chelsea Russo, another Google spokesperson, reiterated that the company’s products do not work this way and cited testimony from Google VP Jerry Dischler that “the organic team does not take data from the ads team in order to affect its ranking and affect its result.” Wired did not respond to a request for comment. Last night, the publication removed the story from its website, noting that it does not meet Wired’s editorial standards.

It’s hard to know what to make of these competing statements. Gray’s specific facts may be wrong, but the broader concerns about Google’s business—that it makes monetization decisions that could lead the product to feel less useful or enjoyable—form the heart of the government’s case against the company. None of this is easy to untangle in plain English—in fact, that’s the whole point of the trial. For most of us, evidence about Big Tech’s products tends to be anecdotal or fuzzy—more vibes-based than factual. Google may not be altering billions of queries in the manner that the Wired story suggests, but the company is constantly tweaking and ranking what we see, while injecting ads and proprietary widgets into our feed, thereby altering our experience. And so we end up saying that Google Search is less useful now or that shopping on Amazon has gotten worse. These tools are so embedded in our lives that we feel acutely that something is off, even if we can’t put our finger on the technical problem.

That’s changing. In the past month, thanks to a series of antitrust actions on behalf of the federal government, hard evidence of the ways that Silicon Valley’s biggest companies are wielding their influence is trickling out. Google’s trial is under way, and while the tech giant is trying to keep testimony locked down, the past four weeks have helped illustrate—via internal company documents and slide decks like the one cited by Wired—how Google has used its war chest to broker deals and dominate the search market. Perhaps the specifics of Gray’s essay were off, but we have learned, for instance, how company executives considered adjusting Google’s products to lead to more “monetizable queries.” And just last week, the Federal Trade Commission filed a lawsuit against Amazon alleging anticompetitive practices. (Amazon has called the suit “misguided.”)

Filings related to that suit have delivered a staggering revelation concerning a secretive Amazon algorithm code-named Project Nessie. The particulars of Nessie were heavily redacted in the public complaint, but this week The Wall Street Journal revealed details of the program. According to the unredacted complaint, a copy of which I have also viewed, Nessie—which is no longer in use—monitored industry prices of specific goods to determine whether competitors were algorithmically matching Amazon’s prices. In the event that competitors were, Nessie would exploit this by systematically raising prices on goods across Amazon, encouraging its competitors to follow suit. Amazon, via the algorithm, knew that it would be able to charge more on its own site, because it didn’t have to worry about being undercut elsewhere, thereby making the broader online shopping experience worse for everyone. An Amazon spokesperson told the Journal that the FTC is mischaracterizing the tool, and suggested that Nessie was a way to monitor competitor pricing and keep price-matching algorithms from dropping prices to unsustainable levels (the company did not respond to my request for comment).

In the FTC’s telling, Project Nessie demonstrates the sheer scope of Amazon’s power in online markets. The project arguably amounted to a form of unilateral price fixing, where Amazon essentially goaded its competitors into acting like cartel members without even knowing they’d done so—all while raising prices on consumers. It’s an astonishing form of influence, powered by behind-the-scenes technology.

The government will need to prove whether this type of algorithmic influence is illegal. But even putting legality aside, Project Nessie is a sterling example of the way that Big Tech has supercharged capitalistic tendencies and manipulated markets in unnatural and opaque ways. It demonstrates the muscle that a company can throw around when it has consolidated its position in a given sector. The complaint alleges that Amazon’s reach and logistics capabilities force third-party sellers to offer products on Amazon and for lower prices than other retailers. Once it captured a significant share of the retail market, Amazon was allegedly able to use algorithmic tools such as Nessie to drive prices up for specific products, boosting revenues and manipulating competitors.

Reading about Project Nessie, I was surprised to feel a sense of relief. In recent years, customer-satisfaction ratings have dipped among Amazon shoppers who have cited delivery disruptions, an explosion of third-party sellers, and poor-quality products as reasons for frustration. In my own life and among friends and relatives, there has been a growing feeling that shopping on the platform has become a slog, with fewer deals and far more junk to sift through. Again, these feelings tend to occupy vibe territory: Amazon’s bigness seems stifling or grating in ways that aren’t always easy to explain. But Nessie offers a partial explanation for this frustration, as do revelations about Google’s various product adjustments. We have the sense that we’re being manipulated because, well, we are. It’s a bit like feeling vaguely sick, going to the doctor, and receiving a blood-test result confirming that, yes, the malaise you experienced is actually an iron deficiency. It is the catharsis of, at long last, receiving a diagnosis.

This is the true power of the surge in anti-monopoly litigation. (According to experts in the field, September was “the most extraordinary month they have ever seen in antitrust.”) Whether or not any of these lawsuits results in corporate breakups or lasting change, they are, effectively, an MRI of our sprawling digital economy—a forensic look at what these larger-than-life technology companies are really doing, and how they are exerting their influence and causing damage. It is confirmation that what so many of us have felt—that the platforms dictating our online experiences are behaving unnaturally and manipulatively—is not merely a paranoid delusion, but the effect of an asymmetrical relationship between the giants of scale and us, the users.

In recent years, it’s been harder to love the internet, a miracle of connectivity that feels ever more bloated, stagnant, commercialized, and junkified. We are just now starting to understand the specifics of this transformation—the true influence of Silicon Valley’s vise grip on our lives. It turns out that the slow rot we might feel isn’t just in our heads, after all.

[thegirlwhorideslikeasamurai]

I can't stop thinking about how the opening lines of Yuri!!! on Ice sound like the beginning of a love story:

"He never fails to surprise me. Ever since I first saw his skating, it's been an unending chain of surprises."

These lines combined with the images of young and adult Viktor skating and the intermediate shot of Yuuri growing up in fast motion are vibrant with symbolism and foreshadowing. They introduce us to Yuuri's obsession with Viktor that started when Yuuri was on the brink of puberty, just old enough to experience his gay awakening when he saw that silver-haired ethereal beauty dance on the blades and his heart was set on fire. Viktor is skating on the other side of the rink—physically, emotionally, and in skill he is far away from Yuuri.

From there on, Viktor becomes the centre of Yuuri's whole universe, a dream still distant, but also a goal to work towards to. For the next 12 years, Yuuri will sacrifice everything to reach this goal as an athlete and to satisfy his parasocial yearning. The sequence ends with Viktor giving Yuuri a private performance of the very programme that, at last, brought them together. They are no longer distant, neither physically nor emotionally, nor in skill. For twelve years, it was Yuuri reaching for Viktor, but now Viktor is here, reaching for Yuuri in response.

How often must Yuuri have wished that Viktor would perform this arm move right in front of him? How often did Yuuri imagine to perform this move in front of Viktor while he was practising Stammi Vicino to rekindle his love for skating and to compete on the same ice as Viktor again? Was he feeling a connection to Viktor when he showed the programme to his friend while at the same time Viktor was skating Stammi Vicino at Worlds? Was he imagining himself in Viktor's stead or was he imagining Viktor standing behind the barrier?

In all this time since Yuuri first saw Viktor's skating and neglected everything else in his life to reach Viktor, did Viktor neglect his own life to become the legend he is today. While everything Yuuri did to feel closer to Viktor screams of longing, Viktor's own longing for a love he has yet to meet remains invisible, until he poured it all into this very personal free programme, a programme that will finally bring him together with the one that will give him life and love. In this sense, it seems almost ironic that Yuuri only starts practising Stammi Vicino after his dream has shattered into millions of pieces in Sochi—at a point in his life when Viktor suddenly seems unreachable again.

What started as a parasocial relationship that inspired Yuuri to chase his dream finally blossomed into the sweetest love as he and Viktor got to know each other. Fascination is what keeps the passion burning and Yuuri's words in the opening make it seem as if Viktor surprising him is a law of nature. It's a gentle foreshadowing into a future in which Yuuri will keep being fascinated with Viktor no matter what. For Yuuri, it has always been and always will be Viktor, and these opening lines put everything Viktor is for him in a nutshell.

The opening lines of Yuri!!! on Ice sound like a love story because the story of Yuuri and Viktor is a love story.

[writing-for-life]

Dream and How He Experiences Love

(Or: When the Unreal is at War with the Real, and Finally Understanding Unconditional Love Tightens the Noose Around Your Neck That Has Been There All Along)

And as always: Send me asks about everything Sandman-related!

Let me start this one with a few adjectives from the horse’s mouth (aka: Neil Gaiman said so 🤣) as to what Dream is actually like:

from: Vertigo Chase Card Set

So in short: This is probably the most accurate way to describe Dream in a nutshell, from the author himself, fully knowing that Murphy doesn’t lend himself well to be described in a nutshell.

And of course it’s absolutely fine if we want to head-canon him just being 5 out of those 50 (or none of them at all)—our stories are our own. At the end of the day, we went through a whole year of Tumblrfication (I might have made up that word), and getting back to the series will be tough. So is trying to align what the current prevalent perception of Dream is like in parts of the fandom, and what he is like in both comics and series (show and comics really aren’t that different where it matters, and I’ll die on that hill). I already worry about the fallout if I look at what happened with GO or OFMD, but that just as an aside.

Anyway, Dream in fandom spaces is often portrayed as either a pathetic wet cat who can’t get to grips with anything and constantly needs rescued in one way or another, or as a completely unfeeling arsehole incapable of relating to the human experience and being horrible all around. There are very few shades of grey in how some fans perceive him, when just the list of above adjectives shows us how complex he is as a character.

One thing that obviously comes up regularly are his relationships, be they romantic or platonic. So I just wanted to draw attention to the adjectives that relate strongly to the relational element in him (although they all apply in one way or another):

touchy, sentimental, cold, loving, [elusive], gentle, hurt, deep, intense, solitary, romantic, shy, intangible, lonely

Dream is the unreal. His way of loving relates very deeply to what stereotypical romantic love is: Romance and reality are a contradiction in terms—romanticism is dreaming because it is, at its very core, an idealised view. The intangible dream that comes back to bite us in the arse once reality sets in. And his flavour of love is the prototype of idealised and intangible (=romantic) and can never be anything else by his very nature.

And I’ve often thought that the way he experiences love is also a large part of why his existence is so difficult for him, and why he ultimately makes the choices he makes. Yes, he detests his function, but if he weren't so lonely (and weren't doomed to be so by his very purpose), he might find it easier to bear.

Let me look at, and draw parallels to, the 7 types of love as the Ancient Greeks perceived them [quick note about the image references: I would have loved to give more, but there is a limit. Also: Apologies I have no alt text for the comic panels at this point, I might add them at a later stage if I find the time]…

Eros

That’s both sexual and romantic love (to varying degrees), and it can be fleeting (like a dream) if not anchored in a less idealised view. So there’s your first cue—he totally experiences that kind of love.

The Ancient Greeks also thought it was a dangerous type of love, one that clouds our judgment and one that won’t last if not combined with some of the other types. And Dream himself knows this and probably relates (he detests his sibling Desire for “meddling”, after all). And yet, he is the intangible, the ungrounded, the unreal.

It’s all over every single one of his relationships we witness:

Killalla—“gifted” by Desire. We never get any cue as to what exactly they were up to, but it can be assumed desire, for whatever, played a large part in their relationship. Killalla makes no secret about it either (and is at the same time uncertain whether she truly loves him while being confused Dream might actually love her after what seems a very short time, at least in cosmic terms). Suffice it to say, he has a very idealised view of her and their relationship. Romantic idiocy at its best: He has literal stars in his eyes and is so grateful for Desire’s help he is basically kissing their boots in gratitude.

Alianora—again one of Desire’s gifts. And Dream tried, and I definitely think he was at least romantically (and physically) attracted to her (the art is very hard to interpret otherwise, neither is the context--she was gifted by Desire, after all). But this relationship is generally a tricky one because there is gratefulness and guilt n the mix, and that is sometimes a very unfortunate combination. He also couldn’t fully trust her because of his deep mistrust of D/desire. And lo and behold, of course the relationship soured when romantic and (potentially physical) attraction waned.

Nada—pursuing each other on and off, broadcasting sexy time all over the Dreaming because he's just so head over heels and literally bursting at the seams—need I say more? Yes, he does say to her that her body does not matter to him, which I 100% believe is true. He also says that he will love her as no mortal man can. But everything that transpires is still deeply informed by romantic attraction, because quite frankly: You don't feel love yet after you've barely met someone. It's again a deeply idealised view and that is something inherently romantic in tandem (in this case) with physical desire. Again, because D/desire was involved.

As to the particulars of Nada’s banishment to hell, and why Dream acted so out of character compared to his other failed relationships: You can find all of it here.

Calliope—read her speech at the Wake is all I’ll say. That is someone making romantic love so integral to their whole existence, I don’t even know where to start. He puts the world at her feet and makes sure she always comes first (quite literally) while they are still loved up…

Thessaly—he's the romantic idiot (affectionately) in the rain with his coat billowing in the wind, and referring to her “weighing him dispassionately and finding him wanting”. It was only a handful of months--you don't feel true, stable love at that point. Again, it has the idealised view of romance (and potentially sexual desire) written all over it. He would have given her the world, just like he would have given the world to Nada and Calliope. That is the trope of every freaking romance novel, and that is exactly how he perceives love.

Titania—who knows, she keeps her mouth shut.

Ludus

I think he has a hard time to be flirtatious and playful (at least, we don't really see it. We never really see him during the courting stage, and what went down with Thessaly was hardly "flirtatious". `Then again, bickering like they did in A Game of You is electrifying to some, so who knows. She also said at his wake he was cautious and nervous). And if he comes across as flirtatious (there is a charming on that list of adjectives after all), it’s just because he is so deliberate in everything he does that he might just push someone’s (right) buttons, so to speak. But that’s not the same as “no strings attached”-love, because I honestly believe he’s incapable of experiencing love that way. There is no “casual” with him. He always stays attached to the people/women he once loved, even if the relationship sours. He still loves each and every single one of them, he never stops. But he also doesn’t in a way that’s sustainable, and it’s an unsolvable conflict due to what/who he is.

Philia

Most closely translated as friendship and affection. Platonic love, if you will. It is also a love between equals. He has a hard time with it and only slowly learns what it means through his relationship with Hob. Needless to say: The Ancient Greeks valued platonic love as one of the highest forms of love. Hence, I’m personally reluctant to turn it into something else/slant it towards romance, because that’s exactly what this part of the story is about: His relationship to Hob is important and grows/lasts because it is not romantic in the comics.

Storge

Unconditional love for family, especially children. Based on complete acceptance and potentially sacrifice. Doesn’t need to be reciprocated. You feel it, no matter what, and you act accordingly. And for Dream and Orpheus, that didn’t work until it did. Or, let’s rather say: I don’t want to assume he didn’t feel it. But he pushed it down in his hurt and pride (as did his son in his grief). No further comment, because that one hurts.

Agape

Altruistic, universal, all-encompassing. And that’s so deeply at the core of his being, and so central to his whole conflict that I don’t even know where to start. From not wanting to kill the first vortex (or Rose, for that matter), to telling John Dee he’s hurting the dreamers, and that being his main concern while he himself was writhing on the floor in agony, to “humanity I love you”, to a million other things. He cares so deeply, there is such a deep concern for sentient beings in their entirety that it’s quite literally impossible to call it anything other than love. And it’s also what plays a large part in his demise.

Pragma

Oh, here we go. I honestly believe he likes the idea of committed and long-lasting. And he’s trying. So very hard. Calliope is the best example. Alianora was another one, because it’s not like they broke up swiftly (hard to tell how long they lasted, but since she had stayed in the Dreaming too long to go anywhere else, it wouldn’t surprise me if we’re actually talking a very, very long time. He called it “a goodly while”, and considering how old he is, I doubt that equals only months, or even just a few years, especially since he is fully aware how short his relationship to Thessaly was). And he wanted to stay true to his promise. But he is who/what he is: the unreal. And as the personification of that, love both feels real for him but will also forever stay intangible. It’s heartbreaking really. Again, it has written the contradiction between romantic love (the ideal) and pragmatic love (the thing that is grounded in reality) written all over it.

Philautia

And that’s the most heartbreaking one. He is incapable of self-love and full of self-loathing instead. The Ancient Greeks used to say that you can’t give what you don’t have. And it’s hard to feel compassion for the flaws we perceive in others if we don’t have that self-compassion for the exact same flaw in ourselves. And that one hurts in so many ways, from his not being able to forgive himself (which is mirrored in his relationship to Nada, who also couldn’t forgive herself—she didn’t need his forgiveness, she needed her own) to Orpheus being so much like him apart from one major difference: he’s mortal in spirit, and even immortality doesn’t change that. And Dream struggles with the part of his child that is so like him for a million reasons that would burst this meta at the seams, but again: it’s hard to love in others what we detest in ourselves, knowingly or unknowingly.

So in short: The particular flavours of love Dream feels (Eros, Agape, Philia growing slowly over time) and the ones he doesn’t (Ludus, Pragma, Philautia) are also at the very root of how the story goes.

And when he finally truly understands what Storge/unconditional love is--both in the way he reassesses his relationship to Nada but especially in how he finally submits to his love for Orpheus (with all that entails)--and when he allows it to become real, it’s what tightens the noose around his neck. But that noose has been around his neck loosely all along…