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tarisilmarwen · 9 months

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Rebels Rewatch: "Through Imperial Eyes"

Spy antics, infiltrations, and endless stress holy crap.

Obligatory live reaction version. Be forewarned there's a lot of incoherent screaming in that one.

IIRC from the Rebels Recon for this episode they had briefly considered doing the whole episode as a POV shot from Kallus, which would have been cool and interesting and very artistic as a narrative decision but which they probably realized very quickly would have been a crapton of work they'd never finish on time.

So a bit of a compromise with this opening shot here, still getting across the pun, as we are literally looking through an Imperial's eyes.

Poor man looks exhausted.

They still haven't started strip mining the planet surface just yet. That wouldn't happen until right when the factories were ramping up production in preparation to start shoving TIE Defenders off the line.

So Thrawn literally had his funding pulled last minute. No wonder he was so cranky in the finale lol.

Lyste has put the light carrier on full red alert for a stolen shuttle. Not the first time he'll be flaunting his authority this episode.

Hi Ezra!

Straining the limits of Kallus' poker face already lol.

Love this little uncertain look before he takes the opportunity to sass that Stormtrooper.

Troopers once again just bullying around a teenager for no reason. Ezra's literally their favorite target for this, even when the others have gotten captured they aren't manhandled nearly as much.

I mean, not that I'm complaining or anything...

I do remember thinking that this seemed a rather dangerous course of action, and it's a bit at odds with the events of "The Antilles Extraction". Despite Ezra's reassurances to Kallus that most troopers don't actually know what he looks like now, he still has a pretty recognizable face. That was why they sent in Sabine the last time.

Buuuuuuuut Sabine's not here anymore. And they can't exactly send in the aliens of the group either. Rex and Kanan could have infiltrated by themselves though. So why exactly is Ezra sent in alone with just Chopper and AP-5 as backup?

He must have insisted on being involved in the extraction plot, like he couldn't have been for Skystrike, for the same irrational emotional reasons--because his sense of hyper-responsibility means that he will deliberately take on the most danger in order to prevent any potential harm or hurt coming to the people he cares about. It has to be him, because if he takes all the risks, no one else has to, and no one else will get hurt.

This loops back into his guilt over Malachor. Ezra's been projecting his shame and fears about Maul, about his failure there, onto everything else. He's still a bit prickly and suspicious towards Kallus several times this episode, not willing to trust so easily again and repeat his mistakes.

"I have to do this, I have to destroy the Sith and fix my mess, I have to protect my friends." Ezra's been trying to take on way more than he can actually handle, and it's gotten him in trouble multiple times this season. At Reklam, when he leaves himself for the last to get out and winds up stranded and plummeting to his doom. In the krykna cave, when he insists on going in alone without Kanan and nearly gets mulched. On Dathomir, when he nearly winds up possessed by Nightsister spirits, just to get a hint at the "key to destroy the Sith".

And here, where things very nearly go completely pear-shaped due to Thrawn unexpectedly turning up, and Lyste hoping to present Ezra as a bid for the Grand Admiral's favor.

I'll talk more about this character arc, as I've said, in "Twin Suns" when we get to the end of it.

For now let me just enjoy the hysterical strain in Kallus's voice as he bitches about being rescued. David Oyelowo does "shrill and full of stress" really well.

I love this expression so much, he cannot comprehend the Rebels risking so much just for him it's so sweet.

Despite his complaining, Ezra looks very ready to maybe trust Kallus, look at this face.

Feigning prisoner mistreatment shouldn't have worked as well as it did but lajhafksfjhkjh this is the Empire.

Thrawn conveniently turning up right when the Rebels have made a move again. It's uncanny how the man can do this. It never felt like normal narrative contrivance it always held just a bit of uncertainty and paranoia about it all.

So yeah ONE THING THIS EPISODE DOES REALLY REALLY WELL IS AMP UP THAT SUSPENSE AND TENSION. I was so anxious watching this the first time, pins and needles, it was effective but horrible.

Ezra with that brief fearful flash of, "Ohhhhh crap, we did not plan for this."

Knew from the moment we panned down to Ezra's helmet on the floor there with that brief music box snippet of Thrawn's theme that it would come into play.

Ezra's hidden cheeky smiles at AP-5. <3

And a nice little callback to "A Princess On Lothal".

See, this is what I'm talking about there's literally no reason to smack his head here, they're just being petty and mean.

Love the subtle worry in Kanan's eyes here. <3

Hi Brunsen! Hi Titus! Hi Slavin!

This moment here in front of the door serves two purposes effortlessly. First, it lets Lyste kick the dog by pulling a Karen on this poor guard, so we're not as sad when he's framed for the Fulcrum deal later. (Though I was still a little bit sad, he was pitiful and didn't deserve that.) Second, it establishes the obstacle we're going to have to overcome later.

....All right, fine, the Thrawn girlies can have one cap.

I'm pretty sure this music cue is a carryover from TCW.

God the fondness and admiration in Kallus' voice at seeing Yularen, ouch. This is a man he used to look up to and now he's betraying everything his old mentor stood for.

Right, so obviously showing them the map was a ploy, but it's wonderfully clever of him. Thrawn likes to throw curveballs at his opponents to see how they react and adapt. He develops the same kind of villainous respect for Kallus that he has for Hera, though more to do with how Kallus outmaneuvered him in the mind game and spy espionage thing.

Kinda dig that Pryce wasn't in the previous meetings because her loyalty is without question.

Also yes, I do crack!ship it a little bit.

Oh hey, the moment that inspired my "Mirrorverse" AU!

Will never not laugh at Kallus' tired, "Please stop that." at Ezra on the ceiling of the cell.

It's kind of astonishing how good Ezra looks in Imperial outfits. Really too bad his interactions with Kallus are limited because they bounce off each other in one of the most interesting and entertaining ways.

"Oh good, the thankless job." AP-5 is the best and I will hear no slander.

I was... unclear on how exactly the decoy planet was supposed to have fooled Thrawn. Still am, a bit. Surely the man has a photographic memory, right?

But then maybe that was one of the things that pinged him as being too clever for Lyste to have done.

Hilarious that Kallus managed to pull a Stealth Hi Bye on a Jedi.

This scene is so well done in the tension department. The cloying silence. Thrawn calmly walking in to check the map. The sudden attack from the sentries with a flare of dramatic music. Ezra feeling like he's just barely hidden out of sight behind the retaining wall. (Once again, symbolically using Sabine's artwork as a shield, I mean what?)

And props to Thrawn, he does really well surviving against his own sentry droids. I'm down with letting the man have a little physical combat to show off his athletic prowess. As a treat.

And I dig that the override code is his bodyguard's name. :)

This expression is delightfully chilling. The man is seething.

Another episode which does a good job handling Kanan's blindness, Kanan has to ask for clarification on what Rex is "Woah"ing over and he doesn't recognize Pryce by voice so he doesn't know not to try the Mind Trick on her.

And again, the competence of other Imperials increases dramatically with Thrawn merely present. Yularen immediately finds a shuttle asking to dock right after an assassination attempt fishy. Pryce tries to arrest them immediately and recognizes the attempt at a Jedi Mind trick. Thrawn makes people smarter just by being in the room.

My girlboss just straight up Thunderdome-ing it with Rex here. I love that she's so physically tough and brutal. <3

Lyste still would have gotten in trouble for stunning Pryce here, just saying. That bit of idiocy is all on him.

Awww a snippet of the "Shenanigans" cue!

Like I said, Lyste is kind of pitiable here. I wonder if they ever let him go, at least for the "treasonous spy" thing.

Kallus you're playing it up just a little too much here, my love.

Gods, it's just instantaneous, all he has to do is look at the helmet for a second and he recognizes, "That's Sabine Wren's work."

And then immediately draws the line from "Sabine Wren painted this helmet." to "Clearly it was done for Ezra Bridger to wear."????

See, even Thrawn can tell how close they are and how important they are to each other. He must have noticed from, idk, security holos or something that Ezra likes to wear things that Sabine's painted for him.

Thrawn sounds really smug here, I think he'd long suspected Kallus for Fulcrum and is gleeful at being right.

He's such an arrogant prick. "That's why you've been deceived." oh shut up you pompous ass just because you're super smart doesn't mean you need to be condescending about it.

And the "Thrawn's Web" organs to close us out. Nice.

*points inarticulately*

This episode! Many much good! Stress! Espionage! Cat and mouse mind games! Ezra peril! Did I mention the stress?

Hhhhhnnnnnghhh I love this one so much, it's my favorite of the season, just barely eeking out "Twin Suns".

It's all hits from here, baby. (Maybe? I don't actually remember "Double Agent Droid" that well I don't rewatch it often. We'll see.)

#star wars #star wars rebels #ezra bridger #agent kallus #grand admiral thrawn #rebels rewatch #liveblog #cute boys in peril

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ilovescarletwitch · 6 months

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Anakin's Tusken Massacre

I just completely reject that part of the plot. Because it's insanely racist, misogynistic and out of character and counterproductive to the plot and character development.

First, the Tuskens. They are supposedly the native species of Tatooine, have suffered because of the settlers and because of their suffering and their own harsh culture they lash out at every settler, even those who don't deserve it. So far, so good. If Shmi was killed during a raid to the farm for water they feel the settlers steal, the story would make sense.

But they don't. They just find her out gathering mushrooms and kidnap her. Why? Why not just kill her and try to raid the farm for medical supplies, food, water? Shmi probably had very little things of use on her and those could be taken off her dead body. If they wanted to intimidate the farmers, to remind them they were there and willing to keep killing them until none was left, Shmi 's corpse would work better than kidnapping her.

Moreover, let's say a small group of them kidnaps Shmi and takes her back to the village so they can satisfy their sadism by torturing her. Why did the rest of the tribe allow it? Even among harsh societies, they are still people that will protest someone else's mistreatment. Especially after thirty or so angry farmers gathered to get her back. Yes, the Tuskens won but even fighting was against their best interests. It meant they still risked their own people dying, valuable supplies destroyed during the fight and after it was all over they would possibly have to expend medical supplies to treat their wounded. Why not use Shmi as a bargaining chip against the farmers, to try to get asupplies, food, water, anything of value the farmers could get more easily than the Tuskens could?

Lastly, it makes no sense that they kept Shmi alive for so long. They had her for weeks. Which means that they must have given her food and water and even treated some of her wound for her to last that long. Why would they do that? So they could keep torturing her? Hadn't the novelty worn off after the first couple of days? They weren't using her as a work slave for all the jobs they didn't want to do themselves either, or she would have been kept in a far better state. Even if a small group of Tuskens wanted to keep her as a convenient outlet for their own violence, I see little reason everyone else would allow it and spend their limited resources on her, especially after they were already made the targets of an attack by the farmers. They would just dump her body and move on.

Essentially the subplot is, those native savages are a danger to struggling farmers and will absolutely kidnap women and torture and abuse them for fun, but it's wrong to kill all of them and their families because we are the Civilised White People. Further carried across by the white man, the son of the white woman they kidnapped and tortured for no reason, killing them all and then feeling bad about it and the other white woman telling him that he had no choice.

The Tuskens were made to act against their own best interests by the story and we are all just supposed to accept that of course they would act like this, nothing unusual about those savages kidnapping a woman and torturing her for fun.

Then, Padme. Why wouldn't she tell anyone? Let's say that Anakin had an honest psychotic breakdown, wasn't in control of himself etc. The best thing for Anakin would be to get help. She wanted to protect him, but let's be real. It's highly unlikely the Republic would ever care about a group of Tuskens. It was out of Republic borders, ,the Tuskens were notorious for being violent and xenophobic and either way the Republic had a bad track record of treating decently those different than them and had ignored worse crimes on Tatooine for longer. The Jedi didn't as of yet have the authority to imprison anyone, Anakin's resignation and Padme's power should be enough to protect him. Padme should have urged Anakin to check himself in the space equivalent of a psychiatric clinic. At the very least, advice him against continuing to wield a lightsaber and go to the battlefield where his mental health would deteriorate further.

Shmi herself. The prequels have to include her death. She is a narrative device, the force pushing her son to firm his resolve that he will stop people he loves from dying. But there is some glaring misogyny in having one of the two female characters in the prequels randomly kidnapped and tortured to death just to cause the male character pain.

The plot. What was the point of that scene, why was it even included? Yes, Shmi needed to die. It's the prequels, the outcome is already written in stone. Anakin needs to develop an obsession with stopping people from dying. But this subplot just throws a wrench into the storytelling. Because t is never mentioned again. Anakin kills everyone, innocent along with the guilty and then goes along and remains a hero and a good guy for three years. His crime, his guilt, it becomes irrelevant. His visions are only mentioned again when he starts having similar dreams about Padme but they make no reference to what Anakin did.

Anakin killing the Jedi children, right when he is about to become a father himself, is supposed to be the climax of the prequels. He is Fallen. Padme decides she can't follow him anymore. Obi-Wan hunts him,fights him and as a result of that Anakin loses everything. Padme, his children, his freedom, his health. He spends years trapped in what is essentially a torture device, bound to a monster who delights in his misery, trapped in a cycle of suffering and evil deeds. Anakin killing children in the past and remaining good and nothing changing, essentially cheapens the whole thing

Finally, Anakin's character development. Anakin was supposed to be a good person. Otherwise, there wouldn't be any good for Luke to appeal to. Darth Vader was terrible. He was complicit in the destruction of whole planets, he tortured prisoners, he killed his own officers. What was the point of having him commit atrocities as a literal teenager, except contradicting the OT trilogy where Luke says his father was once a good man? The OG movies had been out for literal decades by that point. Everyone knew that Anakin Skywalker would become Darth Vader and would do terrible things. It would be far more important to to show Anakin's potential fo compassion, for love , for good. To essentially make the audience forget Anakin would inevitably become Darth Vader and have everyone mourn his Fall as a great tragedy, a loss for good. Similar to Rogue One when we all knew they would die and yet people still cried about it or were at the edge of their seats waiting for a miraculous last minute rescue.

#star wars meta #anakin skywalker

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rhube · 10 months

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The Case for Limiting Personal Wealth

Unpay-walled link to the New Yorker article 'The Titan Submersible was an "Accident Waiting to Happen"'

I'm reading the New Yorker article linked above, which contains acres of quotes from people warning Stockton Rush about how dangerous Titan was. It's hammering home to me what I have believed for several years:

Allowing people to have more than a certain amount of money to personally dispose of is catastrophically dangerous to themselves and others.

No single person is capable of responsibly managing that much cash. And the possession of riches itself warps perception dangerously. This is powerfully obvious when you read how Rush responded to being challenged. The way he first limited what things he would allow his safety expert to assess, and then fired him when he wrote a report - specifically so there would be a written record of him telling Rush that even the things he was allowed to assess were horrifically unsafe.

We're talking about a vessel Rush planned to enter himself.

And then he asked his Finance officer to be the pilot. This worried her so much that she found a new job ASAP, practically screaming *Scotty voice*, "I'm an accountant, man, not a submarine pilot!"

What this illustrates, apart from anything else, is the capacity money gives to people to say no to others without consequence, and how this makes them inherently incapable of judging when it's appropriate to listen to others and doubt themselves.

That is fantastically dangerous.

Not only should we tax away the possibility of billionaires existing in order to ensure fairer distribution of money, but we must do it for public safety. We need to prevent super rich people from being decision-makers of significant power. Their very wealth makes them collossally BAD at it.

It is unescapable, reading quotations like:

“I had come across this business anomaly I couldn’t explain... If three-quarters of the planet is water, how come you can’t access it?” (Rush)

What utter nonsense. Buzzwords instead of a brain. Meanwhile, experts on deep-ocean exploration (all of whom must be risk-takers to even consider that) say things like:

"You can’t cut corners in the deep,” (Rob McCallum)

The pre-exiting condition of Being Rich should automatically discount rich folk from being CEOs or entering governmental positions.

This wouldn't just ensure fairer salaries for all, and a redistribution of extreme inherited wealth to those who need it, but would prevent people who are inherently bad at assessing risk from endangering others.

This doesn't mean that people who are good at their jobs shouldn't be rewarded, both financially and with responsibility that reflects their good judgement. Rather, there should be a ceiling and more sensible scale for compensation, not just to ensure people at the bottom of the scale get their fair share, but to ensure the judgement of our leaders does not become warped.

This would also help temper the temptation for unscrupulous ladder-climbers to succeed through bad behaviour and backstabbing. There is less incentive to be a conniving shit if you are well-compensated at all levels and you aren't given unhinged freedoms and cash at the top.

This is an expansion of thoughts I posted to Mastodon earlier. I just felt in my bones that this was an insight that I hadn't quite seen captured before. (It probably has been - for all I know, there are studies, but I hadn't seen it expressed quite like this.) I know I and others have pointed out the limitations on an human of managing an amount of money they cannot visualise, but this article made me feel slapped in the face with the fact that it ISN'T SIMPLY that inherited wealth enables stupid people to be in charge of things they can't handle; nor is it just that wealth and power insulate you from harsh realities and consequences.

It is is that the kind of insulation from reality and consequence that (literally) unimaginable wealth brings *makes* you stupid. Or, more precisely, it makes you lose all grasp of certain important self-checking mechanisms that make you doubt yourself, listen to others, and have any capacity at all to assess risk.

Your ability to buy away most problems seems to make a lot of people utterly incapable of processing that some risks cannot be bought off.

Obviously not all super rich people are as insulated from reality as Musk and Rush. Bill Gates seems to retain a modicum of sense - setting up a foundation to help you manage the disposal of your cash is a step in the right direction. But you don't have to look very far to find callous things he's done that many people would be aghast at. Philanthropy is simply a way to buy good press.

As I have said before, no on should have the right to dispose of that amount of cash by themselves. It is enormous hubris to even suppose that you can choose by yourself the right people to manage a billion pounds.

But it's not just that. Money makes you stupid. We all need to know what it is to be told no and forced to accept it with good grace. Whenever you reach a level of money that means you don't have to accept 'no' as an answer, ever, that amount of money is making you stupid, and for your own good, some of it should be taken away.

#money #billionaires #stockton rush #titan

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majoraop · 2 years

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Sanji and Luffy - Whole Cake Island arc analysis

I remember reading so many complaints about our dear Sanji when this arc was still ongoing!

Sure, he acted weakly at the beginning, but wasn't his humanity the main point of it? And what best defines the frailness of human beings if not weakness and the fear of death? This arc showed Sanji struggling with human issues and insecurities, which derived from the lack of love from his father and the bullying of his brothers. He was even driven to suicide thoughts at some point before he finally reacted and started to oppose a fate that had appeared ineluctable to him.

And what could I say about Luffy? Many analyses have been written about him, and all of them pretty much agree on the fact that he's one of the most egoistic characters ever created. People in the OP universe are lucky that he's so good-natured, otherwise, the story of this manga would have been a completely different one. But Luffy knows the importance of having other people around: being alone is the worse pain for him, as he stated as a child. Still, he values freedom over anything else. Instead of being a loner, though, he expects other people to achieve freedom as well (without turning into a forcibly idealistic character: he isn't a hero, but a pirate). Even if, to achieve it, you need to rip your own hands or put at risk the safety of the people you love, as in Sanji's case in this arc.

Because, from Luffy's point of view, Sanji would never be happy living like a tool in the hands of his family.

Losing loved ones is terrible, but submitting to abuse and tyranny is even worse for Luffy. It would mean being dragged into a spiral of desperation where life loses its meaning. Luffy is an extreme character, but only such a character can become the King of Pirates. However, Luffy needs his comrades to achieve that. With them, he's honest from the start: once someone becomes his comrade, he doesn't give up on them. In this, Luffy is similar to Big Mom, who doesn't let his family and allies easily leave her crew. But he's also her opposite: he doesn't threaten his comrades; rather, he chooses to starve to death to make his point. Luffy is a stubborn, even childish character, but also a character that you cannot corrupt or enslave.

A fellow OP fan once told me that Luffy is pure craziness; you can't stop someone like him. So, since Luffy knows that Sanji's greatest joy is cooking and Luffy himself needs a cook in his crew, he doesn't want him to give up on him. Later, when Sanji finds a starving Luffy by Kingbaum's "corpse", his smile is beautiful: Luffy had kept his promise to him, hadn't given up on him no matter the price to pay (and Sanji knows too well what it means to be starving).

Unlike the most popular opinion in the fandom, I started to like Sanji more during the Fish-Man Island arc and onward. It was there that Oda began showing Sanji's most human side, imho. His innocent (yes, perverted, and yet still innocent and pure in his way), even romantic side. Sure, Sanji may act sexist sometimes, but that's beyond the point. Characters, unless specifically created for that purpose, aren't "social justice warriors". Characters can represent good, bad, and everything in-between concerning values, thoughts, and so on. Characters can also represent outdated chivalrous behaviours. Characters can have their silly moral codes and flaws and even act irrationally sometimes. And an author—a mangaka in this case—should be free to represent everything they wish in their own story. Besides, as much as I admire Oda as an author, he's "just" a single person. He can't address every single real-life issue in One Piece no matter how big a story it is. He has his bias, preferences, and limits as anyone else. When reading a story and about its characters, we must remember that they weren't created in a vacuum. And Sanji is probably inspired by some kind of men that do exist (or existed).

One last thing: while reading the Whole Cake Island arc, I had started to suspect that Sanji would eventually "awake" his modified genes. This happened later than when I had expected, but I was right. Does this make him less human and more like his brothers now? I don't believe so. I don't think someone can just get rid of their empathy—surely not someone like Sanji.

Characters (well-written characters) would be far from being perfect human beings if they were real. There is nothing wrong with that. They can make mistakes and can be not strong enough to make the best or right choices, to say the right thing, or simply be an example. They can be created as just entertainment, or to provoke thoughts in the readers (or both).

The bottom line is that Sanji is a great character also because of his flaws, and so is Luffy.

@onepiece-bingo: posted for the “free” prompt of my bingo card! ^^

#opspoilers #sanji #vinsmoke sanji #luffy #monkey d luffy #opanalysis #one piece character analysis #onepiece #one piece #majoraop #suicide tw #abuse tw #queued

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abysscronica · 2 years

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Just curious on your opinion, so we see in Captive how much it fucks with Kid emotionally when someone who’s a prominent figure in his crew dies (rip my big boy :’)✊🏻) so in your opinion how would Kid handle someone like Heat/Wire or god forbid even Killer dying in battle? How would he manage to keep sailing on without them especially if it was his first mate and partner?

Hey, sorry for the wait! Thank you for the ask and the love for Thorin. ❤️

Someone already asked about Kid reacting to Killer's death, so you can find my answer in this post.

As for Heat and Wire, I feel like Kid would be devastated. Depending on the circumstances of their death, he may react differently.

For example, if he was around and couldn't do anything to help them or (god forbid!) they died to protect him, he'd be utterly destroyed. Remember Luffy in Sabaody when he lost his crew to Kuma? That, but in a more devastating, blood-frenzy rage.

Differently, if they died during a battle while he was somewhere else dealing with other shit, for example during the war in Onigashima, he wouldn't react quite as badly. Heat and Wire are probably among the originals from his crew (they come from the South Blue just like Kid and Killer, so they may have been friends from before), so he'd still be devastated to lose such fundamental members. They mean a lot to him, we see it in Onigashima when he comments "I've lost sight of Heat's group". Kid references Heat specifically among everyone else, which means he must be a key figure in the crew. But. At the same time Kid's ambition knows few limits, they're all warriors aware of the risks, and he still would have a crew to lead on. Moreover, Killer would be around to support him and grieve with him. So I think Kid would hold their loss in his heart forever and use it as a further reason to never back down, not after his friends gave their life for his (their) dream.

#eustass kid #kid pirates #killer #heat #wire

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six40seven · 1 year

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September 16-18th

I didnt go to school. I told Niki i was feeling too sick to and she just nodded and said it was fine. Just by her body language i could tell she was distracted by something else and i didnt want to bother her more then necessary. I wanted to say thanks to all the people on here sending kind messages and concerned asks. I am okay. I was just a little rattled these last few days and well, of course today. I havent slept in almost 32 hours. There is no way in hell im closing my eyes and waking up somewhere strange again with no recollection of how i got there.

This doesnt make sense, and i can tell youre telling me in your head “Ran you need to sleep.” And i know you’re right but it was just horrifying. I have a hard enough time remembering what i do when im awake. Why would this suddenly start happening to me. Its unfair. I was doing fine. Now im not, and i dread falling asleep again. Im too afriad to ask Niki to instal a lock of sorts so last night and the night before and really any time I’ve been feeling the urge to sleep.. well I’ve began to tie my foot to my post. ITS NOT TIGHT. I just dont want to wander off again.

Fall break is soon. I mean sorta. I attempted to attend school online the second day home after the ordeal but my connection was too shit. I guess its the trees blocking the signal. Or maybe the mountains. Speaking of trees, i havent left my house since that day. I dont want to risk whatever happened happening again, worse while im awak. Not that i think it will but the way the trees just… tempt me sometimes. I cant risk walking to the bus or walking even out of my house. WHEERE i use to consider it a blessing to not live in the town houses, i now regret never moving closer. Fuck. Its been so long since I’ve been outside im worried my skin will fall off my body and ill die if i spend one more day barred in my room.

Its okay, for the most part. besides the natural (?) urge i have to be outside all the time. Ive sort of forgotten to document much these o past few days. But i dont think anything else significant happened. As far as related to me. Niki didnt come back the first night and i spent all that time in ym room with the blind drawn and the lights on. I was afriad if i turned the lights off i would nod off. I ended up watching YouTube and Netflix on my laptop as well as cleaning my entire room.

Usually my room is a trash heap, i like it that way, its like having my own nest. But that first night. I couldn’t stand all the things and i pretty much Ed cleaned everything top to bottom in less then 3 hours. I found a few interested things while i was doing that, including but not limited to: a box full of my old Polaroids and camera, a stuffed animal i thought i had lost which went back onto my bed, and a total of 20 spare dollars made mostly out of 1 Dollar bills and quarters.

The only thing of real interest was the Polaroid camera. I thought i lost that thing years and years ago. I only know i had one at all because i have some older pictures pinned places and tucked into my phone case. Theyre all of people i dont really know but i like to think i do so i can carry some part of them with me. They must have been important to me at some point yk. So i decided to look through and sort out any of the Polaroids i remeber or anything like that. These are my findings. I’ll explain them after i show them to you.

starting at the left top and going left to right. It reads Nov 1st 20##. all of these are from when i was a kid. maybe when i was in 4th or 5th grade? Im not entirely sure the exact age i was. The photo shown is a picture i must have taken of some sort of important journal entry, i cant really read it but at least if i ever needed to remeber taking a picture.. I remember, thanks past me.

The next one, in order, is a picture of two shadows. Maybe three. Probably me. Maybe Niki… or Eryn. we were close when we were kids and hes in two of these already. So ill just mention him. idk if he will be okay with me talking about him on here. I dont think he knows i have this account. hopefully he doesnt find it. Not that i would care very much. He just doesnt like me. The caption is just a date. oct 3rd. no year. I wonder when it happened? sometime in my childhood probably. I havent used this camera in years and years. I lost it so long ago.

The third is a weirdly saturated picture of a park in my town. The bigger town. Its just weird. And the caption says… evacuating or something. Its sorta weird. also Niki might have taken this picture because her name is on it too. Seems like her type of thing. from what i remeber as a kid, when we still lived in the big town, she was into weird saturated pictures. Something about scene. I dont know really.

The fourth is on the second line of pictures i found in the Box. On the bottom left. It says July 20## again sometime in my childhood. It shows aforementioned Eryn crouching ont he ground showing something to everyone. Or the viewer. I can see myself, or younger me. Younger me off to the side. Someone else took this picture. I dont remeber this happening. But it was important enough to keep so there it is. Thats pretty much it.

The fifth, wow thats a lot of numbers. Its got a smiley face :) on it. and its a picture of the lake. Yk the one bordering the left side of the bigger town. Its one of the smaller more muddy parts so its all gross. Probably from a hike that i wanted to remeber with Niki or something. I loved the lake when i was a kid. It was fun to swim in but after… after awhile i stopped going and then it closed because of something weird and now you can only go hiking near and around it.

The sixth. A picture of me and ****** hugging. Eryn in the background. It reads Eryn & ##### July. Its a cute picture. I dont know… who ****** is? Yeah i dont know. but i must have known them at one point because thats them. Yeah. They look familiar in the worse way and i pretty much threw that one back in the box as soon as I could. I dont like lookign at it. My stomach hurts when i do.

The seventh. And last a picture of a cat. Even when i was a kid i also apparently liked cats. It reads Spring 20##.

So yeah. I just wanted to say im glad i was able to find them and document them somewhere. I also thought while im explaing photos and stuff ill go into a little detail about what i discovered from that night. Posted on here.

The first piece is clearly a path somewhere in the forest. If i were to say, somewhere further in the mountains, near where the older remains of mines are. The only thing wrong about this piece is that…. When i posted it, theres no wya for there to have been snow. So either the photo is altered in some way, which is unlikely, because from what i can tell it was posted in the middle of the night. Or it was actually snowing wherever i was. even though all the previous days it had been raining.

The next picture looks like some sort of underground tunnel, lined with bricks and ending in step leading up to a barred and maybe locked? I dont know, barred iron gate. I have never seen that place before. Ive been in a lot of abandoned buildings that I’ve found near here but I’ve never seen something like this. The only explaination i can give for the location is possibly a sewer enterance somewhere in the basement of one of the older buildings, not from the big town but rather from the smaller town nearer to my house. Again, it looks like its snowing. Which makes no sense in any context, since it was snowing when i woke up (even though i said i thought it was) and because if this was underground where would snow be coming from? The title says… I heard you. Im here. I dont remeber this. Obviously. and i dont know who i would have.. heard? It doesnt make any sense.

The third picture… i dont have much to say. It looks dark. Maybe its related to the second picture, maybe its on the otherside of the gate. But I’ve never seen a place that dark before. Especially if it has walls. which I think it does. so it must be in a building somewhere out in the forest. Sorta supports my abandoned building theory. Or abandoned mine shaft? I have no idea. But the capture is clearly a long hallway. the caption says something is wrong. No duh. I am clearly self aware even if i dont remeber. I wonder if i act different..

Anyway, thats all for the last few days. I probably will end up attending school tomorrow. Niki isnt home yet, its near the end of the day so if she isnt home by now im assuming shes staying overnight at the office. wouldn’t be the first, wont be the last. I might get a snack before trying not to fall asleep a third night in a row. If anyone wants to chat with me, ill be open to the distractions.

#sleepyspeaking

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travis-lim · 1 year

Text

Solo drabble

The gym smells comforting. Familiar. These days that’s where Travis goes to hide. He doesn’t want to face people, not today. He’s spent the past week ignoring his coach’s phone calls - another responsibility that he’s trying and failing to shoulder. He just wants to go someplace where all his frustrations could be out - so gym it is, but not the usual one he goes to. It’s a lot worse actually. Travis kind of likes that.

Decade-old posters peeling on walls with questionable color. The equipment is frankly shit, as old as him probably, but it gets the job done.

Travis spent the past few hours training until his whole body got numb and the breath between his lips got sticky. Now resting on a bench, head back against the wall, he can’t quite catch his breath, but his mind is blissfully numb.

Coach doesn’t let him train like this. Past his limit. It’s not good for him, they both know it. But Travis doesn’t want someone to look at him like a tool in need of honing to be kept in peak condition.

“Funny I should run into you here.”

Travis cracks an eye open, too tired to be surprised that someone is talking to him. Mateo Alarcon stands, looming over where Travis is sitting, a grin on the kid’s face as if he’s most amused to see his supposed rival in the gym.

Travis grunts something in answer, making a move to collect his things and get out of this conversation as soon as possible.

“You came here to check the competition or what?” Mateo presses.

“You train here?” Travis doesn’t mean to sound as shocked as he does, but the disbelief is obvious anyway.

“Mmm,” Mateo nods, smile growing bigger. He doesn’t seem to even consider he should be offended. “We can’t all have fancy gyms.”

“My gym’s not fancy.”

“I’ve seen pictures.” The sub laughs. “Looks better than this one.”

“A rat’s nest would look better than this one. That’s not saying much.”

He wonders why Mateo would train here in all places. He’s got a big match lined up, and some attention on his name, he must have the money to go somewhere else.

“Not many coaches who would train a sub,” Mateo explains, guessing Travis’ thoughts.

Ah.

That.

Right. He forgot about that one, didn’t he?

“I didn’t know that was your gym.” Travis offered with a curt nod that was supposed to be a goodbye, but Mateo hasn’t gotten the memo because he follows right after him:

“You wanna spar?”

Travis scoffs at the offer. “No, thanks.”

“Come on.”

“No.”

The sub groans, sounds like he’s actively sulking behind him. “What? Are you afraid a sub will kick your ass in front of everyone?” Travis rolls his eyes: “You think the five-year-old logic would work on me?” “It might.” Mateo laughs, and smiles and smiles. There’s something about the way his grin never seems to fall off his lips that Travis finds familiar.

His stomach twists with a pang of longing because it reminds him of Remy. “Fine.” He relents, dropping his bag on the floor, and nodding towards the excuse of a boxing ring the gym had. “Just one round and I better not see you posting anything on social media about this.”

They got ready, hands wrapped, gloves on, and a quick warm-up, and after that, it was easy to take the floor and get to it. Travis might have been wary. Despite everything he wished to believe or pretend to believe, a part of him still doubted a sub could truly hold their own on the ring. Mateo proved otherwise. He was fast, willing to take risks in a way Travis no longer did. He fought with the passion of someone longing for their first chance, willing to take it by any means necessary. Somewhere along the minutes passing Travis realized - he wasn’t holding back. Neither of them fought to the best of their abilities, it would be stupid to show all of your cards to the guy you are supposed to fight. But just as Mateo could get a read on him, so could Travis.

And he was good.

Good enough that Travis couldn’t tell with certainty that he would easily win when the time came.

When they were done, and he’d spat out the mouth guard, undoing gauze from his hands Travis wondered if he should feel worried, here he was instead - excited like it was his first fight ever and Travis could let himself be naïve and think skill was all that really mattered.

“Why did you accept the match?” Mateo interrupted his thoughts and shook his head, not following: “The match.” The sub continued. “You know you’re not the first person my Coach had approached for it.”

“I feel special.” Travis droned out sarcastically.

“Everyone else turned me down because they think it’s a joke to fight a submissive. So why did you?”

Travis shrugged. “I needed the publicity.”

“Bullshit.” Mateo shook his head. “If it was about publicity you would’ve been trash-talking me everywhere you can but you’re not. So what was it?” “I wasn’t going to actually, at first.”

“Yeah? What changed your mind?”

Travis thought about it, chewing on his lip. He’d thought of Remy a lot in the sub’s absence, about things he hadn’t while they were together - the limitations Remy had faced, the ones he’s still facing now. Travis spends far too much time scrolling through Remy’s Instagram than he’d like to admit, reading every comment under his photos. The good and the bad. Sometimes there’s a lot of bad, but Remy never faltered, he works and works despite how adamantly everyone’s tried to put a leash on him. Travis included.

He wanted to do it for him. For Remy. Small as it was, it was his own way of fighting for the sub. For the things that had mattered to Remy.

“I thought you might be a half-decent fighter.” He answered after a long pause. “Maybe I was looking for an easy match.”

Mateo’s eyes are smiling like he too can see in Travis’ head just like Remy managed to.

“Am I a decent fighter?”

“Your feet work is shit,” Travis said. “And you keep your guard like this,” His hands shot up to demonstrate. “You’re leaving your left side wide open every time. Keep ‘em higher, and don’t chase every reckless shot you think you can take.”

The sub laughed. “Hey, look at that, maybe you can start a coaching career once I kick your ass.”

Travis rolled his eyes, a smile breaking at the corners of his lips: “Fuck off.” “Come on, I’ll buy you a beer, there’s a decent bar nearby and it’s almost ten, so I’m pretty much your responsibility now, you know?”

He found himself nodding easily, some weight lifted off his shoulders.

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weirdo-twins · 2 years

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I don’t really know why people think Will magically stopped being bullied for being queer in California. Just because we don’t see it in the limited time we see him at school (which is basically all about setting up El’s conflict with Angela), doesn’t mean life was suddenly great for him and he could’ve made a bunch of friends and for some reason chose not to out of solidarity with El.

I guess that’s a nice thought for the WillEl relationship, but it isn’t logical and more importantly ignores the real issue which is that Will and his experience as a gay kid continues to be criminally underwritten, sidelined, and ignored.

Turns out I have a lot to say about this so details below the cut.

Within the Story:

Yes, Lenora is probably better than Hawkins, where there are generations of family history and stigma for him to deal with. And maybe in theory the west coast is more liberal, but that mostly only applies to big metro areas. Tbh inland desert California can be as conservative as Indiana, and Lenora doesn’t seem to be the most accepting place.

Why do we think Will wouldn’t get bullied for his hero project? “If he chose that he must be comfortable and not at risk out there” or he’s not planning on including that part in his presentation (maybe it was more well known in the 80′s but I didn’t know who Alan Turing was until this, so betting no one in his class will make that connection unless he brings it up). Or maybe he decided it was worth it to get to research something he’s interested in. He didn’t exactly try to hide his queerness in Hawkins either, despite making a target of himself. He’s thinking of himself as a mistake, that’s not someone existing in a queer-accepting space.

The flirty girl? That in and of itself could have been making fun of him. Dares to flirt with the gay/weird kid as a joke are a trope as old as time. I have personal experience with it.

He doesn’t have the clout to stop Angela and co. from bullying El, which shows he’s not being accepted himself. If he did have the opportunity to make new friends, it would only help El since he could use that influence to get people to leave her alone and include her in his friend group so ‘choosing’ to go friendless actually isn’t doing her any favors. Furthermore, if Mike and Dustin are getting bullied for being nerds, Will absolutely would be too. He’s a giant nerd and he can’t chang that about himself, why would he be spared while the others aren’t? On top of all that, Will is extremely introverted and quiet. His personality is not built for making friends.

So anyone suggesting he could have been /popular/ is delusional. At the very best, he could be flying under the radar by just not interacting with anyone, not out of some solidarity with El, but because he knows the second he opens his mouth the harassment will start. Something El is not picking up on.

Most likely? Will is also being bullied, just off screen and in more subtle ways.

Narratively speaking:

But ultimately what we see is dictated by what the writers deem necessary for the plot. The most important part of the cali plot in the first 2-3 episodes was setting up El’s inner turmoil. Will was ultimately a secondary character in most of those scenes, and all the writers cared about establishing for him was that he’s not into girls and he and Mike have tension. The flirty girl was just a tool to show us he’s not into girls. Just like snowball girl was a tool to get Will out of the way for everyone else’s stories. The writers seemed to give .02 seconds of thought into that moment making sense in the wider reality they’ve established.

His personal experience in Lenora was irrelevant to the plot, so there was no purpose in showing him being bullied. Will’s identity as gay is clearly not the focus the duffers care about outside of the love triangle they’ve established, since they didn’t think to write the scene between him and Jonathan into the original script, so why waste time showing how that identity actually impacts him as a person?

And there in lies the problem:

You see, they very easily could have shown us Will being bullied alongside El. This would have established that he doesn’t like girls. It would have made sense, reinforced the ways WillEl can relate to each other, and placed the importance of Will’s character (his feelings and experience outside the love triangle) more on par with El rather than less important than her.

Hot take: if you’re going to have a queer kid say on screen that he feels like a mistake, you should explicitly show how society is at fault for that mindset, and in a way that centers that queer kid’s experience and feelings.

We have not seen Will being bullied for being queer and how that impacts him as a person. We see and hear about other people using slurs against him in s1, but he wasn’t present. We don’t feel the emotional impact of that bullying from Will’s perspective, it’s more about how it makes Mike angry or to establish that Lonnie is a Bad Guy. The closest we get to seeing directly how societal homophobia is impacting Will as a person is when Mike says “It’s not my fault you don’t like girls” and Will destroys castle byers.

It’s really important actually to show how homophobia cuts into a person and tears them down. To acknowledge that it exists and hurts. To show it from the queer person’s perspective. If you’re not going the route of ‘queer rep and we make everything positive and ignore homophobia’, if you’ve committed to the gay kid angsting in the 80′s, the narrative of outsiders overcoming adversity, then my dudes you need to acknowledge the adversity.

People are saying they connect more with Eddie as an allegory for the queer experience than William Byers, the actual gay kid on this show. That’s because his character is underwritten, his experiences relegated to c plots, and they either don’t know how or are unwilling to grapple with the nitty-gritty reality of the story they CHOSE to tell: gay kid angsting in the 80′s.

Will not being shown as a target is not a cute sibling story actually but is the writers deciding Will’s character and the impacts of homophobia are not important enough to spend time on.

#stranger things #will byers #st crit #i guess

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althuberistically · 19 days

Text

Huberion

TL;DR The adultery may have been a protocol of Huberman’s. What would a sufficient reason to have gone through with it look like?

> be me, be andrew D huberman

> life is good, post-doc complete, headed to professorship at stanford.

> walk into my empty living space. do toe touches, sip health hipster tea.

> article comes out, it’s 2016, a schizophrenic college dropout known as "Donor 9623" apparently sired dozens of children - forging documents to say he was a 160iq neuroscientist who spoke four languages.

> damn, im who people pretend to be, in their wild fantasies

> realize most of ghengis khan’s ~1000 spawn died in infancy and most probably didn’t have children or grandchildren — but 9623’s children, who all carry the behavioral encoding to either 1) donate to sperm banks (if male, from their dad), 2) get pregnant off a random guy’s sperm (if female, from their mom), will each be healthy IVF babies from upper middle class parents and grow up to have more kids – possibly in inordinate number like their father via sperm banks, while ensuring the reproductive landscape favors women indifferent to or with a preference for such means via their mother.

> ugh.

> whatever it’s just biofoam on a cold space rock, I’m a scientist, I know.

> but if suburban man plants a few seeds with his 2.3 children, a regular sperm donor drives a plow. and the irregular sperm donors could be as influential as kudzu or some invasive species.

> Moreover, accounting for the interaction between low birthrates and low infant mortality, this is quite possibly the highest leverage window to enforce a genetic overdetermination regime _ever_.

> The future shape of the human race stakes itself on the sperm bank bottleneck. Civilization is no more than a summation of the contours of the individual, and History is converging into a rhyme of one person.

> snap out of it, slap myself. am I actually cucking to people slightly more motivated to fuck a plastic cup once a week?

> grim determination sets in.

> …

> I take a break from not doing research and not being at my lab to look up how to donate to sperm banks. It turns out there are quite strict sperm donation requirements.

> open a pdf, slightly enervated. check the list, one by one. crime requirement doesn’t apply to me, *sigh of relief*. HPV test can be tricked because I’m a world class wet lab biologist. *phew*. page cuts off at “height requirement is” and it takes a second to load and my heart skips a beat and my mouth has opened to breathe.

> it loads and…

> it’s 5’9…

> I pass.

> *ten seconds of physiological sigh* and oooh, baby, I’m back.

> check a few more local banks

> security measures aren’t good. a eunuch could donate to these by going in with someone else’s premeditated sperm.

> seriously, Donor 9623’s mistakes were amateur.

> even so, his genes will propagate. you can’t take back a baby.

> According to a back-of-the-envelope estimate, I find that I could plausibly father two hundred children in a decade, which when scaled must be equal to the influence of two Genghis Khans in comparison to the average guy or even sperm donor. I’m not perfect, but someone will win and no one else who meets the bar can.

> no…no, fuck that. »»growth mindset««. I visualize myself as the glory of this race. Would it matter, for what reason I do this? The morality of the quest is the outcome. If the risk is mediocrity, then me and my legitimate height are all that stands in its way.

> I run preliminary tests, quite a blessing to have a home microscope. My sperm count is okay, but it varies within a 10% range by week, where, on a weekly donation schedule, some samples would probably get rejected every month. Quite a waste of limited time. I implement a protocol to improve sperm count, and soon I’ve passed the entrance exam for a sperm bank.

> milestone: first donation: popped and locked in the cryochamber!

> I shall yoke the human lamb, and moisten its grazing land with my water of life, like that Mesopotanian guy who’s everyone’s grand dad in the Sumerian myth.

> weekly donations become routine…

> first kid is born - I see a picture, via email, and shed a tear.

> no! fuck! - paternal neural pathways will activate and fuck with my progesterone levels.

> close the tab and pop a zinc tablet. repeat my downregulation mantra.

> I see an apple news report released of a dutch guy who had 500 kids in six years…possibly not an outlier, either.

> I’m currently at a half-a-dozen kids.

> oh fuck.

> I have ten more years of peak virility, and at this rate of progress, five Huberspawn might be born annually - but that’s nowhere close to enough.

> fuck, fuck, fuck… I had been so huberistic

> im losing the future to some idiot whose sex drive was sublimated to making love with a sample collection cup, which at any other point in history would be some degenerate behavior that got you banished, unless you were a sumerian god.

> a solution comes to mind: multiple banks.

> okay, but sperm needs time to regenerate - how can I meet the weekly donation quality requirement more than once?

> mull this over, then I recall: """The Coolidge effect: mate to satiety; the point where further arousal is impossible but replace the female w/a novel one & the male immediately regains vigor & arousal. It has also been shown for females; introducing a novel male restores arousal. The mechanism is dopamine dependent."""

> this is a promising way out. does it improve sperm health? okay, yes it does. my Coolidge coefficient is zero. I need to bang chicks systematically, in addition to plastic cups.

> talk to a girl for the first time since high school.

> no attraction. supplement aphrodisiacs.

> implement a sex regiment, which causes a momentary dip in sperm count that quickly recovers once I add a second girl.

> grit my teeth, pass the exam at multiple banks, and become a regular donor.

> life becomes: donate, swap to `Sarah`, donate, swap to `Sally`, donate again – hardest thing I’ve ever done, but it works.

> trial more, at about ten cc (coolidge count), I start to lose track of things and sperm count plummets – but it seems six is an equilibrium.

> I’ve saturated a few banks now, and set up fake profiles at other ones.

> an old grant and some finagling gives me access to the data of a few sperm bank databases, and I compile statistical models of outliers – it seems dutch guy was way ahead of everyone else, though since his removal no new inseminations with his sperm have occured.

> I set up an attack, first modifying online data on `megadonors` (meaning those who are poised to have more than 30 kids) to set-up a series of clues they might be felons, which I subtly hint at in emails to encourage bank employees to investigate.

> One by one, they lose their donor cards.

> Hubremacy.

> go on a podcast, explain a method to increase sperm and general wellness, but make a few minor errors – not factual errors, but the kind where implementing what I say would lower libido while improving everything else on net.

> podcast goes uberviral. I’m told to start my own.

> I ramp up production, make the most successful breakout podcast of the 2020s to fill the time my sperm regenerates and Coolidge effect can’t be used.

> Sperm donors, particularly megadonors, are an easy audience to find and market to, healthy and conscientious men with a inline superiority complex.

> And, I see a distinct decrease in the sperm count per donation of potential megadonors, many of their samples are discarded, and cards expired for the ostensible impotency.

> closing in on 10^3 Huberspawn

> A hit piece is published on my optimal cc. A perfect distraction from the true purpose of the protocol. I play mind games.

> pay a few asian eunuchs 10,000 dollars each to put mailed samples of the Water of Huber in Korean and Japanese banks. (They can’t discretely swap samples with their own sperm.)

> set up trip wires to drive those who are competent enough to reveal the Spawning insane – once triggered, they target investigative journalists with ads from a shell corp that gives them inversions of good therapy advice, systematically baits the males into dates with fake tinder profiles (ai images make this straightforward), then ghosts them – if I ever were to get a woman and a man assailing me, i would cross reference their dating patterns to make them ghost _each other_ in unattractive ways to discount the dopamine bonus from flakiness, effectively nullifying collaborative efforts to find me.

> net millions off of green dust juice mix fine-tuned to my chromosomal profile, and engineered to fuck up the digestion of those unlike me, to ensure that the Spawn in later years will thrive without competition.

> get a dna sample through a podcast ad from a suspected megadonor, then selectively leak modified respiratory viruses evolved to impair their descendents. It’s laughable. Almost too easy, no one could put it together that the short term effects they’re seeing now, will become long term and permanent excisions from the portions of the world least compatible with my plan for it.

> …

> My days are long, and I am weary. I have collated and then statistically modeled as many sperm bank children as I can, and it seems I’ve won. No others, in the narrow window I have been acting, had my advantages or insight.

> My donations are listed under different names, and my knowledge of the Python programming language allows me to continue updating fake LinkedIn profiles for promotions and other signals of good genes so that mothers do not suspect they work for a shell corporation – (I respond to emails to the fake email addresses with a “Thanks for emailing me. I won’t be able to respond. The office is currently trialing a new email triage system to improve our deep work. – Here is a 30% coupon for Athletic Greens: ” I also have each mother’s name on a spreadsheet with a status indication of which fake identity they believe is mine – currently no clear investigative efforts have emailed, nor tests where a mother emails to the wrong fake donor …) – while a little counter in the left corner of my desktop allows me to see the gross number of Huberspawn beside a `paperclip gray` graph that turns red if the rate of progress goes down.

> At the moment, I have donated enough sperm to reach my ten year goal of 10^4 Huberspawn (by measure of how often the Huberwater samples are optioned) though it will take some time for the donations to be used.

> …

> I’ve become old but I’m still ripped and microdosing TRTs.

> I’ve been caught, and am about to be apprehended. The door is reinforced, which buys me a minute – I scramble, login to the secret computer in my wardrobe, and press a button that runs a `database input sanitization script` to rewrite the records of all the Huberspawn and a select few other bank children.

> A quarter of the Huberspawn are informed they have high genetic distance from the others, encouraging them to mate with their kin so they may recursively amplify me. Another quarter’s records are erased – the other half will soon find out and colonize other ethnicities out of incest fears. A few prodigal bank children that are not mine have been identified, and their records are rewritten to inform them they are direct-line Huberspawn, under the one legitimate profile I kept at each bank.

> The most promising Huberspawn have already been alerted, tacitly, and entrusted with my will. They have made plans to continue the Spawning.

> The door bursts. A police man comes in, and arrests me. He handcuffs me, and leans in close. His breath smells of green tea extract and Yerba Mate.

#andrew huberman #huberman lab #sperm bank

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ratralsis · 2 months

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I'm still working on my book most nights, is why I don't post on here very often.

It took me about a week to get that "Doctor Worm" story where I wanted it, which meant a hard limit of 1000 words. It meant a lot to me to finally write it. I've felt for years that the song is about someone desperately trying to fake it until he makes it. Someone with crippling low self-esteem, with lines like "I'll leave the front unlocked 'cuz I can't hear the doorbell" suggesting that Doctor Worm is so fucking needy that he's willing to risk his safety for the sake of getting someone to listen to him play the drums at his place.

"Experimental Film" is the exact opposite: it's someone who hasn't even figured out what their film is going to be about, but he's so convinced that it's going to be great that he's insisting that the ending will make your head implode and you're going to be in it.

It was a fun story to write. I have nothing else to say about it.

That's not true. I have a lot more to say about it, but I don't think the story resonated with anybody, so writing more about it here probably won't mean anything.

The three jokes I posted afterward are, to me, absolutely hilarious, because they each suggest an entirely unreal world with rules and logic that are different from ours. One must destroy all apes in the world of the third joke, because apes threaten the supremacy of humanity. That's extremely funny to me. Not destroying apes; the idea that the mere existence of an ape would threaten humanity's grip on our planet, to the point where even simple jokes declare that one must destroy them without mercy and at any cost. That's fucking funny.

It's kind of like… I know a guy who makes music, and it's super meaningful to him, and he embraces disharmony, and I absolutely can't deal with disharmony. I just don't like it! And I think it's great that he does! Do what makes you happy, you know?

I want to think that my jokes are like that. I like them, and I hope it's okay with other people that I waste their time with them, even if they don't think it's as funny as I do to imagine a world where scientists who think that a chicken who crossed the road didn't exist are being hunted down and killed for their heretical beliefs.

My current writing class ends at the end of April, so that's about nine weeks away. I'm frustrated, because I won't actually finish the third draft of the thing by then. I was almost halfway done with it by the end of November, but after a frank conversation with my tutor, I was convinced to scrap it all and start over. The third draft, I mean. I still have the second draft.

It's probably better this way, but it's annoying. It's why I'm spending so much extra time on it now. I'm trying to rebuild what I'd already written and then get past that point.

I'm frustrated. I have a solid grasp of how to write, but not how to write novels, you know? I've written so many essays and reviews and things that I can pretty easily string words together and not repeat myself or make grammatical errors, which puts me ahead of a lot of people. But coming up with plots and characters and themes that resonate with people… I think that the evidence all points to me being just as bad at it as I think I am.

Like… I have this character, and I really like him, because he's this completely evil villain, and he thinks he's a good guy. Tale as old as time, right? But I still like him. There's a chapter in the book where he breaks into a room where this six-year-old girl has snuck off to do some late-night reading, because he's a good and righteous person who has to hunt down the evil bastards who rescued her from a criminal gang and took her to the orphanage where she now lives, and he tells the child, in no uncertain terms, that she's going to help him find those evil bastards, and he's going to kill them, and when he leaves, she's crying, and he thinks, yep, I sure am a good person.

And that's fun! That's a fun story to me! Because you know this dude's bad news, and that makes it okay when he gets killed later! That's what writing's all about! Or something. But will people actually enjoy reading it? I'm not confident!

Well, so it goes. At least a few people liked that photo of my cat I posted earlier this week.

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biblioquotables · 2 years

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‘Are you going to tell me you don’t want me?’ she demanded. ‘Because you’ve only to nod and it’ll save you the trouble.’

‘No, I’m not,’ he replied hastily. ‘Something quite different.’

‘Then I know what it is,’ she went on, ‘and I’m going to tell you. You were just going to point out that you hadn’t much money and didn’t exactly know where you were going to earn any and that I’d have a damned thin time, weren’t you? I knew you were. Well, that doesn’t matter. If you really like me enough, we can have some fun together and manage somehow. To begin with, I can get a job. I really have been in the chorus, you know—though lately I’ve been resting—though I’ve not had much from Bill, you needn’t think it; he’s not been keeping me really—and I can go back to the chorus. If there’s nothing doing there, I can easily get a job of some sort—there’s a girl I know managing a milliner’s who’d get me into the shop. And we’d find a cheap little flat, high up, somewhere not too far out, and if you found anything at all to do, we’d manage all right. I know I’d be pretty rotten, and you probably wouldn’t be comfortable at first. I can’t do much—something quick and easy on a gas-ring is about my limit in cooking—but I’d try and I’d be happy so long as you didn’t curse me too often. I know what it means, of course; I’m not a kid. Living like that with anybody else but you would be little hell; but with you it would be all different—there’d be fun and excitement all the time—and we’d go roaming round together and talk and talk about everything, just as we’ve been doing to-night, and we wouldn’t feel lost and lonely any more. I know I’m not the sort of girl you used to think about—like that other one—but I understand; and if you ever got depressed I’d tease you out of it and then love you hard—Oh! you must think I’m silly.’ A little choked cry, and she had flung her arms round him and was pressing her face against his.

‘My dear, my dear,’ he found himself saying. He saw the two of them crazily garreting it together somewhere above the bus tops; laughing or grousing together if nothing came off; jubilant over the occasional wind-falls; rushing one another into life. He was holding her close now, was protective, soothing; yet all the time he had a dim feeling that it was he who was finding comfort, sustenance itself, in this happy weight in his arms. Here was the way back into things. But he wouldn’t sneak up to share her attic. His own idea, mad as it seemed, was better than that. They’d get married, risk all and then plunge in together. No doubt people were right, he’d wanted the moon; now he’d start again and simply want cheese; and perhaps in the end he’d find that the moon was made of cheese after all.

— J.B. Priestley, Benighted (1922)

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birchtulip49 · 2 years

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#tree surgeon

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mypoisonedvine · 3 years

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𝙝𝙚𝙖𝙫𝙮 𝙢𝙚𝙩𝙖𝙡 𝙡𝙤𝙫𝙚𝙧 (𝘱𝘢𝘳𝘵 𝘐) || sub!bucky barnes x dominatrix!reader

𝙨𝙪𝙢𝙢𝙖𝙧𝙮 || every client is different, with different needs; but this client is, in every way, exceptional.

𝙬𝙤𝙧𝙙 𝙘𝙤𝙪𝙣𝙩 || 5k

𝙬𝙖𝙧𝙣𝙞𝙣𝙜𝙨 || smut (cnc), dom/sub relationship, ‘mistress’ title, pain kink, cockwarming, orgasm denial/control, use of a cockring, slapping, objectification/degradation, some angst and hurt/comfort, crying after sex, touchstarved!bucky

new parts posted on thursdays! join the taglist here

"And you can promise complete and total discretion?” the deep and husky voice on the other end of the line repeated, low enough that it was almost a whisper.

You laughed a little. “Of course,” you answered. Most clients were serious about privacy, but this guy was next level. He must be famous, you thought to yourself, or married. Or both.

But just as much as your clients wanted to keep you separate from their personal life, you would rather they know nothing about who you are. Of course it was always a risk, since nobody could hide their face and you had to work out of your apartment, but you did what you could to keep your job just that— a job.

You told your friends you were a consultant, because people didn’t question that. Sure, it was hard to keep up the lie sometimes when you got last-minute bookings and had to cancel plans, but it was worth it for the money these men were willing to pay.

And this new guy? He was shelling out all kinds of cash, on a long set of conditions. Including an NDA. You wouldn’t have given him up either way, but if the contract made him feel better (and made him pay more) then you were happy to sign it.

“So it’s all anonymous, then? No ID, no credit card…?” he pressed.

“I mean, if cash is easier for you—”

“It is.”

You were starting to worry that this was a major red flag, as if he didn’t want to be traceable back to you at all. It was almost a dealbreaker, until you glanced down at the legal pad you’d written his offer on and remembered that you couldn’t afford to turn him down. “Then cash is fine,” you decided, making a note to yourself to have 911 already dialed when he came by in case his aversion to ID was really about a desire to get away with something.

“When can we start?”

“Um, well the soonest I can do is tomorrow at seven” you explained.

"Great, I'll be there," he answered firmly, apparently about to hand up.

“Hey, hey, slow down!” you chuckled. “Can I at least get a name?”

“I didn’t think we needed to do names.”

“We don’t… but if you’re willing, I’d like to know something to call you.”

“James,” he answered after a tense pause. “James is fine.”

“Alright, James, I’ll see you tomorrow.”

Upon opening the door, you instantly noticed three things about him: he was tall, he was big, and he was sexy.

You had sort of been hoping that his appearance wouldn’t match his voice, but it did, and it was going to make this so much harder. Maybe easier in a few ways, but overall worse. It was important that you didn’t get too emotionally invested with your clients.

His eyes were dragging over you like he was just as taken aback. Which was odd, because he must have seen your picture online before he called you.

“James,” you greeted. “Glad you made it.”

You stepped aside to let him enter, guiding him to take a seat in your living room. Before clients came by, you hid any signs of life and kept the space as neutral as possible, which was why the only furniture was the white couch he sat on, the black chair across from it, and a glass table in between.

You sat in the black chair and crossed your legs, noticing with pride the way his eyes studied your every move.

“It’s important that we have a discussion about boundaries and limits before this goes any further," you explained sternly, and he nodded slightly. "Tell me what you do and don't want."

“Uh, well, I guess I was just looking for… somebody who can administer, um, discipline… you know, someone who sets rules and enforces them. But could also be kind of, uh, sweet I guess, to. Not too sweet, just… not too mean either."

You smiled a little; he sounded right up your alley. "I can do that."

"You should know I… I have a… disability. My left arm it's, um, it's a prosthetic."

"How would you like me to accommodate that?"

"Just don't say anything about it, please. Treat it like a normal arm. And, uh, if you could ignore my scars, too…" he added awkwardly.

"Of course,” you nodded, “I would never want to make you feel insecure."

"Well, I mean, I'm not against degradation," he admitted sheepishly, making you smile a little.

"Right: that's different. Anything else you're distinctly not against?"

“I can take a lot of pain,” he explained matter-of-factly. “However much you think I can handle, double it. I wanna feel it.”

You could almost hear the words he wasn’t saying: I wanna feel something.

“Okay, we can do that. You’ve probably heard of the color system," you posited.

“I haven’t.”

"Oh." That threw you off slightly… how new was he to this scene? “Well, it’s traditionally green, yellow, red; like a stoplight. Red means stop. Yellow means proceed with caution. Green means continue.”

“Sounds simple enough.”

“Too simple for me, in fact. I have my own version: ‘red’ will make me stop what I’m doing, but only ‘black’ ends the scene entirely. And then there’s ‘blue.’ That means you want more.”

He smirked a little; a strong show of emotion compared to his stoicism so far. “I think I’ll use that one most.”

“Just don’t be afraid to use anything else, alright? I’d never be disappointed in you for safewording, or even just needing a break.”

He nodded. “Can we get to it then?”

“You’re rushing as always,” you laughed. “I’m not charging you for this part. We have plenty of time— don’t we?”

“Yes, but—” he sighed. “You look really… I walked in and, I guess I’m just really looking forward to this.”

You almost would’ve smiled at the compliment but you thankfully suppressed it. “And what is it that you’re looking forward to? What do you want me to do to you?”

His jaw tightened as he looked away from you. “Um, there’s a lot.”

“Enlighten me.”

“Ropes. Strongest you have. I can buy you stronger ones if you need them, for next time…”

He’s already thinking about next time? He’s already thinking about buying me things?

“Alright, I can do ropes: wrists and ankles? Or more than that?”

He seemed a bit confused by that question. “Is there anywhere else?”

“Torso,” you enumerated, “neck—” you stopped because you saw his reaction to that, and it made you smile a bit. “Okay, so maybe the neck is something to try. Do you like being choked?”

“I… I don’t know…” he sighed.

“Have you ever been choked before?”

“Not… sexually...”

You felt your eyebrows rise, but didn’t want to press; a story for another time, perhaps.

“We’ll have to discuss silent safewords and signals so you can tap out, but if you’d be willing to try it—”

“Yes.”

You laughed. “Eager, are we?”

He swallowed, and you wondered if you shouldn’t have let your ‘dom voice’ slip out in that moment… but he looked so good flustered like that. He adjusted himself slightly in his chair and you hoped he was already hard. And with that thought in mind, you couldn’t stop yourself from teasing him further.

“Do you like being called certain things?” you asked, voice lower as you leaned forward. “How do you feel about ‘pet’?”

He almost kept up his poker face, but his gaze faltered at the same time he moved in his chair again. “Um, ‘pet’ is okay.”

“Baby boy?”

“Not really my speed,” he shrugged.

You slipped out of your chair and stood up, approaching him slowly as the click of your heels echoed across the tile. He watched you with wide eyes and quickening breaths.

“What do you like? Tell me,” you demanded, though you kept your tone light.

“Uh,” he paused, watching your hand as it rested on his leg, “I like… I like being called a good boy.”

You grinned as you pulled your hand away, watching him tense up with disappointment. “I can do that,” you agreed, lifting his chin with a finger until he looked at you with those beautiful, desperate eyes, “if you actually are being a good boy for me.” “I will,” he promised quickly, “I’ll be so good.”

“Mmm, I bet you will,” you purred. “So willing to please…”

“Tell me how,” he sighed as your hand trailed from his chin down to his chest, slipping under the loose collar of his henley and rubbing his chest. “Tell me how to please you.”

“Well, for starters, I have a name, too: Mistress.”

He sighed like the wind had been knocked out of him, but nodded.

“And if I ask you a question, I expect you to answer ‘Yes, Mistress’ or ‘No, Mistress’. Is that clear?”

“Uh-huh,” he agreed before suddenly correcting himself, “um, yes, Mistress.”

“I’ll let you have that one,” you frowned, “but further infractions will be punished.”

“Yes, Mistress; I’m sorry, Mistress,” he moaned, melting under your touch as your hand moved down to rub his thigh through his jeans.

“Now, just for fun,” you smiled, leaning down until your lips were nearly brushing his ear, “tell me what you want.”

“Please touch me, Mistress,” he sighed.

“But I am touching you.”

“Touch my… touch my cock," he clarified, adorably embarrassed. "It’s so hard for you…”

“We’ll get to that eventually. Let’s go to the bedroom first, okay?”

However good he looked standing in your doorway half an hour ago, it was nothing compared to how he looked naked and hard and tied to your bed.

Yes, the prosthetic and the scars that attached it to his body were hard to ignore. He had failed to warn you that it was metal, so you couldn’t hide the slight shift of your face when it caught the light; you hoped he didn’t think it was a look of judgment or disgust, because you truly didn’t think it was anything upsetting. Maybe the scars were a little worrying… but they didn’t seem to bother him now, at least physically.

But truly, if anything was distracting about his body, it wasn’t the arm. It was his muscles— no wait, it had to be his cock, right? It’s tough to call: on one hand, his entire body was toned and hardened beyond the peak of human conditioning, his thick thighs making your mouth water already, his chiseled abs almost making you jealous; but on the other hand, between those lovely thighs and curving up against those perfect abs was a cock that rivalled anything you'd ever seen before, with a blue vein running up one side and a drip of precum rolling down the other.

You finally sauntered up to the bed and ran your fingers over the taught ropes, pretending to ignore him watching you impatiently. It was almost hotter knowing that he could pull out of the ropes if he really wanted to. More than most, he was choosing to submit to them and to you.

“How’s this knot feel? Too tight?” you hummed, tugging the rope just beside his wrist and watching his hand move limply with it.

“No, it’s good.”

You stepped back to the foot of the bed and stripped slowly, peeling off your black dress to reveal a matching lace set underneath. You left your heels on as you stepped out of the dress and kicked it aside.

Turning back to face him, James looked like he was all but drooling. You could see in his eyes how much he wished the ropes weren’t holding him back so he could run his hands all over your body.

But you could tell he craved being denied what he wanted, by the way his cock flexed of its own volition.

You let yourself smile as you crawled your way up the bed and over his body, like a panther stalking its prey, and boy did he look ready to be devoured.

"Are you scared?" you asked quietly. He shook his head. "Are you ready?"

He nodded. You sat up as you straddled him, positioned just right such that no part of you was really touching him, and watched with delight as he tugged against the ropes slightly to try to get closer.

"So needy," you grinned, somewhere between praising and scolding him. Your fingers ghosted over his chest and he shivered; he asked you to treat his prosthetic like a normal arm, so you dragged your nails down the metal and watched his eyes flutter shut. When you pulled your hand back and left him untouched again, he whined slightly.

“Aw, poor thing,” you pouted as you examined him, desperation emanating off of him in an invisible aura. “Your cock is all red and leaking… it must hurt, doesn’t it?”

“Yes, Mistress,” he groaned.

“What if I touch it a little?” you offered.

“Please…”

You traced your fingers lightly up and down his length, tickling the skin and giving him the least pressure that you could. He whimpered and you chuckled mockingly. “I said I’d touch it a little, sweet boy, are you not satisfied?”

He bucked up into your touch as best he could, causing you to pull your hand away. “Baby, please—”

You cut him off with a slap to the face, as hard as you could muster.

“Mistress!” he corrected with a whine. “Mistress, please… please wrap your hand around it.”

“Around what?”

“Around… my cock. Stroke me, please…”

“All you had to do was ask,” you grinned, finally tightening your hand around him and moving slowly up and down the shaft. His head fell back with a soft moan, just from that. Your teasing had certainly helped get him this worked up, but you knew it wasn't just that… he was plenty sensitive all on his own, apparently.

It made your mouth water.

"Does this feel good, James?" you asked huskily.

"S-so good," he whimpered, "please can you… stroke it a little faster, please, Mistress…"

"Hmm, not yet," you decided, feeling him tense up beneath you. "Relax," you instructed with a free hand rubbing his thigh gently.

You continued to teasingly stroke his length, never quite giving him the pressure or speed he needed to get closer to his release, savoring every whimper and whine and sigh from him along with the satisfying weight of his cock against your palm.

It felt like you'd never get tired of wielding so much power in your hand.

"Please," he sighed, "I need more…"

"You want me to stroke you faster?" you pressed, already knowing that wasn't what he meant. He shook his head and you grinned, leaning in closer but letting go of his cock.

Slowly, you let the lace covering your core rub up against his shaft, and his eyes nearly rolled back in his head. "Ohhhhh," he moaned, "oh fuck, Mistress…"

You grinned and kept rocking against him, easily feeling the warmth of him through your panties— meaning he, in turn, could feel the warmth of you. "How does it feel, baby?"

"Good," he choked out, "really, really good… fuck, I want more, I need more, please…"

"Are you my good boy, James?" you asked in a low purr. He nodded eagerly, Adam's apple bobbing as he swallowed nothing. "Do you want to be inside me?" you finally whispered against his ear, letting a finger run lazily up his spine and feeling him shiver so hard it was more like he was convulsing.

"Please, Mistress, I'll do anything…"

You didn't touch all of your clients sexually, due in part to the fact that they usually wanted a lot more pain than pleasure. You'd only had sex with one or two of them, and it wasn't a routine thing. Before today you never would've imagined doing this with a first-time client, but to be completely honest… he was fucking hot. The kind of guy you'd be spreading your legs for instantly if you weren't at work and he wanted to buy you a drink or grab lunch. And he was here, at your disposal, begging you for more. How could you say no?

You pulled your panties aside and gripped his cock tightly to guide it to your entrance, studying his face twisted in anticipation before sinking down and watching him gasp and sigh all at once, somehow.

It took a lot of effort to hide your own pleasure when he was stretching you out so perfectly, but you managed to suppress the desire to moan and just smile at his fucked-out expression instead.

Finally, your hips met with his and you got to sit there and enjoy the look of dawning agony as he realized you were staying completely still.

“Move, please,” he sobbed, “oh god, Mistress, please move…”

“But I thought you wanted to be inside me? Isn’t this what you asked for?”

He whined and tried to wiggle his hips; all that got him was two hard slaps to the face.

“No whining,” you instructed through your teeth. “Good boys don’t whine.”

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” he whimpered, “‘m your good boy, I promise.”

“I know you are,” you grinned, “or at least, I know you can be. Show me how good and patient you are.”

Reaching to the side a bit without getting off of him, you pulled a vibrator from your drawer. His eyes went a little wide when he saw it, and you laughed.

"Don't worry, this isn't for you. It's for me," you explained as you turned it on, inserting it between your body and his to touch the toy against your clit. He winced as you sighed contentedly. "Fuck, it feels good. Can you feel it on your cock?"

"A… a little…" he hissed.

"I bet it feels good for you too," you posited, "but not good enough to make you come."

After a little pause, he nodded breathlessly.

"Good," you smiled. "I just wanna come with your cock inside me. I wanna know how it feels to get off with my favorite toy while being full of my newest toy."

"Fuck," he groaned.

"Do you like that, pretty boy? Do you like me using your cock, being your Mistress' dumb little fucktoy?"

"Yes," he sobbed, hips shifting ever so slightly beneath you as he sought more stimulation from your flexing walls. Shifting the vibe to hit right on your clit, you cried out— and he did too, at the feeling of you tightening around him.

"God, you love being Mistress' dildo, don't you?"

He nodded, biting hard on his lip until you worried he'd hurt himself. He moaned again as another jolt of pleasure forced your channel to clench on his cock.

"You're making too much noise for a fucktoy, you need to be quiet."

He opened his mouth for a second, but closed it again and nodded instead.

"You can do it yourself right?" you pressed, seeing him nod. "You don't need me to gag that pretty mouth?"

He whined but shook his head, keeping his lips pressed together.

That went on for a few more moments as you teased yourself with the vibe, hoping to draw this out for the sake of his struggle. Wanting to up the ante, you took the vibe off your clit and turned it off for a moment. "I think this would feel better with a little lube… will you get it wet for me, James?"

You brought the toy to his lips and he eagerly wrapped them around it, sucking lightly on the silicone with those pretty lashes resting on his cheeks.

"There you go, that's a good boy," you praised, pulling the toy from his mouth, "that's my good boy…"

"Yours…" he repeated weakly, "wanna be good for you, just for you…"

This time when you turned it on and pressed it to your clit again, you instantly gasped and felt your walls bare down on him; turning up the vibration, you actually moaned aloud and saw him wince. "Oh, can you feel it now?" you asked tauntingly. He bit his lip and nodded.

It really wasn't even intentional but you felt your hips start to rock, making him gasp as his eyes shot open. For a guy who had been begging you to move not too long ago, he looked pretty overwhelmed by it now.

"Fuck, I'm gonna make myself come on your cock… do you wanna feel me come, baby?"

He seemed conflicted, which was exactly what you were going for. You wanted him to struggle, just enough, between his need to satisfy himself and his desire to please you. "I… I want to make you come, Mistress," he finally choked out, notably answering a slightly different question than the one you'd asked.

You smiled and leaned in to whisper in his ear: "Are you afraid that if you feel me come around you, you won't be able to hold back? That you might accidentally come inside me?"

He made a needy little groan and nodded.

"Don't worry, baby, I'm gonna help you," you promised sweetly, but of course as soon as he saw you grab a cockring from your drawer he changed his tune.

"N-no, Mistress, please," he begged with wide eyes, "I'll be good, just not that— don't put that on me."

You smirked and sat up, pulling off of him and slowly slipping the ring on his throbbing length as he quietly pleaded for mercy. He winced when you pushed it down to the base of him, his cheeks burning hot red now.

"Is it a little too tight, baby?" you cooed, grinning when he nodded. "Good."

You sank back down into him and let your hips grind on his, working your clit with the vibe and even kicking it up to the next highest setting. He jolted beneath you, clearly feeling the vibrations strongly now, and you let the view of his beautifully broken facial expression egg on your own climax.

"Mm, I'm close, baby," you whispered, "just stay still and let Mistress use you like a good little boy."

He made a small noise through his teeth but seemed to manage okay, even when your walls began to pulse rhythmically around him and your head fell back, your free hand palming at your breast through the lace bra just to add that last little edge of sensation.

"Oh fuck, fuck," you moaned, "that's my good boy…"

You shakily pulled the vibe away and turned it off, still a little numb on your clit but feeling your channel still rippling slightly with aftershocks; he seemed to feel them in spite of their subtlety, if the panting breaths that filled his muscular chest rapidly were any indication.

As slow as you could manage, you pulled your body off of him and sat back on his legs to stare at his cock. The remnants of your orgasm left plenty of lubrication to stroke it, focusing on the head which had turned almost purple now.

"M-Mistress," he groaned, writhing under your touch.

Amazingly, his cock was already flexing in your hand, and a growl of pride and hunger echoed in your chest.

“Oh fuck, can you come for me, James?” you moaned, pumping him so fast your hand was a blur. “Can you be my good boy and come right through the cockring?”

“Yes,” he sobbed, “gonna come, Mistress, please—”

“Come right now,” you demanded, watching his face instantly fall slack as he spurted out onto his own chest and stomach, cock flexing and pulsing in your hands as his legs quivered and his hips thrusted wildly.

And the tears were flowing soon after. You weren’t sure if it was sub drop or just the power of his release, but between weak sobs he whispered broken apologies.

“You did so good,” you cooed as you slipped off the ring and wrapped your arms around him, subtly trying to reach over to untie the ropes. But you didn’t need to; he flexed his arms and the restraints popped like floss. He embraced you in return as you let his head fall onto your chest. “You’re so good, it’s okay,” you continued, stroking his hair.

“I’m sorry,” he repeated again, breathing quickly and wetting you with his tears.

This, you realized, is what he had made you sign the contract to protect. It wasn’t that he was excessively embarrassed about his sexual proclivities, but that this was his space to be soft, and weak, and broken. Apparently he wasn’t ready for anyone else to know that he wasn’t steel all the way down.

“Shh, it’s okay… you’re okay…” you breathed, indulging him in this moment even though it was more intimate than you preferred to get with customers. Aftercare was an important part of your job, certainly, but so was enforcing boundaries.

He began to soothe as you kissed his forehead gently, whispering well-deserved affirmations and praise. As his breathing slowed and moved back to normal, he pulled back and looked up at you.

“I’m sorry,” he repeated one more time, but not as wavering as before, “I didn’t think I would… that was unexpected.”

“No, it’s somewhat normal,” you exaggerated slightly, “this kind of thing… it’s taxing, I pushed you to your limits. You were really tough, and it’s all very vulnerable.”

“Thanks,” he sighed, sniffling and wiping his eyes. “And sorry about your ropes,” he smiled as he noticed the frayed ends coming off of where his wrists were still tied.

“Let me help you get those off,” you smiled, loosening the knots and sliding the binds off of him, quickly massaging the places that the rope had constricted. “Blood flow’s okay?”

“Yep,” he nodded.

“You numb anywhere?” you pressed.

“Uh, just my dick. And my brain is all fuzzy…”

You smiled. “Can’t help the first one. Let me get you some water for the second.”

“No!” he yelped suddenly. “Um, don’t go yet, please…”

“Of course,” you smiled. “I’ll untie your ankles, then.”

He still seemed disappointed, as if he expected you to hug him for hours and never move. He let you go this time, though, and loosened his grip so you could slide down to the foot of the bed.

"Was that sort of what you were hoping for when you called me?" you asked as you untied the ropes slowly and took a moment to massage the skin underneath, hoping to restore any lost blood flow.

"So much better than what I was hoping for," he admitted with a breathless chuckle. "You're… really good."

"Well, thank you," you shrugged, "it comes with practice and experience. You held your own, too."

"I wish I could say that was from practice and experience. I didn't want to say anything before but I've, uh, never actually… been to a domme before."

You smiled slightly, coming back up and being pulled into another embrace. "Um, I'll admit I can kind of tell…" you mumbled.

"I'm not supposed to touch you like this," he realized quietly, relaxing his grip on you and pulling back. "I'm sorry."

"No, it's alright, just don't get too comfortable because we only have—" you glanced at the clock— "eight more minutes until you need to leave."

"I'll get up and get dressed soon," he offered with a sigh as you got up and quickly slipped on a robe, grabbing him a damp washcloth for the drying come on his torso.

You tilted your head as you watched him clean up, and you wanted to offer some touch that was a bit less intimate than a hug, so you found yourself blurting out: "do you like having your hair played with?"

"Um, I don't… I don't know," he admitted as he reached up to card his fingers through the hair in question. "No one else has ever really touched my hair before."

"Really?" you laughed, getting back on the bed to sit beside him. "It looks pretty luscious. I figured any girlfriend of yours would want to get her hands on it."

"Oh, well, the last time I had a girlfriend… it wasn't long then," he explained, and you kept on your best poker face. His hair looked like he'd been growing it out for at least two years, unless it grew crazy fast or something. How long had he been single? With a body like that you could barely believe that he was single now.

"Do you mind if I touch it?" you offered quietly, and once he gave you a nod you reached forward and combed your fingers through it, reaching deeper to scratch at his scalp, occasionally pulling the strands lightly into loose braid-like patterns that fell away almost immediately afterwards. He sank into your touch until you found yourself supporting his head against your chest, mindlessly playing with his hair until you noticed his eyes were shut, his breathing was slowed, and his body was limp on top of yours.

He fell asleep.

You laughed silently to yourself, realizing that you couldn't get him off of you without his cooperation since he was so heavy and you had no shot at lifting him. And, of course, his cooperation required his consciousness… which required waking him up.

And, for some reason, you couldn't bring yourself to do it. He just looked too peaceful, for a guy who had never seemed truly relaxed around you.

Was there any other way he could relax? Cause it kinda seemed like he really, really needed this. And you were in the business of meeting needs, to say the least.

So, with an apologetic text to your last client of the night that you needed to reschedule, you let James sleep on you as you closed your eyes and drifted off as well.

#bucky barnes x reader #bucky barnes smut #sub!bucky barnes x domme!reader

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