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canmom · 6 months

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Hypothetical Decentralised Social Media Protocol Stack

if we were to dream up the Next Social Media from first principles we face three problems. one is scaling hosting, the second is discovery/aggregation, the third is moderation.

hosting

hosting for millions of users is very very expensive. you have to have a network of datacentres around the world and mechanisms to sync the data between them. you probably use something like AWS, and they will charge you an eye-watering amount of money for it. since it's so expensive, there's no way to break even except by either charging users to access your service (which people generally hate to do) or selling ads, the ability to intrude on their attention to the highest bidder (which people also hate, and go out of their way to filter out). unless you have a lot of money to burn, this is a major barrier.

the traditional internet hosts everything on different servers, and you use addresses that point you to that server. the problem with this is that it responds poorly to sudden spikes in attention. if you self-host your blog, you can get DDOSed entirely by accident. you can use a service like cloudflare to protect you but that's $$$. you can host a blog on a service like wordpress, or a static site on a service like Github Pages or Neocities, often for free, but that broadly limits interaction to people leaving comments on your blog and doesn't have the off-the-cuff passing-thought sort of interaction that social media does.

the middle ground is forums, which used to be the primary form of social interaction before social media eclipsed them, typically running on one or a few servers with a database + frontend. these are viable enough, often they can be run with fairly minimal ads or by user subscriptions (the SomethingAwful model), but they can't scale indefinitely, and each one is a separate bubble. mastodon is a semi-return to this model, with the addition of a means to use your account on one bubble to interact with another ('federation').

the issue with everything so far is that it's an all-eggs-in-one-basket approach. you depend on the forum, instance, or service paying its bills to stay up. if it goes down, it's just gone. and database-backend models often interact poorly with the internet archive's scraping, so huge chunks won't be preserved.

scaling hosting could theoretically be solved by a model like torrents or IPFS, in which every user becomes a 'server' for all the posts they download, and you look up files using hashes of the content. if a post gets popular, it also gets better seeded! an issue with that design is archival: there is no guarantee that stuff will stay on the network, so if nobody is downloading a post, it is likely to get flushed out by newer stuff. it's like link rot, but it happens automatically.

IPFS solves this by 'pinning': you order an IPFS node (e.g. your server) not to flush a certain file so it will always be available from at least one source. they've sadly mixed this up in cryptocurrency, with 'pinning services' which will take payment in crypto to pin your data. my distaste for a technology designed around red queen races aside, I don't know how pinning costs compare to regular hosting costs.

theoretically you could build a social network on a backbone of content-based addressing. it would come with some drawbacks (posts would be immutable, unless you use some indirection to a traditional address-based hosting) but i think you could make it work (a mix of location-based addressing for low-bandwidth stuff like text, and content-based addressing for inline media). in fact, IPFS has the ability to mix in a bit of address-based lookup into its content-based approach, used for hosting blogs and the like.

as for videos - well, BitTorrent is great for distributing video files. though I don't know how well that scales to something like Youtube. you'd need a lot of hard drive space to handle the amount of Youtube that people typically watch and continue seeding it.

aggregation/discovery

the next problem is aggregation/discovery. social media sites approach this problem in various ways. early social media sites like LiveJournal had a somewhat newsgroup-like approach, you'd join a 'community' and people would post stuff to that community. this got replaced by the subscription model of sites like Twitter and Tumblr, where every user is simultaneously an author and a curator, and you subscribe to someone to see what posts they want to share.

this in turn got replaced by neural network-driven algorithms which attempt to guess what you'll want to see and show you stuff that's popular with whatever it thinks your demographic is. that's gotta go, or at least not be an intrinsic part of the social network anymore.

it would be easy enough to replicate the 'subscribe to see someone's recommended stuff' model, you just need a protocol for pointing people at stuff. (getting analytics such as like/reblog counts would be more difficult!) it would probably look similar to RSS feeds: you upload a list of suitably formatted data, and programs which speak that protocol can download it.

the problem of discovery - ways to find strangers who are interested in the same stuff you are - is more tricky. if we're trying to design this as a fully decentralised, censorship-resistant network, we face the spam problem. any means you use to broadcast 'hi, i exist and i like to talk about this thing, come interact with me' can be subverted by spammers. either you restrict yourself entirely to spreading across a network of curated recommendations, or you have to have moderation.

moderation

moderation is one of the hardest problems of social networks as they currently exist. it's both a problem of spam (the posts that users want to see getting swamped by porn bots or whatever) and legality (they're obliged to remove child porn, beheading videos and the like). the usual solution is a combination of AI shit - does the robot think this looks like a naked person - and outsourcing it to poorly paid workers in (typically) African countries, whose job is to look at reports of the most traumatic shit humans can come up with all day and confirm whether it's bad or not.

for our purposes, the hypothetical decentralised network is a protocol to help computers find stuff, not a platform. we can't control how people use it, and if we're not hosting any of the bad shit, it's not on us. but spam moderation is a problem any time that people can insert content you did not request into your feed.

possibly this is where you could have something like Mastodon instances, with their own moderation rules, but crucially, which don't host the content they aggregate. so instead of having 'an account on an instance', you have a stable address on the network, and you submit it to various directories so people can find you. by keeping each one limited in scale, it makes moderation more feasible. this is basically Reddit's model: you have topic-based hubs which people can subscribe to, and submit stuff to.

the other moderation issue is that there is no mechanism in this design to protect from mass harassment. if someone put you on the K*w*f*rms List of Degenerate Trannies To Suicidebait, there'd be fuck all you can do except refuse to receive contact from strangers. though... that's kind of already true of the internet as it stands. nobody has solved this problem.

to sum up

primarily static sites 'hosted' partly or fully on IPFS and BitTorrent

a protocol for sharing content you want to promote, similar to RSS, that you can aggregate into a 'feed'

directories you can submit posts to which handle their own moderation

no ads, nobody makes money off this

honestly, the biggest problem with all this is mostly just... getting it going in the first place. because let's be real, who but tech nerds is going to use a system that requires you to understand fuckin IPFS? until it's already up and running, this idea's got about as much hope as getting people to sign each others' GPG keys. it would have to have the sharp edges sanded down, so it's as easy to get on the Hypothetical Decentralised Social Network Protocol Stack as it is to register an account on tumblr.

but running over it like this... I don't think it's actually impossible in principle. a lot of the technical hurdles have already been solved. and that's what I want the Next Place to look like.

#i'm gonna hurry up and get my website on ipfs i think #tumblr

247 notes · View notes

mamayan · 6 months

Note

Dear Yanny,

I am desperately humbly requesting a yandere Giyuu being yandere, very very yandere, with a relatively willing darling AFAB/fem reader and a side dish of bedroom spice.

I am in tears.

Sincerely, Desi <3

Let’s do a yandere profile then for Giyuu! I’ve been wanting to try out this format for a minute now.

☆Giyuu Tomioka★

YANDERE PROFILE || OPEN TEMPLATE!

cw: NSFW • Obsessive/Possessive Themes • Implied kidnapping/imprisonment • Yandere • AFAB! Darling

Type

Overprotective!

This yandere type is obsessive and possessive of their darling, but they believe that their actions are justified in the name of protecting their darling. This yandere type may infantilize or cross boundaries their darling lays down. They intentionally or unintentionally take away their darling’s independence.

Giyuu is constantly in a state of worry for you, he’s thinking of you at nearly every second of the day and when you don’t consume his every waking moment, you appear in his dreams. Did you sleep well? Have you eaten? Did you eat enough? Have you gotten sick? Was someone rude to you? What if you’re hurt?

This type of obsession leads to tailing/stalking/monitoring. He watches you at any and every moment he can, and when he can’t then someone he trusts is. Giyuu learns all your habits, likes and dislikes, fears and dreams, and will insert himself into your life. He doesn’t need to be loud or boisterous, in fact his calm demeanor and presence allow him to seamlessly blend into your world without raising any alarms.

This leads to possessiveness forming. His attachment deepens over time and a sort of ownership forms. It stems from his detailed knowledge of you and even your private life which you’ve never shared with him personally. He sees himself as someone who knows you completely, thus making him the most important character in your life.

He doesn’t understand why you’d spend time with anyone else but him. Those “friends” don’t know you hate that food, but they ignore your indirect ways of steering away from eating it. He knows you dislike it, and he’s happy to eat your favorite food with you, even if he doesn’t love it personally. He’s unafraid of stealing you away too, pretending nonchalantly to have been just passing through with a bag full of your most adored goodies, inviting you away from whatever situation you find yourself uncomfortable in.

Giyuu is a gentleman, even in his most unhinged state of watching you sleep at night in your home you were sure you locked up tightly before bed. He’s not going to be mean or hurtful, his yandere tendencies stem from lack of control in life and deep loss.

Breaking Point

Once “danger” threatens their darling.

Giyuu’s instability would worsen over time, not immediately. It would coincide with his feelings for you. The more he falls in love, the more he begins to stress about that love being taken away in some tragic accident. He’s lost his best friend and sister, how can he lose you too? He’s always being protected by those he cared about, shouldn’t he be the one to protect you then?

Giyuu would ponder and even be consumed by guilt once he realized how powerless he truly is to keep you completely safe. You had a life to live, how could he be so selfish as to tie you to him by a short chain and never let you go?

He won’t take action until a threat is posed… even if that threat is only within his own mind.

It could be a demon nearly harming you, a person that is mean towards you, or even you being clumsy and hurting yourself which could set this trigger off. The longer he waits, the more the line of danger becomes skewed. In the end, he’s giving in to his own paranoia. There’s no way to truly escape this break.

Lucidity

Giyuu is actually fairly aware of how wrong his feelings for you have become. What was once innocent and pure has become warped and twisted into something entirely off. He shouldn’t think of you 24/7 nor should he be keeping such a detailed account of your life. It’s completely wrong of him, illegal, invasive towards you, and he feels immense guilt for it.

At first.

At first, he’s consumed with anger and disgust towards himself. He’s one hundred percent lucid at this point and fighting back against his urges and desires. He loves you, how can he be thinking and doing these things?

As time goes on however, his fight with himself becomes a losing battle. He wants you, needs you, has to keep you close. It’s more than he can take really, and in the end, isn’t he pitiful? Won’t you stop struggling? He adores you, he truly only desires your happiness and safety…

In his arms, of course.

Perception of Darling

Complete adoration!

Giyuu is not the sort of man to worship his darling in a religious sense, because humans are flawed and he wouldn’t truly love you if he ignored your flaws right? He loves those too, so Giyuu falls under the category of adoration.

With complete adoration is how Giyuu views you, his beloved darling.

He struggles not to constantly pamper and even mildly infantilize you, though he doesn’t view you as incapable. It’s the opposite in fact, shouldn’t someone as capable and smart as you be spoiled more? He thinks so at least. He wants to take away all your worries and struggles, all of them, because he wants to keep you safe from more than just outside threats.

He wants to protect you from the ones inside too. He knows what depression and anxiety feel like, how they can destroy you from the inside out, and he doesn’t want you suffering from the same thing.

These feelings are pure but his actions can reflect something different.

In his quest to rid you of all troubles, he can unintentionally make himself a trouble, one which he can sadly not rid you of. His simple solutions may even complicate things, like telling you to quit your job and rely on him financially when you complain of a co-worker. He struggles to listen at times, in his desperation to keep you happy at all points in time, and this can be frustrating.

Whether you are screaming at him in rage, crying in fear, or trembling with anxiety… he still thinks there’s no one more adorable and lovely than you. It’s difficult for him to feel anything but love and patience for you, even if he’s the cause of your outbursts.

It’s not that he believes you can do no wrong, it’s just that he could simply care less. As long as you don’t harm yourself, or try harming him (though he understands that much more), then there’s really not much that would cause his perception to waver.

Love Language

Words of affirmation

Giyuu enjoys words of affirmation the most from you. He enjoys all other love languages too, but in a way he somewhat forces quality time (stalking or kidnapping), acts of service (you breathing), receiving gifts (your presence). Physical touch would be a close second, but Giyuu can actually go without it should you not like it.

It’s your words though he cannot receive without you willingly giving it to him.

What he wouldn’t pay or do to hear you tell him “I love you” or “I forgive you” because he does feel guilty taking you. The guilt just doesn’t outweigh his overprotective instincts which drove him to take you in the first place.

Tell him he’s wonderful, compliment his hair or eyes, or tell him you’re grateful for his presence in your life. All will make him melt, his heart softening into silken tofu by your sweet words.

He also loves your voice, so you speaking at all makes his heart flutter. When you decide to utter kind words with that voice?

He’s gone.

Ability/Danger Level

Giyuu is as dangerous as he is pretty. Not to you of course, but to any and all who may or may not pose a threat to you. This includes family and friends too. He’s not above harming or even killing for the sake of protecting you, though he’d never reveal his actions out of his own volition.

He likely will get blood on his hands, especially since it becomes easier to take people out without you noticing once he’s kidnapped you. How can he allow someone who has harmed you to continue living and breathing? Even if the damage was only psychological, he views it as a trespass against his own and it will be met with violence or some similar horror.

He really doesn’t feel any guilt either, though he does have a strong moral code, especially for children. But that weird man who tried sexually harassing you?

The world can go without that sort of scum.

Punishment

Light/Non-scarring

Giyuu is likely one of the most patient yanderes out there, but he’s not without some temper. The quickest way to find yourself over his lap with your ass in the air is to try escaping or harming yourself.

His punishments, even when he’s in the worst of moods, will never be anything terrible. The worst you can expect is isolation.

This will seem fine at first, even enjoyable if you truly wish to get away from him, but over time it will wear you down to a sort of fragility you wouldn’t expect. It’s horrible being alone, maddening to a point you may break down and beg. He’s not able to bear hearing it, so he’d either lift the punishment as you having learnt your lesson or hide away.

A lesser punishment he might use is spanking or privilege revoking. He might ban you from the garden or walks you enjoy or put you over his knee and make your poor bum burn for a little. He’d never hit you anywhere else though, and of course, never use anywhere near his full strength in spanking you. It’s honestly little taps to him, but you might disagree when it hurts to sit later.

Giyuu may even be inclined to deny you sexually/or an orgasm if you are sexually intimate.

Reward

Constantly

How can he not? He wants to spoil you rotten, so much you can’t even fathom living without him and all he provides.

Giyuu absolutely rewards you with freedoms as his darling too, and you’ll learn to truly appreciate them as time goes on in captivity. The more accepting and loving you are towards him, the more freely he takes you out and allows you to do things. He doesn’t think you incapable as a human, which means he doesn’t mind TV, books, or entertainment as long as you aren’t using them to escape.

He’s not stupid and proves rather difficult to manipulate. He may let you play your game to let his guard down, but know once you make a move he’s showing you how futile the act is.

He’s happy to spend money on you though, whatever you like too. He’s a simple man and doesn’t really spend much on himself besides the basics and necessity, so he’s actually happy he gets to use his money for something besides collecting interest. Let him decorate you, or get all the fancy tools for your hobby you’ve always wanted. It’s not hard to get him to “reward” you. In fact, it’s harder to make him stop.

Style

Kidnap!

Try as he might to resist it, he wants nothing more to chain you to his side. That’s not possible though, he’s got obligations to attend to, but he can lock you in a gilded cage.

Treatment

A delicate flower~♡

He’s actually a bit hard to read when you first meet him, but he melts like ice on a hot summer day in your presence. Others may complain about his personality, or lack thereof, but you wonder if they’re talking about the same Giyuu that you know.

He never shuts up? He’s always bringing you fresh bouquets, sweets and snacks, any and all items that catch his eye which he thinks you’ll like. He’s detailed and incredibly considerate, and this doesn’t change when you’re taken captive either.

Though he won’t allow you to leave him, he can still give you… space. Your own room if you request it, a little garden, your space, as long as it doesn’t involve straying too far from him.

He’s not controlling in a sense of depriving you of basic human abilities, like cooking or using tools. He knows you are capable of taking care of yourself, and he’s careful not to make you feel otherwise.

He really tries. It’s not always perfect though. When you’re cooperative and willing, he has an easier time letting go of the reigns, but when you aren’t? He’ll lock doors and drawers like one might with a small toddler, his mistrust will show through his actions.

Intimacy

Sexually attracted~

Giyuu’s feelings for you are pure in a sense, but he’s a man with wants and desires…that just happen to all be directed at you.

He craves to hold and caress you, and he’s a bit embarrassed to admit he’s done so while you’ve slept. Your defenseless sleeping expression invokes both envy and adoration. He wishes he slept like that and also wishes you’d never sleep any other way. It’s intimate to him, cradling your slumbering form in his arms, pliant and sweet for him to gaze at until the sun rises. His anxiety for you is quenched when he holds you like so, and he enjoys the peace it brings him emotionally.

If you reject his physical affection, Giyuu is surprisingly one of the few yandere types to respect that boundary.

Don’t be mistaken though, he’s not above manipulating your feelings if there is a chance you’re only rejecting him due to the circumstances you’re in. It’s understandable to be frightened in the beginning, he’s not pushy in asking for anything from you that you aren’t willing to give to him.

But he knows he’s an attractive man, and feels nothing walking shirtless before you, or training while you can see. He’s seductive in how he’ll speak to you, lowering his tone and softening it, making you lean in closer to hear him. That’s when you’ll smell him, a clean and masculine scent that will confuse your mind and body because how can someone evil smell so good?

It won’t be hard to succumb to his advances if you’ve been intimate before you’d been taken. He’s detailed, remember? Confident he knows you inside and out, and that includes your weak points. Where to whisper or breathe to make you melt, where to touch to have you gasping, and how to deep he needs to thrust to make you scream. He’s well aware of how much pressure and time he needs to spend between your legs, how to lick your drooling cunt to have you shake and spasm, where to curl his fingers to make you tear at his locks.

No, Giyuu would never force any sort of intimacy on you. He makes it terribly difficult not crave it in fact.

Freedom

Minimal to none—

While in his presence, feel free to ask for walks, dates, or shopping sprees. He’s fine with taking you out so long as you act normally too.

Otherwise expect nothing. No freedom. Your cage may be luxurious and beautiful but you will never leave it, not without his supervision. He won’t budge either, there’s no convincing him something is safe or acceptable. It’s one of the few times you will see him stern and unbending with you, nothing you do will make him cave.

Begging and pleading may even irritate him enough to punish you as well. Why do you want to leave so badly? Is he so terrible to you?

Habits

Sleep watching

Giyuu spends an abnormal amount of time watching you sleep, even at the expense of his own rest. This won’t ever actually affect you, as he never outright tells you he does this, but if you figure it out or wake up unexpectedly to catch him… it may make you nervous to fall asleep.

Sexual Kinks (for non-platonic yandere)

Marking/Praise/Edging&Overstimulation

Giyuu felt these urges mildly before he met you. He’s aware he likes being told how well he’s performing, holding off an orgasm for him or his partner, or making both himself and his partner a mess with overstimulation.

It’s so much worse now though. He can’t help how desperate he becomes with you, how needy and near feral it makes him to just think of filling your pretty pussy up with his cum. It’s sad almost how you turn him into such a pathetic man. He wants to brand himself on you, it wars with his need to never hurt you too, so he settles by sucking bruises into your skin and occasionally biting you. He’s vocal when you’re both intimate, he tells you how much he adores you, what he adores about you (everything), and how good you are for him. His precious pearl, his ocean and entire heart, he’s not the least bit ashamed as he grits his teeth and cries your name as he comes apart. Giyuu loves teasing you and himself too, working you both so close to the edge before stopping, leaving you both whiny and desperate for one another. He needs you to cling to him, to beg for more, to take it too.

His kinks aren’t one sided. He wants you to mark him up, in the way he wishes he could bring himself to do to you. So drag your nails across his skin, make him wear a collar of your bites and kisses around his neck, pull his hair and bruise him. Anyway you show ownership of him is welcomed, though the amount of dominance he’ll accept from you is dependent on your acceptance of your new life with him. He’s less inclined to release the reigns of control when you’re still adapting, cautious and fearful it may be a ruse to trick him and escape. He’ll relax eventually, and even begin to crave the times you tie him up and torment him like he does to you. Deny his poor aching cock again and again, make him beg for you and worship your sweet cunt as you ride his face, and then deny him again just because. He’d even accept if you just stopped there, leaving him painted red and panting, exhausted but not finished. He’d be entirely grateful if you took mercy too, rode his pretty thick cock until he became delirious and keep going even after he’s cum, moving your hips like a goddess on his lap while he pleads for rest and mercy. He can cum multiple times, but it borders on painful after the third, he won’t complain much though if you test his limits.

He’s happy to return the favor, but Giyuu’s favorite way to overstimulate you both is deep hard sex, holding your gaze as he fills you over and over, your pussy oozing his white hot load each time he pulls out to put you in a new position, before he plugs you right back up. Giyuu likes to cum pressed as firmly against your womb as he can, and he likes when you cum around his cock. It feels to most complete to him, and he cherishes the pleasured look on your face.

If it ever becomes too much, a quick way to make him finish is to praise him too. Tell him how good he makes you feel, how beautiful he is, how you like what he’s doing. His hips will always stutter in surprise, blue eyes widening as he gasps and tenses, cock twitching and threatening to spill just from your lovely voice complimenting him.

Boundaries

The front door—

How can he protect you if you run away? He draws a solid line at the doorway. You will not be crossing it without him or else.

Leniency

Strict

Unsurprisingly for an overprotective yandere, Giyuu is incredibly strict.

You’re health and safety are top priority for him, so from when you wake up to when you fall asleep, he’s got all of it tracked.

Your daily needs are monitored like your exact location in his home. He likes having eyes on you at all times. He won’t enforce specific meal plans, but he makes sure you are eating enough, you’re getting enough vitamins and nutrients, and doctor visits are regular. He even knows your menstrual cycle.

You will be asking him for any and all things, he keeps that under tight control. If you want to bake bread or grow a garden, it will all be done through his means.

Overall Rating

89/100

Giyuu Tomioka is an incredibly dangerous yandere!

While he poses minimal threat to you as his darling, he’s a risk to the outside world and your surroundings. He’s sure in his carnage in the name of protecting you, and he’s lucid about it too, which makes him quite threatening.

You’re chance of escape is little to none, and the punishment following it will surely make your teeth ache.

Snippet

“You’re trying to leave?” His tone is soft, no true indication of his mood to those unfamiliar with him.

You were familiar with him though, and his words made your blood run cold. You weren’t trying to leave, you had only wanted fresh air in fact, but the position you were in now made that difficult to believe even to your own eyes. Balanced on the flat surface of the kitchen counter, you were struggling to open the window due to the cold having frozen it outside. Once you had gotten it open, like an animal you’d stuck your head out immediately. It was an instinctive reaction in all honestly, you just wanted the cool air on your skin.

You should’ve gotten him to do it though, he would’ve, you knew, but you’d wanted to do it yourself. To have the little moment all to your own. A foolish goal in the end, as this was where it took you now. He’s not looking at you, just leaned against the entryway with his arms crossed and a cool expression painting his features, head tilted slightly down.

“I’m not!” It’s too quick a denial to absolve you of suspicion, especially as you scramble down with a face appearing impossibly guilty. “I just wanted to open the window,” you explain, but the nervous rise of your voice and the way you look frightened only make his eyes narrow a fraction. He doesn’t believe you. You need him to believe you, because your punishment for escape is always his silence. It’s damning to your senses that crave company and interaction, his patience greater than your own.

“My love, I swear, I really, truly wasn’t,” you stepped closer, heart rate picking up as anxiety tickled your senses. “I would never leave you,” you whisper, coming up to him even as he gazes down at you with eyes pooling with disbelief and suspicion.

He’s unable to resist pulling you into his arms though, wrapping you up close to him and appreciating your softness in his grasp. It helps as you wrap your arms around his neck, press yourself impossibly closer, and whimper in his ear. His grip increases a fraction, a shiver going down his spine while one hand slips further down to cup your ass and lift you.

His strength amazed you at times, and terrified you at others.

You wrapped your legs around his waist, whispering promises of never leaving his side and loving him forever against his lips before he silences you with a kiss. His soft lips warm and coaxing as he takes you out of the kitchen and towards your shared room in the house. His hold becomes a bit too harsh as you’re laid on the bed, his weight blanketing you. His eyes are darker than usual, deeper pools of blue you worry might drown you as he slips his hands beneath your skirt, calloused fingers running along the soft flesh of your thigh as he spreads them. A burning need deep in his gut to remind you where you belong.

“Who do you belong to?” It’s so light against your lips you nearly miss it.

Until he tears your underwear off, a yelp elicited from you at the sting on your flesh from where he tugged and tore them.

“You!”

He easily slips between your legs, fingers sliding through your folds, finding your puffy nub and applying pressure until you’re moaning.

“G-Giyuu…”

“That’s right. You belong to me, don’t you pearl? All mine,” he’s pressing into you, two fingers opening you up despite your entrance weeping for all of him. Still mostly clothed you grip his sleeves, whining because it’s not enough, his lips hushing you again. He swallows all the little noises you make, tongue invading and stealing your ability to think as he fucks you with his fingers. Each shlick of your pussy has you heating further, the lewd wet noises he elicits making your legs tremble around his waist.

He breaks the kiss, rubbing and stretching your gummy walls before curling his fingers and vigorously attacking your poor g-spot, his lips tugging into a smile as you shatter for him.

You’re left limp beneath him, the orgasm he tore from you too quickly made you dizzy as you pant and gather your mind again. Giyuu is already sliding the tip of his cock through your slick before you can recover, pressing forward once he’s lubricated enough to slip past the tight first ring of muscle into your warmth. His cock spreads you perfectly, opening you up and leaving you gasping for air due to the sensitive inner walls being stimulated further.

It’s desperate and messy how he fucks you, intertwining your fingers and pressing them beside your head, kissing and marking your neck up while repeating under his breath how you’re his.

“Mine too—!” Your airy cry has him sinking even deeper, a groan coming out at your own claiming of him.

“Giyuu—,” he wants nothing more than to brand your soul with himself.

“Yours,” he nods, looking into your eyes as he bullies his cock against your poor cervix, using his thighs to press you up further, almost in half while he fucks you.

“All yours,” he moans, burying his face in your neck while he stuffs you full, the room heating as you did, your core tightening around him while your body edges on the beginning of another orgasm.

He stops just before you can cum. His weight and warmth immediately leaving you as you cry out in denial. Your wide gaze on his cooling expression, his jaw taunt with tension.

“Giyuu…?”

“Not till you learn.” Your confusion must show on your face.

“That you’ll never be safe unless you’re by side.”

He didn’t believe you.

“But I—,”

“Shh… I know, my sweet pearl.” He’s blanketing you again, warmth returning to your body but his eyes remain cool.

“You’ll learn eventually.”

Something dark swirls in those depths, your gut telling you to run but…

There’s no where to go.

Dividers hand drawn by @benkeibear !

#Yan answers #not proof read lol #Giyuu Tomioka #Giyuu Tomioka x reader #Giyuu Tomioka x reader smut #yandere Giyuu Tomioka #yandere Giyuu #yandere Giyuu smut #Giyuu Tomioka smut #yandere kny #yandere kny smut #kny smut #demon slayer #kimetsu no yaiba #yan loves her mooties #yandere profile #yandere profile Giyuu Tomioka

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alieinthemorning · 5 months

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Strawberry Mint Lemonade [Getou Suguru | Gojo Satoru]

Content: Meet-Cute, Indirect Kiss, Gojo Satoru Being Gojo Satoru, Getou Suguru Being Getou Suguru, Polyamory, Polyamory Negotiations, Strangers to Friends to Lovers, Kisses, Café AU, No Curses, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Fluff, Crying, Unrequited Love, Not Actually Unrequited Love, POV Second Person, Suggestive Themes

Pronouns: None

Note: THIS IS MY 200TH WORK ON AO3 AAAAAAAAAA (Also UTC because it's 2500+ words)

Header: @/nikki101pistar on Twitter

Reblogs: Let me know that you enjoy my work and want to see more, so don’t forget to like and reblog (and comment in the tags. I love seeing people’s rambles in the tags)!

This work’s concepts, plot and original characters are my own which means I do not allow any sort of creative theft nor do I allow my work to be entered into any sort of A.I. bots. Thank you for respecting my space and boundaries.

Your favorite drink was a simple strawberry mint lemonade. Not too sweet, not too sour. It was made the same way every single time which made sense since you'd had been coming to this hole-in-the-wall café for about three years now. Every employee, new and old knew your name and order, so when the familiar drink was placed in the completed section on the counter, you didn't look twice at it and immediately took a sip.

"What the fuck is this shit?" It was as if your straw was made of sugarcane, the strawberry and lemon pieces were formed from sugar cubes and the liquid itself was pure syrup.

"Ew...what is this?" Someone from beside you, whined.

Looking over, you found an incredibly tall man with stark white hair and—oh, you couldn't see his eye color behind the dark, round shades. You were about to turn around and talk to an employee about this...horror from hell, but your eyes drifted to the drink in his large hand.

You eyed your own drink, frowning at the name written on the side.

Satoru

You looked at the man again. "Are you Satoru?"

He nodded, then said your name. "I'm assuming that's you?"

You sighed, shoving his drink toward him. "Thank god—hand me my drink. I can't drink pure sugar."

"Awww, come on! It isn't that bad! " He pouted as he switched drinks.

You took a long swig of yours before you replied. "It was like drinking the three states of matter. Solid, Liquid and Gaseous Sugar."

"How would it even be gaseous?"

"The air from the straw."

He laughed loudly, startling the other customers.

You flushed, grabbing him by the elbow. "Come on, let's sit and talk."

The Goliath of a man let you drag him to a secluded corner, where the two of you talked each other's ears off. However, despite ordering another drink of your own, you noticed that he still hadn't touched his own.

"You gonna let the ice water down the sugar?" You grinned, "Was I right about it tasting like shit?"

He balked at you. "No way!"

You nodded toward the drink, "Then drink it."

He looked at you, the drink, you again then finally swiped the drink off the table, guzzling it down in mere seconds.

"There! Are you satisfied?" His head was swiveled to the side, tucked into that weird high collared jacket of his, but you swore the tips of his ears were flushed red.

"How are you alive?" You asked in slight awe.

That got him to look at you again, all smiles too. "Must be my impeccable genes."

You raised a brow. "You a citizen of the Candy Kingdom or something? Built like Candy Wife?"

He just smiled at you. "I have no idea about what you're talking about."

The two of you chatted for longer than expect, leaving just an hour before closing.

"Maybe I'll see you around?"

"Maybe so."

And he did, the two of you ending up seeing each other at least once a week for a few months. And of course, you learned a lot about Satoru during that time.

You learned that he had a very unhealthy obsession with sweets. That, despite the goofy look that he basically always had plastered on his face, he was quite intelligent. Oh, and that he had really bright blue eyes (like limpid tears) and the reason why he wore shades was because his eyes were really sensitive and without them, he was prone to awful migraines.

You also were beginning to develop a bit of a crush on him, but you were sure someone has beautiful as him had to already be taken. So, you decided to stuff the feelings in the deepest part of your heart.

And today you learned—

That he was bringing someone else with him today.

The person Satoru brought with him was a stark contrast to him (except in clothing—they both wore dark-colored clothing). He was maybe only a few inches shorter than him with long dark hair that was in an up-down style with a bit of hair draping the left side of his face. You watched that as Satoru pointed at you, the man's eyes slid to you and his lips turned upward. Then Satoru headed toward the counter while the man made his way to you.

He called your name and you raised a brow.

He chuckled. "Satoru told me your name." He slid into the seat across from you, "My name is Suguru. It's a pleasure to finally meet you."

You leaned back in your chair, a bit uncomfortable with his familiarity with you. "Oh? Has Satoru talked about me that much."

Suguru leaned in closer, placing his elbows on the table and resting his chin on his intertwined finger. "Oh, you have no idea."

Before you could question him further on the subject, Satoru placed their drinks on the table, alongside a few sweets.

"Seems like the two of you are getting along." He said with a hum as he pulled a chair over to complete your little group.

"Yeah, sure—Satoru, what exactly have you been telling Suguru here about me?"

His brows shot up to his hairline as his head swiveled to Suguru. "What did you say?"

Suguru just smiled. "I haven't said too much." The unspoken yet at the end of that sentence was very loud.

You sighed, nudging Satoru's foot. "So, you gonna properly introduce me or am I supposed to keep thinking of your friend here as a creep?"

"Oh, uh, yeah," He placed a hand on top of Suguru's, "This is my boyfriend, Suguru. We've been together for a few years now, and been best friends for longer."

Your heart dropped into your stomach, and you felt your lips dip downward. You quickly covered your mouth with your hand, raising a brow. "Oh? We've been talking for so long, and you just now tell me about your significant other? I thought we were closer than that, Satoru."

You knew you didn't play that off well, you knew that Satoru knew that what he had said hurt you.

And Suguru?

Suguru just smiled.

Despite the rocky first meeting and sudden revelation, you, Satoru and Suguru continued meeting (after you had bullied Satoru into inviting Suguru again).

Slowly yet surely, you learned more about Suguru and their relationship. Suguru was the one who did the majority of the cooking (while Satoru baked to quell his late night sweet cravings). He was really sweet and caring despite the shit eating grin that was etched on his face. He also was a pretty big flirt.

Which...was very unsettling to you. Since it seemed like he was very open to doing it in front of Satoru, who didn't seem bothered by it in the slightest.

"You look very beautiful today."

"Oh, um, thank you..."

"I especially like the lip color you've chosen today."

You balked at him, face becoming warm as you looked between him and Satoru.

Satoru continued to sip on his drink and scroll through his phone.

And Suguru—

Just fucking smiled.

And later that night, you knew you were screwed.

You were in love with both Satoru and Suguru.

So, you did what you did with your feelings for Satoru and shoved your feelings for Suguru down alongside his. Instead of running away from them and saving your heart, you hurt yourself even more Getting closer and closer to them to the point where you had visited each others homes and you've met each others other friends (Shoko and Nanami were your favorites among them).

Today you were over at Satoru and Suguru's very nice house (another thing you learned about Satoru is that the was stupidly rich). You were simply lounging around, not over for any specific reason, just to be in their presence, when Satoru suddenly stood up from his relaxed position on the couch.

"I need donuts." And without another word, he snatched his keys off the kitchen island and was out the door before either you and Suguru could utter a word.

Now, you had been alone with Suguru before—plenty of times, when Satoru had suddenly broke off from the two of you to take a closer look at things (see: recklessly spend money). But that was usually when you were out in public, where you could go and run to Satoru if you needed.

You'd never been alone with him like this—trapped within four walls.

And of fucking course, he did what he always did and—

"Why are you always smiling like that?" The question came out rougher than you intended, but your nerves were very quickly becoming frayed.

"Smiling like what?" He asked, tilting his head.

"Like you know everything—I don't know." You crossed your arms with a huff.

"You mean like how I know that you like Satoru and I." It wasn't a question, it was a statement.

Your arms grew slack, hands falling into your lap.

He nodded to himself, "Another tell-tale reaction. This is good…"

"How is this good?" You snapped at him. "I'm in love with the two of you, who are already in a committed relationships."

He had the audacity to look surprised for a moment before his smile widened. "You love us? That's even better."

"How can you—" You sniffled, feeling the hot tears quickly race down your cheeks. "I have been selfishly spending time with the two of you. Despite how I feel, and knowing that I should just stop associating with you. I've instead decided to intruding on your relationship, just so that I can experience the tiniest fantasy of something that will never be." You were somehow able to make through your entire confession before you broke down, curling in on yourself.

You heard Suguru sigh then a bit of shuffling before the couch dipped and you were pulled into his warm embrace, which made you cry harder.

"I'm sorry for pushing you, Darling." His whispered above your head. "I should have been more upfront."

You shoved him back, looking up into his brown eyes. "Been more upfront with knowing good and well about my fucking inner turmoil."

"No," His hands slipped into yours." I should have just told you that Satoru and I feel the same way."

Your heart stopped.

There was no way that that was true. There was no way that Satoru and Suguru both felt the same way about you—and even if they did there was no way that you could choose one over the other, and you definitely wouldn't want to be the reason why they broke up either.

"Please." His voice was strained, "Just give me one chance to show you."

"I don't want to do anything behind—"

"And we won't. I'll wait until he comes back and then I'll ask for permission to kiss you. In front of him."

You sighed deeply, finally resigning yourself to your fucked up fate.

You leaned into him, "If this all goes to shit—I'll hate you forever."

"If it does go to shit, I'll accept your rightful infinite hatred."

The two of you were quite as you waited for Satoru to return. You were too exhausted to speak. Suguru was fine with that, perfectly content with rubbing circles onto your hands to help soothe you.

And then the front door was unlocked, and your anxiety spiked.

But Suguru wasn't going to go back on his word.

"Can I kiss you now?" Suguru asked the moment Satoru stepped into the room.

Your eyes were wide, frantically looking between the two of them, while your lips opened and closed like a fish.

Suguru placed a hand on your cheek, guiding you back to him.

He said your name, soft and sweet. "Can I kiss you?"

"Yes." You said it so quietly that you weren't sure that he heard you, but he very quickly assured you otherwise as his lips met yours.

Right in front of your close friend—his boyfriend, Satoru.

It was as soft as a rose petal, acutely aware of your fragile state.

"Yes—finally!" Satoru slammed the box of donuts on the kitchen counter then rushed over, reaching out for you.

Suguru intercepted him. "You need to ask first, Satoru."

He nodded furiously at his partner before turning to you, blue eyes bright. "Can I kiss you? Please?"

You blinked at him a few time before nodding. Satoru wasted no time and grabbed your cheeks, pulling you forward to meet him half way.

While Suguru's was soft, Satoru's was rough and rushed. Like he couldn't get enough of you now that he had you.

It didn't last long though became Suguru was quick to yank him off you.

"Slow down, Satoru." He flicked his forehand, shaking his head at his pout (your eyes kept finding his lips—they were red and shiny). "All this is new and we haven't even been given an answer yet."

"We just kissed? Isn't that enough of an answer?" Satoru asked Suguru who just gestured to you. Those blue spotlights turned on you. "Isn't it?"

"I mean—" You bit your lip. "I haven't actually said yes or no yet, but..."

"But...?"

You pursed your lips as you glared at the two of them. "...you both better not make me regret this down the line."

Suguru smiled, and despite it being the same know-it-all smile, you felt completely and utter secured by it. "We promise, Darling."

"What? You've already got pet names? No fair!" He paused. "Wait, what exactly did the two of you do while I was gone...?"

Your favorite drink was a simple strawberry mint lemonade. Not too sweet, not too sour. It was made the same way every single time, which made sense since you'd had been coming to this hole-in-the-wall café for about six years now. Every employee, new and old, knew your name and order, so when the familiar drink was placed in the completed section on the counter, you didn't look twice at it and immediately took a sip.

"Oh, what the fuck—Satoru, take your shit ass drink." You shoved the drink into his waiting hand, taking your own and immediately taking a plate cleansing sip.

Suguru chuckled. "I'm surprised that after all these years, the two of you are still getting your drinks mixed up."

"Who is we?" Satoru pointed at you, "This is the one who takes a sip without looking at the name on the side of the cup."

"That wouldn't matter if you didn't drink straight sugar—and then have the damn audacity to eat sweets with it." You eyed him, "Is your body okay?"

He smirked. "Oh, you know my body is absolutely perfect, but I'm sure we can—" Suguru flicked him in the cheek.

"Not in public."

Satoru balked at his audacity (and you to a lesser extent). "Says the one who literally—"

You lightly kicked his shin and hissed, "Not in public!"

"I can't believe my two partners are bullying me like this." He slumped in his seat. "I can't believe I have to deal with this for the rest of my life."

You shrugged, snatching one of his sweets. "You're the one who decided to put a ring on it."

"Now you're stuck with us forever." Suguru nodded in agreement.

Satoru watched the two of you fondly, a wide smile stretched across his lips.

"Yeah, and I wouldn't have it any other way."

I've finally done it.

For my 200th work, I finally gave you all the Sugu/Sato/Reader fluff you all deserved.

IT'S ALSO MY FIRST ONE-SHOT THAT'S OVER 2500 WORDS????

I really popped off for y'all (wipes away a tear).

Now time for me to binge the anime and get back to our regular scheduled programming of Tear Jerking Angst.

Please be excited :)

Ko-Fi | Commission | Masterlist

#alie ficlets #jujutsu kaisen x reader #jjk x reader #sugosato x reader #satosugu x reader #getou suguru x reader #gojo satoru x reader

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anjanahalo · 8 months

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Wayne vs Fenton 4

probably after tim starts investigating

~*~

It was another scheduled playdate that forced Damian to really question what Danny meant when he stated he was “liminal.” From what Danny shared at the time, it felt like a chronic medical condition. He’d been exposed, at some point, to a substance Danny knew from his scientist parents as “ectoplasm.” The exposure was strong enough to leave a lingering effect upon Damian’s body. However, Danny also warned the sort of ectoplasm in question was, as quoted by his classmate “super gross and nasty. Not shocked if it made you more prone to angry outbursts than the normal liminal. Like, getting into actually fighty fights and not regular fights.” Danny, as usual, wasn’t exceedingly helpful in clarifying his explanation. His peer evidentially understood the topic, but was horrendous in conveying the principles. From what he’d gleaned, it seemed this “ectoplasm” was a form of less potent Lazarus Water as, when he’d questioned Danny if it could heal the ill or bring the dead to life, Danny seemed horrified at the prospect. Damian didn’t question further. He enjoyed having Danny’s companionship. He’d hate to jeopardize that with giving his friend dangerous knowledge that might lead to the League hunting him down. He’d have to ask for help in researching this, but later. Later became now when, during their fight, after Damian lept to the next rooftop after being pushed closed to the edge, Danny stopped his pursuit. “Whoa, okay, we gotta go back.” “Are you frightened of falling, Danny?” “From that jump? No, but we’re not going further that way. Let’s head back. Saw an ice cream place a few blocks over. We could go there for a playdate treat?” “You’re deflecting.” “I am not! Get over here and say that to my face.” Damian didn’t move. “Make me.” Danny didn’t move. “Seriously, I get you’re liminal, but you’re apparently not liminal enough to realize why we should go back but, trust me, we should go back.” “I’d like a logical explanation you want to draw our ‘playdate’ to a close before I return, Daniel” Danny groaned. “You know how much I hate that name!” “And I’ll keep calling you that until you either use your fists or your words to stop me, Daniel.” “Urgh, look, you gotta promise not to pick any fights, alright? Seriously. There’s a super dangerous and strong liminal that way, and I do not want to deal with that shit on a school night.” Damian glanced back, properly mapping their location. They were both on the border of Park Row, better known as Crime Alley. Even more known among the Batclan as Red Hood’s territory. Red Hood, Jason Todd, a man who, very certainly, came in contact with the Lazarus pits. If living by them made Damian liminal in Danny’s scientific senses, being fully revived by them certainly would. Damian thought about tempting Danny further in to watch his reactions, but decided against it. Having strong if indirect proof of his hypothesis would be enough for the evening, considering his company. “Alright, Danny. This area is known as Crime Alley. Best to head back for ice cream.” “Thank you! Ancients!” Danny gave his favorite odd curse. “I didn’t want to have to chase you down in that sort of poisonous haunt!” “A…haunt?” “Nevermind about it. Basically the area a liminal lives gives a sort of aura from their ectoplasm and, trust me, yours might give the heebie geebies, but his is full Jason Vorhees. Neither of us want to deal with that shit. You paying?” Damian smiled back, hiding the thoughts and theories forming in his head given the indirect information he’d just been given from a scientific perspective of the Pits. “I assumed you were since you suggested it.” Danny sighed. “Fine, I guess I can use my meager allowance on you. But that means no waffle cones.” “And the place offers vegan-” “Of course it does! You think I’d be so focused on fighting you I wouldn’t note if a neat ice cream place didn’t offer vegan options for you? What sort of friend do you think I am?!” “With that division of attention,” Damian laughed, “it’s a bit up in the air.”

#danny phantom #here i go writing again #wayne vs fenton #dpxdc

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turiluvr · 1 month

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Could I request something (anything) with venti or lyney? 🥹🥹 only if you have time ofc no pressure!!

moonstruck

Swallowing his doubt, the words lodged in his throat finally got out.

— lyney x gn!reader

Lyney recalled that Inazuma had an old phrase that was commonly used in the past to profess their love. It was a piece of trivia he came across after talking to a traveling merchant in Fontaine. He couldn't help but think they were romantic in nature despite their roundabout way of declaring their love. It was a gamble anyway, it all depended on whether or not the other person knew the meaning behind those seemingly meaningless words.

People from Fontaine were romantic in their own way—they often found ways to romanticize any sort of situation and it wasn't difficult for them to come up with their own ways of declaring their love. As a magician, Lyney found himself liking things that were more indirect and roundabout. After all magic was all about misdirection and he was a master at it.

Lynette often told him to just go out and say it without anything veiling his feelings and words. Coming from someone as straightforward as she is, Lyney can only chuckle and remind his sister that it didn't come to him as easily as it did to her. He went out of his way to mention that perhaps even Lynette will have a hard time being forward once she falls in love; they are quite similar, after all. She might find herself tongue-tied the same way Lyney is right now.

But the moon was out and it was shining so brightly to the point where it took his breath away. His mind wandered to the words the merchant told him that time. It was the perfect opportunity to say it—gazing into the sky side by side, the moon was waiting for the words to be uttered and to bear witness to a long awaited confession.

But it's more difficult than he thought it would be. The words are already on the tip of his tongue, begging to be released but the voice is stuck in his throat and suddenly he's having second thoughts about this whole confession attempt. It was laughable, really, he was usually smooth with his words but he can hardly get a word out when it came to you. Especially during times where his words mattered the most.

Then, when he finally looked at you and mustered up the courage, “The–”

“The moon is beautiful tonight, isn't it?” His lips parted slightly in surprise, his eyes widening when he realized that you took the words right out of his mouth and made it your own. A part of him felt that it was a little unfair for you to steal the spotlight from him, now he's left speechless and wondering if your words carried the same intent as the one inside his head.

He'll take the chances in the end. He didn't know if your words had any meaning—were you declaring your love to him or were you just simply saying the moon looked beautiful? Despite his questions, his mind was already searching for answers he could give you. There was no time for pondering. If you meant it in a way that made his heart leap with joy, then perhaps you'll react just as strongly once he gives his response.

“The moon has always been beautiful.”

*Note: It's a famous phrase in Japan to say "The moon is beautiful tonight" as a substitute for saying "I love you"

There are many variations of responses to the saying however in this case, "The moon has always been beautiful" means "I've always loved you"

#genshin impact #genshin imagines #genshin impact x reader #genshin x reader #my writing #lyney #lyney genshin #genshin impact Lyney #lyney x reader

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krakenartificer · 11 months

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Basics of Tumblr-based memetics for reddit refugees

When people arrive at Tumblr, they are generally unsure about how to handle themselves. The buttons are easy enough (I mean, the UI sucks, but it's 2023, we're all used to sucky UIs by now, so....), but what are the social implications of each one? What does a reblog mean?

This is very difficult to explain to people for whom this is their first social media site, or are arriving here from (eg) Facebook. But for this round of refugees, from Reddit specifically, I actually can explain. Because!...

....As you have no doubt noticed ....

.... in a world where we all use 4 websites, and each of them consists of content screenshotted from the other 3....

...there is not an equal distribution of who's making content and who's copying it. Facebook generates almost none of the content for other websites; Twitter generates some; but nearly all of the content on the modern internet is generate on Reddit or on Tumblr.

There is a reason for this: all "web 2.0" sites have the ability to generate new memes, and new variants on those memes. But only Reddit and Tumblr have an evolutionary pressure that forces those memes through a natural-selection process. On Reddit, that pressure is applied by the voting system: if an addition to a post doesn't get enough upvotes, it's hidden from view, which means it has limited ability to affect the next generation of posts.

On Tumblr, the equivalent evolutionary pressure is applied by reblogs: each version of a post, each set of additions, is seen in proportion to how many people reblog it, and thus cause other people to see it. Lack of reblogs -> lack of visibility -> limited ability to affect the next generation of posts.

So with that in mind, let's look at some nuances that are specific to the Tumblr ecosystem.

1) Reblogs are direct visibility; upvotes are indirect

On Reddit, when you upvote something, it's a signal to the algorithm that -- in your opinion -- this thing is useful/valuable/funny or in some other way worthwhile. The algorithm takes that into account along with everyone else's votes, time since it was posted, and so on, and makes a decision about what to show by default vs what to hide by default, and how to sort things. Upvoting does affect visibility, but it's only one factor.

Whereas on Tumblr, reblogging puts the post on your followers' dashboards directly (assuming your followers have chronological order turned on, which most of them probably do because fuck corporate decisions about what I should and shouldn't see). One reblog = one post on everyone's dashboard; it's as simple as that.

Reblogging is therefore a much stronger evolutionary boost than upvoting is.

2) Likes have very little impact on visibility

Most people have "based on your likes" turned off. Even for those that keep it on, it doesn't affect what other people see, it only gives Tumblr some idea of what you might like to see. Of course behind the scenes that's somehow accomplished with some kind of correlation coefficient about which posts are most likely to be "liked" by the same person, and in that sense a "like" on this post increases the likelihood that someone else who has "liked" other posts that you have "liked" will see this post as well, but it's a very tenuous and wispy impact,.

Liking is therefore a much weaker evolutionary boost than upvoting is, and should be considered more along the lines of a high-five, or a hug, or a "I would give you gold for this if I could afford any" comment.

(Also, you cannot "like" only one section of a post. When you "like", the notification goes to everyone in the chain, from OP to the latest reblog. If you wish to give specific high-fives, the mechanism you're looking for is replies.)

3) Replies have no impact on visibility one way or the other.

Only OP gets notifications for replies, but you can tag people in the reply to notify them. This is the place for "@most-recent-commenter I would give you gold if I could" or for tagging a friend that you think would enjoy the post.

So, with the underlying mechanics of the ecosystem out of the way, let's look at

memetic engineering

There are two ways you can add your thoughts/ideas/opinions/snarky commentary to a post: in the text of the post, or in the tags.

a digression on tags

Tags -- of course -- can theoretically be used to organize content, although if we're being completely honest here, they're not ... great. for that. Tags can be handy as a textual handle to simplify your google search when you use an external search engine to search your own tumblr blog, but their use as an archival tool is mediocre at best. Likewise, no matter what the Tumblr UI says in the tag section, they're not gonna be that helpful in allowing people to find your content.

Tags can also, as sometimes they do on Twitter or Instagram, provide context to a post. This is less important here, since without a character limit there's no need to trim down your commentary and trust #wgastrike2023 to fill in the missing details, but it can be very handy when you're trying to determine whether this "Bruce and his buddies" post is talking about The Hulk or about Batman, or whether this thread is dissing Harry Potter, Harry Styles, or Harry Prince of Wales.

Tags are also very handy for allowing people to continue following you even when there's some sort of interest incompatibility. If you love spiders -- especially pictures of spiders -- and I'm arachnophobic, then I'm probably not going to be able to keep following you, no matter how excellent your Anarchist Star Wars takes are. But if you love pictures of spiders and you tag every single one of them #spiders, then I can block that tag and still keep following you. Similarly, a temporary block on #The Witcher Spoilers can allow the fandom to all discuss a new episode at whatever time they're able to watch it, without having to completely avoid online spaces in the meantime.

And finally, tags can, and are, used for commentary that you don't want to put in the main post. Where that line is -- what to put in the post and what to put in tags -- is something you'll have to decide for yourself as you get experience, but as a general rule, the post is for something that you believe contributes to the memetic fitness of this post, and the tags are for things that you believe are not necessarily of memetic value. Additions to the post are integrated into the DNA, and will be passed on with subsequent reblogs; tags are only added to your instantiation of the post, and will not be included on future reblogs (unless the person who reblogs it from you is on iOS Tumblr Mobile app and hasn't adjusted their settings, in which case it'll go into their tags... but at any rate it'll die out in a generation or two.) This feature makes it good for adding meta-commentary that will be interesting/funny/valuable to your immediate circle of friends, but won't be useful to the population as a whole -- it allows you to be as snarky, in-joke-y, and obscure as you'd like, without having to spend any of your mental RAM calculating what will and won't have an impact on your Brand as an Influencer.

Influencers

There is no easy mechanism for people to see your follower count. There are many easy mechanisms for people to make it impossible to see their follower count. No one cares about how many followers you have or how far your "influence" spreads. No one is going to offer you a Tumblr sponsorship deal.

However, for assorted underlying-code reasons, Tumblr blogs are disproportionately useful for manipulating search engines. So.... we have an ongoing problem with SEO scum making a whole bunch of bots and using reblogs etc to generate fake signals to Google.

The combination of those two things leads to a general Tumblr tradition of Block Bots On Sight. The extra followers aren't helping you, and the mere fact of their existence is hurting all of us. If you've seen people strongly urging you to change your profile picture, add a bio, and reblog a couple things, that's why -- because we don't want you to get caught in the crossfire of our ongoing guerilla warfare.

Other Notes

One of the places that Reddit is much better than Tumblr is in the viewing of an entire memetic population as a whole: you just look at a post, scroll through the page, and Reddit helpfully shows you want you want to see, and hides what you don't.

On Tumblr, each memetic variation is functionally an entirely separate entity. This is great for memetic diversity, but it means there's a LOT of duplication, and it means there's really no good way to get all the variants together. The closest you can get is to "check the notes" -- click on that number at the bottom left of a post, and look through the replies, reblogs, and tags. Those are in chronological order and in no way threaded, so it's not very useful, but it is what we've got.

Let's see ...

One thing Tumblr does much better than Reddit is the ability (because of aforementioned fragmentation) to have an arbitrary number of any fandom. No more "Well I don't like the takes in r/polyamory but it's the only place where I can talk about it so idk" ... nope! Here we can have as many Spider-Man fandoms as there are Spider-Man fans. Really like someone's headcanons? Follow them! Really dislike someone's OTP? Unfollow them! Really hate someone's take on your favorite character? Block them! This is a fabulous feature of Tumblr and I encourage you to take advantage of it.

uh...

tags can be 140 characters, but they can't contain double quotes (") or commas (,) because those are delimiter characters and Tumblr will break your tag at those points in the string

...

If you think someone has mis-judged the value of their tags, you can copy them from their post and paste them into the main comment of your reblog. This is known as the tags "passing peer review". Copy-paste is preferred to screenshotting for accessibility reasons (and also the fact that sometimes Tumblr just doesn't feel like loading pictures), and it's considered polite to credit the person whose tags you promoted.

...

Contrariwise, if you think they mis-judged the value of their comment, you can go back to the person they reblogged from, and reblog without their addition. Tumblr made this harder recently, but I have confidence that we'll defeat them eventually.

...

I know that I said reblogs are much stronger than upvotes, but when you've got infinite monkeys generating infinite reblog streams, it all gets lost in the noise. Reblog anything and everything you feel like upvoting -- if people don’t want to be subjected to a bunch of random shit that lights up the dopamine receptors in your brain, they shouldn’t be following you on Tumblr.

...

IDK what to tell you about Tumblr polls. We're just like this 🤷‍♂️

...

That's all I can think of. Deities bless and keep you for seeing a problem in our online ecosystem and actually doing something about it. Looking forward to seeing what we can do together.

(Author's Note: All statements about how Tumblr works ("works") are as of 14 June 2023. God only knows what changes staff will have rolled out by time time you read this)

#welcome reddit refugees #meme mutation #memetics #long post #sociology #anthropology #tumblr culture #the tumblr experience #seriously people tag your fandom if you're going to talk about bruce! Or Harry! Or Steve!

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cult-of-the-eye · 3 months

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LEMME HEAR YOUR UNHINGED TMA RANTS! <3

Oooh I think I've already posted a lot of my rants but one of the characters who I haven't really had a whole rant on is Martin K blackwood.

THIS MAN. This man is so wonderfully written. A lot of characterisations of the "nice one" are quite flat and don't really expand much on them being nice apart from maybe giving the person low self esteem. What I love about Martin is how masterfully it uses that sort of prototype of a character and makes it much more gut wrenching and relatable. He starts off as sort of the office dunce from Jon's pov, which early on we also realise is unreliable. He's the bumbling idiot, the sweet fool and I get it. As a fat person, I feel like a lot of us feel pressured to be the comic relief or to put it more precisely, the one to be laughed at. And he's seen the gap in the archives, he's seen that role that needs to be filled and he's easily filled it. When you have the group of Tim and Sasha and then Jon, the only thing that could unite them is mutual awkward laughter towards Martin. And Martin is used to seeing what's there and filling the gaps, man is a people pleaser to a fault, he has had to guess what his mum didn't like about him and change accordingly, getting it wrong every time. He makes himself palatable which is so REAL especially for a fat person and/or traumatised people.

And then we see this more calculating side of him. He LIED to all his colleagues and his BOSS about a qualification to get a job and then kept that lie going for at least a couple of months. Listen, I don't think it's fair to label Martin as completely a manipulative calculating guy who's just put on a mask but it's also not exactly fair to characterise him as just a sweet, tea making guy who wears jumpers. And that's what I love about him. He's so complex. I feel like it delves into the idea of having both a saviour complex as well as an inferiority complex. He's had to make choices that are above his skillset early in his life and frequently, he's been blamed for causing other people's emotions so he naturally thinks he has control over how other people feel. Which gives him that sense of responsibility, like I can save anyone cause I can control their emotions, if I'm nice enough then they won't be mad/ill/sad/they'll love me. But at the same time, these sort of underhand methods of indirect communication don't resonate to him as causing any damage cause he doesn't actually think he's important enough to cause damage or have an impact on other people's lives

I don't think it's of any shock to anyone that my favourite Martin is angry Martin. It's the part that fights against both aspects of this inferiority/saviour complex because it 1. Is a path of direct communication. He has the opportunity to state exactly how he is feeling and the focus is on that rather than how can I get the other person to respond. 2. It recognises that he is important. Anger is in response to perceived injustice, frustration, annoyance and all of those things are in a way, self preserving. Obviously it's not good to do that too much (see: Tim Stoker) but there you go. I'm not saying angry Martin is perfect or anything but I'm saying that it's so satisfying and interesting to see cause it completely goes against the characterisation we've been given so far and it introduces a whole new facet to Martin - that he doesn't want to be ruled by his trauma and past experiences.

It's honestly a joy to see Martin develop into someone who fights more against the role he's been "given" while simultaneously playing into it. His whole Peter Lukas arc is very much a part of that. Essentially he's saying I'm not important enough to contribute the way you are (inferiority) but I'm still going to try and control things behind the scenes (saviour). So when Jon goes to save him it breaks that, he looks him in the eyes and tells him you, Martin K Blackwood are Important, you make an impact and you Mean Something. You don't have to save us all. It's such an important part of his character arc and honestly it blows me away every time I think about it.

Plus obviously the whole isolation thing is just so AGH it's just so built in to his character it makes complete sense that he has a tendency to isolate himself. It fulfills both the inferiority and saviour - he doesn't think he's important enough to be missed but also he feels like it'll push them into missing him. Solving the problem and putting himself down in one fell swoop.

Our final stage of Martin is one that is far from perfect, far from healed but absolutely closer than he was at the beginning. He shows more of himself, in working towards realising he makes an impact on people, telling jokes and just sharing his thoughts to Jon. So what does him stabbing Jon mean for this? Honestly I'm not entirely sure (I'm gonna be honest I did not realise this rant would be so long lol) but I'm thinking along the lines of this is an ultimate show of acceptance of his significance and rejection of his need to save people. He is committing the most direct act of all, he's doing this in the same need to help people but instead of being manipulative about it, he's just directly doing what needs to be done. But also he's not saving Jon, he's doing the complete opposite. He couldn't control Jon's response to the situation, as much as he wanted to, so he did what jon wanted. I might not be explaining this right cause I'm not entirely sure what I mean either but I'm trying to say it's a poetic end. It's separate from everything he was but in a way that's parallel to and pays homage to his struggles. He's still being sort of a saviour and he's still arguably not the most important person in this scenario but the point is that it's in a different way than he's used to. In my opinion, a better way.

Anyway yeah thank you for enabling me, I didn't know how much I needed this rant and I didn't know I had so much to say lol. <3

#tma #the magnus archives #jonathan sims #martin k blackwood #jmart #jonmartin #tma character analysis #character analysis #martin kartin blackwood #martin blackwood #tma martin #tma martin blackwood #answered asks

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turbulentscrawl · 3 months

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Could I get an Aesop, Norton and Kevin with a S/O who gets turned into a hunter because they learned too much? Like. Their Significant other was always very enthusiastic about discovering secrets and stuff, and they started acting off because they discovered something BAD. And within a month or so. They moved officially to the hunter manor? 🙏

If that's too much, feel free to ignore or decline!

I put my own spin on this, i hope you don't mind! This is SFW but going under the cut because it plays into the horror aspect of the game. Also, I don't have the time to whip up a kevin header currently and don't have the patience to wait on posting this....so I'll get his made and added later!

Warnings: body horror, angst

The worst part of it all is that you can’t even remember the reason for it all.

You were a seeker, a searcher, always nosing into places and subjects you didn’t belong. You craved to know the world’s secrets and that included the manor’s. You spent long hours, days, weeks, investigating the manor’s records, the histories of its inhabitants, obtaining the aid of…some horrific woman. A veritable snake. She told you something. Something bad…. Something that ruined you from the inside out, necrosing its way through every cell.

The changes come slowly at first, and painfully. Your muscles and joints would ache. Your head would throb. Your bones would move on their own, shifting and stretching inside your tearing meat. You drowned in darkness, and suffocated in blinding lights. The worst moments of your life came to you again! Again! Again! Again! Again! Again! Again! Again! Again!

And when all the pain finally melted away, you were different. The friendly faces around you were once your enemies. Your own face was that of a lion, and the original of it staring back was the clueless lamb.

Aesop

-He showed little interest in your “search for answers.” He wants to understand everything better too, true, but even the detective sorts among you had found few answers. Orpheus, Alice, Naib…. No offense to you, of course, I’m just saying he wasn’t be holding his breath….

-But far be it from this recluse to stop you. He of all people understands what it means to hyperfocus on your work. Work is familiarity, truth, and on some level he can imagine how a tangled mystery might be as comfortable to you as a corpse is to him. They both reveal truths in indirect ways.

-Because of your busybody separation from one another during this time, he likely doesn’t notice the changes right away. He probably finds out from someone else about the aches and pains you’ve been having, the sweats, fever, and all without a match in the records to explain them away. People didn’t get sick in the manor, yet somehow you inexplicably were.

-Then you sleep. For days. You’re still enough that Aesop almost feels like he’s watching over one of his 'normal' patients, like he should be doing your makeup. He’s calm, but checks for your pulse and breathing a lot. That’s when he notices you crying in your sleep.

-And things only go downhill from there. Aesop is generally level-headed, but there’s something about your aura that begins to disturb him. He refuses to leave, to abandon you when something is obviously wrong, but you go more and more still under his watchful eyes. You stop breathing, your skin goes pallid, but blood is still hot in your veins—he gives your thumb a pinprick to be sure of it. Your pillow is always wet because you won’t stop silently crying.

-On a whim one day, he decides to check your eyes. He collapses to the ground when he realizes the sockets are empty and raw. He runs from your room then, and when Emily returns to investigate your body is gone.

-The next day, you return in perfect condition. Healthy, though confused, and with no memory of that last several weeks of pain. You both had a match the next day, and Aesop decided he would focus on protecting you above anything else.

-But the Hunter was new. Eerie, unspeaking, blind…and cried ceaselessly. Aesop was frozen in genuine fear when the other you lumbered by him, choking on pained sobs, perhaps in search of your old peace.

Norton

-He told you from the beginning that it was a bad idea. Norton was not an educated man but he had sense—and experience—enough to know when paranormal shit was not to be trifled with. He still had nightmares about that eye….

-But you went on ahead with your business anyway. He let you, albeit while watching his back a whole lot more. Isolating. Swallowing his dread. You remind him of his mistakes before you even make them.

-He doesn’t think much of your first symptoms. Norton gets sore sometimes, and feels ill. The Black Lung never did leave him, and some days he handles it worse than others. You have nothing like that, though, and after several days of persisting discomfort he remembers that fact and sends you to Emily. She’s as perplexed as him though, and that makes him feel even more nervous.

-He also doesn’t notice for a while that you’ve stopped talking about your search entirely. He asks you about it once, when he catches you staring at the wall in a daze, and feels like a knife pierces his lung when you say you don’t have the faintest clue what he’s talking about.

-He keeps catching you like that. Paralyzed in a particular spot. Watching things, unblinking. When you come to, you don’t remember what you were doing. Your memory starts go slip away like Luca’s does, but somehow it’s more severe. You remember who you are, who he is, but everything else is gone. Some evenings he practically has to spoon feed you dinner because the concept of silverware and food have escaped you.

-Paranoid of what it all means, Norton starts to stay with you at night. But he gets no sleep during those times because all night you moan in pain. When Norton wraps his arms around you for comfort, he wears he feels your muscles twisting and undulating under your skin.

-Norton does not remember the last time he’s screamed, but he did the day after you finally seemed better. After he finally started to relax again. He was decoding in the top floor of the hospital when he heard that familiar moaning coming from below. He freezes at the sound, and when he looks over his shoulder he sees a twisted, stretched figure crawling up through the gaping hole in the floor. He knows the hair, the voice, but nothing else is you.

-And he screams, backed up against the cipher like a cornered animal. Never in his life has he not tried to run for his life, but when this Hunter of you locks eyes with him he can’t. He can’t run from what he didn’t fight harder against. Even when facing Fool’s Gold—himself—he’s never felt so much like a failure.

Kevin

-He’s always known he lacks your foresight. Kevin can’t begin to suspect the truth of things like this place. The sprawling vastness of it, he doesn’t trust himself to comprehend the complexity, the darkness. But you? Well, even if this it all a bit eerie, he’s got faith in your intelligence.

-He plays closer attention to you than the other two. The second you start to look off, he tasks notice. He sees the obsession in your face, the dark bags under your eyes, the way your nose digs deeper into things than before. You become…pushier with people.

-Kevin suggests you take a break, but you wave him off. You’re onto something, you say, and just need a little more understanding before everything unravels. He doesn’t like that word. “Unravel.”

-Which is perhaps a premonition, because it’s a great word to describe what happens to you. When you’re awake—and you are awake for irrationally long hours—you seem positively mad. You whisper to yourself in words that don’t sound human. He catches “Hastur” among them a few times, and “Witch” but once again his own comprehension fails.

-And when you sleep, you scream. The fist few nights it happened, he and a few others came running from down the hall and roused you. You didn’t remember the terrors. Night after night it happened, the response dwindling until it was just Kevin abandoning his own sleep to help you from whatever was terrifying you in your sleep.

-Then, you stopped waking up. He tried everything! Water, those smelling salts Emily had. Nothing would wake you and you just kept screaming, screaming, screaming like you were being dissected in your bed. After three days of not sleeping himself, Kevin carried your thrashing form to the infirmary. He was horrified when Emily suggested restraining and gagging you, but he had no other ideas himself. He slept in the chair nearby for what felt like weeks.

-And one day it all stopped. Kevin woke up, cracked his stiff neck, and noticed you were gone from your restraints. Emily was as confused as he was, but before the panic could build you emerged from your own bedroom, right as rain.

-He pulled you aside and cried in your arms until he passed out himself.

-The next match, though, started his own series of nightmares. Only a few minutes in he heard that scream. That blood-curdling wail that had been seared into his memory. It paralyzed him, and everyone else, on the spot. And then the vestige of your suffering appeared. Dark, shivering, voice raw and pained. The new Hunter that rounded the corner was undeniably you, and Kevin was sure he’d never know another peaceful day again.

#idv x reader #identity v #aesop carl x reader #kevin ayuso x reader #norton campbell x reader #idv prospector #idv embalmer #idv cowboy #turbulentscrawl

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therobotmonster · 1 month

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"Doctor Martin, why are you an atheist?"

Director Maria Kleinheart wasn't the sort of person who asked indirect or idle questions. She was in every way a Kleinheart, the spitting image of her grandmother. Only she wasn't staring out from a yellowed ad in a back issue of Popular Science or Woman's Day, she was staring from across desk made of polished slate.

Emil Martin didn't respond immediately. That sort of question usually came with an invitation to services or a badgering about Pascal's wager. That didn't fit what he knew about the director, though that wasn't much. An intense religious conversion would explain the rumors around her distance from the rest of her family.

"Director, is this a personal or work related question?" Emil finally asked.

"Work." She replied.

"Is that appropriate?"

"Yes. This is about security clearances."

That made even less sense. Emil decided to risk a lecture on his eternal soul and answered truthfully. "Pretty standard, insufficient evidence."

"Would you rather it be true?" She asked. "Would it be comforting to know you existed for a purpose, that someone was in charge of your existence, caring for you?"

"Not really." Emil replied. "I'm rather Hitchenisan in that regard."

"Good enough. Follow me."

"BE NOT AFRAID."

The words seemed to come out of the air itself. The thing was at the center of the large, expansive lab that had once been a missile silo. It was a sphere, surrounded by two rings of brass-like metal. The rings were lined with hemispherical semi-translucent white glass or crystal protrusions. The inner ring spun slowly, as did the central core, though only the faintest irregularities in its glowing blue-white corona revealed that motion.

The outer ring was held in place with steel chains, each link six inches in diameter. Two chains locked the ring to the floor, while a third latched the top to the ceiling. The cuffs the chains connected to seemed to have been welded shut around it.

"BE NOT AFRAID." It 'spoke' again. Its voice was clear and musical, but wrong and artificial at the same time. It sounded like familiar voices; his mother and father, his cousins, his old school pals, his boyfriends, even Director Kleinheart, each synthesized poorly via an AI speech simulator, all speaking in perfect time.

Every time it spoke, Emil smelled his grandfather's sweet cornbread fresh from the oven.

"That looks like an angel." He finally gasped.

"Looks like." Director Kleinheart smiled. He wasn't sure she could do that. "I knew we picked the right man."

"This is why you were asking about my beliefs?"

"Yes Doctor Martin. You see, freedom of religion is an extension of the principle of innocence until proven guilty. Once one faith is shown to be correct, all others are revealed as wrong."

"And you wanted to make sure I, what, wasn't guilty of being wrong?"

"No, the mistaken are innocent of everything except the actions they directly take." Kleinheart continued. "It's the ones who would take this to mean they were right that are fifth columnists to an unaccountable alien power."

"Oh." Emil replied. He didn't know quite what else to say.

"I want you on our team that's studying it. We need to know how it works, what it's made of, what those things its made of can be used for, you know the drill."

"BE NOT AFRAID." Again came the smell of cornbread.

"Are the restraints necessary?" Emil asked. "It is telling us we don't need to be afraid of it."

"Oh, we thought that too at first." The director said. "But we've already learned quite a bit about our little intruder here, even a bit of its 'source code' for lack of a better analogue. That message isn't meant for us."

"What is it then?"

"Can't you guess, Doctor?"

Dr. Emil Martin shrugged. "I have no idea."

"It isn't giving us a warning."

Director Kleinheart smiled for the second time in Emil's memory and spoke again.

"It's repeating its orders."

#be not afraid #ophanim #short story #flash fiction #kleinheart robotics #do you think god stays in heaven #etc #melinoe labs #melinoe laboratories #the rare non unreality melinoe thing #not unreality in the sense that its prose and not an in-universe artifact

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coldalbion · 3 months

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Dis/nomers: On misnomers, magic-metaphors, and life in general

So, here's the thing: a lot of societal and cultural metaphors around magic and occultism are in the so-called West, frankly, bad and a product of the imprecision in the English language about "power", which themselves are inherently modelled on industrial-capitalist frameworks thanks to the Industrial Revolution, and steam power. Think about what you mean when you use the word "power" or "intent" and ask yourself whether you are once again running on 19th Century (colonialist ideas: for example see non-Indigenous misconceptions of mana) that boil down to thinking you're a steam engine or some sort of closed system - because that's what the whole popular idea of energy comes from. Why? Because willpower doesn't really exist. Now something seems to be going on, when we do certain things. But are we hoodwinking ourselves - barking up the wrong tree, being led down the garden path -by the porting in pop-metaphor? Sure, it's easier, but is the apparent ease and clarity obscuring insights? Is it preventing us from taking our place as part of a living world; not clockwork and piston but inter-and-intra-relating, inter-and-intra-being in an 'animist' cosmovision? Consider the metaphors you use, and wonder how they're using you. Because they are - we are thinking-with-and-being-with the ongoing worlding of a daimonic (agential) kosmos. And that All is doing the same-with-us. Remember, changing the metaphors we use can change the way we think, and how we are in the world. This is why I mutter about kenning, as found in Old Norse poetry, but also as a method of indirectly approaching experience by folding in the world. Kenning is, in one sense creating a poetic metaphor, a circomlocution that describes a thing without direct nominalisation. A wheelchair user can be a throne-walker; the sea is not just the sea, it is the whale-road and also Aegir's-cauldron, Poseidon's-stable, etc etc.

"It is no coincidence that a kenning is a poetic term of art, a doubling and metaphoric circumlocution of a singular noun or thing – the sea becoming the “whale-road”, a sword seen as the “icicle of red shields”. A singular referent now exceeds itself, drawing the relationality with the whole world of those present. This indirectness, far from detracting from the referent, deepens the knowing. Each portion of the kenning exceeds itself also, thusly thickening the field of the sword or sea, and, in enhancing its relationality, enlivens each further. Further, this means that the poet acknowledges the excess of the referents, comprehending that kenning may build on kenning, and the full, totalistic mapping of a referent is doomed to fail in terms of completion. This goes even beyond the usual aphorism from astronomer Carl Sagan: “If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first create the universe.” For each element of the apple pie is capable of being defined by the relationality of all presences, in all forms, positions, and configurations in all possible and impossible universes – and each of these in turn relate to each other as they will. This then, is the joy and horror, the wonder and terror of an animate, fluxing kosmos – there is always more." - Goêtic Atavisms, Frater Acher & Craig 'VI' Slee (See link above: also available on Amazon as well as from the publisher if you need that)

Do we want to live in a world circumscribed by misnomers, grandfathered in with extractive and clunky ways of perceiving the world? Or do we want to embrace the dis/abling wyrd strangenesses of the numinous? The liberatory power of the dis/nomer - the radical proposition that there is always more than can be named, can be contained? That we might ken more if we embraced blurry, uncertain periphalisms which spiral endlessly inward and down into pandaemonic, living, breathing labyrinths? If we immersed ourselves in relational eddies, tides and gyres eternally returning-and-coming-forth-again - dis/membered and re-membered anew? To dive into currents and flows - the multiplicitous assemblage of influences which are the very bodyof the oceanic river which Herakleitos warned us that we could never enter in the same place twice? What might we notice is already happening, already ongoing, that we are amidst, then? Might we spot the plurality of Minotaurs engaging in their diasporic fugitivity, nomads in their myriad labyrinths, far older, wiser, and weirder than we thought we knew? Spaces of monstrously numinous sanctuary, far beyond the ken of the Theseus (their supposed slayer) and his identitarian regime of denial, his heroic ever-intact status quo. Pity the ship-builders in their labour; they work do so under the threat of sword - or is it gun and bomb, these days? But while Theseus abandons Ariadne, Dionysos does not! And while Theseus eschews the sea route to perform his labours in order to gain heroic glory and satisfy ambition, his oceanic ancestry has the last laugh - both mortal father Aegeus (thrown into the sea that bears his name) and he (thrown off an island cliff - presumably into the ocean) were reclaimed; seized by the sea and its thundering white horses. What might it be, to be oceanically possesed as that hero's mother was? To have one's soul-sea stirred by the Earthshaker? We can but dream on the matter - while also slyly noting that Athenians kept the Ship of Theseus preserved, as mark of divine heritage in their feted city ruled by the demos. What matters now, in these days when even politicians talk of the so-called "will of the people", is matters of ancestry and history dismissed; lineages of language and its many influences ignored - no entanglements here, vine or otherwise, we assure you! But thankfully, the ship-builders know the way of wood and net and weave. They know how many planks pass through their hands, how many nails struck, how much pitch is brewed. They know there's more. They're craftsfolk after all - assemblages are their business, whatever the material - they know what mattering is. And isn't it interesting that the Temple of Hephaistos in Athens was once mistakenly called the Thesseion - The Temple of Theseus, before the moderns realised their mistake? Watch the words we use, and how they use us. Be seeing you.

#goetic atavisms #magick #occult

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weemssapphic · 1 year

Text

in my head (series)

Chapter Four: The Not-Date Date

Larissa Weems x f!reader

previous chapter | next chapter | series page

words: ~4.5k, ao3 link

chapter-specific warnings: indirect mentions of anxiety and insecurities

chapter summary: The day starts with a little hiccup, however Larissa and our dear reader are determined to move forward with their little date - that totally isn't a date, thank you very much.

“Larissa?” You tried to sound confident but your voice shook as your eyes roved over her form.

The young woman stood slowly, turning to face you. A blink of an eye later it was your Larissa standing before you again, face white as a sheet.

You blinked.

“How did you…” you could feel your heartbeat in each of your limbs as a lightbulb went off in your head. “You’re a shapeshifter.”

Larissa’s cheeks turned pink and she crossed her arms defensively across her chest.

“I am.” She held her chin high, her face stony, though you could see the trepidation in her eyes.

You took a slow, careful step towards her, as if trying not to spook her. “Was that… The woman… Was that you? I mean, you a couple years back you?”

“It was.” Her replies were curt, her tone guarded. You knew you weren’t supposed to see what Larissa had done - that her shifting was something private for her, and that you had walked in on some sort of intimate moment. You could practically see her walls coming up in real time, walls that you’d thought - you’d hoped - you’d torn down long ago, when you’d started getting closer.

“Larissa,” you pleaded, taking another step towards her. She didn’t move, though from the way her fingers twitched and her right foot shuffled ever so slightly, you could tell she wanted nothing more than to run. “Talk to me. I’m sorry that I walked in unannounced, I just thought… I just thought you were getting ready. I know I wasn’t meant to see that but please, don’t shut me out.”

The apprehension shining through the cracks in her carefully guarded mask overwhelmed you, and you wished nothing more in that moment than to get in her head, to see what she was thinking, what sort of internal war was going on beneath the surface. But you knew you couldn’t - you wouldn’t risk your closest friendship over a moment of indiscretion, you couldn’t break her trust like that. You seemed to be on thin ice already as it was.

Finally, Larissa closed her eyes, letting out a deep breath and dropping her arms to her sides before sinking down onto the stool in front of her vanity.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered, fighting the lump in her throat. “I would appreciate it if you would keep the knowledge of my shapeshifting to yourself. There is a reason I don’t tell people.”

You nodded furiously, closing the remainder of the gap between the two of you and kneeling in front of her. “I promise I won’t tell a soul. I just don’t understand why you keep it a secret?”

Larissa laughed bitterly. “I would hardly want the entire school, let alone the entire population of Jericho, thinking I’m trying to actively deceive them. Shapeshifters are not often welcomed, darling. At worst, people see us as manipulative and deceitful - after all, how can you be sure this is even the real me? At best, people seem to think they can bend us to their will. I would rather not have to deal with the implications.”

“I understand.” Of course you did. Manipulative and deceitful were words often used to describe you, able to see into people’s minds and glean the most private of information, able to use this information against others on a whim. It was nothing you hadn’t heard before, and it made sense that Larissa, in the position she was in, would choose not to divulge this information with anyone.

Still, though, it stung a bit that she hadn’t even felt safe enough to tell you, had even become defensive when you’d found out.

“You could’ve told me, you know. I guess I get why you didn’t. But I would’ve understood, you know? I’ve spent my whole life fighting against people’s prejudices against people like me - people who supposedly have the ability to manipulate others for fun. I would never think to judge you.” Your voice was gentle, a bit sad, and Larissa’s gaze softened slightly as she looked down at you.

“I…” Larissa seemed to be struggling to find the right words. “I didn’t consider that. I simply didn’t want to lose your trust over something so trivial.”

You couldn’t stop your heart from swelling at the thought of Larissa being afraid to lose you. “It’s not trivial, it’s a huge part of who you are. You could never lose my trust over something like that. Please know that.” Your hand landed on her thigh and you began to rub calming circles over the fabric of her dress.

Larissa swallowed visibly, nodding and choking out a quiet “thank you”.

“Can I ask you something?” Larissa tensed, but nodded again, and you bit your lip, afraid of her reaction. “Why did you shift, just now I mean?”

Larissa’s eyes darted between yours. If you would’ve decided to read her mind, you would’ve seen her inner struggle between lying to you and feeling guilty about it, or telling you the truth and feeling a deep, burning shame for her own perceived shortcomings. What she settled for was a half-truth.

“I’ve been feeling a bit… old lately. Older. As if my career is finally catching up to me. This semester has been… trying, and I feel as though you can tell.” Good enough. You didn’t need to know it was your perception of her, your own validation she had been craving most when she’d shifted.

“Do you want to know what I think, Larissa?” Your heart was cracking at her confession, but you tried not to let it show. She avoided your gaze, but cocked her head nonetheless. “I think,” you took her chin between your fingers, forcing her to look at you. “That you are the most beautiful woman I have ever had the pleasure of knowing. The lines on your face don’t detract from that beauty. In fact, they make you even more stunning.”

It was true - you loved the little crinkles next to her eyes when she smiled, the laugh lines that showed how often she had something to smile about. You adored the crease between her brow when she was deep in thought, the lines on her forehead when she would raise an eyebrow at you.

Larissa’s cheeks were pink and a small smile was slowly taking shape on her face. She let out a shaky sigh. “Thank you. I hope I haven’t made us late…”

You took her smile as a minor victory and grinned back, gently squeezing her thigh. “Not at all - if you still want to go? We could always-”

Larissa cut you off. “Yes, I still want to go. I’ve been looking forward to it. I just need a moment to collect myself.”

“Yeah, sure. I’ll wait in your office.” You stood, leaving Larissa alone at her vanity and settling on the edge of her office desk to wait for her.

She stepped out into the office a few minutes later, locking the door to her quarters behind her. She looked regal as usual, now wearing a matching coat over her dress and sporting black heels. The smile on her face gave nothing of your prior conversation away.

You led her to your car and soon you were on the road.

“Do I finally get to know where we’re going?” Larissa seemed to finally be relaxing. You, however, were fighting the unexplained butterflies that were fluttering about in your tummy at the reality of the situation - Larissa Weems, in your car, for the very first time. How silly, to be so affected by something so mundane.

“We’re going to Burlington,” you quipped, grinning widely as you heard Larissa huff next to you.

“That much is obvious, darling. What will we be doing there?” You didn’t have to look at her to know that her eyebrows were raised, that her lips were turned down into a disapproving frown as a result of your obstinance.

“We’re going to a spa to get massages.” You glanced to your right to gauge her reaction. She looked surprised for a moment, before her face broke out into a pleased smile.

“You certainly know how to woo a woman,” Larissa teased, and you felt your heart skip a beat. She’s just being cheeky, you reminded yourself. She doesn’t mean it like that. Your cheeks began to heat up and you forced out a chuckle.

“I guess.” You tightened your grip on the steering wheel, forcing your eyes to stay on the road ahead of you rather than drifting over to the woman occupying the passenger seat. “The ladies are just lining up for me, huh?”

Larissa remained silent and you couldn’t help yourself - stealing a glance in her direction, you could see she was turned away from you, gazing out the window with a frown on her face.

Great, now you’ve done it. You have to stop pushing her.

Your mind began to race, searching for another subject, anything to distract Larissa from your idiocy. You cleared your throat. “Can I ask you something about the shifting? You don’t have to answer of course…”

“Hmm?” Larissa hummed, as if pulled out of a trance. “Oh. Yes, ask away.”

“Is this, um… Is this your ‘natural’ form?”

There was a beat of silence in which you wondered whether you had, again, pushed too far, but just as you were about to backtrack, Larissa spoke.

“Yes, it is.” There was another brief silence, but then Larissa chuckled lightly. “My days of experimenting with my appearance are long gone.”

“Can you change anything about yourself?” You were curious, you’d never known a shapeshifter personally, as it was a more rare and easily hidden ability, and you’d never had a reason to do much personal research on the subject.

“I can change my physical appearance, yes, though I am limited to human forms. It’s easier if I have a clear picture in my mind, if it’s someone I’ve seen before, though I can also change certain features and body parts at will.”

“Wow… I’m ashamed to say I don’t know much about shapeshifting… You might be the first shapeshifter I’ve met.”

“It’s a rather rare ability, I’m afraid.”

There was so much more you wanted to ask, but the drive to Burlington was quite short and you found yourself pulling into the parking lot of the spa. Your questions would have to wait.

Larissa trailed behind you, allowing you to lead the way to the reception counter. The spa was just as nice in person as it had been in the pictures on Google. Marble floors, plenty of lush green plants, and a small fountain off to the side of the reception area gave the place a serene atmosphere.

“What can I do for you?” The receptionist smiled brightly.

“Y/N Y/L/N, I have an appointment at 2:30?”

The receptionist, whose name tag read ‘Maria’, turned to her computer screen, scrolling idly until she found what she was looking for. “Ah yes, the couples massage.” You could feel Larissa’s eyes boring into the back of your head, and you tried to ignore it as you nodded your confirmation to Maria.

“Perfect. If you two could just fill out these forms, our waiting room is over to your right. Once those are filled out we can lead you back to your private room.” Maria slid two clipboards across the counter. You took them, thanking her, and headed towards the waiting room she’d mentioned; a large, open space with plush couches.

“A couples massage?” Larissa raised an eyebrow at you as you sat down, handing her one of the clipboards.

“They’re not just for couples,” you argued, not quite able to meet her eye. “Plus what fun is it if we don’t even get to spend time together.”

Larissa appraised you for just a second longer before letting out a low hum and dropping her eyes to her clipboard, filling out the intake form. Once both forms were filled out, you dropped them off with Maria. Two massage therapists showed up moments later, ushering you and Larissa down several hallways into a private room with two massage tables at the center. The room smelled faintly of a mixture of essential oils and there was soft, ambient music playing. You could already feel some tension leaving your body.

“So as you booked the full body massage, you can undress and put on the disposable underwear you’ll find on the massage tables,” one of the massage therapists stated. “Just go ahead and get comfortable and we’ll be back in a few minutes. If you’d like, you can pick out an essential oil blend to use for the massage.”

The two women left the room and you and Larissa were left facing each other.

“So…” Larissa trailed off, fingers fiddling with the sleeves of her coat.

“Nothing we haven’t seen before,” you joked, thinking this might not have been the best idea you’d ever had as you shrugged off your jacket. Clearly, you had not considered all of the ramifications of booking a full-body couples massage with the woman you were trying desperately not to have a crush on. Larissa chuckled nervously as she slipped out of her own coat.

Before you could lose your nerve, you undressed, finding the disposable underwear the massage therapist had mentioned and slipping them on. Larissa followed suit and you averted your eyes, taking a particular interest in studying the minimalist decor of the room to avoid gawking at her.

Of course you’d seen her naked plenty of times, hell you’d had your face buried in her cunt multiple times a week for the past month or so, but something about seeing her like this, in such an innocent situation, brought a strange flush to your cheeks. It felt more intimate than anything you’d ever done, and it sure as hell didn’t feel the same as when you’d gotten a similar massage with your friend from back home.

Larissa had turned her back to you as she pored over the little card listing the various essential oils and their properties. You padded over to her, peering around her shoulder to take a look at the card and trying to ignore the way your bare skin tingled where it brushed against hers.

Once you’d made your choices, the two of you settled onto the massage tables and you wiggled your hips to get comfortable.

“I hope I didn’t overstep - booking this, I mean.” You couldn’t help but voice your concerns to the blonde, who looked over at you, head resting on her folded arms.

“What makes you think you overstepped?” Her face was unreadable, her gaze piercing as she searched your face.

“Uh… I don’t. I think. I just don’t want you to be uncomfortable or anything.” You bit the inside of your cheek as you waited for Larissa to say something, anything. Her gaze softened.

“You could never make me uncomfortable, darling,” she murmured, her lips curling up into a small smile. “In fact, I appreciate you doing this for me.”

You returned her smile, opening your mouth to say something just as the door to the room opened and your massage therapists returned, asking about your preferences for essential oils. Larissa opted for a ylang ylang blend, while you opted for sandalwood.

You could feel yourself relaxing as warm hands began to rub the oil into the tense muscles around your shoulders. You hadn’t realized how badly you’d needed it, but after a stressful beginning to the semester, perhaps a massage wasn’t such a bad idea after all.

A soft moan from your left caused your entire body to tense up again, heat filling your belly. You could feel yourself growing hot as an ache began to build in your core, and you were finding it hard not to rut your hips against the massage table. Nevermind. Terrible idea.

You turned your head to look at Larissa. You had never seen the principal look so relaxed before. Her eyes were shut, her lips parted slightly to allow light, barely audible sighs to escape her. As one particular, very breathy sigh fell from her lips, you couldn’t help but buck your hips into the table a bit.

“Someone’s a little tense,” your massage therapist commented, working deeper into the muscles at the base of your spine. You squeaked out in surprise and Larissa’s eyes fluttered open, meeting your gaze as you flushed a deep red. She smirked before shutting her eyes again, allowing a groan to pass her lips as her own massage therapist dug into a knot near her shoulder.

This woman was going to be the death of you. Focus, you thought. You can do this. Surely the whole thing must be over soon, for how long you’ve already been laying here. With Larissa’s eyes closed, you allowed your own eyes to drink her in, free of inhibitions.

Your gaze traveled along her elongated neck, down the curve of her spine, to the dip just above her ass which was, tragically, covered by a towel. You mapped out the freckles dotting her shoulders, allowed yourself to get lost in the sensual way that her eyelids fluttered as she reacted to the massage.

Another gentle moan had your eyes snapping to Larissa’s lips, those soft, plump lips… Heat pooled between your legs and you could feel yourself growing wet. Get yourself together, before you ruin the massage table. You were almost certain she knew what she was doing to you, and you would make her regret it later.

You had never been more grateful for anything than when the massage came to an end and you were allowed to dress again - more specifically, when Larissa was allowed to dress again.

As you stood in front of the reception counter, swiping your card to pay for the massages, Larissa allowed her chin to rest idly on your head, her hand coming to rest on your waist.

Maria smiled at the two of you. “I hope you enjoyed our services today. I must say, it’s refreshing to see a same-sex couple here, we don’t get too many for our couples massages.”

“Oh we’re not-” you began, but Larissa cut you off.

“Thank you,” she replied, her grip on your waist tightening.

~~~

Your brain was short-circuiting all the way back to your car, and it was a wonder you managed to fish your keys out of your purse without dropping them at the rate that your hands were shaking.

“Larissa?” You breathed out as the two of you had settled into your seats.

“Yes?” She leaned back in her seat, a serene expression on her face.

“Nevermind.” You shook your head, trying to gain enough mental clarity to turn on the engine and begin your drive back to Nevermore.

“Someone’s a little tense,” Larissa quoted, and you could hear the smirk in her voice without looking at her.

“Don’t be an ass,” you retorted, trying to hide the way your cheeks burned by putting the car in reverse and making a show of checking your mirrors.

“Relax,” Larissa giggled, placing a hand on your thigh. It was meant as a comforting gesture, but it only made you feel more nervous. “Thank you for taking me here, Y/N. I really enjoyed myself.”

“Me too,” you murmured, a smile slowly spreading across your face. “I’m almost sad it’s over,” you joked.

Except you weren’t joking, not really - you wanted nothing more than to spend the rest of the weekend with the blonde, but you were worried you’d overdo it, that she’d tire of your presence.

Larissa broke the silence that had engulfed the both of you. “Are you hungry? We could pick up something to eat and share the evening in my quarters.”

“I would like that.”

~~~

You ended up agreeing on sushi and picking some up in Burlington, before driving back to Nevermore and making your way to Larissa’s office.

When Larissa walked towards the door to her quarters, you shot her a confused glance.

“I don't want to be in my office this weekend,” Larissa supplied. “Unless it would make you uncomfortable…?” You quickly shook your head and followed her into her quarters, settling on the couch in her small sitting room.

The two of you dug into your sushi and you once again had to ignore the heat spreading in your core at the small moans of delight Larissa was letting out as she tried the different sushi rolls you’d ordered.

“Will you stop making those noises?” you snapped as Larissa let out a particularly lewd moan.

“Or what?” She quirked an eyebrow as she brought her chopsticks up to her mouth, wrapping her lips around the piece of sushi.

“I’m going to have to shut you up.”

Larissa’s next moan was your final straw. You surged forward, claiming her lips in a bruising kiss and causing her to gasp.

Larissa parted her lips for you and you wasted no time in licking into her mouth, your hands fisting needily at the fabric of her dress as you moved to straddle her. She leaned back against the couch cushions, pulling you on top of her and deepening the kiss, drawing a hungry groan from your chest.

You felt hot all over, the desire that had been clouding your mind since the beginning of your couples massage taking over your entire body as you pressed yourself flush against the blonde, slipping a hand between the two of you and hiking up her dress so you could brush your fingers against her core, feeling her wetness through her panties.

Larissa tensed beneath you, her hands dropping from your hips, her lips stilling against yours. Something was off. You removed your hand from her sex, using it instead to prop yourself up as you pulled away from the kiss, hovering over her. Her eyes were shining with unshed tears.

“What’s wrong?” Nothing like this had ever happened before, and you felt yourself begin to panic, running through the evening in your head and trying to think of anything that could’ve been different from your usual interactions.

She shook her head, turning her head to the side and gazing into the void as her cheeks went pink.

“Hey, talk to me, what happened?” You wanted to reach out, to cup her cheek, to hold her, but you didn’t want to make things worse so you sat up, trying to put some distance between the two of you in the hopes it would help her calm down.

“It’s silly,” she whispered, still refusing to meet your gaze.

“Nothing you could ever tell me is silly,” you said firmly.

Larissa struggled to find her voice as she grappled with her past, fears from past relationships and sexual encounters bubbling to the surface - fears that she’d almost forgotten about, situations that she’d buried (or so she thought) deep inside of her.

“In the past,” Larissa started, blinking a few times as if to will the tears back into her head. “I have had some… lovers, who knew of my shapeshifting.” Larissa’s voice was shaky, but she continued. “I have been asked to shift in… intimate moments before.”

You furrowed your brow, not quite following, until a thought dawned on you, though it seemed so absurd you could hardly believe it to be true. “Like what, turning into someone else? Like their fantasy or something?”

Larissa nodded, her teeth coming down on her bottom lip. “Or ex-girlfriends,” she added bitterly.

Anger bubbled hot in your veins. “I hope you told those jackasses off!” Your harsh tone caused Larissa to turn her head towards you, a mixture of anxiety and confusion marring her features. “If I could get my hands on them-”

Larissa let out a choked laugh and cut you off. “It’s in the past.”

“But it bothered you enough to stop kissing me,” you reasoned.

“You’re… the first person I’ve slept with who has known what I am in a long time,” she said quietly, so quietly you had to strain your ears to hear her.

“I would never ask that of you,” you said resolutely. “You are perfect the way you are, and there is no one - no other form or version of you or anyone else - that I would rather be sleeping with.”

Larissa’s eyes searched your own and she nodded hesitantly.

“Can I hold you?”

Larissa didn’t reply, rather, she reached her arms out, allowing you to fall into them. You hugged her back, fiercely and tightly, mind reeling at the thought of someone having this absolute goddess in their bed and wishing for her to be anyone but herself.

You remained locked in an embrace until Larissa began to squirm underneath you.

“Are you okay?” you murmured.

“I’m a bit too tall for the sofa,” she confessed and you laughed, glancing over your shoulder and taking in the awkward angle at which Larissa was holding her legs.

“I don’t want to let you go,” you pouted playfully, giving her a squeeze.

“Can we at least move this to the bed then?” Larissa teased, already pushing you off of her.

You agreed and allowed her to lead you to her bed, where you settled beside her and pulled her back into your arms. She slung an arm over your waist and rested her head on your chest.

“I’m sorry some people decided to be so cruel to you, Riss. You don’t deserve that.”

It wasn’t until Larissa’s head shot up that you realized what you had called her.

“Larissa. I’m sorry.” You worried again that you had crossed some sort of boundary, initiated some sort of unwelcome intimacy by your use of the nickname, but Larissa simply smiled brightly.

“I haven’t been called that in a long time.” There was so much wonder in her eyes that it took your breath away. “I like it.” She ducked her head, hiding her face in the crook of your neck.

You tightened your grip on her waist, smiling to yourself and relaxing against her as both of your breaths evened out.

You could feel your hold on the waking world slipping, your eyes threatening to fall shut, and you attempted to untangle your limbs from Larissa’s. She reacted by letting out a discontented sigh and pushing herself possessively against you.

“Stay?” she mumbled, voice thick with sleep.

“I don’t think that’s a good idea, remember?” you whispered, pressing a kiss to her cheek and squeezing her gently before slipping off the bed. “Don’t forget to take the pins out of your hair, or you’ll wake up with a headache.”

Larissa hummed, pushing herself off the bed and following you as you gathered your shoes and your bag from the sitting room. She walked you to the door and, just before you could turn to leave, pulled you in for a tight hug.

“Thank you,” she said quietly.

“Anytime.”

#larissa weems x reader #larissa weems #larissa x reader #principal weems #principal weems x reader #in my head #in my head series

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