#zealots desire

[kantraels]

i think the various gender awakenings here are really funny

kal, pulling a fish out of an algae-caked trough with his bare hands, parting the murky green for long enough to see his own face outgrowing the gawkiness of early adolescence into something that might be recognized as feminine, without the dirt: i think i'm a man

kenna, after weeks of torture and delusion, retreating into safe and comfortable introspection and dreamlike fearless repose: i think i might be nonbinary

isi, fifteen years old and beating the shit out of some guy in a hive for stealing his lunch: i could do this forever. also this face i'm deconstructing looks like what i wish i looked like. i think i'm a man.

[stjohnstarling]

When you peer under the surface of all this consumerism and chaos, and back into the history of the internet, it becomes clear that the internet was built on sex, and sex has remained its through line no matter how hard some people try to deny it. A demand for sex built the shopping cart, the browser cookie, ad revenue models, payment pro-cessors, and the dynamic web page. The desire to explore and share our sexuality constructed the internet, piece by piece, as we know it today. And then technocratic billionaires betrayed the sexual for the sanitized and safe. We started labeling things "safe for work" and "not safe for work," a binary that's telling of who we allowed to call the shots. Sexuality is either unsafe or safe under a pretense of labor, depending on whether a boss is cool with it. Capitalists built walls around the "safe" parts of the internet to appease investors, advertisers, banks, and zealots-and pushed everyone who didn't comply to the margins.

But there's a catch: There is no adult side of the internet. The internet isn't a wall with sexy stuff on one face and "family friendly" on the other. It's a web. And the ways we knit that web together, from the very beginning in late 1970's chat systems to today, is a choice. They include how we defend or concede our dwindling rights to sexual expression online, how control of that web looks, how we choose who gets to decide and participate, and how those decisions shape our lives away from the keyboard and at what cost.

-Sam Cole, How Sex Changed the Internet, and the Internet Changed Sex

[hughmanbean]

Titles I've Acquired

So I've decided to just jot down all of the titles I made some time ago in older posts and some more recent ones @jedipirateking helped with.

Danny:

First of Holy Name, The Reluctant King, The High Queen, Queen of the Cosmos

Bringer of Balance, Embodiment of Space, Mother of Wrath and Trickery, Siren of the Stars, The Great One, The Inevitable Authority

Danno, Little Badger

Ones we made on a recent post, focused on a joke. Not meant to signify Danny's Rank:

Avatar of Outta Here, Knight of Nope, Sir Scurry Scatter and Scram, God of Getaways, Emperor of the Bounce, Queen of Quick Exits, Prince of Poof, Zealot of Zoom, Duke of Dodge, Duck, Dip, Dive, and Dodge, The Great Gun It, Valet to Vamoose and Vacate, Baron von Bail, Scenechal of Scatter, Coup to Clamor and Climb.

Dante:

First of His Name, The Wrathful Prince, The Erratic Prince, Hate-Filled Union Born Anew, The Watchful and Filial Son

Dani/Ellie:

First of Her Name, The Mischievous Princess, The Wandering Princess, Mirror Turned Painting, A Futile Chase of Desire Remade, The Protective and Loyal Daughter

Vlad:

The Avaricious Duke, The High Queen's Rival, The Greedy Interloper, Creator of Shattered Mirrors, He Who Desires That Which Is Unattainable

Fruitloop.

Lady Gotham:

Home of Many, Perseverance in Protection, The Lady Who Commands the Knight, Bird Keeper

[kiame-sama]

Monster!Yan!Rollo: These disgusting monsters and their magic… They must all be purged!

Human!Darling *Exists*

Monster!Yan!Rollo: Am I seeing an Angel? Have I finally been blessed after all my suffering?

I feel like Rollo would not only be obsessed with Darling but would be pleased with the idea to breed with her to create ‘Pure’ offspring (He might even call her an ‘Angel’) though, he’ll no doubt call Malleus a ‘Devil’ for ‘tempting’ her with his magic (He feels utter disgust seeing such ‘unholy’ beings *Monsters* touch Darling)

Rollo will be absolutely obsessed the moment he realizes that there is a Human in a world of monsters. Not only will he see this fragile Human as an Angel, he will endeavor to win over his Angel by any means possible. A true follower of the example the Righteous Judge set forth, he sees Humanity and Humans as the best example of all living things.

In Rollo's mind, it doesn't matter who or what he needs to destroy in order to have his beloved by his side, it is worth it. Every little touch he is witness to- from anyone other than himself or Grim (as Grim is the only one he will canonically use dual magic with)- he will be adding their name to an ever growing list of those he needs to purge from the world. Malleus is already on his Most Hated list but will be written in several more times if he so much as looks at Rollo's beloved.

Any time Rollo enters his engulfed Inferno Nymph form the fires he creates will scorch everyone except for his darling. He would be inconsolable if he ever wound up accidentally harming his beloved and would even perform self-flagellation as a way to repent for his actions.

(Adult themes under the Cut)

When it comes to how desperate he is to breed this soft little Human, it is almost painful with how much he wants this little Human to be his. An absolute Zealot who worships the ground his darling walks upon. He hates himself for his overly sinful thoughts but also can't help feeling such an undeniable attraction and desire to taste and hold his darling however possible.

He will take any kindness from his beloved as a sign of affection and will devote himself to the cause of enchanting and enticing his darling into his bed. He can worry about the specifics later, he just needs something to tide himself over- be it unmentionables pilfered from his beloved's room, locks of hair, clothing his darling has worn, ect- and he is willing to go to extreme lengths to get these items.

[sinsofsummers]

insatiable

1.3k | marc spector x f!reader

summary: you can never get enough of marc. and marc? he's not complaining. warnings: literally nothing but smut (duh), oral (m receiving), fingering, marc being a little shit, whimpering, begging, masturbation (f), throat-fucking, etc.

Giving Marc head during the worst possible times of his day is your version of fun.

There's nothing quite like the look of unbridled desire that blooms in his eyes every time he sees you sink to your knees in front of him, a pleading smile on your lips..

"Please, baby, I'm busy," he'll always say, as if to protest. But you know he just says it for show; he'll never stop thanking his lucky stars for how desperately insatiable you can be.

Because when your throat feels empty, it feels hollow, and the only thing that can make you return to yourself is his thick, veiny cock stuffed down your throat until your nose brushes the coarse patch of hair at the base.

If he's about to fall asleep? No better bedtime story than the sound of you gagging on the swollen head of his cock touching the back of your throat, your hands splayed on his thighs for balance.

He's on the phone? You'll kneel before him like a zealot bends to pray, and you'll take him into your mouth without a word, hardly even a look into his eyes, while he stifles his moans.

He comes home from another hard day as Moon Knight? You're there for him, ready to pull him down to the bed and let him lose his worries with your mouth around him.

And now? He's just gotten out of the shower, towel draped sinfully low on his hips, his chest a canvas of scars and muscles and droplets of water that still run down the rivets of his stomach.

You've been trying to distract yourself with...well, anything, but that's been awfully hard considering your favorite man is in much need of a relaxing shower. You'd almost gone in with him, but had refrained when you saw the hard look in his eye.

You could be his treat after the shower. Besides, you'd convinced yourself, he needed those quiet moments to come back to himself from a long day.

Of course, the temptation had been so strong that you'd had to resort to sinking your hand into your shorts to keep yourself from interrupting his alone time.

"Look at you," he muses when he steps out of the bathroom, leaning down to drop a kiss on your head. "Keeping yourself busy, I see?"

Your eyes open at the sound of his voice, and you can feel the droplets of water from his hair land on your arm. It cools your hot skin, and your fingers stop circling your clit. "Couldn't help myself," you shrug with a smirk, "what else am I s'posed to do when I know you're just a few feet away, looking as good as you do?"

His smirk remains on his face, but you swear you can see it grow wider when he flits his eyes down to where your hand has disappeared under the soft material of your lounge shorts. "You want something, sweetheart?" he teases, and your face burns.

"Only you," you reply, your voice thick. Pulling your hand from your shorts, you hold out your shining fingers to his mouth, tapping them against his bottom lip before placing them over your tongue, gently sucking your sweet juices from your own fingertips.

"C'mere," you coo. "Wanna taste you, Marc."

It doesn't take much more than that to get him to drop his towel, laying back on the bed with his feet dangling off the edge, just enough to reach the floor. His cock is already half-mast, a delicious challenge for you to conquer. Before you put your mouth over his tip, he reaches out to tug at your waistband. "Lemme see that pretty pussy, baby," he says, his voice always a quiet command. "I wanna hear you play with yourself while you suck my cock."

You bite your lip with a grin and obey. You usually allow him these little requests; it makes him feel like he's in control for the few minutes before you've got him writhing and whimpering beneath you.

With one hand on your clit, rubbing rhythmic circles on your bundle of nerves, breathy moans dropping from your lips, you lift your eyes to his and open your mouth, taking him softly.

At first. You like to watch his lips quiver as he tries to hold in the desperate moans. No matter how many times you find yourself in this position, Marc's moans remain loud and plentiful, turning into an unforgettable chorus of whines when you inevitably take him down to the base of his cock.

"Fuck," he curses under his breath, throwing his arm over his face. "You know just how to make me feel better, honey. That's it, fuck—"

His voice catches when you moan around him, the vibrations stiffening his cock in an instant. Your throat is deliciously full, and you hollow your cheeks for a moment, sucking hard and fast to watch him crumble to pieces.

Now you've got him where you want him.

"Do I make you feel good, Marc?" you ask sweetly when you lift your mouth from him for a moment's reprieve.

It's all he can do to nod, a whine squeezing its way from his throat. "Always so good, doll," he heaves, his hips straining up from the bed. "I wanna—please—"

You dip your tongue down and swirl it gently around his tip, lapping up the precum with an appreciative moan. "Ask nicely, baby," you tease him, your hand curling around his length and delivering a courteous, languid stroke.

His hips stutter. "More, please," he breathes. "Wanna fuck your throat. Please."

For a moment, you pause to look at him. He looks absolutely wrecked. You've never gotten him this desperate so quickly. "And you say I'm insatiable," you murmur. "Come on, Marc. Fuck my throat. Play with me how you want."

His hands come down to the back of your head with almost no warning but a, "thank fuck," and then your eyes are squeezing shut as he plants his feet to the ground, bucking his hips faster and harder into your mouth, watching your hair fall into your eyes.

"That's it, baby," he mutters, and you relish in the deep gravelly tone that his voice takes. "Want me to come down this pretty throat?"

You can't even reply; his hips don't stop until his groans grow louder, and longer, and his hands grip your hair in tight fists, nearly pulling it out from the roots. "Such a good girl, taking my cock so well," he hums. "Gonna come, baby, gonna—"

He loses all coherence when he comes, and it's music to your ears as his hips stutter once more before falling back to the bed, his hands still pulling you to the base of his cock as he pulses, painting the walls of your throat with his release.

When he loosens his grip, you lift your head and swallow, swiping a finger under your lip to catch any drops that might have fallen. Nothing but a smug chuckle passes your lips.

"What?" he asks, his chest heaving and lined in a sheen of sweat.

Your hand returns to your core, having removed it when he was fucking your throat. "Nothing," you say, feigning innocence. "It's just..."

His lips curl up. "Lemme take care of you, baby," he says with a hand reaching for you. Despite his fatigue, his arms are strong as he pulls you up on the bed. "Wanna return the favor," he murmurs, and his hands find your hips, pulling you to straddle his chest.

"Yeah?" you tease, and you can't help but wonder how fucked out the both of you look. No doubt your hair is knotted beyond belief, and with the way he's tugging you closer to his face, making your sopping core hover over his mouth, you're sure it'll be quite a bit longer before the two of you can clean up.

He nods feverishly with a devil's smirk and looks down at your clit, just inches from his nose. "How else would I say thank you?"

[trivanvanile]

The absolute vile behaviour of Bobby Dawn, televangelist of Sol. To show up, promising impartiality to the students and immediately punishing students of different faiths.

To take away the accommodations of a student in a specific circumstance, and then punish them for not being the embodiment of his version of success. Cassandra is alive. Kristen knows this. Others know this. She’s just not *here*. Kristen’s powers have returned and she is able to cast and perform miracles in Cassandra’s name. Her god is not dead.

And if he truly cared or desired to understand her situation, he would use any number of high level cleric spells to aid in confirming the survival of Cassandra. Instead, he belittles and shames Kristen for walking away from Helio, calling her arrogant for refusing a path laid out before her.

What’s worse is that I love his southern drawl, and the utter contempt that drips from his voice. Bleem has successfully made a character voice that is usually used in a comedic sense and made a manipulative, scheming Zealot who can destroy a person while sounding as charming as possible.

[jollierot]

They didn’t mean to be the last living lamb.

Sure, the Lamb knew they had stuck it out for a while. As they counted the days they managed to evade the Bishops’ crusading executioners, they eventually realized the possibility that few of their fellow sheep would have been able to avoid the blade for as long as they had. They were a gentler folk, with simple lifestyles and simpler desires, content to work the fields and raise their kin among the rolling green hills that used to be their home.

While it may have been convenient for them back then, their near universal naivety making it easy to score a few coin or a free meal off their fellow brethren, the Lamb now mourned their race’s collective innocence with crushing guilt.

It wasn’t so long ago their village’s chief tried to impress the virtues of innocence and simple living onto the Lamb. They had begged to join the merchants on a trip outside the village, to catch a glimpse of the world outside their safe but isolated home. They longed for adventure, for excitement, for thrill, and yet, every time they pleaded for the opportunity, they were denied.

They would never get the chance to step outside the village. Not until it was ransacked by Old Faith zealots. The execution party ambushed the village in the dead of night, razing their heard, their family, their only home, as easily as a scythe might slice through a field of wheat. The Lamb did not watch. They could only faintly register the quickly thinning screams of their friends and family as they raced toward the nearby woods, their heart pounding and lungs burning with the effort.

It should have been someone else. Some other sheep. Perhaps someone important, like the chief or the doctor. Someone brave, with the wisdom of their forefathers to guide them. Someone who represented the compassion and grace to which their race was so closely aligned.

Someone who definitely wouldn’t be contemplating pickpocketing this rat that just burrowed out from the ground in front of them.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

The health industry’s invisible hand is a fist

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

https://pluralistic.net/2024/06/13/a-punch-in-the-guts/#hayek-pilled

[max1461]

Rationalists tend to self-conceptualize as nerds, but as far as I'm concerned they are in general not nerds and this bothers me.

As far as I'm concerned, a nerd is an otaku; that is to say, a nerd is someone who is unabashedly enthusiastic about the minutiae of some topic for its own sake. Someone who has a bottomless desire to learn about... trains, or bugs, or math, or whatever their thing is, relatively unconcerned with the degree to which this knowledge is useful to them or anybody else. Doing their nerd thing is its own reward.

Rationalists might be nerds in their off time, but they generally aren't nerds when they're participating in rationalist discourse. One of the things I've noticed since finding myself adjacent to rattumb is rationalist posting in general has a tendency to look for "take aways" in things. A rationalist will read some book or article, and then make a post summarizing what insights they think it contains and what they think these mean or imply for themselves or their audience. I guess this goes back to Scott's book reviews, or maybe some habit of Yudkowsky I don't know. One way or another I've observed this tendency to be extremely strong among rationalists, and it strikes me as almost a maximally un-nerdy thing to do. This is a behavior befitting of startup guys and self-help gurus; a nerd would be principally interested in gaining more knowledge about their chosen subject, rather than extracting some (usually sociological or political) "point" from it.

In general rationalists spend their time talking about The Fate Of The World, whether that be in the form of AI Doom or the advancement of their chosen politics or veganism or whatever. Never have I encountered a non-religious community more fervently interested in The Fate Of The World. So I propose that rationalists are (often; of course this whole post is generalizing) zealots cosplaying as nerds. Kind of ticked off that they're appropriating my culture tbh.

[klaus-littlestwolf]

I can say for sure that we all loved the Catholic school smut and therefore it just made me a new dark desire so heree comes request with our favorite hybrid

Something horny and dark at the same time

(by the way I ALSO read and write to heal religious trauma 🙏🏻)

Reader is a werewolf raised by a very conservative family and there is a lot of abuse in it specially because they think she is demoniac (they aren't werewolves)

In his path to make hybrids klaus finds her and decides to take her, he saw the way she was tortured and remembered the way mikael used to beat him, so he kills her parents

He thinks she will be scared but she was relieved and didn't even blink or tried to help when they were being murdered

She was raised apart from the world so literally everything is new to her and klaus loves to show her all the beautiful things and teach her how to be a hybrid

Obviously she also doesn't know anything about sex (innocence kink maybe?) and eventually she and klaus starts to date but she has no idea of how a relationship should work and klaus makes a good time teaching her all about how to give and receive pleasure and ends with a really good smut like the last one you wrote

Love uuu

The way you said ‘horny and dark’ I assumed you wanted a Yandere Klaus so that’s what I did

Warning: Conservative views from parents, religious trauma and bashing, smut bordering on Dub-con with how naive she is, Don’t Like=Don’t Read

DD:DNE

If your parents had known you were a werewolf when they adopted you they would have given you back immediately. Sadly there’s no way to know that until you’re in an accident.

Your family was always abusive to you, from the moment you were given to them from the 100% definitely illegal agency (since a man with as many arrests as your ‘father’ can’t legally adopt a child). When you turned however, it became worse.

It was sad how it happened, you had saved your parents by grabbing and turning the steering wheel out of the way of an oncoming 18 wheeler, sadly as you did you ended up in the way of a man on a motorcycle who crashed into your car and fell down the side of the mountain you were driving up. The bike should have been driving slower, your father should have been paying attention, but of course only you suffer the consequences.

Your first shift was agonizing and your father, being the religious man that he was, knew you were a demon! A demon who changed on the full moon and every full moon he chained you up like a monster and left you in the woods outside to suffer. They prayed over you , sometimes spraying you with a hose or whipping you while promising God that your suffering was repentance or some shit like that. You decided a long time ago that if their God was this vengeful then you didn’t want anything to do with the “Heaven” they promised. Not that you knew anything different, the outside world had been cut off from you since you were given to them to live in the mountains like the religious zealots that your parents are. Your mother wasn’t nearly as abusive, she just spends her time praying over you for the safe return of your soul and ranting like your father about how the government is controlled by demon possessed people like you.

You never believed that anything could change, especially not because of Ray. Ray had found your house on a hike up the mountain and stumbled upon you chained up in the woods after a full moon. He tried to help you but your parents chased him off, your father shooting his shotgun at him and screaming about ‘demons sent to help fellow demons’ before he hosed you off and took you inside. You always spent the day after a change with your mother patching up your quickly healing wounds and reading from the Bible you had read 60,000 times in your life.

Ray came back to check on you every few weeks, he would bring you food to hide away and some books to read that weren’t the Bible. He told you that you were not a demon but we’re in fact a werewolf, a gene passed down from your real parents (probably a father) and though he tried to convince you to come with him, you knew your father would track you down and hurt him and his ‘pack’ as he called it.

Ray had left you last time with the promise of bringing you more food, it turns out he brought quite a bit more than that.

You heard his voice before you saw him, as well as another voice with him as they approached.

‘I told you I’ll do what you want but we get the kid first, that’s the deal if you want my pack.’ Ray snapped and a weird accented man responded.

‘I’m not taking care of a kid Ray, you didn’t say kid-‘

‘She ain’t a kid but she’s…you’ll see. Now shut up before her father hears us-‘

‘Everything can hear you stomping like that Ray.’ You stated, picking up the last few pieces of firewood you had chopped and putting them into the wheelbarrow.

‘Shit kid, I’m sorry…your face-‘

‘I know. I’m the one in pain, trust me, I know it’s there. He got my ribs real good this time too.’ You looked up to see Ray standing beside another 2 men, one had fluffy brown hair and looked like he didn’t give a shit about anything and the other was staring at you. He had blond hair and bright blue eyes, prettiest shade you’ve ever seen and he wasn’t shy about how he was looking you over.

‘Hurry up and grab your stuff kid, we’re busting you outta here.’ You rolled your eyes, lifting the wheelbarrow and walking it towards your house.

‘You’re delusional. My father will shoot you all and chain you up right beside me, next thing you know he’ll be beating the demons out of you too.’

‘How many times do I have to tell you, you’re a werewolf, not a demon-‘

‘Look, I believe you Ray…sorta, but he won’t. He will see that you’re like me and he’ll either kill you or hurt you. Take your friends and go before they get hurt too.’ You began piling the wood up on the back porch where it needed to go and Ray grabbed your shoulders, stopping you.

‘Please Y/n, please come with me? He’s going to kill you one of these days and I can’t stand to see that happen-‘

‘Then stop coming here Ray! You’re risking your life for a girl you don’t know who is never getting out of here! I don’t know anything besides this, I’m an idiot, I don’t even know how the light up box works!’ He tried hard to hide his smile at that, knowing what you meant.

‘Once again, it’s called a cellphone, and I will teach you-‘

‘You don’t know what a phone is? Seriously Klaus, this is a waste of our time.’ The brunette stated to his friend and you felt tears welling up in your eyes, knowing he’s right.

Klaus’ POV

‘Shut up Stefan, Ray is right.’

‘He is-‘

‘I am?’

‘Yes, he is. This girl needs our help, and after all, I am on the search for werewolves. It was Y/n, yes?’ The girl nodded, clearly wary of me and I couldn’t blame her. Living up here off the grid with nothing but your seemingly abusive adoptive parents must be a new form of torture and werewolf or not, I couldn’t let this beautiful girl continue to suffer…I also had some ideas about a few fun things I could teach her. ‘Okay Y/n, why don’t you get your things you want to keep and you can come with us? Don’t worry about your father, he won’t hurt you-‘

‘He’ll hurt you! Don’t you get it?! He will shoot you Klaus, why would you risk getting hurt for me?’ I stepped forward, tucking this girls long hair behind her ears and making her look at me.

‘Number one I can’t really die, and while I can get hurt it won’t last, number two, because I want to. You don’t deserve this kind of pain, I know what it’s like and you need my help so I’m going to help you.’ She stared at me momentarily as if I had put the stars in the sky before her eyes hardened again. ‘Come on, I’ll come with you.’ I took her arm in mine and walked up to the door beside her. ‘Invite me in gorgeous.’

‘What…you can come in?’ She was clearly confused and it was actually kind of adorable as I walked into the house beside her and into her bedroom which was just off the back door. The amount of crosses that hung on the walls was dizzying, pictures of Bible scenes and Jesus on the walls…this girl is going to need some serious therapy. ‘What do I pack?’ I looked down to see her holding a backpack and sighing. She’s never gone anywhere in her life, of course she doesn’t know what to pack.

‘Here, I’ll put clothes in here. You grab anything else you want to keep.’ I shoved clothes into the bag and noted how desperately I needed to get her appropriate clothing and not ‘Jesus’ clothing. When I stood she put a few books into the bag and a picture of herself with a dog but nothing else.

Just as we were about to walk out we were cut off by a gunshot and I pulled her behind me as we ran outside, she gasped at seeing her father aiming a shotgun at Stefan and Ray. ‘Y/n! How dare you allow this thing into our home! You whore!’ My body tensed up as I felt her hands clutch into the back of my shirt. This girl was innocent and terrified much like I was, she has been kept from experiencing the world and knowing anything besides this Hell and I won’t allow it any longer. Besides, she will be a very fun person to have along the ride, I’ll have to teach her everything but on the plus side, I’ll get to teach her everything.

‘If you call her that again I’ll shove that gun down your throat.’ I growled and he turned his gun on me.

‘No! You could hurt Y/n-‘

‘Our whore of a daughter made her choice when she opened her legs for this demon! You’re like her, aren’t you? Cursed?!’

‘Not anymore. My curse was lifted, I’m just a werewolf now…well I’m also a vampire but that’s beside the point. You’ve crippled your child keeping her here like this, beat her, chained her and you don’t care one little bit, do you?’

‘That thing is not my daughter! It never was! It is a beast from the circles of Hell!’ I dropped her bag, taking a step forward when her hand grabbed my arm and stopped me from moving any further. I turned to look at her and held her face to make sure she paid attention to me.

‘It’s alright love, I promise. You will never be hurt again, you are mine now. Understand?’ She shook her head “no” and I should have known she wouldn’t get that. ‘I take care of you now, you stay with me. I’ll teach you everything and you won’t leave me, promise me.’ She looked shocked but nodded her head, smiling excitedly and hugging me tightly with her head resting on my chest. It was actually adorable how short she was…sexy as well.

She suddenly gasped in pain as she was yanked away from me, her ‘father’ clutching her wrist too tightly. ‘You will die today, demon! And then I will punish my demon child for whoring herself out to the Devil!’ As he raised the shotgun again I grabbed it, bending it in half and watching his eyes widen before pulling him to me by his collar.

‘Interesting choice of words. She hasn’t even begun to whore herself out for me, but you can be sure she will. I should thank you for that I think, she doesn’t know anything about the world and she will be quite easily moldable…I’m not going to thank you of course, you’re an insane child abuser but at least in your last moments you can know that she will be everything you didn’t want her to be. Interesting how things work out that way, isn’t it?’ He tried to fight to his credit but it was much to easy to pull his heart from his chest. I dropped his body to the ground and heard his wife screaming bloody murder but I tuned that out as I looked to Y/n who was staring at his body before looking up at me, excitement in her eyes which I loved instantly. I turned and snapped the women’s neck quickly, irritated with the screaming before turning back to Y/n who grabbed a rag that was on the porch and began cleaning the blood off of my hand like it was her job. ‘Thank you, Kitten, you’re just too sweet.’ I pulled her to my side and turned to walk back over to Stefan and Ray.

‘Why are we taking her? She’s just going to be a distra-‘ I reached out, grabbing ahold of Stefan’s throat before growling down at him.

‘You don’t need to worry about her again. Y/n is none of your concern Stefan. Shut it.’ He nodded and I released him before turning to Ray. ‘Now to you, where are the wolves?’ I asked him and he sighed, pulling out his map as I handed Stefan the duffel bag and turned to lift Y/n onto my back, not wanting her to have to hike up the mountain. As Ray showed us where we were and where the wolves were I could feel Y/n playing with my hair which made me smile.

As soon as he gave up the location of the pack I snapped his neck, Stefan being left to carry his body up the mountain with us. It wasn’t a long hike from Y/n’s home and we got to the clearing in about half an hour, changing all of the wolves before sitting and waiting for them all to wake up which would take a bit of time, about an hour if Ray suddenly waking was any gauge of time. As he woke though his eyes began to bleed and he suddenly lunged forward at Y/n who screamed and clutched to me tightly. Stefan tried to grab him but only ended up with a werewolf bite on his arm before Ray was gone.

‘Well, you best go get him.’ I told him and he glared making Y/n whine.

‘Aren’t you gonna heal me?’ I shook my head.

‘Once you come back with Ray? Yes, and I would hurry. That looks bad.’ I stated before Stefan ran off after the hybrid, leaving Y/n and I alone.

‘I don’t like him.’ She spoke up and I snorted.

‘He doesn’t like you either so I would say you’re a good judge of character.’ I joked making her smile.

‘I like you though.’

‘Well, everyone is allowed one mistake.’ Her eyes widened and she shoved me playfully, leaning into my side. ‘It’s gonna be a while before they wake up, why don’t you come sit on my lap and snuggle with me?’ I proposed and she looked up at me, tilting her head.

‘What’s snuggle?’ My eyes widened before I sighed.

‘It means let me hold you. You’re mine now, I’m allowed to hold you all I want.’ Y/n nodded her head, clearly thinking as she moved to sit on my lap and lay her head into my neck.

‘What does being yours mean?’

‘Hmm, that’s a good question Kitten.’ She blushed a dark shade, clearly enjoying her nickname. ‘It means that only I can touch you, no other man should be too close or putting their hands on you. It means that it’s my job to take care of you and make you feel good in every way I can, to protect you and ensure you’re happy…does that make sense?’ I wondered, knowing those concepts should be things she understands at least and she nodded her head.

‘Are you mine?’ I took pause at that, considering that question. It’s been a long time since I’ve considered only having one women in my life, and I know if I say “yes” she’s not going to want me to be with any other women, she seems the jealous type which was actually a very cute thought. As I considered this I began to realize how attached to her I’ve become already and I suddenly knew I couldn’t let her go.

‘Yes I am, Kitten. I’m all yours, no one else’s. But that means that you can’t leave me, okay? We belong to each other, that means I take care of and protect you and you take care of me, in every way I need.’ She nodded her head, before looking nervous.

‘Can…can you tell me what I’m supposed to do?’ She asked nervously and she was the sweetest thing I had ever seen. Her innocence is precious and she makes it too easy to take advantage of it, but I actually find myself not wanting to hurt her, just have her be mine.

‘Oh Kitten, of course I can! I will always help you baby, do you want to start now?’ I offered and she nodded, excitedly with a smile on her face. ‘Okay, can you turn and straddle my lap for me?’ She turned herself and threw her leg over my lap, gasping as I pulled her close and pressed her cunt against my hard cock through our clothes. ‘Good girl. Now just relax, and let me play with you. Can you do that?’ She looked confused but nodded her head anyway. ‘That’s a good girl.’ I leaned back against the tree behind me and pulled her down to press our lips together gently, letting her get used to the feeling as I molded my lips to hers before pulling her back and reaching up, my thumb pulling her chin down to open her mouth before pressing inside, my thumb brushing up her tongue. She looked unsure but soon closed her lips around it, sucking on my thumb like a pacifier…a thought that hardened my cock even more to an almost painful extent. I rolled my hips up into hers and groaned, feeling the heat of her cunt through her pants and wanting to be buried inside of her so badly. I pulled my thumb back, opening her mouth again. ‘Stick your tongue out, Kitten.’ I demanded and she did as she was told instantly. ‘Such a good girl, I need this mouth on my cock baby, can you do that for me?’ She nodded quickly before pulling her tongue back into her mouth and speaking.

‘What’s a cock?’ My eyes widened in shock at just how ignorant she is, but of course she is.

‘Okay…you’re a girl and you have a pretty little pussy right here in your panties, right?’ I unbuttoned her jeans and cupped her pussy in my hand through her cotton panties and she gasped, the new feeling being overwhelming I’m sure. ‘Well I have a cock, and my cock wants more than anything to be buried inside your tight little pussy so that I can make you feel good, but I need you to help me first.’ I took hold of her thighs and lifted her, helping her to her knees right between my legs and she rested her head on my thigh, looking up at me with such an innocent look on her face that I almost felt guilty for corrupting her…almost. I unbuttoned my pants, pulling them and my boxer briefs down just enough that my cock escaped and slapped against my stomach. She stared at it in shock and curiosity, reaching her hand out and sliding her finger up my shaft which sent a chill up my spine. ‘Fuck! Okay Kitten, open those pretty lips for me and stick that tongue out-‘ I grabbed ahold of her jaw firmly and made sure she was looking up at me. ‘Absolutely no teeth, understand?’ She nodded and I leaned down, licking over her tongue and kissing her roughly. ‘God you’re so perfect, do you know that?’ She whined before leaning down and licking her tongue straight up my cock before suckling on the head, she was so good at it that in any other situation I would have been convinced she had been doing this for years. ‘My good girl, so fucking good!’ I pushed her head down slightly and she got the message, taking more of me into her mouth and bobbing her head up and down.

I don’t know if this is the best blowjob I’ve ever had or if the situation is just turning me on so much that it’s ethereal but it feels as if she is sucking my soul out through my cock. If this is how good she is for me in only a few hours, I can’t imagine what kind of whore I can turn this girl into if I just make her feel good and needed.

‘Fuck! Shit, I’m gonna cum…I’m gonna give you a tasty little treat, okay? Are you ready?’ I asked, grunting as I felt that perfect tongue push me over the edge and just as she whined an affirmation I held the back of her head and came hard, straight onto her tongue. I tossed my head back, feeling myself cum more than I ever had before and she swallowed before using her hand to catch what leaked out the corner of her mouth. I had yet to have sex since becoming a full hybrid…maybe the werewolf in me makes me cum more than before…the image of how full I could fill my Kittens cunt was the driving force of my cock hardening all over again so quickly.

‘I like it, tastes yummy.’ Y/n spoke, licking her hand clean and before I knew it I had moved, snatching her up into my arms and pinning her down to the ground underneath me. ‘Klaus?’

‘Daddy…call me Daddy. Can you do that for me, Kitten?’ She smiled up at me, nodding her head before wrapping her arms around my neck and kissing me sweetly. I quickly reached down, pulling her jeans and panties off of her legs which caused her to whimper. ‘What’s wrong?’ She looked around quickly and I turned her eyes back to me. ‘It’s okay Kitten, talk to me.’

‘What if someone wakes up, or Stefan comes back?’ She worried and I just smiled.

‘Don’t worry Y/n, you’re Daddy’s now, and Daddy will never let anyone see your pretty little pussy but me, and if they do I’ll remove their eyes.’ I teased and she giggled as I nipped at her neck gently. Lifting her thighs up around my waist I groaned as my cock touched her pussy. ‘This is gonna be uncomfortable for a second, but I promise Daddy’s gonna make you feel so good that you’ll never want me to stop touching you.’

‘I trust you.’ She mumbled, nervous but allowing me to do as I wanted.

I considered that for a moment. If anyone else told me that they trust me I would call them crazy, it would be a horrible decision, but not her. I want her to trust me…in that moment I realized how much I needed her to love me. Y/n is mine now and there is nothing that will ever be permitted to take her away from me. ‘Good. Daddy will take care of you, just breathe until the discomfort is gone.’ I instructed and pushed my cock into her. She hissed as my eyes rolled back into my head, this girls pussy possibly being the tightest I’ve ever experienced if not just in hundreds of years considering it had been centuries since I had fucked a virgin, but virgin or not she is tight as fuck.

‘Daddy, Ow! Oh! It stings!’ I leaned down, pressing my lips to hers to distract her as I stayed still, allowing her to get used to the feeling before pulling back out. She squealed as I thrust back into her which I loved, setting a steady pace until her face relaxed and I could see that she was now truly enjoying herself. As she did I lifted her legs around my waist and fucked her tight little cunt the way I desperately needed to.

‘Such a good girl letting Daddy fuck you like this, so tight! Perfect little Kitten cunt!’ She whined as I spoke and I looked down to see her with watery eyes and her mouth hanging open.

‘Perfect, Daddy?’

‘Fucking Perfect!’ I confirmed, feeling her pussy squeeze me tighter. The need to be even deeper inside of her was overwhelming and I grabbed her waist, lifting her against my chest and pinning her to the tree beside us, now thrusting up into her even harder. She gasped, wincing and I could see she was in pain but she didn’t object, not once leaving me to ease up just a little bit before feeling my balls tighten and digging my face into her neck, biting into her throat as I came inside of her. Once again the amount of cum that I filled her with was fantastic and as her pussy squeezed down on me I knew that she was enjoying herself as well. ‘Do you like that Kitten? You love being full of me, don’t you?’ She nodded quickly, arms tight around my neck as she held on like she was afraid I would disappear. ‘Don’t worry, Daddy’s gonna fill you with cum everyday from now on.’ I told her, licking over the bloody bite mark on her neck.

‘Really? We can do this again?’

‘Are you kidding? You’re mine now Kitten, remember? Daddy is gonna fuck you everyday, multiple times a day, every which way you can imagine.’ I explained, pulling my cock out of her and looking around briefly before setting her down on a sleeping bag, using tissues to clean us both up.

‘How many ways are there?’ She questioned, excitedly before it was followed by a yawn making me smile.

‘Daddy’s gonna fuck you everywhere we go. In the hotel, in the car while Stefan drives, against every surface I can find!’ I watched as my cum dripped out of her hole, loving the sight of her being so full of me before cleaning her off and pulling her panties and pants back up her legs. ‘You’re a flexible little baby too, aren’t you Kitten?’ I teased, latching her bra before kissing her head, enjoying the topless sight in front of me. ‘That means I can bend you any way I want to stick my cock in you, Daddy’s never gonna stop fucking you, in every hole I can.’ I wrapped my arms around her from behind as she looked for her shirt, kissing behind her ear and hearing her gasp. ‘Do you want to make Daddy feel extra good and let me put my cock in your little asshole?’ I was teasing her, expecting her to be unsure and nervous about my playing with her ass, however she shocked me completely as she turned and pressed her lips to mine hard.

‘Yes Daddy!’ -Kiss- ‘Want your cock!’ -Kiss- ‘All the time Daddy! Anywhere you want, wanna make you happy!’ My eyes widened and I looked down at her in shock.

‘You want to let Daddy stick his cock up your ass?’

‘Will that make you feel good, Daddy?’ She asked as if it was the most important thing in the world to her and I suddenly realized how much of a complete fucking cum slut I’m going to turn my girl into.

‘Yes Kitten, and Daddy will make you feel good too, Daddy wants you full of my cum all day every day forever, I want my cum leaking out of both holes every time we go out, there won’t be a single chance people don’t know that you’re mine.’

‘Okay Daddy.’ I turned her around, pressing my lips to hers and lifting her up against my chest.

‘I think you’re gonna be the best thing that’s happened to me in a long time Kitten.’ As soon as this pack is turned I’m turning her as well and ensuring that I can keep my little mate around for eternity, she’s too delicious not to. I’m going to teach her whatever I want and have the sluttiest girl on earth for the rest of my endless existence.

‘Daddy?!’ Y/n pulled back quickly and I could see the terror in her eyes, shocking me at how quickly she turned.

‘What is it Kitten? Did I scare you? You don’t have to-‘

‘Daddy! Are They Supposed To Look Like That?!’ I turned around and just barely moved before one of the wolves bit into my Kittens shoulder. His eyes were bleeding black blood and he looked like some kind of zombie.

‘No…stay right here, Don’t Move! Do you hear me?!’

‘Yes!’ She responded as I set her on the fallen tree and turned to the 2 Hybrids that were now awake, examining them carefully before one tried to sink his teeth into me and I quickly ripped his heart out. I was trying to figure out what happened when 2 more were suddenly up and pissed off, leading to me tearing their hearts out as well, moving on as the rest of them quickly began jumping up and screeching or growling and trying to bite at me. I had just killed the last one when I suddenly heard Y/n scream and I spun around to see her backing away from a girl who lunged at her. She turned to the trees and I grabbed the women, ripping her heart out before moving to grab Y/n and holding her arm. ‘No! Daddy-Help!’

‘It’s me! It’s okay baby, you’re okay.’ She gasped, breathing a sigh of relief and hugging me tightly, crying into my chest. ‘Daddy will keep you safe, I promise. You’re okay.’

‘Are you?’ I hesitated as she asked and realized I wasn’t. ‘Daddy? Are you okay?’ I nodded before she pulled away and turned to the campsite to see the 15 dead wolves.

‘After all of this, I finally break the curse and I still can’t make more hybrids…FUCK!’ I screamed, knowing my hybrid visage was on display as my anger was running way too high.

‘It’s gonna be okay, we can find out what went wrong and fix it, right?’ Y/n held onto my arm, unafraid of me like everyone else would have been and it was a bit shocking. ‘You waited this long, you’ll make it work! I know it, and I’ll help you!’ I sat down against the tree and sighed heavily, knowing in that moment that as long as Y/n is here, I won’t be alone again…I just need to figure out how to turn her before she’s gone too.

‘Thank you Kitten, you’re Daddy’s good girl.’

Just as I ran my fingers through my hair, trying to figure out what went wrong, Y/n kneeled on the ground in front of me and leaned against me, kissing my jaw. ‘Can I make Daddy feel good again? Maybe it’ll help?’

This girl may just be the death of me. ‘Yes Little Wolf, I think that will help very much…’

Klaus Mikaelson Masterlist

[gabrielsbubblegumbitch]

tw // fatphobia, ed

I'm sorry, I love Hellaverse as much as the next guy but people cheering that "Fizz gained weight and it's a sign of healing!" are not serious. He gained as much weigh as Valentino lost between Masquerade and Welcome to Heaven aka he changed outfit. If they really wanted to convey this massage of healing, there are ways to do it in animation that don't make 50% of people doubt it's even real.

We can love the show and still acknowledge that Vivzie absolutely sucks when it comes to body diversity and 2 of 3 fat characters she has just perpetuate harmful stereotype that being fat goes hand in hand with being rich, lazy, incompetent and lack of self awareness (they are basically Dudleys of this universe). And that is intentional, see, the literal sin of Gluttony (not all fat people are gluttonous obviously but yes, eating more than someone needs - which gluttony means - makes people fat) is right there but apparently she's too cool and too nice to be fat. Beside Mammon and Adam we have Mimzy. Technically she is not that bad but let's be real she's hated more than the rapist or the genocidal zealot. And since writing in Hellaverse is vary smart in my opion I don't believe Mimzy was created to be liked by audience. From interrupting one of the best songs, to crossing Alastor's boundaries and just being a bad friend, she was doomed from the beginning.

None of the characters we should actually root for is fat. And while being fat is not something that "should be explained" by other character's traits, even if we chose to follow this very flawed logic there are plenty of likeable characters that have """a reason""" to be fat. Alastor and Rosie are foodie-coded, Husk drinks a lot of booze, Vox spends most of the time watching TV, Lucifer is depressed and barely leaves his room... Okay but honestly if we reverse this way of thinking and actually stop treating skinny a default body shape there is only one character that has """a reason""" to be this skinny and it's Angel Dust who - as a famous pornstar - has to be commonly (yes we live in the society and porn industry treats fat people like fetish, not actually attractive human beings) desirable and easy to sexualize. Any character in the shows could be fat but choices were made.

And by the way I think they did a terrible job with the whole Fizz's eating disorder thing because when he supposed to be "skinny in the unhealthy way" he looks like 95% of characters.

Anyway, even your favorite media deserves valid criticism.

[mightymizora]

Others have said something about this before but for me, my favourite drivers for Gortash being into The Dark Urge are so linked to him thinking he wants one thing, and finding he desires something else.

Gortash wanting to tame the wild beast of Bhaal, and finding instead that he desires to submit to it. That he finds safety in the killer who says they will kill him last.

Gortash wanting to own the pretty bauble, the perfect creature designed for death, and instead liking the feeling of being desired himself.

Wanting to manipulate them, and then finding instead he craves an equal.

Wanting to prove his genius, and finding that the supposed instrument of murder is actually smart and capable themselves.

Wanting to play with the zealot and make them blasphemous, but instead finding a strange beauty in their devotion.

I love when it starts from his usual playbook of manipulation and dominance of the tyrant and then finds something much more dangerous, intimate, and damning for both parties.

[dailyadventureprompts]

Villain: Cult of the Earth in Arms

Camped out in remote mines and fortified wilderness compounds, these zealots toil and train and stockpile for a war that may never come, dreaming of the day they will march to glorious victory over their hated foe.. whoever that happens to be week to week.

The cult has many names and supposed patrons: deposed human kings, exiled gnomish geniuses, scornful aspects of dwarven gods. All of these are mere proxies for the cult’s true master Kurtulmak, a bitter god of warfare and mining who takes the form of a kobold who’s ire manifests as poison that dribbles from both his jaw and tailbarbs. 

Like many gods of wicked war, Kutulmak cares nothing for whatever cause his unwitting cultists call him to, feeding instead off of their resentment, suppressed fear, and ever mounting bloodlust. It doesn’t matter whether they are a paranoid militia prepping for a conflict they will never see, or bitter partisans waging guerrilla war against a populace long since seeking peace, they all feed Kurtulmak’s desire for intractable conflict and indelible resentments. 

The cult of the Earth in Arms tends to operate in isolation, pertaining to self sufficiency while raiding, extorting, or fleecing others for what they need. They entrench themselves in an area, filling it with traps and hidden fortifications, while sinking tunnels deep into the earth in search of resources that can help to fill their arsenals. Iron for blades and armour is obviously prized, but copper and tin for cannons and saltpetre for blasting powder are likewise prime targets. Often they will use captives to work these claims and the foundries they feed, as the cultists often consider drugework below the dignity of born warriors such as themselves. 

Adventure Hooks

An uptick in disappearances puts the party on the trail of a slaving operation, funneling bodies into a band of backwoods cultists working a hidden gem mine. After they’ve cleared the bastards out, the party might have the opportunity to make the operation legitimate if they put in the elbow grease and promise the authorities their due. 

The local lord thought he was very clever, operating a hidden foundry out of the old dwarven ruins to produce weapons and artillery in preparation for a campaign against his liege. As it turns out the reason the ruins were abandoned in the first place was because they sat on top of a magical layline, and all the smelting and quenching has attracted the attention of several rogue elementals.  Now there’s a scattering of earth-hulks marauding through the countryside and a team of mephits who’re flitting about with a cannon in tow. 

After suffering a crushing defeat, the general of the imperial army fell back into the mountains, her forces becoming little more than bandits in ensuing years until her scouts came back with news of drakes nesting in the region. Nearly a generation of arduous training and rearing since her defeat, she’s returned to retake the lands she lost with a flight of lesser dragons at her back.. Lands the party just happens to occupy. 

Artsource

[dangermousie]

I genuinely started screaming at this scene. Because JW gave info about bribes to the reporter right before confirmation hearing for his father which was nuts enough but unsurprisingly daddy was able to weasel out of it. And then this happens:

Look at Ju Won's face. He's bracing himself. He knows. HE KNOWS!!!!

This is a man who was expecting it. And not just because of his conscience or w/e, because I 100% bet he planned it. The thing is, it's an objectively an insane thing to do. Running your own unauthorized sting operation during which the mole dies because she comes across a serial killer and which you have by now reported to the proper police auditing authority is not something for which one needs to be arrested during a freaking confirmation hearing for one's father. It's highly unlikely to even be an offense from which you will be dismissed from the force let alone jailed. And both he and Dong Sik have to know this - so it has to be part of some sort of plan. (And also the thing is, Ju Won genuinely believes he should be punished and he's asked for punishment during the audit and got none because nobody wanted to piss off his father. I am sure at least some of this for Ju Won is driven not just by desire to crack the case about DS' sister but by his desire to be punished and if they won't do so otherwise, he will force the issue.)

The way he raises his cuffed hands when asked if he remembers LGH? I love that so much! Ju Won's belief in taking responsibility - not just by others but by himself - is probably the best thing about him. He is my favorite character in a drama full of great characters because he's such an absolutist idealist who applies his insane standards not just to others but to himself whatever the cost. He's a zealot and he's willing to immolate himself for what he thinks is just and I just love love love that in a character. (I mentioned before that he made me think of CWN in 2ha in insistence the same rules and punishment apply to him as to others; even if everyone else knows this is supposed to be only on paper he refuses to live in that reality. And the penalty for violating the law would not stop him from doing what he thinks is needed, but he will also insist on punishment. He believes that it's fair to pay the price for what one's done and it's worth it. He's whatever the opposite of a shirker is and I love that.)

Look at the looks on their faces. This was totally planned by them both or I will eat my nonexistent hat.

I think this is what draws DS to JW btw - he has been surrounded by people who shied away from facing their wrongdoings or the wrongdoings of their loved ones, who tried to hide them or forget them or ignore them - that even includes the Chief let alone everyone else - and then here is Ju Won who comes in as an awkward by the book martinet with seemingly unrealistic standards and HE LIVES UP TO THEM and keeps living up to them in insane circumstances. He will never hide or ignore or try to justify anything of his or his close ones. This is one person DS can always be certain of in that regard. The rest of the characters all have some sort of lever than can be found if one pushes hard enough to make them deviate; but not Ju Won. Because to deviate would be to destroy the basis of his self. It would never be worth it to him because he would not be able to live with it; the pain of whatever happens if he adheres to his code is immaterial compared to the destruction of him at his base that would happen if he failed to adhere.

[llovelymoonn]

on longing, longing, longing

sanna wani my grief, the sun: “tragedy” \\ bill jacobson interim couple (1994) \\ via @deleteddeleted \\ the velvet vampire (1971) dir. stephanie rothman (via @365filmsbyauroranocte​) \\ yves olade hylas, on desire \\ marlene dumas homage to michelangelo (2012) \\ jack devilliers les mains [“the hands”] \\ david rokeah zealots of yearning \\ john everett millais elizabeth siddal - study for ophelia (1852) \\ ingeborg bachmann darkness spoken: the collected poems: “songs in flight”

kofi

[melonisopod]

Really surprised at how well Canto III tackles the whole “roboticism” concept that often comes up in sci-fi but handles it in a really nuanced way. An entire town specializes in robot prosthetics, and as such they really push it and advertise it as “trendy” and it leads to Sinclair feeling stripped of his bodily autonomy, expected to undergo surgery for the “trend” his parents and sister undergo.

But then there is the flip side of this, are people with prosthetics inherently less human? Usually when people with mechanical augments crop up in fiction they’re nearly always portrayed as evil or at least dependent in a way that calls their humanity into question. And Limbus Company flipped that trope on its head with Nagel und Hammer’s crusade against anyone with prosthetics, deeming them all less than human and worthy of torture and death. But then, its members still augment themselves with the HP bullets and E.G.O. corrosion that still twists them into something horrifying. They either fail to see the hypocrisy or just don’t care.

Sinclair’s autonomy and desire to not get a prosthesis is respected, but Dante’s own humanity despite having a prosthetic head is also emphasized, with the Sinners all declaring that they would never look at Dante as less than a person and defend them against Nagul und Hammer’s onslaught. and the way N&H’s fanaticism is presented first and depicted as utterly horrifying, and it’s made clear that these are just crazed zealots indoctrinated in a violent cult, it avoids falling into “Both sides have a point” bullshit while also making Sinclair’s situation understandable.

I’m not done the chapter though yet cause this dungeon is kicking my ass and I’m desperately trying to grind enough to level my whole team. I’ve had to start over the dungeon because it doesn’t let you switch out alts once you select them.