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harryspet · 3 months

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homestead | r.cameron [p.2]

[warnings]dark!rafe cameron x pregnant!reader, farmer!rafe, pogue!reader, implied jj x reader, kidnapping, NONCON, unprotected sex, little editing,READ AT YOUR OWN RISK 18+

word count: 3.4k

In which you confront Rafe's unsettling mix of tenderness and manipulation.

part one

Your search of the room for anything useful as a weapon was not fruitful. Most drawers were empty except for clothes. You found more pairs of pajamas and nightgowns, but searching the closet only yielded a few hung sundresses. The bathroom was simple, with a clawfoot tub and another window looking out onto green pastures. On the bathroom counter, you found a wicker basket full of what you assumed were newly bought essentials. Several containers of prenatal vitamins, body washes and creams for sensitive skin, panty liners, Epsom salts, and essential oils.

Rafe Cameron thought of all of this?

The window offered a view of the other side of the house and a large white barn and Rafe’s blue pickup truck caught your eye. You stepped into the tub to get a closer look out the window. Maybe you could see a road, a way out of here, or even a street sign that might tell you where you were. Just like the bedroom windows, they didn’t budge either.

The bedroom door swings open once more, and you sink into the empty tub, your head cradled in your hands as you desperately try to force your mind to function. For the sake of your baby, you need to think clearly. The overwhelming situation presses down on you, making it even harder to process what’s happening. You can sense his presence in the doorway, but you can't bring yourself to meet his gaze.

“I made scrambled eggs,” He said.

“They make me sick,” You said stoically, “Haven’t eaten them in months.”

“Good to know,” His tall, broad figure stood over you before you heard him kneel down beside the tub, “I also brought yogurt and fresh fruit. How does that sound?”

“All the windows are locked.”

“Uh, yeah,” he said as if it were normal, “I know you’re hungry. You need your strength. I don’t have to remind you why.”

You looked up to see his hand offering a white bowl filled with yogurt, fresh blueberries, and strawberries. He was right—you needed your strength. If not for the baby, then to gather the energy to escape. Perhaps you could think more clearly on a full stomach. You gazed at the food for a full minute, trying to rationalize why you should accept it, wrestling with the cognitive dissonance that churned within you.

You took it from his hands without a thank you and stirred your spoon about twenty times before finally bringing it to your mouth. It tasted heavenly, which you hated. “There’s the cutest farmer’s market a couple of miles from here. The blueberries are incredible but you gotta get there early on Sunday before they’re sold out.”

You met his eyes for a brief moment and realized they were sparkling with joy. You didn’t have to respond to him, he’d happily talk to himself as long as he felt like he was making some progress with you. You couldn’t let me feel that way for long, “You’ve outdone yourself, Rafe, really.”

“Just want you to be comfortable,” He shrugged, and you rolled your eyes, “It’s a lot right now, I know that.”

“A lot,” you scoffed, bitterness laced throughout your tone. “This is insane.”

Something flickered in his eyes, but he suppressed it, whatever it was, “You’re safe here. Your baby’s safe here. There’s plenty of room, plenty of food, and you’d never have to work a real jon. You haven’t even seen everything yet, but it’s beautiful. It’s a great place to raise a kid.”

“Rafe, you took the choice away from me.”

He shook his head, “So what? I saved you from suffering even further. Not even a little part of you regrets choosing JJ?”

You went quiet, feeling your temper rising. Instead of responding, you brought another spoonful to your mouth. He didn’t understand why this was so completely wrong, and presenting him with common sense didn’t seem to be working.

“I love you, Y/N,” He spoke as if to get your attention, but you didn’t meet his eyes this time, “Don’t start thinking anyone’s coming to save you, Y/N. And you won’t overpower me or make it far running. Not in your condition. You know that.”

You knew that, didn’t you? Clearly, JJ didn’t care enough about you to do better. And Pope had a bright future ahead of him. Maybe he’d realize he was better off without you. What were you to do now? Give in when you’ve just realized that Rafe is a monster?

“Finish your food, I’ll be back later,” When you looked again he had the plate in hand and was walking away, not without loudly shutting the door.

Your head tilted back against the cold porcelain. This would turn out to be a game of endurance. You had to outlast him and perhaps outthink him. He’d been planning to bring you here for weeks, but he couldn’t have planned for everything.

You finished your food and then spent the next few hours exploring the room in more detail, ensuring you hadn’t missed any detail. After all that time, the only new discovery that you make is under the bed. Still, in its packaging, you find a pregnancy pillow. You wouldn’t admit that you felt a small comfort at the sight of it. Sleeping had started to feel completely uncomfortable over the past few weeks, and you woke up painfully sore each morning.

It felt wrong when you knew it shouldn’t. In the meantime, you’d also take some of the prenatal vitamins. You could only afford one bottle of the generic brand, but Rafe provided several different types. Taking multiple kinds meant you weren’t missing any nutrients your baby might need. In just a matter of hours, you were starting to realize all that you didn’t have.

You unzipped the pillow from its packaging, letting yourself feel the soft material against your chest. Although the knock at the door wasn’t loud, it startled you. Rafe appeared now in work boots, jeans, and a flannel. He held the doorknob in his hand and looked you over as if he hadn’t just seen you or picked out the exact outfit he wanted to see you in. You noticed he was even taller in those boots.

“What do you think?” He gestured to the pillow.

“Looks expensive,” You said simply.

“It had the best reviews,” he added, “You’ll have to let me know how you like it tomorrow morning.”

You stared back at him, shifting on your feet. "Can I show you something?" he asked, the door still wide open. A chance to leave. Of course, you’d take it. Faking compliance, you carefully stepped towards him. As you crossed the threshold of your room, you allowed him to place a hand on the small of your back. "The room right next door," he said.

Your eyes were anywhere but that door. You were scoping out the entire hallway. There were two more doors across the hallway, perhaps one of them was Rafe’s, and you spotted the staircase. The walls were painted a muted beige and adorned with several rustic paintings. The scent of mahogany lingered in the air, likely one of Rafe’s attempts to make this place feel like a home rather than a prison. You couldn’t turn your head far as Rafe was urging you forward.

“I’ve been working on something,” When Rafe opened the door, you stepped inside a brand new nursery room, “Rose helped with the decorations, but I can change anything that you don’t like.”

The wallpaper was decorated with blue flowers and little woodland creatures. A wooden crib sat in the corner, a white canopy draping right next to a rocking chair. The window on the far side of the room also looked out onto green pastures. Shelves on the walls were already adorned with toys and baby books. It was surreal. Beautiful and horrifying. You clutched your chest as you slowly walked around the room.

“Rafe,” was all you could manage to say.

“I didn’t get a lot of clothes yet. I knew you’d want to pick those out,” His arms raised up, scratching his head as if he was nervous to see your reaction. Over the crib, you noticed the space-themed mobile you had picked out at the store gently hanging down. "It’s a good start, right?" he added, his voice tinged with uncertainty.

“It’s literally perfect,” You couldn’t lie at that moment, “Rafe, d-do you really think I would be that horrible of a mom on my own?”

“No,” He rushed out, his face falling, “What? No, I don’t think that.”

“I could never give my baby anything like this.”

He came closer, but you stepped back, “That’s not what I’ve been trying to say with all of this. I think you’d be a great mom. You’re gonna be a great mom.”

You needed to hear those words. Maybe Rafe was the wrong source but you needed that confirmation. In a moment of weakness, you let him closer. He wiped your tears as they began to fall, “It’s not about what you have, but I’m telling you that I won’t let you do it on your own,” He wrapped his arm around your waist and tear-eyed, and you let your head rest on his chest, “I’ll take care of every little worry. All you have to do is agree to be mine.”

“If you really care about me,” you said softly, letting him run his hands over your hair. “You’ll let me make my own choices.”

“Y/N–”

“I appreciate everything you’ve done. I really do,” You lied, “And I want this. I promise. I know JJ is no good for me or the baby. Could you just give me a little bit more time?”

“You’ll go back to him,” Rafe said. His grip on your waist tightened, and you pulled your head away from his chest, gazing up at him.

“It’s not your baby. You know that, right?” It was the wrong thing to say. His nostrils flared, and your heartbeat quickened. There was no reeling it back, so you pressed him further, “Even if we don’t end up together, I wouldn’t keep his baby from him. That’s wrong.”

“What he’s done to you is worse.”

“You’re right,” You said, trying to maintain the calm, “I know that now. And I understand that you care about me-”

“Do you understand? Really understand? Huh?”

“Rafe-” You pushed at his chest, and he grabbed your wrists tightly. Your eyes widened as you struggled against him, “Please don’t hurt me.”

Powerless, he held you there, “I’d love your baby like it was mine, I would. And soon after, we could have our own. That’s what I want, for us to be a family,” Each word was low, tight, and controlled as he glared down at you.

“Okay,” You agreed, scared more than anything, “I’m sorry.”

“I’ll show you,” He was completely cold now, “If you don’t believe me, I’ll show you. How you deserve to be treated. Everything I can give you. Then you’ll see, huh?”

He forced you down to the plush blue carpet with his body weight. You weren’t used to how your center of gravity had shifted, how your belly was also keeping you from being able to push back against him, “Please,” You said over and over again, your arms flailing until he pinned them above your head. You were out of breath already, and you had to slow your movementsand stop your struggling just to catch your breath. In this position, the baby is pressed against your further against your diaphragm, “Rafe, don’t.”

He just looked at you hungrily, grunting as he pulled down your bottoms and underwear.

“You’re so beautiful like this,” He reached between your legs, and you felt your body freeze, “Fucking gorgeous … I’m so lucky.”

You might’ve swooned in any other context. You were more swollen and much more sensitive, meaning you felt every caress that he made. You didn’t want to, but your head tilted back as he carefully rubbed your sensitive mound, “I’ll make you feel good … haven’t been touched in so long. Daddy’s gonna take care of you,” You told yourself that your body was just reacting, that it didn’t matter how good it felt because you didn’t ask for it. He kept your hands pinned only using one of his, as he used his other to undo his jeans. When he finally freed himself, able to palm his growing hardness through his briefs, he let go of your wrists. On your elbows, you tried to pull yourself away and you caught a glimpse of a smirk on his face. He liked this. Watching you struggle and attempt to crawl away.

You yelped when he grabbed your hips, pulling you back and lifting them up at the same. He was inside of you before you could fully comprehend it. You could handle it if he thrust hard into you if he destroyed you fast, but Rafe took his time with you. There was no rush or hurry in his movements. He went as deep as you would take him, and his long strokes left you crying out with each one.

You could handle it if it weren’t personal, but Rafe leaned over you and stared into your eyes with fierce determination. He talked you through every rush of pleasure, “I know, baby,” He’d coo when he knew it was too much, “Feels too good, don’t it?”

“I know you’re gonna cum for me,” He’d say when your eyes threatened to roll back into your head. “Cum all over me, baby,” He said when you finally couldn’t take it anymore.

When he spilled into you, your body froze again. He cursed, his hips rutting into you. You felt every drop of him, and he didn’t pull out until he’d fully emptied himself inside of you. He sits back on his knees, and you hear him pull up his zipper.

You flinched when you felt his hand on your thigh again.

“I’m sorry.”

What exactly he was apologizing for, you had no idea.

Rafe had gotten what he wanted because you didn’t speak out of turn once over the next two days. At some point, you expected the cavalry to arrive and come save you, but that hope shrank with each passing day. He invited you out of your room, and each time, you denied it. You easily recalled what happened the last time you left your room. You had all you could mentally handle within the room, and Rafe would bring you all three needed meals and snacks. You were quiet when he started the conversation, but you mustered up a few sentences for him when he grew frustrated at the lack of back and forth.

You should have been focused on escape, but all you could think about was never letting him do to you again what he had done on the nursery floor. Being pregnant already made you feel like you had no control over your body. Rafe amplified that feeling, making you feel even more vulnerable and easily manipulated given your current state.

You spent most of the day sleeping, punctuated by long baths or staring out the window. Rafe woke up early each morning to tend to chores, the animals, and the early summer harvest. The vast expanse of land meant you didn’t see all the animals during the day, but in the afternoons when he fed Wrangler and Sadie, many of the animals rushed to the fence, hoping for scraps.

“Got you some books,” Rafe said when he came to see you around dinner time. To your disappointment, he wasn’t carrying any dinner with him. He set the stack of books on the dresser before adding, “And I ordered pizza.”

“Thank you,” you said, resting your head back down on your pillow, hoping that meant he’d bring it to you later.

“Come watch a movie with me, I finally got the surround sound set up.”

“I’d like to eat up here, please?” You asked quietly, “I don’t feel good.”

“You haven’t felt good since you got here.” You let him sit in silence, “You’ll come eat downstairs tonight, Y/N.”

This was the first time you felt he was forcing you out of your room. You didn’t have the courage to upset him, so you lifted yourself out of the bed. He watched you intently, as if waiting for your compliance, aware of your recent streak of obedience. The way the look on his face softened was obvious, and you hated how relieved that made you feel.

This time, he led you down the staircase, his hand gently guiding the small of your back as you held onto the railings. As you descended, you caught a glimpse of the front door, sunlight streaming in from the setting sun, but Rafe guided you in the opposite direction.

You passed through a large dining area with a substantial dark wooden table near the front of the house, then continued into a cozy living room. A plush sectional couch faced a massive stone fireplace, underneath which neatly stacked firewood awaited use. Above, a large flatscreen TV was mounted on the wall, flanked by windows dressed in simple, cream-colored curtains. Adjacent to the windows, a bookcase filled mostly with DVDs caught your eye.

He took the time to show you the downstairs bathroom and laundry room before leading you to the kitchen, which was located toward the back of the house. It was straight out of a magazine, spacious and well-appointed, complete with a charming breakfast nook. Many of the touches seemed to reflect Rose's influence, and seeing the rest of the house gave you a clearer picture of just how well-off he was.

A box of pizza sat atop the kitchen island, and Rafe pulled out one of the stools for you to sit on.

“You take care of this place all by yourself?” You asked as Rafe helped you into the seat.

“I’ve had some help,” He shrugged, “But I won’t need much help anymore now that you’re here.”

“You’re expecting me to take care of the house?”

“Someday soon,” he spoke nonchalantly, opening the pizza box. He grabbed a slice straight from it and started eating so you assumed you could do the same. He added with a slightly full mouth, “Better than working at The Wreck.”

You took a bite of your pizza, not wanting to delve into that conversation further. You should’ve known he was expecting you to be a homemaker. Now that you were gonna be a Mom, you didn’t need to have any career aspirations.

You picked at your slice under his careful eye. This house exuded a warmth that almost drowned out the coldness you felt toward Rafe. You took the time to map out all the windows and doors and the downstairs layout. It kept your mind busy and, combined with the food, provided a helpful distraction.

“Are you feeling better now?” His voice cut through the silence.

“I’m fine.”

“You still like those cheesy rom-coms?”

A memory flashed in your mind. You saw Rafe sitting across from you on his bed. A huge party was going on downstairs in Tannyhill, but you and he were upstairs watching a movie. You wanted so badly to show him Enchanted. He didn’t act impressed at the time, but you could tell he liked it because he couldn’t keep his eyes off the screen.

“Yeah,” You answered cautiously, though the truth was that you hadn’t had time to enjoy a movie in long time.

“I happen to have a few Patrick Dempsey movies … if that interests you,” He smiled, trying to tease you.

“I really should get some rest . . .”

“A movie will help you relax. Just one? C’mon, we can watch Can’t Buy Me Love,” Realizing he wouldn’t let up, you gave in.

You sat on the couch as he moved to set up the movie. You should’ve known that he would sit right next to you, his arm wrapped around the pillows directly behind you, “Relax, enjoy the movie.” He said as the movie’s intro began, and you did your best to appear more like you were. When it wasn’t sufficient, Rafe pulled you closer until you could only lay against his shoulder to be comfortable. You tried to focus on one of your favorite movies and there were moments that night when you completely forgot your circumstance.

Yet, every additional touch brought you sharply back to reality—whether it was the gentle circles his thumb traced on your arm or the tender kisses he placed atop your head.

Please let me know what your thoughts and predictions are! Reblog with a comment to be added to my taglist!

#dark fic #rafe x reader #rafe obx #rafe cameron #rafe cameron smut #rafe cameron x black!reader #outer banks smut #black!reader #obx fic

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lizardkingeliot · 3 months

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I took a ton of notes during my rewatch of 2x07 just now but the thing I kept coming back to again and again was Armand's framing of the entire narrative and how it plays with truth vs lies in such an insidious way it's honestly brilliant in its cruelty. Truth being used as a cudgel not only against Louis, but against Lestat as well. And against, us, the viewers at home.

We obviously all know Armand is a very powerful 500 year old vampire who is not going to be held back by an infant of a vampire like Santiago. Like… Armand. Babe. Let’s get real. But that’s the narrative set-up. The coven, now being led by Santiago, has Armand captive behind his little rickety baby gate with Sam and his prop weapon not letting the puppy come out to play. He cannot prevent it! Poor baby. Someone get him a juice box and a snack.

Enter Lestat. The vengeful lover come to make Louis and Claudia pay for what they did to him. What's interesting here is that everyone—Daniel, Louis, Armand—acknowledges in Dubai that the trial IS a sham from the beginning. A tool to allow Lestat his revenge. But the truth of why it's actually a sham is being hidden behind a thousand layers of gaslighting and deceit by Armand. Lestat is merely another prop on the stage. Being forced to use the TRUTH of his love story with Louis—and to twist essential elements of their beginning as a couple—as a weapon to drive the final wedge between them so that Armand might have Louis all to himself. That's what this is about. A farce so that Armand might have what he wants more than anything in the world. Someone who will be with him always. Without Claudia, without Lestat... who else is there for Louis to run to?

The trial as we see it is told mostly through Louis' POV. It seems to be a true picture of how it all happened but the cognitive dissonance watching him try to reconcile what Lestat was doing on the stage with the framing provided by Armand (who cuts in frequently to assure us that Lestat shapes things to suit HIS narrative) is painful. Louis sees and feels and hears the sincerity of Lestat. A Lestat who is defiant from the jump and refuses to paint the story as butchery. It's about LOVE. It is always always always about the love. An entire sham trial about vengeance and murder framed around... love.

Everyone who's familiar with the books already knows Lestat didn't want to be there. I won't go into that too much but the show did a good job of showing us just how unwell Lestat was during the entire process. But there are also some really interesting moments where we are TOLD explicitly through Louis' recounting of the events that Lestat was not actually there for revenge. Namely, the moment when Lestat says HE deserves to be punished alongside them. These are not the words of someone who is seeking vengeance. These are the words of someone desperately rattling the bars of his own cage trying everything he can to prevent what's happening. Because unlike a certain someone, in that moment Lestat is quite literally unable to prevent it!

The entire episode is Louis trying to reconcile the conflicting truths that exist inside him: that Lestat was there for revenge, that Armand couldn't prevent the coven from exacting their cruelty, and that the Lestat who was on stage WAS sincere and emotional and fighting with everything he had to let the truth ring as true as it was when he was able. He refused to refer to Louis as the accused every time Santiago insisted on it. He would only refer to Louis by name. He would NOT allow the narrative to frame him as someone who didn't also do monstrous things to his lover. He was weeping and flooded with shame. Sincerely, genuinely remorseful for the awful thing he had done to Louis.

There's also something else here about Lestat acknowledging he tried to crush what he could not own vs Armand deceiving Louis into the false sense of control that is the entire basis for their relationship. Owning something he does not crush, merely confines. He's not crushing Louis with insanity, he's locking him inside his prison of empathy. He quite literally has Louis locked in a cage while allowing him to believe he's truly free. Free from the insanity of Lestat. Evil, vengeful, gaslighting Lestat who only uses the truth to shape the narrative for himself.

There's a lot more going on here. I can't possibly get it all out of my brain right now and I imagine I'm going to be picking apart the nuances for a while. There are so many layers. The truth vs lies vs intentional reshaping of the truth of it all. But if you rewatch, pay attention to Armand's face, the score that accompanies his recounting of events, the passive way in which he holds his body in both Paris and Dubai. He's locking Louis in a dream world where the truth is present in such a way it only serves to amplify its own distortion. I don't even think he's fucking with Louis' memory all that much, just framing it in such a way that Louis cannot see past what is right there in front of him. What he already knows. If only he had just a few more tiny pieces of the puzzle...

But he's trying to get there. He is getting there. The truth of Lestat is breaking though. Lestat is still present there with him in Dubai, as real as if he were really in the room. After 74 years, Louis can still recall every detail of his face, still smile at him recalling the truth of his memories. The truth he wouldn't allow himself to look at all the way. The truth he himself had to distort for his own sake because it hurt too much. He's allowing himself to see not only the truth of himself and his own actions, but the truth of Lestat. All the complicated, sincere truth of him. The truth of the one who truly could not prevent it.

#interview with the vampire #interview with the vampire spoilers #iwtv meta #loustat #otp: all my love belongs to you #holly's can't shut up disease strikes again

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qqueenofhades · 3 months

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I think the Aaron Sorkin fic people are writing about the convention to be extremely silly. It's going to be Biden. And if Biden's health takes a downturn and he feels the need to step down its going tk be Harris. This fantasy where we skip over her to whip up two random white guys(or like maaaybe Witmer) and somehow cruise to victory instead of fragmenting the party months before the election is simply not going to happen.

Look, I'm just saying, I got an email from the Biden campaign this morning where they seemed pretty darn happy with the actual (i.e. not-bloviating media) results of the debate: $38 million raised in 4 days ($30 million from individual small-dollar donors), 10K new volunteers in a week, 3x surge in campaign volunteers for battleground states, essentially no change or even a modest boost in the polls. So I think at this point, we can cautiously conclude the following things:

The debate looked bad for Biden, perhaps, but doesn't seem to have hurt him nearly as much the incredibly bad-faith BIDEN NEEDS TO STEP DOWN NOW takes being pumped out by the NYT and its other compatriots would suggest. Especially when these same media outlets have been gleefully sabotaging Biden at every turn for years already and whose fake-sanctimonious hand-wringing "for the good of the nation" pieces honestly should get them dropped into Superhell for Bad Journalists;

Biden went to Raleigh NC right after the debate and gave a fiery rally speech that was very well received. Now, I don't know why we didn't have that Biden at the debate, but it was the same night and there clearly was not any "cOgnItiVe dEcLinE" happening there (also Biden has a stutter and has for literally his entire life, and had a cold on debate night, so it was just an unfortunate confluence of factors)

There are very few actually undecided voters in this election (once again: HOW???) and those who tuned into the debate were largely already convinced of which candidate they were voting for and this didn't do much to change their minds. Just like, you know, pretty much every other debate in the history of presidential elections.

Ordinary voters, and not mainstream media outlets with BIDEN IZ BAD goggles clamped over their eyes, were able to see Trump's insane Gish gallops, lies, and full-blown dementia; this isn't going to get any better for him when he's already lost 20%-25% of GOP voters in every state primary and still is going to be sentenced in his criminal trial;

The D.C. political elite screaming about how Biden should step down (FOUR MONTHS BEFORE THE ELECTION) and leave the Democrats to start from scratch with some Star Chamber-selected candidate with no money and no incumbency record and no organization apparatus and a divided party are either fucking weapons grade morons or working secretly for Trump, because that IS in fact the best way to lose the election;

Such speculation seems to fall chiefly on Gavin Newsom, who (to his credit) has shut down any and all suggestion that he should try to step in and take the place of an incumbent who has won every state primary with 90% or more, because he's remotely sane and understands that this year is too important to fuck around with;

I've somehow never seen any suggestion that Biden should step aside for the duly elected (brown, female) Vice President, because everyone seems to think some Young Miraculous White Guy is coming and/or should step in;

All this while SCOTUS is clearly so confident of Trump getting back in that it's willing to grant him Absolute God King status pre- and post-emptively;

Yes, Biden needs to up his game before the next debate (though that's on Fox News iirc, blargh), but I think it's far enough post-debate that we can say it was bad but did not sink him, and if anything, reinforced the fact to many ordinary, non-brainwormed voters that Biden is old (which has been the number one chief theme of news coverage for four years and is no surprise to anyone) but is a decent and principled man doing a good job, while Trump is an absolute gibbering insane orange shitmonger fascist. I don't think he did himself any favors in that regard.

....anyway. The point is, do not be fucking insane people, Biden is not going to step down and frankly shouldn't, don't read the NYT (as noted, they've openly admitted to sabotaging him for personal ego reasons so I don't know why the hell anyone would listen to what they have to say about him), this is still an eminently winnable election, and let's go get those motherfucking fascists. I want Trump in jail and all of SCOTUS and the MAGAGOP fucking crying over it because they fucking suck. Let's go.

#anonymous #ask #politics for ts #vote and get off my lawn

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starseedpatriot · 13 days

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From X: I am an unaffiliated voter who will be voting for Donald Trump for the first time this November.

I’m not your “stereotypical” Trump voter. I’m college educated. I’m part Latino. I’m gay and married. I speak three languages. I am a classical liberal.

And I believe that a vote for Trump is a critical stand against an illiberal, corrupt, and ineffective government system.

The Biden-Harris administration continues to attack its political opponents, censor critics and threaten free speech, bail out violent criminals, put men in women’s spaces, and allow unvetted millions of illegal aliens to enter the country. Its foreign policy is a nightmare resulting in billions in cash and weapons given to terrorists and involvement in numerous wars. Kamala Harris has failed to show effective leadership on a single issue of national importance and continues to prop up a cognitively impaired Biden.

As unattractive as Trump is as a person, his first term oversaw an incredibly peaceful foreign policy, real wage and economic growth, and didn’t threaten my rights to self defense and free speech.

I believe in freedom over force and in our Constitutional Republic that protects individual rights from government abuse. Donald Trump is the best option to secure those.

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reasonsforhope · 1 year

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Humans are so cute. They think they can outsmart birds. They place nasty metal spikes on rooftops and ledges to prevent birds from nesting there.

It’s a classic human trick known in urban design as “evil architecture”: designing a place in a way that’s meant to deter others. Think of the city benches you see segmented by bars to stop homeless people sleeping there.

But birds are genius rebels. Not only are they undeterred by evil architecture, they actually use it to their advantage, according to a new Dutch study published in the journal Deinsea.

Crows and magpies, it turns out, are learning to rip strips of anti-bird spikes off of buildings and use them to build their nests. It’s an incredible addition to the growing body of evidence about the intelligence of birds, so wrongly maligned as stupid that “bird-brained” is still commonly used as an insult...

Magpies also use anti-bird spikes for their nests. In 2021, a hospital patient in Antwerp, Belgium, looked out the window and noticed a huge magpie’s nest in a tree in the courtyard. Biologist Auke-Florian Hiemstra of Leiden-based Naturalis Biodiversity Center, one of the study’s authors, went to collect the nest and found that it was made out of 50 meters of anti-bird strips, containing no fewer than 1,500 metal spikes.

Hiemstra describes the magpie nest as “an impregnable fortress.”

Pictured: A huge magpie nest made out of 1,500 metal spikes.

Magpies are known to build roofs over their nests to prevent other birds from stealing their eggs and young. Usually, they scrounge around in nature for thorny plants or spiky branches to form the roof. But city birds don’t need to search for the perfect branch — they can just use the anti-bird spikes that humans have so kindly put at their disposal.

“The magpies appear to be using the pins exactly the same way we do: to keep other birds away from their nest,” Hiemstra said.

Another urban magpie nest, this one from Scotland, really shows off the roof-building tactic:

Pictured: A nest from Scotland shows how urban magpies are using anti-bird spikes to construct a roof meant to protect their young and eggs from predators.

Birds had already been spotted using upward-pointing anti-bird spikes as foundations for nests. In 2016, the so-called Parkdale Pigeon became Twitter-famous for refusing to give up when humans removed her first nest and installed spikes on her chosen nesting site, the top of an LCD monitor on a subway platform in Melbourne. The avian architect rebelled and built an even better home there, using the spikes as a foundation to hold her nest more securely in place.

...Hiemstra’s study is the first to show that birds, adapting to city life, are learning to seek out and use our anti-bird spikes as their nesting material. Pretty badass, right?

The genius of birds — and other animals we underestimate

It’s a well-established fact that many bird species are highly intelligent. Members of the corvid family, which includes crows and magpies, are especially renowned for their smarts. Crows can solve complex puzzles, while magpies can pass the “mirror test” — the classic test that scientists use to determine if a species is self-aware.

Studies show that some birds have evolved cognitive skills similar to our own: They have amazing memories, remembering for months the thousands of different hiding places where they’ve stashed seeds, and they use their own experiences to predict the behavior of other birds, suggesting they’ve got some theory of mind.

And, as author Jennifer Ackerman details in The Genius of Birds, birds are brilliant at using tools. Black palm cockatoos use twigs as drumsticks, tapping out a beat on a tree trunk to get a female’s attention. Jays use sticks as spears to attack other birds...

Birds have also been known to use human tools to their advantage. When carrion crows want to crack a walnut, for example, they position the nut on a busy road, wait for a passing car to crush the shell, then swoop down to collect the nut and eat it. This behavior has been recorded several times in Japanese crows.

But what’s unique about Hiemstra’s study is that it shows birds using human tools, specifically designed to thwart birds’ plans, in order to thwart our plans instead. We humans try to keep birds away with spikes, and the birds — ingenious rebels that they are — retort: Thanks, humans!

-via Vox, July 26, 2023

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mostlysignssomeportents · 1 year

Text

Supervised AI isn't

It wasn't just Ottawa: Microsoft Travel published a whole bushel of absurd articles, including the notorious Ottawa guide recommending that tourists dine at the Ottawa Food Bank ("go on an empty stomach"):

https://twitter.com/parismarx/status/1692233111260582161

After Paris Marx pointed out the Ottawa article, Business Insider's Nathan McAlone found several more howlers:

https://www.businessinsider.com/microsoft-removes-embarrassing-offensive-ai-assisted-travel-articles-2023-8

There was the article recommending that visitors to Montreal try "a hamburger" and went on to explain that a hamburger was a "sandwich comprised of a ground beef patty, a sliced bun of some kind, and toppings such as lettuce, tomato, cheese, etc" and that some of the best hamburgers in Montreal could be had at McDonald's.

For Anchorage, Microsoft recommended trying the local delicacy known as "seafood," which it defined as "basically any form of sea life regarded as food by humans, prominently including fish and shellfish," going on to say, "seafood is a versatile ingredient, so it makes sense that we eat it worldwide."

In Tokyo, visitors seeking "photo-worthy spots" were advised to "eat Wagyu beef."

There were more.

Microsoft insisted that this wasn't an issue of "unsupervised AI," but rather "human error." On its face, this presents a head-scratcher: is Microsoft saying that a human being erroneously decided to recommend the dining at Ottawa's food bank?

But a close parsing of the mealy-mouthed disclaimer reveals the truth. The unnamed Microsoft spokesdroid only appears to be claiming that this wasn't written by an AI, but they're actually just saying that the AI that wrote it wasn't "unsupervised." It was a supervised AI, overseen by a human. Who made an error. Thus: the problem was human error.

This deliberate misdirection actually reveals a deep truth about AI: that the story of AI being managed by a "human in the loop" is a fantasy, because humans are neurologically incapable of maintaining vigilance in watching for rare occurrences.

Our brains wire together neurons that we recruit when we practice a task. When we don't practice a task, the parts of our brain that we optimized for it get reused. Our brains are finite and so don't have the luxury of reserving precious cells for things we don't do.

That's why the TSA sucks so hard at its job – why they are the world's most skilled water-bottle-detecting X-ray readers, but consistently fail to spot the bombs and guns that red teams successfully smuggle past their checkpoints:

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/investigation-breaches-us-airports-allowed-weapons-through-n367851

TSA agents (not "officers," please – they're bureaucrats, not cops) spend all day spotting water bottles that we forget in our carry-ons, but almost no one tries to smuggle a weapons through a checkpoint – 99.999999% of the guns and knives they do seize are the result of flier forgetfulness, not a planned hijacking.

In other words, they train all day to spot water bottles, and the only training they get in spotting knives, guns and bombs is in exercises, or the odd time someone forgets about the hand-cannon they shlep around in their day-pack. Of course they're excellent at spotting water bottles and shit at spotting weapons.

This is an inescapable, biological aspect of human cognition: we can't maintain vigilance for rare outcomes. This has long been understood in automation circles, where it is called "automation blindness" or "automation inattention":

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29939767/

Here's the thing: if nearly all of the time the machine does the right thing, the human "supervisor" who oversees it becomes incapable of spotting its error. The job of "review every machine decision and press the green button if it's correct" inevitably becomes "just press the green button," assuming that the machine is usually right.

This is a huge problem. It's why people just click "OK" when they get a bad certificate error in their browsers. 99.99% of the time, the error was caused by someone forgetting to replace an expired certificate, but the problem is, the other 0.01% of the time, it's because criminals are waiting for you to click "OK" so they can steal all your money:

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/ema-report-finds-nearly-80-130300983.html

Automation blindness can't be automated away. From interpreting radiographic scans:

https://healthitanalytics.com/news/ai-could-safely-automate-some-x-ray-interpretation

to autonomous vehicles:

https://newsroom.unsw.edu.au/news/science-tech/automated-vehicles-may-encourage-new-breed-distracted-drivers

The "human in the loop" is a figleaf. The whole point of automation is to create a system that operates at superhuman scale – you don't buy an LLM to write one Microsoft Travel article, you get it to write a million of them, to flood the zone, top the search engines, and dominate the space.

As I wrote earlier: "There's no market for a machine-learning autopilot, or content moderation algorithm, or loan officer, if all it does is cough up a recommendation for a human to evaluate. Either that system will work so poorly that it gets thrown away, or it works so well that the inattentive human just button-mashes 'OK' every time a dialog box appears":

https://pluralistic.net/2022/10/21/let-me-summarize/#i-read-the-abstract

Microsoft – like every corporation – is insatiably horny for firing workers. It has spent the past three years cutting its writing staff to the bone, with the express intention of having AI fill its pages, with humans relegated to skimming the output of the plausible sentence-generators and clicking "OK":

https://www.businessinsider.com/microsoft-news-cuts-dozens-of-staffers-in-shift-to-ai-2020-5

We know about the howlers and the clunkers that Microsoft published, but what about all the other travel articles that don't contain any (obvious) mistakes? These were very likely written by a stochastic parrot, and they comprised training data for a human intelligence, the poor schmucks who are supposed to remain vigilant for the "hallucinations" (that is, the habitual, confidently told lies that are the hallmark of AI) in the torrent of "content" that scrolled past their screens:

https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3442188.3445922

Like the TSA agents who are fed a steady stream of training data to hone their water-bottle-detection skills, Microsoft's humans in the loop are being asked to pluck atoms of difference out of a raging river of otherwise characterless slurry. They are expected to remain vigilant for something that almost never happens – all while they are racing the clock, charged with preventing a slurry backlog at all costs.

Automation blindness is inescapable – and it's the inconvenient truth that AI boosters conspicuously fail to mention when they are discussing how they will justify the trillion-dollar valuations they ascribe to super-advanced autocomplete systems. Instead, they wave around "humans in the loop," using low-waged workers as props in a Big Store con, just a way to (temporarily) cool the marks.

And what of the people who lose their (vital) jobs to (terminally unsuitable) AI in the course of this long-running, high-stakes infomercial?

Well, there's always the food bank.

"Go on an empty stomach."

Going to Burning Man? Catch me on Tuesday at 2:40pm on the Center Camp Stage for a talk about enshittification and how to reverse it; on Wednesday at noon, I'm hosting Dr Patrick Ball at Liminal Labs (6:15/F) for a talk on using statistics to prove high-level culpability in the recruitment of child soldiers.

On September 6 at 7pm, I'll be hosting Naomi Klein at the LA Public Library for the launch of Doppelganger.

On September 12 at 7pm, I'll be at Toronto's Another Story Bookshop with my new book The Internet Con: How to Seize the Means of Computation.

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/2023/08/23/automation-blindness/#humans-in-the-loop

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

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

West Midlands Police (modified) https://www.flickr.com/photos/westmidlandspolice/8705128684/

CC BY-SA 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/

#pluralistic #automation blindness #humans in the loop #stochastic parrots #habitual confident liars #ai #artificial intelligence #llms #large language models #microsoft

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something-ricked-this-way-comesx · 7 months

Text

Dick Prime

Warnings: (18+ only minors DNI), NSFW, 5k word count, fem reader, self- insert OC character, daddy kink, p in v, rick prime with feelings, big dick Rick, degradation a bit, rough sex, praise kink, marking kink, choking, orgasms, cream-pie, fingering, nipple play, manhandling, calling him God, age gap I guess

Hi guys, this is an excerpt chapter from a Rick Sanchez fan fic I have been working on - thought I'd share a little taste on here and see if I could get any feedback. This chapter in particular follows my self-insert, Aurora as she is kidnapped by Rick Prime - enjoy :) If y'all would like me to post and share my other chapters pls reblog or comment 💜

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

I woke up in a unfamiliar place٫ my head pounding viscously as my eyes struggled to adjust to the room around me. This place kind of looked like some sort of space motel room٫ but I couldn't remember a thing from the last 12 drunken hours of my life - I clearly needed to dial back my drinking or just not let Rick bet he can out drink me. I’ve never won that challenge. He really does have the hardest working liver in the universe, that's for damn sure. I wondered if he was feeling the same٫ but I doubted he was even remotely feeling hungover since he was used to getting black-out drunk on the regular.

I flicked my wrist out٫ wanting to portal into Rick’s shoddy bedroom where I could crawl into his sad excuse of a bed (which was really just a small sized cot) with him so that he could hold me tightly while we slept. That plan was quickly cut as I noticed my portal bracelet was no longer on my wrist and it was no where to be found anywhere near me - what the fuck was going on?

Then I realized where I was - the realization smacking me hard in the face like a fucking freight train. The elaborate sci-fi technical patterns covering every square inch of this room should have been a dead give away from the second I laid eyes on it٫ but I was obviously still too inebriated to use my cognitive functions correctly. I was in what I was 95% sure was Rick Prime’s lair - that fucking cocksucker. How had he managed to find me? Much less find a way to lure me back to where he's been hiding this whole time.

As I was taking in every inch of the room in search of any kind of weapon, maybe even some sort of weird sci-fi button on a wall that I could press and magically find a way out of here under Prime’s nose, I suddenly heard a voice behind me٫ the sound striking me so hard I jumped.

“Great you’re awake٫ care to join me for breakfast?” Prime’s voice asked as he nonchalantly yet menacingly stood in the doorway of the room٫ his shoulder leaning up against the doorframe.

“Oh fuck you!” I spit٫ words coming out of my mouth coated in venom like I was a snake ready to strike.

“Like you have a choice. It’s funny that you thought you did. Let's get something straight٫ you’re mine now٫ so it's best you learn early that you WILL do as I say or there will be consequences.”

“What do you even want from me? Wasn’t killing Diane enough for you?”

“Of course it wasn't٫ but you're not here so I can kill you unfortunately. You’re here because do you know how rare you are?” He paused٫ walking forward into the room causing me to back up back onto the bed like a frightened little mouse. Damn, his presence was so intense. He started pacing a bit٫ back and forth٫ arms crossed across his chest as he did so. He turned to me and looked me directly into my eyes before he started speaking again.

“Every conceivable Rick in the universe would happily serve their own balls on a platter for a little taste of what you have to offer - this makes you especially interesting to me. Not only are you one sexy piece of ass٫ you are a Rick’s gateway to so much unlocked potential.”

“Excuse me?”

“If ‘wife guy’ was smart he would have stolen your research from you a long time ago. Do you know how long it took for me to find you? It makes me horny just thinking about all that untapped knowledge you have floating around in that brain of yours.”

“Anything my Rick wanted from me he got because he asked for it. Sorry٫ but I don’t barter for things I created especially not to a sci-fi douchebag like you.”

“No one said anything about bartering. I’m simply going to take what I need via brain scan and then you’re going to put out like a good little girl because when in Rome.”

“My Rick is going to kill you ya know? You’ve taken enough from him and he isn’t going to let you take me too.”

“I’ve avoided him this long and clearly he hasn't learned his lesson yet. I’ve recreated the omega device and this time it can fire more than once٫ I’ll wipe out his entire family line he comes anywhere close to me. I’d kill you too if you weren't so valuable - you should be lucky that a guy like me finds any interest in anyone but himself.”

“You might think that you have me right where you want me٫ but I’m gonna enjoy watching my Rick kill you when he finds you and if you’re lucky maybe we’ll have sex next to your corpse.” I said٫ my words carrying through the air like poison coursing through my vascular system.

It probably wasn’t in my best interest to be taunting Prime the way I was٫ but I refused to let this son of a bitch have it easy especially when it was his dumb ass decision to kidnap me. He knew my Rick was looking for him and he knew he was getting close hence why he even bothered making such an elaborate take on his own already ‘overkill’ device. All that brain and this motherfucker couldn’t grasp the fact that killing peoples’ loved ones doesn’t really warrant being left alone.

“You think I couldn’t just take you right here if I wanted to? I’d bend you over that table and destroy that tight little pussy of yours and I just might considering you have no idea when to shut that bitch mouth of yours.” He grabbed me by the throat as he said that٫ squeezing the sides of my neck hard as he pulled me up and close to him. If I didn’t hate this Rick - I would have thought this interaction was so hot٫ too bad it was Prime.

“I’d like to see you try.” I said before spitting in his face٫ which in hindsight might have been a mistake٫ but it was too late to take it back.

Prime still had me by the neck٫ but he sighed heavily before shoving me onto the floor - catching myself on my hands before I hit the ground.

“Don’t even bother trying to use any of your cybernetics - I put a lock on all of your tech and good luck putting up much of a fight without it.”

---------- 2 weeks later —--------

Over the few weeks that I had been here٫ regardless of how much of an asshole Prime was٫ no matter what it was that I needed or asked (within reason) for he was quick to give it to me. He didn’t appreciate any of my back talk and if I overstepped too far he did with hold things from me as a punishment٫ but for the most part it seemed like his intentions with me weren’t entirely evil - something I not only found puzzling٫ but very difficult to believe was actually genuine.

I pushed the limits of what he would allow a little bit further everyday٫ hoping to gain his trust so that I would be able to either escape or find someway to get a message to my Rick. I still wasn't exactly sure where we even were in relation to the universe - the curve - or maybe we were outside it? It was hard to know with the very little freedom within this elaborate sci-fi base that I was allowed. The most I could do while here was think - run through multiple plans and assess the probability of success rate to each plan I thought of. Most٫ if not every٫ plan I had managed to conjure up was far from impervious to any snags or complete failure given then sheer innate ability of Rick Prime to always somehow be 10 steps ahead.

Today felt different though٫ I couldn't explain it٫ but as I sat across from him eating the breakfast that he had prepared for me - I could feel a different kind of tension in the air.

“Do you want to know why exactly you’re so special٫ Aurora?”

“I’m sure you’re gonna tell me even if I say no, so why the hell not?”

I was pushing around my eggs with my fork now٫ waiting patiently for his response. He kept telling me how ‘rare’ and ‘special’ I was to his grand design٫ but no matter how often he brought this up (which felt like constantly)٫ he refused to tell me how and why. Until now that is٫ which also struck me as weird.

“In order for you to even exist at all٫ Diane had to die you know? You’re familiar with the big bang I assume?”

“Nah٫ I just have a PhD in Quantum Physics for absolutely no reason at all - in fact٫ I just printed it off the internet completely fabricated credentials.” I said٫ the sarcasm clear in my tone as I spoke - I ran the risk of him punishing me for doing so٫ but he was usually lenient with my sarcasm since it matched his overt cynicism. It was my sharp tongue for disrespect and foul insults that really got under his skin.

“Well when I created the omega device to wipe out Diane٫ I didn't think to solve for any kinds of ripple effect that it might cause.”

“Meaning what exactly?”

“Well not completely unlike the big bang - the destruction of Diane’s life across infinity somehow resulted in the cataclysm that created X-258.”

“You’re saying you're responsible for me even existing? How is that even possible? Rapid succession in an inflationary epoch?”

“Precisely - well said. This means that without my omega device٫ you wouldn’t exist. How do you think ‘'wife guy” is going to react when he finds out that I literally made his new slam piece?”

“If you’re even telling the truth٫ which I suppose it is possible therefore also equally not possible by association. I guess given the rightly distribution of a negligible density gradient in order to deter the collapse into just a black hole and taking into consideration cosmic acceleration - I can’t disprove your theory٫ but that doesn’t mean you aren’t just bullshitting me right now.”

“As much as I love bullshitting and torturing other Rick’s for my own amusement٫ this is as real as real gets Aurora. You are only here because Diane had to die. You’re welcome and I’ll be accepting all forms of payment as a thank you٫ especially sexual favors.”

“Wow٫ so my whole life is a lie - imagine that.”

“You don’t seem too deeply affected by this revelation?”

“Did you expect me to lose my mind over a random occurring cosmological event? There was no way you knew your elimination of Diane would result in the formation of a universe that randomly produced me - so you did something by accident which is literally how 80% of all scientific findings usually occur. You aren’t special or interesting just because you managed to create a random event in spacetime - I do appreciate your massive need to milk your ego about it though.”

“Spoken like a true Rick - which you are as far as I’m concerned. The most intriguing out of any possible iteration.”

“So what exactly about that makes me so valuable to you?”

“Other than the fact that ‘'wife guy” loves you٫ according to my advanced research using your brain scans and blood and tissue samples٫ I should be able use both to develop the infinite Rick serum which would make me immortal. I’m not referencing no low grade cybernetic٫ tech bullshit either. I’m talking real٫ invincible immortality. An actual God with the power to create and destroy whatever and whoever I want - 100% unstoppable.”

“Wow٫ who could have possibly guessed that the power hungry evil٫ emo٫ sci-fi Rick with a nondescript haircut would want something so nuanced and lame? If you’re immortal that kind of takes away from the pay off does it not? Not that doing anything honorably is a concern of yours of course.”

“So what do you think about giving your input on something for me?”

“Once again - why bother even asking if you’re just going to make me do it anyways?”

“I guess to give you the illusion of free will or just maybe I kind of like you - don’t get a big head about it though I would still kill you without a second thought if I ever needed to.”

“Okay what exactly am I giving my input on?”

“I feel it may be best to just show you - meet me in the lab after you’ve finished your breakfast. Don’t keep me waiting long, it won’t end well for you.”

I rolled my eyes at his threatening tone as he got up from the table and left the room, I don’t know why I was so attracted to Prime the way I was - especially after what he did to my Rick, but I came to the ultimate conclusion that it was because him and my Rick were indeed so similar. The two Rickest Ricks in all of the infinite number of Rick’s that existed - the only two Rick’s to actually invent portal travel. In a way, my Rick only existed the way he did because of Prime’s destruction of his simple, domestic life. Prime was literally just my Rick without any sense of moral obligation and no matter how much I tried to convince myself that this fucker was bad and that I needed to distance myself - I simply couldn’t. I felt like my dna was so entangled up in having love for Rick that despite Prime’s obvious evil, I still loved him for simply just being a version of Rick. How fucked was that? Jesus fucking Christ - I needed out of here and soon before I really fucked up.

I finished my breakfast and headed out of the kitchen and into Prime’s elaborate sci-fi laboratory - this guy never did anything subtle that was for fucking sure and his attention to detail was absolutely infallible. He had something pulled up on the screen above where he was sitting and the closer I got, the more my eyes focused on the image. It was an image of me with a younger Rick, my Rick and Birdperson when we were together as freedom fighters on Glap-Flaps Third Moon. The Battle of Blood Ridge - this image was obviously a snapshot taken from my mind when Prime brain scanned me, but I didn’t really understand its significance to him. But, I’m sure he was going to tell me even if I didn’t exactly care to know.

“Blood Ridge?” I questioned, my arms crossed across my chest as I approached his sitting form and stood beside him to wait for his response.

“Seems like Nietzsche wasn’t totally blowing smoke out of his ass when he said that whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster -”

“And if you gaze long enough into the abyss, the abyss will gaze back at you. What does Nietzsche have to do with Blood Ridge?” I cut him off by finishing the Friedrich Nietzsche quote he was referring to.

“Well I’m so glad you asked Aurora…” He started as he pulled up a replay of Rick and I’s interaction with Birdperson after the Battle had been won. I watched the playback intently, hoping to see something within my own memory that maybe I hadn’t noticed before in order to try to put together a theory of where exactly Prime was going with this.

-Playback from ‘Aurora’s Memory’ initiated-

Memory Rick: “Damn that shit was cash.”

Bird Person: “It was extremely bad ass. The Battle of Blood Ridge is over. The Federation lost. I am in your debt.”

Memory Rick: “Come with us.”

Bird Person: “To somewhere…nearby?”

Memory Rick: “Anywhere. E-Everywhere.”

Bird Person: “Rick, Aurora, I don't expect you guys to keep fighting, but this war is…”

Aurora: “Far from over…we know.”

Memory Rick: “Dude, we share this with almost nobody, but we could take you right now to this same battlefield, in a universe where we lost, or another where we won, or another where the war never even happened. All equally real, all equally unreal. None of it matters.”

Bird Person: “Then why did you help?”

Memory Rick: “Because I respect you. And I wanted you to know you could respect me.”

Bird Person: “Even though nothing matters?”

Memory Rick: “Okay. You matter... to me.”

Bird Person: “Uh, the relationship that we have…”

Memory Rick: “I NEVER used that word!”

Bird Person: “... is not worth my integrity…”

Memory Rick: “Oh, my God. It's not a complicated transaction, my man. "Would you like to join me doing awesome shit that matters?" "No, I would not. I would rather be a judgmental dork." Case closed. Really no need to drag it out.”

Bird Person: “If you need me, use the beacon.”

Memory Rick: “Yeah, I'm gonna use that beacon a lot. I hope... hope I don't wear it out. Come on Aurora, lets get the fuck out of here.”

—- Playback Finalized —--

“Okay, so what exactly does my memory of Bird Person rejecting my Rick have anything to do with you?”

“Seems allegorical in relation to how Diane died don’t you think? His rejection of me, Bird Person’s rejection of him, you either die a hero or see yourself live long enough to become the villain.”

“Are you trying to suggest to me that my Rick has essentially turned into you? I hope you’re not because that would be absolutely nonsensical.”

“You see Aurora, your Rick isn’t all he’s cracked up to be either. He’s murdered hundreds if not thousands of innocent Ricks, he’s manipulated a version of our adult daughter to get a divorce, he sells weapons to hit men and other criminals, he Cronenberged my original dimension and left my daughter, my granddaughter and my Jerry behind to rot in a world that he ruined, he exploited and threatened to destroy a microverse that he created to control his fucking car, and the worst possible one he trapped all the people in his original reality into an endless mental time loop while their bodies still grew old. Your Rick isn’t and never was the saint you believe him to be - so why hate me for something so small in the grand scheme of things?”

“You’re literally the reason why he did most of that. I don’t think my Rick is a saint, I think he’s a sad, broken man who is trying his best to continue on in his life after losing the very thing he used to live for. What makes my Rick so different from you is his capability to feel and connect to human emotion - his wild callousness is just a front so he doesn’t have to feel the pain his life radiates. He has surpassed you in so many ways, but he will NEVER be the monster you are because he is capable of changing. You know nothing about him and even sitting here under the guise that you do is ridiculous. You will never be him and he will NEVER be you.”

“You’d defend him even if he was the one who killed your husband wouldn’t you?”

“My husband died because you killed Diane - because you accidentally created X-258 where my husband was killed in a freak fucking accident. To even insinuate such an asinine thought is in bad taste even for you. If anything, you’d be indirectly responsible for the death of my husband, big fucking shocker there.”

“How would your husband feel if he knew you gave up on him to be with Rick?”

“My husband has been gone for 25 years, Prime and I loved him dearly when he was alive, but Rick, my Rick, is the love of my life. I don’t have to explain ‘love’ to you especially because you are literally incapable of ever fucking getting it. Killing your wife across infinity because some alternate versions of yourself pissed you off? The mother of your daughter - you have some fucking nerve.”

I was angry now, my words slicing into Prime’s direction like a knife and he was clearly getting upset with my tone towards him. I don’t know exactly what his end goal with me was - he had my blood and tissue samples, he had my brain scans. Why not just let me go or kill me if he got what he had said he wanted? Then it hit me. Prime was in love with me. A man that I had labeled as so incapable of feeling had some sort of feelings for me - what a fucking mind fuck that was to take in. I had made myself speechless as I waited patiently for him to say something to either confirm or deny my theory, but he said nothing so I spoke once more.

“You love me, don’t you? You have feelings for me.”

His silence after I said that was deafening and he quickly stood up from his place in his chair to grab my face in his hands roughly and smash his lips to mine. I knew it. He kissed me so roughly that I barely even had time to react, but once I was finally able to comprehend what was happening, I deepened the kiss. I was actually enjoying this despite how fucking wrong my moral compass knew that it was. He pulled away from me gently, his blue eyes looking me dead in mine before he said in a very demanding, yet hot, tone;

“Strip for me.”

And I did exactly as I was told.

—----------

His hand bent around the curvature of my neck brushing it softly as he continued to walk around me٫ his other hand finding my breasts and taking a nipple into his free hand subtly. He rubbed the nub between his thumb and forefinger as he continued to eye me up and down with an obvious hunger in his eyes٫ his other hand snaking down my body slowly till it found rest on my hip gently pulling me to him as he did so.

“You are so beautiful.” He whispered٫ his eyes glued to my chest as he spoke eloquently.

He was still fully clothed٫ but I was determined to change that - I reached forward and begun unzipping his jacket٫ him allowing it to fall to the floor as I pushed it off his shoulders. I found the hem of his long sleeve next٫ my hands creeping slowly underneath to touch his warm skin and my god his skin felt like I was touching pure electricity the more my fingers danced over his adorable blue happy trail to find a home on his belt buckle. I began undoing it roughly٫ pulling his belt through the loops in his jeans and throwing it elsewhere. I unbuttoned his jeans with my hands٫ quickly slipping my fingers under the waistband of his boxers where I longed to have his dick pressed up against any part of me.

I smirked up at him as I pulled him even closer to my naked body٫ his hands wrapping around me in all the right ways as I felt his extremely hard member pressing into one my thighs now. The length and the girth simply drove me insane as I continued to work diligently to undress him. He suddenly grabbed the back of my head with enough force to crash my lips to his٫ our lips melding together perfectly and I couldn’t help٫ but let out a small moan in favor of his wicked foreplay. The more he touched and teased me٫ the more I desperately wanted to beg him to just destroy me right there. I was so fucked. Fucking Prime. What was I doing? At this point I was too far gone to care - I wanted him and I wanted him BAD.

I pushed his black jeans down past his jutted hip-bones٫ them falling down his tall stature to pool at his feet before he stepped out of them and led me back up against the wall. His fingers left my breasts٫ trailing down until they reached the very top of my mound - him allowing a single digit to pass between my folds to feel the abundance of wetness that I had increasing with each moment between my legs.

“So wet for me already٫ such a horny girl for any Rick aren’t you?” He licked his lips as he pulled away from mine to speak٫ him looking me dead in the eyes as he said that - the lust obvious in his gorgeous icy blue eyes.

“You have no idea how much I long for you to absolutely destroy me.” I whispered back٫ my fingers grappling the side of his boxers before pushing them off of him in one swift motion that now left him vulnerable and naked in front of me like I had been this entire time and ugh was it so worth the wait.

Prime had so many scars littering his whole body٫ adding a sense of mystery and a hot toughness to his already sexy body. I felt guilty that I was about to do this٫ but he was still a Rick whether he was evil or not and holy fuck did his extreme callousness and his “I don’t give a single fuck” attitude turn me on even more. I was like putty in Prime’s hands right now and he was loving it.

“I think I have a pretty good concept٫ but you have no idea how fucking gorgeous you are. If I could٫ I would put you on display so that everyone could see me destroy a perfect little pussy like yours. Holy fuck.”

“You want to fuck me in front of spectators?”

“I want them to revel in jealousy over how I get to be buried in a perfect little thing like you.”

“They should be jealous of me too٫ getting to be a good little cock sleeve for your perfect and massive cock. I love the way you feel pressed against my thigh right now٫ I almost can’t fucking take it.” I whispered in his ear٫ rolling my hips so that I brushed myself up against his rock hard penis - it almost jumping after me over the sudden sensation.

“Mmm what a good girl٫ stroking daddy Prime’s ego. I think it's high time I reward you for such good and filthy behavior.”

He grabbed me harshly by the hips and lifted me till I was straddling his waist with my back up against the wall as he placed himself at my entrance. He parted me gently with the head of his dick before slamming into me so aggressively that I cried out as I felt him ram into my cervix hard as he stroked my g-spot on the way there.

“Oh my god.” I panted٫ holding on to him with a death grip around his neck and my fingers tangling in his powder blue hair as he continued to thrust up into me skillfully.

“That’s right darling٫ I am your god.” He said٫ his lips attacking my neck and jawline with an abundance of sloppy kisses - him using his teeth to mark me however he wanted. The sweet feeling of the slight pain driving me crazy as I held onto him tighter - slowly rocking my hips in tandem with his getting a small moan from him in return as I bounced on his cock dexterously.

“It’s like universe literally created you just for me٫ the way your pussy just grips the absolute fuck out of my dick. Fuuck Aurora٫ no fucking wonder why “wife guy” is so obsessed with you٫ you take dick like a fucking champ.”

“It's not hard when Rick’s have such dynamite dick game - I’ve never ever been disappointed by a Rick sexually.” I purred٫ gripping tufts of his hair and pulling hard enough to hear him moan against my skin.

“Is that so, mmm you were so worth the wait.”

“I want you to come in me so hard that you see fucking stars, baby.” I growled in his ear as he continued to fuck me hard up against the wall, one of arms on the side of me bracing himself and his other hand was wrapped around my neck holding me to the wall tightly. I hadn’t noticed before now, but his ‘6,5” frame had me up in the air so high, holy shit - I felt like I was practically floating off of the ground at this moment. Damn the sex was good.

He soon moved his arm against the wall in order to place his long, lanky fingers on my clit, abusing the nub gently as he continued to go in and out of me. He was watching his dick as he pumped his hips, a smirk plastered on his handsome face as he was enjoying watching his dick disappear inside of me with each thrust. I was moaning loudly now, thankful that we were basically in the middle of nowhere in space because I could have probably awoken a whole cemetery.

“That’s it baby, come for me.”

I could feel that he was close and my eyesight was starting to get blurry the faster his fingers worked to bring me closer to my own climax.

“Oh my god - Prime - I’m - ahhhhhh Rick.” I moaned out as he pushed me over the edge, my pussy pulsating around his dick as he also released into me, burying his face into my shoulder as we rode out the highs of our climaxes together. Both of us sweaty messes as we tried diligently to try and catch our breaths from that absolutely intense workout we had just finished.

Fuck. I seriously just fucked Rick Prime. Fuck.

What had I done?

If you enjoyed this please give the full fan fiction a read - UPDATES EVERY WEEK - 💚

#rick sanchez #rick prime #rick sanchez fanfiction #rick sanchez fuckers #rick sanchez smut #rick prime smut #rick and morty #rick prime fan fiction #rick and morty smut #rick smut #rick sanchez fanfic #rick sanchez x self insert #rick sanchez x oc #rick sanchez x reader #rick sanchez imagine #imagine

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germiyahu · 6 months

Text

When you try to make the legacy of the Holocaust a political favor done to Jews, you are paving the road to Holocaust denial. You're even planting nice trees on the boulevard!

To the historically illiterate Westerner, the true sincere belief is that Israel was "gifted" to the Jews as an apology for the Holocaust. This is actually a quite ingenious mental strategy to handle the cognitive dissonance of both wholeheartedly believing the society you live in was the "hero" of the story, but also that Western society is morally bankrupt and worthless.

See the West saved the Jews from the Nazis, but they also severely blundered by rewarding Jewish suffering with the state of Israel. It's clever. You can feel good about being the hero but also curse your own society for turning around and doing something that you'll argue was even worse in the long run (and they have been saying it's worse).

But then, it gets better! Since Israel is seen as an extension of Europe, and arm of European ideology and interest, it can be argued that the West had good intentions when they magnanimously decided to give Jews someone else's homeland. But they could never have predicted how brutal, how violent, how racist, how genocidal, the Israelis would end up being. You can curse the West but acknowledge it's not really their fault, because then it's not really your fault either.

All this context of the Holocaust being a "lesson to learn" or a precursor to some political reward for the Jews, that Jews have always been crafty and Westerners gullible... it's already on the precipice for those with conspiracy oriented minds. And this is already true and we've all seen it on social media. To those who think the Israel was a reward for the Holocaust, they think that the Holocaust warranted a "reward" in the first place. They can switch those around, and start thinking the Holocaust was a pretext to Israel. They can think that the Holocaust was exaggerated to wring more sympathy from the Europeans. They can think that the Holocaust was staged to trick the West into enacting the Jews' grand plan.

All it takes when you're at this point thinking of the Holocaust as transactional, is a genuine Neo Nazi, or perhaps a Hamas simp, to come along and say "Isn't it suspicious though? Don't you think there are inconsistencies? You should really check out..." and due to the coincidences and incorrect narratives that you made up in your brain, that have no basis in reality, you just might consider hearing them out.

So no, the Holocaust is not being weaponized or hijacked, for any reason. It was a historical event that happened. There are no lessons for the victims of all people to learn. There was no divine intervention or grand conspiracy to make the Holocaust about anything, or use it to bring about some political goal. You want there to be one or all of these things, because it justifies your preconceived notions about Jews.

So if a person is at this point, thinking the Holocaust was transactional, thinking that Israel was a reward, they're already on the road to Holocaust denial. And at this time in the Zeitgeist, they are way more likely than normal to go down that road, readily and eagerly. So be careful, be more cognizant if you actually care about the legacy of this genocide, about honoring its victims and its survivors and their descendants.

#shoah tw #holocaust denial #antisemitism #leftist antisemitism

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hellosweetie99 · 2 months

Text

Here’s a list of my fav fic tags I’ve seen…Enjoy

Chekov’s sex bag

SWORD IN ASS SATURDAY

Homoerotic fossil collection

Passive aggressive nakedness

Blatant misuse of watermelon

The mortifying ordeal of getting your head stuck in a peanut butter jar

This is set in America…sorry

Possessed squirrel

The trio suffers

The grapes are their own character

Dark Ratatouille

Whiny boyfriend doms the undead

Pranks are meant to be silly…like mpreg

New year new kink

Hahaha ouchie

Cock cage (romantic)

Being a lawyer is kinda gay like wdym your job is getting guys off??

Starfire strap color discourse

Science fiction written by a liberal arts major

Doing cute stuff with a decapitated head

HEY MONSTERFUCKERS PSPSPS FOOD FOR YOU

Jealousy as lube

Basically I took one good look at canon and went 'no'

he gets laid in FUCKING JORTS

Kink is just LARP that makes you cum

I wasn't even planning that but the bisexual gods spoke to me

Barry Allen is a human vibrator

Traveler, that Kavehussy got me acting unwise

Evil cuddling

CBT; As In Cock And Ball Torture In Case You Think I Mean Cognitive Behavioral Therapy

Women topping the fuck out of men

Pussy can't heal a broken man but pegging can make him rethink what he's done.

I'm about to slap him on his he/him pussy

Angelic Grace as Lube

Not a cinnamon roll or a war criminal but a secret third thing

Don’t YOU go adventuring with your pussy out?

Weird freaky cannibal sex

Fellas is it gay to receive a dick pic from your archenemies

scott pilgrim vs the 97 lost dr who episodes

10K WORDS OF FOREPLAY AND A BJ

Sorry, it’s for the vibes

Blood sacrifice? More like their wedding

This is true 2009 faggotry

DO NOT USE PAINT AS LUBE

He’s so stupid I need to fuck him

Vampirism or sodomy?

Viktor’s unfortunate foot thing

This is zero percent furry sorry

The ugly duckling but in a really freak way

The Doctor - - -> nest parasite

Accidental pet acquisition (dragon)

Stimming with a deadly weapon

Oh my god it’s fish porn

Clit reveal!

Petition to name it Lesbian Who

Eating a meal with the man you want to study under a microscope

Spydoc are pegging eachother in my Google docs

Psychosexually torturing an old man as quality time

Lan Wangji is a loser trapped in a hot man’s body

Is Xie Lian brat taming? He just might be

They don’t fuck. They do however get a bit bloody

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caligvlasaqvarivm · 7 months

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points at u. how do u play eridan so well!!! hes such a tricky bastard to write for 4 some reason

It's because he's got so many problems and playing him is basically Mental Illness Simulator :') Whipped up a small (that's a lie, it's large and extensive) guide under the cut

ERIDAN DOES NOT HAVE FUN

First most important thing about playing Eridan: THIS BOY DOES NOT DO JOKES. He does NOT DO BITS. He does NOT HAVE FUN. If you check out his logs, pretty much every time he talks to somebody, he has a very clear purpose in mind (usually flirting or grandstanding). One of the few times he does strike up a conversation without a clear goal in mind, it's absolutely disastrous:

CA: fef CA: hey CC: ? CA: glub CC: Glub glub! CC: 38) CA: yeah CA: hm CC: W)(at is it!!! CA: wwhat

He's sooooooo so so so bad at conversation. He doesn't tell jokes. He doesn't know how to lighten the mood. He has no chill. He has no sense of humor. When playing him, if you are making jokes, you are doing it wrong!

The reason for this is because, psychologically, you have to imagine that he is constantly teetering on the edge of a murderous freakout. If he is not, at all times, Being Useful (AKA murderous, sea dweller-y), then Something Bad Will Happen. His entire life is about duty, pressure, responsibility, and, accordingly, at ALL TIMES, he feels an extreme, anxious weight on his shoulders, which makes him incapable of indulging in "frivolous" behavior, like making smalltalk or doing things for fun. In fact, sarcasm and facetiousness are literally considered childish by Alternians, and Equius associates it with lower blood colors:

CT: D --> Humorous insincerity is for pedantic wigglers AG: Pshhhhhhhh, I know! I know you never make jokes. I was the one 8eing sarcastic, you stooge! AG: I was 8eing sarcastic a8out you 8eing sarcastic. Duh. CT: D --> That's because you're a little worse than me

That's why it's also kind of important to make him not really have hobbies. Eridan DOES have interests: he loves wizards and magic, and he's a hipster. HOWEVER, he only ever talks about magic in pursuit of some other goal, like finding a date or winning at a rivalry, AND he's constantly denying his own interest in these things, because they're frivolous, stupid, ridiculous, and deviations from what he "should" be like. He actively distances himself from things that make him happy. In fact, we only know he's a hipster because it's part of his design and Karkat mentions it once - Eridan himself has never talked about it. That's how far he's buried anything that actually brings him joy.

If your Eridan is smiling for ANY REASON, you are DOING IT WRONG!

While we're on the topic, things Eridan is NOT ACTUALLY INTERESTED IN:

History (he only ever talks about history in the vaguest possible terms; I think he is book smart and genuinely knows a lot ABOUT history, but his actual interest in it is middling. He's just expected to be really obsessed with history, especially military history, as a member of the aristocracy, and he reads it in the same way as one doomscrolls on twitter - it's a way for him to self-reinforce his own mental illness and soothe his cognitive dissonance)

Marine life/marine anything (he's TERRIFIED of the ocean, and has spent a few days underwater TOTAL. He knows nothing of the sea.)

Weaponry (he HAS a lot of guns, so he definitely knows how to use and maintain them, but there's a reason he outsources the building of all his doomsday devices. Also, he got a "god weapon" early on in his life, and has kind of just been... using that. He neither has a need to know much about weaponry, nor has ever displayed any particular interest or knowledge. He leaves fully loaded harpoons just lying around on the floor of his house. It's knowledge of necessity, not interest.)

Hunting/Violence/Murder (he's really good at it, he knows a lot about it, he will teach you on request, he will mention it constantly, but he doesn't actually derive any particular joy out of it, especially since we know his thought process after each kill is "that's going to make an orphaned troll very sad. they will be culled soon :/")

Fashion (he has more of an interest than the average Alternian, but it's still not a lot. He dresses up to emulate Dualscar, and his actual clothing choices beyond that are pretty disastrous. Canon Eridan has never shown an interest in fashion. Even if you do want to play him with an interest in fashion, which I think is fine, you have to remember that he deliberately distances himself from anything that brings him joy, so even if he likes fashion, he'll keep that a secret and insist he only does it for utility purposes.)

Pale Romance (just throwing this in there, it's the one quadrant he is *never* shown to pursue. He's tried Feferi and Nepeta in flushed, Sollux, Terezi, and Kanaya in ashen, and Rose and Vriska in pitch. if anything, he goes out of his way to AVOID pale romances, both because he just had a painful pale breakup, and because he freaks out at the implication that he's weak in any way, which pursuing a pale romance would all but be admitting)

The thing that makes playing Eridan so hard, I think, is that he's abjectly fucking miserable, BY CHOICE, and for most RPers, playing a character who's abjectly fucking miserable kind of goes against the appeal of RPing in the first place (that is, having fun). All of the things he says he's really into are things that he either has no interest in, or that actively make his life less enjoyable. All the things he spends all his time thinking about are things that make him feel anxious and hopeless. All the things he actually likes and would have fun with are the things he actively, deliberately, and loudly decries and suppresses.

So that's point 1: Eridan does NOT have fun.

ERIDAN IS AGGRO AS *FUCK*

The next most thing I see that trips people up is that they make Eridan too friendly, usually as an extension of accidentally giving him too much chill. There are two main factors here at play: the first is that he's desperately trying to be a violent, casteist, oppressive, dangerous sea dweller, and outright pushes that image, and the second is that he's really fucking anxious ALL THE TIME, and most peoples' sociability goes down when they feel the cold breath of the reaper on the backs of their necks 24/7.

When looking at the 4 responses to danger - fight, flight, freeze, and fawn - Eridan will overwhelmingly choose "fight," with "fawn" as his secondary option. This makes absolute sense in context: all his trauma comes from its inescapable nature - if he tries to run from his duties, everybody dies; if he freezes up and fails to complete them, everybody dies. Therefore, his only two options are to Fight, and to channel that violent response into completing his duties, and to Fawn, to capitulate to the things that are hurting him - much moreso the former than the latter. Unfortunately, that bleeds over into everything else. Great!

We can see this illustrated really well in his conversations with Kanaya: Eridan does not ask for favors or help, he makes demands:

CA: kan make her talk to me do somethin ... CA: so help me out tell her to talk to me i think she blocked me you got to

ERIDAN: you should of told me about this ERIDAN: if theres goin to be any sort a hope for our race as the prince of hope i demand to be invvolvved ERIDAN: so dont go anywwhere wwithout me got it

The only time he ever really backs off is in confessions, where he's willing to be like "hey, I think we really got something here, don't you think so?", or when talking to Karkat (Karkat is really the only person that Eridan doesn't feel the need to put on airs around, and we can only speculate as to why. It's because they're destined moirails for each other.)

He will also do this for statements that he isn't 100% sure about. If he's going to say something, he is going to ASSERT IT as if it is IMMUTABLE FACT, even if he's immediately disproven. In which case he will admit fault, but then his NEXT wild assumption is the IMMUTABLE FACT.

CA: wwell fine you dont havve to behavve vvillainous if youre bent up on actin against the grain a your nobility or somesuch CA: i can play that role its not like i evver didnt get my gills dirty before TT: Nobility? What are you talking about? CA: wwell arent you TT: No. What gave you that idea? CA: the wway you CA: ok CA: i had a misconclusion about that so my fault CA: obvviously you got rich blood so maybe when you crash landed you wwerent recognized for it by wwhatevver vvehicle upholds the class structure in human society

I feel like he's the type who, if he's genuinely unsure about something, he just won't say it at all. Basically, Eridan is always operating at either 0% or 100%, with almost no in-between. NO CHILL. Given that he only strikes up conversations when he's trying to achieve something from it - whether that's actively getting someone to do something for him, or just trying to assert that magic is fake - he treats every conversation like it' i's a battle, where the prize is whatever it is he's attempting to do, and his conversation partner is an enemy that he has to beat into submission. (Karkat is the only exception. He actually just likes talking to Karkat, and will do more traditional "hey man you wanna talk about your feelings" kind of dialogue with him.)

If your Eridan has chill, you are doing it wrong!

ERIDAN STRUGGLES WITH EMPATHY

This really needs to be qualified: he does HAVE empathy. He DOES care about his friends. But his brain is really cooked, and he has an extremely difficult time actually working up the emotional energy to express or experience it.

He's kind of downright sociopathic, lol:

ERISOLSPRITE: iim of the miind2et that wwhen you havve a rock 2oliid piiece of a22 tiied twwo the dock, you dont bloody wwell tug the knot loo2e and 2hovve the fucker off wwiith the heel a your boot. ERISOLSPRITE: but then another part of me ju2t wwonder2 wwhat the FUCK ii ju2t 2aiid there? liike that wwa2 ju2t 2uch a wweiird 2ociiopathiic thought ii had, ii hone2tly had no iidea howw bad ii could po22iibly feel about my2elf untiil ii BECAME my2elf, iif THAT make2 2en2e.

Like, okay, how do I explain this. His body count is 2000+. He has an EXTREMELY difficult time caring about life or death. He's had to watch kids cry over their dead parents. He has had to kill kids trying to protect their parents, whom he has then had to kill. And he has done this over, and over, and over again, as long as he can remember, to the point where he calls it "all i evver done practically."

Just for the sake of preserving what's left of his sanity, he's had to learn how to not care about that. If he sees someone crying in front of him, it's unlikely to even emotionally register to him as anything beyond "factually, this person is sad." Shit happens, people die. Violence, tragedy, murder, injury, and death are literally daily occurrences to him. For you, the day I killed your lusus was the most important day of your now tragically short life. For me, it was Tuesday.

Vriska is in the same boat, BTW. I think a combination of just being a less sensitive person to start with, the existence of a support network (Equius and Kanaya and Terezi as friends + she was friends with Team Charge before the... incident), and the lack of all the Duty(tm) and Responsibility(tm), helped her cope a bit better, and be better about opening up to people and relying on them for emotional support.

What this means, in terms of playing/writing him, is that his priorities are extremely skewed, and he is genuinely not going to understand things like "maybe I shouldn't tell this land dweller I'm trying to kill all land dwellers," or "maybe this person is sad and I should comfort them," or "maybe my constant talk about murder and death is offputting to other people." Here he is, literally not understanding why insulting and belittling Kanaya has led to her not wanting to help him, as well as not understanding why Vriska might've blocked him:

CA: wwhatEVVER you are so the vvillage twwo wwheel devvice wwhen it comes to auspisticing CA: you cant let a grudge go by you wwont stick your busy stem betwwixt so get wwith the program fussyfangs GA: If Your Slander Werent So Predictable Id Block You Too For Saying That GA: Has It Occurred To You She May Have Blocked You Because You Are Vvery Ovverbearing GA: I Just Said That Aloud Now In Your Silly Accent And Had A Private Moment Of Enjoyment CA: wwho givves a shit wwhy she blocked me or about my fuckin manners come on youvve got a wway wwith her

His brain is constantly running at a fevered 100% full-tilt run; he doesn't have the space, leisure, or energy to spend considering things from the perspective of other people. It leads to weird paradoxes, where he IS considerate of other peoples' feelings, but doesn't actually consider their feelings. After spending almost the ENTIRE conversation with Kanaya belittling her and demanding she be his and Vriska's auspice, he abruptly switches gears:

CA: fine i get it ill step off CA: you dont wwant to be our auspistice cause you dont wwant to get locked into that sort of relation wwith her i can respect that GA: No Thats Not It CA: yeah it is your real feelins run pretty awwful RUDDY methinks evverybody knowws it CA: especially that assblood karkat he and me havve you so pegged about that its upright silly CA: but its cool its totally fine dont wworry ill leavve you alone and givve you a shot

Because he LIKES Kanaya, he REALLY CARES ABOUT Kanaya, he WANTS GOOD THINGS for Kanaya... and yet is entirely, wholly, not taking her feelings into account at all.

BUT! This also applies in reverse! You can make all the death threats and casteist insults and demands towards Eridan as you want, and he won't give a shit aside from his usual grandstanding protests. The only time we ever truly see him offended is when he's genuinely trying to do Jade a favor by giving her the code to his gun, and she calls it a piece of shit and tosses it out with the trash - and even then, he doesn't take THAT much offense. Judge for yourself:

GG: so ill just dump it outside the house with the trash GG: and if it is fated to find my penpal one day then so be it! CA: god damn it CA: its like you people go out of your wway to think a howw to disrespect me GG: maybe you should have been nicer to me! GG: in any case i dont appreciate the spirit in which the gift was given so this is what i will do! CA: fine fuck it wwhat do i care CA: this has been a completely flippin useless exchange as havve they all been wwith your species

After all, he's accustomed to much, much, much worse. His emotional response here is indignation, not even really HURT. Karkat also makes a bunch of genuine death threats towards Eridan, which get entirely written off as "wwitty repartee." He's just really bad at processing hostility! Hostility is very normal to him!

So basically, before letting Eridan engage in any act of empathy or compassion, you have to ask whether or not he's going to recognize that the situation would call for that in the first place, which he is REALLY BAD at identifying. He only asks Karkat if Karkat wants to talk about his feelings after Karkat explicitly says that he's freaking out in every possible way, and without that explicit indication, I don't think Eridan would've even noticed.

If your Eridan has social skills, you are Doing It Wrong!

This also means that, even if Eridan has realized that he needs to act compassionate, he's still going to be really fucking trash at actually providing emotional support. He can't even emotionally support himself, you think he can figure it out for other people?

The most he can do is call it like he sees it - "this is a stupid thing to get worked up over," for example. Or he can jump straight to solutions, like "so what, are you gonna kill that guy?" Being as charitable as humanly possible, he might be able to fire off a "that's rough, buddy" at ABSOLUTE maximum.

ERIDAN KIND OF JUST SEES SLURS AS FACTUAL DESCRIPTORS (AND OTHER GENERAL NOTES FOR HIS SYNTAX AND VOCAB)

And, let's face it, on Alternia, they kind of are. Kanaya doesn't even bother to call him out for calling Karkat an assblood, Terezi and Feferi and Sollux don't bother taking offense to calling Sollux a mustard blood, and Karkat calls himself a gutter blood at one point. Like, even if you're playing/writing an Eridan who's rejected Alternian society, he'll still probably be out here calling people slurs? Things that would be considered hostile from other characters are very much just neutral coming from Eridan. There is no emotional difference to him, calling someone a rustblood or a burgundy, but he's expected to say rustblood because of his sea dweller status, so that's what he goes with.

Also, make some grounded but wild assertions about people and things. This boy loves to Assume. Writing Eridan is a lot of going "ERIDAN DON'T SAY THAT!!!" it's great. Really painful. Highly unrecommended.

He's obviously quite book smart and uses a lot of big vocabulary words. You guys need to have Eridan go on these insane purple-prose rants more often. They're so fun to write and so cringe to post.

CA: yeah go ahead and kiss us off but therell be blood on your hands CA: you could either play along as our auspistice and do a little mediating like you wwere fuckin hatched to CA: or wwatch she and me devvolvve into fuckin full fledged kismesisses the kind like you dont get once in ten thousand swweeps CA: you knoww thats wwhat it wwould be there wwould be rainboww rivvers runnin through star systems and all nebulizin like liquid firewworks CA: it wwill be beautiful and heartbreaking all at once

CA: but the thing is i need a rivval wwho can pose me a challenge CA: and frankly shes not evven fit for holdin my cape anymore CA: at this point i find all her adorable black pixie dabblins to be prime kiddie playtime shit CA: all of her FRAUDULENT MAGICS cannot come close to posin threat to my mastery ovver the TRUEST SCIENCES CA: an wwith my empiricists wwand i servve as the righteous hope that wwill incinerate delusion and the deluded alike CA: my holy fire is the wwhite fury bled from the wwrath-wweary eyes of fifty thousand nonfictional angels CA: and wwhen theyre finished wweepin they wwill boww before their prince GG: wow what are you talking about

For no reason at all. I'm going to post a little Karkat for comparison.

PCG: THE FUNNY THING IS IN THE FUTURE EVERYONE WILL RECOGNIZE ME AS THE UNDISPUTED LEADER, EVEN YOU. PCG: YOU WILL BE STANDING ON THE TIPPYTOES OF YOUR IDIOTIC METAL SHOES, TAKING DELICATE PURCHASE OF MY NUBBY HORNS AND HOISTING YOURSELF OVER MY HEAD TO PUT YOUR SWEATIEST TOUGH GUY SMOOCH UPON MY TWITCHING SPINE LUMP. PCG: IT WILL BE TENDER AND DEFERENTIAL, LIKE A PAUPER KISSING A NOBLE'S RING. PCG: JUST SCROLL DOWN, READ THE LOGS.

Also, notes about his typing quirk:

First, the ww and vv stuff is actively a fake accent he puts on for the #Aesthetic, and his natural way of speaking doesn't include those at all, so it's entirely likely that if you're writing him after he's rejected Alternian society, or if he's trying to be really really emotionally sincere, he wouldn't be bothering with that part of the quirk specifically.

He doesn't ALWAYS drop the G at the end of words ending in -ing. It's frequent and common, but don't feel bad about letting a word end in a g, especially if it would sound or look better (for example, "being a kid and growwing up" doesn't bother to drop the g's at all).

Similarly, he doesn't ALWAYS change "of" to "a," especially preceding a vowel sound. You gotta be careful with when you change this up, because he pretty much only does it when it would make sense spoken aloud.

In phrases like "must have" or "could have," he will often (but not always) change "have" to "of" (so "must of" or "could of").

Dropping the D from the word "and" happens only one time in the entire comic, so it's probably a typo, and if it isn't, it's REALLY REALLY infrequent.

He will sometimes use shorthanded words, like "em" instead of "them" or "ya" instead of "you." I'd say it's occassional, a bit rarer than the G-dropping. He does tend to use "got to" instead of "gotta," however. Again, try saying his lines out loud, to figure out when best to use what.

Given his loquaciousness and clear command of the language, it's likely that this is for Style, but he also doesn't always bother with proper grammar. Places where "[person] and I" would be used are often switched out for "[person] and me," and he might forgo a contraction like "I've" or "we've" and just post the pronoun (for example, "you got to" instead of "you've got to."

He references ocean shit, and ocean anatomy, like his own fins and gills, pretty often! He just doesn't do the puns. Try using "flippin" instead of "fuckin" every now and then, or "glubbin" instead of "talkin," or nautical analogies.

Also throw in some British "bloody"s every so often.

Cusses like a sailor, though, has one of the highest "fuck" counts relative to wordcount out of all the characters (cough like Karkat cough).

HE DOES NOT USE PUNCTUATION. EVER. (Ok, he does use a period once while talking to Terezi in Alterniabound, but I think that that's a mistake because it's literally the only time). This is actually in STARK contrast to other characters that don't generally use punctuation, like Aradia or Nepeta, who will still use ellipses, exclamation points, and question marks. Eridan actively, consciously forgoes using ANY punctuation, EVER, even for questions (which you shouldn't be asking too many of, because Eridan makes DEMANDS).

ERIDAN DOES NOT ANGST

This is another thing that I see a lot. Yes, Eridan thinks that he's worse than everybody. Yes, he deliberately keeps fun things at bay and focuses on things that make him miserable. Yes, he's sad, anxious, emotionally neglected, etc. etc. But I often see this self-loathing played for dramatics - Eridan being withdrawn, quiet, moody, and sad. Or being consumed with guilt and regret, and wishing he didn't have to be a murderer or wasn't forced into the position he was. And that's just not the vibe.

Because Eridan has a lot of pride. He refuses to appear weak, and he has genuinely lost the emotional capacity to feel too guilty about all the killing. Moreover, here's something I often see get overlooked:

He would think of the murders he committed, and the fact that he's so good at murdering, as good things.

It's not only useful, but oftentimes NECESSARY, for somebody on the team to be willing to make those kinds of sacrifices, to be willing to pull the trigger. Very literally, murder kept him and his friends alive long enough to play the game.

There's no universe in which Eridan would denounce killing and violence, because to do so would be to say that he shouldn't have kept his friends alive. Even in a hypothetical golden ending, where everybody survives to the end, Eridan would be the guy on the team who posits murder as a potential solution to problems, reminds people that society is built on sacrifices and suffering, and offers to do the dirty work himself if nobody else has the stomach for it. As much as being the orphaner was DISASTROUS for his mental and emotional well-being, he wouldn't regret the things he did.

And this is reflected in the comic - the rare times he does break down and show that he kind of hates himself, the focus is never on guilt or regret, it's on his perceived shortcomings - calling himself an idiot or pathetic. Because that's what his real insecurity is - he doesn't hate himself because he sees himself as this awful piece of shit, the way Sollux does, he hates himself because he thinks of himself as not good enough, because if he's Not Good Enough, then Something Bad Will Happen.

Remember, his danger response is FIGHT. It's a different paradigm than what most of us are used to, which is why I see his inner turmoil so often represented by him being moody and broody, which he's never really done in the comic. Eridan doesn't get sad, even though he is sad; he gets mad, aggressive, combative. He doesn't wallow; he just keeps swimming.

CA: i got to keep tryin thats howw all the great military masterminds became great through upright persevverance

Again, his response to being insulted is indignation, not hurt. He doesn't sit in his room feeling sorry for himself, he obsesses over genocide and murdering all the land dwellers. His response to seeing the love of his life turn on him with killing intent is to flip out and start killing right back. After being broken up with, his response is to go and pester his friends (and yell at Gamzee a bit) until he can get some emotional support. He doesn't angst, he tries to solve the problem, and, if he can't solve the problem, he starts shooting.

He's awfully violent! If your Eridan is not awfully violent, you're probably doing it wrong!

BUT, ERIDAN LOVES HIS FRIENDS

At his core, however, as tangled up in all of the above as he may be, Eridan loves:

His friends

Wizards

Magic

Probably hipster shit

Happy endings

He is still, after all, a HOPE player. He struggles as hard as he does because he can't give up on the idea that things will get better, eventually. Even if he's struggling in the wrong direction, toward the wrong ideals, and even if emotionally, he's feeling more and more hopeless and closed in, he can't stop himself from trying, and trying, and trying again.

He loves magic. As much as he tries to push it away and calls it stupid and fake and lame at every turn, he still brought his shitty wands onto the meteor. Why does he love magic? It's an extension of his inability to give up. No matter how hopeless the situation, no matter how awful he feels, no matter how unrealistic salvation might seem, if only magic is real, then there's a solution. He wants to be a wizard so badly because wizards can do magic, and magic can overturn reality, and reality is this awful, inescapable nightmare. He is constantly being caught between nihilism and pessimism and hope and belief. In the comic, the nihilism won, but that's the great conflict at the core of his being.

So ummmmm yeah, I hope any of that helps with writing the fish boy at all. Basically, if you aren't constantly cringing while writing the bullshit that comes out of his mouth, you're probably doing it wrong...

#homestuck #eridan ampora

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